Reclamation (17 page)

What they saw were lumps of nameless materials, black, brown, and rust red, and clear silver. They saw dust, everywhere. They saw a world that was scarred, maimed, cratered, ungainly, and old beyond description. But everything they saw was theirs. Their home.

Kelat squinted at the horizon. It was impossible to tell whether the hills in the distance were more ruins or were actual geologic formations. He turned, shuffling around until he saw the black hulk of the mountains that sheltered the artifacts. There was no mistaking them. They stretched farther on each side than his eyes could see. Even though there was not enough air left to support clouds, he could arch his back as far as physically possible and still not see their tops. They pierced the vacuum.

In less than a week, the children of the Lineage would be on both sides of those mountains. Kelat wet his lips. Avir was a confirmed believer in the Assembly’s stance, but a capable and dedicated Contractor. She would be going down with the Second Company into the populated regions. What she would find there … there was no telling, yet. Jahidh’s last message had not been good. But Basq had found a way to trace the loose artifacts. Although Basq would have been horrified to hear it, that meant there was still a chance to bring the situation under control. That they would have to do it under Avir’s nose saddened him a bit.

Is now the time for this?
Kelat chided himself.
You are walking on the Home Ground! Your job is to help coordinate this great work and you can’t even coordinate your own thoughts!

“Contractor Kelat.” Kelat became aware that one of the voices in his helmet was calling his name. “Contractor Kelat?”

“Kelat here.” He touched a key on his wrist terminal to lay a display grid over the landscape his eyes saw. Each Vitae became targeted by a pinprick of gold light. He swung his gaze back and forth until one pinprick turned red.

“Historian-Beholden Baiel, Contractor,” said the voice. “I think you need to see this.” An anonymous figure in a Historian’s grey suit stood beside a gleaming pillar that was twice as tall as he was and waved at him.

“I’m coming, Beholden.” Minding his footing, Kelat picked his way through the mounds of dust and wreckage to Baiel’s side.

The Beholden didn’t even see him arrive. His attention was totally fastened on the cylindrical pillar.

Kelat studied it. For a moment, all he saw were its surprisingly smooth sides that glinted in the harsh daylight. The top was ragged, like the wall of the ruined building they had landed beside. Indistinct shadows played across it from …

Kelat blinked, and looked again. No. The shadows weren’t moving across the surface, they drifted inside the pillar itself. Kelat pressed his faceplate against the pillar’s side. The pillar reflected his face back at him and he saw his own wide eyes and undignified, slack-jawed surprise. Beyond that, under whatever silicate, or polymer, or glass this was, something shifted. A blob of shadow the size of Kelat’s head flowed slowly toward the pillar’s uneven top and hung there for a moment. Then it drew its soft edges in toward its center and began to swim, or fly, or creep back toward the bottom.

“Blood of my ancestors,” he whispered. “Blood of my ancestors.”

An irrational voice in the back of his head wondered if that might not very well be true.

Why cannot the Unifiers find the Evolution Point? For the same reason we cannot find the Home Ground. The two are the same world and we are not just the children of the Ancestors, we are the first of the Human Race. Why then should we, the parents, serve these, our children?

Fragment from an Imperialist text found on the wall of the fifth level park aboard the Grand Errand.

T
HE RAIN CAME DOWN
like the wrath of some ancient god. Even with his lantern in his fist, Jay couldn’t see more than a yard past the tip of his boots. A solid wall of water reflected the light right back at him. It wasn’t all water, though. Slivers of ice smacked against his faceplate like they meant to chip the silicate.

Behind him, the two Notouch women steadied each other. As soon as the squall started up, they wrapped their headcloths around their faces to protect themselves from the ice and to make sure they had pockets of air to breathe. You could literally drown in some of these rains. Now they held tight to each other’s arms, walking in a measured, rocking gait that let them balance against each other as they picked their way over the slick, bare rock of the canyon floor.

If there’d ever been soil here, years of wind and water had washed it away, leaving nothing but granite and sandstone. Jay’s lantern showed up bands of pale pink and flecks of gold underfoot that might have been beautiful had there been daylight to shine on any of them.

Jay glanced up. The bulk of the ragged canyon Wall was indistinguishable from the black sky overhead. The darkness left him no way to pick out the clouds and measure their weight or their movement. If the deluge didn’t stop soon, he could be in trouble. A river could start down the walls, and in this thread-thin canyon, they’d all be washed away and buried in the swamps. Already the rain filled the hollows between the stones underfoot until the puddles overflowed into one another. In places he was up to his ankles in ice water. The women must have been just about numb, but, then, they were used to this. After four years of tramping up and down in the Realm’s insane weather, Jay still couldn’t see how they stood it. He thought about Cor waiting behind with the oxen. At least she could climb under the sledge’s canvas cover and stay dry.

Finally, the water and the darkness split far enough to let through the white spark of another light. Jay resisted the impulse to hurry. Slipping on the wet stone would take him down hard even through the layers of wool and leather he wore, and he had nothing to catch himself against but more slick stone.

The puddles were turning into brooks, fast. One of the Notouch, Broken Trail, he thought, pointed toward the white light and shouted something to her cousin. Jay beckoned at them impatiently. Empty Cups glanced backward and then forward, and evidently decided she’d come too far to carry through any thoughts of turning around. She trudged forward with her cousin.

Jay forced himself to concentrate on each step until he could see the curving, white sides of the shelter. The brightly lit entranceway opened like a warm welcome. He ducked down the short corridor made of polymer sheets over a jointed framework and breathed a sigh of relief. Behind him, Empty Cups pulled Broken Trail back. The cousins stood in the downpour, shouting in each other’s ears to be heard above the storm.

Jay motioned for them to come inside. They obeyed hesitantly.

Always the same,
he thought.
They’ll walk up a dark canyon and through a downpour, but as soon as they get to the dry, well-lit place, they get scared.

He stripped off his glove. Cold sank through his skin straight to his bone. He hammered on the inner door. The door peeled back and let loose a flood of powered light.

“Welcome back, Jay,” said Lu as he stepped back to let the three soaking travelers inside.

Jay felt the muscles in his back relax immediately in the warm, still air. The icy rain became nothing but a distant thunder outside the curving walls. He pulled off his faceplate and shucked the dripping cape, hanging both on an empty hook amid the emergency gear and corporate issue outerwear that none of the Unifier Team bothered with. He snatched up one of the extra towels Lu kept piled on a spare crate and wiped the spattering of rain off his round face and bald scalp.

The dome was a long way from luxurious. Most of the gear was stashed in polymer crates. The crates were stacked between equipment that still had half its paneling open, exposing wires and chips in bundles of black and orange, blue and green. Jay had at one point wondered what Lu did with his days when he was supposed to be making the base not just usable, but livable. Then he had learned that, for Lu, this jumble was livable.

“Who’ve you got for us?” Lu beamed through his scruffy, brown beard at the two women and switched to the language of the Realm. “The Nameless called this day fine, for we have met in it.” Lu held up his hands. He’d had the hand marks of one of the Bondless drawn on their backs in indelible ink. The women relaxed visibly. Now they knew where they were in terms of how to act.

They both knelt on the shelter’s smooth polymer floor. The older of the pair said, “Know, good sir, that this despised one is Broken Trail
dena
Rift in the Clouds and with her is Empty Cups
dena
Reed in the Wind, and we beg to know how we may serve.”

Lu suppressed a grimace and Jay shrugged. When they’d first started the search, Lu had tried to get the Notouch to stop groveling, but found it didn’t work. The Notouch obeyed the rules of a lifetime and simply didn’t trust anybody who told them that the rules were unnecessary. They were so stubborn about it that Jay found himself wondering if some kind of specific subservience hadn’t been bred into them by the old masters of this place. Their caste system had probably evolved around whatever categories their makers had originally placed them in. But then there was Stone in the Wall … But she had been an exception and it was beginning to look like that wasn’t the only thing she’d been an exception to.

“First you can serve by getting yourselves warm and dry,” said Lu, putting his steady smile back into place. “Come here, if you will.”

Trail and Cups followed Jay, walking so close together their shoulders almost touched. Jay had set up an empty metal crate near the back wall of the shelter. A coal fire burned in the middle of it. For the first couple of testees, he had tried to introduce them to heating elements, but none of them would come near the glowing coils.

When Jay stood back to make room for them, Trail and Cups approached the fire without hesitation and held out their scarred hands over the flames, rubbing and blowing on their knuckles. They stripped off their headcloths and ponchos, wringing out the extra water onto the floor. Fortunately, Lu would be spared from having to mop up the mess. The porous polymer absorbed it and let it drain into the ground underneath.

“Now then, Trail and Cups, hear this,” said Lu as the women dried themselves off. “I am going to show you a strange place and ask you some questions you may not see the reason for. To serve, you must stay calm and use the wits the Nameless bestowed upon you when they gave you your lives. You’ll be home before night touches your rooftops again. Can you do this?”

“Good sir, we can,” said Trail, bowing her head humbly.

Lu rolled his eyes. “Then you have my thanks.” He glanced at Jay and switched to Standard. “You coming down?”

“No.” Jay dropped into the chair in front of the encampment stove and yanked off his boots. “I’ve got to make it back before the Seablades show up. King Silver wants her Skyman beside her so she can show how badly she’s breaking all the rules.”

“Well, you know the real rule.”

“If it works, don’t argue,” Jay chorused with him. He stuffed his boots and socks into the stove and set the controls for clothes drying.

“Good luck,” he said as he leaned back.

“Thanks,” answered Lu. “I still wish we didn’t have to do it this way.”

Jay made himself shrug casually again. “Those are the orders. No more volunteers go offworld until we find out what the Vitae have done with or to Stone in the Wall.” He frowned toward the stove.
Should have had word about that by now, even if it isn’t ever going to come from where Lu thinks it will.

“Whatever you say. You’re the boss of this little expedition.” Lu shrugged.

“It’s not my idea,” Jay reminded him.
Believe me, I’d just as soon be shoveling everyone we can get our hands on into the shuttle hold.
“It’s the committee’s. It’s not so bad, though. We do need to be careful. The Vitae are awfully close to making their move on this place.”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you.”

Yes, I would.
“Let me alone, Lu. I exiled myself years ago.”

“Sorry,” said Lu sheepishly. “It’s an old habit.”

“I know.” The stove chimed and Jay opened the door to retrieve his footgear. “Take care.”

“Keep your back to the wall.”

Jay refrained from mentioning that here it was impossible to do anything else.

Lu waited for Trail and Cups to rewrap their ponchos and turbans before he led them to the trapdoor he had jury-rigged in the floor. Underneath it lay a second hatchway, flush to a smooth patch of some silicate-like substance that had been exposed by years of wind and water rushing across it.

Lu dug his fingers into the crack between the hatch and the silicate and, with a grunt of effort, raised the lid. Cups and Trail exchanged apprehensive glances when they saw the smooth-sided, dark well in front of them. Lu pressed the key that turned on the lights he had strung on adhesive pads down the side. The illumination did little more than show the fact that the runners walls were grey and unmarked, broken only by the string of lights and the jointed ladder Lu had hung from the edge of the drop.

Lu had tried to drill holes in the wall to make rungs for a proper ladder, but the silicate wouldn’t yield to anything, including a welding torch.

Nonchalantly, Lu grabbed the ladder’s rungs and started his descent. Cups swallowed visibly, but followed as soon as she had room. Trail glanced back at Jay, her eyes narrow and calculating.

Jay started. Stone in the Wall had given him the same look before she’d agreed to come with him up the canyon.

Do you suppose we’ve finally hit diamond?

Trail turned her attention toward the ladder and started down it. Jay realized he was biting his lower lip and released it. It was a bad habit he’d picked up from Cor. Telltale signs of nervousness had been creeping into his features more and more often.

He stuffed his feet back into his socks and boots, pausing a minute to let the warmth restore at least some measure of circulation to his feet. Then Jay retrieved his cloak and face mask and steeled himself to walk back outside. He really wanted to wait the rain out in the civilized atmosphere of the dome.