The Outpost

The trip was supposed to take nineteen days one way. It took twenty-three.

That was because they were down to ten oxen. Two to a cart, with not one to spare. If one ox started to limp, the whole cart had to rest. Every time it rested, everything stopped. They did that for twenty-three days.

The twenty-third day out of the city. Counting from the day he came back over the wall, the twenty-ninth day in all — and that evening, the outpost came into sight.

＊

It was not what he had pictured.

What Marlow had imagined was a stone fort. What was actually there was a low ring of stacked stone, and inside it fourteen huts of wood and cloth. The ring came up to his waist. It would keep out wind and water-suckers. Not much else.

There were about forty people. Half of them wore uniforms. The rest wore work clothes.

The thing that stood out most was the iron tower outside the ring.

About thirty meters tall. An iron frame built up in a triangle, with a pulley at the top. Under it, iron pipe was stacked in a heap like a mountain.

“…What is that?”

“No idea.”

“Marlow, that's all you ever say lately.”

“Because I really don't know.”

＊

While they were unloading, a dog came running from the direction of the ring.

Brown, short legs, one ear flopped down. It hit a cart wheel once, went over, got up again, and jumped at Willa.

“Agh, hey, no, you stink! You stink, I said!”

Willa pretended to shove it away while she scratched under its chin with both hands.

For the first time in twenty-three days, Willa laughed out loud.

“That one's Boro. Useless dog, but he never misses a meal.”

Marlow looked toward the voice. A woman was standing there.

An orc. A head shorter than Drag, but wide. Two lower tusks stuck out past her lip the way Drag's did, except one of hers was broken off short. She was burned so dark by the sun that the green of her skin was nearly brown. Her hair, gray coming through it, was braided thick and hung down her back.

When she smiled, three back teeth were missing on the right. And she smiled a lot.

“Brin Haskell! Supply officer here. Twenty-three days? Come on now, that's slow. Four days slow.”

“Lost two oxen,” Drag said.

“Ah, water-suckers. Bad year for them. Some years there's plenty, some years hardly any.”

“Lost a man too. Theo Lant.”

Brin's voice stopped there.

The way it stopped was the way water stops when the plug comes out.

“…Theo.”

“You knew him?”

“He burned a pot here just last month. I hollered at him for it. Over one pot.”

Brin took out a ledger and wrote a line. Her hand was rough where Roslyn's was neat, but she took about as long over it.

“Right. Food. All of you! And there's a bath, a bath! Twenty-three days of stink will knock the tower over!”

It was a loud voice. Like she was putting out extra to cover the place where it had stopped.

It took Marlow less than thirty seconds to like this woman. In twenty-three days he had not met one person like her.

＊

Supper was beans and potatoes and salt meat. No different from what he ate in the city. Except there was a lot of it.

Willa ate three bowls, and her hand stopped partway into the fourth.

“…I can't finish it.”

“Leave it, leave it, no need to be polite. Boro'll eat it. Boro eats anything. Last year he ate a boot.”

“Wait — a boot?”

“My boot. Just the one. Why do you think just the one?”

“…I don't know.”

“Neither do I!”

Brin said it herself and laughed at it herself. The three missing back teeth showed plainly.

Boro ate it. Ate it at a terrific speed, and then went to sleep on Willa's feet.

Willa couldn't move. She sat there, unable to move, for an hour.

＊

Marlow went out to look at the iron tower.

Up close it was far bigger than he'd imagined. There was a hole directly beneath it. About as wide across as a man with both arms spread. The rim was reinforced with iron, and from there an iron pipe ran down into the ground.

Brin came up behind him with two steaming bowls in her hands. She handed one to Marlow.

“A hole. This one's an old test bore, shallow. The real one's at the drill site, two days' walk east. That one's deep.”

“A hole for what?”

“A hole for drawing water.”

“A well.”

“A well, that's right. Biggest well in the world.”

Brin slurped from her bowl and belched. She didn't bother hiding it.

“Sixty years we've been digging. When I came, they'd already been digging twenty.”

“How far in sixty years?”

“Three thousand eight hundred meters.”

Marlow's hand stopped with the bowl in it.

“How many meters left?”

“Three hundred and twenty meters. Four thousand one hundred and twenty all told. That's where the water comes, by the calculation. Man who did the calculating has been dead a long while.”

Marlow had heard that number twenty-five days ago.

It was the number Sybil had said at the old lighthouse. The depth cut into the metal fitting on the glass cylinder.

“What's under four thousand one hundred and twenty meters?”

“The sea.”

Brin said it the way she would have said something about the weather.

“There's a sea under the ground. That dry hollow you came through today — not all of its water fell down below. Some of it was always down there. The sea on top went away. The one underneath stayed.”

“Nobody in the city knows that.”

“Because they haven't been told. What do you think happens if they are?”

“They fight over the water.”

“That's right. Only the Empire can dig a hole four thousand meters deep. So the Empire keeps quiet until the digging's done. When it's done, they'll announce it. From the day they announce it, that spot is the most important place in the world.”

Brin drained the rest of her bowl and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

“Fifteen more years. Fifteen years for three hundred and twenty meters. I won't be alive that long.”

She said it and laughed again. It seemed this woman couldn't talk without laughing.

＊

Marlow thought about the load he had hauled for twenty-three days.

Barrels and crates, and long things wrapped in oilpaper. The long things were lashed down twelve to a cart. He had never seen what was inside.

“What we hauled out here—”

“Pipe. Pipe you fix onto the digging end. One length gets you six meters.”

“Twelve to a cart. Five carts, sixty lengths.”

“Sixty lengths is three hundred and sixty meters. Except they snap partway, and the deeper you go the more they snap. A few meters of real progress in a month is doing well.”

“You haul this every month?”

“Every month. Sixty years of it.”

Marlow remembered the weight of the cart he had pushed for twenty-three days.

There were sixty years of that.

＊

The next morning, Drag went into Brin's hut. Marlow and Roslyn were called in too.

Brin took three ledgers off the shelf and stacked them on the table.

“This'll be about last month's convoy. I'll give you the answer first. It never arrived.”

“Not one of them?” Drag said.

“Not one. No cargo either. Which is why we're short of pipe this month.”

Brin opened the ledger and held it down with a finger. There was one blank line.

“I sent a search party. Had them go two days east. Nothing.”

“Tracks?”

“There were. Heading east. I won't have them followed.”

“Why not?”

That was the first time Brin didn't smile.

“Because the ones who follow don't come back. Nine men in four years. Not one of the nine came back. So I don't send them anymore.”

Roslyn wrote something on her board. When she was done, she looked up.

“Ms. Haskell. What is there east of this outpost?”

“The drill site. Two days on foot. Twenty people there.”

“And beyond it?”

“The Lonely Land. I've never heard an account from anyone who went.”

“Is it that no one has gone?”

“People have gone. I said I've never heard an account.”

＊

After that, Roslyn asked to see the outpost's records.

Brin pulled the thickest volume off the shelf. The ledger of arrivals and departures. Who came when, and when they left.

“You said you wanted to see the autumn of three years ago,” Roslyn said.

“Never said that.”

“Then I want to see it, so I will look.”

Roslyn turned the pages. As she turned them, she ran her finger from the top of each down to the bottom.

On the third turn, her finger stopped.

It stopped, and it did not move.

“What does it say?”

“…Let me confirm something first. What were you doing in the autumn of three years ago?”

“I was in the city. Picked Willa up at the market. It was autumn. No chance I'd forget.”

“Do you remember it without a single day missing?”

“Not that far, I don't. Who does?”

Roslyn turned the ledger around toward Marlow.

Brin looked over from the side, and then slowly lifted her head.

In the arrivals column, this was written.

Imperial Year 345, autumn. Marlow Kane. From the city. Accompanying party to the drill site.

It was the autumn of three years ago.

The hand was Brin's. Rough writing, and slow.

“…That's me writing it.”

“You remember?”

“I don't.”

That made three. The seamstress's ledger. The wall guard's Black Book. This outpost's record of arrivals. Three different people had written the same name in the autumn of three years ago, and not one of the three remembered writing it.

Roslyn pointed to the right-hand end of that same line.

There was a departures column.

“This is blank.”

“Meaning what?”

“There is a record of him arriving. There is no record of him leaving.”

Roslyn pushed her glasses up. Her hand was shaking.

“In the autumn of three years ago, Marlow Kane came here and went east to the drill site. And he has not come back here.”

Outside the hut, Boro barked. Willa's laughter carried in.

Marlow pressed the inside of his left elbow.

Under the skin is a seven-digit number. It has been there since he was born.

“Roslyn.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a number there? Beside the name.”

Roslyn brought her face close to the ledger.

“There is.”

“Read it.”

Roslyn read it out.

Seven digits. The first four were the same as the ones on Marlow's arm.

Only the last three were different.

End of Chapter 10