Footfall (43 page)

“You told him all that in fithp?”

Wes Dawion stared, then laughed. “I stuttered a lot and used simple words and waved my hands through the air. I must have got it across. It killed him.”

“How?”

“I told him too much the fithp don’t know. He said, ‘You must be of our fithp when we take the riches of the worlds! You must be swallowed into the Traveler Herd.’ ”

Wes’s chest was heaving. “I think— if I hadn’t known it was my mistake-I wouldn’t have been so mad. I said we could tell them anything they wanted to know. He said, ‘I hear more than you say, Dawson. You want this wealth for your fithp. If we do not fight you for your own planet, we will presently fight you for the others.’

“I threw the grill at him and jumped behind it. The grill bounced off his head. Must have startled him. I was still in the air when I realized I was committing suicide. He turned his head away —  he must have remembered how I attacked Takpusseh — and I kicked against his shoulder and was headed back into the duct, just trying to get away, thinking, Damn! I’ve blown it.

“I made the duct and wiggled in, quick like an eel. Something wrapped around my knee. I looked back and the grill aperture was full of a fi’s face, and the other digits were reaching for me.”

Nightmare! Alice found herself gripping his arm, and her nails. She eased off, but didn’t let go.

And he hadn’t noticed. “I must have been crazy. Maybe I couldn’t have pulled loose. I didn’t even try. I snatched my gear and swarmed back down the duct at him. Felt like I was attacking an octopus. I squirted that bag of soapy water in his eyes, pfoosh! He backed away a little, and I jammed my feet into the duct walls and shook the line loose and knotted it around his trunk, above the nostril, and pulled it tight. Then I heaved backward.

“You know, he didn’t have any leverage. I pulled back and he came with me. He had all eight digits around me. It felt like he was tearing my leg off, but he couldn’t get a digit around my neck because I kept my chin tucked down. I pulled that line just as tight as I could and hung on, and after a bit the grip slacked off. I guess the digits weren’t getting any blood. I pulled him farther into the duct, and I clawed that door-on-springs open and hooked the line over the knob.”

Wes looked at her suddenly. “From there on it was murder.”

“So you’re an inhuman murderer. Go on.”

“What?… Yeah. But this inhuman would have blown the dissident movement apart. It was easy. It wasn’t as if I was fighting a fi’ any more. I was fighting a fi’s head. His torso was out there in the mudroom, useless as tits on a boar. I had a tourniquet above his nostril. I crawled down toward his mouth. He said, ‘Dawson, you gave your surrender.’

“I said, ‘I was raped.’ ”

Alice burst out laughing. Wes said, “English, of course. I wish I could have said it in fithp… hell, they don’t have rape. I crawled down until I could get my knees braced under his jaw, and I jammed his mouth closed. His digits were patting at me, and I could hear him thrashing outside. After a while all of that stopped. I held on for… God, I don’t know how long. His eyes weren’t looking at anything and he wasn’t moving.

“I kicked him out into the mudroom. I pulled the grill into place, and then I couldn’t find the goddam wing nuts. It looked like it’d stay, so I just left.

“He’d wrenched my knee and hip. They were hurting when I

got out of the ducts. I hailed a soldier, and he didn’t notice.

Couldn’t read a man’s face, maybe, or a politician’s. By the time I reached my cell, my knee was the size of a football. In gravity I couldn’t have moved. But I had four days to heal before Thu ktun Flishithy disconnected from the Foot.”

“You didn’t push him into the mud?”

“Nope. I don’t know who did that. There are some funny politics going on aboard this ship.”

Alice smiled slowly. “That’s frustrating. Well, Congressman? I’m still here.”

“Yeah.” He studied her for a moment. He was a little afraid of her; she saw. As if she were dangerously fragile? “You’ve had some time to think. Maybe what you need is just a hug? God knows I owe you.”

What Was he waiting for? She hadn’t intended to say — “Do I look to you like a freemartin?”

“A what?”

“Raztupisp-minz thought I might be a—”

“That’s ridiculous. You get a freemartin when a female calf has, a twin brother. It gets too much of the male hormones. Humans can’t be freemartins.”

“Good,” she said, and launched herself at him.

“Down periscope. Surface.” Captain Anton Villars deliberately kept his voice flat and dull. They can’t watch the whole ocean. It’s just too damned big. Isn’t it?

Ethan Allen rose silently to the surface. The lookouts swarmed up into the conning tower. After a moment Villars felt moist cool night air.

“All clear, sir.”

Villars climbed the steel ladder into the moonless overcast night. Topside was a steady westerly wind. He estimated it at nine knots. The sea rolled with large stately swells, some topped by whitecaps. A light rain pattered down onto the submarine’s deck.

The African coast lay dead ahead. Villars studied it with his night glasses. He didn’t dare risk a radar sweep.

“Quiet as the dead,” his exec said.

“Not the most cheerful image,” Villars muttered.

“Sorry, Captain.”

“Bring ’em up,” Villars said at last.

There were twenty-six of them. Fourteen had painted their faces black. The others, including Colonel Carter, their commander, hadn’t needed to.

Carter looked at the sea and grimaced. “More weather than I like.”

“Not much choice,” Villars said.

“Yeah. Okay, Carruthers, get the boats inflated.”

The troopers climbed gingerly to Ethan Allen’s pitching deck. Some of the waves broke just high enough to send spray flying across it. They inflated their boats. “Ready, Colonel,” one called softly.

“Right. Captain, if you can send up our supplies—”

Villars nodded to his exec. The crew passed up a number of boxes, each wrapped in waterproofing materials. They laid them into the boats and helped the soldiers lash them into place.

“You’ve got a long walk,” Villars said. “Sorry I couldn’t get you any closer.”

“It’s okay,” Carter said.

“I didn’t want to ask before,” Villars said. “But I will. How you get this assignment?”

Carter grinned wolfishly. “My grandmother always said we were Zulu. Made me study the language. I hated it. I never real believed her, but what the hell, it made a good story. So when the President wanted to send elephant guns to the Zulu nation who better to send?”

He was still grinning as he climbed into the boat.

The warning bell bonged. Miranda Shakes put down her book as went to the window to see who had opened the gate. “Kevin!”

“Yeah?”

“Get Dad.”

Kevin came in from the kitchen. “Why?”

“Look.”

“Oh, crap. Carnell. Look at all those dogs! Who’s that with him?”

“I don’t know. We’ve seen him before. Look, they’re coming here. Get Dad.”

William Shakes wasn’t happy. “Look, you never paid your share. You sure as hell haven’t done your share of the work.”

“Relax, Bill. Nobody’s pointing a gun at your head, but I do own a piece of the place, and you invited Fox—”

“I didn’t. George did.”

“Hell, if I’m too much trouble,” Fox said, “I can always find a place—”

“Not now,” Miranda said. “Nobody gets out of Bellingham now.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “You won’t even get close to the high way.”

“We didn’t have any trouble getting in,” Camell said dubiously

“Getting in isn’t the problem,” William Shakes said. “It’s getting out. And what will you do here?”

“Hell, there’s got to be work,” Fox said.

“That’s what we thought,” Kevin said. “All those Army people, Navy too. Trucks. Ships. But it’s like it’s in another country, a long way off. The only jobs are down in the harbor.”

“Doing what?”

“Nobody’s telling,” Kevin said.

“So we go to the harbor—”

“I thought of getting a job down there. Miranda’s friend warned me. It’s like the whole town. People go in, but they never come out.”

“Military staff,” Fox said. “I don’t suppose they need me. It rains all the time. Who needs a desert rat? Anywhere… What do they say they’re doing down there?”

“They say greenhouses,” Kevin said.

“I know greenhouses—”

“But that’s not it.”

“Something important,” Miranda said. “Important enough that the whole town doesn’t exist anymore. You never hear about it on the radio.”

“Something big,” Fox mused. “Something to hurt snouts?”

“Bound to be” Miranda shook her head wistfully. “That’s the only reason Jeananne would do that—”

“Jeananne?”

“Jeananne was a friend of mine. Some big shot from Washington came here and talked to her. Whatever he told her really got to her, because she told the Army about our radios. A whole bunch of soldiers came up to take them, the CBs, ham gear, everything. Not just here. Everywhere in Bellingham. But Jeananne, she brought them here!”

“Some friend,” Kevin said.

“What the hell could he have told her?” Fox demanded. “It must have been important.”

“I never got a chance to ask,” Miranda said. “After they searched the Enclave and took all our radios, they took her with them. I’ve never seen her since. Not that I want to.”

“Yeah, but if it hurts snouts—”

George Tate-Evans came in from the kitchen. He’d obviously been listening. “Okay, Fox, I give up,” George said. “What’s got you so pissed off at snouts?”

Fox’s eyes had a haunted look. “No matter what they did, people never hurt the Earth the way the snouts did. They don’t care. It’s not their planet. I could always get to people’s co sciences. How do I get to the snouts?”

“None of which solves our present problem,” William Shake said. “You can’t stay here. There’s barely enough for us to eat.”

“What do they do with people who come in and don’t have place to go?” Fox asked.

“I don’t know—”

“I don’t think I want to find out.” Fox looked out across the Enclave. “What’s in the greenhouses?”

“Squash. Tomatoes—”

“Know a lot about hydroponics?”

“We have books,” George Tate-Evans said.

“Sure you do. I wrote some of them.”

“I guess you did at that—”

“Let me see your compost heap.”

“Our what?”

“You must have a compost heap,” Fox said. “I taught you that much.”

“Yeah—” Shakes led the way outside.

Fox kicked at the layer of sodden dead grass that lay atop the mound. “You don’t turn it often enough. Not enough dirt mixed in, and you ought to be taking finished compost out from the bottom layer. You’ll have other stuff wrong, too. Like I thought you guys need me. Marty owns part of this place. He’ll work with me. We’ll earn our keep.”

Roger Brooks drank the last of his coffee. It tasted of burnt breadcrumbs. They made coffee with breadcrumbs in the British navy. Or at least the Hornblower novels said they did. Could Mrs. Tinbergen be doing that? She surely could!

Outside his boardinghouse window was pouring rain. It had been that way almost every day in the months since Footfall.

Rain, and everyone too busy to talk to me.

He repressed other memories: of Army guards ordering him away from the gate into Cheyenne Mountain, and one sergeant getting so impatient that he’d drawn his automatic; of the three weeks before he’d found a representative of the Post and got a new credit card so he didn’t have to fish in garbage cans for food…

That memory got too near the surface, and he growled.

“Trouble?” Rosalee asked.

“Nothing much—”

“Like hell.” She came around the table and put her hands on his shoulders. “I know you too well.”

Yeah. Actually it was strange. Rosalee was very nearly the perfect companion. He’d even considered marrying her.

“Can I distract you? I met this Army girl. About nineteen. She said Mrs. Dawson is inside the Hole—”

“I guess that figures—”

“Shut up. Inside the Hole. Came in just before Footfall with a strange character. And a captured snout.”

“A what?”

“Yeah.” Rosalee looked smug. “Still love me?”

“Jesus, Rosalee—”

“This character she came to the Springs every night in a bar across town. Interested?”

The name and the sign outside were new. The sign in particular was a good painting of a fi’ on its back, an oversized man standing with his foot on its torso.

“I like that,” Roger said. They both got off the bicycle.

Rosalee shrugged. “I’ll come get you at dinnertime.” She pedaled off.

To where? She gets money-no, dammit, I don’t want to know

It was still early afternoon. The Friendly Snout was cool inside with a smell of old wood and leather and tobacco smoke. Tin customers were few, and some wore Army uniforms. At the bandstand a small tough-looking Army man was teaching a ballad to a civilian. The big redheaded man was jotting down what he heard repeating each verse by guitar and voice.

That’s him. Roger took a table against the wall. The waitress wasn’t more than sixteen. Owner’s daughter? For damn sure nobody cares any more. Interesting how disasters make people mind their, own goddamn business instead of other people’s. Rum sour.”

“No rum. Whiskey.”

“Whiskey sour.”

“Lemons cost four times as much as whiskey. Still want it?”

Roger produced his gold American Express card. “Sure.” “Yes, sir.”

As he’d expected, the drink was corn whiskey, probably not more than a week old. It needed the lemon juice. And so do I. Vitamin C, and the Post can afford it…

The music and words were sung not quite loud enough to hear, and distracting. Hell, if they’d just sing it straight through and get it over with… The red-bearded man seemed intent on his lesson. Roger decided to wait him out. He took out his notebook and idly flipped through the pages. There was a column due at the end of the week. Somewhere in here is the story I need…

COLORADO SPRINGS: Military intelligence outfit. Interviewing National Guardsmen from the Jayhawk War area. (Goddam, those Kansans think they’re tougher than Texans!) Two turned loose two days before. Didn’t want to talk to me. Security? Probably. That bottle of I. W. Harper Rosalee found took care of that…

RAFAEL ARMANZEITI: Didn’t look like a Kansan. “I was aiming for the head, of course. It was standing broadside to me, and I shot at something and the recoil jerked it back and I thought I’d missed. It whipped around and I was looking right into that huge barrel while it pulled the trigger a dozen times in two seconds. I must have shot out the firing mechanism.

“It must have known I was going to shoot it.” Armanzeiti had laughed. “It did the damnedest thing. It fell over and rolled, just like I’d already shot it. Belly up, legs in the air, just like a dog that’s been trained to play dead.”

“You shot it?”

“Sure. But, my God! How stupid do they think we are?”

JACK CODY: “When that beam started spiraling in on us, Greg Bannerman just pulled the chopper hard left and started us dropping. ‘Jump out,’ he said. No special emphasis, but loud. Me, I jumped. I hit water and there was bubbles all around me. Then the lake lit up with this weird blue-green color. I could see the whole lake even through the bubbles. Fish. Weeds. A car on its back. Bubbles like sapphires.

“Something big splashed in, and then stuff started pattering down, metal, globs of melted helicopter-I’ve got one here, I caught it while it was sinking.

“The light went out and I came up for air-there was a layer of hot water-and then I looked for the big chunk, and it was Chuck, waving his arms, drowning. I pulled him out. When I saw his back I thought he was a deader. Charred from his heels to his head. I started pushing on his back and he coughed out a lot of water and started breathing. I wasn’t sure I’d done right. But the chare was just his clothes. It peeled off him and left him, like, naked and sunburned, except his hands. Black. Crisp. He must have put his hands over his neck.

“But we’d be dead like the rest if we didn’t just damn well trust Greg Bannerman. Here’s to Greg.”

LAS ANIMAS, COLORADO: prosperous man, middle-aged, in good shape. Gymnasium-and-massage look. Good shoes, good clothes, all worn out.

He needed a lift. I didn’t want to stop, but Rosalee made me do it. Said he looked like somebody I ought to know. Damn, that woman has a good head for a story. Good head—

HARLEY JACKSON GORDON.

“I kept passing dead cars. Then burning cars. I tried to pick up some of the people on foot, but they just shook their heads. It was spooky. Finally I just got out and left my Mercedes sitting in the road. I walked away, and then I went back and put my keys in it. Maybe someone can use it, after this is all over, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that Mercedes just rusting in the road. But it felt like bad luck. So I walked. And yes, the snouts came, and yes, l rolled over on my back, but I don’t much like talking about that part, if you don’t mind.”

COLORADO SPRINGS: GENEVIEVE MARSH.

Tall, slender, not skinny. Handsome. Solid bones. No money. Nervous. Sick of talking with military people. Wanted a change. Dinner and candles. Rosalee left me the money to buy her dinner and bugged out.

Goddam. She’d make a hell of a reporter if she could write.

“They had us for two days. We thought they were getting ready to leave, and I guess they were, and they were going to take us with them. We all felt it. But on the last day some of them brought in a steer and some chickens and a duck, or maybe it was a goose. The aliens took us out of the pen, and they looked us over. Then they pulled me out, and I was hanging on to Gwen and Beatrice so tight I’m afraid I hurt them. And that crazy man from Menninger’s who spent all his time curled up with his head in his arms, they pulled on one arm and he had to follow. He never stopped swearing. No sense in it, just a stream of dirty words. They aimed us at the road and one of them s-swatted me on the ass with its-trunk? And I started walking, pulling Gwen along, Beatrice in my arms, and then we ran. Beatrice was like lead. We didn’t wait for the crazy man. When the spaceship took off we were far enough away that we only got a hot wind, and that glare. But they took the rest with them, and the animals took our place.” (Laughter). “Maybe they think the steer will breed!”

NEAR LOGAN.

Whole bunch, all types, digging around in a wrecked Howard Johnson’s. Nobody’s too proud to root for garbage now. Shit.

GINO PIETSCH.

“I knew there’d be a tornado shelter. Every building in Kansas has something, even if it’s a brick closet in a motel room., I broke in, and I found the tornado closet, and I hid. The snouts never even came looking. I guess they didn’t care much, if you were the type to hide. Every so often I came out just long enough to get water. And I was in the closet when the bombs came, and getting pretty hungry, but not hungry enough to come out. How much radiation did I get? Am I going to die?”

LAUREN, KANSAS:

That page was nearly blank. Roger stared at it. I have to write it down some day. Damn. Damnation.

Not just yet…

ROGER BROOKS, NATHANIEL REYNOLDS, ROSALEE PINELLI, CAROL NORTH.

The snouts were all over the city. George Bergson came up with the notion of using Molotov cocktails to wreck a snout tank…

The guitarists put away their instruments at last. Roger got up unsteadily. Three corn-whiskey sours had hit him harder than he’d expected. He moved over to the man with the fading red beard.

“Mr. Reddington?” “Hairy Red, that’s me. And you?”

“Roger Brooks. Washington Post. Capital Post now.”

“Yeah?”

Gotcha! Heroes need publicity. “I hear you have some good stories to tell. I’m collecting war stories. Drink?”

“Sure, but I gotta run. My ride leaves in five minutes.” Reddington turned to the bar. “Watney’s, Millie.”

“Money, Harry.”

“On me,” Roger called. “Things are tough, eh?”

“Toward the end of the month,” Harry admitted. “The Arms gives me a little something, but I had a bad run at poker—”

“Sure—”

“I get gasoline, too,” Harry said. “But I can’t sell that. Use it or lose it.”

Roger let Harry lead him to a table. They sat, and Roger studied Harry while opening his notebook. Beard and hair trimmed. Corn. Patiently but not artistically. Clothes are clean and almost new and don’t quite fit. Supplied by the Army? “Harry, we have a lot to talk about. I’d like to buy you dinner.” He took out the gold Amec card and handed it to the barmaid.

Reddington hesitated a bare instant. “May I bring a friend?”

“Sure. What time do you like?”

“Call it seven-thirty.”

The Friendly Snout was more crowded now, with citizens and Army and Navy personnel.

The civilians had dinner. The service people drank.

“I like it,” Rosalee said. “But where do they get the food?”

“Mess sergeants making a bit on the side,” Roger said. “That’s why the service types won’t eat here.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Don’t have to.”

She drew away from him in mock horror. “But Roger, it’s news, and you’re not digging it out—”

“Now just a damn minute—”

“Gotcha!”

“Yeah, okay. Look, Rosalee, it would only be a little story. No prizes. And I’d get half the Army on my case, and I don’t need—”

“Roger, I’m the one who keeps telling you to relax!”

Roger let thick sarcasm creep into his voice. “By their standard there were no menus. Prices were listed on a blackboard, mostly too high.

“The drinks are dependable,” Roger said.

“Dependable?”

“You can depend on them to take the lining out of your throat. Harry was drinking a brand-name beer, but I noticed there was yeast in the bottom of the bottle… Anyway, they take plastic.”

“Oh, goody. Is that him?” She glanced toward the doorway. “Hairy and red. But he’s with three people.”

“Hardly surprising-Carlotta!” Roger bounded across the room.

Carlotta Dawson grinned widely and came to meet him. “I thought it had to be you from what Harry told me. I saw your column—”

“You knew I was out here and you didn’t come find me?”

“We’re busy in there, Roger.” She lowered her voice so no one else could hear. “They have me sitting in for Wes. Roger, that’s off the record. Really off the record.”

Shit. “Carlotta, I’m glad to see you. Hell, I’ve lost track of everybody. All my girls—”

“Everyone’s all right. I just heard from Linda. She says Evelyn’s fine.”

“Great.” Say what? But Evelyn lives in… later. “Harry, you sure know some famous people.”

“Didn’t know you knew her…”

“Roger and I are old friends,” Carlotta said.

“Carlotta, have you heard anything about Wes?”

“Not since his speech. Roger, what are they saying about him? Do they call him a traitor?”

Roger gestured helplessly. “Not around me—”

“Or me,” Harry said.

“But they do.”

“Some do. Not the doctors. Not the farmers and grocers. Just damn fools.”

“There are always damn fools,” Harry said.

And then there are the ones who say Dawson was insufficiently persuasive, because we ought to give up before they kill us all. “Lots of fools,” Roger said.

“Harpanet-the alien Harry captured-says that Wes told the truth, they do treat captives well—”

Wes did that well, Carlotta. Anybody who knew him would know that.”

“I guess I worry too much.” Her mood changed. “Harry, thanks for inviting me out. I’ve been inside far too long. Time to have a little fun. Roger, it’s really good to see you again.”

“This is Rosalee. I picked her up in Lauren-ah, hell, it sounds wrong. We’ve been together since—”

“Never heard you run out of words.” Carlotta laughed. “Rosalee.”

Good. She doesn’t know she told me something. “Let’s down. Harry’s promised us a song.” Roger led the way to the table. Millie had already pulled up another table to accommodate the extra guests, and brought out a new pitcher of beer.

“What did you get?” Rosalee whispered.

“Mind your own business.”

“You expected that woman.”

“Shhh. I hoped. You told me Harry knew her. Now just listen.” They sat. “Rosalee, I’ve known Carlotta since she was in high school.”