In the shadow of the Underbelly, it was dank and chilly. Because of the tilt, the clearance toward strut number three was reduced to less than two meters. The struts were mottled yellow. Working at it with the edge of a sharp stone, Susannah could barely crack the surface. Mud spattered the Lander’s underside as well. One man-sized hatchcover dangled by its remaining hinge. The doors on two of the small storage bays had been ripped away entirely, and the contents captured by the flood.
“The Sawls are unlikely to be able to assist us with the manufacture of any missing parts,” Weng mused, looking up at the empty bays.
The main hatch gaped wide, now a scant three meters above. Weng stood in the ankle-deep mud beneath the opening and studied its hovering darkness as if she could coax it to speak to her of its miseries and provide a list of damages.
“We will need a rope,” she stated finally. Terseness was often her only visible sign of impatience.
Susannah craned her neck for a look. She could not tell how far the mud and water had risen into the hatch. Besides, Weng’s main concern would be for the precious ascent engines, and the state of their health could hardly be determined by staring into their muddied exhaust cones. She wondered how McPherson had managed to get up to the nose so fast to check the antennas, and then decided that she had done her checking long-distance. Susannah was disappointed. She rather liked her image of McPherson scaling the Lander’s outer shell like Sir Edmund Hillary. “Perhaps the Sawls could build us a new ladder at least,” she suggested.
Weng glanced her way, blinked, then nodded briskly. “We can trade for the materials.”
“What have we got that they want?” asked Megan.
But Weng’s back was a little straighter than it had been a moment before. “I will arrange for it right away.” She turned to start the half-mile trek back to the cliffs. A tired groan from Megan halted her only briefly. “Ah, Dr. Levy. Do stay and enjoy the air.” Her smile was a sly flicker of an eyelid. “I’ll see myself home…
24
Stavros padded through the FriezeHall looking neither to right nor to left. When he noticed that he was shunning the light pooled beneath the chandeliers, he also realized that he was scudding along on the balls of his feet, a sort of speeding tiptoe.
Nobody’s here… who am I avoiding?
But out of the corner of his eye, he caught the red-and-lavender jewel-sparkle from the Friezes, and the accompanying chill told him that Belief was creeping up on him of its own accord.
Breathless, he halted at the open doors of the StoryHall. The old priest had gone, to rest or to celebrate. The fire was ash. The room was dark but for a cool steady glow coming from somewhere in the upper tiers. Stavros slipped in and found his cases waiting in a neat line just inside the door, not as he had left them, scattered in his surprise, but as some meticulous Sawl had placed them, ready for his return. He was ashamed to have worried about leaving them.
He took the two larger cases into the outer hall. Returning for the third, he glanced about for the source of the odd glow. He expected to find a hidden window or a light shaft in the dome, but instead, he saw a faint spear of light on the back wall, at the level of the highest tier. He squinted to make it out clearly, then climbed the tiers for a closer look.
In the wall, just opposite the great wooden doors, was an arched niche that had escaped his notice when the surrounding tiles were ablaze with reflected firelight. A thin flame burned in the niche.
Oil lamp? he wondered as he approached. But the flame was the wrong color.
The niche was tall and narrow, a semicircle bowed into the wall. The curve was set with a mosaic of tiny lozenge-shaped tiles. Its beaded pattern was like a fiery lizard skin: glossy crimson, salmon, vermilion and garnet. Black inlaid letters curved in bands around the back of the inset. Stavros could just make out Lagri’s name, though the lettering differed here and there from the Sawl alphabet he was learning. Some of the tiles were chipped or missing. Moving in as closely as he could without singeing his cheek, he noted hairline cracks in the grout and minute webs of fracture in the glaze. It reminded him of the texture of ancient pots in museums on Earth.
He decided that the niche was very old. The letters excited him with their differences. But the name itself…
The shelf was tiled in concentric rings. The outside ring was deep wine red, and the colors moved inward through red and orange. The central ring was a raised ceramic collar glazed in golden yellow and set with blood-red cabochon stones. The collar enclosed a small hole. From the hole sprang the flame.
The flame was slim and blue. It burned clean and hot without a trace of soot. Leaning in close, Stavros heard a gentle hissing.
He stared at the flame as if it were alive, then stepped back and explored the tiled surfaces for a seam or a hinge, anything that would indicate a hidden vessel of some sort, a refillable reservoir. He found nothing. The flame apparently burned on its own.
And what would burn with such a flame? He knew and did not know. That is, if he were home on Terra, he would know it as a gas flame. But here? How could the Sawls, without metal or machinery, harness a flammable gas?
He thought of the steaming, pressurized water in the BathHall. He had known how wondrous that was but had accepted it rather than explore further to learn how it was accomplished. He thought of the warm, circulating air throughout the entire cave system. The list was lengthening. Apparently more than he had guessed remained to be revealed about the Sawls’ capabilities. And, he thought with relief, this time it had nothing to do with magic or weather. These purely technical mysteries he could delve into without worrying about side issues of sanity or belief.
In a sudden flurry, he scrambled down the tiers and ran into the FriezeHall to grab the case containing the video gun. Pictures, first, then he would tell the others. He bent to lift the little gun from its housing but came up slowly, sucking his check.
No.
He couldn’t tell the others, not until he was sure that the revelation would in no way harm the Sawls.
Secrets again, Ibiá?
But it had to be. Secrecy was his only weapon. Megan’s warnings not to become involved were well meant. he knew that. But she had seen many planets in her lifetime. Her long experience had jaded her into protest without action. Stavros could not bear the thought that everything that was the Sawls, their industrious fatalistic cheer, their rich mythohistory, their generosity and ingenuity, might be lost to him if the rest of the galaxy decided to take further notice, for one reason or another, of the planet Fiix. He was not sure he could just stand aside when it happened, and he certainly wasn’t going to do anything to encourage it.
This secret he would keep for his own sake, as well as for the Sawls’.
Weng would call this a mutiny and have my hide, he thought. His crooked smile belied his awareness that he had just made one of those rare turning-point decisions. Thus are the lines drawn, and fatal choices made.
Stavros took up his new loyalty as easily’ as he shouldered the little video gun, and went about his secret work.
25
A soft wind sprang up as Megan and Susannah watched Weng retrace the rugged path through the mud and rocks. Susannah sniffed at it warily, reminded of the hot desert blast that had foretold the earlier disastrous thaw. She wondered how long it would take to run the return distance to the Caves. Once, proximity to the Lander would have meant safety, and might again, if it was found to be in working order. For now, it was only a vulnerable metal shell parked on an open plain. For now, safety was in the Caves.
“A nice spring breeze,” she remarked to Megan, as if they stood on the terrace of a friend’s country apartment on Terra. “Think I’ll go for a stroll.” She moved out from under the Lander’s oppressive shadow, needing the comfort of the sun. She splashed through the shallow moat and walked to the top of the nearby rise. From there she had a nearly full panorama. Facing south, to her right, muddy hillocks and ravines led to the flat rock terraces beneath the
cliffs. Ahead of her to the east, more mud and hillocks, and the cliff curling around to meet a towering scarp dominated by the Red Pawn. To her left stretched the vast ravaged expanse of the Dop Arek, with its sawtoothed edging of distant mountains.
Megan struggled up behind her, slower and out of breath.
“Well, look at that,” she exclaimed, pointing toward the cliffs.
Susannah nodded. The wide stone stairs were deserted. Gray smoke curled up from a dozen cookfires among the forest of newly erected tents. The harnessing of the hjalk continued, but already a long procession of people and carts and animals snaked down from the rock flats, fanning out into the ravines, their digging tools shouldered like weapons.
Susannah clambered up on a high boulder for a better view.
One arm of the procession moved toward them along the bottom of the gully that ran under the Lander. At the head of the line, a wizened FoodGuildsman walked in intense gesticulating consultation with two Engineers, one of whom broke away to wave directions to the others behind them. They divided into work details and attacked the sides of the gully with rakes and hoes. Each detail started at the top of the slope and worked its way steadily to the bottom, shoveling the yellow mud into semicircular terraces that followed the contour of the rise. Four giant hjalk hauled flatbed wagons along the stream bed. Stones pulled out of the mud were tossed down into the gully to be sorted by a horde of Stonecutters’ apprentices and stacked on the flatbeds according to size. When a wagon was full, its hjalk drew it back up the gully to where the terracing began. There, a detail of journeymen wearing the Stonecutters’ Guild hammer-and-chisel seal raised a low stone dike to contain the bottom terrace. Fat earthworks edged the higher tiers. As each terrace was carved out and flattened, the runoff water was gathered by the earthwork, until a series of narrow stepped ponds lined the gully sides.
From the top of her boulder, Susannah could see the same process being carried out in several dozen gullies or ravines. The terraces took shape with astonishing speed. The largest were nearly an acre square, though most were a third that size or smaller, as the contours of the land dictated. Every available inch of ground was being shaped and put to use.
The mood of wild celebration had dissipated. The party transforming the gully nearest to the Lander worked with a concentration that was almost grim. The foreman from the Engineers’ Guild tramped about in the mud offering advice and encouragement to workers too intent on their task to really listen. The elderly FoodGuildsman paced the top of the slope with his mouth set tight. Occasionally he halted to study the sky, with particular attention to the northeastern horizon.
Susannah and Megan watched for an hour, admiring the care and speed of the work. When both sides of the gully had been terraced for several hundred yards, the work detail took a break. They passed around the water jugs, shed a layer or two of clothing and moved on to carve up the next section of waterlogged slope.
Susannah chewed her lip. “Usually you plow first and then flood a paddy. I mean, terracing is normally used to keep water from running off, but, here, you’d think they’d want it to run off.”
“Apparently not…” Megan began.
The wall-building teams now climbed to the top of the finished terraces. Working down the tiers under the watchful eye of the Engineer foreman, they opened a shallow sluice in each earthwork. A small amount of the water collected in each terrace ran off onto the level below.
“Equalizing the water level,” she concluded.
The finished terraces did not stand vacant for long. More hjalk appeared along the ridge, each hauling a double-shared wooden plow. A young herdsman sat high on each beast’s burly shoulders, feet twined in the curly mane. They urged their mounts into the top terraces and drove them back and forth in the shin-deep mud and water. When one terrace was plowed, a digger was on hand to help lift the heavy blades and rollers over the earthwork and onto the next level.
Susannah shook her head. “Gods, they’re efficient.”
“Mmmm. Too efficient. I’d say they’re in one hell of a hurry.”
Susannah frowned, thinking of the Sawls’ uncanny nose for weather. The old FoodGuildsman too was staring at the sky. The oblate salmon sun still rested between the peaks of the eastern mountain range, as if gathering itself for that precise moment of separation from the horizon that would signal an official sunrise.
This sun is not a friendly color, Susannah decided. The orangy pink was acidic, and the sky around it was tinged a faint green that progressed through a watercolor wash of turquoise and aqua as it rose to azure at the zenith. It deepened again to the heavy green of malachite where the western sky met the sharp white profile of the cliffs. “Why do you think they’re in such a hurry?”
“Sawls hurry,” Megan stated dogmatically. “Whatever they happen to be doing, they do faster than we would do it, so to us it looks like hurrying. Actually, it’s their natural pace of existence.”
“Even though their day is longer and you’d think they’d work slower?” Susannah laughed. “Is this Levy’s Law of Special Relativity?”
Megan looked wounded. “I’m serious.”
Susannah worked at concealing her grin. “Well, I have noticed that their metabolisms run a little hotter, but… Oh, my. Look at this!”
The hjalk and their plows had moved on to the next sector of terraces. The mud stood in high furrows that just broke the surface of the water. A long-haired dairy hekker was coming over the rise. A solitary figure perched on a pad of blankets strapped to its back.
“Kav Daven!” Megan breathed.
The old priest sat erect and smiling on his barrel-chested mount. In the sunlight he seemed to have gained substance. Susannah no longer worried that he would shatter like crystal in the slightest breeze. He stared straight ahead as the hekker plodded along the ridge. His bald head was slightly cocked, as if he were listening to the ground. Behind him strode an apprentice, the tawny child from the StoryHall. She led a double line of younger children who were trying unsuccessfully to appear adult and solemn.
At the first flight of terraces, Kav Daven raised his hand and the hekker stopped. The animal was as thin and gray as the old man himself but it had a willing softness in its eye. Mud and splashing had plastered its long coat to its ribs in matted strands. It was hardly tall enough to be a proper mount. The priest’s bony legs hung long at its sides, his toes skimming the water.
The tawny girl came to stand at the animal’s head. At a sign from the priest, she led it down into the nighest terrace. Kav Daven carried a huge loose sack slung from hip to shoulder. The sack bulged with shifting weight. He dipped in, drew forth a brimming handful of seeds and raised them to the sky in salute. Then with a sweeping gesture, he cast them at random into the mud. The line of children began a high-pitched hum.
The girl twined a hand in the hekker’s shaggy mane and led it up and down the field. The younger children followed in a vee formation, humming their shrill monotone, stalking along the furrows like a flock of water birds. Kav Daven scattered the seed from side to side and sang out in a voice that seemed to fill the nearby plain. The children answered him, and the rhythm of their chant mimicked the swing of his arm and the swish of their own feet as they pressed the seed into the mud.
Susannah climbed down from her boulder, stiff from sitting still. “Let’s find out what they’re planting that’s all going to rot in this waterlogged soil!” She scrambled down the wet bank into the gully and waded along the streambed.
“This you call a wait-and-see attitude?” Megan called after her but rose to follow unwillingly. “Maybe it’s like rice, eh? Rice grows in water.”
“It’s the rice seedlings you plant in water, not the seeds. Besides, what about Taylor’s ‘desert climate’? Rice won’t grow in a desert.”
“Irrigation? From what they’ve done here, I’d guess they were capable of it.”
Susannah recalled the last plant sample she’d been working on before the snow had stopped. She had nev
er completed her analysis of that sample. It was structured like a water plant…
She left the stream bed and climbed the opposite bank, dragging Megan up after her as if she were a troublesome child. She struck out across the rutted ground to intercept the gully where it curved back on itself. The land sloped gently into a puddled depression and rose again. The old priest and his entourage had progressed to the next set of fields. Others moved along the ridges now, seedsmen from the FoodGuild and long lines of apprentices behind them, to finish the bulk of the sowing.
Susannah came to the edge and looked down into the first level of terraces. The water stood knee-deep and still. The furrows had been flattened by the children’s feet. She crouched and plunged both hands into the mud. “Whew! Cold!”
“What do you expect?” said Megan. “It’s been pitch-black night for two weeks.”
“And those children walking in it barefoot!” She scooped up a handful of silt and let the water drain out through her fingers. She sifted the mud back and forth until she had sorted out a dirty pile of seeds. She rinsed one in the water and held it up for Megan to see. It was chunky, triangular and the size of her thumb pad.
“What does that remind you of?” She turned the seed to catch the pale sunlight. Under its coating of yellow mud, it was pale magenta.
Megan took it in her own palm and poked it. “Kind of looks like big corn.”
“Go to the head of the class.” Susannah fished in her therm-suit pockets with a muddy hand. “Forgot to come equipped. Not even some old sample bag with a hole in it. Oh well.” She dropped the dirty seeds into her breast pocket, leaving smudged fingerprints all over the flap. “It isn’t corn, of course, but it might resemble it. We’ll take a look under Ghirra’s lenses in Physicians’. They’re more powerful than my kit scope, would you believe? Damn! If we had CRI on line, she could do… well, we don’t, do we.” She took the single seed back from Megan and tried to break the seedcoat with her thumbnail. “Now, you don’t usually sow com by broadcast, but…”
The Wave and the Flame Page 22