When he got out, he saw that the canyon had closed behind him, like a great black throat on an insignificant morsel. There was not even a crack in the rock. Coyote had no way to go but forward. He took one last look at his beautiful ruined car.
For a while he could walk upright. Then the canyon contracted even more, and Coyote had to walk in a crouch, then on all fours, then crawl on his belly. Still he pressed on, because Coyote was not wise enough to know he was trapped. Behind him the canyon closed tight, with a sound like mountains grinding together. Finally he could crawl no farther, and he felt the canyon pressing on his feet. He could feel a breath of sweet air in his face, so he knew the crack led out, but he could not force himself into it.
"Then I must make myself smaller," Coyote said. He dropped his man shape like an old coat and became a small, wild dog. In this form he crawled on, but the crevice tightened, until he could go no farther. Coyote said, "Well, I must become a rabbit," and in this form he went on.
Finally the crack was too small for the rabbit to continue. Coyote had always disliked snakes, but the breeze still blew, and the canyon pressed at his back paws, so he shrugged his rabbit shoulders and became a snake. For a time he slithered along rapidly, and the breeze grew stronger, and he began to believe he would get out. "This will make a fine story to tell to the other First Folk," Coyote hissed, and he was already at work adding colorful details to this story, when the crack abruptly narrowed again. Somehow Coyote was not surprised, but he had come too far to give up. He began to think that he should have sung his death chant when he had still had a voice to sing with, since snakes cannot sing, but he gathered all his power, and changed himself into a worm as narrow as a thread. But the worm was too narrow to hold Coyote's soul. The last thing he felt was a great pain, as his soul fled.
Thinwolf looked at the hulk again. It had turned away its head so that Thinwolf could not see its face. "Is that the end, John?" it asked in a muffled voice.
"No," Thinwolf said. "Shall I go on? There's only a little more."
"Please," the hulk said.
The worm crawled on, because it knew nothing else to do, and finally it came to the end of the great canyon, which was a hole in the ground no bigger than a pinprick. The worm came up into the sunlight of another world. It assumed the form of a man again, but Coyote was gone, and a thousand thousand years passed before he returned to his own body. And that is the story of how Coyote left the World of Roads.
"Did you like it?" Thinwolf asked the hulk.
The hulk rolled its handsome head and looked up into the night sky. "Yes, John," the hulk said. "It was another good story. Something in it calls to me, though it made me angry and afraid. Those are still uncomfortable emotions for me, perhaps because I am so new."
Thinwolf rubbed at his face, looked out across the dark sea. "They're uncomfortable for me, too. I'm far too old."
"Why do you tell such stories?"
Thinwolf had no answer, so he reached out to switch the hulk off.
"Wait, John." The hulk spoke humbly. "Could you leave me on standby?"
"Why?"
"I know I must hold your mind someday; this is my destiny, and I go gladly to it, as I was designed to do, but first... I have thoughts I wish to think. Simple thoughts, I think; still, they are mine."
"Why not?" Thinwolf left the foredeck, went below. He lay in his bunk, unable to sleep.
He remembered.
THE DISEASE had begun to kill him halfway through the long voyage from Dilvermoon to Jaworld. The early stages were agony, but he could still act. He instructed the ship to seek the nearest SeedCorp outpost, and retreated to his acceleration cocoon, and to the cool blessing of the morphine drip. The ship roused him as they approached the water world of Passage.
The pain had eased somewhat; he was able to get to the console and send a Mayday to the SeedCorp orbital platform.
When the screen lit with the incoming signal, he pushed back the pain, tried to smile disarmingly.
The factor had a thin, hard face, with gray hair piled on her head in a froth of curls. "What is your difficulty, longhauler Summerlodge?"
"I'm ill," Thinwolf said. Sweat ran down his neck, dripped off his chest onto the gleaming console. "I require the use of your med unit; mine is inadequate."
The factor frowned. "You are alone? You have no diagnosis?"
"Alone. No diagnosis."
The factor sat back, away from the comm unit's pickup field. Thinwolf stared at a swirling pattern of pastel color. "Our quarantine regs are stringent, Summeilodge. I'm not sure how we can help you; at the moment our staff is minimal. Can you not reach a settled world?"
A flash of rage burned free from the pain. "I am dying. If you will not allow me access to your med unit, I will die, but before I do, I'll launch a message torpedo to Dilvermoon. This vessel is under contract to SeedCorp; you must assist me, or SeedCorp will face litigation from my heirs." He saw no reason to mention that he had no heirs. "You will be terminated without compensation; this is SeedCorp policy, as you must know." The speech exhausted him, and he let his head sag.
In the end the factor allowed him to board an empty warehouse cylinder, in which she and her crew had previously placed their med unit.
When he emerged from its diagnostic cavity, the med unit spoke in professionally sympathetic terms. No hope, it told him. A tailored virus had invaded every cell of his body, and the med unit lacked the tech to pry it out. It could not even find an uncontaminated cell from which to clone a replacement body, and had that been possible, it had no acceleration tank in which a body could be brought to maturity before the virus killed him.
"I can keep you alive for a short time, and make the pain bearable; otherwise I am helpless," said the med unit. "You have clever enemies. Citizen Thinwolf. They have thoroughly murdered you."
"How long?" Thinwolf asked.
"Four to six standard weeks, perhaps a little longer."
"Ah. Cold storage?"
"Not equipped for it here, Citizen Thinwolf."
He would die. He would die.
After a time his heart thawed, pumped him full of fear. He called the factor, shouted incoherently.
"This is a very minor outpost," she said. "Once a year a circuit freighter calls, and we load on whatever artifacts the free-lance salvagers have managed to take from the Cities. We're mostly end-of-the-liners here; the company doesn't care much about us."
He caught at the word. "Cities?"
"They'll do you no good." The factor had a glimmer of pity in her eyes. "The Forbidden Cities. They’re closed, the live ones, and even if you could get into one and persuade it to help you, well, they're of alien manufacture. What would they know of human diseases?"
The factor's image swam in the monitor; Thinwolf was shocked to feel the heat of tears on his face. "Listen," she said. "The med unit assures me that your disease is too specific to be contagious. Come aboard the main module, and we'll make you as comfortable as we can."
He bowed his head. "Thank you. A kind offer. I'll let you know."
Back aboard the Summerlodge, he went back into the cocoon, where he lay for a day and a night, allowing the palliatives the med unit had prescribed to flush the worst of the pain away.
When he emerged, he felt strong enough to take on the task of ordering his last days. He listened to his favorite music; every phrase seemed unbearably poignant. He prepared his favorite dinner, and tasted a bit from each dish, in defiance of the med unit. Each flavor seemed unbearably intense. He ran his favorite sensie tape, and wept to hear other voices, to see other faces, to touch healthy flesh.