Coyote Rising by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page A

friends.”
    “Thanks. We’ll work things out.” Allegra watched as he turned toward the shack. The door was cracked open; for an instant, she caught a glimpse of Sissy’s face. “Just one more thing . . .”
    “Yes?” The Chief stopped, looked back at her.
    “How long have you been here? I mean . . . which ship did you come in on?”
    Chris hesitated. “We’ve been here three Coyote years,” he said. “We came aboard the Alabama .”
    Allegra gaped at him. “I thought all the first-timers had left.”
    He nodded solemnly. “They did. We’re the ones who stayed behind.”
    “So why . . . ?”
    But he was already walking away. Obviously, that was a question he didn’t want to answer.
     
    Time was measured by the length of her hair. A week after Allegra started work at the community kitchen, she had little more than fuzz on top of her head; that was the day she palmed a small paring knife from the sink and took it home. Its absence wasn’t noticed, and it gave her the first tool she needed to do her work. By the time her shack was built, she no longer needed to wear a head scarf, and she used a few credits to purchase a brush from the general store in Liberty (where she was allowed to enter, so long as she bought something). She had to push back her hair from her face while she finished carving her first flute. A short blade of sourgrass inserted within the bamboo shaft below the mouthpiece served as its reed, and with a little practice she was able to play simple tunes, although not well. It wasn’t until late summer, when her chestnut hair had finally returned to the neck length she’d worn it on Earth, that she finally had her first real conversation with Sissy Levin.
    For many weeks, her reclusive neighbor continued to avoid her; their brief encounter the first night Allegra spent on Coyote was the only time she’d spoken with her. Every morning, just after sunrise when Allegra left to go into Liberty, she spotted Sissy feeding her chickens. She’d wave and call her name—“Good morning, Ms. Levin, how are you?”—and she had little doubt that her voice carried across the short distance between their shacks, but Sissy never acknowledged her except for the briefest of nods. So Allegra would go to work, and early in the afternoon she’d return to find her neighbor nowhere in sight. Every now and then, Allegra would venture over to knock on her door, yet no matter how long or patiently she’d wait outside, Sissy never greeted her.
    Nonetheless, there were signs that Sissy was coming to accept her. About half a month after a group of men from the Carpenters Guild arrived with a cartful of lumber and spent the afternoon building a one-room shack for Allegra, complete with a woodstove fashioned from a discarded fuel cell, some basic furniture, and a small privy out back (“No charge, lady,” the foreman said, “this one’s on the Chief”) she camehome to find a wicker basket of fresh eggs on the front porch. Allegra carefully placed the eggs in the cabinet above the stove, then carried the basket over to Sissy’s house. Again, there was no response to her knocks, and finally Allegra gave up and went home, leaving the basket next to her door. A few days later, though, the basket reappeared . . . this time, though just after sunrise, even before Allegra had woken up.
    This pattern continued for a while. Then one afternoon, Allegra returned home to open the door and discover a dead chicken hanging upside down from the ceiling. The bird hadn’t been plucked or cleaned; it was simply a carcass, its neck broken, its feet tied together with the rough twine from which it had been suspended from a crossbeam. Allegra shrieked when she saw it, and for a moment she thought she heard mad laughter from next door. She didn’t know whether it was a gift or a threat, but she wasn’t about to ask; she didn’t know how to clean the bird, so she took it to the community hall the next morning, and a