Ichor Well

by Joseph R. Lallo

  On the other hand, though, the grunts were marvelous workers. Those who’d raised their hands as having worked with boilers in the past were quick to pick up on what she was working at. Without the need for a mask, they were huffing and puffing much less, and they had the brawn to move with ease some of the materials that were a struggle for her. With their help the work had gone quickly. There were just a few more finishing touches to put on the first cart, and the grunts themselves had begun work on the others.

  “We’re going to want to swap this piece here for a valve with a stiffer tension,” Nita said, gesturing with the tip of the screwdriver she held.

  “Why?” asked Kent, who had taken the lead when it came to distributing instructions to the other work crews.

  “This whole assembly is going to shudder violently when the gun fires,” Nita said. “A valve this loose is liable to vibrate open under those stresses.”

  “Sure, granted,” he said. “But why not just up the tension on this one? This is a variable lock-out model.” He rubbed away a bit of grease to reveal a small hole. “Right for tight, left for loose.”

  “Fascinating… Quite a clever innovation. I’ve never noticed that in any of the equipment I’ve worked on up on the Wind Breaker.”

  He shrugged. “We keep the best stuff down here.”

  Nita pulled a pouch open on her belt and selected an appropriate-size screwdriver. After a few twists, she tested the stiffness of the valve.

  “That’ll do it. Lil, get a chain of fléchettes fed into the chamber and let’s do a test.”

  “Can do,” Lil said.

  The deckhand climbed over the walls of the improved cart and hopped to the ground. As much as Nita claimed it was intended only for defense, she’d managed to construct quite an intimidating vehicle. The cargo platform was clear, but leaning out from it and extending five feet up and two feet out was a fortified wall, topped with barbed wire and crisscrossed with metal struts. It would take several minutes with a sledgehammer and crowbar to even make a dent in the armor without having access to the fasteners on the inside. Mounted at either side of the driver’s seat, one atop the boiler and the other serving as a counterweight for it, was a scratch-built seat and a mounted fléchette gun. These guns, provided by the fug folk themselves, were almost twice the size of the ones that had so dutifully defended the Wind Breaker from raider attacks in the past. The cart no longer looked like a vehicle. It was more like a fortress with wheels.

  Lil rummaged through a crate and found a coiled-up string of foot-long metal spikes, then jogged around to the crew and cargo door at the rear of the vehicle. It was merely a full wall that had been hinged at the bottom to convert to a ramp.

  “I forgot how heavy these things were,” Lil said. “I’m used to the hollow ones we use on the envelopes and such.”

  Nita fed the end of the roll into the receiver of the gun, dropped the rest in the bin, and looked up. “Who wants to do the honors?” she asked.

  All twelve of the workers clambered for the chance, but the winner, thanks to proximity and initiative, was Lil. She’d hopped into the gunner seat before Nita had even finished asking.

  “Let’s see. What am I going to shoot…” Lil said, cracking her knuckles and leaning to look down the barrel. “Anyone attached to that tree over there?”

  “You folk up there get attached to trees, do you?” Donald asked as he levered a wall into place on one of the other carts.

  “The ones up top are still growing. Figured you might want to hold on to the ones you got,” Lil said.

  “Wait until you get to The Thicket. You’ll see what’s still growing down here.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Jabber, jabber. Can I shoot it or not?”

  “Go to it,” Kent said. “I’m eager to see if this thing works.”

  Lil pulled a few levers, and little puffs of steam jutted from vents as the seat rotated. “This one here’s the safety, right?” she said, squinting through the haze.

  “That’s right,” Nita said.

  “Take this, ya lousy tree!” Lil crowed.

  She pulled the trigger. An almost musical sequence of squeaks, rattles, and hisses accelerated to an earsplitting din as a few moments of having the trigger held consumed three feet of chain and sent the spikes hurtling toward the tree at a startling speed. The force of the gun was enough to drive five of them entirely into the wood of the tree, and the handful that were off center actually punched clear through. The shudder of the gun as she fired it was bone-rattling and threatened to throw Lil from the seat as it rocked the cart back and forth on its springy suspension.

  “Whoa!” Lil said. “Kind of hard to handle that kickback.”

  “It won’t be a problem once we’ve got the cargo loaded,” Nita said. “That will give the whole vehicle a lot more stability under force. Does anyone need any help or instruction finishing the modifications on the others?”

  “We’re not doing this as a perfect match, right? We’re putting guns front of the cart on this one, rear on the other one, and sides on the other, right?” said Bludo.

  “That’s right,” Lil said, hopping down from the seat. “Us traveling in one big line, putting guns on the front of the second one is liable to make the folks in front nervous, and so on all the way back.”

  “Then we might need help working the angles on these connectors and supports.”

  “I think I can work that for you,” Kent said. “Let’s not overwork these ladies on their first day.”

  “You’re sure?” Nita said.

  “Absolutely. From the looks of those eyes, you’re fit to drop. I’m surprised you haven’t already. Even some of our folks are eager for a break. In fact… Digger!”

  “Yes?” called their leader from within the cabin.

  “We’re just about ready for a break out here. That suit the schedule?”

  The door opened and Digger paced out. Ink stained one hand that still clutched a pen. The other hand held a stack of pages. Having spent his time inside, he wasn’t quite so well bundled up as the others, so the cold hit him like a hammer, stumbling him for a moment. He paced out far enough to inspect the work.

  “My word, you’re practically through with the modifications. That’s twice as far along as I’d imagined we’d get today. Yes, yes. By all means, take your meals.”

  “You heard him, boys! Lunch break!”

  “What’re you up to in there, Digger?” Lil asked.

  “Paperwork. Though heading a subversive group substantially cuts down on the bureaucracy, there’s still the matter of organizing, inventory, and the like. I daresay it results in more paperwork, as I’ve got to burn anything with names on it after I’m through, for if the cabin is discovered, I cannot risk my records revealing the roster of our little organization.”

  “I reckon the sort of fella who learns to get ink on his hands tends to find ways to keep getting ink on his hands,” Lil said. “Same goes for blood, I’ve noticed.”

  “One works to one’s strengths,” Digger said.

  The grunts began to gather into little clusters, plopping down on the half-finished chassis of armored carts or the unpowered cargo carts in lieu of chairs. Each of them seemed to have their own flask on their belts, but Donald ducked into the cabin and returned with a burlap sack. One by one he handed out what looked like small loaves of dark brown bread, one per worker. When he was through, he and Kent approached Digger, Lil, and Nita.

  “You need one too? Or you got your own?” Donald asked, holding out a loaf to Lil.

  “We got our own, but… what is it?” she said, intrigued. “I’d sniff it, if I could.”

  “This is nothing special. ‘Stock bread’ I fink they call it. We just call it ‘brown.’ Been living on three loaves of brown a day since forever.”

  “But what is it? Besides brown.”

  “Lunch.”

  Nita chuckled.

  “Donald, anyone ever tell you you’re not the brightest fella in the fug?” Lil asked.
>
  “Not more than once,” he said, giving her a shove to the shoulder that, if not for the playful smile on his face, would have been the prelude to another brawl.

  “Standard provisions for workers,” Digger explained. “It’s a dense bread with bits of meat mixed into the dough. And stock instead of water while it’s being made. I’d not had it prior to being moved to The Thicket, but it has rather grown on me.”

  He accepted the loaf Donald offered. Lil plopped down on the ground beside the cabin and leaned against it, crossing her legs such that they disappeared into the bottom of her long coat. She then fished a bundle wrapped in brown paper out of one of the cavernous pockets. Nita took a seat next to her and fetched her own first meal, and each pulled a jar of amber liquid from an inside pocket. Using their laps as tables, they each unwrapped the paper to find one large pastry and three small biscuits each.

  “What’ve you got there?” Donald said, eyeing the meal.

  “This here’s what I always called ‘stew pie,’” Lil said, holding up the large pastry. “It’s like stew that’s thick enough not to drip, wrapped up in dough. Sort of a pot pie without the pot. And these are just some biscuits.”

  “Those aren’t biscuits.”

  “Yes they… oh. Are you like them from Circa, who call cookies biscuits?”

  “What’s a cookie?”

  “I guess so. Here, educate yourself,” she said, handing him one of the biscuits. “Down here you call cookies biscuits and you eat ’em for dessert and such. Up there we call biscuits biscuits and we eat ’em with butter and gravy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Go ahead. Have a bite of heaven.”

  Donald sniffed curiously at the flaky concoction, then popped it in his mouth. “… If that’s what you folk eat up there… I fink maybe I can see my way clear to visiting now and then.”

  “Just in Westrim, now,” Lil said. “In Circa you ask for biscuits and you get sweet crumbly things like down here.”

  Nita took a deep breath and loosened the belt securing her mask. She slid it down and took a big bite of her stew pie, then held the mask in place and huffed out a breath to clear the fug from inside.

  “How’d that work?” Lil asked.

  “It is going to quickly become tiresome… but it’s workable.”

  “Bah. You’ve taken a tremendous risk and are enduring terrible conditions to help us. The least we can do is ease your suffering during meal times,” Digger said. “Kent, run inside and get the large sample.”

  The grunt climbed to his feet and entered the cabin.

  “I’m sorry, but what exactly can you do to help us?” Nita asked.

  “As I’ve said, we barely know more about ichor than you do. Most of what we know comes thirdhand from people who knew people who knew people who made deliveries to and from South Pyre. And… without getting too deeply into details, the circumstances of South Pyre make it difficult to handle pure ichor without taking special measures. So we’ve been learning quite a bit just by having some of the substance to study.”

  Kent returned. In his hand was a small stoppered jar with perhaps three healthy spoonfuls of ichor inside. In this quantity it looked even more like honey, and the dim golden glow was haunting in its beauty. It looked like someone had ladled out a bit of the sunset and stored it for later.

  He set the jar on the ground and pulled the stopper. At first nothing happened, but gradually the air above the opening began to clear. Over the course of a few seconds, picking up speed as it went, the bubble of clarity pushed back the fug until there was a void perhaps ten feet in diameter.

  The grunts and Digger backed away the same way one might retreat to shade as the clouds parted on a hot day. At the edge of the clearing, the fug took on a slightly thicker quality, forming a sort of translucent curtain of mist wrapped around the cleared air.

  “Go ahead. Remove the masks. In its pure form, ichor seems to vigorously repel the fug. No doubt that’s why it’s seldom handled in that form in South Pyre.”

  Nita blinked her eyes. While she’d become accustomed to the constant, subtle sting while working, there was no doubt the sting subsided the moment the clear void pushed past her. She hesitantly took the mask from her face and ventured a tiny sniff. There was still the strong scent of fug, but no more so than what she had to endure for the first few minutes after the Wind Breaker surfaced from a few hours immersed in it. She took a slow breath and released it.

  “Remarkable!” Nita said. “I’m not sure I’d trust it for the full meal, since a good hard breeze would sweep all the clean air away, but that’s quite a trick.”

  “I would offer to allow you to eat in the cabin where the wind won’t disturb the ‘fresh’ air, but I’ve got a few men working in there preparing navigational aids and the like and it might be a distraction for them to have to cope with a lack of fug. But in the future, I’m sure placing the jar in your tent will do nicely.”

  “This whole job just got a whole lot easier to swallow. You’re not half-bad, Digger,” Lil said.

  “I strive to accommodate.”

  Nita moved the jar to between herself and Lil, where it would take a stiff gust for the fug to reach them in dangerous quantities, and munched happily. Slowly, the nearby fug folk wandered off, nearly as repelled by the fresh air as surface folk were by the chemical smell of the fug.

  “I guess privacy is one of the little bonuses that’ll come with this sort of thing,” Lil whispered.

  “I suppose so,” Nita said.

  “… Nobody’s watching from over there. Anyone on the other side of me watching?”

  “It looks like they’re mostly minding their own business. Why?”

  “Nikita’s been tapping me. She’s awful hungry.”

  Lil casually palmed one of her biscuits and reached inside her coat as if to scratch an itch. Her coat was fluffed up enough by sitting down that Nikita’s movements inside were barely perceptible.

  “I ought to say, she’s said something that’s got me a little worried.”

  “What?”

  “About an hour ago, when I went off to answer the call of nature, I let her do the same. She tapped out a message on a stone. Said she smelled and heard another inspector somewhere.”

  Nita tried to keep her face steady. “But there aren’t any airships here. And we made it clear there shouldn’t be.”

  “I know it, but Nikita seemed pretty sure. And they’ve got pretty good ears, remember.”

  “Did she say where?”

  “She couldn’t tell. Just that it was close.”

  “We have to find it… and find out who brought it.”

  “You think maybe the whole thing’s blown?”

  “I don’t want to believe that. Partially because, as you pointed out, these seem like a decent bunch. Partially because there’s not very much we can do if this is proof of a trap.”

  “Sure there is. If we decide things are getting dicey, we’ll just steal one of them carts.”

  “And then what? We barely know where we are.”

  “Maybe so, but problems are usually easier to solve when you’ve got more firepower.”

  “… There’s some logic to that.”

  “Darn right. I learned that from Gunner.”

  “Why am I not surprised about that?” Nita took a bite and chewed it slowly. “Okay… after the break it will be time to start loading up the first cart. Can Nikita hear me in there?”

  “… She says yes.”

  “Can she try to communicate with the other one quietly? Can she ask where it is?”

  “… She’s tapping now… She says it says it is in a dark box.”

  “Well that narrows it down… Okay, that means it’s part of the cargo somewhere. While we’re loading, everyone pay attention. The sooner we find that box, the sooner we’ll know what happened and what to do next.”

  #

  “Okay,” Lil said, heaving a breath, “you boys gotta slow down. You’re making me look bad.”

  Loadi
ng the carts had been a slow process because it had to be done with care. Even with so much of the cargo strapped to the outside of the carts to fortify them, there was barely enough room to bring everything they intended to bring. Digger, in a questionably helpful decision, had taken it upon himself to direct the others where to load each piece of equipment. This provided the workers with ample time to rest and also allowed Digger to have a full manifest of the contents of each cart.

  Lil hefted a box into place and leaned against it. In truth, she was being a bit dramatic in her claims of fatigue. The day had been exhausting to be sure. Her chest ached and her head throbbed from having to draw breath through the mask. But compared to the air while they were in transit, even filtered through the mask it felt like she was breathing soup, much thicker and more substantial. She was slow to lose her breath and quick to catch it. But the frequent breaks gave Nikita a chance to deliver messages and listen closely. At first Lil had been worried things would be unpleasant or difficult for the little creature, tucked away as she was while the day’s work progressed, but it quickly became clear that being carried around by Coop in much the same fashion had given her a particular skill at coping and flourishing in such a state. Every so often she would release her grasp on Lil’s shirt and tap out a message to her. Much of the rest of the time she was simply silent and snuggled close. Considering how warm and toasty she was under the jacket, Lil was starting to feel jealous.

  Just as Lil grabbed the edge of the next box to lift it, Nikita tapped a frenzied message.

  The inspector is near. It is very near.