The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Padding footfalls came across the snow, and Yellow Legs looked up. Coyote seated himself boldly at the edge of the ledge. Since he made no move to steal the meat, Yellow Legs was polite. “Greetings, brother coyote.”

  Coyote ignored him, sniffed the meat, then said to Stays Behind, Farewell, sister. Like the buffalo, Coyote didn’t say these words aloud, for Tachyon was speaking through him. To Stays Behind, the words were Ogalala; to Yellow Legs, Shyela.

  Yellow Legs knew coyotes were lechers and tricksters, but this one was being utterly mannerless. If coyotes could be rude, so could he. “Why do you speak to this woman instead of to me? And are you a Contrary, to greet us with good-byes?”

  Coyote cocked his head. Your world is contrary. First for you is last for me. This is the last I will see of Stays Behind. Yellow Legs and I have met and will meet many times.

  Stays Behind set down her knife, though she had just gotten to the liver. “Coyote, your speech is very confusing.”

  To me, I am talking backwards, which is even more confusing.

  Yellow Legs puffed hard on his pipe; neither women nor coyotes seemed to know their places anymore. “I can’t recall meeting such a mannerless coyote before.”

  Your memories are in my future, so I can’t be exact. Perhaps I will learn manners, but we will keep meeting till you dwindle down to a baby and vanish inside your mother.

  Animals had spoken in his visions, even coyotes, though none had looked like this one. Yellow Legs decided to smoke some more on this.

  Coyote scratched, then eyed the buffalo meat. In your past, my future, I will and did bring that buffalo to you. Now is the time to offer me some meat, for this body I inhabit is a hungry one.

  Stays Behind sliced the still warm liver, squeezed gall on it, then offered bits to both man and beast. Yellow Legs refused, but Coyote snapped his down.

  Much better. It’s hard to hold a body that is both scared and hungry.

  “Why have you come?” Stays Behind cut more liver for the scruffy beast.

  To bid you good-bye, and to offer you passage to another Earth, which you call the Spirit World, where we spent much time together, where you opened your precious memories many times to me.

  “I don’t remember this.”

  For you, it hasn’t happened yet.

  Yellow Legs set his pipe aside. “You come from the Spirit World?”

  The beast licked his lips, begging with its eyes for more. What you call the Spirit World is merely another Earth, not even far away in this shrinking Universe. It lies beyond the Moon and Morning Star, beside one of the Twin Stars in the winter sky. We offer your people passage there, to thank you for the memories that foretell our future, for the future frightens and fascinates us.

  “Why fear the future?” Stays Behind cut Coyote more liver.

  The Universe shrinks smaller and burns brighter. Entropy decreases, stars burn hotter and burst into gas, and planets melt and break apart. We are all shrinking towards a single fiery implosion. Who wouldn’t fear that?

  Stays Behind looked bewildered, but interested. Yellow Legs snorted. “Speak this way to the Wasichu; they would love to argue about such things.”

  I have had wonderful conversations with them, and no doubt will again. To them, I am Tachyon because I travel so fast. But at this moment in space-time, speaking to animals or other worldly beings is out of style among them. Those that I approach act very alarmed, weeping and praying, pretending not to hear.

  Yellow Legs agreed. “Not many of my people will wish to leave this world on the word of a rude coyote.”

  Yes, yes, Coyote yawned, it is very boring to know what will be. I will let you look again at the Spirit World. When you like what you see, bring as many people as you can into the Badlands, in the Moon of Frost in the Tipis.

  Coyote rose, shaking snow from his haunches. Remember, what you see is only a vision. To move your bodies will be much harder. To move metals is hardest of all. As you measure distance, the Spirit World is far away. Moving only as fast as light, the trip would take almost a lifetime, though it seemed only an instant. Your bodies may never return to this point in space-time. You may take with you only the metal that is in skin and hide, wood and bone.

  Stays Behind looked down at the dissected buffalo. The only metal she saw was the knife in her hand. “I don’t understand.”

  Never mind, I will send formulas outlining the principles. Take them to Teacher Miller, and he may translate them.

  The contrary coyote turned to Yellow Legs. When you see the other Earth, you will give up anything to be there. We have seen that it holds everything. Greetings. Coyote became a coyote, and the Tachyon was gone.

  As the beast backed away, Vision Peak seemed to grow. It became a great ghost mountain splitting through the layers of creation. Its roots ran down into the Deep Earth, its slopes thrust through the Air and Near Sky Space, and its peak stretched into the Blue Sky Space that holds the sun and stars. When the mountain reached its full height, a crack opened in the base, and rock and stone peeled apart like a leather lodge entrance. Yellow Legs and Stays Behind saw a brightly lit world within the mountain. They stepped towards it.

  Instantly, there was no earth beneath their feet. Their hands reached out to stop them from falling, but instead their arms bit into the air, becoming wings. Feathers sprouted from their bodies, and they became a pair of hawks circling over the vast earth inside Vision Peak.

  The land inside the mountain lay like a blanket tossed into a tipi. Much of it was flat, with little folds for hills; other parts were bunched into high mountains that ran in all directions. The plains between were filled to overflowing with herds of wild horses, red deer, antelope, and giant antlered elk. Shaggy brown carpets of buffalo covered the prairie. Even the air felt new.

  They flew over many camp circles of tipis. One such circle looked familiar. The hawk that was Yellow Legs glided towards it. The women in the camp circle worked the old way, with stone and bone tools. The men smoked, ate, and danced, taking time to greet the two hawks that settled on a tipi top. They spoke a Shyela tongue, and gray-haired children ran among them. This was the Flexed Leg band of Yellow Legs’s people. Everyone had thought them long dead, killed by a stomach sickness when the Wasichu had first poured over the plains.

  Yellow Legs wanted to stay, to watch them at work and play, but the hawk that was Stays Behind was eager to fly. He followed her into regions where the air grew chill. Cold breezes blew off white sheets of ice that reared more than a mile into the sky, crushing continents with their weight. Dimly remembered monsters roamed the bases of these white cliffs. Woolly beasts with long horns and ivory tusks, such as stalked through power tales told round fires in the dark of winter.

  Green forests, mighty rivers, meat on the hoof—it was a world holding everything that one might want; all things but one. It had no sun. Light rained down from six stars, four white and two red, that shone in full daylight.

  The vision ended, and they were back on the cold ledge, beside the still-warm and half-butchered buffalo. Though they had flown as hawks for days, no time had passed at all. Yellow Legs said nothing. He loaded his pipe and smoked, staring again at the far wall of the canyon. Stays Behind went back to her work, cutting meat into strips and setting the strips out to dry. She cleaned and scraped the paunch, filled it with snow, and hung it over a fire.

  By evening, the meat that wasn’t drying was cooked. The hide had been scraped clean, rubbed with brains and liver, and left to soak overnight. Stays Behind invited Yellow Legs to eat. He barely picked at the roasted flesh, though nothing was sweeter than fresh-killed buffalo meat.

  Finally, she broke the silence. “So you have seen stars in daylight.”

  He nodded. “The land was bountiful; it gives me reason for living. Yet when the coyote said that I would give anything to go there, I did not think he meant the power that has protected me for so many winters.”

  “In the Spirit World, we would die as we were meant to liv
e.”

  “You are young, your body is new, and your death is far off. After coming through so many fights, after seeing the world of my dreams, it is hard to say like the Kiowas, Rocks and mountains, you alone remain.”

  She stood up, standing taller in the waning winter moonlight than he had ever seen her. Slipping the white doeskin off, Stays Behind twined arms washed clean with snow round his neck. She rested her young breasts on his chest. “Forget death, and share this young body.”

  It shocked him, but he did as she said, untying the braided rope that ran between her thighs, the rope that no man should even touch. He did it because it was what Stays Behind had wanted from the start, and because the hawks in whose bodies they had flown were birds mated for life. Coyote had seen to that.

  It would have been bad to waste the buffalo, so they camped on the ledge till the robe had time to tan and dry in the weak winter sun. Stays Behind pounded the dried meat and worked the hide into leather. Even after that, they lingered, for the Black Hills dragged at their moccasins, and when they left, it would be forever. Rested and fed, it still took them longer to follow French Creek down into the flats, longer than it had taken them to climb up on empty bellies. Besides, they now had much buffalo meat to carry.

  In the iron-wired flatlands they moved faster, anxious to avoid Wasichu and get across the Good. They crossed the Good River at Crooked Corn Woman’s camp. There they feasted well, for Crooked Corn Woman was a Christian and the day before had been Christmas. She listened to their vision of the Spirit World, and in return gave them the news among the Minneconjou.

  The news they got was bad. Sitting Bull was indeed dead, murdered by Metal Breasts. Fighting had spread to the Good. Hump and his Minneconjou had surrendered to the Wasichu. The last of Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas had come south from Standing Rock. They had joined Big Foot’s band on the Good River, then fled into the Badlands. Many Wasichu soldiers were out hunting Big Foot, armed with wagon guns that fired faster than a talkative person could speak.

  Stays Behind and Yellow Legs offered to take Crooked Corn Woman with them into the Spirit World, but she said she would rather die where she’d been born. When Jesus raised her, then she promised she would join them.

  At dawn they took their horses and rode off across the south face of the Badlands. They rode beneath a great blue bowl of sky. Here, there were no iron fences, and the prairie rose and fell like a living thing, free for as far as eyes could see. Strands of pale grass, slippery with frost, clung to the brown earth.

  Late in the day, they came upon a Burnt Thigh. Climbing off their horses, they sat on the frozen prairie, sharing their food with him.

  By their wolf faces and the ghost shirt, the Burnt Thigh knew they had been scouting in the Spirit World. Politely, he warned them that the Wasichu were hunting Ghost Dancers. Soldiers said that Bear Coat Miles himself had ordered Sitting Bull and Big Foot arrested.

  “We were camped with Black Elk and his Ogalalas on Wounded Knee Creek. A Black Robe Wasichu found us and tried to bring us back to the Agency. This Wasichu was good, so we listened, but only a few Ogalalas went back with him.” The Burnt Thigh pointed his chin towards the Badlands. “We went and hid near Top of the Badlands. The next Wasichu might not be as respectful as this Black Robe. It is not so easy to hide from the Lakota. Two chiefs, American Horse and Fast Thunder, found us and ordered Black Elk’s people back to the Agency. They went, though we beat them and told them not to go. Some Burnt Thighs went with them.”

  There were tears in the Burnt Thigh’s eyes, but he said it was from eating buffalo again. “There is no game in the Badlands, so everyone is hungry. Big Foot is so sick his people must carry him. Fasting is fine for visions, but it wastes the body.”

  As they rode off, Stays Behind asked Yellow Legs, “Will things be as bad as that Burnt Thigh says?”

  He kept his face fixed on the line where earth and sky become one. “All Lakota talk like noisy birds, and Burnt Thighs are bossier than blue jays.” He was thinking that things had gotten worse since he had taken comfort in this girl’s body, and that he should have faced his death alone.

  At the Smoky Earth River, they found signs that Ogalalas and Burnt Thighs were a half-day ahead of them, probably Black Elk’s people. Atop the pony tracks were ironshod prints, showing that Wasichu were trailing Black Elk, too. Many people were passing like cloud shadows over the prairie. Yellow Legs and Stays Behind waited, letting the Wasichu get well ahead of them, then they camped farther up the Smoky. This would be their last camp alone, under the winter stars.

  The new day’s sun was high in the sky when they saw the banks of White Clay Creek dip down toward the Ghost Dance camps. Like gathering storm winds, Ogalala Bad Faces were riding up from Red Cloud Agency, bringing with them more bad news. Big Foot’s band had been captured by Wasichu soldiers and moved under guard to Wounded Knee. Two Strikes, Kicking Bear, and Short Bull began to gather together Ghost Dancers from among the Burnt Thighs.

  * * *

  The morning after soldiers brought in Big Foot’s band, Miller was aboard Handsome Dog’s buckboard, headed towards the White Clay Ghost Dance camps. It had been an uneasy evening at the Agency, with Lakota riding in and soldiers marching out. In his mind, Miller went over his last argument with Wallace, putting in every word he should have said. He had let Wallace lord over him, like a High Church Scot preaching to a poor, blind Quaker. The Ghost Dance was going to be broken. Yellow Legs was marked for arrest, just as Sitting Bull and Big Foot had been. Miller couldn’t sway Wallace or the army, but he was going to warn Yellow Legs.

  The buckboard bounced beneath a bright young winter sun, but even Miller could smell snow in the air. When the first booming came from the east, Miller thought it might be thunder and said as much to Handsome Dog.

  The Metal Breast kept his face fixed on the road ahead. “It is wagon guns.”

  Miller made no reply. He wasn’t ready for another argument, though he knew it couldn’t be cannon.

  As they topped a rise, they saw riders and ponies streaming out of the White Clay camps. Some were headed south, toward the Agency; others were moving east, over the hills. All of them were armed, carrying more guns than Miller thought the Indians owned.

  Spinning wheels rolled them right into camp. To Miller, it seemed he was sitting in an open-air theater, watching some strange show. Barren hills appeared ahead and disappeared behind. Armed riders in feathered buckskins flicked past. The camp grew into a tapestry of bare tree limbs, dirty brown tipis, and pine-bough shelters. Blue camp smoke rose from the lodges, where blanketed women worked and talked. Children, skinny dogs, and surly brown faces looked up at him. As long as the buckboard was moving, Miller felt removed and immune. When the buckboard stopped before Yellow Legs’s lodge, hard hands seized him and Handsome Dog, pulling them both down to solid ground.

  Burnt Thighs pinned their arms. An angry Bad Face began yelling at them in Lakota, waving a razor-edged skinning knife.

  The knife flicked out, slicing the metal badge off Handsome Dog’s blue uniform jacket. “Metal Breast, you killed Sitting Bull. Your Wasichu friends are killing Big Foot’s people.”

  The Burnt Thighs pulled the jacket back; the next flick of the knife drew blood.

  Handsome Dog laughed. “Was that supposed to hurt? Bad Faces and Burnt Thighs are women.”

  The Bad Face lashed out with his knife, leaving a long strip of flesh hanging from Handsome Dog’s chest. “That’s for serving the Wasichu so well.” He thrust his chin towards Miller. “We’re going to skin you and give you a Wasichu skin to wear.”

  The Burnt Thighs began to strip Miller’s clothes off, and Handsome Dog laughed again. “Do it, and you will still be women. I serve the Wasichu, but have the Bad Faces done better? Where was Red Cloud when we rubbed out Long Hair on the Greasy Grass?”

  Twisting round, he sneered at the Burnt Thighs who were holding him. “Where was Spotted Tail when we rubbed out Long Hair? Your chiefs were cowering on the ag
encies, hiding among their women and eating Wasichu cattle.”

  The Bad Face held his blade in Handsome Dog’s face. “You hope to make me mad, make me kill you quickly.” He jabbed the blade at Miller. “Your words will be different when you wear this Wasichu’s skin.”

  The tipi entrance opened behind the Bad Face, and Miller barely recognized the man who emerged. It was Yellow Legs, his face covered with paint and half-hidden beneath a war bonnet of black-tipped eagle feathers. He wore his white ghost shirt, with the Moon, Morning Star, and Magpie. Like Wallace had said, his leggings were made from cavalry pants, seat and crotch cut out, a yellow stripe running down each blue leg. His paint repeated those colors—yellow from chin to forehead, a blue band across his eyes. His arms craddled the Henry rifle, hung with still more black-tipped feathers.

  He shook this feathered rifle in their faces. “Bad Faces and Burnt Thighs, why are you here? Black Elk has gone to face the Wasichu wagon guns with only his Medicine Bow. Can you be as brave with rifles?”

  Silence fell like a heavy snow. They could plainly hear the dull roll of gunfire from Wounded Knee, like far-off pounding on buffalo-hide drums.

  He pointed the rifle at Handsome Dog and Miller. “Must you have guns and knives to face one unarmed Metal Breast and the teacher who came only to bring us the wisdom of the Wasichu?”

  The Burnt Thighs let go their grip. Handsome Dog’s grin turned smug.

  “These are my guests.” Yellow Legs spoke straight at the Bad Face. “Go count coup at Wounded Knee, and we will all come listen to your kill talk.”

  Miller hadn’t made out a single word, but when Yellow Legs stepped aside, he was delighted to have Handsome Dog hustle him into the gloomy tipi. Stays Behind emerged from the shadows, setting bowls of buffalo meat and chokecherry mush before them. Her calico dress shone like sunset in the firelight, and her hair part was painted to match it. She ignored her brother-in-law and greeted Miller with a shy grin. Both men ate quickly, anxious to make themselves guests in deed as well as word.