Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 12

He meandered away from the muddy river bank towards where he figured the farm was.  As he emerged from the brush, a ray of sunlight, pure and intense, broke through the clouds.

At his feet were rows and rows of little green plants, freshly sprouted from the rich brown soil.  The humans here had planted a field outside their house.  It was practical but not aesthetic.  Outside Blion's home and most everyone else's the robots planted fruit trees and flowers in an artistic manner that was reminiscent of nature.  The fields and orchards would be very small so that diseases wouldn't spread and nutrients wouldn't be depleted from the soil.

The plants went on and on and on.  Thick hedges demarcated the edges of the field.  The hovel was a little ways off, a bit of smoke wafting from its chimney.  Blion headed towards it, staff in hand.

As he approached the small structure, he could see that some parts were actually quite old.  It had stones set together with concrete as mortar between them.  The roof was made of thick layers of thatch.  The walls of the structure looked like they had been made by the Ancients and stood intact for many hundreds of years.  The windows looked to be made of some kind of thin, semitransparent substance hung in a wooden frame.  Blion thought of what that might be.  He gasped at the horror.  It had to be oiled animal hides.  Using animals in this way made these barbarians as disgusting as leeches.  One window, however, still had a piece of primitive glass in it.  The glass wasn't a modern transparent polycrystalline.  It had cracked and looked very dirty but at least it was keeping the wind out, mostly.

He found the door easily enough, a roughly man sized piece of wood set in the side of the building.  Instinctively he used his headband to inform the residents of his presence and desire to speak to them.  It only took a fraction of a second to remember that the headband was disabled here and that even if it had been working, the residents, lacking headbands themselves, would not have the ability to respond to it.

He remembered back to some of his visits to the museum as a child.  They had watched a video of the United States in the 1960's as a history lesson.  The culture was so strange that even though the words had been translated into Lajbon, he didn't understand much of it.  His teacher hadn't explained very much but he did remember that when someone came on a door and wanted to speak to the resident, they found a little button somewhere near the door and pushed on it.  A sound was made and the owner of the house would come to the door.  Blion looked around and, much to his frustration, there was no similar object near the door.

"Hello, occupants!" he spoke very loudly, "I would like to speak to you."  His English was fine but he felt uncomfortable about being completely ignorant of the social conventions.  He heard the sound of hushed voices inside.  He spoke again, "I would like to speak with you concerning an important matter."

A few seconds later the door opened and a pale looking old man stood there inspecting him from head to toe.  "What do you want from us, young man?"

"I'm looking for a man and woman.  Their names are Cindu and Sailce Denzlavi.  Are you acquainted with their location?"

The old man looked at him like he was the strangest creature that ever walked the earth.  "Those sound like Northern names."  He looked annoyed but also somewhat afraid.  His voice was high and kind of whiny.  "Are you a Northerner?"