Footsteps in the Sky

by Greg Keyes

  The little man rose shakily to his feet.

  “Leave these people alone. Just get the fuck out of here and leave them alone.” He spoke in English, not the local language.

  “Who are you?” she repeated, rising to her feet also, watching him for any move. She still had the pain pistol, but he had a sidearm as well. Who would be quicker? And if what she suspected was true, the pain pistol might not hurt him at all.

  “Escobar Jemez, of the colonial Peacekeepers, at your service,” he said, mockingly.

  A wave of nausea swept through Teng, but she kept her focus. She would have to move soon.

  “Bullshit,” she said. “How can that be?”

  “You think the Foundation just sent one traitor here? You know better than that.”

  “You sent that message. Not Jimmie: you.”

  “I shouldn’t have done it. I knew that even then. This place isn’t for the Reed. They have no claim on this place.”

  “Fuck you,” Teng gasped. “They bought and paid for this planet. You too.”

  “That’s the way you see things,” Jemez said. “I don’t see them that way. I’ve been here twenty-five years.”

  He didn’t look that old. Had he been rejuvenated once, already? Paid in advance?

  “You went native,” Teng observed. “How touching.”

  He went for his pistol, and Teng jumped. They came together in a flurry of blows. Fists like rocks slammed into Teng, but she felt her own punches land, too. She got a fistful of hair and yanked his head back, felt the knife-edge of her hand deflected from his throat. Something clattered near their feet, and she twisted, managed to throw him a meter or so. Her hand found the gun without the assistance of her eyes, and she brought it up into his belly as he closed again. Fired, once, twice, three times.

  These bullets were not armor piercing: they did not slide cleanly through his body, but mushroomed, kicking him backwards. He hit the rocks, curled around his belly, so that she could see the caverns that had been torn from his back. Teng scrambled away; he might still get up. She pointed the pistol at his head and carefully pulled the trigger.

  The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

  No matter. Jemez looked up at her with glazed eyes, but the light in them was fading. Or was that the light she saw growing dimmer? It was very hard to breathe, now. She cast about, looking for her rifle.

  Green light stabbed within a meter of her. She had forgotten the fucking flyer. If he had another missile … But she couldn’t even run from the laser.

  The flyer puffed then, and the trail of a missile screamed out of it. Teng watched it, ready to meet death, but the trail sang over her head. She threw herself down, and even to her protected ears, the detonation was deafening. Above her, lasers flickered.

  She turned her head, and there, coming over the ridge, was a peacekeeper flyer, listing. A dark smudge showed where it had taken a direct hit.

  The colonial flyer dropped out of the air, however, underjets flaming. It limped away, back down toward the plain.

  “Shu!” said the voice in her ear. Who was that? Vraslav?

  “Come get me,” she hissed. “Ignore them. Come get me.”

  Figures were scrambling out of the burning flyer, which had managed to land. Two men, a woman—one of them was Alvar.

  Something broke in Teng, something besides her modified parts.

  “Just come get me,” she repeated.

  For the second time, Sand felt the Bluehawk jar to earth. She felt the heat seeping up through the floor and knew that the underjets were burning. Outside, she could see Kewa’s body, and beyond that the shelter where Jimmie and Tuchvala lay.

  The hatchway to the cockpit swung open, and a grim faced Hoku came through it. He unfastened Alvar’s straps and then her own.

  “Go,” he said harshly. “Get out. We’re on fire.”

  Sand scrambled out as best she could without using her arms, which were still cuffed and numb. Alvar followed, even more clumsily, and then Hoku, pistol in hand. The three of them rushed away from the burning Bluehawk; flames were fluttering underneath it as if it were being roasted.

  “Take our cuffs off, Hoku,” she gasped. “I’ll help if I can.”

  He ignored her. He was stock-still looking up at the mountain. A haze of smoke drifted there, but it did not entirely obscure the unfamiliar flyer as it dipped down.

  “For Masaw’s children!” Sand shrieked. “Uncuff me!”

  Instead, Hoku took up a marksman’s stance with the pistol and waited. Sand thought about rushing him, but there was no point; she could accomplish nothing. Instead she ran over to where Tuchvala and Jimmie lay.

  Tuchvala looked asleep, and there were splints on her leg. Jimmie watched her coming. He looked hurt, but Sand couldn’t tell how bad.

  “Sand. …” he began, but her kick in his ribs cut him short and set him to coughing.

  “Uncuff me, you murdering bastard,” she screamed. Jimmie scrambled back from her, crabwise.

  “Uncuff me!” she repeated.

  “Wait!” Jimmie howled as she kicked him again, this time in the arm he raised to defend himself.

  “Wait. I will.”

  Sand stopped and stood panting as her father jerkily climbed to his feet. She kept him impaled with her stare, and it seemed to draw him to her, though the reluctance was plain in his eyes. He reached up and fingered the cuffs, and suddenly Sand could feel her arms again. She shook the cuffs of and Jimmie backed up. He walked off a few meters and sat back down. Sand watched him go, then turned to Tuchvala.

  Tuchvala was breathing regularly. Sand knelt and stroked her face, very gently.

  “Tuchvala?” she said. Her mother’s face twitched, her eyes opened.

  “Sand? Sand, what’s happening?”

  Sand gasped, realized that she was crying. She took Tuchvala in her arms and hugged her, pressed the bitterness of her tears against the other woman’s cheek.

  “It’s good to see you, Tuchvala,” she said.

  “Sand,” Tuchvala sighed, clinging back.

  The moment seemed to last forever, but Sand knew she could afford very little time. Reluctantly, she turned back towards Hoku and the mountain.

  Hoku was still standing there, waiting. The Reed flyer had risen again, hovering over the erstwhile battlefield. Sand watched it, made ready to die. They would not get Tuchvala away from her again, not while she lived.

  But the flyer turned its nose away from them, and with a distant whine, disappeared west over the hills. Hoku howled and fired three shots after it, then began running over the rough ground, favoring his right leg.

  Feeling weak and unsure of what was happening, Sand sat back down. Alvar was leaning against a stone, watching Hoku dwindle in the distance. Jimmie still sat where he had retreated to, his back to them.

  “Are you okay, Tuchvala?” Sand asked.

  “I think so, Sand,” the woman answered. “But I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  Sand expelled a harsh little laugh. “I don’t either, my friend. I only know we’re together again.” She reached over and squeezed Tuchvala’s hand.

  “Teng, what are you doing?” she heard Alvar mutter. Wearily, Sand stood and walked over to where he was, and without a word, freed him of his cuffs. He looked at her with surprise.

  “Thanks,” he said, with real gratitude. Sand nodded. The Bluehawk was burning merrily, now, thick smoke billowing out of its interior.

  “We should move away from that,” Sand said.

  Tuchvala was incapable of walking, but she and Alvar together managed to carry her another hundred paces from the burning craft. Jimmie did not follow, but he watched Sand with eyes she was unwilling to meet. Why? She was justified in hating him.

  But at the moment, for some reason, she did not.

  “Can you puzzle any
of this out?” She asked Alvar, when they again slumped down to the desert floor. He shrugged, but looked thoughtful.

  “Maybe,” he said, after a long moment. “If I know Teng, maybe.”

  “Well?”

  “I think she’s going to do something extreme, Sand. I think she’s decided to fuck it all.

  “Meaning?”

  Alvar looked up to the sky. The clouds were clearing rapidly, hastening east to bring rain to the pueblos. Sand wondered briefly how many days Pela had been dead: she had lost track. Could that be her mother up there, wearing her mask of cotton?

  “She’s going to attack the ships,” Alvar said quietly.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Hoku found Homikniwa in the rocks, painted red with his own blood. He was still breathing, and his eyes, though fogged with approaching death, flickered with recognition when Hoku scrambled down towards him.

  “Ah, no,” Hoku hissed. “Hom!”

  Homikniwa shifted his head feebly.

  “I’m sorry, Hoku,” he said. Blood frothed on his lips. “It’s just been too long. Forgotten too much.”

  How could Homikniwa still be alive at all? Hoku counted at least five bullet holes in the little man.

  “It’s okay, Hom,” he said. “I. …” He reached down to his friend. Homikniwa’s blood felt sticky, like syrup. Hoku had never actually had another person’s blood on his skin. Now, he was smeared in it as he raised Homikniwa’s head to hold it.

  “There’s more, Hoku. It was me that. … The Reed planted me here, long ago, to spy on you. I did bad things at first, evil things. I was a two-heart, Hoku. Two-hearts are real.”

  Hoku stared down at what was left of his friend.

  “You’re like her, aren’t you?” Hoku asked.

  “Not anymore. Hoku, I betrayed the Fifth World, long ago. But it’s my home now. These are my people. Believe that Hoku. I want to be buried a Hopi.”

  “Of course you are Hopi, Hom. The best of us, that’s you.”

  Homikniwa coughed again.

  “You can stop the Reed, Hoku.” His voice was draining out of him, his eyes were already dull.

  “But you have to cooperate with the traditionals. Do you understand? I can’t see you anymore, brother. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you, brother. I hear you, ibaba.”

  A dry wind bustled about them, stealing off the lingering smell of rain and explosives. A clean, husking wind. Homikniwa continued to mumble, and Hoku made soothing sounds as the world rotated into night, as the stars lit. By the time the little Moon rose, Homikniwa was speaking no longer, but Hoku continued to talk to him. The wind died down, but Hoku had inhaled it. It swirled within him now, and for the first time in his adult life, Hoku had no plans, no schemes, nothing he could conceive of doing, but to sing softly, to sing the song of the Sipapuni that he had tried so hard to forget, to beg the Kachina to come and take one of their own.

  “That is very bad,” Tuchvala said, breaking the silence that followed Alvar’s pronouncement.

  “If she attacks my sisters, there will be no stopping them. They will kill us all.”

  Alvar felt the chill of coming night, but could think of no way to stave it off, nothing to say. He could not even imagine a whole world wiped clean, but the picture Tuchvala painted seemed real enough. She believed it, Sand believed it. What choice did Alvar have?

  “This is my fault,” he muttered.

  “What? What language is that?” Sand asked him. She seemed calm, bereft of the fire that had seemed so intrinsic to her from the moment they met.

  “It’s called Norte. It’s what we speak back home.”

  “Where is that?”

  “I was born in Santa Fe,” Alvar answered. An ugly place, he added to himself. An ugly place I miss more than the memory of God.

  “On Earth? That’s on Earth.”

  “Yes. What I said was, ‘this is my fault’.”

  “Is it?” Sand asked mildly. You summoned Tuchvala’s sisters here, then commed the Reed to come and get them? You arranged for Hoku to have my father kill my mother, and then you somehow put the idea in my head that I should hall Tuchvala all over the Fifth World like she was my toy and I some selfish child? No offense, Alvar, but you don’t seem capable of all that.”

  “No,” Alvar answered. “No, I’m not capable of anything grandiose. But Teng is my fault. I think when she saw us … ah, you remember … I think that drove her over the edge. Otherwise, she would have just taken Tuchvala and gone.” He raised his hands and added hastily, “I know that isn’t what any of you wanted. But it couldn’t be as bad as having the whole world destroyed.”

  Tuchvala cut in. “He’s right. It would be better. I wonder …” she trailed off, then turned back to Alvar. “What kind of weapons does she have? Could she win? Could she destroy my sisters and me?”

  Alvar shook his head. “When she was saner, she didn’t even want to try. I don’t know. If anyone can beat anything, it would be Teng. But we came in one little ship, cobbled together. Against those three monsters in orbit—ah, no offense—I don’t see what she can do. But then, I’m sure she didn’t show me all of the weapons, either.”

  Tuchvala shrugged. “I suppose we will see. If I could talk to my sisters first, that would be good. Sand, can we contact your people? Or even Hoku’s?”

  “I don’t know. Hoku’s gone insane, too. But I would guess any transceivers were in the Bluehawk. I suppose Hoku’s men will come looking for him, eventually, but unless the computers are back on line, we don’t have much of a chance.”

  Sand caught movement from the corner of her eye. It was Jimmie, shuffling up behind them. His gaze slipped about, unwilling to touch any of theirs. He reached into his jacket and removed a black, translucent cube. He laid it near Sand, then walked off, slowly, ten meters or so.

  It was a transceiver.

  Sand picked up the cube, felt the weight of it. She spoke the code for the council chamber in Tuwanasavi. It glowed and cleared, to reveal a longish man in the garb of Hoku’s lieutenants.

  “This is SandGreyGirl of the Sand clan,” she said. “How is your day, ibaba?”

  The man frowned and addressed her stiffly.

  “What does this concern?”

  “Your chief and the rest of us are in the desert west of the pueblos, at the feet of the Cornbeetle mountains. I suggest you send a flyer to get us.”

  “If the mother-father is there, I would like to speak to him.”

  “He’s off hunting,” Sand said. “Come get us. I’ll leave this on so you can have a signal.”

  She broke visual contact and set the cube down. It began pinging for attention almost immediately, and she lifted it again and threw it as far as she could.

  Hoku paused over the corpse of Kewa for a long moment, unsure what to feel. Here was a woman he hardly knew, and he had killed her on a gamble. He had killed her. He once believed he was up to that; he had planned deaths all of his life. He had had Pela killed, and never flinched; he was as insulated from her death as he was from the vacuum and cold of deep space. Even when he realized that the woman need not have died, he was able to justify his decision, move on.

  Now Homikniwa, whom he loved, was dead. Kewa, whom he could have loved lay at his feet, her glassy eyes fixed on mystery. His Bluehawk was still burning, and in the unsteady light her shadow shivered about her like a ghost.

  This is what comes of trying to make order out of chaos, Hoku thought. The hero twins did that—made the world orderly and sane—and he had always supposed, deep down, that he and Hom were the hero twins. But no, he was Coyote, who only thought he could bring order. Coyote, more often tricking himself than anyone else, but bringing disaster to all.

  Part of him sneered at that thought. What was a coyote? No Fifth Worlder had ever seen one. But now he had a picture to go with the old sto
ries, and the picture was of himself. Not the happy trickster, but the jealous destroyer. Was that it? Had he always been jealous of those with close clan and kin, of the pueblos?

  Part of him rejected that, too. It was just that his vision had been so clear. What hope did the pueblos have against something like the Reed, against creatures like Homikniwa and Teng? Probably about as much chance as he and his lowlanders, in retrospect, which meant none at all. But he had had to try! Now the alien woman—this Tuchvala was here, in his grasp. He could see her with the others, huddled beneath the stars. They had watched him impassively when he returned, carrying Hom’s body.

  Well, he had her. What now? He went over to ask.

  No one spoke to him when he joined the circle. He didn’t expect them to. Hoku turned to Sand, respectfully not meeting her eyes.

  “I had my reasons, all of you,” he said at last. “Looking back, maybe I was wrong. But I saw the Reed coming—for us, or worse, for our children, and I saw us helpless. Helpless. I don’t want forgiveness from any of you; forgiveness wouldn’t help any of us. Sand, I owe you a clan debt, and someday, one way or another, you may collect that. I don’t know. I killed your mother.”

  Sand just watched him, her face tired and unreadable. Hoku went on. “Jimmie didn’t know. He would never have done it. We infected him with a virus, but it was a virus which could only kill Pela. When he touched her, or kissed her. …”

  “I kissed her!” The anguished cry was barely human. Jimmie was on his feet, and for one moment, Hoku thought he had a gun in his hand, or a knife, that he would fling himself at Hoku. But instead, he just stood there, shuddering, weeping.

  “Sit down, father,” Sand said quietly. “Sit down and listen to what Hoku has to say.”

  “I killed her, not Jimmie,” Hoku repeated. Jimmie sat down, gasping for breath. What could Hoku ever do for him? What was done was done.

  “My friend is dead,” Hoku went on. “Before he died, he told me what he has always told me; that the Hopi should be one people.”

  “The pueblos will never follow you, conquered or free,” Sand told him, without heat.