The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (14 page)

“We could have buried him. Kept his face clear but put a good foot of dirt over him. That could’ve worked, but there were bugs right there, eating those massive hydraulic cylinders buried in the concrete floor of the maintenance bays, the ones that drove the lifts.

“We scattered. He ran, too, but they were all around and they rose up like bees and then he stepped on one and it was all over. They went for the coin like it was a chewy caramel center.”

There were three college-aged tourists – two men and a girl, a pair of Pueblo khaki-dressed mounted territorial rangers that Kimball knew, and Mendez, the spring keeper. There was also a camel caravan camped below the spring, where the livestock were allowed to drink from the runoff, but the drovers, after filling their water bags, stayed close to their camels.

There were predators out here, both animal and human.

“What happened to the noob?” the tourist asked.

“He swallowed the coin. It was in his abdomen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Christ, Robert,” the girl said. “Didn’t you listen to the entrance briefing? He died. The bugs would just go right through him, to the metal. There aren’t any trauma centers out here, you know?”

One of the Rangers, silent until now, said, “That’s right, Miss.” He slid the sleeve of his khaki shirt up displaying a scarred furrow across the top of his forearm. “Bug did this. Was helping to dig a new kiva at Pojoaque and didn’t see I’d uncovered the base of an old metal fencepost. Not until the pain hit. There weren’t many bugs around but they came buzzing after that first one tasted steel and broadcast the call. I was able to roll away, under the incoming ones.”

“Why are you visiting the zone?” asked Mendez. He sat apart, keeping an eye on the tourists. The woman had asked about bathing earlier and the rangers explained that you could get a bath in town and there was sometimes water in the Rio Puerco, but you didn’t swim in the only drinking water between Red Cliff and the Territorial Capitol.

“You can bathe without soap in the runoff, down the hill above where the cattle drink. Wouldn’t do it below,” Mendez had elaborated. “You can carry a bit of water off into the brush if you want to soap ’n’ rinse.”

Kimball thought Mendez was still sitting there just in case she did decide to bathe. Strictly as a public service, no doubt, keeping a wary eye out for, uh, tan lines.

The woman tourist said, “We’re here for Cultural Anthropology 305. Field study. We meet our prof at his camp on the Rio Puerco.”

“Ah,” said Kimball, “Matt Peabody.”

“Oh. You know him?”

“Sure. His camp is just down stream from the Duncan ford. He likes to interview the people who pass through.”

“Right. He’s published some fascinating papers on the distribution of micro-cultures here in the zone.”

“Micro-cultures. Huh,” said Kimball. “Give me an example.”

“Oh, some of the religious or political groups who form small communities out here. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.” Kimball, his face still, exchanged a glance with the two rangers.

As the woman showed no sign of imminent hygiene, Mendez climbed to his feet groaning and returned to his one room adobe-faced dugout, up the hill.

The woman student became more enthusiastic. “I think it’s so cool how the zone has ended up being this great nursery for widely diverse ways of life! I’m so excited to be able to see it.”

Kimball stood up abruptly and, taking a shallow basket off of his cart, walked downstream where the cattle watered. He filled the basket with dried dung: some camel, horse, and a bit of cow. He didn’t walk back until his breathing had calmed and his face was still. When he returned to the spring, one of the rangers had a pile of dried grass and pine needles ready in the communal fire pit and the other one was skinning a long, thin desert hare.

Kimball had a crock of beans that’d been soaking in water since he’d left Red Cliff that morning. Getting it out of the cart he added more water, a chunk of salt pork, pepper, and fresh rosemary, then wedged it in the fire with the lid, weighted down by a handy rock.

“What do you do, out here?” the woman tourist asked him. Kimball smiled lazily and, despite her earlier words, thought about offering her some beans.

“Bit of this, bit of that. Right now, I sell things.”

“A peddler? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Kimball decided he wasn’t going to offer her any of his beans after all. He shrugged. “I’ve done the required.” In fact, he had his GED, but he didn’t advertise that. “It’s different out here.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“How old are you?”

She grinned. “Personal question, eh? Okay. I’m nineteen.”

“I’m sixteen. Sweet, never been kissed.”

She cocked her head sideways. “Yeah, right.”

“Kimball,” one of the rangers called from across the firepit, “a quarter of the hare for some beans.”

“Maybe. Any buwa, Di-you-wi?” Kimball asked.

“Of course there’s buwa.”

“Buwa and a haunch.”

The two rangers discussed this in Tewa, then Di-you-wi said, “Buwa and a haunch. Don’t stint the beans.”

They warmed the buwa, rolled up blue-corn flatbread, on a rock beside the fire. Kimball added a salad of wide-leaf flame-flower and purslane that he’d harvested along the trail. The rangers spoke thanks in Tewa and Kimball didn’t touch his food until they were finished.

The woman watched out of the corner of her eyes, fascinated.

The tourists ate their radiation-sterilized ration packs that didn’t spoil and didn’t have to be cooked and weren’t likely to give them the runs. But the smell of the hare and beans wafted through the clearing and the smell of the packaged food didn’t spread at all.

“That sure smells good,” the girl said.

Kimball tore off a bit of buwa and wrapped it around a spoonful of beans and a bit of the hare. He stretched out his arm. “See what you think.”

She licked her lips and hesitated.

“Christ, Jennifer, that rabbit had ticks all over it,” said the sunburned man. “Who knows what parasites they – uh, it had.”

The rangers exchanged glances and laughed quietly.

Jennifer frowned and stood up, stepping over sunburn boy, and crouched down on her heels by the fire, next to Kimball. With a defiant look at her two companions, she took the offered morsel and popped it into her mouth. The look of defiance melted into surprised pleasure. “Oh, wow. So buwe is corn bread?”

“Buwa. Tewa wafer bread – made with blue corn. The Hopi make it too, but they call it piki.”

“The beans are wonderful. Thought they’d be harder.”

“I started them soaking this morning, before I started out from Red Cliff.”

“Ah,” she lowered her voice. “What did they call you earlier?”

“Kimball.”

She blinked. “Is that your name?”

“First name. I’m Kimball. Kimball . . . Creighton.”

Di-you-wi laughed. Kimball glared at him.

“I’m Jennifer Frauenfelder.” She settled beside him.

“Freuenfelder.” Kimball said it slowly, like he was rolling it around in his mouth. “German?”

“Yes. It means field-of-women.”

Di-you-wi blinked at this and said something in Tewa to his partner who responded, “Huh. Reminds me of someone I knew who was called Left-for-dead.”

Kimball rubbed his forehead and looked at his feet but Jennifer said, “Left-for-dead? That’s an odd name. Did they have it from birth or did something happen?”

“Oh,” said Di-you-wi, “something happened all right.” He sat up straight and spoke in a deeper voice, more formal.

“Owei humbeyô.”

(His partner whispered, almost as if to himself, “Once upon a time and long ago.”)

“Left-for-dead came to a village in the Jornada del Muerte on the edge of the territory of the City of God, where the People of the Book reside.” Di-you-wi glanced at Jennifer and added, “It was a ‘nursery of diverse beliefs.’

“Left-for-dead was selling books, Bibles mostly, but also almanacs and practical guides to gardening and the keeping of goats and sheep and cattle.

“But he had other books as well, books not approved by the Elders – the plays of Shakespeare, books of stories, health education, Darwin.

“And he stole the virtue of Sharon – ”

The two male tourists sat up at that and the sunburned one smacked his lips. “The dawg!”

Di-you-wi frowned at the interuption, cleared his throat, and went on. “And Left-for-dead stole the virtue of Sharon, the daughter of a Reader of the Book, by trading her a reading primer and a book on women’s health.”

“What did she trade?” asked the leering one.

“There was an apple pie,” said Di-you-wi. “Also a kiss.”

Jennifer said, “And that’s how she lost her virtue?”

“It was more the primer. The women of the People of the Book are not allowed to read,” added his partner.

“Ironic, that,” said Kimball.

“Or kiss,” Di-you-wi said with a quelling glance. He raised his voice. “They burned his books and beat him and imprisoned him in the stocks and called on the people of the village to pelt him but Sharon, the daughter of the Reader, burned the leather hinges from the stocks in the dusk and they ran, northwest, into the malpaís where the lava is heated by the sun until you can cook buwa on the stones and when the rain falls in the afternoon it sizzles like water falling on coals.

“The Elders chased them on horse back but the malpaís is even harder on horses than men and they had to send the horses back and then they chased them on foot but the rocks leave no prints.

“But the water in the malpaís is scarce to none and Left-for-dead and the girl were in a bad way even though they hid by day and traveled by night. Once, in desperation, Left-for-dead snuck back and stole a water gourd from the men who chased them, while they lay sleeping, but in doing so he put them back on the trail.

“Two days later, Sharon mis-stepped and went down in a crack in the rock and broke both bones in her lower leg. Left-for-dead splinted the leg, made a smoke fire, and left her there. The People of the Book found her and took her back, dragged on a travois, screaming with every bump and jar.

“They discussed chasing Left-for-dead and then they prayed and the Reader said God would punish the transgressor, and they went back to their village and spread the story far and wide, to discourage the weak and the tempted.

“Left-for-dead walked another day, to the north hoping to reach the water at Marble Tanks, but he had been beaten badly in the stocks and his strength failed him. When he could go no further he rolled into a crevice in the lava where there was a bit of shade and got ready to die. His tongue began to swell and he passed in and out of darkness and death had his hand on him.”

Here Di-you-wi paused dramatically, taking a moment to chase the last of his beans around the bowl with a bit of buwa.

Jennifer leaned forward. “And?”

“And then it rained. A short, heavy summer thunderstorm. The water dripped down onto Left-for-dead’s face and he drank, and awoke drinking and coughing. And then drank some more. He crawled out onto the face of the malpaís and drank from the puddles in the rock and was able to
fi
ll the water gourd he’d stolen from the Reader’s men, but he didn’t have to drink from it until the next day when the last of the rain evaporated from the pockets in the lava.

“He made it to Marble Tanks, and then east to some seeps on the edge of the lava flows, and hence to the Territorial Capitol.”

“Because the incident with Left-for-dead was just the latest of many, a Territorial judge was sent out with a squad of rangers to hold hearings. The City of God sent their militia, one hundred strong, and killed the judge and most of the rangers.

“When the two surviving rangers reported back, the Territorial Governor flashed a message beyond the curtain and a single plane came in answer, flying up where the air is so thin that the bugs’ wings can’t catch, and they dropped the leaflets, the Notice of Reclamation – the revocation of the City’s Charter.”

“That’s it?” said Jennifer. “They dropped a bunch of leaflets?”

“The first day. The second day it wasn’t leaflets.”

Jennifer held her hand to her mouth. “Bombs?”

“Worse. Chaff pods of copper and aluminum shavings that burst 500 feet above the ground. I heard tell that the roofs and ground glittered in the sunlight like jewels.”

The sunburned man laughed. “That’s it? Metal shavings?”

“I can’t believe they let you through the curtain,” Jennifer said to him. “Didn’t you listen at all?” She turned back to Di-you-wi. “How many died?”

“Many left when they saw the leaflets. But not the most devout and not the women who couldn’t read. The Speaker of the Word said that their faith would prevail. Perhaps they deserved their fate . . . but not the children.

“The last thing the plane dropped was a screamer – an electromagnetic spike trailing an antennae wire several hundred feet long. They say the bugs rose into the air and blotted the sun like locusts.”

Jennifer shuddered.