Feeling more alive, he trod forth. The sun stood furious in a sky like blue metal. He could barely make out the waning, westering Moon. No wonder Aleka Was in a hurry. They needed to make contact while it was still above this horizon. Relaying through stations on the ground could alert the system to them.
She took his arm. The touch was more cheering than it ought to be. “This way,” she said. He accompanied her through the camp.
Hemispheres of varying size, according to how many occupied each, had been raised in an orderly array around a space left clear. Behind them, a transportable desalinator worked in a muddy remnant of the Salton Sea. Gray-white desolation stretched onward in that direction. Elsewhere, though, the land bore life, shrubs, cactus, gaunt trees, all growing widely apart in alkaline dust. Some, he knew, was native, but most was metamorphic, designed to thrive under these conditions and produce food, fiber, fuel, phannaceuticals. He spied individuals out there, afoot or on minicycles, inspecting, tending, applying the equipment that harvested the products. Vehicles not in use stood parked offside, half a dozen trucks, two volants, four rugged cars besides the one that had brought him and Aleka.
Heat-shimmer blurred the distances. The air lay full of harsh aromas.
“Hola,” greeted a passerby courteously.
“Uh, buenos dias,” Kenmuir responded. Or was that correct? He wasn’t a North American.
The man was a typical Drylander, thin, black-haired, yellowish-brown complexion, broad face, slit eyes, aquiline nose. A hooded white robe draped proudly over the huge buttocks. Such women as Kenmuir saw were similarly clad and even more steatopygous. In children the water-hoarding cells were less developed. People moved quietly, with an innate dignity, saying little. Not many were around.The temperature didn’t bother them, but those that weren’t out in the field were generally busy in the shelters. A group recital in sweet treble voices, from a large dome, told that a part of the activity was schooling.
The open space, common ground for meetings and for sociability after sunset, had four lamps on its perimeter. At the center, a crucifix lifted three meters tall. The cross was carved to represent a leafing tree, and the Christ was—not exactly metamprphic, but he had a suggestion of the alien about him—Startled, Kenmuir realized that he looked almost Lunarian.
That might not have been intended, the spaceman thought, but the underlying idea certainly was. A faith that sought to expiate man’s sins against Mother Earth … Inevitable, he supposed. When the first Drylanders were engineered to tolerate conditions like these, the deserts were still on the march. The rollback that later began deprived their race of any ultimate purpose in existence. So some among them created it for themselves. He wondered if any appreciated the irony that their credit was what enabled them to buy those necessities they couldn’t produce or trade their meager output for.
Or was it irony? After all, they pooled their individual payments; material possessions were of small concern; distinction came from personal accomplishments, strength, skill, holiness. Maybe the difference between these neonomads—Legionarios was what the members of this tribe dubbed themselves, he recollected—and his Fireball Trothdom was they lived their ideals, while his kind played at their dreams. Who was happier? Who had better adapted to the cybercosm?
“We’re here,” Aleka said.
A shelter facing the square bore a fish symbol painted above the entrance. She went to stand before it and call softly, “Hola. Visitantes, por favor.”
“Entrad en el nombre de Dios,” replied a man’s voice. They obeyed. The inside was nearly as plain as where they had slept, two pallets, a stump-legged table, a portable cuisinier and utensil rack, the curtained wash space. At the back was a primitive desk with shelves holding various items, including a reader and a miniature crucifix. A boy stood watching coffee brew; the fragrance reminded Kenmuir of how long ago it was he last ate. Near the middle a man sat cross-legged on his great fundament. Though the hair was white and countenance deeply lined, he kept his back straight. From a chain around his neck hung an ankh carved out of coral.
“Padre Fernando, el capitan lan Kenmuir,” Aleka said.