Uncharted Territory

they must all have been washed downriver in the flood because he gave the go-ahead and we waded the ponies across and started up the canyon.

After the first klom or so the bank got too rocky to be muddy and the clouds started to drift off. The sun even came out for a few minutes. Ev messed with his specimen, Carson and Bult talked and gestured, deciding which way to go, and I fumed. I was so mad I could’ve killed Carson. I’d been picturing him washed up in some gulch, half-eaten by a nibbler, for the last three days. And not so much as a word when he came back about how on hell he’d made it through the flood or where on hell he’d been.

We began to climb, and I could hear a faint roar up ahead.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Ev.

He had his head in his screen, working on his shuttlewren theory, and I had to ask him again.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up blankly. “It sounds like a waterfall,” and a couple of minutes later there was one. It was just a cascade, and not very high, but right above it the river twisted out of sight, so it was a real waterfall and not just a rough section of river, and we’d gotten above where the rain started, so the water ran a nice clear brownish color.

The gypsum piles made a whole series of bubbling zigzag rushes, and it was presentable-looking enough I figured Ev would at least make a try at naming it after C.J., but he didn’t even look up from his screen and Carson rode right past it.

“Aren’t we gonna name it?” I hollered ahead to him.

“Name what?” he said, as blank as Ev when I’d asked him about the roar.

“The waterfall.”

“The water—?” he said, turning fast to look not at the waterfall, which was right in front of him, but up ahead.

“The waterfall,” I said, pointing at it with my thumb. “You know. Water. Falling. Don’t we need to name it?”

“Of course,” he said. “I just wanted to see what was up ahead first,” which I didn’t believe for a minute. Naming it hadn’t so much as crossed his mind till I said it, and when I’d pointed at it he’d had an expression on his face I couldn’t make out. Mad? Relieved?

I frowned. “Carson—” I started, but he’d already twisted around to look at Bult.

“Bult, do the indidges have a name for this?” he said.

Bult looked, not at the waterfall, but at Carson, with a questioning expression, which was peculiar, and Carson said, “He hasn’t been this far up the Tongue. Ev, you got any ideas?”

Ev looked up from his screen. “According to my calculations, a shuttlebird could construct a Wall chamber in six years,” he said happily, “which matches the mating period of the blackgull.”

“What about Crisscross Falls?” I said.

Carson didn’t even look annoyed, which was even more peculiar. “What about Gypsum Falls? We haven’t used that yet, have we?”

“They’d have to begin building before maturation,” Ev said, “which means the mating instinct would have to be activated at birth.”

I checked the log. “No Gypsum Falls.”

“Good,” Carson said and set off again before I even had it entered.

We’d never named a weed that fast, let alone a waterfall, and Ev had apparently forgotten all about C.J. and sex, unless he thought there’d be plenty of other waterfalls to pick from. He might be right. I could still hear the roar of water, even when we went around the curve in the canyon, and around the next curve it got even louder.

Bult and Carson had stopped up above the waterfall and were consulting. “Bult says this isn’t the Tongue,” Carson said when we came up. “He says it’s a tributary, and the Tongue’s farther south.”

He hadn’t said that. Carson had just told me the Boohteri hadn’t been up this far, and besides, Bult hadn’t opened his mouth. And Carson looked preoccupied, the way Bult had right before the oil field episode.

But Carson was already splashing us back across the river and up the side of the canyon, not even looking at Bult to see which way he was going. He stopped at the top. “This way?” he asked Bult, and Bult gave him that same questioning look and then pointed off up a hill. And what was he leading us into now? If he was the one leading us.

We were above the gypsum now, the soapy slopes giving way to a brownish-rose igneous. Bult led us up a break in another, steeper hill, and toward a clump of silvershim trees. They were old ones, as tall as pines and in full leaf. They would have been blinding if the sun had been out, which it looked like it might be again in a minute.

“Here’re the silvershims you were so anxious to see,” I said to Ev, and after talking to his screen he raised his head and looked at them.

“They’d look a lot better if we were out in the sun,” I said, and right then it put in an appearance and lit them up.

“I told you,” I said, putting up my hand to shade my eyes.

Ev looked dazed, and no wonder. They glittered like one of C.J.’s shirts, the leaves shimmering and reflecting in the breeze.

“Not much like the pop-ups, is it?” I said.

“That’s what gives the Wall its shiny texture!” he said, and slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. “That was the only part I couldn’t figure out, what gave it that shine.” He started taking holos. “The shuttlewrens must chew the leaves up.”

Well, so much for the silvershims he’d come all the way to Boohte to see. Was C.J. going to be mad when she found out Ev had forgotten her and taken up with some leaf-chewing, plaster-spitting bird!

The ponies had slowed to a crawl, and I would have been happy to take a rest stop and sit and look at the trees for a few minutes, but Bult and Carson rode on through the middle of them. When Bult wasn’t looking, I picked a handful of the leaves and handed them to Ev, but I doubted if Bult would have fined me if he’d seen me. He was too busy looking ahead at a stream we were coming to.

It wasn’t much bigger than the trickle up on top of the ridge, and it was coming from the wrong direction, but Bult claimed it was the Tongue. We started up it, winding in and out between the trees till the igneous on either side began to shut them out. It stacked up in squarish piles like old red bricks, and I grabbed a loose piece and ran an analysis. Basalt with cinnabar and gypsum crystals mixed in. I hoped Carson knew where he was going, because there was no room to backtrail here.

The canyon was getting steeper, too, and the ponies started to complain. The stream climbed up in a little series of cascades that chortled instead of roaring, and the banks turned into reddish-brown blocks, as steep as stairs.

The ponies’ll never make it, I thought, and wondered if that was what Carson was up to—leading us into some defile so steep we’d have to carry the ponies through it on our shoulders just for spite. Carson’d have to carry his, too, though, and the way he was kicking his and swearing at it I didn’t think he was playacting.

Carson’s pony stopped and leaned back so far on his rear legs I thought he was going to pitch back onto me. Carson got off and pulled on the reins. “Come on, you beam-headed, rock-brained hind end,” he shouted, leaning right in his pony’s face, which must have scared him because he dumped a huge pile and started to topple over, but the rock wall stopped him.

“Don’t you dare try that,” Carson bellowed, “or I’ll dump you in this stream for the tssi mitss to eat. Now, come on!” He gave a mighty yank on the reins, and the pony stepped back, dislodged a rock, which went clattering down into the stream, and took off up the steps like he was being chased.

I hoped my pony would get the hint, and he did. He lifted his tail and plopped a big pile. I got off and took hold of his reins. Bult took out his log and looked at Ev expectantly.

“Come on, Ev,” I said.

Ev looked up from his screens, blinking in surprise. “Where are we going?” he said, like he hadn’t so much as noticed we weren’t still meandering through the silvershims.

“Up a cliff,” I said. “It’s a mating custom.”

“Oh,” he said, and dismounted. “The shuttlewren’s flight range puts the silvershims well within range. I need