The beach was narrow. Long lines of waves were rolling in. Alex insisted on going out first. He stood in the hatch, and I asked whether he had a memorable comment to make before he took his first historic steps.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s hope that the place is friendly.” He climbed down. Having learned my lesson, I closed the hatch before following him. There was something about the beach that left me not wanting to keep talking. But I didn’t think it would be a good idea to sign off. Keeping the conversation going seemed like the right approach. So I simply lowered my voice and said that we were on the beach and were getting ready to enter the forest. And what a beautiful island it is. The sand was damp, and we both sank a bit. Seaweed and shells were scattered around. We got our bearings, which consisted of Alex pointing into the woods, and saying, “That way.” But he had an impeccable sense of direction.
We switched on our wrist lamps, crossed the beach, and plunged into the trees. Some were hardwood, others were a bright green, with pliable trunks and branches, and long, spear-shaped leaves. They seemed permanently damp, and I recalled the predator plants on Echo II. It’s not a good idea to make unnecessary noise while walking through a strange forest. I told the Martian I was going to disconnect for the moment. “Will see you shortly.”
He replied with enthusiasm, the voice rising to an even higher pitch.
Getting through the woods wasn’t easy, but at least nothing made a grab for us, although the foliage covered the ground so thickly we had trouble finding our way.
There were thick bushes, some with bright flowers of various colors. (It seemed too cold for flowers.)
Something growled in the treetops, and occasionally we heard movement. I touched my scrambler. Good sense of security there.
Alex grumbled that maybe he’d been wrong, and we should have landed in the middle of the town. “No more night hikes,” he said.
“Promise?”
Belle broke in: “The light just went off.”
“Okay. Thanks, Belle.”
And, seconds later: “It’s back on again. But a different room this time.”
Eventually, we broke out into the town.
The houses did not look as if anyone had lived in them for a long time. Rooftops were worn away. Stairs had collapsed. In some places, vegetation had begun to overwhelm the structures.
They were not arranged in any kind of symmetry. There was no appearance of streets. They were simply scattered across an open area at random.
And there, along the edge of the forest, was the light.
It filled the windows at the back of the house. The rest of the building was dark. Alex checked his link: The light we’d seen from orbit had been in the front windows.
I was about to speak to the Martian again, to tell him we were there, but Alex indicated I should stay quiet.
Curtains were partially drawn. He signaled for me to keep back. “Be careful,” he said.
“Okay.” We were whispering.
We walked quietly up to the window and looked in.
Something sat in a chair with its back to us. It was decidedly not human. I saw a fur-covered skull with raised ridges and horns. And long claws. But it wore a robe, and it was reading a book. One wall had been converted into bookshelves. Music was coming from somewhere. It was rhythmic, pensive, sensuous.
I think my eyes were coming out of my head.
Then Alex pressed my shoulder. “That’s odd.”
“You mean that he’s not out looking for us?”
“Look at the books.”
“What about them?” Alex turned away and studied the woods. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Stay close.” He started to remove his helmet.
“Alex,” I said, “what are you doing?”
“Belle says we don’t need it. Why wear it?”
“She suggested we take no chances.”
“My feeling exactly.” He put the helmet down and began to climb out of the suit, unsnapping the wrist lamp and putting it into a pocket.
“Whatever you say.”
“You too,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Alex, what’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. Get out of your suit.”
I removed it and took a deep, but tentative, breath. A cold forest has a distinctive scent, even when half the trees look as if they’re made out of green rubber. That place had it, too.
My head spun momentarily, and he asked if I was okay.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Okay. If you feel ill or anything, let me know.”
We put both pressure suits behind trees, well away from the house. “It’s not an appropriate way to show up,” he said. “We don’t want to scare our host.”
“I suppose that makes sense.”
The front door looked as if it had been yellow or orange before the color faded. It had probably matched the shutters and would have given the place a faerie-like appearance. The door was about the same size as a door back home. And the house’s dimensions generally could have accommodated human occupants.
Alex looked around. “All right,” he said. “Now listen, Chase. I want you to do what I say.”
“Okay.”
“Get behind that tree over there. Stay there until I call you.”
“Alex—”
“Do what I say. If there’s a problem here, get back to the lander and leave. You got that?”
“Alex, whatever happens, I’m not going to leave you here. What are you so worried about?”
“Just bear with me.” He gave me an encouraging smile. “Now, get behind your tree.”
I saw no imminent danger. Even the alien with the books seemed unlikely to attack. Scream and run into the woods, maybe. But, despite the claws, I couldn’t imagine its coming after us. That was naive, I suppose. But that’s where my instincts were. I picked a tree and got behind it.
When I was safely out of the way, Alex turned back to the door, knocked on it, and stepped back a few paces.
I listened to the insects and the surf and the wind in the branches.
Lights came on in the front room. And another one over the door, outlining Alex. The door opened.
The creature stood behind it. He looked down at Alex with large golden eyes that were almost gregarious. The thing had feline features, and was only slightly taller than he was. If there was anything disquieting about the occupant, any sense of implied threat, it went away when it closed the book, tucked it under one arm, raised its left claw in greeting, and said something in that high-pitched voice. It sounded almost like hello. I wanted to go over and introduce myself.
First contact, baby.
Then Alex did a strange thing: He took the wrist lamp out of his pocket, snapped it on, and pointed it at the Martian. A moment later, he turned and sprinted away. Behind him, the cottage erupted.
The ground and the tree shook with the force of the blast. I pressed myself against the trunk. Burning chunks of wood crashed into the trees. When it was over, and heavy smoke was boiling out of the hole in the ground where the cottage had been, I looked for Alex. He was flat on the ground. Unmoving. Branches and bushes behind him were burning.
I ran to him, expecting the worst. But he raised one hand and waved me back.
I dropped at his side. “I’m okay,” he whispered. His clothes were burned, and in fact one sleeve was on fire. I scooped up some dirt and threw it against the flames until they went out. His face was blackened.
He got to his feet, and we stumbled away.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Chase,” he said. “Get back where you were. Keep your scrambler ready.”
“What—?”
“I’m all right.” He turned on his link. “Belle—” His voice shook with sudden emotion. He was trying to hold back tears. “We have a problem.”
Belle’s voice cut through the night. “What’s wrong, Alex?”
“Chase—” He sounded as if he w
ere choking. “Chase is dead.”
My first reaction was that something had hit his head during the explosion. When I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell was going on, he waved frantically at me to stay quiet.
I did.
“I’m burned,” he said. “Going to try to get back to the lander. Not sure I can.”
“Can I do anything, Alex?”
“No. I wish you could, Belle. Chase was just outside the building when it blew, God help her.”
He broke the connection. Then he was walking toward the smoking ruin and calling my name. “Chase—” His voice broke, and he sobbed. “Chase, I told you to wait for me, didn’t I? I told you—” He picked up a rock and threw it high into the trees. Then he sank to his knees and burst into tears.
He was good. I’ll give him that. He could have had a career with the Seaside Players. He was still down, still gasping, when someone walked past me, never saw me, and strode up behind Alex. “Mr. Benedict, I believe?”
The guy was small, middle-aged, with a congenial smile. He wore a StarCorps jacket that was two sizes too big for him, and he struck me as a man you’d be more likely to find in a library than in a forest.
Alex stood, stared at him with empty eyes. “You killed her, you son of a bitch.” He stared at the wreckage. “Why?”
The congenial smile widened. He produced a blaster and replied in a gentle voice: “I’m sorry about all this, Mr. Benedict. Nothing personal, you understand. It’s strictly business.”
“Business?” Alex took a step forward. But the weapon was pointed at his head. Not that it would have mattered with a blaster at that range.
“I’m sure she was a nice lady. Pity, sometimes, what we have to do to get by.” He shrugged.
“You speak Standard,” Alex said.
“Yes.”
“Who are you? How do you happen to be here?”
“I’m Alex Zakary.” He was looking closely at Alex, examining him. “We have the same first name, don’t we? But excuse me, you said you were burned. How badly? You seem well enough.”
“Did you plant the bomb?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I’m the culprit.”
“Why?”
“It’s my profession, Mr. Benedict. I am sorry. And I regret the loss of your assistant, but she really wasn’t very bright. Though I suppose we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Who’s paying you?”
“I’m sure you can—” He stopped. “You really aren’t injured, are you? Your arm a little bit. But that’s all. What did you do? Send her in first? Just to be safe?”
“Who’s paying you?”
“If you’re okay, then it seems I cannot trust anything you say.” He backed away from Alex and took a quick look over his shoulder. In my general direction. “Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“Have it your own way.” He put his back against a tree and raised the weapon. “Good-bye, Mr. Benedict.”
It was enough for me. I was standing there with the scrambler aimed at the middle of his back. When he said good-bye to Alex, I pulled the trigger. Zakary half turned in my direction. A look of regret almost made it into those quietly contented features. Then he crumpled.
Alex hurried to his side. He got the blaster out of his hand and rolled him over. “Thanks, Chase.”
“A professional killer. I thought they only existed in antique novels.”
He bent down and frowned. Checked for a heartbeat and picked up his wrist. After a moment, a puzzled expression came into his face. “There’s no pulse,” he said.
“That can’t be—” I checked the scrambler. And saw that it was still set for lethal. I’d forgotten! Well, if you want the truth, I wasn’t all that sorry.
THIRTY-TWO
I never walk in dark places. At least not when I can run.
—Ruben Banjo, on life in Dellaconda
“How’d you figure it out?” I asked. We were in the lander, headed back to orbit, with the guy’s blaster safely stowed in the equipment locker. Alex was seated beside me while I rubbed ointment into his arm, which had been more seriously burned than I’d realized.
“That the alien was a hologram? To start with, we knew somebody didn’t want this mission to succeed. And we picked up only one radio source. From an entire world. How was that even possible? I mean, who was the guy talking to? So there was reason to be cautious. They knew we wouldn’t be able to resist the bait, but they were a little too obvious.”
“That’s all?”
“The books.”
“You said something about them when we were looking in the window.”
“They were too far away to read the titles. But the binding on all of them was identical. He had about sixty volumes. Different colors, though some matched in sets of two and three.”
“Go ahead.”
“It looked very much like the Library of the Confederacy. We have most of the volumes at home.”
“Very good,” I said. “I never noticed. What was the lamp all about?”
“When I pointed it at him, he didn’t cast a shadow.” A big grin appeared. “The alien was either a vampire or a hologram.”
Damn. “So,” I said, “who hired the lunatic?”
“We should be able to answer that when we find out what Rachel was hiding.” He winced. “Try to be gentle, okay?”
“I’m being gentle. And you already know, don’t you?”
“Let’s wait for more evidence,” he said.
“Are we going home?”
“Not yet. Not until we find out what happened to the inhabitants of this place.”
We’d had enough for a while. Alex was hurting, we’d both been hauling extra weight around on the island, and the aliens we’d hoped would be hanging out here, that we’d be able to talk to, were nowhere in evidence. It broke my heart. And I could see that Alex was affected, too. He sat quietly in the cabin, a book on-screen. But the pages never got turned.
In the morning, his arm was better, and we returned to scouring deserts, forests, and oceans. There were more cities, but they were all like the one on the shore: empty and decaying.
The cities didn’t look old, the way ruins normally do. And they didn’t look as if they’d been destroyed, as if they’d been struck by a natural catastrophe, or by war. They all gave the same impression: that they’d simply been abandoned. That the inhabitants had just walked away.
Alex sat and stared out at the sky. We passed over a river that looked as wide as anything in the Confederacy. Then more plains, rolling away to the horizon, unchanging, tranquil, empty. Then, finally, a crumbling ruin of an ancient city. With what had been a power plant at its outskirts.
If herds of deer or equines, or individual predators, had ever prowled those lands, they were missing now. We saw the remains of some large animals. But we seldom saw anything walking. Or flying. I wondered what had cast the shadow on the island. Probably Zakary.
The cities were not big. They never approached the grandeur or size of the sprawling metropolises on Rimway. Nor could they match the eloquence of modern architecture. Or the engineering techniques. By our standard, they’d been large towns. The biggest of them had probably been home to no more than eighty thousand inhabitants. But, even in their desolation, they retained a kind of charm. Maybe it was simply a sense of loss, an illusion that these places had once, not very long ago, been home to someone.
One in particular, straddling the intersection of two rivers, had athletic fields and pools and open areas that must once have been parks. There’d been floating bridges, only one of which remained intact. And there were complexes that might once have been entertainment centers.
We saw carts, and the skeletons of creatures who’d apparently been attached to them. Some places had been wrecked, brought down perhaps by heavy storms. Others had burned. But for the most part, the streets and roads were, if not pristine, nevertheless in decent condition, showing evidence that at one time they’d been well kept. And no
w suffered only from neglect. But in all that vast desolation, we saw none of the builders.
Country of the dead.
We orbited the globe every hour and seventeen minutes. There was life in the oceans. Spouts and some large tails splatting down on the water. But there were no liners, no boats, nobody fishing.
We changed course. Looked at different towns and cities. Some were crowded with skeletons. Some showed us only a handful. A few were clear. The skeletons looked human.
We saw nothing to suggest anybody still lived down there. There was no moving vehicle, no one waving to us as we passed overhead. And all right, I know we were too high, and they couldn’t have seen us, but the metaphor is accurate. There were occasional animals. Some vulpine creatures. A scattering of felines. No birds, though. We saw absolutely nothing in the air. On the whole, the countryside seemed as empty as the towns.
Near the end of the fourth day, we passed over an idyllic country scene, a small waterfall lost in the woods. A large log cabin stood on a patch of ground near the base of the falls. We were in the northern latitudes, and it was winter, cold on the ground. The place had a chimney, but had anyone been there, we’d have seen smoke. “In fact,” Belle said, “the entire world is, on average, somewhat colder than we would expect, given its composition and its distance from the sun.”
“How much colder?” Alex asked.
“Four or five degrees Celsius.” It doesn’t sound like much, but it was substantial.
Alex looked down at the log cabin. “I guess it’s time we tried again,” he said. “Maybe we can get a sense of what happened.”
The cabin had an upper story. We circled the area, looking for a place to land. The open space was all on the opposite side of the river. There would have been room behind the cabin except that a cart was inconveniently parked. “We’ll have to go downstream a bit,” I said.
“Okay. Whatever—” He’d been very quiet.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Sure.” He heaved a long sigh. “One light,” he said. “I’d give a lot to see one light. A real one.”
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