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23

The trail wound down a hillside past groves of spring formers, die casters, and rotary grinders in an out-of-the-way valley on the edge of the forests in southern Kroaxia. Below, the machinery stood taller around clumps of transfer presses and drop forges lining the banks of the river conveying its burden northward toward the principal city, Pergassos.

Clad in heavy, hooded cloaks and woodsmen's boots, and pacing their step with staffs of duralumin tubing, Thirg and Brongyd made their way downward from the rise they had crossed, while Rex ran ahead, rooting and sniffing in the undergrowth of discarded parts and metal tailings. The Taloids carried packs slung across their backs and walked with the strong, sturdy stride that came from many brights spent living among outdoor people and trekking over mountain passes.

Much had happened since their escape, with a group of other captives, from the village of Quahal during the clash between the Lumian dragon fighters and the Redeeming Avengers. The countryside was alive with spies, Avengers, and other proselytizers of the Lifemaker's True Faith, all playing on the people's recent insecurities in order to denounce the heresies of Kleippur in Carthogia and calling for a return to the older values. Unsure what kind of reception to expect in any place they were not known and with armed Avengers out looking for them to get even for what had happened at Quahal, the fugitives had split up into ones and twos and gone into hiding or tried making their way by different routes to safety. Thirg and Brongyd had lain low for many brights, avoiding the towns, staying on the move, and all the time laying false trails of rumor to throw off their pursuers. Finally they had judged it safe enough to come out of the hills to try crossing Kroaxia and the northern desert to enter Carthogia.

"Ah, I think I see it now." Thirg stopped to study the way ahead. "Yes, this looks familiar." He pointed at a sluggish collection of roller conveyors and chutes sending oddments down toward the river and almost obscured by the wire tangles of a mostly defunct cable-spinning line. "He used to live by that brook. There should be a clearing just past the wall beyond it there. It used to be the side of a motor pit that existed here long ago."

"Let's hope he's still there," Brongyd said. "My feet could use a plate, Thirg. And I can feel dust in the joints that a cool Michelube would do wonders for."

Ahead of them, Rex stiffened suddenly and looked up, coolant vanes bristling and collector horns pricked. At the same instant a din of short alarm-siren wails and cutter gnashings broke out behind the thicket of lattice works ahead. Thirg called for Rex to stay back. It stood, snorting methane vapors, while the two robs hurried to catch up. Then another mecanine bounded into view and stopped a short distance away, facing them along the trail. It was large and fierce-looking, with a black carbon-impregnated face ferrous red around the imagers, heavy turretlike shoulders, and a solidly riveted chest. Its alarm siren fell to a series of warning hoots, which Rex returned as a growl of cavity-amplified cooling-fan whirrings.

Then a rob's voice called out from farther back. " 'Old it, Duke. Down, boy." He came into sight, older than Brongyd would have guessed from the voice, but hardy-looking and vigorous. He wore a laminated foil jerkin with loose breeches gathered into wire-braided boots and was holding a Kroaxian army-issue spring-steel crossbow, cocked and leveled. " 'Oo be ye?" he demanded, his voice gruff and suspicious. "There's nowt for strangers t' be busyin' theirsel's over in these parts. 'Oo are yers, an' what does yer want?"

Thirg waited a moment for recognition to register, but the other's features remained harsh and unyielding. Finally Thirg grinned and shook his head sadly. "Well, that's a strange welcome to be giving to an old friend, Mordran, Master-of-the-Duke-That-Warns. Surely Thirg can't have changed that much. Or has too much imbibing of uranium-salt brews clouded your memory?"

Mordran stared disbelievingly, and then his coolant flap dropped suddenly. "By the Lifemaker's image! Surely not! . . . Tell me it isn't Thirg, the Asker!"

"I'll tell you so by all means if it pleases you, but I can't see how it's supposed to help," Thirg replied. "If true, then you know nothing that you didn't know already. If false, then the purpose of my being here could hardly be served, could it?"

The weather-scoured facial scales shifted to the nearest the craggy features could manage to a smile of delight. Mordran lowered the bow, uncocked the trigger, and came forward. "Hee-hee-hee! There was only ever one person 'oo could 'ave come up wi' an answer like that. Thirg, by all the . . ." He left the sentence unfinished as he grasped Thirg's hand and pumped it as if he were trying to wrench it off at the shoulder. "I 'eard ye'd upped an' awayed to Carthogia. Got yerself mixed up in them goin's-on o' Kleippur's was what they told me. And the best place fer 'im, too, I said. Never thought we'd see you back 'ere again. Never in a thousand brights."

"It just shows never to bet on certainties," Thirg said. "Mordran, this is a very good friend of mine, Brongyd, also an inquirer, one who studies the mysteries of life and the natural machine world. Brongyd is from Uchal but is returning with me now to Carthogia." They shook hands, Brongyd warily, Mordran making a visible effort to be more genteel. Thirg went on. "Mordran's an old soldier, Brongyd, formerly a sergeant with one of the Kroaxian foot pike regiments. One of the times when I upset Frennelech's priests, he got me out of trouble by dropping certain records into a furnace."

"Aye, an' that were the least I could do, an' all," Mordran told Brongyd as he turned and began walking back with them. "Afore that, there were a time when I was wi' this troop that got ambushed by brigands way out in t' 'ills this side o' Meracasine. Right to-do, it were an' all. More'n twenty of our lads got t' chop that bright, they did. They left me fer gone, too. Underneath some welding trees I were—an arm 'alf-off, a leg 'alf-off, an' me 'ead switched all off, hee-hee. But it were Thirg 'ere that found me an' dragged me back to this 'ouse up there that 'e lived in, all away from everyone—"

"Actually, it was Rex," Thirg put in as they walked.

"Aye!" Mordran pointed ahead at Thirg's mecanine, now trotting a length behind Duke, who kept glancing back, not prepared yet to take its eyes away for more than a second. "That were 'im. That mec. If 'e 'adn't found me when 'e did, I wouldn't be 'ere talkin' to the two 'o yers now."

"Yula's well, I hope," Thirg said as they rounded a bend in the path and came within sight of Mordran's house.

"Oh, never better. Ye'll be missin' 'er this bright, though. She's away visitin'."

"Oh, that's a shame," Thirg said. "Where has she gone?"

"Ye remember Serriel, the one that's always talkin' an' never says nothin'?"

"The worob who lives across the river? The one with all the children. Yes, of course. How could I forget?"

"Well, she's just back from t' factory with another now. Eight, that makes it. Anyroad, Yula's off over there to 'elp out, an' probably the two of 'em 'aven't stopped talkin' since she got there. Ee, it's good to see thee back, Thirg. Let's get ye both plated up an' charged, an' ye can tell me all about what's been 'appenin' t' ye all these brights. It'll be a good story, too, I'll be bound. I've never 'eard of such carryin's-on as what folk 'ave been tellin'. King and 'igh priest both out on their ear. Aliens made out of 'ot sticky stuff comin' down out of t' sky. Makes ye wonder where it's all goin' ter end, don't it?"

The house was modest in size but neatly trimmed and of a healthy color, with the folds cut back at the roof ends and center walls, where mature growths often acquired a tired, saggy look. There was a garden of plating salt depositors, coolant and solvent stills, and bearing bush presses, along with a fenced paddock at the rear, in which a mixed herd of rare-metals concentrators were grazing on a pile of scrap. Mordran led them past a flower bed in which micro laser heads were cheerfully sculpting fractal forms from copper and beryllium offcuts and into the kitchen. It was cluttered but clean, with well-stocked shelves of parts and vases of wild forest cogs and cableforms to brighten the place.

Thirg and Brongyd sat down gratefully in front of the waterplace, while Mordran set two rechargers and began preparing solvent and plating solutions. "An' 'ow's things wi' that brother o' yours, Thirg?" he inquired.

"Groork?"

"Aye, Groork, the 'Earer." The Lumians Thirg had talked to said that the "voices" hearers thought came from the sky and certain holy places were a remnant of a lost sense that the early ancestors of the robeings had possessed. Allegedly it was the same ability that enabled the Lumians to talk to each other over vast distances and even to send pictures. " 'Enlightener,' or some such, 'e were callin' 'isself," Mordran went on. "When everyone was goin' daft over this new alien religion that tells everyone ter be friends wi' likes o' Carthogians, when they still can't keep thesselves from 'alf killin' their own neighbors down t' street. Nearly got 'isself t' chop, didn't 'e, that Groork? When they chucked 'im off t' cliff. Then 'e was away to Carthogia, too, last I 'eard. Is 'e doin' all right?"

Thirg sat forward and rubbed his hands together in the warm glow from the flickering fountain of liquid ice in the waterplace. "Yes, he's out of all that business now and a diligent student of the new sciences at Kleippur's academy," he said.

"An' what about you two?" Mordran asked, directing the question at Brongyd to invite him more into the conversation. "This is a strange route to be takin' if ye were supposed to be goin' back with 'im to Carthogia from Uchal."

"The Avengers have been looking for us, so we've been keeping out of sight for a while," Brongyd replied. "I'm sure you know the way things are."

"Aye," Mordran replied darkly.

"We're enemies of the True Faith that they're trying to bring back," Thirg said. "Carthogian inquirers. That says enough."

"An' none of it'll make any difference in the long run," Mordran declared. "They're causin' people a lot of grief an' trouble for nowt. Nobody can put the clock back. Now that them Lumians are 'ere, things can't go back ter bein' the way they used ter be. It's the likes o' Frennelech an' them priests that's be'ind it all. They don't know anythin' that's worth sump sludge, if you want my opinion. Fairy tales and mumbo jumbo, the lot of it. It's the inquirers—the likes o' you two—who'll change the world. An' the priests know it, too. That's why they've always tried to keep you down. But they can't win. So what 'ave ye been doin' that's upset 'em this time, Thirg?"

"I was visiting Brongyd when the Avengers came to Uchal," Thirg replied. "We were taken captive with some others and paraded through more villages where the same things happened. Their leader was called Varlech. His way of intimidating the villagers was to execute the headrob and his family in front of them. They carried the body of a dead Lumian with them in a cart to prove that the Lumians are not gods."

"I know of Varlech," Mordran said. "Real nasty piece o' work. The Lumians went after 'im because o' that dead body that 'e were luggin' around, an' the fool thought 'e could take 'em on. Got 'isself blown ter smithereens, 'e did, along wi' most o' t' lunatics that 'e 'ad with 'im. Only trouble were, a few o' t' villagers got chopped, too. A bad business, that. Place called Quahal, it 'appened in. They're some right fighters from what I've 'eard, these Lumians, when they get mad. I don't reckon I'd want ter tangle wi' 'em."

Brongyd sent Thirg a questioning look. Thirg shrugged and nodded. "We know," Brongyd said, looking back at Mordran. "We were there. That was where we escaped from."

Mordran's imager shades widened in surprise as he came around the table carrying funnels, cans, a bottle, and two cords. "What! You two were there, at Quahal? Ee, I've got t' 'ear this! Come on, then, an' tell me the story." He raked ice flakes and slush aside to get a flow going in the waterplace, then pulled up a chair and sat down.

Thirg and Brongyd took turns relating the events at Quahal while Mordran listened intently, puffing evaporated gasoline fumes from a pipe. They ended with an account of their retreat into the hills and the time they'd spent staying on the move and out of sight. Finally they got around to the question of what they planned to do next.

"I think we've shaken them off now," Thirg said. "Our thought was to go into Pergassos and seek Nogarech's aid in getting back to Carthogia." Nogarech, Kroaxia's new ruler following the expulsion of Eskenderom, was trying to introduce a more liberal system based on Kleippur's model, and it had seemed a reasonable proposition. Mordran, however, was less sanguine about it.

"Things are unsettled all over Kroaxia," he told them. "T' priests 'aven't gone away. They're out there still, preachin' on about the Lifemaker an' scarin' folk wi' tales of 'ow they'll melt in t' furnace if they don't think the way they're told. An' a lot o' folks are startin' ter listen. I mean, it's the way they were brought up, in't it? Then there's been stories about Eskenderom an' all 'is old cronies 'avin' secret meetin's wi' Lumians across in Serethgin, which gives some the idea that 'e might be comin' back. So they're lookin' for ways o' stayin' on 'is right side, just in case. I'd say that right now Nogarech's situation is touch an' go." Mordran shook his head. " 'Tain't a time to go marchin' yersel's into t' middle o' Pergassos, saying what a great lad Kleippur is an' lookin' for a ride back to Carthogia."

Thirg and Brongyd exchanged worried looks. "What would you suggest, then?" Thirg asked Mordran.

Mordran puffed at his pipe and thought for a while. Finally he said, "What I'd do is dress up to look more like farmers and go into Pergassos quiet an' easy. I'll take yer there on a road that not many know, where ye won't attract notice. Then, once ye're there, ye can find someone who'll get y' in to see Nogarech on the side, like, without too many knowin'. Them that wants ter see the old ways back again 'ave got spies around 'im everywhere, an' this way 'e might be better able t' 'elp. Anyroad, that's what I reckon. It'd be no problem fer me. I've time to kill afore Yula gets back, in any case. We've a couple o' lads 'ere who can take care of t' 'ouse an' t' animals. What d'yer think?"

Thirg and Brongyd agreed, and the three of them departed after Thirg and Brongyd had taken a long sleep in a couple of the house's service and overhaul closets.

 

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