A Shadow Over the Land
                                   by Liz Williams
Bantam gave Liz Williams her most recent American book publication when
they released Banner of Souls last fall. The novel has picked up the author’s
third nomination for a Philip K. Dick Award. Her other books include The
Ghost Sister , Empire of Bones , The Poison Master , and Nine Layers of Sky . In
addition, Liz has had over forty short stories published in Asimov’s , Interzone ,
Realms of Fantasy , and The Third Alternative . Her latest tale takes a young
woman on a perilous academic expedition.
                                         ****
       I always knew that one day I would return to the veldt, to the light and the
silence. At night, when I closed my eyes, I could see the veldt rolling before me in
the darkness, all the way to the rocks of the Damara. They are red with iron, great
rusted cliffs that lift up out of the plains. Further in lies the Ushete Rift and the range
that the early settlers to this world called the Mountains of the Moon, meaning both a
barren land, and home. Gahran has a moon, too, and when it rises over the Ushete, it
seems close enough to touch, but I knew nothing of this land when I first came
there.
        I first went to the veldt a year ago. The university had sent me out to
Yaounde, close to the border, with team leader Andre Vauchelade. I hadn’t been at
the university for very long. I had arrived on Gahran from Earth, where I’d held a
post at Nairobi. I was less sure of myself, a year ago. More things seemed to matter
to me, and to matter more. The Yaounde expedition seemed fraught with
importance. I had so much to prove, both as a young researcher and as a woman
from Earth. Vauchelade had a reputation as an exacting man, who was hard to work
for and harder to like. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed the night before we
left, clasping my hands together until they hurt, and thinking that I must not fail, that I
must be perfect in all that I did. Now, I look back and wonder. I failed, certainly, to
make my reputation or even to protect my name, and now it hardly matters.
      I lived out the last year in the city, went to the university by day and came
back at night to write and sleep. At work, I kept myself to myself, as far as that was
possible with a hundred and seventy students to worry about. Yet somewhere at the
back of my mind, I was always aware of the contrast, of the part of the world that
was absent.
       Irubin, where I lived, was one of the big transcontinental ports: you could
stand on one end of the Benue Bridge and look across to the distant hazy shore on
the other side. The city straddled a long arm of the sea, but on the shore beneath the
bridge, there was only an echo of salt on the wind, and the water was sepia with river
sand. I tried to escape at weekends to the northern coast, to the long sweep of Hama
beach beyond the shanty blocks, and watch the breakers roll in. I never found what I
was looking for, and never expected to, for the veldt had marked me, and I could
never see the city in the same way again.
       In the veldt, there is no one and there is no water, unless one follows the thin
line of the river Ghila. It was barren land, to the unschooled eye, but I am a
geologist, and it was rich country for me. I could see life everywhere, the lost life of
this world that had ebbed to leave its traces in the rocks.
        Yaounde had been established as a military outpost some seventy years ago,
when the first settlers arrived and no one knew what lived out in the veldt. This was
before they discovered how empty this world really was, with only the thinnest
scattering of life of its own. When we came through the building at the end of the
little airstrip, there was a single soldier, in the khaki uniform of the SSC, clutching a
semi-automatic. He looked no more than fourteen. Vauchelade, ignoring the gun and
the uniform, made him help us with the bags. Poor Professor, I thought. Short,
white, and with the florid face of the South African Boer, he could not have looked
more out of place. He was sweating profusely and I felt suddenly sorry for him.
       “You’ll have to sign in,” the soldier said, trying to rescue some dignity. I felt
sorry for him, too. He’d joined the army because it sounded more exciting than a life
spent working for his dad on some country farm, and now here he was, guarding an
isolated airstrip on a world that has no enemies.
        “Whatever,” Vauchelade said, then strode past the front desk and out onto the
forecourt. The soldier and I followed. “Where’s the car?” Vauche-lade said
impatiently. “I told them when we were coming. This is bloody typical!” I sat down
on the bags. The sudden rush of heat had hit me. It was much hotter than the damp
air of Irubin, or even Nairobi.
      “Did you take your pills?” Vauchelade asked.
       “No, I forgot.” I said meekly. He did not bother to reply. I knew what he was
thinking. We’d only been here fifteen minutes, and already I was doing things wrong.
I fumbled in the stretch case for the packet of capsules and extracted two. God only
knows what they did to you. I felt them travel the length of my dry throat and then an
icy chill spread upward from my stomach, constricting my heart. It felt like fever.
     “Give them a minute to work,” Vauchelade said, not unsympathetically. I
nodded. “You’ll still sweat, but they do cool you down. Look, here’s the car.”
      It was an old general terrain vehicle. The engine cover was missing, removed
to cool the engine. The driver hopped down and slung the bags into the back of the
GTV.
      “Careful with those,” Vauchelade said irritably. “There’s some delicate
instruments in there.”
     “Sorry,” the driver said, perfunctorily. He handed me into the back seat;
Vauchelade took the front.
      “I hope this isn’t the assigned team vehicle,” Vauchelade said over his
shoulder. “I’m not taking anything in this condition out into the veldt.”
       I watched the streets unfold through the filthy window of the GTV. It was a
good example of frontier military architecture: row after row of prefabs and one
four-story compartment building festooned with satellite equipment. The drive did
not last long. Yaounde was not a large place, and we were staying in the single hotel.
       When we arrived, I collected the imprint for my room and went straight
upstairs. The little window looked out onto a dusty backyard filled with petrol drums
and an old mattress. I think my culture shock was finally beginning, fueled by
disappointment. I had come all this way, out to another world, and it was just like
home.
       I remembered my grandfather telling me about those early days, when a
Settler’s claim had been finally granted to Gahran. He was an engineer, my
granddad, and he had been in space, on one of the lunar projects. He said that he
and his people had been filled with hope, that there was at last a land of their own: a
new Africa. I think he really felt it was a kind of return to Eden, given by God, where
they could avoid the mistakes of the past and start again, be the people they once
were. To some extent, he had been right. Irubin was one of the great cities of the
human worlds, and Somalai, and Rununda. But not Yaounde, I thought. Yaounde
was the same as everywhere else. I had not felt that I belonged in Nairobi. I did not
feel that I belonged here, either. I stood and stared out of the little window, and when
the phone shrilled, it made me jump. The female voice on the other end was
unfamiliar.
      “Dr. Selu?”
      “Yes?” I said.
      “My name’s Essengene Tesh. I’m with the outpost team? The guys that
you’re replacing.”
      “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was supposed to call you earlier in the week. I couldn’t
get hold of you.”
      “No, I know. Something came up. I had to go up-border. I’m actually
downstairs now, in the bar. If you’re not too tired, I thought we could have some
lunch?”
      “Yes,” I told her. “Yes, that would be good.”
        Essengene Tesh was a handsome woman in her mid-forties. She was wearing
military gear, which confused me until she said, disarmingly, “Everything else is in
the wash. I borrowed these from the colonel ... Otherwise you wouldn’t have wanted
to sit next to me, I’m afraid.”
      “We had an eight-hour flight from Irubin. I wouldn’t have noticed,” I said,
and she laughed.
       “When I get back to Irubin, I’m going to hire a salon for a week and live in it.
But I envy you, Dr. Selu,” she added, suddenly serious. “You don’t know how
much you’ll like it, out there.”
      “You can call me Assia,” I said. “How do you know I’ll like it?” I asked,
curiously. She looked at me for a moment. In the darkness of the bar, her eyes were
impenetrable, hooded.
      “Oh, you will. Whether Vauchelade will, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”
      “The professor’s been here before.”
        “Yes,” Tesh said, considering. “He has and he hasn’t. I don’t think he’s ever
really seen things out here. He’s a good geologist, mind, I’m not saying he’s not.
But there’s more out there than rocks.”
      “I thought the veldt was uninhabited.”
       “No one lives there. I don’t mean there’s mysterious alien life or anything. It’s
hard to explain.”
       She looked up and smiled at Vauchelade, who had appeared through the door
of the bar, and the conversation turned to more practical matters. We would leave
Yaounde early the next morning, head out to the base camp, and set up in
preparation for the arrival of the team. Most of the equipment would be inherited
from the departing group, but the instrumentation relevant to Vauchelade’s own
research would need to be assembled. Tesh briefed us on the previous month’s
findings and gave us a copy of the field notes before driving out to the airstrip to
sort out the departure details. When she had gone, Vauchelade said, “I wouldn’t
worry too much about what Dr. Tesh tells you.”
      “About...?”
       “The veldt. I’ve heard her views before.” He smiled indulgently. “She’s a very
spiritual woman.” I did not think it was meant to be a compliment.
      “I’ve read her papers in the AGA journals,” I said, wanting to defend her.
      “Oh, she’s very competent, I suppose.” He picked up the bill and looked
around for the pay-in. “I should get some rest, if I were you. We’ve got a long day
ahead of us tomorrow, and there’s not a great deal we can do here. I need to get the
transport sorted out.”
      I wandered back up to my room and lay down on the bed. It was stuffy, and
the bed cover seemed far too thick. It made my skin itch uncomfortably, but I must
have fallen asleep, because when I next opened my eyes, the light that poured
through the little window was thick and golden.
       When I looked at my watch I discovered that it was four in the afternoon. I
showered and changed, then went downstairs. Reception was deserted. I stepped
out into the street, still feeling the remnants of sleep around me. It was very quiet,
and the sun was sinking to cast long shadows across the packed ochre earth of the
road. I must have dreamed as I lay sleeping in the stuffy hotel room, because I could
not shake the feeling that I had been speaking to someone. I felt light-headed and
strange, and wondered whether it was some after-effect of the temperature control,
but then I realized that I was hungry.
      Even in the smallest place, there is always a market. In Yaounde, it lay at the
back of the temple and consisted of a few stalls selling household goods, cheap
clothes, and fast food. The smell of frying plantain made my mouth water. At the
end was a café, a lot more appealing than the dark and arid bar of the hotel. I went in
and sat down. It was full of people: soldiers and mining personnel. Everyone seemed
to know one another, no surprise in a place as small as this. I typed my order into
the keypad, and, as I did so, something warm butted against my shins, startling me.
The woman sitting opposite me reached under the table and extracted a small child,
who gave me a long and uncertain stare.
       “Sorry,” the woman said.
       “That’s okay. She just made me jump.”
       “You’re with the scientists?”
       It’s always the same in a small town; they like to place you, to know who you
are.
       “Yes, that’s right. We’re here for the next six weeks or so.”
       “Out in the Rift,” the woman said, wonderingly.
       “Have you been there?”
       She smiled at me. “No, never. Why would I?”
       The little girl was marching a plastic doll across the table. She was making it
talk, babbling away on its behalf.
       “Who’s dolly talking to?” her mother asked. The child gave a radiant smile.
       “Demelo.”
       Her mother laughed. “Oh, okay.” I did not recognize the word. The woman
gave her daughter a pat. “Come on. We should be getting back.” She hefted the
child into her arms, and, at that point, my food arrived. I did not see them go.
      I went to bed early that night and had no dreams that I can remember. The
next day was hot, even so soon after dawn, and a bright glaze lay across the sky.
The sun rested in a bronze halo above the distant cliffs of the Rift. Vauchelade
wanted to get going before the heat became too intense to travel. He had acquired a
ground car from the military base, which proved both smoother and faster than the
GTV. Yaounde fell behind us in a cloud of dust. For the first thirty kilometers, we
saw scattered farmsteads—round, white perma-domes surrounded by fields—and
then there was nothing but the plains. The veldt is arid, speckled with stones and
tufts of coarse grass. We saw no life, and the sky, a lid the color of bone, was
empty of birds.
        The dust of the Ushete is also the color of rust. It rose up in a soft cloud,
lifted by the wheels of the car, to settle against the windscreen. Vauchelade switched
on the airwipers, but the dust continued to swirl up to hide the plains from view.
Vauchelade turned the wipers to a constant setting and sealed the windows. The air
inside the vehicle became icy. I tried to adjust the control, but to no effect. It was
like traveling through some cold, dark night.
       At last, Vauchelade pulled the wheel of the car over sharply and turned the
engine off. The roar of the AC seemed loud in the sudden silence. I opened the door
and slid out. It was very quiet and very still. The mountains of the Rift rose up
before me and they were red as blood in the light of the distant sun. They rolled up
in a series of crumpled folds as far as the horizon to conceal the immense fissure of
the Rift itself. The wind carried a dry, harsh heat and the smell of the parched land.
       Vauchelade said, “The camp’s at the edge of the Rift. We won’t be able to
take the car much further. There’s a track leading down to the site.”
      We got back into the car and Vauchelade drove for a short distance along the
rudimentary track made by an earlier vehicle. The track wound between the crimson
rocks until it opened out onto a short plateau. The Rift lay beyond. Stepping down
from the vehicle, I walked to the edge and looked out across the Ushete.
       Compared to other features on other worlds, I suppose, it was not the most
spectacular formation of its kind. Even so, the scale of the Rift left me momentarily
breathless. From the lip of the plateau, the ground fell abruptly into a great chasm,
which snaked away into the distance. It was like standing on the very edge of the
world. A single step, I thought, and I would not fall but float down into the gap,
down forever, and never reach an end. It seemed as though the world had become
inverted, as though all the skies and the starry plains beyond were contained in the
space beneath my feet. Somewhere beyond vertigo, I reeled, and the world spun
around me in a reversed image: light turning to darkness and the rocks of the Rift
burning like fire. Then Vauchelade was pulling me back.
      “Careful,” he said, genially enough, but there was an edge to his voice.
      “I’m sorry,” I said.
      “Look.” Vauchelade pointed into the endless gap of the Rift. “See the strata
running across the ledge? That’s what I want to take a look at. An interesting
product of what we’re calling the Metosaic.” He was holding my arm in a tight grip.
He probably meant to be kind.
      We walked back to the car and began to unload the instruments. The
temperature control kept me cool, but the heat burst over my skin like a wave and I
could taste the dust on my tongue. It was reassuring and familiar, like the dust that
covered the streets of Dushange Street and which my mother swept from the steps
every morning. I closed my eyes for a moment, and, when I opened them, I
expected to see the low house between the lemon trees, and the globes of the fruit
yellow as suns among the leaves.
        Laden with the bags, I followed Vauchelade. He seemed to vanish over the lip
of the Rift, but when I reached the place where he had gone, I realized that a steep
little path led down to a second, wider ledge. The pale tops of the dome tents
billowed up in the wind from the Rift. A small figure stepped out and waved: as we
descended, I recognized Tesh. There were two main tents, the living quarters, and a
smaller nest of domes, like mushrooms, which housed the equipment. The gear
belonging to the departing team was packed and piled at the entrance to one of the
larger tents, ready to go.
      “—but we’re actually going to wait until evening,” Tesh was explaining to
Vauchelade. She ran a hand over her forehead, pushing back the dark braids. “I
don’t want to slog three hundred miles in this heat.” Vauchelade nodded.
        “I think that’s wise,” he said.
        “When are the rest of your team coming?” Tesh asked.
      “They might be in Yaounde now. As soon as I can put a call through I’ll find
out. They may decide to set out tonight.”
        A second person emerged from the tent, a young man with a round, cheerful
face.
        “Hi,” he said, smiling at us. “Dr. Vauchelade and Dr. Selu, I presume?”
        “That’s right,” I said. “And—I’m guessing—you’re Clayton Richards?”
        “Good guess. Yes, I’m Clay.”
     “Well,” Vauchelade said. “Since we’ve got two or three hours before you go,
why don’t you bring me up to date on your readings?”
      “Sure.” Richards held the flap of the tent open for us. We followed him into
the cool half-light of the main tent. The amount of research that they had managed to
complete was impressive. Vauchelade nodded approvingly.
        “This is really good stuff,” he said. Tesh grinned.
       “This,” she told him, “This is the piece de resistance.” She handed him a
series of slides and a sample box. As Vauchelade examined it, his face changed.
      “My God,” he said.
      “Bet you haven’t seen anything like that before,” Tesh said.
       “Well, no, I haven’t,” he admitted. He handed the slide to me. It showed a
microscope sample, and it was beautiful. It was part of a crystalline fragment. Azure
spires reared upward, an Ethiopian city in miniature, iridescent as a peacock’s
feather.
      “What is it?” I asked.
        “It doesn’t have a name yet,” Richards said. “But we’re calling it essengenite,
after its discoverer.”
      “And who knows what else is out there?” Tesh said. I felt a snaking knot of
emotions grip my stomach: pride in her achievement, a measure of jealousy, and
most of all, ambition. This discovery could make Tesh’s name in contemporary
geology. I felt her eyes upon me and knew that she saw what I was feeling. It was an
oddly compassionate gaze, as though the discovery was something that had almost
ceased to be of importance to her.
        We spent the rest of the afternoon setting up the equipment. Vau-chelade put
a call through to Yaounde and learned that the team was ready to set off.
     “Should be with you by midnight,” a crackling, disembodied voice
announced.
      “Good,” Vauchelade said.
      “Well,” Tesh remarked, straightening up from behind the instrument bank. “I
guess Clay and I should think about making a move.”
      When we stepped outside the tent, I found that the wind had dropped and the
sky had become infused with the intense rosy glow of sunset. The sun itself had
disappeared beneath the edge of the Ushete, as if devoured by the Rift.
       “Look,” Tesh said. She turned me around to face the mountains. The moon
was rising, filling the whole world, enormous in the sunset sky.
       “Close enough to touch, isn’t it?” she said. The mountains of the moon were
outlined in a sharp rim of shadow. The great disc bore no semblance of a face, as
the Europeans like to think, nor the long-eared hare seen by people in Asia. Its
craters formed a meaningless pattern on which no interpretation could be placed. In
Irubin, they call it “the mirror,” for when you look upon it you are confronted only
with yourself.
       I said goodbye to Tesh and Richards and walked with them up the track to
the plateau where their own vehicle was parked. I watched as they sped away,
sending the dust up in a moonlit cloud. Then I walked again to the edge of the
plateau and looked across. The moon, clear of the mountain rim, hung over my
shoulder, and the Rift fell away in a ridged mass of shadow. The tilted, serrated
spines lay like bones, as though something almost too vast to be imagined had laid
itself down to die. I stepped back from the edge. My shadow raced away from me,
elongated by the end of the light, and, within my shadow, I saw a deeper patch of
darkness. I thought at first it was a stone, but then it moved. I had the same
sensation that I had experienced that afternoon. The scar of blackness was small
enough to lie within the confines of my shadow, and yet, at the same time, it seemed
huge, encompassing the valley, the mountains, and the roseate moon. It lasted only a
second or two. It left me completely disoriented, and it was a moment before I was
able to recollect myself and head back to the camp.
       Vauchelade said that he would wait up until the team arrived, but that there
was no need for me to do so. He went up to check the car, and I found a camp bed
in the back tent and claimed it, setting up an energy field to keep out insects. It did
not take long to drop into sleep, but, in the early hours of the night, I was awoken by
the wind. It roared overhead, beating at the tent as though it were a drum. I lay and
listened to the wind, and it seemed to me, half-dreaming, that I could hear a voice in
the wind, crying out. Toward dawn, the storm blew out, but it was too late for sleep.
I got up and made my way around the stacks of equipment to the makeshift shower
rig. Then, a little refreshed, I stepped out of the tent into the morning. The sun was
coming up over the distant ridges, infusing the land with a gray light. It was very
cold. A swirl of wind blew across the ground, rolling the loose earth before it.
Vauchelade was perched precariously above the drop, tapping data into the daily
log.
      “Good morning,” he said, courteously enough. “It’s been quite a wild night.
Did you get any sleep?”
      “I slept a little,” I said.
       “Storms blow up fast in this area,” Vauchelade said. “One moment, it’s a
clear sky, and, the next minute, you’re choking with dust. The satellites pick them
up, but you can’t always get a link.”
      “Are the others still coming?” I asked.
        “They should be, later. I tried to get through last night, but the storm knocked
out any communication.” He was staring out across the Rift, his eyes narrowed
against the sunlight. “Right. Get yourself something to eat and then we’ll make a
start. There are a number of things I’d like you to be getting on with today.”
     My first morning in the Rift was spent with my hands in the sink, washing
samples. Vauchelade climbed down onto a lower ledge and did not return until noon.
      “You’ve finished here? Good,” he said. “Haven’t they got here yet?”
      “There’s been no sign of anyone,” I said.
       “Well, that’s very odd,” Vauchelade said, evidently annoyed. “They should
be here by now.” He began to fiddle with the radio, from which a distorted crackling
sound emanated. I left him to it, and went into the adjacent tent to vacuum pack the
smaller samples. When I came back in, Vauchelade had got through and was
conducting a one-sided conversation. I heard him say, reluctantly, “Well, all right
then. I suppose that will have to do,” and then he switched the radio off. Leaning
back in his chair, he said irritably, “That’s that then. They’re stuck. That storm
deposited half the dust in the Rift onto the Upper Veldt. The road’s blocked.
They’re trying to hire an aircar, which will send us way over budget.” He glared at
me, as though I was directly responsible for our present plight. “Well, what are you
standing there for? There’s work to be done.”
       Vauchelade wanted samples from the lower cliffs in order to build up a picture
of the strata.
      “Sort out whatever you need from the stack,” he instructed me. “I presume
you’re familiar with the relevant equipment?”
        “I think so,” I said. I wanted to tell him that we had covered basic tasks such
as this one in our second term of university, and I was a post-doctoral student, but I
let it go. Instead, I went into the tent and sorted out the necessary gear, but there was
something missing. I could not find the sounding gauge. It was such a small thing,
and could easily be overlooked. I ransacked the equipment stack and then I went
back into the main tent and looked there. At last, it occurred to me that Vauchelade
might have taken it for his own testing that morning. Feeling stupid, I went over to
the big collapsible box that he used for his personal equipment and opened the top
drawer. There was the sounding gauge, stuffed inside with packets of soil. Brilliant
Vauchelade may have been, but his working methods left a lot to be desired. I
tugged the sounding gauge free, and the contents of the drawer spilled out across the
floor. And into my lap fell the piece of rock that Essengene Tesh had discovered,
blue as the hem of Isis’ robe. I picked it up and stared at it.
     “What are you doing with that? Put it back,” Vauchelade’s voice came from
immediately behind my ear.
      “I was looking for the sounding gauge,” I said. “I thought that Tesh took this
with her?”
      “No. She left all her samples here, so we could ship everything back at once,”
Vauchelade said, with restrained patience. He added, “Come along, Dr. Selu. We
haven’t got all day.”
       I placed the blue fragment back inside the drawer and followed him outside.
Vauchelade suggested that he should cover the top end of the bluff, while I sampled
the lower ledge.
      “I’ll have to winch you down in the cradle,” Vauchelade said. “It’s a damn
nuisance, being so short-handed. Still, we’ll just have to make the best of it. I’m sure
you can handle it. You’ve done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”
      “In the Caucasus. With Jerry Hutton. We—”
      “Yes, yes,” Vauchelade said. “Help me with the winch.”
        Together, we carried the light extendable winch down to the lip of the canyon
and stood back as it assembled itself. He had some expensive equipment with him,
for all his griping about the budget.
       “Keep attached to the guide rope at all times,” Vauchelade said, “And give me
a call on the portable when you’re ready to come up.”
      “No problem,” I said. I wanted to show him that I could, as he had suggested,
handle it on my own.
       I strapped myself into the cradle and was winched slowly down the cliff. The
ledge on which I landed was no more than a few feet wide, but there was adequate
space in which to work. Methodically, I started my sampling; photographing the
strata and then taking core samples of each separate formation. It was very quiet
within the valley of the Rift, and very hot. The sun had baked the floor of the ledge
into a pavement of cracked bricks, and there was a smell of earth and heat. I worked
in a kind of dream, the repetitive action sending me almost into trance. Somewhere at
the back of my mind, like a pebble at the bottom of a well, lay the thought of Tesh’s
blue stone, which should have been with her, but was not.
      I did not realize how late it had become until I glanced at the watch attached to
my belt and saw that it was well after six. I finished what I was doing and packed
everything into the pouches of the cradle. Then I spoke into the portable.
      “Professor Vauchelade?” I said. “I’m ready to come up now.”
       No one answered. I switched the portable to a higher frequency and tried
again. I may as well have spoken into the deep and empty air of the Rift. It did not
yet occur to me that anything might be seriously wrong. I knew that certain
formations blocked out the frequency from the portable, and Vauchelade might have
moved out of range. I set the portable on an automatic signal, and sat down on the
hard earth. Heat burned out from the Rift wall. My sunsuit protected me from the
worst of it, but it was still uncomfortably hot. I was grateful for the little breeze that
drifted down the Valley, sending the fine sand skittering across the floor of the ledge.
         Slowly the wind began to grow. The entranced complacency of the afternoon
faded and I began to feel uneasy. The portable was still transmitting, to no effect. At
first, I think I wondered whether something had happened to Vauchelade. The
golden light that poured into the valley was hazed with dust, a veil borne on the rising
wind. I looked down at my hand, and saw the dark skin dulled beneath a
spice-colored film. The dust had crept underneath the wrist seal of the sunsuit, and it
itched where it rubbed against the skin. I turned back to the cradle, trying to see
whether I might climb up the guide rope to the brow of the cliff, but when I looked
upward, I could no longer see the top of the bluff. It was hidden by the dust. I
pulled at the rope, and watched in disbelief as it uncoiled down the cliff and fell
snaking around my ankles. It had come detached from the winch.
        I shouted into the portable, and still there came no answer. A gust of wind
buffeted me, nearly sending me over the edge, and throwing me onto my knees.
Beyond the ledge, the Rift valley was filled with a shifting sea of dust, red waves
rolling up to burst like spray against the ledge. It filled my mouth; I spat and rubbed
my eyes, and, for a moment, I saw the sun riding, bright as garnet, through the
boiling storm. I thought, I am going to die, and then everything seemed to right
itself. I breathed dust, and there at the edges of the storm I sensed again a shadow,
vast as the Rift and burning like the sun. It grew as vast as the world. It filled the
Rift, welling up from it like water—and then I knew that it was nothing more than the
Rift itself.
      I understood then what Tesh had discovered: not the shard of rock that would
be named after her, but something else, the presence of the land. Each place has its
own spirit, born out of rock, and wind, and earth. I was choking on dust, and I was
going to die, and it seemed hardly important. I was part of a place; I belonged. I
plunged my hands into the dust that covered the ledge, and laughed.
       Since I am here to tell you this story, it is evident that I did not, after all, die
there. A wave of warm air washed over me, and above the wind, I heard the sound
of a propulsion system. Minutes later, Vauchelade and a woman I did not know were
bundling me onto a stretcher and I was being lifted up into the bowels of the aircar.
They gave me a shot, and pumped out my lungs, and so I did not see the aircar lift
out as the storm spilled over the edges of the Rift to engulf the camp and the reaches
of the Upper Veldt.
       When I came round, we were running ahead of the storm back to Yaounde
and I made a thorough nuisance of myself trying to explain what it was that I had
experienced. Vauchelade snorted. The others clearly thought I was raving, with the
exception of one woman, Gereta Apere, who looked at me strangely and said, “I
know what you mean. I was born on a farmstead near New Cape, not far from the
edge of the Rift. They call it demelo. A shadow over the land. Not everyone sees it.
They say it is a sign that the land has accepted you, that it will save your life when it
can, that you will enter its spirit when you die.”
       She didn’t say anything more, and I relapsed into a fitful sleep. We reached
Yaounde safely, and I spent the night at the medical center. They discharged me the
next morning, and though my throat felt as though it had been sandpapered, I was
clear-headed and in need of answers. I went in search of Vauchelade at the hotel,
only to be told that he had returned to Irubin.
      “He told us what happened,” Apere said. “You must have called him, but he
was in one of the side gullies and the portable failed to receive. At last, he went in
search of you and found that the winch had disassembled, some nano failure. He
was standing at the top of the cliff when we arrived. He was about to climb down to
you, he said.”
      “Can I speak to Tesh?” I asked her.
       She looked at the floor and said, “Dr. Selu, there’s something you should
know. Dr. Tesh and her colleague never reached Yaounde. They were caught in last
night’s storm. There’s been a patrol out looking for them, and they found the vehicle
this morning. They’d gone over the edge into a gully. Didn’t the professor tell you?”
      “He knew?” I said.
       “Yes, of course. I told him myself, over the radio. Perhaps he didn’t want you
to be upset.”
       “I’m sure that’s it,” I said. I was thinking of Essengene Tesh and the azure
mineral that would have made the name and the reputation of its discoverer. I was
wondering where Vauchelade had been, that first night, whether he would have had
time to follow the departing team members, and, if so, what a ruthlessly ambitious
man would have done. Or perhaps he was merely prepared to take advantage of a
tragic accident, and dispose of the only other person who knew that Tesh had been
the one to find the mineral. Outside, the morning sun spilled heat across the parched
garden of the hotel, but the atrium seemed very cold.
      “I have to get back to Irubin,” I said.
       I need not have worried. I returned to find my department mourning the loss
of a promising geologist, and celebrating the discovery that she had made. Tesh, it
seemed, had possessed the forethought to transmit the details through to the
university. They were grateful to Vauchelade for bringing her sample back with him.
I said nothing. I had no proof that Vauchelade had done anything. My contract at the
university was extended, and they placed me on Vauchelade’s research program.
We saw one another every day, but he seemed to have increasing difficulty in
meeting my eyes. After a few months, he was awarded a chair at the University of
Durban back on Earth, and left the department.
        My year in Irubin drew to an end. At the end of the year, I postponed an offer
to renew my contract. I wanted, I told the Dean, to take a walking holiday, see a little
more of Gahran, perhaps revisit the place where Tesh had made her discovery.
Presumably, they thought I was referring to essengenite. At the edges of the Ushete
Rift, they call it demelo, the shadow of the land, and so I am going to go walking in
the veldt, until I can see the Mountains of the Moon, and find again what I hope I
have not lost.


      Copyright © 2005 by Liz Williams.