4. Waterpower #3
The electric pump whirred as he glanced in.
Water flowed as it should. That was very good.
The building smelled of pigs, the dusty, flat scent of pig pellets, and a sharp tang of their waste.
On Saturday they'd clean out the waste catcher and deal with the manure.
Yet another reason to raise pasture pigs—the more time they spent outdoors, the less concentrated waste he, his older brothers, and father had to deal with.
The late spring evening felt soft. Perhaps the forecast storms would pass north of them, or produce nothing more than gentle rain.
Mild rain ... Dr. Chan and his brother and sister told stories about rain on their family's ranch in Utah, storms visible tens of miles away and that came, rained hard enough to drown or flatten everything, then marched off.
Since all the plants and animals out there had spines, needles, or poison fangs, attack rain fit the landscape.
Lukaz shook his head at the thought. No, thank you.
The Great God and His Lady had led the clan to these lands for a reason.
Pennsylvania plants just made you itch or poked you if you paid no attention.
They did not leap onto innocent passers-by the way Utah plants did, or so the cousins averred.
Lukaz started toward the farmhouse. What was that?
Something brushed his shields, or did it?
He walked farther from the lights and buildings, then stopped.
West, the touch had come from the west. Defenses thinned, he let his eyes half close, sensing the magic around him.
A very faint ripple like a single finger touching the surface of water, not sufficient to break the surface tension, passed around the farm.
Nothing more could he sense. He flowed magic back to his shields.
"I do not look, only report." It did not feel or taste like abyssal or other inimical power, and he had not the strength to look more closely.
Once back in the house, he logged into the magic workers' net and checked for announcements.
The only exercise that might have produced something similar would not take place until the morrow, so he moved to the "Pops and Snaps" section and entered his observation.
Back on the "General Notices" board, Phillip, a sorcerer in Riverton, warned of road work on the other road leading from the city, "So be ready to catch curses if you drive that way.
" He acknowledged the warning, passed it to the clan's workers not on the list, and logged out.
"Finally!" He should be studying. His brain refused to hold one more bit of information as related to either speculative literature of the period 1850-1960, or to the hydrology of streams. The latest "Red Wizard, Black Magic" novel awaited.
He'd gotten four chapters in, and might get two more read before he needed to sleep.
"I wanna beer," Suleiman moaned as the grad students oozed out of the door at the end of Landscape Architecture's wing of the building.
"Just beer?" Bekka demanded. She settled her pink ball cap more firmly on her head. "I hear a shot of the good stuff singing my name."
Lukaz nodded as he hitched his satchel strap higher. "The procedures essay." More need not be said, groaned, whined, or sighed. How detailed was "sufficiently detailed to explain proper procedures for selecting and surveying a representative reach of a C-3 stream?"
Sul nodded to him. "What did you put down on seven?"
"False, because a D-1 stream cannot exist." That combination of bed type and channel description defied physics as they existed on this plane of existence.
"Oh good. Thanks." The lean Lebanese grad student slouched off toward the student union, probably on his way to a burger place with beer.
Liquor-by-the-drink wouldn't go on sale in Riverton until four that afternoon.
Not that it stopped people from adding a little from flasks et cetera to drinks, but anyone who spiked beer with hard stuff deserved the results, including being banned from the bar when they got caught.
"Wanna go for wings?" Bekka asked.
"Thanks, but—" They both ducked as a neon yellow plastic disk sliced through the air, then jumped clear of the brown dog that followed it. "Look out!" he bellowed.
A muted "Sorry," came from two undergrads with more disks and sheepish expressions.
Bekka muttered something unkind about oblivious kids, then said, "You were saying?"
"Thanks, but I busted my budget last week, and this was my second final. I'm too tired to hold a beer and wings, even by the handles." He smiled a little and winked.
"Crap, I'm sorry. You one of those got caught in the credit requirement change? Doubling up stinks." She gave him a pity-rich look.
"Yeah, it does. Thanks." They went separate ways. The change in distributive credit requirements had given him the perfect excuse for his strange schedule. Now he got sympathy instead of questions about why he was a masters' candidate in English taking hydro-engineering courses, or vice versa.
"Berkshire farrowed this morning," his father reported when after he got to the house and changed into farm work clothes.
"The other one's delivered three thus far.
I go back to watching. Be ready for a Hunt this night—Hiram reports gaming tournament, live-action, made-up spells permitted, tonight in Schaumberg. "
"Yes, sir." Lady be merciful, please not the Lovecraft-based game, or the one set during the War of the Crosses. That one shouldn't have strong magic. The rules restricted magic within the game. Even so, accidents happened, and the game itself was so dark... It was as it was.
His father glared at the ground. "Were that not sufficient for trouble, Mistress Talyssa had a major working this morning, inadvertent curse."
That left ... the shadow mages, Mistress Hannah, and Mistress Ushla, save that she recovered from a broken arm and could not Hunt. "One of the Riverton sorcerers warned of road construction on County Road Thirty-Six, from the city almost to Devon Line Road."
"Of course." His father shook his head. He was short by Hunter standards, lean, and fair.
Lukaz took after him, while his brothers favored their mother's side of the family.
His sister had an Asian look to her, with a red-headed temper, like their paternal grandfather.
"Thanks be that a trip into town is not yet needed. "
"Amén. The highway backup reached to the top of the bluff this morning."
"So be it. Go check the stream, please. The renter to the west ..." He made the left-handed "uncertain-not good" sign.
"Yes, sir."
Before he could even move, he heard a clanging sound from the house.
His mother needed something. Lukaz Senior waved him that way.
He bowed and trotted to the house, taking the steps on the back porch two at a time.
"Yes, ma'am?" he called as he opened the back door, then scraped his shoes on the outside mat.
"Benes," came from the kitchen. He turned left and stepped into his mother and sister's domain. Mrs. Padurar smiled. "First, please warn your father that supper will be a little late. Second, could you please deal with that?" She gestured to the water-filled sink. "It is coming back to haunt me."
No, that came first, since it seemed to be actively backing into the house. "Yes, ma'am. Did it start on its own?"
She frowned as she pivoted on her crutches, getting out of his way. "No. I had just finished washing and rinsing the jars there when the flow out stopped. Chowchow, but empty."
Not empty enough, perhaps. "Yes, ma'am." He waited until she limped out of the kitchen, then rolled up his sleeves and crouched, peering at the pipe descending from the sink.
"Reveal yourself," he whispered, sending a tiny thread of power through the water.
It flowed almost all the way to the first clean out before stopping.
So why was it backing up still? Water had to be getting in from somewhere.
He drew the magic back into himself and stood, one hand on the sturdy wooden counter. "First, lower the level, all else comes after."
Five buckets of dirty water later, he got the rooter and a cordless drill from the toolshed and walked out to the first clean out point. He opened it and peered in. No miasmas attacked him. When had they last put bacteria into the system? If he could not recall, it was due.
He hooked up the rooter and fed it back, toward the house.
WhrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRR the bit slowed. He stopped, geared down the drill, and started again.
Once the blockage yielded, he pulled the snake out of the pipe and looked.
Cabbage shreds, various other kitchen leavings, a bit of grease, and ... cloth? "This should not be."
A second run of the rooter produced more cloth, bright red like a cheap shop rag. How had a shop rag gotten into the house line? The fourth run went clear, and he could hear the flow moving as it should now that the blockage had cleared. He zoomed the rooter out the other way, and found nothing.
Problem solved for the moment, Lukaz cleaned the rooter, put it and the drill back where they belonged, then went to let his father know that supper would be delayed. He also checked the pump on the pigs' shed. Still running, that was very good. "So, now for the stream."
He followed the old footpath west, between the pasture fences.
From outside, it appeared to be a single fence, so carefully had his great-grandfather and great uncle aligned the posts and rails.
Only if someone came well onto the property, from the correct direction, would they have seen the narrow lane between the two.
The path predated the property, and had been in use by men and beasts when the clan arrived in the land.
Mistress Padurowski said that a little land magic trickled under the trail. He felt safe on the path.