Wasteland of flint ittotss-1

by Thomas Harlan

  "The shape on the floor," he said at last, in a very careful tone. "Does not feel out of place."

  "Oh." Gretchen licked her lips. "I see. But it should — if a human being were lying there, surrounded by human-made equipment — then you could tell there was a…dissonance…between the stone and dust and moss and Russovsky." She paused, a glimmer of thought brightening into realization. "This is one of your tlamatinime skills, isn't it? To tell when something fits properly or not? Like the debris from the shuttle — you moved those pieces of ceramic and hexsteel until they were properly aligned with the world around them — so they fit properly. And when they did — it's like they had been there forever — or at least, if they didn't fit right, you placed them on the ground as if a Mokuil had set them there."

  Hummingbird shrugged. "Perhaps."

  "Oh, Lamb of God bless and protect us!" Gretchen felt her temper fray. The man was obviously on edge, worried, even a little frightened. But could he admit such a thing? No. "Do you understand I don't care if you have some peculiar skill or hermetic training or secret universal decoder ring? I care about getting us both home, alive."

  The nauallis pushed away from the wall and peered out at the Midge s and the jagged peaks. The light in the sky was changing and there was an indefinable sense of gathering darkness.

  "Well? Give over!" Gretchen didn't bother to disguise her irritation. "Just shoot me with your little gun later, if I threaten the Empire with such precious knowledge as you might dispense!"

  Hummingbird turned slightly, face in shadow, backlit by the brilliant sky. "I would."

  "I don't think so," Anderssen said in a tart voice, her nose wrinkling up. "You'd bluster and be all mysterious and withholding and I'd break your bald head open with a wrench before you bothered to put a hole in me."

  "Hah!" Hummingbird laughed aloud, a breathy, thin sound. "You would try, too."

  He shook his head, but the line of his shoulders had already relaxed. "Though everything seems to be in order, I am uneasy. We need to destroy the antenna and this afterimage of Russovsky. The 'ghost' first, I think."

  "Do you know how?"

  The nauallis shook his head. "You've already touched upon the problem. This apparition isn't out of place — most ciuateteo are disturbances of the natural order and their nature is to disperse once matters are set in their proper balance — but this one is already at rest."

  "Hmm. I don't suppose we can leave it be? No? I thought not. Do you have any sense of what this ghost is made of? Is it dust, like the Russovsky on the ship?"

  "No. The dead-seeming crystal fronds on the roof are a likely culprit, though."

  Gretchen wrinkled her nose again. "So helpful. We need to experiment then."

  The nauallis replied with a skeptical grunt. "With what?"

  "With you, for a start." Gretchen tilted her head toward the hidden chamber. "You can tell the apparition is at rest and 'in order', right? Well, go see if you can divine anything more. I'm going to examine the radio antenna before the light fails completely."

  Without waiting for a response — and heartily glad to be out of the cave — Gretchen squeezed out the narrow entrance and set off for the relay. She heard a momentary hiss-hiss on the comm circuit and then nothing. Smiling slightly to herself and feeling entirely pleased to have bossed the nauallis around, Anderssen raised her head and began searching for the base of the antenna.

  The bulk of the mountain had already cast the ledge into steadily-deepening shadow, so the onset of full dark caught Gretchen by surprise. The relay tower had been wedged into a flutelike wind-carved channel. Expansion bolts were driven into the rock on either side to pin the antenna in place. With some tricky climbing — more difficult for the heavy tools and gear slung on her harness — Gretchen had managed to get halfway up the relay. Now, with one boot braced against a lower bolt and a lightwand tight between her teeth, Gretchen was picking away at a thick cementlike layer coating the bottom half of the antenna.

  "How did this get here?" Anderssen was puzzled by the encrustation covering the lower section of the relay. The material was suspiciously even in coverage and included both bolts and the pole. A hand tool splintered the surface, revealing shell-like layers. "This looks like lime concrete slurry."

  Gretchen stopped and tucked the pick away. Wedging her shoulder into the space between the antenna and the rock, she wiggled a materials analysis pack out of her belt and — holding the cup in one hand — picked broken bits of cement from the antenna with the other. The stinging wind was beginning to die down but the relay was particularly exposed on the cliff, so Gretchen pressed herself into the rock and shivered while the cup woke up, detected a sample to compare against an internal database and went to work.

  An hour later, Anderssen was sitting just inside the cave mouth, a comp on her knees and both feet centimeters from a circular heating element. The wind outside had died down to intermittent gusts, which rattled against a filament screen she'd tacked over the entrance. A second screen closed off the inner cave, leaving a five meter–long space where she'd stacked the camping gear. Among the things she'd dragged out of the Gagarin was a battered steel bucket filled with a cementlike crust. A brush was stuck in the long-solidified mire.

  A noise drew her attention and Gretchen looked up in time to see the Nбhuatl unseal the edge of the inner screen. His cloak and legs were streaked with pale white dust.

  "There's food — " she started to say.

  "What are you doing?" Hummingbird came over to her, face tense beneath his breather. "Put that away."

  Gretchen frowned at him, still holding the comp in her hand. It was difficult to use in the thin pressurized gloves. On the surface of the pad, behind a protective covering, indicators were glowing softly as the machine talked to itself. "I'm checking to see if there's a gravity spike here or a strange field reading. Something to…hey!"

  Hummingbird closed his hand over the device, shutting it off. Gretchen realized the nauallis was furious, his dark green eyes turned to smoke. "You rely too much on your cursed tools. Look around you, let yourself become quiet. This is a very dangerous place. I told you before, we must walk quietly here. Your sensor is noisy, it makes a racket like civets in a trash can! I could feel it down in the cave. They could feel it too."

  Gretchen drew back, her throat tightening. She was tired, sore, and very close to complete exhaustion. His anger was a physical blow, making her start to shake. Oxygen hissed against her cheek as the suit reacted to her rising heartbeat. Grimly, she choked down a bleat of fear. "Step away, crow. We need our machines to survive down here. What happened in the cave?"

  For a moment his gaze locked with hers and Gretchen could sense — dimly — the man's own weary exhaustion. She refused to blink and after a seemingly interminable period, he looked away. Score one for the hard-eyed Swede, Gretchen thought, though she remained impassive.

  "You need to sit down and eat," she said, setting the now-quiet pad aside. Gretchen rose and pushed Hummingbird gently toward the opposite side of the heating element. His bags were already stacked there. "Just sit and be still — you're good at that, right?"

  Anderssen was mildly surprised when the nauallis did as she said. She puttered about for a moment, then handed him a container of heated tea and a squeeze-tube filled with two kinds of threesquares mixed together. Hummingbird's eyebrows rose in surprise when he tasted the evil-looking brownish gel. "It's hot," he said around a mouthful of food.

  Gretchen smiled and showed him a storage bottle with the word "tabasco" hand-written on the side with a black pen. "Very hot," she said, "from Chipotle district on Anбhuac. Smoked and dried, then rendered into liquid fire. Just like home cooking, huh?"

  The Nбhuatl nodded in appreciation and ate the entire rest of the tube. Then he closed his eyes and slumped back against the wall of the cave, the djellaba hanging loose around his shoulders. Gretchen sat back down herself, drinking slowly from her own tea. After a bit, the nauallis started to snore and
she shook her head in amazement.

  Well, she thought, putting the sensor-pad away. I guess he thinks we're safe here. Or I'm supposed to stay up and watch all night. First I'm a porter, then I make him my special chile dinner and now I get to stand guard. Huh!

  Getting up again was painful — even with the medband's help, she was going to have serious bruises from the day's excitement — but Gretchen was very careful to take a worklight and sweep the entire camping space with high UV before settling down to sleep herself. Tomorrow, if we're still here, I'll haul in all those damned tiles.…

  Gretchen opened one eye, saw the wall opposite her was lit by a pearlescent gray light, checked her chrono and closed her eyes again. Too early, she groaned, feeling like her brain had been ground fine and scattered in a toad circle for the gaunts to dance upon. The sun should not be allowed to rise at this hour. Not at four in the morning!

  A particular sensation of grainy ash covering her skin made Anderssen twitch and shake her shoulders. Her fingertips found the medband, but stopped short of summoning up a wakeme injection. Grimacing, she opened her eyes to bare slits and then groaned aloud. Hummingbird was gone, his things neatly stacked, djellaba folded and laid atop a tool bag. She rolled up, rubbing grit from the corners of her eyes. "No showers. What an idiot I am…nearest shower is in orbit. Or at the base camp, if the water's still good."

  Anderssen considered using water from the recycler reservoir to wash her face, but the thought of so many more days in this desolation weighed against such extravagance. Sipping from her mask tube, she ate another threesquare liberally mixed with hot sauce. The grainy, over-tired feeling persisted, hanging around like an unwanted morning-after bedtoy.

  The nauallis returned while Gretchen was packing her things away, ducking in through the outer filament screen.

  "Morning," Anderssen grunted at him, but did not look up.

  "Something is attacking the relay antenna," Hummingbird said. He sounded almost as tired as Gretchen felt. "There's this crust all over the lower — "

  Anderssen held up a sample cup with flakes of gray eggshell-like material. "Like this? I took some samples yesterday. My comp was analyzing them when you busted in last night and spoiled the party. It's not something attacking the pole, though." She hooked the battered old steel bucket over with the toe of her boot and upended the cup. The flakes matched the color of the dried goop in the bottom.

  "This," Gretchen said, tilting the bucket toward the nauallis, "is more of Russovsky's work. Local dust mixed with water to make cheap, inert cement. She painted it all over the lower reaches of the relay, making a barrier against the microfauna."

  "Oh." Hummingbird squatted beside his gear. "So there's nothing for them to eat."

  "Exactly. In fact, I think most of this gray dust is waste exudate from the different kinds of microfauna." She grinned at the old man. "There is a lot of it around, isn't there?"

  Hummingbird stared at her, impassive for a moment, then his lips twitched and a gleam shone in his eyes. Gretchen took this to be very close to hysterical laughter. The nauallis's usually grim, composed demeanor returned within a heartbeat.

  "Did you find anything in the cave last night?" Gretchen turned the bucket over and sat down. "Anything new about this copy of Russovsky?"

  "Something." Hummingbird did not look particularly pleased. "I thought the shape moved a little bit, from time to time. In fact, I checked this morning to see if anything happened at dawn." He paused, scratching at a badly fitting edge of his mask. "She woke up."

  Gretchen raised an eyebrow, but managed to keep from making a fool of herself by gaping.

  "Or I should say, the shape woke up, threw back the blanket, checked its chrono…"

  "And then?" Anderssen looked reflexively down the tunnel, as if Russovsky would appear momentarily and want breakfast.

  "Then," Hummingbird's voice assumed a familiar toneless quality. "The shape folded up the blanket, gathered its equipment and walked out of the circle. Then…then it disappeared. Well, almost."

  "How…almost?" Gretchen was trying to divide her attention between the nauallis and the recesses of the cave. The back of her neck was prickling in a very uneasy way.

  "I saw something like a mist, or falling dust, as the shape left the chamber. I was in the tunnel, of course, and the 'disappearance' occurred only about a meter in front of me."

  "And there's nothing there now? Just an empty cave?"

  Hummingbird nodded. "Dust, stone and hanging crystal."

  "Did you feel anything? See anything?"

  Another grimace. "No. All is as it should be. Nothing out of place."

  "So — what now?"

  "We wait for night to fall," the nauallis said. "And see if the shape comes back. I distrust luck, but more observation may reveal something."

  "I see." Gretchen started to sort through her tools. "How tired are you?"

  Hummingbird blinked. "Why?"

  "We still have a relay antenna to dispose of." She passed a wrench and a length of pipe across to him. For herself she hefted a multitool with a cutting attachment. "I'll climb up and cut it down in sections and then you can dispose of them in a suitable manner."

  The sun was almost exactly at meridian when Hummingbird threw the last of the bolts over the edge of the cliff. Calcite-crusted metal spun in the air, then vanished into an abyss tenanted by shrieking winds. Presumably the bolt would make a ringing sound when it struck the ground, but Gretchen didn't think they would hear anything at all.

  "You're sure this will get rid of them properly?" She asked in a sly tone, peering over the edge of the outcropping. "They won't leave traces behind?"

  The sally gained her not so much as a grunt. Hummingbird climbed back toward the cave. Gretchen stared after him for a moment before shrugging and picking up the tools scattered at the foot of the crevice where the relay had been. As she did so, Anderssen made sure to tuck the comm core of the relay into a pocket of her harness. What is an antenna, she mused, stowing the wrenches and cutting blades, but a long bight of metal? You can find one of those anywhere these days.

  Hands on her hips, Gretchen found her best glower rendered ineffective by the goggles, mask and rebreather hiding her face. "Two sets of eyes are better than one, crow. I am trained to observe, to find the hidden and sift patterns from chaos. Both of us can watch from the tunnel mouth."

  "No." Hummingbird had removed his djellaba and kaffiyeh — they were of little use inside the cave — leaving him a short, stocky, thick-bodied tree stump of a man clad in scuffed black and gray. "You do not know how to be quiet and there is a presence — a hostile presence — in the cave which was only peripherally aware of me. We might as well throw a grenade in, as put you on watch."

  He tried to step past into the tunnel, but Gretchen moved to block the opening. "I can be as quiet and as patient as you, master crow. Try me and see."

  "Sitting quietly is not enough," he replied. "You were quick to see how I placed the debris from the crash — but can you do the same with yourself? Such things take training and time!"

  Gretchen did not move and her mouth tightened fractionally. Hummingbird watched her with his flat green eyes, much as a snake might watch a plump bird.

  "Show me," she retorted. "I learn quickly. Think of what a boon I'd prove, if I could keep my own presence from being felt on this world — then you wouldn't have to clean up after me."

  His head jerked sharply and Hummingbird turned away from the filament screen. "Prove you can listen without interruption," he said, stepping into the outer doorway. The screen behind him glowed hot with the afternoon sun. "Stand there, in the middle of this space. Let yourself become at ease. Be silent. Put all noise and clamor from your mind."

  Though taken aback by his changing mood, Gretchen did as he said. She stood silently, trying to dispel the tension in her back, shoulders and legs by will alone. After a hundred beats of her heart, she started to breathe heavily and her legs felt like iron bars, tight and unyi
elding. A tiny hiss of anger escaped her lips and she grimaced, fighting to relax. Her mind was astir with wild phantasms and urgent thoughts. Be silent! Berating herself did no good.

  Hummingbird stepped away from the opening, brow furrowed. Without speaking, he moved to her side. Thick fingers touched the base of her spine, her elbow, the left knee. Grudgingly, she followed his lead and shifted her feet, settling her back, changing the line of her arm. The difference in her body was shockingly immediate. Exhaustion fell away and she coughed, feeling tension ebb from her chest. The tightness in her legs faded, leaving her with only a memory of soreness. Gretchen started to exclaim, but Hummingbird's fingertips were on her lips. The nauallis shook his head and she remained quiet.

  "Now," he said softly, "you can feel the difference. This is a more natural stance for you, one in line with your body, with your mind. Now — for a moment — just be. If you cannot empty your mind — another skill to learn, as a child learns to walk — then begin to count in a simple mathematical sequence."

  One, Gretchen thought to herself. Two. Three. Four…

  "Now sit," Hummingbird's voice was very faint, almost indistinct from her own thoughts. "Squat, let your body feel the pressure of gravity, let it fall, your feet will keep you up. Keep counting. Keep counting."

  Slumped, breast pressed against her knees, Gretchen began to feel very tired. Her head wanted to drag to the floor, but somehow the interplay of muscles and bone kept her upright. Three or four hundred count passed and she shifted to one side. Despite the solidity of the posture, there was an itching sensation, a discomfort. Hummingbird stepped away, his boots whisper-quiet on the rocky, uneven floor.

  "Good. Now move slowly until you feel at ease again. Bit by bit. Keep counting."

  A full hour must have passed by the time Gretchen felt truly comfortable, her arms and legs limp but not heavy, her body curled into a ball, one shoulder against the same slab of stone she'd slept beside the night before.