The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  The 'saurs probably didn't pay much attention to the noise, which the men themselves could barely hear under the bellowing and the growing thunder of massive feet pounding the hard-packed dirt. It seemed to fly by under Marc's feet as they fell behind the 'saurs, until…

  "They did it!" Blair shouted, as pillars of smoke rose up ahead and to their left.

  Marc gave another whoop of relief as he lit a fresh torch from his first and threw the stub away. He hadn't been altogether sure the rest of the Cloud Mountain men would rush out to light the piles of brushwood and dried dung that would funnel the herd towards the cliffs, but they had. They were a gutsy bunch, faced with something they understood.

  "Cloud Mountain forever!" he shouted.

  The ceratopids slowed as they saw the fires ahead and to their flank. Squeezed between the vertical edge of the cliff and flame on two sides, they hesitated; a few turned straight left and charged between the fires, bellowing piteously and holding their great head-shields high. One turned back and thundered towards the line of humans. A man threw himself aside just in time to avoid a vicious sideways stroke of the nose horn before the beast disappeared southward, back along the route of the migration.

  The rest went straight ahead. "Next question," Marc gasped.

  He'd run the better part of three miles now, nearly flat-out; even lungs evolved for thinner air than this were beginning to feel the strain. The tribesmen were panting and blowing, but keeping up, their long legs eating up the distance. Ahead the 'saurs were slowing, despite their oooonnks of panic; they weren't meant for long-distance running. They tried to edge away from the line of fires, but that pushed their crowded ranks against the cliff proper; one big male's flank brushed it as he trotted, bringing down a rush and rattle of rocks and small boulders. The ceratopid ooooonked again fretfully as they bounced from his armored head and massive back, then grunted with a surprised oof as a two-hundred-pounder hit his flank. He swerved away from the cliff, broadsided into an only slightly smaller specimen, and then swerved back towards the rock.

  "I want that one!" Marc yelled, pointing. "Drive him! Drive him!"

  Ahead of them was a prow-shaped obstacle of rocks and timbers. On the right, it led to a narrow ravine framed by a slab of rock leaning away from the main cliff and leaving a path visible to open country ahead; the side to the left gave onto the prairie. Marc put on a further burst of speed as the beast hesitated and swung his head left, looking after his herd-mates. Blair was near him, face contorted as he called up his last reserve. They came closer to the 'saur, which looked more and more like some great creature of animated stone as you got closer. The wheezing bellows sound of his lungs working grew overpoweringly loud, and Marc was close enough to see scars and blotches on the tough pebbled hide. The animal was twice his height at the shoulder but was covering the ground in a ponderous gallop nearly as fast as a running man could sprint.

  "Through there, you couyon!" Marc shouted, and threw his torch.

  It bounced off the beast's left shoulder. Blair followed suit, and Taldi, and half a dozen of the pursuers. The ceratopid bawled in panic and veered right, brushing the cliff wall again and bringing down a shower of stones. One fist-sized one thumped Marc painfully on the arm; another knocked a Cloud Mountain warrior down and left him shouting with pain as he clutched a broken shin.

  "Now!" Marc shouted, as the beast thundered into the narrow cleft of rocks.

  He slowed down perforce; there was just enough room for him to squeeze by and not an inch more, and even a 'saur didn't relish leaving half his skin on edges of rock. Marc's cry had been involuntary, and useless; either the tribesmen waiting would react in time, or they wouldn't.

  They did. The framework of oak logs they'd spent so long cutting and hauling and pegging together crashed downward as the stayropes were cut with frenzied axe blows, burying the sharpened lower points of the uprights three feet deep in the trench of softened earth that had been cut for them.

  The thick, oxygen-rich air of Venus seemed to burn like a thin, hot haze of smoke in his straining lungs, and every movement of his legs was torment. Marc still leaped like a panther to snatch at the running knot on the cliff side of the ravine. Blair swung his machete on the other.

  Whick-whang-thunk.

  The other frame slid down, each side rattling between a pair of trunks set to guide the edges of the massive gate. The points slammed into the ground, missing the end of the ceratopid's tail by inches; they had themselves a big one here. The frame was two-foot oak trunks slotted together in a grid, but Marc didn't think it would hold the ceratopid for long.

  "Quick! Quick!" he screamed.

  Everyone sprang to grasp the thick poles stacked leaning against the rock on either side of the narrow cleft in the rock, four men to each balk of timber. They slammed the upper points into notches pre-cut in the framework, then heaved to set them as braces. Twice as many men would be doing the same on the other side, up where the head and business end of the creature was.

  OOOOOOOHNNNNK!

  A massive rattling thunk followed, and unhappy shouts from the men up there. The 'saur wasn't happy to be trapped, but he didn't have room to back up and take a run against the obstacle in front of him as the men scrambled to reinforce it. As someone handed Marc a waterskin, he saw the rest of the herd off in the distance, gradually slowing as the scent of fire died down. A ripple ran through the other creatures about, off to the edge of sight, and then they resumed the long, slow trek northward.

  The captive 'saur's hindquarters bunched. He even managed to rear slightly before he slammed his bone-covered head into the framework ahead of him again. An ominous crunch followed. The water tasted as sweet as any Marc had ever drunk, despite the taste of leather and heat; he drank more, and splashed some across his face for the glorious coolness, then sighed. Taldi sprang daringly up on the frame itself and climbed to the top, peering over the animal's back.

  "The wood won't hold him for long," Taldi said, as he dropped back.

  If nothing else, this species ate oak trees, their parrotlike beaks shearing the tough wood like a hydraulic press.

  "Better you than me, old boy," Blair said.

  They'd stashed the steel box with the Ice kit in a depression on top of a boulder. The surface had been battered and scorched by the explosion back at their camp, but the contents of the suitcase-sized container had survived a trajectory through the air and a landing on soft earth. Marc opened it with a scream of abused hinges and took one of the loads for the trank gun… which had not survived the plastique and secondary brew-up of the ammunition. It looked like a giant steel hypodermic, six inches from point to rear; a plunger could be fitted there for manual application.

  That was mostly done as a booster shot on a beast already tranked. Just then this one tried to back out of the trap, and the thick oak timbers creaked and groaned and bent. Then he slammed forward again, and there were more crunches and shouts of alarm. Seven tones of muscle and bone…

  Marc finished screwing the plunger home on the tubular dart and took a deep breath. Then he wrapped it in a scrap of soft, thin leather, put it between his teeth, and swarmed up the framework like a Caribbean pirate boarding a ship in the old days. Tahyo oooorfed dismally behind him but submitted as someone grabbed his collar. Marc reached the top of the frame, wound legs and arms around the wood, and held on, with his teeth grinding on the smooth metallic taste of the hypo; the oak logs shook and groaned again, battering him against the hard, rough surfaces, and somewhere one of the thick pegs they'd used to hold the structure together broke with a gunshot crack. Then the 'saur took a step forward and slammed his great battering ram of a head into the frame there…

  OOOOOONNKKK!

  The bellow was enough to make Marc wince, but the screams of fright and the crunch of a timber breaking across showed him how little time was left. He swung his legs across the last horizontal timber and sprang.

  "Ooof!"

  It was five feet down onto the heaving ba
ck. His feet shot out from under him on the slick pebbled surface of the 'saur's hide; it felt more like plastic or rubber against Marc's skin than a living creature's skin. He turned quickly, scrabbling with widespread fingers and toes, then sliding forward as the creature rammed his seven tons into the wood confining him once more. If Marc went over the side into the narrow space between the 'saur and the rock, he'd pop like a grape under a boot.

  The heated reptile stink of the 'saur was gagging strong, with an iron undertang of blood from the gashes and scrapes along his side.

  Gotta get closer to the neck, Marc thought. Hide's too thick here on the back.

  The huge bony shield covered the neck and part of the shoulders of the beast when it was laid back; it reared upright when the nose was lowered for attack, as it was… now!

  Marc let the acceleration take him, sliding back a little as the 'saur lunged forward, and then sharply forward himself as the animal crashed into the ravaged framework barring the northern exit of the ravine. His left hand went up and braced against the inside of the shield, shockingly resilient and warm with the covering of flesh and blood vessels. He dropped the hypo into his right hand and raised it high, then slammed the long needle down onto the thinner hide of the side of the 'saur's neck.

  OooooOOOOONNK! he roared in protest, starting and shaking himself the way a man might if a horsefly bit him on the neck.

  The 'saur also tried to crush whatever had bitten him, by slapping the shield on his neck. With a yell Marc pushed himself back, slewing around and kicking his legs out as he started to fall; the bony mantle clapped to the skin inches from his hands. By sheer luck, his feet struck the wall of the ravine and pushed him back across the 'saur's shoulders as he rammed forward one more time.

  The third effort made up for the others. This time two of the main horizontal braces of the framework barring the exit to the ravine gave way; the splintered end of one nearly swept Marc off his perch again, giving him a painful, bleeding scratch down his left arm.

  Ooooonnhk?

  This time the bellow was much softer, almost plaintive. He could feel the ceratopid hesitate under him, waver, then buckle forward into stillness with an enormous sleepy sigh.

  Marc let himself slide free when the monster moved no more. His legs nearly buckled as he touched the ground; he supported himself on the 'saur and the broken remains of the heavy timber framework as he moved forward, gradually gaining strength as his breathing slowed. Lying propped just off the ground, the 'saur's head was as tall as Marc was, and longer. The leathery skin around the fist-sized nostrils was the only unarmored spot on the front ten feet, except for the eyes, and the nose horn was as long as Marc's forearm. One lethargic brown-yellow eye tracked him as he moved forward.

  Sam Feldman had explained that the trank didn't knock the beast out, not with only one dose. The animal just stopped giving a damn.

  Taldi and Blair came up, panting from having sprinted around the slab of rock that formed the outer wall of the ravine. They looked up at the beast in awe, where he lay with his great head smashed through the framework of two-foot-thick logs. The body stretched twenty feet behind that.

  "Good God," Blair said, watching Marc leaning against the animal's snout.

  "You are a warrior indeed!" Taldi said grudgingly.

  Blair held out the capture kit. Marc took a second hypo and injected the contents into the soft flesh of the beast's inner nostril; it twitched slightly, and the watching Cloud Mountain warriors all jumped.

  Mais, I would myself, but I'm too tired, Marc thought.

  "Now that we've got it…" Blair said.

  "Weh," Marc replied. "Now for the brain surgery."

  "What happens if it doesn't work?" the Englishman asked.

  That was a fair question; only about half the operations were

  successful in Jamestown, and that was with a lot better facilities and more skilled personnel.

  "Catch another one?" Marc asked. "Only this time you go in with the hypo."

  Blair shuddered. Marc nodded and laughed. He slapped the unconscious animal on his massive, stubby nose horn, and poured a little of the water bag's contents over it.

  "I christen thee… Steed Noble!"

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Encyclopedia Britannica, 16th Edition University of Chicago Press, 1988

  NEW FRONTIER

  Phrase often used by the American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy (q.v.) in speeches and policy statements during the 1960s. While first used in 1960 and applied to domestic issues, by 1962 the primary reference was to the space program, the prospective exploration of Mars and Venus, and secondarily to the associated technological developments. The term reached its maximum importance as a political slogan in the late 1960s, when it was also the title of the most popular television program of the period (see Popular Culture, American; Roddenbery, Gene). Some Republican critics assailed it as a disguise for allegedly weak positions on foreign policy, particularly the withdrawal of support for anti-Communist forces in Indo-China, though this became less common after the successful international initiatives of Kennedy's second term (see Indochinese War; Thailand Border Crisis, 1966-7; Six-Day War).

  Teesa brushed aside the hide covering the door, and entered the hut, standing motionless by the door as the leather slowly settled back into place.

  Cynthia looked up warily; she hadn't seen the Cloud Mountain shamaness in the three days since she'd been released from the data mining in the Cave of the Mysteries. Her mind still skittered away from that. Teesa looked disheveled in addition to the eerie absence in her face, like someone who'd been working hard for days and hadn't had the time or inclination to look after herself.

  The blank blue eyes looked through the gloom of the hut at her, and Teesa said in English, "Information-gathering is complete. This unit will maintain efficiency more readily in detached mode. You will supply maintenance to the unit. Terminal-mode operation is suspended."

  Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had met a razor. Jadviga darted forward, catching her before her head thumped on the hut's floor, and the two women lifted her onto a section of the bench that ran around the hut. Jadviga peeled back an eyelid.

  "Shock," she said. "Put some of the furs over her."

  "I'll get a clay pot of embers," Cynthia said, and snatched up a small shovel of hardened wood to scoop the remains of the fire on the hearth into a water jug.

  "That is all we can do," Jadviga replied.

  "Do you think…" Cynthia said, as they rolled the unconscious woman on her side, tucked the pot of embers against her stomach, and pulled the glossy pelts around her.

  "That she is put here as a spy?" Jadviga said. The Lithuanian woman's rather horselike face was charming as she smiled. "No. It can take over our minds whenever it pleases. What need of a spy? The KGB would love it."

  Well, that's bold, Cynthia thought, and raised an eyebrow. "Ahh…"

  Jadviga shrugged. "I doubt that the security services will be involved much more in my life," she said. "And if only I were not faced with death or worse…"

  They both laughed. Cynthia checked on the tribeswoman's pulse and temperature; both were low, but slowly rising back to normal. At last her eyes fluttered open.

  "Where am I?" she murmured—in English.

  "In the village below the caves," Cynthia replied.

  To her surprise, Teesa began to laugh. To Cynthia's shock, the laughter grew until it was on the verge of a scream; Jadviga's hand moved sharply, and the water in the bowl she had been holding ready splashed into Teesa's face. That cut off the building hysteria. The Cloud Mountain woman rubbed her hands over her face, and swung her feet down to the floor.

  "I am sorry," she said. "But… all my life I have wanted to come here and see for the first time the Cave of the Mysteries, the long duty of my mothers before me. And now—"

  Cynthia nodded in sympathy. Sort of like a Christian getting to Heaven and finding the devil run
ning things, she thought. Ouch.

  "What happened?" Jadviga asked.

  "I am not sure," Teesa said. "Could I have some water?"

  "Here," Jadviga said, refilling the bowl from a skin on the wall. "It's all we have, but there is plenty of it." She shuddered a little. "They make a drink, but I wouldn't feed it to pigs."

  Cynthia winced; the Neanderthal women brewed it by chewing roots and spitting them into big gourds, then leaving the resulting pulp in the sun to ferment. Even in this place, the stink was unforgettable. So was the reaction of the subhumans to guzzling the stuff. She suspected there were psychotropics in the mash.

  "Our stories tell of how sweet and cool the springs of this place are," Teesa said bitterly, but she drank the water and ate the dried meat and nutcakes.

  "I can remember a little now and then," she said. "I sat in the Cave… there were lights and shapes, like nothing I have seen before. All my life came to me again, as if I were born and lived it over and over, but also stood aside and watched, as you might watch a game of catch-ball. And through me, the… I will not call it the

  Master. The thing that dwells there saw all that I am. And I could feel its thoughts, and those meant nothing to it. It has no more selfhood than an ant."

  "Yeah," Cynthia said. "Well, that's something we ought to think about."

  Jadviga looked up, her eyes narrowing. After a moment Teesa did, too.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm not sure… except that it isn't a person. And we are people. We should be able to make something of that."

  "Still looks good," Marc said, holding on to the rope ladder with his toes. "Steed looks healthy."

  The ladder was strung from the middle of the beast's neck shield to the nose horn, a good eleven feet, more than a third of his total length. One big, yellow eye blinked at Marc under his brow shield of bone as he examined the gray plastic hemisphere that covered the Ice unit. The tissue around it looked clean and uninflamed, and it had already begun to heal into a ring of scar; the lower edge was under the sheath of skin and muscle that covered the bony armor just above the 'saur's eyes.