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53.
After two days’ journey, they came to a Siirk settlement on the coast.
This was a rude frontier community hewn from the plentiful lumber in the surrounding forests. No sightseeing for the Thuga or them. He glimpsed a wooden wharf, and unpainted wooden houses rising up a hillside beyond that. Siirk walked about, barely noticing their convoy. Boats larger and smaller than ours seemed to come and go here. He noted several barges towing logs out to sea, and could only guess that they must let them drift west or southwest on some current.
The group went ashore a mile or two southwest of the village. Only one boat went aground, held by its Thuga rowers while they and Omas, Nizin, and Kogran debarked. Nizin led the way, and the other two Siirk walked behind them. The ever-present nets hung over them, and they had to hold them up with their hands to keep from stumbling over them. As usual, Omas brandished a pistol to warn them against trying to escape.
They walked up a twisting path so poorly defined that he doubted many souls had gone this way. But Nizin seemed to know his way.
The path led up through moderately thick woods, up onto a lovely grassy hilltop, into more woods, still climbing, until they came to a flat clearing in the woods. In the middle of the clearing was a wrecked spacecraft.
The wreck was a cylinder about 100 feet long and 25 feet in diameter—He thought immediately of the cylindrical shapes he’d seen piled up on the sea floor. It was a skeleton, really—much of the upper part was missing, though all the ribs were still in place. Where the skin was intact, it gleamed like a mirror—something he only remembered from Alex Kirk’s life. It gleamed like liquid mercury under a sheet of glass. It gleamed brighter than chrome. It was blinding in its beauty. They marched right up to the wreck and they could see the inside now—instrument panels up front, pilot and co-pilot seats overgrown with vines, and then twin rows of seats like in a bus toward the front, and an empty cargo compartment in the rear half.
“It doesn’t have any wings,” said Maryan.
“Could have been slung under an airframe,” he guessed. “Maybe dangled from a balloon?”
The Siirk said agitatedly: “Geedeen!”
Nizin grabbed his net and towed him into the ship, making him stumble. Tough old bird. He staggered over the debris—moldy carpeting, soil, vines, weeds up to his thighs. He towed him to a shiny square of the wondrous mirror-material. He slammed his fist against it, several times, and a broken image appeared. A human—talking... “Greetings. This is a robotic rescue appliance. To ensure that this machine has been summoned by a bona fide human, please speak aloud the name of this continent now, in English.”
Static kept corrupting the image.
The little spiel played over and over again, and Nizin threw himself against it in fury, pounding both fists against the speaker’s face. Then he shook him so violently that he nearly passed out. He could smell his last sweet, greasy meal on his breath, and the stench of corruption rising from his gorge where it was being digested. “Geedeen!” he shrieked. “Ingish!” he threw him against the bulkhead and pointed at the screen.
He knew what he wanted him to do.
Kogran and Omas held Maryan between them. Kogran pulled out a knife whose blade glinted a dull leaden color, and he pointed it at her neck.
“Ingish!”
“Okay,” he said.
Nizin grinned. He waved for Kogran to lower the knife. He recognized Nizin’s cunning—he knew he could control him by using her, and that suited him in the desperate sense that, if anything happened to her, he’d kill himself and then they’d have what they really deserved—nothing at all.
He faced the still babbling screen and cleared his throat. “North America.”
Nothing happened. Sweat broke out around his neck. “North America.”
Nizin gazed at him in wonder. “Nofameka?”
“North America, you stupid mutt,” he said to the speaker, and pounded on it with his fist. “North America, you pile of turds.”
It was clearly broken. He looked at Nizin and shrugged. He was scared. “Broken. Kaputt.”
Nizin seemed to take this in stride, to his surprise. “Nofameka? Boken. Kambutt.” he nodded thoughtfully.
Then he turned around and kicked the broken craft. He waved to his followers to return to the ship, and gave him a shove with the flat of his foot for good measure. “Geedeen!” he yelled as they marched at full tilt down to the boats.
He was sure Nizin had more up his sleeve than reptilian scales.
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