‘It is a kind of market,’ Belo whispered to Tira. ‘Meat is exchanged for meat, or for the heaped-up dirt.’
‘And this is how Teeg keeps his people alive,’ Tira said grimly, ‘by trading with other slave runners.’
But Belo, watching closely, suspected this strange process had little to do with Teeg. After all, it was the machines who took the dirt, and absorbed much of the meat into their bodies. ‘Perhaps these Weapons need meat as we do, for fuel,’ he mused.
Tira said, ‘But why the dirt?’
Belo had an idea about that too. He knew a little of the lore of iron-smelting; his mind was bright and acquisitive, and he knew a little about a great many things. Perhaps the Weapons needed this rusty dirt for its iron, or other minerals, to repair their gleaming bodies. And so these toiling wheeled carts gathered iron-rich dirt, or dug it out of the ground as ore, and exchanged it for the organic material, the meat delivered here by their hovering cousins.
There was a kind of economy operating here, Belo saw. But the trade wasn’t really about the people and their needs. It was about the Weapons.
When the strange trade was done, the various groups moved apart, shepherded by the Weapons. The toiling wheel-machines scurried away over the ground, no doubt in search of more iron-rich soil.
That night Teeg’s group ate comparatively well. Spindling flesh was tough and unsatisfying, but better than nothing. Belo believed that was because spindlings weren’t even native to the Old Earth, as humans were. Teeg muttered that sometimes the Weapons brought more palatable meat, rodents or birds.
As he ate, Belo looked out upon the dismal plain, which flickered with light storms, distant, irregular, silent. Day and night on Old Earth were controlled by the rhythmic cycling of these light storms across the face of this, the deepest Lowland. In the midst of a landscape of mysteries, even this simple pattern baffled Belo. For if time was stratified, how could the days and nights down here on the Lowland itself have the same duration as up on the Shelf? For so it felt to him, now that he was here.
But he had no answer to such questions. Belo was now a slave who ate roots and raw meat and slept in the dirt, a situation hardly conducive to theorising, and with time his thinking would surely grow stagnant. But for now he kept his wits.
And as he watched Teeg and his machine, he thought he began to see certain truths about their situation.
That night, in the dark, Tira came to Belo. ‘I think things are coming to a head,’ she whispered.
‘Teeg?’
‘He’s been looking at me . . . I think my grace period is up.’
‘And mine,’ said Belo.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He doesn’t need another male around. But as long as he had Dane’s flesh to trade, it was in his interests to keep me alive.’
Tira grimaced. ‘As a walking larder.’
‘Yes. Easier for me to walk than for my flesh to be carried. But now he needs my meat.’
Tira said, ‘As for me, I’ll fight to the last. But while he has that machine of his—’
‘Oh, I don’t think the Weapon is “his” at all.’
‘You don’t?’ She turned to him, her face grimy and drawn. ‘What’s going on here, Belo?’
‘I’ll explain it all,’ he whispered. ‘But first we need to deal with Teeg. This is what you must do . . .’
As the light of day began to gather, Belo sought out Teeg. The big man sat at the edge of the rough perimeter patrolled by the hovering Weapon, peering out at the other groups scattered over the plain. He watched Belo suspiciously.
Belo was careful to keep his hands in sight at all times. ‘I have something for you. Two things, actually. Gifts.’
Teeg pointed. ‘The Weapon is just over there.’
Belo held his hands up. ‘I won’t try anything; I know it’s pointless. And I know what you intend to do to me.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I won’t fight. What’s the point? I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of it all. I was sick of it before I fell down that chute to this hellhole. Just make it quick, all right?’
‘So what do you want?’
‘I told you. I have gifts for you. Can I reach inside my jacket?’
Teeg hesitated. ‘Slow as you like.’
Belo reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his military-issue flask of gin. ‘It’s meant for the battlefield, to comfort the dying. An anaesthetic, you know?’ He unscrewed the cap and smelled the liquor. ‘Ah, the memories—’
‘Give me that.’ Teeg swiped the flask out of his hand and raised it to his lips. His small eyes closed; it was the nearest Belo had seen him come to showing pleasure.
‘When was the last time you had a real drink?’
Teeg grunted. ‘When my father’s blood was still wet under my fingernails.’
‘Lovely memory. Well, have it all. You’d have taken it anyhow once I was dead.’
‘That and your boots.’ Teeg laughed, an ugly noise, and he wiped his watering eyes with the back of a filthy hand.
The powerful drink was having the effect on a long-abstinent Teeg Belo had hoped for.
Teeg raised the bottle again. ‘So what’s your other gift?’
‘What? Oh – Tira. The woman. Take her.’
Teeg eyed him blearily. ‘You serious?’
‘She turned me down once too often.’
‘She turned you down?’
‘I mean, I got her out of the battle, and protected her from you, and she still won’t open her legs. I’ve had enough of her.’ Belo forced a smile. ‘Take her now, if you want. Have a party.’
‘Where is she?’
‘When I tried it on she got away.’
‘What?’ Teeg, hot with the drink, got to his feet, swaying.
Belo pointed into the dark. ‘Somewhere over there. I couldn’t see. You can get her back. You’re the boss here, aren’t you?’
‘Damn right.’ Teeg took a step forward, two.
And the Weapon came drifting up with an almost-silent whisper of displaced air.
‘Wait.’ Teeg tried to get back inside the perimeter of its patrol. Belo braced himself to push him back – but compact bundles of rags hurtled past him and slammed into Teeg, knocking him to the ground, right in the path of the Weapon. Cold eyes gleamed in small, begrimed faces; Teeg’s slaves had rebelled at last, shoving him out of the Weapon’s cordon.
And the Weapon spat fire.
The wounds didn’t kill Teeg, not straight away. But Belo saw from the way he tried to hold closed his belly that the end wouldn’t be far away. Teeg’s eyes were full of pain and hatred.
Tira stood over him. She had been hiding among Teeg’s women. ‘An appropriate way for you to die.’
‘She’s right,’ Belo said. ‘After all, you lied, didn’t you? That Weapon was never under your control. You have been farmed by it, farmed by a machine, just as much as these others, your hapless slaves. The only difference was that you had the cunning to turn the situation to your advantage. But now it’s over for you. Well, I’ll have my boots back. Don’t trouble to take them off. I can wait.’
And he sat on the dirt while the flickering light of day gathered in the sky, and Teeg’s life blood spilled on the ground.
For the first time the women talked, and even laughed. The children, hesitantly, began to play.
And still the Weapon continued its deadly circling.
‘It is all about the Weapons,’ Belo said to Tira. ‘It always was.’ He smiled. ‘I call myself a Creationist. I should be ashamed of myself for not seeing it sooner.’
The Creationists believed that everything about Old Earth had been made for a conscious purpose. But they also believed that the world was very ancient, and that time, too, had shaped the world and its contents – even here, where time ran like syrup.