by Allen Steele
“Uh-uh. Kuni’s still in bed.” I glanced from one canoe to the other. Both were packed almost full. “Umm…which one am I supposed to be in?”
Chris and Barry gave each other an uncertain look, then Chris made a tentative gesture toward the Pleiades. “I can take you in my…”
“You’re coming with me.”
Carlos emerged from the boathouse’s back door. Carrying an automatic rifle in each hand, wearing a catskin vest and with his hair tried back, he resembled a hero from a nineteenth-century frontier novel. Natty Bumpo on Coyote; James Fenimore Cooper would have appreciated the imagery. Perhaps he was self-conscious about what he looked like, because he gave me an abashed grin. “If you don’t mind, that is,” he added.
Right. Like I’d refuse. Perhaps it wasn’t the best moment to do so, but I practically skipped over to fling my arms around him. He couldn’t hug me back, but I didn’t care, nor did I pay much attention to the sullen glare Chris gave us or the disgusted look on David’s face. Only Barry didn’t seem to mind; he stepped forward to relieve Carlos of the guns, then gallantly looked away as he handed one to Chris.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Carlos whispered. Now that his hands were free, he was able to return my embrace. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Neither could I.” And you don’t know the half of it, I silently added.
We held each other until Barry cleared his throat. “Umm…this is really sweet, but unless we shake a leg…”
“Yeah, sure. You’re right.” Carlos let me loose, but not before patting me on the rump. He gestured toward the Orion. “We’ve saved a place for you behind the sailboard. It’ll be a little tight, but you can sit on your bag and…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.” Barry had already tucked my bedroll into a small space directly behind the horizontal plank where the mast eventually would be mounted. It was going to be cramped, but I figured I could lean back and stretch out my legs once we were under way. “Do you want me to paddle or…”
“Uh-uh. Just ride…at least for the time being.” His hand on my waist, Carlos led to the canoe. “You can take over in the bow if Barry gets tired, or help rig the sail once we get past the Divide, but for now all you have to do is…”
“So that’s where you’re going,” Kuniko said.
I looked around, and there she was.
Mothers can surprise you that way, even adoptive ones. When it comes to their kids, they’ve got their own built-in radar, and are sometimes capable of performing amazing feats of telepathy. Just when you think you’ve gotten away from them, you find they’ve been tracking you all along.
My mother died when I was very young, but Kuniko had become enough of a surrogate that I didn’t have to ask how she’d figured out I was planning to run away with my boyfriend. The only surprise was that she managed to follow me to the boathouse without my catching on. Yet the moment I saw her, I knew she had probably stayed awake all night, waiting for me to make my move; the dark circles under her eyes attested to her lack of sleep.
The boys stared at her in dumbfounded shock. Barry and Chris were frozen in place, still holding the rifles in their hands. David looked down at the dock, muttered an obscenity beneath his breath. Carlos was red-faced; his hand quickly slipped away from me, as if he was a shoplifter caught with the merchandise.
“It’s just a little fishing trip…” he began.
“Oh, please.” Kuniko silenced him with a sharp look. “Don’t lie to me. That’s worse than anything else you could do.” Then she spotted the guns, and her eyes narrowed. “Almost worse. You broke into the armory to get those, didn’t you?” No one replied. “Thought so,” she murmured. “You’re going to catch hell for this.”
As she marched onto the dock. David stepped in front of her; one look at Kuniko’s face, and he hastily moved aside. She glanced at the fully loaded canoes, shook her head. “Figured it might be something like this. I heard folks complaining all day about losing stuff. After a while it began to add up.” She glanced at Barry, then Chris. “Both of you dropped by the infirmary yesterday. So which one took off with my spare med kit?”
Neither of them said anything. “It was me, ma’am,” Barry said quietly. “If you want it back, I can dig it out.”
Kuniko glared at him, but didn’t reply. Instead, she turned to Carlos. “You’re usually the leader, so I take it this is your idea. Right?” He nodded. “So what makes you think you’ve got such a great plan?”
“I…I don’t…I mean…”
“Oh, never mind. You’ve already shown that you’re a thief and a liar. Maybe it’s too much for you to be intelligent, too.” She was quiet for a moment. “You know, all I have to do is run back into the town and yell for help. In five minutes I can have twenty people down here. Even if you push off before then, you wouldn’t get very far.”
Carlos opened his mouth, then closed it. It appeared that he knew she was right. There were three two-man kayaks in the boathouse; anyone using them wouldn’t be burdened with all the equipment we were carrying. Even with a good head start, we’d only get a couple of miles downstream before they overtook us. Or at least so it seemed…
“Yes, ma’am,” he admitted. “I know that.” He hesitated. “So why aren’t you…?”
“I didn’t say I would, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t. So be smart and shut up.” Then she turned to me. “C’mon. I want to talk to you.”
My face was burning as Kuniko led me to the boathouse. She didn’t say anything until we were out of earshot from the boys; she opened the back door, ushered me inside, and slammed it behind us.
“What have you told him?” Her face was only a few inches from mine, her voice very low.
“I…I…”
“Dammit, Wendy, what have you told him?”
Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. “I…I haven’t…he doesn’t know.”
“Are you sure? You’re haven’t said…?”
“No! Kuni, I swear, I didn’t tell him anything…!”
“Shh! Keep it down.” She gave me a hard shake. “Okay, I believe you. Now, next question…do you want to have this child? I mean, do you really want to go all the way with this?”
“Yes.” I looked her straight in the eye. “Yes, I do.”
Which was a lie. Or at least it wasn’t the complete truth. The truth of the matter, which I couldn’t admit even to myself, was that I wasn’t sure of anything, save the fact that I didn’t want an abortion.
Yet I knew that if I hedged in any way, Kuniko would make good on her threat to run into town and alert the Prefects. Then we’d all be disgraced; the guys would stand trial for theft and probably spend hard time in the stockade, and the truth would inevitably come out that I was pregnant. Even if I was allowed to give birth—and the Council would have to overturn Colony Law to give me that privilege—I’d doubtless be shunned by the community. Carlos’s reputation would be ruined, and no one would ever again trust Chris, David, or Barry.
I lied to protect my friends because I loved them. At least that’s what I told myself. I may have even believed it.
Kuniko regarded me for a few moments, as if trying to decide for herself whether I was being honest. At last she nodded. “All right, then. I suppose that doesn’t leave me with much choice.”
She walked to the front door. For a second I thought she was about to return to town and alert the blueshirts; I raised my hand to stop her, then stopped when she opened the door, reached outside, and picked up the backpack she had left on the deck just outside. A small bedroll was strapped across the top. Shutting the door behind her, she turned to face me again.
“Seeing that you haven’t told anyone,” she said quietly, “you’re going to need someone to take care of you.”
“Kuniko…!”
She shook her head. “Sorry, kid. That’s the way it is.” Without another glance in my direction, she slung the pack across her shoulder and walked past me to the back door. “Let’s go tell your boyfrie
nd he’s got another passenger.”
Needless to say, Carlos wasn’t pleased. Whatever he’d imagined his grand adventure to be like, it hadn’t involved being chaperoned. There was a brief face-off between him and Kuniko on the dock; he tried to talk her out of it, but Kuniko remained adamant: either she went with us, or I would return to the town with her, and she’d alert the Prefects. As with me, she refused to give him any other options.
By then the sun was coming up. We didn’t have much time left. Carlos cast me a sullen glare, then looked back at Kuniko. “Okay, whatever,” he murmured, and impatiently motioned toward the Pleiades. “You’ll ride with Chris and David.”
“Thank you.” Kuniko handed her pack to David, who reluctantly took it and shoved it into the canoe next to the rest of the belongings. Chris was already seated in the stern; he made no effort to help Kuniko climb aboard. She looked out of place, a grown woman scrunched into a narrow boat between two teenage boys, but she managed to maintain her dignity.
Carlos refused to look at me as he clambered into the stern of the Orion. He reached back to untie one of the lines holding us to the dock; in the bow, Barry did the same. “Cast off,” he said, then used the butt of his paddle to push us away.
Slowly, the Orion drifted out into the shallow creek. Carlos turned the long canoe to starboard, then dipped his paddle into the brown water and guided it into the current. The Pleiades fell in behind us as we passed the dock; David and Chris were scowling as they swung their oars, yet I was startled to see a broad grin on Kuniko’s face. She caught my eye and gave me a wink.
“She’d better pull her own weight,” Carlos said quietly, “or I’ll put her off and make her walk home.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.” I looked over my shoulder to give him the coldest stare I could manage. “Do that, and I’ll never sleep with you again.”
That shut him up. Truth was, Carlos had never slept with me; what we had done together had been in a few stolen minutes behind the grange. Yet although I was speaking figuratively, he accepted it as literal truth. And Barry, as always, remained quiet, his back turned toward us.
I moved around a little, trying to settle my cramped legs into a position where they wouldn’t lose circulation, and tucked my hands beneath my armpits against the morning cool. A light fog lay above Sand Creek, dissipating as the sun touched the waters with its warmth. To the right, I could see the rooftops of town. Within a few minutes, they disappeared behind a thicket of spider brush, and we were all alone.
We had left Liberty. Ahead lay the wilderness.
The boys were in a hurry to put as much distance between us and town as they possibly could. They paddled constantly, seldom giving themselves a moment to rest. It was only a matter of time before Barry’s parents or Chris and David’s mother wised up to the fact that their sons had run off. Nor would Kim Newell be reticent about sounding the alarm; Carlos didn’t tell us then, but he’d already informed his sister what he was planning to do and sworn her to silence until we were gone.
So they denied themselves a break until midday, when we reached the shallow sandbar marking the junction of Levin Creek. This marked the farthest point anyone had previously ventured south of Liberty; had we chosen to venture down the narrow tributary, we would have soon come to the place where Chris and David’s father was killed. The brothers weren’t thrilled to be there, but Carlos chose the place for us to drop anchor while we had a quick lunch.
The day had become warm and humid; David and Barry had long since taken off their sweat-stained shirts, and Carlos and Chris took the opportunity to remove their own. I had shucked my sweater and desperately wanted to peel down to my halter, but somehow it didn’t feel right. Kuniko must have sensed this; without comment, she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it off, revealing the bikini bra beneath it. Chris, Barry, and Carlos pretended nonchalance, but David openly leered at her. She stared back at him until he turned red and looked away. Kuniko gave me an encouraging smile, and I no longer felt quite as bashful; off went my shirt, and Barry splashed David with his paddle when he tried to give me the eye.
When we were through eating, everyone started to tuck away the food wrappers, but then Carlos had another idea. He collected them, then got out of the canoe, waded ashore and littered the banks of Levin Creek with our trash. “When someone finds them,” he said, walking back through the shallows, “they’ll think we went that way.”
The others were impressed by his ingenuity, but Kuniko shook her head. “Nice thought, but what makes you think they’ll come after us by water?” Their smiles faded as she wiped her mouth with a bandanna. “All they have to do is launch a shuttle and follow us downstream.” She casually gazed back in the direction of town. “In fact, we should be seeing them any minute now.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Carlos asked. He was still in the water, standing between the two canoes. “All this effort, just to be carried back by the scruffs of our necks.”
Kuniko didn’t reply, but I noticed the smug expression on David’s face. “They’re going to have a hard time flying the shuttles if they can’t take off,” he said.
Kuniko gave him a baffled look. “We removed a little something from the cockpits,” Carlos explained. “A small piece of hardware from both ships. If they try to start the engines, the comps will shut ’em down.”
“You little idiots.” Kuniko stared at him in horror. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
I couldn’t believe it either. The Mayflower and the Plymouth weren’t just the colony’s sole means of long-range transport; they were also the only way anyone could return to the Alabama. If they were grounded, there was no way we could retrieve the remaining livestock embryos from biostasis. Nor were there any spare parts for any of their Earth-manufactured components, which was why they were so seldom used.
“You think I’m stupid?” David asked, as Kuniko stared to reach for her pack. “Don’t worry…they’re not damaged.”
“Safe as can be, I promise.” Yet Carlos was no longer smiling. “What are you looking for?”
Kuniko froze, her hands on the half-open flap of her pack. “None of your business.”
Carlos sighed, shook his head. He walked over to where Kuniko was sitting in the Pleiades. “Hand it over.”
“I don’t know what you’re…”
“Carlos,” I said, “don’t…”
“Wendy, please…” Carlos continued to stare at Kuniko. “C’mon, Doc. You’re holding out on us.” He cast a meaningful look at Chris and David; they were ready to climb out of the canoe if he said so. He put out his hand. “Fork it over.”
Kuniko glared back at him, then her shoulders slumped. Her right hand disappeared within her pack, returned a moment later holding a small plastic unit. A satphone: once its parabolic antenna was unfolded, it was capable of transmitting a signal to the Alabama as it passed over, which in turn would bounce it back to Liberty. The colony had only a dozen satphones; as chief physician, Kuniko was entrusted with one of them.
With no small reluctance, she surrendered the unit to Carlos. He opened it, but didn’t deploy the antenna. “I had to bring it,” she said. “That’s my job. I’m a doctor.”
“Yeah, well…” Carlos closed the satphone. “You’ve brought your med kit, too, right?” Kuniko nodded. “So you shouldn’t need this.”
“Carlos, don’t…”
Then he drew back his arm and pitched the satphone as far as he could throw it.
The little unit sailed upward and away, making an arc above Sand Creek, before plummeting into the water a couple of dozen yards away. It disappeared with a splash which probably disturbed a few fish.
“Yeah!” David pumped his fist in the air. “Another blow for freedom!” Chris gave an uncertain grin. Barry, taciturn as always, simply looked away.
I thought Kuniko would yell at him. Instead, she regarded Carlos with a sympathetic expression; she hadn’t even bothered to see which way he had thrown the satphone. “Thank y
ou,” she said quietly, and he stared back at her. “I called you an idiot, and you’ve just proven me right. Now I’m even more valuable to you than I was before.”
Before he could ask why, she turned her back to him. “Lunchtime’s over. Time to go.”
We followed Sand Creek as it meandered through the marshland, sometimes allowing the canoes to drift with the current. Curious swoops followed us from time to time, spying upon us from high above before gliding away on their broad wings. Once we spotted a creek cat half-concealed within a spider bush, frozen in place while taking a drink, its amber eyes locked upon us. We passed a few more tributaries, and gradually the creek grew broader, its banks farther apart.
Late in the afternoon, we came upon a small, shrub-covered island in the middle of the stream. Carlos called back to Chris, asked him if he wanted to pull over for the night. He seemed reluctant, but everyone was exhausted; paddling heavy canoes is hard work even if you’re not carrying passengers. And the island was a good place to camp; it would be more difficult for boids to get to us if we were surrounded by water. So we beached the canoes on the tip of the island and waded ashore, our legs stiff after long hours sitting in the boats.
We had two tents, each large enough for three people. While Barry, Kuniko, and I set them up, David scouted for firewood. Carlos and Chris unloaded the supplies we’d need for the night, then unfolded the map and tried to figure out where we were. The map didn’t show much detail, and we were the first to explore this end of Sand Creek; so far as they could tell, we had traveled about twenty miles, and were a little more than halfway to the Eastern Divide.
Not bad for the first day, but Chris believed that we’d probably encounter white water once we reached the Shapiro Pass; they might be easy to navigate in kayaks, but it would be more difficult for fully laden canoes to get through the shoals. Carlos argued that, if worse came to worst, we could go ashore, unload the canoes, and portage them across dry land until we were clear of the rapids.
That was a problem for the next day, though, and we were too tired to think about it then. As the sun went down, David set fire to the small pile of driftwood he’d scavenged. We roasted some salted pork and a few potatoes; after dinner Barry pulled out his guitar while Carlos produced a catskin flask of sourgrass ale and passed it around. With our stomachs full and the ale beginning to mellow us, after a while we began to relax. We talked about small things. The night sky was clear, and soon the stars came out; we couldn’t yet see Bear, but the leading edge of its ring plane rose above the horizon. Off in the distance, we could hear the boids cry, yet they never got very close to us. It was easy to pretend that we were on a camping trip; no one was worried about what lay before us.