by Greg Keyes
“What is your destination?” The man asked, in lieu of answer.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to decide.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you are headed for the Reed ship on the north coast. I must warn you, I will not allow you to reach it, nor will I allow you to return to the pueblos.”
“What fucking Reed ship? What are you talking about?”
“If I have misjudged you, I apologize. Yet I feel I have not. I know you loved your mother, as every woman should, but you must have known that she was full of wrong-headed ideas. …”
“My mother? You bastard, what are you talking about?”
Hoku seemed sincerely taken aback by her outburst, and also distracted by some off-screen comment.
“Look,” he said apologetically, palms up in a gesture of conciliation. “I understand you are still grieving her death. I’m sorry to have touched a sore spot. …”
Sand closed contact. She had put something off for far too long, and now it seemed that her survival might depend upon it. She leapt out of the Dragonfly and opened the storage hatch. There, where she had laid it the day before was the translucent charcoal rectangle of her mother’s book.
She thumbed it on. Characters spidered across the page.
Sand, my daughter. There are some things you must know now.
Sand paused, scanned the sky and cliffs once more before returning to her mother’s words.
“I am selfish to leave this for you. I have thought long and hard, but in the end I don’t know if you will be safer knowing these things. For that reason, I avoided telling you when I was alive. Now I am dead, and the dead are selfish. We want to be remembered and we want to be avenged. More than that, I feel that someone must know what I do, and you are the only person I trust, sweet daughter. You are so very much like me, Sand.
Where to start? With the Kachina that touched me, I suppose. It took a sample of my blood and skin, Sand. The government people came from the coast, and I met your father. That part you know. They took the Kachina and never spoke of it. Moreover, they warned me not to speak of it as well.
Your father was the spy they set on me, and I always knew that. They needed to be certain that I never speculated publicly about the Kachina, or questioned what they told me about it: that it was one of their own experiments. I was clever Sand, too clever. I played along with Jimmie because he, too, was a source. Men let things slip, when they are drunk, when they are in bed. I found his access code, after a time, and very discretely, with great care, I began to probe the lowland data banks. I found things out. By that time, Jimmie and I were bound together, tied up with lies. There was a kind of love there, too, though I know you never understood it. The things he did to me, I think, were largely out of frustration. He did care for me, Sand, and yet every instant of every day he was my betrayer. That made him sick. There are other things about your father, too, some of which even I don’t understand. There is a deep, deep loss inside of him—and he never belongs, no matter where he goes. The lowlands, the pueblos—all just as alien to him. He grew up nearly alone, on the sea, without clan, without the Kachina. Pity him if you can, because he will always be alone. Kahopi.
That’s enough about your father. The Kachina—that’s what I want you to know about. There are three starships orbiting our world, daughter. Three ships, each of which could swallow every person on this planet and still have room inside. That is where the Kachina came from. The Kachina that stung me had a passenger, too, and thus we know how very alien this race is. It is the race that made the Fifth World, Sand, and I believe that they are the ones spoken of in the Great Prophecy—the Blue Star Kachina and his siblings. They made this world for us to live on, and now they have returned. I don’t know what the lowlanders plan, but it isn’t good. I hope to find out, though I have become more wary over the years, afraid to use Jimmie’s code. I think he knows, by now, what I’ve been doing. Probably he has known for many years. I also don’t think he has told anyone. The lowlanders are dangerous people, with dangerous thoughts. I think they see these ships as weapons that they can wield, somehow. They will never consult with the pueblos. My time has not come to speak, but when I do, the clan council will listen. Sand, all of that assumes I will be alive. If you are reading this now, chances are good that I never made my speech, never told the elders anything. But the Kachina have returned for all of us, daughter, not just for the people down in Salt and Paso. I trust you, your mind and heart. You are smarter than ever I was. Make of this what you can, though please understand that I will also understand if you keep silent and guard your life. But if they killed me, that might think you already know, so be careful no matter what. I love you, little girl. I treasure all of our time together, and I will bring you only gentle rains in times to come. Take those wheels down off of your head one day and make me a grandmother. In a world of pain, children can be joy. Goodbye.
Hands trembling, Sand scanned the rest of the book and found it blank. She reluctantly reached up and thumbed it off, and when she looked up, she found Tuchvala watching her. Sand felt papery, as if she were the ghost rather than the strange young woman. The breeze threatened to carry her off.
“We have to get moving, Tuchvala,” she said, through a tight throat. She opened the storage hatch on the Dragonfly and removed a second jumper.
“Put this on,” she told Tuchvala, who was still naked. The woman nodded without a word and began to clumsily don the garment. Sand went back to the tent and began to cast about, aimless, unsure what to do next. Had the lowlanders pinpointed her location? Could they see her even now with their orbiting eyes? But she had been right. Right to run. Those people had killed her mother, and whatever they wanted, she would not give them, ever. And her father. … she would see about him. Yes, she would.
It was then that Sand heard a sound that was not wind. It was a keening, metallic sound, coming from no particular direction. She virtually leapt out of the tent, becoming entangled in the flap, and when she recovered her balance, she frantically searched the skies. For a moment the sound just hung there, rising in volume but no clearer in bearing. Then metal flashed in her peripheral vision. Something like a Dragonfly roared into the little canyon.
Sand had never seen the Wings of the Whipper, but she had no difficulty recognizing them. A blunt, powerful craft, a crooked mouth was painted below the mirrored windshield. Two horns—Sand suspected they were gun mounts—projected from either side of the small cockpit. The rest of the craft—a flattened “V” shape flaring towards the afterjets—was painted black with white spots. It sat on blue underjets, five meters off of the ground. The horns winked green, and Sand hurled herself to the side. She hit the ground hard, rolled, came clumsily to her feet, and it took a moment for the change in the tableau to register. When it did, she screamed in anguish.
The Dragonfly shuddered and fell apart along a new seam between the cockpit and the engines. There was almost no sound.
The Wings of the Whipper turned so that its mouth and horns were facing her.
Chapter Fourteen
Alvar looked longingly at the solid earth below him. Three years subjective time in space, a gut-wrenching eternity bobbing in the ocean of the Fifth World, and still he did not get to set foot on land. Not that the land looked all that pleasant; broken and rocky, carpeted with something like grass or maybe clover. But it was land, goddammit.
“Soon enough, lover,” Teng told him, eyes fixed on the convoluted mountains they were fast approaching.
“Soon enough for what?” Her profile was lovely, alien, and hard in the light of the strange sun. He thought that she might be some kind of cat that had somehow donned human form.
“Soon enough and you can put your delicate little feet on dirt,” she answered, smiling faintly. Behind them, Jones Cortez was sounding faint, percussive notes as he loaded weapons. Chills shivered up Alvar’s spine. He hated guns.
“Teng. …” Alvar began, and stopped. He looked back at the mountains, trying to ignore the movie his mind was directing, one in which their little reconnaissance craft blossomed against some black mountainside, a stamen of red fire waving in the wind.
“Go ahead, Alvar. I can put up the soundscreen.” Suddenly the noises from behind them ceased, and the whining of the engine dropped away to nothing.
“Thanks, Teng. Your friends make me nervous.”
“They’re just like me, little Alvar.”
“You make me nervous. Do you know what it’s like making love to someone who can break you like a twig if they want?”
“I think so,” Teng clipped out, and each word was a drop of liquid helium, cold enough to burn a hole through unprotected flesh.
“Sorry Teng,” Alvar said, remembering the unexplained scars on his lover’s body. “You know my mouth.”
“It’s a sweet enough mouth. It’s those messages working down from your brain that are the problem,” Teng retorted, but she broadened her lips just enough to disarm the insult. “What’s on your mind?” she continued. “Not sweet talk, I gather.”
“I’m just wondering about all of this,” Alvar said, uncomfortably. Teng didn’t seem to like to talk about their job, but if they were to ever have a discussion about it, now was the time.
“All of what?”
Alvar pressed his lips tight, resolved to go on with it. “These aliens. They’ve been here for twenty years without hurting anyone. That seems to indicate that they aren’t hostile, even to squatters.”
“Could be,” Teng allowed cautiously. “Or it could be that we just don’t understand them that well. If those ships started terraforming this world—what, half a million years ago? Twenty years might not seem like very long to them. They could just be warming up.”
“You aren’t seriously suggesting that these are the same ships? Nobody could live that long.”
“They wouldn’t have to, if they spend most of their time at near light speed, going from planet to planet. Subjectively, they might be only a few thousand years old. That’s moot, though. I don’t think there is anything alive on those ships. None of the tests I’ve run indicate that they are built to maintain an atmosphere. Those are drones, Alvar.”
“Robots? Jesus, even robots, in half a million years. …”
“Well-built robots, surely. But Alvar—of all of the planets that this race must have terraformed—and I bet we’ve only found a fraction—why do you think we have never found an inhabited one?”
Alvar brushed stray hair from his face. He didn’t like it long, and hoped that Fifth World fashions had changed in half a century so he could wear it short again.
“Yeah, of course I’ve thought about that. But maybe they are very long-term thinkers.”
“Oh, they were,” Teng agreed, a faint ring of admiration in her voice. “But I also think they must have over-estimated themselves. They must be extinct.”
“Maybe,” Alvar mused, “they were just altruistic. You know, seeding the galaxy for some religious reason? Spreading life around?”
“Like a man worried about his mortality? Fucking as many women as possible to insure his posterity? Hey, Alvar, that’s good. But we have very little data on their psychology to speculate with. You could assume anything. But the most obvious reason to reform worlds is so that you can use them—because you expect to need them.”
“Okay. We’ve gotten away from my point,” Alvar said. “I’m just wondering if we’re doing the right thing, coming in with guns blazing like this.”
“‘Today is a good day to die,’” she reminded him.
“I should never have told you that,” he groaned.
“Anyway,” Teng went on, “we’ve played this pretty cautiously. We have to, not knowing exactly what’s going on.”
“But right now we’re going to kidnap whatever came down from those ships, right? Couldn’t that be interpreted as an act of aggression? Hey. …” Alvar frowned at Teng. “If there isn’t any atmosphere on those damn ships, what is this thing we’re chasing?”
Teng’s face scrunched in what looked suspiciously like a troubled expression.
“That’s the crazy part,” she said. “It would seem to be a human woman.”
Moments ticked by as Alvar stare blankly at her. He had almost forgotten the mountains, though they reared above them like scaled and plated dinosaurs.
“Teng, you should tell me this kind of thing. I shouldn’t have to cross-examine you to get it. What do you mean, a human woman?”
“The coastal government sent some people out to the landing site. They got there too late: one of the locals had already taken the occupant off in some kind of hovercraft. But the tracks coming out of the lander were human—and a sniffer caught a whiff of human woman in there, nothing else. Like the inside of a fishing boat.”
“How do you know this shit? How many agents do we have down there?”
“Just one.”
“But I thought the pueblos were after this whatever-it-is too. I thought our agent was in the pueblos.”
“Yes, that’s what I told you, and that’s where it stays right now, Alvar. You’ll meet this person soon enough. When you take his place.”
Her words slipped into his belly like a shiv, and with it an accompanying stab of remorse and self-pity.
“Do you really want to leave me here, Teng?”
Her face remained flat. “It’s my job, Alvar. It’s one of the things we came here for.”
“Won’t work if my cover gets blown.”
“Look, Alvar, it’s been fun. It can still be fun, for a while, depending on how things work out. But the agent here is old, nearing the end of his usefulness. Like you—and me—our agent has a contract for life extension, and that contract is coming term. Vilmir doesn’t like court hassles; he honors his contracts. That agent comes back, and you stay. Very simple.”
“Right. But the old agent came here undercover, very low profile. This isn’t the same situation. You and I are likely to become quite famous, if things don’t go just right. My time as an agent here could be extremely limited. I got the impression that my main mission here is to pose as a native until this job is done—to interpret for you, and so on.”
Teng glanced back over her shoulder. Cortez was checking a deadly-looking rifle.
“Alvar,” she whispered, “I’m telling you this for your own good. This could cost me my own contract, so listen to me. I am not, under any circumstances, to bring you back from this place until your contract is up in thirty years. Do you understand? And if your cover is blown, you just become a liability.”
Alvar found that he was not surprised.
“Will you kill me yourself, Teng? What about my goddamn contract?”
“It’s in your contract, you moron. Didn’t you read it?”
“Not the fine print I suppose,” he sighed.
They turned, edged between the sharp backs of two parallel ridges. The sky was suddenly gone, and Alvar felt a terrible claustrophobia building. His throat was tight.
“I won’t let anyone kill you, Alvar,” Teng whispered. It was such a faint sound, he was scarcely sure she said it. He looked at her with wide eyes, and she met his glance for such a long time that he began to fear they would brush against the relentless valley walls. But when she turned back to her instruments, they hadn’t wavered in their course.
“Just don’t worry,” she said. “I’m going to watch out for you. It’s going to work out, one way or the other, and you’ll be fine. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. He felt like a little boy, the first time he had been arrested by the Santa Fe cops. His mother had made him that promise and seemed to keep it, turned her sharp tongue and powerful black eyes on the constable, so that the lash of the whip had never fallen on his back. But when she got him home, he almost w
ished the police had whipped him, because they could never have been as thorough as she was. He had been sore for three weeks.
He wasn’t a kid, and it wasn’t a whipping this time. He hoped that Teng was more trustworthy than his sainted mother, god rest her.
God rest him, too.
He suddenly heard Jones and Cortez muttering behind them, and knew that the private conversation was over.
They flew on, taciturn. Stone walls went by, climbing, falling. Now the land looked familiar to Alvar, and he could have almost been back on earth, taking one of his many long camping trips in the mountains. Alvar liked mountains; they tested you; they had no forgiveness in them, and no malice either. Attributing either to them was a sign of weakness, though Alvar had seen people do it, retreating from the real world and its hard face into a dreamland where the world cared enough about human beings to kill them on purpose. Living indoors did that to people, an old man had once told him. The old man had been dying of lung and skin cancer, courtesy of the toxic air those indoor people had created to maintain their sweet illusions. Alvar wanted no part of either, had headed off-world to places where living outside could be a little healthier. That’s what a younger man had thought, anyway. Lord knows what he thought now.
“There we go,” Teng grinned.
“What?”
“Radio transmission. We couldn’t have even picked it up if we were a kilometer east or west. Lucky.”
“Then who the hell are they sending too?”
“A satellite, probably. Nothing to stop the signal from going up.”
Teng did something to the controls, and the hoverjet began climbing, leaving the valley floor dizzyingly far below. They seemed to be blowing upwards, like leaves caught in the thermals of a forest fire. A jagged mountain hove close, raked by under them, gave a brief impression of solidity before they were out over open space again, falling. Alvar felt his stomach float up, and he had a brief fond memory of Teng wrapped around him in free fall, muscles rippling against his skin.
