Earthbound Read online

  Fortunately, ammunition is getting scarce . . .

  2

  I felt Paul wave and turned around to see Namir running toward us, his rifle pointed down at a slant. “We’re okay,” he said, too softly for Namir to hear.

  Still holding me, he turned partway around, to look in the direction the man had been running. “I think he went back into the HQ building. Here.” He handed me the pistol. “Sit down behind me.”

  He sat down cross-legged and planted his elbows on his knees, bringing the man’s rifle up to sight down the barrel. He clicked a switch, I guess a safety, several times.

  The pistol was heavier than it looked. The barrel was warm. I kept my finger away from the trigger.

  Namir ran up and hesitated, looking at the body, and then got down prone next to us and pointed his rifle in the same direction. “Somebody in there?”

  “I think so. I’ve got his weapon.”

  “Probably more in there. Come on!” He sprang across the road to where a panel truck was stalled sideways. “Get cover.” We followed him and crouched down behind it.

  “So what happened?”

  “Two guys wanted to go down to the motor pool and kill a Martian. They didn’t know we had Elza’s pistol.”

  “That one grabbed me.” I pointed at the body. “Grabbed my breast.”

  “And you shot him in the head. Remind me to mind my manners.”

  “I shot him,” Paul said. “Had to. It was obvious they . . . they weren’t . . .” He swallowed hard.

  “Weren’t going to let you live,” Namir said. “Good you thought fast.”

  “I didn’t think at all.” He left the truck’s cover and walked over to the man he’d killed. He nudged the man’s body with his toe. “Fuck.” He kicked him. “Shit. Fuck.” Kicked him harder.

  I ran over and held him, then pulled him so close I could feel his heart’s hammer in my own chest. Felt him kick again and again. “Fucking shit,” he sobbed.

  My eyes stinging wet on his chest, I echoed him, fucking shit. Strong and meaningless words.

  “Get back here,” Namir said. “Please! You’re sitting ducks.” He fired a short burst at the door.

  Paul snapped out of it and hurried back, with me staggering in tow. “Sorry,” he said to Namir, as we got down next to him. “Never done that before.”

  Namir squeezed his shoulder and nodded, not taking his eyes off the door.

  A spot of white appeared in one corner of the door, a white cloth being waved. “Show yourself,” Namir shouted. “Hands up.”

  He stepped into the light, blinking, still waving the white flag, which turned out to be underwear.

  “Don’t shoot. I don’t have no gun.”

  “Who else is in there?”

  “Ain’t nobody now.” He started to gesture.

  “Keep your hands showing!” To Paul he said quietly, “Stand up with the gun. Aim it at him but stay behind cover.” Then he stood and started walking toward the man.

  “One move and you’re dead. If anyone else shows up, you die first.”

  He got close enough to point the rifle right between the man’s eyes. “Now turn around, slowly.” He did.

  “We’re going into that building. You’re certain there’s no one in there?”

  “Nobody I know of.”

  “If I see one person, I’ll blow your brains out.”

  “One dead guy! There was one dead guy, maybe two.”

  “If they’re still dead, you’re safe.” He tapped him on the back of the head with the rifle’s muzzle, and the man flinched. “Move it.”

  “This doesn’t look smart,” I whispered to Paul. “How does he know he’s not walking into an ambush?”

  “He’s the expert.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe he’s assuming that if there were someone armed in there, he would have fired at us while we were exposed. But he has to know for sure before we turn our backs on the building.”

  “Maybe.” Or maybe, I thought, Namir was going to kill the man in cold blood, and didn’t want to do it in front of us.

  They went inside the building, and I waited for the shot.

  It didn’t come. They shuffled back out, and Namir said something to him, and he ran away at top speed. Namir kept the gun pointed in his direction but walked casually toward us.

  “The place is a mess. A man and a woman dead, and it looks like someone sprayed around the whole control room with automatic fire. Nothing there for us.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  “No idea. That man, Jemmie, said it was like that when they came in. He’s probably lying, but I don’t think he or the other killed those two. They were shotgunned.”

  “They might have used a shotgun and then discarded it,” Paul said.

  Namir nodded and shrugged. “ ‘Every man shall die for his own sins.’ I had to either let him go or kill him.”

  “We couldn’t take him with us,” I said, but didn’t like the idea of him being out there and brutally angry.

  “Let’s go back to the motor pool,” Namir said. “Wait for darkness.”

  “Or the U.S. Marines,” Paul said, “whichever comes first.”

  Elza was waiting for us at the door. I handed her pistol back. “It works.”

  “We saw, through the binoculars. Good thing you had it.”

  “It was.” Though I’d been thinking of it more as a curse than a blessing.

  “You should go talk to your brother. He’s not taking this well.”

  “The shooting?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t see that. Just things in general.”

  The end of civilization? How childish of him. “Where is he?”

  “Snack room.”

  He was sitting cross-legged under the skylight with six empty near-beer cans in a pyramid in front of him. Pretty fast work. Thirty minutes?

  “Card—”

  “I saw Paul kill that man.”

  “Yeah; me too. See?” I turned to show him the speckles and spatters of blood and gore on my left shoulder.

  He nodded, looking at it as if it were a shirt pattern. “I couldn’t be part of it anymore.”

  “You’re not going through one tenth what Paul is.” Not to mention your sister. “He’s never killed before.”

  “I know, I know. But you don’t understand.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  He took the can off the top of the pyramid and sucked at it. “I have three physical identities. Had. The other two are completely, were completely, electronic. They could take external forms—rent-a-bodies—when it was convenient, but they didn’t have to.

  “For most of my life, when this original body became uncomfortable, I could step out of it, and automatic repair nanosystems would take over, while I stayed in one of the other two bodies.”

  “You mean if your brain makes you uncomfortable?”

  “Brain, endocrine system, gonads. The parts that generate and mediate emotional states.”

  “Well, welcome to reality.”

  He had another drink and shook his head, wincing. “Just what I’d expect you to say, Carmen. But there are all kinds of reality. This one is shallow and painful and inescapable.”

  “But this one is the real world.”

  “Not to me. Not to billions of perfectly real people.”

  We had talked about this a little on the cube two days ago. But I guess to me it was just a more vivid and time-consuming version of the VR games that had so dominated his time when he was a kid. To my great annoyance and our parents’ exasperation.

  “Sorry I’m being such a Sal the Sal,” he said, dragging a long-dead pop star from our mutual childhood, an egotistical brat. “It’s almost an automatic reflex, switching over, and my body wonders why it’s alive and suffering.”

  “You’re dead while it happens?”

  “Sure, this body. You can’t be in two places at once.”

  Creepy. “Well, I can see that it’s a terrible loss. Worse
than your best friend dying.”

  “They were both me! Dying. And I think this third me could die if I will it.”

  “Don’t even think of it, Card. You’re all the family I have.”

  “And your only native guide. It’s nice to feel wanted.”

  3

  Nice to have a native guide, but as darkness fell, I might have traded him for a map and a flashlight. A big box of kitchen matches wouldn’t hurt. Did they still have them in this future?

  We had lined up all our gear by the door and opened it a crack to watch the light fade. The cloudless sky went from lemon to salmon to deepening gray.

  It was no surprise, of course, to see meteors crisscrossing as the sky got darker; we’d been seeing that ever since the Others blew up the moon. Really bright ones rolled across the daytime sky so often that no one commented on them anymore. But there was a new feature that we hadn’t noticed while there was still power, and the lights of civilization: night would never be completely dark.

  That cloud of debris that was the corpse of the moon was composed of trillions of pebbles and rocks that all reflected sunlight like tiny moons. The result was a dim haze that made enough light to see your hand a few feet away.

  Paul was mortified that he hadn’t predicted it, with his graduate degree in astrophysics. Of course, we hadn’t seen a night sky without city lights since we had landed on Earth four days before.

  Our plan to sneak up to the farm under cover of darkness was useless. There would be plenty of people on the road at night, avoiding the desert heat.

  Snowbird gave voice to the obvious. “You have to leave me behind. I’m like a beacon, drawing trouble. And I slow you down.”

  “We’re responsible for you,” Namir said.

  “Not really. I would as soon die here as anywhere, and I would rather not take any of my friends with me.

  “Perhaps I will just swim away until I tire out and sink. I would be the best Martian swimmer on Earth. Or anyplace.”

  “Thank you for the generosity, but we can’t abandon you.” In the dim murk, I couldn’t read the others’ expressions. “Are we in agreement here?”

  “No,” Dustin said. “Snowbird, I also appreciate your logic and selflessness. I really think I would make the same offer if I were in your shoes. In your position. Who is with me?”

  There was some muttering and throat clearing, cut short by a loud thump that was the butt of Namir’s rifle hitting the floor. “We are not going to cast lots over whether to allow one of our number to die.

  “The seven of us are alone here. We traveled fifty light-years together in constant danger and considerable discomfort. We faced a powerful and implacable enemy and survived. We watched our universe change drastically three separate times. Whatever is going to happen to us, we face it together.

  “Snowbird, consider extending your logic and generosity. If some idiot kills you for being a Martian, you will be exactly as dead as if you had drowned. Meanwhile, you might be the most valuable member of this ragtag bunch.”

  “You’re our wild card,” Paul said. “I think you’re the only Martian in the hemisphere. You’re closer to understanding the Others than any human can be, and they’re still the primary enemy, no matter how far away they are in space and time.”

  Elza stood up in the darkness. “The enemy I’m worried about now are assholes like the ones you dealt with today. So what are we going to do now? I mean tonight. If we can’t benefit from darkness, maybe we should stay here until morning and start moving then, when no one can sneak up on us.”

  “That’s right,” Namir said. “Another six or eight hours’ rest wouldn’t hurt us, either.”

  “Leaving two of us on guard while the others sleep,” Elza said.

  “One up on the roof, with the binoculars,” Paul said. “That should be me. I can use the stars to measure out two-hour shifts.”

  “Show us how?” Namir said.

  I saw Paul’s silhouette as he opened the door to look out. “Sure. It’s dark enough.” The brighter stars were visible through the sky glow.

  We all filed out, including Snowbird—never can tell when reading the stars might come in handy, for a doomed Martian stranded in the Mojave Desert.

  It was possible to come close to calculating the actual local time, if you knew the date and a few constellations. But none of us had appointments to meet, so he just showed us an easy way to approximate the passage of time. Your fist at arm’s length is about ten degrees. The sun or moon or a star moves about thirty degrees, three fists, in two hours.

  (Meryl was able to use her xenology background—she knew better than the rest of us how the world looked to a Martian—and patiently translated what Paul had showed us into Snowbird’s anatomy. She did have a lot more fists to work with.)

  I drew the first shift, with Paul on the roof, but Namir was out there, too, hidden behind a truck. Not tired enough to sleep, he said.

  He had showed us all how to operate the rifles and pistol, and made us practice loading and unloading and safety procedures until we could do the whole drill with our eyes closed.

  It didn’t make me too confident. The rifle was heavy and cold and greasy, and smelled of gunsmoke. My skin still crawled where the man’s blood and brains had spattered me.

  I’d vomited twice again, mostly water and acid.

  I was hungry but didn’t want to waste food by barfing.

  So I tried to force myself into calm, but I couldn’t not think about the sudden explosion and gory splash.

  Namir had asked whether I would like to be excused from the guard schedule because of the traumatic experience. I said no, that feeling as if I could protect myself would help. Maybe it would. Not yet.

  I was next to the front door, behind a stack of sandbags scavenged from the wall. I could crouch behind them and shoot over the top of the stack, or lie down—“assume the prone position,” which sounds like a porn director’s command. Or I could curl up into a ball and weep.

  There was a hole in the sky, which was interesting. I actually figured it out for myself before Paul had a chance to enlighten me: it was the Earth’s shadow, blocking off sunshine from the lunar debris. Sort of an anti-moon, a little bigger than the moon and moving much faster through the sky.

  The constant meteor shower seemed to be slowing down, or maybe I was just getting used to it.

  There was a quiet rustle behind me, and I started. But it was only Snowbird.

  “I wondered whether you were ready to eat,” she said. She held out something that touched my arm.

  “Thanks.” It was some kind of candy bar. I unwrapped it and was grateful for the creamy chocolate and unidentifiable nuts. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m in a complex state, which is also simple. Preparing to die.”

  “In Mars, I suppose it would be much different.” I knew a little about their death customs. “With your family.”

  She shuffled in the dark. “Newsies called it telepathy, but it’s nothing so strange. More like a data transfer. We don’t quite understand how it works, but the result is clear. Experiences that are unique to the dying individual are transferred to a sort of family memory. Like adding to a scrapbook in a human family, but all in the head.”

  “You would have a lot of those. Unique experiences.”

  She made a two-click sound of agreement. “I don’t think anything will be transferred without physical contact, though.”

  “The more reason for you not to give up.”

  There was a long pause. “You really think the Others will turn the power back on?”

  “Anybody’s guess. I don’t suppose it’s likely. Do you?”

  “My instinct says no. They aren’t kindly.” That was an understatement. “But it’s hard to predict where their logic may have taken them.”

  The Others think very fast, superconducting neurocircuits, but they live and move with glacial slowness, slithering through liquid nitrogen. Their dealings with species like ours are pla
nned out years ahead of time, or even centuries or millennia. Their automata, who perceive and react at our speed or faster, observe us and decide which branch of the logic tree to follow. The decision to turn off the free power doomed a billion or more humans, but as far as we know it was just remorseless logic, a chain of events that started tens of thousands of years ago. If humans do this, then we will do this, in self-defense.

  Many races on earthlike planets have been evaluated this way. They say that many were not destroyed.

  As we weren’t, quite. Yet.

  “They haven’t been unkind to you. To Martians.”

  “No, but we aren’t competitors. It bothers me to think that we’re not particularly useful to them anymore. We were created for a purpose and have fulfilled it.”

  The Others created the Martians, biological machines, and put them in an Earth-like bubble in Mars, to serve as an advance warning, in case the unpleasant denizens of Earth evolved into space flight.

  It was illustrative of the Others’ slow, tortuous, logical method. When we finally were sophisticated enough to leave Earth, one of our first targets would be Mars. When we found the Martian underground city, that would trigger a signal to Neptune’s moon Triton, where an individual Other was resting in frigid nitrogen slush. It would evaluate the situation and choose among various pre-ordained courses of action.

  It chose a scenario where humans and Martians had to work together to defuse a bomb that would destroy all advanced life on Earth. Then it went back to its home planet, almost twenty-five light-years away, to report.

  One assumes that the Others were ready and waiting, when it came back with news of what it had done and learned. The one best course of action was chosen, and the tools for it sent back almost twenty-five light-years to the waiting Earth.

  In the intervening fifty years, though, the Earth had built an interplanetary defense fleet, which was obviously not unexpected.

  Those thousand defensive ships posed no real threat to the Others; their home was a million times farther away. But the ships represented a dangerous attitude, as many had feared, and the Others had a plan for that.