Forever Shores (27 page)

‘You're both probably right about it not being the sats. So let him show you the kite. It is the most likely answer and you'll be gathering facts. We'll continue taking samples.' And he smiled at the sky as if to say: Be circumspect for the watchers.

‘Thank you, John.'

‘It is easy to give this, Captain. It matters to him and so matters to us.'

Five minutes later, John Coyote and I were heading for the line of bale-fires, avoiding the main trail into town by turning south towards the wind-farm, to where a deeper shadow held within the pall, the dark shape of the kite swinging about its mooring stanchion.

John took on the role of guide, very earnest, very serious, his gaze darting this way and that, though everything he said seemed phrased as if to test whether I already knew what he was telling me. Every comment had its tiny payload of challenge and enquiry, though he started, predictably enough, by talking about the Colios festivities.

‘This new custom of yours, Captain. Sand-dolls.' His gaze swept the land, unrelenting. ‘You spend weeks making them, then bury them until harvest. You light the bale-fires, dig up the dolls and burn them, poke and prod at them with your forks, watch them fall apart. It's all so medieval.'

I ignored the
you
and
yours
and the wildness in his eyes and played along, accepting that this was more protective coloration for the inevitable watchers and that his real purpose would be made clear in time. ‘As you say, John. I was telling the others. It's making virtue of necessity. Since we're in a desert, with only modest local crops, market gardens and hydroponics, it's less a localised harvest ritual now than a general plea for bounty and paradise, for any kind of flourishing viable future.'

‘Hence more urgent, more desperate, yes?' The kite was looming before us now, a great dark platform, a disk, an arrowhead shape hanging above the land.

‘If you choose to see it that way. But thanksgiving just the same.'

‘With a sense of giving back for what has been given. Restitution.' His gaze held mine.

I could only nod. What did this striking young man want me to say? But, thankfully, whenever I did leave a silence, John was quick to fill it.

‘I notice that the National sand-dolls are makeshift, even half-hearted things compared to the tribal dolls. The Ab'Os know that stitched-up straw and soaked rags are not enough; you have to coat them with pitch, not just to represent tribal skin-colour but so they burn spectacularly and give off the smoke they require. They know that you need to build your temple in the sky.'

The man was obsessed. ‘John, you're very taken with this? Is there a point you wish to make?'

‘Always, but we're almost there. First let me show you the kite.'

It was one more thing adding to the strangeness, the sense of portentousness. Here at the edge of town was a much-prized rarity: a Gerias Kite, tethered low to a three-metre stanchion like a crippled manta. Someone had flown a ritual bird up from Lostnest for the festival, a Prince or some other privileged tribal leader allowed the dispensation of flight so they could be here for Colios.

Flight! I could scarcely believe it. The votive kite strained at the iron support, pulling this way and that against its land anchors so the cables slackened and bowed one moment, then drew taut as the great arrowhead-shaped flying machine shifted, as if it were testing them.
Tonight I shall escape.

I couldn't help but think of the aerotropts at Twilight Beach during that recent Koronai. This amazing craft was probably inert, probably didn't have a mind greater than function-dedicated comp systems, but it reminded me and I cherished it.

‘This could do it,' John said. ‘It can be programmed. It will have laser points, delivery systems for the pigments.'

We stood watching the great shape nudging the stanchion, guy lines thrumming in the strengthening wind.

‘See how the hull's patterned underneath,' John said, his gaze checking the land about us, as if intent on everything but the hull patterning. ‘The polymer over the flotation nacelles has totemic striations. Very beautiful. It only looks dark like this because of the ash from the fires. There could very well be vents for releasing pigment payloads under there too, laser directed, then laser activated with appropriate allowances for wind dispersal.'

And, taking his cue, suddenly realising what was intended, I moved in under the manta shape itself, avoiding the stabilising vanes.

When it covered us, creaking and straining barely a metre overhead, a vast ceiling, the young shaman held up his hand-set. ‘My scanner is dual function. But the hull screens us as well.' His unsettling mannerisms had vanished just like that; his manic quality set aside.

‘They'll send agents.'

‘But have to implement a suitable strategy.' He spoke in a clear, low voice. ‘Discretion is important.'

‘Please, John, what is it?'

‘In setting up Teny in Dinetah, the Ab'Os needed to bring in resources: necessary tech, search systems, all an acceptable risk, but a risk nonetheless.'

‘Go on.'

‘Such a relocation had to create logistical problems, the security problems of any such major undertaking.'

‘Of course. John, what are you saying?'

‘That the Teny systems had little that was superfluous to the core task of studying the haldanes.'

‘So?'

‘Your name was there.'

‘John!'

‘Your profile. Your case. Coded, flagged highest security, but there.'

‘You hacked their systems.'

‘Acted according to my namesake, Captain. Coyote always plays a part. A troublemaker, true, but there is no civilisation without him.'

‘John, can we get back to—'

‘Nothing is sacred unless we both agree it is so. People say things are intrinsically sacred, but no. That is a yearning, a projection, a need for things to matter. No pharaoh has been left untouched in his tomb, no Celtic chieftain, no Manchu potentate or Persian queen. Nothing has saved them. Nothing is sacred, unless we agree: not life, not even the land. Coyote exists to remind them of that by bringing chaos. It's his job.'

I saw the change of tack for what it was, that this mattered, was what ultimately drove this man. ‘Tell me.'

‘He's the trickster, the mischievous, scheming outsider, the reviled thief and spoiler, the one who makes things go wrong to see what will happen.' He spoke rapidly now, never raising his voice. ‘But he also sits in the doorway between this world and the other, between the spiritual world of the sacred hogan and the world out there. He keeps the door open, ultimately makes hozho possible by providing the chaos against which it is measured. He is Iai, the donkey-head in ancient Egyptian mythology who resists, who tests. The rebel. He is the fool without choice, ill-favoured, blessed and blasted, cursed and vital.'

‘John, what did you do? What did you find?'

‘The others do not know. It's the real reason I am here, why I pestered them to let me come down to Waso. Because of what I learned there.'

‘Please!'

‘You were made. Scribed DNA. They wanted a National Clever Man, as you've suspected. They had to know one way or the other. You are
like
Teny in Dinetah, only as a person: a way of looking back at here. Of looking at the tribal achievement. The Dreaming Way.'

My gaze stayed locked on his. ‘The Dreaming Way?' But I understood. ‘What else?'

‘You went to Tarpial?'

‘I did.'

‘You met Seren Selie, learned it was her face—'

‘She put it there.'

‘Did she say why?'

‘After a fashion.'

‘Don't be coy, Captain. It was an attachment.'

‘She said.'

‘She lied. She is your sister in a sense. The female part of the experiment.'

‘What!'

‘Shut away in Tarpial. Working to bring you the truth.'

‘She's Ab'O!'

‘Scribed to be that way. One more vital legacy of that ancient, splendidly co-opted Human Genome Project. Can you be sure you aren't scribed to be another?'

‘You said—no, I can't.'

‘Exactly. You're National, deliberately that. But she was less clearly defined. She was temporised earlier too, brought into the world ten years before you. You were kept in the Madhouse.'

‘Do you know why?'

‘I can guess. She was part of a great new experiment, the darling of the life-houses, smart, precocious, no doubt a deliberate prodigy. She earned their trust, won their confidence, and ruined the other part of their experiment.'

‘John—'

‘Shut away in Tarpial she used what she could, found ways to circumvent their strictures. The Teny project was already underway. She linked to us in Tuba City; I agreed to act, a deformed outsider. I was already fated, had already been struck by lightning and spared. I was something of a pariah, a charmed yet blighted thing, even among my enlightened kind. I could easily assist. As Coyote, tradition sanctioned what I did. The bad things. The hard things.'

‘How did she ruin it? What did she do?'

‘All she had time for. Something simple. Added a third image to the three. Her own face.'

‘Her face!'

‘She knew something of scribing, had learned about keypoint insertions. She monitored your incept, added her own key template to the intended two when she could. Prioritised it.'

‘Then the Ship and the Star—'

‘The other way round.'

‘The Star and the Ship.'

‘Together!'

‘The Star—Starship!'

‘Was the activation code. They sent it again and again, by tech, via the mindline—'

‘On Lake Air.' Thinking of Iain Summondamas and John Stone Grey, thinking of Arredeni Paxton Kemp and Anna, of Auer Rangan Anoki, all my confrontations with the Clever Men.

‘But it never worked. You never became the full Clever Man they intended. Tartalen persuaded them to turn you out, to see what you would become, what would happen in situ. It was all they could do. They waited, tested, sent things at you.'

Bolo May. Stoutheart Tiberias Kra. Naesé. A carefully laden torc at Pentecost. Ships on the Air. Mira Lari, an animate with
that
Face.

‘Let the Tree give me Blue.'

‘No. That was something they didn't factor in. Couldn't.'

It was good to have it confirmed. Needed right then.

‘They've tried to kill me. Countless times.'

‘Factions. Tribal groups acting on their own, angered by the giving of the Colours, by the Haldane Order's reluctance to act. Even Kurdaitcha supposedly serving the life-houses. They see you as dangerous, as sacrilege.'

‘Others have died because of me. Other Captains. Massen.'

‘Then come in. Go public. Return to Twilight Beach. Or cross to Dinetah with us.'

‘Your colleagues from Waso will be at risk. They—'

‘Captain, they are here to provide an excuse. We've been tracking you too, as well as we could manage. It was so
we
could talk.'

‘But Jon Cipher—'

‘Resents the whole thing, yes. I have been struck by lightning. Ill-favoured. Unlucky. The risk to Waso and our people there concerns him. But a necessary part of the plan. They all know that whatever I tell you now is something we
can
give.'

‘You were struck twice. Outside Teny as well.'

‘Man-made lightning that time. There was a perimeter of angry hands.'

‘You tried to break in to Teny!' I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

‘Three people in our cell did. Encountered difficulties. I tried to help.'

‘Your cell?' One thing after another.

‘A group of Dineh and others trying to learn about the past. About the Tribation. It's an international movement, non-violent, full of Buddhists, Sufis and historians. Ours is a damaged, plundered world, Captain. Slowly healing.'

‘You think the tribes know what happened?'

‘Some of it. Fragments. Information systems were the first to go during that terrible time. It's verifying everything that's important now.'

‘What do you have?'

John glanced at his scanner. ‘They'll be coming for us, Captain. We should get away.'

‘What did you learn, John?'

He didn't hesitate. ‘None of it is certain. But how there was too much information. Truths were lost. Basic knowledge. How the Information Revolution became the Reality Crisis, a saturation of the data-sphere coupled with an intended flattening of effect. Fiction and falsehood more eloquent, more persuasive than available truth. People didn't respond, didn't know how to respond. It's hard for us to conceive of it, to model it now. It got so the world no longer
saw
what was happening. Some insist it was more invasive, that waves of controlled microwave pulses brought down the global data-nets, isolated the nations again, that there were race-specific epidemics, ethnotropic plagues—'

‘Culling.'

‘Culling, yes. We're almost certain. Culling and conditioning on a vast scale. Back and forth. Tom, we should go!'

The kite strained and heaved above us, lines creaking as it shifted with the wind.

But I couldn't leave yet. ‘It's why the arcologies were abandoned.'

‘Initially, yes. Or shut tight against the world.'

‘That didn't save them. They became dead cities.'

‘Many did, Captain. Many have.'

‘And those millions, putting themselves into cryo. All the Cold People in those storage vaults—'

‘Against a better day, yes. Against plague viruses they knew were fixed term. But a logistics nightmare, you see. Now the revival tech just isn't sufficient—'

‘The Ab'O, the Dineh—?'

‘Not all peoples were targeted. It seems these angels of death were very specific. Minorities were exempted. The Maori, the Fijians, the Dineh, other Athabascan peoples—'