Footsteps in the Sky

by Greg Keyes

  Where could she be? For the first time, it occurred to Hoku that the woman may not have been plagued at all; though natural immunity was out of the question, someone could have given her the same inoculation that he and his men had received.

  Red Jimmie was, after all, her father. And Jimmie was missing too.

  “Fuck!” Hoku softly allowed himself. Could Jimmie make a ship invisible? Almost certainly, at least in the sense that he could disable its frequency emitter.

  “Give me an aerial projection from satellite data,” he said, making the request sound like a curse. The image flickered and changed.

  “Moving flyers in red,” Hoku commanded. Immediately a number of red spots appeared on the map, located this time not by their own transmissions but by telescopes and radar two hundred kilometers above them.

  Hoku studied the display intently. Was there anything … The image flickered out of existence. Hoku cursed, clenched his fists until the nails cut his skin.

  “Still image,” he hissed. “Recording of that last transmission.”

  The topography of the mesa reappeared. The red dots were unmoving points. Carefully, Hoku traced his search plan over, calling up a schematic of it to help him. Accounting for the many deviations, he tried to trace down every flyer. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he superimposed a still of the earlier display he had been examining, the one constructed from the identification frequencies. If there was a flyer not accounted for by that map which was present in the satellite image, he would have Jimmie. Unless Jimmie could make the craft invisible in reality, which Hoku chose not to believe possible. Or unless Jimmie had somehow slipped through the noose of Hoku’s ships long ago, which also seemed unlikely. Any ships leaving the pueblo were to have been reported and then intercepted. If Jimmie was smart—and he was—he would have waited to get one of Hoku’s own flyers, so he could slip out unnoticed.

  To his disappointment, the number of ships in the two displays was identical. He called up a real-time map of the flyer transmissions.

  Now there was one missing, he realized with growing excitement. The one whose search pattern had taken it so far off of the mesa proper. He quickly searched to assure himself that the pilot had not merely returned to his proper course, but such was not the case. A flyer was gone, headed out into the badlands south of the mesa.

  What was Jimmie doing? Had he gone insane? It was possible. The strain of being an agent here in the pueblos must have been immense. And it had been Jimmie himself who had infected Pela with the deadly virus tailored for her and only her, though Jimmie himself hadn’t known he was the carrier. But Jimmie could have figured that out easily enough. That and fear for his daughter might have pushed him over the edge.

  “Get me Homikniwa,” he growled at the unseen presence of his computer link. “And get me Kewa.”

  He might need the woman’s advice. She seemed to understand the emotional, irrational side of human behavior better than he. Hoku reflected that most of his mistakes had been in assuming people acted as he did, rationally and with calculation. Surely Jimmie understood that his daughter was no longer in danger, now that the great secret was no longer a secret. Everyone on the Fifth World knew about the alien now, and Hoku stood to gain nothing by killing even as bothersome a pest as Sand. All Hoku wanted now was the woman in Pela’s form. In fact, what he really wanted now was Sand’s cooperation and Jimmie’s too. If they holed up in a canyon somewhere and forced a violent confrontation, Hoku—and the Hopi people—might lose everything.

  Hoku would trust this to no one else. When Homikniwa and the puzzled Kewa arrived, the three of them went immediately to the Bluehawk.

  Halfway there, a voice in Hoku’s ear buzzed for his attention, and he gaped as his carefully constructed theory collapsed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sand clawed her way along a rock face that heaved and trembled, that reached out claws to rend her, that seemed to babble. The shushing of her hands across smooth stone seemed to be a word she couldn’t quite understand, but a crucial one nevertheless. Her heart was thumping out through her hands, which felt like stone themselves, and more than once she feared petrification.

  She had to constantly remind herself what she was doing, that lowland warriors prowled the mesa. She should be trying to find a flyer—preferably a Dragonfly—and escape, find Tuchvala. Instead her mind just kept replaying, over and over, the crush of Alvar’s body against her, the terrible need that had seized her, even though her disgust had been at least as great as her lust. The fragmented images and flashes of sensation that rushed about like ravens in her mind were more than confused, they were contradictory. Everything about the encounter had been wrong—there was nothing about Alvar she had desired, except that he had been there. When they had so frantically coupled, it hadn’t been a man inside of her at all, but a woman. It had been Tuchvala moaning, grinding her into the stone. When her eyes flicked open to Alvar—a man she knew not at all—she had felt sick, and shut them tightly, though terrible colors swirled in the darkness. Now the flashes of him panting over her returned, the feel of his tongue in her mouth, and she retched, emptying what little was left of her earlier meal.

  Hide! She scrambled on across the steep slope. There was a cave she knew of, if only she could reach it, stay there until this terrible thing left her brain. If it ever did. If she wasn’t permanently brain damaged or even dying.

  A sensation came which she only tentatively identified as a new sound, and when she looked for its source, she saw a lowland hovercraft topping the stone ridge. She froze, willing herself to become one of the yellow stone outcroppings, but in an instant the flyer had changed course. Sand darted down the slope, sliding and skidding on her butt. Her limbs refused to react properly, and she quickly lost her balance, tumbled painfully down the grade until she fetched against a projecting spur. Wildly flailing, she scrambled around it, unto the narrow ledge below. Beyond the ledge there was nothing, a sheer drop down to checkered fields streaked with the hazy trails of numerous hovercraft and cycles. Vertigo seized her, for the first time in her life, and though she was safely against the stone face, Sand felt as though she were actually teetering over the brink. The faint voice that always suggested that she jump into the void, plunge through that magical air between cliff and earth sounded like sudden, blaring music. She shivered and ran up the ledge.

  Where was the hovercraft? She had lost sight of it.

  The even stone broke off, suddenly, and she realized that she had gone in the wrong direction. Here was a spill channel, where rainwater traced a steep grove down the mesa. Perhaps forty feet below, she could see another shelf. Could she climb down that smooth channel? Not in this state. She turned to retrace her path, and there was the hovercraft, six meters away, waiting for her. She turned frantically back to the only route left her and was preparing to try it anyway, when her muscles wrapped her into a ball of pain.

  The pain and her terrible confusion lifted at about the same time. She had some slight memory of a woman with a hypodermic and something warm that felt good against her flesh, soothed out the agony with a touch.

  “That should bring them down. This will bond up with the receptors for the drug more efficiently than the drug itself.”

  A woman’s voice, one that Sand did not recognize. When she opened her eyes she didn’t know the face either. Lowlander, though.

  “Good.” Sand did recognize that deep, male voice. It was Hoku himself. Sand didn’t know if she more flattered or terrified. Woozily she surveyed her surroundings. The shape of the cabin and the steady throb of its floor told her she was in some sort of flyer, probably one of those big hovercrafts they call Bluehawks. Alvar—her recent “lover”—sat strapped to a chair, eyes listless. I must look like that, she thought, but instead of feeling sympathy for him she wanted to vomit again. Her thoughts were becoming clearer, but in a way, that only made things worse. What had happened to them? S
he thought she could guess; some microbe engineered to produce psychoactive compounds. Not uncommon on Earth, she understood, but not common on the Fifth World. Such self-indulgent sensation was one of the things her ancestors fled when they left that world of lotus-eaters.

  Who? Her father of course. Fresh anger cut at the clinging cobwebs left by the drug.

  The fourth person in the cabin was Hoku. He stared at her with fixed eyes. The power he radiated was unmistakable, and another thrill of fear woke in her spine.

  “You know what’s going on, SandGreyGirl? Do you? Your father and some offworld woman have taken your friend.”

  What did this man want? Father with Tuchvala? That made sense, somehow, though it shouldn’t. If Jimmie worked for Hoku—and he surely did, releasing the virus and shutting down the computer so that Hoku could take the mesa—then why was he fleeing from Hoku?

  “I don’t know much of anything anymore,” Sand sighed, wearily.

  “Do you know who he is?” Hoku asked, in a way he probably thought was gentle. He pointed to Alvar.

  She shook her head. “He was with the woman, the kahopi. He said he was from Parrot Island, like my Father. He said. …”

  Alvar was staring at her, his face contorted with the effort to understand what he was hearing.

  “He said …” she went on, and suddenly remembered. Her lips thinned into an angry line.

  “He’s an offworlder too. They both came here with the Reed. And so did my father.”

  There. The last thing Alvar had told them, just before the insanity really began. She watched Alvar; he sank into his chair with a look of utter despair.

  “Yes,” he muttered, to Hoku’s suddenly furious glance. Hoku stood, then, crossed the cabin in four quick steps, and slapped Alvar in the face. The offworlder’s head rolled back with the blow, and the red impressions of Hoku’s fingers remained on his cheek.

  “And Jimmie?” He growled. “Jimmie too?”

  “I was supposed to replace him. The Reed always has agents on its colony worlds.”

  “This is our world,” Hoku snarled. “Ours.”

  “He means his,” Sand blurted. “That’s what he means.”

  Hoku turned to her, and for an instant she thought he would strike her too, but instead, his face went blank of emotion.

  “What do you know about me, little girl? Nothing. You know nothing. You have no idea what I have done and will do to keep this planet in Hopi hands.”

  “Hoku.” It was the woman, who still sat near Sand.

  “Hoku, there is nothing to gain by harassing these two. Sand must understand the situation clearly. Then she will see where her duty is, regardless of her feelings about us.”

  “He caused my mother to die!” Sand snarled at the woman, who shrank away from her a bit. “He has nothing to say that I want to hear!”

  The woman seemed to master her startlement. She reached up and dabbed at Sand’s forehead with a damp cloth. It felt good, despite everything.

  “Listen, Sand,” the woman said. My name is Kewalacheoma, from the old Snake clan. You and I, Hoku—we are all Fifth Worlders. These people that have the alien. …”

  “Her name is Tuchvala.”

  “Ah. … Okay. These people that have Tuchvala are taking her to a landing drum north up the coast. A drum from a Vilmir Foundation starship. A Reed ship. Once they get her there, there is nothing we can do for her. Do you understand that? How can you want that?”

  Sand dropped her head down. “What does it matter? While we play these stupid games, Tuchvala’s sisters are preparing our doom. We had a chance, before your idiotic invasion. She was going to talk to them, try to convince them. …”

  “What’s this? What do you mean?” Hoku had a hungry look now.

  Sand’s head felt clearer with each instant, her anger and outrage sharper.

  “Those ships in space, the ones you so stupidly think you can use for your own gain. They’re alive, Hoku. Tuchvala is one of them made flesh, the only one still sane. If the whim strikes them, or if they are threatened in any way, they will destroy us all and start this planet again, from scratch. Do you understand that? That while we chase each other all over the Fifth World, Masaw is preparing an end to it?”

  Hoku regarded her in shocked silence.

  “She told you this?” He finally asked.

  “Who else? She came down here to save us if she could, and you have chased her, threatened her. …”

  “Sand,” Hoku grated evenly. “I have been chasing you. Without your interference, we would have found your “Tuchvala” at her landing site, and she would have told us all this. I assume you used the ojo on her.”

  “She was telling the truth.”

  “I’ll believe that when it’s verified.”

  Sand lunged against her restraints. “And you have no right to my mother’s body! You are the sole reason for her death.”

  “Her curiosity was the reason for her death. But I tell you frankly, Sand, her death was perhaps my biggest mistake, and I regret it bitterly.”

  “Do you. Well how nice. You and I can be mates now, Hoku. When’s the wedding?”

  Hoku blew out a long, slow breath and turned to Kewa.

  “What can I do, Kewa? She is unreasonable. I thought she might be of some help in convincing Jimmie to come back to us, but. …”

  He was interrupted by Alvar’s harsh laugh. “It’s out of his hands now. They’re with Teng now. Nothing can stop Teng and nothing can change her mind. She killed your Whipper, you know.”

  “A Whipper?” Hoku frowned. “I didn’t know about this.”

  Sand watched the exchange. There was pride in Alvar’s voice, and also certainty. And the woman had definitely killed Chavo, despite his Kachina training. She remembered the woman’s eyes, diamond hard. She remembered her, too, towering over Sand and Alvar back on the mesa. That was who had Tuchvala.

  “Killed a Whipper,” repeated Hoku.

  “But she is wounded,” Sand told him. “Chavo cut her good before she killed him.”

  Hoku was nodding, and Sand could almost see the calculation running behind his eyes.

  “Can we catch them, Homikniwa?” he asked raising his voice. The answer came from overhead, through the comm system.

  “Yes. They’ll have to circle to avoid a storm, and the Bluehawk is faster. We’ll catch them, I think.”

  “Then what?” asked Sand. Assume you overcome this woman somehow. What do you think you will do with Tuchvala?”

  Hoku regarded her clinically. “Do you really believe what you said? About the danger from the ships?”

  “It is true,” Sand snapped. “As true as my mother’s death.”

  “And she needs only to talk to these ships to stop them?”

  “She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure she could stop them at all.”

  Hoku pursed his lips and nodded. He spoke once again to the unseen pilot.

  “Homikniwa. Release my personal code. Launch the attack on the landing drum now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Now Teng had no trouble remembering why she hated men. Alvar had tricked her, somehow, weakened her natural caution. Made her forget her pledge and her decision. Teng had never been much use as a human being, not to herself or anyone else. Always the stranger looking in a window from outside, watching other people laugh and love. For her there had only been sex and pain, and finally power. When she had the power—when she was no longer that weak little girl whose bones were so brittle and whose flesh tore so easily—then she began to appreciate the other two. Because with power, she could take sex and inflict pain—or experience it—at her leisure. Sixteen years old and a demigoddess, like black Durga herself. In the fifteen years since she had never regretted the decision; she had sacrificed nothing and gained much.

  Now Alvar had her close to tears
and closer to murder. Why she hadn’t gutted him back on the mesa escaped her—perhaps the nagging suspicion that it was somehow her fault. After all, what man could resist one of those weak, soft things? Men liked being in control without even knowing why. Men were born with power but they never understood it. Teng was born without it and she did.

  She would do now what she always did, what she should have always been doing. Her job.

  “You can’t fly through that,” the traitor said from behind her.

  “I can fly through whatever the fuck I want to,” Teng told him. “If I avoid the storm, they can catch us. That isn’t going to happen.”

  She reached up to adjust the monitoring system and felt a twinge as the dense tissue forming on her scab tore with the exertion.

  “I didn’t sign on for this,” Jimmie snapped. “You’re supposed to get me back to Earth alive.”

  “You aren’t going back to Earth, asshole. Not on this trip, anyway. The Foundation has its central office on Plano Bello, and that’s our next stop. Maybe.”

  Jimmie shrugged. “They can give me the immortality on Plano Bello. Makes no difference to me. But I will get back to Earth and away from these miserable colony worlds.”

  “Shut up. I’m sick of you.”

  “Without me, you’d still be back in jail, and you wouldn’t have this flyer, either.”

  “You should have gotten a faster one. Then we wouldn’t have to fly through your fucking storm.”

  She regarded the black horizon without fear. How high would this piece of shit climb? She should find out.

  As she eased back on the stick, Jimmie swore. Behind them, the woman they called Tuchvala was asleep, tranquilized by Jimmie.

  “That’s really her, eh?” Teng asked. “Not very imposing.”

  “I know. I don’t understand myself.”

  “You must have heard something. Try to make me understand, traitor. It could be important.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Teng laughed. “Now isn’t the time to get sensitive about your work description.”