The Lost Colony

Chapter 28

There seemed little else to learn in the hulk of the airship. In fact, its exploration had raised more questions than answers. Sparr was no closer to learning what had befallen the original colonists. It was clear they had thrived for a time. Setting up a fabrication site was an iterative process. To create the mid-range flyer, the colonists first would have to locate and extract minerals, create buildings, power plants, robotics, smaller machines, and finally the flyer. Agriculture, dwellings, safety, and communications certainly would have been higher priority. Sparr had witnessed evidence of decades of progress, but discovered no clue why that progress had been abandoned.

***

The airship had given Sparr a single artifact to consider. The outskirts of Shong, in comparison, were more like a curio shop overflowing with trinkets.

The approach to the city at first brought near-imperceptible changes. More foot traffic was evident, as well as a few more carts and wagons. The countryside changed as well. Here the road pressed close to the ridge, itself rockier and more imposing than those Sparr had observed during his landing. The plains they had skirted for the past week turned into soft hills, either left untouched, or planted with unfamiliar fruit trees. Drian, flushed with excitement, darted to one such tree, returning with a round, yellow fruit with a delicate, almost transparent skin. He and Sparr cautiously tasted the fruit, which reminded him of lychee.

"Don't eat the pit," Lord Toph called from the wagon. "It will give you the runs for a week!"

As the day drew on, the changes became more pronounced. Stalls selling fruit, steamed shellfish, or jugs of wine began to appear along the road. Crafts were also available, especially textiles. One woman woman's stand was topped with a series of poles which she draped with a dazzling selection of fabrics, the quality of which rivaled that of the Origin priestesses. Others called out the merits of their baskets, shoes, glass, or metalwork.

It was the last of these that most drew Sparr's interest. So far, with the exception of a pair of fine swords that he and Efreem had fought with in the Vonde arena, he had seen little evidence of skilled metalwork. Metal weapons appeared mostly to be fashioned from flattened scraps of various sizes. Even the short swords that the Governor's guards carried were scarcely finer, just more carefully sharpened.

The metalwork he saw now seemed more advanced. Clasps, buttons, and hooks competed with more decorative objects such as pins, tiny spoons, and rings. Most were highly polished, glittering even in the modest light of Kaybe's star. Whatever metal was used in their construction, it must be local.

The caravan stopped for a break shortly after passing through the first town, really little more than a wide spot in the road with a greater concentration of stalls and shops. As the draybeasts munched on their fodder, Liette gathered the pilgrims.

"We're almost to our first view of Shong," she said, her face lit with excitement. "You'll never forget it, I promise." The circle of pilgrims pressed in. "We won't be able to stop there, it's too crowded, but you'll still get a splendid view. We'll discuss more as a group at tonight's lesson."

The pilgrims began to drift away, drawn by cups of wine and plates of dried meat and fruit that Silla and Grom were setting out. Seemingly as an afterthought, Liette called back to them.

"Oh, and please don't buy any souvenirs from the road. They're poorly made. We'll stop at an Origin educational boutique tomorrow where the quality is much higher."

Sparr rolled his eyes. It wasn't difficult to guess what the 'Educational Boutique' was. Gift shops were the same on Earth.

The view of Shong, on the other hand, was just as impressive as Liette had promised. Rounding a corner, the caravan emerged from a cluster of merchants to a section of the road too narrow for stalls. The left side of the road was pressed against a ragged bluff, but to the right the view swept downward and across a wide, shallow valley. At its center was Shong.

Sparr gawked. At this distance the details were still difficult to make out. Much of the town and the surrounding area were obscured by a low-lying mist or smoke, but the towers at the center were unmistakable. Each rose straight before breaking into a crazy twist or spire, different from its neighbors. This was the city he had seen from the air during his emergency landing on the planet. Ruined or not, no other place he knew of seemed likely to hold the same concentration of technology.

"Looks dirty, right?" Silla leaned over the edge of her wagon as they squeezed along the constriction in the road. Sparr had just enough room to scramble along beside the caravan.

She wasn't wrong. The near side of the valley was green and soft, but the center in and around the city itself seemed permanently dusty. A single road led from somewhere ahead of them down toward the city. Sparr could just make out one or two even dustier patches, signs that only a few wagons were making the crossing.

"Does no one live there?"

"A few do," Silla said. "Scavengers, mostly. You saw the metalwork in the shops? The glass?"

"Yeah."

"Shong is mostly where it comes from. A few others sell to the pilgrims, trinkets and scraps. 'A piece of a machine that Omm cast down himself!'" she said, mimicking a merchant.

Sparr chuckled. "You said you grew up not too far from here?"

Silla nodded. "We won't pass through it, but yes, not too far from here." She grew quiet.

Not for the first time, Sparr wondered what Silla felt, being so close to her home. Were their surroundings a comforting reminder of her childhood, or were such recollections painful? As with Efreem, the temple was far from the worst place to land as a slave. She could be cooking for the Governor's gladiators, or at one of the low-grade taverns Sparr had seen in Vonde. Sparr had arrived with strong prejudices against slavery, but it wasn't his world.

Something else caught his notice. Silla, when he first met her, had stood out with her Asian features. Distinctions between the races on Earth had blurred for hundreds of years; meeting someone so clearly ethnic had been a surprise. Now, as he surveyed the travelers around them, he realized that she wasn't alone. There were other shopkeepers, merchants, and travelers who carried Asian ancestry. Sparr added the observation to the stack of unanswered questions about Kaybe.

The pilgrims crowded to the edge of their wagons, chattering excitedly about Shong. Even the bachelors, the solo male travelers who had been lumped into a single wagon, roused from their post-lunch stupor to gawk and boast.

"Let's piss on the machines," one said.

"Agreed!" bellowed another. "Whoever pisses on the most machines is king of the wagon that day!"

"King of the wagon!" the others roared. The two maidens assigned to their wagon giggled, exactly as required.