“You know this land has already been mined? There have already been miners and prospectors here?”
“Oh, yes. You people always seem to think you are the first to do a thing, be it dig for shiny metal or discover some distant shore. But someone has always been there first. Always. Well, not always. But the places where someone has been first were places no one wanted to go. The Center of the Seas, for example. It took centuries in your reckoning to work out how to verify where the Center was. And then when someone did get there, what of it? Can you build on it? Harvest from it?
“Men died to make that journey, before they had a hope of getting there, before they were bright enough to realize how ignorant they were.”
He paused and looked at the other two, still rapt in their wordless debate.
“You two are wasting time. You wanted someone to come from outside and help you, to answer your questions, and here he is, sat at your table while you don’t even have the sense to speak instead of your thought-speech.”
They glanced at us, but never broke their concentration. Therian snorted in disgust, drained his tumbler, and rose to his feet.
“Come, let’s leave these wizards or whatever they fancy themselves. We can get some air and you can learn some things.”
I followed his lead, drank what was left, grabbed one more hunk of the bread, and walked out into the light. We stood looking out at the other villagers going about their business, none of whom paid any notice of us. I supposed they were still angry at the bear antics of this morning, to say nothing of having an outsider in their midst.
I looked up at Therian. He seemed to be following something, his eyes were fixed and narrowed, his nostrils wide, his mouth set.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Could be nothing. You needn’t try to see anything. Your eyes are no match for mine. I thought I saw something move out on the plain, but perhaps not. Come let’s walk around a bit so you can learn more about these people.”
We stepped off around the clearing and headed down a path, well-trodden and broad enough for two to walk abreast. The ground was firm, too well-packed for even hardy grasses to grow. There were some low shrubs and brambles which at the right time of year would be covered in berries.
We came to a turning and followed it. This path was not so well-travelled. Almost immediately we came into a small meadow, with a collection of boxes of the same tightly woven material I saw used elsewhere in the village. I could see that these were beehives. The sound of buzzing was plain to hear as we got closer.
“This is where the bear form comes in handy. The stings are of no consequence through the fur, and its useful to have the strength to lift the larger hives.”
He smiled at the memory of earlier feasts.
“The food we enjoyed just now comes from these fields. The honey from here, the milk, butter, and cheese from the cows grazing just over there, and there are a lot of plots of vegetables. From what I could see, the people here live closer to the ground than your people. They know where everything they eat or use comes from. Your people think it comes from a wagon.”
His tone was so matter-of-fact, it was hard to take offense. I had no idea if he was as old as he claimed to be. Who could remember when the cities had been villages? Most who lived in them would never admit they have been any greater or most prosperous than they were. The most casual observer could see from the soot-blackened facades, the broken pavement, the blistered paint that these cities had seen better days. But no one knew when those days were or what they had been like. There were rumored to be some pictures, drawings, paintings, even some light-impressions, made with metallic salts and the like, but if they existed, they were all in museums or archives, only accessible by researchers and historians.
What had he seen of those days? And who would believe any of it? I wasn’t certain that I would, though I would ever say so. True or not, it would fill the hole where a history should have been.
“The cities were not what they are now. They were clean, bright, and hard-working places, filled with people who enjoyed one another, who looked up at the sky, who filled out the days with music and books. Now they are dirty, cramped, and filled with people who regard hard work as a burden, nothing more, whose tastes in art tend toward the cruel or the shoddy. The change was slow to come but once it began, it was impossible to stop. Too many people in too small a space, even thought the cities are smaller now than they were. A lot of the buildings are uninhabitable, the streets unusable, and the water and air are filthy.
“It’s no wonder people leave those cesspits to make a new life for themselves here. But what kind of life? They are still dependent on the city for their food, for everything from the laces in their boots to the nails that hold their houses together. I don’t know how they could live any other way. It’s a harsh place, but would any of your people be there if not for the lure of treasure under the ground? They take no pleasure in it, staying indoors in the taverns when they are not off pursuing their dreams.”
* * *
“But I tell you, I saw him ride through the hedge. He didn’t jump it, he didn’t go on down the road. He . . . just rode through it . . . ”
“Idiot! Stop making things worse. You lost him. Admit it.”
Jackson, a cadaverously thin specimen, wrapped in ragged woolens, and coated with a thin layer of dust, stared back sullenly, with glint of anger in his eyes.
Cranby glared down at the table where Jackson sat. He was better dressed and better fed, and not as dust-smeared. But both wore the same weathered and fatigued look. The implicit differences of clothing were not so great as they both supposed: Cranby did not look so much better off, nor Jackson so care-worn, for all their feelings about the matter.
“You fool. I should have known better than to expect you to figure out how to do this. So he’s out there now with no one watching, working on the one claim that hasn’t been worked out, and he’ll come back into town, say nothing to anyone, and head back to get some muscle to finish the job. And everything I’ve done here will be wasted. Some new city boy will get it all.”
He turned and stormed off to a cabinet, opened it, pulled out a glass, poured it half full from a glass decanter, and drank it off in one swallow. He hesitated before putting it away, as if he was considering another, then thought better of it. He put the decanter away, and slumped over the counter, hands wrapped around the edges, his head hanging loosely as he stared down at the countertop.
Jackson sat in the chair at the table, his face unchanging, his arms folded across his chest.
With a sudden movement, Cranby straightened, snapped up the glass, and threw it at Jackson, as swiftly and smoothly as a snake. Jackson unfolded his arms, raised one in front of his face, and caught the glass as nonchalantly as if he had been swatting away a fly. His eyes never left Cranby’s, his expression frozen. He slammed his hand flat down on the table and the glass shattered under palm, pieces scattering like snowflakes, glittering and sharp. He swept the remaining shards off the table, stood up, and walked out.
Cranby swore to himself, at himself. He had lost his temper, and showed a weakness he had never meant to expose. Now Jackson had learnt more than he needed to about Cranby’s loathing for Angstrom. He had meant to keep the people he used at arm’s length. Knowledge was currency here, there being so little else to exchange, and he had just given away a tidy amount to someone who should never be permitted to have a claim on him.
He was reasonably sure that Jackson would keep this secret to himself, that he knew how a secret shared was less valuable. So his outburst and the revelation that he feared a secret claim being made by Angstrom was safe for now. Even the few peers Cranby would acknowledge were not aware of his loathing and mistrust, his paranoid fear of this mining engineer. He was not the first to arrive unannounced here or in any of the little hardscrabble outposts in search of a share of a big find. It was not uncommon for an army or city-trained expert to try to leverage his training into a windfall. At the same time, there was no limit of would-be tycoons hoping to get some mineralogical edge from one of them.