by Allen Steele
I wasn’t surprised. Although most of the crops humankind had attempted to introduce to this world had been successful, there had also been notable failures. Coyote’s long seasons had much to do with it; although our springs and summers collectively lasted for a year and a half by Earth reckoning, so did our autumns and winters. Corn and bamboo did well, for instance, but tubers like carrots and potatoes were notoriously finicky. The hardier strains of apples and peaches were able to withstand cold snaps, but citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruit were nearly impossible to grow even in the equatorial regions. Native predators and plant diseases also took their toll; grasshoarders loved turnips and soybeans, it was very difficult to keep strawberries clean of fungus, and apiarists had to find and import bees aggressive enough not to be massacred by pseudowasps.
“But Joe needed something to assist him in his meditation,” Goldstein continued, “so he began to look around.” He sighed, started to pick up his mug again, then put it down without taking a drink. “He found…”
“Sting.” For the first time since he’d approached me at the bar, Mike Kennedy spoke up. I’d almost forgotten he was there; he sat between me and Goldstein, and although his expression was as stoical as before, his eyes were glacial. “He started using sting.”
Goldstein glared at him. “Mike…”
“C’mon, boss. I knew about it before you did.” The bodyguard reached for a piece of corn bread on my plate. “So did everyone else. He got into that stuff like there was no—”
“I know that,” Goldstein said angrily. “But what I still don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me.”
Kennedy shrugged and said nothing, looking away as if it were some minor detail he’d neglected to mention to his employer. Yet I knew exactly where he was coming from. He and Joe Cassidy had one thing in common; they both drew their paychecks from the same source. And only a fink rats out the other guy to the head man, particularly when it comes to drugs.
And sting was pretty powerful stuff. I mentioned pseudowasps: large flying insects that nested within ball plants, the large spherical plant that grew in abundance in grasslands and marshes across most of Coyote’s western hemisphere. Indeed, ball plants and pseudowasps formed part of an interesting symbiosis. Swampers, the ferretlike creatures that inhabited those same areas, hibernated within the ball plants during the winter; the weak and old perished during that period and decomposed within the plant’s hollow core, thus supplying nutrients. Pseudowasps built their nests within the plant’s tough outer shell; they protected the swampers by attacking potential predators who might try to get an easy meal by ripping open the inner cell, and also the insects pollinated the plants. That was why pseudowasps went after bee colonies; they saw them as natural competitors.
Sting was derived from pseudowasp venom. Containing a natural hallucinogen similar to mescaline, it wasn’t fatal, but instead made animals like creek cats and boids so confused that they simply forgot what they were doing and wandered off, while lower forms of insects were so paralyzed that the pseudowasps were able to feed upon them while they were still alive. For humans, though, the effect was more pronounced; the original Alabama colonists stung by pseudowasps staggered around like happy drunks, with some having hallucinations. After that, they learned to avoid ball plants, particularly during the autumn and spring seasons, when the pseudowasps tended to be most active.
Yet once more settlers arrived on Coyote aboard the Western Hemisphere Union ships that followed the Alabama, someone discovered how to trap pseudowasps by dropping a sticky-net, like those used by Union Guard troops, over the ball plants. Once the insects exhausted themselves and died, it was possible to extract them from the nets and, with careful use of a pair of surgical forceps, crush their bodies until the venom seeped from their sacs. It was a slow and painstaking process, to be sure, but it yielded a quarter centimeter or two of fluid that, once diluted with sugar water, gave everyone who put it on his tongue a cheap high that would last for hours.
That was sting, as it was commonly called. It had been made illegal long before I came to Coyote, but that never stopped it from being sold or bartered on the black market. I’d tried it once, for the bloody hell of it, but didn’t like it very much; when an old girlfriend stuck her head up from the ground and asked if I wanted to come down for a quick screw, that was enough fun for one night. There were stingheads all over Coyote; the stuff wasn’t supposed to be addictive, but you can’t tell me that people didn’t become psychologically dependent upon it…and there was nothing worse than seeing some poor fool clawing at the walls and screaming that he’d seen his mother coming for him with a knife between her teeth.
“Never mind.” Goldstein looked away from his bodyguard, turned his attention back to me. “Fact is, Joe started using sting. I don’t think he meant to use it as…as dope, I mean…but rather as a substitute for peyote. All the same, though…”
“He got whacked on the stuff.” Kennedy didn’t try to hide his contempt. “He dropped it whenever he could…”
“Mike…” Again, there was a note of warning in Goldstein’s voice. Kennedy shut up, and his boss went on. “I didn’t know what was happening at first, but when I did…”
He absently ran a hand across his hairless head. “I told him that I couldn’t have someone on my staff who was abusing drugs. He argued, of course, that his reasons for using it were spiritual, that he wasn’t doing it just to get high, but I couldn’t accept that. There was too much evidence that he was taking sting whenever possible…”
“Such as?”
“I first realized that he was using it when people started coming to the estate that I’d never met before. Friends of his, whom he’d met in New Brighton. One or two of them were suppliers, others were just…” He sighed. “Lowlifes. Scum. Immigrants who’d come here without any plans, just trying to get by however they could.”
I bristled a bit when he said that, for he was describing guys like me. One thing that frequently ticks me off about the wealthy is that they often don’t realize that not everyone has a burning ambition to acquire money and material possessions. Ever since the starbridge opened, more people were arriving every month; most were simply trying to flee their ruined homelands on Earth and didn’t have any plans other than getting by as best as they could, one day at a time. The rich don’t understand this; unless someone has made it his or her mission in life to die with more toys than anyone else, then he or she is a deadbeat.
Goldstein didn’t notice that he’d just insulted me, but Kennedy did. His face remained stolid, yet his eyes briefly rolled upward. “Anyway,” Goldstein went on, “Joe and I had a long talk, and we eventually agreed that he needed to take some time off. I knew that the university medical school had recently started a drug-treatment program, so I told him that I’d put money in his account to pay for him to travel to Shuttlefield and get help. Joe said he’d do it, and a few days later he caught a gyro to New Florida.”
He ran a fingertip around the rim of his mug. “When a few weeks went by, and I hadn’t heard anything from him, I called the university, and that’s when I discovered that Joe had never checked in. So I called the bank, and found out that he’d dissolved his account at the branch in Liberty, taking out all the money I’d put in, plus his own earnings.”
“I imagine you were rather upset.”
“To put it mildly, yes.” The lines around his mouth tightened. “But more than that, I was concerned about what he was doing to himself. Understand, I like Joe. As I said before, I’ve always regarded him as being more of a friend than an employee…and from what I could tell, he was in trouble.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Last Barchiel…a little more than two months ago.” Like everyone else born and bred on Earth, I mentally made the conversion from Gregorian to LeMarean calendars. Approximately 190 days, give or take a couple of weeks: the middle of winter. “To make a long story short, I put some people I knew on Joe’s trail and found that
he met up with several people in Liberty…some of whom were the same guys he’d met earlier in New Brighton…and together they’d hired a boat to take them to New Boston.”
“All the way up there?” That surprised me. Aside from Fort Lopez, New Boston was the most remote colony of the Federation, located on the northern coast of Midland. No one went there in wintertime unless they absolutely had to do so. “Why?”
“From what I’ve learned, Joe and his friends stayed just long enough to buy food and supplies, then they hired a boat to carry them across the Medsylvania Channel.” Goldstein picked up his mug again, took another sip without any of his previous pleasure. “After that, the trail goes cold.”
“So I take it that you want me to go up there and find him.”
“No. I want you to take me up there, so I can find him.” He gave a sidelong glance at Kennedy. “My associate will only be going part of the way, assuming that our first stop will be New Boston. Apparently he has no desire to assure himself that his colleague is alive and well.”
“Sorry, boss,” Kennedy rumbled. “My job description doesn’t cover chasing junkies.”
Not very sympathetic, although I wasn’t sure that I blamed him. People like Joe Cassidy made disappearing acts like that all the time on Coyote. Most were would-be frontiersmen, harboring ill-conceived fantasies of going into the wilderness with little more than a backpack, a tent, and a hand ax; sometimes they succeeded at homesteading, but more often than not they simply vanished, never to be seen again. Others were holy fools, believing that Coyote had some mystical powers that would bring enlightenment. A gravesite just below the summit of Mt. Shaw on Midland held the bones of the members of the Church of Universal Transformation, who went cannibal when they were trapped on the mountain during a winter storm.
I didn’t know if either fate had befallen Joe Cassidy and his friends, nor was I eager to find out. In fact, I was still getting over my latest trip. But clients like Morgan Goldstein don’t fall from the sky; if I played my cards right, I could stand to make enough money to last me until summer.
“Five grand up front,” I said, “and another three grand for expenses…not including a gyro ride to New Boston.”
Goldstein didn’t even blink. “Fair enough…but no gyro. I want to go by boat, all the way.” He caught the puzzled look on my face. “Not many gyros fly to New Boston, I’m told…and if Joe’s just across the channel, he’d see one coming. I don’t want him to be expecting me.”
“If you say so.” I turned my head to look at George Waite. As I expected, he’d leaned back in his chair, pretending not to eavesdrop but doing so nonetheless. George caught my eye, gave me a sly grin; he knew a lucrative deal when he saw it coming. I turned back to Goldstein. “I think that can be arranged.”
“I thought so.” He hadn’t missed the silent exchange between me and George. Goldstein polished off his drink, then pushed back his chair. “See you here tomorrow morning, Mr. Lee,” he said, reaching into his pocket to toss a handful of colonials on the table. “I hope your reputation for reliability is well earned.”
I hoped it was, too.
We left Leeport early the next morning, as passengers aboard the Helen Waite.
Before I met Goldstein and Kennedy again, I went down to the wharf and negotiated passage with her captain. George was a buddy, so I held nothing back from him; I told him that my client was none other than Morgan Goldstein, and that although we were heading for New Boston, our destination would be somewhere in Medsylvania. As it turned out, George had already intended to go to New Boston; three barges of coal were waiting for him up there, for shipment to Clarksburg farther south. I wasn’t surprised when he told me that he’d recognized Goldstein, nor was I particularly shocked when he hit me up for a larger fee than usual. C1,000 for the three of us was steep, but George knew the money wasn’t coming from my pocket; in return, he agreed to wait a few days for us in New Boston and continue to pretend that one of his passengers was named Irving Roth.
I’d packed equipment for both of us, but once I rendezvoused with Goldstein at the Captain’s Lady, I discovered Goldstein had brought his own gear. Although I was pleased that he’d come prepared, some of his stuff was unnecessary; the brand-new solar tents and particle-beam rifles were fine, but I made him leave behind the portable hydrogen-cell stove, the infrared motion-detection system, and the seven-day supply of freeze-dried rations, telling him that, unless he wanted to carry all that junk on his back, he’d do just as well living off the land. He argued with me, of course, but I put my foot down, and he reluctantly agreed to put the extra equipment in storage at the Captain’s Lady until we returned.
Just before we left, I linked my pad with his and downloaded C5,000 into my private account. George did the same, taking C1,000 for passage to New Boston. Goldstein performed the transactions with scarcely a blink: more evidence that the rich have different lives than mere mortals. Kennedy and I shared another glance—he was accustomed to this sort of free spending and was quietly amused that I wasn’t—then I shepherded him and Goldstein aboard the Helen Waite. Donny untied us from the pier. George yanked twice on the cord of the steam whistle, and the tugboat chugged out of the Leeport harbor.
The journey to New Boston took two days. The first leg of the trip was spent traveling upstream along the West Channel to the northern tip of New Florida; we dropped anchor overnight at Red Point, the mouth of North Creek where, ten Coyote years ago, Carlos Montero had led his team from Midland on the morning of Liberation Day. All had gone well until then, but the Helen Waite was meant more for hauling barges than passengers; its cabin had only three racks, and those were occupied by George, Donny, and Jose, the retarded man whose job it was to shovel coal into the tugboat’s steam engines. It took a lot of talking for me to get it through to Goldstein that, as passengers, our accommodations were little more than a tarp stretched across the aft deck, and his money didn’t cover anything more than this.
Goldstein grumbled about the arrangements, going so far as to try to bribe Jose into giving up his bunk. George put a stop to that, though, and he finally had to resign himself to sleeping out in the open. I did my best not to smile; it was time that Morgan Goldstein got used to the absence of luxury. Once we had dinner in the pilothouse, he retired to his sleeping bag, complaining to the moment that he finally fell asleep, while the rest of us stayed up for a while to share a bottle of wine and watch Bear rise to the east, its silver rings reflecting upon the cold, black waters of the delta.
The following day we crossed the confluence of the West and East Channels and entered the Medsylvania Channel. To our right lay the northern coast of Midland, the lower steppes of the Gillis Range just visible on the southeastern horizon; to our left, on the far side of the broad channel, lay Medsylvania, its rocky shores and dense forests dark and forbidding. That far north, winter still lingered, yet with spring approaching, the snow was beginning to melt. Boulder-sized chunks of ice, carried downstream from the North Circumpolar River, bobbed along the channel like miniature icebergs, making the passage treacherous. George hugged the Midland coast as much as possible, keeping the engines at one-third throttle; Donny stood at the bow, calling out to his uncle whenever the boat came too close to some ice, yet even so there were occasional bumps and scrapes as the hull collided with something that came up too fast for George to dodge.
It was slow going, and so we didn’t reach New Boston until almost twilight. I’d been there only a few times in the past, and never by choice. The most northern of Coyote’s settlements, it was also the most remote; its closest neighbor on Midland was Defiance, nearly fifteen hundred miles away on the other side of the Gillis Range. Like Leeport, New Boston was a river town, a shipping port for the coal, nickel, and iron mines located farther inland, yet even Leeport was a bustling metropolis compared to this lonely place. As the Helen Waite chugged into the shallow harbor, I saw lights gleaming within the windows of log houses and wood-frame buildings and heard the low gong of the
lighthouse bell as the watchman signaled our arrival.
“Hope you have a place to stay.” George twisted the wheel to follow the harbormaster’s lamp to the nearest available slot in the pier. “Me and the boys are sleeping aboard.”
“Uh-huh. I’ve always had good luck with the Revolution…”
“Why are you staying aboard?” Goldstein stood next to us in the pilothouse, leaning against the railing. “You said you were going to pick up coal…Why not sleep in a decent bed while you’re here?”
“No, thanks. We’ll stay on the boat.”
“I insist.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, Goldstein produced a money clip stuffed with enough colonials to plug a leak in the hull. “You’ve done well by us. Let me make it up to you.”
Once again, George and I exchanged a glance. “Put that away, Mr. Roth,” the captain said. “First, we’re going ashore tonight just long enough to get a bite to eat. So far as accommodations are concerned…I appreciate the offer, but there’s nothing in town much better than what we have here. Second, this isn’t…shall we say, the safest place to be.” He nodded toward Kennedy, who stood silently beside his boss. “If I were you,” he added, “I’d keep your friends close and your money even closer, if y’know what I mean.”
“I…”
“Do what he says.” I gave Goldstein a hard look. “You hired me to be your guide. So let me do my job, all right?”
“Of course. Certainly.” The wad disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Kennedy handed him his cloak; he pulled it on, tugging the hood over his head. Once again, Morgan Goldstein became Irving Roth, an anonymous traveler. Or so I hoped.
Once we tied up at the pier and George paid the harbormaster, we went into town, leaving Jose behind to watch the boat. Fish-oil lamps illuminated our way along the muddy main street; potholes covered by thin skeins of ice crunched softly beneath our boots. The evening air was cool, warmed by the aroma of fish and herbs, boiled meat and tobacco. Kiosks lined both sides of the street, their tables offering skins, handmade jewelry, liniments, secondhand electronics. Prostitutes and hard-eyed men lingered in doorways, watching us as we passed by.