Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  "Huh! Why? We've finally reached some shelter, where we can refuel and resupply and you're worried?" She pointed a finger at the roof. "We're even out of the wind. That tent was starting to smell."

  "Yes." Hummingbird looked around, his expression becoming almost morose. "That is the problem. I had no idea the camp here was so extensive."

  "Ah." Gretchen ran the edge of her thumb against the boot sole. The material was porous and spongy. Bits of glittering crystalline mica spilled out. She felt a little ill at the sight and dialed her lightwand into UV and stuffed it inside the boot. My feet feel fine... sort of. I hope.

  "Well," she said, trying not to stare in sick fascination at her socks, "humans get kind of busy sometimes—I mean, they planned on being here for two, three years. A camp for a long-term expedition isn't just some tents or a carryall. It's a little town."

  "I can see." Hummingbird fingered the goggles hanging around his neck. The glassite looked like it had been attacked with a power sander or a steel rasp. "I think—no, I am afraid we are too late. Man has been here too long, put too much of his mark on the land. Even our passage across the world has stirred up rumors, echoes...."

  "You mean the Russovsky-thing I spoke to." Gretchen swallowed, preparing herself for the worst, and tugged off one sock. The moisture-wicking, thermally insulated fabric disintegrated in her hand, leaving a blue ring of elastic material around her ankle. Suddenly, she felt light-headed. "Oh, oh sister..."

  "You saw more than a rumor." Hummingbird was staring out the portholelike windows. Sodium-tinted shadows turned his face to graven brass. "I know it was gone when we went back—but such things are real. We're a stone, cast into a still pond. Though we sink and disappear, the wave from our entry propagates through this world. Some of the waves turn back upon themselves—well, you saw the effect—and the memory of our passing through this place is retained. Layers build on layers. ..." His voice trailed off, wrinkled old face growing stiff in anger.

  "Sure." Gretchen forced down a surge of nausea, bile tainting her throat. She felt faint, but gripped the edge of the table and waited for the sensation to pass. Hummingbird was saying something, but the words were far away and indistinct, unintelligible. Jerkily, she swung her leg up and put her foot across the opposite knee. In the muted yellow light from the windows, the sole of her foot was shiny and slick, almost glassy. "Uhhh..."

  A trembling finger reached out to touch the discoloration—she felt a hard, smooth surface and jerked away again. "Oh blessed sister, deliver us from all the fears of the world, from evil, from want...." Is it deep ? Why didn't I feel anything ? Is it my whole foot? Oh, Sister, how deep does this go!

  "What happened to your foot?"

  Gretchen looked up, sweating, and saw Hummingbird looming over her, eyes narrowed.

  "I—it ate right through my boots."

  The nauallis knelt beside her, firm hands grasping her ankle and toes, turning the sole into the light so he could see. Gretchen slumped back into the decaying chair, fist jammed into her mouth to keep from crying out.

  But there was no pain. Hummingbird squinted, turning her foot this way and that. She could feel the strength in his fingers, immobilizing the offending limb better than a surgeon's vise. White-shot eyebrows gathered over dusky green eyes and then his face became still, wrinkles fading, a sense of release and settling peace washing over his countenance. After a moment, he reached into his vest and produced a small folding knife.

  Gretchen's eyes widened and her leg tried to jerk violently away. Hummingbird's hand tightened and her movement was stillborn. "Hold still," he said, eyes focused on some unseen distance. The blade snapped out of the handle with a sharp click and he put a mirror-keen edge against the heel of her foot. Gretchen felt the world swim again, vertigo surging around her.

  "You should start counting," he said, eyeing her with interest. "Or look away."

  There was a scraping sound, but Gretchen felt nothing more than a tugging. She blinked, surprised. Shouldn't it hurt? The old man made a hmm sound and his fingers tightened. This time, Gretchen could feel more than a tugging; there was a sharp, piercing bolt of pain.

  "Ayyy! Oh, sister... is that blood?"

  "Sorry," Hummingbird said, cleaning the blade on his thigh pad. "Nicked you a little."

  "How bad is it?" The pain parted a cloud of nausea. Her medband reacted, flooding her arm with a pleasantly cool sensation. Gretchen looked down and her teeth clenched. Hummingbird was carving away a slice of her heel; metallic, glistening skin peeling back from the edge of his knife. "Guuuhhh... why—why isn't that bleeding?"

  "Dead skin," he said, lips pursed in concentration. "Whatever got into your boot doesn't seem to have done much more than eat up your calluses."

  The nauallis finished with the heel and cleaned the blade again. Gretchen could feel her foot start to throb, but realized the sensation was more from the tight grip he had on her ankle than anything else.

  "Now let's see ..." He switched the blade around to hold as a scraper and began to work on the instep. Gretchen's leg jerked again and the chair gave out with a little groan as she moved. "Ticklish, I see."

  "Just pay attention," she hissed, hoping his hand didn't slip again. Her fingernails squeaked on plastic. "I've only got the one left foot."

  The view from the second floor windows was no better than from downstairs. The sun was gone, reduced to a muddy flare in the sky. A sickly yellow fog had swept across the camp, driven by wild, intermittent winds. Gretchen perched in a deep window embrasure, bandaged foot sticking out into the room, her eyes fixed on a narrow view of the quadrangle. Hummingbird had gone out into the storm—she'd seen him open one of the airlock doors and hunch out into the blowing dust—but he'd vanished from sight almost immediately. Grimly nervous, Gretchen kept one hand on the grip of the Sif at all times. Their gear was piled downstairs, but the echoing vacancy of the common room set her on edge.

  Out in the blowing murk, the gritty fog parted for a moment. Anderssen stiffened, searching for the nauallis, and caught a glimpse of a dark-cloaked figure near the lab building. She frowned—the shape was moving strangely, a sort of duck-walked sideways shuffle. The head bobbed from side to side—and then the dust closed in again.

  "What is he up to?" Gretchen spoke aloud, depressed by the leaden silence in the abandoned room. The echoes of her voice fell away, leaving another bad taste in her mouth. It's almost worse to speak, she thought in disgust. A frown followed. He can't "align" an entire building, can he?

  A gust roared past outside the window, rattling the heavy pane. Even the bright patch of the sun had disappeared in a gathering darkness. There was an intermittent glow from the east, but the light was far too low in the sky to be the sun.

  Gretchen checked her chrono. Not quite midday. She put her hand against the wall, cheap plaster cracking away from the concrete backing at her touch. The entire building shivered in the storm. Snatching her hand away, Gretchen swung around on the window ledge and gingerly tested her bandages. Her left foot, which had suffered the most damage, was completely shrouded in healfast gauze, medicated antiseptic cream and a layer of spray-on dermaseal from Hummingbird's medical kit.

  Her boots had been a complete loss, which left her slopping around in a spare pair of mulligans Hummingbird had found in a downstairs locker. These would fit Tukhachevsky.... okay, let's see about walking.

  "Ow. Ow. Ow. Dammit." Trying to walk very lightly, Anderssen limped down the stairs to the lower floor and began checking each of the rooms. She didn't think there were any ground-floor windows besides the portholes in the common room, but a queer prickling feeling urged her to check. The kitchen was entirely dark, as were the storage rooms behind the grill.

  "We need to get the power working," she muttered after banging her knee on a chair. The circle of radiance from her lightwand seemed very small in the thick, heavy air. A handful of the precious glowbeans broke up the dimness, though they seemed very lonely once they were shining from the ce
iling.

  Moving carefully, she forced open a maintenance door on the' far side of the ground floor. A sloping tunnel led down into close-smelling darkness. Gretchen paused—a low, extending rumbling sound penetrated the heavy walls—and she turned in time to see the portholes lit by the stabbing brilliance of a lightning strike. Almost instantly, the building shook and the crack was clearly audible. Dust sifted down from the ceiling of the tunnel.

  "Okay. Time to stick close to home." Gretchen retreated to the pile of gear in the middle of the room and shoved two of the tables together to make an L-shaped work area. Putting down the Sif so she could unpack was a struggle, but her nerves settled a little after checking—and locking—all of the doors.

  The intermittent rumble of thunder continued to grow, until the noise faded into the background of her consciousness as a constant rippling growl. The windows stuttered constantly with the flare of yellow-orange heat lightning. Squatting beside the little camp stove, watching a pale blue flame flicker in the heating unit, she was very glad the buildings were quickcrete rather than metal-framed.

  The tea finally consented to boil, which reminded her far too much of a particular storm on Old Mars. She'd ridden that one out in an abandoned building too—a mining camp shaft-head in the barrier peaks around the Arcadia impact crater. Too many tricky memories, Gretchen thought, rather sullenly. "Why do all these places seem haunted?"

  "Because they are," Hummingbird said, appearing out of the darkness, his step fight as a cat. "Is there tea? Ah, good."

  Gretchen lowered the Sif, though her heart was beating at trip-hammer speed. "Where..."

  The door into the tunnel was still slightly open. She glared at the old man, who was stripping off his gloves, crouched over the tiny flame. "Well? What did you do?"

  "I went here and there." Hummingbird dug out some tea, packets of sugar and a steel cup. "Seeing about the destruction of this place."

  Gretchen's eyes narrowed. "You going to tell me how?"

  "Doors." He said, stirring his tea. In the pale blue light of the glowbeans, his eyes were only pits of shadow, without even a jade sparkle to lighten his mood. There was a distinct air of concern about him, hanging on his shoulders like moldy laundry. "Opening and closing vents. In some places I moved those things which could be moved. Tidying up, as one of my teachers used to say."

  "Opening ... oh." Gretchen looked sharply at the partly-open door. Her stomach was threatening to churn again. I'll have an ulcer out of this, if nothing else. "Including the one at the other end of the tunnel?"

  Hummingbird shook his head. "Nothing in this building. Not yet. We'll save that for last."

  "What about the hangar?"

  "No. I supposed we might need the ultralights again."

  "That's very wise," Gretchen said with a sigh of pure relief. "Please don't destroy our means of transportation."

  "Is there anything to eat?" The nauallis looked around hopefully.

  Gretchen scowled. "Do I look like a cook to you?" She nudged one of the bags with her too-big boot. "Vanilla, chocolate, grilled ixcuintla, ham surprise, miso, all the usual flavors. And if you want any of my hot sauce," she said in a waspish tone, "you will have to ask very nicely."

  Hours dragged by—measurable only by the tick of a chrono, for the storm-dimmed light in the windows did not seem to change—and Gretchen's feet began to itch terribly. Hummingbird had gone to sleep, leaving her to watch in the darkness. The afternoon dragged by and finally, when her stomach was starting to grumble about supper, Gretchen poked the nauallis with a long-handled spoon from the kitchen.

  "Crow. Crow, wake up!"

  One eye opened and the old Méxica gave her an appraising look. "Yes?"

  "How many teachers did you have?" Gretchen was curled up, leaning back against the baggage, two stolen blankets draped around her shoulders. "Is there a school for judges?"

  "Not so much so." Hummingbird clasped both hands on his chest and looked up at the ceiling. "My father was a judge, so there were things I learned 'from the air' as he would say. When I graduated the clan-school, the calmecac, he took me aside." His face creased with a faint smile. "He was a strict man—much given to fairness and justice—but on that day he took the time to ask me if I wished to enter the service of the tlamatinime or not"

  Hummingbird turned his head, giving Gretchen a frank look of consideration. "You should understand one does not become tlamatinime by intent. There are no civil exams, no waiting lists, no quotas. There is no one to 'talk to' about a promising son. The judges are always watching, listening, considering. We find you."

  "So I was surprised when my father broached the subject. I think—looking back in memory—he was a little embarrassed to do so, because he was a judge, as his father, and his father's father, had been. Later, I learned the examiners found me suitable on their own and he'd learned of their decision from a friend." Hummingbird's smile remained only a faint curve of the lips, but Gretchen had watched him long enough to feel the depth of his emotion.

  This is a precious jewel. Conviction grew, as Gretchen watched the old man speaking, that the crow's father had never shown him any special consideration beyond this one moment which was so clearly etched in his memory.

  "He wanted me to consider the matter before they cornered me. To make my own choice. To escape the burden of family duty. To be free, if I wished."

  Gretchen nodded, feeling a familiar weight of expectation pressing on her own shoulders. "But even so, you said yes?"

  "Eventually." Hummingbird's smile vanished. "They were as patient as I was impatient."

  "You?" Gretchen lifted her head in a sly smile. "You were the black sheep? The reckless, irresponsible child? Were you in a band?"

  Hummingbird made a snorting sound and looked away. When he did not turn back, Gretchen pursed her lips in speculation. So sensitive!

  "What do I need to learn?" she asked, after some endless time had passed. "How do I learn—if there's no school—"

  "There are no books," Hummingbird said in a stiff voice. "No tests. No sims. Only a teacher and a student, as it has been for millennia."

  "Are you my teacher, then? Can I even be a student? I mean, you said women aren't accepted into the tlamatinime."

  The nauallis sat up, jaw clenched tight. "There are women who learn to see," he said in a rather brusque voice. One hand made a sharp motion in the air. "But there are two ... orders, you might say. One—the men—the tlamatinime, the other—the women—named the teonantli. By tradition—more recently by law—the two are kept separate in all matters."

  'So," Gretchen said, watching his face, "there are no female judges serving the Empire. They are... soul-doctors, is that what you said?"

  Hummingbird's lips compressed into a tight, stiff line. "The teonantli are not what they once were, in the time of the old kings. Though they too serve the Mirror, I prefer not to speak of their purpose." He made a pushing-away motion with both hands. "You are burden enough, just by yourself, without bringing them into the situation."

  "How much trouble will you be in?" Gretchen tried to be nonchalant about the question, but Hummingbird's eyes narrowed at the light tone in her voice. "I mean, if women aren't supposed to learn these things—"

  "Not enough trouble," he said, rather guardedly, "to see a certain cylinder back in your hands."

  "So cynical," Gretchen said, hiding momentary disappointment. "I get the idea. I even understand," she made a face, "a little. It will hurt my children, that's all. That said—will I be in trouble if it's known I've started to gain this ... sight?"

  The nauallis nodded and rolled up to sit opposite her. "You will not be troubled by the Imperial authorities," he said. "I will not tell them what has happened. If you keep this to yourself, no one will trouble you."

  "Will you show me more? Can you train me to control this clarity? You say some students have become 'lost-in-sight'. Will I become lost too?"

  The old Méxica hissed in annoyance. His fingers tapped on t
he crumbling floor for a moment, then fell still. "It might be best for you to forget all this, put these matters from your mind, turn your back on clarity and sight and all the rest."

  "And how," Gretchen said, irritated, "do I do that? Right now I see double or triple most of the time—very disorienting. And then the hallucinations—I mean, I can almost perceive things in this room—people and voices—that aren't here!"

  The old Méxica looked around casually, then back at Anderssen. "Men talking? The smell of cooking? The half-heard chatter of music? The buzz of machinery?"

  "Yes." Gretchen felt suddenly cold and turned abruptly, looking behind her. "Upstairs is better—it doesn't feel so crowded. But down here ..."

  "You're seeing," Hummingbird said quietly, "the shadows of man. The impression left on this room, this building, by the scientists who worked and lived here for the past year. We leave shadows too, if I don't clean them up before we go. Right here." He made a circular motion with his finger. "Two indistinct shapes sitting on the floor, talking."

  Gretchen felt a little sick again. "How long do these shadows last?"

  "Usually," Hummingbird said, searching through his pockets, "they fade. Someone else comes and sits in the same chair, eats at the same table. The shadows interfere with one another and dissipate. Have you ever entered a dwelling where only one person lived for a long time? Where they died? A house left empty afterwards?"

  "No." Slow rolling creeps slithered across Gretchen's arms. She could feel every single hair on her arms and neck stand on end. "I don't like abandoned places."

  "It is dangerous," Hummingbird said, finding what he was looking for, "for a person to live alone, in the same house or room, for more than a few months at a time. Shadows accumulate. A living person needs to move, to change, to see new things. Say a man lives in the same room, eats at one table, seeps in the same bed in the same orientation for years on end. Shadows reinforce. The mind is affected by shadows—you're feeling the effects of this empty room right now—sometimes the shadows become more real than the living man."