Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  “PORT CENTRAL.” The voice was flat, tinny. Jink held the com close to her mouth, as she had seen the Mirror do.

  “Burnstone,” she croaked. The flames had caught at her throat.

  “PORT CENTRAL,” the voice repeated.

  “Burnstone,” Jink said, fighting spinning nausea, “your Mirrors have started a burn!”

  “WHO IS THIS. NAME AND NUMBER.”

  Jink looked at it. The voice tried another tack.

  “WHERE ARE YOU.”

  “I’m—a building. A store building.”

  “WHERE. COORDINATES.”

  “It—I know nothing of your numbers.” Blood dripped down her back from between her shoulderblades. She blinked, focussed. “The storehouse lies beneath the moon’s path as she travels across the sky from your Port to the horizon. The wind blows from my left as I face ... as I face . . .”

  “PLEASE GIVE DIRECTIONS.”

  A great wave of pain swept over her.

  “The clouds above are thick and soft. One holds the shape of a woman’s face. One yet to pass overhead is a tree, the trunk short and strong.”

  “REPEAT. PLEASE GIVE DIRECTIONS.”

  Jink fought the urge to shout at the stupid voice. She was giving the best directions she knew. One had only to look at the sky and follow. She tried again.

  “The grass here is…”

  “GET OFF THE AIR YOU LUNATIC. WE ARE TRACING THIS CALL AND GOD HELP YOU WHEN YOU SOBER UP IN THE LOCKHOUSE. WE’RE SENDING A PICKUP TO —”

  “But one is already coming,” Jink said, trying to remember if she had already said that. “It must not land. Its weight will only make the burn worse. You must tell it not to land.”

  The voice shouted something but Jink ignored it.

  “It must not land,” she repeated. She was feeling very ill.

  The ground was hot to the touch. There was danger of an extrusion. Port would not listen. Day was as safe as possible. She had to get away.

  She dropped the wristcom and started walking. Vaguely, she realized that her arms and legs were red with her own blood. She kept moving. A walk, a shambling trot, a walk again. Every step counted.

  She fell. The slight jar was enough to send her drifting off into nothingness.

  When she woke it was dawn. She was sick and cold but her mind was clearer. The gaping cut that ran from between her shoulder to midway down her back had stopped bleeding. Her skin felt raw. From behind the hummock of grass where she lay she could hear Mirrors shouting, the rumble and clank of heavy machinery. Company had sent people to fight the burn.

  Jink eased herself into squatting position and watched for a while.

  They were doing it all wrong. The machine was tearing at the soil, lifting it out in huge chunks and dumping them in piles. Figures in suits and masks walked in a line, spraying foam. Jink found it difficult to understand their stupidity. Had no one told them that the only way to deal with burnstone was to leave well alone? All this walking and digging aggravated the burn.

  She ran towards a black suit, grabbed the arm. “Stop,” she shouted, “you must stop.”

  The man turned. A Mirror Captain. Jink’s hair was singed and she was crusted with dried blood. The Mirror turned his head slightly, and called to another black-suited figure.

  “Lieutenant!”

  “Sir?”

  “Take this native to the medic. Find out what she’s doing here, how on god’s earth this thing started.”

  “Sir.” She looked at Jink. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes. But there is no time.”

  She swayed and the lieutenant reached out, intending to steady her. Jink backed away.

  The lieutenant flipped up her visor. Perhaps the native would be reassured at the sight of her face. She reached out again, but hesitated. There was so much blood. How could she tell where was safe to touch?

  Jink closed her eyes, listened with her whole body. She could feel the burn-paths now. One heading north, one slightly eastwards, downslope, towards Oriyest. Nearby, an extrusion of hot rock bubbled from the ground. She heard the Captain yelling for his Mirrors to smother it. She opened her eyes, caught the lieutenant’s arm.

  “Listen to me. Your . . . foam. It keeps the heat in. It feeds the burn. You must not. The digging it—” She did not know the outlandword. “It... angers the burn, prods it to greater ferocity. You must not. Leave it.”

  “Lieutenant!” the Captain snapped. The lieutenant spun round guiltily. “I told you to take the native to the medic.”

  “Sir.” She hesitated. “Sir, she was speaking of the burn. The fire, sir. Maybe we should listen. She seemed most certain that—”

  “Lieutenant, the girl has a lump on her head the size of an egg. She is concussed, suffering from shock and weak from loss of blood. Even if she were talking sense, which I very much doubt, would it be fair to keep her here in this condition?”

  “I. . . no, sir.”

  “The medic, lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jink did not stay to listen further. She had tried, but now there was Oriyest to think of. She ran.

  The Captain bit back an oath. “No, lieutenant. Let her go. We’ve enough to worry about here.”

  ~ * ~

  Midmorning. Jink jogged over the familiar rise.

  Where was the flock? Neither sight nor smell gave any clue. She cupped her hands around her mouth.

  “Oriyest!”

  The call echoed and was still. She ran on. She came to a great outcrop of rock that towered above her like a bank of stormcloud.

  “Oriyest!”

  The rocks echoed back her shout, and something else. The herd bird flapped heavily overhead.

  “Clan!”

  The herd bird hesitated, made another overpass. Jink smothered her impatience, forced herself to sink slowly into a crouch on the grass. She knew she smelled of burnstone and blood. Clan would be nervous. She waited.

  The herd bird spread his leathery wings and sculled air, landing an arm’s length away. He did not fold his wings and his crest stayed erect. Jink made no move.

  Slowly, cautiously, he sidled nearer. Jink watched his beak slits flaring as he sampled the air. He hopped closer. Jink spat in her palm, rubbed it against the grass to wash away blood and burn smells. She reached out an inch at a time. Clan lowered his head but did not hop away. Her fingertips brushed his pectorals. He huffed. She scratched at the soft down around his keelbone. He began to croon.

  “Where’s the flock, Clan? And Oriyest?”

  He grumbled in his throat, then flapped and hopped a few paces towards the rocks. Jink levered herself to her feet and followed slowly.

  Oriyest had left her a message, a satchel of food and a waterskin. Jink read the message first, picking up the pebbles one by one and dropping them in her pouch. The message stones, rounded and smooth from generations of use, were one of Oriyest’s treasures.

  She ate cautiously, uncertain of her stomach, and thought hard. The message said that Oriyest had felt the burn and had taken the flock to their safe-place. Jink was to join her there as soon as possible. If Jink was injured, then she was to send Clan to the flock and Oriyest would come to her. If neither Jink nor Clan came to the flock within three days, Oriyest would journey to the store building and then if necessary to Port Central itself in search of her.

  Message stones did not allow for subtlety of tone but Jink could well imagine Oriyest’s grim face as she placed those particular pebbles. She sighed, wishing Oriyest was beside her now.

  She shook nuts and dried fruit into one hand and clucked encouragingly at Clan. He sidled over on stiff legs and neatly picked up the offering. When he had finished, Jink pulled him to her. She pointed his head in the direction of the safeplace and scratched at his keelbone.

  “Find Oriyest, Clan. Oriyest.” She pressed her cheek onto his skull and hummed the findflock command twice, feeling the bone vibrate. She pushed him. In an ungraceful clutter of legs and wings he hauled himself into t
he air. Jink watched him flap northward, then lay down on her stomach. She was very tired.

  It was afternoon and she could not expect Oriyest before nightfall, some time before the burnpath crept its soft, dangerous way here. She thought of the Outlandar store building; anger at their stupidity stirred sluggishly at the back of her mind. She had heard rumours of their ignorance but to be faced with its enormity was something else. Outlandar ignorance would cost them vast areas of pastureland, destroyed in the burn. Even if a good portion survived, the area would be unstable for seasons. Burnstone was like that. She had heard of one seam that had smouldered for generations before sighing into ash.

  The Outlandar respected nothing. According to the last journeywoman teller to share a fire with herself and Oriyest, the strangers had triggered a handful of burns already. Still they did not learn. Were they capable of it?

  ~ * ~

  Jink stretched, grimacing as the new scar on her back tugged awkwardly. It was healing well but strength was slow to return.

  She hunkered down again. The youngling on the grass before her would not live: the flock was birthing before time. The long run from the rock to the safeplace ahead of the burn had shocked the young from their mothers’ wombs before they were grown enough to live. Jink looked at it sadly. Even as she watched, it stopped breathing.

  On the way down the hill she caught the echoes of Oriyest’s singsong commands to Clan as they herded the flock into the gully for the evening. They met at the bottom. Oriyest, stripped to the waist, looked at Jink.

  “The little one died?”

  “Yes.”

  Oriyest sighed. “Flenk dropped two. Both dead. I buried them by the creek.”

  Jink did not know what to say. Flenk was their best producer. If she dropped badly. . . “The others?”

  “I don’t know.” They began walking back to the shaly overhang where they had been camping since their flight from the burn. “They seem sound. If only one or two drop tomorrow then we’ll be over the worst. And we will have been lucky.”

  Her voice was not bitter, now was not the time for such things. The flock must be seen to first. After that there would time to think. Then they would send out the message cord.

  ~ * ~

  T’orre Na found them five days after they sent the cord. The three women sat around their fire, dipping hard dry bread into the stewpot. The sky was clear, bright with stars and the moon’s shining three-quarters face. T’orre Na ate the last mouthful and settled back expectantly. This time, the journeywoman was here not to tell but to listen.

  The fire popped. Jink added another stick.

  “I worry, T’orre Na,” she said.

  The journeywoman looked from Jink’s smooth brow to Oriyest’s calm eyes. “Not about your flock.”

  “No. And yes. We were lucky. We lost less than two handfuls. This time.”

  “Ah.” T’orre Na nodded to herself. She stripped the bark from a twig and began to pick her teeth, waiting for Jink to continue.

  “The Outlandar understand nothing. Much of our grazing is destroyed and will take seasons to re-grow. Do they take heed? No. Their hearts and minds are closed to us. Closed to our land, to what eases it, what angers it.”

  Oriyest looked at T‘orre Na. “Perhaps they have not been taught to listen to the right things.”

  “Is that what you wish, Oriyest? Jink?” The journeywoman tossed her stick into the fire. “You want the Outlandar to learn to hear?”

  “Something must be done.”

  “Indeed.” She paused. “It would not be easy.”

  “Nor impossible, T‘orre Na.” Jink leaned forward. “I have spoken of the two Mirrors—Day and Lieutenant—who would have listened. And Captain, too, was not unkind, just. .

  “Over filled with small things.”

  “Yes,” Jink said, surprised. That was it exactly. His mind had been heaving with little things that meant nothing to her: numbers and quotas, money, promotion, service record . . . She shook her head to free it from those hard, incomprehensible thoughts.

  “They are all the same,” T’orre Na said softly. “I have been to their Port and I have seen.”

  Jink and Oriyest said nothing. Not far away they heard one of the flock shifting over the rocky ground, sending pebbles scattering along the gully. There was an enquiring low from another, then silence.

  “They should be made to hear,” Jink said finally. T ‘orre Na looked at Oriyest who looked right back. The journeywoman sighed.

  “Very well. What will you ask for?”

  Jink pondered. The usual penalty for triggering a burn was double the amount of destroyed land from the wrongdoer’s holdings. But the Outlandar had no land to give.

  “We will ask a hearing. As our reparation price we will demand that the Outlandar listen to us. Listen and hear. We will teach about burnstone. We will demand to learn what it is they want from us, why they came here and put their store buildings on our grazing lands. And when we know more, we will ask more.”

  Oriyest looked at the journeywoman. “Will you help us?”

  T’orre Na looked from Oriyest’s steady gaze to Jink. They would do it anyway, without her. “I’ll help.”

  ~ * ~

  Day was startled when she saw them. Natives were a very rare sight inside Port, and here were two of them, making straight for where she sat at the bar. She recognized one of them as her skinny captive. As they approached, she marvelled at how such a frail-looking thing could have dragged her, in full armour, all the way to the shelter of that rock. But she must have done. There was no other explanation.

  “Greetings, Mirror.”

  “Hello.” She lifted her helmet off the stool next to her. “Uh, sit down.”

  Oriyest nodded. They sat. Day cleared her throat.

  “You shouldn’t be here. Technically, you’re an escapee.” She felt awkward.

  “Will you help us?” Jink asked.

  “Well, sure. But all you have to do is lose yourself. Leave Port. No one’ll think to chase you up.”

  The other one seemed amused. “You mistake us, Mirror.”

  The skinny captive, Jink, laid a hand on her arm. “Listen to us,” she said. “If you can help, we would thank you. It costs nothing to listen, Mirror Day.” Day blinked. “Will you hear us?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The other one spoke. “I am Oriyest. Jink and I tend our flock. Some seasons are good, some are not so good, but we expect this and we survive. This would have been a good season but for the burn you and your companion started.” Her brown eyes were intent on Day’s. “ When you built your store place on our land, we thought: it is not good grazing land they have chosen; perhaps the Outlandar do not know of our custom of permission and barter; we will not make complaint. This has changed.”

  “Now wait a minute. That land is Company land.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. God above, the whole planet is Company land!”

  “No.” Oriyest’s eyes glittered like hard glass beads. “Listen to me, Mirror Day, and hear. Seven seasons ago we petitioned the journeywomen. The land between the two hills of Yelland and K’thanrise, between the river that runs to the sea and the rocks known as Lother’s Finger, was deemed to be ours to use until we no longer have need of it.”

  Day had never thought about natives owning things. “Do you have any of that recorded?”

  Jink frowned. “Recorded?”

  “Yes. Recorded on a disc or in a— No, I don’t suppose you would. Anything written down?” She looked at their blank faces. “Here.” She pulled a pad and stylus from her belt. Wrote briefly. “See?”

  Jink looked at the marks on the pad thoughtfully. “This is a message?”

  “Of sorts. Do you have any, uh, messages saying the land is yours?”

  “Our messages last long enough to be understood. Then…” Jink shrugged.

  Day drummed her fingers on the bar. There must be some way they recorded things. She tried again.

  �
��How would you settle a dispute?” She groped for words. “What would happen if another herder moved onto your land and claimed it?”

  “They would not do that. Everyone knows that land is for our use. If they need more land, they have only to ask.”

  “But how would they know the land is yours? You could be lying.”