Free Bronze Summer by Stephen Baxter Page B

choice, and evidently a good one.
    He said, ‘I think you genuinely don’t know what you want, do you?’
    She sighed. ‘No. I just know I don’t want this .’ And she opened her arms to indicate the carpet-like landscape of Northland, the people marching with their shovels, the laughing children. ‘I keep thinking there must be more to life. Even getting drunk with some greasy Dumno miner with wandering hands is different .’
    ‘Then be a trader,’ he said. ‘See the world. See Hattusa and Mycenae, see Egypt . . .’
    Ximm looked back. ‘Serious talk’s for tomorrow,’ he said briskly. ‘Today we’ve got a canal to fix – and here we are.’
    Before them, the people were spreading out along the bank of a drained canal, dropping their packs of food and water, taking their shovels from their backs.
    Irritated, Milaqa snapped, ‘Oh, give me that shovel, Voro, and show me where to dig.’

 
    11
     
    They were to be supervised by a senior of the House of the Vole, the water engineers, who unrolled a complicated map drawn in red and black on a sheet of bark. The canal system had been dammed and diverted at some point upstream from this stretch, which was a branch of the main canal called the Sky. The duct here had been left to drain and dry out for the best part of a month, ready for the family to take it on.
    So, with Ximm and the others cheerfully calling out orders, the adults and older children grabbed their shovels and buckets and clambered over the banks of hardened mud and earth down into the empty channel. Though it had been drying out for some time the mud at the bottom was wet and deep and clinging and cold. Milaqa, up to her calves in it, wondered how long it had taken this thickness of muck to build up – how long since this particular stretch had been dredged, five years or fifty?
    The people got their bearings quickly. They formed up into rough lines, the adults and older kids in the deeper mud of the bottom, the smallest children and nursing mothers and old folk walking along the banks, looking down and calling encouragement. They began to dig away at the mud with shovels of bronze and bone, passing it up by a bucket chain. The glistening stuff was dumped to add another bit of height to the banks that lined the canal – and indeed, it was this endless digging-out that had created the banks in the first place.
    There were a few surprises. They turned up broken pots, what might have been a child’s doll of wood and bone – even a broken bronze sword. Offerings to the gods, to the little mother of the sky, to Ana and Prokyid. You were supposed to make such offerings by one of the five great canals, but people driven by sufficient hope or despair would make their small prayers wherever they could. Ximm always made sure that such finds were pressed back into the deeper mud, to be covered over and lost again. Then some of the children got excited at the sight of a sunken boat, a few hundred paces further down the channel. They ran off to investigate, followed by cries of exasperation or envy from the toiling adults.
    Milaqa had Hadhe and Teel to either side of her, Ximm just ahead, and Voro hanging around somewhere just behind her. She threw herself into the work. There was no real choice; this was what Family Day was all about. And she didn’t want any comments about how hard she worked, or not. Besides, though the mud was heavy and sticky, she found the simple repetitious work warmed her muscles up. Somebody began singing, a rhythmic comic song about the only ice giant who didn’t like fighting. People joined in, up and down the stretch of the canal, as they dug and lugged their way through the mud, growing steadily filthier.
    ‘This is the life,’ Teel said, working beside Milaqa.
    She eyed him sceptically.
    ‘Good honest work. Building the world, spadeful by spadeful. The way it’s been since Ana’s time. It’s the Etxelur way. When our family came here from Kirike’s Land, this work was