“I say again, if you use something out of the wagons, put it back when you’re finished with it, because we may need to leave in a hurry. Don’t scatter stuff about, because if we collapse the camp, our stuff will probably not be there when we open it up again. It is not an actual place! Each time we open it, it’s a temporary construction! I have no idea what memory capacity it has; could be inclusive, could be none. Keep your belongings in your packs where you can grab them. If you go out, either take your pack with you or put it in a wagon. We are very unlikely to leave without the wagons.
“We assume whoever’s been here making that mess along the shore will be back in the morning. In the morning, we intend to be waiting for them. Remember. If you go out, go out quiet and stay quiet. Kitchen crew for tonight will be Silver Plume, Squash Blossom, and two men. Blossom, you pick two. We’ll appoint somebody else for tomorrow if we’re still here tomorrow. Any questions?”
“How long will the provisions guy wait?” someone asked.
There was a brief give-and-take before they decided on three days before a rescue party would be dispatched from Wide Mountain.
And with that, they settled for the evening. Horses lay down and sighed. People ate many-eater stew and sighed. People, amazed, took hot showers and sighed pleasurably. The kitchen crew had almost nothing to do but heat the food. Empty bowls set down on tables were miraculously washed and returned to cupboards. One of the men reported that horse droppings and urine disappeared before they hit the ground. Silver Plume, experimenting, found that bringing food had been unnecessary. The camp would provide whatever food was asked for, she told them, gleefully hoisting a fancily decorated cake to illustrate the point.
Before it became completely dark, Arakny, Precious Wind, Deer Runner, Xulai, and Abasio sneaked out to look over the territory. Whatever was being done was happening down on the “beach” next to the extended water. Abasio took off his clothes and slipped into the lake, his body making the change as soon as he was completely below the surface.
After climbing out and changing back, he reported: “It fits what the rider reported. I can’t see down there; I get some echoes. It’s so deep that there must have been a series of caverns running more or less parallel to the river but below it. In some places the bottom of the river was evidently the roof of the cavern. There’s a kind of ridge around the edge where that floor was. I imagine some water has been leaking down into the cavern for a very long time; the bottom finally weakened, collapsed, and the whole cavern system filled up with water. It’s very, very deep in there, and something way, way down there is making a strange noise.” It had been what Abasio would call a purposeful noise, but he’d been unable to locate the source. Considering the depth and the darkness, he had not gone far; he had been uncertain about being able to find his way out if he got lost under a stone roof.
Arakny, meantime, had sought an observation post they could use on the following morning without being observed, a place that would let them see all of the roughly rectangular space the Edgers had strewn with one mess or another, limited by the lakeshore on the west; the line of dunes on the south; and the low forest now around them on the north. East was Cow Bluff, with a long narrow trough along its bottom between mountain and a parallel ridge known as the Cow’s Tail: as though a huge plowshare had been dragged along the foot of the mountain. The ridge was partly rounded, some parts of it topped with scattered outcroppings of stone; the trough between rump and tail was the only clean and uncluttered place on the site; it offered the best view and the least danger of discovery. Arakny pointed to the area and told her group to be ready to go there at first light. Everyone else was cautioned to stay out of sight and hearing.
When it was fully dark, Abasio whispered in Grandma’s ear. He found Xulai, whispered in her ear, and they both went out, leaving Grandma as babysitter. They did not return until well after dark, and well after moonrise. They had taken the crystal cube with them to record the situation along the shore and the extent of the inundation, presuming there would be a way to download that information.
(Actually, the cube recorded everything that occurred in or near the water, and sent that information to a receiver at the House of the Oracles, including a passionate interlude on the shore. After watching this without comprehension, the Oracles decided to store what they had seen and keep it secret. Galactic inspectors had a lot of rules and were fussy about what they called “intruding on other people,” and sometimes actually removed such things. With their customary efficiency, they put Abasio and Xulai’s lovemaking in a secure file and pushed a certain button labeled ERASE, which their experience had taught them meant “hide.” Since they had never yet remembered wanting something they had hidden, the word “erase” had never inconvenienced them in the least.)
ARAKNY WAKENED THEM WHILE IT was still dark. Abasio and Xulai checked on the babies, and told the two young women who were acting as babysitters much more than they needed to know about feeding the babies, changing them, and so forth. Since they’d been helping for some little time they were almost believably attentive.
They asked for and received toasted bread with honey but brewed their own special tea known as wake-up tea, made from desert shrubs. Arakny moved about, sending this one here and that one there. At sunrise, she led the other six observers along the foot of the mountain into the trough behind the tail. They lined up at the north end of it, close together, each behind a sheltering clump of sage or yucca.
Early as they were, they were not the first on the site. A set of rails had been laid entering the site from the south through the gap between dunes and the dark water. Along the rails two giants were propelling a flatcar that held the skeleton of a fish. A huge fish . . .
“It’s a whale,” murmured Arakny.
“It wasn’t there last night,” whispered Grandma. “The giants have probably just brought it there . . .”
The rails ran into the water. Needly whispered, “What’re they doin’?”
Abasio shrugged. “My grandfather used to tell me, ‘Watch and you’ll find out.’ I suppose that’s what we’ll have to do.”
As the light increased, the rails were more clearly visible, coming in from the south through the gap between dunes and the widening lake. The wheeled car holding the metal monster was now about halfway to the water’s edge. It did resemble a whale more than anything else. At the near end of the convoluted, cupped, skull shape of the thing, its mouth gaped wide.
“No hinge,” muttered Abasio. “That jaw has no hinge. The mouth doesn’t shut.”
Among the observers, people made chewing movements of their jaws to determine where the hinge on the huge skeleton creature should be, but wasn’t.
“Do whales have lips?” asked Needly. “Maybe it’ll just shut its lips.”
The framework was about six or seven man-heights long, and it included fins, hinged where they met the huge ribs curving down from a long spine, the rear half of it segmented and ending in a flat tail, like an afterthought, as though someone had said, “Whoops, it should have a tail, shouldn’t it?”
“The framework . . . skeleton actually looks like bones,” Xulai murmured.
“Right shape but wrong color for bones,” said Grandma. “It’s metal.”
“I’ve always assumed the Edges were too constricted to hold really big equipment,” Xulai said fretfully.
Arakny commented in an annoyed whisper, “Well, we at Artemisia have always assumed the Edgers would stay in their own territory. Both our assumptions have been wrong. It’s obvious this group intends to go anywhere it likes and build anything it likes. The Edges had an underground manufacturing plant east of Fantis. So far as I know, it’s still there. And usable.”
“I’m assuming they’re here without permission, Arakny?” Xulai asked.
Arakny shook her head, wondering how many days Wide Mountain Mother might take to cool down once sh
e heard of this. “They didn’t even ask! I’m virtually sure they intended to use the area without bothering to clean up after themselves. Whatever they’re doing, it has to do with water, and the pond at the Wandering Lows was probably the closest calm water they could find. Mother will be very annoyed.”
“They may have thought this area would be underwater before anyone else knew they’d been here,” Needly murmured.
There was still nothing happening down below them but lethargic and what seemed to be pointless wanderings by the two giants. The rails were equipped with a siding, the mechanism of which was stuck, stubbornly resisting the attempts of the giants to run the flatcar out of the way. The watchers had time to become thoroughly bored before two other giants emerged from behind the dunes, pushing another car along the rails. Whatever was being delivered was shrouded in canvas, and the shape of it gave Abasio a premonitory pang. He did not have to wait long to have his suspicion confirmed. A truckload of men arrived, the switching mechanism became the center of their attention and was either repaired or unlocked, and both skeleton and the canvas-shrouded object were thrust onto the siding, where several of the men cooperated in pulling off the covering to display a long cylinder on a complicated understructure that was designed—if the various cogged wheels and levers were to be believed—to be raised or lowered as well as swung to either side.
“What’s that?” demanded Deer Runner.
“I’ve seen pictures of them,” said Abasio. “Haven’t you, Xulai? Arakny?”
“Cannons,” said Arakny. “They were made to throw exploding projectiles or just large chunks of metal that would kill and wreck. That’s why the mouth on the fish doesn’t close. The cannon is supposed to fit inside it.”
“A weapon of war disguised as a whale,” said Grandma, turning toward Arakny. “Do you really think the Edgers are using that factory east of Fantis? You think they’ve set it up to produce this . . . whale-y thing?”
Arakny murmured, “The factory east of Fantis was built mostly underground during the Big Kill. If the Edges are manufacturing anything really large, that’s the only place they could be doing it. After we starved the Edges, they stopped their giant and behaved themselves, so it’s been some time since we’ve thought it necessary to have scouts checking that far north.
“Now, however, Deer Runner has called out all the scouts, even the older ones and the young men just getting familiar with the territory. He has them covering the entire area from just north of Fantis to here. They’ve checked the west side of the Big River and gone as far east as Wide Mountain. They’ve found a lot of vehicle tracks, but there are no newly laid rails coming into Artemisia. The pieces must have been brought down separately, in wagons, and assembled here.”
Several men had come to assist the giants in closing the siding switch and bringing something else along the tracks. Needly made a troubled sound and pointed. They looked farther along the beach to the south, where another skeleton was being giant-handled along the tracks toward the shore area—an infant child of the first thing. “Now, that’s definitely a fish,” she announced.
It certainly resembled one closely: as like to the whale framework as doghouse to castle, though the small one was much more complicated, being strung, laced, and patterned with networks and webs of various shapes and sizes. These networks ran to and through many small and very complicated-looking mechanisms at various places inside it. This framework, too, had fins and a tail, and the head end had a number of lenses curving around the front from one side to the other.
“Eyes?” murmured Xulai.
“Or windows?” Grandma suggested.
On its own smaller flatcar, the smaller fish was pushed to the end of the tracks, where four giants lifted it onto the shore before pushing the flatcar back along the tracks and around behind the dunes.
“They’ve got a camp or an assembly area or something behind those dunes,” said Abasio. “Any known sites that come to mind?”
“Caves,” said Arakny. “There’s quite a large complex of caves on the south side of Cow Bluff. The border riders always kept the caves stocked with emergency rations and supplies, and they’re large enough to have served as an assembly site for these things. When we get back to the camp, we’ll send a team over the mountain to take a look.”
Just as the huge fish was apparently supposed to have a cannon protruding from its mouth area, the smaller one had several small guns mounted atop its head, and these were now being inspected by half a dozen men who had parked a mechanized cart alongside the fish. Its shelved compartments were loaded with mechanical contrivances, spools of wire, odd-looking tools. Moving with the utmost care, two of the men took a container out of the cart, set it on a fold-down work surface, and opened what appeared to be an extremely complicated lock mechanism. One of them walked to the mouth of the fish, where he received the container from his coworker and set it down carefully while the other carefully joined him inside the fish.
The two of them alternately peered into the container and at a bracketlike device that extended across two of the ribs, meantime exchanging comments or argument, though, as Needly remarked, they seemed more puzzled than anything.
“They haven’t done this before,” commented Deer Runner. “It’s a mystery to them!”
All conversation exhausted, Worker One finally reached into the container and removed the mystery: a carefully wrapped lump that he and Worker Two attempted to affix to the bracket. This required one or both of them to go back and forth, inside and outside, as they decided different tools were required. After the third upheaval, the taller of the two simply stayed outside and passed whatever items were requested by the inside man through a gap in the skeleton.
“Deer Runner’s right. They haven’t done this before,” said Needly, craning to see. “If they had, they’d have known what to take in there.”
“Use these,” said Arakny, handing a thing forward. “Put it to your eyes . . . no, the other end. Now turn the wheel until you can see . . .”
“What is it?” whispered Needly.
“It’s like the long-looker they had in the tower at Saltgosh,” said Xulai. “It magnifies things that are far away. The one in Saltgosh was very big. These are tiny in comparison, and two linked together, one for each eye. I think they’re called ‘duoscopes.’ ”
Arakny said, “They make them in the east somewhere. That is, I assume they do, because the traders from there sell them. We bought a few dozen of them for use by our border riders and scouts. I put this pair in my pack, thinking they might be useful, but I’d forgotten about them until this morning.”
Needly passed the glasses back. “Xulai, Precious Wind, look at that thing they’ve put in. Up above the bracket. They’ve unwrapped it.”
Xulai looked, gasped, passed the instrument to Precious Wind, who made a face and passed it on to Grandma.
“As I feared,” said Grandma. “I see a transparent spherical container of a . . . I believe it’s a brain. It could be a human brain, though some other creatures have brains of similar size.”
Far to the left, at the other end of the work area, the workers had given up on moving their cannon. They were moving toward the smaller construction, stopping at a respectful distance to watch. Grandma passed the duoscopes to Needly. “Your eyes are best, child. Tell us what you’re seeing.”
“The . . . the brain’s in a transparent kind of globe, with liquid in it. The globe is mounted on a complicated metal base. The man inside keeps turning it over and looking at the bottom of the metal part, then looking at the place it’s supposed to go. When he turns it over I get glimpses of the bottom. It’s not flat or smooth, it’s octagonal. There’s a place on the bracket thing that could also be octagonal—we’re just high enough above them for me to guess at that, it’s hard to tell because the bracket’s almost edge-on. I think that must be what the brain globe is supposed to c
onnect to. He keeps turning it over and looking back and forth and talking to the other one. Something’s in the way or it isn’t made right. The part on the bracket has wires . . . lots of them, all different colors, running from it all over the inside of the . . . framework, the skeleton. Wait. Ah! He wiggled something and made it fit. Now there’s bubbles in the liquid around the brain. Can you hear the hum?”
She took the glasses from her eyes to listen, cocking her head. The others nodded. Yes, there was a hum. All of them heard it but Grandma, who shrugged. “I can’t hear it, but I’m making note for the Oracles that there’s a hum.”
“Won’t their recorder thing notice the hum?” asked Abasio.
“Of course it will.”
“Then why do you—”
“I have told them I may not be available in the future, that is, after this particular problem with the Edgers is solved. Wide Mountain Mother and I have agreed to discuss our . . . relationship with the Oracles. Until Wide Mountain Mother and I decide what our particular arrangement, if any, is going to be with them in the future—for instance, providing them with food is certainly unnecessary and unwarranted given their access to food machines and the fact they have paid for nothing Artemisia has given—I thought I’d keep things as usual, no matter how silly it seems.” Particularly inasmuch as they might still have her children. She put the thought away resolutely. She could not afford to dwell on that, not now!
Fish Tails Page 66