Coyote Rising (9 page)

“I . . . I saw him.” Allegra came closer, intending to comfort her. “He was outside. He told me to tell you . . .”

“I know. I heard everything . . . every word.”

And then she raised the flute, put it to her mouth, and began to play the opening bars of “Jerusalem.” Flawlessly, without a single missed note.

The shuttle burned all night; by morning it was a blackened skeleton
that lay in the center of the landing field. Fortunately, the blaze didn’t spread to the rest of Shuttlefield; Allegra would later learn that the townspeople, upon realizing that their homes weren’t in danger, abandoned all efforts at forming a bucket brigade and spent the rest of the night dancing around the burning spacecraft, throwing empty ale jugs into the pyre. It was the highlight of First Landing Day, one people would talk about for a long time to come.

Later that day, Chris Levin came out to check on his mother. She was through feeding the chickens, though, and didn’t want to talk to him. The door of her shack remained shut even after he pounded on it, and after a while he gave up and walked over to visit Allegra. She told him that they’d spent a quiet evening in her house and were unaware of any trouble until they heard the explosion. No, they hadn’t seen anyone; did he know who was responsible? Chris didn’t seem entirely satisfied by her answer, but he didn’t challenge it, either. Allegra returned the com he’d lent her, and he left once again.

In the months to come, as the last warm days faded away and the long autumn set in, she continued to make flutes. Once she had enough, she began selling them to shops and kiosks. Most of those who purchased them didn’t know how to play them, so she began giving lessons, at first in Shuttlefield, then in Liberty. By midwinter she was holding weekly seminars in the community center, and earning enough that she was eventually able to quit her job as a dishwasher. Some of her students turned out to have talent, and it wasn’t long before she had trained enough musicians to form the Coyote Wood Ensemble.

One morning, she awoke to see the first flakes of snow falling upon the marshes. Winter was coming, and yet she didn’t feel the cold. Instead, for the first time in many years, she perceived a muse whose voice she hadn’t heard in many years. She picked up her flute, put it to her lips, and without thinking about what she was doing, began to play an
unfamiliar melody; for her, it sounded like a song of redemption. When she was done, there were tears in her eyes. Two days later, she taught it to her students. She called the piece “Cecelia.”

Despite invitations to move to Liberty, she remained in Shuttlefield, living in the small one-room cabin on the outskirts of town. Every morning, just after sunrise, she sat outside and waited for her neighbor to finish feeding the chickens. Then, regardless of whether the days were warm or if there was snow on the ground, they would practice together. Two women, playing the flute, watching the sun come up over Shuttlefield.

And waiting. Waiting for the return of Rigil Kent.

Part 2
BENJAMIN THE UNBELIEVER
(from the memoirs of Benjamin Harlan)

Three days after I betrayed the prophet, the hunting party from
Defiance found me at the base of Mt. Shaw: starving, barely conscious, more dead than alive. At least so I’m told; that part of my memory is a blank spot. The hunters fashioned a litter from tree branches, then tied me to it and dragged me back to their hidden settlement. I slept for the next two days, waking up only now and then, often screaming from nightmares that I don’t remember.

I went into the wilderness of Midland along with thirty-one people, including their leader, the Reverend Zoltan Shirow. I was the only one who came back out. So far as I know, the rest are dead, including the woman I loved. I tried to save them, but I couldn’t. Indeed, perhaps only God could have saved them . . . and if Zoltan is to be believed, then God had His own plans for him.

I begin my story here so you’ll know, from the beginning, that it ends in tragedy. This is a dark tale, no two ways about it. Zoltan’s disciples were in search of spiritual transformation; I wish I could believe that they achieved their goal, yet there’s no way of knowing, for when the time came for me to stand with them, I fled for my life. Though my motives were base and self-serving, I’m the only one who survived.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I’ve never spoken about what happened until now. Not just because what I endured has been too painful to recall, but also because I’ve had to give myself time to understand what happened. Guilt is a terrible burden, and no one who considers himself to be a decent person should ever have to shoulder the blame for abandoning someone he loved.

This is my testament: the final days of Zoltan Shirow, God’s messenger
to Coyote, as told by Ben Harlan, his last remaining follower. Or, as Zoltan liked to call me, Benjamin the Unbeliever.

The prophet fell from the sun on a cold winter morning, his coming
heralded not by the trumpets of angels but by the sonic boom of an orbital shuttle. I was standing at the edge of the snow-covered landing field as the spacecraft gently touched down, waiting to unload freight from the starship that had arrived a couple of days earlier. I like to think that, if I had known who was aboard, I might have called in sick, but the truth is that it wouldn’t have mattered, because Zoltan probably would have found me anyway. Just as Jesus needed Judas to fulfill his destiny, Zoltan needed me . . . and I needed the job.

Good-paying jobs were tough to find in Shuttlefield. I’d been on Coyote for nearly seven months, a little more than a year and a half by Earth reckoning. My ship, the
Long Journey
—full name, the WHSS
Long Journey to the Galaxy in the Spirit of Social Collectivism
—was the third Union Astronautica ship to reach 47 Ursae Majoris. On the strength of a winning number on a lottery ticket and promises of a better life on the new world, I’d spent forty-eight years in biostasis to get away from the Western Hemisphere Union, only to find that the same people who ran the show back there were also in charge out here. And that’s how I found myself huddled in a leaky tent, eating creek crab stew and wondering how a smart guy like me had been rooked so badly, when the fact of the matter is that I’m not very smart and the system is rigged to take advantage of losers. So screw social collectivism and the horse it rode in on. On second thought, let’s eat the horse—if we had one to eat, that is—and let the guys who came up with collectivist theory go screw themselves.

When it was announced, in the first week of Barchiel,
C
.
Y
. 05, that the fourth Union ship from Earth—the WHSS
Magnificent Voyage to the Stars in Search of Social Collectivism
, or the
Magnificent Voyage
for short—had entered the system and would soon be making orbit around Coyote, I was the first person in line at the community hall in Liberty for the job of unloading freight from its shuttles. Literally the first; there were nearly three hundred guys behind me, waiting for a Union Guard soldier to
open the door and let us in. During the warm seasons, we would have been working on the collective farms, but it was the middle of Coyote’s 274-day winter and jobs were scarce, so I was willing to stand in the cold for three hours just for the chance to schlep cargo containers.

And that’s why I was at the landing field in Shuttlefield that morning, stamping my feet in the snow and blowing in my hands as I watched the gangway come down from the shuttle’s belly. The first people off were the pilot and copilot; perhaps they were expecting a brass band, because they stopped and stared at the dozen or so guys in patched-up parkas who looked as if they hadn’t eaten a decent meal in six months. A Guard officer emerged from the crowd, saluted them, murmured a few words, then led them away. Poor bastards—nearly a half century in space, only to find starving peasants. I felt sorry for them, but envied them even more. As members of
Magnificent Voyage
’s flight crew, they’d have the benefit of warm houses and good food before they reboarded the starship to make the long return flight to Earth. They were just passing through; the rest of us were stuck here.

The passengers came next, a steady parade of men, women, and children, every one of them with the shaved heads and shuffling gait of those who’ve recently emerged from the dreamless coma of biostasis. Their duffel bags were stuffed with the few belongings they’d been allowed to bring from Earth, their parkas and caps were clean and new, and not one of them had any clue as to where they were or what they’d gotten themselves into. One by one, they stepped off the ramp, squinted against the bright sunlight, looked around in confusion, then followed the person in front of them, who didn’t have a clue as to where he or she was going either. Fresh meat for Coyote. I found myself wondering how many of them would make it through their first year. We’d already lost more than forty colonists to hunger, cold, disease, and predators. The cemetery outside Liberty had room for plenty more.

About thirty people had come down the gangway when there was a pause in the procession. At first I thought everyone had disembarked, until I remembered that the shuttles had a passenger load of sixty. There had to be more; the shuttles wouldn’t fly down half-f. I had just turned to the guy next to me—Jaime Hodge, one of my camp buddies—
and was about to say something like
What’s the holdup?
when his eyes widened.

“Holy crap,” Jaime murmured. “Would you look at that?”

I looked around to see a figure in a hooded white robe step through the hatch. At first I thought it was a Savant—just what we needed, another goddamn posthuman—but quickly realized I was wrong. For one thing, Savants wore black; for another, there was also a huge bulge on his back, as if he was carrying an oversize pack beneath his robe. He kept his head lowered, so I couldn’t see his face.

And right behind him, a long line of men and women, each wearing identical robes. A few had their cowls pulled up, but most had let them fall back on their shoulders; unlike the other passengers, they weren’t carrying bags. What really set them apart, though, was an air of implacable calm. No hesitation, no uncertainty; they followed their leader as if they knew exactly where they were going. Some actually smiled. I’d seen all kinds come off the shuttles, but never anything like this.

The first guy stepped off the ramp, stopped, turned around. Everyone behind him halted; they silently watched as he bent over. The shuttle’s thrusters had melted away the snow, exposing charred grass and baked mud; he scooped up a fistful of dirt, then he rose and looked at the people behind him. He said something I didn’t quite catch—“the promised land” was all I heard—before everyone on the ramp began to yell:

“Amen!”

“Thank you, Reverend!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Praise the Lord!”

“Oh, yeah. Go tell it on the mountain.” Jaime glanced at me. “All we need now, a bunch of . . .”

Then his mouth sagged open, and so did mine, for at that instant the leader opened his robe and let it drop to his feet, and everyone got their first good look at who—or what—had just come to Coyote.

Two great wings the color of brown suede unfolded from his back. They expanded to full length, revealing serrated tips and delicate ribbing beneath the thin skin. Then he turned, and his face was revealed. Narrow eyes were sunk deep within a skull whose jaw had been enlarged to
provide room for a pair of sharp fangs; above his broad mouth, a nose shortened to become a snout. His ears were oversize, slightly pointed at the tips. Like everyone else’s, his body had been shaved before he had entered biostasis, yet dark stubble was growing back on his barrel chest. His arms were thick and muscular, his hands deformed claws with talons for fingers.