Renegade on Kara: The Great Basin, Chapter 9, Traveling With Tomlin

Roger learns more on how Tomlins are like human, and how they differ.

chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Roger jerked to a sitting position as the snorting camels jolted him awake.

On all sides of him, the camels were standing up as the Tomlins moved between them, giving them their feed.

With a groan, Roger climbed out of his sleeping bag and stood. He missed his bed. Even with all the comforts he had managed to bespell into that sleeping bag, it was nowhere near as comfortable. He began putting his sleeping bag away and got a few things out of his food hamper to spice up his porridge. Porridge in the morning and rabbit in the evening were bound to get old, but adding the different things he carried in different proportions could put that off.

He hoped anyway.

A thought impinged on his shields.

Make sure your charge gets up before you start feeding your camels next time. Because you didn’t, we now have to delay while he eats.

The caravan master had given that reprimand to Kissain in their public speaking mode, making it clear to all the Tomlin that he considered the delay Kissain’s fault, and not Rogers. He had put enough power behind it to ensure every being there heard it.

Each Tomlin added their own disapproval.

Roger slipped past Kissain’s shields.

Under the weight of all their disapproval, the young Tomlin accepted that it was his own fault and not Rogers that they were being delayed.

I will do better, Kissain thought back at them.

Roger hurried to wolf down his porridge and put the pan away so to delay them as little as possible. He resolved to set his wards to wake him next time he slept.

He had read about how peer pressure shaped Tomlins to a far greater degree than any other. The smaller the groups the more effective it was supposed to be. But reading it and seeing it in action were entirely different things.

Kissain made some clicking sounds, and the saddled camel snorted a complaint, then knelt.

With it kneeling, Roger put his backpack on the beast, and climbed into the saddle.

Kissain clicked again. The rear of the camel came up first without the side-to-side movement it had done the last time, but it still couldn’t be called a smooth rise, and it would have dumped him if the saddle hadn’t been spelled to keep him in it.

As the group moved back on to the road, he saw a Tomlin, even younger than Kissain, began gathering up the camel dropping.

This side and the other side of the road were clean, smooth, well packed sand. How many people had camped there and how often over the past fifty thousand years? Yet it was clean with no sign of trash.

Part of that was Kara itself, and the speed that organic compounds break down here. It was bad back home with third universe law slowing it down some, but here was worse. But that was only part of it. In his home parts of Kara, garbage litter all major roadways, despite having robots and using spells to keep the areas clean. The Tomlin made sure to leave nothing behind here. Not camel dung, and not the scraps from cleaning the rabbits.

His books had said that everything was worth something to someone here, and the road cities were the closest anyone ever came to a no waste society.

Roger felt one of them pulsed a spell over the campsite and analyzed it in an instant, despite its non-human symbology, and not seeing anything like it before in his life.

He stared at the Tomlin who had cast it in shock.

That being now knew every single change that had occurred to the ground over the past ten hours, and when each happened. As far as Roger knew, there was no human spell that could do the same and he doubted it was from lack of trying. Such a spell would be of tremendous use to forensic and many other professions.

Another spell restored much of it back to the way it had been when they arrived. It wasn’t a perfect restoration, but was impressive none the less. Especially that it was done with spells instead of working with the symbology of magic.

What other magical surprises did the Tomlins have in store for him?

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