by Sam Smith
Chapter Thirty-One
The mountains between the two seas were of yellow rock seamed with purple. Awen filmed them as the plane made several slow passes over the proposed route. The Spokesman was now piloting his plane.
“They look very substantial,” Tulla said of the mountains, uncertainty in her tone.
On this part of the planet it was now dusk. The mountain summits cast long indigo shadows. The valleys and crevices seemed deep and dark.
“Think it can be done?” Jorge asked the Spokesman.
“Oh it can be done,” the Spokesman assured him. “Question is — how long will it take?” He pointed ahead to a small silver plane sat atop a plateau, “She’ll let us know soon enough.”
The Spokesman contacted the woman in the plane below, asked if there was room enough for him to land near her. She gave him instructions to approach from the rear of her plane, to land directly behind it.
“I want you out of here within thirty five minutes though. First load should be here by then. Won’t be room enough on here for a gnat when that gets here.”
The Spokesman told his passengers to strap themselves in; then, concentrating over his screens, made his landing approach. Awen held one camera against the fuselage window, used another to film the plane’s occupants. By the time they touched down the Spokesman was shining with sweat and Tulla Yorke and Jorge Arbatov were rigid with tension. Awen, though, was beaming in anticipation of some exciting footage.
A short stubby woman was standing among an assortment of equipment under the triangular wing of her plane. Her grey hair was tied back and tucked into the collar of her tunic. She had thick round red forearms. After the introductions, and thanking her for acting so quickly, the Spokesman asked her how long it would take to cut through the rock.
“Depends,” she said, pointed to a console: wires led from it into the plane. “I’ve gone over the route, made a program. Some specifications need clarifying. This is the route?” she asked Tulla. Tulla studied the map under the screen grid.
“Looks like it. The shortest physical distance between the two seas?”
“It has to be straight?”
“Yes.”
The engineer pulled a face. Awen filmed her. The skin around her eyes was deeply wrinkled. She and Tulla went on to clarify other points of what the engineer called ‘the road’. The maximum permissible height above sea level, the gradient.
“Means cutting through, vertically, 80 kilometres of solid rock.”
“You have the equipment?” Jorge asked her.
“Use lumber cutters. Re-tune the torches. Only takes a couple of hours. Be going too deep to use sonics.”
“Will they be sufficient?”
“Got four promised. Any more and they’d get in each other’s way.”
“I meant,” Jorge said, “will those torches be powerful enough?”
Stood in that landscape, the surrounding yellow peaks reaching up into the darkening violet sky, it seemed impossible that they should be so casually discussing the removal of those towering mountains.
“I use ‘em for most land clearance. All that’s different here is scale. I’ve got a couple of tractors coming in first — level out a landing ground. You want me to make a separate apron for the police planes?”
“No,” the Spokesman said. “We don’t want them this close. They’ll be stationed at Mart’s and Toom’s farms.”
“How long will it take to build this road?” Jorge asked.
“Depends where I can put the rubble. And you say you don’t want the road wet?”
“Between the seas they avoid water,” Tulla said. “We thought we could put the rubble in the marshes on either side.”
“That’ll add time. Might offend a few of our amateur naturalists too. There’s colonies of two species of sail fin lizards in those marshes. Unique species.”
“Those marshes,” the Spokesman said, “are thousands of square kilometres. At the most, surely, we’ll use only a hundred square kilometres of each.”
“Maybe....... Seems a bit unnecessary ferrying it all that way though when we can push all the rubble off either end into the sea.”
“No,” Tulla said. “We don’t want to obstruct their approach to the road. We’ve got to get rid of it on land.”
It is a common misconception in Space that all farmers are anti-wilderness. Yet, while it might be true to say that many farmers grumble about any wilderness adjacent to their own farms, they are also fiercely concerned by wilderness infringements elsewhere on their planets. This is because planets do not have a stable life-support system. Farmers depend on clement weather. Each is therefore acutely aware of the planet’s overall ecosystem, is therefore fearful of the effect any changes within that system can have on the climate and ultimately upon their own crops.
The engineer was scratching her head,
“In that case we’ll start by levelling off the top of that mountain there,” she said. “It’s more or less in the middle. Then we’ll work roughly down to either end, make a working surface. The rubble from that we’ll use to block off any streams coming in this way, build up the sides. Then, level by level, we’ll go deeper, taking the rubble off via this mountain in the middle here. I’ll get rid of what I can in the ravines either side. Don’t want to block off too many streams though — no telling where the water might work through. I’ll use the rest of the rubble to build the roads to the marshes. I’ll have to work out the routes for those. Was counting on using the sea.”
“What about,” the Spokesman ventured, “using the sea to either side of the entrance to the road? That way they’d be forced to use it.”
Tulla looked out over the jagged landscape to where she knew the sea to be.
“No,” she said. “It’s a gamble enough as it is. We don’t use the sea. Too dangerous. Might offend them. And we want them to use the road of their own free will. The choice has to be theirs.”
“It would be quicker,” the engineer held Tulla’s eyes.
“No,” Tulla was firm.
“How long will it take?” Jorge asked.
“Depends...” the engineer said. She regretted once more not being able to use the sea, about having to work out a route to the marshes, “I don’t know... Working day and night, four... maybe five days.” Tulla and Jorge simultaneously exhaled.
The engineer lifted her head, listening.
“You’d better get out of here now,” she told the Spokesman. “You staying?” she asked Tulla. Tulla hadn’t thought beyond getting agreement to build the road. But here seemed the place to be. She nodded.
“I’ll get a cabin sent over,” the engineer reached for a phone on her console. Awen inserted himself into her line of vision.
“I’m staying too,” he told her.
While the engineer asked for two extra cabins to be sent over, Awen retrieved his black cases from the Spokesman’s plane. Tulla made arrangements with Jorge and the Spokesman to have her luggage brought to her.
“I’ll also get some technicians,” the Spokesman told her, “to come over and fix up some lines for you.”
“Better get a direct link with Tevor Cade,” Jorge said. “So Tulla can let him know when we start cutting and he can report any change in their transmissions.”
“You’d best be off!” the engineer shouted at them. Away across the bare rock of the mountains could be heard the thrumming of heavy engines. As the Spokesman’s plane whistled off darkness came. The engineer walked around the plateau switching on land-lights. The noise of the engines came thundering closer, the clatter bouncing up off the barren rocks. The engineer returned at a trot to Tulla and Awen.
“Stay by the plane!” she shouted at them. “I don’t want either of you falling off a mountain!”
The noise grew even louder. Both Awen and Tulla cowered from the sound, shielded their faces from a sudden blast of dry air. Tulla gasped for breath, the noise seeming to reverberate through her entire being.
Newly arrive
d on the planet Tulla was more accustomed to the flat acoustics of Space, to the shallow muted echoes, to — in her ship — the sibilant background of machine noise. This roar bludgeoned her. She could feel the sound waves on her skin, decided that if it became any louder she’d be shaken to pieces.
She was momentarily distracted by the sight of a massive tractor, its dusty underside lit by the landing lights, swinging in a cradle. Then she cringed again, the slashing rotor blades of the transport plane seeming to bite at her soft flesh with their every turn. Awen was gripping onto the unsteady console with one hand and filming with the other as slowly the tractor descended into the circle of lights. The driver had travelled in the tractor’s cab.
No sooner had the tractor wheels touched the rocks than the cradle was released and the plane went racing away. The tractor driver bounced up and down inside his cab. Tulla breathed again. The cab door opened. The engineer gestured to the driver to stay where he was, snatched a small box from a pile on the console and ran over to the tractor’s steps. It was a long climb to the cabin.
In the sudden quiet of the plateau Awen dropped to one knee to film the tractor. Along the whole of its front was one large shovel; behind the cab were the high sides of the barrow; beside the cab the hydraulic arms with their many angular fitments; and down the tractor’s sides were chains of digging buckets. Awen and Tulla listened numbly to the shouted conversation between the driver and the engineer, she gesticulating with her short vigorous arms. In parting the engineer slapped the driver on the knee and began climbing down the steps. When she was halfway down the driver slammed the cab door and started the engine. Tulla recoiled from this new aural onslaught.
The driver waited until the engineer reached the bottom of the steps and was clear of the tracks, then he began turning the tractor. When he was almost completely turned he switched on the tractor lights. The side of the mountain across from the plateau sprang into colour.
The three on the plateau watched the tractor rumble out of the circle of landing lights and grind down the hillside. The glow of its lights, reflected off the yellow rocks, rose above the rim of the plateau.
“How does he know where he’s going?” Awen asked the engineer, realised that he was shouting.
“I surveyed this area this afternoon,” she signified the pile of boxes. “Programmed all the gradients.” Her voice too was raised. She lowered it, “First light tomorrow I’ll map out the terrain where the marsh roads have to go. Here,” she reached into the plane, “you’d better have these.” She passed out two helmets with visors to Awen and Tulla, “Sorry. Forgot about your Space-sensitive ears.”
Awen and Tulla took the helmets. From somewhere to the South they could hear the sound of another plane approaching.
“What’s he doing down there?” with her helmet Tulla indicated the tractor in the valley below. She too was shouting.
“It’s all shale. He’s levelling it out to form a temporary base. This should be another tractor now. First cabins won’t be here for three hours or more yet. Technicians’ll be here by then setting up a beacon. Make yourself coffee.” She gestured to the plane.
“Do they know there’s Nautili here?” Awen asked her.
“Course they know. Why else d’you think they’d come? It’s our planet dammit.”
Her phone rang. The other plane was closer now, its rotors downbeating the air. Awen and Tulla donned their helmets. This time, although the blasting air pressed their tunics against their bodies, neither flinched from the sustained bellow of the hovering engines.
Again, as soon as the tractor landed, the engineer was scrambling up the steps. The tractor rumbled down the hillside. Awen removed his helmet,
“How many more coming tonight?”
“Three tractors tonight!” the engineer shouted. “Three more tomorrow. Nothing much for them to do tonight. It’s the cutters we want. But they take time to convert. That should be the first now.”
It wasn’t. Another tractor came swinging down into the circle of landing lights. Once more, although with less alacrity this time, the engineer clambered up to give the driver his instructions. The phone rang. Tulla lifted off her helmet, answered it.
Above the whine of the receding plane was added now the boom and roar of straining engines in the valley below, punctuated by the random crunch of metal on cracking stone, the clash of stone on ringing metal. The voice in the phone shouted meaningless words at Tulla. She stared about her dizzy with the clamour. And at that moment the newly arrived tractor started its engine.
The disturbed sleep pattern of Tulla’s last twenty five days, the ebb and flow of her anxieties, the emotional extremes, abetted now by this fresh onslaught on her eardrums had her reeling away from the console. Awen caught her by the elbow.
“Come into the plane,” she saw him say. Dazed she allowed herself to be led. The engineer motioned to Awen to close the plane door behind him, reached for the phone dangling from the console.
Tulla sat nauseous in the insulated quiet of the plane. Awen, watching her, made coffee, placed the cup in her hands.
“When you’ve drunk that I suggest you lay down.” He lowered a seat, plucked a cover from a rack and placed it around her shoulders, “If she needs you she’ll call you.” Bending down he peered out of the plane window at the navigation lights of another approaching transport plane. Even within the plane they could hear the engineer shouting into her phone, the surging increase of noise the new transport plane was bringing with it.
“The bigger the space,” Awen grimaced, “the more noise people make to fill it. Ever been to a stadium?” Tulla looked at him puzzled.
“The first cutter’s here,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
“They don’t need you,” Tulla’s speech was slurred.
“I need them,” Awen winked at her. “You lay down.”
The cutter was smaller than the tractors. Its lumber chains and hooks had been removed and it had been fitted with two extra torches — so the engineer informed Awen as the cutter trundled off to join the tractors. The engineer had taken longer instructing the cutter driver than she had the tractor drivers.
“Rock falls differently to trees,” she told Awen.
Awen had dispensed with the helmet: it removed him from the scene. The moving lights and the racket in the valley attracted him. And now the sudden glare of light from the cutter’s torches, followed by the detonation of falling rock, was too exciting to be ignored. The ground trembling beneath his feet he picked his way over to the edge of the plateau.
The air in these barren mountains was hotter and drier than it had ever been on the humid estuary. Even though it was now the dew-gathering dusk, even though it was two hours now since sunset, the rocks were still warm and his every breath dried his mouth. While the dust raised by the tractors coated his teeth.
The tractors had already levelled the loose stones on the floor of the valley, were now shovelling and digging into the shale at the sides. When the shovels were full to overflowing they were upended and emptied into the capacious barrows at the rear. When the barrow was full the tractors reversed into the middle of the valley and spread the shale there. Two tractors were working this side of the valley, one on the other.
The cutter was at the head of the valley, was working at an apparently slower pace than the tractors. It seemed to stand off and measure before it cut. A moment of suspense, then its four torches jabbed into the yellow rock, the rock glowing red for a moment, before the cliff above it collapsed in a cloud of dust, an occasional large boulder bouncing off a wheel of the cutter. The cutter then reversed, drove slowly up over the rubble it had created, stopped, measured, manoeuvred, and cut again.
Awen broke off filming the antics of the cutter to turn his camera on the arrival of another tractor. He filmed it from this novel angle, the plane thrashing above it, the release of the cradle, the settling of the tractor, the engineer stumping over to it.... Awen, though, had enough footage of equipment being delive
red; the cutter below was more dramatic.
As the latest tractor to arrive lumbered down to the valley the engineer joined Awen on the plateau’s sloping edge. She studied the work that had been done, spoke into a handphone. The roar of the work below dribbled to a muttering undertone. The engineer spoke to each of the tractor drivers by name, telling them what she wanted of them. Awen heard them commenting to one another. With a joke the engineer replaced her phone, and immediately the engines shouted back into life and the scene below changed.
While the cutter reversed out of the channel of its own making the four tractors emptied their barrows and queued up one behind the other. As soon as the cutter was clear of the entrance the first of the tractors went into the channel scooping up the rubble there. When its barrow was full it reversed out and spread the rubble over the floor of the valley while the next tractor was filling its barrow. The last tractor got hardly a shovelful. The cutter returned into the channel. The four tractors reverted to shovelling and spreading shale.
Uncertain of what he had seen Awen asked the engineer if the floor of the channel was smooth.
“Like glass,” she said, explained briefly the effect of the torches on this particular kind of rock, the characteristics of the resultant magma. Abruptly she returned to the task in hand,
“Next time,” she pointed with her handphone, “the tractors’ll push the rubble through into the far valley. That’ll give the cutter a road across to the next hill. By then we’ll have finished here.”
The air was now thick with dust, rising in billows up through the moving headlights towards the wavering stars. Rock cracked and rattling cascaded. The sharp light of the torches pierced the dust. In prolonged blasts the rock became visibly molten, bright red sputtering rivers splashing and dribbling from the points of the torch beams until suddenly obscured by the collapse of the undercut cliff.
A plane arrived with six technicians and a cameraman. All joined Awen on the plateau’s edge. The cameraman greeted Awen as an old friend: he had been at the Senate. Awen brought him up to date on what was happening, asked him where on the planet he could find photographic accessories. The cameraman gave him the phone number of a friend.
