Architect Neron's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Neron spread a blank plan sheet across the crate lid. The city needed the ridge. The herd needed the ridge. Neron could not draft a single wall until one question was answered. What did the animals actually pull from that rock? Grass grew all over the meadow, yet they never left the stone. "If I don't know why they stay," Neron said, "any plan I draw could starve them." Nevin looked up from the crate. "Then we ask someone who watched them longer than us." He pointed across the mud. A small android child stood at the meadow's edge, counting under his breath. His overalls were caked with mud. A crack split the glass in his chest, glowing faint blue. "That's Dax. He's been logging the herd since before you landed. Nobody built him, and nobody claims him. But he watches." Neron walked over. The child did not stop counting. "Fourteen," Dax said. "Fif-fifteen. The herd is fifteen now. Two calves." He turned his cracked chest toward Neron. "You want the rock. I saw the shells you were holding." "I put them away," Neron said. "I need to know what the herd eats up there. What keeps them on the stone." "Not the grass," Dax said. "They ig-ignore the grass. They dig." He crouched and mimed clawing at the ground. "Roots under the rock. Wet roots. The stone cracks and the roots grow in the cracks. They chew the roots. That's why they stay." Neron's mind raced. Roots under the ridge. Water feeding them. "How do you know it's water?" "I coun-counted," Dax said. "They dig more after rain. Less when it's dry. The roots need the wet." Neron pulled the survey device from the crate. He set its sensor rings against the ground and launched a probe reading toward the ridge. The screen filled with a map. Below the gray stone ran a wet layer, threaded with root systems. The herd fed on those roots, and the roots drank from trapped groundwater under the rock. Neron sat back. The obstacle broke open. He finally knew what the herd needed. Not the whole ridge. The wet root beds beneath it. "I can build," Neron said slowly. "I can build without touching the root beds. The city takes the dry crown of the ridge. The herd keeps the wet edges." He looked at the drainage tool in the crate, then stopped himself. "And I do not drain that water. Ever. Drain it and the roots die and the herd starves." Dax counted three cracks in the mud. "Sixteen," he said. "Another calf." Neron stared at the survey map. The plan was possible now. But the wet root beds cut straight through the flattest ground, the only place strong enough for his largest structures. To save the herd, he would have to build his city around water he could not move, on a footprint far smaller than he needed.