Blackout

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Probably," Lowell said.

  "What do you mean, probably? You're the one who rallied the knights from San Diego. Without them, Raina would have died. Without her, the Dovon would have released that new plague."

  "Don't think it was a plague. Think it's nanobots."

  "Nanowhats?"

  "Microscopic machines that can be programmed to destroy certain kinds of matter. Like anything organic." Next to him, Randy cocked his head. "Forget it. Besides, without you, I never would have contributed. So if you want to play it that way, you're the reason we're all alive today."

  Randy frowned, glasses hiding his eyes. "I can't take any credit. I didn't do any of the fighting."

  "Be glad you didn't. No one leaves a battle without wounds. And for every soldier, we need ten people along the way to prop them up. Food. Supplies. Support. Strategy. That's stronger than any gun or sword."

  "But that one soldier gets all the glory while the ten who help him get forgotten."

  "Most soldiers don't take home any glory, either. Besides, if we were all soldiers, then what would we be fighting for back home?" Lowell pushed himself up from the wall, dusting his hands, pistol almost but not quite forgotten in its holster. "Let's leave these people to their families. Lots to do."

  Randy nodded, glancing down at the cracking bike path, then followed after him. Halfway up the hill, Lowell turned toward the sea. More than anything, he wished his son could have lived to see this moment: the sun on the waves, the prisoners hugging those who loved them, the aliens watching in respectful silence.

  But that was no longer the way of the world. Everyone had lost someone. Many had lost all. In the aftermath, you had two options. You could let your pain define you, becoming as mean as it commanded you to.

  Or you could pick up the pieces and moved on.

  He slapped the boy on the back. "Besides, now that the war's over, we soldiers aren't much use. It's time for the people who know how to build to start giving the orders."

  * * *

  For so many days, the ship had hung above the sea like a giant, immovable moon. Now, seeing it creep beneath the clouds on its way up the coast, Raina felt as if it wasn't the ship that was moving, but the sky.

  On the cliffs of Palos Verdes, Mauser swept his hair from his eyes. "This is their farewell tour, yes? Not the final departure?"

  "They're off to gather those who didn't make it to the city," Raina said. "Once this is finished, they'll return here to see that all is well. And then they will go."

  "And we're sure we trust them?"

  She shrugged. "What other choice do we have?"

  "Maybe we should have taken the ship and left them with the planet."

  "We'll be fine. If they return to make war, we'll wear them down inch by inch."

  "Don't you mean tooth by tooth? If you ask me, that plan was more than a little iffy."

  "It might have worked."

  "That 'might' is as small as the ones that live on your eyelashes."

  Raina scowled at him. "I don't have mites on my lashes."

  Mauser's expression took on the barely concealed exasperation he donned when he referenced the old books, movies, or television that would never exist again. "I'm sure they know better than to attempt to infest you. Regardless, let's hope we don't have to revert to Plan B."

  "We might have won. We might have lost. I know we would have fought to the end."

  She might have said more, but she was lost in the sight of the circular ship skirting northward. It looked no more capable of flight than a mountain did, yet it was already gaining speed, cruising through the clouds on its way to the first pickup spot far up the coast. Again, she had the sense that it wasn't the vessel that was moving, but the world.

  And perhaps it was.

  "Anyway," Mauser said. "They're on their way out. Shouldn't we have a feast?"

  "Since when did you need an excuse to eat and drink to excess?"

  "Since never. Others, however, are much less enlightened. I'd like to offer them the opportunity to indulge guilt-free."

  "We have nothing to celebrate yet." Raina rested her elbow on the hilt of her sword. "Not until the day they leave for good."

  "This is an amazing sight. I could watch it all day."

  "Too bad. There's work to be done."

  He looked at her, then did a double take. "You can't be that much of a taskmaster. We just won a war. The war. The greatest war ever fought by man. Or woman. Or anyone in the vibrant spectrum between. Surely we deserve a moment to reflect on our glory."

  "Are you that sure it's over?"

  Mauser shuffled his feet together, standing taller from his slouch. "Deep down? No. Not yet."

  "Then let's make sure that if they return in anger, that we are prepared to meet them in kind."

  She turned from the cliff and hiked toward the nearby street. Mauser swore softly, then followed, as he had since she had always known him, as loyal of a second as she could ever ask. As he walked, he kept both eyes locked on the receding ship. Whenever Raina knew her footing was sure, she watched it, too.

  * * *

  He felt. It was no particular sensation, this feeling. Rather, it was awareness itself. Compared to the last period of dreams, memories, nightmares, and random neural impulses, consciousness was as bracing as diving into a cold sea.

  He supposed he should open his eyes, so he did that. A face hung above him. It was beautiful. As she smiled, tan lines crinkling around her eyes and mouth, it was more beautiful still.

  "You're here," he croaked.

  Carrie laughed. "And incredibly bored. What took you so long?"

  "I might be able to answer that if I had any idea where I was."

  She handed him a cup of water. The cup was a dull plastic that didn't feel quite right. The water tasted of minerals.

  "You're on the ship," she said. "Which is a miracle, considering how close you came to destroying it."

  "Wonderful. Just so we're perfectly clear, though—I am alive?"

  "To the chagrin of your enemies. How do you feel?"

  "Good." He set down the cup on a weird-looking bedside table, stretched his arms, then his legs. "Great, actually. Like the way it should feel when you wake up but never does."

  "They said it would be like that."

  "They?"

  "The Swimmers. The Dovon. They put you in a bit of a coma."

  He sat up. His chest was lightly sore all over, especially on his right side, but it almost felt good, like the day after exercise. "A coma?"

  "They said it would help you heal faster. I think that was just a cover story, though. I think they were afraid you'd wake up and finish what you started."

  "How are you? The guy who brought me up here convinced me that they'd killed you."

  Carrie laughed through her nose. "I was unconscious when they filmed that. Drugged. They'd been questioning me. I don't know what the bag was about. To scare me, I think. They also had a thing against touching humans. Maybe it was to make us seem that much more vile. Or maybe it was just a way to distance themselves from the guilt of what they were doing."

  "These guys are fiendish." He rubbed his eyes, then his head. Everything felt intact. "How long was I out?"

  "A week, I think."

  "A week?"

  "In any human hospital, you'd be dead. They had to take blood from Sprite. By the end, he was so delirious he was ranting in Chinese. Do you know him?"

  "Not really."

  "Well, you owe him a thank you card," Carrie said. "So. Just how good are you feeling?"

  "Why? Feeling frisky?"

  "Extremely. Unfortunately, I think we should wait at least a day. Can you stand?"

  "Why?"

  "There's something I want to show you."

  He found that he could stand. And that he was dressed in a rubbery diaper with various tubes feeding into his nethers. The tubes were easily detachable, however, and Carrie had clothes ready for him, including a new shirt. He dressed without any real d
ifficulty. He felt on the weak side, like he'd just gone for a long run after not having eaten since the day before, but as he prepared himself, Carrie departed the room and returned with a flatbed cart similar to the one Bait had wheeled him around on.

  He went out into the hallways by the power of his own two feet. Swimmers bustled around, watching the pair of humans pass by. None of them drew weapons. That was a plus. In the elevator, he sat on the cart, resting, then got up again once the doors opened. He followed Carrie to her destination: the bridge.

  As they entered, a number of alien eyes shifted their way. The desks and computers had been restored to their proper positions, but some were marred with laser burns, as were the walls.

  But Walt barely noticed this. At the far end of the bridge, stretching at least a hundred feet from the floor to the ceiling, the view—he still didn't know if it was a window or a monitor—showed a miles-high vantage of scudding white clouds, snowy green mountains, and choppy blue seas.

  "Where are we?" he said.

  Carrie shrugged. "Japan, I think. We've been traveling the world for the last five days. Picking up Dovon wherever we go."

  He found an unoccupied workstation and sat on the awkwardly large low, round chair. "This is what you wanted me to see?"

  "Don't tell me you're disappointed."

  "It's gorgeous. Particularly compared to the insides of my eyelids. Just wondering if there was anything especially special about it."

  "That depends on how soon you think we'll be flying airplanes again."

  "Last I checked, people were more concerned with not shitting themselves to death than air travel. It's going to be centuries before we're back to where we were."

  She reached for his hand. "Then we're going to be the last humans to see something like this for a long, long time."

  * * *

  Day after day, they cruised over the hills, plains, deserts, mountains, lakes, ice fields, rivers, and oceans. Wherever there were Farschool refugees, the whaleship stopped, dispatching jets and personnel ships to pick them up and lug them aboard.

  Despite being captured and delivered to the Dovon equivalent of a prison/rehabilitation center, almost none of the Farschoolers caused any ruckus. Some of them welcomed imprisonment. It was like they'd been waiting for justice to come and find them. Either that, or they were so relieved to be escaping Earth that a little jail time was no real cross to bear.

  Ness knew that getting the last aliens off the planet was an important mission, but privately, he thought it was super boring. Every once in a while, Toru—or, more often, Inana or Llen—consulted him on what he knew of local Dovon activity, but for the most part, he didn't know enough to be useful. The sub crew had wiped out nearly every colony they knew about.

  Sprite seemed to think the whole thing was a blast. One big intercontinental airborne cruise. When he wasn't on the observation platform of the bridge, soaking in the view, he was busy cajoling the crew to give him an endless series of guided tours of the city-sized ship, or gossiping with Abadd, an imprisoned but cheerful Farschooler who'd taught himself Mandarin after the invasion failed and he found himself stranded in China.

  Two weeks into their tour, which was supposed to last 27 days, Sprite found Ness in a quiet corner of the ship's library, bent over a tablet.

  "What are you doing?" Sprite said. "Reading?"

  "Trying to." Ness sat back with a sigh. "The Dovon alphabet is impossible."

  "You think that's hard? Try learning to write traditional Chinese."

  "No thanks. Shoot, in this day and age, nobody should be learning traditional Chinese. Or English, for that matter. They're way too complicated. We should all start speaking Esperanto or something. Or invent a new language designed to be simple enough that the whole world could learn it."

  "It would probably be smarter to do that." Sprite's voice was much gentler than usual. "But as convoluted, jury-rigged, and flat-out dumb as a lot of the old ways were, it would still be sad to lose them."

  "A lot of them just don't make sense anymore, though. Still, I guess there's not much point thinking about it. No way you're going to convince the whole world to start speaking Sprite-ese."

  "If the old ways don't make sense, then we'll just have to come up with something better. Just like people always have." Sprite leaned against the desk Ness was using. "We'll be back in L.A. in less than two weeks. What's the first thing you're going to do now that the war's over?"

  Ness shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Well, I do." He waited to be prompted. When Ness said nothing, Sprite forged ahead. "I'm going to eat barbecue."

  "That's your big plan? Barbecue?"

  "Yeah dude! Think about it. When was the last time you had it?"

  "In New Zealand, probably. Bay of Islands."

  "And it was great. Now imagine how great it's going to be when it's a 'We Saved the World' party." He gazed across the library, a smile oozing across his face as he waved an imaginary banner. "What's Sebastian going to do?"

  "I'm not sure," Ness said. "These days, I think he's more at home around humans than his own kind."

  Somehow, the question hadn't occurred to Ness before. He'd always assumed things would simply go on. Now that Sprite had asked, though, Ness found himself haunted by uncertainty. With each stop they made—Russia, Egypt, Madagascar, Brazil—and each day that passed, the weight lay heavier on his shoulders.

  They swung down to Argentina, then hooked north, stopping in Cuba on their way to North Carolina. After that, there was just one stop in Texas before the return to L.A.

  At last, admitting to himself that this was a problem that wasn't going to solve itself, he went to Sebastian.

  "So," he signed. "Only three days until it's over."

  "YES CAN IT BE BELIEVED"

  "Not really. We've been doing this so long I kind of thought we'd do it forever. At least until our luck ran out and one of them got us."

  Sebastian clicked his claws in laughter. "OUR LIFE IS VERY UNLIKELY. YET THAT IS THE BEST KIND OF LIFE"

  "Well, I'm ready to go back to the one where we don't experience a new explosion every day." A cold weight pressed on Ness' stomach. It felt like he'd swallowed something sideways. "Once we get back to the city, what are you going to do?"

  "I WILL LEAVE"

  The coldness went hot. Electric. Hands shaking, Ness gestured, "With the Dovon? On this ship?"

  "YES NESS. I AM DOVON. DOVON ARE LEAVING. THEREFORE I LEAVE TOO"

  "But…you can't."

  Sebastian considered him. "WHAT YOU MEAN IS THAT YOU DON'T WANT ME TO"

  "That's right. So don't. Okay?"

  "IT IS NOT RIGHT TO STAY. THIS IS NOT OUR WORLD AND ALL OF US MUST LEAVE IT SO IT CAN ONCE MORE BE HUMAN"

  "But no one has to ever see you. We could go hide on a mountain somewhere. The planet's practically empty. We'll be dead long before it gets filled up again."

  "THIS CANNOT BE. ALL DOVON MUST LEAVE. TO STAY IS TO REMIND. HUMANS MUST BE ALLOWED TO SET DOWN THEIR HATE AND PICK UP THAT WHICH COMES NEXT"

  "What difference would one Dovon make?"

  "SOMETIMES?" Sebastian spread his tentacles wide. "ONE PERSON MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE"

  Ness stood there, numb and dumb. He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he told the truth. "But you're my best friend."

  Sebastian lowered his eyes. A moment later, he swung up his head. "NESS DO YOU WISH TO GO TOO"

  "Go?" He pointed up to the ceiling and the space that lay beyond. "With you?"

  "YES GO WITH ME AND WITH US"

  "I didn't think I'd be allowed to!"

  "WHY NOT? IT IS UNRIGHT FOR A DOVON TO STAY. YET THERE IS NOTHING UNRIGHT ABOUT A HUMAN WHO GOES"

  Tears rolled down Ness' cheeks. He was glad he didn't have to try to speak out loud. "I was sure you were going to say that I can't go with you. That my home is here. That's how these things always go."

  "HOME IS NOT WHERE," Sebastian gestured. "IT IS WHO. AND YOU AND I—WE ARE GUTBROTHERS"
/>   * * *

  The Dunemarket lay in shambles.

  The Seat had been bombed, the underground homes collapsed. Trees lay in broken splinters, leaves browning on the branch. The Home Depot had been replaced by a crater. Broken glass glinted on the road. Many houses had been knocked to rubble, the flames going on to burn down entire blocks.

  Raina hadn't seen the devastation in person. Neither had many of her warriors. Gazing on it, they were as silent as the ruins themselves.

  "This place is a mess," Georgia said, breaking the stillness. "You're sure you don't want to set up shop somewhere less demolished? Like San Diego?"

  "Better San Diego is yours." Raina nudged a broken board with her foot, rattling it. "Besides, it is better to settle two places. If disaster falls on one of our lands, we'll have the other to fall back on."

  "Your call. But putting this place back in order is going to be a ton of work."

  "Our hard work will only prove that it was meant to be ours."

  Georgia laughed. "You're a born politician. You could make a tsunami sound like a good thing. Sure, it might kill us all, but at least we'll have plenty of new beaches!"

  "There are strategic concerns, too. From here, we can sail straight to Catalina. This area is a crossroads between the city to the north and the lands of the south. That's why the Dunemarket grew here in the first place."

  "Well, if you're that devoted to foolishness, I suppose the least I can do is lend you a hand. My knights are right here. Let's put them to work and get you some new houses."

  Raina nodded slowly. "I'm glad to accept your offer. But doing so now would only be a waste of your time."

  "How's that?"

  "We're still not sure the Dovon can be trusted. If they're lying to us—if they're gathering their scattered soldiers for a renewed attack—they'll destroy everything we'll have built."

  "If so, then we'll have spent the last weeks building big strong muscles to fight them with, too." Georgia hoisted her pack. "Come on. These heaps of trash you're so proud of aren't going to nail themselves back together."

  Raina smiled. Some projects, such as the re-digging of the cool earthen homes of the Seat, could be assigned workers immediately. Before others could begin, however, Raina consulted her people and advisors as to what was most needed. They all agreed: the market itself that brought people together from all over. And the inn at its foot where those people could eat, drink, and rest from their travels.