The Keenest Disappointment I Have Felt In My Travels Came When At Last I Was Permitted To View A Traditional Ritual Of The . . .
That took care of the head phase of preparing the ground, that is, determining if someone else had already done so. Dirant proceeded to the belly phase wherein he actually prepared the ground, an operation of little complexity outside of remembering the ground in this case was a shelf. He measured and marked off with talc the square in which he intended to set the base portion of the design. That was all. And Ritualists demanded money for such services.
Though the imagined reactions of their employers upon learning what they did all day amused them, Ritualists could hardly deny that they had by centuries of persistence and genius refined their profession to such an advanced state that most rituals demanded little from them aside from a reference to their Ritual Memory and a certain word in the class portion of their status. The Popcorn Regularization Ritual lay outside that “most,” but not because of the difficulty of wrestling reality into the desired shape, the strain placed on the Ritualist's mind by the myriad elements he must balance, or the anti-social pressure of secrecy owing to legal complications. The three-dimensional design caused the problem.
“An unfortunate occurrence,” Dirant might have muttered if he comported himself as a gentlemen ought even when alone and working on a troublesome task. Regardless of the actual words used, he felt the sentiment deeply as he grabbed a cloth to wipe off that line and, he hoped, nothing else. Oops. There it went. He said a few more words which failed to adhere to the standards of restraint and taste one hoped to hear from a university graduate but seldom did.
The design for the popcorn ritual began on a flat surface. Later a heating apparatus would be placed there. The design then extended up along the inner side of the box, down again, then up again, and so on. A great deal of the time spent in development had to do with Donnlink and Dirant's aversion to those continuous lines and their efforts to exclude them, all with no happy result. The Ritualist had to tip over the box, work his little brush dipped in a mixture of esoteric substances including burnt popcorn ground into a powder inside, paint, and bring the brush back out, all while keeping the lines reasonably straight. Those lectures about failed efforts by past Ritualists to involve Colorists in the process had puzzled him in Todelk, but his participation in the development process gave him a far better understanding.
At least Donnlink had managed to produce a Compound ritual, meaning it consisted of several distinct designs which could be completed piece by piece. It was also Fifth Course Third Accent, which indicated a generally triangular set of lines except for flares here and there disconnected from the main bodies. If not for the relative simplicity of the layout, the two inventors might still have been working on the prototype and taking art classes under the bored eye of an underemployed portraitist. The extra bits would be made with a special, harder-to-see preparation; trying to conceal the whole thing would only make a ritual thief more alert.
A simple design meant a possible design, students liked to say, but not an easy one, as the professors liked to remind them. Hunched over, shifting from side to side as he tried to reposition his shadow, and squinting hard enough to make a mother warn her children not to make faces like that, Dirant felt worse than he ever had when helping to move a piano. Heat built up inside his stomach. He dropped his brush and walked a circuit around the enclosure after each mistake or rare success. His self-conception as a professional capable of prompt work confronted the slack deadline allotted by the customer, and only the memories of having accomplished this before allowed the former to throw temptation back. Those memories, he reflected during one of his breaks, never included the discomfort he endured every time, which proved how trivial setbacks appeared when set against triumph.
The box itself seemed enormous when stuffed in a pack, tiny when he was drawing, and equal to the planet when he checked how much more had to be done. Ignoring the size, he appreciated it as a work of engineering which neglected neither function nor aesthetics. The glossy white exterior adorned by a noble otter insisted that popcorn must not be hidden behind a plain, dark curtain. As for the material used, he had no idea.
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The premium box differed from its common cousins in two ways, the first by having a sliding slab which joined or interrupted the ritual design depending on its position instead of a simple lid, and the second because of the extra openings. There was a slot which accommodated a grating on which a popcorn container might rest after being inserted through a swinging door on the side. Stadeskosken personnel came up with it, and it was that element of the popcorn stand which no Bodan-Tin or anyone else could acquire from a deal with Donnlink and Dirant.
For all his driving pride and his admiration of the clever otter box, the perspiration poured down and forced him to pause his work over an hour after he started. To avoid insulting his host by looking for what he needed himself, Dirant decided to ask the guy on the bench. What did that Drastlifar of the ordinary type think when he saw a Ritualist stumble toward him, hair flattened by sticky sweat, eyes narrowed as if light itself harmed them, and his mouth half-open before he gasped, “Eizesl, is there water I may have?” Nobody in the modern era believed that demons grabbed at the shins of Ritualists while they drew their pictures and chanted with the aim of dragging them to worse realms, but sometimes one questioned.
“Sit here, Sajaitin. Everything will be done if I have a voice.” The oligarch's friend dashed away at a speed that must have earned him admiration in the local sports scene. He came back with a jug of water, a bowl also for any dirty faces he would never imply the Ritualist to be near, a towel for immediate use, and a second towel for later deployment. Even if Dirant's disordered mind had thought to consider asking for such things, the courteous part of it would have regarded the request as too much of an imposition. His expression of gratitude therefore conveyed enough sincerity as to overcome the weakness of his facility with the local language.
He returned to work renewed and capable of the highest accomplishments, and that feeling lasted for almost three minutes before he reached for the erasing cloth again. Nevertheless, Dirant persisted and finished the design. A simple summary, and so he would remember it.
The remainder of the process had nothing in it of a nature other than rote. He drew out various implements to make varied gestures, poured powders either on the lines or in the gaps between, and all the while conducted a long chant in the Adaban mode. The term did not refer to his native language (though it was in that) but rather to any invocation formed from intelligible words. Sometimes the phrases those words formed ended up being nonsense, but the same held for most speech.
Suppose someone reads a letter, finds the contents objectionable, crumples it up, and tosses it in the trash. Suppose further that the intended recipient comes into the room, deals with his correspondence, reviews his investments, and tidies his desk. When he stands and stretches, the act tips over the can, at which point he finds the letter, smooths it out, and only then discovers his bid succeeded over his rival's. Dirant's gut felt like that paper, and he the winning bidder. Such was the signal from his Ritual Judgment informing him he had just performed an authentic ritual, a miracle requested and granted. A few hours of work for months, or if careful years of more consistent popping was indeed a miracle worthy of a god such as his. “Rejoice, rejoice,” Dirant uttered to acknowledge the completion. After packing up his tools and a final round of broom-work, he left the pavilion.
The fellow on the bench when the Ritualist walked over had evidently communicated with the one he replaced, since he looked on Dirant with a mixture of concern, worry, and anxiety. A straightforward mixture, but one with kind intentions behind it. “Are you sure you aren't working too hard, Sajaitin? On whatever it is you were doing.”
Though a habitual urge to tease the layman rose in him, Dirant did not feel it strongly. His mood could not fail to be light after a successful ritual, and the lickspittle's vagueness likely came from cultural circumspection and not a veiled accusation of slacking off such as a manager might make. If anything, the man was showing heroic restraint, since he surely wished to shake good news out of the sajaitin he could report to the Stanops and subsequently bathe in that great man's approval. Why not oblige him? “I worked exactly hard enough to do everything which may be done today. Tomorrow morning I must return to it.”
“Congratulations, Sajaitin. Several poets have held the best days are those when from fruitful labor sweet juice is squeezed, and I may even be able to name a few of them if I think hard. But what if I did, when you are off to prove them right or wrong? May you have a day not so far from paradise.”
“I would be happier if yours were closer still, Eizesl.” With that formula Dirant had picked up they parted, the local with enough spirit in his step to convince anyone his hope for good tidings to report to Poiskops Bodan-Tin was fulfilled, and the foreigner to stash his stuff in his room.