Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  THE "OBSERVATORY" BASE CAMP, THE EDGE OF

  THE WESTERN DESERT, EPHESUS III

  An orange spark swelled in the sky, the thin, attenuated roar of airbreathing engines piercing gathering twilight. The number one shuttle swept over the base camp, wings glowing with the heat of reentry. Dust swirled up from the landing strip—no more than a long rectangle of glowlights and flattened earth. Against the blue-black heavens, the long coiling contrail burned golden with the last light of day. The Ephesian atmosphere was thin, and even with the copper disk of the sun still hanging at the horizon, a wash of stars filled the east.

  The shuttle set down, engines thrust-vectored to airbrake. More dust billowed up, burning red with jet exhaust, and the aircraft bounced and shivered down a thousand meters of flattened desert. The runway was a crude outline at best, scratched from the dry soil. At the far end, engines idling down to a rambling shriek, the shuttle turned and began rolling back to the camp.

  From a forward window, Gretchen peered out at a sprawling compound of brown huts and tall metal poles strung with swinging glowlights. Under fitful spots of illumination, she saw beaten paths winding between the buildings, a handful of figures shrouded in z-suits trudging toward the landing strip and the bulky shapes of crawlers parked under metal sheds. Everything was brown and tan or hidden in shadow.

  Just another camp on another world, far from home. She felt a keen disappointment. There was nothing grand here, only the same prefab huts and camp buildings. Another brown, desolate world filled with dust and chokingly thin air. Even the diamond brilliance of the night sky was familiar—she was no astronomer to pick out differences in the constellations—this place seemed no different than Mars or Ugarit or Zhendai.

  The shuttle rattled to a halt and pressure lights came on. Cabin lights flared awake and Parker called back from the cockpit in a cheerful voice. "Please have your customs and immigration forms ready. Welcome to Ephesus Three. Please enjoy your stay."

  Gretchen gathered up a heavy courier-style bag and checked the seals on her suit. Fitzsimmons had stitched her boot back together with some kind of adhesive goo and fishing line. Which was very nice of him, she thought wryly. He '11 be glad to have me out of his hair for a day. Her goggles slipped into their long-accustomed grooves beside her nose and around her ears. Sealing the breather mask and checking the tubes and respirator were second nature—quickly and efficiently done—then she turned and checked the seals on Bandao's suit as well.

  The gunner waited patiently, calm brown eyes watching the figures crossing the field toward them through the window. When she was done, he returned the favor and signed she was tight. Gretchen smiled in thanks and wove her way forward past Delores to the main hatch.

  "Mister Parker, cycle the lock please."

  The pilot nodded over his shoulder, flipped a series of switches and the inner door recessed with a dull clang. Two minutes later, Gretchen was standing on the landing strip, feeling a chill, cutting wind tug at her legs. She'd left a little of her face mask open and the smell of the planet flooded her nostrils.

  Ephesus at twilight was sharp and cold, tart dust and crushed rock, the methane-stink of a recycler in the camp, a faint aroma of something metallic tickling the back of Gretchen's throat. She was glad she'd put on field pants and a shirt and jacket over the z-suit. The thermal heaters in her leg pads were already starting to run and her fingers were cold even with two layers of gloves.

  Bandao rattled down the landing stairs and took up a position to the left and behind, while Parker and Delores went around to the cargo doors to start unloading the repaired engine. The gunner had a hand on the butt of his rifle—a stocky, evil-looking thing with a shining dark finish and a stubby, rubberized scope—and his attention moved in careful, measured sweeps, watching the distant, flat horizon and the buildings.

  "Mister Parker," Gretchen called, her voice buzzing on the comm, nearly drowned by the keening wind. "Don't forget to put those seals in our engine intakes."

  "Crap!" Both the pilot and Fuentes turned around and jogged back to the shuttle. Isoroku had machined up a set of shock-foam plugs to close the air intakes and—hopefully—keep the Ephesian spores out of the engines. They were unwieldy, and Gretchen watched in amusement as Parker staggered down the stairs with a pair of multispec worklamps around his neck, arms filled with the fat round shape of an intake plug.

  "Doctor Anderssen?" A bluff, accented voice called through the darkness and Gretchen turned. Three shrouded figures approached, bent into the wind. She walked forward, hand raised.

  "Doctor Lennox." Gretchen clasped the thin woman's hand firmly and nodded. "Smalls-tzin. Doctor Tukhachevsky."

  "Welcome to Ephesus," the Rossiyan answered, dark eyes sparkling over the green snout of his respirator. Neither Lennox nor Smalls said anything. "Come, let's get to the main hall and you can meet the rest of the crew."

  Everyone began walking back toward camp, save for Smalls, who paused—indecisively, it seemed to Gretchen—and stared at Fuentes and Parker working on sealing the engine intakes. Then the meteorologist shook his head and hurried to catch up with the rest of the group. Gretchen watched him as they followed the path through the buildings—even in the poor light of the hanging lamps she could see he was a little pale. Hmm... can't be Parker, no one here knows him... must be Delores.

  The main hall was a two-story building framed with hexacarbon beams, the walls and roof formed by extruded slabs of local gravel and sand run through a reprocessor. Gretchen passed into the airlock in the middle of the group—a line of dust-streaked backs, shining respirator tanks, the local equipment pitted and gray. She paused at the outer door, fingertips brushing across the metal frame of the door. The hexacarbon was scored and dark, riddled with tiny pits, as if acid had splashed on the exposed surfaces.

  Inside, she pulled back the cap of her skinsuit and tugged the respirator mask aside. She was in the building atrium—a close, crowded room filled with worksuits, boots, stained jackets and dirt—with Bandao close at hand. Smalls was already gone, leaving a tired-looking Lennox and a beaming Tukhachevsky behind.

  "How is everyone doing?" Gretchen slipped her nose tube free and tucked it into the collar of her suit. "I guess you'll be glad to get upstairs and hit the showers."

  "Yes, our water supplies have always been minimal. There's no local source of water, though we'd hoped..." Lennox sounded even more exhausted than her haggard face suggested. "I'm sorry, Doctor Anderssen, I'm very tired. Do you know when we'll be able to return to the ship?"

  Gretchen spared a quick glance for Tukhachevsky, who was watching Lennox with concern, and Bandao, who was waiting patiently at the inner door of the atrium. She could see the acid glare of overhead lights and the tinny sound of someone's music box playing year-old tunes. The smell was entirely familiar and for an instant—setting aside the pale, worn face of the woman in front of her—she could have been standing in Dome Six at Polaris again.

  "I think," Gretchen said gently, "we'll send you up to the ship tomorrow. Do you have your things together?"

  "Oh." Lennox seemed to come awake, blinking. "No—I've been busy. I suppose I should—"

  "Mister Bandao? Would you help Doctor Lennox pack her things up, and take them to the shuttle? Tell Mister Parker we'll be wanting to ferry up most of the crew tomorrow morning—early, I suppose, before the air gets too thin to fly."

  Bandao nodded and shifted his rifle behind him, out of the way and out of sight.

  "Doctor? Bandao-tzin will help you get ready and carry your things." Gretchen took Lennox by the hand and turned her around.

  Bandao nodded politely and introduced himself. While he did, Gretchen motioned to Tukhachevsky and they stood aside near the main lock.

  "Is everyone still in camp?" She asked, quietly. The Rossiyan nodded, fingering his beard. The sore beside his nose was beginning to suppurate—Gretchen recognized the sign of an ill-fitting respirator mask—and he smelled of alcohol. "Have you heard anything from
Russovsky?"

  "Nyet," he said dolefully. "Not so much as a peep. I don't know—she seemed preoccupied when she was here last—maybe the desolation is telling on her. This is a bleak world."

  "Did she talk to you, when she was here? Did she talk to anyone—say where she'd been, where she was going?"

  Tukhachevsky shook his head again, beard wagging slowly in counterpoint. "No, Doctor Anderssen. She landed while we sat at breakfast and immediately went to see McCue in the main lab. Then Clarkson..." The Rossiyan paused, nose twitching, and Gretchen could see him weighing dirty laundry in his mind. After a moment, he shook his head slightly and continued. "Doctor Clarkson went out to the main lab as well. An hour later—I would guess—I was packing a crawler to go reset the sensors at the edge of the White Plain and I saw Russovsky's Midge taking off." He scratched his beard. "A little odd, that By then it was full sun, but she took off anyway and headed north."

  "When did the shuttle leave?"

  "Later," Tukhachevsky said, a slow grin peeking out from his beard. "I heard Clarkson on the comm, shouting at Blake—he's the head of the security team—to get a shuttle ready. But number two was already sidelined on the field with some mechanical problem. So they had to wait for a shuttle to come down from the ship to pick him up."

  "Him and the damaged engine, right?" Gretchen tucked a wayward tendril of hair behind her ear. "Carlos flew the shuttle down to pick them up?"

  Tukhachevsky nodded. "Yes, Flores had been down for several days, working on the grounded shuttle. By the time the other shuttle arrived, Clarkson was about wetting his pants." The Rossiyan grinned again. "He was in a rare state—almost happy, if such a dour man could ever be happy—and he was even civil to Molly."

  "You saw them while they were waiting for the shuttle? Were they waiting together?"

  "No! They couldn't abide being in the same room." Tukhachevsky waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't see—I'd already taken the crawler out—but Frenchy told me Doctor McCue decided to go aboard at the last moment. Clarkson was already aboard, the engine already stowed. They had to delay departure a couple minutes for her." The physicist shrugged.

  So, Gretchen thought to herself, Russovsky and McCue didn't show Clarkson the limestone fragment, only the freestanding cylinder. That was enough to get him off their backs.. . but why did McCue suddenly go aboard the shuttle? What made her hurry? Or was she just trying to keep Clarkson from seeing what she'd put in the cargo hold?

  The Company dossier on McCue implied she was a careful, thorough woman. A mathematician from the Arkham Institute on Anáhuac, the dig coordinator and chief bottlewasher. Meticulous, detail-oriented ... not the kind of person to rush a sample somewhere, even one so precious. Huh. But if things between her and Clarkson were as cold as everyone is hinting, maybe she wanted to make him look bad.

  "What happened then?" Gretchen returned her attention to the Rossiyan, who was looking mournful, his memories of the past stirred up. "Did you hear anything more from the ship, from Clarkson or McCue?"

  "No." Tukhachevsky laughed hollowly. "Blake received a call from Sho-sa Cardenas, saying the shuttle had docked on the Palenque, then nothing. For weeks and weeks, nothing. We made a telescope—we could see the ship—but..."

  "I'm sorry." Gretchen squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sorry about what happened, and sorry it took so long to get here."

  "But you did come," Tukhachevsky sighed, and shook himself. A weight seemed to lift from his broad old shoulders and he stood up straighten "Please, we can't stand here talking all night—come and meet everyone else and—please!—have a drink, on me." His eyes twinkled. "You will find men and women's interests are reduced to their base constituents when faced with a slow, lingering death abandoned on an alien world, far from home, without hope of survival."

  Gretchen made a show of sniffing the air. "I can tell," she said with a laugh. "It smells like a distillery in here! What are you making?"

  "Vodka, of course. You can make vodka out of anything." Tukhachevsky pushed open the door to the common room and Gretchen stepped in. A dozen people rose to meet her, some young, some old, and a stained plastic cup was pressed into her hand, sloshing with jet fuel of some kind. The Rossiyan's meaty hand was on her shoulder, guiding her to a chair at the long table and Gretchen caught a swift montage of tired, haggard faces—men and women seamed by the elements, burned dark by the sun—and everyone was smiling, relief plain on their faces, babbling their names, questions, rude jokes.

  "Hello," she said, when things had quieted down a little and she'd taken a suitably long drink of the "vodka" in the cup. "I'm Gretchen Anderssen, and I thought you'd like to know the water cyclers on the ship are working just fine."

  Everyone smiled and the last of the heckling died down. Gretchen swung a heavy bag from her hip onto the tabletop. No one made any particular movement, but a sense of expectation pricked the air, like ozone spilling away from an oncoming thunderstorm.

  "And our Magdalena has the t-relay working back to Imperial space, so there was some mail waiting for you."

  Hhhhuhhh... The simultaneous exhalation of a dozen breaths stirred the air. Gretchen didn't look up—it would be rude to grin at these men and women, who'd thought they were lost at the edge of known space, with no way home—and concentrated instead on dumping the bundles of printed messages onto the table. She'd sorted them on the flight down and tied up each set with string. Some events, she knew, were venerable enough to become rituals. This was one. Mail call, particularly when a new crewmember arrived on site.

  "Blake." She called out, holding up the first set of letters. A stocky man, his pockmarked face twisted halfway from a grim snarl to disbelieving joy, scraped back his chair and leaned over the table.

  "Thanks," he muttered, sitting down, almost-trembling fingers picking at the twine. "Thanks."

  Gretchen nodded, then looked down. She'd already removed all the letters for the dead crewmen, for Clarkson and McCue. Strangely, there hadn't been any letters in the inbound queue for Russovsky, though her company file said she had an entire clutch of cousins and sisters at home on Anáhuac. Better have Maggie check on that, she thought while she held up the next bundle. "Fuentes, Antonio?"

  The sound of a power wrench whining against a reluctant bolt roused Gretchen the next morning. She blinked, seeing actual, real sunlight spilling down a dirty brown wall above her head, then poked her nose out from the sleepbag. A pungent smell of cooking oil, coffee, sweat and heated metal washed over her. "Ah," she grumbled, sitting up, "home at last."

  Surprisingly—considering how late she'd remained awake, talking to Tukhachevsky and Sinclair and the others about the dig and the planet—she felt good. Actually rested. "Gravity is a wonderful thing," she said, baring her teeth for a little hand mirror she carried in her jacket. "And whatever they put in the vodka here stains! Now I look like a real babushka."

  Taking a carefully hoarded bottle of water out of her bag, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. "Two cups," she muttered, measuring the fluid level in the translucent canteen by eye. "I used to be able to take a whole bath in two cups."

  Water rationing had been very strict on Mars, even with thirty meters of permafrost under their feet. The Imperial Planetary Reclamation Board guarded the native ice jealously, and charged the dig crews for every liter they extracted. IPRB had a vision of a green Mars, and weren't going to let some profligate scientists spoil their grand dream. Ugarit, for all the stink and humidity and flies and constant, deafening noise, had plenty of water. Some of it was even potable by human standards, but Gretchen had fallen out of the habits she'd learned on Mars. New Aberdeen was a wet, green world—flush with stormy gray seas, heavy forests and chill, cleansing rain pouring from masive, white thunderheads. Home seems so distant... Then she put the thoughts away and concentrated on getting the right boot on the right foot.

  As Fitzsimmons had promised, his repair still held. A Marine of a thousand uses, she thought amusedly, trying to dig her fingernail into
the seam. She failed, finding the military-issue adhesive goo holding the uppers to the sole like bedrock. "Time for breakfast, and I smell coffee!"

  Downstairs, Gretchen found herself sitting at a table near the single window in the common room, a plate of eggs, toast and something which smelled—but did not taste at all—like bacon in front of her. The cook, a short, round Frenchman named De'vaques, poured her a big mug of coffee to which she added a liberal amount of sugar and creamer. By some unspoken conspiracy, she found herself accompanied for a lengthy breakfast by Tukhachevsky and the xenobiologist Sinclair. Both men were in a formidably happy mood, and Gretchen tuned them out almost as quickly as they started propounding at length on he peculiar nature of the Ephesian microfauna.

  Hot food—and not a heated threesquare or mealbag—commanded her full attention until the plate was bare and the cup empty. She looked up, wondering if the kitchen was flush enough with supplies to allow her a second cup, and caught sight of the meteorologist Smalls's face from across the room. He was a thin, sallow-faced man in the sharp, bright glare of morning, with sunken eyes and lank black hair. Watching him, his body half-hidden behind Tukhachevsky's rotund bulk, Gretchen thought she'd never seen anyone so sad before.

  A particularly sharp peal of laughter drew the man's eyes, his head moving with a sharp jerk. Gretchen looked over and realized the common room had already separated out, like some chemical precipitating out of solution, with the scientists—herself included—at one table, while the "crew" sat at another. Delores, her oval face slightly flushed with amusement, was telling a particularly poor joke at the other table. Parker and Bandao were watching her with amusement, while the ground side security people—Blake and a comm tech named Steward—were groaning.

  "... so she said she'd rather date a cattle guard than a cowboy, so we left her sitting by the fence until she had the sense to walk home herself!"

  Only Smalls was sitting alone, at the end of a table near the kitchen door. Gretchen realized he was watching Delores, as covertly as he dared, and she remembered how he'd moved toward her on the landing field the night before. Poor kid, she thought, remembering a crush she'd suffered through on Mars. Being in the field for a long expedition—and one like this, on the edge of human-controlled space, might last for years without relief—was always tricky. Being married didn't make any difference, not if your spouse was sixty light-years away. Distance washes away all attachments, makes us forget the old world and see only the new.