Wasteland of Flint

Mons Prion, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III

Sunlight blazed through the canopy of the Gagarin as the ultralight buzzed past a towering pinnacle of slate-gray stone. Gretchen squinted, waiting for her goggles to polarize against the brilliant light. They did, but slowly. The two aircraft had reached an altitude where there was very little atmosphere to diffuse the glare of the solar furnace. She was sweating — the heat load inside the cockpit was tremendous — despite the freezing wind roaring past outside. Both engines were honking fuel warnings and the wing edges had extended to try and generate as much lift as possible.

Hummingbird's insistence on reaching the peak as quickly as possible had resulted in a very dangerous approach. The late afternoon heat robbed them of colder, heavier air and the morning thermals had faltered and failed, so there were no updrafts to push them higher. With so little lift under their wings, both ultralights were burning fuel at a prodigious rate. The Gagarin wallowed between two more knife blade–thin towers of stone and the upper slopes of the mountain came into view at last. Prion loomed above a wilderness of ravines, plunging canyons, skyscraping cliffs and long tongues of shattered tumulus. Gretchen could make out the shining silver wing of Hummingbird's ultralight above and ahead of her, though the nauallis was having just as much trouble gaining altitude.

Broken dark rock slid past beneath her feet, glittering with streaks of frost. Anderssen had seen gloomy sections of canyon hidden from the burning white disc of the sun. Fantastic shapes hid in the shadows, glittering with quartz and garnet and amethyst. There were caves — yawning black cavities flipping past with dizzying speed — and sometimes she could swear strange lights gleamed in the inky depths.

The portside engine honked angrily and Gretchen's free hand danced across the control panel, manually adjusting the flow of hydrogen to the engines. Trying to climb through such thin air was burning too much fuel. The comp was overrunning safety parameters on a second-by-second basis and kept resetting, destroying the smooth microcontrol necessary to keep the Gagarin aloft. Ridges of jagged stone blurred past, talons reaching out for the ultralight's fragile skin.

"We won't be able to get down," she muttered, sweat trickling down her nose. "We'll be trapped on some Sister-forsaken mountainside — if we don't crash first."

Unexpectedly, the comm warbled in response to her cursing and Hummingbird's flat, tense voice filled her ears. "I see the ledge and the antenna. Forward and right three hundred meters. Follow me."

The nauallis's craft jerked up and away, out of her sight. Gretchen swore violently, then squeezed a last gasp of power from the laboring engines. The Gagarin lurched skyward and Gretchen swung the stick lightly to the right. The arc-shaped wing of the other Midge appeared again. Hummingbird's craft swung sideways and then went nose-up, bouncing down onto an impossibly narrow ledge beneath a massive black cliff.

Anderssen tried to stay calm and not jerk the stick wildly as bone-chilling fear flooded her body. The Gagarin swept across the ledge and she pulled up, skimming her landing gear only a meter from the roof of Hummingbird's canopy. There was a startled shout on the comm and Gretchen — teeth gritted tight — rolled left, the Gagarin's outstretched wing jarring away from a wall of basalt jutting from the mountainside.

"Oh most gracious Virgin," Gretchen chanted, her entire world focused down upon the control stick and the wildly gyrating view of mountains and sky and cliff flashing before the nose of the Midge. "In thy celestial apparitions on Mount Tepeyac, thou didst promise to show thy compassion and pity toward all who, loving and trusting thee…"

Gagarin made a wide circle out into the rarefied air and came around on a second approach to the outcropping. Gretchen caught sight of the nauallis darting out from under the wing of his Midge and running toward the far end of the slanted, rocky ledge. There was just barely enough room to land one ultralight. Anderssen caught a glimpse of a tall silver and black pole rising up from a crevice in the rock.

Russovsky only had this one Midge to land, Gretchen realized, feeling her stomach crumple into a contorted, burning knot. And she was a really, really skilled pilot. Oh, good little plane, remember how to do this!

"Get out of the way," she screamed into the comm mike. "I'm coming in!"

The ultralight wallowed down — much too fast, she realized as the forward wheel bounced violently across shale — and she threw the engines into reverse. Grimly hanging onto the stick, Gretchen was slammed repeatedly into her restraint harness as the Midge jounced and slid across the ledge. Loose rock skittered away under wildly spinning wheels. The entire aircraft crabbed to the side, away from the cliff wall, and Gretchen was suddenly staring out the port window and into the abyss of a canyon with no visible bottom.

"Sister, guide me!" Anderssen goosed the starboard engine and the Midge spun away from the edge. The aft-starboard wheel slammed into a protruding rock and the Gagarin bounced up with a jolt. Gretchen's teeth cracked together like a hammer. She tasted blood. The stick wrenched itself out of her hand and Gagarin clattered through a complete circle. Anderssen grabbed wildly for the stick — overcorrected — and the Midge lurched over the lip of the cliff.

The ultralight dropped like a stone. Gretchen was flung back into the pilot's chair. Mumbling prayers in a constant, unwavering stream, she slammed the stick forward, trying to raise the nose and let the wings catch some air. The entire control panel flashed bright red and a honking noise from her earbug drowned out the distant sound of Hummingbird shouting in alarm.

Stone and sky rushed past.

Floating in unexpected freefall, Gretchen blinked her eyes clear and immediately became dizzy. For an instant it seemed she was rushing forward across a flat, rocky plain, with queer looking mountains rising in the distance. Then her eye registered thin veils of cloud standing vertically from the plain and she remembered the Midge was plunging down the side of an enormous peak. Anderssen's eyes snapped to the control panel.

Both engines had shut down and — without power — both wing comps had locked out surface adjustment control. The wheels skittered across basalt and suddenly Gagarin was drifting away from the cliff face. Even without comp control, the Midge's curving wing could bite some air and get some lift. Gretchen closed her hand on the stick with infinite gentleness, feeling her stomach squirm with the unremitting sensation of falling. But we're miles up, she realized, and that means I have whole seconds, even as much as a minute, to react.

She pushed the stick forward, finding it terribly stiff without the comp providing powered support. The wings seemed to creak and the entire aircraft shuddered in reaction. Wind howled around the cockpit and Gretchen tried to bring the nose up slowly. "Inspired, we fly unto thee, Oh Mary, ever Virgin Mother of the True God!"

The wings shimmied into the right cross section and there was a heavy jolt. The Midge wallowed into a glide, slowing, and the altimeter stopped spinning so wildly. Gretchen dragged the stick to the right a point, then two. Her course angled away from the spires of a lesser peak and into clearer air. "Though grieving under the weight of our sins," she heard herself shout, as from a great distance.

Anderssen punched a shutdown glyph at the upper right of the main comp. The panel flickered, then died abruptly. All machine noise ceased. There was only a shriek of air roaring under the wing and whining through the landing gear. A heavy hand pressed on her shoulders. "…we come to prostrate ourselves in thy august presence; certain thou wilt deign to fulfill thy merciful promises…"

Gretchen started to count the beats of her heart, mouth filling with blood. The yawning chasm of the canyons below her grew larger. She could see rivers of crumbled rock and stone twisting between towers of stone. The wind had carved huge, shallow caves from the cliffs and pierced some ridges with winding tunnels. There was no sign of life — no green, no blue — only black and gray and ever-present rust-red.

"And…sixty!" Gretchen managed to gasp out, past bloody lips. Her thumb mashed down on the panel restart and she groped to switch her air supply to an oxygen pack. Chill air hissed across her face, drawing a cry of pain.

The comp flickered and woke up. The Midge's flight control systems ran through a startup checklist, registered a dozen warning signs and flashed an amber alert on the panel. Gretchen overrode the query, hoping the engine failure hadn't fouled the fuel lines with ice. The mountains below had swollen into vast fields of brightly-lit boulders and gravel. She felt the stick quiver to life and the main panel rippled with light.

"Show me your mercy, blessed Sister!" She leaned right, swinging the stick over and the Gagarin's engines kicked in with a thready hiss. Comp control reasserted on the wing surfaces and the entire aircraft suddenly came alive. Giddy with relief, Gretchen swung the little plane away from the onrushing mountainside and roared south along a steep-sided, V-shaped valley. Momentum bled away and she turned the ultralight into a wide, climbing turn.

Once more, the shape of Prion filled the sky, blotting out the horizon.

Hummingbird had winched his Midge to the far end of the ledge by the time Gretchen came around for her third landing attempt. This time she managed to drop her airspeed almost to a stall as the Gagarin drifted over the tilted slab. All three wheels set down with a gentle clatter and the ultralight rolled to a halt. Anderssen felt the aircraft leaning to one side and she adjusted herself in the pilot's seat to compensate. Moving carefully, she locked the wheel brakes and shut down the engines. Gagarin gave out a weary sigh of settling metal, plastic and composite. The comp panels dimmed down to standby.

Getting out of the cockpit proved a slow process. Gretchen was sore from head to toe — again — and had trouble standing. She wound up crawling away from the Midge with the winch line over one shoulder. Reaching the wall, she leaned back against dark, gray-streaked stone with relief. Grudgingly, the medband consented to dispense an antitoxin to break down the fatigue poisons in her weary limbs. Feeling the familiar, welcome chill flushing through her body, Anderssen was content to lie at the base of the cliff, the winch pad adhered to the nearest rock surface, and close her eyes.

The view from the mountaintop was stunning. The Escarpment slashed left and right to the rim of the world. She could make out the slowly advancing terminator of night to the east. Another vast desert lay there, though the feet of the mountain chain were deeply buried in blown sand. Tiny shining lights sparkled across the distant plains.

When Gretchen felt she could stand up without having both legs buckle under her, she stumbled back to the ultralight and released the wheel brakes by hand. Another trip back to the base of the cliff left her a little dizzy. Too much altitude, too little oxygen for the rebreather, she realized, checking the medband. The clever little device indicated a variety of oxygenating compounds were already flowing into her bloodstream. Be fine in awhile. Gretchen propped herself against the cliff again.

The nose winch on the Gagarin whined and complained, but managed to pull the ultralight up close to the cliff. Both wings had collapsed into their storage configuration. Squatting under the pitted canopy, Gretchen secured the wheel brakes again and managed to wedge the sand anchors into crevices in the crumbling stone.

"Hummingbird?" Where is he? There was no answer on the comm, though the indicator lights showed two responding units within range. Hmm, Gretchen worried, he's left the Midge comm open. Shouldn't be wasting power like that.

Gretchen surveyed the ledge — a hundred meters of tilted, corroded rock jutting from an equally decrepit-looking mountainside — with a frown. The nauallis's Midge was parked fifty meters away to her right, the whip antenna she'd seen while landing at the far end of the ledge to the left. For no particularly good reason, she set off to the right, clambering over rough-edged stone and slabs of tilted rock. She was halfway to the other ultralight when a cave mouth appeared in the cliff face. The opening was tall, slanted and narrow. Anderssen peered at the floor, making a face when she saw the outline of boot prints in the gravel and dust.

"Old crow?" She whispered into the throat mike. Again, there was no answer, though some odd warbling static began to filter in around the edges of the comm band. Wary of the shadows — who knew what kind of life they sheltered? — Gretchen crept into the cave, her goggles dialed to light-intensification mode.

To her surprise, the cave seemed totally empty — there were no effusions of the spindle-and-cone flora which had overtaken the shuttle or even the tiny spikelike clusters she'd seen in the discarded pulque can. Instead the floor was a jumble of fallen stone, pebbles and dust. A blotchy series of tracks led off down the passage. Gretchen paused, digging a light out of her tool belt and adjusting the wand's radiance to the lowest possible setting. Her goggles would take care of the rest.

With the wand held out of her line of sight, Anderssen padded down the slot for another twenty meters or so. The ancient crevice ended, opening out into a larger chamber with a tilted roof of jammed-together boulders. Gretchen halted quietly and pressed herself against the wall, her thumb switching off the wand.

A queer blue radiance filled the chamber, reflecting from a ceiling covered with pendant crystalline fronds. The branches and whisker-thin needles seemed dead and lightless themselves, but the faceted surfaces gleamed with puddles of cobalt and ultramarine. Below them, the floor of the cavity was a bowl of crushed rock, surrounded by a thin circlet of something like blue moss. Gretchen resisted the urge to dial her goggles into magnification, though she supposed the "moss" was truly a forest of tremendously thin filaments, swarming with Ephesian life.

The unexpected presence of Doctor Russovsky captured her attention instead.

Anderssen froze, suddenly, simultaneously aware of the geologist lying on the floor of the cave, wrapped up in an old red-and-black checked blanket, and a muscular, gloved hand pressing against her stomach. Hummingbird was crouched at her feet, one arm out stiff to hold her back. A few centimeters from her boots, the circle of bluish filaments was crushed and broken, leaving a black gap in the carpet.

Gretchen backed up very slowly, unable to keep her eyes from Russovsky's recumbent form. Behind the sleeping figure was a camp table holding a big service lantern. A gear bag and an insulated foodbox sat next to the table. Humingbird rose, blocking out the scene, and together they moved carefully back down the tunnel.

Outside, the eastern sky had darkened further. Winds were playing among the spires of Prion, flinging a constant rain of sand to rattle against the Midge s. Gretchen stopped just inside the mouth of the cave and dialed her comm to very short range. "That wasn't the real Russovsky?"

Hummingbird shook his head. Gretchen could see the corners of his eyes were tight with tension. "No," he said after adjusting his own wrist-mounted comm. "No respiration. No carbon dioxide residue in the air. It's some kind of copy — something like what you saw on the ship — but I don't think it moves or speaks."

"But she was here," Gretchen said, thinking of the whip antenna. "She must have slept in the cave at least one night, perhaps two, while she was installing the relay."

The nauallis nodded. "You saw the dead moss on the floor? I think she cleared most of the local microfauna out of the cave to make a safe place to sleep."

"Yes." Gretchen adjusted her breather mask. At this height, you needed to keep a tight seal to reduce oxygen loss. "Her lantern is a multispectrum one. If she left it tuned to UV all night, nothing would be able to get at her."

Hummingbird grunted noncommittaly. "But she didn't kill everything in the cave."

"Maybe she knew what was dangerous and what wasn't. Not everything in this ecosystem will want to consume us and our equipment." Gretchen smiled. "Just enough of them to kill us if we're not careful. So — what is this afterimage made of? Dust, like the other one? Something else?"

The nauallis shrugged slightly. "I'm not sure that is important, though an interesting question. She looks like the real thing. The table, the cloth — you can't tell a difference with the goggles dialed to hi-mag — but they aren't real."

"How can you tell?" Gretchen bit down on a follow-up question, seeing Hummingbird stiffen. "Ah, master crow, you don't have to keep secrets from me! We're all bundled up tight together, aren't we? Sharing the same piss-pot and cup." With a mighty effort, Anderssen kept a sarcastic tone from her voice, though she dearly wanted to twit him again. "Your secrets are safe with me. I swear I will never tell another soul — and if you doubt me, then when we're back on the ship, you can have me clapped in irons and sent off to the helium mines on Charon."

With the mask and breather and hood, Gretchen couldn't tell if Hummingbird smiled or not, though she was fairly certain at least the tiniest ghost of amusement might have creased his weathered old face. There was a distinctive hiss-hiss on the comm channel.

"The shape on the floor," he said at last, in a very careful tone. "Does not feel out of place."

"Oh." Gretchen licked her lips. "I see. But it should — if a human being were lying there, surrounded by human-made equipment — then you could tell there was a…dissonance…between the stone and dust and moss and Russovsky." She paused, a glimmer of thought brightening into realization. "This is one of your tlamatinime skills, isn't it? To tell when something fits properly or not? Like the debris from the shuttle — you moved those pieces of ceramic and hexsteel until they were properly aligned with the world around them — so they fit properly. And when they did — it's like they had been there forever — or at least, if they didn't fit right, you placed them on the ground as if a Mokuil had set them there."

Hummingbird shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Oh, Lamb of God bless and protect us!" Gretchen felt her temper fray. The man was obviously on edge, worried, even a little frightened. But could he admit such a thing? No. "Do you understand I don't care if you have some peculiar skill or hermetic training or secret universal decoder ring? I care about getting us both home, alive."

The nauallis pushed away from the wall and peered out at the Midge s and the jagged peaks. The light in the sky was changing and there was an indefinable sense of gathering darkness.

"Well? Give over!" Gretchen didn't bother to disguise her irritation. "Just shoot me with your little gun later, if I threaten the Empire with such precious knowledge as you might dispense!"

Hummingbird turned slightly, face in shadow, backlit by the brilliant sky. "I would."

"I don't think so," Anderssen said in a tart voice, her nose wrinkling up. "You'd bluster and be all mysterious and withholding and I'd break your bald head open with a wrench before you bothered to put a hole in me."

"Hah!" Hummingbird laughed aloud, a breathy, thin sound. "You would try, too."

He shook his head, but the line of his shoulders had already relaxed. "Though everything seems to be in order, I am uneasy. We need to destroy the antenna and this afterimage of Russovsky. The 'ghost' first, I think."

"Do you know how?"

The nauallis shook his head. "You've already touched upon the problem. This apparition isn't out of place — most ciuateteo are disturbances of the natural order and their nature is to disperse once matters are set in their proper balance — but this one is already at rest."

"Hmm. I don't suppose we can leave it be? No? I thought not. Do you have any sense of what this ghost is made of? Is it dust, like the Russovsky on the ship?"

"No. The dead-seeming crystal fronds on the roof are a likely culprit, though."

Gretchen wrinkled her nose again. "So helpful. We need to experiment then."

The nauallis replied with a skeptical grunt. "With what?"

"With you, for a start." Gretchen tilted her head toward the hidden chamber. "You can tell the apparition is at rest and 'in order', right? Well, go see if you can divine anything more. I'm going to examine the radio antenna before the light fails completely."

Without waiting for a response — and heartily glad to be out of the cave — Gretchen squeezed out the narrow entrance and set off for the relay. She heard a momentary hiss-hiss on the comm circuit and then nothing. Smiling slightly to herself and feeling entirely pleased to have bossed the nauallis around, Anderssen raised her head and began searching for the base of the antenna.

The bulk of the mountain had already cast the ledge into steadily-deepening shadow, so the onset of full dark caught Gretchen by surprise. The relay tower had been wedged into a flutelike wind-carved channel. Expansion bolts were driven into the rock on either side to pin the antenna in place. With some tricky climbing — more difficult for the heavy tools and gear slung on her harness — Gretchen had managed to get halfway up the relay. Now, with one boot braced against a lower bolt and a lightwand tight between her teeth, Gretchen was picking away at a thick cementlike layer coating the bottom half of the antenna.

"How did this get here?" Anderssen was puzzled by the encrustation covering the lower section of the relay. The material was suspiciously even in coverage and included both bolts and the pole. A hand tool splintered the surface, revealing shell-like layers. "This looks like lime concrete slurry."

Gretchen stopped and tucked the pick away. Wedging her shoulder into the space between the antenna and the rock, she wiggled a materials analysis pack out of her belt and — holding the cup in one hand — picked broken bits of cement from the antenna with the other. The stinging wind was beginning to die down but the relay was particularly exposed on the cliff, so Gretchen pressed herself into the rock and shivered while the cup woke up, detected a sample to compare against an internal database and went to work.

An hour later, Anderssen was sitting just inside the cave mouth, a comp on her knees and both feet centimeters from a circular heating element. The wind outside had died down to intermittent gusts, which rattled against a filament screen she'd tacked over the entrance. A second screen closed off the inner cave, leaving a five meter–long space where she'd stacked the camping gear. Among the things she'd dragged out of the Gagarin was a battered steel bucket filled with a cementlike crust. A brush was stuck in the long-solidified mire.

A noise drew her attention and Gretchen looked up in time to see the Nбhuatl unseal the edge of the inner screen. His cloak and legs were streaked with pale white dust.

"There's food — " she started to say.

"What are you doing?" Hummingbird came over to her, face tense beneath his breather. "Put that away."

Gretchen frowned at him, still holding the comp in her hand. It was difficult to use in the thin pressurized gloves. On the surface of the pad, behind a protective covering, indicators were glowing softly as the machine talked to itself. "I'm checking to see if there's a gravity spike here or a strange field reading. Something to…hey!"

Hummingbird closed his hand over the device, shutting it off. Gretchen realized the nauallis was furious, his dark green eyes turned to smoke. "You rely too much on your cursed tools. Look around you, let yourself become quiet. This is a very dangerous place. I told you before, we must walk quietly here. Your sensor is noisy, it makes a racket like civets in a trash can! I could feel it down in the cave. They could feel it too."

Gretchen drew back, her throat tightening. She was tired, sore, and very close to complete exhaustion. His anger was a physical blow, making her start to shake. Oxygen hissed against her cheek as the suit reacted to her rising heartbeat. Grimly, she choked down a bleat of fear. "Step away, crow. We need our machines to survive down here. What happened in the cave?"

For a moment his gaze locked with hers and Gretchen could sense — dimly — the man's own weary exhaustion. She refused to blink and after a seemingly interminable period, he looked away. Score one for the hard-eyed Swede, Gretchen thought, though she remained impassive.

"You need to sit down and eat," she said, setting the now-quiet pad aside. Gretchen rose and pushed Hummingbird gently toward the opposite side of the heating element. His bags were already stacked there. "Just sit and be still — you're good at that, right?"

Anderssen was mildly surprised when the nauallis did as she said. She puttered about for a moment, then handed him a container of heated tea and a squeeze-tube filled with two kinds of threesquares mixed together. Hummingbird's eyebrows rose in surprise when he tasted the evil-looking brownish gel. "It's hot," he said around a mouthful of food.

Gretchen smiled and showed him a storage bottle with the word "tabasco" hand-written on the side with a black pen. "Very hot," she said, "from Chipotle district on Anбhuac. Smoked and dried, then rendered into liquid fire. Just like home cooking, huh?"

The Nбhuatl nodded in appreciation and ate the entire rest of the tube. Then he closed his eyes and slumped back against the wall of the cave, the djellaba hanging loose around his shoulders. Gretchen sat back down herself, drinking slowly from her own tea. After a bit, the nauallis started to snore and she shook her head in amazement.

Well, she thought, putting the sensor-pad away. I guess he thinks we're safe here. Or I'm supposed to stay up and watch all night. First I'm a porter, then I make him my special chile dinner and now I get to stand guard. Huh!

Getting up again was painful — even with the medband's help, she was going to have serious bruises from the day's excitement — but Gretchen was very careful to take a worklight and sweep the entire camping space with high UV before settling down to sleep herself. Tomorrow, if we're still here, I'll haul in all those damned tiles.…

Gretchen opened one eye, saw the wall opposite her was lit by a pearlescent gray light, checked her chrono and closed her eyes again. Too early, she groaned, feeling like her brain had been ground fine and scattered in a toad circle for the gaunts to dance upon. The sun should not be allowed to rise at this hour. Not at four in the morning!

A particular sensation of grainy ash covering her skin made Anderssen twitch and shake her shoulders. Her fingertips found the medband, but stopped short of summoning up a wakeme injection. Grimacing, she opened her eyes to bare slits and then groaned aloud. Hummingbird was gone, his things neatly stacked, djellaba folded and laid atop a tool bag. She rolled up, rubbing grit from the corners of her eyes. "No showers. What an idiot I am…nearest shower is in orbit. Or at the base camp, if the water's still good."

Anderssen considered using water from the recycler reservoir to wash her face, but the thought of so many more days in this desolation weighed against such extravagance. Sipping from her mask tube, she ate another threesquare liberally mixed with hot sauce. The grainy, over-tired feeling persisted, hanging around like an unwanted morning-after bedtoy.

The nauallis returned while Gretchen was packing her things away, ducking in through the outer filament screen.

"Morning," Anderssen grunted at him, but did not look up.

"Something is attacking the relay antenna," Hummingbird said. He sounded almost as tired as Gretchen felt. "There's this crust all over the lower — "

Anderssen held up a sample cup with flakes of gray eggshell-like material. "Like this? I took some samples yesterday. My comp was analyzing them when you busted in last night and spoiled the party. It's not something attacking the pole, though." She hooked the battered old steel bucket over with the toe of her boot and upended the cup. The flakes matched the color of the dried goop in the bottom.

"This," Gretchen said, tilting the bucket toward the nauallis, "is more of Russovsky's work. Local dust mixed with water to make cheap, inert cement. She painted it all over the lower reaches of the relay, making a barrier against the microfauna."

"Oh." Hummingbird squatted beside his gear. "So there's nothing for them to eat."

"Exactly. In fact, I think most of this gray dust is waste exudate from the different kinds of microfauna." She grinned at the old man. "There is a lot of it around, isn't there?"

Hummingbird stared at her, impassive for a moment, then his lips twitched and a gleam shone in his eyes. Gretchen took this to be very close to hysterical laughter. The nauallis's usually grim, composed demeanor returned within a heartbeat.

"Did you find anything in the cave last night?" Gretchen turned the bucket over and sat down. "Anything new about this copy of Russovsky?"

"Something." Hummingbird did not look particularly pleased. "I thought the shape moved a little bit, from time to time. In fact, I checked this morning to see if anything happened at dawn." He paused, scratching at a badly fitting edge of his mask. "She woke up."

Gretchen raised an eyebrow, but managed to keep from making a fool of herself by gaping.

"Or I should say, the shape woke up, threw back the blanket, checked its chrono…"

"And then?" Anderssen looked reflexively down the tunnel, as if Russovsky would appear momentarily and want breakfast.

"Then," Hummingbird's voice assumed a familiar toneless quality. "The shape folded up the blanket, gathered its equipment and walked out of the circle. Then…then it disappeared. Well, almost."

"How…almost?" Gretchen was trying to divide her attention between the nauallis and the recesses of the cave. The back of her neck was prickling in a very uneasy way.

"I saw something like a mist, or falling dust, as the shape left the chamber. I was in the tunnel, of course, and the 'disappearance' occurred only about a meter in front of me."

"And there's nothing there now? Just an empty cave?"

Hummingbird nodded. "Dust, stone and hanging crystal."

"Did you feel anything? See anything?"

Another grimace. "No. All is as it should be. Nothing out of place."

"So — what now?"

"We wait for night to fall," the nauallis said. "And see if the shape comes back. I distrust luck, but more observation may reveal something."

"I see." Gretchen started to sort through her tools. "How tired are you?"

Hummingbird blinked. "Why?"

"We still have a relay antenna to dispose of." She passed a wrench and a length of pipe across to him. For herself she hefted a multitool with a cutting attachment. "I'll climb up and cut it down in sections and then you can dispose of them in a suitable manner."

The sun was almost exactly at meridian when Hummingbird threw the last of the bolts over the edge of the cliff. Calcite-crusted metal spun in the air, then vanished into an abyss tenanted by shrieking winds. Presumably the bolt would make a ringing sound when it struck the ground, but Gretchen didn't think they would hear anything at all.

"You're sure this will get rid of them properly?" She asked in a sly tone, peering over the edge of the outcropping. "They won't leave traces behind?"

The sally gained her not so much as a grunt. Hummingbird climbed back toward the cave. Gretchen stared after him for a moment before shrugging and picking up the tools scattered at the foot of the crevice where the relay had been. As she did so, Anderssen made sure to tuck the comm core of the relay into a pocket of her harness. What is an antenna, she mused, stowing the wrenches and cutting blades, but a long bight of metal? You can find one of those anywhere these days.

Hands on her hips, Gretchen found her best glower rendered ineffective by the goggles, mask and rebreather hiding her face. "Two sets of eyes are better than one, crow. I am trained to observe, to find the hidden and sift patterns from chaos. Both of us can watch from the tunnel mouth."

"No." Hummingbird had removed his djellaba and kaffiyeh — they were of little use inside the cave — leaving him a short, stocky, thick-bodied tree stump of a man clad in scuffed black and gray. "You do not know how to be quiet and there is a presence — a hostile presence — in the cave which was only peripherally aware of me. We might as well throw a grenade in, as put you on watch."

He tried to step past into the tunnel, but Gretchen moved to block the opening. "I can be as quiet and as patient as you, master crow. Try me and see."

"Sitting quietly is not enough," he replied. "You were quick to see how I placed the debris from the crash — but can you do the same with yourself? Such things take training and time!"

Gretchen did not move and her mouth tightened fractionally. Hummingbird watched her with his flat green eyes, much as a snake might watch a plump bird.

"Show me," she retorted. "I learn quickly. Think of what a boon I'd prove, if I could keep my own presence from being felt on this world — then you wouldn't have to clean up after me."

His head jerked sharply and Hummingbird turned away from the filament screen. "Prove you can listen without interruption," he said, stepping into the outer doorway. The screen behind him glowed hot with the afternoon sun. "Stand there, in the middle of this space. Let yourself become at ease. Be silent. Put all noise and clamor from your mind."

Though taken aback by his changing mood, Gretchen did as he said. She stood silently, trying to dispel the tension in her back, shoulders and legs by will alone. After a hundred beats of her heart, she started to breathe heavily and her legs felt like iron bars, tight and unyielding. A tiny hiss of anger escaped her lips and she grimaced, fighting to relax. Her mind was astir with wild phantasms and urgent thoughts. Be silent! Berating herself did no good.

Hummingbird stepped away from the opening, brow furrowed. Without speaking, he moved to her side. Thick fingers touched the base of her spine, her elbow, the left knee. Grudgingly, she followed his lead and shifted her feet, settling her back, changing the line of her arm. The difference in her body was shockingly immediate. Exhaustion fell away and she coughed, feeling tension ebb from her chest. The tightness in her legs faded, leaving her with only a memory of soreness. Gretchen started to exclaim, but Hummingbird's fingertips were on her lips. The nauallis shook his head and she remained quiet.

"Now," he said softly, "you can feel the difference. This is a more natural stance for you, one in line with your body, with your mind. Now — for a moment — just be. If you cannot empty your mind — another skill to learn, as a child learns to walk — then begin to count in a simple mathematical sequence."

One, Gretchen thought to herself. Two. Three. Four…

"Now sit," Hummingbird's voice was very faint, almost indistinct from her own thoughts. "Squat, let your body feel the pressure of gravity, let it fall, your feet will keep you up. Keep counting. Keep counting."

Slumped, breast pressed against her knees, Gretchen began to feel very tired. Her head wanted to drag to the floor, but somehow the interplay of muscles and bone kept her upright. Three or four hundred count passed and she shifted to one side. Despite the solidity of the posture, there was an itching sensation, a discomfort. Hummingbird stepped away, his boots whisper-quiet on the rocky, uneven floor.

"Good. Now move slowly until you feel at ease again. Bit by bit. Keep counting."

A full hour must have passed by the time Gretchen felt truly comfortable, her arms and legs limp but not heavy, her body curled into a ball, one shoulder against the same slab of stone she'd slept beside the night before.

Hummingbird's face loomed over hers, his goggles pushed back. Eyes like smoky jade stared curiously into hers. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," she mumbled and fell asleep before he could say anything more.

Anderssen woke to an odd tickling feeling. The sky beyond the filament door was entirely dark, so she guessed night had swung round again. Cautiously, she looked around the narrow, tilted chamber. Then Gretchen jerked upright, realizing Hummingbird had tricked her and — strangely — she did not feel sore. The persistent grainy feeling was gone. In fact, she felt remarkably rested, even good. Suspicious, Gretchen examined her medband, but the silver strip was happily asleep, all lights green, indicating no pharmaceutical intervention in progress at all.

"Crow?" Mindful of the situation deeper in the cave, she tried to shout quietly.

As usual, there was no answer. Gretchen's peaceful mood dissipated immediately.

When Anderssen unsealed the filament screen leading to the deeper cave, however, she was careful to keep her mind suitably blank. A moment's effort turned off all of her electronics; the wrist chrono, goggles, her comps. Luckily, the rebreather and recycler were powered by the motion of her limbs. She couldn't make them any quieter without asphyxiating. Counting slowly seemed to do the trick and Gretchen let her feet find the way down into the cavern. In the darkness, she realized there was a distinct slope to the passage and her hands found steadily narrowing walls on either side. Though she didn't want to risk a light, after twenty meters a faint azure glow led her to the edge of the cavern where the Russovsky-shape had been sleeping.

This time she stopped and settled into the "heavy" squat Hummingbird had guided her into. Eyes closed, Gretchen waited, counting. Eventually, she felt itchy again and began to move from side to side, fingers outstretched to warn her of looming rocks. Strangely, after a few moments, she felt as if the room had grown larger and her questing fingers found nothing until the itching stopped. Gently, she settled to the ground, fingers finally coming to rest on stone as she opened her eyes.

The dusty floor was to her left and in the blue gleam she could see Hummingbird almost directly opposite her. Again, Russovsky was asleep under the red-and-black blanket. The table and lantern were — as far as Gretchen could tell — in the same position. Nothing seemed to have changed. The circle of faintly radiant ground cover was still interrupted by the dead, broken section. Crystalline fronds still hung from the jumbled ceiling.

What now? she wondered, turning her head slowly to look at Hummingbird. He did not move, but his attention was fixed on the sleeper, not on her. Thinking of nothing else to do, Gretchen started to count again. Bored, she began a more complicated sequence.

More time passed and Anderssen suddenly became aware something had changed in the cavern. She stopped counting but managed to keep from stirring or opening her eyes. Without seeing Gretchen became uncomfortably certain the Russovsky-shape had woken up. She strained to listen but heard only a faint, dry rustling — no more than stone settling in the vault of the mountain. Her heart began to beat faster, but she did not leap up. A queer, electric tension began to build in the air. The prickling feeling on her neck returned, stronger than before. A terrible desire to leap up and shout in alarm came over her.

Gretchen resisted, resuming her count. 2579, she thought, 2591, 2593, 2609…As she did a feeling of heat became apparent on her face, as if a torch or open flame were coming closer. The desire to open her eyes was very strong. Instead, she let her breathing slow and settled back, her limbs growing heavy again. The heat became very apparent, verging upon painful. Something brushed against her face, then withdrew… 3217, 3221, 3229…

The warmth moved, shifting to her right, and then suddenly ceased. With its absence, Gretchen realized the intermittent sound had stopped as well. The cavern felt empty, though now — as if a veil of static or noise had been drawn back — she became distinctly aware of Hummingbird sitting opposite her. She could hear him breathing. Gretchen opened her eyes.

The blue circle was empty. Russovsky, or her copy, was gone. Hummingbird was right where she'd felt him. Gretchen felt a jolt, a bright flash behind her eyes, and wondered if the sick, queasy feeling in her stomach was supposed to be there. The nauallis slowly unfolded himself from where he'd been sitting cross-legged. As he did, Anderssen realized her skin was soaked with sweat and she felt clammy from head to toe. Oh Sister, why do I feel so scared?

"Well done." Hummingbird's voice was almost inaudible, tinny in the thin air. Gretchen moved to turn on her comm, but the nauallis shook his head. "You did well to remain still. But I do not think it is safe to move yet. Stay where you are."

"Why?" The word came out as a choked whisper. Her throat felt raw. "What happened?"

"The shape rose up," he replied after a moment's silence, "and became aware of you. She cleaned up the camp, as I related before, and turned toward you. For a moment, she seemed to reach out, but then returned to the pattern I saw before."

"Oh." Gretchen remembered heat on her face. "And vanished again."

Hummingbird nodded. "I fear," he said, in a very cautious tone, "the inhabitants of this world may sometimes express their curiosity through imitation. Those here — and be assured, if you cannot feel them, I can — are not so adept as those who made the Russovsky which came aboard the ship. Perhaps…" He paused. "Perhaps these ones are immature."

Gretchen watched the nauallis puzzle over the matter, but soon found her attention drawn to the dusty circle where the shape had appeared. After a moment she frowned. "Crow? You're thinking the thing we see is the microfauna — grown enormous, assembled into something which can move, which wears the shape of a human? Why would it repeat these actions over and over again? Why vanish?"

The nauallis regarded her. Gretchen saw the corner of his jaw clench, then loosen.

"This cavern," Anderssen continued, "the fronds, the moss — it's like a recording mechanism. One that's broken, looping, showing the same 3v over and over again. We know Russovsky was here — she must have taken at least a full day to install the relay, maybe even two — and she killed off most of the blue stuff on the floor. Maybe this particular species is one of the imitators. But this one is injured."

Now she paused, still staring at the dusty floor. There's something here. "What does this stuff eat, anyway? It must take a lot of energy to make imitations of things."

"Does that matter?" Hummingbird sounded sour. "If you're correct, then destroying the rest of the microfauna here will remove the traces of Russovsky — What are you doing?"

Gretchen ignored the nauallis, stepping carefully into the dead circle. She went down on her hands and knees and began to examine the rumpled, dirty floor centimeter by centimeter.

"Anderssen!" Hummingbird's voice was noticeably strained. "Can't you feel it? We're being watched."

There was a queer tension in the air, an almost electric sensation. Gretchen paused, shutting out the sound of the old man's querulous voice. There was something — a presence — around her, but while there was a sense of sharpness, of intent focus, she did not feel threatened. Anderssen resumed her search, wishing she had brought some of the tools from her gear bag. The edge of her hand would have to suffice and she began to brush back the first layer of dust in short arcs.

Her fingertips moved across a lump of dirt and the feeling of tension in the cavern spiked. Gretchen stopped, hand frozen above the dust. Hummingbird made a gargling sound and she heard him moving — away, scuttling back up the passage. The faint blue glow brightened, throwing a steadily sharpening shadow beneath her.

Without looking up — a little afraid of what she might see — Gretchen plucked a smooth, round stone out of the dust. As she did, something flickered in the air — a shadow, a shifting light — and there was a glimpse of another hand — a gloved hand — reaching for the stone as well. Gretchen's fingers curled tight around the stone. The shadowy glove vanished. The light went out, leaving her wrapped in darkness.

"Hummingbird?" Her whisper fell on dead air. Bastard!

Anderssen eased back across the floor, wondering if the tik-tik-tik sound in her ears was the comm channel muttering to itself or something moving in the rubble. Now her heart was hammering, her throat tight. A heavy sense of oppression pressed down on her, inspiring a cold sweat. One of her boots touched stone and she scrambled back into the tunnel mouth. A moment later, Gretchen threw aside the filament screen, bounded across their hasty campsite and out into the midday Ephesian sunlight. Hummingbird's incoherent voice rang painfully loud in the enclosed space.

The horizon was a blue wall rising above the curving white dome of the eastern plains. Jagged mountains tumbled away to her left and right, leaving only empty air and the colossal plunge down the face of Prion before her. Gretchen set herself, swung back one arm and flung the stone out and away into the empty vastness.

Swaying a little, she started with surprise when Hummingbird caught her arm.

"What was that?" His fingers were tight on her bicep.

Gretchen wrenched her arm free of his grip. "Hands off, crow."

"Tell me what you found in there. Why did you throw it away?"

Smirking, Anderssen brushed dust from her hands and knees. "The cave really creeped you out, didn't it? You — the tlamatinime, the all-knowing one — you ran out of there pretty fast for such an old man."

Hummingbird drew back and the line of his head, the clenched fists and stiff shoulders, told Gretchen she'd scored a hit — a palpable hit, she thought smugly.

"You weren't kidding," she said after a moment of silent gloating, "about this male and female business, were you? I thought you were being difficult."

"No." The nauallis gave her an inscrutable look. "I was not."

"Hmm." Gretchen looked over the edge of the cliff. Such a long way down. But you'd fly, part of the way at least. "Russovsky forgot something in the cave, just a round stone she'd picked up somewhere. A native Ephesian stone. I doubt she even noticed she'd forgotten the little thing — there are plenty of wind-smoothed stones to pick up from the ground. But the cave didn't like it. Not at all."