“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 fire-pit. “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. Kim 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.

  “Frauenfelder.” 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 interruption, 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,” said 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 horseback 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 misstepped 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 fill 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 five hundred 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.

  Di-you-wi relented a little. “Many more got out when they saw the cloud. I mean, it was like one of the ten plagues of the first chapter of their book, after all. If they made it outside the chaff pattern and kept to the low ground, they made it. But those who stayed and prayed?” He paused dramatically. “The adobe houses of the City of God are mud and dust and weeds, and the great Cathedral is a low pile of stones and bones.”

  “Owei humbeyô.” Once upon a time and long ago.

  Everyone was quiet for a moment though Jennifer’s mouth worked as if to ask something, but no sound came out. Kimball added the last of the gathered fuel to the fire, banged the dust out of his basket, and flipped it, like a Frisbee, to land in his rickshaw-style handcart. He took the empty stoneware bean crock and filled it from the stream and put at the edge of the coals, to soak before he cleaned it.

  “What happened to Sharon?” Jennifer finally asked into the silence.

  Di-you-wi shook his head. “I don’t know. You would have to ask Left-for-dead.”

  Jennifer: “Oh, thanks a lot. Very helpful.”

  Di-you-wi and his partner exchanged glances and his partner opened his mouth as if to speak, but Di-you-wi shook his head.

  Kimball hadn’t meant to speak, but he found the words spilling out anyway, unbidden. “I would like to say that Sharon’s leg still hurts her. That it didn’t heal straight, and she limps. But that she teaches others to read now down in New Roswell. That I had seen her recently and sold her school some primers just last month.”

  Jennifer frowned, “You would like to say that?”

  “It was a bad break and I set it as best I could, but they bounced her over the lava on their way home and trusted to God for further treatment. She couldn’t even walk, much less run, when the metal fell.”

  Jennifer’s mouth was open but she couldn’t speak for a moment.

  “Huh,” said Di-you-wi. “Hadn’t heard that part, Left-for-dead.”

  Kimball could see him reorganizing the tale in his head, incorporating the added details. “Got it from her sister. After I recovered.”

  Jennifer stood and walked over to Kimball’s cart and flipped up the tarp. The books were arranged spine out, paperbacks mostly, some from behind the Porcelain Wall, newish with plasticized covers, some yellowed and cracking from before the bugs came, like anything that didn’t contain metal or electronics, salvaged, and a small selection of leather-bound books from New Santa Fe, the territorial capitol, hand-set with ceramic type and hand-bound—mostly practical, how-to books.

  “Peddler. Book seller.”

  Kimball shrugged. “Varies. I’ve got other stuff, too. Plastic sewing-needles, ceramic blades, antibiotics, condoms. Mostly books.”

  Finally she asked, “And her father? The Elder who put you in the stocks?”

  “He lives. His faith wasn’t strong enough when it came to that final test. He lost an arm, though.”

  “Is he in New Roswell, too?”

  “No. He’s doing time in the territorial prison farm in Nuevo Belen. He preaches there, to a very small congregation. The People of the Book don’t do well if they can’t isolate their members—if they can’t control what information they get. They’re not the People of the Books, after all.

  “If she’d lived, Sharon would probably have made him a part of her life . . . but he’s forbidden the speaking of her name. He would’ve struck her name from the leaves of the family Bible, but the bugs took care of that.”

  Di-you-wi shook his head on hearing this. “And who does this hurt? I think he is a stupid man.”

  Kimball shrugged. “It’s not him I feel sorry for.”

  Jennifer’s eyes glinted brightly in the light of the fire. She said, “It’s not fair, is it?”

  And there was nothing to be said to that.

  CHILD-EMPRESS OF MARS

  THEODORA GOSS

  In the month of Ind, when the flowers of the Jindal trees were in blossom and just beginning to scatter their petals on the ground like crimson rain, a messenger came to the court of the Child-Empress. He announced that a Hero had awakened in the valley of Jar.

  The messenger was young and obviously nervous, at court for the first time, but when the Child-Empress said, “A Hero? What is his name?” he replied with a steady voice, “Highest blossom of the Jindal tree, his name is not yet known. He has not spoken it, for he has as yet seen no one to whom he could speak.”

  The Ladies in Waiting fluttered their fans, to hear him speak with such courtesy, and I said to Lady Ahira, “I think I recognize him. That is Captain Namoor, the youngest son of General Gar, who has inherited his crimson tongue,” by which I meant his eloquence, for an eloquent man is said to have a tongue as sweet as the crimson nectar of the Jindal flowers.

  Lady Ahira blushed blue, from her cheeks down to her knees, for she had a passion for captains, and this was surely the captain of all captains, who had already won the hearts and livers of the court.

  “Let the Hero’s name be Jack or Buck or Dan, one of those names that fall so strangely on our tongues, and let him be tall and pale and silent, except when he sings the songs of his people to the moons, and let him be a slayer of beasts, a master of the glain and of the double adjar.” The Child-Empress clapped her hands, first two and then four, rapidly until they sounded like pebbles falling from the cliffs of the valley of Jar, or the river Noth tumbling between its banks where they narrow at Ard Ulan. And we remembered that although she was an Empress and older than our memories, she was still only a child, hatched not long after the lost island of Irdum sank beneath the sea.

  “Light upon the snows of Ard Ulan, he is indeed a slayer of beasts,” said the captain. The Ladies in Waiting fluttered their fans, and one sank senseless to the floor, overcome by his courtesy and eloquence. “He wounded two Garwolves who approached him, wishing to know the source of his singular odor. He wounded them with a projectile device. They are in the care of the Warden of the reed marshes of Zurdum.”

  “This cannot be,” said the Child-Empress. “The Hero must go on his Quest, for that is the nature of Heroes, but he must not harm my creatures, neither the Garwolves singing in the morning mist, nor the Ilpin bounding over the rocky cliffs of Jar, nor the Mirimi birds that nest in the sands of Gar Kahan, nor even the Sloefrogs, whose yellow eyes blink along the banks of the river Noth. He must not bend a single wing of an Itz. Let us give him a creature to speak with, who can learn his name and where he has come from. Let us send him a Jain, and with her a Translator, so that he will perceive her as resembling his own species. Is there one of my Translators who would travel with the Jain to meet the Hero?”

  All three of the court Translators stepped forward. From among them the Child-Empress chose Irman Adze, who was the oldest and most honored, and who signaled her willingness to make such an important journey by chirruping softly and nodding her head until her wattles flapped back and forth.

  The Child-Empress said to Irman Adze, “Your first task is to remove his projectile device and replace it with the glain and the double adjar, so that he is suitably equipped but can cause no great harm to my creatures and the citizens of my realm.” Then she turned to the court. “And let us also send an Observer, so that we may see and learn what the Hero is saying and doing.” The Observers whirred and flew forward. She selected one among them and entered its instructions.

  “And you, Captain,” said the Child-Empress, turning to Captain Namoor, “because of the pleasure you have brought us in announcing the arrival of a Hero, you shall be permitted to wear the green feather of a Mirimi bird in your cap, and to proceed after the Chancellor on state occasions.”

  His training prevented Captain Namoor from blushing with the intensity of his emotions, but he must have blushed inside, for not one in a thousand receives the honor that the Child-Empress had bestowed upon him. Lady Ahira squeezed my upper left hand until it went purple and I winced from the pressure.

  “What beast shall he slay, great—green feather of the Mirimi bird?” asked the Chancellor, in his ponderous way. He fancied himself a poet. The Ladies in Waiting hid their ears with their fans, and even the Pages giggled. His words were so trite, and not at all original.

  “What beast indeed?” asked the Child-Empress. “Since I have said that none of our creatures must be harmed, let us send our own Poufli.” Hearing his name, Poufli rose from where he had been lying at the Child-Empress’s feet and licked two of her hands, while the other two stroked his filaments.

  “Go, Poufli,” said the Child-Empress. “Lead the Hero on his Quest, but allow him eventually to slay you, and when you have been slain, return to me, and I will think of a way to reward him that is appropriate for Heroes.”

  The next day, the Jain, with the Translator strutting beside her and the Observer whirring and darting around them, left for the slopes and caverns of Ard Ulan, where the Hero had awakened. Poufli bounded off in the opposite direction, to where the Child-Empress intended that the Hero should encounter his final Obstacle.

  We watched, day after day, as the Hero traveled across the valley of Jar. The images transmitted by the Observer were captured in the idhar at the center of the Chamber of Audience. I preferred to watch in the mornings, when the mist still hung about the bottoms of the pillars but the dome high above was already illuminated by the rising sun, and the Mirimi birds were stirring in the branches of the Gondal trees. I would splash water on my face from one of the sublimating fountains, eat a light breakfast of Pika bread spread with Ipi berries, drink a libation made from the secretions of the Ilpin that were kept at court, and then sit on one of the cushions that the Child-Empress had provided, watching, with the other early risers, as the Hero performed his ablutions and offered his otherworldly songs to the gods of his clan.