Without warning, Reski Emantes suddenly launched itself at the big mech, ducking a parrying limb and striking the top of one of the legs where its armoured joint emerged from the plating. There was an immense clang and sparks flew as Reski rebounded from the impact and tumbled away. The large mech turned and sprang after it.
‘What kind of machine is that?’ Robert murmured.
‘A dock drone of some kind, Daddy,’ Rosa said unexpectedly. ‘A midrange assembler, possibly a positioner.’ She met his gaze. ‘I learned a lot from the Construct’s archives before we left.’
Interesting
, Robert thought, his fond smile fading a little as he regarded the fight below.
Reski Emantes now seemed to be getting the worst of it. His narrow, pyramidal torso was bent and two of its corner studs were missing. The big mech had it pinned to the floor with a clamp effector while all around the crowd’s roaring approval came in waves.
‘Reski can’t survive this much longer,’ Robert said. ‘We should go down and protest …’
‘Don’t worry, Daddy. Just watch.’
A moment later Reski had somehow managed to slide his wide upper section a short way out from under the clamp. Before the mech could reposition its effector, Reski Emantes thrust upwards, levered itself free and shot away, looking somewhat wobbly in flight. Robert thought it was going to stay at a safe distance but instead it swooped in again … and was sideswiped by another of those armoured yet lithe articulated legs, whipping up to swat it like a fly.
But instead of spinning away, Reski was clinging to the armoured limb’s lower section with thin, cable extensors. The big mech tried to shake it off but Reski doggedly held on and made its way up to the segmented shoulder junction. Robert could just see Reski wrapping its cable extensors tightly around the top of the articulated leg. The droid gave a sharp tug, then another, and the leg came away.
The big machine quickly shifted one leg forward to compensate but Reski had already hopped to the next shoulder junction. A moment later the second leg was wrenched off, and the mech crashed to the floor. With contemptuous ease, Reski Emantes dodged the two remaining limbs as it darted in to finish the job. The Swaydrome crowd stared in stunned silence as the last heavy armoured leg landed on the big mech’s hull with a clang.
‘Calculator,’ the droid Reski Emantes said to its opponent.
In its cupola-pulpit, the golden insectoid sapient raised one angular limb and pointed its spiny tip at the Construct droid.
‘Force-Fate bout … to the challenger!’ And at once the inhibitor device detached from Reski’s cowling and fell to the arena floor.
This provoked a mass chorus of hisses, clacking, hooting and less than complimentary (not to say improbable) observations as to Reski Emantes’s origins, as well as surreal suggestions on what to do with a variety of power tools.
‘Thank you, thank you, dearest of all my fans,’ Reski said as it slowly rose towards the top balcony. ‘Your incoherent, hate-filled grunts say more than real words ever could.’ Below, attendants were dragging off pieces of the dismembered mech.
Robert and Rosa stood back as the Construct droid floated up and over the balcony netting. The crowd of onlookers and patrons offered only glowering, unfriendly looks as they moved away, so Robert decided that a burst of applause might be unwise.
‘You don’t look too bad,’ said Rosa.
Up close, Robert could see the damage in detail, a disconcerting collection of dents, scuffs, gouges and cracks, as well as the bend two-thirds of the way down its tapered carapace. All four corner studs were missing, too.
‘You look terrible,’ said Robert.
‘Looks can be deceiving, Robert Horst,’ the droid said. ‘Some repairs are already under way and will accelerate once my internal builders replace the micromolbots I used to deal with that cretin’s legs.’
Robert stared. ‘Was that … cheating?’
‘You heard the list of forbidden tactics,’ Reski Emantes said. ‘Micromolecular toolbots weren’t mentioned.’
‘It may be advisable to return to the ship,’ Rosa said. ‘We still don’t know why the challenger image switched from that other droid to you.’
‘It may be nothing more than picking on the stranger,’ the droid said. ‘But before we go, I want to buy some more urmig eggs …’
Just then, Robert felt a tap on his elbow and turned to see the Gomedran, Ku-Baar, standing there.
‘Captain Ku-Baar – a pleasant surprise meeting you here. Did you happen to see the last bout?’
‘Indeed I did, Seeker Horst.’ The Gomedran gave a polite tilt of the head towards the Construct droid. ‘Congratulations on your victory, Seeker Reski, a notable event that I suspect may be connected to the reason for my presence here.’
‘Which is?’ Robert said, feeling a prickle of anticipation.
‘A short while ago, I was contacted by the mystic Sunflow Oscillant, directly, by voiceline.’ The Gomedran regarded their expectant faces. ‘He has agreed to meet with you.’
Robert and Rosa exchanged smiles.
‘When and where, Captain?’ Robert said.
‘Tomorrow, at the outset of the Bright Bell, at your vessel. He said that all of you must await him on the bridge, else your quest will be at an end.’
In the middle of their first night’s sleep inside Tusk Mountain, Cheluvahar, scholar and seer, awoke suddenly, senses quivering with the certainty that something was watching them. Ever since yesterday, while his three Artificer scholars and Pilot Yash were clearing the rubble from the entrance, his husked senses gave him the distinct feeling that the ancient Uvovo sanctuary held some other presence. A brief survey of the mountainside entrance and the surrounding rock turned up nothing, however, so the debris clearance had continued.
Chel and Yash and the others had come to Tusk Mountain with the permission of the elder Listeners, to search for an old Uvovo bastion long rumoured to be buried somewhere on its shattered, boulder-strewn slopes. Chel’s new eyes, piercing the veil of likelihoods and past echoes, found it in a matter of hours. And going by the good condition of the interior, it would make a formidable new home for the Human–Uvovo resistance.
Now, Cheluvahar, scholar and seer, lay back down with all of his eyes tightly shut. Lying here on the chamber’s chilling stone floor, enclosed by stone, it was an effort to remind himself that the Uvovo of ancient times had been as skilled in the shaping of stone, and even metal, as their descendants were in the care of Segrana. Ten thousand years ago, the Segrana-That-Was had encompassed both planet and moon, suffused with a might and a purpose that made it the mainstay in the War of the Long Night, a struggle against destroyer machines called the Dreamless. It took the decimation of ancient allies, the Ghost Gods, and the sacrifice of Segrana’s greater strength to defeat those pitiless machine minds. But still the world Umara suffered partial incineration, all the splendour of its vast and teeming forests consumed by fire, their smoke filling the skies, ashes choking the rivers. Chel had witnessed it all in the vivid, unforgettable visions of a husking ceremony. But rather than transforming him into a Listener, the taller, gaunter form of Uvovo, the ritual gave him four new eyes which, when opened in certain combinations, could reveal things from the past as well as possible futures.
Now, in the darkness, he sighed and sat up again and brooded. Umara, cradle of Segrana-That-Was, had become Darien, home to a colony of fractious, flawed, fascinating Humans who seemed to draw in enemies and adversity the way sun-fermented emels attracted insects. Yet if Humans had not come to settle here, the Uvovo would never have been able to cross from the moon to their ancient home and there would have been no resistance to the Hegemony and possibly no knowledge of Umara’s existence spread among the stars.
And little real good have the Humans brought about
, responded his inner arguer.
Half the stars in the sky seem to know of our plight yet none come to our aid. Knowledge is clearly of little value to them
.
We cannot see all that is happening so we cannot know what will happen
, he countered.
Bare ground hides many seeds
.
But his arguer was not done.
So how long will you wait for your forest to grow out of that dry, dusty soil?
Chel smiled and gazed around him at the dimness, broken only by a Human oil lantern set to give off a feeble amber glow. The unseen watcher was still there, he was sure. He raised one hand to the cloth strip covering his Seer eyes and was on the verge of opening the outer pair when one of the prone shapes nearby stirred and sat up.
‘So – can’t sleep?’ muttered a voice in accented Noranglic.
‘It’s the stone, Pilot Yash,’ he whispered back. ‘I find I cannot fully relax here.’
‘What about them cave recesses back at Tayowal? They’re cut into rock but you didn’t have trouble sleeping there.’
‘True, but the scholars there have enfolded their refuge with plants and flowers and umisk nests, all the tendrils of life.’
‘Hmmph.’ Yash scratched one of his ears. ‘Or you could be wondering if we’re being watched.’
Chel smiled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Places like this, they always have a bit of …’
He paused as one of the scholars muttered in her sleep and turned over. Both of them were still and silent for a moment, then Chel, in the faintest of whispers, said, ‘Talk outside …’
They stood and carefully tiptoed to the door, then by the light of a handtorch moved along the corridor a few paces.
‘You were about to say something about old places like this, Pilot Yash,’ Chel said in a low voice.
The short-bodied, long-armed Voth, wrapped in a bulky quilted coat, gestured at the stonework all around.
‘Your ancestors built this place for a serious reason, and it’s big enough for plenty of them and whatever they were about, yes?’
Chel nodded, and Yash spread his hands.
‘Right, well among my people we know that all old buildings, especially ones made for war or captivity, carry residual imprints of past inhabitants and their activities. I overheard that them new eyes of yours let you see the past – have you seen anything here?’
‘I have not used my other eyes here,’ Chel said.
‘Aren’t you curious?’ said the Voth. ‘Jelk, if it were me I’d want to know what my predecessors were up to!’
Chel smiled. Of course he was curious, but he was also cautious and not a little bit afraid of what he might see.
But I’ll have to take forward steps sometime, and it would be worth seeing if this seer sight reveals who or what is watching us
.
‘Very well, Pilot Yash, I shall take a brief look. But be aware that these eyes sometimes show me more than just the past …’
He pushed the cloth strip up into his fine, dense hair and for a moment just stood, regarding his dim surroundings, grey surfaces in the torch’s meagre light. Then he hesitantly parted the eyelids of the outer pair of new eyes. At first, same as his own original eyes, except that there was an extra sense of solidity to objects, conferred by a four-way ocularity, illuminated by the pale halo of Yash’s torch from which tenuous shadows spread. There was stillness, the sound of Yash’s breathing, the faint pulse of his own heartbeat which seemed to slow, then slow further, the beat low and languid, slowing down …
Then leaped back to normal again, as the walls suddenly flickered with shifting strands and clusters of glowing threads, and the air shimmered with glimmering outlines of shapes in motion, moving together or through one another, lines writhing across the walls and ceiling, tangled meshes, quivering webs hurrying to and fro …
He gasped, closing his eyes tightly. It was too much, too overwhelming –
Focus on the now, the here, and the vital, sift out the discord
– yet he steadied himself, breathed deeply and opened his eyes again. And saw ghosts.
Saw a group of nebulous forms made of those same fine outlines, which he now realised were the residue of past occupants, just as Yash said. The forms grew more detailed, became three Uvovo bent to the task of pushing a loaded cart along the corridor towards where Chel and Yash stood.
‘What do you see?’ Yash murmured.
Chel held up a silencing finger, keeping his eyes on the approaching trio, standing aside as they drew near and passed by. On the cart was a large device of some kind, its details vague apart from hints of flanges, spikes and what looked like twisted limbs. The faces of the Uvovo were indistinct but there was a certain urgency to their posture as they faded into the dark end of the corridor.
What am I seeing and why? It must be important for it to be still playing out after so many centuries, but why
?
‘Looks as if we may have woken someone,’ Yash muttered beside him. ‘Now what’s that he’s got …
no, wait, stop!
…’
Chel turned and for a moment saw one of his Artificer scholars standing next to the chamber door with a crowbar wedged behind one of the stone pillar uprights. The scholar’s face was blank as he put his full weight behind the crowbar and wrenched at the pillar. There was a grinding sound, then the lintel and the wall and ceiling above caved in with a roaring rumble, falling rubble throwing up clouds of dust.
Yash dragged him back, shouting about a weakened ceiling, and Chel complied while in his mind’s eye he saw again the scholar, this time with a violet nimbus about him. Then Yash ignored his own advice and advanced through the dusty haze, coughing as he shone his narrow torch beam on the collapse. Chel was still looking through his outer new eyes and could see gleams and splinters of amber light slipping past gaps in the rubble that blocked the chamber entrance.
‘I can hear their voices, Chel!’ cried the Voth.
But Chel’s senses, alerted by his enhanced vision, quivered in warning as he saw it – a shimmering outline flowing across the shadowy wall away from the fallen masonry. He concentrated his awareness on it, letting his perceptions draw the vision into his mind, as the outline took on hazy details, took on an odd, flattened form. A figure that dipped in and out of the wall as if it were no more solid than a barrier of smoke. Could this be the watcher?