Coyote - A Novel of Interstellar Exploration Part 22

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

"Everyone rested? Had enough to eat? Peed and everything?"

I could have used a squat in the woods, but just then Kuniko scared me more than the rapids. I dumbly nodded, just like everyone else. "Good," she said.

"Then let's get going. The day's getting late."

She thrust the handle of her oar into the water and shoved off, then switched her grip on the oar and backpaddled to move the Pleiades away from sh.o.r.e.

Her boat was already turned around by the time Barry pushed off the Orion. She didn't pay attention to me, but Carlos had a mean look on his face.

"So who died and made her G.o.d?" he muttered.

"I dunno." I thought about it a moment. "Maybe G.o.d likes her more than you."He didn't appreciate that, but if he had a good answer, it didn't come to him. But when Barry glanced back at me, there was a subtle smile on his face.

He and I shared a secret moment of understanding, then he turned and put his back to the oar. fln hour later, we were within the shadow of the Eastern Divide, approaching the Shapiro Pa.s.s.

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

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

I looked back at Carlos. He caught my eye, gave me a smile. "Don't worry about it," he said quietly.

"My of' man and I used to white-water all the time. This'll be..."

"Rapids!" Barry shouted. "Here we go!"

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

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

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

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

"Boid!" Carlos shouted.

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

"Don't worry!" Chris shouted. "It's on the sh.o.r.e! It can't... I"

As if to defy him, the boid let out a terrible screech that echoed off the bluffs. Then, in one swift move, it leaped onto a midstream boulder and, raising its hooked foreclaws, bounded to another boulder closer to the middle of the channel. The boid saw us coming; rapids or no rapids, it wasn't going to let a potential meal slip past."Gimme the gun!" Carlos took a hand off his paddle, began groping behind me for the automatic rifle he'd stowed next to the mast.

"Watch out!" Kuniko shouted. "Rudder left!"

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

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

"The gun!" Carlos yelled. "Wendy, gimme the gun!"

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

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

"Barry, get down!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I grabbed the sailboard as a bucketful of cold water dashed me square in the face. When the canoe was steady again, I snapped the rifle's safety, then braced it between my legs and held on to the sailboard.

No time for discussion; we still had to do battle with the rapids.

We fought our way down the gorge, the canoes twisting left and right to avoid the rocks. Water wasflung high into the air and came back down upon us as a steady downpour, drenching us to our skins.

Cursing the river and each other, Kuniko and Chris, Barry and Carlos struggled to keep the boats from being smashed or overturned, while David and I clung to whatever we could grasp. My neck aching from being whip- lashed back and forth, my ears deafened by the constant roar, I stared at my knees and prayed that death would be swift, if not painless.

And then, almost all at once, it ended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know. That's when you lost control." Barry shrugged. "I guess I was supposed to steer while you were shooting."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I'm just glad your girlfriend was with us."

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

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

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

Carlos's eyes slowly rose. "What are you saying?"

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

"It's just a question. Take your time with it."

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

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

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

It wasn't much of a fight, nor did it last long. Barry grabbed Carlos from behind and pulled him off David.

Tears mixing with the blood streaming from his nose, David tried to retaliate, but Kuniko forced herself between them, pushing them apart. Seeing the blood on his brother's face, Chris turned toward Carlos, but I interceded before another squabble could break out.

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

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

Once we were away from camp, we sat down on a rock next to the water. We watched Bear rise abovethe channel, listened to the tide lapping against the sh.o.r.e.

I stroked his hair, tried to calm him down, and after a while he put an arm around me. His breath shuddered out of him, and at last he spoke.

"He's right," he said, very softly. "About the boid hunt, I mean."

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

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

A long pause. "Go on," I whispered.

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

"Why didn't you?"

"Because..." Carlos hesitated. "I don't know. Maybe because he didn't save my folks when they were under his protection. Maybe because he was a loudmouth and he'd bullied everyone into making that trip with him. Maybe just because I wanted to see what he'd do when it was just between him and the boid, with no one to back him up." He put his head down.

"That's why I wanted you to give me the gun. It was a second chance to..."

His voice trailed off, and that's when I realized why we were there. Through his own inaction, Carlos had let a man die. Perhaps it was Gill Reese and not Jim Levin, and David had heard the story wrong, and perhaps one could rationalize things by believing that Reese had it coming. Yet that wasn't the issue.

Carlos had come face-to-face not only with the forces of nature, but also his own soul; he'd lost, and now he wanted a rematch. Only this time, he wanted someone to back him up: all his friends, including his girl. And if she was a better shot than he was, or if anyone reminded him why he was doing this...

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

"You and I are through," I finished.

"What... ?" Astonished, he stared at me. "Wendy, what... ?"

"You heard me. We're over. Done." I pulled away from him.

"Wendy, jeez..." He grinned, took me by the hand. "C'mon, I'm sorry. If you're p.i.s.sed about the thing with the gun..."

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

"Wendy! What the h.e.l.l... ?"

"Just leave me alone. I don't want to talk anymore." Then I turned and marched back to camp.When I returned to our tent, I gathered up his bedroll and put it outside. Kuniko watched me, then she went over to where Barry was washing dishes and quietly invited him to spend the night with us. He moved his bedroll into our tent, and had enough sense not to ask why we were changing our sleeping arrangements.

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

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

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

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

Barry pulled out his guitar and pensively strummed it as he sat in the bow of the Orion.

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

That set the pattern of the next five days. We camped on the narrow sh.o.r.eline running beneath the bluffs, being careful to set up our tents beyond the high-water mark. We'd get up early, break camp, and continue sailing down the channel, always making sure that we never lost sight of the Eastern Divide.

We'd sail all day, then beach the canoes as the sun was beginning to go down and set up camp once more. A quick dinner, some small talk around the fire, then off to bed.

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

Near the end of the sixth day, after hauling aboard countless weird- lings, David finally landed something that resembled a wide-mouth ba.s.s. All it took was switching bait; the first time he tried using bread instead of meat, he landed a channelmouth: a big, fleshy fish that faintly resembled a ba.s.s. David cleaned and cooked it that evening; we all tried a little bit, and found that it was delicious. Which was just as well, for our supplies were beginning to run low; after that, both he and Chris always had their lines in the water, with Barry or Kuniko sometimes taking a turn, and after a while I tried my hand at it as well.

Hooking a channelmouth wasn't all that difficult; you had to cast your lure to the port side, into deep water away from the bluffs, and slowly reel it back in. The real trick was getting it out of the water before a weirdling homed in; now and then someone would pull up a half-eaten channelmouth a weirdling haddevoured while it was on the line.