Date Point 12y6m2w AV
BGEV-11 Misfit, Uncharted Class 12 Deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Julian Etsicitty
Xiù was curled up on the couch and not talking with either of them. She hadn’t taken the decision to arm the tribe with steel and send them to war at all well.
It would have been better if she’d cried or something. Or… shouted maybe. Kicked his ass. Something. The worst thing she could have done to him was this silent misery. It wasn’t as if Julian was feeling great about the decision after all.
None of them were. Allison was giving her shotgun the cleaning of its lifetime. That weapon deserved the best care in the world and right now Allison was taking out her own fears and doubts on every last little blemish that might have made it anything less than pristine.
But Misfit wasn’t a big ship. It had always been cramped even with just the three of them, and now there was just no escaping each others’ emotions. So Julian did the only thing he could do: he sat down on the couch and hugged with a desperate prayer to whatever loving god might listen that he hadn’t irreparably fucked things up, and damn near started crying when Xiù made a soft sound and leaned into his chest.
That same god doubled down when Allison picked that moment to return, looking pale and thoughtful but sharp again. She watched them for a long instant, then sat down on Julian’s lap and put her arms around them both and the three of them just sat and held each other for an intimate eternity before any of them found the energy to say anything.
Xiù’s head shifted slightly, she sniffed and raked the back of her hand across her nose.
“…We’re going to do something terrible, aren’t we?”
There was a mutual three-way nod.
“…Yeah.” Julian’s voice was little more than a deep, choked grumble. “Think we are.”
“Is it the right thing, though?” Allison asked.
They pulled back and looked at each other.
“…We’re doing it for the right reasons,” Julian ventured. “Aren’t we? To save them?”
“Like I said. If it’s adapt or die, I’d rather help ‘em adapt.” Allison scrubbed at her eyes. “Kinda harder in practice, though.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what Yan said. About… children.” Xiù choked on the word.
“He was…honest. Very honest.” Allison, a champion of forthright honesty herself, didn’t seem pleased about it.
“Too honest.” Julian finished the thought.
“Bullshit.” Allison shook her head. “No such thing. We needed to know what the consequences will be. I don’t wanna… I don’t want us lying to ourselves about just what we’re gonna do to those people. We’re about to turn Yan into Genghis fucking Khan and we need to fucking own it.”
Julian considered the expression he’d seen on Yan’s face as they had struck their bargain. There hadn’t been a gleam of conquest or megalomania there: to the contrary, Yan had looked old as he considered what he was learning. “I think Yan knows it, too. I don’t think he likes the idea much.”
“He’ll still do it, though.” Xiù straightened up a bit more. “…Because he has to. Just like we do.”
“Do we really?” Allison asked. “That volcano might not blow for… hundreds of years. Thousands maybe. It might never blow again. Might be all it ever does is fizz. Couldn’t we be overreacting?”
“We can’t gamble a whole species on that,” Julian said.
Xiù nodded, weakly but with that determined look of hers in her eye. “And they’ll need steel if they’re to have a chance of getting the other tribes to join them,” she added. “And what if the Hierarchy comes back before we do? They’d need…” She trailed off, and left the thought unfinished. It wasn’t like basic steel knives would do a thing against an Abrogator anyway.
“No. But you can go to ground and that matters. Hell. You can’t even dig without metal!” Julian finished. “Not really.”
“When did you learn how to make steel, anyway?” Allison asked. “I mean, I’m not surprised, just curious.”
He shrugged. “Boy scouts.”
“Okay…so why steel? Why not bronze?”
“Because I lied to Yan, kinda. Iron is easy once you know how. I mean… way more complex than anything they’ve ever done before, but easy in the big picture. I’m not exactly an archaeologist, but…”
“We know, but go on…” Xiù prompted.
“I figure the only reason we did bronze first is because it’s more obvious when you find it. They’re something special. Like, iron’s everywhere,” Julian explained, digging deep into the geological education he’d picked up a lifetime ago working as a park ranger, “But it ain’t obvious. Tin and Copper, the ores stand out. They’re shiny and look like metal. Iron ores don’t stand out precisely because they’re everywhere. They just look like… well, rocks. Hell, they basically are rocks.”
“Makes sense,” Allison nodded.
“Right. Besides, you put copper or tin in a good campfire, they melt. But you don’t smelt iron ores without getting stupidly hot.”
“And having everything just right, too,” Allison nodded. “They taught me a bit about smithing back at Omaha, remember? Just enough to help fix the ship.”
“…Right, yeah. So, you can help!”
“Oh hell no,” Allison shook her head vehemently. “Not without a power hammer, no way. I’m not strong enough.”
“Yeah, that’s the other side of it. Lot of hard work goes into smithing steel. We’re lucky we have Yan because we have to make wrought iron first and…fuck, that takes a hell of a lot of muscle power. Just making the tongs is gonna take it out of me and Yan’ll have to pound all the rest of it out himself. And then after all that you only have the start of steel. The rest is hard work and finesse. Good thing Vemik’s smart.”
“When you put it like that, it’s no wonder humans developed bronze first,” Xiù said, quietly.
“Yup. And anyway, if they’re gonna move…they need a metal that they can get wherever they go. And once you can make basic iron, good steel’s not that far away. It’s just…details, really. Attention to detail. And that’s good for ‘em, too.”
“Took our ancestors a long time to figure out those details,” Allison nodded. “But they did it. This is just the easy way.”
“Right. This? This is…God, what’s the word? Like, a cognitive head start? I dunno. If they can make steel again after we leave, that means they can transmit history accurately. That’s important, and it’s a good incentive for a lot of things all at once.”
“Okay, fine. Steel is good. But what happens if they use this steel to put so many tribes to the sword that they go extinct anyway?” Allison asked. “I like these guys, but they ain’t exactly civilized. Let’s not pretend they are.”
“Well,” said Julian, “I suppose that depends on how good of an orator the big fella is.”
“I don’t think any orator’s that good.”
“We can only hope.”
“And trust him,” Xiù said. “I think… Yan knows what’s at stake.”
“Yeah. These people really aren’t stupid, are they?” Allison agreed.
“No, but they’re… they’re all a bit like Vemik.” Xiù said. “Even Yan and the Singer. Vemik reminds me of my brother a little.”
“How so?”
“He’s so smart that he forgets how to be sensible.” Xiù sat back from the three-way hug and started to re-tie her ponytail. “This isn’t like the Gaoians or any of the others, they don’t…they’ve never opened Pandora’s Box. This is the first time they’ve ever played with this kind of… well, magic.”
Julian fidgeted with some of the dirt under his fingernails. “And we’re not there to help them with that. Well…Fuck.”
“There’s gotta be a limit on how much help we can give them,” Allison said. “End of the day, if we teach ‘em the secret of fire and they burn themselves down…”
“That’s cold, Al.”
“Please, if we get back here and all we find is bodies I’m gonna be a fucking wreck!” Allison shook her head vigorously. “But they’re not children. I think about the worst thing we could do is treat ‘em like children. They’re fucking deathworlders, just like us! They live tough lives, they have these rites of adulthood and… all that stuff. They clearly know all about responsibility. You saw Yan’s expression, he knows the stakes here… this one’s a test they have to do for themselves.”
“So…what do we do, then?” Xiù asked. She finished tying her hair back again and drew her feet up to sit cross-legged on Julian’s lap, with his arms around her waist.
“We treat ‘em like adults. And… we pray for them.”
Date Point 12y6m2w AV
Miami, Florida, USA, Earth
Professor Daniel Hurt
“Our next guest tonight is an evolutionary psychologist and historian, the author of ‘The Road To Reason,’ New York Times bestselling author Daniel Hurt, Daniel Hurt everybody!”
There was always going to be this kind of show on at this kind of time of night on this kind of a channel. The name, host and music changed, but the intersection of politics and media needed a talk show hosted by a stand-up comedian, in the same way as an axle needed a differential to turn the energy of one into the work of the other.
This one, with a kind of creative lack of imagination, was called ’That Show With Steven Lawrence.’
But, whatever. The appearance money was good, so Dan adjusted his tie, made sure his jacket was sitting right and strolled out onto the stage with practiced nonchalance.
“Welcome have a seat! It’s been…what, almost a year?”
“Ten months,” Dan made sure his pants weren’t creased as he sat, and acknowledged a lone whoop in the audience with a wave.
“And you’ve been busy, too! Making friends, earning the love of your legion of adoring fans…” there was a ripple of laughter at the sarcasm.
“And I wrote a book,” Dan had rehearsed the way these conversations went.
“Oh yeah, and you wrote a book!” More whoops from the audience. Somebody out there was clearly a bigger than average fan. The host, Steve Lawrence turned to the audience and raised his hands like the showman he was. “Y’know, just a little bestseller…”
“And I only received thirty death threats this time,” Dan rested his hands lightly on his knee. “So, things are improving there! Thank God for tenure, huh?”
“You seem to enjoy poking people in the eye, don’t you?”
“Because we need it, Steve. People don’t think about anything unless you kick them right in the head. Me too, all of us! So what if I upset people?”
“Well, at least it’s entertaining to watch, right?” Lawrence asked rhetorically, setting up another football for him to kick.
“It cuts through the crap, too!” Dan nodded. “The last decade has been just poisoned with tribalism and feels-before-reals politics, and the only way to break through that is with mockery! Nothing else works, and we know this because Science.”
Lawrence laughed. “That should be the title of your next book! ‘Because Science!’
Dan smiled for both his benefit and the camera’s and pressed on with his point. “Which science? Any science! Psychology, history, biology, take your pick. Humans are incredibly good at feeling, but you just can’t base rational decisions on your feelings alone, that just doesn’t work.”
“You said in your book that for daily purposes, intuitive thinking does the job just fine…” Lawrence pointed out.
“Yes! See, the way we make decisions is really weird,” Dan sat forward eagerly, all pretense of composure forgotten. He was the first to acknowledge that when he got into his stride there was no stopping him, and the way people thought about everything was easily the most fascinating subject in his life.
“It happens before you know it, and usually when you’re not even thinking about whatever, right? And that’s okay! It helps you get through everyday nonsense, just all the things in your life that you don’t really need to pay attention to you can deal with like pop, pop, pop!” He waved his hands around his head for emphasis. “It lets you save your focus for the things that need it, and it means you, uh…absorb all the smarts from the people you know. But what it doesn’t let you do is analyze something rationally. That is work. That is hard work, and people don’t like to do it!”
“So what are we mere mortals to do?”
“Laugh! Laugh at ourselves, laugh at each other, especially laugh at the people who don’t want to be laughed at, and double-especially at the people we’re told we can’t laugh at!” Dan reined himself in a bit and sat back again.
“Know thyself,” he continued, in a slightly quieter tone of voice. “That’s all. It’s way easier to live with each other if we think about why we think and emote and tribe up like we do. It makes it easier to make friends with the other guy, right? And that, right there, is the only thing that’ll keep us off each others’ throats and prevent another, uh…Presidential experiment.”
As expected, the usual round of exuberant cheers and full-throated jeering came immediately.
“Never were a fan of that guy, huh?”
“Hell no! But, well. Even I can’t really step completely out of my own tribe. None of us can. I try not to be too judgemental because I think it’s for history to really judge the outcome of those years. We’re all too close to it to know. I admit, I’m a fan of Sartori…”
“Even though he’s a Republican?” Steve Lawrence’s question sounded guileless, but of course he was just following the cards.
“See, that’s tribal thinking. And the one and only way to stop that is to forge a common identity. Honestly, try it out. Find that neighbor you really hate because, I dunno, his dog craps on your lawn or he’s a Patriots fan or whatever, and find out what you have in common. And here’s the magic bit—you do have something in common. You always have something in common! So be deliberately friendly and polite no matter how much you hate his guts because a couple of weeks of hanging out later? You will be friends.”
He paused and reflected. “Well, if you’re a man. Women find it more difficult.”
Lawrence shifted in his seat as a few people in the audience made disapproving noises. “Isn’t that sexist?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Dan had to raise his voice slightly as the disapproving noises escalated. “Steve, men and women have different bodies. There’s nothing sexist about acknowledging that, right? Well there’s nothing sexist about acknowledging that we have different brains. There have been studies performed on one-day-old infants who haven’t had time to internalize any kind of gender-based nurture-over-nature thing which show a clear difference between male and female in how they respond to different stimuli. We’ve known since the Classical civilizations, and even before then, that men and women really don’t think or behave the same way…And sure, that’s not a nice truth, but it’s still true.”
He sat back. “If I designed the world? Men would share the best elements of female psychology, and vice versa. But I didn’t: Evolution did.”
Lawrence nodded. “And evolution doesn’t care.”
“Nope. Neither does Biology. Or Chemistry, or Physics, because that’s all everything is in the end. We have to deal with reality as it is if we want to shape it towards how we might want it to be, and I want to live in a society without prejudice. That means knowing what real prejudice actually looks like.’”
“Well, we’re getting plenty of Tweets already!” Lawrence segued, hitting the last of the planned interview. This was where things got difficult as while they could script for the type of messages they expected to get, the public had a knack for throwing some surprising curveballs.
“Tell ‘em to delete their account.” Dan suggested. There was a dutiful chuckle from the audience, and he sat up straight. “Alright, let’s hear it…”
“So, this one comes from Zoe Foster, who I guess saw you on ESNN after the protests at NEC…She says ‘Hate speech is hate speech, Nazis don’t get a seat at the table. If you advocate for genocide you don’t get a say.’
Dan shrugged the statement off. That one was just an appetizer. “Well, she’s wrong. The most effective antidote to bigotry is to permit it,” he answered breezily. “The facts have weight, Steve. You only have to worry about what the other guy is saying if you’re wrong…”
They navigated five more minutes of topical questions, a couple of in-jokes and three outright attacks on Dan’s character and from there Dan parked himself at the panel table and waited while the rest of the night’s guests came in.
It was a productive conversation in the end. There were some civil differences of opinion, some impassioned interruptions and talking over one another because that was really the only way to get anything said at that table, and…as always, the whole show was over before Dan had even really noticed.
There was the usual ‘aftermath’ segment for the Internet, a few outtakes and reshoots, and Dan finally got to drop the act backstage when they settled down on the couch in the green room and hung out with a bottle of sparkling wine and some snacks.
“Tiring work,” Lawrence commented, patting him on the shoulder as he passed around the drinks. At fifty-two, Dan was the oldest one in the room and he was definitely feeling it. Hot lights and keeping up the public persona had a way of draining him.
“Yyyup.” Dan was generally a man of few and carefully considered words off-stage. He accepted the champagne flute with a smile and joined in the five-way toast to a successful show.
Diana Wimmer, the political editor at Horseshoe Media, made a special point of ringing her glass against his. Out at the panel table, the two of them had been at odds over his comment about women and friendship, but in private they were actually friendly acquaintances and regular correspondents. He respected and admired her enormously.
“You have a lot lined up for this week…” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Ten book signings in six days,” Dan nodded.
“You sound bored.”
“Weary. Never bored.”
Diana nodded agreement with that one, and sat back on the couch. “I doubt you’re considering a change in career anytime soon, though.”
That got a laugh. She was right—Dan loved his job.
“Not,” he said, “unless something even more epic comes along…”
Date Point 12y6m2w1d AV
Uncharted Class 12 Deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Yan Given-Man
The sky-people had strange ways.
Yan shouldn’t have been surprised. Anybody who flew between skies in a hut made of ‘steel’ had to be strange, without question. They seemed friendly, and they were cunning in ways that Yan didn’t understand, but…
But they liked water. That was just…
That was…
It was very strange. Water itched and made people cold, it could hide yshek or the sweating sickness.
The sky-hut had a name. That was strange too. They spoke about it as if it was a living thing, a person. A woman. They called it “her” and “she” and yet they made it clear it was no kind of a beast. It was simply a tool with much, much sky-thinking behind it.
To Yan, who had spent his life making and discarding tools as they were needed, the idea of loving a tool was…
But then Jooyun had showed him why they loved their tools. The sky-people’s tools weren’t knocked off a flint core when needed, they were made well and carefully and kept for when they were needed. Each one was like a Knife of Manhood to them and each one, according to Awisun, could be the difference between life and death.
“How?” Yan had asked, curiously. Vemik was rubbing off on him.
“There’s no ‘air’ above the sky,” Xiù had explained.
“Air.” A new word.
Jooyun raised a hand and blew across his own fingers. His breath had the strong and sharp taste of ‘garlic’ that day. “That. The wind. That’s air. Imagine a place where there was no wind, where you could not breathe. That’s what it’s like above the sky.”
Awisun hadn’t learned the People’s words so well. “We… one time, our ‘ship,’ our skies-hut, it broke. All of the air went out. We, uh…” she thought hard. “We maybe-died.”
Yan frowned at her, alarmed. “You maybe-died? You don’t know if you died?”
“No, we didn’t die,” Xiù corrected. “We nearly died. We were very badly hurt, but we lived.”
“I see.” Yan reminded himself again that the sky-people were still just People. Shyow had terrible scars on her arm, and Jooyun had lost his foot in a fight. A fight with sky-weapons, no less! Having seen Awisun’s ‘shotgun’ in action, and the woman herself glide through a deadly battle like a dancer, it was easy to keep thinking of them as a kind of god. But gods would heal their scars, or regrow their lost foot. Gods wouldn’t have foul-tasting breath.
“So…these tools are like a spear. You need them to stay safe.”
Jooyun nodded. “Yes. And…well, they’re really hard to make. So we look after them.”
Yan glanced at the site where the women were working on the ‘furnace.’ “…How hard?”
“Well…tomorrow, I’ll show you. It’d be good if everyone ate well and got lots of sleep.”
“…Yes.” Yan glanced up the hill, to where the ‘ship’ now rested. They had moved it closer to the village, and the sight of something so big and obviously heavy drifting above the trees like mist…
Vemik had pestered the sky-people into letting him travel inside it, and had said the view out the frozen-warm-ice ‘window’ was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen in his life. Jooyun had invited Yan to ride along as well but he had politely declined the offer; he liked the sky-people in the careful way he liked any friendly strangers, especially strange strangers…but the tribe always came first. He needed to stay a bit aloof, at least when he wasn’t in control of the meeting. Too bad, really. It sounded like fun.
The Sky-People had been no less strange after it had come down again. They had put it down among the pools of warm water north of the village, and Jooyun had spent several minutes picking among them for some reason.
When he had turned to Shyow and Awisun and declared “This one!” the two sky-women had seemed as pleased as if he’d lain a yshek at their feet for a courtship-hunt. Yan had no idea what was so exciting about a pool of hot water of all things.
“We’re going to get some rest ourselves,” Jooyun had announced, and the sky-people had vanished uphill again. Something about the way they walked…
Yan was, in his own way, just as curious as Vemik about things, even if he was better at hiding it. Which was why he went on a patrol after sunset. He caught Vemik at the edge of the village about to head off toward the ‘ship’ and the pools.
Yan gave him a knowing look. “Sky-thinker, you should be asleep.”
Vemik startled guiltily and immediately objected as only a young man caught doing something he shouldn’t could. “So should you! Jooyun says we’ll need your strength!”
Yan grinned mischievously in return. “Sky-thinker. Sleep. Now.”
Vemik sagged. “…Yes, Yan.” He slinked back into the village, grumbling unhappily.
Yan made sure that the young thinker was back in his hut before he nonchalantly slipped behind one of the small, young Ketta that grew up in the high-forest-place and circled around downwind of the pools, where the air tasted of especially bad farts.
Both moons were full that night, the air was still, and he heard sky-people voices easily enough. He stuck to the deep shadows under the trees and stepped only where he knew his feet and knuckles would make no sound. Hunting on a bright, still night wasn’t easy, but it could be done with practice.
Besides, he didn’t need to get within spear distance. He just wanted to see.
He followed the rhythmic sloshing sound and soft vocalisations as close as he dared, and…
Well. Awisun was certainly having fun, oh yes. So was Jooyun. They really were People, through and through. Strange, pale people but nothing more than that. And if that was their idea of a restful night’s sleep…
Smirking, he crept away and left them to enjoy themselves.
They seemed surprisingly fresh and alert in the morning, though Yan didn’t even have time to poke fun at Jooyun for it, because the steel-magic started at dawn.
Over the last hand of days, the whole village had been tasked to gather many different rocks and several different clays, and had gone rushing off on Vemet’s orders—backed by Yan’s leadership—to go find them. According to Jooyun they were lucky and everything they needed to make ‘Damascus steel’ was there, hiding in plain sight all around the village and the camp.
So, they gathered. They found a good workspace, one not too far from the stream but downriver from the village, and had stacked up the gathered rocks carefully.
Yan, meanwhile, had taken for himself the task of finding an ‘anvil’ like Jooyun had described. He walked far up the stream and eventually found a little fall where the gods had polished flat a black, glossy stone. It was almost too big for him to get his arms around and so heavy that he could hardly lift it, but it was exactly like Jooyun had said.
He spent the morning working it out of the muddy gravel, then the rest of the day wrestling it back to the village, cursing and aching all along the way. It was worth it, though—When he finally got it back, Jooyun had stood there with his mouth open in an astonished, lop-sided gape. [“Christ! The fuck you tryin’ to prove!?”]
Yan didn’t understand more than two of those words but he guessed that the comment was an approving one, so he grinned and did a maybe stupid thing by hoisting the ‘anvil’ above his head a few times with a cocky, pained grunt like it was a prize bull Werne. In a way it was.
They wedged it into place to make a flat surface to work on, and then Yan called it a day while everyone else bustled endlessly and did many things to prepare. He ate like he was famished and he drank two full skins of water. All his muscles hurt and the tribe left him to rest, slapping him on his shoulders in congratulations. He wasn’t complaining; three of the tribe’s prettiest women visited Yan’s hut that night and rubbed his aching body…
He didn’t get enough sleep and the next day was worse, because the first thing he discovered was that there had been a mistake. The women had finished building the ‘furnace,’ which was something like a tall, narrow, complicated pot with many holes and strange shapes that had to be done just so.
The shape was exactly like Jooyun had drawn on ‘paper’ with his ‘pencils,’ but when Jooyun had come down from the ship that morning he’d seemed surprised to find that it was as tall as him. Apparently, they’d made it too big.
He’d scratched his head at it for a while before shrugging. [“Well… okay,”] he declared. [“I guess we’re doing a really big melt, then.”]
Somehow that sounded like a good thing to Yan. But it made a lot more work.
The ‘furnace’ wasn’t the only thing they had to make. The men had to make ‘bellows’ which needed big Werne hides that were smoked, tanned, and then ‘soaped’ to keep them supple. They had to make that too, along with other things that Vemik could no doubt recite but which passed in a blur for Yan; lots of charcoal, ‘flux’ from ‘limestone,’ ‘gloves’ made of leather, ‘aprons’ made to protect skin from the promised fire. Split sheets of quartz to look through and protect the eyes from the heat of the fire. Whatever they were preparing for, it was clearly a mighty craft and one that needed giving- and taking-magic at the limit of what the tribe could do. And all of it was rushed; the Sky-People had to leave.
There was so much to do. Jooyun wasn’t lying, they really did need Yan’s strength and the demands on it were endless. It was back-tiring work and he wasn’t alone; the other men had to practice on the ‘bellows’ to Jooyun’s satisfaction if they weren’t tasked by Vemet or the Singer. They built a fire inside the furnace to bake it hard and dry. Then they scrubbed it free of any ash. Then they baked the gathered rocks, then let them cool, then smashed them small, and finally they stacked it all into the ‘furnace’ in exactly the right order.
“Remember all of this exactly,” Jooyun had said. “And practice all of it while we’re gone or you may lose the magic.”
That evening the Singer sat down with Jooyun and, over the course of a long conversation, made a very intricate biting on a thin piece of tree bark so the tribe would never forget what to do. He seemed to know he might be giving offense by guiding her in her craft, but like so much that had happened there were bigger problems at hand. For Sky-People, biting-sign wasn’t a giving-magic or a taking-magic, it was just another tool.
Of course, that attitude inspired Vemik as well. He tried his hand at a biting and some of the women immediately objected, but both the Singer and the Sky-Hunter intervened.
[“The men must remember too,”] Sky-Hunter intoned. [“Everything must be done carefully to get ‘steel.’ ‘Iron’ is easy but it’s not good for knives.”]
That more or less settled the issue and everyone grumbled and got over it. The next day the Singer sang and danced for good fortune, and everyone took an easy morning, and then…
And then they made fire. A fire such as Yan had never imagined. They made it slowly, so slowly that it took two whole days just to get it hot enough. It was a fire so hot that anything coming even close could burst into flame. So hot Yan couldn’t even look at it except through the sheet of quartz. And they had to pump those ’bellows’ all day and all night without stop until finally, finally after a long and exhausting night, Jooyun poked the clay plug at the bottom with a very long stick…
And out came fire, flowing like water and spitting like wet Therka-wood thrown into a campfire. Something like that. It was so much more than anything Yan had ever known.
For once, Yan indulged in a little Sky-Thinking, wondering how in the names of all the gods the Sky-People had first learned how to do this. This was a craft of wonders.
[“This is one of the hardest metals to make,”] Jooyun had said, [“And one of the best. If you can make this you can make almost any other.”]
Yan had asked about why they didn’t start with an easier thing, but Jooyun had said something about ‘ores’ and ‘smelting’ and honestly, that seemed like something for Vemik to understand.
Yan had other things to worry about. By the next morning the water-fire had cooled to the point where it could be picked up, like water freezing into ice. Yan hefted the big new blackish rock from its pit—it was so *heavy!*—and set it down on their rock-slab ‘table.’ Jooyun beat on it with a heavy rock to break off the ‘slag’ and there it was. Metal. ‘Iron’ as Jooyun had said. Everyone stared at its dark, shiny surface for a long while, reverently. They had made this.
Jooyun spoke and broke the spell. [“Well, that’s ‘iron.’ Next, we make our tools.”]
A second ‘furnace’ which didn’t get as hot as the other had been built right next to the slab-rock. It was open on the side and things could be taken out of it when needed. Used less charcoal, too. The metal was loaded onto the top of glowing-red charcoal and the bellows were worked again until the lump was glowing dull orange. Jooyun used long, fire-blackened sticks to quickly pull the lump onto the slab. The sticks burst into flame but they lasted just long enough to do the job.
He then picked up the big hammering-rock and slammed it down into the glowing hot ‘iron.’ To Yan’s great surprise, it dented almost like firm clay, but Jooyun didn’t stop at hitting it once: He kept beating on the metal without stop until it was thinner and longer while Yan and Vemik watched, fascinated. Yan had to admire the sky-man for his tenacity. Jooyun was weaker than any one of the People, even the women, but he just kept going like…like the monster in children’s stories. As if there was nothing that could stop him. As if he didn’t know how to stop.
He sweated all over, too. They already knew that about the sky-people, even the cool and calm Shyow had an all-over sheen on muggy days, but pretty soon Jooyun was covered in a beading shine that soaked his strange hair and ran down his limbs.
Any man of the People who got that sweaty would be on the edge of falling down, but Jooyun’s worst discomfort seemed to come from the raw leather ‘apron’ they had made, rather than any real tiredness. The ground around his feet drank up the little dark spots that rained from him, his breath settled into a steady rhythm, and his arm fell in step with it, rising and falling and every time it fell the impact of rock on ‘metal’ sent a sharp sound stabbing through Yan’s ears.
The Sky-Hunter stopped only once to politely request some water. Yemik gave him his skin and watched, awestruck, as Jooyun downed the entire thing in a single long but quick series of gulps and then picked up the rock again and kept on pounding as though he hadn’t paused.
By the time Jooyun was happy the lump had changed its character. It was somehow even hotter and glowed as bright as sunset, hotter and brighter than Yan could look at. Seeming pleased with himself, Jooyun paused and caught his breath. [“…Okay.”] He panted, and swiped a handful of water off his forehead before flicking the drops away. [“Now we gotta make the most important tool. You’ll want to watch me carefully.”]
He made tools. Lots of tools. They started off simple—a sharp spike, a round peg—but each new one he made was then used to make a new tool, which in turn made another tool. By sunset, Jooyun had made two hands of different tools, each with a special job and each with special names. ‘Punch,’ ‘drift,’ ‘pin’ and others.
The most important, he explained, were the ‘tongs’ and those were the first completely new thing Yan saw him make. They had a ‘hinge’ in the middle and made it easy to pick up things that were very hot and very heavy. They snapped together like a Tatrak’s claws, and Jooyun worked them a few times with a grin, obviously pleased with himself. [“Got it done in one day! We should be good to start tomorrow, if you want.”]
Yan couldn’t contain himself. “Start?!“ The idea that every back-breaking moment of the last two days and all that relentless exertion had only just got them to the start was…
Jooyun rolled his shoulders, rubbing at his well-used muscles. He seemed amused in an exhausted way. “I told you, good tools are hard to make. Next we beat the ‘carbon’ out of that metal and make ‘wrought iron,’ and then we need to ‘refine’ it to ‘steel’ for the knives, and then—”
“He’s already made wonders, Yan,” Vemik pointed out in response to Yan’s incredulous look and reverentially took the ‘tongs’ from Jooyun. “I wonder if…”
Before anyone could stop him, Vemik bounced over to the pile of rocks they’d crushed to make steel, picked one up with the ‘tongs,’ squeezed, and grinned when the rock exploded in its jaws in a puff of white dust and sharp splinters.
Jooyun’s smile got wider. “Your first ‘machine,’ Vemik!”
Yan tasted the word. “Ma-chine. Means what?”
“Means… a thing for doing things you can’t. Or for making things you can do, easier. Anyway, simple machines are for later. Tomorrow, I think…yeah. Tomorrow we make knives.”