People of the Sky

by Clare Bell

  It does, its feet ticking behind me on the clay floor. Its eyes catch some sliver of stray light and gleam briefly. Still holding its tether, I mount my own aronan, drawing up my feet and leaning forward as the signal to depart.

  Haewi’s wings hum, answered by an echo from Baqui Iba and then we are over the sill, plunging into the night, swooping out and away from the Pai Mesa. Wind rushes over my shoulders, presses against my belly, slaps my face. I crouch low on Wind Laughing, knotting the tether of the other aronan around my hand. The creature flies close, not pulling away. Perhaps it knows we are united by the same needs, if not the same fears.

  I look up, thankful no clouds hide the sky and that I can guide Haewi by the stars. When dawn comes, I will seek the sky-road that Kesbe-Rohoni took, for my only hope is to find her. Haewi’s wings beat fast and powerfully, taking me through the night above the Barranca to whatever lies beyond.

  Dawn burns white-gold on the horizon ahead. I shade my eyes to face it, cold and stiff from a night of flying against the wind. My hand has cramped from holding the tether to Baqui Iba. The formless shadow far beneath me takes on color and detail to become the Mother Canyon. I circle, taking my bearings from the formations beneath. This is where Kesbe passed/I saw this scene from the nose of her Gooni Bug before she bid me go. This is where she turned toward the world’s end and shot like a loosed arrow away from me.

  Haewi’s wingbeats are slowing. It is tired. Even such an aronan as mine cannot fly far against a headwind without rest. A spire rises from the canyon to one side, bearing sheltered ledges where weary fliers might land. I head Haewi toward it and soon we are there. I feed both aronans from the large bag of pinyon nuts I have bound to my waist. I think Haewi would be hungry, but it seems fretful, tossing its head and eating little. The other eats well.

  I wait, letting the two ease their wings while I hope for a shift in the wind. At last I feel it swing around to blow from behind us. I stand between the two aronans, facing outward into the sky. Two sets of antennae twine about my arm, telling me their owners are ready. Kesbe’s Baqui Iba is fresh and eager, but Haewi’s response seems dulled, though willing.

  I consider letting my aronan rest longer. No. We are still too near Tuwayhoima and may be pursued. I mount, taking up the tether and giving the signal. We plunge from our spire into the sky.

  The sunrise falters, its fierce new light watering to gray. A warming wind grows chill again as I see clouds streaking the line between earth and sky. The clouds mass into a low wall across my path. So the very gods of the heavens would block my way? I snarl at the gathering storm. Leaning forward on Wind Laughing’s neck, I urge both aronans into a steep spiralling climb.

  The clouds build, but Wind Laughing is swifter. It flies above as roiling whiteness reaches up as if to capture us. Updrafts bounce us from one air column to another. Still Wind Laughing strains upward, the other aronan following after.

  We arrive at heights where the air is so cold and sharp it makes my chest ache and both fliers are whistling through the breathing-pores that line their sides. The storm sulks below, unable to reach us. I end the climb in a smooth arc that puts us into a long shallow dive, gathering speed until we hurtle over the raft of stormcloud.

  The descent ends in a long period of level flight. I notice that Wind Laughing is still whistling slightly as it flies while Baqui Iba makes only the noise of its wings. Haewi’s antenna blows back, brushes against my hand and clings briefly. It has smelled my Question and it answers my uncertainty. Wind Laughing knows I ride to save it and will bear me as far as I must go.

  My quick flickers of worry have become a constant presence now. Something is wrong with Wind Laughing. I have halted many times to feed and rest my flier, yet once it takes to the air, its wingbeats become labored. Baqui Iba flies ahead, pulling at its tether.

  I try to slow Wind Laughing, but it will not let me. It tosses its head impatiently and paws the air with its forefeet. Its antennae stroke my hands with smells that say all is as it should be, yet I know otherwise. I wonder if I should try riding the other aronan, to spare mine.

  But why should my mount be faltering? It has borne me through many a journey longer and harder than the distance we have come. Could it be that the seasons Wind Laughing has lived are the load it now bears? I never thought of that before, perhaps because I never wanted to. I have seen men grow old and fail, but the ceremony of adulthood takes aronans from us before they wither.

  Again the antennae stroke my hands, trying to reassure me, but something underneath says that Wind Laughing is also afraid. Quickly I look about for a place to land, but there is none, clouds fill the canyon, trapping me above on a rolling desert of dirty white. Ahead clouds fume up into an iron-headed pillar with almost a human shape, its hair streaming back.

  The wind swings about, blowing fiercely one instant, fitfully the next. Wind Laughing battles to keep its place in the sky. I fight to keep my hold on Baqui Iba’s tether. The wind tears at Haewi’s wings, throwing us toward the storm even as we veer away. I curse myself for not sensing the wrongness in my flier in time to land safely.

  Haewi seems strangely fragile beneath me. No longer is it the fast and powerful rescuer that led the crippled Gooni Bug through the terror of a thunderstorm. Now the winds toss it about as though it was a wisp of feather-scale. A yank from the tether nearly pulls me from my struggling mount. I must let the line go, leaving the black and amber to fight its own way out of the storm. I loose it, clinging to Haewi.

  A flurry of rain sweeps across us. A bolt of lightning sears the sky, blinding me for an instant. Haewi fights to climb, as it knows we must, but something is taking its strength. A downdraft plunges us into freezing cloud. Haewi’s whistling has grown nearly to a shriek and I can feel my aronan shuddering. We drop out of swirling mist into battering rain.

  Haewi still fights, though I beg it not to. Its neck arches, it redoubles its wingbeats. Ahead through the curtain of rain, there loom the forms of rocks. I turn Haewi toward it, asking one last effort. The pelting rain beats us down as we struggle to stay aloft. I can feel how hard Haewi is driving its wings, its thorax is pulsing furiously.

  I reach for one lashing antenna, shouting out that we are almost there and then I feel something break terribly within my flier. Its head arches back, it writhes its neck and something flares brightly in its eyes and goes out…One forewing no longer beats and the others sigh down to stillness even as I feel my flier slip into a jagged downward spiral.

  I cling, numbed by shock and horror. Something new rises in my mind, something once forgotten, the one deadly fear left behind in the freedom of the skies and the sureness of riding an aronan. It freezes my belly, rips an anguished scream from my throat. Again I know the terror of falling…

  Chapter 11

  After hours of flight, Kesbe found herself standing in front of Tony Mabena’s desk, thinking it was a shame she wasn’t going to be able to like this man. A pity. Mabena resembled his desk—dark, solid and exotically carved.

  She stared across the desktop at the face in front of her and wondered again if she might be dreaming. Beneath the fur-banded bush hat with one side of its wide brim jauntily folded up, she studied tattooed lines winding themselves about the contours of the man’s leathery skin.

  Feeling punchy, she stooped in front of the desk, fingering the design of spirals, masked tattooed faces and animal figures that sprawled over the legs and panels. Strange decoration for an otherwise ordinary piece of furniture.

  She heard Mabena’s footsteps as he came around the desk and stood beside her. “You start here/’ said a lilting voice over her shoulder a coffee-colored finger traced the inward whorl. “And you journey all your life until you reach the center.”

  The center, Kesbe thought, wondering if her brain was also starting to spiral down into infinite weariness. The place of emergence. In the ancient tongue of the Hopi, it was the sipapuni.

  “You are Southwest American Indian, are you not?” he asked
. She freed her gaze from the paths of the tattoos whirling on his face and answered slowly, yes.

  He grinned and said, “I am Maori, on my mother’s side. Our peoples share the image of the spiral, the inward and outwardly moving circle.”

  Kesbe made herself stand up. She wished she wasn’t so bone-tired and Mabena’s voice so hypnotic. She hadn’t come here to discuss cross-cultural tribal symbolism. Taking a deep breath, she threw back her hair and recovered her indignation. “Mr. Mabena, at your request I have flown a one-of-a-kind antique aircraft several thousand miles, endured a thunderstorm, a forced landing and other hazards, only to find that you don’t have the money to pay me.”

  Mabena leaned with one meaty hand splayed on the desk. “Ah, but that is a temporary situation and not worth the worry. In the interval, we may enjoy the things that are important, such as this, the work of one’s own hands.” He stroked the carvings on the piece of furniture that deserved much more than the ordinary label usually given it.

  Despite herself, Kesbe’s interest was piqued. “You did that? I thought you’d bought it somewhere or commissioned it.”

  His grin widened infectiously. “From a primitive artisan, perhaps? Oh, but I am myself a primitive. It is my mother’s blood that gave these hands their gift for working wood. As a boy I trained at the carver’s school at Whaka.”

  “Whaka.”

  “New Rotorua. The original school was on Earth of course, but they moved it off-planet like everything else. I should go back for a visit. Freshen up this tattoo. It fades over the years.”

  “Whaka,” Kesbe mumbled to herself, knowing she was too drained to counter Mabena’s eccentricities. The man was unbelievable. But I believed he was going to buy the damned airplane.

  She screwed her eyes open and folded her arms. Not bothering with politeness, she challenged, “What do you do here, anyway?”

  Neither her question not her tone apparently bothered him. On the contrary, he seemed delighted that she asked. Despite her protests, he led her through a sliding glass door onto a balcony shaded by a woven grass awning. Beyond Mabena’s house, the landscape tumbled into rolling hills that opened up into a vast plain. Something moved in the distance. He slipped an electronic binocular into her hand. She lifted it to her eyes.

  A gathering of indistinct blotches resolved into a herd of animals. She saw graceful horns, long legs with delicate hooves, but most of all, buff, gray and black fur. On Oneway, where vertebrates had barely given rise to fish, let alone mammals?

  “That is a sable antelope,” said Mabena, peering through his own binocular. “Nearby, a herd of impala. I have imported them as embryos. With the permission of the planetary authorities, of course. They thrive here. I am pleased.”

  Kesbe lowered the viewer, staring at him.

  “My mother’s ancestors were Maori,” he continued expansively, “but my father’s were African. At first a family of warriors, later a family of wardens in the great wildlife refuges of Terra that are now gone. But the animals are not gone. Here I recreate what was lost” He waved his arm. “Here I have more space than the Serengeti and it will not be swallowed up by the spill of people and cities.”

  Kesbe felt herself become a little less grumpy. “Why are you doing all this?”

  “For the same reason you have rebuilt and flown the old Douglas. It is something I love that will also make money. It is something people want. They have a hunger for the land and for the sight of animals native to their world of origin. They want the primitive. I will give it to them.”

  “What do you want Gooney Berg for?” she asked. “Freighting baby elephants?”

  Mabena chuckled, then looked at her wisely over the binoculars. “Ah, so it is not just merchandise you bring. I was right. The aircraft has meaning for you. You give it a name.” He sighed deeply. “As for juvenile pachyderms of the species Loxodonta, would that I could. I am presently concluding an agreement with an individual to sell me frozen gametes at extraordinary prices The creatures themselves were casualties of mans rapaciousness, but someone had at least the forethought to preserve a remnant.”

  Kesbe eyed him sharply. “And that is where my money went.”

  “That is where your money went,” he agreed.

  She leaned on the veranda rail, watching the transplanted East African wildlife and trying to suppress the urge to smile. How the hell could she stay mad at a man who blew his ready cash on elephant seed?

  “Do you still want the plane?” She didn’t look at him.

  “Absolutely. No other form of air transport is so fitted to these surroundings. When I bring selected segments of the public to witness this re-birth of Africa on alien soil, I want the entire experience to be unique.”

  “And worth the price you intend to ask. You don’t want any laser shuttles screaming in here and ruining the effect.”

  “You are most astute. Exactly. There will be a shuttle point outside the far periphery of my reserve. Clients will transfer to the old Douglas and land on a dirt strip to begin their safari. I do think it is a magnificent idea, eh?”

  Kesbe had to agree, assuming he could pull it off. There was still the question of how this would affect her own finances. “When do you think you’ll actually need the aircraft?”

  Mabena pursed his lips. “Well, I don’t think I will be ready to open my establishment until the next dry season. Of course, I shall also need time to learn how to fly the craft or procure a suitable driver. Your letter did say that instruction was included in the purchase price. Or perhaps I might even convince you to stay, on salary of course.”

  She couldn’t help but grin at some of his assumptions. “You’ll need a pilot, not a driver. As for me staying, let’s talk about that later. I have a proposal for you. Back in the old days of the twentieth century, people had some very creative ideas on how to handle aircraft financing. One of these was called a lease-back arrangement…”

  Mabena escorted her back into the house and poured drinks for both of them while she explained the details. He would become the nominal owner of the C-47, but she would retain physical possession while he paid her in a series of installments. In addition, he would fuel and oil the craft without charge (from his petrochem cracking unit) and provide access to his machine-shop or any other facilities Kesbe might need for maintenance.

  She sipped the last of her whiskey and soda while Mabena affixed his signature to the contract his computer generated. She studied it carefully, then signed it. He put the paper to one side with a relieved sigh and crossed his legs. “You are a woman of great practicality.”

  “You have to be if you’re going to fly Gooney Berg,” she returned.

  He leaned forward, his dark eyes alive with interest. “Ah yes, your difficulties in reaching me. I imagine there is a tale to tell. A thunderstorm and…what did you call it…a forced landing?”

  Kesbe felt a thread of wariness part the pleasant fuzz imparted by the whiskey. Inadvertently or not, Mabena might tempt her into revealing more than she wanted to about her stopover in the Barranca. “Not much of a tale,” she answered. “I lost contact with Canaback Base, went down in the storm, had to make a few repairs and took off again.” She yawned, but a part of her no longer felt sleepy.

  “I have read a little about these machines and it strikes me that they are not easy to repair without some assistance. Did you have any help?”

  She tried to relax, tried to make her grin easy. “Are you joking? Where would I get help in the middle of the Barranca? That’s pure, wild, alien country. No people there.”

  “That is what the authorities assume,” said Mabena quietly. “On the other hand, I have heard rumors.”

  “Rumors,” Kesbe scoffed, but could not help noticing that he was eyeing her curiously. “Every world has its tall tales. What have you heard?”

  “History, mostly. That the first settlers on Oneway were American Pueblo Indians, such as yourself. The colony supposedly did not survive. An aerial search by authorities re
vealed no trace.”

  “There you are, then.” She flourished her glass. Mabena poured another two fingers worth of the amber liquid into hers and freshened his.

  “Miss Temiya, it also strikes me that you, like me, have played around the skirts of official planetary governments long enough to know they are not efficient or thorough in conducting such investigations.”

  Especially when the objects of the search don’t wish to be found, Kesbe thought, but did not say. Mabena continued, “I am a member of a small but widespread community here in the back-country. One of the first things I heard when I arrived was a strange legend of a lost colony still surviving in the depths of the Barranca. It is said that these people managed to survive by making a cooperative arrangement with the native species of this planet.”

  “Cooperation implies sentience,” she objected. “None of the species on Oneway have been proven sentient.”

  “Perhaps not,” Mabena said smoothly. “However, one other thing about this legend intrigues me. It is said that the price of survival for these people was a devil’s bargain for which they had to trade their humanity.”

  Kesbe had to restrain herself from jumping up indignantly and yelling denials in his face. Thoughts of Imiya and his people drifted through her head. Oneway had changed them, but there was nothing inhuman about them, except, perhaps for the shaman Sahacat. Was the partnership between the Pai child-warriors and their aronans to be described as “a devil’s bargain?” No.

  Mabena’s voice brought her back. “You have been wandering,” he said softly.

  Kesbe stared at her glass, then at the floor while he said, “You had to have had help, Miss Temiya. With Oneway’s weather and the rugged country in the Barranca, you could not have survived, let alone recovered your craft.”