Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  "I risked." The corners of the Méxica's eyes crinkled up. "Such ephemeral things as these, they exist on a very narrow margin. They are parasites. They need to 'eat' with as little cost to themselves as possible. If there is a rich source of what they need, they will flock to it like bacteria growing in the outwash of a factory power plant." One hand moved to indicate the mountain above them. "This is not a rich paradise. This is a desert. Here we are food, not just our bodies, but the exhalation of our breath, the leakage from our recyclers, radiation from our powerpacks. The explosion of the bullets from your gun."

  Gretchen pressed a thumb against her left eyebrow. A too-familiar tickling was starting to brew behind her eye. Swallowing a trace of nausea, she punched a code on her medband. "So—you're saying our fear and panic were enough to keep them alive."

  "Fear," Hummingbird said, giving her a piercing look, "is always the enemy."

  Gretchen turned away again, waiting for the chill rush of meds to blanket her rising migraine. Talking to Hummingbird made her very tired. She peered out through the filament, seeing the daystorm had settled into a reddish haze, reducing visibility to almost nothing. She did not feel at all well.

  By mid-afternoon, the storm dwindled away into a herd of dusty whirlwinds dancing on the plains east of the Escarpment. A singular hour arrived, wherein the eastern sky was fully light and the air had fallen still. Gretchen and Hummingbird emerged from the overhang to find the ultralights partially buried in blown sand. The east steadily darkened as they worked, clearing a coating of dark cadmium-colored dust from the wings and making sure the air intakes and engines were free of microflora.

  The sun passed behind the peaks of the Escarpment and shadow swallowed the camp. Hummingbird and Gretchen were both busy inside the overhang, packing the last of their gear into rucksacks or carrybags, so they did not notice the upper wing of the Gagarin suddenly glow with a soft, diffuse light The forward edge grew dark for a moment, then pulsed once, then twice. A brief interval of darkness followed, before the phosphor array resumed flickering in a series of bright, sharp pulses.

  After a moment, the light dimmed down to nothing, though close examination would show the phosphor array shifting state with dizzying speed. Inside the aircraft, the main panel flickered awake and a number of gauges and dials registered commands passing through the control system. The in-flight data recorder switched on and, after a flicker of conversation between the appropriate subsystems, went into "quiet" mode.

  Then everything went dark again, save for the local comm relay, which was now awake and listening for suit traffic.

  THE CORNUELLE

  Mitsuharu sat in his office, overhead lights dimmed down to rows of faint orange glowworms. A single hooded lamp cast a circle of sharp white light on the papers, storage crystals and pens covering the top of his desk. A comp panel on the bulkhead was filled with a navigational plot—a bright dot for the ship and five hundred thousand kilometers of asteroid, meteor debris, interstellar ice and dust in all directions. The image had been building for hours, data flowing in slowly from the ship's skin fabric and the newly tuned g-array.

  In the dim light, the captain's face was mostly in shadow, head against the back of his chair, eyes closed, thin-fingered hands clasped on his breast. The rest of the room, the stacks of books, the ancient pottery bowls and rice-paper paintings were entirely dark.

  A sound recording was playing. Children were singing, their careless voices echoing from the walls of an unseen building.

  Kaeru no uta ga

  Kikoete kuro yo

  Guwa... guwa... guwa... guwa

  In the background, the sound of trucks passing on a road mixed with the high, thin drone of a supersonic transport overhead. Dogs barked in the distance and a woman called out. The children splashed in water and sang another round, voices sweet in unconscious harmony.

  Ge ge ge ge ge ge ge ge,

  Guwa guwa guwa

  In his memories, Mitsu knew the building had whitewashed wooden walls and a roof of green iron. Paper lanterns ornamented with pen drawings of birds and flowers hung from the eaves. Inside the house, the floors were glossy dark redwood, with tatami mats and rice-paper screens between the rooms. An old man would be sitting in his study, short white hair lying flat against a sun-bronzed scalp. He would be reading, a book turned into the cool light slanting down between the closely spaced buildings. The study smelled of mold and paper and dust and ink.

  Guwa... guwa... guwa ... guwa, sang the children in the yard. They were playing with frogs.

  On the comp display, another level of detail slowly appeared, etching images of tumbling, shattered mountains of ice and stone and iron ever clearer.

  In his memories, Mitsu knew the street in front of the little house was black macadam, potholed and crumbling at the edges. He heard a delivery truck putter past and saw an enameled red panel with the word asahi painted in black and yellow. Thick green grass sprouted from every crevice along the sidewalks. The walls of the houses were tinged with moss and tiny blue flowers.

  On this day, as the children splashed in the mud, making frog pens of twigs and glass jars from the kitchen, the sun was shining through heavy gray clouds, making the air sparkle and shimmer. To the east, a line of mountains rose, white shoulders gleaming with ice and snow.

  The recording ended. After a short pause, the scratchy, keening sound of a bow scraping across taunt gut string emerged from the quiet silence. The shamisen wailed up into the sound of falling leaves. A hand drum began to tap in counterpoint. Mitsu settled deeper into his chair, letting the warm fabric carry the weight of his head. The strings and the drum lifted into summer wind and a reedy bamboo flute joined them, carrying falling rain.

  A man's voice—deep, hoarse, rich as the rivers and streams beneath the Golden Mountain, melancholy with longing for a homeland lost beyond the sea—began to sing. One of the musicians coughed, almost covering the sound with the hem of his kimono.

  Kimi ga yo wa,

  Chiyo ni yachiyo ni,

  Sazare ishi no

  Mitsu could see his father sitting on the edge of the porch surrounding the garden, face shining in the light of the lanterns and lamps. The shamisen across his leg was a dark walnut color, faced with amber-tinted pine. In memory, the hands were nimble on the strings, while the porch roof and the house walls gave his graceful voice a full, mellow echo.

  Iwao to nari te,

  Koke no musu made

  On the comp display, the ship continued to move in endless night, skin taut against the fabric of space, straining to hear the slow lilting song of gravity humming in the void.

  SLOT CANYON TWELVE

  After hiding in a cave for two days, Gretchen felt relieved to be airborne and mobile again. The Gagarin hummed around her, engines chuckling, broad wings spread wide, canopy whistling with the familiar, proper sound of air rushing past. The night around her was blessedly still and the ultralight made a slow, tight turn in the narrow confines of the canyon. Sheer rock walls drifted past, shining glassily in the glare of the wing lights. Gretchen had turned off the collision alarm—though the canyon was hundreds of feet wide, the turning radius of the Midge brought the wingtips almost to brushing distance on each circuit.

  Below, the phosphor-bright illumination cast by Hummingbird's ultralight made the canyon floor a sharp jumble of black and white, boulders and sand. Gretchen could see twin coils of water vapor rising from the idling engines. The nauallis, however, was nowhere to be seen. The tunnel entrance was a void of darkness against the matte nothingness of the cliff.

  The momentary vision swept away as the Gagarin continued its turn. Gretchen tried to maintain focus on the aircraft and keep her slow, spiraling turn going, but she was worried. The Méxica lad been inside too long for comfort. Feels like an hour, she grumbled to herself. How long, she suddenly wondered, would it take for the gray to make a copy of a single ragged crow?

  The Gagarin arced around again, now at least a hundred meters from the
canyon floor, and she caught sight of something bright out of the corner of her eye. Gretchen looked down and to the side, trying not to reflexively swing the aircraft to follow her eye movement, and saw the trapezoidal door now lit from within by a cold, pale light.

  "Hummingbird!" Gretchen's voice spiked in alarm. "Let's go!"

  A figure bolted out of the opening, cloak flying out behind him. A too-familiar radiance filled the doorway and in the cold sepulchral glare she saw the man hurl himself into the cockpit of the Midge and slam the door shut. Cold oily light spilled out onto the dust, lapping around splintered sandstone and granite. Both engines flared bright with exhaust and the Midge leapt forward, sand spewing away from the wheels.

  Gretchen pulled back gently on the control yoke and Gagarin soared up into the dark, constricted sky. The overhanging cliffs on either side rushed in, but she adjusted nimbly, sweat beading in the hollow of her neck, sending the ultralight dancing higher. Through the transparent panel under her feet, Anderssen saw the other Midge dart up the canyon, lifting off only meters ahead of the advancing radiant tide.

  The cold light cut off—a shutter slammed on an empty window—and Gretchen felt the air in the canyon heave with a sudden, sharp blast. A cloud of black smoke jetted from the tunnel mouth, drowning the queer light, and Hummingbird's Midge wobbled in flight as a Shockwave rolled past.

  Gretchen wrenched her attention back to the business of flying, narrowly dodging the Gagarin around a jutting outcropping. The airframe groaned, complaining at such rough handling, but the Midge swept past the obstacle and soared on down the canyon. Below her, Gretchen was peripherally aware of Hummingbird's ultralight straining to catch up.

  The canyon behind both aircraft filled with a black, turgid cloud of dust and ash. The cliff-face above the tunnel shuddered, still rocked by the violence of the explosion and then—with majestic, slow grace—splintered away from the core of the mountain and thundered down into the canyon. More dust, ash and grit roared up with a flat, massive thump.

  Gretchen heard the blow, and grinned tightly, fingers light on the stick. This business of flying at night, even with goggles, radar and the strobe-white glare of the wing lights was tricky-business. I hope that's the end of the nasty dirty color, she thought peripherally, some tiny corner of her mind pleased to see something which had threatened her destroyed.

  The odometer on the control panel began to count the kilometers as they flew on into the night. There was a long way to go before dawn roused the slot canyon to near-supersonic violence.

  Behind the massive barrier of the Escarpment, dawn was much delayed. When the clear, hot light of the Ephesian primary finally pierced the canopy of the Gagarin, both ultralights were far out over the western desert. Hummingbird's Midge was only a hundred meters to starboard, easily keeping pace in the cool, thick morning air.

  Gretchen clicked local comm open. "Shall we land?"

  She hadn't heard a peep from the nauallis since they'd left the canyon. Watching the roseate glow of dawn creeping across the rumpled, barren landscape below them was interesting enough without his company. They had passed over a broad valley filled with pipeflowers in the predawn hours and Gretchen had been very glad the spindly, fluted organisms were quiescent after sunset. There had been places—deep ravines or defiles in the broken land—where jeweled lights had gleamed in the ebon blanket of night.

  The palaces of the fairy queen, she thought, staring down at the traceries and cobwebs of trapped, frozen light passing below her. And by day? Nothing, only desolation and lifeless stone. I wonder if Sinclair has dared see the desert by night, her veils drawn aside....

  "Are you tired?" Hummingbird's voice sounded thick and muzzy.

  "Have you been sleeping?" Gretchen frowned across the distance between the two aircraft. She couldn't make out more of the nauallis than the outline of his kaffiyeh in the close confines of the Midge cockpit. "We should set down before the air grows too thin—we need to conserve fuel after burning so much to reach the summit of Prion."

  "Understood," he said, voice clearer. She could see him shift in his shockchair. "Pick a suitable location."

  He was sleeping, she thought wryly, glancing at the autopilot display on her panel. He slaved his Midge to Gagarin and tagged along like my little brother at a Twelfth Night party.

  Scratching a sore on her jaw where the rebreather strap was starting to wear, Gretchen began to scan the radar map of the land ahead, searching for a cave or ridge or anything which would let them escape the heat and brilliance of the sun. I wonder what our trusty guide has to say.

  She punched up the travel maps in Russovsky's log and began going through the notes, wondering where the geologist had landed on her circumnavigation of the globe. After twenty minutes of keeping one eye on the horizon and one on the maps, she opened the local channel again.

  "There's a place ahead," Gretchen said, squinting at the lumpish dun-colored landscape. "Russovsky calls it Camp Six—a canyon, an overhang big enough to pull a Midge into the shade—she'd stayed there two, three times. About an hour, hour and a half."

  The nauallis responded with a grunt and Anderssen was disgusted to see him lean back in his shockchair, apparently asleep again.

  The full weight of day was upon the land, flattening every color and detail to burnt brass. Russovsky's overhang stood in the curve of a long, S-shaped ravine where hundreds of tons of sandstone had crumbled away, leaving a fan-shaped talus slope. Gretchen climbed among the upper rocks, laboring to breathe as she pulled herself up onto a tilted, rectangular boulder. She stood up and the roof of the raw amphitheater was within arm's reach.

  Curious, she scanned through a variety of wavelengths visible in her goggles. From below, where the two Midges stood in partial shade and Hummingbird was puttering around the camp, setting up the tent and making a desultory attempt at breakfast, she'd seen a faint pattern on this rock, something like interlocking arcs or circles.

  Close up she didn't see anything unusual, which Gretchen admitted to herself was par for the course. Rock fractures or mineral deposits... A little miffed at getting excited over nothing she looked around, taking in the barren, sun-blasted landscape. The ravine was very peculiar-looking to her eye—no water had run on the surface of Ephesus III for millions of years, so the bottom of the "canyon" was jagged and littered with fragile-looking debris. A similar canyon on Earth or Ugarit would have been washed clean, worn down, abraded by flash floods or even a running stream. But there was nothing like that here, only the evidence of constant wind.

  No litter in the shade, she thought, left by those who passed this way before. No broken bits of pottery, flaked stone tools, arrowheads. No detritus of bones from the kill, cast aside from where afire burned against the stone, leaving soot buried deep in every crevice. Nothing but the spine of the world, open, exposed, left out to bleach in the sun. ... Gretchen thought she understood why Russovsky had spent so much time alone in the wasteland, drifting on the currents of the air, floating high in the sky in her Midge.

  "Is there lunch yet?" Anderssen began picking her way down through the broken, eggshell-like slabs of sandstone.

  "Yes," Hummingbird said in a grumpy voice.

  Gretchen sighed, but said nothing, preparing herself for threesquares straight from the tube.

  She was not disappointed, though the Méxica had scrounged up some flavored tea. Still, protein paste was protein paste, even if the taste approximated the reddish dust covering every surface in all directions. Gretchen watched Hummingbird eat, making sure he finished his daily ration and drank all his tea. When the nauallis was done, she lifted her chin questioningly.

  "Can you show me what to do? How to control this sight?"

  Hummingbird looked up, green eyes clouded with distracted thoughts. "I can show you how to begin," he said slowly, as if each word were painful. "Small things. Simple things."

  "Fine." Gretchen squared her shoulders, feeling a kink in her neck. He's worried. "Whatever you think is
safe. Just being able to tell when I'm seeing or just seeing would be good."

  The nauallis nodded, looking around him on the ground. Take a moment," he said, voice subtly changing tone. "Close your eyes, let your mind empty, and feel around among these stones. Find one which feels right in your hands. Don't hurry. We're not going anywhere."

  Gretchen did as he bid, though after finally sitting down to eat she felt very tired. Flying by night sort of implied sleeping by day, a little voice muttered in her head, not crawling about among broken shale. As before, when she closed her eyes a great commotion seemed to brew up in her thoughts. This time, the voices and memories and flashes of things she'd seen or done or heard were overlaid by a patina of exhaustion which made them distant and faded. Old sepia-tone images of her life. Despite a great desire to curl up in her sleepbag, Gretchen moved blindly around the camp, letting her fingers see the sand and grit and broken little stones.

  Eventually, her hand touched something and she stopped. The bit of rock felt warm, almost hot, even through her gloves. Gretchen opened her eyes. She was at the edge of the rockfall, far from the brilliant demarcation of light and shade. The glassy, dark stone in her hand was curved and sharp along one edge. Could make a tool from this, she thought, turning the piece of flint over in her hands. Without much work at all.

  "How does that feel?" Hummingbird said. He was lying down in the tent, his eyes closed.

  "Good," Gretchen replied, becoming aware of the rightness of the stone in her hand. "It felt warm for a moment."

  "Put it in your pocket," he said. "Now close your eyes again and feel about. But this time, find a stone which does not feel proper. One you do not wish to touch. Take your time."