by Allen Steele
“Two guys, at the table behind you to your left.” Dave kept his voice low, didn’t look in their direction. “Came in a couple of days ago. Took a room upstairs, paid for it a week in advance. Been asking questions about you.”
“Uh-huh.” I felt the hair on the back of my neck begin to rise. There wasn’t a mirror behind the bar; otherwise, I might have been able to sneak a peek at them. “What sort of questions?”
“Where you’ve been, mainly…also if you’re reliable.” Dave continued to swab the deck. “Dana’s done most of the talking. She told them that you’re a good guide, if that’s what they’re asking, and that you’re out of town and she didn’t know when you were getting back. Didn’t let ’em know where you live, just that you drop in now and then.”
“I see.” Good old Dana: always watching my back. “Anything else?”
“Sure. Two more things. They wanted to know if you and her were…y’know. Related.”
An old question, yet one I still hadn’t become used to, even after all these years. There weren’t very many people of African-American descent on Coyote, and sometimes I wondered if people thought we all came from the same family. “I hope she set ’em straight,” I muttered, and when Dave raised an eyebrow I knew she hadn’t. “Aw, hell…so what’s the other?”
“One of them’s coming over now.” Dave backed away from the counter. “White chili and corn bread,” he said aloud, scooping up the money I’d just put down. “Anything else, sir?”
I might have asked for the stunner he kept under the bar, just so I could have it in case this was someone’s jealous boyfriend, yet that was out of the question. Dana Monroe wasn’t only the proprietor of the Captain’s Lady, but also Leeport’s mayor, not to mention one its founders. So while she and I were close friends, a brawl was the last thing she wanted in her place of business. Not good for either commerce or politics.
“No,” I said, “thanks anyway.” Dave nodded and headed for the kitchen. I picked up my mug and took another sip of ale while I waited for someone to ask my name.
“Pardon me, sir,” a deep voice said a moment later, “are you Sawyer Lee?” And that was how it all began.
The guy who’d come up behind me was only slightly smaller than Hurricane Dave, with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a thick beard. I wondered how I could have missed seeing him; perhaps I was more tired than I thought.
“You’ve found him,” I said. “May I help you?”
“Yes, sir, you can.” His voice was surprisingly mild; despite his size, there was nothing menacing about him. “I have someone with me who’d like to speak to you, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” I nodded toward the beaded curtain through which Dave had just disappeared. “I just ordered dinner. If your friend wants to come over here…”
“He’d like to speak to you alone, please. At our table.” He paused. “If that’s inconvenient just now, we’ll gladly wait until you’ve finished your meal.”
Jealous beaus are never so polite, and this bloke could have easily wrenched my arm behind my back and frog-marched me wherever he pleased. Instead, he was giving me the option of eating in peace before attending to whatever business his friend had in mind. Not only that, but apparently the guys had been patiently waiting for me to reappear in Leeport, to the point of renting an upstairs room and staking out the tavern for the last two nights. And Dana’s accommodations don’t come cheap; she provides soap with a bath and even changes the bedsheets three times a week.
I decided to take a chance. “No, no…I can have dinner over there just as well as over here, Mr…um?”
“Kennedy.” A dour nod. “If you’ll follow me, please…?”
As he led me across the room to his table, a few people I knew in the place gave me curious looks. One of them was George Waite, a tugboat operator who’d carried me and my clients as passengers on more than one occasion. He was having a drink with his nephew, Donny; the boy ignored us, yet I couldn’t help but notice the cautious expression on George’s face. I gave him a brief nod, and he reciprocated with one of his own, and in this way a silent understanding was reached: if there was trouble, he’d back me up. That’s the way things are out on the frontier; friends look out for each other, particularly when strangers are involved.
The other man seated at the table had his back turned to the room. Despite the warmth of the nearby fireplace, he wore a dark blue travel cloak, its hood pulled up over his head. Clearly, he didn’t want his face to be seen. He stood up as we approached, and I saw that he was a small man, no taller than my shoulder, middle-aged and thickset. Yet it wasn’t until he pushed back his hood that I recognized him.
“Mr. Lee?” he said quietly, holding out his hand. “Good evening. I’m Morgan Goldstein.”
If St. Nicholas had suddenly appeared in the Captain’s Lady, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.
There was no one on Coyote who didn’t know his name. The founder and CEO of Janus Ltd., Morgan Goldstein had been one of the richest men on Earth even before his company managed to negotiate a near monopoly on hyperspace shipping rights to 47 Ursae Majoris; since then, he’d become even more wealthy, if that was possible. Over the last couple of years, he’d relocated his business from North America to Coyote, where he’d established a sizable estate just outside New Brighton. Yet Goldstein hadn’t been content with merely having more money than anyone else; two years ago, he’d run for president of the Coyote Federation. His defeat by the incumbent, Wendy Gunther, in a second-term bid for office, apparently settled his political ambitions. Since then, he’d retreated to his manor; according to the Liberty Post, he was underwriting a major expedition to the unexplored regions, and rumor had it that he was trying to negotiate a trade deal with the hjadd. Although he occasionally emerged for one public event or another, lately he’d become something of a recluse. We heard a lot about him, but no one ever saw his face.
And now, here he was, nursing a pint of ale in a beat-up cantina halfway between somewhere and nowhere. It took me a moment to unglue my tongue. “Pleased to meet you, Mr…”
“Roth” He lowered his voice as I grasped his hand. “So far as anyone here knows, my name’s Irving Roth.” He grinned as he sat down again. “I like this town. Everyone minds their own business.”
“It’s a nice place.” I took a chair across the table from him. Kennedy moved behind me to take the chair between us. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
Goldstein raised an eyebrow. “How did you…?”
“Pardon me.” Unnoticed until that moment, Hurricane Dave placed a bowl of white chili and a plate of corn bread on the table in front of me. “That it? Want another drink?”
“No, thanks.” I pointed to Goldstein, then Kennedy. “You? How about you?” Goldstein had already raised his hood again, and Kennedy silently shook his head. “We’re fine, Dave. Thanks.”
“What is that stuff?” Goldstein peered at my meal. “I saw it on the chalkboard, but I didn’t ask…”
“White chili. Made from chicken, not beef.” I picked up a spoon, stirred the grated onions and goat cheese on top. “Try it. House specialty. So what brings you here, Mr. Roth?”
“A job.” Goldstein settled back in his chair, clasped his hands together in his lap. “But first things first. I understand you’re a professional wilderness guide, Mr. Lee…”
“Uh-huh. Best in the business.” Not to mention almost the only one in the business. True, Susan Gunther and Jonathan Parson had their Coyote Expeditions outfit in Liberty, as a sideline to Susan’s teaching job at the university, but they specialized in camera safaris and refused to take hunters. I liked them well enough; nonetheless, we had a certain difference of opinion. They saw boids as an endangered species, while I saw any creature that could disembowel me with one swipe of its claws as a danger only to me and my clients. So if you wanted to take pictures of a boid from the safety of an armored skimmer, you hired Sue and Jon; if you wanted to take home its head
, I was the man you went to see.
“So I’ve heard.” Goldstein watched while I dipped my spoon into the chili. “I’ve also heard that you’ve gone north…across the Highland Channel, up to Medsylvania.”
“A couple of years ago.” The chili was hot and spicy, just the way I liked it. I reached for my ale. “I once led a group from the university up there. We spent a week or so mapping the southern peninsula.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Not really. Mainly forest. The trees are a bit taller…different species of roughbark, with faux birch as the understory. Other than that…” I shrugged. “Swamp. Ball plants. Creek cats and swampers. Seen one, seen ’em all.”
“Uh-huh.” Goldstein smiled. “You don’t sound very impressed, considering…”
“Considering what?”
“From what you’ve told me, you’ve visited a part of this world few people have seen, yet it seems to have made no more of an impression on you than…well, the compost heap out back.”
“It’s my business. After a while, it all begins to look the same.” It wasn’t quite true; there were places, like the view of Mt. Bonestell from the Gillis Range, that still took my breath away. But the people who usually hired me as a guide were never interested in seeing these beauties; more often than not, I found myself babysitting rich tourists who just wanted to shoot a boid or a creek cat. For them, it was a rich man’s thrill. For me, it was something that paid the bills and kept me in ale without demanding that I find honest work.
“Uh-uh. Of course.” Goldstein sipped his beer. He remained quiet for a minute or so, giving me a chance to eat. I welcomed the silence; no one made chili like Dave. I was working my way to the bottom of the bowl when Goldstein spoke up again. “I understand you may be related to Captain Lee…Are you?”
I hated it whenever someone mentioned this. Captain Robert E. Lee—himself a descendant of the Confederate Army general of the American Civil War—was nearly as famous as his namesake, for being the commanding officer of the URSS Alabama, the first starship to reach the 47 Uma. There’s a life-size statue of him in front of Government House in Liberty, but you’d have to look hard to detect any family resemblance. Quite a few generations separate him from me, but I rather doubt any of my ancestors married into his family. My kin left the United Republic of America just after the Liberty Party took over, and watched the old country go to hell from the safety of Switzerland.
“I don’t think so.” I put down my spoon and reached for a napkin. “There’s a lot of people who claim they’re related to Captain Lee…or General Lee, for that matter…but I’ve never made that assertion.” Not deliberately, at least.
“Aren’t you curious?” Goldstein raised an eyebrow. “If you’re a descendant, I mean.”
“Not really.” I wiped my mouth, tossed the napkin on top of the bowl. “He was before my time. So far as I know, we’ve got nothing in common.”
Not entirely true. Once I migrated to Coyote aboard one of the first ESA ships to carry passengers through the starbridge, it wasn’t long before I made my way to Leeport. My first night here, I met Dana Monroe; I was trying to gamble my way to passage aboard a boat bound for Great Dakota and made the mistake of trying to hide an ace of spades up my sleeve. Another guy at the table caught me, and that was when I learned that card cheats weren’t tolerated in Leeport. Dana saved my skin; using her authority as mayor, she hauled me into the kitchen and put me to work washing dishes until I earned enough money to cover my civil fine.
That was when I discovered why the place was called the Captain’s Lady. Dana Monroe had been the chief engineer aboard the Alabama; indeed, there was a torn piece of metal mounted above the fireplace that had once belonged to the ship, recovered from its wreckage on Hammerhead. But it went further than that; Chief Monroe was Captain Lee’s partner in the last years of his life, and although they’d never been formally married, she still carried a torch for her man.
So there I was, some guy from Earth so down on his luck that he’d try to cheat at poker just to buy his way aboard a tugboat to a place where he might get a job at a sawmill, only to have his fortune change when he met a woman who was the former lover of a legend. A legend with whom I shared a last name. One of the great regrets of Dana’s life was that she and Captain Lee never had any children; although she never came right out and said so, I became the son she didn’t have. I was almost the right age, after all, and since there weren’t too many other dark-skinned people on Coyote, that only tended to strengthen our bond.
So this was how I came to live in Leeport, and why the Captain’s Lady was a second home to me. I never called Dana my mother, and she never called me her son, but the relationship was nearly the same. And once I became a safari guide, willing to escort visitors into the wilderness for a fee, I discovered that having the surname of Coyote’s most famous figure worked to my advantage. It helped attract clients, and I couldn’t fool myself by believing that the reason why I had an extra C300 in my cubbyhole wasn’t because three guys could go home to Germany and claim that they’d gone boid-hunting with a possible descendant of Captain Lee.
But that sort of secondhand fame can also be a curse. As I looked across the table at Morgan Goldstein, I saw from the look in his eyes that he was expecting more than I could deliver. Although I didn’t yet know what he wanted from me, Goldstein wasn’t some rube looking for a stuffed boid head to hang above his fireplace.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Mike…?” He pointed to my half-empty mug, then made a gesture to Kennedy. Without a word, his aide—or maybe he was Goldstein’s bodyguard—left us, marching across the room to the bar. “Regardless, I have great need of an experienced guide. Someone who can take me to Medsylvania.”
“Hunting?”
“Yes…but not for animals. For a person.” A pause. “A friend, to be exact. His name’s Joe Cassidy…Joseph Walking Star Cassidy.”
Kennedy returned to the table with two fresh mugs of porter. Goldstein took a drink, smiled. “One nice thing about coming all the way out here…best ale on Coyote.” I nodded, hoping that he didn’t like it so much that he got it in his mind to buy the place. Noting my impatience, he put down his mug. “Joe came with me from Earth, where he’d worked for me for many years as my equerry.” I raised an eyebrow, and he added, “Stable master. Someone who takes care of horses.”
“Gotcha.” One of the first things that brought Goldstein to the attention of everyone on Coyote was his gift to the colonies of his private collection of horses. Forty-eight in all, everything from Arabians and Percherons to quarter horses and donkeys: breeding stock, possibly the last herd of its size left in existence. He’d given most of the horses to the different settlements, with the stipulation that they would be treated well and allowed to have offspring. Horses had become nearly extinct on Earth, and it was Morgan’s intent that, by introducing them to Coyote, they’d have a chance to survive; yet he’d reserved a half dozen or so for himself, which he continued to raise on his estate. “Go on,” I said.
“Joe was…is…an employee, but…” Morgan hesitated. “Well, over the years I’ve come to consider him a friend. He’s something of the last of the breed himself. Full-blooded Navajo, and a shaman at that. His people were scattered when climate change caused the reservation to become uninhabitable, and Joe made his way up to New England. I was looking for someone to take care of my horses, and…”
He shrugged. “I suppose we were meant to find each other. Neither of us ever had much in the way of a family, and Joe always made it clear to me that he didn’t give a damn how much money I had, it was the fact that I cared so much about horses that mattered. So I took crap from him that I would have fired anyone else for saying, and he let me know when he thought I was wrong about something, and…well, I guess you can figure out the rest.”
And indeed I did. In my line of work, I’d seen my share of rich and powerful men, enough to know that extreme wealth bears a curse of its own: you never know for
certain who’s really your friend, and who’s just kissing your butt so that they can keep their seat on the gravy train. If Cassidy was as sincere as Morgan Goldstein made him out to be, then he was as rare as the horses he tended.
“And you say he’s missing,” I said. “Why do you think he went to…?”
“Let me finish.” Goldstein lifted one finger from the handle of his mug, a subtle-yet-imperious gesture that had probably intimidated entire boardrooms. “As I said, Joe has a mystical streak in him. Now, I don’t know for sure if what he told me about himself is true…that he comes from a long line of Navajo medicine men, that he talks to the spirits and they talk back to him…and I’ve never had much use for religion of any kind, but he believes it, and that’s been fine with me. When we had the estate in Massachusetts, he built a sweat lodge on the property, and from time to time he’d go there to commune with the gods, that sort of thing. I tried to talk to him about it, but that was one part of himself that he always kept closed to me. And I let him, because…”
“Because it was none of your business.”
“Exactly.” Morgan picked up his mug again, took another sip. “I even knew that he’d cultivated peyote, in flowerpots in a corner of the greenhouse where my gardener raised roses. Duncan was rather upset when he found them, and wanted to rip them up, but I forbid him to do so, because I knew that they belonged to Joe and that he used them for…y’know, spiritual reasons.”
“That’s interesting, but I don’t know why…”
“Let me continue, please.” Again, a cold stare. Goldstein was someone who didn’t tolerate interruptions. “When we relocated my estate to New Brighton, I let Joe build another hogan so that he could continue his practices. I think he might have brought some peyote seeds with him…in fact, I’m sure he did…but something happened, and he was unable to cultivate any plants.”