After a moment, his eye picked up a piece of bark off the lowest visible log of the building. That a piece of bark might have been broken or rubbed off a building that had been here this long was not surprising, but this piece was almost a perfect square some three inches on a side. On closer examination it turned out to have been put back over the exposed bare wood with some sticky substance to hold it there while yet making it easy to remove.
Bart did not remove it himself, but dug with his fingernails into the loose soil, pine needles and other detritus just below it. After a few seconds he found it, a wire coated in some flexible material of a dull reddish gray that matched with the color of the ground around it.
A lifetime of habit sent Bart’s hand to his belt for the knife he had not worn for nearly two years. Frustrated, he looked around on the ground, found a couple of shards of granite with sharp edges, and started macerating the wire between them until it parted. When it finally broke, the two frayed ends looked not unlike the ends of a break chewed by some small burrowing animal; and to further the illusion, when Bart put them back in the earth, he raked in on top of them such loose earth and pine needles as a squirrel or other such creature might claw up while rooting for food.
He straightened and went on to the trees in the direction of the outhouse; but once beyond them he turned to the edge of the fast-moving river. He squatted to wash his hands in the cold water, cleaning under his fingernails with the sharp edge of a broken dry twig to get as much of the earth out as possible.
When he stepped back inside the building, everyone there was gathered at the counter in the main room, near a stack of woods clothing, blankets, and sacks. Michel and Lehrer had their heads together over a large piece of paper spread out on the wood surface of the counter. At the sound of the door opening, Michel looked up.
“Bart!” he called. “Come over here and look at this map!”
The map had names printed plainly on it, with the false trading post near its center. The name “Shunthead” was plainly to be seen not far off. Running from the trading post in the opposite direction from the mine, however, was a chain of lakes. The first of these was the lake the trading post was on, which was nowhere near as small as it had seemed. They were simply on one narrow arm of it, and the main body curled southward toward a chain of farther lakes. On one shore of the last of these was a square marked “Fort Shadwell.”
From Fort Shadwell, a road was indicated stretching out to the southwest, off the map; an arrow paralleling it underlined the words “to the coast.”
“What about it, Bart?” asked Michel as Bart also bent over the map. “Does this tell us what we want?”
The question had a double meaning, for they had discussed the direction of their going the night before at Pier’s; and Bart had told Michel that they would by no means be going southward and coastward, but up into the woods, to sit out a winter in a cabin they would build. By doing that they could let their trail get cold for any hunters sent by the Emperor. In the spring they would move on again, bypassing any nearby settlements until they were far to the east and could slip, unnoticed, into some fairly large town to take up roles as different people.
“Looks like it ought to work fine for our purposes,” said Bart. “That’s that, then,” said Michel.
He folded the map up and pushed it into a pocket of the bulging backpack at his feet. “By the way, that one’s yours, Bart. I explained to Lehrer here about my weak back.”
Bart now noticed that there were three backpacks as well as a small stack of firearms and other gear, and of the three, one was the large one into which Michel had stuffed the map and two were smaller—obviously for only two of the three other people—who had to be Arthur and Emma if Michel was hinting that for some reason he was not going to carry a pack.
This was puzzling, but it could wait to be explained once they were well away from the post. They would not need the backpacks, anyway, until they left the lake to head into the woods.
“I’ll help you get the other gear down to a canoe,” said Lehrer. “You’ll want something bigger than the one you came out in. That can wait here until some of the bunch from inside come out on one kind of business or another.”
They moved their gear and supplies down to the dock.
“I’ll pack the canoe,” said Lehrer, who was obviously used to dealing with people whose experience with such things had been minimal or none. “You may think you know how after the training course they put you through—”
Bart and Michel exchanged significant glances.
“—but you still may learn something by seeing me do it,” went on Lehrer, continuing to work. “Just remember that a badly loaded canoe can overturn on just a breath of wind—and that you can get at any time. Also, remember the advice you had to stick close to the shoreline, no matter how much of a long way around it looks, because a real wind or a sudden rain that hides sight of any shore, can come up in a moment . . .”
He continued packing.
“Well,” he said at last, standing up. “There you are.”
He watched as they took their places in the craft, nodding in approval as they stepped into the middle line of it to enter, then raised his eyebrows as Michel took the bow position and Bart the stem.
“You’re not going to have the slave paddle?” he asked, staring at Arthur. “He looks strong enough for a good day’s work—”
“Not to start off with,” said Michel. “I’ve been inside all my life and I want to see what this feels like.” With his paddle he swung the bow of the loaded canoe away from the dock, Bart helping a little less so that they turned to face away from the shore. They turned their bow toward the same gap between island and land they had passed through earlier, for their supposed route down the lakes to the south and Fort Shadwell.
“Good luck!” Lehrer shouted after them. “Remember that business of staying close to the shore!”
They saw him turn back up the dock toward his trading post as they passed from sight around the bulge of land that came out toward the island.
“Pull in to shore,” said Emma unexpectedly, cutting short Michel, who was also starting to say something. Bart looked at her in the center of the boat, where she knelt facing him. There was a stem look on her face and she had open in front of her the small suitcase she had carried all this way.
As Bart automatically turned the prow of the canoe toward a low point in the bank of land alongside, she held out to him a piece of paper from the open suitcase.
“I think I can follow this all right,” she said, “but you’re the woodsman among us, Bart. Why don’t you look at it?”
As the prow touched the earth and rock of the lake shore, Michel, looking bemused, stepped out with the mooring rope in his hand and looped it around the lower trunk of a nearby spruce.
“Go ahead, Arthur!” said Emma, urging her brother forward and leaving the canoe herself behind him, so that Bart unthinkingly followed her and came ashore himself, still studying the paper she had handed him.
It was a map; and, as she had said, not too difficult a one to follow. The exit of the underground river, the shoreline with its bulge out toward the tip of the island, and a rectangle with the words trading post printed neatly beside it in English, were all easily recognizable at the bottom of the map. They stood out clearly in the lines of black ink in which the map had been drawn. There, also, at the approximate equivalent of the point where they now stood, a dotted line led up the slope away from the lake, roughly parallel to the shore, for a short distance to an “x” marked lightning-struck tree stump. At that point it turned left at an angle marked 40 degrees and proceeded for a rather longer distance to end at a curved line that looked the rough outline of a camel’s hump.
Beside the hump was the legend large boss of rock. Looks solid but is actually hollow. Follow directions on back of map.
Bart turned the map over and found its back half filled with a series of sentences, set down in a neat list and numbered consec
utively.
“What’s this?” he asked, frowning.
“I know,” answered Michel in a cold voice, “and so should you. That bag must have the equipment Pier mentioned confiscating from some of our earlier, more eager, cousins. Isn’t that right, Emma?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You mean—” Bart broke off, suddenly aware of Arthur’s curious, sullen face, and realizing why neither Emma nor Michel were putting into plain words what Emma had carried from the Inner World. “But Pier was definite about not—”
“Marta is a little more practical than he is,” said Emma.
“But . . .” Bart’s mind scrambled still in some confusion. “Eventually—I mean, if we follow what’s here on this paper, Pier’s got to guess what Emma carried away with her and who’s responsible for her having it. What if he simply asks Marta?”
Emma smiled.
“He won’t ask,” she said. “He’ll guess, but he won’t ask. He’ll know that if he asks, she’ll tell him; and what she’ll tell him is something he knows he mustn’t hear. His honor is precious to him; but nowhere near as precious as Marta.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Bart, staring at her. It was not the first time he had been made aware of the flint-hard practicality Emma could show under certain conditions. She and Marta were evidently much alike.
“It’s her grandchildren she’s thinking of, you know,” Emma reminded him, more gently. “Our children, but her grandchildren.”
Bart nodded slowly.
“Well, you’re right about the map,” he said. “There’ll be no trouble following it.” He stepped over to the mooring rope and tied it more securely around the tree trunk to which Michel had attached it. Then he paused for a moment and looked out across the empty lake. Untying the rope again, he waved a hand to Michel.
“Give me a hand,” he said. He picked up two of the packs from the interior of the canoe, having to step down the steep bank and into the water to do it; and held them up to Michel. The latter nodded and took them, handing them in turn back to Emma, who with Arthur’s slow aid deposited them back in the trees. Within a few minutes they had emptied the canoe; and then Bart and Michel lifted that from the water, and it, too, was hidden.
“Let’s move, then,” said Bart. “It’s past noon, already.”
“What is it?” asked Arthur as they all, including him, began to move away from the lake. “What’s on that paper?” But no one, including his sister, answered him; so he followed in silence.
Bart took the lead and the map. The true distances covered by the lines of ink on the paper were not indicated there; and he was a little surprised to find his way to the lightning-blasted tree stump mentioned, in less than fifty yards. Looking back along the way they had come, he chose two of the taller trees they had passed and took a bearing that was approximately forty degrees to the left of the line of travel they had been following up until then. He also looked back at the way they had come, to familiarize himself with its appearance for the return trip.
If the tree stump was that close to the lake edge, then their destination could not be much farther—he suddenly made the connection in his mind. Almost certainly Lehrer Green not only knew what was at the place to which they were headed, but probably had some routine duties there, from time to time. Naturally, then, it would be close to his trading post . . . or rather, his trading post would have been set up close to it.
In any case, it meant that what the map pointed them to could not be much farther from the stump than it had been to the edge of the lake behind them; and, sure enough, they had covered only a little more than the equivalent of that distance when they came out into an open area where a number of trees had been cut down, and a large outcropping of granite rose from the slope around it.
The outcropping was about the size of a three-story building. Following the directions on the back of the map, Bart led them around it to its far side, to a smaller boulder of some whitish-gray rock that was unlike the brown granite of the outcropping itself and did not look as if it had originally occupied the place in which they found it.
Bart passed the map to Emma and got down on his hands and knees searching around the base of this rock. When he found a whitish patch on it, almost at ground level and almost between the small boulder and the outcropping—for the two stood close enough to touch at one point—he pressed the whitish patch inward.
It sank down into the surface of the boulder only a fraction of an inch, but the whole part of the boulder visible above ground leaned over on its side like an egg sliced across near one end and hinged at a single point. Revealed below it was not the buried part of the boulder but a lighted opening equipped with steps descending below ground level.
“Ah!” said Michel.
Bart led the four of them onto the steps and down. Emma came last and the minute her head had descended below ground level, the boulder righted itself over them; and they were sealed within the tube of the staircase.
Bart counted the steps as he descended. There were a hundred and fifty-one of them. They brought him at last to an ordinary door-sized entrance beyond which was a well-lit room, its center dominated by a round, polished metal shaft some yards in thickness. It not only looked like the shaft of the Tectonal which Bart had seen in the Inner World, it was turning like the shaft he had seen. Its top vanished into a heavy metal cap braced with girders that ran from it to the surrounding wall, which was also circular, also of metal.
Bart drew a deep breath.
“Right,” he said.
He led the way up to the shaft and knelt at its base, glancing at the last lines of instruction on the back of the map. There was a thin silver collar, nearly a foot wide, that surrounded and almost touched the moving shaft. It extended out over the floor. Bart used the point of the sheath knife given him by Lehrer, as part of his woods outfit, to pry up the edge of the collar. For a long moment it resisted; and as he grimly increased the pressure he was putting on the point of the knife in trying to force it between collar and floor, he began to wonder if he was asking too much of the blade—the directions on the back of the map had called for a screwdriver to pry up the collar.
Then, with an almost musical sound, the entire twenty feet or so of ring sprang free from the floor and hung loosely around the turning shaft, being dragged along with it as it rotated. Bart got up and walked around the shaft until he met what he was expecting—a point where the ends of the ring came together.
Taking hold of both ends of the parted ring, he pried them apart. They came reluctantly at first, then more easily; then stiffened to the point where it was obvious he would never be able to spread the ring enough to take it off the shaft. Michel came to aid him, but it was obvious that even with Michel’s help—and Arthur’s as well, for what it was worth—the ring could not be taken from the shaft.
They ended by propping the ring at two opposing points with a couple of their backpacks, so that it tilted up on one side enough to allow nearly four feet of space between it and the floor, at the point where Emma and Michel knelt with the small suitcase open and a rectangular package in what looked like waxed paper on the floor beside it.
From one end of the package came what seemed to be no more than a hair-thin thread, leading to a roll of such thread wound on a spindle. At one end of the spindle, the thread ran to another, identical spindle, and this to a third that Emma was now carefully lifting out of the suitcase, while Bart held the piece of luggage open for her.
They went on extracting more of the connected spindles. When they finally finished emptying the bag there was a long row of spindles laid carefully out on the floor, each one connected to the one beyond it by a loose length of the threadlike material that wound it. In addition, there was a small, boxlike affair with a short, serrated, but thick piece of metal projecting from one end of it—rather like a key with a block for a handle.
“Is that all of it?” demanded Bart, staring unbelievingly at the fragile-looking thread and th
e package, which was less than four inches thick and not even three feet in length.
“It’s plenty for its purpose,” answered Michel.
He took up one of the connecting lengths of thread between the second and third fingers of his right hand. “This is brittle, but it’s got remarkable longitudinal strength. Enough so that less than the twenty pounds of it we’ve got here can hold the weight of the explosive—” He tapped the rectangular package. “—and either you or I can hold them both and lower the package a good two and a half miles into the tube, there.”
He pointed to the girders strengthening the cap that were easily in reach overhead.
“Then, when we’ve got it down as far as we want it, I set the timer with the setpiece, here, for anything up to fifty minutes. At the end of that time it’ll trigger off the charge in the explosive—” He pointed briefly again at the rectangular package. “It goes off, and blows the shaft apart at that point.”
Arthur made an odd sound, somewhere between a gasp and a choke.
“And then what?” said Bart skeptically. “They pull out the broken pieces down there and put a new shaft in. It may take them a few weeks, even a month or so to make a new shaft and set it in place—”
“You don’t understand,” Michel interrupted him. “This shaft has tremendous length and weight; and it’s delicately balanced. The forces turning it are tremendous and they’re coming nowadays mainly from the magma currents below, rather than any driving apparatus in the Inner World. After the explosion the broken pieces will try to keep turning. The shaft’ll break into dozens of pieces and probably pierce the tube that contains the shaft in as many pieces, or more.”
“So,” said Bart. “Perhaps six months to fish it all out and fix it.”
“More like a year or two,” said Michel. “The whole Tectonal will have tom itself apart. And by the time they get it replaced and working again, the concentration of currents in the magma will have been lost from the gathering of them that’s been going on for over eighty years. It’ll take as long again—perhaps as much as a’ hundred years—to rebuild such a concentration of forces again and get back to the point the Tectonal’s at now.”
The Earth Lords Page 37