weeping quietly.
Manlayl
HALF COMPLETED / HALF STARTED
A small island in the temperate latitudes of the northern Midway Sea, close to the northern continent, MANLAYL was for centuries known only for its fishing. The fishing grounds on the continental shelf in the Manlayl region are exceptionally rich and diverse, and the catches were exported to all parts of the Archipelago.
With the coming of the war, however, all islands in that part of the sea were surveyed for possible strategic usefulness. The Covenant of Neutrality was not then in place and many small islands found themselves requisitioned for the siting of observation and listening posts, for airfields, deepwater ports, training grounds and the like. In Manlayl’s case, the Glaund Republic sequestered the island by main force and set about building an underground missile-launching site. The people of the island could only stand by powerlessly and watch.
The island’s salvation came in the form of the hastily drawn up First Protocols of what was to become in due course the full Covenant. Protective neutrality was declared, the Glaundians departed with bad grace, and peace returned to Manlayl and many other small islands like it.
The Glaundians left a legacy of several deep tunnels drilled into the rock. Their excavations had revealed that the rock of Manlayl was mostly an old and stable formation of limestone, a soft but durable rock, suitable for ambitious tunnelling projects.
Word of this reached Jordenn Yo, the earthmoving installation artist. Using false documents to show she had claimed and won mineral development rights from the Glaund occupiers, Yo brought in her equipment, hired the necessary artisans and tunnelling began. It was not long before news of her installations spread, and hundreds of freelance or mercenary tunnellers began arriving on Manlayl. Soon they had set up their own projects in competition with Yo.
Having seen or learned about what had happened on other islands, the Manlayl Seigniory Department invested most of the accumulated wealth of the island in a desperate lawsuit intended to protect the island from reckless tunnelling. After protracted and frequently adjourned legal proceedings they eventually won their case.
Jordenn Yo had already left Manlayl, realizing that if she did not her equipment would risk being seized by the authorities. She had already served prison sentences elsewhere. But many of the mercenary tunnellers carried on boring and digging until the last possible moment. Some were removed only after bailiffs were called in to take them out by force.
Finally, the battle was over and the last tunnellers departed. Some went into prison. Manlayl was made safe from tunnellers, and many other islands, feeling themselves at similar risk, used the case as a precedent for bringing in their own anti-tunnelling legislation. The life of the island slowly reverted to what it had been many years before.
Much irreparable damage had been caused, though, and more than half the island was now riddled with long, corkscrewing passages through the bedrock. Many of these had ingresses at mid-tide level, causing daily floods. Several of the smaller hills began to collapse, and part of the northern shore was crumbling into the sea with every tide. Inundation and subsidence extended a long way inland. Even today there are many large areas of Manlayl where it is unsafe to venture.
However, most of the south and eastern areas of the island are as they have always been, and commercial fishing has resumed. The island is a pleasant and interesting place to visit, with many historical markers. The main port, Manlayl Town, has several small hotels and pensions suitable for couples or families, and the cuisine, largely based on exotic seafood, is exquisite. Summer and autumn are the best times to visit, because the winter gales do still make Manlayl an extremely noisy and disharmonious place. It is not wise to reveal any interest in tunnelling.
Currency: Archipelagian simoleon, Ganntenian credit, Aubracian talent.
Meequa / Tremm
BEARER OF MESSAGES / FAST WANDERER
THE DRONE
The drones came in at nightfall. If she had completed her day’s tasks at the observatory, Lorna Mennerlin would shut down her terminal then scramble down the uneven cliff steps to the beach. From there she could watch the aircraft returning as they flew in low above the sea.
When the sea was calm, the brightly coloured LEDs in the belly of each of the drones mirrored back from the surface of the waves. On some evenings the machines flew over one by one, sometimes separated by several minutes, but most evenings they arrived in such numbers that they swarmed towards the island in a glittering formation. As they passed over the beach and responded to the radar sensing of the rocky cliffs rising beyond, they would adjust their height in unison. In their wake was a breathy susurration from their silenced vanes, a feeling of secretive distances already crossed, covert explorations, unstated winds.
As a precaution against the security staff coming across her and challenging her for being on the beach at that time, Lorna always took the tabulator down to the beach with her, but this evening, as on most evenings, she did not switch it on.
The tabulator hung on its strap against her side. She could feel it vibrating gently in stand-by mode as it responded to the locating pulse of each of the incoming machines, separately identified. In this mode the tabulator’s detection of the drones was numerical: so many of them recognized and logged, so many accounted for. She would return to evaluating the more complex quantified results the next morning, after they had been downloaded at the base and sent along the landline to the MCI’s computers.
In the chartroom the staff would view the coverage of the ocean, then become absorbed in the task of tracing each drone back to its launch point, using the satellite returns to analyse its route. Working with the other cartographers, Lorna then laboriously transferred the images to the master data store. But even with a full complement of staff they were endlessly running behind — they were still trying to untangle the reports from more than two years before. Tonight’s mapping data would probably not be properly evaluated for another two years or more. Gradually, the backlog was increasing.
Lorna should have left the MCI and Meequa Island several months earlier, at the end of her contract, but she felt trapped by Tomak’s sudden disappearance. How could she leave until she knew what had become of him? Patta, her roommate, obviously thought it was time for her to move on, but that was for Lorna irrational and impossible. Tomak had left her with so many things unsaid, so many personal decisions unmade.
She still ached with love for him. Why had he left her that way? It was impossible to re-adjust until she found out what had happened.
She stared across the sea, under the scattering of drone lights, at the dark offshore island where Tomak had been posted. This was the real reason she came down to the beach every evening whenever she could, but it was becoming a habit. No longer a hope. Silence was the cruellest burden.
The other island had a name: Tremm, named after the mythological companion of Meequa, who was the bearer of messages. Tremm was Meequa’s outrider, the guard, the protector, the fast wanderer who passes. But the island which carried his name was dark and low against the twilit horizon, stolid and heavy-looking, as much unlike a fast-moving wanderer as it was possible to imagine. Tremm was directly opposite the cove, an hour or more by boat from Meequa, across the shallow strait, and whenever the drones swarmed in she would see the paths of their LEDs veering to one side or the other of the island.
Tremm had been charted years before, but ironically it was one whose details were the least known because of the secrecy that surrounded it. It was one of several closed islands in the vicinity of Meequa, taken over by the military many decades before. The drones were programed to avoid it. No one could go near it without permission. Anyone who did go there had to sign security pledges, and never spoke about the use the island was put to. Most
