Agatha's House
Nov. 14th, 2009 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyBwoorp beep? inquired DOG as the big robot clanked along behind her.
"I'm not sure how much farther we've got to go," Ellen admitted. "We're headed in about the right direction for Megaton, but I'm not very good at estimating distances aboveground. We're making good time, though, I think."
D0G nodded, and kept going. Ellen envied him a little. The robot seemed as tireless as Deputy Weld or Wadsworth. She, on the other hand, was starting to feel the strain of wearing the power armor. Oh, it didn't weigh down on her, exactly- all its weight was distributed evenly around her- but the way the limbs moved, every stride exactly the same, every swing of the arms constrained to a certain set of tolerances... She'd never had to match something else's movement so exactly, minute after minute, without so much as a pause or an adjustment. It was starting to tell on her. If she had a little bit more of a clue which direction the three (four? Did the armor count as a fourth companion?) of them had to travel, she'd have given D0G their course heading and asked to ride for a while.
(Mr. Mills' world, and its working vehicles everywhere, suddenly sprang to memory. What she wouldn't have given for a functioning car!)
"Tell you what, guys," she said after a bit. "The sun's getting awfully high. What do you say we stop when we get to that chunk of raised road up ahead and rest until it's gone down the sky a bit?"
D0G nodded; Dogmeat whuffed tiredly. "Pansy," the armor muttered.
"Yes, well, you're outvoted," Ellen said to the suit. "Plus I outrank you."
"Yes, ma'am."
Ellen smiled and patted one of the massive shoulder-pieces. "It's all right, we-"
"TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!" the suit suddenly roared. Dogmeat was off like a shot, snarling and snapping at the distant figures; D0G thundered after him at speeds nothing that large should have been able to manage. By the time Ellen arrived on the scene, though, it was all over. Two spike-wearing raiders lay sprawled in the dust, throats and worse torn out. A third's bent, broken body draped over a jagged black stump some ways off, where the chunk of stone D0G had flung his way had deposited his corpse. And the fourth- well, the fourth Ellen only found out about because Dogmeat padded away from the corpses rather than wait for his usual praise, and sat down to stare at the ground. Or, rather, not the ground. It appeared that they'd only narrowly missed falling into a long, deep ravine, possibly a place where water pipes had run in the distant past. The fourth raider had fallen over the edge and broken her neck. Ellen bit her lip, looking down at the corpse. Then she turned to the robot. "D0G?" she said. "Can you help me lay these people straight, please?"
Mwoo? the robot inquired, canting his head to one side.
"They might've wanted to kill us, but they're still people. I have to see them on their way."
D0G didn't quite seem to understand, if his shrug was anything to go by, but he obeyed the request anyway. He even stumped off after they'd laid the three out together and came back with the broken, livid form of the fourth. "Thank you," Ellen said as he deposited the corpse nearby. "I appreciate it."
D0G, however, had more to say than that. Ellen didn't understand his string of beeps and whistles, and couldn't claim to, but his gestures seemed pretty clear: the ravine ran further along from where they were, and it went in the same direction they were heading. "Thank you for the warning, D0G," she said as she closed the last raider's eyes. "We'll be careful, I promise."
She bowed her head and murmured a quiet prayer for the raiders. Even if she couldn't really help but feel the world was probably better off without them... well, you had to do something; otherwise you were nothing but a savage. When it was done she adjusted her pack over her shoulder (she'd need new straps if she wore this armor for long) and gestured to Dogmeat and D0G to move on.
Dogmeat prowled ahead of them, trotting back and forth along the ravine edge with his muzzle low to the ground. Suddenly he barked, the sound an excited one. Without any warning at all he turned and trotted out over the-
Over the ravine, on a bridge that dipped so low into the ravine she hadn't seen it before. He ran towards the massive rock formation on the other side. No, towards the gap in the rock formation. There was something concealed in there, somehow...
"D0G? Armor? Can we follow him?"
"We can," the armor said after a moment. "Sergeant Stubby here'll snap that bridge like a bunch of dry twigs."
Ellen sighed and looked up at the robot. "I'm really sorry," she said, "but I've got to make sure Dogmeat's all right. Can you stay here? I'll be back as quickly as I can, I promise."
Bwoop bwaap, D0G reluctantly agreed.
"Thank you so much. I'll make it up to you, I promise."
The bridge was no picnic for Ellen, even without the huge 'bot behind her. It looked like it had been made from scavenged wood and cord and patched a hundred times, and it swayed every time she took a step. It held up under her weight, though, and that was the important part. She rested one hand against the rockface for a moment before following Dogmeat's trail around a curve in the rock and into a small, concealed open space. At the back of the space, a little metal shack like the houses of Megaton was built against the stone; off to one side a great slender tower of metal rose towards the sky. Ellen hadn't spotted it before, possibly because it was gappy and hollow, all girders like the open part of the Washington Monument. Rusty fencing ringed its base, and fat cables ran between it and the house. She wondered what it was, briefly, before turning to look for Dogmeat. He sat in front of the shack's door, looking very proud of himself, and barked twice.
"Dogmeat, if that's where somebody lives-"
The door opened just a crack, and a bright little eye peered out from behind it. "I must warn you, if you're not with the caravans," said an old woman's voice, "it will go very badly with you."
"Um?" Ellen blinked, and held up both hands. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to disturb you-"
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were one of those awful raiders." The eye receded, and the door opened a little farther, showing a woman easily old enough to be Ellen's grandmother. Her dress was old and made of Brahmin hide, but well cared-for. "When I heard that dog of yours-"
"He means well, ma'am. I'm sorry if he bothered you."
"Not at all," said the woman, and smiled. "Well, all right, perhaps a little. But not enough to be a real problem. My name is Agatha. Welcome to my humble little home. Would you like to sit down? You must be awfully hot out there in that armor."
Ellen glanced over her shoulder towards the path out. "Just for a bit," she decided. "I've got a robot waiting for me on the other side of your ravine."
"And we mustn't keep the robots waiting. I understand," said Agatha. "Please, do come in."
Ellen followed the old woman inside, blinking at the change in light levels. The house was a single room, with the sleeping area cordoned off by an old medical examination privacy screen. The two chairs at Agatha's small round table didn't quite look up to holding the armor's weight, but there was a stout, reinforced crate. When she pulled it up to the table and Dogmeat lay down next to her, Agatha smiled. "It's good to see you. I don't get many visitors except the caravans. Thank goodness that business in Canterbury Commons was cleared up, or they'd probably have dropped me from their routes..."
Ellen blushed a little at that. "I'm just- I was just trying to help the people there, ma'am," she said.
"Oh, that was you?" Agatha brightened. "My goodness. Yes, now that I think about it, Wolfgang did say that all the credit went to the girl from Vault 101, and a boy who was traveling with her- is he with you today?"
"Tyler? No, he's gone home," Ellen said. "He did most of the really hard work there."
"Well, in that case, give him my thanks when you see him next," Agatha said. "What brings you out this way, if you're not traveling with the traders?"
"I was looking for a Vault, actually," Ellen said. "My father's trying to find Vault 112, and I'm trying to find him. And I'd heard there was a Vault up north, so..."
"So you wound up coming this way. I see." Agatha nodded. "I wish I could help you with that, but I'm afraid I haven't the slightest clue where any of the Vaults are."
"That's all right, ma'am. I'll find it one way or another."
"That's the spirit." Agatha smiled again, but suddenly stopped; the light of an idea had come into her eye. "I wonder, though..."
"Hm?"
"Well- normally I wouldn't ask this of a stranger, but... I have a favor I'd like to ask you, if it isn't too much trouble."
Given what had happened the last few times favors and questions had come up, Ellen was a little hesitant. Nevertheless, she nodded. "Go on."
"Well, you see, I get most of my supplies and care from the caravans that stop here on their circuits," Agatha said. "I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of repayment for them, except a place to rest and some music to play for them."
Ellen glanced around the room. "I don't see a radio," she said.
"No, no, not a radio at all." Agatha chuckled. "No, I play the violin for them. Music runs in my family, so to speak- my great-grandmother, Hilda Egglebrecht, was a very prominent concert violinist in the years right before the War, and we've kept up the tradition ever since."
"Really?" said Ellen. "The only instrument I'm much good at is the harmonica. Are you still using her violin?"
"Unfortunately no." Agatha shook her head. "I only wish I were. The violin I've got is one my late husband, God rest his soul, made for me before he died. It's everything I can do to keep it in tune; homemade instruments just aren't what they used to be."
Ellen winced. "I'm sorry to hear that. So you want me to keep an eye out for a violin?"
"Well, if you're already looking for Vaults," Agatha said, "then yes. The reason I haven't got Great-Grandmama's violin is because it was such a rare instrument- a very particular violin, called the Soil Stradivarius- she took it with her into a Vault, you see. Vault-Tec was committed to preserving artistic and musical talent, so they set aside a space in Vault 92 for- oh!"
Ellen had seen where the conversation was going the instant Agatha mentioned the Vaults, and dug the case out of her pack.
"My- my goodness! How on Earth- where did you-"
"Vault 92 is several hours' walk north of here," Ellen said quietly. "I've already been there. It failed a long time ago... but this was still there."
One of Agatha's hands went to her mouth. "Oh, my," she breathed. "I don't know what to say! It's just-"
"Don't say anything," Ellen advised; she didn't want to think about what she'd seen. "Just... will you do one thing for me?" She nodded to the violin case. "Play that for me, please? I want to ... I want to hear that something good came out of that place."
"Yes. Yes, of course," Agatha said. "It would be an honor."
"I'm not sure how much farther we've got to go," Ellen admitted. "We're headed in about the right direction for Megaton, but I'm not very good at estimating distances aboveground. We're making good time, though, I think."
D0G nodded, and kept going. Ellen envied him a little. The robot seemed as tireless as Deputy Weld or Wadsworth. She, on the other hand, was starting to feel the strain of wearing the power armor. Oh, it didn't weigh down on her, exactly- all its weight was distributed evenly around her- but the way the limbs moved, every stride exactly the same, every swing of the arms constrained to a certain set of tolerances... She'd never had to match something else's movement so exactly, minute after minute, without so much as a pause or an adjustment. It was starting to tell on her. If she had a little bit more of a clue which direction the three (four? Did the armor count as a fourth companion?) of them had to travel, she'd have given D0G their course heading and asked to ride for a while.
(Mr. Mills' world, and its working vehicles everywhere, suddenly sprang to memory. What she wouldn't have given for a functioning car!)
"Tell you what, guys," she said after a bit. "The sun's getting awfully high. What do you say we stop when we get to that chunk of raised road up ahead and rest until it's gone down the sky a bit?"
D0G nodded; Dogmeat whuffed tiredly. "Pansy," the armor muttered.
"Yes, well, you're outvoted," Ellen said to the suit. "Plus I outrank you."
"Yes, ma'am."
Ellen smiled and patted one of the massive shoulder-pieces. "It's all right, we-"
"TIME TO KICK SOME ASS!" the suit suddenly roared. Dogmeat was off like a shot, snarling and snapping at the distant figures; D0G thundered after him at speeds nothing that large should have been able to manage. By the time Ellen arrived on the scene, though, it was all over. Two spike-wearing raiders lay sprawled in the dust, throats and worse torn out. A third's bent, broken body draped over a jagged black stump some ways off, where the chunk of stone D0G had flung his way had deposited his corpse. And the fourth- well, the fourth Ellen only found out about because Dogmeat padded away from the corpses rather than wait for his usual praise, and sat down to stare at the ground. Or, rather, not the ground. It appeared that they'd only narrowly missed falling into a long, deep ravine, possibly a place where water pipes had run in the distant past. The fourth raider had fallen over the edge and broken her neck. Ellen bit her lip, looking down at the corpse. Then she turned to the robot. "D0G?" she said. "Can you help me lay these people straight, please?"
Mwoo? the robot inquired, canting his head to one side.
"They might've wanted to kill us, but they're still people. I have to see them on their way."
D0G didn't quite seem to understand, if his shrug was anything to go by, but he obeyed the request anyway. He even stumped off after they'd laid the three out together and came back with the broken, livid form of the fourth. "Thank you," Ellen said as he deposited the corpse nearby. "I appreciate it."
D0G, however, had more to say than that. Ellen didn't understand his string of beeps and whistles, and couldn't claim to, but his gestures seemed pretty clear: the ravine ran further along from where they were, and it went in the same direction they were heading. "Thank you for the warning, D0G," she said as she closed the last raider's eyes. "We'll be careful, I promise."
She bowed her head and murmured a quiet prayer for the raiders. Even if she couldn't really help but feel the world was probably better off without them... well, you had to do something; otherwise you were nothing but a savage. When it was done she adjusted her pack over her shoulder (she'd need new straps if she wore this armor for long) and gestured to Dogmeat and D0G to move on.
Dogmeat prowled ahead of them, trotting back and forth along the ravine edge with his muzzle low to the ground. Suddenly he barked, the sound an excited one. Without any warning at all he turned and trotted out over the-
Over the ravine, on a bridge that dipped so low into the ravine she hadn't seen it before. He ran towards the massive rock formation on the other side. No, towards the gap in the rock formation. There was something concealed in there, somehow...
"D0G? Armor? Can we follow him?"
"We can," the armor said after a moment. "Sergeant Stubby here'll snap that bridge like a bunch of dry twigs."
Ellen sighed and looked up at the robot. "I'm really sorry," she said, "but I've got to make sure Dogmeat's all right. Can you stay here? I'll be back as quickly as I can, I promise."
Bwoop bwaap, D0G reluctantly agreed.
"Thank you so much. I'll make it up to you, I promise."
The bridge was no picnic for Ellen, even without the huge 'bot behind her. It looked like it had been made from scavenged wood and cord and patched a hundred times, and it swayed every time she took a step. It held up under her weight, though, and that was the important part. She rested one hand against the rockface for a moment before following Dogmeat's trail around a curve in the rock and into a small, concealed open space. At the back of the space, a little metal shack like the houses of Megaton was built against the stone; off to one side a great slender tower of metal rose towards the sky. Ellen hadn't spotted it before, possibly because it was gappy and hollow, all girders like the open part of the Washington Monument. Rusty fencing ringed its base, and fat cables ran between it and the house. She wondered what it was, briefly, before turning to look for Dogmeat. He sat in front of the shack's door, looking very proud of himself, and barked twice.
"Dogmeat, if that's where somebody lives-"
The door opened just a crack, and a bright little eye peered out from behind it. "I must warn you, if you're not with the caravans," said an old woman's voice, "it will go very badly with you."
"Um?" Ellen blinked, and held up both hands. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to disturb you-"
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were one of those awful raiders." The eye receded, and the door opened a little farther, showing a woman easily old enough to be Ellen's grandmother. Her dress was old and made of Brahmin hide, but well cared-for. "When I heard that dog of yours-"
"He means well, ma'am. I'm sorry if he bothered you."
"Not at all," said the woman, and smiled. "Well, all right, perhaps a little. But not enough to be a real problem. My name is Agatha. Welcome to my humble little home. Would you like to sit down? You must be awfully hot out there in that armor."
Ellen glanced over her shoulder towards the path out. "Just for a bit," she decided. "I've got a robot waiting for me on the other side of your ravine."
"And we mustn't keep the robots waiting. I understand," said Agatha. "Please, do come in."
Ellen followed the old woman inside, blinking at the change in light levels. The house was a single room, with the sleeping area cordoned off by an old medical examination privacy screen. The two chairs at Agatha's small round table didn't quite look up to holding the armor's weight, but there was a stout, reinforced crate. When she pulled it up to the table and Dogmeat lay down next to her, Agatha smiled. "It's good to see you. I don't get many visitors except the caravans. Thank goodness that business in Canterbury Commons was cleared up, or they'd probably have dropped me from their routes..."
Ellen blushed a little at that. "I'm just- I was just trying to help the people there, ma'am," she said.
"Oh, that was you?" Agatha brightened. "My goodness. Yes, now that I think about it, Wolfgang did say that all the credit went to the girl from Vault 101, and a boy who was traveling with her- is he with you today?"
"Tyler? No, he's gone home," Ellen said. "He did most of the really hard work there."
"Well, in that case, give him my thanks when you see him next," Agatha said. "What brings you out this way, if you're not traveling with the traders?"
"I was looking for a Vault, actually," Ellen said. "My father's trying to find Vault 112, and I'm trying to find him. And I'd heard there was a Vault up north, so..."
"So you wound up coming this way. I see." Agatha nodded. "I wish I could help you with that, but I'm afraid I haven't the slightest clue where any of the Vaults are."
"That's all right, ma'am. I'll find it one way or another."
"That's the spirit." Agatha smiled again, but suddenly stopped; the light of an idea had come into her eye. "I wonder, though..."
"Hm?"
"Well- normally I wouldn't ask this of a stranger, but... I have a favor I'd like to ask you, if it isn't too much trouble."
Given what had happened the last few times favors and questions had come up, Ellen was a little hesitant. Nevertheless, she nodded. "Go on."
"Well, you see, I get most of my supplies and care from the caravans that stop here on their circuits," Agatha said. "I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of repayment for them, except a place to rest and some music to play for them."
Ellen glanced around the room. "I don't see a radio," she said.
"No, no, not a radio at all." Agatha chuckled. "No, I play the violin for them. Music runs in my family, so to speak- my great-grandmother, Hilda Egglebrecht, was a very prominent concert violinist in the years right before the War, and we've kept up the tradition ever since."
"Really?" said Ellen. "The only instrument I'm much good at is the harmonica. Are you still using her violin?"
"Unfortunately no." Agatha shook her head. "I only wish I were. The violin I've got is one my late husband, God rest his soul, made for me before he died. It's everything I can do to keep it in tune; homemade instruments just aren't what they used to be."
Ellen winced. "I'm sorry to hear that. So you want me to keep an eye out for a violin?"
"Well, if you're already looking for Vaults," Agatha said, "then yes. The reason I haven't got Great-Grandmama's violin is because it was such a rare instrument- a very particular violin, called the Soil Stradivarius- she took it with her into a Vault, you see. Vault-Tec was committed to preserving artistic and musical talent, so they set aside a space in Vault 92 for- oh!"
Ellen had seen where the conversation was going the instant Agatha mentioned the Vaults, and dug the case out of her pack.
"My- my goodness! How on Earth- where did you-"
"Vault 92 is several hours' walk north of here," Ellen said quietly. "I've already been there. It failed a long time ago... but this was still there."
One of Agatha's hands went to her mouth. "Oh, my," she breathed. "I don't know what to say! It's just-"
"Don't say anything," Ellen advised; she didn't want to think about what she'd seen. "Just... will you do one thing for me?" She nodded to the violin case. "Play that for me, please? I want to ... I want to hear that something good came out of that place."
"Yes. Yes, of course," Agatha said. "It would be an honor."