The rushing sound of 15 million cubic meters of water diverted off course drowned out the sounds of the pumps. It drowned out the sounds of the endless procession of heavy equipment and raw materials for the constructors. It drowned out thought, and the city did not sleep.
The last cranes were erected by first light, built by cranes a step above them in the break, themselves built by larger cranes still higher up. The blackened muck at the bottom surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of gleaming, articulating appendages gave the impression of a dying millipede laying belly-up between Lander’s Square and Westerend, legs spasming out of synch.
It was Dredge Day in Oryl City.
Once per cycle, the mighty Mondlebrid river that cuts through its center—valued highly enough as to serve as an anchor for the first planetary settlement—is completely drained. The river grows faster than it can excavate the ground beneath it, threatening devastating floods. And the constructors, for their part, work more efficiently without the current. So the river is temporarily diverted.
Much of Oryl’s industry depends on the Mondlebrid: for energy, for transportation, for material. For quenching the thirst of three million emigrants on this parched and strange superearth. But the river has its own agenda, and the equipment doesn’t last.
Now, in the morning brightness, the people of Oryl descend into the damp depths of the emptied riverbed to make their repairs, and additions, and improvements.
And those who have no such need descend likewise to collect the exposed salvage. Strange materials, unnatural but not either made by any human hand. Washed up trinkets of a long-absent civilization. Bodies of the missing.
The day was short, and the work was hard. Into the depths they went, and what they would find that day could not be put back.
Warmup Pages 