The Dream Compass [Book 1 of The Merquan Chronicle] (19 page)

The Monitor thudded into the sand just beside them, and after a series of kicks and howled threats, the two captives reluctantly trudged in the direction of the strange, but not displeasing, music. Londi, dazed, leaned heavily into the llama for support.

The Monitor seemed maniacally incensed at the foreign musician’s intrusion, while the reason for fury escaped Londi and Diego. The man-beast shouted into the sky, gurgling with frothing phlegm: “Loo! All of you! Grab that pig-poking Rafer, and watch his quiver. De-ball him, and hold him for me!”

The bird people hummed close, and en mass they tilted their wings for a menacing dive toward the beach’s edge. Tha’Enton studied the change in trajectory with trepidation. He knew the dreadful weapons these airborne beasts carried—he had just killed one of them on the canyon rim—but his assignment, from the highest of gods save Rutherford Cross himself, was that he must continue the music. He would not lift a weapon. He would not waver from the soundings, and he forced himself to consider how next he might flavor the symphony.

At that moment the decision was made for him. A long black form catapulted out of the white rush of waterfall. It arced into the air like an arrow and, halfway down to the sheet of blue lake, the sticklike shape stopped in midair and bounced—snagged by the expansive hemp web protecting the turbine. Tha’Enton smiled: His companions beyond the waterfall were indeed doing their part, and the anguish of loneliness began to dissipate.

Then began a new chapter of musical history, with Tha’Enton the conductor. The murderous bird people were at killer tilt, seconds away; the Monitor himself was just a few dozen wrathful strides down the beach. And a second tree trunk rocketed off the waterfall, swan-dived into the net, and … boooooooooong.

The sound of the two logs crashing thundered down the canyon, then spilled over onto its own echoes. Even the Monitor stopped mid-beach; it was the exquisite, undeniably perfect underlayering for Tha’Enton’s musical work. The Rafer flushed, and his crotchplate bulged outward. It was the lowest of low tones, the chiming of a Pa so large that only a god could hope to manage such a contraption.

A third tree trunk split the air at the far end of the canyon, and its crash into the net was the perfect complement to the dying tone just rung by its predecessors. Tha’Enton shivered, but did not break stride with his own part of the music.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth logs also crashed into the net with perfect timing, and finally the mirror-eyed Monitor, stalled on the sand, reassessed his orders. The gnarled muscles of his snouted countenance fell into a sag as he regarded the mounting pile of logs in the net over the turbine—a net grown taut, a net becoming dangerously stressed.

And then he screamed new orders to his legions falling from the sky: “The net! Get those logs out of the net!”

Thundering voice. Booming tree trunks. The bird people peeled away toward the far end of the canyon, and the Sounder’s grin bared two rows of dingy, sharpened teeth. His symphony was coming along splendidly. It was a symphony to die for.

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Gregory removed his shirt and tied it awkwardly across his mouth to filter out the sawdust. His was a broad, fleshy chest, a girth the young revolutionary was rather proud of—a pride that withered when the Northland dullard Anton Takk stripped his torso as well. The odd bearded man, who took such pride in his limited reading and writing abilities, seemed oblivious to his physical attributes—that remarkable warehouseman’s build.

Takk’s mouth twitched impatiently at Gregory’s stare, and the former log-camp worker motioned him back to the two-man saw.

“Can’t fall behind,” Takk said. “It’ll ruin it all.” Two dozen trimmed tree trunks made an orderly stack at the riverside.

“We should have done this yesterday,” Gregory complained, leaning into the broad blade, pleased at least that his makeshift mask was saving his lungs from further dusting.

“Couldn’t a done it without drawing the attention of those cave creepers down there,” Takk said, nodding downstream. “I gully they’re a might distracted nowabouts. The surprise is best.”

“You seem to have a lot of faith in this foolishness. My way, I’d haul down the hand bombs. By now, the cannibals, they’ve put the Rafer to a roasting spit.”

Takk didn’t answer. How to combat the lethal bird people with hand bombs—the lithe little killer beasts that Tha’Enton and Pec-Pec described—was beyond him.

It was a bit late, Takk thought, for Gregory to become a fan of Rosenthal Webb’s hardware. Pec-Pec called the bangers spiritually abhorrent; now Takk was also glad they had been left at the old camp, up on the mountaintop. Pec-Pec had returned from a mind-float insisting again that Nora Londi was in the canyon, not at Blue Hole. Who knows—aimless bomb tossing could kill her, and that would be the ender for Takk. He would drown himself.

Down the bank, Webb worked with the llamas. They had found the ferry rigging across the river intact, although little was left of the dory itself. Webb had assumed that someone had played a bit of sabotage against Government Transport, until Pec-Pec awakened with his odd tale about Nora Londi shattering the little boat.

It was the llama Salvadore who devised the method for getting the logs into the strong center current. Two llamas labored on each side of the bank. They were loosely yoked (as they refused to be actually tied to the rigging), and their lines were knotted to the O-rings that had drawn the old dory across the river.

Webb had fashioned a rope cradle suspended from the O-rings. As he sat in that web the llamas could draw him in and out of the river, as if he were a pair of trousers on a pulleyed clothesline. Salvadore stood on the bank, rubbery lips pursed, staring at the pocket watch Webb had placed among the stones. With Webb harnessed midstream, holding a newly felled tree trunk in the numbing current, Salvadore would raise his head, dignified, calling out at forty-three-second intervals: “Now!”

(The night before, Gregory had fomented a great row about this timing business. Pec-Pec had feigned surprise at the outburst and held court for a half hour on the interlockings of art, religion, nature, strategy, and fate. Finally, Webb had just ordered Gregory to shut up.)

Webb released a log, it arrowed downstream, and the yoked llamas hauled Webb out of the stream to get another. Slapping his arms, Webb scrambled for the tree pile, harness lines trailing. “Couldn’t someone start a little fire for me?” he complained.

Salvadore glanced down at his hoofs and up again, perplexed. The only unoccupied human was the mindless Inspector Kerbaugh, equally incapable of supplying a warming blaze.

They had considered lashing Kerbaugh to a tree while the others worked, to keep him from wandering into the forest. But an unexpected object near the ferry landing served as babysitter. Kerbaugh squatted in his filthy tunic, held rapt by a human head atop a three-foot stake. It was red-bearded and aswarm with flies.

Pec-Pec sat cross-legged nearby, eyes closed, an empty fishbowl in his lap.

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My name’s Mickey Kerbaugh. My Auntie Mommie made up a song about the Man in the Hat. It goes:

Auntie Mommie used to tell me to stay in bed or the Man in the Hat would come get me like he came got Mommie. Auntie Mommie would do each line as she sang it. You know, I’d be under the covers, and she’d grab my hair and pull my head back for the first part and it hurt. Then she’d pinch my nose. And then, well you know, she’d punch me … down there.

Auntie Mommie is not real Mommie, because the Man in the Hat came got real Mommie when she turned red. I said that. Then I went to live with Auntie Mommie. And later Auntie Mommie turned red too, and the Man in the Hat came got her. Finally I left Nawlins and nobody ever is allowed to go back there. Nobody. Or maybe they’d turn red too. I didn’t, but maybe they would.

The Man in the Hat wears long black clothes. He has a long beard and brown teeth and smells like pee-pee. He even gave me black candy when Mommie turned red, and it tasted like worms. He watches at night from the black outside the window, and he’ll come get me next. Auntie Mommie said so.

Well, I’m with the Big People now, and today I found a new friend. He lives by the water near the little fish and his name is Mr. Funny Nose, and all of the Little Green People like him a lot.

I could sing a song but the Big People don’t like it. Maybe I could sing a song for Mr. Funny Nose.

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The Monitor bellowed, flinging sweat, apoplectic with fury. The bird people obediently changed course for the endangered turbine and the sagging net full of logs. But it was evident to all observers on the beach that only one of the fliers—a particularly lithe winger—was recouping enough height to make a net landing.

Londi was baffled by the scenario, particularly the Rafer musician. But the destruction of the turbine—whoever was behind the scheme—had obvious appeal. Her wrists still firmly lashed behind her, her rib cage newly bruised from the fall to the beach, she swung painfully onto Diego’s back and murmured “Go!” Either they would be immediately torn apart in the Monitor’s hands, or they would quickly be out of his reach.

Diego snuffled in surprise, sprang away, and they were yards down the sand. The Monitor was still belching orders into the sky.

“Can you hold me?” shouted Londi, alarmed that the llama was staggering.

The llama cocked his head, but did not slacken the hoof pounding: “If stay, hoom … to wet beach. Watch … balance.”

Londi leaned forward and bit into Diego’s neck wool for support. She scanned the sky. “They’re all going for the net, not us,” she mumbled through the fur. “Orders. But we’ll be in tomorrow’s soup if this doesn’t work.”

“You soup. I be rug.”

Londi worked at the bindings behind her back as Diego galloped, his shoulders two bony pistons under her chin. The leather tie on her wrists gave little, and Londi felt the sting of sweat meeting blood. They pounded past several frustrated bird people on the beach who had fallen short of the turbine. Those fliers trotted east, wings folded on their backs, perplexed by the passing sight of the giant woman bouncing on top of a speeding llama.

Where the beach petered out and gave way to canyon wall at the shadowed east end, Diego stopped. “Off,” he said flatly. “Can’t carry up.” His lungs wheezed and his wool lay flat, sweaty.

As Londi dismounted a single bird woman alighted on the net’s main support above. It was Loo. The flier quickly folded her wings and, spiderlike, she crept into the net.

Diego gave a puppylike whine. “Will you … must hurt Loo?” he asked, watching the bird woman start to work. Londi frowned but didn’t answer.

The Rafer musician’s thrumpings were drowned now in the waterfall rumble, but Londi discovered that his rhythms were still with her. She could feel precisely when the next log would crash into the net—there … ka-choong.

There were more than a dozen logs in the net, and Loo dashed for the newest arrival in what first seemed to be a comic mismatch in weight. The bird woman used the log’s impetus to roll it part way up the net. She crouched under the tree, adding her force to the roll, feet pumping from one cross-rope to the next. Her progress slowed when the log’s fall force expired, but clearly she would make it to the net’s edge, where the log could be shoved into the lake safely away from the turbine.

Londi hopped up from boulder to boulder, climbing the canyon wall, hoping she would find a trail. The rocks were perpetually damp from spray. Her feet slipped dangerously, and she stamped impatiently to free the wet beach sand from her boot treads. Just as Loo’s first log splashed into the lake, another smacked into the net, its boom the only sound audible above the squalling waterfall. At best Loo would be able to prevent the log pile from increasing until help arrived. Londi looked down: A scattering of bird people were just minutes away.

Londi arrived, gasping, at the point where the net’s northeast guy line was anchored to the rock wall. There, a steel post the width of her torso was cemented into the stone. The guy line was double braided at the end and looped over the post. Another log hit the net, and the post showed no strain. She knelt under the rope and shouldered upward, hoping to shove it off the post and collapse the net. Impossible. Too much weight and tension. She thought of rope-walking the 200 feet to the net, but the line was green with slime.

Bird people arrived at the beach’s end below. Londi climbed higher, wishing she could use her hands as the slope steepened. Her knee joints ached.

Loo rolled another log into the lake. She was falling behind.

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The Monitor stopped screaming when he saw the first log hit the lake with a white splash. He had sprinted down the beach himself until it appeared his minions would soon swarm the net and empty it safely. Now he wiped a rivulet of phlegm onto his forearm and turned back to regard the musician, who was mesmerized in his own frantic poundings. They were alone on the beach.

The monster grinned, his snout crinkling back. His skin was beginning to glow, both flushed with fury and starting to burn under the climbing sun.

It was fine music. The Monitor samba-stepped in its direction, his bare feet swishing in shallow water. It had been months since he had tasted Rafer meat.

The Sounder kept to the music, his faith pushing back intrusive mental pictures of each of his weapons.

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Loo’s hands and forearms were awash with blood from a growing number of deep scratches. She had tried a shortcut—perhaps time could be saved by rolling the logs just halfway up the slope and sliding them through a hole in the netting. But the new method was too cumbersome and dangerous. Most of the logs had limb nubs that caught easily in the rope. And just one such snag could set a log swinging unpredictably, perhaps tossing it toward the turbine.