Mallow (15 page)

Again, they scrambled over ridges sharper than their axes, and the country behind them burned, then melted, consumed by a lake of iron and slag.

Nomadic blood had taken hold.

When they settl
ed again, no one expected to linger. Miocene asked for simple houses that could be rebuilt anywhere in a ship's day. She order
ed Aasle
en and her people to build lighter tools, and everyone else stockpiled food for the next migration. Only when those necessities were assured could she risk the next step: they needed to study their world, and if possible, learn to read its fickle moods.

Miocene put Washen in charge of the biological teams.

The first-grade captain picked twenty helpers, including the five from her first team, and with few tools but keen senses and their good memories, they fanned out across the nearby countryside.

Three months and a day later, every team brought home their reports.

"Breeding cycles are the key,' Washen reported. 'Maybe there are other keys. But certain cycles are pretty close to infallible, it seems.'

The captains were packed into the long narrow building that served as a cafeteria and meeting hall. The central table was a block of iron dressed with gray wooden planks. Chairs and stools were crowded around the table. Bowls were filled with grilled flame ants and sugarhearts, then ignored. Cold tea was
the drink of choice, and it smell
ed acidic and familiar, mixing with the tired oily sweat of women and men who had been in the field too long.

Miocene nodded, at Washen and at everyone. 'Go on, darling. Explain.'

'Our virtue trees,' said the first-grade. 'Those gold balloons are their eggs, just as we assumed. But they typically make only one or two in a day. Unless they feel the crust becoming unstable, which is when they use all of their stockpiled gold. In a rush. Since the adults are about to be torched, and the land will be remade—'

'If we see another show,' Diu interrupted, 'we're being warned. We've got a day, or less, to get out of here.'

In a grim fashion, the other captains laughed.

Miocene disapproved with a look and a cold silence, but nothing more. Normally, she demanded staff meetings that were disciplined and efficient. But this was a special day, and more special than anyone else had guessed.

Washen's team spoke about the species worth watching and each warning sign of impending eruptions.

During stable times, certain winged insects transformed themselves into fat caterpillars, some longer than any arm. If they grew new wings, the stability was finished.

At the first sign of trouble
, crab-sized, highly social beetl
es launched themselves in fantastic migrations, thousands and millions scrambling overland. Though, as Dream noted, the herds often went charging off in the very worst direction.

At least three predatory species, hammer
-
wings included, would suddenly arrive in areas soon to be abandoned. Perhaps it was an adaption to the good hunting that would come when locals rushed out of their burrows and nests.

In dangerous times, certain caterpillars sprouted wings and took up the predatory life.

And slight changes in water temperature and chemistry caused aquatic communities to panic or grow complacent. Just what those changes were, no one was certain. It would take delicate instruments and years more experience to read the signs as easily as the simplest black scum seemed to manage it.

Everything said was duly recorded. A low-grade captain sat at the far end of the table, taking copious notes on the huge bleached wings of copperflies.

Once finished, it was Miocene's place to invite questions.

'How about our virtue trees?' asked Aasleen. 'Are they behaving themselves?'

'As if they'll live forever,' Washen replied. 'They're still early in their growth cycles, which means nothing. Eruptions can come anytime. But they're putting their energies into wood and fat, not into gold balloons. And since their roots are deep and sensitive, they know what we can't. I can guarantee that we can remain here for another two or three, or perhaps even four whole days.' Again, the grim laughter.

Washen's confidence was contagious, and useful. Losing her would have been a small disaster. Yet years ago, the Master had sent this talented woman to the far side of Marrow, doing her accidental best to get rid of her.

Miocene nodded, then lifted a hand.

Quietly, almost too quietly to be heard, she said,
'Cycles.'

The closest captains turned, watching her.

'Thank you, Washen.' The Submaster looked past her, and shivered. Without warning, she felt her own private eruption. Thoughts, fractal as any quake, made her tremble. Just for the briefest moment, she was happy.

Diu asked, 'What was that, madam?'

Again, louder this time, Miocene said, 'Cycles.'

Everyone blinked, and waited.

Then she turned to the leader of the geologic team, and with a barely hidden delight, she asked, 'What about Marrow's tectonics? Are they more active, or less?'

The leader was named Twist. He was a Second Chair Submaster, and if anything, he was more serious-minded than Miocene. With a circumspect nod, Twist announced, 'Our local faults are more active. We have nothing but crude seismographs, of course. But the quakes are twice as busy as when we arrived on Marrow.'

'How about worldwide?'

'Really, madam
...
at this point, there's no competent, comprehensive way for me to address that question . . .' 'What is it, madam?' asked Diu.

Honestly, she wasn't absolutely certain.

But Miocene looked at each of the faces, wondering what it was about her face that was causing so much puzzlement and concern. Then quietly, in the tone of an apology, she said, 'This may be premature. Rash. Perhaps even insane.' She swallowed and nodded, and more to herself than to them, she said, 'There is another cycle at work here. A much larger, much more important cycle.'

There came the distant droning of a lone hammerwing, then silence.

'My self-appointed task,' Miocene continued,
‘
is to keep watch on our former base camp. It's a hopeless chore, frankly, and that's why I don't ask for anyone's help. The camp is still empty. And until we can find the means, I think it will remain abandoned.'

A few of the captains nodded agreeably. One or two sipped at their pungent tea.

'We have only one small telescope, and a crude tripod.' Miocene was unfolding a copperfly wing, her long hands
gently
trembling as she t
old everyone, 'I leave the tele
scope set on the east ridge, on flat ground inside a sheltered bowl, and all I use it for is to watch the camp. Five times every day, without exception.'

Someone said, 'Yes, madam.'

Patiently, but not too patie
ntly
.

Miocene rose to her feet, spreading out the reddish wings covered with numbers and small neat words. 'When we lived beneath the camp, we rarely adjusted our telescopes. Usually after a tremor or a big wind. But now that we've moved here, fifty-three kilometers east of original position . . . well, I'll tell you
...
in these last weeks, I've twice had to adjust my telescope's alignment. I did it again just this morning. Always nudging it down toward the horizon.'

Silence.

Miocene looked up from the numbers, seeing no one.

She asked herself, 'How can that be?'

With a quiet, respectful voice, Aasleen suggested, 'Tremors are throwing the telescope out of alignment. As you said.'

'No,' the Submaster replied. 'The ground is flat. It's always been flat. I've tested for that exact error.'

It was a steadily growing error; she saw it in the careful numbers.

Quietly, Miocene read her data. When she felt absolutely sure that she understood the answer, she asked, 'What does this mean?'

Someone offered, 'Marrow has started to rotate again.' The flywheel hypothesis, again.

Aasleen said,'It could be the buttresses. With a fraction of their apparent energies, they could act on the iron, causing it, and us, to move a few kilometers . . .'

A few kilometers. Yes.

One of Miocene's long hands lifted high, silencing the others. 'Perhaps,' she said with a little smile. 'But there's still another option. Involving the buttresses, but in a rather different fashion.'

No one spoke, or blinked.

'Imagine that the Event, whatever it was . . . imagine it was part of some grand cycle. And after it happened, the buttresses under our feet started to weaken. To loosen their grip on Marrow, if only just a little bit.'

'The planet expands,' said someone.

Said Washen.

'Of course,' Aasleen trumpeted. 'The interior iron is under fantastic pressures, and if you took off the lid, even a little bit—'

Perhaps unconsciously, half a dozen captains inflated their cheeks.

Miocene grinned, if only for a moment. This very strange idea had taken hold of her gradually, and in the excitement of the moment, she summoned up old instincts, telling everyone. 'This is premature. We'll need measurements and many different studies, and even then we won't be certain about anything. Not for a very long while.'

Washen glanced at the ceiling, perhaps imagining the faraway base camp.

Diu, that low-grade charmer, laughed softly. Happily. And he took his lover's hand and squeezed until she noticed and smiled back at him.

'If the buttresses below us are weakening,' Aasleen pointed out, 'then maybe the ones in the sky are getting dimmer, too.'

Twist said, 'We can test that. Easily.'

Nothing was easy here, Miocene nearly warned them.

But instead of discouraging anyone, she took back those copperfly wings and her precious numbers, and with the simplest trigonometry, she interpolated a rugged Little estimate. Only in the dimmest back reaches of her mind did she hear Washen and the engineers spinning new hypotheses. If the expansion was real, perhaps it would give away clues about how the buttresses worked. Clues about what powered them, and why. Aasleen suggested that a cycle of expansion and compression was the obvious means through which excess heat, from nuclear decay or other sources, was bled away from Marrow. It might even explain how the bright buttresses overhead were refueled. The whole ad hoc hypothesis sounded perfectly reasonable. And perhaps it was even a little bit true. But its truth was inconsequential. All that mattered were the dry little answers appearing beneath Miocene's stylus.

She lifted her head.

The motion was so abrupt that the room suddenly fell silent. A flock of jade-crickets broke into song, then, as if sensing a breach in etiquette, stopped.

'Assuming some kind of expansion,' Miocene told her captains, 'this world of ours has grown a little less than a kilometer since the Event. And at this rate, assuming that Marrow can maintain this modest pace for another five thousand years
...
in another five millenia, the world will fill this entire chamber, and we'll be able to walk back to our base camp.'

In her own grim, determined way, Miocene laughed.

'And after that,' she whispered, 'if need be . . . we'll be able to walk all the way home . . .'

Fourteen

I
t was sleeptime
for the children.

Washen intended to visit the nursery. But as she approached she heard the gentle murmurs of a voice, and she hesitated, then eased closer, an adult caution and her own curiosity making a game out of this routine chore.

The community nursery was built from iron blocks and iron bricks, black umbra wood making the steeply pitched roof. Next to the cafeteria, this was the largest structure in the world, and easily the most durable. Washen leaned against the wall, an ear to one of the
little
shuttered windows, listening carefully, realizing that it was the oldest boy who was speaking, telling everyone a story.

'We call them the Builders,' he was explaining. 'That's our name for them because they built the ship and everything within it.'

'The ship,' whispered the other children, in one voice.

'The ship is too large to measure,' he assured them, 'and it is nothing but beautiful. Yet when it was new, there was no one to share it with. There were only the Builders, and they were proud, and that's why they called out into the darkness, inviting others to come fill its vastness. To come see what they had done and sing about their lovely creation.'

Washen leaned against the wall, smelling the shutter's sweet wood.

'Who came from the darkness?' asked that oldest boy. 'The Bleak,' dozens of voices answered insta
ntly
. 'Was there anyone else?' 'No one.'

'Because the universe was so young,' the boy explained. With utter confidence, he picked his own odd course through what the captains had taught him. 'Everything was new, and there were only the Bleak and the Builders.'