The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  "Haul away!"

  A few seconds later Marc threw himself flat on the rock at the top, panting and scratched and bleeding, the smell of his own sweat thick in his nostrils and the taste of vomit at the back of his throat.

  Hey, you were nearly defan Vitrac there; you're lucky you don't need new underwear. Not time to be a saint yet, you.

  Tahyo stood shivering in splay-legged panic for a while, then went over and christened the palm tree, trotting around the top of the column as he investigated their new surroundings. Marc suppressed an impulse to kick the gangling animal; the cold sweat was still pouring down his face.

  "Sheee-it, that was scary!" Cynthia said, scolding.

  "Weft. Mais, love me, love my dog," Marc said.

  "Quite right," Blair said, and she glared at them both.

  Marc controlled his breathing and took a careful sip from his canteen; the ones they had here might have to last awhile. Then he rolled to the edge and looked down.

  "Jadviga's talking to her husband. She looks a bit worried… wait a minute…"

  One of the Neanderthals made a grab for the woman. Without even looking aside, Binkis drew the machete at his waist and cut backhanded. The man-thing's hand dropped in the dirt, and he ran off shrieking, clutching at the stump as it sent red gouts into the air.

  "Shee-it," Cynthia said quietly, swallowing.

  "This is odd," Blair said. "According to reports, Franziskus Binkis is, if not a mild-mannered pilot, an unexceptional one. How exactly did he come to be the Great White… er, how did he come to rule this bunch? They're not turning on him for lopping off a hand. Look at the way they're cringing, even that older one in the ritualistic gear."

  Jadviga seemed to be having second thoughts as well. She shook her head, once and again, and began backing away from her husband. Then she turned and bolted for the ladder; Binkis made a gesture, and two of his followers leaped, brought her down, lashed wrists and ankles together, and carried her away.

  The pilot himself approached a little closer. "Come down!" he called, his hands cupped around his mouth. "Come down, and you will not be harmed!"

  "Said the spider to the fly, eh?" Marc called back. "Get those hairy goons away and we'll talk. We came here to rescue you, vieux!"

  He suppressed a plaintive: What the hell's going on?

  "Circumstances have changed," Binkis said.

  Marc shivered slightly. There was something… strange in the

  Lithuanian's voice, and it wasn't just the clotted accent. There was a flatness to it, a lack of affect. And the way he turned his head to look at the piled boxes of supplies had a mechanical quality to it—supple, but disconcertingly precise. He grunted and gestured. Half a dozen of the shambling figures moved towards the stacked crates of supplies.

  "Can't let them do that," Marc muttered, and reached for his rifle.

  Binkis turned as Marc leveled it, and brought the AK to his shoulder. Marc ignored him; a hundred yards away, a hundred feet down… with an ordinary assault rifle and iron sights, it would take a miracle for the EastBloc pilot to hit anything. Marc aimed instead at one of the Neanderthals, aimed for the ground at his feet. Shooting down a man who held nothing but a wooden spear and stone hatchet wasn't something he'd do if there was any choice, and the dirt spurting up at the man's feet ought to do it. Breathe out and squeeze the trigger—

  A bullet went crack over Marc's head, close enough to feel the hot wind of its passage. Another struck not far from his face, peppering him with grit blasted free, making him claw at his eyes with a shout of pain. A third and forth struck the rifle from his hands. By the time he had cleared the grit from under his lids the irreplaceable weapon was tinkling in pieces over the rocks at the foot of the column.

  "Down!" Blair shouted, suiting action to words; Cynthia followed with prompt prudence. "Flat!"

  "Jesus!" Marc said reverently, looking at the blood on the palm he had wiped across his face. "There is something very goddamn wrong here, eh? Nobody shoots that good offhand."

  "I should say so," Blair said. "I'd have a shot at them myself, but on second thought, no, perhaps not."

  Cynthia crawled close. "Well, there's always this," she said, and pulled a canvas bandolier from around her neck. "From when we excavated that well." The plastique was in blocks about the size of an ordinary brick; the time-fuses were ready to cut.

  "There won't be much left of the bally gear if we use that," Blair warned.

  "Weh," Marc said, nodding once. "But we can't let that stuff fall into Binkis' hands, or his merry friends'. And we can't sit around and discuss it. Let's do it."

  All three of them took out a block of the plastic explosive, pushed a detonator into the soft, doughy material, and pinched off a six-second length.

  "You drop yours straight down, Cynthia," Marc said. "Chris, you go long. I'll aim right for the crates. One, two, three."

  The woman rolled onto her back, pinched the detonator to start it, and tossed it gently behind her. The four-pound block of explosive cleared the lip of the column's edge with barely an inch to spare and dropped, trailing a hissing sound and a thin line of blue smoke. The men threw an instant later; Marc came up on one elbow and chucked underarm like a softball pitcher, and behind him, Blair came to his knees and used an odd-looking circular overarm toss.

  "One, two, three, four—," Marc counted.

  CRANNNG! Bits and pieces of boxes, gear, and rock fountained up, and the ladder disappeared in a whirlwind of splinters and chunks. The basalt of the column quivered beneath them; it was far too thick to be brought down, but the sensation was unpleasant anyway.

  CRANNNG! CRANNNG!

  The sound of the second and third blasts was a little flatter than the first, not being partially confined by the rock. They did have a background of screaming howls. Marc shook his head to try to clear the ringing in his ears, leopard-crawled to the edge of the column, and peeked cautiously over. Most of the Neanderthals who weren't down still or writhing were running fast. One of them had Binkis over a shoulder; no way to tell whether the EastBloc pilot was dead, or how badly he was injured if he wasn't.

  And the piled boxes of supplies were shattered, and the remnants burning with the fierce bright flames that this oxygen-rich atmosphere bred. A firecracker ripple spoke of ammunition cooking off…

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Look!" Teesa cried desperately. "The beastmen flee! The fire-from-the-sky has struck them!"

  Heads turned, and it was true; dozens of the Wergu fled across the open downs, howling witlessly. The sweat of fear still gleamed on the limbs of the Cloud Mountain warriors, its smell rank, but she could see the spirit return in them. Through the Cave Master, she could feel the fierce swell of their will to battle. And the mind—the strange mind, the one that had touched hers through the circlet—had flared and gone blank. Not dead, but… away.

  "So come!" she cried, and clambered up to run forward.

  The death-maker went to her shoulder. A dot appeared in her vision as she stared down the barrel; with the dreamlike certainty of the Cave Master she could tell that marked the place the little darts would fly.

  Crack. A beastman toppled backward. Crack. Another. A third shot wildly at her, until a flurry of blowgun darts brought him down, convulsing as the black-spider venom had its way with him.

  "Well, well," Marc said, looking down. "The day's full of surprises, isn't it?"

  As he knelt, Tahyo stood beside him, nose pointed alertly and tail wagging slightly. The other two humans had a similar look.

  The newcomers were putting out fires and looking around the former campsite. Others dragged the Neanderthal corpses together off to one side. And one stood below, looking up at him.

  A true human, like the rest. Unlike most of the others, she was female: around twenty Earth-years, he judged, and near his own height. Slender, like a runner or gymnast, with long blond hair falling past her shoulders and confined by a headband of some silvery substance. She wore a loincloth of some taw
ny fur with flaps falling halfway to her knees before and behind, and a halter of the same, shaped like a sports bra. A machete rode at one hip, a bronze knife at the other, and a bandolier held magazines for the AK-47 she carried with easy assurance. Her face was alien, high-cheeked, snub-nosed, with a full-lipped mouth and pointed chin; her eyes were turquoise, bright against the honey-amber color of her skin.

  Blair said thoughtfully, "Does that remind you of anyone?"

  "She's a dead ringer for that woman in the fur bikini who ran past the Russian probe back in '62," Cynthia said. "Couldn't be the same one, she's too young, but she's definitely the same type. So are the spearmen."

  "Not just spearmen," Marc said, watching one of them pull a long shamboo dart out of a Neanderthal corpse. "Those are blowguns they've got slung across their backs, and poisoned darts, at a guess. And there are a few bronze tools there, as well as polished stone."

  "High-grade hunter-gatherer culture, or maybe Neolithic, with contacts with someone more advanced. The coastal towns, at a guess," Blair said.

  "Let's not assume they're friends, just 'cause they look pretty," Cynthia said sharply.

  Below Marc, the yellow-haired woman gestured again: Come down. Then she pointed to her lips and spoke, then touched her ears. We will talk.

  "Mais, we don't have a language in common, lady," Marc muttered.

  Just then a pre-pubescent girl came up and stood beside the woman; they looked very alike, perhaps sisters, perhaps just members of a tribe with a limited gene pool. The older woman gestured again, and then turned to say something to one of the warriors; the man touched his spear shaft to his forehead and hurried off.

  "Well, the young lady is in charge," Blair said, stroking his chin.

  "Yeah, could be they're feminist cannibals and torturers," Cynthia observed dryly.

  "I don't think we have much choice but to try and make contact," Marc said, a little reluctantly. "There's the enemy-of-my-enemy bit, and we don't have enough water to stay up here more than a few days. Plus we really, really need help getting back home now that all that gear got blasted to bits—and we need help finding out what the hell's going on here."

  "I'm a linguist," Blair pointed out. Cynthia laid a quick hand on his shoulder, and Marc shook his head.

  "I've had more experience with primitives. Let me down on the rope, and then pull it back up quick when I'm on the ground."

  Both of them looked at him. Tahyo did, too, and whined plaintively; that made everyone chuckle. Marc stood up and shouted. The woman looked at him, and so did most of her followers. He ostentatiously set down his weapons, held up his hands to show them empty, and made an I'm coming gesture.

  The woman froze for a moment, and then called an order. The young girl took her war-gear and walked back a hundred yards; the rest of the warriors backed off likewise, most of them squatting on their haunches and leaning on the shafts of their spears, apart from the ones on burial detail or camp-chores.

  "Mais, that's a gesture, at least," Marc said.

  "And only a gesture," Blair said.

  Marc nodded at the warning. His two comrades reeved the rope through the loop of a piton driven into a fissure in the basalt near the lip, and Marc snugged the loop under his arms. It still felt a bit like walking naked out of an air lock in deep space when he slipped over the lip of the column, holding the rope and fending off with his feet as they lowered him down the steep rock, smooth and swift. Loose rock shifted among the scree at the base; he cast off the rope and turned around, walking down towards the… Priestess? Princess? Whatever?

  Teesa started as the stranger walked towards her. That is the man I saw in my dreams! she thought, awed.

  She touched her hand to her forehead and bowed slightly. The stranger smiled at her and made an expressive gesture—shrugging his shoulders and turning his palms up.

  That was so human and yet so strange that she fought back a laugh, and looked at him with fresh eyes. He wore odd garb: closed sandals that covered his feet completely, leggings of woven cloth joined together at the waist, a heavy belt. She recognized the 'saur hide of that and the boots, and her brows went up—his folk must be mighty hunters, and from the workmanship of the metal buckle also gifted makers. His build was much like men of her folk, muscular and broad-shouldered but lean and long in the limb, and he was not much different in the color of his sun-bronzed skin.

  She judged that he would be a good warrior, strong and quick; right now he was bare to the waist, and showed the scratches and grazes that would come of fighting or fleeing.

  Wholly alien was the cast of his features, and the darkness of hair and eye. Through the Cave Master she could feel the contours of his mind, and that was both oddly new and familiar. A smile dimpled her cheek as she felt his eyes on her face and body, looking at her as a man gazed on a woman, but without any hint of anger.

  "Who are you, warrior, that you walk my dreams and hurl thunder?" she asked. "You are not as the one who now leads the beastmen against us—you are his enemy, is that not so?"

  Then he spoke in turn, and she frowned in puzzlement. It was true speech, not beastman gruntings, but it was as alien as the talk of the coast-men towns. And though she knew only a few words of that, this was plainly something else again.

  Need drove, despite the risk. She smiled reassuringly, and touched the Cave Master. Then she advanced, slowly, meeting his eyes as she reached out to lay fingers on his temples. He made no objection. With the touch established, she reached…

  God, she's gorgeous, Marc thought. Then: Down, boy! Concentrate on the job here! And: Hey, she looks a lot like the woman in that dream I had… looks a lot like the one the probe showed back in '62. Couldn't be her, of course…

  Closer, he could see that she was close to his own midtwenties, with a few fine lines beside the slanted blue eyes. Her teeth showed white and even when she smiled; there was a smell of clean sweat, well-cured leather, and some spicy herb about her, as well as a faint hint of cordite. The leather of her garments was fine-grained, probably from some young antelope, and dyed along its edges with flowing patterns. Her hands were long-fingered and graceful as she gestured, the nails pared close and kept clean—cleaner than his, right now.

  She spoke; the language was utterly strange, not even the sounds like Kartahownian or any of the tribal dialects he'd acquired a smattering of. Some people could pick up a strange tongue in a few weeks; unfortunately, they were extremely rare and none of them had the other qualifications necessary to get sent to Venus. So he'd be stuck drudging through more show-and-tell…

  Might as well start with names, he thought.

  Then the woman stepped closer. That gave him a better look at the headband she was wearing, and his eyes went wide. It wasn't copper or gold or bronze, and the lines of it were sleek enough to look machined. And the setting for the jewel at the center was smoothly seamless, not like anything he'd ever seen before.

  The stone was a clear, translucent green, with depths that seemed infinite. Marc stared at it as the woman slowly raised her hands and set them on either side of his head; he could feel her fingertips searching through the close-cropped hair, settling into contact with his skin.

  Then they clamped down hard. Marc opened his mouth…

  … and staggered up from his knees. His comrades' voices came to him, hard with concern.

  "I'm not harmed!" he said, turning and shouting.

  Then his mouth and tongue froze, as he realized he'd spoken in a language he had never learned. Something went click in his head, and he called the same words in English.

  "What happened?" Blair called.

  "I haven't got the faintest idea," Marc called, feeling sweat breaking out all over his body.

  His head… not ached. It felt suffused. And his stomach rebelled in sympathy; he barely managed to suppress it. Just what he needed to demonstrate his diplomatic skills: projectile vomiting.

  "But oo ye yi, I'm going to find out!"

  He turned back to th
e woman. She touched the base of her throat.

  "I am Teesa, of the Cloud Mountain folk; my sign is the Eagle," she said.

  And he understood her perfectly; even that her name incorporated her mother's, with a shift from d to a t sound, and that "folk" was an elided form of a word that had once meant clan-hearth-in-common, and that the sign was partly a totem inherited with the maternal bloodline, and partly something found in dreams and visions…

  "I'm Marc Vitrac," he replied, wincing at the cataract of data. "Ah… American, of the Terrans… the Sky People." What did you do to me? he didn't ask aloud.

  Instead he went on: "How did you teach me this language?"

  She smiled and made a soothing gesture… and he knew what the gesture, a sort of patting-the-air motion of the hand, meant, too.

  "I gave you our speech and took yours through the Cave Master, which is the inheritance of my line, from mother to daughter from time out of mind," she said. "But now we must leave here quickly. We are too close to the hearths of the beastmen, and they have new and terrible weapons. Come quickly!"

  Marc sat looking at the fire, kneading his temples. It was very dark, with not even the occasional glimpse of a star, with only the low light of the cookfires to show the sheltering circle of jagged rocks. The Cloud Mountain People had chosen well; the light wouldn't show outside the hollow. None of them were very close. They looked at the strangers with a mixture of awe and suspicion, and they spoke sparingly, their voices low.

  But normally they're a talkative folk, and they'd be laughing and boasting of their deeds now…

  "Cho! Co!" he groaned, clutching at his head.

  When he looked up, he was uneasily conscious of how Blair and Cynthia sat together and stared at him a little fearfully.

  "Hey, that's Cajun, not Cloud Mountain. Look, I'm still me," he said, his voice shaky. "Not pod people, Okay?"

  Cynthia relaxed first. "You've got to admit something has been… hell, Marc, something's been done to you. To your mind."

  Blair nodded.