Worlds

49. Cape Town

We only missed the Cape by about forty kilometers, over-shooting it to the south. We crossed the Indian River by moonlight, churning through the water at an agonizing crawl There was a bridge in sight, but we’d had one ambush too many.

Merritt Island. Lights off, we sneaked north up darkened residential streets. All along the eastern horizon the sky was red and boiling grey; we supposed it was a forest on fire.

This was the first part of Earth I ever saw, close up, gliding in on the shuttle. So full of industry and promise.

A green-white flash dazzled us, followed by a low rumble, like thunder but deeper and more sustained.

“That would be the Cape’s defensive net,” Jeff said. “Someone’s shooting at them.”

“I don’t suppose the 3R has missiles,” I said. “It’s the States after us.”

“Probably.” We had talked earlier about the possibility of the SSU taking advantage, starting The War that everybody always capitalized with their voices. Or of there possibly being a connection between the SSU and 3R.

“Do you think they’ll be all right? The missiles won’t get through?”

“I don’t know. Those lasers must have been twenty years old when New New York bought the Cape.” He reached over and patted me on the breast, not taking his eyes off the road. My shirt was stiff with caked blood. “You know there may be no one there. Or the army or the 3R might have taken over—you could probably take the place with a squad of riflemen.”

I hadn’t let myself think of that, but it was obvious. What could they fight back with?

We found out a half-hour later. We ran out of residential area abruptly and, guessing, headed east along a road that was suburbia on one side and mangrove swamp on the other. Heading toward the fire. We came to a northbound road with a fence and someone fired a laser pulse over our heads.

A bright searchlight blinded us. “GET OUT OF THAT VEHICLE AND IDENTIFY YOURSELF,” said a greatly amplified voice.

I saw Jeff take the handlaser out of its holster and stick it under his belt behind his back. “Keep your hands out in front of you,” he said. “Be calm.”

We walked toward the searchlight, “FAR ENOUGH.”

A small woman armed only with a clipboard came out of the glare. “Are you Worlds citizens?”

I nodded. “New New York. Marianne O’Hara.”

She riffled through the pages. “Root line?”

“Scanlan.”

“Who are you?” she said to Jeff.

“He’s my husband,” I said.

“Not Worlds?”

“No, I’m an American citizen. I do want to emigrate, though.”

“Don’t blame you. I can’t wait to get out of here myself. But you know,” she said to me, “you’ll have to wait until the war’s over. If you want to stay with him, you’ll have to stay here.”

“She’s going,” Jeff said.

“Are you the one who was kidnapped?” I said yes. “They didn’t treat you too well.” To Jeff: “Drive past the gate about a kilometer, and there’ll be a road to the right; that’s Cape Town. There’s an aid station in the middle there.”

“Wait,” I said. “There’s room for one more man, isn’t there? He’s my husband,”

“There isn’t even room for you,” she said without inflection, “or me. Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The States tried to blow the Worlds out of the sky. There’s nothing left but New New. And it’s going to be crowded with survivors from the others.”

I was stunned speechless. “So no groundhogs,” Jeff said.

“None. There’s one last flight going out at nine-ten this morning. Every shuttle leaving. And you’d be smart to be far away; the defensive lasers shut down a couple of minutes later. We want this place blown to pieces. We don’t want the U.S. to have a launch facility.”

“You ought to sabotage it yourselves,” Jeff said—unrelenting professional. “The U.S. won’t hit it once they see you’ve pulled out.”

“You don’t know.” Her eyes glistened and her voice broke. “It’s total war. The whole fucking planet” She said Whole. Fucking. Planet.

I staggered and Jeff grabbed me around the shoulders. “You can last until nine-ten?”

“Everything’s automatic,” she said. “So far, so good. I don’t know what we’ll do if they send soldiers.”

Jeff reached back and handed her his pistol, butt first. He turned a switch on the side. “We have other weapons in the RV; you’re welcome to them.”

He gave them the riot gun and grenades and the knee mortar and the subsonic claymore. We kept the laser rifle and my pistol, just in case.

Cape Town was a mess. Paper everywhere, a lot of it American currency. Piles of clothing, books, household effects. Fancy vacationers’ tents mixed in with lean-tos of cardboard and scrap wood. Knots of people huddled around small fires.

We followed signs to the aid station, a graceful modern building that had once been a duty-free shop. The one doctor was asleep on a cot, snoring; a nurse helped me up onto a table and gave me a shot, then cut away the stiff bandages. I faded out while he was asking me what had happened.

I woke up in the back seat of the RV, my head on Jeff’s lap. The sky was getting bright “What time?”

“Almost seven,” he said. “I’ll have to go soon.”

My neck was tight and sore from the stitches. I pulled myself up to a sitting position and closed my eyes until the dizziness went away. “I’m coming with you,” I said. “I can’t abandon you here.”

After a long silence, he whispered “Bullshit,” and kissed me. He opened the door. “Think you can stand up?”

“I’m serious, Jeff.”

“I know you are. I’ve had more time to think about it, though.” He helped me out onto the crushed grass. The swamp air was cool and musty. We were less than a kilometer from where the nearest shuttles were waiting.

“Look at it this way,” he said. “The war can’t go on very much longer. I have weapons, transportation, a uniform; chances are I’ll make it through.

“Let me keep the gold. As soon as possible, I’ll get to Tokyo Bay, Zaire, Novosibirsk—wherever they’re still launching. And I’ll buy passage.”

“It may be years before they let anyone up.”

“Now suppose you did come along with me,” he continued. “We wouldn’t get into orbit any faster—and the two of us together would be a lot less likely to survive the next couple of weeks, than I would be, by myself. ‘He travels swiftest who travels alone.’”

“You’ve got it all figured out.”

“Pretty much.”

“Except how I’m supposed to live with myself, letting you—”

“Don’t be sentimental. Melodramatic. We have to be practical.”

It wasn’t a setting conducive to practicality, the space ships poised against an impossible magenta sunrise, my mind a confusion of gratitude, fear, guilt, and hope. I knew he was right but my will was paralyzed.

“Here.” He took me by the arm and turned me around; opened the RV’s front door. My trunk was on the seat. “I got your things while you were sleeping. Can you choose out seven kilograms’ worth?”

“Already have.” I unlocked it and lifted out a plastic bag. “Last day I was in New York.” Almost nothing practical: a carton of French cigarettes and six bottles of Guinness, a clarinet with two dozen bamboo reeds, a diary, a drawing. A shamrock frozen in clear plastic, that Jeff had given me on New Year’s Day.

He closed the trunk and heaved it into the back. “Better get you aboard. I’ve got a long way to go in two hours.” He did over to the driver’s seat and switched on the motor. “Come on.”

I sat down and eased the door shut “Don’t we have to find out which one…”

“You’re going in Number Four, the low-gee one. Because you’re injured.” The vehicle bumped across the uneven grassland. He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and passed over a folded sheet of paper. “They let me do your manifest for you.”

I stared at it without reading it “How far do you have to be?”

“I don’t really know. Some of those old missiles have a blast radius some tens of kilometers. Just want to get as far away as possible and be behind something solid, at nine-ten.”

We lurched up onto the tarmac and Jeff sped toward Number Four. There were a few dozen people waiting at the lift entrance at the base of the shuttle, many of them propped up on crutches or sitting in wheelchairs, clustered around a small fire.

He eased the RV to a stop a little beyond the crowd and leaned over and kissed me. He was gentle but his arms were hard and trembling. “No words,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just go.”