behemoths but hardly stressed. On the other side the process was reversed with
a new carriage. It was slow but efficient.
The other, parallel bridge did not have such an assembly and was probably
built later for routine foot traffic, which would not have to be held up
waiting for teams to pass. With those draft animals and the rather imposing
girth of the Verionites, traffic was pretty well limited to one way at a
time, anyway. The natives were clever, quite modern, and industrious; that
much was sure. She had the opportunity to take a magnified view of a couple
of them while they were setting up the cables, and while the faces were ugly
and their figures matched the sort bipedal hogs might be expected to have,
their arms and hands seemed quite muscular and flexible, and their feet,
supporting that form and weight, more resembled those of a hippo or an
elephant than a hog's. Large, wide, and flat, almost like tree trunks, they
provided pretty good balance and flexibility.
But if those suckers could fly, she wanted to see it!
She wondered if perhaps such clever folk might have hot air balloons or
something like that which the Lebans would consider flying. That was a
thought, although it wasn't at all something she would have thought common in
a hex like Verion. Like Erdom, Verion was against an impenetrable barrier, in
this case the equator, and so wasn't hex-shaped at all. Balloons might well
be practical in a compact hex-shape, but unless they were pretty well staked
down and used only for lookout purposes, they were unlikely to be practical
for travel here. Still, after seeing those bridges, the cable car, and the
container apparatus in action, she wouldn't put anything past these people.
In a sense, she admired them from what little she'd seen. Most of the nontech
hexes seemed to have accepted their lot and mummified their culture and
society. Erdom was a perfect example of this-static, with change considered a
threat. The Verionites, though, had refused to accept their limits and become
at least in part a culture of engineers. It was almost as if they'd said,
"Okay, here are the limits, and here's what we want to do. Now figure out how
we do it!"
That made them dangerous as well. They couldn't afford to treat this society
as a standard, lazy nontech culture.
Remaining in the groves all day, Julian also noticed one other characteristic
of the hex that seemed quite odd. Everything animal appeared to be bipedal
for some reason; even the insects ran around on two legs, looking almost like
miniature varieties of Mixtimese. Yet another very odd place, but not nearly
as strange as Leba or even Mixtim.
That night they had to face the problem of the bridges.
There was no way around them; who knew how long this canyon was or how far it
stretched? And even if it didn't go on forever, what of the river at the
bottom, which certainly seemed large and wild running? There was a sort of
tollbooth, but both it and the cable crew and shack seemed to shut down
shortly after dusk; they had watched the creatures lock up and leave. Lights
indicated a town not too far on the other side, probably a farming center and
way stop for bridge travelers, and everybody on this side seemed to cross the
Page 124
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
bridge and go off in that direction. Whatever justified the whole system was
either to the east or to the west of them; they certainly did no traffic with
Leba.
There was no way to be completely safe crossing the bridge, but nothing in the
infrared showed that they had left any kind of guards around, although Julian
had half expected to be barked and growled at by bipedal dogs or something.
The big problem would be that they had no idea what was on the other side.
The guards might be there, where the bulk of the people were, since a barrier
on either side would do to block passage, or they might ring alarm bells over
there by merely shaking the bridge up and down as they walked. Although
Julian had heard nothing specific, an alarm system might be hooked up when
they closed, or it might be something she wouldn't recognize as an alarm but
they would. What they found was a solid wooden gate, a sign, and a large bell.
The sign was in Verionese. not commercial, so it was impossible to read it,
but they could all guess what it said: 'To use bridge, ring bell for
attendant." There was an opening on either side of the gate, but it was much
too small for either Lori or Julian. Mavra went to it, looked in and up, and
saw that the gate was secured from the other side with a large wooden bar.
This was one time when her lack of arms might be an asset, although not for
actually moving the thing. She was, however, able to wiggle through the
opening at ground level with minimal loss of feathers and get on the other
side. That left the bar, which was a bit above her eye level. It looked to be
a simple enough system, but how to move that bar when she didn't have any
arms?
Ultimately, she pressed her back against the gate, got her head under the bar, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]