by Allen Steele
So we couldn’t be far behind. And as it turned out, we weren’t.
So intent were we upon following the tracks, we didn’t look up to notice that the mountainside had changed, until I raised my eyes and saw a massive bluff looming before us. At first I thought it was another limestone formation, like those prevalent throughout Midland, yet as we came closer, I saw that it was dark grey rock. Much later, talking it over with Fred LaRoux, I’d learn that this was ignimbrite, volcanic ash left behind by ancient eruptions that had been compacted over time to form a substance much like concrete. Sometimes called tuff, it had often used on Earth as construction material. In parts of China, houses were built of bricks carved from ignimbrite quarries, but in northern Italy the opposite approach had been taken, with homes and shops being excavated within tuff deposits.
That’s what we were seeing now. The vast rock wall rose above us, and within that wall were dozens of doors and windows, resembling natural caves, until I realized that their shapes were much more regular, their distance from one another obviously deliberate. The trees around the wall had all been cut down; here and there along the wall I spotted small wooden platforms jutting out from above-ground doorways to form terraces. Rough fabric, like woven grass, covered some of the windows as curtains, while smoke from fires burning somewhere inside seeped through chimney holes here and there.
It looked somewhat like an ancient Pueblo cliff dwelling, yet that wasn’t my first impression. What I saw was a fortress, hostile and impregnable, somehow obscene. And from behind all those doors and windows, eyes that studied us as we emerged from the woods.
Carlos stopped. “That’s far enough,” he said quietly, almost a whisper. “They know we’re here.” He nodded in the direction of the nearest window. “See? It’s hard to sneak up on them. Probably heard us coming a long time ago.”
I caught a brief glimpse of a tiny face—coarse black fur surrounding overlarge eyes and a retracted snout—before it disappeared. Here and there, I spotted small figures within doors and windows, vanishing as soon I looked directly at them. We were watching them, but they’d been watching us for much longer.
And not just watching. The air was still and quiet, scarcely a breeze moving through the trees behind us. Now I could hear a new sound: a rapid cheeping and chittering, punctuated now and then by thin whistles and hoots, animalistic yet definitely forming some sort of pattern. They were talking to one another.
“Oh, crap,” I murmured. “What do we do now?”
“Stay calm.” Carlos pointed to the tracks we’d been following. They led away from us, straight toward a doorway at ground level. “She’s somewhere in there. They must have just taken her inside.”
So what do we do now? Charge into an alien habitat in search of our daughter? Fat chance. From the looks of it, the cliff dwelling could have been honeycombed with dozens of passageways, all of which so small that we’d have to bend double just to get through the largest of them. We were unarmed, and Carlos had already discovered that these creatures were capable of making knives. A small cut from a tiny flint blade might not mean much, but a hundred such cuts just like it would kill you just the same. Negotiation? Sure, sounds good to me. What’s the word for hello? So I did what any mother would do.
“Susan!” I shouted. “Susan, can you hear me?”
I stopped, listened. Silence, save for the cheeps and chirps of the cliff dwellers. I raised my hands to my mouth. “Susan? Sweetie-pie, do you hear me?”
“Susan!” Carlos yelled as loud as he could. “Susan, we’re out here! Answer us, please!”
We shouted and screamed and called her name again and again, then we’d stop and wait, and still we heard nothing. In the meantime, the sandthieves were becoming a little braver. Apparently realizing that we weren’t about to storm their habitat, they ventured to the windows and stood in the doors, cheeping madly at one another until it almost sounded as if they were mocking us. And maybe they were; one of them, a little larger than the others and wearing what looked like a serape, stood on an upper parapet and jumped up and down, hooting in glee. Frustrated, I picked up a stick and wound back to hurl it at him.
“No!” Carlos snatched the stick from my hands. “It’ll only excite them. Trust me, I’ve tried that already.”
“Trust you?” I turned upon him. “Why didn’t you trust me? If you’d only told me . . . if you’d just been honest . . .”
“I didn’t know . . . I didn’t think they—”
“Mama!”
The sound of Susan’s voice stopped us. For a moment, we couldn’t tell where it was coming from, except that it was in the direction of the cliff dwelling.
“Susan!” I shouted. “Baby, where are you?” I could see nothing in the windows except sandthieves; yet they’d suddenly gone silent, and even the big one on the parapet was now longer prancing. “Susan? Can you—?”
“Here! I’m up here!”
I raised my eyes to peer at the top of the bluff, and there was Susan, a small figure standing alone at the edge of a wooden platform. My heart froze when I saw her. She was nearly sixty feet above the ground. Two or three more steps, and she’d fall over.
“Stay there!” Carlos yelled. “I’m coming to get you!” I couldn’t see how he could, yet he was determined to try anyway. He’d taken no more than a few steps, though, when another voice came to us from above:
“Stay where you are!”
Looking up again, I saw a human figure standing next to Susan. No, not quite human; with great wings like those of a bat rising from his back and fangs within an elongated jaw, he resembled a gargoyle. Although I’d never laid eyes upon him before, I immediately knew who he was. And so did Carlos.
“Zoltan,” he whispered.
Zoltan Shirow. The Reverend Zoltan Shirow, if you cared to call him that. Founder of the Church of Universal Transformation, the religious cult that had followed him to Coyote. They’d worshiped him as a prophet, believing that he held the key to human destiny, yet the truth of the matter was that he was a madman, and the only destiny to which he’d led them was death.
The last person to see Zoltan alive was Ben Harlan. From what he’d told me and the other members of the Defiance Town Council, he’d fled for his life when it became apparent that Zoltan intended to kill him on Mt. Shaw. He later led an expedition to the camp just below the summit, where they confirmed that the group had resorted to cannibalism. Zoltan’s own remains were never found, and the body count had come up short by two. Since then there had been reports, delivered occasionally by hunters who’d ventured into the Gillis Range, of a bat-winged figure lurking within the woods, sometimes with a woman beside him.
No one had ever given much credence to these claims, least of all me. Yet there was Zoltan, alive and well, standing next to my little girl. Even from the distance, I could tell Susan was badly frightened; she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, yet she was all too aware that she was standing close to the edge of the platform.
“Don’t you dare . . .” My voice was a dry croak; I had to clear my throat. “Don’t you dare hurt her!” I shouted. “Bring her down from there!”
Carlos glanced back at me. “Wendy, don’t provoke him. He’s—”
“I have no intention of hurting her.” Although Zoltan scarcely raised his voice, we could hear him clearly. The sandthieves were all quiet now, and I noticed that most had fallen to their knees. “In fact, if you want her back, then I’m happy to oblige.”
Before Susan could react, he bent forward and swept her up in his arms. And then, holding her tightly against his chest, he stepped off the platform.
I think I screamed. I must have, because I heard the sound echoing off the cliff. Yet, as the two of them plummeted toward us, Zoltan’s wings unfurled, spreading out to their maximum span, catching the air and braking their descent as if he was wearing a parachute. Zoltan couldn’t fly—his wings, grafted onto his body long ago on Earth, didn’t have the muscle structure necessary for that—but
apparently he’d learned how to use them to glide short distances in Coyote’s lesser gravity.
Nonetheless, it was a long fall, and he was burdened with Susan’s extra weight. He hit the ground hard, taking the impact on bent knees, his breath whuffing from his lungs. He managed to hold on to Susan the whole time, though, and as soon as they were down, she wiggled out of his arms and dashed toward us. Carlos knelt and caught her; she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing and refusing to let go as he murmured into her ear.
From the cliff dwellings, the sandthieves leaped up and down, chattering and squawking to one another, out of their minds from what they’d just seen. I couldn’t blame them; I was pretty much out of my own mind, although for different reasons. “What the . . . ? Who the hell do you think you are?” I demanded, ignoring both husband and daughter—in fact, forgetting everything else—as I marched toward him. “What do you think you’re doing, pulling something like—”
“Quiet!” Zoltan raised a hand as he slowly stood erect. He winced as he did so—no doubt he’d pulled muscles in his thighs and calves—yet he maintained the unholy charisma that had allowed him to gather more than two dozen disciples to his side and lead them across time and space to an unknown world. “I’ve done as you’ve asked, in the quickest way possible. Aren’t thou grateful for the miracle you’ve witnessed?”
He turned to Carlos. “And you . . . you, I know. Once already I’ve saved your life. Now I’ve saved that of your daughter. Have you no gratitude in your heart?”
“What’s he talking about?” I looked at Carlos. “When did he . . .”
“I’ll tell you later.” Carlos shot me a sidewise look—not now—as he stood up, still holding Susan in his arms. “I remember. You didn’t give me a chance to thank you before, but . . . well, thanks. And thank you for letting her go.”
Obviously, there was more to all this than I knew. I’d have to get the whole story from Carlos at another time; as before, he’d been keeping secrets from me. Just then, though, I was more concerned with the present. “Why did you take her?” I said, looking at Zoltan again. “She’s just a little girl. She means no harm to you.”
“Exactly. She’s just a little girl.” Zoltan smiled, revealing the tips of his fangs. Not very comforting. “The chirreep . . . that’s what they call themselves . . . had never seen a human child before you came here. Adults, yes, but never a kid.”
“You know their language?”
“Only a little. They actually have to show something to you and tell you what it’s called before you know what it means. So when they told me that a group of small outsiders . . . kreepah-shee, their word for you . . . had appeared in the valley, I tried to get them to explain what they meant.” An apologetic shrug. “So they found one and brought her to me. They didn’t know she was a child . . . just an immature kreepah-shee.”
Now I understood. As Carlos had told me, the sandthieves—the chirreep—were an alien race, very primitive, that had only recently felt the hand of man. Zoltan had asked an innocent question, and they’d done their best to oblige him: take one, bring it back, and show it to him. By their nature, they were used to stealing things, so why stop at a child?
“So what are you to them?” Carlos handed Susan over to me, being careful never to turn his back on him. “Their leader? I mean, either you found them, or they found you, but obviously they respect you.”
“Can’t you tell?” I nodded toward the chirreep; they were still silent, their heads lowered into supplication. “He’s not their leader . . . he’s their god.”
“Thank you for recognizing that.” Zoltan’s wings rippled slightly as he stood a little straighter. “Many years ago, when I received divine inspiration to come to this world, I believed the Almighty wanted me to lead the human race to a higher plane. Since then, I’ve come to realize that I misunderstood His message. Man is a flawed creature, beyond redemption. I learned that when my followers . . . all but one, whom I saved as my consort . . . perished because of their inadequacies, and the one whom we’d trusted as our guide betrayed us. He paid for his sins. Cast out, he died alone, and now his soul suffers in—”
“You mean Ben Harlan?” Carlos shook his head. “Alive and well. He told us all about—”
“Be quiet!” His wings stretched out once more, and the chirreep quailed in alarm, squeaking among themselves at this outburst. “I won’t tolerate blasphemy in my house!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I apologize for my husband.” If Zoltan wanted to believe that Ben had been his own personal Judas, then let him. We might have found Susan, yet we were still on dangerous ground. “Please, go on, Reverend Shirow. I’d like to hear more about—”
“I no longer acknowledge that name. It belongs to the man I once was, before the final station of my transformation. I am now Sareech . . . the messiah, the one who has come from the stars.” He beckoned to the chirreep behind him. “These are now my people, the ones I was truly meant to lead. Unspoiled, innocent, without original sin. Man is lost, but they . . . they are my flock. And they are under my protection.”
If Zoltan hadn’t been insane before, he certainly was now. When he’d come to Coyote, he’d been satisfied with merely being a prophet. With his original followers gone, having stumbled upon a primitive species willing to worship him, he’d elevated himself to godhood. And indeed, there was no one else who could challenge that claim. He was the only human on Coyote who looked the way he did . . . and the chirreep didn’t know any better.
“I understand this,” Carlos said. “Believe me, I do. I found some sand . . . chirreep, I mean . . . several years ago, on an island south of here.”
“You have?” Zoltan peered closely at him. “The chirreep-ka? Their cave drawings tell of another tribe across the waters, lost many years ago, but I didn’t . . . they didn’t . . . know they still existed.”
Some god. He didn’t even know about another group of sandthieves only a thousand or so miles away. “They’re there, all right,” Carlos went on, “but I didn’t let anyone know about them. I wanted to protect them, keep their existence a secret. And I won’t tell anyone about your chirreep if you’ll just . . .”
“It scarcely matters, does it?” Zoltan looked at Susan, huddled in my arms. “When she was taken, you came after her, and in doing so you found this . . . and I have no doubt that others will follow you. Perhaps this is part of my destiny. To save them from you and your kind.”
For a moment, he’d almost sounded human again. “Then we can go?” I asked. “We can . . .”
“Leave. No one will harm you.” He smiled, once again exposing his fangs. “Besides, it makes very little difference what you may say or do. Corah will soon speak again, as it did many years ago. It once changed all life on this world, and soon it will do so again.”
“Corah?”
He pointed toward the summit of Mt. Bonestell. “Corah. The destroyer.” When he looked at us again, his eyes promised fire. “Now go. Make peace with yourselves, if you can. The end of the world is near.”
Then he turned and began to walk back toward the cliff dwellings. Seeing that their god was returning to them, the chirreep broke their silence; once again, they began to twitter and chirp amongst themselves, bounding in and out of the doors and windows of their city. It wasn’t hard to figure out what they were saying. All hail mighty Sareech, our lord and savior. He confronts the kreepah-shee and sends them packing. Sareech is our man. . . .
“Let’s go,” Carlos murmured. “I don’t want to give him a chance to change his mind.” He took Susan from my arms. “C’mon, Scout. Piggyback ride down the mountain.”
Susan nodded, but didn’t smile or say anything as her father swung her up on his shoulders. She’d lost a bit of her innocence that day, although it would be many years before I knew just how much. But for the moment, we had our daughter back, and that was all that mattered. . . .
Just before I turned away, I caught a glimpse of something moving on the parapet where we’d firs
t seen Zoltan and Susan. Looking up, I spotted a lone figure: a woman, wearing a frayed and dirty white robe, its cowl raised above her head. Thin and terribly frail, she leaned heavily against a walking stick, like someone who was ill; she peered down at us, and in the brief instant that our eyes met, I felt a sense of longing, as if she was silently begging us not to go.
Zoltan had mentioned having a consort, someone whom he’d claimed to have saved. And Ben had told us that he’d left someone behind. I struggled to remember her name. . . .
“Greer?”
I didn’t speak very loudly, yet Zoltan must have heard me, for he turned and looked back at me. There was a flash of anger in his eyes, and again I realized just how vulnerable we still were. Carlos must have heard me, too, because he stopped at the edge of the clearing. “What’s that, honey? You say something?”
“I just saw . . .” But when I looked up again, the figure had vanished from the parapet. Like the ghost of a dead woman, seen only for a moment in the half-light of winter’s day. “Never mind,” I murmured. “Let’s just get out of here.”
So we took Susan and made our way back down Mt. Bonestell, saying little to each other as we followed our own footprints through the forest. About halfway back, we met up with Marie; she was leading a group of men from Shady Grove, all of them armed with carbines, ready and eager to take on whatever we might have found. It took a lot of double talk, yet we managed to convince them that a posse wasn’t needed. Some strange aboriginals had taken off with our girl, but they’d abandoned her after a while, and we’d found her on the mountain. More a nuisance than anything else. We just wanted to go home.