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After the Llordian mess, I was more than a little apprehensive about walking
alone in places where my disposal would be easy from a distance. So I stayed
with the crowds near what seemed to be an open market. The air was like an
oven. Only the lack of humidity made either the temperature or the odor
bearable.
And I had thought the damps were rank!
"Hslop?" A ragged child grinned at me. His face was almost squarish, and his
hair was black and tight-curled around an olive face.
Since I didn't know what the urchin meant, I scowled.
"Hslop? Hslop?"
I just turned away, ducking between two substantial matrons, and moving toward
a line of stands, each draped in purple.
Despite my hopes, I was still staggered. The first stand had a wide range of
steel knives, real steel, laid out. I nodded and passed by.
"Hssilinglop?" asked the woman tending the stand.
I ignored her, wishing I could understand the language.
The second stand was more interesting, with an assortment of hand tools. I
watched as the owner and a thin young man bargained over a hatchet. Finally, I
drifted on, noting that the urchins still trailed me, at a distance.
A quarter of the way around the market, past the food stands and the fabrics,
I found the power tools. Some of them looked like they ran on etheline, or
some liquid hydrocarbon. One or two were battery-powered, but they were
covered with a film of dust. Several were not familiar, but one looked like a
tree saw. I could make out another saw with an assortment of circular blades
that looked as though it would cut finished timbers and boards, and a power
drill.
"Hssilinglop?" asked the stall tender.
I pointed to the circular saw, thinking that we could try it out. If it
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worked, someone like Gerloc could get some more.
"Res thorp."
Not knowing what "res thorp" meant, I pawed around in the purse that I had
liberated, and offered a small silver coin far less than an earlier customer
had paid for the tree saw.
He held up four fingers, pointing to the silver coin. I didn't have four of
them, but I did have a gold piece of some sort. So I held up two fingers. He
gave me a sad face. I shrugged.
Finally, he held up three.
I winced, thinking about having to show the gold piece.
He shrugged and gave me two and a crooked finger. I guessed that was a half.
I scrabbled through the purse and came up with two silvers, and a quarter of a
silver, it looked like, plus some smaller and lighter coins. I put them all on
the wooden counter.
He shrugged, trying not to smile too much, and took them. I think the smaller
coins added up to more than half a silver because he dragged out a carrying
case and threw in all the blades, plus a wrench and a small can of lubricant.
I walked to the nearest alley and disappeared undertime.
Someone else could certainly handle Sertis, even if I had to write a manual.
That would provide goodies for both the divers and Odin Thor.
LI.
Collecting weapons is hard work for a timediver. A knife I could carry, but it
would be useless against a Frost Giant.
A projectile rifle presented the same problem.
Nuclear weapons worked effectively on the Frost Giants. But nukes also
destroyed large chunks of real estate and possessed too much mass for a
timediver to carry. From what Wryan had determined, particle beams also would
work, but not lasers. The difference was academic, since any particle beam
ever built by Westron with enough force to fragment a Frost Giant wouldn't fit
on a steamer, much less on a timediver's back.
Only high-tech worlds can build small and destructive weapons, and
high-technology cultures tend to be shortlived because they are complex and
require a continuing high level of education. There are always exceptions, but
the exceptions presented another problem.
Not that either kind of high-tech system was hard for me to find because their
energy use beat through the undertime like a flare.
High-tech meant unstable and short-lived or stable and lasting. The first of
the longline high-tech cultures I found was Muria. That's what I called it,
but who knows what they called themselves?
Tall and slender people, bipedal, with brains and eyes in their heads, finely
scaled green skin and white silk hair.
Scales and hair don't go together? On Muria they did.
Three sexes, or maybe four, and they all looked alike. The Murians had created
a paradise. Golden-fronded trees lined paths that were permanent, yet
cushioned every footstep and wound between close-linked clusters of hive
houses.
Each hive house group was separated from other groups by a varying mixture of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]