Footfall (8 page)

“We have no reason to believe this is a threat.” Martin grinned and shook his head, wishing he’d heard the beginning of the broadcast. Whoever was playing the part, he sure had the President’s voice down pat. Martin laughed (as J started all three dogs barking) at a different thought: George Tate-Evans tuned in at the same moment he had; he wouldn’t know whether to bellow with the joy of vindication, or hide under the bandstand.

The Enclave was still going, Martin knew that much. He couldn’t understand now, how he’d got sucked into the survivalist mind set. Spent some real money, too, before he came to his senses. The only thing that little fling had ever done for him was to turn him from miniature poodles to Dobermans. He’d bought Marten burg Sunhawk because a Doberman might be better equipped to defend his house and found that he flat out preferred the larger dogs.

But the rest of the Enclave families must still be meeting on Thursday nights, all ready for the end of civilization on Earth. George and Vicki, what would they do? Warn the rest of the the Enclave and head for the hills, of course: their natural reaction to, any stimulus. And they say dog people are scary.

A newscaster’s rich radio voice continued the theme, speaking of war and politics. It introduced a professor of physics who also wrote science fiction and who predicted wonderful things from the coming confrontation. Martin, easing down old U.S. 66 with a load of prima donna dogs, began to wonder if he really was listening to a remake of “War of the Worlds.” He hadn’t found a plot line yet.

There was heavy traffic in the San Fernando Valley. Isadore Leiber cursed lightly, half listening to the news station, half worrying about how late he would be.

Isadore had simply forgotten. It wasn’t a Thursday. His brain hadn’t ticked over until four-thirty, and then: Hey, wasn’t something happening tonight? Sure, Jack McCauley called an emergency meeting of the Enclave. Probably has to do with that … light in the sky. I’d better call Clara, remind her.

Clara had remembered, and wondered where he was. He fought abnormally dense rush-hour traffic straight to the Tate-Evans place, one house among many in the San Fernando Valley. Clara met him at the curb, laughing, insisting that she’d followed him right in, in her own car. He grabbed her and kissed her to shut her up. They held each other breathlessly for a moment, then by mutual consent let go and walked up on the porch.

Clara rang the bell and they waited. In those few seconds Clara stopped laughing, even stopped smiling. “Do you think they’ll be angry?”

“Yeah. My fault, and I guess I don’t care that much. Relax.”

“They did tell us. Or Jack did.”

The door opened. George Tate-Evans ushered them inside. He wasn’t angry, but he wasn’t happy either. “Clara, Isadore, come on in. What kept you?”

“My boss,” Isadore lied. “What’s happening?”

George ran his hand over bare scalp to long, thin blond hair. He wasn’t yet forty, but he’d been half bald when Isadore first met him. “Sign of virility,” he’d said. Now he answered, “Jack and Harriet taped some newscasts. We’re playing them now. Clara, the girls are in the kitchen cooking something.”

Girls, kitchen, cooking something. What? This was serious, then; or else George was sure this was serious. Could it be? That serious?

Survivalism. Specialization. Wartime rules. Isadore made his way into a darkened living room. He knew where the steps and the furniture were; he’d been there often enough. The light of the five-foot screen showed him an empty spot on the couch.

There were only men in the room. The house belonged to George and Vicki Tate-Evans, but Vicki wasn’t present.

And Clara had gone to the kitchen. Clara! Ye gods, she thought it was real…

George waved him to a seat, then went to the Betamax recorder. “Here it is again,” he said.

The set lit up to show the presidential seal, then the Oval Office. The camera panned in on President David Coffey. The President looked calm and relaxed. Almost too much so, Isadore thought. But he does look very presidential…

“My fellow Americans,” Coffey said. “Last night, scientists at the University of Hawaii made an amazing discovery. Their findings have since been confirmed by astronomers at Kitt Peak and other observatories. According to the best scientific information I have been able to obtain, a very large spacecraft is approaching Earth from the general direction of the planet Saturn.”

The President looked up at the camera, ignoring his notes for a moment. He had a way of doing that, of looking into the camera so that everyone watching felt he was speaking directly to them. Coffey’s ability to do that had played no small part in his election. “I have been told that it is not possible that the ship came from Saturn, and that it must have come from somewhere much farther away. Wherever it came from, it is rapidly approaching the Earth, and will arrive here within a few weeks, probably at the end of June.”

He paused to look at the yellow sheets of paper that lay on his desk, then back at the camera again. “So far we have received no communication from this ship. We therefore have no reason whatever to believe the ship poses any threat to us. However, the Soviet Union became aware of this ship at the same time we did. Predictably, their reaction was to mobilize their armed forces. Our observation satellites show that they have begun a partial strategic alert.

“We cannot permit the Soviets to mobilize without some answer. I have therefore ordered a partial mobilization of the United States’ strategic forces. I wish to emphasize that this is a defensive mobilization only. The United States has never wanted war. We particularly do not desire war at a time when an alien spacecraft is approaching this planet.

“No American President could ignore the Soviet mobilization. I have not done so. However, I have spoken with the Soviet Chairman, and we have reached an agreement on limiting our strategic mobilization. We are also consulting on a joint response to the alien ship.

“My fellow Americans, our scientists tell us that this could be the greatest event in the history of mankind. You now know all that we know: a large object, perhaps a mile in length, is approaching the Earth along a path that convinces our best scientific minds that it is under power and intelligently guided. So far there has been no communication with it.

“We have no reason to believe this is a threat, and we have many reasons to believe this is an opportunity. With the help of God Almighty we will meet this opportunity as Americans have always met opportunities.

“Good night.”

The Oval Office faded, and news analysts came on. George switched off the set. “We can skip the analysis. Those birds don’t know any more than we do. But you see why I called an alert.”

They had called themselves the Enclave before there was anything more than four men meeting at George and Vicki’s house.

That was at the tail end of the seventies, when the end of civilization was a serious matter. There were double-digit inflation and a rising crime rate. Iran was holding fifty-odd kidnapped ambassadors and getting away with it. OPEC’s banditry regarding oil prices seemed equally safe. What nation would be next to see the obvious? The United States couldn’t defend itself. The value of her money was falling to its limit: a penny and a half in 1980 money, the cost of printing a dollar bill. U.S. military forces were in shreds, and the Soviets kept building missiles long after they caught up, then passed, the United States’ strategic forces.

If the economy didn’t collapse, nuclear war would kill you. Either way, there were long odds against survival of the unprepared. The Enclave was born of equal parts desperation and play-acting. Which was more important depended on the morning headlines.

Things looked better after Reagan was elected. The hostages were returned minutes after the old cowboy took office… but the Enclave continued to meet. The dollar ceased to fall, then grew strong. The economy was turning around, the stock market was showing signs of health; but there was no money for the military, and the Soviet Union kept building rockets. The Enclave made lists of what a survivalist ought to own, and checked each other’s stocks. A year’s supply of food, just like the Mormons. Guns. Gold coins. And they dreamed of a place to run, just in case.

The late eighties: Welfare had not increased to match inflation, and unemployment was down. There might have been a connection. Inflation had slowed too. General Motors had won its lawsuit against the unions, for damages done by a strike, and collected from the union funds; strikes ought to be less common in the future. The weapons of war had moved into a science-fictional realm, difficult for the avenge citizen to assess. But the Soviet space program had been moving steadily outward until they virtually owned the sky from Near Earth Orbit to beyond the Moon.

The Enclave continued to meet. They had grown older, and generally wealthier. Four years ago they had bought a piece of land outside Bellingham, a decaying city north of Seattle that had been a port and shipyard before the silt moved in and the trade moved south. It was as far from any likely targets of war as anyplace that seemed able to support itself. There had once been a navy shipyard, but that was long ago.

They all made money, but they weren’t rich. Their jobs kept them in Los Angeles. Over the years one or another had found wealth or peace or even both in small towns. The dropouts were replaced, and the Enclave endured, an aging group of middleclass survivalists unwilling to break away from Los Angeles and their not inconsiderable incomes.

All this time they had been meeting, every Thursday night after the dinner hour, like clockwork. Tonight was Monday; they had left work early, and Isadore was getting hungry; the dinner hour should have been just beginning. But the terrible strangeness of this night did not derive from that. Isadore Leiber sought for what it was that was bothering him, and it came, not in strangeness but in familiarity, as he reached for a cigarette.

Four years ago he’d given up smoking for the last time. He’d given it up, but he borrowed from his friends at every opportunity. Giving up smoking became his lifestyle. It got to where his friends couldn’t stand him: the sight of a familiar face triggered his urge to smoke; he would roll pipe tobacco in toilet paper if he had to. But he was giving up smoking, yes indeed. And he was getting ready for the end of civilization, yes indeed. But he’d been doing it for well over a decade, and that had become his lifestyle. Tonight was weird. No laughter, no complaining about fools in Congress.

Tonight they meant it.

“I hate the timing,” George said. “Corliss is about to graduate, and the rest of the kids won’t like missing the tail end of the school year, and if they do, I don’t.”

There were echoes of agreement. “I can’t go,” Isadore said.

The noise stopped. Jack McCauley said, “What do you mean, can’t?”

“I can’t quit my job. I can’t take leave, either. George said it, it’s timing. Travel agencies get hectic with summer coming on.”

Jack made a sound of disgust. George asked, “Sick leave?”

“Mmm … a couple of weeks.”

“Wait till, oh, the tenth of June. Jack, this makes sense.” George jumped the gun on an automatic protest. “We’re bound to forget something. We’ll keep Ia posted. Ia, you take your two weeks sick leave just before the ETI’s reach Earth. You come up then. Two weeks later you’ll damn well know whether you want to go back to the city.”

“It’s still costing us a pair of strong arms,” Jack groused.

Isadore decided he liked the idea. “I’ll ask Clara if she wants to take the kids up early. Maybe we’ll want to keep them in school as long as we can.”

“All right, it can’t be helped,” Jack said. “But the rest of us are going, right?” He snowballed on before there could be an answer. “Bill and Gwen are already up at the Enclave. We’ve got the second cistern system running, and he’s got the top deck poured on the shelter. Bill says the well has to be cleaned out, but we can do that with muscle when we get there.” He pursed his lips in a familiar gesture. “One thing, Ia. You come up a full week before the ETI’s get here. Cut it any finer, and you may not make it at all. When people really believe in that ship, God knows what they’ll do.”

“If the Soviets give us that long,” George said.

Jack frowned. “For that matter, if there’s any alien ship at all. Maybe this is something the Russians cooked up.”

They all shrugged. “No data,” Isadore said. “But you’d think the President would know.”

“And he’d sure tell us, right?” Jack said. “Ia, are you sure you want to wait?”

“Yeah, I have to.” Christ, he’s right, Isadore thought. Who the flick knows what’s happening? Aliens, Russians — a nuclear war could ruin your whole day. “I think Clara will go up early,” he said. “I’ll have to ask her.”

The others nodded understanding.

When they’d first started the Enclave, they made a decision. One vote per adult, but all the votes of a family would be cast by one person. The theory was simple. If a family couldn’t even agree on who represented it, what could they agree on?

There’d been a problem at first, because Isadore thought Clara ought to vote rather than him, but she didn’t get along with Jack, or maybe Jack didn’t get along with her. There’d been too many arguments. After the first year things had settled in, and only the men voted, but Isadore often went off to ask Clara’s opinion before making a decision.

“Who else goes?” Jack demanded.

The inevitable question struck each of them differently. Jack was already belligerent. George looked disconcerted, then guilty. “Well… us, of course,” he said. “Our wives and children.”

“Of course. Who else? Who do we need, who do we want? John Fox?”

Isadore laughed. “Hell, yes, we want Fox. He’s a better survivor than any of us. That’s why he’s not coming. I talked to him. He’ll be camping somewhere in Death Valley, and that’s fine for him, but he didn’t invite me along.”

“What if Martie shows?”

“Aw, hell, Jack.”

Martin Carnell had been with the Enclave for a time. He’d lasted long enough to help buy the house and land in Bellingham. Then… maybe he’d run into financial trouble. He’d quit. Later he’d moved further north into the Antelope Valley.