Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  He watched the alien’s armored chest flaps retract, saw the small instrument-using arms unfolding. The cold, clinging inhuman fingers began to poke and prod at him, trying to touch his open eyes, exploring his face and the rest of his body inch by inch. He whimpered like a child, his eyes shut tight—not even able to turn his face away, but ready to turn himself inside out, if it would only make those hideous maggot fingers stop touching him—

  The feel of crawling, prodding fingers suddenly disappeared. He heard the click and clatter as Red Scar picked up something from the tray of torture instruments. One of the deft, translucent hands activated a light-beam dissecting tool, like the one that had cut a hole in his side . . . like the one that had torn open Alice . . . and guided it toward him, ready at last to finish what it had begun.

  Jake cringed and shut his eyes tighter, holding his last breath—

  “Hey,” a man’s voice said. A very familiar voice.

  Jake opened his eyes, to see Red Scar’s head rise as it looked away. Jake dared to lift his own head, just enough to see the barrel of a rifle . . . and Wood-row Dolarhyde standing behind it.

  Red Scar swung around, aiming a blow at Dolarhyde. Dolarhyde dodged backward, colliding with the wall: he fired the gun even as he lost his balance and fell.

  Red Scar screeched, staggering. Wounded but far from dead, it left Jake lying on his deathbed as it went after Dolarhyde.

  Jake flung himself off the table the moment he was free, running for the rifle. He grabbed up the gun—his old favorite, a lever-action Winchester ’66. He cocked and fired it once, twice, knocking Red Scar away from Dolarhyde before the alien could finish the job of killing him.

  Red Scar reeled sideways and then backward as it tried to turn and face him, but Jake fired again, and again, driving Red Scar back toward a glowing river suspended impossibly in the air. The fluid poured into the alien ship’s belly like whiskey from a bottomless bottle in a drunkard’s dream. The river was well over Jake’s head, but not Red Scar’s. Red Scar hesitated as it felt the waves of heat radiating from whatever was flowing past.

  Jake cocked the rifle, and fired the last bullet in the magazine. Red Scar crashed backward into the ribbon of fluid.

  Whatever illusion held the fluid suspended, the impact of Red Scar’s body shattered it. The stream burst free and poured down onto the alien’s head, covering its body, as Red Scar fell shrieking to the floor.

  Jake stood staring, as Red Scar thrashed and flailed, trapped in a lava-like flow of heavy, opaque . . . Mother of God, it was gold. Pure, molten gold.

  The spoils of war—

  Jake backed away, step by step, as the fluid metal crept slowly across the cavern floor. At the center of the lake Red Scar still struggled, frenzied; the shining crust on its armored limbs began to congeal, crippling its movements, as the iron-hearted flood of gold continued to engulf it.

  Jake watched, his face impassive, as Red Scar burst into flames. He listened to the alien’s shrieks of agony without pleasure, without compassion . . . without feeling anything at all. He forced his gaze to stay fixed on the burning lake until it had consumed Red Scar completely . . . until there was no sign that the alien had ever existed except for a faint ripple of impurity, a ghost of the brand he had put on Red Scar’s face.

  The wages of sin. . . .

  Bathed in hellshine, Lucifer the Lightbringer spat into the sea of gold. “. . . Go back to hell . . .” he muttered, and turned away.

  Jake shook the burning brilliance out of his eyes and the nightmare haze out of his brain as he started back to where Dolarhyde was still struggling to get his feet under him. Jake’s body was no longer trembling, but now the ground underneath his feet was. He helped Dolarhyde get up, but the shaking around them had gotten worse, fast. Dolarhyde put a hand against the wall to keep his balance. “Old man—” Jake said, with a trace of a wicked grin.

  Dolarhyde gave him a dirty look, and then gestured toward the ship. “Where’s Ella?”

  Jake looked up, suddenly realizing how close the ship must be to making its emergency departure. The strange machinery, flumes, supports, were withdrawing into it or falling away as the hatches sealed up one by one. The ship itself was beginning to vibrate, like it was more than ready to tear itself free of the earth—only waiting for the signal.

  But Ella still hadn’t come out. Why—?

  “We gotta move,” Dolarhyde said.

  Jake shook his head, still gazing at the ship. “Not without Ella.”

  Rocks and rubble were sliding down the walls; the ceiling began to drop chunks of stone all around them.

  “Jake!” Dolarhyde said, as more chunks of stone fell to the floor between them and the ship. “We’re outta time.”

  Jake resisted as Dolarhyde tried to get him moving, trapped by another impossible choice, like the one he’d faced when Ella had gone into the ship. He’d had to cover her, then; that had made his choice for him. But this time—

  This time Dolarhyde made the choice. “I said move—!” He shoved Jake into motion. They headed toward the tunnels as a piece of ceiling the size of a horse hit the ground behind them, landing between them and the ship.

  Jake glanced over his shoulder. No turning back. Ella had tried to tell him that . . . maybe she’d been trying to tell him all along: that she never intended to come out of the ship alive; never intended to stay with him, even for a little while . . . or to let him follow her as she faced whatever happened next.

  Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. Jake nodded to Dolarhyde as they reached the tunnel entrance, and they began to run.

  OUTSIDE, HUMANS WERE fleeing from the slot canyon on foot and on horseback as if they were trying to escape the worst earthquake they’d ever known, as the ground shook and the mesa walls began to crumble.

  As Jake and Dolarhyde ran toward the light of day, the alien ship’s thrusters fired deep inside the mesa, releasing waves of energy that sent a cloud of heat and pulverized rock roaring through the mine shafts after them.

  They came out of the entrance a bare second before the choking cloud of fumes and dust caught up to them as it blew on out the entrance. It hurled them aside, shaken but alive, to stagger up and go on running along the steep-walled arroyo.

  Behind them, the full force of the alien ship’s power blasted the tunnel entrance wide open, but they didn’t look back.

  They only stopped running when they had reached the arroyo’s end. Dolarhyde stumbled to a stop first, and leaned forward, his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.

  Jake stopped beside him, turning to watch as the side of the mesa avalanched down into the arroyo, burying the tunnel opening in broken rock, blocking the entrance to the underworld.

  The shouts and cries of other survivors rang dimly in his ears. Dolarhyde nudged him, pointing.

  Jake looked up, just in time to see that the thing they had all sacrificed, fought, and died to keep from happening, was happening in spite of everything they could do: The alien ship tore itself free from the underworld, the mesa imploding beneath it as it escaped the Earth’s grasp and streaked into the sky, rising up and up. . . .

  “No—” Dolarhyde whispered.

  Not after all they’d done, all they’d lost. . . . It couldn’t be getting away from them now.

  Jake stared up at the sky along with Dolarhyde, and everyone else who was left alive—all of them watching the alien ship grow smaller with every second that passed . . . getting away.

  Ella . . . they must have found her, caught her, stopped her. . . . He should have been with her. Why, Ella—?

  Ella. . . .

  ELLA HAD FOUGHT her way at last to the alien ship’s heart, the power core. She had felt the ship’s thrusters fire, endured the vibration that threatened to tear the ship and her body apart as it fought its way free from the burial place where it had hidden from human eyes. Now, she knew, it was already climbing, higher and faster all the time; too soon it would be out of Earth’s gravity well, and able
to engage its hyperlight drive.

  But not soon enough. Her lips thinned, her eyes closed for a long moment, in a prayer of resolve. Simple survival had never been enough; death was nothing at all. . . . To keep what had happened to her and her people from happening anywhere else, ever again, had always been her only choice.

  She waited with a patience that, this one time, was more resigned than serene as the countdown sequence on her weapon dropped into single digits. Her human body still resisted her with emotions all its own, its instincts so interwoven with its higher mind that they were inseparable: dreading the unknown . . . still praying, if not for survival, at least to be remembered, by someone, with love. . . .

  Ella said a prayer of her own, then: that she would never forget what she had learned here from her existence as a human woman on the planet Earth—the thing that made even a single fragile life-thread important. . . .

  Jake. Goodbye, Jake—

  As the countdown on her weapon zeroed out, she let go, falling into the core. The weapon detonated, and everything went white . . . stealing her vision, her form, her thoughts, as all that she was became one with the blinding chain reaction in the core, and she blew the ship into stardust. . . .

  THE ALIEN SHIP exploded in mid-air: The sky lit up with a fireball that outshone the sun, and then an invisible wall of sound seemed to crack the sky and earth apart—

  For an endless moment the entire sky went white with blinding remnants of the explosion . . . and then slowly it faded, bit by bit, until it was gone . . . all of it. The sky was a deep blue, cloudless dome once again; the sun was back in its rightful place as the only star that mattered.

  And Ella. . . .

  Jake bowed his head and turned away, not wanting Dolarhyde to see the kind of pain that had hold of him now. But he felt Dolarhyde’s hand come to rest on his shoulder; steadying him, supporting him . . . comforting him, as if somehow Woodrow Dolarhyde knew exactly what kind of pain he was feeling.

  It finally occurred to Jake to wonder what Dolarhyde had been doing there in the aliens’ underworld, after all the captives had been freed. It struck him that the only reason Dolarhyde could possibly have had for going in was because he, and Ella, still hadn’t come out. . . . That Dolarhyde had gone in there meaning to save his life.

  As Jake and Dolarhyde stood side by side, looking up again in silent amazement along with everyone else who had survived the end of the world, something began to patter down on their hats like falling rain. Something was falling out of the sky that . . . glittered. Jake held out his hand, and watched it begin to fill with gold dust.

  He looked over at Dolarhyde, who was beginning to gleam faintly in the sunlight; looked down at his own clothes, as he dusted off his gold-covered hand on his chaps. He realized that without a coat, Dolarhyde looked too much like him—dark vest and pants, pale shirt, his hat covered in dirt and blood . . . and gold dust. They could have been brothers.

  Suddenly Jake started to laugh. He doubled over with laughter, laughing until tears spilled out of his eyes and fell onto the dry ground like rain, vanishing into the dust, as all tears of laughter—of loss, of grief and pain—always did, here in the desert.

  Tears were still running down his face as he finally raised his head again; but his eyes were as empty as the sky, and his face was as bleak as the desert. Dolarhyde was staring at him like he’d actually gone crazy. Maybe he finally had . . . but after a day like this, he dared anybody to tell him who was sane, and who wasn’t.

  He took a long, shaky breath, wiping his face on his sleeve, getting a chokehold on his emotions as he slowly leaned down to pick up Dolarhyde’s rifle. Some compulsion as natural to him by now as breathing had kept him holding on to it, through everything. He held it out to Dolarhyde. “Good gun,” he said, only now aware of the peculiar form of decoration on its stock.

  It looked like an Apache gun. The Apaches liked the Winchester ‘66 too, so much that they had their own name for it: They called it “Yellow Boy,” because its receiver was the color of gold.

  Dolarhyde only shook his head. “Thank Black Knife, if you see him. . . .”

  Jake gave him a twist of a grin, to match his own.

  Jake and Dolarhyde walked out of the arroyo side by side, into the valley and toward the ridge where most of the survivors were gathered now.

  The group of captives Jake and Ella had freed still stood huddled together, looking hopeful but uncertain, as the survivors of the battle approached—whites and Apaches together, their faces filled with the same hope and longing, as they searched for loved ones they’d lost.

  Jake saw Doc start to run forward as he spotted Maria, and the light in his eyes as she stumbled toward him, tears streaming down her cheeks. He put his arms around her, kissing the tears from every inch of her face.

  Emmett pushed through the crowd, calling out, “Grandpa!” He ran to his grandfather, hugging him. A tremor of recognition and confusion flickered across Sheriff Taggart’s face, as Emmett looked up at him, saying, “You’re alive! . . . It’s me!”

  “Reb-Rebecca?” Taggart said, uncertainly.

  “No . . .” Emmett said, glancing down. “She’s gone, Grandpa.”

  Taggart blinked, as if some elusive memory had blown into his eyes, like smoke.

  Emmett’s own face changed, touched by an understanding he wouldn’t have found inside himself only a week before. He smiled, gently, as he said, “We still got each other.” He took his grandfather’s hand in his. “And I’m lookin‘ out for ya.”

  Taggart glanced down at his hand, held tightly inside the boy’s, not yet fully comprehending, but . . . somehow . . . accepting. His smile filled with a kind of wonder as he looked at Emmett’s face again. “Emmett,” he said. “You’re all grown up.”

  Dolarhyde moved away from Jake as he saw Black Knife coming toward him. They stood facing each other silently for a long moment . . . and then the nantan offered his arm in a gesture of friendship.

  Just for a moment, Dolarhyde hesitated. Then he reached out and gripped it, as if at last his heart, and not just his mind, fully understood the distinction between the word “human,” and the word “monster.” At least he’d never forget now what “father” meant, and “loss,” and “grief”—and that they were things as much a part of every human being—every one—as life itself.

  His eyes glanced past Black Knife’s shoulder, as he suddenly spotted the one face that he had needed to see: Percy.

  With a nod to Black Knife, he headed toward the spot where his son Percy moved uncertainly though the crowd, searching. . . .

  Dolarhyde stopped in front of him. Percy looked up at his father’s face, his own face furrowing with concentration, as if he knew that he remembered this man from somewhere—somehow, if only. . . .

  “Don’t you remember me, boy?” Dolarhyde asked softly, his expression somber with concern and uncertainty.

  Percy only blinked, as if the memory still wouldn’t come to him.

  Dolarhyde’s eyes filled with emotion, until Jake wondered if Dolarhyde was actually capable of shedding tears. But he didn’t need to, because the look itself had more of grief and joy and everything in between than any tears could express. His voice catching in his throat, Dolarhyde said, “I’m your father.”

  Percy’s frown of concentration faded, and he . . . smiled. It held only the barest trace of recognition, but it was so innocent, so content, that it could have been the smile of a small boy, full of unquestioning trust.

  Dolarhyde put an arm around Percy’s shoulders, drawing him away through the crowd. “Come on, son,” he murmured, “let’s go home.”

  JAKE DRIFTED AWAY from the spot where the reunions were taking place, since there was no one left for him to find, and nobody who’d been looking to find him. Not here, at least.

  He saw the members of his former gang—the ones who’d survived, the ones who’d been rescued—holding their own private celebration, as the last of the gold dust still rained down around the
m. Some of the boys were carefully picking up nugget-sized dollops of gold that had congealed as they hit the ground. He saw the members of his munitions team, collecting their reward along with the rest—all still alive. Jake felt oddly relieved.

  Well, at least he’d kept his promise to them . . . he’d made them rich. Some of the gang glanced up as he passed; they whooped or called out his name, grinning.

  He smiled and kept moving, until he was finally alone. And then he looked up at the sky again. Squinting against the glare, he thought he could still make out faint traces of the dissipated explosion, like sun-dogs, a kind of rainbow haze. He let his grief, his loss, out onto his face at last, where nobody could witness it except the sky.

  Ella had been on that ship . . . she’d kept her promise: Never again. She’d been a selfless warrior . . . but not a soulless one . . . in a no-holds-barred struggle against her people’s, and his people’s, worst enemy, never allowing herself to think about her own safety, her own needs . . . or his.

  Except in that timeless moment when they’d kissed, and he’d felt her passion, her terrible loneliness, her unanswered need, answering his . . . the truth about everything. . . .

  He looked down again, the ache inside him somehow only made worse for remembering it. Worst of all, he knew he didn’t even have the right to feel angry that she’d left him, to feel bitter because she’d left him like this—to feel any kind of emotion at all that would help him stop hurting, for her, for himself . . . or to stop wanting the impossible.

  He looked out across the desert that stretched away on all sides, only meeting up with the sky at last on what looked to be the edge of forever. The desert was all he had left; maybe all he’d ever been meant to have. A place where, if he could get far enough away, he couldn’t hurt anybody but himself.

  You’re a good man. He suddenly remembered Alice’s words, in a dream . . . remembered that Ella’s last words to him had been the same ones.