Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  Letting go proved difficult, though, and she wandered back and forth at the edge of the camp for nearly an hour before stumbling across a narrow fissure in the earth. Something about the unexpected opening convinced her this was a safe place to discard the gun.

  The Sif clanked and rattled down into the shadows. Gretchen tossed the ammunition canisters in one at a time as she walked the length of the fissure. The bandolier was easier—the cheap old leather was cracked and ugly—and she just tossed it into the crumpled ruins of an equipment shed.

  In the gathering darkness—more than half of the sun was now hidden behind the western horizon—Gretchen could make out familiar pale gleaming lights in the wreckage. Politely, she pressed her fingertips to her forehead before limping back toward the headquarters building. She hoped the microfauna in the sand enjoyed the meal.

  "Sister... I should get rid of all this stuff." Gretchen fingered the tools on her belt and the work vest. There had to be at least six kilos of gear draped on her or tucked away in the thighpads on her suit or in the back of her equipment belt. She took out her trusty old multitool.

  Grandpa Carl gave me this, she remembered, ratcheting the drill attachment in and out. Middle School graduation. Long time ago. I can't throw these things away, they're my friends. I might need them.

  And, Gretchen realized with a sinking, sick feeling, she couldn't keep them either.

  I'd better keep just this one, she resolved, limping back toward the main building, the multitool snug against her side. Loyal service should be rewarded.

  Gretchen angled to her left, aiming to cut around the lab to the hangar entrance, when someone stepped around the corner of the low-slung building. She slowed, feet shuffling in knee-high drifts of freshly blown sand, and raised her hand to wave hello.

  The figure—features obscured in a tightly wrapped kaffiyeh and respirator mask—paused, startled, one leg unusually stiff and something—she had no idea what—made her lurch to a halt. Gretchen's throat went dry and a familiar chill feeling stroked the back of her neck.

  "Crow ... ?" Gretchen backed up, realizing the bulk of the lab building hid her from view, should anyone look out the windows of the headquarters or even go outside the main airlock. "Stand away!"

  The figure stopped, kaffiyeh coming loose, djellaba flapping dark around short legs. Gretchen squinted, trying to peer past the half-mirrored facemask. Startled pale blue eyes stared back through greasy blond hair. Gretchen felt the world come unglued again.

  "Oh blessed sister..." Her voice sounded queer—strained tight—almost lost in the gusty evening wind. The sun had vanished into the west, leaving behind a glorious sky glowing orange and red and dusky purple. Along the horizon, the vast sandstorm was still visible, burning golden with the last rays of day.

  "I've been copied!" A double echo vibrated in her comm.

  Gretchen flinched back, her stomach burning with a chill knot of fear. Unbidden, the sight crept up on her and the figure's arm blazed with a cool flame. She shook her head violently, trying to clear her untrustworthy vision.

  Anderssen was suddenly only a pace away, reaching out to take her arm.

  "Are you all right?" The face behind the mask was stiff with concern.

  "Stay back!" Gretchen tried to scramble backward but her feet dragged in the sand and she fell. The woman stopped, a penetrating look on her face as Gretchen crawled away. She could feel—and almost see—a familiar cool fire in the watching eyes. A sense of heat flushed her face. Gretchen recognized the sensation and both eyes grew wide, casting from side to side.

  Forcing her fingers to steadiness, Gretchen switched her comm live. "Hummingbird?"

  Static, warbling, rising and falling in tuneless rhythm. The voice of the wind.

  She shut down the comm. The sky was darkening steadily and down among the buildings night gathered around her. Anderssen did not move. She seemed to be watching her intently. Mouthing a prayer to the Sister to fill her limbs with strength and guide her to safety, Gretchen closed her eyes. Fear boiled behind her eyelids, clinging, cold, leaching thought of motion. Now, encompassed entirely in darkness, the night felt heavy, pressing against her from all sides. There was menace hiding in the darkness. Why didn't I feel this before? None of this was here!

  "I need your help," her own voice said from the night. Her face warmed again, as though a bonfire roared and leapt only meters away. "Just come with me."

  Gretchen gathered her legs under her, forcing the awareness of stabbing pain in her brutalized feet away, and drifted away from the sickly heat on her face. Her hands brushed across sand, gravel and slivers of rock, searching for just the right place to settle.

  The voice followed her, not too far, not too close. "It's growing cold. We should go inside. Gretchen, I know this seems terribly strange to you.. .."

  Shuddering with relief, her outstretched hands found barren rock, exposed by the ceaseless wind and there, among chipped, splintered shale, was a sense of solidity, of lightness. Gretchen scurried onto the stones, halting when her left boot skidded out over unseen emptiness. Digging her hands into the loose rock, she exhaled slowly and opened her eyes.

  A cloud of chilling mist wavered in the air. She could see a single, solitary light burning in one of the second-floor windows of the main building. Everything else in the camp was dark and deserted. The sense of menacing abandonment rushed back, stronger than ever. Even the stars seemed faint.

  Anderssen approached, stepping over the ridges of sand. Her movement was odd—jerky, a half-motion slower than expected. The odd doubling and tripling of her vision returned, stronger than before, showing an Anderssen ablaze with the chill blue light or blocky dark or illuminated again. Nothing about her, no matter the wealth of detail in her face and suit and cloak, seemed even remotely human.

  Hummingbird sang bravely when they came against him, she remembered, a sharp fragment of the dreadful night under the cliffs of the Escarpment. Damn it, I can't think of any songs! I hate singing. Why would I have to sing?

  The shape paused and she saw it had reached the edge of the stone outcropping. Furling the djellaba aside with a deft motion, the shape settled into a crouch, puddled in shadow and darkness. Gretchen swallowed, closing her eyes in concentration. The warmth in the stone seeped up into her fingers, into her hands, filling her arms with strength.

  "I am not afraid," she said aloud. The sickly heat returned, beating against her face. She started to sweat, feeling moisture bead on her neck and forehead—and then the dampness froze. Alarmed, Gretchen opened her eyes. The sky had grown fully dark, awash with pale emerald, topaz and carnelian stars, all trace of the blinding sun fled.

  A faint blur of light tainted the sand around the crouching figure. As Gretchen watched, the blur thickened, brightened and spread. Slow radiant threads crept across gravel and scattered stone, winding their way onto the rocks. A fierce desire to flee gripped her, seeing the glassy illumination advance, but everything beyond the steady, solid warmth in the rock was cold and remote.

  Wait, she wondered. Is this something only visible to my sight, or is it real?

  The blur washed closer, now rippling in faint, ghostly waves across the stones.

  What do I really see? Is anything really there? What if it's just an echo of myself?

  Gretchen let her body become loose again. A stiffness in her arms and legs resisted, but slowly faded as she controlled her breathing. In the brilliant dreams, the turmoil of hallucinogenic visions and uncontrollable sight had been subsumed into a crystalline sense of order. In the perfectly etched world the bitter powder had shown her, there was sight and sight. There was the promise of focus and a diamond-bright perfection of intent.

  She groped to recapture the sensation. Memory fled, vanishing in a chaos of confused images, in delirious phantasms. Heat burned suddenly in her fingers. Gretchen jerked back, forcing her eyes open.

  The cold blur lapped around her feet and covered her gloves. Stunned, she saw clouds of tiny flickering
particles swarming among the broken, dead stone. An effort to lift her hand failed—a steadily growing web of jeweled threads chained her to the ground. Oh, shit!

  Gretchen dragged at her leaden arms, trying to wrench free of the spreading jewel-stain permeating the glossy black of her suit. Despite straining with both feet braced, she only succeeded in wrenching her shoulder. The sense of steady warmth vanished in the moment of effort, leaving the biting cold of the Ephesian night flooding in around her. A wild glance to either side revealed only darkness and some kind of pit or fissure a the earth. Trapped! Both forelegs in the trap. I can't even gnaw free.

  Stomach churning with nausea, she looked across the outcropping, expecting to see the shape looming there in triumph. Instead, she gave a tiny, fierce shake of her head, stunned.

  Anderssen rose, bloody feet bare on the gleaming sand. A queer emerald fire licked through her short blond hair, then faded away. The woman shifted her shoulders, letting the djellaba fall properly. Her face was bare to the thin, frigid air—the red welts of a breather mask worn too long were plain on her round cheeks, nose and neck—every tool and gadget was in place, comm and medband clasped around well-muscled wrists.

  "Wha—" Gretchen rallied, violently collecting her thoughts. "You don't look like me."

  The stance was all wrong, weight evenly distributed, not leaning to one side, favoring the wounded foot; even the face seemed distorted—lopsided—one eye fractionally higher than the other.

  Hummingbird will be able to tell. Gretchen found the thought a frail comfort. If he has time to see as she rushes out of the darkness or creeps up behind him.

  The chains of jewels dragging at her arms pulsed with delicate, subtle color. Gretchen felt something change and shift in her mind. Half-familiar memories stirred, clamoring for her attention. They felt strange—not soft and faded, burnished by the passage of time—but cold and clear, freshly struck from the die.

  A sullen yellow sky filled with hundreds of bright pinpricks loomed overhead, a harsh, claustrophobic vault crushing the breath from her lungs. In every direction endless ranks of vast obsidian towers soared in counterpoint to the sulfurous heavens. She turned, images blurring past—more towers, some shattered and cracked with age, some newly raised from the plain.

  In the distance, heat haze shimmered in deserted avenues, yielding the sickly black image of a vast, implacable lake. Somewhere, beyond the horizon, down just such an avenue as this, ringed by the same colossal buildings, the lake was real; oily, infinitely deep, stretching from horizon to horizon, a choking black band wrapped around the wizened throat of an ancient, dying planet.

  "No—I was never there!" Gretchen shouted aloud, filled with an all-encompassing fear for her own memories, her own thoughts. Voices roared in her ears, shouting and accusing her of monstrous deeds. "I'm not one of the things in the library! I'm not one of them!"

  A cloud of brilliant stars spanned the arc of a blue-green world. Great whorls of white cloud obscured most of the surface, but mottled green and brown continents peeked through. Seas and oceans blazed blue, shining in the light of a dim yellow sun.

  Across the face of the void, stars rippled and twisted, distorted by something vast. Space boiled and tore, splitting aside. A shape forced its way through the burning gap, something nearly dwarfing the world shining below. Tatters of space and time flew past, the light of distant suns still reflected in long streamers of darkness. An ebon shape swept across the world, blotting out any view of the green hills or shining seas.

  In the passing wake, the fabric of space reknit, stars falling back into their accustomed courses, the glare of the sun once more traveling as it had done for millennia. Yet the spilling, fluid darkness already englobed the world, a tightening black web, shutting out the sun, blocking the light of the stars.

  "No ..." Gretchen tried to concentrate, to hold back a titanic flood of images—not her thoughts, not things she had done—from overwhelming her mind. They crowded in, pushing aside memories of her friends at the university, time spent hiking in the tall pines behind the steading, the smell of coffee perking in her dorm room, the harsh taint of diesel in the fog as she hurried across the Quad to class. "Give them back!"

  But her memories were dying. Wiped away. Replaced by images of a horizon boiling with black ink, of shining silver sparks raining down out of the sky, splashing into the sea, tangling in saw-leafed palmettos. The single burning image of a four-fingered hand lifting a muddy cylinder from a stream.

  "Not mine. Not mine. Not mine!" Gretchen wailed, clutching desperately at carefully hoarded memories of two little girls and one little boy. The sound of Isabelle crying, swaddled in fluffy blankets. Duncan's face screwed up in a pout, thin little arms crossed over his chest, one of his grandfather's flannel shirts rolled up sixty times to fit. Tristan declaring she would be planetary president right after third form. Everything they had ever done or said or shouted. Bare feet pattering down wooden stairs into the kitchen.

  A sharp sense of disassociation overtook her, a threshold breached by urgent need.

  The sense of brilliant clarity from her dreams was suddenly there, around her, a perfect, frozen world of absolutes. Black stains upon her memory shone very clear in this incandescent vision. Mine, she raged, driving back the distorting clouds. Where the shimmering visions had lain entwined with-her own imperfection, she summoned up every detail from faint traces, from ghosts, from the neural residue left in the rubble of invasion. Mine!

  For a moment, she hung in a balance, staring into endless corridors of memory, where every lost day, every forgotten word, every kiss was still alive, poised for her to plunge into them again. Youth. Tiny wrinkled pink babies drawing breath for their first wailing cry. Tiny hands clasped in hers. Frost on the porch in the morning. Melting snow plunging from the steep, slate roofs of the university halls as spring sunlight shone through the last clouds of winter.

  Freezing cold engulfed her hands and Gretchen hissed in pain. Her eyes were still open, staring at sand spun with a web of jewels, but the vision was very distant from her thought. A jolt of physicality shook her body, tearing her mind away from the swarm of memories and plunging her once more into the cold, bruised, bleeding, frightened body crouched on a bare stone outcropping amid desolation. "Ahhhh! Oh Sister... that hurts!"

  Her work gloves and the z-suit covering her forearms had been eaten away, leaving nothing to protect her skin from the subzero Ephesian night. Her fingertips were turning black. Gretchen clutched both hands to her chest and cried out at a fresh burst of pain.

  A rasping cough tore itself from her chest, then another. Tears froze at the corners of her eyes. Still afraid to move, she curled herself up on the bare stone, trying to protect her ruined hands with the bulk of her body. Cold closed in on her, heat seeping away through the damaged suit into the open sky. In the darkness, Anderssen frowned, displeased. There are no answers here.

  ABOARD THE TURAN

  Tonuac, shipgun at high port, scuttled up to a pressure door at the end of the corridor. A dozen yards back, Hadeishi tensed, waiting for Heicho Felix—who was covering the Marine on point with her Whipsaw—to wave him forward. Tonuac crouched, keeping his head below the level of a glassite panel set into the door, and listened intently. A moment later he made a hand sign. Felix did not turn, but her hand slashed at the floor of the corridor. Traffic ahead.

  Hadeishi settled in to wait. Maratay was right behind him. making sure the hardwire for the comm relay spooled out properly while keeping an eye on the chu-sa, who as an officer—a Fleet officer at that—needed constant supervision. Clavigero was ten meters behind, at the last bulkhead frame, watching the backtrail for unwanted visitors.

  Nearly two hours had passed since they'd broken in through the airlock. The Turan had proved vaster than Hadeishi had expected. The schematics did not do justice to the endlessly snaking passages, countless levels, ramps, elevators, and gangways they had traversed to reach this point. From his handheld. Mitsu knew the co
rridor ahead was a main artery in the primary hab core of the refinery. Here, at last, they were reaching territory where they might encounter the crew.

  "There's a galley and common area listed on the spec," he whispered to Felix. "Through the hatch and to the right about twenty meters."

  "I know." The heicho grinned mischievously over her shoulder. "You know, in the sims, everything was very shipshape."

  Hadeishi swallowed a guffaw. Nothing they'd seen so far had been clean. A thin layer of oily, pastelike grime covered every visible surface. Some of the gangways they'd climbed had left black stains on his gloves and boots. The chu-sa had neglected to pack an analysis comp with a sampler, but he suspected all this finely coated debris was residue from the refinery operations. He could feel the ship vibrating through his boots and shoulder—somewhere downship enormous machines were grinding raw asteroid rock down to a molecular grit for ore separation. Some process of the sort was leaking this slippery, invasive grime. Civilians... is it like this on commercial, licensed miners, too?

  Shaking his head slightly, he nodded to Felix. "Is this a bad spot? In the sims, I mean."

  "No." Felix adjusted her grip on the Whipsaw, dark brown eyes troubled. "So we're going to go careful."

  Tonuac motioned, drawing her attention back to the door. The point-man keyed the pressure door open, revealing a brightly-lit corridor with rubberized carpet. Tonuac eased out, swinging his gun sharply from side to side, then signed all-clear. Felix was moving the instant Tonuac cleared the door, one hand guiding Hadeishi through the opening. Behind them, Maratay scuttled along, playing out hardwire from his spool. Clavigero sprinted up the passageway, running as quietly as he could to catch up. Hadeishi caught a glimpse of a broad passage lined with working, reasonably clean overhead lights. There were even 3v posters of beaches and wooded mountainsides on the bulkheads. Tonuac punched the access plate of a door facing them as Felix and the chu-sa reached his side. The two Marine privates were crowding in behind, shipguns covering the hallway in either direction.