by Allen Steele
The Revolution Inn was located a couple of blocks from the waterfront, a ramshackle two-story building that looked as if it had been hammered together by a crew of drunk carpenters. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth; despite the patriotic name, the Revolution was little more than a beat-up tavern, with sawdust on the floor and benches in front of a fireplace half-filled with ash and soot. There were a few guest rooms upstairs, and although they were most commonly used by the local hookers, they’d do for the night.
Once I paid the barkeep for two rooms, we parked ourselves at a vacant table in the corner. Dinner was creek-crab stew, watery and undercooked; one bite, and Morgan pushed aside his plate, muttering that he’d rather go hungry. I distracted myself by studying the crowd. It was early evening, and already the place was full: fishermen, farmers, a handful of loggers and miners who’d come down from the mountains for a night on the town. I polished off my stew—it was wretched, but since it was probably the last hot meal I’d have for a few days, I made myself eat it—then left the table and wandered over to the bar, ostensibly to buy a drink but really to ferret out some information.
It didn’t take long for me to find out what I needed to know. The barkeep remembered Joe Cassidy, all right; he’d come through town about two months ago, along with seven other people: four men and three women. They’d stayed in New Boston just long enough to buy supplies, then they hired a local boatman to ferry them across the channel to Medsylvania. As luck would have it, the same boatman was at a table on the other side of the room; at first he pretended not to recall who I was talking about, but the jug of bearshine I bought for him and his cronies helped restore his memory. Sure, he remembered those people…and for a modest fee of C200, he’d be happy to give me and my friend Mr. Roth a ride to the exact place where he’d dropped them off.
Something about me must have smelled like money. Either that, or I’d spent too much time lately with rich people. We dickered for a bit, and finally agreed that he’d get fifty colonials up front, and the rest once our feet touched dry land on the other side of the channel. I went back to our table and reported what I’d learned.
Goldstein wasn’t happy with the arrangement. “Two hundred for a lift across the channel?” he muttered, glaring at me from across the table. “Hell, we could buy our own canoe for that kind of money.”
“Sure, we can…but what would we do with it?” I took a drink of ale. “This guy knows exactly where he put off Joe and his pals. Chances are, they’re not far from that spot. Without knowing that, though, we could wander up and down the coast for weeks and not find them.”
Goldstein considered this for a moment, then turned to George. “Mr. Waite, if you knew where to go…that is, if we were to get directions from this fellow Sawyer just met…?”
“Not a chance.” George shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not about to risk my boat trying to make landfall on a shore that doesn’t have a deep harbor. Helen draws too much water for that sort of thing.”
“I’ll pay you…”
“Uh-uh.” He picked up his mug. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Roth, but this is as far as I go.” George looked at me again. “I’ll wait until Camael”—by this he meant four days from now—“for you to do your business, but if I haven’t heard from you by then, we’re going to have to cut you loose. My people in Clarksburg are waiting for their coal, and every day I hang around here means that I lose money.”
“I understand. Thanks for being willing to wait.” I looked at Goldstein again. “So there it is, Morgan…Mr. Roth, I mean.” He blanched when I said his real name; George and Donny pretended not to notice. “Either we take our chances with that guy over there, or George carries us back home. Your call.”
Goldstein scowled, then slowly let out his breath. “You know I don’t have a choice,” he said quietly. “Mike…?”
“I’ll stay here.” Kennedy was the only one at the table who seemed to like creek-crab stew; he was working on his second helping. Meeting Goldstein’s gaze, he went on. “Look, chief, Joe and I never got along. That’s a fact. If I go with you, he’ll just get pissed off when he sees me. You’ve got a satphone. If you run into any trouble, you call me and I’ll come to the rescue.”
Goldstein seemed so hesitant that, for a moment, I thought he was going to abort the rest of the trip. The place had clearly given him the willies—not that I blamed him—and for the first time, I think, he’d come to realize exactly what it meant to leave behind even a rough excuse for civilization and venture into the wilderness. The temptation must have been great: abandon Cassidy to whatever uncertain fate had befallen him, pay George for return passage to Leeport, then retreat to the comforts of his estate, where he could play with his horses and spend his free time making even more money.
Yet there was something within him that simply wouldn’t let this go. For better or worse, he had to see this through. Joseph Walking Star Cassidy was his friend…perhaps his only friend. Like it or not, he couldn’t give up.
“We’ll do it,” he murmured. “Dammit, we’ll do it.”
Without another word, he pushed back his chair, stood up, and marched across the room to the stairs. He left so suddenly that it took Kennedy a moment to remember his duty; he quickly left the table, following his boss upstairs. I wondered if his job included tucking in the boss’s bedsheets and singing him a lullaby.
George watched them go, then quietly shook his head. “Sawyer, I appreciate the work, and you won’t hear me complain about the money…but if you ever bring aboard someone like that again…”
“I hear you, man.” And indeed, I was beginning to have second thoughts about the entire business.
The boatman’s name was Merle—no last name, or at least none that he was willing to give me; “Just call me Merle,” he said—and his craft was a single-masted pirogue that he used to inspect the trotlines he’d rigged along the Midland side of the channel. Once Goldstein and I loaded our gear aboard, we cast off from the dock, with the boatman and me using the oars until we were clear of the harbor, at which point he unfurled the sail and set out across the channel.
It had rained during the night; a dense fog lay low and thick upon the water, making it difficult to see more than a few dozen yards ahead. Yet the boatman knew the channel well; he steered between the ice floes, tacking against the cool morning breeze that drifted up the river. At first he said little to us, but after a while he began to ask questions: who were we and why were we so interested in finding the guys he’d carried over to Medsylvania last Barchiel. I told Just-Call-Me-Merle that my name was Just-Call-Me-Sawyer and my friend was Just-Call-Me-Irving, and the rest was none of his business. He got the message and shut up after that.
It took a little more than an hour to cross the channel, but much longer than that to reach the place where he’d dropped off Walking Star and his companions. It turned out to be the mouth of a narrow creek, about sixty miles southwest of New Boston; the Helen Waite had cruised by it only yesterday. Yet George wouldn’t have been able to take his craft safely that way even if we’d known of its existence; as we glided closer, I caught sight of jagged rocks just beneath the pirogue’s flat keel. The tugboat would have run aground.
Merle lowered the sail and unshipped the oars once more, and we paddled the rest of the way to shore. We beached the pirogue just above the creek; Merle remained in his boat, not lifting a finger to help us as Goldstein and I unloaded our packs, waded through the ice-cold water, and hauled them to the rocky shore.
“You sure this is the right place?” I asked.
“Yessir. Right on this very spot, that’s where I left ’em.” Merle had produced a tobacco pouch from his jacket; as he spoke, he pulled out a chaw and tucked it into his right cheek. “Last time I saw ’em,” he said, pointing to the tree line a few yards away, “they were headed…” He hesitated, then grinned. “Y’know, I think I done forgot.”
I glanced at Goldstein. He reached into his jacket, pulled out his money clip,
and counted out C150. I coughed; he scowled and added another C50. “Yeah, I think I remember now,” Merle said as he took the money. “Right thataway, through those trees.” He pointed to the thicket of faux birch that formed the tree line just a few yards from the river-bank. “That’s as much as I know.”
“Thanks.” Wading ashore, I picked up my pack. “You got a satphone code in case we need a pickup?”
“Yup.” Merle spit brown fluid into the river. “Nancy Oscar two-two-three-niner. If my ol’ lady picks up, ask for me. Just call me…”
“Merle. Got it. Thanks for the ride.”
“Think nothing of it.” Merle thrust an oar into the water and shoved off. “Good luck,” he called back, then he sidestroked until the prow of his boat was pointed back the way we’d come.
“Think he was being honest with us?” Goldstein was seated on a nearby boulder; he’d taken off his boots and opened his pack, and was in the process of exchanging his waterlogged socks for a dry pair. “He could have dropped us off anywhere, you know.”
“He could, but what’s the point?” I didn’t mind hiking in wet socks—they’d dry out soon enough—so I hoisted my pack and settled its straps upon my shoulders. “He knows better than to lie to us.”
“Why…?”
“Because people out here in the boonies play it straight, Mr. Goldstein. Word gets around that you’re a liar, then no one trusts you anymore…and when the chips are down, that kind of trust is more precious than all the money you’ve got in the bank.” As I spoke, I was scanning the tall grass between us and the tree line. “Of course, you already know that, don’t you?”
He said nothing, only grunted as he relaced his boots. Once again, I doubted that Morgan Goldstein had seen much more of Coyote than what he’d viewed from the windows of a gyro. After fifty Earth-years of human colonization, almost two-thirds of the planet was unexplored; even Medsylvania barely felt the human presence. The population was growing, but the world itself was still untamed. With any luck, it would remain that way for a long time to come.
“So which way do we go?” he asked.
“That way.” By then, I’d spotted what I was looking for: a place where it looked as if the frozen grass had been trampled and pushed down, creating a narrow trail that led into the trees. Even though months had gone by, the grass was only beginning to thaw; the trail still remained. Not by coincidence, it ran parallel to the creek. Made sense: follow the creek, find the people.
Goldstein peered in the direction I indicated, yet he didn’t see the clues I’d spotted. “Whatever you say,” he said, standing up and hoisting his own pack. “You’re the guide. Lead on.” A moment of hesitation. “How far do you think…?”
“No idea.” I picked up my rifle, checked its charge. “As far as it took for your friend to find wherever he was looking for.”
Goldstein gave me a sharp look. “You think he was looking for something? What?”
“Don’t know.” Pulling the rifle strap across my left shoulder, I led the way toward the trail. “Reckon we’ll find out when we get there.”
We followed the trail into the forest. It hadn’t been used in quite a while, yet there was still enough snow on the ground, sheltered from the sun by the faux birch that rose around us, that I was able to discern the occasional footprint. As I had figured, the trail ran parallel to the creek; if Cassidy and his people set up camp somewhere nearby, then it made sense for them to be near a source of fresh water.
The terrain was flat, but that didn’t make the going any easier. Faux birch soon gave way to Medsylvania roughbark so tall that we couldn’t see the treetops. The trail had vanished by then, forcing us to rely upon the creek as our only guide; now and then I stopped to pull nylon ribbons from my pack and tie them around lower branches, a precaution I’d learned to take against getting lost. Before long we found ourselves entering a low swamp. Trudging through ankle-deep pools of brackish water, we used our machetes to hack through thickets of clingberry and spider bush.
We were halfway through the swamp when my nose caught an out-of-place odor: woodsmoke, wafting through the woods from a nearby campfire. Goldstein smelled it, too. Looking around, he pointed toward a bright place between the trees where it seemed as if the sun had penetrated. “Over there, maybe?”
I stopped, peered more closely. Yes, it looked like a clearing. “Worth a try,” I said as I tied another ribbon around a branch. “Let’s go.”
Morgan’s guess turned out to be correct. We left the swamp behind and went up a low rise, and suddenly came upon a broad natural clearing, a place where a lightning storm had long ago caused that part of the forest to burn, leaving behind only bushes, rotting stumps, and tall grass. And it was there that we found the camp.
A half dozen dome tents, like blue-and-red-striped pimples, were arranged in a semicircle around a stone-ringed fire pit from which brown smoke tapered upward. The grass had been cleared away, but not recently; tufts of green rose here and there among untidy stacks of firewood and under sagging clotheslines strung from one tent to another. On the far side of the camp was a low, six-sided wooden structure, its windowless walls fashioned from crudely cut roughbark logs, its roof a thatchwork of tree limbs stuffed with lichen. At first glance, I took it to be a Navajo-style sweat lodge. As we came closer, we passed a small, tarp-covered shelter that reeked of urine and feces: a latrine, probably little more than a hole in the ground, with tarpaulins rigged around it for a modicum of privacy.
The camp was run-down and ill kept, as if the people who lived there no longer cared about maintaining it. If, indeed, anyone was still there. There was no one in sight; were it not for the smoke rising from the pit and the damp clothes hanging from the lines, I could have sworn the place was deserted. Frost-covered grass crunched beneath the soles of our boots as we ventured closer; looking down, I realized that I’d unconsciously pulled my rifle off my shoulder and was holding it in my hands, my right forefinger an inch away from the safety.
“Oh, my god.” Goldstein’s eyes were wide. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know. I…” Then I glanced his way, and felt my heart skip a beat. “Morgan…freeze. Don’t move a muscle.”
“What are you…?” Then he saw what I’d spotted, and stopped dead in his tracks. “Aw, crap.”
No more than three yards to his right, half-hidden among the brush, lay a ball plant. It wasn’t very large, yet its shell was still closed; the immature flower rising from its top showed that it was in early bloom. A bad time to be close to one of these things; the pseudowasps would be coming out of winter dormancy, ready to protect the plant while they pollinated it.
That wasn’t the worst of it. I looked around, saw another ball plant to my left, a little farther away and yet just as menacing. Glancing to my right again, I spotted yet another, only a few feet past the one near Goldstein.
A chill went down my spine. The field was practically evil with ball plants. Which only made sense, in ecological terms. Marshland nearby, affording shelter for hibernating swampers, yet with enough sunlight to allow for photosynthesis. And although these specimens were a little smaller than the ones closer to the equator, they weren’t so close to the subarctic region farther north that they couldn’t survive. I was no botanist, but if they could make it through winter here…
“Don’t worry, Morgan,” a voice called out. “Just back away, and everything will be fine.”
A tall, muscular man stood at the edge the campsite, arms folded across his broad chest, long black hair gathered in a braid behind his neck. Tough as a slab of Arizona sandstone; one look at him, and you knew that nothing could ever scratch him.
“Joe!” Goldstein looked around. “Thank God, I thought we’d never…” He stopped, remembering where he was. “What do you think you’re doing, camping so close to these things?”
An amused expression appeared on Cassidy’s face. “They’re not so dangerous, once you know how to approach them. You’ll only get swarmed if you co
me within six feet of them. Just back away, and you won’t be harmed.”
Goldstein was less than confident, yet he took Joe at his word. He carefully walked backward, picking his way across the field until he’d joined Cassidy. I followed him, keeping a wary eye on the plants. Under different circumstances, I would’ve retreated to the safety of the woods…yet this was the person we’d come to find, so that wasn’t an option.
“Good to see you again.” Once Morgan was away from the ball plants, he visibly relaxed. “You don’t know how worried I’ve been about you. I mean, you just…”
“Disappeared, yes.” Cassidy shook his head. “Sorry I didn’t leave word where I was going, but this was something I just had to…”
“Don’t give me that.” Once again, the imperious tone crept into Goldstein’s voice. “If there’s something wrong, if there’s something bothering you, you can come to me. We’ll work it out.”
“There’s nothing wrong, really.” An elusive smile crossed Cassidy’s face. “I don’t expect you to understand, but…everything’s fine. You didn’t have to hire a guide to find me.”
How did he know who I was? Sure, it was probably a safe assumption, but…
“The name’s Sawyer,” I said. “Like your boss…like Mr. Goldstein says, he’s been worried about you.”
“Of course.” Cassidy’s eyes barely flickered in my direction. “I appreciate your concern, but you shouldn’t be here. This place isn’t for you.”
As he spoke, I gazed past him. People were crawling out of their tents, like nocturnal animals cautiously emerging into the light of day. Men and women, their hair unwashed and matted, their clothes threadbare and soiled. Shielding their eyes from the midday sun, they regarded us with silent curiosity, as if Morgan and I were mirages that would vanish as suddenly as we’d appeared.
