Chapter 34: Desert Queen
Arriving at the appointed launching position, Tulland surveyed his tools. He had some rocks left without briars, and these he dutifully wrapped with the vine until they were just like all the others. He was left with a pile of ten or so vines, which he coiled as best he could into a package he could carry with him if he needed to.
And then, into one very special vine and rock assembly, he placed more projectiles. Loosening the vine from around the rock, he began to pack in flowers, putting dozens of them around the smaller, apple-sized rock this vine contained. He kept packing them for a while, only stopping when the overall weight approached but didn’t quite reach that of his other rocks.
You should turn off my communications now. If you are to try this, you will need to concentrate.
“That’s oddly considerate.”
Hardly.
If the System meant anything by that, it chose not to elaborate. Personally, Tulland thought it was just unable to refute the idea that it was being considerate. Something about the System was off, this last week or so. He wouldn’t quite term it remorse because he wasn’t at all sure the System could even feel that. But something about how it was treating Tulland was less like an evil trickster. It was approaching how a stiff person might talk to a near-equal, almost as his old tutor used to be.
Either way, it wasn’t wrong about the communication channel. If Tulland was going to do this, he would need his concentration. Switching it off, he picked up the first of the rock-vine combinations, commanded it to be very still, and began swinging it in circles.
“One, two, three, throw!” Tulland shouted. He had learned through recent experiments that the ants were deaf to actual sounds that didn’t come to their feet through the soil. At this distance, Tulland could make as much noise as he wanted. And the little mantra helped keep his shots consistent, so there was no reason at all not to do it. The stone sailed along its path, with the vine still attached and trailing behind. “One, two, three, throw!”
The second stone followed the first, traveling a truly impossible distance before slamming hard into the side of the hill in roughly the same area. The ants started to stir. As they did, Tulland threw out as many rocks as he could, bunching them up in that one spot and slowly turning that side of the hill green.