by Allen Steele
The stench of burning vegetation hit her as soon as Susan pushed open the passenger hatch, and her eyes started to water before she was ten yards from the gyro. Gagging against the haze, she held a hand against her nose and mouth. Everyone at the command post had seen the gyro come in for a landing; they silently watched as she marched toward them. No one moved to stop her, yet no one offered to help her, either. They knew who she was, and they knew why she was there.
Susan approached the first person she saw, a young man wearing goggles, a bandanna around the lower part of his face. “Who’s in charge here?” she demanded, and he pointed to the nearer of the two tents. Not bothering to thank him, she headed toward it.
Rifle shots from not far away. Startled, she turned around, spotted one of the riders pointing a carbine at something in a patch of spider bush that the fire hadn’t yet reached. A high-pitched avian screech caused his horse to nervously step back, but the rider kicked the heels of his boots against the animal’s sides, then raised his rifle again. He fired once more into the thicket. Another harsh cry, then two more shots brought abrupt silence. Appreciative cheers from the men watching the fire. Susan scowled, then continued walking toward the tent.
The interior was cool and dark; a couple of portable fans had been set up, and several men and women loitered around a folding table covered with maps and aerial photos. A few observed the conflagration through binoculars, while others consulted the maps, coordinating the movements of those in the field and communicating with them via headset radio. No one noticed Susan as she pushed aside the tent flap and stepped inside.
“Who’s in charge here?” she demanded.
They turned to gaze at her, but no one spoke. Susan didn’t recognize any of them until Morgan Goldstein put down his binoculars and walked over to her. “Ah, Ms. Montero. What a surprise.”
“I can’t imagine why. You knew I was coming.” She made a pretense of snapping her fingers in sudden recollection. “Oh, wait, now I remember. You weren’t supposed to start anything until I arrived. Wasn’t that supposed to be next Anael, or was it sometime later next week?”
Goldstein shrugged. “My apologies. We decided to go ahead with the controlled burn a little earlier than planned. I know the government wanted to be informed, but—”
“But you decided that the less we knew in advance, the easier this would make things for your guys.” Susan was having a hard time controlling her temper. “Did you really think we wouldn’t notice?”
“Susan…”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She pointed to the long line of fires. “You were supposed to clear just enough to make room for a spaceport, not burn down an entire savannah. From what I can tell, you’ve already torched two square miles!”
“We have certain requirements.”
“Requirements?” She strode over to the table, impatiently pushing aside one of the men. A quick glance at the areas of the maps outlined in red marker confirmed her suspicions. “Good grief, you’ve got at least four, maybe five square miles marked for clearance!”
“Susan…”
“Don’t try to play nice with me. You’re friends with my folks, but that doesn’t mean…” On impulse, she snatched up a headset someone had left on the table. “Never mind. I’m calling this off.”
Before she could issue any orders—which doubtless would have been ignored anyway—Goldstein laid a hand upon her arm. “Susan, calm down,” he said quietly. “Please. You’re not doing any good, and you’re just making a fool of yourself.”
Another crack of a high-powered rifle. Two of the men standing nearby murmured to one another in German; they glanced over their shoulders at her, then one of them chuckled. Without asking, Susan knew what was going on. As the grasslands burned, so, too, did the habitat of every native creature that lived within them. Creek cats, swampers, grasshoarders, swoops…and in particular, boids. As they fled the fire, men waited to pick them off, one by one. Horses had given men an advantage above boids in particular; now they could sit up high above the grass where the giant avians lurked, able to see them long before they attacked. And as fast as boids were, a well-trained stallion was even faster.
“We’ve lost a couple of our people to boids already.” As usual, Goldstein was uncannily perceptive. “Creek cats have been a nuisance, too. We can’t expand the colony until we’ve eliminated their nests, and there’s only one way we can do that.”
“Oh, c’mon…” She gestured to the maps. “You’re not doing this simply because you want to get rid of boids and cats. Once you’ve set up perimeter guns—”
“No. No, you’re absolutely right. We also need land for crops, for building more houses, for establishing a spaceport.”
“This much? What are you planning to do? Build a city?”
“In fact, yes.” Morgan smiled as he looked away. “That’s exactly what we plan to do.”
She looked helplessly at the fountains of brown smoke rising from the grasslands. “You can’t do this,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. “You signed an agreement.”
“The trade agreement the EA signed with the Coyote Federation places limits on immigration and export of raw materials, in exchange for territorial rights.” Morgan folded his arms across his chest, his voice assumed a lecturing tone. “There’s nothing there about importing raw material from other colonies, or limiting the expansion of our own colony.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Nor does it affect business arrangements made between companies here on Coyote…in this case, the one between Janus and Thompson Wood.”
Susan’s mouth fell open. “You’re…?”
“We’ve been contracted to develop this area on behalf of the EA.” Morgan waved a hand at the burning grasslands. “A thousand new colonists a year…do you honestly think that they’re going to want to live in grass huts or build log cabins when they arrive? Perhaps your parents did, but these people are used to a rather higher standard of living.”
So her suspicions had been correct. The European Alliance wasn’t content with only a small settlement. Jon had already discovered as much, the night he’d been beaten up by Uncle Lars’s men; the last time she’d spoken with him, he was still recovering from his injuries at the farm he shared with Manny Castro. He’d assumed that the EA was purchasing timber from the Thompson Wood Company for export to Earth. So far, though, not so much as a stick had been loaded aboard the cargo transports that rendezvoused with the Drake during its now-frequent voyages through the starbridge. Yet seldom did a day pass when barges stacked high with lumber departed from the Clarksburg mills, southbound down the West Channel to the Great Equatorial and, beyond, the coast of Albion.
“As a matter of courtesy, we agreed to let a government representative come down here to witness our operation.” Goldstein reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a piece of cellophane-wrapped candy. “So you’re here. I didn’t know you worked for the interior department.”
“On temporary assignment.” No sense in mentioning that the department consisted of exactly six people, including the commissioner and his personal staff. She’d volunteered her services while on summer sabbatical from the university.
“Ah, so.” A noncommittal nod. “Any comments?”
“This…this is a…a disgrace.” She struggled to find words for her outrage. “A complete catastrophe. You’re destroying thousands of acres of native habitat—”
“On a world with tens of thousands of miles still unexplored.” Goldstein unwrapped the candy, popped it into his mouth, let the wrapper fall to the ground. Noticing her expression, he self-consciously bent down to pick it up. “Your objections have been noted. I’ll be happy to review your report, if you wish to forward it to me.”
From the distance, she could hear more gunshots; the breeze had shifted, wafting more smoke toward the campsite, and she thought she heard of the crackle of the flames. “This isn’t the end of this,” she murmured.
“Well…no, I think it is.” Goldstei
n hesitated, then stepped closer to her. “Susan, I know you’re upset, but have a talk with your father. I think he may enlighten you.”
She turned to stare at him. “What about my father?”
“Hasn’t he told you?” Goldstein gave her a benign smile. “He’s one of my major shareholders.”
4. AUTUMN LEAVES (BARBIEL 29, C.Y. 14)
The wind was colder, this close to the top of the mountain. It moaned like a lost spirit as it roamed along the granite bluffs, scattering dry leaves from the branches of the rough bark and faux birch at its base. So late in the afternoon, there was little warmth to be found in the last rays of the autumn sun, now hovering less than a hand’s-breadth over the summit. Soon it would be twilight, and the beginning of another long night.
Feeling the chill, Lars pulled up the collar of his shagswool coat. He gazed at the narrow crack within the escarpment, rising along a steep bluff just above the tree line. “This is it?” he asked. “You’re sure there’s no other way?”
“I’m sure.” Hawk pointed to the top of the crevice. “This is the way Jon showed us to get to the ledge.” He paused. “It’s easier than it looks.”
Lars absently sucked at the gap in his teeth where a dentist in Clarksburg had pulled a rotten molar last month. It didn’t look easy at all; at least sixty feet, nearly straight up, and he couldn’t see the ledge his son indicated. And the light was beginning to fade. If he had any sense, he’d mark this place, then send a couple of his men up here to do the job for them.
“C’mon. You can make it.” Hawk cinched the straps of his backpack a little tighter, then stepped over the broken rubble that lay at the bottom of the cliffs. “You said you want to find where they live. Well, here it is.”
“Yeah, but…”
“You coming?” The boy looked back at him. “Or is this just one more thing you’re going to get James to do for you?”
There was contempt in the young man’s voice, a mute challenge in his eyes. “Watch your mouth, boy,” Lars muttered, pulling his pack tighter against his back. “There ain’t nothing I can’t do myself.”
Hawk nodded, then stepped into the crevice. Without hesitation, he began to climb upward, bracing his back against one side of the fissure, while finding places to put his hands and feet along the other side. Lars watched his son until he was eight feet above the ground, then he took a deep breath, spit in the palms of his hands, rubbed them together, and followed him.
Hawk had turned eighteen only a couple of months ago; hard to believe the squirt grew up so fast. After their falling-out last year, he’d disappeared for a while before showing up at his mother’s doorstep, asking to be taken in. But the kid had never been meant for books and school; six months in Clarksburg, then he’d left home again, hooking up with the logging crew when they returned to the Black Mountains for the spring season.
Lars had agreed to take him back, but only on condition that he help them track down the chirreep. The boy knew where they were hiding, but his damn cousin had caused him to mix up his priorities. It had taken a lot of persuasion before Hawk had come clean, or at least halfway clean: as it turned out, the chirreep hadn’t been responsible for all their troubles, but instead shared the blame with someone else. An ex-spacer named Jonathan Parson, who’d moved into the mountains after he’d jumped ship from the Columbus, had been the one who’d tried to destroy the spill-dam.
Hawk insisted that he didn’t know where Parson lived, but Lars managed to convince him that, if the boy would just bring Parson to some place near the logging camp where they could meet, perhaps the two of them could peacefully settle their differences. He even went so far as to promise that Parson wouldn’t be harmed. Just a little parlay between two grown men.
Yeah, well…promises are like turds; just because you make ’em don’t mean you gotta keep ’em. Maybe Hawk was irate because of what his father’s men had done to Parson after they caught him at the spill-dam, but Lars had kept his word: he’d never laid a hand on him. And since then, no one had touched the spill-dam. But the damn chirreep had continued to pester the camp—knocking down flume supports, stealing supplies, harassing the big Percherons the company had recently bought to haul logs—until Lars decided that enough was enough.
His son knew where the chirreep were hiding. He’d kept that secret for much too long. And two days ago, Lars laid it on the line. Show me where they are, he’d said, or we’ll go looking for your friend again. And when we find him, he’ll find himself in a hole in the ground. And, of course, the boy had agreed. Because, after all, blood is thicker than water…
The climb was even worse than he expected. The years he’d spent in the mountains had toughened him, yet he’d spent too many days making his guys do all the work, too many nights drinking until he passed out in his bunk. There was a pot in his belly and flabby tissue in his arms and legs; he had to stop now and then to catch his breath, and despite the cold he found sweat running down his face. Meanwhile, his boy was scuttling up the crevice like a monkey in a tree. More than once, he thought he caught a smirk on Hawk’s face, one which quickly vanished when he caught his old man’s eye. When this was over and done, he’d have to teach the boy some discipline. Perhaps he was too old for lessons from Mr. Belt, but neither was he too young to be reassigned to the tree-topper crew. A few weeks hooked by a belt to the top of an eighty-foot rough bark would remind him to respect his father.
At long last, he reached the top of the crevice. Hawk was patiently waiting for him, sitting on a rock and having a drink from his flask. He didn’t offer any water to his father as he silently watched Lars sag against a boulder. Lars glared at him, then pulled his own flask from his pack. “Think this is funny, don’cha?”
“Not at all.” Hawk shrugged, put a stopper in his flask. “Kind of feel sorry for you, to tell the truth.”
“If you think beating me to the top makes you a better man than me—”
“No, no…it’s not that.” Hawk looked away, gazing down the mountainside spread out below. Although they were many miles from the camp, the extent of the clear-cutting was plain to see: vast patches of naked terrain where dense forest once lay. “You don’t have anything left but that, do you?” he asked. “Just a lot of stumps, and your drinking and womanizing.”
“You got something against getting drunk and screwing?” Lars smirked at him. No sense in pretending that he had any affection left for his mother, and what a man did when he wasn’t on the clock was no one’s business. “And those stumps brought us a lot of money, boy. Don’t forget that.”
“I know.” Hawk paused. “And I’ve tried to overlook it. But you’ve got a lot of hatred in you, Papa…”
“I don’t hate no one.” Still trying to get his wind, he drank too quickly. The water went down the wrong way, caused him to cough. “Hell, I love everybody.”
“No, you don’t.” Hawk shook his head sadly. “You don’t love my mother or my sister, and I know sure as hell that you don’t love me. You’re just a worn-out old bully, trying to force everyone to—”
“If that’s what you think,” Lars rasped, “then why’d you come back?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If I’m such a mean ol’ daddy, then what made you leave your mama and come back here? No one forced you.”
Hawk didn’t reply. Instead, he looked down at the toes of his boots, letting his flask swing back and forth by its strap between his knees. “I dunno,” he said. “The last time I saw you, things went bad between us. But after I got away, I thought maybe…maybe if I gave you another chance, things would work out.”
“I gave you your job back. What else do you want?” Lars didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “You want me to say I love you? Yeah, well, okay, I love you. Happy?”
“Not really.”
“Show me what you brought me up here for, and I’ll give you a kiss.”
Hawk said nothing for a moment. He sighed, stood up again. “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
The ledge was narrow, and didn’t get any wider as they moved along it. Uma had disappeared behind the summit, taking with it what little direct sunlight they had left. Yet Hawk knew the way. He led his father along a trail that became more precarious with every step they took, until they were practically hugging the granite wall. Lars found himself regretting that they’d come up here. If they remained much longer, they’d have to camp overnight, and neither of them had brought bedrolls, food, or anything to drink except for water. The lack of liquor bothered him more than anything else. God, what he wouldn’t give for a shot of bearshine just now.
They came around a large outcropping, and now Lars saw that they were in a broad hollow that erosion had carved within the face of the mountain. Sheer bluffs rose up around them; in the wan light, he could see what looked like piles of branches, stacked here and there around the center.
“Here it is.” Hawk kneeled to the ground, motioning for his father to do the same. “There’s a sinkhole in the middle. It leads down to a cave where they live.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Keep your voice down.” He saw that Lars was reaching back into his pack for a flashlight, and quickly shook his head. “Don’t use that. They’ll know we’re here.”
Lars withdrew his hand. He squinted through the darkness. “I don’t see it,” he whispered. “You’re sure it’s there?”
“Of course, I’m sure.” Hawk sighed in exasperation. He slipped off his pack, laid it on the ground. “I’ll get you closer, but you’re going to have to leave your pack behind.”
Lars hesitated. His son didn’t know it, but he’d brought a couple of bricks of plastic explosive, along with a coil of det cord and a battery-powered charger. He figured that once he found the chirreep cave, he’d plant the charges and run the cord to a safe distance. With luck, they might be able to bury the critters alive. “How come you want me to—”