by Allen Steele
“I’ve got an idea, yes,” he said, looking back at me again with dry eyes. “If it’s going to work, though, I’ve got to know that we’ve got little to lose. As it is now, there’s too much in our way.”
“What are you saying?”
He let out his breath. “We’ve got to do something about the kids.”
As soon as he spoke, I knew he was right. I’d charged into battle, barefoot and with little more than a rifle to defend myself, only because I was afraid for Susan. If Carlos and I had been killed today, then our daughter would have been left an orphan, just as both he and I had been left without parents the first few days after the Alabama reached Coyote.
Susan had been the first child born on the new world, but now there were nine other children in Defiance. Among them was Tom’s son, Donald, born only a few months later; his wife Kim was not only a widow now but also a single mother. I’d tried my best to protect my daughter, but taking out a couple of soldiers doesn’t count for much when a missile carrier is lobbing rockets at your home. And the neighborhood bully likes it when you’ve got one hand tied behind your back.
“You want to get them out of here?” I asked, and he nodded. “Got any suggestions?”
“In fact, I do,” Robert said. And then he told me all about it.
I went home and slept for a few hours. Night had fallen by the time I woke up, and Carlos and Susan already had made dinner. Carlos warmed up some of the leftover stew; while I ate at the table, he took Susie to bed and read her a story. We’d been making our way through The Chronicles of Prince Rupurt—a generation of Coyote children were growing up with Leslie Gillis’s fantasy—yet I noticed that he skipped the scene where Rupurt fights the skeleton army. Susie had been very quiet all evening; she was ten years old by Gregorian reckoning, so she was very much aware that several of her parents’ friends had lost their lives that day, and she didn’t need to be frightened any more than she already was. When story time was over, I gave her a good night kiss while Carlos turned the lamps down, then we put on our coats and slipped out onto the porch to have a talk.
We could see lights glowing in tree house windows, hear muted conversations, and yet the paths and crosswalks were empty. There was a certain stillness I’d never seen before, as if Defiance was an injured animal, licking its wounds as it curled in upon itself. Not far away, we could see Lew and Carrie picking through the ruins of their home, their flashlight beams roaming across the wreckage as they searched for any belongings they might be able to salvage. From somewhere nearby, there was the sound of two flutes: Allegra DiSilvio and her companion Sissy Levin, playing “Amazing Grace” in duet as night closed in on town.
Carlos unfolded a couple of camp chairs and set them up on the narrow porch, and we kept our voices low so as not to wake Susan. I told him about what Robert and I had discussed a few hours earlier, how he thought it was wise to send the children away in case there was another attack. I wasn’t surprised when Carlos told me that Robert had already broached the subject with him as well.
“I think it’s a good idea. If Susan had been killed, it would have been . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked at me sharply. “That’s why you went out there, wasn’t it? You were trying to protect her.”
“I know. That wasn’t part of the agreement.” I looked away. “It was either that, or . . .”
“I understand. It was just that . . .” He shook his head. “Look, when Rigil Kent has gone out, I’ve never had to worry about you and Susie, because I knew you were safe back here. But when I saw you today, I couldn’t do what I had to do, because I had to look out after you as well.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I realize all that. You did what you thought had to be done. But you know, and I know, that the next time this happens . . . and there probably will be a next time . . . we can’t afford to worry about mothers and children being caught in the cross fire. If we have to . . .”
“You’re not listening to me. You think I’m against the idea. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Robert’s right. I think it’s time to get the kids out of here.”
“You do?” He peered at me through the darkness. “How much has he told you? I mean, about where we’d go . . . ?”
“He mentioned a new settlement up north along the Gillis Range. Shady Grove, near Mt. Bonestell. The Union doesn’t know about it yet, so . . .” Suddenly, I realized what he’d just said. “What do you mean, ‘we’? He asked if I’d be interested in taking the children up there, and I told him I would, but he said nothing about . . .”
“Robert’s playing both ends against the middle. Typical politician.” Carlos chuckled, then became serious again. “No one expects you to go off into the wilderness all by yourself. It’s almost eight hundred miles to Shady Grove. He asked me to go with you, and I told him that I would.”
“But . . .” This caught me by surprise. “What about everything else? Like, defending the town?”
“We’ve got plenty of people here for that. They don’t need my help.” He hesitated. “There’s more to this than you know,” he added. “I need to talk to some people up there.”
I was about to ask about that before I remembered something Robert had said earlier: Sooner or later, we’re going to have to take the fight to them. For the past two years, Rigil Kent had been waging guerrilla warfare against the Union. Occasional raids on Liberty and Shuttlefield to steal weapons and destroy shuttles, the sabotage of the Garcia Narrows Bridge . . . hit-and-run tactics, without any clear purpose except to encourage hope that the Union would surrender New Florida and leave those who’d fled to Midland alone.
For a while, it seemed as if our side was winning. Then the Union Guard raid on Thompson’s Ferry ended in the settlement’s destruction and the loss of many lives. Shortly afterward, the Union had established a military base on Hammerhead and an attempt was made to capture Carlos. Though the mission was unsuccessful, they managed to figure out where Defiance was located. Since then, reports had come in about Union attacks upon settlements along the Gillis Range: Forest Camp, on the Midland side of East Channel, was assaulted, and New Boston, near the Medsylvania Channel, had been hit as well. Shady Grove was one of the few towns that had remained untouched.
A few weeks ago, though, our satphone link to the new colonies had been severed, indicating that someone had boarded the Alabama, still in high orbit above Coyote, and pulled the plug on the transceiver. So now all contact with the other towns was either done by shortwave radio—itself a risky business, since those transmissions could be monitored from space and triangulated to their source—or through word of mouth, which was more reliable but much slower.
Carlos had assumed the name Rigil Kent in order to protect his identity if any of his small group of resistance fighters was ever captured. There weren’t many to begin with—Carlos, Barry, Ted LeMare, and a few others—but as their numbers expanded to include second-wave immigrants who’d fled from New Florida, his alias came to be attached to the group as a whole, and Carlos found himself in the role of a military leader. Warlord of Coyote . . . almost sounded like a twentieth-century fantasy novel. Didn’t seem so funny now.
“Robert told me you’ve got something planned,” I said quietly. “What is it?”
Carlos didn’t respond for a few moments. I knew that silence: he was wrestling between a choice of how much he wanted to tell me and revealing no more than I needed to know. “We’re working on something,” he said at last. “It’s pretty big, and there’s going to be a lot of people involved. But more than that . . .” He shrugged. “Sorry. Can’t talk about it.”
Of course, there were good reasons why he couldn’t take me into his confidence. Nonetheless, we’d journeyed down the Great Equatorial River together, split up, patched things together again, had a child, gotten married . . . a lot of water under the bridge, and it stung that he couldn’t trust me. “Yeah, okay, sure . . .”
He
caught the hurt in my voice. “I’m sorry, but we’re still pulling things together. That’s one of the reasons why I’m making the trip with you. It’s not just to help you watch out for the kids. It’s also because I have to . . .”
“Talk to some people. I understand.” A new thought occurred to me. “But if Shady Grove’s that far away, why don’t we just take the Plymouth?”
The Plymouth was the remaining shuttle from the Alabama; its sister ship, the Mayflower, had been left behind in Liberty, after we’d cannibalized it for every usable component. For the last three years it had remained grounded, concealed beneath camouflage covers in a field about a mile from town. Now and then Robert, Dana, and Tom had gone out there to clean it up, reactivate its major systems, and test-fire its engines, yet it hadn’t moved an inch since it was used to evacuate most of the Alabama party and our belongings from Liberty. It was still flightworthy, though; if you wanted to transport nine children and several adults across eight hundred miles, that was the quickest way to do it.
Carlos shook his head. “We’re not using Plymouth. We’d get there quicker, but . . .” He hesitated. “We’d just as soon not remind the Union that we’ve got a spacecraft. If they remember it at all, better to let them assume that it’s rusting away somewhere.”
Ah-ha! But I didn’t say anything. “So we’re riding shags? Or are they classified as well?”
He chuckled, patting my knee. “Yeah, we’ll have the shags. As many as we need. I know Susie thinks they stink, but . . .”
“She’ll get used to it. The other children will love it.” I took his hand. “So it’s you, me, the kids . . . and who else?”
“Don’t know yet. Haven’t thought that far ahead. Maybe Chris . . . ?” He caught the look in my eye—I still had personal problems with his oldest friend—and quickly shook his head. “Chris should stay back, help hold down the fort.”
“Barry’s good with children. Maybe Klon, too.” The kids loved Uncle Klon; he made a great Santa Claus, and his pad was filled with old fantasy stories he’d brought with him from Earth.
“They’ll need both of them back here. Barry’s my second-in-command while I’m gone, and Klon has to help build the fortifications. It’s going to be hard for us to spare many people for this. Besides, we’ve only got room for four adults.” He paused. “I was thinking about asking Ben. He’s got this sort of backcountry experience.”
“If he’ll do it.” It had been nearly a year since Ben Harlan had attempted to lead the members of the Church of Universal Transformation across Mt. Shaw. He still didn’t like talking about what had happened up there; he’d lost someone whom he cared about. But Carlos was right; Ben knew what the Gillis Range was like in the dead of winter, and he got along well with kids. “I’ll ask him,” I said. “Maybe he’ll sign on.” I thought about it for a moment. “Kim should go, too. She’ll want to look out after Donald.”
“We can’t risk sending Kim. She knows how to . . .” He stopped himself, but I knew what he was going to say. Kim Newell had been the Plymouth’s copilot; with Tom gone, she was needed to fly the shuttle, for whatever they intended to do with it. “I think we should take Marie.”
Something within me went cold. “I know she’s your sister, but . . .”
“She’s good with a gun. And the kids like her. . . .”
“Hell they do. Susie hates her.”
“Marie’s going. I’ve already told her so.” Before I could object, he stood up, headed for the door. “It’s late. Time to go to bed.”
The caravan left Defiance two days later.
We were supposed to leave shortly after daybreak, but it wasn’t until midmorning that we were able to mount up. There were a lot of teary farewells as mothers and fathers hugged their children, made sure that they had their hats and gloves, promised them that they wouldn’t be gone very long. A couple of kids refused to let go of their parents and had to be gently prised away; others wept or threw tantrums when they were told that they couldn’t take their dogs or cats because we wouldn’t be able to feed them. I had a lot of private discussions with their folks; each one needed to tell me about their child’s personal needs, and I had to assure them that they wouldn’t be neglected.
I’d half expected Ben Harlan to refuse to join us, so it came as a surprise that he didn’t. He still walked with a limp from having lost two toes to frostbite during his ordeal on Mt. Shaw, and he warned me that he couldn’t do any serious hiking, but when I told him that we’d ride most of the way, he was willing to undertake the task. He liked the children, and besides, he’d lately graduated from herding goats to minding the shags. And, although he didn’t say so, I think he privately needed to confront the mountains again, if only to exorcise the memories of what had happened to him the year before.
The saddest moment came when Kim Newell said good-bye to Donald. They’d been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours; first Tom’s burial, now this. She would have preferred to go with us, but she also knew that she was needed there, so she clung to her son until we were ready to saddle up. When I looked back, she had her head against Robert’s shoulder, weeping as if she’d never see her son again.
We had five shags: four to carry adults and children, and one to haul all the food and camping equipment. Susan and the four other older children—none of whom was more than ten Earth-years, with Susie the eldest—were able to sit upon saddles along with the adults, although we made sure that they were secured with harnesses so they couldn’t fall off. The four youngest children were little more than toddlers; for them, we’d fashioned papoose bags that were slung over the sides of each animal.
We gave names to the two groups, taken from the Prince Rupurt stories—the older kids were called Scouts, the younger children Dauphins—while the grown-ups were referred to as High Riders. The arrangement worked out well; at any one time, each shag carried a High Rider, one or two Scouts, and one Dauphin. Susan was designated Chief Scout for as long she chose to serve. I whispered in her ear that, at some point, she might have to share that title, to which she agreed, albeit reluctantly.
The shags were well suited for the trip; their coarse fur was warm, their elephantine legs tramped through the snow as if it were nothing more than soap flakes. The children were still upset, so again we tried to make the best of it by giving the Scouts the privilege of naming the shags. After much discussion, they settled upon Achmed, Zizzywump, Sally, Old Fart, and George the Magnificent. Go figure; it helped cheer them up a bit.
We made good time; by early afternoon of the first day, we reached Johnson Falls, where Marie and I dismounted to lead the children across the rope bridge over Goat Kill Creek while Carlos and Ben took the shags through the shallows upstream. We gave the shags a few minutes to shake off the icy water—which the kids loved, since it reminded them of big, grunting dogs—then we climbed aboard again and continued making our way on the trail leading us up the northern side of Mt. Aldrich.
I knew the kids pretty well because Kuniko and I had seen them troop through the infirmary at one time or another with the usual childhood bruises, fevers, and earaches. Susan, Donald, Lewis, Genevieve, and Rachel were the Scouts; Lilli, Alec, Ed, and Jack were the Dauphins. Every one of them had their own personalities, with which I was familiar, and before long the High Riders were known to them as well. Carlos was our undisputed leader—whatever he said, that was the rule—and they looked up to him with reverence. I was Dr. Gunther, the surrogate mother who made sure their caps were on tight and their harnesses weren’t too loose. Ben was the easygoing chum who told jokes, tended to the shags, and made sure that we’d stop whenever anyone needed to pee.
But Marie . . . they didn’t know quite what to make of Marie. As a teenager, she was the youngest of the High Riders, and the children immediately realized that she wasn’t that much older than they. Yet she remained aloof from them: sitting stolidly upon her saddle, rifle never leaving her hands, eyes constantly searching the mountainside as if expecting Guardsmen to
emerge from the woods at any moment. Donald rode with her until we reached Johnson Falls; after we crossed the bridge, though, he insisted upon riding with me, and almost threw a fit until Susan, in her role as Chief Scout, volunteered to take his place.
It wasn’t just Marie’s inability to warm up to children that made me wish we’d left her behind. She hadn’t been very much younger than Susan was now when the Alabama reached Coyote; since then, a certain hardness had entered the eyes of the little girl who’d once splashed around in Sand Creek and giggled whenever she saw Carlos and I sneak a kiss. Over the course of the last couple of years, she’d changed into a person whom I barely recognized—cold, tough, cynical, and on one notable occasion even bloodthirsty. Only a month ago, she’d shot an unarmed Union soldier in cold blood, and smiled about it as if he’d been nothing more than a swamper caught prowling through the garbage.
Marie was scary, and she made the children nervous, yet Carlos insisted that we bring her. “I don’t want to leave her here,” he’d said when we argued about it the day before our departure. “Lars and Garth are a bad influence, and I’d like to get her away from them for a while. And since I’m putting Barry in charge of the outfit while I’m gone, I don’t want the three of them getting together to pull something behind his back.”
It was difficult to argue with that. The Thompson brothers were stone killers, no question about it; Carlos had recruited them to join Rigil Kent shortly after they moved to Defiance along with their uncle and aunt, on account of the fact that they’d fought the Union Guard before. It wasn’t until much later that he realized just how merciless they could be. Marie had lately been spending a lot of time with Lars, and not just to trade tips on how to keep their rifles clean. That worried him, too, even though he tried not to pry into his sister’s personal business. Lars and Garth might not be able to conspire against Barry, but if they had Marie on their side . . .
So there were good reasons why Carlos would want to keep his sister close to him. Besides, she was good with a gun, and we’d be on the trail for four weeks. It was still winter, so the boids were in their migratory grounds on the southern coast of Midland, but there was no telling what else we might run into out there in the wilderness.