Coyote Frontier

by Allen Steele

  As it turned out, though, it wasn’t dinosaurs they had to worry about. Late that afternoon, as Uma was beginning to hang low to the west, Carlos and Barry were studying the map and discussing whether they should make camp here or wait until after they reached the confluence, when Jonas let out a shout from the bow.

  “Smoke!” he yelled, pointing to the east. “Over there! I just saw smoke!”

  Stepping out from under the awning, Carlos peered in the direction he indicated. Just as he said, a slender tendril of brown smoke was rising from the other side of a high riverbank. He couldn’t see exactly where it was coming from, but he had little doubt what was causing it. “Pull over!” he called back to Barry. “Anywhere you can!”

  Ana had been dozing in the cabin. Now she came out to join him and Jonas. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s so significant about a wildfire?”

  “Grass doesn’t catch fire all by itself.” Carlos turned to help Will lower the sails; Jud and Jonas had already picked up oars and dropped their blades over the port gunnel. “Takes a lightning storm to do that, and we haven’t had one in the last two days.” Glancing back at her, he saw that she didn’t get it. “You wanted to see chirreep, didn’t you? Well, here’s your chance.”

  Barry managed to locate a spot on the east side of the creek where the riverbank fell to a small, muddy beach. Once they dropped anchor, Jonas hopped over the side; landing in thigh-deep water, he slogged through the shallows, carrying the bow-line over his shoulder. Once he was ashore, he looped the rope around the base of a bush and knotted it tight, but when Jud tried to lower the gangway, they found that the plank wasn’t quite long enough to reach dry ground.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Carlos said to Tereshkova, “but I’m afraid you’re going to have to get your feet wet.” She scowled, but said nothing as he picked up a pair of binoculars and slid over the keelboat’s starboard side. All the same, though, she hesitated as he gallantly offered a hand to help her off the boat. “It’s just water and mud,” he added. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I can see that,” she said stiffly, insulted by his belaboring of the obvious. “But shouldn’t we arm ourselves?”

  Behind her, Pacino was already pulling a weapon from his bag: an EA particle beam pistol, sleek and silver in the waning light of the day. “Put that back,” Carlos said. “We don’t need it.” Pacino hesitated; then, ignoring Carlos’s request, he tucked the gun in his waistband of his trousers, staring back at him in defiance. Tereshkova stayed where she was, not making a move to get off the boat. Carlos sighed, “All right then, suit yourself…but leave it where it is.”

  The water was warm, but the mud below it was deep; it slopped around their calves and sucked at the soles of their boots. Ana didn’t let go of Carlos’s hand until they’d come ashore. Then, with Pacino and Jonas on either side of them, they scurried up the riverbank on hands and knees, clinging to crumbling red soil and half-buried roots until they reached the top.

  From here, they saw more of the same sort of broken landscape they’d been seeing all day: narrow canyons, tabletop hills, dry creek beds. The smoke spiraled up from the other side of a small mesa a few hundred yards away. “Over there,” Carlos said to the others. “When we get closer, stay low. And whatever else you do, be quiet. They’ve got a very sharp sense of hearing.”

  They nodded, and then he led them toward the mesa, careful to avoid stepping on any sticks or brush. Fortunately the air was still, so there wasn’t any wind to carry their scent. Once they reached the mesa, he bent low, motioning for the others to do the same. It was only a couple hundred feet high; once they reached the top, Carlos dropped to his hands and knees, and in this way they crawled until they could see the source of the smoke.

  On the other side of the mesa, within a gulley surrounded by low hillocks, were eight dome-like mounds, each about fifteen feet tall, nearly indistinguishable from the natural formations around them except for entrances and windows burrowed into their sides. The smoke they’d spotted emerged from a hole bored into the top of the central one; here and there were small piles of wood, and what looked like racks with pieces of woven grass draped across them.

  And amid all this, dozens of small dark-furred creatures, none larger than a small ape, each going about their daily business: carrying wood from the stacks in the domes, squatting together in circles and chipping at small rocks, weaving cloth. A couple of children chased each other around the domes; a few older ones sat by themselves, observing their antics with sublime disinterest.

  Even from the distance, they could hear the voices of the chirreep: a babble of hoots, clicks, and chirps, with the occasional whistle for emphasis. They might have been mistaken for random animal sounds, as Carlos had when he’d first heard them, but when he listened closer he found that it was possible to make out a distinct pattern; consonants mainly, with few vowels. A protean form of language. Susan had taught him a few words, yet just how she’d come by such knowledge, she’d refused to tell him.

  “Fantastic.” Tereshkova’s voice was a faint whisper; she lay on her belly next to him, watching them with wide-eyed astonishment. “Absolutely incredible.”

  “You’d almost think they’re intelligent.” Pacino was less impressed; apparently he thought he was watching a group of trained monkeys. “Wonder how they got that fire going.”

  Carlos ignored him. He pushed his binoculars across the ground to Ana. “Each dome belongs to a family,” he murmured, “and the central dome belongs to the tribal leader. It’s his job to stoke the fire and keep it going all day, and when evening comes he lets the others carry embers back to their own mounds so they can make their own. Or at least that’s how we think they work it out.”

  Tereshkova studied the village through the binoculars. “An alien civilization.”

  “A native civilization,” Jonas corrected. “We’re the aliens.”

  Pacino smirked. “I’d hardly call this…”

  Suddenly, a sharp, high-pitched shrill: a chirreep standing on top of a mesa on the other side of the gulley, screaming at the top of his lungs. The chirreep in the village below stopped whatever they were doing to stare up at him. Another warbling cry, then the chirreep raised a staff and pointed it straight toward the mesa where they lay.

  “Aw, crap,” Carlos murmured. “We’ve been spotted.”

  “What?” Ana was just as surprised as he was. “How did they—?”

  “Like I said, they’ve got great hearing.” Within seconds, the village had gone into a panic. Alerted by the sentry, the chirreep rushed to their domes, dropping their belongings as they gathered their children. Carlos had no doubt that the sentry had heard them; damn it, he should have obeyed his own advice and kept his mouth shut. “No sense in pretending,” he added, pushing himself up from his prone position. “Let’s go before we…”

  A beep, then a high whine from somewhere beside him. He looked around, saw Pacino standing erect, his pistol clasped between his hands. He was taking aim at the nearest chirreep, an adult who’d frozen in his tracks to stare at the intruders. Pacino’s finger was curled within the trigger guard, and he was squinting down the barrel. In another instant…

  “Stand down!” Tereshkova yelled. “That’s an order!”

  For a moment, it didn’t seem as if her first officer would obey. Then she shouted something else in Russian, and he relaxed his grip on the gun. The chirreep at whom he’d been aiming sprinted for the nearest dome; he was among the last to disappear.

  Suddenly, the village was deserted. Save for a few items scattered here and there across the ground and the smoke wafting upward from the central dome, there was no sign of life. Carlos rose to his feet, let out his breath. “Well, now you’ve seen some chirreep,” he muttered, offering a hand to Tereshkova. “Hope you enjoyed the experience.”

  At first, it seemed as if Ana was going to ignore his offer to help her to her feet. Upon catching her first officer’s eye, though, she glared at him, then took Carlos’s
hand. “I did, yes,” she said. “Thank you very much. And my most profound apologies…”

  “Sorry, Captain.” Pacino put away his gun. “I thought they were going to…” Tereshkova said something else in Russian. It sounded like an insult, and his face went red before he turned to look at Carlos. “My apologies, Mr. President. My actions were rash and unwarranted.”

  “Yeah, well…” Carlos wanted to chew him out as well, but it looked as if his commanding officer had just done that. “No harm done,” he finished, and let the matter drop. “Let’s head back to the boat.”

  The hike to the chirreep village cost them an hour of daylight; it was dusk by the time they reached the confluence. Barry was leery about entering strange waters at night, so they pulled a half mile up from where the rivers came together. As a further precaution, they set up camp on the west bank of the Valentina, across from the side where the chirreep lived; no sense in tempting the locals to pay them a late-night visit.

  Dinner that evening was lamb stew, which Will served up along with sourdough bread and another jug of wine. They ate sitting around the fire; high clouds were moving in from the west, obscuring the stars and causing a thin, luminescent ring to form around Bear. Carlos used the satphone to call Liberty and check the weather forecast; as he anticipated, it was already raining in New Florida, so they could expect to receive much the same sort of weather in their part of the world, beginning either late tonight or early tomorrow. Hearing this, Jud took a few minutes to go back to the boat and make sure that it was firmly tied down.

  The topic of conversation turned to the chirreep. “I can see why you think they’re a native civilization,” Pacino said, leaning forward to turn his waterlogged boots so that the fire would dry their toes. “They build shelters, they tend fires, they care for their young, and so forth. Fine…but I wouldn’t exactly call them civilized.”

  Carlos nearly choked on a mouthful of stew. “What do you want? Malls? Netcasts? I can’t see what more proof you need to show that they’re an intelligent race.”

  “I said civilized, not intelligent.” Pacino favored him with an indulgent smile. “They’re not necessarily one and the same. Birds build shelters and care for their young.”

  “Do birds make fires? Do they have their own language?” No longer hungry, Carlos laid his plate aside. “My daughter showed me photos of cave paintings she found in the Black Mountains a few weeks ago. Pictographs of what look like starships, at least as much as the chirreep understood them. Also boats, which the chirreep don’t know how to build, and humans coming ashore to—”

  “I don’t quite understand,” Tereshkova interrupted. “If the chirreep don’t know how to build boats, then how did they get from here to Midland and Great Dakota? And why aren’t there any on New Florida?”

  “I don’t know.” Carlos shrugged. “We think that the islands of the northern hemisphere may have been closer together at one time, perhaps even forming one great landmass. Sort of like Pangaea back on Earth, before it was separated by the movement of continental plates. If that’s the case here, then the chirreep might have evolved in one place, then migrated to other parts of Coyote before channels divided the major landmasses. As for the other, we can only guess that the chirreep tribes on New Florida lost out to the boids and were wiped out.”

  “That’s quite a bit of conjecture, don’t you think?” Ana wasn’t being snide; she was simply unconvinced of his theory.

  “Perhaps…but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.” Suddenly restless, Carlos stood up from his chair. “If a race is capable of recording its own history, doesn’t that make them civilized? Granted, the chirreep we’ve found on Great Dakota may be more advanced than the chirreep you saw today, but still they belong to the same species.”

  “It might,” Pacino conceded. “But still…”

  “Look, we can’t judge an alien race…I mean, a native race…by our own standards. Perhaps they can’t build boats, let alone starships. So what? From what you’ve told me, even after three hundred years, there’s been no indication that intelligent life exists elsewhere…or at least intelligent life as you define it, on a par with human civilization. Right?”

  Pacino uneasily shifted in his chair, absently turning his boots once more. “That may be the case,” Tereshkova said. “We still don’t know for sure.”

  “Exactly. So far as we know, humankind may be the most advanced race in the galaxy. Compared to the chirreep, we’re like gods.”

  “If we are like gods, then we’d better get good at it.” Jonas had said little since they’d left the chirreep village; now he sat in a folding chair, nursing a glass of wine. “Someone said that once. I forget who…never mind. Look, until about the seventeenth century or so, everyone believed Earth was the center of the universe, and all the stars and planets revolved around it. That was Ptolemy’s model, and the church held to it because it proved that Earth was God’s chosen place and all that. Fit right in with their doctrine. But then Galileo came along, and he built a telescope to study the movements of the planets, and he discovered that, no sir, the planets revolved around the sun, and there were even tiny moons revolving around Jupiter.”

  “Are you making a point?” Pacino was becoming impatient with him.

  “Let me finish, okay?” Jonas was mildly drunk; he drank some more wine, went on. “So Galileo…good ol’ Galileo Galilei…took it upon himself to publish his findings. Only he knew that, if he went outright and said it, then the church would put him on trial for heresy. So instead he wrote it up as sort of a story, just a chat between two guys, and he called it…” He shut his eyes for a moment, seeking to remember. “A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems…and, y’know, the rest is history.”

  “Galileo was eventually put on trial by the Vatican, anyway.” Barry’s voice was quiet. Will sat on the ground beside him, and he fondly stroked his shoulder. “He recanted his statements, if only to avoid being put to the stake, and after that he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.”

  “Right.” Jonas raised a finger. “But enough people paid attention to his theories that he overturned the idea that Earth is the center of creation, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. The more we learn, the more we have to change the way we look at things. Ever since Galileo, we’ve searched for life on other worlds…intelligent life, I mean. All well and good, but somewhere along the line we managed to persuade ourselves that, when we finally met these aliens, they’d be just as smart as we are, maybe even more. But Carlos is right. It may be possible that we’re the most intelligent race, the most advanced, the only ones capable of building starships.”

  “God help us,” Will murmured.

  “Then help yourself…because if we’ve become like gods, that means we should recognize the responsibility that puts upon us.” He looked straight at Pacino. “Keep that in mind, the next time you get trigger-happy.”

  Pacino’s face turned red. “I only intended to…”

  “All right, that’s enough.” Carlos didn’t like the way the conversation was headed; they still had a few more days to spend together, and he didn’t want everyone at each other’s throats. He stretched his back, then bent over to pick up his plate. “It’s getting late, and we’ve got a long day ahead of us. My turn to wash the dishes. Will, if you’d help me gather everything, I’d appreciate it. Everyone, make sure your tents are properly staked and there’s no leaks…we’ll probably get rain later tonight.”

  And that was the end of the discussion. Yet, as Will collected the cookware and Jud folded the chairs, Carlos observed that Tereshkova and Pacino had walked away from the others. Although they seemed to be having a quiet discussion between themselves, Ana kept glancing in his direction. Carlos pretended not to notice, but it seemed as if they were talking about him.

  Another mystery. Or maybe just the same one as before.

  Just as the forecast predicted, the next day was wet and miserable, with heavy rain coming down from an overc
ast sky and a bitter wind from the northwest. They broke down the tents and stowed the gear; a breakfast of hot oatmeal was served in the Orion’s cabin, with Jud brewing a pot of coffee on the portable stove, but that was their only source of warmth. No one was dry, and everyone was cranky, and for five dollars Carlos would have gladly used the satphone to summon a gyro to pick them up. But he reminded himself that he’d been through much worse; besides, it was time that his VIPs got a taste of what frontier exploration was really like.

  So they pulled up anchor and, with the men handling the oars, they let the current carry the keelboat the rest of the way to the confluence. As it turned out, the passage was easier than expected; the new creek was wider than the Valentina, and once Orion rounded the point, it was easily swept along by the current.

  And so it remained for the rest of the day. The rainstorm continued, lightening up for a while now and then before returning with a vengeance. Barry had Jud and Will raise the sail, but he became concerned about the wind ripping the sheet, so after an hour he asked them to lower it once more. They could see little of the countryside around them; all they could make out through the downpour were low hills and the occasional mesa. When evening came, they rowed the boat close to shore, then dropped anchor and tied up against a couple of small trees. A cold dinner of ham and beans was served in the cabin, and there was little conversation before they unrolled their sleeping bags and slept, side by side, in the cramped confines of the keelboat.