57 - Hunker Down

Darcy staggered out of the Inquiry Office and fell.  The quivering washed over his muscles and he shuddered in the night cold.  This was awful. This was horrid.  This was a disaster. Haig and Palmer had vanished. He struggled to get up, get his mask out of the sand in the common.  A hand under his arm, helping him up.

“Fitzwilliam,” he managed to gasp.  His cousin.  He’d been keeping back, letting Haig and Palmer come to the front, from the moment that Darcy had won the evil attention of the Immoderate.

“Come on, Darc.  Let’s get you into your hammock, hmmm?”

“Ha…hammock?”

“Yeah.  While y’r out grubbin’ wi’ pisslizards… we foun’ ton o’ multi-leggers crawlin’ in our blankets.  Y’ smash ‘em, they stink, and stick, and live ‘uns leave a slime trail. T’ like bunks.  We’re rebuildin’ ‘n makin’ hammocks.”

“Oh, blank, blanket blank page.”

“Y’ don’ needta swear so much, cuz.”  Fitzwilliam had his arm around his shoulders and managed to get him onto his feet, even if they felt like so much jelly in his shoes.

“’T Immoderate’s Brain’s sent message t’ Glass Mountain.  Prime’s busy. Cap’n’s busy.  ‘T’s name is ‘Redcap’ ‘n it’s takin’ over.  Till we get word.”

Fitz stumbled, sending both of them staggering.  “A brain?  Oh, shit on’t Page. Brains got no slack.”

“Yeah.  It likes rules.”

Fitz helped him back into the barracks and everyone turned to look.  “Message’s sent.  Immoderate’s machine sees itself as ‘bove us.  It’s takin’ o’er.”

“Oh, blank.”  That was someone in the back. 

“Literate Redcap shocked me… twice… fer bein’ rude,” Darcy said as Fitz helped him down to a mat on the floor.  “It needs ‘t horse fixed so it kin watch us.”

“Jes sit, Darc.  Y’ didyer duty.” That was Haig.  “Rains er comin, I guess.  I feels it.”  He had a weather leg that the Illiterates had long depended, back in the Pleasant Village on Xanadu.

“We’ll clean t’ horse.  It’ll load in n’ have its other brain back at t’ Office. Creep ‘round, watchin’ us.” Darcy looked at his hands in front of himself, shaking.  He couldn’t make them be still.  “It’ll get sandy ‘n wet ‘n fulla them yucky multi-things.  They like our grease, don’ they?”

“Ink shit, yeah.  They eat every bit o’ grease we spray.”

“Pen ‘n Ink ‘n Page… We got piss t’ keep us safe from more pisslizards and we’ll get t’ horse clogged up so t’brain has t’ hear our reports.”

“This plantation s’ shithole, Palmer.”

“Tis so, Haig… but…here comes t’ rains…”

The wind suddenly howled up between the barracks and grabbed the sand and composite walls and shook them.  The cold dessert night changed suddenly into swamp and quicksand, flying sheets of wet sand from the south… from what would be the ocean one day.  It was the fall rains that the Illiterates had never seen before, since the rains hitting Xanadu were filtered and baffled by kilometres of seagrass and Earthan scrub cedars before the stunted trees blocked the hurricane force winds.

Here there was nothing to block the water being driven nearly sideways.  The buzz of sand driven took on a gradually deepening drone as it bit into the walls.  “Blank Page.” Someone whispered.  “It’s eatin’ inta t’ walls.”

“Glad our fields r’ locked down tight, boys.” Someone whispered.  “Shitten t’ page…”

“If thet gets through, we’re fakkit up  n’ down ‘n flayed wide open.”

“Hunker down, boys.  We need t’ hunker down.”