* * *
The next morning the dwellers, after waiting interminably for the late-rising strangers to arrive, watched with amazement when the long-legs were escorted into the chamber, the taller ones ducking their heads to avoid striking the uneven ceiling. Their ugly round faces were splotched and burned by sun and wind. They smelled horribly.
The cliff dwellers, including the elders, stood uncertainly at their perches. An awkward silence ensued. Eventually Koop-thefacilitator signaled for all to sit. Koop remained standing.
"Braan, leader-of-hunters, thy report?" he whistled.
Braan stood forth and summarized what they had learned. The elders asked questions. The long-legs sat and watched.
"There is little we can do," Braan said, "without a means of communication." He turned and faced the steam users.
"Master Bool," said the facilitator. "Hast thou a recommendation?" To steam user Bool had been assigned the task of interpreting the long-leg drawings. He had delegated this to his assistant, steam user Toon, a capable intellect. The drawings were simple, and Toon had compiled a translation scheme and added pictographs he felt would assist in expanding the communications.
"With permission, facilitator," Bool spoke. "Steam user Toon has analyzed the pictographs and has expanded them. I offer Toon to work directly with our visitors."
Koop nodded approval, and steam user Toon, clutching his manuscripts, stepped unsteadily toward the sour-smelling giants.
* * *
Buccari watched, fascinated, trying to determine what was happening.
"Look. On the tall ones' necks," Jones whispered. "Diamonds! Rubies! And those are emeralds!" He pointed. MacArthur grabbed his hand.
"Manners!" Buccari hissed. Her interest piqued, she turned and examined the necklaces. The gemstones glowed luminously, their large facets sparkling with rich color.
"Geez, Boats!" she croaked, craning her neck. "You're right!"
The dwellers appeared irritated at their gawking. Buccari composed herself as the taller creature approached. His face was oddly formed, wider and flatter than the others, and he was burdened with large, bound tablets.
"Whew, he's an ugly bugger," O'Toole whispered. "Looks like a lizard. What's he carrying?"
Included in his burden Buccari recognized the notebooks she and Hudson had used to compose pictographs. The dweller halted at a low table in the middle of the room and deposited the books.
"Everyone sit tight," Buccari ordered as she presumptuously stood, walked over to the table, and sat, gesturing to the cliff dweller to do the same. She slid a book in front of her and studied it.
"Fantastic!" she exclaimed over her shoulder. "Lizard Lips here has taken our pictographs and developed a shorthand system." The door was open. Buccari smiled at the creature. She pointed with two hands at the manuscript, demonstrating joy at what was before her. She clapped her hands and whistled the ditty. The creature apparently understood, hesitantly clapping its four-fingered hands together. Soon all the dwellers were clapping and chirping.
The celebration abruptly halted when Buccari brusquely reached across the creature and grabbed a writing implement, a stylus with an ink wick squeezed in a fine-tipped clamp. Stylus in hand she flipped through the manuscript, stopping to copy symbols onto a square of stiff linen. The creature at her side squeaked and chirped as she wrote.
* * *
A high overcast painted the calm afternoon winterscape in muted tones. The spindly yellow-barked evergreens contrasted green-black against a blanket of powdery snow. Packed footpaths stitched the campsite, connecting shelters, watch posts, woodpile, meathouse, and latrines. Hudson looked up into the heavy underbellies of the clouds rolling ponderously across the white-shrouded mountains. The small canyon above the camp echoed with the hollow thunk-thunk of wood chopping. White and yellow splinters of wood fluttered across the radius of hard-packed snow as Tatum swung the long axe. Beppo Schmidt worked on boughs and branches with the hatchet, while Fenstermacher used a hammer and heavy chisel to split logs.
"Another storm's coming," Hudson sighed, lifting his parka from a tree branch. He had worked up a sweat. An icy chill flowed across the small of his back. "Looks like a big one."
"Where—the—hell—are—they?" Fenstermacher grunted in time with his hammer blows. As if cued, Mendoza, on watch above the cave, shouted, "The patrol! I see 'em. They're back!"
Hudson jerked his eyes from the storm clouds and turned to scan the vast whiteness of the plateau. The lake with its three islands, hard frozen except for irregular blemishes of black and gray marking the welling hot springs, provided the only relief. She was back. Finally, the patrol was back. Through the trees a cluster of dark forms plodded along, leaving a trail of blue prints that disappeared in a faint melding with the near horizon of the high plateau rim. Hudson exhaled, muttering a silent prayer of gratitude.