Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  The wind direction altered slightly, and the ribs splayed open like the fingers of a fan, turning the sail, stretching it tight enough to show for a moment the vascular system, like a filigree of tarnished silver among the amethyst and aquamarine, before it picked up speed and hissed through the water away from them.

  The Nemoraswung out of the deep channel onto a more westerly heading. The weather changed again, cooling a little, clouding over. By the time the shoreline lay on the horizon, the world had turned gray. Marghe was not looking forward to making landfall; it would be a long, hot walk to Port Central, and she was not sure Danner would welcome her opinion of the Mirror’s actions.

  High Beaches was a forbidding place, all bleak, liver‑colored cliffs and rocky promontories rearing from a choppy and restless sea. The Nemoraweighed anchor, and Marghe and Thenike took the Nid‑Nodin to a steeply sloping pebble beach. A woman with the same liver‑colored eyes as the cliff rock met them. She was thin, with lank brown hair rising from a high widow’s peak and the kind of sallow complexion that made her look grimy. She introduced herself as Gabbro.

  “The viajeras Marghe Amun and Thenike, sa?” Marghe nodded. “I’m to be your guide through the burnstone to the west,” she said, and set off up the beach in a ground‑eating stride. “If we hurry, we can make a good start today.”

  They did not follow her. “We can use the skiff,” Thenike called. Gabbro turned; reluctantly, Marghe thought. “The wind should be steady enough to take us upstream faster than we could walk. That is, if the spring rains were heavy enough.”

  “Sa, sa. The river’s deep enough.”

  “The skiff will save time,” Marghe said.

  “Sa, sa.” Gabbro headed back down the beach toward the Nid‑Nod.

  “But we’ll need to eat before we set out.”

  “We can eat on the way. The silverfish shoals are due before the end of the moon. I have to be back by then. Come, we’ll need ropes.”

  After so long aboard ship, Marghe struggled to keep up on the sliding pebbles, and she was sure she would be sick of hearing sa, sabefore dark, but she said nothing. This had been her own idea.

  They were four days on the river Glass, four lazy days of trimming the sail, sitting at the tiller, and watching the banks go past. Marghe spent endless hours trying not to think about how she would persuade Danner to honor trata, concentrating instead on the variety of plants and animals they saw: nutches, knobby dark reptilian predators sunning themselves on stones; sleths, which Marghe at first mistook for bunches of reeds until one exploded into motion as a swarm of boatflies hummed past, catching half the cloud in its sticky fronds; pelmats, slow green amphibious things that crawled on the riverbed, and sometimes up onto the hull of the Nid‑Nod.

  In the evenings, they tied up on the bank and Gabbro caught fish for their supper. Sometimes Thenike told a story.

  Marghe hardly tasted the fish, barely listened to the stories. Her stomach felt full of rocks. The closer they came to Port Central, the more she lost herself in trying to find a solution to her problem: how to make Danner do the right thing. How? Danner would do as she thought best for her personnel. The difficulty lay in persuading the Mirror commander that honoring trata was the best thing, in the long term.

  Marghe went over and over in her mind that original report on trata to Danner, searching for flaws. She found none. It was all there: long‑term and short‑term benefits. What more could she add? She had no idea, but she knew she had to try. She just had to hope that presenting the arguments in person would carry more force. The queasy weight in her stomach told her otherwise. No. The problem was not in her arguments, her initial reasoning: something was happening that was forcing Danner into this decision. Something of which Marghe knew nothing. What? She could only assume some kind of Company threats. What had Sara Hiam said? That cruiser out there isn’t hanging around for the view. TheKurst ’s a military vessel… Every time I wake up, I wonder, Is this going to be my last day?

  Marghe picked absently at her fish. It was almost cold, but she did not notice. What had changed to turn that ever‑present threat into something more urgent, something that made Danner believe trata should take second place?

  The only thing she knew of was the fact that she was no longer protected by the vaccine. But that would not precipitate Company action, not of and by itself. If the vaccine had been proven ineffective, maybe. But her message had been quite specific: she had chosen not to continue. As far as Company was concerned, that decision would only result in unpleasant consequences for her personally. It should not affect Company’s attitude toward Danner or Hiam. In the long term, Company would be philosophical and simply try the vaccine again with someone else. After all, it was not as though the damn thing did not work…

  “Amu? Marghe?”

  “Um?”

  “That fish is beyond eating.”

  Marghe looked at it. Thenike was right. She threw it onto the pile of leftovers that they would bury in the morning before they set sail again. Gabbro was toasting some gram roots in the embers. They smelled sweet. All of a sudden, Marghe was restless.

  “I’m going to walk for a while,” she said, scrambling to her feet and brushing sand from her legs. She faced west, where the last bloody rags of sunset lay scattered on the tops of the distant hills.

  “Do you want company?”

  Marghe nodded. They walked in silence, occasionally stopping to skip stones on the river, or to listen to the steady, reassuring flow of the water. It was warm, and insects hummed and buzzed. The evening gradually seeped into Marghe, loosening her shoulders, straightening her back.

  “That’s better,” Thenike said.

  They walked farther, then Marghe stopped to watch the last of the dark red slide from the sky. Inky clouds swept across the sky, and the air stirred with a warm breeze from the nttls. “I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills,” she quoted quietly, “coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.” A viajera’s memory was good for remembering poetry.

  They walked back hand in hand, and ate hot, charred gram roots with Gabbro.

  On the fifth day, at the foot of the Yelland hills, they beached the boat.

  “From here, we walk.”

  Port Central lay southwest, but they had to detour through the Yelland hills, zigzagging northwest then southeast to avoid burn‑stone and the possibility of triggering a burn that might smolder for a generation. It would add two or three days to their journey, Gabbro said.

  Marghe walked behind Thenike, trying to imagine how it would be to feel the ground suddenly split between her feet, hot gases exploding, sending them tumbling into rocks; the eerie silence while they lay stunned, then the molten burnstone bubbling up through the turf, forming pools and sinks, setting the grass on fire…

  The grass was brown from lack of rain, and the hot winds were scratchy with dust. There were no paths, and they had to clamber over outcroppings of needlestone that glittered under the dust and would cut their feet deeply if they slipped. The vegetation was grotesque, shaped by wind and aridity: thick and stunted, with enormous root systems.

  On their second day in the hills, they met a band of seven olla shapers, and Weal, their headwoman, invited them to share a meal. Eager to eat something that was not fish or waybread or dried fruit, they accepted.

  It was a seasonal camp; the shelters were simple corner posts supporting a roof of wide leaves. There were no walls, and the floors were beaten earth. But the cookfires were big, sunken pits, they had fresh vegetables and ten newly caught wirrels to offer, and a thin and bitter wine.

  In return for their hospitality, the olla shapers got a story from Thenike about the nine riding soestre of Singing Pastures who had lived, loved, and died many years ago.

  Firelight played on the women gathered around the cooking pit, reflected from rapt faces shiny with wirrel fat, and as Marghe listened to the ageless rhythms of the story, the repetition and ritual description, she knew a stranger lookin
g at the listeners would be unable to tell her apart from the others.

  The story was interrupted by the rustle and thump of a landing herd bird. Thenike fell silent as it waddled into the firecircle. It had a message cord around its leg. The viajeras and Gabbro politely looked away as the headwoman unwound the cord and read it: it could be private kin news, or trata business.

  “Part of the message concerns the viajeras,” Weal said. “It is addressed to all in the north, and asks that if we meet you, we are to pass on the words of the viajera, T’orre Na. Thenike and Marghe Amun, greetings. Danner is heading north to Holme Valley and the pastures with sixty of her kith, and more following, to fight the tribes. I go with her.”

  There was silence. One of the women coughed and the herd bird humphed and raised its crest.

  “That’s all of the message?” Marghe asked.

  ”All concerning you.” Weal tucked the cord into her pocket, gesturing for Thenike to go on.

  Thenike continued with the story, but Marghe no longer listened. What had happened to change Danner’s mind? Sixty Mirrors was a lot of firepower; she must intend serious fighting.

  Later, when Marghe and Thenike were lying side by side, too hot for nightbags, Marghe was still wondering what had happened to involve Danner with the tribes. “I don’t understand any of this. But I want to find out.”

  “Then we’ll head north in the morning.”

  “Gabbro won’t like it.”

  “No. But we don’t need Gabbro from here. I know the way to Singing Pastures.”

  They were quiet for a long time. Just before she fell asleep, Marghe asked, “Were there really ever nine soestre?”

  “Maybe there were, somewhere,” Thenike said, and Marghe knew she was smiling in the dark.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DANNER STOOD OUT on the glaring white concrete, waiting for the gig. She was hot, and getting a headache, which she made worse by looking up into the bright summer sky even though she knew they would hear the gig a long time before they saw it.

  Day was there, and T’orre Na–it had seemed polite to ask them as guests–and a small honor guard: Lieutenant Lu Wai, Sergeant Kahn, Officers Twissel and Chauhan. Teng should have been there, but the deputy was miles away, investigating a promising site in the southwest at the foot of the Kaharil hills.

  Danner made a deliberate effort to not shift from foot to foot. Anything could happen. When– if, she amended, if–the Kurstfound out that the orbital station was being abandoned, they might blow the gig out of the sky. Even if they did not, then its passengers were by no means safe: autopilot was fine for landings not involving people, but risky for human cargo, and although Nyo had basic pilot skills, she had not flown anything in over six years.

  The sky cracked with sound. Danner jumped, along with everyone else except Twissel. Good woman under pressure, Danner thought, and filed that knowledge away. The cracking came again, a broader sound this time, then again, and again, until the noise widened into a flat sheet of sound that climbed the register to a roar, then a scream, then a thin, piercing shriek.

  “There!”

  They all followed Day’s pointing finger. A tiny black speck to the northwest, getting rapidly larger. The two sleds detailed as emergency vehicles hissed up onto their cushions of air as their drivers fed power to the motors. Lu Wai signaled to her three officers, and all four snapped down visors and stood to attention.

  And suddenly the gig was tearing a tunnel through the air and landing, and Danner grinned, for the immediate worry was over and now here she was, getting ready to meet in person for the first time a woman she had come to know well over the last few months, who had listened when she had needed an ear, had talked when she needed advice, had faced hard decisions without flinching. An ally and friend.

  A friend who was coming to stay. A friend.

  The gig landed in a ball of heat and noise, adding a black carbon streak to the dozens already crisscrossing the concrete. Its power systems whined. One of the sleds hummed over grass, then concrete, and a tiny figure leaned from the cab to flip open a small panel on the still‑warm hull of the gig, then yank a handle. The hatch popped and hissed open. The Mirror pulled down a ramp. Three figures climbed out shakily and onto the sled. One of them waved, and Day and T’orre Na waved back. They were the only ones who did; Danner and the other Mirrors, after hundreds of hours of parade‑ground training, did not think to respond. It saddened Danner. What else had been trained out of them? How many other things, human things, would they have to relearn?

  The sled hummed back over the concrete and settled five feet from Danner. Sara Hiam climbed down a little unsteadily. Danner saluted, then dropped her hand and smiled instead.

  “Welcome!” She held out both hands. Sara took them. She seemed smaller in real life than on the screen, and thinner. She was trembling.

  “Hell of a journey.”

  “Looked like a good landing.” Nyo and Sigrid climbed out of the cab like old women. They, too, looked too thin; Nyo’s skin was gray, like hot charcoal. Sigrid was so pale Danner could see the blue lines of veins around her neck and eyes. They both looked as unsteady on their feet as newborn foals. “Welcome,” Danner said, troubled, and turned to Sara Hiam. “Is this the gravity?”

  “That’s part of it, though we’ve done nothing but exercise this last month.” She drew away from Danner gently and looked up into the sky. “I hated to leave. Five years’ work up there. Who knows what those bastards will do with it now.”

  Four days later Danner was sitting in her office with the newly returned Teng.

  “As you can see,” Teng was saying, as she pointed to the screen, “precipitation patterns look favorable. This site in the foothills would be ideal for grain production and for grazing herd beasts.”

  “Yes. I see.” The deputy was looking tired from her trip, and was being more than usually pedantic. “I hear that this site has a name already.”

  Teng smiled a little. “My team have been calling it Dentro deun Rato.”

  “In a while,” Danner translated. “A nice enough name, with a good feeling. Sounds like home. But in just four days it already has an Anglo corruption: ‘Dun Rats.’ What does that say to you?”

  Teng said nothing.

  Danner sighed, and wished her deputy was someone with a little more imagination, someone she could talk to. Like Sara Hiam. Or even Day and T’orre Na. She made a quick note to talk to the viajera later in the day, find out if there was any reason using this site would antagonize the natives. “Continue.”

  Teng looked relieved. “Well, there are several springs. Fa’thezam says they’re deepwater springs that won’t dry up except in the most severe and prolonged drought. In which case we could always run a line from the Ho.” She tapped a key. The map widened to include half the continent. “These blue arrows indicate major native trade routes. We can use the Ho to transport our goods for barter; upstream past Three Trees and Cruath, all the way to Holme Valley; downstream to Southmeet and the coastal trade.”

  “The soil?”

  “McIntyre gave the all‑clear,” Teng consulted her notes, scrolling rapidly. “Rich, well‑drained, well‑protected by root systems. That means not much danger of erosion. Apparently the–”

  “Give me a separate report on that. Let’s keep this general. Anything else?”

  “It’s easily defensible.” The map changed to show elevations. Danner nodded. “Plenty of natural resources: clay, wood, workable stone. Olla.”

  “Has Gautier finished her report on that?”

  “Not yet.” Again, Teng scrolled busily. “But it looks promising. She says that the chemical valences of the olla are such that if–”

  “Later. All I need to know is that progress is being made, and things are looking good. That there are no substantial snags.”

  “That about sums it up: the more we know about Dentro de un Rato, the better it looks.”

  Danner turned off the screen. “Tell me, Teng, do you thin
k we could live there if Company cuts us off? If something happened like, oh, say, we lost all our equipment here.”

  Teng sucked at her lower lip, but Danner made no sign that it was a habit that had always irritated her. Teng was slow, but methodical. Danner had never known her to make a single major mistake: everything was checked and double‑checked before Teng would commit herself. Danner trusted Teng’s judgment, no matter how impatient she became with her methods.

  “Hard to say.”

  “Take a shot at it.” Don’t think, she wanted to say, react. Tell me your gut feeling. But that would only confuse her stolid deputy.

  “Well…” Teng sucked her lip some more. “If we could start sowing crops now, and if nothing untoward happened–no fires or floods or droughts–and if we had help from the natives: seed stock, a breeding herd, advice, good trade relations… then, maybe. Maybe we could.” She looked pleased with herself. “Yes, I really think we could.”

  Danner smiled. “Good. That’s good. I want a copy of every report, with your comments. I’ll read them tonight. I’ll also consult with Day and the viajera T’orre Na, see if we can get a guarantee of that native cooperation.” She drummed her fingers a moment. “Yes.” She stood up, decisive. “Teng, if you’re not too tired, I’d like you to put in some time today and tomorrow laying down a preliminary evacuation plan. I’ll rely on you to deal with the broader logistics. If it turns out we hit a major flaw with this site, though I don’t think we will, much of the planning could be translated for another site.”

  Teng did not stand up but shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  “There’s something else?”

  “Yes.”

  Danner sat down, gestured for Teng to go on.

  “Several people have approached me about… about leaving. About taking the gigs up to the Estrade.”