Sky Coyote (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “He doesn’t need the Goat Cult.”

  “Nobody needs the Goat Cult!” I agreed desperately. “And he knew that as well as you or I. He did his job so well, all of you did, that nobody will ever have to worry about the Goats again. All he had to do was bring his men home. And now he’s facing a disciplinary hearing, when he ought to be retiring with honors.”

  “And is he sitting in a detention cell, awaiting trial?” Budu inquired.

  “Well—not exactly,” I admitted. “He’s still out there. He says he’s on the trail of a new Goat incursion. He’s refusing to come in.”

  “How unfortunate,” said Budu, “for everyone concerned.”

  “It really is. The rumors are that there were even women and children killed at this village,” I went on.

  “But we always killed them.” Budu looked at me. “He-Goats, she-Goats, little Goats beside their Goat mothers. We spared only the infants. The indoctrination was too complete in the others. If you’d been crouching beside a Goat body instead of by your mother, I’d have knocked in your little head too, lest you grow up into a big Goat.”

  He watched my reaction with a cold twinkle in his eye. “Now you look shocked!” he joked. “Don’t worry. I knew you were a good child when I saw you. But really, there was no way but to exterminate them wherever we found them, and they were everywhere in those days. Not now.”

  After an uncertain pause, I said, “So, have you any suggestion about what to do with Marco? I don’t suppose you could talk to him?”

  “I might,” Budu told me. “If I see him. I could tell him he’s wasting his time hunting for Goats.”

  “It would really, really be a good idea if you could,” I told him. “It would ease a lot of people’s minds at Company headquarters. Some of those committee members don’t understand—well, no, they do understand what you guys have done for them. But they’re getting a little scared, to tell you the absolute truth.”

  “They know they can’t do much to stop us, if we refuse orders,” said Budu.

  “Exactly,” I agreed.

  A silence fell. I hurried to fill it in.

  “Under the circumstances, you can see how the Company might be a little uncomfortable that you’ve chosen to postpone coming in, yourself.”

  “I’ve been busy,” he replied.

  “It sounds like you’ve been doing a great job with the locals,” I said lamely.

  “I’ve been busy thinking,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, and then he got up and paced out to the edge of the bluff, and I had to run after. He stopped and looked around him. You could see for huge distances in all directions, well into what would one day be different nations.

  “You ought to look at this and think about it, too,” he told me. “Look, out here. That will be Italy, one day. The little man Napoleon will come from there, and go over there”—he swung his big arm around in the direction of France—”to raise his armies, trying to be a god. Many, many people will die before he learns he’s a man.” He swung his big arm around. “And that will be Germany, where there will be a man so stupid, he doesn’t know what happens when one group of animal breeds only with itself, or one family marries only its own cousins. You know what he’ll do in the name of what he calls his race. How many will die? Ten million? And how many others will learn the idea of big murder from him, and do as he did in their own nations? And look out there,” he went on, turning. “Spain. They will feed people to their god, and then go conquer a world, beyond that sea, where the rulers feed people to their god.

  “Keep looking, Joseph. That will be Africa. Think of all those slaves dying for the wealth of nations, and the curse they fulfill. And there, in Jerusalem, three people of one book, children of one god, will tear one another to pieces. Farther, where you can’t see, from the steppes, another little man will come, with his horses and his men, conquering with no other plan than to make heaps of skulls wherever he goes. British, Americans, Japanese, Russians. Look up at the sky, think of all those people burning to death on Mars. Big murder, son. You can’t look in any direction without seeing a nation that deserves to be gelded.”

  “Well—yeah,” I agreed. “That’s why Dr. Zeus was founded. Why we were made. To preserve the good part of humanity from all the awful things these people will do.”

  “That was why you were made, son.” He turned to look down at me. “And since you were made to hide things away to keep them safe, it must have occurred to you how much simpler your job would be if we Enforcers were permitted to keep monsters from running loose in the world.”

  “Of course,” I said uneasily. I could see where this was going. “But what can we do? Those people will have their time. Hitler, the Vikings, the Church of God-?. All we can do is work in their event shadows to make the best of things. We can’t prevent their existence, however much we’d like to. We can’t change history.”

  “How do you know, son?”

  “Because it’s impossible! Every one knows that. It’s one of the first things we learn. The laws of temporal physics prove it,” I stated.

  “And you’ve made a study of temporal physics?” He put his enormous hands behind his back and regarded me.

  “No, but I know what everybody else knows,” I answered, feeling panicked.

  “Because Dr. Zeus told you.” His gaze traveled out to the world again. “Think about this, son. If the Company were lying to you, how would you know? And if the Company were lying, and history can be changed—would it be to the Company’s advantage to change it?”

  “Well, of course,” I responded. “Except—well, wait. No, because the whole operation has functioned by using the event shadows cast by history as it exists. If history were changed, all those chains of connected circumstance would be broken. We don’t know what would happen.”

  He nodded slowly. “The Company owns many fine things, saved from war and wickedness. But if there were no wars, no thieves and murderers, who would own those fine things? In the future there are wise and powerful men who send us our orders, you and me. If history were changed, would those men lose their power?”

  The line of black clouds was advancing from the north, bringing a storm that couldn’t be blown away or outrun. He sighed, watching it come.

  “Maybe our masters are great and good and have told us the truth. But if they’ve lied to us—and how can we know they haven’t?—then a thousand generations of innocents will die to make our masters rich.”

  “But we have no way of knowing that they’ve lied, either!” I protested.

  He looked down at me and smiled. “No way at all,” he said. “So I’ll speak to Marco, when I see him. Tell me, do you know what they’re going to do with us, my Enforcers and me, now that we have served our purpose?”

  “You’ll be retrained.” That was what I had been told.

  “Will we?” He held up his big hands and looked at them. “Will they make us Preservers, like you?”

  “I—I guess so.”

  “Then we must obey,” he said. “I wonder about something. When the year 2355 has come and gone, will the Company still need its Preservers?”

  “Not as Preservers, no,” I said after a moment. “The Company will have made a new civilization, one that’s so advanced, there won’t be wars.”

  “Or natural disasters, or accidents?” he asked. A breeze came out of the north, cold as ice, the outrider of the coming storm.

  “Maybe they’ll need us to preserve things from those, then.” I said. “We have to trust the Company, father! What else can we do?”

  “I don’t know,” he told me. “But you should think about this, son.”

  I didn’t want to. It was pointless. What could I do, even if he happened to be right? But I owed him a son’s duty, so I told him I’d think about it.

  I left him and made my way back down the mountain. Near the pass into future Switzerland, I encountered a mortal traveler swinging a nifty copper ax as he strode along.

  Is pas
s open? he signed to me.

  Yes, I signed back, but you’d better hide your ax. His eyes widened at that; he must have heard about the angry god. Hastily he slipped it over his shoulder into his backpack.

  Thanks, he signed.

  You should probably turn back, though, I added. There’s a storm coming.

  His gaze traveled off to where I was pointing at the wall of clouds. It had come a full third of the way across the sky. He evaluated for a moment and then shrugged.

  I bet I make it.

  I shrugged back at him and went on my way. If that guy got caught in the storm, he might be stuck up here until skiers found him in the late twentieth century; but it wouldn’t be my fault. I’d warned him, hadn’t I? Whatever doubts Budu might have on the subject, it was my experience, so far, that history couldn’t be changed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ON THE OTHER HAND, BUDU had been right in his suspicion that the Company didn’t always take the high moral ground where troublesome immortals were concerned. The Enforcers were gone now; I hadn’t seen one in centuries. Were they really leading happy and productive lives somewhere? What happened to immortals who asked the wrong questions, like Budu? Or like MacCool, for that matter?

  And what was going to happen in the year 2355?

  I stood up slowly and looked out into the night. There were the lights of the base. No nice warm fireside for me; I had a berth among the other ageless, in a gray future room without decoration, where walls met floors and ceilings without molding or baseboard, stripped bare of decoration and other nonfunctional nonessentials.

  Oh well. It would at least be warm and dry. I turned to head down the ridge.

  What was that? There was that emotion again, that broadcast from somebody far out in the night. Anger, but with it a certain glee. Whoever it was had evaded our patrols. Great. Well, he wasn’t close enough to do me any harm on my way home. I’d make my report in the morning, which it was already, actually. One of the really important things an immortal needs to know is when to go to bed.

  I made my report, and the security patrols were stepped up. They found evidence somebody had been lurking around, all right; some Native American covert surveillance guy was peeping at us. Would he be back? It was anybody’s guess, but the proper precautions were taken. Meanwhile, those of us working in the field tried to speed up the job a little.

  I was watching Mendoza and Dalton at work. They were on their knees in a meadow, examining some plant with one of the wise women, who was pronouncing:

  “Now, this we call tok, and it has many uses. The flower buds are good to eat—”

  “Asclepias eriocarpa,” said Mendoza under her breath. “Ask her if this isn’t the same thing they use to make fishing tackle.” She could speak Chumash perfectly well but preferred to let Dalton do the talking. With one memorable exception, Mendoza avoids contact with mortals.

  “Don’t you use this for fishing tackle, too?” prodded Dalton obediently.

  “Of course! You see, you just cut the stems and peel them open …” Their voices faded into the background. Far but sharp, I heard a man weeping. I smelled mortal misery.

  I scanned. He was a mile distant, but his emotional state streamed in the air like a banner, blue and purple. I focused in and could just make out somebody huddled in oak shade on a hill due west of us. Mendoza was too focused on what she was doing to hear, but Dalton sensed him too and glanced across at me, questioning. I got up and strolled away in a casual manner until I was out of sight, when I broke into a run.

  No, no, this would never do. Everyone was supposed to be happy about leaving. Upbeat. Glad to be clearing out before the murderous white men or Chinigchinixians or whoever arrived. If one mortal sat down and actually thought about it and got sad, others might too. Mortals are like that, for all their lack of sympathy for one another. And unhappy individuals ask questions, which is never a good idea when you’re trying to lead a people to a promised land. I had to find this poor wretch, whoever he was, and cheer him up. Or something.

  Half a mile down the canyon, I could identify the guy: Kenemekme, the first man to speak to me. I’d got to know him, slightly, since. He seemed to be the loser my groupies had said he was: a decent hunter, but nobody much otherwise. Not wealthy. Once a husband and father, but something had happened to the baby and the wife had run off with somebody else. Nobody listened to him in the councils. I guess you might hide in the bushes and cry, if your life was like that.

  By the time I got to where he was, he’d stopped crying and was resting his chin in his hands, staring at the far-off sea horizon. He jumped a little as I hunkered beside him.

  “Nice view, isn’t it, nephew?”

  He looked down at his feet. “All right, I guess.”

  “Yes, lovely view. The sky is blue, the sun is warm, the salvation of your people is proceeding apace. So, why such a long face? You can tell your Uncle Sky Coyote.” I put my head to one side, watching him.

  He swallowed hard and at last replied, “I thought it would be different.”

  “What would be different, nephew?”

  “Well, I thought—it’s just that before You came, I had my own ideas about the way things worked. All that about Father Sun drinking blood and devouring corpses, like the priests told us—I mean, that couldn’t be true. He’s no more than a monster if He does things like that. I had Him pictured more like a kind of grandfather, loving but stern. Terrible to the wicked, yes, that I could believe. And… I thought some kind of higher order prevailed in the Upper World. But from what You say, things are just as bad up there as they are down here. Even God cheats.” He gave a shaken little laugh that caught on a sob.

  I sighed and shrugged. “Nephew. What did you think, when the priests and shamans told you about us Sky People? When you hear a story, do you believe only the nice parts? Truth isn’t like a baked fish, where you can eat the flesh and leave the bones and skin. You have to eat it all.”

  “But if some of those stories are true, then worship is pointless, isn’t it? Why worship beings like that? And all those rituals, all those kantap mysteries, why bother anymore? I mean, now we know.”

  “Well, the kantap’s another affair. But—”

  “And as for prayer, forget it. Why pray to a cannibal who cheats at dice, no matter how powerful He is? And why behave at all? You Sky People have Your nerve dictating rules to us, the way You carry on! When I think of some of the stories I’ve heard about You, Coyote—!”

  I hated to do it, but it was time to drag out my Spanish Jesuit training.

  “All right-Think what you’re saying, nephew. You don’t like us Sky People, so no more moral restraints for you. You can lie, steal, and cheat, yes, rape and murder too, if you feel like it.”

  “Well, no, I won’t, because—well, it’s wrong, and if everybody did it, nobody could live anywhere, and—we have to have some way to protect people. And I won’t be like You Gods!”

  “I see. But doesn’t that mean you’re deciding to be good without anybody telling you to? Nobody punishing you if you sin, nobody rewarding you for virtue? Think of that, nephew.”

  He struggled with the idea. It scared the daylights out of him, of course. I’ve never met a mortal it didn’t scare. So he said:

  “Wait a minute! Why am I even listening to You? Of course! You’re a liar! In every story I’ve ever heard, You tell the most outrageous lies!”

  “So it follows that—?”

  “Well, it follows that none of what You’ve been telling us is true.” He grasped at a ray of light. “And maybe things are like I’d imagined, and maybe Father Sun is loving and benign and cares for us …”

  I shook my head. “You’re forgetting something, nephew. I didn’t tell you that Father Sun eats people. That’s been said by your own priests, by all the reverend truth-tellers of your own village.”

  He stared at me and bit his lip. “Then maybe they don’t know anything either …”

  “Then figure it out for yo
urself! Here I come all the way from the Upper World to save my people from annihilation, and what happens? I get called a liar. Thank you so much.” I rose as if to go.

  “No! Wait, just this once, couldn’t You tell the truth?” He caught hold of my leg in desperation. “The shamans don’t know anything more than I do. They’ve never been to the Upper World, but You have! You’re the only one I can ask! If You really love Your creations, why can’t You at least tell us the truth about it all? Why do children die? Why doesn’t love last? Why are our lives so short and miserable? Why do You allow evil? Isn’t there anywhere things are the way they ought to be? What’s the truth?”

  “Is that what you’re really in search of, nephew? Truth?”

  “Yes! Truth!”

  Hell, I hate to see people unhappy. “Then look into my eyes, nephew.”

  Truth is not all that hard to do, as special effects go. You just put mortals in a trance, scramble their brains a little, and invest some random object with Mystic Significance. It can be anything: a rock, a bush, a flower, a word. The tricky part is making sure your subject has a nice neutral Life-Affirming Experience and not a Call to Action. Otherwise he or she is likely to go out and preach that it’s necessary to the world’s salvation that (for example) everyone must be tattooed or the universe will collapse. Look at whoever this guy was down in Yang-Na.

  Me, I’m a professional. I don’t make that kind of mistake. When I blow somebody’s mind, I empty the ammo chamber first. Kenemekme staggered back and shook his head. His eyes filled with tears.

  “The beauty,” he sobbed. “Oh—oh, the beauty!”

  “Happy now?” I ventured. He threw his arms around me.

  “Yes! At last, I understand! It all makes sense now and—what beauty!”

  “Yes. But you can’t put it into words, can you? That would be blasphemy.”

  “Oh, yes, You’re right. How could I ever describe … How can I ever thank You?”

  “And you won’t try to go out and tell other people about it, will you? No preaching or anything like that? This is our little secret.”