Defenders

by Will McIntosh

  “You underestimated us,” he said.

  Five didn’t move, didn’t reply. Oliver wondered what he was feeling. Was he mourning their dead? Given their psychic bonds, they might all be emotionally closer than human brothers and sisters, parents and children. That is, if they loved at all.

  The war was far from over; maybe Five was strategizing with his kind at this very moment, plotting their next move. The perimeter around D.C. had decayed enough that there were certainly Luyten close enough to Five for communication to be possible.

  Oliver was tempted to get a rubber band and shoot some paper clips at Five through the barrier, to see if he could get him to at least move. It was a childish thought, but Oliver was feeling giddy. Odds were, Five wouldn’t react to anything less than a blowtorch.

  Studying the Luyten, Oliver wondered what it must be like, to be in constant contact with thousands of minds, some human, some Luyten, all at once. Could Five turn them off, or were they always chattering in his head? A human mind could never tolerate that.

  “I guess you’re not in the mood to talk.” He paused a moment longer, then headed for the door.

  22

  Kai Zhou

  June 11, 2030. Washington, D.C.

  A little boy in pants way too big for him ran past Oliver and Kai on the sidewalk, shouting, “A defender! A defender!” He disappeared through an open doorway, still shouting.

  They paused, waited until the boy reappeared clutching a grocery bag of what looked to be carrots and potatoes to his chest. As he ran, hiking his pants with one hand, potatoes dropped out of the bag and rolled along the sidewalk.

  “Oh, no,” the boy said. He squatted to retrieve the fallen potatoes, causing even more to roll out. “Oh, no,” he wailed.

  Grinning, Kai went to help the boy secure the bag while Oliver retrieved the fallen potatoes. As soon as he was set, the boy took off again, down Third Avenue, still tugging to keep his pants up.

  “Shouldn’t we take the defender something?” Kai asked. He was eager to get back to their poker game, but he was also aware of their duty. The premier had made it clear, right after the defenders were released: How can you help? Feed them. They eat a lot, because they’re big and they work hard. When a defender needed food, all it had to do was go find humans. It made sense.

  “You’re right, we should,” Oliver said.

  They stopped in a bread shop, bought two large loaves of wheat, and headed in the direction the little boy had gone.

  As they walked in silence, Kai occasionally looked at Oliver, still half expecting him to say something, to ask Kai questions the way his father used to. He wasn’t at all like Kai’s real father, who’d laughed and goofed around and played jokes on Kai. Most of the time Oliver didn’t say much. It was strange to eat dinner mostly in silence, but it felt good to have dinner to eat, and a table, and someone taking care of him. Kai had had a nightmare the night before, where he woke up to find his bed had been moved outside, into the woods, while he slept. When he woke for real, in his own room, he’d felt such relief.

  There were three defenders, actually. They were standing in the shadow of the Vietnam War Memorial, accepting food eagerly from kids and adults alike, their assault rifles leaned up against the memorial. They ate fiercely, the way they fought, showing no preference for any particular food, and no pleasure in eating it. The people feeding them were clearly enjoying themselves, though.

  Kai held up his loaf until a defender plucked it away with two clawed fingers. He felt a thrill as the defender ate it like it was nothing. It felt good to do his part.

  When the defenders had eaten their fill, they retrieved their weapons and left without a word. They weren’t much for conversation, didn’t say please or thank you, but as they trotted off to rejoin their company Kai and Oliver joined in when the humans applauded, shouting out lyrics from the defenders’ song the band Hot Button had just released. Kai loved the song, played it all the time.

  As they headed out of the park, Kai looked up at Oliver, who seemed lost in thought, as usual.

  “Do you like football?” Kai asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe when the war is over and the NFL starts back up, we could go to a game?”

  “Okay. I’d like that.”

  Oliver sounded a little hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he’d like it but was willing to give it a try.

  “What team do you like?” Kai asked. When Oliver hesitated, Kai added, “I like the Broncos.”

  “Me, too,” Oliver said.

  Kai suspected Oliver didn’t know a touchdown from a ground-rule double, but he appreciated that Oliver was willing to lie to make Kai feel like they had something in common. It was a good sign. He was a good guy. Maybe one day it would feel natural to call him Dad.

  23

  Oliver Bowen

  August 23, 2030. Washington, D.C.

  Oliver watched a cardinal perched in a tree outside his office window. He wondered what birds thought, when they were flying around in deep woods and came upon a Luyten. Were they at all surprised? Did they sense the Luyten were something different that didn’t belong?

  “Dr. Bowen?”

  It was Carlotta Marcosi, carrying a screen. “You said you wanted to see the fMRI. Is now a good time?”

  “Sure. Yes.”

  Marcosi set the screen on his desk. Oliver studied the fMRI video, trying to make sense of it. Brain activity was not his area, but he could read an fMRI well enough to know Five’s brain activity was beyond bizarre.

  “I don’t understand what I’m seeing,” Oliver finally said. “Do you?”

  “Not really, no,” Carlotta Marcosi said. Her hand was trembling as she pointed out regions of Five’s brain. Apparently she was nervous about making this presentation to Oliver, who was, from her perspective, the big boss.

  “We’re struggling to link brain structures to functions. We do know there’s a lot of repetition in the structures.” Marcosi pointed to structures that looked like jagged mountain peaks, repeating again and again in Five’s brain. “There’s very little overlap in the pattern of chemical and electrical activity among these structures at any one time, though, so they’re carrying out independent functions.”

  “Hmm.” It boggled his mind, how complex their brains were. It would be so much easier if Five were willing to talk to him, although Oliver couldn’t blame Five for not wanting to divulge information about how the Luyten brain functioned. They were, after all, studying Luyten physiology because of the potential to gain military advantage. Still, Oliver couldn’t understand Five’s recent boycott on any communication whatsoever. Oliver had grown so used to hearing that voice in his head that he missed it, in a masochistic way.

  Not everything about the Luyten brain was foreign. They shared some neurotransmitter systems with humans, including serotonin, which had been the key to developing the defenders. But the Luyten brain also possessed dozens of mysterious neurotransmitter systems the human brain didn’t.

  When Marcosi finished briefing him, Oliver went to Operations for an update on the campaign. Now that it was often good news, Oliver was addicted to hearing the latest on the various campaigns being carried out by the defenders.

  The news was always after the fact. The war was primarily taking place in Luyten-controlled territory, so surveillance of defender activity was strictly prohibited, because human knowledge of defender troop movement hindered defender effectiveness. Once a territory was under defender control, they alerted their human counterparts, often requesting that human forces hold captured territory. The defenders didn’t have sufficient numbers to leave behind troops to hold territory after they captured it.

  Oliver slipped into Operations and watched over shoulders as technicians updated three-dimensional maps. He worried that they might get tired of Oliver hanging around, although he wasn’t the only one. There were usually two or three voyeurs from other departments hanging around Operations at any given time.

  Suzanne Ram
os, one of the technicians he’d gotten to know a bit, noticed Oliver and smiled. “Hey, the starfish whisperer.”

  Oliver had a thing for Suzanne, but she’d never know it. He was utterly incapable of flirting, and usually didn’t know when a woman was flirting with him. He never would have known Vanessa was interested, if his late sister hadn’t told him.

  “Hi, Suzanne. What’s the latest? In—” He stepped closer and examined the topography she was working on. “Southwest Africa?”

  Suzanne leaned back in her chair. She was petite, her eyes bright. “There’s no defender presence there yet. We’re trying to assess what sort of Luyten presence there is. I still miss high-def satellite imagery; we’re working with these little butterfly cameras that give you grainy images, plus the Luyten have a habit of routinely frying them to ash.”

  “What about in our backyard? Any progress since yesterday?”

  “I-95 is clear from here to Baltimore. There’s a lot of activity between Wilmington and Philly. We’re guessing the defenders are trying to create a supply corridor from D.C. to New York.”

  Oliver couldn’t help grinning. “That’s just wonderful. It’s hard to imagine, being able to walk from here to New York.”

  Suzanne leaned her head back until she was looking at Oliver upside down. “Even if there were no starfish, it’s hard to imagine being able to walk from D.C. to New York.”

  “True,” he said, wishing he had a witty comeback. One would come to him tonight, while he was watching a video or something.

  “Here,” Suzanne said, calling up a map of the area, divided into a green and red grid. Green squares indicated defender- or human-controlled territory; red squares, Luyten-controlled. There was still an awful lot of red—to the west, between D.C. and Richmond, covering the entire Delaware peninsula—but the green area was growing.

  Large-scale battles between the Luyten and defenders were rare. Soon after the bloody battles to defend the production facilities, the Luyten went back to their net configuration—three Luyten defending territories of five to ten square miles. After retaking most of the strategically important facilities from the Luyten, such as power plants, factories, and mines, the defenders were now forced to locate and kill millions of Luyten, three at a time. Meanwhile, the Luyten had resumed their early strategy of sabotage and raids on vulnerable human populations.

  “Thanks, Suzanne. Sorry to interrupt your work.”

  “Not a problem,” she said, restoring the map of southwest Africa.

  Back in the hallway, Oliver passed the room housing Five’s holding cell. He hadn’t been there in two months. There was little point, if Five wouldn’t talk to him. He decided to pay Five a visit.

  Five was facing the back of his cell. Oliver took a seat and watched Five do nothing for a while.

  “When it looked like humans were on the verge of being wiped out, I still spoke to you. I didn’t blame you, personally, for it.”

  When the reply came, it startled Oliver, because he wasn’t expecting it. You spoke to me because you hoped I could provide you an advantage.

  “It wasn’t quite that simple, was it? There was more than one reason.”

  As usual you give yourself credit for being more complex and inscrutable than you are.

  Oliver let it go, not wanting to goad Five into once again hurling the ugliest contents of Oliver’s own mind back at him to prove a point. “If my kind win, I won’t take pleasure in your defeat.” And every day it seemed more likely that they would win. The tide was turning.

  Yes, you will. You take great pleasure in dominating and debasing other species. It’s what your kind does best.

  “I don’t. I wish we could live in peace. I honestly do.”

  No, you honestly don’t.

  Oliver sighed, then closed his eyes. Five would never allow that what he thought—actively, consciously—should be given more weight than what the baser, more primitive, less controllable parts of his mind felt. Yes, he hated the Luyten, and hoped to see them rendered extinct as a species, but he didn’t want to hope that.

  Yes, you do. You want to believe you’re conflicted, because it makes you feel better. There’s no conflict inside you. Your primitive side and your conscious side feel the same elation at the prospect of our extinction.

  “So I have nothing redeeming in my heart or mind. I’m just one big hate pie.”

  You don’t want me, personally, to die, if that makes you feel more virtuous.

  “No, I don’t want you to die,” Oliver agreed. “And no, it doesn’t make me feel more virtuous.”

  Yes, it does.

  Laughing at the hopeless absurdity of trying to interact with Five, Oliver stood. He was already tired of this game.

  Do you know why we arrived here so unprepared for war?

  “You arrived unprepared? You seemed awfully prepared to me.”

  If we’d been prepared, you would have lost long ago. Our weapons are adaptations of civilian technologies we brought with us, for heat and power generation. We brought no weapons because we came as settlers, not conquerors.

  “You adapted to your new role quickly. And brutally.”

  We’re more deserving of existence than you. More will be lost if we’re gone.

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit narcissistic?”

  No. Evidently Luyten didn’t possess ugly qualities like narcissism or bigotry. They were perfect, enlightened killing machines.

  We have many flaws. Understanding them is beyond you.

  “Of course it is.” He should have left well enough alone. Now Five would probably yammer in his head all day, distracting him from his work, feeding him false information about Luyten brain function the way he’d fed him false information about Vanessa. “You can do so many things I can’t, Five. But I can do something you can’t. I can leave.” Oliver spun and headed for the door.

  We want you to speak with President Wood on our behalf.

  Oliver paused, but didn’t turn around. “About what?”

  Conditions for surrender.

  Oliver’s heart began to thump, slow and hard. “Is this more psychological warfare? Are you just setting me up to look like an ass.”

  There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

  Never a direct answer. “Do you have the authority to negotiate this?”

  I won’t be negotiating. I’m in contact with those who make the decisions.

  “You’re in contact with them right now?”

  Shall I tell them you said hello?

  It could be nothing but a big screw you Five was orchestrating, but he had to take it seriously. “I’ll contact the president.”

  “He’s in a lunch meeting with Secretary of Defense Oteri in the West Wing,” Five said.

  “Silly me,” Oliver said as he left Five’s room. He continued as he hurried down the empty hall. “I was on my way to his chief of staff to request a meeting. With your helpful information, now I can barge straight in and interrupt the president of the United States. Unless the Secret Service agents stationed outside his dining room disapprove, of course.”

  Oliver hurried toward Chief of Staff Reinman’s office.

  24

  Oliver Bowen

  August 23, 2030. Washington, D.C.

  Oliver glanced around the Oval Office, took in the burgundy drapes, the ornate woodwork over the doors and on the crown molding, but it was difficult to appreciate where he was, because of what was about to happen. If it actually happened, this might be the most important event in human history, and Oliver was right in the middle of it.

  “I’m not sure why I’m here,” he said to Five. “Can’t you speak directly to the president?”

  I can, but I don’t want to. You’re the only human who wants at least one Luyten to live. You’re the closest thing we have to an advocate.

  Five was in his cage, which had been transported from CIA headquarters to the White House via a closed underground rail system Oliver hadn’t known existed. The tript
ych of windows behind the president’s desk had swung open to allow Five to be rolled right into the Oval Office. Oliver wondered if the windows had always opened like that, or if the president’s people had installed it in case there was ever a need to meet with Luyten. Whatever the case, they’d gone through a great deal of trouble so Five could come to the president, rather than vice versa. Evidently it was crucial to keep up appearances, even if your opponent knew all of your effort was simply for appearance.

  The president’s private door swung open. Wood entered, followed by Secretary of State Nielsen and Secretary of Defense Oteri. Oliver stood, and to his surprise, so did Five.

  As they shook hands, the president winked at Oliver, then clapped him on the shoulder. Oliver’s throat tightened with pride at the private attaboy. He swallowed, trying to banish the emotion, which was extremely premature. It was yet to be seen if he’d accomplished anything.

  The president turned to face Five. “I understand you wish to discuss terms for surrender?”

  Tell him he’s correct.

  Relief washed over Oliver as he repeated Five’s words.

  “What terms are you requesting?” Wood asked.

  President Wood has been authorized by the premier to accept our surrender if we’ll agree to incarceration in an internment camp. We see this as the best terms we will be able to negotiate given our circumstance, so we would, theoretically, accept them.

  Everyone in the room jolted visibly, as Five finished his thought aloud: “The problem is, once we enter the camps, we will be killed.”

  It took Wood a moment to regain his composure. He’d seen the recordings of Five speaking aloud on Easter Island, but no doubt hearing it live was another matter entirely. “No you wouldn’t,” he said, still facing Five. “If we sign an agreement in good faith, we’ll honor it.”

  “Your intention is to honor it,” Five said. “The premier is less certain. Others are certain you should exterminate us.”