The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge

by Cameron Baity

  They abandoned their pump cart. The kids had no idea what awaited them up ahead, but the squeak and rattle of the contraption was certain to draw attention. Phoebe removed her Trinka from the head of the cart and fastened it around her wrist as they continued on foot.

  First came the sound—the thrum of machines, the growl of heavy equipment, and the chatter of countless metal-soled shoes. Then, the smell overtook them. It was subtle at first, but soon the scent developed into a peculiar rusty tang, a pungent mixture of smoky spice and iron.

  It was her father’s scent, Phoebe realized with a start. Or rather, what he smelled like without his aftershave.

  The tunnel’s end was just ahead, and after so many hours of darkness, the light was blinding. They shielded their eyes and scuttled into a narrow niche near the exit.

  Outside the tunnel was another train yard, so vast it made the one beneath the Foundry look like a mere pit stop in comparison. It had the turmoil of rush hour in Albright City, with cranes reaching as high as skyscrapers and leagues of workers and Watchmen bustling everywhere. Train tracks extended through a dense plaza, then split into dozens of parallel lines. Transloaders hauled shipping containers onto behemoth locomotives, their electric engines breathing like giants. Powerful floodlights illuminated a grid of buildings that sprawled as far as the eye could see, forming avenues and intersections of bustling productivity. There were even several Aero-copter pads and a runway for Galejets.

  Far in the distance, a massive security wall enclosed the perimeter. It was protected by watchtowers and turrets armed with what Micah eagerly identified as Frag-cannons. Lining the top of the wall was a row of mysterious coils that pulsed with an intense purple glow. Phoebe studied them for a moment, wondering what they could possibly be.

  Without a word of warning, Micah sprang from their hiding spot. She could do nothing but stare as he zigzagged between trucks and cargo containers like a soldier under fire. He ducked underneath a tarp that was stretched over some shipping crates about twenty yards away. The fabric fluttered once, then was still, concealing him completely.

  Her fists clenched so tight that her hands cramped. What did he think he was doing? He was going to ruin everything.

  She sidled closer to the tunnel entrance and tensed her legs, preparing to spring into action. But there were too many workers. Every time she was about to go for it, another one came around the corner, hauling a dolly of steel crates or driving a Multi-chain conveyor.

  Phoebe went for it anyway.

  But she slipped. A strap loosened, and her right shoe fell off. She regained her balance and turned around to grab it, but the shadow of an approaching worker snaked across her path.

  She dove for cover beneath the tarp and slammed up next to Micah, ignoring his look of outrage. Through a slit, they could just make out the figure—a Watchman worker in a blue Foundry jumpsuit and hard hat, his death mask of a face placid. He set down the steel box he was carrying and picked up the shoe.

  Phoebe closed her eyes. She wanted to cry, but that was not an option. Micah nudged her, and she looked back as the Watchman departed, her shoe in his hand.

  “Nice goin’!” he spat. “Might as well scream out your name and address and do a big ol’ cartwheel while you’re at it.”

  “This is all your fault!”

  “Me? Am I the one who can’t keep my stinkin’ shoes on?”

  “No, you’re the one running out like an imbecile.”

  “Hey, I’m lookin’ for the Doc. What are you doin’?”

  “Quiet!” she urged. “I’m trying to think of a plan.”

  “Maybe first you should try to not get caught, and maybe—”

  “Okay, rule number three. No more idiotic leaping into danger. You follow me from now on. Got it?”

  “You wanna know what I think of your…” The words died in his mouth.

  They heard footsteps right beside them and could make out the shapes of two human workers through the tarp.

  “Look, I’m already pushing six K here,” one of them said. “I can’t handle any more.”

  “Just following orders,” replied the other. “I need you to take this unit.”

  “But it’s headed all the way out to Station four eighty-six. Can’t you just wait for the next train?”

  “I told you, Mr. Goodwin took my last Cargoliner to the Citadel. You got an issue, take it up with him.”

  Phoebe and Micah exchanged a look. The Citadel? If that’s where Goodwin was headed, it was a good bet her father was there, too. They watched through the fabric as one of the figures grumbled to himself and entered something into a bleeping device.

  “Guess we’re taking this one, too!” he called out as he stomped off.

  Before the kids could figure out their next move, the pallet jostled and rose off the ground. The kids clung to the crates to keep from spilling out. There was a series of hard lurches, and the buzz of hydraulics.

  Then they plunged, once again, into total darkness.

  A familiar chugging sound ratcheted, followed by a pronounced thunk, and the deep vibration of an engine. Phoebe and Micah had been loaded onto the back of a cargo truck.

  The vehicle crunched into gear and rolled forward.

  “Oh no, no, no,” she whispered.

  The truck was picking up speed. The muffled murmur of the train station was punctuated by a harsh rattle every time they hit a bump. There were a couple of sharp turns that sent the kids knocking into each other, and then the vehicle slowed to a stop.

  “Prob’ly security,” Micah mumbled, his ear pressed up to the wall. The truck began to move, then stopped once more. They sat longer this time. Phoebe felt sick with anxiety, certain that the cargo door would slide up at any moment, and they would be discovered.

  She closed her eyes and tried to think. Nothing made sense. Ever since she had spied that Watchman from her bedroom window, she had nothing but questions. Obviously they were machines, but not like any invention she had ever heard of. They took verbal commands. They could respond to unexpected events, plan, and strategize. And like the one that took her shoe, she could swear they were actually thinking.

  Why did the Foundry keep them hidden? They would sell like crazy. Who wouldn’t want a robot servant of their own? Yet the Watchmen were so secret that her father was shocked to find out they were in the city at all.

  At last, the truck started to drive again, rattling as it moved along. So far, so good. Phoebe glanced at Micah—she wanted to talk to him, but he was only ten, too little and too dense for real conversation. But maybe not entirely without his uses.

  “Sounds like we’re in the clear,” he said, pulling his ear away from the truck wall. “Gimme that light.”

  “No,” she replied. “It’ll draw too much attention.”

  “We’re in the back of a truck, Freaky. The driver—”

  “What did I tell you about the name calling?”

  “Whatever! Plumm then, okay? The driver can’t see nothin’, no one can. And I wanna know where we’re goin’.”

  He was right. Again. She activated the Trinka on her wrist, and its little light guided her as she slipped out from under the tarp. Sure enough, they were in a big Foundry truck, one with a segmented cargo hold like the ones she used to thrill to see parked in front of her favorite shops. They squeezed between the crates and made their way to the rear.

  The ridged metal floor was cold on Phoebe’s shoeless foot.

  “Shine it here,” he said, pointing to a round hub in the floor at the base of the gate. She provided light while he crammed his fingers in the panel and manually unhooked the latch. With a tug of the hoisting chain, they raised the back gate a couple of feet and got on their bellies to look outside.

  It was night, the hazy bright lights and glowing purple coils of the train yard fading on the horizon. All around them, the groun
d was hard and dead, pocked with clumps of ragged trees. In the distance, she saw a range of craggy mounds dominated by an enormous mesa with an odd, slanted top. There was a shimmering streak of silver running toward it.

  The train tracks. And the truck was veering away.

  “Wait, no!” Phoebe cried. Those rails were all she had to go on. “We have to jump.”

  Spindly trees grew dense around them as the truck drove up a steep grade. The road was bumpy, causing some of the hefty crates to shift and forcing the driver to slow down.

  “After you,” Micah said with a sneer. “Rule number three, remember?”

  There was no time to argue. She crawled under the back gate and immediately felt a warm breeze waft through her hair. Phoebe lowered herself to the back bumper and clung there, unsure of how best to drop. Reluctantly she let go, falling hip and shoulder first. She hit the unyielding ground with a shock of pain, tumbled several times, and then came to a stop.

  Better than the fall from the train, but it still added a few nasty bruises to her growing collection.

  She heard Micah roll to a stop next to her, and they lay there unmoving, staring up at angular treetops that swayed beneath the night sky. The rough sound of the Foundry truck faded, drowned out by the forest. There were unfamiliar animal calls and a symphonic chorus of ghostly, tinkling chimes. A rich scent clung to their nostrils, acrid but not harsh, more moist and earthy.

  They were exhausted. The kids had been on the run for hours, and yet judging by the host of twinkling stars above, it was still the dead of night.

  “Do you know the constellations?” Phoebe croaked, her throat parched.

  “Why?”

  “To figure out where we are, genius.”

  “Don’t they teach you that stuff in that snooty school of yours?”

  “Would I ask you if they did?” she shot back. “You’re the hick boy. Don’t you know all about outdoorsy stuff?”

  “I know you’re s’posed to bring a compass and a Celestron with you wherever you go, but I didn’t exactly pack for a camping trip.” Micah got up to dust himself off and mused aloud. “Let’s see here, I know the tail of the Big Dipper points north. Or was that the Li’l Dipper?”

  “Micah?” she breathed faintly, staring up.

  The sky was all wrong.

  The stars didn’t twinkle—they vibrated, as if attached to a plucked piano wire. And some of them were moving. Not in arrow-straight streaks, but up and sideways, tracing intricate shapes across the night. There was no moon, but when the kids rubbed their eyes, they noticed fine silvery strands stretching between the stars, all connected like shining beads woven into a web by some unfathomable celestial spider.

  This was not their sky.

  If there had been anything in Phoebe’s growling stomach, she would have thrown up.

  “What is this place?”

  Her question hung heavily in the air. Micah was speechless.

  With shaking hands, she held out her Trinka.

  They were next to a rugged road at the sparse edge of a forest. The trees here were thin with odd angular branches and shiny bark that reminded her of birch covered in a sleeve of ice. Deeper in the forest, a low and nearly imperceptible tone rumbled their innards like the moan of an ill-tuned pipe organ. A breeze hushed through the woods, causing the fine leaves to flutter. Then came that tinkling sonata again.

  Wind chimes. But there were none in sight.

  A strange notion was rising to a boil in Phoebe’s mind. She approached a stand of ferns, wincing as the sharp ground poked at her right foot through her bare sock. She reached out and touched a leaf.

  Weakness washed over her. She was going to pass out.

  “It can’t be,” she breathed, tracing the veins of the leaf with her finger. “It’s impossible.”

  “This ain’t real. This ain’t really happening,” Micah consoled himself.

  “The plant…” she said, but words wouldn’t come.

  “What about it? It’s just a—”

  She flicked the leaf. It rang out like a cymbal.

  Metal.

  Micah’s brow furrowed. But she was already moving to another plant, touching it in disbelief. “All of them!” she said with a mix of fear and wonder. She knocked on a tree branch, and it rang with a resonant hollow sound. There were individual boughs, branches, and twigs of bark-covered tube, all different sizes and thicknesses. It was like bamboo made out of flaking steel. They were jointed at severe angles, and as Phoebe followed them with her light, she realized that all of the trees were interconnected.

  It was like this entire forest had been built by a mad plumber. No matter how much she tried to comprehend it, the truth dangled just beyond her grasp.

  Micah had picked up a metal twig and was rapping it sharply on whatever he could find. Everything from pebble to branch, root to leaf, it all rang with a different metallic sound. He giggled to himself.

  “Micah,” she called. Had he lost his mind?

  He got down on all fours and plucked something from a cluster of leaves.

  “Ha-ha! Nuts!” he snickered, and held out his hand. In his palm were six or seven hexagonal nuts, the same kind used on machines, but these were clumpy and tarnished, nestled in a silver pod. “Someone made it look like they was growing on that bush,” he said giddily. “This is wicked! Almost looks like a real forest.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice was hushed.

  “This is just some Foundry thing,” he scoffed. “That tunnel, the weird sky, this metal forest. It’s all fake. This is probably Goodwin’s private island, or somethin’. You know, like that story about the king who wanted everything made of gold?”

  “I don’t think that…” she trailed off. There was movement in the dark. A shadow in the forest had come to life.

  “Sure it is!” he said with forced confidence. “Means we must be close. Goodwin’s prob’ly got the Doc stashed away in some sorta mansion near here. Yeah, that’s it!” Micah tried to convince himself. “Why don’t we—”

  They didn’t even get a chance to struggle.

  Phoebe sucked in a lungful of air to scream, but cold cable wrapped around her tightly, binding her hands and feet.

  Then, before they knew what was happening, their stomachs dropped. Wind gushed past, and the ground shrank below. It felt like she was falling up, tearing through the treetops at a dizzying speed.

  he throne room was hacked from tarnished gold and streaked with rust-red veins. Barbed columns and gnarled buttresses wove together like gilded serpents and formed a twisted ceiling overhead. Hundreds of roosts protruded from the rough-hewn walls, where flying courtiers had perched long ago, each niche sculpted to look like the sun. In the middle of the chamber stood a headless statue eighty feet high, posed in fierce triumph, its luster dulled with age. Dozens of wings sprouted from the back of the monstrous effigy, layered in feathers splayed like saw-blade sunbeams.

  This grim palace had lain dormant for epochs, a reminder of a more brutal time. Which was why the Foundry now used it for their headquarters.

  The murky golden throne room was the center of operations, pulsing with the urgent activity of nearly a hundred personnel. It was outfitted with humming electric generators that ran banks of Computators and surveillance equipment. Workers and coordinators bustled about while dozens of black-suited Watchmen stood silently, poised to execute orders at a moment’s notice.

  Mr. Goodwin stared at a map projecting up from an illuminated table, his fluffy white brows furrowed. Three military executives gathered around the Chairman, clad in steel-trimmed suits ornamented with shining badges, medals, and stripes that signified rank.

  “Meridian needs us,” insisted one of the executives, locking his arms across his chest. “We can’t let that Lavaraud clown put our national security in jeopardy.”

 
“This is much more than rhetoric,” another added. “The Trels are itching for a fight.”

  “Especially if these reports of the Quorum’s rearmament are true,” said a third.

  “So let’s give President Saltern what he wants and show Trelaine we mean business,” the first said, pointing to the map. “We can divert resources from here, our stations along the Inro Coast. If we give the order now, reinforcements will reach Meridian within thirty-six hours.”

  A warbling chime interrupted their conversation.

  “Pardon me, gentlemen,” Goodwin said as he stepped away from his advisers to address a conical brass intercom on his desk. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Goodwin, I have Captain Strauss reporting,” answered a tinny voice.

  “Yes,” he sighed and leafed through a stack of papers. The intercom emitted a series of clicks, and another distorted voice came through.

  “Strauss here, sir.”

  “You are calling to tell me that you have the Plumm girl in custody.”

  “Um, no, sir. We’re close, though. We have been reviewing the security footage. I just patched it through to you. It appears that she and the boy entered the Depot at approximately—”

  “You let them cross over?” Goodwin interrupted.

  “I…” Strauss trailed off. “Yes, sir. I take full responsibility.”

  The Chairman was silent. His crystal blue eyes glowed with the reflection of a nearby Computator screen as he watched the grainy images of Phoebe running from the tunnel and losing her shoe.

  “Sir? Sir, I am rectifying the situation as we speak,” Strauss said hastily. “They escaped on cargo truck number CR-0228. We have located the vehicle, and triangulated their potential location to a thirty-mile radius. My team is—”

  Goodwin hung up on Strauss. He clicked a button on the intercom and spoke into it once again. “Get me Associate Captain Elias.”

  The Chairman watched the footage again.

  “Elias here,” came a different voice.

  “Congratulations. You are our new Security Captain, First Class.”

  “Thank you, sir.”