Mazelton grabbed his heat projector and a few small sacks of core dust. A hoe. A canteen. Light cores. And a half dozen heat sponges. And that was about it because he was damned if he was going to spend the night dicking about in some abandoned town that was a hick town when it wasn’t an abandoned town!
Also, more than that would just slow him down if he had to run.
So off he trotted, to the ruins of what was once the town of… no idea. The buildings appeared to be fairly close together, concrete jutting out of the ground in neat rectilinear forms marking where the buildings were. Some built up on concrete slabs. More dug into the earth, with rough concrete basements outlined in more dirt. You could still see where the roads were- grown over yes, but their sunbeam straight lines divided the smaller boxes a bit more than two wagon lengths apart. Six boxes across, three up, and you are halfway around the block. Boxes within boxes, lines following lines.
“Looks like a Third Empire settlement, or someone following their taste in urban planning.” Mazelton told his guide. Not that the Third “Empire” was much more than the wet fart heralding the fecal tornado of the Fourth Swabian Empire some sixty years later.
“You would know.” His guide grumbled back. A worryingly raw boned young man, already short on calories and temper. He held his spade like he was trying to will it into being an ax. And that was probably the best he could get out of him, Mazelton concluded.
“Right, where did the detectors change color?”
“Big building around the corner. This is as close as I am getting.”
“Sure.”
Mazelton tied strings around the tops of three sponges and threw them around the corner. He gave it a minute and, not hearing any sudden whistling noises, he went around the corner after them. He let his eyes half close, trying to see what was in front of him and what the radiant heat wanted to show him.
The sponges would be… less than completely useful here. Oh, he’d keep using them, to encourage sales, but… yeah. This wasn’t ambient dust, the site was radiating heat at a frankly alarming rate. Mazelton carefully patted himself down to remove any metal on his person, left his sack of supplies around the corner, and started walking his way to the… building? Looked like some sort of large structure was once there, long since collapsed. But something carved a three meter hole through it and the floor under it, and the hole was putting out enough heat to make even a polisher question some life choices.
Mazelton swung one of the sponges on it’s string out in front of him, then cycled through them as he progressed forwards. Sponge, swing, sponge, swing, so on until he reached the hole. The edges were eerily smooth. When he got a bit closer, he found that the concrete had more or less melted together, sintering? Something like that. The edges of the cut were what was releasing the residual heat, that and the concrete around them. There were probably metal bars buried in the concrete, that hadn’t helped.
He flicked a few light cores into the hole. Apparently there was some sort of basement there, once upon a time, and a staircase was still visible off to one side. Whatever had cut the hole clearly couldn’t be bothered with it, as a ten meter long ramp of debris had been shoved down into the basement. Something heavy had run up and down it, leaving compressed ruts in the dirt and rubble.
Mazelton didn’t see anything radiating fresh heat down there, and with the spirit of the terminally bored, he walked down into the hole. Then ran back out, yelled to the guide that he was checking out the underground and then went back into the hole.
You could take the boy out of Old Radler, but you couldn’t take the Old Radler out of the boy. Exploring ancient, forgotten tombs? Hidden chambers? Places that were sealed away for a very good reason? Mazelton felt more at home there than he did in his parent’s apartment. In all honesty, they tended to be anti-climactic. Anything really valuable would have been taken away by the people who sealed the place, or the hundreds of generations after them. But every now and then there would be a treasure. A small library of crystals, or books, or pressed clay tablets. Caches of minerals harvested from heavenly rocks and returned to the earth. Machinery. Seeds. Oh, what our ancestors did with seeds!
And speaking of…
The basement had clearly stored some sort of machinery- Mazelton could see the rust filled holes where bolts had been attached. The whole room smelled of rust, so there must have been a monstrous fortune in iron sitting down here. Not a speck of it now. Mazelton looked up. The ramp angled down at what would be an odd location if you gave a damn about the existing structure, but it was also the shortest line between whatever was down here and the street. Equally clearly, the dirt had been pushed in from outside, so something found whatever was down here, cut the hole, built the ramp, and dragged out the iron. Which was… worrying. That was an alarming level of machine sophistication for this point in the epoch. Especially as this epoch was stronger in the life sciences than machinery. And anything really human would have noticed the seed bank.
He quickly scooped up his light cores and positioned them around the sealed resin chest. Bright orange with a green seed on it, roughly the size of a coffin. Most of the chest would be insulation, of course. It would be a miracle if there were even two hundred viable seeds in there. But it didn’t take many to establish a strain. This was huge. Too big for him alone.
He really, really wanted to crack open the chest and loot it. Or not report it and come back later to loot. Or… something! Anything but share the wealth! Mazelton sighed and shook his head. This was exactly how people got murdered. He clambered up the ramp that suddenly felt much, much longer, picked up his sack, and started walking back to camp.
“What did you find?” His suddenly chatty guide demanded.
“Trouble.”
Mazelton cornered Polyclitus and by dint of furious whispering, got him to take a small walk with him where prying ears couldn’t hear them.
“Short answer is this- news that is so good that it’s big trouble, wrapped up in extremely worrying news that is also trouble but possibly not right-this-minute trouble.”
Polyclitus glanced over at Mazelton, then stared up at the ruins on the Moon.
“I know I am going to regret saying this but… please explain more.”
“Man sized seed bank, seals intact, probably Third Empire. Which was probably the peak of greensmithing in this epoch, at least so far.”
Polyclitus’ eyes seemed to flash red for a second as Mazelton watched him fight off the descending greed demon.
“Alright. And?”
“And something cut a hole in the basement of what was once probably some kind of agricultural supply or processing center, neatly removed all the valuable iron machinery that was down there, and just left the coffin sized, bright orange, insanely valuable to humans seed bank.”
Polyclitus looked like he had just bitten into something nasty, and found a weevil in it too.
“And in the course of cutting said hole, it generated enough heat to make me pay real attention, hot enough to melt concrete. I know from reading historical records that such machines have existed in the past, but they require immensely sophisticated cores combined with technologies we haven’t learned how to describe yet, let alone recreate. I know that you can make a lens by grinding glass and you can make glass by melting sand, but don’t ask me to make a Mazer, you know?”
“What’s a Mazer, and what’s that to do with lenses?”
“I don’t know either. See the problem?”
Polyclitus rubbed his face.
“You think it’s related to the Nacon slave machine?”
“I think it would be a hell of a coincidence if it isn’t. I can’t really date how long ago the cut was made. Less than two years, certainly, and could be as little as a few months. That kind of heat, in those materials, doesn't stick around long.”
Polyclitus looked back up at the moon.
“Nobody else saw the seed bank?”
“Not that I know of. Nobody said anything, at any rate.”
Polyclitus sighed.
“I really, really want to pretend that they aren't there, just tell folks about the machines being around to keep them moving.”
“I had the same thought.”
“Except you were planning to go back later and snatch it up for yourself.”
“And you aren’t? Actually, I guess we could still do that. Probably easier for the two of us to get away with it than one alone.”
“Mazelton, you are a smart guy but that is exactly how people get murdered.”
Mazelton laughed in near silence, a little panting noise.
“That thought occurred too.”
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“So what haven’t I thought of yet, smart guy?”
“Whatever got hauled out of there is no doubt a fortune in steel, but the seed bank is worth a whole lot more. Especially with the Disputed Territory opening up, and new land being reclaimed. Any human with any contact with the outside world would grab the seeds first.”
“You think this was done by… who, a bunker of frozen Nacon soldiers?”
“Sacral Smith would be the more likely job. Soldier case only fought and nothing else. And no, we probably aren’t that lucky. I’m more worried that it’s a bunker full of frozen Nacron dry minds, looking to rebuild. And they don’t give a damn about food.”
It was the first time Mazelton saw Polyclitus look scared.
The next morning, Polyclitus called an assembly. He clearly hadn’t slept.
“Alright, gather ‘round. This is going to be a quick and dirty meeting, because I want us to be moving. The short of it is this- the prospectors found a newly opened hole in the ruins south of here. The hole is very, very hot. Lethally hot to anyone not a polisher. So we sent our polisher in to see what made the very hot hole. The bad news is that whatever it was is most likely related to the slave machine we killed, and the hole is most likely less than a year old. The good news is that whatever they were looking for in the hole, they ignored a seed bank that was cached down there.”
Muttered questions grew into cursing as the better informed explained what that meant.
“Yep. Not the biggest I ever heard of, but plenty big. It appears to be intact, though Mazelton had the great good sense not to touch it before reporting back. The problems are this- one, is it a real seed bank and not, say, a boobietrap? Two, if it is real, are the seeds still viable? Three, if the seeds are viable, are they valuable? That is, do we already have them or want them? And lastly, four, how do we divide the benefits?”
This led to a roar, as everyone decided that they had to be heard on this. Polyclitus let them go for about a minute before he blew a sharp, shockingly loud blast on a whistle.
“Now, I know you are all most interested in point four, but if points one through three don’t pan out, then there ain’t no benefits to divide. So quiet down! Mazelton, our very own polisher, has agreed to go back into the hole with some rope, so we can try to haul the chest up and see if it’s got any nasty little surprises for us. We will work from there. We will also keep the wagons moving, because whether or not it has anything, we are dead if we are too slow getting across the mountains. No two ways about it- dead.”
That got the crowd’s attention.
“Anybody with experience disarming traps, please stick around. Likewise if you can identify seeds. Needless to say, this is a hazard job. Now back to your wagons and let’s go!”
With great reluctance, the crowd fitfully broke up. Unsurprisingly, the Collective produced a couple of trap finders under the supervision of Mendiluze. The Dusties dug out a journeyman greensmith who ran a commercial nursery and a grain merchant. The independents contributed a “Madam Lettie,” who did not appear to do anything useful but assured everyone that she was quite indispensable.
The Hole wasn’t any less hot the next morning. A wagon had been detached with a brace of teamsters to operate it and be in charge of hauling the crate up the slope. Mazelton went down dripping with rope and proceeded to try and check for traps as best he could, following the hurried instructions of the trap finders. “Don’t touch NOTHING,” was the gist of it. Mazelton had his own trap discovery ethos- “Be somewhere else.” Not seeing anything obviously suspicious, he tied the chest as firmly as he could without picking it up. Annoyingly, it was not designed for easy transport, and didn’t have any exterior handles.
The bright orange started to grate on Mazelton. Nothing should be that color. It was like the case was telling you that it was poisonous. The hemp rope looked even muddier against the vivid color. Ah hell. “”Be somewhere else” plan phase one, commence!”
Mazelton tied off the last knot with a firm pull and trotted up the slope.
“Problem?” Mendiluze sounded concerned without looking worried. A good trick.
“Nope, nothing that I can see. It’s roped up and ready to be hauled.”
“So why are you up here?”
“Because if something does go boom I want to be far, far away.”
“But what if it gets stuck on something?”
“If two aurochs, two teamsters, three soldiers and Madam Lettie cannot pull it out of the hole, having me in the hole with it won’t matter.”
Mendiluze looked ready to argue the point, but Mazelton just looked over at the teamsters and said “Pull.” The teamsters called the Auroch, leading them at a slow, steady plod away from the hole. A vast quantity of thick rope ran into the hole, tens of meters of it, and the chest had to weigh a good bit too, but rope, chest and friction all learned the same lesson- two Aurochs can pull hard, and they can do it all day. This was a little bit of nothing.
The seed bank slowly emerged from the hole, crossed the street, and was finally hauled around a corner. Mazelton had been firm- non polishers and potentially explosive chests stay on the far side of walls from massive sources of heat. For once, nobody argued with him about it. He carefully checked over the seed bank for any heat sources he might have missed. Indeed there was one, a very faint flicker of heat in the bottom corner.
“Faint trace of heat in the bottom right corner facing us. From what I can tell, this is the front of the seed bank and both the front and the lid lift open so the seed containers can be safely removed. The heat trace may be a remnant cooling system, but I have no way to say for sure.”
The trap finders nodded at this, not particularly reassured. They directed everyone, teamsters and Madam Lettie alike, to go stand far, far away and behind something solid. Mazelton opted to lie down in a depression in the dirt and used his time to build up a little earth berm in front of him. The trap finders looked like they dearly wished they could do the same. The two men went in from either side of the chest, running thin strands of fine filament over every crack and seam, looking for a weak point. There wasn’t one. The latches, if they could be called that, were just tightly wound polymer with a nut on the end of them, slotted into U shaped protrusions in the front to the chest. Friction and resistance was enough to keep the chest sealed indefinitely. Gossamer thin strands of filament were made into nooses and looped over the nuts. The trap finders dug themselves their fox hole and a considerably bigger berm than Mazelton managed. The threads were pulled. The latches popped open.
For a terrible moment, nothing happened. Then it kept on not happening. Nobody even twitched for a year or two, or maybe two minutes. Mazelton figured it was safe, but the trap finders had no such delusions. Instead they extended long wooden poles to push up the lid. Very, very slowly. Once the lid got about half way up, the front of the chest fell open with a meaty THUMP.
A minute or two later, when everyone re-learned how to breathe and regained control of their bodies, the trap finders finished pushing the lid all the way open. Nestled in insulation inches thick were two rows of polished tubes- some sort of non reactive metal? Polymer of some sort? In any case they clearly could stand cold and time with no trouble. And could hold a negative pressure too. The trap finders looked over everything as best they could, but they looked very reluctant to use the word “safe.” Just too much that they couldn’t see into.
“So how would you make it safe?” A teamster yelled over.
“We blow it up!” A trap finder yelled back.
Mazelton and Madam Lettie shared a look.
“Approaching to check for heat.” Mazelton shouted.
“Approaching to check for bio-chem.” Madam Lettie shouted. Or just spoke, she had some lungs on her. Hard to tell sometimes.
The trap finders looked mutinous but nodded. Clearly they didn’t intend to get out of their hole if they could help it.
Mazelton gave Madam Lettie a curious look. Not many people had knowledge of bio-chem warfare since the fall of the Fourth Swabian Empire. Too many generals, warlords and divine children contesting over the knowledge base, tearing it apart, killing the greensmiths and alchemists who could make such horrors. Same old story- an empire collapses and the knowledge is gone in two generations. Well, one way to find out if she was bluffing.
Mazelton hooded his eyes, letting his whole body observe the seed bank. More heat in here, but still precious little. Only source was the bottom right corner, under the insulation. The insulation was some sort of shredded material packed so thick he could have buried the length of his hand in it. The tubes were clean as could be, free of heat. Mazelton stood back, shaking his head with a smile.
“Clear for heat- still just the one resonance under the insulation and that’s so mild I could dunk it in my tea.”
“We have very different tastes in tea.” Madam Lettie let out a wild, wailing laugh. It seemed like that was just how she laughed, but it threw Mazelton every time he heard it. “My turn, I suppose. Now, don’t ask, because I can’t explain. Ancestral law and all that.”
Madam Lettie dusted herself down, pressed her hands together, then swept them out and back like a bird about to take flight. She drew a deep breath, expelled it hard through her nose, repeated the breath, and began to sing. An ancient song, a language that didn’t walk the land this epoch. She sang, moving her body from high to low, circling the chest in circle after circle of song and body and breath. Mazelton damn near fell over. She was singing the Akeloisis.
Not the polisher’s Akeloisis the Ma had practiced for epochs. This was something else, something he didn’t recognize, but still unquestionably the Akeloisis. And since he was called to dance, dance he would.
Mazelton stood to attention. Pressed his hands together, and swept his arms in the infinite orbits of his craft. His voice rolled out sure and strong, supporting the sharp highs and sweeping lows of Madam Lettie. They swirled and twirled around the seed bank, letting their bodies stir the air, filtering whatever was around through their lungs. By inherited blood, practiced skill and fires of their will, the chest was purified of whatever evils their powers could reach.
The song ended, Mazelton and Madam Lettie standing on either side of the chest. They bowed politely.
“Glory to the Black Parade, glory to the Marchers, glory to the beat of their drums.” Mazelton murmured.
“Glory to the Black Parade, glory to their Witnesses, glory to the roads they march upon.” Madam Lettie murmured back. Her voice had gone hoarse. There was an art to singing loudly without hurting your throat, and she hadn’t been taught.
“Clan Ma guards the black sun this epoch, as ever. May I know the honored name and station of the Marcher?”
“Clan Pi guards the black dust this epoch, as ever. And like you, my branch of the clan has fallen. No matter, the clan lives on. I live on.”
“Eating carrion to survive.”
Madam Lettie twisted her lips at that.
“A very Ma way of thinking. But I suppose it’s true.”
“How do the Pi think of it?”
“When the flower blooms, it dies, but not before scattering it’s seeds.”
Mazelton silently laughed at that.
“Not our kind of poetry, no. Black dust, cold minds. You see the same things I do.”
“Oh yes. Nothing on here though. Clean as a whistle, which is a whole other problem of course.”
“Can’t purify human greed. Or at least I can't.”
“Nor I. Well, with the right tools…”
“Right, right.”
“Want to go tell everyone the chest is safe?”
“Why start lying now?”
Madam Lettie laughed, the noise piercing directly through Mazelton’s ears. They reported back to the rest of the group. When asked what, exactly, they had been doing, the two just silently glared.