Variations on a Theme Read online

The Country of Silence is the lowermost of the Underground Fields in the Great Redoubt, a hundred miles deep in the world. Here I have plied my trade in peace and solitude for as long, and longer, than I can remember. This hundred miles square of garden bounds my existence and I have been content among the soft whispers of wind in the corn and the dancing of the blossoms of the poppy.

  I have rarely given any thought to the doings of Lords in their tower so many miles above, thus it came as some surprise when Lord Marturioch descended to this level in the early part of my latest shift of duty and asked for me by name. I had to wait for his bulb to acclimatise before he was able to converse, and once he had done so I knew that my time of peace had, for a while at least, come to an end.

  The tale he told me was one of large Watchers gathering in ever increasing numbers beyond the Redoubt. The Lords believe that the beasts are drawn by the waste products from our cultivations here in the fields even though great care is taken to see that such products are only released in the depths underneath even this, the bottommost level of the Redoubt. The Watchers presence has become enough of a nuisance to warrant action, and it seems that I am the tool which will be employed for the purpose.

  Lord Marturioch has tasked me with improving the efficiency of our waste disposal by a factor of ten in the next two cycles. It is a great honor, but it is also a heavy burden, for the scale of the operation will be large indeed, and the burden of its success will fall on me and me alone.

  I have much work ahead of me.