it? Thirg wondered. Perhaps it was an indication of rank or status. No, that
wasn’t it; the servant wanted him to look at it. He looked. Shapes were visible
in the square of violet light, faint and difficult to distinguish in the glare.
Thirg adjusted his vision to the nearest he could manage to dragon light and
stared for awhile before he realized what he was seeing. It was a view looking
out over the open ground they had crossed back beyond the rise. Piles of debris
were scattered here and there and lots of buckled and twisted machine parts
spread over a wide area, with violet glows and obscuring patches of smoke
hanging above . . . And then Thirg gasped as he realized what it meant. Now he
understood what devastating powers Fenyig had been trying to describe. In those
few brief seconds . . . and there was nothing left. Then it came to Thirg slowly
that the servant was trying to show how the dragon had helped them.
But what form of magic vegetable was this, that could see through a hillside?
Thirg looked at the servant, and then turned his head several times to look back
at the rise, just to be sure he was not mistaken.
Zambendorf felt a surge of elation. Something that they both recognized as
having meaning had passed between him and the robot. “It understands!” he said
excitedly. “Rudimentary, but it’s communication! It’s a beginning, Otto!”
“Are you sure?”
“I showed it the scene from over the hill. It understood. It’s trying to ask me
to confirm that it’s seeing what it thinks it’s seeing.”
Abaquaan motioned for the robot to climb down from its mount, and after a few
seconds of hesitation it complied. Then it gestured at Zambendorf’s wristset
some more, and held up a hand and began pointing at it repeatedly first from the
front and then from the back, and in between pointing back at the rise. “It
can’t make it out,” Abaquaan said. “It can’t figure how the picture could be
coming through solid ground from behind the hill.”
The robot was mystified and curious. Suddenly much about it seemed less strange.
Zambendorf could feel himself warming toward it already. “I’m sorry, but how
could I even begin to explain the technology, my friend?” he said. “For now, I’m
afraid, you’ll just have to accept it as magic.”
“Try getting the idea of a camera across,” Abaquaan suggested. “At least it
would say we’re not actually looking through the hill from here.”
“Mmm . . . maybe.” Zambendorf switched the wristset to another channel, this
time showing a view of the lander and its immediate surroundings from the drone
hovering above the landing site.
It took Thirg a while to comprehend that he was looking down on the Dragon King
now. Then it came to him with a jolt that the dots to one side of the dragon
were the dragon-servants and robeings around him; in fact one of them was
himself! He looked at the servant and pointed down at the ground, then up at the
sky. The servant confirmed by mimicking him. Thirg tilted his head back to peer
upward, and after searching for a few seconds made out a pinpoint of violet
light hanging high overhead. Could the servant’s magic vegetable see through the
eyes of the flying dragons? But that meant that a mere servant who possessed
such a vegetable could send his eyes anywhere in the world and see all that
happened without moving from one place. If the dragon bestowed such powers upon
its servants, what unimaginable abilities did it possess itself?
Zambendorf could sense the robot’s awe as it finally made out what the screen
was showing. He switched from the drone’s telescopic channel to a lower
resolution, wide-angle view. The screen now displayed a much broader area of
terrain, with the lander barely discernible as a speck in the center. After more
pointing and gesticulating, the robot seemed to get the idea. Zambendorf
switched to a high-altitude reconnaissance flyer circling just below the aerosol
layer, whose cameras covered several hundred miles of the surrounding desert and
a large tract of the mountainous region beyond its edge. Then the robot started
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