by Allen Steele
Yet as she could plainly see, there were no starships. Only a couple of satellites. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I.” Pacino moved a little closer, dropping his voice slightly so that he couldn’t be overheard. “It’s possible, of course, that the Spirit may have headed for home while we were still in transit.”
“Perhaps.” She absently reached up to push back her hair, before once again remembering that she had none. Like everyone else aboard, her scalp had been shaved before entering biostasis. She ought to start wearing her beret. “We’d have to examine the log to see if the AI registered any ships heading in the direction of Sol.”
The Columbus had departed from Earth orbit on Jan 19, 2290, thirty years after the Spirit, yet more than ten years before the estimated arrival date of the Alabama. As fast as the Union ships traveled, or even as late as it had been before the European Alliance managed to develop the diametric drive on its own, the first radio messages transmitted by the Alabama still hadn’t reached Earth before the Columbus had launched.
“Little chance of that,” Pacino said, “but we can always check. Yet it doesn’t answer the question…where’s the Alabama?”
“Do Italians have to ask so many questions?” She gave him a sidelong glance.
“Are Russians always so obstinate?” He grinned back at her. A private joke, left over from when they’d once shared the same bed. “Look, we’ve already seen lights from the planet surface, right?”
She nodded. Earlier infrared photos, taken shortly after the Columbus had entered the system, had revealed dim sources of illumination scattered in a narrow band across Coyote’s northern hemisphere.
“That means the earlier expeditions have established colonies,” Pacino continued. “We just don’t know what happened to the ships themselves.”
A chill moved up her spine. “We don’t know what happened to the Galileo, either,” she murmured.
The smile vanished from Pacino’s face. “That’s another matter entirely,” he whispered. “Don’t borrow bad luck. We have to—”
The lockwheel on the hatch next to them suddenly turned clockwise. They looked around to see the hatch ease open, allowing a figure to emerge from the shaft that led up from the ship’s lower decks.
“Pardon me.” One of the civilian passengers paused on the ladder, uncertain of whether he should enter the command deck. “Is this a bad time to…?”
“Not at all.” Ana moved away from the console. “Please, come in. Perhaps you can help us solve a mystery.”
“I rather doubt it, but…” Jonas Whittaker carefully stepped through the hatch. “Whatever I can do, please let me know.”
CLARKSBURG / HAMALIEL 69 / 1200
“The boat’s too slow,” Carlos said. “I’m going to need—”
The long, sharp blast of the noon whistle startled him, causing him to wince as he clapped his hands against his ears. He glanced in the direction of the timber mill; the vast shed was nearly a hundred yards away, yet the steam whistle mounted on its slate roof was just close enough to deafen him. He waited until the noise subsided, then he spoke into the satphone again.
“Sorry ’bout that,” he continued. “It’s lunch time. Like I was saying, getting home by boat is too slow, so I need—”
“A gyro to fly out and pick you up.” A faint note of amusement in Tomas’s voice. “We’ve already got you covered. Wendy called the Chief Proctor’s office and asked them to send one over. Should be landing”—a short pause while he cupped the phone to speak to someone else—“in about thirty minutes. Forty-five, tops.”
“Outstanding. Thank you.” Although he should have expected as much. As his chief of staff, Tomas Conseco was responsible for making sure that the president got from one place to another with as little fuss as possible, but the fact of the matter was that the Wendy handled a lot of these details when no one was looking. She’d once served a term on the Colonial Council, so she knew the drill better than anyone else who worked for him. “Tell the pilot to touch down—”
“Near the wharf. Got it. I…” A pause; Carlos heard voices in the background. “Hang on a moment, boss.”
Again, Tomas muffled the phone with his hand. Something was obviously going on back in Liberty. Glancing over his shoulder, Carlos became aware of the curious looks being cast his way by passing townspeople. He stood outside a cheesemaker’s shop on River Street, only a short distance from the wharf where the keelboat that had transported him from New Florida was moored. By custom, the president traveled by water when he paid state visits to the colonies. Everyone else did, after all, so why should the president of the Coyote Federation rate special treatment?
Most of the time, Carlos enjoyed the fact that even senior officials received few extra privileges than anyone else. He remembered what it had been like to grow up in the United Republic of America, where the government had become separated from the people and the unwritten rule was that those in power were somehow superior to those who’d put them there in the first place. All this had been rejected on Coyote; indeed, the First Article of the Liberty Compact held that the government existed to serve the public, not vice versa. When he walked down the street, he did so without bodyguards or entourage, and only on formal occasions did anyone address him as “Mr. President.”
All the same, standing out here by himself, he was drawing attention that he didn’t want just now. Turning away from the street, Carlos headed for the shop behind him. A bell jingled as he opened the front door, and the sharp aroma of fresh cheese surrounded him as he stepped inside. The young woman stacking wheels upon a shelf did a double-take as he entered; the last customer she expected today was the president.
“Pardon me, but is there a place where I can be alone?” Carlos held up his satphone. “Private call. Should take just a moment.” Mildly flustered, she hastily ushered him through the beaded curtains of a keyhole door into a back room, where copper pots of goat’s milk slowly simmered upon wood-fired stoves and a couple of men stirred curds within barrels. No one paid much attention to them as the clerk led him to an ice block-lined storeroom; she smiled sweetly and favored him with a brief curtsy before closing the door behind him.
A moment later, Tomas came back. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but—”
“Never mind. What’s going on?”
“We just received a radio message from the ship.” Tomas’s voice was rushed. “It’s called the Christopher Columbus, and claims to be from the European Alliance. They say that they expect to achieve orbit over us by 0200 tomorrow.”
“Who were they trying to reach?”
“The message wasn’t…” A murmur from somewhere in the background. “Hold on, I’ll put you through to Wendy.”
Another pause, then he heard his wife’s voice. “Carlos, the message was sent to anyone representing either the Alabama or the Western Hemisphere Union. Like Tomas said, it wasn’t specific, but considering that it was sent first in English, then in Anglo, I guess they don’t know exactly who’s here.”
That made sense. If the new ship had taken nearly forty-nine years to get here, as had the previous starships using diametric drive, then it would have been launched even before the first radio signals from the Alabama reached Earth. “Has anyone sent a response?”
“No. We’ve maintained radio silence, pending your decision. In the meantime, I’ve contacted the Council members, along with the chairmen of the Defense and Interior committees. Hope you don’t mind, but I knew you’d be out of touch until you got back into town, so—”
“Don’t worry. You did the right thing.” In fact, he had to admit, she’d done a better job than he would have. Wendy had been involved in colonial politics since she was a teenager, when she was elected to the Liberty Town Council, while Carlos had come into politics only reluctantly, first assuming the mayorship of Liberty following Captain Lee’s death, then later being drafted to run as president. But while his wife was a natural-born stateswoman, Carlos’s reputation came
from being an explorer and war hero; although he was now the leader of the Coyote Federation, in many ways he was Wendy’s political protégé.
“So what do we do now?” Even as he said this, he shut his eyes, swore at himself. “I mean, what do you think we should do now?”
“Carlos…” She took a deep breath. “C’mon, you can’t do this. You’re in charge. I can’t—”
“Look, I’m in the storeroom of a cheese shop, all right? I’m making this up as I go along.” He sat down on a stool, stared at the wax-encased wheels stacked on the shelves around him. “We’ve been through this before, and I don’t want it to go the same way again. This time, I want the new guys to know where things stand from the beginning.”
“I agree. That’s the consensus of the Council members I’ve spoken with, and same for the committee chairs. No one wants another war, but…”
She didn’t say more, nor did she have to. It had been over ten years, by LeMarean reckoning, since the Glorious Destiny had arrived from Earth, bringing with it the Matriarch Luisa Hernandez and the armed might of the Western Hemisphere Union. For three and a half years, the Union had maintained an authoritarian dictatorship over New Florida, while the Matriarch sought to assert military control over the rest of the planet. It had taken an armed uprising by the original colonists to overthrow the Union, yet it had come at the cost of many lives.
No one had any desire to repeat that experience. But neither did anyone want to give someone else from Earth the chance to take their world away from them again.
Carlos leaned forward, absently rubbing his forehead. “All right, send a message back to them. Tell ’em we’re willing to meet with them down here…on Federation territory, not their ship. Give them the coordinates for Shuttlefield and inform them that the president will be there to greet them.” He thought a moment, then added: “And one more thing. Tell Chris I want him to mobilize the Proctors. Every blueshirt not on leave…no, skip that, all leaves are canceled. Put ’em in uniform, and break open the armory. Everyone gets a gun, and everyone gets put on the front line.”
“Are you sure you want to—?”
“Yes, I’m sure. And get that gyro here as soon as you can.”
“It’s on the way. Don’t stop for souvenirs.”
He smiled at that. Wendy had a small collection of handcrafted wood bowls from Clarksburg; he made a point of picking up a new one for her every time he came out here. “I’ll IOU one for the next trip. See you when I get back.”
Carlos closed the satphone and put it back in his pocket, then left the storeroom. This time, the men working in the cheese shop noticed him, and the clerk was waiting for him just outside the door. Making a deliberate effort not to appear as if he was concerned about anything, he spent a few minutes touring the shop, inspecting their work and accepting a small wheel of smoked gouda as a gift. By the time he made his exit, the gyro from New Florida had appeared, a tiny black dot high above the sapphire waters of the West Channel.
As he waited in a square near the wharf, he took a moment to look around. At midday, Clarksburg went on about its everyday business. Here and there, he saw people moving along the wooden sidewalks, either heading home for lunch or having a sandwich and a mug of ale at one of the pubs along the riverside. Rough bark logs floated in a pond next to the mill, waiting to be loaded into the conveyer that would take them to the saws; a couple of teenagers played on the logs, trying to push each other off as they rolled beneath their feet. From somewhere nearby, he heard a burst of laughter as someone told someone else a funny story.
They’d come a long way in thirty-nine Earth-years: from little more than a hundred settlers struggling for survival upon a dangerous and unexplored world, to nearly seven thousand people in eight colonies scattered across the northern hemisphere. They still had their problems, to be sure, not the least of which was a shortage of advanced technologies they’d once taken for granted, yet their early hardships were now largely in the past. No one was starving; the wilderness had been tamed, and they were at peace.
And yet, on this sunny afternoon of another endless summer, he had the uneasy feeling that all this was about to change.
EAS ISABELLA / NOV. 3, 2339 (RELATIVE) / 0842
The skiff shuddered, then took a hard jolt that threw Jonas against his straps, almost knocking the wind from him. Gripping the armrests a little tighter, he took short, deep breaths, yet he refused to shut his eyes, knowing that this would only make him airsick.
“Having trouble?” From her seat on the right-hand side of the cockpit, Captain Tereshkova calmly observed the efforts of her second officer. “If you want any help…”
“No, ma’am. No problem at all.” Parson pulled back on the yoke, then pushed forward on the throttle bar. The engines whined a little louder as the pilot compensated for an increase in atmospheric density. More air, more resistance; more resistance, more drag against Isabella’s wings. For a moment, it seemed as if they would encounter more turbulence, yet Parson was keeping an eye on the gauges; there was another jolt, less severe than before, then they found smooth air once more, and everything settled out.
Jonas let out his breath, tried to relax. Tereshkova turned her head to gaze back at him. “How are you doing there, Dr. Whittaker? Not going to be sick, I hope.”
“No, no, I’m fine.” Which was a lie. Although he tried to pretend that this was just like riding a jet back on Earth, the fact of the matter was that this wasn’t Earth, nor had he been on a plane in…how long? Nearly 269 years, give or take a few months. Even when he’d left Earth, it had been aboard the New Guinea space elevator: a long, slow climb to geosynchronous orbit, with none of the high-g stress of a shuttle launch. “Doing great, thanks.”
He gazed out the window beside him. Now that the Isabella had penetrated the thin layer of cirrus clouds, Coyote’s northern hemisphere spread out below him, a vast mosaic of islands of all shapes and sizes, separated from one another by a maze of rivers and channels. No oceans to speak of; the largest body of water was the equatorial river that wrapped itself around the planet’s midsection like an immense serpent, becoming broad enough at one point to form a small sea. The enormous blue orb of 47 Ursae Majoris-B hovered above the western horizon, its ring-plane obscured by high clouds as it rose straight up into the deep purple sky.
An alien world. Again, he found himself awestruck by the simple fact that he was here. Although his life’s ambition had been to build the first interstellar vessel, never had he truly expected to go to the stars himself. Even when he’d become involved in the conspiracy to steal the Alabama, its final destination had been something he’d thought about only in the most abstract of terms. But now, here he was.
Yet Caroline wasn’t, and neither was Ellen. Once again, any sense of wonder he felt was suffused by the hollow pain of grief. His wife and daughter, long since dead and gone, lost to him forever. Not for the first time, he felt guilt gnawing at him. He’d cheated death, yes, but only at the cost of their lives…
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, gazing at ghosts only he could see reflected in the window. “I’m so sorry…”
“Pardon me?” Tereshkova gazed back at him. “Did you say something?”
“Just thinking to myself.” He drew a deep breath. “Shouldn’t we be seeing the colony…um, New Florida…by now?”
“We’re approaching it now.” She pointed straight ahead, through the teardrop-shaped forward windows. “In a moment we’ll be above—” She suddenly stopped, staring at something far below. “Is that what I think it is?”
Jonas craned his head to look. They were passing over a channel separating the island just ahead of them from the larger landmass to the east. For a moment, he didn’t see what startled the captain so much, but then he spotted a dark, slender line that ran straight across the channel, an artifice that closely resembled…
“A bridge!” Parson yelled. “There’s a bridge down there!”
Nor was that all they saw. As the skiff shed a
ltitude, now they could make out other signs of human habitation. Small settlements lay on either side of the bridge, with a road leading inland through a quilt-like patchwork of farm fields, and even from several thousand feet they could see the regular lines of irrigation ditches.
“Someone’s been busy,” Tereshkova murmured.
“They’ve had a lot of time.” Yet even so, Jonas was impressed. The farms lay here and there along the twisting road, isolated from one another by vast tracts of marshland, yet as the Isabella continued to descend, they saw that the settlements grew closer together until, as they passed low over a wide creek, they came upon a broad expanse of houses, barns, sheds, buildings both large and small.
Thirty-nine years, he thought. No wonder they’ve done so well. Give people a wide-open frontier and put them on their own for a few decades, then stand back and watch what happens. If nature doesn’t kill them or they don’t die of starvation, then they’ll learn to live off the land. And these people were well-motivated for survival.
“We’re coming in on the landing coordinates,” Parson said. “I take it this is the Liberty colony.”
“Liberty, or else Shuttlefield. I think they’re two towns adjacent to one another.” Tereshkova glanced back at Jonas. “We weren’t given much information by the person with whom we spoke.” Then she looked forward again, and pointed through the cockpit windows. “There, Mr. Parson. Landing beacons, twenty degrees port.”