Ceam grunted. “How you going to fix them?”
“Hokori puffballs. The spores get into the part that runs the machines and make it go crazy. Couple of the Meloach get under the crawlers between the tracks, pop a dozen spores into the air intake and, oh, twenty minutes later, the thing’s junk.”
“I was warned to stay telkib melkib from them. Alarms go off, I get roasted. How…”
“Something we found out by accident a couple ten-days ago. Meloach don’t register on their detectors. Our younglings there can slide right up to the crawlers before the mesuch know what’s happening. About a dozen klids like us moving on Crawlers this tenday. Want to get as many of them as we can before they figure out what’s happening and how to stop us.”
Ceam glanced at the sun, eyes squinted against the glare. Half an hour of light left, maybe a bit more. He wriggled closer to the rim, trained the binocs on the trees behind the Crawler. The klid should be in place now. Not a sign of them. Good thing, that. His mouth pinched to a narrow line as he saw one of the mesuch move into the doorway of the Crawler living space and stand staring at the canyon rim. Nervous, are you, scraem? I hope you’ve got reason you don’t know about. “Ah!”
A small, agile shadow snaked from under the trees and vanished beneath the Crawler. As Leoca said, no alarm.
Ceam smiled. If the teachers are right and hokori spores can poison that thing, Chel Dй be blessed, there’ll be a dozen of the monsters dead soon. Not too soon-for me.
The Meloach slid out and crawled for the trees. Xe looked wobbly now, uncertain.
Xe must have got a whiff of them xeself Move, child. Go on, go on, keep going. Aid good.
One of the other Meloach slipped from the trees, caught the first by the arm, and half-lifted, half-dragged xe back into shelter.
Ceam moved the binocs to the door into the Crawler shell. As the sun slid completely behind the peaks, the light visible through the louvers that protected the windows were lines of yellow on a black ground, the open door a yellow rectangle interrupted by the blocky form of the Chav.
The mesuch turned his head, said something to the other one, his voice a grumble on the wind, the words unintelligible. He moved inside and pulled the door shut.
For half an hour nothing happened.
The door to the Crawler burst open, the two mesuchs stumbled out, choking, coughing, wisps of smoke following them, the yellow glow behind them flickering as if it were firelight rather than electric. As the mesuchs flung themselves onto the creek to wash the spore dust off them, the light pulsed a last time and went out.
Ceam smiled with pleasure. It worked. The Crawler’s dead.
The smile vanished as the cliff groaned and shifted under him. He heard a horrible whining sound below him. When he looked down, he saw the nose end of one of the mole machines poke through the stone; a moment later the rest of it followed and it fell into the canyon, landing with a crash that echoed from wall to wall and a flare of light that started spots dancing before Ceam’s eyes.
“Ihoi!” As the stone started shaking under him like a Keteng in the grip of berm fever, Ceam scrambled away from the edge and watched with horror as another of the machines screamed out where he’d been lying. It turned end for end and ate its way back into the stone.
He snatched his pack and bolted up the uneven mountainside rising from behind the canyon rim.
The mining machines screamed, the high whines lifting the hairs on his arms and neck; the groaning and cracking of the stone got louder. As the dirt slipped under his feet, trying to drag him with it, the mountain rocked and shuddered, the trees around him cracked and groaned, he caught at branches, brush, used them to pull himself along, fell to his knees again and again, the pack he held by one shoulder strap nearly wrenched from his grasp. He scrambled on, struggling to get over the shoulder of the mount, onto the far slope.
Near dawn when the mountain had settled to its ordinary stolidity, Ceam crept back, keeping a careful watch on the sky to make sure no airwagons were around. At the edge of the still unstable scree, he stopped and looked down along what had once been a canyon wall.
The Crawler had escaped much of the slide, but a few huge chunks of stone had brushed against it and tumbled it onto its side. It looked like a dead nagal tipped on its back, the tracks like broken legs tucked close to the shell. Ceam set the binocs to his eyes and picked up glints of starlight from the twisted torn metal of the mining machines, mixed inextricably with the shards of stone. Near the Crawler he spotted an arm and a leg in the dull gray of mesuch worksuits poking from under a pile of debris. Either the second mesuch got away on foot or he was mashed to pulp under the fallen stone.
After a last scan with the binocs, he resettled the ‘straps of the pack and began making his way down back around the mountain, a small contented smile on his round, lined face.
2
Ilaцrn sat in the corner of the Ykkuval’s consultation chamber, playing wallpaper music on the harp and listening to the reports coming in on the com. He kept his head down, his eyes on his fingers so he wouldn’t betray the satisfaction he felt. Six Crawlers and their moles completely destroyed. Two intact but needing a complete replacement of the control system and new moles. Four Crawlers with only minor damage because the crews were alert enough and lucky enough to get the systems shut down before the spores had a chance to destroy them-all that working on information he’d passed out of the Kushayt. Matha matha, it was a piece of luck, that, hearing the report about the spores. He freed one hand, stroked it with loving care along the wood of the harp frame. Your doing, my sweet mistress, all you.
His heart had nearly failed him the morning a ten-day ago when Hunnar’s voice sounded behind him as he finished coding some information he’d picked up about movements of the Crawlers.
“Why haven’t you played that before?”
Ilaцrn eased himself away from the harp and got to his feet, moving stiffly, his knees aching because he’d sat so long on the cold damp earth. He folded his hands, bowed his head. “Oh Ykkuval, I was mourning. The time is finished now, so I play again. I was Ard, O Ykkuval. I was a master harper. It was my life.”
“That was a strange piece you played. Jarring.”
“Oh, Ykkuval, it was a study, not a finished piece. An exercise. Something to get my hands in shape again.”
“Play something more ahh euphonious. Something more suited to Dushanne.” Hunnar strolled off, glancing back now and again, a thoughtful frown on his heavy face.
Ilaцrn leaned into the harp and considered what he should play. By way of their intimate connection through the probe sessions, he knew Hunnar better than most of his own people, knew the Chav’s pretensions and limitations. Something simple but flashy. His mouth twitched, into his first unbitter smile in months as he thought how like this mesuch was to more than one Ordumel Teseach he’d known. He started playing Ard Amorane’s Trick-and tricked himself. He forgot about Hunnar and the mesuch, even about his sioll, losing himself in the sheer joy of the sound.
Hunnar’s voice brought him back all too soon to the reality of his life.
“… to judge with that primitive instrument you play, but the touch is lyrical, the tone most pleasing to the ear. An artist. Yes. Anyone can grub in a garden, but a true artist must follow his gift. We pride ourselves on our taste, we highborn. And our generosity. A gift like that puts a man outside of caste, makes him worthy of our patronage…
Ilaцrn stopped listening; he could guess what outside of caste meant. Pampered pet dancing to the whim of the patron. I’d rather be your gardener than your “artist in residence,” but I don’t have a choice, do I. Hm. I can try telling you the garden refreshes my soul and I need to work here. Wonder if that’ll work? If I can’t get out… cha oy, it has to work.