Cracking the Sky

by Brenda Cooper

  When I dropped my load of rope on the ground outside the house, the three of them tumbled out right away, faces full of excitement. They’d been planning. Sho came up to me and said, “We can’t get that over their heads. We can’t get it around their legs or we might break them.”

  I considered. I’d been thinking of horses. But we were not cowboys. I’d never tried to catch a wild animal in my life. Ran from a few—here. The animals on my farms had been born in warm stables and grown up unafraid of me. This was a puzzle. “We can’t cut the rope too short or we’ll never be able to use it for anything else.”

  So we made walls on two sides, using the cliff as the other side.

  We lost a whole day hiking to the Lace Forest and finding four big logs, dragging them back, and posting them upright into the ground. About the time we finished that, the work crews had broken for the day. They helped us string and tie the rope walls, the lowest rope at hebra-knee-height, which was about our waists, and the highest something I could barely touch with my hands.

  When we finished, the dark brown rope stood out against the pale green grasses of late autumn. The corral did not look like it would work for much of anything. Besides, I wasn’t at all sure how we were going to get them anywhere near it.

  Now we had to do what Jove was afraid of. We had to walk through the tall grass and get the hebras to walk away from us and into the makeshift corral. Maybe we shouldn’t have done this—maybe we should have tried to get close without rope. Maybe we should have tried to find them in the winter woods. At any rate, it no longer mattered what we should have done. The shadow of night was knifing across the plains, and it was time to beat it up the cliff and bed down.

  I slept fine, but before the first light all three boys came to my room. Derk, the biggest, rested his arms on Niko’s and Sho’s shoulders. “Sho was dreaming of hebras, and when he came to wake me up, I was dreaming about them, too.”

  Sho nodded. “We dreamed they got caught in the walls we made and the dogs got them, rising up over their back legs and standing on their backs.” He stopped, his eyes wide. He might cry if I let him keep worrying, and then he’d lose face, and maybe be the next one to end up with a broken leg.

  “And biting their necks,” Niko added, not helping.

  “Did you dream, too?” I asked Niko.

  He shook his head. “No. But I’m worried about the hebras.”

  “Well, I’m glad you care. That should make it easier to catch them.”

  “Really?” Sho asked.

  “Yes,” I assured them all. Might as well believe in success. It couldn’t hurt.

  “Can we sit in here with you?” Niko asked.

  So I let them stay. In ten minutes they had fallen asleep all over the bed like a litter of puppies, and I got up to watch for the light and make us all a good lunch. The apple trees had come in well this fall, and Jove’s new wife, Maria, made excellent goat’s milk cheese. We’d be set if we added a bit of fresh bread from the communal kitchen. Even though the morning shadows were still black ghosts, the first loaves should already be out. I shrugged into my coat and opened the door.

  I nearly jumped as a shadow moved nearby. Jove. Worldlessly, he held out three loaves of bread.

  “I don’t need that many.”

  “Yes, you do. I gave everyone on your shift the day off.”

  I raised my eyebrows and spoke more boldly than I ever had to him. “Big risk for you.”

  Although I really only still had moonlight to see by, I swear his cheeks reddened. “I had trouble sleeping. I kept doing math in my head. Doing just what we’re doing, if we keep dying so fast, there won’t be anything left of us in two hundred years.” He looked directly at me for the first time in a few days. “I remember what you said when you brought your ideas to us. Last year. We have to risk.”

  I could barely imagine what that cost him. People followed him because they were afraid. Like him. And now he was being brave. This would change us, and only success would change us for the better. The stakes had just risen.

  Together, Jove and I made up sandwiches for thirty people. My shift-mates started gathering outside, stamping against the morning cold, dressed in layers against the heat that would follow by midday. They chattered amongst themselves, a few nervous, a few excited. Laughter broke out over and over.

  The boys didn’t want anything more than excitement for breakfast, but I got them each to take a bread heel down in their coat pockets against the hunger that would threaten them as soon as we stopped and waited. At first I worried that Jove would try to take over, although in truth, neither he nor I knew much of anything about hunting hebras.

  He didn’t take charge. He stood to the side, curious and watchful and very silent. People looked to him at first, and then when he looked to me, they did, too. A relief and a worry.

  We handed out stunners to all of the adults, two to the good shots. Half of our total stock, a firepower that scared even me. The stunners quieted everyone a bit. One shot would stop a human, two a demon, three a paw cat.

  The hebra herd watched us come down, and of course, we watched them.

  I expected them to think it was like any other morning, since we always came down with dawn to watch. But they scattered before we were even halfway down. Maybe because we started later than usual. Maybe just something in the way we walked, like we had a purpose instead of a simple curiosity.

  Jove spoke what I was thinking. “Maybe they don’t want us any more than the rest of this cursed planet wants us.”

  There were twenty-five of us total. I broke us into groups, and sent four groups of five off. I thought about keeping Jove with us, but since I was keeping all three boys I decided I needed a shooter I could count on, and so I sent Jove off with the group that I figured would be safest. So that’s how me, the three boys, and my second in command from the smelter project, Campbell, all went over to stand downwind of the rope corral.

  The boys ate their bread. Campbell and I watched, keeping companionable silence. The boys fidgeted. Campbell and I made them stretch in the grass, crawling and parting the fronds, reminding them to close their eyes and mouths as they moved through it, like swimmers. We sent them one by one up onto a small pile of rocks to look around the plain and see if they spotted the hebras (or anything else). They got bored and hungry and ate their bread heels and drank half the whole day’s water supply. Derk got bit by something nasty and flying and a welt came up on his arm. He didn’t complain, though. Good kid. It warmed and we stripped off our outer layer of coats.

  The first group came in, including Jove. He shook his head at me. “Nothing.”

  The second and third groups found each other and came in together, then the fourth. No one reported seeing anything bigger than a jumping-prickle or a long-tailed rat. We made a long string of humans and sandwiches at the base of the cliff, still downwind from the ropes. We rested on warm rocks. The three boys abandoned me and Jove. I figured they’d be watched well enough between so many of us. Besides, they too had seen cats bring down a baby hebra this spring. Surely they’d be cautious.

  “Did you see anything interesting out there?” I asked Jove.

  “Grass.”

  Well, true enough. His right cheek showed a set of thin lines where he’d seen the grass too closely, and one had been deep enough that it was slightly crusted with blood.

  “You should clean up before that starts itching.” I dug an antiseptic cloth out of my bag, adding a bit of water from my canteen to bring it to life. Some plants here were the antidotes to other plants, and we had a whole team of botanists doing nothing more than cataloging everything we learned. This was one of their gifts. Jove took the cloth, and while he wiped up his cheek and a deeper cut I hadn’t noticed on his forearm, I said, “They know we’re here. They’ve been grazing here every day for two years except winters and today—maybe they’re territorial and this is the territory for this herd. They’ve been watching us watch them, but they don’t like us all the way
down here.”

  “What next?” he asked.

  We still had half of this day. “Let’s try again today, send everyone in one group except me and Campbell and the boys. Have you all go together along the road so you get further away, and then make two teams and go forward. Maybe you can get far enough out for the hebras to be between you and me. Just don’t spook them. Sometimes they sleep during the day, but they’ll have watchers.”

  He handed me back the cloth instead of just putting it in his own pocket.

  I took it.

  “How do you know what they do during the day? You’re always working.”

  “I ask around the fire at night. Almost no one sees them during the day. One theory suggests they go into the woods, another that they sleep when the big predators sleep. I kinda like—”

  A scream cut my sentence off. One of the boys. “Demons!”

  No! They slept during the day. I knew that. Everybody knew that. Damnit—What did I know? I leapt up, dropping the rest of my lunch, and scrambled to a higher rock behind me. Our line—stretched out maybe twenty meters—did the same, people backing up against the cliff.

  “To me,” I called. The demons would try and surround the ends first, to isolate a single person or two and then kill them easily. I tried to recall who was where, couldn’t remember. Lousy leading.

  A demon bayed as if answering me, the same call I’d heard from the cliff, shuddering. It was worse down here, and diffuse, like the wail came from all around, the grass and the plains themselves hunting us.

  I couldn’t tell where the demon was.

  The boys.

  Derk and Niko came running up to me, panting, standing one at each side of me, looking out. They trembled, but neither cried.

  “Where’s Sho?” I demanded, voice high and worried.

  Another bay, and a yip. People gathered around us.

  Derk found his breath. “Up. On the cliff.”

  Indeed, over the chaos of gathering, drawing stunners, screeching for each other, demons yipping and baying, I heard the high slip of Sho’s voice.

  I looked up.

  He stood three meters above me, his feet dug into the cliff, apparently balanced on a ledge too small for me to see from below. He hung onto a tree growing thin and spindly out of dirt caught between rocks, leaning out. Close to falling. Now that I was looking at him, I could see he was screaming details. “Six of them. To the right.”

  I looked right. My head was above the grass, but barely. The stones we’d sat on made a small clearing, the grass close enough to throw shadows at our feet.

  Sho would see them coming for us, but we wouldn’t know until the grass parted in front of our faces.

  The demon cries were still a bit away, but confident. Maybe the demons didn’t care we were all together.

  “One almost there!” Sho cried. “By you, Chaunce.”

  I raised my stunner, hand shaking. I’d fired at a demon once, missed as it came right at me fast as lightening. Louise had been behind me and she hadn’t missed. Now the boys were behind me, small, no stunners.

  The dog burst through the grass, long and sinewy, teeth bared, eyes black and full of hunger.

  I fired.

  Someone else fired.

  The dog fell. It’s coat rippled as another shot hit it.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t waste shots!”

  “There!” Sho.

  A second dog burst through in almost the same place, its body landing on the other one. This time we used four shots.

  Derk pushed past me, knife in hand, bent on killing the stunned animals.

  To my right, someone screamed, and in a moment of shock I heard the slick of another stunner and another thump. Who screamed?

  A hebra bugled, high and long. The same sound I’d heard a hundred times when this hunt played out below me and I merely watched.

  “Back!” Sho screamed. The watch hebra. That’s what Sho did for us.

  Sho and a real hebra. What was the hebra doing here?

  I backed.

  Derk ducked, his right hand now covered in demon blood.

  A head rose above mine, above the grass, the neck long and thin, a white beard like my grandfather’s last beard, long and thin.

  I backed faster.

  The hebra passed between me and Derk in its lurching fast run, bigger than I expected, an animal the color of spring grass with gold spots on its knobby knees. It breathed deep and rattling but ran strong. A dog followed it, too fast for me to bring up my stunner.

  The woman next to me, Paulette, screamed in joy, clapping.

  “Watch!” Sho still sounded scared. “Stay back!”

  More hebras, the whole herd of them, and dogs, all running together. The dogs had given up on us. They moved away a bit, the hebras now silent except for deep, sharp breathing, the dogs yipping and baying on their heels.

  “Shoot the dogs!” I couldn’t tell who yelled, the command a shiver down my spine.

  Instinct told me. “No! The hebras can do this.”

  I stood as still as I could, the grass waving around me, the slick sounds of animals racing through it and the call and yips of hunter, hunted, and humans all distinct and all around.

  A high pitched squeal touched my heart. A hebra. I heard its body fall, a sound like a sack of flour thrown from the roof of a storage barn. Me and Jove and Campbell raced toward the fallen hebra. A dog passed right in front of me, its tail slapping me sideways. I raised my stunner and hit its flank.

  It cried in pain, stopped, stood still, didn’t fall.

  I hit it again.

  It mewled, sounded like a child needing help, like it didn’t understand, and then it fell.

  Ahead of me, the fallen hebra struggled up, blood dripping down its leg from a slash in its thigh. Shaking. Not broken.

  Someone else dropped a dog to my right.

  Two other hebras raced past us, screaming.

  The few dogs left didn’t draw off this time. They circled the beast that had just scrambled up. One of its knees bled.

  There were four demons left. Few enough they should know better. Maybe the smell of blood drove them crazy.

  Someone I couldn’t see stunned another dog.

  A dog I couldn’t see let out a high, sharp bark, and in heartbeats the pack was gone. They might have never been there. The grass closed across the memory of their hungry mouths and long, powerful legs.

  The injured hebra took a step, and then another. Gingerly.

  Two hebras walked through the grass, oblivious to us, and placed themselves of either side of the wounded one. One of the two strongest watch hebras came up to stand between me and the threesome, looking down at me. I stood there, craning my neck up, sweating, my ankle throbbing lightly from the sidestep I’d taken. Its shoulder rose above my eye, its front knee about at my chest. Its fur looked coarser than I’d expected.

  I kept my gun down.

  If it could talk it would be telling me something with its calm gaze. Even though its sides heaved, it looked at me as if speaking sentences. They had no language we could understand, but they were at least as smart as the herding dogs. And some days I thought the collies were smarter than me. I knew I was in the presence of something good, even on this hellhole of a planet.

  We would never capture such beasts in a rope corral. But they had allied themselves with us in that moment, voted with their thundering feet and high bugle calls. We would come to some kind of accommodation, some way to trade them safety for safety.

  These are the things that went through my head as I watched the beast watch me.

  The boys came up beside me and still the hebra watched, the plains silent now except for the ever-present buzz of insects. It took a long time before the hebras moved off, stately, heads visible above the waving dry grass for a long time.

  The STREET of ALL DESIGNS

  I asked Bryan, once, how it had been on Silver’s Home without me. These were the years when we were separated, before the fig
ht on Fremont, before we all went together to the planet of the fliers. He talked to me about that ever-so-strange place all night. This is the part of the story where he told me the most about himself . . . . I’ve tried my best to remember his own words.

  —Chelo Lee, as told to the New World Historians

  *

  “I want wings.” Alicia watched Tiala’s gold and red bird named Bell swoop back and forth above us. Bell was a living thing, light and fast, with metal parts and the voice of an angel. At the moment it was silent except the silk of its wings through the air. If we weren’t hemmed in by silvery and black buildings, the sun would paint diamonds and stars on Bell’s feathers, so bright she’d be a red glow of life beating in a flame.

  Bell was only one wonder among millions on Silver’s Home. Even though we’d been on-planet a few months now, walking through Li City felt like an assault of the strange.

  Alicia repeated, “I want wings.”

  She didn’t want wings like Bell’s. She wanted wings big enough to carry her above her broken soul. “Why do you want to lose your ability to run? I’d be happy with a bird like Bell. Something to follow me around, let me put a camera on its neck so I can see anything I need to.”

  “I’d rather fly than run.”

  “That’s not nearly as useful.” But Alicia never listened to me. I’d worked all week to get her alone so I could convince her to choose mods that would help us save our people in the war, and all she could say was she wanted to fly. “I’m happy enough to be a strongman, and you should be happy enough to be a pretty girl.”

  “You sound old. Jenna said we could pick a mod. I want wings.”

  “She also said wings take too long.” I searched the crowd for a flier, hoping to remind her how pained they looked on the ground. But we were nowhere near a flyspace, and there were only walking people on this street—tall ones, wide ones like me, pretty girls who were probably two hundred years old, and dressed in almost nothing. “Besides, you wouldn’t fit in a spaceship if you had wings.”