by Allen M. Steele
* * * *
“I read the first issue of Asimov’s when I was a high school senior,
and, since even then I was an aspiring science fiction writer, I looked forward
to the day that I’d find my own stories in this magazine. Thirty years later, I’ve
had more than three-dozen stories published here, including two Hugo winners
and four that have received the annual Readers’ Award. So it’s a quite an honor
to be back for the thirtieth anniversary issue.”—Allen M. Steele
“The River Horses” is a stand-alone Coyote story that
takes place after “Home of the Brave” (December 2004)—the story that comprises
the last chapter of Coyote Rising (the second volume of the Coyote trilogy),
and precedes the events of Coyote Frontier, the third volume. The author’s
latest novel, Spindrift, which is set in the same universe, is just out from
Ace Books.
* * * *
The shed’s wooden doors rumbled as they were pushed
apart by a couple of proctors. Early morning sun flooded the barnlike interior,
causing Marie to raise a hand to her eyes. About thirty yards away, her brother
walked up the dirt path that would lead him back to town. For a moment she
thought Carlos would turn to wave goodbye, but he’d turned his back upon her,
and there was nothing more to be said between them.
The proctors finished opening the vehicle shed.
Neither of them spoke as they turned toward her, but the one on the left tucked
a thumb in his gun belt, his hand only a few inches from the butt of his
holstered flechette pistol, while his companion nodded toward the skimmer
parked behind her. A wayward grasshoarder fluttered into the building; Marie’s
eyes followed the small bird as it alighted upon the floodlight rack mounted
above the glass hemisphere of the hovercraft’s cockpit. Then Lars started the
twin duct-fan engines; alarmed by the abrupt roar, the grasshoarder flew away.
“Time to go, Ms. Montero.” Manny loaded the last crate
of supplies aboard the skimmer; grasping the hatch-bar of the starboard cargo
bin and pulling it shut, the savant walked over to her. “We have to leave.”
Marie didn’t respond. Instead, she glanced back toward
where she’d last seen Carlos, only to find that her brother had already
disappeared into the tall grass that lay between Sand Creek and Liberty. She’d
expected him to watch her leave, at least; finding that he wasn’t going to do
even this, she felt something cold close around her heart.
“Ms. Montero...”
Something touched her left shoulder; looking around,
she saw that Manny had laid one of his clawlike hands upon her. “Get away from
me,” she snapped as she tried to swat it away. The four-fingered claw was made
of ceramic carbon, though, and was hard as steel. Flesh met unresisting metal,
and she winced in pain.
“Sorry.” As always, the savant’s face registered no
emotion; it was only a silver skull, a death’s head shrouded by the raised hood
of his black cloak. His remaining eye, the right one, emitted a faint amber
hue; the left one was covered by a patch. His hand disappeared within the folds
of his robe. “I didn’t mean to...”
“Just stay away, all right?” Marie had spent the last
several years of her life learning how to hate Manuel Castro; just because he’d
volunteered to accompany her and Lars didn’t give her any reason to make
friends now. Massaging her fingertips, she stepped around him and marched
toward the skimmer. Within the cockpit, Lars waited for her, his face impassive
as he kept the engines at idle. Marie glanced up at him and he gave her a quiet
nod. No point in standing around, and they had no choice; it was time to go.
She was about to mount the ladder to the skimmer’s
middeck when Chris Levin came up behind her. “Marie...”
She paused, her hands on the ladder’s bottom rung. The
Chief Proctor held out a satphone, wrapped in a waterproof catskin packet. “In
case the com system goes down,” he said, his voice barely audible above the
muttering engines. “Don’t use it unless...”
He stopped, not needing to finish the rest: Unless
you’re in so much trouble that you can’t get yourselves out of it. Then we
might come get you, but only if it’s a life or death situation. Otherwise, you’re
on your own.
She wondered if he was embarrassed by what was
happening here. After all, he himself had been made an outcast once, many years
ago. Marie took the satphone, hooked it to her belt. She thought to say
something, then realized that any words from her would be pointless. Behind
Chris, another proctor watched her; his eyes were hidden by a pair of
sunglasses, yet his expression was unkind. Not wanting to give anyone the
satisfaction of hearing her beg forgiveness, she simply nodded. Chris gave her
a tight-lipped smile, then offered his hand. Marie chose to ignore the gesture,
though; the last thing she wanted was belated sympathy from her brother’s best
friend. Turning away from them, she grasped the ladder rungs and climbed up
onto the skimmer.
The top hatch was open; she climbed down into it and,
ducking her head, clambered through the narrow aft compartment into the
cockpit. The skimmer was an Armadillo AC-IIb, a light assault vehicle left
behind by the Union Guard after the Revolution; there were four seats within
the bubble, two forward for the pilot and co-pilot, two in back for the gunner
and engineer. The 30mm chain gun and rocket launchers had been removed, though,
and only a few capped wires showed where the weapons-control panel had been
dismantled. Seeing this, she wondered whether the skimmer’s armament had been
taken out before now, or if the magistrates had decided that they didn’t want
to risk giving her and Lars enough firepower to level most of the colony. She
wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“Ready to go?” Lars glanced over his shoulder at her.
Marie didn’t say anything as she squeezed past him, making her way toward the
bucket seat on the right forward side. “Okay, then let’s go....”
“You’re not forgetting someone, are you?” Castro’s
leaden footfalls had been lost in the growl of the idling engines; Marie looked
around to see the savant’s head and shoulders emerge through the hatch leading
to the aft compartment. “I’d be insulted if you did.”
Lars didn’t reply, yet his hands fell from the control
yoke and his head fell back on his neck. “I wouldn’t be ... never mind.” Then
he turned to look at the savant. “Look, we’re going to get along fine if you’ll
just keep your mouth shut.”
“My mouth is shut, Mr. Thompson.” Castro’s
voice emerged from the vocoder grille on the lower part of his face. “I wouldn’t
have it any other way ... and you?”
Lars slowly let out his breath. He turned back around,
but when he grasped the yoke again, Marie noticed that the knuckles of his
hands were white. “Keep pushing it,” he murmured. “Just keep pushing it....”
“Let’s just go, okay?” Through the curved panes of the
canopy, she could see the proctors watching them, their hands never far from
their sidearms. Chris had stepped away from the vehicle; she briefly met his
eye, and saw that any vestige of their childhood friendship had been lost
behind an implacable mask of authority. Suddenly, she was sick of Liberty and everyone
who lived here. “C’mon. I just want to get out of this place.”
A grim smile crept across Lars’ face. “Your wish is my
command.” He reached to the twin throttle bars, gently slid them upward. The
engines revved to a higher pitch, and the hovercraft rose upon its inflatable
pontoons and began to ease forward ... and then, obeying a sudden, violent
impulse, Lars shoved the bars the rest of the way into high gear.
“Hang on!” he yelled, as the skimmer lunged for the
shed doors.
The proctors standing at the entrance were caught by
surprise. For a moment, they stared at them in shock, then threw themselves out
of the way. Marie caught a brief glimpse of the proctor to the right as he
tripped over a barrel and fell to the concrete floor. For a moment, she thought
Lars would run over him, but the proctor managed to scramble out of the way
before the Armadillo swept out of the shed.
“Yeee-haaah!” Lars’s rebel yell reverberated
within the cockpit, almost drowning out the engines. “Run, you sons of bitches!
Run!”
Once the skimmer was clear of the shed, he twisted the
yoke hard to the right, aiming for the nearby creek. Pieces of grass and flecks
of mud spattered the bottom part of the bubble; Marie clung to her armrests as
her body whiplashed back and forth in her seat.
“Gangway!” Lars shouted. “Mad driver! Run for your...!”
“Stop it!” Marie reached forward, grabbed the throttle
bars. “Stop it right now!”
She yanked the throttle back in neutral. The back end
of the skimmer lifted slightly as it coasted to a halt, less than a half-dozen
yards from the creek. Through the tall grass, she caught sight of a canoe
drifting near the shore; two teenagers, neither much younger than her or Lars,
stared at them in horror, their fishing poles still clutched in their hands. In
another second or two, Lars would have mowed them down.
Lars’s laughter died, the ugly amusement in his eyes
suddenly turning to frustrated anger. “You said you wanted to get out of here,”
he said, grabbing her hand and trying to pry it away from the throttles. “I was
just doing like you...”
“That’s not what I meant!” Wincing against his grasp,
she wrapped her fingers more firmly around the bars. “I don’t want to leave
this way,” she added, speaking more softly now. “I just want to...” I want
to come backsome day when no one is afraid of me anymore, or at least when my
own brother can look me in the eye. “Just take it easy,” she finished,
struggling for words that might get through to him. “Show a little class, y’know
what I mean?”
Dull comprehension crept across her boyfriend’s face. “Yeah,
sure,” he murmured. He released his grip from her hand, and it wasn’t until
then that she realized how much he’d hurt her. “Just take it easy,” he said,
repeating what she’d said as if the idea was his own. “Show a little class....”
“That’s it.” Marie let go of the throttles. “Be cool.
That’ll really bug ‘em.”
The outlaw smirk reappeared on Lars’s face. He laid
his right hand on the throttles again, and for a moment Marie thought he’d jam
them forward once more. But instead he eased the bars up just a half-inch, and
the skimmer responded by sluggishly moving forward. The teenagers in the canoe
had already paddled out of range by the time the Armadillo entered the narrow
river; there was a mild splash as the pontoons drove water against the cockpit,
rinsing away torn-up grass and mud.
“So,” Lars asked, “which way you want to go?”
“To.... “Marie hesitated. “I don’t know.” She pointed
downstream, south from where they were now. “That way, at least until I can get
our bearings.”
“Our bearings?” He glanced at her. “What, you don’t
know where you are? I mean...”
“Just go that way, okay?”
She pushed herself out of her seat. Castro’s skeletal
face raised slightly as she brushed against him; for a brief instant, as the
multifaceted ruby of his right eye gleamed at her, she caught dozens of tiny
reflections of herself, each tinted the color of diluted blood. Yet the savant
said nothing as she ducked her head to make her way through the aft-section
hatch, and anything else Lars might have said to her was lost in the thrum of
the skimmer’s engines.
The day was a little older when she climbed out
through the topside hatch. Grasping the slender handrails, she stood upon the
middeck, feeling the engines vibrating beneath the soles of her boots as she
gazed back the way the way they’d just come. The wood-shingled rooftops of
Liberty were already lost to her; she caught a last glimpse of the grange hall,
the tall mast of its adjacent weather tower rising above the treetops. A minute
later, the faux-birch cabins and shops of Shuttlefield went by; the shadow of
Swamp Road Bridge fell across her, and Marie looked up to see a little girl,
not much older than she herself had been when she’d come to Coyote, waving to
her from its railing. Marie lifted her hand to wave back, and the girl beamed
at her, delighted to be acknowledged by a woman traveling down Sand Creek,
bound for glories that she could only imagine.
Marie stood on the deck until the last vestiges of
human civilization disappeared behind her. Then, wiping tears from her eye with
the back of her hand, she climbed back down the hatch.
* * * *
From the
journal of Wendy Gunther: Uriel 47, c.y. 06
Today was First Landing Day, our first since the
Revolution. I should be happy, but it’s hard for me to join the celebration: we
sent Marie and Lars into exile today.
That’s not the official term, of course. The
magistrates are calling it “corrective banishment,” and claim that it’s a more
benign form of punishment than sentencing them to a year in the stockade.
Perhaps this bends Colony Law a bit, but count on Carlos to come up with a new
idea; he didn’t want to see Marie do hard time, so he used his mayoral
influence to convince the maggies that his sister and her boyfriend would
benefit from being sent to explore the wilderness. And since Marie and Lars are
former members of the Rigil Kent Brigade, no one wanted to put a couple of war
vets on the road crew. Better for them to do something that might serve the
community more than digging ditches and hauling gravel.
I thought Clark Thompson would object. After all, he’s
not only a member of the Colonial Council, but Lars is also his nephew. From
what I gather, he and his wife Molly raised Lars and his brother Garth as their
own children after their parents were killed (never got the full story on
that—wonder what happened?). But Clark is as tough as Molly is gentle, and he
was furious when he learned that his boy held a man’s arms behind his back
while Marie slashed his face with a broken bottle, the outcome of a tavern
brawl that should have been settled with fists and nothing worse. Like Carlos,
Clark figured that statutory reform was preferable to penal time, so he agreed
not to stand in the way while the magistrates sent Lars and Marie into exile
... pardon me, “corrective banishment.”
They may be right. Marie and Lars aren’t hardened
criminals, nor are they sociopaths (or at least Marie isn’t—I’m not too sure
about Lars). Yet the fact remains that both of them came into adulthood
fighting a guerilla war against Union forces. In a better world, Marie would
have spent her adolescence knitting sweaters and fidgeting in school, while
Lars might have done nothing more harmful than pestering the neighbors with
homemade stink bombs. But they were deprived of that sort of idyllic fantasy;
they grew up with rifles in their hands, learning how to shoot enemy soldiers
from a hundred yards away with no more remorse than killing a swamper. Their
first date should have been a shy kiss and a furtive grope behind the grange
hall, not a quick screw somewhere in occupied territory, with one eye on the
woods and their weapons within arm’s reach.
So this morning, just before sunrise, Chris had his
proctors release them from the stockade. They were marched down to the vehicle
shed, where they were given a decommissioned Union Guard skimmer, along with
rifles, ammo, wilderness gear, and enough food to last them a month. And then
Carlos told them to get lost ... literally. Go out and explore the boonies, and
don’t come back for six months. If they show up in any of the other
colonies—Defiance, New Boston—they’ll be arrested and sent back here to serve
out the rest of their sentence, plus six months, in the stockade. Until then,
they’re expected to survey the wilderness and use the skimmer’s satphone to
make a report every couple of days or so on what they’ve found.
I have to hand it to my husband: as solutions go, it’s
not such a bad one. The Union occupation pretty much forestalled further
exploration of Coyote, or at least beyond what we found on Midland while we
were hiding from the Union. Once the Revolution ended, we had our hands full,
dealing with the climatic after-effects of the Mt. Bonestell eruption. So
nearly eight-tenths of this world have never been seen except from space; the
maps we have, for the most part, are little more than composites of low-orbit
photos.
Time to send out the scouts, even if they’re
conscripts. Carlos spent several months alone on the Great Equatorial River, so
he knows it’s possible to live off the land. And I know how he changed for the
better from that experience. He left Liberty as an irresponsible, reckless boy,
and came back as the man I was willing to marry and be the father of my child.
Why not have his sister and her boyfriend have the same benefit?
And it isn’t as if they’re completely on their own.
Manny Castro has volunteered to go with them. To be sure, this is a calculated
risk. Manny isn’t just a savant—he was also the lieutenant governor of Liberty
during the Union occupation. Lars even attempted to drown him after he was
captured during the Thompson’s Ferry massacre. But Manny is trying to find his
place in the world, I think, now that the Matriarch is gone and the Union has
fled Coyote ... and perhaps Lars should learn what it’s like to live with
someone whom he once tried to murder.
So it’s all very logical, all very sane, all very
benign. Everything we’ve done today is in keeping with the sort of society we
aspire to create on this world. And yet ... I’m still not certain whether we’ve
done the right thing. We can justify our actions with our choice of words, yet
the fact remains that we’ve just sent three people into exile.
I’ve never been much of a religious person. My faith
is in the human spirit, not in what most people call God. Nonetheless, if there
are angels in the heavens, I pray that they guard and protect those whom we’ve
made outcasts.
* * * *
They made camp late that afternoon downstream from
Liberty, on a brush-covered spit of land formed by the divergence of Levin
Creek from Sand Creek. This was boid country; they were near the place where,
four Coyote years ago, Jim Levin and Gil Reese had lost their lives in a
fateful hunting expedition. Marie knew the story well; Carlos had been on that
same trip, back when he was a teenager. She was reluctant to spend the night
there, but Lars was nonchalant about the risk they were taking.
“Look, we’ve got rifles,” he said, “and we’ve got it.”
He pointed to Manny, who’d undertaken the task of unloading their gear from the
skimmer, now floating next to the gravel beach where they’d dropped anchor. “Better
than perimeter guns ... it can stay awake all night, and shoot anything that
moves.”
“I can do that, yes.” Manny walked down the lowered
gangway, aluminum food containers clasped within each claw. “That is, if I don’t
put myself in rest mode. Helps to conserve power, you know....”
“Shut up.” Lars lay on the beach where he’d thrown
down a thermal blanket, his back propped against the still-folded dome tent. He
unwrapped a ration bar, carelessly tossing the wrapper into the cloverweed
behind him. “When you get done unloading everything, you can set up the tent.
Then you can get started on dinner.” He glanced over at Marie. “What do you
want to eat tonight?”
Before Marie could reply, Manny dropped the
containers. “Mr. Thompson, I’ll tell you this once, and once only. Appearances
notwithstanding, I’m not a robot, and I refuse to be treated as such. If you
want anything from me...”
“You’re our guide, Robby. You volunteered for the job,
remember?”
“A guide, not a slave ... and as I was saying, if you
want anything from me, then you’ll treat me with common human respect. That
begins with not calling me ‘it’ or ‘Robby’ or anything other than...”
“I dumped your metal ass in the river once.” Lars
stared at him. “Give me a reason to do it again ... please.”
Manny gave no answer. Instead, he strode across the
beach to where Lars lay, until he was close enough for his shadow to fall
across the young man. Lars hastily scrambled backward on his hands and hips, as
if afraid that the savant was about to attack him. But Manny merely regarded
him for a moment before he slowly turned his back upon Lars and, ever so
deliberately, lowered himself to the ground, folding his legs together in lotus
position. As Marie watched, the savant rested his hands upon his knees, lowered
his head slightly, and became silent.
And there he remained for the rest of the afternoon
and into the evening, motionless and quiet, even as daylight faded away and
darkness came upon the tiny island. Lars kicked at him, swore at him, even
pulled out a rifle and threatened to shoot him. Yet Manny refused to budge; the
multifaceted corona of his right eye, now dimmed ever so slightly, reflecting
the setting sun a dozen different ways as he meditated upon whatever it was
that savants thought about when they entered rest mode. By then it’d become
obvious that they would receive no cooperation from him; Marie pitched the tent
while Lars was still throwing his tantrum, and she finally managed to get him
to help her gather driftwood for a campfire. Dinner came late, and was little
more than sausage and beans warmed in a skillet above the fire; when they
finished eating, Marie coaxed Lars into gathering the plates and utensils and
washing them in the shallows. And still Manny remained inert and silent.
Bear was rising to the east, the leading edge of its
ring-plane a spearhead against the gathering stars, when Marie lighted a
fish-oil lamp and used it to illuminate the map she’d spread out on the ground
next. “We’ve got to figure out where we’re going,” she said, kneeling over it. “We
can’t keep going down Sand Creek....”
“Why not?” Lars pointed to where it flowed into the
East Channel. “Look, that’s only a day away or so. Once we make the channel,
all we have to do is follow it until we reach the big river.” By that he meant
the Great Equatorial River, which encircled Coyote like an endless, elongated
ocean. “Get there, and we can go anywhere.”
“Not the way we’re going, we can’t.” Marie tapped a finger
against the Eastern Divide, the long, high ridge that separated the New Florida
inland from the East Channel. “The only way through is the Shapiro Pass. Carlos
went through that in a kayak, and it almost killed him.”
“But we don’t have a kayak. We’ve got that big mother
over there....”
“Even worse.” Marie let out her breath, looked up at
him. “I’ve been through it, too, remember? In a keelboat, back in ‘03 when we
evacuated Liberty. That was in mid-winter, when the water was high, and even
then we nearly ripped out the bottom of the boat. The rapids ... trust me, this
time of year, the rapids are murder. We’ll never make it.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Lars had learned not to argue with
Marie about the terrain of places where she’d already been. He pointed to the
Garcia Narrows Bridge, northeast of their present location, where it crossed
the East Channel to Midland from the Eastern Divide. “So we cut across country,
take the bridge....”
“Can’t do that either. That’ll take us into Bridgeton
and Forest Camp—” she indicated the settlements on the east and west sides of
the bridge respectively “—and we were told to stay away from the other
colonies.”
“C’mon ... you’re not taking that seriously, are you?”
A smirk came to his face. “I got friends in Bridgeton. Lester, Tiny, Biggs ...
I’m sure any of them would put us up for a few days.” He gave her a wink. “Maybe
even six months, if we play our cards right....”
“Or they would turn you in as soon as they saw you,
and avoid jail time themselves.”
Startled by the unexpected sound of Manny’s voice,
Marie looked up to see the savant gazing at them. Sometime during the last few
minutes, he’d risen from his perch at the water’s edge and turned to face them,
a black specter half-visible by the firelight.
“No one will help you,” Manny went on, as if he’d been
part of the conversation all along. “The word is out, or at least it will be by
the time you make it to the next town. You’re persona non grata. Bad
company. Anyone who associates with you risks stockade time. I wouldn’t count
on...”
“I thought I told you to shut up.” Lars scooped up a
handful of gravel, flung it at the savant. It clattered off his metal chest,
ineffective as it was impulsive; Manny didn’t move, but simply stood there.
Lars shook his head and looked down at the ground. “God, I need a drink. Didn’t
we bring any booze?”
“Did you ever stop to consider that drinking may be
the source of all your...?”
“If you want to help,” Marie said, “you can start by
not lecturing us.” Picking up the map, she stood up and walked over to him. “We
need a place to go. If we can’t go south or east, and north takes us back to
Liberty...”
“Then it’s obvious, isn’t it? You should follow Horace
Greeley’s advice.”
“Who the hell is Horace Greeley?” Lars muttered.
“‘Go west, young man, go west.’” Taking the map from
Marie, Manny studied it for a moment. She was surprised that he could see it
without the aid of a flashlight, then remembered that he was gifted with
infrared vision; bearlight was sufficient for his electronic eyes, even if one
of them was permanently damaged. “If we cross Sand Creek and go west by
southwest for about fifty miles, we’ll arrive at the confluence of North Creek
and Boid Creek. And if we follow Boid Creek upstream for another hundred and
twenty miles, we’ll reach the West Channel, just past the mouth of the Alabama
River. From there...”
“Wait a sec.” Marie held up a finger, then dashed back
to the campfire to pull a pocket light from her pack. Bringing it back to where
Manny stood, she switched it on and held it over the map so that she could read
it as well. “Oh, no ... no, that’s no good. That’s almost two hundred miles
through back country, with the first fifty across dry land.”
“The skimmer is designed for all-terrain travel.
Deflate the pontoons, and it’ll operate just as well in high grass. It’ll run a
little slower, granted, and we’d do well to avoid heavy brush, but once we
reach Boid Creek, we’ll make up for lost time.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Robby?” Still not
rising from where he sat, Lars snapped a branch in half and fed it into the
campfire. “Back country means boid country. Maybe you don’t have anything to
worry about, but us flesh ‘n blood types...”
“I have no more desire to encounter boids than you do,
Mr. Thompson. I doubt they’d distinguish very much between a savant and a
baseline human ... and I’ve asked you not to call me Robby.” He returned his
attention to Marie. “The first fifty miles will be the toughest, I grant you
that, but, with luck and skillful driving, we can probably travel the distance
in only a day or two. Once we reach Boid Creek, we’ll be on water again. After
we reinflate the pontoons, we should be able to cover....”
A harsh scream broke the quiet of the evening, a
high-pitched howl that drifted across the savannah and caused the hair on the
back of Marie’s neck to stand. She immediately switched off her light, even as
Lars looked around for where he’d left his rifle. Only Manny was unperturbed;
pulling back the hood of his cloak, he turned his head toward the direction from
which the sound had come, as if searching for its source.
“It’s not close,” he said. “No less than two miles, at
least. But...”
“But what?” Marie peered into the darkness. Once
again, she became aware just how vulnerable they were. The narrow creeks on either
side of the island offered little protection from what was out there.
“Wait,” Manny said softly. “Just wait.... “Then they
heard another boid cry, this time from a slightly different direction, and a
little louder than the first. “Ah, so,” he added. “That would be the mate. They
work together, frightening their prey into making them run first one way, then
another, until they become disoriented. Then...”
“I got the idea.” Yet in all the years she’d spent on
Coyote, this was the first time she’d heard of this. Not even Carlos, who had a
boid skull on his cabin wall as a hunting trophy, possessed that kind of
insight. “So what do we do?”
“Keep the fire going. They associate open flame with
brush fires caused by lightning storms, and they tend to avoid those.
Otherwise, all we need to do is stay where we are and make as little sound as
possible. We don’t want to draw their attention.” Folding the map, Manny handed
it back to her, then walked over to the fire, where Lars crouched, rifle at
hand. “Thank you for allowing me to recharge, Mr. Thompson. If you’ll give me
your weapon, I’ll be happy to stand watch tonight.”
Lars gazed at him warily, unwilling to surrender his
carbine. “Give it to him,” Marie said quietly. “He knows what he’s doing ... I
think.”
“Believe me,” Manny said, “I do.” Lars hesitated, then
stood up and, without another word, relinquished the rifle to the savant. Manny
checked the cartridge to make sure that it was fully loaded, then tucked it
beneath his right arm, pulling back his robe so that it wouldn’t get in the
way. “Now go to bed, both of you. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” Standing a little straighter,
Lars tried to muster what remained of his earlier bravado. “So what’s for
breakfast tomorrow, Robby?”
“‘I don’t use it myself, sir ... it promotes rust.’”
Manny’s voice became deeper and more mechanistic as he said this. It sounded
like another quote, yet Marie couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Humiliated,
Lars slinked off to the tent, muttering something she didn’t quite understand.
She watched while he fumbled with the zipper, waited until he went inside, then
turned to Manny.
“Thanks, Savant Castro,” she murmured. “I appreciate
it.”
“Of course, Ms. Montero.” His voice returned to its
former inflection. “And, by the way ... my name’s Manny.”
She nodded, and began to walk away. Then she paused to
look back to him. “I’m Marie,” she said, as quietly as she could.
“Good night, Marie. Sleep well.”
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero; Uriel 49, c.y. 06
Decided to start a diary today—this is my first entry.
Found an old logbook in the bottom of the tool compartment while searching for
something to help us clean grass from engine blades. Figure since we’re going
to be out on our own for a while, might as well keep a record of where we’ve
gone and what we’ve done. Got to report in every other day, so it’ll help me
keep track of stuff. Wendy’s been keeping a journal for years, seems to help
her put everything in perspective (is that the right word?), so maybe if I do
the same thing it’ll help me, too.
Lars says I’m wasting time doing this, but I’ve got a
lotta time to waste. Just spent last two days making our way across New
Florida—seen nothing but grass, grass, and more grass. Trees now and then, but
it’s pretty much the same thing: miles and miles of grass, tall as my chest.
Every ten miles or so we have to stop because the stuff gets caught in the fans
and clogs them up, so when the engines start to overheat Lars pulls over and
then Manny and I have to get out and yank all that grass out of the cowlings
while Lars waits for the engines to cool down. But when we’re not doing that,
the only thing I have to do is sit there. Lars won’t let me drive, and he doesn’t
like it when I talk to Manny. So it’s pretty boring.
Manny’s not such a bad guy, once you get to know him.
We chit-chat while we clear the engines, and he’s told me a bit about himself.
Turns out that he was once a poet, back on Earth almost eighty-five years ago.
Even wrote a couple of books. But he got some sort of disease that caused his
bones to lose calcium and deteriorate, so when he got a chance to download his
mind into a quantum comp and become a savant, he took it. Hearing this makes me
think he’s a little more human than I thought ... but then I remember that he
used to be the Matriarch’s #2 man, and I try to keep this in mind before I
trust him too much.
Spent last night (our second) somewhere in the
savannah. Close as we can tell from looking at the map, we’re about two-thirds
of the way to where North Creek and Boid Creek come together. Lars wanted to
push on until we got there, but Manny told him that it wouldn’t be smart to
travel at night. There’s a lot of stuff out here—tree stumps, ball plants, even
boid nests—that we could run into even with the floodlights on. Lars finally
listened to him and stopped, but the grass was too high for us to make camp
without doing a lot of clearing, so instead we stayed aboard, laying out our
sleeping bags on the deck and eating cold rations for dinner.
Didn’t sleep well. Kept hearing boids all night. Manny
stood watch again—nice to have someone who doesn’t need to sleep and who can
see in the dark—but I woke up once when I heard something moving through the
grass pretty close to us. Looked up, saw Manny standing just a couple of feet
from Lars and me. Bear was up high, so I could see him really well. He had his
carbine raised to his shoulder and was aiming down at something I couldn’t make
out. He didn’t fire, though, but just kept watching, and pretty soon I didn’t
hear the boid any more. Almost like it caught sight of Manny and decided not to
mess with him.
Lars missed the whole thing. Just kept snoring away.
Took me a while to shut my eyes again, though. When I woke up this morning,
though, Manny didn’t tell us what happened. He just gave us some cereal and
sliced apples, and stood watch while Lars and I took turns to go off in the
high grass to shit and pee. And then we were off again.
Made North Creek about two hours ago. Stopped to
reinflate the pontoons, then hit the water and went south down it about five or
six miles until we reached the junction of Boid Creek, where we turned W x NW
and started heading toward West Channel. Feels good to be on the water again.
Making time now that we don’t have to stop to clear the fans.
Will use the satphone later to call back home, tell
Carlos what we’ve seen so far. Which ain’t much. Stupid idea, sending us out
here to explore the world. Ha! Just grass, grass, and more grass.
* * * *
They were on the fourth day of the trip, little more
than ten miles from the West Channel, when Marie was nearly killed.
As Manny promised, the journey became faster once the
Armadillo reached Boid Creek and was on the water again. Although they were
traveling against the current, it didn’t slow the skimmer very much, so long as
Lars kept the engines at full throttle and remained in the center of the creek.
They camped overnight on a sandbar just east of the confluence of the Alabama
River, and the evening had passed uneventfully; once again, Manny stood watch
while Lars and Marie slept in the tent.
The following morning, though, they awoke to find the
sky overcast with iron-grey clouds. While the others had breakfast, Manny used
the skimmer’s comsat system to pull up a nowcast report from Liberty. Satellite
images showed that a low-pressure front had rolled in from the west during the
night, bringing with it a strong chance of storms. Back in the colonies, the
change of weather wouldn’t have mattered so much, but out here in the open...
“We should go as far as we can today,” Manny said, “but
we need to get off the water at the first sign of a thunderstorm.”
“C’mon, what’s a little rain?” Lars peered at him over
the lip of his coffee mug. “You won’t melt.” Then he snickered. “Oh, wait, I
forgot ... you might draw lightning.”
“If I happen to attract lightning, as unlikely as that
may be, then you’ll be the first to know. I sit behind you, remember?” Lars’s
smirk lapsed into a dark glower, and Manny went on. “It’s not just lightning we
have to worry about ... if we get enough rain, we’ll also have to be concerned
about flash-floods. If that happens, we’d rather be on dry land, don’t you
think?”
Despite himself, Lars had to admit that the savant had
a point. Until the storms actually came, though, there was no reason why they
shouldn’t keep moving. So they put out their fire, struck camp, loaded their
equipment back aboard the skimmer, and continued down the narrow river, with
Marie and Lars taking turns on the middeck to watch for signs of bad weather.
Yet, although the air became cooler and a few drops of
rain occasionally pattered against the canopy, the storm never arrived. The
clouds became thick and heavy, and shortly after midday Marie briefly spotted a
blue-white lancet arcing between the sky and the ground. But the lightning
strike was somewhere in the grasslands many miles to the south, so far away
that, when the thunder finally arrived nearly a minute later, it was only a
dull grumble. The front moved past them with little more than a vague threat of
violence; by early afternoon, as they passed through the broad delta that
marked the mouth of the Alabama River, the clouds were parted here and there to
admit angular columns of pale yellow sunlight, ghostly stairways rising into the
heavens.
Marie was in no mood to appreciate the sublime beauty
of the moment; she had another problem to worry about. She didn’t know whether
it was anxiety or the diet of processed food—it had been two days since they’d
had anything fresh to eat—but, regardless of the reason, she’d come down with a
case of diarrhea. Since the beginning of the trip, she’d learned to wait until
they made rest stops along the way, but today her bowels refused to cooperate.
The antacid tabs she’d found in the medkit didn’t help much, and, during the
hours while Lars was running the engines hard in an effort to get out from
under the storm, she hadn’t dared to ask him to pull over so that she could
make a quick dash into the tall grass.
Yet her guts had begun to cramp painfully, and unless
she wanted to relieve herself over the middeck rail, she had to do something
fast. So as soon as they were past the Alabama River, she demanded that Lars
make an emergency landing. No, they couldn’t wait until they reached the coast;
she had to go, right now. Lars groused a bit, but one look at her face told him
that she wasn’t kidding. With a resigned shrug, he throttled down the engines
and turned the Armadillo toward shore.
Marie was off the skimmer before Manny had a chance to
lower the ramp. Scrambling down the ladder, she dropped into ankle-deep muck so
thick that it threatened to pull her moccasins off her feet. Scowling as she
grabbed at waterfruit vines for support, cursing with each bowlegged step she
took, she clambered ashore, then scrambled up a muddy riverbank until she
reached dry land. Then she plunged in the tall grass, searching for some place
where she couldn’t be seen from the skimmer.
A dozen yards from the creek, she found a spider-bush
thicket high enough to afford her some privacy. Dropping her pants, she
squatted behind it; relief was immediate and not a second too soon. Once she
was done, she pulled up a handful of cloverweed and used it to clean herself, a
trick she’d learned while in the Rigil Kent Brigade. Then she stood up and bent
over to pull her pants up from around her ankles.
It was when she raised her head again that she spotted
the boid.
The giant avian stood less than twenty yards away,
silently watching her from the tall grass within which it was concealed. So
perfectly did its tawny feathers match the color of the sourgrass, she might
have missed seeing it entirely if something hadn’t moved near its feet. Perhaps
it was a swamper or a creek cat, but it distracted the boid just enough that it
moved its head ever so slightly to watch it go.
She caught a glimpse of its enormous beak, absurdly
parrot-like yet large enough to decapitate her with a single bite, and
involuntarily sucked in her breath. The sound she made was sufficient to draw
the boid’s attention; its head swiveled on its thick neck, and once again its
black, button-like eyes fastened upon her.
Fighting the urge to run, Marie forced herself to
stare straight back at the creature. If it knew that it’d been seen, it wouldn’t
attack immediately, because boids preferred to stalk their prey and catch them
unaware. Yet now that it knew that it had been spotted, the attack would be
inevitable. The short, spike-like plumage on the top of the boid’s skull
lifted—it was an adult male, as if that mattered much just now—and it rocked
back and forth upon its legs, almost as if it dared her to make a break for it.
Marie’s mind raced, calculating her odds for survival.
The distance between her and the boid was greater than the distance between her
and the skimmer. Not much, but those few extra yards might make all the
difference. If she ran as fast as she could, she might be able to reach the
creek before it caught her. But boids were fast; their legs were longer than
her own, and they were accustomed to chasing down their prey and leaping upon
them while they were...
Damn it! Too much thinking, and not enough action. “Aw,
shit,” she muttered, and then she turned and ran.
She might have had a good head-start, were it not for
the spider-bush directly behind her. She’d forgotten about that. Swearing, she
nearly charged headlong into it, and only barely managed to avoid being tangled
within its thorny strands. Yet it cost her precious seconds; even as she dodged
around the bush, she heard the boid screech, and knew without looking back that
it was coming after her.
Air burned within her lungs as she raced for shore,
her arms raised to swat aside the grass. The ground trembled slightly beneath
her feet, and she instinctively knew that the boid had leaped over the thicket.
Still, she refused to look back. The shore was close, very close; already she
could see the skimmer’s aerial, protruding against light grey clouds tinted
orange-red by the afternoon sun, so heartachingly beautiful, and, in a moment
of clarity, she regretted that this might be the last thing her eyes would ever
see.
Oh god, oh god, oh god ... oh dear lord, save me, I’ll
never do anything ... oh god, please, I swear I’ll...
A hot wind, stinking of decayed flesh, brushed against
the back of her neck. A hard snap just behind her...
From somewhere to her left, the loud poppa-poppa-poppa
of an automatic weapon, Looking around, she caught a glimpse of Manny standing
in the tall grass only a few yards away, hood thrown back, carbine raised to
his shoulders.
“Down!” he yelled.
The gun’s muzzle moved in her direction, and she dove
headlong for cover. She hit the ground face-first, hard enough to knock the
wind from her lungs. Rolling over, Marie saw the boid towering above her. For a
second, she thought this was the end, then she heard gunfire again. The boid
staggered backward, red blood and grey brains spurting from a hole in its head
big enough for her to stick her hand in. Gore spattered across her legs, then
the creature toppled over, its taloned feet twitching as if, even in death, it
was still trying to catch up with her.
Her mouth dry, her heart feeling as if it was about
pound its way through her chest, Marie fell back against the trampled grass. A
timeless time went by, then Manny loomed over her, a figure in black with a
death’s head for a face. He said something—it may have been are you all
right? but she couldn’t be sure, because his voice sounded scratchy and
distant, as if it was a radio transmission from another world—and all she knew
for certain was that she was drifting away to a dark, warm place, where there
was no fear.
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero: Uriel 52, c.y. 06 (extract)
When I came to, I was back aboard the skimmer. Manny [had] carried me
back while Lars pulled anchor and started up the engines, so when I woke up, I
found that we were already underway. Manny’d laid me out on deck and pulled the
awning over me, and when I woke up, I found that he’d put a wet cloth across my
forehead.
Very weird, coming out of it like that. Don’t even remember
fainting. In fact, that’s a first for me—fainting, that is—but Manny says it’s
not unusual, considering how close I came to buying it. I asked him how close
the boid was when he shot it and at first he wouldn’t tell me, but when I told
him about the snap I heard, he said the snap was the boid trying to bite my
head off. That’s how close it was.
Manny told me he’d come ashore when he saw that I’d
gone off without a rifle. He had a hunch there might be trouble. Glad he had
that hunch, or I would’ve been lunch, ha ha. Not funny, I know ... but right
now, laughing is a lot better than crying, and I’ve done some of that already.
Lars got us downriver a mile or two, then stopped
engines and came back to see how I was doing. He was worried, too ... at least
I think he was ... but then he went off on me about going ashore unarmed, and
that I shouldn’t ever take a dump again without packing a gun. Then he told
Manny we should’ve hauled the boid aboard and carved it up for food, because we
could’ve gotten a good meal out of it. I had to laugh at that. Hell, I was
downright hysterical. Told him that it would’ve tasted even better if I’d
fattened it up a little bit. That got him pissed off. He went back to the
cockpit and started the engines again, and didn’t say anything to me after I
returned to the bubble.
Lars means well, I know that. And he was right about
going ashore without carrying a rifle to protect myself. But, dammit, I was
almost killed back there, and he’s mad about not getting some fresh meat from the
carcass?!
At any rate, we made it to the end of Boid Creek by
the end of the day, where we found the entrance to the West Channel. So far as
we know, we’re the first ones to see the western side of New Florida. From
here, it’s about five miles across the channel to Great Dakota; we can see
river bluffs on the other shore, with deep forests and high mountains that look
almost black rising in the distance. Totally different landscape from New
Florida—sort of like Midland, except even more rugged. What a relief. I’m so
sick of sourgrass, I could puke.
It was too late for us to cross that night, so we made
camp on New Florida, on the north side of the mouth of Boid River. For once,
Manny made Lars haul everything ashore and set up the tents—he wanted to spend
the last hour or two of daylight surveying the area (taking pictures, setting
up the theodolite and making measurements, using a plumb-line to estimate the
water depth, etc.). Says this place could be a good site for a port town, some
time in the future. Guess I can see that, maybe ... but Manny sees things a lot
different from us, I think.
I made dinner, but it wasn’t very good ... burned the
beans and undercooked the chicken (in fact, I couldn’t even eat the
chicken—reminded me too much of what almost ate me). Lars bitched about having
to do all the hard work, but Manny stayed quiet. He spent the time writing up
the report to send home—I asked him not to mention what happened today
[because] I didn’t want Carlos to get worried—and when he was done I read it
over and let him transmit it. Then I crawled into the tent and tried to go to
sleep.
Lars came in a while later. Pulled off his clothes and
made me take off mine. Wanted to have sex. Wasn’t in the mood, but I let him,
because he insisted. Felt good for about a minute, but I [crossed out]. It
seemed to satisfy him, though, because after he was done he rolled over and
fell asleep.
Needed to pee, so I moved him aside, crawled out of
the tent. Found Manny standing by the fire, looking out over the channel. He
wanted to escort me while I went into the bushes, but I told him I’d be OK. No
boid cries—everything was calm and quiet. I didn’t go far, just to the edge of
the water, but I never let him out of my sight. He turned his back, but I could
tell from the way he held his gun that he was on alert.
When I was done he said goodnight and told me to have
pleasant dreams. Before I went back to bed, I asked him what he was doing,
i.e., what did he do all night while Lars and I were sacked out.
He said that he was writing poems.
Writing poems. I like that.
* * * *
Although Marie, Lars, and Manny thought they were the
first to navigate the southwest end of the West Channel, they soon learned they
were wrong. Not long after the expedition crossed over from New Florida and
began making its way down the east coast of Great Dakota, they unexpectedly
came upon another group of explorers.
At Manny’s insistence, Lars throttled down the engines
and let the current carry them downstream. Although Lars was impatient to reach
the Great Equatorial River, Manny wanted to take time to study the channel.
When Marie agreed with the savant—after all, there was no reason for them to
hurry—the pilot found himself outvoted. So while Lars fumed within the cockpit,
Manny and Marie sat side by side on the middeck, legs dangling over the side,
as they watched the river go by.
The day was pleasantly warm, with just a touch of
autumn to the salt breeze wafting across the channel’s dark blue expanse.
Swoops circled above the faux-birch whose roots clung precariously to the edge
of limestone bluffs rising above the river; now and then, channelmouth jumped
from the water near the boat, as if frightened by the aliens who’d suddenly
appeared in their midst. In the far distance, they could make out the
highlands, enormous mountains so thickly forested with blackwood and rough bark
that they looked as if they were made of charcoal, save for the rocky summits
that towered above the tree line.
Great Dakota was breathtakingly beautiful, as awesome
in its unspoiled majesty as the savannahs of New Florida had been menacing. For
the first time since they’d left Liberty, they were able to relax. There was no
sourgrass to battle though, no boids to watch out for. After a while, Marie and
Manny stopped talking; instead they shared a quietude that was both respectful
and intimate. Manny made notes in a datapad, but every so often he switched to
the graphic-input function and used the tip of one of his claw-like fingers to
render a quick sketch. Peering over his shoulder, Marie was surprised by the
delicate lines he traced upon the screen. Manny was not only a poet, but also
an artist; it was easy to forget that he was a savant, a soul locked within a
mechanical body.
Around midday, Lars stopped the engines. He came up
top to drop anchor, then stomped across the middeck to the stern where, without
apology, he opened his fly and urinated into the river. Marie had taken off her
shirt and now wore only her bra; looking around to catch Lars staring at her
breasts, she found herself feeling naked, and quickly pulled her shirt on again
before going below to make lunch.
Left alone with Manny, Lars leaned against an engine
cowling; he crossed his arms and silently regarded the savant for a long time,
idly scratching at his beard but never once saying a word. Manny put away his
datapad and stood up to face the channel; he was better at practicing stoicism
than Lars, and after a while Lars turned and began plucking small blades of
grass from the fans.
Marie came back up with sandwiches and some dried
fruit; she and Lars ate in near silence, their only conversation some technical
chatter regarding engine maintenance. Lars threw the rest of his sandwich
overboard and watched a couple of channelmouth fight over it, then he stomped
back across the deck, pulled up the anchor, and went back down the ladder.
Manny and Marie resumed their previous places on the
deck. A few minutes later, the engines restarted and the skimmer began moving
down the channel. Marie let out her breath, and for just a moment she heard the
soft crackle from Manny’s mouth grille that, in its own way, signified a sigh.
It was late in the afternoon when they spotted a thin
tendril of smoke rising in the distance, from a point farther down the coast.
At first Manny thought it was a forest fire caused by the storm that had passed
over them the day before, but after a while he and Marie realized that it was
too small to be natural in origin. Lars must have thought so, too, for suddenly
the engines revved up and both of them had to grab the railing as the skimmer
rose higher upon its pontoons and began to cruise down the river.
They were right: the source of the smoke was a
campfire, set by people who’d already ventured down the West Channel. As they
grew closer, the bluffs gradually disappeared until they came within sight of a
broad, flat delta where an inland creek emptied into the channel. A pair of
keelboats lay at anchor just offshore, their sails furled. Nearby were several
catskin tents, their poles leaning haphazardly as if carelessly planted in the
muddy soil. And it was clear that they’d been spotted as well, for several
figures stood on the sandy beach, waving their arms above their heads as the
skimmer approached them.
“Who do you think they are?” Marie had climbed down
the ladder into the cockpit; now she stood behind Lars, gazing at the campsite
through the bubble.
“Does it matter?” Lars throttled back the engines as
he turned the yoke toward shore. “First people we’ve seen in almost a week.
Probably the only guys we’re going to see this side of New Florida.” He
grinned. “Time to go over and say howdy.”
“We’re not supposed to make contact with anyone.”
Unnoticed by either of them, Manny had followed Marie belowdecks. “That’s the
condition of our...”
“Shut up, Robby.” Lars shoved down the throttle bars.
The fans growled as the engines reverse-propped; the skimmer’s bow rose
slightly upon the crest of its own wake. “Ain’t a colony, is it? So we can meet
‘em if we want to.” He glanced back at the savant. “And since when did you
become boss?”
Marie kept her silence. Already, two men were wading
out into the shallows, preparing to grab hold of the skimmer and help tow it
ashore. Their beards were long and unkempt, their clothes ragged and patched
together. Upon the beach, several more men and women stared at them; although a
couple held up their hands in greeting, she saw no welcoming smiles.
“He might be right,” she murmured, feeling a
forbidding chill. “Maybe we should...”
“Look, it’s just for a little while, okay?” Lars cut
the engines, let their momentum carry the skimmer the rest of the way ashore. “‘Sides,
we gotta make camp soon anyway. Why not with these guys?” He stared at her. “Anything
wrong with that?”
“No ... no, I guess not.” Her voice was meek. “It’s
just that...”
“Yeah, well, hold that thought.” Lars pushed himself
out of his seat, then slid between her and Manny, practically shoving them out
of the way in his haste to get topside. “Need to drop anchor before this heap
drifts away.”
Manny watched him as he scampered up the ladder. “Who
knows?” he said quietly. “Maybe seeing someone else might do him some good.”
Marie could already hear men clambering up the sides
of the skimmer. Recalling stories of Caribbean pirates she’d heard when she was
very young, it wasn’t hard to visualize them with bandanas tied around their
heads and daggers clenched within their teeth.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. “Please, whatever you
do ... just stay with me.”
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero: Uriel 53, c.y. 05 (extract)
Stopping was a mistake. We should’ve stayed away, just
waved and kept going. But Lars insisted, and Manny thought it might be good for
him if he saw someone else besides just him and me. But if I could take it
back, somehow run back the clock, we would’ve never set foot on the beach.
I was nervous about these people from the get-go,
especially the way a couple of their guys climbed aboard without so much as a
how-do. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, like I was fresh meat they’d
love to skewer. But Manny really put the spook on them ... the last thing they
expected to see was a Savant, not to mention one with a rifle in his hands, so
they calmed down a bit once we came ashore, and introduced themselves as
politely as they could.
Turns out they’re a group from New Boston, about three
hundred miles N x NE from where we found them. Twenty-seven in all, mostly men,
although there’s also a few women and a couple of children. They built the
boats themselves and set out from Midland to explore the West Channel, mainly
to see if they could find a location for a new settlement. They’d been on the
river for about three weeks when we happened upon them, and they were just as
surprised to see us as we were to see them.
That warned me right then and there that something was
wrong. New Boston isn’t a major colony, but it’s well-off enough that no one
ought to want to leave it to go exploring, or at least not in the last month of
summer, with autumn just ahead. And these guys seem to have just enough to get
by on ... just a few patched-up tents and some hand-me-down equipment that’d
seen better days. Even their guns are old Union Guard flechette rifles left
over from the war, and they didn’t have but a few of those. Like they’d just
grabbed whatever they could get their hands on before they shipped out.
But they’ve got plenty of booze. About six kegs of
sourgrass ale, along with a few jugs of bearshine that they said they’d been
saving for a special occasion. Soon as Lars heard that, I knew we were staying
for the night, whether Manny or I liked it or not.
At least their leader is someone I can trust. Woman by
the name of Chris Smith—guess it’s short for Christine, although almost
everyone calls her Missus Smith. Big lady, with arms that look like they could
yank the wings off a boid. Real no-nonsense attitude. When one of the guys
started to get a little frisky with me, she stepped in and stared him down. He
backed off right quick, and after that the others decided to look but not
touch. At least for a while.
They got a bonfire started shortly after sunset, and a
couple of guys fried some redfish they caught this morning. For a while, it
wasn’t so bad: just a bunch of people, chowing down around the campfire and
swapping stories about what we’ve seen and done since we left home. Lars didn’t
tell anyone exactly why we’d left Liberty, and none of them told us exactly why
they’d left New Boston, but after a while I got the feeling that the reasons
were pretty much the same. These people were too ornery for the place where
they’d come from, and someone had told them to hit the road and not come back.
Well, good enough. But then a few of the men got into
serious drinking, and that was when I noticed that the rest, including all the
women and children, began making themselves scarce. The only woman who stayed
behind was Missus Smith. She parked herself on a log next to me, and I noticed
that her right hand never strayed far from the big hunting knife she kept in a
scabbard on her belt.
Manny was there, too. Although no one liked having him
around—all through dinner, he had to put up with stuff like “Hey, where’d you
get the pet robot?” and “Maybe we can break him down for spare parts”—he never left my side, and
stood behind me while we ate. He said nothing, and after a while people pretty
much forgot he was there.
So it was Manny and Missus Smith who saved me from
getting gang- raped, because I have no doubt that’s what would’ve
happened if they hadn’t been there. I was tired, and about ready to head
for our tent, when Lars happened to remark that we hadn’t brought any liquor of
our own, and would anyone consider making a trade for a jug of bearshine.
Someone suggested that they’d swap a jug for one of
our carbines, but Lars shook his head and told him that we only had two and we
needed both of them. Another guy said that he’d settle for our satphone, and
for a moment I thought Lars would actually do that, so I said that we needed
it, too, no thanks. And then someone else—a skinny guy named James—said that he’d
trade up for a night with me.
Lars looked at him. Then he looked at me. Then he
looked at the jug James was holding out. And then he just shrugged and said, “Sure,
why not?”
At first I thought he was joking. I mean, there was a
smile on his face when he said this. But then James said, “All right, it’s a
deal” and then he stood up and started toward me. “Let’s go, honey-doll. We got
a big night ahead of us.”
That’s when I knew he wasn’t kidding. He meant to drag
me off to his tent and ... well, you can guess the rest. And not only that, but
since his pals stood up as well, it was pretty clear that James wouldn’t mind
having company. Lars did nothing to stop them, though. James handed him the
jug, and Lars pulled out the cork and treated himself to a big swig of corn
liquor. Didn’t even look at me.
Chris stood up and pulled out her knife. “No deal,”
she said. “Everyone just stay put and no one gets hurt.” But they didn’t back
down. After all, she was outnumbered at least six to one. No matter how tough
she might be, there’s no way she could take them all at once.
Then there was a shot behind us, and I knew without
looking that Manny had fired his gun in the air. Everyone jumped except for
Lars, who just stayed where he was, cool as can be, while Manny lowered the gun
and pointed it straight at James.
No one said a word, but James and his posse backed
off. They went back to where they’d been sitting, and for a couple of minutes
no one said anything. Then someone remarked that Bear had come up and didn’t it
look pretty tonight, and pretty soon everyone was back to talking about the
weather and fishing and what-else, as if nothing had happened.
Chris didn’t sit down, though, and she didn’t put her
knife away. She nudged me with her elbow and cocked her head toward the
skimmer. That was all the advice I needed. I stood up and, with Manny beside
me, walked back to where we’d beached the skimmer. I didn’t breathe easy until
I’d climbed back aboard, and didn’t feel safe until I went belowdecks.
I’m sleeping in the skimmer tonight, with the hatch
shut and Manny standing watch topside, as he’d done while we were still on New
Florida. It’s not boids he’s on the lookout for, though, but James and his
buddies. Lars hasn’t returned and I hope he doesn’t. Looking through the cockpit
at the bonfire, I can hear him: laughing, singing, getting drunk. Not a care in
the world.
Sure know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?
* * * *
Lars seemed to remember nothing of what had happened
the night before. When Marie saw him again the following morning, his clothes
were grimy from having slept on the beach next to the bonfire. His breath
reeked of alcohol, and he claimed to have no recollection of attempting to
trade her for a jug of bearshine. So far as he was concerned, all he’d done was
have a little party with some newfound friends. But Marie couldn’t help but
notice that he was unable to look her in the eye, or that he avoided having
anything to do with Manny.
She wanted to leave at once, as did Manny. While Lars
stumbled off toward the latrine, the other two of them packed up their gear.
Much to her surprise, nothing appeared to be missing; the fact that they’d left
most of their equipment aboard the skimmer probably had something to do with
this. The half-dozen men who’d stayed up all night were still sleeping off
their hangovers; those who were awake studiously avoided Marie and Manny while
they disassembled the tent and rolled up the sleeping bags, yet just as they
were about to carry everything to the skimmer, Chris Smith came over to them.
“Just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened last
night.” Like Lars, she had trouble looking at Marie, and instead gazed at the
smoldering remains of the bonfire. “What James said and did was...” Her voice
trailed off, and she shook her head. “Look, it’s no way to treat a guest, let’s
put it that way.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Marie was tempted to turn her back on
Missus Smith until she saw how embarrassed the woman was. “Appreciate you
standing up for me,” she added, her tone softening. “Would’ve been worse if you
hadn’t.”
“Yeah, well...” Straightening her broad shoulders, she
turned to look at the nearby tents. “My fault. James and his boys seem to think
they run the show here. They tried this once before with some of the other
women. I put it down then, thought it wouldn’t happen again. If I’d known it
would, I would’ve warned you.” She hesitated. “Besides, I thought your man
would’ve ... I mean, that he would have defended you, not...”
“You’re no more surprised than I am.” Marie turned to
look in the direction Lars had gone. Through the brush that marked the edge of
the campsite, she saw him standing at the edge of the latrine pit, his back
turned to them as he relieved his bladder. As she watched, he abruptly
collapsed to his hands and knees; even from that distance, she could hear
gagging sounds as everything in his stomach forced its way up through his
throat. No longer did he resemble the guerrilla fighter with whom she’d fallen
in love. Instead he was a pathetic drunk. All of a sudden, she realized how much
she had come to despise him.
“If I could leave him behind,” she murmured, “I’d do
so in a heartbeat.”
Chris quietly regarded her a moment. “Got a minute?”
she asked at last. “Or are you in a hurry to get out of here?” Marie looked
back at her, and Missus Smith nodded toward the water’s edge. “Take a walk with
me, sister. I got a proposition for you.”
Marie glanced at Manny. The savant nodded, then
reached forward to take the folded tent from her. As Manny carried their
equipment to the skimmer, Chris led Marie down the beach, away from the
campsite.
“You probably figured out by now that we’re not your
usual settlers,” Chris said once they were out of earshot of anyone else. “Fact
is, most of us are here ‘cause we got fed up with New Boston. It’s become an
iron town ever since they found the Gillis lode, and these people aren’t the
kind who want to spend their lives down in some mine with pick-axes in their
hands. So we gathered up what little we could and sailed off down the channel,
looking for some place to start our own colony.”
“Makes sense. We’ve had people like that leave Liberty
since the war was over.”
“I know. I was in Forest Camp during the occupation,
working on the bridge project. So’s most everyone else here. When Rigil Kent
blew up the bridge, we headed north and started New Boston. So we’re used to
cutting timber, not digging holes. But...” She shrugged. “Well, lately I’ve
begun to wonder just how serious some of these guys really are.”
“I don’t understand.”
Missus Smith stopped and turned toward the beach. “Take
a look around, tell me what you see.” Without waiting for Marie to respond, she
pointed inland. “I’ll tell you what I see. Plenty of dry land past the beach,
with a freshwater river leading down from the mountains. No boids to worry about
... they’re all on the other side of the channel. And up there in the hills,
all the wood you could possibly want. Good, solid timber, too ... not just
blackwood and faux-birch like on New Florida, but rough bark and mountain briar
as well. With some work, this place could become a major settlement.”
In her mind’s eye, Marie perceived the place as Chris
imagined it: not as a broken-down fishing camp, but as a thriving frontier
colony. And she had a point. Most of Liberty, and much of Midland on the other
side of the Eastern Channel, had already been deforested during the Union
effort to build the Garcia Narrows Bridge. Although this place was farther away
from Liberty than Forest Camp, she’d already glimpsed the vast, untouched
wilderness of Great Dakota. There was potential here, no doubt about it.
“Have you talked about this with anyone else?” she
asked.
Missus Smith let out her breath as a dry snort. “Sure
I have. We’ve been here nearly two weeks, y’know. And a few of us see it as I
do. But James and his bunch...” She absently kicked a clump of beach grass in
frustration. “Should’ve never let them get into the booze. Hell, if I’d known
they’d turn into a bunch of drunks, I’d never have let ‘em bring it in the
first place. Now all they want to do is drink and fish, and half the time they’re
too messed up to fish. Like this is some sort of vacation.”
She looked at Marie. “Last night was the final straw,”
she went on, more quietly now. “I’ve had it with ‘em. No more parties, no more
trying to gang-bang anyone with tits. So I’m cutting ‘em loose.”
Marie stared at her. “You can do that?”
“Sure, I can.” A grim smile. “Second day out from New
Boston, when we made camp on the north shore of New Florida, James and I had a
little disagreement about who was in charge. So we had an election, winner take
all. I won. And believe me, I can make it stick. Maybe you didn’t see it last
night, but there’s a lot of people among us who are just as sick and tired of
him and his pals as I am.” Missus Smith patted the knife on her hip for effect.
“If I tell em to go, then they’ll go.”
“Sure, but ... where’d they go?”
“I don’t care.” She pointed to the two keelboats
anchored near the skimmer. “They can take either one of the boats ... both are
in good condition. Load up their tents and take the booze with ‘em, and head
any which way they choose. North, east, west, south ... wherever they can get
the news. So long as they’re not hanging around here, causing trouble.”
She paused. “If you want to get rid of your man,” she
said, very quietly, “here’s your chance. I saw what he tried to do last night.
He would’ve pimped your ass for a jug of bearshine. Whatever caused you to
light out for the country with him is none of my business, but...”
“I know.” Marie looked back at camp. Lars was nowhere
to be seen, yet she felt his presence nonetheless, and it gave her a chill.
Sometime in the last week, the tough-minded yet easy-going guy whom she’d met
during the Revolution had disappeared. Perhaps he’d never been there in the
first place; all she’d seen was what she had wanted to see. Yet the fact
remained that, from the moment they’d left Liberty, all he’d given her was
heartache and misery. Two days ago, he’d shown no remorse when she’d been
attacked by a boid. And last night...
“Can Manny stay?” she asked abruptly.
“The savant?” Chris thought about it for a moment,
then shrugged. “I’m not crazy about those kind, but if you really insist....”
“I mean it. If I stay, he stays, too.” She hesitated. “Look,
he saved my life. Twice now, in fact.”
“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Missus Smith smiled. “He’s
handy with a gun, I’ll give him that much.” Then her smile faded, and her
expression became more serious. “So, are you with us? Or do you want to take
your chances with Lars? Tell me now, because I need to know where you stand.”
Marie took a deep breath. “I’m with you.”
“Good.” Missus Smith clapped her on the shoulder. “Glad
to have you with us. Now let’s go and read ‘em the riot act.”
* * * *
Lars didn’t take Marie seriously at first. Even when
she climbed aboard the skimmer to throw his belongings on the beach, he seemed
to think she was simply having a fit; he stood nearby with his arms crossed, a
knowing smirk on his face. It was not until Missus Smith told him to pick up
his gear and carry it to the closer of the two keelboats that he realized this
wasn’t a joke. He was being expelled, along with the New Boston colonists who’d
been at last night’s drinking party.
His disbelief quickly turned to anger, as did everyone
else’s being forced to leave. Yet Missus Smith had the upper hand; she’d
already spread the word to all those in camp who were tired of being bullied by
James and his cronies, and they’d decided the time had come to stand up for
themselves. They’d shown up with guns, machetes, tree branches, anything that
could be used as a weapon. Seeing that he and his pals were outnumbered, James
tried to bargain with her, making promises that they’d behave from now on, but
Missus Smith remained firm. James’s group would be given one of the boats and a
fair share of the supplies, including a couple of flechette rifles and a
satphone in case of an emergency. They could take the rest of the ale and
bearshine, too. Yet there was no question that they were being sent their own
way, or that Lars was going with them.
Lars became ugly. Red-faced, stamping at the ground
like a petulant child, he heaped foul words upon Marie, calling her things
that, until now, she’d never imagined that he could think about her. Perhaps it
was only the heat of the moment, but it was then that she realized for the
first time that he’d never really loved her; she’d been little more than a toy
he’d found, useful for sex and little else. Truth be told, she’d felt much the
same way about him, too; the events of the past several days, though, had shown
her that Lars was only a mannish boy who thought of no one but himself.
Nonetheless, his last words to her stung the most. “You
can’t get along without me,” he said as he bent down to pick up his sleeping
bag. “You know it, too.”
“Yes, I can.” She fought to keep her expression
stolid, yet tears welled in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t need you.”
“Yeah, you do. You’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for
me.” He looked past her toward Manny. The savant stood a few yards away,
carbine in his hands. “Who you gonna depend on now, that thing? Hell, it ain’t
nothing more’n a two-legged can opener.”
“He saved my life. And he didn’t try to trade me for a
jug of booze. More than I can say for you.”
“No?” Lars slung the pack over his shoulder, tucked
the bag under his arm. “Let’s see him keep you warm at night, then.” An
ill-humored grin split his face. “Hell, I’d pay good money to see that. Might
be as much fun as watching you and James...”
She stepped forward and slapped him across the face.
The blow was harder than she meant it to be; that, or he simply didn’t see it
coming. Either way, he staggered back, almost tripping over his own feet as the
sleeping bag fell from his arms. His eyes were wide with astonishment, his
cheek reddened where she’d struck him, and, although his mouth opened, for a
moment he was speechless.
Behind him, a couple of men from James’s group
snickered. Someone muttered something that Marie didn’t catch, but Lars
apparently did. The swollen corner of his upper lip curled, and Lars started toward
her, dark fury in his eyes.
“That’s enough,” Missus Smith said. Hearing a low
click to her left, Marie looked around. Missus Smith had raised her rifle and
was pointing it straight at Lars. “Any closer, and so help me I’ll put an end
to you.”
“Chris....”
“Hush.” Missus Smith didn’t look away from Lars. “No
more words. You’re done here. Pick up your stuff and get on the boat. Now.”
Lars said nothing. He leaned over to retrieve his
sleeping bag, now laying unrolled upon the sand like a dead worm. For a moment,
Marie thought he’d mutter a last curse or threat, but Lars surprised her by
remaining silent. Instead, he quietly slung the bag over his shoulder, turned
away from them and marched down the beach to the keelboat.
James was waiting for him. The two men spoke for a few
seconds, then James swatted him on the shoulder and let Lars climb aboard. Two
other men shoved the boat backward into the surf, then were hauled over the
side by their companions. The morning tide pulled the craft out into the channel,
and the people on shore watched as the seven outcasts hoisted sails and tacked
into the wind. Within minutes, they were gone, sailing southwest toward the
Great Equatorial River.
“Good riddance,” Missus Smith said quietly. “With any
luck, we’ve seen the last of ‘em.”
Marie raised a hand to wipe away the tears sliding
down her face. For the first time since they’d met, she was free of Lars. And
yet, despite all reason not to do so, she knew they’d meet again.
* * * *
From the
journals of Wendy Gunther: Uriel 54, c.y. 06
We heard from Marie today—not a mission report, but a
real-time call via satphone. I was on duty at the hospital, but Carlos was home
when she called. He spoke with her, and told me about it once I got home. By
then he’d calmed down a little, but the conversation clearly upset him.
In short: Marie has left Lars. Or rather, she’s made
him leave her. She told Carlos that Lars had become abusive since they left
Liberty, to the point that he’d almost allowed her to get killed a few days
ago—a run-in with a boid that, for some reason, she hadn’t mentioned in her
last report. It seems that matters came to a head two nights ago after they
crossed the West Channel, when they met up with a group from New Boston who’d
made camp on Great Dakota. Apparently some of these people were rather ...
well, unpleasant, to put it mildly ... but they had plenty of liquor, and Lars
went on a binge with them.
Carlos says that his sister wasn’t very specific about
what occurred next, but apparently something occurred that gave her reason to
become afraid of what Lars might do if he remained with her. And that was
enough for her, and for the rest of the people in the camp; the next morning,
their leader told the troublemakers to get lost, and to take Lars with them. Whatever
Lars did, it must have been pretty bad, because Carlos said Marie broke down
while she was talking to him.
So Lars is gone, and Marie and Manny have elected to
stay for a while on Great Dakota, helping the rest of the group establish a new
settlement. Although Carlos is relieved that Marie hasn’t been hurt and that
she’s no longer with Lars—so am I; neither of us ever liked him very much—he’s
also angry that she’s broken the conditions of her parole, i.e., that she and
Lars were to explore as much of Coyote as they could during the next six
months, and to avoid contact with any other colonists. On the other hand,
realistically speaking, there’s not much we can do to stop her, short of
sending a couple of blueshirts out in a gyro to pick her up and bring her home.
And what good would that accomplish?
We’ve discussed the situation with the magistrates,
and come to agree that, at least for the time being, we just should wait and
see what happens. If Marie and Manny have located a prime location for a new
colony—and from what she’s told Carlos, Great Dakota could become a major
timber resource—then it’s probably best that they explore it with others. After
all, they’re the first people to cross the West Channel; the other side is
wilderness no one else has seen before. So it makes no sense for them to go at
this alone when they’ve found other people who share the same objectives.
As for Lars ... well, that was a tough call. One of
the rules we’d set out was that they were to stay together, with Manny as their
guide. Marie broke that rule when she allowed the New Boston group to expel
him. We’ve talked this over with Clark Thompson. As much as he loves his
nephew, he and Molly are aware of Lars’ problems—especially his drinking—and he
knows how much trouble he can cause. On the other hand, he’s upset that Marie
allowed him to be cut loose. He thinks Manny had something to do with this,
even though Carlos told him that this was apparently Marie’s decision, and he
seems to believe that Lars should have been allowed to stay. But again, he
knows there’s not much he can do about it, so all he can do is hope that Lars
will reappear sooner or later, and that by then Marie will have forgiven him
for whatever he did.
Carlos is worried sick about his little sister. Maybe
she’s not so little anymore, but nonetheless he remembers when they were kids
and he always had to look out for her. He’s felt responsible for her ever since
their folks were killed a few days after we arrived on Coyote and the two of
them became orphans. (I had the same problem, of course, but since I didn’t
know my father very well, the situation was different for me.) When I got home,
I found him gathering his outback gear. He planned to enlist a gyro pilot to
fly him out west so he could track down Marie. I talked him out of it, but he’s
still pacing the floor.
So now Marie is on her own, or at least without Lars.
Well, maybe that’s the way it was meant to be. But there’s one thing that still
puzzles me. In her reports, she seldom mentions Manny. Wonder why that is?
* * * *
With the camp’s population reduced by one-fourth, the
first days without those seven men were the hardest. Although several weeks
remained before the autumn equinox, it was clear that Coyote’s long summer was
drawing to a close; the days were beginning to get cooler, the nights a little
longer. If the twenty-two remaining men, women, and children—who now included
Marie and Manny—wished to settle Great Dakota, they would have to prepare for
the hard, cold months that lay ahead. Cabins needed to be built, along with
outhouses, storage sheds, and greenhouses; autumn crops had to be planted,
firewood cut and stockpiled: those and a dozen other tasks that James and his
crew, who’d been among the hardiest of the original group, had ignored in favor
of drinking and sport fishing.
Now that they were gone, though, there was nothing
left to distract the others from the serious business of homesteading. Two
nights after Lars left, Missus Smith called to order a town meeting, held after
dinner around the community fire pit. After it was decided that the settlement
would incorporate itself as Riverport, pending approval of the Colonial
Council, an election was held for the town mayor. To no one’s surprise, Missus
Smith ran unopposed.
When Chris presented a motion formally inviting Marie
and Manny to become town members, Marie was stunned to find the vote was
unanimous in their favor. Perhaps she’d been an outcast in Liberty, but in
Riverport she was a fellow citizen. Nor did anyone make an issue of the fact
that Manuel Castro was a savant, even though almost everyone was aware that he’d
once been the lieutenant governor of the New Florida colonies during the Union
occupation. All the same, Marie was struck by the irony that Riverport’s mayor
shared her first name with Liberty’s Chief Proctor: one had welcomed her with
open arms, while the other had thrown her in the county jail.
“You two aren’t the only ones with a past,” Chris said
to her after the meeting was over. “Everyone here’s running from something.”
Then she smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Look, you’ve got a clean
slate. Whatever you or Manny did is over and done. So forget about it, okay?
Time to start fresh.”
And so she did. Over the course of the next several
weeks, Marie joined the effort to transform Riverport from a squalid collection
of tents into something that resembled a frontier settlement. It was hard work,
relentless and seldom pleasant. Once the camp was relocated from the beach to
higher ground beside the nearby river, an adjacent stand of faux-birch was
designated as timber for the construction of permanent structures. Her first
task of the day usually involved helping the men cut down trees and strip them
of branches. They lashed ropes around the trunks and dragged them to where
cabins would be built. After lunch, she’d help the women and children clear a
nearby meadow for the crops that would eventually be planted. And if there was
any time left in the day, she collected firewood, washed clothes, cleaned fish,
did some of the cooking, and whatever else needed to be done.
Although Manny wasn’t strong enough to offer much
assistance in the more grueling chores—despite appearances, his mechanical body
wasn’t meant for hard labor—he proved to be an able architect and civil
engineer, designing not only cabins, but viaducts and sewage systems. He
performed water-table measurements that accurately predicted the locations for
artesian wells, and once he learned less physically demanding crafts such as
carpentry and fishing, he turned out to be adept at them as well. Logs shaved
and trimmed beneath his tireless hands had precise fittings; the trotlines he
rigged every morning produced enough channelmouth, redfish, and brownhead to
feed everyone by day’s end.
For the first couple of weeks, Marie and Manny saw
little of each other. She shared a tent with another woman whose former
companion had been among those who’d been expelled, while Manny stayed aboard
the skimmer. Although it had been beached, he made sure that its engines remained
in proper operating condition. Their work schedules seldom coincided; when she
was with the timber crew, he was helping build cabins, and when she was
planting seed for corn, wheat, and radishes, he cut bait for the trotlines. Yet
as time went on and they became accustomed to their duties, the two found
opportunities to talk.
As before, when they’d been on the river, Marie found
herself amazed by his insights. Even with only one functional eye, little
escaped Manny’s notice. He was intrigued by the seasonal migration of
sea-swoops toward their breeding grounds in the distant Meridian Archipelago;
day by day, he counted their numbers, taking note of how many birds were in
each flock that passed overhead, and how that indicated the coming of autumn.
He also followed gradual changes in the night sky, the way bright stars like
Arcturus and Canopus seemed to rise a little earlier every evening. One
afternoon they all witnessed a solar eclipse, when Bear passed between Coyote
and 47 Ursae Majoris; it happened often enough that Marie had long-since become
accustomed to such events, but Manny pointed something out to her that she’d
never really noticed before. The winds rose from the east at the beginning of
the eclipse, abruptly died off during totality, then rose again from the west
during the end. Just one more thing she’d taken for granted, yet which
fascinated him.
Indeed, Manny was everything that Lars hadn’t been. He
was always gentle, never raising his voice to her, and although he was gifted
with vastly superior intelligence, not once did he ever condescend to her. She
found solace in his presence, and found herself longing for his company when he
wasn’t around. In time she forgot almost entirely about Lars, except to
occasionally wonder what he’d do once his pals ran out of booze, and whether
that meant he’d reappear to make her life miserable again.
Lars’s departure had one unforeseen side effect.
Although Missus Smith used the skimmer’s satphone to transmit a formal petition
to the Colonial Council for ratification of Riverport as a colony, the motion
failed in the executive committee by a vote of 4-3. When Marie asked why this
happened, Carlos told her that the dissenting vote had come from Clark
Thompson. Lars’s uncle was still angry about his nephew’s expulsion. In his
capacity as an influential committee member, he didn’t want to do anything that
might result in vital materials being shipped to the fledgling settlement. So
until Lars reappeared, if ever, Riverport was nothing more than a squatter camp
unrecognized by the Coyote Federation. Petty politics, really, but the only
alternative was to make contact with James’s group and beg them to return.
Chris was firmly opposed to that idea, and so was Marie.
Yet even that was little more than a nuisance. Once
the crops were planted, Marie found more opportunities to spend time with
Manny. By then he was beginning to survey the nearby forests. In her desire to
find reasons for the Council to recognize Riverport, Missus Smith wanted to
make a case for Riverport becoming a major source of timber for all the
colonies, and she’d put Manny in charge of scouting out the nearby woodlands.
Marie and Manny would follow the river upstream into the foothills, then hike
upward through dense forests of rough bark and swoop’s nest briar until they
reached a granite bluff upon a steep ridge overlooking town. This lonely spot
on Thunder Ridge became a favorite place for them to rest—although Manny didn’t
really need to do so, he never forgot that she wasn’t a savant—and compare
notes on what they’d found.
The fifth day of Adnachiel was surprisingly warm, at
least for the first week of autumn. Behind them rose the rocky summits of the
Black Mountains, forbidding in their stark majesty. A few miles to the east lay
the broad expanse of the West Channel, bright sunlight sparkling upon its cool
blue waters. Manny sat cross-legged upon the bluff, sketching the view upon his
pad. Marie lay on her side, quietly observing the delicate way his forefinger
traced the river upon the pad’s opaque plate.
A notion occurred to her, and she reached forward to
tap his arm. “Hey, do you ever draw people?”
His head swiveled toward her. He’d pulled back his
robe’s cowl, so she saw his face clearly. Although it remained expressionless,
there was something in the way that he tilted his head that caused her to
imagine a wry grin. “On occasion,” he replied. “No one has ever posed for me,
though, so I have to do it when they’re not looking.”
“I’ll pose.” She smiled. “I’d love to have a picture
of me.”
The metallic buzz from his mouth grill that she’d come
to recognize as laughter. “Certainly. It’d be my honor.” He shifted around so
that he faced her, propping his pad on one raised knee. “How would you like
to...?”
“I’ll show you.” Grasping the bottom of her shirt, she
pulled it over her head in one swift motion. She reached behind her back and
unsnapped her bra. Tossing it aside, she shook out her hair, then stretched out
upon the granite, feeling its cool, gritty texture against her skin.
“Like this,” she said, her voice soft and low.
Manny stared at her, his right hand poised above the
pad. He said nothing for a few moments, then he lowered his head. “Please put
your shirt back on.”
“It’s all right.” Marie gave him a shy smile. “No one
can see me but you.” She paused. “I don’t want anyone but you to see me.”
Manny put the pad aside, and said nothing for a few
seconds. “Whatever it is you want from me,” he said at last, “I can’t give it
to you.”
“You already have. You’re my friend....”
“Then be my friend, and...” He stopped, slowly raising
his head. “Marie, have you ever wondered why I became a savant? Why I chose to
have my mind scanned, downloaded into this?”
Raising his right claw, he tapped it against his
chest, where his quantum comp lay. A dull, metallic clank, like a fork rattling
against an empty skillet. “Because I was ill. In fact, I was ill all my life.
The only part of me that was healthy was my brain. The rest ... I spent my life
in a wheelchair, with a respirator tube running up my nose and a nurse pushing
me around.”
“Manny...”
“Just listen, please.” The afternoon sun reflected off
the ruby orb of his left eye, turning it into a jewel. “I never walked on my
own. I never ran, or played games with other children, or did anything that I
couldn’t do with my hands. Or at least my right hand ... the left never worked
very well.” He paused. “And, no, I’ve never been with a woman, if that’s what
you’re thinking.”
Suddenly, the day felt cold, as if summer had abruptly
come to an end. “I’m sorry,” she said, sitting and reaching for her shirt. “I
didn’t mean to...”
“No, of course you didn’t.” He shook his head. “I know
all about cruelty, and that wasn’t your intent.” Again, the short buzz. “Misplaced
flirtation, perhaps, but not cruelty. But seeing you this way ... well, the
gesture is appreciated, but it’s also one of those things I’ve tried not to
think about.”
Marie slowly nodded. Neglecting her bra, she hastily
pulled the shirt over her head. “Please forgive me. I just...” She sighed,
looked away. “Hell, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I know. Just an impulse.” Then he hesitated, a little
longer this time. “One thing, though ... something I noticed when you were ...
shall we say, disrobed?”
She laughed at the diplomatic way he chose his words. “You
mean when I was half-naked and trying to play sex kitten?”
“If you wish.” Another pause. “It wasn’t until you
took off your shirt that I was certain of something I’ve observed before. Your
breasts have become larger.”
Marie stared at him. As busy as she’d been over the
past several weeks, she hadn’t been paying close attention to herself. Now that
he mentioned it, though, she realized that her brassieres had become a bit
uncomfortable lately. And although she’d eaten as well as anyone in camp could,
given the fact that they were living on a diet of fish, waterfruit, rice, and
beans, there were mornings when she’d been unable to keep anything in her
stomach.
“Oh, god,” she murmured. “Don’t tell me what I think
you’re telling me.”
“I’m not telling you anything. Only let me ask a
personal question.” He hesitated. “When was the last time you had your period?”
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero: Adnachiel 5, c.y. 06
I’m pregnant.
Yeah, I’m sure. Found a test stick in the med kit.
Peed on it, watched it turn red. You know the saying: stick turns green, a
virgin you’ve been, stick turns red, you’ve been naughty in bed. Ha-ha. Not so
funny now.
Looking back, I think I’ve known for a while, but was
trying not to admit it to myself. All the signs were there: morning sickness,
cold sweats, craving for fish and sweets, tits getting bigger and more
sensitive. And, of course, that period I missed a couple of weeks ago. But it
took Manny to make me see what I didn’t want to see.
Don’t know how I could’ve been so stupid. We brought
pills, of course—they were in the med kit, too—but for some reason I forgot to
take them. Maybe it was because I wasn’t having sex with Lars. But that night
when he forced himself on me ... well, that must have done the trick. So now I’m
knocked up, and...
[Passage deleted]
Don’t know how to feel about this. Angry at Lars for
getting me in this position (or any other position, ha-ha—sorry, another bad
joke) but also at myself for being so careless. But also scared. Last thing I
need right now is worrying about having a baby.
Manny and I talked it over tonight, aboard the skimmer
where we wouldn’t be overheard. He let me have a good cry and once I got it out
of my system he gave me a cloth to dry my tears. Then we discussed what I
should do.
He figures that I’m about four or five weeks pregnant.
Means I’ll be due in about two and a half months Coyote-time. So I should
expect to have the baby by the end of the year, sometime between Hanael 45 and
New Year’s Day.
Abortion is out of the question. Even if I wanted to
do that ... and I don’t, ‘cuz it’s against my principles ... there’s no one
here to perform the proce dure. Not safely, at least, and I refuse to
let anyone get near me who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And even tho’
the med kit has pregnancy strips and contraceptive pills, for some dumb reason
there’s no whoops-silly-me pills.
Leaves me with two choices. Stay here in Riverport,
and have the baby in a town that’s going to have a rough time getting through
winter as is without having one more mouth to feed, or pack up and head back to
Liberty where there’s a half-decent clinic and a sister-in-law who’s used to
delivering babies.
Might think the choice is obvious, but it’s not. For
one thing, I’m still in exile. If I go back, I’d have to fill out my sentence.
That means the baby gets born in jail, with Mama going off to the road crew
every morning. Even if the maggies cut me some slack, I’ll still go back to
being the bad apple no one wants around, not even my own brother. Just some
stupid girl who got preggers and had to crawl home with a baby in her belly,
looking for mercy and hoping that someone would take her in. If I’m lucky,
someone will take pity on me and give me a job washing dishes or something.
But here, I’m a respected member of the community. No
one cares about what I once was or what I once did ‘cuz just about everyone
else here has something in their past, too. Sometimes it seems like we’re just
getting by, but today we finished putting a roof on another cabin. Even if it leaks,
it’s a place someone can live, not just some crappy tent. That means something
... and dammit, I like having a life that means something!
I want my child to grow up the same way.
Manny says I don’t have to rush into this. The
pregnancy is still early, so I’ve got some time to decide what to do. We’re not
telling Chris or anyone else what’s going on until I figure things out. Hope
she’ll forgive me, but I’m not ready to pop the news just yet.
I’m scared. Goddamn, but I’m scared. Least I don’t
have Lars around, though. Sure, he’s the other half of this problem, but I
remember what he did to me and I don’t want him being the father of my child.
Where is he, anyway?
* * * *
They heard from Lars two days later.
The satphone transmission might have been missed if
Manny hadn’t been aboard the skimmer, using its side-looking radar to verify
the topographical estimates of the maps he and Marie had made. Considering that
it was one of those rare occasions when he switched on the instrument panel for
anything besides a quick system check-up, it was pure luck that Lars’ satphone
call was intercepted. Yet as soon as Manny heard a familiar voice coming
through the transceiver—”Mayday, mayday, is anyone there?”—he reached
over to pick up the hand mike.
Marie was helping raise a cabin’s roof beam when one
of the kids raced into town from the beach, breathlessly telling her that Mr.
Castro needed to see her right away. She might have waited until the beam was
safely hoisted into place if the child hadn’t added that Manny had just heard
from Lars, and that it was an emergency. Someone quickly stepped in to take her
place at the pulley-rope, and she jogged across Riverport to the beach,
following the boy whom Manny had sent to find her.
Lars was still on the line when she climbed down the
skimmer’s top hatch. Manny was sitting in the pilot’s seat; as she entered the
cockpit, she observed that he’d patched himself directly into the com panel via
a cable that he’d extended from his chest. “Here she is,” Manny said, then he
picked up the mike and extended it to her. “Lars. Says he’s in trouble.”
Marie hesitated, then took the mike from him. “Hello,
Lars,” she said, realizing even as she spoke how aloof she sounded. “How are
you?”
“Marie ... oh, man, it’s good to hear you.” Although
the satellite downlink should have been perfect, the signal was scratchy,
fuzzed with static. “I’ve got trouble. You gotta help me out.”
Her lip curled. What’s the matter? she was
tempted to say. Run out of bearshine and getting the shakes? Yet when
she glanced at Manny, he slowly nodded, confirming the gravity of the
situation. “I’m listening ... go on. Where are you?”
“On the big river,” he said, meaning the Great
Equatorial River. “About eighty miles southwest of you. An island a few
miles west of the channel, just off the coast.” His words came as a rush,
and she was surprised to hear an undertone of panic in his voice. “I’m not
kidding. You gotta get down here ... we need you, real bad.”
“You’ve got a boat.” Despite herself, she was still
skeptical.
“Sank. Shoals punched a hole in the hull while we
were trying to make it to shore. We’re lucky to get here before...”
A sudden rush of sound, as if something was moving
past the satphone. In the background, a voice, unintelligible but nonetheless
frightened. She caught only a few words—” ... back, get back, they might ...
“—then Lars came back again.
“We’ve lost almost everyone.” Now his voice was
low, as if he was whispering into the satphone’s mouthpiece. “Just me,
James, and Coop ... and Coop’s in bad shape. We’ve got only one gun, and that’s
not going to help much. Marie, swear to God, you gotta get us out of this.”
“Out of what?” Puzzled, she leaned closer to the com
panel. “You’re not making any sense. What’s...”
Once again, in the background she hear a flurry of
noise, as if the satphone was held in the hand of someone who was running. A
couple of swift, violent pop-pop-pop sounds that she immediately
recognized as the semi-auto gunfire. Then Lars’ voice returned “Please,
Marie ... for the luvva God, come get us! I’m sorry about everything! Just come
and...”
A sudden snap, like a dry twig breaking. Then silence.
“I have a fix on the location.” Manny disconnected the
cable from the com panel and let it spool back into a panel within his chest. “Latitude
three-point-one degrees north, twenty-three minutes, longitude
seventy-seven-point-nine degrees west, nine minutes.” He pointed to the comp
screen above the yoke. “Here.”
Marie peered at the screen. Displayed upon it was an
orbital map of Coyote. As Manny indicated, the signal from Lars’ satphone
originated from the eastern tip of a large island off the southern coast of
Great Dakota, just miles west of where the West Channel emptied into the Great
Equatorial River.
She sighed. Less than a hundred miles away. Apparently
Lars and his buddies hadn’t wandered so far as she and the others had hoped.
Maybe they thought they’d just go away for a while, get in some drinking time
and do a little fishing, then come home and sweet-talk their way back into good
graces with everyone they’d left behind. She could almost imagine him now. Oh,
babe, I was just foolin’ with you. You know how much I love you. C’mon, now,
sweetie, just let me in....
But that was in the past. She’d heard not only the
gunshots, but also the terror in his voice. Somewhere just north of the
equator, Lars had run into something that he couldn’t handle. Marie tossed the
mike on the dashboard, let out her breath.
“Better warm up the engines,” she murmured. “I think
we’re going on a rescue mission.”
* * * *
They didn’t go alone. When Marie went back into town
to gather the things they’d need, she took a minute to find Chris and tell her
what was going on. As it turned out, Missus Smith already knew something was
up; the boy who’d fetched Marie had gone on to tell her as well, so when Marie
located her in her cabin, she was putting her pack together.
“If there’s trouble, you’re going to need someone to
ride shotgun.” Chris didn’t smile as she took down her rifle from the hooks
above the door. Marie started to object, but she held up a hand. “James is a
worthless drunk, and Cooper’s a lowlife, but they’re still my people. And you
and Manny can’t do this by yourselves.”
Marie didn’t argue. If the situation was as dire as
Lars had led her to believe, she knew they’d need all the help they could get.
So the two of them grabbed a medkit and some food from the mess tent, then they
hurried back to the beach. News traveled fast in Riverport; a small crowd had
already gathered near the skimmer, wanting to know what was going on. Chris
told them what little she and Marie knew, then gave the town’s remaining
satphone to another woman and told her to monitor the emergency frequency. If
anything were to happen to them, Missus Smith said, she was to call to Liberty
and request—no, demand—assistance from the Colonial Militia.
She and Marie climbed aboard the skimmer. Manny revved
the engines, then put the fans in reverse and slowly backed out into the water.
As the skimmer pulled away from shore, Missus Smith went below to join Manny in
the cockpit; Marie lingered on the aft deck, though, and watched while
Riverport receded from view. Once again, she was leaving home ... and she found
herself surprised to realize how much she’d come to regard this small,
underpopulated settlement as home. Only last month, she’d thought it was a
mistake to stop here. Now she was afraid she’d never see it again.
It took the rest of the day for them to travel down
the coast. They’d left shortly before noon, and although the current was with
them, the distance from Riverport to the delta where the West Channel emptied
into the Great Equatorial River was considerable. Manny stayed close to shore
as they cruised past the lowland marshes south of Riverport, vast tracts of
sourgrass and spider-bush, the southeast range of the Black Mountains rising
beyond them. The humid air lay still, sullen in the warmth of the afternoon
sun; skeeters purred around the aft deck, and from the shore they could hear
the cries of nesting birds.
This was a part of the world none of them had ever
seen before. It wasn’t long, though, before the view became monotonous. Shortly
after lunch, while Missus Smith took a siesta, Marie relieved Manny at the
controls. Lars had been reluctant to let her drive the skimmer, so it was a
pleasure to take the yoke, feel the smooth vibration of the fans beneath her
hands. Despite the urgency of the mission, she throttled down a quarter-bar,
just to savor the sensation of water passing swiftly beneath the bottom of the
hull.
“Not in a rush, are you?” Manny said after a few
minutes. “You can go faster, you know.”
Marie glanced at him. “Just enjoying the ride, that’s
all.”
“No apologies necessary.” Manny turned his head to
glance back at Missus Smith. She lay upon an unrolled sleeping bag in the aft
compartment, eyes closed and hands folded together on her chest. “Day’s getting
short, and it looks rather tight for two people back there. Unless you want to
sleep up top....”
Marie didn’t reply, but instead throttled up the
engines once more, returning the skimmer to cruise speed. Through the canopy,
she could make out a low ridge gradually falling toward the southeastern tip of
Great Dakota. Just past that point lay the Great Equatorial River; somewhere
beyond that, the island where Lars and his companions were shipwrecked.
“I don’t get it,” she murmured, keeping her voice low
so Chris could sleep. “Lars has been gone ... what, five, six weeks? And he
gets stranded so close to us?” She shook her head. “What’s he been doing all
this time?”
“No idea.” Manny hesitated. “What I’m more concerned
about is what you’re going to tell him when you see him again.”
Marie didn’t say anything. She hadn’t given the
subject much thought, believing that Lars was out of her life for good, or at
least until after the baby was born. Indeed, no one in Riverport knew that she
was pregnant, save for Manny. She hoped that, by the time her condition became
obvious, the town would be self-sufficient enough that she could take maternity
leave and return to Liberty long enough for Wendy to deliver the baby in the
colonial hospital. Then she’d be able to go back to Great Dakota with her
newborn child and a clear conscience that she’d done the right thing.
“As little as possible,” she said after a moment. Then
she gave him a sidelong frown. “And neither will you.”
“My lips are sealed.” A pause. “Literally.”
Marie grinned at the self-effacing joke. “You’d make a
great father, you know that?” A new thought occurred to her. “Think you’d like
the job?”
Now it was Manny’s turn to become silent. He didn’t
respond for a minute or two; when Marie looked at him again, he was staring
straight ahead, as if studying the channel. Once again, she found herself
wishing that his face was capable of displaying emotion, so that she’d have an
idea of what thoughts were passing through his mind.
“Stay close to shore,” he said at last. “Get out into
deep water, and you might have trouble with the current.”
* * * *
A couple of hours later, they left the West Channel
and entered the Great Equatorial River.
It was almost twilight, the sun’s reddish-orange light
illuminating the enormous granite escarpment that marked the southeastern tip
of Great Dakota. Like the prow of some mammoth, petrified vessel, the
sharp-edged cliffs towered nearly three hundred feet above the jagged shoals
below. Manny had taken the yoke back by then; carefully steering clear of the
surf that crashed against the shoals, he slowed down so that they could take in
the majesty of the giant rock. Missus Smith had awoken from her nap, and she
and Marie stood on the aft deck, watching as the skimmer slowly cruised beneath
its shadow.
Just past the delta was the Great Equatorial River, so
broad that its far side lay beyond the horizon. To the east, on the opposite
shore, they could make out the thin, dark line that marked the west coast of
New Florida. It wasn’t until Manny turned the skimmer to the west and they
began traveling up the south coast of Great Dakota that they spotted the smoke.
Back-lit by the setting sun, it curled upward as a slender tendril from a dark
form that seemed to float upon the water.
The island ... and someone there had lit a signal
fire.
Wary of the fading light, Manny pushed the engines up
to full throttle and switched on the spotlights. Salt spray drenched the aft
deck, chasing the two women below; from the cockpit, they watched the island
gradually grow larger. Now they could see that it was a narrow stretch of land,
about five miles long but less than a mile across, and heavily forested. The
smoke rose from the closer end of the island, but they still couldn’t see the
fire. The island was a couple of miles away when the satphone crackled, and
once again they heard Lars’ voice.
“Hey. Marie! Is that you, babe?”
Marie picked up the handset. “Roger that. We see your
smoke, and we’re coming in.”
Through the speaker, the ragged cheers of men shouting
with relief. “Oh, babe, I love you! Can’t believe you got here so soon!
Really made that sucker fly, didn’cha?”
Marie glanced at Manny. “Don’t let him know,” he said
quietly. “It’ll just upset him.”
Missus Smith snickered. Marie shook her head, then
keyed the mike again. “Yeah, sure ... look, the sun’s going down, so you’re
going to have to help us find you. If you’ve got a light, turn it on and shine
it out toward the water so that we can see where you are.”
A long pause, then Lars’ voice returned, more calm
this time. “Can’t do that. River horses might see the light, follow it back
to us. We’re taking a chance as is, just keeping a fire going.”
“River horses?” Marie stared at the satphone in
puzzlement. “What are you...?”
“Just take my word for it, okay? Kill your lights
... we can see you now ... and put someone on deck to look for the fire. That’s
where we are.”
Marie shook her head, glanced at Manny. “What the hell
is he...?”
“Never mind. I’ll go.” Rising from her seat, Chris
picked up her carbine. “Just get us in close, and I’ll yell as soon as I spot
the beach.”
“Chris, wait...”
“Don’t worry about it. I got my best friend to protect
me.” Missus Smith patted the stock of her rifle, then ducked her head and left
the cockpit.
Early evening had settled upon the river, with the
first stars beginning to appear in the darkening sky, when they caught sight of
a flickering glow upon the island’s eastern tip, close to the waterline. Chris
called down from the aft deck and Manny throttled back the engines, then swung
around so that the skimmer approached the point from an oblique angle. Through
the bubble, they could see the leading edge of Bear’s rings appearing above the
eastern horizon, casting a silver luminescence upon the black water.
A couple of sudden bumps against the bottom of the
hull as the skimmer hit unseen driftwood. “Wish we could switch on the
spotlights,” Marie murmured. “Can’t see where we’re going.”
Manny turned off the interior lights. The cockpit was
plunged into darkness save for the sallow glow of the instrument panel. “There,”
he said. “I can see now.”
As if to demonstrate, he twisted the yoke hard to
port. A moment later, there was a gentle bump against the starboard pontoon as
the skimmer grazed a floating log. Once again, Marie remembered that Manny
possessed infrared vision; now that Bear was rising, he was able to use its
light as human eyes could not. An uncomfortable reminder that Manny was a
savant. His soul might be human, but his body was not.
“You’re almost there!” Once more, Lars’ voice
crackled through the transceiver. “C’mon in! We’ll meet you at the water!”
The fire was very close now, less than a few dozen
yards away. Marie started to reach for the mike when Chris yelled down through
the top hatch. “There’s something in the water! I saw it move!”
“Hold on!” Marie rose from her seat and started to
head for the hatch. “I’m coming up!”
“Stay put.” Manny remained calm. “We’re almost there.
Thirty feet more, and they’ll be able to...”
A gunshot from the aft deck, followed by two more.
Marie bolted from the cockpit and scrambled up the ladder.
In the wan light cast from the open hatch, she saw
Missus Smith standing at the starboard rail, rifle raised to her shoulder and
pointed toward the water just beyond the skimmer. Left eye fixed upon the
infrared sight, she tracked something Marie couldn’t see, then cursed and
raised the barrel.
“Dammit! It’s gone under!” She glanced at Marie. “You
see that?” Without waiting for an answer, she lunged for the far end of the
deck, pointed the gun down over the side. “Whatever it is, it’s goddamn big!”
“What did you see?” Marie peered into the darkness.
With night closing in, there was little that her eyes could make out. “What did
it look like?”
“I dunno.” Missus Smith searched the water, her rifle’s
muzzle sweeping back and forth. “All I saw was this giant head. Sort of like a
horse, but...”
“Hey! Over here!”
Lars’s voice, from the port side. Looking around,
Marie caught a brief glimpse of two figures caught in silhouette against the
signal fire. Then they disappeared; a few seconds later, the sound of men
splashing through shallow water, as if meaning to swim out toward the
approaching skimmer.
“Stay back!” Marie rushed to the port rail as Manny
coaxed the skimmer closer to shore. “There’s something out...!”
Another gunshot from behind her, and Marie turned just
in time to see a massive head rise above the starboard side.
Almost equine in shape, yet larger than any horse’s
head she’d ever seen, it swayed back and forth upon a thick, amphibian neck.
Narrow eyes deep within a bony skull reflected the dim glow of the firelight;
she had an impression of jagged teeth inside a cavernous mouth, and shrank back
in horror.
The river horse loomed above Missus Smith, and for a
moment it seemed as if it was studying her. She squeezed off another shot, but
her aim was wild. The creature recoiled, but only for an instant. Then its head
pounced forward, and its jaws clamped down upon Chris’s shoulder.
Crying out in agony, she dropped her weapon. The rifle
clattered to the deck, and Marie hurled herself toward it. Chris was battering
her fists against the creature’s skull as she snatched up the rifle.
“Shoot it!” Chris screamed. “Shoot ... !”
Yet before Marie could get a clear shot, the creature
yanked Chris from the deck. The toe of her left boot caught against the
railing, and for a half-second Marie thought that might save her. Then the boot
was ripped from her foot and her body was dragged overboard, down into the
black water.
Marie ran to the railing, fired aimlessly into the
water, but there was nothing to be done now; the river horse had disappeared,
taking her friend with it.
She sagged against the railing, still staring at the
place where Chris Smith had vanished. She was barely aware that Lars had
scrambled up the ladder, with James just behind him, or that Manny had shoved
the throttles all the way forward. The fans roared as the skimmer hurtled away
from the island. Cold water, tasting of salt and death, cascaded upon her.
She stared back at the island that she’d barely
visited, knowing even then that she’d never be the same again.
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero: Adnachiel 9, c.y. 06
We rescued Lars and James from Smith Island—that’s
what Manny has decided to call it, in honor of Chris—but they were the only two
survivors. The other five men in their group were killed by river horses: the
first four in the initial attack, with Cooper surviving long enough to reach
the island only to die before we could reach them. Considering everything that
happened, they’re lucky to be alive.
Lars wasn’t pleased to see Manny again. Almost as soon
as he came aboard, in fact, he told Manny to hand over the skimmer’s controls.
But Manny refused and I backed him up, and after that Lars hunkered down in the
back with James. He didn’t put up much of a fight, really. He and James were
cold, wet and hungry, and I think he was more scared than he wanted to admit.
Took most of the night to get back home. Didn’t reach
Riverport until a few hours before sunrise. Found some food in the back (they’d
lost everything when the boat capsized ... lucky that Lars had the satphone in
his pocket) and once they ate, Lars told us what happened. Don’t know how much
is true and how much isn’t, but here goes:
After they got thrown out, the seven of them sailed a
few miles downstream, then made camp in the swamps. At first they thought they’d
just wait until “the heat blew over” (as Lars puts it), then come back and try
to talk their way back into our good graces. After a while, though, they
decided that they were better off without us anyway—little did they know the
feeling was mutual.
They knew they couldn’t rough it on their own for very
long, so they talked over what they should do next. Lars told them about his
good friends in Bridgeton who he was sure would take him in—I remember when he
tried to use that line on me—and he managed to persuade the others that
everything would be wine and roses if they could only get there.
So they sailed down the West Channel to the Big River,
then turned east and moved along the southern coast of New Florida, and finally
turned north and went up the East Channel till they reached Bridgeton. Took
them nearly three weeks to make the trip, so they must not have been in much of
a hurry. James said something about “doing a lot of fishing,” so I figure they
were drinking all the way. Miracle they made it in the first place.
But they didn’t stay long in Bridgeton before they had
to move on again. Lars is a little vague about that part of the story. He says
he found Tiny, Lester, and Biggs, but none of them had room for the group in
their houses and they couldn’t find jobs anywhere. I find that story hard to
believe. More likely someone in town recognized Lars and knew that he’d been
exiled from the colonies, and that taking him in would result in criminal
prosecution. The way he carries on about how his pals “betrayed” him makes me
wonder if his old buddies decided to play it safe and turn him in. Or maybe
Lars and the others just wore out their welcome, drinking and causing trouble,
until everyone in town finally got fed up with them and the blueshirts showed
them the way to the docks.
In any case, they left Bridgeton in a hurry. Now they
had a choice—either keep going north and try for New Boston (fat
chance! they would’ve gotten the same reception there, more than likely!) or go
back the way they’d come and try to beg forgiveness from Missus Smith.
That’s when Lars turned on his charm. For the next few
minutes, I got an earful about how much he loved me, how he couldn’t live
without me, etc. while James is sitting beside him with this shit-eating grin
on his face, staring down the front of my shirt. I heard him out, then told him
to go on with the story.
So, anyway, they sailed back down the East Channel
until they reached the big river, then turned west and started toward Great
Dakota. But they’d just reached the delta and were about to turn north up the
West Channel when they changed their minds and and instead decided to go
downriver a little further.
Again, I’m not sure what to believe. Lars says that
some of the others wanted to get in a little more fishing, while James says
they wanted to give us a little more time to think about how much they missed
us. I think the truth is somewhere in-between—i.e., they got cold feet about
having to beg their way back into camp. Besides, the weather was still warm and
they still had plenty of booze (no doubt they picked up more bearshine in Bridgeton).
In any case, they opted to sail downriver a little ways—to have one more party
before they came home to face the music, I think—to an island they’d spotted
before.
That’s when the river horses found them.
There’s a lot about Coyote we still don’t know, even
after being here nearly nineteen Earth-years. Not all of it is the same; we’re
still finding new animals, plants, etc. And considering how long the Great
Equatorial River is, we’ve barely explored 1/10 of it. So maybe we shouldn’t be
surprised that there’s more to it than catwhales, weirdlings, and redfish.
There are creatures that have never met humans before, and don’t care if we’ve
got boats and guns.
In any case, the boat was coming close to the island
when the creatures attacked. Lars says that Cooper gave them the name “river
horses” because they look like sea horses back on Earth, only bigger (yeah—a
lot bigger). Manny believes the similarity may only come from what they saw
above water; he thinks they may be something like crocodiles back on Earth,
only warm-blooded and much larger. That’s something I don’t know, though, so I
have to take his word for it.
In any case, a pack of them attacked the boat just as
the men approached the island. Two or maybe three of them came in all
at once, from both sides, just after one of the guys jumped overboard to swim
ashore with a rope to tie off. He died first, before the rest of the group knew
what hit him, and while the others were still running back and forth on deck,
the other two river horse went for the boat.
It’s hard to tell to what happened after that, except
that everyone panicked. The flechette guns they had were useless, in any case.
Three more men were killed and the boat capsized before Lars, James, and Cooper
managed to swim ashore. And even then Coop barely got away—a river horse caught
him in its mouth, but he kicked it in some way that made it let him go (I wish
Chris had learned that trick), then Lars grabbed him and hauled him ashore. By
then their friends were gone and their boat was sunk.
Like I said, they were lucky on two scores: Lars was
carrying the satphone in his shirt pocket and James had a waterproof lighter in
his pants. So after they carried Cooper the rest of the way onto dry land, they
started a fire on the beach. But that seemed to attract the river horses, so
they doused it, and didn’t start another one until after Lars used the satphone
to call for help and they were sure we were on the way. They tried to keep Coop
alive, but they didn’t have a medkit and he’d lost too much blood. By the time
we got to them, he’d been dead three hours.
Don’t know what to make of all this. Lars is back. He’s
asleep in my bed in the cabin I built without his help. When he gets up, maybe
I’ll talk to him. Or maybe I won’t. But he’s not welcome, that’s for damn sure.
River horses. What a name. Kind of think it describes
me. Something that just keeps pulling and pulling, with no end in sight.
* * * *
Marie kept her distance from Lars. As soon as she
could, she evicted him from her cabin, telling him that, despite what happened
on Smith Island, she wasn’t taking him back. No one else in town wanted him
either, so he and James moved into a tool shed, the only shelter available to
them in Riverport.
The two men found jobs with the timber crew, and for a
little while it seemed as if Marie would be able to keep Lars out of her life.
They saw each other infrequently, usually at dinner time when they stood in the
chow line together, and her friends made sure that she never had to sit next to
him. It hardly mattered, though, because Lars seldom spoke to her; indeed, his
only companion was James, and together they occupied the lowest rung of the
social ladder. Although they’d returned to the settlement, they were far from
being accepted back into the community. Everyone knew what had occurred on
Smith Island, and they held Lars and James responsible for Missus Smith’s
death.
Yet it wasn’t long before the situation changed.
With Chris gone, there was a vacuum that had to be
filled. Although Marie didn’t want the job, she soon found the others turning
to her for leadership. She and Missus Smith had been close, and people were
looking for someone who could fill her role. So it came to pass that, when the
next town meeting rolled around and a special election was held, Marie
discovered she was the sole nominee for mayor. Although she accepted the job
with reluctance, she promised to continue the work her predecessor had begun,
the transformation of Riverport into a self-sufficient community.
By then, that which only Manny had known had become
obvious: she was pregnant, with her child due by the end of the year. Now that
she was mayor, Marie knew leaving Riverport even for a short while was out of
the question. Yet she also realized that her condition gave the settlement a
bargaining chip it hadn’t possessed before. So one evening, with Manny’s
assistance, she composed a formal letter to the Colonial Council, which was
transmitted via satphone to Liberty the following morning.
The response came quickly, and not the way she’d
expected. Marie was working on the farm when she heard a familiar sound.
Turning to raise a hand against the afternoon sun, she watched as a gyro soared
across the West Channel, making a lazy arch above the settlement as the pilot
searched for a place to land. Marie put down her rake, picked up her straw hat
from where she’d placed it on a tree stump, and walked back into town to greet
the visitors.
She wasn’t surprised to find that the delegation from
Liberty included Carlos. For a few seconds after he climbed out of the gyro,
brother and sister regarded one another with mutual discomfort, neither of them
quite knowing what to say or do. Then Carlos grinned and stretched out his
hands, and Marie walked over to give him a hug, to the warm applause of the
settlers who’d come out to the beach.
This wasn’t the only reunion. Also aboard the gyro was
Clark Thompson. He waited patiently beside the aircraft until his nephew
shuffled forward from the back of the crowd. Lars was a broken man; thin and
hollow-eyed, his shoulders slumped, he’d lost the arrogance that he had carried
when he’d left New Florida. The two men regarded each other for a moment, then
Clark solemnly extended his hand, and Lars took it with shame-faced reticence.
The townspeople quit work early that afternoon, and a
special dinner was prepared for their honored guests. While the cooks labored
in the mess tent, Marie escorted Carlos and Clark, along with the two other
members of the Council, on a quick tour of Riverport. Although she was
embarrassed by what little she had to show them—a half-dozen log cabins, along
with a couple of sheds and a half-built greenhouse—the council representatives
were impressed by the progress made in only a month by less than thirty people.
It was clear, though, that the settlement would need assistance if it was going
to survive the long winter ahead, and Marie knew without asking that this
support would not come without a price.
Her suspicions were confirmed shortly after dinner,
when Carlos came over to her. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?” he said quietly. “There
are some things we need to discuss, just the two of us.”
The crimson rays of the setting sun peered from behind
purple clouds as they strolled together along the beach, Marie’s hand clasped within
the crook of Carlos’s arm. “You’ve done well,” he said as they walked along the
water’s edge, watching the tide lap at the mottled sands. “Better than I
thought ... than we thought ... you would.”
“Thank you.” To the east, Bear’s ring-plane was beginning
to glide into view above the horizon. “I can’t take credit for this, though.
These people have worked awful hard to...”
“I don’t mean the colony. I mean you.” He pulled her a
little closer. “Hard to believe you’re the same girl ... the same woman, I mean
... who was getting in bar fights just a month ago. You’ve changed a lot since
then. I’m proud of you.”
“Well...”
“Hear me out, please. This is important.” He paused,
as if to choose his words. “I’ve spoken with the magistrates. They’re willing
to let you return ... on probation, at least, so long as you behave yourself
... but my guess is that you won’t come back.”
“Nope.” Marie grinned and shook her head. “Wouldn’t
look good for a mayor to skip town just because she’s pregnant.” Her smile
faded. “Besides, people might think I’m nothing but trouble. Can’t have that,
can we?” Embarrassed, Carlos looked away. He started to release her arm, but
she pulled him close again. “Forget it. You did what you had to do. If you didn’t,
I’d be digging ditches now.”
“Yeah, well ... like I said, you did better than most
people expected.” He glanced back at the settlement. “As for Lars ... that’s a
whole ‘nother issue.”
“Not an issue at all.” Marie gazed out at the channel.
“He’s got his life now, and I’ve got mine. So far as I’m concerned, he can go
back any time he wants. We’ll get along just fine without him.”
“Well ... no.” Carlos shook his head. “The amnesty the
maggies have offered you doesn’t extend to him. They know everything he did ...
or at least what you’ve told us, along with how he tried to hide out in
Bridgeton ... and they don’t consider him to be—” he searched for the correct
phrase “—’sufficiently rehabilitated,’ if I remember it correctly. So he’s
stuck here, whether he likes it or not.”
“All right.” Marie gave an offhand shrug. “Fine.
Whatever makes them happy, I can live with it.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Carlos let
go of her arm, tucked his hands in his pockets. “Problem is, you’re carrying
his child. And Uncle Clark is an old-fashioned sort of guy who seems to think
that, no matter what else, his nephew has a right to be a father.”
“Like hell, he does.” Feeling a surge of anger, Marie
stopped and turned toward him. “Lars knocked me up one night when I was too
tired to resist. He...”
“Did he rape you?” Carlos looked her straight in the
eye. “Tell the truth.”
She hesitated. “Well, no, but...”
“Then there’s nothing I can do ... and please, don’t
ask me to lie on your behalf.” He held up a hand before she could object. “Clark
Thompson hasn’t given up on his boy, any more than I gave up on you. He wants
the best for him, and that includes the prospect of him settling down and
raising a family.”
“Oh, for the love of...”
“Just listen, please.” Carlos let out his breath. “There’s
more to this than just you two. Clark has a strong voice on the Council, and it’s
become even stronger since word came that you and Lars discovered a new source
of timber....”
“It wasn’t him and me, dammit.” She felt her face
becoming warm. “It was Chris Smith’s idea. She...”
“Maybe, but she’s not around anymore, is she? And the
way Clark has put this to the council, this is your settlement. Yours and Lars’s.”
Again, he raised a hand before she could protest. “He’s willing to allocate
everything you need ... tools, generators, boats, whatever ... to turn this
place into a viable colony as soon as possible. A blank check....”
“But his signature has to be on it.” Marie stared at
him. “Right?”
“Right.” Carlos bent down to pick up a piece of
driftwood. “But that’s just council business. I’ve also learned that he’s
already taken steps toward setting up a private company to corner the market on
the Great Dakota timber industry. The Thompson Wood Company, with him and Molly
in control...”
“Oh, great. That’s excellent.” Marie shook her head in
disgust. “Coyote’s first major corporation. What’s next, a stockholder meeting?”
“Probably.” Carlos hurled the stick out into the
water. “What do you want? Social collectivism all over again? Maybe Manny
Castro would like that, but...”
“Leave Manny out of this.” She absently ran her
fingers through her hair. “Look, let me get this straight. Clark is willing to
provide support for Riverport...”
“Which is what you want.”
“...but he’s not going to persuade the Council to give
us the stuff we need to do that unless his family has a lock on the timber
industry.”
“That’s correct, yes.”
“And for him to do that, he wants...” Marie’s voice
trailed off as she put everything together. “Oh, god ... Carlos, you can’t be
saying...”
“You know what I’m saying.” Carlos looked down at the
ground, suddenly reluctant to meet her eyes. “Uncle Clark wants what’s best for
his favorite nephew. A wife, a child, a job...”
“I don’t love him!” In frustration, she turned away
from him. “He’s not the one I want! I...!”
She stopped before she said something she knew she’d
regret. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she fell on bended knees to the
beach. “Is there someone else?” Carlos asked, kneeling down beside her. “Who is
it? Tell me, please....”
Marie raised her head, looked away. For just a moment,
beyond the nearest dune, she caught a glimpse of a figure cloaked in shadows, a
single red eye reflecting the light of the setting sun. Then the figure
disappeared, a twilight ghost swallowed by the coming night.
“No,” she whispered. “There’s no one else.”
* * * *
From the
diary of Marie Montero: Barbiel 15, c.y. 06
The first keelboat from Liberty arrived today: fifteen
people in all, including Clark and Molly Thompson and Lars’s brother Garth. And
that’s just one boat: two more are on the way, sailing out from Bridgeton and
making their way around New Florida until they reach Great Dakota. We’ve made
sure that they know to avoid Smith Island. That place belongs to the river
horses, and we should all stay away from there.
By the time everyone gets here, Riverport’s population
will have doubled—no, tripled—in size. Only a couple of months ago, this
explosion would’ve been unimaginable. Maybe even impossible: there was no way
we could have supported seventy-two people. But apparently there’s quite a few
folks in New Florida and Midland who want to take a shot at starting a new
colony, especially if there’s a chance they’ll make a good living working for
the Thompson Wood Company.
Now that the Council has formally recognized us, we’re
getting everything we need: food, livestock, clothing, hardware, building
materials, comps, even a couple of electrical generators. I was told that
several panes of uncut plate glass are also being shipped out to us, which
means we’ll be able to finish work on the greenhouse. Such a small thing,
really, and yet so necessary. Once the greenhouse is up, we’ll be able to feed
ourselves through winter.
Lars is happier now that he has his family with him.
Our relationship has been pretty much touch and go since he moved in with me.
Even though I’ve told him that he’s going back to the tool shed if he starts
drinking again, there’s been a couple of nights when he’s come home with ale on
his breath. Decided to look past that as much as I can. He’s been nicer to me
lately. and he seems to be honestly looking forward to raising a child. We’ve
already decided on names: Hawk if it’s a boy, Rain if it’s a girl.
Clark insists that we get married, and I think that’s
pretty much inevitable. I’m still not sure whether I can love Lars, but the
baby is coming soon, and he or she is going to need a daddy. Besides, the
Thompson Wood Company is going to be a family-owned business. If I want an
interest in it, getting hitched to Lars is part of the deal. Carlos and Wendy
still don’t trust him very much, but they’re willing to go along with the plan.
It may not be the happiest of marriages, but ... well, we’ll see.
Clark and I have talked things over lately, and we’ve
agreed that he’s probably better cut out to be mayor than I am. After all, he’s
had experience with this sort of thing before, and with a baby on the way, the
last thing I need to worry about is running a town. We haven’t gone public with
this yet, but once all the newcomers arrive and get settled in, I’m going to resign
and put my support behind him in the special election. Maybe not the most
democratic way of doing things, but at least it’ll help make sure that
Riverport has a strong leader during its first year.
So all is well, or at least as well as it can be. Except
for one thing...
* * * *
Manuel Castro had his own cabin, a one-room shack on
the far side of town. A handful of New Boston settlers helped him build it, but
since then he’d lived alone, becoming increasingly reclusive as new people
began to arrive in Riverport. The cabin had no windows, and no furniture save a
table, a chair, and a cabinet for his few belongings. The one room was lit by a
fish-oil lamp suspended from its rafters, and it wasn’t until someone noticed
that they didn’t see its glow seeping beneath the doorframe one evening that
anyone realized the savant had disappeared.
Learning this news the following morning, Marie
hurried to his cabin, only to discover it had been stripped bare. Manny hadn’t
left a note, yet when she questioned several townspeople, she discovered that
he’d recently bartered his meager possessions—his chair here, his desk there—in
exchange for hand tools and a backpack. The sort of things one might need in
order to homestead in the wilderness. That was when she knew where he’d gone.
She didn’t tell Lars or anyone else where she was
going when she left town by herself. By then it was late autumn; the wind had
long since ripped the leaves from the trees, and the first hard freeze had
solidified the ground. She bundled herself warmly in the oversized wool serape
a couple of friends had woven for her, and filled a waterskin from the town
well. Along the way, she found a broken tree limb to use as a staff to help
support her weight. In her second trimester, it felt as if she were carrying a
heavy sack in her midriff; she made sure that she rested frequently, and drank
water whenever she was thirsty.
The path leading into the foothills was just as she’d
remembered it, when she and Manny had hiked up Thunder Ridge in the first days
of autumn. The season had become colder since then, the sky the color of iron,
yet by midday she’d reached the bluff where she and Manny had rested on an
afternoon more warm and fair than this. It was here that she found him.
It was almost as if he’d never left this place at all.
He sat on a boulder, pad propped upon his knee, using a claw-like finger to
etch a picture on its screen. His cowl was pulled up around his face, though,
so his blind eye didn’t see her coming until her staff made a scraping noise on
the bare rock. Then he looked up, and stared at her for a long time.
“Marie,” he said at last. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“You shouldn’t have left.” She clung to the branch
with both hands, trying to catch her breath. “Damn it, Manny. Why did you...?”
“Hush.” Putting down his pad, he rose to his feet and
walked over to her. “You’re pregnant, remember? This can’t be good for...”
“I’m fine. Exercise is good for the baby.” Yet she let
him take her by the shoulders, ease her to a seat on the ground. “Where do you
think you’re going? Why didn’t you...?”
“So many questions.” The soft rasp from his chest that
signified a chuckle. “You know, you’ve changed quite a bit since we first met.
Back then...”
“Shut up and talk to me.”
“Which do you want first? Shut up, or...?”
“Never mind.” She glared at him. “Why...?”
“Because I don’t belong down there.” His single eye
peered at her. “I went with you and Lars because I didn’t want to be the
resident freak in Liberty. Now Lars is back, and I don’t want to be the resident
freak in Riverport either.”
“Lars is...”
“I know what Lars is, just as I know that I can’t
compete with him.” He shook his head. “I need to find my own place in the
world, even if it means living alone. So I left. Simple solution to a simple
problem.” All this came in the same monotone he’d assumed when he’d first met
her. “Any more questions? Catch your breath, and...”
“One more, then I’ll go home.” She stared at him. “Do
you love me?”
“Of course, I love you.” His reply was immediate,
without reservation. “You should know that by now, just as you know it’ll never
work out...”
“Dammit, Manny...!”
“Please ... just listen.” Standing up, he pointed
toward the nearby hills. “I’m building a cabin up there. Just for myself, with
no one else around. But if you ever need me, that’s where I’ll be.”
She tried hard not to cry, but the tears came anyway.
Manny didn’t say anything for a moment, then he reached down and, taking her by
the shoulders, gently raised her to her feet. “You’ll do fine. You’ve got a
family again, and you’re no longer an outcast. Everything you’ve ever wanted is
yours for the taking. All you need to do is be strong ... and you’ve shown that
you have more courage than you thought you had.”
She started to reply, but found she could think of
nothing to say, so instead she put her arms around Manny and laid her head
against his chest. She heard no heartbeat within his metallic body, but when he
wrapped his arms around her shoulders, the embrace was tender and undeniably
human.
They stood that way for a long time until he finally
pushed her away. Looking up at him, she was surprised to see a few white flakes
upon his cowl; unnoticed by either of them, snow had begun to fall.
“Storm’s coming in,” she murmured. “I better get back.”
“Yes, you should.” Manny reached down, picked up her
walking stick. “Go quickly, before it gets too rough.”
Marie nodded as she took the stick from him. There was
nothing more to be said, so she turned and started toward the downhill trail.
At the edge of the tree line, though, she paused to look back. The snow was
falling more swiftly now, making a soft hiss as the wind carried it through the
trees.
For a moment, she caught a last glimpse of a
black-robed figure walking across the bluff, heading for the dense woodlands.
And then he was gone, leaving her to a follow a path that was hers and hers
alone.
Copyright © 2007 Allen M. Steele