A Succession of Bad Days

by Graydon Saunders

The only thing you can say for the canyons draining Old Lake is that they’re through the line of mountain-roots that make the high land that holds and holds back the Old Lake, it would have been the west end of the Old Lake when it was full, three or four thousand years ago when there was more rain in the eastern extent of the Creeks. It’s a mess on the map, falls, tighter than right-angle changes in the canyon, all this steep fall with side-streams and then a braided, marshy mess through swampland, it would have been a major river bed when the lake was full, the south dam, the big one, blocks the whole width of that old river at the last fall from low hills, it’s maybe fifty metres rise, six kilometres back from the canal.

  Absolutely no place to put locks, and the dams are complicated, the north dam has to run sluices both ways, it’s easy to see why no one wants us to tangle a canal into this.

  Old Lake itself’s got one township and three or four settlements, the town’s not Laketown, it’s Morning Vale. There are bunches of fertile valleys, used to be little lakes or bays off the big lake, the actual non-marsh north shore of the still pretty big lake that’s left, it’s maybe twenty-five kilometres of navigable water east-west, never broader than five, north-south, the water level’s dropped a lot, thirty metres, maybe, it’s left a lot of good dirt. Getting to it, though, the obvious routes are all through marsh, canals in marsh are six kinds of trouble, roots, silt, losing the channel, no place to put the dredge spoil.

  Ed. Dove, this should sound sharp. It feels like a slow hug. Never mind not having enough time to be a slow anything, or for me to hug back, it works, I don’t want to think about it so much I make it stop working.

  I look up from the map, realize I’ve got it going exaggerated-elevation full relief, and turn that off.

  There’s a Creek there looking at me funny, Dove’s smiling, Blossom’s smiling if you don’t have to limit yourself to what Blossom’s face is allowed to show.

  “Edgar, this is Arch, the survey team lead,” Blossom says, and I reach across to clasp hands. Skinny lad for a Creek, not short, looks surprised at my grip.

  Not precisely a sorcerer, talented, though, Power-user, frequent.

  Arch looks at Blossom, then Dove, then back to Blossom, and says “These are students?”

  Zora grins; Chloris, well, preens, Dove’s head tips, quizzical, and I go still. Blossom nods, gently. “First-year apprentices.”

  Arch has better maps, better because they’re full of annotations. Seems relieved while agreeing that going through the Sometimes Stream is absolutely unhinged, going to a lot of trouble to have more trouble with the forty kilometres of swamp and then worse trouble with the Erebos Reservoir and no place to put locks.

  “People have suggested a canal-causeway through the marsh, it’d be a better idea if there was any place to send it, the whole ridge is challenging.” The way Arch says challenging you can hear crazy to try. It was a mountain range, under a mountain range, once, metamorphic rock, mostly, tough and old and tangled.

  “North of Morning Vale,” Dove says, chin pointing at one of Arch’s annotated maps, “that’s a set route?”

  The marked route runs north and a bit east away from Morning Vale, curving around the Blue Highlands, which tip, and drain, mostly west, until it stops almost to the Northern Hills. The printed ‘grumpy’ label’s been replaced with tiny neat characters saying ‘avoid’. Much of the water’s coming off the Northern Hills, snow melt, it’s a bigger valley than there’s stream for now, more old rain, and it’s not as clean as right around Old Lake, but there’s lots of room and not many weeds. Lots of good mill sites, too. Twenty-something First Class sites marked.

  “Voted for twice,” Arch says, voice inexplicable. Not inexplicable to Dove or Chloris, they both wince. “Higher yea margin the second time.”

  Breakfast involves some funny looks, but not many; they’re used to people actively using the Power here, barge crews, mostly. The usual route into Old Lake involves taking a canoe up the long string of marsh and braided river to a place there’s, well, not stairs, some set guide ropes and a hoist, you can get your goods and canoe up the twenty metres of sloping smooth rock, and then it’s a twenty-three kilometre portage, following the rock cairns across smooth rock until you get to the marsh margin of the former Old Lake. Portages after that, short ones, over the old ridge lines until you’re down to the present lake level. People have made the trip to Morning Vale in a day from there, but not many of them; a forty-some kilometre paddle’s a long day with a loaded canoe without picking your way through reeds.

  Three days, for us, five for most. Totally unhelpful, we don’t want to go that way.

  “Does anyone care where the link to the main system goes other than not coming out here?” Dove, picking up what I’m thinking.

  Blossom doesn’t move at all, says “No,” in a way which suggests anybody who might want to care about that will be dissuaded.

  I pull the image off a map in Arch’s map case, run it in high relief over the breakfast table. Everybody moves dishes that are distorting the impression of the terrain.

  “East end of the Old Lake’s at, what, four-ninety metres?” The map’s clear, but the lake level will vary with the season.

  “Really dry year’s four-eighty-five,” Arch says. “Only one recorded, four-eighty-eight averages once every ten years.”

  “This lake — ” Sad Goat? That’s what the map says — “is at four seventy-something, seasonal variation, but consistent.” Deep, narrow, looks like an old fold valley. “Twelve kilometres long, lots of water. The outflow’s unencumbered — ” no one’s using it, no mill, no irrigated fields, no settlement — “so it doesn’t have to keep going where it’s going. Cut through here — ” twenty kilometres downstream, more or less, about twelve, straight line, it’s a widening valley down from the lake — “where it’s closest, less than five kilometres, from the next watershed over, and divert it down to Thines, that puts us one lock sequence away from Slow Creek.”

  I’ve got a route line showing on the map; a little concentration and it gets symbols for locks, dams, the tunnel through the ridge between Old Lake and Sad Goat Lake. Going to want to put locks on the high side there. Probably two.

  “Why not divert into the Blue?” Zora asks, and then answers, “All that swamp.”

  “We’re going to need a control dam at the Sometimes Stream outflow anyway, so there’s a control on the level for Old Lake, but there’s the swamp and then all that ridging, it’s possible, but there’d be a lot of locks involved. Have to cut, looks like six, of the bending-southwest ridges before you got to something that’s a navigable tributary of the Blue.”

  “Chloris?” Dove says.

  “I’m here to make sure you remember safety railings.” Chloris sounds cheerful. “And to push.”

  “Anybody see anything shorter?”

  If I had, I’d have proposed that, Chloris’ head shakes no, Zora looks carefully for a minute and then the same. Dove puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Twenty-kilometre tunnel?” Blossom says.

  “It’ll hairpin if the rock won’t take a tunnel,” Dove says, and there’s a much longer trace on the map, six sets of locks, going around the north east end of that ridge and coming back to Sad Goat lake.

  Blossom nods.

  “Start above Thines?” Zora says, it’s not really a question.

  We all nod, Blossom too.

  “Are you actually in charge?” Arch asks Blossom. It’s got an entirely curious tone in it, it’s a real question, not a complaint about Blossom. Trying to figure out what’s happening.

  “Teacher says what, we figure out how.” Dove’s tone is being most clear that how we decide things isn’t Arch’s problem. Dove’s head tips, just once. “We listen if Blossom says we’re being rash.”

  Some vast feeling comes and grips Arch, enough that there’s clearly no place to start expressing it.

  “They’ve built dams and dredged,” Blossom says, “quite well enough.”

  B
lossom teaches us a canoe-pushing trick, which has its unnerving moments but nobody tips, we brought three of the four canoes, Arch’s canoe gets towed, Arch gets put in the bow of Blossom’s, something accepted with good humour. We get locked through to the Slow Creek, and up as far as the mouth of the Thines-stream, by mid-afternoon, and into Thines for dinner.

  Blossom and Arch head off to talk to the Clerk of the township Meeting. ‘Not encumbered’ isn’t the same as ‘no one cares’, diverting a stream that size will take a vote of the gerefan.

  Which we get, that night; Blossom comes back for us after dinner, and I get to do the relief map and the lines and explain why I think it’s a good idea, something I defer to Dove. Dove says “Speed of building,” in a thorough, and thoroughly convincing way. The sooner those tens of thousands are there, the sooner they can be putting up shelter, clearing fields, setting up mill races, digging cellars.

  Blossom has a list; it’s whole collectives, they’d been sent to places with good water power, saw-makers and a lot of machinery makers, there’s a collective that does heavy air compressors and a collective that does axial turbines, and all the collectives that make parts for them, valve-makers, pipe fittings, casing-makers, it’s a long list.

  The Gerefan of Thines look at each other, and one of them, I think the lead for a collective of barge-fitters, says “Anybody got a good reason we don’t want machinery to cost half as much?”

  Another gerefan says “Flooding?” and the Clerk hauls out the big flow tables. The stream down from Sad Goat isn’t well-measured, no one lives in that whole valley, but there’s hundreds of years of every-five-years soundings from Sad Goat Lake. The area of the lake and those give a usable worst case, and the Clerk makes notes. There are a few places where a flood wall will need to be taller, mutterings about finally getting to put in that third sluice.

  The vote’s unanimous, go do it. And tell them before we move any water into the Thines Stream, the Clerk adds, handing Blossom an attested copy of the vote.

  Blossom nods, Dove nods, I turn off the map. It takes Dove and Blossom two tries to sort out who is going to say thank you for the fast decision, don’t think you’d notice without the Power.

  Next morning, we’re another ten kilometres up the Thines-stream, just above a set of double locks, and looking at what I really want to call a creek. It’s been larger, flow-wise, than it is now, you can see that from the little valley, that’s sixty or seventy metres across the bottom, maybe ninety across the top, and the flowing water’s maybe five. Valley bottom’s flat, nearly, it’s grown full, though, choked, and there’s a buoy warning about aggressive weeds, and four warnings from passing boats that see us looking at the steam-mouth, people don’t go in there.

  “Nesting’s mostly over,” Dove says to Chloris, and Chloris nods in the middle of a widening cloud of lamentation. Spook hops up on the bow of Chloris and Zora’s canoe, sits tall and still and prim, tail wrapped around toes and tail again, one and a half times around.

  We turn in, single file, Chloris and Zora’s canoe first, and the vegetation starts dying, thoroughly dying, dead and falling into dust, from twenty metres out. Zora’s mostly steering and keeping lookout, Dove and I have the push for all three canoes, Blossom’s got a bubble up, quietly, and Arch is trying not to shake. Sorcerous enough to recognize what Chloris is doing.

  It’s strange, and sad, and a relief, watching all the green fade and die. Chloris isn’t killing everything, there are bewildered small pangolins being set down with Chloris’ slow care, startled birds and turtles and huge-eyed small deer staring at us as we slide by, not even paddling, in a slow fall of dust. One of the deer sneezes, and there’s a spike of sorrow from Chloris, but the working does not waver. All the green in the whole little valley is going, there are a couple of eel-trees six or seven metres thick that surprise Dove, that’s much larger than usual, two metres through is huge for eel-tree, those have been here some great span of time.

  The little feeder stream along the bottom is twisty, but the big valley isn’t, it’s got a couple long slow curves to it, nothing you’d have to care about for barge traffic. Problem’s going to be getting the flow down from the ridge line.

  Arch’s composure has recovered by lunch time. Fed, Arch pulls out the maps, a book of trig tables, a sextant, an artificial horizon, and a chronometer, then finds a firm position.

  We’re, could be five kilometres, above where we think, I think, the dug part from the hills will need to come in. Which is about right, a little high, but Zora’s tally of troubling weed species, the kind that will come find you in the hopes that you’re tasty, stands at eleven. Eleven, Zora’s emphatic that’s just what happened to be seen throughout the working, it was terrifying in there, there are book pages playing out across Zora’s mind, things and awful possibilities of things.

  Blossom looks questioning at Chloris, Chloris says “Eight metres down,” and Blossom says “Any vegetative kraken to be dealt with one by one,” nodding in approval.

  “Six-metre gate?” Dove says, and Blossom says “Five would do, but why not?” and some mud and some rocks turn into a couple of water-gates, one in-and-upstream and one out-and-down, six metres across. Takes half an hour, the size really isn’t the important thing, size is only tricky because the glass has to cool right. The standards were a lot of practice for gates, and Wake’s preferred ceramics are trickier than glass and sodium and magnesium, it’s amazing how much sodium is just sitting in rocks. Might not be good for more than a hundred years. Too much of a hurry to worry about that, nobody’s lock-gates last half that long.

  The dam, at least as much a wall, takes some digging, we don’t want the remnant weeds going under or around, and a lot of gravel sorting, so we’re dealing with all one kind of thing. We wind up with a solid silicon carbide wall the full width and height of the valley. Not much temperature sensitivity, it shouldn’t crack, and no road atop because the upstream side is still horrid dangerous. The water gurgling out of the downstream gate runs past a pile of aluminium ingots, twenty or thirty tonnes of leftovers. Those, our baggage, and the canoes go up top, near where we think the entry point should be, not weedy up there, looks like rough pasture, a guess confirmed by two representatives of a team of shepherds. The rest of the team, and all the sheep, are as far away and upwind as they can readily get; clouds of what could be spores out of the Weed Stream’s valley are a worry.

  They both look impressed at the bare valley, and seem entirely relieved to know they saw dust. Blossom provides an apologetic explanation centred around haste, in the process confirming that no one but shepherds and weeding teams come up here, there’s pretty nearly nothing, people-wise.

  The shepherds aren’t worried about a bridge, sheep will walk along the top of lock-gates, but think the weeding-teams, who always have waggons, will be. The shepherds are worried about a fence, and maybe extraction ramps, so they can get the sheep who leap off lock-gates out of the water, but certainly a fence, “A fence they can’t climb,” repeated with emphasis. Zora suggests a three-metre curve, circle section, concave and half a metre deep, smooth, backed with dirt, and provides a ten-metre illusory stretch to show what’s meant precisely.

  The shepherds allow as how that will work, as long as the sheep can’t dig into the curve. “Not unless it’s Eustace,” Zora says, and gets grins.

  Blossom sends them off with a bag of hot biscuits and a crock of butter — bag, biscuits, and butter all converted out of grass.

  We do not mention the bugs, Dove says, grinning inside.

  There’s a chorus of It’s all chemistry! and smiles.

  “So,” Arch says, “where are you going to put the canal?”

  There’s a lot of rolling grassland, it’s not downs, not a pattern of hills, it’s a pattern of ridges that vary in height, but they’re not tall ridges.

  I shrug. “Two, crossing ponds, step locks.” I look at Blossom. “We’re not going for river sizes?”

  Blossom’s head shakes. �
�We’re going for as soon as we can.”

  “So the step height’s between six and twelve metres.” Two-metre draft, four metre depth, it was like that in the Old Commonweal for a couple hundred years, it’s like that everywhere in the Creeks.

  “Ed?” Zora’s not worried, but definitely curious. “Why do you know about canals?”

  “Wending was right on the downstream limit before the Dread River started. Everyone worried about water, there was no way to be sure the Dread River wasn’t going to wander north.” It did, in a way, when the Iron Bridge went down. “What you do, with a canal, is really easy. How isn’t, but the what is simple. I used to go to the planning meetings and listen because everything was simple and people repeated it a lot, they were scared of getting anything wrong, I could be sure I understood.” There were constant arguments about how far south it was safe to extend canals.

  Dove’s four metres away, but my hair ruffles anyway.

  “Usual rule’s as few locks as you can, locks slow everything down. So what we want is as few steps as we can get, so long as we won’t get fill problems.” When we don’t have any adjacent water like this. Also why there’s so much surplus draft, you can draw down the whole canal segment a bit and not ground anybody. There’s enough, should be plenty enough, water to run a parallel stream, but not on this landscape, it would erode into the canal. Going to be mostly seasonal use, what they call seasonal use, lots going up, lots coming back months later, it’s not slack water that would balance with traffic anyway, there’s going to be a flow issue.

  Blossom imagines a map table, gets Arch to provide the best map of the ridge line we’re expecting to cross, gets a pained expression, asks Arch what the next sequence number, the sequence belonging to the survey team Arch leads, is, turns an aluminium ingot and some silicon into survey stakes, real ones, you can feel the unique identifier in each of them, picks up four of them, says “We camp here tonight, back in an hour,” and vanishes, stakes and all.

  Chloris is positively cross before finding the bit of grass-stem in the map table.