Coyote - A Novel of Interstellar Exploration Part 27

Then the satphone went dead.

The next morning, Carlos packed up his gear, stowed it in his canoe, and set sail once again. It wasn't until he was a hundred yards away from sh.o.r.e, though, that he finally made up his mind which way he'd go. Tacking the sail to the catch the westerly winds, he turned Orion to the southeast and set out to cross the Midland Channel, heading for the island and, beyond it, the Meridian Sea.

The uuind uuas strong that day, the water choppy but the current with him; the journey across the channel took only eleven hours. When he came upon the island shortly before sundown, he had no problem finding a place to go ash.o.r.e. A sun-baked expanse of sand and high gra.s.s shaded now and then by parasol trees, it was as flat as New Florida. River-swoops circled the beach as he pulled out the canoe; he had been seeing them all day, sometimes dozens at a time. He wondered if this was the place where they nested, yet as the sun went they soared away to the east. They had to be sleeping on the river, he concluded, but that couldn't be where they nested. There was a mystery there, one whose solution continued to elude him.

He built a fire, then cleaned and cooked a channelmouth he had caught that afternoon. The night sky was cloudless, the stars brilliant; looking up, he saw the Alabama glide across the zenith, briefly appearing as a tiny black dash as it moved past Bear. It was a warm evening; there was little chance of rain, so he decided to sleep out in the open. He moved his bedroll from beneath the tarp he'd pitched and laid it outnext to the fire, and once he'd put his rifle and bow where he could reach them quickly, he lay down and went to sleep.

Sometime during the night, he was awakened by scurrying noises, as if an animal was prowling through the campsite. Opening his eyes but being careful not to move, he looked first one way, then the next. The fire had died down, but Bearlight illuminated the beach. At first he saw nothing, and for a moment he thought he might have only been dreaming. Then, from the direction of his canoe, he caught a ragged sc.r.a.ping sound, as if something was gnawing at the mooring line.

He counted to three, then quickly sat up, grabbing his rifle and pointing it toward the canoe. As he flicked on the infrared range finder, for a brief instant he caught a glimpse of a couple of diminutive figures crouched near the canoe's bow. Yet the moment the invisible beam touched them, they emitted a tinny, high-pitched chaawp! and vanished before he got a chance to fire.

In the same instant, he heard something move behind him, near the tarp. Swinging the rifle in that direction, he spotted through the scope a small, dark-furred form that stood upright on pair of forward-jointed legs. He had an impression of oversize eyes above a tiny mouth, with a pair of tendrils spouting from a low forehead. Then it made a startled cheeep! as it dropped something and bolted into the darkness.

Carlos yelled and leaped to his feet, then fired a couple of rounds into the air. From all around him, a half dozen more of the creatures fled for their lives. He heard the clatter of cookware, the static buzz of his sat- phone, the rustle of a shirt he'd washed and laid out to dry. He fired another round to chase the tiny thieves away, but they were already gone. From somewhere out in the high gra.s.s, he heard them chawp and cheep and coo-coo, like fairy children giggling about the mean prank they'd just played on the giant found slumbering in their midst.

He gathered what he could find lying in the sand-fortunately, they hadn't gone very far with the satphone-then stayed awake the rest of the night, the gun propped in his lap. When morning came, he walked up and down the beach, picking up the stuff they had dropped: a spoon, his flashlight, the cook pot, a shirt. Yet when he took inventory of his belongings, there were also several things missing: a fork, a pen, an extra spool of fishing line and some hooks.

Nothing very large; everything that had been either ignored or abandoned weighed more than an ounce or so. His packs remained where they were, although he noticed that their drawstrings had been untied instead of being ripped apart.

Their footprints were small, paw-shaped impressions, with smaller clawlike prints where they had dropped to all fours to escape. Judging from their size and distance from one another, Carlos estimated that the creatures couldn't have stood more than two feet tall. And he couldn't shake the impression that they were much like the swampers that infested New Florida, yet more highly evolved, their actions more... deliberate.

Yet the biggest shock came when he inspected his canoe. The boid skull lay next to the bow. The fact that they'd tried to steal it didn't surprise him; indeed, it was their attempt to do so that awakened him in the first place. When he knelt to tie the skull back in place, though, he saw that the lines that had held it place had been severed clean.

Something jabbed against his knee. He reached down to toss it away, then did a double take. It was a long piece of flint, no larger than the first two knuckles of his index finger, its edges sc.r.a.ped and honed to razor-sharpness. Dried gra.s.s was carefully woven around its haft, forming a handle that could be easily grasped by a tiny hand.Carlos gazed in wonder at the miniature knife. It hadn't been made by an animal. There was intelligence behind the tool; it was the product of a sapient mind.

There was someone else on Coyote.

For the next week, he sailed along the southern coast of the island. He would have liked to give himself more time to study the sandthieves, as he named them, yet their larcenous nature made that difficult.

Every evening when he came ash.o.r.e, he had to take special precautions to ensure that the rest of his belongings wouldn't vanish during the night. Although they shied away from him, the sandthieves obviously weren't afraid of his fire, and as soon as they were sure he was asleep they would emerge from the darkness to raid his camp. When he tried hanging his gear from a parasol tree, they soon demonstrated that they were willing and able to climb up to get to it. Burying his stuff didn't work, nor did hiding it beneath the canoe or even placing everything next to him while he slept. Carlos finally had to resort to leaving everything aboard the Orion, then anchoring the craft in the water six feet away from sh.o.r.e, making camp with little more than his bedrolleither the sandthieves weren't able to swim, or piracy wasn't something they'd learned yet.

The few times he saw them, the more he became convinced they were intelligent. Their high-pitched vocal sounds were evidently a form of language, not simply animal noises; on a couple of occasions, he noted that some of them wore breechcloths woven from parasol leaves, even necklaces of tiny pebbles held together by braided gra.s.s. From time to time, while paddling close to sh.o.r.e, he spotted tall, cone-shaped dwellings made of mud and sand, rising nine feet or taller above the nearby gra.s.slands, their packed-dirt walls honeycombed with holes large enough for them to enter. Twice he saw slender trails of smoke rising from their tops, indicating the presence of interior fireplaces.

He was tempted to make a satphone call back to Liberty and tell someone of his discovery. Yet he knew that if he did so, within a couple of hours a shuttle would descend upon the island, carrying teams of overeager scientists ready to doc.u.ment, record, perhaps even capture a specimen or two. The more he considered that mental picture, the less he liked it; the last thing a primitive civilization needed was an alien invasion.

No. The sandthieves would remain unknown to everyone else. Once he returned to Liberty, he'd tell everyone this particular island was little more than a large sandbar, uninteresting and worthless. He decided to name it Barren Isle; he would have marked it as such on his map, were it not for the fact that his pen was among the items the sandthieves had stolen.

On the morning of his last day on the island, he left Barren Isle for the last time. As he raised his sail and set out toward the nearby archipelago, he looked over his shoulder to take a long, final look at his secret place. For the first time in many days, he found himself smiling.

Since he had long since lost track of the days, Carlos was unaware that it was Uriel 48, halfway through last month of Coyote summer. Had he been able to compare this the date to a Gregorian calendar, he would have discovered, by Earth reckoning, he was 247 years old.

It was his seventeenth birthday, and he didn't even know it.

He sailed southeast, crossing the equator once again as he entered the Meridian Sea, the point at which the Great Equatorial River became so broad that nearly twelve hundred miles lay between the southeastern tip of Barren Isle and the nearest subcontinent in the southern hemisphere. Between them lay the Meridian Archipelago.

Carlos spent three days and two nights at sea. He subsisted upon the dried fish and fresh water he hadstockpiled in antic.i.p.ation of the your ney. The sun became his enemy; he covered himself with his tarp during the day to avoid heatstroke and sipped water to keep from becoming dehydrated. A brief rainstorm on the second day came as blessed relief; he stripped off his clothes and took a shower while standing naked in the stern of his canoe, scrubbing furiously at his matted hair and beard, then quickly refilled his water flasks.

He slept little, and only after he furled the sail and locked the rudder in place. He sang to himself to keep himself amused, and carried on imaginary conversations with the boid skull; for some reason, he was no longer visited by anyone he knew. On three different occasions he spotted catwhales, and on the second occasion he saw one as it breached the surface only a few hundred feet from his boat, hurling itself high into the air. He was unafraid of these giants, though, having long since realized that the only reason why one of them attacked his party was because David opened fire on it. He left the rifle alone-which was just as well, for there were only four rounds left in its clip anyway-and the catwhales spared him from anything more than a curious glance.

He navigated by following the flight of the river-swoops. There were dozens of them, great flocks of broad-winged birds that soared across the sky, sometimes hurling themselves headfirst into the sea to s.n.a.t.c.h up fish. By morning, they flew northwest, heading in the direction from which he had come; during midday he saw but a few, but by evening they would return, riding the twilight thermals as they made their way to the east. So long as he trailed them, Carlos knew he couldn't get lost. Or at least that was what he believed.

Four days after he left Barren Isle, the winds shifted to come from the east, in the direction toward which he was traveling. Carlos reluctantly folded his sail and lowered the mast. Now he had to depend solely upon his paddle; the current was mild, but it, too, was going in the wrong direction. It was hard work; the canoe, that had once glided effortlessly across the water, had to be pushed along one foot at a time.

As the day wore on, he mechanically pumped the oar, staring down at his knees. His thoughts kept returning to Wendy, that moment with her on the beach just before he left. I love you, he'd said; why hadn't she responded in kind? Good luck, she said, /'// be waiting for you. No, that wasn't right; what she'd really said was, We'll be waiting for you. Meaning who? Her and the baby? That was what he thought she meant, but maybe she was really thinking about Chris?

How had their relationship gone wrong? She'd accused him of being self-centered; the more he thought about it, the more he realized that she was right.

When they'd left Liberty, all he could think about was having s.e.x with her; when she refused-and of course she would; she'd just learned she was pregnant by him-he'd become cold toward her. No wonder she had fallen out of love with him. Perhaps he'd seen himself as an adult, but the fact of the matter was that he'd acted childishly.

And then he'd abandoned her. Not just Wendy... everyone else as well. When he was sure everyone was asleep, he'd taken the rest of their supplies and the remaining canoe. The only reason why he'd said goodbye to her was because she woke up early and caught him. Was it really because he wanted to see the world, as he'd told her, or was there another reason?

Of course there was. David was dead, and he couldn't deal with his responsibility for his death. There had been a certain look in Chris's eyes, one he'd never seen before, and he couldn't bear to see it again.

So he'd split before he had to face his friend again.

Realizing these things, he winced with self-loathing. Why had it taken so long for him to see things so clearly? For weeks he'd sailed on the Great Equatorial, putting as much distance between him andeveryone else as he possibly could. Now he was thousands of miles from Liberty, nearly half a world away from everyone he knew...

And yet, no matter how far he traveled, he couldn't escape from himself.

Was it too late for him to go home? Should he even bother?

The harsh cries of river-swoops broke his train of thought. For the first time in hours, he raised his eyes.

And suddenly, he discovered that he had reached the end of his journey.

The Meridian Rrchipelago lay before him as an endless string of tiny isles, stretching away across the horizon. Yet they were islands unlike any he'd seen before: enormous ma.s.sifs hundreds of feet tall, slender towers of rock looming above the water like the columns of some vast temple whose roof had long since collapsed. Thick blankets of vegetation covered their summits, from which long vines dangled.

Countless years of tides and storms had gradually eroded them, leaving behind these uninhabited stone pillars. flllen M. Steele No... not quite uninhabited. Swoops...o...b..ted the islands, their raucous voices echoing off the sheer rock walls. Above the nearest ma.s.sif, dozens of birds, perhaps even hundreds, weaved around each other in a complex gyre. Sometimes they came down to rest, but more often than not they launched themselves in angry, seemingly random attacks upon other swoops. The water lapping against the base of the island was filthy with feathers, and sky about it was filled with the shriek of constant, unending warfare.

Carlos gradually began to comprehend what he was seeing. This one island was only a few hundred feet wide; the swoops must be fighting for s.p.a.ce upon which to build their nests. And since there were hundreds of thousands of birds living upon the islands, territory would be at a premium. Not only that, but they'd have to range farther and farther away in order to gather food for their nestlings. At one time they might have preyed upon the inhabitants of Barren Isle, yet the sandthieves had evolved into intelligent tool-users, capable of building shelters, who only roamed at night. So now the swoops ruled the archipelago; they had chased off everything else and had only each other as enemies.

A cycle of life, as ancient as time itself. He'd reached the center of the world, yet he couldn't remain there. There was no beach upon which to land, no place he could set up camp. Even if there was, the swoops would never let him stay; this was a society of predators, and they wouldn't tolerate the presence of a stranger. He'd either have to raise sail, turn around, and go home... or continue southeast past the archipelago, and never see home again.

There were no other options. Go forward, or go back.

Putting down his oar, he crawled forward along the canoe until he found his pack. Opening it, he dug through his clothes until he found the satphone. He didn't know what time it was, but it was midafternoon; if he was lucky, the Alabama should be somewhere overhead. Unfolding the antenna, he squatted on the sailboard and pushed the return b.u.t.ton.

The unit clicked a few of times as it sought to achieve uplink, then he heard a familiar buzz. He waited patiently, watching the swoops as they wheeled around the island. After a minute, someone picked up.

"Yes? Who's calling?"

Carlos recognized the voice: Captain Lee. "Carlos. I'd like to talk to Wendy."

"Carlos! Where are you?"

Why tell him? "Could I speak to Wendy? It's really important."Pause. "I can't do that. She's gone into labor."

Carlos sat up. She wasn't due until sometime in Uriel. How long had he been gone? "What... I mean, how... ? Is she... ?"

"She's doing fine. Don't worry. Kuniko's with her, and so far... look, where are you?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"She wants you here. I've been standing by the satphone, just in case you called." Another pause.

"Carlos, listen to me. Don't hang up again. She broke water last night, and since then you're the only thing she's asked for. She needs you to be here."

As he listened, Carlos gazed at his boat. Fourteen feet long, made of faux birch and catskin, with a boid skull lashed to its bow. A small craft that had served him well. It would be easy to raise the mast and unfurl the sail once more; a good breeze was coming from the west, and he still had enough food and water to last a while longer. He'd learned how to live with this planet. He could take his time returning home. // he returned home...

"Carlos, listen." The captain's voice had become urgent. "Just leave your antenna open and the phone switched on. We can find your current position from your uplink and send a shuttle out to get you. Two hours, and you'll be home..."

There was still much left to be learned. Yet, hadn't he learned enough already? And what's the point of knowledge if you don't use it?

"Do you copy? Carlos, answer me, please."

"I copy." He let out his breath. "Will do. Tell Wendy I'm on my way."

Being careful not to switch off, he placed the satphone on top of his pack, then reached forward to pick up a flask. He took a long drink of tepid water, spit it out, then splashed some on his face. No more need to conserve. He'd have to abandon the Orion once the shuttle arrived, along with everything else he couldn't carry. A shame, but it couldn't be helped.

Carlos crawled to the bow. He untied the boid skull and put it aside, gathered up his map and stuck it in his bag. Then, taking off his shirt and wadding it behind his head, he lay back against the sailboard and idly studied the birds as he watched for the shuttle.

His family was waiting for him. It was a good day to go home.

Part Eight GLORIOUS DESTINY Liberty: Zamael, Gabriel 16, C.Y. 3 / The comet had appeared a couple of weeks earlier, in the last few days of Hanael before the winter solstice that marked the end of the Coyote year. At first it was little more than a hazy white splotch that hovered just above the southeastern horizon after sundown, and no one in Liberty paid much attention to it until its nimbus grew brighter and a distinct tail began to form. Eighteen nights later, its luminescence was rivaled only by Bear, until the superjovian rose high enough to eclipse the comet that it couldn't be seen again until it made a brief reappearance in the northwestern sky a couple of hours before dawn.

Like everyone else in Liberty, Robert Lee noticed the comet; lately, though, he's given it little more than a pa.s.sing glance. As chairman of the Town Council, other matters rank higher on his list of priorities. Thelast of the autumn crops are in, and although the colony won't have to worry about food shortages this winter, swampers discovered the corn stored in one of the silos shortly before they went into hibernation; the tunnels they'd dug beneath the refurbished Alabama cargo module threaten to undermine its foundation and eventually topple it. Two more colonists have come down with ring disease; it isn't contagious and easily treated with antibiotics, but Kuniko Okada has privately warned him that the drug supply is running dangerously low. One of the aerostats was toppled two weeks ago by a severe windstorm; if it's not rebuilt soon, the Council will have to start rationing electrical power.

And then there's the storm that's been forming a few hundred miles east of the Meridian Sea, slowly gathering-force as it creeps eastward along the Great Equatorial River. It's still on the other side of the planet, so it's possible that it might die off, but if it doesn't, it'll soon circle the globe until it rips across the southern plains of Great Dakota and slams straight into New Florida.

Tonight, though, the sky is clear: no clouds, no wind, the stars serene in their crystalline beauty. As Lee marches across the light snow covering the frozen mud of Main Street, he spots a small group of people gathered outside the grange. They've built a small fire within a garbage barrel and cl.u.s.tered around it to keep warm, yet their eyes are turned upward. It's not hard to figure out what they're watching.

"Evening, folks," he says. "Comet keeping you busy?"

Everyone looks around. Smiles, murmured greetings: "Evening, Mr. Mayor," "Hi, Captain," "h.e.l.lo, Robert," and so forth. Now he can make out individual faces, shadowed by the parka hoods and downturned cap bills: Jack Dreyfus, Henry Johnson, Kim Newell, and Tom Shapiro. Tom, Jack, and Kim are former Alabama crew members, of course, while Henry was once a civilian scientist, yet people seldom make such distinctions anymore. Lee's the only person anyone still addresses by his former rank, and then only out of habit.

There's a child among them: Marie Montero, almost nine. No doubt there are other kids inside, but she's always been shy, preferring the company of Tom and Kim, her adoptive parents. It seems as if ages have pa.s.sed since Tom was Alabama's first officer and Kim was a Liberty Party loyalist who had to be held at gunpoint while the ship was being stolen from Highgate; now they're married, and the bulge beneath Kirn's parka shows that it won't be much longer before they add another member to their family.

"Looked at it lately, Mr. Mayor?" This from Jack Dreyfus, standing on the other side of the barrel.

"We're trying to figure it out."

"Looks like a horn!" Marie proclaims. "A big friggin' horn!"

"Marie! Language!" Kim gives the child an admonishing glare, then looks at Tom. "She's spending too much time with grown-ups. Look what she's picking up."

"Yup," Tom mutters, "h.e.l.luva shame." Chuckles from all around, but Lee barely hears this as he gazes up at the sky.

The comet's tail is very long now, stretching almost halfway to the edge of Bear's rings as the giant planet slowly rises above the horizon. Yet it doesn't taper down to a point, the way a comet's tail normally would, but fans outward instead, forming an elongated cone as seen from profile. Beautiful, yet discomforting in its strangeness.

"Y'know, she's right," Jack says. "Kind of looks like a trumpet." He grins. "Gabriel's Trumpet. Good name, kid."

Marie blushes, hides behind Tom. "Beats h.e.l.l out of me." Henry murmurs. "Sorry, guys, but I can't figurethis one out."

"What do you mean?" Lee asks. Before he turned to farming, Henry Johnson was an astrophysicist. If anyone should be an expert on comets, it would be he.

"Well, for one thing, the tail's going in the wrong direction." He points to the comet. "Shouldn't be doing that. Solar wind from Uma would be blowing dust off the nucleus, sure, but away from the sun, not toward it. And spreading it out like that... ?" He shakes his head. "Might happen it the dust is being deflected by Bear's magnetosphere... but if that's the case, then it's a lot closer than we think."

"It's not going to hit us, is it?" Kirn's voice is low, concerned.

"Oh, I doubt that. Bear's gravity will probably pull it in long before it comes close enough to be any sort of threat. One of the benefits of having a gas giant for a neighbor... sort of a huge vacuum sweeper for comets and rogue asteroids." Henry gives the others a rea.s.suring smile. "Don't worry. We're just going to have a light show for another week or so."

The group laughs, albeit nervously, and shuffles their feet in the snow. "Well, have fun," Lee says, and ruffles Marie's hair as he walks past. "Don't stay out too long, or you'll catch cold."

The little girl favors him with the salute she's seen her guardians and other former crewmen give him on occasion. Lee dutifully responds in kind; even after nearly four Earth-years on Coyote, he's still regarded as captain by most people. He supposes he should be honored, although he prefers to think of himself as an elected public official rather than a commanding officer.

He opens the heavy front door, steps into the foyer, takes a minute to remove his parka and hang it next to the other coats and jackets. Warm air rushes across his face as he opens the inside door; someone has stoked a fire in the woodstove, and the meeting hall is nice and toasty. The grange has become the center of Liberty's social life, particularly during the long months of winter. There are probably a dozen or so people hanging out at Lew's Cantina; every so often Lee will spend an evening there himself, but generally he prefers the more placid ambiance of the grange.

Chairs have been pushed aside to make room for card tables; there are a couple of bridge games going on, but a few people are also playing chess or backgammon, and some of the younger children are huddled around a Parcheesi board. Dogs lounge on the blackwood floor, showing only slight interest in the mama cat nursing her kittens in a nearby box. A platter of home-fried potato chips and onion dip has been laid out on the side table beneath a watercolor painting of the Alabama; a pot of coffee stays warm on the stove in the center of the room, itself fashioned from an old oxygen cell salvaged from one of the habitat modules.

And there's music. A three-man jug band-the Crab Suckers, a private joke no one else understands-is on the raised platform at the front of the room, where the Council usually sits when the monthly town meeting is in session. With the exception of Ted LeMare's antique Hammond harmonica, brought with him from Earth, their instruments were handmade by Paul Dwyer, the ba.s.sist, and their repertoire mainly consists of twentieth-century blues and country standards.

But they've been working out some original material lately; as Lee walks in, Barry Dreyfus, Jack's boy, is singing: Catwhale, stay away from me. Catwhale, stay away from me. Just lost in your river, can't you see?

Catwhale, stay away from me...

Not quite up the standards of Barry's idol Robert Johnson, but for homespun music it isn't bad. Leehelps himself to a mug of black coffee and reflects upon the circ.u.mstances that inspired the song. Barry had been one of the members of the ill-fated Montero Expedition; that considering the fact that one of his friends was killed by a catwhale, the lyrics are strangely lighthearted. Perhaps black humor is Barry's way of dealing with David Levin's death.

Catwhale, don't eat me.

Catwhale, don't eat me.

There's a lot of other fish you can have for free.

Mr. Catwhale, don't eat me... puh-lease!

Morbid, yes, yet then Lee notices Wendy Gunther sitting nearby. Her legs crossed, her left toe tapping the floor beneath her long catskin skirt, as she bounces baby Susan on her knee. Wendy's another member of the expedition; the last line of Barry's song refers to her near-death experience, but if she thinks it's in bad taste, there's no indication. Susan smiles in delight, babbles something that might be a compliment.

We've raised a tough generation. Lee thinks. Almost four Earth-years here, and the kids are hard as nails.

He can't decide whether he likes that notion or not. Wendy's just turned eighteen, yet not only is she now a mother, but in the last election she managed to get herself voted onto the Town Council, replacing Sissy Levin when she unexpectedly resigned. Wendy ran for office on the platform that Liberty's younger generation needed a voice in the colony government, and since then she's carried out her responsibilities well. Lee can't complain about her performance, yet whenever he sees her, he feels a twinge of long-suppressed guilt. Her father...

Enough. There's another reason why he's ventured out into the cold Gabriel night. Taking his coffee mug with him, he crosses the hall, briefly nodding or waving to everyone whose eye he meets, until he reaches a door off to one side of the room.

A narrow corridor takes him past the Council meeting room, the armory, and the records room. His office door's shut, but there's light under the crack; he hears Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from within.

He quietly opens the door, steps inside. Dana Monroe is seated at his black- wood desk, studying the screen of his comp; she doesn't look up as he comes up behind her, but smiles as he leans over to give her a kiss on the cheek. "Wondering when you'd get here," she murmurs. "What took you so long?"

"My turn to wash up after dinner, remember?" Lee finds the spare chair, pulls it over next to the desk.