The Buttoned Sky Part 3

"How do you know?"

"The miners would know it. We broke through the wall only yesterday."

"What are these things?"

"You know as much as I do." He was looking at her in the way her father sometimes looked at rucker serving women, as though she had no clothes on at all. She had little modesty, society was lax when it came to such things as clothing, and frequently she had ridden the streets of Dolfya Town in a suit of transparent silk that made the ruck gape and blush; but this very personal scrutiny made her s.h.i.+eld her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with one arm as she stared back at him.

"I've changed my mind about you," she said pleasantly.

"Yes?" Did the swine look eager?

"I have ... you won't be hunted by the pack. You'll be flayed alive, inch by inch, with white-hot needles of iron, starting with your feet and working upward. And I'll watch."

He laughed. "You _are_ a wench," he said admiringly. Then he turned and appeared to forget her as he began to inspect the contents of the cavern. After a moment she wandered off to look at them herself.

Nearest lay a long wooden chest, on which were arranged certain contrivances that looked like guns, except that they were short, no more than a foot long; they had triggers and barrels and small curved stocks, so they must be guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long.

She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly they were cached inside it.

Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen anything like it--like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of the oiled paper in her father's windows. A sheet of this substance in a window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a piece of air.

There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father's library, but this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she felt two hard hands on her waist.

"Get your stinking paws off me," she said, without moving.

She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the chest.

"What are they?"

She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know they _were_ guns: _American handguns of 1940-1975 period_, it said. She couldn't let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he'd attack the gentry themselves, for hadn't he slain innumerable G.o.ds already?

"They are children's toys," she said. "I don't know what sort of children would be interested in such weird-looking things."

"Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?"

She shook her head; the term was new to her.

"The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here then." His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker, screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something.

"The people of that far-off time, They carried little guns; They had so much more freedom Than we who are their sons."

He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. "These are toy guns, yes.

The writing says they are guns for children."

"Maybe the toys of those children worked," he said looking at her.

"You talk nonsense."

He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the small things from its place, he examined it closely.

"No toy, Lady Nirea," he grunted. "You lied to me."

"I didn't! Can _you_ read the writing?" she asked sourly.

"No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it." He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. "You can show me how to use them later."

She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin tingling, she said, "Play the squire, miner, you don't have long to do it!"

"They won't find this hole."

"I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she told him.

Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.

A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What is it?" he said. "Read for me."

She looked at the printing on the front. _Dynamo_ she spelt out, and shrugged. "A name I don't know."

"If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying."

"I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her on. "What's this?"

The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "_Man of the 21st century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and--_"

"Never mind." He left the big s.h.i.+ning case, which was oblong and featureless and seemed made of metal, to pa.s.s to something else. Her gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: _Held in suspended animation._ What could the words mean?

They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand.

Here and there were ordinary objects--plates, hides of animals under the near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles--but in the main it was a place of mystery.

"The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin, "put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number of keen brains."

"n.o.body has more than one brain," she snapped.

He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal, that he was a G.o.d-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.

His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not fight the instinct that racked her.

It's a strange place for pa.s.sion, she thought dazedly; an unknown cavern, full of antique wonders never heard of on earth, filled with a blue haze, and only she and the tall fierce rucker....

CHAPTER IV

The Mink has come to the bright sun's light, His pick is lifted high; He hears the gentry's whooping yell, And sees them gallop by.