Footfall (42 page)

“Did you have a good flight?” The President didn’t wait for an answer. “What did you learn?”

“They’re in good shape, sir,” Jenny said. “The scheduled launch date was late next year, but General Gillespie thinks he’ll be ready months before that.”

“Good.” David Coffey rubbed his hands briskly together. “The sooner the better. Jack, how’s the security situation?”

“Better now that I was there,” Clybourne said. “There was a bit of a problem with the local sheriff, but we fixed that. He’ll cooperate now.”

He sure will, Jenny thought.

“We’ve laid it all out,” Jack said. “Like an onion. Highway patrolmen, only they’re Marines. No CB radios except ours, with Army intelligence people simulating CB chatter.”

“I expect you had your work cut out, rounding up all the CBs,” the President said.

“Yes, sir,” Jack said. “There was one place full of survivalists, mostly from Los Angeles of all places—”

“Los Angeles is in pretty good shape,” the President said.

“Yes, sir, but they can’t get back there. Anyway, they had a dozen radios. We got them all. They sure didn’t like giving them up.”

“Sure you got them all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“General Gillespie has put together a weapons team,” Jenny said. “Boeing engineers. Some Navy people. Even a retired science-fiction writer—”

“Good choice. They’ve been useful here.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, they’ve invented a lot of weapons. Stovepipes. They take one of the main guns off a Navy ship. Wrap a spaceship around it. Not a lot of ship, just enough to steer it. Add an automatic loader and nuclear weapons for shells. Steer it with TV.”

“Jeez. Who’d fly that?”

“They’ve got volunteers.”

The President smiled broadly. “Good. Damn good. What else?”

“Sir, you won’t believe all the stuff they’re putting on that ship. Torpedoes with H-bombs. Cannon. Bundles of gamma-ray lasers that go off when the burst from the drive bomb hits them. Anything that can hurt the alien ship. One of the engineers was trying to get them to truck the old X-15 from the museum at Edwards. ‘It maneuvers in space, doesn’t it’?’ But I don’t think they’ll do that. It’s easier to add another stovepipe.”

“And people really will fly that,” the President said. “Damn all, we’ll beat them yet! All we have to do is hang on until it’s finished.” He glanced at his watch. “Cabinet meeting in an hour. You two have been Outside. I’ll want you there to answer questions. One thing, though, nothing about why you went north or even where you went. Most of the Cabinet doesn’t know about Michael.” The President paused. “I’m thinking about making it a total-restriction. Any who knows about Michael stays Inside. What do you think?”

Jack shrugged. “If you say so, sir—”

“I didn’t necessarily mean you two. I may have to send you up there again. But everybody else, everybody who won’t be going up north-why should they know? There were all these stories about UFOs kidnapping people—”

“That wasn’t the fithp,” Jenny said. “Sir—”

He laughed. “I know that. They’re not that smooth. They shouldn’t even be in space at all!” He sobered. “They evolved too fast. They’re clumsy, they’re bad at toolmaking. There are gaps in their knowledge, and we can exploit those. We’ll win, Colonel. You know, I could even begin to feel sorry for them.”

What’s got into him? Pictures flashed through Jenny’s head. A doll resting on a gingham skirt-I don’t feel sorry for them. But I’d rather see the President like this than ready to give up…

Jenny fidgeted uncomfortably. Cabinet meetings were important, but most of the Cabinet didn’t know the crucial secret. It must be tough trying to run the country without knowing how we plan to win.

“Item Two. The Secretary of Commerce,” Jim Frantz said.

Connie Fuller pushed her chair back as if she were going to stand, but decided against it. “I too will be brief,” she said. “And, I’m afraid my report is almost as gloomy as Admiral Carrell’s was.

“First the good news. A lot of greenhouses are going up. Crops are being planted in backyards, on school playgrounds, golf courses, lawns of public buildings-nearly everywhere. Given any luck at all, we won’t have people starving.

“I wish I had more good news, but I don’t. Most of our dams’ are destroyed. So are most bridges. Some were fired on, others were washed out in the floods that followed the dams. The earthquakes got more. Mr. President, the United States is chopped up into a series of isolated regions, and there’s not much we can do about it.

“The interstate highway system is destroyed. There are secondary roads and old highways, but travel on them has not been safe. Sometimes they let big trucks alone, not always. No train is safe. Ships are-often fired on.”

“Even now?” the President asked. “After using Mr. Dawson’s symbol?”

They all looked at Carlotta Dawson. For a moment she met their gaze with a smile, then she looked down at the table.

She doesn’t know about Archangel. Shouldn’t they tell her? She deserves that much — “I was just coming to that,” Mrs. Fuller said. “So far we have no confirmed report of a vehicle or installation marked with the ‘harmless’ symbol being fired on. We’ve been somewhat careful about where we use it—”

“Good,” the President said. “That’s vital. We must not abuse that symbol. Mr. Speaker?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“We need new legislation, making it an act of treason to misuse the snout ‘harmless’ symbol. I would appreciate it if you would get that done immediately.”

The Speaker nodded slowly. “If you think that’s wise—”

“It’s vital, Mr. Speaker. If you insist on knowing why, I’ll tell you at another time—”

“Thank you, no.”

“I want strict enforcement,” President Coffey said. “Any law enforcement agency is authorized to stop attempted abuse of that symbol by any means required, including destruction of the offending installation. That’s important.”

The Chief of Staff wrote in his book. “Yes, sir. I’ll get the executive order out right away.”

“I can understand the need,” General Toland said. “But the troops sure won’t like taking casualties.”

“Tell them to shut up and soldier,” Admiral Carrell said.

We’ve put the fithp symbol on the Archangel dome. And on the ships coming into there. No bigger than anywhere else. We had to. Otherwise we might as well paint Bomb Me on them. But if somebody paints that on an ammunition truck… Connie Fuller shuffled her notes on the plastic tabletop. “We don’t have much electricity. Gas pipelines are working, and some oil lines. They haven’t bothered nuclear power plants. There’s no reliable way to move coal, so we don’t have much electricity.

“We’re able to ship some staple foods, but we can’t move enough foodstuffs.

“In short, Mr. President, there is no national economy.”

There was a long silence. The Speaker cleared his throat.

“Yes, Mr. Dayton?”

“They don’t hit nuclear plants. Seems to me there were a bunch of those stalled by red tape. All across the country. Could we get cracking and complete them?”

“A good question,” the President said. “Jim, look into that, will you?”

“No problem.”

There’s a switch! Of course we can get them completed, if all the anti-nuke idiots stay out of the way. Including you — “We’ll need that electricity,” Mrs. Fuller said. “If we have electric power, we have a civilization. If we don’t—” There wasn’t any point in finishing that statement.

Message Bearer was under spin. The fithp seemed to prefer their gravity low, and Alice was near the axis anyway. The ducts curved more tightly here. She moved in low-angle leaps, against the wind, hurrying. Dust puppies tended to clump where the pipes turned, and she stopped occasionally to clean them away.

She heard something ahead. She called, “Wes?”

“Yeah. How are you doing? I don’t think the ducts were this clean when they were new.”

She rounded the curve. “It’s make-work,” she said.

“Yeah, but it lets us explore. Sooner or later we’ll use what we know.”

“Want to make love?”

He banged his elbow. He turned around clutching it, staring openmouthed. She started to laugh.

He said, “Sure I want to make love. I’ve been chaste for months. Are you aware that I’m a married person?”

“How far away is your wife?”

“Carlotta’s twenty-two thousand three hundred miles away. Wait a minute. That’s geosynchronous orbit, measured from the center of the Earth, and we’re over Africa, so… another two, three thousand miles.”

He was treating this as all too amusing. Alice said, “So she’s not likely to come barging in on us.”

“No. Why me, Alice?”

“I think you killed the Bull’s Advisor.”

Good, the amusement had gone out of him. “Again, why me?”

“Who else-would have the guts?”

“Any cluster of eight or more fithp who didn’t like his politics.”

Alice grinned. She’d been scared to death when she made this decision, but — “Play your games, Congressman, but you wouldn’t be hesitating if you weren’t guilty.”

“Oh, I… don’t… It wasn’t like you think.”

He did it! “How was it then?”

“I didn’t sneak up on the poor fithp and strangle him in his sleep. I—” The violence she knew was buried in Wes Dawson surfaced in his face. For a moment she regretted her decision. You can always find an excuse. If the horrors were listening there’d never be another chance. She moved closer to him.

Rage was in his eyes, and they looked through her. “I thought I had it all fixed! The Herdmaster’s Advisor wanted to leave Earth. What he wanted from me was arguments to use. I by God was willing to give them. He ran out of time, the first time we met, so we set something else up.

“After five days we were still cleaning out the ducts near the hull,” Dawson said. “The Bull probably thinks he’s training us to make repairs in that area. I’d seen the mudroom, I knew how to reach it. Fathisteh-tulk was supposed to be waiting in the mudroom.

“The duct was warmer this time. You saw the door, with a knob the size of a soup bowl? I turned the knob and the door went back on springs. I squeezed through. I left my gear in the duct, just behind me.

“There were warm and cold currents mixing. Grill at the end. I looked through and saw a lot of black mud. The air currents set up ripples in it, but there wasn’t enough thrust to move it. We were still pushing on the Foot then.

“Nobody was there.”

She could feel’ the disappointment. “Nobody? Nothing?”

“Not then. I was very very nervous. I kept wondering what he really wanted. Military information? It was a silly way to get it—

“They’re not that tricky.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know that then. If he tried something I didn’t like, I was going to back down the duct, scream for the warriors, and lay a charge of mutiny on him. But maybe he just wanted me on record, encouraging mutiny myself. I thought I’d better see if there were witnesses.

“So I took the wing nuts off and worked the grill loose. I was going to go in, but I heard something, so I pulled the grill back in place. Fathisteh-tulk came in, walking along the wall on those Velcro shoes they wear.

“He got right to the point, like we’d never ended the last conversation. He told me about the dissidents, the fufisthengalss, mostly spaceborn, who don’t think conquering Earth is worth the bother. It sounded ideal. I was actually wishing I had Dmitri Grushin with me. He said there are a lot of dissidents, and they want to make peace, but they, um, they’re diffident. They don’t want to make waves, they don’t want to be rogues. Stick with the herd. Like voters in the natural state. They need jazzing up, something to get them moving.”

His eyes shone, and he waved his hands excitedly. I can see why they vote for him. Especially women. She felt a tingling in her loins. It was a feeling she’d long since known was dangerous, and for a moment the old fears came back. He won’t like me. He left her no time for more thought.

“I said it would be easy to make peace. I tried to tell Fathistehtalk how often yesterday’s enemies become today’s allies. I think that confused him. For the fithp, yesterday’s enemies are today’s slaves are tomorrow’s citizens. I think he believed me, though.”

He would. I would.

“I told him. If the fithp would mine the asteroids, we could trade their metals for our fertilizer and soil and nitrogen. We’d all get rich! I told him we’d grow fithp plants and animals for them. There’s bound to be somewhere on Earth where any damn thing will grow that grows in water and air. I really don’t think I lied to him at any point.

“Alice, I can’t blame myself. I was being as persuasive as I knew how—”

“They’re different. They’re crazy.” It’s a great story. But get through with it! She’d never felt that way, not since a certain high school dance. The anticipation had been there, but things had gone too far too fast and she panicked and ran from the car… and the next morning everyone knew the tale. For a moment the dread rose in her again. But this was very different. She hadn’t expected to find herself

playing therapist. Should she resent it?

“Oh, but I had Fathisteh-tulk all figured out,” he said. “I talked about how to use space. I’m good at that too, I was doing the research in my teens. Solar power collectors. Free-fall chemistry. Alloys that won’t mix in gravity. Single-crystal fibers stronger than anything you can make in a gravity field. They’d missed a lot of that!”

“Why?”

“It’s not in their granite cubes. Alice, they’re powerful, but they’re stupid!”

“Not stupid. Crazy, maybe.”

“Or something in between. They don’t think for themselves. Maybe they never had to. But I told him. I told him about mass drivers. It’s easy to put stuff in orbit from the Moon. O’Leary’s plan to mine the asteroids, do you know that one? You land a fully equipped mine on a metal asteroid. Put a big bag-around the asteroid. You refine the metal, but you keep the slag-that’s what the bag is for. You make hemispherical mirrors from the metal and use them for solar power. More metal becomes a linear accelerator. It gets longer and longer. Before you quit, the accelerator’s so long that the asteroid looks like the head of a sperm. Now you run slag down the linear accelerator. You get a rocket with arbitrarily high exhaust velocity! You put the rest of the asteroid into orbit around Earth and—”