by Kage Baker
“I grabbed up Eagle’s daughter and Falcon, one in either arm, and beat it through the door and swam up and up until I saw clear water above me and the face of the Moon, white with horror. She used to be red like the Sun, before that night when I farted. I broke the surface and found the canoe still floating there,though it was half swamped, and Cormorant and Pelican were lying in it unconscious. I tossed in Eagle’s daughter and Falcon, jumped in myself, bailed out the water, and paddled us all back to the mainland single-handed.
“Eagle’s daughter and Falcon recovered and were married, and lived happily ever after. I’m not sure if they had children, though. At least I wasn’t invited to any naming ceremonies! And you can hang that story on the hook, because I’m finished telling it.”
“God, Sky Coyote, that was so gross!” giggled Awhay, rolling close to me. “Did it really happen like that? Was that really the truth?”
“As much of the truth as I ever tell, child of earth.” I grinned lazily at her.
“My mother used to say You’re a truth made of lies. Maybe she was right, for once in her life.” She snuggled closer. “You know what? I think Puluy’s gone to sleep …”
When it got quiet at last, I lay there between the girls and watched the stars. From time to time a little wind moved in the oak trees, but mostly there was only the old sound, the oldest sound, mortals breathing slowly by their hearth fires, with now and then the whimper of a child or dog.
Sleep tight, children. Sky Coyote is with you.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I SLEPT, AND SAW ALL the terrible things I’d warned the Chumash about. From the sea came the white sails, and they anchored and the white men came striding up over the land. Their armor gleamed silver and their priests carried banners with crosses. My people fought and died, or turned to flee into the mountains. But from beyond the mountains came more white men, under a striped banner, bearing long rifles. What were my people going to do? Were we all going to die?
No! Because here they came, the Enforcers, heroes to save the day. Budu pointed at the Spanish and the Americans with his ax. He pronounced his sentence on them, as he always did: If you make war on other tribes to take their land, you must die. He gave an order, and the big men in bearskins moved, as they always had, like a wave rolling in to crush the guilty and protect the innocent. The Spanish cut them with steel, but they kept coming. The Americans shot them with bullets, but they kept coming.
Oh, it was wonderful! All the terrible things I’d prophesied weren’t going to come true after all, no near extinction for the Chumash, no mission slaves, no conquerors! The Enforcers were seeing to it that life would go on in the ancient ways forever and ever, so that good people could sleep safely by their fires under the kindly stars. The problems with history being changed had all been smoothed over, somehow.
Now all the invaders seemed to be dead, and Budu was helping his men take heads. The bodies were stacked in heaps and burned. He was laughing his high-pitched laugh; his pale-blue eyes were dancing. The Chumash were bowing down to thank him. But then from the dead I saw a figure leap up, a priest who somehow hadn’t been executed, a small man in a black robe. He slipped in under Budu’s arm. He had a long knife in his hand. I tried to yell a warning but I couldn’t, and anyway I recognized the man in the black robe. I saw myself running my knife in between Budu’s ribs. No. No.
It didn’t happen that way. I would never have done that.
Would I? If I’d been ordered to do it, would I have betrayed him?
I was shivering when I woke up, but the girls were hogging the furs. Growling softly, I nipped at Awhay until she woke up enough to relinquish some bed space to her principal divinity.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IF THE CHUMASH HAD BEEN impressed with me, I really made a sensational entrance at the weekly production meeting.
I had to open the rear seam of my breeches to let my tail out, and it stuck through the rear pleat of my coat. I had to abandon my wig, but my tricorne fit very tidily between my coyote ears. Yes, all eyes were on me during my report on Initial Contact and Preliminary Negotiations. I disconcerted Mr. Bugleg no end. I could tell, because he kept dropping his stylus. Then again, maybe he usually had trouble holding small objects. Anyhow I concluded my report and stepped down, and there was vast creaking in that prefab hall as fifty people shifted uncomfortably in their folding chairs.
“Questions?” inquired Mr. Lopez.
One of the administrative team put up his hand, an elderly mortal. He wasn’t a scientist or anything; he was just some investor the Company had sent along on the trip so he could think he was helping to make decisions. He stood and frowned at me.
“I’m sure everyone at Dr. Zeus would like to thank Joseph for his report, and it sounds like he’s doing a great job, but I don’t see why he had to include in his report his adventures with the underaged native girls. I would like to go on record as protesting that.”
“So noted,” intoned Lopez, and I made my ears droop. There was a wave of subvocal giggling from the immortals in the hall. The old man glared around—you’d have thought he could hear us—and raised his voice as he continued:
“I would also like to go on record as protesting the choice of the Chumash tribe as preservation subjects.”
“So noted,” replied Lopez hurriedly, but the old guy went right on:
“I’ve been watching the preliminary field reports. These Indians aren’t like the Hopi or the Navajo. Those were clean, peaceful Indians with an advanced society and beautiful mythology. They farmed and they built houses the way we do. These Chumash are different. They’re dirty-minded, lazy, pleasure-loving Indians. They don’t have anything important to contribute to human culture. I think it’s a waste of Company funds to bother with them.”
“So noted. Thank you,” said Lopez.
“And they’re not spiritual people at all! Their sexual habits are depraved. They’re decadent. They remind me of those emperor people who used to lie around in togas—you know. What were they called?”
“Romans, sir,” said Lopez faintly.
“Romans, right. The Company would be spending its time and money much better if it went after a nicer tribe. There are Indians down in Los Angeles now with much more meaningful lives. I saw a thing on the holo where they’ve even discovered monotheism and they have a prophet and everything. If they were the ones we were saving, I’ll bet they’d develop into a great civilization.”
Lopez cleared his throat.
“With respect, sir, we operatives aren’t permitted to judge the quality of one mortal culture against another. You all have equal value in our eyes, regardless of your beliefs and practices. We simply follow the directives of Dr. Zeus, and in this particular case Dr. Zeus has decided that the Chumash are worth rescuing.”
“Yes, I know all about you immortals and how smart you are. Well, I’m just an old man from the twenty-fourth century, but I’ll tell you this: we should have programmed you with a sense of right and wrong. Because it sure seems to me that you androids don’t have any.” Oooo! What a faux pas. There was a real vibration of subsonic rage in the room from my fellow Old Ones. Lopez drew a deep breath.
“Sir, we are cyborgs. Not androids. There is a difference.”
“Whatever.” The old guy waved dismissively. “The point is that you people just don’t have any values. So I want to go on record as protesting this Chumash thing. And the way Dr. Zeus is being run nowadays. I know I can’t do anything about it, but I’ve been a stockholder since this company started, and I don’t like one bit the way it’s turned out.”
“So noted,” said Lopez. And over the red wave of immortal wrath that filled the ether, he broadcast: Please, everybody, the old horse’s ass is retiring next month.
The meeting moved on to other topics, and afterward there were refreshments, if you found distilled water and little sea-algae crackers refreshing. I didn’t stay.
I went back to Humashup by a path different from the one I too
k the first time. People are funny about their gods: might be one or two lurkers hoping to get off an arrow or two at me. So I went over the hills and just strolled in through the oak trees behind the houses, where there were some children running around. They didn’t notice me. I crouched down to watch them.
Little brown kids, mostly naked, playing with some rocks by water. I’d been like that once: no bright electronic toys, and no possible way to understand one if I’d encountered it. That was before all the operations that turned me into a brainy little cyborg like Latif. Old Eurobase One in the high Cevennes in France, that had been where Budu sent me. They’d unloaded me, crying and airsick and disoriented, straight into the base hospital. When I awoke, my intelligence had been zapped upward a few million points, and I had the potential to become immortal.
The very first thing I remember seeing, in my new improved state, was a flat white wall on which images danced, a lot more colorful than my poor dad’s bison and horses. There were other children lying in beds nearby, and they were giggling weakly at the bright figures. There was a little pink man with a weapon, and a rabbit and a duck; the duck was trying to get the man to kill the rabbit, but the rabbit was so clever, he managed to turn the duck’s scheming back against him every time. The duck’s bill was blown completely off his face. I laughed at that until I hurt.
Eurobase One was a lot more primitive than the deluxe private-school bases the Company built later. It was more like a military base with a school attached as a kind of afterthought, and we kids were used to seeing Enforcers go charging out to fight off the latest stupid attack by the Great Goat Cult. Bad guys were stupid. I remember a nurse sitting down on the edge of my bed and explaining this to me. The Rabbit was the hero, because he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, and he used his intelligence to confuse his enemies so they hurt themselves instead of hurting him. It made sense to me, and as a role model the screwy Rabbit was hard to improve on. Which was a good thing, since Eurobase One had a limited budget for teaching tools in those days.
I wondered how these kids would adjust to a new world, and to new heroes like rabbits and stuttering pigs? To say nothing of all the shiny educational toys the Company provided for its mortal wards. The kids wouldn’t be turned into little geniuses like I’d been, but life was going to offer a lot more than the game of scrambling up on a high rock and stopping everyone else from getting up there too.
These kids seemed to be having a great time, though, getting muddy in a stream. Nobody was watching as one little guy, maybe fifteen months old, toddled away downstream and found a big pool of still water to stare into.
Something on its surface fascinated him, and, after watching awhile, he made a grab for it. He lost his balance and fell in. It wasn’t all that deep, but he wasn’t all that big, and once he’d choked and got water up his nose, he became panicky and uncoordinated. Facedown in the water, and somehow unable to climb out.
Now, I can watch human tragedy on the large scale and yawn. Nations fall? Big deal. Revolutions fail? So? Societies collapse? I’ll join the looters. Most people have it coming to them. Their babies don’t, though. So I sprinted over and fished the kid out before he could drown. At the sight of me he coughed up water and began to scream bloody murder.
The other kids paid no attention until one of them glanced over and noticed I was Coyote, and then they all came running. “Sky Coyote!” they all yelled, mostly in unison.
“Are You really Sky Coyote?”
“Are You going to take us away in a canoe?”
“Will You make some magic work for us?”
“Can I go up in the sky with You?”
“Look, whose baby is this?” I demanded, holding him out at arm’s length because he was wetting all over the place in his terror.
“That’s my little brother, Sky Coyote,” admitted a boy about eight years old.
“Well, why weren’t you watching him? He almost drowned,” I said sternly.
He just stared at me.
“Where’s your mother?” I barked at him.
“She’s working in her house,” volunteered another child.
“Well, where’s her house?” Now they all just stared until I bared my fangs at them, and then they all took a step backward. One’ of them pointed to a house down the street.
“Over there.”
“Thanks,” I growled, and hauled the still-shrieking kid in that direction. As I departed, I heard one of the group say:
“He’s mean.”
The only reason the baby’s mother didn’t hear me coming was that she was having an argument with a man at her door. She was a nicely plump lady in the two-piece outfit most of the working women wore, a woven tule skirt under a tabard of the same material, fastened at the shoulder with a feathered pin. The skirt was weighted at the hem with little plumb bobs of drilled stone to keep it hanging in dignified folds. This regal effect was spoiled a little by the fact that she was yelling so loud, the veins were standing out in her neck.
“You have to be crazy!” she was shouting. “I can’t turn out three-color baskets that fast! Nobody can!”
“My other manufacturers do,” the man said.
“Oh no, buster, no no no, you just said the wrong thing. Didn’t you ever think me and the other ladies would get together and compare notes?” Her eyes widened in fierce triumph. “You’ve been using that line on all of us! And we found out you’ve been lying about a lot of things. Like the price controls on deergrass!”
He was withering under her assault when I barked, “Excuse me.” She barely glanced at me, and then she and the man did a set of double-takes so classic, it put me in mind again of the rabbit and the duck. “This your baby, lady?” I held him out. She didn’t take him, but he scrambled loose from me at last and ran to cling to her. “What’s going on, here?” I inquired.
“Just a business discussion, Sky Coyote.” The man held up his hands. I recognized him as Kaxiwalic, the one introduced to me at the town meeting as a successful entrepreneur. Not all that successful, to judge from his skinny appearance and the fact that he wore only a couple of strands of shell money. Right now he looked as though he’d like nothing better than to vanish silently into the sagebrush. “I’ll see you later, Skilmoy.”
“Hey, now here’s somebody who’d be interested in your dirty tricks!” Grinning hugely, the woman grabbed him by the arm. “What do You think of smooth operators, Coyote? This lousy slave driver charges us extra for our materials and then gets a kickback from the Deergrass Gatherers’ Union—” The baby’s squalling threatened to drown her out. She leaned down and slapped him a good one. “Shut up! Kyupi, will you get out here and do something with him?”
An adolescent girl came out of the house. Her eyes got big when she saw me, but she grabbed up the baby and scuttled back inside with him. I could hear her rocking and shushing, rocking and shushing.
“These women are all lazy,” said Kaxiwalic in a chummy way, evidently assuming I was a male chauvinist god. Skilmoy rounded on him furiously.
“Lazy! Sky Coyote, do You know how hard I have to work to feed all these miserable children? Do You know how much fish costs these days? I’m an artist—”
“Your baby almost drowned.”
“He what?” Her face crumpled up. Tears came into her eyes. “How can I watch him when I have to weave baskets every hour of the day and night? The kids won’t help me with him at all.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have had so many,” said Kaxiwalic, looking smug.
“I’d like to see you pregnant every year, you bastard, and count how many big basket deals you’d make—”
“Now, hold it.” I stepped between them. “What’s the point of all this? Weren’t you listening to what I told you in the meeting hall? The end of the world is coming soon. What do you need all these baskets for?”
“I can sell them, Sky Coyote,” explained Kaxiwalic. “I mean, wherever we go, people are going to need baskets, right? And wait’ll they see my merchandise. I s
ee the end of this world as an opportunity. Think of the new markets opening up in the next one!”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear: you’re going to a wonderful paradise. Do you think there are underpaid, overworked women in paradise to make baskets for you?”
“But that’s exactly why I need a big inventory before we leave! I have to—” I took him by the arm. He flinched at the touch of my paw. I looked into his eyes and shook my head.
“Uh-uh,” I told him. He stared at me.
“But if I don’t have baskets to sell, I—”
“Uh-uh. You can’t use World Below methods in the World Above.”
He opened and shut his mouth a few times. He glanced quickly at the woman and then said to me, lowering his voice, “Can I discuss this with You later?”
“Anytime.”
“Thank You. I have to be going now.” He hurried off, doubtless to call an emergency meeting of the local businessmen.
Skilmoy had calmed down a little, but now she looked worried.
“Sky Coyote, are you saying Kaxiwalic won’t need us to make baskets for him anymore?”
“Yes, my child.”
“But he can’t lay us off! How are we going to live, with no money coming in?”
“What will you need money for, in paradise? As far as that goes, why do you need it now? Don’t I send you plenty of good food? Look at all the acorns there are, look at all the roots and seeds and bulbs. I haven’t seen one starving person in this town.”
“Well, so nobody’s starving, but I have to pay the fishermen and the hunters, don’t I? And I have to pay the fees to get my son into the Kantap Society, so he can go somewhere in life. For all the child support I get, my ex-husband might just as well be in hell, which is where I wish he was anyway.”
“Now, now, my child.” Boy, these people needed a social benefits program or at least a day care center, but that wasn’t my job. I was only there to play God. “Don’t you understand that all these concerns won’t exist anymore, very soon?”
