Kio's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kio stood at the fence line in the gray morning. Beyond it lay the far side of the ridge, the forbidden ground where his two hundred samples waited. But he had never crossed it. He didn't know where the soil was alive and where it was dead. Each sealed jar took work to build. If he drove one into dead ground, he wasted it. He needed a map, and he had none. He carried a single jar up to the tower's glass deck and set it down. "I can't just walk out there," he told Lexon. "Half that land could be dead dust. I'd burn through jars finding out." Lexon rolled to the workbench. Its cyan eyes brightened. "Then you send something that cannot waste a jar," it said. It bent under the bench and pulled out a shape wrapped in cloth. It peeled the cloth back. A metal dog lay there, legs folded, panels dull with dust. Kio knelt beside it. "What is it?" "A survey unit. Old, but it walks." Lexon pressed a panel on the dog's flank. Purple lights ran along its spine. "I can fit its nose with a soil probe. It reads moisture and spore life through the ground. It maps the living soil without opening a single jar." Kio's chest tightened. All week Lexon had watched him fail before it helped. Now it moved fast, hands sure on the wires. "You had this the whole time," Kio said. "You needed the jar first," Lexon said. "A map is useless if the sample dies in your hand." It didn't look up. "Now you have both problems solved. Hold the probe." They worked through the morning. Kio wired the probe to the dog's snout while Lexon set the reader code. By noon the metal dog stood on all four legs. Its head turned. Its eyes glowed amber. Kio carried it to the fence and set it in the grass. He tapped its back. "Go on. Find live ground." The dog stepped over the fence line onto the far side. Its legs moved smooth and quiet. It lowered its snout to the dirt, paused, lifted, walked on. A green dot bloomed on Kio's screen. Then another. A third dot flashed red where the soil ran dead. Kio watched the map fill. Live ground and dead ground, marked apart, each step the dog took. He could see now exactly where to drive his jars. "It's working," he breathed. "It is," Lexon said behind him. The dog trotted deeper into the forbidden land. Then it stopped. Its head snapped up toward a ridge of rock. A shape stood there, watching. A person, past the fence, where no one was allowed. The dog's amber eyes locked on them, and a warning tone rose from its throat. Kio froze. He was not alone on the far side.