scrubbed them, and she itched to see them work as they should. An
easy tug on the ring, and down they slid with a puff of dust that was
hardly noticeable.
'_Why don't you dust it?_'
Everyone had laughed, and she had too, though she had been so
shy. He had been tall and--what was it? Five-point-two-five times
stronger than she, with handsome steel features that faded when she
tried to see them again.
All nonsense, really.
Like believing she had posed, after she had told Maytera over and
over that she had lied. She would never have taken these new parts
if... Though they were hers, to be sure.
One more time up the steps. One final time, and here was her old trunk.
She opened the gable window and climbed out onto the roof. If
the neighbors spied her, they would be shocked out of their wits.
_Trunk_ evoked only her earlier search for its owner.
_Footlocker_, that was it. Here was a list of the dresses she had worn
before they had voted to admit her. Her perfume. The commonplace
book that she had kept for the mere pleasure of writing in it,
of practicing her hand. Perhaps if she went back into the attic and
opened her footlocker, she would find them all, and would never
have to look at the thrumming thing overhead again.
Yet she did.
Enormous, though not so big you couldn't see the skylands on
each side of it. Higher up and farther west now, over the market
certainly and nosing toward the Palatine, its long axis bisected by
Cage Street, where convicts were no longer exposed in cages. Its
noise was almost below her threshold of hearing, the purr of a
mountain lion as big as a mountain.
She should go back down now. Get busy. Wash or cook--though
she was dead, and Maytera Betel and the rest dead, too, and
Maytera Mint gone only Pas knew where, and nobody left to cook
for unless the children came.
Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched
field, the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the
soldiers' precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at
first a fleck of black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot;
had said, 'It looks so dirty.' A soldier had overheard her and called,
'Why don't you dust it?'
Everyone had laughed, and she had laughed, too, though she had
been humiliated to tears, had tears been possible for her. Angry and
defiant, she had met his eyes and sensed the longing there.
And longed.
How tall he had been! How big and strong! So much steel!
Winged figures the size of gnats sailed this way and that below the
vast, dark bulk; something streaked up toward them as she watched--flared
yellow, like bacon grease dripping into the stove. Some fell.
'Here we are,' Auk told Chenille. It was a break in the tunnel wall.
'This leads into the pit?'
'That's what he says. Let me go first, and listen awhile. Beat the
hoof if it sounds a queer lay.'
She nodded, resolving that she and her launcher would have
something to say about any queer lay, watched him worm his way
through (a tight squeeze for shoulders as big as his), listened for
minutes that seemed like ten, then heard his booming laugh, faint
and far away.
It was a tight squeeze for her as well, and it seemed her hips
would not go through. She wriggled and swore, recalling Orchid's
dire warnings and that Orchid's were twice--at least twice!--the size
of hers.
The place she was trying so hard to get into was a pit in the pit,
apparently--as deep as a cistern, with no way to go higher, though
Auk must have found one since he was not there.
Her hips scraped through at last. Panting as she knelt on the
uneven soil, she reached back in and got her launcher.
'You coming, Jugs?' He was leaning over the edge, almost
invisible in the darkness.
'Sure. How do I get out of here?'
'There's a little path around the sides.' He vanished.
There was indeed--a path a scant cubit wide, as steep as a stair.
She climbed cautiously, careful not to look down, with Gelada's
lantern rattling on the barrel of her launcher. Above, she heard Auk
say, 'All right, maybe I will, but not till she gets here. I want her to
see him.'
Then her head was above the top and she was looking at the pit. a
stade across, its reaches mere looming darkness, its sheer sides
faced with what looked like shiprock. A wall rose above it on the
side nearest her. She stared up at it without comprehension. turned
her head to look at the shadowy figures around Auk, and looked up
at it again before she recognized it as the familiar, frowning wall of
the Alambrera, which she was now seeing from the other side for
the first time.
Auk called, 'C'mere, Jugs. Still got that darkee?'
A vaguely familiar voice ventured, 'Might be better not to light it, Auk.'
'Shut up.'
She took Gelada's lantern off the barrel of her launcher and
advanced hesitantly toward Auk, nearly falling when she tripped
over a roll of rags in the darkness.
Auk said, 'You do it, Urus. Keep it pretty near shut,' and one of
the men accepted the lantern from her.
The acrid smell of smoke cut through the prevailing reek of
excrement and unwashed bodies; a bearded man with eyes like
the sockets in a skull had removed the lid of a firebox. He puffed
the coals it held until their crimson glow lit his face--a face she
quickly decided she would rather not have seen. A wisp of flame
appeared. Urus held the lantern to it, then closed the shutter,
narrowing the yellow light to a beam no thicker than her
forefinger.
