Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  “Excuse me just a moment, please, sirs. Hello, sirs? Yankee soldier gentlemen? A moment of your time, if you please.”

  All the soldiers whirled around away from me and toward poor old Fuss-X Quall, who came strolling out of those black and midnight woods as natural and casual-like as at noon on the main street of Frogmore, one hand fanning skeeters with his hat. The last time I ever saw the man was the only time I'd seen him walk a straight line. Straight toward the rifle barrels a-pointing at him.

  “Just one moment,” said old Fuss-X—no, not old Fuss-X, neither. The man's name was Quall. Just in time, I caught that he was really talking to me. “One moment, sir, is all that I need. A single moment's opportunity.”

  I made use of that moment Mr. Quall gave me. I took off running, straight down that dark road. Behind me the rifles fired. Again. Again. Bullets went zing past my head, kicked up dust to my left, splinters to my right. Zing. Zing. I ran and cried and ran. Farther and farther behind, the soldiers hollered like dogs. After a while I couldn't cry no more, but I still could run, so I kept on a-doing that. The zing in my ears now were skeeters, I reckon, but I ran just the same. I outran any skeeter. I ran out of those woods tiddy umpty, ran home straight as a martin to his gourd.

  When I dragged on into the yard just before sunrise, I saw Maum Hannah a-sitting on the joggling board, a-talking to herself, her pipe glowing like a third eye. I tried to call to her, but didn't have no breath. Closer up, I heard who she was talking to.

  “When little Shad come down to die, I want you, Master, to be to the head and be to the foot for the last morning. When you see Shad done knock from side to side on Helena, I ask you, Jesus, to be his mother and his father for the last new day. Oh, God! Stand to him as his hair to his head. Take charge of him one more time—on the road, in the field, up to the fireside, oh, God! to the well.”

  By that time I was at the foot of the steps, and so wore-out that when I tried to climb I just fell a-sprawling in the sand. And then the fice run out from neath the porch to lick my face, and Maum Hannah was plumb all over me, mashing me into her sweat-smelling bosom so I couldn't breathe and hollering—

  “Thank you Jesus! Mama! Master! Thank you Jesus! Mama! Master!”

  —till the sun come up on St. Helena that day.

  I reckon I'm the only one left that heard Mr. Lincoln's talk at the praying ground that night. I was the youngest one there, and now I'm the oldest one here, and the others all done died in between.

  Now, hold up there, ma'am, hold up there—don't be starting in on me, pulling out your history-book learning and all such mess as that. I done heard it all. These younguns round here, they take the ferry into Beaufort, they get some free schooling and come back telling me I don't know shit from Shinola bout Lincoln or nothing else. And the Yankee schoolteachers who come out here to take pictures and write everything down, I get it from them, too. Oh, I get it from all sides. People say Lincoln didn't come no further south during the war than Hampton Roads. People say Lincoln wasn't really all that hot to free the slaves nohow, that it was all just politicking for votes and soldiers. People say we coloreds were better off before the war, when the likes of Mr. Ravenel were taking care of us. People say the mockingbirds all fly to hell on Fridays, toting grains of sand to squinch the flames. You ever hear that one? Yes, Lord, people will say just bout anything. That don't mean I have to believe it. What I see with my own eyes, that I believe. And these eyes when they were good saw Lincoln, a lot better than they seeing you now. Maybe they see him again, before too long. Maybe we be needing him again. Yes, ma'am, that's the end of that tale. You know how to end a tale, don't you?

  "I stepped on a pin, the pin bent,

  And that's the way the story went."

  —For Sam Doyle (1906-1985)

  of St. Helena,

  who painted the speech of

  Lincoln at Frogmore

  Copyright © 2001 by Andy Duncan.

  Liberty Journals by Allen M. Steele

  Allen M. Steele's latest story is the fourth in his riveting Coyote adventure series. It follows “Stealing Alabama” (January 2001), “The Days Between” (March 2001), and “Coming to Coyote” (July 2001). Last April, Mr. Steele had an adventure of his own when he testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. He spoke at a hearing on the future of American space exploration.

  From the journal of Dr. James Levin

  December 24, 2296

  Christmas Eve. No reason to celebrate, though. We suffered two casualties today—Jorge & Rita Montero, killed by a boid.

  Most of Alabama's cargo and hab modules landed where they were supposed to after they were dropped from orbit, but C4's chute got its lines tangled and came down in a swamp about two miles northeast of Liberty. The module broke apart when it crashed; pieces scattered all over the place, some ending up in a creek and the rest spread out across the marsh. Thank God C4 wasn't a cargo module, or we'd really have a problem, but it was a loss all the same; we were counting on dismantling the hull and interior bulkheads for temporary shelter.

  Capt. Lee sent people out to salvage whatever they could find. He hasn't taken any chances; every time a group has left camp, two soldiers have gone with them as escorts. Col. Reese's men have cut the sleeves off their URS uniforms and wear them over their shirts. We've started calling them blueshirts, which they don't seem to mind very much. They're adequate protection against the boids ... or at least so we'd assumed.

  No one had seen a boid close up, but we've spotted them now and then in the distance: huge bird-like creatures, flightless raptors between five and six-and-a-half feet tall, with enormous beaks and long legs—sort of like a cross between an ostrich and a parrot. We hear their cries after dark each night, and every now and then the perimeter system opens fire on them, but they're fast and none had been killed.

  Jorge and Rita were in a group of six that went out to the crash site this morning: four civilians and two blueshirts, one of them Reese himself. Carlos wanted to go along—just to get away from camp for a few hours, I think—but Jorge told him to stay behind and babysit Marie. Carlos didn't like it much, but Jorge had been cracking down on him lately, telling him he's got to stop goofing off with Chris and David. Probably a good thing; losing Jorge is bad enough, and I liked Rita as well, but if their boy had been killed it would have been all the more tragic.

  After the group arrived at the site, they spread out to search the swamp for wreckage while Reese and Corp. Boone stood guard. Reese told everyone to stay close, not to get out of sight of one another, but it was the middle of the day, and no one had seen any boid tracks on the way out there. Everyone was concentrating on locating more pieces of the module that they could drag back to the colony.

  I'm forced to consider the fact that the fault may be my own. Since we've heard the boids only at night and spotted them early in the morning or late in the afternoon, I assumed that they were nocturnal. I told Jorge that just yesterday. As Liberty's resident exobiologist, these people are accepting my judgments at face value. I should know better than to jump to conclusions without more evidence.

  Jack Dreyfus and Beth Orr found an intact hull plate stuck upright in shallow water; they couldn't get it out by themselves, so they yelled for help and Boone went over to give them a hand. He was supposed to be watching Jorge and Rita, and Reese couldn't see them from where he was standing. Boone was gone for only a few minutes when everyone heard Rita scream. Reese took off running in that direction, but by then it was all over.

  The boid was waiting for them in the tall grass. It killed Jorge first—at least he died quickly, if not without pain—then it went after Rita. It was trying to drag her body into the swamp when Reese got there. Reese says he had to empty a full magazine into the [illegible] thing before it went down for good; even with fifteen rounds in its body, the boid just kept coming at him.

  They brought Jorge and Rita back to Liberty, then I followed Reese and Boone back to where they shot the boid. It
was already covered with creek crabs, but Reese kicked them off and let me examine the creature. It looks like something from a nightmare—the beak alone is two feet long, with a sharp hook at its end, and since its feathers are the same color as the grass it's perfectly camouflaged.

  Blood everywhere, most of it belonging to Jorge and Rita. I went off into the grass and got sick. Then I remembered why I was there, so I made notes and took pictures. Guess there was bound to be something like this: a tiger in the jungle, a wolf in the woods.

  They're digging graves for the Monteros now, by torchlight out by the edge of the camp. Sissy's taking care of Carlos and Marie, and Chris and David are with them. Haven't seen Wendy Gunther—she and Carlos are friends, but she lost her father only three days ago, when her dad was killed while helping Capt. Lee close down the Alabama. Maybe she's not ready for this yet. Can't blame her. Neither am I.

  We've been on Coyote for only four days, and already we've got three orphans on our hands. What the hell are we doing here?

  From the diary of Wendy Gunther

  December 25, 2296

  Today's Christmas. Hip-hip-hooray. I'm miserable.

  That's a pretty lousy way to begin a diary. Dr. Okada—she wants me to call her Kuniko now that she's taken me in—suggested I start keeping one. She gave me a spare pad from her supplies, even tied a little bow of surgical tape around it to make it look like a Christmas present. None of the other kids received any presents—nothing to give—so I guess I should be grateful. But Dad's dead, and it's Christmas, and I hate this place.

  Could be worse. Carlos and Marie Montero lost both their parents yesterday—killed out in the swamp by a boid. At first we thought it was cute, naming these things after the giant birds in the Prince Rupurt stories, but it's not any more. I guess I should spend more time with Carlos's sister, since he's my friend and all that, but how can I help a little girl when I can hardly stop crying myself?

  What were our parents thinking when they brought us here?

  Maybe I can understand why Dad did it. After Mom died and he was recruited by the Party to join the Service, I spent seven years in a government youth hostel. When he asked if I wanted to join the expedition, I was only too happy to go along with him. But it never really occurred to me that I was heading to another planet; all I wanted to do was get out of Schaefly. I mean, you can either go into biostasis for 230 years and wake up 46 light-years from Earth, or spend the rest of your life in a dorm with a baseball bat under your blanket in case another counselor tries to rape you. Talk about a tough choice.

  But Carlos's folks, and Chris and David's ... were they out of their minds? From what Carlos tells me, they were all about to be shipped off to Camp Buchanan, where they'd be interned along with all the other “dissident intellectuals"—God, I hate that term—the government was busy rounding up. But what made them think stealing the Alabama was any kind of solution? Yeah, so maybe the borders were sealed and there was the European shipping blockade. People still managed to escape to New England or Pacifica. And most of these guys have no survival training, none at all. Maybe I had it rough at Schaefly, but at least I learned how to pitch a tent and start a camp fire. Until a few days ago, Carlos never spent a night sleeping out in the open, and Marie's scared out of her wits.

  I think I know why they did this. It wasn't enough just to escape from the United Republic of America—they wanted to stick it right in their face. The government spent one hundred billion dollars, and completely ruined the economy and sent the bottom one-third of the population to live in shacks, just to erect a monument to itself: the first starship. Dad bought into that crap, but he was a card-carrying member of the Liberty Party, so that figures. But Capt. Lee and the other officers who organized the conspiracy ... they had a vendetta.

  So here we are, the promised land of milk and honey, and we've paid our ticket with four people's lives, including my father's. Now I'm squatting in a tent that leaks when it rains. Haven't bathed in a week, and there's bug bites all over my neck and arms—we call ‘em skeeters: they've got huge wings and they hurt like hell when they take a chomp out of you—and tomorrow we've got to start clearing land to raise crops.

  Sure doesn't feel much like Christmas.

  I hate Coyote. I miss my Dad. I want to go home.

  Colony Log

  December 29, 2296

  (Tom Shapiro, First Officer, URSS Alabama).

  (1.) Three more acres cleared today for farmland. Controlled fires set five hundred yards NE of town, approx. fifty yards from Sand Creek in order to facilitate irrigation if necessary. Fifteen acres cleared so far, with ten more slated for agricultural use. Soil tests conducted by Dr. Cayle and Dr. Berlant continue to indicate that the ground is suitable for farming. Have put twenty people to work raking the first three acres; others tasked with setting up seed germination trays under guidance of Lew and Carrie Geary. Should be ready to begin planting within a few days if the weather remains dry.

  (2.) Nearby woods inspected by ten-man timber crew led by Ensign Dwyer. Two major species of trees identified and named: blackwood, which resemble very large bonsai except with a deep root structure much like a cypress, and faux birch, a smaller tree closely resembling its namesake in that it has the same sort of flaky bark. Blackwood hard to cut—Paul reports that it took two men almost an hour just to saw through a low branch—but appears suitable for building permanent shelters. Faux birch easier to cut, but its wood is soft, unsuitable for construction purposes; its fallen branches are good as firewood, Paul believes that it may be useful for making paper, furniture, utensils, etc.

  Faux birch is plentiful, but Bernie and Lew believe that the blackwood may be old-growth, perhaps hundreds of years old, and have voiced concern that harvesting them may damage the local ecosystem. I've reminded them that our first priority is establishing a self-sufficient colony; tents and prefabs won't get us through winter, and we're already in late summer. If we don't erect warm shelter before the cold weather sets in, then we may pay for our environmental concern with our lives.

  (3.) Lt. LeMare surprised Capt. Lee and me by showing us a side-project he's been working on—a Coyote calendar. Apparently he's been doing this on his own initiative ever since Alabama entered the 47 Uma system, basing his computations upon local astronomical data. It's not quite finished yet, and it's more complex than an Earth calendar, but Ted claims that it will reliably predict the passage of seasons.

  Robert has temporarily relieved Ted from well-digging chore to complete his work; he'd like to have the new calendar ready within the next two days, so that it can replace the old one by Jan. 1, 2297 [Oct. 7, 2300, Earth-time].

  (4.) Capt. Lee has placed Carlos and Marie Montero under temporary custody of Lt. Newell. They were staying with the Levin family, who were close friends of Jorge and Rita Montero, but Jim and Sissy already have two sons of their own; even after they moved the Montero tent closer to their own, having to mind three teenage boys and an adolescent girl soon proved impossible. Wendy Gunther remains under custody of Dr. Okada, and they seem happy together, yet Robert agrees that a more permanent solution is needed in regards to caring for our orphaned children.

  Once again, we're reminded that Alabama's military command structure is ill-suited for running a civilian colony. We need to devise some form of democratic government, as soon as possible.

  From the notes of Lt. Theodore LeMare

  Uriel 59, C.Y. 1 (December 30, 2296).

  The Coyote calendar is determined by Bear's sidereal year, i.e., the time it takes the primary to complete a full orbit around 47 Ursae Majoris. This takes 1,096 days, with each day approximately 27 hours (Earth standard) in length.

  Although Coyote's orbit around Bear is circular, Bear's orbit around 47 Uma is slightly elliptical. Furthermore, Coyote doesn't have an axial tilt. Therefore we can expect an Earth-like seasonal cycle, with both northern and southern hemispheres experiencing the same seasons at the same time. As a result, the Gregorian calendar is useless
for accurate timekeeping and predicting the change of seasons.

  The Coyote calendar is divided into 12 months, with 10 weeks in each month and 9 days in each week. The months are 91 days long, except for every third month, which is 92 days long; these third months roughly correspond with the end of the seasons, which are approximately 274 days in length.

  I've decided to name the months and days after archangels in Gnostic Christian pantheon, with Coyote's months named after the twelve governing angels of Earth's months. Commencing with the new year, the calendar is as follows:

  The Winter months are Gabriel (91 days), Barchiel (91 days), and Machidiel (92 days).

  The Spring months are Asmodel (91 days), Ambriel (91 days), and Muriel (92 days).

  The Summer months are Verchiel (91 days), Hamaliel (91 days), and Uriel (92 days).

  The Autumn months are Adnachiel (91 days)), Barbiel (91 days), and Hanael (92 days).

  The nine days of the week have likewise been named after the angelic governors of the seven planets in Earth's solar system (according to Aristotle's cosmology). They are, in order: Raphael, Anael, Michael, Zaphael, Kafziel, Sammael, Camael, Zamael, and Orifiel. This is a mouthful, of course, so they could be referred to as Rap, Ann, Mike, Zap, Kit, Sammy, Cam, Zam, and Oz.

  The calendar would begin with the year in which humans first landed on Coyote; this would be known as C.Y. 1, or Coyote Year 1 (2300 Earth time; 2296 relativistic time). The date of First Landing would be Ann, Uriel 47, 01 (Dec. 19, 2296 relativistic; Sept. 27, 2300 Earth). The algorithms necessary to convert one calendar to another can be easily entered into a pad; comps may likewise be reprogrammed.

  Personal note: I'm not fooling myself—many people won't want to use this, at least not at first. So much of the way we've come to regard the passage of time is based upon the Gregorian calendar that it's become a fundamental part of our consensus reality. If today's date is December 30, then tomorrow is New Year's Eve; time to break out a bottle and sing that German song no one can remember. By my calendar, it's just another Zaphiel (or Zap, maybe Zapday) in the middle of the week sometime in late summer.