Fish Tails (80 page)

A
RAKNY WAKENED THEM WHILE IT
was still dark. Abasio and Xulai checked on the babies, and told the two young women who were acting as babysitters much more than they needed to know about feeding the babies, changing them, and so forth. Since they'd been helping for some little time they were almost believably attentive.

They asked for and received toasted bread with honey but brewed their own special tea known as wake-­up tea, made from desert shrubs. Arakny moved about, sending this one here and that one there. At sunrise, she led the other six observers along the foot of the mountain into the trough behind the tail. They lined up at the north end of it, close together, each behind a sheltering clump of sage or yucca.

Early as they were, they were not the first on the site. A set of rails had been laid entering the site from the south through the gap between dunes and the dark water. Along the rails two giants were propelling a flatcar that held the skeleton of a fish. A huge fish . . .

“It's a whale,” murmured Arakny.

“It wasn't there last night,” whispered Grandma. “The giants have probably just brought it there . . .”

The rails ran into the water. Needly whispered, “What're they doin'?”

Abasio shrugged. “My grandfather used to tell me, ‘Watch and you'll find out.' I suppose that's what we'll have to do.”

As the light increased, the rails were more clearly visible, coming in from the south through the gap between dunes and the widening lake. The wheeled car holding the metal monster was now about halfway to the water's edge. It did resemble a whale more than anything else. At the near end of the convoluted, cupped, skull shape of the thing, its mouth gaped wide.

“No hinge,” muttered Abasio. “That jaw has no hinge. The mouth doesn't shut.”

Among the observers, ­people made chewing movements of their jaws to determine where the hinge on the huge skeleton creature should be, but wasn't.

“Do whales have lips?” asked Needly. “Maybe it'll just shut its lips.”

The framework was about six or seven man-heights long, and it included fins, hinged where they met the huge ribs curving down from a long spine, the rear half of it segmented and ending in a flat tail, like an afterthought, as though someone had said, “Whoops, it should have a tail, shouldn't it?”

“The framework . . . skeleton actually looks like bones,” Xulai murmured.

“Right shape but wrong color for bones,” said Grandma. “It's metal.”

“I've always assumed the Edges were too constricted to hold really big equipment,” Xulai said fretfully.

Arakny commented in an annoyed whisper, “Well, we at Artemisia have always assumed the Edgers would stay in their own territory. Both our assumptions have been wrong. It's obvious this group intends to go anywhere it likes and build anything it likes. The Edges had an underground manufacturing plant east of Fantis. So far as I know, it's still there. And usable.”

“I'm assuming they're here without permission, Arakny?” Xulai asked.

Arakny shook her head, wondering how many days Wide Mountain Mother might take to cool down once she heard of this. “They didn't even ask! I'm virtually sure they intended to use the area without bothering to clean up after themselves. Whatever they're doing, it has to do with water, and the pond at the Wandering Lows was probably the closest calm water they could find. Mother will be very annoyed.”

“They may have thought this area would be underwater before anyone else knew they'd been here,” Needly murmured.

There was still nothing happening down below them but lethargic and what seemed to be pointless wanderings by the two giants. The rails were equipped with a siding, the mechanism of which was stuck, stubbornly resisting the attempts of the giants to run the flatcar out of the way. The watchers had time to become thoroughly bored before two other giants emerged from behind the dunes, pushing another car along the rails. Whatever was being delivered was shrouded in canvas, and the shape of it gave Abasio a premonitory pang. He did not have to wait long to have his suspicion confirmed. A truckload of men arrived, the switching mechanism became the center of their attention and was either repaired or unlocked, and both skeleton and the canvas-­shrouded object were thrust onto the siding, where several of the men cooperated in pulling off the covering to display a long cylinder on a complicated understructure that was designed—­if the various cogged wheels and levers were to be believed—­to be raised or lowered as well as swung to either side.

“What's that?” demanded Deer Runner.

“I've seen pictures of them,” said Abasio. “Haven't you, Xulai? Arakny?”

“Cannons,” said Arakny. “They were made to throw exploding projectiles or just large chunks of metal that would kill and wreck. That's why the mouth on the fish doesn't close. The cannon is supposed to fit inside it.”

“A weapon of war disguised as a whale,” said Grandma, turning toward Arakny. “Do you really think the Edgers are using that factory east of Fantis? You think they've set it up to produce this . . . whale-­y thing?”

Arakny murmured, “The factory east of Fantis was built mostly underground during the Big Kill. If the Edges are manufacturing anything really large, that's the only place they could be doing it. After we starved the Edges, they stopped their giant and behaved themselves, so it's been some time since we've thought it necessary to have scouts checking that far north.

“Now, however, Deer Runner has called out all the scouts, even the older ones and the young men just getting familiar with the territory. He has them covering the entire area from just north of Fantis to here. They've checked the west side of the Big River and gone as far east as Wide Mountain. They've found a lot of vehicle tracks, but there are no newly laid rails coming into Artemisia. The pieces must have been brought down separately, in wagons, and assembled here.”

Several men had come to assist the giants in closing the siding switch and bringing something else along the tracks. Needly made a troubled sound and pointed. They looked farther along the beach to the south, where another skeleton was being giant-­handled along the tracks toward the shore area—­an infant child of the first thing. “Now, that's definitely a fish,” she announced.

It certainly resembled one closely: as like to the whale framework as doghouse to castle, though the small one was much more complicated, being strung, laced, and patterned with networks and webs of various shapes and sizes. These networks ran to and through many small and very complicated-­looking mechanisms at various places inside it. This framework, too, had fins and a tail, and the head end had a number of lenses curving around the front from one side to the other.

“Eyes?” murmured Xulai.

“Or windows?” Grandma suggested.

On its own smaller flatcar, the smaller fish was pushed to the end of the tracks, where four giants lifted it onto the shore before pushing the flatcar back along the tracks and around behind the dunes.

“They've got a camp or an assembly area or something behind those dunes,” said Abasio. “Any known sites that come to mind?”

“Caves,” said Arakny. “There's quite a large complex of caves on the south side of Cow Bluff. The border riders always kept the caves stocked with emergency rations and supplies, and they're large enough to have served as an assembly site for these things. When we get back to the camp, we'll send a team over the mountain to take a look.”

Just as the huge fish was apparently supposed to have a cannon protruding from its mouth area, the smaller one had several small guns mounted atop its head, and these were now being inspected by half a dozen men who had parked a mechanized cart alongside the fish. Its shelved compartments were loaded with mechanical contrivances, spools of wire, odd-­looking tools. Moving with the utmost care, two of the men took a container out of the cart, set it on a fold-­down work surface, and opened what appeared to be an extremely complicated lock mechanism. One of them walked to the mouth of the fish, where he received the container from his coworker and set it down carefully while the other carefully joined him inside the fish.

The two of them alternately peered into the container and at a bracketlike device that extended across two of the ribs, meantime exchanging comments or argument, though, as Needly remarked, they seemed more puzzled than anything.

“They haven't done this before,” commented Deer Runner. “It's a mystery to them!”

All conversation exhausted, Worker One finally reached into the container and removed the mystery: a carefully wrapped lump that he and Worker Two attempted to affix to the bracket. This required one or both of them to go back and forth, inside and outside, as they decided different tools were required. After the third upheaval, the taller of the two simply stayed outside and passed whatever items were requested by the inside man through a gap in the skeleton.

“Deer Runner's right. They haven't done this before,” said Needly, craning to see. “If they had, they'd have known what to take in there.”

“Use these,” said Arakny, handing a thing forward. “Put it to your eyes . . . no, the other end. Now turn the wheel until you can see . . .”

“What is it?” whispered Needly.

“It's like the long-­looker they had in the tower at Saltgosh,” said Xulai. “It magnifies things that are far away. The one in Saltgosh was very big. These are tiny in comparison, and two linked together, one for each eye. I think they're called ‘duoscopes
.
' ”

Arakny said, “They make them in the east somewhere. That is, I assume they do, because the traders from there sell them. We bought a few dozen of them for use by our border riders and scouts. I put this pair in my pack, thinking they might be useful, but I'd forgotten about them until this morning.”

Needly passed the glasses back. “Xulai, Precious Wind, look at that thing they've put in. Up above the bracket. They've unwrapped it.”

Xulai looked, gasped, passed the instrument to Precious Wind, who made a face and passed it on to Grandma.

“As I feared,” said Grandma. “I see a transparent spherical container of a . . . I believe it's a brain. It could be a human brain, though some other creatures have brains of similar size.”

Far to the left, at the other end of the work area, the workers had given up on moving their cannon. They were moving toward the smaller construction, stopping at a respectful distance to watch. Grandma passed the duoscopes to Needly. “Your eyes are best, child. Tell us what you're seeing.”

“The . . . the brain's in a transparent kind of globe, with liquid in it. The globe is mounted on a complicated metal base. The man inside keeps turning it over and looking at the bottom of the metal part, then looking at the place it's supposed to go. When he turns it over I get glimpses of the bottom. It's not flat or smooth, it's octagonal. There's a place on the bracket thing that could also be octagonal—­we're just high enough above them for me to guess at that, it's hard to tell because the bracket's almost edge-­on. I think that must be what the brain globe is supposed to connect to. He keeps turning it over and looking back and forth and talking to the other one. Something's in the way or it isn't made right. The part on the bracket has wires . . . lots of them, all different colors, running from it all over the inside of the . . . framework, the skeleton. Wait. Ah! He wiggled something and made it fit. Now there's bubbles in the liquid around the brain. Can you hear the hum?”

She took the glasses from her eyes to listen, cocking her head. The others nodded. Yes, there was a hum. All of them heard it but Grandma, who shrugged. “I can't hear it, but I'm making note for the Oracles that there's a hum.”

“Won't their recorder thing notice the hum?” asked Abasio.

“Of course it will.”

“Then why do you—­”

“I have told them I may not be available in the future, that is, after this particular problem with the Edgers is solved. Wide Mountain Mother and I have agreed to discuss our . . . relationship with the Oracles. Until Wide Mountain Mother and I decide what our particular arrangement, if any, is going to be with them in the future—­for instance, providing them with food is certainly unnecessary and unwarranted given their access to food machines and the fact they have paid for nothing Artemisia has given—­I thought I'd keep things as usual, no matter how silly it seems.” Particularly inasmuch as they might still have her children. She put the thought away resolutely. She could not afford to dwell on that, not now!

Needly interrupted. “The man inside is coming out—­no, he's stopping just inside the mouth. There's a . . . well, it's like a bunch of switches . . .”

“Control panel,” said Abasio, who, while he and Xulai were in Tingawa, had spent a good deal of time in the workshops.

“Well, he's pushing things on the control panel. I can't tell what. There are about twenty switch things and button things, and he's only pushing a few of them. Okay, now—­no, the other man is bringing him some stuff.” She took the glasses away from her eyes. “You can see him. He's got a hose that goes to . . . a tank of something on the cart. I didn't see that before.”

“He just uncovered it,” said Abasio. “It was behind the wagon.”

They were silent, watching. The tank was obviously under pressure. The worker was attaching something to the end of the hose. “Nozzle,” said Abasio matter-­of-­factly. The hose was directed through the wire mesh at the far side of the interior. The man at the control panel looked at the other, received a nod, then pressed one of the bars on the panel. The hum changed, became piercing. The man left the control panel and went some distance away from the thing; the other pressed on the nozzle, which began to project . . . stuff, some kind of coating that stayed on some surfaces, but merely dropped off of others. Gradually one network was coated with something white and waxy-­ looking.