Diggers Read Free

practical people, and there was so much to organize these days.
    It was just that everyone was settling down. We’re going to turn this into our little world, just like in the Store, Masklin realized. They thought the roof was the sky, and we think the sky is the roof.
    We’ll just stay and . . .
    There was a truck coming up the quarry road. It was such an unusual sight that Masklin realized he had been watching it for a while without really seeing it at all.
    â€œThere was no one on watch! Why wasn’t there anyone on watch? I said there should always be someone on watch!”
    Half a dozen nomes scurried through the dying bracken toward the quarry gate.
    â€œIt was Sacco’s turn,” muttered Angalo.
    â€œNo, it wasn’t!” hissed Sacco. “You remember, yesterday you asked me to swap because—”
    â€œI don’t care whose turn it was!” shouted Masklin. “There was no one there! And there should have been! Right?”
    â€œSorry, Masklin.”
    â€œYeah. Sorry, Masklin.”
    They scrambled up a bank and flattened themselves behind a tuft of dried grass.
    It was a small truck, as far as trucks went. A human had already climbed out of it and was doing something to the gates leading into the quarry.
    â€œIt’s a Land Rover,” said Angalo smugly. He’d spent a long time in the Store reading everything he could about vehicles, before the Long Drive. He liked them. “It’s not really a truck, it’s more to carry humans over—”
    â€œThat human is sticking something on the gate,” said Masklin.
    â€œOn our gate,” said Sacco disapprovingly.
    â€œBit odd,” said Angalo. The man sleepwalked, in the slow, ponderous way that humans did, back to the vehicle. Eventually it backed around and roared off.
    â€œAll the way up here just to stick a bit of paper on the gate,” said Angalo, as the nomes stood up. “That’s humans for you.”
    Masklin frowned. Humans were big and stupid, that was true enough, but there was something unstoppable about them, and they seemed to be controlled by bits of paper. Back in the Store, a piece of paper had said the Store was going to be demolished and, sure enough, it had been demolished. You couldn’t trust humans with bits of paper.
    He pointed to the rusty wire netting, an easy climb for an agile nome.
    â€œSacco,” he said, “you’d better fetch it down.”
    Miles away, another piece of paper fluttered on the hedge. Spots of rain pattered across its sun-bleached words, soaking the paper until it was heavy and soggy and . . .
    . . . tore.
    It flopped onto the grass, free. A breeze made it rustle.

2
    III. But there came a Sign, and people said, What is it that this means?
    IV. And it was not good.
    From The Book of Nome,
Signs Chap. 1, v. III–IV
    G URDER SHUFFLED ON hands and knees across the paper that had been taken down from the gate.
    â€œOf course I can read it,” he said. “I know what every word means.”
    â€œWell, then?” said Masklin.
    Gurder looked embarrassed. “It’s what every sentence means that’s giving me trouble,” he said. “It says here . . . where was it . . . yes, it says here the quarry is going to be reopened. What does that mean? It’s open already—any fool knows that. You can see for miles.”
    The other nomes crowded around. You certainly could see for miles. That was the terrible part. On three sides the quarry had decent high cliff walls, but on the fourth side . . . well, you got into the habit of not looking in that direction. There was too much of nothing, which made you feel even smaller and more vulnerable than you were already.
    Even if the meaning of the paper wasn’t clear, it certainly looked unpleasant.
    â€œThe quarry’s a hole in the ground,” said Dorcas. “You can’t open a hole unless it’s been filled in. Stands to