But not for long, this beauty of contrasts. The long-lived began to have a certain sense of timing, apart from Ian’s machines and the opinions of the heavens, and Marak’s said greater change was imminent, perhaps this year. Perhaps this very quarter of the year, all the life that clung to a foothold here would meet a new challenge. The earthquakes had assumed a rhythm he had seen before, and if he bet, as some of his foolish descendants loved to do, he would say it would be soon.
Count among those signs Ian, perhaps seeing better than his machines, too, who quibbled about his going out on this ride, fore-knowing he would lose the argument.
“Go,” the Ila had whispered, when she heard about the debate. She had even hinted at going with them—the Ila, who would bring all her accompaniment of tents and attendants and recorders, her cooks and her wardrobe and her comforts, not to mention her often-voiced opinions. He had not wanted her along. So he and Hati had spoken to a handful of the young men, and they had packed up the requisite equipment, thrown saddles on the beshti, and gone speedily over the horizon without further discussion with anyone.
The Ila, he had heard, had chosen to be amused at his escape, and possibly had rethought the strenuousness of the journey, or possibly had not wanted to leave Ian and Luz unchallenged in the Refuge, likely to make decisions in which she would have no direct part for months. The Ila had generously wished them, through their watchers, a good journey, and was content that they had at least taken her au’it, a woman as ancient as themselves, and in the Ila’s service, a recorder whose book now had become many books, full of the most extraordinary things.
They rode carefully and well back from the rim of the deepening gorge, and this passage, like all others, the au’it recorded, writing as she rode, having given up the precarious ink for aself-contained source, but never relinquishing the weighty book she balanced on her knee, like those many, many books before it.
The Western Red, a sizable river, poured through the gap into the Needle just east of them, where the rim of a second great river chasm split the southern face of the Plateau and joined the gorge. That seam in the earth stretched hazily off into the distance. From here on, only the wind and the rain had touched this ground since the Hammerfall.
And this, Marak reminded the younger riders, created a certain danger. For centuries a rock layer might stand, undermined and precarious, balanced against wind and rain and gravity, but not against the added weight of a beshta’s pads. So they kept the beshti back from the rim, not letting them meander to the fragile rim, no matter their longing to snatch a mouthful or two of the greenbush that grew there.
They rode where the high, improbable rim of the Needle Ridge broadened, until they had a good, level space around them. Greenbush as well as knifeweed had spread here, in sand and soil that endured in patches across a layer of sandstone. It was sparse and tough foliage, gray, mazy clumps rising up off a tough and knotty base growth. Beshti could use either for graze.
“Here for the base unit,” Marak said to Hati and to the others, having brought the party to a halt. All about him he surveyed that unobstructed field of view, from the low-lying river gorge and the red land on the other side, to the bare, eroded sandstone spires falling away to the south, down to the wide pans, apart from this strip of ancient basalt.
This broad place on the ridge was where they would put the critical relay, which might even make contact with number 105, lost out of range to the south, so they could perhaps gain its attention to effect an autorepair. So Marak hoped. At the very least, it was time to set a relay, since contact with the Refuge was perceptibly fainter. And there was, at this height, in that broad sweep of his eye westward, a rim to the sky.
That was not good.
“This is a good broad vantage before the Wall,” he said. “Set up the base. And bring out the deep-stakes.”
The young men looked, all of them, apprehensively westward,as they ought, when he said that about deep-stakes. They gazed at just a faint dirtiness above the horizon.
They should have seen it. Now they had.
DEEP-STAKES. TIME. Damn, time,and it was just getting to what would be a rapid deployment, just when Procyon had a screen cleared and ready for that new monitor Marak was setting up. He’d known it. He’d known it would work out that way. And what was this about deep-stakes, the irons they used to anchor shelter in a blow? Weather showed nothing but a small line of disturbance off the sea.
The tap came in from Drusus, the clock showed 1802, and Procyon moved, realizing pain. His left leg had gone to sleep.
“They’re well out on that rocky spine, now, between the Needle River and the pans,” he said aloud to Drusus, hiding his disappointment, since he knew Marak could overhear them talking. “They’re at the site. Marak’s asked the base be set up. Then he asked for deep-stakes.”
Flash of light. Quadruple flash from Drusus. “Coming on a serious blow, I’m afraid. And they’re still setting up?”
Drusus was taking up his watch in a similar office in another apartment, far across the station. Drusus would actually see the new landscape and the camp the instant the new relay and the camera installation turned on, if they got it done before dark. If weather didn’t intervene.
“Looks like.”
He, on the other hand, had to wait until morning to find out what happened, and he would very likely miss the deployment. It would take a bigger blow than seemed likely from the weather reports to prevent the base unit driving its legs down. It took only an hour.
But he had taxed his brain and his eyes enough over the last eight hours. A flutter in his left eyelid and a leg gone to sleep confirmed it. He was officially booted out of the tap. He hadn’t quite shut down yet, as he multitasked his transcript and Auguste’s belatedly over to Drusus—they should have gone half an hour ago.
He had a rapidly burgeoning headache, he’d been paying suchtight and constant attention. The average tapped-in line worker in, say, a bank, sat with his ears plugged and his eyes shut, focused on a single audio interface and admitting no alternate possibilities to confuse his brain.
He, on the other hand, did multitask. He didn’t ordinarily take allthe information simultaneously available to him, but close to it, and when he had to, his brain ran a large number of tracks quite handily: get the transcript out, get the board shut down, were the final two. All those daily repeated tasks, the same daily-routine keystrokes, the hindbrain could handle on autopilot.
Drusus had been, it turned out, by a glance at the clock ticking away in his contact display, two minutes late tapping in. Neither of them was sinless, him for hanging on and Drusus for showing up late. But Drusus had delayed to get an updated weather report. Not entirely a favorable one, as it had developed a bit beyond the last he’d pulled down: he could see that when he demanded it. The front they’d thought would miss—wouldn’t.
He slid out of the chair, gathering up the used cup and plate, thinking about the cold front, and spotted the note he’d scrawled on his hand. Which otherwise he’d have completely forgotten, given the depth of his concentration.
Anniversary.
Damn. He’d been ready to think about restaurants. About de-buzzing and recovering the sensation in his right foot.
“Procyon is reluctant to leave us,” Marak said, at the edge of his conscious attention, and Procyon felt himself flush, embarrassed to be caught between here and there.
“Good night,” he said to Drusus, “Good night, Marak. Forgive me, omi.” With that, he did entirely tap out, doing the little blood shunt behind the ears that shut the contact absolutely down.