Footfall (40 page)

Dawson appeared in the cell something more than an hour after the rest arrived. He was shaking. He looked about at several sets of more or less questioning eyes, and he said, “They want me to tell the Earth to surrender.”

The Russians’ eyes met. Arvid grinned and Dmitri shrugged and Nikolai’s expression went quite blank.

“I won’t do it,” Wes Dawson said. “Vidkun Quisling, Pierre Laval, Benedict Arnold, I’d be remembered longer than any of them!”

Dmitri asked, “Why would you consider it?”

Wes flopped on his back on the padded aft wall. Looking at the featureless ceiling, he said, “There’s a symbol. It looks like a fi’ on its back. It means ‘Don’t bomb me.’ People can paint it on greenhouses and hospitals and trucks carrying food… like a Red Cross. But if they use it wrong, it’ll be rocks from the sky again.”

“If you do not speak, you cannot make food shipments safe?” Dmitri demanded.

“Yeah. There was some other stuff. Threats, mostly. Another Foot.” Wes shuddered. “I won’t tell them that.”

“We have no evidence that they have other asteroids ready to drop,” Arvid said.

“They don’t need them. There are plenty more where they got that one,” Jeri said. “Or in the asteroid belt. It might take a few years, but they’ve got years. They’ve already spent, what…?”

“Fifteen years just since they reached the solar system. Sure they can bring another, and another. But it’s worse than that.”

Alice demanded, “What could be worse than another Foot?”

“They’ll go to the Moon,” Wes said. “They don’t need to to Saturn, or the asteroids! They’ve wiped us off the Moon. The gravity’s low, and they can get as much Moon rock as they want.”

No. God, why? Jeri wanted to curl into a tiny ball. “Wes, what will you do?”

“You tell me. I need help.”

And all the time they’re listening, watching, while we talk about it.

“Perhaps,” Arvid said, “just perhaps it would be better if you make this speech. It would have to be carefully done. We could help you prepare.” He looked significantly at Wes.

“They want me to talk the human race into surrendering! They’ll tell me what to say. If I say something else, they’ll cut me off. What’s the good of that?”

Arvid glanced casually at the watching camera. “One must paraphrase.”

A long moment passed. Then Wes mused, “Of course, the fithp will need help with their phrasing. Their English isn’t that good…”

“But yours is.”

The rest were asleep. Alice curled in a protective ball, one arm thrown across her face, the other reaching to clutch the wall rung. They had never been given blankets; they slept in the clothes they wore. Thuktun Flishithy had gone over to spin gravity, and Alice could feel an eccentricity, a wobble. Dmitri snored with a sound like complaint. Alice uncurled. The hell with it.

Congressman Dawson slept a few feet from the rest, on his side, with his head pillowed on one arm. Alice watched him, Sleeping, he looked quite harmless. Yet he frowned in his sleep “Foot,” he muttered. “Feet. Giant mee… meteoroid imp. .”

Everybody in Menninger’s had nightmares. It wasn’t rare for Alice to wake in the middle of the night. Then she would watch and listen… and the others weren’t any better off than she was. She used to wonder about that. If she’d spent any amount of time in a dorm, she thought, she would have known she wasn’t unusual.

And if she hadn’t been sent to a girls’ high school, she might have grown used to… persons of the male persuasion. She’d have known how to handle them, like other women did. If her parents — “Dinosaurs. Oh, God, like the dinosaurs…” Dawson said in a breathy moan. Alice had never seen a man whimper.

Poor bastard. He could tell the world how to safeguard their food and hospitals, but what would they remember? Wes Dawson urging them to surrender to the horrors. Wes Dawson, traitor. Unfair! Learning what the horrors had planned, Wes Dawson had tried to tear the nose and eyelid off Teacher Takpusseh. He’d told Mrs. Woodward about it in Alice’s hearing. Alice tried to picture that. It must have been a short fight.

So safe, so harmless, asleep; but he was the only one who had fought back.

Greatly daring, Alice reached out and touched Wes Dawson’s wrist. Too little pressure would tickle him, too much would wake him.

He stopped breathing, and so did Alice. Then, “I can kill them. They can die,” Wes said. His face relaxed; his lips parted slightly and he was deep asleep.

After a moment Alice curled up beside him.

The helicopter settled onto the parking lot behind an odd gray building, granite base, brick towers at each corner. An elderly man waited with two others, all in tan uniforms. They held umbrellas against the drizzling rain. Jenny and Jack followed them inside.

“I’m Ben Lafferty. Sheriff. This is Deputy Young and Deputy Hargman. Anything you want, just ask them.”

“Actually, we’d expected to see the military intelligence people,” Jenny said.

Lafferty screwed his face into an exaggerated squint and eyed Jenny’s bright new silver oak leaf. “Well, Lieutenant Colonel, I’m a colonel in military intelligence myself. Matter of fact, I’m the senior one here.” His grin faded, and his face lost all traces joviality. “This is my town, lady. The state of Washington never had much need for Washington, D.C., and Bellingham never got much out of the state. We had a nice little university town he until you federal people came.”

Jack Clybourne reached into his pocket. Jenny laid her hand on his arm. “I can sympathize, Sheriff,” she said. “We’re just doing our job.”

“And what’s that? What the hell are you people building down in that harbor? And don’t give me crap about greenhouses. Green houses don’t need big iron things brought in hung under barges.”

“There is a war,” Jack Clybourne said.

“So they tell us.”

“Tell you! If you’d seen that crashed ship—” In a moment Jack Clybourne had calmed himself, but the sheriff had backed away a step. “I brought some films and I can get more. I believe I can persuade you that there’s a war. We’re losing it. We need all the cooperation we can get.”

“Yeah, sure you do.” The sheriff glanced at his watch. “Okay. Hargman and Young will take care of you. I got to go.” He left the office without looking back.

“What was that all about?” Jack Clybourne asked.

Deputy Young looked thoughtful, then lowered his voice. “He has a point. We got along fine until all of a sudden they announced this big greenhouse project. Only it isn’t a greenhouse, is it? I never heard of a greenhouse needing an astronaut general to run it.”

“Air Force,” Jenny said. “He happens to be my brother-in-law.”

“That so? You still didn’t tell me why we need the Air Force to raise groceries. Or why all the security stuff.”

“There is a reason.”

Deputy Hargman snorted. “Sure there is. One good enough to get this town and everybody in it killed by a meteor.”

“Not if they think it’s a greenhouse,” Jenny said. “They’ve never bombed a food storage place.”

“How will they know that’s what this is?”

“Maybe you take your chances,” Jack said. “Just like the rest of the world. Look, one hint gets to the snouts that Bellingham has a secret, and—” He spread his hands.

“No more Bellingham,” Young said. “How would they find out?”

“TV. More likely radio. Police radio. Even CB.”

“Jeez,” Hargman said. “Look, just what is this secret we’re protecting?”

“What do you care?” Jack demanded.

Jenny remembered the gray face of the President. “Hey, look, we’re all on the same side, remember? What’s important is not to let them get the idea there is any secret about Bellingham. Let’s work on that.”

“Round up the CBs,” Hargman muttered. “Won’t be easy — hey, won’t that make the snouts suspicious? No CB chatter here at all?”

Jack’s chin bobbed up and down. “We’ll set up fakes. Lots of chatter, but it will be our people doing it. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Deputy Young said. “But — dammit, I don’t like not knowing what I’m protecting.”

“You don’t want to know,” Jenny said.

General Edmund Gillespie closed the door, and the sound of hammers and riveting guns died away. Jenny could still hear them but they no longer tore at her eardrums. The office was cluttered. Plans and blueprints covered every desk and table, and more hung on the walls.

Jack Clybourne removed his ear protectors with a look of relief.

“Max,” General Gillespie said, “you remember my wife’s kid sister. They promoted her. Lieutenant Colonel.”

A wide grin split Max Rohrs’ face. “Hey, Jenny. Good to see you. That’s great…”

“And this is Jack Clybourne,” Gillespie said. “Max is the chief construction foreman on this job. Max, Jenny and Jack are here as — let me put it right — as personal representatives of the President. They’ll go back and report to him.”

“Okay,” Rohrs said. “I knew we were important…”

“Max, you’re all we have,” Jenny blurted.

“Yeah, I knew that.”

Gillespie waved them to chairs. “Drinks? We have a good local beer. I recommend it.” He opened a refrigerator and produce several bottles. They had no labels, and the bottles were not a alike.

“Sure,” Jenny said.

Jack frowned but accepted a bottle.

“So how are we doing?” Jenny asked.

“Not bad,” Max Rohrs said. “Matter of fact, we’re way ahead of schedule.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, we got that nuclear sub hid out in the harbor. Plenty of electricity. And we’ve got every computer design system on the West Coast. That all helps. Mostly, though, it’s just there’s no paperwork,” Max said. “No telephone lines to Washington. The engineers plan something, the computer people check it out, E and I agree, and it goes in, no conferences and change-approval meetings. We just do it.”

“It helps that everybody busts ass,” Gillespie said.

“That’s for sure. We’re here to get this done, not make money and take coffee breaks.”

It shows, too, Jenny thought. Max doesn’t look as if he’s had a night’s sleep in a month, and Ed looks worse. “So, when can I report she’ll fly?”

Max looked thoughtful. “Supposed to take a year more, but I’ll be surprised if we can’t launch in nine months. Maybe sooner.” He unrolled a sheath of drawings. “Look, the heavy work is the base plate. The barges bring that in pieces, and we have to put it together. Heavy work, but it’s still just welding and riveting. Then there’s the gun that puts the bombs behind the butt plate. If that fouls… well, we’re putting in two separate TBGs.”

“What?”

“Thrust bomb guns.”

“Oh. But there’s all the electronics, and life support, and — don’t I remember they needed nine months just to change toilets on the Shuttle?”

“Sure, NASA style,” Gillespie said. “We just install the damn thing. Of course it helps that we’re not shaving off ounces. We’ve got plenty of lifting power.”

You sure do. “Is everything coming in on schedule?”

“No, but we’re dealing with it,” Gillespie said. “Maybe you’ve noticed, there aren’t many of my Air Police here, just enough to guard the inner fences. I sent the rest over with Colonel Taylor to the Bremerton Navy Yard to put the fear of God into those bastards…”

“Which sped up deliveries something wonderful,” Rohrs said. “Here, let’s have another round.” He fished out more beer bottles.

“We’ve learned a lot of security tricks,” Gillespie said. “From Vietnamese, mostly.”

“Refugees?” Jenny asked.

“Some refugees, but mostly former Viet Cong. They know a lot. Ways to hide convoys. Hollow out logs to transport steel. Tunneling. All the things they did to us.”

“Maybe you should have kept your security troops here,” Jack Clybourne said. “I don’t think your local sheriff is enthusiastic about your project.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gillespie said. “I thought of telling him what we’re doing. Maybe that would get him working.”

“Why not?” Jenny asked.

“No. No telling what those people will do if they know what’s going to power this beast.” Gillespie shook his head. “The only safe place for miles around will be in the ship. Everything else will go. Somebody may think it’s better that the snouts drop rock on the harbor than have fifty atom bombs go off here.”

“It’s hard to believe anyone would deliberately inform,” Jenny said. “But it’s better to be safe. All right. What we need, then, is cover stories. What are you building if it’s not greenhouses?”

“We thought about that a lot,” Gillespie said. “How do you like a prison?”

“Prison?”

“Secret, for political prisoners. Explains why there are so many soldiers. If anybody gets too suspicious, we let them think we’ve got political prisoners from Kansas. Collaborators we couldn keep in Kansas because they’d be torn apart by mobs. Deserters.”

“It might work,” Jack said. “And if they don’t believe that what do you fall back on?”

“That’s as far as we’ve—”

“Nested cover stories. Like an onion.” Jack began drawing concentric circles on a notepad. “Penetrate one and you come to the next, and you still don’t have the real secret. So what’s the next one?”

“Bathyscape?” Gillespie asked. “Underwater research facility under construction?”

“No. Why keep that a secret? Hell, we’ll come up with something. Let’s keep talking.”

Jenny leaned over to look. Outside the circles Jack had printed GREENHOUSE. Inside the first, COLLABORATORS.

They drank.

“Snouts,” Jenny said.

“Eh?”

“Captives. A big research facility, to study captive snouts. The aliens wouldn’t bomb that, but we’d have good reason to keep it secret from our people.”

“That’ll work.”

“In fact, that’s why we house the collaborators here, to talk to the snouts!”

Clybourne smiled. “So. Who do we have who can design prisons?”

“We have the skeleton of a good story. Now we put flesh on it. What would you import? Whatever it is, we have to bring it in and show it. We’re supposed to be growing food. Ships would take food out. We’ll bring them in full and send them out empty.” Next to GREENHOUSE he wrote FOOD and an inward-pointing arrow. Next to COLLABORATORS he wrote JAIL, JAILERS. Within the second circle, SNOUTS. GET SNOUTS. “We’ve got snout prisoners, but they’re crazy. They go where they’re pushed. They don’t talk even to each other. But we can show them to people.” Jenny grinned. It’s the first time I’ve seen Jack get really turned on about something. Other than me. “Circles,” Jack said. “Layers. The security system is in rings, just like the cover stories. They look like they’re set up to keep you out, and they will if you’re not too determined, but the real purpose is to keep you in if you do manage to penetrate — heck, we’ll have a prison, not too large, maybe, but big enough to take care of anyone who learns too much.”

“It all sounds wonderful, but aren’t you forgetting something?” Rohrs asked. “Sheriff Lafferty isn’t going to help you do any of this.”

“We do it ourselves.”

“Yeah.” Rohrs scratched his head. “But, Mr. Clybourne—”

“Jack.”

“Jack, I don’t have anybody to spare.”

Jack chuckled. “Now, how did I guess that? It’s okay. First thing, we get some Army troops in here.”

“Intelligence types,” Rohrs said. “Sure.”

“MPs, too. Construction engineers to build prisons. And combat troops, just in case,” Jack said. “The next time we talk to Sheriff Lafferty, I want him to know he’s talking uphill.”

“Did I just hear something tear?” General Gillespie asked. “It sounded like the Constitution.”

Jenny caught the look on Max’s face. Interesting. He looked disgusted. A liberal general? We’re fighting snouts here!

“No.” Jack Clybourne was positive. “What you hear is the sound of Bellingham being put outside the boundaries of the United States.” He opened his brief case and removed a document. “I hold here a presidential order suspending the rules of habeas corpus in the Bellingham area. It’s quite constitutional. I play by the rules, General.”

“Yeah, but when word of that gets out …”

“It won’t. The first thing we do when the troops get here is seal off Bellingham. No one leaves.”

“What about people from the highway?”

“There isn’t much traffic now,” Rohrs said.

“You can’t see the harbor area from the highway,” Jack said. “The big hill with the university on it is in the way. So we leave service stations alongside the highway, and all’s well for people who go to them, but anybody who goes further into town, to the other side of the hill — they don’t leave, that’s all.”

“But what about—”

There was a knock at the door. Rohrs shouted, but no one heard. He went to the door. A flood of sound washed into the room. The workman at the door shouted. “Max, turn on the radio. There’s something important—”

“Okay. Thanks!” Rohrs closed the door and the hammers and rivet guns became tolerable again.

“What station?” Clybourne asked.

“There’s only one.” Rohrs went to the radio that perched above a file cabinet.

A voice boomed out. It sounded familiar, like a professional orator.

“They will take the surrender of all humans — and they will incorporate them into their herd. Those of their race who surrender become the property of the herd. Eventually they or their descendants may find status therein …”

“Son of a bitch!” General Gillespie said. “That’s Wes Dawson!”

They all stood when the President came in. He gestured impatiently for them to be seated. Reynolds stood with the rest of them. With its haphazard furniture and refreshments the room looked like the Green Room at an underfunded science-fiction convention, but it felt weirdly like the White House. Most of the Dreamer Fithp were present. Harpanet was not.

“Commander, I understand that you have a tape?”

The naval officer looked young for his rank. “Yes, Mr. President. It’s just as we received it. We’ve put it through filters to clean out the noise, but nothing else.”

“Play it, then.”

“Yes, sir.” The navy commander gestured.

There was a short hissing sound, and then a voice from outer space.

“My fellow Americans, I’m Wesley Dawson, formerly a congressman from California. I’m now a member of the Chtaptisl Fithp — which is to say the Traveler Herd. I am alive and well and I send my regards to my family. We have been well treated by their standards.”

By their standards. The words stood out; Dawson must have intended them to.

“The human fithp aboard Message Bearer have been brought together. There are three Russians. Commander Rogachev, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri Grushin, and Commander Rogachev’s sergeant. There are six Americans in addition to me. Mrs. Geraldine Wilson and her daughter Melissa. Gary Capehart, aged nine. John and Carrie Woodward of Lawton, Kansas; and Alice McLennon, who was formerly resident in Topeka. We’re all alive, in reasonable health, due largely to Alice’s forethought in bringing us dietary supplements.