Alternate Americas

by Gregory Benford

  “Sometimes we eat other things besides fish. Little birds or small game,” Little Gull said. “What do you eat?”

  I tugged playfully at his hair. A small boy’s conversation is all out of time with that of his elders.

  “Meat, of course!” Angelito said. “Buffalo or oxen. Or a tasty water fowl. You have plenty of them all over the place. Why didn’t your chiefs serve them?”

  “We never eat their flesh, only the eggs,” I explained.

  “You wouldn’t kill the ducks?” Little Gull asked anxiously, and I hugged him to me.

  Angelito’s laughter, bubbling out like a spring of pure water melted my heart. “Why not?”

  “Because we honor the First Captain,” Little Gull said. He glanced at me to see if he had given the right answer, and I smiled at him.

  But already the power my grandmother had passed to me began to shape my destiny, in spite of the wishes of my heart. I said, “Forgive me, Angelito, but I must ask again, and you must answer me this time. Why do you follow these strangers?”

  “They aren’t strangers to me,” he said. “Have you heard of Junipero Serra? No, I suppose not. The good news has only just come to your poor towns! Fra Serra—a priest, like Fra Palou here—took me in when my father died, and taught me his language.”

  “‘Priest,’” I said. “Shaman, do you mean?”

  Angelito frowned. “Well, perhaps. But—different! It’s Serra who’s building all the missions up and down the shores of Great Sea. He sent me to assist de Anza on his quest—that was when I first saw you—and now I guide Moraga and Palou.”

  “What’s a mission?” Little Gull asked.

  “A place the good fathers build where The People can live and learn about the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  “Why is this good?” I asked. “Don’t we have homes already?”

  “Of course it’s good!” Angelito said, and I heard irritation in his voice.

  Then I asked, “And your mother, Angelito. What about her?”

  Angelito hesitated. “She accepted the mercy of God.” His right hand made an odd fluttering movement over his chest. “Now the Chumash live in the mission Fra Serra built, in the valley of the bears.”

  “And do you like it with the bears?” Little Gull asked. “What games do you play?”

  Angelito made a face. “No time to play! Too much work to do. And prayer! A lot of that, to find salvation!”

  His words made little sense to me. First Captain taught us to pray too. But among all The People, Miwok and Chumash and others up and down the shores of Great Sea, only shamans undertook a quest to find their spirit voices.

  “But why have so many come on this quest?”

  Angelito wiped fish grease off his fingers in the dust. “Fra Serra says Saint Francis needs his mission here. And de Anza thinks this inland sea will make a fine harbor for the tall canoes.”

  Confusion filled me then. Angelito had spoken the name of First Captain. Could it be these strangers revered First Captain? How fine that would be!

  “Angelito, that name—Francis. Our First Captain was named Francis. What does this mean?”

  He stared at me, frowning. “You’re a strange woman, Red Deer. Yes, and the Miwok are different from The People to the south! I heard Lieutenant Moraga tell Fra Palou, such a pattern your square fields and hedges make—and the houses!—he hasn’t seen the like since he visited England in his youth!”

  England! The old people tell stories of their ancestors, First Captain’s men who stayed behind, and the land they came from, so far away in the direction of sunrise.

  “What do you know about England?” I asked, eager for fresh information.

  “Not much. Only what I overhear. Some men from England may be building somewhere to the east—a long, long way from here, on the sunrise coast! It doesn’t worry the holy fathers.”

  He knew about the people First Captain had come from! It seemed like a dream to be hearing about them. I was full of questions, but Angelito knew little more than I myself. I took a morsel of honey cake and thought about this. Something bothered me, like getting a thorn stuck in a tender part of the foot. I wanted so much to believe all was well. Yet I was still uneasy in my mind. There was a word I could not remember.

  “This Fra Serra you speak of,” I said. “He comes from the land south of the Chumash?”

  “Holy Virgin, Mother of God!” Angelito did not look up from the dust, where his fingers were very busy. “How little you know!”

  “You must promise not to harm the ducks,” Little Gull said sleepily. Angelito laughed. “Go to bed, little bird lover!”

  Little Gull wandered away, rubbing his eyes.

  My heart won its struggle against my mind, and I leaned over and kissed Angelito on the cheek. He held me close, his lips against my hair, and both of us paid little attention to the feast.

  “Our enemies are many but our Protector commandeth the whole world.”

  I awoke much later alone, screaming from a frightening dream.

  The feasting had gone far into the night until there was no more wood to burn and no man who could stand upright long enough to fetch more. It seemed that the strangers’ yellow drink softened the bones of the legs. Then Angelito and I lay down together in the darkness under the oak trees and became one. It was like fire and honey, violent as a storm on Great Sea and delicate as apple blossom. I gave up my soul to Angelito, and he his to me. As blood thundered through my veins, I thought it must be possible to serve both love and the power that had chosen me, for I did not see how I could ever give up my love.

  In the next room I could hear Bear-With-One-Ear snoring. Even as the dream let go of my heart, I thought now that I was a medicine woman, I could not go on living in my uncle’s house. I must soon build one for myself of oak wood and baked river mud colored white, with a thatched roof of tule reeds. Perhaps I would take Little Gull with me. For a while longer he could live with a woman. Then he must go to Hawk Wing’s house to learn how to be a man.

  At that I realized Little Gull was not asleep on his mat beside me.

  I should have guessed he would become sick from eating so much! As I knew that, I also knew the sight had given me my answer in a dream. Death had entered our town, and I had remembered its name.

  I scrambled up from the mat, my hands shaking with fear.

  I found my brother outside his house, smoking a pipe, moonlight cloaking his bare shoulders like finest deerskin.

  “Francis Hawk Wing!” I cried. “We’re surrounded by enemies!”

  He looked up, his expression ugly in the moonlight. “I saw you kiss the shaman’s slave tonight. Have you come from his bed?”

  I took in a quick gasp of cold night air. Then I raised my fist and hit my brother’s cheek with all my strength. His hand flew up to touch the place, but he said nothing.

  “Be silent, fool! Little Gull’s gone. And I know the name of these strangers. They’re Spaniards.”

  He stared at me. “First Captain fought Spaniards on land and sea! Burnt their ships. Took their treasure. Remember what he wrote? ‘There was never anything that pleased me better than seeing the enemy flying with a southerly wind to the northwards!’”

  “Yes, but do you know why he hated them?”

  “The papa—and the lies he taught about Sky Father.”

  “More than that, Hawk Wing,” I said. “Much more! Remember the stories from the long voyage of the Big Canoes?”

  “He hated them for their cruelty to The People. He said every man had a right to be free, not a slave.” Then he frowned. “How do you know this?”

  “It came to me in a dream.”

  “A dream?” My brother’s expression was incredulous. “Why should I take notice of such nonsense?”

  “Because Lark Singing taught me to see before she died! I am the medicine woman of the tribe now. I tried to tell this to Bear-With-One-Ear—but we’re wasting time!”

  He gazed at me a moment longer while he thought it over. Then h
e jumped to his feet, his hand reaching for the crossbow that lay beside him. Hawk Wing ran fast, but I flew faster. Through the sleeping town we raced, to the place I had seen in my dream. Fires flickered where guards kept watch in the Spaniards’ camp.

  On the trampled grass where the feast had been held we found Little Gull, a clutch of duck feathers in his hand. His skull had been split open. Blood soaked into the earth around him.

  I fell down on his small body, wailing. “Why? Why?”

  Hawk Wing dragged me up again. “Later we’ll find out why! Now we must avenge this Spanish killing!”

  From across the lake, where the gray-robed priest camped under the oaks, came the smell of roasting flesh, and I gagged. Too much was happening, too quickly.

  Inside my head the voice of Elizabeth Lark Singing said, “My time is over. Yours is coming.”

  No! I said to the vision. I wanted only to live with my lover and raise children on the shores of Great Sea.

  “What can we do?” I cried. “We’re a peaceful people. We’re not ready for war!”

  Hawk Wing grabbed me by the arms and thrust his face close to mine. It was mottled red with his anger. “Do you remember the teaching First Captain gave us?”

  “Yes.” I looked down at Little Gull’s small body. “But we don’t know how to fight an enemy like this.”

  “I know how to fight Spaniards,” Hawk Wing said. “First Captain taught that as the lore of men. He warned us one day Spaniards would come up the coast, even to our peaceful land, and we must be ready. This is why young men spend so much time learning the skills of killing that we need. And we’ve spread this teaching to the men of all the tribes around Lesser Sea. We’re ready!”

  “Do you think arrows will suffice against monsters who kill children?” I asked scornfully. “For that’s all you have. Men who wear metal clothes will fight with stranger weapons than you can dream of!”

  At that Hawk Wing smiled. “You think so because you’re a woman! That long metal stick they carry? That’s an harquebus. Oh, better perhaps than the two First Captain left with us so long ago. I can’t make one, but I know how a gun works, and if I get one from the Spaniards, I’ll use it against them! But, tell me, Red Deer. Do you truly know how to see? How to tell me where the advantage lies when I make war? Can you take Lark Singing’s place? Will you do that?”

  No one could take Lark Singing’s place. I wept again, for Little Gull, for our people in the terrible days that the sight showed me would come, for the blood that would flow before we were rid of our enemies. And I wept for myself with the heavy burden of sight.

  He was impatient with my tears. He shook me hard. “Well? Give me an answer!”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” He released my arm. “Then I’ll kill this Moraga before he knows what’s happened! With him dead the Spaniards—”

  “No!” I said sharply. “You don’t know as much as you think about these enemies. First you must kill their shaman, Palou.”

  “Red Deer—”

  “I have seen this, Hawk Wing! Listen to what I say. And when that’s done, seek south for the shaman called Junipero Serra, and kill him too! Serra is the papa’s wolf that would devour us as First Captain warned.”

  “I’ll gather the men,” my brother said. “We’re ready. We’ll kill all who travel under the Spaniards’ banner!”

  “Hawk Wing,” I said as he turned to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “Spare Angelito.”

  “He’s one of them!”

  “Leave him for me.”

  “Done by English who are well disposed if there be no cause to the contrary. If there be cause, we will be devils rather than men.”

  Thus began the years of blood and fire that I had seen in the smoke-dream in my grandmother’s hut. My memory quails before the task of retelling the death and the suffering of the Miwok during those years. (I tell it now only that you will understand that sometimes evil things must be done in order for good to come of them.)

  The first arrow my brother shot took the priest Palou, and the second, the warrior Moraga. Then I learned the wisdom of my uncle Black Otter’s remark, for we had the enemy surrounded. But even so the Spaniards were not easily killed, though there were few of them. They fought like demons. The battle lasted three days, and many of our own died too. I remember Bear-With-One-Ear was killed in that first battle, for he was old and slow-moving, and Black Otter with him. And when Hawk Wing and his warriors had finished in the river meadow outside our town, the dead lay in rows under the sun, their corpses crawling with flies, for there were too many to cremate all at once.

  Angelito came to me, on the second day of the battle, begging shelter. I took him into the house that had been my uncle’s but was mine now and I concealed him from my brother’s warriors, hiding him under the blankets on my own bed. First Captain had told us Spaniards were our enemies, but I thought that The People must defend each other. Angelito did not argue when I gave him back his own name. I held him close to my breast while Death stalked outside with his fellow riders, Famine, Pestilence, and War. In spite of the danger outside we lay in each other’s arms and were happy. We spoke of children we would have together, how the rivers of our blood would run together and create a tribe that would stand proudly against tall enemies. Miwok, Chumash, English—no mere Spaniard could frighten us!

  When the battle was over at last and there was time to mourn the dead, I wrapped Little Gull’s stiff body in his blanket and laid him on the funeral platform. I took First Captain’s knife that had hung over the hearth to cut wood for the fire, and White Cloud went with me. It was a hot day, the valleys clotted with the odor of death, the sky full of smoke from the funeral fires.

  “Little bird lover, I tried to warn you,” White Cloud said, laying pine branches on my brother’s body. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed in bed.”

  Something stirred in me then, like a blind worm in the cold earth. I felt my destiny rising to confront me as I looked at my lover. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he tried to save a duck Lieutenant Moraga wanted. I told you these Spaniards were meat eaters.” Then he laughed his easy laugh. “You should have served more than fish at your feast!”

  “You saw this?” I said slowly. No! I said in my mind, No! I will not accept this hard destiny!

  He nodded. “I had just gone back to camp.”

  “And did nothing?”

  He gazed at me. “What could I do, Red Deer? I was only a priest’s servant!” He turned back to heap more wood on the pyre.

  Now I saw what it was First Captain had really warned us of. The real danger lay within us if we forgot ourselves, if we became slaves, smiling though we were bound. Even a man like White Cloud—so beautiful! so fine!—could become a slave in his heart.

  I knew immediately what I must do, yet I fought it. The path of my life forked here, but I did not want to choose! Why can I not have both? I cried in my pain.

  Once the power has taken a woman, her life is straight and clear, but very hard. And there is no going back.

  So I closed my heart against my lover, and I filled my mind with the teachings of First Captain. While White Cloud’s back was still turned, I drew out First Captain’s knife. My hand trembled so much, I needed the other to steady it, but I stuck the knife deep into his ribs.

  He gave a great, ragged gasp and half turned to me, dragging the knife out of my hands. “Red Deer!”

  “You named yourself correctly, Angelito,” I said. “You became one of them.”

  A stain as scarlet as the berries Little Deer had been picking when he first saw this man spread over his back where the knife still protruded. “For the love of God—”

  “For the love of The People, Angelito.”

  Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. He stared at me, his eyes already filming over. He stumbled, holding out his arms to me to steady him.

  I stepped back and let him fall. Enemy! Enemy!
I said over and over in my mind so that I would not cry.

  I, too, could become a devil when there was cause.

  After a few days Hawk Wing gathered men from many tribes along the coast of Great Sea and the inland valleys all around Lesser Sea and at my urging led them south to find Junipero Serra. Gray Seal went south with my brother, but Fog-On-Water remained here to hold the tribes together when they were gone, teaching them to trust no Spaniard, nor show mercy to gray-robed priests who would have given them none.

  My brother’s warriors found Serra a year later, with a party of Spaniards at the big mission he had built on the large bay where seals and sea otters played in the kelp and The People foraged for abalone. I had seen him there in a smoke-dream.

  I was still in mourning for my uncles and for Little Gull, and I was nursing the infant when they brought Serra back to our town. I was surprised to see how small he was, and how frail. He walked with a limp, his shoulders bowed under the hot sun. I had thought this wolf must be a giant to have such power to harm us. It did not seem possible that such a weak man could create such havoc. The power of an evil shaman is such that he can make himself appear harmless, like a coiled snake waiting to strike. I knew he was the one who was truly guilty of my lover’s death, for it was his teaching that had corrupted White Cloud so that I had been forced to kill him.

  “See,” I said to the infant. “This is your father’s murderer!”

  But it did not help the pain.

  We kept little Serra for a while in a hut, because Fog-On-Water said we should see if these Spaniards would trade for him, to get him back. My uncle sent a message to the mission in the valley of the bears where White Cloud had been born, but there was no answer. We began to see that although the Spaniards were wolves, the pack might be small or too far from the den to have power if we attacked them. We knew now that we could win.