Wasteland of flint

Gretchen shook her head, the motion barely visible through the suit. 'Your little blue pyramid tell you that? Does your book have a picture of my cylinder in it, with a warning label?'

'No,' bit out the judge, 'but such things have been encountered before.'

'Have they?' Gretchen felt curiosity stir. Down! She reminded herself. Stay on task.

'Yes. The mining settlement on Aldemar Four was obliterated by an equivalent device -'

'You know,' Gretchen said, rudely ignoring Hummingbird. 'I really don't care about some miners who found something they shouldn't have. This find is mine. Logged, duly reported, even surveyed and examined. Now, you can destroy the object if you want, but given the high likelihood the cylinder is in fact a First Sun information storage device – your masters in the Ministry of Finance will be very, very unhappy with you for doing so.'

Hummingbird's head drew back a fraction and Gretchen felt a sharp stab of delight.

'If you destroy my artifact,' she said in a cutting voice, 'then a court of adjudication will weigh in my favor when the Company sues the Imperial Navy for confiscating and destroying something worth billions of quills. Now, you're a judge – you know what the rules for theft and destruction of property are like.'

There was a strangled hiss from the nauallis. 'You'd quote the law to me?'

'I would,' Gretchen said, stiffening and rising up slightly. 'You stole from me. If you destroy the evidence of theft, then I'll be compensated as if the object had a 'fair market value'. Now, let's say I put a proven First Sun artifact up on the block in the zocalo of Tlateloco. How much do you think I'd get? Can you even count that high? How many centuries of servitude to me would it take to pay off such a debt?'

'It–it is a trap!' Hummingbird's control was fraying. 'Useless and dangerous! Not a prize, not a find, not worth a single quill!'

'Not to me.' Gretchen glared at the stupid man, though he couldn't see her expression through the mask. 'That slab and that cylinder are worth everything to me.'

'You'd risk your life, and the lives of others, for money?' There was a pitying tone in Hummingbird's voice. 'You can't spend all those quills if you're dead.'

For a moment, Gretchen said nothing. Then, in a cold voice, she said, 'I risk my life every day, Hummingbird- tzin, for one hundred and nineteen quills. I live for months in a suit, eating my own waste, breathing my own toxins, grubbing in the dirt, for one hundred and nineteen quills. I break into tombs filled with explosive gasses; I watch my friends get killed by accidents with earthmoving equipment, or suit ruptures or sheer carelessness, or from drink or drugs or mindless brawls in some grimy hole-in-the-wall bar, all for one hundred and nineteen quills a day.

'How many quills are in my bank account?' She shook her head, feeling enormous, crushing weariness press down on her like a planet. 'Maybe two, three hundred. Everything else goes home to my mother, who manages to keep shoes on my children's feet, food in their mouths, maybe some new soft for the home comp so they can learn. My son is going to be eight years old next year, oh mighty Judge, and unless I have nearly thirty thousand quills in my bank account, he won't be able to get into a calmecac school or a pochteca academy, which means he'll have to work lookout on a lumbering crew, watching for woodgaunts or frayvine – just so we can keep paying the rent on what little land we do have.'

'That's nonsense,' Hummingbird said, startled. 'The calpulli schools are -'

'Free? Maybe on Anбhuac they are, maybe for the sons and daughters of landowners, surely for the nobility – and you are a noble, aren't you? But on New Aberdeen, there aren't those kinds of luxuries, not for landless tenants. Not for Swedish immigrants. Not for my children.'

The judge said nothing, settling back on his heels. Gretchen felt the pressure in her chest ease a little and she put her head between her knees.

'How did you get an education?' The anger was gone from the nauallis's voice. Gretchen didn't look up.

'My grandmother's father was a Royal Navy commander in the Last War.' Anderssen wanted to lie down and close her eyes, but managed to resist. 'He was killed in action off Titan and his service pension passed to her. When my grandparents fled Anбhuac during the Conquest, she put the pension money – which wasn't much, but something – in a Nisei bank. When I was old enough to enter a school and I needed tutors and up-to-date software and living expenses, she broke it out. Sixty years of interest can make a little pile fairly big – but all that was gone by the time I finished university.'

There was a hissing sound again and Gretchen realized the nauallis had a habit of biting on the tip of his oxygen tube when he was thinking.

'The Imperial academies are free -' Hummingbird started to say.

'- if you can gain admittance. How many students do you think apply every year? There are millions of applicants, millions. I'm sure your relatives back on Anбhuac think the system is fair, but they're landowners and inside the Seven Clans. They're not exiles on a backwoods hellhole like Aberdeen, saddled with a crushing tax burden to subsidize the landed colonists and treated like dirt by the so-victorious planetary government.'

Silence again. Gretchen saw night had advanced to the peaks lining the eastern edge of the basin. The wind – thankfully – seemed to be dying down.

'So you've come for money.' Hummingbird sounded suspicious. 'No you haven't! If you were really only interested in the cylinder and your 'fair' compensation, you'd be sitting up on the ship, filing suits in district court at Ctesiphon by t-relay!'

Gretchen nodded, her bleak mood lifting fractionally. 'So true.'

'Then why?'

She sighed, forcing herself to her feet. Her left leg was starting to fall asleep. 'Because I want you to give me the cylinder back without all that legal fuss. And you desperately need my help and I can't say I've ever let someone carry a load too heavy for them without offering a hand.' The angle of the nauallis's head shifted questioningly. 'You're not getting back upstairs without me and my Midge, Hummingbird-tzin, and unless you do you can't remand the cylinder into my possession without us all spending years mired in the Cihuacoatl's court of appeals.'

'I see. I am sure Chu-sa Hadeishi would find your lack of confidence disheartening.'

'Ah-huh.' Gretchen walked, creaking a little, to the cargo stowage of the Gagarin. 'You're aware of the altitude limits of these aircraft?'

'Yes,' Hummingbird replied, following her. 'But they don't matter. A shuttle from the Cornuelle will retrieve me from the observatory camp when they return from their hunt.'

'How long will that take, do you suppose?' Gretchen popped the latches and began unloading a pressure tent and her cook kit. 'A couple weeks? A month?'

'I'm a patient man,' Hummingbird replied, taking the bundle from her. 'I've waited longer for retrieval before.'

Gretchen looked the nauallis up and down with a wry expression. 'I'm sure you have a lot to think about. Do you know how long these z-suits will last down here? Down here with this dust eating away at them every minute of every hour? I don't suppose you talked to Sinclair before loading up your gear?'

'The xenobiologist? No…'

Gretchen fished around behind the seat of the ultralight and pulled out a bulky object which looked for all the world like an old-fashioned hair dryer. 'Got one of these?'

Hummingbird shook his head. 'What is it?'

'It's worth an extra six, seven days in this acid bath. This thing uses a magnetic field to strip the microfauna living in the dust from your suit – or other equipment – if they haven't managed to burrow in yet.'

Hummingbird became entirely still and Gretchen's nose wrinkled up at an undefinable, but unmistakable impression of the nauallis listening. After a moment, he stirred, then knelt down and ran