The salt began three miles north of the dry wash.
It didn’t appear all at once. First came the gray crusting along the wheel ruts, pale as dry wood ash, coating the dried mud until the iron tires of the supply heavy cart hissed like hot metal dropped in grease. Then the stunted sage scrub died back, replaced by low cushions of saltwort and spiny camel-thorn clinging to the bleached clay. By mid-afternoon, the earth was blinding white. A vast basin of dried sodium carbonate stretching thirty miles south toward the low rim of the chalk hills.
Tomas Reed paused at the crest of the final gravel bench. He reached behind his neck to ease the shoulder straps of his ash pack frame. The load was eighty-four pounds of dry freight. Two brass-bound land-mapper’s transit theodolites in oiled cedar cases, fifty deep-water lengths of tuned iron measuring chain, six bottles of packed burning acid testing acid packed in sawdust, and his lead-lined courier ledger. The weight was familiar, settled square against the small of his back. Even so, the steppe heat had baked the leather harness stiff against his collarbone.
Beside him, Nessa Vale dropped the iron-shod tips of her surveying tripod into the crust. The dry salt gave way with a crisp, hollow crunch, like stepping on brittle eggshells. She unhooked her aimed hearing tube from the breast of her canvas coat, wiped the fine white dust from the brass horn with her thumb. Then she raised it toward…
