North Wind (7 page)

He sat her down to put the shoes on. She’d tried, but she couldn’t seem to manage it. Their so-called “baseball boots” gave you no idea of how odd an Aleutian foot was. Bella’s foot was broad in the ball, ridiculously narrow in the heel, and had a kind of lockable arch. Her clawed toes were as long as fingers, and heavily padded underneath. He worked the one-size plastics in his hands ’til they were soft. When he tried to ease them on, he discovered that her pads were raw and bloody. He looked up, appalled. They felt pain, the same as humans.

“Why didn’t you say?”

“Don’t worry. I can carry you.”

He dropped the honor cloak over her and picked up the whole bundle. She was no heavier than a six year old child, but he was very tired. They got down the hill with frequent halts. He kept to the trees as long as possible, though he was fairly sure the skies were empty. The Aleutians were terrified of flying eyes, bugs, spy-satellites. It was ironic. The humans thought the aliens read their thoughts. The aliens were convinced that humans watched and listened to every move they made. He wished he didn’t have to take her through the hotel ruins. He put her down outside the stable, so she wouldn’t have to see the droms. She’d been fond of them.

“Wait there and see what I found!”

The jeep had not been a hallucination. It was solid, untouched under its shroud of Aleutian-tarp. The darling machine started first time. There was easily six hundred klicks level driving in the discrete energy stack. Sid dropped his head on his hands, tearful with gratitude. Then, suddenly inspired, he groped in the deep shelf under the dash. He found a pack of stale chocolate biscuits, and a full two liter canteen. “Well, thank you little Sid,” he breathed. Little Sid had an ingrained habit of tucking supplies away. “Thank you, my rotten childhood!”

The jeep crawled out of the stable, silent and lightless. Sid jumped out, elated. “How about that! And look here: food. Water!”

Bella was staring at the place where the main hall had been. His stomach churned in sympathy. “Don’t think about it,” he told her. “It’s over. They’re safe home, waiting for their next turn.”

It was what she believed.

He saw the large pallid figure, moving behind one of the rags of the burned dome. “A suit!,” he whispered, numb with shock. He pulled out the revolver. “Stay here.”

The bulky doll moved lightly over the ruins, stooping and rising like a feeding bird. Sid followed, feeling dizzy; lightheaded. He couldn’t tell if it had anyone on board or not: the gait was smooth. Either way, its sophisticated senses must find Sid’s trail, of this morning or last night. It would find the Aleutian clothes in the cistern cave. If he didn’t stop it from searching, whoever had sent it would know that one of the aliens had survived here. He saw it raise its big head, with a listening air. He’d been spotted. He was a warm moving manikin in its fields of perception.

He ran and hid in the disk works. The walls were blackened but standing. They held the shape of Aleutian utility architecture, knotted and lumpy as if woven from tree-roots. Sid let the suit take a step inside, and dropped from his perch above the doorway. It toppled. He tore at the helmet seal, a suit’s weak point. He was hampered by the revolver, still clutched in his hand. The suit rolled and Sid was pinned, staring into a square of gleaming black. A gauntlet closed over his face. He swallowed a great gulp of something that was not air. He could not breathe, his eyes teared, his lungs were bursting…. Something moved, over the monster’s shoulder. To his horror he saw the blurred outline of Bella, without her cloak, with a rock in her strengthless hands.

Something went thunk. The gauntlet came loose, and instantly Sid got a hand and arm between himself and the carapace. The suit recovered quickly from that fly-swat, it was trying to get its glove back over his face….

BLAM!!!

Sid crawled to his knees, while the echoes rolled. His head was ringing, his eyes bleared, his throat was on fire. The suit lay still, a blackened hole in its chest. Sid reeled away, found Bella and clutched at her: his face buried in her shoulder, his lungs heaving. Flower-stem arms hugged him, until he managed to stop shaking and stood upright.

“I told you to stay put,” he quavered, trying to be funny.

she asked.

They crouched on either side of it. Sid tugged at the helmet unit. He didn’t know this model, but he knew the seals would release easily if someone inside needed resuscitation. It came away without resistance.

“It can be a robot. They can walk about on their own.” A woman’s face looked up at him, shocked and sad. “But often a suit is worn by a businessman, a Mr. Fixit. Businesswoman, in this case. What they used to call a
plumber,
when Braemar Wilson was around.”

Adrenalin made him garrulous, he hardly knew what he was saying. He pulled off a gauntlet, lifted the slack wrist and showed Goodlooking a broad silver bracelet, incised with a pattern of crossed branches and flames. “This is a Campfire Girl. United Socialist States Special Exterior Force. She’s from the USSA.”

“Ah, like most truth: not quite true. They used to be called the policemen of the world. Maybe they still feel responsible. Anyway, SEF keeps an eye on things over here. Sometimes they shoot trouble, if they think they can get away with it.”

The Socialist States had decided long ago to keep the aliens out. The Special Exterior Force kept watch over the infested Old World, but at a price. They lived and died in their own quarantine, they could never go home. They were dedicated people.

Her suit would have become amour at a touch. But in an armored suit you felt trapped. You didn’t stiff it until you were actually under fire, whatever your officers said.
I’m sorry,
he told the dead woman silently.
I’ve never killed anyone before, not in the real.
He replaced the helmet and the glove. He and Bella looked at each other, across the ominous body.

“I don’t know. Monitoring the protest and the Gender truce, I’d guess: just routine, I hope. But we should not hang around. It is not a good idea to kill a Campfire Girl. We’d better get you covered again.”

For speed, he carried her back to the stable. They drank half the canteen between them. Sid got the jeep out onto the road and lowered its wheels. They set off towards Korinth in the dusk.

“It’s about a hundred and fifty klicks. There may be roadblocks. We’ll bluff our way through. The jeep’s panel has no map system. We wouldn’t want aliens to have maps, would we? So I’d rather stay on the road. If we’re challenged, keep quiet. Give them a silence; nine times out of ten the other person will fill it. Let them make up their own story. You concentrate on giving them a good impression ‘informally,’ in the Common Tongue: you know. Tell ’em you’re normal and everything’s fine.” Beside him the cone of dark cloth didn’t stir or make a sound.

Sid began to relax enough to worry about the suit. “Probably she was working alone. She’ll have left a flier somewhere near. When she doesn’t check in, it’ll go back to the mothership or to base. They don’t tangle with Old Earth authorities and definitely not with the gender warriors. With luck the suit’s working record will convince them she was killed by a random Greek bandito”

Suddenly there were lights ahead. They were the headlights of a long, armored vehicle, half blocking the road. Sid gasped.

“Get in the back!” They were being flagged down. There were figures in silhouette, helmets and weapons. He slowed. He prepared himself. A hand rapped at the window. Sid stuck his head out. “Who are you lot?” he demanded.

The woman was wearing green combat fatigues, and a green supple balaclava with a nightsight and telecoms band. She wore the Fallen Leaf emblem, with additions that identified her as a captain of the Franco-Suisse NVDA (military wing).

“Who are
you,
soldier?” she countered, in accented English. Narrow dark eyes raked him. “Irregular undercover forces, ma’am. Ordered to Athens.”

“Bon. Ther jeeep is requisisioned.”

“Hey, what about my orders?”

“We’re heading thar way. We’ll give you a lif’. You can get in the back…. Captain Hassan,” she yelled, “We have transport!”

The Swiss tapped the coms’ unit by her ear, addressed a subvocal mutter to the troops in the crippled personnel carrier. The other captain, despite the name, was a heavily built West African type with a smooth, cheery face. He wore the red-flashed blue uniform of the Western European Union, an Allied army. Sid leaned back, nerves thrumming, noting how the woman had tacitly assumed control. As they do. Oh, this truce couldn’t last.

“Lights, Hassan: and drive it, don’t trust the panel. These roads are vile. Goddess, what a day. Did you hear the news, English? We have burned out the nests. Not one is left on earth!”

“So its not true that half of them got away, ma’am?”

“Quoi? Well, some were allowed to evacuate, it’s true. Why not? We don’t kill for killing’s sake in my army, soldier.”

He hadn’t looked at Bella, he was pretending vividly that she wasn’t there. He hoped she’d caught that news: some comfort. The Swiss was searching for controls she wouldn’t find, in dawning wonder. No direction finder, no tvs, no radio: no telecoms.

“Where did you
get
this?”

“Liberated it from the Mykini looties, ma’am. They weren’t going to be needing it.”

She exploded. Slammed her hands on the dash. “You see what we’re up against, Hassan!” She swiveled around. “DON’T CALL THEM NAMES. NEVER CALL THEM NAMES. They’re telepaths, fuck it. They could be listening even in orbit. And if they weren’t, it’s a question of self respect. They are the Aleutians! You see what that ‘looties’ makes us seem? Like children!”

Appeased by Sid’s earnest nodding she settled back. “Did you have any part in the orgy, soldier?”

“Not me, ma’am. Nothing further from my thoughts.”

“Good. I detest that.” She swiveled around again. “Who’s your friend?”

Sid suddenly knew that putting Bella in the chador had been a deeply flawed move. In the dark with a scarf round her face she might have passed. Ominously shrouded, her alien-ness was subliminally dead obvious. He was pinned in the Ochiba woman’s stare. He tried desperately to intensify the message of his expression, his manner, his everything:
I’m a nice boy, I’m one of us. Whatever I do is normal.
It wasn’t working.

Without warning, a zinging burst of blue-white shot through the cab.
“Abaissez-vous!”
yelled the Swiss. Hassan dropped over the stick, as if in swift obedience. The jeep careered to the side of the road, rammed and rolled. The Swiss scrambled out, rifle in her hands, jabbering into her coms’ reed. Sid pulled himself free, dragging Bella. He swung her up in his arms: ran and fell and ran again, until the noise had diminished and the dark was complete.

“Looks like the truce is in trouble,” he remarked.

He had collapsed, face in the grass. He was clutching a fold of the chador in one hand: in the other, the biscuits and the strap of the water canteen. He rolled over. Stars looked down.

“Some Aleutian you are. Didn’t your great Clavel live for months among the locals at first contact, and no one suspected?” He sat up, pressing the heels of his hands into his tortured eyes. “We lost the jeep. No probs. We’ll be safer on foot.”

ii

That night he carried her in bursts until he managed to blunder into another plantation. Then they slept on a bed of slippery pine needles, under the chador. It was for Sid a headlong fall into oblivion, while whatever happened, happened between the squabbling armies on the road.

In the morning he looked at her feet and found the blisters perfectly healed. They set out to walk to Athens. It was not such a bad plan. It was summer, dry and warm. Sid had no maps but there were roads to follow, and the distance between them and the megapolis was not impossible. Sid knew it would be slow. He reckoned it could take them ten days, or even double that. It didn’t matter. It would be more time to think about what he was going to do next.

But there was a problem. Bella could not walk. She didn’t refuse, she didn’t complain. She would creep along for fifty meters, and wilt to the ground. He thought she’d slept, as far as aliens slept, and was as much recovered as you could hope for. She simply couldn’t do it. He had not known this. He’d never seen her use any kind of cuddly organic wheelchair. He realized now that was because Aleutians didn’t think that way. She was a cripple: being helpless was part of her obligation. If need be, there’d always be someone to carry her. He guessed she’d never walked more than a few meters at a time, unaided, in her entire god-knows how long lives.

It was like leading a toddler. He coaxed. He cajoled, he teased her, he praised her. They tried having her go four-footed, though that was dangerous. It was no better. They set off at dawn. By the time Sid gave up, in the heat of the day, they’d hardly covered enough ground to daunt an energetic caterpillar.

There was another problem. They were crossing a desert. No food was grown here. There was only the aromatic scrub, and the swathes of marching softwoods that served the Hellenic Federation Accelerated Biomass Power Grid. Sid knew there were a few fortified villages. There’d been the place where he went to buy his human rations. But he wouldn’t have dared to go back there, where he was known as the aliens’ interpreter; and they came upon no others.