by J. D. Lakey
She bent again, hooked her short curved blade around the thick stalk just above the melon and jerked the blade through. With a quick toss, she sent it tumbling into the walking cart. Bend, cut, toss. Bend, cut, toss, with an occasional pause to give the cart a little nudge. The cart walked itself forward, rotating its four pairs of feet, planting one pair at a time in the dirt.
When the cart was full, its feet sunk deep in the soft soil of the field, she holstered her blade and nudged the walker into motion, pushing it gently whenever it slowed. The cart obligingly walked itself down to the end of the row of melons where the boys driving the electric collector wagons could unload it for her. For an unpowered mechanical device, the walking cart was surprisingly efficient at doing what it was designed to do, which was to move heavy loads over the top of the planted rows without damaging the fragile plants.
Sigrid and Meshel, his Packmate, had drawn collection duty for the dawn shift. Sigrid smiled at her from underneath the wide brim of his hat as he and Meshel hoisted the walker into the air and tipped its contents into the deep bed of straw in the back of the electric wagon. Cheobawn returned the older boy’s smile, peering shyly out from under her own hat.
Since her first foray, Sigrid greeted her with a smile every time they met now. He was a silent boy whose awkwardness covered hidden depths which, in her mind, gave them something in common. The fiasco at the end of her first foray had bonded them in some strange way. She did not totally understand it. Somehow it felt right to have allies outside the circle of Mora’s influence and the confines of her Pack.
“Excellent work, Little Mother,” he said. “You set a fine example for others to follow.”
“Thank you,” Cheobawn said, grateful for the compliment.
“Too bad her own Pack can’t learn from her example,” Meshel laughed. “Alain plays with his walker more than he cuts.”
Cheobawn glanced back down the row to where Alain was pushing his cart back and forth, studying its construction. He seemed to take endless delight in watching the mechanism that controlled the motion of the cart’s many legs.
“Don’t tire yourself,” Sigrid cautioned her, positioning her walker at the end of her row for her. “Remember to sip from your waterskin frequently and leave a bit for the midday shift.”
Such obvious advice would have been annoying coming from an elder, but Cheobawn found Sigrid’s concern sweetly endearing. She gave him one last shy smile before she nudged her walker into motion.
Her Pack worked the rows around her. Alain was supposed to be harvesting the row to her right, Tam beyond him. Megan had the row to her left, Connor cutting beyond. Alain had progressed from study to actual tinkering. He lay underneath his walker, his fingers twiddling with the leg mechanisms. He had only managed to harvest a quarter of his row. Connor had grown tired of waiting for him and had moved on, his picking haphazard as he sped over his row towards Tam.
“Zeff will be checking our progress,” Cheobawn reminded Alain as she nudged her walker alongside. Alain came out from under his walker. The sun made his distinctive coloring all the more apparent, turning his auburn hair into a cap of fiery copper, his eyes made doubly green by the verdant ambient light of the melon field.
“You know what?” Alain said, an excited look on his face, “I’ll bet I can make this thing go faster with a little bit of a redesign. They might be prone to tipping, but that would not matter if you were careful.”
Cheobawn paused, intrigued.
“Really? You should tell Finn.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Alain said. “Next thing you know, I would be drawing maintenance duty in the machine shops with him.”
“Oh, my,” Cheobawn nodded sagely, “that would be awful.” Alain, preoccupied, did not note her sarcasm.
She moved up the row. Connor grunted at her as he carelessly tossed another melon into his cart. He took her presence as an opportunity to rest and drink from his waterskin.
“Alain is going to fix his walker. Did he tell you? He wants to fix mine too. Then we can have races,” the dark haired boy said excitedly.
“I don’t know if that is such a good idea. It has only been a month since we got off restricted duty for the last time,” Cheobawn said doubtfully, not wishing to repeat the punishment any time soon, although the memory of their adventure did bring a smile to her face. Trying to climb the ribs of the dome had been a lot of fun. Free climbing using the natural irregularities in the organically grown support strut had been relatively easy. They had grown bored and were getting ready to climb down when someone noticed them from inside the dome. You would have thought they had stolen all the honeypots out of the Pantry or something. It was not like they climbed all the way to the top. The scoldings, lectures, and extra duty had been nearly unbearable. Cheobawn suspected the elders were less worried about them killing themselves and more worried about the integrity of the dome.
“See,” Connor said, spotting her smile. “You think it will be fun, too, don’t you? That’s why we need to do it! Summer is almost over and we haven’t done anything but collect fungus caps on our forays and clean out sewer vents in our off time. I’m tired of pretending to be good.”
“Let me go ask Tam what he thinks,” she said. “Maybe we can plan a hunting foray. I’ve never been hunting.”
Connor looked up, a bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes. She shook her head, amazed at little boys and their irrepressible enthusiasm for killing.
She caught up with her cart as it lumbered to a stop and nudged it along.
Megan and Tam had their heads together, looking at something in Tam’s hands. Megan looked up as she approached, a pleased smile on her face.
“Ch’che, hold out your hands. We have a surprise. No fair peeking in the ambient.”
“Why?” Cheobawn asked suspiciously, putting her hands behind her back. She’d seen Alain play that joke on Connor with a big fat melon grub.
“Because it’s a surprise,” said the older girl impatiently.
“A good surprise,” Tam added, smiling.
Cheobawn held her palms out as far away from her face as possible, just in case the thing wanted to leap up in the air.
Tam placed his cupped hands in hers and opened the bottom. Something with tiny claws tried to get out between her fingers.
“Don’t let it get away,” Tam cautioned.
She closed her hands together as he carefully slid his own away. The thing was soft, silky, and warm in her hands. A tiny little nose poked out of the crack between her thumbs, its stiff whiskers tickling her palms.
Cheobawn held her hands close to her eye and peered into the dim recesses of her fingers. Bright eyes set in a darkly furred face peered back at her. It shook its long fuzzy tail and squeaked querulously.
“Oooh,” she breathed. “What is it?”
“Biology vids call it an Orphid’s weasel, but everyone calls it a stalker because of how good they are at catching the melon grubs and leaf moths. It is forbidden to kill them because they help kill off the pests,” Megan said.
Cheobawn listened to the stalker in the ambient. It liked the safety and darkness inside her hands. She wished it calm. It flicked its tiny round ears at her, listening. Reassured that she was not about to eat it, the stalker curled its tail around its paws, settled into the curve of her palms, and opened itself to the ambient. Its mind was full of thoughts about hunting in the shade of the giant leaves, the satisfying crunch of melon buzzers between its sharp teeth, and the sweet juice inside their grubs. It told her of simple pleasures, of nights curled around family in the cool dark den, safe from the nighthawks and sky foxes. Emboldened by her interest, it began to sing a song of love used to call its children to him out of the deep shadows of the melon fields. Cheobawn tried to mimic the song with a whistle, but the high thin sound was beyond the reach of her human lips.
“Can I keep it?” Cheobawn asked in raptured awe, looking up at her Packmates.
“Uh oh,” Megan said to no one in
particular.
“What do you mean, keep it, wee bit?” Tam asked.
“Keep it. Make it a little stalker house. Put a nest inside. Feed it. Let it sleep on my pillow. You know. Like Zeff’s hounds.”
“I don’t know if that is such a good idea, wee bit,” Tam said doubtfully.
Megan scowled at him.
“Coward. You must tell her no,” she said to Tam. She turned back to look down at Cheobawn. “Absolutely not, Ch’che,” she said firmly. “We just got off restriction. We are not smuggling wild things into Home Dome for you.”
“We could keep it outside, build it a cage somewhere,” Cheobawn ventured.
“Stop,” Megan said, holding up her hand. “Listen to what you are saying for a moment and then tell me why that is such an awful idea.”
Cheobawn’s lower lip trembled. “I could take care of it,” she said stubbornly.
Tam groaned and ran his hands through his hair. He hated it when she cried.
Megan sighed. “I know you think you could, but wild things do not belong in cages, Ch’che. They curl up and pine away. You wouldn’t want something you love to die of a broken heart would you?”
“No, but …”
“No, Cheobawn. There is no way to cage a thing and keep the predators off it. And the Elders will not allow it into the barns for fear of attracting trouble,” Megan added firmly. The older girl turned, returning to her cutting, putting an end to the discussion.
Cheobawn looked up at Tam, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“Ten minutes, wee bit, then you gotta let it go, alright?”
She nodded sadly. The stalker licked her finger, trying to comfort her, but not quite understanding her pain. The touch of his tongue sent shivers of pleasure up her spine. She pressed it against her heart. It scrabbled at the cloth of her tunic until it found the buttoned down flap at the neck. Wriggling through, it found her omeh, nibbled experimentally on the plasteel threads before venturing deeper down into her clothing, its tiny claws making her squirm as they tickled her ribs. For the next ten minutes, listening hard to the ambient of the stalker, she forgot who she was, reveling instead in a life of living close to the earth under the canopy of leaves.
Chapter Four
When they stopped for the mid-shift rest, the Packs sorted themselves back into their groups and sat in whatever shade they could find under the maize stalks and runner bean trellises. Cheobawn sat a little apart from her Pack and drew lines in the dust with a pointed stick, brooding about stalkers, Lowlanders, and being a little girl who knew more than was probably good for her.
Connor and Alain were busy nudging their walkers towards anything that would not get up and run away. Megan and Tam watched, laughing, as the younger boys’ carts knocked together in a vain attempt to tip each other over. Megan leaned over and whispered something in Tam’s ear.
Shrieks of laughter and a crash made Cheobawn look up. Megan had borrowed a couple of support poles from the runner bean field next to them and she and Tam sat in the walkers while the smaller boys nudged the carts into motion. As the distance between them closed, the two older children tried to dislodge each other, imagining themselves contestants on the jousting field, though a walking cart was not quite as intimidating as a bennelk and a bean pole came nowhere near the effectiveness of a jousting lance.
Cheobawn laughed and left her solitary study to join them.
Alain, not content with being the pusher, bent and tinkered with the workings of the legs on another one of the walkers and then jumped in and leaned forward. The walker teetered precariously, then took a few quick steps to compensate for the shift in its center of gravity. Connor whooped in delight and insisted he do the same to his cart. Soon, all five carts were modified. It took a little bit of practice to get the walkers to run without tipping over. In a matter of minutes they taught themselves how to balance over the legs while the cart scrambled to right itself. Soon, all five carts were locked in a pitched battle of Last Man Standing. The other Packs, attracted by the noise, gathered to cheer them on.
Tam, not happy with the linear maneuverability, shifted his weight over one set of legs and twisted his body, forcing the walker to pivot around the weighted set of legs. Wood creaked ominously, but the walker held together as it turned and ran in a new direction. The others soon mimicked him, though their lighter weight made it harder.
Cheobawn grew frustrated and abandoned her walker, leaping across to Tam’s. She clambered up his back and onto his shoulders with a bean pole in hand. The cart teetered precariously. Moving became less of a walk and more like a controlled fall. They were now faster than any other cart on the battlefield. Noting this, Connor tried joining Alain in his walker, but they had a harder time coordinating the twisting turn. Tam crashed into them just as Alain’s cart teetered on one set of legs.
With a loud crack, Alain’s cart collapsed, sending the boys tumbling, the leg mechanism in shambles. Tam’s cart caught its feet in the rubble and teetered. Cheobawn felt Tam falling beneath her and leaped clear, tumbling into a hill of runner beans, their support poles snapping under her weight.
She lay, momentarily stunned, looking up at the sky, making sure she was all in one piece. The sting of half a dozen scratches faded as she began to laugh. She laughed until her sides hurt. By the time she could catch her breath and crawl out from the ruins of the vines and their support poles, she was ready to go at it again. Standing up, she froze.
Finn, the village Master Machinist, stood beside Zeff, both gazing sternly down at her. Zeff’s hounds sat alertly at his heels, their tales thumping madly against the ground. They wanted to play too and kept glancing up at Zeff, waiting for their release signal. It never came. The sun glinted off the oldpa’s silver hair, pulled back as it was in a tight warrior’s knot at the back of his head, making it look like hammered metal. Zeff’s black eyes were just as hard. They glinted ominously at her from under a frowning brow.
“Oops,” she said softly, looking around out of the corner of her eyes for her Pack. The other four stood at attention by the pile of tumbled walkers. Connor sported a bruise high on one cheek that had the promise of a great black eye. Tam was sucking on a split lip. The other Packs had disappeared into the tall crops, wisely choosing to be absent when the punishments were handed out.
“Whose idea was this?” Zeff asked.
Alain looked guilty, but remained silent, waiting for his Alpha to speak.
“Well?” Zeff said.
“I was the one who thought up cart battles,” volunteered Connor. Cheobawn looked at him, startled that he would throw himself into harm’s way so readily.
“What do you mean? That was my idea,” Alain said, offended.
“It was my idea to get in the carts,” Megan interjected bravely.
“It was my idea to fix the carts so we could all play,” Alain claimed hotly, not liking anyone laying claim to his accomplishments no matter what the consequences.
“I was the one who got on Tam’s shoulders, first,” Cheobawn added, “Tam thought up the pivot move. I thought that was quite brilliant.”
“You helped me out. Good thinking,” Tam said, grinning at her. She grinned back.
“Are you done?” asked Zeff coldly. “It seems that you are under the mistaken assumption that walkers grow on trees and can be plucked whenever one is needed.”
Cheobawn looked down at the wooden walkers and pressed her lips together to keep from commenting about lumber and trees.
“I shall inform Phillius of your offense. Take your walkers and follow Finn. You will serve your restricted duty under his supervision for the next week. Move it.” Zeff growled. He looked at them expectantly, waiting for any protest and when there was none, he strode away, his dogs following. The female hound, Lady, paused to lick Cheobawn’s face, perhaps apologizing for her masters sharp words. Cheobawn grinned, letting her fingers trail along the dog’s coat as it jumped away to join its mate at Zeff’s heels.
Finn sucked his te
eth and rocked back and forth on his heels as he considered them for a moment, his weathered face inscrutable. The children met his gaze, barely breathing. Between the grizzled hair that stuck up in random ways from the top of his skull, the frayed and grease stained clothes, and the grime indelibly etched into the skin on his hands, Finn appeared slovenly. His exterior belied the sharpness of the wit inside that head. If the rumors among the Pack were true, then age had not slowed Finn down. Woe betide the young Pack that tried to test that.
“Well. Think you’re clever, do you?” he said sourly, “Let’s see how clever. Come along. Bring the carts.”
Finn turned and strode away, not waiting for them.
They looked at each other. Tam raised an eyebrow and shrugged in resignation.
It took a few minutes to get the carts set to rights. Alain’s was ruined. They were forced to dismantle the broken cart using only their fingers and their pocket knives as tools. Setting the legs in the bed of one walker and the legless cart bed in another, they nudged the carts into motion and followed Finn. The Master Machinist had taken the path out of the fields. He strode towards the equipment huts by the North Gate, clearly expecting them to follow.
“This is the worst punishment ever,” moaned Alain. “Stuck inside cleaning mud off the feet of the walkers for a week.”
“Yeah,” growled Connor.
“Did you see me go flying?” Cheobawn asked, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“It was a truly spectacular somersault,” Megan said, laughing.
“Your landing was worthy of legend,” Connor added, giggling.