A Coming Of Age

Chapter 26

The dump site was in a grassy valley three or four kilometers from the temple site, an unexceptional place with a handful of trees, a narrow yet surprisingly gentle river, and two or three barren hills poking through the scrub weed. It was only as Lisa guided them to one of the latter that Tirrell could see it was in actuality an immense pile of broken stone.

"They dug all this stuff out of that mountain?" Tonio asked, eyeing the rocks with obvious amazement.

"This isn't half of what they've actually mined," Tirrell told him. "Loose rock always looks bigger than the hole it came out of." Sliding his backpack onto the ground, the detective found a relatively flat slab at the edge of the pile and unfolded the small-scale survey map he'd obtained from the Plat City police. "They've probably been quietly hauling the stuff away, most likely during weekdays when all the kids are at work. Probably leaving this much here on purpose so no one'll realize any of it's missing."

Fiddling with one of the smaller stones, Tonio flew over to land at his side. "You figured out where we are?"

"I think so." Tirrell was actually somewhat more certain than that, having followed their course on the map all the way from Plat City. "We're on the southern edge of the De Sable Plateau, next to the main branch of the Rashoni River. Flows generally south, then goes southwest down the far side of the mountains and off my map."

"Is that why the water's moving so slowly?" Lisa asked. "Because we're on a flat area?"

"Basically. The size and number of tributaries and the cha

"Makes it nice and easy to anchor their boat while they load up, doesn't it?" Tonio commented. He teeked his stone hard into the side of the heap, causing a minor rock slide. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's head on down and find him."

Tirrell was already folding up his map when something in his righthand's voice—overconfidence?—made him pause. Let's head on down and find him. It was a perfectly reasonable and obvious statement... but this was Martel they were dealing with, and Martel had stayed free this long precisely because he worked hard at avoiding the obvious. Still, shipping the ore via water was the simplest and cheapest method available. Why bother teeking the stuff to the riverside if all he wanted was to leave a false clue before carting it away overland again?

Unless...

Unfolding the map again, Tirrell studied it closely. Yes... yes; it was possible. And right or wrong, it wouldn't take long to check out.

"Stan?" Tonio asked impatiently. "We going or not?"

"We're going," the detective answered slowly. "But we're going to start by heading upstream. The current's slow enough that even a heavy boat shouldn't have any trouble fighting it, at least for a few kilometers."

"You think he's set up a refinery way up here in the mountains?" Lisa asked, looking puzzled. Wouldn't that have been the hard way to do it?"

"No, to both questions," Tirrell told her, taking one last look at the map before folding it to show only the region immediately upriver of them. "What I'm thinking might be crazy, or it might be brilliant—and I won't know which until we check it out on the actual terrain."

"Well, let's do it then," Tonio said. "Don't worry, Lisa," he added to the other preteen. "He gets these brilliant hunches all the time. You just have to learn to put up with them."

Tirrell smiled, and a small tight place in his stomach relaxed for the first time in hours. The resurgence of Tonio's sense of humor was a good sign, an indication that the righthand was finally catching up with the emotional shocks and stresses that had been pummeling him all day. To capture Martel at the cost of damage to Tonio's personality was not a trade he would've liked having to make. "So skip the noise and give me a lift," he said, scooping up his backpack with one hand and holding out the other. "You can explain to Lisa on the way that my hunches usually come out right."

They found it a bare kilometer upriver—not the refinery, but the clue that Tirrell, despite his outward confidence, had only half expected to find.

"What are they?" Lisa asked as they hovered over the grooves cut into the narrow band of moist ground separating the riverbank from the harder rock beyond.

"Tread marks," Tirrell told her. "Almost certainly those of a heavy amphibious vehicle."

"This doesn't make any sense," Tonio complained, squinting in the direction the tread marks pointed. "There's nothing but rock over there. No trees, no possibility of a decent cave—how's he going to hide a refinery out in the open?"

"Let's go see, shall we?" Tirrell said.

"But they'll see us," Lisa objected, looking around nervously.

"Don't worry; Martel's still kilometers away," Tirrell assured her. "Let's go—you'll understand in about a hundred meters."

The two preteens exchanged glances. Then Tonio shrugged and they were airborne again, flying low. The ground swelled up into a low rise, and they topped it to find—

Another river.

"Are you going to tell us," Tonio demanded as they landed, "that Martel carts his rocks up one river and across dry land just to ship 'em down another river? Why?"

"I am indeed," Tirrell nodded. "And the why is twofold: first, because this river—a tributary of the Nordau, according to the map—winds up going down the other side of the mountains, which means that at the cost of relatively little trouble he's managed to point any pursuers in exactly the wrong direction. And secondly—"

"Stan!" Lisa exclaimed suddenly. "There's an old metal refinery where the river leaves the mountains!"

Tirrell nodded. "Right. It hasn't been used in probably twenty years or more—not since the mines southeast of Plat City were played out—but it wouldn't take much to get one of the crushers and a cyanidation tank or two back in operation. I'll lay ten to one odds that's where he's holding Jarvis."

"Yeah—with thirty or forty kids to help him," Tonio muttered.

"No, he doesn't have nearly that many," Tirrell told him. "Remember back to the cabin. Even though he left the temple site with fifteen kids and picked up reinforcements on the way, he hit us with only eight or nine—and recall that Weylin wasn't among them. I suspect that those eight or nine have been trusted with the full story of what Martel's pla

"But Weylin was willing to attack a policeman for him," Lisa pointed out. "He had to be pretty loyal to do that."

"Breaking laws in the name of religion and seeing your leader break them are two very different things; and that's an even stronger indication that Martel's not taking any chances at all with his group. So he's probably only got those same eight or nine kids with him. The other side of that, of course, is that trying to talk them into mutinying would be essentially useless. We're just going to have to hit them hard and fast, without any call for surrender to alert them."

"That doesn't sound very... pleasant," Lisa said hesitantly.

"It probably won't be," Tirrell acknowledged. "But with luck you won't have to be there. We're going to head down to the refinery first of all and try to confirm that Martel's there. If we can, Tonio and I will put the place under surveillance while you sneak away and whistle us up some backup forces, Probably from Nordau; it'll be faster than going back to Plat City." He glanced up at the midafternoon sun, already perilously close to the highest mountain peaks. "And we'd better get moving—I want to get things rolling as soon as possible."