The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  Venus, Gagarin Continent—south of Jamestown Extraterritorial Zone

  The night would be cold, but at noontime in the canyon the late-summer heat was dense enough to cut, trapped by the fifty-foot walls of dark rock on either side. Beech trees lined the edges of the cliffs, and arched over the narrow slit in the rock; bright sunlight filtered through the drying fall leaves and turned daylight into a green-gold twilit shade; enough of the leaves had fallen to make gold drifts along the banks, and more floated downstream past the feet of their churr.

  The stream was low now, trickling ankle-deep over brown polished rock, but you could see that the winter torrents stretched halfway to the top of the cliffs and across the full twenty-yard width of this water-cut groove in the earth. The churr of the five riders were panting a little, tossing their shaggy blocky heads and stopping frequently to lap from pools; the beasts smelled hot and musky, like overworked dogs, and they panted with tongues the size of dish towels. Now and then one would snap at a passing insect with a wet chomp! like a door slamming.

  The five riders kept going even when they took swigs from their canteens or gnawed biscuit and dried fruit. Three were Terrans in outfits of camouflaged parachute cloth, and two were hunters of the Kudlak tribe in straw hats like Earth's Chinese coolie type and knee-length leather pants held up by cross-belted suspenders. The Venusian tribesmen had quivers over their backs and short recurved bows made of laminated shamboo and tharg-horn in their fists, with steel trade-knives at their belts; the Earthlings carried their rifles across their saddlebows. Humans and churr all looked tired and worn, sweat cutting runnels in the dust on faces, brown fur matted and dusty.

  Marc blew out a long sigh of relief and blinked in the bright sunlight as they came out into a broad open circle where a sinkhole had collapsed long ago.

  "I was beginning to doubt my memory," he said thankfully. "Mais, here we are."

  The depression was a mile or so across, an irregular oval with walls that were near-vertical in parts, in others collapsed into steep scree covered in thorny bushes. The little river spread more broadly here, in wide, shallow pools edged with rushes; those were dry with autumn, their tops shedding white seed-fluff that mingled with insects whose wings glittered gaudy or iridescent, many of them six inches across. The largest of all were the dragonfly-like predators; those buzzed like miniature crop dusters as they swooped, feeding, in lethal arcs. Birds larger still had been taking all of them impartially; they exploded upward in a multicolored swarm as the humans came into view, and the noise level dropped. Cliffsides were streaked with droppings, the guano adding an ammonia pungency to the air and showing where rookeries were in the spring, but the big, shaggy twig-bundles of nests were unoccupied right now.

  Cynthia Whitlock pushed back her sweat-stained bush hat and glanced at Marc sharply. "Did we just escape something?" she asked.

  "Not exactly," he said, scanning for the good campsite he remembered from his previous visit.

  There were a couple of running springs around the edge of the sinkhole even this late in the year, each marked by a clump of trees and bright green grass and bush. The best was at the top of a short rise, on a knee of rock more than head-height above the level floor. A steady trickle of water as thick through as a man's wrist fell down into a pool before draining farther down, providing clean water and a ready-made shower. The cliff overhead was steep, inclined inward towards the base, which would give shade. Just beyond was a section that had collapsed into a steep slope, which gave a route out if necessary.

  "In other words, yes, there was something to worry about," Christopher Blair said dryly. "Was that why you've been pushing us so hard?"

  Marc shrugged. "Weh. Thing is, it's getting on towards the winter rainy season. That usually starts with cloudbursts up in the hills before the lowlands get any rain. Flash floods can come down this way fast."

  Cynthia Whitlock had trained as a geologist. She looked at the way the rock had been gouged by water and nodded.

  Zhown nodded, too, as he dismounted, looking around. "Toob! Toob!" he said, pointing at the canyon they'd just left, then around at the sinkhole and up at the cliffs around it. "Bad, much bad in narrow place if rains come. Better here. Better still if we go up there."

  Blair raised one blond brow. "You might have mentioned that before we spent two days in a bloody wadi with no way out, old chap," he said to Marc.

  "Dr. Feldman and Cynthia thought it was important to get those samples. So it was worth the risk to save a week's travel time," Marc retorted. "I was keeping an eye out for clouds, and I knew we'd reach this opening today. Otherwise we'd have had to wait until the next dry season."

  I like Cynthia, Marc thought. Hell, I like Zhown and Colrin. Blair… I don't know exactly why I don't like him. Well, weh, I do know why, but it's not just that.

  There wasn't any flotsam on the knee of rock, and there was enough level ground for themselves and their beasts as they set about making camp. That didn't take much time. They unsaddled and hobbled the riding-churr, unloaded the four pack-churr and hobbled them, and turned them all loose to browse. At sundown they'd give the churr some of the smelly, oilseed-oats-dried-offal pellets and scraps. Churr would eat nearly anything, and until then they'd have plenty of browsing around the spring-fed pools and along the ponds.

  With rain unlikely the humans didn't need a tent, and setting out bedrolls took only a moment. Last spring's floods had left plenty of deadwood around the perimeter of the sinkhole, and they soon had a campfire going. Colrin put a pot of water on to boil, and started stringing lumps of meat from a small antelope they'd shot earlier today on skewers, along with chunks of onion from a sack they had with them, then set the meat and onions in a plastic basin and poured beer, chopped garlic, and ground eesum spice in with them. The kebabs, some it-might-as-well-be-rice and dried vegetables and fruit would make a good enough meal. They'd also dug a couple of sacks' worth of tubers from a vine that grew along sandy riverbanks. Something very close to it was a cultivated crop called a breadnut. The tame variety was about the size of a fist, while the wild ones were the size of walnuts, but both tasted a lot like potatoes with a sweetish overtone when roasted in the embers.

  After their meal, they got to work, each group in its own way. The two native hunter-guides unlimbered their horn-and-shamboo bows and started shooting at stumps and logs. Archery was new to them, introduced by the Earthlings—nobody on Venus had invented the bow yet, as far as they could tell—and so was riding on a churr's back rather than in a chariot behind it, but they'd taken to both like Russians to strong drink, and practiced relentlessly. It was something they understood and could copy themselves, and it was a tactful way for the Earthlings to refuse to sell them guns.

  The Earthings got out their rock hammers and sample boxes.

  "Is Zhown and Colrin's Kartahownian as lousy as it sounds to me?" Cynthia asked, as they walked towards the southern rim of the sinkhole.

  The hills rose steeply there, several hundred feet; the knife-edged cleft where uncounted seasons had sliced through the rock showed bands in colors from fawn through dull yellow to black. Marc kept up a wary scan and the rifle in the crook of his arm ready to go, which wasn't easy as the footing changed from rock and mud to stream-smoothed rock alone. The stones rattled under the tough ceratopsian-hide soles of their boots.

  "It sure is," Marc said. "It's not their native language, either, and some of the sounds are hard for them."

  "It's related," Blair cut in "but distantly, much the way English is to Russian."

  "Weh," Marc agreed. "A few of them learn Kartahownian so they can trade with the river valley people, but not that many. They're herders and hunters, mainly."

  Blair stopped. "And how are their relations with the city?"

  The Englishman had spent a lot of time in Kartahown's territory since he'd arrived, which was to be expected of a linguist and anthropologist.

  Marc's duties as a Ranger took him more among the wild peoples. With a
shrug, he replied, "Like bedouin or Mongols in the old days back on Earth. Sometimes they trade or work as caravan guards and suchlike; sometimes they raid and steal stuff; sometimes they and the sedentary peoples fight big-time. There's some intermarriage, too, along the edges."

  "That's roughly what I thought. Whose idea was it to teach them how to make bows and ride?" Blair asked, flushing under his tan. "Is someone trying to re-create Genghis Khan?"

  Cynthia looked at Marc, too. He shrugged again.

  "The high command sets the policy—we've given the city-folk a lot of new ideas, too. Personally, I approve. The nomads can be almighty rough, but they need an equalizer. To the city-folk here you don't have any rights unless you're a free Kartahownian or a damned powerful foreigner. They think the nomads are monkeys from the wilds and treat them like dirt if they can get away with it."

  "Most of this planet is pre-agricultural, not even as far along as the Neolithic," the Englishman snapped. "Civilization is a new and fragile thing here. It can't take chances."

  Marc grinned innocently. "Guess us Americans just can't help sympathizing with a bunch of wild-ass cowboys," he said. "Even if they are wearing lederhosen."

  Cynthia snorted laughter. Marc bowed, and then turned to the Englishman. "Scissors-paper-rock for who keeps first watch?"

  They both turned their backs on Cynthia. Now, what do I think Mr. Bloody Blair will pick?'he mused. That needed only a moment's consideration: He flattened his hand.

  "Marc has paper; Chris has rock," Cynthia said, her voice carefully neutral. "Let's get going."

  Marc nodded easily to both of them as he and Cynthia leaned their rifles carefully against a boulder, keeping his smile from getting too broad. Blair had certain things going for him; he was smart and handsome and charming and well educated and hardworking and smooth. His big drawback was being an arrogant son of a bitch, of course.

  But you can't fault his bushcraft, the Cajun acknowledged reluctantly. That's a good position and he's keeping his eyes open.

  Marc and the scientist went to work. The banded rock stretched a hundred and fifty feet above them, sheer except for a couple of cracks and fissures. They worked their way up cautiously, driving pitons deep with blows of the blunt hammer sides of their picks, testing them carefully, and then reeving the knotted climbing rope through the spring-loaded loops on the ends. After an hour they had a secure pathway from top to bottom for someone who knew his or her way around a rock face, which they both did. Marc did wish he had goggles, since the limestone they were working on tended to chip and powder, but he didn't want to restrict his peripheral vision. He felt even better about that when something tugged at the corner of his eye and he lashed out with the sharp end of the pick. There was a crunch and a rattle and he held up a scorpion the size of a small bread plate on the point. The stinger on the end of its tail lashed around in dying reflex, and Marc jerked back to avoid a drop of the poison.

  Cynthia looked at it from her perch about fifteen feet away. "I think I recognize that from the briefing you guys put on. Is it the one whose venom is deadly in thirty seconds?"

  "No, that's the little black one, worse than a black mamba back on Earth. These big ones, it's more like a minute or even two. You've only got about thirty seconds to inject the antidote, though."

  "Thank God there is one!" She shuddered slightly. "I'm not equipped to blanch, but consider it done."

  "I am so equipped, and I'm doing it!" Blair called from the ground. "This ecosystem is simply far too energetic for my peace of mind!"

  After that, the afternoon went quickly and relatively peacefully. Rock-climbing could be fun, if you knew what you were doing, although dangerous wildlife made it a little more nerve-wracking than Marc really liked. Mostly he went where the scientist sent him and chipped out what she wanted him to. That could be real work when she wanted a chunk as large as his head, but the samples were mostly smaller. Every hour or so, Blair spelled him; Cynthia quelled his attempts at lighthearted repartee. At last the thirty-hour day drew to a close, and they laid the samples out on a tarp in the open where the sunlight still reached, away from the shadows pooled at the base of the cliff; the limestone itself had a yellow tint, like the rock that built Jerusalem.

  Cynthia peered at the rock samples as if they should be subject to a pooper-scooper law; Marc had seen her getting more and more intent—and discontented—all afternoon.

  "What's the problem?" he asked.

  She made a hissing noise. "I'm starting to get really annoyed. I'm going to start sounding like Sam Feldman, pretty soon."

  "Oh, I doubt it," Marc said. "You'd have to have five o'clock shadow to make that scratchy sound Doc does when he rubs his chin."

  Cynthia gave a quick, unwilling grin. "Point. Okay, I'm getting frustrated like he was. Look at that cliff. You were right—good strata. Nice marine sedimentary limestone, uplifted when those mountains south of here got going."

  Thirty miles south of Jamestown, the land rose from the coastal plain into these rolling hills, divided by occasional flattish valleys, oak savannah gradually turning into low mountains forested with beech, then pine and fir, and then becoming alpine meadows. The hills got steeper still south of that, and the rivers cut into them in spectacular fashion. The current theory was that Venus had bigger mountains because the continental plates were thinner and the magma beneath hotter and more liquid. Plates slipped around faster and collided harder.

  "Reminds me a bit of the Dordogne country," Blair said.

  "Or the Kentucky pennyroyal," Marc answered.

  "Yup, similar in both cases. Except for the mountains, of course."

  Some of the tremendous peaks that floated blue against the horizon had snow half the year. On Venus that meant high mountains; only the Mother River pierced them anywhere near here, the one that Kartahown sat on.

  "Okay," Cynthia continued, "so first off, this is the best undisturbed but sufficiently exposed set we've got so far. I'd guess it covers, oh, one to two hundred million years. Down to the Jurassic in Earth terms. Plenty of fossils just like you said. As good as we're going to get until we get up into the mountains or the Eastbloc start sharing their data from their base."

  "One would be ill-advised to hold one's breath waiting for that," Blair said. "Amazing how selfishly capitalistic those Johnnies can be, since they decided, quote, It is glorious to get rich, unquote."

  "And they're still paranoid as hell," Marc added.

  Cynthia nodded. "Yeah, most of the old bad features and a lot of new ones. So the big news is that this pretty stratigraphy has got the same things we've been finding everywhere, only all together and less ambiguous."

  She pointed at a dark layer six inches to a foot thick at the bottom of the cliff. Below that the stone was also dark, but denser-grained and shiny.

  "There it is."

  "Sam's famous organic boundary layer?" Marc said.

  "Yeah. One hundred fifty to two hundred million years ago, as far as we can tell, you get this layer everywhere that was underwater then. Basically it's a sort of quasi-coal made of solid blue-green and red algae and plankton, coccolithophorids-sort-of; there's nothing quite like it on Earth. It's like someone dropped the first ones into a planetary-sized nutrient bath to watch 'em go fizz't Then you get massive limestone—limestone's usually a biological product, and this sure is, calcium carbonate with some phosphate, lots of seashells. The isotopes look like the atmosphere was anaerobic at the beginning of these strata, mostly CO2 and thick, nitrogen only a trace element, but then it gets much more Earth-like, as if biological action suddenly pumped the carbon out of the atmosphere and oxygen into it. It happened fast, couple of million years tops, and when it was over, this planet had an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere pretty much the way it does now, only with even more oxygen. That's an eyeblink. Then a little bit up from the atmospheric transition phase, as soon as there's enough oxygen around, you get—"

  She pointed at a fossil. It was about a foot long and looked roughly like
a curled nautilus.

  "You get things like that. It's an ammonite, near as I can tell identical to a couple of the Earthly varieties from the Sinemurian strata of the Jurassic, two hundred million years old. No antecedents, no equivalent of the Triassic or the Burgess Shales, suddenly you go from single-celled organisms, mostly plants, to stuff like ammonites and"—her hammer pointed at another shape—"belemnite cephalopods and fully developed teleosts, fish with bony skeletons and jaws. That one there looks like a shark. And corals. And dammit—"

  They both chuckled at her Feldman imitation.

  "—I think that's part of the skull of a marine crocodile. Hell, for all we know there are still ammonites around on Venus. How could we tell? All we've seen is a thin sliver of what's equivalent to Hudson's Bay, and this planet has relatively more ocean than Earth does."

  Blair grinned. "There are certainly some very large marine reptiles out there, crocodilians included," he said. "That's why the Kartahownians are so precocious with their catapults. I wouldn't care to go sailing in these waters without one!"

  Marc nodded. "Point," he said unwillingly.

  "And that's how it goes, all the way up," Cynthia said, swinging the hammer up to where the cliff tops were catching the sunset. "Suddenly you get new species, every couple of million years, very, very similar to critters from Earth. Some of them persist; some don't. Some of the older ones persist; some don't; some evolve into new types… same with the land fossils. We've established some tentative sequences. Sam, Dr. Feldman, has found what looks like a proto-churr, about half the size and much more carnivorous than the modern type. As far as we can tell, the fossil record is as screwy as the contemporary ecology here, with sauropods and saber-tooths and antelopes and hominids all mixed up."