Wasteland of Flint

Southeast of Mons Prion

Two Midge s flew south, southeast — tiny silver specks against the dark immensity of the Escarpment. Sharp peaks towered thousands of meters above them, a sheer wall of basalt with sandstone feet. Deep canyons split the face of the range, spewing out kilometers of rubble to be swallowed by enormous dunes below. Gretchen fought to keep her eyes from straying to the horizon. When they did, her stomach twisted with a start of fear. The horizon tilted at a strange angle, one entirely at odds with her inner ear and the sensors on the Gagarin.

The mass of the mountain range to her right was so great that "down" had shifted, swinging off to an angle pointing at the base of the Escarpment. Hummingbird was suffering from the same problem — every so often his Midge would twitch over as he tried to correct an unexpected, unfelt bank.

Progress had been slow all day, but the navigation v-pane on Gretchen's console now showed they were very close to slot canyon number twelve. Russovsky's logbook had a note indicating the geologist had set down inside the canyon, where there was a sheltering cave. A second entry reported discovering a "cylinder."

Anderssen scowled at the tiny shape of the nauallis's ultralight. The Mйxica had remained silent all day despite her attempts to engage him in conversation. Hundreds of kilometers had rolled away under them as they flew past jagged peaks, steeply plunging canyons and endless bony ridges. Gretchen felt oppressed by the lack of human contact, but she'd held her tongue for the last six hours. In that time she'd thought a great deal about what the old crow had claimed in the cave. While Gretchen didn't doubt something had happened and had no doubt the nauallis held closely guarded secrets, she thought his out-of-hand dismissal of human-built technology was dangerously self-centered.

How could we survive down here? She grumbled to herself, without spacecraft and ultralights and pressure masks and z-suits? Millions of tools — an entire civilization — specialists by the planetfull…all of which were sustained, informed and generated by human science and technology.

Is he jealous? she wondered. The talamatinime must be descendants of the priestly caste of ancient Azteca. Curiosity stirred an eager head and she wondered just what kind of secret history — what hidden, almost-forgotten tales — had been handed down from priest to priest over the fifteen hundred years since the first Nisei merchant landed on the coast of Matlalzinca with a shipload of iron ingots, steel sword blanks and huge, long-legged riding "hornless deer." A tale worth knowing, Gretchen thought, biting her lip. So much of the public record was lost in the Second Blow…

Despite an angry desire to shout at the thick-headed old man over the comm, Anderssen restrained herself. We'll have to land eventually, she thought grimly. Countless questions had come to mind since their last conversation on the slopes of Prion. And then I'll sit on him if I have -

"Hummingbird, look out!" Gretchen's voice rang thin and shrill in the cabin of the Gagarin.

The nauallis's Midge had suddenly jerked sideways, toward the looming wall of the Escarpment. What at first seemed to be a black crevice in the mountainside was now visible as a huge canyon. Hummingbird's ultralight was sweeping toward the opening at tremendous speed. Gretchen immediately hauled right on the control stick and Gagarin swung round with gratifying speed. She stared out of the port side of the aircraft, searching for a telltale — There!

Far below, the sand was in constant motion, gusting thin streamers of reddish dust toward the face of the Escarpment. The dunes made sort of a nozzle where speeding clouds of grit rolled across the valley floor. Anderssen cursed, realizing they had come unawares upon the mouth of the canyon.

Static jammed the comm band and Hummingbird's Midge had disappeared from view. Gretchen stabbed a gloved finger at the control panel and the nav pane appeared. Keeping one eye on the controls and the other on the looming wall of basalt ahead, Gretchen saw the other ultralight had gone down near the mouth of the canyon. Winking amber lights indicated some kind of damage. Gritting her teeth, Andersen let the Gagarin spin into a precipitous spiral.

The little aircraft swept down out of the sky, skimming across the tops of the dunes. Sand and grit rattled against the windows and Gretchen angled away from the funnel-path centered on the entrance to the canyon. Her sensors now showed nearly a two hundred-k wind rushing into the slot. The nauallis had flown right into an invisible wall of air.

"Hummingbird, can you hear me?" Gretchen powered up the comm and began broadcasting on multiple channels. Maybe microwave will work. "It's Anderssen, I'm coming in to get you."

The Gagarin sideslipped low across the valley floor, droning up and down over dune after dune. The wall of the Escarpment rose to blot out the sky. Gretchen flew into shadow and the wind grew massively worse. The Gagarin shuddered in the twisting crosscurrents, wings rippling and flexing. The invisible river kept trying to suck her into the canyon mouth.

Waves of red and tan sand ended abruptly in a glassy, polished wall of black and gray stone. Gretchen pulled up, her stomach doing loop-de-loops, and circled. Peering out of the side door, she caught sight of a glittering rainbow flash very near the canyon entrance. Swallowing, mouth dry with fear, Anderssen rolled the stick right and Gagarin heeled over as gently as a turning shrike.

"Careful," she muttered, keeping an eye on the radar display. The entrance to the canyon flickered on the panel and the kilometers between her and the deadly opening spiraled down quickly. A kilometer short, she turned again, away from the cliffs of the Escarpment and touched down on the side of a sloping dune. Gagarin slid to a halt on a thirty-degree slope, though Gretchen's stomach told her the rippled sand was as level as a kitchen floor.

Engines growling, Gretchen retracted the wings and disengaged the brakes. Bouncing over the slope, sand spurting away from the wheels, she drove the aircraft up over the crest of the ridge. Three more dune ridges separated her from Hummingbird, but Anderssen took her time, letting the ultralight jounce along, all three fat wheels shimmying in the heavy sand.

The other Midge came into view, canted sideways, one wing crumpled into hard-packed gravel. Hummingbird rose as Gagarin approached, djellaba snapping around his legs. He waved. Gretchen waved back and let the ultralight putt-putt to a stop.

"Are you all right?" Local comm was awash with warbling static and queer shrieking echoes.

The nauallis nodded, tapping his earpiece, and began trudging across the sand toward her. Wind hissed past the door and whined across Gagarin's wings. A constant rattle of grit pattered against the canopy. Gretchen pulled a heavy lever set into the floor and felt a sharp thump-thump as the sand anchors fired into the dune.

"…hear me?" Hummingbird's voice cut across the interference. "Anderssen?"

"I hear you." Gretchen swung the door open, feeling a buffet from the gusting wind. Her right hand was already dragging a tool belt out from under the seat. "How bad is the damage?"

"Manageable. Perhaps." Hummingbird ducked under the wing, his head tightly wrapped in the folds of his kaffiyeh. Even at such short range his voice was distorted by the comm cutting in and out. "Both pumps switched over, so not much H₂ was lost, but the wing and landing gear are badly damaged."

Gretchen gave him a grim look, shook her head and began making her way in the heavy wind toward the damaged ultralight. Hummingbird stared after her, then followed, head bent against the blowing sand. Though she couldn't see his face, the old Mйxica looked worried.

"Push!" Anderssen growled, putting her shoulder against the bent wing. Hummingbird was right by her side and together, straining and grunting with effort, they managed to free the honeycombed length of composite and hexsteel from the clinging sand. The entire Midge tipped over, rocking back on the port and forward wheels. Wind gusted, threatening to tear the aircraft from their grasp. Gretchen peered under the wing and her face screwed up into a grimace. The starboard landing gear was twisted into something very much like a pretzel. She looked sideways at Hummingbird. "Can you hold this weight?"

He nodded, legs braced in the sand, broad shoulders against the underside of the wing.

Anderssen scrambled around under the tail and threw open the cargo door. Two heavy canvas duffels were squeezed inside. She grabbed both by their straps and hauled them out. Slinging one over her shoulder, Gretchen staggered along the length of the unbroken wing, the second duffel in her arms. Wheezing with effort, she dumped the heavy bag on the ground beneath the wingtip and shrugged the other into her hands. A recessed hook for a ground anchor flipped down from the underside of the airfoil, giving her enough purchase to hang the duffel. The entire Midge shivered and Gretchen heard Hummingbird cough in surprise as weight lifted from his shoulders.

A moment later, the second duffel was adding its weight to the counterbalance and Gretchen could nip around to starboard again. The Midge creaked into precarious balance on the two good wheels. Hummingbird was holding the wingtip steady with both hands, a questioning look on his face.

"Keep hold," Gretchen said as she dug into her tools. She found a powered wrench, tested the tool — which responded with a high-pitched burring sound — and smiled. "Just for another thirty minutes or so."

Night came on suddenly in the shadow of the Escarpment. One moment Gretchen was working in a diffuse blue dimness, the next everything had plunged into complete darkness. She stopped, a welder sparking blue-white in her hand, and looked up. Hummingbird had found a cave, a deep overhang a kilometer and a half from the mouth of the slot, where they'd dragged the Midge s and their gear. Some shelter from the gusting wind was better than nothing.

"I need some light," Gretchen said into the gloom. There was a click on the comm circuit and the bright white glare of a camp lantern set on high flared around her. "Too bright…thanks."

The circle of illumination dimmed to a reasonable level. Hummingbird's feet appeared out of shadow, boots crunching on scattered, shalelike debris covering the floor of the overhang. The nauallis squatted, watching her work.

Gretchen had laid out an old blanket covered with the bits and pieces of the broken landing gear on top of one of the hextile pads. The main strut had snapped clean off when Hummingbird's Midge corkscrewed into the dunes, and the rest had been badly twisted by the impact. Gretchen was straightening each section of hexsteel with a set of wrenches and a jimmied-up guide. The little welder was on its last legs, but had lasted long enough to get most of the sections patched back together.

"You've done this before," Hummingbird said, fingers intertwined between his knees.

"All the time." Gretchen adjusted her goggles and flicked the welder to life. The burning white point hissed and spat, but there was very little smoke in such an anemic atmosphere. "Mechanical things are born to break in the field — no matter how new they are. Mostly the Company sends me places where there's no support — no handy machine shops, no supply dumps, no warranty service."

She grinned, thinking of the dig water filtration tower on Ugarit. Eighty-six light-years was a long way for a Poseidon SureClean Filtration Systems tech to travel to replace gunked filters or a bacteria separation unit which had failed to separate the more vigorous organisms living in the brown flood of the Hagit River. "You have to be handy with fixing things if you want to survive."

Gretchen set down the main strut, now repaired, and picked among the parts of the wheel housing. "Growing up in high timber on Aberdeen helped, though. Most students out of university don't know how to strip an engine or weld or…well, do any of the things we had to do at home."

"It's good you followed me." Hummingbird's voice had a funny tone and Gretchen looked up, wondering if he were getting sick or something. Then she realized he was trying to be friendly.

"You're welcome," Anderssen said, after thinking about it for a moment. "You needed help, even if you didn't admit it. Like I said before, I can't stand by and let someone else carry all the load. Now — I don't mean to be nosy — but you're used to having an Imperial warship on call, aren't you? Filled with Marines in combat armor and assault shuttles, waiting for your signal."

The nauallis nodded, dipping his head. "Sometimes," he said, "an entire Fleet carrier battle group."

"We don't have one here," Gretchen said, looking up. Her voice was flat and tight. "We don't have spares and mechanics and a medbay an hour away. It's just the two of us. So be careful, old crow. You were stupidly lucky today."

"I know… I was watching for the canyon mouth and didn't…I didn't notice the warning lights on the radar panel until about a second before I hit the edge of the wind."

Gretchen's mouth twitched and she held back a hoarse, mocking laugh. Had trouble seeing, did we? Interesting…

Hummingbird shifted, rolling back on his haunches. In the encompassing light, she could see his dark green eyes clearly, surrounded by a sea of fine wrinkles. "Tomorrow, if the weather permits, we'll need to go into the canyon. I went down to the edge of the funnel a little while ago — the wind has died down — so if we wait until full dark, we should be able to go in."

"Without being blown away." Gretchen nodded, lining up the repaired wheel housing bracket with the main strut. "Do you know what time the wind starts up?"

"Before dawn," he replied, rubbing the back of his head. "Doctor Smalls made a study of the wind patterns in the canyons — "

"He told me," Gretchen interjected. She slid the bracket firmly onto the strut and began repairing the broken weld line connecting the two. Sparks flared and hissed. "We'll only have a couple of hours to look around." Anderssen paused. "I'm coming with you into the canyon?"

"Yes." There was a hiss-hiss sound. "I think two would be better than one."

"Really?" Gretchen gave him a sharp glance. Not a glare, exactly, but enough to make him look away. "Will I need to be quiet again?"

"I don't know." Hummingbird looked out into the darkness. "There is a queer feeling here — something is close by, but I cannot feel more than a pressure. But everything here — rock, sand, cliffs, even the air — feels very, very old."

Gretchen suppressed an involuntary shiver. "The…dreaming power?"

Hummingbird did not answer, his attention fixed on the night. Beyond the mouth of the overhang, the curved ridges of endless dunes marched off toward a starry horizon. After a moment he twitched his shoulders and turned his attention back to her. "Sometimes, Anderssen-tzin, these…powers…have a subtle influence. A matter and degree of atoms. There are…I was once in a place where every action fell just a little foul. If you stepped, you came up just a millimeter short. If you reached, your target was always a fraction away." He shook his head from side to side. "A single misstep is nothing…but a million errors compounded?"

"You escaped." Gretchen held herself to have no powers, but she could feel an almost visible pain radiating from the man — from his tightly clenched fingers, his hunched shoulders — like a chill flame.

"Others — many others — did not." Hummingbird clicked his teeth together. "I was one of few. Anderssen…" The nauallis stopped, apparently unable to force his thought into words, then they came with a rush. "I…I need your help. I can teach you, show you, something of the world I see — quickly, too. Would you…do you want to see?"

Gretchen was nonplussed and carefully turned off the welder before setting her tools down on the blanket. Hummingbird had grown still, his green eyes shadowed.

"What do you mean by see?"

"As I do. You will be able to…apprehend the pattern of things, see that which is obscured by the overwhelming detail of the world, become aware of what is invisible to the lazy eye. I hope you will be able to become properly still as well."

Gretchen felt cold and hot at the same time. Her heart was racing. "How? Don't such things take years of training, meditation, effort?" What will I see? What secrets will be revealed?

Hummingbird reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a small plain paper packet held between his fore- and middle fingers. The nauallis looked at the packet grimly. "Sometimes there are shorter paths than those trod by tradition."

The packet seemed to swell in Gretchen's sight, becoming enormous. She could hear the stiff paper scratching and rustling against something inside. Grains of sand. A powder.

"And in return? What do you expect of me for this gift?"

Hummingbird set the packet down at the edge of the blanket. "Go with me into the canyon. I want every advantage at my side, Anderssen, including you."

Gretchen shook her head. She felt clammy — and afraid — from head to toe. She licked her lips. "I have to finish fixing this landing gear. I'll think about it."

"Very well." Hummingbird rose and disappeared into the gloom outside the cone of light. The packet remained, glowing a soft cream, at the edge of the blanket. Gretchen turned the welder back on and resumed fitting the landing gear back together.

The stars had moved far in their slow, stately dance before Anderssen finished repairing the Midge. She carefully brushed herself down and limped stiffly back to the cave. Her right leg was cramping. The old Mйxica was at the mouth of the overhang, face to the night, legs crossed. Their camp lantern had been dialed down to a bare gleam against the rear wall. Gretchen sat down next to him and took a long drink from her water tube.

"Hummingbird," she said, "What does a judge — a tlamatinime — really do?"

"Those are two questions, Anderssen. You are making idle conversation."

"No, I want to know. Are all judges like you?"

Hummingbird laughed. "That is impossible. There is only one of me. Each judge is different as stones from stones or clouds from clouds."

"Do all judges know these secrets you've told me?"

"No." Hummingbird settled back against the wall of the overhang, staring out across the vast empty plain. "A judge has a duty, to see the people live a proper life, one pleasing the gods and benefiting all. The evil, the duplicitous, the amoral — the judge must take these influences away from the people, for they divert men and women from the right path. A judge must abide by the laws of the gods and of men; he must live a strong life. His example is worth a thousand punishments."

Anderssen began scratching lines in the sand between her boots. "You do not seem to be the usual sort of judge."

"No." Gretchen caught a faint impression of grief on Hummingbird's face. "My burden is heavier. I and others like me watch at the edge of human knowledge — in empty places like this — where our ignorance may lead to disaster. Individual human lives, in raw truth, mean nothing, but the race — our people — must live, and this requires vigilance and protection at all times."

Gretchen shook her head, dismayed. "Your universe seems filled with threat and horror. Is it worth it to live in such a place? Do I want to see such things? Do you really think humanity must be coddled in this way? Wouldn't — "

Hummingbird turned, eyes flashing. Gretchen felt his disapproval like a physical blow.

"You are very young, if you think men and women do not need protection. If you really believe this, you should take off your z-suit."

"Peace! Peace, old crow." Gretchen raised her hands. Her face grew still and Hummingbird — who had been about to speak sharply — waited instead.

"I have been thinking about my children," she said. "My mother and I — all the adults on our steading — watch after and protect them. Why am I angry if you watch over the Empire and all the sons and daughters of man?" Gretchen's mouth quirked into a wry smile, opening her palm toward him. "On the mountain, you expressed a low opinion of my science, of tools. But you are a societal tool yourself — a very, very specialized one — a soldier of the mind rather than guns or steel."

Even in the darkness, Gretchen could tell the nauallis's expression became sour.

"I am not making fun of you," she said, unsealing a pocket on her vest. The packet of paper unfolded under clumsy, gloved fingertips. Inside was a glittering powder. In the starlight, Gretchen thought the crystals burned a golden color. "You are aware of your purpose, which is far more than I could say. Do I take this dry or mix with water?"

The nauallis shifted, head turning towards her. Both goggle lenses caught the lantern light and shone brilliant silver. "Put it under your tongue. Let it dissolve."

Gretchen leaned her head back, fist cupped over her mouth. There was a sharp bitter taste.

"Now, you should lie down." Hummingbird was at her side, guiding her into the cave. His voice grew distant, then louder again, before fading away entirely. Darkness closed around her, a comfortable, heavy old blanket.

Indefinable time passed.

Gretchen became aware of a single voice echoing in a void. She tried to open her eyes, thinking dawn had come and Hummingbird was calling her to wake, but she found only limitless darkness, unbroken by any source of light. There was nothing to touch or smell, taste or feel. Only echoing sound, only the one voice — almost familiar — tense and irritable. Gretchen realized the sound was a man — a very old man speaking in a sonorous, trained way — arguing bitterly.

Immediately, the voice split into two. A young woman made a sharp, angry reply.

"Even the least organism must adapt to changing circumstance! Everyone in service to the Mirror knows you plead the poor mouth to the ruling council and the colonial office, saying the naualli are stretched too thin."

"We are!" The elderly man let his full voice boom in response. "The Empire is too large for us to protect — changes will have to be made — "

"Abandonment, you mean." Acid bitterness etched the woman's voice. "Reserving the naualli to watch over the 'important' worlds, the Mйxica colonies, the Fleet! What of the other settlements? You will leave millions of humans without even the slightest protection."

"We do not have enough men to watch every squatter's camp and unlicensed mining station." Gretchen could tell the elderly man was entirely sure of himself and his policy. Certainty throbbed in every perfectly enunciated syllable. "We hold a hundred worlds which are not full! Even on older colonies like Tlaxcallan and Shinjuku there is room for millions. Those worlds are already watched, already guarded by the tlamatinime. Without more judges, we dare do nothing else."

"Then," the woman said, drawing a breath, "let us help."

"No." The man's voice was sharp and firm.

"Change the policy," the woman pleaded. "Let the tititil go out among the people. Let us watch in darkness, as the naualli do." Her tone changed, once more veering into anger. "Abandoning the frontier colonies will suffocate the Empire. You know as well as I what will happen to fresh populations sent to Tlaxcallan — or Shinjuku or Budokan — they will find only the lowest professions open to them. Doctors and scientists will toil in laundries or dig in the fields. They will be servants!"

"These are not matters for us to decide," the man said patronizingly. "Each man — and each woman — finds their own way in the world. Only the survival of the race is our concern."

The woman made an almost familiar hissing sound. "You don't care about the race. You only care about your calmecac friends and the hunger of the pochteca companies for cheap labor! What organism can thrive in an ever-shrinking niche? Nothing! If you cared about the race, you'd let us train alongside the men and stand watch as they do."

"Foolishness." A faint thread of irritation wove into the man's voice. "Women and men do not train together. The ancient traditions are wise to forbid such things. Like to like is the proper path. So it has been, so it will be." There was a creaking sound and Gretchen wondered in confusion where a wooden chair had come from. There are no chairs in our cave.

"You will return to your classes and duties, Papalotl. We will not speak of this again."

The elderly man's voice held a tone of complete finality. Gretchen strained to hear more, but the two voices dissolved into only one and Anderssen recognized the sound, at last, as Hummingbird muttering under his breath.

Without any kind of transition — no slow lightening, no sudden brilliance — Gretchen was staring at the roof of the overhang, her gaze fixed upon gray and black stone. The dark, striated rock was split with dozens of crevices and fissures. She could see the way each layer of clay had been compressed by the eons of terrible pressure into flat sheets with unexpected clarity. The violence of the mountain range's creation had tilted the ancient sediment, exposing the edges of the layers to the wind from the east. Now they eroded, millimeter by millimeter, and shaled away from the rooftop a finger's width at a time. Gretchen became uneasy, then almost frantic, realizing she could pick out the smallest detail of the eroding stone.

She could even see the faint, shining presence of minute Ephesian stoneflowers growing in cracks between the slabs. She could see them moving as the light of the sun began to gild the roof of the overhang. Though Gretchen was unaware of making a noise, there was suddenly a sharp gasp of pain echoing in her ears.

A shadow moved on the ceiling, almost lost among the crevices. She heard boots crunching on sand. Gretchen rolled her head to the side, feeling strangely empty, as though everything inside her body had been drawn out through a very small straw.

Hummingbird approached, silhouetted against the rising sun. Behind him, the wings of both Midge s were shining with fabulous rainbow brilliance.

For an instant, as the shadow moved toward her, Gretchen saw something strange. A shifting cloud of Hummingbirds filled the mouth of the cave. Some wore their djellaba over one shoulder, some had none, the z-suits of some were dark, some light. Some of the figures had long hair, some short. One indistinct shape had pale skin. The sound of boots on gravel grew deafening, then subsided.

The old Mйxica leaned over her, smoky green eyes concerned. His mouth opened, one hand reaching down to touch her shoulder. Smoke billowed from between his teeth, curling around his goggles and lean, weathered face.

Gretchen closed her eyes, head thudding back on the blanket. She welcomed onrushing darkness with vast relief.