Coyote

by Allen Steele

  She waited a moment, then nodded. “Okay, fine. I think I can guess. For God’s sake, you could have been more careful. I mean, if you had just come to me, I could have prescribed a morning-after. Or at least slipped you a condom for him to…”

  “It wasn’t like that. I mean, it happened so suddenly…”

  Her face darkened. “Did he rape you?”

  “No!” I looked up at her. “I wanted to…I mean, it was my…what I’m trying to say is…”

  “Shh. Relax.” Kuniko took my hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m not blaming you…or him either,” she added, not very convincingly. “These things happen. I just wish you had been a little smarter about it, that’s all.”

  Now I was more ashamed than scared. Kuni was more than my foster mother; she was also my best friend, or at least among the adult members of the colony. She had taken me in when no one else either could or would…and although Liberty suffered shortages of food and replacement parts for high-tech equipment, one thing we had in surplus were orphans.

  Just after the Alabama had reached Coyote, my father died in what everyone had been told was an accident aboard ship while helping Captain Lee close it down prior to parking it in permanent orbit. I always thought it unlikely that Dad would allow himself to get into a position where he’d be blown out into space through an open hatch. That was the beginning of a string of fatalities. A few days later, Carlos’s parents were killed by a boid while salvaging the wreckage of a hab module that had crashed in a swamp near the colony, and last spring Chris and David lost their father during an expedition down Sand Creek; as coincidence would have it, Carlos was among the group of men whom Gill Reese had led into the boonies to hunt boid.

  Colonel Reese hadn’t survived that trip either, but few people grieved his loss; a bully respected only by his fellow URS soldiers, no one made a real effort to recover his body. I was much more sorry that Chris and David no longer had a father; I spent a lot of time at their house, cooking for Sissy Levin and trying to help David recover from the shock of seeing his dad come home in a bloodstained sleeping bag.

  But it was Carlos to whom I had run when the half-empty kayaks returned to Liberty that terrible night, Carlos whom I embraced with tears in my eyes. Until then, he was a just a boy on whom I had an adolescent crush. He’d given me my first kiss, and we’d played the usual touchy-feely games behind the grange after night had fallen and we were sure the blueshirts were getting drunk at the Cantina, but I couldn’t honestly say I loved him. At least not then. But he’d gone down Sand Creek a teenager with a premature fuzz of a mustache on his upper lip, and come back a man who’d stood his ground when the boid that slaughtered Dr. Levin and Colonel Reese turned to attack the rest of the party. When Henry Johnson related the story during the town meeting, I looked across the grange hall to see Carlos sitting on a bench with his eyes on his feet, and that was the moment I realized I was in love with him.

  And then I had gone and done something really stupid…

  “So.” Kuniko had given me a few moments to myself. A teakettle grumbled on the woodstove; she was in the main room, hand-grinding some coffee beans she had roasted a week earlier. “When do you want it done?”

  “Umm…what? Excuse me?”

  “Wendy…” She kept her back to me as she sifted coffee into the filter sieves she had placed above a couple of handmade mugs. “Don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about.” A pause. “Can’t do it today, because I’ve got a couple of appointments, but tomorrow…”

  “What makes you think I want it done?”

  She stopped, peered over her shoulder. “You’re kidding,” she said, and I stared back at her. “You’re not kidding. Oh, God, I hope you’re kidding…”

  I swallowed, shook my head. “Not kidding. I’ve been thinking about this…”

  “What? Five minutes?” The kettle began to whistle; Kuniko impatiently removed it from the stove, put it down on the counter, then turned to me. “Look, besides the fact that you’re practically a child yourself…”

  “I’m not a child!”

  “Sixteen, just short of seventeen. I’m sorry, but that makes you a…” She hesitated. “A kid…and kids shouldn’t have kids.” I started to object, and she raised a finger. “Second, and more important…the Town Council established a one-year moratorium on new births. Remember? Not until after First Landing Day next Uriel…and that’s two months away.”

  She meant two months according to the LeMarean calendar. We were near the middle of Verchiel, the first month of Coyote’s summer; in another forty-five days we’d go into Hamaliel, the second month, which would last ninety-one days, and then enter Uriel, the third month. First Landing Day was Uriel 47; this would mark the first anniversary of the establishment of our colony, approximately three years by Gregorian reckoning.

  Some quick mental calculation. “That’s about six months, Earth-time. If I’ve still got eight months to go…”

  “Seven to eight months. A little more, maybe a little less. Still too early to put a date on it.”

  “Right, whatever…that still means I’ll have the baby after the moratorium is over.” I grinned at her. “See? Everything’s legal.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kuniko crossed her arms. “And what do I tell the Council when you start showing? That I decided to split the difference? Damn it, I’m the town doctor…do you know how irresponsible that makes me look?”

  Although I didn’t understand Kuniko’s predicament back then, I do now. One hundred and four men, women, and children were aboard the Alabama when it left Earth. Minus our casualties, Liberty’s current population stood at ninety-eight persons: barely enough to sustain a colony over the long run, but just the right size to keep everyone fed until we became self-sufficient. We’d made it through our first long winter without losing anyone to starvation, but only because we managed to raise enough fresh vegetables in the greenhouse to supplement a diet of creek crab stew. There hadn’t been many fat people among us when we arrived on Coyote, but the few we had were as skinny as everyone else by the time the snow melted.

  Early that first spring, Captain Lee and a couple of crewmen had flown a shuttle up to Alabama, where they had retrieved from biostasis the embryos of some of our livestock: thirty-six chickens, twenty-four pigs, and twelve dogs. Although they were successfully incubated in noah creches, swoops and creek cats killed almost a dozen chickens and half of the pigs succumbed to ring disease carried by swampers before the dogs were trained to chase the local predators away. As we’d learned from our first attempts at agriculture, introducing Earth animals to Coyote was largely a matter of trial and error.

  The Council voted to delay bringing down the rest of livestock until we learned how to protect them adequately. They had much the same concerns when it came to the question of raising children. True, we needed to increase our population, and the sooner the better…but if a swoop was capable of carrying away a full-grown rooster, what might happen if one spotted an infant momentarily left alone by his or her mother? What if a curious toddler spied a creek cat and tried to pet it? And besides that, could we afford to feed anyone else? Did anyone want to risk losing a child to malnutrition?

  We had a long summer ahead of us: 270 days, almost an entire year by the Gregorian standard. Time enough to tame the land, or at least the few hundred acres we had claimed as our own. By the end of the season, we might be able consider letting colonists have children…if the summer crop had yielded sufficient harvest to get us through the next winter, if we earned how to raise livestock without losing half of them. Until then, having a baby was a chancy proposition no responsible adult would want to accept.

  But I wasn’t an adult. I was teenage girl who had gotten herself knocked up. And I’d witnessed Kuniko perform one abortion already. However much I loved and trusted her, it was one procedure I’d just as soon not go through. And, truth be told, it wasn’t as if I really wanted to have a child. I simply dreaded the prospect of having a drug-induced m
iscarriage. It may be easier and less painful than surgery, but it certainly didn’t seem any less traumatic…

  But that wasn’t what I told her.

  “I know.” I let out my breath, looked down at the floor again. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s got to be done.”

  “I know this is tough. Really, I do.” She hesitated. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had it done myself.”

  I looked up at her again. “You have?” I asked, and she nodded. “How long…?”

  “About four years ago.” She shook her head. “Sorry, mixed that up. Four years subjective time…two years before we left Earth, I mean.”

  That would be sometime in 2068. Over 230 years ago, not factoring in the time-dilation factor; it was still hard for any of us to realize that two and a quarter centuries had passed while we were in biostasis. Abortion was illegal in the United Republic of America; the Fourth Amendment of the Revised Constitution defined life as something that began at conception and guaranteed its protection under any circumstances; subsequent rulings made abortion a criminal offense punishable by life sentences for both the patient and the physician who performed it. If Kuniko once had an abortion, it must have been a terrible risk.

  “I’m sorry, Kuni. I didn’t…”

  “Don’t be sorry.” She shook her head. “No offense taken. You didn’t know.” She picked up the kettle, carefully poured hot water into the sieves. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the room. “But you still don’t have a choice. I wish it could be different, but…”

  “Right.” I got out of bed, pulled off my nightshirt, went over to my clothes trunk. “Umm…I need to take a walk. Think about this, y’know?”

  She looked over her shoulder at me. “You’re not going to tell…?”

  “No, no. I just need to think about this some.” I forced a smile. “You’re right. It’s got to be done. Maybe…I dunno…day after tomorrow? Gimme some time?”

  She nodded. “Sure. I can clear my schedule for then.”

  “Okay. That’s good for me.” I put on a catskin skirt, tied on a halter, shoved my feet into my boots. “Be back soon.”

  “Sure.” Kuniko forgot that she had just made coffee for me. She watched as I headed for the front door. “Wendy…you won’t…?”

  “No one. Promise.”

  Of course it was a lie. I knew that even before I slammed the door shut behind me. She probably did, too.

  When we weren’t in school or doing time on the farm, my friends and I hung around the boathouse. A one-room shack down by Sand Creek where the canoes and kayaks were kept, it had become the place where Liberty’s teenagers tended to congregate. We could swim off the docks or go flycasting for redfish, or just park our butts on the back porch and talk about how bored we were. The younger children, like Carlos’s sister Marie, had their own swimming hole in the shallows about fifty feet away, and by unspoken agreement the adults had ceded the boathouse to the older kids so long as we didn’t cause any trouble. Now and then a blueshirt would come by to make sure that we hadn’t stolen any sourgrass ale from the Cantina, but otherwise we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

  It was a good place to hatch a conspiracy.

  As I marched down the path leading from the back of the grange, my arrival was heralded by a high-pitched bark. The boathouse was just within sight when the small black-and-tan mutt sunning himself on the porch bayed at me, giving his best shot at pretending to be a ferocious watch dog. Give Star some credit; he was very good at assassinating swampers, and even creek cats knew better than to tangle with him. But his white-tipped tail wagged too much whenever he saw a human, and a gentle scratch behind the ears was all it took to turn him into an overgrown puppy. Star accepted his due with a grin and a yawn, then escorted me onto the porch and through the door.

  As I expected, Carlos was inside, working on his project. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone; Chris and Barry were helping him dope the seams of the Orion, while David stirred a clay pot simmering on a hook within the fireplace. The shack reeked of something sour and rancid; I gasped for breath as soon as I opened the door.

  “Something die in here? Open a window or something!”

  “What, you smell something?” Chris glanced at the others. “I don’t smell anything.”

  Barry smiled and shook his head, but David’s nose was pinched between his fingers and his eyes were watery. Fatty tissue from a creek cat; put in a pot and melted over a high flame, it was perfect for waterproofing; once it hardened, it was better than polymer resin, which was in short supply. Quite a few cabin windows and roofs had been sealed this way. But, man, did it stink…

  Bent over the upended hull of the fourteen-foot canoe, Carlos used a swamper-hair brush to spread pink slime across the hand-stitched seams of creek cat hide tightly stretched across a frame carved from faux birch. Completely focused upon his work, he barely seemed to notice my entrance. “Keep the window shut,” he said quietly, not looking up from his work, “and close the door. I don’t want this stuff to cool before I put it on.”

  The shack was hot enough already—David had his shirt off, and the other guys had their sleeves rolled up—but I kept the door open for another moment to let Star in before I shut it.

  “You still sick?” Standing next to Carlos, Chris peered at me from across the canoe. “I mean, you look okay, but…”

  “Yeah, you all right?” Carlos put down the brush, wiped his hands on his trousers. “Maybe you should stay in bed.”

  “I’m fine. Great.” Despite the trapped warmth, I suppressed a shudder as I found a stool near the closed window. “Kuni says it’s just a summer cold. She gave me some medicine.”

  “You’re looking better.” Carlos smiled. “Must have done some good…the medicine, I mean.” He glanced over to check Chris’s progress. “Hey, easy with that stuff. Don’t slather it on or you’ll get air bubbles.”

  Damn. I really needed to talk to Carlos, but not while Chris, David, and Barry were around. Yet telling him that I wanted to speak with him in private would have only generated attention; sure, Carlos would have stepped outside with me, but his buddies would have demanded to know what was going on as soon as he came back. The four of them were tight—particularly Chris and Carlos, who had known each other since they were little kids—and it would be only a matter of time before they got it out of him, even if I swore Carlos to secrecy. Boys are like that; it’s impossible for them to keep their mouths shut.

  And besides, I still didn’t know what to say to Carlos, or even how to say it. Telling him I was pregnant would be hard enough; the fact that I was actually thinking about keeping the child was even worse. Carlos was only sixteen; I might be willing to accept the role of motherhood, but there was no way he was ready to become someone’s daddy. And even if he loved me as much as I loved him—and sometimes I wondered about that—I sincerely doubted marriage was in his plans.

  So I sat quietly and watched them work. The Orion was the second boat they had built; their first, the Pleiades, hung upside down from the rafters. Carlos had named them after the galleons in the Prince Rupurt story, which was appropriate since both canoes were designed for exploration. With cable-controlled aft rudders and sailboards mounted amidships, each was capable of carrying three persons—one in the bow, one in the stern, and a passenger hunched in the middle—along with sufficient supplies for a long journey.

  Building the canoes was Carlos’s idea. He’d studied the wilderness-survival books his late father had brought with them from Earth, and over the course of the winter he had mastered his craft by helping the adults build the two-man kayaks used for fishing trips along New Florida’s maze of creeks and tributaries. I think he secretly wished to emulate the adventures of Prince Rupurt; we’d all read the book Leslie Gillis had penned during the years he spent alone aboard the Alabama, but Carlos was fascinated by the exploits of the exiled heir-to-the-throne as he sought to circumnavigate the planet Gorgon by sail. One might have thought that his participat
ion in Gill Reese’s ill-fated expedition would have quelled his ambitions, yet it only whetted his appetite. My boyfriend didn’t want to settle down and raise a family; he wanted to cross the Eastern Divide and sail down the East Channel to the Great Equatorial River, and his friends had been caught up in his dreams.

  The only problem was that the Town Council wouldn’t let them.

  Oh, they saw no problem with allowing the teenagers build a couple of canoes. Indeed, it had voted in favor of giving them all the supplies they needed to make the Orion and the Pleiades. But Captain Lee let young Mr. Montero know that, once the colony was ready to mount an expedition past the Eastern Divide, it wouldn’t be done by a handful of kids. No one wanted to risk a repeat of the Reese Expedition; the next time a group set out from Liberty to explore Coyote, it would be comprised of scientists and astronauts who had undergone FSA survival training. This was a job for men, not Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

  Perhaps the Council was right. Perhaps it was wrong. In any case, it hadn’t counted upon Becky Thatcher having her say. For even as I sat there, watching my friends put the finishing touches on a boat they had been forbidden to use themselves, I suddenly perceived the ways and means of solving my dilemma.

  “Guys,” I said, “I think we need to bug out of here.”

  No one said anything. Carlos, Chris, and Barry continued to paint the canoe’s underbelly with greasy pink stuff while David stirred the pot. They were so quiet, I didn’t think they’d heard what I just said.

  I checked the window to make sure it was shut, then tried again. “I mean it. I’m serious. It’s time for us to take off on our own. If we’re ever going to…y’know, explore the Equatorial, that sort of thing…we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Don’t wait for permission. Know what I’m saying?”