by Kate Ormand
The little figures Marran made from stiffened scraps of material bored Essa. They were beautifully executed, and every one of them showed a perfectly formed Arconian in a traditional pose, dancing or working. They were hardly visible tonight since Bonix, ever the good citizen, was allowing only a trickle of electricity to charge the phosphor bars on the ceiling. Only the high-ups had apartments on the outer skin of the Pyramid, and this room was windowless and always gloomy. Essa could not see the blunt features of her father, only the top of his grizzled head as he sat in meditation in front of her, tired after the day’s labors.
Beside Essa, her mother was playing the bass flute. Its melancholy tones were made the more plaintive because Marran was practicing very quietly. The walls were thin throughout the living quarters, and she was considerate of their neighbors. She was rehearsing for a concert, playing the classic “The Weight of the Rain.”
Essa was cold. It must be dark outside by now. Freezing. She looked forward to getting under her bed cover. The surprise she had for her father could wait till tomorrow. He was going to smile and smile.
Hawkerman’s team were still feasting on the contents of the pot. The vessel was made of beaten copper alloy with clasps around the middle so the lid could be tightly fixed, and it held fresh lizard and dried greenback steamed throughout the day in layers of fat and grasses, with the inevitable desiccated pulp from a desert warden. When they were not prospecting, the Wanderers slept through the day while the sun cooked their evening meal outside the tent’s entrance. They trekked during the hours of darkness, unless—like tonight—Hawkerman called a “make and mend.”
The trick with a tent was to have an outer surface that repelled heat. Even inside a good tent, temperatures were so high during the day that sleep was a kind of coma. The sun beat into your brain like a hammer. You breathed so shallowly you were hardly alive.
At dusk the team awoke and prepared to eat. When the temperature had gone below freezing and they were in one of the greener areas, a party would go out to gather sweepings of frost to add to the pot. Tonight Kean had gone with Ax to pick up Hawkerman’s thick steel darts. Having only one arm, it was Ax who collected them, leaving Kean the more delicate task of gathering up teeth and bones and scraps of charjaw pelt. Like the Wanderers, hungry charjaws were not wasteful and had left little to take back to the tent.
There was a residue of the day’s warmth still under the patchwork roof. Tapers burnt in pots of animal fat, casting cozy yellow light on the faces of the team as they ate.
“An albatross … I would have liked to have seen that,” said Barb. She sat next to Ax. They argued passionately but were a couple. Both were strong fighters; Ax with the one massive arm and the weapon that gave him his name, and Barb with the long bow she rubbed and oiled and cherished as if it were the limb her man was missing.
Ax said gruffly through a particularly chewy mouthful of greenback, “It means the winds are starting. It wouldn’t be around here without something to carry it.”
“Winds must be getting strong up there, to get it this far,” said Hawkerman.
“Wonder what it died of,” Barb said. She was a striking-looking young woman with amber eyes and wild, matted red hair.
“Old age. They gotta die sometime.” This was Wailing Joe, the oldest of the team. He looked at least a hundred. Only Kean was unmarked by the rigors of their life; the rest of them looked older than their years. Joe was in his sixties and close to being sunblind. A genius with metals, he was an instinctive engineer who had fashioned Hawkerman’s powerful dart gun. If they came across the right materials again, he would make another one; a small team like this needed powerful weaponry. His name came from his memory for the old songs and legends of the Wanderer life. He made up new songs, too, as he had for the terrible drought which had killed Kean’s parents when he was four years old. Kean remembered nothing of them. The drought had dispatched many who were feeble. He himself had lived because the team had taken him in and made him their own.
The other three members of Hawkerman’s select band were his own partner, Cara, who was herbalist, doctor, and nurse to the group, and the mute twins Wil and Gil, whose faces were riven from nose to chin with gene faults, giving them crooked mouths and stunted tongues. Hardy warriors, they were also fine tailors, keeping the tent sun-tight and making and mending clothes with extraordinary dexterity and good humor.
Cara was very small and slight, well-suited for life on the plains, with the calm of one who is in touch with nature at a deep level. Kean had a notion that if anyone ever mistreated her, Hawkerman’s first thought, for once, would not be what he might get out of the situation.
The team leader’s attitude to life was not surprising when you knew his background. His father had died in a fight over ownership of a small reel of copper wire when Hawkerman was very young. In order to support his mother and younger brother, Hawkerman had learned to barter articles of value before he even knew what they were. Names were bestowed according to character and skills, and “hawker” was a term of high praise in the valley.
The Wanderers were not a fertile race, and even at the Lakes, mortality was high. Hawkerman and Cara had produced no offspring, while Ax and Barb had buried their one child, born dead, a year gone now.
Eating done, the team began the making and mending. Inevitably the terrain had taken its toll on the trailer. Light alloys might be practical, but they tended to buckle, and one of the axles needed attention.
Outside, Hawkerman and Ax wired on a reinforcement to the axle, and Wailing Joe sharpened the team’s weapons, while in the tent Wil and Gil carried out essential repairs to clothing. The leather patches they used were cut from cured hides, which Cara and Barb softened by repeated beating and rolling. The noise of all these activities was loud in the darkness. Kean came out of the tent with the big pot, to scrub it clean with dirt.
“How’s it going?”
Hawkerman grunted, “Nearly done.”
Wailing Joe said suddenly, “Someone coming in?”
They stopped what they were doing and listened through the continuing din from the tent until Hawkerman said, “You don’t hear any better than you can see.”
“Sorry. I just thought, back then …”
He and Hawkerman went back to work. Kean took handfuls of rapidly freezing dirt and scoured the pot. Suddenly he was aware of a different sound somewhere in the rest of them. A clink of metal that had not sounded before.
“Yes—strangers,” he said.
Hawkerman did not bother to stop and listen this time. He ran around to the tent entrance and darted in.
“Threat—all stand by.”
Within seconds the team was armed. Long knives for the twins—the pump gun, ax, and longbow. Despite her small size, Cara hefted an aluminum spear with serrated blades at both ends. They came out of the tent fast and silent. Wil gave Wailing Joe the rusty club he favored, and the old man crept under the low trailer, a surprise package should he be needed.
“Where?” Hawkerman asked Kean.
Kean had been listening and looking the entire time. He pointed. “There for sure. Two men. More to each side, I think.”
The stars shone down on a million little hollows in the terrain, causing shadows everywhere. It was hard to distinguish any life-form unless it moved. Hawkerman stepped away from the tent.
“You out there. You come forward—or do you want to get yourselves hurt bad? I will guarantee you some serious damage if you don’t show yourselves now.”
About fifty yards away, someone laughed.
“Send one into him, Hawkerman!” Ax wanted immediate and violent action. The laughter got louder. “Just aim at the noise!”
“Well, Ax,” Hawkerman said calmly, “I could do that. But I just might hit him. We don’t have much in common, but he is my brother.”
“It’s Fireface out there?”
“It is.”
One of the shadows ahead of them got to its feet. “Hawkerman!”
> “Yes. Come on in, if you’re coming.”
“Got twenty more with me. That okay?”
“Since it’s you. We can’t feed you.”
“Don’t need feeding. Be with you, brother.”
Two battered trailers had been pulled in next to the one belonging to Hawkerman’s team, and Fireface had come into the tent to talk.
He didn’t look anything like Hawkerman. He was taller, with long golden hair and a face that was alive with good humor. He wore a wonderful cloak of the finest animal skins, dyed an uneven red. It was pinned at his neck by a strange brooch crafted from brass and steel cogs, with a shard of quartz at its center. Kean had met Fireface several times at the Lakes and was impressed by his drive and persuasiveness. The raised white weal down the right side of his face was a result of a drunken brawl, in the course of which he had fallen into a fire. These days he didn’t drink and had the zeal of the reformed. He got onto his favorite subject almost at once, speaking to Hawkerman but aiming his words at the rest of the team.
“The Bleachers have everything. We have nothing. It’s just that simple.”
Bleacher was the name given by Wanderers to the citizens of the great Pyramid.
“I got everything I need,” Hawkerman said amicably.
“You do, yes. But hundreds don’t. Not everyone’s as capable as you are.”
“Just takes practice. That’s all there is to it.”
“No. It takes character. If you’d just do the right thing once in your life, Hawkerman … if you joined us, with your team—well … more would follow.”
“Nobody cares what I think. Just like I don’t care what they think.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Oh yes, that’s always the way with you, isn’t it? You’re right and I’m wrong. Should have named you ‘Preacherman’ these last few years.”
“Wouldn’t bother me one bit. At least I believe in something.”
The exchange ended with the brothers smiling at each other in the warmest way.
“So … ,” Hawkerman said. “When are you going to get yourself killed?”
“You trust every man and woman in this tent?”
“Absolutely.”
Fireface hesitated and shook his head. “I still can’t tell you. I got a good time planned, and it’s soon. We’re going to rip the Pyramid open and watch it fly away.”
“How many of you now?” Wailing Joe asked.
“A hundred at the Lakes. I been out recruiting, picked up another team. We’re on our way back now.”
“If I were a Bleacher, I wouldn’t be worried,” said Ax.
Fireface spoke harder. “I don’t mind my brother laughing at me. But you, big man—you’re just a simple fool who can’t see past the next meal. We’re all out here dying before our time—and all we ever get from the Pyramid is their rejects, and that is plain not right.”
He was looking at Wil and Gil, children of a malformed mother, expelled from the Pyramid at the age of three. The deformities so prevalent out here in the valley were the product of long-discontinued Bleacher experiments with genes. Over the last two centuries, few freaks of nature had been cast out in this way, because few occurred anymore.
“We’re all rejects, one way or another,” Hawkerman said mildly. “But we get by. Fireface, if you insult any member of my team again, you will leave at that moment.”
“What about if one of them—any of them—wanted to come with me?”
“Oh, well. They could do that. If they wanted to.”
Fireface gazed at each member of the group in turn. In his eyes was such passion and hope that Kean felt swayed for a moment. But you didn’t abandon your team. Loyalty was what kept you alive out here.
“Good team,” Fireface said eventually. “Pity.”
“Want to bed down here?” Hawkerman asked. “We could talk some more.”
“There’s nothing more to say. Where you headed?”
“South.”
“It’s kind of late in the year. Going after your cache, brother?”
Two years ago, the team had found an area of great metal and plastic reserves in the far south. Beneath an accumulation of broken vehicles from some ancient unknown civilization, they had found unmistakable evidence that there had once been a settlement there, when the climate had been more accommodating. They had taken as much as they could carry, and trading had been wonderful at the Lakes. Hawkerman had intended to go back again for more, but events had always been against them. This time he swore they were going to make it.
He was fiddling with a bone toothpick in his mouth. Removed it to answer Fireface. “Yup.”
“Gonna make it back before the Season?”
“Hope so.”
“Might see you, then.” Fireface got to his feet. “We’re in a hurry. Do you have anything to give us? You could do that—give us something to trade with at the Lakes. There’s some men whose loyalty you can buy.”
“What we have, we keep,” Hawkerman said from where he sat. “And you don’t want any man you can buy.”
Fireface grinned. It was wonderfully charismatic, that grin. “It’s war—I want all I can get, any way I can get them.”
He nodded to Hawkerman and left the tent.
When his band had pulled on out, the team was subdued.
“Fine man,” Hawkerman said simply.
“Has he got a chance?” Barb asked. The twins turned their heads to see how Hawkerman would answer.
He sighed. “Oh sure. There’s been no trouble for so long … He could just surprise them.”
Kean said, “But you wouldn’t join him.”
“There’s an awful lot could go wrong. And I don’t join anyone, Kean. I don’t owe anyone anything.” There was finality in Hawkerman’s voice.
Cara said suddenly, “Remember Crazy Skinner?”
Wailing Joe did. “Went missing three years back. He talked a better fight than Fireface, even.”
“He went out over the Gray, didn’t he?” Barb put in. “Heard some story about a big weapon lying out there someplace, went after it, and didn’t make it back.”
“He didn’t go into the Gray. Crazy to do that,” Wailing Joe said.
“Well, that was the story. And he was crazy.”
“It was a story, that’s all,” Hawkerman said with sudden anger. “You ask me, one of his team cut his throat, took his gear, and spread the story. That’s the way he’d have gone.” He calmed down. “What does it matter? He’s with the horses now, whatever happened.”
“With the horses.” Kean liked the romance of that phrase. It was Wanderer slang for death. The last of the horses had died over two hundred years ago; Wailing Joe had a song about them. You’d soon be with the horses if you ventured into the gray wilderness beyond the valley walls. At the northern mouth of the valley, beyond the Pyramid, was the Big White; everywhere else was gray, a wilderness of broken rock and impassable gorges. There was sickness in the Gray, too. One way or another, you did not survive long when you left the valley.
“Maybe … ,” Kean said tentatively, “maybe he got fed up and went over the Big White.”
“No. No one’s done that in years.” All this talk was making Hawkerman restless. “He’d have needed a Waterboy, and there hasn’t been one since Little Jack, forty years ago.”
“Would you have gone into the Big White if Little Jack had been on your team?” Kean asked.
“I’d have sold him.” Hawkerman smiled. “Let someone else take the chance.”
Bit by bit, work started up again. Kean could hear Wailing Joe humming as he sharpened Cara’s spear. The tune he snuffled out through his nose was the one that was used for the song of the camel.
The legend said that way back when the horses were still alive, a man had set out across the Big White, looking for the better life that folklore said existed beyond it. He was a Waterboy, one with the gift of water divination, who could find water even in a desert. Left behind, his woman had settle
d in with another Wanderer after a year or so. Not very loyal of her, but as Hawkerman was always saying, “These things happen.”
Then a team had gone off a little way into the Big White, where there were always stories about untold riches just waiting to be excavated, simply because it was so inhospitable. And they found the Waterboy. After two years. Recognized him from the knife he carried. People would have said he had died without getting anywhere, except his beast lay beside him. Both had been picked clean by vultures, but one thing was clear. His steed was not a horse. It was an animal with much longer legs—a bigger creature altogether. His widow had sold the bones one by one, and now no one could even guess what the animal had looked like.
THREE
“No—I’d love to—really!”
“A girl like you—you deserve to do better for yourself.”
“No, it’s what I want, Bonix.”
In the last year of schooling, students were apprenticed to a trade. For so long Essa hadn’t known what career to apply for; there were so many possibilities, so many choices. A problem with most work within the Pyramid was that you had no freedom of movement—your workplace was the same every day. Like, it would be wonderful to work in the Orchard, the big greenhouse on the top level of Arcone, where the hard angles of the Pyramid softened and curved so that the overall structure of the city was really more of a rhomboid shape than a true pyramid, and where the plastic was all semitransparent to let in light … But you’d be in there day in and day out until you were sick of the sight of the plants you were tending.
Just above the underground reservoir, where the workers were men only, there were the fields of plastic. A vital and highly skilled job, no doubt, but what a dull, sterile environment. And while it was prestigious to work on the massive cooling system that used so much of the Pyramid’s electrical resources, the conditions were even worse. There were an infinite number of jobs in manufacturing and recycling, and all were praiseworthy—and tedious.