A Succession of Bad Days Read Online Free PDF

them and you can say what the range of outcomes were ahead of time.”
    “It’s a
hill
,” Zora says.
    “It’s a tremendous pile of chance events, stretching backbillions of years.” Wake outright grins at us. “It just
looks
like a hill.”
    It goes right on looking like a hill while we stake out a big squashed rectangle, “Trapezoid,” Chloris says definitely while I’m wondering about the lumpy hill making the sides curve and wiggle, the baseline two hundred metres across the south side of the crest of the hill and reaching more than six hundred metres ofthe north slope, fanning out so that the far side, the end line, is four hundred metres long. It’s regular old iron survey stakes and heavy twine, nothing special; last time I saw a road crew, this is just what they were using.
    Not quite twenty hectares; Wake points out that we don’t really need even this much, and Chloris, Kynefrid, and Zora all produce some variation of “But we can grow stuff!”.
    Chloris tries to pull Dove into supporting that. It doesn’t work; Dove apparently held a quarter-thorpe once, what would be more than one farm where I’m from. Dove makes a best try to point out to the other three that while it’s usual for Independents to do things like develop new varieties of food crops, that’s probably not what any of us are going to be doing.
    “Why not?” Kynefrid clearly likesthe idea of being able to make better apple trees.
    I think it’s going to be a long time before we’re allowed to make anything alive.
    “Strength. If it’s a five-demon problem, they send the Line. If it’s a lots-of-work-over-a-long-time problem, like making weeding work better, that’s an Independent from the right tail of the main distribution; something that depends on skill and specific knowledgemore than strength. We’re going to get either three-demon problems, or the stuff no one has ever seen before; if we can figure it out, great. If we can’t figure it out, that’s when someone on the battalion list gets to deal with it.”
    Ok, that’s twice. “What do Line battalions have to do with being an Independent?”
    Dove looks at Wake.
    “The Line’s standing orders, should an Independent ever escapethe constraints of the Peace, include a minimum level of force.” Wake’s tones are completely dry.
    “There are people, individual people even if they are wizard people, who could fight a battalion?” Zora, sounding almost personally offended.
    I’ve only seen it once, but a single battalion can march somewhere and leave a permanent road behind them, fused rock a metre thick and ten metres wide, andeverything under it rearranged into roadbed. Ditches, too.
    Wake looks at Zora, makes a
gently
gesture. “It has never been tried within the Commonweal, and the Line is cautious.”
    I’ll believe
cautious
. I don’t believe
timorous
. Are the Independents that strong, or that skilled?
    “If we are to be cautious, we should specify which of the changes in the terrain are most desirable.” You can tell fromWake’s voice that we’re getting back to the actual lesson.
    “Bedrock, nearby sand and clay, limestone top cover, cellar bubble?” Dove tries to make this sound like a question, it’s an honest try.
    “Isn’t that too specific?” Zora, sounding both doubtful and determined. “We want good clean soil, compatible with the Creeks; we don’t really care what produced it, do we?”
    “Good clean soil arising fromnatural processes,” Wake says, quite gently.
    Everybody nods.
    No one else is going to ask, so I’d better. “What about water? We’re on top of a hill, and lugging buckets up from Westcreek doesn’t sound fun.”
    “The West Wetcreek,” Zora and Chloris and Dove all say at me, quietly, but definitely out loud.
    Dove says it while miming a forehead smack, only just within the gentleness of ritual. Wake lookspleased at me. Everybody else’s face does some variation of ‘Establishment Of Laws, uphill with