Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  "You would," Gretchen replied, finally picking out the gleam of his eyes through the polarized goggles. She laughed softly.

  "I knew you wouldn't shoot. I would wager you're even glad to see me ... you don't have to admit that. I understand how it is."

  "Why would that be?" The nauallis's voice had a cold edge. "You don't even have any idea why I'm down here. You don't even know who I am."

  "I know enough," Gretchen said, still watching the eastern horizon. In such a thin atmosphere, night advanced like a solid wall, the sky darkening swiftly to blue-black as the terminator approached. "You got spooked by my cylinder, by the Russovsky-copy. I think you got enough bits and pieces of the big puzzle to make a guess—yeah, maybe an educated guess—about what's going on down here. Suddenly the funny little archaeological expedition became a serious problem. So everyone has to clear out fast, leaving you behind to clean up the mess."

  "The cylinder," the nauallis interjected, "will remain in Imperial custody and will be destroyed before the Cornuelle leaves this system."

  "I don't think so," Gretchen replied tartly. "Not without fair compensation!"

  "It is worthless," Hummingbird said, the edge returning to his voice. "Don't you see the device is a lure and a trap? I've seen such things before, left behind to ensnare the unwary. Such things cannot ever be allowed into Imperial space or even onto one of the Rim colonies."

  Gretchen shook her head, the motion barely visible through the suit. "Your little blue pyramid tell you that? Does your book have a picture of my cylinder in it, with a warning label?"

  "No," bit out the judge, "but such things have been encountered before."

  "Have they?" Gretchen felt curiosity stir. Down! She reminded herself. Stay on task.

  "Yes. The mining settlement on Aldemar Four was obliterated by an equivalent device—"

  "You know," Gretchen said, rudely ignoring Hummingbird. "I really don't care about some miners who found something they shouldn't have. This find is mine. Logged, duly reported, even surveyed and examined. Now, you can destroy the object if you want, but given the high likelihood the cylinder is in fact a First Sun information storage device—your masters in the Ministry of Finance will be very, very unhappy with you for doing so."

  Hummingbird's head drew back a fraction and Gretchen felt a sharp stab of delight.

  "If you destroy my artifact," she said in a cutting voice, "then a court of adjudication will weigh in my favor when the Company sues the Imperial Navy for confiscating and destroying something worth billions of quills. Now, you're a judge—you know what the rules for theft and destruction of property are like."

  There was a strangled hiss from the nauallis. "You'd quote the law to me?"

  "I would," Gretchen said, stiffening and rising up slightly. "You stole from me. If you destroy the evidence of theft, then I'll be compensated as if the object had a 'fair market value'. Now, let's say I put a proven First Sun artifact up on the block in the ti anquizco of Tlateloco. How much do you think I'd get? Can you even count that high? How many centuries of servitude to me would it take to pay off such a debt?"

  "It-it is a trap!" Hummingbird's control was fraying. "Useless and dangerous! Not a prize, not a find, not worth a single quill!"

  "Not to me." Gretchen glared at the stupid man, though he couldn't see her expression through the mask. "That slab and that cylinder are worth everything to me."

  "You'd risk your life, and the lives of others, for money?" There was a pitying tone in Hummingbird's voice. "You can't spend all those quills if you're dead."

  For a moment, Gretchen said nothing. Then, in a cold voice, she said, "I risk my life every day, Hummingbird-tzin, for one hundred and nineteen quills. I live for months in a suit, eating my own waste, breathing my own toxins, grubbing in the dirt, for one hundred and nineteen quills. I break into tombs filled with explosive gasses; I watch my friends get killed by accidents with earthmoving equipment, or suit ruptures or sheer carelessness, or from drink or drugs or mindless brawls in some grimy hole-in-the-wall bar, all for one hundred and nineteen quills a day.

  "How many quills are in my bank account?" She shook her head, feeling enormous, crushing weariness press down on her like a planet. "Maybe two, three hundred. Everything else goes home to my mother, who manages to keep shoes on my children's feet, food in their mouths, maybe some new soft for the home comp so they can learn. My son is going to be eight years old next year, oh mighty Judge, and unless I have nearly thirty thousand quills in my bank account, he won't be able to get into a calmecac school or a pochteca academy, which means he'll have to work lookout on a lumbering crew, watching for woodgaunts or frayvine—just so we can keep paying the rent on what little land we do have."

  "That's nonsense," Hummingbird said, startled. "The calpulli schools are—"

  "Free? Maybe on Anáhuac they are, maybe for the sons and daughters of landowners, surely for the nobility—and you are a noble, aren't you? But on New Aberdeen, there aren't those kinds of luxuries, not for landless tenants. Not for Swedish immigrants. Not for my children."

  The judge said nothing, settling back on his heels. Gretchen felt the pressure in her chest ease a little and she put her head between her knees.

  "How did you get an education?" The anger was gone from the nauallis's voice. Gretchen didn't look up.

  "My grandmother's father was a Royal Navy commander in the Last War." Anderssen wanted to lie down and close her eyes, but managed to resist. "He was killed in action off Titan and his service pension passed to her. When my grandparents fled Anáhuac during the Conquest, she put the pension money—which wasn't much, but something—in a Nisei bank. When I was old enough to enter a school and I needed tutors and up-to-date software and living expenses, she broke it out. Sixty years of interest can make a little pile fairly big—but all that was gone by the time I finished university."

  There was a hissing sound again and Gretchen realized the nauallis had a habit of biting on the tip of his oxygen tube when he was thinking.

  "The Imperial academies are free—" Hummingbird started to say.

  "—if you can gain admittance. How many students do you think apply every year? There are millions of applicants, millions. I'm sure your relatives back on Anáhuac think the system is fair, but they're landowners and inside the Seven Clans. They're not exiles on a backwoods hellhole like Aberdeen, saddled with a crushing tax burden to subsidize the landed colonists and treated like dirt by the so-victorious planetary government."

  Silence again. Gretchen saw night had advanced to the peaks lining the eastern edge of the basin. The wind—thankfully-seemed to be dying down.

  "So you've come for money." Hummingbird sounded suspicious. "No you haven't! If you were really only interested in the cylinder and your 'fair' compensation, you'd be sitting up on the ship, filing suits in district court at Ctesiphon by t-relay!"

  Gretchen nodded, her bleak mood lifting fractionally. "So true."

  "Then why?"

  She sighed, forcing herself to her feet. Her left leg was starting to fall asleep. "Because I want you to give me the cylinder back without all that legal fuss. And you desperately need my help and I can't say I've ever let someone carry a load too heavy for them without offering a hand." The angle of the nauallis's head shifted questioningly. "You're not getting back upstairs without me and my Midge, Hummingbird-tzin, and unless you do you can't remand the cylinder into my possession without us all spending years mired in the Cihuacoatl's court of appeals."

  "I see. I am sure Chu-sa Hadeishi would find your lack of confidence disheartening."

  "Ah-huh." Gretchen walked, creaking a little, to the cargo stowage of the Gagarin. "You're aware of the altitude limits of these aircraft?"

  "Yes," Hummingbird replied, following her. "But they don't matter. A shuttle from the Cornuelle will retrieve me from the observatory camp when they return from their hunt."

  "How long will that take, do you suppose?" Gretchen popped the latches and began unl
oading a pressure tent and her cook kit. "A couple weeks? A month?"

  "I'm a patient man," Hummingbird replied, taking the bundle from her. "I've waited longer for retrieval before."

  Gretchen looked the nauallis up and down with a wry expression. "I'm sure you have a lot to think about. Do you know how long these z-suits will last down here? Down here with this dust eating away at them every minute of every hour? I don't suppose you talked to Sinclair before loading up your gear?"

  "The xenobiologist? No ..."

  Gretchen fished around behind the seat of the ultralight and pulled out a bulky object which looked for all the world like an old-fashioned hair dryer. "Got one of these?"

  Hummingbird shook his head. "What is it?"

  "It's worth an extra six, seven days in this acid bath. This thing uses a magnetic field to strip the microfauna living in the dust from your suit—or other equipment—if they haven't managed to burrow in yet."

  Hummingbird became entirely still and Gretchen's nose wrinkled up at an undefinable, but unmistakable impression of the nauallis listening. After a moment, he stirred, then knelt down and ran his fingers through the pea-sand underfoot.

  "Try an ultraviolet band on your goggles," she suggested. "They'll shine momentarily when you disturb the surface."

  Hummingbird straightened up, shaking dust from his gloves. "How many days do we have?"

  "Safely? About two weeks. Pushing our luck and assuming the buildings at the observatory camp are still intact when we get there, maybe twenty days."

  The judge stared up at the darkening sky. "And the Cornuelle?"

  "You can call them if you'd like. I'm sure the honorable captain will give you an estimate of when he hopes to return."

  Hummingbird said nothing.

  "I thought so." Gretchen marked out a rectangle with her boot, then dumped the tent bundle at one end. "You're serious about removing the traces of our expedition, aren't you? Well, you're going to need me, my Midge and the extra supplies I brought if you want to succeed."

  "Will I?" The judge sounded irritated. "You have no idea what I intend to do."

  "Doesn't matter," she said, unsealing the bag. With long-experienced fingers she flipped the rolled mat out onto the sand. At the motion, the tent stiffened and snapped into a long, broad rectangle. "I'll do my best to keep you alive so you can do ... whatever you're going to do. Then, when we're back at the observatory camp, I'll make sure we get picked up before our suits erode and we wind up like Doc Russovsky."

  "I don't need your help," Hummingbird started to say.

  "Hummingbird-tzin, you are being stone-headed." Gretchen tried to glower, but gave up. She was too tired. "You cannot remove all evidence of human presence here if you remain." She paused a beat. "You are human, aren't you?"

  THE CORNUELLE

  Deep in shipnight, Hadeishi surrendered to futility and opened his eyes. The cabin was dark, only furtively lit by the soft glow of a chrono panel beside his desk. In the dim green light, shelves of books and papers loomed enormous against the walls. Hadeishi threw back the coverlet and swung out of bed. Sleep had eluded him, weary mind filled with a constant stream of images—phantoms of the day's events, wild imaginings of what would come, a nightmare of being dragged before a court of inquiry—and he felt worse than when he'd gone to bed.

  "A fine hell awaits Hummingbird and Anderssen for inflicting this upon me," Mitsuharu grumbled as he found a robe. Silk and velvet slid across wiry, muscled shoulders and he glared at the comp. Late in third watch, he saw. Four o'clock. "What a wretched hour to be awake."

  His stomach grumbled, making the captain think of tea and hot soup. Breakfast was still hours away, but the act of waking had convinced his body it was time to eat. Shuffling his feet into a pair of shipshoes, Hadeishi tucked long, loose hair behind his ears and went out, kimono cinched tight. Shipsnight always felt cold, though environmental maintained a constant temperature at all times and the corridors were brightly illuminated.

  He was not surprised, however, to find Sho-sa Koshō in the tiny rectangular space of the officer's informal mess. Hadeishi was amused to see the young woman was dressed informally—no jacket, the collar of her duty uniform unsealed, the sleeves of an oatmeal-colored shirt rolled back. The exec was removing a cup from the automat as he shuffled into the room.

  "Hello, Susan," Mitsu nodded at her, feeling stubbled, unshaven and out of sorts. Koshō, for her part, looked entirely composed. "Are you up early or out late?"

  "Late, Chu-sa," she replied, studiously avoiding looking directly at him. "Hayes has been running navigational scans of the asteroid belt. I was considering the data and time elapsed."

  Mitsu grunted, punching up a cup of bancha-grade yamacha. He waited, hands in the pockets of his robe, while a cup descended from the machine and filled with hot, black liquid. Cradling the tea, he shuffled to the table where Susan was sitting. She raised an eyebrow as he approached, nostrils flaring at the sharp, distinct odor wafting from his cup.

  "With respect, Chu-sa, how can you drink such a cheap, bitter grade of tea?" Koshō seemed to shrink away from the harsh smell. "It's barely cured at all!"

  "This?" Mitsu swirled the liquid, watching grayish foam twist into a corkscrew pattern. "My father used to make this for us every morning when I was little, before we went to school. If I rise early, I can't drink anything else. There is one thing missing, though."

  "Which is?" Susan put her own cup—filled with a delicate golden broth of steaming water, boiled rice and finely rolled leaves—aside with a grimace.

  Hadeishi smiled fondly. "The smell of diesel and wet pavement. In Shinedo there's rain almost every night, or fog ... that's what I remember best. Sharp black tea and the sound of my shoes in the mist as I walk to school, hearing the heavy trucks on the old highway, bringing goods into the market district."

  Koshō's grimace eased a little, but her head tilted questioningly. "What is a truck?"

  Mitsu hid a smile. His executive officer's family background was not included in her service record, but no one who had spent more than a day in her company would classify her as anything less than a daughter of the nobility. In comparison to his own relatively low birth, Hadeishi was sure a great social gulf existed between them. His own family at the feet of an invisible mountain, hers somewhere in the clouds. Outside of the Fleet, he doubted they would have met, or even been allowed in proximity to one another.

  "A truck is like an aircar, but it runs on wheels, on the ground. They burn petroleum distillate for fuel, which is cheap and efficient, though there is a distinctive smell from the combustion process. Very noticeable on a damp, cold morning."

  "Are they still used today?" Susan's tone implied such devices were remnants of some ancient, time-shrouded age of barbarism and chaos. "On Anáhuac?" Or relegated to the colonies, where men struggled to carve a life from howling wilderness, only a single step from hunting with knapped-flint spears and knives of sharpened bone.

  Mitsu nodded, eyes crinkling with a smile over the lip of his cup. "I believe so. The markets of the lower city deal in bulk goods—agricultural products, raw materials, metal, ceramacrete, goods delivered in lots of thousands—in such circumstances the cost of freight is an important consideration. Shuttles, aircars, lifters—they are reserved for luxury items, not for bundles of steel pipe and casks of beer."

  "I suppose." Susan's expression settled from a grimace to a tight mask. "Efficiency must be profit in such an enterprise."

  "Yes," Mitsu said in an equitable voice. I am surprised to hear the filthy, dishonorable word profit from your lips, lady Koshō. Again he suppressed amusement at her reaction. Hadeishi knew he'd never had a better second officer. Koshō was tenacious and hardworking and faultlessly competent, but there was a constant nagging tension between them. A divide which could not be crossed, though they had served together for the better part of three years. For his part, Mitsu was convinced his subordinate was aware of the division between them, but he was equally sure
she did not know exactly why. Susan will think this is the isolation of command; my role as captain drawing such a distinct line between us. Yet, Hadeishi was certain the true gulf lay in the abyss of their respective births and upbringing. Their futures would be different as well, and therein lay the seed of bitter separation.

  In time—in two years, or four, as Fleet decided in its infinite wisdom—Susan Koshō would leave the Cornuelle and be posted to a larger ship—a sleek battle cruiser or a light carrier—as captain and commander. Mitsuharu Hadeishi, of such low birth, would remain aboard the little cruiser, perhaps for the rest of his career. In twenty years, should luck favor him, he might become a flotilla commander, responsible for screening some larger battle group. In twenty years, Koshō would be an admiral and her inflectionless voice would descend to him from on high, ordering his ship into the raging maw of battle.

  Fate, he thought and found solace there. But for now, my duty is to guide her, to make her better, by such means protecting myself and my crew on some later day.

  "What did you find in Hayes's data?" Mitsu took another sip from his cup.

  "Well, sir," Susan settled back in her chair. The tension in her face and shoulders eased, her thoughts turning away from the disreputable mysteries of trade and back to the mission at hand. "Young Smith-tzin had been reviewing our navigational data and found something he did not understand. He brought the data to me, expecting he'd made a mistake or an error." The exec's lips quirked into the ghost of a smile. "He did not make a mistake."

  Susan leaned over and tapped the nearest wall panel awake. The Imperial crest appeared briefly, accompanied by the tinny blare of flutes and drums. She accessed an astronomy module from among a dizzying array of choices. A black field appeared, anchored by a dim yellow disc surrounded by gleaming motes.

  "This is the Ephesian solar system." Koshō's well-manicured forefinger indicated a reddish disk. "The third planet. And here is the asteroid belt which hides our 'wildcat' refinery ship. Hayes has been building a navigational map of the belt, searching for anomalies or radiation spikes—anything that might help us pinpoint the enemy. He became concerned today when—after the first pass of the map was complete—it seemed the belt was too small."