Wasteland of Flint

Mons Prion, Northern Hemisphere, Ephesus III

Hummingbird fiddled with his breather and goggles, trying to get them to lie comfortably over his nose and ears. Gretchen, passing by with the last of her personal gear, threw the comp and sensor pad into the front seat of the Gagarin.

"Hold still," she said over the comm, her own face mostly masked by the tail of her kaffiyeh. "There's a trick to it…there. How is that? Better?"

The nauallis nodded, finding the new arrangement suitable. For a moment, Gretchen thought he might actually thank her, but he did not. She was not surprised.

"So — you feel comfortable leaving this place now?"

"Yes." Hummingbird had spent the day sitting cross-legged in the cave, watching the passage down into the cavern. "We will follow the course of Russovsky's last flight."

"Sure." Gretchen peered at the nauallis curiously. "You haven't seen anything? Felt anything?"

Hummingbird shook his head. "We have a long way to go, Anderssen. We shouldn't waste any more time here."

"Really." Gretchen felt a cold, sharp anger boiling up in her stomach. With an almost physical effort, she forced her voice to remain level. "Aren't you going to ask me how I could find Russovsky's stone — when you couldn't? Or do you know already?" Her eyes narrowed. "You do know. You even know why these things are happening!"

Hummingbird laughed in relief, an abrupt, unexpected sound. "Know? I know many things, Anderssen, but I've not the slightest idea why the cave made a copy of Russovsky or kept repeating itself!"

Oddly, as the nauallis was speaking, Gretchen became aware of a queer flutter in his voice, as if two voices were speaking at once — different voices — and they were contradicting each other.

"You're lying." Hummingbird became very still. Gretchen looked around, entirely startled by her own statement and then she advanced on him. "You are lying and I…I can tell."

"Could you?" Hummingbird stirred, regarding her with a fierce, sudden intensity. "Very well — how did you find the stone in the dust?"

Faced with the question she'd wanted to hear all day, Gretchen felt entirely deflated. She was sure the nauallis already had some esoteric answer for her, and she realized she didn't care. "Never mind. Our real problem is what happened in the cave. There is no reason for an organism in this environment to waste energy making copies of things. At least — no reason I can think of." She drew back her hood, so the Nбhuatl could see the fierce expression on her face. "Why don't you fill me in? Before we stumble into the next situation, and one of us is hurt, or killed, by my ignorance."

Hummingbird's lips had compressed to a tight line and his eyes grew dark and guarded. "There are secrets which cannot be revealed…"

Gretchen's face contorted into a snarl. A hand groped at her belt for a wrench, a hammer, a gun…

"…so I will not tell you everything I know." Hummingbird said firmly. "But I will tell you enough. But first, think about what you did in the cavern. You've had a certain kind of training — from school, from university, from your parents, from the work of your hands — and you're skilled in a way of seeing." He paused, regarding her. "Did those skills show you the stone in the dust?"

Gretchen became aware her mouth was very dry. She licked her lips and took a drink from the recycler tube in her mask. Hummingbird's gaze did not waver or look away. Gretchen started to become nervous. "I…no, no I don't think they did. I didn't see the stone, not with my eyes. There was only an itch. Just…something was out of place."

The nauallis nodded minutely. He seemed to gather himself, jaw tightening, brow creasing. For a very long time, Hummingbird said nothing, staring at her with an unwavering expression. Just as Anderssen — tired of standing on a windy ledge while the day inexorably passed — was about to speak, he blinked and said:

"Think of a river, broad and running swift. The bottom is smooth sand, the banks thick with algae. There is nothing to disturb the current, the surface is placid. If you hover above the clear water, you can see into the depths, pick out details of patterns in the sand. Perhaps there is seagrass waving in the current. Put your hand in the water and you are surprised by the strength of the water — but now the surface is distorted, confused. A wake trails behind your hand and suddenly the water is no longer clear. Such an effect is obvious, even to the unwary.

"Consider a boulder, submerged and invisible to a man standing on the bank. The river may seem placid, but the current is distorted. A boat on the river may strike the rock before anyone notices anything amiss. The current may twist across the stone, eddying, rushing faster or slower. Now, in the constrained universe beneath the glassy surface, there may be places where the seagrass cannot hold, or places where an eddy falls, leaving a thick stand of growth."

Hummingbird made a motion with his hand, indicating the landscape around them.

"What you see here — the ruined surface, tortured mountains, desolate plains — is not the whole of this world. There are submerged currents. There is something here, something hidden. There is an influence, like my hidden boulder, which directs, confines, shapes all that happens on this poor, broken orb. We felt an echo in the cave — "

Gretchen felt her pulse trip a little faster. She blurted, "The First Sun people! Something interrupted their labors! They fled, didn't they? What…what did they leave behind?"

"Do not presume they fled," Hummingbird replied, raising his eyes to the sky. His goggles polarized into a shining mirror, reducing the sun to two blazing points. "Have you thought about the power of the First Sun people? They bestrode the stars as gods — we have seen the scraps and ruins they leave behind — and we are ants creeping across the floor of a deserted house. Our ships have visited six hundred worlds, only the tiniest fraction of the suns we can see with the unaided eye. Yet there are wonders which beggar our knowledge and skill even in such a tiny space. Have you thought what might lie beyond the rim of our domain?"

"Hasn't everyone? Every undergraduate class debates this in first-term xenoarcheology!" Gretchen began to feel the excitement of curiosity stir and tried to keep her voice level. "Where did they come from, the giants of the First Sun? Where did they go? Why aren't they here now?"

"They were destroyed." Hummingbird's statement was flat and cold. "There were — there are — powers which exceeded them in all ways. In age, though the First Sun races are impossibly ancient by our measure, in strength, though the least of the First Sun valkar could smash Earth to a cinder."

He tilted his head toward the vast sweep of mountains and canyons and plains. "One of the valkar was here, remaking this world into something pleasing — if such a term can be used. Then it fled to safety." Hummingbird fixed Gretchen with a piercing stare. "What made it run? What drove it away, what frightened a power capable of shattering an entire planet?"

"I…" Gretchen couldn't think of anything to say.

"Not man." The nauallis shook his head, laughing bitterly. "Not man! Not our tiny little empire! We are very small. Insignificant. But think about what happened in the cave — Russovsky left something behind, something equally small. What did you find?"

"A pebble." Gretchen squinted, trying to make out the man's expression. "Just a water stone, like the old-timers use on Mars. She'll have taken it out of her mouth at night and put it aside. Then she forgot in the morning and left. There are plenty of other smooth stones here."

"You saw what happened. The things which live in the cave reacted — their current was disturbed — I venture they were trying to eject the stone, like shrapnel from a wound. You saw what kind of distortion such a small, tiny object created."

Gretchen nodded. "But how — "

Hummingbird raised a hand, cutting her off. "This world is filled with echoes, Anderssen-tzin. Echoes of destruction and fear. Echoes of the dead. There are shades all around us, even now. You cannot see them — they are faint even to me — but enormous forces have been at play. The tread of the gods, if you wish to think of the First Sun people as deities. Your precious cylinder was in a fragment of stone — even I recognize the fossils in the ancient layers of sediment. The valkar consumed a living world and was then defeated in turn by something even more monstrous."

Pursing his lips, the nauallis stared off into the emptiness. "But I do not think it fled."

"What do you mean?" Gretchen moved into Hummingbird's line of sight.

"It is still here, somewhere. In hiding."

"Oh." Gretchen shook her head, trying not to laugh. His statement seemed preposterous. She wasn't quite sure if she was afraid or exasperated with the old Mйxica. "It's…hiding here? In a cave or something?"

"I don't know." Hummingbird looked entirely grim. "We see only echoes of its effects — ripples from a stone thrown a million years in the past. These crystalline entities, whatever consumed Russovsky and then vomited her up again, the corrosive dust, the fields of pipeflowers — they are reflections of a hidden power."

"Have you been taking some kind of psychotropic while I wasn't looking?" Gretchen failed to hide her complete disbelief. "How can you reach such a conclusion after only being planetside for, what — three days? You don't have any data!" She stopped, mouth open. A nagging thought had blossomed into certainty, watching his inscrutable old face.

"You knew what was here before you came." Gretchen felt a little sick. Russovsky. The crew on the ship. Doctor McCue…everyone who'd already died…"Did the Company know?"

"No. No one knew." Hummingbird adjusted the hood of his kaffiyeh to shade his goggles. "I have data — but not from this world. From another ruined planet. If the proper authorities had known what was here, no civilian ship would have been allowed in the system."

"Which authorities," Gretchen replied testily, "are the proper authorities for dealing with gods?"

"I am," Hummingbird said quietly. "This is my responsibility."

"You? Just you by your lonesome or the whole of the tlamatinime?"

Hummingbird almost smiled. "Not all of the judges are privy to everything, but as a whole we are entrusted — by both Emperors, by the Fleet — with keeping a guard upon humanity."

"Do we need to be guarded?" Gretchen felt cold, even in the direct unfiltered blaze of the Ephesian sun. "Are we sheep, who need a watchdog prowling? What would you do if one of these…these valkar attacked a colony world or even Anбhuac itself?"

"The world would die," Hummingbird said tonelessly. "But the valkar — the gods of the First Sun — are scattered or dead." He paused. "Or sometimes they lie hidden, trapped in a kind of sleep. This one must be dreaming, waiting for the stars to change in their courses so it may wake again."

"What good can you do, then, if you cannot stop these powers?"

Hummingbird's eyes glinted angrily and Gretchen swallowed another acerbic comment.

"We watch, Anderssen. We watch in the darkness at the edge of human space. As a famous general once said, 'We stand guard so you may enjoy the untroubled sleep of the innocent.' Your attitude, I realize, is a testament to a job well done by my brothers and their predecessors. We are rarely idle. Many times men have stumbled into danger. Colonies have been abandoned, stations lost. Ships disappear with dreadful frequency. In Tenochtitlбn, in the district of the Weavers, there is an unremarkable building which holds room after room filled with anthracite tablets. The names of my brothers who have fallen in our quiet, unseen struggle are inscribed therein. This is not a pleasant universe, Anderssen-tzin, where man can roam without care."

The old Nбhuatl scratched the back of his head. "We might be lucky here. The dust will help consume our tracks, our equipment, all traces of our visit. We just have to make sure there are no more 'memories' trapped along Russovsky's path."

"What about the cylinder on the Palenque?" Gretchen asked quietly. "You really think it is a trap? That it will have to be destroyed?"

Hummingbird nodded. "I know what the cylinder means to you. But such devices are far too dangerous to be deciphered or allowed into human space."

"I see." Gretchen felt ill. "Does your 'unseen struggle' include explaining these things to my Company? Maybe a receipt? Or am I expected to suffer quietly as well?"

"I will do what I can." The old Mйxica did not look away, but Gretchen didn't see the slightest hint he would help her, either. She sat down on the forward wheel of the Gagarin.

"What do you think will happen now?"

Hummingbird shrugged, squatting easily on the windy ledge. "All we can do is follow her trail and clean up what we can. There will be other…apparitions. We will have to break up their patterns, try and return things to their usual course. And quickly too, before we become part of the flow ourselves."

"Do your skills let you tell which boulders should be removed from the 'stream'?"

He nodded sharply. "The tlamatinime learns first to see. If the gods smile, what I cannot perceive, you will."

"Me?" Gretchen's nose twitched as she made a disbelieving face. "What do you mean see?"

"Perceive, then," Hummingbird said in a wry tone. "In the cavern, you felt something was out of place — this is the beginning of the seeing. I was surprised at your reaction. Most humans are nearly blind."

Gretchen felt insulted. "I'm a trained, experienced observer, Hummingbird-tzin. It's my job to see subtle differences in a substrate, in a dig layer, a field of loose stone and gravel."

"Trained by science," he said, almost dismissively. "Trained with one set of tools at the expense of others. You're a specialist, Anderssen. A tool designed for a single task. Your personnel records are filled with praise, but this is not an archaeological excavation. This world is not depth-tagged or laser-gridded."

"The science you dismiss has built an entire civilization, crow." She tapped the breather mask covering the lower half of her face. "We're alive because of specialized tools. I wouldn't dismiss them as if they were toys!"

Hummingbird looked at his gloved hands, then at her. "Do you believe everything can be measured? Everything can be described?"

"What?" Gretchen was nonplussed. "Well…yes, I think so. Eventually. Our tools and techniques are constantly improving."

"I thought so once." Hummingbird turned his hands over, apparently interested in the pattern of the material covering his palms. "But I have learned — at cost, Anderssen, at cost! — this is not true. There are limits to human perception and human science — but those limits do not correspond to the limits of the universe. Not at all."

The old Mйxica looked up, gauging the progress of the sun against the dome of heaven.

"Time is passing, Anderssen. Consider this, while we are in flight: We — by we, I mean humans like you and I — exist within a bubble of the known. What we can see or hear or taste or feel. From this we have derived a description. This description is your science. Within the known, we build tools, live our lives, raise our children. Those tools let us manipulate the known, the material.

"But what of the unknown, Anderssen? What about the things we do not perceive? There is a universe of ghosts and shadows just beyond our living sight. Do you doubt the presence of the unseen?"

Gretchen shook her head. "No — I get your point. A human being doesn't even live in the same perceptual universe as a cat. Not without tools to extend vision, sight, smell, hearing. Are you saying your training lets you perceive the infrared or ultraviolet? See as a baleshrike sees? Smell as a truedog smells?"

"No." Hummingbird stood up and shook out his cloak. "I am bound by my physiology, just as you are. My nose — for example — does not have the physical receptors to capture the wealth of molecules a beagle may." He grasped the offending organ between thumb and forefinger. "Anatomy limits me. But laziness…laziness blinds men."

"Then what are you talking about?" Gretchen stood and swung open the Gagarin's cabin door. "What do you mean?"

"Did your eyes physically change between the time you first walked out onto that soccer field and today?"

"No." Gretchen climbed into the cockpit of the Midge and squirmed into the lumpy seat. "They're probably worse. All right, so I know what to look for. I can recognize patterns — "

In the other aircraft, Hummingbird shook his head sharply. "Not so. The enemy of clear sight is accepting patterns in the world around us. To see clearly, you have to let your eyes take in what is truly before you, not allow a lazy mind to fit things into a familiar shape."

Anderssen closed the cabin door and began running through a preflight check. She started to speak and then looked closely at the control panel. Most of the Gagarin's instrumentation was held in a v-pane, but there were certain systems served by archaic-looking dials and switches. Everything you need to fly without the comp being live, she realized. Gretchen ran a hand over the console, feeling smooth metal and rubber under her gloved fingertips. Most of the dials had cream-colored backgrounds with red needles or indicators. Flecks of rust were visible where the enamel covering the metal had worn away.

For the first time, she actually saw the console and all the minute, tiny details of wear and use. Not the sketchy, abstracted impression she'd had of the control panel before. Almost immediately, Gretchen felt her mind try to draw back — an almost physical sensation — and the sense of limitless clarity faded. She blinked and concentrated, trying to see the numbers on one of the dials. Now they were blurry and she started to squint.

"Focus is an enemy," Hummingbird said softly over the comm. "You're trying to limit your field of view in hopes of gaining clarity. Forcing sight won't work."

"How do you train, then?" Gretchen blinked furiously. Her eyes hurt. Her brain hurt! "How do you reach an objective without pursuing a goal?"

"You've already started — in the cavern — when I guided you to a natural posture. When you found a comfortable place to sit." The nauallis was starting to sound a little irritated. "We will talk of this again, later. Are your engines warmed up? We should lift off."

"Wait. Why are you showing me these things? Telling me these secrets?"

Hummingbird smiled, white teeth barely visible through the scarred canopy of his ultralight. "My other option is to kill you. But you are alive and a human being and your presence aids me. The universe is connected in odd ways and you might tip a balance in my favor. Besides, if things come to violence, you can get in the way of the enemy for a few seconds."

"Oh my," growled Gretchen, "that is nice. Very nice. Very Imperial sounding."