Fire in the Sky

1

Ceam handed the binocs to the Fior woman squatting beside him. “Look where they put the Crawler. They’ve learned. Take the canyon falling in on them to do serious damage there.”

Leoca adjusted the focus. “Hm. I see what you mean. Good thing that isn’t what we have in mind.”

The Crawler was edged up against a stand of ancient kulkins and gumas, a swath of grassy ground between it and the creek that ambled down the canyon, the chuff of its air intakes audible above the muted sounds from the rest of the canyon. The day was warm and quiet, the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the creek soporific as a lullaby; even the angies were staying close to their perches, their songs subdued, barely reaching the watchers on the rim. One of the mesuchs was stretched out on a blanket, sleeping in the shade of a young kerre just coming into bud_

“Doesn’t look like they’re expecting trouble. I suppose the storm meant you had clouds down to your ankles when Eolt Kitsek brought you word.”

Ceam rested his chin in his hands. “Mm. You get caught in it?”

“Ihoi! did we.” She took a long careful look at the canyon below, lowered the binocs, and rubbed at her eyes. “Makes you dizzy, this. Engebel, see if you can work out a way to get at that thing.” She passed the glasses to her Keteng companion. “How many and what schedule are they keeping?”

He wriggled from the rim so the Keteng could take his place, stood when he was far enough that he wouldn’t be seen from below, dusted himself off and sat with his back against one of the scrub gumas clinging to the slope behind the canyon lip. “Two mesuch. Four hours on, four off. The pair on duty when I got here were sloppier about it. Did a lot of leaving the machine to run itself. Next lot, though, they rung the changes by the bell. That’s the way it’s been since. Twelve days I been here, they’ve had three personnel switches, new mesuch coming in second day, sixth day, first lot came back yesterday. They were hot to hold sched, figure they got chewed out about it, but they’re already starting to get lazy. I’d say tonight or tomorrow would be best time, they won’t be cleaning up yet for next rotation.” He glanced at the three Meloach squatting silent in the shade of the other gumas. “New kind of Mengerak?”

Leoca sighed. “In a way. Chetiel, Tengel, and Bliull were students of ours. Engebel and I, we’re teachers. Cha oy, we were before the mesuch came. Story you probably heard a hundred times, they hauled Fior off to labor camps, killed any Keteng they could catch, and burned the Dumel.”

Ceam grunted. “How you going to fix them?”

“Hokori puffballs. The spores get into the part that runs the machines and make it go crazy. Couple of the Meloach get under the crawlers between the tracks, pop a dozen spores into the air intake and, oh, twenty minutes later, the thing’s junk.”

“I was warned to stay telkib melkib from them. Alarms go off, I get roasted. How…”

“Something we found out by accident a couple ten-days ago. Meloach don’t register on their detectors. Our younglings there can slide right up to the crawlers before the mesuch know what’s happening. About a dozen klids like us moving on Crawlers this tenday. Want to get as many of them as we can before they figure out what’s happening and how to stop us.”

Ceam glanced at the sun, eyes squinted against the glare. Half an hour of light left, maybe a bit more. He wriggled closer to the rim, trained the binocs on the trees behind the Crawler. The klid should be in place now. Not a sign of them. Good thing, that. His mouth pinched to a narrow line as he saw one of the mesuch move into the doorway of the Crawler living space and stand staring at the canyon rim. Nervous, are you, scraem? I hope you’ve got reason you don’t know about. “Ah!”

A small, agile shadow snaked from under the trees and vanished beneath the Crawler. As Leoca said, no alarm.

Ceam smiled. If the teachers are right and hokori spores can poison that thing, Chel Dй be blessed, there’ll be a dozen of the monsters dead soon. Not too soon-for me.

The Meloach slid out and crawled for the trees. Xe looked wobbly now, uncertain.

Xe must have got a whiff of them xeself Move, child. Go on, go on, keep going. Aid good.

One of the other Meloach slipped from the trees, caught the first by the arm, and half-lifted, half-dragged xe back into shelter.

Ceam moved the binocs to the door into the Crawler shell. As the sun slid completely behind the peaks, the light visible through the louvers that protected the windows were lines of yellow on a black ground, the open door a yellow rectangle interrupted by the blocky form of the Chav.

The mesuch turned his head, said something to the other one, his voice a grumble on the wind, the words unintelligible. He moved inside and pulled the door shut.

For half an hour nothing happened.

The door to the Crawler burst open, the two mesuchs stumbled out, choking, coughing, wisps of smoke following them, the yellow glow behind them flickering as if it were firelight rather than electric. As the mesuchs flung themselves onto the creek to wash the spore dust off them, the light pulsed a last time and went out.

Ceam smiled with pleasure. It worked. The Crawler’s dead.

The smile vanished as the cliff groaned and shifted under him. He heard a horrible whining sound below him. When he looked down, he saw the nose end of one of the mole machines poke through the stone; a moment later the rest of it followed and it fell into the canyon, landing with a crash that echoed from wall to wall and a flare of light that started spots dancing before Ceam’s eyes.

“Ihoi!” As the stone started shaking under him like a Keteng in the grip of berm fever, Ceam scrambled away from the edge and watched with horror as another of the machines screamed out where he’d been lying. It turned end for end and ate its way back into the stone.

He snatched his pack and bolted up the uneven mountainside rising from behind the canyon rim.

The mining machines screamed, the high whines lifting the hairs on his arms and neck; the groaning and cracking of the stone got louder. As the dirt slipped under his feet, trying to drag him with it, the mountain rocked and shuddered, the trees around him cracked and groaned, he caught at branches, brush, used them to pull himself along, fell to his knees again and again, the pack he held by one shoulder strap nearly wrenched from his grasp. He scrambled on, struggling to get over the shoulder of the mount, onto the far slope.

Near dawn when the mountain had settled to its ordinary stolidity, Ceam crept back, keeping a careful watch on the sky to make sure no airwagons were around. At the edge of the still unstable scree, he stopped and looked down along what had once been a canyon wall.

The Crawler had escaped much of the slide, but a few huge chunks of stone had brushed against it and tumbled it onto its side. It looked like a dead nagal tipped on its back, the tracks like broken legs tucked close to the shell. Ceam set the binocs to his eyes and picked up glints of starlight from the twisted torn metal of the mining machines, mixed inextricably with the shards of stone. Near the Crawler he spotted an arm and a leg in the dull gray of mesuch worksuits poking from under a pile of debris. Either the second mesuch got away on foot or he was mashed to pulp under the fallen stone.

After a last scan with the binocs, he resettled the ‘straps of the pack and began making his way down back around the mountain, a small contented smile on his round, lined face.