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THERE WAS A GENTLE hand on Dun’s shoulder, but he still woke bolt upright.
“Hey, take it easy there, fella,” Stef said. “You should probably get yourself down to the canteen while there’s still any food left!”
“Okay. And thanks,” Dun said.
“You’re welcome,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Always pleased to help out a Bumpkin.”
“Hey!” Dun said.
“I used to be one, you know.”
“What?”
“Used to live, you know, way down deep like you.”
“Did you? Where from?”
“I used to be Machine-folk.”
“Why did you move?”
“Long story, another time.”
“Ok...”
“Promise. Now go! Leave me to sleep and go eat.”
Dun left. The bay seemed to be filled with Community. What would they be, militia? They were carrying out some kind of drill. There was lots of clunking and clicking and swearing and shouting by some kind of sergeant at arms. Dun kept to the back of the landing bay, passed a door in the back wall, and moved around to the door that would take him to the canteen.
The smells from there seemed to include the fantastic hubbous from the day before except this time it was warm! Dun thought he might drown in his own saliva before he got there. There was some resinous dark-tasting, bitter drink being handed out in the plastic beakers from the day before. Some kind of spread, sweet to the point of sickliness accompanied the hubbous. He followed the sounds of a particularly noisy table and sat. It transpired that the rowdy crew on the table had returned from a raid while Dun was sleeping. They seemed to have stolen or liberated some medical supplies and explosives amongst other things and taken a ground car to bring it back in. Dun wasn’t sure what most of it meant but it seemed to be good news to the Community folk.
Coming around a little, Dun realized that one of the voices in the conversation was Tam. Whether he had been out on the raid or not wasn’t clear, but when he had noticed that Dun had filled the unoccupied chair he stopped.
“Hey, you lot,” Tam said. “This is Dun. He came up from Down-Below yesterday.”
There were loud choruses of hellos and introductions too many for Dun to take in. When the hubbub had died down Tam spoke again, but quietly to Dun. “When you’ve had something to eat, shall we go and finish the rest of that debrief?”
“Sure,” Dun said.
They reassembled in the same room as before, and Bel was summoned. Dun and Tam waited for her and talked.
“Is Bel your Alpha then?” Dun said.
“My what now?”
“King? Chief?”
“Oh.” Tam laughed. “No, we don’t have those.”
“Eh?” Dun said. “Well, who organized that raid then?”
“We choose leaders for particular jobs and aptitudes, and we change them on a regular basis. It saves anyone getting too carried away.”
“Oh.”
“Doesn’t that happen where you come from? Bridge-folk, right?”
“Oh. We change leaders but its usually a big thing. We choose a new Alpha if the old one isn’t leading well anymore.”
“What happens if one gets too self-important?”
“Oh, they can be challenged.”
“Voted out you mean?” Tam said.
“No, more like a series of ritual combats.”
“Wow,” Tam said.
Bel arrived, trailing the scent of another cup of whatever Dun had been drinking.
“That sounds a pretty elaborate set up you Bridge-folk have got down there,” Bel said.
“It works for us,” Dun said.
She sat and shuffled some papers she seemed to have brought. Creaking back on the plastic chair and tapping some kind of plastic sounding stylus on the table.
“Okay, where did we get to yesterday?” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “Are you feeling a little better by the way?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good. Do you understand what happened yesterday?”
“A little more now, yes, I think. The projector thing shoots sensations out everywhere and you have to find someone that's picking them up. Then you can kind of communicate with them.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Bel said.
“How long have you been doing it for?”
“Two, three eons, maybe?”
“Why?” Dun asked.
“We need recruits,” Bel said.
“What for?” Dun said.
“There’s a war on,” Tam said.
“But why from our world, not your own?”
We don’t know why, but the projector seems to work best with your people, not ours. It’s quite a hit and miss process. First, you’ve got to find someone, and then you’ve got to send the right kind of message,” Tam said.
“And finally you’ve got to hope they don’t think they’ve gone mad and keep it all to themselves, although that doesn’t always preclude people coming here,” Bel said.
“So the need to come and explore up here, that was all sent from you?” Dun said.
“Pretty much yes,” Bel said. “You wouldn’t make very good recruits if you went anywhere else, now would you?”
Dun had a terrible chilling feeling run through him. His father had just upped and left, no shaman he was, but perhaps he had been getting the signals just the same but never mentioned them. The whole mapping extravaganza, just cover to make him look better?
“So there must be a massive number of folk you project to who just never get here?”
“Wastage,” Bel said. “It’s one of our biggest problems.”
“What happens to them?”
“Some, as I said, go mad and never arrive,” Bel said. “Many fall into the hands of the Duchy or the Bureau.”
“Like me?”
“Yes, and they’re a suspicious bunch. They know we’re recruiting, have done for a while, but then don’t know how. We want to try and keep it that way.”
“My father, Abdun, disappeared on a mapping mission up this way,” Dun said.
“I don’t know him, I’m sorry,” Bel said.
“So he became wastage then?” Dun said.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yes, you did. Why are you fighting?”
“Ah yes, I’m glad you’ve brought us on to that. It makes things easier to explain the right way around. We all used to live in a relatively peaceful society until a section of us started believing more in the privileges of office than the treatment of the people.”
“Okay,” Dun said.
“The remains of that society is the Bureau, and they hold jealously onto the records of our society and yours, but don’t want to share. A resistance movement formed to try and escape that formed from some sections of the peacekeeping officers, but it quickly got out of hand when a little power became available to people too long powerless. We broke off from that faction believing that we could organize a little better and a little more fairly than that which we were trying to usurp. It works mostly.”
“Why do you need to be telling me all this?”
“We are rather hoping you’ll stay,” Bel said.
“That gives me the impression I haven’t much choice.”
“No,” Tam said a little too cheerily. “Of course you’ve got a choice.”
“In which case let me think on it,” Dun said.
“Err, okay,” Bel said.
Clearly, she was used to getting all of her own way more often. True to his word though, Dun went off to think. He went by the canteen and found himself a beaker of water from one of the catering folk. He took it and found a crate to perch on at the back of the landing bay. His back supported by the wall facing the outer door he felt oddly calm. He found the bustle of this place where everyone knew there own small part in what they were doing, peaceful. He began to think of all the things he thought he’d come here for: because he was a shaman, because he was looking for his father, because he wanted an adventure. Was there anything left? Maybe there was. Maybe there was one thing.
A familiar scent tweaked his nose.
“Hi,” Stef said. “Room on that box?”
“Sure.”
“You gonna stay?” she said.
“Maybe,” Dun said.
She left a companionable silence between them. Eventually Dun broke it. “The drains here, do they all empty into the sluice that we came in over?” Dun asked.
“Weird question. I guess so. I’m not the best one to ask.”
“Oh, who is?”
“Nev. He looks after the drains. Want me to introduce you?”
“Why not,” Dun said. Slowly, for the first time in this whole adventure, he felt like he could be the agent of something, maybe.
They found Nev in the canteen where it became apparent quite quickly even without Stef’s introduction that he looked after the drains. The smell didn’t seem to bother Stef any, and Dun found it reassuring: no matter people’s differences in technology or outlook their drains smelled the same.
“So, Nev,” Stef said. “My crazy friend Dun here has a bizarre interest in drains.”
“Nothing bizarre about drains,” Nev said. “The intestines of a civilization. You can tell a lot about a people by their drains. What do you want to know?”
“The drain that runs out under the door that goes back home to, what do you call it? Down under? Deep down?”
“Sluice,” Nev said.
“Eh?” Dun said.
“Not a drain as such,” Nev said.
“Oh?”
“No. A drain is foul water, that water going out is fresh.”
“Ah,” Dun said. “Who controls it?”
“Now?” Nev said, “Duchy, I reckon.”
“Brilliant,” Dun said.
“Is it?” Stef said.
“Yeah, it might be,” Dun said and marched back to the office to find Bel.
