The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  "No infection," Marc said, sniffing to make sure.

  Sure enough, nothing but the giant-iguana-and-stable smell of big herbivorous 'saur. Then Marc reached out and flicked open the top of the dome, took up the connector cable, and plugged it into the port.

  "How does that read?"

  Blair looked at the control box. "Green and go, Marc. All vital signs normal and connectors functioning. But why not use the wireless system? We don't need a hard link."

  "Humor me," Marc said. "Issues of control now make me nervous."

  "You do have a point."

  Marc scrambled back up to the 'saur's neck; he blinked again as the man passed the eyes. There was a moment's flicker of pity for the majestic animal turned into a giant meat machine, but Marc suppressed it; needs must, and anyway a 'saur like this had no more in the way of brains than a gecko, and considerably less than an ox. He walked and ate and crapped and made little 'saurs, and that was about it. And he wasn't in any pain—if anything, the trickle to his pleasure center that kept him calm and docile made this the happiest time of his life.

  "Let's get it done," Marc said, and Blair hit the release button for a moment, waiting with thumb poised over the bliss-out control. The 'saur merely bent his head and started to snack on the fodder piled up under his nose; Marc let him eat as he slid down to the ground.

  "Here, boy! Here, Tahyo!" he called.

  The greatwolf's spotted nose showed from around a rock. He came into view half-crouched to the ground, tail held between his legs and twitching back and forth.

  "Here, boy!"

  The piteous rolling-eyed look translated roughly as: Are you crazy, boss? Can't you smell how big and mean that thing is? Nevertheless, Tahyo did come.

  "See, it's harmless," Marc said, when the greatwolf was within arm's reach.

  The 'saur shifted his weight from one foot to another and sighed as he ate. Tahyo skittered back half a dozen paces, then came reluctantly forward again. He whined as Marc picked him up—with a grunt; the young animal was gaining weight and size every day—and climbed a stepladder to hand him up to the howdah. Tahyo wriggled a little as he was handed over, then retreated to a corner of the enclosure and curled up, probably trying to pretend it wasn't happening from the way he put his tail over his eyes.

  The 'saur ate on, unconcerned. The big ones didn't need to feed all the time despite their size, since their metabolism was less active than a mammal's, but it would be a good idea to stock up while they could. Crunching and cracking sounds came as he chomped through two-inch branches and then ate them like candy canes, leaves and needles and all.

  Marc stood with arms akimbo and looked at the assembled warriors of the Cloud Mountain People, crouching or standing with their blanket rolls over their shoulders and their weapons in their hands. Taldi stood in front of them.

  "Is my word good, or not, Taldi of the Badger totem?"

  "Your word is good. You have done what you said you would do," Taldi replied. "Now let us rescue Teesa!"

  "And get your holy place back," Marc added. "And rescue Teesa, yes."

  Rescue her from more than physical danger. Having your mind taken over like that… that really is a fate worse than death. Marc looked at Blair's tight-held face. Rescue Cynthia, too, of course.

  A cheer went up at Marc's words, from the warriors in the howdah and from the two hundred more grouped around the great ceratopid. The meadow where they'd gathered was nearly full; beyond was a long stretch of tree-speckled savannah, with a mixed herd of several thousand antelope a couple of miles away, a smaller one of tharg, the big bisonlike beasts flowing up a slope like a shaggy moon-horned tide, some churr lying under the shade of a steep hillside, and a bipedal 'saur mottled in green and orange, a plant eater with a face like a giant sheep, grazing off the top of a tree.

  And about forty miles thataway, southeast, was the Cave of the Mysteries.

  They're still nervous, Marc decided. They've seen too many things from outside their world. And they're scared about the non-combatants. Time to get loud and flamboyant.

  "I promised you that I would lead you to your ancient homes riding on a hornhead thunder-lizard," he shouted. "And I will. I will lead you to victory!"

  There were more cheers. When they'd died down, he climbed the stepladder to the howdah, pulling it up after him so it could be lashed to the side. It had solid plank and boiled-leather protection along the sides, probably enough to stop an AK-47 bullet, particularly since the enemy didn't have more than a couple of them left. The howdah would hold Blair with his scope-sighted game rifle, and the three remaining bullets, plus half a dozen of the best archers among the Cloud Mountain folk and a half-ton of supplies, which would spare them the need to forage as they went. And there was a nice padded seat for the driver.

  "Gee-up, Steed Noble!" Marc called, and eased the joystick forward a notch.

  The beast raised his head, splinters and fragments dropping from his mouth, and gave a grumbling moan. Then he turned his head slightly from side to side. The impulses trickling into his head made him want to go in a certain direction, but his own programs for picking the details of a route still operated unless you threw the control farther forward.

  He took a step, and then another, in the swaying left-front-leg-right-hind-leg pace that something this big had to use. The Cloud Mountain warriors cheered again, looking with envy at the ones riding in the howdah, then began walking, spreading out to either side.

  "Now we find out," Blair said.

  "Find out what?" Marc asked.

  "What can go wrong next."

  "Who would leave such a thing?" Teesa asked, rubbing at the red mark around her brow where the Diadem of the Eye had lain. "A blind monster with such power?"

  Jadviga smiled bitterly. "Think what my people… well, my people in a way… have sent here," she said. "I like to think they would not use it—but they did send it."

  Cynthia nodded soberly. They were sitting in the sunlight in the courtyard of the hut. That got them out into the fresh air, but it also exposed them to the flies and stink of the Wergu encampment. There was a bleak bitterness in the way Teesa cast an occasional glance around. There was a hate that went back generations here, and it made the fiercest ethnic squabbles back on Earth look tame—people back there might pretend that their enemies weren't human, but they knew better deep down. Here, the contending parties really weren't of the same species, any more than cows and horses were.

  "Even without the Diadem of the Eye, I can feel it," Teesa said, looking east over the valley, the river and lake, to the yellow and black rock of the cliffs and the caves there. "At the back of my head, like a… a what is your word, a machine talking to itself inside me."

  Cynthia nodded again. "There seems to be some sort of distance effect here," she said thoughtfully.

  "Franziskus was taken to the cave," Jadviga added. "It can control him several miles away… but the control fades sometimes, and I do not think it could hold him much further than that."

  "But through the Diadem, it could control me" Teesa said. "Thirty miles or more away. And through me, Cynthia."

  Cynthia felt the skin crawl on her stomach and back. The memory of that icy violation, like spikes of ice driven into her head…

  "So there are limits on what it can do," she said. "It can't control all the Wergu like waldos. I think the more people it… interfaces with… the less it can do with each."

  "As if it were using up its bandwidth," Jadviga said thoughtfully.

  The ground grew narrower as they neared the mountain spur where the Cloud Mountain People had once dwelt and where the Wergu now laired. The rolling hills grew steeper, with less grassland and more forest. The narrowing valleys were often swampy; Marc had to hit the calm button twice when Steed Noble began to sink a little in a swamp. His species' instincts made them very sensitive about falling over or getting bogged, and he held his head high and complained as they crossed the soft, wet ground and came out in a lush meadow on th
e other side.

  "This is pretty country," Marc remarked to Blair.

  The Englishman grunted, the big-game rifle ready in his hands. Still, it was true. Flamingos burst upward from the little lake to their east, living crimson streaks against the still-dark eastern horizon. The air was cool and crisp, full of the smells of water and green-musky-sweet crushed grass and herbs. Wisps of mist clung to the tops of the trees and drifted between them, also tinged with pink by the sunrise. And among them stirred…

  "The beastmen!" someone shouted. "The Wergu come!"

  Marc swallowed through a throat suddenly gone dry, and he heard Tahyo growling thunder-deep in his chest behind him. They'd picked a pretty good spot, too—there was only a couple of hundred yards from here to the forest.

  "And a bloody great lot of the Wergu come," Blair said dryly.

  "Weh."

  Something like six or seven hundred of them, painted and screaming. The Cloud Mountain warriors were painted, too, but not screaming right now—murmuring, rather.

  Marc unlimbered his binoculars; Tahyo put his forepaws on the forward edge of the howdah beside him, growling low in his chest and peeling back his lips over teeth that somehow looked much longer and sharper than they appeared normally. The man's thumb turned the focusing screw.

  Hairy faces split to show tombstone teeth, stamping and hooting and waving their hardwood clubs, the black, fire-hardened points of their spears thrusting at the sky or booming the shafts on their hide shields. Bones through noses, human femurs crossed through topknots, here and there a shaman with the skull of a bear or saber-tooth or carnivore 'saur in one hand and a baton de commandment—a thick wand—in the other, dancing the cursing dance at the aliens.

  "You see Binkis?" Marc said, passing his binoculars to the Englishman.

  "No," Blair replied. "But I think I see who's leading them… the older one, the one-eyed?"

  Marc took the glasses back. So that's what an old Neanderthal looks like, he thought. He hadn't seen many, but then, all the ones he'd met so far had been trying to kill him, which was young man's work.

  The old Wergu was certainly hooting and gesturing hard. When a younger male darted forward, the older one clubbed him smartly on the back of the head, and then hit him in the face a couple of times for measure. The noise the others were making hid the sound, but Marc winced slightly inwardly at the thought of the solid hard tock! sound the knobkerrie would make.

  "I'd say he's trying to keep them at the edge of the forest," Marc said. "Not such a couyon, him. He's their tactical control."

  "Which is precisely what we don't want," Blair replied, taking a loop of the sling around his left forearm.

  "Well, they're brave at least," Marc said. "They're not running away at the sight of the 'saur."

  "Perhaps they're too stupid to be afraid," Blair said.

  "Or they're fighting with their backs to their homes and children," Marc said, but quietly.

  Aloud, to Taldi: "If they charge, shoot as many as you can with arrows. Then keep close to Steed Noble."

  The Cloud Mountain man dipped his head slightly in a taut acknowledgment.

  "And…" Blair whispered, resting the rifle on the edge of the howdah.

  Crack.

  Through the binoculars Marc saw the ancient Wergu jerk backward and then spin, clutching at his left arm and then looking incredulously as it came loose in his hand. He shrieked once, sank to his knees, and then forward onto his face to lie twitching for a few seconds as his powerful heart pumped diminishing jets out through the stump.

  ''Here they come! Marc snapped. "Save the ammo, Chris."

  "Bloody right," Blair replied. "Use our steed."

  Marc ducked down, until only his eyes showed over the edge of the howdah; and he pushed the joystick forward, thumbing off the calming circuit at the same time.

  OOOOOOOONNNNKKKK!

  He could feel the quiver that went through Steed Noble as the electronic tether was removed, up through the boards and leather padding of the floor. The suddenness of the charge that followed put Marc's teeth together with a snap, and made his eyeballs feel as if they were going to pop out through sheer inertia; Tahyo pitched backward against the feet of the bowmen, yelping.

  The massive feet came down, thud… thud… thud. . . then thudthudthud, as the ceratopid burst into an elephantine gallop. The Cloud Mountain men behind him yelled and clutched at the grab-bars of the howdah; one nearly toppled over the side as it swayed and tossed.

  Ahead was a knot of Wergu with AK-47s. The assault rifles gave them confidence, or maybe it was natural fearlessness; they stood and shot, and bullets began to snap by. A few struck the great bone shield over Steed Noble's head, and Marc could hear the hard rapping sound, like high-velocity hail hitting concrete.

  Trickles of blood ran down from the tiny wounds in the thin sheath of flesh over the bone, but they had no chance of seriously hurting the 'saur, unless a golden BB hit an eye. But they could kill Marc quite effectively and finally. And they were getting closer; the 'saur was doing better than twenty-five miles an hour now. Marc ducked down farther.

  Suddenly the knot of Wergu riflemen seemed to realize that they were facing something twelve feet high and thirty long, and that he was pissed.

  They burst apart like a ball of dandelion fluff struck by a puff of breath. Steed Noble ducked his head and tossed one overhead with a jab of his horn, so high that a trail of blood droplets fell neatly along the length of his spine and tail. Tahyo's head tracked that one like a radar set, with a pitch of his ears that said: Wow, I didn't know they could fly!

  Marc spat in disgust to get the blood out of his mouth; wrenching his focus back, he turned the joystick to steer the 'saur toward the largest clump. Steed Noble needed little encouragement. He gave a whistle like a ruptured boiler and crashed into the midst of them, goring right and left with his horn, stamping with yard-wide feet. The Cloud Mountain archers in the howdah had recovered enough to shoot; the platform was violently unstable, but the range was short. Marc turned left down the line of Neanderthals just outside the forest edge. Branches scraped along the top of the howdah, and men ducked with yells, but the Wergu broke to either side like foam before a ship's prow, or dirt to either side of a plow.

  Except that dirt doesn't scream or bleed, Marc thought grimly. Or go squish like a peunez when it gets stepped on by something that weighs seven tons.

  He glanced back out into the meadow, blinking eyes watering after a branch had lashed him across the face. With half the Wergu gone, the Cloud Mountain warriors were coming forward with a will, shooting as they ran. The remaining Neanderthals wavered, then broke in a hooting mass as he turned Steed Noble in a wide circle and headed towards them.

  "They flee!" Taldi shouted exultantly, freeing his spear from a Wergu's back.

  "That they do," Blair said. "And those that don't very much wish they could."

  He said it in English. Marc nodded, as the warriors finished off any Wergu still moving with spear-thrusts. He tried not to let it bother him; they played for keeps around here.

  "Let's get going," he said. "Once they're running I want to keep them on the run."

  "Now is the time," Teesa said firmly. "Their males have all gone to fight."

  "Yeah, but I don't much like the look of the womenfolk, either, you know?" Cynthia said ruefully. Guess this is it, sister, she thought. Talked the talk, now you better walk the walk.

  "Teesa is right," Jadviga said firmly. "We must act now, or never."

  Cynthia nodded soberly. The three of them pulled back the furs along a section of the bench around the interior of the hut. Beneath lay the weapons they'd made: three crude chipped-stone daggers, and clubs made from sections of wood taken from the rafters.

  "I will lead," Teesa said.

  Cynthia's brows went up. "You remember the way to the Cave? I thought you were pretty well out of it. I sure as hell was."

  Teesa nodded, and smiled grimly. "I was, yes, out of it. But all my l
ife, I have repeated to myself the things my mother and the other elders said about this place. Even though I have never been there in my waking life, I know it as one hand knows the other."

  They pushed the daggers through their belts and took up the clubs, and slipped out from the dim interior into the bright fly-buzzing haze of the courtyard. The sound of chanting and hollow-log drums came from the south end of the village, near the lake, where the Neanderthal women held a ceremony to aid their menfolk. The usual drifts of wood smoke were about, and the usual stinks, but less of the common noise—the screeching and hooting and grunts.

  Plenty of children and girl-adolescents were left. They watched the humans, some scowling and hissing, one turning and scratching her feet in the dirt at them. Younger children simply stared; one of about two watched Cynthia while clutching a crude wooden figure to her chest, a thumb in her mouth. Cynthia grimaced slightly; the Wergu children looked a lot more human than the adults. It was hard to wish them ill.

  And at the end of the row of huts…

  "That is where the old one lairs," Teesa said. "The Diadem will be there."

  I hope, Cynthia thought.

  An old Wergu woman was. She hooted at them as they approached, clutching arthritis-gnarled hands and making pushing gestures, white hair swinging on either side of her jut-browed bristly face. After an irresolute moment Cynthia pushed past her.

  A hand shot out and clamped on her shoulder, shockingly hard. By reflex she twisted and grabbed, a self-defense move designed to rip against the thumb of an attacker. The fingers stayed clamped on her, like a mechanical grab inside a glove of rough leather, and bone began to creak under the grip; the Neanderthals were strong, ape-strong compared to humans. Cynthia hissed in pain and reached for her knife.

  Jadviga clamped her lips and swung her club. The wood went crack on the Wergu woman's elbow, and the oldster screeched and let go. Teesa was behind her; she planted a knee in the other's back, hooked her left arm around her chin, and swept the sharp stone knife with her right. The Wergu ululated and flopped and was still, with a spreading pool of crimson spreading beneath her bent form and swatch of white hair.