The Kyben Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  From concealed positions, lancet batteries opened up on the silent black cube on the plain.

  Crackling beams of leashed energy erupted from the projectors, criss-crossed as they sped toward their target and impacted on the near face of the cube. Where they struck, novae of light appeared. Drabix lowered the visor on his battle helmet. ‘“Protect your eyes, Friend,” he warned.

  Lynn dropped her visor, and heard herself shouting above the sudden crash of sound, “Let them alone!”

  And in that instant she realized no one had asked the right question: where were the original natives of this world?

  But it was too late to ask that question.

  The barrage went on for a very long time.

  Drabix was studying the southern face of the cube through a cyclop. The reports he had received were even more disturbing than the mere presence of the forts: the lancets had caused no visible damage.

  Whatever formed those cubes, it was beyond the destructive capabilities of the ground batteries. The barrage had drained their power sources, and still the fort stood unscathed.

  “Let them alone? Don’t disturb them? Now do you see the danger, the necessity?” Drabix was spiraling upward, his frustration and anxiety making his voice brittle and high. “Tell me how we secure a war zone with the Enemy in our midst, Friend?”

  “They aren’t the Enemy!” she insisted.

  “Leave them alone, eh?”

  “They want to be left alone.”

  Drabix sneered at her, took one last look through the cyclop and pulled the communicator loose from his wrist cuff. He spoke directly to the Descartes, hanging in space above them. “Mr. Kokonen!”

  The voice came back, clear and sharp. “Yes, sir?”

  “On signal, pour everything you’ve got into the primary lancets. Hit it dead center. And keep it going till you open it up.”

  “On signal, sir.”

  “Drabix! Wait for Central to—”

  “Minus three!”

  “Let it alone! Let me try another—”

  “Minus two!”

  “Drabix...stop....”

  “Minus one! Go to Hell, Friend!”

  “You’re out of your—”

  “Commence firing!”

  The lancet hurtled down out of the sky like a river of light. It struck the cube with a force that dwarfed the sum total of annihilation visited on the cube all that day. The sound rolled across the plain and the light was blinding. Explosions came so close together they merged into one endless report, the roof of the cube bathed in withering brilliance that rivaled the sun.

  Lynn Ferraro heard herself screaming.

  And suddenly, the lancet beam was cut off. Not from its source, but at its target. As though a giant, invisible hand had smothered the beam, it hurtled down out of the sky from the invisible dreadnought far above and ended in the sky above the cube. Then, as Drabix watched with eyes widening and the Amicus watched with open terror choking her, the beam was snuffed out all along its length. It disappeared back up its route of destructive force, into the sky, into the clouds, into the upper atmosphere and was gone.

  A moment later, a new sun lit the sky as the dreadnought Descartes was strangled with its own weapon. It flared suddenly, blossomed...and was gone.

  Then the cube began to rise from the earth. However much larger it was than what was revealed on the plain, Lynn Ferraro could not begin to estimate. It rose up and up, now no longer a squat cube, becoming a terrifying pillar of featureless black that dominated the sky. Somehow, she knew at forty-nine other locations around the planet the remaining forts were also rising.

  After endless centuries of solitude, whatever lived in those structures was awakening at last.

  They had been content to let the races of the galaxy come and go and conquer and be assimilated, as long as they were not severely threatened. They might have allowed humankind to come here and exist, or they might have allowed the Kyben the same freedom. But not both.

  Drabix was whimpering beside her.

  And not even her pity for him could save them.

  He looked at her, white-eyed. “you got your wish,” she said “The war is over.”

  The original natives of the planet were taking a hand, at last. The stalemate was broken. A third force had entered the war. And whether they would be inimical to Terrans or Kyben, no one could know. Amicus. Ferraro grew cold as the cube rose up out of the plain, towering above everything.

  It was clear: roused from sleep, the inhabitants of the fifty forts would never consider themselves Friends of the Enemy.

  THE FEW, THE PROUD

  The means by which they had tracked him, though secret, was idiotically simple. It came as a result of the naïveté that universally gulled all recruits to the Terran Expeditionary Force. Set afire by subliminal messages encoded in the recruitment assaults, young men and women of the united Earth rushed to enlist, to fight the monstrous Kyben, and they put their trust, put their honor, put their lives in the hands of a planetary government that assured them danger, far traveling and—if they were bold—eventual total victory over the alien scum. And so, whey-faced and trusting, they came to the recruitment depots and enlisted. As part of their induction, they received a thorough physical. As part of the physical, they received a tiny implant in the Orbital Region, passing between the fibers of the Orbicularis to be inserted into the skin of the lid, inner surface of the tarsal ligament. Should the recruit still retain some scintilla of individuality that had survived the fever of patriotic fervor, and should he or she inquire, "What is that thing you're putting in there?" he or she would be told with lambs-wool sincerity, "Well, you know, something could happen...you might not make it back...and, well...it's not something anyone likes to think about, but if you didn't make It...well, it's just an i.d. for the Graves Registration unit." Accompanying these reluctant words was a quiet manner of such humane fatalism, that the recruit would invariably smile and say, "Hey, I understand. I know it's rough out there and I might buy it. Just a precaution; I understand." And, secure in the knowledge that the government cared enough to make sure his or her body parts would not be scrambled with someone else's, they accepted the implant with pride and courage. In this way, they were all gulled. The implant was a tracking device. So when he went AWOL, the means by which they tracked him, though secret, was idiotically simple. He carried the beacon in his eye.

  When they got around to him, a three-MP team of "rabbit finders" had no trouble locating him living among the chonaras in the delta lands of the sub-continent the natives called Lokaul, on the fifth planet of the binary system designated by the Celestial Ephemeris as SS 433. No trouble at all: they rode in on the beacon of his eye. And when he ran, they came down in skimmers and burned a ring around him in the marshland; and they drove him toward the denuded center; and they dropped a tangle-web on him; and they schlepped him aloft and bounced him into their scoutship; and they warped him back to TEF Mainbase on Cueball, the ringed planet orbiting Sirius, to be court-martialed and to stand trial. By that time, of course, the charge against him was not Absent Without Leave: it had been upgraded to Desertion Under Fire.

  His name was Del Spingarn, he was a Dropshaft Sapper 2nd Class, and he had cut out during the battle of Molkey's Ash.

  And this was a serious matter, because—after all—There Was a War On. It happened in the eighty-fifth year of the war between Earth and Kyba.

  Do I have anything to say before sentence is passed?

  You betcher ass I do.

  Oh, sorry, sir, I know I'm supposed to show respect for this Court, but since I know sure as snuffers sip shit that you're going to toss me into a starfire chamber and blow my atoms to goofer dust, I figure there isn't a whole helluva lot you can do to me if I fully invoke Section Fifty of the UCMJ and tell my tale nice and slow, and just the way I feel like it.

  UCMJ. I've always loved that. The Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's one of those phrases that contradicts itself, don't you think?
Like Military Intelligence. Or Free Will. I forget the name for what they call those. But "Military Justice!" That's a killer. And you're a killer. And even me, I was a killer. Just like my Grampa. Which is what my story's all about, since this is my parting statement.

  So just let your asses itch, you Officers and Gennulmen up there sitting in judgement of Spingarn, because Section Fifty says I can bore you till I go hoarse. After which, I'll go ever so quietly downshaft to the starfire and let you disperse the crap out of me.

  But before that, I'll tell you about my Grampa Louie.

  That was Louie on my mother's side. My Grampa Wendell died when I was eleven. He was my dad's father. Nice old guy with a lousy sense of humor, but he doesn't figure in this story at all; I just didn't want to leave him out.

  But Grampa Louie, ah, there was a guy! Came back from three tours out in the Pleiades with a sash full of citations and medals and honoraries, not one of which meant doodly when he went to buy the shots that were supposed to retard the nerve damage from catching too many short-bursts. But, oh, what a prideful thing Grampa Louie was to the family. An authentic hero of the War.

  We used to pull out the ghostcube and run the hologram of Grampa Louie getting his medals; every time someone new came to visit. We'd snap in the ghoster and everyone would see Grampa up there on the dais with no less than President Gorman and three Phalanx Generals and Greer McCarthy, that redhead who used to be on the vid. You remember, she starred in that series about the undercover Terran agent; she was very popular at the time. Hell, you remember, don't you? Lots of people thought she was President Gorman's lover, but both of them denied it even after Liza Gorman's term was up and she wrote her autobio. Denied it right to the end, both of them; but I always thought that Gorman bringing flowers to Greer McCarthy's sepulcher every year on the anniversary of her suicide really told the true story.

  Oh. I can see you're getting annoyed that I keep straying off the main line. Sorry about that fellas, but you remember Scheherazade: as long as she kept telling her tale, the Sultan couldn't lop off her head. But I'll get on with it.

  The thing about it, you see, was that Grampa Louie was so damned humble about it all. He wasn't the most decorated grunt in the War, maybe, but he never bragged about what all he'd done, he turned away compliments and just settled down to being a guy with an illustrious past, and letting others do the bragging.

  Even that day when they gave him all that metal for his sash, he just thanked the President and shook her hand, and took the kiss from Greer McCarthy and the salutes from the Generals and the laserlight salvo and the standing ovation, and just nodded, with his eyes checking out his boots. Like, well, did you ever see the ghoster of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Grampa Louie was like that. Just a real nice guy, kind of sweet and embarrassed at all the fuss. Just being a real hero but not stuck up about it, the way we like to see a special sort of man who's done remarkable things, but not making a big wind of it.

  And then, when the great-great grandson of Gutzon Borglum picked Grampa Louie to be the model for the War Memorial Wall, and he was so humble he refused, saying he wasn't worthy to represent all the grunts who'd bought it in the War, it took a direct appeal from the President before he agreed.

  That wall's still standing. In big carved letters it says OUR GLORIOUS DEAD and there's my Grampa Louie, stripped to the waist, wearing his blast helmet and packing a squirtgun, with his boot on a Kyban battle bonnet. Of course, by the time I was old enough to see the Wall, Grampa Louie was already an old man, and he didn't have the muscles anymore, and he needed a cane to get around. But at least Borglum was smart enough to put the blast helmet on the sculpture so he didn't have to show the scars Grampa Louie had.

  Did I forget to mention the scars?

  They were awful. A lot worse after the radiation turned him bald and you could see where the red ripping of the short-burst had cut bloodlines from almost the top of his head, down past his right eye—he damned near had lost it—and all the way to his chin. They were parallel lines, like bullet train tracks, right onto his lips at the corner of his mouth. Always red, like blood was coming out of them, even though they'd scabbed over a long time ago.

  So with all that, you can imagine how proud I was of my Grampa. He was the model for the Glorious Grunt, for all the men and women who'd eaten dust in the War. My Grampa.

  When we'd go out for a walk, I'd always make him take me past the Wall. He hated doing it, just this kind and humble guy who didn't want to make a big thing of being a hero. But I'd cry and blow snot out of my face till he did it...and oh yeah, how I loved to look up there at what Grampa Louie had been like when he'd come back, years before I was born.

  But he'd mumble something self-effacing and drag my ass down the street before somebody made the connection. And as the years went by, I couldn't wait till I was old enough to enlist and go out there to take up where Grampa Louie had left off. We weren't doing too well in the War at that time. It was after the Kyben bastards had nuked Deald's World, and they were dunkin' us real good. But I was just a kid, so the best I could do was put the pins in my star map, to follow the battles, and play Sappers'n'Snipers with the other kids. And just wait till I was growed-up enough to make my mark on the recruiter's readout.

  And finally, when I turned thirteen, that was seven years ago, I went in the day after my birthday, and I joined up.

  It was the proudest day in my life.

  You probably can't know about something like that! You Officers and Gennulmen likely all graduated from Sandhurst, and got commissioned straight-away into a Phalanx post. But for me, to be the grandson of the man who'd come out of the Pleiades crusher and been a full-Earth hero...well, it was the best thing I'd ever done, or ever would do!

  My family was so damned proud of me.

  Even Grampa Louie. He was so choked up about it all, he wouldn't even come down out of his room for the farewell dinner my family and friends threw for me. He just locked himself in and said goodbye to me through the door.

  And as I walked away, kind of sad that Grampa Louie hadn't come out to hug me and say take care of yourself, kid, he called me through the door; and I went back, and listened close because he was an old, old man by that time; and he said, "Try to come back, Del. I love you, kid." And I'd have cried, but I was going off to the War, and grunts don't groan.

  So I left the next day, and they sent me to Croix Noir, and I did my training for Dropshaft service, and came out third highest in my class, and then I did the 80days on Kestral V, and made 2nd Class forty-six days into the rigor. You can't know how proud my family was, and they wrote and looked just as proud as birds in the ghoster, and though Grampa Louie didn't come down to get holo'd, they told me he was as puffed up about me being in Dropshaft as they were, and to go out there and let the yellow stuff flow!

  Which is what I did.

  They booted me out over Strawhill and I rode the dropshaft into country, and we took Borag and Hyqa and the whole archipelago at Insmel. I got this at Insmel, this nice transparent cheek here.

  TEF pulled us out of there and I went straight on through inverspace to Black's Nebula. That was sweet, too. Lost half our complement there. They were waiting when we popped out of inver. Wiped two dreadnoughts and a troop condo before we'd pushed our eyeballs back into their sockets. They were all over the scan. Men-of-war and little kickass wasps from the top of the screen to the bottom. And there was just a little poof of implode and a couple of thousand grunts were stardust.

  But we got a few loads through, and I went shaft and tried to make my way to the primary, and on the way I got tossed and went in a hundred and fifty kliks shy of the bull. Some kind of a little city, not a major target, but with enough of a home defense system to raise some mist around me. So I burned them.

  Turned the beams loose on full, and just swept the goddam town. That wasn't smart. First thing they tell you in Sapper school is, "Don't ever get close enough to see them burn."

  I got too c
lose. First time I ever saw anything like that. Wasn't like what they'd taught us it would be. There were old guys like my Grampa Louie, and old women, and kids, and those dog-things they keep for pets.. and all of them splitting and popping like bags of pus. They'd bubble and the eyes would explode from the inside. The hair sizzled and the gold skin split, and you could see bone for a second before it all turned black and they fell in like finishing a bag of popcorn and crushing the bag in your hands. I saw a kid, a little girl, I guess, and she looked straight into the screen as I passed over, and she opened her mouth to scream, and her mouth just kept going, right across her face, and then the bottom came away, and she was running in circles and flapping her hands, and I saw all her parts before they turned into stew.

  You motherfuckers never told me about that part of it, did you?

  Never told me they look a lot like us. Oh sure, they got golden skin, and those eyes, and the little worm fingers. But they're not like the ghosters you showed us! They're not, are they? Where's the guy who phonyed up those Kyben monsters for the bond drive ghosters, for the holos that got all of us to join up before we'd learned to wipe our asses? Where is that talented sonofabitch? I'd like to give him an Oscar. 'Cause they don't look like that!

  I'm okay.

  Gimme a minute. Just to clean up.

  Yeah. Swell. I'm just swell.

  I did the job for you. That kid would never invade old Earth. Took her right out.

  But it was the old ones that did it to me. The old ones just like my Grampa Louie, that I adored. You should see what old Kyben have inside them. A lot of stuff that wriggles before it bursts. I guess that was what the guy who phonyed up the monsters meant to show, but he never got any closer to the real thing than any of us do. We just hang out there in space and dump. And when the Sappers go in, it's whambam and out so fuckin' fast all you see is a new sunrise.