Wasteland of flint

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