them and the gloom that pressed in when the lanterns flickered. The
wide, calm face seemed almost stupid to Maati, the andat's occasional
pronouncements simplistic compared with the thousand-layered comments of
Seedless, the only andat he'd known intimately. He knew better than to
be taken in. 'The form of the andat might be different, the mental
bindings that held it might place different strictures upon it, but the
hunger at its center was as desperate. It was an andat, and it would
long to return to its natural state. They might seem as different as a
marble from a thorn, but at heart they were all the same.
And Maati knew he was walking through a tunnel not so tall he could
stand to his full height with a thousand tons of stone above him. This
placid-faced ghost could bring it down on him as if they'd been crawling
through a hole in the ocean.
"So, you see," Cehmai was saying, "the Daikani engineers find where they
want to extend the mine out. Or down, or up. We have to leave that to
them. Then I will come through and walk through the survey with them, so
that we all understand what they're asking."
"And how much do you soften it?"
"It varies," Cehmai said. "It depends on the kind of rock. Some of them
you can almost reduce to putty if you're truly clear where you want it
to be. Then other times, you only want it to be easier to dig through.
Most often, that's when they're concerned about collapses."
"I see," Maati said. "And the pumps? How do those figure in?"
"That was actually an entirely different agreement. The Khai's eldest
son was interested in the problem. The mines here are some of the lowest
that are still in use. The northern mines are almost all in the
mountains, and so they aren't as likely to strike water."
"So the Daikani pay more for being here?"
"No, not really. The pumps he designed usually work quite well."
"But the payment for them?"
Cehmai grinned. His teeth and skin were yellowed by the lantern light.
"It was a different agreement," Cehmai said again. "The Daikani let him
experiment with his designs and he let them use them."
"But if they worked well ..."
"Other mines would pay the Khai for the use of the pumps if they wished
for help building them. Usually, though, the mines will help each other
on things like that. There's a certain . . . what to call it ...
brotherhood? The miners take care of each other, whatever house they
work for."
"Might we see the pumps?"
"If you'd like," he said. "They're back in the deeper parts of the mine.
If you don't mind walking down farther...."
Maati forced a grin and did not look at the wide face of the andat
turning toward him.
"Not at all," he said. "Let's go down."
The pumps, when he found them at last, were ingenious. A series of
treadmills turned huge corkscrews that lifted the water up to pools
where another corkscrew waited to lift it higher again. They did not
keep the deepest tunnels dry-the walls there seemed to weep as Maati