Walt leaned back. He scratched on his pad. "It's funny. I've been bumping into you guys for years, but I don't think I've ever had a conversation with one of you."
"YES VERY FUNNY"
"Why haven't we talked? Aliens and humans?"
"USE OF WEAPONS IS ALSO SPEECH"
Walt snorted. "Gets a bit repetitive, though. And even now that we are talking, it's still about killing."
"BUT NOT EACH OTHER," the alien wrote on its tablet. "A FEW OF US—AND THEN NO MORE OF EITHER"
"Pretty sweet deal for me. What do you get out of this?"
The Swimmer watched him. "WHY TRUST ME?"
"Because I'm dead no matter what I do. If this is a cunning trap to kill me, great. You've saved me the trouble of finding a battle to die in."
"BUT IF I DO NOT TRAP THEN YOU WILL GO AND KILL AS I NEED"
"Want to tell me a little more about this amazing offer? Like who exactly I'll be executing and how that's going to put a stop to the fighting?"
"WE DID NOT COME TO FIGHT," the Swimmer wrote. "OUR COMMANDER CAME TO SEE AND THEN TO JUDGE. BUT THOUGHTFUL JUDGING IS OFTEN SEEN AS WEAKNESS"
Was Walt imagining the arch tone to the words? "So what happened? Mutiny?"
"IF 'MUTINY' IS WHEN THE WISE LEADER IS REPLACED BY FOOLS TOO FOOLISH TO UNDERSTAND HIM? THEN YES MUTINY"
"So I kill the rebels and you replace them with non-fools. Sounds great. But if it's that simple, why not kill them yourself?"
Its eyes glittered. If it had been human, Walt would have sworn it was smirking. "IF YOU TRY BUT THERE IS FAILURE, WHO IS TO BLAME?"
"Humans," Walt wrote. "Who are already getting blown to hell anyway. So what does it matter if we get blamed for a failed assassination attempt."
The alien wagged its head up and down. "AND YOU UNDERSTAND. SO I ASK: YES OR NO"
"I barely know what's going on here. You want me to commit to this right now?"
"YES OR NO"
Walt rested his elbows on the cool granite of the kitchen island. It felt like the situation stunk. Was that because it did smell? Or because it was so damn hard to meaningfully communicate with the space-bugs? He felt like he could sit down for a week-long conference with this one and barely scratch the surface. How was he supposed to make a smart decision when he didn't have the vaguest idea of the Swimmer political structure underlying the situation?
On the other hand, who said he needed to make a smart decision?
"Like I said, I'm dead either way," he wrote. "So let's go kill ourselves a traitor."
* * *
Back home, he retreated to his closet and consulted his bottle of tequila. It told him he'd made the right decision. He rewarded its faith in him by drinking it.
As he drifted off to sleep, he sat up hard, knocking over the bottle. If Carrie was still alive, she'd be up on the ship. It didn't matter how dumb the plan might be. Or how small its chance of success. Flying up to kill some rebel admiral would give him his only chance to get onboard.
And his only chance at her.
When he got up early the next afternoon, he lay on the floor of the closet for ten minutes, listening to make sure the house was empty. Only then did he go to the garage to urinate into the bucket he kept there. After, he checked all the doors and windows, ensuring they were locked. This accomplished, he spent a long time spying from the windows. The one time he saw a Swimmer patrol, he retreated to the closet, laser in hand, ears perked for the squeak of the front door.
When he emerged from hiding, he went to the big blue recycling bin in the garage and dug out the empty soda cans, placing them in front of every exterior door so they'd rattle if anything tried to come inside.
After giving some thought to nailing the windows shut, he went back to the closet, amused at himself. The day before, he'd been so unconcerned with his future that he'd strolled up to a strange Swimmer and agreed to become its assassin. Today, he was jumping at every creak of the house.
The Swimmer, who had told him to refer to it as Bait, had told him that it had some details to nail down. They'd arranged to meet again at the same place two nights later. Walt spent most of that first day sober, holding off on the tequila until nine or ten that night. With no desire to go outside, and not enough light to read by, he went to sleep early. He killed the next day plowing through an old Robert Heinlein novel, then napped, waking to darkness.
He had a wind-up watch that kept semi-accurate time. A half hour in advance of the meet, he exited into the night. As he walked to the other house, sticking tight to the shadows, his heart beat relentlessly. Annoying. Caring about things was far too stressful.
He got to the house and went to the kitchen, pistol in hand, pressing himself beside a row of cabinets. A few minutes later, the door groaned open. A Swimmer's feet skittered on the hardwood. The alien moved into the kitchen. Reasonably certain it was Bait, Walt raised his hand. Bait lifted a tentacle in response.
He held up its tablet. "GREETINGS HUMAN. TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER"
Walt moved to the island and got out his pen and paper. "You've checked out our movies?"
"THE TRIP IS LONG. AND ALSO IS IT NOT WISE TO KNOW THE ENEMY?"
"Enemy? I thought we were on the same side."
"WE HOPED THERE WOULD BE NO SIDES. BUT TO TRUST IN HOPE IS TO WALK ON WATER"
"Liable to get you drowned?"
Bait wagged his head in the affirmative. "ALL IS READY," it wrote. "ARE YOU?"
Walt scratched the back of his neck. After a moment's thought, he wrote, "I have a few questions first."
"YOU KILL, THE FIGHTING ENDS. WHAT MORE IS THERE TO KNOW?"
"For one thing, how does killing this guy guarantee an end to the fighting?"
"AS HE LEADS THE CHARGE"
"I presume that, like most generals, he has any number of soldiers ready to take his place if he falls."
Bait stared at him, claws spinning in small circles. "CAN YOU SEE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US? MY PEOPLE?"
"Sure. Some of you are uglier than others."
He clacked his claws, which seemed aggressive, but the rest of Bait's posture looked relaxed, his tentacles draped over the back of a chair. "WE ARE NOT ALL OF ONE. THERE ARE TWO PEOPLES. ONE IS FARSCHOOL. THOSE WHO CAME FOR YOUR WORLD. AND THEN WE WHO ARE NEW ARE DEEPFINDERS"
"What are these groups like? Countries? Tribes? Religions?"
Bait spun his claws some more. Thinking? Searching? "THESE WORDS ARE TOO FINE TO PINCH TIGHT. SAY THAT EACH IS A PEOPLE"
"Fair enough. And?"
"DO YOU KNOW WHY THE FARSCHOOL TRIED TO TAKE YOUR WORLD?"
Walt sighed and wrote, "They said we were mistreating it. So they took it from us for its own good."
"CORRECT THIS IS WHAT THEY SAY. BUT MOSTLY THEY TAKE YOUR WORLD IN ORDER TO TAKE YOUR WORLD"
"I figured that out a while back. So what are the Deepfinders here for?"
Bait gave him a look Walt had no hope of interpreting. "THAT QUESTION IS FOREMOST. AT FIRST, WE DEEPFINDERS COME TO JUDGE THE FARSCHOOL. NOW? REBELS TAKE OVER. AND THEY CHOOSE TO FINISH THE FARSCHOOL'S WORK."
"That would explain the sudden interest in burning down Los Angeles. But we're back to my original question: how does killing the rebel leader kill the rebellion?"
"WHEN YOU KILL THE REBEL LEADER, I ACT TO MAKE THE BLAME RAIN ON THE FARSCHOOL. THAT THEY WISH TO RETAKE THE WAR AND KILL THEIR OWN KIND TO DO THIS. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, SUCH CRIMES ARE NOT SWALLOWED BUT INSTEAD ARE VOMITED UP AS FOUL POISON. THOSE DEEPFINDERS WHO REBEL SEE THEIR SUPPORT RECEDE LIKE LOW TIDE. AND OUR FIRST COMMANDER IS RESTORED"
Walt sorted this out in his head. At least there seemed to be more to their plan than "kill the bad guy and hope that puts an end to the bad stuff." The success of that plan hinged heavily on Swimmer psychology and internecine politics, which he was about as well-versed in as he was in the mating habits of wallabies.
But pulling off a war-ending counter-coup wasn't his only—or even chief—objective. First and foremost, he was getting Carrie back. And even if
the assassination didn't put an end to the fighting, it was sure to stir up a lot of chaos.
"Okay," he wrote. "Now I'm ready."
* * *
"GET IN"
Walt peered over the lip of a giant box of sludge. The hangar was dark, but the sludge appeared to be orange in color, with the approximate viscosity of lukewarm jelly. Like all Swimmerdom, it smelled a little like the sea, but there was something more biological about it.
To get Walt through the airport, Bait had locked Walt's wrists and ankles in rubbery alien fetters and brought him in under the guise of being a prisoner. Walt had assumed he'd be taken up to the mothership using the same ruse.
He wrote, "What the hell is this?"
"TO SNEAK." Bait reached inside the box, fished around the goo, and extracted a thick rubbery tube. "FOR AIR"
The tube was connected to a filter-covered port in the box's exterior which they presumably used to fill the box with the sludge. Walt put it to his mouth and breathed. Air whooshed in and out. It wasn't much of a snorkel, and he'd have to pinch his nose shut, but it did the job.
"How long am I going to be in there?"
"I DON'T KNOW YOUR TIME"
"Take a guess."
"ONE-NINTH OF A DAY OR MAYBE TWO"
Three to six hours, roughly. "One more question." He nodded at the goo. "What is that stuff?"
"OUR EXCREMENT"
"You want me to fly up there in a tub of your own shit???" Walt underlined the last word repeatedly, shredding through the paper.
Bait clicked his claws together. On his tablet, he displayed, "A JOKE. NOT EXCREMENT. THAT WHICH OUR BUILDINGS USE TO GROW"
Walt nodded in recognition. Their buildings were orange and blue and had always looked like they were grown rather than built. "You're sure this will work?"
"THIS BOX IS TOO BORING TO BE CHECKED. CLOSE YOUR MOUTH AND GET IN"
A glimmer of doubt appeared in Walt's brain. But that was probably just the lack of tequila talking. He clambered up the side of the box and lowered himself inside. The goo was cold, slimy, and thick. The kind of thing you might find in a frog's shower drain. As he sank deeper, the sludge rose, displaced by his body. The box was shorter than he was, but it was too tall to sit down in without the slime closing over his head.
Bait lifted his tablet, shining pale light into the box. "DON'T BREATHE THE NOT-AIR"
The tablet and its light withdrew. A lid slid over the side of the box. Walt tipped his head to the side to prevent it from getting donked. One of his cheeks went into the slime. He pulled the breathing tube to his mouth, got a mouthful of goo, and coughed it out. Above, the lid slurped closed.
His breathing sounded elephantine. He regulated himself, breathing shallowly through the tube; there was a small pocket of air at the top of the box, but not enough to last more than a few minutes. He leaned his body against the wall, crouched awkwardly. There was no way he was going to be able to stand halfway upright for the next three to six hours.
Well, then there was no sense putting it off, was there? Pinching his nose and squeezing his eyes shut, he lowered himself into the goo.
On the bright side, he was going to be able to hold this over Carrie until the end of time.
Twenty-ish minutes later, a small engine grumbled. Walt held his breath. The box jarred, lifted, sloshing the goo within. It felt strangely good. The box rumbled along for a minute, then rocked to a stop. After a bit of jostling and maneuvering, it came to a rest.
This was soon interrupted by another and much larger set of engines. The box vibrated lightly. The fluid inside it swayed, mushing Walt against the side. He was inside a vehicle. One that was accelerating rapidly. It lifted off, pressing him deeper into the goo. He held the breathing tube tight to his mouth.
The jet climbed steadily. A cool breeze wafted through the tube. Was the cargo hold pressurized? It was, right? Surely Bait knew humans needed a healthy supply of oxygen. He'd provided Walt with a breathing tube. But was he familiar with the intricacies of the Earth atmosphere? Maybe on his homeworld, the breathable air was a hundred miles thick. Maybe he'd grown up on a spaceship and didn't even know how planets worked.
Well, if Bait had dropped the ball in the breathing department, then the Swimmer was out his top assassin.
The plane leveled out. The air wasn't noticeably cooler. The mothership was no more than two or three miles up. People could climb mountains that high, right? He'd be fine. He relaxed against the side of the box, trying not to think about the gunk pressing into his ears.
The jet decelerated gently. The engines protested. It touched down hard; Walt jerked forward as its landing gear snagged a catch line of some kind. The goo slopped forward, sliding over his skin. The deceleration ceased, tossing him back. The plane's engines cut off, revealing the deep-down hum of a much greater propulsion system.
The smell of ozone wafted through the breathing tube. When it cleared, the metal-brine tang that replaced it was so familiar that, for a moment, Walt was certain the jet had taken him to the ship crashed in the bay. Six years back. Had it been that long since he'd run through the halls of the craft, shooting everything that moved, culminating in the slaughter on the bridge? His mad dash out and plunge into the sea?
He could still recall every second of that night. The whoof of the burner as the balloon carried across the sky. The feel of his bare feet on the mist-slick metal of the hull. The vibration of the engines as he'd packed their nacelles with explosives. Those had been the clearest moments of his life.
Machines whirred. Plastic rattled. After a great deal of knocking around, the box lifted. For five minutes, it was hauled this way and that. It set down with a clunk. The whirr withdrew.
All told, he'd been in the box less than an hour. Bait had told him it would take at least three. He surfaced, head pressed against the lid, and wiped the goo from his eyes. It was pitch black, but it was nice to be out of the muck. In time, though, his knees grew weak. He sat back down.
He'd repeated this cycle five times before the lid rasped. Walt pushed himself flat against the bottom of the box, blind; even if he wanted to risk opening his eyes, he'd have no way to see through the viscous orange stew. Something pliable but firm brushed over his face. He gasped, drawing in some of the sludge. He fought not to cough.
A tentacle patted his back searchingly, then tightened around his biceps. He got out his laser, almost certain it wouldn't be able to fire through the slime coating it. As the Swimmer lifted him, he palmed goo from his eyes, blinking, lashes gummed together. An alien gazed back at him, expression somehow mocking. Bait.
The alien held up his tablet. "YOU DIDN'T BREATHE NOT-AIR. GOOD. YOU FOLLOW ORDERS"
Covered in goo, Walt had no way to respond to this faint praise. He was in a vast, dim space piled with plastic crates. While he was still getting his bearings, Bait dragged him to a flatbed cart carrying a smaller box. Walt climbed in. Thankfully, this one was empty, but he barely had enough space for his elbows and knees. The cart rumbled along, stopping occasionally. The hard rap of Swimmer feet was everywhere. Twice, Walt felt the lurch of an elevator.
The cart stopped. Bait pulled the lid from the box. Walt emerged in something approximating a bathroom: smooth floors, plastic and metal fixtures that would have been inscrutable if not for the plumbing. Bait took him to a stall and poked the wall. Water sprayed from the ceiling. Walt stripped and cleaned up. After, Bait passed him a towel made of springy, spongy matter, then provided him with a t-shirt, jeans, and shoes. There were no socks. The jeans sagged past his hips while the shirt was so tight Walt thought it would rip if he moved too fast.
Lastly, Bait gave him a pen and paper.
The alien's tentacle squiggled over his tablet. "NOW WE KILL HE WHO MAKES WAR"
"Sure thing," Walt wrote. "But first, I need you to do something for me."
Bait's eyes went steely. "AND WHAT IS THAT?"
"Some of your pals kidnapped a friend of mine. Her name's Carrie. You find her, and I'll kill
your rebel."
20
By the time they got down to the shore, the submarine had sunk beneath the waves. The smoke had blown away. Pieces of junk tossed on the water. Sprite and Sam were gone. Lost with the ship. Refusing to believe it, Ness went on scanning the waves.
Beside him, Tristan's eyes went hollow. "I told you we couldn't trust them. That we were moving too fast."
Ness flinched. "The one who did this was a traitor."
"And he was one of them! Who cares if the others meant every word they said? They didn't even know they had a fucking traitor in the group. And now Sam and Sprite are dead."
"We don't know that yet."
She spread her arms wide to the ocean. "Do you think they're huddling in the ruins of the sub on the bottom of the ocean? So why aren't we swimming down there to help them?"
Ness' eyes stung. "Why are you being like this?"
"This is exactly what I was afraid would happen!"
"I was afraid, too. And so were they. But they knew we had to try."
"And now they're gone."
There was a coldness to her words that spooked him. "Then the only way to honor them is to see this through. If we stop the Dovon, then our friends will be the last people who had to die in this stupid war."
For a moment, several expressions struggled for control of her face. One by one, they all fell until the only one that remained was wrath.
"I'll stop the Swimmers." She glanced at Sebastian, who'd remained a few steps behind them in the shrubs overlooking the beach. "But not here."
Tristan turned and hiked up the hill toward the road.
Ness took after her. "Where do you think you're going?"
"To join Raina. She's the only one here who knows how to fight. Everyone else is throwing their wishes into the wind."
Dirt clods crumbled beneath her feet. Ness walked beside her, face flushed. "At least talk to the Dovon about our next move!"
She didn't respond. Ness grabbed her left wrist. "Tristan, you can't—"
She spun, driving her right fist into his gut. He grunted, wind knocked out of him, and fell to the dirt clutching his gut.
Blackout Page 26
