THE MADWOMAN OF SHUTTLEFIELD

The first night Allegra DiSilvio spent on Coyote, she met the madwoman of Shuttlefield. It seemed like an accident at the time, but in the weeks and months to follow she'd come to realize that it was much more, that their fates were linked by forces beyond their control.

The shuttle from the Long Journey touched down in a broad meadow just outside the town of Liberty. The high grass had been cleared from the landing pad, burned by controlled fires to create a flat expanse nearly a half mile in diameter, upon which the gull-winged spacecraft settled after making its long fall from orbit. As she descended the gangway ramp and walked out from beneath the hull, Allegra looked up to catch her first sight of Bear: a giant blue planet encircled by silver rings, hovering in an azure sky. The air was fresh, scented with midsummer sourgrass; a warm breeze caressed the dark stubble of her shaved scalp, and it was in that moment she knew she'd made it. The journey was over; she was on Coyote.

Dropping the single bag she had been allowed to bring with her from Earth, Allegra fell to her hands and knees and wept.

Eight months of waiting to hear whether she'd won the lottery, two more months of nervous anticipation before she was assigned a berth aboard the next starship to 47 Ursae Majoris, a week of sitting in Quito before boarding the Union Astronautica space elevator in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, three days spent traveling to lunar orbit, where she boarded the Long Journey . . . then, forty-eight years in dreamless biostasis, to wake up cold, naked, and bald, forty-six light-years from everything familiar, with everyone she had ever known either long dead or irrevocably out of her reach.

She was so happy, she could cry. Thank you, God, she thought. Thank you, thank you . . . I'm here, and I'm free, and the worst is over.

She had no idea just how wrong she was. And it wasn't until after she'd made friends with a crazy old lady that she'd thank anyone again.

Liberty was the first colony on Coyote, established by the crew of the URSS Alabama in A.D. 2300, or C.Y. 01 by the Lemarean calendar. It was now 2306 by Gregorian reckoning, though, and the original colonists had long since abandoned their settlement, disappearing into the wilderness just days after the arrival of WHSS Seeking Glorious Destiny Among the Stars for the Greater Good of Social Collectivism, the next ship from Earth. No one knew why they'd fled—or at least those who knew weren't saying—but the fact remained that Liberty had been built to house only a hundred people. Glorious Destiny brought a thousand people to the new world, and the third ship—Traveling Forth to Spread Social Collectivism to New Frontiers—had brought a thousand more, and so by the time the Long Journey to the Galaxy in the Spirit of Social Collectivism reached Coyote, the population of New Florida had swelled to drastic proportions.

The log cabins erected by the first settlers were currently occupied by Union Astronautica officers from Glorious Destiny and New Frontiers. It hadn't been long before every tree within ten miles had been cut down for the construction of new houses, with roads expanding outward into what had once been marshes. Once the last stands of blackwood and faux birch were gone, most of the wildlife moved away. The swoops and creek cats that once preyed upon livestock were seldom seen anymore, and with automatic guns placed around the colony's perimeter only rarely did anyone hear the nocturnal screams of boids. Still there wasn't enough timber to build homes for everyone.

Newcomers were expected to fend for themselves. In the spirit of social collectivism, aid was given in the form of temporary shelter and two meals a day, but beyond that it was every man and woman for himself. The Union Astronautica guaranteed free passage to Coyote for those who won the public lottery, but stopped short of promising anything once they'd arrived. Collectivist theory held that a sane society was one in which everyone reaped the rewards of individual efforts; but Liberty was still very much a frontier town, and anyone asking for room and board in the homes owned by those who'd come earlier was likely to receive a cold stare in return. All men were created equal, yet some were clearly more equal than others.

And so, once she'd picked herself up from the ground, Allegra found herself taking up residence not in Liberty, where she thought she'd be living, but in Shuttlefield, the sprawling encampment surrounding the landing pad. She made her way to a small bamboo hut with a cloverweed-thatched roof where she stood in line for an hour before she was issued a small tent that had been patched many times by those who'd used it earlier, a soiled sleeping bag that smelled of mildew, and a ration card that entitled her to eat in what had once been Liberty's grange hall before it was made into the community center. The bored Union Guard soldier behind the counter told her that she could pitch her tent wherever she wanted, then hinted that he'd be happy to share his cabin if she'd sleep with him. She refused, and he impatiently cocked his thumb toward the door before turning to the next person in line.

Shuttlefield was a slum; there was no other way to describe it. Row upon row of tents, arranged in untidy ranks along muddy footpaths trampled by countless feet, littered with trash and cratered by potholes. The industrious had erected shelter from bamboo grown from seeds brought from Earth; others lived out of old cargo containers into which they had cut doors and windows. Dirty children chased starving dogs between clotheslines draped with what looked like rags until Allegra realized that they were garments; the smoke from cook fires was rank with the odor of compost. Two faux birch shacks, side by side, had handwritten signs for MEN and WOMEN above their doors; the stench of urine and feces lay thick around them, yet it didn't stop people from pitching tents nearby. The voices she heard were mostly Anglo, but her ears also picked up other tongues—Spanish, Russian, German, various Arab and Asian dialects—all mixed together in a constant background hum.

Copyright © 2004 by Allen M. Steele