Sky Coyote (14 page)

“So noted. Thank you,” said Lopez.

“And they’re not spiritual people at all! Their sexual habits are depraved. They’re decadent. They remind me of those emperor people who used to lie around in togas—you know. What were they called?”

“Romans, sir,” said Lopez faintly.

“Romans, right. The Company would be spending its time and money much better if it went after a nicer tribe. There are Indians down in Los Angeles now with much more meaningful lives. I saw a thing on the holo where they’ve even discovered monotheism and they have a prophet and everything. If
they
were the ones we were saving, I’ll bet they’d develop into a great civilization.”

Lopez cleared his throat.

“With respect, sir, we operatives aren’t permitted to judge the
quality of one mortal culture against another. You all have equal value in our eyes, regardless of your beliefs and practices. We simply follow the directives of Dr. Zeus, and in this particular case Dr. Zeus has decided that the Chumash are worth rescuing.”

“Yes, I know all about you immortals and how smart you are. Well, I’m just an old man from the twenty-fourth century, but I’ll tell you this: we should have programmed you with a sense of right and wrong. Because it sure seems to me that you androids don’t have any.”
Oooo!
What a faux pas. There was a real vibration of subsonic rage in the room from my fellow Old Ones. Lopez drew a deep breath.

“Sir, we are cyborgs. Not androids. There is a difference.”

“Whatever.” The old guy waved dismissively. “The point is that you people just don’t have any values. So I want to go on record as protesting this Chumash thing.
And
the way Dr. Zeus is being run nowadays. I know I can’t do anything about it, but I’ve been a stockholder since this company started, and I don’t like one bit the way it’s turned out.”

“So noted,” said Lopez. And over the red wave of immortal wrath that filled the ether, he broadcast:
Please, everybody, the old horse’s ass is retiring next month
.

The meeting moved on to other topics, and afterward there were refreshments, if you found distilled water and little sea-algae crackers refreshing. I didn’t stay.

I went back to Humashup by a path different from the one I took the first time. People are funny about their gods: might be one or two lurkers hoping to get off an arrow or two at me. So I went over the hills and just strolled in through the oak trees behind the houses, where there were some children running around. They didn’t notice me. I crouched down to watch them.

Little brown kids, mostly naked, playing with some rocks by
water. I’d been like that once: no bright electronic toys, and no possible way to understand one if I’d encountered it. That was before all the operations that turned me into a brainy little cyborg like Latif. Old Eurobase One in the high Cevennes in France, that had been where Budu sent me. They’d unloaded me, crying and airsick and disoriented, straight into the base hospital. When I awoke, my intelligence had been zapped upward a few million points, and I had the potential to become immortal.

The very first thing I remember seeing, in my new improved state, was a flat white wall on which images danced, a lot more colorful than my poor dad’s bison and horses. There were other children lying in beds nearby, and they were giggling weakly at the bright figures. There was a little pink man with a weapon, and a rabbit and a duck; the duck was trying to get the man to kill the rabbit, but the rabbit was so clever, he managed to turn the duck’s scheming back against him every time. The duck’s bill was blown completely off his face. I laughed at that until I hurt.

Eurobase One was a lot more primitive than the deluxe private-school bases the Company built later. It was more like a military base with a school attached as a kind of afterthought, and we kids were used to seeing Enforcers go charging out to fight off the latest stupid attack by the Great Goat Cult. Bad guys were stupid. I remember a nurse sitting down on the edge of my bed and explaining this to me. The Rabbit was the hero, because he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, and he used his intelligence to confuse his enemies so they hurt themselves instead of hurting him. It made sense to me, and as a role model the screwy Rabbit was hard to improve on. Which was a good thing, since Eurobase One had a limited budget for teaching tools in those days.

I wondered how these kids would adjust to a new world, and to new heroes like rabbits and stuttering pigs? To say nothing of all the shiny educational toys the Company provided for its mortal
wards. The kids wouldn’t be turned into little geniuses like I’d been, but life was going to offer a lot more than the game of scrambling up on a high rock and stopping everyone else from getting up there too.

These kids seemed to be having a great time, though, getting muddy in a stream. Nobody was watching as one little guy, maybe fifteen months old, toddled away downstream and found a big pool of still water to stare into.

Something on its surface fascinated him, and, after watching awhile, he made a grab for it. He lost his balance and fell in. It wasn’t all that deep, but he wasn’t all that big, and once he’d choked and got water up his nose, he became panicky and uncoordinated. Facedown in the water, and somehow unable to climb out.

Now, I can watch human tragedy on the large scale and yawn. Nations fall? Big deal. Revolutions fail? So? Societies collapse? I’ll join the looters. Most people have it coming to them. Their babies don’t, though. So I sprinted over and fished the kid out before he could drown. At the sight of me he coughed up water and began to scream bloody murder.

The other kids paid no attention until one of them glanced over and noticed I was Coyote, and then they all came running. “Sky Coyote!” they all yelled, mostly in unison.

“Are You really Sky Coyote?”

“Are You going to take us away in a canoe?”

“Will You make some magic work for us?”

“Can I go up in the sky with You?”

“Look, whose baby is this?” I demanded, holding him out at arm’s length because he was wetting all over the place in his terror.

“That’s my little brother, Sky Coyote,” admitted a boy about eight years old.

“Well, why weren’t you watching him? He almost drowned,” I said sternly.

He just stared at me.

“Where’s your mother?” I barked at him.

“She’s working in her house,” volunteered another child.

“Well, where’s her house?” Now they all just stared until I bared my fangs at them, and then they all took a step backward. One’ of them pointed to a house down the street.

“Over there.”

“Thanks,” I growled, and hauled the still-shrieking kid in that direction. As I departed, I heard one of the group say:

“He’s
mean
.”

The only reason the baby’s mother didn’t hear me coming was that she was having an argument with a man at her door. She was a nicely plump lady in the two-piece outfit most of the working women wore, a woven tule skirt under a tabard of the same material, fastened at the shoulder with a feathered pin. The skirt was weighted at the hem with little plumb bobs of drilled stone to keep it hanging in dignified folds. This regal effect was spoiled a little by the fact that she was yelling so loud, the veins were standing out in her neck.

“You have to be crazy!” she was shouting. “I can’t turn out three-color baskets that fast! Nobody can!”

“My other manufacturers do,” the man said.

“Oh no, buster, no no no, you just said the
wrong
thing. Didn’t you ever think me and the other ladies would get together and compare notes?” Her eyes widened in fierce triumph. “You’ve been using that line on all of us! And we found out you’ve been lying about a
lot
of things. Like the price controls on deergrass!”

He was withering under her assault when I barked, “Excuse me.” She barely glanced at me, and then she and the man did a set of double-takes so classic, it put me in mind again of the rabbit
and the duck. “This your baby, lady?” I held him out. She didn’t take him, but he scrambled loose from me at last and ran to cling to her. “What’s going on, here?” I inquired.

“Just a business discussion, Sky Coyote.” The man held up his hands. I recognized him as Kaxiwalic, the one introduced to me at the town meeting as a successful entrepreneur. Not all that successful, to judge from his skinny appearance and the fact that he wore only a couple of strands of shell money. Right now he looked as though he’d like nothing better than to vanish silently into the sagebrush. “I’ll see you later, Skilmoy.”

“Hey, now here’s somebody who’d be interested in your dirty tricks!” Grinning hugely, the woman grabbed him by the arm. “What do You think of smooth operators, Coyote? This lousy slave driver charges us extra for our materials and then gets a kickback from the Deergrass Gatherers’ Union—” The baby’s squalling threatened to drown her out. She leaned down and slapped him a good one. “Shut up! Kyupi, will you get out here and do something with him?”

An adolescent girl came out of the house. Her eyes got big when she saw me, but she grabbed up the baby and scuttled back inside with him. I could hear her rocking and shushing, rocking and shushing.

“These women are all lazy,” said Kaxiwalic in a chummy way, evidently assuming I was a male chauvinist god. Skilmoy rounded on him furiously.

“Lazy! Sky Coyote, do You know how hard I have to work to feed all these miserable children? Do You know how much fish costs these days? I’m an
artist—”

“Your baby almost drowned.”

“He what?” Her face crumpled up. Tears came into her eyes. “How can I watch him when I have to weave baskets every hour of the day and night? The kids won’t help me with him at all.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have had so many,” said Kaxiwalic, looking smug.

“I’d like to see you pregnant every year, you bastard, and count how many big basket deals you’d make—”

“Now, hold it.” I stepped between them. “What’s the point of all this? Weren’t you listening to what I told you in the meeting hall? The end of the world is coming soon. What do you need all these baskets for?”

“I can sell them, Sky Coyote,” explained Kaxiwalic. “I mean, wherever we go, people are going to need baskets, right? And wait’ll they see my merchandise. I see the end of this world as an opportunity. Think of the new markets opening up in the next one!”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear: you’re going to a wonderful paradise. Do you think there are underpaid, overworked women in paradise to make baskets for you?”

“But that’s exactly why I need a big inventory before we leave! I have to—” I took him by the arm. He flinched at the touch of my paw. I looked into his eyes and shook my head.

“Uh-uh,” I told him. He stared at me.

“But if I don’t have baskets to sell, I—”

“Uh-uh. You can’t use World Below methods in the World Above.”

He opened and shut his mouth a few times. He glanced quickly at the woman and then said to me, lowering his voice, “Can I discuss this with You later?”

“Anytime.”

“Thank You. I have to be going now.” He hurried off, doubtless to call an emergency meeting of the local businessmen.

Skilmoy had calmed down a little, but now she looked worried.

“Sky Coyote, are you saying Kaxiwalic won’t need us to make baskets for him anymore?”

“Yes, my child.”

“But he can’t lay us off! How are we going to live, with no money coming in?”

“What will you need money for, in paradise? As far as that goes, why do you need it now? Don’t I send you plenty of good food? Look at all the acorns there are, look at all the roots and seeds and bulbs. I haven’t seen one starving person in this town.”

“Well, so nobody’s starving, but I have to pay the fishermen and the hunters, don’t I? And I have to pay the fees to get my son into the Kantap Society, so he can go somewhere in life. For all the child support I get, my ex-husband might just as well be in hell, which is where I wish he was anyway.”

“Now, now, my child.” Boy, these people needed a social benefits program or at least a day care center, but that wasn’t my job. I was only there to play God. “Don’t you understand that all these concerns won’t exist anymore, very soon?”

She looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. “When You say we’ll all be in paradise … You don’t mean we’ll all be dead or anything like that, do you?”

“No. You’ll live long, long, and happy lives, and you’ll never be sick or in need.” And that was the absolute truth; the Company had great retirement plans for its mortal employees. “Then you’ll move on to another plane of existence.”

“That’s just … that’s too good to be true.” She stared hard at me, wanting to believe it all the same. “No trouble? No bad luck? No work?”

“I didn’t say there wouldn’t be any work.”

“Ha! I knew it.”

“But it’ll be easy work, helping the Spirits. You’ll have everything you could possibly want. If you didn’t have
something
to do, paradise would be a pretty boring place. But you won’t have any worries.”

“Well, no offense, Sky Coyote, but I’ll believe it when we get there.” She got an odd look on her face. “Coyote? Are You going to rescue the people at Syuxtun Township too?”

“No,” I told her. “Only Humashup has been chosen.”

She clapped her hands and let out a whoop of laughter. “My ex-husband and his girlfriend live in Syuxtun!” she cried in delight. I put my head on one side and regarded her. “You’re a pal, Sky Coyote! Come in and have some food. Do You like roasted agave heart?”

“With cherry sauce?” I said hopefully. She looked coy, and I followed her inside.

The girl was still rocking the baby by the fire. As we came in, he pointed at me and began to scream again.

“Oh, shut up, stupid, can’t you see this is Sky Coyote?” Skilmoy went and rummaged among her kitchen things.

“Hello, Uncle Sky Coyote. He’s too little to understand, Mama,” said the girl.

“Hi there.” I sat down on a tule-reed mat.

“Well, he’d damn well better learn to understand, if he wants to get anywhere in life,” retorted Skilmoy. “Kyupi, where’s the agave heart we had last night?”