Cicoi was not part of the Council and would not make that decision. He was glad of it. He had made too many decisions as it was.
Although he would argue for another, and he suspected he would win.
He was going to argue that recycling Commanders was not the way to cope with failure, not in a time of limited resources. For the Commanders learned from failure.
He had.
He had learned that the creatures of the third planet were as determined to protect their home as he was. He had also learned they would stop at nothing to do so.
It was a valuable lesson.
And one that had to survive the long sleep. For in addition to repairing Malmur, readying the ships for the next Pass, and preparing for the sleep, his people had another task.
They had to plan for the days when they faced the third planet again. To them, that day would come very, very soon.
Cicoi could only hope that the creatures of the third planet made the mistakes so many other sentient beings made. He would hope that they were no longer in existence when he returned.
But, seeing their determination and their resourcefulness, he doubted that would happen. He suspected his greatest fears would come true.
When he returned, after the long sleep, the creatures would have had countless generations to figure out how to fight the Malmuria. While the Malmuria slept and did not change, the creatures might grow in power just as they had in the last sleep.
Right now, they were capable of defending their home.
They might become capable of attacking his home while the cold sleep continued.
He had to prepare the leaders for that.
The long period of simple harvesting and sleeping had ended. The Malmuria were in a new period, one made up of war and struggle. The sooner they realized that, the better their chances for survival.
Cicoi was determined to be part of that survival.
He would not make the same mistakes in the future. Next time the creatures would not stand in his way. And he would not underestimate them again.
November 13, 2018
11:54 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Second Harvest: Fourth Day
Leo Cross looked out the windows of Britt’s apartment. The quiet neighborhood stretched before him.
Cars were moving as if it were a typical workday. People were outside, rebuilding, working on preparing for winter. Trying to resume their normal lives.
So quickly. So very quickly.
That told him that everyone missed the world as it had been.
Even though it would never be the same.
He turned. Britt’s cat Muffin guarded the door to the kitchen. Cross was Muffin’s arch enemy: he always took her time away from Britt. And Muffin was even more determined now than ever to have time with Britt. Muffin had no idea what had taken Britt from her these last few months, but Cross suspected that Muffin blamed him.
Interspecies communication didn’t work on this planet. He wondered why he had ever thought he could comprehend a species from another planet.
He sat at the dining room table. He couldn’t remember ever being this tired in his life. Part of the exhaustion was physical—he hadn’t had more than eight hours of sleep total in the past week—but the bulk of his exhaustion, he knew, was relief.
There was no way the aliens would return in his lifetime. He would never see them or their ships again, never again view the tenth planet in real time.
Of course, its arrival, the war, the downed ships and the harvesters, as well as the few glimpses of the planet itself, would give scientists, researchers, and people like Cross enough work to last the rest of their lives.
“Did you microwave the potpies?” Britt asked as she came into the room. Her other cat, Clyde, was following her like a lost puppy. The cats hadn’t received much attention since the planet was discovered. They didn’t know yet that they would have Britt with them more often.
Cross looked at Muffin who sat in front of the kitchen entry. “I value my shins too much to try.” “Well, frozen potpies aren’t the best dinner, but it’s what I have.” She worked her way around Muffin, who followed her, purring, into the kitchen. Britt was humming. She was clearly as relieved as Cross, and probably even more tired.
After a moment, he heard the hum of the microwave. Britt came out with two apples and tossed him one. It was shiny and red, but he checked it for brown spots all the same. He had no idea when Britt had last had a chance to shop for food.
She sank into the chair across from him. Fie smiled at her. He’d been in the apartment a lot since he started working in the lab, but he hadn’t been there with her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her in her own home.
“I feel like I should be working,” she said.
“Me, too.” He took a bite out of the apple. “We’ll have plenty to do after we get some rest.”
She nodded, then turned her apple over and over in her hands. “I keep thinking about that map of the world, the one with all the dark spots on it.”
“All the people who died,” Cross said softly.
Fifty million was the rough estimate. People who didn’t understand the threat, like some of the native tribes in the Amazon; people who had refused to evacuate; and then the people who had fought against the aliens.
Fifty million out of a population of ten billion was statistically a huge success. But statistics weren’t helping Cross.
Fifty million people, all of whom were known by someone, and probably loved by someone.
That was a lot of lives. A lot of lives lost to a war that no one had ever expected.
Too many lives for him to face comfortably. The relief work and the level of mourning worldwide was going to be huge.
“The people who died.” Britt sounded reflective. She shook her head, and he recognized the movement. It was the one she made when she surprised herself. “You thought of the people who died. I was thinking about the food. We’re going to have a lot of shortages, aren’t we?”
“Not here,” he said. “Once again, the United States lucked out. We were heading into spring the first time, and they only hit a section of California. This time, we’re heading into winter, and the areas they hit in the U.S. were mostly forest. We’ll have enough food. We’ll probably have to go into full production for the first time in a hundred years so that we can meet the worldwide demand.”
“Other places will starve then,” she said.
“Africa. Parts of Europe.” He set the apple down. It suddenly wasn’t as appealing. “I don’t know enough about the current economy of Central and South America to know what the loss of the rain forests will do to them ”
“How long?” Britt asked.
“Will they suffer?” He shrugged. “Depends on how the governments handle it. You’ve heard the reports. The dust that the nanoharvesters left is nontoxic. Stuff should be growing in it next spring.”
“And the nukes?” she asked softly. “What about the fallout from them?”
She apparently hadn’t believed Franklin’s speech just an hour before about the “cleanliness” of the nuclear attack.
“The president was right,” Cross said. “The radiation will circle the Earth fora few years, but compared to the damage that the aliens would have done—” “That’s minimizing, Leo.” Britt rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “We’re going to suffer something from it.”
He nodded. “You know the drill, Britt. You don’t need me to tell you.”
“Increased cancers. Climate problems.” She got up. “Those aliens have left us with a mess.”
“It could have been a lot worse.”
The microwave dinged in the kitchen. Britt went to get their food. The plan was to eat and then go to bed. To sleep. Cross doubted he had enough energy for anything else. They actually had time for that later.
All the time in the world.
He heard drawers open and a cat meow. Muffin and Clyde were probably circling Britt, hoping fo
r treats. During their brief meal, he had to get her to talk about other things. He didn’t want to talk about what was going to happen next. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about it.
There wasn’t just the devastation, the loss of lives, the possible disasters worldwide, and the radiation threats. There were also questions that he had had from the beginning, questions about the new world that had been formed by the alliance between all the countries, by the martial law imposed, by the way the scientists had given away a lot of autonomy to the governments in the name of peace.
So many battles lay ahead. Human battles.
He suspected someone would sue over the nanorescuers, too. Since they never got to be used, and they dusted every major city, someone would see them as a threat. Even though they weren’t. They were harmless to everything except the aliens’ harvesters. In time, Portia assured him, they would break down into their component parts. The cities will be dustier for a few years, that’s all, she had said, and he knew she was right.
Britt brought out steaming potpies. They weren’t frozen food like he expected, but some from a local restaurant—or what had been a local restaurant until a few weeks ago. He wasn’t even sure it had windows left, let alone equipment.
The smell of the chicken and sauce made his stomach growl. “How’d you get these?” he asked.
“You said to stock up on food,” she said. “So I stocked up on stuff I knew we wouldn’t get for a while.”
He grinned at her. An impractical solution that had actually turned practical. If the world had ended, these potpies would never have lasted as long as the ones that were full of preservatives and fake vegetables.
He dug in.
“You’re quiet,” she said. “You don’t want me to know how upset you are, do you?”
He looked at her. She was the only person he had ever met who completely understood him. It was a bit disconcerting at times.
“We’ve lost a lot,” he said. “We probably don’t even know yet all that’s gone.”
“At least the human race can get on with life again,” Britt said.
“It won’t work that way,” Leo said.
“Why not?” Britt asked.
“Because we know they’re out there.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be sleeping. Frozen for two thousand years. The ultimate cold war.”
So she was going to get it out of him no matter what. He sighed. “It won’t make any difference,” he said. “We still know they’re there, and that information will eat at us until we do something about it.”
Britt looked out the window at the afternoon sky, then shuddered. “What would we do?”
Cross chose not to look at the sky. Britt was smart. She’d figure out the options. There were only two of them. Either the human race got past this war and decided to share the planet with the aliens, or one of the races was going to be destroyed.
“We have time to figure out something,” Cross said carefully. “And that’s what bothers me the most”
November 13, 2018
5:12 p.m. Central Standard Time
Second Harvest: Fourth Day
Kara stood in front of the picture window in her now-empty home. Everyone was gone except her own family. The house suddenly seemed excessively large for three people.
Her father stood beside her, his arm around her, holding her close. They were watching the sunset.
It had an odd glow. It was redder, darker, gloomier than any sunset she had ever seen before. And a part of her didn’t care. They had used nuclear bombs to save her city. She had seen the intense flash of light that seemed to fill every corner of everything, even inside the house. Then she had heard them explode overhead. The booms were tremendous, shaking everything.
But nothing would have been as bad as melting under those alien devices. No one had to test those nanorescuers. Everything was safe.
Although her mother was already talking about selling the house, and seeing if her father could move his law practice somewhere else. He had tried explaining to her that the radiation was in the Earth’s atmosphere, and that everyone would be exposed, but she wasn’t listening.
She never listened.
Kara leaned against her father. She’d take a world with extra radiation. She’d even take the spots some of her neighbors were seeing because they’d been outside during the blast.
She had looked down the well of having no future. Any future was better than that.
She would always remember that, the feeling of having no future.
She also understood now what it meant to choose between difficult things. If the president hadn’t given the order to fire those nukes, her city might be gone.
She might be gone.
And she might never have seen this sunset, tainted though it was.
Her father hadn’t said much. He didn’t have to. The relief on his face told her everything she needed to know. She felt very secure against him.
Secure, knowing that she’d never see those aliens again in her lifetime. But she felt vulnerable, too. From now on, she wouldn’t see the Earth as an isolated place, but as an island in space, vulnerable to attack.
An island that she was trapped on.
The strangely colored sun disappeared behind a line of black clouds. She squinted, trying to see beyond the orange glow on the horizon. Trying to see clear to the hated tenth planet. Soon, those aliens and their planet would be headed out into deep space, frozen. Yet every night, when she went out and looked up at the stars, she would remember they were out there.
She would remember that they had tried to kill her, and everything she knew and loved.
And she would remember they were coming back.
Two thousand and six years until the next harvest.
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