Hummingbird rummaged through the cargo compartment and found a bag containing power cells. Fumbling with chilled, nearly nerveless fingers he managed to swap out the cells in his belt and let out a long, tired hiss as the suit heaters woke to life again.
"And in an hour," he husked, drawing on his djellaba and slinging the scarf-like kaffiyeh over his shoulder. "I'll be broiling."
The Mйxica looked around the campsite and was cautiously pleased to see everything still in place — the pressure tent inside the cave, the filament screen, the other Midge. He dug in the confusion of the cargo compartment again and dragged out some tubes of water and a package of threesquares. Holding them up to his suit light did not reveal any discolorations or other signs of infestation, so the nauallis stuffed them into the pockets of his cloak.
Prepared for a long walk, Hummingbird retraced his steps and then pressed on, following the scuffed, irregular tracks left by Anderssen's blind flight.
Gretchen was sitting on a low outcropping, her face washed in cool golden light, arms clasped around her knees, when Hummingbird finally caught up with her. The Mйxica came to a halt at the edge of a tilted slab of sandstone, looking up at her. Hot pink reflections of high-altitude ice clouds blazed from his goggles.
"Are you all right?" He sounded very tired on the comm, though the channel was perfectly clear at such close range.
"I am alive," Gretchen said. She did not look down at him, but raised her head to indicate the eastern sky. "Look."
The edge of a ruddy, golden sun would soon rise above the horizon. For a moment, Hummingbird saw nothing and then — a bright point stabbed down from the heavens, cutting across the spreading roseate glow before vanishing in a bright streak.
"A meteor," he said.
Gretchen turned her head, resting one cheek on her arm. "There have been three while I've watched. Doctor Smalls will be watching them too, from the Palenque, and he will be sad. They served him faithfully while they lived."
"His meteorology satellites," Hummingbird replied, climbing up onto the outcropping. "Hadeishi will have diverted them into decaying orbits — letting them burn up in the atmosphere."
"You shouldn't sit down," Gretchen said, unfolding herself as the nauallis approached. "Don't you see the color of the sky?"
The Mйxica frowned, forehead creasing, but then a faint dim line along the horizon caught his attention. "Aiii…it is dawn. The storm."
Together, they walked quickly back toward the cliff. Gretchen's feet were sore — she hoped she didn't have to run anywhere today — but she was more concerned with the odd way her sight was behaving. Suspicious, Gretchen changed the setting on her goggles to normal intensification. The shale and broken sandstone she was crossing remained sharp and distinct, despite the predawn darkness cloaking the land. I can see in the dark?
She stopped and bent down, running a hand across scattered chunks of eggshell-thin stone. A dissonant, queasy feeling roused, stirred by the motion of her fingers against something standing still. Gretchen slashed her hand back and forth, as fast as she could. Odd and odder, she thought, grappling with a perception of her hand moving very slowly, with sort of a staccato afterimage trailing along behind.
"Check the tie-downs." Hummingbird turned toward the overhang without looking back. "The filament screen needs to be repaired."
Gretchen looked up, catching a furtive glimpse of the nauallis stepping past the glistening sheet of monofilament. At the same time, she saw him both outside and inside the barrier. Anderssen blinked in surprise, lifted her goggles and rubbed her eyes. When she looked again, the tripartite vision was gone.
"Hurry," his voice echoed. "The wind will be rising soon."
The storm shrieked and wailed against the filament screen blocking the entrance to the cave. A rain of sand rattled endlessly against the magnetically-stiffened monofilament before slithering down into a steadily growing drift. A sustained high-pitched ringing — Gretchen thought it came from the cables holding down the ultralights — shivered in the air. She turned her face from the glowing, saffron-yellow light filtering down through the storm and the filament screen. Hummingbird was sitting with his back to a chunk of basalt, staring at nothing.
Gretchen scraped the last of a threesquare from the bottom of a battered steel cup. Today she was so hungry the sludge didn't need chile sauce to make it palatable. She waved the spoon in the air experimentally, but the blurred — or tripled — vision effect had faded. There was only a metal spoon in the dim light of the cave.
"Last night…" she started to describe what she'd seen, but then changed her mind. "I would feel stupid about running," Gretchen said, glaring at the old Mйxica, "but you were running too. So what did come out of the cave? Were we ever in any danger?"
"We were," Hummingbird replied. He seemed tired, too. "Even at the end, when they had no more substance than a shadow, we were still in danger. I thought…" He stopped, considering his words. "When you ran, I feared things would go badly for you. I am glad they did not. We were lucky."
"We were idiots — I was an idiot," Gretchen said in a very sharp tone. "They ate the energy released by the Sif bullets, didn't they? If I hadn't done that, we'd have been able to walk right out."
"You did not know what would happen. I did not know either." Hummingbird made a dismissive gesture. "And I wonder if they did eat the bullets from your gun. I'm not sure they had the strength to do so. We might have seen only an echo of what the substance experienced. A living, moving memory."
"I saw a flechette in one, hanging in the air, as if the explosion itself had slowed down and was being consumed!"
"I wonder…" Hummingbird raised an eyebrow wryly. "If we go into the tunnel and examine the rear wall, it may be we find the impact marks of each and every flechette — if the entire passage has not collapsed as a result of the explosions."
Gretchen's face screwed up in a disbelieving grimace. "Does this happen a lot with your sight?"
"Sometimes." Hummingbird's expression turned grim. "Achieving clarity does not mean you have learned to discern truth from falsehood. The world around us is filled with too much data. Why else would our infant minds learn to hide so much from our consciousness? Some students are blinded by the clarity they achieve." He raised two fingers. "This is the second obstacle a student must overcome: control of sight."
"How long," Gretchen said, rather suspiciously, "does that take?"
"Years." Hummingbird's voice was flat. His right hand twitched. "The drug I gave you…is a shortcut. But one usually given only to students who have passed the first obstacle."
"Which is?" Gretchen's lips drew tight and a dangerous glitter entered her eyes. What was in that packet? What did he do to me?
"The first obstacle is fear, Anderssen-tzin. It is to achieve clarity of mind before you attain clarity of sight." The nauallis shrugged. "I admit giving you the teonanacatl was a throw of the beans. I was hasty."
Gretchen swallowed, her throat dry with a bitter aftertaste, and she drank deep from one of the water bottles. Even the stale, metallic taste was preferable to the flat, oily fluid from her recycler. "You seem to be a very reckless man, Hummingbird-tzin. Are you well regarded by your fellows?"