Footsteps in the Sky (11 page)

Sand cracked the windshield and pushed it up. A rush of chill night air swept around the two women, and Sand heard Tuchvala gasp—whether with surprise, delight, or consternation, it was difficult to say. To Sand, the night air was delicious after nearly two hours of stale, hot, vomit-smell, but she also understood that very soon the night would begin to suck at them, bleed off their body heat until they were miserable. She stepped down onto the invisible stone, felt its unforgiving strength, and wondered where she could possibly have an ally. It seemed that her world had turned against her, and she expected at any moment for the landscape itself to follow suit.

“We better put up a tent, Tuchvala,” Sand remarked, lighting their immediate area with a small prayer-stick-candle. It was almost better without light at all, so huge and hollow did the world seem around them. As Tuchvala joined her on the ground, Sand had a brief, chilling image of them as twins in a negative-image womb—light, rather than dark—surrounded by a measureless, hostile realm of shadow. A womb that exposed rather than nurtured them. High above, a wind shrieked through some unseen fissure, and even the stars were obscured by a shroud of low clouds.

Numbed, both physically and spiritually, Sand began showing Tuchvala how to help her erect a tent.

Chapter Twelve

The Tech Society Kiva seemed to hum like a tension field, a vague, bone-sawing but unhearable vibration. It bored into Hoku's skull like a weevil, conspired with the sour, thick tea he had been drinking to keep him both awake and on the edge of a tantrum. And yet, cocooned in the anger and the frustration, Hoku felt a tiny elation. He was being challenged, the challenge of his life. He had always managed to make things fall his way, but he had been a giant amongst dwarves. He was ready to prove himself against other giants.

Hoku addressed himself to a balding, gnomelike man in a bright yellow Tech smock. He was correlating data from the Kachina satellites and two planet-bound observatories.

“What's the story, Tomas?” Carefully keeping his weariness and irritation from inflecting the question.

Tomas frowned briefly at the cube and the figures scrolling through it.

“The Reed ship is down off the coast, thirty-two kilometers north-west.”

Hoku did a quick calculation in his head. “Wife-Tell-the-Sea-Point”.

“Yes, thereabouts. About two kilometers off-shore. So far they haven't launched any reconnaissance craft, though I suppose we can't rule out submersibles.”

Hoku stood and walked to the wall map, traced his finger along the bay that swept north-west from the bright red dot signifying Salt. Below his finger, the bunched elephant skin of the Cornbeetle Mountains puckered out at him.

“Interesting,” he noted. “This is where the girl went—what was her name?”

“SandGreyGirl. Sand clan,” Homikniwa offered from behind Hoku's left shoulder.

“Perhaps she goes to rendezvous with the Reed ship,” Hoku speculated, his mind wheeling back for the implications of that. “That would mean she has somehow been in communication with the Reed.”

“Or her mother was,” Homikniwa pointed out.

“Yeeeesss,” hissed Hoku. “I see the Reed's hand in this. Somehow we missed it. As closely as we watched that mesa bitch, she somehow made contact with the Vilmir Foundation. She should have been killed right away, twenty years ago.”

“That wasn't your decision to make then,” Homikniwa whispered, by way of consolation. “And after all, the woman was touched by the thing. The Tech Society wanted to understand that.”

“Which they still don't.” And yet, Hoku felt that he was near a revelation. Some obvious truth was dancing in the darkest kiva of his mind, waiting to be called into the plaza. When he concentrated on it, however, it willfully slipped away from him.

“What progress on finding the girl?” he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“No word from our agent. She's in the mountains somewhere, hiding. We have several hours before a satellite can cover that area,” Tomas told him. He had been concentrating intently on his job, no doubt trying to give the impression that he was not listening to the exchange between Hoku and Homikniwa. Still, he looked faintly troubled. People were squeamish: it was what kept most from becoming great.

“You should send your own patrol,” said Homikniwa. “You should get there ahead of the pueblos, if they send a flyer.”

“My thoughts exactly, my friend. The Cornbeetle Mountains are nobody's territory. I don't see how the pueblos can complain. And if they do. …” He let the threat die on his lips, but it remained in his bunched jaw muscles.

“What about the Reed ship?”

Hoku sighed, felt his stomach churn like crashing waves.

“I'm sure they are well armed, both here and in space. We have to be very careful with them. Even if we succeed in disabling the landing drum, we can't touch the warship itself.”

“How do you know it's a warship?” Tomas interjected. Hoku smirked at him paternalistically.

“It's a warship, have no doubt. The Reed gives no quarter and asks none. They know what is at stake here.”

A needle-sharp man in a red jumper walked up and waited to be noticed. When Hoku acknowledged his presence, he nodded and snapped off a few short words about the warriors being ready. Hoku thanked him and sent him on.

“Here we go again, Homikniwa,” he said, and was gratified by the nearly imperceptible smile on his aid's face. He smoothed his hands against his slacks and went to put his armor back on.

Kewa, the little biologist, intercepted him.

“Mother-Father.”

“You have something to tell me, Kewa?”

“I … I think I have a suggestion, Mother-Father.”

“I'm open to suggestions.”

“May we speak privately?”

After a brief hesitation, Hoku motioned her into his office and sealed the door behind them.

“What is this, Kewa?”

“I didn't want to disagree with you in front of your people.”

“Very kind of you, Kewa,” Hoku said, and meant it. The woman rose a bit in his estimation; she had learned her lesson. His people's confidence in him was probably already a little shaken.

“Here is my suggestion, Mother-Father—but it begins with a question.”

Hoku raised his eyebrows, indicating that she should go on.

“This woman—this SandGreyGirl—why is she trying so hard to elude us?”

“I have several suspicions along those lines,” Hoku answered. “She may be a traitor, like her mother.”

“But you could not have suspected that to begin with. Not when you had the Whipper Kachina sent after her.”

Hoku nearly gaped at her, which would have been most undignified.

“How did you know that?” he hissed, instead.

“I was there, when the man called you in the Bluehawk. You damped his image, but I still recognized him. So I did some checking. You had him send the Whipper Kachina after SandGreyGirl and our alien.”

“How could I do that? The pueblo council hates me.”

“You didn't go through the council, though I suspect more than one of them secretly sympathize with you, Mother-Father. You are a most capable leader.”

“And you are a most capable spy,” Hoku returned, feeling his eyes narrow.

Kewa drew back, looking really injured. “Mother-Father. Your only fault is that you don't trust your inferiors more. I hoped to help by. …”

“By tracing my communications? I must see that the Tech Society power to do that is annulled.”

“Don't go too far, Mother-Father,” Kewa snapped. “I'm on your side in this, but more of the Tech Society resists you than you would believe. If you abrogate our privileges too quickly, you will have a rebellion we can ill-afford right now.”

Hoku glared at her, but quietly admitted she made sense.

“My only point,” Kewa continued, “is just this; if you are wrong—if this girl is not an agent of the Reed—then sending the Whipper after her has naturally caused her to flee. Anyone with any brains will run if they're being chased. But this girl has nowhere to go.”

“You think we may have frightened her.”

“Shit, yes. The Whipper? I have nightmares still, from my mother's stories.”

Hoku nodded. “You may be right,” he admitted, and he felt a gate open, somewhere. It swung wide, and doubts crowded to get out. “I thought it was the smartest thing to do, especially when we realized who the girl was. The coincidence seemed too great.”

“No. You hate to depend on someone else's decision. You want to do everything yourself, make every die fall the way you call it. You couldn't depend on the girl. …”

“… because she is an unknown quantity, Kewa. This is too important. At best she would have gone to the pueblo council. Who knows what they would have done? Anything. Worshipped this alien, whatever it is. Perhaps seized its power for themselves. And if she is a spy—if she is going to the Reed ship—then I was fully justified. Shit, how could I know she would escape the Whipper?”

And why the fuck am I telling you this? Who are you, Kewa, that I'm parading my doubts in front of where you live?

He felt a warmth on his hand and looked down to see her touching him.

“Mother-Father. Just try. Try talking to her. You might be surprised.”

Kewa turned and let herself out of his office, leaving Hoku a little confused. What if he had been wrong? Certainly he had misjudged one factor in the situation; the Reed. The appearance of their ship complicated things beyond all measure, because it was no longer a simple conflict pitting him against the traditionals. Perhaps Kewa was right. The warship's presence might be enough incentive to make even the most conservative of the pueblos councilmen listen to reason. In that case, this expedition into the mountains might be another mistake, angering the pueblos beyond rationality.

No. Because if Kewa was wrong—and why shouldn't she be?—then SandGreyGirl was headed for the Reed ship with the alien in tow. That was as parsimonious an explanation of the past day's events as any. And that simply could not happen. He had to find her. Then, maybe he would talk, as Kewa suggested. In fact, he might try talking as soon as the Kachina satellite was in position. But talk or no talk, Hoku would get what he wanted.

Chapter Thirteen

I saw space was full of shifting forms, and cursed, knowing that my mass sensor had finally broken. It was an old curse, taught me by a Maker.

I switched on the braking field, and it felt strange. A sort of contraction, a tightening. …

Something was amiss. The brake had triggered some problem in the fusion bottle. The reaction was out of control, hammering at the walls of the field. The sensors were malfunctioning as well, because instead of a calm, composed signal, they sent a scratchy, itchy kind of feedback.

I bled off the excess ions, felt the reaction subside to manageable levels. It was a vast relief.

Meanwhile, my sisters were screaming at me. Hatedotik was sending something unintelligible but angry, and Odatatek was repeating the same phrase, again and again. Her sentiment seemed familiar, urgent, and it made me sad, but I could not understand it.

That itching was back. Alarmed, I bled charged hydrogen into space, again felt the sensors register normal.

“Mother!” The small, slim ship that was my daughter skittered ahead. Planets lay as dense as gas molecules in front of us, and I knew she was going to die, dragged into a gravity well or vaporized by an impact. The fear was terrible. I reached out to her frantically, and she grabbed my hand, jerked me along. Someone wearing a mask pointed a rod at me, and my shoulder went numb.

“Come on, you fool,” my daughter screamed. I looked back, and Hatedotik was behind us, her drive lazily turning in our direction. The braking field was already on, the numbness in my shoulder the fringes of its effect. Soon, it would wipe my mind clean. …

And still, the burning pressure. Maybe it wasn't the fusion bottle at all. No, the coolant system was over-pressurized. I leaked that out to the terrible stars, screamed as I fell and fell—I was always falling or climbing. My daughter grabbed my arm, yanked me along. She looked like me. So did my sisters, who were walking behind us with grim faces.

Falling. And still, something demanded to be relieved. …

The darkness was suddenly different. I was no longer falling. The woman I called my daughter was shaking me and calling me “Tuchvala”; I could see her by the dim glow of her torch, turned to minimum.

“I. …” I began, but had nothing to say.

“You were dreaming, Tuchvala, and it wasn't a good dream. You kept crying out.”

“Dreaming?” That made sense, and now, so did the persistent pressure between my legs.

“I have to piss,” I told her.

“Go outside, but close the tent behind you. It's cold out there,” Sand told me. She showed me how to open the fabric of the tent. It was warm to the touch.

It was cold outside. Wind battered me, and I wondered if it could blow strongly enough to lift me off of the ground, rake me along those sharp rocks, make my pitiful body rupture and die. I tried to recall the range of surface wind speeds I had recorded from orbit, and though I could, found the information useless. Oh, I could recall how fast the wind was, but I had no way of calculating what that meant in terms of lift. I was stupid that way, now. Even simple calculations had been a part of subroutines that occurred below the level of my consciousness, like the autonomic systems of my human body. I understood the concept of calculation—even knew which kinds of calculations were appropriate to specific problems. But in terms of operations, I couldn't even do simple division.

A more urgent question involved the appropriate distance to travel before finally relieving my bladder. I knew that there were multiple and complex cultural parameters surrounding elimination, but the few that I was specifically aware of from my orbital monitoring seemed to have little application in my present situation.

It was cold. I didn't go far. Sand had made me strip off my clothes; she said the tentskin would keep us warmer if it could respond to our own body heat.

Here was a problem; none of the communications I monitored explained how to piss. Before, in space, I had used a modified Maker apparatus—a soft tube the coupled directly to a Maker's slightly protruding cloaca. By adding a trifling suction to the hose, I had been able to stand freely, and this seemed natural. That had been so I did not soil my relatively limited shipboard environment, but here, that was not a problem—there was a whole planet to piss upon. So where was appropriate, and how? Frozen out of further logic, I stood straddled and released the pressure. Warmth drizzled down my legs, and in alarm, I squeezed shut an unseen sphincter. Whatever I didn't know about humans, I did
know
that they scrupulously avoided contact with their own waste. If I was pissing on myself, I was doing it wrong.

I was beginning to shiver, and the warmth on my legs rapidly became a chill. I would have to think of something or ask Sand. But by asking Sand, I could break some taboo. …

I settled for lying down on a slightly tilted slab of stone, legs raised and spread. That worked in that I got only a little more urine on myself, but it wasn't very comfortable. I hurried back to the tent.

The warmth inside felt wonderful, almost as wonderful as that final feeling of release when my bladder was empty at last. Sand was still awake, and she wrinkled her nose as I entered. I wasn't sure what this facial language signified, but she cleared it up.

“You pissed on yourself,” she said.

“I had some trouble,” I told her cautiously.

“You don't know how to piss?”

“Not outside, on rocks, in the cold.”

She reached for something. It turned out to be a swatch of the tent fabric.

“Dry yourself off with this. It'll help clean you, too.”

I rubbed myself with the warm cloth. The chill from outside clung nevertheless, and I shivered.

“What were you dreaming about?” Sand asked me.

“I don't know. Nothing. Dreams are nothing.”

“What do you know about dreams, Tuchvala? You said you were a machine before.”

“Not a machine, exactly. And I had dreams, even then. I shut down my consciousness between stars, but pulses from the engines still stimulated the latent circuits unpredictably. My brain is not unlike yours, a network of varying pathways. My memories are associative, like yours. Certain patterns of thought recall certain past thought and stimuli. Between the stars, I dreamed, and they were not unlike the dreams I have now. Not always, anyway. They were dimmer, less coherent, usually. I did not mistake them for reality, as I do now. Still, not that different.”

Sand moved her head up and down, affirmative.

“But my people make much of dreams,” she told me. “We believe that they reveal things. Tell me your dream.”

I did, and she listened without speaking. When I was done, she smiled.

“Yes. That dream is full of meaning. It means you had to piss.” Then she paused and fiddled with the torch, and the light went out.

“Tuchvala. In your dream you thought of me as your daughter.”

“Yes.”

“You aren't my mother.”

“I understand that. As I said, dreams mean nothing.”

“Go back to sleep, Tuchvala. In the morning, we'll need our strength.”

I lay there, silently, listened as the sound of her breathing became more regular. I did not go back to sleep. I don't know how much time had passed, but eventually, Sand began to groan and gasp in her sleep.

A bad dream? She had awakened me. I reached over and shook her gently. She moaned and curled towards me, hands greedily grasping at me. She pulled her head into my breast, reached one leg over mine. I didn't know what to do: she had not awakened. I started to push her more, but the touch of her flesh against mine was pleasant. It seemed to melt against me, bring the warmth of the tent into me. Sand ceased moaning, and I guessed that her dreams were gone. I shifted a little, put one arm beneath her head. Her breath tickled against my clavicle, and the pulse of her breathing and her heart slowed.

It felt good, and soon I was asleep. If I dreamed again, I did not remember it.

Sand's limbs felt heavy and warm, and they seemed to lack the power to move. Muzzily, she fought to make sense of her location. In a tent? The pale light seeping through the fabric indicated that it was day outside. She was spooned against another woman, but she could not imagine who it was. Who?

It came like a lightning-stroke, as such realization always does. Tuchvala.

And with that, a shattering wave of fear and worry that obliterated her morning torpor. She sat up quickly, roughly disentangling from the flexed form that so resembled her mother. And yet, in this light, naked, her unkempt hair plastered across her face, Sand realized that Tuchvala did not resemble her mother much at all. She looked more like a sister, or a cousin. All of the things that had made Pela really look like Pela were lacking in Tuchvala—that half cocked eyebrow that showed puzzlement, the round-eyed blaze of anger, the tight but beatific grin. Strange that in sleep, with no expression at all, she should resemble Pela least.

Of course. She had renamed the thing, stolen back her mother's ghost. Its essence was not Pela, and now its appearance was changing too.

Her chagrin at finding herself intertwined with Tuchvala, her relief in discovering the lessening resemblance of the alien to her mother, were all swept away by a tiny, metallic sound. She realized suddenly that it was this sound that had awakened her. It was the communication link in the Dragonfly, yammering for her attention.

That meant that there was a Kachina, somewhere above her.

Sand quickly stepped into her jumpsuit and sealed it up. Tuchvala was looking around the tent, puzzled.

“Get dressed, Tuchvala,” Sand told her. “We may have to leave soon.”

Sand pushed out of the tent. It was still early morning, and the sun was not visible, hidden by the stone cathedrals surrounding them. The sky was clear, though, a plate of unveined turquoise.

The Dragonfly trilled for attention once again. Sand approached the craft cautiously, scanning the surrounding rocks for anything unusual.

She shouldn't answer; it would only help them get a fix on her. But this was a new day, and certain doubts had begun to settle around her. Why was she running so hard, so fast? That was all she had done since her mother's death, and she had only the word of her father—an undependable source at best—that she was really in danger. The Whipper Kachina had tried to kill her—that she could not deny—but she had proven herself dangerous by shooting him with the crab gun. While inhabited by the Whipper Kachina, its wearer had little choice but to respond to such kahopi threats with violence. If she had not attacked it, would the Whipper have used the Sunbow? Probably not.

And if her communications board was engaged, “they” already knew something about where she was. It was time to find out who “they” were.

She pushed up the windshield and took her seat in the Dragonfly. The flat screen chimed once more, and she commanded it to display.

The square, handsome face that materialized before her was a familiar one. Hokuhemptewa was famous, even in the pueblos, but Sand had met him when she was at school in the lowlands. She remembered the uproar over his appointment as Mother-Father at Salt and his subsequent claim to sovereignty over the whole of the Fifth World. He had not pushed this claim with the pueblos, of course—the bulk of real terraforming was still in the hands of the traditionals and no one could afford a shutdown due to strike or worse yet, war. Still, his imperious claims and “reforms” amongst the coastal communities had the pueblo councils in a state of constant irritation.

“Ah. SandGreyGirl,” he said, his voice deep and reassuring. As if they were friends.

“Mother-Father,” she said, seeing no reason to irritate him immediately.

“SandGreyGirl, you have been foolish and caused us all a lot of trouble. You now have a chance to rectify that situation.”

“I don't understand you, Mother-Father. What trouble have I caused?”

The face nodded in a fatherly gesture. “You—perhaps inadvertently—took something which belongs to the coastal communities. I think you know what I'm talking about. If you return it, there will be no penalty. This will all be deemed a misunderstanding.”

He's afraid that the pueblos might be listening in, Sand realized. He doesn't want to spell out exactly what I have.

“I don't know that I have anything that belongs to you, Mother-Father.”

The man's face clouded, and the righteous anger there made Sand feel ashamed. How could her feelings so easily hinge on one man's facial expressions? She hardened her stomach muscles as he continued to speak.

“Enough of this, SandGreyGirl. We know what—or rather who—you have. Your heroics are silly, unnecessary, and dangerous. As an individual, you are not equipped to handle this situation, nor do you have the moral right to try. This is a matter for the Hopi people, not some half-cocked youngster. Frankly, I'm astonished by your lack of common sense and social responsibility. You contacted neither me nor my local representatives, the clan council.”

“The clan council,” Sand returned, finding her voice, “is not representative of you and your policies, as I'm sure they would agree, though it is clear to me that you have a traitor working amongst them. It was you who sent the Whipper after me, I assume?”

“Religion is not my jurisdiction, granddaughter,” Hoku said, stressing the kin term he himself had discouraged as a lowland form of address. “I do not command Kachina. If you fear Kachina, I suggest you come to the coast, where we have dispensed with such silly superstition.”

“What do you intend to do with what you think I have?”

Hoku smiled, seemingly with great sincerity. “Such convoluted language. Child, we only want what is best for the Fifth World, can't you see that? This first contact with—” he stopped, and his face clouded briefly. He began again, speaking faster.

“Alright,” he said. “No more hiding between words. SandGreyGirl, you have abducted an ambassador from an alien race. This ambassador's mission is with the legitimate government of this planet, and that is me. Our contacting this ambassador is more necessary and urgent than I can say. SandGreyGirl, you are an inhabitant of the Fifth World, like your mother before you. Your allegiance should be to your home.”