The Sky Woman

by JD Moyer

  In any case, she wasn’t going to give him any ammunition by stealing a pork chop, no matter how good they smelled. And she wasn’t going to let him know about the white-haired man, at least not until she figured out who he was. A silent man with two swords chased me up a tree and stole my carbonlattice knife. Embarrassing, to say the least, and maybe enough to end her field research and bring her home.

  Another alert from her m’eye: the biosampler kit had finished its analysis from Esper’s arrow. She brought up the results. Sample size insufficient. The sample had included a few skin cells, but not enough DNA to sequence. The mysteries of Esper’s genome would have to wait.

  What she had discovered so far from genomic analysis of the Happdal villagers was fascinating. Ethnically, they were just as diverse as ringstation citizens, with almost every sample showing heritage from multiple continents. But for the most part they skewed Northern European, and that was how they looked as well. On the Stanford, Car-En was used to seeing a plethora of skin tones and facial types, most of them ethnically mixed, many with light brown skin like herself: the full spectrum of human ancestry. The Happdal villagers, on the other hand, all looked Caucasian, without exception, though genetic analysis revealed small traces of Asian, Middle-Eastern, and North African ancestry.

  Another point of interest: Car-En had so far identified nineteen wildstrains of what had once been commercially trademarked genetic enhancements from the Corporate Age. She had isolated artificial genes related to superhuman strength, rapid healing, pain resistance, high visual acuity, night vision, fast reflexes, enhanced immunity, photographic memory, and accelerated learning. Not all of the wildstrains were expressing, but they were definitely there.

  Ringstation citizens had their own style of genetic manipulation, significantly less ambitious than the Übermensch experimentations of the Late Corporate Age. These days most rare disease traits were absent from the gene pool, having been selected out on an embryonic level over the generations. Most couples chose to just procreate naturally; it was simply less hassle than creating a bunch of sex-cell combinations and then having to choose, or building an embryo from scratch. There were screenings, but it was the rare embryo that was terminated for genetic reasons. In terms of human potential, the frequency of ‘genius’ genes in various categories (mathematical or musical aptitude, learning and memory, athletic ability, extreme sensitivity/empathy) was already so high that any given offspring was bound to get at least a couple. And one was enough, really. Early experiments in maximizing human genetic potential had shown that being too ambitious was counterproductive. Too many ‘genius’ genes often produced a complicated, neurotic person who amounted to nothing much at all.

  The noise level rose. A parade or procession was entering the clearing. Car-En sent part of the swarm toward the commotion to get a bird’s-eye view. Trond and Jense, the two towering smiths, were carrying a frail, middle-aged man on a crudely made stretcher. When they reached the clearing, Esper helped the older man ascend the scaffolding. The guest of honor. As far as Car-En knew, Arik (Trond’s father) was the village chieftain; nobody else in the village held any particular rank. Maybe it was the older man’s birthday.

  An alert: the white-haired man was moving. She selected an infrared feed from the insect-drone nearest to him, watched as he crept along the tree line. He moved about ten meters, crouched behind an old beech, and stayed there. Spying from his own vantage point.

  Musicians took up their instruments. For the next hour the people of Happdal sang, drank, and feasted. Car-En monitored the white-haired man on the opposite side of the clearing, but he didn’t move. The villagers brought food, drink, and gifts to the older man on the platform, spoke with him at length. As the level of drunkenness increased, several fights broke out. Most were playful in nature, competitive jousts more than actual combat, but one in particular attracted a crowd and much yelling. Car-En had a poor view of the commotion. She sent a few drones above the fray to get a better angle.

  A young blond woman was fending off a huge, drunken man. He swung at her with a heavy steel blade; she parried his blows with a makeshift staff. The stick broke, the girl yelled in pain as the sword connected with her shoulder. Car-En recognized her: Katja, Trond and Esper’s younger sister.

  Katja, more angry than injured, incapacitated her opponent with a series of quick, deft attacks. She stormed off, leaving her vanquished foe unconscious. The crowd dissipated, leaving the loser lying in the dirt, flat on his back. Car-En watched the man for a full two minutes. His temperature remained stable. Unconscious, but alive.

  Her m’eye interrupted her observations; the white-haired man was on the move again. She tracked him, via the drones, as he crept along the circumference of the clearing. Once again he stopped and watched. Was he watching someone in particular? She surveyed his field of vision with a few of her drones, looking for anyone familiar. She saw Katja, sitting at one of the long tables, eating a piece of meat with her hands. Juices from the roasted flesh ran down her chin. As far as Car-En could tell, Katja was eating alone.

  The music stopped. Villagers gathered around the wooden structure in anticipation. Her m’eye registered the heat before she saw the fire. Her stomach turned. The man on the scaffolding….

  She pinged Adrian. “Are you getting this?”

  “I’ve been watching the whole time.”

  “They’re going to burn him alive. Should I….” She didn’t finish the question, and Adrian said nothing in the ensuing silence. “He’s sick,” she finished lamely.

  “It had occurred to me this might be a euthanasia ritual.”

  The flames rose. The villagers were singing. The emotional tenor of the song was inconsistent, vacillating between mournful and celebratory. At times the men and women sang in unison, in other sections their parts diverged into haunting harmonies.

  “You could have mentioned that,” she said.

  “I wasn’t sure. You know, I’ve been looking at your genetic analysis. I have a theory as to the cultural origins of this group. It’s just speculation at this point – I’ll need you to gather more data.”

  She couldn’t concentrate on Adrian’s voice. The man was standing up on the platform, surrounded by orange and yellow flames. The pain – it must be unbearable. Yet he seemed calm. Suddenly his hand shot up – a signal. Seconds later, a hail of arrows pierced his body, felling him.

  Something shifted inside of Car-En. She didn’t know the man on the platform, but he was obviously beloved by those she did know: Esper, Trond, Katja, their father Arik. At least she felt as if she knew them, in a unilateral sort of way. They might not be friends, but they were more than subjects. She cared for these people.

  “Did you….” said Car-En weakly. Adrian had stopped talking, at least. Of course he had seen. She sat down heavily, turning off the feed. She would complete a detailed report later, after she’d had a chance to reflect. Adrian might complain about being cut off, but she needed a moment. She was still recording everything. He could watch later. It wasn’t as if he needed to see everything in real time. Why would he, considering it was against his philosophy to Intervene?

  All she could see from her seated position was a thick plume of black smoke rising from the burning platform. She smelled roasted meat, but now she couldn’t be sure of the source. Her appetite was gone.

  Once again, the white-haired spy was moving. He was entering the clearing.

  Most of the villagers were clustered around the remains of the platform, now a smoking inferno. The white-haired man was making a beeline toward the food tables. She almost laughed. Was his plan simply to steal food, as she’d been tempted to?

  She had a direct line of sight; she could now see him without the assistance of the drones. He crept past the food tables. Katja stood nearby, her arms folded across her chest, watching the blaze from afar. The white-haired man sneaked up behind her.

  Without th
inking, Car-En cried out. “Watch out!” Katja looked in her direction, not seeing her (she was still fully cloaked), and not understanding her either (her translator was input-only, and did nothing to modify her voice).

  The white-haired man pressed his palm against the side of Katja’s neck. The girl turned, grabbed his wrist, and stared at him defiantly. Seconds later, she slumped into his arms. In one powerful motion the man slung Katja’s limp body over his shoulders, like a hunting kill, and strode swiftly toward the tree line.

  Car-En followed them from what she hoped was a safe distance, instructing the swarm to do the same. She kept the pair just in sight, relying on the drones to direct her when she lost visual contact. Several times the drone count in her m’eye ticked down; she was losing a few to mechanical failure (or maybe something was taking them out) but she still had enough for the job. The white-haired man walked quickly; Car-En was soon perspiring from exertion. The bioskin absorbed and recycled the moisture for the most part, but the sweat felt cool on her forehead.

  They were heading south, higher into the mountains. From her m’eye she dispatched a hound to gather information on the surrounding area. Seconds later, after accessing the databases on the Stanford, the hound reported back. The mountain range had been called the Harz during Late Inhabitation, within an area known as New Saxony. Before the era of nation states, inhabitants had included Iron Age Germanic tribes; before that a number of neolithic pottery cultures; earlier still various Neanderthal culture groups had called the area home. The hound was predictably thorough, offering to display a long-view inhabitation chart. She brought up the chart in her m’eye.1

  It was notable that the hound had tentatively classified the Happdal group as Phase 1 Repop. She wondered who in the anthropology department had made that classification. Definitely not Adrian. His vision for Repop (which was clearly articulated in his election platform) was orderly, slow, highly organized, and definitely did not include a raggedy bunch of neo-Vikings most likely descended from tribes of Germanic Survivalists (harboring unknown wildstrains and who-knows-what unclassified mutations).

  She cleared the anthropological timeline – interesting, but not relevant – and asked for a detailed topographical map. She’d slowed down, and the white-haired man – a bright blue dot on her display – was now about five hundred meters ahead, veering west.

  Car-En forced her pace. Gradually, the thick brown beech trees gave way to more sparsely spaced silver birch. The white bark shone in the early twilight; it was nearly dawn. She entered a wide clearing filled with high grass and fragrant lavender; the pale purple flowers took on an indigo cast in the dim light. She hadn’t slept since her brief nap at her camp, but felt wide awake.

  She crossed the clearing cautiously, though the display indicated they were still far ahead, out of visual range. What was she doing, tracking this man? It wasn’t Intervention, at least not yet, but certainly Adrian wouldn’t approve. Compulsively, she double-checked her feeds to the Stanford. They were still deactivated.

  A warning from her bioskin: background radiation levels had ticked upward. Whatever the source of Happdal’s radiation poisoning, she was getting closer to it. With her genetic resistance and limited exposure, she was still in the safe zone, but the thought of the steady, cumulative damage made her uneasy.

  At the far end of the clearing she reached a dirt trail running east–west. She followed it west, tracking the blue dot in her display. She kept her distance, staying at least one hundred meters back. The challenge was to keep up. The white-haired man, despite his heavy load, was increasing his pace. Car-En bit her lip and walked faster, ignoring the discomfort of the pack straps cutting into her shoulders. Even the rifle, constructed of ultralight materials and weighing less than two kilos, felt heavy in her hands. She was losing ground. Unless she used a stim she wouldn’t have the strength to catch up.

  The blue dot on her display stopped, about one hundred fifty meters ahead. She brought up a visual from the swarm drones. The white-haired man was sitting, his back against a tree. Katja lay supine nearby, absolutely still. Her body was still giving off heat and there were no visible injuries. Car-En was relieved to see that the blond warrior was still fully clothed; whatever the white-haired man’s interest in her, it didn’t appear to be sexual. At least not yet. Kidnapping for ransom, maybe?

  She commandeered a single drone and sent it closer to Katja, trying to get a close visual on her neck where the white-haired man had touched her. Contact poison? She dispatched a hound to search for compounds that might be extracted from nearby fauna or flora, poisons that could quickly induce unconsciousness. Almost instantaneously the hound returned a negative result.

  The drone display blacked out. Crap. She switched to a composite 3D display from other nearby insect-drones. The white-haired man was holding a closed fist near his face, peering at a narrow crack between his fingers. She switched back to the single drone feed. A single gray-blue eye stared back at her. She killed the drone, switched back to the overhead view, and watched the man slowly open his fist to reveal what she hoped looked like a dead horsefly. He inspected the small insectile machine, lifting it up by a single wing and sniffing it. The drones were fabricated from a chitinous material; they were synthetic but appeared organic. But she couldn’t account for odor; she had never thought to smell one.

  The man closed his fist, crushing the drone, and shook his hand clean.

  Car-En stopped in her tracks, fending off a wave of fatigue. What was she getting herself into? She should contact Adrian and ask for advice. Even as the thought occurred to her, she knew she wouldn’t follow through. Already she had gone too far. Explaining her predicament at this point would bring her field research to a quick and decisive end.

  She pulled her long hood forward, turning off the m’eye displays entirely. She wanted to rely on her physical senses, and there was now enough light to see without infrared enhancement. As she neared the spot where she had last seen the white-haired man, she slowed her pace, stepping more carefully. With her cloaking maximized, she would appear merely as a ripple of light moving through the trees. Moving slowly, she noticed the early morning sounds of the forest: singing birds and, in the distance, running water.

  She stopped when she saw them, thirty meters ahead. The man was crouching over Katja, his face close to hers, silently retching. His white hair hung down over her face, partially obscuring Car-En’s view. As far as she could tell, he was dry-heaving. Katja still appeared to be unconscious.

  Car-En crept closer, fascinated. A string of dark blood dripped from the white-haired man’s mouth onto the girl’s pale cheek. His abdomen contracted violently. He gripped her jaw and pulled her mouth open. A small, black, oblong object emerged from his mouth and fell into hers. He slammed her jaw shut and massaged her throat, forcing the object down her gullet. Katja convulsed, choking.

  Terrified, Car-En leveled the rifle, then immediately lowered it. The sedative might take too long to kick in. She had to force herself out of her paralysis, to do something. That, or regret doing nothing for the rest of her life. Move now, think later. She dropped the rifle and launched herself from her hiding place in a flat-out sprint. She closed the gap in seconds, greeting the white-haired man, who was sitting back on his haunches, with a flying kick to the face. His head snapped back and he collapsed.

  She landed, stumbled briefly, and recovered into a low fighting stance. She wasn’t a martial arts expert, but she’d taken the mandatory self-defense classes required for fieldwork, and a few beyond that. She was ready to fight.

  But the white-haired man lay motionless on his side, eyes closed, apparently out cold. She had already won.

  Gingerly, she placed the ball of her foot against his shoulder and rolled the man onto his back. His chin was smeared with blood. A smear of dirt on his forehead marked where her foot had connected. The dark, vein-like web she had noticed earlier stood out beneath his pale, tr
anslucent skin.

  Katja, after a brief coughing fit, once again lay motionless. Keeping the white-haired man in her field of vision, Car-En knelt next to the girl, feeling her neck for a pulse. Slow, but steady. A little color had returned to her cheeks.

  Car-En looked back at the white-haired man, switching to heat vision. His temperature was dropping steadily, with no visible respiration. Dying, if not already dead. She didn’t care. She hated him.

  She stood and slowly retraced her steps along the trail, trying to think. First things first: she instructed her implant to administer a mild sedative; her hands were trembling violently from the adrenaline coursing through her system. She sat on a fallen tree trunk, taking in her surroundings. The east–west trail through the wilderness looked well-used. She wondered by whom.

  In her m’eye, she reviewed the fight in slow motion. The white-haired man had been sitting upright before she’d attacked. In the recording, blood dripped down his chin, his eyes looked unfocused. He hadn’t seen her coming, even as she’d barreled through the brush like a wild boar.

  She watched her foot connect with his forehead. A solid hit, but it hadn’t knocked him out. He’d already been unconscious.

  The black egg-thing – what the hell was that? And what was she going to do now?

  She hadn’t thought it through; she’d just reacted. She’d been sure the white-haired man had been trying to kill Katja. That hadn’t been the case. The young woman was unconscious but very much alive.

  Her implant sedative was kicking in, maybe a little too fast. She was deeply exhausted, coming down hard. She could give herself a stim, but she desperately needed rest. And she should rest; the immediate danger was gone. While she could still think clearly, she instructed the swarm to maintain a tight perimeter, to wake her if anything entered the safety zone. She didn’t trust the m’eye display to wake her; she gave her kit permission to wake her chemically if necessary. Struggling to stay conscious, she shrugged off her pack and lay down next to Katja. Using her cloak as a blanket, she covered both of them, pressing close. The girl smelled like smoke and sweat. The ground was mossy and spongy, slowly heating in the morning sun. For the first time in weeks, Car-En felt warm.