by Allen Steele
A couple of sudden bumps against the bottom of the hull as the skimmer hit unseen driftwood. “Wish we could switch on the spotlights,” Marie murmured. “Can’t see where we’re going.”
Manny turned off the interior lights. The cockpit was plunged into darkness save for the sallow glow of the instrument panel. “There,” he said. “I can see now.”
As if to demonstrate, he twisted the yoke hard to port. A moment later, there was a gentle bump against the starboard pontoon as the skimmer grazed a floating log. Once again, Marie remembered that Manny possessed infrared vision; now that Bear was rising, he was able to use its light as human eyes could not. An uncomfortable reminder that Manny was a savant. His soul might be human, but his body was not.
“You’re almost there!” Once more, Lars’ voice crackled through the transceiver. “C’mon in! We’ll meet you at the water!”
The fire was very close now, less than a few dozen yards away. Marie started to reach for the mike when Chris yelled down through the open top hatch. “There’s something in the water! I saw it move!”
“Hold on!” Marie rose from her seat and started to head for the hatch. “I’m coming up!”
“Stay put.” Manny remained calm. “We’re almost there. Thirty feet more, and they’ll be able to…”
A gunshot from the aft deck, followed by two more. Marie bolted from the cockpit and scrambled up the ladder.
In the wan light cast from the open hatch, she saw Missus Smith standing at the starboard rail, rifle raised to her shoulder and pointed toward the water just beyond the skimmer. Left eye fixed upon the infrared sight, she tracked something Marie couldn’t see, then cursed and raised the barrel.
“Dammit! It’s gone under!” She glanced at Marie. “You see that?” Without waiting for an answer, she lunged for the far end of the deck, pointed the gun down over the side. “Whatever it is, it’s goddamn big!”
“What did you see?” Marie peered into the darkness. With night closing in, there was little that her eyes could make out. “What did it look like?”
“I dunno.” Missus Smith searched the water, her rifle’s muzzle sweeping back and forth. “All I saw was this giant head. Sort of like a horse, but…”
“Hey! Over here!”
Lars’s voice, from the port side. Looking around, Marie caught a brief glimpse of two figures caught in silhouette against the signal fire. Then they disappeared; a few seconds later, the sound of men splashing through shallow water, as if meaning to swim out toward the approaching skimmer.
“Stay back!” Marie rushed to the port rail as Manny coaxed the skimmer closer to shore. “There’s something out…!”
Another gunshot from behind her, and Marie turned just in time to see a massive head rise above the starboard side.
Almost equine in shape, yet larger than any horse’s head she’d ever seen, it swayed back and forth upon a thick, amphibian neck. Narrow eyes deep within a bony skull reflected the dim glow of the firelight; she had an impression of jagged teeth inside a cavernous mouth, and shrank back in horror.
The river horse loomed above Missus Smith, and for a moment it seemed as if it was studying her. She squeezed off another shot, but her aim was wild. The creature recoiled, but only for an instant. Then its head pounced forward, and its jaws clamped down upon Chris’s shoulder.
Crying out in agony, she dropped her weapon. The rifle clattered to the deck, and Marie hurled herself toward it. Chris was battering her fists against the creature’s skull as she snatched up the rifle.
“Shoot it!” Chris screamed. “Shoot…!”
Yet before Marie could get a clear shot, the creature yanked Chris from the deck. The toe of her left boot caught against the railing, and for a half-second Marie thought that might save her. Then the boot was ripped from her foot and her body was dragged overboard, down into the black water.
Marie ran to the railing, fired aimlessly into the water, but there was nothing to be done now; the river horse had disappeared, taking her friend with it.
She sagged against the railing, still staring at the place where Chris Smith had vanished. She was barely aware that Lars had scrambled up the ladder, with James just behind him, or that Manny had shoved the throttles all the way forward. The fans roared as the skimmer hurtled away from the island. Cold water, tasting of salt and death, cascaded upon her.
She stared back at the island that she’d barely visited, knowing even then that she’d never be the same again.
From the diary of
Marie Montero:
Adnachiel 9, c.y. 06
We rescued Lars and James from Smith Island—that’s what Manny has decided to call it, in honor of Chris—but they were the only two survivors. The other five men in their group were killed by river horses: the first four in the initial attack, with Cooper surviving long enough to reach the island only to die before we could reach them. Considering everything that happened, they’re lucky to be alive.
Lars wasn’t pleased to see Manny again. Almost as soon as he came aboard, in fact, he told Manny to hand over the skimmer’s controls. But Manny refused and I backed him up, and after that Lars hunkered down in the back with James. He didn’t put up much of a fight, really. He and James were cold, wet and hungry, and I think he was more scared than he wanted to admit.
Took most of the night to get back home. Didn’t reach Riverport until a few hours before sunrise. Found some food in the back (they’d lost everything when the boat capsized…lucky that Lars had the satphone in his pocket) and once they ate, Lars told us what happened. Don’t know how much is true and how much isn’t, but here goes:
After they got thrown out, the seven of them sailed a few miles downstream, then made camp in the swamps. At first they thought they’d just wait until “the heat blew over” (as Lars puts it), then come back and try to talk their way back into our good graces. After a while, though, they decided that they were better off without us anyway—little did they know the feeling was mutual.
They knew they couldn’t rough it on their own for very long, so they talked over what they should do next. Lars told them about his good friends in Bridgeton who he was sure would take him in—I remember when he tried to use that line on me—and he managed to persuade the others that everything would be wine and roses if they could only get there.
So they sailed down the West Channel to the Big River, then turned east and moved along the southern coast of New Florida, and finally turned north and went up the East Channel till they reached Bridgeton. Took them nearly three weeks to make the trip, so they must not have been in much of a hurry. James said something about “doing a lot of fishing,” so I figure they were drinking all the way. Miracle they made it in the first place.
But they didn’t stay long in Bridgeton before they had to move on again. Lars is a little vague about that part of the story. He says he found Tiny, Lester and Biggs, but none of them had room for the group in their houses and they couldn’t find jobs anywhere, but I find that hard to believe. More likely that someone in town recognized Lars and knew that he’d been exiled from the colonies, and that taking him in would result in criminal prosecution. The way he carries on about how his pals “betrayed” him makes me wonder if his old buddies decided to play it safe and turn him in. Or maybe they just wore out their welcome, drinking and causing trouble, until everyone in town finally got fed up with them and the blueshirts showed them the way to the docks.
In any case, they left Bridgeton in a hurry. Now they had a choice—either keep going north and try for New Boston (fat chance! they would’ve gotten the same reception there, more than likely!) or go back the way they’d come and try to beg forgiveness from Missus Smith.
That’s when Lars turned on his charm. For the next few minutes, I got an earful about how much he loved me, how he couldn’t live without me, etc. while James is sitting beside him with this shit-eating grin on his face, staring down the front of my shirt. I heard him out, then told him to go on with the st
ory.
So, anyway, they sailed back down the East Channel until they reached the big river, then turned west and started toward Great Dakota. But they’d just reached the delta and were about to turn north up the West Channel when they changed their minds and instead decided to go downriver a little further.
Again, I’m not sure what to believe. Lars says that some of the others wanted to get in a little more fishing, while James says they wanted to give us a little more time to think about how much they missed us. I think the truth is somewhere in-between—i.e., they got cold feet about having to beg their way back into camp. Besides, the weather was still warm and they still had plenty of booze (no doubt they picked up more bearshine in Bridgeton). In any case, they opted to sail downriver a little ways—to have one more party before they came home to face the music, I think—to an island they’d spotted before.
That’s when the river horses found them.
There’s a lot about Coyote we still don’t know, even after being here nearly nineteen Earth-years. Not all of it is the same; we’re still finding new animals, plants, etc. And considering how long the Great Equatorial River is, we’ve barely explored 1/10th of it. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s more to it than catwhales, weirdlings and redfish…creatures that have never met humans before, and don’t care if we’ve got boats and guns.
In any case, the boat was coming close to the island when they attacked. Lars says that Cooper gave them the name “river horses” because they look like sea horses back on Earth, only bigger (yeah—a lot bigger). Manny believes the similarity may only come from what they saw above water; he thinks they may be something like crocodiles back on Earth, only warm-blooded and much larger. That’s something I don’t know, though, so I have to take his word for it.
In any case, a pack of them attacked the boat just as the men approached the island. Two or maybe three of them came in all at once, from both sides, just after one of the guys jumped overboard to swim ashore with a rope to tie off. He died first, before the rest of the group knew what hit him, and while the others were still running back and forth on deck, the other two went for the boat.
It’s hard to tell to what happened after that, except that everyone panicked. The flechette guns they had were useless, in any case. Three more men were killed and the boat capsized before Lars, James and Cooper managed to swim ashore. And even then Coop barely got away—a river horse caught him in its mouth, but he kicked it in some way that made it let him go (I wish Chris had learned that trick), then Lars grabbed him and hauled him ashore. By then their friends were gone and their boat was sunk.
Like I said, they were lucky on two scores: Lars was carrying the satphone in his shirt pocket and James had a waterproof lighter in his pants. So after they carried Cooper the rest of the way onto dry land, they started a fire on the beach. But that seemed to attract the river horses, so they doused it, and didn’t start another one until after Lars used the satphone to call for help and they were sure we were on the way. They tried to keep Coop alive, but they didn’t have a medkit and he’d lost too much blood. By the time we got to them, he’d been dead three hours.
Don’t know what to make of all this. Lars is back. He’s asleep in my bed in the cabin I built without his help. When he gets up, maybe I’ll talk to him. Or maybe I won’t. But he’s not welcome, that’s for damn sure.
River horses. What a name. Kind of think it describes me. Something that just keeps pulling and pulling, with no end in sight.
Marie kept her distance from Lars. As soon as she could, she evicted him from her cabin, telling him that, despite what happened on Smith Island, she wasn’t taking him back. No one else in town wanted him either, so he and James moved into a tool shed, the only shelter available to them in Riverport.
The two men found jobs with the timber crew, and for a little while it seemed as if Marie would be able to keep Lars out of her life. They saw each other infrequently, usually at dinner time when they stood in the chow line together, and her friends made sure that she never had to sit next to him. It hardly mattered, though, because Lars seldom spoke to her; indeed, his only companion was James, and together they occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder. Although they’d returned to the settlement, they were far from being accepted back into the community. Everyone knew what had occurred on Smith Island, and they held Lars and James responsible for Missus Smith’s death.
Yet it wasn’t long before the situation changed.
With Chris gone, there was a vacuum that had to be filled. Although Marie didn’t want the job, she soon found the others turning to her for leadership. She and Missus Smith had been close, and people were looking for someone who could fill her role. So it came to pass that, when the next town meeting rolled around and a special election was held, Marie discovered she was the sole nominee for mayor. Although she accepted the job with reluctance, she promised to continue the work her predecessor had begun, the transformation of Riverport into a self-sufficient community.
By then, that which only Manny had known had become obvious: she was pregnant, with her child due by the end of the year. Now that she was mayor, Marie knew leaving Riverport even for a short while was out of the question. Yet she also realized that her condition gave the settlement a bargaining chip it hadn’t possessed before. So one evening, with Manny’s assistance, she composed a formal letter to the Colonial Council, which was transmitted via satphone to Liberty the following morning.
The response came quickly, and not the way she’d expected. Marie was working on the farm when she heard a familiar sound. Turning to raise a hand against the afternoon sun, she watched as a gyro soared across the West Channel, making a lazy arch above the settlement as the pilot searched for a place to land. Marie put down her rake, picked up her straw hat from where she’d placed it on a tree stump, and walked back into town to greet the visitors.
She wasn’t surprised to find that the delegation from Liberty included Carlos. For a few seconds after he climbed out of the gyro, brother and sister regarded one another with mutual discomfort, neither of them quite knowing what to say or do. Then Carlos grinned and stretched out his hands, and Marie walked over to give him a hug, to the warm applause of the settlers who’d come out to the beach.
This wasn’t the only reunion. Also aboard the gyro was Clark Thompson. He waited patiently beside the aircraft until his nephew shuffled forward from the back of the crowd. Lars was a broken man; thin and hollow-eyed, his shoulders slumped, he’d lost the arrogance that he had carried when he’d left New Florida. The two men regarded each other for a moment, then Clark solemnly extended his hand, and Lars took it with shame-faced reticence.
The townspeople quit work early that afternoon, and a special dinner was prepared for their honored guests. While the cooks labored in the mess tent, Marie escorted Carlos and Clark, along with the two other members of the Council, on a quick tour of Riverport. Although she was embarrassed by what little she had to show them—a half-dozen log cabins, along with a couple of sheds and a half-built greenhouse—the council representatives were impressed by the progress made in only a month by less than thirty people. It was clear, though, that the settlement would need assistance if it was going to survive the long winter ahead, and Marie knew without asking that this support would not come without a price.
Her suspicions were confirmed shortly after dinner, when Carlos came over to her. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?” he said quietly. “There are some things we need to discuss, just the two of us.”
The crimson rays of the setting sun peered from behind purple clouds as they strolled together along the beach, Marie’s hand clasped within the crook of Carlos’s arm. “You’ve done well,” he said as they walked along the water’s edge, watching the tide lap at the mottled sands. “Better than I thought…than we thought…you would.”
“Thank you.” To the east, Bear’s ring-plane was beginning to glide into view above the horizon. “I can’t take credit for this, t
hough. These people have worked awful hard to…”
“I don’t mean the colony. I mean you.” He pulled her a little closer. “Hard to believe you’re the same girl…the same woman, I mean…who was getting in bar fights just a month ago. You’ve changed a lot since then. I’m proud of you.”
“Well…”
“Hear me out, please. This is important.” He paused, as if to choose his words. “I’ve spoken with the magistrates. They’re willing to let you return…on probation, at least, so long as you behave yourself…but my guess is that you won’t come back.”
“Nope.” Marie grinned and shook her head. “Wouldn’t look good for a mayor to skip town just because she’s pregnant.” Her smile faded. “Besides, people might think I’m nothing but trouble. Can’t have that, can we?” Embarrassed, Carlos looked away. He started to release her arm, but she pulled him close again. “Forget it. You did what you had to do. If you didn’t, I’d be digging ditches now.”
“Yeah, well…like I said, you did better than most people expected.” He glanced back at the settlement. “As for Lars…that’s a whole ’nother issue.”
“Not an issue at all.” Marie gazed out at the channel. “He’s got his life now, and I’ve got mine. So far as I’m concerned, he can go back any time he wants. We’ll get along just fine without him.”
“Well…no.” Carlos shook his head. “The amnesty the maggies have offered you doesn’t extend to him. They know everything he did…or at least what you’ve told us, along with how he tried to hide out in Bridgeton…and they don’t consider him to be—” he searched for the correct phrase “—’sufficiently rehabilitated,’ if I remember it correctly. So he’s stuck here, whether he likes it or not.”