Chapter 3
Joen awoke feeling refreshed. He felt better each day, and guessed it would probably only be a couple more before his body was fully recovered. So much in his life and way of thinking had changed over the last weeks, he found he had to pause ever longer each morning to take stock of where he was now.
Overwhelmed at first, Joen was starting to come to grips with the flood of new information that greeted him with each new day. The more he learned, the more attractive he found the concept that the world around him was governed by the constant and predictable rules of science, and not by the capricious whims of fickle gods and goddesses.
Then Joen remembered the task he'd agreed to the night before, and felt a shiver of uncertainty rattle his comfortable thoughts. It was easy to think revolutionary thoughts, but it was an altogether different matter when his life might depend on their validity.
As he lay there getting ready to sit up and admit he was awake, Joen considered how different life with Hubert was from the life he'd lived before. He remembered how in the forest he'd had to be instantly awake and aware at the slightest sound. Lying in bed thinking wouldn't have been possible. He felt safer and more relaxed now than at any time in his life before meeting Hubert.
And it actually was safer here. Joen remembered Hubert saying that most of his human companions had stayed for more than twenty years. Few of the boys who shared his childhood would survive into their twenties, and almost none would see forty. Thinking about Hubert's previous record of keeping his human companions alive helped firm up Joen's resolve to overcome his apprehensions, and do his best in the tasks Hubert had given him. If Hubert wanted him to buy a horse and scout out a path to the wreck, he was game to try.
Joen sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Now that the pall of indecision had been removed, he felt a growing excitement about the coming trip. As he dressed and ate breakfast, his imagination began to conjure up fantasies of high adventure along the trail.
Joen left his room. Failing to find Hubert or the noise of his activities in the nearby hallways, he addressed the intercom panel in the wall by his door. Pressing the general call button, he announced, "Hubert, I'm awake and ready to begin. Where are you?"
Hubert's voice replied from the speaker grill, "I'm in the garage. Go through the large double doors in the wall between the foundry and machine shop. Follow the tunnel past the door to the coal bins, and on down the ramp. You'll be able to see where I am from the bottom of the ramp."
Joen walked around the arc of the main gallery and through the double doors. He found himself in a rough-cut side tunnel with a flat gravel floor. The tunnel ran level until it passed another large pair of double doors in the wall on the left side. Continuing on, the tunnel began to slope downward and curve in a gentle arc to the right. After he'd followed the arc around 90 degrees, the the tunnel straightened out considerably, but continued to curve to the right.
The mouth of the tunnel opened onto a large chamber with a high ceiling supported by thick pillars spaced in regular rows. Covering the floor, stacked up in the corners, and leaning against the walls and pillars was a riotous confusion of machinery.
Machines of all different sizes and conditions were haphazardly mixed, with huge machines buried under piles of small machines and parts of larger ones. Some of the equipment looked to be in almost new condition, while other pieces were obviously worn out or broken.
Movement caught Joen's eye, drawing his attention to Hubert waving at him from the far side of the chamber. After a quick search he located a narrow path leading in the right direction, and set off across the garage. He found Hubert sitting on a mobile crane moving accumulated objects from around a large machine.
"Now you've discovered the secret of how I've managed to keep the upper galleries so neat and orderly," laughed Hubert as Joen walked up. "This is where all the clutter ends up."
"Does any of this stuff work?" questioned Joen as he poked experimentally at the control panel of a nearby machine.
"Pushing buttons around here is a risky thing to do," cautioned Hubert. "Quite a number of these machines were working when they were brought here, and I would imagine that some of them probably still have charge left in their powerpacks."
At Hubert's warning Joen restrained his urge to experiment, and instead asked, "Where did all this stuff come from, and why is it here?"
"Well, at the bottom is the mining equipment I used to build this place. After the tunnels were bored and the space for the shops excavated, I parked the machines down here in case I ever needed them again. Some of the other piles are spare parts for shop equipment upstairs. The rest is broken equipment I saved in case I needed to recycle the component materials. Once you throw something away, you can't replace it any more. There's no industrial base extracting and refining new materials these days, so everything has to be saved."
"So what are you doing now?"
"Anything that doesn't move for a while down here gets buried. I've already uncovered the tractor and trailer, and I'm now clearing a path to the outside door. You can take a look at the heavy equipment while I finish this. It's right over there." Hubert gestured back along the path he'd just cleared, and then returned his attention to the crane controls.
A short distance up the path Joen came to a shoulder-high curved metal barrier. As he stepped around the barrier, he saw that it was attached to a veritable mountain of machinery. When he'd gained sufficient perspective, he realized that the metal barrier was actually a bulldozer blade attached to what must be the tractor. Attached to the rear of the tractor was a large trailer. The tractor seemed a curious device at first glance. It had wheels, with which he was already familiar. But the wheels were encircled by a chain of metal links. Attached to the links were flat metal plates with raised ridges. The trailer also had tracks on its four corners where Joen expected to see simple wheels.
It took a couple of minutes for Joen to figure out how the tracks worked. After a few more minutes of thinking, he started to see how the increased surface area, and raised ridges of the plate and chain arrangement, would distribute the massive weight of the machine and provide plenty of traction on soft ground. By distributing its massive tonnage over the large surface area provided by the tracks, the tractor's effective ground pressure would be even less than the weight of a light cart concentrated into the relatively small footprint of a simple wheel.
Joen remembered how the narrow wheels of his tribe's wagons sank into the soft ground every spring. The tractor and its trailer wouldn't suffer this limitation. It would be able to cross ground that was too soft for even the most lightly loaded of his tribe's wagons. He now understood why Hubert hadn't been concerned about the weight of the booster engine.
Climbing up on the tractor, Joen found a thickly padded seat at the rear surrounded by an assortment of levers - obviously the operator's station. Looking forward from the commanding heights of the operator's station, Joen's view was dominated by a collection of grimy black objects. Closest to him were a pair of vertical cylinders with a lot of plumbing attached to them. Farther forward was a circular tank with an exhaust stack extending upward from its center. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that at least half of the trailer was taken up with various tanks and bins. Hubert finished his task and walked up to the tractor as Joen finished his initial cursory survey.
"What do you think of it? asked Hubert.
"It's certainly big enough, and it looks impressively complicated. But what is it, and how does it work?"
"The tractor started out as a large bulldozer, but the Antitechs ruined the engine. It would have taken major repairs to fix the existing power plant, and I'd have had to build a chemical cracking plant to brew up fuel for it once it was running. So I converted it to coal. I removed the old engine and replaced it with a double-acting piston-valve steam engine. Mounted in front of the steam engine is a fluidized bed burner with a flash steam generator.
"The fluidized bed works by injecting a mix of coal and limestone dust into the bottom of the round chamber. The dust floats on a bed of high pressure air. As it boils up and around the tubes of the flash steam generator, it burns and transfers the resulting heat into the water in the tubes, flashing it into steam. The coal dust has burned completely by the time it reaches the top of the bed and is removed. The limestone dust and careful control of the temperature of the bed reduces the visible exhaust smoke to next to nothing. The exhaust steam from the engine returns to the trailer where it's condensed and reused. The spent coal and limestone dust are also returned to the trailer for storage.
"It's a lot more complicated than it needs to be just to provide motive power. A simpler system would produce a plume of smoke and steam that would advertise my activities. The trailer was built on the recycled running gear from two smaller tractors. It can be detached from the lead tractor for short periods - such as when maneuverability is needed to remove an obstacle."
Sitting in the operator's seat and looking out over the expanse of machinery, Joen was impressed to think that the whole mountainous pile could move as one across the ground. It seemed even more incredible that one man could control the monster. He placed his hands on the controls and imagined what it must be like to be the master of such a machine. In his imagination, he thundered across the landscape, pushing huge trees aside as he crashed through the forest, terrifying the natives as he crossed the plains.
Perched on top of the machine, Joen noticed that the path Hubert had cleared wasn't much wider than the tractor. It amazed him to think that Hubert had enough control over such a giant machine to be able to thread it down such a narrow path. That thought brought him out of his reverie, and he realized that Hubert was still talking.
"...it could operate on very steep inclines with its former diesel engine. The fluidized bed is sensitive to tilt so the machine must now be kept as flat as possible. Not that it would blow up or anything if you got it on a slope - it just loses a lot of efficiency. Any questions?"
"How much noise does it make?"
"Quite a lot with the old diesel engine. The steam engine is pretty quiet. There is a certain amount of mechanical noise - mainly the clanking of the tracks - but it's not excessive if the tracks are kept well greased."
Well, scratch one fantasy, thought Joen. "How do you make it go?"
"By 'go', I assume you don't mean the extensive lubrication sequence necessary before starting up, or the lengthy cold start procedure for the burner. Am I right?"
When Joen nodded affirmatively, sure that whatever Hubert had said applied, Hubert continued, "OK, assuming you have steam pressure showing on the gauge, and the engine is warmed up and running, the first thing you need to do is to get your blade up off the ground. The large lever over your right shoulder raises and lowers the dozer blade up front. You pull it toward you to lift the blade. The two small levers by your right knee are the blade controls for tilt and angle, but you needn't worry about them now - you only want the blade out of the way.
"Next you pull the small lever on the dashboard back about half way and leave it there. That lever controls the engine speed. Once you set it, the governor will take care of it from there. This tractor is an early model with mechanical steering clutches and brakes. The newer models with all hydraulic controls would have been nicer, but I had to make do with what was at hand. Besides, this thing is built so solid it won't ever wear out. You have three large levers in front of you. The center two are the steering clutches. The one on the far left is the main clutch. Push the main clutch all the way forward. Now do you see the small lever between your legs with the numbered slots? Well, each of those slots is a different gear. The tractor has five speeds forward and one in reverse. You want to go pretty slow over rough ground, so put the lever in the slot marked 2.
"Now you're ready to move. Pull the main clutch lever back slowly, and the tractor will be moving straight ahead. If you want to turn, pull back the steering clutch lever on the side you want to turn towards. These levers cause the steering clutches to slip, slowing the track on the inside of the turn. The more you pull the lever back, the tighter the tractor will turn. If you've got the lever all the way back and the tractor still isn't turning tight enough, that's when you use the two brake pedals by your feet. Once again, when you step on the right one, you go right and vice versa. Last but not least, you stop by pushing the main clutch lever forward, disengaging the main clutch. It's all very simple and straight forward when you get the hang of it. Ready to give it a try?"
Joen looked around again at the size of the tractor and its attached trailer. Then he looked at the narrow path Hubert had cleared through the piles of machinery, and replied, "Think I'll wait and watch you drive it for a bit first."
Hubert laughed, "Thought you'd say something like that. It has that effect on everyone the first couple of times. Don't let it intimidate you though, it really is easy to control."
As Joen climbed down from the operator's seat, Hubert continued, "The monster may look huge to you now, but it shrinks a little when it's out in the open. Believe it or not, before the Time of Troubles, machines much larger than this one were commonplace.
"I think next I should show you the exit tunnel you'll be using to leave the mountain. Then we can go to the trade-goods storage room, and pick out the items you'll barter for a horse. You wouldn't happen to know the going price on a good horse nowadays, would you?"
Joen looked down at the ground as he admitted, "Hubert, I should have told you earlier. Not only don't I know the going price on a good horse, but I don't have any idea of how to go about bargaining for one. Only warriors could go on horse trading trips."
"Do you know what to look for in a horse? For that matter, can you ride?"
"Oh yes, I've lived around horses all my life. Children in my tribe learn to ride almost before they can walk."
"Well, knowing what to look for in a good horse is the most important thing. As for the wheeling and dealing, you'll probably get taken to the cleaners... no, you won't understand that one ...how about it'll be like highway robbery... no, that one's out of date too. Well, let's just say you'll probably pay too much. I remember what we had to pay for the last horse, and we can go from there. The only real danger is that you may arouse the suspicions of the horse traders if you're willing to pay too high a price. Follow me and I'll show you the exit tunnel."
Hubert began to lead the way, but progress soon slowed to a crawl. As he walked along, Hubert would spot machines or devices in the confusion, and stop to dig them out. He would then point out the unique features of the construction of the device, or launch into lengthy stories about using or abusing the various objects he came across. No sooner had he finished one tale of high adventure or intrigue, when he would happen upon the inspiration for a comedy of errors, or a dark tragedy. Some of the stories were so outrageous that Joen found them very hard to accept at face value. By the time they reached the end of the path, Joen was convinced that Hubert was making up some of the stories. True or not, he'd enjoyed the tales, and was sorry to reach the end.
The exit tunnel was small - just large enough for a man on foot leading a horse. At its end was a thick steel door with substantial bolts holding it closed. Joen watched as Hubert showed him how to open the door, and how to set the lock so he could get back in when he returned. Joen was impressed by the camouflage on the outside of the door. It seemed to melt into the surrounding rock as it closed. It occurred to him that he'd better carefully study the area around the door so that he'd be able to find it again.
Returning back down the tunnel to the garage, Hubert led the way to a small room. Inside the room were shelves and bins full of knives, hatchets, bows and arrows, pots and pans, blankets, and assorted other items. While the shapes of the objects were familiar, the quality of the merchandise was not. The knives and hatchets had a mirror-like finish, and their razor-fine edges looked sharp enough to slice through flesh at the merest touch. Joen shivered at the thought.
The bows had a dark, slender, almost delicate look. The arrows were painfully straight with heads sharpened until they tapered to transparency. As he experimentally drew back one of the bows, Joen was surprised by the action of the slender limbs. The force required was heavy at first, but got progressively easier as he approached full draw. He found he could hold the bow at full draw with amazingly little effort, making it easy to hold steady for careful aim. It was a far cry from the type of bow he'd used all his life. The wood of his old bow had to be treated just right or it would break, the hand twisted string would fray, and the effort required to hold full draw made precise aiming difficult.
Looking at the piles of treasure, Joen questioned, "Are you sure you want to trade these things away? I mean, there's some really nice stuff here."
"You're looking at the merchandise through your old values," replied Hubert. "Of course we want to trade this stuff - as long as we get fair value for it. We can easily enough manufacture more if we use up all that's here. With the workshops here, making knives and arrowheads isn't the monumental achievement it is for the metal workers of your old tribe.
"Let me see... If I remember correctly the price of the last horse was 2 bows and twenty arrows. If you take another bow and ten arrows for yourself, and three knives - one for you and two to trade - you should be covered in case the price has gone up.
"As for the actual trading, from what I understand, it should go something like this: The bargaining starts in earnest after you've settled on a particular horse. You'll initially offer much less than you expect to pay. The seller will counter by demanding a price much higher than the animal is worth. If you offer say, just one bow and ten arrows, the seller will demand everything you have - including the shirt off your back. You will then, after much soul searching and scratching of your head, raise your offer a little - say fifteen arrows. The seller will appear to be in mortal anguish, and will probably claim you're cold heartedly stealing the food from the mouths of his children, but he'll lower his price a little.
"The process will go on like this, with you claiming he wants everything you have in the world, and he claiming that you're forcing him so far below his cost that he'll either have to sell his first born or go out of business. Eventually, you will both reach a mutually agreeable figure, and the two of you will shake on it.
"As soon as the deal is sealed, the anguish and misery will suddenly disappear from the seller's face. There will be food and drink, and probably a little music, to celebrate making the deal. The rest of the night will be spent sitting around the campfire swapping lies about great deals and swindles in the past. Approached properly, buying a horse isn't a disagreeable task at all - especially when you're spending someone else's money! Don't worry about it, Joen. I'm sure you'll make out all right."
"If I'm to spend the night in the horse trader's camp, what's to stop them from waiting until I'm asleep and then robbing me?"
"Now there we can give you a bit of an advantage," replied Hubert with a fair amount of pride. "For protection, besides your own capabilities, you'll have three insurance policies. First of all, woven into your clothing will be a layer of fine metal links called chain mail. The links are so small that you can't tell they're there by feel, and are made out of a material that not even one of our trade arrows can penetrate. There is an assortment of this type of clothing left from my previous companions. I'll alter some to fit you while you're asleep tonight.
"Your second insurance policy will be a small proximity alarm. The device senses any change in the mass inside its field. You turn the device on when you go to sleep. It will generate an ear splitting alarm if someone approaches within two meters. You'll have to make up some sort of cover for the proximity field. Maybe you could tell the horse traders that you have a magic spell that protects you when you sleep. You could draw out a circle, say some mumbo-jumbo, and promise dire consequences for anyone stepping inside the ring. The device can't actually do anything but make noise, but they won't know that. While an attacker is distracted by the alarm, you'll hopefully have time to wake up and arm yourself.
"The third insurance policy is the most reliable, and should, - at least inside the trader's camp - make the other two unnecessary. Along with the trade goods, you'll have a sharpener that can handle the alloys out of which we make our trade goods. We've been trading these same goods for hundreds of years. While they're tough enough to hold their edge through years of constant use, they will eventually get dull. Once they get dull, they can't be resharpened with the means available to primitive metal workers. As part of your deal for the horse, you'll offer to resharpen all the tribe's dull knives, hatchets and arrows. The catch is you'll only do this just before leaving. The desire of the majority of the tribe to benefit from your services the next morning should ensure you a safe night's sleep. At least it's worked in the past."
Joen felt many of his worst fears slipping away as he considered Hubert's tips on horse trading, and the extra protection he'd have. There were still the dangers of the trail to contend with, but at least the way Hubert talked about it, he wouldn't have much to worry about at the horse trader's camp itself. With his confidence improved a notch or two, Joen started to think his apprehensions of the night before might have been a bit excessive. Maybe this wasn't going to be such a tough job after all.
"Your mind seems to be wandering," observed Hubert, interrupting Joen's thoughts. "It would probably be a good idea for you to retire now. You should get an early start tomorrow morning. I'll pack your kit while you sleep."
Joen nodded his agreement and headed for his room. His mind was already a turmoil of mixed emotions, and well past the point where any effort to add new information to the mix was subject to diminishing returns. On one hand, his greatest fears had eased. But there were still nagging apprehensions about doing things he'd never done before, and the ever present fears of the unknown and unexpected. Interlaced with these fears, partly displacing but not eliminating them, were growing currents of excitement and anticipation. He tossed and turned for a long while before he finally drifted off to sleep.
Joen awoke the next morning to find Hubert gently shaking him. "Sorry to have to wake you, but it's time to get started."
Joen rubbed the sleep from his eyes and collected his thoughts for a moment. Then he remembered what Hubert was talking about. Having failed to resolve his tangled emotions the night before, the whole mess came flooding back into his consciousness. Deciding that worrying about the unknown wasn't getting him anywhere, he pushed the tangle back into a corner of his mind where it could continue to nag but not hinder. With the majority of his mind cleared and more or less prepared to face the coming challenge, Joen responded, "OK, I'm awake. What do we do next?"
"You start by eating a hearty breakfast. The food you're taking with you is portable and nourishing, but I'm told the taste and texture leaves something to be desired. When you eat lunch out on the trail you'll appreciate the breakfast you ate here. When you've finished, put on these clothes and meet me at the exit tunnel."
After eating, Joen turned to the clothes. If Hubert hadn't told him about the chain mail, he wouldn't have suspected the clothes were any different from what he'd been wearing when he first came to the volcano. There was a coarse fabric undergarment, and a leather jerkin that hung down to mid-thigh. A belt cinched the jerkin at the waist and carried the sheath for his knife. Knee-high leather moccasins and a rabbit-fur-lined leather hat completed the ensemble. When he'd finished dressing he headed for the exit tunnel.
Hubert was waiting at the mouth of the tunnel with a backpack when Joen arrived. "Ah, I see the clothes fit you well enough. Can't really go too far wrong with fashions being as simple as they are nowadays. Remember that the chain mail is only in the jerkin, so pull the hood up if you need to protect your head and neck. There are a few things I want to show you before you leave. First the sharpener."
Hubert pulled a cylinder out of the pack. The cylinder was about as thick as Joen's wrist and as long as his hand, and had a wedge-shaped opening across its diameter cutting it nearly in half. Pointing to the opening, Hubert explained, "You draw the edge of whatever you want to sharpen through here. One pass is enough."
Returning the sharpener to the pack, Hubert rummaged around until he found a small flat disk. "This is a compass," he explained, pointing to the face of the disk. "I also have a map here that shows where the horse traders used to be. Once you get into their area, chances are they'll find you before you find them, so this map should be good enough. Do you understand how to read the map and use the compass?"
Joen's people used maps drawn on leather, so the only thing remarkable about Hubert's map was the fine paper on which it was drawn. The compass was another thing altogether. Compasses weren't unknown to his people, but they'd lost the ability to make new ones. One by one, the relics of the past had been broken or lost, to the point that a working compass was now a treasure. Only the headman was allowed to touch the tribe's last remaining compass. Eagerly taking the map and compass, Joen aligned the map to north and traced his intended path with his finger.
Convinced of Joen's ability to read the map, Hubert continued, "Looks like you're ready to go, then. Here, I'll help you with your pack, and walk with you to the end of the tunnel. I wish I could go with you, but that would be unwise. While you're gone, I'll get the tractor and trailer ready. Now remember, don't let on that you like the horse until you seal the deal. Stay off the beaten path - that's where you're most likely to get robbed. Don't take any unnecessary chances."
With Hubert's chatter starting to get to him, Joen interrupted, "Last night you said I didn't have anything to worry about - that it was going to be fun. Now you sound like I'm marching off to face a herd of hungry dragons. Which is it going to be?"
Joen's remark brought Hubert up short. "I do sound like a mother hen whose chick is going outside for the first time, don't I," chuckled Hubert. "No, if you're careful and use a little common sense, you shouldn't have any trouble."
By this time they'd reached the outer door. As he stepped through Joen affirmed in parting, "I'll be careful, and I'll be back on the evening of the third day."
Hubert held out his hand, and as Joen shook it, said, "Then it's goodbye, take care, have fun, and by all means - get a good horse!"
Joen stepped out into the clear morning air and closed the door to the tunnel. The outside world felt familiar, and at the same time an alien world he was seeing clearly for the first time. He suddenly felt very much alone.