She’d been bored, bored, bored to the point that she had learned to ride a horse and use a bow and arrow. (Granted, the latter skill came in handy for killing Lord Tomtom but at the time she was simply out-of-her-skull bored.)
When Queen Soulful Ember finally—finally—gave her royal permission for Windwolf and Tinker to return to their interrupted life, they arrived during the July Shutdown. Pittsburgh was missing. It had gone to Earth, leaving Tinker behind. All that remained on Elfhome with her were the enclaves built along the northern arch of the Rim.
The enclaves proved to be just as primitive as Aum Renau.
A great many truths dawned on Tinker that day. One of which was that she had been utterly plucked out of the cycle of life as she knew it. Eternity loomed before her — huge and massive and boring as hell if she didn’t have her normal level of technology. The other truth was that nothing in human civilization ever lasted more than a few hundred years. Even the Chinese imperial rule had been a series of various dynasties rising and falling. Sooner or later (and it proved to be sooner rather than later — by her own doing no less) she was going to be stuck on Elfhome with whatever happened to be there when the gate failed.
She’d freaked out.
The next morning she had commandeered a fleet of construction vehicles and began to create infrastructure. Almost as soon as she had started, though, she was kidnapped by the oni, never to return to the hilltop. She had managed to totally forget about it — which seemed inconceivable until one considered what the rest of her summer had been like.
That morning, they had cut down five acres of virgin ironwood forest. She had left the hilltop denuded except for massive stumps. (She had thought that they would need to use dynamite to blast out the rootballs, but the elves had said they had some kind of magic to excise the huge remains.) There had been detailed, ambitious, but often unrealistic plans tacked to a hastily erected bulletin board. (She wasn’t thinking too sanely that day.) She was sure that the shanghaied humans from the EIA and the city would have fled shortly after she had left. Windwolf had told her that the work had continued after she disappeared, but she figured that was just his people. Yes, the landscaping would be beautiful but would there be any electricity?
Tinker doubted it.
Stormsong had promised, though, that the Tinker Domi Computer and Research Center had honest-to-God technology. More importantly, it had a casting circle. Tinker hadn’t included one in her plans, so someone else must have decided to put it in. Windwolf? Tooloo? Being that Tinker couldn’t think of any other place with computers and a casting circle — that she hadn’t blown up or dismantled — she had decided to give it a try.
The construction site seemed like a totally different place. Someone had pushed farther into the virgin forest, clearing a full twenty acres of the snaking ridgeline until it lay windswept. The massive stumps had been removed, the hilltop leveled, and wild flowers sown. White drifts of yarrow covered the ground. Lobelia and phlox created islands of color. Tinker had designed wind turbines made out of Ford 150 trucks. She had barely finished one base tower before Lain pulled her down off it and talked sense into her. Someone had finished her work. A line of sixty-foot-tall wind turbines crowned the ridge, facing west, their long white sails turned against a sky filled with rain clouds. Her bare-bones tower had been modified to something more elven in design with a solid stone base and wood shingle sheathing. (This made her happy as the structures would be able to offer more defense during an attack — which was probably the point of the changes.) To the north and east, the ironwood forest stretched out as far as the eye could see as a sea of green. To the west, the white dome of the Observatory peeked out over the forest roof. To the south, the land dipped down to the river with tips of the skyscrapers barely visible. At one time, the Rim cut its arc clean through the area but time had pushed the forest into the city proper, diffusing the line.
The dirt road had been graveled to make it more passible. There had been a stout gate with royal marines standing guard. The marines had waved the Rolls-Royce through once they saw Pony at the wheel. A ten-foot-tall fence of rough-hewn ironwood lined the edge of the perimeter of the hilltop, protecting the compound from anything that might venture out of the virgin forest.
Tinker expected elves, perhaps some horses and maybe even indi. She hadn’t expected the surprising number of EIA trucks and cars parked just inside the gate. Yes, there were more royal marines within the fence line, but the bulk of the people in sight were men.
“What the hell?” Tinker muttered. “What are all these humans doing here?”
“Wolf asked Maynard to assign someone to oversee the technology side of the project,” Stormsong explained. “Considering the progress made, the person must have been given command of an entire section of the EIA.”
A tall EIA officer spotted the Rolls and crossed the compound to meet it. Tinker recognized him but it took her a minute to remember from where. He’d led the squad of EIA commandos who had helped rescue Oilcan’s kids. Oh, good, he should be willing to cooperate if he’d followed her into the whelping pens. She hadn’t bothered to catch names as she charged into the pens but she’d collected Captain Roger A. Josephson’s name and phone number just in case she couldn’t get hold of Maynard and needed backup.
The captain was a tall human, solid without being thick, with his reddish blond hair shaved on the sides in a military cut. “Domi, we didn’t expect you to…well, I guess we never expect anything you do. How can we help?”
“You’re in charge here?” Tinker said. “I thought you were some kind of combat commander.”
“Yes, I am — and I am. My command are special operations forces. We’re a combat unit that specializes in establishing infrastructure if it’s been compromised by sabotage or nature. I’m actually new to Pittsburgh; we were deployed after the Viceroy was attacked. Maynard assigned me to the tech center in July. My unit was the only one close enough to respond when you needed help in the whelping pens.”
“I was told that you have a casting circle here.” Tinker scanned the compound. There were lots of buildings of all varieties, some still under construction. She was pleased that the idea of being “separate from Pittsburgh’s infrastructure” seemed to continue after she left. There was a water tower and men were installing a large septic system to handle sewage.
“The casting circle is in the last tent on the right.” Captain Josephson pointed at a large white tent of elf canvas. “A strong ley line crosses the area that we cleared, so I had one put in—”
“You did?” Tinker said in surprise.
“The Viceroy made it clear that if I were to discover any gaps in your plans, I should see they were filled. The casting circle is just one of several items that I thought were needed to complete the project. We haven’t gotten around to building the permanent shelter as it needs to be constructed without nails.”
“Good, good, good.” Tinker pointed to the only thing that had an electrical panel on it. It was a small mobile office. “Computers? Printers? The type that can print spells?”
“Yes.” Josephson trailed after Tinker as she started for the computers. “We’re building a permanent building to house the equipment but it’s not finished yet. We focused on finishing the wind turbines and securing the area.”