Free The Deep Gods by David Mason Page A

“I have seen the other things you plan, too,” he said. “These are wonders. A way to make cloth, better than we have now. My women will like that. And you plan boats, too, like your own.”
    “Your carpenters are good at their work,” Daniel told him. “But the new boats can’t be made till there are better tools. And there won’t be better tools till the smiths begin to work with iron.”
    “Then you will stay with us, many years,” the Chief said, watching Daniel. “All these great things will take a lifetime.”
    “Well, not quite that long, I hope,” Daniel said. But he realized, with a twinge, that the Chief might be right at that. He was very tired, too.
    Watching the Chief move off, Daniel considered the curious addiction that made a man an engineer to begin with. Gadgets, dingbats, doohickeys… somebody made a wheel, and the disease began. And ended with jet bombers, he remembered. But he had always had that addiction to the things that turned and clanked and wagged. A man couldn’t be forever worrying about what some fool might do with the new thing he had built; it was somehow necessary to build it, anyway.
    I’ve given them far too much, though, Daniel thought, staring up at the catapult. I could show them even more; things it would take them a lifetime to get around to making. But if I draw them a picture, they’ll keep on trying to make it, whatever it is… even if it takes them that lifetime.
    Too much. I won’t show them cannon, he thought. Let them find out about that for themselves. Damn them, they probably will, too. They’ll be building generators, if I’m not careful; he chuckled aloud, a little bitterly.
    He went back to the wooden house he had been given; a big, much-ornamented place where awed natives constantly waited for a look at the wonder-worker. Ammi had been greatly pleased with her new status; she enjoyed herself immensely at first, playing at the business of being a chief’s lady. But she had been becoming oddly snappish lately, and sometimes gazed at him with a new, narrower look.
    “You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” he said a little later. He was lying back comfortably in the cool shade in the big house; Ammi sat cross-legged opposite him, her face in shadow.
    “You must go to the Morra-ayar soon,” she said in a low voice. “It has been many, many days since we came up the river.”
    He nodded, but said nothing.
    “This is a good enough place,” he said after a while. “Don’t you like it here, Ammi?”
    “It’s too hot, always,” she said quietly. “Also, there are always too many people, making much noise.” She shrugged. “They are good people. But they have forgotten so much. They cannot go to the sea either, or they will not.” She leaned forward toward Daniel. “Daniel.”
    “Yes?”
    “Let us go on,” she said. “You have shown them the new things. They can fight now.”
    “Go? Where?”
    “Where it is a little cooler,” she said. “Where there are not so many folk, all talking at once. There are many lands. We would find the right one, if we look.” She paused. “And you must find… the thing you seek. The thing the wise old ones could tell you.”
    “Maybe I… don’t want to know, anymore,” he said, closing his eyes.
     
    But much later he awoke to the clamor of voices, an uproar that increased as he listened. And catching a shouted phrase, he realized what was afoot.
    “Sea folk!” the voices were shouting.
    The dolphins swam, circling slowly in the wide river beside the town; from time to time their noses lifted above the water and an odd piping cry echoed. On the shore, awed and silent, crowds of people waited and watched.
    Daniel came and the crowd parted to let him through; he moved down into the water, waist deep, and called out.
    “We have waited long,” the dolphin voice came through the water. “Come with us, man. Come now.”
    “I have work to do here,” Daniel told them. “I’ll come later, when I have