SHADY GROVE

from the memoirs of Wendy Gunther)

The revolution against the Western Hemisphere Union occupation of Coyote was the turning point of our lives. We'd come to the new world to escape one form of tyranny, only to have another take its place; we tried to run away, but found that doing so was little more than a temporary solution. Sooner or later, we had to stand and fight.

No one wanted a war, but we got one anyway. Yet there are worse things than war. I discovered that in the winter ofC .Y. 06, when the Union Guard attacked Defiance.

They appeared shortly after sunrise on the morning of Anael, Barchiel 29. Bill Boone was just ending his shift on overnight watch when he spotted two aircraft coming in over Mt. Aldrich from the east. He ran to the bell post and sounded the alarm, but it was early and most of us were still in bed, so only a few people managed to grab their guns before the gyros touched down in a farm field about three hundred yards from town.

Carlos and I were awakened by the bell, but we thought it was only another drill until the shooting began. He threw on his clothes, pulled his rifle off its hooks, and was down the ladder before I was even dressed. We'd discussed what we would do if something like this happened, so my duty was clear; I yanked Susan out of her bed, shoved her beneath it, then pulled off the mattress and stuffed it in after her to catch any stray bullets that might come our way. She screamed like hell-little girls don't like rough treatment, least of all before breakfast-and I tried to calm her as best I could, but by then I knew we were in trouble.

I was supposed to stay in the tree house and protect Susan, but that's not what happened. This may sound negligent, but when your home is under attack, you've got a choice: either bolt the door and hide, or pick up a gun and go out to face the enemy. I'd long since made up my mind, without telling Carlos, that if the Union ever attacked Defiance, I wasn't going to play the role of defenseless female. When I was a kid back on Earth, I had the benefit of paramilitary training in Republic youth hostels; if anything, I was a better shot than my husband. So I told Susie to stay put and that Mama would be back soon, then I took down my own rifle, jammed in a cartridge, opened the floor hatch and jumped, not bothering to use the ladder.

I like to think I was brave. Perhaps, but I was also stupid. I was wearing nothing more than a thin nightshirt and a pair of drawstring pants, and in my haste I'd forgotten to pull on moccasins or a jacket; when my bare feet hit the ground, they sank into three inches of snow. If I wasn't fully awake by then, that did the trick. I hardly noticed, though, because all around me were my neighbors, coming down rope ladders and running across catwalks from one blackwood tree to another. An ice-fog lay thick above fields where only last autumn corn had grown high beneath camouflage nets; I couldn't see Carlos, but from the mist I could hear the popcorn sound of guns in full-auto mode, interspersed with the more distant noise of enemy fire.

The snow numbed my feet as a chill wind ripped through my clothes. I was useless as far as leading any sort of cavalry charge, so I headed for the nearest dry spot I could find, a well about a dozen yards away. The low stone wall that surrounded it had been swept clear of snow; I jumped on top, taking cover behind the wooden yoke supporting the bucket.

It was an absurd moment-Wendy Gunther, wife of the legendary Rigil Kent, crouched in her pajamas on top of a well-but there wasn't much else I could do. Leaving the cabin was a bad move; I had realized that by then. Yet there I was, all the same, so I held my rifle against my chest and waited for something to come close enough for me to shoot.

But the Union wasn't fighting fair that day. A sudden boom from out in the fields, then a high-pitched whistle as something hurtled through the air. I barely had time to realize what it was before a tree house only a few dozen feet away exploded. Wood flew in all directions; I instinctively ducked, falling off the wall just in time to avoid having my skull fractured by a broken post that went sailing past my head.

"They've brought in a missile carrier!" someone yelled, and I raised my head to peer over the wall. I couldn't see anything save for vague forms firing into the fog, yet somewhere out there was a Union Guard skimmer. Doubtless it had come up Goat Kill Creek in a coordinated attack with the gyros. Another shriek, then a patch of ground about sixty feet away went up in a fireball. Men were thrown in all directions, hitting the ground as if they were little more than broken toys.

It's easy to talk about courage when you're sitting at the table, sharing a bottle of sourgrass ale with your husband; it's something else again when you find yourself the target of an armored hovercraft loaded with enough rockets to take out a small town. Hiding behind the well, I covered my ears, closed my eyes, tried to wish it all away. It was a bad dream, nothing but a bad dream. In a minute, I'd wake up to find out that I was still in bed, with Carlos curled up against me and Susan asleep on the other side of the room. Yet I couldn't ignore the evidence of my senses: the cold, the smoky odor of burning wood, the gunfire. This was no nightmare. My town was under attack. If we didn't do something, then we were all going to die. . . .

"Get some rifles up here!" All around me, voices. "Don't fall back!" "Find some water, put out that fire!" "C'mon, dammit, move! "

No,I thought, you can't do this. Go back to the cabin. It's warm and dry and safe up there. Susan needs her mother. You're not supposed to be here. . . .

"Fan out! Don't let 'em get through!"

Another rocket ripped into the settlement. Another tree house went up in flames. For a terrifying moment I thought it was my own, until I looked back and saw that, no, it wasn't mine, but the Gearys'. But it could have been my home, and Susan could have been . . .

"Where's the kids? Someone get the kids out of here!"

In that instant, something came over me. It wasn't bravery, or courage, or honor, or any of those things. Fear, yes, but also pure rage, plain and simple. Someone out there wanted to kill me, but worse than that, they wanted to kill my little girl, too.

And I just went berserk.

Before I fully realized what I was doing, I was on my feet, charging out from the tree house village, racing into the fields with my rifle in my hands. The cold meant little to me now, the fact that I was barefoot even less. Nothing mattered save the cauldron of hate that boiled within me, a white-hot furnace that melted away all considerations for my own safety. This was my home, everyone and everything I loved and held dear. I couldn't-I wouldn't -let that be taken away.

Through the fog, I spotted a figure-little more than a silhouette, but obviously a Union soldier. I went down on one knee, braced the rifle stock against my right shoulder. Line up the target in the crosshairs . Take a deep breath . Hold it . Fire . The rifle kicked against my shoulder. Three sharp cracks, and the half-seen Guardsman sagged in upon himself, toppled to the ground. I leaped to my feet again, continued to run forward. . . .

"Wendy!" From somewhere behind me, Carlos. "What are you . . . ?"

To my left, another soldier, this one closer than the first. I could see his uniform clearly, along with the face beneath his helmet. He gaped at me in astonishment, as if not believing what he was seeing, then his gun started to turn my way. No time to take careful aim; I sprayed bullets in his direction until he grabbed at the right side of his chest and pitched sideways. He squirmed on the ground, blood bubbling upward from a punctured lung, as I walked over to him. He was trying to raise a hand toward me, as if to beg for mercy, when I fired again. One shot, and his brains were blown across the snow. No mercy.

My friends and neighbors were running past me. I was about to join them when a heavy force slammed into my back, knocking me facedown to the ground. Snow stung my eyes, blinding me for a moment, as the rifle fell from my hands, landing a few feet away. For a second I thought I'd been hit. . . .

"What do you think you're doing?" Carlos was kneeling on top of me, pinning my body to the ground. "Stay down!"

I was trying to crawl out from under him when I heard engines. Rubbing snow from my eyes, I saw the colony's captured Union skimmer roar past, Clark Thompson standing behind the 30mm chain gun mounted above its bubble canopy. He turned the gun on a line of advancing soldiers and mowed them down, then the skimmer-doubtless piloted by Barry Dreyfus, who had liberated the craft only a month earlier during the Goat Kill Creek incident-roared away into the mists.

Carlos removed his knee from my back. "I thought I told you to . . ."

"Get off me!" I impatiently shoved him aside, scrambled to retrieve my rifle. "You want me to fight or what?"

Carlos started to argue, then thought better of it. "Just stick close," he said as he yanked me to my feet. "You don't want to get lost in this."

I wasn't about to object. The soldiers were among us, and it was hand-to-hand combat within a white veil. I caught a glimpse of Paul Dwyer, blood streaming down one side of his face, as he buried a machete within the chest of a soldier. Ron Schmidt and Vonda Cayle ran past us, firing at anything that moved. Ben Harlan and Molly Thompson and Klon Newall: all newcomers to Defiance, yet nonetheless just as determined to defend the settlement as if they'd been with us from the beginning. Ron Schmidt, one of the URS soldiers who'd tried to retake the Alabama when it was being hijacked, shot someone, then fell as someone else shot him.

A few feet away, Ellery Balis knelt to the ground, a stolen Union Guard RPG resting upon his right shoulder. As a gyro lifted off a hundred yards away, Ellery trained his weapon on the aircraft. He squeezed the trigger and a shell lanced through the fog. The gyro's port nacelle exploded; the aircraft careened sharply to one side, lost altitude, plummeted back into the mists, and went up as an orange-red blossom. Ellery pumped his fist once, then stood up, tucked the RPG beneath his arm, and ran away.

"Let them handle this." Carlos pulled at me, trying to lead me to safety. "You're only in the way."

"No!" I tore myself loose. "I want to see!" In hindsight, I must have sounded like a petulant child, being told that she couldn't stay to watch the gory part of a flix. And perhaps I was; I'd never been in battle before, and there was a certain terrible fascination to all this. And I'd killed two men myself; now I wanted more.

There were no other soldiers in sight. I could still hear gunfire within the fog, but it was less frequent. Somewhere out there, I heard the chatter of dueling chain guns, like two mad pianists trying to top one another in a lethal symphony. The missile carrier hadn't fired any more rockets, which meant that its crew must be engaging Thompson's skimmer. Another gyro lifted off; I could see wounded Guardsman within its open aft hatch, staring down at us. Ellery fired another grenade at it, but it missed and the gyro peeled away.

And then, all of a sudden, an eerie calm descended upon the field. No more shots. No more explosions. It was if God had come down to silence the guns. Now I could only hear the groans of the wounded, the cries of the dying. The sun had risen above the mountains, its warmth burning away the fog, revealing bodies strewn over the ground. Some still twitching, others perfectly still.

Finally, I felt the cold, and with it, a strange delirium. Leaning against Carlos, I turned away, began to lurch back toward town. It was over. We were safe. No one could touch us. We'd fought back and won. But I felt no jubilation, no rejoicing. Only sickness.

A body lay on the ground before us, lying in a patch of blood-drenched snow. For a second I thought it was a Guardsman, then I came close enough to recognize the face . . .

Tom Shapiro. The former first officer of the Alabama , the first man to set foot on Coyote. His chest had been ripped apart, his sightless eyes dully reflecting the cold light of the rising sun.

I stared at him for a few moments, then I tore myself away from Carlos, staggered a few feet, collapsed to my knees and threw up.

We lost Tom that morning . . . and twelve others, too, including Michael Geissal, Tony Lucchesi, and Ron Schmidt. The latter three were blueshirts, members of our local militia: the first to fight, and the first to die. Their lives weren't meaninglessly sacrificed, though; the bodies of fifteen Union Guard soldiers were also found, and no telling how many of their wounded had been airlifted out by the gyro that Ellery failed to take down.

Over twenty of our people were wounded as well-some critically, including Henry Johnson, who took bullets in the gut and his left knee and came close to bleeding to death before Kuniko got to him, and Jean Swenson, who suffered massive internal injuries and severe burns across most of her body when one of the tree houses collapsed on top of her. As soon as the battle was over, we set up a tent as a temporary hospital-Kuniko's infirmary simply wasn't large enough-and started drafting people as blood donors.

Shortly after Defiance was established as a new colony, Kuniko started breaking me in as her assistant. Most of the Alabama crew members had first-aid training, but Dr. Okada was the only one among us who had gone to med school. So when I wasn't doling out pills and delivering babies, I was also learning how to perform minor surgery.

If I had been Kuniko's student before the firefight, that day I received my final exam. Until then, the most I'd done was assist her in an emergency appendectomy; after the Union attack I found myself removing bullets, tying off veins, stitching wounds, performing transfusions, and trying like hell not to lose either my wits or my stomach. By noon my arms were drenched with blood up to the elbows; we didn't have enough instruments to exchange them after each operation, so it was all that we could do to have them sterilized in boiling water before we went to work on the next patient. Don't ask about nanites, cloned tissue grafts, or any of that stuff; we didn't have them. This was combat surgery at its most brutal, as primitive as anything since the early twentieth century. We didn't have enough drugs to go around, so we reserved general anesthesia for those who needed it the most, administered local sedatives to the others, and offered bite-blocks and jolts of bearshine to those strong enough to take it.

Not everyone made it. We did our best for Jean, and she toughed it out as long as she could, but shortly after midday she lapsed into a coma and two hours later she passed away. I pulled a sheet over her face and said a silent prayer for her; a few moments to dry my tears, then I went out to tell her husband that she was gone. That was the hardest thing I'd ever done; Ellery probably saved a lot of lives when he shot down one of the gyros, but in the end he'd not been able to save his own wife.

Someone once said that liberty is paid for with the blood of patriots. If so, then the bill was paid in full, for we saw a lot of blood that day.

Sometime around twilight, I finally left the tent and began trudging home, making my way along a quiet path that led through the trees. For a few minutes, I was alone, which was what I needed. I was exhausted, heartsick, and miserable. I'd seen enough violence and death to last a lifetime. The next morning we'd have to bury thirteen of our friends. Up on the high meadows outside of town, their graves were being dug in the frozen ground with pickaxes, along with those for all the soldiers who'd been killed. My husband and daughter were waiting for me; I wanted to take them in my arms, tell them how much I loved them, then collapse in my bed and sleep for a year. It was early evening, yet it felt like midnight.

"Wendy? Got a few minutes?"

I looked around, saw Robert Lee coming toward me. From the Town Council meeting, I assumed; while I was in the tent, Vonda came in to tell me that it was being convened in an emergency session. I was a Council member-the youngest, in fact-but there was no way I could attend. Vonda told me that she'd explain my absence, and someone would tell me later what happened.

"Yeah, sure." The last thing I wanted to do just then was talk to anyone. But this was town business, and it couldn't be avoided. "How did the meeting go?"

"Maybe I should wait till later. You look like you need a rest."

Someone had delivered hot coffee to the tent, but I hadn't eaten all day, and my eyes were heavy-lidded. I was about to agree when I raised my face to look at him. Robert E. Lee wasn't just the mayor; he was also captain of the Alabama , our leader from the very beginning. Over the course of the past few years, his dark hair had become streaked with silver, his beard white as ivory. We'd often remarked on how much he'd come to resemble his famous ancestor, sometimes even jokingly referring to him as General Lee, yet at that moment the similarity wasn't just superficial. There was a darkness within his eyes that I'd never seen before; he looked like a man who'd just fought a bloody battle and was aware that he'd have to fight again all too soon. You don't say sorry, try me again tomorrow to someone like him.

"No, go on. Let's have it now." I looked around, spotted the well behind which I'd taken cover an impossible amount of time ago. Strange that I would find myself there again; I sat down on the wall, bunching the hood of my parka around my neck.

Robert took a seat beside me. "First off," he began, "I want to tell you what a fine job you've done today. We would have lost more people if it hadn't been for you and Kuniko."

He was trying to say the right things, but only a couple of hours ago I'd pronounced Jean Swenson dead. Doctors might get used to the fact that they occasionally lose patients, but I barely qualified as a paramedic. Jean's death made me sick to my soul, and I wasn't ready to handle any well-meaning words of gratitude.

"Thanks," I mumbled, and there was an uncomfortable silence. Not far away, the ruins of the Geary house smoldered upon the ground. The tree in which it had been built was still standing; blackwoods are as tough as they are large, and it takes a lot to destroy them. If only human flesh were as resilient . . .

"So what happened at the meeting?" I asked again, trying to change the subject.

Robert straightened his back, gave me the full rundown. Two houses were destroyed by enemy fire. The Geary and Sullivan families were moving in with friends until new homes could be built for them, but the Construction Committee informed the Council that it was unlikely that new tree houses could be erected within the next two months-i.e., the end of Machidiel, the last month of winter. A grain silo had also been destroyed; like the cabins, it could be rebuilt, but one-third of the autumn harvest saved for the feeding of livestock had been lost. The Farm Committee had been instructed to put the goats and chickens on half rations and look toward culling their numbers by slaughtering the older animals. That in turn, meant a reduction of food; we could only hope that we'd be able to hold out until we could plant new crops next spring.

Finger-pointing was inevitable. Some of the Council members were inclined to blame Rigil Kent-that is, Carlos and his brigade-for bringing the Union down upon us, yet Robert refused to hear any of it. He pointed out that the Union had been looking for Defiance for over two Coyote years now, and, despite all our precautions, it was only a matter of time before they managed to locate our position. Luisa Hernandez would have ordered a raid even if there hadn't been a resistance movement, he said, and in fact we should be thankful that Rigil Kent had captured a patrol skimmer last month; otherwise, we probably wouldn't have been able to beat off the attack.

There was one bright point. Lew Geary had inspected the missile carrier-hearing that, I had to wonder; though his house had been destroyed, the man was still capable of examining the machine that did it-and determined that it could be salvaged. Even though its cockpit was riddled with bullet holes and one of its engines had been shot up, its launchers still worked, with eight rockets remaining in their magazines. Lew already had his people working on it, and they hoped that the skimmer could be restored to operating condition. To defend the town if-or, more likely, when-the Union returned.

And that was the question. When would they attack again? And what could we do about it?

"This isn't over. Not by a long shot." Robert idly tapped at the ground with a stick he'd picked up. "They know where we are. Sooner or later they'll try again."

"We need to fortify the town."

"We discussed that. Sandbag emplacements, tiger traps. And now that we've got enough guns to go around, everyone is going to be armed." He shrugged. "But I've got a feeling that they were just testing our defenses. Seeing how much we could take."

"You don't think they were serious?"

"Oh, they were serious, all right . . . to a certain extent." He turned his head to gaze across the field where only a few hours earlier we'd fought for our lives. "But we know that they've received several hundred troops from the ship that arrived last month, along with heavy equipment like that missile carrier. So why didn't they throw everything at us at once?"

"They were taking a poke at us. Seeing what we're made of." I remembered the bullies I used to have to deal with when I was in the youth hostel. The dumb ones came straight at you with their fists; if you could take them down the first time, then they'd leave you alone, knowing that you'd fight back and it wasn't worth getting a bloody nose. The guys you really had to watch out for, though, were the ones who prodded and needled you, seeing how much you could take, observing your weaknesses. Only then would they attack-late at night, when you weren't ready for a pillowcase over your head and sawed-off baseball bat to your stomach. "I think I understand."

"I thought you would." Robert nodded appreciatively; he knew my life story. "Then you know our situation. Even if we arm everyone in town, we're still on the defensive. That isn't where you want to be if you have any hope of winning. Sooner or later, we're going to have to take the fight to them."

I raised an eyebrow. "You've got a plan?"

"Sort of." His voice became quiet. "Nothing I've told anyone yet . . . or at least, no one who's still with us. Tom knew, but . . ."

Robert stopped, looked away. Before his hand came up to rub his face, I saw tears in his eyes. As long as I'd known Captain Lee, this was one of the few times I glimpsed even a trace of deep emotion. Perhaps Dana, his mate and the Alabama 's former chief engineer, saw a side to him that we didn't. To most of us Robert was intensely private, even enigmatic. Tom Shapiro had not only been one of his senior officers, but also a close friend. Losing him hit closer to home than he was willing to admit.

"I've got an idea, yes," he said, looking back at me again with dry eyes. "If it's going to work, though, I've got to know that we've got little to lose. As it is now, there's too much in our way."

"What are you saying?"

He let out his breath. "We've got to do something about the kids."

As soon as he spoke, I knew he was right. I'd charged into battle, barefoot and with little more than a rifle to defend myself, only because I was afraid for Susan. If Carlos and I had been killed today, then our daughter would have been left an orphan, just as both he and I had been left without parents the first few days after the Alabama reached Coyote.

Susan had been the first child born on the new world, but now there were nine other children in Defiance. Among them was Tom's son, Donald, born only a few months later; his wife Kim was not only a widow now but also a single mother. I'd tried my best to protect my daughter, but taking out a couple of soldiers doesn't count for much when a missile carrier is lobbing rockets at your home. And the neighborhood bully likes it when you've got one hand tied behind your back.

"You want to get them out of here?" I asked, and he nodded. "Got any suggestions?"

"In fact, I do," Robert said. And then he told me all about it.

I went home and slept for a few hours. Night had fallen by the time I woke up, and Carlos and Susan already had made dinner. Carlos warmed up some of the leftover stew; while I ate at the table, he took Susie to bed and read her a story. We'd been making our way through The Chronicles of Prince Rupurt -a generation of Coyote children were growing up with Leslie Gillis's fantasy-yet I noticed that he skipped the scene where Rupurt fights the skeleton army. Susie had been very quiet all evening; she was ten years old by Gregorian reckoning, so she was very much aware that several of her parents' friends had lost their lives that day, and she didn't need to be frightened any more than she already was. When story time was over, I gave her a good night kiss while Carlos turned the lamps down, then we put on our coats and slipped out onto the porch to have a talk.

We could see lights glowing in tree house windows, hear muted conversations, and yet the paths and crosswalks were empty. There was a certain stillness I'd never seen before, as if Defiance was an injured animal, licking its wounds as it curled in upon itself. Not far away, we could see Lew and Carrie picking through the ruins of their home, their flashlight beams roaming across the wreckage as they searched for any belongings they might be able to salvage. From somewhere nearby, there was the sound of two flutes: Allegra DiSilvio and her companion Sissy Levin, playing "Amazing Grace" in duet as night closed in on town.

Carlos unfolded a couple of camp chairs and set them up on the narrow porch, and we kept our voices low so as not to wake Susan. I told him about what Robert and I had discussed a few hours earlier, how he thought it was wise to send the children away in case there was another attack. I wasn't surprised when Carlos told me that Robert had already broached the subject with him as well.

"I think it's a good idea. If Susan had been killed, it would have been . . ." His voice trailed off, and he looked at me sharply. "That's why you went out there, wasn't it? You were trying to protect her."

"I know. That wasn't part of the agreement." I looked away. "It was either that, or . . ."

"I understand. It was just that . . ." He shook his head. "Look, when Rigil Kent has gone out, I've never had to worry about you and Susie, because I knew you were safe back here. But when I saw you today, I couldn't do what I had to do, because I had to look out after you as well."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"Let me finish." He held up a hand. "I realize all that. You did what you thought had to be done. But you know, and I know, that the next time this happens . . . and there probably will be a next time . . . we can't afford to worry about mothers and children being caught in the cross fire. If we have to . . ."

"You're not listening to me. You think I'm against the idea. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Robert's right. I think it's time to get the kids out of here."

"You do?" He peered at me through the darkness. "How much has he told you? I mean, about where we'd go . . . ?"

"He mentioned a new settlement up north along the Gillis Range. Shady Grove, near Mt. Bonestell. The Union doesn't know about it yet, so . . ." Suddenly, I realized what he'd just said. "What do you mean, 'we'? He asked if I'd be interested in taking the children up there, and I told him I would, but he said nothing about . . ."

"Robert's playing both ends against the middle. Typical politician." Carlos chuckled, then became serious again. "No one expects you to go off into the wilderness all by yourself. It's almost eight hundred miles to Shady Grove. He asked me to go with you, and I told him that I would."

"But . . ." This caught me by surprise. "What about everything else? Like, defending the town?"

"We've got plenty of people here for that. They don't need my help." He hesitated. "There's more to this than you know," he added. "I need to talk to some people up there."

I was about to ask about that before I remembered something Robert had said earlier: Sooner or later, we're going to have to take the fight to them. For the past two years, Rigil Kent had been waging guerrilla warfare against the Union. Occasional raids on Liberty and Shuttlefield to steal weapons and destroy shuttles, the sabotage of the Garcia Narrows Bridge . . . hit-and-run tactics, without any clear purpose except to encourage hope that the Union would surrender New Florida and leave those who'd fled to Midland alone.

For a while, it seemed as if our side was winning. Then the Union Guard raid on Thompson's Ferry ended in the settlement's destruction and the loss of many lives. Shortly afterward, the Union had established a military base on Hammerhead and an attempt was made to capture Carlos. Though the mission was unsuccessful, they managed to figure out where Defiance was located. Since then, reports had come in about Union attacks upon settlements along the Gillis Range: Forest Camp, on the Midland side of East Channel, was assaulted, and New Boston, near the Medsylvania Channel, had been hit as well. Shady Grove was one of the few towns that had remained untouched.

A few weeks ago, though, our satphone link to the new colonies had been severed, indicating that someone had boarded the Alabama , still in high orbit above Coyote, and pulled the plug on the transceiver. So now all contact with the other towns was either done by shortwave radio-itself a risky business, since those transmissions could be monitored from space and triangulated to their source-or through word of mouth, which was more reliable but much slower.

Carlos had assumed the name Rigil Kent in order to protect his identity if any of his small group of resistance fighters was ever captured. There weren't many to begin with-Carlos, Barry, Ted LeMare, and a few others-but as their numbers expanded to include second-wave immigrants who'd fled from New Florida, his alias came to be attached to the group as a whole, and Carlos found himself in the role of a military leader. Warlord of Coyote . . . almost sounded like a twentieth-century fantasy novel. Didn't seem so funny now.

"Robert told me you've got something planned," I said quietly. "What is it?"

Carlos didn't respond for a few moments. I knew that silence: he was wrestling between a choice of how much he wanted to tell me and revealing no more than I needed to know. "We're working on something," he said at last. "It's pretty big, and there's going to be a lot of people involved. But more than that . . ." He shrugged. "Sorry. Can't talk about it."

Of course, there were good reasons why he couldn't take me into his confidence. Nonetheless, we'd journeyed down the Great Equatorial River together, split up, patched things together again, had a child, gotten married . . . a lot of water under the bridge, and it stung that he couldn't trust me. "Yeah, okay, sure . . ."

He caught the hurt in my voice. "I'm sorry, but we're still pulling things together. That's one of the reasons why I'm making the trip with you. It's not just to help you watch out for the kids. It's also because I have to . . ."

"Talk to some people. I understand." A new thought occurred to me. "But if Shady Grove's that far away, why don't we just take the Plymouth ?"

The Plymouth was the remaining shuttle from the Alabama ; its sister ship, the Mayflower , had been left behind in Liberty, after we'd cannibalized it for every usable component. For the last three years it had remained grounded, concealed beneath camouflage covers in a field about a mile from town. Now and then Robert, Dana, and Tom had gone out there to clean it up, reactivate its major systems, and test-fire its engines, yet it hadn't moved an inch since it was used to evacuate most of the Alabama party and our belongings from Liberty. It was still flightworthy, though; if you wanted to transport nine children and several adults across eight hundred miles, that was the quickest way to do it.

Carlos shook his head. "We're not using Plymouth . We'd get there quicker, but . . ." He hesitated. "We'd just as soon not remind the Union that we've got a spacecraft. If they remember it at all, better to let them assume that it's rusting away somewhere."

Ah-ha!But I didn't say anything. "So we're riding shags? Or are they classified as well?"

He chuckled, patting my knee. "Yeah, we'll have the shags. As many as we need. I know Susie thinks they stink, but . . ."

"She'll get used to it. The other children will love it." I took his hand. "So it's you, me, the kids . . . and who else?"

"Don't know yet. Haven't thought that far ahead. Maybe Chris . . . ?" He caught the look in my eye-I still had personal problems with his oldest friend-and quickly shook his head. "Chris should stay back, help hold down the fort."

"Barry's good with children. Maybe Klon, too." The kids loved Uncle Klon; he made a great Santa Claus, and his pad was filled with old fantasy stories he'd brought with him from Earth.

"They'll need both of them back here. Barry's my second-in-command while I'm gone, and Klon has to help build the fortifications. It's going to be hard for us to spare many people for this. Besides, we've only got room for four adults." He paused. "I was thinking about asking Ben. He's got this sort of backcountry experience."

"If he'll do it." It had been nearly a year since Ben Harlan had attempted to lead the members of the Church of Universal Transformation across Mt. Shaw. He still didn't like talking about what had happened up there; he'd lost someone whom he cared about. But Carlos was right; Ben knew what the Gillis Range was like in the dead of winter, and he got along well with kids. "I'll ask him," I said. "Maybe he'll sign on." I thought about it for a moment. "Kim should go, too. She'll want to look out after Donald."

"We can't risk sending Kim. She knows how to . . ." He stopped himself, but I knew what he was going to say. Kim Newell had been the Plymouth 's copilot; with Tom gone, she was needed to fly the shuttle, for whatever they intended to do with it. "I think we should take Marie."

Something within me went cold. "I know she's your sister, but . . ."

"She's good with a gun. And the kids like her. . . ."

"Hell they do. Susie hates her."

"Marie's going. I've already told her so." Before I could object, he stood up, headed for the door. "It's late. Time to go to bed."

The caravan left Defiance two days later.

We were supposed to leave shortly after daybreak, but it wasn't until midmorning that we were able to mount up. There were a lot of teary farewells as mothers and fathers hugged their children, made sure that they had their hats and gloves, promised them that they wouldn't be gone very long. A couple of kids refused to let go of their parents and had to be gently prised away; others wept or threw tantrums when they were told that they couldn't take their dogs or cats because we wouldn't be able to feed them. I had a lot of private discussions with their folks; each one needed to tell me about their child's personal needs, and I had to assure them that they wouldn't be neglected.

I'd half expected Ben Harlan to refuse to join us, so it came as a surprise that he didn't. He still walked with a limp from having lost two toes to frostbite during his ordeal on Mt. Shaw, and he warned me that he couldn't do any serious hiking, but when I told him that we'd ride most of the way, he was willing to undertake the task. He liked the children, and besides, he'd lately graduated from herding goats to minding the shags. And, although he didn't say so, I think he privately needed to confront the mountains again, if only to exorcise the memories of what had happened to him the year before.

The saddest moment came when Kim Newell said good-bye to Donald. They'd been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours; first Tom's burial, now this. She would have preferred to go with us, but she also knew that she was needed there, so she clung to her son until we were ready to saddle up. When I looked back, she had her head against Robert's shoulder, weeping as if she'd never see her son again.

We had five shags: four to carry adults and children, and one to haul all the food and camping equipment. Susan and the four other older children-none of whom was more than ten Earth-years, with Susie the eldest-were able to sit upon saddles along with the adults, although we made sure that they were secured with harnesses so they couldn't fall off. The four youngest children were little more than toddlers; for them, we'd fashioned papoose bags that were slung over the sides of each animal.

We gave names to the two groups, taken from the Prince Rupurt stories-the older kids were called Scouts, the younger children Dauphins-while the grown-ups were referred to as High Riders. The arrangement worked out well; at any one time, each shag carried a High Rider, one or two Scouts, and one Dauphin. Susan was designated Chief Scout for as long she chose to serve. I whispered in her ear that, at some point, she might have to share that title, to which she agreed, albeit reluctantly.

The shags were well suited for the trip; their coarse fur was warm, their elephantine legs tramped through the snow as if it were nothing more than soap flakes. The children were still upset, so again we tried to make the best of it by giving the Scouts the privilege of naming the shags. After much discussion, they settled upon Achmed, Zizzywump, Sally, Old Fart, and George the Magnificent. Go figure; it helped cheer them up a bit.

We made good time; by early afternoon of the first day, we reached Johnson Falls, where Marie and I dismounted to lead the children across the rope bridge over Goat Kill Creek while Carlos and Ben took the shags through the shallows upstream. We gave the shags a few minutes to shake off the icy water-which the kids loved, since it reminded them of big, grunting dogs-then we climbed aboard again and continued making our way on the trail leading us up the northern side of Mt. Aldrich.

I knew the kids pretty well because Kuniko and I had seen them troop through the infirmary at one time or another with the usual childhood bruises, fevers, and earaches. Susan, Donald, Lewis, Genevieve, and Rachel were the Scouts; Lilli, Alec, Ed, and Jack were the Dauphins. Every one of them had their own personalities, with which I was familiar, and before long the High Riders were known to them as well. Carlos was our undisputed leader-whatever he said, that was the rule-and they looked up to him with reverence. I was Dr. Gunther, the surrogate mother who made sure their caps were on tight and their harnesses weren't too loose. Ben was the easygoing chum who told jokes, tended to the shags, and made sure that we'd stop whenever anyone needed to pee.

But Marie . . . they didn't know quite what to make of Marie. As a teenager, she was the youngest of the High Riders, and the children immediately realized that she wasn't that much older than they. Yet she remained aloof from them: sitting stolidly upon her saddle, rifle never leaving her hands, eyes constantly searching the mountainside as if expecting Guardsmen to emerge from the woods at any moment. Donald rode with her until we reached Johnson Falls; after we crossed the bridge, though, he insisted upon riding with me, and almost threw a fit until Susan, in her role as Chief Scout, volunteered to take his place.

It wasn't just Marie's inability to warm up to children that made me wish we'd left her behind. She hadn't been very much younger than Susan was now when the Alabama reached Coyote; since then, a certain hardness had entered the eyes of the little girl who'd once splashed around in Sand Creek and giggled whenever she saw Carlos and I sneak a kiss. Over the course of the last couple of years, she'd changed into a person whom I barely recognized-cold, tough, cynical, and on one notable occasion even bloodthirsty. Only a month ago, she'd shot an unarmed Union soldier in cold blood, and smiled about it as if he'd been nothing more than a swamper caught prowling through the garbage.

Marie was scary, and she made the children nervous, yet Carlos insisted that we bring her. "I don't want to leave her here," he'd said when we argued about it the day before our departure. "Lars and Garth are a bad influence, and I'd like to get her away from them for a while. And since I'm putting Barry in charge of the outfit while I'm gone, I don't want the three of them getting together to pull something behind his back."

It was difficult to argue with that. The Thompson brothers were stone killers, no question about it; Carlos had recruited them to join Rigil Kent shortly after they moved to Defiance along with their uncle and aunt, on account of the fact that they'd fought the Union Guard before. It wasn't until much later that he realized just how merciless they could be. Marie had lately been spending a lot of time with Lars, and not just to trade tips on how to keep their rifles clean. That worried him, too, even though he tried not to pry into his sister's personal business. Lars and Garth might not be able to conspire against Barry, but if they had Marie on their side . . .

So there were good reasons why Carlos would want to keep his sister close to him. Besides, she was good with a gun, and we'd be on the trail for four weeks. It was still winter, so the boids were in their migratory grounds on the southern coast of Midland, but there was no telling what else we might run into out there in the wilderness.

All the same, though, I privately vowed to keep a close eye on my sister-in-law. We might be kin, but I didn't want to leave her alone with the children for very long.

Fortunately, the journey to Shady Grove was largely without incident.

We spent two days climbing Mt. Aldrich and coming back down the other side. In terms of geography, that was the hardest part, because there was no clear pass over the mountain and we had to spend a cold and windy night on a ridge below the summit. But we set up the tents so that we were all together, and after dinner that night Ben began telling the kids about Prince Rupurt, a story they'd never heard. It wasn't something Leslie Gillis had written. Indeed, Ben would later tell me that he'd been making it up as he went along. But the children were fascinated all the same, and that night he ended with a cliffhanger that made them want to hear more. "Tomorrow night," he said, "and only if you're good." Then we put out the lights and went to sleep.

And that pretty much set the pattern of our days for the next two weeks. Shortly after sunrise the High Riders would get up, stir the ashes of the campfire and get a fire going again, then start making breakfast while we woke the children. A bite to eat, then the Scouts would disassemble the tents and help the Dauphins into their papooses, while we reloaded everything on the shags so we could start making our way north along the southeast side of the Gillis Range. Once we descended from the mountains, the forest occasionally gave way to lowland marshes, which were still frozen over, so the shags had little trouble going through the swampy areas. On good days, we'd make fifty miles or more; at our worst, when we'd encounter a ravine that we'd have to skirt, only about forty. But, aside from the occasional snow squall or having to stop to retrieve something valuable that someone dropped, we made good time.

It wasn't always easy. The children got homesick, and it passed like a virus among them, with a lot of crying jags, until they finally got over it. Lewis and Donald got into a nasty fistfight one evening over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, and days went by before Genevieve would talk to Rachel again after a feud over something about which I never learned. Lilli got diarrhea, and Ed and Alec came down with colds, so I had to tend to them. Jack demanded that he become a Scout-and indeed, he was the oldest and largest of the Dauphins-so after considerable discussion we decided to make him a Scout Apprentice, with all due privileges: now he had to wash dishes and help the older kids forage for firewood. Two days of that, and he wanted to be a Dauphin once more. Yet every night, all their differences were put aside as they curled up against each other and waited for Ben to continue the further adventures of Prince Rupurt. I think Ben spent most of his time trying to figure out how he'd get Rupurt and his friends out of the latest peril he'd put them in the previous night.

We had other ways of having fun. Every few days, we'd choose a new Chief Scout. Carlos taught the Scouts how to make a fire with damp wood, how to determine location from the position of the sun and stars, how to guide a shag with little more than a slight tug of their reins, while I showed the Dauphins how to make snow angels and tie square knots. One night, we sat up late to watch a rare convergence of Coyote's sister moons Dog, Hawk, and Eagle against Bear's ring-plane.

And every day, our destination grew a little closer. Mt. Bonestell was the highest point on the Gillis Range, and also the second-tallest volcano on Coyote, exceeded only by Mt. Pesek on the western side of Hammerhead. Like Mt. Eggleton and Mt. Hardy in the southern hemisphere, it had been named after a twentieth-century astronomical artist-Henry Johnson's idea-yet even though Pesek was the largest, Bonestell was impressive in its own right. An enormous cone rising twenty-six thousand feet above sea level, its flat-topped summit was beyond the reach of any climber unaided by oxygen. Frequently shrouded by high clouds, it was awesome to behold on a clear day. We had compasses and maps to guide us, but even if we'd lost them, we would have been able to find our way to Shady Grove simply by hiking toward Mt. Bonestell.

On the eleventh day, shortly after we'd stopped for lunch, we heard the low clatter of rotors. Looking up, we spotted a pair of tiny specks moving across the sky, coming from the west. Not taking any chances, Carlos quickly moved the caravan beneath a couple of blackwoods, and there we waited while two gyros cruised high overhead, heading due west. Until then, the Union had been the least of our worries. This small incident reminded us that our journey wasn't a camping trip, as we had managed to pretend, but something far more serious.

Three days after we saw the gyros, we were about sixty miles from Shady Grove. We'd entered the broad mountain valley between the Gillis Range and Mt. Bonestell, where Longer Creek flowed south from the highlands. The marshes behind us, once again we were surrounded by dense forest, yet we'd located a trail leading north to the settlement. Barring any problems, we'd reach our destination in a couple of days. Ben was carrying the radio, and, once we were within range, Carlos planned to get in touch with the settlement and tell them we were coming.

Late that afternoon, as Uma was beginning to set behind the mountains, we came upon a small clearing that looked suitable. By then the Scouts and Dauphins had become accustomed to their roles. While the High Riders unloaded our equipment from George the Magnificent, the Dauphins helped unroll the tents, and the Scouts went into the woods to scrounge for firewood. The kids liked sharing the responsibilities; the older ones had made it a game to see who could find the best dry wood, and the toddlers had learned how to use branches to sweep away snow to make room for the tents. So we had the tents set up, and Lewis and I were breaking up kindling for the fire, when we heard a girlish scream from the woods.

At first, I didn't think much of it. We'd become used to this sort of thing; someone finds a dead swamper decaying under the leaves, or a kid takes a snowball and shoves it down the back of another kid's parka. Easy to ignore. But then I heard the scream again, and this time it had a note of pure terror. The others heard it, too, because Carlos and Marie dropped the rain tarps they were setting up and Ben scrambled out of the tent where he'd been taking a siesta. I told Ben to stay back with the Dauphins, then Carlos and Marie grabbed their rifles and we bolted for the woods.

We were only about fifty yards from camp when Genevieve came running toward us. Clingberries covered her arms and legs where she'd charged through the undergrowth, and there was a thin streak of blood across her nose from when a low branch had whipped against her face, but it was the look in her eyes that I noticed first: absolute horror, as if she'd just seen something that scared her half to death. She ran past Marie and Carlos and barreled straight into my arms as I knelt to stop her.

"I saw . . .I saw . . .I saw. . . !"

"Easy, easy. It's all right. Everything's okay." I stroked her hair as she buried her face against my parka. Never before had I felt a child tremble so much. "You're safe. You're fine. . . ."

"What did you see?" Marie was standing nearby, her rifle half-raised. "C'mon, kid, spill it."

"Marie . . ." Carlos shot her a look, then crouched down next to us. "We're here," he said, laying a hand on Genevieve's shoulder. "Nothing's going to get you, I promise. Now what did you . . . ?"

"A . . . a . . . a m-man. A l-l-little man."

I stared at her. "You saw a man?"

"Uh-huh. A li-little man." Genevieve snuffled, raised her face. Tears diluted the blood from her cut; she started to wipe them away, but I caught her hand, not wanting the scratch to get infected. "B-but not like a real man. L-like a . . . a monkey. A monkey, with fur and everything."

A little man, or a monkey. Which was more implausible? The nearest human settlement was over sixty miles away, nor were there any monkeys, or simians of any kind, on Coyote. Genevieve must have learned the word from tutorial discs, because it was beyond the range of her experience.

"Probably a creek cat." Disgusted, Marie lowered her gun, started to turn away. "Hell . . ."

"Go see what you can find." Carlos nodded in the direction from which Genevieve had come. "If you spot anything . . ." He hesitated. "Don't shoot. Just come back, that's all."

Marie looked at him askance. "You can't be . . ."

"Just do it, all right?" By then we could hear the other Scouts crashing through the underbrush toward us; they'd heard Genevieve's screams and were rushing over to investigate. Marie gave her brother a skeptical look, then walked away. Carlos watched her go, then turned to Genevieve again. "You saw a little man," he said quietly, looking her straight in the eye. "What did he do? Did he say anything?"

"N-n-no. H-h-he was just standing behind a t-t-tree, w-watching me." She was calming down a little, beginning to pick clingberries off her parka. "And . . . and then he started for me, and th-then I . . ."

"You ran away?" I asked.

"Uh-huh." She looked up at me again. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Not at all, sweetie. Not at all." I took her in my arms again, but she was through crying by then. When her friends showed up a few moments later, Genevieve told them all about what she'd seen.

Marie returned a while later with nothing to report, and that was it for the evening. We discussed the incident over dinner, and although Genevieve stuck to her story, the other kids either disbelieved her, or else believed her but decided that this was just another story like the ones Ben had been telling them all along. When you're very young, the line between fact and fantasy is thin; this was a good ghost story, and it helped us get them in bed a little earlier than usual.

Carlos and I didn't get a chance to talk that night. Even if we had, though, I don't think he would have told me everything he knew. Yet just before we tucked away the kids, he told Ben that he'd take the overnight watch, and quietly cautioned us to keep our guns where we could find them in the dark.

He knew something we didn't. But he wasn't letting on.

Two days later, late in the afternoon, we reached Shady Grove.

The town was smaller than Defiance by at least half, and looked little like it: a nine-foot stockade wall of blackwood timbers surrounding a half dozen longhouses, thatch-roofed barracks providing shelter for ten people, each arranged around a small commons where a well had been dug. Just outside the stockade were barns and corrals for livestock, toolsheds and grain silos; not far away was a broad plastic dome, apparently a greenhouse. The front gate was open, and we could see woodsmoke rising from behind the walls. Nonetheless I had the impression we were approaching a fortress. It should have been comforting, but it wasn't.

A watchtower rose on stilts from the center of town; as we came within sight, a sentry called down to someone below. We'd barely reached the gate when several dozen men and women rushed out to greet us. The residents of Shady Grove might have been strangers, yet they had received our radio message, and they treated us as if we were long-lost relatives they hadn't seen in years. They clapped us on the back, shook our hands, introduced themselves so fast that I was barely able to remember their names. Several men helped us unload the shags before they were led to a nearby corral, then we trooped inside the stockade and went straight to the main lodge, where we discovered that they had already prepared dinner for us.

Shady Grove had been in existence for a little less than four months. Its population was just over fifty-all adults, although a few women were obviously expecting children soon-but in that short time they had done well by themselves. Life in Shuttlefield and Forest Camp had taught them how to make do with what little they'd managed to bring with them when they'd escaped. The greenhouse we'd seen earlier was carefully stitched together from transparent plastic tarps and heated by a wood furnace; in this way they managed to grow crops even in the dead of winter. The longhouses had been built with energy conservation in mind; internal partitions allowed for privacy while allowing heat from woodstoves to circulate through the rafters, and the cracks between the log walls were stuffed with cloverweed as insulation. One of the longhouses served as the main lodge; long tables ran down half of its length, and it was there that everyone had breakfast and dinner. No one was starving; no one was sick. Everyone there worked hard to survive, sure, but that was the way it was in Defiance, too.

It seemed as if everything was perfect. We'd crossed eight hundred miles of wilderness to find a settlement inhabited by friendly people who'd welcomed our arrival. There was a storage space in the back of the lodge that could be cleared out to make room for the children; a few more bunk beds would have to be built, but that wasn't much of a problem. And they had enough food to go around, so long as no one minded shag stew on occasion. Although the residents also used shags as pack animals, they weren't disinclined toward slaughtering the old and weak. I decided to keep my mouth shut about the practice. People in Defiance had come to revere shags as more than livestock and seldom had we eaten one, and only then in desperation.

The mayor of Shady Grove was Frederic LaRoux. A geologist by training, he'd been a member of the expedition that Chris Levin had led up the East Channel to pick out a site for the Garcia Narrows Bridge. Following the sabotage of the bridge, he and the others had fled Forest Camp, making their way across the mountains to establish Shady Grove on the other side of the Gillis Range. Carlos had met him back then, but only briefly, and over dinner they came to know each other a little better. When the tables had been cleared, and Carlos broke out one of the jugs of bearshine he'd brought with us, the discussion became more serious.

"I appreciate the necessity of what you've done," Fred said, speaking in Anglo, "and why you had to do it. But Rigil . . . Carlos, I mean . . ."

"Don't worry about it. You can call me Rigil." Carlos grinned as he poured a shot of bearshine for LaRoux. His mastery of the newer form of English had become better since Chris had taught him the nuances. "Most people in the new settlements know me only by that name. I'm used to it by now."

"As well you should. You've become something of a legend, you know." Fred settled back in his chair, idly swishing the liquor around in a ceramic mug. "Rigil Kent, scourge of the Union, leader of the revolution." He raised an eyebrow. "When we first met, you were younger than I expected. But now that I see that you have a wife and child . . . this explains much."

"Just trying to protect them, that's all." Carlos glanced in my direction. Ben had escorted the children to bed, and everyone else was either cleaning up or doing other odd jobs. For the moment, it was only the three of us. "I hope this isn't an inconvenience. We're asking a lot of you."

"Under any other circumstances, no, it wouldn't be." Fred shook his head. "Either the Union doesn't know we're here-rather unlikely, since we're out in the open-or our town is so small and remote that they don't consider us much of a threat. It's also possible that they've seen our stockade and figured that we'd be a hard target to take down."

"They used a missile carrier against us," I said, speaking up for the first time. "Your walls wouldn't stop something like that."

Carlos cast me a look; but LaRoux just nodded. "She's right. We couldn't fight them off if they came at us the way they came at you. But we've kept our heads low, haven't caused any trouble. Maybe that's the reason."

"Maybe for now, but not very much longer." Carlos bent forward. "Sooner or later, they're going to-"

"Why is this inconvenient?" Yes, I was trying to change the subject. Carlos was looking for recruits, but my top priority was the safety of the children. "Is there something we should know about?"

Fred took a drink, made a face as the corn liquor scorched his throat, then rested his mug on the table and tapped his fingers against it. "There's an irony in all this," he said, very quietly, "because I was thinking about sending someone down south to ask if we could take refuge in your town."

Carlos stared at him. "But you just said-"

"I know, I know. But this isn't about the Union." He let out his breath. "Tell me something . . . while you were coming up here, did you feel any tremors? Did the ground shake at all?"

Carlos and I looked at each other. "No . . . no, we didn't," he said, and I shook my head.

"Good. Glad to hear it." Fred took another sip. "Twice since we've been here, we've experienced small tremors. Nothing major, just enough to break a few things and knock down part of the stockade. All the same, I think we made a serious mistake by settling here."

"Earthquakes?" I nearly said Coyote-quakes , but that would have sounded silly.

"No. Worse than that." He hesitated. "We don't have any seismographs, and right now I'd give an arm and a leg for a decent tiltometer, but it's my professional opinion that Bonestell is coming out of a dormant period."

"The volcano?" I leaned across the table to look him straight in the eye. "We thought it was, y'know, dead. Inactive. Whatever."

"Not a chance. Oh, Mt. Pesek is probably extinct. It's a shield volcano, very old, maybe one of the reasons why Coyote has a breathable atmosphere in the first place. Ditto for Mt. Eggleton down south. But I have little doubt that Bonestell is coming out of dormancy, and that it's only a matter of time before it blows."

"How long?" Carlos asked.

"Can't say. Even if I had the right instruments, I couldn't tell you that. Predicting volcano eruptions has always been an inexact science at best. But I wouldn't bet against its happening sometime in the next year. If and when that happens, the last place I want to be is here." He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being overheard, then lowered his voice. "We're happy to take care of your children, but pretty soon we're going to have to abandon the town and head south ourselves. Maybe you ought to keep that in mind."

While we were mulling it over, he drained the rest of his mug. "But that's not all," he said as he reached across the table for the jug. "There's something else . . . we're not alone out here."

"What do you mean?" Carlos kept his voice neutral, but there was something in his face that told me he was hiding something.

Fred started to pick up the jug, then reconsidered and put it down again. "The last couple of months, some of our people have seen things in the woods. Sometimes they look like . . . well, I know this sounds silly, but they look like monkeys." He glanced first at me, then at Carlos. "I know how this sounds, but it's not cabin fever. We've had things turn up missing, stuff that was left outside overnight. Anything small enough to be taken away."

Carlos remained quiet, absently running a fingertip around the rim of his mug. "One of the girls saw something like that yesterday," I said.

"She did?" Fred nodded grimly as he let out his breath. "You know, I'm almost glad to hear you say that. I didn't want to mention it to you, because . . . I dunno . . . maybe you'd think we'd gone around the bend. But if you've seen these things, too . . ."

"Keep the children in the stockade," Carlos said abruptly. "Don't let them go out, not under any circumstances." He knocked back a slug of bearshine, then looked at me. "He's right. This was a mistake. We should have never come here."

"What?" I couldn't believe what he was saying. "You're . . . I mean . . . you're telling me we-"

"Fred, we appreciate your hospitality. You've been very kind, and we won't forget this. But I think we should take the kids and head back as soon as we can." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "If you want to send anyone with us, we can make room for them. It may not be safe here much longer." He hesitated, then added, "With the volcano being active and all, I mean."

Fred was just as astonished by Carlos's reaction as I was. "Sure. Whatever you say. I can ask around, see if anyone wants to-"

"It's been a long ride to get here. Let's talk more about this tomorrow." Carlos stepped away from the table. "I'm going to go check on the kids, make sure they're tucked away. See you in the morning. Good night."

I caught up with him just before he opened the door leading to the back of the lodge. "What aren't you telling me?" I whispered, grabbing his arm and pulling him aside. "You know something."

Carlos didn't reply. For the first time since we'd been married, he avoided looking at me. "It's important," he said at last. "I've kept it from everyone for a long time now. Maybe I should I have talked about it earlier, but"-he glanced back at the dining room, where Fred was still seated at the table, gazing at us in puzzlement-"this isn't the time or place," he added softly. "Ask me again tomorrow."

"If it's that important . . ."

"It is." Now he looked me straight in the eye. "But it'll keep until the morning. Will you trust me till then?"

I was tired. He was tired. It wasn't a good time to carry on a long conversation. "All right," I said, letting go of his arm. "Sure. But tomorrow . . ."

"Of course." Carlos forced a smile, then bent down to give me a kiss. "I love you," he murmured. "Now let's make sure the kids are in bed."

When morning came, I awoke to find Shady Grove already up and around. The smell of hot coffee and cooked food permeated the log walls; chickens cackled and roosters crowed as they were fed, and men and women murmured to one another while they walked past the shuttered windows of our longhouse. Carlos turned over and wrapped himself against me. I opened my eyes to see Ben scratching at himself; in the bunk above him, Marie tried to burrow beneath her blankets.

It was a cold winter morning, and it had been many days since any of us had slept in a bed with a roof over our heads. One of the women had told me that the community bathhouse had warm water. The tank was solar-heated, and so long as we didn't pump too much we could get a decent shower. So I prised myself loose from Carlos, put on my clothes, and headed for the bathhouse. The others could sleep a little while longer; I just wanted to feel clean again.

The sun was up, rising over the southwestern flanks of Mt. Bonestell. No clouds in the sky; with luck, maybe we'd get through the day without any more snow. Through the open gate of the stockade, I could see townspeople heading out to do the morning chores. No one in Shady Grove slept late, and neither did the children. The Scouts were playing tag in the commons while the Dauphins built a snowman nearby. I spotted Susan talking to an adult, and for a moment I considered going over to introduce her, but decided to let her make friends by herself. She might like it here . . . if Carlos allowed her and the other children to stay, that is.

The bathhouse had two stalls, markedMEN andWOMEN , with a dividing wall between them. It was small, with unfinished faux birch floors and walls, but there was a small stack of shag-fur towels on the table and a bar of lavender soap in an aluminum can nailed to the wall beneath the showerhead. I took off my clothes and hung them up on the door, then shivered against the cold as I worked the pump handle until I received a thin cascade of water. Not much better than lukewarm, but still a luxury I hadn't enjoyed in two weeks; I stood beneath the shower and felt the sweat and grime of eight hundred miles wash off me.

Carlos couldn't be serious about taking the children back. Yes, it was possible that Mt. Bonestell might erupt, but LaRoux hedged his bets about when it might occur. Even if an eruption was imminent, surely they'd have enough advance warning to evacuate the town and head south. But that wasn't what bothered my mate; it was the sightings of these so-called monkeys. Clearly he knew something about them, and he had admitted as much. If only he'd tell me . . .

From somewhere nearby, I heard a dinner bell begin to ring. Time for breakfast. I rinsed my hair, then turned the spigot to shut off the water and reached for a towel. Even if Carlos insisted on leaving, there was no sense in rushing home. I was in no hurry to hit the trail again, and the kids would only fret. If we stayed a couple of days, he might come to his senses. I loved him dearly, but sometimes he took things much too seriously. . . .

Feeling much more civilized, I made my way across the compound to the lodge. The children had already gone in, leaving behind a half-finished snowman, and only a couple of townspeople were in sight. The gate remained open. There was no one on duty in the watchtower; the sentry was climbing down the ladder, heading in to get some chow. I noticed all these things, but paid no attention to any of them. My hair was wet, and my stomach was rumbling; the only thing that mattered was getting in from the cold and putting some food in my belly.

The dining hall was filled to capacity: men and women crowded next to one another on the benches, passing bowls of kasha and plates of fresh-baked corn bread down the line. The kids were scattered here and there across the room; they were probably sick of seeing each other, because only a few of the Dauphins sat together. The older ones had joined adults who'd taken them under their wing; to see the townspeople already adopting the Defiance children as if they were their own reinforced my belief that we'd done the right thing by bringing them there.

I found Carlos, Marie, and Ben sitting with Fred LaRoux at the far end of the middle table. "See you've found the bathhouse," LaRoux said, grinning, as Carlos and Barry moved to make room for me. "Enjoy yourself?"

"Very much, thank you." I could have dried my hair a little better, though, for it hung in damp snarls around my face. "Wish I could do that every day."

He shrugged. "Three times a week is all we get, or at least until we get around to building more facilities. No shortage of well water. We've got a pretty deep aquifer, but putting in sewer pipes is murder." He glanced at Ben. "Did y'all have the same problems?"

"Sort of." He took a bowl of wheat porridge that was handed to him, passed it to Carlos. "Piping wasn't a problem so much as heating the water. We've kept everything under the trees, so there was no way we could use passive solar systems. We're still taking cold baths."

I smiled at that. Ben hadn't been around when we'd put in the water pipes, yet he knew enough about them to be able to discuss them. "Did Susan like her shower?" Carlos asked, dipping his spoon into his bowl to stir the kasha. "Hope so . . . the kids are beginning to reek."

"She didn't come with me." I looked at him in puzzlement. "Last time I saw her, she was outside, talking to someone."

"She must have come in with them, then." Carlos put down the spoon, raised his head to peer across the room. "Susan!" he called out, and a woman seated about a dozen feet away looked toward him. He ignored her, called again: "Susie! Susie Gunther!"

No response. I searched the room with my eyes, called for her myself. No Susan.

Rachel was the nearest Scout, and one of Susan's closest friends. I got up and went over to her. "Have you seen Susan?" I asked.

Always fastidious, Rachel took a moment to chew and swallow the corn bread in her mouth. "She went out," she said nonchalantly, as if that explained everything.

"Out? Out where?"

"Out the gate."

I turned toward Carlos, but he was already pulling on his coat and heading for the door. I tried to tell myself that it was probably nothing. Susan had taken it upon herself to see to the shags; she was particularly concerned about Old Fart, who had begun to show his advanced age. Just a small matter; we'd find her in five minutes, after which she'd receive a scolding from Mama and Papa and a long time-out in the longhouse while her friends got to play.

But she wasn't at the corral, nor was she visiting the greenhouse nor any of the outlying sheds. We didn't find her feeding the chickens, and she wasn't playing hide-and-seek under the floor beams of the longhouses. Within a half hour, almost everyone in town had joined the hunt; breakfast was forgotten as people who barely knew her name searched for her in every conceivable place.

The adult with whom I had seen her talking told Carlos that she'd expressed interest in Longer Creek; he'd told her that it flowed down from the hills north of town, and that it was where they did most of their fishing. He hadn't seen her since then. So Carlos, Marie, and I walked around behind the stockade, and sure enough, there were her footprints in the snow, leading in the direction of the narrow river and the woods that surrounded it.

We started to follow them, still calling her name, but we'd just entered the woods when Marie suddenly stopped. "Oh, hell," she muttered, staring down at the ground, "look at this."

There were Susan's footprints, barely six inches in length, continuing through the ice-crusted powder. But now, on either side of her, were several other sets of tracks; bipedal and four-toed, less than four inches long, with deep heel marks and sharp indentations at the end of each toe.

"Oh, my God." Carefully stepping around them, Carlos followed Susan's footprints a little farther. "Oh, dear God, no . . ."

Then I saw what he was seeing. The alien tracks emerged from the woods on either side of Susan's; they surrounded hers, and there was a deep impression in the snow where she had fallen down. Her footprints emerged from the scuffle, becoming deeper as if she'd tried to run away. In her panic she'd headed in the wrong direction, away from the stockade and toward the forest.

"They caught her here." Marie pointed to another place where she'd fallen down. "There must have been two . . . no, three, maybe four . . ."

"Oh, God." Carlos was fixated on the tracks. "They wouldn't do this. It's not their way. They only want things. . . ."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I lost my patience. No, not just my patience; my mind, too. I grabbed Carlos's shoulders, turned him around to face me. "What haven't you told me? Who are they?"

In that instant, I saw something in his eyes I hadn't seen in years. Fear, as terrible as any man could have, yet not of death, but of the unknown. He pulled himself loose from me, turned to his sister. "Marie, go back and get the guns. Tell Ben to stay back and take care of the kids, but you get the guns and round up a few more people, then come after us."

"Why don't you go back yourself and . . ."

"They're fast. Believe me, they're already way ahead of us. If we follow them now, we may be able to catch up to them. But if we go back to town, they'll have that much more of a head start. And Ben can't keep up with us, not with that bad foot of his." He pointed back the way we'd come. "Now move . . . and get back here quick as you can."

Marie hesitated, then turned and began to sprint back toward town. "C'mon," Carlos said, taking my arm. "We don't have much time." He glanced at me, saw the look on my face, and nodded. "I'll try to explain as we go along."

Three and a half years ago, by the LeMarean calendar, Carlos had taken off by himself to explore the Great Equatorial River. I've told my part of that story before; how he'd left me, Barry, Chris, and Kuniko behind after our attempt to explore the river had failed. I was carrying Susan then, so I couldn't go with him-not that I particularly wanted to; Carlos and I weren't on good terms at that point in our relationship-and so for nearly three months he was on his own, not returning to Liberty until I was going into labor.

I thought I'd learned everything about that hegira -his term for his "spiritual journey"-but I was wrong. There was one thing he'd kept secret, not only from me, but also from everyone else.

He'd paddled his canoe along the southern coast of Midland, seeing our future homeland as no other human had ever seen it before, until he reached its southeast point. Following a brief conversation via satphone with me and Chris-and I hate to admit it, but we weren't very kind to him-he decided to keep going west, raising his sails to cross the Midland Channel to a small island south of Hammerhead. At first, it seemed as if the island was little more than sand and brush, yet on his first night there he discovered that it was far from deserted.

"I thought they were just animals." As he spoke we were hiking uphill, following the tracks as we made our way through dense forest toward the lower slopes of Mt. Bonestell. "Like raccoons or maybe overgrown pack rats, but then I found something that made me realize that they were intelligent. There was this tiny knife-"

"What?" Despite the urgency of the moment, I stopped. "You're saying you found intelligent life on Coyote?"

He looked back at me. "Uh-huh. That's what I'm saying. Now c'mon." Still talking, he continued up the trail. "Intelligent, but very primitive . . . sort of like little Cro-Magnon men. They knew how to make tools, how to build fires, erect structures from the sand. Even something of a language, although damned if I could understand it." He chuckled to himself. "And, man, were they a pain in the ass. I spent nearly a week on the island, and it was all I could do to keep them from stealing everything I had. I called them sandthieves after a while. But they were pretty peaceful. Just as curious about me as I was about them."

"And you didn't tell anyone about them?" If the circumstances had been different, I would have had a hard time believing him.

"No, I didn't. I . . . oh, no. Look at this."

We'd come to Longer Creek. It wasn't very wide at that point, its surface frozen over, but that wasn't what distracted him, Susan's footprints stopped abruptly on its bank. Carlos bent over, picked up something from the ground, turned around, and held it out to me.

"Oh, God!" I whispered, putting my hand to my mouth. It was Susan's cap, the one Sharon had woven from shag fur and given to her for First Landing Day last summer. "Is she . . . ?"

Carlos knelt, inspected the smaller tracks within powdery snow on top of the ice that lay across the shallow creek. "No. She's still with them. They just picked her up to carry her across. She probably tried to fight, and that's how her cap got knocked off." He took a few tentative steps out on the ice; it groaned a bit, but remained solid. "We can make it across," he said, offering his hand. "Let's go."

We carefully walked across the creek, trying to avoid soft spots in the ice; when we were on the far side, the tracks continued, Susan's among them. I could see Mt. Bonestell clearly through the trees, looming above us as a massive, snowcapped dome. "Go on," I said. "Give me the rest of it."

"Not much more to tell." Carlos shrugged as he continued to lead the way. "They're intelligent, no question about it. But I was pretty cynical about everyone I'd left behind, and I didn't want all these people descending upon them, the way European explorers did to the Native Americans, so I kept it to myself. Even named the place Barren Isle so that no one would think anything important was there. And I haven't told anyone until now." He looked back at me. "You're the first."

"But if they're peaceful-"

"I thought they were peaceful." He stopped, bent over to clasp his knees and catch his breath. "But these aren't the same sandthieves. The ones I found over there didn't know how to swim or build boats, so they couldn't have come over here. And if everyone says they're the size of monkeys, then this bunch must belong to a different species, or tribe, or"-he shook his head-"whatever. The ones I met weren't that large. But they must be just as intelligent, and if they've taken Susan . . ."

"Let's go." I didn't need to hear any more; I pushed past him, taking the lead. My daughter had been abducted by these creatures. I didn't care how peaceful their relatives on Barren Isle might be; I wanted her back.

The slope quickly became steeper, the snow more thick, yet urgency pumped adrenaline into my blood, making me forget the cold in my lungs and the ache in my muscles. More than once I was tempted to stop for a moment, take a break, but then I'd look down at the ground to see Susan's small footprints surrounded on either side by those of the sandthieves, and my steps would quicken. That, and the realization that we had to be catching up to them. Carlos said the sandthieves were fast, and doubtless they were strong enough to scurry up a mountainside without breathing hard. Yet they had a human child among them; even if they were forcing her to run, her very presence would slow them down. And twice already Susan had tried to escape; if they were half as intelligent as Carlos said, then they'd realize the need to keep a close eye on her, and that would slow them down even more.

So we couldn't be far behind. And as it turned out, we weren't.

So intent were we upon following the tracks, we didn't look up to notice that the mountainside had changed, until I raised my eyes and saw a massive bluff looming before us. At first I thought it was another limestone formation, like those prevalent throughout Midland, yet as we came closer, I saw that it was dark grey rock. Much later, talking it over with Fred LaRoux, I'd learn that this was ignimbrite, volcanic ash left behind by ancient eruptions that had been compacted over time to form a substance much like concrete. Sometimes called tuff, it had often used on Earth as construction material. In parts of China, houses were built of bricks carved from ignimbrite quarries, but in northern Italy the opposite approach had been taken, with homes and shops being excavated within tuff deposits.

That's what we were seeing now. The vast rock wall rose above us, and within that wall were dozens of doors and windows, resembling natural caves, until I realized that their shapes were much more regular, their distance from one another obviously deliberate. The trees around the wall had all been cut down; here and there along the wall I spotted small wooden platforms jutting out from above-ground doorways to form terraces. Rough fabric, like woven grass, covered some of the windows as curtains, while smoke from fires burning somewhere inside seeped through chimney holes here and there.

It looked somewhat like an ancient Pueblo cliff dwelling, yet that wasn't my first impression. What I saw was a fortress, hostile and impregnable, somehow obscene. And from behind all those doors and windows, eyes that studied us as we emerged from the woods.

Carlos stopped. "That's far enough," he said quietly, almost a whisper. "They know we're here." He nodded in the direction of the nearest window. "See? It's hard to sneak up on them. Probably heard us coming a long time ago."

I caught a brief glimpse of a tiny face-coarse black fur surrounding overlarge eyes and a retracted snout-before it disappeared. Here and there, I spotted small figures within doors and windows, vanishing as soon I looked directly at them. We were watching them, but they'd been watching us for much longer.

And not just watching. The air was still and quiet, scarcely a breeze moving through the trees behind us. Now I could hear a new sound: a rapid cheeping and chittering, punctuated now and then by thin whistles and hoots, animalistic yet definitely forming some sort of pattern. They were talking to one another.

"Oh, crap," I murmured. "What do we do now?"

"Stay calm." Carlos pointed to the tracks we'd been following. They led away from us, straight toward a doorway at ground level. "She's somewhere in there. They must have just taken her inside."

So what do we do now? Charge into an alien habitat in search of our daughter? Fat chance. From the looks of it, the cliff dwelling could have been honeycombed with dozens of passageways, all of which so small that we'd have to bend double just to get through the largest of them. We were unarmed, and Carlos had already discovered that these creatures were capable of making knives. A small cut from a tiny flint blade might not mean much, but a hundred such cuts just like it would kill you just the same. Negotiation? Sure, sounds good to me. What's the word for hello? So I did what any mother would do.

"Susan!" I shouted. "Susan, can you hear me?"

I stopped, listened. Silence, save for the cheeps and chirps of the cliff dwellers. I raised my hands to my mouth. "Susan? Sweetie-pie, do you hear me?"

"Susan!" Carlos yelled as loud as he could. "Susan, we're out here! Answer us, please!"

We shouted and screamed and called her name again and again, then we'd stop and wait, and still we heard nothing. In the meantime, the sandthieves were becoming a little braver. Apparently realizing that we weren't about to storm their habitat, they ventured to the windows and stood in the doors, cheeping madly at one another until it almost sounded as if they were mocking us. And maybe they were; one of them, a little larger than the others and wearing what looked like a serape, stood on an upper parapet and jumped up and down, hooting in glee. Frustrated, I picked up a stick and wound back to hurl it at him.

"No!" Carlos snatched the stick from my hands. "It'll only excite them. Trust me, I've tried that already."

"Trust you?" I turned upon him. "Why didn't you trust me ? If you'd only told me . . . if you'd just been honest . . ."

"I didn't know . . . I didn't think they-"

"Mama!"

The sound of Susan's voice stopped us. For a moment, we couldn't tell where it was coming from, except that it was in the direction of the cliff dwelling.

"Susan!" I shouted. "Baby, where are you?" I could see nothing in the windows except sandthieves; yet they'd suddenly gone silent, and even the big one on the parapet was now longer prancing. "Susan? Can you-?"

"Here! I'm up here!"

I raised my eyes to peer at the top of the bluff, and there was Susan, a small figure standing alone at the edge of a wooden platform. My heart froze when I saw her. She was nearly sixty feet above the ground. Two or three more steps, and she'd fall over.

"Stay there!" Carlos yelled. "I'm coming to get you!" I couldn't see how he could, yet he was determined to try anyway. He'd taken no more than a few steps, though, when another voice came to us from above:

"Stay where you are!"

Looking up again, I saw a human figure standing next to Susan. No, not quite human; with great wings like those of a bat rising from his back and fangs within an elongated jaw, he resembled a gargoyle. Although I'd never laid eyes upon him before, I immediately knew who he was. And so did Carlos.

"Zoltan," he whispered.

Zoltan Shirow. The Reverend Zoltan Shirow, if you cared to call him that. Founder of the Church of Universal Transformation, the religious cult that had followed him to Coyote. They'd worshiped him as a prophet, believing that he held the key to human destiny, yet the truth of the matter was that he was a madman, and the only destiny to which he'd led them was death.

The last person to see Zoltan alive was Ben Harlan. From what he'd told me and the other members of the Defiance Town Council, he'd fled for his life when it became apparent that Zoltan intended to kill him on Mt. Shaw. He later led an expedition to the camp just below the summit, where they confirmed that the group had resorted to cannibalism. Zoltan's own remains were never found, and the body count had come up short by two. Since then there had been reports, delivered occasionally by hunters who'd ventured into the Gillis Range, of a bat-winged figure lurking within the woods, sometimes with a woman beside him.

No one had ever given much credence to these claims, least of all me. Yet there was Zoltan, alive and well, standing next to my little girl. Even from the distance, I could tell Susan was badly frightened; she didn't want to be anywhere near him, yet she was all too aware that she was standing close to the edge of the platform.

"Don't you dare . . ." My voice was a dry croak; I had to clear my throat. "Don't you dare hurt her!" I shouted. "Bring her down from there!"

Carlos glanced back at me. "Wendy, don't provoke him. He's-"

"I have no intention of hurting her." Although Zoltan scarcely raised his voice, we could hear him clearly. The sandthieves were all quiet now, and I noticed that most had fallen to their knees. "In fact, if you want her back, then I'm happy to oblige."

Before Susan could react, he bent forward and swept her up in his arms. And then, holding her tightly against his chest, he stepped off the platform.

I think I screamed. I must have, because I heard the sound echoing off the cliff. Yet, as the two of them plummeted toward us, Zoltan's wings unfurled, spreading out to their maximum span, catching the air and braking their descent as if he was wearing a parachute. Zoltan couldn't fly-his wings, grafted onto his body long ago on Earth, didn't have the muscle structure necessary for that-but apparently he'd learned how to use them to glide short distances in Coyote's lesser gravity.

Nonetheless, it was a long fall, and he was burdened with Susan's extra weight. He hit the ground hard, taking the impact on bent knees, his breath whuffing from his lungs. He managed to hold on to Susan the whole time, though, and as soon as they were down, she wiggled out of his arms and dashed toward us. Carlos knelt and caught her; she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing and refusing to let go as he murmured into her ear.

From the cliff dwellings, the sandthieves leaped up and down, chattering and squawking to one another, out of their minds from what they'd just seen. I couldn't blame them; I was pretty much out of my own mind, although for different reasons. "What the . . . ? Who the hell do you think you are?" I demanded, ignoring both husband and daughter-in fact, forgetting everything else-as I marched toward him. "What do you think you're doing, pulling something like-"

"Quiet!" Zoltan raised a hand as he slowly stood erect. He winced as he did so-no doubt he'd pulled muscles in his thighs and calves-yet he maintained the unholy charisma that had allowed him to gather more than two dozen disciples to his side and lead them across time and space to an unknown world. "I've done as you've asked, in the quickest way possible. Aren't thou grateful for the miracle you've witnessed?"

He turned to Carlos. "And you . . . you, I know. Once already I've saved your life. Now I've saved that of your daughter. Have you no gratitude in your heart?"

"What's he talking about?" I looked at Carlos. "When did he . . ."

"I'll tell you later." Carlos shot me a sidewise look- not now-as he stood up, still holding Susan in his arms. "I remember. You didn't give me a chance to thank you before, but . . . well, thanks. And thank you for letting her go."

Obviously, there was more to all this than I knew. I'd have to get the whole story from Carlos at another time; as before, he'd been keeping secrets from me. Just then, though, I was more concerned with the present. "Why did you take her?" I said, looking at Zoltan again. "She's just a little girl. She means no harm to you."

"Exactly. She's just a little girl." Zoltan smiled, revealing the tips of his fangs. Not very comforting. "The chirreep . . . that's what they call themselves . . . had never seen a human child before you came here. Adults, yes, but never a kid."

"You know their language?"

"Only a little. They actually have to show something to you and tell you what it's called before you know what it means. So when they told me that a group of small outsiders . . . kreepah-shee , their word for you . . . had appeared in the valley, I tried to get them to explain what they meant." An apologetic shrug. "So they found one and brought her to me. They didn't know she was a child . . . just an immature kreepah-shee ."

Now I understood. As Carlos had told me, the sandthieves-the chirreep -were an alien race, very primitive, that had only recently felt the hand of man. Zoltan had asked an innocent question, and they'd done their best to oblige him: take one, bring it back, and show it to him. By their nature, they were used to stealing things, so why stop at a child?

"So what are you to them?" Carlos handed Susan over to me, being careful never to turn his back on him. "Their leader? I mean, either you found them, or they found you, but obviously they respect you."

"Can't you tell?" I nodded toward the chirreep ; they were still silent, their heads lowered into supplication. "He's not their leader . . . he's their god."

"Thank you for recognizing that." Zoltan's wings rippled slightly as he stood a little straighter. "Many years ago, when I received divine inspiration to come to this world, I believed the Almighty wanted me to lead the human race to a higher plane. Since then, I've come to realize that I misunderstood His message. Man is a flawed creature, beyond redemption. I learned that when my followers . . . all but one, whom I saved as my consort . . . perished because of their inadequacies, and the one whom we'd trusted as our guide betrayed us. He paid for his sins. Cast out, he died alone, and now his soul suffers in-"

"You mean Ben Harlan?" Carlos shook his head. "Alive and well. He told us all about-"

"Be quiet!" His wings stretched out once more, and the chirreep quailed in alarm, squeaking among themselves at this outburst. "I won't tolerate blasphemy in my house!"

"Sorry," I said. "I apologize for my husband." If Zoltan wanted to believe that Ben had been his own personal Judas, then let him. We might have found Susan, yet we were still on dangerous ground. "Please, go on, Reverend Shirow. I'd like to hear more about-"

"I no longer acknowledge that name. It belongs to the man I once was, before the final station of my transformation. I am now Sareech . . . the messiah, the one who has come from the stars." He beckoned to the chirreep behind him. "These are now my people, the ones I was truly meant to lead. Unspoiled, innocent, without original sin. Man is lost, but they . . . they are my flock. And they are under my protection."

If Zoltan hadn't been insane before, he certainly was now. When he'd come to Coyote, he'd been satisfied with merely being a prophet. With his original followers gone, having stumbled upon a primitive species willing to worship him, he'd elevated himself to godhood. And indeed, there was no one else who could challenge that claim. He was the only human on Coyote who looked the way he did . . . and the chirreep didn't know any better.

"I understand this," Carlos said. "Believe me, I do. I found some sand . . . chirreep , I mean . . . several years ago, on an island south of here."

"You have?" Zoltan peered closely at him. "The chirreep-ka ? Their cave drawings tell of another tribe across the waters, lost many years ago, but I didn't . . . they didn't . . . know they still existed."

Some god. He didn't even know about another group of sandthieves only a thousand or so miles away. "They're there, all right," Carlos went on, "but I didn't let anyone know about them. I wanted to protect them, keep their existence a secret. And I won't tell anyone about your chirreep if you'll just . . ."

"It scarcely matters, does it?" Zoltan looked at Susan, huddled in my arms. "When she was taken, you came after her, and in doing so you found this . . . and I have no doubt that others will follow you. Perhaps this is part of my destiny. To save them from you and your kind."

For a moment, he'd almost sounded human again. "Then we can go?" I asked. "We can . . ."

"Leave. No one will harm you." He smiled, once again exposing his fangs. "Besides, it makes very little difference what you may say or do. Corah will soon speak again, as it did many years ago. It once changed all life on this world, and soon it will do so again."

"Corah?"

He pointed toward the summit of Mt. Bonestell. " Corah. The destroyer." When he looked at us again, his eyes promised fire. "Now go. Make peace with yourselves, if you can. The end of the world is near."

Then he turned and began to walk back toward the cliff dwellings. Seeing that their god was returning to them, the chirreep broke their silence; once again, they began to twitter and chirp amongst themselves, bounding in and out of the doors and windows of their city. It wasn't hard to figure out what they were saying. All hail mighty Sareech , our lord and savior. He confronts the kreepah-shee and sends them packing. Sareech is our man. . . .

"Let's go," Carlos murmured. "I don't want to give him a chance to change his mind." He took Susan from my arms. "C'mon, Scout. Piggyback ride down the mountain."

Susan nodded, but didn't smile or say anything as her father swung her up on his shoulders. She'd lost a bit of her innocence that day, although it would be many years before I knew just how much. But for the moment, we had our daughter back, and that was all that mattered. . . .

Just before I turned away, I caught a glimpse of something moving on the parapet where we'd first seen Zoltan and Susan. Looking up, I spotted a lone figure: a woman, wearing a frayed and dirty white robe, its cowl raised above her head. Thin and terribly frail, she leaned heavily against a walking stick, like someone who was ill; she peered down at us, and in the brief instant that our eyes met, I felt a sense of longing, as if she was silently begging us not to go.

Zoltan had mentioned having a consort, someone whom he'd claimed to have saved. And Ben had told us that he'd left someone behind. I struggled to remember her name. . . .

"Greer?"

I didn't speak very loudly, yet Zoltan must have heard me, for he turned and looked back at me. There was a flash of anger in his eyes, and again I realized just how vulnerable we still were. Carlos must have heard me, too, because he stopped at the edge of the clearing. "What's that, honey? You say something?"

"I just saw . . ." But when I looked up again, the figure had vanished from the parapet. Like the ghost of a dead woman, seen only for a moment in the half-light of winter's day. "Never mind," I murmured. "Let's just get out of here."

So we took Susan and made our way back down Mt. Bonestell, saying little to each other as we followed our own footprints through the forest. About halfway back, we met up with Marie; she was leading a group of men from Shady Grove, all of them armed with carbines, ready and eager to take on whatever we might have found. It took a lot of double talk, yet we managed to convince them that a posse wasn't needed. Some strange aboriginals had taken off with our girl, but they'd abandoned her after a while, and we'd found her on the mountain. More a nuisance than anything else. We just wanted to go home.

We didn't tell Ben about finding Zoltan, nor did I tell him about having seen Greer. Ben had suffered enough already; he was already half-convinced that Zoltan was dead and that the woman he'd once loved had joined him. Why rip open an old wound? At best, the knowledge that they were both still alive would have broken his heart all over again; at worst, it might have prompted him to go charging up the mountain, in the vain hope that he might be able to save her. But if that was indeed Greer, then she was beyond hope of redemption; she'd become the consort of an insane god, and there was nothing that could be done for her.

So we swore Susan to silence and kept this knowledge to ourselves. That evening, though, after everyone had gone to bed, Carlos and I met once more with Fred LaRoux. In the quiet of the main lodge, with a fire in the hearth and drinks in hand, we came clean, telling him everything that we knew, while insisting that the chirreep posed no direct threat to Shady Grove. He was disturbed to learn that Zoltan Shirow was still alive. His first impulse was to send some of his people up the mountain to find him, but Carlos and I managed to make him realize that doing so would probably cause more harm than good. So long as Shady Grove kept the gates locked at night, Zoltan and his chirreep would probably leave them alone so long as they left him alone.

We remained in Shady Grove for a few more days, then we loaded the Scouts and Dauphins aboard the shags and began to make the long journey back to Defiance. This time, though, we didn't make the trip alone. Nearly two dozen men and women came with us, those willing and able to take up the fight against the Union. They were only the first; through the remaining months of winter, word would spread to other camps and settlements scattered across the Gillis Range, until an army was assembled for a final assault on Liberty, the colony we'd been forced to abandon so long ago.

In the end, Zoltan Shirow- Sareech, the mad god-was right all along. War wasn't the worst thing, and even Corah wouldn't have the last word. We'd seen the shape and form of spiritual slavery; only the apocalypse itself would bring salvation.