Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (31 page)

Vailret has also seen the great ship and can vouch for the truth of my statements.

"Their ship is still there. And I know where it is." He paused to let them think of the implications. Both professors showed expressions of captivated interest.

"The ship does not still function as it once did
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but imagine what you could learn just from the structure of such a vessel? You could determine how to build your own model and perhaps rescue the people of Sitnalta. When Gamearth is finally erased, you can gather all the people together in your ship and whisk them off into
reality
.

"Surely that is worth the price of one man's eyes?"

Frankenstein and Verne stared at each other for a long moment with a glitter of fascination in their eyes. Without speaking, Professor Verne relit his pipe and took a long puff, lost in thought. Frankenstein flipped the pages of his huge volume of notes, scanning through the diagrams and observations, looking for any work concerning eyes. Both inventors wore feverish smiles.

Vailret did not have to ask their answer.

At dawn, Delrael and Bryl left their sheltered spot in the rocks near the shore and stepped back out into the raw wind. They heard only the background noises of rushing waves and whispering beach grass. Delrael could feel a tension in the air, a subdued fear that kept everything quiet. The sounds of a few gulls only added to his sense of eerie loneliness, the solitude
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he knew that he and Bryl were probably the only two characters on the entire island, except for Sardun's daughter.

They set off across the first hexagon of grassy terrain. According to their map, the island's northern shore was bounded by a row of grassland hexes and then forest, except for the cluster of mountain terrain surrounding the towering volcano on the eastern end of the island.

Pushing themselves, they were able to traverse three full hexagons of grassland by nightfall, when the Rules forced them to stop at the black hex-line. On the other side they saw forbidding mountain terrain, jagged and inhospitable. The next day they would climb the side of the volcano, looking for some way inside to the grotto of Tryos the dragon.

The grass was soft and the night warm, but Delrael had trouble sleeping. He could see the looming dark blot of the dead volcano against the skyline, obliterating the scattered stars. He watched the night and the tattered aurora, wondering if the stars were really out there, or if it was just a screen to keep all the characters from seeing the Outside.

Bryl had kept himself uneasily silent for most of the day. Now, he heard the old half-sorcerer tossing on the ground and guessed that Bryl slept as little as he did. All night long Delrael felt the eyes of the dragon hanging over him, waiting for them to draw closer.

The next morning they picked their way among the rock jungle of the volcano's slope. Monolithic blocks of sharp lava lay scattered like enormous betting chips along the zigzagging path. The rock was gray and lifeless, free even of lichen stains.

At last, Delrael looked up into the bright daylight and saw the sheared-off top of the cone drooping at its lip. He stopped and wiped sweat off his forehead. Despite the protection it gave, his leather armor made him feel hot and stiff. He waited for Bryl to catch his breath.

"We may have to climb all the way to the top to get inside. Tryos probably keeps all his treasure in a lower grotto, and we should find Tareah there." He sighed and shifted his long hunting bow on his shoulder. "But, then, I would not be surprised if we found a secret passage leading inside to the treasure chamber. The Outsiders seem to enjoy that sort of thing."

"Let's hope Sardun's daughter is waiting for us, and the dragon isn't!"

Bryl waited until Delrael set off again and then followed close behind. He sweated from the exertion, but he did not complain.

Just past noon, they rounded a corner and came upon a narrow cave broken into the wall of the volcano's cone. Two gray-brown boulders bordered the opening, and Delrael stopped. He felt the cool breeze and smelled the brimstone stench drifting out into the sunshine.

"What did I tell you?" Delrael said, smiling to himself.

He noticed how the rocks around the entrance had been partially melted, turned glasslike from blasts of heat. "I think we should try it. I don't like being exposed out here on the mountainside."

Inside the cave, they stumbled over two ancient and burned skeletons lying just out of the light. Melted items of stolen gold were clutched in their blackened hands.

Bryl gulped, but Delrael was unimpressed. "Cute," he said. "Such a subtle reminder."

The cave was deep and winding, burrowing all the way into the interior of the volcano. Their footsteps echoed as they worked their way deeper into the catacombs of the dragon.

When he had the afternoon to himself, Vailret went to Mayer's tower workroom. Verne and Frankenstein had summoned Paenar to their laboratory for some tests of his eyes. Professor Verne had had an inspiration during the night, another sending from the Outsiders, though this time the professor insisted he remembered a woman's presence instead of the familiar freckled boy.

The Rulewoman Melanie? Vailret wondered. Without giving further regard to Vailret, the two professors had attached probes to Paenar's arms, his temples, his eye sockets. Frankenstein checked his notes, impatient, as if nothing happened fast enough for him. After a few moments, Vailret slipped out the door.

He strolled by himself through the crowded and impressive streets of Sitnalta, trying to understand how some of the wonders had been accomplished.

He sat on one of the stone benches near the fountain and listened to the falling water, staring at the ornate water clock and trying to figure out how to read its gauge.

Finally, Vailret decided to go see Mayer, in part because he enjoyed discussing things with her when she could keep from being too defensive. She would explain things to him, but she did not have the patience to make sure he understood what she said. Vailret had grown to like Paenar more over the past day, but the blind man was still too intense at times.

Since he could see Mayer's tower on the edge of the city, he had no difficulty making his way through the streets. The tower was blurry in the distance, and he did not have the skill with directions that Delrael had, but he still felt confident as he made his way past the manufactories and tall buildings, pumping stations and generator shacks to the outer wall of Sitnalta.

He stood at the base of the tower. He wondered if he should knock or shout up to the window. He stared at the brass end of the speaking tube dangling beside the door; in the end he decided just to trudge up the stairs and find her.

Mayer stood in the wide, drafty room, staring at her chalkboard.

Equations went on in endless lines. He watched her wrestle with something in her mind. Chalkdust covered her hands; a white smear on her cheek and streaks in her short dark hair showed when she had run fingers through her hair in frustration.

A cool breeze gusted through the open tower windows, scattering some papers on the floor. Mayer turned, muttering to herself, and saw Vailret. She jumped in surprise.

"I didn't mean to startle you like that," Vailret said.

She scowled and bent to pick up her scattered papers, chasing one around the floor and keeping her face turned away from him.

"I didn't want to break your train of thought," Vailret continued. "I just got here. You looked so intent on what you were doing."

After a pause, Mayer sighed and looked at him again. "I'm frustrated because I can't solve this. You wouldn't understand."

"I'm not stupid, you know. I've spent years studying the history of the Gamearth campaigns."

She frowned. "History doesn't matter. You don't make progress with your head turned in the wrong direction."

"You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you
are
.

And you can't know where you are if you have no idea where you've been." He held up his hand in a truce. "Why don't you just try to explain what you're doing."

"You'll just criticize it."

"No. I'd really be interested."

Her expression softened, but Vailret doubted she believed him. "If this works, it will be a calculating machine. It will take some of the tedium out of long but simple mathematical problems," she said, and gave many examples, the relevance of which were lost on Vailret. But he kept nodding and listening.

Mayer regarded him for a moment, then turned back to her equations. "I said you wouldn't understand."

Vailret stared out the tower window, looking at the path they had traveled from the mountains. "Look, I admit I don't understand all you just explained. But you have to remember that out there, beyond your technological fringe, none of this stuff works anyway! It would be wasted effort for us to learn it."

The intensity in her eyes surprised him. "But it would do you good! If you insisted on using technology, then perhaps the Rules would change around your Stronghold as well! The more we Sitnaltans develop science, the farther out the fringe extends. If you want to be proud of your humanity, cast off this dependence on elite Sorcerer magic. Make your own magic, with science!"

Vailret tried to look open and receptive. "We're too busy trying to survive. We're now safe from wandering monsters, we have developed hexes of fertile cropland
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"

"Well, if you didn't spend so much time on those meaningless quests to get treasure or exploring catacombs, you might have time to devote to it."

Vailret sighed and shook his head. "We haven't done that since the Scouring, and that's been more than a century. The Game isn't like that anymore
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and that's part of the problem. The Outsiders got bored with all the run-of-the-mill quests, and then they got bored with our daily life. We can't win."

A racket of loud bells clanged from the tops of tall buildings. Others shouted the alarm. Mayer joined him at the tower window, craning her neck to see. "Here it comes," he said. "You'll find this interesting."

A large black shape winged out of the north, skipping over the updrafts. The thing soared toward the city, growing larger and larger.

Vailret recognized the shape from some of the terrified descriptions scrawled by survivors of the old Sorcerer battles. "A dragon?"

"Yes
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Tryos, returning to his island. He will probably attempt to attack Sitnalta first." She shook her head. "He never learns."

The dragon beat his huge batlike wings and drove forward, circling low over the city. Mayer grabbed her optick-tube and pulled on Vailret's sleeve.

"Come with me and watch."

They rushed up a winding staircase to a platform on the roof of the tower. The sounds of the streets and the manufactories seemed far away. He could see all three hexagons of the city and took a moment to orient himself with the landmarks he remembered.

Tryos floated over Sitnalta, taking no action. The dragon's wings creaked in the wind, making a sound like leather stretched taut over a frame.

Mayer tugged on his arm, pointing Vailret's attention elsewhere. "See that tall ziggurat, the pyramid over in the southeastern hex? Watch."

Atop the stepped pyramid, Vailret could barely make out the blurry shape of a small device. He squinted, but it did no good. Mayer handed him the optick-tube.

He stared at it, turning it one way and then the other. "What do I do with this?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You look through it."

Vailret put one end to his eye, but could discern nothing. Mayer snatched it from his hands and turned it around. When he stared through the lens, his perspective shifted in a dizzying jump. The top of the ziggurat leaped out at him, distorted but so close that he almost dropped the tube. He removed the end from his eye and blinked at it. Lifting it, he stared through the tube again, finding the pyramid's top platform.

In a shelter sat a Sitnaltan woman beside a strange device. It looked like a dish mounted on an axis and pointed to the sky. A box with levers and buttons rested against the pedestal, coming into view as the woman wrestled with the dish to turn it toward the dragon. Then she sat back in a firmly anchored chair. She strapped herself in. The woman flipped one of the switches.

"What is that woman doing?"

"Just watch." Mayer gave him a confident smile.

The Sitnaltan woman fastened something over her ears before she lifted a microphone to her mouth. A booming voice echoed into the air and through the winding hex cobbled streets. "Tryos of Antas! Depart at Once. You know the consequences."

Provoked, Tryos wheeled in the air and came flying toward the ziggurat, scooping the air behind his great wings. He thrust his spined head outward, drooling flames down his chin.

Through the optick-tube, Vailret watched the Sitnaltan woman adjust the face of the dish once more. Vailret felt anxious, knowing she could not escape the dragon's attack.

Tryos swallowed a cavernous mouthful of air, feeding the furnace inside of him. The Sitnaltan woman spoke into the microphone again, appearing calm.