“It looks worse than it is.”
“Yeah, how are we supposed to get through that?” I asked.
“With this.” Kira produced a compact plasma torch from her bag.
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It’s the only way.” She ignited the torch and began cutting a passage through the dense wall of thorns. “Once we get going, you guys need to stay right with me. They grow back pretty fast.”
“Great.”
As Kira carved a tunnel through the thorns, I stuck pretty close to her—with TenSix bringing up the rear. The little bot had a habit of talking to itself in a low mutter, keeping up a stream of worried self-talk.
And Kira was right. Seconds after burning the branches away I could see little green buds press out from the smoking edges. This plant had some crazy metabolism, that was for sure.
“Tell me we don’t have to do this all over again to get back,” I said.
“Fortunately, no. There’s another way out on the west end of the canyon.”
“Thank the Maker!” TenSix chirped.
“Really? Since when do bots believe in the Maker?”
“Professor Griffin had me upgraded with several humanization packages last year. Some of her co-workers appreciate such exclamations.”
“Yeah, well, you can save it when you’re around me. What about you, Kira?”
“Huh?” She was working on a particularly thick knot of thorns blocking our way, racing against their rapid regrowth. Complicating things was a blast of cool air which whooshed through the thorns, shaking everything.
“Are you religious?”
“Can we have this conversation a bit later? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Finally the knot fell to the ground with a thump. Another blast of wind blew the smoke away, but even the fresh air couldn’t dispel the burning stench. This whole place smelled like half-melted rubber.
As we advanced, Kira said, “To answer your question, I’m not sure if I’m religious or not. I guess it depends how you define religious.”
“I was just making conversation,” I said. A branch whipped back, almost taking out my left eye. That was close. From now on I’d be keeping my arms up in front of my face.
“I mean, if you are asking if I believe in the Maker or Dynark or even Klothar for that matter, I’d say no.”
“That’s what I thought. Me too. But I respect pretty much everyone’s belief system. Except for the Mayir.”
“Racists and bigots,” TenSix muttered.
“You really do have an opinion on everything, don’t you?”
“Again, upgrades. I was actually deeply programmed to discuss politics, religion, death, sex, race, money, and eleven other topics that sentients find controversial.”
“What was the thinking behind that?”
TenSix moved his shoulders in a little shrugging motion that was probably added during one of his ‘humanizing’ upgrades. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I believe my mistress felt that university researchers like her co-workers could handle more in-depth, intense conversations with bots.”
“Well, I’m looking forward to our journey to Ganga Kos, then. At least it won’t be boring.”
“Back to religion,” Kira said. “The thing I do believe is that there is a lot in this universe that is unexplained and unexplainable.”
“Yes, like what one plants to grow seedless grapes,” TenSix quipped. He had to increase the volume of his audio so I could hear him over the wind whistling through the thorns.
“Let me guess, that was your humor module,” I shouted.
“Wit, actually.”
“In that case, I think it needs to be updated!”
“Ah ha!” TenSix said. “I see what you did there! Wit of your own!”
I turned back to Kira. “I know what you mean. There are a lot of weird things out there.”
“And in here,” she said.
“What?” I could barely hear her.
“Check this out,” she yelled.
As we finally emerged from the wall of thorns a strong breeze battered my face. I followed Kira into an open clearing in the canyon. And saw the source of the breeze.
It was a powerful whirlwind—a spinning column of dirt and dust that rose from the floor of the canyon to the top of its cliff, fifty meters over our heads. The whirlwind wasn’t especially thick—only two or three meters in diameter—but it danced in front of me, showing no sign of abating.
Around us, the canyon had formed a mostly-enclosed space. It was like a tall oval room, twenty or thirty meters in diameter, bathed in bright sunlight. A curved vertical cliff face of weather-smoothed stone surrounded us. Dozens of small waterfalls cascaded down the cliffs and into cracks in the ground. Between the waterfalls and the whirlwind, this canyon was an amazing sight.
“This is something,” I said, raising my voice to a near shout. “Is that thing a dust devil?”
“The Manteans called it shakah-nua, the wind geyser,” TenSix said.
“Manteans?” I asked Kira. “Didn’t you say that they were extinct?”
“They are,” she said.
“Then how—”
“Shakah-nua has been active for an estimated three thousand years,” TenSix said. “Its history is well-documented.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You’d think so,” Kira said, kneeling down and opening up her pack. “Something about magnetically-charged particles, solar radiation, and a lava tube. You’d have to ask the geologists.”
I took a few steps closer to inspect the whirlwind. I couldn’t believe this thing had been spinning for thousands of years.
“So weird.” When I turned back towards Kira, she was wearing goggles and was in the process of pulling on a thin thermal-reflective jumpsuit.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The last sample is in there.” She fastened a harness around her chest and then reached for a coil of CNT line.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Saved the best for last.”
“I don’t get it. The sample is swirling around in a whirlwind?”
“Not in the whirlwind, beneath it.”
“There is a network of lava tubes beneath the wind anomaly,” TenSix said. “If I am not mistaken, the heated air issuing from the lava tube is instrumental in creating the shakah-nua.”
“Oh, heated air. I see.
