by Allen Steele
As he expected, his building was quiet when he got home; everyone else was still at work, and even Melissa was nowhere to be seen. That suited him well; he needed some time to himself.
He locked the door and closed the windows, then took the Sa’Tong-tas from his pocket and placed it on the table. His first impulse was to open it at once, yet he stopped himself. Taf had told him not to do so unless his mind was at peace. So he took off his uniform, then went into the bathroom and gave himself the luxury of a midday shower. Once he toweled off, he found an old robe that he seldom wore and pulled it on. All the while, he tried to empty his mind, deliberately avoiding thinking about anything in particular. He didn’t know exactly why he did all these things, only that it seemed natural.
When he was ready, Hawk sat down at the table. The black box rested where he’d placed it, inert and mysterious. He found the crack at its center and, ever so gently, pulled open the flaps.
Inside the box was an object little more than five inches in height. Carefully removing it from the box, he found what appeared to be a small, delicate sculpture: two gold rods, supporting a translucent cylinder capped by a small glass orb, anchored to a pedestal inscribed with script that somewhat resembled Farsi. Some sort of fluid, golden brown and viscous, was suspended within the cylinder. Tiny jewels sparkled from the support rods, and sunlight entered the sphere as if it were a prism, breaking into multicolored rays that fell across the table. The hjadd script on the pedestal seemed to glow with a luminescence of its own.
At first glance, the Sa’Tong-tas appeared to be little more than an objet d’art, beautiful but nothing else. Resting it on the table, Hawk cautiously probed it with his fingers. Taf had said that it was a book, but it certainly didn’t look like any book he’d ever seen. Unless it was, in fact, only a decorative piece, something which didn’t have any purpose except to look pretty.
Speak to it, and it will speak to you. That was what Taf had said. Feeling just a bit silly, Hawk cleared his throat. “Hello? Are you listening? Can you hear me?”
A moment passed, then the jewels flashed in a random pattern, and the orb took on a soft internal glow.
“Hello,” a voice said, coming from some source near the sculpture’s base. “Yes, I am listening. Yes, I can hear you.”
Startled, Hawk withdrew his hand from the object. The voice was neither male nor female, yet it was quiet and kind. The fact that it spoke Anglo, though, somehow didn’t seem strange at all. If it was hjadd in origin, then it only made sense that it might know a human language.
“Hello,” he said again. The Sa’Tong-tas didn’t respond but instead seemed to wait for him to go on. “Umm…my name is Hawk Thompson. What are you?”
Again, the jewels flashed. “Greetings, Hawk Thompson. I am your Sa’Tong-tas. Are you ready to begin?”
Hawk blinked, not quite understanding. “Begin? Begin what?”
“To learn those things that you should know.” It sounded like a patient teacher addressing a student for the first time. “Are you ready to begin?”
At a loss for what else to say, Hawk nodded. “Yeah…uhh, yes, I think so.”
The orb grew a little brighter, then the Sa’Tong-tas spoke again.
“You are God…”
The sun had long since set, with night coming upon the town, by the time Hawk put the Sa’Tong-tas back in its case. He carefully closed the box, then sat at the table for a little while longer, his hands at his sides. Many hours had passed since the Sa’Tong-tas began to speak to him, yet he’d been only barely conscious of the passage of time. From all around him, he heard the usual sounds of the tenement—the voices of his neighbors, the occasional flush of the upstairs commode, the lonesome notes of a guitar—yet they were little more than a slight distraction. All he knew for certain was that he’d learned things that he’d never known, yet which were so obvious that he marveled at the fact that they hadn’t ever occurred to him.
He now knew that the Sa’Tong-tas was an artificial intelligence created by a miniature quantum computer, yet it was more than that. It was the voice of a system of spiritual beliefs older than human history, a way of knowledge that went far beyond religion. And even after the long session he had just finished—listening, asking questions, listening some more—he was all too aware that he’d barely scratched the surface. There was more, much more, that he still needed to learn.
Hawk looked around the room, and it was as if he was seeing it for the first time. Something had changed within him; he knew that he’d never be the same again. His job, his way of life, everything that had happened to him until today…unimportant, almost meaningless.
So much more to learn. So many questions, and so few answers. He wouldn’t find them here, nor did he want to search for them alone.
Hawk took a deep breath, then stood up from the table. His back ached from the hours he’d spent sitting there; he took a moment to stretch, then turned and walked to the door.
As he expected, Melissa was in her apartment. Her eyes widened when she opened her door. “Hey, what’s going on? I thought I heard you talking to someone, but when I knocked…”
“You did?” Hawk shook his head. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”
She peered at him. “You okay? You look…I dunno. Weird.”
“I’m fine. Really, I am. It’s just that…” He stopped. If he tried to explain what had just happened to him, she wouldn’t understand. No. That would have to come later. Best to start with the most immediate problem. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, and I think you’re right. We need to leave. New Brighton, that is.”
A smile stole across her face. “Y’know, I kinda thought you might come around. Yeah, sure…we gotta get out of this place.” A pause. “So when do you…?”
“Now.” He hesitated. “Tonight.”
Melissa stared at him, her mouth falling open in shock. “Tonight? But…Hawk, how…I mean, why…?”
“I’ll tell you later. It’s…Look, it’s complicated, but…” He let out his breath. “Now. Tonight.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything. Then she slowly nodded. “All right…but we can’t go right this minute. We’ll have to wait until dawn.” He started to say something, but she shook her head. “I know a way out of here, but I can’t do anything about it until early tomorrow morning. Can you wait until then?”
“Sure, all right.” Hawk was reluctant to put off leaving for so long, when every impulse told him to depart at once, but he wanted Melissa to go with him. Besides, she’d said that she knew a way to get out of town that wouldn’t attract any attention. Which led to another question. “What am I going to do about…?”
He held up his left hand. “That thing?” Melissa finished, and he nodded. Taking his wrist, she carefully inspected the control bracelet. “Shouldn’t be too much hassle getting this off,” she said at last. “I know a guy downstairs who works as a handyman. He owes me a favor”—a salacious wink—“so maybe I can borrow some tools from him. A pair of bolt cutters should do the trick.”
“We’ll have to wait until the last minute. If I take it off now, it’ll send a signal to my parole officer. Same for the patch.” That was the first time he’d thought of Joe Bairns. He didn’t like the idea of betraying the one person who’d been on his side since he was released, but it went without saying that he couldn’t tell Joe what he intended to do.
“Sure.” Melissa didn’t let go of him, though, but instead clasped his hands within her own. “What is it, Hawk-Hawk?” she asked quietly, gazing into his eyes. “What’s made you change your mind?”
“I’ve…discovered something. Something very important.” He caught a flash of fear in her eyes, and he quickly shook his head. “No reason to be frightened. It’s just…something that I’ve got to do, and I don’t want to do it alone.” He paused. “Will you trust me? Please?”
“All right.” Melissa nodded. “Sure. I’ll trust you.”
The early morning sun rose
above the Great Equatorial River, dappling its dark blue waters with streaks of orange and silver. To the west, Bear was beginning to sink below the horizon, its rings touching the last fading stars. The low clouds that shrouded the night sky had begun to disappear; once they were gone, the new day promised to be bright and clear.
The fishing boat tied up at the dock gently bobbed on the morning tide, its ropes creaking against its moorings. Hawk stood quietly nearby, watching as Melissa completed her negotiations with the captain. A handful of colonials made a swift transition from her pocket to his; the older man nodded, then gestured toward his boat. Melissa looked over at Hawk and gave him a furtive nod, then reached down to pick up the hempcloth duffel bag at her feet.
Hoisting his own bag by its strap, Hawk walked down the dock to join her. “They’ll get us as far as Bridgeton,” she whispered as they watched the crew load their nets aboard the aft deck. “After that, we’re on our own.”
“Did he ask any questions?”
“Sure, he had questions.” A sly smile. “A hundred colonials gave him all the answers he needed to have…and fifty more made sure that he’s never seen us.”
Hawk nodded. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before Joe discovered that he was gone. Indeed, the parole officer was probably already on his way to Hawk’s apartment; once he used his badge to get the land-lord to unlock his door, Bairns would find the flat just as he’d last seen it, except for the severed bracelet and discarded patch lying on the table. But the dresser would be empty and a bag would be missing, and the only other evidence that Hawk had once lived there would be his customs uniform, neatly folded on his bed.
Joe was a smart guy. He’d eventually figure out how Hawk managed to leave New Brighton. But he and Melissa would have something of a head start, or at least if the captain kept his word. And even if he didn’t, by the time Joe tracked them across the river to Bridgeton, the two of them would’ve long since left New Florida. Heading for some place where they would never be found.
The captain walked across the gangplank onto his boat. He looked around, making sure that everything was where it should be, then he turned and gave Melissa a quiet nod. “It’s time,” she murmured, taking Hawk’s hand again. “Ready?”
“Yes,” he said, and let her lead him across the plank. Finding a place to sit on the hatch cover above the live hold, they watched as ropes were untied and sails unfurled. The wind caught the sheets, billowed them outward; without any fuss, the boat slipped away from the dock.
As the fishing boat sailed out into the harbor, Hawk took a moment to gaze back at New Brighton. One last look, then he deliberately turned away from its tenements and smoke. Sitting beside him, Melissa rested her head against his shoulder.
“So,” she whispered, “where are we going?”
“I don’t know.” Taking her hand, he gazed at the distant horizon. “We’ll find out when we get there.”
Part 2
WALKING STAR
(from the memoirs of Sawyer Lee)
We grow up believing that our minds are citadels, unassailable fortresses behind whose walls our thoughts are protected, unknowable to all save when we choose to open the gates of our mouths, our eyes, our hearts. Certain that ours is a separate reality, we spend our lives creating inner worlds, ones whose relationship to the true nature of things is tangential at best. We see the same things, but we perceive them differently; all we have in common, really, is a universe that we’ve agreed upon by consensus.
At least, this is what I once thought. Then I met Joseph Walking Star Cassidy, and nothing was ever the same again.
By the time I returned to Leeport on the last day of the seventh week of Asmodel, the springtime rainy season had begun. I’d spent the last few days in the southern half of New Florida, in the savannas of the Alabama River; three wealthy German businessmen had come to Coyote to hunt boid, and they’d hired me to be their guide. It hadn’t been an easy trip; my clients had more money than sense, and none of them had ever fired a gun at anything more threatening than a hologram on a Berlin rifle range. So when I wasn’t trying to keep them from tipping over our canoes or showing them how and where to set up their tents, I was worrying whether a boid would kill them instead of vice versa.
Yet we got along well enough, and on the morning of the fifth day, I’d managed to track down a boid just northwest of Miller Creek, in the equatorial grasslands where boids were known to migrate for the winter. It was only a young male, no taller than my head, nonetheless ferocious enough to give my clients their money’s worth. The Germans opened fire as soon as the creature charged us from the high grass; although most of their shots went wild, enough struck home to bring it down; once I was sure that the boid was mortally wounded, I allowed Herr Heinz, the group’s leader, to approach the giant avian close enough to deliver a coup de grâce to the narrow skull behind its enormous beak. After we dragged the carcass to the nearest blackwood and strung it up from a lower branch, I took the pictures that would give them bragging rights once they returned home, then we cut the boid down and everyone got feathers as souvenirs before I butchered it. Boid meat is actually rather gamey—those of us who live here eat it only when we’re desperate—but it was all part of their vacation, and once I broke out another jug of bearshine, they didn’t mind the taste so much.
The other two Germans wanted to stay longer, perhaps hoping they’d bag a creek cat, but I knew we were pushing our luck; where there’s one boid, there are bound to be more, and the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by a pack with tourists at my back. So I used my satphone to call for a gyro pickup—another C500 fee, not including my own surcharge—and by early evening we’d been airlifted northeast to Liberty. I settled the bill with my clients at the upscale B&B where I’d first met them, then let them take me to Lew’s Cantina for some serious drinking. Truth to be told, by then I was sick and tired of their company, but experience had taught me that a little indulgence goes a long way; once they’d put away a few pints of ale, the three of them emptied their wallets and put another C300 on the table. And they even paid the bar tab.
The next morning, after I returned the canoes to the outfitter from whom I’d rented them, I hitched a ride home on a shag-team wagon hauling a load of Midland iron from Liberty to Leeport. I was exhausted by the time we rolled into town late that afternoon, but with C5,000 deposited to my account at the Bank of Coyote—minus expenses, it came to C3,000 that I could call my own—and another C300 in my pocket that the Ministry of Revenue didn’t have to know about, I was solvent for another month or so. Not rich, by any means, but with luck I wouldn’t have to get a real job anytime soon, so long as I didn’t do something stupid like blowing a wad at the poker table.
My place was a two-room flat on Wharf Street, above a ceramics shop where in winter I had the benefit of hot air carried up through vents from their kiln. Once I put away my gear, I pumped some water into the tub and lit the heating coil. While the bath warmed up, I hid my cash within a knothole in the wall behind the dresser, then peeled off my filthy clothes. A long soak in the tub with a glass of waterfruit wine, then I dried off, pulled on a robe, and went to bed. I was asleep before I remembered to check my comp for messages.
I woke up later that evening, hungry and restless. So I trimmed my mustache and ran a pick through my hair, put on some clean clothes, and hit the town in search of a decent meal. Leeport was still a small settlement in those days—a dozen or so wood-frame-and-adobe buildings on either side of three muddy streets, a waterfront with tugboats and barges lined up at the piers—so that time of night there was little question where I was going to find dinner and a pint of ale.
Not surprisingly, the Captain’s Lady was only half-empty. It was Orifiel night, after all, and Leeport was a workingman’s town. Tomorrow morning, the barges would be back on the channel, the wharf lined with wagons. A handful of boatmen sitting around the hearth, warming their feet by the fire; a few more locals gathered around a nearby table, cards in h
and and a modest pile of chips between them. The usual faces; a few of them looked up as I shut the door behind me, and I nodded as I hung up my jacket, then sauntered to the other side of the room. The bartender saw me coming; Hurricane Dave had already pushed a mug beneath the ale spigot by the time I reached the roughbark bar where he spent his evenings.
“Welcome back,” he said, favoring me with a seldom-seen smile. “How was the trip?”
“Good ’nuff. Where’s the chief?”
“Off for the night. Town business.” He topped off the mug, passed it to me. “On the house. Good hunting?”
“Okay.” I lifted a hand, waved it back and forth. “A little one. Made the tourists happy.” The porter was black as coal, bitter as a lie; the Lady’s ale came straight from the brewpots down in the cellar, which Dave tended as lovingly as if they were his own children. “Thanks, I’ve been waiting for this. What’s on the menu tonight…the usual?”
“Got a fresh batch in the kitchen. Want some?”
“Only if I have to pay for it.” I dug a couple of wooden dollars out of my vest pocket and dropped them on the counter. “Corn bread, too, if you’ve got it.”
“Sure. We’ve got some left, I think.” Yet Dave didn’t leave the bar. Instead, he picked up a rag and, making a pretense of wiping down the counter, moved a little closer. “Expecting trouble?” he murmured.
Dave was a big guy, a giant even in a town full of men with a lot of muscle. His boss didn’t tolerate troublemakers in her establishment, and neither did he; firearms were surrendered at the bar, and anyone caught with a knife larger than those used to clean fish were evicted at once. So if Hurricane Dave sensed a problem, it was worth taking seriously. “Not really,” I said quietly. “Why do you ask?”