by M. R. Carey
Coming back out of the Underhold was not half so easy as going in. I forgot where the stairs was at first. I had got to free one hand up to feel along the walls, so now I was just holding the tech all cradled in my other arm. A couple of times I dropped something and had to go back for it. I was scared past anything that I might of broke the tech. That instead of making myself a Rampart I was just making myself a wrecker and a reaver. I was moaning, kind of, in my throat, and my knees was shaking so much I must of looked like I was bit by a knifestrike and took the poison.
But I found the stairs at last, and I stumbled and scrambled my way up them to the landing where the window was. I dropped the tech out onto the grass outside, one piece at a time. There was seven pieces, I knowed now, for I counted them as they passed out of my hands. They might of broke then too, from hitting the ground or from landing on top of each other, but there wasn’t no other way to do it. I needed both hands and both feet to climb back out.
I done it slowly, scared of making a sound. The new lookout had only just come on, so she would be wide awake, and there was no way now to lie about what I done or why I done it. There was the tech lying right by to accuse me.
Once I was out, I had to go down on my knees and pick up all the tech, one piece at a time. The moon was down, which was a help in one way as I wasn’t in full view, and a hindrance in another as I couldn’t see. I swear to Dandrake, I almost forgot to breathe when I was groping around for those precious things, waiting all the time for a light to go on inside the house or for the lookout to shout a challenge.
None of them things happened. I picked up all the tech and I creeped away on my toes’ tips across the gather-ground.
And home, where the door was still unlocked as I had left it, I hanged up the workshop key on its hook.
I stowed the tech under my bed, where no one was like to look.
I undressed and climbed back under the covers.
I guess I don’t need to tell you how much sleep I got.
21
The next day I worked in the shed and in the mill yard, and said not a word to anyone. My ma was approving of the work I done but a mite troubled by my silence.
“What bit you on the tongue, Koli?” she asked me.
“Nothing bit me,” I mumbled. “I’m just tired, is all it is.”
“He sneaked out in the night,” Athen said. “I think he got a sweetheart.”
She only meant it as a joke, but it give me great dismay that she heard me go out. And the dismay come out as anger, like it will for anyone from time to time. “A man can’t even take a walk but women watches him,” I shouted, and throwed down the long-soled plane with a great clatter.
“You just wish women watched you,” Mull said. “Act your age now, and go back to work.”
“And pray that plane isn’t broke,” Jemiu put in. “For if it is, I’ll take a broom to you and turn your face into something worth watching.”
“Looks like someone already did,” Athen says. I didn’t realise until then that I took some bruises when I run into that wall in the Underhold. They had flowered up in the night, so now there was a line, all purple and yellow, down from my left eye to my chin. It seemed like I was raising a cry against my own self, every way I could.
“Did you get in a fight?” Jemiu asked me, giving me a harder look.
I put on a kind of a smile, or the closest I could get to one. “I did, Ma, if you want to know,” I says. “I got in a fight with a door, and the door give me a smack when I wasn’t looking. But I’m gonna win next time. I’m gonna wait till it’s bolted and drub it good.”
Jemiu laughed, and so did my sisters. I took up the plane again and put my back into it, hoping they would let it lie there, which I’m happy to say they did.
In the afternoon, when things was a mite quieter, I went and looked at the tech for the first time since I took it. You might wonder that I didn’t steal a look as soon as the sun was up, but there was a kind of a fear on me that pushed me away from it. What I had done in the night seemed more like a dream than a real thing now that it was daylight again, and the tech was the onliest thing that would prove it true. It was like the longer I stayed away from it, the longer I could make pretend I wasn’t a thief or a law-breaker and hadn’t done any such crazy thing.
But when I kneeled down and looked under the bed, there it was. There wasn’t no denying it, or making it be something different than it was. So I might as well go forward, for there certainly wasn’t no chance of going back. I took the seven pieces out from under the bed to get a better look at them.
Now I seen my mistake, very clear. When I seen the tech on testing day, it had seemed to me to be all kinds and shapes and sizes and conditions of things all throwed in together. But that was in the hot moment, as they say. I was seeing something different now.
The seven pieces of tech I had took was all the same. They was seven little silver boxes, maybe a hand’s length from top to bottom and half that much across. They was very thin, but they was made of white metal and had some weight and solidness to them. They all had the smoothness and the coldness that the bolt gun had when I picked it up on my testing day. They was shiny and lustrous and altogether beautiful.
But they was just the same thing seven times over, like I said. When the tech was took up and brung down again, the officers of the Count and Seal must of tried to keep like with like and same with same. That cast my spirits down, for it seemed my chances of carrying out my plan was a lot less than if I had got seven different things made in seven different ways.
I say they was the same, but that’s a loose speaking. They was all the same shape and size, with three of the things that Ursala called switches on them, all in a line along the bottom. Also they all had a kind of a glass plate set into them on one side, that I would of called a window except you couldn’t see nothing through it but black. Maybe it was one of those things Ursala told me about that soaked up the sun and stored it inside the box so it could do whatever it was made for.
They was all made that way, like I said. But underneath this sameness there was small differences to be seen. Two of the boxes had got a little twist of string hanging off of them, where the other five didn’t. And one of them had a star shape stuck on the back, with a little a picture of a horse, only the horse had a horn in the middle of its head and was smiling, which is a thing I never seen a horse do. Also, one of the seven had some signs from the old times across the bottom of it under the switches. I couldn’t read back then so I had no idea what the letters said. I didn’t think of them as saying anything at all, but only as shapes, like the signs that was moving on Ursala’s computer when she done the maths on it.
I looked at the little boxes a long while, with my thoughts running every which way inside my head. I was struck and dazzled by them being there, in my hand, in my room. I felt like I was different, somehow, when I was holding them – like some of their smoothness and coldness had come off onto me. But at the same time, I was thinking: I should of taken something from off of every shelf. It would of been easy to do, and better.
And I was wondering mightily what the boxes might do if they woke. They didn’t look like no weapons, but nor did the cutter until you seen how it worked. If my plan come to pass and I was made a Rampart, what Rampart would I be?
I used up most of an hour in this dreaming, and only come out of it when I heard Mull call for me to come and help her carry some planks to the steeping trough. Quickly I gathered up all the boxes and done what I meant to do in the first place. I set them out in a line on the ledge next my window. Not in front of the window, but beside it. There was a kind of a gable there, so nobody would see them even if they come in the room, and the tech would get all the light there was. The sun was shining fit to bust right then. I think I said before that these were the last clear days – a time my ma sometimes called the engine Summer, though what engine she meant I never heard her say.
I figured I would give them silver boxes a day to ch
arge up with sun energy, or maybe two days, and then I would start in trying to wake them one at a time. I’d keep on going for maybe a week, pressing the switches and trying to make the boxes say accept or acknowledge or such. Then if nothing happened I’d take them back to Rampart Hold after night fell and pretend like nothing had happened.
But somehow I never really believed it would go like that. I thought for sure the boldness of what I done would bring some good. It was like I had put everything I was and everything I had into this one business, and the world had got to match that wager or it wasn’t no world at all.
I was young, which maybe isn’t no excuse for being so stupid. Also, the way it come out, I was right. But I don’t see as how that makes it any better. Good success in a bad labour sets you down a dangerous path, so the dead god said one time before they killed him.
That lock-tide when I come back to my room I picked up the boxes one by one. The sun had gone down a good hour before, but they was still warm to the touch like as if they was alive.
22
Salt Feast was coming up. Haijon and Spinner was fasting for their wedding, which was set to be on the day of the feast.
I think I told you that Ursala give answer on three pair-pledges that year. Them other two couples was in the Fasting House, for they decided they would say their promises on the same day the new Rampart did. They thought it a good omen, like as not.
But Haijon and Spinner was not in the Fasting House. The Count and Seal said it would be too cramped in there for six people, the women’s room in particular being very small and narrow. So they give a licence this one time for Spinner to fast in Rampart Hold, and since she was doing that, Haijon had got to fast there too.
Meanwhile, there was the salt lodge to be put up in the middle of the gather-ground, and the tabernac for the wedding right next to it, and the bonfire over on the setting side. Three new share-works, and six souls less to advance them. That meant some busy days coming, right when I needed to be free.
It worked out well enough though. My sisters was dead set on decorating the tabernac, and since they couldn’t do till it was builded they went all out to build it. Ma and me was left alone at the mill the next three days. There was lots of work to do, but we was often doing it in different places, Ma going out with the catchers while I took care of what they catched. So I had no one watching over me, and could do as I liked as long as I didn’t slack.
Late in the morning of that next day, I went into my room and sit down on the bed with all the boxes laid out in front of me. I tried the one with the horse on it first, pressing the switches each in turn, then going back and holding each one for a couple of breaths before I let it go again.
That didn’t do nothing. I went along the line, trying the same things each time. It seemed a good idea to keep some order in it so I knowed where I was got to.
But it didn’t help none. There wasn’t a single one of the boxes did anything at all. They didn’t feel warm now, the way they did the night before. They was as cold in my hand as when I brung them out of Rampart Hold.
So then I tried to bespeak them, the way we was told to do when we was preparing to be tested. I said confirm and accept and acknowledge to each and every one of them, sometimes with my thumb on one of the switches and sometimes without. That didn’t make no difference, neither.
I was at this for an hour or more. Then I looked out of the window and seen the catchers coming back with a cartload of fresh wood. Ma was looking around for me, no doubt so I could help with getting the wood tied down on the drying frame, so I had got to leave off what I was doing and hide the boxes back under the bed again.
The next time I took them out was that same night, after everyone was gone off to sleep. I was tired to death myself, but my restless thoughts wouldn’t let me settle, so in the end I give in to them and tried again. I done the same as before, except that I was whispering the words instead of saying them out loud. Mull and Athen’s room was next to mine, and I was scared of rousing them instead of the tech. Dandrake save me if I broke their sleep after they slaved all day on the tabernac.
Come morning, I set the boxes out on the window ledge again, being afraid that they might not of drawed down enough power, or that they had used up all they took even though they didn’t do nothing yet. Ma stayed home that day, so I didn’t get no chance at all to put them to trial again. Just before lock-tide, she went to visit with Shirew Makewell, but right then was when Athen and Mull come home. I had to wait until we all of us went off to sleep, just like the night before.
As soon as the goodnights was all said and my door was closed behind me, I went to it, pressing and holding, confirming and acknowledging and all the ruck and run of it. I was clinging onto hope like a man sinking in a bog holds onto a clump of grass, not daring to pull on it in case it breaks clean off. The boxes still wasn’t doing nothing at all but lie there, while I tickled and coaxed and begged and meddled to no purpose.
A thought come to me then. The tech had laid in the Underhold for years on top of years. If the Vennastins knowed the same things Ursala knowed, which they had got to because otherwise they couldn’t of made the tech wake for them, then they knowed how to do all the things I was doing now. And if they knowed, then they must of tried them out. The rest of us only got to see the tech on testing day, but Dam Catrin and her kin lived with it all year round – and everything they had, everything they was, come from this one power, this one thing that they had the say over.
I seen it, of a sudden, and I didn’t doubt but it was true. They must of pressed every switch and spoke every word, not blind like me but careful and slow and patient, year after year – just in case they found a fifth piece of tech that someone could hold, so their power could sit that much firmer and their glory be greater still.
And now here I come, with the big secret burning a hole through my head, thinking it give me advantage, when it hadn’t never been a secret to the Vennastins in the first place. So whatever I tried, it was certain sure they must of tried it before.
The sorrow of it come down on me like a weight. All the things I done, that I thought was uncommon brave and brilliant, wasn’t nothing of the kind. I was just a thief and a scoff-law, bloated up with big intentions. The kind of man I never had any consideration for and never wanted to be. The kind of man that eleven times out of a dozen ends up faceless or shunned.
I set down the box I was holding. I didn’t do it gentle, neither, but sort of pushed it away from me across the bed. I put my head down in my hands. I think maybe I was crying, though I don’t remember for sure. I felt like crying anyway.
“Go ahead and choose a channel,” a voice said. “It’s not like it’s gonna bite you.” It was a girl’s voice, and it come from right next to me on the bed. I jumped up like I was stung, and looked around to see who said it. I didn’t see no one, but the box I just throwed down was all on fire with light. The light was coming from the black window, only it wasn’t black no more but full of swirling, twisting colours like oil poured out on water.
The girl give a laugh. “Or maybe I should choose, baka-sama,” she said. “Put your tunes in my hands. You can trust me. Just tell me how you want to feel.”
It was the strangest voice I ever heard. The sounds of it was wrong in some ways. Like when the girl said feel, she made it longer than it should be. Fee-el. As if it was two words instead of one. But it was a real beautiful voice too, like it was halfway to being a song. And there was a kind of a brightness in it, so you could almost see the girl when you heard her talking.
She was young. She had got to be young, because her laugh come out of her like bubbles, the way children laugh. And pretty, and smiling in a way that was coaxing you to smile too or else you was spoiling the party.
What I should of said first, though, is that the voice was coming out of the box. I seen now that the swirly colours in that little window was kind of flickering in time to the words, like they was tied together somehow. I kneeled down next to
the box and stared at it with my eyes as big as barrel-heads.
“Do you like scratch-pop?” the girl said. “Eva Lopez just cut a new single. Say the word, boy wonder, and I’ll pour that honey right in your ears.”
I come to my senses at last. It was a wonder Athen and Mull wasn’t yelling through the wall at me already. I had got to stop this, right now, before they waked up and come to see who I was talking to.
“Stop talking,” I says. “Please. You got to be quiet!”
The colours kept on moving for a second or two, then the window went dark again. I was all in a panic, thinking I switched it off when I didn’t even know how I switched it on. Worse than that, once the light went out of the window, that box looked just like all the other boxes. In the dark, I couldn’t tell any more which one it was that had spoke.
“Are you still there?” I whispered. “Girl? Hello?” I picked up one of the boxes and give it a shake. Then I dropped it and done the same to the next one along. “Just say confirm,” I moaned. “Or acknowledge. Please! Please don’t be gone!”
The window of the first box – the one I just took up and dropped – come alight the same way it did before. I heard that laugh again, bubbling up out of nowhere. “Okay, moon rabbit. Confirm! Acknowledge! Was that good for you?”
I picked up the box. My hands was shaking so I almost dropped it, but now it was lit again, I could see it was the one that had the picture of a horse with a horn on its head. At least I would be able to tell it from the others. “Yes,” I says. “Thank you. That’s… that’s all for now.”