by Joe Haldeman
We got to the door of the motor pool building. Paul knocked twice and pushed it open. “Hello? Anybody here?”
“We’re over here,” a voice reverberated in the gloom. “Who are you?”
“Space Force pilot,” he sort of lied. “We were down on the beach, watching the launch.”
“So were we.” Sound of footsteps coming our way. A man and a woman in blue NASA coveralls came out of the murk. “When we couldn’t raise anyone, we came back here. What was that gunfire?”
“We don’t know,” Paul said. “Came from the reviewing stand, sounds like.”
“Press Relations getting rid of witnesses,” the man said.
“Be serious, Wilbur. I’m Katie, this is Wilbur . . .” She pointed at Paul. “You’re the famous guy. And you’re the Mars Girl.”
“When I was a girl.” I introduced Meryl.
“You went off to the aliens, the Others.” She shook her head. “My grandmother was a girl then, she watched the take-off. Brightest star in the sky. But you’re not, she’s eighty-some . . . I guess that relativity does work.”
I had to smile. “Seems to work for me.”
The man cleared his throat. “The Others are behind this? The rocket failing and the power going off?”
“As punishment,” Paul said, and explained what we’d seen. Not everybody had been glued to the cube during the launch. How long would it take for the word to get around? Word of mouth and written message, carried by hand.
Two more bursts of automatic-weapons fire. Wilbur went to the door and peered out in that direction. “Hope that’s our guys.”
“Has to be, doesn’t it?” Katie said. “But who are they shooting at?”
“Probably just shooting in the air, crowd control. But I wish we had a weapon here, just in case.”
“We have a couple,” I said, and he looked at me sharply. “We didn’t want to look dangerous, walking up here. They’re back on the road to the beach, with the rest of us.”
“Better bring ’em up.”
I started to reach for my cell; how long would that reflex survive? Went to the door and waved both arms.
The four of them came out. “Holy shit!” he said. “Is that a Martian?”
No, it’s two ostriches sharing a potato costume. Elza and Dustin trotted toward us; Namir came slowly, covering Snowbird. She was wearing a dirty white smock the size of a tablecloth, dragging along on four legs made for Martian gravity. She liked humans and Earth as abstractions, but I think the reality was getting a little hard on her.
“We heard there was a Martian on the base,” Katie said.
“They’re not dangerous,” Wilbur said.
“Heavens, no.” Snowbird might hurt you if she fell on you.
“The three people look dangerous,” she said, “though it might be the guns.”
“Soldiers,” I said, simplifying. “They were with us on the starship.” I introduced Elza and Dustin as they sidled in, and then Snowbird and Namir.
“Keep a lookout, Dustin,” Namir said. “Thank you for sheltering us. We shouldn’t be here long.” He gestured toward a long lunch table. “Let’s sit.”
Namir sat at the head of the table and began disassembling and inspecting his weapon. “If this were a military operation—”
“Which it’s not,” Paul said quietly.
“We won’t forget that. But if it were, there’s a standard hierarchy of concern: first ammunition, then water, then food. Communication is in there, irrelevant now, and mobility, which seems to be shoe leather. First ammunition. You don’t have any here?”
“No guns,” Wilbur said. “Couple of signal-flare pistols in the locker with the life rafts.”
“Water, we have plenty of,” Katie said, “our own water tank. Not much in the way of food. A snack machine, some left-over bagels.”
“Food is going to be the long-term concern, with supply lines broken down. Dustin, tell them about the farm. Fruit Farm?” Namir slapped his gun back together and traded places with Dustin.
“Yeah, the family farm, the commune where I grew up. It’s only about a couple of hundred miles to the north.”
“I thought they disowned you,” I said.
“Well, they did. But that was like seventy years ago. The conservative bunch who ran things will all have died out by now.”
“Long walk,” Paul said.
“Moving at night,” Namir said. “Still, less than ten days.”
“How far would you have to walk before you get out of the desert?” I asked.
“Twelve miles,” Wilbur said. “Actually, 11.6, going straight west on the access road just north of here. Where is this farm?”
“Near Viva Lento,” Dustin said. “Up by the Oregon border.”
“Head north on 17,” Katie said.
“Good as any. No traffic.”
“What are you two going to do?” I asked. “Strength in numbers, if you want to come with us.”
“No, I’d better head home,” she said.
Wilbur nodded. “No disrespect, Ms. Snowbird, but I don’t think I want to be traveling with a Martian.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Snowbird said. You could never tell when they were being ironic, or just logical.
“All of us ought to ransack this place for provisions,” Namir said. “Could you show me those snack machines?”
We followed Wilbur through the gloom to the snack bar alcove. There were two machines full of snacks, behind glass, which turned out to be unbreakable plastic. We toppled them over with a crash, and Wilbur found a crowbar that allowed us to break the locks and pry the backs open. Satisfying in an obscure way.
The machines weren’t operated by money, but by ration card. So Wilbur or Katie could sit there and get a candy bar every four hours. We didn’t have cards, not having yet joined the 22nd century.
While the men ransacked the machines, I went with Katie on a fruitless search for something like knapsacks to carry the booty in. In the mail room, I found a metal cart, a frame that held an empty mail bag and rolled on four sturdy casters. We took it to the water rescue lockers, where I liberated two flare pistols with two belts of four flare rockets each.
Back at the snack bar alcove, we let Katie and Wilbur stuff their pockets and two bags, then arranged the rest into piles according to shelf life, so we could put the relatively perishable things on top. Fruit and sandwiches that had been refrigerated. A drink machine yielded ten liter bottles of water and a couple dozen less useful soft drinks and near beer.
My rolling cart would hold about a quarter of the bounty. Nobody turned up anything like knapsacks, but a storage room had a drawer full of random sizes of cloth bags. Together we could carry all of the water and most of the food. We could leave behind most of the soft drinks and near beer.
Snowbird insisted on carrying two light bags of snacks, though she couldn’t eat any of it. She refused water. “I can live a week or more without it. I come from a dry planet.” And she wasn’t going to last a week unless they turned the power back on.
Katie and Wilbur wished us luck and headed home, facing hours of walking. Neither had family to worry about, but Katie had cats and fish to feed.
“Might as well feed the fish to the cats,” Meryl said after they left. “Or fry them up.”
Namir was watching them go. “Seem to be nice people. But you never know. They might be back, with others.”
“Maybe we should start moving,” Dustin said.
“We don’t want to travel in daylight. Especially not loaded down with food and water. There will be plenty of people out there with neither, but with guns.”
“So let’s get some rest while we can,” Elza said. “Those of us with weapons stand guard, what, two hours at a time?” We made sure all the doors were locked. The windows were silvered for insulation, so nobody could see us if it was dark inside.
I found a cot in a back room but couldn’t sleep, my mind spinning. What if we made the two-week-long trek without incident, a
nd Dustin’s family welcomed us into the fold? What about the other seven billion people in the equation?
There wouldn’t be seven billion after two weeks. Maybe not half that. I could hardly imagine what the crowded cities would be like. Even if the governments tried to provide food, water, and shelter for everyone, how could they do it without communication and transportation?
When I was in school, we were told that the world had only three or four months’ worth of food in reserve. I suppose that in America most of that was in grain silos, thousands of miles from the population centers on the coasts.
In an abstract sense, I supposed the very poor had the best chance of survival, used to living close to the bottom of the food chain. As if the rich would politely stay away, when the shelves were bare.
I wondered whether Dustin’s family had guns. If they were pacifist vegetarians, we might only find their bones.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Meryl was shaking my shoulder, whispering, “We’ve got company.”
Namir and Elza and Dustin had their guns at the ready. Through the window you could see a ragtag crowd, maybe twenty, and someone was pounding on the door with something heavy and metallic.
None of the people in the crowd had guns visible, but we couldn’t see the ones who were pounding on the door.
No police or military uniforms. Most of them wore white name-tags.
“I think they’re newsies,” Card whispered. “And VIPs, from those bleachers where they put me first.”
After a minute, most of them moved on, by ones and twos. The one guy kept pounding on the door, rattling the lock. Then he left, too, carrying a metal pipe.
Paul returned from watching out the back windows. “Couple of guys tried to start vehicles. They’re gone now.”
“How could they start them without keys?”
“Like metal keys?” Card said. “They just have a code you punch into the dash. Those are all N-A-S-A, Wilbur told me.”
“What’s the firearms law like now, Card?” Namir asked. “Do people have guns at home?”
“California, you can have guns but you can’t carry one without a permit, and permits aren’t easy to get. That’s academic now, I guess.”
“Maybe. We’ll see how it shakes down. I wonder whether cops will report for duty, and try to enforce the law.”
“Where we’re headed,” Dustin said, “I don’t think there’ll be much law. Maybe in small towns and some big cities, where cops can work on foot.”
“Some people have really big gun collections,” Card said. “Dozens of working weapons. Most of them are electric pellet guns, though. Gunpowder and smokeless weapons are expensive, and ammunition is taxed like a hundred bucks a round. Plenty of military and police ammo around now, I guess.”
Namir looked at his clip. “I’ve got a double magazine, forty rounds, and Dustin, you’ve got a single one?” He nodded.
Elza held up the pistol. “Nine here.”
“So we’re not getting into any gunfights. We have to assume that any group we encounter with weapons will have more ammunition.”
“It’s not a war,” I said. “We shouldn’t even be thinking in those terms. It’s more like a natural disaster.”
“Unnatural,” Dustin said. “I wouldn’t wait around for the Red Cross to show up.”
“I have a radical thought,” Meryl said. “Instead of heading for the hills with guns, why don’t we try to find something like the Red Cross, and volunteer. Try to do something constructive.” That was so like Meryl, social worker to the core.
“It’s a good thought,” Paul said. “But where would you go; what would you do?”
“It would have to be a city of some size,” I said. “Where they might already have charitable organizations in place, with a substantial number of volunteers. With resources for emergency work.”
“Like a computer network and ambulances. Helicopters.” Namir shook his head. “More useful, they might have first-aid kits. I wouldn’t like to be the guy in charge of guarding them, though.”
“You think too much like a soldier.” Meryl sat down at the table across from him. “That may save our lives some day. But it’s not everything. If there’s going to be an alternative to chaos, to anarchy, we have to pursue it right away.”
“You do that. I’ll keep you covered, from behind something solid.”
“It’s not always about guns!”
“May I say something.” Snowbird had all four arms folded, a posture communicating thoughtfulness. “I do not have a dog in this fight, as I once heard a person say. My destiny will not be affected by your decision.
“Namir, your supply of ammunition is small. You have four seconds’ worth, and Dustin has two. When it’s gone, your weapons are dead weight.”
“You can shoot single-shot. And we can find ammunition.”
“But there will be people guarding it, who will kill to keep you from it. And how much can you carry? They won’t be making any more of it.”
“There’s probably a lot of it around. But I concede your point.”
“If you plan to survive more than weeks or months, violence is the wrong direction. When you run out of ammunition, what will you do?”
Elza did not surprise me: “My husband unarmed is more dangerous than any two men with guns.”
“A nice sentiment,” he said, “but I want to choose the two men.
“But Snowbird is right, in the long run. Card, walking north, what would be the nearest city?”
“Depends on what you would call a city. Custer City, technically. But don’t try to get a good meal there.”
“How far?”
“Twenty-five miles, I guess.”
“That’s about as far as we’re going to get on this amount of water.”
Card smiled. “Have you tried a tap?”
“What?”
“This isn’t a spaceship. You turn on a faucet anywhere, and water comes out.”
That caught me, too. Live on recycled pee for years, and you start to feel real personal about water.
A shed outside had armloads of empty plastic gallon jugs. We didn’t take the ones that smelled of solvent, and rinsed the others well—just by turning a tap and letting gravity do the work. How long that would last, of course, we had no way of telling. You could see the water tank a couple of blocks away. One stray bullet could empty it. Or an aimed one.
The sun would be up for a few more hours. Paul and Namir took binoculars up on the roof and didn’t see any gatherings of people: just a few individuals and pairs. Paul came down with a suggestion.
“We ought to go find out whether our celebrity is worth anything. Go back to that headquarters building and find out what’s happening, anyhow.” A reasonable suggestion that made my knees weak.
“I’ll come along as a guard,” Namir said.
“No; no guns. We’ll probably be safer without.” He looked at Meryl, who smiled and nodded.
I wasn’t so sure. We didn’t have a magic wand that would make other people’s guns disappear.
Elza held out her pistol, handle first. “Paul, at least take this. You must have had some training in the Space Force.”
He took it and stared at it. “One afternoon, back in ’62. This is the safety?” She nodded, and he put the pistol in his waistband, out of sight under his shirt. “Thanks. Pray we don’t need it.”
I put two bottles of water and some snacks in a bag, and slung it over my shoulder. I’d lost my sun hat down on the beach, so pulled a faded NASA cap off a peg. Paul straightened it. “Now we’re official.”
“If you’re not back in two hours, we’ll come after you,” Namir said. I checked my wrist tat and it was still 10:23, for the rest of my life.
“Make it three,” Paul said, without suggesting how either of them could tell time—some secret military thing, no doubt. “Take us half an hour just to walk there.”
“Careful by the bleachers,” Card said, unnecessarily. Paul nod
ded and went out the door.
It was a relief to be alone with him, the first time since we’d left the billet at dawn. He took my hand and squeezed it. “You and me.”
“Me and you,” I said automatically. A song refrain from when I was eighteen. Paul an ancient man of twenty-nine.
We walked in silence for a minute. “It’s a lot to take in.”
