Coyote Horizon

by Allen Steele

  Yuri reappeared. He’d spent the evening thinking about the things the chaaz’maha had told him during the long ride from New Boston, and he wanted to know more. They spoke for a little while, then the chaaz’maha copied the Sa’Tong-tas into the pad the drover had brought with him. Yuri left again, but not before telling the chaaz’maha that he thought he’d like to see his wife again, and perhaps the time had come for him to buy her passage to Coyote from Russia.

  And so it went, not only for the rest of that day, but also the next day, and the day after that. One by one at first, and then in twos and threes, the people of Carlos’s Pizza came to see the man with the odd tattoo on his forehead. Sometimes they were curious, other times they were skeptical, but more often than not they were desperate, scared, depressed, or angry at the way life had treated them. The only common factor was that they had questions for which they had no answers and were willing to listen to what the stranger had to say.

  The chaaz’maha delivered no sermons, nor did he treat the inn’s front porch as if it were a church. When he spoke, it was with only one person at a time, and often he spent more time listening to others than talking. Searching their minds, he was able to determine what troubled them even if they didn’t articulate the problem themselves, and responded in kind. Sometimes Walking Star or Melissa joined him on the porch, but after a while he grew confident enough to be able to sit out there on his own, meeting with whoever happened to show up. He refused offers of money, politely saying that he didn’t need any, although he was always grateful when someone was thoughtful enough to bring him some water or perhaps a snack.

  He never claimed to know the mind of God, except to occasionally say that the only holy spirit was that which all beings carried within themselves. And that may have been what finally persuaded Grey Rice to pay him a visit.

  Indeed, Rice had never been far from the chaaz’maha. From his very first day in Carlos’s Pizza, the young Dominionist minister—or rather, former minister—had lurked nearby, often following him down the street or quietly standing at a corner of the porch, maintaining a discreet distance while staying just close enough that he could hear what the chaaz’maha had to say. Walking Star was wary of his presence, and Melissa didn’t recognize him until the chaaz’maha reminded her of who he was; when Cassidy searched Rice, he didn’t find any hostile thoughts, only a sense of curiosity. So the chaaz’maha continued to ignore him, giving Rice a chance to come to him if and when he felt like it.

  It was late afternoon of their fourth day in Carlos’s Pizza when Rice finally decided to approach the chaaz’maha. By then, it was almost dinnertime; the chaaz’maha had been talking to townspeople all day, and his throat was raw and his stomach was beginning to rumble. Melissa was taking a nap, and Walking Star was off on an errand. The chaaz’maha was about to get up from his chair when he heard footsteps on the porch, and when he looked around, he saw Rice strolling toward him.

  “Hello, Reverend Rice,” he said. “I was hoping you’d eventually come to see me.”

  That stopped Rice dead in his tracks. “So you remember me.”

  “Of course, I do,” the chaaz’maha replied, although he didn’t say how. In the year and a quarter since they’d last spoken to each other, Grey Rice’s appearance had changed. No longer wearing the black vestments of a Dominionist minister, he’d also lost weight; his long hair had become shaggy, and an unkempt beard covered his lean face. But the most noticeable difference was his eyes; once confident and open, they were now shrouded and hollow, filled only by a deep sense of loss. The chaaz’maha didn’t need to search him to know that Rice was in pain.

  “Please, sit with me.” The chaaz’maha gestured to the vacant chair next to him, still warm from his previous visitor. “I’ve been wondering if we’d ever meet again.”

  Rice hesitated. “I remember you,” he said, coming closer but not sitting down. “You’re the person who came to see me at my church…the one who said he’d met the hjadd ambassador.” He paused, then added, “You didn’t tell me your name, and you look a lot different now, but as you mentioned Sa’Tong, I knew who you were.”

  “You’re very observant.” The chaaz’maha settled back in his chair, casually crossed his legs. “Yeah, I’m the same guy,” he went on, briefly allowing himself to become Hawk Thompson again. “Kinda surprised you picked up on it. Guess I do look a bit different these days.” A pause. “So do you, Reverend, if you don’t mind me saying so…”

  “I do mind.” Rice’s eyes narrowed, and there was an angry harshness in his voice. “I’m no longer a pastor. I’ve lost my church…Hell, because of you, I’ve lost my religion…”

  “Because of me?” The chaaz’maha shook his head. “Sorry you blame me for this, but the choices you’ve made are your own. They can’t be the result of the few minutes we spent together.”

  Rice let out his breath. “Not directly, no…but because of you, I went to meet the hjadd ambassador myself. The things he told me, the things he said to me…”

  “Heshe.” The chaaz’maha was careful not to smile. “The hjadd share both genders.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Rice glared at him. “That day, everything changed for me. Sure, it took a couple of weeks for it to really sink in, but when I finally had a chance to speak my mind to a deacon who came from Earth to meet with me, I realized that I no longer had faith in my own beliefs, that I couldn’t function as a pastor. I abandoned my church, and when I found I couldn’t even live in Liberty without being reminded every day of what I once was, I came here.”

  “And what have you been doing since?” The chaaz’maha refrained from searching him. He wanted to hear the truth from Rice himself, in his own words.

  “I found work at the plant. Filleting brownhead and packing them in ice.” A humorless smile. “It’s a lousy job, but the smell keeps me from thinking too much. About you, about where you led me…”

  “I’m sorry.” The chaaz’maha briefly closed his eyes. “Really, I am. I never meant to harm you, or do anything that would cause you to lose your way. All I wanted to do was ask a few questions, see if you had any answers to the things I needed to know.”

  “Guess you found them yourself, didn’t you?” Rice pointed to the tattoo on his forehead. “Now you’re setting yourself up as some sort of messiah, starting your own religion…”

  “No. There you’re wrong.” The chaaz’maha shook his head. “Sa’Tong isn’t a religion so much as it is a system of spiritual beliefs. Sort of a higher form of ethics, if you will. And the last thing I want to be is a messiah. If you’ve listened to anything I’ve said these last few days, you’d know that my role is that of a teacher.”

  “Better hope that’s your role.” A cynical grin. “Coyote’s had a messiah before, y’know. Zoltan Shirow, the Church of Universal Transformation…” He gestured in the direction of the Midland Range. “They ate each other alive way back when, up on Mt. Shaw. If you don’t watch yourself…”

  “I know all about Shirow. I was born and raised here. My parents…” Realizing that he was about to reveal more about himself than he meant to, the chaaz’maha changed the subject. “That’s an experience I have no desire to repeat,” he went on. “Shirow was a charlatan, someone who claimed to be a holy prophet but instead used his followers. That’s not what I intend to do.”

  “So you say…you’re a teacher, that’s all.” Leaning against the porch rail, Rice folded his arms together. “I’ve heard what you’ve told the others. That the only God is that which is within us, and if we are to truly worship Him, then we must learn to worship and respect each other.”

  “Essentially, yes.” The chaaz’maha nodded. “The First and Second Codicils of Sa’Tong, although not exactly in those words…”

  “Autotheism. The belief in self-deification, an idea that goes all the way back to the seventeenth century.” Rice shook his head. “Nothing new, really. I learned this stuff in divinity school.”

  “Similar, yes, but not the
same.” The chaaz’maha raised a hand. “Again, you continue to insist that Sa’Tong is a religion. It isn’t, or at least not the way you’re accustomed to thinking of religion. As I’ve said, it’s more like an ethical construct, or a philosophy. The major difference is that it doesn’t recognize God as a divine entity but rather as something we invent ourselves. God didn’t create us…”

  “‘We created God.’ Yes, I’ve heard you say that.” Rice shrugged. “Old wine, new bottle.”

  “A different vintage entirely, if you’ll only allow yourself to taste it.” Bending forward to rest his elbows on his knees, the chaaz’maha gazed up at him. “Grey, if you’ll stop blaming me for your loss of faith, I can show you something that’s greater than Dominionism, more true than anything you heard before. No, it isn’t the word of God, nor does it pretend to be. It’s a way of thought…a way of living…that can ease your pain.”

  “The one, true path to Heaven.” The same weary cynicism.

  “There is no Heaven. There is no Hell. There’s only the world that we make for ourselves, in this life…which is the only one we have.” The chaaz’maha hesitated, then reached into his robe. “You’ve seen me do this,” he said, holding up his pad. “You know what’s in here. If you’ve got a pad, let me give you the Sa’Tong-tas. You can read it, then decide for yourself…”

  “No.” Grey shook his head. “I don’t want the watered-down version you’ve given everyone else. When we met before, you told me about the one the hjadd gave you. That’s what I want to see.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. We decided it was too valuable to carry along with us, so we left it behind.” The chaaz’maha was careful not to say where they had come from. As Walking Star had said, people would inevitably learn about The Sanctuary, but the longer its existence was kept secret, the better.

  Grey shrugged. “Then it’s hard for me to accept it at face value. Sorry I have to be skeptical about this, but…”

  “I understand…In fact, I agree. All forms of spiritualism should be treated skeptically.” Grey’s face turned red, but the chaaz’maha paid it no mind as he put the pad back in his robe. “Then you’re welcome to hang around while I deliver my teachings. You can even sit beside me. Ask all the questions you like. Challenge me, if you feel the need to do so. This isn’t church.”

  “No need to be insulting.”

  “My apologies. Didn’t mean to offend you. I was only trying to point out the difference between Sa’Tong and most human religions. Religion insists upon its dogma being accepted at face value, no questions asked. But Sa’Tong isn’t a religion, or at least not the way we usually define it, nor am I a priest, but rather a teacher…and only a mediocre teacher wouldn’t allow his students to ask questions.”

  Grey scowled. “That’s rather presumptuous of you. What makes you think I’m your student?”

  The chaaz’maha rose from his seat. “You’ve come to listen to me, haven’t you? I’d say that qualifies.” He turned toward the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…it’s been a long day, and I think it’s almost time for dinner.”

  Grey hesitated. “Would you mind company?”

  The chaaz’maha stopped, looked back at him. “Not at all. You’re always welcome at my table.”

  Over the course of the next week and a half, the chaaz’maha’s life assumed a pattern. After breakfast, he and his companions would take their morning exercise by walking around town, visiting places where they were no longer strangers: the waterfront, the grocery and various shops, the clinic where a local physician had offered to monitor Melissa’s pregnancy. He’d made friends with various townspeople, so he’d sometimes drop by for a cup of coffee; the chaaz’maha had become a familiar face in their homes, a caring friend to those who’d come to him with their problems.

  In the afternoons, he resumed his place on the Laughing Sailor’s front porch, where he spoke with whoever came to see him. By then, he was often drawing a small crowd, with some returning every day; whenever he sensed that someone needed to meet with him on some private matter, he’d take the individual to another side of the porch, where they could talk without being overheard. At first, Owen McKay had objected to having so many people crowded onto his porch; he was also irate that he’d lost his barmaid, although he hadn’t yet connected Bess’s abrupt departure with anything the chaaz’maha might have said to her. But when he noticed that the tavern was gaining revenue from people coming in for drinks and snacks, he came to realize that playing host to a spiritual teacher wasn’t bad for business.

  Grey Rice was always there. He never accepted the chaaz’maha’s invitation to sit next to him, but he did frequently ask questions, often challenging him at one point or another. The chaaz’maha always answered him, candidly and without obfuscation, and after a few days Grey decided that perhaps he should read the Sa’Tong-tas himself, just as many of the regulars already had. And both men were amused when, not long after that, Grey found himself defending Sa’Tong, reciting the Codicils or Poems from memory when another person began making objections to their principles.

  Yet the chaaz’maha didn’t just hold forth. He listened, too, sometimes not speaking for a long time as he heard what people had to say. Very often, the afternoon meetings took the form of informal bull sessions, with townspeople discussing matters that had nothing to do with Sa’Tong. The falling wholesale price of weirdling oil, now that more homes and businesses in the colonies were being refitted with photovoltaic cells imported from Earth. Competition with Bridgeton’s commercial fishing fleet and how it affected their share of the market, causing fishermen to bring home catches that they couldn’t sell. Whether or not the town needed to build an expansion for its school. Which kind of sails were better, canvas or polymer, or the best ways to keep deck nails from rusting.

  The subject that came up most often was increased immigration to Coyote. By then, it had become common knowledge that the Western Hemisphere Union had collapsed, with hundreds of thousands desperate to flee the riot-torn cities of North and South America. Word reached Carlos’s Pizza that Carlos Montero was trying to negotiate an accord with the Union’s provisional government that would remove the emigration barriers put in place by the Proletariat in exchange for formal recognition of the Coyote Federation and relinquishment of previous territorial claims. The U.N. treaty would finally be ratified by all of Earth’s major superpowers, but it also raised the problem of a massive surge of refugees, with no obvious way to shelter or feed them.

  Although the chaaz’maha shared their concerns, he was also pleased by the general tenor of the discussions. He was all too aware that, until recently, most of the townspeople would have reacted selfishly, deciding that it wasn’t their problem and that the door should be slammed shut. Yet many had come to realize that, if they were to treat others as if they were manifestations of God, then they could not refuse them sanctuary in their time of need. So the talk wasn’t about whether former citizens of the Union should be allowed to immigrate to Coyote, but rather how they would be cared for once they arrived. Indeed, there were even some who noted that the Carlos’s Pizza fishing fleet often brought home more fish than the market could bear; perhaps the warehouse’s frozen surplus could be sent across the channel to Albion, where the Colonial Militia was already beginning to set up a refugee camp.

  Listening to all this, the chaaz’maha realized that there was a chance for him to guide his followers toward a positive purpose. Yet he had only begun to think about how to accomplish that when he received an unexpected visit from Rhea Wolff.

  He and his companions had just finished breakfast and were about to leave the Laughing Sailor when they found the chief proctor waiting for them on the front steps. Aside from casual greetings now and then, none of them had spoken with Rhea since their first day in Carlos’s Pizza. At first, the chaaz’maha was pleased to see him, but when he saw the look on Wolff’s face, he realized that the proctor was there on official business.

  “Good morning,
Rhea,” he said, walking down the steps. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  The fact of the matter was that the sky was overcast, promising rain by afternoon at the latest. But the proctor didn’t seem to notice; his expression was grim, his arms folded together across his chest.

  “Morning,” he replied. “Got a minute? I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Of course. What’s on your mind?” As he said this, the chaaz’maha glanced at Walking Star and Melissa. The question, so casually asked, was a private signal the three of them had worked out. Yet Cassidy had already searched Rhea, and when he looked back at the chaaz’maha, it was as if he were whispering in the teacher’s ear.

  —He knows who you are.

  “Hate to put it to you like this,” Rhea was saying, “but…well, something’s come to my attention that I can’t ignore.”

  “Is there a problem?” Melissa asked. She’d just suffered another bout of morning sickness; her face was sallow. Despite her appetite, which remained ravenous, it had become difficult for her to keep anything in her stomach. Yet she’d heard Walking Star as well.

  “I’m afraid there is…or at least there may be, if what I’ve heard is true.” Rhea pulled out his pad, unfolded it. “A year or so ago, I got a memo from Albion. Chief proctors send and receive a lot of stuff like this…it’s our way of sharing information between jurisdictions…but most of the time they’re pretty routine. Read it once, store it in memory, and forget about it. And that’s what happened with the one I got from my colleague in New Brighton…until I happened to find it again yesterday.”

  As he spoke, he ran his index finger down the screen, pulling up a file from the menu. “Last year, someone went missing in New Brighton…a customs inspector who’d been working at the spaceport until he suddenly vanished. Wouldn’t matter much except that this individual was currently on parole, having been previously convicted on charges of second-degree murder. But he decided to remove his inhibitor patch and monitor bracelet and skip town without informing his parole officer. The parole officer”—Rhea paused to read something on his pad—“name of Joe Bairns, eventually managed to track him as far as the fishing boat that carried him and an unidentified female companion across the channel to Bridgeton. And after that…”