by Allen Steele
“I see a ship,” Bigthorn said. “Is the danger aboard the ship? Which one is it?”
Coyote smiled a canine smile, the grin of a god. Watch carefully, keeper of the gringo law.
Bigthorn looked back at the ship. Suddenly, it exploded, transforming itself into a white sphere of nuclear energy that pulsed outwards with terrifying speed and force. He heard Coyote laugh—his grandfather’s laugh—and when he looked up, Coyote had vanished. The darkness of night was swept away in the sudden, horrible glare.
Bigthorn only had time to realize that Coyote had tricked him, too, before the Shockwave ripped through the window, glass exploding around him, slicing through him, in the first moment of the destruction of Clarke County.…
He was out cold for a long time.
When he awakened, Bigthorn found himself curled against the wall on the floor of his hogan. Every joint in his body ached. His mouth was cotton-dry and he was hungry. Sunlight streamed in through the smokehole and the open door. The fire in the pit had long since burned out, leaving a small, cold heap of ashes. And he was no longer by himself.
Jenny Schorr was sitting on her knees a few feet away, smiling. As he twisted around on his back, painfully, she held out his clothes to him; she had folded them neatly. Her eyes drifted down his body, hovering for a moment over his crotch, and she let out a low, coy whistle.
“Hoy hoy,” she dryly commented. “Injun brave have heap good body.”
“Thanks. Go to hell.” Bigthorn closed his eyes for a second, then took the clothes and, sitting up, placed them in his lap. His head felt as if someone had hammered a rail spike through his skull. “What time is it?” he rasped through his dry throat.
“Nine o’clock … Saturday morning,” she said.
“Oh, great.” He lay his head against the wall. He should have been on duty an hour ago. “Did Wade send you out here?”
“He was worried, but he didn’t know where to find you.” Jenny’s smile grew wider. “I had stopped by to … never mind, but he checked the message board when your home phone didn’t answer. Blind Boy Grunt knew where you were.”
Bigthorn squinted at her. “He did?”
She shrugged. “No kidding. Right there on the screen.” He stared at her and she continued. “‘Bigthorn—Rindge Hill. Howling with the coyotes.’ That was it. So I came up here to check it out, and looky what I found.” She nodded her head. “For this kind of show, I’m glad I did.”
“Whoopee.” Bigthorn bent forward and snagged the leather flask he had brought with him, unstoppered the cork and took a long, soothing drink. Looking back at Jenny, he saw that she was still admiring his body. “C’mon, what’s the matter? Never seen a naked man before?”
“None like this.”
“Gnngh.” He was embarrassed. “If and when I find out who Blind Boy Grunt is, I’m going to twist his goddamn neck.”
Jenny nodded her head. She was still transfixed by his groin, and it was making him distinctly uncomfortable. “You know,” he said, “a Navajo hogan is a sacred place during a sweat.”
“Really now?” A wicked smile spread across her face. “If you want sweat, I’ll be happy to oblige.”
He frowned, not catching her drift. “Hmm? I don’t understand.”
“Let me try to be a little more clear, then.” She shook back her long blond hair and began to unbutton her white cotton blouse. “Maybe if I take off my clothes and lie on top of you,” she said softly, “we could work up a little more sweat, hey?”
Bigthorn stared at her speechlessly as she removed her shirt, untucking it from her jeans. Her breasts were lovely. He would have loved to touch them. In the back of his mind, he had always wondered what Jenny Schorr looked like in the nude. Yet now that he was about to find out, he didn’t want to know.
“Only if your husband says it’s okay,” he murmured.
“Neil?” Jenny shrugged. “Oz the great and powerful lost interest in this sort of thing a long time ago.” She lay her shirt aside and reached for the top button of her jeans. “Saving the world takes a lot out of a man, y’know.”
The sheriff forced himself to look away. Like it or not, he was beginning to get hard. The temptation was there … but he couldn’t bring himself to follow his urges. “Please, Jenny … please stop.”
She stopped. The seductive smile escaped from her face. “Is it because of Neil?” she whispered.
“Not necessarily,” he replied. “It’s just … well, on principle, I don’t go around fucking married women. Don’t take it personally.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Considering the circumstances, what other way am I supposed to take it?”
“Well, you can put your clothes back on, for starters.” He tried not to stare at her. He didn’t even want to consider how long it had been since the last time he had gotten his ashes hauled, or the fact that Jenny was exactly the kind of woman who could make him want to die and go to heaven. Hell, man, who’s going to know …?
No one except you, bub. Bigthorn looked away again. “Sorry, but it ain’t me, babe. Please …”
Jenny stopped unbuttoning her jeans. She looked at him sulkily, then picked up her shirt and began to dress. She even turned her back as he began to pull on his own clothes. For a couple of minutes neither of them said anything, until finally Bigthorn cleared his throat to break the nervous silence.
“I better get down to the cop shop,” he said as he zipped up his trousers and reached for his uniform shirt. “Don’t want anyone to get the idea that I’ve gone off on a bender.”
Jenny didn’t smile or meet his eyes. “No, you don’t,” she said neutrally as she buttoned her shirt. “Of course everyone knows you don’t drink.” She cast a glance at him over her shoulder. “Come to think of it, have you ever gotten drunk?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t enjoy the experience.” Suddenly, Bigthorn recalled his vision from the night before, what Coyote had told him. “By the way,” he added, “you haven’t seen the inbound flight schedule, have you?”
“Uh-huh. The Lone Star Clipper’s due in at eleven hundred.” Jenny stood up and shoved her shirttails back into her pants. “Why do you ask?”
“Hmm … no particular reason.”
“Right. Well …” She quickly slapped the dust off her knees. “Time to go be Neil Schorr’s wife again.” Jenny turned and bent over to pass through the low door, but then she stopped. “John …?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened here … that’s strictly between you and me, isn’t it?” She glanced down at the cold fire-pit. “Believe me when I tell you that I still love him. You have to know that. But I have my needs, and he isn’t doing anything about that.” She hesitated. “Maybe being horny doesn’t count compared to feeding a million starving children in Africa but … sometimes you start to think about doing stuff that you normally …”
Bigthorn held up his hand. “I understand, Jenny. Don’t sweat it. It’s just between you and me.”
Jenny closed her eyes and nodded gratefully. Then she smiled again. “But if you should ever change your mind …”
Without waiting for an answer, she swept forward and planted a soft, wet kiss on his mouth. Then, with a parting wink, she ducked through the door of the hogan, leaving Bigthorn half-dressed on the floor. He could hear her whistling an old Beatles tune as she walked down the hillside.
“Great,” he murmured to himself. “What a wonderful development.”
3
Her Declaration of Independence
(Saturday: 9:23 A.M.)
Jenny Schorr walked down the hillside path from the sheriff’s hogan, stepping over the irrigation canals that crisscrossed the agricultural zone, absently looking for the rare weeds that invaded the croplands. As she brushed through the early summer corn, Jenny found herself wondering if she was living at the end of a broken-down hippie dream.
Married ten years, reasonably happy with her marriage, and still she was throwing herself at the first naked man she saw. Jenny co
nsidered herself to be monogamous. If asked, she would have said that she was a faithful wife. So what was she doing, making an overt pass at someone who was little more than a cordial friend?
God, what got into me? The thought kept repeating itself like a mantra as Jenny hiked back towards Western Avenue, where she had left her tricycle. Okay, so it’s been months since Neil has paid any attention to me. But I can’t be that horny that I’d start strip-teasing for the first naked man I run into.…
Even if he is hung like a stallion, she thought. Cut it, Jenny!
She must have made a fool out of herself. Worse, she probably gave John the impression that she was some sort of slut. Jenny’s face reddened at the thought. In a decade of marriage she never slept with anyone except Neil. She had always stood fast by her wedding vows.
On the other hand, she didn’t believe that Neil had been entirely faithful to her. As the founder and spiritual leader of the New Ark, Neil always had women around who seemed ready and eager to ball their avatar. Jenny had seen plenty of lovely young ladies throw themselves on their guru—the “Mary Magdalene complex” some pop psychologist had termed it—and Jenny had not always been around to fend them off.
Nor had Neil always seemed morally compelled to hold them at arm’s length. There was the time when she had gone for six weeks to Guatemala to oversee an earthquake rescue project, while Neil had stayed behind to supervise the spring planting at the Ark. When she had come home, Kate Watanabe was gone from the commune. She was pregnant when she left, and there were idle rumors that she had been sleeping with Neil. Neil, when confronted, had denied everything, but not long afterwards he began to lose interest in sex altogether.
Okay, maybe Neil’s slept around. That doesn’t excuse your own conduct, Jenny reminded herself. Worse than betraying Neil, it could wreck the Ark itself, or a least derail the High Grange Project.
She and Neil were the spiritual leaders of the New Ark Community; she had to keep that foremost in her mind. They had asked over 2,000 people, out of the Ark’s 8,000 members worldwide, to relocate to a space colony thousands of miles away from everything familiar to them. Most had come from the Ark’s original communal farm in Ashby, Massachusetts; they had sold the property itself, the former site of Fort Devens, in order to raise the money to bring everyone to Clarke County. Others who were not members of the Ashby farm had given up their homes. There was even one couple who had been forced to put their four-month-old child up for adoption, when doctors told them the infant’s health would be endangered by the launch and flight.
So much had been sacrificed and risked, she remembered, all for the chance to prove that space could be settled by a spiritual community. It had taken years of negotiation between the Clarke County Corporation and the New Ark before the consortium’s leaders were persuaded to turn over the space-ag industry to the Ark, to support the High Grange Project as a non-profit business. Too many people were depending upon their leadership for either one of them to get involved in a tawdry little affair.
Okay, Neil’s gotten himself into a messiah complex, she thought. He wants to feed the world from Clarke County. Fine and dandy. If he’s the messiah of the poor and the downtrodden, then you’re Mrs. Messiah. You don’t have the liberty to be a normal woman with a normal sexual appetite.
Right. But that doesn’t mean I’m not goddamned sick of it.…
As she reached the edge of the field and stepped onto the road, the telephone on her belt chirped. Jenny unsnapped the phone and held it to her face. “Hi, this is Jenny,” she said.
It’s Neil, her husband’s voice said, as if she couldn’t recognize him. Perhaps this was another sign of their growing apart. Where are you?
“Ummm … Southwest quad, checking the irrigation canals. We have the weekly Ark meeting coming up, don’t we?”
It’s been postponed. We’ll probably cover the items scheduled at the town meeting on Sunday. They’re on the docket anyway. Listen, I’m at Colony Control right now. The selectmen’s exec session, remember?
Jenny winced. The executive session of the county Board of Selectmen, usually held on Monday mornings, had been moved up to Saturday because of Memorial Day. “Sorry, I forgot,” she replied. “Umm … why don’t you guys go ahead without me?”
It’s important, Jenny. We’re discussing the Ark’s troubles with LaGrange. Neil was insistent. Please, can you come on over?
Of course she could come on over. It wasn’t a question, no matter how Neil phrased it. Even though she wasn’t a member of the Board of Selectmen, she was one-half of the unit known as Neil and Jenny Schorr, and was expected to be present whenever the interests of the Ark were being discussed. Not that the continuous friction between the Clarke County Corporation and the New Ark wasn’t of concern to her. It was only that she wished, for once, Neil would handle this stuff all by himself.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be there, in five. Colony Control, main board room. Right?”
Right. See you in five.
Jenny clipped the phone back on her belt and walked over to the large red tricycle parked on the roadside. Two plastic gallon jugs of drinking water were in the rear basket. She pulled them out and left them on the ground for the field workers, then she straddled the trike, settled herself on the seat, and began pumping the pedals with her sneakered feet.
It was a quick, easy ride to South Station. Although it appeared as if she were going uphill, she was actually heading closer to the colony’s axis, coasting down the gravity-grade. By the time she crossed the footbridge over South Window, out of the farm sector and into the forest land surrounding the biosphere’s South pole, she was peddling barely more than was necessary to defeat inertia. Jenny was gliding when she pulled into South Station, the round mooncrete parapet surrounding the Pole.
She nestled the front wheel of the trike into the community bike stand and carefully climbed off. While gravity was Earth-normal at the biosphere’s equator, here near the axis it was slightly less than one-quarter normal. The tourists waiting in queues to ride the Gold Line, the aerial cable car that traversed the empty line of axis between South Station and North Station, were trying to readapt to the fact that every move they made was exaggerated in one-quarter gravity. Often with disastrous results; many of the tourist injuries treated at Clarke County General were sprains and bruises suffered by overeager visitors who misinterpreted the phrase “reduced gravity” as “anything goes.”
Jenny passed the tourists, doing the short-step heel-to-toe shuffle which inhabitants learn to adopt in reduced gravity areas, and headed for the Red Line tram, which was loading passengers for another trip down to the South tori. She waved her ID at the sensor and managed to scuttle inside the little monorail cab before the doors shut.
Colony Control was the name for Torus S2, located at the farthest end of the eleven tori that comprised Clarke County’s South Section. Although the torus was huge, in terms of square-footage, it was also one of the colony’s self-contained “closed” tori. Unlike the landscaped terrains of the agricultural and habitat tori and the Strip, where fields, plazas, and buildings lay under greenhouse-like “skies,” Torus S2 was composed of enclosed decks. Here were the colony’s control rooms, computer centers, the field offices of the Corporation’s member companies, and meeting rooms.
Colony Control thus felt more like the interior of a metropolitan office building than a suburban neighborhood. As large as the torus was, there clung to it a cavernous, yet still somehow claustrophobic atmosphere that was absent in most other areas of the colony. The potted ferns in the corridors were a weak substitute for the wide farm fields of the biosphere, and although the light fixtures in the ceilings automatically dimmed during the colony’s twelve-hour night, it was hardly the same as seeing nightfall, even through the lunar-glass ceilings of “open” tori.
Jenny paused in the corridor at the observation window overlooking Main Operations, the vast central control room for the colony. The floor of Main-Ops was tiered with se
micircular carrels, its walls lined with giant holo screens and computer displays. Just below the observation window, Jenny could see the shift-supervisor’s station, raised slightly above the rest of the carrels.
Main-Ops was a striking sight. Most of the people who worked there were not quite so impressive. They were the reason why Main-Ops was sometimes called Wanker Central. Nervous young techies were crouched over and slumped behind their work stations, muttering (or yelling) into their headset mikes, eating freeze-dried crap (ham and cheese po’boys was the favorite entrée), staring at the giant images on the wall holoscreens, scribbling notes with light-pens, and forever snarling stupid insults at each other. Even on a routine day, the wankers always acted as if an asteroid was about to collide with the colony. Nerds in space.
Jenny grinned and continued down the corridor to the board room, where the meeting was being held. The smartdoor was locked, but it recognized her palm-print and allowed her to enter. The three people seated around the conference table looked up as she walked in, and Robert Morse studied her as she found a seat next to her husband.
“Something funny?” he asked politely.
Jenny shook her head, trying to get the smile off her face. Neil, stoical as always, give her a cold, businesslike look. Obviously they had started the meeting without her, and Neil did not appreciate the fact that she was late. But Rebecca Hotchner did not seem perturbed, although she would probably remain unruffled if an asteroid did collide with the colony.
They were still watching her. “Nothing really,” she repeated as she quickly searched for something inconsequential to say. “Who’s at the resort this weekend, Bob? Anybody interesting?”
The mayor of LaGrange smiled grimly. “Is that what’s funny?” he asked.
“I’d heard something,” Jenny bluffed.
“Oh, no,” Rebecca Hotchner said, closing her eyes. “You would have to bring them up, wouldn’t you, dear?”
Neil, confused, glanced around the table. “Who are you talking about?”