Coyote Rising (13 page)

“You know,” I said, as gently as I could, “it’s possible that Zoltan may be . . .”

“Crazy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you were about to say.” Greer gave me a condescending look. “We’ve all heard it before. I thought the same thing
myself, when I first met him. But, Ben, you have to listen to him. You need to open up your heart, let him . . .”

The tent behind us rustled; another church member had come home, probably to get something from his or her belongings. Reminded that she shouldn’t be speaking to me this way, Greer went silent. Touching my arm, she stood up, took a few steps away from the tent.

“Let me show you what we found,” she said aloud. “Maybe you know what it is.”

I nodded and followed her to past the edge of the cleared area. A few yards away from camp, the sourgrass grew chest high, bowed by the winter snow. We pushed through it until Greer stopped and pointed to several spherical plants growing above ground. Resembling gigantic onions, their thick brown leaves were layered with frost.

“Ball plants,” I said. “You should stay clear of them.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Not now, no, but by spring they’ll start to flower.” I pointed to the wilted stalks protruding from the tops of the balls. “When that happens, they’ll attract pseudowasps . . . and believe me, you don’t want to get stung by them.”

“Thank you. I’ll tell the others.” Greer stared at the plants. “Why are they so big? Are they fruit or something?”

“Uh-uh. They’re carnivorous.” I stepped closer to one of the balls. “In late autumn, just before the first snow, swampers take shelter in them. To hibernate, y’know? They curl up together inside to get out of the cold. But one or two always die during winter, and so the plant feeds off their bodies as they decay. It’s sort of like . . .” I searched for the right word. “Symbiosis, I think they call it.”

She shuddered. “Horrible.”

“Just nature.” I shrugged. “That’s the way things work around here.”

It was also much the same way Zoltan worked. Through temptation, he’d managed to attract her and the other followers to take shelter within the folds of his wings; it wasn’t until later, once they were held captive, that he fed off them.

Unfortunately, that simile didn’t occur to me until sometime after. By then, it was much too late. I had become something of a swamper myself.

Winter went by the way winter does on Coyote: slowly, with
every day a little colder than the day before. For anyone who hasn’t lived here, it’s hard to realize just how long winter lasts on this world; three times longer than on Earth, it sometimes seems as if spring will never come. People rose early in Shuttlefield: knocking fresh snow off their shacks and checking to see if anyone had died during the night before trudging over to the community hall in Liberty to receive another bowl of gruel. And then you’d have the rest of the day to kill. Try to stay warm. Try not to do anything that would draw the attention of the Proctors or the Union Guard. Try to stay alive. Try to stay sane.

It was a little less difficult for me to get by since I’d taken up with the Universalists. Or at least for a while. They’d brought plenty of food with them, and their heated tents were a luxury no one else in Shuttlefield had. They went about their business quietly, a small group of pilgrims in monkish robes who kept to themselves except when they went into town to barter spare items for whatever they might need. In the first few weeks after their arrival, visitors were welcomed to their camp. No effort was spared to make them feel at home, until it soon become apparent that many of those who dropped by were merely looking for handouts. Seeing their rations running low, the Universalists reluctantly stopped being quite so generous, and that’s when the trouble began.

The first sign of friction came when Caitlin, one of the younger church members, was harassed by a couple of Cutters as she tried to trade a power cell for a pair of catskin gloves at one of the kiosks. The craftsman tested the cell and claimed that it was depleted by 10 percent;
when Caitlin insisted that the cell was fully charged, two Cutters who happened to be loitering nearby—or, more likely, following the girl—stepped in. At some point in the argument, one of them made a grab for Caitlin, saying that he wanted to see what she was hiding beneath her robe. Caitlin managed to get away; she rushed back and told everyone what had happened, and that evening during dinner Zoltan forbade anyone from going out alone.

A few days later, some New Frontiers guys sauntered into our camp, demanding to see “the freak”—meaning Zoltan—and be fed, in no particular order. When Ernst informed them that the Reverend Shirow was in meditation and that we had no food to spare, they got ugly about it; one of them shoved Ernst to the ground while two more tried take off with a generator. That was when I first saw how capable the Universalists were of defending themselves; within moments, the intruders were surrounded by church members wielding quarterstaves they’d fashioned from bamboo stalks. A few bruises later, the gang was sent running; but that evening, for the first time, Zoltan declared that we would begin posting overnight watches, with everyone taking turns guarding the camp.

Yet I can’t honestly say that the Universalists were without blame. By early Machidiel, the third month of winter, their food supply was running short, and so the church members were forced to go into Liberty every morning to eat breakfast at the community hall. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had stuck together as a group, but some of them took it upon themselves to take the opportunity to sit with other colonists . . . and once they’d made their acquaintance, they couldn’t resist the urge to tell them that the Reverend Zoltan Shirow was God’s chosen messenger to Coyote.

By then, I’d been allowed to know the details of the holy mission. According to Zoltan, God had told him to seek out a group of disciples and take them to a place where no one had gone before, where they would spread the word of universal transformation. That was why he had brought his followers to Coyote; they’d done so by taking everything they owned—bank accounts, real estate, personal property, the works—and surrendering it all to the church, which in turn sold or exchanged
them for berths aboard the
Magnificent Voyage
, along with all the supplies they could bribe Union Astronautica officials at Highgate into letting them carry to the new world. So it was no wonder that they had come well stocked; some of these people had exchanged houses for tents, family fortunes for a diet of rice and beans.

And, indeed, the people who joined the Church of Universal Transformation had come from all walks of life. Ian had been an AI systems engineer, Renaldo a schoolteacher, Clarice an award-winning dramatist, Dex an attorney; many came from wealthy families, and I was surprised to find that Doria’s husband—her former husband, rather; they’d separated when she joined the church—was a member of the Union Proletariate. Greer had been a student of historical linguistics at the University of Colorado when she, like the others, had heard about the former Union Guard soldier who’d undergone hideous torture at the hands of a madman and survived to proclaim that the human race was on the verge of becoming something new and better. None of them had been poor or ignorant; but they had all been searching for greater meaning in their lives, something in which they could believe: a revival of the soul, far beyond the false promises of social collectivism. And while countless thousands who’d heard Zoltan’s message had turned away, this small handful had chosen to cast aside everything else and follow him. They’d found contentment in the church, a purpose for existence; no wonder they wanted to share this revelation with those they met, forgetting Zoltan’s early promise that they wouldn’t try to convert anyone to their beliefs.

Yet they found no new disciples on Coyote. The people who’d come here had made sacrifices of their own; their lives were hard, and most didn’t like the way they were being treated by the Matriarch Hernandez and her cronies. Some of them weren’t going to take it anymore; during the long winter, rumors circulated through Shuttlefield about various individuals who’d suddenly vanished, packing up their gear and heading off into the wilderness before the Guard and the Proctors knew they were gone. But the vast majority who’d remained behind weren’t ready to surrender themselves to a cult operated by a guy who looked like a demon and claimed to be a prophet. The Universalists had been virtually
unknown when they left Earth, but by the end of winter every person in New Florida knew of their beliefs . . . and no one wanted anything to do with them.

Although I lived in their camp, I wasn’t a member of their church. Zoltan and I remained on friendly terms, but he never called me into his tent, as he often did with everyone else. This distinction, though, was lost on everyone I knew in Shuttlefield. I’d had few friends before I’d moved out of the
Long Journey
camp. The attitude, however, of those few I did have, changed toward me; they no longer greeted me when I saw them in town, but walked past as quickly as they could, refusing to make eye contact. At first I thought it was jealousy—after all, I was living in comfort, with no other responsibilities than to tell a bunch of greenhorns what plants or animals to avoid—but it wasn’t until I saw Jaime Hodge that I learned the real reason.

He was in line outside the community hall late one afternoon, waiting to be let in for dinner, when I walked up behind him. I usually ate dinner at camp, but I happened to be running an errand in Liberty, so I decided to eat at the hall instead of waiting until I got home. Jaime glanced back when I joined the chow line, saw me standing there, then turned away.

“How’s it going, dude?” I asked. “Keeping warm?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He looked straight ahead.

“Days are getting a little longer.” The sun wasn’t down yet, and it was almost 1900. “Think spring is almost sprung.”

“Could be.”

I tried to think of something to say. The left shoulder of his parka was becoming frayed; I could see tufts of fiber peeking through the seam. “Y’know, I could help you with this,” I said, touching his jacket. “I know a girl back at my camp who’s good at patching. . . .”

“I can take care of it myself.” Jaime shook off my hand. “And if I want religion, I’ll get it my own way.”

“Huh? Hey, whoa . . . just trying to be helpful. I know someone who’s good at patching up clothes. . . .”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

I did, but I wasn’t about to let it slide. “Jaime,” I said quietly, “let me tell you something. I may be staying with them, but I’m not
with
them. Y’know what I mean?”

He seemed to think about that. Finally, he turned around, looked me in the eye. “If you’re not one of them,” he said, “then why did you park your tent over there?”

“Free food. No rent. No hassle.” I shrugged. “I’m tellin’ you, running into these guys is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I was trying to make it light, but it didn’t work. His face darkened, his lip curling into an ugly smirk. “Right. All the food you can eat, and all you have to do is suck up to the bat.”

My face grew warm. “Now, wait a minute,” I said, taking a step closer. “If you think . . .”

“No,
you
wait a minute.” Jaime planted a hand against my chest, shoved me back. “Maybe I’m hungry, but at least no one’s trying to brainwash my ass. So far as I can tell, that’s what’s going to happen to you . . . if it hasn’t already.”

There was nothing guys in Shuttlefield liked more than watching a fight. From the corner of my eye, I saw people beginning to close in, forming a circle around us. Beyond the edge of the crowd, I caught a glimpse of a Proctor hovering nearby. He was doing nothing to stop this, though; from the look on his face, he was anticipating a good brawl before dinner. No one was on my side; they knew who I was, and they were hoping that Jaime would smear my face in the mud.

I caught myself wishing that a couple of the Universalists were with me just then. Two of the larger members, like Boris and Jim, and armed with quarterstaves. But they weren’t there, and I knew that Zoltan’s order that no one should leave camp alone applied to me as well.

“Ease down, buddy.” Carefully keeping my hands in my pockets, I lowered my voice. “I’m not trying to start nothing with you.”

“Yeah? Well, then go tell your pals not to start nothing with us.” Jaime wasn’t backing down, but he wasn’t pushing it either. Whatever friendship still remained between us was staying his hand. “I don’t want to know about God, I don’t want to turn into a bat, and if they don’t find
someplace else to carry on with their weird shit, we’re coming over and having ourselves a little Easter egg hunt.”