Coyote Horizon (2 page)

She pressed its button, bent closer. “Hello?”

“Yes?”
The voice from the speaker was male, with the Hispanic accent of someone born in the Western Hemisphere Union back on Earth.
“Who’s calling, please?”

“Lynn Hu . . . Pan News Service. I have an appointment with . . .”

“Of course, senorita. We’ve been expecting you.”
A brief buzz, then the right half of the gate slowly swung open.
“Please come up.”

“Thank you.” Lynn started to step through the gate, then stopped as something occurred to her. “Umm . . . come up, you said?”

She stared at the dirt road leading up the ridge and swallowed. No signs that any vehicles had recently come this way. Nothing that looked like a tram. She heard the chitter of small birds—grasshoarders, she’d learned they were called—within the high grass on either side of the road; a skeeter buzzed past her face, and she swatted it away.

“Walk, you mean,” she added.

No response from the intercom, yet as she strolled through the gate, it silently closed behind her, locking with a definitive click. Realizing that argument was pointless, she took a deep breath, then set out to climb the rest of the way to Traveler’s Rest.

The ascent was less difficult than it appeared. The house was only about three hundred yards from the bottom of the bluffs, with the road cut in a series of switchbacks that afforded an easy grade. Yet, although someone born and raised on Coyote probably would have considered it little more than morning exercise, Lynn had only recently become acclimated to the thin atmosphere; when she’d left the inn in Liberty, she hadn’t expected to go hiking. So her linen business suit was drenched with sweat and her sandals filled with sand by the time she arrived, out of breath and gasping, at the top of the ridge.

Traveler’s Rest was magnificent. Tall cathedral windows looked out upon carefully cultivated gardens, their beds planted with flowers both native to Coyote and imported from Earth, lending color to a place where it was least expected. Wooden stairs led her up a low retaining wall to a semicircular veranda upon which Adirondack chairs and potted shrubs had been set out; she noticed a small refractor telescope on a tripod, its capped lens pointed toward the sky. As she came closer, Lynn was startled to hear a horse whinny; looking around, she spotted a chestnut mare peering at her from the half door of a shed beneath the wind turbine. Horses were still scarce on this world, and most were working animals, yet this one was obviously a pet, something a rich person would ride every now and then.

She was about to walk over to the shed when a carved blackwood door opened on the veranda. A young man, not much older than herself and wearing a homespun tunic and trousers, stepped out. “Ms. Hu? I’m Tomas Conseco, the president’s personal aide. Would you follow me, please?”

The foyer was cool after the unseasonal warmth of the morning, the lighting subdued. “You may leave your shoes there,” Tomas said, motioning to a row of boots and moccasins carefully arranged on the tile floor beside the door. As Lynn gratefully slipped off her sandals, he offered her a hempcloth towel. “It’s a long walk here,” he added. “If you’d like to freshen up a bit, the guest bath is just over here.”

“No, thank you. This will be fine.” She ran the towel across her face and neck, mopping her sweat. Suddenly, her business suit felt too warm. “Is there any place where I may . . . ?” She plucked at her jacket lapel.

“Of course.” Tomas gallantly extended a hand, and Lynn shrugged out of the jacket and surrendered it to him.

“Just one thing, though,” she said, reaching for its inside pocket. “I need my pad . . .”

“Sorry. No pads.” Tomas shook his head as he draped her jacket across his arm. “Not until the president gives permission.”

“You don’t understand. I’m here to interview . . .”

“The president scheduled a time for you to meet with her.” Tomas turned to walk up a short flight of stairs. “Whether she consents to an interview is another matter entirely.”

Irritated, but with no choice but to comply, Lynn followed Tomas as he escorted her through the house. Much of the ground floor was taken up by a large living room, with overstuffed cat-skin furniture arranged around a fieldstone hearth whose chimney rose nearly twenty feet above the polished wooden floor. The sun shone brightly through the cathedral windows, illuminating a framed portrait of the two presidents that hung upon a wall above a handcrafted cabinet. A miniature globe of Coyote, positioned within a semicircular arc carried upon the shoulders of a pewter boid, stood upon a glass-topped center table; scattered here and there were books, delicate ceramic sculptures, finely woven blankets. A place of splendid isolation, inhabited by a couple who’d earned a dignified retirement after a lifetime of labor and sacrifice.

At the back of the living room was another row of windows, shorter than the ones that faced west. Tomas opened a glass door, then stepped aside to let Lynn pass through. She found herself on an open balcony that ran the length of the house, with only a railing separating her from a sheer escarpment that plunged several hundred feet to the rocky shores of the West Channel. And it was here that she found the former president of the Coyote Federation.

Wendy Gunther didn’t appear much older than she did when she and her husband, Carlos Montero, traveled to Earth as Coyote’s emissaries to the United Nations. With pale blond hair turned silver with age and braided into a slender rope that hung down her back from beneath a straw sun hat, she remained slender and almost sensuously regal, with only crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and the wrinkled skin on the backs of her hands giving evidence of her age. There was a certain strength to her, though, that hinted at a sense of belonging to this place; Lynn would later reflect that it was as if she’d become part of Coyote, as native to this world as any of the creatures that had evolved here.

An easel had been set up on the balcony, a broad canvas perched upon the tripod. President Gunther stood before it, wearing a smock smeared with flecks of gumtree-oil paint. She didn’t look around as Tomas escorted Lynn onto the balcony but instead continued to gently daub at the canvas with a small shagshair brush, using brief, gentle strokes to add minute details to the landscape she was creating.

“Ms. Hu, yes?” she said softly, her voice almost too quiet to hear. “Welcome. I’ll just be a minute.” She nodded toward a nearby pair of wingback wicker chairs. “Have a seat, please. Tomas . . . I believe there’s some ice tea in the kitchen. Would you be so kind?”

“Of course, Madam President.” Tomas gestured Lynn toward a chair, then disappeared through the glass door. Yet Lynn didn’t sit down yet. Instead, she stepped closer to the easel to see what President Gunther was painting.

The Garcia Narrows Bridge, as seen from the top of the Eastern Divide. Not a realistic depiction, though, but rather an impressionist image, its two-mile span rendered in muted, slightly unfocused earth tones, the reddish brown colors of the wooden trusswork contrasted against the blue waters of the West Channel and the dark tan of the Midland Rise on the opposite side. Certainly not a masterpiece, yet nonetheless the work of a talented amateur.

“Please don’t tell me it’s good.” The president added a dash of magenta to the leaves of the faux-birch trees in the foreground, then sighed in frustration as she stepped back from the canvas. “An old lady’s hobby, nothing more. Something to while away the time.”

“Well . . . it is pleasant.” Lynn gazed over the balcony rail at the view below. The Garcia Narrows Bridge rose high above the channel, its long roadway joining New Florida with the subcontinent of Midland to the east. If she correctly remembered the history of Coyote colonies, the bridge had been erected during the Union occupation, shortly before the Revolution. Although sabotaged by its own architect, James Alonzo Garcia, the bridge was rebuilt after the war, and now served as the major conduit between the two landmasses.

From the distance, she could see traffic moving along its roadway, with sleek hovercoupes recently imported from Earth competing with riders on horseback and farm wagons hauled by massive shags. Beneath the bridge lay Bridgeton’s commercial port; dozens of vessels were tied up to the pier, while people and animals unloaded freight from barges that had recently sailed up the channel from the Great Equatorial River and carried it to warehouses along the nearby wharf.

“Flattery will get you nowhere . . . except here.” President Gunther dropped her brush in a jar of grain alcohol, then picked up a rag next to the palette and wiped her hands. “So . . . from what I’ve been told, you’re a journalist from the old world, come out here to write about what you’ve found in the new.”

“Yes, ma’am. I—”

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, young lady.” The president’s chin lifted slightly as she turned toward her. “I have a daughter about your age, and I wouldn’t take that from her.” Lynn couldn’t tell she was joking until she glanced toward the door. “Tomas insists on formality,” the president added, smiling as she lowered her voice in a conspiratorial manner. “He’s been with me a long time, so I let him do that . . . but between you and me, I wish he’d call me by my first name.”

“Umm . . . Wendy?”

“At your service.” She offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Hu . . . or may I call you Lynn?”

“Lynn is fine.” Surprised by the unexpected familiarity, Lynn accepted Wendy’s hand. Her grasp was almost mannishly firm, her callused palm like old suede. “Yes, I’m writing a story . . . a series of stories, really . . . about the colonies. Trying to find out what’s going on here, for my readers back on . . .”

“ ‘Trying to find out what’s going on here.’ Fascinating.” Wendy glided over to the wicker chairs. “Please sit . . . ah, and here’s Tomas with our drinks.”

Lynn looked around just as Tomas opened the balcony door and stepped out, carrying two tall glasses filled with dark brown tea. He silently handed one to each of the women, then walked over to the railing and settled against it, arms folded against his chest. “Forgive the sarcasm,” Wendy said as she sat down, “but I’ve been on Coyote for most of my life, and I’m still trying to find out ‘what’s going on here.’ What makes you think you’re going to do any better?”

Again, it was hard to tell if the former president of the colonies was serious or not. “I have a hard time believing that. I mean, one of the reasons why I want to interview you is because of your memoirs . . .”

“You’ve read my book?” Wendy’s face expressed mild astonishment. “All of it?”

“Yes.” Lynn couldn’t help but grin. “You don’t know that it’s been a bestseller back home? Takes several minutes to download . . . and forget about trying to buy a hard copy in a bookstore. The waiting list is . . .”

“I had no idea.” The president shrugged. “I should have a word with my editor. My royalty statements seem to be in arrears.” She gave Lynn a sidelong glance. “Not that I’ll see any money from the book. I’ve put it in my contract that all royalties are to be contributed to the Colonial University medical school. The Kuniko Okada Scholarship, named for . . .”

“Your adoptive mother, who taught you how to become a physician yourself.” Lynn caught the annoyed look on Wendy’s face and shook her head. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all. I’m afraid I’m the one who keeps interrupting.” Wendy took a sip from her tea, then placed her glass on a table between them. Taking off her sun hat, she stood up for a moment to untie her smock, revealing the light summer dress she wore beneath it. “But the question still stands,” she continued, sitting down again. “What makes you think you can do any better?”

Lynn had lost the train of conversation. “Umm . . . at what?”

Wendy gazed at her for a moment, then turned her eyes toward the unfinished painting. “I’ve written my memoirs, and lately I’ve taken up art, and still I find that I’m unable to express . . . or even understand . . . what this has all been about. And I’ve been here since I was little more than a child. This place . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you’ve come to the wrong person. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Perhaps if you just spoke.” Lynn glanced at Tomas. “If I could have my pad, we could do an interview. Get it all down, in your own words.” She hesitated. “Or perhaps I could speak with your husband, if you’d rather not.”

“Carlos is in Liberty, visiting our grandson and attending to some business. I’m afraid he won’t be back for a few days.”

“I see.” Lynn picked up her glass of tea, took a sip. “I understand he’s become the official liaison to the
hjadd
. Is that where he is now? Visiting their consulate, I mean.”

Wendy said nothing for a moment. Lynn wondered if she’d pried a little further than she should. “His dealings with the
hjadd
are matters of state,” Wendy said at last, “and not open for discussion. Was the walk up here difficult? I can’t help but notice that you’re sweating.”

“Not really. Just getting used to the thin air.” Lynn cast her gaze across the balcony. “This is a beautiful house. Interesting place to build . . .”

“But a little off the beaten path, right?” Again, the guarded smile. “After I finished my second term in office, my husband’s sister had it built for us. We considered remaining in Liberty, but . . . well, considering that both Carlos and I had served as president, it became difficult for us to extricate ourselves from politics. Too many people seem to believe that, because they once voted for one or both of us, they’re entitled to a few minutes of our time. So we moved out here and made it as hard as possible for anyone to reach us.”

“Uh-huh.” If Lynn’s recollection was correct, that would be Carlos Montero’s younger sister Marie, who had married into the family that owned the Thompson Wood Company, one of the largest private enterprises on this world. Indeed, it was the current president’s older brother, Lars Thompson, who’d been Marie’s husband before he was murdered; with the recent death of Molly Thompson, the family patriarch, it had fallen to Marie to run the family business. How interesting that the two families, the Monteros and the Thompsons, had come to command so much of the wealth and political power on Coyote. “Well, it is hard to get to.”