Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  "Tla xihualhuian," his voice echoed over the comm, woven into a rising and falling storm of static and queer shrieking wails. The nauallis's hand extended, clenched tight into a fist. Grains of newly-crushed powder dribbled into the dark air. "Tlazohpilli, Centeotl! Ticcehuiz cozauhqui yollohtli. Quizaz xoxouhqui tlahuelli, cozauhqui tlahuelli!"

  The Méxica's voice grew stronger with each syllable. Gretchen's distracted comprehension slid away from the barely-understandable words. They were in a strange, archaic-sounding dialect—she recognized a few of the words—yellow and green and wrath.

  "Do not move," Hummingbird said, the sound of the chant still ringing in his voice. "Become still."

  Gretchen stared at him in horror. The nauallis was settling to his knees, back straight and shoulders square. Around them, the belt of the gray was advancing through the air like ink spilled into clear water. The bright points of heat were gone. In infrared the malicious cloud had faded almost to invisibility. Her heart hammering, Gretchen forced incredulous words between clenched teeth.

  "Are you insane? They're going to drink us up like a sponge! Get up!"

  "No." Hummingbird placed his hands on both knees, eyes invisible in shadow, his face a faintly gleaming mask of dim fire. "Let them come...."

  "Never," Gretchen snarled, swinging away from the old man.

  Before he could react, she sprinted away, aiming for a space where the drifting radiance seemed thinnest. At the same time, her finger squeezed the firing bead on the Sif and there was a tinny crack as another flechette cylinder accelerated down the fat barrel and soared away into the night sky.

  Anderssen tried to leap the curdling indistinct color but failed, plowing through a thin drifting sheet. Immediately, she felt a chill, numbing shock. Gretchen staggered, nearly twisting her ankle on a hidden rock, then caught herself and fled. Gray clung to her legs and torso like the shredded remains of a gauze quilt or a thin paper banner. Against her black cloak and z-suit, the color shimmered pale and lifeless—fish scale without rainbows, a dead iridescence—but did not fall away as she ran. Cold blossomed in her side, cutting through the layers of insulation and radiation shielding built into the suit.

  Off in the distance, the canister blew apart, filling the night with a bright, sharp blossom of red and orange. Hundreds of tiny explosions followed, the paltry air robbing their roar and clamor of its full-bodied rage. A twisting cloud of sand and grit billowed up into the black sky, lit from below by the fading reflection of the explosions.

  Gretchen managed another twenty strides and then collapsed with a thin, despairing cry. A cloud of the omnipresent dust puffed up around her. Color dripped from her legs and stomach like fresh steam rising from a still-unfrozen lake in a high country winter. Muscles spasmed, clenching tight within her skin. Blinded by needlelike pain, Gretchen tried to force her legs and arms to move, but wave after wave of nervefire crushed her down into the sand and gravel again.

  Hummingbird remained sitting amid the writhing circle of gray, eyes closed, his heartbeat steady as a temple bell calling the faithful to prayer. The color drew closer, puddling and seeping across the ground, still shadowless, emitting no light save the heatless glare of its own substance. Gray washed across his knees, his hands, up his arms. The nauallis's body shivered slightly, then grew still as the colorless tide mounted to cover his broad chest and then his face.

  ―—―

  Choking, her mouth coppery with blood, Gretchen felt sweat freezing on her clammy skin beneath the tight grip of the z-suit The dreadful color was pooling around her, covering her arms and torso, blotting out her sight of the sky. A single jewel-bright star gleamed for a moment amid the gray before being swallowed up.

  Oh blessed sister, what do I do? Gretchen felt her body slow, leached of warmth, robbed by creeping, icy fingers. Her heart was still racing wildly and panic threatened to drown her mind as her body was being smothered by the color clouding around her. Stupid old man! We shouldn't have gone down there....

  Then, across a sputtering flood of near-comprehensible static and the tinny warbling of countless invisible birds, she heard the nauallis singing in his deep, slow voice.

  "Nic-quix-tiz," the words came, somehow clear and distinct amid all the noise and fury rolling around her, "nic-toh-tocaz nit-lama-caz-qui nina-hual-tecuti. Niquit-tiz tlama-caz-qui, pat-tecatl, tollo-cuepac-tzin."

  This time they did not sound so strange, so foreign to the Náhuatl Gretchen had spoken since she was a young girl, laboring over her alphabets and word lists in a low-slung white-painted school perched amid spruce and realfir on the ridge above Kinlochewe. The pacing and tone of the words were not the quick modern dialect, but something older and more resonant. A language which was complete unto itself, not crowded with Norman and Japanese loan words, where the sound of the old names was proper and correct Temachticauh instead of sensei for teacher. Totoltetl instead of tamago for egg.

  "I banish wrath," Hummingbird sang. "I pursue fear. I am the priest, the nauallis-lord. Let wrath, let fear consume me, the priest."

  The suddenly understandable words tumbled through her consciousness and just as swiftly fled, but the clarity and conviction in the old Méxica's voice settled into her bones like the warmth of a mulled draught. He is not afraid, he is not afraid. The thought spun around Gretchen and she fell still and quiet on the ground. He is still alive.

  Though her heart was hammering hard enough to bring a spark of pain in her chest and cold sweat purled behind her ears, Gretchen surrendered, trusting to the steady voice ringing through the encompassing gray. Her fists relaxed and she let the gray enter her. I am not afraid, she thought as a rasping tumult of static swelled loud, roaring in her ears. I am not afraid.

  There was a moment of wailing sound and a rush of prickling chill. Gretchen felt her body convulse, though she felt the sensation at an odd distance, and the gray radiance faded away. The sky was revealed once more, though the stars were now twinkling and shining, no longer hard, bright points. Hot wind brushed across her face, carrying a humid, decaying smell and the chattering angry cry of something crashing among the trees. Palmate fronds—serrated with slender triangular leaves—obscured most of the sky. Gretchen could hear the sea—surf booming against a shallow shore—not far away.

  I am not afraid, she repeated to herself, sure that death was closing about her in a cold, implacable grip.

  The sensation of lying in a muddy stream under a hot, tropical sky faded away by degrees. In some indefinable time, the vision became a memory—sharp and distinct, as if such a thing had happened to her only the day before—lodged among thoughts of Magdalena and remembrances of school and travel and her children throwing snowballs in the meadow behind the big barn. Gretchen realized her eyes were still open and the vault of stars above was cold and still again.

  Tentatively, she tried to raise her head. Nothing happened. Slowly, the sky brightened and obscured. Gretchen tried to focus, to bring forth the clarity Hummingbird had promised her, but as she did the colorless gray returned, damping out the stars and the night sky. In the formless void, shapes and phantasms flickered—emerging from nothing, nearly reaching definable shapes or scenes—then vanishing again. Everything was so indistinct, so faint, her mind failed to grasp reason or purpose among the shifting gleams and tremors.

  These are hungry memories, Gretchen heard Hummingbird say, his voice a weak thread amid the roiling nothingness. They seek shape and purpose.

  I can be formless, Anderssen realized, and I will not die.

  She let go, letting herself—sore muscles, bruised ribs and weary mind—fall into stillness.

  Once more the gray faded away, leaving only crystalline night. Gretchen had a sensation of floating upon a limpid, dark lake without a visible shore. The water was heavy, holding her up, her body freed from the tyranny of gravity, in some balance where the rubbery tension of the lake surface could hold her weight. She could not see the lake—only the constant, unwinking stars—but was certain of its pres
ence. All sense of frigid cold and weariness were absent. Even her thoughts—which had begun to feel attenuated, drained, parched by the relentless events of the day—were at peace. They did not hurry, but moved languidly, finding their own proper pace and rhythm.

  I am finally still, she realized. This is what Hummingbird meant.

  The nightmares and frantic memories of the gray seemed far away, reduced to insignificance. Gretchen perceived—as though she stood on a great height and stared down, finding a tiny dark speck in a field of gravel beneath a looming cliff of basalt—her body was alone in the darkness. There were no furious, malefic clouds of not-color swirling around her, no half-seen shapes drawn from the ruins of an ancient world, only stone and crumbled shale and dust.

  Am I really alone? she wondered, though the thought had no urgency. Was the gray merely hallucination? A phantom drawn up into a bewildered, confused mind?

  Something moved—a human shape—and entered her field of view. Gretchen felt the lake tremble and shift, unseen waves rolling her up and down. Gently, with no more than the sensation of sand and grit pressing into her back, she found herself on the shore of a vast, dry ocean. The figure—cloaked and hooded, z-suit half-visible in the pale starlight—leaned over her, one hand resting on a padded knee. The thin aerial of a comm pack arced up against the stars.

  Was the gray only something I saw in a moment of clarity? The thought struck her hard, rousing a placid mind to hurried thought. Certainty gathered beneath her breastbone, solid and unmistakable. Like the glow around the ultralights? Around the cable? The witch-fire of the dunes shedding their day-heat into the implacable night?

  "Hello." Gretchen's voice felt rusty, deep and scratchy, as though she'd woken from a long, deep sleep. "Give me a hand, huh?"

  A glove clasped hers, drawing Gretchen to her feet. The motion roused to life all of her aches and hurts, drawing a hiss of pain and a wry grimace. The figure's kaffiyeh fell aside, revealing battered, scored goggles and a rust-etched rebreather. Anderssen squinted, surprised. Hummingbird's equipment isn't so badly used.... She stopped, frankly goggling, eyes widening in surprise.

  A woman stared back at her from the depths of the hood, brushstroke-pale eyebrows narrowed over half-seen pale blue eyes. Gretchen felt calm flee, brushed aside by a shock of realization and confusion.

  "Doctor Russovsky?" she managed to choke out.

  DECK SIX STARBOARD, THE CORNUELLE

  Susan Koshō slid down a gangway ladder at speed, the instep of her boots straddling the rails on either side of the steps. She hopped off nimbly just before the end, letting her hands guide her to thump down on a nonskid deckplate. Straightening her uniform jacket and pants, the sho-sa turned in the tiny intersection and strode off down the right-hand hallway. A line of cargo staples ran down the center of the passage, offering a secure anchor for heavy straps holding cargo billets against the wall. Stenciled labels identified the pods as holding flash-frozen food supplies—potatoes, chiles, rice, onions, wasabi paste, buffalo meat, mutton, carrots, peas, mangoes—everything the kitchens would need to keep three hundred men and women from rioting over an unvarying diet of vanilla-flavored threesquares, recycled body water and vitamin supplements.

  She reached a pressure door with a small sign reading Junior Officers' Quarters taped to the bulkhead. The crates stacked to the low overhead on either side of the hatch were labeled Medical Supplies. Stonefaced—though there was no one to see her—Koshō examined the seals on the cargo pods and found them intact. Pursing her lips slightly, she plugged her duty-officer's comp into the bottom crate's dataport and watched for a moment as the two systems conversed. The inventory request registered thirty-six full bottles of Usunomiya-city-brewed sake, in ceramic bottles.

  Koshō considered opening the case, which had been placed in such perilous proximity to the JOQ by the ship's supply officer—a man widely regarded as being without pity or remorse or any human sense of mercy or decency by the crew—to see if the bottles were truly inside, or if they even retained any rice wine, but did not. The hour was deep into second watch and she had her own business to finish.

  The pressure door yielded to her command insignia and levered up into the overhead with a hiss. Koshō schooled her face to perfect stillness and stepped through the hatchway into a thick miasma composed of human sweat, the acrid taste of metal oil, drying laundry and half-cooked food. A clamor of sound enveloped her as the hatch closed; music blaring from personal players, the clatter of two midshipmen fencing with rattan words at the far end of the deck, people shouting encouragement to the duelists, an ensign arguing passionately with a bored-looking second lieutenant, the beep and whir of electronics, someone singing a Nōh ballad off-key.... The sho-sa's nostrils flared slightly, then settled. Dark brown eyes surveyed the rows of bunks sitting over tiny desks and lockers with interest. Every square inch of the long, slightly curving room was covered with people, equipment, posters, 3v postcards or zenball schedules.

  Forty-seven violations of shipboard regulations, she thought as her eyes returned to look down the long, crowded hallway. A very faint, calculating smile touched her lips. Though none needful of real punishment. Not today, at least.

  A middle-grade lieutenant standing in front of the nearest desk, shirt off—revealing a jawless skull tattooed on a powerfully muscled cocoa-colored back—happened to turn at just that moment. He was dressing for third-watch duty, his tunic, uniform jacket and soft, kepi-style cap laid out on a neatly made bed. The Mixtec froze, seeing her, then his brain restarted with admirable speed and he stiffened to attention.

  "Senior officer Koshō," he bawled in a voice worthy of a Jaguar Knight gunso, "on DECK!"

  His voice echoed back from the far end of the JOQ in abrupt silence. The Nōh singer's caterwauling aria flew in counterpoint, but was immediately silenced. There was a commotion as men and women swarmed down off the bunks and leapt up from their chairs or the deck and formed two rows facing into the central walkway. Koshō nodded politely to the thai-i.

  "You will be late for your duty station, Eight-Deer. Please continue."

  The African bowed gracefully in response and resumed dressing.

  Koshō took two steps into the room, politely removing herself from the lieutenant's way. "I require the assistance of Sho-i Ko-hosei Smith," she announced in an inflectionless voice. "The rest of you, as you were."

  Everyone stared at her and not a few heads turned to look at the far end of the room. A murmur of noise carrying the midshipman's name flew down the walkway. The fencers were frozen en-pointe, the tips of their boken touching. Koshō saw Smith appear, hastily shoving a handful of pay chits into the hands of another midshipman, and hurry through the crowd toward her. As the baby-faced communications officer passed, the other junior officers relaxed and returned to very subdued, decorous activities. Koshō noticed, to her private amusement, two ensigns osculating on an upper bunk did not resume their extracurricular activities.

  "Ma'am?" Smith made a futile effort to straighten his hair "Is something wrong?"

  "Come with me, Sho-i." Koshō turned smartly on her heel and left the JOQ. Eight-Deer was gone, having fled quietly while her back was turned. The hatchway closed behind them with a thud and the hiss of pressurized air. "There's something you should see."

  The ride in the core-transit car to the bridge ring was very quiet, which did not discomfit Koshō at all. She believed in the benefit of learning to wait silently and was not averse to helping others—particularly junior officers—improve their skills. Watching Smith-tzin fidget out of the corner of her eye, the sho-sa reminded herself she had learned these skills at a younger age, when sitting motionless, clad in the elaborate drapery of one of Hannobu's juni-hitoe for five hours while listening politely to scratchy, ill-executed music was a matter of course. He does not have to wear four kilos of hair, golden pins and jeweled ornaments either. A good switching would improve his posture, though.

  A chime signaled the arrival of their transit car at t
he command ring and Koshō pushed away from her seat and kicked off to fly through the widening iris of the door leading to the bridge. Smith followed, entirely at ease in z-g.

  The bridge was quiet and dim, the lights having switched into nightcycle. Koshō nodded to the officer of the watch and swung herself over to the communications station. Smith's usual configuration had been entirely changed, with the broad work panel split into three sets of v-panes. The sho-i dropped into his shockchair while Koshō took a newly added second seat. Out of habit, Smith strapped himself in and tested chair integrity. The sight brought a brief, warm glow to Koshō's breast. Ah, but he does occasionally learn. "Reconfiguration of the shipskin is complete," the sho-sa said quietly, tapping her half of the divided panel alive. A new set of blank v-panes and controls appeared. Her console shone a light green, indicating a standby status. Curious, Smith leaned over, checking the intermediate display, which was the fruit of Itto-Heiso Helsdon's foregoing sleep for two days. While Smith's reduced primary panel showed the feed from the remaining, normally-configured sensor array, the intermediate display served as an amalgam of the two sets of data. At the moment, it showed the main battle plot from Smith's panel.

  "Helsdon-tzin assures me," Koshō continued, "all of the new data feeds are online and the shipskin is properly reconfigured for g-wave detection."

  Smith nodded, impressed, but he still looked a little puzzled.

  "Your idea was a good one," Koshō continued in a low voice. Only a skeleton watch was on deck at the moment, so she felt safe enough to talk openly with this boy. The raven-wing of her left eyebrow curved up gracefully. "Did you feel slighted when Chu-sa Hadeishi tasked me to implement the concept, rather than you?"