by Scott Mackay
“Yes.”
Fernandes went over to the kit and brought the unit back. He seemed to know how to use it well, because he jabbed it right into Neil, no hesitation, and a moment later Neil quieted down.
He weakened through the night, and even though they had a stockpile of dressings in the cave, Glenda went through them quickly, trying to stanch the flow of blood. Fernandes tried to comfort the girls as best he could, but he was awkward in this task and finally went to join Jake a little farther down the hill to keep an eye out for possible attacking Tarsalans.
By morning—if in fact it was morning—Neil’s breathing grew labored, and his face was so pale that Glenda was sure they were going to lose him. Yet he hung on, hour after hour, and was even able to eat some military rations. At one point, she sent all four kids out to the ledge along with Fernandes to keep a lookout for Tarsalans, even though for the last several hours—ever since the destruction of Marblehill—the aliens had been eerily inactive.
That’s when Neil started talking.
“In our will… Louise’s sister, Joanne, and her husband, Lorne… are designated as legal guardians for the kids… should Louise and I die before they reach the age of majority, et cetera, et cetera. Grab Lenny’s topographical map for scrap paper. Let’s write a… a codicil to change that.”
“Neil, you shouldn’t even think of that now. You should try to rest.”
“No, no. We’ve got to do this, Glenda. Joanne and Lorne… who knows if they’re okay. I’m sure all of Atlanta has burned to the ground by this time. We’ve got to make it so… you know… you have the necessary resources to… raise Melissa and Morgan, and send them to college… and all the things… that the girls are going to need. And to bury Ashley… properly.”
“Fernandes is talking of burying her up here… close by.”
He turned from her and stared at the cave ceiling. His eyes closed partially and he exhaled, and finally nodded. “I think she’d like that. When I die, bury me next to her. I don’t want her to be alone.”
Glenda wanted to tell him that he wasn’t going to die and that there was no need for him to think about his burial at this time, but she had extreme doubts that he would in fact pull through because he looked awful, white and clammy and ready to give up at any moment.
“Why don’t you have some more water?” she suggested.
“I’ve got pens in that case.”
“And how’s your pain? Do you need more morphine?”
“I’d sooner stay clearheaded for this.”
She saw he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so she got the topographical map, and a pen from the case. Neil dictated and she wrote the codicil in the light of a flashlight, and she couldn’t help taking heart because he appointed not only herself but also Gerry, as if he firmly believed that Gerry was going to return and that Gerry’s mission to destroy the phytosphere would succeed.
Ten hours later, when it was only Jake and Melissa standing guard on the ledge, and Fernandes, Hanna, and Morgan were trying to make themselves comfortable on coarse military-issue mats, Glenda heard a strange hissing sound up toward the cave ceiling. She shone the flashlight at the ceiling but all she saw was the rough limestone.
She shook Neil by the shoulder. “Neil. Wake up.”
Neil groaned and opened his eyes.
“Listen,” she said.
Neil’s eyes grew more focused, and he finally lifted his head off the mat. “Get the spray. They’ve sent in some macrogens.”
She quickly got an aerosol can and sprayed the air. Fernandes roused himself and helped her with a second can. The spray particles immediately tagged the macrogens, and they glowed with a dull green phosphorescence, fifty of them, flying all over the cave, several of them going into the second cavern, where the foodstuffs and medical supplies were.
The tagged macrogens eventually fell to the floor, like insects overcome by insect killer, but she was sure some must have already transferred their data to Tarsalan survivors in Chattahoochee.
She and Fernandes crushed the felled macrogens underfoot, like they were so many dead locusts. They then picked them up and threw them off the cliff overlooking the dry forest. They did all this, but she knew it wouldn’t matter. From that point on, she understood a fresh Tarsalan attack was imminent. The aliens had to know she had food in the cave. And they were starving. It was the same story all over the world—everybody fighting over food, simply so they could live another day.
Neil settled and she sat up next to him. Fernandes, unable to sleep, joined her. He talked about his wife.
“Her name is Celia. She’s in Denver. I haven’t heard from her since this whole thing began. But I got this strong feeling that I’m going to see her again. She’s smart. Like you. She’ll know how to survive through this. We always meant to start a family.”
After that, they both slept for a while.
When they got up, they decided to bury Ashley. They got some shovels, went up the hill, and dug a pit through the soft forest mulch. They laid the girl inside. Jake stood next to them holding a flashlight, his Montclair slung around his shoulder. Once Ashley was settled in her grave, Fernandes went to get the others. He came back. Neil limped along, supported on one side by Fernandes, and on the other by Melissa. At the graveside, Neil managed to say a few words. Recounted Ashley’s short life. Her interest in riding, tennis, and reading. How, though she didn’t say much, everyone could tell that she thought a lot, that she was extremely aware of the world around her, and that she loved life. “She was too young,” said Neil. “But at least she’s gone to join her mother now.”
The girls gathered some chunks of limestone and made a marker for her.
As they finally pushed the forest soil over the dead girl, Glenda couldn’t help wondering how many similar scenarios were playing themselves out all over the world.
In the meantime, she was worried that the Tarsalans had spied on them with their little flying bugs.
Her suspicions about an imminent attack were confirmed when, over the next several days, she and Fernandes counted a combined total of seventy-three new Tarsalan ships landing in the vicinity. After two days of continuous sightings, the landings tapered off and the dead forest grew still. Glenda knew that it had to be the proverbial calm before the storm.
On the evening of that fifth day, she sat on the ledge overlooking the forest, cross-legged, bony knees slightly up, her Montclair resting on her lap, and her night-vision goggles flipped down over her eyes.
Fernandes was somewhere off down the main road running reconnaissance. The forest was a collage of green trunks and branches. She saw no movement. But somewhere out there she realized there had to be hundreds, possibly thousands, of desperate Tarsalans who knew about her food. She hoped Fernandes would come back with exact numbers.
She flipped her night goggles up and looked at the sky. Why didn’t Gerry hurry up? If the phytosphere were suddenly and miraculously destroyed, and the sun shone again, wouldn’t that give everybody, including the Tarsalans, hope? Wouldn’t there be born in the breasts of humans and aliens alike a new spirit of cooperation? She wasn’t more than moderately religious, but she couldn’t help thinking of the old Biblical phrase in Genesis: “Let there be light.”
She repeated this phrase to herself, off and on, for the next half hour, chanting it like a mantra, but it did absolutely no good as the sky remained locked in darkness. She had to be frank with herself. Louise and Ashley were dead. Neil was going that way. Of the airmen, only Fernandes remained. Marblehill was destroyed. The world was forever enshrouded in darkness. And now she had to defend this cave against hundreds of alien invaders from a star forty light-years away. Worst of all, she had to do it with an army of kids.
A couple of days later, while she was sitting in the exact same spot overlooking the forest, waiting for the Tarsalan attack to come, Morgan came out of the cave and said, with zero inflection, “Dad’s dead.”
In another time, Glenda might have jump
ed up and raced into the cave. In another time, she might have said, “What? Are you sure? This can’t be.” But all she did was sit, her shoulders sinking, trying to pick out the features of Morgan’s face, struggling to understand how this solemn and strange third child, who always went her own way on everything, must be feeling, now that she was an orphan.
Subdued at first, Morgan cried a short while later. So did Melissa.
Glenda and Fernandes gripped Neil by the shoulders, and Hanna and Jake each grabbed a leg—they couldn’t have the remaining Thorndike sisters doing this—and they carried him outside, up the hill where the trail curved past three yew trees, venerable evergreen giants she remembered and identified from happier times. They took him to the same spot where Ashley had been buried. Jake and Fernandes hollowed out a shallow grave through all the dead leaves, having to cleave through some roots with the ends of their shovels. And as Jake and the airman dug, Glenda wondered about the nature of luck. As she had once told Gerry, Neil, a spectacularly successful academician, an investor of consummate skill, a presidential advisor, the man appointed to save the world, had been born with a golden horseshoe up his butt. But now it was up to Gerry—a reformed alcoholic who never had any luck, and who had faced setback after setback in both his professional and financial lives—to get them out of this mess. She decided Neil had to be overdrawn at the bank of good luck. The gods of misfortune had cashed in big-time.
They buried Neil. Morgan, Melissa, and Hanna gathered some limestone from the surrounding area and made a crude marker similar to Ashley’s: just a pile of stones—hardly worthy of this great Nobel prize winner, with his five homes, eighteen cars, and magazine-perfect family.
Glenda said a few words. She didn’t know much of the Bible, especially as it pertained to death, but she parroted the most obvious phrase that everyone knew: “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.” And thought she’d better improvise something more so the girls wouldn’t feel shortchanged. “May the Good Lord take our brother Neil into His arms.” What else, what else? There had to be something solemnly appropriate she could say about Neil. “He was a loving father, and a good husband…and he was kind to me when I needed help…and I could always talk to him…”
She had such mixed feelings about Neil. On the one hand, she couldn’t understand why Neil deserved to be so lucky, and got all the plum appointments, and was able to make such a killing on the stock market.
Envy was a sin, she knew that, but it didn’t seem fair that Gerry, who was really an extremely smart man, should have to suffer through a lackluster academic career, chronic financial embarrassment, and a serious bout of alcoholism that had nearly killed him.
So how to wrap it up? Melissa and Morgan wept. Hanna, emotional in any situation, had tears running down her cheeks. Jake was like a stone. Fernandes kept staring into the forest, on guard as always.
Glenda looked at the grave. In this final hour, in this desperate last chapter, when Neil had been handed his greatest challenge and the stakes had never been higher, the gods of misfortune had indeed cashed in.
And Neil’s luck had finally run out. Her eyes moistened.
“May God bless him,” she intoned, and then said what she really wanted to say. “He was like the rest of us after all.”
A hot west wind rustled through the forest a day later, bringing with it the scent of a dead, dry land. The temperature had to be over a hundred. The sky was darker than ever. And the air seemed thin.
Glenda sat on the ledge overlooking the forest. The wind was so strong it kept blowing her hair in front of her face. Hanna and Morgan slept inside. Melissa and Jake were in position up and down the path.
Fernandes was somewhere out in the forest doing reconnaisance again. Jake came running up the hill, breathless, skinny, and as pale from lack of sunlight as a fresh mushroom. She thought he was coming to tell her that Fernandes was returning. But it wasn’t that at all.
“Three Tarsalans are coming up the path. They’ve got strange lights over their heads. They’re unarmed.”
Thirty seconds later, she saw the glow from down the hill.
Three Tarsalans, one in a jumpsuit made of papery material, another in something that looked as if it were stitched from orange and brown silk, and a third who wore blue jeans with the legs cut short to fit his short limbs, came up toward the cave. An egg-shaped beacon of light shone over each one, hovering in the air above them like halos.
As they got closer, the one in the middle shone an Earth-made flashlight up the path. Glenda immediately lifted her Montclair and pointed it at the Tarsalans. Hard getting used to them, the way they looked. In God’s image, so to speak, as if human anatomical con-figuration was the evolutionary ideal for sentient beings throughout this sector of the galaxy, but with huge, bicephalic heads—big bulbs right and left on top of their craniums, each covered with shaggy black hair, so that, not for the first time, she was reminded of ostrich feathers. And the eyes. So large now, the special genetic part of their makeup actually changing the shape of them so they could see better in the dark—like loris eyes. Hard also getting used to the pale blue skin, a result, Neil had once told her, of a cyanogenic component in their blood.
The middle one had a headset and mike over his ears and mouth, one of those translating things. A small speaker-receiver apparatus hung around his neck, so small that it was like a piece of faucet mesh.
The Tarsalan spoke and the translation thing translated. “Please, my child, put your weapon down. We mean no harm. We’ve come to”—and here the translation device took a few seconds—“palaver, or at least to offer you an ultimatum.”
Her face settled. She kept her Montclair trained on the middle one. So, an ultimatum. Just like the phytosphere.
The middle one was obviously the oldest, with thick crow’s-feet around his eyes, a bushy black brow, and a steadiness about him that the other two didn’t possess. The three kept coming, but they advanced slowly and it was hard to read their expressions. As they got closer, their approach became downright cautious, and she could tell they were frightened, wary of her the same way they might be of a wild animal.
“We don’t accept ultimatums,” she said, feeling as if she were speaking for the whole human race.
“Haven’t you learned that yet?”
She heard the faint sound of the Tarsalan language bubbling through the translation device, and it sounded not unlike a human language because the Tarsalan mouth, glottis, and pharynx, though producing a timbre a lot different than the human voice, were fundamentally based on the same design.
“Then let us palaver,” came the response at last.
“You back off. You withdraw. And I might let you live.”
She couldn’t stop her anger. Louise dead. Ashley and Neil dead. And her children and remaining nieces threatened. The Tarsalans obviously had no idea what a human mother was capable of. Even as she spoke, a plan formulated itself in her mind. If they wanted Armageddon, they would get Armageddon.
“Human, you underestimate the forces ranged against you. We are over a thousand strong. And we are hungry. We demand that you give over your food and fresh water. We’ll leave you with a day’s supply of each. With this food of yours, we can feed our survivors in the command area for a week. Our metabolism utilizes food resources much more efficiently than the human metabolism. The human metabolism is a wasteful thing.”
She was galled by the alien’s hubris. “And this is a reason I should give you all our food?”
“In an absolute moral sense, yes, it is. It’s better that you keep more individuals alive longer than a few individuals alive for a shorter period of time.”
“And you’re the experts on absolute moral sense?”
“When creatures such as yourselves fail to see reason—and we will admit that we ourselves failed to see just how vastly reasonless your psychology is—it is incumbent upon us, as the more advanced society, to try to teach you what is just and right.”
“So murder is just and ri
ght. You see these girls here? They’re orphans. And they’re orphans because of you.”
“That was a choice you made for yourself. Human, I give you this opportunity to save yourself. We are by nature negotiators. We have proven this to you over the last nine years. We are not fighters.”
“No. You simply put us all in a big plankton bag and watch us fight each other.”
“It is you who choose to fight. Cooperation would have gotten you much further. Cooperation is the model for all other civilized worlds, and a model we mistakenly assumed for you. Yet you are creatures of choice, just as all creatures are. Don’t blame others for the choices you have made.”
“You’re trespassing on the property of Dr. Neil Thorndike. Does that name mean anything to you?”
A pause as the translator did its thing, and then, “Yes.”
“Dr. Thorndike has died, and all his property has passed to me.”
It took the Tarsalan a moment, but finally, through his translation thing, he said, “Ah, yes…his last will and testament. We don’t have such customs where I come from.”
“Do you understand what trespass means?”
“The human sense of it is slightly different than the Tarsalan one. And there is no concept or word for property in any of our languages.” The word property popped out in English. “Or in our various cultures. But it is a concept that is obviously deeply ingrained on Earth.”
“Then let me give you some advice… Tarsalan.” She hit the word hard. “Get off my property before I kill you.”
She lifted the Montclair and pointed it straight at him. He shifted, took a step backward, and his pupils shrank to such a small size that she could hardly see them.
“My child, shoot me if you wish…but you have already signed your own death writ. We outnumber you more than a hundred to one. What can you possibly do to stop us?”
And Glenda realized that, yes, they weren’t really so smart after all.
She watched them go. She felt sorry for them. The Cameron Chess Study was one thing, and Tarsalans might win against humans again and again in a situation where all the moves were circumscribed by game rules—indeed, all the negotiations with the Tarsalans had possessed a gamelike quality, and she remembered how all of Kafis’s actions seemed to be predicated on a kind of rarefied and arcane games theory—but there were no rules when it came to war, especially human war. There was only brutality.
