And maybe the hireling would get lucky; but more likely, the new occupant would wind up the same way Villiers had, dead and forgotten almost before his corpse had frozen in the winter night.
Grit from the flour mill scrunched between Hansen’s teeth. He liked the flavor of the bread, though. There were a lot of things he liked about Northworld; and a few he was quite sure that he was going to change, whatever else he did here—if he survived.
Hansen stepped into the smithy, now crowded with new arrivals whose battlesuits required repairs. He’d been fortunate in his timing. A few hours later, after these recruits had arrived and been issued units which needed repair, Hansen wouldn’t’ve had the time he needed to practice with the unfamiliar hardware.
One of apprentices lay on the couch in the center of the shed. Ore was piled on the chest of the armor beside him.
Vasque was arguing with three warriors, each of whom stood beside what Hansen was coming to recognize as a (damaged) battlesuit of reasonable quality. Meanwhile, several lower-status warriors were trying to badger the other apprentice, though the boy was obviously too exhausted even to give coherent answers to the demands being fired at him.
Hansen moved in. “You lot,” he snapped. “Get out of the way. You’ll be taken care of in good time—better time than you deserve, at any rate.”
He sat down beside the apprentice. The hired warriors backed unwillingly, but Hansen’s assumption of rank made that rank real among these newcomers—and perhaps generally real in the Peace Rock pecking order.
There were slaves standing against the walls of the single room. Hansen pointed at one and said, “Beer! Something to drink. Now!”
The slave scurried off. People—lower-status people—didn’t argue about orders here on Northworld. Of course, Special Units personnel hadn’t argued with Commissioner Hansen, either.
As an afterthought, Hansen offered the apprentice a chunk of his bread. The boy took it and began to worry at a corner, not so much out of hunger as in an apparent need to do whatever was put directly in front of him.
“Just how is it that you work on armor?” Hansen asked, pitching his voice reassuringly but glaring at the other warriors to keep them at a distance. “How do you know how to design the circuit architecture, for instance?”
“Uh?” said the apprentice. His eyes were dull with exhaustion. Whatever was involved in fixing battlesuits, it certainly wasn’t work that did itself. “Archi . . . ?”
He blinked and focused on Hansen. The warrior’s patient interest brought the youth back to the present and the ability to think.
“I go into the Matrix,” he said, “and I find the piece I’m supposed to work on. Where it’s different from the Matrix, I move things so that it fits. I don’t—”
The slave reappeared with a skin of liquid. Hansen took the container and passed it directly to the apprentice. While the youth drank greedily, Hansen asked, “What do you mean by `the Matrix’?”
It couldn’t be whatever Walker had talked about, dimensions and planes of spacetime. . . .
“Well, you know . . . ,” the apprentice said. “Though you’re not a smith. . . .” His brow furrowed. “It’s the way everything’s put together, you know, inside.
“You’re hypnotized, and the first time you need a master to guide you, but it’s like—” He gestured with his hands. Beer splashed from the neck of the skin. “—feeling your way through shadows even then.”
Hansen nodded gently, to show that he was interested without interrupting the flow of words.
“And it’s clearer each time,” the young smith said with increasing animation, “but it’s still like, you know, kneading mud and ash together into the shape of the armor. Even the master—” he gestured toward Vasque.
His voice lowered conspiratorially. “Even the greatest masters,” the apprentice whispered to Hansen, “I don’t think they see really clear. But the closer you can mold the workpiece into the Matrix—”
“Mold it in your dreams, you mean?”
The youth shook his head.
“It’s not a dream,” he said firmly. “It’s entering the Matrix. And it’s real—” He grinned and lifted a section of thigh armor from the table behind his bench. “—as this is.”