Misfits (8 page)

Sighing, Brunner returned the bow. "Now tell
me: Down there--what has happened?"

Jack rubbed his face wearily. "They're
killing each other. Not a peep from our weather station. Every time
the terminator hits a new planetary time zone, bombs go off. Looks
like somebody's answering somebody else back. There's been a couple
of pretty big bombs go off up north, random times, like maybe they
had to be delivered in person. I think there's been more gas, too,
but it's hard to tell with all the other--… Anyhow, I saved it all
for you."

Brunner stared at the screens full with
smoke, fire, doom and destruction. He leaned against the counter,
pushing hard to counteract the shaking.

"To what can they aspire?" he whispered in
Liaden. "What can they achieve?"

"I guess," Jack answered, in quiet Terran,
"that they can be right."

Still shaking, Brunner took his seat,
riffled screens, counted seventeen marked explosions on the charts.
He had no way of knowing dispersal rates at this point but many
were already thinning rapidly. One in the north was very heavy, and
he zoomed the map in to take a closer look.

"Was the south attempting to destroy the
rest of the farmlands?"

Jack looked over his shoulder, shook his
head.

"That's centered on a small range of hills.
Might've been the Chilongans were after a base, a treasure
house--something buried for protection."

The door opened, admitting the Scout. He
waved toward the wall and Brunner reluctantly put the image of the
whole hemisphere on the big screen, with the terminator moving
relentlessly west.

"That could be bad downwind," said the
Scout, shockingly matter-of-fact. "We'd need twelve dozen automated
Stubbs, to begin tracking. Perhaps we could get by with six dozen
if we rule out a need to--…"

"Rate they're going at it," Jack broke in,
"won't be any reason to track it but science."

"We shall see. I have spoken to the chief,
who informs me that the station cannot accept more than ten dozen
refugees, and that only with the assurance that there be no local
interference and that ships will be on the way to offload them
soonest."

"No local interference? Surely--…" Brunner
was watching the clock and the terminator on screen, bringing the
satellite online to the old coordinates--…

"Nothing there," Jack told him. "Trees,
some. Burn marks. Couldn't catch anything moving but the IR isn't
that good--…"

"There!" the Scout shouted, not quite as
loud as the alarm.

Jack muttered something, his belt clanked
briefly and the alarm shut abruptly off.

"What are they doing?" Even from here there
were noticeable points of light, all concentrated.

"Carpet-bombing. Nuclear bombing on the
isthmus."

The alarms sounded again as two very bright
spot blossomed, beeped as several more--…

…
and stopped.

"… here. Dawn shows us clear; we blew the
bridge and--…"

"Miri!"

Brunner slapped at the switch.

"Miri!"

"Got static, Tech, are you--… There, gotcha.
Yeah, it's me. Most of us got through, but we picked up some
damage. The Stubbs, it bounced a couple with my name on 'em."

The station alarm sounded, stopped.

"… so none of 'em are dependable. Hey,
sounds like you got some hoorah going up there."

"Miri, Miri, do you know they are still
using nuclear weapons? Several dozens or more. All over the world.
Many, thirty degrees northeast of you. The--…"

"Right, we thought something was going on.
Locals suiciding, station control ain't answering--doesn't
acknowledge."

The Scout made a small sound, and Jack said,
"Why you think I'm down here? Tried to answer the phone, stupid old
man that I've come to be."

"No," the Scout said sharply, "look at the
isthmus!"

The low sun angle and remains of expanding
clouds made the seeing difficult; but the intent appeared clear.
The excavation he had noticed so many days ago had been
completed--perhaps by the bombing--and stretching from one ocean to
the other.

Brunner took a hard breath. "Miri, it is
good that you are far from a coast," he murmured, his fingers
keying his cameras to record, while Jack moved away. "We shall need
to speak with Commander Lizardi."

The alarm beeped, but barely. Around it, he
heard Jack paging the planetologist.

"… with the wounded. I'll grab her when I
can. Be there, right?"

"We will be here," Brunner promised. "Next
orbit."

* * *

Dr. Boylan was--… delighted.

"Do you see what they've done? They have
removed the isthmus, and that--… and that has done something
unprecedented on an inhabited world. There are shock waves
registering on the seismographs, and not simply the explosives.
They've significantly altered the actual surface structures--… and
they've created a triple tsunami as well! Something else is going
on--but that will take days to confirm, and perhaps millennia to
conclude!"

Brunner closed his eyes against this
ghoulish enthusiasm while trying to visualize the changes,
the--

"I believe the flow of water has upset the
balance of the underlying plates," she went on, "and may have even
broken the link! They'd be free to float--…"

"Brunner! We will need as much as you can
get in the way of gas analysis, for they may well have released the
oceanic methane clathrates. Oh, that's a delicate balance indeed,
and given the odd sediment formations here, and the subsurface
temperature variations, we could be looking at a cascade of
undersea landslides and quakes, reinforcing a continental
redistribution--…"

"The jet streams," Brunner managed to get
in, "should not be greatly affected, but the currents--… much of my
database will need to be rebuilt, and we have no reliable reporting
scheme--…"

Boylan fizzed on, lost in the beauty of the
cataclysm. "Imagine! A complete change in the ocean currents
occurring nearly instantly! Storm systems and climate disrupted on
the spot! Given the elasticity of the plates, who knows but that we
might get volcanism out of this?"

"The people," Brunner said, forcefully. "The
survivors--…"

Boylan's lips straightened. She looked at
him, and pointed at the missing isthmus.

"What we need to do now is study and record
the processes and phenomena that have been unleashed," she said
firmly. "The people will have to be left to historians, don't you
think?"

Brunner's glance sought the Scout, who took
a breath and bowed low--excessive respect for one far exceeding the
bower's humble estate.

"Dr. Boylan," he murmured, honey-voiced.
"Your enthusiasm for science is well known and manifest. I wonder
if you might have the means among your programs, or"--he bowed to
Brunner as might one to a comrade--"if you, Ichliad Brunner, might
have among yours, a means to predict where these triple tsunami
might strike, and when? Perhaps we are best placed to offer
warning, if not solace, to those who still live."

* * *

There was no response to Brunner's call on
the following orbit, and nothing on the automatics indicating that
the Stubbs was online. Chief Thurton, apparently again against
objections, permitted the station to broadcast a multiband warning
to the world below once the Scout pointed out that he might do the
same from the comfort of his own ship, if the station preferred not
to.

As to specific warnings, that was barely
possible. A tsunami travels transparently in open ocean, its wave a
rapid but nearly invisible swell in an already tumultuous world.
They had no resources to determine speed, nor even to insure that
the first burst of monster wave against nearby shores had continued
beyond the initial coastline.

Eventually Jack was pressed into service
with the satellite, sampling coasts and islands visually, with his
observations of specific sites added to the warning the scout gave.
What lives were affected by this they could not tell: the surface
spoke not at all to them, along any of the regular bands.
Periodically he returned to view the isthmus area where a few sandy
shoals amidst the deep gash of a river of darker water triumphantly
flowing from the west were all that was left of the former
barrier.

"An army of liberation?" Jack asked heavily
of the room. "Is that what was here?"

"Does it matter?" Boylan answered
impatiently. "They are beyond concern at this point, are they
not?"

Brunner held to his tasks and said nothing,
working as if he could prevent further disaster by the strength and
purity of his research.

Eventually, the Scout returned, bearing with
him a station-issue portable.

Bowing a bow of respectful request to
equals, he waved the portable as if it were a child's rattle or
toy.

"The main computer was able to share with me
demographic information reported by planetary authorities, and
later by those splinter groups claiming authority. Some of it
conflicts, some of it is probably purposefully wrong. I would like
to use overlays of the various records you have of the last
Standard, with particular emphasis on the past three days."

This was said to the room at large.

Jack looked at Boylan, who was tending her
screens, working as if the words had not been said.

Brunner sighed and bowed, finding it within
himself to add the flourish which brought his acceptance close to
that of accepting a comrade's necessity.

"Yes," agreed the Scout, "there is some of
that, isn't there?"

"Some of what?" asked Boylan, raising her
face from her work.

"Must be a Liaden thing," Jack said, rolling
his eyes, and nodded at the Scout. "How can I help?"

* * *

Liz was talking to the Scout via the Stubbs,
and Liz was not happy. Redhead hovered nearby, one eye on the
machine and the other on the horizon. The air was bad, pollution
and radiation levels high--she saw it all on the screen as the
Stubbs did its upload.

"The shuttles that brought us down might
still exist," Liz was saying, sounding like she'd be mad if she
wasn't so damn tired. "So what? They're hellengone back down where
the city used to--"

"In that case," the Scout interrupted. "They
do not exist, my friend. Nothing exists there anymore."

Liz rubbed her face.

"I've broadcast a plea for assistance," the
Scout continued, "but Klamath has not been a good neighbor these
last dozen years and it is painfully clear there is no immediate
commercial advantage to be had."

Liz shook her head. "Merc unit here. I don't
have much in the way of bargaining chips, but I do have some
off-planet resources. Beam Merc Headquarters, tell 'em Lizardi's
good for the fare--…"

Redhead saw it first, the tell-tale wobble
in the land.

"Quake, clear and down!" She was parched,
and her voice didn't travel; Skel bellowed a repeat before going
down flat.

Exhausted Lunatics ran from under tree and
makeshift shelters. You didn't want to be under anything when the
wave came through and you didn't want to be standing, either--in
fact, you couldn't; it was like trying to stand on a tarp stretched
out over the sea with the tide coming in.

Whomp!

Redhead was flat when the roll hit, and Liz,
already sitting cross-legged, bobbed around as the dirt groaned and
a few more trees fell, and that part was over.

Now came the hard part for her: the ground
felt unsteady and swollen under her, like it was thinking about
splitting open or folding over, or--…

The second stage passed, too, and she sighed
into the scorched ground before pushing upright. Liz was still at
the Stubbs; she swept her hand out toward the scattered
Lunatics--

"Injury check!"

Redhead rose unsteadily and hinted at a
salute with her right hand while grabbing up the staff she'd picked
up from down-wood. Her speed and size conspired, giving her a
chance to get through tree-fall and such in a hurry. The circuit
here was familiar, and this time there were no new casualties among
the troops.

The civilians--… there were still a few out
there, and as long as they didn't actively shoot or throw rocks it
didn't matter if they came along. They'd already been on short
rations and shorter morale when they'd stumbled on the Lunatics and
their grasp of Trade and common Terran was less than good. Some of
them still grabbed for their amulets and lucky pieces instead of
hightailing to open land--… and there were a couple more among them
injured.

She got back to the Stubbs in time to hear
an exasperated Liz snap, "Tidal? We're a good three days' march
from anything approaching shore side, assuming I can still read a
map. Unless things have changed--…"

"The tsunami made some new dents, but
nothing that extreme," the Scout offered. "The under-plates
themselves are doing something we can't quantify yet. The
planetologist and the weatherman are working to define--to predict.
Moment--… Ah. Tech Brunner shows me that your location gained
altitude in the last upheaval. Higher by about the height of your
redhead, I think."

"That's interesting," Liz grated. "But it
doesn't get us out of here."

The line buzzed empty, then the Scout was
back. "It does not," he admitted quietly. "Give me the headcount at
your next check-in--your people and the civilians. I do not wish to
commit insufficient transport--and I would prefer a better landing
zone."

That, thought Redhead, sounded like he was
going to get them transport--and apparently it sounded like that to
Liz, too.

"Will do," she said, sounding easier.
"Here's your connection!"

Liz waved her over. Redhead muttered a quick
report: "Lost three of the locals overnight but everybody else came
through fine. Might've been a sprained ankle there--… but that's
livable."