Free Golem in the Gears by Piers Anthony Page B

new way out! That was
    the night sky up there!

Grundy mounted Snortimer again, and they scrambled nimbly up to the surface. It was a tremendous relief to be free!
    Once he was far from the hole in the ground, Grundy described his adventure, embellishing it only slightly, and showed them the metal spike Puck had brought out. "What do you think it is?" he asked.
    Neither Bink nor Chester had any idea. "Not treasure, certainly," Bink concluded.
    "More like a tool," Chester said. "But it has no han- dle."
    They decided to camp one more day, then take the tunnel down into the Gap. Obviously the tunnel repre- sented no trap, as long as they were careful not to trigger a collapse.
    But as the day brightened, Grundy remained unsatis- fied. There were too many unanswered questions! Who— or what—had made all those tunnels, that network of passages surrounding the central chamber? What had hap- pened to those creatures? Why had they left a treasure chest full of hollow metal spikes? He hated to remain in ignorance.
    At last he got up and walked alone to the entrance of the tunnel to the Gap. He stood there and stared at it. "If only I knew who made you!" he exclaimed.
    There was the rustle of leaves. A giant ancient acom tree grew at the brink of the cleft; some of its roots had been exposed, but it had survived. "I can tell you that, golem," it rustled.
    The tree! It had to be many centuries old! It had been here when the tunnel was new! "Tell me!" Grundy cried.
    "It was the voles," the tree rustled.
    "The what?"
    "The voles. Human folk call them by other names, but
    they haven't appreciated the real voles."
    "What other names?" Grundy asked, perplexed.
    "Wiggles and squiggles and diggles." "Wiggles!" Grundy exclaimed, appalled. "Are they
    swarming again?"
    "Of course not, golem," the tree rustled, chuckling in
    its fashion. "But they're related. The wiggles are the smallest and worst, and the diggles are the largest and best, and in between are the squiggles. They're all related." "I know that, barkface! What about the voles?" "The voles are the true name for that extensive family of tunnelers. They were once more common than they are now; you hardly see any of their family branches anymore. But the greatest of them were the civilized voles, bigger than the squiggles but just as tunnelsome. It was here they had their main camp, a thousand years ago. I was just a sprout when they left, but I remember." "They departed a thousand years ago?" Grundy asked,
    amazed.
    "Give or take a century; I lose track. My memory rings
    aren't what they used to be. Before the dominance of the
    goblins and harpies, anyway."
    "The harpies and goblins haven't been dominant since
    the days of King Roogna!" "Just so," the tree agreed. "These voles—just what were they like?" "They were fairly big—bigger than the squiggles of
    today, but smaller than the diggles. Big enough to make
    these tunnels."
    "Centaur-sized, then!" Grundy said. "Maybe a little smaller. They didn't like to be crowded,
    so they made their tunnels with some clearance. It's hard for me to judge, because I was so much smaller then."
    "These voles—they were just big squiggles, just tun- neling everywhere?"
    "They tunneled, but they weren't just squiggles!" the tree rustled. "They did things, there underground. They had conventions, or something, they made plans—and then they went away."
    "Where did they go?"
    "That I don't know. They just went, leaving their tun- nels behind."
    So the tree really didn't know much. But Grundy tried again: "We found some sort of metal thing, a chest full of them, like hollow spikes, only slightly curved. Do you know what those would be?"
    "Oh, yes, of course. I saw those being used. They are artificial claws."
    "What?"
    "The voles dug so much, they wore off their natural claws. So they put on artificial ones, made of metal, very strong. Then they could dig twice as fast, and not get as tired. Those claws were their most prized possession."
    Of