Coyote Rising (4 page)

Before he could inquire who that might be, Hull took a step forward. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Captain Baptiste,” he said, extending a clawlike hand from beneath his robe. “I trust we’ll have an interesting voyage together.”

Baptist forced a smile. “I’m sure we will,” he said, surrendering warm flesh to the Savant’s cold grasp. “To Coyote.”

“To Coyote.”

 

The
Mayflower
was packed to the gunwales, for 102 passengers had been crammed on board with their goods and supplies. No impression is more deeply imbedded in the popular mind, nothing is more firmly woven into the American
mythos
than the notion that these first Pilgrims were a homogeneous and united group. . . . It is a pleasing fancy, but the Pilgrims would have exploded it in the name of “ye truth.”

 

—GEORGE F. WILLISON
,
Saints and Strangers

Part 1
THE MADWOMAN OF SHUTTLEFIELD

The first night Allegra DiSilvio spent on Coyote, she met the madwoman
of Shuttlefield. It seemed like an accident at the time, but in the weeks and months to follow she’d come to realize that it was much more, that their fates were linked by forces beyond their control.

The shuttle from the
Long Journey
touched down in a broad meadow just outside the town of Liberty. The high grass had been cleared from the landing pad, burned by controlled fires to create a flat expanse nearly a half mile in diameter, upon which the gull-winged spacecraft settled after making its long fall from orbit. As she descended the gangway ramp and walked out from beneath the hull, Allegra looked up to catch her first sight of Bear: a giant blue planet encircled by silver rings, hovering in an azure sky. The air was fresh, scented with midsummer sourgrass; a warm breeze caressed the dark stubble of her shaved scalp, and it was in that moment she knew she’d made it. The journey was over; she was on Coyote.

Dropping the single bag she had been allowed to bring with her from Earth, Allegra fell to her hands and knees and wept.

Eight months of waiting to hear whether she’d won the lottery, two more months of nervous anticipation before she was assigned a berth aboard the next starship to 47 Ursae Majoris, a week of sitting in Quito before boarding the Union Astronautica space elevator in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, three days spent traveling to lunar orbit, where she boarded the
Long Journey
 . . . then, forty-eight years in dreamless biostasis, to wake up cold, naked, and bald, forty-six light-years from everything familiar, with everyone she had ever known either long dead or irrevocably out of her reach.

She was so happy, she could cry.
Thank you, God
, she thought.
Thank you, thank you . . . I’m here, and I’m free, and the worst is over.

She had no idea just how wrong she was. And it wasn’t until after she’d made friends with a crazy old lady that she’d thank anyone again.

Liberty was the first colony on Coyote, established by the crew of
the URSS
Alabama
in
A
.
D
. 2300, or
C
.
Y
. 01 by the Lemarean calendar. It was now 2306 by Gregorian reckoning, though, and the original colonists had long since abandoned their settlement, disappearing into the wilderness just days after the arrival of WHSS
Seeking Glorious Destiny Among the Stars for the Greater Good of Social Collectivism
, the next ship from Earth. No one knew why they’d fled—or at least those who knew weren’t saying—but the fact remained that Liberty had been built to house only a hundred people.
Glorious Destiny
brought a thousand people to the new world, and the third ship—
Traveling Forth to Spread Social Collectivism to New Frontiers
—had brought a thousand more, and so by the time the
Long Journey to the Galaxy in the Spirit of Social Collectivism
reached Coyote, the population of New Florida had swelled to drastic proportions.

The log cabins erected by the first settlers were currently occupied by Union Astronautica officers from
Glorious Destiny
and
New Frontiers
. It hadn’t been long before every tree within ten miles had been cut down for the construction of new houses, with roads expanding outward into what had once been marshes. Once the last stands of blackwood and faux birch were gone, most of the wildlife moved away. The swoops and creek cats that once preyed upon livestock were seldom seen anymore, and with automatic guns placed around the colony’s perimeter only rarely did anyone hear the nocturnal screams of boids. Still there wasn’t enough timber to build homes for everyone.

Newcomers were expected to fend for themselves. In the spirit of social collectivism, aid was given in the form of temporary shelter and two meals a day, but beyond that it was every man and woman for himself. The Union Astronautica guaranteed free passage to Coyote for those who won the public lottery, but stopped short of promising anything
once they’d arrived. Collectivist theory held that a sane society was one in which everyone reaped the rewards of individual efforts; but Liberty was still very much a frontier town, and anyone asking for room and board in the homes owned by those who’d come earlier was likely to receive a cold stare in return. All men were created equal, yet some were clearly more equal than others.

And so, once she’d picked herself up from the ground, Allegra found herself taking up residence not in Liberty, where she thought she’d be living, but in Shuttlefield, the sprawling encampment surrounding the landing pad. She made her way to a small bamboo hut with a cloverweed-thatched roof where she stood in line for an hour before she was issued a small tent that had been patched many times by those who’d used it earlier, a soiled sleeping bag that smelled of mildew, and a ration card that entitled her to eat in what had once been Liberty’s grange hall before it was made into the community center. The bored Union Guard soldier behind the counter told her that she could pitch her tent wherever she wanted, then hinted that he’d be happy to share his cabin if she’d sleep with him. She refused, and he impatiently cocked his thumb toward the door before turning to the next person in line.

Shuttlefield was a slum; there was no other way to describe it. Row upon row of tents, arranged in untidy ranks along muddy footpaths trampled by countless feet, littered with trash and cratered by potholes. The industrious had erected shelter from bamboo grown from seeds brought from Earth; others lived out of old cargo containers into which they had cut doors and windows. Dirty children chased starving dogs between clotheslines draped with what looked like rags until Allegra realized that they were garments; the smoke from cook fires was rank with the odor of compost. Two faux birch shacks, side by side, had handwritten signs for M
EN
and W
OMEN
above their doors; the stench of urine and feces lay thick around them, yet it didn’t stop people from pitching tents nearby. The voices she heard were mostly Anglo, but her ears also picked up other tongues—Spanish, Russian, German, various Arab and Asian dialects—all mixed together in a constant background hum.

And everywhere, everyone seemed to be selling something, from kiosks in front of their shelters. Plucked carcasses of chickens dangled
upside down from twine suspended between poles. Shirts, jackets, and trousers stitched from some hide she’d never seen before—she’d later learn that it was swamper fur—were laid out on rickety tables. Jars of spices and preserved vegetables stood next to the pickled remains of creatures she didn’t recognize. Obsolete pads containing data and entertainment from Earth, their sellers promising that their power cells were still fresh, their memories virus-clean. A captive creek cat in a wooden cage, lying on its side and nursing a half dozen babies; raise the kits until they’re half-grown, their owner said, then kill the mother and inbreed her offspring for their pelts: a great business opportunity.

A small man with a furtive look in his eyes sidled up to Allegra, glanced both ways, then offered her a small plastic vial half-filled with an oily clear liquid. Sting, he confided. Pseudowasp venom. Just put a drop or two on your tongue, and you’ll think you’re back home. . . .

Allegra shook her head and kept walking, her back aching from the duffel bag carried over her shoulder and the folded tent beneath her arm. Home? This was home now. There was nothing on Earth for her to go back to, even if she could return.

She found a bare spot of ground amid several shanties, yet no sooner had she put down her belongings when a man emerged from the nearest shack. He asked if she was a member of the Cutters Guild; when she professed ignorance, he gruffly told her that this was Guild territory. Reluctant to get in a quarrel, Allegra obediently picked up her stuff and went farther down the street until she spotted another vacant place, this time among a cluster of tents much like her own. She was beginning to erect the poles when two older women came over to her site; without explanation, one knocked over her poles while the other grabbed her bag and threw it in the street. When Allegra resisted, the first woman angrily knocked her to the ground. This was New Frontiers turf; who did she think she was, trying to squat here? A small crowd had gathered to watch; seeing that no one was going to take her side, Allegra quickly gathered her things and hurried away.

For the next several hours, she wandered the streets of Shuttlefield, searching for some place to put up her tent. Every time she found a likely-looking spot—and after the second incident, she was careful to
ask permission from the nearest neighbor—she discovered that it had already been claimed by one group or another. It soon became clear that Shuttlefield was dominated by a hierarchy of guilds, groups, and clubs, ranging from societies that had originated among the passengers of earlier ships to gangs of hard-eyed men who guarded their territory with machetes. A couple of times Allegra was informed that she was welcome to stay, but only so long as she agreed to pay a weekly tax, usually one-third of what she earned from whatever job she eventually found or, failing that, one meal out of three from her ration card. A large, comfortable-looking shack occupied by single women of various ages turned out to be the local brothel; if she stayed there, the madam told her, she’d be expected to pay the rent on her back. At least she was polite about it; Allegra replied that she’d keep her offer in mind, but they both knew that it was an option only if she were desperate.