Coyote Horizon (16 page)

“Your tribe. I see.” I glanced at the others; some glowered at me, others were defiant. “And the rest of these people . . . ?”

“They’ll tell you if they wish to do so.” Ignoring me again, Walking Star picked up a stick, snapped it in half, and fed it into the smoldering fire. “You shouldn’t have come here, Mr. Goldstein . . .”

“Morgan.” Goldstein put down his plate, inched a little closer. “I told you, Joe. We know each other better than that.”

“I know we do.” Cassidy stared at the fire intently, as if closely examining every smoking ember. “Believe me, I do. But this is not the place for you, trust me . . .”

“How can I trust you?” Goldstein became insistent. “I gave you money, sent you to a doctor . . .”

“A doctor is the last person I want to see. What I want . . . what
we
want is be left alone. I appreciate your concern, but there’s a reason we’ve come out here.”

Goldstein looked away, gazing toward the edge of the field where we’d encountered the ball plants. “I think I can guess what it is. You and your . . . your tribe . . . have gotten hooked on sting. So much that you’ve decided to go straight to the source. Why buy it on the street in Liberty when you can . . . ?”

His words trailed off as he became aware of the reaction of the people around us. For the first time since we’d entered the camp, they displayed some sort of emotion. A few concealed grins behind their hands, while others quietly giggled; some snorted back derisive laughter. Cassidy tried to remain respectful, but there was no hiding the smirk on his face.

“We’re just a bunch of junkies. Is that it?” His voice was seasoned with contempt. “Sting may be many things, Morgan, but even a doctor would tell you that it’s not addictive.”

“Not physically, at least,” I added.

Cassidy looked at me. “You’re right. It can be habit-forming, at least in the psychological sense. But so is cannabis, and that’s cultivated in the colonies. If getting high was all this was about, we would’ve just as soon stayed home and taken jobs on hemp plantations.” He turned back to Goldstein. “But you’re half-right. Yes, we came here because of the ball plants. We needed to find a wild stand that hadn’t been discovered, and the privacy in which to . . .” Again, he paused. “Shall we say, experiment.”

“Experiment. Right.” It was Goldstein’s turn to show contempt. Standing up, he raised a hand to encompass the run-down camp. “Look at this place. You’re so far gone, you don’t even realize how . . . how sick you’ve become.”

“No.” Cassidy pushed himself to his feet. “Not sick. In fact, we’ve become something you can’t possibly imagine . . .”

“Don’t say.” This from the gap-toothed woman who’d served me earlier. Cassidy looked around, stared at her. A moment passed, then she seemed to wither, visibly recoiling from his dark brown eyes. Indeed, it seemed as if the others did the same, all at the same moment. Almost as if . . .

“Perhaps they should know,” Cassidy said. “It’s unfortunate, because I think we need more time to study this.” Then he looked at Morgan again. “But I know you all too well, boss. You’re tenacious. Once you learn about something, you don’t give up easy. And I can’t allow you to go home with misconceptions about what we’re doing here.”

Goldstein smiled with the confidence of a man so accustomed to winning that losing was no longer a possibility. “That’s all I want. Just straight answers.”

“Then you’ll get them. Not now, though. This evening . . .”

“Joe . . .”

Cassidy nodded toward a vacant spot within the campsite. “Pitch your tents over there,” he said. “Rest. Take a nap. Don’t eat, and drink as little water as you can. Around sundown, go over there . . .” He pointed to the log hogan at the periphery of the camp. “We’ll be waiting for you.”

Goldstein studied the shack with suspicion. “Why can’t you just tell me . . . ?”

“Because you’d never believe me. This is one of those things you have to experience yourself.” Then he looked at me. “I don’t expect you to attend. You can sit this out, if you wish.”

“I’ll . . . think it over.” I was already considering the possibility of something going wrong. What, I didn’t know. But it was comforting to know that I had a satphone in my pocket. If worse came to worst, I could always call Mike Kennedy, get him to bring in the cavalry.

“I’ll leave it to your discretion, then. But . . .” Cassidy held out his hand. “One condition. I’ll need your satphone, please.”

I felt a touch of suspicion. “Why?”

“You’ll get it back. Promise.” A wry smile. “I just want to make sure that we’re not interrupted.”

Again, subdued laughter from those around us, as if Walking Star’s tribe had caught a whispered joke I hadn’t heard. I traded a glance with Morgan; he didn’t know what was going on, either, yet he reluctantly nodded. I dug the satphone out of my jacket and handed it to Cassidy.

“Thank you, Mr. Lee . . . Sawyer, I mean.” Then he turned away from us. “Tonight at bear-rise. See you then.”

The last rays of sunset were filtering through the trees when Goldstein and I left our tents and walked across camp to the hogan. The evening was chilly; we could see our breath before our faces. To the east, the leading edge of Bear’s ring plane was already rising above the forest, its silver bow bright against the twilight sky. Tall, slender torches had been lit on either side of the hogan, their flickering light illuminating the faces of the men and women waiting for us outside its open door.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Goldstein murmured, as we approached them. I noticed his pensive expression. We’d spoken little that afternoon; once we’d erected our tents, we’d spent our time taking catnaps and . . . well, just waiting. I regretted having surrendered my satphone; I at least could have called Kennedy with it, told him that we’d located Cassidy.

“Goes with the service,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “Besides, I’m just as curious about this as you are.”

He looked as if he was about to say something, but then Cassidy stepped forward. “You’ve accepted my invitation,” he said. “I hope you’ve taken my advice not to eat anything.” Goldstein nodded, and so did I. “Very well, then. Before we go in, though, you’re going to need to do one more thing. If you’ll please remove your jackets . . .”

“Joe, it’s freezing out here.” Goldstein stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t see why . . .”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do so if it wasn’t important.” Even as Cassidy spoke, the others were pulling off their jackets and serapes, neatly placing them on the ground just outside the hogan before entering one at a time, ducking their heads to pass through the low doorway. “Trust me, it’ll be warm inside. But you’ve got to do it.”

Goldstein hesitated, then reluctantly unzipped his fleece-lined, Earth-made parka and placed it outside the door, just a little apart from the others. The evening wind bit at me as I did the same; I wore a light sweater beneath my cat-skin jacket, and Cassidy paused to look me over. “Take that off, too,” he said. “Loosen your collar and roll up your sleeves. It’s important.”

“Yeah, sure.” I removed my sweater, noticing that he hadn’t yet taken off his jacket. “Any reason why you’re not . . . ?”

“No. Just waiting for you.” Cassidy unbuttoned his jacket, carelessly tossed it aside. “After you, gentlemen.”

One last, uncertain glance at each other, as if trying to decide who’d go first, then Goldstein lowered his head and, crouching almost double, entered the lodge. I was about to follow him when Cassidy stepped in front of me. He said nothing, yet it was plain that he wanted to be with his old boss. I waited until they disappeared through the door, then I followed them inside.

The hogan’s interior was dark, almost pitch-black; torchlight seeped through narrow cracks between the log walls, the only source of illumination. I smelled the dank odor of dirt, mildew, and roots, heard the faint scuffling sounds of a lot of people crowded into a small space. When I tried to stand erect, the back of my head connected with the ceiling; I snarled an obscenity, then someone grabbed the back of my shirt, roughly hauled me down to a sitting position.

“Hush,” Cassidy hissed at me. “Be quiet.”

My eyes soon adjusted to the gloom. Ten men and women, Goldstein and me included, seated in a circle within the hogan, so close to one another that our elbows and shoulders nearly touched. To my left was Cassidy; to his left was Morgan. Almost directly behind me was the door; a woman to my right leaned over to pull it shut, and we were all together in the suffocating darkness.

There was something in the middle of the lodge. A tall, rotund object, only half-seen yet so close that, if I’d leaned forward, I could have touched it with my fingertips. My nose caught a faint vegetable fragrance, the smell of something alive and growing. Suddenly I began to suspect what was in the room . . .

“See,” Cassidy whispered. “See and know.”

He broke open a lightstick and tossed it on the floor, and in the wan chemical glow we saw what grew from the center of the lodge. A ball plant, perhaps the largest I’d ever seen; nearly five feet in diameter, it rose from the ground like a giant tumor, malignant and obscene.

My immediate reaction was to shrink back in horror. Yet even as I did, I noticed that, despite its size, the planet was somehow retarded. By that time of the season, leaves should have sprouted from its upper shell, with the first flower stalks beginning to blossom. Deprived of sunlight, though, it did neither; only the most smallest, vestigial leaves had begun to appear, and those were withered and stunted.

That was when it occurred to me what Cassidy and his people had done. They’d found the largest ball plant in this field and built the hogan around it. I glanced up at the ceiling, spotted a circular crack of light. A ceiling hatch, like a removable skylight; once a day, I surmised, they’d open the hatch, allowing in just enough sun and rain for the plant to remain alive, but not enough for pollination. In that way, they managed to keep the ball plant a captive specimen, contained within its own miniature greenhouse.

“Oh, for the love of . . .” Goldstein was just as horrified as I was. “Joe, what are you . . . ?”

“You’ll see.” Then Cassidy raised his left foot and slammed his heel down on the packed-earth floor.

The others did the same, stamping on the floor, causing the plant to shake. When I realized what they were trying to do, my first thought was to get out of there as fast as I could. Yet by then it was too late; the door was shut, and there was no escape.

I couldn’t see the pseudowasps when they emerged from their nests within the shell; there wasn’t enough light. Yet I heard an angry buzz from the plant, and for an instant the immature leaves parted just slightly.

Something small purred past my face, and I felt insect wings against my cheek. I reached up to swat it away, and a white-hot needle lanced into the back of my hand.

I yelped, and instinctively started to clamber to my knees. Cassidy grabbed my shoulder, forced me to sit down. “Just be calm,” he said quietly. “It’ll all be over in . . .
ah!
”

“Joe, for God’s sake . . .
dammit!
” I heard Goldstein slap at something, then he cried out again in pain. “Holy . . . Get ’em off! They’re all over me!”

By then the air was alive with pseudowasps. They swarmed the small room, buzzing all around us, stinging everyone with whom they came in contact. I tried to bat them away, but there were too many; I was stung again on my face, and when I leaned forward to put my head between my knees and cover the back of my neck with my arms, they attacked my wrists and shoulders.

Glancing up from my folded arms, I caught a glimpse of Cassidy. It was as if he was in meditation; seated beside me in lotus position, his eyes were shut, his body relaxed. Others had done the same; although they occasionally gasped in pain, they weren’t bothering to fight off the insects. Goldstein was curled up on the floor, rolling this way and that, screaming in terror as he tried to ward off the insects. Then a pseudowasp alighted upon my face, just below my right eye. I managed to swat it away before it stung me, then I buried my head within my arms again.

It seemed to go on forever. Then I heard a wooden creak from somewhere above, felt a cool breeze. Hesitantly, I raised my head again. Someone had used a rope to move aside the ceiling hatch; bearlight streamed down through the opening, and I saw a thin cloud of insects fly upward, their wings appearing as tiny silver halos.

For a moment it seemed to me that they were miniature angels, vengeful yet innocent, spiraling upward into the night. Despite the pain, I found myself entranced by their beauty; I laughed out loud and watched their ascent with fascination. Others chuckled, as if understanding what I’d seen.

“There, see? The way has been prepared.” Cassidy handed me a cat-skin flask. “Drink. Relax.”

The water in his flask was tepid, yet it tasted like wine. I drank a little, then passed it to the woman sitting beside me. A certain numbness was rapidly spreading through my body; the places where I’d seen stung no longer burned; the wounds itched for a few minutes, but even that sensation gradually passed away. Goldstein was on his hands on knees, violently retching, yet he was no longer my concern. All I knew was that the hogan wasn’t as menacing as it’d once been; indeed, it was as comfortable as my favorite table at the Captain’s Lady, and all the people in it had become my friends.

Time lost meaning. I watched Bear slowly come into view through the skylight, its silver-blue radiance painting the log walls with colors I’d never seen before. Ash stared up at the stars, humming beneath his breath; the gap-toothed woman rocked gently back and forth on her haunches, muttering to herself as if carrying on a conversation with some invisible person. Across the room, a man and a woman pulled off each other’s clothes and, oblivious to everyone else, started to have sex; I observed their fornication with disinterest, neither aroused nor offended. A skeeter, wandering in from the nearby marshes, flittered above the ball plant, performing a delicate ballet in the bearlight just for me. It was as if a universe I’d never known to exist had opened before my eyes, and I was an astronomer seeing its hidden wonders for the very first time.