The Books of the Wars by Mark Geston

Author:Mark Geston [Geston, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 1-4165-9152-4
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2009-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

XXI

Cavandish told him he had been out for only five days this time. It was raining heavily and the plain had turned largely to mud. He led him down through the corridor to the other end of the car and then opened a door, reached out and opened another in the car in front. They worked their way forward until they reached the control car. VanRoark could feel the humming of the engines much more clearly here; Cavandish said the bottom deck of the car held four turbines and dynamos. Current from there was carried outward and aft to electric motors buried in each of the twelve foot wheels.

The control room took up the whole forward half of the car; there was a low bench, raised in the center for the driver. In front of this raised section, a panel was fitted with a steering wheel, throttles, gauges and other things at which VanRoark's knowledge of machinery would only allow him to guess. Cavandish mounted the driver's throne and gestured that VanRoark should sit beside him.

He fooled with some of the controls and VanRoark heard the subdued wailing of the turbines rise under the floorboards. Why? he asked himself again. Why does everything sound as if it comes from someplace other than its obvious source? The sound of the turbines and now the remote jounce of the huge wheels against the desert soil, four hundred miles away. Ever since they had come upon the army, wrapped and shrouded in sea fog, he realized his senses had become more distrustful of what they reported. Perhaps if this Kenrick had given him an ear of copper and brass, then he would hear the sounds of things as they really were; but he was chilled at this thought and tried hard to listen to Cavandish, discoursing upon the history of the indisputable distant mountains (but only, VanRoark despaired, if he did not increase the magnification of his right eye).

He seemed to be right back where he had been on board the Garnet, with all reference points and perspectives falling away from him. This was particularly bad, for he had thought that here, in a creation of the old world or at least one of its descendants, he should have felt more secure than ever, with the steel and fiber of the old worlds riveted and welded into his own body.

The hand and eye burned on him. They felt completely normal except, of course, when his eye decided to wander off into some unknown extreme of the spectrum. It was his own mind that terrified him; it seemed to have developed a sudden talent for thinking up the most perverse observations on his new limbs to fill the spaces where the Sea and the promises of Timonias had been: How would a woman enjoy the touch of the hand inside her? Would he corrode from it? Could he rent himself out to carnivals? And when Cavandish's dead friends saw him walking alone with his

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