Diggers (17 page)

“When I say pull, I want you to pull.”

The nomes took the strain.

“Pull!”

The creases in the tarpaulin flattened out and disappeared.

“Pull!”

It began to move. Then, as it slid over Big John's angular shape, its own weight started to tug at it. . . .

“Run!”

It came down like an oily green avalanche, piling up into a mountain of folds, but no one bothered about it because the sun shone through the dusty, cobwebbed windows and made Big John glow.

Several nomes screamed. Mothers picked up their children. There was a movement toward the doors.

It
does
look like a head, Grimma thought. On a long neck. And he's got another one at the other end. What am I saying?
It
has got another one at the other end.

“I said it's all right!” she shouted, over the rising din. “Look! It's not even moving!”

“Hey!” shouted another voice. She looked up. Nooty and Sacco had climbed out along Big John's neck and were sitting there waving cheerfully.

That did it. The tide of nomes reached the wall and stopped. You always feel foolish, running away from something that isn't chasing you. They hesitated and then, slowly, inched their way back.

“Well, well,” said Granny Morkie, hobbling forward. “So that's what they looked like. I always wondered.”

Grimma stared at her.

“What what looked like?” she said.

“Oh, the big diggers,” said Granny. “They'd all gone when I was born, but our dad saw 'em. Great big yellow things with teeth that et dirt, he said. I always thought he was just pulling my leg.”

Big John was still not eating people. Some of the more adventurous nomes climbed on him.

“It was when the motorway was built,” Granny went on, leaning on her stick. “They were all over the place, Dad said. Big yellow things with teeth and knobbly tires.”

Grimma stared at her with the kind of expression reserved for people who turn out, against all expectation, to have interesting and secret histories.

“And there was others, too,” the old woman went on. “Things that shoved dirt in heaps and everything. This would have been, oh, fifteen years ago now. Never thought I'd see one.”

“You mean the roads were
made
?” said Grimma. Big John was covered with young nomes now. She could see Dorcas in the back of the cab, explaining what various levers did.

“That's what he said,” said Granny. “You didn't think they was nat'ral, did you?”

“Oh. No. No. Of course not,” said Grimma. “Don't be silly.”

And she thought: I wonder if Dorcas is right. Perhaps everything was made. Some bits early, some bits later. You start with hills and clouds and things, and then you add roads and Stores. Perhaps the job of humans is to make the world, and they're still doing it. That's why the machines have to suit them.

Gurder would have understood this sort of thing. I wish he was back, she thought.

And then Masklin would be back, too.

She tried to think about something else.

Knobbly tires. That was a good start. Big John's back wheels were nearly as high as a human. It doesn't need roads. Of course it doesn't. It
makes
roads. So it has to be able to go where roads aren't.

She pushed her way through the crowds to the back of the cab, where another group of nomes was already nomehandling a plank into position, and scrambled up to where Dorcas was trying to make himself heard in the middle of an excited crowd.

“You're going to drive this out of here?” she demanded.

He looked up.

“Oh, yes,” he said happily. “I think so. I hope so. I imagine we've got at least an hour before any more humans come, and it's not a lot different from a truck.”

“We know how to do it!” shouted one of the younger nomes. “My dad told me all about the strings and stuff.”

Grimma looked around the cab. It seemed to be full of levers.

It'd been almost a year since the Long Drive, and she'd never taken much notice of mechanical things, but she couldn't help thinking the old truck cab had been a lot less crowded. There had been some pedals and a lever and the steering wheel, and that had been about it.

She turned back to Dorcas.

“Are you sure?” she said doubtfully.

“No,” he said. “You know I'm never sure. But a lot of the controls are for his mou . . . for the bucket. The thing with the teeth in it. At the end of his neck. I mean, the digging bits. We needn't bother with them. They're amazingly ingenious, though, and all you have to do—”

“Where's everyone going to sit? There isn't much room.”

Dorcas shrugged. “I suppose the older people can travel in the cab. The youngsters will have to hang on where they can. We can wrap wires and things around the place. For handholds, I mean. Look, don't worry. We'll be driving in the light and we don't have to go fast.”

“And then we'll get to the barn, won't we, Dorcas?” said Nooty. “Where it'll be warm and there's lots of food.”

“I hope so,” said Dorcas. “Now, let's get on with things. We haven't got much time. Where's Sacco with the battery?”

Grimma thought: Will there be lots of food at the barn? Where did we get that idea? Angalo said that turnips or something were stored up there, and there may be some potatoes. That's not exactly a feast.

Her stomach, thinking thoughts of its own, rumbled in disagreement. It had been a very long night to pass on a tiny piece of sandwich.

Anyway, we can't stay here now. Anywhere will be better than here.

“Dorcas,” she said, “is there anything I can help with?”

He looked up. “You could read the instruction book,” he said. “See if it says how to drive it.”

“Don't you know?”

“Er. Not in so many words. Not
exactly
. I mean, I know how to do it, it's just that I don't know what to do.”

The book was under the bench on one side of the shed. Grimma propped it up and tried to concentrate above the noise. I bet he does know, she thought. But this is his moment, and he doesn't want me getting in the way.

The nomes moved like people with a purpose. Things were far too bad to spend time grumbling. Funny thing, she thought as she turned the grubby pages, that people only seem to stop complaining when things get really bad. That's when they start using words like pulling together, shoulders to the wheel, and noses to the grindstone. She'd found “nose to the grindstone” in a book. Apparently it meant “to get on with things.” She didn't see why people were supposed to work hard if you ground their noses; it seemed more likely that they'd work hard if you promised to grind their noses if they didn't.

It had been the same with
Road Works Ahead
on the Long Drive. The road ahead works. How could it mean anything else? But the road had been full of holes. Where was the sense in that? Words ought to mean what they meant.

She turned the page.

There was a big brown ring on this one, where a human had put down a cup.

Across the floor a group of nomes swarmed past around the slowly moving bulk of the battery. They were rolling it on rusty ball bearings.

The can of fuel wobbled past after it.

Grimma stared at the pictures of levers with numbers on them. Suddenly people were keen on the barn. Suddenly, when things were not just averagely awful but promising to be really dreadful, they seemed almost happy. Masklin had known about that. It's amazing what people would do, he said, if you found the right place to push.

She stared at the pages and tried to get interested in levers.

The clouds running before the sun were spreading across the pink of the sky. Red sky in the morning, Grimma had read once. It meant people who kept sheep were happy. Or not happy. Or perhaps it was cows.

In the dark office the human awoke, mooed for a while, and tried to jerk free of the cobweb of wires that held it down. After a lot of effort it wriggled most of one arm free.

What the human did next would have surprised most nomes. It caught hold of a chair and, with a great deal of grunting, managed to tip it over. It pulled it across the floor, manipulated the leg under a couple of strands of wire, and heaved.

A minute later it was sitting upright, pulling more wires free.

Its huge eyes fell on the scrap of paper on the floor.

It stared at it for a moment, rubbing its arms, and then it picked up the telephone.

Dorcas prodded vaguely at a wire.

“Are you sure the battery is connected the right way round, sir?” said Sacco.

“I can tell the difference between red wires and black wires, you know,” said Dorcas mildly, prodding another wire.

“Then perhaps the battery doesn't have enough electricity,” said Grimma helpfully, trying to see over their shoulders. “Perhaps it's all run to the bottom, or gone dry.”

Dorcas and Sacco exchanged glances.

“Electricity doesn't sink,” said Dorcas patiently. “Or dry up, as far as I know. It's either there or it isn't. Excuse me.” He peered up into the mass of wires again and gave one a poke. There was a pop, and a fat blue spark.

“It's there all right,” he added. “It's just that it isn't where it should be.”

Grimma walked back across the greasy floor of the cab. Groups of nomes were standing around, waiting. Hundreds of them were clutching the strings lashed to the big steering wheel above them. Other teams stood by with bits of wood pressing, like battering rams, on the pedals.

“Just a bit of a delay,” she said. “All the electricity's got lost.”

There were nomes everywhere. On the Long Drive there had been a whole truck for them. But Big John's cab was smaller, and people had to pack themselves in where they could.

What a ragged bunch, Grimma thought. And it was true. Even in the sudden rush from the Store, the nomes had been able to bring quite a lot of stuff. And they had been plump and well dressed.

Now they were thinner and leaner and much dirtier, and all they were taking with them was the torn and grubby clothes they stood up in. Even the books had been left behind. A dozen books took up the space of three dozen nomes, and while Grimma privately thought that some of the books were more useful than many of the nomes, she'd accepted Dorcas's promise that they would come back, one day, and try to retrieve them from their hiding place under the floor.

Well, thought Grimma. We tried. We really made an effort. We came to the quarry to dig in, look after ourselves, live proper lives. And we failed. We thought all we had to do was bring the right things from the Store, but we brought a lot of wrong things too. This time we'll need to go as far away from humans as possible, and I don't actually think anywhere is far enough.

She climbed up onto the rickety driving platform, which had been made by tying a plank across the cab. There were even nomes on this. They watched her expectantly.

At least driving Big John should be easier. The leaders of the teams on the controls could see her, so she wouldn't have to mess around with semaphore and bits of thread like they'd done when they left the Store. And a lot of the nomes had done this before, too. . . .

She heard Dorcas shout: “Try it this time!”

There was a click. There was a whirr. Then Big John roared.

The sound bounced around the cave of the shed. It was so loud and so deep, it wasn't really sound at all, just something that turned the air hard and then hit you with it. Nomes flung themselves flat on the trembling deck of the cab.

Grimma, clutching at her ears, saw Dorcas running across the floor, waving his hands. The team on the accelerator pedal gave him a “Who, us?” look and stopped pushing.

The sound died down to a deep rumbling, a
mummummummum
that still had a feel-it-in-the-bone quality. Dorcas hurried back and climbed, with a lot of stopping for breath, up to the plank. When he got there, he sat down and rubbed his brow.

“I'm getting too old for this sort of thing,” he said. “When a nome gets to a certain age, it's time to stop stealing giant vehicles. Well-known fact. Anyway. It's ticking over nicely. You might as well take us out.”

“What, all by myself?” said Grimma.

“Yes. Why not?”

“It's just that, well, I thought Sacco or someone would be up here.” I thought a male nome would be driving, she thought.

“They'd
like
to,” said Dorcas. “They'd
love
to. And we'd be zipping all over the place, I don't doubt it, with them crying, ‘Yippee!' and whatnot. No. I want a nice peaceful drive across the fields, thank you very much. The gentle touch.”

He leaned down.

“Everyone ready down there?” he yelled.