"What does it do?" Tanis finally asked.

"Do?" Speaker repeated. Standing on the stool, his exasperated face was mere inches from Tanis's. "It facilitates the adjustatory demarcation option. Isn't it obvious, half-elf?"

Tanis gazed again at the shiny but ash-spotted apparatus. Then he looked back at Speaker Sungear. The gnome sighed heavily and sat down on the stool. "This apparatus will revolutionize life on Ansalon," the gnome said.

Tanis looked from Speaker to the machine. "Really."

The gnome nodded vigorously. "It will allow all races to speak to one another without being anywhere near each other!"

"Really." Tanis wondered if Speaker Sungear had received a knock to his noggin when he tumbled through the door.

"Really," the half-elf reiterated, gazing at the machine.

"Why?" the gnome demanded. "What does it look like it would do?"

Tanis strolled before the contraption. "It looks like its chief purpose is to make noise." The gnome looked askance. The half-elf reached out to touch a toggle switch, only to bring Speaker Sungear tumbling from his stool in frantic haste.

"This is a carefully adjusted mechanism! Not for amateurs to fool with."

Speaker's expression told the half-elf that the gnome thought his visitor had the intelligence of a gully dwarf. "This"-he pointed to the flower-shaped horn-"collects sunlight, focuses it through my special illuminatory derivation device"-he pointed to the small box at the base of the horn-"and picks up the auditory emanations of ordinary speech"-he indicated a series of small gears ribboned with copper wire-"and translates the auditory ululations into illuminatory permutational vectors"-he showed Tanis a spool wrapped with more wire and a paper covered with figures-"which can be perceived and retranslated back into auditory emanations suitable for comprehension by the ordinary ear!" He stood back and folded his arms across his small chest. It was apparent that he expected an outburst of applause.

"You don't say," Tanis said. He cast about for something else to say. "Why?"

The gnome's violet eyes bugged. "Why? Why!" A pinkish streak was forming across his cheeks and nose. Tanis hoped it wasn't a sign that the gnome was having an apoplectic seizure.

Speaker Sungear inclined his head. The blush faded from his face. "How do you find out about events now?" he asked in an almost fatherly tone, as if explaining dewdrops to a child.

Tanis thought. "From friends. At alehouses. Overhearing things on the road."

"And in larger towns?"

Tanis felt his brow furrow. "Larger alehouses?" he guessed.

Speaker rolled his eyes. "Town criers!" he crowed triumphantly.

"Oh. Town criers."

"Think about it-some human standing on a street corner, yelling the day's events to passersby. It's not efficient!" That seemed to be the worst condemnation the gnome could devise. "Think of the improvements in communication if we could get machines to do it!" Speaker Sungear was enthralled with his notion.

"Machines?"

"Specifically my machine here. It will translate sound into sunlight and back into sound. We could send messages with this apparatus, learn about events in far-off corners of Ansalon almost as they happened!" Speaker, tears in his eyes, caressed the contraption with one hand, then cocked his head. "In fact, as a test, I will use this very machine to transmit some important news to all the inhabitants of Haven." Speaker's mustache drooped. "Of course there are a few wrinkles to smooth out."

"I should say." Tanis decided the creature was harmless, and certainly entertaining. He pulled up a wooden barrel and seated himself. "Tell me more."

"Well, the technological aspect I was working on when… when…" Speaker floundered.

"… when the bugger exploded?" Tanis supplied helpfully.

Speaker cast him a dirty look. "… when I experienced a momentary scientific setback was the illuminatory collection function." He explained how fully half the machine's workings were devoted to collecting the rays of the sun and concentrating them in the tiny box at the tip of the horn. "But I need to create an egress to the outdoors through which the illuminatory emanations will be transmortified. I've tried yards of tubing"-coils of which looped up to a hole in the roof-"but the light evaporates before it ever drains into the device."

"Why not move the contraption outside?" Tanis suggested. "There's plenty of sun out there."

"Unscientific," the gnome said. "Anyway, the device will rust if it gets rained on."

Tanis pointed across the room to the eastern wall. The rising sun made coronas around cracks in the wooden shutter that blocked the window opening. "Why not just open the shutters?"

Speaker looked from him to the window. He murmured and stroked his bearded chin. "It just might work," he agreed. "I'll need an automated illuminatory facilitation coordinator, using wire and a trip switch and…" He set to work, turning his back on the half-elf.

Tanis watched the busy gnome for a short time, then walked across the stable and threw open the shutters. He folded back the two halves and fastened them in place. "There."

Speaker jumped. "How did you do that?" he shouted. When Tanis showed him, the gnome's face crinkled in revulsion. "Crude. What if no one's around to open the window?"

Tanis was saved from replying, however, by the gnome's burst of activity. The small creature bustled from switch to gear to lever, adjusting the sunbeam collection horn into alignment with the window and traipsing from machine to window and back innumerable times.

"What's in the little box?" Tanis pointed to the tiny box at the tip of the horn. The gnome had fondled it with particular awe.

"My beam-conducting concentration device."

"Which is?"

"A wondrous piece of rock. See!"

The gnome flipped down a little door in the side of the box. Violet light poured into the shadowy stable. Tanis felt his eyes grow wide. "Where did you get that?"

The gnome looked away. "I acquired it-andelevenotherslmightadd-fromaQualinestielfwhohad-retrievedthemfromakenderwhoborrowedthemfroma-hilldwarfwhoboughtthemfromahumanwhowon-themfromagamblingsailorwhogottheminsomefrozen-southernportthenameofwhichlneverlearned-althoughnowlwishlhad."

"In other words, you stole them," Tanis observed. Gnomes were not above outright theft-acceptable in the name of technology and science, of course.

"This could revolutionize…" The gnome stopped at the frown on the half-elf's face. "Ah, what would a half-elf know of science? Elves know only magic, magic, magic." He turned his back and resumed work on his machine. After a while, Tanis realized he'd been dismissed, and he moved toward the open double doors. But he turned back when he heard the gnome crow, "And now the test!"

Speaker Sungear threw the main switch just as the sun rose above the low building to the east. Its beams poured into the window, over the floor, and into the huge metal horn.

"By the gods," Tanis said in awe. Unbelievably, the contraption began to percolate. It spluttered and creaked and groaned, and Tanis remembered Flint reciting a proverb about gnomes: Everything gnomish makes five times the noise it needs to. The air around the horn began to glow. Speaker Sungear leaned forward and hummed a gnomish folk tune into a mesh of wire. Sparks of purple and magenta erupted around the box that held the violet stone. Then the machine gave a hum-the same notes the gnome had hummed. Speaker froze, wordless, before the apparatus; tears streamed down his cheeks. "It works! By the great god Reorx, father of gnomes and dwarves, it works!"

The machine continued to hum-the same tune, over and over, faster and faster. Metal rasped against metal. The violet glow around the stone's box became an angry, plum-colored haze.