“Can this be right? It gets worse not better. Something terrible is happening.”
“I don’t think so,” Chimal said, frowning in concentration over the breviary. “It says the chemical needs replacing. So first I imagine the old chemical is pumped out, and this removal is what gives that false reading on the scale. Certainly the absence of a chemical will give the same reading as a bad chemical.”
“Your argument is abstract, hard to follow. I am glad you are here with us, First Arriver, and I can see the workings of the Great Designer in this. We could do nothing about this without you.”
“Let’s see how this comes out, first. So far I’ve just followed the book and there has been no real problem. There, the new chemical must be coming in, the needle’s going back up again to fully charged. That seems to be all there is to it.”
The Master Observer pointed, horrified, at the blinking warning light. “Yet — that goes on. There is something terrible here. There is something wrong with our air!”
“There is nothing wrong with our air. But there is something wrong with this machine. It has been recharged, the new chemical is working perfectly — yet the alarm goes on. The only thing I can think of is that there is something wrong with the alarm.” He slipped through the sections of the book until he found the one he wanted, then read through it quickly. “This may be it. Is there a storeroom here? I want something called 167-R.”
“It is this way.”
The storeroom contained rows of shelves, all numbered in order, and Chimal had no trouble locating part 167-R which was a sturdy cannister with a handle on the end and a warning message printed in red. CONTAINS PRESSURIZED GAS — POINT AWAY FROM FACE WHEN OPENING. He did as it advised and turned the handle. There was a loud hissing, and when it had died away the end came free in his hand. He reached in and drew out a glittering metal box, shaped like a large book. It had a handle where the spine would be and a number of copper-colored studs on the opposite edge. He had not the slightest idea what its function might be.
“Now let’s see what this does.”
The breviary directed him to the right spot and he found the handle in the face of the machine that was marked 167-R, as was the new one he had just obtained. When he pulled on the handle the container slid out as easily as a book from a shelf. He threw it aside and inserted the new part in its place.
“The light is gone, the emergency is over,” the Master Observer called out in a voice cracking with emotion. “You have succeeded even where the Air Tender failed.”
Chimal picked up the discarded part and wondered what had broken inside it. “It seemed obvious enough. The machinery appeared to work fine, so the trouble had to be in the alarm circuit, here. It’s described in the book, in the right section. Something turned on and would not turn off, so the emergency sounded even after the correction had been made. The tender should have seen that.”
He must have been very stupid not to have figured it out, he continued, to himself. Do not speak ill of the dead, but it was a fact. The poor man had panicked and killed himself when the problem had proven insoluble. This was proof of what he had suspected for a long time now.
In their own way the Watchers were just as slow-witted as the Aztecs. They had been fitted to a certain function just as the people in the valley had.
3
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand it,” Watchman Steel said, frowning over the diagram on the piece of paper, turning it around in the futile hope that a different angle would make everything clear.
“I’ll show you another way then,” Chimal said, going into his ablutory for the apparatus he had prepared. His observer’s quarters were large and well appointed. He brought out the plastic container to which he had fastened a length of strong cord. “What do you see in here?” he asked, and she dutifully bent to look.
“Water. It is half filled with water.”
“Correct. Now what will happen if I should turn it on its side?”
“Why… the water would spill out. Of course.”
“Correct!”
She smiled happily at her success. Chimal stretched out a length of cord and picked up the container by it. “You said it would spill. Would you believe that I can turn this bucket on its side without spilling a drop?”
Steel just gaped in awe, believing anything possible of him. Chimal began to spin the bucket in a small circle, faster and faster, lifting it at the same time, until it was swinging in a circle straight up into the air, upside down at the summit of its loop… The water stayed in; not a drop was spilled. Then, slowly, he decreased the speed, until the container was once again on the floor.
“Now, one more question,” he said, picking up a book. “If I were to open my hand and let go of this book — what would happen?”
“It would fall to the floor,” she told him
“Right again. Now follow closely. The force that pulls the book to the floor and one that holds the water in the bucket is the same force, and its name is centrifugal force. There is another force on large planets called gravity that seems to act the same way, though I do not understand it. The important thing to remember is that centrifugal force also holds us down, so we don’t fly up into the air, and is also the reason why we could walk across the sky and look up at the valley over our heads.”
“I don’t understand any of that,” she admitted.
“It’s simple. Say that instead of a cord I had a spinning wheel. If the container were hung from the rim of the wheel the water would stay inside of it just as it did when I spun it on the cord. And I could fasten two containers to the wheel, opposite each other, and the water would stay in each one. The bottom of each container would be down for the water it held — yet the direction down would be directly opposite for each of them. The same thing is true for us, because this world of rock is spinning too. So down in the village is below your feet — and down on the sky is toward the sky. Do you follow all of this?”
“Yes,” she told him, although she did not, but she wanted to please ham.
“Good. Now the next step is the important one and I want you to be sure you are with me. If down is below your feet in the village and down is toward the sky when you are opposite it, then halfway between them the force must be equal, so that there is no force acting at all. If we could get halfway to the sky from the village we could just float there.”
“That would be very hard to do, unless you were a bird. And even birds are prevented from leaving the valley by a certain device of which I have heard.”
“Very true. We can’t climb up through the air, but we can go through a tunnel in the rock. The valley is in an opening in the rock, but it is solid at both ends. If there is a tunnel leading to the spot, it’s called the axis of rotation, that’s the name from the book, we could go there and float in the air.”
“I don’t think I would like that.”
“I would. And I have found the right tunnel on the charts. Will you go with me?”
Watchman Steel hesitated; she had no desire to experience adventures of this land. But the First Arriver’s wishes must be treated as law.
“Yes, I will come.”
“Good. We’ll go now.” The books were satisfactory and he enjoyed his studies, but he needed human contact too. In the village people were always together. Watchman Steel was the first person he had met here, and they had snared experiences together. She was not bright, but she tried to please. He put some food concentrates and a water bottle into his belt pouch: he had taken to wearing this as did all the others. It held the communicator, his writing instruments, some small tools.