The Great Escape Chapter 14, Part 3 of 11

The Great Escape
Chapter 14, Part 3 of 11

"How do you do, Madam Scientist?" he said.

"I do very well, thanks, Ezra Goldrick of the Three Tribes. Call me Sally, and come on in."

The door opened into a room with four cubes. It was filled with bits of old technology on the floor or stacked on shelves against the walls. Everything was labeled, and a sizeable leather-bound inventory book was open on a wooden bench just inside the door, at which Madam Scientist had been working.

Halfway down the corridor, a girl bent over a pile of oddments, using a small strip of wood bark as a paper sheet and a charcoal stick to make notes.

"We have the big stuff outside, under tarpaulins," Madam Scientist said. "When you're done here, just go through the door at the far end, and you'll see it right ahead. Just promise you'll keep to our rule?"

"Of course, Sally. What is it?"

"If you move anything, either put it back or let Crystal or me know where you put it. Keeping inventory is the very devil! That's Crystal." She indicated the girl bending over the box of parts.

"She's an apprentice who thinks I'll give her a better report just because she's staying here to help me rather than running off to have fun at the Fair, as she damn well ought!"

Crystal smiled and looked up. She stared at Ezra briefly before blushing and looking down again at her work.

"What are you looking for, Ezra Goldrick?" Madam Scientist asked.

"I'm interested in medical equipment, but I'm willing to try to get any technology working for
you if possible. What exactly are you doing with all this, er, stuff?"

At first glance, Ezra saw a poorly arranged pile of junk. After closer examination, he saw a neatly arranged museum of junk.

"We're recording it and trying to fit pieces together. If we can take something apart and guess how it works, we write it down. Someday, something may work again. Maybe we can make one good thing out of two or more broken things. You can help. We don't know what everything is. Please let us know what it should do if you see anything marked as 'unknown."

Ezra began to look around and quickly found something promising: a laser penknife much like his own.

"Do you know how this works?" he asked.

"What's the inventory number?" Madam Scientist asked from down the room.

"A015/G032."

She looked it up in the inventory book.

"Aha! It's a laser penknife. The handle has a solar collector, and a laser blade emerges from the nib. The last time anyone tried to charge it up or use it was, erm, eighteen years ago, give or take."

"Your records are remarkably thorough," Ezra said, somewhat impressed. "May I try it?"

"Of course."

All three women came to look. He pulled out the umbrella and held it in the intense afternoon sun by a window for a few minutes, then tried the buttons. Nothing happened.

Crystal gasped, and the two older women looked closely as he took out his pen knife and detached the fuel cell, swapping it with the fuel cell from the dead knife. Neither knife now worked.

"It's the circuitry inside, I'm afraid," he said, putting his knife back together and handing the broken one to Crystal. "I thought this would work because it's such simple technology. It's a bad omen for other technology."

"Would you know how to repair it?" the Scientist asked.

"Sorry, not a clue."

"That's all right. Will you show us how your penknife works?"

After ten minutes of demonstrating his laser knife, letting them touch it, and promising to come back to perform all the tasks they now had for him and his laser blade, Ezra spent half an hour helping Crystal identify some of the 'unknown' items, giving his best guesses for what they might be.

Then he went outside.

Outside were a hover plane with detached engines, a jeep with no wheels and broken windows, two tractors, a digger with decayed tires, mixing and drilling machines, and a crane mechanism that must have been used to build the houses. All of them were falling apart or seized up.

It saddened Ezra to think of the Founders' effort to drag all this junk here and protect it with valuable tarpaulins.

They could see what he thought of the exhibits from his disappointed face in the technology store. With the last few words from Sally, Gloria showed him to the medical room, where the same story was told.

Various electronic machines have been left in place since the Founders' days. Still, none worked: X-ray machines, ultrasound viewers, robotic microwave surgery tools, or anything else in what once was a very well-equipped clinic.

There were hypodermic syringes, scalpels, and clamps, but nothing to examine a living body to determine where the work was needed. This wasn't very pleasant.

Gloria was sympathetic but not very encouraging.

"I'm sorry you haven't found what you hoped for, Ezra Goldrick, but we can only record and preserve the technology. We cannot mend it."

"I understand. Thank you, Madam, for showing me everything I needed to see. I'll go and report back to the chiefs."

"No need. I sent Crystal to fetch everyone to the Council Chamber. They should be there now.

Shall we go and join them?"

Four councilors and three chiefs were waiting in the Council Chamber, sitting on throne-like seats at the big table. They stood when Gloria entered the hall.

The only council member Ezra hadn't met was Madam Medic, an old, frail-looking lady with white hair and a kind smile. She'd been talking to Calliope, who introduced Ezra to her. Now, eight of the most senior women of Samothea were gathered for an unscheduled meeting with their guests from Earth.

It was clear where the councilors would sit. Gloria's seat of honor was reserved in the middle of the table, and her counselors sat on either side. Richly embroidered cloaks hung over the backs of their chairs, one for each councilor. Now, a water pitcher and a fruit bowl were on the table.

The three chiefs stood behind the chairs opposite the councilors, waiting for Gloria to sit down, who remained standing.

"Well, Ezra Goldrick of the Three Tribes," she said, "I've shown you what you asked to see.

Are you satisfied, or do you have any further questions?"

"Thank you, Madam. "He replied, "I have many questions, but first, may I speak to the three chiefs alone?"

"Of course," Gloria said. "I have something for the councilors to do. Ladies, please come with me to the scriptorium."

As they left, voices were outside the chamber, and the pretty blonde Junior came in.

"Yes, Hazel?" Gloria said. "What is it?"

"It's Megan Herder, Madam."

"Megan Dierdre's daughter, Herder," Madam Recorder muttered to herself automatically.

"She wants to know where she and Ezra are sleeping tonight."

"Solange!" Mirselene exclaimed. "Do you Herders think of nothing except sex?"

"Sure, we do, Mirselene," Solange answered happily. "Occasionally, we think about food.

Gloria, will you put Ezra and Megan up here tonight? I'm sure you've got room."

Gloria nodded.

"Hazel, please make Megan a bed in the Junior dormitory and put Ezra in one of the spare rooms. Afterward, will you ask the cooks at the Fair to send us some food? We'll be having an early dinner. We won't need the Juniors again until dinner so that you can amuse yourselves for an hour or two."

Gloria led the councilors to the scriptorium, and Hazel helped Megan carry her and Ezra's packs up the stairs to the Junior dormitory.

When Ezra was alone with the three chiefs, they waited expectantly for him to speak.

However, he silently gripped the back of one of the councilors with whitened knuckles.

"Well, Ezra," Mirselene prompted. "What do you have to say?"

He remained silent, looking down.

"What is it? Are you disappointed?"

He looked up. It was Calliope's turn to be perceptive.

"He's not disappointed. He's angry."

"Why so he is," agreed Solange, examining his face closely. "I have to admire Gloria. It took me a month of goading and teasing to get you this riled up, but she managed it in only a few hours."

She turned back to the others.

"He's beautiful when he's angry, isn't he?"

"Stop needling him, Solange, and let him speak," Mirselene ordered. "Come on, Ezra, we're your friends. What have the Cloners done? Why are you so angry with them?"

"I'm not angry with the Cloners. Not really. They showed me everything I wanted to see and kept nothing from me."

"So, what is it?"

"Do you know what an anticlimax is?"

"Of course."

"Well, this is the biggest bloody anticlimax of my life! I was ready to fight over the precious old-
Earth technology, but what did I find?"

"What?"

"Nothing!" he shouted. "There's nothing here. You told me about the wicked Cloners: how they were proud, arrogant, greedy, rapacious?"

"We did," Mirselene said.

"I didn't," Solange said.

"No, Solange," he admitted, "you only said the Cloners wanted to kidnap me and keep me a prisoner."

She smiled at the memory.

"Go on, Ezra," Mirselene said, "tell us how we misinformed you."

"I expected there to be Amazons with spears guarding the technology store and triple locks on the door of the cloning lab. I expected the Cloners to be menacing and territorial, secretive and cunning. They're nothing like that! They're just a bunch of women without a clue what they're doing or what they've got hold of. You know their much-vaunted collection of Earth-side technology, wheedled out of you and miserly protected?"

"What of it?"

"It's scrap, the whole lot of it. Nothing works or likely ever will work. Their medical kit is the same; it is just rubbish. There's nothing here and no excuse for all their superiority and luxury.

They cover all that junk with tarpaulins while our tribes use banana leaves to roof our huts!"

"Is that why you're angry?"

"No. I'm frustrated at the whole situation, especially at my impotence." There was almost despair in his voice. "Mirselene, there's nothing here to help Yumi, and there's bugger all I can do if anything goes wrong!"

He sat down and was silent. The chiefs also sat.

"Yumi is key to so much that could be done here to make human life sustainable," he trailed off.

"We understand, Ezra," Mirselene assured him. "What can we do?"

"Nothing. Sorry. I'll calm down in a while. Please excuse my swearing."

They waited patiently, though Solange was disappointed at letting Ezra's anger disappear.

Calliope took the pitcher of water and poured him a cup. He drank it slowly and calmed down.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Not really. I feel cheated - and stupid."

"Why stupid?"

"Because I expected the Cloners to have secrets, I kept secrets myself. I didn't tell Megan and
the others that Yumi was pregnant. Why not? Who cares? It shouldn't be a damn secret. Does anyone here object if I tell the Cloners everything about the salvage?"

There was no dissent.

"You've been here a few hours and seen the city, but you weren't angry before," Solange probed, perceptive. "You and Gloria seemed to be getting on famously. So, what just set you off?"

He just looked down, frowning.

"Come on, Ezra, tell us." This was Mirselene, in the soothing tones she used on children.

"Better: I'll show you," he said, getting up.

He dragged a throne-like chair from the Council's side of the table to the side where the chiefs sat and lined it up with one of their back-to-back chairs.

"See?"

They saw all right. Though the backs of the chairs were the same height, the seat of the councilor's chair was three inches higher than the chief's seat.

"It's a trick to make the councilors seem taller so they can look down on you. This is for the show, so many women can play-act, just like men!"

"What do you mean 'just like men'?" Solange asked.

"All this dressing up and the pompous titles, Madam Recorder' and 'Madam Lawspeaker."

Men do that, not women. On Earth, there are societies where men wear grand costumes and address each other as 'Worshipful Brother' or 'Honourable Master,' but it's all mere posturing.

They pretend to hold arcane knowledge. They have a big dinner and collect money for charity.

Women's lodges also do charity work without the pointless ceremony and dressing up.

Women are more practical."

"But here, in the Cloner City," he said, "the councilors have big titles, thrones, and sumptuous cloaks. I'm surprised they don't have headpieces as well. Men must have designed this nonsense, so why are women perpetuating it? What's it all for? They have nothing here: no secret power; nothing to justify all this pageantry."

"Don't the Cloners have one secret?" Mirselene asked. "They kept the cloning lab closed to you."


To be continued