Coyote - A Novel of Interstellar Exploration Part 33

Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes, I am," Wendy says. "And where I'm going, you can't follow."

Liberty: Kafziel, Gabriel 22 /.

The storm has pa.s.sed, the sky has cleared. Now the town lies buried beneath fourteen inches of fresh snow that has drifted high against the log walls of cabins and glazed over their windows. Icicles like slender crystal daggers drape from roof eaves, the bright morning sun causing them to drip slowly into rain barrels below. A low breeze, cold and lonesome, murmurs through the snow-covered street, rattling closed shutters, whistling past chimneys from which no woodsmoke rises.

Wrapped in a thick blue cloak, hood raised over her head, Matriarch Hernandez stands in front of the grange hall and studies the still and silent town.

Except for the handful of Union Guard soldiers making a house-to-house search, nothing moves; the snow lies thick and undisturbed save for their footprints.

The Matriarch shudders, pulls her cloak tighter around herself. This world is much colder than she expected, its thin air difficult to breathe. Hearing a muted rumble from far above, she glances up, watches a shuttle as it races across the cloudless blue sky. Antic.i.p.ating some form of resistance from the Alabama colonists, she'd instructed the second shuttle to land an hour after her own craft touched down on the outskirts of town. There are twenty armed soldiers aboard, ready to quell any rebellion, yet they aren't necessary now.

The town is abandoned, without life. In little more than three days, more than a hundred men, women, and children have vanished.

"Matriarch," a voice says from behind her. She turns, sees Savant Castro marching toward her, a stark black shadow against the whiteness. He can't feel the wind, of course, yet somehow she imagines it biting at him through his monkish cloak.

"What have you found?" she asks, speaking in Anglo. "Is there anyone left?"

"Only two. A young man and his mother." The Savant stops before her, his spindly legs almost knee deep in the snow. "We found them down the street, in what seems to be a jail. They were locked inside,although with sufficient food and water to last a few days."

"Locked in?" The Matriarch is puzzled. "Why would they... ?"

"He identifies himself as the one who sent us the coordinates. He says the others don't trust him anymore and decided to leave him behind. His mother elected to stay behind on her own."

"I see." The Matriarch frowns. "So they would know where the others have gone."

"Unfortunately, they do not. They were put in jail two days ago. No one told them anything until then."

Savant Castro points in the opposite direction.

"I've just visited their landing pad. One of their shuttles is still here... the Mayflower, what used to be called the Wallace... but it's little more than an empty hull. They've cannibalized it of every usable component..."

"What about the other craft? Any indication of when it lifted off?"

"The snow has covered its blast marks. That leads me to conclude that it probably departed before the storm arrived-at least two days ago."

Luisa Hernandez looks away, murmurs an obscenity beneath her fogged breath. Once her crew learned the location of the colony from the radio transmission they had received-apparently from the young colonist they've just found-shortly before Lee and his party had visited them, she tried to keep Glorious Destiny within sight of New Florida. Yet the planet rotated out of synch with her s.h.i.+p's...o...b..t, and so there were many opportunities for a shuttle to lift off without being observed.

"Near the river, we've discovered what appears to be a shed meant for watercraft," Castro continues.

"Three large boats were once stored there, along with a number of smaller ones." When she looks at him again, he shakes his head. "They're all gone now."

And then the storm hit, and for the next two days several hundred miles of Coyote's western hemisphere had been shrouded by dense clouds. Sufficient time for the colonists to make their escape beneath the cover of the storm...

"And their homes?" She gestures to the primitive log cabins neatly arranged along the colony's major avenue. "Is there anything here that... ?"

"No, Matriarch," he says, and she nods. As her scouts have already discovered, the dwellings have been stripped down to bare walls, with only window gla.s.s and the heaviest pieces of furniture left behind.

Everything that couldn't be replaced, the colonists took with them. Even electrical fixtures are gone, the wiring carefully removed from the walls and ceilings.

"We've found livestock pens," the Savant says, "but the animals are missing. The grain silos are bare as well. There's nothing left in them."

Hearing this, Hernandez scowls. She'd been counting on the colony's food supply to get her advance team through the winter, until spring arrived and the colonists could cultivate sufficient crops to support the rest of Glorious Destiny's crew. She gazes at the ground, absently running the toe of her left boot through the snow. Her plans have been dealt a severe setback; she wonders what she might have said or done that gave Captain Lee some warning of her ambitions.

"Have you... ?" she begins, and at that moment the front door of the grange bangs open. Startled, she turns quickly, her hand reaching beneath her cloak for her sidearm, yet it's only the Guardsman she sentinto the meeting hall.

He halts on the snow-trampled steps, something beneath his right arm. "Pardon me, Matriarch," he stammers, his eyes wide as he perceives the gun in her hand. "I didn't..."

"Have you found something?" Savant Castro asks. The soldier nods. "Bring it here, please."

The soldier stumbles down the stairs, wades across the snow to where they're standing. "It was in a room in the back, on a table. They'd taken everything else, so I thought it might be important."

"Thank you." Hernandez takes it from the soldier: a swatch of colored fabric, very old, neatly folded. She carefully pulls it open, involuntarily draws a breath when she recognizes it for what it is. The flag of the United Republic of America. Back on Earth, they're only seen in museums. This one was probably given to the Alabama crew before they left Earth. A priceless historical artifact...

"There was also this." The soldier nervously extends a small slip of paper. "It was attached to the flag.

Excuse my ignorance, Matriarch, but I don't know what it means."

Luisa Hernandez takes it from him. There's something written on it, but it's in Old English. Without asking, she hands it to Savant Castro.

He studies it for a moment. "Well done, Guardsman. You're dismissed." The soldier gives him a long look, then salutes and reluctantly walks away. Castro waits until he's out of earshot, then he reads the note aloud.

East Channel: Kafziel, Gabriel 22 /.

" This belongs to you. UJe have no use for it any longer, so you should keep it. Don't follow us, or we'll follow you.' "

"Excuse me, Captain? You said something?"

Lee looks around. Carlos stands in the longboat's stern, his hands on the tiller. Lee thought he'd been speaking to himself, but the young man apparently overheard him. "Never mind," he says. "Just something I left for the Matriarch. I imagine she's found it by now."

Standing up from the grain sack upon which he's been seated, he props a foot upon the gunnel, gazes back the way they've come. The Eastern Divide is still just within sight, but it's falling below the horizon, its limestone bluffs swallowed by the cold waters of the East Channel. In a few minutes, New Florida will be gone. Enough time for one last look...

"I don't think we've seen the last of 'em." Carlos peers over his shoulder. "In fact, I think we can count on it."

"If they're smart, they'll keep their distance." No doubt that the newcomers will try to find them; Lee guesses that Glorious Destiny will locate their whereabouts within a few weeks, if not sooner. But the Matriarch only wanted Liberty, not the people who once lived there, and the note he left behind was his warning to stay away. Pinning it to the flag was a little more subtle. So far as he was concerned, there was little difference between the Republic and the Union: just another form of oppression justified by political ideology. The Matriarch might or might not get the jab; it matters little to him.

A sly grin steals across Carlos's face. "Do I have to keep my distance, too?"

"I hope that doesn't mean what I think it means." When Carlos doesn't reply, Lee shakes his head."That'll come later. Right now, we've got a lot of work ahead of us."

The broad deck is packed solid with sacks, crates, and equipment containers: all their belongings, or at least everything that could be salvaged from the colony and loaded aboard three thirty-four foot boats.

Their boat is bringing up the rear of the flotilla; ahead of them are the other longboats, escorted on either side by kayaks and canoes, their sails billowed by the cool easterly wind. Just as Carlos predicted, the storm flooded Sand Creek, raising the water level enough for the flat-bottomed boats to slip through the Shapiro Pa.s.s without foundering on the shoals.

In another couple of days, they'll reach the Montero Delta. Then they'll turn east and follow the southwestern coast of Midland until they reach the place where Carlos made camp last summer. The rest of the colonists, along with the livestock, have already gone ahead, airlifted to Midland by the Plymouth just before the storm swept across New Florida. They should have already made camp in the mountain valley Carlos found not far from where he built his tree house.

Lee turns away, starts heading toward the bow, picking his way across bags of corn and beans, boxes of tools and spare parts, rolls of electrical wire and plastic tubing. Carlos knows where he's going; just now, there's someone else aboard he needs to see.

Wendy sits cross-legged on a sailboard, her back propped against the mainmast. Her pad is open in her lap, yet she's paused to gaze back at New Florida.

The breeze whips her hair across her face, the morning sun turning it from ash blond to silver-grey; in that moment, she appears far older than her years, more world-weary than any girl her age should be. Lee hesitates-perhaps he should respect her solitude-but then she looks around, finds him standing behind him. Her expression is solemn, her eyes impartial.

"You want to talk about it?" he asks.

"Does it matter?"

"It should. At least it does to me." Lee finds a seat on a crate. Looking around, he catches a last glimpse of the Eastern Divide, now only a ragged dark line above the horizon. "If I didn't get a chance before to say I'm sorry..."

"You've done that already. What you didn't tell me is why."

There's no accusation in her voice. She simply wants to know. There are a dozen different lies he could tell her now, some more comforting than others, yet she'd see through any of them in a moment. In her face, he perceives the child she had once been; in her eyes, the woman she would become. He had to speak to the woman, not the child. flllen M. Steele "I didn't kill your father," he begins. "Gill Reese did... he shot him in the back, aboard the Alabama, because he thought he was going to shoot me."

"Why did my father want to kill you?" Blunt. To the point.

"He said that I was a traitor, and that it was his duty to kill me." Lee pauses. "Please believe me when I tell you that I didn't want Gill to shoot him.

I tried to get your father to give me his gun, and for a second or so I thought he would, but then he changed his mind and... well, Reese thought he was about to shoot me, and so he fired first. He died in my arms.""What..." Her voice chokes a little; she clears her throat. "What were his last words?"

" 'Long Live the Republic.' " Lee remembers the moment with terrible clarity. "But that's not what matters. The last thing he spoke of was you... he didn't want you ever to know why he was aboard.

That was his greatest fear, I..."

He shakes his head. "No. That's not right. I don't think that's what frightened him. I think he was afraid of the future. He'd lived so long in the past, he didn't want to let it go. When he stole a gun and tried to kill me, he was trying to turn back the clock. But he couldn't do that, so..."

"I understand." She still doesn't look at him, but through her windblown hair he can see wetness on her face. "You want to know what's funny? I hardly knew him. I mean... he put me in a youth hostel so he could join the Service, and I barely saw him again until he took me out to put me aboard the Alabama.

What kind of lousy father would... ?"

"I don't know. Maybe a father who cared more for his daughter than he was willing to admit."

Her chin trembles, and now the tears come freely. Lee hesitates, wondering if this is the right thing to do, then he moves to sit next to her. She doesn't resist as he puts an arm around her shoulders; her head falls against his chest, and Lee holds her that way for a long time. The handful of other colonists aboard the boat pointedly ignore them; Carlos minds the tiller, careful not to look their way as he steers them closer toward Midland. New Florida has vanished, and now the boats are alone on the East Channel.

Wendy raises her head, snuffles a little, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "So... what's next, Captain? What do we do now?"

Robert E. Lee, descendant of a Confederate general, turns his eyes toward the south. "There's a whole new world out there," he says quietly. "Let's go find it."

The author wishes to thank the following for their advice during the writing of this novel: Gieg Bear, Gregory Benford, Rob Caswell, Hal Clement, Jack Cohen, my niece Florence Edwards, Terry Kepner, Judith Klien-Dial, Ron Miller, Bob and Sara Schwager, my sisters Elizabeth and Rachel Steele, and Mark W. Tiedemann.

A special debt is owed to Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams, the editors of Asimov's Science Fiction, and to Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, the editors of the anthology Star Colonies, for allowing me to write an early version of this novel as a series of short stories.

As always, I'm grateful for the encouragement and support of my editor, Ginjer Buchanan, and my literary agent, Martha Millard. And none of this would have been possible without my wife, Linda, who followed me down the wild rivers of Coyote, then took over the oars and brought me back to civilization.

-March 2000-October 2001;

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