The Margarets (16 page)

My team was number six. The other five members of it, two girls and three boys, immediately began rushing or staggering back and forth as they fetched stones to the assigned site. I went a bit farther up the road, thrust my fingers into a few narrow slots, found a few almost invisible footholds, and worked my way up to the shelf where the flat stones had piled. I began dropping the stones onto the roadway beneath, taking care not to drop them upon one another. When the largest one of my teammates came near, I said over my shoulder, “Hey, Ferni. I’m picking flat ones for the bottom row. If I drop them down there, can you help me carry them over? It’ll go faster if somebody picks and the other people carry, you or me, one or the other?”

Ferni, a generally affable cadet, took a look at the wall I had ascended and said, “Go ahead. It’s easier to take them from here than dig them up out from under all the little ones anyhow.”

Within a very short time, Ferni was joined by the other two boys, Caspor and Poul, and the girls, Jaker and Flek, who also found it easier to take the stones I dropped down than to dig them out of the general rockfall, especially with all the squabbling over territory that was going on. Meantime, I mentioned quietly to Ferni that one of them should always stay by our stone pile to prevent it being borrowed from by neighboring teams, and Ferni quietly passed the word to the others.

I, meantime, was counting to myself: so many stones to the row, so many rows to the layer, so many layers to make the wall. Midafternoon came, and team six had not built a foot of wall while some of the others had sizable structures. Grangel, working with one of the fastest teams, was loud in his mockery and direct in his abuse.

“Look at the noomi bunch!” he cackled. “Buncha real slow worms!”

“We better build something,” complained the smallest of the group, Poul. “Everybody’s ahead of us, and they’re calling us names.”

“Good enough,” I conceded. “I think we have almost enough stone to complete the job. We’ll start with the largest flat ones we
have, but let’s grab a couple of those shovels over there to level the soil first.”

We leveled, to cackles of derision, particularly when I poured a thin stream from my water bottle at various spots on the leveled area to see if it went anywhere.

“They think old Orley told them to dig a latrine!”

“Ho, Noomi, you puttin’ in a swim pool?”

The leveling process uncovered several jutting stones, the smaller of which I insisted we remove. We bridged the larger ones when we set flat base stones around them. The big, flat stones were laid up quickly into courses one and two. As we were midway through the third course, cries of dismay erupted from the neighboring group five, whose quickly built wall suddenly collapsed in a cloud of dust when one hasty rock carrier tripped and fell into it.

“Slowly,” said I in a low voice. “Don’t look at them, look at what we’re doing, starting on course four. Make sure every stone is level and wedged to the next one. If it teeters, it’s in wrong!” With no comment, the other five went on building while I fished my coil of twine from my pocket, one of the things I’d brought in my memorabilia box, tied one end of it around a small stone, and heaved it over a low branch that jutted just above where we were working, lowering the stone until it hung just above the earth alongside their wall.

“What are you doing?” demanded Ferni.

“We did our best to level the bottom,” I replied. “Now we have to be sure it’s rising straight, otherwise it’ll topple over like that other one. Point your fingers, lay your palm where it just touches the string and your middle finger just touches the wall, move it up and down and you can tell whether the wall’s going straight up. If we had some really straight sticks, we could put in some stakes, but there aren’t any.”

“There’s shovels,” said Ferni. “Nobody’s using them.”

I grinned at him, and together we brought over the shovels and made a line of them, each handle adjusted by plumb line to be straight up and down. No one had watched us doing this because all eyes were on group two, where Grangel was summoning attention by showing off what heavy stones he could lay in place. As he heaved an especially large one atop their structure, I clenched my teeth and held
my breath. The rock immediately below the space Grangel was attempting to fill was roughly spherical, wedged into position with small, also rounded pebbles. When Grangel’s burden hit the wall, the round rock slipped sideways, the smaller pebbles shot out of place, and half the wall collapsed as the spherical stone bounded across the space between walls two and three, hit wall three a resounding blow and destroyed a large part of it.

Groups two and three began to direct their scorn at Grangel instead of at me.

“Pay no attention,” said I. “Caspor and Ferni, we’re going to need more middle-sized and small flat rocks to finish off. You’ll find the best ones right under where I was getting them. The four of us will go on building if you’ll gather more stones for us, and don’t waste a trip. Pick them carefully.”

The wall went on growing. Almost flat, it rose regularly equidistant from the vertical shovels, needing only a final layer to reach the required height. Each layer contained stones of varying thickness, but all were leveled and interlocked, with no rounded ones used at all. While Jaker, Poul, Flek, and I leveled the course for the last layer, Caspor and Ferni moved back and forth with the smaller flat stones I had asked for.

Only four teams were still building. Teams two and three were madly piling rock, making up for lost time; five had not yet totally recovered from its collapse, and six was still leveling its last course while the teams that had finished amused themselves by insulting those who had not. “Noomi” had become a favorite word, and I noticed our team looking sideways at me. “Don’t expect me to notice that nonsense,” I said quietly. “We’re all too busy doing what we’re supposed to do: build wall.” When team six laid the last few stones securely on the layer beneath and took the shovels back where they’d been found, the sun was sinking beneath the sea, its rays penetrating the western fringe of trees, turning our work into sharply contrasted shapes of shadow and brilliance. Around the clearing, the teams were lying about, their backs against convenient tree trunks.

Ferni murmured to me, “The more even the walls are, the fewer shadows on them, did you notice that?”

“Enough to decide where I want to sit down,” said I, leading the way to a large tree, well away from the building area. The others assembled around us, sprawling around the tree’s roots. Lying as I was, my eyes fixed on a shadow above the shelf I’d climbed earlier. “Ferni, Jaker,” I said. “What’s that up there on the rock wall?”

“It’s a bush,” said Ferni.

“Above the bush,” I said.

“A shadow,” said Jaker. “But see the way the light goes into it. It could be a cave.”

I started to stand up, so I could get a better look, when I felt a premonitory shiver in my feet. “Listen,” I murmured to the group. “When the wagon gets here, no matter what happens, just don’t say anything. No yelling or jeering.”

“But I’m hungry,” whispered Caspor.

“We all are, but we’re not going to yell about it.”

“Wagon coming,” called someone from team two.

The team nearest the road got to their feet and began cheering.

Our team six remained where we were, sprawled around the tree as the horses came into view at the top of the rise sloping down into the clearing. By now, most of the cadets were on their feet. The driver clucked to the team, the horses bent to their collars, jerking the wagon over the top, and down they came at a gallop, thundering, the stones echoing the noise. The ground shook. The walls shivered. Small stones popped out here and there; minor avalanches began. The horses kept coming. One by one the walls slumped, tottered, fell.

“Ours stood up,” whispered Caspor, sitting up. Then more loudly, “Ours stood up!”

“Shhh,” said I, loudly enough that all five of them could hear me. “Don’t you dare cheer or yell or anything.”

There was a good deal of shouting going on as blame was assigned and denied, resulting in several bloody knuckles and at least one split lip.

The wagon came to a halt. Sergeant Orson jumped from the wagon seat and moved among the collapsed heaps.

Our group got up, everyone yawning and stretching, making good theater of it, as Lady Badness used to say back home in Bright. The other five were giving me little looks, grinning.

The side of the wagon went down. Food smells drifted out.

“Well,” said the sergeant. “You bunch, team six, there by the tree. Come get your plates while I walk around and inspect the others.”

We were back under the tree with highly piled plates on our laps by the time group four, with two-thirds of their wall still standing, went to eat. Teams one, eight, and nine each had half a wall standing, and they ate next. Five, seven, and ten had some wall standing, though not much, but still, they got to eat before groups two and three, who were sullenly watching others enjoying their supper.

When all had been fed, the officer strolled over to our tree. We put our almost empty plates aside and stood up.

“Good job, cadets. Who’s the leader here?”

“It was a group task, sir,” said I. “I think we all worked equally hard.”

“Built rock wall before, have you?” the officer asked, moving his gaze across us, receiving several no sirs, including one from me.

“Hmmm,” he said, turning to look at the newly built wall behind him. “You leveled the soil?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” said three or four voices.

“I don’t see a large pile of unused stone. Selected the stones carefully before you hauled them over here, did you?”

“Oh yes, Sergeant,” said Caspor and Ferni.

The sergeant turned to Caspor. “I’d have to swear somebody knew what he was doing. What is it you’re best at?”

“Not much, Sergeant, except numbers. I do real well with them.”

“And you?” to Ferni.

“I’m good with animals, Sergeant. Like those big horses.”

Jaker, Poul, and Flek disclaimed any abilities whatsoever. Sergeant Orson frowned.

“And you,” he said to me.

“Battle games,” said I without expression. “I’m very, very good at battle games, Sergeant.”

“You mean strategy, Cadet?”

“Of course, sir. What else is there?”

One day, just for exercise, I decided to run up the track along the cliff to the clearing where we had built the walls. I had some free time,
and though the shadow on the cliff side was only a tiny mystery, I never did like mysteries, especially ones that might be solvable in an hour or so of free time.

Getting up the wall was only a minor problem. There were a number of grips and good places to put one’s feet if one had the wits to see them and remember where they were when the time came to climb down. The shadow was indeed the very narrow entrance to a cave, one that would show up only when the sunlight hit it at a particular time of day. I climbed onto the lip of it with some elation. Since it was morning, there was no sunlight to fall inside the west-facing entrance, but I’d brought a torch, just in case. It lit a level floor that went straight in, past a dark recess to the left, then bent around a corner to the right. I walked it quietly, just in case there was something in residence, though it didn’t seem likely. Unless it was something with wings.

I had no sooner had the thought than the torch was knocked from my hand by a flurry of wings, headed out. Birds! Rather large birds. They circled over the clearing, complaining loudly at my intrusion. I looked up to see nests stuck tight to the walls, visible even without the torch in a flickering blue light that came from farther in.

The light was just around the corner in a section of tunnel that looked just like any section of tunnel except for the light itself, a whatever that I couldn’t really see. It was more a blue shivering in the air, an evocation of some other…what? Without thinking about it, I took two steps into it and found myself somewhere else. Though I couldn’t see where, not clearly, it was very definitely somewhere else.

I held very still for a long moment. This was not something I wanted to do right at that moment. Some other time, maybe, but not right now. Carefully, I stepped back, one step, and two, and was back in the tunnel once more, with the very strong feeling I had just avoided some very great danger.

Watching my feet carefully to be sure I didn’t stumble into some other unsuspected threat, I climbed carefully down the rock face and jogged back to Zibit, all the while reviewing what I’d seen and felt in the cave, saving it, as it were, in my mental memorabilia box. Something to take out and look at from time to time. Something to keep for the future.

Occasionally, as time went on, and only when I was out of sorts, I regretted having been so successful in that first cadet exercise, for it had an unanticipated result. I had ended up with Caspor, Ferni, and Poul as constant companions in the dormitory, and with Jaker and Flek tightly attached to the group during field exercises. Ferni, I really, genuinely liked. It was a feeling I couldn’t really identify, one I’d never had before, an internal heat, a wanting feeling. It wasn’t an appropriate feeling. Or maybe it was an appropriate feeling but not…not for an appropriate person, even though something inside me felt Ferni was…completely appropriate. More likely I felt this way because he and I were so much alike. We were both orphans. Both reared by foster parents. Both, surprisingly, with vacant spaces in our memories, and both of us ending up at the academy without warning or provocation. After some thought, I decided it would be best for me just to set the feeling aside and enjoy working with him.

As for the others…Jaker and Flek could have been sisters, both quiet, both unexpectedly strong and very determined in everything they did. Caspor and Poul had been sent by their parents. None of them seemed to have particular skills except for Caspor’s uncanny mathematical abilities and Flek’s mysterious affinity for armaments—she could break down and reassemble the model RB27 faster than the rest of us could decide how to start.