Footfall (45 page)

Ken had known food would be scarce. But who’d have thought that heat to cook it with would be the hardest thing to come by? No sun!

Cora was just beginning to bulge. I suppose I’ll have to marry her. Maybe not. Either way, she’s going to make me send Patsy away. Unless I can get somebody to marry Patsy? Somebody hungry who’ll act jealous?

They took the coffee into the front room. Anthony Graves was in his usual place by the big front windows. They faced southeast and got just enough sun to grow tomatoes in pots if somebody would spend enough time taking care of them. Graves was glad to do it. There wasn’t a lot else for somebody his age.

Randy Conant was there, too.

Sarge gave Anthony Graves a quarter cup of his coffee. Ht liked Graves. He carefully ignored Randy Conant. “Get much written, sir?”

“Some,” Graves said. He grinned. “I never expected to write my magnum opus long after I retired.”

“I think it’s great,” Sarge said.

Randy Conant mumbled something.

“What?” Cora asked.

“I said it was shit.”

“Enough, Sarge,” Ken said. Sarge Harris hadn’t moved, but his face told it all. “Randy, why don’t you go turn over the compost heap?”

“Fuck all, let somebody else do some of the work!”

“Sarge, I said that’ll do! Randy, we all work. Now get going before I forget you’re my sister’s kid—”

“Don’t do me any favors, Uncle Ken.”

“Maybe I’ll take that advice.”

“Whew,” Patsy said. “It gets thick—”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Randy said. “I get upset, that’s all. All this work, and what for?”

“What for?” Sarge demanded.

“Yeah, what for? We’re gonna lose anyway. Just like that Dawson guy said, they can keep dropping rocks on us until we have to give up. Why don’t we do it while we’ve got something left?”

“Peace in our time.’ Thank you, Neville Chamberlain,” Graves chuckled.

“You’re gonna fight the snouts with quotes?”

“Sure. Have another. ‘Some folks win by winning, some folks win by losing.’ I think you get off on looking stupid, Randy.”

“There’s a lot of people think like I do!”

“Bullshit!”

“Sarge, you won’t hear it,” Patsy said. “But he’s right. I hear them down at the market. Nice people. They just want things the way they were before the war started.”

“That’s what they won’t get,” Graves said. “Whatever else, they won’t have that. Look what happened after World War II. Everything changes after a war. Win or lose.”

“It’ll be worse if we lose,” Sarge insisted.

“Sure. People don’t tame very well.”

“I don’t want us to surrender,” Cora said. “But-well, would it be so awful? That congressman, Dawson, he said they’ll let us live under our own laws, live the way we always said we want to—”

Monogamously. You’d like that. Ken thought.

“That’s what the commies always said!” Sarge shouted.

“True enough,” Graves said.

“I’d rather have them than snouts,” Patsy said.

“What difference does it make, what you’d rather have?” Randy demanded. “Nothing we do makes any difference! They’re up there and we can’t hurt them!”

“The Army’s doing something.” Sarge was positive.

“What? Just what can they do?”

“I don’t know, but they’re doing something. You heard the President! He sounded good, confident—”

“And you really believe in politicians. I mean, you really trust them! Hell, you hate President Coffey!”

“A lot of people hated Roosevelt,” Graves said. “A lot more than you’d think. But he won the war.”

“It’s different now,” Randy said. “Don’t you see, it’s different. If there was something we could do, some way we could fight, but there’s nothing, we just sit here and let them drop rocks on us, nothing we can do, and they’ll get bigger and bigger. They’ll kill us all and we can’t do anything about it.” He laughed. “Shit, we sure can’t do anything. We can’t even surrender.”

“We can hang on,” Graves said. “Stay alive and be ready to

“We are winning.” Attackmaster Koothfektil-rusp’s image blurred slightly, and his voice hissed.

African night lay below Message Bearer. The dark cloud coy flared with chains of wild power surges. The Herdmaster’s nerv screamed at the sight, but he couldn’t look away. Repair the broken lines, lest the ship die! He waited for the atmospheric electric discharges to end. They came less frequently now. When the fithp had landed in the first weeks after the Foot, they had been near constant.—

The image solidified. “We have captured wonderful machine which make electrical power, and transportation devices, machines that make other machines. We have slaves. The land is wide, and it is ours. We eat the native food—”

“We must learn if poisons are present or nutrients are missing. Ship samples to Message Bearer for chemical analysis.”

“We will, on the next launch. Herdmaster, Chintithpit-mar wishes to return for the mating season. We will miss him sorely but he has surely earned the privilege.”

“Yes, I remember your reports.” Yet Chintithpit-mang is a dissident, of the Year Zero Fillip! What have they found, that the look so far? “Can you truly spare your best warriors? You continue to lose fithp.”

“Yes, Herdmaster. We will always lose warriors until we have culled out the rogues from among these humans. Fistarteh-thuktu was correct. This is a race of rogues, rogues everywhere, they may be more rogues than normals. The acolytes are studying this, to see how it could have come about. Herdmaster, we may have come just in time to save these humans. As if it were meant to be. Herdmaster, we gain a new domain, a wide domain. We stand on high places and we cannot see the bounds of our territory!”

“Your domain grows large and the fithp grow fewer. The warriors sicken of slaughter.”

“It will not always be so. The true humans learn. We kill rogues only. It is the, task of warriors to kill rogues.”

The Herdmaster suppressed an urge to trumpet. “How are you sure there are what you call true humans?”

“I will show you.” The Attackmaster gestured and stepped aside. Two stepped into camera view: Breaker-One Raztupispminz, and a dark human male covered with drab cloth, as the important ones always covered themselves. He stood half out of camera view, for fear of standing too close to the Breaker.

“This one is called Botha. He held high rank in the Afrikaans tribe. He knows little of our speech, but I will give you his words. He is eager to end this war.”

The human spoke at length. His voice went up and down, now a mumble, now a whine. Pastempeh-keph heard it as a plea.

“He speaks strangely,” Tashayamp said.

Pastempeh-keph turned to her. “Is it not English?”

“Yes, Herdmaster, but not as I have learned it.”

The Breaker spoke. “He says that the war destroys, and both humans and flthp lose. He says that he would do what he could to end the fighting and let humans and fithp live together. This he calls peace. He says that now he can do nothing. We took his surrender in a ceremony broadcast to all the humans here, and because they have seen my foot on his chest, many will no longer obey him.”

The Herdmaster trumpeted in rage. “Then why seek leaders at all? Must we take surrender from each? We have not enough feet for every human!”

“No, Herdmaster. We allow them to gather. They have gatherings, much as we do, where the eldest speak for all. Their decisions are binding. These humans do nothing without meeting and talking. We will allow these eldest to meet and take their surrender. They will name this Botha as leader. He will then command the human warriors to keep order and enforce our domain.”

Something had changed in the African fithp-it was visible even in the monitor screens-and the Herdmaster began to see why. “Was this peculiar approach your own idea, Breaker?”

“Herdmaster, the human fithp always want to discuss terms before they surrender. From curiosity I began to discuss ‘conditional surrender’ with small human fithp—”

“Over my objection,” Atackmaster Koothfektil-rusp put in. “I was mistaken. When a human fithp surrenders under agreed terms, the members tend to honor their surrender.”

“Not all, surely.”

“Some fight on, Herdmaster, but those are rogues, known to all to be rogues, in defiance of their own leaders. We kill the rogues. The humans will aid us in this. Then we will have one herd again.”

Colonel Julius Carter tried once more. “I’ve got three wounded men. One of them will die if we move him. Man, I’m only asking for shelter!” The Afrikaners turned us away. I hadn’t expected it, but they did. But this one is English!

The farmer spread his hands helplessly. “I can’t.”

“He-he’s a white soldier. Blanqui! Not black like me.”

Brant Chishoim laughed bitterly. “Do you think that matters now? Great God, man, don’t you think I want to help?”

Carter let his voice grow cold with menace. “If you don’t help us, we’ll kill you and burn your place.”

The farmer nodded wearily. “I expected that. Will you kill my wife and children too? And my neighbors, and their women, and all their children?”

“We’re Americans, not monsters!”

“If the jumbos find you here, they’ll kill us all. Do your worst, Colonel. You’re not as bad as them.”

“Ah, shit,” Carter said. “You know damned well I can’t just shoot you.”

“If you’re going to stay here, it would be better if you did. Shoot me and put my body where the jumbos will find it,” Chisholm said, dropping his voice conspiratorily. “Maybe then they’ll blame you and not everyone here.”

“Shit.” Carter couldn’t keep it up. “We won’t hurt you. But man, we need help. We worked our way up from the coast—”

“Bad down there?”

“It’s bad. It’s worse than you can think. Buzzards everywhere.” Buzzards and bugs and everything dead and smashed. Rotting corpses left by the waves. New corpses too. We brought the guns as far as we could. Now we have to find somebody willing to go get them and use them, and there’s nobody left with guts. “All right, we’ll move out. Can I leave Corporal Allington with you?”

“Yes. Take all his equipment. Take his uniform too. What’s wrong with him?”

“We shot up a Snout patrol, and they called in their lasers. He’s burned over almost half his body.”

“Okay. We’ll take care of him as best we can. If they ask, I’ll say he was burned in a motor accident. They probably won’t. As long as we bring in the crops they pretty well leave us alone.”

“I guess it’s pretty rough for you, too,” Carter said.

“Rough? Yes, you could say that. I’d head for the bush, but what would happen to the wife and kids? Let me tell you, Yank, a man with four small children doesn’t have a lot of choices.”

“Sure.” What would I do?

“Brant! Magtig, commandos—” A tall blond woman rushed into the room. She stopped when she saw Carter. “Magtig! Here, in our house!”

Chisholm spoke briefly in Afrikaans. Despite the lessons he’d taken while aboard Ethan Allen, Carter didn’t understand any of it

“My wife, Katje,” Chisholm said. “Colonel Carter of the United States Army.”

“I see that he is. Colonel, do you understand the danger you cause here?”

“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t have a choice. One of my soldiers is hurt—”

“Where is he?”

Carter waved toward the barn.

“And what do you wish to do?”

“Leave him with you, I guess,” Carter said. “Then we’ll go back in the bush.”

“And what will you do there?”

“Whatever we can to hurt the snouts.”

“Och, I could wish to go with you. That is impossible. Let us bring your soldier into the house, and get your commando away into the bush. Three miles north from here you will find a deep ravine, filled with brush. Go into it and wait. I will send Mvub] You must speak with him.”

“Mvubi?”

“Our Zulu headman. He will help you. Go now. Go and hurt them. But in the name of God, go far from here.”

Mvubi was old, and darker than an American ever gets. Carte guessed him to be sixty. He squatted to make drawings in the dirt “Here. Kambula. White soldiers. They do not speak English o Afrikaans. Jantji says they are Russian. They hide. They wish to fight. They ask Zulu to help them. Some go to join them.”

Russians. They must have come south, through Mozambique Hell of a long way to come. “Do you know any Zulu who wan to fight?”

“Yes.”

“Take me to them.”

Mvubi rocked back and forth on his heels. Finally he stood

“I will.”

The airlock door swung ponderously outward, and the smell of Winterhome hit him in the snout. Fookerteh flinched, then sniffed. Mustiness. Alien plants, quite different from the life of Kansas.

A tastelessness: the buildup of biochemical residues in Message Bearer was missing here. Over all, the smell of the funeral pit.

Lesser ranks waited behind him, but Fookerteh paused at the top of the ramp to examine the spaceport. It was large, with hard, paved strips set within other strips of close-cropped green vegetation.

Strange winged craft, man-built and large enough to hold eightsquared fithp, were parked at one end of the field. Humans were loading them. Other machines guided by humans moved across the field to the digit ship, and a human crew began loading boxes and baggage from the digit ship onto their vehicles.

Orderly and proper. Koothfektil-rusp has not stretched his domain with words. The humans work for us.

There were tall thin columns in the distance. Smoke trailed from their tops. Wind blew much harder than comfort demanded. Water fell in fat drops. The sky was a textured, uneasily shifting gray, vast and far.

And everywhere was the faint but unmistakable smell of the funeral pit.

Fookerteh went down the ramp to where Birithart-yamp waited. They clasped digits. “Your presence wets my back.”

“Welcome to my domain, companion of my youth,” Birithartyamp said formally. Then he lifted his digits. “I am truly glad to see you. When they told me you would come down, I arranged to greet you myself. Come, I will take you to the mudrooms.”

“I thank you.” They walked across the hard surface. Gravity pulled at Fookerteh. The sky was so big, stretching distances he had not seen since he left the war in Kansas. “Can you not-is there no way to bury the dead?”

Birithart-yamp sniffed. “I had nearly forgotten. You will not notice the smell after a few days. Perhaps at night, or when you come from the clean air of the mudrooms. Fookerteh, we have buried the dead within our domain. Beyond—” He swept his digits in a wide arc toward that endlessly distant sky. “The waves drowned numbers you cannot hold in your head. When the wind blows from that way or that, it is strongest. Today the smells are faint.”

Fookerteh shuddered.

“It will pass. In a season, in two seasons.” They had left the hard-surfaced spaceport. Soft loam sank under their feet, and a new smell was in the air. Spiral plants stood as tall as their knees. Winterfiowers were just visible as loops of vine above the soil. In a year they would be blooming.

“See, death makes the land fertile. The flying scavengers — they are called aasvogel in the dominant language, vultures in English. They do their work, as do the running creatures, and the worms and insects. They do their work, that the Garden will be green. Is it not always so?”

“You sound like a priest,” Fookerteh said.

Birithart-yamp flailed digits across his friend’s shoulder. “Mocker! Here is the mudroom. My officers await us inside, all but one who will join us presently. You know him. Chintithpitmang.”

“Yes.” Chintithpit-mang was a dissident; Fookerteh had avoided him.

“Before we go in-why.are you here?” Birithart-yamp asked urgently.

“It is as you suspect. My mother’s mate wishes to smell through my nostrils and feel through my digits. He trusts Koothfektil-rusp but he wishes another view. I was sent.”

“Good. It is as I hoped. The Herdmaster will sniff your thoughts and believe. We are winning, Fookerteh. The path is long and twisted, but we can follow it-and the domain is endless!”

The mudroom had a random, primitive look. Of course it lacked the curve of spin gravity; but it was shapeless, a mere hole dug in the dirt, filled with water, churned and heated. It was twice the size of Message Bearer’s communal mudroom. On the far side was an endless cascade of water plummeting into a separate pool.

This was the way a mudroom should be! Fookerteh sagged in the warmth, resting muscles strained by Winterhome gravity, eyes half-closed, his snnfp just above the surface. He was glad to be out of the stinking wind. “We were told of an animal. Large, resembling the fithp—”

“They call it elephant,” Birithart-yamp said. “Imagine a tremendous fi’ with only a single digit. These creatures are truly enormous. I will show you one that masses more than eight times your weight.”

Fookerteh snorted incredulity.

“I agree, but it is true.”

“And these are not the dominant species of this planet?”

“They are not. Many humans believe them to be the most intelligent of all species living on the Earth, save for themselves.”

“Of course. Even a single digit may manipulate tools.”

“Yes, but badly. Their digit is primitive compared to ours, and our digits are—”

“Yes?”

“It is not important. They are large and powerful, but the human called Botha said that unless these elephants were protected, they would all be killed.”

“Killed? By what?”

“By the lesser humans, for food. By those we fight in the wild areas. Fookerteh, we win, but you do not yet know the valor of their warriors, and ours.”

Fookerteh let warm mud flow along his sides. A creature that massive should be unstoppable… yet humans killed them. Technology?

He sensed a mass above him, and reached up to clasp digits with Chintithpit-mang.

“Well met, companion of my youth.” There was a strangeness, a distance in Chintithpit-mang’s voice. The fi’ bore new scars. He was armed, and wore the harness of an eight-cubed leader. Infrared night-seeing goggles, and other equipment Fookerteh did not recognize, hung from his harness. He stood like a wall in the gravity — that had — Fookerteh sagging. His look made Fookerteh uneasy.