“Don’t touch it!” she called sharply, as some of the children ran ahead of her.
The older ones pulled their younger siblings back, making a circle around her as she knelt. The impacts had driven the fragment back against the stone; into the stone, in fact, cutting a trough. The surface was shiny, plated with a film of osmium, and splashes had colored the earth and rock. She reached out with a stick, and it sizzled as the end came in contact with the shiny film. The osmium layer peeled away at the touch, falling to the battered earth below.
“Scheisse,” she whispered. Nothing. Gottdamned nothing. The dull gray surface of the material was utterly unmarked, to the naked eye at least. She shifted the rifle to her left hand and pulled out the scanner. Another no data, and the temperature was still at ambient… no, about. 002 of a degree higher. That after being struck with penetrator darts that splashed across its surface in a molten film!
Well, Herr Montferrat-Palme wanted the unusual she thought. And this is certainly unusual enough.
Another thought struck her as she lifted the material and turned it. The edges were torn, twisted as if something had struck a sheet of whatever-it-was and belled this piece out beyond the breaking strain of the material. Considering what the tensile strength must be, that would have to be a fairly drastic event.
“Careful about that,” she said to a curious child who was poking at the film of osmium; the edges would be razor sharp even though it was thinner than tinfoil. She crumpled it with the heel of her boot and stamped it into a harmless lump. Turning to the headman:
“Where did you find this stuff?”
“The Muttiberg, Fra Nordbo. We pan a little gold in the rivers below it, to trade for things we must have. In the wash beneath-“
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Let her rip!” Hans called into his beltphone. “Don’t get your underwear in a knot,” he went on to Jonah. “And that’s enough dirt”
“My back agrees with you but my greed dissents,” Jonah said, straightening up.
The water-furrow that fed their wash was nearly half a kilometer long, dug along the hillside or carried in troughs of log slab. Nothing in it had come with them, except the monofilament line that held it together. The wash itself was a series of stepped wooden boxes, ingeniously rigged with baffles so that the flow of water would shake them.
Their bottoms were different; memory-film, made in Tiamat, the central manufacturing asteroid of the Serpent Swarm asteroid, Leads hooked them to a wooden stand where their computer and main distortion-battery lay. A single keystroke would activate the memory-film; each box’s floor was set to form an intricate pattern of moving ripples. Rushing water would dissolve the mixture of water-deposited volcanic soil and gold granules Jonah shoveled in to the first box; a thin layer of water would then run over the rippling film. Gravity would leave the heavier metal particles in the troughs of the ripples, and they would move slowly down each box to deposit the gold in a deep fold, ready to be scooped out. The surface had a differential stickiness, too, nearly frictionless to the useless garague, catching at any molecule the computer directed.
From higher up the water-furrow a rumbling sounded. Spots had lifted the sluicegate, and the flood was rumbling along. Raw timber vibrated and thuttered, and the beams reinforcing corners groaned as the first weight threw itself against them. A meter across and deep, the wave bore dirt and twigs before it, and a hapless kermitoid that peeped and thrashed. It curled and rose as it struck the pile of gold-rich dirt, then washed it away and into the settling tanks like a child’s sand-castle. The tanks themselves began vibrating back and forth, their squealing groans almost deafening.
“Shovel, boy, shovel!” Hans called. “That’s a pocketful of krona with every shovelful of dirt”
Jonah cursed and wiped at his face, covered in an oil of sweat and dirt; more moisture ran from the sodden rag around his forehead, trickling down to cut runnels over his face and drip onto his bare chest. He had always been muscular for a Belter, but the weeks of labor had thickened his arms and shoulders, besides burning his face and body nearly the color of teak. The loads of dirt still felt heavy as he swung the long handle. Hans was spindly and wrinkled beside him, but his movements were as regular as a metronome.
“You’re putting too much heave into it,” the old man said after a moment. “Remember what I told you. Don’t jerk at it. Just enough to get the shovel moving, then turn your wrists and let the dirt slide off into the water. No need to waste sweat sticking it in.”
Jonah grunted resentfully, but he followed Hans’ advice. He was right; it was easier that way. Zazen helped too. His training was coming back to him, more and more these days. Use the movements to end thought; become the eye that does not seek to see itself the sword that does not seek to cut itself, the unself-contemplating mind. Feel sensation without stopping its flow with introspection, pull of muscle, deep smooth breath, aware without being aware of being aware. The two humans fell into lockstep, working at the high pile of precious dirt. Presently the pile grew smaller, and Spots came up with more. He was dragging it on a sled made from more of the film, set to be nearly frictionless on the packed earth of the trail. There was a rope yoke around his neck and shoulders, and he pulled leaning far forward, hands helping him along. When he was level with the men he collapsed to earth, panting.
Jonah stuck his shovel in the pile and helped him out of the rope harness, then handed him a bucket made from a section of log. The kzin lapped down a gallon or so and then poured the rest over his head, scooping out another from the trough and repeating the process. Then he licked his whiskers back into shape and shook himself, showering Jonah and Hans with welcome drops from his fur. The air was full of the smell of a quarter ton of hot wet carnivore.
“Bigs needs someone to help with the shoring,” he rasped, drinking again. “He digs more quickly than we thought.”
“Guess I’d better,” Hans said, rubbing a fist into the small of his back. “See you later, youngster.” He walked off up the trail to the shaft they had sunk into the hillside, whistling.
Spots paused as he gathered up the drag harness and the film. “Ah-adventure!” he said. “Travelling to far-off lands; ripping out the gizzards of hardship and danger; winning fortune and Name. Is it not glorious? Does your liver not steam with-”
“Go scratch fleas,” Jonah muttered, spitting on his hands and reaching for the shovel.
“Better that than hauling freight like a zitragor,” the kzin replied, flapping his ears ironically as he turned to go for the next load. “Far better.”
“I cannot believe it! I do not believe the testimony of my own nose!” Bigs said, pawing through a pile of datachips.
“Believe what?” Spots replied.
Across the campfire Jonah looked up at the sound; the hiss-and-spit of the Hero’s Tongue always sounded like a quarrel, but this was probably the real thing.
“That I was stupid enough to let you pack the virtual-reality kit!” Bigs said.
That was a late-model type, with nose implants for scents as well as ear and eye coverings for visual and aural data.
“It’s in perfect working order.”
“The chips, fool, the chips-you forgot the Siege of Zeeroau, the Hero Chruung Upon the Ramparts, no Warlord Chmee at the Pillars-all our good stuff. None of the classics at all!”