by Kage Baker
She looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. “When You say we’ll all be in paradise … You don’t mean we’ll all be dead or anything like that, do you?”
“No. You’ll live long, long, and happy lives, and you’ll never be sick or in need.” And that was the absolute truth; the Company had great retirement plans for its mortal employees. “Then you’ll move on to another plane of existence.”
“That’s just … that’s too good to be true.” She stared hard at me, wanting to believe it all the same. “No trouble? No bad luck? No work?”
“I didn’t say there wouldn’t be any work.”
“Ha! I knew it.”
“But it’ll be easy work, helping the Spirits. You’ll have everything you could possibly want. If you didn’t have somethingto do, paradise would be a pretty boring place. But you won’t have any worries.”
“Well, no offense, Sky Coyote, but I’ll believe it when we get there.” She got an odd look on her face. “Coyote? Are You going to rescue the people at Syuxtun Township too?”
“No,” I told her. “Only Humashup has been chosen.”
She clapped her hands and let out a whoop of laughter. “My ex-husband and his girlfriend live in Syuxtun!” she cried in delight. I put my head on one side and regarded her. “You’re a pal, Sky Coyote! Come in and have some food. Do You like roasted agave heart?”
“With cherry sauce?” I said hopefully. She looked coy, and I followed her inside.
The girl was still rocking the baby by the fire. As we came in, he pointed at me and began to scream again.
“Oh, shut up, stupid, can’t you see this is Sky Coyote?” Skilmoy went and rummaged among her kitchen things.
“Hello, Uncle Sky Coyote. He’s too little to understand, Mama,” said the girl.
“Hi there.” I sat down on a tule-reed mat.
“Well, he’d damn well better learn to understand, if he wants to get anywhere in life,” retorted Skilmoy. “Kyupi, where’s the agave heart we had last night?”
“I had it for breakfast, Mama.”
The woman turned and slapped her. “Didn’t it occur to you that I might bring a guest home? I’m so sorry, Sky Coyote. Would You like some acorn porridge instead? Or—oh.” She looked appalled as something dawned on her. “You don’t want … ? I mean, I’ve heard stories that Spirits do lots of stuff backward in the World Above. I’ve heard that the Sky People eat … well, shit.”
I’d encountered this quaint belief in a few other cultures. What a dilemma for a thoughtful hostess!
“Actually, acorn porridge will be fine,” I assured her. I had no idea there was any difference between Spanish acorns and the New World variety, which are, well, an acquired taste. But after the first shock I choked the stuff down with a happy doglike expression. Laying the abalone-shell bowl aside, I looked around the room. Domestic chaos was everywhere, except for the corner that was clearly where Skilmoy worked. There were tidy bunches of deergrass and split rush there, sorted for length and tied in bundles. Some of them had already been dyed assorted colors, reds and yellows and blacks. In a small woven tray were a few simple tools, a bone knife and an awl, a couple of spools of thread, and some bone needles.
“So this is your work?” I picked up a stack of baskets and examined them. They were so tightly woven, they could have held water, and so beautifully finished, you could turn and turn one in your hands without finding a loose end anywhere. The spiraling patterns were sophisticated and dizzying in their complexity.
“You like them? Yes, they’re mine. I’m the best, even Kaxiwalic admits it.” She came and sat down beside me so her knee touched mine. “The ones with the colored patterns are the most expensive,” she explained.
“I guess the colored dyes cost a lot, huh?” I turned one over and stopped cold. Worked into this basket was a pretty fair representation of the flag of Spain. There was no mistaking it; I’ve marched, ridden, and persecuted heretics under it enough times to know those little castles and lions when I see them.
“What’s this one?” I said, when I’d collected my wits.
“That? That’s a new design. Some strangers came ashore in a canoe at Syuxtun and bought a lot of baskets at Kaxiwalic’s shop down there. They were such good customers, he copied some designs off their gear. The idea is, next time they stop there, he’ll have a whole new line of merchandise to appeal to them. Kaxiwalic’s a lying bum, but he gets good ideas.” So much for the purity of Chumash culture.
“Well, you know—” I frowned, holding the basket up to the light. “It might not be a good idea to trade with those people. I’m pretty sure this is the tribal tattoo of the white men, the ones the Sun is sending? That must have been one of their scouting parties that came ashore. They may not be causing much trouble now, but soon …”
“Oh, Sky Coyote, how terrible.” She looked into my eyes, and hers were wide with—concern?
“It was hard to hear You through the wall when You spoke to us the other night, but You looked so impressive, standing there towering above everyone else. Won’t You tell me more about this? These white men you speak of frighten me.” And she leaned forward. All those kids notwithstanding, she still had a figure.
“I think I’ll go out for a walk,” said the little girl, and she got up with the baby in her arms and took him outside.
It must have been the ears or something. I hadn’t seen this much romantic action in a couple of centuries.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK like?” Mendoza peered at me from her beach chair. “Like the guy in that Beauty and the Beast movie. The one by Cocteau.”
“Nah.” Ashur paused as he moved from refilling her glass to refilling mine. He stood back and studied me. The campfire danced behind him. The surf boomed distantly; it was late, and the tide was way out. We were celebrating Matthias’s upcoming transfer back to Greenland One, and the party had gone on too long.
“Wrong clothes,” Ashur pronounced at last. “The one in that movie had a high lace collar. Remember? With this shirt he’s more like the Beast in the Duvall version.”
“I think he looks like Puss in Boots,” somebody on the other side of the fire giggled. I glared across at her.
“You’re all wrong,” I stated. “I look like the guy in the Kracowiac ring holo of The Isle of Dogs.”
There was silence and then a scattered chorus of agreement from my fellow Old Ones. “Except the costume’s still wrong,” amended Matthias. “That production was done in late-twenty-first-century dress.”
Never play trivia games with immortals. Do you know how many movies we’ve seen?
“Henry Hull in Werewolf of London,” somebody ventured, but he was drowned out by somebody else insisting, “No! No! Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf!”
“Ssh.” Ashur waved his arms above his head drunkenly. “Keep it down. Wind’s shifted and noise carries. Don’t want the”—he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the base—”the New Kids to hear.”
“Let ‘em hear. What a bunch of snotty-nosed, puritanical brats they are, to be sure.” Mendoza tossed back another shot of homebrewed aguardiente.
“They don’t mean to be. We just sort of—” Sixtus groped for words.
“Gross them out?” I suggested.
“They’re too delicate for this end of time, that’s all. We see venison, they see Bambi. We see swordfish steaks, they see Friendly Flippy lying murdered.”
“We see ourselves, and they see—” Matthias scowled into his drink. “Savages, I suppose.”
“Don’t take it to heart,” Ashur said, patting his shoulder. “They’re just a bunch of rude, racist, species-ist adolescents.”
“Then they ought to get back to their own damned end of time and let us manage affairs at this end, like we’ve always done,” growled a zoologist named MacCool.
“Even the abalone they get sentimental about,” mused Sixtus. “Can you imagine? I don’t remember any animated mollusk classics, do you?”
<
br /> “Wrong. There was a whole French school of cinema d’abalone in the late twentieth century,” I lied. Matthias gave a high-pitched giggle.
“No, with the abalone it’s bacteria they’re afraid of,” Mendoza informed Sixtus, ignoring us. “They’re positive everything here is contaminated. I tried to get clearance to put in a little vegetable garden on the leeward side of the base. You know, for fresh tomatoes and maybe a lettuce or two? You’d have thought from Bugleg’s face I was suggesting we grow amanita mushrooms. What about the microbes, the man said. I don’t know where he learned a big word like that. As though I couldn’t spot a goddam pathogen a mile ahead of him any day!”
“It’s because they can’t see them that they’re so frightened,” pointed out our principal anthropologist. Imarte was her name.
“Yeah, well.”
“They think germs are scary?” demanded Sixtus. “They ought to see some of the things we’ve had to fight in their service, over the ages. A damn sight nastier than microbes, most of them! Eh?” He elbowed Matthias. Matthias and I exchanged uneasy glances. Most of the younger operatives don’t know about that particular episode in prehistory, and official Company policy doesn’t encourage letting them in on the secret. Besides, Sixtus was wrong to assume Matthias was part of the operation. Full-blooded Neanderthals weren’t drafted to be Enforcers. They were too short, and they just couldn’t ever seem to get worked up enough.
“How on earth can they know what we’ve seen?” mused Ashur, belching gently. “We’ve made life in that precious future of theirs so safe for them, they can’t even imagine what real danger is.”
“They’re ungrateful brats,” MacCool said.
“I think you’re missing the point,” Imarte tried to tell him, but he rounded on her:
“Aren’t you appalled by them? Weren’t you brought up to see them as the wise and benevolent Masters of the bloody Universe? Remote figures in their twenty-three-hundred offices who Know It All? God help us if these people are representative of Dr. Zeus.”
“Of course not. They’re field lackeys, that’s all.”
“So why do we have all these geeks from the future on this job?” Mendoza wanted to know.
“Because this one is a big moneymaker for the Company,” I said, glancing sideways at Matthias. “Or so the rumor goes. There’s a lot hanging on this one.”
“There’s a lot hanging on every one,” grumbled Sixtus.
MacCool flung a deer rib into the fire and watched it sizzle. “We’ve been running things for them for how many millennia now? Thirty? Forty? We were always good enough for the job before. This boy in charge can’t seem to make up his mind whether I’m some sort of temperamental office equipment or belong in a cage next to the specimens I collect. Were they always like this? I can’t ever recall being called an android before, can any of you?”
“We’re starting to get close to their end of time,” Ashur told him. “Only a few more centuries to go. Makes ‘em nervous. Have little drink.”
“It’s all that processed food they eat making them constipated, that’s why they’re nervous,” chortled Sixtus.
“And these are the cretins we’re saving the world for.” MacCool’s eyes smoldered.
“You’re-talk-ing-TREA-son,” sang somebody from the other side of the fire.
“And if I bloody am?” He half-started up.
Matthias stared at him. “Boy, what’s eating you? No need to fight about it, is there?”
“Sorry.” MacCool raised his drink in a gesture of apology. “I’ve had this little spit-and-polish mortal jerk overseeing my project. He seems to feel that if he isn’t right there to watch my every move, I’m going to club and eat all my specimens before they can be shipped. I thought of telling him about the times I’ve watched his ancestors clubbing and eating one another! Where does he get off thinking I’m barbaric, the chinless little twerp!”
“Okay, okay, mortals stink,” agreed Ashur.
“Not the New Kids,” said Mendoza in a thoughtful voice. “Have you noticed? They have no proper scent. They don’t even sweat.”
“I mean it!” MacCool turned slowly to stare at us all and settled his gaze at last on Mendoza. I should mention that he was a big good-looking guy with a black mustache that would have done an Armenian poet proud. She looked up at him. “What are these people? They don’t watch their own movies, they don’t read their own books, they don’t listen to their own music, their art embarrasses them, and as far as I can tell they’re afraid of one another. They stay in their rooms playing games! How in the living hell did they ever create us?”
I knew some answers to that question, but it didn’t seem like a good time to give them, not with the mood he was in.
“MacCool, their lives are so short,” pleaded Imarte. “They don’t have time for anything. Why shouldn’t they be frightened? What if you knew you only had two centuries of consciousness, maybe less?”
“Then I wouldn’t waste it in a holo cabinet shooting at imaginary soldiers,” snarled MacCool. He looked down into Mendoza’s eyes. “Would you?”
She returned his stare with a flat, opaque look, but smiled and drew her shawl around her shoulders. “Certainly not.”
“Is that what they do all the time?” somebody asked.
MacCool turned and said: “As God’s my witness. When they’re off duty, they hook up to a console and play holo games. They shoot at targets or collect little blue dots of light. That’s all they do, for hours on end! Take a look at their entertainment programs sometime. Not one book or film will you find, and no music more than two years old their time. Nothing but games, and not even that many of them.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Well, maybe they’re exercising. Practicing reflex speed or something,” Ashur suggested. “They have to operate a lot of machinery. Maybe in the field they don’t want any other entertainment. They seem to be big on stripped-down efficiency. Function over form. Look at those god-awful clothes.”
“They’re more androids than we are,” muttered MacCool.
“Although …” Mendoza said slowly. “They do seem to have a point about wearing simpler clothes in the field. I’m ruining all the stuff I brought up from New World One. It’s hard collecting specimens in all that lace. I’ve broken three sets of heels climbing around in these canyons. I don’t know who I thought I was going to impress in my Madrid fashions, because the sagebrush sure doesn’t care. This is stupid. I’m ordering more sensible clothes. Khaki. Low heels. That kind of thing.”
I stared at her in disbelief. MacCool put his hand over hers.
“But the lace suits you, you know. Jesu, don’t let them persuade you to their notions of fashion. They have no fashion.”
Mendoza looked down at their touching hands. I couldn’t read her expression.
Was he thinking of putting the moves on her? He was definitely her type, as I remembered her type: large, loud, and physically impulsive. A crusader. I prayed to every god I’d ever burned incense to that I wouldn’t to be treated to a ringside seat as history repeated itself in Mendoza’s love life. Even a wimp like Lewis seemed far and away a safer choice. But who was I to get involved? She wasn’t a kid anymore.
“It has nothing to do with the New Kids,” she told him. “Why indulge in vanities like fashion if simpler clothing will make my work easier?”
MacCool reached out uncertainly and brushed her hair back from her face. “I also like the way you look in white silk,” he added.
“Well, the Don Juan of the canid world has to get his beauty sleep,” I said loudly, briskly shaking the sand from my tail. “See you guys in the morning. Don’t forget to cover the still and bury the barbecue leftovers. We wouldn’t want Bugleg to find out about these swell parties.”
“Huh?” Matthias started up from where he’d begun to doze.
“They know perfectly well what we do out here,” said Sixtus sullenly, staring into the fire.
“Probably, but isn�
��t it fun to pretend? ‘Night, all.” Putting on my hat, I walked back down the beach toward the lights of the base. There was salt in the wind. I turned up my collar. One thing you can say for mortals: when they get together at a party, they don’t have the same damned conversation every time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SKY COYOTE! DELIGHTED YOU COULD make it,” Sepawit welcomed me from the doorway of the sacred enclosure. It was an impressive doorway, framed by whale ribs. Do you have any idea how big whale ribs are? I stepped up to go in, but he stopped me with an apologetic little smile.
“I have to precede You walking backward. It’s customary. I know You probably don’t demand anything like that, but the shamans are so set on protocol, and my Speaker is away on business for me, so if You don’t mind …”
“No problem.” I gave him a conspiratorial wink and let him back in ahead of me.
“Welcome to our house, Uncle Sky Coyote; welcome from the north, welcome from the east, welcome from the south, welcome from the west,” he recited in a loud voice.
“Slower!” somebody hissed from inside. “Don’t babble it like that.”
“And the white wind welcomes You. And the red fire welcomes You. And the black earth welcomes You. And the blue rain welcomes You.” Sepawit looked mortified. This might take all night. I put my paw on his shoulder and stepped past him into the enclosure.
“Thank you, all you directions and personified natural phenomena, your welcome is gratefully accepted. Well, well, and who do we have here?” I looked around at the religious dignitaries assembled before me. They looked back at me, formidably. Time for a few good guesses. I bowed to one elderly gent, portly and very distinguished in appearance, with a nice mild face like the bishop of Madrid.
“My greetings to the astrologer priest,” I ventured.
“Uncle Sky Coyote.” He inclined graciously. “You are truly with us.”
