Earthbound

3

Nice to have a native guide, but as darkness fell, I might have traded him for a map and a flashlight. A big box of kitchen matches wouldn’t hurt. Did they still have them in this future?

We had lined up all our gear by the door and opened it a crack to watch the light fade. The cloudless sky went from lemon to salmon to deepening gray.

It was no surprise, of course, to see meteors crisscrossing as the sky got darker; we’d been seeing that ever since the Others blew up the moon. Really bright ones rolled across the daytime sky so often that no one commented on them anymore. But there was a new feature that we hadn’t noticed while there was still power, and the lights of civilization: night would never be completely dark.

That cloud of debris that was the corpse of the moon was composed of trillions of pebbles and rocks that all reflected sunlight like tiny moons. The result was a dim haze that made enough light to see your hand a few feet away.

Paul was mortified that he hadn’t predicted it, with his graduate degree in astrophysics. Of course, we hadn’t seen a night sky without city lights since we had landed on Earth four days before.

Our plan to sneak up to the farm under cover of darkness was useless. There would be plenty of people on the road at night, avoiding the desert heat.

Snowbird gave voice to the obvious. “You have to leave me behind. I’m like a beacon, drawing trouble. And I slow you down.”

“We’re responsible for you,” Namir said.

“Not really. I would as soon die here as anywhere, and I would rather not take any of my friends with me.

“Perhaps I will just swim away until I tire out and sink. I would be the best Martian swimmer on Earth. Or anyplace.”

“Thank you for the generosity, but we can’t abandon you.” In the dim murk, I couldn’t read the others’ expressions. “Are we in agreement here?”

“No,” Dustin said. “Snowbird, I also appreciate your logic and selflessness. I really think I would make the same offer if I were in your shoes. In your position. Who is with me?”

There was some muttering and throat clearing, cut short by a loud thump that was the butt of Namir’s rifle hitting the floor. “We are not going to cast lots over whether to allow one of our number to die.

“The seven of us are alone here. We traveled fifty light-years together in constant danger and considerable discomfort. We faced a powerful and implacable enemy and survived. We watched our universe change drastically three separate times. Whatever is going to happen to us, we face it together.

“Snowbird, consider extending your logic and generosity. If some idiot kills you for being a Martian, you will be exactly as dead as if you had drowned. Meanwhile, you might be the most valuable member of this ragtag bunch.”

“You’re our wild card,” Paul said. “I think you’re the only Martian in the hemisphere. You’re closer to understanding the Others than any human can be, and they’re still the primary enemy, no matter how far away they are in space and time.”

Elza stood up in the darkness. “The enemy I’m worried about now are assholes like the ones you dealt with today. So what are we going to do now? I mean tonight. If we can’t benefit from darkness, maybe we should stay here until morning and start moving then, when no one can sneak up on us.”

“That’s right,” Namir said. “Another six or eight hours’ rest wouldn’t hurt us, either.”

“Leaving two of us on guard while the others sleep,” Elza said.

“One up on the roof, with the binoculars,” Paul said. “That should be me. I can use the stars to measure out two-hour shifts.”

“Show us how?” Namir said.

I saw Paul’s silhouette as he opened the door to look out. “Sure. It’s dark enough.” The brighter stars were visible through the sky glow.

We all filed out, including Snowbird—never can tell when reading the stars might come in handy, for a doomed Martian stranded in the Mojave Desert.

It was possible to come close to calculating the actual local time, if you knew the date and a few constellations. But none of us had appointments to meet, so he just showed us an easy way to approximate the passage of time. Your fist at arm’s length is about ten degrees. The sun or moon or a star moves about thirty degrees, three fists, in two hours.

(Meryl was able to use her xenology background—she knew better than the rest of us how the world looked to a Martian—and patiently translated what Paul had showed us into Snowbird’s anatomy. She did have a lot more fists to work with.)

I drew the first shift, with Paul on the roof, but Namir was out there, too, hidden behind a truck. Not tired enough to sleep, he said.

He had showed us all how to operate the rifles and pistol, and made us practice loading and unloading and safety procedures until we could do the whole drill with our eyes closed.

It didn’t make me too confident. The rifle was heavy and cold and greasy, and smelled of gunsmoke. My skin still crawled where the man’s blood and brains had spattered me.

I’d vomited twice again, mostly water and acid.

I was hungry but didn’t want to waste food by barfing.

So I tried to force myself into calm, but I couldn’t not think about the sudden explosion and gory splash.

Namir had asked whether I would like to be excused from the guard schedule because of the traumatic experience. I said no, that feeling as if I could protect myself would help. Maybe it would. Not yet.

I was next to the front door, behind a stack of sandbags scavenged from the wall. I could crouch behind them and shoot over the top of the stack, or lie down—“assume the prone position,” which sounds like a porn director’s command. Or I could curl up into a ball and weep.

There was a hole in the sky, which was interesting. I actually figured it out for myself before Paul had a chance to enlighten me: it was the Earth’s shadow, blocking off sunshine from the lunar debris. Sort of an anti-moon, a little bigger than the moon and moving much faster through the sky.

The constant meteor shower seemed to be slowing down, or maybe I was just getting used to it.

There was a quiet rustle behind me, and I started. But it was only Snowbird.

“I wondered whether you were ready to eat,” she said. She held out something that touched my arm.

“Thanks.” It was some kind of candy bar. I unwrapped it and was grateful for the creamy chocolate and unidentifiable nuts. “How are you doing?”

“I’m in a complex state, which is also simple. Preparing to die.”

“In Mars, I suppose it would be much different.” I knew a little about their death customs. “With your family.”

She shuffled in the dark. “Newsies called it telepathy, but it’s nothing so strange. More like a data transfer. We don’t quite understand how it works, but the result is clear. Experiences that are unique to the dying individual are transferred to a sort of family memory. Like adding to a scrapbook in a human family, but all in the head.”

“You would have a lot of those. Unique experiences.”

She made a two-click sound of agreement. “I don’t think anything will be transferred without physical contact, though.”

“The more reason for you not to give up.”

There was a long pause. “You really think the Others will turn the power back on?”

“Anybody’s guess. I don’t suppose it’s likely. Do you?”

“My instinct says no. They aren’t kindly.” That was an understatement. “But it’s hard to predict where their logic may have taken them.”

The Others think very fast, superconducting neurocircuits, but they live and move with glacial slowness, slithering through liquid nitrogen. Their dealings with species like ours are planned out years ahead of time, or even centuries or millennia. Their automata, who perceive and react at our speed or faster, observe us and decide which branch of the logic tree to follow. The decision to turn off the free power doomed a billion or more humans, but as far as we know it was just remorseless logic, a chain of events that started tens of thousands of years ago. If humans do this, then we will do this, in self-defense.

Many races on earthlike planets have been evaluated this way. They say that many were not destroyed.

As we weren’t, quite. Yet.

“They haven’t been unkind to you. To Martians.”

“No, but we aren’t competitors. It bothers me to think that we’re not particularly useful to them anymore. We were created for a purpose and have fulfilled it.”

The Others created the Martians, biological machines, and put them in an Earth-like bubble in Mars, to serve as an advance warning, in case the unpleasant denizens of Earth evolved into space flight.

It was illustrative of the Others’ slow, tortuous, logical method. When we finally were sophisticated enough to leave Earth, one of our first targets would be Mars. When we found the Martian underground city, that would trigger a signal to Neptune’s moon Triton, where an individual Other was resting in frigid nitrogen slush. It would evaluate the situation and choose among various pre-ordained courses of action.

It chose a scenario where humans and Martians had to work together to defuse a bomb that would destroy all advanced life on Earth. Then it went back to its home planet, almost twenty-five light-years away, to report.

One assumes that the Others were ready and waiting, when it came back with news of what it had done and learned. The one best course of action was chosen, and the tools for it sent back almost twenty-five light-years to the waiting Earth.

In the intervening fifty years, though, the Earth had built an interplanetary defense fleet, which was obviously not unexpected.

Those thousand defensive ships posed no real threat to the Others; their home was a million times farther away. But the ships represented a dangerous attitude, as many had feared, and the Others had a plan for that.

The Others didn’t destroy us all, though that would’ve been simple, but just pulverized the moon, scattering its material more or less evenly inside the former satellite’s orbit, which destroyed the fleet and sent an unambiguous message: stay on Earth. Our glorious leaders opted to ignore that, or defy it, which triggered another pre-ordained response, taking away not only their gift of free energy, but somehow all electrical power as well. Suddenly marooning us in the nineteenth century, surrounded by useless sophisticated hardware. Like flashlights.

“Someone’s coming,” Snowbird whispered. I couldn’t see anyone.

“Halt!” Paul shouted from the roof. “Put your hands up.” The binoculars would help him see.

“I’m not armed,” a scared voice said. A young woman or younger boy.

“I see her,” Namir said. “Carmen, she’s directly in front of you, maybe thirty feet away. Please leave your weapon and go search her. I have you covered.”

That does a lot of good, I thought. If something goes wrong, you can shoot in our general direction.

“I’m over here,” she said. “Over here, over here, over here. I don’t mean anybody any harm.” About halfway there, I could see her, a dark ghost in the dim sky light, dressed in black, her hands pale smudges over her head.

“Excuse me,” I said idiotically, and patted her the way they did in cop shows fifty and a hundred years ago. She was about my size, but muscular. If she had a weapon on her, it was stuck in a place I was reluctant to touch.

Her clothing was like satin, and it was a strangely strong erotic experience, caressing a person I’d never seen. Maybe with proper study I could become a lesbian.

“Okay. So who are you, and what are you doing here? All dressed in black.” Her skin was evidently dark, except for her palms.

“I’m Alba Larimer. Security officer here at Armstrong. I came to warn you—some people plan to ambush you and take the Martian.”

“What do they plan to do with her?” Namir asked. He was still behind the truck.

“They think the Other must be watching us, the one that was on the cube?” The one we knew as Spy. “They think if they threaten to kill her, the Other will show up and make a deal.”

“That is stupid on so many levels,” Namir said. “But thank you. My name is Namir. Do you know where the ambush would be?”

“Somewhere between here and the turnoff to Route 17. Probably a building. There are a couple of dozen, unfortunately. You’d probably be better off staying here, if you have guns. Let them approach a defended position.”

She was talking his language.

“Hm. How many of them?”

“Only two were talking. There might have been more outside.”

“And what is your stake in this?”

“My job,” she said, her voice shaking. “No one has relieved me of my responsibilities.”

I could almost see him nodding, assessing her. “Security. Do you have access to weapons and ammunition?”

“An assault rifle, a shotgun, and riot gear. In my car’s trunk, I’m afraid. Electronic lock.”

“We have an electronic crowbar,” Paul said from above. “How far away?”

“Less than a half mile; I was watching the launch.”

“What do you think?” Paul said.

I was not sure what to say, and then Namir answered. “I’ll go with her. Alba, can you find your car in this darkness?”

“Yes; it’s white. It’s exposed, though, by the side of the road.”

“Let’s move quickly, then. I’ll get the crowbar.”

Paul offered to come along as backup, and Namir said no, period. He didn’t have to explain. If she turned out to be a bad guy, we were only risking one man and one weapon. And she didn’t yet know how few people and weapons we had.

“Is there a central security building,” I asked, “where they keep all the guns and all?”

“I walked there first. It was a mess. At least three officers dead inside. I let myself in through the kitchen, and nobody saw me. That’s when I overheard the plot to kidnap the Martian.”

“So they’re armed to the teeth.”

“I don’t think so. The armory went into automatic lockdown when the power went off. I don’t think you can get in there without a heavy-duty laser or a cutting torch.”

“The lock would be mechanical,” Paul said, “I wonder if there’s a mechanical way around it… probably not. It wouldn’t have been designed with the idea that the power would go off forever.”

“Do you think it really is forever? I didn’t see the broadcast.”

“I don’t remember the exact wording,” I said. “It sounded pretty final.”

“They said we were to become a ‘donor planet,’ ” Paul said. “So some other world would be getting free power at the expense of our own potential for generating electricity. Or that’s how I interpret it.”

“Are you a scientist?”

“No. Used to be a rocket jock. Currently unemployed.”

I could feel her smile. “Aren’t we all, now.”

I heard a loud clank and muttered curse from inside. Namir had found the crowbar by knocking it over.

He was just visible, coming through the door. Rifle slung over his shoulder, crowbar held like a weapon in his right hand.

“Carmen, you move up to the edge of the wall. Take the safety off. If we draw any fire, shoot high in our direction. We’ll run back as fast as we can.”

“We’ll probably be okay,” Alba said. “I haven’t seen or heard anyone nearby.” She laughed. “Though I didn’t see or hear you, Namir, when I walked in.”

“Good. I’ve been trying to stay invisible. Let’s go.”

I followed them as far as the entrance, then settled in, leaning against the sandbags. Which smelled like the beach, plastic and hot sand.

Alba disappeared immediately into the murk, but I could still see Namir for a minute. Then he was gone.

I was straining to hear, and so jumped at the first loud noise. A good thing I didn’t have my finger on the trigger. It was just Namir attacking the car trunk with the crowbar. Then a loud pop, and a vague sound of metal things clicking against metal in the distance. Then several dull thuds, which I supposed were Namir trying to break into an unbreakable window.

This would be the dangerous time. People would be attracted by the noise and follow the sound.

It stopped, and I watched and listened anxiously for several minutes.

Then something moved on the road in front of me. “Namir?” I whispered.

“It’s me.”

“And Alba.” I couldn’t see her until they passed directly in front of me. An advantage to being black.

“Paul,” Namir stopped, and said to the roof, “is it two hours yet?”

“Just about.”

“I’ll send Elza up to relieve you.” He reached out and touched my arm. “You can get some rest now, Carmen. Give Dustin your rifle and send him back. I’ll bring Alba up to speed.”

I felt a momentary irrational twinge of jealousy. The black widow comes out of the night and claims our protector. But I really could use some sleep.