Wasteland of Flint

In the Wasteland

A pair of glittering white contrails made two rule-straight lines against the velvety darkness of the Ephesian sky. Both Midge s hummed along, wing surfaces finely tuned to squeeze as much lift as possible from the thin atmosphere, ice crystals spiraling out behind them. In the Gagarin, Gretchen was letting the comp fly, her attention turned to the geologist's travel logs. Their flight path had carried them out over a truly vast desolation, leaving the uplands of the Escarpment far behind.

Gretchen looked over the maps one more time. Russovsky had marked them up with a variety of notes and scribbled amendments. Not all of them were in Nбhuatl or even in Norman. Anderssen scowled, trying to make out a note marking an area they would fly over near dawn if they held their current course. What is this? Old Russian, maybe. She scratched her jaw thoughtfully, trying to remember how to read the blocky letters. Her grandmother had some books…thoughts of childhood yielded nothing but a memory of pine-smoke, nutmeg and pumpkin. Checking her comp found at least a phonetic alphabet.

"B-r-i-l-l-e-a-n-t," she spelled out, rather laboriously. Russovsky's handwriting was not the clearest in the world. "Or…brilliant. Hmm." What does that mean? Well, something she saw from the air. Something very bright — perhaps even visible at night. "Hummingbird? Are you awake?"

"Yes," came the answer — and the nauallis, for once, did not sound half-asleep.

"I'm looking at Russovsky's maps," Gretchen said, taking a moment to eyeball the horizon and the ground below. Sand. A barren flat covered with faint linear shadows. Anderssen grimaced, looking ahead. The field of pipeflowers disappeared rather abruptly into darkness. "And we've two options to reach the base camp. We can keep on this heading and enter an area she has marked 'brilliant' or swing north to follow a section of uplift."

"An odd thing to mark," Hummingbird replied. "Can I see the map?"

"It's on your comp…now," Gretchen said, tapping a glyph to send the file to his console.

There was momentary silence and then she heard the nauallis make a curious hmm-hmm sound. "This is in old script — Kievian Rus, I believe — and among those savages, the word 'brilliant' refers to 'almaz' or what we would term 'diamond in the rough.'"

"Diamond?" Gretchen shook her head. "So a geometric figure on the ground? That would explain why she could see it from the air."

"Not the shape," Hummingbird said, sounding a little puzzled himself. "Almaz is a cheap, colorless gemstone. There are Mixtec mining colonies on Anбhuac which mine the mineral for industrial purposes. It makes a particularly fine abrasive for certain processes."

"Hmm. If it's a mineral, perhaps Russovsky could see an open drift of the material as she flew overhead. Or…or her geodetic sensors revealed a vein of the stuff in the earth. She'd be sure to note something like that."

"Indeed." Hummingbird sounded satisfied. "So, do we swing north or not?"

"I think we should be careful," Gretchen said, checking her fuel gauges. "A day won't make an enormous difference one way or another and there's no sense risking — "

Out of the corner of her eye, Anderssen caught sight of Hummingbird's Midge suddenly lurch in the air and lose a hundred meters of altitude. At the same moment, her comp squawked in alarm and she heard the nauallis shout in surprise.

"I've lost an engine," he barked, the ultralight falling away toward the desert floor in an ungainly spiral. "Number one has shut down completely. I'm losing fuel on tanks four and five."

"Set down," Gretchen snapped, the Gagarin banking sharply to the right as she reacted. "I'm right behind you. Shut all your fuel feeds and go to an unpowered glide."

"Understood." Hummingbird's voice was calm and precise, though Anderssen immediately lost visual sight of the plunging aircraft. The contrail ended abruptly in a slowly falling cloud of ice. The Gagarin nosed over into a steep dive, wind shrieking under her wings, and Gretchen felt the pit of her stomach squeeze tight.

Her radar showed Hummingbird's Midge lose nearly a thousand meters of altitude before staggering into a kind of glide. By that time, Gretchen was swooping down out of the night sky, the falling ultralight in sight again. The upper wing of a Midge made a good reflector and by starlight her goggles could pick him out. Below them both, however, the land was dark and featureless, though Gretchen doubted the ground was soft as a pillow. At least we're past the pipeflowers!

"Switch your radar to ground-scan," she said tersely. "You'll need to find someplace flat — "

"Too late," Hummingbird snapped and his breath was harsh on the comm. Gretchen cursed — the altimeter jumped and radar suddenly revealed a broad, deep canyon rushing past below her — and pulled up, turning wide around Hummingbird, whose aircraft was skidding across the crown of a mesalike hill rising above the canyon floor. The Gagarin made a swooping, leisurely circle as the other ultralight bounced to a halt and Gretchen could make out rough, jagged cliffs on every side.

"Turn all your lights on," she said, hoping Hummingbird hadn't been knocked unconscious by the violence of his landing. "And put out your anchors."

Her breath puffing white in the chill air of the cockpit, Gretchen ignored everything but the radar image of the rock and stone and precipices below as she lined up to land. "Gently now," she whispered to the Gagarin as the ultralight drifted down out of the sky, airspeed dipping low, almost into a stall. "Easy…easy…"

The front wheel touched down, sending a shock through the airframe, and then the Gagarin was rolling to a halt a dozen meters from Hummingbird.

"The number four fuel pump is clogged up," Gretchen said, her voice muffled by the cowling around the engine. White fog billowed around her shoulders, oozing from the maintenance hatch in thin streamers. "Looks like a line cracked when you crashed and has been leaking hydrogen vapor into the casing. Everything's frozen solid." A little shaky from too much adrenaline and too little rest, she climbed down from the upper wing, holding tight to the wing struts to keep from slipping.

"Can it be fixed?" Hummingbird was unloading gear from the cargo compartment. He made a vague gesture at the dark, still night hiding the rugged mesa and canyon beyond. "Here?"

Gretchen gave him a sharpish look — completely lost on the man, given the lack of light — and ran her hands over the tools on her belt. "If we have a schematic of the engine and component details, I might be able to fabricate a new fuel line or fix the old one, but I don't know if the maintenance manuals are loaded into either comp." Gretchen tried to keep her voice light, but the prospect of doubling-up in one single remaining Midge made her feel sick. We need both aircraft for the pickup, she thought desperately. The skyhook won't work with just one.

"If they're not, we're in serious trouble." Anderssen cracked frost from her gloves, keeping her eyes away from the old man. "The weight ratio in one of these aircraft is marginal with one person and supplies. Two can fit, but not with much food, water or equipment. We could probably make base camp, but I don't know how long we'd last then."

"Don't worry." Hummingbird's tone was still perfectly even. "The Cornuelle will come looking for us soon and base camp is filled with Company supplies."

"It was," Gretchen said, picking her way across splintery, loose shale. There was a bitter edge to her voice. "You're thinking everything is still in place because we left so quickly. Maybe it is, but I've never seen an abandoned camp last — and with the microbiota here — well, I think we'll find bunkers filled with calcite flowers and beautiful stone cobwebs."

"Well…" The nauallis seemed to have lost track of what he was going to say. "What can I do to help, then?"

Gretchen pulled open the door of the Gagarin and slid into her seat. The lumpy confines were starting to fit properly, but she didn't know if that was because the chair had changed or she had. Biting her lip nervously, Anderssen started to punch up a document search.

"Anchor both aircraft," she said, fighting to keep a rising tide of despair from overwhelming her. "And…and set up the tent. Find someplace out of the wind — we're all exposed up here." Her voice trailed off in surprise.

Her search for "fuel line repair" had returned an immediate hit and the comp had helpfully opened a series of v-panes on the display, showing a complete schematic of the fuel pump, the circulatory system on Hummingbird's Midge, the specifics of the lines and tubes, and a checklist showing how to repair a broken one.

"What the?" Gretchen was entirely nonplussed. "There is no way," she said to herself, tabbing through the array of documents, "Russovsky shoehorned an AI into this comp. This is impossible. Just…" She blinked, staring at the checklist. The last entry read: Buy your beautiful, smart pack-sister a drink, when we get back to the den. Paw Paw, Magdalena.

"Maggie?" Gretchen stared around the deserted, windswept mesa top in amazement. Outside, vapor was still boiling out of the damaged Midge and she could make out the outline of Hummingbird as he stomped around, stitching the anchors into the rock. A creepy shiver ran up her back, making her switch her comm to a private channel. "Can you hear me?"

There was no answer, just the usual warble of tuneless static.

"Ok…maybe dear Magdalena is psychic." Gretchen read the checklist again. Everything seemed straightforward enough, except one part about checking all of the fuel lines for microfine cracks. "How are we going to do that?"

The Gagarin rocked gently as Hummingbird unspooled an anchor line. Gretchen started to sort through her tools, reading each section of the instructions as she worked.

"All done." Hummingbird leaned against the Midge, one hand on the raised door. "I've put the tent in a crevice not too far away. Should be out of the wind." He stopped, watching her suspiciously. "What is it?"

Gretchen was regarding him appraisingly. "So, Hummingbird-tzin, an unbroken fuel line has a certain…wholeness…doesn't it? So someone with the sight should be able to see a crack or break or even a weakness — that would be a distortion of proper order, right?"

"Yes." The visible parts of Hummingbird's face became rather sour-looking. "They would."

"Good." Gretchen tapped the panel in front of her. "Here's a layout of the entire fuel system in your Midge. You need to check every centimeter for leaks or fissures. I'm going to fabricate a replacement for the broken line."

"Very well." Hummingbird stared stoically at the complicated spiderweb filling the v-pane. "Are these data on my comp?"

Gretchen nodded. "Make sure you have the hydrogen tanks locked off — we can't afford to lose any more fuel."

The old man nodded and turned away. Gretchen looked around the tiny cockpit and sighed. Too small for this job. She gathered up all her tools and plugged her hand comp into the main panel to make a copy of the instructions. "Maybe the tent is big enough."

A pale wash of violet was just beginning to tint the rim of the world when Gretchen climbed back up onto the Midge and unscrewed the engine housing. Hummingbird, wrapped in his cloak and a blanket, was squatting beside the main body of the aircraft, rubbing his hands together. Out in the open like this, without even the marginal shelter of an overhang or a cave, the night was ferociously cold.

"Pass me the other heater." Gretchen wedged the tube-shaped unit in above the pump and turned it on high-radiate. The unit was low on power, but she hoped there was just enough juice left to melt the ice and run the forced-air fan to disperse the resulting fog. While the heater hummed and glowed and blew blessedly hot air against her chest, Gretchen laid out her tools and parts on a technician's clingpad.

"You were able to make a replacement?" Hummingbird moved up next to her, angling himself into the warm draft from the heater.

"Yes," she said dryly, craning her head to peer inside the housing. "Modern science and technology triumph again. Did you check all the fuel lines?"

The nauallis nodded, arms wrapped tight around his chest. "Two show signs of damage. I marked them with colored tape. They've not cracked through."

"Yet." Gretchen brushed melting frost out of the way and began unscrewing the two valves holding the broken section of line. "We'll wrap them in steeltape later." She stifled a yawn. "This afternoon we'll press on and see if we can reach the camp in one long flight."

"Very well." Gretchen felt the old man shivering, even with his suit and the blankets and djellaba.

"Get in the tent," she said, giving him a concerned look. "You're losing too much body heat out here."

For a moment, Anderssen thought he would refuse and some sharp words about pigheaded men were on the tip of her tongue, but he nodded and climbed stiffly down. He's had a big day, she thought, watching him disappear in the direction of the tent. Almost crashed twice. Very lucky, these judges, very lucky.

The broken section of line came free in her hands and she put the part aside. A little can of compressed air blew out the usual gunk fouling the valves. "Huh. Should talk to Delores and Parker about maintenance on this bird…needs a tune-up."

Squinting, her goggles dialed up into a moderately high magnification, Gretchen eased the new line into the first valve. Her fingers were stiff from the cold, making fine work difficult. After the third failed attempt to line them up, she eased herself back and took a moment to warm her hands on the heater. Her eyes, back and shoulders were hurting from tension and cold and weariness. Got to loosen up, Gretchen thought, flexing her gloved fingers. Maybe I should empty my mind and count, she smiled a little at the memory of Hummingbird's pedantic, measured voice. Her brow furrowed, considering the situation. Maybe I should…maybe I should try this with my eyes closed.

The tube felt cold and round beneath her fingers, only a few centimeters long, ending in two delicate valve stems and a counter-rotating jacket to fix the connection tight. Gretchen let her shoulders and arms settle. She let herself count until the busy noise in her thoughts settled down and then faded away.

The warmth of the heater was almost hot on her left shoulder, but she shifted the tube gently until a familiar prickling heat suffused her fingertips. Trying not to lick her chapped lips nervously, Gretchen leaned forward slightly, letting the tube slide into proximity with the sleeve. Eyes still closed, working in complete, chill darkness, she slid the tube into the stem and finger-tightened the jacket, first on one side, then on the other. A moment later — it seemed like only seconds — she opened her eyes and smiled slightly to see the tube in place. That was easy.

The Midge tool kit had a specialized microdriver, which torqued down the two connections to the proper, factory-approved tightness. Gretchen sighed in relief when she was done and closed up the compartment with trembling fingers. A wave of complete exhaustion had crept up upon her and now dragged at every muscle in her body.

"Dawn soon," she muttered, climbing very stiffly down from the wing. The tools and the portable heater were slung over her shoulder, making what felt like an enormous, bone-crushing weight. "At least the tent will be nice and warm."

But the tent was too hot and the ground too hard. Hummingbird was snoring again, and she couldn't take the heep-snort-heep sound of his breathing. After laying in the sleepbag for an hour, too tired to remove her breather mask or even brush her teeth, Gretchen crawled out of the tent and into the mind-numbing cold again.

She climbed back up to the ultralights and made a desultory circuit, checking their tie-downs and anchors. The old Mйxica had done a fine job, each cable taut and balanced. Irritated, Gretchen walked to the edge of the mesa, stepping carefully among weathered, wind-blasted slabs and boulders.

The canyon below was entirely, impenetrably dark. Anderssen considered pitching a glowbean over the edge, just to see what might be revealed in the flickering blue-green light. The stars gleamed on her goggles, very bright and steady. The air had chilled to a supernal level of stillness, much as it did during the polar winter on Old Mars. Good place for a telescope, she thought, beginning to walk along the rim of the mesa, her back to the eastern sky. But is there anything to see out here?

Ephesus sat at the edge of one of the abyssal gulfs running through the spiral arm. There were few nearby suns, only clouds of dust, dark matter and interstellar gas. A lonely outpost on the verge of nothingness, hundreds of light years from another habitable world. Gretchen wondered, as she climbed a rough, rectangular outcropping, if the long-dead inhabitants had ever managed to pierce the envelope of air around their home world. Had satellites or orbital stations seen the valkar burst from the nothingness of hyperspace? Had anyone tried to escape? Or were the Ephesians still grubbing in the mud, trying to trap their dinner in woven nets or pit traps when the sky darkened with the killing cloud? A million years…Earth was still a raw, primitive world. Only megafauna and protohominids fighting to survive in Pliocene swamps. Did we escape a similar fate by some quirk of chance?

The thought made her feel despondent. Her heart did not easily agree with the prospect of a universe where man only lived and thrived by the fall of some random cosmic die. Gretchen realized Hummingbird's vision of a universe of frightful powers — of gods — offered a strange kind of comfort. He believes men can alter the course of fate. He believes he can divert the engines of chance. Huh.

Beyond the outcropping, a deep crevice split in the face of the mesa. I should head back…she started to remind herself, but then…what's that? A light?

Anderssen stopped and knelt down, peering over the edge into the darkness. There was a light. There were many lights, spreading in a delicate cobweb across the rock, making the ravine gleam and glitter like the stars above, a hidden galaxy of jeweled-colors and shining motes.

Like moss, a firemoss, she thought, lips quirking in a smile. Life blooming from nothing. Even here, at the edge of annihilation. Gretchen concentrated on the nearest filaments and was rewarded by a vision of delicate tendrils radiating out from a cone-shaped core. The surface seemed to glisten, though she doubted there was any kind of moisture in this system. A superconducting energy trap, maybe? I wish Sinclair and Tukhachevsky were here… They would love this. Ha! They'll be jealous when I tell them about all the things I've seen. God, I even miss that tub vodka of theirs. A sound interrupted her delight. Gretchen looked up, surprised. A cloaked figure knelt a few meters away, silhouetted by a wash of stars, djellaba and kaffiyeh wrapped expertly around narrow shoulders. An instant of surprise was replaced by a certain sense of recognition.

"What are you?" Gretchen stood up slowly, hoping to leave the firemoss undisturbed. Flakes of rock spilled away from her gloves, falling among the thready clusters. "You're not Russovsky, are you?"

"I am," answered the dark outline. The voice was hoarse, rusty, as if long unused. The shape stood as well, wiry blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders. "What are you?"

"A human being," Gretchen said, then stopped, horrified. Hummingbird wouldn't want her to give anything away. "A visitor."

"Am I a human being?" Russovsky came close and Gretchen could see her pale, lean face glowing with an inner light. Stunned, Gretchen realized she was seeing the pattern of a vibrant crystalline lattice seeping through the woman's skin. "My memories are strange. I was flying, high above the world. I was walking under the sea, among the bones of the dead."

"Yes, yes, you were. But you are not a human being now. You are an Ephesian, like the moss."

Russovsky looked down at the colony, her bare, unprotected face perfectly still. "No. I am not. The hathol are an incurious people, content with their long slow lives. I am restless. I need something I do not have."

"Everyone is restless," Gretchen laughed softly, breath puffing white around her breather mask. "Perhaps you are human."

"Are you content?" Russovsky moved closer and the light within her skin grew brighter. Her eyes shone like stars themselves. "Show me!"

Gretchen began to back away, feeling her way along the edge of the ravine. Something in the shape began to change and she felt the prickling of alarm. The voice continued to echo in her suit comm, but she realized there was no way Russovsky could make such a sound in the thin atmosphere, not without a comm link. She scrambled up and over the crest of the rocks. The figure stopped and was staring up at her. Without waiting for the shape to do something, Gretchen scrambled away as fast as she dared, heading for the tent and Hummingbird.