by Pam Uphoff
"When she grows up I'm going to recommend her to Colonel Grissom. She'll be a natural for the espionage group." Lefty yawned himself, and they all sought beds shortly thereafter.
The Earthers' attempts to manage them the next day were not nearly so pleasant. Dydit left the kids in the Earth's kitchen "box" pummeling the big beefy male cook with questions. Dydit looked at some very bizarre pictures and answered questions about them, then practiced a baffled look and gazing out the window in boredom while the two women doctors chattered about psychological profiles and then segued back into genes, allele frequencies, and racial characteristics. After lunch (served by Rustle) he was shuffled off to Nelson, who sat him down with a large rock collection and asked him where he'd seen various types. Did he want general geological knowledge? Or was he looking for valuable mineral deposits?
Dydit played ignorant, and pointed out the granites of the mountains, the basaltic lava like Mount Frost, and the canyon and the stripes paralleling the Rip, porous pumice, the limestones and sandstones. He puzzled over the iron ore, recognized the pyrite, and admitted that the Kingdom imported most of their iron. He acted ignorant of copper, zinc and aluminum. Admired the crystals of lead oxide and failed to recognize anything that might indicate anything of value.
The disappointed Nelson had rattled along the whole time, about a place called California, and gold strikes. The whole of the New Lands were open to these people and their machines, should they decide to mine them. Dydit rather thought that the Kingdom would have trouble evicting them, when all their troops and supplies depended on a pass that was snowed close for a quarter or more of the year. Of course the Earthers' line of supply was longer, but those gyps were faster than a horse and never tired. He hauled Rustle and Havi back to the cave for a nap.
He was more weary than they were.
"George is nice. He says that on Earth people don't have very many kids, but people still get married. I told him witches don't ever marry, and he said witch was a bad word."
"Me and Uncle Lefty scouted around." Havi jumped in before Rustle started up again. "There aren't any tracks to show where they came from. And Aunt Question said the Boxes were obviously designed to be moved. Mom said maybe they had some electronic levitation, but then why didn't they use it on their gyps?"
They eventually wore down, and slept for two hours.
They ate dinner with the Earthers, checking out all the little packets of goodies, salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, catsup and mayonnaise in little envelopes, and managing to secrete a reasonable number of them. He walked out munching a small square of cake, and handed half of it over to the invisible lady waiting at the top of the hill.
"Umm, sugar, fat, a touch of flour and chocolate. Utterly useless food. Thank you."
"We've got a few other goodies for you two as well." Lefty, besotted fellow that he was, handed over a pristine square. "I got a good look at their maps. Those little airplanes take pictures, like a photograph with color. From up high, and they turn the pictures into a map. They're covering huge areas every day. I'm not going to steal a map until just before we leave. I think their machines are like printing presses, they can make lots of copies. So I won't even have to feel guilty."
"Come down to the stream, and start a fire. We've got a lot of venison to cook, and I don't want the odors to lead them to the cave." Never dropped her light warp and rubbed her temples. "I think I'm getting better at holding it for hours on end. Anyway, I took over watching the healer Doctor and Doctor Rae. They think there are lots of universes, all side by side, new ones forming when something significant both happens and doesn't happen. Then they split apart and go on, each dealing with the consequences of the difference between them. They think our world and that Earth of theirs were all the same until thirteen thousand years ago. Then something happened, and they split. Here, most everything died. They figured it was another comet fall, but possibly even bigger. I don't understand how they can tell."
Dydit snorted. "They talk about genes like Lady Gisele does. Familiar territory. They explained a bit of it to Farr when she came in. According to one of their theories, all the people here may have been killed by the splitting event, and our ancestors colonized from another parallel world. I tried fitting it into various myths and speculative histories. The gods do speak of the Exile."
"But they're testing us, not any of the gods." Lefty looked around the patch of shorn grass. "Yeah, we'd better camp here, so they don't wonder where the grass went to. If they are right that we moved here, were the gods the sole survivors from the thirteen thousand years ago comet fall?"
"They said they were going to do more detailed studies. Maybe it'll make more sense, then."
"I don't see why we should believe them at all." Question excavated a hole with a twist of power and Never brought an armful of rocks from the streambed. "I haven't heard a single one of them talking about sending an ambassador to the King. I know we don't use this side of the world, but it's still ours isn't it?" The kids started bringing more rocks and dried twigs from the brush along the stream.
"How do you define 'ours' when we've got five semi-peaceful countries?" Dydit shrugged. "If this place belongs to the Kingdom of the West, since we got here before the other countries, consider that these Earthers appear to have gotten here before us."
Lefty nodded. "Nelson said something about the first survey a year and a half ago. They might actually be interesting trading partners if they're peaceful."
Dydit agreed. "Those black rectangles on all the roofs turn sunlight into electricity, and powers their machinery during the day. At night they burn fuel, similarly to how the gyps are powered. Either method would be useful for factories like those in Karista that use steam engines."
Question brought more rocks and they lined the pit, then piled up the twigs.
Question sniffed. "They depend on their machines too much." She waved a hand at the twigs. They burst into flames. Never, Dydit and Lefty all looked around, scanning the starry night sky. There was a faint rumble of thunder from the south-east, some stars along the horizon winked out as clouds climbed into the sky.
"I refuse to believe I'm affecting weather so far away. At home it's thirty miles at the most."
The kids snickered.
"I'll get the venison." Never slid away tactfully.
Question sighed and headed for the creek.
Lefty and Dydit cut a bit more grass, and laid down on their heaps, across the fire from each other.
"Oh, that healer, Dee Whatever, asked about families and homosexuality. I carried on about how my wife was in an important ceremony, while I was taking care of our two children. I said that generally the kids were with her, surrounded by her mother and grandmother. I told her you were pinning after your young bride, and had no children yet. She seemed quite shocked when I told her that the grandmother was a hundred and twenty something."
"They probably think you can't count."
Dydit chuckled. "Exactly. I wonder what we could convince them of? They are so sure of their view of things."
"I wonder what we could pull off under their noses, if they're so sure of themselves." Lefty grinned wistfully, as Question returned with two Y shaped sticks and planted them in the narrow holes that emptied themselves at her command. No thunder.
She shot Lefty a quick grin and faded back into the dark. Never brought the meat, and skewered it to turn over the fire. Both kids showed back up with more twigs. Rustle was swishing hers through the air.
"What is it Mom? Why can't I grab it or hit it?"
"Most people call it air."
"Moooom!" Rustle dropped her twigs and walked back into the dark trying to grab air.
"No decent firewood. But it looks good." Lightening flashed to the south as Question heated the rocks. The rumble of thunder was unfortunately quick to arrive.
"Do you think we can make them believe we cooked in a thunderstorm?" Dydit looked innocently over at Lefty.
Lefty glanced campward. "He
ll, one of them is coming this way."
Never and Question faded back into the tall grass and went to ground with minor illusions of grass over themselves. Lon arrived a few minutes later.
"Hullo. May I enter your camp?"
:: At least one of them is polite. :: Lefty switched to vocal cords. "Sure, comin."
"This thunderstorm came up quickly, surprised us. You are welcome to spend the night in the camp if you want to stay dry." He sniffed at the campfire. "Deer? Smells great."
"Tannu fer t'offah, but we'd rather stay an smoke t'meat. Dees summer storms ain't a bugdel."
"They're fun." Rustle told him, adding her armful of brush to the pile beside the firepit. Havi was right behind her, pulling a whole dead tree. A small one, one of the stunted willows that grew here.
"Right. Come up if you want to, though."
Dydit nodded as the man walked away. "That one, on the other hand, doesn't talk over our heads nearly as much as the rest of them." He got up and started helping Havi break up his prize into useable pieces.
"Which will make him our best friend or worst enemy, depending on which way everything goes." Lefty laid back down.
Question snuggled up against him. "I'm afraid that'll be his choice, not ours."
"As he works for a company, I expect he won't be able to choose. Either his boss or his government will decide for him." Never waved to heat the rocks nearly to incandescent before sitting down with Rustle. "And he's not so much of a city boy as the others. He identified venison roasting over a campfire by smell."
They sat, quiet and content, as the thunderstorms died down and the clouds blew over them.
In the morning they walked back into camp. Lefty concentrated, again on the mapping. He asked right out about ruins. "From the people tat lived here before t'comet."
Niaomi Haskell shook her head. "Right now we're doing high altitude mapping. We'd probably notice an old city, if it wasn't buried too deep. But anything smaller, or in rough terrain that would hide the angles . . . well, maybe. See over here on the northern coast? All these fractured rocks. But once you look at them, you realize the corners aren't square, and the lines are really discontinuous segments, that from a distance look like they connect."
Lefty nodded, studying the bit she'd indicated. "An they all angle down into t'wata."
"Oh, right, it's not flat at all."
Lefty reflected that he'd seen plenty of steeply hilled cities. And he'd seen fault off-sets, and read about sea level changes. Maybe we could sail over and check this area out. He preferred to travel on his own two feet, but in this case, a ship, to support a mapping project down the entire coast . . . Umm, maybe next year. First he had to deal with these people. He glanced down and spotted a large crumpled sheet of paper in her trash basket. "You trow away? Is good for fire starting." Drat it all! What did my accent used to sound like?
The woman glanced at it. "It's a misprint, take it if you like."
He pulled it out and folded it carelessly, without looking at it or the other smaller papers he extracted as well. "Tannu." He managed to wander casually off. He checked the kids, playing some game in the kitchen box with George tapping away at one of those machines in the background, then retreated all the way to the cave to examine his trophy. The paper had crinkled, going through their press, or whatever they called their machine. But the printing was clear and bold. Altitudes, rock types, vegetation types, rivers, streams, lakes, and the crater. The ring of the ridge around the crater, hints of a second ring that erosion had removed or other land forms concealed. The spray of debris, blasted out of the crater, heaviest nearby, and fading with distance. A thousand years of weather and volcanoes had removed, reworked and buried quite a lot of it. He worked out a rough equivalent of scales and realized they were 2500 miles inland from what must be the Cific Ocean, to the east. The Earthers hadn't mapped to the west yet. They'd worked their way around a broad peninsula to the southeast and were mapping the southern coast now. "I'll have to collect fire starters more often."
One of the other sheets was streaked by an excess of ink. A map of the crater, with several spots marked, and below, mineral assays. Lefty looked at them with dismay. Just the nickel content would have been enough for his people to mine it. Did these people have use for all the other minerals, as well?
"We've got trouble. We're worth too much for them to just go away."
And then there was a cross section. Like a slice through the layers of soil and rock. It reminded him of his own counting of layers, and the two major black layers among the ash and lava layers on the far side of the world. The cross section contained no lava, but plenty of ash, with dark layers beneath both.
Same as his dark layers? Two cosmic disasters preserved in stone? He folded them all carefully. If nothing else, they'd learn a lot about their own world from these strangers.
***
Roxy finally had to get her eyes checked. The little heat shimmers and distortions were driving her buggy. But Dr. 'Call me Dee' Odessa said she was fine, and perhaps it was just occasional eyestrain and sent her off with vitamins. Better than glasses, though. She watched Lon walking between boxes, and there was a shimmer in the air right on his heels. She sighed. Maybe the planet's haunted, and the Ghosts cause gravity field distortions as well. She snickered to herself, and headed for the geology and physics box.
"Dr. Farr? Lon said you might need to place your gravity meters out and about. I've got a gyp."
"Call me Kia. And yes, I do indeed. I've pulled them all from the drones and got them hooked up with new power sources. I figure we can run out about ten clicks and drop one in each direction, so perhaps we can tell if this is a local phenomenon or not."
Of course when a scientist says 'about ten clicks' she really means exactly.
They loaded up, with assistance from the two Native kids, and let them ride along when they headed out. Roxy wasn't surprised by how finicky the placement was, nor Kia's frustration with not being able to cross the river to the east. But the first results showed a slight fall off of the effect with distance.
Kia threw her hands up. "Why is it centered here? It's a bit beyond coincidence that we arrived right where the problem is."
"Did you make the problem? How did you get here?" The kids were not only cute, they were smart.
"We came through the gate. It's an electro-magnetic phenomenon, nothing whatsoever to do with gravity." Kia eyed the girl. "Do you even know what gravity is?"
"Gravity is the acceleration we feel toward the center of the world. It's what holds the Moon in orbit around the world, and the world in orbit around the Sun." She rattled that right off.
Roxy studied the girl. "You're, what? Seven years old? That's, umm, second grade. That's an impressive curriculum your school has. We got a balloon across the ocean. It showed a big city. Do you live there?"
"Nope. We live in Ash. It's much nicer there. I know all two hundred and forty seven people who live there." Rustle peered over Kia shoulder. "What do those mean?"
"That the local gravity background level that is jumping all over the place."
"Probably magic." Rustle told her.
Kia snorted. "I'll add that to my very short list of possible causes."
Roxy viewed all the wiggly lines with the eyes of the ignorant. "How many more gravity meters do you have?"
"Two." She frowned at her hand annotated map. "Let's move everything around."
Roxy spent two days fetching carrying and finding exact locations with radio triangulation, however slowed by intermittent static. The gravity fluctuations were still most powerful in camp. They faded away altogether at four hundred kilometers distance.
"Is it, like, the gate anchor? It's not even turned on. Can you bring everything in close and see where in camp it's the most powerful?"
"It doesn't drop off very fast . . . but I might get some indication. All right. Let's go collect them all again."
Roxy felt a bit foolish, watching for her shimmers, and writi
ng down the times and places when she saw them. But Kia couldn't pin point anything with the resolution of her machines. Silly idea, anyway.
***
Something was bothering Lon.
Never followed him everywhere, but he spent an inordinately long time at his desk, doodling on a piece of paper. Writing figures and making calculations, starting letters or reports. Then ripping them up savagely and tossing them. He checked the activity of all his people, but left them to get on with their work. His driver eyed him oddly, and finally tackled him.
"What's the problem, Boss. Don't like the natives?"
Never smirked. It is aberrant behavior. Roxy sees it too.
"No, I have the opposite problem. I do like the natives. And I've seen what contact with Earth does to their societies. It's not pretty. And it doesn't make us look very good either."
Roxy rubbed her nose. "Eh. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've had troubles on some worlds. That's why I mostly hire on long term with you. I didn't know you'd ever taken on an inhabited world."
"Only once, and that was one time too many. Maybe we can just stick to this area and avoid the natives altogether."
Roxy shook her head. "Nah. Levty and Dudit are too curious to go away and not mention us to anyone. We'll probably get the nearest Chief huffing and puffing and all important on the doorstep in short order. With his hands out for 'gifts' if he's anything like the ones I've met."
Lon nodded, and looked away. Creases between his eyebrows. Eyes haunted.
Very interesting.
At the end of the week everything changed. The doors at the end of the long street were opened to show a circular arch, flattened on the bottom.
:: Not flattened. It goes underground. The flat surface, I think is to accommodate gyps. :: Never was closer than Dydit and Lefty were being allowed.