by Allen Steele
My arrival wasn’t unexpected—I knew better than to pay a visit without first calling ahead—but that didn’t mean I was welcome. Susan Montero had seen us coming, and even before the pilot lowered the landing gear, she’d left the house and walked down to meet us. The rotors had barely stopped spinning before she marched out to the gyro. One look at her face, and I knew that I was the last person she wanted to see, that day or any day.
“Morning, Susan,” I said, once I’d opened the side hatch and climbed out. “Good to see you again.”
That was a lie, of course. We’d never gotten along very well. Her husband was my chief of staff, so she had to put up with me. This was her family home, though, and my coming there constituted a breach of privacy that she could barely tolerate.
“Hello, General.” Her arms were folded across her chest, her gaze as cold as the Gabriel winds buffeting the ridgeline. She glanced past me; the pilot was climbing out of the gyro, buttoning up his parka with one hand as he removed his helmet. “Sorry,” she added, “but he can’t come in.”
Damned woman; the older she got, the more inhospitable she became. Not that you could tell that she was sixty-six by Gregorian reckoning; she’d opted for somatotropin therapy a few years ago, bringing her apparent age down to about forty. Indeed, she now looked a decade younger than I. But the reversal of age was only skin-deep; inside, she was a cranky old lady who neither forgot nor forgave, and her grudge against me was nearly two decades old.
I looked back at the gyro. The pilot had heard her: a shrug, then he shoved his gloved hands in his pockets and leaned against the fuselage. He’d be patient and wait for me. “That’s all right,” I replied, starting to step past her. “I’m not planning to stay long.”
Susan wasn’t happy about any of this, and for a moment I thought she was going to block my way. But someone must have told her that I was permitted to visit her mother because she moved aside. A wise decision; I was in no mood to argue with her.
“How is the president…your mother, I mean?” I asked, once we were walking together to the house. “Doing better, I hope.”
I tried to phrase it as a polite question, but it was also something that genuinely concerned me. What I was about to tell her would come as a surprise, perhaps even a major shock, and I didn’t want to cause any harm. Susan seemed to recognize this, because when she spoke again, her attitude softened a bit.
“All right, I suppose,” she murmured, keeping her voice low. “Her doctor gave her a physical just a few weeks ago, and said that she’s as well as could be expected.” She hesitated. “For a woman who’s 315 in Earth-years, that is. If she’d taken therapy…”
Her voice trailed off. She didn’t need to finish the rest. Although rejuvenation treatment had been available to Federation citizens for quite some time, it hadn’t worked for the original colonists who’d tried to take it. No one had yet learned the exact reason why the procedure wasn’t successful for them, except that it probably had something to do with the fact that they’d been in biostasis for nearly 230 years during the Alabama’s long voyage from Earth to Coyote. Apparently their bodies, constantly repaired at the cellular level during that time, rejected subsequent efforts once they’d resumed the normal aging process.
In any case, the small handful of Alabama colonists who’d tried to become young again had died during the procedure, leaving the others with no recourse but to live out the rest of their biological existences the way nature intended. The last person from that group to die trying to extend his life was Barry Dreyfus, whom I’d met when he was the LeMare’s pilot during the First Exploratory Expedition. He’d been almost Wendy’s age when he passed away. But I didn’t miss him as much as I did one of my closest friends, Dana Monroe, who had been the Alabama’s chief engineer. She died four years ago, during one of the first attempts to sustain the life of an original colonist. I’d scattered her ashes beneath the apple trees she’d cultivated in her backyard in Leeport, and christened a Corps dirigible in her memory, but there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t miss her. Susan was facing that same loss now.
“I know.” Again, I tried to be as diplomatic as possible. “At least she’s comfortable.” A glare from her, and I realized that I’d picked the wrong words. “That is, she’s got you and the rest of her family…”
“I’m here, yes. And Marie has come by, although she’s no longer fit to travel.” Marie was Carlos’s younger sister, nearly as old as Wendy herself. I’d been told that she’d become senile, barely recognizing anyone from her own family. “Jon would be here more often,” she added, “but you keep him busy, don’t you?”
Another stab. Susan was clearly in the mood for a fight. I didn’t reply, though, instead turning my gaze toward the manor. Constructed of blackwood imported from Great Dakota, with a cantilevered roof and broad windows overlooking the East Channel, Traveler’s Rest was the retreat Carlos Montero and Wendy Gunther had built for themselves following their retirement from politics. Few people were allowed to visit them once they’d gone into seclusion; I’d been here only a couple of times before, when Wendy, Jon, and I had met to make plans for carrying out Carlos’s last wishes by forming the Corps of Exploration.
A beautiful place for an old woman to spend her final years. No doubt she’d once thought Carlos would spend them with her. The fact that this wasn’t to be lent a sadness to Traveler’s Rest; the wind that moaned through the bare tree branches sounded like the utterances of a ghost who’d never left the premises.
Susan didn’t say anything until we reached the wooden steps leading to the veranda, but then she stepped in front of me. “All right,” she demanded, “before I let you see my mother, I want to know why you’re here.”
“I told you on the phone. I have something important to tell her…”
“Tell me first.”
“I’d rather tell you both at the same time.” She started to object, but I brushed her aside as gently as I could. “Look, I know you’re trying to spare your mother’s feelings, but this is something she’s going to hear anyway. It’s better that it come from me, in person, and not from someone else.” I decided not to let her know that person might be President Edgar; for all I knew, she might actually prefer it that way. “Besides, there’s something I need to talk to her about.”
Susan was hesitant to trust me, but she also knew that I wouldn’t lie to her. It had been many years since we’d been on the ExEx together, and although she’d never gotten over the gun accident that nearly killed Jorge, she’d also come to realize, however reluctantly, that I’d never meant harm to her or her family. She looked me straight in the eye for another moment or two, then slowly exhaled a small cloud of vapor.
“All right,” she murmured. “You may see her. But you can only stay for a few…”
She was interrupted by a high-pitched bark. An instant later, a small dog with shaggy grey-black fur trotted down the steps, its stubby tail wagging in consternation. He stopped a few feet from us and regarded me with suspicion, a soft growl rising in his throat.
“Hush, Campy. It’s all right.” Susan bent down to stroke him behind the ears. The dog looked like a mixed-breed, perhaps a Lhasa-terrier, and he was definitely wary of strangers; although he calmed down a bit, he didn’t take his eyes off me. “Mama’s dog,” Susan explained. “He isn’t used to…”
“Susan? Is there a problem?”
Unnoticed by either of us, a back door had opened, and someone had walked out onto the veranda to peer down at us from the railing. For a second, I thought it might be Tomas, Wendy’s lifelong aide. Instead, I saw an older gentleman whom I recognized. Nearly Wendy’s age, with a trim build and a white mane of hair, nonetheless he appeared younger, as if the years hadn’t quite touched him.
“No…not really.” Susan stood up, letting Campy come over to carefully sniff at my ankles. “Just talking, that’s all.” A glance in my direction. “General, this is…”
“We know each other.” The older man
smiled. “Good to see you again, Sawyer. Been a while.”
“Yes, it has, Chief.” I returned the smile. “Nice to see you, too.”
It had been a few years since the last time I’d seen Chris Levin. Not since his retirement party, at least, when he’d stepped down as Liberty’s chief proctor. He and I had never been close friends, but when I’d moved my wilderness outfitting business from Leeport to Liberty, not long before I helped form the Corps, I’d gone to him to acquire a firearms permit, and he’d taken the opportunity to tell some stories about the times he’d humped the boonies himself. I always thought that, if Chief Levin hadn’t been a lawman, he might have made a pretty good wilderness guide; as another original colonist, he was no stranger to Coyote’s unexplored regions.
Susan seemed surprised that we’d know each other; I bet she was wondering if the chief had ever run me in. And indeed, there was a time, many years ago, when I’d tried to stay off his radar. But my days of hard drinking and cheating at poker were long behind me, and I’d given them up for the Corps before I had a chance to enjoy the questionable comforts of the old town stockade.
Chief Levin—it was hard for me to think of him as anything else—gave me a brief nod, then looked back at Susan. “If you’re done, perhaps you ought to come in. Wendy’s waiting to see him…and since she’s due to take her medicine soon, I don’t know how much longer she’ll be awake.”
“Sure…of course.” Another brief glance in my direction, then Susan turned her back on me and started walking up the stairs. Apparently Campy had determined that I was harmless, because he let me follow her without further protest. Chief Levin didn’t say anything, but when I reached the veranda, he gave me a wink and a pat on the shoulder.
He’d probably been standing there for a minute or so before he’d let his presence be known, quietly eavesdropping on our conversation until coming to my rescue. I nodded my silent thanks, then followed him and Susan into the house, with Campy leading the way.
Tomas met us at the door. He shooed the dog into a side room and shut the door behind him, then took our jackets and hung them in the vestibule closet before pulling out a pair of soft moccasins and silently offering them to me. As I sat down on a bench to remove my boots, once again I found myself marveling at Tomas Conseco and his reasons for being there. A quiet, middle-aged man who, as a child, had been among the first wave of immigrants to come to Coyote from the Western Hemisphere Union, he’d been Wendy’s aide when she was president. Rumor had it that she and Carlos had tried to persuade him to enter politics, but apparently his first loyalty was to them. In any case, Tomas never left their side, and once Wendy became a widow, he’d moved into Traveler’s Rest to take care of her, assuming the role of a surrogate son.
The manor’s main room was magnificent, its vaulted ceiling rising high above tall windows that looked out over the East Channel, the blackwood walls decorated with Wendy’s oil landscapes, painted before she’d grown too old to wield a brush. Mounted above the mantel of a fieldstone fireplace was the lacquered skull of the boid Carlos had shot when he was a teenager; I wondered whether the historical museum in Liberty, which I’d visited only the night before, had ever approached the family about acquiring it, and decided that it probably had but been turned down. Nonetheless, there was a lot of history in this place…and like the museum, it was uncommonly quiet.
I didn’t spot Wendy, though, until Susan led me across the room to where she was sitting, beside a window overlooking the Garcia Narrows Bridge. As we came closer, I was astonished by how frail she’d become. Seated in a faux-birch wheelchair, a fleece blanket draped over her legs, she barely resembled the strong young woman who’d once led the Coyote Federation. Her hair, once thick and pale blond, was now sparse and the color of dirty snow; her skin had become almost waxen, the flesh shrunken around her eyes and mouth. It seemed as if it took all her effort just to sit upright; whatever strength she still had was being held in reserve, rationed out a bit at a time just to get her through the day.
No wonder Susan was so protective. It didn’t matter what the doctors said; her mother was dying.
I’d just come to regret being there when Wendy turned her head to look at me. “Sawyer,” she said, her voice little more than a dry rustle. “How pleasant to see you again. What brings you here?”
Her body was in a state of terminal breakdown, yet one look at her eyes, and I knew that her mind was as sharp as ever. Although it had been over three years since my last visit, she recognized me at once and realized that this wasn’t a social call.
“Good morning, Madam President.” I forced a smile. “I…”
“Please. Not ‘Madam President.’” She closed her eyes, shook her head ever so slightly. “I wish people wouldn’t call me that anymore. They mean well, but”—a quiet sigh—“I’m Wendy, and that’s all I want to be called.”
“Wendy…as you wish.” From the moment we first met, the day the Lee was destroyed, I’d never called her anything except “Madam President.” I was uncomfortable about using her first name, but I wasn’t about to make an issue of it. “I’ve come to tell you something you may want to know…and also ask your advice.”
“Advice?” A raised eyebrow: she was both intrigued and skeptical. “Oh, dear, I hope not. I’m so tired of people asking me what to do.” She might have been joking, but I couldn’t tell for sure. “Please, sit down,” she added, then raised a liver-spotted hand to gesture toward a nearby ottoman. “Would you like something? Perhaps a cup of coffee? Tomas…Susan…somebody, please get Sawyer some coffee.”
Before I could object, Tomas walked off. Susan wasn’t about to leave us alone; without a word, she sauntered over to an armchair. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Chris Levin had taken a seat on a couch, far enough away not to be intrusive while still being able to listen to what I had to say. I hadn’t expected to speak to anyone except Wendy, but there was no diplomatic way to ask the others to leave us alone. I’d just have to hope that they’d have the common sense to keep what they heard to themselves.
“Now,” Wendy went on. “You’ve something you’d like to discuss?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I took a deep breath, then began to relate the events of the past few days. The unexpected arrival of a ship from Earth, with a former Union Astronautica captain aboard. The revelation that the chaaz’maha had survived the Lee disaster. The knowledge that he was alive and well, and apparently living somewhere in North America, possibly in Boston. That President Edgar had instructed the Corps of Exploration to send an expedition to Earth, and also that he was currently negotiating with the hjadd, requesting permission for us to reopen the hyperspace passage between Coyote and humankind’s homeworld. And finally, with no small reluctance, that I’d informed Jorge and his cousin Inez of what we’d learned, and had enlisted both of them to join the expedition.
The last part caused Susan to rise from her seat. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she snapped. “You’re not sending my son to…!”
“Susie. Be still.” Wendy had been quiet throughout all of this, her face showing little or no emotion. Her eyes darted toward her daughter, and although Wendy didn’t raise her voice, that simple, understated command was sufficient to make Susan sit down again. “Go on, Sawyer. Tell me…why do you want to send my grandson on this mission?”
By then, Tomas had returned with a cup of coffee. He placed it on a table beside me, then quietly took his place next to Wendy. I ignored the coffee and went on. “Inez needs to go because the chaaz’maha…”
“Hawk.” A small frown. “I know what he was…what he is…but here in this house, my nephew’s name is Hawk.”
“Yes, ma’am. Of course.” Another glance at Susan, who remained silent but angry, then I started again. “Inez is Hawk’s daughter, so the reason for her being on the expedition is obvious.” Wendy nodded; she understood. “But she’s still only a corporal, so she doesn’t have the experience for such a…such an advanced mission.”
“Dangerous,
you mean.”
There was no double-talking her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It will be dangerous. That’s why I’m sending Jorge, too. Although he’s only recently learned that they’re related, he’s been her commanding officer ever since she joined the Corps. They work well together, and I think…I believe…that he can protect her from any harm.”
Wendy nodded again. It had been many years since Black Anael, but she obviously remembered the decision, made that night in the New Brighton consulate, to hide Melissa Sanchez and her newborn daughter from the rest of the world. Even before I spirited them away to Medsylvania, we’d also decided that Jorge would never know that he had a second cousin who was the chaaz’maha’s only child. The boy was just too young to be trusted with the secret, and even after he grew up, it had been to our advantage never to reveal Inez Torres’s true identity to him. Not even Susan and Jon were aware of this; of Jorge’s family, only Wendy knew that he had a younger relative serving with him in the Corps.
“So you’ve finally told him the truth.” Wendy closed her eyes, let her head fall back against the chair. “I’m glad. Perhaps it’s for the best…especially since he’s going with her.”
“Mother!” Susan was aghast. “I can’t believe you’re actually…that you’d even think of letting Jorge do this!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh; instead, I just bit my lip. Apparently the news that Susan had a cousin she’d never known about was completely lost on her; as usual, her primary concern was only herself and her immediate family. I’d been told that she hadn’t always been so self-centered, but it was hard for me to believe.
