People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  She lifted her head, eyeing him narrowly. “Suppose I did have help. What would that matter to you?”

  “Nothing beyond the fact that you arrived here safely. If these people exist, they do not wish to be found—you said so yourself.”

  “You won’t tell Canaback?”

  He threw back his head in a hearty laugh. “Now I know the whiskey has muddled your wits, my dear pilot. The authorities would never believe a rogue like me even if I had proof” He stood up. “I am being extremely rude to keep you talking when you are exhausted. Come,” he said and showed her from the room into a windowless refuge with a small lamp and camp-bed. Her weariness overwhelmed her and she flopped down, barely hearing his apology that it wasn’t the most luxurious of accommodations.

  “After those pine-branch pallets, it feels wonderful,” Kesbe mumbled and slid away into sleep as he turned out the light.

  She didn’t mean to spend more than a few days, but it took her longer than she thought to recover from the flight and her experiences in the Barranca. For the first two days, she did little more than sleep and eat. The next day she had a bath, washed the few clothes she had brought and prepared to re-enter the civilized world. That same afternoon, Mabena took her on a short tour of his installation to meet some of the people who ran it. They were a mixed crew in terms of background and skills. Some, like her, specialized in dealing with equipment that would have been thought antiquated anywhere else. Others, such as the biologist that Mabena had brought in to oversee the growth of his animals from fertilized ova, used highly sophisticated techniques and instruments.

  How the man had managed to pay for all this, she had no idea. She imagined that most of his employees were here because it suited them, not because of money.

  Kesbe spent most of her time with the mechanic and machinist who would be responsible for maintaining the aircraft. They were young, but not as inexperienced as she might have feared. What they lacked they made up for in enthusiasm and soon both she and they were deeply absorbed over copies of C-47 engineering drawings she had managed to scrounge and put on laserdisk.

  She also inspected the automated petroleum pumping and cracking station Mabena had installed to provide hydrocarbon lubricants and fuels for the aircraft as well as for some wheeled ground vehicles he was intending to purchase. The petrochemical engineer showed her samples of aviation gasoline that were purer than the stuff she had been able to get at Canaback. Gooney Berg would be in good hands when the time finally came to give her up, Kesbe thought a little sadly.

  But it was not yet that time. She still had the plane and she knew exactly what she intended to do with it in the interval. The black-and amber-winged aronan still waited in Tuwayhoima.

  She said nothing of her plans to Mabena, except to request that he fuel and provision her for another journey. To anyone who asked, she said that she was doing some aerial resource surveying and would be gone for a month or two. Mabena didn’t ask, nor, she suspected, did he need to. He did all that she asked, including the repair and reinstallation of the aircraft’s broken lasercom transmitter.

  The repairs and refueling cost another two days and by that time, she was fidgety and anxious to go. Mabena came out to the strip to see her off. He came aboard by the cargo door, carrying what looked like an old metal box equipped with a crank handle and needle gauges. Kesbe met him in the center aisle at the bulkhead behind the pilot’s seat.

  He gave her a grin that crinkled the tattoos on his face. He seemed to fill up the narrow aisleway, but instead of feeling annoyed as she did when strangers invaded her aircraft, she was glad to welcome him aboard. She was surprised when another feeling followed, a surge of attraction toward him. Well, he was charming, educated and handsome in a rough-cut way. As for his being an eccentric and a rogue, that could be forgiven, perhaps. Inwardly she thought about lost opportunities and wished she had not been so tired or so preoccupied.

  Her attention came back to the metal box he carried. “What’s this?” she asked as he placed it in her hands.

  “A hand-operated shortwave transmitter. Here, I’ll show you how it works.” As he began to grind the handle, the old box came to life with a quivering of needles. The microphone was a simple disk of ancient bakelite. He cupped it and spoke while continuing to crank. “A little awkward, but it suffices.”

  Kesbe eyed the old radio dubiously, blew dust from its gray pebbled cover. “Unless you have a receiver, it won’t do us much good.”

  “Some of the modern types of equipment can be altered to receive the signal. I have an engineer who knows how. She also informed me that shortwave does not require line-of-sight transmission as does the lasercom.”

  “Where did you get this and why do you think I need it?”

  “I am a collector of antiques,” he answered. “Antique hardware, antique animals and antique ideas.” He paused. “As to why you might require such a device, you know better than I. I might say that it is for my own self-interest. Goodbye and good journey to you, dear pilot.”

  After he had clumped down the planking and out of the aircraft, Kesbe turned the old transmitter in her hands. It might be a piece of junk, but it might just save her neck. She wound the microphone lead around the transmitter’s case and stowed it in an easily accessible compartment.

  He knows where I’m going. He’s warned me, but hasn’t tried to stop me, she mused as she settled into the pilot’s seat and readied the C-47 for take-off. He’s not as bad as I thought he’d be. By the time he pays off the contract, I may even like him.

  She started the engines and glanced out her side window. The mechanic, bless him, had managed to replace the glass she had smashed with her boot during that wretched landing. Mabena was standing with his crew at the side of the dirt strip.

  “You take good care of Gooney Berg,” he bellowed, holding onto his bush hat in the backwash from the C-47’s whirling props. “I’m having her insured, but I don’t want to get the money that way.”

  Kesbe waved at him from her perch high above the ground in the C-47’s nose, then eased forward on the throttles. The big radials sang a droning dissonance as Gooney began her take-off roll.

  Kesbe flew carefully, selecting a cruise speed that would minimize fuel consumption. She hoped to have the tanks more than half-full by the time she reached the Pai Mesa. She had marked Tuwayhoima’s location on her map, but finding that mesa among all the other formations in the Barranca took a low-altitude visual search. It was near sunset before she found herself above the mesa, circling with one wing low and looking for a good landing field.

  She’d hoped that Gooney’s engine noise might bring out a welcoming party of Pai child-warriors on their winged mounts, but the skies around the mesa remained empty. Below, a few figures worked the ragged cornfields, looking up in surprise at the aircraft.

  Kesbe picked her spot, an open stretch of dirt between two small fields. She slowed the plane on the downwind leg of her approach, lowering the landing gear as she turned crosswind. The green lights and hydraulic gauges kept her busier than she wanted to be and made her wish Imiya had stayed on as copilot. At last everything was set. Gooney sank in an easy glide down to the mesa.

  It was a good landing, with only the drag of tires on dirt to tell Kesbe she had touched down. The plane settled on its tailwheel, bathed in a cloud of dust. Coughing, she shut down the spinning props and secured the controls. By the time she was finished, the Pai workers were gone. She hoped they weren’t too frightened. Well, this was her second appearance, so they shouldn’t think the plane was some unknown apparition.

  She decided to relax in her seat and wait for the welcoming party that would eventually appear. As soon as Imiya heard she had returned, he’d be on the mesa trail in an instant. Or perhaps he’d fly up on Haewi.

  She let herself doze, expecting any instant to be roused by a pounding on the cargo door. The sun crept closer to the horizon the mesa remained quiet. At last she got up, too stiff to remain in her seat. She undogge
d the cargo door, got out and leaned against the aircraft. The colors of sunset were starting to spread over the sky above the canyon, but the whistling wind unsettled her. She retreated back inside the aircraft. Where was Imiya? For that matter, where was everyone else?

  At last, when dusk was fading into darkness, someone did come. It was a stocky figure with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. As he approached, Kesbe could see the beard that edged his round face by the plane’s exterior lights. Nabamida.

  She opened the cargo door, invited him inside. He squinted in the glow from the cargo compartment and declined. She got a hand-held flashlight and left the plane.

  “You have returned, as Imiya said you would,” the boy’s uncle said, facing away from her and folding his arms. She could not see Nabamida’s face, but the tone in his voice chilled her.

  “Where is your nephew?” she asked, struggling to recall the Pai words. “I thought he would meet me.”

  There was a long silence before Nabamida answered. “We no longer speak of him. He is lost to the Pai people.” Nabamida’s voice betrayed a quaver. Was that gleam along his cheek the wetness of tears? Kesbe couldn’t tell. The bowmaker lifted his face to the stars.

  Disbelief flashed through Kesbe, numbing her. “What? Nabamida, are you telling me he’s been killed?” Recklessly she grabbed the man by one shoulder and spun him to face her. She brought the light up, but his squinting eyes told her nothing. He pulled away, wiping the place where she had touched him as if it were contaminated, and turned on his heel.

  She called after him. “Wait. Can’t you tell me what has happened to Imiya?”

  A low utterance like a growl came from the bowmaker. “You have interfered enough with our lives and our ways. Leave us alone.”

  “How can I know what I’ve done unless you tell me!” Kesbe screamed at his retreating back. “I want to know what happened to your nephew. Don’t you care about him?”

  Her last words struck him like a spear between the shoulders. He wheeled about, his blanket flapping in the beam from Kesbe’s light. “You would drag it from my heart,” he said bitterly. “Very well, I tell you. The boy was to have completed his initiation rites before the next ceremonial. Two days past we found he had gone and taken both his flier and the rogue aronan. The rogue returned to us. The boy and Wind Laughing did not.”

  “And that is all? Has anyone searched for him?”

  Nabamida shook his head. “No one will seek him. The council has declared him dead. We can only grieve.”

  “But you don’t know. He might be alive. Maybe he was injured or something else happened…”

  Nabamida raised a hand. “You do not understand. The boy has chosen not to become an adult within our tribe. He has turned his back to us. We are dead to him. He is dead to us.”

  “But that’s not right,” Kesbe spluttered. “If he did leave, he must have had a reason. Nabamida, I’ve got to find him.” She swallowed. “I may have some responsibility for what happened.”

  “That is why the council asked me to meet you and tell you to leave,” the bowmaker said sternly.

  “I can’t go,” Kesbe began, but Nabamida had turned from her and was striding away into the night. Her fingers clutched the light so tightly they hurt. A cold wind touched her between the shoulders, making her shiver. She felt frozen inside and terribly bewildered. Had the few words she’d said to the boy done that much harm? No. It had to have been something else.

  Despite the judgment of the council, she couldn’t just fly away. Imiya and Haewi meant too much to her now. And there was also Baqui Iba. She would find the youth and his flier if she had to search every square meter of the Barranca Madre. And if they were dead and she was responsible, she would face the Pai tribe to understand the evil she had done and the punishment she must accept.

  Chapter 12

  In the half-light of early evening, the path from the mesa to the village was shadowed and treacherous. Despite her impatience, Kesbe had to choose her way with care. Her healing knee began throbbing, as if to warn her. She stopped, resting with one hand against a sandstone face. When she looked up again, a figure stood in front of her. She had heard no sound of footsteps.

  The figure stood still on the trail with an aura of power that came from its straight-backed stance. The hood was tossed back, revealing the face of Sahacat. On the shaman’s breast was a stitched design of skeleton ribs and sternum. At her right shoulder was fastened a circular disk of obsidian so highly polished that it reflected light like a mirror. One hand clutched the black flute made from an aronan wingspar.

  Kesbe took advantage of her crouched position to grope for the needle-pistol in her thigh pocket. Carefully she brought it out, hiding it in her own shadow. She did not want to use the weapon, but if Sahacat raised the black flute to her lips…

  “Let me pass.”

  The shaman’s eyes were like her obsidian mirror, a deep black color yet strangely reflective. Kesbe thought she could see herself in the mirror. The image distorted her face and body, making her look and feel like an intruder. It shamed her into lowering the nose of the pistol, though she kept it in her hand.

  “What do you seek in Tuwayhoima?” Sahacat asked.

  “Two things. The black and amber aronan and the fate of the boy Imiya.”

  “Neither of those things are yours,” the shaman answered. “Leave us.”

  “I can’t,” Kesbe said, knowing she was speaking the truth not only to the shaman, but to herself. “Imiya is my friend. I must know what has happened to him.”

  Sahacat’s hand twitched on the flute as if she wished to play it. Kesbe remembered what had happened during the Cloud Dance.

  “Don’t,” she growled, showing the gun. “I have a little snake in my hand that spits needles.” Her finger hovered near the trigger. She knew she could stun Sahacat, or even kill her, but Bajeloga’s voice within said such a thing would be shameful.

  “What does your little snake offer? Death?” the other woman taunted. She shook back her hair in a wild tangle and laughed with a low hooting sound. “I have had my flesh torn from my body by spirits and I have lived to walk again. I have died many times. What is another death?”

  As she spoke, the shaman pulled the flute from her robe and cast it at Kesbe’s feet. It broke into fragments that began to move, scuttling and seething in a mass on the trail. Scorpions! Kesbe’s finger convulsed on the trigger, burying several darts in the ground even as she leaped back.

  Her mind screamed disbelief. No such thing as magic existed in her world. Again she seemed to hear the voice of her grandfather Bajeloga, grown stern and solemn. You are no longer in your world.

  Sahacat knelt, extending one arm. The scorpions marched across her hand, her wrist and up her forearm, arranging themselves into a line. Each linked one of its twin tails with another and then abruptly were gone, leaving in their place the black flute.

  A heavy spicy scent in the air made Kesbe dizzy. Sweat broke from her forehead, pain pressed at her temples and her sight blurred, making her question what she had seen. Yet her heart still beat fast and her leg muscles quivered in aftermath of her reaction to a myriad of poisonous arachnids writhing on the trail.

  “I gave you warning once in words.” The shaman’s voice seemed come from a great distance. “I gave you warning again at the Cloud Dance. I give you warning once more and you will heed it if you are wise. You say you are drawn back to Tuwayhoima by the bond between you and the rogue aronan. You have neither the training nor the understanding to carry through with the obligations such a partnership demands. Such a thing can only end in tragedy.”

  “For Imiya, it already has,” Kesbe shot back, although she had to clutch at the rocks on the trail. The shaman’s figure was barely a wavering blur before her eyes. Her nose was stinging and streaming from the effect of the strange smell surrounding Sahacat and she wondered if its effect might be hallucinogenic. She gathered herself. “Teach me what I need to know,” she demanded. “Or tell
me exactly what will happen. If I have the knowledge, I can decide for myself.”

  “You ask for knowledge that is sacred to the Pai. No. It cannot be done. Go. Leave us as you are bidden. If you stay, it will be awatovi, a great wrong.”

  Kesbe clenched her fists. “You have already done a great wrong to one of your own people. What about Imiya? At least let me try to find him.”

  Sahacat straightened her shoulders. The obsidian mirror flashed red in the sunset. “The boy has made his own choice, as have you. So shall you both bear the burden and I pray to the spirits that it does not fall on the rest of my people as well.” She closed her eyes and began to chant softly, “Awatovi, awatovi, awatovi…”

  Kesbe shook her head. The drugged feeling was gone. So was Sahacat. Somehow she had lost perception of time passing, for the sun had dropped below the horizon and a chill wind blew into her face as if to push her back from Tuwayhoima. She shrugged her shoulders, felt in another pocket for her flashlight and went on.

  The circle of light was an alien thing, gliding across ground that had never known any illumination but sunlight, stars and fire. She felt as if she had become the distortion she had seen in Sahacat’s obsidian mirror, an alien spirit creeping into the village to steal what was most sacred and precious to its people. She couldn’t shake off that feeling, though she told herself again and again that her purpose was to discover what had happened to Imiya.

  At the end of the path, leading into the great cave that sheltered the Pai village, her light fell upon a line of cornmeal across the trail. It was, as she knew, only a symbolic barrier, but something deep inside her could not step across that line. She clambered awkwardly into the rocks around it and went on her way, trying not to tremble.

  Misshapen figures with huge horned and plumed heads seemed to appear as though they had risen from the ground far ahead. They fled into the night so swiftly she could not say whether she had really seen them. Soft low chanting echoed from the walls and roof of the great cave that sheltered the village, but when she stopped to listen, she heard only the wind. All the houses she passed were dark, as if waiting or dead.