Coyote Destiny

by Allen Steele

  “I was coming to that.” Manny tapped McAlister on the shoulder, and apparently didn’t notice that the pilot flinched at his touch. “Interface the nav system with the comlink, then return to autopilot. The local traffic network will guide us to whatever berth the Council wants us to use. Once we’ve arrived, you may resume manual control and commence docking maneuvers as usual.”

  “‘As usual,’ he says.” McAlister reached forward to enter a new command into the comp’s keypad. “I should’ve never volunteered for this damned mission.”

  Talus qua’spah steadily grew in size until it filled the cockpit windows for as far as the eye could see. As Manny said, the Mercator was on full autopilot, guided in by the traffic-control net. As the shuttle reached the colony’s periphery, its reaction-control thrusters fired on their own accord, putting the spacecraft on a new course that swung it along a shallow arc above the vast construct.

  Dozens of habitats moved beneath them, with thousands of lights gleaming within their portholes. Every now and then, they caught a fleeting glimpse of an alien figure, as if a member of one extraterrestrial race or another had paused for a moment to watch the approach of the tiny craft. Along the thick cables that linked Talus qua’spah together, Jorge spotted small, lozenge-shaped cars moving at breakneck speed within transparent tubes: obviously a rapid-transit system, providing access from one hab to another. Talus qua’spah was called a house, but in fact it was a city, one larger than any ever built by humankind.

  The Mercator began to lose altitude, gradually dropping to a couple of hundred feet above the colony, until it headed directly toward a geodesic sphere five hundred feet in diameter. As the shuttle approached the hab, a rectangular hatch opened just above its equator; light spilled out, revealing what appeared to be a small hangar. The thrusters fired again, this time to brake the shuttle, then the Mercator slipped into the bay.

  As soon as the shuttle was past the doors, Jorge felt weight return; apparently their craft had just entered a local gravity field. At that moment, the master alarm rang, signaling that that the autopilot had been disengaged. Caught by surprise, McAlister swore under his breath; he grabbed the yoke and pulled back on it, firing the thrusters one last time to complete the braking maneuver. He reached up to snap a row of toggles; a bump from beneath their feet as the landing gear was lowered, then the pilot slowly brought the craft down. A hard thump as the Mercator made its touchdown, and the pilot let out his breath.

  “They might have warned us,” he said to no one in particular, as his hands moved across the console, shutting down the engine and thrusters. That done, he craned his neck to peer aft through the cockpit windows. “All right, they’ve closed the door. Let’s see if it’s okay to leave.”

  Jorge was already ahead of him. Gazing at the environmental control panel to his left, he studied the readout for the outside atmosphere. The gauge slowly rose, indicating that the hangar was being repressurized. “Coyote-normal,” he said at last. “Same for gravity. Looks like they’re expecting us.” He looked back at Manny. “We may not need those airpacks after all.”

  “Wear them anyway. This is only the hangar, after all. We’ll be going…well, somewhere else.” The Savant leaned forward to activate the wireless again. Once more, he said a few words in the hjadd language. This time, though, there was no response, only an expectant silence. “I believe that means they’re waiting for us. Shall we?”

  Jorge unfastened his seat harness, then climbed over the center console and followed Manny into the passenger cabin. The others had already unbuckled their own harnesses; Inez had risen from her seat, but Greg and Vargas remained where they were, staring out the portholes at the hangar. “Don’t see anything else out there,” Greg said, looking up at Jorge as he entered. “You’d think there’d be other ships.”

  Jorge shrugged. Just then, that was the least of his concerns. “Manny says we might need the airpacks,” he said to Inez, then another thought occurred to him. “Weapons, too?” he asked, turning to the Savant. “Or would that be considered an insult?”

  “More than an insult,” Manny replied. “Weapons of any kind are prohibited on Talus qua’spah. Fortunately, we’ll be here for so short a time that no one will ask to inspect our ship and its cargo. Otherwise, we could expect to have them impounded.”

  Jorge had expected as much. “All right, then…no guns.” Inez nodded, then walked aft to the cargo nets and found the equipment case containing the airpacks. He turned to Greg and Vargas. “I don’t know how long this will take, but until we get back, you’re to stay put. No wandering around, no exploring…”

  “Aw, c’mon, Lieutenant.” Sergio looked at him askance. “Can’t we just get out and stretch our legs? We’ve been cooped up in here for eleven hours now.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Manny said before Jorge could respond. “Just make sure that you don’t leave the hangar…and under no circumstances should you reveal any weapons.”

  Greg nodded, and once again he and Jorge gave each other a knowing glance. The sergeant was to keep an eye on Vargas. And perhaps McAlister, too, for that matter; Jorge wasn’t sure how much he trusted their pilot.

  By then, Inez had removed the airpacks from their case. She handed one to Jorge, and they took a couple of minutes to put them on: a small pack, about the size and shape of a knapsack, that they each carried on their backs with a small harness. Once activated, the packs would filter oxygen and nitrogen from the ambient atmosphere and turn them into breathable air. Two elastic tubes led to a half-face air-mask, which was also fitted with a mike and amplifier; a pair of goggles went with it. Inez and Jorge pushed the goggles up on their foreheads and let the masks dangle beneath their chins.

  Once they were ready, Jorge knelt to undog the belly hatch. A faint hiss of escaping pressure, then the hatch opened. He lowered the ladder, then stood up. “Ladies and Savants first,” he said, making a polite gesture.

  “No.” Manny shook his head. “As expedition leader, you’re expected to be the first to exit your craft.”

  Something in the way Manny said this caused Jorge to pause at the hatch. “You think we’re being watched?”

  “From the moment we came through the starbridge. And believe me, Lieutenant…the Council, and particularly the hjadd, take great stock in even the most casual of actions.” He looked at the others. “Remember that when you get out to stretch your legs.”

  Jorge swallowed, but there was no point in arguing. Bending forward again, he climbed down the ladder, with Inez and Manny just behind him. Ready or not, they were about to enter the House of the Talus.

  They had just emerged from the shuttle when a circular door within the hangar’s far wall opened like a sphincter. A robot came through, or at least that was what Jorge assumed it to be; spherical, about the size and shape of a spacecraft oxygen tank, it scuttled forward upon four multijointed legs resembling those of a spider. The machine moved toward them so quickly that both he and Inez instinctively stepped back. Manny remained where he was, though, and waited until it stopped in front of them.

  “Greetings,” he said, hands at his sides. “I am Manuel Castro, diplomatic liaison to the Talus from the Coyote Federation. With me are Jorge Montero and Inez Sanchez, both of the Coyote Federation Corps of Exploration.”

  As he spoke, a slender arm detached itself from the sphere’s base and extended toward them. At its end was a pair of lenses that rapidly telescoped and retracted as the arm twitched back and forth, inspecting each of the three visitors in turn. At the same time, a panel near the top of the sphere opened, allowing something that looked disturbingly like a gun barrel to protrude. If it was, indeed, a weapon of some sort, then it was aimed straight at them.

  Manny had barely finished when the machine responded in a high-pitched chitter that sounded somewhat like that of a grasshoarder. Whatever its language was, it clearly wasn’t hjadd. Manny listened for a moment. “Yes, we’re here to see the High Council regarding a matter of some urgen
cy.” Another outburst. “We’ve been invited, yes,” Manny continued. More chittering. “I assure you that we’re unarmed, and that my friends will abide by the protocols. Now, please, escort us to the meeting place.”

  A pause, then the gun barrel disappeared, and the machine began to retreat, returning to the door from which it had appeared. “Come along,” Manny said quietly, not looking at Jorge and Inez. “My friend has agreed to take us there.”

  “Some friend.” Jorge followed him, with Inez right behind. “A security ’bot, I take it?”

  “Not exactly.” Manny kept his voice low. “You’re right about her job, but she isn’t a robot. She’s a danui…or at least that’s how she was born. Since then, though, she’s become their version of a Savant. The difference is, in her case, her brain was physically transplanted into a machine body, thereby allowing her to become a very efficient sentry.”

  Inez stared at the danui cyborg. “Why?”

  “Why not?” The buzz that signified Savant laughter. “The danui are naturally suspicious, and this particular one loves nothing more than interrogating new arrivals. Believe me, if I weren’t with you, you’d have been here for hours, arguing with her just for the sake of her amusement.”

  The cyborg led them into a broad, steel-walled tunnel; the door behind them swirled shut as they walked down the corridor to an identical door. The sentry halted before it, her eyestalk twitching toward Manny. Once again, she voiced another demand. “I understand,” Manny replied, then he looked back at his companions. “My friend informs me this is both an airlock and also a sterilization area. Although we won’t have to undergo full-body decontamination, the Council does want to make sure that our clothes aren’t carrying any contagious microorganisms. So you’ll need to put on your masks and goggles once we go in.”

  “Understood,” Jorge said. Manny responded to the danui in her own language, and a second later the door irised open, revealing a small, circular room. To Jorge’s surprise, the sentry didn’t follow them inside but remained in the corridor.

  “She decided we’re harmless,” Inez said, as the door closed behind them.

  “I had much the same impression, yes. Otherwise, she would’ve joined us.” Manny watched as she and Jorge donned their masks and goggles. “Just out of curiosity…the way you said that leads me to wonder if you picked up on her emotions.”

  Inez didn’t respond for a moment. “In a manner of speaking,” she said at last, her voice distorted by the mask’s amplifier. “She might look like a ’bot, but her brain is organic. That was how I was able to pick up on her. It was…well, weird…to be able to sense an alien’s emotional state, but it was surprisingly human. Or humanlike, at least.”

  “I see.” Manny was quiet for a few seconds. Panels within the ceiling turned red, and Jorge felt a subtle rise in temperature. He guessed that the room was being bathed in ultraviolet radiation. “But you can’t do that with me, of course.”

  “No. Your intelligence is contained within a quantum comp, and so it’s inaccessible to me.”

  “Interesting. I’d never thought of that.” Manny paused. “Still, I’d refrain from doing that during our meeting with the Council. Some of its members are empathic by nature, and I understand a few of them have some strong cultural taboos against uninvited sensing.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Looking at Jorge, she gave him a wink through her goggles. “I have plenty of practice in shutting out strong emotions of those around me.”

  Jorge said nothing, but he was suddenly glad that the air mask hid his expression. How many times in the past had he entertained fantasies about her before he’d known that they were related? Again, he was uncomfortably reminded that she had been aware they were kin long before he was, and had been shutting out his feelings toward her.

  A few seconds later he felt his ears pop from the lowered atmospheric pressure, then the ceiling resumed its former appearance. “We’re done,” Manny said. “Remember…the atmosphere we’re now in isn’t necessarily fatal, but you’ll pass out if you try to breathe it. So keep your mask on at…ah, here we go.”

  Jorge turned to see two curved sections of the wall behind him split in half, sliding open to reveal a doorway that he hadn’t realized was there. On the other side of the door was a broad, elliptical chamber, its floor a smooth expanse of fine-veined black marble, its walls reflective black glass. The ceiling was a concave dome just a dozen feet above the floor, with indirect lighting from around its rim. No furniture of any sort, although there appeared to be a keyhole-shaped door on the opposite side of the room.

  “Ever been here before?” Jorge asked, as he and Inez followed Manny into the cold and featureless chamber.

  “No. This is new to me.” Jorge couldn’t be sure, but he thought he detected nervousness in the Savant’s electronic voice. “My previous meetings with the Council or its individual members have always been in…well, other places.”

  Their footsteps echoed softly off the black walls as they walked farther into the room. A faint sigh from behind them; Jorge looked back, saw the door sliding shut. All of a sudden, he felt as if he’d stepped into a trap. No way out…

  “It’s okay,” Inez murmured, coming up beside him to touch his hand. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  A reluctant nod as he took a deep breath, tasting the antiseptic flavor of his pack’s air. Whatever happened next, he could only hope that she was right…

  All of a sudden, they were no longer alone.

  The surrounding walls, once empty black glass, now displayed the images of aliens: not holograms, but nonetheless forms three-dimensional enough that it seemed as if they were silently peering in at them from behind plate-glass windows. Nearly two dozen extraterrestrials, no two of them alike. Jorge recognized a few—a fur-covered, wide-eyed arsashi; a four-armed, blue-skinned biped with an elongated skull that he tentatively identified as a soranta; an emaciated-looking quadipod that was probably a kua’tah—but most were unfamiliar to him, with some so weird that he wouldn’t have even believed that they were sentient creatures if he hadn’t known better.

  The High Council of the Talus was all around them, their virtual presence both shocking and humbling at the same time. Jorge realized where they were: a conference room where the aliens could gather to meet with aliens—he and his companions, in this case—whose environments were unlike their own. Yet if this were so, then why was it that the room hadn’t been furnished with an atmosphere suitable for humans?

  Jorge was about to ask Manny about this when the answer became apparent. The keyhole door split apart at the center, allowing a hjadd to enter the room. Slightly shorter than a human, heshe somewhat resembled a tortoise that lacked a shell and walked upright on two stumpy legs, but with a fin rising from the top of hisher sloping skull. The alien wore the iridescent, togalike garment favored by hisher kind, and as heshe walked toward them, hisher slitted eyes moved independently of each other, as if examining the three humans before himher.

  “Greetings, and welcome to Talus qua’spah.” When heshe spoke, they heard two languages at once: the hissing, almost reptilian tones of hisher own voice, and Anglo, coming from the pronglike translation device heshe wore against hisher lipless mouth. Heshe formally raised hisher left hand, six webbed fingers spread apart, as a gesture of goodwill. “I am Jasahajahd Taf Sa-Fhadda, First Speaker of the High Council. For purposes of conversation, you may call me Taf Sa-Fhadda, or First Speaker.”

  When heshe said this, Jorge immediately knew who heshe was. Many years ago, Jasahajahd Taf Sa-Fhadda had come to Coyote as the hjadd’s Cultural Ambassador, a role intended to help humankind better understand the aliens who’d recently built an embassy on their world. Yet Taf had done far more than that; upon arrival at the New Brighton spaceport, heshe had given a Sa’Tong-tas to the young customs inspector who, along with Jorge’s grandfather, had come out to greet himher. That person was Hawk Thompson; the rest was history.

  Jorge was unaware that Taf
had since returned to Rho Coronae Borealis, or that heshe had apparently been promoted to a more senior diplomatic position. Which was not surprising; even after all these years, the hjadd on Coyote still kept to themselves, although they’d continued to maintain their embassy in Liberty. So while it was surprising that Taf would be there today, it nevertheless made sense; not only did heshe have previous experience with humans, but heshe had known Hawk Thompson before he’d become the chaaz’maha.

  “Greetings, First Speaker Taf Sa-Fhadda.” Manny returned the gesture, his four-fingered claw appearing from beneath his black robe. “I am Manuel Castro, diplomatic liaison of the Coyote Federation to the Talus.” No doubt this was only a formality; Jorge knew that Manny was no stranger to either Taf or the Council. The Savant extended the same hand toward him and Inez. “Allow me to introduce my companions…Jorge Montero, an officer in the Coyote Federation Corps of Exploration, and Inez Sanchez, also a member of the Corps.”

  As he spoke, Jorge was aware of subtle movements from the aliens observing them: heads moving back and forth, or weaving to and fro; mandibles silently clicking; pinchers, paws, or tentacles making discreet motions. He could hear nothing from them, but he assumed that the Council members were receiving translations of the conversation, and these little movements were the equivalent of nodding, perhaps even a smile or two. Or so he hoped.

  “Welcome, Jorge Montero and Inez Sanchez.” Facing each of them in turn, Taf repeated the same left-handed gesture. Inez reacted before Jorge did, raising her left hand and making a slight bow; Jorge hastened to do the same. “What matter do you wish to bring to the attention of the High Council?”

  Manny didn’t say anything. Instead, he half turned toward Jorge. His face was incapable of human expression, yet Jorge was suddenly aware that he was being called upon to speak. Jorge hadn’t expected this; his face grew warm, and for an instant he was tongue-tied. There was no way out of this, though. The time had come for him to address the Council.