by Allen Steele
All the while, Carlos remained quiet. At first he interjected a question or comment now and then—“So what happened then?” “Really?” “And did he…?”—until eventually he became silent altogether, still giving Reese his audience, yet letting his gaze drift across the savannah stretching out around them. Henry couldn’t tell whether he was actually listening or simply pretending, but his reticence made Henry uneasy in a way he couldn’t quite fathom.
Shortly after midday they reached a fork where Sand Creek branched off into a tributary. By then the sun was blazing hot; they had been paddling for over four hours, so they lashed their boats together and dropped anchor near the point. While they lunched on the sandwiches Carrie had sent with them, Jim dug out an orbital map of New Florida and stretched it across the gunnels. Studying it, they saw that the tributary split off to the southeast for about twenty miles before meandering westward again to rejoin Sand Creek just south of the long, skinny sandbar formed by the two streams. Past the confluence, the creek gradually became wider until it joined East Channel, one of the two major rivers that bordered New Florida and eventually flowed into the Great Equatorial River.
No one had yet explored this tributary; it didn’t even have a name on the map. Perhaps that was what prompted Reese to insist that they go down it instead of continuing down Sand Creek, even though it would take them farther away from Liberty. Since they hadn’t yet spotted any signs of boids, he argued, it made sense for them to explore the tributary, but Henry thought he had another motive. Maybe he was only curious, or perhaps it simply appealed to his vanity to name a stream after himself.
“Let’s try it out,” Carlos said. “If we don’t find anything, we can always paddle back to where we started, right?”
This was the first time he had said much of anything. After listening to Reese talk about himself for four straight hours, one would have thought he’d be aching for decent conversation. Instead he sat quietly in the bow of his kayak, hunched over his paddle as he stared at the grasslands. The sun must be getting to him, Henry thought. Either that, or he’s regretting his decision to go on the trip. Henry knew he certainly was.
“No, no.” Gill shook his head as he talked around a mouthful of potato salad sandwich. “If we go that way, I don’t want to come back until we’ve reached the end.” He brushed the crumbs off his hands, then jabbed a finger at the map. “If we need to, we can pull off and make camp for the night, but I want to see where this takes us.”
Once again Henry wondered how Gill had become the de facto leader of this expedition. Probably because he was so accustomed to command, he automatically assumed it whenever possible. Since he hadn’t been elected to the Council, this was his way of asserting himself. Bernie mumbled something about trying to get back home before sunset, but Jim nodded as if surrendering himself to the inevitable. Neither Lew nor Henry said anything. For better or worse, this was Reese’s trip; the rest of them were just along for the ride.
The tributary wasn’t like Sand Creek. After the first mile, its banks became so narrow that they had to paddle single file, so shallow that they could easily touch bottom with their oars. Dense walls of spider bush crowded in upon the kayaks from all sides, their roots extending into the stream like veins, their branches arching overhead like a tangled canopy, casting angular shadows across the water. They had entered a swamp darker and more forbidding than the sun-drenched grasslands they’d left behind, and it wasn’t long before Henry was certain that they had taken a wrong turn.
Yet Gill insisted that they continue, even after Bernie and Lew begged him to reconsider. He had stopped bragging about his exploits; now his eyes prowled the stream banks, and Henry noticed that he had shifted his rifle between his knees, where he could reach it more quickly. Henry soon found himself doing the same.
They were about three miles downstream when they came upon a small clearing on the left, a place where the spider bush parted almost like a doorway. As he and Carlos rowed closer, Gill suddenly raised a hand, then silently pointed to the stream bank. Lew and Henry looked at each other, then slowly paddled up alongside the other two kayaks, carefully sliding next to Jim and Bernie.
Sourgrass grew in the clearing, yet it lay low along the ground, as if something large had recently passed through, pushing down the grass on its way to the water. Gill used his paddle to point to the water’s edge, and Henry saw what he had spotted: a distinctive three-clawed impression in the mud.
“This is it,” Gill whispered. “Here’s where we’ll find ’em.”
Once they beached the kayaks and gathered the rifles, the hunters set out on foot through the opening in the spider brush, following the trail of trampled grass left by the boid. It led them out of the brush and into a broad, open meadow surrounded by groves of blackwood and faux birch. On either side of the narrow trail the sourgrass grew shoulder high, so dense that they could barely see through it. The meadow was humid in the midafternoon sun, hot as a furnace and still as a painting.
They marched two abreast down the trail, clutching their guns to their chests, trying their best to remain quiet. It wasn’t easy; the grass crunched softly beneath their boots with each step they took, and Bernie’s canteen sloshed and clanked on his belt until Gill irritably motioned for him to take it off and leave it behind. Gill and Jim were in the lead, with Carlos and Bernie trailing them; as before, Lew and Henry were in the rear, not an enviable position since boids were sometimes known to attack from behind. Henry frequently glanced over his shoulder, trying to watch every corner of the meadow at once.
Soon the stream could no longer be easily discerned, and even the path itself seemed to be disappearing behind them. A warm breeze drifted through the meadow, wafting through the grass in a way that suggested movement. Sweat oozed down Henry’s forehead, stinging the corners of his eyes, tasting sour on his lips. But they were almost halfway through the meadow; if they could only reach the far end, he prayed, perhaps Gill would give up, and they could return to the safety of the kayaks.
He glanced at Lew; without having to ask, he knew that his partner had the same thought. It was then that it occurred to him that everything was much too quiet. No swoops, no swampers, no creek cats…nothing moved except the wind in the grass.
And them.
Reese stopped. He raised a hand, bringing the column to a halt, then he crouched on his hips, studying something he had found on the trail. Jim glanced around, then bent over to look at the same thing. Although Henry couldn’t see what it was, he intuitively knew what they had found: a pile of boid scat, the ropy brown turds sometimes found just outside town. The wind shifted a little just then, and he picked up a heavy fecal scent. The droppings were fresh.
There was something else, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Again, Henry looked all around, searching for any movement within the meadow. Everything lay still. The breeze died, and now nothing stirred the high curtains of grass, yet there was a prickling at the nape of his neck. The atavistic sensation of being watched, studied…
Reese stood up, beckoned for them to continue onward. As he and Jim started walking again, Carlos glanced over his shoulder at Henry. There was a boyish grin on Carlos’s face, but Henry saw fear deep within his eyes, and that was when the boid attacked.
The boid had been lurking only a few meters away, keeping breathlessly still, perfectly camouflaged within the tall grass. Perhaps it had been stalking them ever since they entered the meadow. The moment it saw that their guard was relaxed, if only for a second, it moved in for the kill.
Jim Levin was dead before he knew it. He heard a swift motion to his right side, whipped around just as Bernie yelled, and the creature was upon him. Its massive orange beak darted forward on its long neck, snapped and twisted in one swift movement. Henry caught a glimpse of a large lump flying off into the tall grass. He didn’t realize that it was Jim’s head until it hit the ground.
The next few seconds became minutes, as if time itself had dilated. In those mo
ments, Henry saw:
The boid in the middle of the path: an enormous, flightless avian, like a pale yellow ostrich crossed with a small dinosaur, standing upright on long backward-jointed legs, still holding Jim’s decapitated corpse in its slender, winglike arms. Six feet and two hundred pounds of instant death.
Reese, somehow having managed to dash past the boid, in a perfect position to fire, yet standing stock-still, staring at the creature, rifle frozen in his hands.
Bernie, on his hands and knees, scrabbling for his gun where he had dropped it, screaming in terror as the boid dropped his friend’s body and turned its enormous eyes toward him.
Carlos, standing his ground in the middle of the path, bringing up his rife, settling its stock against his shoulder, squeezing off a round that went wild.
The boid, startled by the flash-bang of the shot, stopping in midcharge, its bloodstained beak open as if in dumbfounded surprise.
Bernie was still screaming, and Henry was just beginning to raise his own gun, when Carlos fired again. Two shots, three, four…at least two of them missed, but Henry saw bits of orange bone splinter from the boid’s beak and small feathers spray from its body.
The boid staggered backward, making that awful screech Henry had heard only the night before.
Just behind him, Lew fired, his gun so close to Henry’s right ear that he was deafened. Henry couldn’t tell whether he missed or hit, but it was enough to make the boid change its mind.
Abandoning Jim’s body, it turned and began loping back down the path…
Straight for Gill.
Reese saw the boid coming. He was at least twelve feet away, and he had his gun half-raised to his shoulder. The boid was at full charge, but it was wounded and in a panic. He had enough time to empty his magazine into the creature, at point-blank range.
But he didn’t.
He remained locked in place, his mouth open, even as the boid descended upon him.
And in last few moments of slow time, Carlos lowered his rifle.
“Shoot!” Henry yelled. “Carlos, shoot…!”
The boid lowered its head, snagged Gill within its beak. Reese screamed once, a terrible howl abruptly cut short a half second later as the creature, dragging his body with it, plunged back into tall grass.
As quickly as the boid had appeared, it vanished.
The hunting party made it back to Liberty a few hours after sundown. The clouds had moved in again, so it was in a cold, dark drizzle that they rowed the last few miles up Sand Creek. The most welcome sight of Henry’s life were the lights of town as they rounded the last bend, but even then they didn’t ease up from the paddles. Behind them, the boids were making their nocturnal cries, as if reasserting their territory.
Someone had spotted the kayaks as they approached town; a small crowd stood waiting for them at the boat dock. They watched in stunned silence as Jim Levin’s corpse, wrapped in a bloodstained sleeping bag, was unloaded from the bow of Bernie’s kayak. Henry saw Wendy Gunther push through the mob; she flung her arms around Carlos, who stood alone, with a rifle in one hand. Then Henry turned away; he joined Bernie and Lew as they went to the Levin home to tell Jim’s wife and kids what had happened.
At least Jim was lucky to have a grave. Although his companions managed to bring Levin’s remains back to Liberty, Gill’s body was never found; the boid had taken its victim away into the grass. Yet few in Liberty felt much remorse over his death. Reese had been a bully; everyone knew that. He had badgered the others into taking the trip, then turned coward when he had to walk the talk. Coyote was a hard world; humans had named it after a trickster demigod, and you can’t lie to the gods and expect to live.
For a time, Henry believed that was the lesson Carlos had learned.
Gill Reese had intended for Carlos to become a man that day; perhaps the boy had taken a step in that direction. Yet although Henry would share many drinks with Carlos at the Cantina, never once did he ask why he’d lowered his gun at that critical moment on Levin Creek.
He never asked, and Carlos never told him.
Part Six
ACROSS THE EASTERN DIVIDE
(from the memoirs of Wendy Gunther)
Once upon a time, when I was young and stupid, my friends and I ran away from home. For reasons that seemed right at the time but in fact were utterly selfish, we stole a couple of canoes and, with little idea of where we going or what we were getting ourselves into, set out to explore the world. It was the great adventure of my life, but it came at the cost of someone else’s, and for that I’ve never forgiven myself.
Nor has anyone forgotten what we did. It’s become as much a part of the colony’s history as the Alabama’s escape from Earth or Leslie Gillis’s lonesome ordeal or even First Landing itself. I’m much older now—the other day I discovered my first grey hair, which I yanked before my mate noticed—and still I find myself telling the story. Once every year or so, a teacher will ask me to come speak to her class. Captain Lee passed away long ago, and although quite a few other members of the original expedition are still alive, the kids always want to hear about the trip I made when I wasn’t much older than they are now. Sometimes I’ve had to correct things they’ve heard, yet I’ve never told the entire story, not only because I clean things up a bit for adolescent ears, but also because the truth hurts too much.
As a result, fiction has caulked the gaps left open by the absence of fact. Some of these untruths are rather amusing—for example, that the catwhale swallowed me whole, only to spit me out again because I was indigestible—and I might have been content to let these fabrications pass if only because tall tales are sometimes more interesting than reality. But the last time I told the story, a girl not much younger than I had been raised her hand and asked—very shyly, and with some embarrassment—whether it was true a baby had been born during the trip, and whether it was mine.
I told her the truth, but by the same token I also lied, and somehow I managed to get through the rest of the hour without revealing my emotions. When I was done, the students clapped their hands, and their teacher thanked me for giving them my time. I nodded, picked up my shawl and cap, and excused myself, but once I was outside the schoolhouse I slumped on the front steps and broke down in tears.
I thought I was alone, but the classroom window was unshuttered. When I happened to look up, I saw the girl who had asked the question staring out at me. Her hair was brown, while mine is ash blond, and she was four and half by LeMarean calendar whereas I had been just a few months past five—fourteen and sixteen respectively, by Gregorian reckoning—but nonetheless she could have been my mirror image the day I told Carlos that I was ready to run away from Liberty. And she knew I had lied; her eyes told me so just before she turned her back to me.
No one should repeat the mistakes I’ve made. Not that girl, nor innocent boys like Carlos, Chris, David, and Barry. I’ve kept my secrets for too long already; if I can’t say them aloud, then perhaps the least I can do is commit them to paper.
This is our story. It began the day I learned I was pregnant.
I thought I had the flu.
The symptoms were all there: high temperature, weakness in my joints and muscles, loss of appetite, vomiting after every meal. Wanting to pee all the time. No sinus congestion or coughing up phlegm, but that didn’t mean anything; although everyone had been inoculated against terrestrial diseases before coming aboard the Alabama, the fact that we spent most of our time outdoors guaranteed that we’d get sick sooner or later. The odd part was that I was first person in the colony to have come down with the flu; the bug didn’t naturally exist on Coyote, and since the Alabama had been decontaminated before it left Earth, there was little chance that we could have brought it with us.
Kuniko put me on antivirals and sent me to bed, then asked the Gearys to relieve me from farm chores for a few days. One of the benefits of having a doctor as an adoptive mother is that you’re always going to be her first priority. Unfortunately, it also works
the other way; when it was obvious that drugs weren’t helping much, Kuniko gave me a complete physical. She was afraid that I might have contracted some heretofore unknown virus; several colonists had already come down with ring disease after being bitten by swampers, and as the colony’s chief physician she lived in constant fear of an untreatable epidemic sweeping through Liberty. So she put me through a full workout, including urine analysis, then she disappeared into the infirmary she had set up in back of the four-room log cabin we shared.
Although I had already thrown up breakfast, I was beginning to want lunch—and for the damnedest reason, I had a craving for creek crab stew, which no one in their right mind would eat unless they were on the verge of starvation—when Kuniko came to my room. I knew something was wrong when she shut the door and checked the windows before she sat down on the end of my bed. The good news was that I wasn’t ill. The bad news was my condition would persist for the next seven to eight Earth months.
“Oh,” I said. That was the only thing I could say. It was as if my mind was a pad and someone had just erased its screen: total blank. “Umm…are you sure?”
Dumb question. “Oh, well…sure, I could be mistaken. By the way, did I ever tell you that I cheated my way through med school?” No trace of amusement in her eyes; she wasn’t playing games with me today. “Damn it, Wendy…”
“I’m sorry.” Numb all over, I stared down at the rough planks of the floor. “I didn’t know…I mean, I didn’t think it would…oh, Jesus…”
“Unless we’re talking about immaculate conception, then you better find someone else to blame.” She sighed. “Who’s the father?”
I didn’t answer, yet my hands involuntarily clenched and knotted the T-shirt I was wearing. It was much too large for me, and I only wore it to bed. It belonged to Carlos, but I’d swiped it from the boathouse when he wasn’t looking. I never washed it, so it smelled like him, and sleeping in it felt like being in his arms. Although Kuniko knew it wasn’t one of my own T-shirts, she had never asked how I’d obtained it. She probably knew anyway, and now she was doubtless kicking herself for giving me so much freedom.