When the Marshal gave the word, they poured down the ramp, pointedly ignoring the men with the mats as they marched directly across the sands. The lead men brushed the guards out of the way as they went past the barrier, down a short tunnel cut through the city wall, through a new iron-bound door, and into a scorched courtyard with empty pots around its edges and a dry fountain at its center.
A ground floor and upper story surrounded this vacancy on three sides the city wall closed it on the fourth. They had been told the place would be furnished. It was not furnished. No matter, said Aufors, there are furnishings among the cargo, all cunningly designed to unfold and expand. Except for being under a roof and among walls, it was just like setting up camp, something most of the men had a long practice at doing.
Aufors spoke to three of the men, and then, so quickly it was almost a miracle, Genevieve had a room of her own upstairs, a bed, a desk, her books, a view through the open door, though only of the seared atrium below. It was done so neatly, with so little fuss, that it made her want to cry. She did cry, with the door shut so no one would hear. This was a terrible place. The only improvement over the airship was that one had more cubic feet of stifling air to oneself.
20: The Malghaste
They made a desert camp of their first evening in Mahahm, with some men snatching sandwiches while others huddled over the dry well, talking on the link to the ship. Several of them went out, past the barricade, returning with one of the grav-sleds and something bulky atop it which they maneuvered over the top of the well. A blinding light erupted from below the device, followed by a rushing sound, then steaming muddy water welled up the shaft, overflowing the housing, running away through the door and tunnel, past the guardhouse and under the barricade, toward the sea, while the Mahahmbi guards danced wildly to escape being boiled about the feet.
“How did you do that?” Genevieve asked Aufors, when he brought his mud-stained self to the door to see if she had survived the geyser. “How did you get water in the well?”
“I modified one of the laser cannons from the ship. Made a decent mining drill out of it, didn’t I?”
“Where’d you learn that?” she asked, astonished.
“Soldiers have access to cannon, Jenny. Once you’ve done field repairs on a few, they loose their mystery, off-planet technology or not. I may not know how all of the parts work, but I know which ones go where. Anyhow, my digging about in the archives told me there’s an underground river below us. All Mahahmbi towns are on the sites of former oases, and all oases had subsurface water, some of them even had pools at the surface. The subsurface water is still there, and from the long, narrow shape of the town, I’m guessing most buildings are drilled into it.”
“Where does the river come from? Where does it go?”
“The presettlement geology report says it starts up in those mountains south of us. The area was probably covered by polar ice at that time. Now the river is completely underground, and it must be completely enclosed or we wouldn’t get this flow. Our well was deliberately stopped up before we arrived, just to be disobliging. Now we’re working on a seal for the well so we can get all the water we need without having a river through the door.”
“How did they stop it up?”
“With considerable labor and tons of rubble. One of the men took a water sample out to the ship and they ran it through the analyzer. It’s perfectly clean.”
She considered this. “Aufors, if there’s all that water available, why don’t they have agriculture? If they put water on this desert, it should bloom, shouldn’t it?”
He hugged her. “From what we’ve seen so far, we’ll probably find that it’s either forbidden by their religion or beneath their dignity. One or the other.”