“I miss you, too, C.J.,” Ev said.
Nothing was stopping me from pointing the camera at a likely suspect and doing one myself, but there wasn’t so much as a haze on the horizon. The Wall was only half a klom off along this stretch, and sometimes there are little kick-up breezes along it, but not today. The air was as still as a roadkill.
“Look!” Ev said, and I thought he was talking to C.J., but he said, “Fin, what’s that?” and pointed at a shuttlewren that was flying toward us.
“Tssillirah,”
I said. “We call them shuttlewrens.”
“Why?” he said, watching the little bird fly over my head and back toward the other two ponies.
I didn’t waste breath answering. The shuttlewren circled Carson’s head and started back for us, flapping its stubby pinkish wings like it was about to wear out. It made two trips around Ev’s hat and started back for Carson again.
“Oh,” Ev said, turning around to see it making the circuit again, flapping for dear life. “How long can it keep that up?”
“A long time. We had one follow us for fifty kloms like that one time up by Turquoise Lake. Carson figured up it flew almost seven hundred kloms.”
Ev started asking for stuff on his log. “What does the Boohteri name for them mean?” he asked me.
“Wide mud,” I said, “and don’t ask what that’s supposed to mean. Maybe they build their nests out of mud. But there’s no mud around here.”
Or dust, I thought. I went back to thinking about dust storms. If Bult and Carson had been up ahead of us, I’d’ve taken my foot out of the stirrup and dragged it in the dirt to stir up some dust, but the way it was, Bult would catch me, and Ev would stop talking about shuttlewrens and ask what I was doing.
I looked back at Carson and waved, thinking maybe that would signal him to do something, but he was so busy talking to Bult I couldn’t get his attention. The shuttlewren, on its tenth lap, skimmed the top of his hat, but that didn’t get his attention either.
“Oh, look!” Ev said.
I turned back around. He was half up in the saddle, pointing off toward the Wall. I couldn’t see what at, which meant neither could the scans.
“Where?” I said.
“Over there,” he said, pointing.
I finally saw what he was looking at—a couch potato lying down behind a roundleaf bush and looking like a ponypile with fur.
I didn’t think the scan had enough res to pick it up, but I said, “I don’t see anything,” to stall while I set the camera on a narrow focus to the far left of it, just in case.
“Over
there,”
Ev said. “Is that—”
I cut him off before he could get more specific. “My shit!” I shouted. “Put the shield on. That’s a …” and hit the disconnect.
“What is it?” Ev said, reaching for his knife. “Is it dangerous?”
“What?” I said, locking the disconnect in for twelve minutes.
“That!” Ev said, waving his hand in the direction of the couch potato. “That brown thing over there.”
“Oh,
that”
I said. “That’s a couch potato. It’s not dangerous. Herbivore. Lies down most of the time, except to eat. I didn’t notice it lying there.” I set my watch alarm for ten minutes.
“Then what were you looking at?” he said, staring worriedly at the horizon.
“The weather,” I said. “We get dust tantrums close to the Wall, and they play hob with the transmitter.” I punched the transmitter’s send three or four times and then held it down. “C.J., you there? Calling Home Base. Come in, Home Base.” I shook my head. “It’s out. I was afraid of that.”
“I didn’t see any dust,” Ev said.
“They’re only a meter or so wide,” I said, “and nearly invisible unless they’re in your line of sight.” I hit a few more keys at random. “I better go tell Carson.”
I yanked hard on the pony’s reins and prodded it in the sides. “Carson,” I called. “We got a problem.”
Carson was still deep in conversation with Bult. I gave the pony another prod, and it gave me an evil look and started backing. At this rate, the dust storm’d be over before I even made it back there. I should’ve made it twenty minutes. “C.J., you there?” I said into the transmitter, just to make sure it was off, and got down off the pony.
“Hey, Carson,” I yelled, “the transmitter’s down.” I walked back to his pony. “Wind’s picking up,” I said. “Looks like we’re in for a dust tantrum.”
“When?” he said, with a glance at Bult, who was busy digging for his log to fine me for being off Useless.
“Now,” I said.
“How long do you think it’ll last?”
“Awhile,” I said, looking speculatively at the sky. “Twelve minutes, maybe twelve and a half.”
“Rest stop,” Carson called, and Bult leapt off his pony and stalked over to look at my footprints.
Carson walked off in the direction of the couch potato. I looked back at Ev. He was standing with his head up and his mouth open, watching the shuttlewren. I caught up with Carson, and we squatted so we wouldn’t attract the attention of the shuttlewren.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just thought we should have one dust storm before we crossed into uncharted territory.”
“You could have waited, then,” Carson said. “We’re not crossing anytime soon.”
“Why not? Is this break fixed, too?”
He shook his head.
“Tssi mitsse,
which means big
tssi mitss,
which I figure translates as he’s going to see to it we don’t get anywhere near Sector 248-76. What did you find out from C.J.? Did the aerial show anything?”
“She didn’t get it. She was too busy batting her eyes at Ev and forgot.”
“Forgot?!” he said. He stood up. “I told you he was going to louse up this expedition. I suppose you were too busy pointing out the sights to run whereabouts either.”
I stood up and faced him. “What on hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you two’ve been so busy talking I figured you’d forgotten all about a little detail like what’s going on in 248-76. What on hell’s interesting enough to talk about all day long anyway?”
“Mating customs,” I said.
“Mating customs,” he said disgustedly. “That’s why you didn’t run whereabouts?”
“I did run them. Whatever’s in that sector, it’s not Wulfmeier. He’s on Starring Gate, and he’s under arrest. I got a verify.”
Carson stared south at the Ponypiles. “Then what on hell’s Bult up to?”
The shuttlewren changed course in midflap and started toward us. “I don’t know,” I said, taking off my hat and waving with it to keep it away. “Maybe the indidges have got a gold mine up there. Maybe they’re secretly building Las Vegas with all the stuff Bult’s ordered.” The wren circled my head and made a pass at Carson. “Maybe Bult’s just trying to run up our fines by taking us the long way around. Did he say how much farther we’d have to go before we could cross the Tongue?”
“Sahhth,” Carson said, mimicking Bult holding his umbrella and pointing. “If we go much farther south, well be in the Ponypiles. Maybe he’s going to lead us into the mountains and drown us in a flash flood.”
“And then fine us for being foreign bodies in a waterway.” My watch beeped, “Looks like it’s starting to clear up,” I said. I picked up a handful of dirt, and we started back for the ponies.
Bult met us halfway. “Taking of souvenirs,” he said, pointing sternly at the dirt in my hand. “Disturbances of land surface. Destruction of indigenous flora.”
“Better transmit all those right away,” I said, “before you forget.”
I went over to Ev’s and my ponies, the shuttlewren tailing me. While Ev was watching it circle his head, I blew dirt off my hand onto the camera lens and then swung up and looked at my watch. A minute to go.
I messed with the transmitter a little and called to Carson, “I think I’ve got it fixed. Come on, Ev.”
I messed some more for Ev’s benefit, taking off a chip and snapping it back into place, but I didn’t need to have bothered. He was still gawking at the shuttle-wren.
“Is that shuttlewren a male?” he asked.
“Beats me. You’re the expert on sex.” I released the disconnect, counted to three, hit it again, and counted to five. “Calling Ki—” I said, and kicked it on again. “—ng’s X, come in C.J.”
“C.J. here,” she said. “Where on hell did you go?”
“Nothing serious, C.J. Just a dust tantrum. We’re too close to the Wall,” I said. “Is the camera back on?”
“Yes. I don’t see any dust.”
“We just caught the edge of it. It lasted about a minute. I’ve been spending the rest of the time trying to get the transmitter up and running.”
“It’s funny,” she said slowly, “how a minute’s worth of dust could do so much damage.”
“It’s one of the chips. You know how sensitive they are.”
“If they’re so sensitive, how come all that dust from the rover didn’t jam them?”
‘The rover?” I said, looking around blankly like one might drive up.
“When Evelyn drove out to meet you yesterday. How come the transmitter didn’t cut out then?”
Because I’d been too busy worrying about Wulfmeier and wrestling the binocs away from Bult to even think of it, I thought. I’d stood there coughing and choking in the rover’s dust and it hadn’t even crossed my mind. My shit, that was all we needed, for C.J. to catch on to our dust storms. “No accounting for technology,” I said, knowing she was never going to buy it. ‘Transmitter’s got a mind of its own.”
Carson came up. “You talking to C.J.? Ask her if she’s got an aerial of the Wall along here. I want to know where the breaks are.”
“Sure,” I said, and hit disconnect again. “We got a problem. C.J.’s asking questions about the dust storm. She wants to know why the transmitter didn’t go out with all that dust from the rover.”
“The rover?” he said, and I could see it dawn on him like it had on me. “What did you tell her?”
“That the transmitter’s temperamental.”
“She’ll never buy that,” he said, glaring at Ev, who was watching the shuttlewren start another lap. “I told you he’d cause trouble.”
“It’s not Ev’s fault. We’re the ones who didn’t have sense enough to recognize a dust storm when we saw it. I’m going back on. What do I tell her?”
“That it’s dust getting in the chip that does it,” he said, stomping back to his pony, “not just dust in the air.”
Which maybe would have worked, except two expeditions ago I’d told her it was dust in the air that did it.
“Come on, Ev,” I said. He came over and got on his pony, still watching the shuttlewren. I took my finger off the disconnect. “—ase, come in, Home Base.”
“Another dust storm?” C.J. said sarcastically.
“There must still be some dust in the chip,” I said. “It keeps cutting out.”
“How come the sound cuts out at the same time?” she said.
Because we’re still wearing our mikes too high, I thought.
“It’s runny,” she went on. “While you were out, I took a look at the meteorologicals Carson ran before you left. They don’t show any wind for that sector.”
“No accounting for the weather either, especially this close to the Wall,” I said. “Ev’s right here. You want to talk to him?”
I patched him in before she could answer, thinking sex wasn’t always such a bad thing on an expedition. It would take her mind off the dust anyway.
Bult and Carson rode in a wide circle around us to get in the lead again, and we followed, Ev still talking to C.J., which mostly consisted of listening and saying “yes” every once in a while, and “I promise.” The shuttlewren followed us, too, making the circuit back and forth like a sheep dog.
“What land of nests do the shuttlewrens have?” Ev asked.
“We’ve never seen them,” I said. “What did C.J. have to say?”
“Not much. Their nests are probably in this area,” he said, looking across the Tongue. The Wall was almost up next to the bank, and there were a few scourbrush in the narrow space between, but nothing that looked big enough to hide a nest. “The behavior they’re exhibiting is either protective, in which case it’s a female, or territorial, in which case it’s a male. You say they’ve followed you for long distances. Have you ever been followed by more than one at a time?”
“No,” I said. “Sometimes one’ll fall away and another one’ll take over, like they’re working in shifts.”
“That sounds like territorial behavior,” he said, watching the shuttlewren make the turn past Bult. It was flying so low it brushed Bult’s umbrella, and he looked up and then hunched over his fines again. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to get a specimen?”
“Not unless it has a coronary,” I said, ducking as it skimmed my hat. “We’ve got holos. You can ask the memory.”
He did, and spent the next ten minutes poring over them while I worried about C.J. We’d talked her into believing the transmitter could be taken out by a gust of dust that wouldn’t even show on the log, and then I’d stood there yesterday and let the transmitter get totally smothered with it and hadn’t even had the sense to disconnect.
And now that she was suspicious, she wouldn’t let it go. She was probably checking all the logs for dust storms right now and comparing them to the meteorologicals.
Bult and Carson were looking in the water again. Bult shook his head.
“The staking out of territory is a courtship ritual,” Ev said.
“Like gangs,” I said.
“The male butterfish sweeps an area of ocean bottom clear of pebbles and shells for the female and then circles it constantly.”
I looked at the shuttlewren, which was rounding Bult’s umbrella again. Bult put down his log and collapsed the umbrella.
“The Mirgasazi on Yoan stake out a block of airspace. They’re an interesting species. Some of the females have bright feathers, but they’re not the ones the males are interested in.”
The shuttlewren flapped past us and up to Bult and Carson again. It rounded the bend, and Bult shot his umbrella open. The shuttlewren fell in midflap, and Bult stabbed it with the tip of the umbrella a couple of times.