Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (10 page)

Dydit flinched as something invisible tickled his ear. "No fair. Bet you've got a headache."

"A beaut. Is it dark enough to let it go?"

Dydit nodded. "If you get on the far side of me and stay low. Lefty and I have declined their offers of beds."

"You ought to have nabbed the blankets though. You two
didn't bring very much. Dydit may get cold." Question sounded a bit smug.

"If all else fails, we'll just start insulting each other, and we'll both get all hot about it." Never let her warp go. She stretched out on the grass just beyond Dydit's feet, tossing her pack and bedroll further down the hill. "Ah. That feels better. So, at what point do we say good bye and go tell King Rebo about these people?"
The kids galloped uphill to hug her, then ran downhill, arms extended as if they were trying to fly.

"If they're making reports of their own, about us, we should wait until they have a reply. Then we can report whether our contacts are friendly, neutral or hostile." Lefty looked over his shoulder at the bright lights of the camp. "We already know what they think of strangers."

"For all the contempt, they aren't very heavily armed." Dydit frowned, thinking it out. "They weren't expecting us, and sort of scrambled for their weapons. If we'd been a pack of hungry wolves we'd of had them for dinner. But they are so used to 'natives' that they were automatically contemptuous."

"They must not be used to people fighting back. I wonder how they get away with their attitude. I wouldn't trade with them."
Question scowled in the Earthers general direction.

Lefty shook his head. "Slave owners get like that. Contempt, pity, even liking, but cross them and they'll call in the muscle to beat you or kill you. When we leave they'll think we 'escaped' and send the war dogs. Bettcha a weeks worth of dish washing."

"Can we keep them?" Havi plunked down between Dydit and Never.

"Keep what?"

"The war dogs." Havi explained, patiently.

"No, they aren't the sort of dogs you can make pets out of." Never smiled. "Pity. So the
y think they've captured you four?"

Dydit nodded reluctantly. "I've seen people like that. Well, we'll just have to get a good head start on them."

Question snickered. "Probably family, right Duke?"

"My father. What a poisonous society that was. We didn't really have
slaves.
We were merely the worst employers imaginable. Don't tell Nil I'm utterly delighted to have been taken away from it all." Dydit had managed to scoot down hill enough to touch Never's hair. The poor man looked like he was trying to find the nerve to stroke it.

Lefty stifled his smirk. "So, we've got a week to study these people and give them more to add to their report. What do we want them to know about us? What do we need to find out about them?"

Never propped herself up on her elbow. "Magic. When you mentioned it as the cause of that bridge they were amused by your superstitious beliefs. They turned it into a joke, explaining their machines to you as magic. I haven't seen a thing to indicate they have any magical ability at all."

"You're right. They certainly knew the term, though. If they didn't have any magic they wouldn't have a word for it, would they?" Question frowned up at the sky. No clouds. The brightest stars were out now, as the sun sank below the horizon.

"You could make it rain on them, Aunt Question." Havi looked hopeful.

"I think not." Lefty hugged her. Just to show Dydit how it was done. "I think we'll not open their eyes. Let this first report underestimate us. Dydit, stop being so damn good with the language. We want them to keep talking in front of us, and we want them
to not know about our invisible watchers. Can you two find a place to hide, so you don't bake your brains warping all the time?"

"Actually, we've got a great overview from here. Dydit, how about making a nice little cave, with peep holes out the camp side and a hidden exit down hill from here?" Never stood, staying low and headed d
own hill, away from the Earthers' camp. Dydit and the kids followed.

Lefty and Question moved close enough to camp to hear any alarms. Open windows carried voices. One of the women scientists was raving about the strongest gravity fluctuations yet, and what could possibly be causing it.

Question listened carefully, then stepped away, her whisper shaking with laughter. "Never, they're measuring Never tapping gravity to make the cave."

"Well, there's one indication that they don't know much about magic." Lefty kept his voice quiet as well.

"Look at that! Would you look at that? A full milligal." The woman sounded both excited and frustrated. "What the
Hell
can be causing it?"

"I had a bad thought." That sounded like Lon Hackathorn, Nelson's boss. "Could it be magma moving underground?"

There was a thoughtful pause. "I think you'd have earthquakes. I don't know if you'd get fluctuations like this even sitting on a volcano about to erupt."

"Is there any way to check for direction?"

"No . . . but, well, I might manage something. If I can calibrate them closely enough . . . Hmm. Now they've gone back to zero. Normal as can be." There was a thump, that Lefty rather hoped involved a head and a hard surface.

They faded back away from the light and over the hill. As usual, Never and Dydit had gone overboard. A concealed entrance, a long climbing hallway with t
hree bedrooms off it. A nook with two kid sized bunks, a small kitchen and common room, and then up to the viewing gallery, a long room with slits looking out over not quite a complete panorama.

Question was reduced to giggles by the stone beds. "At least you didn't make stone pillows.
The beds look like water troughs. I think I'll collect some nice soft grass to sleep on."

Dydit stared down at the beds. Sighed and walked away.

Lefty looked at Question. "You'd think when they were doing these semi-out-of-control building sprees their subconscious attraction would come through."

Question bit a knuckle to get her giggles under control. "There's nothing subconscious about their attraction. This is Dydit's terror coming through, I think. We get a great big bed, they get
two narrow little cots. Poor Never. Who'd have thought she'd have to chase a man down and tackle him?"

"Who'd have thought Dydit would ever need to be chased down and tackled? I'd hate to meet the witch
who scared him so badly he can't trust Never." Lefty looked around the observation room. "Well. This is a nice safe place to see everything that's going on."

Never nodded as she walked back in. "But we need to be down among them to hear them, most of the time. We may need to split up, and follow specific people around. Dibs on Lon."

Dydit snorted, somewhere down the corridor. "I think we need to listen in regularly to that healer and the . . . biologist. I don't understand half of what they were talking about. What is a dimensional split? Where are these people from? We need to look for tracks tomorrow."

Lefty nodded. "I'll keep my eyes open for an opportunity to steal a map."

Havi perked up at that.

"Don't even think about it." Never frowned at the
young pair. "Your jobs are to listen to them, find stuff out and tell us all about it." She winced a little. "You may sneak around, but please be careful around their machinery, especially those gyps. They aren't horses, that will at least
try
to step over you."

"I want to know all about the machinery." Question sighed. "Pity I'm one of the invisible ones."

"Right now, though, Lefty and I had better go hunting. We don't want them wondering where their food is going." Dydit headed down the hallway.

Lefty agreed and they headed out leaving Never and Question to turn the cave into some approximation of home.

The activity of the camp had chased the wildlife off a few miles. But for a pair of wizards, locating deer was a snap. The full moon had cleared the east ridge and gave plenty of light for a bit of stalking. Then a quick slice was all they needed to secure a hundred pounds of meat.

"And knowing those two they've got at least flour and dried fruit with them."

"I noticed Never had blankets." Dydit snorted. "I expect by the time we get back, they'll have us all sorted out."

"Flowers on the table, you think?"

"Hmm. That might be a bit much, even for them. But I'm sure they'll think they have us managed and civilized." Dydit hoisted the deer haunches over his shoulder and followed Lefty back to the cave.

Where a bowl of crisp greens and hot biscuits kept them busy while thin slices of
venison grilled, and beds filled with grass awaited, and even Dydit had blankets.

"Unfortunately they didn't see you bring
many extra clothes, so you're stuck wearing what you've got, every day. We'll try to wash them often enough that they don't notice you going from ultra filthy to almost presentable." Never eyed them and shook her head. "Starting now, so they don't wonder about the blood stains on your shoulder."

Dydit and Lefty swapped grins and allowed themselves to be managed.
The kids were playing spy up in the observation room, hauling food up there to sustain themselves. When they stopped coming back, Dydit went up and returned with a sleeping Havi over his shoulder. "Rustle's got a piece of chalk. She's diagramming where every one lives and works."

"When she grows up I'm going to recommend her to Colonel Grissom. She
'll be a natural for the espionage group." Lefty yawned himself, and they all sought beds shortly thereafter.

The Earther
s' attempts to manage them the next day were not nearly so pleasant. Dydit left the kids in the Earth's kitchen "box" pummeling the big beefy male cook with questions. Dydit looked at some very bizarre pictures and answered questions about them, then practiced a baffled look and gazing out the window in boredom while the two women doctors chattered about psychological profiles and then segued back into genes, allele frequencies, and racial characteristics. After lunch (served by Rustle) he was shuffled off to Nelson, who sat him down with a large rock collection and asked him where he'd seen various types. Did he want general geological knowledge? Or was he looking for valuable mineral deposits?

Dydit played ignorant, and pointed out the granites of the mountains, the basaltic lava like Mount Frost, and the canyon and the stripes paralleling the Rip, porous pumice, the limestones and sandstones. He puzzled over the iron ore, recognized the pyrite, and admitted that the Kingdom imported most of their iron. He acted ignorant of copper, zinc and aluminum. Admired the crystals of lead oxide and failed to recognize anything that might indicate anything of value.

The disappointed Nelson had rattled along the whole time, about a place called California, and gold strikes. The whole of the New Lands were open to these people and their machines, should they decide to mine them. Dydit rather thought that the Kingdom would have trouble evicting them, when all their troops and supplies depended on a pass that was snowed close for a quarter or more of the year. Of course the Earthers' line of supply was longer, but those gyps were faster than a horse and never tired. He hauled Rustle and Havi back to the cave for a nap.

He was more weary than they were.

"George is nice. He says that on Earth people don't have very many kids, but people still get married. I told him witches don't ever marry, and he said witch was a bad word."

"Me and Uncle Lefty scouted around." Havi jumped in before Rustle started up again. "There aren't any tracks to show where they came from. And Aunt Question said the Boxes were obviously designed to be moved.
Mom said maybe they had some electronic levitation, but then why didn't they use it on their gyps?"

They eventually wore down, and slept
for two hours.

They
ate dinner with the Earthers, checking out all the little packets of goodies, salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, catsup and mayonnaise in little envelopes, and managing to secrete a reasonable number of them. He walked out munching a small square of cake, and handed half of it over to the invisible lady waiting at the top of the hill.

"Umm, sugar, fat, a touch of flour and chocolate. Utterly useless food. Thank you."

"We've got a few other goodies for you two as well." Lefty, besotted fellow that he was, handed over a pristine square. "I got a good look at their maps. Those little airplanes take pictures, like a photograph with color. From up high, and they turn the pictures into a map. They're covering huge areas every day. I'm not going to steal a map until just before we leave. I think their machines are like printing presses, they can make lots of copies. So I won't even have to feel guilty."

"Come down to the stream, and start a fire. We've got a lot of venison to cook, and I don't want the odors to lead them to the cave." Never dropped her light warp and rubbed her temples. "I think I'm getting better at holding it for hours on end. Anyway, I took over watching the healer Doctor and Doctor Rae. They think there are lots of universe
s, all side by side,  new ones forming when something significant both happens and doesn't happen. Then they split apart and go on, each dealing with the consequences of the difference between them. They think our world and that Earth of theirs were all the same until thirteen thousand years ago. Then something happened, and they split. Here, most everything died. They figured it was another comet fall, but possibly even bigger. I don't understand how they can tell."