Sky Coyote (Company)

by Kage Baker

  On the other hand … you never have enough hands, you know? Look at it from the Company’s point of view: here they are stuck with these enormously strong guys who don’t even look human anymore, at least not by the modern definition, and as if that isn’t awkward enough, they like to kill, kill, kill. Though only in the most righteous of causes! So to keep them happy, you have to keep finding evildoers for them to tear into little pieces. To make matters worse, the immortals are terribly cunning and now beginning to disapprove of you.

  I would’ve started sweating, myself. And if there’s this future of perfect peace and harmony coming in 2355, what place would soldiers have in it anyway?

  I didn’t see what choice the Company had. But the Enforcers couldn’t have been done away with. They were immortal, after all. Probably they were hidden away somewhere having a nice long rest. Maybe being saved as some kind of special-unit ace in the hole just in case the future of perfect peace and harmony didn’t quite work out. Yeah.

  The awful bottom line, of course, is that if you’re going to rule the world, you have to have absolute power, and everybody knows what absolute power does. Dr. Zeus set out to change things, to give the whole sorry history of the human race a happy ending. The Company discovered that it had to rule the world first; and then it turned out that nothing could be changed. As for that happy ending—we won’t know until after 2355, will we?

  So, really, what can one poor little coyote like me do about it?

  You could decipher the message.

  Bugleg began to snore. I scanned him and found that he had asthma, which the dust and spring pollen were probably aggravating. He couldn’t even breathe the same air as us, poor bastard.

  The east got brighter, and pretty soon my enemy the Sun rose, red and hungry. I got up and went over to Lopez to see how things were going.

  He stood in the open air reading a transmission. Our communications system must be okay. He was still wigless, but somebody had fetched his tricorne out of the mess for him, and it threw a pointed shadow on the page in his hands.

  “Want me to go check on the Chumash now?” I asked him, and he turned to me a face livid with rage.

  “They knew,” he said, “about the quake. In their time, their survey equipment is clever enough to read old strata like a book. Isn’t that wonderful? Of course they had no idea it would be this severe, or that we’d be sitting right on top of it. They didn’t tell us, because it would only have upset the mortals; besides, they knew we could handle any problems that might arise. Naturally. It’s what we were designed to do, after all.”

  He crumpled up the paper and flung it into the sagebrush. I slunk away, my tail between my legs. Another round of motion sickness was coming on. Was it an aftershock, or all the shifting conspiracy theories?

  You could hardly tell there’d been an earthquake, away from the base. Back along the trail everything looked just as normal and sunny as can be, with little birds singing and dew sparkling on the leaves. In a couple of places there’d been a minor landslide, a few bucketfuls of rocks and dirt fresh and dark on the path; that was all.

  Humashup was busy as I walked in. Outside their doors, people were shaking ashes and charcoal out of their sleeping furs, or sweeping cold cinders into the streets. I let myself pretend for a moment I was walking into the old village I dream about, which was now probably buried under somebody’s wine cellar in Spain or France. Sepawit, sluicing off ash with a basket of water, greeted me cheerfully.

  “Hey, Sky Coyote, You should have been here this morning! We had quite a shaker!”

  “Hell of a quake,” agreed Nutku, beating his best bearskin robe until the dust flew. I was about to reply when a bizarre figure pranced by, decked in flowers and tootling away on a deer-bone flute. It was Kenemekme; he had taken to doing things like that lately. We watched him in silence for a moment. Nutku sighed and went on shaking dust out of his robe, and I tried to remember what I’d been about to say.

  “I know. Khutash is very angry. She found out about Sun’s white men last night,” I told them. They looked surprised.

  “Khutash is angry? Is that what makes earthquakes?” Sepawit blinked. “Well, I guess You’d know, but we always thought it was a natural phenomenon.”

  “What?” Oh, boy, I wasn’t at my quick-witted best today.

  “We always thought it was the World Snakes down there under the crust of the earth, the ones who hold everything up? We thought they just get tired every now and then and bump into one another,” Nutku explained. “The astrologer-priest says they push the mountains up a little higher every year.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HUMASHUP WAS BACK TO NORMAL by midmorning. AltaCal Base took a lot longer to recover. Even after the techs had managed to right and reinforce the supports on the modular dome, we had trouble convincing the mortals to go back inside. They crouched in the pop-tents on the hill, shivering, and even when we explained that we could tell it was absolutely safe (hadn’t they designed us to detect structural infirmity in any building we might enter?), they wouldn’t budge. Finally I said I thought I’d seen bear tracks nearby, and that got them moving. Within an hour the corridors of the base were resounding with electronic beeps and blasts from all the reactivated holo cabinets, and another layer of mutual dislike and mistrust settled into place.

  “So, can that thing see me all right?” Nutku inquired, peering into the holocamera lens. It was one of two reflective eyes in the face of a little crouching figure Jomo was carrying on his shoulder. The other two holocameras, similarly disguised, were par-ranged at the two other points of a triangle centered on Nutku.

  “Just fine,” Jomo assured him. Jomo was the Spirit Who Wants to Watch As You Build a Canoe. Chang, his team anthropologist, was excitedly talking to Nutku’s apprentices where they were attempting to work. They were trying to be terribly cool and make it all look easier than it was. I sat in the shade nearby, glad I didn’t have to stand in the sun in my coyote fur.

  “All right. This is my boatyard we’re standing in,” said Nutku, gesturing around him. “Over there are my apprentices. Their parents are paying me plenty to take them on, believe me, because once you’ve joined the Canoemakers’ Union and learned how to build fine-quality canoes, you’re set for life. For an extra fee they can get their kid into the kantap, but only if I agree to sponsor him, and I only sponsor the really talented ones. Some guys will let any moron into the kantap if he pays enough, but not me.

  “Where was I? So anyway, I’ve got them cutting up these logs.” He walked over to the work site. The boys were hacking away self-consciously, trying not to look up at the camera. “Pine isn’t your best material for canoes, but this is a midrange model with just a few luxury features—”

  “Where do you get your wood?” Chang wanted to know.

  “What?”

  “Where do you get the wood you use?”

  “Stuku the lumber dealer,” Nutku replied, as though it were terribly obvious. “Except when we get some redwood from dealers I know up north, or sometimes we get lucky and a redwood log washes up on the beach. But we’re talking pine right now, okay? So what I’ve got my boys doing is, they’re splitting these logs up into planks. Show one for the spirit, Sulup.”

  One of the kids held up a plank that had been split off, rough and splintery, about an inch thick. He grinned at the camera. “Remember me, spirit! My name is Sulupiauset and my father’s a rich man and I make the best canoes anywhere!”

  “And you get tar detail, too, smart mouth,” growled Nutku. “Pay no attention to these brats, spirit. Anyway, once the pine’s all cut into planks, we adze them down until they’re only about so thick.” He measured a three-quarter-inch space between his index finger and thumb.

  “What are they using, there?” Jomo asked, moving in for a close-up. The boys gladly stopped working to turn to the lead camera and display their adzes, the various flint and obsidian blades in handles made of deer antler.


  “Damned expensive tools, but their parents can afford the best. It’s an investment, anyway,” Nutku explained. “That black rock’s imported all the way from the desert on the other side of Kuyam. Back to work, kids.”

  “Don’t you find the flint lasts better?” I asked, surprised. My tribe had always preferred it. The camera wobbled over to focus on me for a moment—the heads of the two other little figures followed suit, turning silently—then swung back to the workers. Nutku stepped out of camera range and told me sotto voce, “Of course it does, but the kids love the way the black stuff looks, right? And it is sharp.”

  Chang meanwhile had become fascinated with the sight of the wood curling back from the planks—it looked so easy—and had taken up an adze himself to try a few tentative scrapes. The boys put their tools down and stood around to watch his efforts, very respectful. Jomo went for another close-up. After a couple of minutes Jomo set down his camera and reached for an adze himself.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” he told Chang. The boys snickered and nudged one another.

  “I don’t think so,” Chang replied huffily. Nutku turned and saw what was happening.

  “What do you think you’re doing, watching a race?” he shouted at the apprentices. “Get back to work! I want those planks cut and sanded by dinnertime!” He strode back and crouched down in front of the holocamera, which was still recording. “Can you still see me, little spirit? Okay, the next thing we do is cut the planks in the pattern for a canoe and drill the holes so the planks can be sewn and tarred together.”

  Jomo and Chang were still splintering away at their respective planks, so I went over and picked up the holocamera. “So, uh, what do you use for sanding? Sharkskin?” I inquired.

  “What else is there to use? And don’t think that doesn’t cost plenty. Hey, do You use something else for sanding in the World Above?” Nutku stepped too close, and the frame filled with a picture of his chest. I set the holocamera on my shoulder and pointed it at the work team, trying to focus on the boys and not on Jomo and Chang.

  “Well, we’ve got a few things …” I hedged, but Nutku pushed on:

  “See, Sky Coyote, I’ve been wondering about something. I know you said we’re all going to lose our markets in the World Above, but are You really, absolutely positive nobody’s going to need canoes where we’re going? What’s Spirit Who Buys at Retail going to do with all those he bought, or this one?” Nutku gestured at the one that was being constructed for the documentary. “Maybe nobody uses canoes to get around up there, but couldn’t there be some way to create a market? The spirits must go fishing once in a while. What if we came up with some sort of sales strategy, you and I, huh? What do you think?”

  I was about to let him down tactfully, when an idea hit me.

  “You know, it just might work!” I remembered MacCool’s comment about how popular Chumash woven sandals were becoming with our operatives. “Have you ever thought about diversifying?”

  “What, make other stuff besides canoes? But canoe building is what I know,” protested Nutku. He was clearly thinking about the concept, all the same, because a moment later he added, “Which is not to say I can’t turn out wooden bowls and boxes, especially with inlay decoration.”

  “Even canoes, maybe!” I said, thinking about luxury bases like New World One, to say nothing of the Company’s Day Six resorts for twenty-fourth-century tourists who wanted to go primitive. “You’re right, spirits do go fishing once in a while. What I’m seeing here, though, is that you have a monopoly on a marketable commodity. Nobody else can make the things you and your people make, and as soon as the other Sky People see how beautiful your merchandise is, I’ll bet it’ll be in demand. If you organize with Sawlawlan and the others—I wonder if you couldn’t start production again, once you’re in the World Above? Some canoes, but also baskets, bowls, inlaid carvings, sandals, the kind of stuff people like to buy ready-made.”

  “Small items they could easily take away with them if they were traveling,” breathed Nutku, his eyes lighting up.

  “Things that would have a special value because they’d been made by you, the craft masters of Humashup, and wouldn’t be available anywhere else,” I suggested.

  There was an outburst of profanity from Chang; the adze he was using had just broken. “See, if you’d been using it correctly, that wouldn’t have happened,” Jomo told him smugly.

  “We’d have to make damn sure they wouldn’t be available anywhere else,” mused Nutku, rubbing his chin. “Some kind of bigger and better brotherhood system to put pressure on imitators, if you know what I mean.”

  “Hey! You wouldn’t have to break a single arm,” I told him. “We’ve got this law in the World Above about unauthorized use of somebody else’s guild mark.”

  “Master Nutku?” One of the boys came forward tearfully. “The spirit broke my new adze! My father’s gonna kill me—”

  “Oh, shut up and take a new one from the basket,” Nutku told him. He turned to grin at me. “The spirits are paying for it, after all.”

  Bit by bit, the town of Humashup began to take on an empty and untidy look, the way a house will when people are packing up to move. One day the chisels stopped ringing in the stone-workers’ yard: the last mortars, the last bowls had been made for the holocameras, and nobody would need any more. That ringing was subtracted from the sound of village life, but the subtraction wasn’t noticed.

  Next, the adzes stopped chuffing in the cured pine, the last canoe was finished, and Nutku’s boatyard was silent. The boys were glad to clean the pitch and the fragrant shavings off their fingers, glad to kick back and relax for a change. They were still thinking of the upcoming flight as a kind of vacation, nothing more. Only Nutku had grasped the idea that the rules of the game were about to change forever. You’d think that mortals would understand the end as a concept—it’s what defines them as mortals, after all—but they never do.

  It was my job, of course, to let them in on the truth and conceal it at the same time. I was sort of an anesthesiologist. I capered for the Chumash, I kept them laughing with funny stories, I diverted them with songs and sleight of hand (or paw). I came up with facile answers for the ones who asked awkward questions.

  Mostly facile answers, anyway. Sometimes you have to come up with more.

  We’d all gone down to the beach to watch the canoe launching—not the beach at Point Conception, where the base was, but the closer and convenient beach the Chumash frequented. It had turned out really well, that last canoe, that midrange model with spear racks (safety bladders optional), and, since people still had to eat until the day of our departure, the fishermen were taking it out to see what they could get.

  Jomo had carefully positioned two holocameras on the beach and waded out with the third one for triangulation. Our other anthropologists had been thrilled by the news, and there were a whole bunch of them gathered on the shore, avidly watching-recording the ceremony. Nutku and three other guys were carrying the canoe on their shoulders, while the fifth waited, knee-deep in the surf, both oars over his shoulders.

  “All right now!” hollered Nutku proudly, showing off for the spirits. “This baby’s going to cut through the water like a Shoshone after a duck! Come on, boys, march! Give me some room!”

  “Give me some room!” echoed his bearers.

  “Don’t give up!” Nutku sang out like a drill instructor.

  “Don’t give up!”

  “We’re almost there!” Nutku told them.

  “We’re almost there!”

  “EEEE-ha!” Nutku charged into the water.

  “Eeee-ha!”

  They wrestled the canoe out through the surf, and the new owner waded uncertainly after them. I was cheering with everybody else, until the security tech appeared at my elbow.

  “Jesus!” I leaped into the air. “Give a guy some warning, can’t you? You’re too good at your job, you know that?”

  But he looked grim. Grimmer, I mean, than secur
ity techs usually look. “We’ve caught the intruder. Mr. Lopez said you were to deal with the situation immediately.”

  “Me? Is there a problem?”

  “The Chumash know about it. Our rabbit just walked right into the village. We’ve got him isolated in one of their huts, but people are curious about him. He won’t shut up, either.”

  I got a bad, bad feeling. Sepawit noticed me talking to the tech and approached hesitantly. “Has something happened, Sky Coyote?”

  “Uh … the spirit tells me that a stranger has come to Humashup,” I translated.

  “Maybe it’s my Speaker!” Sepawit’s face lit up with hope. “Is he all right?”

  I thought fast. “The spirits aren’t clear about what’s going on. I think I’d better get back there right away.”

  “Let’s go.” Sepawit sprinted ahead of me. How to tell the guy he wasn’t going to like what he found, that he should leave this to old Uncle Sky Coyote? I couldn’t think of a way, so I just dogtrotted after him. Halfway there, the tech and I caught up with him, and he limped after us into Humashup, winded and puffing, holding his side.

  Scared and curious Chumash were clustered a short distance from Sepawit’s house, in front of which two of our security guys stood guard, tall, green, and impassive. From inside a voice was droning on and on in some kind of chant. Mrs. Sepawit (actually her name was Ponoya, I remembered now) approached us tearfully, leading their little boy by the hand.

  “Sepawit, what’s going on? Uncle Coyote, the spirits threw me out of my own house! They have a stranger in there, and they’re not letting anybody see him—”

  “Stranger?” Sepawit’s face fell. “It’s not Sumewo?”

  “No!” she replied, as the security team leader came up to me and saluted.