Coyote Rising (5 page)

By dusk, she was footsore, hungry, and on the verge of giving up, when Allegra found herself at the edge of town. It was close to a swamp—the sourgrass grew chest high there, and not far away were a cluster of the ball plants she’d been warned to avoid—and there was only one other dwelling, a slope-roofed and windowless shack nailed together from discarded pieces of faux birch. Potted plants hung from the roof eaves above the front door, and smoke rose from a chimney hole, yet there was no one in sight. Walking closer, Allegra heard the clucking of chickens from a wire-fenced pen out back; it also seemed as if she heard singing, a low and discordant voice from within the shack.

Allegra hesitated. This lonesome hovel away from all the others, so close to the swamp where who-knew-what might lurk, made her nervous. Yet darkness was settling upon the town, and she knew she couldn’t go any farther. So she picked a spot of ground about ten yards from the shack and quietly went about pitching her tent. If someone protested, she’d just have to negotiate a temporary arrangement; she’d gladly trade a couple of meals for a night of sleep.

No one bothered her as she erected her shelter, and although the voice stopped singing and even the chickens went quiet after a while, no one objected to her presence. The sun was down by the time she was finished, and dark clouds shrouded the giant planet high above her. It
looked like rain, so she crawled into the tent, dragging her belongings behind her.

Once she had laid out her sleeping bag, Allegra unzipped her duffel bag and dug through it until she found the lightstick she’d been given before she left the
Long Journey
. The night was cool, so she found a sweater and pulled it on. There were a couple of food bars in the bottom of the bag; she unwrapped one. Although she was tempted to eat the other as well, she knew she’d want it in the morning. The way things were going, there was no telling what she’d have to suffer through before she got a decent meal. It was already evident that Shuttlefield had its own way of doing things, and the system was rigged to prevent newcomers from taking advantage of it.

Yet she was free. That counted for something. She had escaped Earth, and now she was . . .

A shuffling sound from outside.

Allegra froze, then slowly raised her eyes.

She had left the tent flap partially unzipped at the top. In the sallow glow of her lightstick, she saw someone peering in through the insect netting: a woman’s face, deeply lined, framed by lank hair that might once have been blond before it turned ash grey.

They silently regarded each other as the first drops of night rain began tapping at the tent’s plastic roof. The woman’s eyes were blue, Allegra observed, yet they seemed much darker, as if something had leached all the color from her irises, leaving only an afterimage of blue.

“Why are you here?” the woman asked.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Allegra said. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Sorry for what?” The eyes grew sharper, yet the voice was hollow. Like her face, it was neither young nor old. She spoke English rather than Anglo; that caught Allegra by surprise, and she had to take a moment to translate mentally the older dialect.

“Sorry for trespassing,” she replied, carefully speaking the English she’d learned in school. “I was—”

“Trespassing where?” Not a question. A demand.

“Here . . . your place. I know it’s probably not . . .”

“My place?” A hint of a smile that quickly disappeared, replaced by
the dark scowl. “Yes, this is my place. The Eastern Divide, the Great Equatorial River, Midland, the Meridian Sea, all the places he sailed . . . those are Rigil Kent’s places. My son lives in Liberty, but he never comes to see me. No one in Shuttlefield but thieves and scum. But here . . .” Again, the fleeting smile. “Everything is mine. The chickens, the stars, and everything in between. Who are you? And why are you here?”

The rush of words caught her unprepared; Allegra understood only the last part. “Allegra DiSilvio,” she said. “I’ve just arrived from the . . .”

“Did Rigil Kent send you?” More insistently now.

In a flash of insight that she’d come to realize was fortunate, Allegra didn’t ask whom she meant. What was important was her response. “No,” she said, “he didn’t send me. I’m on my own.”

The woman stared at her. The rain was falling harder; somewhere in the distance, she heard the rumble of thunder. Water spilled through a leak in the tent, spattered across her sleeping bag. Still the woman’s eyes didn’t stray from her own, even though the rain was matting her grey hair. Finally, she spoke:

“You may stay.”

Allegra let out her breath. “Thank you. I promise I won’t . . .”

The face vanished. Allegra heard footsteps receding. A door creaked open, slammed shut. Chickens cackled briefly, then abruptly went quiet, as if cowed into silence.

Allegra waited a few seconds, then hastily closed the tent flap. She used the discarded food wrapper to plug the leak, then removed her boots and pushed herself into her sleeping bag, reluctant to take off her clothes even though they were filthy. She fell asleep while the summer storm raged around her. She hadn’t turned off the light even though common sense dictated that she needed to preserve its chemical battery.

She was safe. But for the first time since she’d arrived, she was truly frightened.

The next morning, Allegra saw her neighbor just once, and only
briefly. She awoke to hear the chickens clucking, and crawled out of her tent to see the woman standing in the pen behind her house, throwing
corn from an apron tied around her waist. When Allegra called to her, though, she turned and walked back into her house, slamming the door shut behind her. Allegra considered going over and knocking, but decided against it; the old woman clearly wanted to be left alone, and Allegra might be pushing her luck by intruding on her privacy.

So she changed clothes, wrapped a scarf around her bare scalp, and left to make the long hike into Liberty. She did so reluctantly; although there were no other tents nearby, she didn’t know for certain that she wasn’t camped on some group’s turf. Nonetheless, her stomach was growling, and she didn’t want to consume her last food bar unless necessary. And somehow, she had a feeling that people tended to leave her strange neighbor alone.

The road to Liberty was littered with trash: discarded wrappers, broken bottles, empty cans, bits and pieces of this and that. If Shuttlefield’s residents made any effort to landfill or recycle their garbage, it wasn’t evident. She passed farm fields where men and women worked on their hands and knees, pulling cloverweed from between rows of crops planted earlier in the summer. Coyote’s seasons were three times as long as they were on Earth—ninety-one or ninety-two days in each month, twelve months in a year by the LeMarean calendar—still, it was near the end of Hamaliel, the second month of summer; the farmers would be working hard to pull in the midseason harvest so that they could plant again before autumn. The original colonists had struggled to keep themselves fed through the first long winter they faced on Coyote, and they only had a hundred or so mouths to feed.

The distant roar of engines drew her attention; looking up, she saw a shuttle descending to the landing pad. More passengers from the
Long Journey
being ferried down to Coyote; with the arrival of a new ship from Earth, the population of New Florida would increase by another thousand people. Social collectivism might have worked well in the Western Hemisphere Union, built upon the smoldering remains of the United Republic of America, but there it benefited from established cities and high-tech infrastructure. Coyote was still largely unexplored; what little technology had been brought from Earth was irreplaceable, unavailable to the average person, so the colonists had to live off the land
as best they could. Judging from what she’d already seen in Shuttlefield, utopian political theory had broken down; too many people had come there too quickly, forcing the newcomers to fend for themselves in a feudal hierarchy in which the weak were at the mercy of the strong, and everyone was under the iron heel of the colonial government. Unless she wanted to become a prostitute or live out the rest of her life as a serf, she’d better find a way to survive.

Allegra came upon a marsh where Japanese bamboo was grown. The most recent crop had already been harvested, its stumps extending for a hundred acres or so, the ground littered with broken shoots. On impulse, she left the path and waded out into the marsh, where she searched the ground until she found a foot-long stalk that was relatively undamaged. Tucking it beneath her arm, she returned to the road.

It would do for a start. All she needed was a sharp knife.

Liberty was much different than Shuttlefield. The streets were
wide and clean, recently paved with gravel, lined on either side by log cabins. There were no hustlers, no kiosks; near the town center, she found small shops, their wares displayed behind glass windows. Yet everyone she passed refused to look her way, save for Proctors in blue uniforms who eyed her with suspicion. When she paused before the open half door of the glassblower’s shop to watch the men inside thrust white-hot rods into the furnace, a blueshirt walked over to tap her on the shoulder, shake his head, and point the way to the community hall. Few words were spoken, yet the message was clear; she was only allowed to pass through on her way to the community hall, and not linger where she didn’t belong.

Breakfast was a lukewarm porridge containing potatoes and chunks of fish meat; it resembled clam chowder, but tasted like sour milk. The old man who ladled it out in the serving line told her that it was creek crab stew, and she should eat up—it was only a day old. When Allegra asked what was on the menu for dinner, he grinned as he added a slice of stale bread to her plate. More of the same . . . and by then it’d be a day and a half old.

She found a place at one of the long wooden tables that ran down the length of the community hall and tried not to meet the gaze of any of the others seated nearby, even though she recognized several from the
Long Journey
. She’d made friends with no one during her passage from Earth, and wasn’t in a hurry to do so now, so she distracted herself by studying an old mural painted on the wall. Rendered in native dyes by an untrained yet talented hand, it depicted the URSS
Alabama
in orbit above Coyote. Apparently an artifact left behind by Liberty’s original residents before they’d fled. No one knew where they’d gone, although it was believed that they had started another colony somewhere on Midland, across the East Channel from New Florida.

Allegra was wondering how hard it might be to seek them out when she heard a mechanical sound behind her: servomotors shifting gears, the thin whine of an electrical power source. Then a filtered burr of a voice, addressing her in Anglo:

“Pardon me, but are you Allegra DiSilvio?”

She looked up to see a silver skull peering at her from within a black cowl, her face dully reflected in its ruby eyes. A Savant: a posthuman who had once been flesh and blood until he’d relinquished his humanity to have his mind downloaded into cyborg form, becoming an immortal intellect. Allegra detested them. Savants operated the starships, but it was surprising to find one here and now. And worse, it had come looking for her.

“That’s me.” She put down her spoon. “Who’re you?”

“Manuel Castro. Lieutenant governor of the New Florida Colony.” A clawlike hand rose from the folds of its dark cloak. “Please don’t get up. I only meant to introduce myself.”

Allegra made no effort to rise. “Pleased to meet you, Savant Castro. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

“Oh, now . . . no reason to be rude. I merely wish to welcome you to Coyote, make sure that all your needs are being met.”

“Really? Well, then, you could start by giving me a place to stay. A house here in town would be fine . . . one room will do. And some fresh clothing . . . I’ve only got one other change.”

“Unfortunately, there are no vacancies in Liberty. If you’d like, I can
add your name to the waiting list and notify you if something opens up. As for clothing, I’m afraid you’ll have to continue wearing what you’ve brought until you’ve tallied enough hours in public service to exchange them for new clothes. However, I have a list of work details that are looking for new employees.”

“Thanks, but I’ll . . .” A new thought occurred to her. “Are there any openings here? I think I could give a hand in the kitchen, if they need some assistance.”

“Just a moment.” Castro paused for a moment, his quantum-comp brain accessing data from a central AI. “Ah, yes . . . you’re in luck. The community kitchen needs a new dishwasher for the morning-to-midday shift. Eight hours per day, starting at 0600 and ending at 1400. No previous experience required. One and a half hours credit per hour served.”

“When does it start?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you. I’ll take it.” She turned back to her meal, yet the Savant made no move to leave. It patiently stood behind her, its body making quiet machine noises. Allegra dipped her spoon into the foul stew, waited for Castro to go away. All around her, the table had gone silent; she felt eyes upon her as others watched and listened.

“From your records, I understand you had a reputation back on Earth,” Castro said. “You were known as a musician.”

“Not exactly. I was a composer. I didn’t perform.” Looking straight ahead, she refused to meet his fathomless glass eyes.