The riverboat Kestral tied up at the wharf and Limpkin stepped off into the Yards.
They had passed Gun Hill yesterday and the civil servant had thought that its monumental dimensions would have insulated him against the impact of the Yards. The Hill was a vast mound a mile in diameter at the base, rising gradually to a height of just over two hundred feet. He had viewed it through a heavy telescope; it was now overgrown with vegetation, but the trees and grasses failed to conceal the two structures at the top. Placed a quarter of a mile apart, they nevertheless crowded the Hill with their incredible bulk. One of the crew had told him that they had, indeed, once mounted great siege guns and that they had been instrumental in the defeat of the Dark Powers.
Vast hydraulic cylinders, ten feet in diameter by Limpkin's reckoning, studded the machines; pipes and fittings of every conceivable shape and size ran along the bases of the mounts, climbed up their sides and ended, twisted, in empty air. Shell carriages, big as First World trucks, stood scattered all over the Hill, their chrome steel bodies rusting into dust.
The Hill had been the first of the great First World relics that Limpkin had ever seen. They had drifted past the Hill as the sun was falling behind the western mountains and it seemed as if the guns'fire were still scourging the evil darkness there. Limpkin had moved into a near dream and found himself listening for the thunder of the guns' report and watching for the yellow-white flash from their muzzles; all the tales of his rural youth flooded back to him. He was moving through a land which did not exist for most of the World; the Dark Powers, the Builders of the Yards, the whole lot of it belonged to another creation.
As they had passed from under the Hill's shadow, a grassy plain reaching all the way to the distant mountains unrolled itself on the western bank. Limpkin had felt a sadness descend upon him, and he noticed it in the wrinkled expressions and staring eyes of the Kestral's crew.
When the Powers had finally been defeated a millennium ago and thrown back past the western peaks, a final stand had been taken by their most powerful elements. The Battle of the Westwatch was supposed to have finally ended the First World and marked the almost-triumph of the World. The plain that ran for fifty miles from the Tyne to the foothills of the mountains was now said to be a graveyard for the battle's First World victims; the dead lay shoulder to shoulder, head to foot, for virtually the entire expanse of the field. Limpkin tended to view any account of so huge a battle as being more myth than anything else, yet the stupendous fortifications of Gun Hill and the Fortress were quite real, as was the sorrow that he and his men then felt.
They had moored several miles upstream from the delta, for the river had not yet been safely charted for night travel. At dawn they had cast off again and had tied up at the Yards shortly afterward.
Immediately any sadness that Limpkin had carried with him from Gun Hill was swept away by the scope of the Yards, by the height of Westwatch and by the sinister immensity of the Fortress. He walked away from the ancient pier, his mind spinning, for before him, all the way to the ring of small mountains that surrounded the eastern bank of the delta—or so it seemed—lay stretched a field of concrete. Here and there the first small cranes that the first work crews had begun reconditioning stood like candles in the middle of an enormous birthday cake; they only served to accentuate the sense of vastness, of unbelievable space. Limpkin turned to the southeast and saw the ways that were to eventually cradle the Victory. Even though its slope into the Sea was most gradual, the near end was still almost fifty feet in the air before the colossal support ribs began.
A year ago Limpkin had sweated over the construction of a ten mile drainage ditch in the Randau Basin and now he had inherited from a vanished race an enterprise so vast that, as one of his reports had told him, the ways must arch slightly to compensate for the curvature of the Earth. Limpkin could not help laughing to himself.
As he walked, not having any idea of exactly where he was going, he noticed that the field was not as featureless as he had supposed. Sharply outlined platforms of rusted metal were set flush with the concrete at random intervals, varying in size from four foot squares to rectangles a hundred feet long and fifty wide; Limpkin supposed them to be freight elevators. Steel tracks were recessed into the surface and wandered, again without obvious purpose, across the official's path. Wondering at the excellent condition of the metal, Limpkin bent over to find the grooves, some of them a yard across, were filled with a clear plastic material.
Limpkin rose and headed toward the land end of the ways where a cluster of cranes indicated some activity; he had, of course, forgotten that the ways were more than a mile distant.
He had been walking for about five minutes when a two-horse surrey approached him. Limpkin shaded his eyes and as the coach drew near he saw that it was driven by Damon Trebbly, the engineer in charge.
One could hardly have found a person better suited to supervise the resurrection of a lost technology; Trebbly, despite his gaunt, perpetually stooped body and perpetually complaining mind, had been a good enough engineer to have been branded a warlock in four nations and a high sorcerer in two others. He had never attended any of the proper academies, had never read the current masters of science and had never been able to accept contemporary standards of craftsmanship, design, or ambition. He had been a child in one of the nomadic tribes that wander the northeastern rim of the Black Barrens; instead of learning to tend his father's griffins and hippogrifs, however, he had wormed his way into every First World ruin and Black Library he found and had memorized every legend that every blind wanderer had sung.
When he had adjudged himself to be adequately steeped in the witchcraft of the First World, he had presented himself to the government of New Svald, offering to tame the Shirka River. He was immediately convicted of insanity, demonic possession, and of being an agent for the Dark Powers. A similar reception was given him when he tried to interest the House of Raud in a plan to rebuild the great bridges of their mountain kingdom.
Eventually news of the Victory project attracted him to the Caroline Office of Reconstruction. Seeing at once that here was a man tailored for the job at hand, Limpkin enlisted him as the head of the technical elite which would rule in the Yards—and which would build the ship.
But in the short time that Limpkin had known the man—and the association had been a close one, for much had to be learned and exchanged in that brief space—he had not once seen him smile or show the slightest indication that life was anything more than tolerable. His religion was the technical greatness of the First World; he had grown up amid the memories of men and machines that had conquered creation (but not, as the hack phrase inevitably runs, themselves) and now he was forced to exist in a society which presupposed the failure of its every endeavor. The store of pent-up frustration that he had developed had bent his body and, Limpkin sometimes thought, his mind.
But now the bean-pole figure that sat in the surrey was actually grinning. Limpkin stared in pleasant disbelief and searched for the cracks in the man's skull that the smile must produce. The low, cynical voice had been replaced by a tone that quavered with expectation and hope.
Limpkin greeted the man and asked him how the work was progressing. Apparently making a monumental effort to suppress himself, Trebbly asked Limpkin to accompany him on a little trip.
They set out in a cutter through the maze of small islands that composed the delta and within half an hour of rowing they had reached the artificial island upon which the Westwatch was built. Trebbly mumbled something about "the big picture, sir," and then climbed from the cutter onto the island. The island was about five hundred feet in length and was situated a mile and a half from the Yards, three miles from the Sea, and two miles from the western shore. Six miles to the west sat the Fortress.
Limpkin followed the engineer. He gazed up at the fantastic height of the tower and was at once terrified and intrigued. From its diameter of less than two hundred feet the tower grew upward until its needle top ended over a thousand feet from the waters of the Tyne. It did not climb as an ordinary building might, but really did seem to grow like the trunk of a blasted, blackened tree. It appeared to be hewn out of a single piece of rough gray rock; indeed, except for its height, it was nearly identical to the lonely rock spires that Limpkin had seen as they had sailed past the Black Barrens.
Yet the building was undeniably of intelligent conception. Limpkin entered the small door to his left and saw that the inside was dimly lighted by torches. The two men crossed a vaulted chamber, perhaps thirty feet high and partially covered with crumbling mosaics, and passed into a small booth opposite. They got into a cage-like affair; as it swayed in the shaft, Limpkin noted with a shock that a single stout cord was all that supported the platform. Two of the boat's crew had gone over to a low stone cabinet that projected from the wall beside the shaft entrance and had inserted an iron crank. The cage rose jerkily into the darkness above. "Strongest single piece of hemp in the World west of the Armories," said Trebbly proudly. Limpkin didn't answer.
After several minutes of noisy climbing, the platform drew even with a small oval door. Trebbly stepped out and then helped Limpkin over the combing. Fighting down a wild desire to either cry or run back to the platform and its soft darkness, Limpkin stepped out onto the deck that ringed the top of the Westwatch; it was roughly circular, extending outward from the tower for about ten feet, and was bordered by an exceedingly flimsy looking railing. Above them the tower rose for another fifty feet. Bracing himself against the wind and summoning up his courage, Limpkin moved out to the railing where Trebbly was standing.
Below them were the Yards. Trebbly leaned closer and yelled into Limpkin's ear. "I wanted to bring you up here, sir, so you could get an idea of how really grand this whole complex is." Trebbly was grinning like a fool. Limpkin thought that the boy finally had a toy to suit his gigantic talents. "Look at it, sir! Did you ever see anything more bloody marvelous in your life? Nine miles! And see there, the ways, a hundred feet across and it looks like a ribbon from up here.
"Now, aside from the fact of the Yards existing at all, I've been poking around a bit and, if I may say so, our beloved and mysterious General Toriman didn'tdo much real investigation when he was here. It's utterly beyond belief, sir. Below the surface of the Yards are storerooms that go down for almost two miles! Goddamn, sir, we don't have to build the Victory; all we need to do is assemble her. I'd estimate that almost sixty percent of the structural fittings necessary to build the ship are already down there."
"But the age, Trebbly, metal fatigue and that sort of thing?"
"All sealed up in the plastic that covers the rails down at the Yards; a hundred, a thousand years wouldn't matter a bit.
"And not only parts, but machines to build what we don't have. Cranes, generators, tools, lifts, lorries, everything." An air of disgust invaded his voice. "And all of it good solid craftsmanship. Goddamn, at last actual engines and fuels that don't have to have a torch thrown into them before they'll burn. Sir, I tell you it's a bleeding wonderland down there."
"Then you would say that we have really stumbled onto something," said Limpkin with feigned gravity. Trebbly hardly noticed but went right on in a near fit of joy.
"And the land around here! I don't believe it. I don't see how anyone could believe it. Below the sands out there are the foundations for roads which, I'll wager, lead to some of the richest mines in the World. And foundations for a whole city! Why, some of my men even report that there are whole factories, rolling mills, and foundries under the Yards just waiting to be put together again and set to work. It's bloody unbelievable, sir, too bloody good to be true."
Limpkin swallowed the lump in his throat that had arisen when he had looked down, and grinned as broadly as possible. "Sounds as if we really could build a ship."
Trebbly looked a little embarrassed. "I know that isn't the point of it, sir, but"—he stared at the Yards, looking like a happy idiot—"but as a child, I had heard stories of a race known as the Builders, but none of them can match all this. Damn, but they were a conscientious lot! All that material, all those plans, all that power, neatly packed away and sealed up just so the imperial Caroline could build, your pardon, start to build a myth."
Limpkin was finally beginning to rid himself of his acrophobia and began to stroll around the deck. Trebbly followed behind him. On the other side of the platform, Limpkin looked out upon the gray western mountains and upon the grassy, featureless plain that lay between them and the Westwatch. Clouds were more numerous to the west and the silence and far-off darkness served to dampen his mood a bit. Even Trebbly let his face sag back into its normal cast; he moved to Limpkin's side and pointed down and to the south. "The Fortress, sir," and yet a third Trebbly presented itself to Limpkin: one of cold awe, tinged with something very close to, but not quite, fear.
"Will it hinder you in any way, Trebbly?"
"Not in any way that I know of. In fact, somehow I find myself glad it's there."
"How so?"
"Well, the Powers, you know . . . " Trebbly trailed off weakly.
"Really, man, that was supposed to be over a thousand years ago—if it existed at all."
"I know that, but the Fortress is still there. It's shaped like a hexagon, a mile long on each face; her ferroconcrete walls are sixty feet thick and topped with three feet of stainless steel or some such metal. I figure that about half of that facing has been worn away by now, but when the sun hits it right, it's like a flaming jewel.
"It's open in the middle and the man I've had looking at it tells me that the court is filled with huge, incomprehensible machines, tubes, antennae, and so on. But I do know that it's still quite alive. We at the Yards can hear it stirring every once in a while; jets of steam can occasionally be spotted escaping from the inside, and, well, it seems to be repairing itself. Look over there, just where one of the western walls angles out of sight; it's almost parallel to our line of sight. Now you can't see from here without a glass, but with one you can see that the metal facing that wall is smooth and up to what I suppose is its proper thickness." Trebbly pointed up to the top of the tower. "And if you'll look up there, sir, you can see some holes and bracings; we've found some detection equipment, antennae and the like, under the Yards. They might fit those sockets."
"Detection equipment?"
"Well, sir, it is called the Westwatch. The tower itself is older than anything around here but has been used by many nations. Why not those who defeated the Powers? If, as Kirghiz once told me, the Fortress was built to keep the Powers behind their mountains, then it would need eyes. The Fortress is apparently blind but, like I said, alive; why not its enemies, too?"
Limpkin tried to sound bored. "Then maybe it is best it is there, if it can't hurt us."
Both men stood looking at the Fortress for a moment, Trebbly thinking of his legends and Limpkin wondering what they might be. Limpkin thanked Trebbly then, for the observation was obviously ended and besides, it was almost lunchtime; both turned to go. Then a faint, high-pitched whine penetrated the howling of the wind. Trebbly instinctively looked to the Fortress and then tapped Limpkin on the shoulder.
A plume of smoke was jetting out of the Fort's hollow center. It was not steam for it did not disperse quickly, but collected and climbed over the walls to be caught by the breezes. A small branch of flame appeared at the base of the smoke column. The roaring grew louder until it was quite distinct to both men. Gradually the flame increased in intensity and began to rise. Slowly at first, and then faster, it climbed out of the cloud; Limpkin saw that the fire was issuing from and supporting a dark cylinder. Gathering speed and altitude it began to curve off to the west and was soon lost in the clouds over that land.
Limpkin glanced at Trebbly with the intention of asking him about this curious thing, but he saw that the engineer had the same expression of worshipful awe that he had when he first started talking of the Fortress and the legends that had grown up around it.
* * *
Instead of mentioning the missile, therefore, Limpkin pointed out that it looked like they would be in for a storm and perhaps they had better retire to the Yards. Neither man said another word on the ride down the tower and back to the Yards.
A storm did indeed hit the Yards that afternoon, forcing Limpkin to cancel any further touring that day. That evening, Trebbly dropped by his quarters for a short talk, requesting, among other things, to eventually try to fit up the detection apparatus that looked as if it belonged on top of the Westwatch.
On the five days that followed, Limpkin was led like an amused child through the new toy store that his friend had just discovered. Trebbly's ecstasies multiplied as he guided Limpkin down into the storage vaults under the Yards and showed him the disassembled factories, vehicles, and the titanic sections that would soon be the Victory. Limpkin began to share Trebbly's euphoria for, even though he didn't have the slightest idea of what most of the machines actually did (he was even more confused after Trebbly attempted to explain), he knew that with the death of Toriman, he was the ultimate commander of this enterprise.
Finally, Limpkin's six days were up and it was time to return to the Caroline, Lady Limpkin, and work of a more tedious nature.
He bid goodbye to Trebbly and told him to hurry along his work; the first of the People, those who knew only the Myth of the Ship and nothing else, would arrive to help with the physical labor. Also, more men and women who knew the full story would be heading for the Yards as soon as they could be found and indoctrinated; if either man could have had his way, he would have shifted the entire population of the Caroline bodily to the Yards in one move. But such things must be executed with discretion.