Ascending - James Alan Gardner [6]
2
WHEREIN I BECOME AN IMPORTANT WITNESS
Subterranean Snow
Outside the tower, it was snowing. Only a few flakes trickled directly onto my shoulders, but many more were falling three blocks over.
The snow came through a great hole in the roof. This city—and I do not know the city’s true name, so I shall call it Oarville—was built within a gigantic cavern dug deep under a mighty mountain. The place seemed empty and abandoned now, except for thousands or even millions of Ancestors who slept in their great bright towers. Apart from those towers, all other lights had been damped down by the supervising machines that concern themselves with power consumption. The result was a permanent dusk, illuminated only by Ancestral Towers shining amidst the underground blackness.
At one time, the whole cavern had been completely sealed off from the outside world; but then my friend Festina used Science to blow a great fissure in the stony roof so she could fly inside with an aeroplane. Although that happened four years before, the city’s repair machines had not yet patched up the damage…which disturbed me very much indeed. The purpose of machines is to work automatically: to mend breakage and to shield people from the Harsh Cruel World. Here in Oarville, the Harsh Cruel World was enjoying free rein—a blizzard gusted with arctic ferocity through the mountains outside, and its thick showers of white spilled in through the roof’s hole.
Why had the damage not been fixed? Unless perhaps the city’s repair machines were becoming as Tired as the people: lapsing into torpor like the woman in the tower. But I did not want to think such a thing—I did not want to think about my whole world guttering out like a candle. Therefore, I tried to empty my mind of mournful thoughts, concentrating only on the here and now.
Standing in the open air. Snowflakes falling down.
The hole in the roof was high above us, higher than the city’s glass towers. Wind whistled across the gap, but did not reach all the way to the street; the gale sent snow swirling madly as it entered the cavern, but the furious spinning whiteness lost energy as it fell. By the time the snow brushed past my face, it had resigned itself to perfect calm. Even over by the central square, directly under the rupture in the roof, the snow floated quietly as it settled onto the pavement.
“Whoa!” Uclod said, staring at the soft white tumble pouring onto the city. “Where did that come from?”
“It is snow,” I told him. “Snow is a weather phenomenon.”
“It wasn’t a weather phenomenon ten minutes ago,” he said. “But I guess things change fast in the mountains. Give me a sticky-hot beach any day.”
“I will not give you anything,” I said. “I have heard about you aliens trying to obtain other people’s land. If you offer me beads and trinkets, I shall punch you in the nose.”
“You got the wrong idea, missy. I’m not here to give you grief.” The little man grinned. “But maybe together, we can give grief to other people.”
“Are these other people evil?”
“Utter bastards.”
“Then they deserve trouble. I feel no pity for bastards, especially utter ones.”
I started toward the central square, where the snow drifted down the thickest. Snow is a fine thing indeed: it is pleasantly cool as it falls on your arms, and when the flakes melt against your skin, they leave attractive droplets of water. I am not such a one as wears clothes even in winter, but snowflake sprinkle is an excellent look for me.
The short Uclod man trudged at my side, muttering about the snow; he was obviously a Warm-Weather Creature, un-prepared for a Melaquin winter. His skin, which had darkened in the tower, was now growing light again: turning from umber to orange, and onward to a bleached yellow jaundice reminiscent of dead grass. It could not have been that he was sickening from the cold, for the city was well-heated despite the hole in the roof. (All around us, the snow melted as soon as it touched the pavement.) But Uclod’s skin