Footfall (26 page)

Jesus.

“So far nothing’s shot at us—”

There was a roar and the sharp snap of multiple sonic booms. Harry looked up. Dozens of parallel white lines crossed the sky from the southwest; they dropped like the lines in Missile Command, downward toward where Colonel Halverson’s force was centered. There were bright flashes at the horizon and along the line where the connecting vehicles had been strung out. After a long pause, there was the sound of thunder.

“Jayhawks, this is Watcher,” Harry said. “Any Jayhawk, this is Watcher. Come in—”

Harry poured the last of the gas into the motorcycle.

“What was it?” Carlotta asked.

“I don’t know. It looked like a video game. It was unreal.” Harry went on checking the motorcycle. Making a motorcycle work was a good test of sanity, and one he could win. Death from the sky-we owned the sky once. Then the Soviets took it away. Now we’ve got to take it back from baby elephants.

“Motor’s in good shape. We’ll make it fine. You’ll have to hold the rifle.” He handed Carlotta the 30-06 Winchester that David Morgan had loaned him.

“Not an elephant gun, but it’ll give them pause to think,” Morgan had said.

Not a loan anymore. They were dead, all of them. He’d waited an hour. “Maybe I ought to go look?”

“No.” Carlotta was positive. “You’ll get yourself killed. It’s more important that we capture that stray—”

“Mrs. Dawson, you don’t know that’s a stray.”

“What else could it be?”

Harry shruigged. All I know is I’m gettin’ damned tired of ridin’ this motorcycle, and I wish I had another tube of Preparation H. But my back isn’t as bad as it was. “All aboard.”

He patted his pocket to be sure the tape was in it. Somebody would want that tape.

“I will never go metric—” Harry sang.

A clump of cars and people was clustered around a big semi ahead. “We’re just about to Collinston,” Harry shouted. “That looks like trouble.”

He slowed, and drove the motorcycle up to the semi. A highway patrol cruiser was parked nearby, and a lieutenant of the highway patrol stood facing a knot of angry farmers and truckers. Most of them held rifles or shotguns.

“Oh, shit,” Harry muttered.

The lieutenant eyed Harry and Carlotta. Red beard, dirty clothes; middle-aged woman in designer jeans. He watched Carlotta dismount. “Yes, madam?”

“I am Carlotta Dawson. Yes, Dawson. My husband was aboard the Soviet Kosmograd. Lieutenant, I gather there is an alien here?”

“Damn straight,” one of the truck drivers shouted. “Goddam snout blew George Mathers in half!” He brandished a military rifle. “Now it’s our turn!”

“We have to take it alive,” Carlotta stated.

“Bullshit! This one was a farmer. “I come out of Logan, lady. The goddam snouts killed my sister! They’re all over the fucking place.”

“How’d you get out? Foot on your chest?” Harry asked.

The driver looked sheepish.

“Thought so,” Harry said. “Look, give us a chance. The military wants to question that thing. We’ll go in after it.” He pointed to the willow trees a hundred yards from the highway. “Over there, right?”

“Over there and go to hell,” someone yelled.

“Let’s go,” Harry said. He gestured to Carlotta. She climbed on behind. “In there.”

“There” was a dirt path leading to the clump of willow trees. As Harry started the motorcycle, he heard one of the truck drivers. “We can blow it away when he gets out.”

There were mutters of approval.

When he stopped at the swamp’s edge, he could hear something big in the creek.

For Harpanet, things had become very odd. He had gone through terror and out the other side. He was bemused. Perhaps he was mad. Without his herd about him for comparison, how was a fi’ to tell?

Try to surrender: fling the gun to the dirt, roll over, belly in the air. The man gapes, turns and lurches away. Chase him down: he screams and gathers speed, falls and runs again, toward lights.

Harpanet will seem to be attacking. Cease! Hide and wait.

A human climbs from the cab of a vehicle. Try again? The man scampers into the cab, emerges with something that flames and roars. Harpanet rolls in time to take the cloud of tiny projectiles in his flank instead of his belly. The man fires again.

He has refused surrender. Harpanet trumpets: rage, woe, betrayal. He sweeps up his own weapon and fires back. The enemy’s forelimbs and head explode outward from a mist of blood.

In Harpanet’s mind his past fades, his future is unreal. His digits stroke his side, feeling for the death wound.

No death wound; no hole big enough for a digit to find. What did the human intend? Torture? Harpanet’s whole right side is a burning itch covered with a sheen of blood. An eight to the eighth of black dots form a buzzing storm around him. He lurches through the infinite land, away from roads, downhill where he can, within the buzzing storm and the maddening itch The jaws of his mind close fast on a memory, vivid in all his senses, more real than his surroundings, He moves through an infinite fantasy of planet, seeking the mudroom aboard Message Bearer.

Green… tall green plants with leaves like knife blades, but they brush away the hungry swarming dots… water? Mud?

He rolls through mud and greenery, over and over, freezing from time to time to look, smell, listen.

Harpanet’s past fades against the strange and terrible reality. If he has a future, it is beyond imagining, a mist-gray wall. There is only now, a moment of alien plants and fiery itch and cool mud, and here, mudroom and garden mushed together, nightmarishly changed. He rolls to wash the wounds; he plucks gobs of mud to spread across his tattered flank.

Afraid to leave, afraid to stay. What might taste his blood in the water, and seek its source? The predators of the Homeworld were pictures on a thuktun, ghosts on an old recording tape, but fearsome enough for, all their distance. What lurks in these alien waters? But he hears the distant sound of machines passing, and knows that they are not fithp machines.

A machine comes near, louder, louder. Harpanet’s ears and eyes project above the water.

The machine balances crazily on two wheels, like men. It slows, wobbles, stops.

Humans approach on foot.

Harpanet’s muscles know what to do when he is hurt, exhausted, friendless, desperate, alone. Harpanet’s mind finds no other answer. But he sees no future—

He lurches from the water. Alien weapons come to bear. He casts his gun into the weeds. He rolls on his back and splays his limbs and waits.

The man comes at a toppling run. No adult fi’ would try to balance so. The man sets a hind foot on Harpanet’s chest, with such force that Harpanet can feel it. He swallows the urge to laugh, but such a weight could hardly bend a rib. Nonetheless he lies with limbs splayed, giving his surrender. The man looks down at his, captive, breathing as if he has won a race…

“We got him!” Harry shouted “Now what?” He waved uphill, where a score of armed men, hidden, waited with weapons ready.

“I can talk to them—” Carlotta sounded doubtful.

“They won’t listen.” And dammit, this is my snout, they can’t kill it now. Harry thought furiously. A guilty grin came, and he lifted the seat of the motorcycle, where he kept his essential tools.

“You’ve thought of something?”

“Maybe.” He dug into the tool roll and found a hank of parachute cord. It was thin, strong enough to hold a man but not much use against one of those. He gestured to the captive, using both hands to make “get up” motions.

The alien stood. It looked at them passively.

“Gives me the creeps,” Harry said. He clutched his rifle. One 30-06 in the eye, and we don’t have a problem. “See if it’ll carry you,” Harry said.

“Carry me?”

“Sheena. Queen of the Jungle. I know they’re strong enough.”

A dozen truckers and farmers stood with ready weapons.

Harry walked ahead of the invader, leading it on a length of cord. Carlotta rode its back, sidesaddle, She beamed at them. “Hi!” she called.

None of the watchers spoke. Perhaps they were afraid of saying something foolish.

“It surrendered,” Carlotta shouted. “We’ll take it to the government.”

There was a loud click as a safety was taken off.

Harry whistled: Wheep. wheep, wheep! “Here, Shep! Hey, it’s all right, guys. Shep big gray peanut-loving doggie!”

There were sounds of disgust.

Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev fingered the priceless tapestry covering the bare concrete wall. “It doesn’t really look like a bomb shelter,” he said.

Lorena rolled lazily in the big bed. “They are very nice rooms,” she said.

Her own room was just down the corridor, close enough that only a few of Bondarev’s staff knew just how late she stayed. They wouldn’t talk. As secretary to the acting commander of the Soviet space defense forces, Lorena was one of the most powerful women in the Soviet Union . As long as my wife is not offended. She must know, but so long as I am discreet…

Lorena rolled off the bed and walked to the closet, where his uniforms hung. She fingered the shoulder straps on one of them. “I had never thought to see you a general,” she said. “And now there is talk of making you a Marshal of the Soviet Union—”

“Hah.”

“You do not wish promotion?”

“Of course not. I never wanted to be part of the military at all. I would rather talk with the aliens than fight them! They were in space for decades, out between the stars where there is no interference, no radio noise-think of what they must have learned!”

“They have destroyed half of Russia , and you wish to talk to them!”

He sighed. “I know it is impossible. Perhaps, though, when we defeat them, I will learn what they know of stars.” Only it is not so certain that we can defeat them. Whenever we launch a missile, they destroy the missile base.

“They have landed in America . Perhaps the Americans have captured aliens.”

“Perhaps.”

“And perhaps not. It is late.” She moved provocatively. He didn’t react. “So. You are satisfied for the moment,” she teased. “Perhaps later—”

“I have other things to concern me,” Boudarev said.

Lorena laughed. “They do not always keep your attention—”

A chirp sounded from the other room. Bondarev put on a robe. He could not cut short a conversation with whoever called on that phone. “Bondarev here,” he said.

“Narovchatov.”

“Da, Comrade Narovchatov?”

“I am told that the Americans have called you.”

“Only to test the telephone line. I did not myself speak to them.”

“Who did?”

“My secretary.”

“What was said?”

“Nothing, Nikolai Nikolayevich. Comrade Polinova spoke to an American technician. She was told that the Americans wished to speak with me, but then the connection failed.” Bondarev spoke nervously. Should I have reported this? But there was nothing to report.

“It is a matter of great concern,” Narovchatov said. “We have been unable to make contact with the Americans. The Chairman wishes to speak with the American President. Are your technicians working on reestablishing this connection?”

“The failure was not here, Comrade Narovchatov. I understand that the cable crosses the Atlantic, then passes under the Mediten’anean, and comes through Istanbul . I believe the break was in Marrakech.”

“Where there is chaos,” Narovchatov muttered.

“Da.” Bondarev had sporadic communications with a large Soviet armored force in Africa , but that group was far to the south and east of Marrakech.

Lorena came in with a glass of hot tea and set it beside him. Bondarev nodded his thanks.

“Perhaps the KGB has agents in Marrakech,” Bondarev said. “Perhaps they could facilitate the repair of the cable.”

“A splendid suggestion. I will send the orders. The matter is urgent, Pavel Aleksaridrovich. There is unrest in Germany and Poland . We have reason to believe the West Germans may attempt something. The Americans must restrain them.”

If they can. And if they will. “Da. I understand.”

“Have you anything to report?”

“Only rumors. Our station in Tehran confirms that the Invaders have landed in the central United States , and there is land warfare. The Americans in Tehran know little else, but they pretend high confidence.”

“You will call if you learn more, or if you make contact with the Americans.”

“At once.”

“Your wife sends her regards,” Narovchatov said, “She is well and your children are well.”

“Thank you.”

The connection broke. Bondarev sipped his tea. “My family is well,” he said musingly.

“But they did not say where.”

“No. With the Chairman and the Politburo. Somewhere near Moscow , I would presume.”

She sat on the couch and leaned against his shoulder. “I am glad they are safe. I am also glad your wife is not here.”

“The Chairman wishes to speak with the Americans. It is urgent.”

She sat up quickly. “Why?”

“There is unrest, in Poland and Germany .”

She cursed. “They dare!”

“Da. They dare.” Now that we cannot send the army. Now that the army is needed in the Turkic republics, and Latvia , and Estonia .

“I hate them,” Lorena said.

They were under the house, inspecting the support pillars. Carlotta was more frightened than Wes. He tried to reassure her-not hearing what he was saying, but knowing he was lying badly. The quake was coming. Soon. These pillars had to be reinforced before the San Andreas fault tore loose and sent everything rolling downhill in a spray of debris. A sound like a brass trumpet ripped through the world; and then the world tilted and everything started to roll.

Wes Dawson woke to the blare of the acceleration warning, and Russian curses, and the deep hum of Thuktun Flishithy’s drive. The floor was tilted, not toward a wall but toward one corner… the outer-aft-antispinward corner. The fithp must be accelerating and decreasing spin, simultaneously.

The fithp would have no time for prisoners during maneuvers. Wes did what the others were doing. He spread out on his belly like a starfish knd curled his fingers and toes in the padding-dry here, though damp throughout the rest of the ship-and dozed.

The tilt grew more pronounced as Thuktun Flishithy’s spin decreased. After several hours everyone shifted to the aft wall. They were awake and talking, but not to Wes Dawson. Once he heard “amusement park” in English, and Nikolai made rollercoaster motions with his hands while the rest laughed.

Another several hours and the aft wall had become a flat floor. Thuktun Flishithy’s drive was pushing at one Earth gravity or close to it.

The door opened.

It was a door now, and four fithp warriors rolled through without pause. They herded the humans into the corridor, where four more warriors waited with the teacher’s female assistant, Tashayamp. Dmitri bowed to her. “Greetings,” he said (the pattern of sound that they had learned for a greeting; it had the word time in it). “Question, destination selves?”

“Destination Podo Thuktun,” Tashayamp said. “Ready your minds.”

With no superior present, she seemed surer of herself. Now, what gave him that impression? Wes watched her. She walked like an unstoppable mass, a behemoth. She wasn’t adjusting her gait! He had seen her veer from contact with warriors and humans alike. Now the warriors were presumably her guardians, and her human charges had demonstrated both the agility and the motivation to dodge her ton-plus of mass.

Never mind; there was something he wanted from het “Question, destination Thuktun Flishithy?”

“In two mealtime-gaps this status will end. There will be almost no pull. You will live floating for a long time. You must learn to live so,” she said. She hadn’t answered his question; but then, they often didn’t.

The corridor branched. The new corridor dipped, then curved to the right. Now, why the curve? This ought to be a radial corridor. Wes remembered that the streets of Beverly Hills had been laid in curves just to make them prettier. Was that it? Under spin the corridor would rise at twenty or twenty-five degrees…

But under spin, a radial corridor would be vertical. Fithp couldn’t climb ladders. The routes inward had to be spirals. Look for fast elevators too?

As the Soviets had stopped talking to Wes, so Wes had stopped talking to them. He had fallen into a kind of game. Observe. Deduce. Who will learn faster, you or me?

Tashayamp says we’ll be living in nearly free-fall in a day or so. What makes nearly free-fall, and why not spin the ship to avoid it? The fithp liked low gravity, but not that low. What could prevent them from spinning the ship?

Ah. An asteroid, of course. They’ve got an asteroid base, a small one, and we’re going to be moored to it. I wish to hell they’d let us near a window.

And now we’re to see the Podo Thuktun. They showed that in the picture show. Installing the Podo Thuktun was a big deal, so important that they recorded it and showed it to us. As important as the fuel. So what was it?

Thuktun means message or lesson or a body of knowledge; I’ve heard them use it all three ways. Thuktun is part of the mother ship’s name. Fistarteh-thuktun, the sleeper with the tapestry harness, is mated to thuktun and doesn’t seem to have a normal mate. What, then, are we about to see?

The curved corridor ended in a massive rectangular door. Unlike most, this door didn’t seem to have automatic controls, and it took two warriors to shoulder it aside.

The troop marched in.

A spiral ramp ran up the sides of the cylindrical chamber. The cylinder was nearly empty: conspicuous waste in a starship. In the center was a vertical pillar no thicker than Wes’s wrist. He looked up to where it expanded into a flower-shaped cradle for…

For the Podo Thuktun, of course. It was a relic of sorts: a granite block twenty-five or thirty feet long by the same distance wide by half that in height. Its corners and edges were unevenly rounded, as if it had weathered thousands of years of dust laden winds.

There was writing on it. In it: Wes could see overhead light glinting through the lines. Something like a thread-thin laser had written script and diagrams all the way through the block.

He was being left behind. Tashayamp and half the warriors were escorting the Soviets up the spiral ramp; the other warriors were coming for Wes. He hurried to join them. Platforms led off the ramp at varying heights, and on one of these three fithp were at work. They ignored the intruders.

Fistarteh-thuktun and his spaceborn acolytes looked down for a long moment of meditation before beginning their work. It was a ritual, and necessary. One could become too used to the Podo Thuktun; could take it for granted. That must never happen.

At one time bloody wars had been fought over the diagram in the central face of the Podo Thuktun. Was that diagram in fact a picture of a Predecessor? Half the world had been conquered by the herd that thought it was. Many generations had passed, and heretics had been raped of their status with dismaying regularity, before the fithp realized the truth.

Message Bearer’s interstellar ramjet had been made from that diagram.

The priest and his acolytes turned to the library screen. Paykurtank tapped at a tab the size of a human’s fist. The screen responded by showing a succession of photographs. One after another, granite half-cubes appeared in close-up against varying half-seen backgrounds.

“Skip a few,” Koolpooleh suggested.

“I countermand that,” Fistarteh-thuktun said instantly. “We’ll at least glance at them all. We’re seeking any relevant information left by the Predecessors regarding aliens, or Winterhome, or its natives,”

The thuktunthp were arrayed in order of their discovery, and roughly in order of simplicity of the lesson delivered. The history of the fithp could be read in the order of discovery of the thuktunthp. Uses of fire, mining and refining of metals, uses of the wheel: the Predecessors had made these easily available to their successors. Later discoveries had been found in caves or mountaintops or lifeless deserts.

“Pause that. Koolpooleh, is this nothing but mathematics?”

“I have no trouble reading the Line Thuktun, Fistarteh-thuktun. Simple plane geometry, a list of axioms.”

“Go to the next one.”

“The Breaker has arrived with trainees.”

“Ignore them. Pause that!”

Koolpooleh and Paykurtank were watching the humans, furtively, with one eye each. Fistarteh-thuktun pretended not to notice. Perhaps they could learn from watching the aliens. Perhaps not. The fithp warriors were even now aground and dealing with the prey.

Fistarteh-thuktun remembered what it was like to run, to take prey from a rushing stream, to see nothing but mountains in the distance and clouds overhead…

These creatures must first be defeated. Surely the knowledge was here! All knowledge was contained in the thuktunthp.

The Life-Thuktun was surely interesting enough. The script and diagrams dealt with biology, and Fistarteh-thuktun had studied it before. Hierarchies of plant life to the left, animal life to the right. Tiny, ancient single-nucleated life at the bottom, scaling toward complex warm-blooded air breathers at the top. Simple sketches at every level. The sketch that was third from the top resembled a stunted fi’. It was bulky, flat-skulled, with but one branch to its trunk. The feet were clubs, each with a tiny afterthought of a claw.

The creatures sketched above the prom-fl’ were extinct, though skeletons had been found preserved in soft sedimentary rock. Other pictured life forms had disappeared too, but…shouldn’t that top sketch be the lineaments of a Predecessor? Wouldn’t they have considered themselves the top of the ladder of life? Wars had been fought over that question, too.

It was not easy to ignore Tashayamp, half an octuple of soldiers, and four of Winterhome’s small, flat-faced natives, including one in a wheeled cage. Fistarteh-thuktun could hardly fail to hear Takpusseh lecturing them in baby talk. He let himself glance at the humans. They didn’t resemble that top sketch in any way. Fistarteh-thuktun felt a relief he would not let himself admit.

Since his revival from the death-sleep, the priest’s position had never been stronger. The average fit’ aboard Message Bearer had no grasp of what the Predecessors were all about, or how much Fistarteh-thuktun didn’t know.