Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  Eventually, the pilot had given up trying to make the Javan and Swedish equipment play nicely and had settled for a visual inspection. A multispectrum lamp was clipped to the lip of the intake.

  "What?" Delores, surly again for some reason—though she'd greeted both Parker and Isoroku with a big smile this morning when she came swinging out of the accessway—climbed up on the rack and worked her head and shoulders inside.

  "Switch to UV-band on your lenses," Parker said, gently, placing his fingertip on a curving section of the intake wall. The highly polished ceramic alloy gleamed like a mirror, reflecting his face as an enormous, distorted monster. "And hi-mag, about six hundred."

  "Now I can't see anything but the surface of the composite." Delores didn't bother to keep mounting irritation out of her voice.

  "Follow my arm, then just ahead of my finger."

  Delores grunted, making a face. "You need to take a bath sometime. Your nails ..." Then she whistled softly in alarm. "By the Sister—what is that?"

  "Something alive," Parker said, watching a faint discoloration shimmer like a rainbow in the hi-mag view of his work lenses. He could see regular, symmetric structures in the discoloration—not the stolid honeycomb of the ceramic, but something delicate and far, far more complicated. "Something eating the hi-temp ceramic lining and making more ... more metallic lichen."

  "Oh, Sister!" Delores scrambled backward out of the intake. "It's the eaters!"

  "No," Parker said, watching the tiny gleaming lights with a bemused expression on his narrow face.. "No, it's not them ... we'd be dissolved or turned inside out. This is different—this must have come from the planet. Is there any life down there?"

  "No," Delores called from across the engineering bay. "Just rocks, sand and barren mountains. Nothing green, no trees, no water. Nothing."

  The pilot wanted to scratch his nose, but couldn't, not in the close confines of the intake. On a hunch, he breathed on the discoloration, trying to focus the flow of moist gas with his lips. In the restricted universe of hi-mag, he saw the delicate tendrils wave in the wind, and the textures and colors brightened. He blinked, then squinted in disbelief. "I think they got bigger," he called excitedly to Delores.

  The crewwoman was still on the other side of the bay. She had found a welding torch and was hefting the slender wand like a bat. "Well, don't do that again, whatever it was! Come on, let's tell the engineer or Anderssen-tzin about this."

  "Hmmm ... ok." Parker backed out of the intake and swung the UV lamp to mark the discoloration. Even from the vast remove of a meter, he could no longer make out the lichen. Sitting on the steps of a work ladder, he tapped open a channel.

  "Doctor Anderssen? Parker. Can you join me and Delores down in Engineering bay four? Bring your hi-mag lenses, if you've got 'em handy."

  Squeezed into the intake, with Parker, Delores, Isoroku and the ever-present Fitzsimmons crowding around outside, Gretchen stared dully at the glassy, curving surface. Now she felt too hot—the heaters were working in Engineering for some reason—and there were too many people around. "All right Parker, what am I looking at?"

  "Right where I've got the UV spot shining," the pilot said, trying to wedge in beside her. "You can't miss them, not in hi-mag."

  "I don't see anything," Gretchen said after a moment, "except some discoloration, like some kind of acid spilled on the ceramic." She turned her head, then made a face. The inside of Parker's nose was not the place to be looking with work lenses dialed high. Flipping up the goggles, she looked at him inquiringly.

  "What?" Parker swung down his own lenses and hunched over the section of metal. Almost immediately he started cursing. "This is... they're all gone! There's nothing but some kind of mottled smear left." He sat up, cracked his head against the roof of the intake, then wormed his way back out with a snarl. "I saw them," Parker declared, stripping off his lenses. "They were there, all glowy and fanlike and... they were alive! Delores saw them too!"

  Gretchen looked at the crewwoman and she nodded her head in agreement. "He's not crazy. Well, ok, he saw what he said he saw."

  "Fine." Gretchen looked at Isoroku. "Then what happened to them? Vanishing in thirty minutes is too great a rate of change for me. Did they cause the engines to overheat?"

  "Maybe," Parker mumbled, scrunching up the side of his mouth. He took a tabac out of his pocket, shucked the wrapper and lit the stick on his belt. Gretchen stepped back, out of a rising gray whorl. In low-grav the tobacco smoke made corkscrew . patterns in the air. "They grew—I saw them grow—with more moisture, more air, more oxygen. No, more carbon dioxide. Maybe they eat C02, like a plant at home?"

  "Would that cause an overheat?" Gretchen spread her hands questioningly.

  "No ..." Parker squinted into the intake, then at the fleet engineer. "But if they got inside, into the rest of the engine, they would make turbulence—the airflow surfaces wouldn't be smooth anymore—and they do seem to be eating away at the composite."

  "Even in a Javan machine," the engineer rumbled, his Norman tinged with a thick accent, "there are close tolerances. We will have to examine the entire engine for contamination."

  "Do it." Gretchen started to turn away, but then a thought struck her. "Wait—find another patch, if there is one. Record the ... um ... the infestation or planting or whatever. Then shine Parker's lamp on it for a half hour."

  "Good idea." Isoroku's eyes glinted. 'The simplest explanation."

  "I killed them with the multispec?" Parker seemed incredulous. "But if they came from the planet... the atmosphere's thin—everything's bathed in UV! Why should it kill them?"

  'Try it anyway," Gretchen replied, swinging up onto the ladder leading into the main accessway. "And let me know what happens." She disappeared up the shaft, followed moments later by Fitzsimmons.

  Parker shared a glance with Delores, who shrugged and looked at him expectantly, and the Nisei, who had no discernible expression at all. The pilot hunched his shoulders and shuffled back to the engine, glaring at the machinery. "And I thought you were pretty," he grumbled as he flipped down his work lenses. "Shows what I know."

  Gretchen woke from a dream of endlessly mutating gray-green ideograms to an irritating beeping sound. Groaning—the sound was her comm paging—she unzipped her sleepbag and peered out into darkness. The lights in the crew quarters were on some day-night cycle which eluded her—they certainly didn't match the schedule on the Cornuelle—and her mouth tasted bad, her eyes were grainy and the persistent throb of a headache flared as consciousness returned.

  "Oh Sister, mother of God, bearer of the Holy Savior..." Gretchen fumbled for her medband and pressed the cool metal against the side of her neck. A sensor flickered, there was a warning beep, and a cool, delicious sensation flooded into her bloodstream. With sanity restored, she picked up the comm and saw the pilot's face—even rougher-looking than she imagined her own appeared—staring back. "Good morning, Mister Parker."

  "Its afternoon," he replied in a dead-sounding, slurred voice. "Planetside, anyway. I'm finished with your shuttle engine."

  "Good," Gretchen said, clipping the comm to her duffle. She eeled out of the sleepbag and braced herself against the floor. A netted sack held her clothes, and she began dragging out an undershirt, pants, her skinsuit. "What did you find?"

  "This engine is completely infested with these ... these chapoltin ... these locusts! Well, they're not insects, but plants, I guess. Ones that like to eat hexacarbon and ceramic composite and drink C02 and produce 02 and C and some more O and lots of little crystalline frond-thingies." He rubbed his face, leaving a long smear of oil across his forehead. "We're sack-bound, but the number two shuttle engine is cleaned up, disinfected with your friendly multispec lamp set on hi-UV and then..." Parker groaned. "We resurfaced everything back to tolerance, or replaced the sections eaten clean through. So—maybe tomorrow—we can fly shuttle one back to groundside base and put this engine back in the grounded shuttle."

  The pilot glared owlishly
at Gretchen, who was worming herself into a skintight shipsuit. When she was done, he continued. "Before you ask: Yes, we checked the other engine. It was infested too, but not so badly. Anyway, Isoroku cleaned up number one. So both will fly, eventually."

  "What happens when we go groundside?" Gretchen asked, straightening her hair and pulling the heavy blond mane back into a ponytail. "They'll get infected again, right?"

  Parker nodded, listlessly pushing another tabac into the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, and we'll clean up again, I guess."

  "Okay," Gretchen said, her attention already turning to the puzzle of the cylinder. "One trip, then, to repair the other shuttle and load everyone up. Then it's back upstairs for the entire team. If we need to make an excursion groundside, we'll use the shuttles in rotation and not leave them on the planet for more than a day."

  "Sure." Parker took a long drag on his tabac, then tapped off.

  Gretchen stared at the comm, then shook her head. Should I call Maggie about her status? No, later. I'll just take a look at the latest translation runs before breakfast.

  Feeling much better, she banged the door open, then kicked off in a long arcing jump toward the main accessway. Behind her, a minute telltale flashed on her doorway, and not so far away, a chime went off in a cabin occupied by the two Marines.

  A black sleepbag stirred in the dimly lit room, then an arm reached out from the cocoon and thumped the other sleeping soldier.

  "Fitz, your girlfriend's up." Deckard closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

  Fitzsimmons crawled out of his own sleepbag, rubbed a chin covered with fine black stubble and started getting dressed. I hope she gets breakfast first, he thought forlornly, so I can at least get some coffee. Even the bad coffee on this barge—or the reprocessed, recycled "black crude" from the navy three-squares—was better than nothing. He hooked one foot in a hanging strap, then slung on his combat vest and gun-rig before picking up a jacket to hide the weapons. "Huh," he laughed softly. "I've been with the navy too long—like anyone aboard would worry if I was carrying."

  His combat bar strapped to the side of one boot, a heavy utility knife to the other. The waist rig held eight flechette-wire clips, and a holster with the pistol-styled shipgun. The rest of the chest rig held various tools, lamps and spyeyes. His hand hovered over the squat, short-barreled shape of his heavy ship-gun, then he plucked it away from the wall and slung the automatic rifle behind his back. Nervous fingers—this whole situation made him nervous—checked the loads in the pistol and the rifle. Both weapons were topped, lit green and ready to cook.

  Pretty useless, he thought, mouth tasting oily, but what else do I have? Nothing to stop a nanomech cloud, or a pocket-sized shipkiller, or a virus or a biological. Not much at all but spit and my knife.

  "Thank you, Sho-sa." Hummingbird tapped his comm closed and took a deep breath. Lieutenant Isoroku's respectfully polite call reported the Palenque main environmentals restored to operation, the last of the air filters cleaned out and power working on most decks. Almost time to go across and see these things for myself.

  The tlamatinime turned to his surveillance display and panned through the feeds. After a moment, he switched back to the video from outside the number three airlock on the Palenque. The portable work panel Anderssen had been using for her translations and analysis sat idle, the area lights dimmed low.

  "Not there?" Hummingbird made an amused clicking sound with his teeth. "But not sleeping, or eating." He flicked through the feeds from the Company ship and his brow furrowed. The archaeologist was nowhere to be seen. A stab of intense irritation twisted his lip, but then he calmed himself. Large sections of the Palenque were still without power, and many video feeds were dead or offline. She could be anywhere, doing anything, and be out of his sight. He glanced around the cabin, reminding himself of the many luxuries afforded by the navy ship.

  "Everything works here," he said aloud, "on a well-maintained Imperial vessel. There? On a private ship which has only known the attentions of the pious and dutiful Isoroku for a few days? Scattered feathers, filth, fallen shells."

  Hummingbird switched the view back to the number three airlock, where the cylinder still rested quietly in its steel cradle. He bent close, though a fingertip's motion on the panel would zoom the image to almost any level of detail he desired Red sandstone and milky white streaks of sediment filled the view. "But how could she leave your mystery, even for a moment?"

  Anderssen had been spending every waking moment with the artifact for the past two days. The still-idle exploration ship's main comp was almost entirely tasked to her translation jobs, much to the annoyance of everyone else working aboard. Hummingbird suddenly closed the feed, feeling his own curiosity stir.

  "A cunning lure," he muttered, then turned away from the panel and knelt before a small shrine set into the wall of the cabin. Nothing so fancy as the main chapel down in the heart of the ship, but this was a space reserved for him and him alone. The Blessed Virgin stared down, jade eyes looking upon him with radiant compassion. Hummingbird made the sign of the cross, bowed to the Lady of Tepeyac, she surrounded by so many shining rays, she of the dark cloak strewn with stars, with a mantle of flowers and shining feathers, possessor of the beneficence of man. On a narrow ledge before the icon sat a cup filled with milky liquid and a scattering of dried, perfectly preserved rose petals.

  Hummingbird began to sing, his hoarse voice rising in the cabin.

  So it has been said by the Lord of the World,

  So it has been said by the Queen of Heaven:

  It is not true, it is not true

  We come to this earth to live.

  We come only to sleep, only to dream.

  Our body is a flower.

  As grass becomes green in the springtime,

  So our hearts will open, and give forth buds,

  And then they wither. So did our Lady of Flowers say.

  The sound echoed and died, and he felt a great comfort from the long-familiar ritual. Hummingbird bowed again, before the image of the merciful one, then raised the cup of octli to his lips. The smell of bitter alcohol stung his nose and he took the sacred liquid into his mouth, let the fermented sap of the god's fruit wash over his tongue, then passed the fluid, again, into the cup.

  "So does temptation wash over me, held at bay by your grace, Queen of Heaven, lady whose belt is a serpent, whose faith lifts the heavens and presses the earth." He made the sign of the cross once more, and pressed his forehead to the floor before the Sister. "So it is above, so it is below."

  He stood, his heart easy once more, and passed his hand across the display set into the wall. The comm woke to life, and a blinking glyph—a youth bearing two rabbits by the ears—winked azure. Hummingbird grunted, feeling the moment of isolation and serenity pass.

  "Yes, Sho-sa Koshō? Has something happened?" The tlamatinime did not feel entirely at ease with the dark-eyed lieutenant or her ever-pleasant expression. Hummingbird thought he'd reached an equitable relationship with the captain, but this woman... her eyes were filled with secrets. Is she also an agent of the Mirror? One set to watch me, as I watch the others? Or is her malice solely a matter of our races, our stations in life?

  "Honorable one," the executive officer said, bowing her head slightly. "The Companymen have launched one of their shuttles—they are descending to the surface to repair the grounded shuttle at the observatory camp."

  "Ah." Hummingbird was surprised. He had not expected the civilians to finish their repairs so quickly. "Are they going to retrieve the scientists on the ground as well?"

  "I believe so," Koshō replied, a faint smile hiding behind her usual, stoic mask. "You left instructions to be informed. Shall I prepare a work carrel to take you and your luggage across?"

  Hummingbird's face tightened—I should not have mentioned my intent to Hadeishi—and then he nodded in agreement. "Yes," he said, turning his most severe expression upon her. Koshō did not flinch, or look away, but maintained her pleas
ant, polite expression. "I will go across in twenty minutes."

  The executive officer bowed again and tapped the channel closed. Hummingbird stared at the blank display for a moment, then his fingers stabbed at the panel, bringing up the surveillance view of the bridge. From this angle, he looked down upon Koshō's command station—an inset showed the ever-changing contents of her panel—and the soft lighting on the bridge gleamed in raven-dark hair. A long plait hung down her back, wound with copper, jade and pearl. The tlamatinime watched the woman intently, listening to the subdued chatter on the bridge, her conversation with a midshipman being dispatched to carry his bags, the orders to an engineering crew to bring a carrel around to the main airlock and prepare for a trip across the quarantine zone to the Palenque.

  In all of this, she betrayed no knowledge of his observation, though Hummingbird could only assume she knew he was watching. After ten minutes he closed the feed—the lieutenant had studiously continued about her business—and began packing his bags. A suspicion was beginning to ferment in his agile old mind, though he did not believe any officer would be so reckless to endanger her career in this way.

  She should be properly respectful, even a little afraid.

  Hummingbird wrenched his thoughts away from the Nisei woman and back to the delicate matter of packing the blue glass pyramid into a shockfoam carrying case. The object was very, very old. Even handling with thin gloves risked scarring or chipping the precious, eons-old surface.

  Hummingbird breathed easier when the artifact was safely stowed.

  The door chimed, and he turned to let the midshipman in.