one of the eastern underlakes, every incision smooth
and precise; the sighting, on the night before last, of a
large, dark bird swooping low over the dense heart-
lands of the Great Central Uplands before lazily
flapping away eastwards.
Catriona brought the spiderlike trictra to a halt on a
natural shelf of interwoven branches and tied it up
within easy reach of edible foliage. Then it was a brief
downward climb to the small platform where the
vodrun waited. She thought about those singular reports
and what they might mean if yesterday's dream-vision
was right, the possibility that offworld intruders were
lurking somewhere, watching, planning . . .
In her left hand she held a plastic tub on a cloth
strap - inside were some biscuits, nuts, a small flask of
turnsprig tea and a luring candle fixed in a seashell
holder. Then with her right hand she took out her comm
and called Greg, imagining the signal flying up to one of
Nivyesta's comsats and then tight-beamed to another
orbiting Darien, then down to the local hub node. After
several moments a breathless Greg answered.
'Yes? . . . hello? . . .'
'Greg, it's Cat,' she said.
'Well, hi... did you get my message? Did you ... did
you go through with it?'
'I did, and I didn't.'
At the other end Greg chuckled quietly. 'I detect a
wee note of indecision there.'
'Not so much indecision as blind terror,' and she gave
him a terse summary of that unnerving vision, including
her encounters with the younger Greg and Julia, which
also entailed a brief explanation of Julia's role in her past.
'Uh huh, so you were dreaming about me, eh? I'm
honoured.'
She smiled and shook her head. 'No, Greg, there
wasn't any dreaming involved. I'm certain, now, that I
was talking to Segrana and that she was using images
from my memory . . .'
'I must admit that sounds pretty wild,' Greg said.
'But I had my own share of surprises last night...'
She listened as he told of the huge chamber and the
pattern-inscribed floor that Chel and Listener Weynl
called a well, and how the Uvovo had awakened some
kind of automatic defence (which had apparently obliter-
ated his boots during the first expedition).
'Your boots?' she said, laughing.
'Aye, took exception to certain aspects of their man-
ufacture, it seems.'
'I think I'd rather be down there than up here,' she
said.
'Ach, we are where we are.'
'Homespun philosophy, Mr Cameron?'
'Straight from my mother's knee to your ears, Miss
Macreadie. So - are you going to try again?'
How did he guess} she wondered.
'I think ... I think that I have to,' she said. 'It's the
precautionary principle - if Segrana has been talking to
me and if there are hostile intruders around, then it's
wise to be prepared. In the vision she said I could help -
now I'm going to find out how.' She laughed drily. 'And
if it turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'll be on the next
shuttle back to Darien to join the resistance!'
'It's not quite got to that stage,' Greg said. 'In fact,
Sundstrom has somehow got the Brolturans to drasti-
cally reduce their troop presence at the Hegemony
embassy, and persuaded the Earth people to send some
marines down from the Heracles'
'Some good news at last - maybe I'll not have to
leave Nivyesta after all.'
'I don't know - we could need a Uvovo expert on call
when we get round to studying those underground
chambers!'
Their shared laughter was easy and warm, but brief.
'Sorry, Greg, but I'll have to go and get this over with
while I'm still convinced.'
'Aye - I have to go, too. Promise me you'll call the
moment it's done.'
'I will, I promise. Goodbye, Greg.'
'Bye, Cat.'
Call ended, she tucked the comm away, breathed in
deep . . . then swung round, tugged open the vodrun's
circular door and ducked inside. Moments later, the
candle was lit, the tea was poured and the door wedged
shut with a wad of leaves.
Right, she thought as she sipped the hot, herby infu-
sion. I'm here so let's get to work.
40
CHEL
The zeplin pilot was a Finn named Varstrand who kept
up a stream of gossip and rumour as they flew out from
Hammergard, heading southwest across Loch Morwen
towards the Savrenki Mountains, a southerly offshoot
of the Kentigerns. Varstrand's craft, the Har, was essen-
tially a true dirigible with a gondola slung beneath a
gas-filled envelope shaped like a fat cigar. The gondola's
twin-prop motors could run on either alcofuel or battery
power and solar cells glued to the outer skin provided
an emergency backup.
Chel was seated behind Varstrand, in a wire-and-
wicker couch that seemed as rickety as the construction
of the creaky gondola. He was wrapped up well against
the chill and the icy draughts that slipped through
cracks in the hide-and-canvas hull. The noise of the
engines added to the discomfort but this was his first
visit to some of the Burrows to which he had dispatched
the teams of Artificer Uvovo over a day ago. He would
sit it out - there were worse things to be endured.
A two-hour journey under grey skies took the rest of
the morning and, following the map scribed by Uvovo
scouts, brought the Har to a bushy ridge in the foothills
of the Savrenkis. Chel clambered down a rope ladder to
be greeted by Tremenogir, the Scholar in charge. Then
together they grabbed the mooring lines let down by
Varstrand and tied the zeplin between a couple of sturd)
trees.
'How long you be, Listener, sir?' Varstrand yelled
down.
'Not very long, Pilot Varstrand,' Chel called back.
'Maybe half an hour.'
'Good! - I have book ...'
Chel grinned and waved then looked round at
Tremenogir.
'Let us begin, Scholar Trem.'
'It is a great relief to have you here, Listener,' the
Scholar said as he led the way down the other side of the
ridge then up into a steep-sided gully. 'Our findings are
astonishing.'
Chel thought about correcting the Scholar's use of
the Listener title, but since he was not entirely sure of
the difference himself he decided to leave it until he was.
Rocks, bushes and age-twisted trees cluttered the
gully, carved from the hillside over time by a stream
which splashed and gurgled down a notched rock face
at the gully's end, where four immense boulders were
piled to one side. A stair of flat rocks led up onto the
second-highest boulder and a dark gap where the third
boulder leaned against the gully's undergrowth-
swathed slope. Chel followed Scholar Trem into the
gap, which became a low, nar
row, curving passage,
clearly hewn out of the tilted boulder.
The passage widened, wood-shored sides showing
many signs of recent repair. Ulby roots and tethered
ineka beetles shed enough blue-green light to see by as
they continued further into the hillside.
'So, Scholar Trem, your findings,' Chel said as they
walked. 'What makes them so astonishing?'
'The expected followed by the unexpected, Listener,'
said Trem as they entered a small, shadowy room where
three young Uvovo sat at a table, scribbling by the light
of a candle. Hastily, they stood and bowed.
'My assistants, Jont, Flir and Kamm - it was Jont
who literally stumbled upon our discovery. But first, the
roothouse.'
The Scholar showed Chel through a doorway leading
off to the right and down stone steps into cold depths.
The carapace glows of a few ineka beetles speckled the
inky darkness. Soon they came to a low, arched entrance
where Trem paused, took a shell candle from a waist
pouch, lit it with a Human match then continued. The
air was dry and musty, like the faint emanation of an
ancient decay. The passage was about a dozen paces
long and showed many holes and gouges where plant
growth had eaten into the stone, most of which had
been cleared away except for one thick, rough root
which had burst through then snaked along to the other
end. And this was the very least of it, as Chel saw when
they emerged into the roothouse and Trem raised his
lamp.
Twisting, coiling and knotted, rootworks filled the
high, circular chamber before them. Through the tangle
Chel saw vague suggestions of carved images on the
walls, all buried beneath encrusting filth, except for a
massive, fallen shard of rock which stood at an angle
across the chamber, webbed with roots. He could also
tell that several other passages led outwards from the
round room - ten or twelve all told.
'I had Flir and Kamm clear away some of the roots
from the bottom,' Trem said. 'There's enough room to
crawl over to one of the laving galleries.' He crouched
down and pointed. 'That one.'
As they crept under the mass of entwined roots, occa-
sionally snagging clothing on twiggy protrusions, Chel
went over in his thoughts what Listener Weynl told him
about the Burrows. They had been built well before the
War of the Long Night as a means of bringing greater
focus to the powers of Segrana-that-was, the Segrana
whose embrace had once enclosed both planet and
moon. Each Burrow, Weynl said, was the meeting point
of hundreds of roots, thousands in the larger ones. With
the use of nutrients and other balms provided by some
of Segrana's most specialised plants, the growth and
extent of the forests and jungles could be managed; like-
wise, Segrana's harsher powers could be channelled and
intensified and, if necessary, put forth in anger. This was
the Artificer Uvovo's urgent task, to find out if anything
useful remained, at least in those Burrows in the imme-
diate vicinity.
A few paces into the laving gallery they were able to
stand up and survey what it had come to. From the grey,
dust-choked remnants of ducts and wall channels, Chel
could see how the roots entered from above and curved
down through one or more stone basins, where they
were fed specific fluids. Now a snarl of uncontrolled
roots filled most of the gallery, grey roots, grey dust,
grey webs.
'This has been abandoned for a very long time,' Chel
said. 'And it provokes in me a certain sadness rather
than astonishment.'
Trem nodded. 'As it did in me until Jont found some-
thing more interesting in another gallery.'
A few moments later, in the root-framed entrance to
that gallery, they were standing over a rectangular hole
in the floor.
'While clearing away dead roots and dried-out debris,
Jont tripped and fell to his knees right here.' Trem squat-
ted down beside the opening. 'Some rotted framework
gave way beneath and he would have plunged into dark-
ness had he not caught the edge and climbed back out.'
A narrow set of steps was visible by the meagre light
of Trem's shell lamp as he led the way down. Chel
immediately smelled something different from the root-
house - a hint of damp, a woody odour, then the
pungency of mould. Something was growing down here.
The steps ended in a small alcove just off a corridor,
but the way was blocked by a large pipe. No, not a
pipe, he realised as Trem went over to it with his lamp,
but a huge root. Like the Scholar he ducked under and
saw a high-walled passageway not unlike the galleries
above, except that here the roots were big and alive,
some bulbous, some bifurcated, some sprouting pale
rootlets that spread across the walls, over faint,
labyrinthine traces of previous rootlet webs. And there
in the quiet, underground dimness he heard the sound of
droplets falling from high onto roots or plinking into
small puddles. He was tempted to tug aside the blind-
fold and open some of his new eyes to all this, but his
perceptions were still unpredictable so perhaps another
time would be better.
'Yes, Scholar Trem,' he said. 'Astonishing is the right
word.'
'Thousands of years,' Trem said. 'Thousands of win-
ters and summers and still it functions - if we'd brought
more lamps you would see the fenfinil roots where the)
come down through the ceiling then push through the
cutting collars that feed the sap down to the spouts -
true, there is mould and moss everywhere, but never so
much that they staunch the flow.'
'Well, Scholar Trem, if the roothouse is above us,
then what is this place?'
Trem smiled and gave a little shake of the head. 'I can
only make a tentative guess, Listener, that it may be
some kind of master regulating system which we've
stumbled upon by chance. But if the other Burrows also
have something similar, we may have to think again on
its purpose.'
If only I had known of this before leaving
Hammergard, Chel thought. But Weynl and the other
Listeners had banned the use of radios to ensure that
positions were not given away by signals easily detected
by those in orbit above. Thus all communication was by
courier, either on foot or by dirigible. Which was what
Chel would have to do now, take Varstrand's zeplin back
to Waonwir rather than continue on to the next Burrow.
The other Listeners would have to be informed and then
enough messengers would have to be dispatched to dis-
cover if there were similar galleries elsewhere.
He explained this to Trem, who nodded.
'A sensible approach, Listener,' he said. 'Would you
like any or all of my assistants to return with you and
give what he
lp they can?'
'No, Scholar Trem - I need you all working hard
here. If your Burrow turns out to be the only one with a
gallery like this, we will need to know all there is to
know as quickly as possible.'
'I shall get them back to work at once,' Trem said.
'Good. Now I shall return to my zeplin and be off
back to Waonwir. We must use the Humans' flying craft
for swift travel while we are still able to do so.'
'Are the Dreamless close to assuming control?' Trem
said as he led the way back up to the roothouse.
'Not yet,' Chel said. 'An emissary from the
Brolturans was assassinated soon after landing at Port
Gagarin, which the Brolturans then used as an excuse to
start sending troops down from their huge warship, sup-
posedly as protection for the Hegemony envoy. Yet the
Humans' president somehow persuaded them to with-
draw while obtaining Human soldiers from the Earth
ship.'
'This Human Sundstrom has great cunning,' Trem
said, helping Chel up out of the floor opening. 'I have
heard some Listeners speak highly of him.'
'Cunning may not be enough,' Chel said. 'I have been
told that the Dreamless are as numerous amongst the
Brolturans as they are across the Hegemony. I fear that
it is only a matter of "when" not "if" they reach out to
take what they want.'
'I fear you may be right,' Trem said. 'Ah, now we
have made several sketches of the roothouse and the
galleries since our arrival. Would you care to take them
with you?'
'That would be most useful, Scholar, my thanks.' By
now they had reached the narrow passage leading to
the exit. 'Shall I send you more paper with the next
courier?'
'That and more blankets,' Trem said, as they emerged
blinking into the daylight. 'There are centuries of cold in
those underground stones and it feels as if I am getting
to know it all too well!'
41
THEO
Grimy, sweaty, streaked with dirt and grease, weary and
aching, Theo, Rory and the Firmanov brothers staggered
into the Bell and Cat, an old-fashioned dockside pub.
Outside, sunlight gleamed on cobbles wetted by a brief
shower; inside, it was as murky and smoky as it would be
by the evening, though perhaps not quite as crowded. As
Alexei Firmanov went to buy the first round, the others
Michael Cobley - Humanity's Fire book 1 Page 37
