Wasteland of Flint

The Shuttle Wreck, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III

The sun broke free of the eastern mountains and a steady bright light illuminated the roof of Gretchen's pressure tent. Almost immediately, a hot radiance filled the tiny, cramped space. Stale air trapped inside began to heat, making the shelter entirely uncomfortable. The archaeologist groaned and rolled over, burying her head in an olive-drab blanket she'd stolen from Fitzsimmons's rucksack. The cloth was filled with the irritating, precious smell of his aftershave. She wished she were still on the ship, listening to him talk about nothing. Sister of God, she thought wearily, why didn't you remind me to put up the sunshade?

"Because last night was pitch black and thirty below outside, idiot." Gretchen mumbled aloud, then raised her head and groped for her goggles. With her eyes protected from the morning glare, she looked outside and began cursing. Immediately to her left, one buckled, scorched wing of the shuttle cast a long shadow across the sand. The nauallis's pressure tent was well placed to keep cool until the sun had risen above the wreck. "I was tired," she declared to herself, feeling thwarted. "He just got lucky."

Thirty minutes later, half-bathed in her own sweat, Gretchen rolled out of the shelter, her suit, goggles, djellaba and kaffiyeh squared away. She shook out her shoulders, letting the recycler, rebreather apparatus and tool bag settle comfortably on her back and hips. With deft, assured motions she struck and cleaned the tent, then packed the material into a small bag. Chewing a paline-flavored threesquare, she knelt beside Hummingbird's tent and peered inside.

No nauallis, she thought, shaking her head. He shouldn't leave his gear lying around like this. Or does he think I'll play porter for him and pick up the camp? Gretchen snorted at the thought, then gathered up her gear and walked to the Midge. Another fifteen minutes passed in careful scrutiny of the landing gear, the wheels and the lower parts of the aircraft. Russovsky had obviously taken meticulous care of the ultralight. There were many signs of microfauna infection, but they had been cleaned and patched. Gretchen, for her part, took the time to clean all of the exposed surfaces with the magnetic sweeper. Then she surveyed the interior of the cabin with her goggles dialed up into ultra. Seems clean, she thought.

After stowing her baggage and prepping the ultralight for takeoff, Gretchen ran a test on the shipboard systems, including the cameras and the geosensing array Russovsky had added to the underside of the wings. Everything checked out. She amused herself for a few minutes with the cameras, zooming the viewfinders and seeing what kind of magnification they were capable of. They were of moderate quality, so she left them focused on the horizon in case something happened.

Gretchen climbed up into the wreck. The shuttle had been reduced to a skeleton of twisted metal and soot-blackened surfaces. A jumble of unidentifiable wreckage filled the interior, leaving no way to crawl inside. Every nook and cranny was filled with spidery stone filaments and tubelike extrusions. Anderssen grimaced at the mess, then climbed down and began to circle the debris, paying close attention to the hull surface.

Atmospheric shuttles were fitted with heat-ablative polyceramic sheathing. This one had been twisted and warped by the impact of the crash, stripping away long sections of the hex-shaped tiles, leaving them scattered across the sandy floor of the valley. Anderssen bent down and gingerly turned over one of the black hexagons. To her surprise, the underside of the composite was dusty but not eaten away or encrusted with the mineralization she'd come to associate with the microfauna.

"They don't eat everything," she mused, picking up the tile. Under a rubbing fingertip, the ceramic came away clean and shiny. Gretchen frowned before realizing the composite would be designed for minimal air resistance as well as its heat-shedding properties. "Huh. We could collect the whole set and make ourselves a house."

Emboldened by this discovery, she took out an excavation tool and wedged the metal tip between a pair of tiles still attached to the wreck. Both tiles popped off, revealing a honeycombed, stonelike crust beneath. Gretchen drew back, but even the unaided eye could see the delicate filaments so-suddenly exposed to the bare sun wither and corrode. "Sister! They're already eating away the hull."

Her comm woke with a buzz and Hummingbird's harsh voice filled her ears.

"They are. The first storm of any magnitude will tear the sheathing away, scattering the tiles, and then there will be only dead stone."

Gretchen turned, following the winking light of her directional finder and saw a tan and black shape climbing down the face of a long, low dune to her west. A line of footprints smudged the perfectly smooth face. "Where have you been?"

"Two men survived the crash, one injured, one not," the nauallis said, his breathing a little short with the effort of moving in sand. Gretchen could hear a background hiss of his rebreather and the hum of suit systems over the comm link. "They went toward those hills."

The distant figure raised an arm, pointing west.

"Did you find their bodies?" Gretchen continued to move along the edge of the wreck, turning bits of metal and plastic over with her tool. "Or any sign they were picked up?"

"They found a cave at the edge of the hills. A deep cave. They did not come out."

Anderssen clicked her teeth in amusement. "You mean you didn't find any more tracks."

"No." Hummingbird's voice was still thready. "The cave could have another exit, but I did not explore beyond the mouth. The floor was covered with minute bluish crystals — they were not disturbed beyond a certain point."

"Hmm." Gretchen had rounded the western side of the wreck and stood near the tents again, staring at the long scarlike furrow torn across the valley. "These crystals only grow in shadow?"

"Yes." The nauallis began to make better time, having descended the dune to the gravel-strewn floor of the valley. "But there is enough space for two men to find shelter. How swiftly do these structures grow?"

"A good question, old crow." Gretchen bent down and began to unstake the nauallis's pressure tent. "If they have something to eat — and are protected from UV — you can watch them expand with the naked eye."

There was a sigh on the comm, followed by an intermittent hissing sound. "Then both men could have gone deeper into the cave and the crystals might have regrown, covering their tracks."

"I suppose." Gretchen made a face, examining the bottom of Hummingbird's tent. The reinforced floor was discolored and ragged. So much for impact-resistant microfiber. This looks worse than mine does, but it's been sitting here longer. At least a half-hour longer! Better figure out some way to sterilize the ground when we camp. Ah, I know! She stirred the sand with her boot, watching sparkling motes appear among the reddish grains, then disappear. "We should make camp early each day," she said in an offhand voice.

"Very well." Hummingbird approached, striding easily across the hard-packed gravel. Gretchen looked him over and saw he'd managed to get his head scarf and cloak properly secured and draped. "What are you doing with my tent?"

"Seeing how badly it's been damaged," she said, dropping the rotting plastic back on the ground. "Do you have a spare?"

Hummingbird shook his head as he came up. At close range, his eyes were only smudged shadows within the cowl of his kaffiyeh. "What happened?"

"The sand is hungry. I guess it likes the taste of double-flex, single-porosity polymer." Gretchen stifled a sigh and tried not to glare at the Nбhuatl. "We'll have to double-bunk in mine. We'll keep yours as a ground cover for as long as the fabric lasts."

The nauallis turned over the tent himself and Gretchen heard the hiss of an interrupted breathing tube again. "I see," Hummingbird said at last. "What about the aircraft?"

"What about any of our equipment?" she snapped in annoyance. "Everything we have is at risk. Are we leaving here today?"

The nauallis shook his head. "There are some things I have to do first."

"Get busy, then." Gretchen felt a stab of worry, staring at the Midge landing gear. All three wheels were resting in the sand. Great, an inch of dust is dangerous. Well — if we land on solid rock, we should be safe. What are those wheels made of? I'd better find something to protect them with.

The day passed and grew hotter. The nauallis wandered around the wreckage in an aimless fashion, apparently ignoring the fierce, white-hot glare of the sun. Gretchen kept to the thin sliver of shade under the corroded, decaying wing of the shuttle. Her suit was insulated and cooled, but the thin atmosphere of Ephesus offered only meager protection against the radiation flooding down from the system primary. She amused herself by peeling hexagonal tiles from the skin of the shuttle. Each hex was cut with alternating tongues and grooves, allowing a secure fit between the sections.

Gretchen looked up, her attention drawn by a faint muttering sound. She felt disoriented and realized the sun had changed position noticeably, twisting the shadows cast by the wreckage and the boulders to the west. The quality of the air seemed different — though there was no single factor she could bring to mind to account for the feeling.

The nauallis passed by, facing into the sun. Hummingbird seemed to be limping, dragging his feet. Further, he was hunched over and swinging his arms as if he were weighed down by a tremendous weight.

"Crow? Are you all right?" Anderssen rose from her pile of black hexagons. An adhesive from her tool belt seemed to adhere to the ceramic, allowing her to make a series of meter square pads from the material. The first assembly was buried in sand at the base of the shuttle wing. She planned on excavating the offering in a couple of hours to see if the microfauna liked the taste of the bonding agent. "Have you hurt your leg?"

There was no answer, only a faint hissing and chuckling sound on the comm link. Gretchen felt a queer, stomach-churning tension overtake her and jogged out into the sunlight. The nauallis had turned away, heading out along the line of the shuttle's impact. Despite his unsteady gait, Hummingbird made good time. Anderssen blinked in surprise — it seemed the Nбhuatl had suddenly leapt ahead, receding before her eyes. She began to run.

The nauallis shambled along the line of the skid, a long rough gouge in the sand and stony soil. He seemed to waver, weaving his body, kneeling, almost crawling on the ground, moving as if a wind pushed him, but the air was still and cold. Gretchen felt the heat of the pale white disk of the sun burning on her arms, even through the layers of insulation and her cloak. The air pressure in her suit seemed to rise, making it difficult to breath, though the gauges showed nothing abnormal.

Hummingbird grew smaller again, as if he had traveled a great distance over the desolate plain, but he still had not passed the nearest boulder. Gretchen felt her pace slow, following the line of his tracks in the disorderly sand. Now she felt a heaviness in her own limbs, as if the suit had grown thicker, more cumbersome.

Gasping, Gretchen forced her feet to move, to step forward. There was an instant of resistance and then she began to run. She became aware of a peculiar sensation — her legs had become long and heavy, tipped with something sharp, something which dragged in the sand. Her body moved strangely and she weaved, realizing a swing weight followed her motion, acting as a counterweight to her loping stride. Terror rushed up in her throat, green bile biting at her tongue. The sky had darkened to brass, the sun shrunken to a single point of steady white light. Under her feet, the footprints left by Hummingbird were obscured, blown away by the wind and only her heavy, three-toed tread replaced them.

"What was that?" Gretchen found herself standing beside Hummingbird on the crest of a low, scythe-shaped dune. The hills were a dim line along the horizon. Her entire body was aching, starved for breath and she crumpled with agonizing slowness to her knees. Sweat clouded the inside of her goggles and pooled in the hollows of her cheekbones. "What happened?"

The masked face of the nauallis stared down at her. A steadily rising breeze tugged at the man's kaffiyeh and cloak. He did not seem winded by the run across the desert. "You should not have followed me. Now you will have to walk back."

Gretchen tried to rise, but found her attention entirely occupied with the effort of breathing. "I saw…I thought I saw something. There were tracks in the sand… They weren't human footprints."

"Really?" Hummingbird turned away and began moving down the face of the dune with a sideways, half-walking, half-slipping motion. "Come. It will be dark soon."

Both arms trembling with fatigue, Gretchen managed to get to her feet. She blinked, trying to clear away the sweat stinging her eyes. After a moment, she lifted the goggles a fraction to wipe the moisture away with the corner of her kaffiyeh. Even the brief instant of exposure stung her face with freezing cold and the terribly dry Ephesian atmosphere wicked the sweat away. Settling the goggles into their long accustomed grooves beside her nose and along the crest of her cheekbones, Gretchen set off after the nauallis. She felt entirely unsettled and the obvious — unexpected — distance between this unremarkable ridge of sand and the distant, glinting wreck made her feel a little queasy.

"Wait for me," she growled into the comm. "There may be siftsand or hidden crevices!"

Hummingbird did not reply, continuing to walk steadily west.

Swallowing another curse, Anderssen stumbled to the bottom of the dune and then noticed — at last — the beginning of the crash skid in the swale between two lines of dunes. The little valley in front of her was scattered with a litter of hextiles and bits and pieces of decaying metal from the initial impact of the shuttle. "What the — How far did we run? Hummingbird!"

There was no answer and the nauallis's shape disappeared over the next dune. Gretchen stumped after him, uneasily aware of her own exhaustion and the relentless advance of night.

Thin night wind keened through the wreck, swirling among slender towers of calcite and quartz. Gretchen lay in the pressure tent, her head toward the entrance; her breathing mask, goggles and respirator blessedly laid aside. Her nose was covered with medical cream. The moment's exposure out at the end of the impact scar had given her a nasty burn. Part of the door was clear, allowing her to make out the dark shape of the wing surrounded by the blaze of stars. Ephesus had no moon and the constellations seemed terribly bright in such an ebon sky.

She felt a little strange, lying in the darkness, listening to the tent's compressor hum to itself, the shoulder of her z-suit touching Hummingbird's. The tent had an insulated floor, the walls trapped three layers of atmosphere in an airtight sandwich, and a heating element glowed along the roof ridge yet she still felt cold. The only warm part of her entire body was the right shoulder, where she could feel Hummingbird's suit resting against hers.

Is this how he feels all the time? A single warm point in a cold, friendless universe?

Gretchen could feel her legs complaining, even through the haze of painkiller and muscle relaxant dispensed by the medband — all the gods bless that infuriating scrap of metal, which had decided to unlock itself an hour after she'd stumbled, nearly crawling, back into the camp — and trying to cramp up.

"What happened this afternoon?" Anderssen grimaced, hearing her voice as a tight, tinny squeak. "I heard these sounds… I saw strange tracks in the sand… What were you doing out there?"

For a moment, Hummingbird did not respond, though she could feel him shift in his sleepbag. The ruined tent made a good cushion beneath them and Gretchen had managed to find the strength to lay out blocks of hextile as a floor to protect them from the hungry sand. There was a hiss, a clicking sound, then another hiss of air.

"There was nothing to see." In the darkness, his voice sounded contemplative.

Gretchen swallowed a very rude curse and then forced herself to breathe steadily until she thought she could speak without shouting. "I saw you walking very strangely. I heard a sound like someone singing over the comm link. I went out to see what you were doing and…and I felt something strange in the air. The sun seemed…different. I started to feel odd, as if my body were very heavy. Then — suddenly — I'm three k away on top of a dune! How do you explain that?"

There was another silence. Hummingbird turned towards Gretchen. She could see starlight glinting in his eyes. "You can't have heard anything," he said in a musing, suspicious voice. "I had my comm turned off."

"What? That's impossible. I heard you chanting!"

"You're very tired, Anderssen-tzin. You should probably sleep now."

Hummingbird's fingers closed around Gretchen's wrist and her head rolled back. Though she tried to keep her eyes open, sleep rose up and swallowed her whole. Distantly, she heard a raspy voice singing:

"Tla xi-huГўl-huiГўn, in Temic-xoch…tla xihuГўl…"

Gretchen became aware of a faint clear light filling the tent and she opened her eyes, wondering if the nauallis had turned on a flashlight. Instead, she beheld the full vault of heaven, flush with glittering stars. They were tightly packed, a carpet of gleaming, colorful jewels, and their light fell upon her face with a cold, delicate touch. Wind ruffled her hair and for a moment — just a moment — Gretchen smelled realspruce and pine and the bitter, pungent tang of wood smoke.

I'm home, she thought, then sat up, heart thudding with fear, the sleepbag clutched to her chest.

The tent was gone. Hummingbird lay beside her, a dark indistinct shape wrapped in a dirty woolen blanket. She looked to her right and saw both Midges sitting on the sand, undisturbed, the smooth metallic shape of the shuttle rising behind them, metal skin intact, the windows glowing with the light of flight instruments.

Impossible. Gretchen abruptly looked to her left. What was that? Something moved!

A man, crouching on his hands and knees, was staring at her. He was blond, square-jawed, with short-cropped hair. Dark ink circled his biceps with interlocking genome trails. A shipsuit clung to taut muscle and a broad chest. A name tag gleamed on his shoulders and breast beside a star-shaped logo.

You can't be here, she tried to say. Then she realized he was not wearing a helmet.

Neither am I!

She woke up in the tent, the air stifling and close, blood thundering in her ears. A dry, parched taste filled her mouth, as if she'd gone without water for days. In the darkness, Gretchen managed to find the tube of her water pouch by feel and slumped in relief to feel the brackish, metallic fluid sliding across her tongue.

Beside her, Hummingbird was snoring softly, deeply asleep.