PHOENIX IN THE ASHES
Joan D. Vinge
PHOENIX IN THE ASHES
The sun’s blind, burning face pushed upward past the scarred rim of the river canyon; brands of light seared Hoffmann’s closed eyelids. He stirred, and sighed. The temperature rose with the sun; flies and red ants took the day shift from the mosquitoes.
Hoffmann kicked free of the blankets and sat up. He brushed flies from his face, sand from his watch crystal. “Six a.m. ...” Something stung his foot. “God damn!” He crushed an ant, felt the familiar throbbing begin to spread up his foot; he was allergic to ants. There was no antidote—it meant half a day’s nagging pain and nausea. He put on his pants, hobbled down to the river to splash his head and shoulders with the still-cool waters of dawn. The river moved sluggishly past him, only two hundred kilometers from the Gulf; the water was silted to the color of coffee with too much cream. But Colorado meant “the color red.” He wondered whether it had been different, in the past, or whether, somewhere upstream, the river still ran red. . . . “Someday we’ll get to find out, Hoffmann.” He stood up, dripping, noticed a piece of scrap metal half-buried in the sand. He squatted down again, dug with his fingers. “Steel . . . talk about the middle of nowhere! Yeah. Looks good. . . .” He went back up the bank.
He gathered brush for a fire, cooked rehydrated eggs and bacon. A final bat surrendered to the day, chirping shrilly overhead on its erratic return to the shadowed caves on the far canyon wall. Sparrows rustled in the dusty trees behind him. He tossed out stale bread, watched the birds drop down to peck and wrestle; the sun’s heat burned away the wetness on his back, faded the ends of his dark, shaggy hair. He studied the roll of USGS map reproductions again, laboriously translating from the English. “Huh! Los Angeles basin! San Pedro; nice bay…wonder what it looks like now? Probably like a crater, Cristovāo: navy yards, at Long Beach.” He pronounced it “Lona Becha.” “Well, we’ll know by nightfall, anyhow ...” He laughed suddenly, mocking. “They say talking to yourself means you’re crazy, Hoffmann. Hell, no—only if you answer yourself.”
He forced his swollen foot into a hiking boot, pulled on his wrinkled shirt and drooping leather hat, and threw his bedroll into the cockpit behind the ‘copter’s single seat. The bulge of oversized fuel tanks made the ‘copter look pregnant: He called it the Careless Love. He brushed the blazing metal of the door. “Don’t short on me again, machine—they didn’t build you to give me trouble. Get me to the basin, one more day, then I’ll check the wiring; promise…” His eyes found the starry heavens in the Brasilian flag on the door. He looked past the ship at the smoothly rising gravel of the slope, toward the barren, tortured peaks, basalt black or the yellow-gray of weathered bone. He remembered pictures of the moon; pictured himself there, the first man to walk another world since before the Holocaust; the first man in two hundred and fifty years. ... He smiled.
As he climbed into the cockpit, he struck his aching foot on the door frame. “Mother of God!” He dropped into the pilot’s seat, grimacing. “This day can only get better.” He started the engine. The ‘copter rose into the sky in a swirling storm of sand.
Amanda sipped tea, watched sun sparks move on the water of the bay through the unshuttered window of her sister’s house. She set down her beaker, returned to brushing the dark, silken hair of Alicia, her niece. Red highlights flickered between her dye-stained fingers like light on the water, a mahogany echo of the auburn strands that escaped around the edges of her own head-covering. Alicia twisted on her lap; sudden impatience showed on the small snub-nosed face. “Ow! Aunt Amanda, tell us another story, please?” She tugged at the laces of Amanda’s leather bodice, untying them.
Amanda shook her head. “No, Alicia, I can’t think of any more stories; I’ve already told you three. Take Dog outside, you and Mano can make him chase sticks.” She slid the little girl down, steadied small, bare feet on the floor, and retied the laces of her vest. Dog whined under the table as the children pulled at the scruff of his neck. He raised a bristled yellow face, his jaws snapped shut over a yawn with a clack of meeting teeth. He scratched, and sighed, and obeyed. She heard his toenails clicking on the floor tiles, and then happy laughter in the courtyard: sounds she seldom heard.
Her sister returned from the fire, moving slowly because of the clubfoot invisible beneath her long dress. She propped her crutch against the table and sat down again in the high-backed chair. “Are you sure it’s all right for them to play with Dog, Amanda? After all, he was…well—”
Amanda smiled. He was a snarling, starving mongrel when she had hurled rocks at him for stealing eggs and broken his leg. And then, in remorse, she had thrown out food to him, and given him shelter. When he stood on his hind legs he was as tall as she was; his mustard-brown hide was netted with battle scars, his flopping ears were torn. He would attack any man who gave her trouble, and that was why she kept him…But he slept peacefully at her feet through the long, empty hours, and rested his ugly head against her knee as she sat at her loom; and whomever she loved, he loved . . . and that was also why she kept him. “It’s all right, Teresa. I’m sure.”
Her sister nodded, turning her cup on the plate. Rainbows revolved in the beaker’s opalescent glaze. Teresa put her hands to her bulging stomach suddenly. “Ah! I’m kicked night and day. The little devil ... I have bruises, would you believe it?” She sighed.
Amanda laughed sympathetically, covered her envy, because Teresa tried to cover her pride.
“How do you ever think of those stories you tell the children?” Teresa pressed on, too brightly; Amanda felt her own smile pinch. “All those wondrous cities and strange sights, balloons big enough to carry men in a basket…honestly, Amanda! Sometimes I think José enjoys them more than the children…You’re so good with children…” Amanda watched the brightness break apart. “Oh, Amanda, why didn’t you obey Father! You’d have children too, and a husband—”
“Let’s not bring that up, little sister. Let’s not spoil the afternoon—” Amanda studied the dark wood of the tabletop; the fine lace of the cloth Teresa had made by hand caught on her calloused fingers. To have the money, to have the time…“I made my choice; I’ve learned to live with it.” Even if it was wrong. She looked away abruptly, out the window at the sea.
“I know. But you’re wasting away ... it breaks my heart to see you.” Teresa’s brown eyes rested on Amanda’s hands and were suddenly too bright again with brimming tears. “You were always so thin.”
But once there was a man who had called her beautiful; and when he touched her—Amanda felt her cheeks redden with shame. “By the Word, Teresa; it’s been eight years! I’m not wasting away.” Teresa jerked slightly at her oath. Embarrassed, she picked up her beaker.
“I’m sorry. I’m very…moody, these days.”
“No…Teresa ... I don’t know what I would ever have done without you and José. You’ve been so kind, so generous to me. I never would have managed.” No resentment moved in her.
“It was only justice.” Old indignation flickered on Teresa’s face. “After all, Father gave me your dowry as well as mine; it wasn’t fair. I wish you’d let us do more—”
“I’ve taken enough already. Truly. It was more than I deserved that Father lets me have the cottage. And that José lets you give away his possessions like you do. He’s a kind man.”
Teresa patted her stomach, smiled again. “He treats me very well. I don’t know why I deserve it.”