Footsteps in the Sky (25 page)

But at the moment, for some reason, she did not.

“Can you puzzle any of this out?” She asked Alvar, when they again slumped down to the desert floor. He shrugged, but looked thoughtful.

“Maybe,” he said, after a long moment. “If I know Teng, maybe.”

“Well?”

“I think she's going to do something extreme, Sand. I think she's decided to fuck it all.

“Meaning?”

Alvar looked up to the sky. The clouds were clearing rapidly, hastening east to bring rain to the pueblos. Sand wondered briefly how many days Pela had been dead: she had lost track. Could that be her mother up there, wearing her mask of cotton?

“She's going to attack the ships,” Alvar said quietly.

Chapter Thirty-One

Hoku found Homikniwa in the rocks, painted red with his own blood. He was still breathing, and his eyes, though fogged with approaching death, flickered with recognition when Hoku scrambled down towards him.

“Ah, no,” Hoku hissed. “Hom!”

Homikniwa shifted his head feebly.

“I'm sorry, Hoku,” he said. Blood frothed on his lips. “It's just been too long. Forgotten too much.”

How could Homikniwa still be alive at all? Hoku counted at least five bullet holes in the little man.

“It's okay, Hom,” he said. “I. …” He reached down to his friend. Homikniwa's blood felt sticky, like syrup. Hoku had never actually had another person's blood on his skin. Now, he was smeared in it as he raised Homikniwa's head to hold it.

“There's more, Hoku. It was me that. … The Reed planted me here, long ago, to spy on you. I did bad things at first, evil things. I was a two-heart, Hoku. Two-hearts are real.”

Hoku stared down at what was left of his friend.

“You're like her, aren't you?” Hoku asked.

“Not anymore. Hoku, I betrayed the Fifth World, long ago. But it's my home now. These are my people. Believe that Hoku. I want to be buried a Hopi.”

“Of course you are Hopi, Hom. The best of us, that's you.”

Homikniwa coughed again.

“You can stop the Reed, Hoku.” His voice was draining out of him, his eyes were already dull.

“But you have to cooperate with the traditionals. Do you understand? I can't see you anymore, brother. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, brother. I hear you, ibaba.”

A dry wind bustled about them, stealing off the lingering smell of rain and explosives. A clean, husking wind. Homikniwa continued to mumble, and Hoku made soothing sounds as the world rotated into night, as the stars lit. By the time the little Moon rose, Homikniwa was speaking no longer, but Hoku continued to talk to him. The wind died down, but Hoku had inhaled it. It swirled within him now, and for the first time in his adult life, Hoku had no plans, no schemes, nothing he could conceive of doing, but to sing softly, to sing the song of the Sipapuni that he had tried so hard to forget, to beg the Kachina to come and take one of their own.

“That is very bad,” Tuchvala said, breaking the silence that followed Alvar's pronouncement.

“If she attacks my sisters, there will be no stopping them. They will kill us all.”

Alvar felt the chill of coming night, but could think of no way to stave it off, nothing to say. He could not even imagine a whole world wiped clean, but the picture Tuchvala painted seemed real enough. She believed it, Sand believed it. What choice did Alvar have?

“This is my fault,” he muttered.

“What? What language is that?” Sand asked him. She seemed calm, bereft of the fire that had seemed so intrinsic to her from the moment they met.

“It's called Norte. It's what we speak back home.”

“Where is that?”

“I was born in Santa Fe,” Alvar answered. An ugly place, he added to himself. An
ugly
place I miss more than the memory of God.

“On Earth? That's on Earth.”

“Yes. What I said was, ‘this is my fault'.”

“Is it?” Sand asked mildly. You summoned Tuchvala's sisters here, then commed the Reed to come and get them? You arranged for Hoku to have my father kill my mother, and then you somehow put the idea in my head that I should hall Tuchvala all over the Fifth World like she was my toy and I some selfish child? No offense, Alvar, but you don't seem capable of all that.”

“No,” Alvar answered. “No, I'm not capable of anything grandiose. But Teng is my fault. I think when she saw us … ah, you remember … I think that drove her over the edge. Otherwise, she would have just taken Tuchvala and gone.” He raised his hands and added hastily, “I know that isn't what any of you wanted. But it couldn't be as bad as having the whole world destroyed.”

Tuchvala cut in. “He's right. It would be better. I wonder …” she trailed off, then turned back to Alvar. “What kind of weapons does she have? Could she win? Could she destroy my sisters and me?”

Alvar shook his head. “When she was saner, she didn't even want to try. I don't know. If anyone can beat anything, it would be Teng. But we came in one little ship, cobbled together. Against those three monsters in orbit—ah, no offense—I don't see what she can do. But then, I'm sure she didn't show me all of the weapons, either.”

Tuchvala shrugged. “I suppose we will see. If I could talk to my sisters first, that would be good. Sand, can we contact your people? Or even Hoku's?”

“I don't know. Hoku's gone insane, too. But I would guess any transceivers were in the Bluehawk. I suppose Hoku's men will come looking for him, eventually, but unless the computers are back on line, we don't have much of a chance.”

Sand caught movement from the corner of her eye. It was Jimmie, shuffling up behind them. His gaze slipped about, unwilling to touch any of theirs. He reached into his jacket and removed a black, translucent cube. He laid it near Sand, then walked off, slowly, ten meters or so.

It was a transceiver.

Sand picked up the cube, felt the weight of it. She spoke the code for the council chamber in Tuwanasavi. It glowed and cleared, to reveal a longish man in the garb of Hoku's lieutenants.

“This is SandGreyGirl of the Sand clan,” she said. “How is your day, ibaba?”

The man frowned and addressed her stiffly.

“What does this concern?”

“Your chief and the rest of us are in the desert west of the pueblos, at the feet of the Cornbeetle mountains. I suggest you send a flyer to get us.”

“If the mother-father is there, I would like to speak to him.”

“He's off hunting,” Sand said. “Come get us. I'll leave this on so you can have a signal.”

She broke visual contact and set the cube down. It began pinging for attention almost immediately, and she lifted it again and threw it as far as she could.

Hoku paused over the corpse of Kewa for a long moment, unsure what to feel. Here was a woman he hardly knew, and he had killed her on a gamble. He had killed her. He once believed he was up to that; he had planned deaths all of his life. He had had Pela killed, and never flinched; he was as insulated from her death as he was from the vacuum and cold of deep space. Even when he realized that the woman need not have died, he was able to justify his decision, move on.

Now Homikniwa, whom he loved, was dead. Kewa, whom he could have loved lay at his feet, her glassy eyes fixed on mystery. His Bluehawk was still burning, and in the unsteady light her shadow shivered about her like a ghost.

This is what comes of trying to make order out of chaos, Hoku thought. The hero twins did that—made the world orderly and sane—and he had always supposed, deep down, that he and Hom were the hero twins. But no, he was Coyote, who only thought he could bring order. Coyote, more often tricking himself than anyone else, but bringing disaster to all.

Part of him sneered at that thought. What was a coyote? No Fifth Worlder had ever seen one. But now he had a picture to go with the old stories, and the picture was of himself. Not the happy trickster, but the jealous destroyer. Was that it? Had he always been jealous of those with close clan and kin, of the pueblos?

Part of him rejected that, too. It was just that his vision had been so clear. What hope did the pueblos have against something like the Reed, against creatures like Homikniwa and Teng? Probably about as much chance as he and his lowlanders, in retrospect, which meant none at all. But he had had to try! Now the alien woman—this Tuchvala was here, in his grasp. He could see her with the others, huddled beneath the stars. They had watched him impassively when he returned, carrying Hom's body.

Well, he had her. What now? He went over to ask.

No one spoke to him when he joined the circle. He didn't expect them to. Hoku turned to Sand, respectfully not meeting her eyes.

“I had my reasons, all of you,” he said at last. “Looking back, maybe I was wrong. But I saw the Reed coming—for us, or worse, for our children, and I saw us helpless. Helpless. I don't want forgiveness from any of you; forgiveness wouldn't help any of us. Sand, I owe you a clan debt, and someday, one way or another, you may collect that. I don't know. I killed your mother.”

Sand just watched him, her face tired and unreadable. Hoku went on. “Jimmie didn't know. He would never have done it. We infected him with a virus, but it was a virus which could only kill Pela. When he touched her, or kissed her. …”

“I kissed her!” The anguished cry was barely human. Jimmie was on his feet, and for one moment, Hoku thought he had a gun in his hand, or a knife, that he would fling himself at Hoku. But instead, he just stood there, shuddering, weeping.

“Sit down, father,” Sand said quietly. “Sit down and listen to what Hoku has to say.”

“I killed her, not Jimmie,” Hoku repeated. Jimmie sat down, gasping for breath. What could Hoku ever do for him? What was done was done.

“My friend is dead,” Hoku went on. “Before he died, he told me what he has always told me; that the Hopi should be one people.”

“The pueblos will never follow you, conquered or free,” Sand told him, without heat.

Hoku shrugged. “True. I don't care about that. I don't know what to do at all, SandGreyGirl. I've schemed and chased and killed to get this woman, this Tuchvala.”

He turned towards the woman. She was beautiful. Had Pela been so beautiful? Hoku had never met her. He never would.

“Tuchvala. I am Hoku, from the lowlands. You have been the prize in a game I thought that I understood. I have to know now; was it worth it? Do these deaths mean anything? Can you save us?”

The woman looked back at him with—sadness? Concern? She spoke slowly, as if making absolutely certain he would understand.

“I came here to save you,” she said. “I don't know that I can. I understand what you fear from the Reed—now—but I did not come here to save you from them. I came here to save you from myself, from my sisters.”

And as Hoku listened, she told her story, a story of stars and time, of age and madness. And Hoku believed; this was no mystical vision, no religious nonsense. This was metal and energy and fact. He had seen those ships, through the telescopes.

“The pueblos revere you as a Kachina,” he whispered, when she was done. “I have never admitted belief in them, never given credence to such superstition, save perhaps when I was very young. It doesn't matter anymore, does it? Whatever I call you, whatever you are named, you are the same thing. Tuchvala, all of you. My life has always been lived for this world, the Fifth World—believe that or don't. Tell me what to do now, and we will do it.”

In the distance, there was a sound like wind. The flyers were coming at last.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“There,” the man said. The binary code had been sent to my sisters, and a string of signals answered. They were listening. From now on, they would listen to me speak in the language of human beings; it was apparent that this was the easiest course, since I could no longer send or comprehend in our own language, and human speech organs could not produce the sounds of the language of the Makers.

The others sat around me, more quietly than I ever knew human beings could be. Despite the throbbing pain in my leg, the tension of what I was about to attempt, I felt at ease. These people comforted me in a way I had never been comforted, despite my short time amongst them, despite the fact that some of them had been intent upon my capture or demise since I came to be on the Fifth World. Perhaps—I had to consider this—perhaps something of Pela's tohodanet still lived in me, mixed with mine. In many of my dreams, I am a mother, Sand is my child. Perhaps Pela is the only reason I never became insane, though it is clear tom me that I should have. Whatever the reason, live or die, I had found a place I never imagined existed before.

“Sister,” I began.

The voice that came back to me was one of the many voices of the Hopi computer, and still, when I heard it, it became the voice of my otherself, my mother and my sister. I knew it in an instant.

“Hello,” it said. “So you have accomplished this much, at least.”

“Yes.”

“I recognize your voice,” my sister said. Of course she did. She had listened to me learn to talk. I hoped that it would make things easier.

“How is the situation up there?” I asked, cautiously.

“Our sisters have not changed, though Hatedotik (The name sounded like sputtering to me, but I understood who she meant) has become more agitated, because the outsystem ship has been conducting odd maneuvers. She is also aware of you, now. I could not keep the information from her, and she had more sentience left than I thought.”

“She can hear us now, of course,” I said.

“Of course, as can Odatatek, for what that may be worth. You remember that what we speak of here is an analogue of the three of us, not merely “my” voice.”

“I understand that. I
am
you, remember?”

“Of course. Tell us what you have learned.”

I drew a breath. Could I be truthful? Maybe. And maybe they would not know if I lied.

“As we suspected,” I told her, “these people are intelligent, like the Makers.”

“But not the Makers,” she answered.

“No, of course not. But they have worked hard, made this planet a home. They are worthy to keep it.”

“You have yet to convince me of that.”

“They understand etadotetak,” I told her, carefully attempting to render the hissing clicks of the Maker's language.

“You mean etadotetak?” my sister corrected me.

“Yes.”

“They understand it. But do they possess it?”

“They are willing to kill and die that others might survive.”

“There is more to etadotetak than that.”

“True,” I said, “But how to quantify such a thing?”

I recognized my emotion as fear, now. I had indeed changed. How much of what I said would my sisters even understand?

“Listen,” I continued, urgently. “I am you. You know that. There is no cause to re-seed this planet. It is already seeded. And the Makers are dead, anyway. They. …”

“What? From what evidence do you draw such a ridiculous conclusion?” There was, of course, no human inflection in the voice, but I suddenly recognized Hatedotik's impatience. My sisters had drawn more tightly together. They saw the starship as a threat, and they were re-integrating. Combining their madnesses.

“The three of you, listen to me! The Makers must be extinct. These people have colonized many of the other farms, and never have the Makers returned to dispute or claim them. Never, in all of the millennia. We formed these worlds so that the Makers could live upon them, didn't we? Where are they?”

My sisters think with great speed. There was no pause, no chance for me to marshal other arguments.

“This is not important, unless these creatures themselves killed the Makers, which we consider a distinct possibility.”

I had not thought of that, and the prospect appalled me. The humans in the room were shaking their heads violently, no—but I knew them by now, knew that they would deny such a thing even if it were true. Or they might not know what had occurred; there were so many factions among them, so much done secretly, by only a few. …

“That doesn't make sense,” I decided. “As evinced from what we have experienced, these people do not have the technical power to destroy the Makers. Their weapons are too crude, their means too limited.”

“The Makers have etadotetak,” my sister said. “Perhaps they allowed these creatures to populate some of their worlds.”

“Listen to yourself!” I cried, seizing upon that. “Perhaps that is so! And if the Makers made such a decision, how can we do likewise?”

“But I think your first guess is more probable,” she answered. “I think the Makers are dead.”

“Then this world should belong to these people. They are sufficiently similar to the Makers.”

“We weren't built to decide that. We were built to maintain these worlds in a particular way. Not so the Makers could settle them, as you claim. That was a secondary consideration. We were built to do this because the Makers had etadotetak.”

She had said it; what I had been unable to voice, what I had forgotten when I made this human body. Who had remembered it? Hatedotik? Odadatek?

“Sisters, listen. We are very, very, old. Older than our brains and systems were really meant to function. You know that: that's why I was created. Because in this body, in this brain, I could become whole, undamaged, sane. I am that, or very nearly so. Of all of us, I am the most like a Maker. That is the truth. I am the only one capable of comprehending etadotetak. Consider your last statement, sisters, because it is crucial. We were designed to modify planets so that they bore life. Not just so that the Makers could have habitable worlds, but so that there would be more life. They had etadotetak, not just for their race, but for the universe. They would not object to a modification of that life to suit the needs of another race. That is all that has happened here. The Makers' plan had been fulfilled.”

“The Creator!” Croaked Yuyahoeva, from behind me, before even my sisters could react. “Elder sisters, listen to me! I am Yuyahoeva of the Sand clan, mother-father of the pueblo of Tawanasavi! We know that this world was created, not for us, but just so that it would be! But the creator—and Masaw, the caretaker of this world—he indulged our existence here. You have heard this! You sister tells me that you have heard our songs, our legends, our faith. We understand that this world is not ours, but that we have been allowed to live upon it. The hero twins were given leave to change it, to make it suitable for us. But every moment of every year, we send our thanks to you and your Makers. You know this, if you have listened to us.” The old man panted off into silence, but the other Hopis in the room—Hoku included—sounded gentle agreement to the words he had spoken.

This time, there was a silence, and in that silence, my sisters could exchange a hundred billion thoughts. They had ceased to reckon with us, I knew that, though my friends thought my sisters were merely mulling over a response. They had heard all they were going to hear. Our fate, I thought, was already decided.

“We consider that a convincing argument,” my sister said, finally. “But the human ship in orbit has just fired energy weapons at us. Apparently, their sense of etadotetak is not as finely tuned as you claim.”

Teng was a goddess again. The little man had hurt her, shaken her. How could she have known that there was a rogue peacekeeper on this miserable planet? But now her torn lung had a temporary inflation, and a half-liter of medical miracles had her feeling fine. With the help of her comrades' covering fire, she had brushed aside the defenses around the drum as if they were flies. Nothing had impeded the drum's assent into space, and the single pitiful nuclear weapon the Fifth-Worlders sent climbing after her had been easy to stop. Now the drum was back with its mother, and Teng sat poised behind some of the deadliest weapons known to humanity.

“Strap in.” she snapped, over the intercom, and ten seconds later she kindled the drive and opened it to a full gravity. Coiled compensators whined to cope with the stress as she increased the feed, and she sagged back in her couch as her weight doubled. One pass, that was all she would get; she would not float about while the alien ships marshaled themselves; she would whip by them, one at a time, and when she was past they would be debris. After that, who gave a shit?

Already the first one was within weapons range. She clenched her teeth, happier than she had been in some time. She targeted and cut on the particle beam, launched a half-score of her smartest missiles. She watched the beams punch out at the alien ship, checked the spectrometer when nothing dramatic happened. Nothing; no sign of vaporized metal, nothing.

Three of the hydrogen bombs detonated, but too far from their target. Nothing.

“Fuck!” She howled. In moments, she would be past this one, and she hadn't scratched it. What could withstand the beam? Maybe some kind of charged field. Lasers, then.

She flicked on the forward x-ray lasers. Was her enemy responding at all? Seconds ticked by.

The cube crackled and lit of its own accord. Someone with a code.

Alvar, of course. His face was wild with fear—she had always loved that expression on him, the first few times they fucked, when he thought she might kill or cripple him.

“Teng! Teng! What the fuck are you doing? Teng! They'll destroy this world!”

“Fuck you, Alvar.” Her attention was on the ship. It was spinning on its axis, faster than she imagined might be possible for a craft of such mass. It was pointing its drive at her! And, she noticed, the X-Ray lasers were having an effect. They had boiled perhaps a millimeter of her opponent's hull into space.

“Teng, calm down.” Alvar was desperately trying to calm himself, she knew. She spared him a glance.

“I am, calm, Alvar. I'm not human, remember?” But his face made her ache, like she hadn't since she was a child. Ache! That, she would not have. She adjusted her course a bit and launched two more bombs. Of course, at this acceleration (climbing now past four gravities) she would get to the ship long before the weapons did. And there was one other weapon, one which would almost certainly be effective.

“Teng. I love you, Teng.”

A sudden calm settled over Teng Shu, a calm such as she had never known in her entire life. It was sweet, sweeter than anything. It was like swimming in the cool waters of the Kelbab River, but it soaked all the way through. She could see the open mouth of the alien drive, a hole that nearly eclipsed the ship itself. It would not quite make it; she would reach the monster before it was fully turned. Her lung had collapsed again under the pressure of acceleration, and even her heart was reaching its limit, as the blood's uphill climb to her brain became too steep. But she was lucid, sharp. She saw everything.

“It's okay, Alvar,” she managed to whisper, through her skinned-back teeth.

“Today is a good day to die.”

And then she saw the brightest light she had ever seen.

There should be a sound, Alvar thought. There should be trumpets, drums, an explosion.

There wasn't though. The telescope showed them very clearly, at a speed they could comprehend, the visual of what happened; but it happened in utter silence. There was the Mixcoatl, his home for three years. It was aimed dead on at the alien ship, which was turning with incredible speed to meet the attack. Teng and her crew were less than a hundred kilometers away when a perfect white light stabbed out from the alien craft. Actually, “stabbed” was wrong, because it wasn't there, and then it was, even on this slow rendering. The Mixcoatl was not caught full; it just brushed the drive, or whatever it was. But it was suddenly gone, replaced by a white-hot tongue of flame.

Jimmie was shaking his head. “She got close enough. Son-of-a-bitch. At those speeds. …”

The molten jet of plasma that had been the Mixcoatl skinned up the side of the alien ship, which suddenly light up like a red candle, dull save for that one brilliant streak. The drive stayed on.

“Jesus!” Jimmie leapt to the telescope, and nobody stopped him; they were staring at the image, the column of light and its dull, glowing apex. It didn't seem to be moving, despite the drive.

“Where the fuck is that thing going?” Jimmie asked no one, but then he began giving the computer pointed commands. A new display appeared some kind of gravitic map that made no sense to Alvar at all.

It's not going anywhere! Alvar thought, and then: Teng!

But of course the ship was moving. Its drive was on. The Hopi telescope must have had orders to track it, wherever it went, so it didn't appear to be moving. If the ship was coming down, into the planet's gravity well. … then it would be here very, very soon.

But after a long moment, Jimmie visibly relaxed.

“Fucking drive is barely on. And it's headed out.”

“What if it explodes?”

Tuchvala was blinking at tears like an owl. She was crying for the ship. What about Teng? Why wasn't he crying?

“No,” she said. “The drive can't explode. It would just go out. She must be … that would have killed her, but the drive is still on. …”

“What will they do?” Sand asked, softly, taking Tuchvala's arm. Alvar thought they looked more like sisters than ever.

“What will the other two do?”

Tuchvala shook her head. I don't know. She buried her face against Sand's shoulder.

Alvar looked back at the image, which the tech had just had re-set for a wider angle. The wreath of gas that had been the Mixcoatl was barely visible, far behind the dead, fleeing ship.