Oblivion (11 page)

My people,
said the Elder who had spoken before.

In unison, all of the eyestalks were pocketed. Heads went down, tentacles flattened in a submissive position. The sound of so much movement echoed in the square.

Cicoi kept one stalk out. He wanted to see, and he knew it was allowed.

We shall do all we can to preserve our people. You must trust in us, as you have in the past. Now. Go back to your work.

Single stalks rose and pointed away from the Elders. Keeping heads bowed and tentacles as flat as possible, the Malmuria filed toward their work.

Cicoi took a deep breath. He turned toward Command Central’s main door only to find a single Elder before him. He did not recognize which one this was: they were so wispy as to be almost formless.

Other Elders stood before the Commanders of the North and Center.

You seem hesitant,
the Elder said, and Cicoi wondered if it was speaking to him, or to all three of them.

None of the others answered. Cicoi could only assume that the Elder was speaking directly to him.

“I am not hesitant,” Cicoi said softly.

Ah,
the Elder said, and his head moved slightly forward.
But you are. You have concerns about the creatures of the third planet. You believe because they have developed technology, because they have
learned,
they should not die.

Cicoi flattened his tentacles and moved his eyestalk into a position of respect. “It has always been our policy to leave the natives as untouched as possible.”

We no longer have time for niceties, Commander.
The Elder’s mental voice seemed colder than it had before. Cicoi did not know how that was possible, but it was.
We are speaking of the survival of our own people.

“I know,” Cicoi said.

You are young. Inexperienced. You do not know.

Cicoi raised one of his eyestalks enough to peek out of the pocket. The other two Commanders appeared to be getting instructions from their Elders, not having conversations.

Are you paying attention?
This time the Elder’s voice held the sharpness of command.

“Yes, O Great One. I’m sorry.”

We were speaking of our survival.

“I know.”

Survival occurs at all costs.

Cicoi almost lost control of the single fully extended eyestalk. He forced himself to hold it in place. “All costs?”

You
are
young,
the Elder said. Six of its upper tentacles floated free. Cicoi couldn’t tell if they indicated annoyance, amusement, or both.
We were speaking of the creatures on the third planet, and your sympathy for them.

“It’s not sympathy.”

Empathy then. A reluctance to kill sentient beings.

“It is a tenet of our training.”

It is a luxury. All ethical considerations are luxuries in grave situations.

Cicoi felt his lower tentacles wobble. “We have to make choices that do not diminish us.”

Do you think anyone will care what our choices were if our species does not survive?
The Elder moved closer to him. Cicoi had to concentrate to prevent himself from backing away.
I am not telling you to kill indiscriminately. I am ordering you to view all options. The creatures of the third planet have proven themselves to be resourceful. If they hold us off, if they destroy more of our harvesters, the choice will come down to one thing: their survival or ours.

Cicoi’s eyestalk toppled, and he pocketed it quickly, making himself temporarily blind. He raised a different eyestalk.

Theirs or ours,
the Elder repeated.
If it comes to it, can you order the destruction of the creatures of the third planet?

“All of them?”

We might need them gone because of their fighting capability. Or we might need their organic material for food. The third planet is not as rich as it was in my time.
The Elder’s transparent eyestalks turned toward him.
Which is a long way of saying, yes. You might have to destroy all of them. Can you do so?

Cicoi wobbled again on his lower tentacles. He couldn’t maintain the position of respect much longer.

The Elder’s ten eyes were staring at him. They seemed eerie, with their whitened pupils, their transparent lids.

“Yes,” Cicoi finally said. “I’ll do what I have to. I will protect my people first and foremost.”

The Elder’s eyestalks bent slightly, and then he turned them toward his companions.
We have agreement from the Commander of the South.

And the North,
came a different Elder’s voice.

And Center,
came a third.

Cicoi bowed his head and folded his tentacles into a position of submission. Survival at all costs.

It was the only way.

April 29, 2018
11:16 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time

168 Days Until Second Harvest

Somehow, seeing the destruction a second time wasn’t as devastating. Perhaps that was because Cross was prepared for it.

He sat in the back of a helicopter, again, the same pilot in front of him. Sunlight played across the majestic Pacific, sparkling on the waves. He saw the white spot among all the black as the copter turned and began its rapid descent.

Cross wasn’t nervous this time. He was feeling optimistic and it felt strange.

Jamison had paged him less than twenty-four hours ago, claiming he had found what they were looking for. A cache of the little alien nanomachines.

Cross’s stomach had settled down for the first time in weeks. He even ate some leftover pot roast from the dinner Constance had prepared for him while he was packing for his second flight across country in less than a week.

He was glad to be returning to California. The Tenth Planet Project meeting had left him unsettled. Britt claimed it was because of the discussion about secrecy.

Cross knew that it was his reaction to the aliens.

Something about them had penetrated his scientific aloofness. If he had to guess, he would say something buried within him recognized that visage as the face of the enemy. He had mentioned it to Shane in passing, and Shane had laughed.

“You mean we’ve got an instinctual reaction to those things?” he asked. “Like a rabbit instinctively knows the shadow of a hawk means danger?”

“I don’t like your analogy,” Cross said. “But yeah, I think that might be what’s going on. Didn’t you have a reaction?” “Of course,” Shane said, “but my rationale for it was different. I know what those creatures can do. I think I have a right to be repulsed. And angry.”

“It’s not a scientific reaction,” Cross said.

“Since when did an emotional response become unscientific?” Shane asked. “You might have been looking on the thing that will kill you. Don’t you think that’ll create a reaction—in anyone?”

Shane had a point, but, days later, Cross wasn’t sure he agreed with it. His reaction concerned him because he worried that he wouldn’t be able to look at the aliens rationally. In a war situation, the enemy was always made out to be subhuman. In this war situation, the enemy was
nonhuman,
and that might be a problem. If Cross—and his colleagues— couldn’t get by their feelings of disgust, couldn’t look at things rationally, then they might miss something important, something that could only be gained through understanding. Not through fear or anger.

But Cross wouldn’t, and couldn’t, put away the desire to pay those creatures back somehow.

Someway.

The copter set down on the white patch, and Cross got out. The black dust whipped around him as the copter blades slowed. His skin crawled, just like it had before, only this time, he ignored it. He stepped out from under the blades, and into the truck that was parked alongside the spot.

Jamison was at the wheel, looking jaunty. “We have loot,” he said.

“Let’s hope it’s the right kind,” Cross said.

Jamison backed the truck up and drove down the narrow path that led out of the destruction. “We found it in the remains of a restaurant, of all things.”

“A restaurant?” Cross asked. “How’d you know?”

“The industrial-sized stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher were largely intact, along with some steel tables. The nanoharvesters got blown underneath the door of the freezer somehow.”

“If they were inside something, how’d you find them?” Cross asked.

“I opened the door. I wanted to see if the food inside had gotten destroyed.”

“It had, I take it,” Cross said.

Jamison shook his head. “Apparently those nanoharvesters eat on the way down. They don’t have independent propulsion. They somehow got through the door. Maybe it was left open when they were dropped and got shoved closed by something falling before they were picked up. Who knows. But they were trapped in there. Some of the food they had missed, and it smelled like a son of a bitch ”

Cross didn’t have to be in that freezer to know what it smelled like. He was glad he hadn’t been there after all. “Good work,” he said.

“You’ve been saying that, but let’s wait until you examine those things.” Jamison bumped the truck over a curb and onto a real road. Suddenly buildings surrounded them. It felt as if they had sprouted suddenly, when of course they hadn’t. But Cross hadn’t been looking at the road—purposely. He hadn’t wanted to see the black dust, the twisted metal, lining the sides. So it was out of the corner of his eye that the buildings suddenly appeared.

Jamison took the truck on a road Cross hadn’t been on. They parked in front of what had once been an insurance office. Jamison had gotten permission to set up camp here before Cross had left the first time, but this was the first time Cross had been in the building.

It was a single story with tacky plastic desks from the early ’90s. The door’s window even had the business’s name painted in gold.

Jamison unlocked the door and went inside. His computer setup was in the back office, the one that had probably belonged to the long-vanished insurance agent. Cross didn’t want to think about what had happened to that person.

“I suppose you want to see them,” Jamison said.

“Yes,” Cross said.

“Okay.” Jamison sat down at the desk, spun his chair to the right, and grabbed two sets of thin rubber gloves. He handed one set to Cross, who put them on, and then slipped the other set on himself. Then Jamison picked up a microscope slide. It really didn’t look as if anything was on it, the nanomachines were so small.

“These were in the freezer by themselves?” Cross asked. “How did you even see them?”

“I kept the wand running. I found a whole pile. It was like a little anthill.”

Cross took the slide and held it gingerly. He brought it closer to his eye. He could barely see what looked like dirt flecks that sometimes got on his sunglasses. Smaller by far than the period at the end of a sentence, these nanoharvesters seemed completely harmless.

He still found it amazing that something that small could do so very much damage.

“Okay,” he said, handing the slide back to Jamison. “Let’s see these vicious machines up close and personal.” “I thought you’d never ask.” Jamison put the slide into the microscope built into the side of his computer. An enlargement of a section of the slide, a thousand times bigger than could be seen by the naked eye, appeared on the screen.

The nanomachines were gray and oblong, with ten slashes along their upper surface. Viewed this way, they looked like carved rocks or the badly designed New Age jewelry of his youth.

Except for their color and their three-dimensional appearance, they looked just like the fossils that Edwin Bradshaw had found embedded into a bit of rock decades ago.

“That’s them, all right,” Cross said.

“I figured,” Jamison said, “when I brought them back here and gave them a quick look-see. Our nanotechnology is becoming pretty sophisticated, but it’s nothing like these little creatures here.”

“What can you tell me about them?” Cross asked.

“Not much,” Jamison said. “Analyzing other people’s technology is not my strong suit. That’s why you have Portia.”

“She’s in South America with Bradshaw,” Cross said.

“I think it’s time she comes home,” Jamison said.

“I think you’re right.” Cross tapped his wrist’puter and had it dial out for Bradshaw. Jamison continued to stare at the nanomachines.

So did Cross.

They were creepy in their own way, a completely different way than the aliens themselves were. The nanomachines didn’t move. They seemed inanimate. Something that small, Cross thought, should be moving, like viruses in a drop of blood. But these things just rested on the glass surface, waiting for something to activate them.

“Will they eat us if we touch them?” Cross asked.

“I don’t want to find out,” Jamison said. “We’ve been using strict contamination procedures whenever we work with these things. I don’t even know if this group has chewed its quota or hasn’t even begun its work. That’s for Portia.”