Skipper held her hand up against the sun, squinting at the little cluster of stone houses clinging to the cliff face high above. Someone had already pulled their rope ladders up for the night. Which was, to say the least, weird, considering the sun still had three hours from setting.

She picked up the long, thin stone that had been conspicuously left beside a little outcropping of rock beneath the canyon wall and slapped it a few times against the canyon wall. The crystal ring of the stone reverberated throughout the canyon…

…but no one came out on the ledges to look at them.

“That’s weird,” Skipper muttered. Beside her, the Skymancer was in an ethereal form—he hadn’t managed to stay in a physical body for more than twenty more minutes after they’d arrived at his fire—and was pacing back and forth like a tiger in a cage.

“This is not cool,” Ptah snarled from the other dimension. “I never had this problem before.” Earlier, he’d tried forming his hand into a solid fist, but he hadn’t even been able to pick up a canteen. He’d been complaining about it for hours.

“You had a suppressor acting as an anchor before,” Pax said pleasantly. “And, had you accepted the terms of the contract rather than breaking the treaty like a war criminal, you would not be having this problem right now, either.” The AI had jumped ahead and was relaxing upon a rock outcropping above and out of reach, leaning back and dangling a leg like a man who was more interested in sunbathing than finding a shelter for the night, as she had requested.

And why should he care about shelter, Skipper thought, disgusted. Of the three of them, she was the only one who needed to worry about rain or rock-lions.

When no one answered the summons, Skipper banged the welcome-rock a few more times, just to be sure. There was no movement from the cliffs. “Hello!” she shouted up at the tiny cluster of buildings. “It’s Skipper Stax! I’m looking to do some trading!” The ancient Tuliin hadn’t shown herself again after freeing Ptah of the pact, and the conniving old bitch had taken all the Changer food bars as they slept.

Honored ancient alien from beyond the stars and she’s nothing more than a petty food thief, Skipper thought, frustrated. She’d been looking forward to a week of not having to eat dried cactus.

“So why’s a Tuliin terraformer stealing food, anyway?” Skipper muttered, dropping the rock back into the sand as she glared up at the stoic buildings clinging to the cliff. “I thought she was anchored to the land. Doesn’t that mean it feeds her or something?”

“I can think of a couple reasons,” Pax said idly. “The Terraformers of the Cataclysm days notoriously hated humanity and spent a good portion of their time trying to kill them off during the Fall. Turned the very land against them. Made the rabbits infiltrate their houses and turn on their gas stoves, shit like that.”

“So, what, less food for me and maybe I’ll just keel over dead one day?” Skipper demanded.

Pax shrugged. “Or she could just be crazy.”

“Seriously, this is really bothering me,” Ptah said, trying again and again to pick up the stone that Skipper had casually dropped. “I can’t even pick up a rock.”

“You could always let me finish that anchoring contract…” Pax offered casually.

“No,” Ptah and Skipper said at once, for the hundredth time.

“I’d rather run my nuts through a mining crankshaft,” Ptah added.

“She is kind of that bad, isn’t she?” Pax asked, making a face. “If ‘ignorant stone-throwing savage’ were to have a picture in the dictionary…”

“Technically that’s an encylopedia,” Ptah muttered, again trying to pick up the rock, only to succeed in nudging it slightly.

“I need to get you rock-crunchers out of my head,” Skipper muttered, only half listening. She still had the wrap of cloth around her forehead, hiding the glowing blue gem. She was not looking forward to living like this much longer. The poor gem-touched fools she’d seen wandering the desert, muttering to themselves, were beginning to take on new meaning. Still focusing on the ledge high overhead, she called, “Hello? It’s Skipper! I’d like to trade for some—”

Skipper hesitated when she saw the blood spatters on the rock under the ledge, dribbling down the sandstone. Immediately, she jumped out of sight under an overhang and looked up, squinting at possible sniper positions. She didn’t see anything, and she was pretty sure if she was going to get shot, it would’ve happened already. Gingerly, she glanced out from behind the rock she’d sheltered against.

The blood under the ledge was congealed, not completely dry.

“Or it could be a fetish,” Pax said thoughtfully. “Tuliin get old enough, they develop…quirks…”

“It’s the same with humans,” Ptah said, making a face. “Pharaoh likes feet.”

Pax raised his hand in appreciation. “Thank you. For once, the criminal and I agree.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Skipper muttered. “I think these people are all dead.”

But if they were dead, they were dead on the ledge, with their ladders all pulled up as if to avoid a fight. Which…didn’t make sense. Perhaps their attackers were still up there with them?

But Skipper knew that was also unlikely. If a group of attackers were climbing a ladder that the cliff-people didn’t want to visit, they could simply cut the ropes and end the problem. The ropes hadn’t been cut—they’d been withdrawn.

“Pax,” she said, squinting up at the ledge. “Can you get up there?”

“Of course,” he said. He continued lounging on the rock.

Skipper snapped her attention to him. “Now.”

Sighing, the AI blinked out of existence. A moment later, he returned to his ledge overhead, squatting, looking up at the cliff village with pensive wariness.

“Well, that’s not good,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s a dead guy up there,” he said. “Had an energy wound through his chest, one that didn’t cauterize. Blood everywhere.”

“What’s an energy wound?” Skipper asked.

Ptah, too, was frowning at the AI. “As in a ‘Before the Fall’ type of energy wound?”

“Technically, they lasted a couple hundred years after the fall, until the last of their charges ran out.”

“What’s an energy wound?”

“Oh don’t patronize me, you robotic piece of shit. You did this to me.”

“Robots require mechanical parts. Do you see any mechanical parts, you organic hump-monkey?”

Skipper glanced at the sky again for patience, then decided to climb the cliff and see for herself. She left the two arguing about what, exactly, constituted ‘artificial life’ and whether or not Pax, who was apparently originally organic, actually qualified.

The cliff wasn’t an easy climb, but some ancient people had etched small hand-holds into the stone hundreds of years before they installed the rope ladders, so it wasn’t the worst she’d ever scaled. Getting into the buildings themselves was harder, as it was clear whoever had built the ladders had also made a little adobe ledge above the line of hand-holds in an attempt to keep people from doing what she was doing just then. Skipper had to shove with one leg and swing out an uncomfortable distance with one arm to grab the ledge, then hauled herself over it, struggling only briefly when her tool belt caught on the lip of adobe as she pulled herself up.

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Inside the cozy little structures, she found beds and intact pottery, but no food. An entire village of houses, and no food. Not even a grain of corn. The gods were laughing at her.

Damn, Skipper thought again, slumping to the bed beside the wizened old man with the burn in his chest. It looked small, like something one might get from dropping a hot coal on the chest for several minutes, but it clearly went all the way through in a line, coming out the back side with a leaking of coagulated blood. She grimaced down at him, wondering what terrifying new force he had seen right before he died.

“Yep, energy weapon,” Pax said, suddenly standing right beside her. “You can tell by the concentration of intense heat, so focused it didn’t even boil the meat on either side of the wound. See?”

“Hey guys!” Ptah called distantly from below. “I’m having trouble getting up the cliff! My hands keep slipping through the stone!”

Skipper, who had set up to sleep in the bed, squinted down at the toothless dead guy. He’d told good stories, she remembered, complete with a lisp from no front teeth. “You know what did this?”

“Looks like classic laser fire,” Pax said. He shrugged. “Nothing special. Same kind they had standard on every Tuliin ship before they ran like bitches from the civil war in the Fields and decided to go all peace-loving hippy preaching nonviolence and chasing butterflies.”

“So a ship did this?” she asked. She had pieced together over the mind-numbing days of listening to the two Tuliin argue with each other that a ‘ship’ was a house-sized metal construction that hovered in the air like a hummingbird, guided by someone who drove it like a Hummer.

“A ship?” Pax laughed. “No, this was a handheld. Personal weapon. Probably close quarters, too, judging by how tight the burn radius is.”

“So whoever it was, he was in here with him, but he’s not now,” Skipper said, trying to piece that together. She couldn’t see an old man climbing that cliff face with a hole in his chest, but she supposed stranger things had happened.

“Seriously, guys, don’t leave me down here!” Ptah called again. “This is not cool!”

Pax stuck his head through the wall and Skipper heard, “Being an oath-breaking war criminal isn’t cool either, Ptahmohtep.” Then he pulled his head back inside and squinted at Skipper, who was unpacking and getting ready for the night. “Are you seriously planning on sleeping in here with him on the floor like that?”

Skipper stopped, frowning at the corpse, then up at Pax. “Yeah? Why?”

“He’s dead,” Pax said.

“He didn’t die of something contagious, so what should I care?”

“But why in here?” Pax asked, gesturing to the small room connected by a narrow hallway. “There’s a bed in there.”

“This one’s the better bed,” Skipper said, still unwrapping her bedroll.

“Then why don’t you move him to that room?” Pax demanded, pointing.

“Don’t wanna waste the effort. I’m just gonna leave him, so what’s it matter?” She hadn’t killed him, and she didn’t have the energy to bury the old man, so his soul would have to be satisfied with being mummified by the heat in the home of his ancestors.

“He’s covered in flies,” Pax said, swatting at one needlessly. “Of all the things I’ve seen you do, I think this is barbaric. Even moreso than wiping your ass with your finger and flushing away the shit with a little bit of water and sand.”

“Are you on that again?!” Skipper cried. “I told you. The turd didn’t come all the way out!”

“So you touched it. With your fingers.”

Skipper rolled her eyes and went back to prepping for the night. Everything usable had been taken from the buildings except for the massive clay pots, though how whoever had done it had gotten the supplies out of the homes without the rope, she still wasn’t sure.

“Wait, don’t tell me you’re planning to sleep up there! Skipper, you can’t leave me like this! Damn it!” There were several flashes of light against the canyon walls as he started to complain, but she had learned days ago that, like his physical presence, they were generally ineffective without an anchor.

“Oh don’t worry, you don’t want to be up here, you oathbreaking maggot,” Pax said, once more sticking his head through the wall to look down on the Skymancer. “She’s literally sleeping two feet from a corpse.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“I know. I told her. She doesn’t care.”

“That’s worse than the finger thing!”

Skipper groaned and lay down with her back facing the dead man, just resigning herself to trying to get through the night without losing her mind.

Pax’s face popped into existence right out of the stonework wall two feet off the floor. “You know, you should trade for some toilet paper. Or maybe he’s got some. Did you check the corpse?”

‘Toilet paper’, Pax had discovered, was yet another show of Changer extravagance, where they literally cut down trees, and instead of burning them, pulped them and used them to wipe their asses, then threw the wads away when they were done. It had blown her mind, the first time she’d heard it, and the two Tuliin had gotten a good laugh at her expense.

“You could use strips of his shirt,” Pax insisted. “Just carry around a wad of those with you. Hell, you could even re-use them…”

Skipper rolled over in exasperation, found herself looking at a corpse, then groaned and got to her feet in disgust. Another irritating side-effect of having two interdimensional beings tied to her—or, in Ptah’s case, just following her around like a lost puppy now that he no longer was technically bound to her at all—was that neither of them needed to sleep, and they didn’t seem to be of the opinion that she did, either.

It wasn’t quite yet dark, so Skipper busied herself with looking for something she could use the next day. It was so strange—even the blankets were gone. Like everyone had just packed up and left.

She was standing in the empty granary, frowning at the rubble from a collapsed roof, then at the rope ladder still neatly piled by the exit to the ground, when a thought occurred to her and she glanced up.

“Pax?” she asked.

The AI stopped eying the large black beetle crawling up the mortar and glanced at her. “Yes?”

“Those airships you keep talking about. Could they go up a cliff?”

Pax peered up at the ruined stone roof, then squatted beside the rubble. Examining it warily, he said, “The collapse looks to be recent.” He was more wary when he stood. “And I did feel something of Tuliin manufacture moving around in the general area yesterday…”

Skipper turned to frown at him. “You didn’t think that was important to mention?”

“I was hoping it would spot us!” Pax cried. “You need a symbiote.”

Skipper took a deep, steadying breath, and glanced up at the open hole in the roof that was even then beginning to show stars. “Ptah said the Pharaoh doesn’t have ships. Who does?”

“Someone beyond the Rim,” Pax said. He made a face, glancing through the hall back at the dead man. “Though the fact they came with force suggests it probably wasn’t a diplomatic mission.”

“Why’d they take the clay?” Skipper asked.

Pax blinked at her. “The what?”

“The clay.” She went into the potter’s room and pointed at the water-filled casket where the village’s artisans would keep clay before shaping it into something to be fired. “It’s all gone.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Last I heard, big-shot Changers and people who get uppity about not having toilet paper don’t give a crap about clay cooking pots.”

Pax gave the empty casket a wary look. “Maybe they ran out.”

“They have kids go get it daily from the river,” Skipper said. “These guys used to make a business of selling pots and cups and stuff to scavvers. Sold to six different villages up and down the canyon. They literally built their village over the source of the clay. They didn’t run out.”

Pax considered that, then again looked at the sky. “Where are these other villages? Is one to the southwest?”

Skipper thought about the scavver village nestled in the ruins of the ancient settlement out by the Blue Star Oasis—called such because the massive hole it bubbled up from out of solid red rock looked like a huge blue star. “There’s one out there,” she agreed. “Star Village. Nicest place in the Wastes this side of the Charred Hills.”

“The Tuliin ship’s out there right now,” Pax said. “Hasn’t moved in a few hours.”

Star Village was a good twenty miles from where they stood. “That’s a day’s walk,” she said. “If we followed it, there’s no guarantee it’d still be there when we got there.”

“Your Skymancer could do it,” Pax said. “Tell him to go check it out.”

Skipper scowled. “He’s not my Skymancer. He’s technically not even alive.”

“He’s down there sulking,” Pax said. “If you told him pretty pretty please to go look at something for you a couple miles away as a favor, I’m sure he would.” He cocked his head. “Besides. He’s got a crush on you. He’d do it.”

Skipper twitched at the last. “No he doesn’t.” He did nothing but bitch about her decisions, her movements, her knowledge, and her behavior for the last two weeks. “He hates me.”

“Uh…hmm.” Pax gave her a long look, seeming to consider that. “You should ask him.”

Squinting at Pax, Skipper nonetheless leaned out over the open window to the granary and glanced down at the dusky ground, where Ptah was, indeed, sitting with his wispy, star-speckled black knees up against a rock, sulking. “Uh, Ptah?” she called.

His head jerked up, a shimmer of the Void staring back at her. “Yeah?” He sounded way too eager.

“Um, there’s a scavver village to the southwest of here, out in the sand dunes about twenty miles. Can’t miss it. It’s in the wreckage of that huge Before city from the Fall. Sits around an oasis shaped like a big blue star. Think you can go check it out for me? I think there might be a Tuliin ship out there, taking prisoners. I think they hit this place, too, and that’s why there’s a dead guy up here.”

“Oh thank fuck, something to finally do,” Ptah said, throwing himself to his feet in a wash of black smoke and energy tendrils. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Be—” Skipper started, but the black wisps had already shot away faster than a running horse. She sighed. “—careful.”

“Oh I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Pax said. “Only someone of Tuliin heritage can see another non-corporeal Tuliin without an interface, and those idiots rebuilding everything on the other side of the Rim are a hundred percent human, from what I can tell.”

“Good to know,” Skipper said. Still, though, she worried despite herself. Why would someone with the ability to make flying metal houses care about taking the potting wheel and all the clay?