So, half an hour later, we met downstairs. A frustrating half hour, since Jodi and I like to take showers together which maybe accounts for why we usually take such long ones. I was finding this be-proper-before-the-family routine was getting old really fast. Even the prospect of continental catastrophe in four days wasn’t enough to squelch all my normal I-want-Jodi enthusiasms.
I guess I muttered something to that effect. “Stop whining, Clint,” Jodi instructed me, as we headed for the kitchen. “Look at it this way. Soon enough we’ll either be dead or we’ll be married and either way you won’t have to worry about it any more. Getting laid, I mean. You’ll still have to scrub my back—don’t think for a moment I’ll let you off the hook on that just ’cause you’re my husband. Or a corpse.”
Her stern and stoic words would have been more effective if she hadn’t goosed me as I started through the kitchen door.
Mamma was in the kitchen, looking exhausted herself, but with enough food to feed four of me laid out. “Nice to see both of you up, Clint dear, Jodi. Father and Adam are up to the road, along with Helen and Evangeline. Everyone else just went to bed, which is where I’m going now.”
“How’s it going up there?”
She gave a tired smile. “Lord, they’re devilish looking things, but those rockworms and their keepers can work miracles. We just might get this done in time, Clint. Might could. Best eat up and go see for yourselves.”
I gave Mamma a hug, which she returned—a little tighter than usual. She kissed Jodi on the cheek and then headed upstairs. I turned to the table and dug in.
“We slept ten hours, Clint. Down to three and a half days or less now. We have to get into town, get back with the diamonds in less than a day.”
I nodded, wolfing down some ham. “I know, I know. Let’s get up to the road, see what they’re up to.”
It wasn’t a long hike, and in the sunlight it was less eerie, though no less strange, to see the hurrying pipestem-limbed Nomes and their centipedal assistants. As we came to the edge of the huge scar in the earth, I sucked in my breath. Buttresses of limestone were forming, curving in rippling bands to create supports for the stone that would lie atop them. It was the rockworms which were doing most of the work, chewing up rock in one place and depositing it, changed and molded, in another. I looked around and saw Adam, Father, and Rokhaset under a large spreading oak at the far edge.
We hiked around to them. Looking down, I could see that the rockworms came in differing sizes, from the little ones about two feet long up to one nightmare-inducing monster nearly twenty feet long, with horns and spikes of crystal adorning its head and a mouth that looked more like a rock-crusher than anything living.
“Father, Adam, Rokhaset.” I said in greeting.
“It is good to see you again, Clinton Slade, Jodi Goldman,” Rokhaset acknowledged us.
“Clint. Jodi. Work’s going.”
“And fast, too,” Adam said. “Their . . . what was the name again, sir?”
“Seradatho H’a min, or you might call them simply seradatho for short.”
“Seradatho, yep, they just make the rock as we stand here. Ain’t maybe as fast as a full construction crew, but it’s plenty fast enough. I think.”
“Is it safe for me to go down and look?”
Rokhaset gave a deliberately human shrug. “The seradatho will not harm you on purpose, Clint. But some may not notice you immediately, even with their handlers present, so take care.”
I slid down into the pit and walked carefully up to one of the medium-sized seradatho, which was starting to put some kind of joining stone between some of the buttresses. I examined the resulting stone carefully, then climbed back up. “Sir, that looks just like standard cavern limestone! I swear, if I took that back to a lab I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference!”
“And nor should you. We are part of the Earth, Clint. How many times must I say this before you truly understand? Nothing that we do may be apart from her. Except in our own dwellings, it must not even be recognizable as our work, but be fully in harmony with Nowë, as much a part of her as we are.”