At the mention of its name, the little sphere pulsed with a warm green light and levitated briefly. Tinker glanced from the ancient’s face to the magic ball. Mu Ren leaned heavily on his arm.
“You must be tired,” continued the Hip. “That wickiup will be yours.” He pointed to a partially finished shelter on the opposite side of the clearing. “You will find a workbench and sleeping mats inside.”
Tinker nodded: “Thank you. We have been traveling ever since our conversation. We passed a quiet Harvester on our way up this mountain. Is that the renegade?”
Hip nodded: “Yes. He chose freedom. We called you through him. Unfortunately his power cell is now depleted.”
“And the skeletons?”
Hip smiled: “Two hive creatures who tried to salvage it.”
Tinker took Mu Ren to their new shelter and bedded her down with the infant. He squatted in the door and studied the villagers—naked, leathery troglodytes, in his eyes. A plump motherly female from the next shelter offered him a bowl of broth containing recognizable vegetable cuts. He woke Mu Ren and they ate. Rested and nourished, he noticed his own calloused and tanned body. Shaggy hair. Weeks in the gardens had transformed them into villagers. He playfully scratched the sole of her foot.
“They live close to nature up here. From now on, so will we. We are going to be very much like them—except for one thing. You and I are the only four-toeds in the village.”
He took his restless five-toed son to the doorway and sat—rocking. Ball sat on its cairn—dull, opaque. Tinker wondered how the Hip had gotten Harvester to go renegade. Magic?
The Hip of Mount Tabulum was nervous at the sight of Toothpick. For here was a companion cyber that could take a very active role in things—a talking spear—a weapon. And old man Moon looked every bit as old as the Hip, if not older. With the added sorcery of a four-legged carnivore—unknown to all who lived on the mountain—Toothpick and Moon were a real threat to the Hip’s authority. But Ball said cooperate, and cooperate he did, though reluctantly.
“We have come to see your Tinker,” said Toothpick.
Hip folded his robes about him.
“Why?”
“To talk, toothless one. Where is he?”
Hip eyed the truculent javelin sullenly. The little cyber returned his gaze. Moon and Dan sauntered about the cairn studying the village huts. For them this was a big village, almost civilization. Finally Hip pointed to Tinker’s wickiup.
Tinker was skeptical.
“You are a machine. You shouldn’t even be in the village. You might report us.”
Moon held Toothpick up so the full volume of its lingual readout could play over Tinker. Here was the man Toothpick had promised would reconstruct Moon’s teeth, and Moon was going to see that he did.
“I am a companion robot, thousands of years old,” said the cyber. “The old chains of command were broken while I slept. My superiors are gone. Now my only loyalty is to Moon, who found me. Moon needs teeth.”
“But how can I trust—” objected Tinker.
“Ask your seer, the Hip,” suggested Moon.
Tinker left them in front of his shelter while he crossed the clearing to the cairn. Hip was in a demitrance with his hand on his crystal ball. Finally, Hip turned to him and nodded. The strangers were safe enough.
Tinker took Moon and Dan into his hut. Mu Ren and Junior were with some women of the village pounding grain. The hut contained their simple, hand-made belongings—cetacean hides, woven fiber, clay, wood and stone. Small crude tools of Tinker’s new trade—healer—were arranged on the split log. Most were flint. Picking up a polished white wooden stick, Tinker motioned for Moon to open his mouth. He prodded the gum line methodically with a flint tool—his retouched Levallois point. Then he glanced into Dan’s mouth, shaking his head.
“Those teeth are really worn down,” he said, looking over his pitiful tools. “Need full or three-quarter crowns on every one. Tin caps I can do—crowns, no.”
Toothpick hummed a sharp request: “What would you need to do the restorations here? Now? You’ve done similar work in the Big ES. Couldn’t you try it on the Outside?”
“Tell him what you need, Tinker,” encouraged Moon with his toothless grin. “I’ve seen him make it rain. He can probably get most anything for you.”
Tinker remained skeptical, but the prospect of working with his hands again excited him. He had nothing to lose but time—and there seemed to be a surplus of that.
“Open up,” he said, reaching for the Levallois point. He pressed the cold flint against the fibrotic tissue of the gum line and picked out a yellow flake of dental calculus. He put the tiny flake on the tip of his index finger. “This calcified debris is all around those stumps. My stone tools are probably strong enough to get it all out, but it will be an awful lot of work. There’ll be pain and blood—and a very real danger of infection. That black area, however—” he held Toothpick so the cyber’s optic was in Moon’s mouth, “—is decay. Decayed dentine is softer than enamel, of course, but it is too hard for my primitive setup here.” He thought for a moment. “I could adapt a power drill from an Agromeck’s tool kit. It could bring hunters if we tamper with that, however.”
“I’ll handle that,” said Toothpick. “Go on. What else would you need?”
Tinker began to show some interest in the project. He looked into Moon’s mouth again.
“Most of the root canals must be dead. It would be a good idea to fill them all. Cure the dead ones and drain any root abscesses that might be forming. Any rough metal wire will do for scraping the canals clean. For curing I can use a wick with any of several antiseptics—phenol, iodine, anything from a Hunter’s medipack. Those things should be no problem after we get a power drill set up.”
Moon volunteered: “They are my teeth, and I know most of the Agromecks in the south valley. I’ll go for the tool kit right now. Anything else you might need?”
“Don’t load yourself down,” warned Tinker. “Hunters could be on your tail in half a day. But it is your mouth and any small sharp tools you bring could make it easier—tiny drill bits, scissors, pliers, picks. The smaller and sharper the tools, the less trauma. I’ll build a dry cache under a rock to hide them from the metal detectors.”
Then he turned to Toothpick and continued: “I can use wax for the positive—sand-clay for the negative form. What metal can I use for the casting? I only have a little tin.”
“Would gold do?” asked Toothpick.
“Certainly. The best.”
“Ball can help us there. He was wearing a laminated foil cap when he was found. Most of the foil was gold. A simple charcoal forge will melt it. We can fire it up when all the molds are ready—shouldn’t attract any more Hunters than one of our regular campfires.”
Tinker looked at Toothpick with more respect now that he realized how thoroughly the little cyber thought things out.
The gum-trimming and tartar-chipping went smoothly enough. Both Moon and Dan dragged themselves around with swollen faces and rusty saliva for a few weeks, but that was what they had expected. However, when time came to drill away the black dentine, willpower began to fray.
The drill was large and coarse. It raised a lot of heat with its vibrations. When Tinker worked, there was the smell of cooked blood throughout the village. Dan’s dog mind had a very high pain threshold, but he considered it torture. A hundred years of discipline proved inadequate to keep him on Tinker’s work table. Moon’s nerves, too, were about shot. He was ready to call off the whole project when Toothpick suggested using Molecular Reward to disassociate the pain impulses.
Tinker dug up the remains of several Hunters before he found an intact neck console.
“The last dose would be the MR,” suggested Toothpick.