Footsteps in the Sky

by Greg Keyes

  “Leave the woman in,” the old man snapped. “Get Jimmie and this Parrot-Island boy.” He did not look pleased.

  On of the gunmen went to Jimmie’s cell and Alvar heard it hiss open. He swallowed and noticed that his throat seemed a little raw. Some goddamn colona virus? He had had his shots.

  Jimmie was a lot like Alvar expected, but better looking. Dried blood was smeared across his lower face. He had busted his nose and made no attempt to wipe it off.

  Then they opened Alvar’s cell.

  “Come on, boy. The two of you have some questions to answer. Now.” The old man’s voice had none of the warmth in it that Alvar had come to associate with him, both on the mesa-top and in the kiva. It was terrible and cold, like the midwinter nights in the desert around Santa Fe. Alvar wanted desperately to say something, to deflect that malice from himself somehow. Instead he bowed his head and submitted without comment.

  This time they weren’t taken to any public kiva. In fact, they didn’t go far at all. They left the jail and crossed ten meters of bare stone to another concrete building, which, like, the jail, was incongruously ugly when compared to the simple elegance of the rest of the pueblo.

  Alvar noticed that Jimmie kept looking up at the sky. He was humming to himself.

  The interrogation room was three meters square and supplied with straight-backed chairs. There was little else. Alvar had read medieval and early atomic romances in which torture figured prominently, but he saw no recognizable instruments of torture. Why bother when they had the ojo, as they called it here?

  Jimmie went first, and there was no nonsense involved. The lights of the room were dimmed and a pair of goggles were strapped on Jimmie’s face. The old man sat down in a chair facing him. He sneezed. As if by contagion, so did Sand and then the alien. Alvar felt his own nose itch.

  “Red Jimmie,” the old man rasped. “Did you cause the computer to shut down?”

  “Yes.” There was no hesitation on Jimmie’s part.

  The old man wrinkled his face in disgust. “Jimmie, why? She was our faithful companion from the time of our emergence here, even before. How could you do this to her?”

  “She’s not dead, you old fart. She’s just asleep for awhile.”

  If the old man was relieved, he didn’t show it. Instead he leaned forward, eyes intense.

  “Why Jimmie?”

  “I think you know, don’t you? You’ve known I was Hoku’s man for a long time.”

  “There’s something more than Hoku in this business, Jimmie. Hoku is nothing compared to the Reed.”

  “If you want to know about the Reed, ask the warrior.”

  “I will, when she’s well enough. But Jimmie, even the Reed wouldn’t kill us all, wipe this planet clean. Those Kachina up there might. Do you understand that?”

  The icy anger was gone from the old man’s voice, thawed once more into warmth and concern.

  “Spare me your superstition, old man.”

  “It’s not superstition, you asshole!” Sand broke in angrily. Alvar thought that she would go on, but a sudden sneeze—a violent one—dispersed whatever words she might have offered. In any event, the old man held up his hand to quiet her.

  “Okay, Jimmie,” he said tiredly. “Let’s not call them Kachina. Let’s call them terraforming starships, whose job was to make this planet livable for life different from our own. Old, old ships who don’t work as well as they once did. Jimmie, Tuchvala promises us that if we don’t stop them, they will kill all of us, lay the Fifth World bare.”

  Jimmie was staring at Tuchvala. His face was working, and Alvar thought he saw the old spy squinting back tears.

  “Why did you have to come?” He whispered at last. “Why? This place is no longer yours. You cost me nearly everything. May cost me everything before it’s over.”

  Was this the same man? The self-confident smartass from the cell? Who was this Red Jimmie?

  “You killed mother!” Sand screamed, a nearly incoherent screech. Her fists were balled into white-knuckled bludgeons, her lips skinned back from her teeth. “You, not Tuchvala. You!”

  For a moment, Sand’s voice seemed to recede from Alvar, wing up and become something different from sound. The entire world seemed to pulse with the explosive rush of her syllables.

  “Jimmie. Explain it to us, Jimmie.” The old man reached over and took off the goggles. There were tears there.

  “It’s too late,” he whispered, looking at his daughter. “It’s just too late.”

  Alvar felt a hot wind, as if he were a kid standing outside in front of the huge exhaust fans of the arcology, flying a kite. He could almost see the kite, shimmering along the wall of the room. And a sudden, profound sadness swept through him.

  The old man seemed to sway—or was that the room swaying? He leaned towards Jimmie.

  “Bring her back, Jimmie. Bring the computer back for us, so we aren’t helpless against the ships and Hoku. We can forgive a lot, here in the pueblos.”

  “You can never make me one of you, though,” Jimmie replied.

  “You were never one of us because you were always working against us. That can change.”

  “No,” Alvar found himself saying. His own voice sounded weird, distorted. “He can’t change what he is. He’s from the Reed. Like me.” Mother of Jesus, what had he just said? They were all looking at him now, but their eyes were strange, as if her were a long way off and they were searching for him in some obscure place.

  All but Jimmie.

  Yuyahoeva sank slowly to the floor, his eyes still bright and uncomprehending. Sand sagged back too, the anger seeming to leak out of her as she bumped into the wall and slid her back against it, like a cat scratching. Alvar felt a sudden surge of emotion as he watched her, a spiraling, gut-wrenching need.

  The guards were staring around, bewildered.

  Someone spoke—Alvar wasn’t sure who—and the words buzzed and rattled like an electrical short.

  Mary! We’ve been ’fected! Alvar realized, suddenly, as a wave of sound and color seemed to roar up from his feet. That was why they had all been sneezing. They had all been infected with some tailored plague, the kind that the most hopeless addicts on Earth kept in their systems all of the time. What was it carrying? What toxin was in their bodies? It could be anything. Alvar had plagued once, on something that made him happy, happy, happy. This wasn’t that. This was more like the peyote he took one time, but at the same time it was more—emotional. He was not detached or godlike, noticing the little details in things. He was afraid, angry, remorseful—and he was in love with Sand. He wanted that soft woman’s body—a real woman’s body—crushed up against him.

  Tuchvala was the one talking, some slurred dialogue that made no sense at all to Alvar anymore. Things were happening in the room, but the storm in his head made it impossible to pay attention. This could kill them, he knew. Some plagues did that, intentionally or not. Alvar did not want to die like this, flayed open to the universe, a bug with a pin through him as God and Mary thumbed through his lusts and fears.

  Though his head was full of static, he did notice that Jimmie was gone.

  So, apparently, did Sand. Alvar saw her go to the door, her legs jerking as she tried to control them. Alvar followed, discovered that walking felt a lot like standing on the deck of a ship in high seas—with cigarettes for legs. No wonder she was jerking. Jimmie had also engineered some kind of seismic disturbance. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the earth itself was bucking and heaving.

  He saw that Sand stopped long enough to gently take a gun from one of the guards, and it suddenly occurred to him that he could do the same. That might restore some of Teng’s confidence in him, if he walked in and liberated her, guns blazing. He staggered on to the door, but when he tried to repeat Sand’s trick of taking a gun, the guard looked at him with a puzzled—but noticeably hostile expr
ession. In fact, it seemed as if his mouth were expanding, his teeth grown immense, like those of a monstrous horse. Alvar had been bitten by a horse before; he retreated from the Hopi, waited until the guard’s eyes spun elsewhere, and then fled out the door.

  Sand hadn’t gone all that far. She was standing beneath the night sky on the yellow mesa rock, swinging her head in all directions. It was mesmerizing; she just kept turning and turning. A wind ruffled the hem of her skirt, and the yellow of her body suit blazed like the most perfect color. As if the sun was out. Love at first sight. Of course he loved her.

  But she had a gun, and now it was pointed at him, her fugue state broken by his presence.

  “Where is he?” he thought she said. Her face was wonderful and terrible. Her grey eyes grew huge in his vision.

  “I don’t … I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it, with all of his heart.

  “Who are you?” She was coming closer. “What do you want?”

  That was her breath he smelled.

  Was he crying? He was. Why?

  She was close enough to touch him now, and she did.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her hand touched him and lit fire along his cheek, fire that torched down through his skull, rushed to ignite other parts of him.

  Alvar stumbled forward and kissed her. She seemed to respond almost reflexively, and the ground began to shake again. He was holding her arms, and his hands melted through the cotton bodysuit so that his fingers gripped down through her flesh to her very bones.

  It was very confusing after that. Every brush of his skin against her ignited nerve cells in a way that Alvar never knew they could be fired. He had never wanted a woman so much in his life, ever, never loved one as deeply. Her face was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen, and each moment it glowed brighter. If only her expression weren’t so puzzled, whenever she opened her eyes. But she didn’t do that often.

  At some point, he found a way to open her bodysuit at the crotch. He frantically entered her, and they were rolling and squirming on the mesa-top as lava rushed up from Alvar’s feet, collecting and swelling in his groin with volcanic pressure.

  Just before eruption, there was a moment of perfect clarity. He was fucking a woman he didn’t know, didn’t care for in the least. When he closed his eyes, it was Teng there. These thigh’s did not grip the way Teng’s did, the arms were not as rough. But the last time he and Teng had made love, she had actually looked at him … at him. This woman was looking at him, hissing, face contorted, but she didn’t know who he was. She didn’t care either.

  Thus, when Alvar cried out, it was as much with despair as with ecstasy, and the throbbing pulses in the aftermath of his orgasm were much more like pain then pleasure. He disengaged and rolled away from the woman, disgusted, deeply depressed.

  Teng was standing over him, framed by stars. For a moment he thought it might be some plague-inspired vision—but up until now he hadn’t actually seen anything that wasn’t there. Teng’s face was as fixed as an ivory statue. Her bandaged arm hung loosely, but the other gripped a black pistol.

  “So that’s how it is, Alvar,” she said, towering over him like the goddess she was. Her words fell on him like hail. She stared at him a moment longer, and he thought—but it could be the plague—that her whole frame was trembling, like a string on a guitar. As if something terrible were trying to escape her will.

  “Today is a good day to die, Alvar, remember?” Teng raised the gun and pointed it at Alvar.

  Not like this. At least when I’m sober, so I can meet death with real fear instead of confusion! Alvar struggled to speak, but his mouth was foam rubber. I love you, Teng, I really do. He closed his eyes.

  “Let’s go,” another voice cried. “Oh, shit.”

  It was Jimmie, coming up behind Teng.

  “Oh, shit. Sand I’m sorry, girl,” he said.

  Sand was levered up on her palms. She gathered her self quickly, however, despite her tangled and disarrayed clothing, and launched herself clumsily at Jimmie.

  Teng scarcely moved. Her hand seemed to merely brush at Sand. Jimmie was screaming hoarsely and incoherently, and then Sand was on the ground. Jimmie knelt beside her.

  “You’re right,” said Teng. “It’s time to go. See you in Hell, Alvar.”

  With that she turned and strode away without a backwards glance, and after a moment’s hesitation, Jimmie followed.

  Alvar groaned and sank back down to the quaking stone, praying for the plague to end.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Hoku watched Homikniwa sprint ahead, gun snapping first this way and then that. The speed and precision of the man was amazing. Hoku wondered where Homikniwa could have learned to move so, on a planet which had never known war. There was much that he did not know about the little man; Homikniwa had come to him long before Hoku became mother-father of the coastal communities. In those hard times, Homikniwa had been invaluable, both as a companion and as a bodyguard. When Abraham and his faction had made their move against him—fifteen years ago?—Homikniwa had been there. Alone, in the desert, it had been the two of them against six men. But those six were amateur killers, and Homikniwa was a professional. Five corpses and one frightened witness had marked the end of Hoku’s struggle for succession. Only one of them had Hoku killed himself, and that had been a lucky shot. But after that Hoku knew he could kill, if need be. That one man was the only man Hoku had killed with his own hands, but when time came to arrange the death of Pela, Hoku had been able to do so without flinching. Killing was power, and Hoku understood the uses of power.

  Still, he knew better than to kill too much, and to make it look accidental when he did. The Hopitu-Shinumu—whether progressive or traditional—were not used to violent death. It terrified them, and though he wanted people to be afraid of him, to respect him—he did not want them to hate him as an inhuman monster.

  Red Jimmie had saved him a lot of deaths. With all of their computer defenses down and its defenders plagued into oblivion, he had thus far taken the pueblo without firing a shot. People would remember that about him. They would remember that he loved his people, even the stupid traditionals, and that he was only doing what was best for them.

  Homikniwa motioned him on ahead. It was safe. Hoku, unarmed—the mother-father should not have to arm himself—moved on up into the pueblo proper.

  The plague was a short-lived one: the virus itself was probably already dead in most of its human hosts, and the drug it produced would run its course in perhaps six or seven hours. That gave Hoku plenty of time to disarm the pueblo warriors, find the alien, and get down to the business of consolidating his power here. With Tuwanasavi under his control, the other pueblos would be of little difficulty; the great kivas and the rites they controlled were all here, and so were most of the clan headmen. He would allow them their traditional ways for many years—wean them slowly—but by the time he went to meet Mas—by the time he was dead, he would see them modernized, ready to face the Reed toe-to-toe. And whether he ever gained control of the alien ships or not, the Reed would at least believe he had, if he could find some way to deal with the warship in orbit.

  Deep breaths, and one thing at a time. Flyers were settling everywhere, now, like bees on corn tassels. The sky was full of them.

  The jail would be his first stop. Get Jimmie out, have him put the computer back to its tasks, but working for Hoku. And find the alien. Was it true, as Jimmie said, that it wore the shape of dead Pela? Or was it possible that the strain had become too much for the old traitor, that he saw his dead wife in everything? Hoku would find out, without need for middle-men. He could put his own hands to the task, and that appealed to him, after the defection of his satellites.

  An hour later, Hoku had installed himself in the clan council building and was receiving reports from around the mesa. The reports were good, ge
nerally—there had still been no fighting to speak of, though one traditionals had shot himself in the foot with a Wasp. Yuyahoeva—the ostensible mother-father of Tuwanasavi—had been found and was recovering from the effects of the plague in isolation; Hoku wanted him pliable, and the drug would make him that. The woman Sand and more importantly the alien were both still unaccounted for, but Hoku did not imagine that they could have escaped the mesa while plagued. Hoku repeated this to himself over and over. How could one woman continue to stay out of his grasp?

  Another disturbing problem was the absence of Red Jimmie. That meant that Hoku still did not have access to pueblo data or defensive capabilities. He must rely on information beamed to him from the coast or from space—and Hoku trusted nothing from space anymore. Still, he had a fairly tight net around the pueblo, in case this Sand did manage to summon the coherence to try and fly out again. Impatiently, he called the cube in front of him back to life, though he had silenced it only a moment before.

  On his order, the cube projected a flat relief map on the wall. There was the mesa, the crooked seams of the land around it. His own flyers were ubiquitous, a swarm of red dots identified by a coded and always changing frequency. Yellow marked any pueblo flyers, and the screen showed them to be stationary, all of them. Sighing, Hoku leaned back and contemplated the shifting patterns of the red lights as they conducted search sweeps over the mesa and the rugged land near it. He had designed the pattern himself, and was slightly displeased to see that it varied a bit from his orders. Here, a flyer had deviated into another’s search territory, there, one had spiraled too far across the broken cliff-side. Surely, no plagued woman could negotiate such terrain.

  Then again, each man out there wanted to be the one to find Sand and the alien, to please Hoku, and so he could not blame them too much for such personal initiative. All in all, the search seemed efficient.