I like Egan, he's silly.
Anyway my official bolded recommendations are:
Establish a cover as a museum researcher, visit nice places around town like taverns and such to ask about local history. Like how Frodo in LOTR pretended to be writing a book.
Use birds to find the lab, then rats to infiltrate. Hang around for a few weeks to a month tops during rat phase, head on back.
Sounds good, but what is meant by rat phase, is it sending rats to the lab when the birds find it, or something else?
This.
Rats can sneak in and learn things like guard schedules, shipping intervals, personnel information, things like that. Make it easier to pack ourselves into a box and get inside to snoop about and learn.
+1
+1
But I say at some point we should do that Five point plan that Dunamisdeos made.
You formulate a plan of action and then consider what steps to work on first. Rats are no issue; you're sure you can find them almost anywhere. Birds however, those might be more of a problem. They have an annoying habit of being able to fly and neither you nor your memories have much experience with hunting them. Its a job that you consider might be best left to piecewise with his exacting and inhuman skill for simple tasks. However, its something that should probably wait until after nightfall; would do no good to have the locals seeing a bundled up stranger hunting...You stop and consider this for a moment. Surely it wouldn't be TOO odd for a city dweller to come out to the wilderness to hunt? Maybe he could buy a hunting rifle or shotgun from somewhere in town; it would give him a cover for his work and explain his place here. After all, why would a professor or researcher have a silent manservant dogging his every step? Or worse yet, silently hiding away in his hotel room. Both of those would create mystery and mystery is the last thing you want.
Plan in mind, you make sure your bags are carefully stored - and locked against the snooping of busy body innkeepers- and head out. First you ask someone on the street for directions to a shop that can set your friend up with a rifle. The fisherman points you up the road to a hunting lodge on the edge of town. There, amidst a classic decor of wood and taxidermy, an old gentleman places a series of rifles on a padded countertop for you to inspect. You puppet piecewise, having him silently inspect them and show them to you as though to an eager but clueless friend. The gentleman offers scattered snippets of conversation, generally a complement about some positive aspect of the rifle or a fragment of anecdote while pointing to one mounted head or another. You make your decision and then spend a few extra minutes reexamining things and testing actions, just to make it very clear that Piecewise is a seasoned woodsman. You select a lever action repeating shotgun that- from a combination of hijacked memories and salesman assurances- you believe will be a good choice for downing anything from birds to, well, lets just say larger targets, depending on the cartridge used. You buy birdshot, buckshot, and slugs- a box each - and a bag to carry the rifle in. That done, you walk with piecewise to the edge of town and give him an order: Shoot some birds with the new rifle, avoid contact with any people, once you have a half dozen or so birds, return to the inn. You watch him walk deliberately off into the underbrush and then head back to town.
By now the day has worn on to mid morning and everyone is either out working the sea or doing what business they have to do in town. The shops are open and you take a moment to slip in and buy a notebook and a pen -both of a quality befitting a researcher- before you put on your best friendly, naive grin and start harassing the locals. You rely heavily on the memories of your devoured farmboy for the correct rustic etiquette; you don't follow it exactly, so as to preserve your citydweller cover, but you follow it enough to put the locals at ease. You start with the housewives and shop keepers and nosy servants that are milling around in the streets or at the town square, asking for any information they can give you on the history of the town and their places in it. People, in your experience, are always willing to talk about themselves. You harvest a great bounty of gossip, questionable family history, town lore, town superstition, and backhanded complements directed at other domestic types. Sunset comes eventually and the men return from their ships, stinking of fish, brine, sweat and seaweed, down turned faces like gnarled driftwood. They trudge up to their homes and strip off waders and oilskins before collapsing into chairs or trudging back out to the taverns. You wander the taverns, trying your luck, but the men are often far less talkative. Until you administer a drink or two to loosen their rusted jaws, that is. From them you get histories far more focused on work, on heroic stories born from tragedy, on pride toward their humble home, and on the various much cursed actions of far removed men who make their lives difficult. Law this and law that. Ration this and ration that.
Finally, you see piecewise out the tavern window, walking with deliberate steps back towards the inn, a regular bouquet of what look mostly like seabirds- gulls, terns, and shags- slung over his shoulder. You excuse yourself and walk out to meet him. You look him over and besides some damage from walking through underbrush he seems fine. He reports no incidents of running into others, but he did come across some evidence of large scale building; specifically a refuse pile of crushed concrete and rebar, now mostly covered over by dirt, moss, and plants. You walk back with in to the Inn, give the inn keeper a friendly nod, to which she responds with the annoyed politeness of one whose snooping has discovered nothing juicy, and head up stairs. She calls after that if you need the birds dressed, there's a butcher down the road. You thank her and close the door. Piecewise deposits the cluster of corpses in the washbasin and then settles into his usual position at the window. You don't order him to do it...he just seems to like it there. Hmm.
You start going over your notes, looking for connections and striking out things that seem either meaningless or fabricated. There's a lot of that. Worse yet there is lot of information you're just not sure about. Its repeated, yes, but because you have no idea of the truth of the matters it connects to, you cannot tell if it is pervasive falsehood or hidden truth. You summarize your findings on a new page.
1. There is a military base here, that much is apparently an open secret.
2. It was made in the last 5 or so years, though some say a little longer. Back before the coup and revolution.
3. Before and after the revolution there were pretty consistent shipments up the old road to the base; no one knows exactly what but large military trucks that drive through town in the middle of the night. They come from the south, down the coast road, but they take a side route that bypasses the town itself. They're only visible by their headlights most times.
4. The base is still manned though seems less busy these days; the shipments still come but erratically.
5. Apparently, the traitor Kelley was somehow connected because shortly after he was denounced by the party there was a sudden influx of soldiers into the area. Some people say there was fighting, other that there wasn't, but if it did happen it was up in the woods not in town.
6. Shortly after the soldiers arrived there was a night where strange lights were seen in the sky above the woods and surrounding lands. Again, descriptions vary but many say that they saw lights "Falling" into the woods, like a slow cyclone drawn in to somewhere out there.
7. The old road up to the base is still there but there are new fences and gates, further out from before. "Half the wood" is now fenced off they say.
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Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 119085 times)