ACROSS THE EASTERN DIVIDE

(from the memoirs of Wendy Gunther)

Once upon a time, when I was young and stupid, my friends and I ran away from home. For reasons that seemed right at the time but in fact were utterly selfish, we stole a couple of canoes and, with little idea of where we going or what we were getting ourselves into, set out to explore the world. It was the great adventure of my life, but it came at the cost of someone else’s, and for that I’ve never forgiven myself.

Nor has anyone forgotten what we did. It’s become as much a part of the colony’s history as the Alabama’s escape from Earth or Leslie Gillis’s lonesome ordeal or even First Landing itself. I’m much older now—the other day I discovered my first grey hair, which I yanked before my mate noticed—and still I find myself telling the story. Once every year or so, a teacher will ask me to come speak to her class. Captain Lee passed away long ago, and although quite a few other members of the original expedition are still alive, the kids always want to hear about the trip I made when I wasn’t much older than they are now. Sometimes I’ve had to correct things they’ve heard, yet I’ve never told the entire story, not only because I clean things up a bit for adolescent ears, but also because the truth hurts too much.

As a result, fiction has caulked the gaps left open by the absence of fact. Some of these untruths are rather amusing—for example, that the catwhale swallowed me whole, only to spit me out again because I was indigestible—and I might have been content to let these fabrications pass if only because tall tales are sometimes more interesting than reality. But the last time I told the story, a girl not much younger than I had been raised her hand and asked—very shyly, and with some embarrassment—whether it was true a baby had been born during the trip, and whether it was mine.

I told her the truth, but by the same token I also lied, and somehow I managed to get through the rest of the hour without revealing my emotions. When I was done, the students clapped their hands, and their teacher thanked me for giving them my time. I nodded, picked up my shawl and cap, and excused myself, but once I was outside the schoolhouse I slumped on the front steps and broke down in tears.

I thought I was alone, but the classroom window was unshuttered. When I happened to look up, I saw the girl who had asked the question staring out at me. Her hair was brown, while mine is ash blond, and she was four and half by LeMarean calendar whereas I had been just a few months past five—fourteen and sixteen respectively, by Gregorian reckoning—but nonetheless she could have been my mirror image the day I told Carlos that I was ready to run away from Liberty. And she knew I had lied; her eyes told me so just before she turned her back to me.

No one should repeat the mistakes I’ve made. Not that girl, nor innocent boys like Carlos, Chris, David, and Barry. I’ve kept my secrets for too long already; if I can’t say them aloud, then perhaps the least I can do is commit them to paper.

This is our story. It began the day I learned I was pregnant.

I thought I had the flu.

The symptoms were all there: high temperature, weakness in my joints and muscles, loss of appetite, vomiting after every meal. Wanting to pee all the time. No sinus congestion or coughing up phlegm, but that didn’t mean anything; although everyone had been inoculated against terrestrial diseases before coming aboard the Alabama, the fact that we spent most of our time outdoors guaranteed that we’d get sick sooner or later. The odd part was that I was first person in the colony to have come down with the flu; the bug didn’t naturally exist on Coyote, and since the Alabama had been decontaminated before it left Earth, there was little chance that we could have brought it with us.

Kuniko put me on antivirals and sent me to bed, then asked the Gearys to relieve me from farm chores for a few days. One of the benefits of having a doctor as an adoptive mother is that you’re always going to be her first priority. Unfortunately, it also works the other way; when it was obvious that drugs weren’t helping much, Kuniko gave me a complete physical. She was afraid that I might have contracted some heretofore unknown virus; several colonists had already come down with ring disease after being bitten by swampers, and as the colony’s chief physician she lived in constant fear of an untreatable epidemic sweeping through Liberty. So she put me through a full workout, including urine analysis, then she disappeared into the infirmary she had set up in back of the four-room log cabin we shared.

Although I had already thrown up breakfast, I was beginning to want lunch—and for the damnedest reason, I had a craving for creek crab stew, which no one in their right mind would eat unless they were on the verge of starvation—when Kuniko came to my room. I knew something was wrong when she shut the door and checked the windows before she sat down on the end of my bed. The good news was that I wasn’t ill. The bad news was my condition would persist for the next seven to eight Earth months.

“Oh,” I said. That was the only thing I could say. It was as if my mind was a pad and someone had just erased its screen: total blank. “Umm . . . are you sure?”

Dumb question. “Oh, well . . . sure, I could be mistaken. By the way, did I ever tell you that I cheated my way through med school?” No trace of amusement in her eyes; she wasn’t playing games with me today. “Damn it, Wendy . . .”

“I’m sorry.” Numb all over, I stared down at the rough planks of the floor. “I didn’t know . . . I mean, I didn’t think it would . . . oh, Jesus . . .”

“Unless we’re talking about immaculate conception, then you better find someone else to blame.” She sighed. “Who’s the father?”

I didn’t answer, yet my hands involuntarily clenched and knotted the T-shirt I was wearing. It was much too large for me, and I only wore it to bed. It belonged to Carlos, but I’d swiped it from the boathouse when he wasn’t looking. I never washed it, so it smelled like him, and sleeping in it felt like being in his arms. Although Kuniko knew it wasn’t one of my own T-shirts, she had never asked how I’d obtained it. She probably knew anyway, and now she was doubtless kicking herself for giving me so much freedom.

She waited a moment, then nodded. “Okay, fine. I think I can guess. For God’s sake, you could have been more careful. I mean, if you had just come to me, I could have prescribed a morning-after. Or at least slipped you a condom for him to . . .”

“It wasn’t like that. I mean, it happened so suddenly . . .”

Her face darkened. “Did he rape you?”

“No!” I looked up at her. “I wanted to . . . I mean, it was my . . . what I’m trying to say is . . .”

“Shh. Relax.” Kuniko took my hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m not blaming you . . . or him either,” she added, not very convincingly. “These things happen. I just wish you had been a little smarter about it, that’s all.”

Now I was more ashamed than scared. Kuni was more than my foster mother; she was also my best friend, or at least among the adult members of the colony. She had taken me in when no one else either could or would . . . and although Liberty suffered shortages of food and replacement parts for high-tech equipment, one thing we had in surplus were orphans.

Just after the Alabama had reached Coyote, my father died in what everyone had been told was an accident aboard ship while helping Captain Lee close it down prior to parking it in permanent orbit. I always thought it unlikely that Dad would allow himself to get into a position where he’d be blown out into space through an open hatch. That was the beginning of a string of fatalities. A few days later, Carlos’s parents were killed by a boid while salvaging the wreckage of a hab module that had crashed in a swamp near the colony, and last spring Chris and David lost their father during an expedition down Sand Creek; as coincidence would have it, Carlos was among the group of men whom Gill Reese had led into the boonies to hunt boid.

Colonel Reese hadn’t survived that trip either, but few people grieved his loss; a bully respected only by his fellow URS soldiers, no one made a real effort to recover his body. I was much more sorry that Chris and David no longer had a father; I spent a lot of time at their house, cooking for Sissy Levin and trying to help David recover from the shock of seeing his dad come home in a bloodstained sleeping bag.

But it was Carlos to whom I had run when the half-empty kayaks returned to Liberty that terrible night, Carlos whom I embraced with tears in my eyes. Until then, he was a just a boy on whom I had an adolescent crush. He’d given me my first kiss, and we’d played the usual touchy-feely games behind the grange after night had fallen and we were sure the blueshirts were getting drunk at the Cantina, but I couldn’t honestly say I loved him. At least not then. But he’d gone down Sand Creek a teenager with a premature fuzz of a mustache on his upper lip, and come back a man who’d stood his ground when the boid that slaughtered Dr. Levin and Colonel Reese turned to attack the rest of the party. When Henry Johnson related the story during the town meeting, I looked across the grange hall to see Carlos sitting on a bench with his eyes on his feet, and that was the moment I realized I was in love with him.

And then I had gone and done something really stupid. . . .

“So.” Kuniko had given me a few moments to myself. A teakettle grumbled on the woodstove; she was in the main room, hand-grinding some coffee beans she had roasted a week earlier. “When do you want it done?”

“Umm . . . what? Excuse me?”

“Wendy . . .” She kept her back to me as she sifted coffee into the filter sieves she had placed above a couple of handmade mugs. “Don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about.” A pause. “Can’t do it today, because I’ve got a couple of appointments, but tomorrow . . .”

“What makes you think I want it done?”

She stopped, peered over her shoulder. “You’re kidding,” she said, and I stared back at her. “You’re not kidding. Oh, God, I hope you’re kidding. . . .”

I swallowed, shook my head. “Not kidding. I’ve been thinking about this . . .”

“What? Five minutes?” The kettle began to whistle; Kuniko impatiently removed it from the stove, put it down on the counter, then turned to me. “Look, besides the fact that you’re practically a child yourself . . .”

“I’m not a child!”

“Sixteen, just short of seventeen. I’m sorry, but that makes you a . . .” She hesitated. “A kid . . . and kids shouldn’t have kids.” I started to object, and she raised a finger. “Second, and more important . . . the Town Council established a one-year moratorium on new births. Remember? Not until after First Landing Day next Uriel . . . and that’s two months away.”

She meant two months according to the LeMarean calendar. We were near the middle of Verchiel, the first month of Coyote’s summer; in another forty-five days we’d go into Hamaliel, the second month, which would last ninety-one days, and then enter Uriel, the third month. First Landing Day was Uriel 47; this would mark the first anniversary of the establishment of our colony, approximately three years by Gregorian reckoning.

Some quick mental calculation. “That’s about six months, Earth-time. If I’ve still got eight months to go . . .”

“Seven to eight months. A little more, maybe a little less. Still too early to put a date on it.”

“Right, whatever . . . that still means I’ll have the baby after the moratorium is over.” I grinned at her. “See? Everything’s legal.”

“Uh-huh.” Kuniko crossed her arms. “And what do I tell the Council when you start showing? That I decided to split the difference? Damn it, I’m the town doctor . . . do you know how irresponsible that makes me look?”

Although I didn’t understand Kuniko’s predicament back then, I do now. One hundred and four men, women, and children were aboard the Alabama when it left Earth. Minus our casualties, Liberty’s current population stood at ninety-eight persons: barely enough to sustain a colony over the long run, but just the right size to keep everyone fed until we became self-sufficient. We’d made it through our first long winter without losing anyone to starvation, but only because we managed to raise enough fresh vegetables in the greenhouse to supplement a diet of creek crab stew. There hadn’t been many fat people among us when we arrived on Coyote, but the few we had were as skinny as everyone else by the time the snow melted.

Early that first spring, Captain Lee and a couple of crewmen had flown a shuttle up to Alabama, where they had retrieved from biostasis the embryos of some of our livestock: thirty-six chickens, twenty-four pigs, and twelve dogs. Although they were successfully incubated in noah creches, swoops and creek cats killed almost a dozen chickens and half of the pigs succumbed to ring disease carried by swampers before the dogs were trained to chase the local predators away. As we’d learned from our first attempts at agriculture, introducing Earth animals to Coyote was largely a matter of trial and error.

The Council voted to delay bringing down the rest of livestock until we learned how to protect them adequately. They had much the same concerns when it came to the question of raising children. True, we needed to increase our population, and the sooner the better . . . but if a swoop was capable of carrying away a full-grown rooster, what might happen if one spotted an infant momentarily left alone by his or her mother? What if a curious toddler spied a creek cat and tried to pet it? And besides that, could we afford to feed anyone else? Did anyone want to risk losing a child to malnutrition?

We had a long summer ahead of us: 270 days, almost an entire year by the Gregorian standard. Time enough to tame the land, or at least the few hundred acres we had claimed as our own. By the end of the season, we might be able consider letting colonists have children . . . if the summer crop had yielded sufficient harvest to get us through the next winter, if we earned how to raise livestock without losing half of them. Until then, having a baby was a chancy proposition no responsible adult would want to accept.

But I wasn’t an adult. I was teenage girl who had gotten herself knocked up. And I’d witnessed Kuniko perform one abortion already. However much I loved and trusted her, it was one procedure I’d just as soon not go through. And, truth be told, it wasn’t as if I really wanted to have a child. I simply dreaded the prospect of having a drug-induced miscarriage. It may be easier and less painful than surgery, but it certainly didn’t seem any less traumatic. . . .

But that wasn’t what I told her.

“I know.” I let out my breath, looked down at the floor again. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s got to be done.”

“I know this is tough. Really, I do.” She hesitated. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had it done myself.”

I looked up at her again. “You have?” I asked, and she nodded. “How long . . . ?”

“About four years ago.” She shook her head. “Sorry, mixed that up. Four years subjective time . . . two years before we left Earth, I mean.”

That would be sometime in 2068. Over 230 years ago, not factoring in the time-dilation factor; it was still hard for any of us to realize that two and a quarter centuries had passed while we were in biostasis. Abortion was illegal in the United Republic of America; the Fourth Amendment of the Revised Constitution defined life as something that began at conception and guaranteed its protection under any circumstances; subsequent rulings made abortion a criminal offense punishable by life sentences for both the patient and the physician who performed it. If Kuniko once had an abortion, it must have been a terrible risk.

“I’m sorry, Kuni. I didn’t . . .”

“Don’t be sorry.” She shook her head. “No offense taken. You didn’t know.” She picked up the kettle, carefully poured hot water into the sieves. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the room. “But you still don’t have a choice. I wish it could be different, but. . . .”

“Right.” I got out of bed, pulled off my nightshirt, went over to my clothes trunk. “Umm. . . I need to take a walk. Think about this, y’know?”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “You’re not going to tell . . . ?”

“No, no. I just need to think about this some.” I forced a smile. “You’re right. It’s got to be done. Maybe . . . I dunno . . . day after tomorrow? Gimme some time?”

She nodded. “Sure. I can clear my schedule for then.”

“Okay. That’s good for me.” I put on a catskin skirt, tied on a halter, shoved my feet into my boots. “Be back soon.”

“Sure.” Kuniko forgot that she had just made coffee for me. She watched as I headed for the front door. “Wendy . . . you won’t . . . ?”

“No one. Promise.”

Of course it was a lie. I knew that even before I slammed the door shut behind me. She probably did, too.

When we weren’t in school or doing time on the farm, my friends and I hung around the boathouse. A one-room shack down by Sand Creek where the canoes and kayaks were kept, it had become the place where Liberty’s teenagers tended to congregate. We could swim off the docks or go flycasting for redfish, or just park our butts on the back porch and talk about how bored we were. The younger children, like Carlos’s sister Marie, had their own swimming hole in the shallows about fifty feet away, and by unspoken agreement the adults had ceded the boathouse to the older kids so long as we didn’t cause any trouble. Now and then a blueshirt would come by to make sure that we hadn’t stolen any sourgrass ale from the Cantina, but otherwise we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

It was a good place to hatch a conspiracy.

As I marched down the path leading from the back of the grange, my arrival was heralded by a high-pitched bark. The boathouse was just within sight when the small black-and-tan mutt sunning himself on the porch bayed at me, giving his best shot at pretending to be a ferocious watch dog. Give Star some credit; he was very good at assassinating swampers, and even creek cats knew better than to tangle with him. But his white-tipped tail wagged too much whenever he saw a human, and a gentle scratch behind the ears was all it took to turn him into an overgrown puppy. Star accepted his due with a grin and a yawn, then escorted me onto the porch and through the door.

As I expected, Carlos was inside, working on his project. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone; Chris and Barry were helping him dope the seams of the Orion, while David stirred a clay pot simmering on a hook within the fireplace. The shack reeked of something sour and rancid; I gasped for breath as soon as I opened the door.

“Something die in here? Open a window or something!”

“What, you smell something?” Chris glanced at the others. “I don’t smell anything.”

Barry smiled and shook his head, but David’s nose was pinched between his fingers and his eyes were watery. Fatty tissue from a creek cat; put in a pot and melted over a high flame, it was perfect for waterproofing; once it hardened, it was better than polymer resin, which was in short supply. Quite a few cabin windows and roofs had been sealed this way. But, man, did it stink. . . .

Bent over the upended hull of the fourteen-foot canoe, Carlos used a swamper-hair brush to spread pink slime across the hand-stitched seams of creek cat hide tightly stretched across a frame carved from faux birch. Completely focused upon his work, he barely seemed to notice my entrance. “Keep the window shut,” he said quietly, not looking up from his work, “and close the door. I don’t want this stuff to cool before I put it on.”

The shack was hot enough already—David had his shirt off, and the other guys had their sleeves rolled up—but I kept the door open for another moment to let Star in before I shut it.

“You still sick?” Standing next to Carlos, Chris peered at me from across the canoe. “I mean, you look okay, but . . .”

“Yeah, you all right?” Carlos put down the brush, wiped his hands on his trousers. “Maybe you should stay in bed.”

“I’m fine. Great.” Despite the trapped warmth, I suppressed a shudder as I found a stool near the closed window. “Kuni says it’s just a summer cold. She gave me some medicine.”

“You’re looking better.” Carlos smiled. “Must have done some good . . . the medicine, I mean.” He glanced over to check Chris’s progress. “Hey, easy with that stuff. Don’t slather it on or you’ll get air bubbles.”

Damn. I really needed to talk to Carlos, but not while Chris, David, and Barry were around. Yet telling him that I wanted to speak with him in private would have only generated attention; sure, Carlos would have stepped outside with me, but his buddies would have demanded to know what was going on as soon as he came back. The four of them were tight—particularly Chris and Carlos, who had known each other since they were little kids—and it would be only a matter of time before they got it out of him, even if I swore Carlos to secrecy. Boys are like that; it’s impossible for them to keep their mouths shut.

And besides, I still didn’t know what to say to Carlos, or even how to say it. Telling him I was pregnant would be hard enough; the fact that I was actually thinking about keeping the child was even worse. Carlos was only sixteen; I might be willing to accept the role of motherhood, but there was no way he was ready to become someone’s daddy. And even if he loved me as much as I loved him—and sometimes I wondered about that—I sincerely doubted marriage was in his plans.

So I sat quietly and watched them work. The Orion was the second boat they had built; their first, the Pleiades, hung upside down from the rafters. Carlos had named them after the galleons in the Prince Rupurt story, which was appropriate since both canoes were designed for exploration. With cable-controlled aft rudders and sailboards mounted amidships, each was capable of carrying three persons—one in the bow, one in the stern, and a passenger hunched in the middle—along with sufficient supplies for a long journey.

Building the canoes was Carlos’s idea. He’d studied the wilderness-survival books his late father had brought with them from Earth, and over the course of the winter he had mastered his craft by helping the adults build the two-man kayaks used for fishing trips along New Florida’s maze of creeks and tributaries. I think he secretly wished to emulate the adventures of Prince Rupurt; we’d all read the book Leslie Gillis had penned during the years he spent alone aboard the Alabama, but Carlos was fascinated by the exploits of the exiled heir-to-the-throne as he sought to circumnavigate the planet Gorgon by sail. One might have thought that his participation in Gill Reese’s ill-fated expedition would have quelled his ambitions, yet it only whetted his appetite. My boyfriend didn’t want to settle down and raise a family; he wanted to cross the Eastern Divide and sail down the East Channel to the Great Equatorial River, and his friends had been caught up in his dreams.

The only problem was that the Town Council wouldn’t let them.

Oh, they saw no problem with allowing the teenagers build a couple of canoes. Indeed, it had voted in favor of giving them all the supplies they needed to make the Orion and the Pleiades. But Captain Lee let young Mr. Montero know that, once the colony was ready to mount a expedition past the Eastern Divide, it wouldn’t be done by a handful of kids. No one wanted to risk a repeat of the Reese Expedition; the next time a group set out from Liberty to explore Coyote, it would be comprised of scientists and astronauts who had undergone FSA survival training. This was a job for men, not Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

Perhaps the Council was right. Perhaps it was wrong. In any case, it hadn’t counted upon Becky Thatcher having her say. For even as I sat there, watching my friends put the finishing touches on a boat they had been forbidden to use themselves, I suddenly perceived the ways and means of solving my dilemma.

“Guys,” I said, “I think we need to bug out of here.”

No one said anything. Carlos, Chris, and Barry continued to paint the canoe’s underbelly with greasy pink stuff while David stirred the pot. They were so quiet, I didn’t think they’d heard what I just said.

I checked the window to make sure it was shut, then tried again. “I mean it. I’m serious. It’s time for us to take off on our own. If we’re ever going to . . . y’know, explore the Equatorial, that sort of thing . . . we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Don’t wait for permission. Know what I’m saying?”

Pause. Not a word from the bunch. Had they been here so long that the fumes fried their brains? “Did you hear what I just . . . ?”

“We heard,” Barry said, ever so softly. “What makes you think we want to leave?”

Barry had always been the quiet one. Taller than the others, with big hands and broad shoulders, he was the sort of kid adults mistake for being a dumb jock. More intelligent than he looked, he tended to hide his brains behind a curtain of reticent silence, but that wasn’t all. His dad was a Liberty Party member who had been a propulsion systems engineer aboard the Alabama, and Barry had to live down the fact that his father had been one who had to be overcome when the ship was stolen from Highgate. So he was kind of stuck between two worlds: his parents, who still maintained stubborn allegiance to the United Republic of America, and his friends, who came from D.I. families whom Captain Lee had helped escape from the URA. Dad had also been a Party member, so I knew where he came from, yet sometimes he was difficult to read.

“You’re still building these boats, aren’t you?” I nodded toward the Orion. “I mean, I know you guys are bored, but you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t think you actually had a chance of using them. Right?”

“Maybe we don’t.” David tapped his wooden spoon against the side of the simmering pot. “It’s either this or feed the chickens.” He glanced at the others. “Hey, that might be a hoot. Why don’t we knock off here and head over to the coop?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Chris murmured. “We’ll catch up to you.” His younger brother scowled and remained where he was.

David was the youngest of the bunch. Until recently he had been nearly as quiet as Barry, but over the last month his personality had changed, and not for the better. His father’s death hit him hard; for nearly three days he didn’t eat or sleep, and when he finally snapped out of it, it was with a newfound cynicism that wasn’t very pleasant. Chris put up with David’s sarcasm and ironic side remarks, but only barely. They quarreled a lot, and once I saw Chris punch him out when he whispered something about me I didn’t quite catch.

And then there was Chris . . . “You could be right.” He avoided my gaze as he carefully sealed the canoe’s keel. “We’re not doing this for fun. Fact is, we’ve got plans . . .”

Carlos gave him a hard look—shut the hell up!—but Chris glanced at him and shook his head. “We were going to tell you earlier,” he continued, “but . . . y’know . . .”

“You don’t know if you can trust me.”

“No. That’s not it.” Carlos put down his brush, looked straight at me. “Wendy, we trust you. You’re one of us. But we didn’t really make up our minds until a couple of days ago, and since the Doc’s been keeping you in . . .”

“You couldn’t talk to me about it.” It felt like a lie, but I wasn’t about to call him on it. Not when I wasn’t willing to be completely honest myself. “Sure, I understand.”

Carlos favored me with one of those smiles that softened his face and caused a goofy kid to emerge from within the mannish boy I loved. Chris frowned, but then he noticed that I was watching and quickly forced himself to smile. And that, right there, was the difference between him and Chris.

They were best friends long before I met either of them. They had grown up together in Huntsville, and their fathers had worked together on Project Starflight before they were dismissed from their jobs at the Federal Space Agency for political reasons. When the Monteros and the Levins joined the conspiracy to steal the Alabama, they had done so largely because they wanted their children to grow up in a place where they wouldn’t have to worry about Prefects breaking down the door and spiriting them away to a government reeducation camp. Until the day they were revived from biostasis, any differences they had were trivial.

Now they had one point of rivalry, and it was . . . well, me.

The five of us were the only teenagers among the handful of children in Liberty, and since I was the lone girl their age it only made sense that the two alpha males of our group would fight for my attention. Yet though I had been initially attracted to Chris—smart, good-looking, a certain savoir faire—he always had a certain attitude that turned me off; he tried too hard to be someone he wasn’t. With Carlos, there was no pretense; he was who he was. Chris always wanted to play the coolest guy in school; Carlos didn’t seem to care what people thought of him. Chris tolerated his little brother; Carlos obviously loved his sister, Marie, even when she was being a crybaby. And when we were alone, Chris had his hands all over me; with Carlos, I had to be the one to initiate our first kiss . . . or, at least, the first kiss that meant something to both of us.

So I’d picked Carlos, but not before I’d given Chris a chance. We had our moment together, but it didn’t work out, and that pretty much settled the issue. After I became Carlos’s girl, Chris did his best to be a good loser. Yet sometimes there was a certain look in his eye that unnerved me; he’d never forgotten that he and I were once a pair.

“You’re right. We’re taking off.” Carlos picked up a rag, wiped his hands on it. “Orion’s done . . . or it will be, once we get through here. Barry and David finished stitching the sails a couple of days ago, and tonight we’re going to come back here and drop the boat in the water, see if she floats.”

“She’ll float.” Barry patted the underside with his hand. “This baby’s watertight. And we’ve already tested Pleiades. She’s ready to go, too.”

“You’ve already planned this?” I demanded, and Carlos responded with a solemn nod. “And you didn’t tell me?”

A glance at the others. “I was going to tell you, I swear . . .”

“Damn it, Carlos!” I was already off my stool, stalking toward him. “If you were going to leave without me . . . !”

He dropped the rag and backed away, raising his hands defensively. “No, no, I wasn’t going to . . . !”

“Woooo-hoo! Pussy-whipped!” David chortled, standing up to make a vaguely obscene gesture. “She’s got you by the third leg, man! You’re pussy-whipped . . . !”

“Shut up!” Chris slung his brush across the room. Still grinning, his brother ducked for cover; the brush ricocheted off the wall and nearly hit Star. The dog recoiled, then walked over to it and began licking congealed fat off the bristles.

By now I’d backed Carlos into a corner. He ducked to avoid banging his head against the Pleiades, and I took the moment to slam him against the wall. “If you were going to leave without me . . . !”

“I wasn’t! Swear to God, I wasn’t!” Carlos tried to laugh it off, then realized I was serious. He glanced past me at the others. “We were going to tell you! Weren’t we . . . ?”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Chris, Barry, and David looking at one another. “Yeah, sure,” Chris said reluctantly. “Like he says . . . you’re with us. All the way.”

“Aw, man . . .” David began.

But I wasn’t giving any of them a chance to back down. “Okay,” I said quietly, still staring Carlos straight in the eye, “then I’m in on this. All the way. Right?”

The smile faded from Carlos’s face when he realized what I was saying. His eyes begged forgiveness, pleading for me to let him off the hook. This was supposed to be a boys-only adventure; he had already imagined that I’d play the role of the girl he left behind. But I wasn’t about to stand alone in the meadow, fretting for my lover after he’d gone away to sea. And he didn’t know how to stop me.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Sure.”

“All right, then.” I released his arms. “So tell me where you’re going.”

Carlos gazed back at me. It took a minute, but the smile finally returned. “Let me show you.”

He walked over to a shelf in corner of the room, reached behind a row of paint cans to pull out a rolled-up sheet of paper: an orbital photo of New Florida, gridded as a map. Barry picked up the handmade guitar Paul Dwyer had given him for his sixteenth birthday; as Carlos unscrolled the map across Orion’s bow, Barry sat down on a stool and idly strummed his instrument. David stood near the window, watching to see if anyone was approaching.

“We’re going down Sand Creek, all the way to the Eastern Divide,” he said quietly, speaking beneath the cover of Barry’s guitar. “Once we’re through Shapiro Pass, we’ll hit the East Channel.” He ran his finger down the broad river separating New Florida from the small continent of Midland. “All we have to do is follow the channel to the southern end of the island, and we’ll be in the Equatorial.”

That was at least two hundred miles. By the time we reached the southeastern tip of New Florida, we’d be below Coyote’s equator. “You’re planning to paddle all that way?”

“Uh-uh. Won’t need to.” Chris had come up behind us. “Once we’re in the channel, we can raise the sails, let the wind carry us up the coast. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so.”

“And that’s the beauty of it.” Carlos pointed to a broad delta that marked the confluence of the East Channel and the Great Equatorial River. “When we’re past the equator, we can catch the westerly winds.” He moved his finger across the southern end of New Florida. “They’ll carry all the way up the Equatorial to the West Channel. By then we’ll be back in the northern equator once more, and that’s where the wind patterns change again, moving to the east.”

“Tack the sails the right way, and we can let it carry us straight up West Channel.” Chris pointed to the river that divided New Florida from Great Dakota, the large continent lying west of our island. He traced the West Channel almost to the northwestern tip of New Florida. “And here’s the mouth of Sand Creek. All we have to do is paddle down it past Boid Creek . . .”

“And boom, we’re home again.” Carlos tapped the small X that marked the position of the colony. “By the time we’re back, we’ll have circled most of New Florida.”

I studied the map. “That’s at least seven . . . eight hundred miles . . .”

“Eight hundred sixty miles, start to finish.” Barry picked at his guitar, essaying an old Robert Johnson song. “More or less.”

“We’ll be the first to do it.” Carlos gazed fondly upon the map. “It’ll be a long haul, but we’ll see things no one has ever seen. We’ll make history . . .”

“How long?” I asked.

He raised his eyes, gazed at the others. “Five weeks. Maybe six. We’ll get back sometime in Hamaliel, I guess.”

Nearly half a Coyote month from now, perhaps more. By then, it would be too late for a drug-induced abortion, and I knew Kuniko would think twice about forcing me to undergo second-trimester surgery. And if I came home just a few weeks before First Landing Day, no one would be able to stop me from having the baby. . . .

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “When do we leave?”

Carlos stared at me, and I prayed that he wouldn’t realize that I had my own agenda. Chris sighed, walked away. David continued to gaze out the window. Barry, as always, kept his own counsel; he continued playing “Crossroad Blues,” pretending that he hadn’t heard a word of what we’d said. I laid my hand across Carlos’s and favored him with a disingenuous smile, and knew that he couldn’t reject me.

“Day after tomorrow,” he said, almost a whisper. “We’re taking off early, just before dawn. Think you can make it?”

“Sure,” I said. “I don’t have any other plans.”

The next day, things mysteriously began to vanish throughout Liberty.

Nothing that would be missed immediately—a flashlight here, an electronic compass there—or at least until the culprits had long since departed. We pretended to go about our business much the same as always, but each of us had our own shopping list, and when the moment was right something else would disappear under our shirts or down our pants. As luck would have it, it was my turn to help to clean up after lunch in the community mess hall; once the cooks left the kitchen it was easy to raid the pantry and fill an old grain bag with salted meat and preserved vegetables, along with some plates, cups, and cookware.

I felt more than a small twinge of guilt, but it had to be done; we couldn’t set forth into the wilderness with only the clothes on our backs, and we needed this stuff. I salved my conscience by reminding myself that what we were doing was no worse than what the Alabama conspirators had done when they hijacked a hundred-billion-dollar starship. If we were caught, we could always blame our elders for setting a bad example.

The most difficult task was acquiring firearms. The armory was located in a locked closet inside the grange; only the Prefects and a couple of Council members had keys, and every gun had to be signed out with Ellery Balis, the quartermaster. But Carlos had already devised a solution; Lew Geary had started letting him into his cantina, and as a regular patron he knew that one of the blueshirts, Michael Geissal, was in the habit of dropping by for a drink after his shift ended. So Carlos hung out with Mike and tipped a few mugs with him, and when he was good and drunk Carlos helped him stagger home, during which time he artfully deprived him of his key ring. One more reason to disappear for a few months: when Michael figured out what happened, he’d probably want to feed Carlos to the hogs.

For my part, I played things as quietly as possible. It wasn’t easy; Kuniko doted on me all evening, beginning with a special dinner she cooked on my behalf. Chicken was tightly rationed, as precious as a replacement microchip, but nonetheless she used up four weeks’ worth of food chits to acquire a fresh-killed and cleaned bird from the livestock pen. When she placed a whole roasted chicken on the table, I knew what she was trying to do: make up for pushing me into the abortion she’d perform the next day. I wasn’t hungry—too nervous about what I was about do—so I was only able to force down a few bites before I pushed back my plate. Kuni misinterpreted this as anxiety about the procedure; while we were washing up she told me again how easy it would be, that I had nothing to worry about, and how no one would ever know. I listened until she was done, then excused myself and went to my room.

When she checked in on me an hour or so later, I was curled in bed with my pad, reading The Chronicles of Prince Rupurt. She asked how I was doing, and when I looked up I could see the love in her eyes. My mother was a woman I barely remembered, my father a near stranger with whom I’d shared only a few scattered months of my life. Kuniko Okada was the nearest thing I ever had to a family. Stealing food didn’t bother me very much, but betraying Kuni’s trust was like sticking a knife in her back. For a moment I was tempted to tell her, but that was clearly out of the question, so I told her I was okay, just feeling a little tired. Kuniko hesitated for a moment, then she wished me good night and left, closing the door behind her.

After a while I closed my pad and shut off the oil lamp next to my bed. A thin slit of light gleamed beneath the crack beneath the door. Kuniko moved around the house for a little while longer, the floorboards creaking softly beneath her moccasins, then the light disappeared. Her bedroom door opened, slammed shut. And then the house was still.

I tried to make myself go to sleep. I needed all the rest I could get, but that didn’t help very much; instead, I lay awake in the darkness, staring up through the window at the night sky. Bear hung above town, a pale blue orb four times the size of the Moon, its ring plane reflecting the light of 47 Ursae Majoris. I remembered the long nights I’d spent in government youth hostels, lying awake in my narrow bunk, one hand on the sawed-off baseball bat I kept beneath the sheets in case one of the counselors tried again to rape me. Back then, all I’d ever wanted was freedom. Finally, I had my chance . . . and it scared the hell out of me.

I must have dozed off, because the chime of my pad startled me from what felt like sleep. I fumbled for it in the darkness, switched it off, lay still for a few moments. The house remained quiet; when I didn’t hear any movement, I pushed aside the covers and reached for the clothes I had placed beneath the bed. No time for hesitation or second thoughts; if I didn’t go immediately, it would be too late.

I had already made up a bedroll with an extra set of clothing tucked inside, fastened together by a belt. I eased open my window and dropped the bedroll outside. That way, if Kuni happened to wake up and see me leaving, I could always tell her I was visiting the privy.

Yet her door remained shut as I crept through the cabin. I had a momentary urge to write her a note, explaining what I was doing and why, but the boys were probably already at the boathouse, and I was worried that they might take off without me. So I gently closed the front door behind me and tried not to think very hard about what I was doing.

The first light of day tinted the sky purple as I hurried down Main Street. No one was in sight, and the windows of the cabins I passed were still dark, but the roosters were starting to crow; in just a little while the town would begin to wake up. Kuniko liked to sleep late, but it wouldn’t be long before Sissy Levin or Jack and Lisa Dreyfus discovered that their boys weren’t in their beds, or Marie Montero would tell Kim Newell that her brother was gone.

Everything was quiet on the path leading to the boathouse save for the chitter of grasshoarders, but as I drew closer I could make out muted voices. For once, Star didn’t run out to greet me; Carlos must have decided to leave the dog behind. For a moment I thought I heard someone behind me, but when I glanced back the way I came, I saw no one.

David was standing lookout on the porch; he seemed disappointed when he saw me. “What took you so long?” he whispered, as I jogged up the steps. “Forget your teddy bear?”

“Stick it,” I muttered. I was in no mood to argue with the brat. The canoes were already in the water, tied up on either side of the dock. Barry and Chris were loading the last of the supplies, carefully placing them in the middle of each boat and covering them with tarps. Unlike David, they were pleased to see me; they both grinned as I walked out onto the dock.

“Morning, gentlemen,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Aye, m’lady. Glad to see you made it.” Barry took the bedroll from my arms. “Anyone see you . . . ?”

“Uh-uh. Kuni’s still in bed.” I glanced from one canoe to the other. Both were packed almost full. “Umm . . . which one am I supposed to be in?”

Chris and Barry gave each other an uncertain look, then Chris made a tentative gesture toward the Pleiades. “I can take you in my . . .”

“You’re coming with me.”

Carlos emerged from the boathouse’s back door. Carrying an automatic rifle in each hand, wearing a catskin vest and with his hair tried back, he resembled a hero from a nineteenth-century frontier novel. Natty Bumpo on Coyote; James Fenimore Cooper would have appreciated the imagery. Perhaps he was self-conscious about what he looked like, because he gave me an abashed grin. “If you don’t mind, that is,” he added.

Right. Like I’d refuse. Perhaps it wasn’t the best moment to do so, but I practically skipped over to fling my arms around him. He couldn’t hug me back, but I didn’t care, nor did I pay much attention to the sullen glare Chris gave us or the disgusted look on David’s face. Only Barry didn’t seem to mind; he stepped forward to relieve Carlos of the guns, then gallantly looked away as he handed one to Chris.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Carlos whispered. Now that his hands were free, he was able to return my embrace. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

“Neither could I.” And you don’t know the half of it, I silently added.

We held each other until Barry cleared his throat. “Umm . . . this is really sweet, but unless we shake a leg . . .”

“Yeah, sure. You’re right.” Carlos let me loose, but not before patting me on the rump. He gestured toward the Orion. “We’ve saved a place for you behind the sailboard. It’ll be a little tight, but you can sit on your bag and . . .”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.” Barry had already tucked my bedroll into a small space directly behind the horizontal plank where the mast eventually would be mounted. It was going to be cramped, but I figured I could lean back and stretch out my legs once we were under way. “Do you want me to paddle or . . .”

“Uh-uh. Just ride . . . at least for the time being.” His hand on my waist, Carlos led to the canoe. “You can take over in the bow if Barry gets tired, or help rig the sail once we get past the Divide, but for now all you have to do is . . .”

“So that’s where you’re going,” Kuniko said.

I looked around, and there she was.

Mothers can surprise you that way, even adoptive ones. When it comes to their kids, they’ve got their own built-in radar, and are sometimes capable of performing amazing feats of telepathy. Just when you think you’ve gotten away from them, you find they’ve been tracking you all along.

My mother died when I was very young, but Kuniko had become enough of a surrogate that I didn’t have to ask how she’d figured out I was planning to run away with my boyfriend. The only surprise was that she managed to follow me to the boathouse without my catching on. Yet the moment I saw her, I knew she had probably stayed awake all night, waiting for me to make my move; the dark circles under her eyes attested to her lack of sleep.

The boys stared at her in dumbfounded shock. Barry and Chris were frozen in place, still holding the rifles in their hands. David looked down at the dock, muttered an obscenity beneath his breath. Carlos was red-faced; his hand quickly slipped away from me, as if he was a shoplifter caught with the merchandise.

“It’s just a little fishing trip . . .” he began.

“Oh, please.” Kuniko silenced him with a sharp look. “Don’t lie to me. That’s worse than anything else you could do.” Then she spotted the guns, and her eyes narrowed. “Almost worse. You broke into the armory to get those, didn’t you?” No one replied. “Thought so,” she murmured. “You’re going to catch hell for this.”

As she marched onto the dock. David stepped in front of her; one look at Kuniko’s face, and he hastily moved aside. She glanced at the fully loaded canoes, shook her head. “Figured it might be something like this. I heard folks complaining all day about losing stuff. After a while it began to add up.” She glanced at Barry, then Chris. “Both of you dropped by the infirmary yesterday. So which one took off with my spare med kit?”

Neither of them said anything. “It was me, ma’am,” Barry said quietly. “If you want it back, I can dig it out.”

Kuniko glared at him, but didn’t reply. Instead, she turned to Carlos. “You’re usually the leader, so I take it this is your idea. Right?” He nodded. “So what makes you think you’ve got such a great plan?”

“I. . .Idon’t. . .Imean. . .”

“Oh, never mind. You’ve already shown that you’re a thief and a liar. Maybe it’s too much for you to be intelligent, too.” She was quiet for a moment. “You know, all I have to do is run back into the town and yell for help. In five minutes I can have twenty people down here. Even if you push off before then, you wouldn’t get very far.”

Carlos opened his mouth, then closed it. It appeared that he knew she was right. There were three two-man kayaks in the boathouse; anyone using them wouldn’t be burdened with all the equipment we were carrying. Even with a good head start, we’d only get a couple of miles downstream before they overtook us. Or at least so it seemed . . .

“Yes, ma’am,” he admitted. “I know that.” He hesitated. “So why aren’t you . . . ?”

“I didn’t say I would, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t. So be smart and shut up.” Then she turned to me. “C’mon. I want to talk to you.”

My face was burning as Kuniko led me to the boathouse. She didn’t say anything until we were out of earshot from the boys; she opened the back door, ushered me inside, and slammed it behind us.

“What have you told him?” Her face was only a few inches from mine, her voice very low.

“I. . .I. . .”

“Dammit, Wendy, what have you told him?”

Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. “I. . . I haven’t. . . he doesn’t know.”

“Are you sure? You’re haven’t said . . . ?”

“No! Kuni, I swear, I didn’t tell him anything . . . !”

“Shh! Keep it down.” She gave me a hard shake. “Okay, I believe you. Now, next question . . . do you want to have this child? I mean, do you really want to go all the way with this?”

“Yes.” I looked her straight in the eye. “Yes, I do.”

Which was a lie. Or at least it wasn’t the complete truth. The truth of the matter, which I couldn’t admit even to myself, was that I wasn’t sure of anything, save the fact that I didn’t want an abortion.

Yet I knew that if I hedged in any way, Kuniko would make good on her threat to run into town and alert the Prefects. Then we’d all be disgraced; the guys would stand trial for theft and probably spend hard time in the stockade, and the truth would inevitably come out that I was pregnant. Even if I was allowed to give birth—and the Council would have to overturn Colony Law to give me that privilege—I’d doubtless be shunned by the community. Carlos’s reputation would be ruined, and no one would ever again trust Chris, David, or Barry.

I lied to protect my friends because I loved them. At least that’s what I told myself. I may have even believed it.

Kuniko regarded me for a few moments, as if trying to decide for herself whether I was being honest. At last she nodded. “All right, then. I suppose that doesn’t leave me with much choice.”

She walked to the front door. For a second I thought she was about to return to town and alert the blueshirts; I raised my hand to stop her, then stopped when she opened the door, reached outside, and picked up the backpack she had left on the deck just outside. A small bedroll was strapped across the top. Shutting the door behind her, she turned to face me again.

“Seeing that you haven’t told anyone,” she said quietly, “you’re going to need someone to take care of you.”

“Kuniko . . . !”

She shook her head. “Sorry, kid. That’s the way it is.” Without another glance in my direction, she slung the pack across her shoulder and walked past me to the back door. “Let’s go tell your boyfriend he’s got another passenger.”

Needless to say, Carlos wasn’t pleased. Whatever he’d imagined his grand adventure to be like, it hadn’t involved being chaperoned. There was a brief face-off between him and Kuniko on the dock; he tried to talk her out of it, but Kuniko remained adamant: either she went with us, or I would return to the town with her, and she’d alert the Prefects. As with me, she refused to give him any other options.

By then the sun was coming up. We didn’t have much time left. Carlos cast me a sullen glare, then looked back at Kuniko. “Okay, whatever,” he murmured, and impatiently motioned toward the Pleiades. “You’ll ride with Chris and David.”

“Thank you.” Kuniko handed her pack to David, who reluctantly took it and shoved it into the canoe next to the rest of the belongings. Chris was already seated in the stern; he made no effort to help Kuniko climb aboard. She looked out of place, a grown woman scrunched into a narrow boat between two teenage boys, but she managed to maintain her dignity.

Carlos refused to look at me as he clambered into the stern of the Orion. He reached back to untie one of the lines holding us to the dock; in the bow, Barry did the same. “Cast off,” he said, then used the butt of his paddle to push us away.

Slowly, the Orion drifted out into the shallow creek. Carlos turned the long canoe to starboard, then dipped his paddle into the brown water and guided it into the current. The Pleiades fell in behind us as we passed the dock; David and Chris were scowling as they swung their oars, yet I was startled to see a broad grin on Kuniko’s face. She caught my eye and gave me a wink.

“She’d better pull her own weight,” Carlos said quietly, “or I’ll put her off and make her walk home.”

“Oh, no, you won’t.” I looked over my shoulder to give him the coldest stare I could manage. “Do that, and I’ll never sleep with you again.”

That shut him up. Truth was, Carlos had never slept with me; what we had done together had been in a few stolen minutes behind the grange. Yet although I was speaking figuratively, he accepted it as literal truth. And Barry, as always, remained quiet, his back turned toward us.

I moved around a little, trying to settle my cramped legs into a position where they wouldn’t lose circulation, and tucked my hands beneath my armpits against the morning cool. A light fog lay above Sand Creek, dissipating as the sun touched the waters with its warmth. To the right, I could see the rooftops of town. Within a few minutes, they disappeared behind a thicket of spider brush, and we were all alone.

We had left Liberty. Ahead lay the wilderness.

The boys were in a hurry to put as much distance between us and town as they possibly could. They paddled constantly, seldom giving themselves a moment to rest. It was only a matter of time before Barry’s parents or Chris and David’s mother wised up to the fact that their sons had run off. Nor would Kim Newell be reticent about sounding the alarm; Carlos didn’t tell us then, but he’d already informed his sister what he was planning to do and sworn her to silence until we were gone.

So they denied themselves a break until midday, when we reached the shallow sandbar marking the junction of Levin Creek. This marked the farthest point anyone had previously ventured south of Liberty; had we chosen to venture down the narrow tributary, we would have soon come to the place where Chris and David’s father was killed. The brothers weren’t thrilled to be there, but Carlos chose the place for us to drop anchor while we had a quick lunch.

The day had become warm and humid; David and Barry had long since taken off their sweat-stained shirts, and Carlos and Chris took the opportunity to remove their own. I had shucked my sweater and desperately wanted to peel down to my halter, but somehow it didn’t feel right. Kuniko must have sensed this; without comment, she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it off, revealing the bikini bra beneath it. Chris, Barry, and Carlos pretended nonchalance, but David openly leered at her. She stared back at him until he turned red and looked away. Kuniko gave me an encouraging smile, and I no longer felt quite as bashful; off went my shirt, and Barry splashed David with his paddle when he tried to give me the eye.

When we were through eating, everyone started to tuck away the food wrappers, but then Carlos had another idea. He collected them, then got out of the canoe, waded ashore and littered the banks of Levin Creek with our trash. “When someone finds them,” he said, walking back through the shallows, “they’ll think we went that way.”

The others were impressed by his ingenuity, but Kuniko shook her head. “Nice thought, but what makes you think they’ll come after us by water?” Their smiles faded as she wiped her mouth with a bandanna. “All they have to do is launch a shuttle and follow us downstream.” She casually gazed back in the direction of town. “In fact, we should be seeing them any minute now.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Carlos asked. He was still in the water, standing between the two canoes. “All this effort, just to be carried back by the scruffs of our necks.”

Kuniko didn’t reply, but I noticed the smug expression on David’s face. “They’re going to have a hard time flying the shuttles if they can’t take off,” he said.

Kuniko gave him a baffled look. “We removed a little something from the cockpits,” Carlos explained. “A small piece of hardware from both ships. If they try to start the engines, the comps will shut ’em down.”

“You little idiots.” Kuniko stared at him in horror. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

I couldn’t believe it either. The Mayflower and the Plymouth weren’t just the colony’s sole means of long-range transport; they were also the only way anyone could return to the Alabama. If they were grounded, there was no way we could retrieve the remaining livestock embryos from biostasis. Nor were there any spare parts for any of their Earth-manufactured components, which was why they were so seldom used.

“You think I’m stupid?” David asked, as Kuniko stared to reach for her pack. “Don’t worry . . . they’re not damaged.”

“Safe as can be, I promise.” Yet Carlos was no longer smiling. “What are you looking for?”

Kuniko froze, her hands on the half-open flap of her pack. “None of your business.”

Carlos sighed, shook his head. He walked over to where Kuniko was sitting in the Pleiades. “Hand it over.”

“I don’t know what you’re . . .”

“Carlos,” I said, “don’t . . .”

“Wendy, please . . .” Carlos contined to stare at Kuniko. “C’mon, Doc. You’re holding out on us.” He cast a meaningful look at Chris and David; they were ready to climb out of the canoe if he said so. He put out his hand. “Fork it over.”

Kuniko glared back at him, then her shoulders slumped. Her right hand disappeared within her pack, returned a moment later holding a small plastic unit. A satphone: once its parabolic antenna was unfolded, it was capable of transmitting a signal to the Alabama as it passed over, which in turn would bounce it back to Liberty. The colony had only a dozen satphones; as chief physician, Kuniko was entrusted with one of them.

With no small reluctance, she surrendered the unit to Carlos. He opened it, but didn’t deploy the antenna. “I had to bring it,” she said. “That’s my job. I’m a doctor.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Carlos closed the satphone. “You’ve brought your med kit, too, right?” Kuniko nodded. “So you shouldn’t need this.”

“Carlos, don’t . . .”

Then he drew back his arm and pitched the satphone as far as he could throw it.

The little unit sailed upward and away, making an arc above Sand Creek, before plummeting into the water a couple of dozen yards away. It disappeared with a splash which probably disturbed a few fish.

“Yeah!” David pumped his fist in the air. “Another blow for freedom!” Chris gave an uncertain grin. Barry, taciturn as always, simply looked away.

I thought Kuniko would yell at him. Instead, she regarded Carlos with a sympathetic expression; she hadn’t even bothered to see which way he had thrown the satphone. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and he stared back at her. “I called you an idiot, and you’ve just proven me right. Now I’m even more valuable to you than I was before.”

Before he could ask why, she turned her back to him. “Lunchtime’s over. Time to go.”

We followed Sand Creek as it meandered through the marshland, sometimes allowing the canoes to drift with the current. Curious swoops followed us from time to time, spying upon us from high above before gliding away on their broad wings. Once we spotted a creek cat half-concealed within a spider bush, frozen in place while taking a drink, its amber eyes locked upon us. We passed a few more tributaries, and gradually the creek grew broader, its banks farther apart.

Late in the afternoon, we came upon a small, shrub-covered island in the middle of the stream. Carlos called back to Chris, asked him if he wanted to pull over for the night. He seemed reluctant, but everyone was exhausted; paddling heavy canoes is hard work even if you’re not carrying passengers. And the island was a good place to camp; it would be more difficult for boids to get to us if we were surrounded by water. So we beached the canoes on the tip of the island and waded ashore, our legs stiff after long hours sitting in the boats.

We had two tents, each large enough for three people. While Barry, Kuniko, and I set them up, David scouted for firewood. Carlos and Chris unloaded the supplies we’d need for the night, then unfolded the map and tried to figure out where we were. The map didn’t show much detail, and we were the first to explore this end of Sand Creek; so far as they could tell, we had traveled about twenty miles, and were a little more than halfway to the Eastern Divide.

Not bad for the first day, but Chris believed that we’d probably encounter white water once we reached the Shapiro Pass; they might be easy to navigate in kayaks, but it would be more difficult for fully laden canoes to get through the shoals. Carlos argued that, if worse came to worst, we could go ashore, unload the canoes, and portage them across dry land until we were clear of the rapids.

That was a problem for the next day, though, and we were too tired to think about it then. As the sun went down, David set fire to the small pile of driftwood he’d scavenged. We roasted some salted pork and a few potatoes; after dinner Barry pulled out his guitar while Carlos produced a catskin flask of sourgrass ale and passed it around. With our stomachs full and the ale beginning to mellow us, after a while we began to relax. We talked about small things. The night sky was clear, and soon the stars came out; we couldn’t yet see Bear, but the leading edge of its ring plane rose above the horizon. Off in the distance, we could hear the boids cry, yet they never got very close to us. It was easy to pretend that we were on a camping trip; no one was worried about what lay before us.

There was only one sour moment, and that was when we went to bed. Just as Barry was gathering water to throw on the fire and Kuniko was packing away the cookware, Carlos stood up and stretched, then announced that he and I were taking the tent on the left. That was news just as much to me as it was to the others; Chris and David glanced at each other, then at Barry, then at Kuniko. What, the four of them were supposed to squeeze into one tent while Carlos and I shared the honeymoon suite? Yet Carlos seemed to assume that was what I wanted to do; he took me by the hand and, without so much as saying good night to the others, tugged me toward the tent.

Carlos had already laid out his bedroll; as soon as he closed the tent flap behind us, he began pulling off his clothes. Sex was the furthest thing from my mind; I could barely keep my eyes open, and all I really wanted to do was sleep. But soon he was half-naked, sitting up on his knees and stroking my back even before I had finished untying my bedroll. In retrospect, I think he’d entertained fantasies of this moment for many months: him and me, alone in a tent on our own little island . . .

A couple of days ago, it might have been my fantasy as well. Yet we weren’t alone anymore, and the way that he had treated Kuniko irritated me. I was trying to think of a way to turn him down that wouldn’t hurt his feelings when someone opened the tent.

I looked around to see Kuniko crawl inside, pulling her bedroll behind her. She said nothing, but the cold glare she gave Carlos caused him to move away from me. Then, without a word, she threw down her bedroll and began to lay it out between us.

From somewhere outside, I heard muffled laughter from the Levin brothers; Barry murmured something, and they quickly shut up. Carlos fumed, but he remained quiet; he must have realized any argument was pointless. Kuniko was sleeping with us whether he liked it or not. I favored him with an apologetic smile, and he scowled as he put his shirt back on. Kuniko either didn’t notice or pretended not to; she removed her boots, placed them behind her, then pulled aside her blanket and stretched out, separating Carlos from me with her body.

And that was the way we slept, not only that night, but for many nights thereafter. To be quite honest, I preferred it that way.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned what had happened back in Liberty.

Our escape wasn’t as close as we’d imagined because our absence wasn’t immediately noticed. When Sissy Levin awoke to discover that Chris and David weren’t home, she assumed that they had merely gotten up early to go fishing; it wasn’t until midmorning that Kim Newell dropped by to ask whether she’d seen Carlos. More mystified than alarmed, Sissy and Kim found Marie Montero and asked her where her brother had gone. Carlos might have sworn his kid sister to secrecy, but it didn’t take much to make the little girl break down in tears and tell the grown-ups what she knew.

In the meantime, Michael Geissal had awakened with a wretched hangover and the realization that he had somehow misplaced his key ring. He was still searching his cabin when Ellery Balis showed up at his place, keys in hand. Two rifles were missing from the armory, and the quartermaster wanted to know why he’d found Mike’s keys dangling from the lock. The hapless blueshirt swore up and down that he hadn’t visited the grange since the end of his shift the night before, and that he had no idea how he had lost his keys.

Ellery told him that they needed to see Captain Lee; the theft of two rifles was a serious matter. They were headed down Main Street to the mayor’s house when they were approached by Sissy and Kim. Chris, David, and Carlos had run away, the women were in near panic, and that was when Mike remembered Carlos having helped him stagger home from the Cantina.

As it turned out, Captain Lee was already aware that the boys were missing; Jack and Lisa Dreyfus had found the brief note Barry left on his bed. Since the note mentioned me by name, everyone trooped down to Kuniko’s house. She and I were long gone, of course, but Kuniko had left behind a letter of her own. Robert Lee found it on her examination table; he read it once, then folded it and put it in his pocket without letting anyone else see it.

Liberty was still a small settlement in those days, so it’s no surprise that news traveled fast. From what we were later told, it was Mike’s idea to go after us; angry that he had been duped so easily, he rounded up a posse of three other Prefects, and they went to the boathouse with the intent of pursuing us down Sand Creek. Yet as soon they dropped a couple of kayaks in the water, the boats sprang leaks; someone had drilled neat little holes in their hulls. It wasn’t until nearly noon that anyone considered launching a shuttle to go searching for us, and it took another hour for Jud Tinsley to discover that both the Mayflower and the Plymouth had been sabotaged.

About the same time we’d stopped near Levin Creek to have lunch, the Town Council convened in emergency session. Captain Lee did his best to keep everyone calm; he reported the theft of the canoes, guns, and various supplies, but also mentioned that Kuniko’s satphone was missing as well. The fact that Dr. Okada had decided to join us instead of blowing the whistle was a source of much speculation until Lee produced the letter he’d found and read it aloud. He then gave his opinion that pursuit was out of the question until the missing shuttle components were located; on the other hand, there was some small degree of comfort in the knowledge that a responsible adult was with us, and she had the ability to make contact with Liberty.

By then the satphone lay at the bottom of Sand Creek, but they couldn’t have known that. The only thing anyone knew was that five teenagers and an adult had gone off by themselves. After much discussion, the Council decided there was no real reason to worry. It was clearly a case of adolescent rebellion. We were just some crazy kids sowing our wild oats; in a few days, we’d get tired of our little adventure and come back on our own.

There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

We rose shortly after dawn, while the morning was still cool and a silver mist lingered over the island. A quick breakfast of cold cereal and coffee, then we broke camp and loaded the canoes. I switched places with Barry in the bow of the Orion; his right shoulder was sore from having pulled a muscle the day before, and I was tired of being a passenger. Although Carlos wasn’t saying much to me—he was still miffed about the night before—he didn’t object. Kuniko offered to relieve David in the bow of the Pleiades, but he rudely insisted that he was doing okay. We cast off with the sun rising to the east and Bear directly above us: a clear morning, with no clouds in sight.

Sand Creek continued to broaden, and within a couple of hours we could no longer see the stream bottom. I had no problem adjusting to the work of hauling the heavy canoe; the current had become swift, and I was able to rest now and then. There was none of the urgency we’d felt the previous day; if anyone from Liberty was coming after us, they would have caught up with us already. So our pace was almost leisurely, and by late morning we were within sight of the Eastern Divide.

Most of New Florida was flat terrain, freshwater marshes only a couple of feet above what passed for sea level on Coyote. The Eastern Divide was the sole exception: a long, steep limestone wall looming above the grasslands, formed ages ago by the tectonic fault that ran beneath the East Channel. Over the course of countless years, the creek had eroded a narrow canyon through the wall; it was through the Shapiro Pass that we’d leave the inland.

I spotted a pair of swoops perched upon a limb of a blackwood. Swoops had always fascinated me, and since we were heading in the same direction they migrated late in autumn, I hoped we’d discover where they spent the winter. But now, staring down at us, they looked less like raptors than vultures anticipating their next meal. Feeling a chill, I took a moment to unwrap my sweater from around my waist and put it on again.

Shortly after noon, just before we entered Shapiro Pass, we paddled into a shallow cove to take a lunch break. We nibbled some dried fruit and biscuits and tried to make light conversation, but it was obvious that everyone was nervous about the rapids. When Barry offered to take over the bow, I didn’t protest; we’d need someone with white-water experience to get through the pass.

Kuniko climbed out of the Pleiades, waded to the front of the canoe. “You, too,” she said to David, picking up his oar from where he had laid it across the gunnels. “I’ll take over from here.”

David didn’t budge. He looked straight ahead as he gnawed at his biscuit. “No way, bitch . . .”

She slapped him.

Not all that hard, but enough to knock the half-eaten biscuit from his mouth. “First, don’t ever call me that again,” she said, in an almost casual tone of voice that nonetheless had an edge to it. “In fact, if you ever address me as anything other than ‘ma’am’ or ‘Dr. Okada,’ I’ll remove your teeth through nonsurgical means. Are we clear on that, David?”

David glared up at her. His chin trembled, and his face was bright red where she had struck him. A tear crept down the side of his face. Everyone had gone silent; we could hear the skeeters buzzing around us, the water lapping against the side of the canoes.

“Y-y-yes, ma’am,” he whispered.

“Good. Second . . . the reason why I’m taking over is that you’re . . . what? Thirteen? Fourteen? I’m thirty-six, which makes me stronger than you are. If you don’t believe it, we can go ashore, and I’ll continue your lessons in proper etiquette. Do you believe me, David?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Very quietly, and with no argument.

“Good. You’ve done fine, but we need more muscle right now, and you just don’t have it. So climb in the back . . . please.”

David hesitated. He glanced back at Chris, who suddenly looked as if he wished he could claim his brother had been adopted, then he reluctantly stepped out of the bow seat and, head down, began sloshing his way toward the middle of the boat. “Thank you, David,” Kuniko said, and waited until he was back aboard before she climbed into the boat. She picked up her paddle, glanced at the others. “Everyone rested? Had enough to eat? Peed and everything?”

I could have used a squat in the woods, but just then Kuniko scared me more than the rapids. I dumbly nodded, just like everyone else. “Good,” she said. “Then let’s get going. The day’s getting late.”

She thrust the handle of her oar into the water and shoved off, then switched her grip on the oar and backpaddled to move the Pleiades away from shore. Her boat was already turned around by the time Barry pushed off the Orion. She didn’t pay attention to me, but Carlos had a mean look on his face.

“So who died and made her God?” he muttered.

“I dunno.” I thought about it a moment. “Maybe God likes her more than you.”

He didn’t appreciate that, but if he had a good answer, it didn’t come to him. But when Barry glanced back at me, there was a subtle smile on his face. He and I shared a secret moment of understanding, then he turned and put his back to the oar.

An hour later, we were within the shadow of the Eastern Divide, approaching the Shapiro Pass.

By then the current had turned swift. It carried us toward a deep gorge where great limestone bluffs towered above us like chalky white battlements. Here and there along the edge of the creek, massive boulders jutted above the surface, the water foaming as it surged around the rocks. We could no longer feel the sun upon us; a steady breeze moved through the pass, blowing cold spray into our faces. From somewhere not far ahead, we could hear a muted roar.

We’d moved ahead of the Pleiades, and Carlos yelled back to the other canoe, telling them to stay in the middle of the stream; it was deeper there, and we’d pass over the rocks. But not much deeper; glancing over the side, I could see gravel bottom racing past us. If we capsized, the undertow could pull us down before we’d have a chance to swim to safety. Suddenly, I was all too conscious of the fact that none of us wore life jackets.

I looked back at Carlos. He caught my eye, gave me a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he said quietly. “My ol’ man and I used to white-water all the time. This’ll be . . .”

“Rapids!” Barry shouted. “Here we go!”

I stared past him. Seated where I was, I couldn’t see anything, yet a moment later there was a hard thump against the bottom of the canoe as its keel grazed an unseen boulder. Orion rocked back and forth; I grasped the gunnels and watched as Barry hastily switched his paddle from the right to the left, thrusting its blade deep into the water, deftly stroking away from the rocks.

I heard a whoop from behind us. The Pleiades was only a half dozen yards away, its prow leaping above the water before plunging back down again. Grinning like a madman, Chris was enjoying every moment of the ride, but David’s head lolled forward between his raised knees; his eyes were shut, and he looked nauseous. In the bow, Kuniko’s face was grim; her arms pumped at her oar as her eyes searched the churning water ahead, wary for any more potholes. Perhaps this was a game for Chris, but she knew the danger we were in.

“Hey!” Barry yelled. “Something moved . . . ahead to the right, on the rocks!”

I turned my head, looked around. For a moment, I didn’t see what he was talking about. Then a tall, angular shape flitted across the narrow bank running between the creek and the bottom of the bluff. It turned toward us, and suddenly I caught a glimpse of an enormous beak. . . .

“Boid!” Carlos shouted.

A cold hand reached into my chest. He was right; one of the flightless avians that haunted the grasslands had found its way into the pass. Perhaps it had ventured there in search of small animals; whatever the reason, there it was, and within a few seconds we’d come within only a few yards of it.

“Don’t worry!” Chris shouted. “It’s on the shore! It can’t . . . !”

As if to defy him, the boid let out a terrible screech that echoed off the bluffs. Then, in one swift move, it leaped onto a midstream boulder and, raising its hooked foreclaws, bounded to another boulder closer to the middle of the channel. The boid saw us coming; rapids or no rapids, it wasn’t going to let a potential meal slip past.

“Gimme the gun!” Carlos took a hand off his paddle, began groping behind me for the automatic rifle he’d stowed next to the mast.

“Watch out!” Kuniko shouted. “Rudder left!”

An instant later the Orion’s bow sideswiped a boulder that we could have avoided if Carlos had been in control. The canoe tipped to the right; icy water rushed over the gunnels, and for a terrifying moment I thought we were going to capsize, but then its keel smacked the water again. We were safe, but not for long; now we were caught in the rapids and heading straight for the boid.

Something took hold of me. Survival intuition, perhaps, or maybe just common sense. Yet before I knew it, the rifle was in my hands.

“The gun!” Carlos yelled. “Wendy, gimme the gun!”

I ignored him as I flipped off the safety and toggled the infrared range finder. I raised the rifle and settled its stock against my right shoulder. A holographic sight appeared a few inches in front of my right eye; its bull’s-eye shifted from blue to red as I moved the rifle toward the left, trying to get a bead on the boid standing on the boulder ahead of us.

The canoe scraped against another boulder, throwing me off-balance. I steadied the rifle again, stared down the barrel. Barry was in the way; I couldn’t get a clear shot. And the boid was crouching on its long, backward-jointed legs, preparing to lunge at the canoe.

“Barry, get down!”

He threw himself forward across the bow deck, almost losing his paddle. The bull’s-eye strobed as I got a fix on the boid’s tufted forehead just above its angry parrot eyes.

I took a deep breath, held it, and gently pulled back on the trigger. There was only the slightest recoil as the rifle shuddered in my hands.

A loud bwaaap! and the boid’s cranium exploded.

Blood and cartilage sprayed across the rock. Its beak sagged open, almost as in surprise, as the creature jerked spasmodically. Then it toppled sideways and fell off the boulder. It hit the water with a loud splash; the current swallowed its corpse and swept it away.

I lowered the gun. Barry sat up again; his mouth hung open in mute shock, then he remembered where he was and shoved the butt of his paddle against the boulder, pushing us away before we collided with it.

I heard a ragged cheer, looked around to see the Pleiades rushing past; Chris was grinning at me, and David was pumping the air with his fist. I caught a brief glimpse of Kuniko’s face; she was ashen, but managed to give me a quick smile.

Carlos said nothing. When I glanced back at him, he was struggling to get us back into the middle of the stream; he didn’t seem to want to look at me. I was about to say something when the canoe hit another pothole.

I grabbed the sailboard as a bucketful of cold water dashed me square in the face. When the canoe was steady again, I snapped the rifle’s safety, then braced it between my legs and held on to the sailboard. No time for discussion; we still had to do battle with the rapids.

We fought our way down the gorge, the canoes twisting left and right to avoid the rocks. Water was flung high into the air and came back down upon us as a steady downpour, drenching us to our skins. Cursing the river and each other, Kuniko and Chris, Barry and Carlos struggled to keep the boats from being smashed or overturned, while David and I clung to whatever we could grasp. My neck aching from being whiplashed back and forth, my ears deafened by the constant roar, I stared at my knees and prayed that death would be swift, if not painless.

And then, almost all at once, it ended.

Suddenly, there was no more violence, no more waves battering the canoe . . . just a sensation of slow, steady movement. Feeling warm sunlight against my face, I carefully raised my head.

The bluffs had disappeared. Now there was only a great expanse of blue water, still as a mirror beneath under the sun. Upon the horizon, I could make out a thin dark line: a distant shore many miles away.

Unnerved by the abrupt silence, I pushed wet hair from my eyes, turned to gaze back. The Eastern Divide towered above us, a bleak limestone fortress from which we had managed to escape, broken only by the narrow crevice of the Shapiro Pass.

The Pleiades drifted a few dozen yards away. Kuniko and Chris were slumped in their seats, staring up at the rock wall. Barry groaned softly, then fell back against the pack behind him. I turned to look at Carlos; soaking wet, his chest rising and falling with every breath he took, he regarded the rugged escarpment through exhausted eyes.

Somehow, against all odds, we’d made it. We were now in the East Channel.

Crossing the Eastern Divide should have been the tough part, but it wasn’t. We didn’t know it then, but our troubles had just begun.

We didn’t travel much farther down the channel that day. The rapids had drained us, and after an hour or so everyone agreed that it was probably best to pull over for the night. So we paddled along the bluffs until we found a narrow strip of sand where we could beach the canoes and set up camp. David gathered enough driftwood to build a small fire, then we fried some pork and beans and had an early dinner. We were tired and sore, and once the sun went down a stiff breeze moved through the channel, making everyone feel cold and miserable. It wasn’t a good time to have a serious discussion, for under such circumstances even an innocuous question can spark a quarrel. Which was exactly what happened.

We were talking about the boid when Barry nudged my elbow. “Hey, nice shooting back there. I thought that thing was about to jump in the boat. Where’d you learn to use a gun?”

I swallowed a mouthful of beans. “Camp Schaefly, in Missouri. They required us to undergo paramilitary training . . . prepping us for the Service, that sort of thing. I was pretty good on the firing range.”

Barry nodded knowingly—his parents were Party members, so he knew something about government youth hostels—but the other guys gave me a blank look. They were from well-off families; even though they were D.I.s, no one had ever seriously suggested shipping them off to a hostel. That was something for vagrant kids like me: one parent dead, the other in the Service. And what little they did know came from Govnet propaganda: well-scrubbed teens in clean uniforms, happily marching through the Colorado Rockies. They’d never spent a night in an overcrowded dorm, or been beaten up by a counselor, or nearly gang-raped in a shower stall.

“Good thing you grabbed the gun when you did,” he said. “We had our hands full.”

“I could have gotten it.” From the other side of the fire, Carlos gave him a sharp look. “I was trying to get the gun, but she . . .”

“I know. That’s when you lost control.” Barry shrugged. “I guess I was supposed to steer while you were shooting.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just glad your girlfriend was with us.”

Carlos put his plate down, started to rise. “Whoa, take it easy,” Kuniko said. “Cool off. No one meant anything.” She glanced at Barry. “Right?”

Neither of them said anything, but Barry was the first to look away. After a moment Carlos picked up his plate and continued eating. A long silence. My beans had gone cold, but I ate anyway; no sense in letting food go to waste. But, man, did I have a craving for something with more salt in it. . . .

“Y’know,” David said, “there’s one thing that bugs me.” He gazed across the fire at Carlos. “If you’re so good with a gun, then why didn’t you shoot the boid that killed my dad?”

Carlos’s eyes slowly rose. “What are you saying?”

“Just something I’ve always wondered about.” David’s tone remained nonchalant, almost conversational; he could have been discussing the weather. “It’s just that . . . y’know, here you are, saying that you could have taken down the boid we saw today even though you were busy steering a canoe, but when you had a chance to kill the one that murdered my dad, you couldn’t even though you were on dry land.” A shrug. “It’s just a question. Take your time with it.”

There was a coldness on Carlos’s face I’d never seen before. The silence around the campfire became menacing. “Bro,” Chris said, very quietly, “I’d leave that alone, if I were . . .”

David ignored his brother. “No reason to get upset. I’m curious, that’s all, because the way I’ve heard it, you lowered your rifle when . . .”

The plate fell from Carlos’s lap as he flung himself at David. Chris was sitting between them; he leaped to his feet and tried to stop Carlos, but Carlos knocked him aside as he charged David. The younger boy squawked and tried to run, but Carlos tackled him like a linebacker; the next instant, David was on the ground, his arms wrapped around his face, as Carlos pummeled at him with his fists.

It wasn’t much of a fight, nor did it last long. Barry grabbed Carlos from behind and pulled him off David. Tears mixing with the blood streaming from his nose, David tried to retaliate, but Kuniko forced herself between them, pushing them apart. Seeing the blood on his brother’s face, Chris turned toward Carlos, but I interceded before another squabble could break out.

It took a lot of words, but eventually everyone calmed down. Kuniko made the boys shake hands, which they did with great reluctance, then she led David to our tent to clean him up. Chris gave Carlos a long, hard look, then he stalked away. At a loss for anything else to do, Barry began gathering the cookware; it wasn’t his turn to do the dishes, but David clearly wasn’t up to it.

That left me with Carlos. Truth was, I really didn’t want to be around him just then; David might have picked the fight, but it was Carlos who’d thrown the first punch. Yet even though I was having second thoughts about our relationship, I was still his girlfriend; it was my job to take care of him when he needed me. So I took him by the arm and we walked down the beach.

Once we were away from camp, we sat down on a rock next to the water. We watched Bear rise above the channel, listened to the tide lapping against the shore. I stroked his hair, tried to calm him down, and after a while he put an arm around me. His breath shuddered out of him, and at last he spoke.

“He’s right,” he said, very softly. “About the boid hunt, I mean.”

“What . . . ? No, he’s not.” I peered at him through the darkness. “I was at the meeting, remember? I heard what Dr. Johnson said. It killed Dr. Levin before anyone could fire, and when it went after the rest of you . . .”

“Henry didn’t tell the whole truth.” He swallowed, looked away from me. “Jim Levin was dead before anyone could do anything about it, sure, and I opened fire as soon as it started to attack, but . . .”

A long pause. “Go on,” I whispered.

“When it went after Gill Reese, I lowered my rifle. I could have saved him, but . . .”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because . . .” Carlos hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe because he didn’t save my folks when they were under his protection. Maybe because he was a loudmouth and he’d bullied everyone into making that trip with him. Maybe just because I wanted to see what he’d do when it was just between him and the boid, with no one to back him up.” He put his head down. “That’s why I wanted you to give me the gun. It was a second chance to . . .”

His voice trailed off, and that’s when I realized why we were there. Through his own inaction, Carlos had let a man die. Perhaps it was Gill Reese and not Jim Levin, and David had heard the story wrong, and perhaps one could rationalize things by believing that Reese had it coming. Yet that wasn’t the issue. Carlos had come face-to-face not only with the forces of nature, but also his own soul; he’d lost, and now he wanted a rematch. Only this time, he wanted someone to back him up: all his friends, including his girl. And if she was a better shot than he was, or if anyone reminded him why he was doing this . . .

“Carlos . . .” I said, and waited until he turned to me. His eyelids were half-lowered; I think he was expecting a kiss. And that made me even more mad.

“You and I are through,” I finished.

“What . . . ?” Astonished, he stared at me. “Wendy, what . . . ?”

“You heard me. We’re over. Done.” I pulled away from him.

“Wendy, jeez . . .” He grinned, took me by the hand. “C’mon, I’m sorry. If you’re pissed about the thing with the gun . . .”

“The thing with the gun, yeah. And the thing with the satphone, the thing with the way you’ve treated Kuni, and . . . a lot of other things.” I was tempted to tell him the rest; instead, I stood up. “But you’re not the guy I thought you were, and I don’t think I’m the girl you think I am.”

“Wendy! What the hell . . . ?”

“Just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk anymore.” Then I turned and marched back to camp.

When I returned to our tent, I gathered up his bedroll and put it outside. Kuniko watched me, then she went over to where Barry was washing dishes and quietly invited him to spend the night with us. He moved his bedroll into our tent, and had enough sense not to ask why we were changing our sleeping arrangements.

It was a long time before I fell asleep. Nonetheless, I didn’t cry. Or at least not then.

The next morning, we continued our journey down the East Channel.

Before we left shore, we hoisted the masts, and once we’d paddled the canoes into the channel we unfurled the sails and stowed our oars. There was a steady breeze from the east that day; the wind caught the canvas sheets and billowed them outward. Soon we were cruising at about five knots. The bow of the Orion sliced through the dark blue water; I lay back against the gear and gazed up at the high bluffs of the Eastern Divide.

Carlos and I said little to each other, and although the canoes traveled close together, there wasn’t much conversation among their crews. The events of the previous evening weighed heavily on everyone; we all had a lot to think about. David pulled out a fishing rod, put a piece of leftover pork on the hook, and cast it over the starboard side of the Pleiades, then he propped the pole between his knees, pulled his cap low over his eyes, and dozed off. Barry pulled out his guitar and pensively strummed it as he sat in the bow of the Orion.

Shortly before noon, David’s line went taut. The bail-arm of his reel snapped over, bringing him wide-awake; grabbing the rod with both hands, he began to haul in whatever he’d caught. David might have been a smart aleck, but he was a well-practiced angler; his prey fought for a while before he exhausted it, but what he pulled out of water didn’t look particularly appetizing: a flat, ugly creature with gaping jaws, like a cross between a stingray and a miniature shark. David managed to free his hook without being bitten; he gave the weirdling—his name for it, which stuck—a close inspection before he pronounced it inedible and tossed it overboard. Yet the incident broke the ice; David’s catch was the main subject of discussion when we went ashore for lunch, and by the time the day was done we were all speaking to one another once more.

That set the pattern of the next five days. We camped on the narrow shoreline running beneath the bluffs, being careful to set up our tents beyond the high-water mark. We’d get up early, break camp, and continue sailing down the channel, always making sure that we never lost sight of the Eastern Divide. We’d sail all day, then beach the canoes as the sun was beginning to go down and set up camp once more. A quick dinner, some small talk around the fire, then off to bed.

After a couple of days I let Carlos back into my tent. He’d resigned himself to the fact that Kuniko was sleeping between him and me. Yet I remained cool toward him, and his relationship with Kuni never really thawed. We were simply sharing quarters, and that was all there was to it.

Near the end of the sixth day, after hauling aboard countless weirdlings, David finally landed something that resembled a wide-mouth bass. All it took was switching bait; the first time he tried using bread instead of meat, he landed a channelmouth: a big, fleshy fish that faintly resembled a bass. David cleaned and cooked it that evening; we all tried a little bit, and found that it was delicious. Which was just as well, for our supplies were beginning to run low; after that, both he and Chris always had their lines in the water, with Barry or Kuniko sometimes taking a turn, and after a while I tried my hand at it as well. Hooking a channelmouth wasn’t all that difficult; you had to cast your lure to the port side, into deep water away from the bluffs, and slowly reel it back in. The real trick was getting it out of the water before a weirdling homed in; now and then someone would pull up a half-eaten channelmouth a weirdling had devoured while it was on the line.

Getting fresh fish was a blessing in more ways than one; my craving for seafood was becoming almost obsessive. I still wasn’t showing any obvious signs of pregnancy, yet I noticed that my breasts were becoming more full, a little more tender. And morning sickness had come back to haunt me; almost as soon as I got up, I’d have to make an excuse to slip away quickly and throw up everything in my stomach. Kuniko knew what was going on, so she’d cover for me; the guys just thought I was going to use the pit. Or at least Carlos and the Levin brothers were fooled; more than once, I noticed a curious look on Barry’s face. If he figured out what was going on, though, he kept it to himself.

By the morning of the nineth day, we could no longer see Midland; the far shore of the channel had disappeared beyond the horizon. Dense clouds were forming when we went to bed the night before, and we awoke to a rippled grey sky. We put out to water, but the wind was harsh and the water choppy. It wasn’t long before a hard rain began to fall, and soon whitecaps began to appear. Chris and Carlos wanted to tough it out, but distant thunder settled the issue; we folded the sails and dropped the masts, then scurried back to shore just as the storm was beginning to hit.

As luck would have it, the place we found to ride out the weather was another gap in the Eastern Divide, similar to Shapiro Pass yet a little more broad, its bluffs less steep. When Carlos checked the map against his compass bearings, he discovered that it was the mouth of the Lee River, another inland stream. Although rapids surged through the gap, we discovered a place within the shelter of the bluffs where we could ride out the storm.

Once we beached the canoes and overturned them, we pitched our tents below the limestone escarpment and hunkered down for a long wait. The rain lashed at our tents and soaked everything we’d left outside, yet the storm blew itself out within a few hours. No one was in any hurry to leave; Carlos cocooned himself within his sleeping bag and took a long nap, and when I went over to the next tent to check on the others I discovered Chris doing the same while Barry and David played blackjack, with crackers as their stakes. Maybe we needed a rain day. We’d been traveling for a full Coyote week: time to take a break.

We also needed fresh water, so Kuniko and I gathered a few empty flasks, pulled the rifles across our shoulders, and set forth into the unnamed pass. After clambering across slippery rocks for an hour or so, we came upon a rugged trail leading up the side of the bluffs. Perhaps it had been formed by natural erosion, or maybe by swamp cats; either way, it seemed easy to climb. With nothing better to do and several hours left before sundown, we decided to go exploring.

The trail was more difficult than it first appeared; we skinned our hands and knees on bare limestone, and halfway up we considered giving up and turning back. Yet there was an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t quit, and about an hour later we finally reached the end of the trail.

It was worth the effort, for we found ourselves on top of the Eastern Divide. Faux birch had managed to sink their roots into the rocky ground; far below us, the vast and wild marshlands of New Florida stretched away to the western horizon, an endless sea of grass threaded by narrow waterways, the Lee River meandering through the prairie like a blue serpent. The clouds were beginning to part, and golden shafts of late-afternoon sunlight fell upon the island; through the haze, an iridescent rainbow had formed above isolated stands of blackwood. A whole world seemed to have been painted just for us, so heartachingly beautiful that all we could do was sit on a boulder and gaze upon it all, not daring to say a word lest we break the spell.

After a time I turned to look the other way. Grey clouds hung heavy above the East Channel, casting bleak shadows upon its cold waters. Then I saw something new: in the far distance to the south a dark expanse met the sky as a razor-thin line. The Great Equatorial River, still another two days away by boat.

“There it is.” Kuniko’s voice was quiet; she was gazing in the same direction. “That’s what we’ve come all this way to find.” She paused. “Think you’re ready for it?”

It might or might not have been a rhetorical question, all the same I found myself more afraid than anytime before in my life. Nothing else came close: not the day my father said goodbye, not the first night I spent in Schaefly, not even my last moments on Earth before I boarded the shuttle to the Alabama. In that instant, the Equatorial was more forbidding than the forty-six light-years I had crossed to get to this place, for at least then I was asleep; had I perished in biostasis, my passage from life to death would have been effortless and without pain. I couldn’t say the same for the uncertain fate that lay before me.

“No,” I whispered, “I’m not.” I looked at Kuniko. “We . . . I mean, we don’t have to do this, y’know.”

“What are you saying?”

“I mean, we can get off here.” Standing up, I desperately scanned the top of the escarpment until I spotted what appeared to be a downward slope. “Look,” I said, my voice quavering as I pointed to it. “We go that way, down the other side.” I gestured to the Lee River. “Then all we have to do is follow the river. I’ve seen the map . . . it leads north to the Alabama River, and that takes us to Boid Creek. Follow that for a while, and it meets the junction of North Creek. Once we’re there, all we have to do is hike due east, and we’re back in Liberty. . . .”

“Wendy . . .”

“Yeah, okay, I know, it’s long . . . but I’m telling you, we can do it.”

Even as I spoke, I realized how absurd the notion was. Two women, on their own, trekking across hundreds of miles of uncharted wilderness with nothing more than a couple of rifles and the clothes on their backs, a vague understanding of New Florida’s river system as their only sense of direction.

“Wendy . . .” Kuniko’s voice was soft, as patient as if she was speaking to a child.

“Yeah, all right, that’s stupid.” Another thought occurred to me. “So we cut loose from the others. Grab one of the canoes, take as much stuff as we need, then paddle up the Lee River. It took us just a week to get here, right? That means we can be back home in . . .”

“Wendy . . . we can’t go upstream through rapids.”

“We can try, can’t we?”

“No.”

“Oh, screw you!”

I don’t remember exactly what happened next. I have only a fleeting recollection of trying to hit her; perhaps she managed to stop me, or perhaps she didn’t. Yet when I came to my senses once more, I was curled up in her arms, sobbing and shaking as she gently stroked my hair and told me that everything would be okay, everything would be all right, we’d get through this somehow.

It took a while, but eventually I calmed down. Kuniko wiped away the tears and kissed me on the cheek, then she helped me to my feet. One last look behind us, and we began making our way back down the path.

We had to hurry. Daylight was fading fast, and night was closing in.

It was just as well that we took some time off, for two days later we

entered the Great Equatorial River. The southernmost edge of New Florida ended in a short peninsula where the Eastern Divide gradually sloped down into the warm waters south of the equator. We sailed past the point with our fists raised in victory, yelling at the top of our lungs as the wind carried us out of the East Channel. Carlos pulled out the map and marked it with pen, unofficially naming the confluence the Montero Delta. He’d later claim that he christened it in honor of his parents, but those of us who were with him at the time knew better.

The Great Equatorial is a river in name only. In fact, it’s an elongated ocean that completely circles Coyote, fed by the dozens of channels, streams, and creeks that empty into it from either side of the equator. At it broadest point, the Equi is nearly eleven hundred miles across. Between New Florida and the southern hemisphere, the distance is relatively narrow: 410 miles.

Just as Carlos predicted, the wind patterns changed once we were past the equator. Now they came from the east, taking us west along the long, shallow bay marking the southern shore of New Florida. In order to keep those easterlies at our backs, we’d have to remain below the equator as long as possible, and that meant traveling farther away from land; if we tried to hug the shore, we’d eventually be forced to drop our sails and paddle the entire distance, fighting both wind and current. Since the mouth of the West Channel lay over four hundred miles away, no one wanted to do that, so it was with no little reluctance that we set forth to sail the Equatorial.

We maneuvered the canoes next to each other and lashed them together to form a twin-hulled catamaran; as one craft, we were now heavier, but we also had twice as much square-footage of sail. We took inventory of our supplies; provided that we didn’t brush our teeth and ate sparingly, we figured we’d have enough food and potable water to get us through the nine days we figured it would take us to reach the West Channel. We could always fish, though, and if necessary we could make landfall and locate a source of fresh water. Otherwise, we’d stay in the river, sleeping in shifts during the night so that there would always be someone awake to mind the rudder. It wouldn’t be easy, but we’d get by somehow.

At least, that was the theory. But Carlos and Chris had made their plans in the comfort of the boathouse, where a hot meal and a comfortable bed were only a few steps away; I don’t think either of them realized just what it takes to travel by canoe for four hundred miles without setting foot on dry land.

As we sailed away from New Florida, I sat with my back to the mast and watched the shoreline as it gradually disappeared below the horizon. A flock of swoops followed us out in the water, taunting us with their raucous cries as they circled the canoes, but eventually they turned and soared back toward land. At that moment, I would gladly have traded my soul to be able to go with them.

Instead, I hugged my knees between my arms and tried not to look at Carlos as he pulled at the rudder cables. His shirt half-unbuttoned, the breeze casting his hair back from his sun-browned shoulders, he projected a heroic image; I could tell that he knew it, too. A couple of weeks ago, I might have melted at the sight, but at that moment I could only feel contempt for this boy pretending to be a man.

Although the canoes were made more stable by being lashed together, they rocked constantly upon surf; everyone was seasick at least once. The days were hot, the nights brutally cold after the sun went down. We had no shelter save the elusive shade cast by the sails or our blankets. There was enough room to stretch out and sleep, but very little privacy; it was as if six people were sharing a narrow room with no dividing walls. I’d rather not describe how we relieved ourselves, save that it was messy, uncomfortable, and embarrassing.

David and Chris fished almost constantly, but nothing took their bait . . . save for once, on the third day out, when Chris caught something, only to have his twenty-pound line snapped as easily as if it were floss. A few moments later, a great shadow passed beneath the boats; an enormous large fin briefly broke the surface about a hundred yards from the boats, then disappeared. Once more, we were reminded that we were visitors in an unknown world; there were things out there that had never known the human presence, and some of them were potentially lethal.

On the morning of the fourth day, we awoke to see a dense wall of clouds forming on the western horizon. We covered the cargo with tarps and lashed them down, then furled the sails and took down the masts. The storm broke a few hours later, and we soon found ourselves battling ten-foot breakers that threatened to swamp our craft at any moment. It was like fighting the rapids in Shapiro Pass all over again, only much worse, for we didn’t have the option of quickly making for shore. The storm didn’t end until long after dark; we slept little that night, and the following day we were cold, wet, and sore, with three inches of water in the bottom of the boats we had to bail out with drinking cups.

Noticing that the winds were now coming from the west, Chris accused Carlos of misreading the compass and taking us off course, yet Carlos refused to show him the map and his handwritten readings until Kuniko intervened. As it turned out, Chris was right, although it wasn’t Carlos’s fault; the storm had blown us ten miles over the equatorial line. Nonetheless, it meant that we had to fold the sails once more and paddle back in the opposite direction, a chore which cost us a day in travel time. Chris and Carlos glowered at each other from the sterns of their canoes as they rowed and spoke little to one another.

Morale had been fragile even before the storm; afterward it sank to a new low. Kuniko snapped at Barry when he pulled out his guitar when she thought he should be standing watch. David lapsed into a funk; he sat for hours in the middeck of the Pleiades, his head lowered and his arms folded across his stomach, saying nothing as he stared at the water. Unable to agree on even the most minor details, Chris and Carlos bickered constantly, and it was left to Kuniko to settle their arguments. As the oldest person aboard, she had become more than the arbiter of disputes; now she was a surrogate mother to everyone, scolding us when we were bad, forever trying to keep us in line. I was used to her taking that role, but it grated on the boys.

Our worst problem was the diminishing supply of food and water. By the seventh day out, we were forced to dig into the emergency rations, and even then only carefully: a few crackers and some dried fruit for breakfast, then nothing else until the end of the day. We took water in small sips, never able to fill our cups at any time.

I was always ravenous. Kuniko, mindful of the fact that I was carrying, slipped me food when the guys weren’t looking, and let me have a drink when I needed it. Yet the cramps and the bouts of morning sickness had returned. Before we left New Florida, I had been able to sneak away from camp when I needed to throw up. Once that became impossible, I tried to pass it off as seasickness.

I was also beginning to show. Not very much, yet it was clear that my midriff was a little larger than it had been before we left Liberty. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed.

Since our luck had been bad already, it only figured it had to be Carlos.

“Is it just me, or are you getting fat?”

He said this on the morning of our eighth day on the river, as I was changing my shirt. I’d long since given up any efforts at modesty, yet even David had stopped staring at me and Kuniko when we undressed. In fact, it had been several days since he’d shown interest in anything at all.

“Just a little.” I forced a smile. None of our clothes were clean; some were just a little less filthy than others. “Must be our rich diet.”

It was meant to be a joke, but it didn’t come off that way. Chris was lying across the stern of the Pleiades, a sunburned arm cast across his face to block out the sun; hearing what I’d just said, he looked up. “Rich diet of what? You been holding out on us?”

“I’m kidding.” I tried to hide my face by ducking my head a little to tie the halter behind my neck. “It’s just a girl thing.”

Carlos looked away, but Chris wasn’t letting it go. “No, I’m serious,” he said as he propped himself up on his elbows. “I thought we made some rules about hoarding.”

“I’m not . . .”

“Then how come you’re gaining so much weight?” Chris raised a hand to shade his eyes. “You must be eating more than we are, because you puke it all up every morning.”

“Drop it.” Kuniko was stretched out along the Pleiades, her head propped against the mast. She turned to glare at Chris. “If she’s eating more, it’s because I’ve been giving her some of my share. And if she’s seasick, then that’s her business, not yours.”

That should have settled the issue. The boys had learned to pay attention to Kuniko when she put her foot down. But while Chris fell quiet, I could feel Carlos’s gaze even after I had turned my back to him. “There’s no way you could be getting fat,” he said after a moment. “We haven’t eaten enough for anyone to gain weight.”

“I told you, it’s a girl thing.”

That sounded lame even as I said it. “Wendy,” he said quietly, “is there something we should know about?”

Chris looked up again, and Barry glanced up from his guitar; only David didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Kuniko slowly let out her breath.

“Go ahead, tell him,” she said. “There’s no point in keeping it a secret any longer.”

The last thing I wanted to do was reveal the truth of my condition, yet there was no way around it. But when I turned to Carlos, I saw that his jaw had gone slack. I stared into his eyes and said nothing; no words were necessary.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered, and I nodded. “Jesus, when . . . I mean, how long have you known . . . ?”

“Before we left. I wanted to tell you, but . . .” Suddenly ashamed, I dropped my eyes. “I was afraid you’d . . .”

“Oh, man. Oh, hell . . .” He stared at me, shaking his head. “If I’d known . . . if you’d told us . . .”

“You would have done what?” I asked. “Left me behind? Maybe taken off a little sooner?”

He didn’t seem to hear. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered, as much to himself as to me. “I mean, we shouldn’t have brought you along. You should have stayed behind. . . .”

“He’s right, Wendy.” Chris’s voice was low. “If you’re going to have a baby, you should have told us before we agreed to take you along. This is no place for . . .”

“And what if I didn’t want to have a baby?” I looked up at him again; my face grew warm as my temper began to rise. “Maybe I just wanted to get away, think things over a while. That’s my right, isn’t it?”

“Your right?” Now there was anger in his eyes. “Hey, wait a minute! It’s my child, too, y’know! Don’t I have a say in . . . ?”

“You self-centered jerk! What makes you think it’s yours?”

To this day, I don’t know what made me say that. Perhaps it was the way he had treated me ever since we left Liberty. And now, after all this, he wanted to claim the privilege of telling me what I should do with my life.

He gaped at me as if I had just slugged him. “How . . . ? You couldn’t have . . .”

“Wendy, please.” Kuniko said, very softly. “Don’t do this. . . .”

“I couldn’t?” I wasn’t paying attention to her; Carlos was my sole focus. “Tell me something . . . do you really think you bagged a virgin that night?”

Confusion . . . then dawning comprehension. Carlos stared past me, his eyes moving across the two boats. Barry sat quietly in the bow, stolidly returning his gaze. No, there had never been anything between him and me save friendship of the most platonic kind. David was much too young, and he and I had never really gotten along very well anyway. But Chris . . .

“Sorry, man.” His shoulders slumped forward, Chris was barely able to look at his lifelong friend. “I never meant for you to find out.”

Carlos’s eyes narrowed. His right hand fell to his side; I could see that he was reaching for his paddle. “You son of . . .”

“Hey, guys . . . I think you should see something.”

It was the first thing David had said in several days; perhaps that’s why we all turned to look at him. As before, his gaze was fixed upon the river, but he had raised his hand to point at something off the starboard side of the Pleiades.

For an instant, I thought—indeed hoped—he might have spotted land. Perhaps the coast of New Florida, even though that was an impossibility; we were at least fifty miles from shore. Yet there was nothing on the horizon.

“I don’t . . .” Barry shaded his eyes. “No, wait a sec . . .”

About a hundred yards away, a dark shape moved just beneath the sun-dappled water. A long fin briefly appeared, vanished a second later, leaving a long trough in its wake.

The argument was suddenly forgotten. “Maybe we should . . .” Kuniko began, and in that instant the leviathan hurtled upward from the depths.

Like a dark grey missile breaching the surface, it pitched itself high into the air, water streaming off its dark grey flesh. At least sixty feet long, it had a sleek, bullet-shaped head and a crenellated dorsal fin running down its back. I caught a brief glimpse of whiskerlike tendrils on either side of a gaping mouth, then it crashed back into the river and disappeared.

“That . . . that’s a catfish.” Stunned, Chris could barely speak.

“No catfish is that big.” Barry’s voice was soft. “That was a whale. . . .”

“Catwhale.” David was grinning. “Big ass catwhale.”

Whatever it was, it had changed direction. An elongated shadow turned toward us, and for an instant its fin sliced above the water.

“I think it’s seen us,” I said. “Maybe we’d better . . .”

“Yee-haah!” David howled. “Let’s go fishing!”

Hearing the loud poppa-poppa-poppa of a rifle on full auto, I looked around, saw him standing up in the Pleiades, a gun cradled in his hands. He hadn’t raised it to his shoulder, so his aim was off; spent cartridges clattered across the middeck as bullets pocked the water just above the shadow.

“Dinnertime!” he yelled. “Come and get it . . . !”

“David, no! Stop!” Kuniko was closest to him, she lunged forward, trying to get the rifle away from him.

David twisted away from her, but tripped on a rucksack and fell across the canoe. His finger was still within the trigger guard; the gun went off again. The next shots went wild, missing Kuni by only a few inches; she ducked, instinctively throwing her arms over her head. David ignored her; fumbling with the rifle, he rolled over on his side, aimed at the water again . . .

“Stop!” Chris was on his feet, trying to get to his brother, but the mast was in the way. “Put it down . . . !”

Thinking Kuniko had been hit, I scrambled on hands and knees across the Orion. I was on the sailboard when she glanced in my direction. No blood on her face or hands . . .

“Look out!” Carlos yelled.

I looked around just in time to see the monster come up again . . . this time, less than a dozen feet away.

A wall of mottled grey flesh rose up next to the boats, bigger than anything I’d ever seen. For a split second the catwhale seemed to stand on its tail, as if challenging gravity itself. To this day, I have the vivid recollection of seeing it posed against the sky. . . .

Then it came down upon us, smashing straight into the Pleiades.

I remember very little of what happened next.

One moment, I was kneeling on Orion’s sailboard, watching the catwhale as it hurtled into the other boat. A fleeting impression of being airborne, then of something hitting me in the back, shocking me out of my senses.

The next thing I knew, I was underwater, helplessly thrashing against the undertow that threatened to drag me farther down. Bubbles rose from my nose and mouth: my life escaping from my lungs, traveling upward to a rippling silver-blue ceiling somewhere far above my head.

Salt stung my eyes; my vision began to form a tunnel. It would be so easy to give up. All I had to do was just let go, allow myself to sink into cool, dark oblivion.

Yet I wasn’t ready to die. Somehow, I knew that I had to survive, even if only for a few more seconds. I closed my mouth, holding what little air was left in my lungs, and began flailing my arms and legs, propelling myself upward. Stroke, kick, stroke, kick, just the way I’d been taught . . .

The surface was just within reach when a shadow fell upon me: something from below, coming up fast. I looked down, caught a glimpse of an enormous, rubbery mouth surrounded by tendrils, and two black eyes the size of dinner plates.

The mouth yawned open beneath my feet, and I saw the pink ribbing within its throat. It could easily swallow me whole. . . .

A silent scream rose deep within my chest. I kicked back, as hard as I could, and the sole of my left foot connected solidly with the creature’s head.

Maybe it was startled by prey that actually fought back, or perhaps it decided that I just wasn’t worth the effort. Either way, it gave me a pass. The mouth closed, and the catwhale darted away.

My lungs burning, my skull feeling as if it was about to burst open, I fought my way to the surface. My head broke water and I gasped for breath.

I don’t recall whether or not I cried out for help. I think I did, but I can’t be sure. The only distinct memory I have of the next few moments is someone grabbing me under the shoulders, hauling me roughly out of the water and across a gunnel.

“Easy, easy,” murmured Kuniko. “You’ll be okay . . .”

“David!” Chris yelled from somewhere nearby.

Gagging on salt water, I turned sideways and threw up across someone’s legs. A hand brushed the hair from my eyes; a soft voice told me everything would be okay. Thinking it was Kuniko, I looked up at the person who had rescued me.

“David! Where the hell is David?”

Darkness overtook me, and I passed out in Carlos’s arms.

I awoke to the gentle rocking motion of a boat slowly moving across water, a quiet breeze snapping at an unfurled sail. The light was mellow, subdued; the setting sun gilded a thin skein of clouds above the western horizon. Everything was silent, eerily serene.

Weak, every muscle aching, I propped myself up on my elbows. I was lying across a wet tarp, a moist blanket pulled up around my body. My head had been resting in someone’s lap; looking around, I saw Carlos sitting cross-legged behind me, his back braced against the mast, his head lolling against his chest as he dozed. A few feet away, Kuniko sat in the stern, her hands gripping the rudder cables. She hadn’t noticed that I was awake; her eyes were fixed upon the horizon, squinting against the sun as she piloted the canoe. The fact that she and I were in the same boat with Carlos was my first clue that something was wrong.

The Pleiades was missing; a severed nylon rope drifting in the water along the starboard side was the only indication that it had once been tied to the Orion. The waterline was only a couple of inches below the gunnel; the surviving canoe was overloaded, almost on the verge of sinking under its own weight. Peering past Carlos, I saw Chris sitting on the forward deck. His right arm was wrapped in a torn shirt and suspended by a sling around his neck; like Kuniko, he was watching the horizon, as if searching for something. Barry sat in the prow, his back turned to everyone; an oar lay across his lap, but I noticed that a rifle rested only a few inches away.

“Hey . . . you all right?” Carlos’s hand was tender as he touched my arm.

“Yeah. Think so.” As I spoke, Kuniko looked at me. Her eyes were moist and red-rimmed. For a moment I thought she was going to say something, but she remained quiet. “What . . . ? I mean, I don’t . . .”

“Don’t you remember? That fish . . .”

“Catwhale.” I had only a vague recollection, but most of it was confused; a jumble of disjointed images. “That’s what David called it . . .” Suddenly, I realized what was wrong. “Where’s David?”

“He’s gone.” Kuniko’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “He went overboard when you did. You came up again . . . he didn’t.”

Flashback: an enormous mouth yawning open beneath me, the panic-stricken kick that chased it away. I looked around at Chris again. He still hadn’t moved; there was no indication whether he’d heard us. Perhaps it was just as well that I couldn’t see his face.

“Pleiades sank.” Carlos shifted his legs a little, then he carefully laid my head back in his lap. “The thing . . . catwhale, if you want to call it that . . . broke it in half. Chris and Kuniko got off in time, and we managed to cut it loose before it dragged down Orion.”

“The last thing I . . .” A memory of fighting the undertow, swimming for my life as the air boiled out of my lungs. I had an impulse to tell the others of my narrow escape, but now wasn’t the time. “Chris, what happened to your arm?”

Chris didn’t reply. “Broke it when the mast came down on him,” Carlos said quietly. Chris muttered something I didn’t catch yet Carlos apparently did; he turned his head away.

“We thought we’d lost you,” Kuniko said. “We couldn’t find you for a couple of minutes. Then you came out of the water, and . . .” She let out her breath, and now there were tears in her eyes. “Thank God.”

Perhaps I should have thanked God, too. Just then, though, I was more grateful to my late father, who’d taught me how to swim when I was still a toddler. He might have been a lousy dad, but on that one point he’d done pretty well by his daughter. “Yeah, okay . . . so where are we?”

“Halfway to shore. At least that’s what we think . . . we’ve lost the compass, along with everything else that was on the Pleiades. Maybe another ten, fifteen miles to go.”

“We’ve lost . . . ?”

“Shh. Take it easy.” Kuniko returned her attention to the rudder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be home soon enough.”

She was only half-right. We made it to shore about a couple of hours after sundown . . . but we were a long way from home.

Although we still had the map, without a compass to give us an accurate bearing we had no real idea where we were. Somewhere west of the Alabama River, many miles from the mouth of the West Channel, or at least that was our best guess. The shallow coastline lay ghostly white beneath the light of Bear as Kuniko and Barry paddled the last few hundred yards to shore; when they heard the soft crunch of sand beneath the keel, Carlos and Barry stepped off into the cold surf breaking against the beach and hauled the canoe ashore.

It felt strange to set up camp again, and not only because it was the first time we’d walked on dry land in eight days. Half of our supplies had been aboard the Pleiades, including one of the tents and most of what little food we had left; we pitched the remaining tent, then tied one of the tarps from the low bough of a short, palmetto-like tree as a sort of lean-to shelter. It took a while for anyone to remember to gather wood for a fire; that had always been David’s job, and somehow I think we were all expecting him to emerge from the darkness, his arms laden with kindling, complaining about always having to do that particular chore himself.

Once a fire was started, though, no one wanted to gather around it. It wasn’t just the fact that we were exhausted or that we had precious little to eat; we just couldn’t bear to look at each other anymore. Barry was filthy and unshaven, and for the first time he’d become irritable, unable to communicate except in short, terse monosyllables. Chris’s eyes were unfocused, and he refused to speak to anyone. Kuniko’s hair was matted, her shoulders slumped as if she’d been carrying our collective weight for thousands of miles. Carlos’s face was haunted.

Lost, hungry, and sick to the bottoms of our souls, we went to bed almost as soon as the fire was going and the tent was erected. There was no room for all five of us, and so I offered my place in the tent to Chris, telling him that I’d sleep under the tarp that night with Barry. He stared at Carlos, and for a moment I thought he’d refuse, but then Carlos dully announced that he’d take first watch; without high bluffs to protect us from any boids who might happen to spot our fire, someone had to stay awake. Barry volunteered for second watch, and so Chris crawled into the tent with Kuniko while Barry and I spread out my bedroll under the tarp and huddled together beneath its blanket. The last thing I saw was Carlos silhouetted against the fire, squatting on a crooked piece of driftwood with the remaining rifle at his side.

I didn’t sleep well, if at all. Whenever I shut my eyes, I saw the catwhale rising above us in that moment before it crashed down upon the Pleiades. I’d wake up to stare at the canvas tarp rippling in the wind. At one point I found myself crying, trying to hold back my sobs lest I awaken Barry. Then I’d close my eyes again, try to force myself to sleep.

Sometime very early in the morning, I awoke to an unfamiliar sound. For a moment I thought I heard static. An indistinct voice, as if coming from far away. A quiet murmur, much closer. Then silence, save for the soft hiss of morning tide against sand.

I raised my head from beneath the blanket. The sun wasn’t up, but neither was the night as dark as it had been. Although the stars were still out, a cool blue tint outlined the eastern horizon. Barry lay cuddled next to me, snoring quietly with his fists wadded together against his face; apparently Carlos hadn’t awakened him to take over the night watch.

I sat up, rubbed sleep from my eyes. Thin brown smoke wafted up from the low-burning fire, but Carlos wasn’t to be seen.

It was warm beneath the tarp. So tempting just to fall back asleep, wait until the sun came up or someone else stirred. Yet the sound I’d heard puzzled me, and Carlos’s absence was disturbing, so I carefully pushed aside the blanket and crawled out from under the tarp.

Carlos was down by the Orion; he had pulled out the rest of the gear we’d left in the canoe, and it now lay across the dry sand, arranged in some sort of order. When I came upon him he was kneeling next to the boat, closely inspecting its inner frame by the glow of a flashlight resting on the bow deck.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”

Startled, he turned to look up at me. “Nothing,” he said, almost a whisper. “Everything’s all right. Go on back to bed.”

The rifle lay against Carlos’s pack, along with a bedroll, a food container, and two water flasks. Glancing into the open pack, I noticed a medkit tucked inside. All those things had been scattered around the campsite when we had gone to sleep; now they were gathered together, as if Carlos was preparing to load them aboard the canoe.

But that wasn’t all. On the bow seat was an item of equipment I hadn’t seen before: a satphone, its antenna unfolded. Identical to the one he’d thrown into Sand Creek two weeks before.

I bent down to pick it up. “Carlos, where did you . . . ?”

Carlos snatched away the satphone before I could touch it. Then, realizing that trying to hide it was pointless, he reluctantly put it back. “It was in my pack,” he murmured. “I found a spare unit in the armory when I stole the guns, so I took it as well. Just in case we ran into something we couldn’t handle.” A grim smile. “Guess that’s now.”

“Why didn’t you . . . ?” Confused, I shook my head. “I mean, I can’t believe you didn’t tell anyone.”

“Really?” Carlos wiped the sand off his hands as he stood up. “You yourself told me I was a self-centered jerk. This just proves it.” He took the satphone from the seat, folded the antenna. “I didn’t let anyone know I was carrying this because I didn’t want them crying for help at the first sign of trouble. That’s why I got rid of Kuniko’s. I knew things would get tough, but I had to see if I could handle it . . . if we could handle it . . . on our own.”

Looking down, he slowly let out his breath. “I never expected this. If I’d known you were pregnant, if I’d thought anyone would be harmed . . . I would have made the call earlier. Or maybe I’d have just gone out by myself, left the rest of you . . .”

“You’ve called home?”

He nodded. “Waited up until I saw the Alabama pass over. That was about ten minutes ago.” He glanced up; the ship would have been a bright star, traveling east across the night sky, easily seen from the ground. “Woke up Mike Geissal and told him where we are, or at least my best guess. And I told him where we’d hid the shuttle hardware. A couple of motherboards from the guidance systems . . . they’re in the false bottom of a paint can in the boathouse. Once they find ’em and put them back in place, no one should have any trouble flying out here. Two or three hours, tops, and you guys can expect a rescue.”

I closed my eyes, felt myself go weak. In a few hours, either the Mayflower or the Plymouth would descend from the sky. Before the day was over, we’d be back in Liberty. Fresh food and water, clean clothes and a bath, a bed surrounded by four walls and a roof . . . I’d never realized how much I missed such simple luxuries.

Hearing him move away, I looked back at him again. Carlos had picked up the food container and was hauling it over to the Orion. He placed it in the canoe, then turned to reach for his pack. “What are you. . . ?”

“What I should have done before.” He stashed the satphone next to the medkit within the pack, then closed its flap and cinched it tight. “Like I said, it was stupid of me to risk your life or anyone else’s. Should have known better. So I’m finishing this by myself. . . .”

“Carlos . . . !”

“Shh.” He gently placed a finger against my lips. “Don’t wake the others.” I nodded reluctantly, and he took his hand from my mouth. “I’ve got to do this, Wendy. If I don’t, then everything we’ve been through . . . even David’s getting killed . . . will have been pointless.”

“It’s not pointless!” I snapped, louder than I intended. “David’s death was an accident! You can’t let yourself feel guilty for . . . !”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” He sighed, then turned away to grab his bedroll. “I do know that I’ve lost my best friend over this.” He glanced toward the tent where Chris lay asleep, then back at me again. “And I’ve lost you, too.”

I opened my mouth, intending to deny this . . . and then realized that anything I’d say would be a lie, and thus would hurt him even more. Perhaps I’d been in love with him when I decided to run away from Liberty, but that was over; I’d seen the darker half of his soul, and it would take a long while for me to forgive him for all the things he’d said and done.

“I’ll be gone a while, but I’m keeping the satphone.” He smiled again. “Won’t throw it away this time, I promise. When the baby comes, I want you to call me. . . .”

“You’ll be back by then.”

The smile faded. Carlos glanced away, toward the east. “I might. But I’ve got a lot of things to work out first. And there’s a big planet out there . . . someone’s got to scout the terrain. It’s either this or stay home and feed the chickens.”

“Where are you going? Up West Channel?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head as he tossed the bedroll into the boat. “I’d just wind up back in Liberty if I went that way. I think . . .”

He shrugged, then picked up the rifle and placed it next to the rest of his gear. Perhaps he didn’t want to tell me, or perhaps he didn’t really know himself. With the exception of the tent, he had taken everything he needed to survive.

“I better get out of here before the others wake up.” He reached down, picked up an oar, idly weighed it his hands. “Listen . . . take care of Marie, will you? I haven’t been much a big brother lately, and she’s going to need someone to look after her.”

Dawn was beginning to break; the wind was starting to rise. Feeling a chill, I wrapped my arms around my shoulders. “Sure, okay. Carlos . . .”

I hesitated, not knowing what to say. He waited, then nodded. “That’s all right. I know.” He stepped close, put an arm around me, and bent to give me a long kiss that tasted of salt water and wilderness.

“I love you,” he whispered.

I nodded, but couldn’t say what he wanted me to say. “Good luck,” I said, very softly. “I’ll . . . we’ll be waiting for you.”

There was nothing else that needed to be said. Carlos turned away, placed the oar in the back of the canoe, then pushed it out into the surf. He climbed into the boat, settled into the stern, dug his paddle into the water. A few long strokes and he was away, the ebbing tide quickly carrying him away from the shore.

I sat on the beach, letting the river lick at my bare feet, as I watched him raise sail. The wind was coming from the west that morning; it caught the canvas sheet and pushed it outward, and soon the Orion was a small triangular spot on the horizon.

I couldn’t tell whether he ever looked back, but I waved anyway. Once he was gone, I stood up and went to wake the others.

That was many years ago.

So many years, in fact, that it’s often hard for me to recognize the girl I once was. I know she’s hiding somewhere within the woman I’ve become, for every now and then I’ve let her out, yet each time I do, she seems to have receded a little farther into the past. Perhaps that is why I’ve put all this to paper; I’m not proud of some of the things I did, and all too often I’ve deliberately mistold the story so that I don’t have to confront those terrible memories. But now it’s almost done, and when I’m through I hope I can get on with the rest of my life.

Shortly before noon, the Plymouth arrived to pick us up. As it turned out, we’d traveled a little farther than we believed; the beach upon which we were shipwrecked was only thirty miles from the confluence of the West Channel. If we hadn’t lost the Pleiades, in another day or so we would have been able to start making our way up the channel; another week, and perhaps we might have returned home on our own. Or perhaps not. In hindsight, I think we were lucky to have gone as far as we did.

On the way back to Liberty, we spotted the Orion. Carlos was sailing down the Equatorial, heading west along the southern shore of New Florida. Jud Tinsley was piloting the shuttle, and he brought it down low, at one point hovering barely a hundred feet above the canoe. Yet he couldn’t make a water landing, and when Jud attempted to contact Carlos by radio, he refused to respond; he simply stared straight ahead, ignoring the shuttle even as he battled the downdraft caused by its vertical thrusters. Jud finally got the message; he lifted away from the river, leaving Carlos alone.

That was the last I saw of Carlos Montero for a long time. When we finally met again, we’d both changed. But that’s a different story, and one which doesn’t need to be told now.

Two Coyote months later—Uriel 52, C.Y. 02, five days after First Landing Day—I brought my baby into the world: Susan Kuniko Gunther, named after her late grandmother and the doctor who delivered her. As the first child born on the new world, my daughter’s birthday was considered an historic event. A couple of Council members demanded that I obey the moratorium on new births, but Kuniko refused to perform an abortion, and so there was little anyone could do about it except leave the choice to me. Besides, it wasn’t long before Susan had plenty of playmates; apparently I wasn’t the only lady in Liberty who had been concealing her incipient motherhood.

Shortly before Susan was born, Chris proposed marriage. I turned him down. I was having a hard enough time being a teenage mother, and I didn’t want to be a teenage bride as well. And I couldn’t wed someone who hated Carlos as much as he did. Which was just as well, for eventually we all saw each other again . . . but, again, that’s another story.

Coyote was a different place then, just as I was a different person. We make stupid mistakes when we’re young; we do our best to make amends for them as we get older. We survive by learning; by learning we survive.

Such is life. So be it.