Coyote Rising

by Allen Steele

  While we were mulling it over, he drained the rest of his mug. “But that’s not all,” he said as he reached across the table for the jug. “There’s something else . . . we’re not alone out here.”

  “What do you mean?” Carlos kept his voice neutral, but there was something in his face that told me he was hiding something.

  Fred started to pick up the jug, then reconsidered and put it down again. “The last couple of months, some of our people have seen things in the woods. Sometimes they look like . . . well, I know this sounds silly, but they look like monkeys.” He glanced first at me, then at Carlos. “I know how this sounds, but it’s not cabin fever. We’ve had things turn up missing, stuff that was left outside overnight. Anything small enough to be taken away.”

  Carlos remained quiet, absently running a fingertip around the rim of his mug. “One of the girls saw something like that yesterday,” I said.

  “She did?” Fred nodded grimly as he let out his breath. “You know, I’m almost glad to hear you say that. I didn’t want to mention it to you, because . . . I dunno . . . maybe you’d think we’d gone around the bend. But if you’ve seen these things, too . . .”

  “Keep the children in the stockade,” Carlos said abruptly. “Don’t let them go out, not under any circumstances.” He knocked back a slug of bearshine, then looked at me. “He’s right. This was a mistake. We should have never come here.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying. “You’re . . . I mean . . . you’re telling me we—”

  “Fred, we appreciate your hospitality. You’ve been very kind, and we won’t forget this. But I think we should take the kids and head back as soon as we can.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “If you want to send anyone with us, we can make room for them. It may not be safe here much longer.” He hesitated, then added, “With the volcano being active and all, I mean.”

  Fred was just as astonished by Carlos’s reaction as I was. “Sure. Whatever you say. I can ask around, see if anyone wants to—”

  “It’s been a long ride to get here. Let’s talk more about this tomorrow.” Carlos stepped away from the table. “I’m going to go check on the kids, make sure they’re tucked away. See you in the morning. Good night.”

  I caught up with him just before he opened the door leading to the back of the lodge. “What aren’t you telling me?” I whispered, grabbing his arm and pulling him aside. “You know something.”

  Carlos didn’t reply. For the first time since we’d been married, he avoided looking at me. “It’s important,” he said at last. “I’ve kept it from everyone for a long time now. Maybe I should I have talked about it earlier, but”—he glanced back at the dining room, where Fred was still seated at the table, gazing at us in puzzlement—“this isn’t the time or place,” he added softly. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

  “If it’s that important . . .”

  “It is.” Now he looked me straight in the eye. “But it’ll keep until the morning. Will you trust me till then?”

  I was tired. He was tired. It wasn’t a good time to carry on a long conversation. “All right,” I said, letting go of his arm. “Sure. But tomorrow . . .”

  “Of course.” Carlos forced a smile, then bent down to give me a kiss. “I love you,” he murmured. “Now let’s make sure the kids are in bed.”

  When morning came, I awoke to find Shady Grove already up and around. The smell of hot coffee and cooked food permeated the log walls; chickens cackled and roosters crowed as they were fed, and men and women murmured to one another while they walked past the shuttered windows of our longhouse. Carlos turned over and wrapped himself against me. I opened my eyes to see Ben scratching at himself; in the bunk above him, Marie tried to burrow beneath her blankets.

  It was a cold winter morning, and it had been many days since any of us had slept in a bed with a roof over our heads. One of the women had told me that the community bathhouse had warm water. The tank was solar-heated, and so long as we didn’t pump too much we could get a decent shower. So I prised myself loose from Carlos, put on my clothes, and headed for the bathhouse. The others could sleep a little while longer; I just wanted to feel clean again.

  The sun was up, rising over the southwestern flanks of Mt. Bonestell. No clouds in the sky; with luck, maybe we’d get through the day without any more snow. Through the open gate of the stockade, I could see townspeople heading out to do the morning chores. No one in Shady Grove slept late, and neither did the children. The Scouts were playing tag in the commons while the Dauphins built a snowman nearby. I spotted Susan talking to an adult, and for a moment I considered going over to introduce her, but decided to let her make friends by herself. She might like it here . . . if Carlos allowed her and the other children to stay, that is.

  The bathhouse had two stalls, marked MEN and WOMEN, with a dividing wall between them. It was small, with unfinished faux birch floors and walls, but there was a small stack of shag-fur towels on the table and a bar of lavender soap in an aluminum can nailed to the wall beneath the showerhead. I took off my clothes and hung them up on the door, then shivered against the cold as I worked the pump handle until I received a thin cascade of water. Not much better than lukewarm, but still a luxury I hadn’t enjoyed in two weeks; I stood beneath the shower and felt the sweat and grime of eight hundred miles wash off me.

  Carlos couldn’t be serious about taking the children back. Yes, it was possible that Mt. Bonestell might erupt, but LaRoux hedged his bets about when it might occur. Even if an eruption was imminent, surely they’d have enough advance warning to evacuate the town and head south. But that wasn’t what bothered my mate; it was the sightings of these so-called monkeys. Clearly he knew something about them, and he had admitted as much. If only he’d tell me . . .

  From somewhere nearby, I heard a dinner bell begin to ring. Time for breakfast. I rinsed my hair, then turned the spigot to shut off the water and reached for a towel. Even if Carlos insisted on leaving, there was no sense in rushing home. I was in no hurry to hit the trail again, and the kids would only fret. If we stayed a couple of days, he might come to his senses. I loved him dearly, but sometimes he took things much too seriously. . . .

  Feeling much more civilized, I made my way across the compound to the lodge. The children had already gone in, leaving behind a half-finished snowman, and only a couple of townspeople were in sight. The gate remained open. There was no one on duty in the watchtower; the sentry was climbing down the ladder, heading in to get some chow. I noticed all these things, but paid no attention to any of them. My hair was wet, and my stomach was rumbling; the only thing that mattered was getting in from the cold and putting some food in my belly.

  The dining hall was filled to capacity: men and women crowded next to one another on the benches, passing bowls of kasha and plates of fresh-baked corn bread down the line. The kids were scattered here and there across the room; they were probably sick of seeing each other, because only a few of the Dauphins sat together. The older ones had joined adults who’d taken them under their wing; to see the townspeople already adopting the Defiance children as if they were their own reinforced my belief that we’d done the right thing by bringing them there.

  I found Carlos, Marie, and Ben sitting with Fred LaRoux at the far end of the middle table. “See you’ve found the bathhouse,” LaRoux said, grinning, as Carlos and Barry moved to make room for me. “Enjoy yourself?”

  “Very much, thank you.” I could have dried my hair a little better, though, for it hung in damp snarls around my face. “Wish I could do that every day.”

  He shrugged. “Three times a week is all we get, or at least until we get around to building more facilities. No shortage of well water. We’ve got a pretty deep aquifer, but putting in sewer pipes is murder.” He glanced at Ben. “Did y’all have the same problems?”

  “Sort of.” He took a bowl of wheat porridge that was handed to him, passed it to Carlos. “Piping wasn’t a problem so much as heating the w
ater. We’ve kept everything under the trees, so there was no way we could use passive solar systems. We’re still taking cold baths.”

  I smiled at that. Ben hadn’t been around when we’d put in the water pipes, yet he knew enough about them to be able to discuss them. “Did Susan like her shower?” Carlos asked, dipping his spoon into his bowl to stir the kasha. “Hope so . . . the kids are beginning to reek.”

  “She didn’t come with me.” I looked at him in puzzlement. “Last time I saw her, she was outside, talking to someone.”

  “She must have come in with them, then.” Carlos put down the spoon, raised his head to peer across the room. “Susan!” he called out, and a woman seated about a dozen feet away looked toward him. He ignored her, called again: “Susie! Susie Gunther!”

  No response. I searched the room with my eyes, called for her myself. No Susan.

  Rachel was the nearest Scout, and one of Susan’s closest friends. I got up and went over to her. “Have you seen Susan?” I asked.

  Always fastidious, Rachel took a moment to chew and swallow the corn bread in her mouth. “She went out,” she said nonchalantly, as if that explained everything.

  “Out? Out where?”

  “Out the gate.”

  I turned toward Carlos, but he was already pulling on his coat and heading for the door. I tried to tell myself that it was probably nothing. Susan had taken it upon herself to see to the shags; she was particularly concerned about Old Fart, who had begun to show his advanced age. Just a small matter; we’d find her in five minutes, after which she’d receive a scolding from Mama and Papa and a long time-out in the longhouse while her friends got to play.

  But she wasn’t at the corral, nor was she visiting the greenhouse nor any of the outlying sheds. We didn’t find her feeding the chickens, and she wasn’t playing hide-and-seek under the floor beams of the longhouses. Within a half hour, almost everyone in town had joined the hunt; breakfast was forgotten as people who barely knew her name searched for her in every conceivable place.

  The adult with whom I had seen her talking told Carlos that she’d expressed interest in Longer Creek; he’d told her that it flowed down from the hills north of town, and that it was where they did most of their fishing. He hadn’t seen her since then. So Carlos, Marie, and I walked around behind the stockade, and sure enough, there were her footprints in the snow, leading in the direction of the narrow river and the woods that surrounded it.

  We started to follow them, still calling her name, but we’d just entered the woods when Marie suddenly stopped. “Oh, hell,” she muttered, staring down at the ground, “look at this.”

  There were Susan’s footprints, barely six inches in length, continuing through the ice-crusted powder. But now, on either side of her, were several other sets of tracks; bipedal and four-toed, less than four inches long, with deep heel marks and sharp indentations at the end of each toe.

  “Oh, my God.” Carefully stepping around them, Carlos followed Susan’s footprints a little farther. “Oh, dear God, no . . .”

  Then I saw what he was seeing. The alien tracks emerged from the woods on either side of Susan’s; they surrounded hers, and there was a deep impression in the snow where she had fallen down. Her footprints emerged from the scuffle, becoming deeper as if she’d tried to run away. In her panic she’d headed in the wrong direction, away from the stockade and toward the forest.

  “They caught her here.” Marie pointed to another place where she’d fallen down. “There must have been two . . . no, three, maybe four . . .”

  “Oh, God.” Carlos was fixated on the tracks. “They wouldn’t do this. It’s not their way. They only want things. . . .”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I lost my patience. No, not just my patience; my mind, too. I grabbed Carlos’s shoulders, turned him around to face me. “What haven’t you told me? Who are they?”

  In that instant, I saw something in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years. Fear, as terrible as any man could have, yet not of death, but of the unknown. He pulled himself loose from me, turned to his sister. “Marie, go back and get the guns. Tell Ben to stay back and take care of the kids, but you get the guns and round up a few more people, then come after us.”

  “Why don’t you go back yourself and . . .”

  “They’re fast. Believe me, they’re already way ahead of us. If we follow them now, we may be able to catch up to them. But if we go back to town, they’ll have that much more of a head start. And Ben can’t keep up with us, not with that bad foot of his.” He pointed back the way we’d come. “Now move . . . and get back here quick as you can.”

  Marie hesitated, then turned and began to sprint back toward town. “C’mon,” Carlos said, taking my arm. “We don’t have much time.” He glanced at me, saw the look on my face, and nodded. “I’ll try to explain as we go along.”

  Three and a half years ago, by the LeMarean calendar, Carlos had taken off by himself to explore the Great Equatorial River. I’ve told my part of that story before; how he’d left me, Barry, Chris, and Kuniko behind after our attempt to explore the river had failed. I was carrying Susan then, so I couldn’t go with him—not that I particularly wanted to; Carlos and I weren’t on good terms at that point in our relationship—and so for nearly three months he was on his own, not returning to Liberty until I was going into labor.

  I thought I’d learned everything about that hegira—his term for his “spiritual journey”—but I was wrong. There was one thing he’d kept secret, not only from me, but also from everyone else.

  He’d paddled his canoe along the southern coast of Midland, seeing our future homeland as no other human had ever seen it before, until he reached its southeast point. Following a brief conversation via satphone with me and Chris—and I hate to admit it, but we weren’t very kind to him—he decided to keep going west, raising his sails to cross the Midland Channel to a small island south of Hammerhead. At first, it seemed as if the island was little more than sand and brush, yet on his first night there he discovered that it was far from deserted.

  “I thought they were just animals.” As he spoke we were hiking uphill, following the tracks as we made our way through dense forest toward the lower slopes of Mt. Bonestell. “Like raccoons or maybe overgrown pack rats, but then I found something that made me realize that they were intelligent. There was this tiny knife—”

  “What?” Despite the urgency of the moment, I stopped. “You’re saying you found intelligent life on Coyote?”

  He looked back at me. “Uh-huh. That’s what I’m saying. Now c’mon.” Still talking, he continued up the trail. “Intelligent, but very primitive . . . sort of like little Cro-Magnon men. They knew how to make tools, how to build fires, erect structures from the sand. Even something of a language, although damned if I could understand it.” He chuckled to himself. “And, man, were they a pain in the ass. I spent nearly a week on the island, and it was all I could do to keep them from stealing everything I had. I called them sandthieves after a while. But they were pretty peaceful. Just as curious about me as I was about them.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone about them?” If the circumstances had been different, I would have had a hard time believing him.

  “No, I didn’t. I . . . oh, no. Look at this.”

  We’d come to Longer Creek. It wasn’t very wide at that point, its surface frozen over, but that wasn’t what distracted him, Susan’s footprints stopped abruptly on its bank. Carlos bent over, picked up something from the ground, turned around, and held it out to me.

  “Oh, God!” I whispered, putting my hand to my mouth. It was Susan’s cap, the one Sharon had woven from shag fur and given to her for First Landing Day last summer. “Is she . . . ?”

  Carlos knelt, inspected the smaller tracks within powdery snow on top of the ice that lay across the shallow creek. “No. She’s still with them. They just picked her up to carry her across. She probably tried to fight, and that’s how her cap got knocked off.” He took
a few tentative steps out on the ice; it groaned a bit, but remained solid. “We can make it across,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s go.”

  We carefully walked across the creek, trying to avoid soft spots in the ice; when we were on the far side, the tracks continued, Susan’s among them. I could see Mt. Bonestell clearly through the trees, looming above us as a massive, snowcapped dome. “Go on,” I said. “Give me the rest of it.”

  “Not much more to tell.” Carlos shrugged as he continued to lead the way. “They’re intelligent, no question about it. But I was pretty cynical about everyone I’d left behind, and I didn’t want all these people descending upon them, the way European explorers did to the Native Americans, so I kept it to myself. Even named the place Barren Isle so that no one would think anything important was there. And I haven’t told anyone until now.” He looked back at me. “You’re the first.”

  “But if they’re peaceful—”

  “I thought they were peaceful.” He stopped, bent over to clasp his knees and catch his breath. “But these aren’t the same sandthieves. The ones I found over there didn’t know how to swim or build boats, so they couldn’t have come over here. And if everyone says they’re the size of monkeys, then this bunch must belong to a different species, or tribe, or”—he shook his head—“whatever. The ones I met weren’t that large. But they must be just as intelligent, and if they’ve taken Susan . . .”

  “Let’s go.” I didn’t need to hear any more; I pushed past him, taking the lead. My daughter had been abducted by these creatures. I didn’t care how peaceful their relatives on Barren Isle might be; I wanted her back.

  The slope quickly became steeper, the snow more thick, yet urgency pumped adrenaline into my blood, making me forget the cold in my lungs and the ache in my muscles. More than once I was tempted to stop for a moment, take a break, but then I’d look down at the ground to see Susan’s small footprints surrounded on either side by those of the sandthieves, and my steps would quicken. That, and the realization that we had to be catching up to them. Carlos said the sandthieves were fast, and doubtless they were strong enough to scurry up a mountainside without breathing hard. Yet they had a human child among them; even if they were forcing her to run, her very presence would slow them down. And twice already Susan had tried to escape; if they were half as intelligent as Carlos said, then they’d realize the need to keep a close eye on her, and that would slow them down even more.