"According to Windy Fedder, it's called pegmatite. That clear stuff is quartz, and it's just like tryin' to chop through solid glass. But it's either that, or run the road half-way around the damned swamp."
Packy took the rock, examined it, then handed it back to Skinner. "Steengrease?"
"I can't see any way around it."
The punk from rotting frond trees mixed with powered charcoal and treated with the acid from the fruit of the death tree explodes after the mixture has dried into a semi-solid goo. It explodes when jarred, when ignited, when heated, or when the mood is upon it. Butterfingers McCorkle from Miira discovered it; Firehole Steen from Kuumic manufactured and used it for mining—for a brief time. Firehole's pieces were never found.
The concoction was called Steengrease.
Soon after the road was begun, the road gang was out of the jungle and into the sparse trees and grasses of the Upland foothills. Each turn and curve of the road took them higher and closer to the base of White Top Mountain. Five times wagons were sent to Miira filled with the sick. The fifth wagon returned with a few of the ones who had recovered from the still unknown disease.
By the time the nights became chill enough to require blankets for the bulls, five more bulls and bullhands had left the gang. Two bulls were steered north toward the Emerald Valley; three went south to Kuumic to help work the mines. And a coldness entered Little Will's heart as she counted the twenty-three bulls left to build the White Top Mountain Road. The image of Bullhook Willy, the full line of bulls, and the show filled her mind. The image and the coldness combined to form a resolve—a mission—to preserve what she knew and what she was.
Then bullhand Slim Kim and her bull Tori were torn apart as Steengrease exploded unexpectedly at the cut through the first ridge. And then the bulls numbered twenty-two.
The months passed, the newly stricken were replaced in part by the recovered, and the gang heard from Goofy Joe how those who had not recovered were filling Miira's Big Lot. The road gang had reached the last, and the biggest, of the pegmatite ridges.
It was too steep to go over, and there was no way around. Working on the rock with hammers and chisels left everyone with a hammer bleeding from the cuts made by numerous splinters of razor-sharp quartz. Within that same hour, Sterno Ti Myati had her left eye closed forever when a splinter punctured it.
The Steengrease was brought up. Three times before, Shiner Pete had worked with those who had worked the touchy explosive. At the fourth cut, Shiner was the sole remaining member of this select, and highly scarce, group.
For the fourth time that day, Shiner Pete worked his way up the cut with a bucket of Steengrease to fill the cracks in the cut's jagged face. Once the cracks were filled, grease-smeared strings implanted in the cracks, and Pete safely down the hill, the ends of the strings were drawn together and prepared for ignition.
Little Will stood by Reg's left front as her husband prepared to set off the charges. She was with the rest of the bullhands and elephants, far back from the hill. As Pete talked with Packy, Little Will studied the cracks in the pegmatite. She saw the slope of the hill, the amounts of Steengrease Pete had placed into the cracks. She had seen the differences in fuse lengths, and had seen Steengrease used before. She turned to the other bullhands. "All up! We have to move!"
Slobby Mike Kuboski had laughed. "I'm just a little wore. This is the first time I've had to sit on my buns all day. I don't feel much like moving."
Little Will looked at Slobby Mike, then at his bull, Dancer, then at the other bullhands. "If we don't move, the rocks from the blast will kill us." She pointed down. "A lot of the big ones are going to land right here."
There was laughter all around. They were a long way from the cut. Little Will looked at them all, then turned and moved Reg a hundred yards from the rest. The rest of the bullhands talked it up as though they were humoring a child's whims, but they followed—all but Slobby and Dancer.
Shiner Pete and Packy had looked around, surprised that the bulls had moved; but they returned to their work. Packy moved off and hid behind a tall standing rock. Pete had the fuse ends behind another rock. He prepared to slam the ends of the fuses between two rocks. Little Will moved a step forward as she saw a huge mass of rock falling upon Pete. But he hadn't even set off the charges. She bit her lip and turned to the singer-turned-harness worker, Canary Mary. "Canary, I... I see a mass of rock landing right where Pete is standing right now!"
The singer put her arm around Little Will's shoulders. "Don't worry, honey. Planting the charges was the dangerous part. Everyone's far enough away from the blast—"
"No!" Little Will shook her head. "You don't understand. I've seen this before when Stub went over the cliff in the Snake Mountain Gap. I can see things that'll happen." She pointed toward Slobby and Dancer. "A horrible thing will happen there. I don't know how I know, but I do." She pointed at Shiner Pete. "Right there will land one of the largest rocks from the blast. I know it. I just know it!" Canary Mary had patted Little Will's arm as Shiner Pete swung the rock down upon the fuse ends.
It was a deafening roar against the ears, clouds of gray and white powder climbing into the sky. Above the powder there were quartz shards, and many huge slabs and boulders. Many of the monsterous hunks of hill fell where the bulls had been standing—where Slobby and Dancer still stood. But Little Will was watching the lone slab that tumbled in the air, reached its peak, then began dropping toward Shiner Pete.
Pete was crouched against a rock, his face and eyes covered. The noise of the blast still reverberated from the hills. Little Will screamed at the falling rock, ran at it, and waved her hands. All saw it. The young woman ran in panic toward the cut; the rock—five tons if an ounce—changed direction and landed twenty feet from Shiner Pete. Slobby and Dancer were crushed.
That night Shiner Pete and Little Will huddled under a blanket before a fire. "They said you moved the rock."
Little Will nodded once. "I think I did. Since then I've tried twice to move small things, but I can't. I don't understand it. The Ssendissians never said anything about moving things with thoughts."
"They wouldn't. They just talk and listen with thoughts. They don't move things." He squeezed her hand. "Maybe everybody's eyes were tricked."
Little Will sighed, closed her eyes, and nodded. "Maybe." She ran the images through her head, then began crying.
Pete put his arm around her shoulders. "You're thinking about Dancer."
"Twenty-one, Pete. We have twenty-one bulls left with us."
EIGHTEEN
The Season the third passed almost without notice; the event being marked only by Cookie Jo being sent back to Miira with a pregnancy that was making her too ill to run the cookhouse. As Thunder of the Fourth year since the crash began, the road had reached the frozen crest where Little Will could stand on the road and look down upon the whiteness of the frozen lakes at the foot of White Top Mountain.
From that same crest she could look east, over the Great Muck Swamp far below, to where the town of Miira was lost in the distant haze. She sadly shook her head at the winding scratch in the planet's surface that the bullhands were calling "Bull Buster Road." Eleven men and women had died from accidents; another nine from illness. Over thirty had died in Miira from illness. Besides Dancer, the White Top Mountain Road had claimed the lives of two more bulls: Prima and Sailor, both from the cold. Nineteen bulls left. She looked west. And there were still the lakes to reach.
She turned and walked back to where the gang was camped in a draw that protected them somewhat from the icy winds. Mounds of blankets were gathered around wind-whipped fires as blanket-covered Packy Dern checked the bulls' blankets and feed. Before she could cross the frozen ground and join Pete's huddled form, Packy crossed over from the bulls and stopped her.