Chapter 4

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"How did you answer him?" asked Jiro as they walked along the nanoceramic wilderness path that led to a small waterfall. It had been two weeks since the incident in the canyon and Blion now felt good enough to go on a group hike in the mountains.  It was actually not very wild, the path was very well traveled and they met people returning every few minutes.

"What do you think?  I said no!  He was a crazy old man in a weird house."

"Seriously?  You turned down an Apprenticeship?" Jiro said incredulously followed by a little whistle.  "You'll be under Discipline in a week," he smiled.  "Your mother was right, you're an idiot* for turning it down." 

"My mother never said I was an idiot."  Blion knew, however, that even though she never used the word, she shared Jiro's sentiment.  The term idiot was a loan word from Ancient English since their native Lajbon had no similarly insulting equivalent.  It was popular among teenagers at the time but not familiar to most adults.  "The old guy kept his house warm by a fire.  Can you even imagine that?  What was I supposed to do? "

"I don't know, bro," Jiro shrugged his shoulders.  "I've never seen a fire before.  It's a tough choice."

The two teenagers were the vanguard of a group of about a dozen who were hiking together.  Blion slowed down a bit to let the rest of the group catch up and Jiro followed his lead.  Karissa was among them and Jiro began to talk with her.  With Jiro engaged, Blion realized he needed to evacuate his bowels.  What an inconvenient time!  He allowed the whole group to pass him so he could find a private spot.  The last person in the group was a boy Blion didn't know, probably a relative of someone in the group from a distant community center.  He had unusually short legs and was breathing quite loudly trying to keep up.  Blion chuckled to himself about the boy's ridiculous looking gait.  His tall torso made must have made him look by far like the tallest in the room as long as he was sitting, right now he looked a little short.

Finally the boy passed and Blion found a secluded spot between the trees and poison oak.  It took a few minutes in the unusual squatting position he had to take and he again regretted not having timed himself better.  Finally he finished and had to walk quickly to catch up before they reached the waterfall.  He reached a spot where the nanoceramic path had a junction where an unpaved trail went off to the side.  He'd seen the shortcut on an aerial view and decided to take it.  It was a beautiful trail and would save several minutes of walking, enough to catch up with time to spare.  Perhaps the remnants of an ancient road, it was somewhat overgrown and washed out in places.

"Hey!  Help me!"

Blion heard a rather desperate sounding voice coming from just ahead.  The trail was, at this point, on the steep side of the mountain and much of the edge washed away.  He turned a corner and there was the short legged boy clinging precariously to a bush that was growing tenaciously from the rocky slope.  His clothes were dirty and ruined and his skin also looked pretty roughed up, a little blood was trickling out of his leg and chin.  The bush was a foot below the road level and it's roots were being pulled out by his weight.  The little ribbon of the trail that was left must have crumbled under his weight.  There was no way to continue.

"Pull me up!" he yelled.  "Please!"

Blion looked down at him disapprovingly.  "You should have been much more careful going on this path.  Tsk-tsk.  Didn't you see that it could collapse if you didn't walk carefully?"

"I'm losing my grip!" he said in a state of panic.  "Please, help me!"  Tears began to flow.

"I'm sure the Attendants will be here soon," Blion replied, with a sigh.  There could be no doubt that the headband would have summoned them the moment the boy's subconscious registered the slip.  "Looks like this was a a waste of time," he gestured at the crumbled path, "I better run the rest of the way if I want to catch up to everyone at the waterfall."

If he lost his grip, it was a long way down to the rocks below.  Nonetheless, with modern medicine Blion was confident that his wounds would be easily healed, and even if there was some brain damage it would be reversible.  He didn't bother to check how long it would be until the Attendants arrived.

Blion turned around to go.  "Lot's of incentive to strengthen that grip for next time," he yelled back.  "And be more careful too."

"Nooooo!!! Help me!" he said with a voice quavering with fear.

"Hey, it'll be a good lesson for you."  Blion said, convincing himself that the easy thing to do was also the right thing to do, a task for which human minds are excellently suited.

Just then, Blion heard the fans of a nearby vacikarce, he turned around quickly to see the show.  The boy finally lost his grip and began tumbling out of control down the mountainside, screaming in pain.  The vacikarce was not fast and maneuverable enough to reach him, so a gleaming metal Attendant jumped out.  To see an Attendant in action was a rare spectacle.  It jumped out of the vacikarce's door landed like a gymnast in a spot just below the rolling boy where the ground could support it's several hundred pound bulk.  It caught him as gingerly as the physics would allow and decelerated him while at the same time lifting him away from the sharp rocks and keeping their common center of gravity under control.  He continued shrieking as the vacikarce, its own mechanics communicating with the Attendant's, descended to just the right spot so that the Attendant could leap and fall right into it.

The whole scene was so beautifully choreographed, it was a shame that no one else had been here to enjoy it.

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