Honor - Kevin Killiany [13]
Corsi did her bit for interspecies goodwill by smiling, stating her name in pleasant tones, and assuring them she was delighted to be there and to meet them whenever it seemed she was expected to contribute to the conversation. In fact, she was enjoying herself a bit. The constant motion was working the kinks and aches out of her joints and muscles while the unfamiliar sights and sounds kept her conscious mind busy. That last was doing more to help her subconscious sort out where it had misfiled her memories than lying alone in a wooden room would have done.
Extrapolating from the numbers of chiptaurs she could see in the amphitheater clearings and the flow of traffic in and out of tunnels, she estimated the population of the community was somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four thousand. Not a city, but certainly larger than a village.
At the far end of one amphitheater they entered was a raised stage on which several chiptaurs moved about in an organized fashion while a sizable crowd lounged on the ground and watched. She had no way of knowing if it was a theatrical performance or a religious ceremony. In any case, her nurses had no interest in attending and led her out another way.
They were well down another corridor when she realized there hadn’t been any music to accompany the organized movement. Whether it was a ballet, a play, or a mass, she would have expected some sort of music.
Now that she thought of it, there was no music anywhere. At least, she thought there wasn’t. Some of the chittering clicks and ticks that made up the background murmur of the chiptaur city could have been local opera for all she could tell. What were definitely missing were musical instruments.
There were niches or hollows lining the walls of some of the broader corridors and carved into the bases of many of the root columns. These appeared to be shops offering wares she could only glimpse in passing. Apparent fruits or vegetables, baskets of every description, a wood carver, and what might have been a physician.
She wasn’t sure, but Corsi thought she remembered Abramowitz once explaining that an active economy in nonessentials and decorative arts indicated something significant about a culture’s development. Of course, she couldn’t remember exactly what that significant thing was.
What she could do, with a tactician’s eye, was evaluate the technology around her.
No metal, of that she was sure. Cutting and carving tools appeared to be made of volcanic glass, similar to obsidian but in a variety of colors. She saw levers, pulleys, and inclined planes in use everywhere, but evidently the chiptaurs hadn’t thought to attach their pulleys to the bottom of a platform to make wheels. Every burden she saw was carried; no carts or even sleds were in evidence.
Nor were any weapons. She couldn’t be sure if it was planetwide or just the rules of this particular community, but there was nothing remotely resembling a spear, club, or bow anywhere to be seen. There were edge tools in abundance, from wooden shovels to chisels and vegetable choppers apparently shaped from volcanic glass. But none were shaped and balanced as weapons.
Corsi began to suspect the assertive nonviolence practiced by her nurses reflected the cultural norm here. Wherever here was.
There were cultivated areas beyond the columns of roots bordering some of the amphitheaters. This didn’t seem right to Corsi, particularly since the spaces received less indirect sunlight than the clearings. Perhaps the pinkish-yellow growths were more akin to mushrooms than true plants.
Lining each mushroom garden were rows of simple lean-tos with pounded felt blankets draped over their open ends. Corsi’s companions led her to one of these and made several ambiguous gestures that communicated nothing, then stood by expectantly.
“Uh-huh,” Corsi said. “It’s a lovely lean-to. Are these the guest quarters?”
Evidently realizing she hadn’t understood what they’d meant to communicate, the chiptaurs repeated