gently hoisting her baby higher up. “And that’s the guano?” She nods towards the workbench.
I show her the pot where I’m mixing the dirty white substance with water. “I’m hoping that I’ll see some crystals of saltpeter after I filter it and let it set. But it’s more a hunch than anything else. I may end up with… well, this.”
“Saltpeter is a good fertilizer,” Delyah ponders. “And there’s your sulfur, I see. Opens a few possibilities. Especially if you add some charcoal to the mix, right?” She gives me a sideways look.
I run my hands through the heap of pyrite I’ve ground up as finely as possible. Delyah is the smartest one of us, and I’m not surprised she’s thought of this, too.
“It does, doesn’t it? If nothing else, it would be nice to know if we can make it or not. I haven’t told anyone. Feels like it would be a sensitive topic.”
“Keep it on the down low,” Delyah says. “Some of the girls wouldn’t like it. And I understand them. We don’t want to turn Xren into another Earth. We want it to be better than that. But while we’re not in strict survival mode anymore, this is still a jungle, and we still have to survive. I don’t want to limit our options. If it comes down to the wire. You know?” She arches her eyebrows.
I’m chilled by both her words and the way she says it. She’s co-chief, and taking a peek into her world of responsibility is scary. She deals with life-and-death stuff on a regular basis.
I wipe my hands clean of the pyrite. “I can’t do it here. For obvious reasons. And it would be nice to be closer to the raw material.”
Her little daughter mewls and starts to move, as if she also senses that our conversation has taken a serious turn.
Delyah rocks him gently. “Makes sense, Dolly. Think about it and tell me how you want it.”
“Okay. I might recruit Jennifer to make the soap while I’m gone. It’s easy.”
Delyah smiles. “And so the Dolly Corporation was born. Sure, if she wants to. Could you please show me, too? Looks like the kind of thing I’d love to know. Everyone is being so productive these days. It makes me feel like a useless moocher.”
“Anytime,” I laugh. “I’ve never known anyone more useful than you, though. Soap or no soap.”
Her baby starts squirming and is obviously awake.
Delyah turns her around. “Yes, fine. We’ll go and get some food, tiny cavegirl. She eats like her father. With perfect manners, but a lot.”
I laugh. “That sounds about right.”
“Alright, Dolly, see you later. You rock, by the way. You’re bringing us centuries ahead all on your own.”
Warmed by her words, I decide to break for lunch.
16
- Brank’ox -
“Shall we return, Swordmaster?”
Hanb’uz’s voice is soft, as it must be when we want to be undetected. Which we always do when on patrol in the jungle. We don’t do this to scare enemies away with noise, we do it to surprise them if they’re preparing some mischief.
I look around the area we’re in. No sign of dragons or enemy tribes of our own kind. If they’re close, we can’t see them.
“We shall, Hanb’uz,” I decide. “We’ll backtrack, for a change. Follow the exact same route back.”
“Yes, Swordmaster.” He uses hand signals to relay the order to the men. There’s only four of them, plus him and me. Six is about the right size for a long-range patrol like this.
I take up the rear and follow Hanb’uz at the usual fifteen paces. The jungle is quiet today. Not completely peaceful, though – we spotted four rekh and several other dangers on the way here. We were able to avoid them all – this is not a hunting mission.
But the dragons are either invisible, or they stay away. There’s supposed to be many of them, though they probably stay away. It’s wise of them – if they’re as weak as we think, being found by a patrol like this could be bad news for them.
The men move silently in front of me, making sure they can barely be seen among the bushes and tree trunks. They’re all getting used to how we do things in our strange tribe, and they seem to like it. As they should – the other tribes seem stale by comparison, old and complacent. Our new tribe has a real purpose, something we can all unite for. Unite with the female aliens.