Dragging the sheet of hextile to the Gagarin and under the forward landing gear was hungry work, and Gretchen was perched up in the wreckage eating a three-square when Hummingbird finally emerged from the pressure tent. The sun was still behind the eastern mountains, but a hot pink line silhouetted the peaks. With such a thin atmosphere, there was little warning of sunrise. She toggled local comm awake.
"You want breakfast?" Gretchen made a great effort to be civil, though the sight of the Nбhuatl brought to mind all of the odd business of the previous day. "There's hot chocolate in the pot."
The nauallis looked directly up at her, which surprised Gretchen. I'm not exactly drawing attention to myself up here, she thought, no lights, sitting in shadow. He nodded gravely and climbed up, hands and feet finding plenty of purchase on the crumbling metal.
A bronze mealheater sat between Gretchen's boots, steam condensing to frost around the lid. Hummingbird opened the cover and pinched out a tube of chocolate and a threesquare from slots surrounding the heating element. He squatted nearby, back to a tortured chunk of drive coil, and ate quickly. Gretchen watched him warily, sipping from her entirely cold chocolate. In temperatures like these, heat bled out of everything almost as quickly as it was generated.
"Yesterday," she said after a moment, "you said you'd found tracks left by the survivors of this crash, leading off into the western hills. I note – merely out of curiosity – your tracks have already been obliterated by the wind. It seems odd you could find a trail left by someone six weeks ago."
The nauallis did not answer, taking his time to chew down the rest of the bar. The chocolate followed and he tucked the foil wrappers away in a pocket of his overcloak. Gretchen finished hers as well. When he said nothing, she pursed her lips and tried a different approach.
"Are we departing this morning, or do you have more to do here?"
Hummingbird's head turned toward her, the faint gleam of sunrise reflecting murkily from his goggles. "I will need another day. Will the aircraft be safe?"
"Likely," Gretchen said, trying to catch any hint of an expression on his muffled, masked face. "If no big storm comes up. I can make more pads out of the hextiles – they'll protect the wheels and the tent floor. Do you need my assistance?"
"No." The nauallis shook his head vehemently. "You…you should ignore me. Pay no attention to anything you might hear or see." He paused and Gretchen gained the undeniable feeling he was debating with himself. "If you can, try not to think of me at all, think of something inconsequential, random, useless. Don't watch me or concentrate on my actions."
"I see." Gretchen licked her lips. They were always dry in this bitterly cold air. "Like yesterday. I started to follow you and…got caught up in whatever you were doing."
Hummingbird stood up, saying nothing, and climbed down from the wreck. Gretchen glared at his back, but he did not turn or look back.
"Pigheaded Aztec!" She sat sullenly for awhile, watching him closely out of spite. The nauallis wandered around the camp aimlessly, then took off into the desert. Though Gretchen kept the comm channel open, she heard nothing more of the odd noise. Eventually, Hummingbird disappeared around the far side of the shuttle. She thought about pestering him on the comm, but the sun was rising and there were things to do. Gretchen climbed down and began gathering up hextiles scattered around the crash site.
After a half hour, the sun was full in the eastern sky, painting everything in bleached-out colors. Anderssen used the sunshade from Hummingbird's tent to make an awning. Being out of the direct glare cut at least thirty degrees off the heat load borne by her suit. She squatted and began piecing new tilepads together. This is boring, Gretchen thought after an hour had passed. She looked up and scanned the horizon. There was no sign of the nauallis. Where is he now? Probably getting into trouble.
Restraining her curiosity, Gretchen finished assembling the last of the pads and dragged them over to the Gagarin. Getting the rear wheels onto the tilepads was sweaty work and when she was done, Anderssen parked herself in the shade of the awning. Her suit water tasted more brackish than usual, so she broke out a fresh bottle and topped off the reservoir before drinking the rest straight.
Hummingbird had not returned. Gretchen's comp showed noon had come and gone.
A little concerned, Anderssen climbed up onto the wreck again and found a perch near the twisted spine of the craft. From this new elevation, she searched the valley, hoping to catch sight of a tan-and-black figure doing…whatever. As it happened, Hummingbird was only a few hundred meters away, off at an angle from the crash scar and the wreck. He was hunched over, walking slowly across the gravelly soil, peering at the ground.
As she watched, he bent down and picked up something bright – a bit of metal, she thought – and weighed it in his hand. Gretchen expected the nauallis to throw the fragment away, but he did not. Instead, he continued to wander aimlessly. A little later, he turned suddenly, curving back on his previous path, and dropped the metal on the ground. Without pausing, Hummingbird continued his lazy, winding circuit.
Shaking her head, Anderssen climbed down from the wreck and resumed piecing hextiles together. Boring work, but at least there was some sense and purpose to the activity.
Hummingbird returned after dark, suddenly appearing at the edge of a circle of light cast by a lantern hung on the nose of the Gagarin. Both aircraft and the tent were now up on hextile pads. Anderssen ignored Hummingbird as he unwrapped his kaffiyeh and cloak. Another pad of tiles held the mealheater and a water bottle. She was working with her big comp, collating the data collected during the day by sensors on the Midge and her suit. Despite the nauallis's admonition, nothing had prevented the cameras on the ultralight from recording his activities.
"Did you finish?" Gretchen did not look up. An interesting pattern had revealed itself from the camera data. Biting her lip in concentration, she sketched in a transform with the stylus. The comp obediently began to interp the data, building a three-dimensional model.
"Yes." Hummingbird squatted across from her, his back against the front wheel of his ultralight. "We can leave in the morning."
"Are we going far?" Intrigued by the display building on the comp, she turned the device sideways to get a different perspective. "Which direction?"
Hummingbird pointed southwest with his chin. "The comm records on the Palenque show Russovsky used a relay transmitter on one of the Escarpment peaks to communicate with the ship when she was on farside. The peak is called Mons Prion on her maps. That is our next destination."
Gretchen nodded and put down the comp. "And once we're there, you'll make the transmitter disappear without a trace."
The nauallis unwrapped a threesquare and began to chew methodically.
"There you go with the stone face again," she sighed. "Do you really think I'll just follow your orders blindly? That I'll ignore what you're doing, or pretend it hasn't happened?"
Hummingbird stopped eating and Gretchen thought he was actually paying attention. She tried not to swallow nervously and plunged ahead.
"You didn't want me to pay attention to you today, so I kept out of your way. But the cameras on the ultralights recorded everything you did on this side of the wreck. You didn't seem to care about that…they made me a map of where you went. Would you like to see it?"
Gretchen tipped up the comp, showing him a three-dimensional representation of his path. The trail looked like a snake with a broken back, but one which entirely surrounded the wreck in a long oval. Moreover, the path seemed to cover the sandy ground without doubling back upon itself. "This search pattern, master Hummingbird, is a thing of beauty. I am truly impressed."