Wasteland of flint

analysis undone – is your supervisor pleased? Does he laud your efforts?'

'No.' Grimacing, she made a so-what motion with her hand. 'So we chase something unattainable – is that bad? Is that something to deride or disparage? You're pleased enough to ride in an aircraft which will work reliably! Disorder is no friend of humanity.'

Hummingbird's head rose at her words and a calculating, weighing expression came into his lean old face. 'Do you think so?'

Gretchen nodded, tapping her recycler. 'Yes, I'd rather be able to see another sunset than choke to death on my own waste.'

'There is a difference,' Hummingbird said quietly, 'between the individual and the race.' He paused and the hiss-hiss of his air tube being idly bitten filled the comm circuit. 'Are you familiar with the mortality rate among infants on planets newly colonized by the Empire? The so-called Lysenko effect?'

'Yes.' Gretchen could not keep a dubious tone from her voice. Though the scientists on Novoya Rossiya were good Swedes, she did not agree with all of the work being done there. 'Death rates among the first generation of colonists are high, but not unduly so for a new world being opened. First Settlement is dangerous work. But the second and third and fourth generations suffer from an incredibly high death rate among the young – sometimes as high as eighty percent. After the fifth generation, if the colony has managed to survive, the mortality rate begins to drop, eventually approaching, but never matching the Anбhuac baseline.'

Hummingbird nodded. 'This has been the focus of great debate. Many scientists have urged genetic modification of the colonists to better fit the parameters of their new worlds, so more children would survive.'

'Yes, I have heard of this.' Gretchen watched him carefully. As a rule, the Great Families did not colonize other worlds themselves, though they financed many settlements. The landless were sent out in their stead. There was great social and economic pressure on the macehualli to gain a landholding, even at great risk. She had reviewed the literature herself, in grad school. Millions had died. 'The Empire has steadfastly refused.'

Hummingbird smiled at the bitterness in her voice. The flat, golden light of the setting sun gleamed on his high cheekbones. 'I will tell you a small secret, Anderssen-tzin. Nearly a hundred years ago, when this trend had repeated for the fourth time, the Emperor decreed that this thing, this genetic modification, would be attempted. A world called Tecumozin was selected and a generation of humans was pre-adapted for life thereupon.'

'And?'

'They thrived for a time – two, three generations. Then a plague brewed up among them, something attacked the modifications which had been made to their core DNA. The entire colony was lost. The Emperor was perturbed and listened to us, the naualli, for a change.' A brief flicker of irony colored his words. 'A judge was sent and he went among the ruins, watching quietly and listening. What he found can – could – be best expressed as the planet being angry with the colony. No accord had been reached between the men who settled there and the fabric of the world around them. They had tried to gain power over it, recklessly. Very foolish.'

'What do you mean?' Gretchen was disturbed. Every planet she had visited had held a particular, unique feeling or atmosphere. Ugarit was clearly different from Old Mars, but she had never thought of it as being 'angry.'

'What I mean is this; the race of man may come to thrive on an alien world, but he must reach a balance, he must pay a price for life within its shelter, and the price is blood. This is old, old knowledge among the Mйxica: All human life is sustained by the sacrifice of a few. In your terms, in the context of your science, the colonists needed to adapt in subtle ways to their new home. This is a delicate process and many die, unable to exist in the new environment. But a few live and prosper. And their children have found a balance with the new world. Your science is not subtle enough to rush the process, but we are a hardy race and teoatl, the fluid of life, is the opener of the way.'

Hummingbird fell silent, watching her.

Gretchen stiffened, his words triggering a flowering of thought in her mind. Bits and pieces of studies she had read, personal experiences, stories heard around dig campfires, even the echoes of the old Church coalesced. 'The Emperor sleeps soundly at night, does he, knowing the Empire is built on the bones of children?'

'This is the way it has always been. I hope it will always be so.'

Gretchen felt sick, but there was a certain, cold sense to his viewpoint. To think progress could be gained free of cost, without struggle, was a child's daydream. She put down her tea, a sort of lost, distraught expression creeping into her face.

'You would let a station die – even if there were thousands of people aboard – to stop some kind of…infection…from entering the Empire. You'd just let them die. You'd let me die.'

Hummingbird nodded. Gretchen felt his calm gaze like an iron band tightening around her heart.

'I would trade many lives to save our race,' he said with a perfectly grim certainty. 'A hand, any eye, a limb – as long as mankind survives, my work is done. An old man said this, long ago: 'It is not true we come to this earth to live. We come only to sleep, only to dream. Our body a flower, as grass becomes green in spring. Our hearts open, give forth buds, then wither.' So did Tochihuitzin say, and his words are as true today as they were then.'

Gretchen's mouth twisted into an expression of complete disgust. 'You're…you're not interested in justice at all. You're no more than an antibody!'

'Hah!' A sharp laugh escaped the old man. He grinned, teeth very white in the dim light beneath the overhang. 'I am. A good word to describe what must be done for our tribe to survive. An antibody.' He laid back down, chuckling to himself.

Aboard the Palenque

Parker ran his finger up a control gauge on the main pilot's panel and felt a subdued, distant roar shiver through the frame of the ship. 'Commencing turnover,' he announced on the public comm. 'We are in z-g for sixty-five seconds.'

The navigational display showed the Temple-class starship begin to tumble in place, a constellation of maneuvering drives on the engineering ring blazing with light. Parker watched silently, chewing on a rolled-up tube of plastic he'd scavenged from Anderssen's kit. Tastes better than the tabac, he thought, feeling a twinge of nervous urgency. His medband beeped sullenly, refusing to dispense more nicotine into his system. The pilot scratched at a red abrasion along the edge of the silver unit. Freakin' company medical policy…it's my religious right. Goddamit.

'Turnover complete,' he said, sliding the maneuver drive control back to zero. Another set of readouts was rapidly spiraling down to nothing as the ship completed the roll. The flare of exhaust guttered out, equalizing the ship's forward momentum. Parker grunted in satisfaction. 'Ship at…full stop. Main engines zero thrust. Maneuvering drives zero thrust.'

The view in the main display had shifted, following the rotation of the ship, and a red spark glowed among black velvet and diamonds. Parker dialed up the magnification, causing the half-disc of Ephesus Three to swim into closer view. 'Better.'

He turned, looking over his shoulder at the captain's station. Magdalena was barely visible, hunched down in her nest of blankets and quilts, only the thin yellow slits of her eyes visible. 'Orders, mon capitaine? ' Parker tried to look properly attentive, which was difficult given his unshaven face, sallow complexion and weary, fatigue-smudged eyes.

'I'm not the pack leader,' she hissed in response. Her fur was getting matted too. 'But we should stay.'

'Okay,' Parker said amiably. 'I can nudge us into a long parking orbit, maybe spiral us back in a little bit at a time.'

Commander's privy comm made an abrupt squeaking sound and Magdalena swung her chair around, scanning the feeds from various shipboard cameras. 'Isoroku is coming topship,' she said briskly, the tight fur around her nose wrinkling up. 'With one of the Marines. Fitzsimmons.'

'Starting delay one,' Parker replied, as he tapped a series of glyphs on his panel, initiating a detailed diagnostic test of the ship's hyperspace generators. 'That's four hours at least.'

Magdalena was also in motion, keying a private channel to their Welshman, who appeared on camera in the mess area of the habitat ring. Several of the scientists were also in the galley, trying to make an appetizing lunch