Good Mountain

Toward Port of Krauss

Brace began walking toward the worm’s head.

The worm was slowly crawling forward, gulping down the big sweet barrels as she moved. Farther ahead, several dozen mockmen were being coaxed down onto the trail. At a distance, they looked entirely human. They seemed small and plainly scared, clinging to one another while their bare feet slipped on the white grease.

Jopale caught Brace, and before he lost his own scarce courage, he made an enormous request.

“I know it’s asking a lot,” he admitted.

“That won’t make much difference,” the old man said, offering a dark little laugh. Then he paused and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting new orders into the wind.

The red-haired female was separated from the other mockmen.

Jopale rejoined his companion, and the two of them grabbed his bags and then a rope ladder, climbing onto the worm’s wide back.

Without prompting, the mockman claimed one of the low chairs, facing forward, her long legs stretched out before her. If the creature was grateful, it didn’t show on her stoic face. Either she was too stupid to understand what he had done, or she was perceptive enough to despise him for saving only her, leaving her friends to their gruesome fate.

The worm’s bare flesh was warm to the touch. Jopale sat directly behind his mockman, letting her bulk block the wind. He could feel the great spine shifting beneath his rump. Facing backwards, he didn’t watch the rest of the feeding, and save for a few muddled screams, he heard nothing. Then the worm began to accelerate, drugs and this one meal lending her phenomenal energy. And after a little while, when they were racing across the empty landscape, Master Brace came and sat beside him.

“But the book,” Jopale began.

“It certainly looks real enough,” the old man replied, guessing his mind. “And maybe it is genuine. Maybe she stole it from a true scientist who actually knows where the starship is buried. Or maybe it’s an ancient manuscript, and there was once a starship… but the ship sank to the core ages ago, and some curious fluke has placed it in her strange hands.”

“Or she invented everything,” Jopale allowed.

“Perhaps.” Watching the firestorm, Brace nodded. “Perhaps the girl heard a story about space flight and lost worlds, and she has a talent that lets her draw elaborate diagrams and play games with cameras. And these times are what made her insane. The terrors and wild hopes tell her that everything she can dream up is real. Perhaps.”

Or she was perfectly rational, Jopale thought, and the starship really was waiting out there. Somewhere. While Brace was the creature whose sanity had been discarded along the way, his mind lying to both of them, forcing them to stay onboard his treasured worm.

“But the name,” Jopale muttered.

“Sir?”

“ ‘Good Mountain.’ She told me why the scientists used that old word. And honestly, I can’t think of another reason for placing that noble name on this ridiculous place?”

“First of all, sir—”

“Call me Jopale, please.”

“Jopale. Yes.” Brace held both of his hands against the worm’s skin, listening to the great body. “First of all, I know this country well. If there were a project here, a research station of any size, it would not be a secret from me. And I can tell you frankly, Jopale… except for that one strange girl and her misguided men, nobody comes to this wasted space…”

A small quake rolled beneath them.

When it passed, Brace suggested, “We might be in luck here, sir. Do-ane may have told you: There’s a dead island under this ground. There’s a lot of wood sitting between us and the methane. So when the fire gets off the Tanglelands, it should slow down. At least for a little while. This wood’s going to burn, sure, but not as fast as that damned gas does.”

Jopale tried to feel encouraged. Then he repeated the words, “ ‘First of all.’ ”

“Sir?”

“You said, ‘First of all.’ What’s second of all?”

Master Brace nodded in a thoughtful fashion, then said, “You know, my mother was a caretaker on a worm exactly like this one. And her father was a driver on a freighter worm that crawled along this same trail, bringing the new iron back from Port of Krauss. It was that grandfather who told me that even when there was sunlight here, this was an awful place to live. Flat like this. Sapless. Hard to farm, and hard on the soul. But some greedy fellow bought this land for nothing, then sold pieces of it to people in more crowded parts of the world. He named his ground ‘Good Mountain’ because he thought the old word sounded strong and lasting. But of course, all he wanted was to lure fools into his trap…”

Jopale reached back over his head, burying one of his hands into the mockman’s thick hair. Then he pushed with his legs, feeling a consuming need to be closer to her, grinding his spine hard up against her spine.

“It’s just one old word,” Brace was saying. With his face lit up by the endless fire, he said, “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, sir. But words… what they are… they’re just sounds and scribbles. It’s people who give them meaning. Without us, the poor things wouldn’t have any life at all.”

And they pressed on, rushing toward the promised Ocean, with the End of the World following close behind.