Earthbound

4

I woke to pale light and quiet conversation. Got up stiffly from the pile of laundered uniforms I’d used as bedding. Rubbed my face and dragged fingers through my hair and realized I would kill for a toothbrush. Found the rear sink and rinsed my mouth and splashed my face, and went toward the sound.

Alba was talking to Paul. Please let her be ugly.

Of course she was not. Regular features, intelligence in her eyes. A nice figure that I’d gotten to paw before Paul could even fantasize about it.

“You must be Carmen.”

“I don’t know. It’s early yet.” I took her hand. Able was I ere I saw Alba. “This is the stuff from your car?”

“Combined with your pistol, yes. Wish we had more ammunition. At least all the rifles use the same kind.” Two pistols and a new-looking rifle—our two must have been in use—and a mean-looking thing that I guessed was the “riot gun.” I picked it up carefully.

“Ten gauge,” she said. “It makes a hell of a noise, but we only have one box of shells for it. Can’t get them at Kmart.”

“Must kick like a mule.”

“No, it’s recoilless. The rounds are like little rockets. And nobody but me can fire it; it’s keyed to my thumbprint.”

“What will they think of next?”

“I’d like to ask Alba to join us,” Paul said. “She brings expertise and local knowledge as well as weapons.”

We looked at each other, and a certain understanding passed. She wasn’t a danger where Paul was concerned, at least not yet. “And a knapsack,” I said, looking down at the gear. “Tear gas grenades, two canteens. What are these?” I gingerly touched one of four things that looked like rubber balls painted green.

“Flash-bangs. You can temporarily blind and deafen an adversary without hurting him.” She pointed at one. “You click the red dot twice and throw; it’ll go off when it hits the ground.”

“Do they come with earplugs and dark glasses?”

She laughed. “Long gone. We have to improvise.”

There were four boxes of rifle ammunition, smaller than the box for the riot gun. Nothing that I could see for the pistol. “We’re not exactly ready for a war, are we?”

“In more ways than one, no.” She glanced at Paul. “Paul told me what happened to you both yesterday. I’ve never gone through anything like that. I mean, I trained for the eventuality, and thought it through, but I’ve never shot anybody or been shot at.”

“Does the prospect bother you?”

“It makes me sick. Ten percent excited and ninety percent sick.”

“Here comes the expert,” Paul said. Namir came in shirtless, rubbing his face with a towel. His muscles weren’t as well defined as they had been on the starship. No real exercise for a week.

“There’s a story that’s reinvented every war,” he said, “that goes back at least to the nineteenth century… someone asks a sniper what he feels when he takes aim and squeezes, and a man falls dead. He says ‘Recoil.’

“I did that when I was a boy, eighteen or nineteen. We had smart bullets; you kept them on target with a joystick. And there was a kind of joy when you hit the target, hand-slapping and thumbs-up—it was a group effort, and the guy you killed was just a grainy black-and-white image, like a pocket video game.

“But I’ve done the opposite extreme, too. After Gehenna, I killed a man with my bare hands. Tried to strangle him, but he resisted hard. Finally beat his head against the concrete floor until… until he died. I felt a different kind of joy then, fierce. But horror, too, like I could never get my hands clean again.”

“Gehenna,” she said quietly. “We studied it.”

“The bastards killed my mother. And almost everyone I worked with, in Mossad. Tel Aviv, what, seventy years ago?”

“Seventy-one,” she said, good student.

“And you’ve been shot, too,” I said.

He nodded. “New York City. I stepped off a slidewalk and a woman was waiting for me. One shot, point-blank in the chest.”

“Killed you?”

“Yeah, but I was back in a couple of minutes. A pro would’ve gone for the head.”

“Was she a spy like you?”

“Just a hire, we think. My bodyguard did go for the head—‘two in the chest, one in the head,’ as we were taught. So we couldn’t find out from her who she was, who she worked for. He got hell for that, demoted. Unfair.”

He picked up the new rifle and removed the magazine and the bolt, the way he’d showed us, and inspected the bolt minutely. “I’d thought that part of my life was long over.” He slid the top two rounds out of the magazine and put them back, testing the spring with his thumb, and then removed the top round again and set it on the table. “Better to have one less round than jam. Spring is old.”

He looked up. “Your name is Alba?”

“That’s right.”

“Scotland?”

“No, it means ‘dawn’ in Spanish.”

“Your father was…”

“Five cc’s of thawed-out Harvard sperm. Never met the guy.”

He nodded, looking off in the distance. “That must feel strange. Your father might have been dead when you were conceived.”

“I’ve thought about that myself. I was never curious enough to check.”

“Understandable.” He looked around. “Did we all lose fathers and mothers on this trip?”

Fifty years evaporated by relativity. “Meryl talked to her parents,” I said, “both of them. Don’t know whether they’d survive the power going off.”

He looked at the cartridge in his hand. “These aren’t smart rounds. Tracers?”

“Every fourth.”

“Mixed blessing.” I supposed because they made a line that pointed back to your own position.

“Are we going to stay here or leave?” I said.

“They know we’re here?” Namir asked Alba.

“Motor pool, yes.”

“I think we should wait for them. They’ll get impatient, today or tomorrow. How many?”

“Three I know of. The ones I overheard at HQ.”

Namir stood and stretched. “If I were them, I’d find sniper positions, separate ones, and wait. Pick us off one at a time. Who’s on the roof?”

“Dustin,” Paul said.

“I’ll go up and make sure he’s keeping his head down. Roof’s the obvious first target for a sniper.” He checked his wrist for the nonexistent watch, made a face, and went toward the stairs.

“Is he hard to live with?” Alba asked, after Namir had left.

“No. He’s very considerate and calm.”

“Controlled,” Paul said. “He’s been through enough to send anybody right ’round the bend. That one he talked about wasn’t the only person he’s killed.” He shook his head hard. “God. Now I’m one, too, a killer.”

“You had to do it, Paul.”

“So did he. So did he.”

“He’s stable, though,” Alba said. “Seems about as solid as anyone I’ve ever met.”

Paul laughed. “That’s what they always say in the newsie interviews. ‘Who would ever have thought a man that stable would kill his mother and eat her?’ But yeah. We lived together for years in that crowded starship, and I never saw him lose his temper.”

“Which is unnatural,” I had to point out. “The rest of us had our little moments.”

“Like Moonboy. A little assault and battery.”

“I heard about him, on the cube show about you. He went crazy, and the Others killed him?”

“Not really,” I said. “They took him, but he’s not dead, if they’re to be believed.”

“Not alive, either. A kind of suspended animation, which he’ll never leave. Close enough to being dead.”

Something I hadn’t thought of in a while. “Alive or dead or in between, he’s the only human they have in their possession, to study. The only one of us who cracked under the strain.”

“Of course they knew that,” Paul said. “And we were all glad. He was a real pain in the butt, as well as a lunatic.”

“Talking about my Moonboy?” Meryl said as she walked into the room, brushing her hair.

“Sorry,” we both said.

“Don’t be. He was a lunatic and a pain in the ass. Ask Elza.” He’d been in bed with Elza when he had his breakdown, and punched her hard enough to break her nose. Meryl was not surprised by the infidelity then, but she had been by the violence.

“We were all supposedly chosen because we could get along with others in close quarters,” I said.

“Some things you just can’t test for.” There was real pain behind her brusqueness. “So are we moving out now?” We told her about the new plan, or non-plan. She went into the kitchen to hard-boil all the eggs, for portability.

Namir came down and went around checking doors and windows. He came back with Snowbird. “Snowbird, this is Alba.”

She made a little curtsy, like a horse in dressage. “You are black.”

“Yeah, and you smell funny.”

“I apologize for catabolism. I have no food to metabolize.” In fact, she was starting to smell like marigolds. “I’ve not seen a black person since I left Mars, many years ago.”

“You’ve been stuck here since you got back?”

“Here on the base, yes, in protective custody.”

“Serious threats on her life,” I said. “Even before the shit hit the fan.”

“The what?”

“Old expression. One of my father’s favorites.”

“How much longer can you live,” Namir asked, “without new food?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been hungry before.”

“You can’t eat any human food?” Alba asked.

“No. I can consume pure carbohydrates but get no nutrition from them. And the smallest amount of protein contamination would kill me.”

“They didn’t have food for you anywhere on this base?” I said.

“A few days’ worth, which I’ve eaten. More was coming, from Russia. Actually, if the power hadn’t gone out, I might have joined the other Martians there by now, or at least tomorrow—”

There was a sudden gunshot. Namir snatched the rifle off the table and hit the floor, hard. “Get away from the window!” Snowbird half galloped into the next room. I slumped myself down behind the table. They couldn’t see in, I thought irrelevantly. They could shoot in.

Elza came staggering into the room, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What was—”

Paul grabbed her, and Namir shouted, “Down, Elza! Get down!” She did, and scuttled over to take one of the pistols.

A single answering bang came from the roof.

“Dustin’s a good shot,” Namir said. After a minute he stole up the stairs and cracked open the door to the roof. “Any luck?”

Dustin’s response was inaudible, where we were. Namir came back down, still keeping low. “Target’s not moving,” he relayed. “Dead or wounded or playing possum. I guess Dustin doesn’t want to use up a round, checking.”

“Might be good strategy to shoot a couple,” Paul said. “Make it look like we have ammo to spare.”

“Might be. But I think the time for that is past, now. I better check out back.”

“I’ll go,” Alba said. She had the riot gun. “Won’t use this unless they’re coming in the door.”

“Good. Take the other pistol, Carmen.” I did. It was the one Paul had used. Keep it in the family. I clicked the safety off, on, off again. A speck of red paint showed when it was off. Red equals fire, easy enough.

There was a long stammer of automatic fire, part of which crashed through the window. Only seven rounds of it, evidently; there were seven small holes letting daylight in. But the glass hadn’t shattered.

“He’s close,” Namir said in a hoarse whisper. “If Dustin can’t see him, he’s probably just behind the sandbags. Where you were on guard last night, Carmen.”

I was trying to swallow, but couldn’t. Most of those bullets hit the wall behind me. If I’d been standing up, I’d have been hit.

“Stay down,” he said unnecessarily. “He might try to shoot out—” There was a longer sustained roar of fire, glass splintering everywhere, which blew a hole in the picture window more than two feet wide.

Namir stood up quickly and sighted through the hole. He stood still as a photograph for two seconds and then fired a single shot, which reverberated like a gong in the closed room.

“Lucky shot.” He strode over to the front door, unbolted it, and opened it a couple of inches. He aimed down through the slit and fired once more.

“Okay. Paul, come check. Isn’t this the guy from yesterday?”

I stepped over to look. It looked like him, Jemmie, in NASA coveralls, but he was face-down on the sidewalk, blood and brains sprayed in a fan from the back of his head; Namir’s second shot. I swallowed bile.

He was still holding his weapon, a pistol not much bigger than mine, but with a large ammunition canister attached.

“Yeah,” Paul said. “One to go, maybe?”

“I want to go up and take a look around. You cover things down here?”

“Sure.” He didn’t sound so sure.

Where would the third one be? Would he or she continue the plan alone? If I were in that situation, with the two others gone, I would be hiding now. Sneak away after the sun goes down.

Paul had said something to me. “What?”

“I want you to cover me while I run out and get that guy’s gun. He has two magazines on his belt, too.”

“Cover you? You mean shoot back if someone shoots at you?”

“Yeah. Keep their heads down.”

“I only have five bullets in this thing.”

“Here, trade.” He set the rifle in front of me on the reception table, and took my pistol, ours.

He bounded out the door as I picked up the rifle. I barely had time to figure out the safety, when he came rushing back in with the weapon and its two magazines, and kicked the door shut with a slam behind him.

“Get down!” I was already crouching, but I flopped down, the rifle clattering under me, and there was a deafening explosion.

His face was about two feet from mine, and we stared at each other wild-eyed. “Grenade. Hand grenade.”

Namir came rattling down the stairs. “What the fuck was that?”

“He had a hand grenade. I went out to get his weapon and I guess his hand relaxed. The whatchamacallit sprang off—”

“The arming lever.”

“—and I just got back in time.”

“God. That’s why he shot out the hole in the window. To toss it in.”

“I wonder if they have more,” Paul said.

“I wonder why they had one!” Alba had crawled up with her shotgun. “Not exactly crowd control.”

“Namir!” Dustin’s voice from the door onto the roof. “Guy running away.”

“Armed?”

“Not obviously.”

He went up, taking two stairs at a time. I could hear them talking quietly, and then a single shot.

Namir came back down. “Shot over his head. Just let him know we saw him.”

“Wonder if that’s all of them,” Alba said, standing up.

“Maybe there’s one inside the building here,” came a voice from the shadows. My brother Card came forward. He was holding one of the flare pistols, aimed at Alba.

“For God’s sake, Card,” Paul said, “don’t shoot that thing indoors.”

Alba set the shotgun on the floor and raised both her hands. “Let him have his say.”

“You came out of the darkness with just what we needed. Guns, ammunition, information. You’re pretty and smart and have a convincing and useful uniform. Anybody who’s ever gamed knows that rule: If it seems to be too good to be true, it’s probably not true.”

“I have ID.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“It’s a NASA ID with a DNA spot.”

“Which means shit without electronics.”

“Card,” I said, “you’re being paranoid.”

“We all should be,” he said. “Alba, even if you do work for NASA, or did, how do we know you’re not one of them, now?”

Snowbird came up behind him. “I could speak to that,” she said, “just from observation.”

“What have you observed?” Card asked.

“This morning, when it became light, Alba could have taken the riot gun and killed everyone except the upstairs guard. And then, probably, killed the guard as soon as he opened the door. Her partners in this endeavor would be nearby—we know they were—and then the three of them would abduct me and get on with their plan.”

“An idiotic idea to begin with,” Alba said. “If, as you say, I’m smart, why would I team up with those idiots?”

“Good enough for me,” Namir said. “Card, your caution is commendable. But excessive in this case, I think.”

“I agree,” Paul said. “The same thing occurred to me last night, Card. But after we’d talked for a while, no. Besides, she had plenty of opportunities last night and, as Snowbird said, this morning, and we’re all still alive.”

I saw a tense look pass between Paul and Namir, and could read it well: Paul was closer, and Namir’s expression was saying, “You do it, and I’ll be right behind you.”

I opened my mouth to intervene, but then the totally unexpected happened.

“I’m sorry, Alba.” Card lowered the gun. “I’m way out of line here. Forgive me?”

“Um… sure, Card.” She slowly reached down and retrieved the shotgun.

“I’m used to spending most of my time in virtuality. Making my living in an imaginary world, and mostly living there. Without it, I suppose my imagination is a little out of control.”

“It isn’t a bad instinct,” Namir said carefully. “We need to think in different ways; need to look at problems from every angle.”

“Though we might stop short of pointing guns at each other,” Paul said.

I was just plain stunned. The Card I grew up with would not have apologized if he’d caused the London Fire and 9/11 combined. The fifty years had mellowed him.

“Okay,” Namir said. “If we’re going to stay here much longer, we have to bury what’s left of that poor bastard up front. He’ll be smelling pretty bad by evening.”

Something made the small hairs on the back of my neck stir. “Wait. Where’s Meryl?”

Namir looked around. “Wasn’t she with you?”

“Back in the kitchen, a minute ago.” I called her name twice.

Dustin trotted back toward the kitchen. “Oh, shit,” he said softly.

She was lying on the kitchen floor in front of the sink, her legs out straight, as if she were resting. There was a red stain the size of a playing card on the center of her chest and a large pool of blood under her back. The window over the sink had a bullet hole and blood spatter.

Dustin fell to his knees and tried to breathe life back into her.

I couldn’t find breath myself. Elza shook her head, and said “No.” She got down next to Dustin and grabbed his shoulders lightly. “That’s not… She’s too far gone.”

Dustin didn’t respond at first, but then eased the body back down. He wiped blood from his lips. “She didn’t make a sound.”

It was one of the bullets that had crashed through the living-room window. Paul and I found two spades in a shed out back. There was a patch of grass with some roses behind it. We all took turns standing guard and digging. After we buried her, Dustin said some words in Latin.

We washed up in the bathroom, avoiding the kitchen. The water from the tap was still warm.

I felt like part of me had died. I’d never been as close to Meryl as to the other five, but we had all lived through several different worlds together.

So we weren’t immortal. We weren’t even bulletproof.

“The hell with the body out front,” Paul said. “Let’s get our gear together and start pushing up to Fruit Farm.”

“Nothing here for us,” Namir said, then… “What the fuck?”

The lights had come back on.

From Rear View Mirror: an Immediate History, by Lanny del Piche (Eugene, 2140):

…were the Others just playing a sadistic game, when they restored power temporarily on 30 April that year? If my guess is as good as anybody’s, I’d say they were just temporarily changing the parameters of the experiment. Our physical comfort was of no concern to them, and our existential or psychological state was invisible, not even a variable.

My first area of study was animal behavior. We were reasonably enlightened in our treatment of test animals—any sign of cruelty or even lack of compassion would’ve resulted in student demonstrations and faculty censure.

But that was about animals who were cousins to humans. A lab rat shares more than our gross anatomical structure; it has more than hunger and thirst; it prefers one taste to another. Individual rats have individual personalities, even when they’re raised in robotic unison. Sacrificing them was a necessary chore, but I remember how I grated my teeth when I grabbed one by the tail and swung him down to smack his head against the lab table. Did the other rats know what was going on? I don’t remember them reacting; if they had, it would have upset me.

Perhaps a closer analogy would be in our study of microorganism cultures. A drop of nutrient doped with penicillin would create a clear circle that was the purposeful destruction of millions of creatures. And after their survivors had been measured and photographed, the whole small universe went into a red bio-waste bucket.

When the Others are done with us, will they leave us there on the table, to work out our individual and collective destinies?

Or will they be more fastidious than that…