I
woke to awareness of my mastodon. She lay beside me in noisy darkness, facing
as I did. I slid behind her senses, and saw that we were in some great vault.
The smell of ancient machines hung very heavily, like the most fierce of summer
storms. Men in silver Profusionist armor shouted and walked swiftly all around,
though none were very near. The rest of the herd slept ahead of us or munched
on grass outside the walls. It was cold, though of course to my mastodon this
made no difference. Behind us a great door opened, though we saw nothing but a
flat line of brown-green grasses beneath a graying sky. My mastodon was very
glad that I was finally awake.
I
sat up, too quickly to be prudent. My head swam, and my arm cradled the
soreness of my chest and stomach. Swiftly, I returned to my own senses so that
I would not bother my mastodon, who trumpeted uneasily. I sent her reassurance
and the desire to sleep again. And found that a strange wrap of metal
surrounded my limbs and head and torso, flowing around everything but my eyes
and ears and nose and mouth. It felt heavy and cold at first but warmed and
moved as I moved. The metal I wore was Profusionist, of course. I wore a suit
of ancient armor, though soon I did not feel it. I could now tear down a tree
if I so chose, or leap far above my own head. As it was, I stood very
cautiously, for I remembered everything that happened.
But
I found that I could walk. I did, then, toward the open sky. Along the way I
passed others like me, men who slept in armor or cradled arms or legs and
groaned beside unquiet mastodons. That unnerved me; it took a great deal of
pain or stress or urgency for the Never-born to make any noise at all. But
those who passed me walking in the darkness carrying crates or racks of
quickswords or extra suits of Profusionist armor did not pause in their labor. Nor
were all of them the size and shape of Never-born. Indeed, most of them were
not.
Outside
the wind was blowing strongly and the glare from the clouds was very bright.
Now there came the loamy smell of the tundra and small animals and birds and
fresh water somewhere to the west. I turned all around, seeing the line of the
Gidwinn Mountains rumpling the southern and eastern horizon and in the northern
distance the long grey line of the ocean at the top of the world. I saw also,
of course, what I had already guessed: I had woken in a greatship, one of those
vessels which has plied the waters of my world since the time of the Profusion.
A city unto itself, the greatship stood fifty paces high and eight hundred long,
all the silver of Profusionist machines. Its size beggared the imagination. I had
of course only heard of them, as they never came so far up the river into my
city Ariel. How this one had come so far inland I did not know.
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