Mordran couldn't understand it. He had lived in this part of Kroaxia for almost two hundred brights, and he didn't know how many times he had taken this route into Pergassos. He knew every machining center, welding line, and assembly station along the way as well as he knew the hydrocarbon fractionaters in his own kitchen garden. And yet on this trip he was continually getting lost. Time and again he would stop, puzzled, to stand rubbing his carbon-blacked chin and radiating a frown from his facial thermal patterns while he surveyed the way ahead and then announce, "No. This in't a bloody right, either. Some guide I turned out ter be, din't I? We'll 'ave ter go back a bit an' try it another way. I don't know what's 'appenin'. I've never seen owt like this before."
Whole parts of the forest seemed to be changing. The forest was always changing itself, of course, but the changes had always been scattered and gradual. As one expression of life was dying here, another grew there, but always with an overall continuity that the robeing sense of time, progressing naturally from bright to bright, could assimilate.
But what was happening now was different. In one place they'd come to, the trail ended at a wall of uprooted pylons, crushed girders, piled-up casings, and debris of every kind, where a whole swath had been leveled and everything in it just torn up and pushed aside. In another, death had descended everywhere. Everything, even the river, stood silent and idle, with only screw extractors and rivet shavers buzzing in the undergrowth to break the stillness. Mordran had never before seen whole areas affected in that way.
They came to an assembly and testing plant, modest in scale, where Mordran said smaller-size animals of various kinds had been coming to life for as long as he could remember. But now all that had ceased, leaving partly completed animals lying discarded in heaps all over the place. Around the plant, squads of retoolers and refitters scurried and chattered, modifying the assembly machines to new configurations. At the same time, ferocious-looking lunge drills and laser spitters patrolled the boundary to keep inquisitive forest dwellers at bay. They were intimidating enough to keep Rex and Dukestalwart companions by this timewell back.
"Never in all my twelve-brights of studying the world of nature have I seen machines of the likes that are starting to take shape there, Thirg," Brongyd said as they stood watching from a safe distance. "The strangeness is not simply that they are new machines. But their whole layouts and growth sequences are of a kind unknown to me. It is as if they are of another worldconceived by the mind of a different Lifemaker."
"A right caper this is turnin' out t' be," Mordran declared. "Now I'm beginnin' ter wonder if I'll be able ter find me own way back."
Eventually the trail they had been following came out of a spray-painting ravine to join the road into Pergassos. But instead of the deserted track Mordran had promised, they found the way filled with a slow procession of frightened-looking Kroaxians heading toward the city. They had as much of their possessions as they could bring with them, some riding in loaded wagons, others pushing carts or leading pack animals, many just carrying bundles.
Thirg stopped a worob in a wheelskin bonnet and wire shawl, one of a group following a heavily laden wagon. "Where are you from?" he asked her.
"Kirtenzhal. The village back fifteen leagues yon."
"Why is everybody leaving?"
She looked at him with the hostility that fear, fatigue, and resentfulness that another's security instilled. "Leaving? Leaving where? The village isn't there anymore."
"Why? What happened?"
"Torn down, it was. Dozers and icemovers came out of the hills and swept it asideall the houses, everything. Now it's being replanted as a forest."
"But not any kind of forest that you've ever seen," a rob who had stopped with her to rest put in. "The machines are all being laid even-spaced in straight rows. The pipes are in trenchesall paralleled and right-angled, regular and neat. It ain't natural, what's going on."
"It's the Lifemaker's wrath come down on us all!" another worob wailed, joining them. "The priests were right. We let our minds be poisoned by heretics. First Kleippur in Carthogia. Then we let Nogarech take over this country. We were warned. The vengeance is upon us! We'll all melt and burn!"
Others took up the lament.
"Praise be to the Lifemaker. We were led astray."
"May He preserve the king! Bring back the king."
"Preserve Eskenderom and Frennelech!"
Thirg stepped back and turned to Brongyd. "What do you make of it all?" he asked.
"I can make nothing of any of it," the naturalist replied. "Entire areas of the forest seem to be reorganizing themselves according to a common plan. It is as if some strange, unworldly influence were asserting itself, taking over the whole scheme of things and redirecting it to some sinister end of its own."
"Well, the only unworldly influence we've 'ad around 'ere lately is them bloody Lumians," Mordran declared. "Weren't there talk goin' round about that bein' why they were chasin' about like fools after Eskenderom instead o' chuckin' 'im in t' methlake along wi' Frennelech an' t' rest of 'embecause they wanted 'im to 'elp 'em tame t' forests? Well, it looks ter me like maybe they've gone an' done it. Don't yer reckon?"
Thirg hoped not. If the designs of the merchant Lumians who wanted the forests tamed had advanced this much while Thirg and Brongyd were in hiding, it could only mean that the wrong faction on Lumia had prevailed, and the inquirer Lumians and other friends of the Wearer who defended Kleippur had been vanquished. Yet the great dragon that was bringing warriors, which had been the Wearer's main cause for worry, could never have reached Robia so soon. So how could the situation have altered this drastically in so short a time?
The three hastened on their way, past the column of plodding figures and creaking wagons, in the direction of Pergassos.
Meanwhile, near a bridge on the outskirts of Pergassos, a vaguely bathtub-shaped section of metal casing bumped its way ashore just above where an assortment of chutes and conduits deposited garbage from the city onto an outflowing conveyor. The robot inside, clutching a length of scratched and dented tubing, sat looking around disbelievingly, astounded to have completed the journey in one piece.
Groork climbed out and collected together what remained of his belongings. The supplies were gone. He had broken the sword prying his craft loose from a jam where a tributary entered from a grove of plate benders and part of the feed hoist had broken down, and had lost the lance in an encounter with something that screeched and swung down at him on a power vine. But he still had the spare clothes and a few tools.
Then, as he had been instructed by the Lumian-Who-Heals-Hearers, he spoke with his internal voice the sign to alert the ear that would always be listening inside the Lumians' camp back at Menassim. The response came back as a mystical voice speaking inside his head:
"SORRY, NOBODY HERE RIGHT NOW. LEAVE MESSAGE AFTER BEEP."
So much for "Our guys'll be listening for you all the way," Groork thought glumly. He sent the code announcing his arrival anyway. Then he turned from the river, climbed the ice wall forming its bank, and headed toward the center of the city.