[Back to Surreal Tender the Technomancer. This story picks up the next morning after Salts of Soul-Stuff. If you need to catch up, check out the Table of Contents.
Lore about wind and water courtesy of His Nibs. If we stay on Atlantis long enough, maybe he’ll make us a map.]
Surreal Tender and her companions watched the dirigible disappear, lightening the load on its engine by following the trade winds north and east. Then they looked south, where green hills rose one behind the other into what she first thought was a hazy purple horizon, then realized was the lowest of the Atlantean Alps, also following each other slope upon slope, peak upon peak, until the highest of them became indistinguishable from the indigo sky.
Something tilted high up — a gleam thin as a needle. Surreal could not tell whether she saw an eagle’s wing or snow on a mountain ridge. She stepped away as if the mountains, distant though they were, might come down on her. Then she dropped her head back and spun around.
“Don’t get dizzy!”
She whirled to a stop and smiled at the speaker. Vertigo was impossible for her, but she didn’t bother explaining that — her sudden focus made him start. The sickly youth with the magic tricks. He smiled, then dropped his eyes and turned away.
“Shall we walk on?” Surreal asked the group. Seven passengers had stayed behind to await the next dirigible, due in four days. After a breakfast of coffee — bitter and creamy — and pastries — rich and filled with apricot paste — Surreal proposed an expedition up into the hills to the south.
Randal Jasper, the red-haired geologist, was going south anyway; he wanted to take a look at an old saltpeter cave in the next valley. Silas Norton, the black-haired businessman, explained he was taking a holiday before an important conference in London. His valet, a clockwork man of Bessemer construction, followed behind him, carrying his owner’s possessions in a towering rucksack. The valet also carried a gun case.
The conjurer, who gave his name as Quicksilver the evening before, was also on holiday. “It’s just a stage name,” he explained. “I’m called Simon Quick.” He carried a sketchbook and soft pen case dangling by a leather strap like a schoolboy.
The last of the passengers who remained behind, a slender woman of about 60, walked beside him. She also carried a sketchbook and pencils — hers in a bag slung over her shoulder. She was a teacher, she explained, and was now taking her first trip away from Nova Terra since retiring that spring. Her name was Sarah Norton.
“No relation,” Silas Norton had interrupted when she mentioned the name the past evening.
Miss Norton looked at him with vague disapproval. “Certainly not.”
Miss Norton also must think Simon Quick looked ill, Surreal thought. She watched Miss Norton fish an orange out of her bag and hand it to Mr. Quick.
Surreal, who had a long stride, soon led the group along with Mr. Jasper, the geologist. He had forgiven her for snubbing him the previous night. She asked about the geological history of Atlantis, then about any towns in the mountains.
“There aren’t any on the map,” she explained.
“Cos there ain’t none,” Mr. Jasper explained. He glanced at her. “Not to speak of. There’s the ports, but no one lives there who was born here — maybe second or third generation, but newcomers all the same.”
“But the Atlanteans — ”
He laughed. “What’s an Atlantean when he’s at home?”
Surreal looked at him, smiling.
He answered his own question. “Someone who lives on Atlantis, that’s all.”
“Then why is it not colonized and built up, do you think?” she asked. “Like Nova Terra?”
“Beats me.” He took off his straw hat and scratched his head. “But it makes prospecting simpler; no lawyers or mineral rights to deal with.”
Surreal Tender thought something must be missing here, but the day was fair and the hill steep. She strode along through the short-cropped grass. Sheep strayed across the road and up the next slope like a cloud moving across a green sky.
After a while she thought Mr. Carker must be getting winded. She fell back to check on him. He was walking easily enough in the back of the group, Mr. Norton’s clockwork man beside him.
“Hello,” Surreal Tender said to the clockwork man. “I’m called Surreal.”
The clockwork man nodded his graphite-colored skull. “Madam.”
Mr. Norton spoke over his shoulder. “He can’t learn new words. Not an advanced model like some of us here.”
Unlike Mr. Jasper, he had not forgiven Surreal for the night before. She smiled at the clockwork man and leaned her head to his ear. “Your boss is a pinhead.”
The clockwork valet did not answer.
The hill grew steeper and the trail divided: straight ahead they saw a grove of aspen trees. To the right a few stone steps and a tumbled barricade suggested an overlook. Surreal did not get a thrill from looking down from high places. She sat in the grass. Mr. Carker joined her, fanning himself with his hat. The clockwork man, uninstructed, stood still in his tracks.
Mr. Jasper, Mr. Quick and Mr. Norton strolled on up the stone steps. Miss Norton hesitated. After a while she put her hand on Surreal’s shoulder.
“I don’t know whether I should say anything, but — could we have a talk tonight at the inn?”
Surreal blinked up at her. The woman’s face, up close, was faintly lined. Her eyes were large and periwinkle blue. A crease across her nose marked where she must use a pince-nez to read.
“Of course,” Surreal said. She put her hand over Miss Norton’s.
“I’m staying here to walk and sketch for a couple of weeks, then flying back to Nova Terra. If you need anything in the Old World, find my sister in Broceliande. She’s also called Norton.” Miss Norton slid a card under Surreal’s fingers. “Before then, stick with your secretary.”
Surreal glanced at Mr. Carker, who was lying back on the grass with his hat over his eyes.
“I’m sorry?”
But Miss Norton was turning away.
Surreal looked up at the clockwork man. “What do you make of that?”
He did not answer. He looked at Surreal with his opalescent optics, then with a whir moved his wipers up and down over them. Needing no sleep, he could not close his eyes, but he had been engineered to clear the surfaces.
“You need a hat,” Surreal said, “so you can nap like James Carker there. Look how he earns his keep.”
Mr. Carker didn’t move. The clockwork man turned his head to her.
“Use mine,” Surreal said to him, holding it out. “And hand me the basket. I’m going to set out the lunch things.”
The clockwork man accepted Surreal Tender’s straw hat, sat on the grass with more grinding and whirring, and then unfolded his full length on the verdure under a poplar tree. He placed Surreal Tender’s hat over his face and lay still. A trace of steam, no more than a shimmer of air, rose from his chest.
Surreal Tender gazed at him a while. Then she looked up at the poplar. Must be water nearby, Surreal thought. She listened for a stream. Nothing but wind and a bird screaming — an eagle, she thought, far away. She spread out the picnic blanket and began arranging everything — bread and cheese, fruit, glasses, bottles of beer and ginger fizz. She found a sausage in the basket — donkey sausage, she noticed — and began slicing it.
Mr. Norton came down the trail from the precipice and chivvied his man. “Don’t learn bad habits.” The clockwork man stood. Mr. Norton sat down and accepted a beer from Surreal. “I had too much to drink last night. Don’t mind my rudeness.”
“Not at all,” she murmured.
Mr. Carker sat up and began spreading cheese on bread. Mr. Jasper swung down the trail and took the stone steps two at a time.
“That precipice is a quarter mile long if it’s an inch,” he said. “A new vista every time you turn a corner. And the karst! Probably magnificent caves under our feet.”
He opened a bottle of ginger fizz and accepted a plate of bread and cheese. “Gee willikers, I’m hungry! What’s this sausage?”
“Donkey,” Surreal said, then laughed at his expression. He also laughed. The others joined them. A day for goodwill, Surreal thought. Air like apple wine —
It took Mr. Quick — out of breath from sprinting down the trail — several tries to hail them. He stood bent almost double, his long, thin hand clutching his chest.
Surreal jumped to her feet, tumbling her plate to the ground. She ran a couple of long strides up the stone stairs. “Are you well?”
“Fallen,” Mr. Quick gasped. “The cliff — 90 feet down — someone’s pushed Miss Norton. She’s dead.”