Whatever Gods May Be

by George P. Saunders

"Colonel Phillips," John continued in a remarkable imitation of Walter Cronkite, "Do you know who the father of your wife's child is? Uh, yes sir, I think I do... God! Of course, Colonel Phillips. Happens everyday," John yo-yo'd back and forth in the vignette, "Tomorrow, join us when we talk to Zontar, Thing from Venus. Until then, this is-"

  "Stop it!" Cathy snapped, snatching her hand away from his and leaning back into her seat. "Just stop it."

  John was seething again, but quieted at his wife's plea. He kicked himself silently; he'd done it again.

  "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry." Helpless, John just sank back into his seat and stared out the window.

  Though the public disclosure to the world stated that Cathy had become pregnant in space, the truth of the matter was quite another thing altogether. In fact, after a battery of extensive examinations and transported medical experiments, it was confirmed by the best NASA doctors on the force that Cathy's actual time of conception took place only one day following her arrival in space...not one month, as the official headlines so enthusiastically reported.

  Notwithstanding John and Cathy's firm position that they had abstained from sexual relations during the entire pre-mission phase of the Challenger launch, a more remarkable discovery surfaced that prompted an immediate security clamp by NASA, and outrightly deceptive rhetoric to the rest of the world for the following months concerning Cathy's pregnancy.

  The early blood tests themselves had changed medical history - as well as a few religious practices within the small minority of researches involved with the case of Cathy Phillips' mystery conception. For while the gestation period had been verified, and the fetus' blood corresponded to Cathy's own 0 positive blood type, there was one added element in the findings that proved conclusively that the American Medical Association was going to be kept very busy for a long time concerning the herebefore comforting science of obstetrics.

  John Phillips, to his great surprise and stunned indignance, was not the father to his wife's unborn baby. Furthermore, the blood type found within the fetus itself was one that had previously never been seen on the face of the Earth. Relieved that he was not faced with an adulterous wife, John Phillips - along with the puzzled defenders of medical science back on Earth - had to now accept what was without doubt the most confounding medical anomaly of the century.

  For months thereafter, secret shuttle consignments took place regularly to the Space Lab where Challenger and her baffled crew were stationed. Cathy was prodded and poked by the finest contingent of medical prodigy Earth had ever offered to an expectant mother. Tests were retested, and those were tested tenfold. Meanwhile, press dispatches to the rest of the world by NASA continued to fabricate the myth that the 'highly romantic Phillips' were enjoying routine schedules, despite their happy anticipation to the birth of 'their baby.' Finally, after every examination had been completed, theories touted and pummeled, and questions left embarrassingly unanswered, John and Cathy Phillips were again left alone to wonder among themselves what exactly was happening

  The final, feeble assessment from the examining doctors was less than comforting to digest. Quite simply, Cathy was carrying an entirely alien form of human being. Much more than this would not be able to be determined until after the actual birth. For the moment, the fetus was healthy, strong, possessed of an entirely unknown blood composition...and had nothing in common (save a certain closeness with the mother) to Colonel John Phillips.

  Finding only meager shelter in one of several theories that suggested his sperm had undergone a chemical metamorphosis while in orbit, and that somehow it had remained intact through several months of ovulation, John attempted speculating on his wife's condition as little as possible. He was not crazy about the alternative explanations which Cathy was beginning to believe - and that he himself was about to embrace in desperation.

  With the marvelous bandaging properties of time, coupled with a busy workload, John Phillips had just about recovered from a bludgeoned ego (as well as a certain ridiculous grudge against the mysterious something that had knocked up his wife behind his and her back) by the time Cathy's delivery date approached.

  Then ALC-117 arrived.

  And World War Three.

  With that eerie monster called Coincidence having a field day of catastrophe, both John and Cathy Phillips were asking themselves the very same questions -- and not sure if they were happy about the answers.

  In the past two days, however, Cathy had become more complacent than her husband. John found her change in temperament both soothing and infuriating. He was feeling like Chicken Little with the falling sky, and she seemed to have acquired an inner peace amidst the past forty-eight hours of disastrous events. Except for the one emotional collapse awhile back when speaking to Bud Scott, and this latest rebuke to John, Cathy Phillips had definitely borne the stress of the past few hours better than he.

  "Hey," he said softly, "I'm sorry about, uh, what I said before."

  Cathy was immediately ready to forgive. "I know. I'm sorry, too."

  They held hands and turned to look out the window. "What's going to happen, John?"

  "I don't know. I wish I did."

  The answer seemed to be enough for Cathy. She squeezed his hand once again, then continued to stare out at the blue-brown curvature of Earth.

  Several hundred miles beneath them, the world began to explode.

  FIFTEEN

  Smithers' gaze was vacuous and frozen.

  The almost unbearable throb of the alarm siren seemed a million miles away, as he automatically pushed buttons and responded to rehearsed instructions learned a thousand times over in past training sessions. His brain had gone into a kind of auto drive, and not once in the several minutes allotted to him to complete his launch directive did he question the morality of his actions. He was a soldier now, perfectly tuned and equipped to carry out the one duty he was expected to perform faultlessly, without hesitation. He would not have disappointed his employers, for a second later, the base and his small room which he shared with Coleman shuddered and thundered violently as the missiles in the adjoining silo left their launch pads.

  Smithers' destiny, along with Coleman's, had been fulfilled. They had but one more duty to perform, and this was by far the easiest one to execute. For it was a task that demanded little thought, and virtually no action of any kind.

  In the few minutes remaining in their lives, Smithers and Coleman needed only to wait. Time and fate would take care of the rest.

  Suddenly, the control complex became very quiet. The klaxons discontinued their possessed whining, and the only sound that the two men could detect was each other's measured breathing. Smithers did not get up from his chair, though Coleman rose slowly and began to pace quietly behind him. For one hysterical moment, Smithers did give some thought to running from his command post abducting the nearest on-base jeep, and drive away from here as fast as he could without turning back.

  He chuckled to himself a moment later. What a ridiculous waste of time that would be. He glanced at the clocks on the wall; four minutes had passed since the missiles had departed. This meant that Coleman and himself had roughly three to four minutes remaining before the sub launched rockets hit their base.

  Four minutes' Smithers found himself gripped in a numbing seizure of fascination. In four minutes, he would die. Was he afraid? he asked himself quickly. There was no reason to be, really, he reasoned. The resulting explosion would vaporize the base in one tenth of a second - about the span of time involved in blinking an eye.

  Three minutes! He felt nervous; he wondered if Coleman felt the same way, though he did not wish to speak and break the sublime moment of silence that was pervading the control room. Coleman, Smithers was dimly aware, was still pacing in back of him. He did not bother to turn around and examine the man's face.

  Smithers fingered the picture of Janet he had been holding earlier. The town of Boulder was so close to the missile complex, that it would most likely also be completely destroyed
by the same missile that would hit the base. Janet and he would die at almost precisely the same moment. There was something morbidly romantic about this fact that made Smithers unconsciously smile. Would they meet again? Or would it finish now forever? Smithers folded the worn picture and brought it to his lips. Such answers were only moments away...

  Two minutes. Coleman flopped back down into his chair and began to cry softly to himself. Smithers listened unashamedly but did not bother to offer condolences. What was the point?

  Briefly, Smithers mentally followed the two Minuteman bombs he and Coleman had launched; by now, they were rising out of the stratosphere, and commencing a low arc that would bring into their electronic sight the Russian city of Kiev, nearly ten thousand miles away. It would be a twenty minute journey altogether, but once it was completed, nearly four million human beings would die. Such grim statistics had always bothered Smithers before, but now he felt absolutely nothing. Today was a day of dying for everyone; the time for regret and guilt had passed. Smithers forgot about the Kiev missiles - and never thought about them again.

  One minute. Smithers reached for his pack of cigarettes. What the hell, he thought. He looked down at the Janet photo for the last time, then pulled one of the faggots free of the box. He would have to hurry.

  His face froze in disappointment. No matches. He shot a glance towards Coleman. The negro had completely recovered and was staring straight ahead. Well, Smithers thought resignedly, there's no harm asking.

  "Got a light, buddy?"

  Coleman turned his face slowly around to meet Smithers' eyes. Smithers let his cigarette dangle limply from his lips. He broke out into a cold sweat, and lost his voice.

  Coleman's eyes were bloodshot and tear soaked. At first, Smithers thought the other man was in a trance and had not heard him. Then, slowly, Coleman reached for the pocket in his uniformed shirt and produced a small fold of matches. Still holding Smithers' gaze, he handed them to his friend. Twenty seconds. .

  Smithers nodded his thanks, but remained staring into the white pupils of Coleman. He did not like what he was seeing. Ten seconds. .

  Soon, now .

  Five seconds.

  "Ah, shit!" Smithers whispered at last, not even bothering to strike the precious match. The sonic boom thudded dully above them; it was the last sound to be heard before the world around Smithers was transformed into light.

  * * *

  Angry, self-recriminating thoughts flooded through Zolan as he watched the sky paint itself with the exhaust smoke from the rising missiles. Vandenburg Air Force Base was many miles away, but the piercing whine from the boosters shrilled strongly enough to be heard even at this distance and the grinding noise made Zolan snarl to himself. He had hoped to be allowed at least a little more time to pack valuable equipment away back at the shanty. Additionally, he would have liked to have attempted to coax one or two of his pigs inside the Rover as well; the flat-snouted beasts were a totally alien form of life that the people of his world would have been most amused with. All such aspirations were immediately dashed when Zolan heard the far-off alert sirens, and a second later, witnessed the first launches of attack. Mankind's last war on Earth had begun, and Zolan Rzzdik would be very lucky if he could pack himself off this hapless planet intact, much less the accumulated paraphernalia of an entire century.

  He was still growling when the Rover appeared over a nearby hill. Airborne, the starship was an impressive piece of manufacturing; perfectly spherical, it glided on the air with the lightness of a bubble, making hardly a sound as its three dividing sections rotated opposite one another to generate the anti gravitational field that held it aloft. Zolan waved at the Rover wildly, while also pounding the hood of his truck. He need not have made such a commotion, since it was hardly likely that the ship would have missed him. Even without the tracking beam from Zolan's comwatch, the Rover would have had no difficulty in finding the man; elaborately tuned to every physiological and metabolic beat Zolan's body possessed, the starship could pick out his PO from a million people in only a few seconds, simply by identifying heartbeat, glandular activity, and brainawave impulses. Zolan realized this, but continued waving nevertheless. In a time of crisis, he thought, a good old-fashioned howl and a hoot certainly couldn't hurt.

  The Rover was only a hundred feet away from Zolan and the truck when the blast thundered around it.

  The sky blazed white for a second, then ebbed back to a washed-out gray, sucking down to the horizon where a churning ball of orange was beginning to expand and mushroom. The Rover was not unprepared for the explosion, and had implemented numerous protective procedures. Had it failed to do so, half of its onboard functions would have collapsed from the electromagnetic drain produced by the fireball.

  Zolan was instantly blinded by the surprise flash of the explosion. He screamed and brought his hands to his wounded eyes. A moment later and he was flung against the door of his pickup by the force of the shockwave that followed. Sand and rock spit around him as the hellish wind tore over the desert. The Rover compensated as best it could against the turbulence, alternately trying to get as close to the stricken man as possible. It was not a simple task, and it was worsened by a second explosion that howled demonically from the west.

  The first detonation had vaporized Vandenburg. The second, and slightly closer blast, melted the city of Barstow, along with the strategically more important hydroelectric plant a few miles outside of town. Both targets were victims of submarine launched missiles that were able to dispense with the lengthy time lag attached to the heavier ICBM's now speeding over the troposphere to inflict further carnage. Already, the sky was beginning to darken as the two clouds converged together. Several more flashes over the horizon quietly informed those that were capable of noticing that the war to end all wars had finally been consummated.

  Zolan writhed blindly in the dust, calling out to the Rover hovering above.

  "Remain still, Zolan. I'm bringing you aboard," the Rover bellowed loudly, without transmitting through the man's comwatch.

  The ship lumbered a hundred feet above Zolan, adjusting its tractor devices to do Zolan no harm when he was caught in its vortex. Seconds later, and Zolan floated limply up through the air and into a bottom port door beneath the Rover's stomach.

  Zolan's vision gradually improved to a colorful blur, but the pain behind his eyes was throbbing and persistent. Nevertheless, he was able to haul himself up through the lower levels and onto the flight deck, where he found the Rover's central computer blinking at near light speed.

  "Are you damaged, Rover?" Zolan asked, shaking his head trying to rid himself of the nagging cobwebs that obstructed his vision.

  "Negative, Zolan. All ancillary backup systems operative and compensating. We still don't have a Hall-breach yet."

  Zolan's mouth went dry as he remembered the much-prized and desperately needed bottle of bicarbonate still sitting on the driver's seat of his truck below. If the Rover still maintained that the corrosive agents affecting the Hall components would damage other adjoining systems, then they were both in for some very rough and dangerous rides ahead.

  "Can we still get into the Hall?"

  "No problem there, Zolan. Our troubles will begin when we attempt to pilot ourselves without Scanner assistance. And, of course, we will be unable to effect a closure as required -"

  "I don't care about that," Zolan snapped, rubbing his hand through his hair angrily, "Do you still have enough control on the HS to know where you're going once we enter?"

  The ship shuddered once violently, as the second shock wave from the Barstow blast reverberated against the hull. Zolan was thrown forward, but he caught himself against the pilot seat.

  "That's a difficult projection to make, Zolan. As I was unable to exercise even minimal influence on the sub access you created earlier, I see no reason to expect further success in any other area of Hall control. Since you failed recover the bicarbonate -"

  The Rover discontinued its transmis
sion as it watched Zolan shake his head in pain.

  "You should experience only minimal discomfort for the next few hours, Zolan. The kind of exposure you just endured would have scorched an Earthman’s retina."

  "I'll try to remind myself how lucky I am, Rover," Zolan replied sarcastically. "You'd better get us out of here. We'll worry about what to do once we're Hall Safe."

  The Rover responded immediately, igniting its powerful boosters and rocketing upwards. Zolan was only vaguely aware of the steep ascension, thanks to the fine balance the Rover perpetuated within its internal compartments. Zolan took his seat, and squinted into his gauges.

  All at once the world around him went black. "We have a Hall entry, Zolan," the Rover said quietly.

  "Do we have navigation?" the man asked, staring into the foreboding void.

  "Affirmative, however -"

  And those were the very last words Zolan Rzzdik heard before an even more engulfing blackness than the Hall cloaked over him.

  SIXTEEN

  The Thelerick Stingers agreed that it was an impressive world to behold. A diverse topography even included vast deserts waving over the surface, most of them occupying regions at or below the equatorial plane. As they had earlier deduced, it was primarily an aquatic planet flooded with monstrous salt oceans that made the heavy atmosphere wet and oppressive. Yet, the Stingers assumed that most of the arid wastelands were probably quite pleasant and mild, with a low humidity factor.

  Conjecture on the pros and cons of the blue world was enjoyable, but the Stingers realized that it could go no farther than that. The planet was teeming with life forms on all four hemispheres. One race in particular held sovereign sway over all other species and the Stingers guessed that it was this superior creature that had constructed the wonderful machines they were now studying on the blue planet's only moon. It would be an exciting first civilization to contact, but aside from this, the beautiful aqua world would have to be bypassed as a possible encampment.