Coyote Rising (27 page)

No. Not quite silent or still. A dozen yards away from where
Thompson stood, Manuel Castro crawled on hands and knees across the beach. With his black cloak draped around him, he looked like a wounded slug that had emerged from the water, only to have a bag of salt dropped on it. As Thompson came closer, he heard a rasping sound, like a gear that had come loose and was grinding against metal.

The Savant had taken a bullet, he realized; he was dragging his right leg behind him, and he was unable to stand. As Thompson stopped, Castro arched his neck, peered up at him from beneath his hood.

“You planned this, didn’t you?” Less a question than a statement.

“You had a chance.” Thompson let out his breath, not willing to admit the truth. “You didn’t take it.”

“Yes, well . . . so did you.” There was no pain in the Savant’s voice; if there was any emotion, it was only resignation. “So what do you do propose to do now?”

Thompson didn’t answer at once. Nothing would have given him any more satisfaction than to plant his gun barrel against Castro’s head and squeeze the trigger, even though it wouldn’t have done much good. The Savant was a cyborg, a human intelligence downloaded into a quantum comp contained within its chest, adjacent to the nuclear battery that supplied power to the body’s servomotors. Castro’s limbs were his weak points; even if Thompson tried to shoot him in the head, the bullets would probably ricochet. Unlike the flesh-and-blood soldiers he’d led here, the Savant was virtually immortal.

At least three of Thompson’s people were dead, with no telling how many others wounded. Two cabins were ablaze, with black smoke funneling up into the grey sky, and it was only a matter of time before the others would catch fire as well. Even if no one from the squad had managed to transmit a message back to Liberty, it wouldn’t be long before other Union soldiers would arrive to investigate their silence, this time in greater numbers.

His town was doomed. No option left except evacuation; load everything aboard the boats, call back the raft, and make for Midland as fast as possible. He’d known this might happen; that was why he’d told Molly to start packing up the food and Garth to remain on Midland.

His bets were covered . . . except for one detail.

The raft creaked softly, water spilling across the rough planks of
its deck as it moved across the channel. The rain had stopped an hour ago; the sky had cleared above New Florida, and Uma had begun to set behind the vast wall of the Eastern Divide. Dark clouds remained above Midland, and in the waning hours of the day a rainbow had formed above the channel, a translucent arch of orange and purple that seemed to form a gateway from one world to another.

“Damn, that’s beautiful.” Clark Thompson stood at the front of the raft, one hand braced against crates of pickled fish. “I mean, I’ve lived here two years now, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” He turned to look at Manuel Castro. “What do you think? Isn’t that something?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The Savant was seated awkwardly on the raft, propped up against a barrel. His cloak had been taken away from him, and without it he looked curiously naked: a robot with a thorax like an upside-down bottle, with narrow pipelike arms tied at the wrists behind his back and spindly legs thrust out before him, the broken one at an odd angle, its knee ruined. “Do you see something?”

“The rainbow.” Thompson turned to look at him. “You don’t see it?”

“Sorry, no. My vision isn’t sensitive enough.” Castro lifted his head; multifaceted red eyes peered unblinkingly from his metallic skull. “I can see colors . . . even ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths . . . but things like sunlight shining through water vapor elude me.”

“So you’ve never seen a rainbow?” This from Lars; he and Garth stood at the winch, turning it hand over hand. The others aboard took little interest in the conversation; their attention was upon the receding New Florida shore, watching the flames that consumed the small village they had once called home.

“Oh, I’ve seen rainbows.” Castro didn’t look back at him. “A long time ago . . . a little over eighty years, by Earth’s calendar . . . I was flesh and blood, just like you. But nature wasn’t as kind to my body as it’s been to yours, so when I had the choice of dying as a human or surviving as a Savant, I gave up watching rainbows.”

“Do you miss them?” Thompson asked.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Castro shrugged, an oddly human gesture. “Are we there yet?”

Thompson turned to gaze the other way. The eastern shore was still almost a mile away; the canoes and kayaks carrying Molly and the rest of the townspeople had nearly reached the Midland Rise, but it would take the slower-moving raft a little while longer to get across. “Almost. So what were you before you had yourself downloaded?”

“You’d never believe me if I told you.”

“Try me. Besides, what do you have to lose now?”

Again, the queer buzz that approximated a laugh. “I was a poet.”

“A poet?” Thompson looked back at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Well, that makes two of us. I have a hard time believing that you were once a Union Guard officer.”

Several people raised their heads. It wasn’t something that Thompson kept secret. On the other hand everyone knew that he didn’t like to talk about it, either. “We’ve all got our cross to bear,” Thompson said, looking away once more. “Tell me something else . . . why did you do this?”

Castro didn’t answer at once. “You know, I think I may be able to make out that rainbow. Not the same way you see it, of course . . . sort of as an atmospheric distortion. If you had my vision, you might be able to see it the same way that I do.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I didn’t.” The Savant looked directly at him. “We see things differently, Colonel. You believe that you’ve just fought for your freedom. It cost many lives, and you even let the fire consume the rest of your town just to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Nonetheless, you think you’ve won.”

Thompson didn’t reply. By then the fire had reached the lodge, its smoke rising as a thick brown plume that obscured the white bluffs behind it. Somewhere within those flames were the bodies of everyone who’d died that day, laid out upon the long table where he and the others had shared many meals together. He still felt the ache in his arms from hauling the blackwood logs he and his nephews had carried
through the Monroe Pass. Sometimes freedom means giving up the things you cherish.

“But the way I see it,” Castro continued, “you’re only resisting the inevitable. Coyote belongs to the Union. That’s a fact. You may not believe in collectivism, but it’s here to stay, whether you like it or not. And so are we.”

“And that’s why you came here? Because of some goddamn political theory?”

“No. I came here because I want to see the human race expand into the cosmos, and because collectivism is the only social system that makes sense. What you call freedom, I call anarchy. And anarchy doesn’t—”

“Can’t we just get it over with?” Lars interrupted. “I’m sick of hearing him.”

He and Garth let go of the wheel. The raft drifted to a stop as they stepped across the sacks and crates to stand on either side of the Savant. Castro heard them coming, but he continued to gaze at Thompson with eyes that could no longer see the colors of a rainbow but could make out the lines of a face.

“You think you’ve won,” he went on, “because you’ve ambushed a Union patrol. But there are still more then two hundred soldiers where they came from, and another ship is on its way with even more. It’s futile, Colonel. You’re living on borrowed time and a few stolen guns. Give up now, and you may be able to get out of this with your lives.”

Fists clenched at his sides, Thompson regarded the Savant with helpless anger. He didn’t want to admit it, but Castro was right. They had managed to take down a squad of fourteen soldiers only because they knew they were coming. Next time, they might not be so fortunate. . . .

“You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “You know why? Because this is our home. . . .”

“How noble. Pathetic, but noble.” Again, the eerie laugh. “I hope someone carves that on your tombstone.”

“I hope so. At least I’ll get a grave.”

Thompson glanced at his nephews, then cocked a thumb toward the
channel. Lars and Garth bent over, grasped Castro’s arms from either side. They grunted as they hauled the Savant to his feet. His body was heavier than it looked, yet he didn’t fight back as they pushed him to the edge of the raft. Its weight thrown off-balance, the ferry listed slightly, water sloshing across the planks.

At the last moment, Castro stalled, yet the deck was too slippery and the cords binding his wrists were too tight. Behind him, the other passengers silently watched; there was no emotion on their tired faces, save perhaps for resentment.

“Any last words?” Thompson asked. The Savant said nothing. “Write a poem about this. You’ll have time.” Then he nodded, and his nephews shoved him overboard.

Manuel Castro tumbled into the water with a loud splash. He sank quickly, without leaving so much as a bubble to mark his passage.

They were over the deepest point of the Eastern Channel between New Florida and Midland; his body would plummet more than a hundred feet before it came to rest upon the muddy riverbed. He couldn’t drown, because he was incapable of such a death, nor would he be crushed by the pressure of all that water on top of him, yet he couldn’t swim or even walk. Trapped in an immortal form, marooned in the lightless depths of an alien river, he would have plenty of time to contemplate the nature of freedom.

Thompson watched him long after he disappeared, then he picked up the black robe he’d taken from Castro. At first, he was tempted throw it overboard after him. Instead, he folded it under his arm. Someday, he promised himself, he would raise it on a pole above the ashes of the town he’d built, the day he returned to build it again.

The poet was gone, and so was the mayor. Now only the colonel remained.

“All right, let’s go” he murmured. “We’ve got a war to fight.”

 

If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full due amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the
individual,
separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

 

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Civil Disobedience

WHSS
Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars

Part 5
INCIDENT AT GOAT KILL CREEK