by Greg Keyes
Ondekane started speaking in French, and DeBoer began a running translation.
“He says the ship didn’t crash, that it landed. They fought the aliens for ten years…”
“Yes, yes,” David said. “We know all of this. Skip to the drilling.”
She said something to Lucien, who nodded and started again.
“Once it was over, they found a huge hole in the ground, so deep that they couldn’t see the bottom, so deep that the monsoon rains didn’t fill it up.”
David frowned. “That’s… not typical. Ask him if he knows why.”
Lucien wasn’t sure. “There are many rare and precious metals in the region,” he said.
“Sure,” David said, “but that can be said of many of the other locations as well.”
“Maybe their primary weapon misfired,” Tanner suggested.
“No,” David said. “Think about it. New York, London—more than a hundred cities they fired their primary weapon upon. Nowhere did it dig a hole. It wasn’t designed that way. Their primary weapon was meant to do what it did—depopulate huge swaths of urban area. Reduce cities to rubble. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Tanner asked.
“Maybe it was set on stun.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Maybe the primary weapon was a multitasker. We only saw one setting. After all, in no other ship was the weapon intact. It’s how we beat them, by blowing them up.”
“Or maybe that ship was just a one-off,” Tanner said. “Maybe it had a different mission and a different tool set.”
“We’re pretty sure it’s the same ship that took out Lagos and Kinshasa,” David said. “So it did the other thing, too. You see what this means. We’ve got to get in there.”
“We’ve been trying diplomatically for years,” Tanner said. “They refuse.”
“Maybe it’s time to get undiplomatic,” David said.
“I’ll take it up with the president,” Tanner said, “although I don’t really see the relevance. We’ve got their cannon, we’ve put their technology to good use. We have a base on the moon and soon we’ll be on Mars and the moons of Saturn. It doesn’t matter what they were doing a decade and a half ago. What’s important is that we stop them from doing anything at all if they come back.”
“There’s something here we don’t know,” David said. “What we don’t know very certainly can hurt us.”
“Like I said,” Tanner replied, “I’ll take it up with the president.”
Lucien suddenly started speaking again, quietly, his tone flat and hopeless. DeBoer stared at him, listening but saying nothing.
“What?” David asked.
“He says do not go there,” she said. “It is a place of evil spirits and madness, and if you go there you will only be infected by it. You will let it loose on the world.”
* * *
Dikembe swept his gaze over the troubled ground, wishing not for the first time that he could simply get in a jeep and drive away, leave his country, go someplace and paint for the rest of his life. As a question of practice he could, of course, do that, but he knew if he did he could never come back.
For years he had been flattering himself that he was making a difference, that he was the one person standing between his father and the people. He had helped the starving, in many cases aided those without hope of survival, enabling them to escape into nearby countries. Now he was starting to doubt that he had had any effect at all.
The problem, in a sense, was uchawi.
In England, speaking to a young literature major, he’d made the mistake of translating the word as witchcraft, following the practice of English anthropologists of the last century. Witches, he was stridently informed, were merely women who held to the pre-Christian beliefs of the land, who worshipped nature or the Great Mother and such. It was the Patriarchy that named them witches and attributed evil doings to them, trying to keep women in their place.
So perhaps it was a problem with the word, and the freight it carried in the English and not the concept. The fact was, people all over the globe believed that sickness and misfortune weren’t naturally occurring things. If you became ill or died suddenly it was because someone—or something—was practicing uchawi against you. This was a belief that was still strongly held by many of his people, even in the face of modern science and medicine.
His people were not at all unique in this regard—even people in the most technologically advanced countries like the United States had faith healers or relied on mystical explanations for traumatic events. Yet here, the deep-rooted belief in spirits and sorcerers of ill will had become all mixed up with the aliens. When somebody was sick, or acted badly or did anything that conflicted with the tenets undergirding his father’s brutal regime, they were said to be infected by one of the thousands of alien spirits that now dwelt in the dark recesses of the land.
Killing them all, it seemed, had done little to decrease their influence.
Such things were happening elsewhere as well. He had lately read a book by a French psychiatrist, in which she theorized that contact between humans and aliens showed a residual effect. She had interviewed and studied the transcripts of conversations with people from all around the world—any place human and alien had come face to face. She conjectured that part of this residual contact was the absorption by humans of alien semiotic structures, of the symbols by which they understood and negotiated the universe.
The author, Catherine Marceaux, had applied on three occasions for a visa to enter the Republic of Umbutu to conduct her studies amongst his people. His father, of course, had denied the visas.
Some clear-thinking people believed that co-opting traditional superstitions was a thing his father had done with foresight, in a clinical, calculated move to validate his rule. In reality, Dikembe had been forced to admit years ago that his father was quite mad. He surrounded himself with seers and charlatans, protected himself with magical charms. He saw enemies even in the faces of children.
The place Dikembe stood now only made that all the more clear.
“How many?” he asked Zuberi.
“Around a hundred,” his old friend replied.
Dikembe felt numb. The bodies had been thrown into a wide, dry creek bed, and from the looks of it a bulldozer had then pushed dirt over them. Whoever had done it was either stupid or didn’t care—when the rains came, most of the dirt had washed away, so that now one could see the shapes of corpses here and there, exposed arms and legs. Vultures had been picking at what they could reach, and in fact vultures had led hunters here, men hoping to find a dead elephant or giraffe from which to scavenge.
Instead, they had solved the mystery of the missing village. It was not the first mass grave Dikembe had seen, but it was the largest.
“How can this go on?” he asked himself.
“How can we stop it?” Zuberi said.
“We stand up to him,” Dikembe said.
“You could do that,” Zuberi said, “for all it would accomplish. But if I were to say a wrong word, they would start with my wife, and then my children, and they would do it in front of me. You understand that, don’t you? I’m risking far too much in even showing you this.”
“Surely…” Dikembe said. “Surely there must be those even inside of his guard who understand that he is mad, who can see the ruin he is driving us to.”
“What are you suggesting?” Zuberi said. “A coup?”
Dikembe didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to say it aloud, and Zuberi didn’t need to hear it. It would only make things harder on the both of them. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered it, but he kept hoping that things would somehow get better. For a while it almost seemed like they would. His father showed moments of clarity, became more susceptible to reason for a time. But that had been an illusion. Things were getting worse. The voices in his own head, quiet for so many years, were whispering again. It was happening to others, especially his father, who now sometimes spent w
eeks in seclusion and at other times went on sudden tours of the country, dressed in uniform, draped in ornaments created from alien bones and exoskeletons.
It was getting worse, and Dikembe realized that it was time to stop putting it off.
Something had to be done.
27
JULY
Patricia expected her father to answer the door the way he always did, but instead she found herself smiling at Agent Vega.
“Hey,” she said. “Is Dad here?”
“Yes, Ms. Whitmore,” the agent replied. “He isn’t up yet.”
“Isn’t up?” she said. “It’s eleven o’clock. He’s usually up before six.”
“He’s been sleeping in a little more often lately,” Vega said.
“Well, I’ll surprise him,” Patricia said. She put down her bags and went back to his room. The curtains were drawn, and the light was dim.
Shock stopped her in her tracks.
“Dad?” she said.
He was sitting up in the bed, staring off at nothing. For a second she was six years old again, and he had just wakened from another nightmare—but it was much more than that. His hair was nearly completely gray, and his face was so stubbly he must not have shaved in three or four days. His room—always spare and neat, the product of his military background—was a mess.
He turned toward her slowly.
“Marilyn?” he said.
Patricia froze, her throat tightening. Marilyn was her mother, and she had been dead for sixteen years. She didn’t know what to say.
Then the look on his face changed as he understood his mistake.
“Dad—”
He put his hand to his forehead.
“Munchkin?” he murmured. “Patty?”
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “You must be tired.”
“You’re so much like her,” he said. He looked confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on leave for two weeks, remember?”
He nodded, but it was as if he was still half asleep. “Yeah,” he said. “God, it’s good to see you. Come give the old man a hug.”
After the greeting she sat next to him on the bed.
“What’s going on, Dad?” she asked.
“These damned meds,” he muttered. “Half the time—”
“Meds?” she said. “For what? I haven’t heard anything about this.”
“Well, you know, I sort of hoped it would go away.”
“Why don’t we get you up and get you some coffee, and you can tell me about it?” she said.
He nodded. “Alright.”
“I’ll go get the coffee started.”
* * *
He showed up half an hour later. He’d put on a robe, but he hadn’t shaved. In the light streaming through the windows he looked even worse than he had in the darkened room. He looked old, and lost, and fragile.
Faded.
It scared the hell out of her.
He sat down and flashed a reasonable facsimile of his famous crooked smile.
“So how is flight school?” he asked.
“No, Dad,” she said firmly. “We’re going to talk about you first. What meds?”
He rubbed his forehead with his fingers.
“Nothing is really helping,” he said. “I don’t think they know what they’re doing. I think some of it makes it worse.”
“What’s wrong with you?” she said.
He sighed and looked at his finger as he scratched it in a circular motion on the table.
“I’m, uh—they won’t quite use the word psychosis around me, but some of the drugs are… about that. And depression. I checked.” He looked up from the table, and his eyes had a sort of pleading. “I’m not crazy, Patty,” he said. “I’m not. But they’re in my head, and I can’t get them out.”
“They?” she said.
“The aliens,” he said. “The goddamn aliens. In my head—and not just when I’m asleep, not just when I close my eyes. Sometimes it’s like they’re projected from my eyes onto the wall, onto other people’s faces. There are other things I see, or think I see, that are hard to describe.” He bent toward her. “You remember when you were little?”
“The nightmares,” she said. “They went away.”
“Slowly,” he said. “I was a little shaky for a couple of years, but I managed it. I was okay, and it got better. I almost forgot about it. But now it’s all come back, and I don’t know why. Neither do the doctors.”
“Dad…” she began. “Since when? When did it start coming back?”
“A few months ago, a year. I’m not sure,” he said. “It was little at first, like a cricket in my brain, but now…”
“So when I came home last time?” she said, and he nodded.
“It comes and goes,” he said, “but when it comes, it always comes a little stronger.”
“Why have you been hiding this from me?” she asked.
“You’ve got enough to worry about,” he said. “I know how rough flight school can be. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. Sometimes I wish there was.”
As he talked, he seemed to be getting better. His eyes became more focused, his expression more like what she was used to. He asked her about flight school again, and she answered as best she could through the cloud of distraction. When he came to the topic of Dale, she took a deep breath.
“Yeah,” she said. “About that. That’s kind of over.”
“Since when?” he asked.
“A few months ago,” she said.
“So now you’re hiding things from me?”
“Sure,” she said. “You should be used to that. The things I don’t tell you—”
“Could fill a shoebox,” he finished, smiling. “I’m sorry, Patty. I’m sorry I’m not one hundred percent for your visit. I really have missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said. “The breakup wasn’t that long ago. I thought I might as well wait to tell you in person.”
“For the record, I never liked Dale,” he said. “No ambition. I mean, you don’t have to want to own the world, but having a goal of some sort would be nice.”
“Well, apparently he was ambitious enough to maintain several girlfriends at once,” she said.
“You want a little accident should happen to him?” her father said, in his best Vito Corleone impression. Which was terrible.
“Nope,” she said. “Moving on. Besides, my new ride is a bona fide killing machine, so if the mood strikes me—pow.”
“So is there a new guy?” he asked.
“No. Every other guy I know right now is a pilot,” she said. “You know how that is.”
“Not really,” he said. “Not a lot of women pilots back in my day.”
“Well, it’s not a good idea, flight school romance,” she said.
“So there is somebody,” he said.
“What?”
“You made the face,” he said. He sounded fine now. It wasn’t so bad. Whatever was going on with him, he would snap out of it. He always did.
“I know what face you’re talking about, Dad, and I did not make it. I haven’t made that face since high school.”
“No, I’ve seen it since,” he said. “When we were out in Nevada, for the test flight…”
She realized with a start he was about to say something about Jake, and she knew she would blush. He didn’t, though. He trailed off, and his eyes became a bit vacant, the sparkle suddenly gone.
“Captain Hiller,” he murmured. “He died there.”
“He was a colonel, Dad,” she corrected gently.
“My God,” he said. “They got to him, somehow.”
“Dad?”
“The aliens,” he murmured. “I always knew they would get their revenge.”
“It was an accident,” she said. “A problem with the fusion containment.”
“What about David Levinson? Is he…?”
“As far as I know he’s fine,” Patricia said, her own spirits beginning to flag. “He
’s the director of the Earth Space Defense, remember?”
“I asked him to do that,” Whitmore said. “We needed to unite the world around a common goal.”
“You did,” she said.
He shook his head. “It isn’t done,” he said. “They’re out there. We have to be ready.” He looked up. “Patty, David has to be warned. They got Hiller. Now they’ll come for him.” His voice was rising, edging toward hysteria. She put her hand on his.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll let him know. We’ll be ready. Did I tell you about the new fighters? They handle like a dream—like nothing you’ve ever flown before.”
Her talking seemed to calm him down, so she kept going. Finally he got up and kissed her on the head. “Let me shower, clean up, Patty. We’ll go out somewhere. That Italian place you like, maybe.”
The last thing her dad needed at the moment was to be in public. “I’m tired, Dad,” she said. “Long flight. Why don’t we have sandwiches for lunch, then order in for supper? Maybe watch a little Letterman tonight.”
He smiled faintly. “We watched Letterman the night before they came. I don’t remember who the guests were. Good thing he was on vacation at his place in Montana,” he said. “That sounds good, Patty.”
“Feel free to shower, though,” she said. “And a shave wouldn’t hurt you either.”
* * *
She cornered Agent Vega the next day.
“Who knows?” she demanded.
He fidgeted a little.
“Just me and the other agents,” he said. “The house staff. His doctors.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And whoever they blabbed to.”
“Secret service doesn’t ‘blab,’ ma’am,” Vega protested.
She stepped a little closer.
“Agent Vega,” she said, “I was more or less raised by the secret service. I have nothing but the highest respect for you, but all of you are human, and humans talk. I know, because I’m one too. From now on, I need to know what happens here. What meetings he has and with whom. Any public appearances he might have scheduled, anything like that. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, but with all due respect, you’re not going to be here all of the time.”
