The Sand Towers, the wind-carved buttes exposing their layers of coloured sands recounting the ages of Cull, extended as far as he could see to his left and right, and tens of kilometres beyond towards the plains. Raising his family monocular to his eyes, Anderson Endrik now inspected the Overcity of Golgoth, spread across its great steel platform high up on the Towers, then the lower city crouching in the foothills. The entire city was a product of metallier industry, and the centre of the closer, lower section bore the appearance of giant iron lichen holding the spheres and ellipses of its denizens’ metal houses. Sprawled all around it were long low steel mills and factories interspersed with chimneys belching smoke. Anderson had heard much about this place: that old technologies were being resurrected in pursuit of the dream of re-establishing the downed communication link with Earth, of interstellar travel, and of rejoining the human empire. Anderson raised his monocular to the sky to observe Ogygian—the ship that had brought his own ancestors here—a sphere connected by a narrow body to the triple nacelles of the U-space engines, glinting like green quicksilver in the turquoise firmament. Then he lowered his monocular to let it hang by its strap and, tapping his goad against the back of its sensory head, urged his sand hog mount into motion.
‘Are all the rumours true, or just bullshit?’ wondered Tergal.
Anderson glanced aside at his young companion.
Tergal was skinny and tall, his head topped by the wide-brimmed hat of a gully trader, with long dark hair spilling from under it down his back. He wore a leather jerkin, canvas trousers and sandals, and armed himself only with a punch axe and heavy crossbow. The boy’s sand hog, Stone, was also young, perhaps only the age of one human lifetime, for it still bore the red flush of youth and, as Anderson had noticed when the hog had first folded out its feeding head from underneath itself, it still possessed all its blunt white teeth. Seated in the saddle glued to the creature’s long teardrop-shaped carapace, Tergal was a metre lower than Anderson. The rough ride the young hog gave him also threw him continually from side to side.
Anderson’s own hog, Bonehead, was mature, and twice the bulk of Stone. The ears on its sensory head Anderson had trimmed back to stubs, and it was missing a few teeth. Its gait, however, up on its two powerful hind legs, was smooth. He remembered searching old records about why their mounts were so named. One reference to ‘hog’ had its meaning as something greedy, which certainly applied to Bonehead. When he discovered that hog also meant pig, he realized the true reason for the naming. When the creatures’ sensory and feeding heads were meshed, the composite head which resulted looked very much like that of a domestic pig portrayed in a very old picture. The carapace body, when viewed from the side, was also comparable, as was the pinkish coloration of sand hogs. Of course the similarity fell apart when these creatures rose up on their muscular hind limbs, or parted their composite heads on separate necks.
‘Ah, I think much truth can be weaned from the sand slide of rumour. Doubtless much old technology has been recovered or relearned—but surpassed?’ Anderson shook his head.
‘But they have advanced… you’ll grant that?’ The boy gestured to the city.
‘I’ll grant you that, though it could have been inferred before even seeing this place.’
‘How?’
Anderson eyed the youth. ‘Gully traders becoming wealthy by transporting coal and metal ores here?’ he suggested.
Tergal glanced at him. ‘I don’t know much about that. My mother was a trader by birth, but my stepfather is a minerallier. I know our mining was confined to shallow pits until the metalliers started wanting more coal and ores. My stepfather used to make a living from single-handedly mining gems. Now he employs hundreds of immigrants from Dalure, and even Rondure, and his mines extend right underneath the mountains. But does increased demand equate to advancement? It might well be just because their population has increased.’
Anderson grinned. ‘That’s one clue, but there are others.’ He reached into his belt pouch and took out a small cloth bag closed with a drawstring. Opening this, he shook out a handful of shell cases into his palm. ‘These tell us a lot. I found them scattered in a gully traders’ campsite, and I dug the metal slugs they propelled from the remains of a sleer. I’ve yet to see the weapon that uses them, but by their size I would guess the explosive is somewhat more efficient than my black powder.’ Anderson nodded to where he holstered his fusile muzzle-loader beside his saddle. ‘I’d guess they’re smokeless and that the weapon even has the facility for fast repetition of fire.’
‘What leads you to that assumption?’ Tergal asked archly.
‘They’re uniform, so probably not the product of individual skill. We’ve always known how repeating weapons function but just haven’t possessed the materials technology and industrial infrastructure to manufacture them—something like that takes time, effort and considerable organization to build. But having reached such a level of expertise, why not make the best weapons of that kind that you can?’
‘And?’Tergal asked.
Anderson weighed the shell cases, as if in judgement, then slipped them back into his bag and placed it in his belt pouch. ‘Impressive weapons, certainly mass-produced, but not a product of the technology our kind first arrived here with. Do you think that if they had surpassed the old technologies, the metalliers would still be producing something so primitive? Where are the pulse-guns and the beam weapons, then?’
‘Yes—I see.’ The boy shrugged.
‘Course, I could be talking complete bollocks,’ Anderson added.
Tergal muttered something foul and, causing static sparks to flare, whacked his goad against his mount’s sensory head, and it reared, nearly unseating him as it pulled ahead. Anderson watched the boy a moment longer, then turned his attention to the eye-palp Bonehead extruded from its upper porcine sensory head and turned to observe him disapprovingly. He shrugged and placed his fingers against his lips to signal his own silence, and Bonehead sucked the eye-palp back into its skull, looking forwards. Anderson decided he wouldn’t needle the boy further.
It had always been his intention to make this final leg of his journey to the Plains alone, but the youth, joining Anderson’s camp one night, seemed disinclined to go away. Anderson had yet to fathom the boy’s history, but certainly it contained theft and quite possibly murder. Anderson suspected the boy balanced on a cusp — attracted by the kudos of travelling with Anderson but undecided about whether or not to rob him. Anderson would let him make his choice, and let him suffer the consequences of the same. At least, while the boy decided, he was not harming anyone. But mostly Anderson was glad of the company and of a willing audience to his many enthusiasms.
The concrete road winding towards Golgoth, the City of Skulls (named so because of the similarity many of the houses bore to those items), soon reached an intersection in the foothills and thereafter became much wider. Surveying his surroundings, Anderson observed further signs of technological advance. In the distance, he saw electricity pylons, and supposed it was true the metalliers had repaired the old power station in Bravence. Hereabouts the sand was only prevented from turning into shifting desert by the white and yellow plates of what was called egg lichen, though why it was called that Anderson had no idea—eggs were something he had only seen under a microscope, and had nothing to do with lichen. However, here there were also wide expanses levelled into fields producing cereals and root vegetables, irrigation frames being mounted over the latter, and occasional sprawls of glasshouses, usually as an adjunct to the occasional lone metallier dwelling, which consisted of anodized sheet aluminium nailed over wooden frames.