The cliffs were not visible even when the plane descended to improve the view, but they could see the fishing boats, a few under sail, most with the boiling wakes that indicated engines.
“There’s a frigate,” said Dotson. “Watching for floaters, illegal immigrants in small boats.”
Hrecker could see no land in the distance except a scatter of small islands. “How far do they come?”
“You’ll see. But now …”
The plane’s path bent inland once more, over a forest that once had been a battlefield, a town built around a massive fortification, an open-pit mine.
“That’s Kitewing’s tomb.” A sepulcher of black stone set in an open field starred by paths. “He was born here. There used to be a village. His bones were moved to the Worldtree only later.”
“The capital.” A plain, gray building in a small town fifty kilometers from the valley. “We keep it separate in case of war. It might be a target, and we cannot risk the Worldtree.”
Hrecker thought that humans would surely see the sanctity of such a holy icon in quite another way. If no one would attack in its vicinity for fear of damaging it, then it would be the ideal shelter for rulers and bureaucrats and military planners.
On the other hand, Earth’s history made it clear that war cared more for targets than for sanctity. Perhaps the coons were right.
“It keeps the priests and scholars and rulers out of each other’s way, too.”
“Who rules?”
A look of vast surprise. “We do, of course. Not like the Farshorns. Every other year, we choose senators from each town, each profession. They meet here.”
“What do the Farshorns do?”
“They have priests and kings, and the children of priests and kings.”
“We don’t!” protested Sunglow in shrill tones. She faced Hrecker and Tamiko. “There’s just one nation here. Across the sea, there are fifty, only some of which are ruled that way. My own land is just as democratic as this.”
Tamiko patted her hand. “Earth used to be that way too.”
“It’s all one now,” said Hrecker.
“What’s that?”
A complex of buildings not far from the capital, a center of learning even larger than Worldtree Center.
“Do they have any of those plaques here?”
“Of course,” said Dotson. “Copies, anyway. A few originals on display. But here the focus is much more on our own world. History and government, literature and art, the biology of First-Stop, the astronomy of our own skies.”
“Was Starsight from here?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“I’ve seen him in the Center,” said Sunglow.
Smoking power plants and titanic mills. “Steel,” said Dotson. “Aluminum. Petrochemicals. Vehicles. Aircraft.”
“We’ve seen plenty of military hardware,” Tamiko had said before they joined their guides that morning. “Watch for the factories. We need to know.”
And now it was almost impossible to believe that the coons had existed as an intelligent species less than two centuries. Yet—Hrecker forced himself to think of human history. It had not taken much longer for Europeans to go from primitive agriculture and handwork to factories on just as grand a scale, not once the industrial age had dawned. Not once the Renaissance and the Enlightenment had liberated the human mind from the prison of the Dark Ages and invention and discovery had begun to bloom. And the coons had been given a boost at their very creation. They had been born enlightened. What they had most lacked was the sheer numbers to build a civilization.
Hrecker paused to do a little mental arithmetic. In one hundred years, humans could run through seven generations. If each generation doubled the one before, that would be enough time for a single couple to become two hundred and fifty people. In two hundred years, they could become half a million. If the Gypsies had just produced a few hundred or thousand breeding couples … If the coons bred just a little faster …
There was no sign of the facilities that had to exist to account for the tanks and fighters and missiles and ships. Hrecker wished he dared to ask, but Tamiko had already warned him against that. “If we show any special interest,” she had said. “That could alert them. Not that it would do them any good. But it might make our job more difficult.”
“Don’t you worry about pollution?”
“Our population is small. We can afford a dirty technology. And besides …”
“The space station?” asked Tamiko.
Dotson nodded. “We were planning to leave as soon as we could.”
“Everyone wasn’t,” said Sunglow. “Not the Farshorns. Not even all the tailed Racs.”
“How will they live?”
“We are already designing power satellites,” said Dotson. “The space infrastructure would still be here after we were gone, we thought. And we expect plenty of ore and oil and coal to remain.”
“Where were you going to go?”
A shrug. “We wanted to find the Gypsies.”
“But now you’re here,” said Sunglow.
“You’ve done very well so far,” Tamiko said, and the coon’s back stiffened proudly, her lips parted, and she beamed at Dotson.
Hrecker winced at the effect Tamiko had. So far, he had let the coons believe what his superiors and Tamiko wished them to believe, that the Engineers were their gods returned. Now sympathy swelled in him, and he recognized the tragedy he was helping to create. Even if the Engineers left them in peace, the coons would surrender their dream, believing it pointless.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Tamiko’s chair suddenly spun to face his and her foot connected with his ankle. “Unh.”
Had the coons seen?
Perhaps not. They were side by side, staring out one of the plane’s broad windows. The cabin was tilting, the plane beginning its descent. The coastline was visible ahead, a scatter of small buildings, a tiny airstrip.
“This is where we spend the night,” said Dotson Barbtail. “Edgewater. It’s a base for researchers and prospectors.”
The small crowd that met them held roughly equal numbers of tailed and tailless coons, male and female. There were few children, but near one edge of the runway was a line of wild coons, squatting on their haunches, watching their landing and reception.
The fattest coon Hrecker had seen so far met them at the foot of the plane’s fold-down ramp. “They call me Sugarberry,” he said, introducing himself. “I run the guesthouse.” He must be, thought Hrecker, the closest thing Edgewater had to a mayor or a constable.
He turned and raised his voice. “Get back. Out of the way. Let ’em through.”
No one paid any attention. The onlookers pressed closer even as they kept a respectful gap between them and the humans. Voices murmured, “The Remakers. Come at last. They look just like the pictures.” Someone reached out to touch Tamiko’s chest. When no one protested, more hands made contact, poked, pinched, tugged at cloth, and the murmur became, “They’re real! But no fur. No straps. So strange.”
“Out of the way,” growled Sugarberry. “You can feel ’em up later, in the bar.”
* * * *
Hours later, when the humans were alone in a room equipped with a single broad sleeping pad, Tamiko said, “There’s a difference here.”
Hrecker was flat on his back on the pad. He only grunted in reply.
“Back at Worldtree Center, there weren’t as many tailless coons.”
“So?”
“And they were watchful, wary. While the tailed ones strutted.”
“Even Dotson. But not as much as that priestess.”
“Even him,” she insisted. “Rubbing in his kind’s superiority.”
“I didn’t see anything strange about it.”
“You wouldn’t.” She kicked the side of his leg gently. “You’re a man.”
He blinked at her. “I didn’t know you were a feminist.”
“I’m not, not particularly. But I know a lord-and-master type when I see one.”
“He’s not that bad. She contradicts him, corrects him, argues with him.”
“Just like a woman? He lets her do it? That’s my point.”
“Are we like that?”
“Not much. But humans are, in general. Back on Earth.”
“Not in the boonies?”
“That’s where we are here, isn’t it? A frontier mentality. More equality.”
“No ideology, you mean. I didn’t see a single priest.”
“The ideology is getting along, surviving, helping each other. Tails be damned.”
“What about Gypsies?”
“That’s different.”
“I hope it is.” He sighed. “I like these guys.”
“They’re not human, Mark. They’re aliens.”
“Still …”
“Animals. Or not even that.”
“Gengineered, you mean. Just things.”
She nodded.
He wished she hadn’t.
* * * *
The only witnesses to their departure the next morning were the wild coons lined up beside the runway, their striped tails curled around their feet. Hrecker wondered briefly whether they were the same ones he had noticed the day before.
“Where is everybody?” asked Tamiko.
“Once was enough,” he said as the plane tilted its nose up and climbed.
“At work,” said Dotson Barbtail. “In the woods by now. Or in their labs.”
“Where are we going?”
“Farshore.”
An hour later, Hrecker understood how easy it must be for even small boats to cross the sea. As their plane climbed and its course put sea beneath it, land became visible on the horizon. The two continents were separated by no more than a few hundred kilometers. Small boats could manage that in decent weather, if the wind was right.
The coastline was sand and rock and forest. The cities were smaller and farther apart. There were more mines, shipping their ores by truck and train to ports where ships prepared to cross the sea. There were military bases. The largest prompted Dotson to say, “That’s ours. The site was part of the last peace settlement.”
“You seized it,” said Sunglow. “And when we tried to drive you off, to reclaim our own land, you bombed the capital.”
“You were arming frantically. We were only enforcing peace.”
“We …”
Hrecker looked at Tamiko and found her looking at him.
His smile felt strained, and he thought hers seemed slightly forced. Their own differences were becoming clearer, stronger. Perhaps they would not last much longer as a couple. If the General …
The plane abruptly banked. The cabin speaker crackled into life and brought the pilot’s shrill words: “Tighten those belts. We’re in a hurry.”
“Are we being attacked?””
Dotson didn’t answer Tamiko. Instead, he unstrapped and headed forward, lurching as the plane tipped down at the nose and accelerated.
When he returned a few minutes later, he looked troubled. “We’ve been recalled.”
“Why?” asked Sunglow.
He shook his head. His face, despite the alienness of its features, plainly said that he knew but would not say.
* * * *
When their plane landed outside Worldtree City once more, the mood inside was tense, anxious. The few words Dotson uttered were as shrill as the pilot’s, and he would barely look at the humans. Sunglow, even though she knew no more than Hrecker or Tamiko, did not take long to decide to imitate him. The humans, baffled, chose to say nothing themselves.
Two other observation planes were already on the runway. Outside one of them a circle of coons surrounded a single crouched human. Most held rifles in their hands and looked prepared to use them.
“That’s Gatling,” said Hrecker when they had taxied close.
“That gyppin’ idiot,” said Tamiko. “He’s got his gun out.”
“What did he do?”
Dotson Barbtail only shook his head.
“Tell us!”
“He shot a mechanic.”
“What for?” Tamiko sounded as bewildered as Hrecker felt.
“They were at Glenrock, a place like Edgewater, ready to leave. The mechanic was running toward the plane. And—”
“Let me talk to him,” said Tamiko.
The coon turned toward Hrecker, his expression plainly asking, “Would that help?” Hrecker nodded. He wasn’t sure it would, but it couldn’t hurt. After all, Gatling was an officer of just one ship. Tamiko was an aide to the general commanding the entire fleet.
When they left their plane, heat struck them like a blow, concentrated by the pavement all around. Dotson and Sunglow both began to pant. Moisture instantly coated Mark’s and Tamiko’s faces.
The voices awaiting them were loud, shrill, and demanding: “Drop the gun … Like hell! … You’re under arrest … Mechin’ monsters … Come with us … And get my throat cut? Think I’m crazy? … We’re not beasts … Ha! Ha!”
The armed coons opened a path for the new arrivals.
“What happened?” asked Tamiko.
“We had a squeak in the undercarriage,” said a nearby coon.
“He’s the pilot,” said Dotson Barbtail.
“And this coon came chasin’ out of the hangar with a grease gun. A grease gun!” Gatling’s eyes were sunken, staring, pupils wide and black. Water ran from his forehead into his eyes, forcing him to blink again and again and again, and down his cheeks. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. Tendons showed taut even through the cloth of sleeves and pants. He sounded on the verge of hysteria. “I thought sure he was after us. A grease gun! So I shot him.”
There was silence until Tamiko sighed and said, “I’ve read your dossier. You’re good at jumping to conclusions.”
He said nothing. He did not lower his gun or look any less besieged.
“He made a mistake,” she said to no one in particular.
“It was still murder,” said Dotson.
One of the coons said, “Let us have him.”
Gatling screamed: “No!” The gun was aimed at Dotson now.
Tamiko shook her head and sighed and approached the man. “I’ll take care of you,” she said. “I will. You know I’m close to the General.”
Gatling looked at her. He licked his lips. His gaze darted at and past the other humans, across the coons that surrounded him with weapons just as deadly as his own. He could not help but see that he had no hope of shooting his way to freedom.
She held out her hand, chest high, chin high. “Give me the gun.”
The crowd was deadly silent, waiting, expectant. Suddenly Hrecker knew what was about to happen. He should have known Tamiko could do it, but …
He wished he dared to close his eyes or turn away. He wished his father and grandfather did not spring to mind with words all their own: “She has to do it. You know she does. The General would if he were here.”
He wished he did not feel ashamed of who and what he was.
After a long moment, Johnny Gatling laid his gun on her palm and took a deep breath.
He too knew what was about to happen.
Tamiko closed her fingers on the handgun’s grip and pulled the trigger.
Johnny Gatling’s left eye disappeared.
Chapter Twelve
The Racs had no difficulty with the idea of rapid, drastic punishment. They had officials whose job it was to investigate crime
s and find criminals, but they came into play only when the miscreant was not caught in the act or persuaded to confess. Thieves were turned over to the police who immediately shipped them to labor camps; repeat offenders had their tails docked—if they had tails—and were banished to Farshore. Rapists lost more than their tails. Murderers were executed quickly and quietly.
Yet the Racs had always thought their gods more benign than they were themselves. They were creators, the Remakers who had raised Rackind from the animals in the forests and given them both knowledge and the thirst for more. They were nurturers and teachers. They were as loving and forgiving as only a mother could be.
“They left us only one myth that has anything at all to do with destruction,” said Gypsy Blossom. She remained rooted in her pot, but every muscle, bone, and joint were clear beneath the thin leaves that covered her furless skin. It was impossible to look at her and believe she was more plant than animal, that she had grown from a seed.
“The one about the enemy among them,” said Sunglow. “The one who tried to kill a …”
“Yes,” said the bot. “And they were victims, not actors. They did not even punish, for the enemy leaped to his own death.”
“We have no way to tell if that was how they handled such things all the time. There’s only that one example, one incident, one myth, if you like.” Sunglow seemed to be groping for some way to say that the humans now on their world were indeed the Gypsies of which all Rackind dreamed. “But Johnny Gatling did that too. He handed her his gun, and he must have kn—” She stopped abruptly, panting lightly. The contradiction was too much. Yes, he had aided his own death. But if they were Gypsies, he could not have done what he had done before that. And Tamiko could not have …
“Could they have changed that much?” asked Dotson Barbtail. He stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, his muscles taut with tension, his mouth open. He too was panting. The heat had penetrated indoors now.
“If they are even Gypsies.”
“They have to be!” cried Sunglow. “Who else could they be?”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 136