Earthbound (7 page)

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Authors: Joe Haldeman

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #General

BOOK: Earthbound
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He was still holding his weapon, a pistol not much bigger than mine, but with a large ammunition canister attached.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “One to go, maybe?”
“I want to go up and take a look around. You cover things down here?”
“Sure.” He didn’t sound so sure.
Where would the third one be? Would he or she continue the plan alone? If I were in that situation, with the two others gone, I would be hiding now. Sneak away after the sun goes down.
Paul had said something to me. “What?”
“I want you to cover me while I run out and get that guy’s gun. He has two magazines on his belt, too.”
“Cover you? You mean shoot back if someone shoots at you?”
“Yeah. Keep their heads down.”
“I only have five bullets in this thing.”
“Here, trade.” He set the rifle in front of me on the reception table, and took my pistol, ours.
He bounded out the door as I picked up the rifle. I barely had time to figure out the safety, when he came rushing back in with the weapon and its two magazines, and kicked the door shut with a slam behind him.
“Get down!” I was already crouching, but I flopped down, the rifle clattering under me, and there was a deafening explosion.
His face was about two feet from mine, and we stared at each other wild-eyed. “Grenade. Hand grenade.”
Namir came rattling down the stairs. “What the fuck was that?”
“He had a hand grenade. I went out to get his weapon and I guess his hand relaxed. The whatchamacallit sprang off—”
“The arming lever.”
“—and I just got back in time.”
“God. That’s why he shot out the hole in the window. To toss it in.”
“I wonder if they have more,” Paul said.
“I wonder why they had
one
!” Alba had crawled up with her shotgun. “Not exactly crowd control.”
“Namir!” Dustin’s voice from the door onto the roof. “Guy running away.”
“Armed?”
“Not obviously.”
He went up, taking two stairs at a time. I could hear them talking quietly, and then a single shot.
Namir came back down. “Shot over his head. Just let him know we saw him.”
“Wonder if that’s all of them,” Alba said, standing up.
“Maybe there’s one inside the building here,” came a voice from the shadows. My brother Card came forward. He was holding one of the flare pistols, aimed at Alba.
“For God’s sake, Card,” Paul said, “don’t shoot that thing indoors.”
Alba set the shotgun on the floor and raised both her hands. “Let him have his say.”
“You came out of the darkness with just what we needed. Guns, ammunition, information. You’re pretty and smart and have a convincing and useful uniform. Anybody who’s ever gamed knows that rule: If it seems to be too good to be true, it’s probably not true.”
“I have ID.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“It’s a NASA ID with a DNA spot.”
“Which means shit without electronics.”
“Card,” I said, “you’re being paranoid.”
“We all should be,” he said. “Alba, even if you do work for NASA, or did, how do we know you’re not one of them, now?”
Snowbird came up behind him. “I could speak to that,” she said, “just from observation.”
“What have you observed?” Card asked.
“This morning, when it became light, Alba could have taken the riot gun and killed everyone except the upstairs guard. And then, probably, killed the guard as soon as he opened the door. Her partners in this endeavor would be nearby—we know they were—and then the three of them would abduct me and get on with their plan.”
“An idiotic idea to begin with,” Alba said. “If, as you say, I’m smart, why would I team up with those idiots?”
“Good enough for me,” Namir said. “Card, your caution is commendable. But excessive in this case, I think.”
“I agree,” Paul said. “The same thing occurred to me last night, Card. But after we’d talked for a while, no. Besides, she had plenty of opportunities last night and, as Snowbird said, this morning, and we’re all still alive.”
I saw a tense look pass between Paul and Namir, and could read it well: Paul was closer, and Namir’s expression was saying, “You do it, and I’ll be right behind you.”
I opened my mouth to intervene, but then the totally unexpected happened.
“I’m sorry, Alba.” Card lowered the gun. “I’m way out of line here. Forgive me?”
“Um . . . sure, Card.” She slowly reached down and retrieved the shotgun.
“I’m used to spending most of my time in virtuality. Making my living in an imaginary world, and mostly living there. Without it, I suppose my imagination is a little out of control.”
“It isn’t a bad instinct,” Namir said carefully. “We need to think in different ways; need to look at problems from every angle.”
“Though we might stop short of pointing guns at each other,” Paul said.
I was just plain stunned. The Card I grew up with would not have apologized if he’d caused the London Fire and 9/11 combined. The fifty years had mellowed him.
“Okay,” Namir said. “If we’re going to stay here much longer, we have to bury what’s left of that poor bastard up front. He’ll be smelling pretty bad by evening.”
Something made the small hairs on the back of my neck stir. “Wait. Where’s Meryl?”
Namir looked around. “Wasn’t she with you?”
“Back in the kitchen, a minute ago.” I called her name twice.
Dustin trotted back toward the kitchen. “Oh, shit,” he said softly.
She was lying on the kitchen floor in front of the sink, her legs out straight, as if she were resting. There was a red stain the size of a playing card on the center of her chest and a large pool of blood under her back. The window over the sink had a bullet hole and blood spatter.
Dustin fell to his knees and tried to breathe life back into her.
I couldn’t find breath myself. Elza shook her head, and said “No.” She got down next to Dustin and grabbed his shoulders lightly. “That’s not . . . She’s too far gone.”
Dustin didn’t respond at first, but then eased the body back down. He wiped blood from his lips. “She didn’t make a sound.”
It was one of the bullets that had crashed through the living-room window. Paul and I found two spades in a shed out back. There was a patch of grass with some roses behind it. We all took turns standing guard and digging. After we buried her, Dustin said some words in Latin.
We washed up in the bathroom, avoiding the kitchen. The water from the tap was still warm.
I felt like part of me had died. I’d never been as close to Meryl as to the other five, but we had all lived through several different worlds together.
So we weren’t immortal. We weren’t even bulletproof.
“The hell with the body out front,” Paul said. “Let’s get our gear together and start pushing up to Fruit Farm.”
“Nothing here for us,” Namir said, then . . . “What the fuck?”
The lights had come back on.
 
From
Rear View Mirror: an Immediate History
, by Lanny del Piche (Eugene, 2140):
 
 
. . . were the Others just playing a sadistic game, when they restored power temporarily on 30 April that year? If my guess is as good as anybody’s, I’d say they were just temporarily changing the parameters of the experiment. Our physical comfort was of no concern to them, and our existential or psychological state was invisible, not even a variable.
My first area of study was animal behavior. We were reasonably enlightened in our treatment of test animals—any sign of cruelty or even lack of compassion would’ve resulted in student demonstrations and faculty censure.
But that was about animals who were cousins to humans. A lab rat shares more than our gross anatomical structure; it has more than hunger and thirst; it prefers one taste to another. Individual rats have individual personalities, even when they’re raised in robotic unison. Sacrificing them was a necessary chore, but I remember how I grated my teeth when I grabbed one by the tail and swung him down to smack his head against the lab table. Did the other rats know what was going on? I don’t remember them reacting; if they had, it would have upset me.
Perhaps a closer analogy would be in our study of microorganism cultures. A drop of nutrient doped with penicillin would create a clear circle that was the purposeful destruction of millions of creatures. And after their survivors had been measured and photographed, the whole small universe went into a red bio-waste bucket.
When the Others are done with us, will they leave us there on the table, to work out our individual and collective destinies?
Or will they be more fastidious than that . . .
5
 
We spread through the building, flipping light switches on and off. Suddenly, I heard a sustained musical note.
“What’s that?”
“A-440,” Namir said. “Like a tuning fork.” We followed the sound to the Women’s Lounge area, where a small cube had been left on.
“Same guy,” Alba said. The one we called Spy—it couldn’t be the same one literally; we’d left him twenty-five light-years away. Just a standard “human” interface for the Others.
He looked out of the cube, unblinking, for another minute or so. Then the tuning-fork sound ended, and he spoke:
“We have decided to give you power again, for one week, to see what happens.” The screen went blank.
“One week,” Paul said. “What do we do first?”
“Let’s see if the cars work,” Alba said. “One of those panel trucks, or a little bus.”
I followed her out to the lot, carrying my superfluous pistol. Card came out, too. The morning was pleasant, still cool, about nine o’clock.
She got into the first car and punched in N-A-S-A on the dash keyboard.
“Shit.” Faint numerals appeared on the windshield, OOH OOM. “They probably all drained out.”
We tried two others and got the same. Card found the recharging station and unreeled a cable out to a small bus. He plugged it into the rear.
“All right!” Alba called out from the driver’s seat. She hopped down. “Is there another cable?”
“Two more. Maybe do that panel truck?” She looked at me and rubbed her chin. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Umm . . . it’s been a while.” I had a license back in 2070, but moved to Mars in ’72. “Sixty-some years. I suppose cars are a lot different.”
“But
you
can,” she said to Card.
He shrugged. “I have a car, but I live in LA. Haven’t touched a steering wheel in years.”
“You may be about to.” She pointed to a stolid-looking blocky sedan. “Might as well charge that one up, too. We may want to look official.”
He went off to do that. “How long do they take to charge up?”
“An hour, maybe a couple of hours. Depends on the range, mainly. And whether they’re hooked up to free energy. You probably want to take the sedan to get the most miles.”
“Couldn’t fit Snowbird in there.”
“Well, the panel truck, then.” She pointed back at the building.
Paul was at the door. “Carmen,” he called, “we have a problem.”
“Only one,” Alba said. “How nice.”
I went to him. “Snowbird’s hurt. Another stray round hit her.”
“How bad?”
“Who can say? She didn’t even tell anybody about it; Dustin saw the hole.”
We walked back to the snack area, where the Martian was standing in a corner. That was normal; she even slept standing up.
“It’s a small thing, Carmen,” she said. “Just a small bullet, which didn’t hit any vital organs.”

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