The Sky Woman

by JD Moyer

  With the attrition and eventual disappearance of the Survivalist tribes, ringstation anthropologists had assumed that all technologically adapted human lines had gone extinct. That is, until five years earlier, when Penelope Townes had spotted some anomalous activity in a north-western sector of Eurasia. Townes had documented wooden structures, smoke and steam clouds, small plowed fields, and a dozen more indicators of a ‘neolithic or higher’ level of technology. Further research had turned up three similar communities in the immediate vicinity, as well as tantalizing evidence of two other isolated agricultural settlements in the Mediterranean region.

  For years, the ringstation anthropologists observed from their high vantage point. The idea of field research, once rejected for safety and contamination concerns, gained support over time. The right precautions could be taken, and the wealth of knowledge to be gained from up-close observations was too great to pass up. After eighteen months of meticulous planning and training, Car-En Ganzorig was part of the first wave of field researchers. She was the only researcher assigned to this area. It had been hard to find volunteers within the department, and many had dropped out during the rigorous training program. But she had stuck it out, always envisioning what it would be like to set foot on the planet where her ancestors had evolved for millions of years.

  And now she was here, and the experience was every bit as exhilarating as she had imagined. But she often wondered as to the ultimate purpose of the research. Was it merely academic? Or were there practical considerations as well? Ultimately, she supposed, that was up to the Repop Council.

  A branch cracked behind her. Car-En turned slowly (the mirror cloak worked better with slow movements) and scanned the area. A man – one of the villagers – was peering in her direction. He was about forty meters away. She froze, issuing a subvocal command to her cloak to match the ambient temperature. Some of the villagers carried wildstrains that enhanced their vision in various ways – including infrared thermal vision.

  After a full minute the man looked away and continued walking toward the road. If he stayed on course he would pass no closer than twenty meters. So far, none of the villagers had seen her. The Stanford’s Over Council had agreed to a strict Non-Interventionism policy for at least two years. The decision had faced rancorous dissent from several camps, including a few radicals on the Repop Council who were in favor of immediate contact. But more conservative voices had won out. Her orders were to remain completely invisible to the people of Happdal, to avoid interference of any kind.

  The villager was young, tall, and slender, with long brown hair that fell to his shoulders. He carried a short, recurved bow, and two dead rabbits hung from his belt. He looked familiar; Car-En had observed him before. She requested facial recognition from her m’eye.

  Esper, brother of Trond, son of Arik and Elke. But his genetic analysis was missing; she’d yet to collect a sample.

  She liked the look of his face. He had intelligent eyes. Could you really tell if someone was intelligent from their eyes? It was probably a cognitive illusion. If you liked a person, you were more likely to perceive them as intelligent. But she decided to believe it anyway, for the moment. Esper had high cheekbones, a long but not overly big nose, and pale blue intelligent eyes.

  She would have to collect a biosample.

  Esper reached the road and greeted a tall, broad man. That one she recognized right off. It was Trond, Esper’s brother. She didn’t need to consult her m’eye to remember his stats; Trond was one of the first villagers she had secretly bioanalyzed (using hairs from his beard, collected during a night visit to the smithy). He had a fascinating genome, including myostatin suppression and growth factor wildstrains. The man was built like an ox on steroids. In addition, he had an incredibly robust immune system, and was likely a fast healer. He was also resistant to radiation (as was Car-En, as were all space dwellers; radiation resistance was part of the Standard Edits).

  The radiation resistance was interesting and, for Trond, useful. Background levels were abnormally high in and around Happdal. She had gathered that a large number of the villagers sickened and died in middle age, most likely from radiation-induced leukemia or gastrointestinal cancers. Many of the adults had cataracts, indicative of high radiation exposure. Adrian was still trying to pinpoint the source, but the isotope signatures (mostly U-233) were consistent with nuclear power plants used in the late twenty-first century. Her hounds had turned up nothing; the nearest reactors from that era had all been safely decommissioned.

  The brothers gripped forearms, a greeting ritual Car-En had previously observed. A minuscule directional microphone adhered to her ear oriented itself in the direction she was looking, feeding the stream to her cochlear implant. Her translator module had nearly mastered the local dialect, a devolved mishmash rooted in various European languages of the Corporate Age. After a few seconds of processing and noise cancellation, the conversation came into focus.

  “…eat one of those raw.” Trond pointed at the rabbits hanging from Esper’s belt. “Instead of a midday meal I’ve been running errands for Mother. Soon she’ll have even the infants wearing boiled leather and carrying knives.”

  “She’d rather be too cautious than reckless. She fears the Rat,” said Esper.

  “Haakon? Maybe you and I should make a trip to his valley and return with his head. He’s not so tough. I remember wrestling him as a boy during Summer Trade. He was a dirty fighter – a biter. And he had a strong grip. But he was small, and easy to outmaneuver.” The bigger man vigorously pantomimed a wrestling match, securing his imaginary foe in a crushing headlock.

  “Every man is small compared to you, brother. And how will you remove his head with Trondfist? A hammer does not cut.”

  “Good point. Perhaps if you hold him down, I can take it off with my tongs.”

  Esper smiled. “Mother would be pleased. But not Arik.”

  Trond nodded. “Father is a man of peace. But if we brought Elke the head of Haakon, there would be joy in our house. When Mother is happy, so is Father.”

  Esper grinned, patting his brother’s huge shoulder. “Go back to work. And get some sustenance in you. Perhaps that dairymaid Lissa will let you take a draught from her bucket – I’ve heard she’s fond of you. Maybe you’ll work up the courage to kiss her tonight, at the Burning.”

  “Lissa? Who told you that?”

  “Our sister. Who else? She loves gossip as much as swordplay.”

  Trond laughed and ambled down the road toward the village. Esper lingered, watching the children stack firewood. When he looked in Car-En’s direction, carefully scanning the trees, she checked the temperature of her cloak in her m’eye. It was still concealing her body heat.

  Quickly, before she could react, Esper drew and nocked an arrow, pulled back the string, and loosed. The arrow thudded deep into a beech trunk a meter to her left. Had he seen her? She startled, but managed to override her body’s desire to flee. Her heart pounded against her ribcage.

  Esper continued to scan the area with predatory intensity. She was too close; somehow he could sense her presence. She made a mental note to maintain a minimum distance of eighty meters. It might be too far for her microphone to pick up conversations, but she didn’t want to be the first academic field casualty in three hundred years. These people were dangerous.

  Esper re-slung his bow and headed back toward the village, leaving the arrow stuck in the tree trunk. She watched him closely, wondering if he would look over his shoulder, but he didn’t.

  Car-En opened a small med-kit strapped to her thigh and removed a biosampler. With some difficulty (her hands were trembling) she swabbed the notch of the arrow where Esper had touched it with his bare hand. It was a long shot; she was just as likely to get rabbit DNA, or even Trond’s. She snapped the sampler closed and it began its analysis automatically. Worth a try.

  Keeping her hood up, Car-En started the hi
ke back to her camp, about two kilometers west of Happdal. She crossed the river on a fallen tree, hoping to obscure her tracks. Even after walking for twenty minutes, her heart was still pounding. Her hands and feet were frigid. She considered a small sedative dose from her pharma implant. No, it was better to just tolerate the effects of the adrenaline. Maybe she should learn to be scared. Mild sedatives were useful to suppress an adrenergic response before public speaking, or on a hot date. But nearly getting impaled by an arrow? That’s what fight or flight was for. The thought made her grin, then laugh. The sound of her own voice startled her. She stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she turned in a complete circle, patching in the stream from her ear-mike. She heard birds, insects, and small fauna rustling in the brush. But nothing big, as far as she could tell. Nothing human.

  She had hidden her camp almost too well. She wandered in the general vicinity for a few minutes, briefly considering pinging her backpack. She resisted the impulse. She’d been living in the rough for weeks; she should be able to find her own camp without cheating. Calming herself, she looked for the landmarks she had noted earlier: a gray snag, a copse of slender silver birch trees. Her camp was right where she had left it, concealed by a dense thicket of young saplings. As she approached, her backpack de-camouflaged. She pinged her dart rifle, hidden nearby in the brush. Still there, as were her numerous clips of sedative, explosive, and screecher darts. She had overpacked in terms of ammunition, at first intending to hunt. So far she had only eaten nutrient bars and a few handfuls of wild berries (after carefully identifying them in the flora database). And the stolen bread, which she felt guilty about. Maybe she should confess the indiscretion to Adrian, clear her conscience.

  Car-En pulled the tent from the backpack and commanded it to unfold, but it stuck halfway, resuming its process only after a sharp tug. Finally the single-occupant tube self-assembled, masking itself to match the green saplings and brown earth. She told her pack to stay camouflaged until instructed otherwise, covering it with some fallen branches for good measure. She crawled into the tent. It didn’t do much for warmth – that was the job of the bioskin and her own metabolic implants – but the fabric kept the bugs out. Most importantly, it felt like she was inside, at least for the moment.

  Something was sticking in her side. She unclasped the sheathed carbonlattice knife from her belt and placed it within reach. It was so light – she’d forgotten about it entirely. Like much of her gear, she hadn’t used it at all. Adrian had advised her to look at all the equipment she planned to bring, then leave one item in three behind. She had ignored him and brought everything. Maybe the blade would come in handy.

  She closed her eyes, setting an alarm for ninety minutes with her m’eye. One REM cycle and she would awaken refreshed. Trond and Esper’s conversation had confirmed her guess that the village celebration was happening tonight. She wanted to observe. Maybe she would even patch in Adrian.

  She lay on the cold ground for twenty minutes, struggling to keep her eyes closed. Even with the ear-mike turned off, the unfamiliar forest noises distracted her. She told the tent to increase its opacity. The compact tube darkened.

  Finally, she slept.

  Her bioskin woke her with an electric tingling on her left side. The proximity sensors. Two days ago, after setting up camp, she’d released two handfuls of what looked very much like black flies. She’d thrown the insect-drones into the air, instructing them to patrol a two-hundred-meter radius. Each one was equipped with a tiny array of sensors, as well as simple evasion algorithms to prevent the local birds from getting indigestion.

  The swarm metaprogram was set to ignore all small and non-threatening fauna. But she’d been awakened with some insistence. Something big, and possibly dangerous, was out there: most likely a boar, or possibly a lynx. Or maybe something not in the database.

  The visual telemetry was coming into focus, feeding to her m’eye.

  Not a boar or a hunting cat, but a man, carrying a sword, creeping toward her. One hundred fifty meters away, closing rapidly.

  She whispered a command to her tent: “Unseal.” She grabbed her cloak, slithered out, and stood. The electric tingling of her bioskin reoriented and increased in intensity. She squinted in the direction of the threat but could only see a hundred meters or so in the dim light. She switched to heat vision. Still nothing. Her ear-mike was picking up only ambience, even at maximum sensitivity: a thundering breeze and roaring insects. She switched off audio and focused on the images coming in from the swarm.

  The low-res stream showed a man with long white hair striding through the trees. In his left hand he held a long, narrow blade. He stopped for a moment, sniffing the air, then redoubled his pace.

  What to do? Her heart was racing again. Could this man actually know she was there, from such a distance? For a moment, her mind went blank. When she forced herself to think, all she could summon was a vivid image of her own decapitation.

  Think, Car-En!

  The rifle?

  Shooting a villager, even just with sedatives, would not advance the cause of her field research. They’d never let her off the Stanford again. She’d have to leave the weapon hidden and hope for the best.

  She put on her cloak, activated the climbing spikes on her boots, and modulated the surface of the bioskin to provide more grip. Slowly and deliberately (she couldn’t afford a bad fall), she scaled a sturdy birch tree. Perching on a high, slender branch, she pulled up her hood, wrapped her cloak around her legs as best she could, and commanded it to conceal her heat signature. Breathing shallowly, she waited.

  Seconds later, she heard his approach. He strode into the camp as if he owned it, immediately zeroing in on her tent. From her perch, she could barely see it in the dusk light, camouflaged as it was.

  He drew back his sword and violently slashed at the tube-tent. The silk-like fabric yielded but did not tear. Despite her panicked feeling (or possibly because of it), Car-En had to stifle a laugh. Synthetic silks were practically indestructible.

  The man sheathed his sword in one of the long scabbards slung across his back. Car-En now saw there were two crossed scabbards: a pair of matching swords. The white-haired man crouched and peered into the open tent. He reached in.

  Dammit. Her blade.

  Sure enough, his hand emerged holding the carbonlattice knife. He hefted it incredulously, sniffed it. He drew the blade from its sheath and gently tested the edge against his finger. The material was a complex matrix of carbon, silicon, zinc, and titanium, optimized to provide hardness, lightness, and a persistent razor-sharp edge. The man sheathed the weapon and tucked it into his own belt. Car-En winced. There goes non-contamination. New Iron Age, welcome to twenty-eighth-century materials science.

  He paced a perimeter around her tent. Her pack and rifle were both hidden, but not carefully. If he found and took those, she’d be out of air. What exactly would she do in that case? She’d have to hike back to the mule station, over one hundred fifty kilometers, a journey that had taken weeks on the way in. Subsisting on what, exactly? Wild berries wouldn’t cut it, and she couldn’t hunt without her rifle. Maybe she could learn to set snares? Or fish?

  She’d be really out of air. She’d have to call in a rescue party. Mortifying.

  The man wasn’t digging around in the brush; that was good. He approached her tree. Not good. She tried to stay calm, but her heart refused to co-operate. She ignored the pounding in her chest and concentrated on not hyperventilating. Fainting would be a poor choice.

  The man sniffed and looked up. He was looking right at her. From his perspective she might look like a gray blob. The mirror cloak worked better in daylight, where it could mimic its background and provide a kind of moving camouflage. In this light, the best it could do was to conceal detail.

  His white hair had a silvery sheen. His skin was smooth, and extremely pale, like some kind of subterranean creature. There was something wrong
with his face; just beneath his skin she could see a web-like pattern of black threads. Car-En had seen many kinds of body modification among ringstation citizens, both cosmetic and functional, but the veiny threads resembled none of them.

  He reached up and leapt, trying to grasp the lowest climbable branch: about four meters up. He jumped shockingly high, but failed to reach it. Next he tried to climb the trunk itself, but his hard leather boots found no traction on the smooth white bark. Pausing in his efforts, he stared up at her, silently, hands hanging loosely at his sides. Using all her powers of concentration, she remained completely still, holding her breath.

  Finally, he loped off in the same direction he had come. She watched him on her m’eye, via the dispersed swarm, until he left the security perimeter.

  She exhaled and inhaled deeply. That had been much too close. To her surprise, she began to sob uncontrollably. She clutched the trunk of the birch for support, trying to calm down. Each time she got ahold of herself, another wave of emotion overwhelmed her, and she continued to blubber. She considered using a short-term mood stabilizer from her implant, but once again resisted the urge to medicate. She was experiencing a normal emotional response to an extreme incident. Eventually her sobs decreased in intensity and frequency.

  Once again, she forced her mind to work. One step at a time. What was the next rational action to take? The swarm of sensor drones had given her a false sense of security; in reality, she was completely exposed. She needed new security protocols.

  And she needed to get out of this tree and relocate her camp, right now. The man might return with an axe, or climbing gear, or a bow. He didn’t strike her as the type to be reasoned with. He seemed determined, and malevolent. Perhaps that was an unfair assumption, but she didn’t care. She could die down here. She wasn’t ready to run back to the mule station just yet, but she had to make safety a higher priority.