The jingling handful of yellow metal filled Daenek with dismay. I’ve gotten hooked up with a thief, he realized. If they catch her . . . it’s my neck, too.
She had read the expression on his face. “Ahhh, don’t worry. I’ve just hit a few caches on board—just enough to keep my hand in. Something like this is too good to waste. I’m not cut out for the ways busker women usually make money. So when I got this from my old man I figured I needed a way of getting in and out of a lot of places with people in them. People that like to stash their little hoards in places where they think it can’t be found.”
“So you decided to become a mertzer.”
She shrugged diffidently. “Sure. Why not. I was lucky and managed to get signed on. Beats walking to all these damn villages. And by the time anyone checks their life savings, we’re all long gone.”
Daenek shook his head. This wasn’t turning out the way he had planned. But, he admitted to himself, at least I’m not alone now. As strange and mercenary as this girl is . . . “All right,” he said. “If we find money as well, then you’re entitled to it.”
Rennie grinned. “Just my share. And maybe a little more.”
“Now when we get to the Capitol—”
“Wait a minute. You’ve got problems to take care of before you start planning that, you know. Like staying alive, and undiscovered, long enough to get there.”
He started at her blankly.
“Look,” she said patiently. “We probably don’t have to worry about that subthane and his bunch any more. They’re too fuddled up to accomplish anything more, and they’re sure not going to report to the Regent that they lost you. But what about the sociologists?”
“All right, what about them?”
“There was one on board here the day before you got picked up. Just asking the usual dumb questions. But still, I’ve got my suspicions about those creeps. They pop up everywhere and they’re always writing everything down. I really wonder what would happen if one of them saw you and recognized you. Or even some oldtimer on board or in the villages—what if you’ve got enough of your father’s face in your own to make ’em guess who you are? Somebody might think it worth while to let somebody else know—like the Regent. No, we’ve got to make sure nobody does find out who you really are.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” said Daenek.
She leaned back against the metal column. “The caravan just left the Capitol a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s heading for the mertzers’ home village. Then, after they rest up and visit their families for about six months, the convoy will start on its route through the villages again—”
“Hey,” broke in Daenek. “That means it’s going to be another two years before we reach the Capitol!”
“Didn’t you know?” She looked at him in surprise.
Daenek’s shoulders drooped as he sat on the box. “That’s a long time,” he said after a moment.
“Best thing,” said Rennie. “Gives you a better chance to get forgotten about. Anyway, when the caravan gets to the mertzers’ village, we can hike over to the busker village—it’ll only take a couple of days. None of the mertzers will miss us while we’re gone.”
“What’s the point of going there?”
“You’ll see,” she said. She replaced the seeklight and the gold pieces back in her pockets, then picked up the pack of cards.
“Why don’t you go check those gauges again, while I deal a couple hands?”
“We’ve got a long shift ahead of us.”
Chapter XI
“What’s that?” Daenek sat up in bed and looked around the darkened room. He scraped a crust from the corner of one eye as he tilted his head, straining to hear whatever noise had awoken him.
“Hey.” He rapped on the screen dividing the little room in half. “Hey, Rennie. Did you hear something?”
Muttered grumbling, then the sound of her turning heavily onto her other side. “For god’s sake,” she said disgustedly. “Go back to sleep. The engines shut off, is all.”
That was it. Daenek touched the wall behind him and realized that it was the sudden stopping of the vibration that he had become so used to, that had startled him from sleep. The engines’ constant noise permeated everything, became as much a part of one as the sound of one’s own breathing. And now that noise wasn’t there.
Wait a minute, thought Daenek. He scratched his chin, carefully nursing himself back into full consciousness. We’re still a week away from the mertzer village. So if the engines aren’t running right now, it’s because they can’t. Something must have gone wrong.
He rapped on the screen again. “Hey. Rennie. We’d better get down to the engine room.”
A groan answered him. “What for? We just finished our shift a couple of hours ago.”
“Come on.” The engines are stopped. It’s an emergency.”
“Let ’em fix it themselves.”
Daenek gave up and set about retrieving his scattered clothing on the floor. When he was dressed, he strode across the room and slammed the door after himself as loudly as he could.
On the caravan’s deck it was bright daylight. Daenek winced and shaded his eyes with one hand as he headed along the main walkway.
“Daenek,” a voice called from above. “Hey, what’s up?”
He looked overhead and saw one of the young cargo-handlers, named Mullon, perched on a strut of one of the cranes. The youth’s beard-stubbled face grinned down at him.
“Beats me,” Daenek called up to him. “I just woke up.”
“Well, at least it didn’t sound like anything exploded down there.”
“That’s good, I suppose.”
Mullon’s grin grew wider. “Maybe it’s just waiting ’til you get there.”
“Thanks.” Daenek resumed his way towards the stairwell that descended to the caravan’s bottom levels. The entire crew of mechanics was assembled in the engine room; waiting while the head mechanic stood talking into the ’phone mounted on the wall. A couple of the men nodded at Daenek as he emerged into the crowded space from the forest of grease-covered machinery.
Benter hung up the ’phone and turned around to face the men. “I told the captain we could fix it ourselves,” he announced.
“He’s sending the other caravans on to the village, instead of having them wait for us.”
Daenek waited and listened as the head mechanic divided the men into groups of three and four, detailing what had to be done. In a few minutes, Daenek found himself following one of the groups into the dark recesses on the other side of the illuminated open space.
“Hey,” he said, “what happened, anyway?”
“One of the damn torque shafts ripped loose,” answered one of the men. “It’s got to be bolted into place, and then splined in with the rest.”
He didn’t bother asking for any further explanation. The nature of a torque shaft was no more mysterious to him than everything else with which the mechanics concerned themselves.
A metal ladder dangled precariously through a circular hatchway in the floor. It creaked with Daenek’s weight as he descended after the others, finally emerging onto a small metal grid that hung by struts from the bottom of the caravan.
Several meters away, towards the rear of the caravan, he could see daylight. The view to the sides was blocked by the innermost of the gigantic treads. Other groups of mechanics were visible, working from similar metal platforms that hung suspended from the caravan’s enormous metal belly.
That must be it, thought Daenek. A long shaft, thicker than a man’s height, dangled from one end into the dirt of the roadway below. Its loose end had dug a trench a couple of meters deep into the rocky soil before the caravan had come to a halt.