Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers Read online

  Explorers

  Pam Uphoff

  Copyright © 2011 Pamela Uphoff

  All rights reserved

  ISBN

  978-0-9839469-3-9

  Cover Art credit P.A. McWhorter

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Pam Uphoff

  Excerpt from an Upcoming Release

  Prologue

  1359 Spring

  The New Lands

  Fifty miles to the north they were stopped by a wall of ice.

  "The Great Northern Glacier." Lefty stared up at it. "I've seen it on the other side of the mountains. This is fantastic. Do you suppose it goes all the way across the continent to the Eastern Ocean?"

  "Only one way to find out." Dydit was riding today, occasionally scouting out ahead of the wagon to find a path the horses could traverse.

  Question flashed a grin from the high driver's bench of the boxy wagon. "I want to see what happens when it meets the Rip."

  Lefty was on the other saddle horse, and reined around to head east without commenting.

  Never stuck her head out of the front hatch to look. A tangle of high, young voices behind her testified to her failed efforts at getting the kids to nap.

  She ducked back out of sight, and the kids crowded in.

  "That's a lot of ice." Rustle sounded impressed.

  "Wow!" Havi was less verbose, and just as impressed, as he twisted his head to stare up at what must be a couple of hundred feet of jagged ice. Backed up by even more ice towering up in the near distance.

  Question nodded. "Yep. Dad says it covers the whole north pole region."

  The kids nodded solemnly. Nil was considered an expert, bested only by one of the old gods. Not that they often disagreed with the old wizard.

  It took four days to climb the gradual slope of the Rip, scouting out paths over the rough weathered ash ridges that interrupted the smooth stretches of younger lava fields.

  The Rip was a strange structure. Taken at its largest it was a ridge, several thousand miles long, a hundred miles wide and a mile high, except for the canyon down the center. Down in the depths of the canyon, it was even stranger, warm and steamy from the numerous geysers, a badlands of twisted rock formations and dangerously oversized lizards living in the warm river that snaked though the eerie lava landscape. Here, where the Rip met the glacier, the wall of ice thinned as it climbed the ridge, and stopped altogether at the rim, adding a mere five hundred feet or so to the canyon walls. The deep canyon arrowed north into the ice and faded into the steam and fog with no sign of narrowing or stopping.

  "I wonder how far north the hot zone goes?" Never was sitting cross legged on the rock. "The ice is invisible, to Witch sight. How about you wizards?"

  They all variously squinted and closed their eyes, and they all shook their heads. Rustle and Havi, Never's daughter and Dydit's son, copied the adults and reported similar negative results. They were six and five this year, and trying to be good. The concept of being left behind to attend school having been broached, they were being very good.

  "Should we try and travel down there, or stick to our planned route?" Never paced to the canyon edge and squinted at the fogbank. "Hot wet air rising, hits the cold from the ice. Maybe I could just go in on foot a little ways."

  "Ha! Never." Dydit looked over to see how she'd take it.

  Never ignored him. "What do you two think? Is it worth finding or making a way down?"

  "We ought to go at least far enough to see if it could be traversed," Lefty opined.

  After much negotiation, Lefty and Question climbed down the canyon walls to scout, while Dydit and Never moved south to find a lower starting spot to cut a ramp down to the floor of the Rip. They stopped even with the Old Road. A thousand years old, built by one of the gods, it had once crossed the continent, and was still visible here and there.

  They camped and walked over to study the situation.

  "The canyon walls aren't getting any lower, and I need the practice, anyway. Let's turn this side canyon into a ramp. That should get us nearly halfway down." Dydit drew a precise hot line across the rocks. "This will get me out of trouble with Nil. Always sneering that I'll never be a decent wizard if I don't practice more."

  "Decent? You?" Never raised her eyebrows, but reached to pull power from Earth. "I think I can give it a push, from here."

  "Show me."

  She shoved and the rock slid and crashed down into the canyon. "Hmm, let me give it a shake." That was harder, vibrating it so it shifted and packed down . . . she concentrated on small parts at a time, and established a balance between the power she was pulling from beneath her feet and the power she was applying 'over there.'

  "Can you shift this stuff?" Dydit heated a pile of rubble.

  Never stopped vibrating, and picked up the top boulder and rolled and bounced it into the largest hole. It was hot enough to be squished down flat. With a pattern on top, for traction, just like the Old Road. "Next!"

  Witch and wizard, each working in their own way, but also coordinating, they walked forward, cutting back the canyon walls, packing the debris, fusing the surface, and texturing it. Learning as they worked.

  When it was done, they staggered, exhausted, back to the camp. And found Lefty and Question with the kids, cooking dinner.

  Lefty spotted them coming and crossed his arms disapprovingly. "When we got back, two days ago, the kids were fixing their own food, and feeding the horses and chickens. Fortunately the horses were pegged out where they could get to water. Will you two please not do that when there isn't a responsible adult around?"

  "Mind you," Question added, "it was very impressive, the boulders flying through the air, the rock melting and glowing and flowing downhill. Why, if it hadn't been for both of you being completely oblivious to the whereabouts of your own children, I wouldn't worry about you doing dangerous things like that at all."

  Never and Dydit looked at each other.

  "How long were you gone?" Never asked.

  "Three days." Lefty said. "Assuming you took a day to move here, you two were completely zoned for four days."

  "I am a little thirsty." Never admitted.

  Dydit turned and walked back to the start of the ramp. Never joined him.

  "We did that?" she whispered.

  "Guess so." He had an odd expression on his face as he turned away.

  Havi and Rustle ran up. "Can we see it now? Please Daddy? Mommy?" Rustle looked longingly at the ramp.

  "Certainly. You were very, very good kids while Mommy and Daddy were building it."

  "We fed the horses becaus
e you forgot." Havi was smug.

  "And we cookeded all by ourselves." Rustle informed them. "You wouldn't eat it, though. You just said 'Go away, don't come near.' It looked pretty at night. Me and Havi sat on top of the wagon and watched."

  "Uncle Lefty and Aunt Question said you were bad. What did you do?" Havi sounded a bit gleeful.

  "We didn't fix dinner or feed the horses or the chickens." Never told her. "You two were very grown up and very good. And very smart to stay away, so we didn't accidentally hurt you."

  They both looked insufferably smug, and at Dydit's wave, galloped down the ramp.

  "You two are impossible." Question came up behind them. "And should they both be calling you Mommy and Daddy when as far as I can tell you don't do anything?"

  "Bah, nit picking details." Never took the canteen Question held out to her. "Just because we're almost as slow as you two were is no reason to pick."

  The ramp was wide enough for two wagons, at an easy slant that bent at the rim of the Rip to run along the side of the canyon. It swept around corners and leapt side canyons on graceful curves.

  They stared at the first bridge.

  "Do you remember us doing that?" Dydit asked.

  "Sort of. I mean, I remember saying we shouldn't block the water, and we needed something like that. It looks like it was all melted. I think that's your fault."

  They walked down to the first outward curve, where they could see the whole thing. Never leaned out over the low fence between the ramp and a straight drop of a few hundred feet. "Did we build a bridge over the river?"

  Dydit leaned over and took a long look. "Guess so."

  Lefty looked as well. "Is this how you old Scoone Wizards built things?"

  Dydit blinked at him, and started giggling.

  Never punched his arm, "No hysterics!"

  Dydit slid down to sit with his back to the view, and cupped his hands over his mouth while he breathed. He finally dropped his hands. "That is how the ancient wizards built things. The Old Gods, maybe. I don't remember anything being made like that. I certainly should not have been able to do it. My parents weren't that strong," he made a throwing motion. "Well, parents of record. The Scoone nobility were notorious for abducting bloodlines. It was a mark of prestige to have a royal bastard or a god's baby in the family, and every one considered it a show of ability to diddle your betters and put a bastard of yours in theirs."

  "So, you don't know, I mean . . . " Never boggled. "I thought you were like a Duke or something."

  "Yeah, but only after my two older brothers died. As my mother's fourth child, she may well have, umm, they called it birding, umm, have tried for a stronger wizard to sire her next child. They don't sleep around, mind you, that's a cheap trick. It's all done by magic. Teleportation if you're feeling scientific. Traveling on a very small scale. All the wizard women tried to steal sperm from their husband's betters, all the young male wizards tried to sneak their sperm in where it didn't belong. The top wizards were always defending and shielding their privates. If I'd been a girl, a rumor would have been tossed around, to improve my marriage prospects."

  "Improve?"

  "Yeah. As a son, well, I was just another kid at the table, no big deal, but I got an advantageous apprenticeship. Old gods! I hope Maleth wasn't my actual father!"

  "Heh. No kidding. How about the King? Did the wives try to snag some royal connections for daughters? And of course that was about the time Harry and the Auld Wulf were . . . "

  "Enough! Stop! Maybe Maleth wouldn't be so bad after all." Dydit buried his head in his hands. "Unless of course, it was the God of Bad Luck. That would actually make sense. Anyway, that was like, six hundred years ago."

  Rustle and Havi came running back, and instantly homed in on him. "Hi Daddy. Are you tired, Daddy?"

  "You should eat something before you go to bed." Rustle crossed her arms and tapped a foot.

  Dydit pulled Havi onto his lap and hugged him. "Yes, I think I need to go to bed. And yes, Miss Rustle, you are absolutely correct. I need to eat a healthy, well-balanced lizard. Take me to him."

  Over dinner, Lefty and Question described the eerie fog covered landscape of the Rip.

  "Every once in a while you'd come on these huge blocks of ice that had fallen from above. Just sitting there, slowly melting." Question grinned, "It's a bit hard on the local wildlife, I'd think."

  "It's fairly flat. We went nearly fifty miles, and never found a barrier that the wagon couldn't cross." Lefty glance toward the Rip. "Especially with you two around. Still plenty of hot pools and occasionally a geyser. Did we mention the fog? It got thick enough that you couldn't see more than ten feet, and even when it cleared at ground level, it was overhead. Between the Rip and the Glaciers, there may not be much seasonal change of temperature."

  "Just the light season and the dark season." Question grinned. "I wouldn't want to spend a winter in there, it's really gloomy already. So whatever we're going to do, we must turn back in time to find a geyser."

  Never poked at the crumbs of dinner. "Have you all read Zobeste's History of the World?" They all nodded. "Would it be possible to cross the northern pole and end up in the old world?"

  Lefty sat up. "Or whatever is left of it? I wonder if there is anything left?"

  "There are tales, myths." Dydit scratched his chin. "Maybe we could find evidence of what actually happened."

  "The horses will starve if we have to spend a winter in there." Question pointed out.

  "Ah, but if we are near a hot spring, we can teleport back through known sites. Or call a god for a lift all the way home. And I suspect that if the geysers don't go all the way across, the ice canyon will close down pretty quick and we'll have to turn back anyway."

  Never grinned. "And if we can cross, we'll have a whole new world to explore."

  Chapter One

  25 November 3476ce

  The Hague, Earth

  "Must be your kind of sale, Hackathorn."

  Lon glanced toward the voice, and jolted to a stop. "Florian Hastenberg. Didn't recognize you in the Authority suit." He gave a stiff nod and shifted back into motion.

  Unfortunately Hastenberg followed. "Yeah, I got tired of kissing corporate butt. I see you're all in team rah rah colors. Doesn't it just make you feel like a tot on a field trip?"

  "Never bothered me. It helps keep things moving at the gate."

  "Riiiight. And like I said, you're all happy because there's no natives in this band."

  Lon turned around, stepped in close and let his voice go cold. "Yeah. As a matter of fact, I am." He turned away, and this time Hastenberg let him go. Asshole. Only thing he'd ever been right about was the maroon and dark blue checked jacket that all Dallas Dimensional Exploration representatives had been ordered to wear today, for the sale.

  Forty-two newly discovered trans-dimensional worlds were up for today's sealed bid auction. The Trans-dimensional Gate Authority had found a major band of habitable worlds and opened them to exploitation.

  The Dallas Dimensional Exploration Company was what the industry called wildcatters. They specialized in exploring undeveloped worlds. Once they had a good grasp of the mineral wealth available, or anything marketable about the plants or animals, and had evaluated any native cultures for use as labor they'd sell limited rights to other companies. Mining companies, agrobusinesses, labor brokers, colonization groups. Whatever had value would be sold.

  But the first step was a government auction. Once they had leases in hand, Lon's plans could move from paper to actuality, and he'd lead the first team through the gate to explore the new world. He had twenty-nine profitable explorations behind him, out of fifty-six worlds. A solid and respectable percentage, and his reputation was bolstered by his not wasting money when the profit simply wasn't there. The eight worlds the company was bidding on today all looked, on the face of it, to be at least colony prospects. The bidding was based on the raw data returned from the very brief government expeditions. The big mining companies
would be taking the worlds with the obvious minerals potential. Wildcatters like Dallas would pick up the rest, spending less money and taking a larger risk.

  Lon spotted a clump of maroon and blue and eased into the group. The Board of Directors was treating this like a holiday, in their new Company jackets, jostling for seats like kids at a circus. Lon stifled a wish to be back in Dallas with the rest of the staff. They would be watching remotely, one wall of the conference room displaying the auction room as if from a balcony, above the attendees. A better view than he had, from the floor.

  The room quieted abruptly as the officials walked in and sat down.

  "In accordance with the regulations, bidding is now closed. We will proceed immediately to the next phase of the auction. All worlds are leased as Class three: unexplored worlds with breathable atmospheres. All lease payments are due and payable upon certification of the auction results. We begin bidding today with world number one-thousand two-hundred and eleven."

  The first two worlds were only moderately promising, but drew multiple bids in the midrange. On the third world the gate had anchored right on top of a argentite deposit. Peru Silver out bid the rest at a touch over three billion creds, setting a new record for an unexplored world.

  Whispers ran around the room about the risk, if the rest of the world didn't live up to the anchor point's promise.

  Lon's attention jumped back to the auctioneer as the Company's first bid came up.

  "Lot one-thousand two-hundred and fourteen. Class Three, uninhabited world. There are five bids." The officials started opening the envelopes and reading out the bids. Everyone in the room leaned forward.

  Gerald McCamey was Lon's immediate superior, also attending in person, like it or not. He'd been in on final decisions on the Dallas bids. And very, very closemouthed. But with the bids closed, the need for secrecy was gone. He still kept his voice down. "We've bid fifty-three million for this one." He crossed his arms and looked unmoved as the first bid was for seventy-five million.

  Lon crossed that one off his list, and waited two more worlds for the next on their list. That one they took for eighty million, just edging out Hesperus Enterprises.