"Oh, yeah, it's about time to load up our gear and get over there, isn't it? I just wish he'd built up a little more rock climbing experience, before tackling this mineral survey grant on the Wall. If you ask me, all these down-timers take too many chances. As sensible as he is most of the time."
"Well, that's why we're going along this first time, right, to show him the ropes?"
Olivia stuck out her tongue and threw a gardening glove at his head.
"Seriously, it should be a lot more manageable once we help him get that first line of fixed anchor points set. And it's not like El Capitan, this is all business. Won't be any hot-dogging."
"Better not be. I'll give him an earful if he pushes things."
"Yes, Mother."
Murphy's Run
This was nothing like sport climbing. Will began by shooting an arrow trailing a lightweight cord across to where Carlos was standing on the clifftop. In a few minutes they had a line dropping from a solid-looking tree, protected by a heavy canvas covering where it went over the edge, coming down at an angle to their starting point on the south slope. Will anchored a second line close to where he and Olivia stood, and looked at her inquiringly. Olivia nodded. Good. They had a few minutes' wait, until Carlos could work his way back down through the woods. Olivia used the time for one more visual check of their equipment.
Carlos buckled on his harness and hung his gear, ready for use. "Will, suppose I demonstrate the first few, and then you take the lead? Livie, you want to belay?"
"That seems reasonable, Carlos."
"Sure. On belay."
Will watched closely while Carlos clipped onto both lines, then Olivia started carefully paying out slack in the side line from their starting point while he "ascended" the overhead line at a slant, ending up several yards out on the Wall at their original height. There was nothing but mirror-smooth hard rock wall at that spot. Carlos pulled a star drill and a hammer out of his tool belt, both of them secured with lanyards, and proceeded to drive a hole a couple inches deep. Next he brushed the dust out of the hole, tapped in a lead shield, and cranked a forged eyebolt into it and set a carabiner ring. Next, he hauled in the line that was to be left in place, slipped that and his trailing line into the ring, and closed it. No, this was nothing like sport climbing. This was somewhere between high construction work and ship rigging. "Want to watch another one, before we switch?"
"Yes, please."
"Okay, slack."
Will continued observing as Carlos maneuvered out further and set the next rock anchor.
"Very good, Carlos, I believe I understand it. Did you capture the dust you drilled out?"
"I got some of it. It's in these two bags. Just a second while I number them. After that, I'll come back and we can switch. Livie, you want to take up on the side line for me?"
Will turned and made a series of hand signals to the student down on the valley floor with a theodolite and a field book. There wasn't much wind, but it was still difficult to shout that far. Carlos came back to the starting point, and they went to work.
Along the Schwarzburg road
James Rothrock looked to be sure Bennet was ready to resume the upward trek. It was laborious to take a roundabout route up the slope to where it met the original Thuringian terrain, then up again on the hillside outside the Ring, but far easier and safer to climb to the clifftop and then descend by ropes, than attempting the route straight up to the cave above the place where George had found that tantalizing fragment.
This time they were bringing a collapsible canvas bucket and a spare line, so that they could haul away a much greater quantity of what they'd discovered than they could carry on their backs while climbing back up.
Rothrock casually glanced toward the Wall to his right, and froze. Another party had come into view around the flank of the cliff. That in itself was not to be wondered at, but . . . there was something familiar . . . He reached into the handcart, snatched at a side pocket of his backpack, and pulled out a small telescope. Bennet looked at him curiously as he focused the thing. He couldn't quite make out the faces, but by the shape of the man, and the rhythm of his movements, Rothrock knew. "Mars and Jupiter! George, Oughtred himself is crawling sideways across that cliff! What a strange way to proceed!"
"What? Let me see."
Rothrock passed over the instrument. Bennet stared at the cliffside for a short while. "There are two others there with him. Who do you imagine they could be?"
"Not anyone I can recognize, but by their size and the cut of their clothing, I should think up-timers, Americans, more than likely. We had best watch what they do, and not reveal ourselves until we know better what is happening here. Come, we can watch from under the trees there."
Hours passed. The party on the cliff moved slowly, starting and stopping, as if they were searching for something, or closely examining what they saw as they went along. But then . . .
"James! Look where they are now!" Rothrock saw, and his lips tightened. They were coming close to that cave, the one where they'd made their discovery. The party reached it. And went inside.
Rothrock stared in consternation. "Our mine is there! Do they intend to poach on it?"
"Ha! If they try, we could put a quick stop to that. After what we have risked, they certainly shall not."
"What? What do you mean?"
Bennet pointed to the far ridge, the one that held back a deep, still lake.
Rothrock could not stop his jaw from dropping. "Murder? Have you lost your mind? Why, by all that's holy? Our mining right is already recorded in the county archives! By the law here, it's ours! And even leaving that aside, how in the turmoil that would surely follow, could we accomplish the purpose for which we came here, to restore the correspondence between Oughtred and His Lordship?"
"Oh, a record, my young friend, a legally recorded right to bring forth what we found! Do you really imagine that these people, who made all these laws and offices for their own purposes, all of them related by blood, could find no way around that? Yes, we saw it recorded in ink in a bound record book. Do you care to wager that they couldn't cause it to vanish into thin air, like a conjurer's trick?"
Rothrock felt his face tighten.
Bennet laughed until he started coughing up blood, gagged on the clot until he spat it on the ground and could speak again. "He thinks nothing of showing that hidden place to those others. He shows not the least sense-nor, I do think, do you!"
"You call him a fool, now? Whether he is or not, remember our errand. We have found William Oughtred; he not only lives, he looks to be well. But now we must watch for a chance to speak with him in strict privacy, and learn whether he acts freely, or whether those strangers have some hold over him. Look, they have come out; they couldn't have penetrated so quickly to where we did. We shall watch where they go."
William Oughtred's cabin
Murphy's Run
It had been a pretty good day, with two rows of anchors set, but they'd all had enough. Carlos finished writing up his observations in one of Will's regular-size scientific notebooks, refreshing his memory from the little dollar-store address book Will carried in the field. He passed it over to Olivia, so she could make her own additions. It was just such a compliment that a real scientist thought a couple of country rock dealers had ideas worth listening to. And that's what he was now, too; it hadn't taken William Oughtred long to understand what Francis Bacon's controversial ideas would have flowered into, in another generation-not that Bacon was the only one questioning the old ideas of where knowledge came from.