There was a brief astonished silence behind us, which was good, then a bunch of shouted warnings which was bad. They weren’t shouting at each other - this was shouting directed at someone far away. I had a bad feeling we weren't done.
“Detour, guys, the direct route is booby-trapped or staked out or something.”
Three acks. No one was sparing energy for speeches. We made an abrupt left at the next intersection, still setting a pace that would make a Quinlan Olympian quit in despair. Assuming they had Olympics.
More shouts.
“We’ve pissed them off, at least.”
“To the left, up there,” Bill said.
I looked in the indicated direction. Huh, not bad. A three-story building with a flat roof and a reasonable climbing route, if you're into parkour. It would be fair to say that Quinlans are not climbers, and it would not occur to them that we might climb drainpipes and hop roofs.
Bill led, we followed. Mechanical muscles and computer reflexes ensured no oopsies, and in seconds, we were lying flat on top of a roof. There is a short barrier wall around the edges, more likely for aesthetics, as I couldn't see it being of any practical benefit. I opened my mouth, spit out a roamer, and set it on top of the wall. The others did the same, and in moments, we had four video windows hanging in our heads up displays will we lay out of sight.
Our pursuers came into view in a ragtag mob. They'd clearly not planned for this eventuality. Some were checking doors and alleys, others were running back and forth on all fours. I could see five tranq guns being carried in plain view. Then one of the group called out, and the others gathered around her. I tagged her as a probable leader, and made sure I got a close-up image.
The group had a conversation we couldn’t make out. Or maybe argument would be a better term. There was a lot of arm waving and interrupting, and one attempted bite. But eventually they settled on a plan. A couple of Quinlans took up positions in the shadows, where they can keep an eye on the street, while the rest marched off the way they'd come.
“Looks like were to be here a while,” Bill noted.
“I need a coffee,” I added.
Leaving the Mannies AMIs on Sentry, we all popped into my VR and grabbed our favorite seating. I pulled up the four video windows from our surveillance roamers, and put them on the wall. Bill leaned forward and made a point of making eye contact with each of us.
“I guess the first question we need to deal with is how they knew we were coming.”
“That's got some assumptions in there.”
“Reasonable ones. We didn't do anything to attract attention in Elbow.”
“Like peeking into a cart,” Bridget gave me the sideways eye.
“One frigging mistake…”
“Good point, though. This had the smell of setup right from when we asked…” Garfield stopped abruptly and stared into space, his eyes growing slowly wider.
“What? What??” We all knew that facial expression, it was the light bulb look.
Instead of answering, Garfield pulled up another video showing our encounter with the helpful citizen who'd given us directions. He paused the video, then pulled up another video from our subsequent encounter. He fast forwarded a bit, then paused that video and place them side by side. Sure enough, the helpful giver-of-directions was also one of our ambushers.
“Well that pretty much settles it, if there was any doubt the first place,” Bill swept us with a glare. “They were watching for us. Us, specifically. In a town we'd never been in.”
“The general population doesn't have anything like telephone a radio, or telegraphs.” Garfield popped up the report from Hugh. “They explicitly are pre-steam and pre-electricity.”
“And Hugh confirmed that they didn't have any electronics and Galen,” I added. But there are ways to communicate over long distances that don't depend on those technologies.
Garfield shrugged dismissively. Pony express, ship based mail system, semaphore telegraph towers, like in Lest Darkness Fall… we’ve seen no signs of any of that.”
“Actually, they do have a river-based mail system, but it's kind of what you might call ‘relaxed’ in its execution. News of us would reach Elbow in about two weeks.”
“Which means our erstwhile captors have some more immediate form of communications. The Administrator?
“It does seem to be the most likely explanation.”
“But using locals?”
“Who says they’re locals?” Bill said, cutting into my discussion of Garfield. “I mean they’re Quinlans, obviously, but they might go home at the end of the workday to their underground fully-tech-enabled bunkers.”
“Ah. Secret police, sort of.”
“Wait,” Bridget said. “You don't think these are Resistance? Why?”
“Quick communications between cities,” Bill replied, “multiple tranq pistols.”
I nodded. “Well it makes sense, if you think about it. There’s some kind of secret society with full technological assets that is either controlling or at least monitoring the general population. They are probably responsible for Scattering's when people break some set of rules.”
“Wait, hold on. The people we took on in Galen Town and were trying to kill Skeev talked about Scattering as something that someone else did to them. They couldn’t be part of the Administrators group.”
Garfield held up his hands in emphatic negation. “Unless it was Skeev or his contacts that tagged us, Bridget. Maybe they noticed us trying to grab Skeev.”
“Nope, that doesn't make sense either. Skeev was Scattered twice, remember? He wouldn’t know anyone in Galen Town.” I grimaced in frustration. “Dammit. Are we running from Skeev and company, or from his attackers? And if the latter, does that mean there's more than one group? And do any of them represent the Administrator?”
“Well, one way or another, we attracted someone's attention.” Bill drew a deep breath and leaned back, hands behind his head. “If they have some kind of back-channel communications than it doesn't matter. Either way, they’re a step up from the common population.”
I sighed. “We have a lot of theories, but not much in the way of answers. The question is, should we let them succeed?”
“What? Are you insane? That's ridiculous.”
Not one of my more popular suggestions. I contemplated the shocked and outraged expressions. “It's just a thought, guys. And I guess it's always available, if we get desperate. But it would presumably get us in touch with someone, one way or another.”
“We’ll keep in mind, Bob,” Bill said, “but I think we’d have to be pretty desperate. It's an all or nothing action. And if we've guessed wrong would send us back to square one. Even worse than square one, I think, since the administrator would then know exactly what they are dealing with.”
I nodded, feeling obscurely disappointed, although weather that was with myself for the suggestion or my friends’ reaction to it, I couldn't say.
It was now very early the next morning and the street surveillance had given up and gone home, or wherever, so we'd gone back to our Mannies. The first order of business was getting down off the roof. I didn't want to go the same way we came up, because it was always possible someone was still watching from a less obvious location, but a quick check around the periphery of the building made it clear that the route we'd taken was the only simple one. So it was that, or go through the building.
Fortunately, there was an entrance: a horizontal hatch, which likely opened directly into the top floor. Unfortunately, it appeared to be secured from the inside. But we had roamers. I spit out a couple of 2 mm models and sent them down between the cracks in the structure. It took them only seconds to discover the problem: a simple sliding latch. Unfortunately, moving that was beyond the strength capabilities of that particular model, even if we all unloaded our entire complement.
“Can we cut the latch off?” Bill asked.
“I guess we'll have to,” I replied. “But let's make it quick. Everyone spit up
fleas.”
We sent in a total of 20 of the little guys, miniature light sabers primed and ready. 10 seconds of battling the dark side, and the latch released with a thud sound. I pulled up the hatch, and we carefully climbed down the very steep stairs.
The building had the look of an apartment complex: long halls with numbered doors spaced evenly. The stairway was situated near the center of the building. No elevators, of course. The stairs creaked loudly enough to wake the dead in the next town, and we were all cringing with every step.
When we got to the main floor, Bridget glanced around and pointed. “Back door.” Without waiting for agreement, she headed that way.
The door let out to an alleyway. Not particularly odious, as alleys went, but quite gloomy, due to the tall buildings on all sides. We paused to take stock.
“Are we just gonna bail again?” Bill asked.
“A good question,” I replied. “It might not actually be a terrible tactic to stay overnight, and go to the library in the morning. I’d think they'd be expecting us to head downstream first thing. They might even have set up at the river to watch for us.”
“Or we could cross over to the next river and had back upstream, double back,” Garfield suggested. “Maybe communications between rivers is less dependable or slower.”
“Or,” Bridget added, “head downstream underwater and skip a couple of towns.”
“What about taking a tributary?” Bill said.
We turn to him in surprise.
“The population isn’t all concentrated along the main waterway. There lots of tributaries and branches along the way, and there’s usually a small town or village or two on them.”
“Unlikely to have a good-sized library, Bill. That's what we’re looking for.”
“Yes, but also less likely to have goons looking for us. At least I hope so.
“Alright, vote.” I queued up a voting app. 2 ms later, the results were in. One vote for each of four alternatives. Le sigh.
“Well, looks like it's rock paper scissors lizard Spock again.”
The elimination rounds lasted a few extra milliseconds, but it soon transpired that we would be, by executive decision, going farther downriver.
“Okay, fine. But we can’t just float down, that's asking for trouble.”
Agreed, Bill. Like Bridget said, we’ll stay underwater and put some serious speed on. That will hopefully throw them off.”
This business of sneaking to the shore was getting really old. The vegetation was thick and I didn't care how aquatic Quinlans were, I didn't like swampy squishy ground. But finally, we were in the water. We went under immediately, and stayed a good 20 to 30 feet below for hours, driving west as hard as our Mannies would allow. We still hadn't done that maintenance break, and I was a bit concerned about breakdowns, but the Mannies were well constructed and didn't give us trouble. This marathon swim would take us through one of the segment ends. We all agreed that this was a good thing and that it would be very interesting. Whether it would put us beyond the reach of our pursuers was up in the air.
When we were close to the mountain, we all surfaced and formed a raft. We knew, generally speaking, what to expect. The river narrowed and consolidated as it approached the segment boundary, until only four branches of it flowed through the mountains in straits wide enough to take the total river flow without forming rapids.
The mountains themselves were impressive. They rose abruptly out of the shell with very little lead up, only a mile or two of foothills, turning into a slope of 70° easily. Looking at them, I decided that even that pitch was a concession to the engineering requirements of holding back the atmosphere, if and when. And they seemed to go up forever.
“Are you sure this is intended to be closed off?” Bridget said, staring at the spectacle.
“We have scans,” Bill replied. “Not a ton of detail, but essentially the middle hundred yards or so of the segment boundary is a diaphragm, similar to a camera shutter. I think if it was activated, it would close off the segment right to the central cylinder. And you can see two sets of guide wires or pylons or stays of some kind attached to the central cylinder, if you engage telescopic vision. One set on either side of the central line of the mountains.”
“The diaphragms would serve two purposes,” Garfield added. “One, to allow segments of the topopolis to be pressurized during construction while adding new segments. And two, as a safety mechanism in case of catastrophic blowout.”
“Where would the river go, though?” I asked.
“We already have two rivers going in each direction. Just divert all the water to the next river.”
“Wow,” Bridget shook her head in awe. “Are we sure we’re more technologically advanced than these people?”
“Not really, no. We just have some tech that they don't. But remember Bridget, and we said this back when we were starting out on this quest, this whole thing is just scale. Everything we see, humans could do if they had the will, and a sufficiently long view to make them stick to it for however long it took.”
Bridget was silent for a moment. “I wonder if the Quinlans got their motivation from being certain that they'd kill themselves off soon.”
“Hair-trigger tempers plus advancing weapons technology. Not a stretch, as a working theory.”
During this discussion, we drifted into the actual straight. This section of the Arcadia River was perhaps 2 miles wide, which led me to believe that the river must be quite shallow through the segment itself. Otherwise, four straits wouldn't be able to handle the flow. In any case, the current had certainly picked up, as had the wind. Ships attempting to sail up River would have a demanding and extended voyage.
The mountains rose straight up out of the water on either side of us, with no concession for any kind of usable shoreline. I thought I could see what might be a road or path along the nearer bank, but I couldn't resolve it enough, even at maximum magnification to be sure.
It was an impressive, if short, ride. Within minutes we been spit out on the downstream side of the mountains and the river immediately started to split off into tributaries. We also discovered something new: it was full night on this side of the mountains.
I gazed up at the stars. “We didn't… time warp, did we?”
“Interesting,” Bill replied. “It looks like the segments alternate day and night cycles. Makes sense, only half the segments would be drawing power for sunlight at any time.”
“Or this segment has a burned-out bulb,” Garfield added.
“Sure, or that,” Bill said, rolling his eyes.
Another three hours of floating brought us to a largish city, just as morning was breaking. Several sets of docks crowded with rivercraft hinted at a thriving industry. The city was close to a couple of tributaries, and it was likely that there were other settlements in those directions. This would be an excellent place to look for information and possibly make contact with a useful group, if we could figure out how not to get stabbed and shot during the introductions.
We decided to improve our chances by entering the town individually. Group of sabbatarians, one female, was a pretty good filter, if they were watching arrivals. Hopefully they didn't have photorealistic wood carvings or something.
The first person into town, Bill, set himself up to casually watch the dock area, looking for anyone else who might be doing the same. Next, Garfield docked and went looking for somewhere to stay. Bridget arrived shortly after him, and began asking around for a library. I came in last and searched for pubs. There'd been a lot of argument about whether this was strictly necessary, but I pointed out the we'd found out quite a bit during the Skeev affair by just sitting and listening.
Garfield reported that he had found and paid for a large room without having to specify the number of occupants. If we could avoid the use of the word ‘four’ entirely, we'd likely be better off.
Bridget had gotten directions to a library, without the up-and-down appraisal this time. She was headed in that d
irection and sent us a map.
Bill reported noticing a half dozen different people, including a couple of cops, but admitted they might have legitimate business that required them to hang around. Especially the cops. He didn't want to appear suspicious himself, so he suggested tag teaming with Garfield.
I eventually settled into a pretty forgettable pub a few streets in from the docks. It had an outdoor patio, which I took advantage of. The fare offered an option other than fish, for a wonder. Hounid, which was a smaller and presumably more tender version of the draft animal. I decided that I liked this town.
“Say, did anyone notice the name of the town when we came in?
“First Stop,” Garfield replied. “Not kidding. If these people have artistic souls, it doesn't extend to their city-naming.”
“Well, whatever First Stop may lack in naming, I'm willing to cut some slack because it also has steak.”
“What?! Where?”
I gave directions, and sat back to enjoy my meal. In minutes, the others showed up and ordered similar meals, which the Quinlans referred to as ‘land meat’. Garfield kept grinning, and I finally had ask what was tickling him.
“On the ‘Quinlans are a lot like humans’ list,” he replied, “I saw an adult female walking her, uh, pet. It's a sort of small dog equivalent. The poor creature was wearing a waxed paper…” Garfield made motions around his head.
“Cone of Shame? It had a Cone of Shame??”
Garfield grinned. “Yeah. It actually made me homesick.”
“I found a library,” Bridget said. “That's my target for the afternoon.”
“We’re going on the pub crawl,” I replied. “And doing some listening.”
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