Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Whatever happened to the people of this little Stone-Age city, it wasn’t plague or famine or anything like that. We peek in on each house, and they’re all empty. Every single one is completely body- and bone-free, which makes me feel better. I think I’d probably have turned around and faced the metlaks if we’d found a stack of bodies. It’s all very quiet and peaceful, just…empty.
I think it’s old, too, and I tell Hassen that. A few of the small ‘houses’ have rotted bits of what must have been furniture. There’s nothing left but a few frames and piles of dust that suggest stuff was here that didn’t survive the elements. Everything is coated with a thin layer of ice, too. Even the floors. Each of the small houses is made the same, a perfect little square with an ice-covered dugout section that must be a fire pit, and something that looks suspiciously like a kitchen area. There’s a debris-covered cubby connected to each house that has grime and detritus caked into the ice, and I can’t figure out what they’re supposed to be used for…until I find one that has a hole in the floor, and then I get excited.
“These aren’t Stone-Age people,” I tell Hassen. “That’s a motherfucking toilet.” I get down on my hands and knees, leaning over the ice-covered hole. “Give me your spear!”
“What are you doing, Mah-dee?”
“Looking for pipes,” I tell him. He hands me his spear, and I jab the butt of it against the ice, cracking the thick layer after a few stabs and uncovering the hole. I peer into it and then drop a chunk of ice down the hole. I can’t see anything down there, but despite the shadows, it looks like there are pipes of some kind.
Crude pipes are still pipes.
“These people had toilets,” I tell him, excited. I get to my feet. The stone walls suddenly look a lot less crude to me. Romans had running water and pipes, didn’t they? Maybe this is the ice planet equivalent of an ancient Roman civilization.
I’m going to ignore the whole Pompeii-Vesuvius equivalent my brain immediately draws. There’s no lava here. The volcano was a jillion miles away. “This place is fantastic, Hassen!”
“Why is it fantastic?” He gazes at me, hard brows draw down.
“Because toilets. That means running water somewhere around here. Let’s go find it!”
He’s mystified by my excitement, but takes his spear back and follows me as I dash around the icy remains of the city.
I’m not wrong—in the big house, there’s a bright blue hot spring bubbling, the edges lined with squared pavers. It looks deep and smells stinkier and more sulfurous than the one back at the old cave, but it’s fresh water. I glance around. “Maybe this was a bathhouse. Or a communal gathering spot.” I see lots of benches and another hollow that’s probably a fire pit. “This place is so great!”
“Mmm.”
I turn to look at Hassen. “You don’t like it?”
“I do not like that there are people here, Mah-dee.” He still holds his spear, alert. “How can people have lived here without the tribe knowing?”
“Maybe they’re other sa-khui?” I rub my lip as I think. “Actually, that can’t be right. You guys crashed here about three hundred years ago, and these ruins look way, way older. That means this planet was inhabited before you guys got here.”
His mouth sets in a grim line. “What does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, rubbing my arms. “It could mean any number of things. It could mean that the people that lived here are long gone and we’re the only ones left on the planet. It could mean that there are people living somewhere else, but far away. Maybe they didn’t like how cold it was here and left.”
“For Jo-see’s island?” He snorts. “If so, they are gone now.”
I wince at the thought of another tribe of people vaporized by a poor living location. “You might not be wrong. But we don’t know. What I do think is that we should stay here tonight, and then we need to tell Vektal about it. This could be a place to live during the brutal season.”
He looks around, clearly not seeing what I see. “Here?”
“Yes, here.” I gesture at the pool of water. “We’ve got water. We’ve got plumbing, however frozen. We’ve got houses. Those are like caves. People live in them.”
“There are no tops!”
“We can make tops,” I tell him. “Roofs, I mean. We can make roofs for each of the houses. And look at this place!” I point to the high canyon walls. “We’re snug here. I bet it doesn’t get much snow. No metlaks are going to wander down here.”
“No sa-khui either. We fell down a hole,” he says in a flat voice.
“Then we can make ladders. My point is, it’s not the worst idea.”