Coyote Destiny (3 page)

Except for one person.

Grabbing hold of a bulkhead rung, Vargas pulled himself over to the lifeboat’s sole occupant. Within the beam of his flashlight, he saw a young man, strapped into the seat, arms and legs dangling in midair. His eyes were shut, and for a moment Sergio thought he might be dead, until his flashlight caught the faint vapor of exhaled breath rising from his open mouth.

“Better get in here,” he said aloud, and was startled when, in the next instant, Jewel’s hand grasped his shoulder. The vet hadn’t waited for the captain to give her permission to enter the lifeboat but had followed him through the docking collar.

“Let me see him.” Grabbing hold of the back of the seat frame, Jewel turned herself around until she could look straight down at the unconscious passenger. “Do you think we could have a little more light in here?”

Turning around, Vargas unfolded the control console and used it to switch on the lifeboat’s interior lights. As they flickered to life, he was able to see the young man more clearly. In his late twenties, he wore what appeared to be a hooded brown robe much like a monk’s. His head was shaved save for a long, braided scalp lock dangling from the back of his skull; on his forehead, just above his nose and between his eyes, was a tattoo that resembled the Greek letter
pi
turned upside down.

Jewel gently pried open the young man’s left eye, peered at the pupil. “Mild concussion. Probably caused when the lifeboat was jettisoned.” She located foot restraints on the deck beside the couch and inserted her feet within the elastic stirrups; properly braced, she continued her examination, carefully flexing the passenger’s limbs and prodding his chest. “Nothing broken. No ribs cracked. No signs of internal injuries. I think he’s . . .”

The young man groaned, a soft sigh coming from his slack mouth, as his eyelids fluttered slightly. “Looks like he’s coming out of it,” Vargas murmured. “Think you can wake him up?”

“Give him a minute, all right?” Sensing the captain’s impatience, though, Jewel gently massaged the passenger’s wrist. “Hello,” she whispered. “Are you with me?”

“Humm . . . huhh?” The young man’s eyes slowly opened. Dazed, he gazed up at the two people hovering above him. “Whuh . . . who ...”

Startled by Treece’s voice in his headset, Vargas bit back a curse, then tapped his mike. “Affirmative,” he replied. “We’ve found someone aboard . . . only one, but at least he’s still alive. Stand by.”

He clicked off again, then bent closer to the passenger. He was only semiconscious, but Vargas needed to talk to him as soon as possible. Dom was breathing down his neck for answers, and Vargas was all too aware that it wouldn’t be long before everyone else would be as well.

“Can you hear me?” he demanded, raising his voice a little. “Do you know where you are?”

“Captain, please . . .” Jewel placed a hand on his shoulder, tried to push him back. “Give him a sec. He’s been through a lot.”

“Life . . . lifeboat.” Apparently confused, the young man turned his head slightly, looking around himself. “In the lifeboat . . . I’m . . . where . . . ?”

“Yes, you’re in a lifeboat.” Vargas was trying not to lose patience. “The lifeboat was ejected from the
Lee
. You’re the only one aboard. No one else made it. What happened to the ship? Why did it . . . ?”

“Captain, please!” Jewel insistently pushed him aside. “You’re not helping.” She turned to the passenger again. “Relax, you’re okay. You made it through . . .”

“Ship . . . bomb on the ship . . . explosion . . .”

“There was an explosion, yes.” Sergio bent closer to him again. “You say there was a bomb on the
Lee
?” The young man slowly nodded. “Who brought a bomb aboard?”

“Captain, please . . .” Once more, Jewel pushed him away. Then she turned to the young man again. “Can you tell me who you are?” she asked, as gently as she could.

The sole survivor of the
Robert E. Lee
was quiet for a moment, and Sergio was surprised to see tears glistening at the corners of his eyes, breaking off to form tiny spheres that floated away. Then he looked straight at both him and the doctor, and a soft smile touched the corners of his mouth.

“I’m God,” he said. “And so are you.”

The vast resources of the New World so liberated human potential that the imaginative mind felt a new relation with the universe—a new sense of control over destiny. But the consequent rise of the self-reflexive individual, severed from institutional contexts of identity, brought the loss of innocence that has made the reconquest of Eden the organizing image of the last half-millennium. If the Copernican expulsion from the literal center symbolizes this loss of larger meaning, then the leitmotif of the longing to return . . . has been the dream of spaceflight.

The southern coast of Algonquin was a white and desolate expanse,
its subarctic tundra hidden beneath the snows of winter. Beneath skies the color of dirty chalk lay a monotonous plain, with only the dark brown bluffs of the nearby mountains lending the slightest hint of color. Even the North Sea matched the landscape, its frigid blue waters concealed beneath a dense layer of ice. At first glance, it seemed as if this part of the world was utterly lifeless, save for the lonesome wind that picked up patches of snow and spun them away as miniature, short-lived twisters.

And yet, there was movement.

The polar cow and her family were almost invisible, their thick white fur allowing them to blend in with the snowpack. The cow had migrated down from the mountains, where, sometime last autumn, it had mated with one of the bulls that roamed its lower steppes. Now she was at the midpoint of an annual winter migration that would eventually take her across the frozen sea to the northern coast of Vulcan, a slightly warmer climate where she and her calves would find enough food to sustain them for the long, cold months ahead. She’d made this journey many times before, and even though her species was not terribly intelligent, she was doubtless aware that the most dangerous part of their trek still lay ahead.

Her children, of course, didn’t know this. Seven in all—there had once been eight, but they’d lost one of their kin during a storm only a few days ago—most of them marched in tandem behind their mother, the footprints of their stumplike legs forming a deep trail that went almost all the way down to the frozen dirt beneath the snow. The cow carried the two smallest and weakest of her offspring upon her back, where they gently rocked back and forth with every step she took; they weighed at least a hundred pounds each, but their mother didn’t seem to mind. Nine feet tall, weighing nearly a ton, her size was rivaled only by her close cousins, the shags that inhabited the equatorial continents of Midland and Great Dakota.

“Wonderful,” Inez murmured. “Absolutely wonderful.”

She lay prone upon the crest of a small hill, elbows propped against the snow-covered ground. In her gloved hands was a pair of binoculars through which she studied the herd from a distance of two hundred yards. Although she wore Corps winter gear, her maroon parka and snow pants were camouflaged by a solar-heated white cape that gave her additional warmth. Inez had pushed back her goggles in order to use the binoculars, but her voice was muffled slightly by the hood pulled up around her head.

“Aren’t they?” Kneeling beside her, Jorge watched the polar cows with the naked eye—or rather, without the aid of binoculars; he was careful to keep his goggles in place, lest the ice-reflected sunlight damage his eyes. Which reminded him of something that might interest her. “Look closely,” he added. “Do you see something peculiar about the way they walk?”

Inez was quiet for a few moments, during which Jorge stole a glance at her. Even though she wore thick clothes and was swaddled within the
arsashi
cape, he couldn’t help but admire the arch of her back, the curve of her rump. It was a liberty he felt a twinge of guilt for taking, but Corps regulations only prohibited unwanted sexual overtures; there was nothing said about looking.

“I don’t know what you mean.” When Inez spoke again, there was an undercurrent of irritation to her voice. “What are you getting at . . . sir?”

Had she caught him looking at her? Once again, a tacit reminder that they were separated by rank, not to mention age. At six and a third by the LeMarean calendar, Corporal Inez Torres was a couple of years younger than Lieutenant Jorge Montero II. Nonetheless, he lay down in the snow beside her, close enough to feel the warmth of her cape. “Notice the way the mother moves. She keeps her head low, with her snout touching the ground, moving it back and forth. Almost like she’s searching for something . . .”

“Food?” Inez looked away from the binoculars, her gaze briefly meeting his. Her eyes were beautiful; pale blue, solemn yet perpetually curious, as if always seeing the world for the first time. Jorge never got tired of looking at them.

“No. Not food. Not much of that around here. Besides, they’re living on body fat. They probably haven’t eaten in weeks. That’s why they’re migrating in the first place.” He grinned, then pointed to the children. “Give you a hint. Look at her kids . . . the way they’re following Mama, and what they’re doing with each other, too.”

Inez raised the binoculars again, peered through them. “All right, they’re all walking one right behind the other, with their snouts touching against each other’s backside. It’s almost like . . .” Her eyes widened as the realization hit her. “They’re blind!”

She spoke louder than she should have. The procession suddenly came to a halt as the mother’s shaggy head swung in the direction of Inez’s voice. Her large, tufted ears rose slightly, and her broad, lipless mouth opened to emit the bovine
mo-o-o-oah
that gave her species its name.