The Sky People

by Terry Goodkind

  As a last resort, even though she thought it might be disrespectful, River pulled the war hammer from where it hung at her waist. She tapped on the shiny black mask with the stone face of the war hammer, but it did nothing. She hit it harder with the same lack of result.

  She finally lifted the war hammer back over her head and brought it down with all the force she could, trying to break the mask apart.

  To her surprise, the hammer simply bounced off. It didn’t even leave a mark on the shiny black mask covering the face of the mysterious Sky person.

  She wondered if the face was so hideous and frightening that maybe she didn’t really want to see it.

  But she did. She really did. So, she repeatedly struck the mask with the war hammer, thinking that she could weaken it and eventually it would crack and break open. Even that didn’t work. She put all of her muscle into each swing. Nothing.

  Panting from the effort, she finally gave up. While she wanted to look at the face of one of the Sky People, what she really needed was living Sky People. Looking at the face of a dead one wasn’t really going to accomplish anything other than to satisfy her curiosity.

  River wondered, then, how in the world she was supposed to accomplish what she had set out to do. How could she call them? How was she ever going to be able to get their help?

  Unable to have any success with the mask, she moved down the body to inspect the things attached to the belt. None were like anything she had ever seen before. They had been made with a kind of precision none of her people could attain. While she had always considered some of her arrowheads a marvel of precision, these things were on a whole different level.

  Whatever the objects were and whatever they were made of, they were the product of a people far more advanced than anything she had ever seen before.

  River explored every little detail of all the things attached to the belt. There were round, colored knobs that gave when she pressed them. Others that stuck up turned freely. Some turned with a clicking sound. All of them had mysterious symbols and lines beside them.

  She moved over to the strange armband on the left arm of the Sky person. It had a flat area with different-colored round buttons to each side. River found that by pressing small little levers on the underside of the band holding it on the arm, she was able to detach it.

  Once she had it off, River started testing different places on the face. Being an odd shape, it was difficult to hold and kept slipping from her grip, so she wrapped it around her own arm the way it had been wrapped around the arm of the dead Sky person and clicked the ends back together. That made it easier to press the colored buttons. Some clicked when she turned them. Others that didn’t turn made a clicking sound when she pressed on them.

  Getting tired of the smell inside the cave, she went outside and sat back against the rock wall. As she sat there, she played with the thing wrapped around her forearm. She pushed at the round, colored studs and turned knobs.

  And then, when she pressed a round red button, the thing on her arm made a brief noise. River froze. When it went quiet, she pressed the red bump again, but held it down longer. This time the armband let out crackling sounds.

  A flat shiny area on the face of the armband suddenly lit up. Astonished, River tried pushing her finger around on the shiny surface that had lit up. Light from underneath seemed to follow her finger. She slid her finger around in a circle. Light chased the movement of her finger. She pushed her finger in the center of the circle she had made. The whole flat shiny surface lit up red and the armband crackled with sound. The circle she had made pulsed with light. She pressed the center again and it lit up with a brighter red light.

  Words crackled from the device, but they made no sense to her. They were unlike any spoken words she had ever heard before. She wasn’t even really sure they were words. It was more like muffled, garbled sounds along with crackling noises.

  As she continued to play with the armband, that was the most she was able to make it do. As it grew dark, she grew weary and frustrated. Nothing was working, nothing was helping.

  For all of her brave talk of calling the Sky People, River realized she didn’t have any idea what she was doing. She didn’t have a clue as to how to call the Sky People. She had only been fooling herself into thinking that as priestess she knew more than everyone else and that she would be able to bring help.

  River wiped tears back off her cheeks. She did know one thing. Her people were going to be murdered. She knew she was never going to see Morning Flower again. The life she knew and loved with her people would soon end. Suffering and death were all that lay ahead.

  Alone, cold, and deeply depressed, River pulled the blanket from her pack. She didn’t like the smell in the cave, but she was getting numb to it. With rain just starting to come down, she knew she couldn’t stay out in it. She picked up her pack and withdrew into the cave.

  When she called Big Dog, he came to be by her, even though he didn’t like the smell in the cave.

  Feeling more miserable than she had ever felt in her life, River curled up in her blanket. Big Dog rested his head on her hip.

  She had no rage left.

  She cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  River woke with a start. She had heard a sound, a distant rumble of some sort, something like thunder, but different. She didn’t know if she had heard it, or if she had dreamt it. Big Dog was gone, probably off exploring.

  She sat up when she thought she sensed the ground beginning to tremble. As the sensation increased, she saw small stones dancing around on the floor of the cave. Small bits of rock fell from the ceiling, followed down by trails of dust and dirt.

  Running out of the cave, she looked around but didn’t see anything. The early-morning sky was much brighter than it had been the day before. There were still clouds, but not like the ones that had brought rain the night before. These were a thin and wispy white.

  She called Big Dog, but he didn’t respond. Having that wild streak in him, he sometimes went off on his own for a time, so she wasn’t alarmed.

  When she heard another sound, she looked up just in time to see a sharp point of light glimmer high up in the sky, like a bright star in the day.

  Suddenly, a long streak shot down out of the sky. It looked like a shooting star or a streak of cloud as thin as sinew thread coming straight down out of the sky. High up, what looked like a perfectly cone-shaped cloud puffed out around the tip of the streak.

  Then the ground shook with a resounding boom.

  The streak of cloud flashed down out of the sky to hit the ground right in front of her. Dust blew up into the air. Trees all around bent back, their branches thrashing.

  River fell back both with the suddenness of it all and in fright. The air shimmered the way it did above a fire. A piercing shriek hurt her ears as a bright light streaked down through the thread of cloud. River covered her face with her forearm with the armband as she cowered back against the cliff wall.

  When the world again went silent, she carefully took her arm away from her eyes. River was astonished to see a tall figure standing before her. It looked in a way similar to the remains of the Sky person in the cave, but the clothes on this figure were a dull black with varied designs on it. They fit better, too, revealing the shape of a muscular man. There was a similar big round mask over the head, but it was not quite as large and the shape was different, too. There were rows of indentations along the sides. Like the rest of the clothes, the head mask was also a dull black color, with glossy black over the front of the face, similar to the one in the cave.

  There could be no doubt. Even though the clothes and mask were somewhat different, this was one of the Sky People standing before her.

  River could have jumped with joy, except that she was too scared to stand.

  The figure reached up and touched the side of the mask. The shiny black part of the mask in front made a sound as it instantly vanished up into the top part.

  Inside the
mask, a man, possibly the most beautiful man she had ever seen, smiled out at her.

  River shot to her feet. She couldn’t hold back her own grin with the relief and excitement of seeing that it was a man and not some terrifying beast.

  The Sky man pointed at his mouth. He rolled his hand in a motion like he wanted something. River frowned. He nodded encouragement as he rolled his hand again.

  “I don’t know what you want,” she said.

  He nodded as if excited and then rolled his hand again.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean. Are you saying that you want something? Can you tell me? Can you speak?”

  He nodded then and held up a finger, as if he wanted her to wait a moment.

  “Ah,” he said at last, fussing with the adjustments on his own armband. His armband was not separate, like the one she had, but instead it seemed molded in to be part of his outfit. “There we go. I have your language zeroed in, now.”

  “You speak my language?”

  He smiled again. “I can now. I just needed a sample to fix in on. I have it locked in now.”

  River was trembling. “Thank the spirits. Thank you for coming. I didn’t know if you would.”

  “I was on patrol in the area when I got the distress call. It’s very strange because it’s a form of signal that I don’t recognize. It’s possible it’s one no longer used. That would mean it would have to be quite ancient. I was lucky to pick it up at all. Where is the one who sent the distress call? Can you show me?”

  “Yes,” she said, “we are in distress. My people are all in distress. We are in great need of the help of the Sky People. I came to try to call you. The laws you have given us are about to cost the lives of my people.”

  “The laws we gave you?”

  “Yes. Those laws from the Sky People have already killed a great many people. More are about to be killed, all killed because of the laws you gave us. I must save my sister. She was captured—”

  “Slow down.” He frowned. “The Sky People?” Then his head lifted back as he understood. He pointed a finger up at the sky. “The Sky People. All right, I see. You mean those like me?”

  “Yes,” she said as she nodded furiously. “Sky People.”

  “First, what is your name?”

  “I am Raging River—”

  “Raging River,” he repeated, as if testing the sound of her name. “I’m Tom. Just Tom.”

  “Thank you for coming, Tom-just-Tom. We must—”

  “No, no,” he said, smiling as she waved a hand. “My name is Tom. People who know me call me Tom.”

  “People call me River.”

  “All right, River, nice to meet you.”

  “There is little time—”

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, pointing at the armband she was wearing. “That has to be what generated the distress call. Did you find it?”

  River gestured back into the cave. He immediately went in to have a look for himself. He seemed astonished by what he saw. He walked all around the remains on the stone, looking with great care.

  Once he had looked them over carefully, he pressed a thumb against the side of his hand. “Control, this is Commander Tom. I’ve located the source of the distress call.”

  From inside his mask River could hear the crackle of a female voice say, “What is the source?”

  He bent over the remains on the stone slab, looking, then wiped dust and dirt off of a raised area near the shoulder.

  “This is old. Beyond old, actually. The name looks like… R. Collins.”

  “Hold a moment, Commander, while I check,” came the female voice from inside his mask.

  River pointed. “How is there a voice in your mask?”

  “My—? Oh, you mean my helmet. It’s a way I communicate with my people.” He smiled. “With the other Sky People.”

  She decided that in his language, “helmet” must be the word for “mask.” He had a friendly voice that put her at ease. Even though she liked his voice, River didn’t really understand much of what he was saying.

  “When your people came here before”—she swept a hand toward the dead Sky person on the slab—“they gave us our laws. Because of those laws, my people have been murdered and our women taken as slave wives.” She could feel tears of rage springing up at the corners of her eyes. “Now, because of the laws you gave us, all my people are about to be murdered. All because of you Sky People! You must help me. There is no time—”

  “Got it,” the voice in his mask crackled. He held his hand up to River, signaling her to wait while he listened. “You aren’t going to believe this, Commander. The remains you found are one Rebecca Collins.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t,” the female voice said. “She was a crew member on a primitive exploration vessel. It was designated Twelve Twenty-three David.”

  He put the tips of his fingers to his forehead for a moment, thinking. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said at last, his head coming back up. “A Twelve Twenty-three would have to have been, I don’t know, back before the Jardin colonies were established, right?”

  “That’s right. A portion of the records sent back from Twelve Twenty-three David survives in the archives, but they were badly fragmented. The communication systems back then were not designed for such distances, and on top of that the ship was breaking up.”

  “What were they even doing out here?” Commander Tom asked the female voice in his mask. He sounded deeply concerned.

  “The record indicates Twelve Twenty-three David had a nav or auto guidance failure of some kind that sent them out there. They were desperately trying to repair unspecified, serious hardware failures in a drive unit they couldn’t shut down. They lost directional control and the core flared, sending them beyond the range of ships at that time and into what was then uncharted territory.”

  “Does it say what happened to them?”

  “Let’s see… It looks like they had critical damage and were looking for a survivable planet that could sustain them in the hopes of eventually being rescued. The record shows that they sent emergency teams to several planets on their way past. None were survivable, so the crews returned.

  “Rebecca Collins was in command of the last team sent out. She reported that they found a Langstrom-class planet. The record shows that the team returned to Twelve Twenty-three David to help with an emergency evacuation of the crew along with the supplies they would need to survive.”

  “Then why is she the only one down here?”

  “Data is incomplete, but it looks like their ship disintegrated and all crew members were lost immediately after the team returned and before they could evacuate. Protocol would have dictated that she would go up last. The record assumed Rebecca Collins had returned to her ship just before the entire crew was lost when the ship broke up.”

  “She didn’t make it back to her ship,” Commander Tom said. He took a deep breath. “She is buried down here.”

  “If she didn’t make it back to her doomed ship then she was the only survivor, even though the record indicates all souls were lost. The type of personal rescue beacon of that era didn’t have a far enough range to reach help. Since it was assumed she died with her crew no rescue was attempted. For that reason, nothing is known of what she did down on that planet.”

  “It appears she lived out the rest of her life here with the indigenous people,” Commander Tom said.

  He pressed some colored knobs on one of the boxes on the dead Sky woman’s belt. River was surprised when lights flashed on the armband she was wearing. Commander Tom took River’s wrist and turned her arm so he could see the symbols that lit up on the shiny surface.

  “The biodata show she had to have survived here for quite a while,” he reported to the female voice in his mask. “She was quite an advanced age when she died. The scan shows a variety of health problems, but a blockage in the main artery of her heart was what eventually ended her life. Her suit
helped with life support as long as it could. When she died, her helmet and suit closed automatically to preserve her remains. Didn’t do any good. There was no one within range to receive the End of Life notice.”

  “Any idea what she did there for all that time?”

  Commander Tom looked at River while he spoke to the voice in his mask. “Apparently, she played God.”

  Chapter 15

  River followed Tom out of the cave. She didn’t understand a lot of what he had talked about to the voice in his mask, but she had much to tell him, and they had no time to waste. She needed him to lift the laws given to them so long ago.

  River was about to again try to explain things to him when a sound she knew all too well made her turn just in time to see a Wolf People warrior, painted in full war paint, coming out of nowhere to lunge in at her with a knife. She deliberately fell back away from him, barely in time. He missed with his slash and stumbled. She was puzzled to see that his arms were bloody. He caught himself and turned to dive for her with his knife held high to stab into her as he came down.

  At the same time, she saw another man—the leader she’d seen before with the feathers in his headband, the one she had shot through the arm with an arrow—driving a spear toward Tom’s face as he turned to the sound of the war cry.

  It seemed like she could see it all happening at once.

  Just as the first man was coming down and about to stab River, Commander Tom reached around the leader coming at him with the spear. A kind of blue light she had never seen before lit from something in Tom’s hand.

  The Wolf warrior coming down on her suddenly exploded in a cloud of black ash. All of him, even his knife, were turned to a whirlwind of ash. In that instant he was gone.

  River scrambled to her feet as she saw the man with the spear lunging for Tom, but Tom fell back just in time and landed hard on his back. The thing that made the blue light fell from his hand.