by Greg Keyes
“I made you act too soon, Teng. If I hadn’t tried that stupid stunt, you wouldn’t have been injured. I’m sorry.”
Teng leaned briefly against a large rock. She looked at him with weary eyes.
“No telling, lover. You made him drop the laser. He might have gotten me with that, which would have been much worse.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t been here at all. …”
“That’s silly shit, Alvar. You think too much. Even when we fuck, you think to much. Just let things happen and be, okay? It’s alright.”
With that, her legs wobbled wildly, as if they were rubber. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny. She straightened back up and fell again.
“Shit,” Teng whispered, as Alvar bent frantically over her.
“Teng, what can I do?”
“I’ll be okay. Just lost a little too much blood. Get those women on that thing’s ship and tie them up or something. Take my pistol. Then get me on board and let’s get back to the ship. I’ll just lie here for a moment.”
“Teng, are you lying to me? Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. Alvar sucked in a deep breath, took her gun, and jogged off across the canyon floor, damned if he knew what he was doing.
Chapter Sixteen
Sand managed to get to her feet and stand for a brief moment before toppling for the sixth time.
Seven’s the charm, she thought, grimly. The Whipper was off in the rocks, hunting whoever had been in the downed ship. That should be a break for her, but the wasp sting was wearing off slowly. Though her back and arms held only the dull ache of remembered agony, her calves and feet were still cramping, evidence to Sand that human beings should never have been bipeds; they should have stayed in the First World with fish, bugs, and lizards.
Seven was not the charm, and Sand collapsed once more before pragmatically resigning herself to crawling, inspired by her thoughts of the First World. Climbing down the reed rather than up, she thought. Ironic, since Tuchvala was climbing up, from whatever she was to human.
That assumed, Sand realized suddenly, that humans were always up the reed. Crawling was making her humble. The religion taught that the Hopis had climbed up through Four Worlds on Earth, right up through the sky of each on ladders or canes or whatnot. The sky of each previous world then became the floor of the next. The Fourth World—Earth—had been Masaw’s world, and the Hopi lived there only by his leave. They had climbed once more, through the roof of the Fourth World, via starship and the Vilmir Foundation—which Fifth-Worlders, for obvious reasons, nicknamed the Reed. The Reed was their Masaw, now.
Hopi leaders taught that the movement from world to world was a metaphor, on one level, for evolution; that the essence of the Hopi had resided always in certain creatures, from the first, single celled creatures, and that this spirit had moved upwards towards the present state. Intellectually, Sand knew that evolution did not work in this way—that there was no up to seek, that people were anything but inevitable in the scheme of things. But if one believed in the gods—well, human beings could manipulate living substance to create whatever they want, now. Why couldn’t gods?
And why was she thinking of this as she dragged herself painfully across the many-fanged canyon floor? Her mind seemed to buzz with a life of its own, demanding her attention. You’ve been thinking with your legs, she seemed to be telling herself. The Kachina took your legs for awhile. Use your grey stuff, idiot!
She wasn’t making all that much progress towards the Whipper’s ship, but soon she would try to stand again. She could humor her brain for a while longer. There had been a thought a little earlier that jogged something. About Masaw. How did the legend go? In the Third World, the ancestors of Human Beings had been plagued by two-hearts and other evil. They heard footsteps in the sky above them. They fashioned a catbird out of clay and sent it to see what was there. The footsteps came from Masaw, the master of fire. Being a thing of clay, the catbird did not fear his dreadful appearance. The catbird asked Masaw if the people could come up to live in Masaw’s world. The god replied “there is nothing here, only grey mist. Nothing grows; I must build fires just to tend my crops. But you are welcome to come.”
The people accepted this challenge, came to the Fourth World. In the domain of Masaw, they naturally came to know death, but they also had fire, and the power to make the world a fit place to live. The Hero twins Pokanghoya and Polongahoya changed the grey face of the Fourth World, made it fit to live in for many centuries, until the nineteenth century, when the two-hearts revealed themselves, cut the forests, filled the waters with stink that nothing could live in, tore holes in the roof of the Fourth World so that the light from Tawa became harsh. Many Hopis had eventually participated in this destruction; the two-hearts had infiltrated every race and tribe.
So once more the Hopis heard footsteps in the sky, but these footsteps were bursts of hydrogen fusion, and when they sent their catbird, he met the Reed. And what had the Reed said? “It will be a hard life, because there is nothing there. You must make this world grow, but then it will be yours.”
There was the rub. The Reed was a two-heart. Was he as trustworthy as Masaw? Certainly not.
A shadow fell across Sand, and she clenched her teeth against coming pain. It did not come. Instead, a voice that evoked more than one layer of familiarity spoke.
“Sand, are you okay?”
It was Tuchvala. Standing.
“Tuchvala. Help me up. Help me get to the Whipper’s ship. We have to get out of here.”
Thinking with your legs again, her brain reminded her, but she pushed that away. She rolled over onto her back. Tuchvala bent over and they locked arms at the elbows. The other woman pulled back as Sand struggled to get her feet under her. She stood, shakily, but quickly collapsed against Tuchvala. The woman slipped a shoulder under Sand’s armpit and reached around her back. Pela’s stocky body was good, strong, just as Sand remembered it from childhood.
“How is it that you’re up so quickly?” Sand asked as they moved—much more quickly now—towards the Wings of the Whipper.
Tuchvala made a noncommittal noise that sounded rehearsed; her off-the-cuff vocalizations were still anything but. “I think I must have been farther from the wave emitter. I didn’t know who was coming, but you’ve run from everyone so far, and it seemed a safe guess that I should run from that ship—especially after he cut yours in half.”
Running, Sand’s mind echoed, taunting. They had reached the hoverjet. The door was locked.
“Fuck!” Sand hissed. The Kachina would have the key.
What now?
“I’ve never seen one of you dead before, Sand. It made me sick, like I was sick in the flyer.”
“What?”
“The Whipper. He cut someone’s head off.”
“Show me, Tuchvala.”
Sand could have probably walked unassisted, but Tuchvala’s shoulder felt good under her own; comforting. Sand saw what her companion had been talking about almost immediately. A human body was lying some twenty meters or so from the Whipper’s Wings. It was in the direction of the broken Dragonfly and the burning ship—wherever the hell it was from. As they drew nearer, the body looked stranger, however; less human. It was only when she noticed that the oblong rock near it had open, glazed eyes and white teeth showing behind skinned-back lips that the whole picture came into focus.
The man was black. There had been a few people that color among the original Hopis, Sand thought, but no one living was that black. Briefly, she wondered if the sunbow could have turned him that shade, but discarded that as silly. The color looked right on him, as right as anything could look on a decapitated corpse. He was wearing an odd uniform, too, one she did not recognize as any pueblo or lowland society.
This man was not from the Fifth World.
The swirling, chaotic, saltwater thoughts in her head
settled then, and clear crystals precipitated. Hoku had mentioned a Reed starship; he thought she was going to it. Somehow, the Reed had known about the Kachina orbiting above and sent a ship. The Reed, which had given the Hopi this land, and which would undoubtedly take it back when they had made it a fit place to live. That’s what they whispered in the lowlands, in the school at Salt. She had believed it, but she had put that thought away, as a vague, distant danger. Hoku must take it very seriously, however. He must think that Tuchvala could offer him the power to confront the Reed. Despite his professed atheism, Hoku still believed—whether he knew it or not—that the Kachina could save them, as they had always been taught. The Vilmir Foundation must believe that, too, or they wouldn’t have sent warriors to take Tuchvala themselves. This man had been a warrior, that much was clear. An ugly weapon of some sort was still clutched in one ebony hand.
This explained a lot. It probably explained how and why her mother had died. Ironic that the lowlanders were seeking the very woman they had killed. Sand did not wonder how the murder had been done: viruses tailored to kill individuals were among the easiest life that could be engineered.
Sand gingerly stepped away from Tuchvala, testing her own legs and finding them finally able. She reached down and pulled the rifle from the black man’s fingers. He was reluctant to let it go; she avoided the disembodied stare a meter to her right.
“That is a weapon,” Tuchvala offered. “I saw him fire it at the Whipper.”
“I know.”
“Put that down. Now.”
Sand turned slowly to face the soft, strangely accented voice. She saw a young man—maybe a bit older than herself. He had a round face that looked Hopi, handsome in a boyish way. He had a Badger Clan look to him, but Sand had never seen him before, of that she was certain. He was dressed oddly, in loosely draped clothes that suggested a pleasant, lean body. He also wore a serious expression and held a pistol in both hands. It was pointed at Sand’s chest.
“Stranger,” Sand said quietly. “The Whipper is about. He killed your friend and he’ll kill us, too. I need this gun.”
“Put it down. The Whipper is dead.”
Sand gaped at him. The man looked pleasant, but not dangerous. Not dangerous enough to defeat the Whipper. Still, he had a gun which he clearly knew how to use. Sand had not yet had a chance to figure the rifle out. She bent over and gently laid it on the ground.
“Okay. Now move away from it. You too,” he said, gesturing with the weapon to include Tuchvala.
He’s nervous, Sand thought. How could someone so nervous kill the Whipper?
“I don’t believe you,” Sand blurted, suddenly. “I don’t believe you killed the Whipper.”
“Good guess,” the man said, the first hint of a smile twitching at his lips. “But he is dead. I’m not alone. And I can kill you.”
Sand didn’t think he would, be she didn’t want to test that just yet. With the Whipper dead, there was no real hurry. Or was there? If the Whipper could find them, so could the lowlanders.
“You’re from the Reed,” she stated, flatly.
“No,” he replied, glancing around nervously. “No, I’m from Parrot Island, up the coast. Cortez here was from the Reed. I’m their translator.”
“A traitor, then,” Sand said, trying to sound indifferent. Parrot Island? Where had she heard of that place? It sounded very familiar—a place with unpleasant associations.
“What’s your clan?” she challenged.
“Why?”
“Perhaps we are related,” she replied.
“Even if we were, I couldn’t help you. But we aren’t, I’m sure. I’m clanless.”
Parrot Island. Clanless. Her fucking father was from there! She had heard him mention it, just once or twice. A small family, the last members of a dead clan, the Parrot Clan. This asshole was a relative of her father’s!
And so not really a relative of hers, not in any real way.
“It must be easy for the clanless to turn traitor,” she sneered.
“Must be,” he replied. “Now, I want you to walk this way with me. I have a friend who needs some help—oh, Jesus.”
He was staring at Tuchvala. She held a pistol much like his own, pointed at him.
“I got this from the dead man,” Tuchvala informed him. “I know it works.”
“I can still shoot your friend.”
“You could,” Tuchvala replied. “But she is the person you are seeking. The one from the sky.”
The young man’s eyes clouded with uncertainty. He believed her! As ridiculous as it seemed.
“Shit.” He sighed and lowered the gun. “Look, I meant you no harm. I’m not very good at this.”
“No, you aren’t,” Sand agreed, as she stepped forward and took his pistol.
“We still have to help my friend,” he said, his tone pleading. “She is very badly hurt.”
“No tricks,” Sand said. “We both have guns now, and were very fucking tired of being chased and pushed around. I will kill you, if I must.”
“What do you want? Why did you come here?” He asked.
“Later. Where is your friend?”
He led them back over the valley floor. Above, the winds had begun, sawing at the harsh stone rims above them. A half-dozen cyan barrels were opening their thick, petal-like maws towards the Sun, who was just now peaking over the walls of the canyon. The light was pale and yellow, choked by the thick clouds of smoke still billowing from the downed Reed ship. They passed the slug-like trail that Sand had left when she was crawling, and they made a slight detour to pick up the resistance cuffs the Whipper had dropped. She made the man put them on.
His friend was in bad shape, and Sand’s impression was that she could not live for long. The woman was beautiful and very alien looking, as certainly an outworlder as the black man. She was half painted with blood, but her breath still whistled harshly, and her eyes, incredibly, were slitted open, feral. Here was the person who could kill a Whipper. A chill finger touched Sand’s spine.
“Tuchvala, aim your gun at her. If she moves at all, shoot her.”
Sand took the cuffs off of the man, and then tentatively knelt beside the woman.
“We’re going to help you,” she said, “But I can’t trust you, whatever you are. You killed a Whipper.”
The woman lashed out at her feebly, and when Sand caught her arms there was surprising strength. The man started forward.
“Teng!” He shouted, and then something in a foreign language. Teng sounded like a name.
Sand felt a lot safer when the cuffs were on. They would tranquilize her arms up to her shoulders, render them nerveless. She wished she had another pair for the woman’s legs—which looked dangerous too.
To her surprise, she found a second pair ticked in a pouch on the woman’s side. They were of Hopi make.
“Where did she get these?” she asked, directing her question to the man.
“Off of the Whipper. Don’t hurt her.”
“Show me the Whipper’s body.”
“Please, Teng needs help.”
“She’ll get it, in a moment. We need the key to open his ship. Or did you take that, too?”
“I don’t think so. What does it look like?”
A cylinder the size of your little finger.”
“We didn’t find that.”
“Come on then,” Sand ordered, waving the gun. “Tuchvala, stay with this woman.”
Resigned, the man trudged off in the direction of a pile of stone rubble, skirting around most of it. Twice, Sand saw him tense as if preparing to attack her, and twice she saw the tension melt out of him when he caught her eye.
“I’ve been wondering what an alien would be like,” he said, as they picked their way over the cracked, weathered stone.
“Have you?”
“Yes. How is
it that you look just like a human woman? I’d heard that report, but it seemed absurd. How could another world have produced such similar species?”
“You’re right. It is absurd. But nature didn’t produce this body; I did.” Sand was warming to this game. This man was even more gullible than he looked.
They entered a narrow cleft-canyon, and Sand could see the dark form of the Whipper lying thirty meters or so up it. Fear gripped her momentarily, and she almost thought she heard the ghostly hu! hu! hu! of the Kachina’s song, but it was only wind, flapping through the stone corridor.
When they reached her former antagonist, she stood as if rooted for long moments. The dread mask had been torn away, and though the face was obscured by blood, Sand had no trouble recognizing her first cousin, Chavo. If she had ever had a friend in her family, it had been Chavo. As children, they had pretended to be from different clans and talked of marriage. As teenagers, they had stopped just short of incest, his penis being the first male member she had ever touched. He had sighed and bitten his lip then, but it was hard to connect that image with this corpse. Tears started, and Sand reflected that she had cried more in these three days then she had in her entire life. Her mother and now Chavo. She could not blame him; the Whipper had been upon him, and he could not have known or cared who she was. And yet, his aim with the Sunbow had been so unerring against the Reed ship and warrior—and so poor against her own Dragonfly, when she escaped from him at the pueblo.
Here he was dead, Kachina no longer. He should be properly buried. She should tell the clan.
Sand found the key in a small pouch under the sash.
“Pick him up,” she whispered to the stranger.
“What?”
“Pick him up!” She screamed.
“Wasn’t he trying to kill you? That’s what it looked like when we showed up. He cut your ship in half!”
“He was my cousin, you bastard!”
The man narrowed his eyes in understanding, and then they flew open wide as the understanding deepened.
“You are not the alien!”