by Allen Steele
Like most maps of Coyote, mine wasn’t very detailed; it had been made from high-orbit photos, and 95 percent of the planet hadn’t been explored, let alone named. It appeared, though, that the Gillis Range split in half at its southern end, with a waterway forming a broad river valley between Mt. Shaw and another mountain to the southeast. It would make sense that the original colonists would settle in there: a source of fresh water and plenty of land, but protected on three sides by high terrain.
“I see.” I traced my finger around the southern edge of the range. “So all we’d have to do is hike around Mt. Shaw. . . .”
“Uh-uh. Think again.” Thompson pointed from the East Channel to the base of the mountain. “That’s about a hundred and fifty miles. It’s flat country, more or less, so you can make it in about a week, maybe two. But if you decide to go all the way around the range, then come up the valley, that’s going to be . . . what? Another two hundred, maybe three hundred miles?”
“I guess. We can make it.”
“You guess?” Thompson raised his eyes from the map. “Let me remind you of something . . . we’re halfway through Machidiel, which means we’re coming into spring. The boids will start migrating north pretty soon, and the lowlands are their stomping grounds. And I notice your people aren’t carrying any firearms.”
He was right. Almost four hundred miles across uncharted terrain, with nothing more than quarterstaves for protection . . . useless against a creature capable of ripping your head off with one swipe of its beak. Not only that, but we carried precious little food. We might be able to forage for a while, but the longer we stayed out in the open, the less chance we’d have of survival.
“Someone must have made it. How else would you be getting this?”
Thompson smiled. “That’s what I figure.” He pointed to Mt. Shaw. “If there’s a new trail, then it must lead straight over the mountain. And even if there isn’t one, it’s the most direct route, and it’ll cut a couple hundred miles off your trip.”
I stared at the map. There was no indication of how tall the mountain was or how steep its incline might be. Yet Clark Thompson had a good point; if we could make it across Mt. Shaw, then we’d come down into the valley where the Alabama colonists were likely to be hiding. It was a risk, to be sure, but it was the best shot we had.
“Thanks.” I picked up the jug, took another slug of bearshine. “What do I owe you for this?”
Thompson sat back in his chair, thought about it for a moment. “If you make it, come back sometime and tell me.”
“So you’ll know where you’re getting your booze from?”
“No,” he said quietly. “So I’ll know that there is indeed a God, and that She looks out for holy fools.”
The ferry was a raft comprised of several blackwood logs lashed together, with a rotary winch from a rover mounted in its center. A thick cable made of coiled tree vine was stretched all the way across the East Channel, anchored to boulders on both sides of the river; it fed through the winch, and when Lars and Garth stood on either side of the raft and turned the crank hand over hand, the raft was slowly pulled across the channel. It might not have been the quickest or easiest way of getting across the East Channel, but it was the safest; the ferry was located about fifteen miles north of the shoals at the channel’s most narrow point, and the swift current could easily have swept small boats downstream.
Clark Thompson might have been sympathetic to us, but he was also a businessman. It took three round-trips to get everyone to Midland, and it cost us six of our tents and three data pads; he already had enough lanterns and warm clothes. Yet he was generous enough to supply us with some dried fish, and he slipped me a jug of bearshine when no one was looking. I shook hands with him, and he wished me good luck; the last I saw of him, he was standing on the wharf, watching us go.
By the time the Universalists were all on the far side of the channel, the day was more than half over. Following Clark’s instructions, I led them down the stony beach until we reached a place where a landslide had occurred long before, opening a narrow ravine in the limestone bluffs. A long, steep climb upward through the breach, and we came out on top of a high ridge. Behind and below us lay the East Channel . . . and before us stretched Midland, a vast savanna leading to forest, the Gillis Range visible in the distance as a ragged purple line across the horizon.
Once I found the trailhead Clark had told me about, I sat down on a boulder, spread the map across my lap, and pulled out the compass. When I had my bearings, I put everything back in my pocket, shouldered my pack once more, and began to lead the others down the hillside.
Everyone was happy; I remember that clearly. We’d made our escape from New Florida; the day was bright and warm, the road ahead clear and easy to follow. The Universalists began singing “God of Our Fathers” almost as soon as we reached the bottom of the ridge; I joined in even though I didn’t know the words. And most of all, I remember Greer. She walked a few steps behind Zoltan, but whenever I looked back at her it was as if she were right beside me; the smile never left her face, and her eyes were as bright as the day we’d first met. After a while, Zoltan permitted her to join me; together we marched into the wilderness, two lovers with nothing before us save the brightest of futures.
It was a wonderful moment, one I’ll never forget or regret. And like all wonderful moments, it didn’t last very long. A pleasant dream, with the nightmare soon to follow.
New Florida, for the most part, was flat terrain, wide-open grass-lands laced by streams, interspersed by swamps and occasional woods. During winter, when the ground was frozen and the swamps were dry, you could walk across it with relatively little effort.
Midland wasn’t like that. By the end of the third day, we’d left the savanna and entered a vast rain forest that gradually became more dense, with faux birch and spider bush disappearing beneath a canopy of trees of a kind we’d never seen before, somewhat resembling elms except with thicker trunks and broader leaves, from which rough-barked vines dangled like serpents. Even in midday, sunlight seeped through only in sparse patches; it was cold down on the forest floor, the overgrowth brittle with frost.
We could no longer see the mountains; it wasn’t long before we could no longer see the sun either, and on the fourth day we lost the trail itself. I don’t know whether we’d taken a wrong turn or if the trail simply ended; I only know that, in a moment of clarity, I came to the realization that the path had simply vanished. We doubled back, losing an hour in our effort to retrace our steps, but the trail was no longer there. All we had left was the map and the compass I carried in my pocket; without them, we would have been completely lost.
Day in and day out, we fought our way through the forest, using our staffs to hack our way through dense foliage. At night, we huddled together against the cold; the dead branches we found were either frozen or too rotted to be burned, so what little warmth we got was from setting fire to small piles of twigs and leaves. No longer having as many tents as we once had, we were forced to double up in our sleeping arrangements, with four or five people crammed together into tents meant for three. At least it helped keep us warm; Greer and I learned how to zip our bags together, and we went to sleep with our arms around each other, jostled by others sharing our tent.
Yet Zoltan always claimed a tent for himself, in order for him to continue his daily communion with God. He may have had some interesting chats with the Lord during that time, but if he had, he wasn’t sharing what he’d learned with us. He became silent, rarely speaking, and although he still invited others to join him in meditation, he ceased leading us in prayer in the morning, and after a week or so he neglected to offer prayer in the evening as well. By then the hymns had stopped. Ian and Renaldo got into a fistfight one morning over whose turn it was to carry a tent, and Clarice and Ana stopped talking to one another over something that occurred when no one else was watching.
But the gradual disintegration of morale wasn’t the worst, nor were the endl
ess days of making our way through the rain forest, or even the cold. All those miseries we might have been able to endure, had it not been for one more thing.
Hunger.
When we’d set out from Shuttlefield, we’d packed as much food as we could carry on our backs, along with our tents, clothes and sleeping bags. There were thirty-two of us—thirty-one, rather; as always, Zoltan never carried anything—so we were able to bring quite a lot of food, and we’d stocked up on more at Thompson’s Ferry. I figured that, by the time we began to run low, we would be only a few days away from wherever the original colonists had settled, and all we’d have to do was go on short rations for a while. If worse came to worst, we could live off the land; a few of the native plants were edible, and I knew which ones they were.
What I didn’t take into account was the fact that we were traveling through unknown territory in the dead of winter. First, we burned up a lot of calories, not just hiking but also keeping warm. We filled up at breakfast, then ate again at night: two meals a day for thirty people, not counting all the times when someone would nibble a biscuit or open a can of beans while we were taking rest breaks, and we used up our supplies very quickly. I didn’t notice our rate of consumption at first because my mind was focused on getting us through the forest, and I was also half-expecting Zoltan to do his part by keeping his people in line. But Zoltan said nothing, and almost two weeks went by before it hit me that our packs were getting lighter and we were leaving behind a trail of plastic wrappers and cans.
Second, none of the plants I’d learned how to eat on New Florida grew in the forests of Midland. Sourgrass, cloverweed, Johnson’s thistle . . . all were crowded out by the dense shrub that made up the undergrowth, and even those plants had gone into long-term dormancy. The streams and creeks where we might have found fish were frozen over, and any animals that we might have been able to trap were either in hibernation or had gone south for the winter. It was all we could do just to find dry tinder for firewood.
Most of the Universalists were city people before they’d left Earth. They’d done pretty well so far, making their way through an alien jungle carrying forty or fifty pounds on their backs; their faith had supplied motivation where experience had failed. But by the time we’d stopped eating breakfast and were skimping on the evening meal, the base of Mt. Shaw was still a day away. Spirits were running low, and Zoltan was almost totally incommunicado.
Unless you’ve been there, you don’t know what it’s like to face slow starvation. I’m not talking about skipping a meal or two, or even fasting; I mean the desperation that comes with the realization that you’re running out of food, and the knowledge that when it’s gone, it may be a long time before you eat again. There was a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach where there should have been weight, and an invisible band had formed on either side of my skull, pressing in on my temples. We had to find something to eat, and soon.
Just before we reached Mt. Shaw, we came upon a low swamp. The ice was thin, so we had to detour around it, but then I noticed a small cluster of ball plants growing on a tiny island in its center. I’d sooner throw a dead rat in a cook pot than a swamper. Nonetheless, they could be eaten, and they hibernated within ball plants, so I drafted a couple of guys, and we waded across the swamp, each footstep breaking through the ice and filling our boots with frigid slush, until we reached the island.
While the others waited behind me, I pulled out my knife and used it to cut open the thick leaves of the nearest plant. I intended to pull out a few sleeping swampers, then have the other guys club them to death. Skin ’em, stew ’em, eat ’em up . . . that was the plan.
What I’d neglected was the fact that pseudowasps sometimes also hibernated inside the balls. It was one of the more interesting symbiotic systems that had evolved on Coyote: pseudowasps protected the ball plants during summer, during which time they pollinated their flower tops; in late autumn, swampers curled up within the balls, and the pseudowasps retreated into their underground nests. Yet now and then, the odd pseudowasp or two would seek refuge within the ball plants themselves, perhaps to ward off any predators who might try to get at the swampers.
That’s what happened to me. No sooner had I begun cutting my way into the nearest ball plant when a pseudowasp, awakened by my knife, burrowed out of the incision I’d made. Before I could react, it alighted on the back of my left hand and stung me.
My hand swelled up, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Pseudowasp venom contains a toxin somewhat similar to lysergic acid; it causes paralysis in other insects, but in humans it produces hallucinations. In Shuttlefield, there was even an underground trade in what was known as “sting”—venom extracted from pseudowasps that had been captured, then sold as a cheap high.
I’ve never been a doper, so I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Within a half hour, colors began to get brighter as everything seemed to slow down; it seemed as if there was a subtle electric hum in the air, and nothing anyone said to me made sense. By the time my companions helped me stagger out of the swamp, I was raving like a lunatic. I vaguely recall trying to take my clothes off, insisting that the perfect way to enjoy this lovely winter day was for everyone to get naked and have an orgy, swigging the bearshine Clark had given me and telling Zoltan that he should use those wings of his to fly back to Thompson’s Ferry and grab us a couple more jugs. Everything was happy and wonderful and exquisitely beautiful; these people were all my friends, and it mattered little that we were lost and close to starvation.
At some point, though, my vision began to tunnel. Suddenly feeling very tired, I sat down on a log, saying that I needed to take a rest. Go ahead with the party, gang, I’ll be along in just a moment. And then I passed out.
When I came to, I found myself in a tent. Night had fallen; I could smell the smoke of a campfire. From somewhere outside I could hear low voices. And I wasn’t alone; in the soft glow of a lantern, Zoltan was seated cross-legged on the other side of the tent.
“Welcome back,” he said. He’d removed his robe, and his wings furled about his bare shoulders. “We were worried about you. Feeling better?”
“A little.” Not much. My head pounded, and my throat was parched. Without asking, he handed me a water bottle. I unscrewed the cap and drank. “Where are we? How far have we . . . ?”
“Where we were before you fainted.” His face was hideous in the half-light; it had been a long time since I’d noticed just how ugly he was. “We couldn’t go any farther, not with you in this condition, so we stopped for the night.”
“Oh, God . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” Zoltan took the bottle from me, replaced the cap. “In fact, I rather envy you. Seems to me that you’ve had a moment of revelation.”
My mind was too fogged for me to realize what he was saying. “Yeah, well . . . getting stung will do that to you.” My left hand was sore; it had been bandaged, and the swelling had gone down. There were antibiotics in the first-aid kit we were carrying; if this had happened to someone else, I might have been able to administer them in time to prevent the venom from taking effect. Unfortunately, these people didn’t know much about pseudowasps. “My fault. I should have warned you.”
“Why? How can you warn someone about God?” Zoltan shook his head. “He does what He chooses to do, speaks to you when you least expect it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know about the Holy Transformation. I must assume you do, because you’ve never asked me about it, not since the first night you spent with us. One of my followers must have told you . . . probably Greer, since you two have become close.” I said nothing, and he went on. “When God came to me, while I was in the Room of Pain and Understanding, He told me that I had a mission in life. Gather as many as I could find who would believe His word and take them to another place, where we would spread the word that the universal transformation was forthcoming.”
He shifted a little,
stretching his legs. “I thought we’d receive that sign in Shuttlefield, but when it didn’t happen and it became apparent that we were surrounded by those who’d eventually try to kill us, I realized that our mission would be fulfilled elsewhere. And so, like Moses and the Israelites, we’ve set forth into the wilderness . . . and now it’s become clear to me what our purpose truly is, for through you, God has spoken.”
“Zoltan . . . Reverend Shirow . . . I was stung by a pseudowasp. It makes people freak out, do weird things. That’s all. I didn’t hear God. I was just hallucinating.”
“Perhaps you think you were suffering hallucinations. Yet during that time, you told us that you loved us all, that we should freely share our love with one another.” I started to protest, but he held up a hand. “You say you were under the influence of the pseudowasp, and perhaps you were . . . but I think God was speaking through you.”
“But I’m not a believer. I’ve told you. You’ve said it yourself.”
“You’ve led us to this place, and God has spoken through you.” He gazed at me with great tenderness, as if I were a lost child whom he had found. “I know now what He has planned for us,” he said very quietly. “We are going to die here.”
“No, we’re not.” I shook my head. “We’re going to make it through this. We’re going to get over that mountain, then . . .”
“You can’t refuse. It’s God’s will that we perish together. Perhaps not now, but soon, very soon.” Zoltan took a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. “Benjamin, you’re one of us now. The time has come for you to join us, body and soul.”
Reaching around behind him, he pulled out a soft leather bag. He unzipped it and reached inside; when his hand came out, it held the black sash I’d seen the others wear so many times before. With great reverence, he laid it on the ground between us.
“Remove your coat,” he said quietly, “and roll up the left sleeve of your shirt.”
