Later, Twig explained that to speak of a noblewoman being paired was something one did not do within hearing of the party concerned. For the time being he merely changed the subject with an over-loud interruption.
“Now come and see what’s really interesting about the work we’re doing!”
Yet, although she declined to accompany them to the laboratory, the lady herself seemed rather flattered than upset.
This time their path wound eastward to the place where the hot river broke out of shattered rocks. Alongside it a tunnel led into the core of a low hill, uttering an appalling stench. Yet the heat and humidity reminded Jing’s weather-sense of home, and inside there were adequate glowplants and twining creepers to cling to when the going became treacherous. Sighing, he consented to enter.
When he was half choking in the foul air, they emerged into a cavern shaped like a vast frozen bubble, at whose center water gushed up literally boiling. Here Hedge, Bush and the rest were at work, or more exactly directing a group of ill-favored peasants to do their work for them.
They paused to greet their visitor, and Twig singled out one husky fellow who sank to half his normal height in the cringing northern fashion.
“This is Keepfire! Tell Master Jing what you think of this home of yours, Keepfire!”
“Oh, it’s very good, very safe,” the peasant declared. “Warm in the worst winter, and food always grows. Better here than over the hill, sir!”
Jing was prepared to accept that. Anything must be preferable to being turned loose to fend for oneself in the barren waste to the north, where no plants grew and there was a constant risk from icefaws and snowbelongs, which colonized the bodies of their prey to nourish their brood-mass. Twig had described the process in revolting detail.
Having surveyed the cavern and made little sense of what he saw, Jing demanded, “What exact you do here?”
“We’re testing whatever we can lay claws on, first in hot water, then on rock to protect it from flame, then in flame itself. We make records of the results, and from them we hope to figure out what fire actually can do.”
To Jing, fire was something viewed from far off, veiled in smoke and to be avoided, the flame was a conjurer’s trick to amuse children on celebration days. More cynically than he had intended—but he was growing weary and dreams were invading his mind again—he said, “You are proving something it does?”
Stung, Twig reached up to a rocky ledge and produced a smooth heavy lump which shone red-brown.
“Seen anything like this before? Or this?”
Another strange object, more massive and yellower.
Realization dawned. “Ah, these are metals, yes? You find in water?” Sometimes in the streams which fed the lake of Ntah placer-nuggets turned up, softer than stone ought to be, which after repeated hammering showed similar coloration.
“Not at all! This is what we get when we burn certain plants and then reheat their ash. Don’t you think some of the essence of fire must have remained in these lumps? Look how they gleam! But I should have asked—what do you already know about fire?”
“Is to us not well known. In dry land is danger for plants, homes, people. But in Ntah is air damp same like here. Is down in this cave possible flame?”
His doubt was plain. Twig snorted.
“I thought so! The more I hear, the more I become convinced we must be the only people in the world seriously investigating fire. Either they think it’s blasphemous because it’s reserved to the heavens, or they’re as wrong as you about the way it works. Let a humble peasant show you better. Keepfire, make a flame for the visitor!”
Chuckling, the peasant rushed to a recess in the cavern wall. From it he produced articles which Jing’s poor sight failed to make out in the dimness.
“Long before anyone came here from as far south as Forb,” Twig said softly, “Keepfire’s ancestors were priests of a cult which now has vanished—based on dreams, of course. But they found out some very practical techniques.”
“What he do?”