People of the Sky (35 page)

“I don’t imagine it can keep you from facing charges,” said the voice mildly, but Kesbe had already turned away form the lasercom pickup and was executing a wingover that would put
Gooney Berg
directly in the path of the feed laser for the first ship.

She had a wild and ridiculous vision of herself in feathers brandishing a war-club. “Watch out, General Custer,” she growled as the C-47’s engines rose into a snarl, “Us Injuns are gonna do it again.”

It was surprise that gained her the advantage. The laser-driven craft of the expedition might have expected her to fire at them with whatever clumsy antique weapons her ‘anachronism’ had. The men might have feared she would try to ram them, but they had no idea she would climb above and then dive to intercept the power laser feeding their ships from the satellites above.

Intense ruby light shimmered on
Gooney’s
left wing. The beam supplying power to a ship immediately below lanced back into the sky. Kesbe heard the com channel squawk and then pour out an assortment of curses, both ancient and modern.

Tell Geosync Four that we are not receiving their beam,” said a voice on a channel not intended for her. She heard a pause, then, “I don’t give a cannister of aliencrap for what Sync Four says they’re sending. The beam’s gone and our storage cells are draining…”

Kesbe had hit the beam too fast. The shimmering vortex of light slid off the trailing edge of
Gooney’s
wing even though she tried to dump airspeed with a power-on stall. She wheeled the big plane through a steep turn. Below one banking wing, she saw the stratocraft canted over to one side and the feed laser arrowing past it to be lost in the thickening air below. Through the curved windshield of the Canaback ship, she saw uniformed men looking up at her in amazement and shaking their fists.

“Canaback Search One to Canaback Search Two,” Kesbe heard Bridges say. “Temiya is intercepting our input laser. Give her a blast to scare her off, and if she doesn’t run, knock her out of the sky.”

Kesbe let the big plane stall and then rode her down in a steep dive toward Canaback Search Two. She saw the muzzle of an energy weapon poking from a dome on the ship and rotating toward her. She wasn’t going to give it a chance. She shoved the throttles forward, adding the power of the engines to the momentum of her dive. Canaback Two’s commander gave a yell.

“The crazy bitch is heading right for us! Collision alert!”

But Kesbe had no intention of sacrificing
Gooney
in a kamikaze attack. At the last minute, she jerked back on the yoke and roared across the top of the stratocraft. She hoped her passage had severed the feed laser from the second ship and that her propwash vortex had caught it. She swept around in a wide circle and was rewarded by the sight of Canaback Two bucking wildly in rough air.

An energy charge spat past her. Canaback One had recovered. Again she dived and swept past underneath the first stratocraft, again using air turbulence as an effective weapon. Her backwash sucked the light stratocraft behind her, then turned it loose, spinning it on its long axis. From the sounds she heard on the com channel, some of its occupants were having an abrupt and unpleasant introduction to the effects of motion sickness.

To prevent any rear-guard action on the part of Canaback Two, she gave it a dose of the same treatment and was satisfied to see the feed laser bouncing off the reflective metal of its fuselage as it spun wildly out of control.

“I can keep this up as long as I’ve got fuel,” she said into the com channel. “And
Gooney Berg’s
got big tanks. Anyone want to sign a peace treaty?”

She heard another round of ship-to-ship communication. “…no, I don’t know what the hell she is flying…more mass…creating those atmospheric vortices and disrupting the beam…I’m telling you we have never fought anything like this…she could ram us both and still come out in one piece.”

Kesbe cut in. “Gentlemen, this is a military version of a DC-3, known as a C-47. She has a few hundred years on her, but she has been known to tangle with better-built adversaries than your stratocraft and come out still flying.”

Commander Bridges got on her channel, threatening everything from planetary deportation to confiscation of her aircraft, Kesbe ignored him while climbing above the two Canaback ships in a spiral that allowed her to alternately intercept the feed lasers for both, causing more havoc.

The craft commanders sputtered indignantly, unable or unwilling to believe they had been bested by an ancient piece of junk. At last the outbursts got weaker and were interspersed with groans, retches and background warnings that the storage cells on both craft were weakening under the abuse.

“Are you ready to alter course away from Tuwayhoima?” she asked, and received a subdued reply. She circled above the two ships as they stabilized and retrieved their power beams. Then, off to the right, she saw another speck that rapidly grew into the form of another stratocraft. Her spirits sagged momentarily, then lifted as she trained her electronic binocular on the newcomer. It was a civilian, not military, configuration. In the front seat, beneath the plex dome of the little skycraft, she saw a familiar figure.

“Greetings to you, dear pilot,” came Mabena’s lilt over the lasercom. “I thought you might require assistance. However, you don’t appear to need it.”

“You missed the fun, Tony. But I may need a little moral support. Help me herd these jokers to the nearest landing site that’s not too rough for them and we’ll have ourselves a little pow-wow.”

“Lead on, dear pilot,” Mabena answered. “But please, try not to put any more disfiguring marks on the aircraft.”

Kesbe glanced out the cockpit window. She saw numerous scorches and blisters where metal had nearly-melted. She felt cold, knowing it had been a close thing after all. But she had turned the invasion away from Tuwayhoima, at least for now.

The commander of Canaback Search One stumbled from his craft, running a hand through rumpled hair. As Kesbe watched Tony Mabena scramble from his craft, she was relieved to see a heavy laser-rifle slung across his shoulder. Although corrosion stained its metal, Kesbe had no doubt that the thing was in excellent working order.

Commander Bridges noticed it too and Kesbe saw him make another swipe through his hair. She cleared her voice as she jumped down from the C-47’s cargo door. “Commander, I’d advise you and your men to leave all sidearms in the craft. This is meant to be a peaceable discussion. Tony?”

Mabena grinned and hefted the rifle, enjoying the role of enforcer. Bridges’ face was the color and texture of sour milk as he said, “Let me state again that you’re interfering with planetary police authority. You may have the upper hand now,” he glanced at Tony’s big gun. “but you’ll inevitably face charges.”

“Surrender now while you’re still feeling merciful?” Kesbe grinned. “No thanks.”

“Miss Temiya, you’re obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty.”

“I’m not sure this is your duty,” Kesbe said slowly. Bridges’ hand slid from his hair to the back of his neck and rubbed hard. “And I’m not sure the authority you represent does have legal jurisdiction in this situation.”

“The planetary government of Oneway…” Bridges began.

“Is made up of a bunch of ex-squatters who think because they got here first, they own the planet.”

“Miss Temiya, if you would study the history of Oneway, you would see that you’re mistaken. This world was legally opened for colonization in 2223 and the government was set by
the first settlers.”

“The first settlers did not come in 2223,” Kesbe said. “They came in 2064. On the basis of first claim, the Pai Yinaye have possession of this planet. They are not in your jurisdiction. If anything, you are in theirs.”

“You have no evidence to back up your story,” Bridges tried.

“It won’t do, Commander. You can’t say that the people don’t exist—your ship’s scanners detected them. And they are living in the same place where the supposedly ‘lost’ colony was founded.” She paused. “I can prove that the Pai Yinaye are descendants of the Blue Star colonists. I’ll do it in court if I have to.”

Bridges folded his arms. “All right. Why don’t you just accompany us to this village, or whatever it is, and let us assess the situation?”

Kesbe eyed him. “I don’t trust your way of assessing things. Even if I did, I know that the Pai don’t want any interference from outside. The fact that I came has upset things enough.”

“These people are going to have to come to grips with the fact that there is another world around them. I think you’re trying to be too protective.” Bridges said.

“That may be,” she answered. “However, if you know anything about history at all, Commander, especially Terran history of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, you know that the opposite is more often the case.” She paused. “I am Pueblo, like the Pai. My tribe was destroyed by the intrusion of the ‘other world around it.’ You are right that the Pai will eventually have to accept the existence of our civilization. But I am determined that it will be done on their terms, Commander.”

Behind her, she heard Tony Mabena chuckle softly. “Gentlemen, she is immovable on that point. And I agree.”

Bridges and his men squinted at her. “Someone will find this hidden village of yours eventually. You’ve only delayed the inevitable.”

“That’s enough for me, and for them,” Kesbe answered. “Your part in this is over, Commander. Get in your ships and go.”

Bridges’ men looked at him and began to grumble. He shrugged his shoulders and stalked toward Canaback Search One.

“Tony, you have my leave to singe some tailfeathers if you think anyone is dragging their ass,” Kesbe said, loud enough to be heard over the mutter.

The crew were soon aboard their ships and as soon as both craft had recovered their feed laser beam from the geosync station, they rose and sped away across the great canyon.

Kesbe leaned against the sidepanel of Tony’s craft. She felt the shakes coming on, as they always did after an adrenaline high. She felt a hand steady her and looked up into Mabena’s tattooed face.

“You are a warrior, dear pilot,” the soft voice said. “The ones you are fighting for are lucky to have one such as you to champion them.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten very far without your extra hardware,” Kesbe answered. “Thanks for the help.”

He said something she didn’t expect. “I would like to meet the Pai Yinaye, if possible.”

She bit her lip. “I think you will, Tony, but not immediately.”

He nodded. “Unfinished business?”

“You might say that.” She was thinking very hard about Baqui Iba.

Leaving Tony Mabena in
Gooney Berg,
Kesbe ran down the mesa path to Tuwayhoima. She took the path to Aronan House and rushed in past the startled door-warden only to find that Baqui Iba was not there.

“We saw it last the previous night when it left its perch after the Rain Star had passed zenith,” the boy told her. “It has not returned.”

Kesbe felt despair welling inside her. She walked down the path from Aronan House with dragging feet, wondering where Baqui Iba might have fled in its pain and betrayal. It had borne the loss of one partner already. She had wounded it again by the betrayal of another. She flung back her hair, feeling the wind dry the sweat on her scalp. If Baqui Iba was lost to her now, why stay? Her role in the fight to save the Pai Yinaye would take place not here in the Barranca but in the records offices and courts at Oneway’s governmental center.

First, however, she would need access to tribal records that would give the legends and history of the Pai people. Even though she had no idea if the Pai had a written form of their language, she thought that there must be something, perhaps some document or artifact from the original colony. Alternately the information she needed might exist only in the minds of Pai tribal elders. And who would be better able to deliver those records or tell her who might best remember than the most respected elder of all? Very well, then. She would go to the Sun Chief.

“No.” The Sun Chief’s veined hand cradled a clay pipe from which smoke curled. The filmed eyes seemed to look right past Kesbe, though she got the uncomfortable thought that it was only an illusion and the Sun Chief could examine her very soul.

“Honored one, the people from outside will come and take this land from your tribe unless I can provide proof that the Pai were here first. The proof lies in the records your priests and elders must have kept.”

The ancient gaze sharpened. “You speak about the stories of the gods, of our people? They are not written down, but told by the elders to the young. And they are sacred. Only the ears of the Pai may hear. And you, warrior-woman, are not yet of the Pai.”

“Honored one, I have heard tales of the People of the Axe and how your tribe was driven from the Fourth World. I tell you now that they come again, to claim the Mother Canyon.”

Shrunken lips puffed on the stem of the pipe before the Sun Chief answered. “It would be a great wrong for the People of the Axe to invade us again. But it would be an even greater wrong to profane our ceremonials by allowing outsiders to hear them.” The Sun Chief paused. “You seek to do us good. It is a worthy thing. But if you would do the greatest good, you must do it for yourself and for us as your people.”

The Sun Chief sat back. Kesbe felt as though another door had closed, forcing her back to the original way. “Baqui Iba,” she whispered.

“The partnership must be brought to fruition,” said the Sun Chief. “Then will you be of our people.”

But I have destroyed the partnership, severed it with anger born of terror
, Kesbe thought as she lowered her eyes before the Sun Chief’s stare.
Baqui Iba will take me now only out of need, not love.

The seamed face lifted once again to gaze at the sun-star and Kesbe, sensing that her audience was through, retreated down the ladders that led from the roof of the pueblo to its lower
levels. She walked away, letting her shoulders slump. She gazed longingly back up the path that led to the mesatop,
Gooney Berg
and Tony Mabena.

“It is not that easy, warrior-woman.”

Kesbe spun. The voice of Sahacat’s. Seeing that long-eyed Mayan face and the shaman’s robes thrust her back into memories of the dance and the horrors that had danced with her, leaving her groveling in abject terror and shame. To face the woman who had raised those demons from the secret wells of her mind was to relive that time. And worse was to know that this one who was enemy and opposite had access to her emotions in a way more intimate than anyone else could. She felt a strange tension that drew her toward Sahacat and at the same time thrust her away.

She saw the lines of the shaman’s face shift as Sahacat made a grimace to capture her scent. Did a start of surprise mar that expression ever so briefly?

“I left you amid the dark places of your mind,” the shaman said. “I thought you would be imprisoned there, but I find that you have gained freedom.”

“Would you throw me back into that? You stained yourself with the filth you dug up. It was bitter, dirty magic,” Kesbe lashed out and saw that she struck a tender place with her words. “It was also useless.”

“No. Not useless.” The shaman’s smile was slow. “Bitter, yes, and dirty, but I know now that it played a part in transforming one who feared her woman-self into one who understands it.”

“Don’t lie to me about your intentions, Sahacat.”

“I do not lie. You rebelled against me and disrupted my plans. I wished to be rid of you. I cast a stick into the fire expecting it to be consumed. Instead what has come forth is an arrowshaft, hardened and straightened by the flame.”

Kesbe’s eyes narrowed. Beyond the manipulation, beyond the trickery, beyond the flattery, she heard the truth about herself. With Chamois help she had faced down terrors that rose from the darkest regions of her mind.

But she had not mastered all of them. One still remained.

She tested the air, wondering if Sahacat were once again enmeshing her in the influence cast by scent to bring forward the memory of the wasp and the sphinx-moth caterpillar. But the shaman’s odor was neutral, waiting.

It is the final fear that stands in my path. I must choose to face it now.

Kesbe cast the barriers away, letting the memory come through with full force. She remembered the feel of the caterpillar’s spiny tufts against her hand as it crawled across her palm and how it lifted up its head as if to rejoice in its rescue. She remembered placing the caterpillar in a glass jar and feeding it, hoping to see it form a cocoon and emerge as a moth.

But the seven-year-old did not know that the wasp had already laid its eggs in the sphinx-moth caterpillar. Instead of continuing to grow, it grew torpid and died, eaten alive from the inside by tiny wasp larvae. She remembered how the screams tore her throat as she shrieked at her grandfather to throw the jar and its morbid contents away.

She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. It almost overwhelmed her. She had wakened to the cruelty and horror of the world on that day, long before she was ready. She had denied it then, but she could not deny it now. Parasitism was the truth of things between the wasp and the sphinx-moth caterpillar. What of humans and aronans?

She swallowed hard. The image of the wasp-ridden caterpillar hung in her mind, hazing her vision.

The wasp and its prey act blindly, through instinct. Aronans once did the same. What is the
difference?

She struggled for an answer.

The only difference is that we and the aronans are aware. We must both love and we must accept. What happened to Imiya showed me what can happen if we fail. But Nyentiwakay showed me that such a path can lead to joy.

With a growing feeling of triumph, Kesbe realized that she could now see things as they were, not as she feared they would be. While she was haunted by the vision of the wasp-ridden caterpillar that meant a loss of control over her body, while the whole concept was so highly charged with repulsion and fascination, she saw the aronan-human partnership as something horrifying. She stood quietly before the shaman for a long time before she spoke again.

“You once told me that a thing is evil when perceived by senses touched by evil. What kept me from understanding may not have been evil, but it did equal wrong.”

Sahacat stood quietly, staring into space. When she looked back to Kesbe, something new and almost vulnerable came into her face. “It was evil, yet it was not. I speak this way, for I know this thing myself. Fear has touched my senses too—fear for my people.”

Kesbe felt the beginnings of a truce between the two of them. “You are not my enemy, Sahacat.”

“That is good. I am enemy enough to myself,” said the woman dryly, but with a note of rawness in her voice. Kesbe sensed what it had cost her to act as she had done. She found herself drawing back her lips in the flehmen-grimace to draw in the shaman’s scent and in it found a hidden note of bleakness.

She realized there was another component to Sahacat’s odor. It was the scent of Baqui Iba. The thought that the shaman might have the aronan hidden or caged somewhere made Kesbe’s all-too volatile emotions threaten to swing once again to anger.

“Where is Baqui Iba?” she asked.

“The aronan came to me this morning, asking for death,” the shaman said softly.

Kesbe felt as though freezing water was filling her from the ankles up. “No,” she said softly.

“It spoke to me, saying that with no one to receive the gift it bears, why should it live?”

Kesbe swallowed. “When I…attacked it…drove it away…I was mad from fright. I didn’t know…” The freezing water had reached the pit of her stomach. So Baqui Iba had asked the shaman to end its life.
Dear winged one, had I understood the real truth, I would not have thrown hate at you. If you were still alive, I would accept your gift.

The shaman stared back at Kesbe as if she knew her thoughts. A strange smile crossed Sahacat’s face. “So the bond is not broken after all. It is good that I delayed killing Baqui Iba.”

The freezing water drained away, leaving numbness. Kesbe knew she had been tricked once again, knew she should feel a burst of outrage, but felt only a surge of relief that weakened her knees. She made herself straighten up.

“You have been prepared by your training and by the
kekelt
drink I gave you during your time in the kiva. Will you receive the aronan’s egg?” the shaman asked.

“Yes.”

“The
lomuqualt
ceremony will take place in a cave beneath the mesa. Come to Aronan Kiva at sunset. There you will meet priests to prepare you.”

“One more thing, Sahacat. The youth, Imiya. He has been punished more than enough for any crime he may have done. I want him to be accepted and forgiven.”

“The price of entry into Pai adulthood is the bearing of an aronan-child,” the shaman answered and added, “To birth.”

“You can’t make him do it again!” Kesbe was shocked that the shaman would suggest such a thing. “It nearly killed him.”

“The act cannot be repeated. As you have said, his body will not tolerate incubation again and there are no other fliers with more than one egg.”

“Can one person…substitute for another? Could I…redeem Imiya in the eyes of the council by saying that any aronan-child I bear is to be considered his?”

“The council may consider it,” Sahacat answered. “And I…may be moved to speak for such a substitution. It gives us what we need—a new flier.”

And it gives your tribe back what you thought was lost. The mind and heart of a young man.

“I will see Imiya before the ceremony,” Kesbe said. “To tell him what I intend to do.”

“I will not interfere, warrior-woman.” Sahacat turned on her sandaled heel and strode away.

I lie on my pallet in Nabamida’s house, thinking about what will happen.

I could die and become part of the darkness that surrounds me. When Haewi fell, my life should have ended. But I lived to bear the egg of Desqui Deva and to feel my body kill the aronan’s child. Again I should have died, hut I lived and now I breathe and feel my pulse beat in my throat. I feel my face flush with shame and grief when I remember.

Shame and grief and…fear. It was my fear that killed Desqui Deva’s child, fear and anger that would not let my body accept the nymph and provide what it needed, fear and anger that twisted the nymph into a pitiful thing that could not live once it had been expelled from my body. I know how it fought back, drawing strength from me, sickening me, swelling me…I am still so weak that it would be easy for me to choose the downward road.

When I turned my face to the wall, there is only darkness. Behind me, away from my pallet, Chamol has set an oil lamp. Its flame is small, but it melts the enclosing dark Kesbe was here too. She left only her words. They do not burn very brightly, but like the oil lamp, they keep the shroud-dark from folding itself across me and claiming me.

Kesbe came this morning, sat down by my bed and told me that she would walk the same trail with Baqui Iba that Mahana had walked with her flier. And if there is an aronan-child from the pairing between Kesbe and Baqui Iba, it will be given to the tribe as if it were mine.

Perhaps the little flame inside me is not hope but more rage. In making her choice to stay and bear Bacqui Iba’s child, Kesbe has closed one path that might have let me escape. I still wonder ij I could have gone with her in Gooney Berg and lived a life apart from my people.

No. There was no chance of that happening. The pull from Baqui Iba was too strong to let Kesbe go. I knew that from the time I launched the two toward each other. I have only myself to blame if I am trapped by her choice.

I think of Mahana’s hands breaking the wings from her flier. The thought that Kesbe must do the same thing wrenches at me. I did not tell her what I witnessed for, as Sahacat said, I could not see it without distortion. Perhaps Kesbe can see more clearly than I did. When she returns, perhaps she will bear not only the aronan’s egg, but the truth about the ceremony.

I am afraid for her, yet I know it is the honorable choice. It offers me a strange kind of redemption, but it is not a gift. If she can do what she has set out to, she will struggle and she mill need my help. For me to take the downward road and leave her alone would be a betrayal. I have lived through this and I have the knowledge, bitter though it is.

If she finds the courage, if she is able to bear the strangeness and not break as I did…