Footfall (24 page)

“To see Saturn.” An anger was building in Wes Dawson, and he didn’t understand it. They had come in war and killed without warning, but he’d known that for days. What new grievance — They had used Saturn! Deep in his heart Dawson felt that Saturn belonged to Earth-to mankind-to the United States that had explored Saturn system, to the science establishment and science fiction fandom. Goddaminit, Saturn is ours!

He kept his silence. The film started again, and jumped. They’d skipped something: they’d skipped most of what they were doing in Saturn system. Two crescents, Earth and Moon, were growing near. Wedge-shaped markers pointed out the United States and Soviet moon bases, artifacts in orbit, weather satellites, Soviet devices of unknown purpose, the space station…

“Question, time you know we come,” Takpusseh said. Then louder: “Time you know we come!”

“One sixth part of a year,” Arvid said in English. “A year is—” His hands moved, a forefinger circling a fist, while he spoke alien words: “Circle Earth around Earth-star.”

“You slow to fight. You know we come. Why slow?”

Why had Earth’s defenders responded so slowly? Wes said, “Earth fithp, chtaptisk fithp maybe not fight.”

“You fight,, you not fight, two is one. Earth fithp is chtaptisk fithp. Sooner if Earth fithp not fight.”

The last time Wes Dawson had felt like this, he had put his fist into a Hell’s Angel’s mouth just as far as it would go. “You came to make war? Only to make war?”

“Make war, yes,” Takpusseh said, as if relieved to be understood.

Wes barely felt a large hand closing on his arm, above the elbow. “What can you take, move to fithp world?” What could they possibly hope to steal? They’d dropped too much of their craft; they’d be lucky to return home themselves!

“Earth is world for chtaptisk fithp,” Takpusseh said.

Warriors had come at Takpusseh’s bellow. The humans were gone now. Fathisteh-tulk helped Takpusseh to his feet. “Are you injured?”

“My pride hurts worse than my eye-and snnfp. Dawson surprised me entirely. They look so fragile!”

“They don’t know when to fight and they don’t know how to surrender,” the Herdmaster’s Advisor said. “One would think that would be good news for the invasion, but I wonder.”

“ Dawson is mad,” Breaker-One Raztupisp-minz said. “His behavior tells us nothing. Must we keep him?”

“He is a puzzle that needs cracking. He speaks English as his native language, and we will need that too until the others know the speech of the fithp a srupk or two better.”

“They must surrender, at once, formally,” Raztupisp-minz stated. “We should have taught them how, and much earlier, so that they can teach future prisoners.”

The memory flashed in Takpusseh’s mind; it hurt worse than his eye. Takpusseh realized why he had delayed this crucial step. “Of course you’re right, Breaker-One. I want to visit the medical section. I’ll meet you afterward, above the restraining cell.”

It hurt to breathe, but he had to breathe. Hands were on him, probing a stabbing agony in his ribs. Wes gasped and fought to open his eyes. Red mist… gradually clearing… the shapes around him resolved into human faces…

“What happened?”

“You attacked the teacher, Takpusseh. I tried to stop you.” Dmitri said. “Do you remember?”

Seeing red… but his mind must have been working well on some level. He hadn’t just swung a fist. He’d lunged forward and reached between the branches of Takpusseh’s trunk, closed his fingers hard in Takpusseh’s nostril, and pulled back savagely to keep himself moving. The teacher screamed; his digits had whipped around Wes’s rib cage. With his ribs collapsing and the air sighing out of him, Wes Dawson reached along the trunk and slid his thumb under Takpusseh’s thick right eyelid-was he flying?-and did his damnedest to twist it off. He didn’t remember any more.

“Why did you do it?”

“They never had the least intention of negotiating anything,” he said. “They came to take the Earth away from us.”

Dmitri Grushin took Dawson’s chin in his hand and twisted it to put them eye to eye. “Do not attack them again. You would kill us all for nothing. For nothing.”

They were quiet for some time. Then Arvid and Dmitri began to talk. Wes, with too little Russian, quickly lost track. He was more interested in the pictures in his own mind.

Presently he asked, “Did you notice? They threw away half their ship.”

“Yes,” Arvid said. “The external fuel tank, and the massive looking ring.”

“I think it was a modified Bussard ramjet.”

“Explain.”

“It’s a way of reaching the stars. Fusion drive, but you get your fuel by scooping up interstellar hydrogen.”

Arvid dismissed that. “Certainly nobody has ever built a Bussard ramjet. How would you recognize one?’

“After they got going they changed something. It made a violet glow behind the ship. Arvid, the point is that they threw it away when they got here. It was used to cross interstellar space, and they dropped it. They let it fall back toward the stars. They’re serious. They’ve got no plans to go home.”

“I was more interested in watching our captors. So. They dropped it to save weight, of course, but… well. As if your ancestors had burned the Mayflower. Yes, they came to stay.” Arvid’s eyes went to the trapdoor in the ceiling, which once again was closed against them. “Did you notice anything else worthy of comment?”

Wes pounded a fist on his knee, twice. “They were at Saturn when the Voyagers went by. They spent years there. We might have noticed something if Saturn wasn’t so weird. We’d have had fifteen years warning!”

“It is difficult to put the mushroom cloud back iato the steel casing.”

“At least we know this is the mother ship. This is all they’ve got.”

“They did not exceed lightspeed?”

“They didn’t even come very close.” Wes had been watching for the effect of relativity; stars blue-shifted ahead and reddened aft. It hadn’t happened.

“Good. They cannot expect help. But they must be desperate. Where can they go if we defeat them?”

“They’ll have to land sometime. They must expect to beat us on the ground. They’re crazy.”

Arvid saw no reason to answer. Dawson was not of his nation. But any cosmonaut knew that from a military standpoint the command of space was priceless. The Soviet Union , which had always expected to rule the world, had held that position until three days ago.

“Yeah. Well. They didn’t show much of the inside of the ship. They showed only the last leg of their approach to Earth. They showed the mother ship being refueled, but they didn’t show where the fuel came from. So maybe they scooped methane snow off a moon and refined deuterium and tritium out of it. But why didn’t they show that? They’re hiding something.”

“Of course.”

“Something specific.”

“Of course.”

The trapdoor swung open.

The platform descended into a wary silence. Takpusseh was quite alone. His right eye was covered with soft white cloth. Another patch covered his nostril. He carried his branched trunk

at an odd angle. A second fi’ followed him down. The soldiers remained above.

The Breakers faced the humans alone.

The captives looked harmless enough. They were clustered in a corner, frightened, wary. The black one was on his back and trying to roll over. He seemed to be just becoming aware of the aliens.

Raztupisp-minz told them, “Move away from the dark one.”

The humans discussed it. Instant obedience would have been reassuring, but in fact they seemed to be interpreting for each other. Then they moved away. The black one protested and tried to move in the same direction, Then his eyes fixed on Raztupispminz. He breathed as if the chamber had lost its air, his eyes and mouth opened improbably wide, as Raztupisp-minz walked toward him.

Raztupisp-minz set his foot solidly on the black man’s chest.

He lifted it and backed away. “You,” he said, and his digits indicated the crippled one. “Come.”

The humans discussed it heatedly. Then Nikolai pulled himself across the floor on his hands.

Dawson had moved, without permission. He knelt by the black man with his bony digits on the man’s throat. He spoke to the others, in English. “Dead.”

Tnkpusseh let it pass rather than interrupt the ceremony.

“Roll,” Raztupisp-minz said, and he rotated his digits in a circle. Nikolai didn’t appear to understand. Raztupisp-minz forcibly rolled the man onto his back, set his foot on the man’s chest, and stepped away. He pointed to another. “You.”

One by one the Soviets submitted to the foot on the chest until only Dawson was left, Then, as they had discussed, Raztupispminz stepped aside and Takpusseh came forward.

The man stood balanced, forelegs slightly bent, hands open, palms outward, It came to Takpusseh that Dawson expected to die.

It wouldn’t bother Takpusseh that much if he did. He swung his digits with nearly his full strength. Dawson ducked under it, fast, and lunged forward. Takpusseh caught him on the backswing and flung him spinning across the cell and against a wall. As the man started to topple. Takpusseh was there, catching him and rolling him on his back. The man blinked, opened his eyes and mouth wide. Frozen in fear? Takpusseh raised his foot over Dawson’s chest.

I was almost the last to be thawed awake. Some of the sleepers were brain-damaged. They fought, or they didn’t respond at all. Most accepted the change.

It was Breaker-One Raztupisp-minz who accepted their formal surrender. My grandson, though older than I, discounting the eights of years slept. This was nothing new to him.

His task it was to break me too. Nonetheless he was uncomfortable, because we are related, or because afterward 1 must teach him his profession. “Your position won’t change, Grandfather. Who but you has the training to break alien forms of life to the Traveler Herd? But the Traveler Herd has changed, and you must join it again.”

I roll over on the floor, feet in the air, trunk splayed, vulnerable. Others watch. My spaceborn grandson’s foot on my chest. “There, that’s over. Now you must begin to train me,” his voice dropping, for my ears alone. “to break me. I must know something of what we must do.”

I feel it now, the foot lightly crushing my chest. Takpusseh lowered his foot. A mere tap would not do; this was no token surrender. He felt the man’s ribs sag before he lifted his foot.

Dawson waited for more, but there was no more. He rolled Side, convulsively, groaning with the pain of damaged ribs.

“Now you belong to the Traveler Herd,” Takpusseh said in his own speech. He saw Dawson take it in and relax somewhat. Dawson moved to join the other prisoners. “Is the black one dead?” Takpusseh asked. “What killed him?”

The one called Dmitri answered in the fithp speech. “Fear you. Fear foot make dead. Take him out?”

Takpusseh summoned the warriors. Two came down and moved the black man onto the platform. It rose. It descended to take the fithp up one by one. Takpusseh went last.

The house had belonged to Carlotta’s grandmother. Trujillo had married Castro had married de Alvarez, families whose names were respected when the Lowells and Cabots were field hands. Carlotta’s sister Juana had inherited the house. She married a man with the unlikely name of David Morgan.

Of course Dawson wasn’t exactly in our conquistador heritage either. Carlotta lay in the exact center of the big four-poster and tried to count the spots on the ceiling. Thoughts came unbidden.

Her superb imagination showed her a torn puffball of a corpse, dry and brittle, falling through vacuum and the savage sunlight of space. A dissection table with monstrous shapes around it. A carved corpse, the parts arrayed on a silver platter, surrounded by cooked plants of unearthly shape; voices chittering or booming as the banquet began.

No! She leaped from the bed. The floor creaked as she scurried across the room to the door. The house was old, begun as a ranch house before the Civil War, added to as family required and money enabled. It had been built in clumps, and not all the additions fitted well together, although Carlotta rather liked the general effect. Now it had only four inhabitants, Carlotta, David, Juana, and an ancient housekeeper from Xuahaca who called herself Lucy. Juana’s children had long moved away.

And Sharon is in Peterborough , New Hampshire . Will I ever see her again? Thank God the telephones worked long enough for me to tell her to stay there. How could she travel?

Bright sunlight flooded the ball outside her bedroom, and when she reached the kitchen the windup clock said it was midafternoon. Lucy had put away the gin bottle. Or did I finish it to get to sleep? There should be some left in it. She went to the cabinet, but she felt Lucy’s disapproving stare.

“Desayuno, Senora?”

“Gracias, no. Por favor, solamente cafe.” And damned right I’m going to sit on the patio in my housecoat. Who’s going to see me, or care if they do?

The patio was too large. When Carlotta had visited as a child, the gardens were famous through the state. Pumpkins, melons, vegetables-all won prizes at county and state fairs. Now there was a big flagstone patio where the melon patch had been, and a field of sweet peas where celery and chard had grown. No gardeners. Plenty of people unemployed, but no one wants to raise vegetables for a retired professor and his wife. But it does make a nice patio. She sat at the big wrought-iron table. Lucy was setting the coffee down when the thunder began.

Thunder from a clear sky was not unheard of in Kansas , but this didn’t come in claps and die away. It rolled in and stayed, renewed itself, grew louder and faded and grew louder still.

Then brilliant points were drawing straight white lines across the sky, sowing clouds of dots that drifted away to west and south. Lucy whimpered in terror, and the need to reassure the older woman kept Carlotta calm. Invasion. Parachutes. What came for Wes has come for me. But nothing showed directly overhead. Not here. Not yet, anyway.

“Carla,” a voice spoke from behind her.

“Yes, Juana?”

“What is happening?” The noise had brought her sister outside. Juana Morgan held a small transistor radio that poured out static as she frantically turned the tuning knob this way and that.

For once you will not look disapprovingly at me in my housecoat in mid-afternoon. “Vapor trails, I think, Perhaps the professor will know.”

“He went to town to buy newspapers.” Juana paused. “And more gin.”

“Ah.” Carlotta shrugged, and glanced significantly at Lucy. “They’re not coming here,” she said. “Miles away. Not to Dighton, either.”

“Are you sure?” Juana demanded.

“Yes.” How the hell can I be sure? And what could we do about it if they were coming here, or to Dighton? It’s ten miles to Dighton, and David has the only damned car—

“David didn’t think they’d come, either,” Juana said. “But his

National Guard colonel wanted to mobilize. Maybe that’s where David is! With the Guard.”

“Could be.” What good is that? Bunch of old men with worn out equipment… Wes always voted for bigger appropriations for the Guard, but nobody was really pushing it.

“Lucy, perhaps it would be well to get out the candles and the storm lanterns,” Juana said.

“Si.” Lucy shuffled away, still glancing up at the sky and looking away in fear.

“Give her something to do and she bears up well,” Carlotta said. She stared at the open work of the tabletop. “I wish I had something to do.”

“So do I.”

Carlotta nodded. “Yeah. I wouldn’t approve of me as a houseguest either.”

“It’s as much your house as mine,” Juana said. “I haven’t forgotten how much you and Wes loaned us.” She sat across from Carlotta. “Hell, get smashed every night if that’s what it takes. You really loved the guy, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Still do.”

“Sorry—”

“You don’t know he’s dead.”

“No.” There was another peal of thunder. Juana shuddered. “I wish it had happened to me.”

Carlotta frowned.

“I mean, that it had been David up there. Instead of Wes. Damn. That sounds horrible. I mean-well, you’re really in love with Wes. It’s breaking you up. I’d miss David; we’re very comfortable together, but-well, I wouldn’t be like you. I hate to see you like this, Carla. You were always the strong one—”

“Yeah. I sure look it, don’t I. Oh damn, Juana, damn, damn, damn, what am I going to do?”

Juana looked up at the dot-filled skies and shuddered.

The motorcycle was intact. Harry looked around furtively. No sign of the enemy. He lifted the motorcycle and stood it on its stand.

The saddlebags with his gear had vanished. They’d taken them along with Jeri and Melissa—

God damn the bastards! Harry cursed steadily until he had control of himself. Then he felt ashamed. Cursing wouldn’t change the situation. He’d lost two women he was supposed to protect. The fact that he couldn’t have done anything about it didn’t help much.

He felt a lump in his pocket. The little .25 Beretta was still there. They hadn’t bothered to search him. He thought about that for a moment, then began to search the wheat field. Sure enough, a blue-gray object was just visible in the wheat. The .45 automatic, with dirt in the barrel. One of the invaders must have flung it aside.

Why the saddlebags, then? Clothes? Jeri’s and Melissa’s clothing. Which means they’ll be keeping the girls. Why take them and not me? But there was no answer to that.

The motorcycle started easily enough. It hadn’t been damaged at all. He heard noises ahead. The Invaders were still in Logan . Harry cleaned out the barrel while he felt something stir in his guts, but then he shook his head. It would be pointless. The Invaders wore body armor. His pistol hadn’t done him any good at all when there were only a few of them. Charging into Logan to rescue Jeri wouldn’t do Jeri any good. She might not even be there any longer.

He tried to remember the map. That part of Kansas was laid out in a grid, roads at section and range boundaries, other roads parallel to them. Few diagonal roads. Farmhouses at regular intervals. Dirt tracks crossed the wheat fields. Those tended to parallel the main roads, too, but they led to farmhouses, not towns.

Logan was several miles ahead Harry gambled that there’d be a farm access mad leading north before he came into sight of the Invaders. He put the pistol into his kidney belt where he could reach it easily, and started off east.

He saw the smoke long before he reached the ruined farmhouse. He came up slowly, ready to leap off the motorcycle and run into the wheat. He stopped several times to listen, but there was nothing to hear. The dirt road led through the wheat fields to the farmhouse. He could go back the way he’d come; or go on. He went on.

The house itself was a wreck, roof sagging, doors torn from their hinges, but it hadn’t burned. The barn was burned to ashes. The bodies of a man and two dogs lay in the dusty yard between the house and the barn. A shotgun lay across the man’s chest.

Another dog whimpered from under the wreckage of the farmhouse.

“Ho! Anyone home?” Harry shouted. There was no answer except the whimpering of the dog. He stopped the motorcycle and got off. Large tracks were visible in the dust. They didn’t really look like the tracks of elephants, because they left claw marks. Nothing on Earth left tracks like that.

He stalked cautiously around the yard, and after a while he went inside the house. There were women’s clothes in the closet with the farmer’s clothes. Another room had been occupied by a boy. Harry guessed he’d been about Melissa’s age, ten or eleven. A model of the starship Enterprise hung from the ceiling and toy guns stood in the corner. Clothing for a small boy was flung onto the floor. Two dresser drawers were empty.

Prisoners? They’re taking women and children, but not men? That doesn’t make sense.

There were letters scattered across the front room floor. John Thomas Kensington, RFD #3… Harry went back outside. Kensington lay on his back, his eyes staring upward to the sky. He’d been torn in two halves by one shot. The bore on those alien guns was as big as a fist. Twenty yards from his body the ground had been torn up by something large thrashing in the dust, and there were dark stains. John Thomas Kensington had sold his farm dearly. Harry saluted and went back into the collapsing house.

They take their dead with them. Dead or wounded. A shotgun ought to do some damage at hat range. Wonder what he was using?

The refrigerator had been wrecked, but the food inside wasn’t spoiled. Harry rooted around until he found bread and cheese and lunch meat and made a sandwich. While he was looking for bread he found a box of shells for the shotgun. It was number six bird shot, suitable for doves and quail. Not much of a load for elephants. He waited until he’d eaten before he went to take the gun from the man’s lifeless fingers.

The dog under the porch continued to whimper.

Bury the dead? Shoot the dog before it turns feral or starves?

Harry had always believed himself tough, but he’d never thought he’d be faced with decisions like this. Dead bodies were matters for the police and the coroner’s office and the undertakers.

There won’t be a coroner. Harry went looking for a shovel.

He made another dozen miles before the sonic boom tore at his ears. Harry braked the motorcycle and looked up. Three contrails led from the west, passing nearly overhead. Harry cheered. “Go get the bastards!” he shouted.

As he watched, one of the contrails broke into a ball of black smoke. Something bright seemed to stab upward from the east, and the second contrail died. The third traced a complex curve; then it, too, ended in a ball of black smoke.

“Damn. Damn and hell.” Harry started the bike again.

The big situation map in the war room changed every few minutes, but no one was sure how current its information was. A vast area of Kansas , stretching northward into Nebraska , was covered with bright red symbols. Someone had finally got stylized parachutes to show where alien units had landed. They covered an area that looked much like an amoeba, with its nucleus at Great Bend . Pseudopods reached east and west.

The Situation Room was the center of the underground North American Air Defense complex. It was located under nearly a mile of granite, separated from the outside world by sealed corridors, water barriers, guard rooms, and more granite. A row of offices overlooked the Situation Room. Jack Clybourne stood outside one of the office doors.

Jenny came up to him and winked. He didn’t respond. “I’m supposed to report to Admiral Carrell,” Jenny said. Her voice held slight irritation.

“Sure.” Jack shook his head. “Sorry, hon. I’m about as useful as a fifth leg here. Where’s the President safer? But I’m the only Presidential Protective Unit agent here, and I have to act like it.”

“Yeah. Look, there’s no such thing as off duty down here, but we have to eat sometimes. Sleep, too…Dinner tonight?”

“I’d love that—”

“I’ll be around.” She grinned. “If they leave the door open, be sure to watch the screens.”

“You’ve got pictures of the aliens?”

“We think so.” Jenny tapped at the door. It wasn’t closed properly, and the door swung open. One wall of the office was glass. It overlooked the big screen displays and control consoles on the floor below. There was one desk. President David Coffey sat there staring at the maps. Admiral Carrell stood next to him. General bland stood grimly on the other side of the desk from Carrell, his lips a tight line.

“Roughly a circle,” Admiral Carrell said.

“But what do they want?” the President asked.

“This is obviously a reconnaissance in force,” Carrell said. He shook his head. “As to what their ultimate aims might be, I don’t know, sir.” He looked up to see Jenny at the door. “Come in, Major. Have your intelligence people got the displays ready?”

“Yes, sir. We have reports from refugees, and some pictures one brought out. The pictures should be up from the lab any minute.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No, sir, they’re color, and you don’t look at color while it’s being developed.”

“But you have descriptions?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, tell us!” the President demanded.

“Mr. President-sir, it will only be another minute until the pictures are ready. I’d-sir, I’d rather you saw for yourself.”

“Refugee reports,” General Toland said. “They’re letting people out, then?”

“Yes, sir, if they’re walking. No vehicles allowed out. Anyone who goes out is required to undergo a sort of ceremony.”

“Ceremony?”

“Yes, sir. They-the science-fiction people say it’s reasonable, given the way the aliens look, but—”

“Major, your air of mystery is rapidly becoming tiresome,” Admiral Carrell said.