by Steve Perry
“Thank God!” the unseen speaker said.
The alien sensed something wrong. It lifted the woman up, held her at arm’s length, turned its head from side to side, as if examining her. The thing looked at the shooters. It dropped the dead or dying woman onto the sidewalk as if she were yesterday’s garbage. Began to run directly toward the shooters. Made a hissing, burbling sound as it came—
* * *
Here, what was once a school classroom: but the rows of blank computer terminals were powerless; the only light was that which slanted in through a broken window. A human body lay on the floor, parts of it gone, eaten away, leaving a fly-blown swollen mass. Maggots squirmed in the rank remains, and the putrefaction had drawn ants and other small scavengers. The corpse was too far gone to say what sex it had been. Above the body, spray-painted on the wall in letters half a meter high the words: DARWIN ESTIS KORECTO.
Darwin was right.
Had the dead person written those words as a final statement? Or had the human arrived later, to contemplate them, to seek after truth—before the higher link in the food chain came for its due? Words like these had power, but in the jungle, the sword, the tooth, the claw, were mightier than the pen. Always…
* * *
A young man, maybe twenty-five, sat in a church, in the front pew. Religion hadn’t been doing so well on Earth in the last twenty years, but there were still places of worship. A soft glow from beneath a cross mounted behind the altar illuminated the young man, who sat in the first row of the otherwise empty church with his eyes closed, praying aloud.
“…And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” he said. “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
Almost without pause, the young man began the prayer again, speaking in a monotone. “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…”
A dim fuzzy shadow loomed suddenly on the wall at the end of the pew.
“…Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…”
The shadow grew larger.
“…on Earth, as it is in heaven…”
There came a faint rasping on the floor, and if the young man praying heard it, he made no sign.
“…Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…”
The alien rose from behind the praying man, clear slime dripping in jellylike strings from its jaws. The lips cleared the sharp teeth. Its mouth opened, revealing an inner set of smaller teeth, more like a claw in their function.
“…And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
The inner set of teeth was mounted on a greasy ridged pole. The rod shot from the thing’s mouth with incredible speed and power. The sharp teeth punched a hole in the top of the praying man’s skull as if it were no thicker or harder than wet paper. Blood and brain tissue splashed. The praying man’s eyes snapped open in a final surprise and he managed one word: “God!”
The alien caught his shoulders with its taloned hands and lifted him clear of the pew, the claws piercing flesh and drawing gouts of blood from a heart that didn’t know it was dead yet.
The alien and its prey disappeared from view, leaving only a small puddle of congealing blood and a few flecks of gray matter on the pew to show they had been there.
The pew stood empty and silent.
God, it seemed, wasn’t taking deliver-us-from-evil petitions just now.
* * *
Wilks leaned back and stared at the empty church on the screen. “Automatic camera,” he said. “Probably set to catch thieves. Wonder how the signal got this far?”
Next to him, Billie’s face was streaked with fresh tears. “Jesus, Wilks.”
“Amazing how people keep sending the ‘casts out. Like they really expect help. Or maybe it’s like an old grave headstone, you know? The signals will go into space forever. Immortality as a radio wave. Maybe they think a million light-years from Earth somebody will pick them up and give a shit. You know, buy a bag of popcorn and watch the end of man, maybe on a double bill with a nature special.”
Billie stood. “I’m going to see Mitch,” she said.
“Give him my love,” Wilks said.
She tightened, he could see her go tense, and he thought about softening it, but said nothing as she left. Fuck it. It didn’t matter.
Wilks scanned the ‘casts, looking for something different, but found only more of the same. Death. Destruction. Bodies rotting in the streets, animals feeding on them. A pack of dogs worried over a human arm. There wasn’t any sound, probably a traffic cam, but he could tell they were growling and snarling at each other. The arm was bloated and slug-belly white. Been out in the sun too long, Wilks figured. Well. Whoever had owned it probably didn’t have any use for it, might as well let the dogs eat it. It was just carrion now.
He shut the feed from Earth off. It was all history now. Whatever he was looking at had happened already, was over with, done.
He played with the scanners again, looking for wherever this ship might be bound. It was a crappy situation, the ship having been designed without passengers in mind. He’d managed to rig a few programs to get a read on the screens, which were only there for emergency backup anyhow, way he figured it. Probably cobbled together after things went bad on Earth, and as such was built with fence wire and prayer. After seeing the guy in the church, Wilks didn’t have a lot of faith in prayer. Not that he’d ever had much to begin with.
The ship knew where it was going, maybe, but that didn’t help Wilks. There must be a planet or wheelworld out here somewhere; there was a G-class star less than two hundred million klicks away, but if it had satellites, he hadn’t spotted them yet. Had to be there, otherwise why would the sleep chambers let them out?
Could be a malfunction, asshole, the little voice in his head said with a smirk. Could be you’re all gonna die.
Fuck you, Wilks told the voice. I got business to finish before I die.
And you think the universe cares about your business?
Fuck you, pal. You and the id you rode in on.
The voice rewarded him with a nasty laugh.
2
Mitch rested in the cradle they had improvised for him, and from behind it appeared that he was sitting up. Given that there was nothing left of his body from the waist down, sitting wasn’t exactly possible. He stopped in the middle, almost literally half a man—half an android—a ragged medifoam blob sealing his innards shut. He had done the repairs on his circulatory tubules himself, shunting, reconnecting, so that he was once again a closed system. That was how he’d put it, a closed system. The other half of him had been left on the aliens’ homeworld, torn off by a maddened drone protecting its nest. That alien was killed and likely it and most of the others there were vaporized by the subsequent atomic explosions Wilks had left them as a going away gift. A man torn asunder as Mitch had been would have died on that hellish planet, from blood loss or maybe shock. Androids were built better.
He heard her come in. This was the starboard computer access compartment, smaller even than the place where she’d just left Wilks. He heard her, but pretended he had not.
“Mitch?”
He shook his head. “I can’t get past the operating system,” he said. “Navigation access code is sixty-five digits, backed up by a second code of forty numbers. It would take forever to get it, given the hardware I’ve got. And where are the other ships? We left Earth in the middle of an armada. They should be somewhere around here, but they aren’t. We’re alone. It doesn’t make any sense.”
She moved to stand next to his cradle. Resisted the impulse to stroke his hair. “It’s all right—”
“No, it isn’t all right! We don’t know where we are, where we’re going, if we’ll get there alive! I have to, it’s my function to…” he trailed off. Shook his head again.
Billie wanted to cry, something she’d done more of in the last week than ever in her life. His function. She’d fallen in
love with an android. Worse, maybe, he’d fallen in love with her. He was having more trouble dealing with the feelings than she was. When they’d gone into the sleep chambers, she’d accepted it, believed it would be all right, somehow. But when they’d come out, something had changed. Some of it was him. Some of it, she had to admit, was her.
She didn’t think she was one of those people who carried her prejudices around like a club, bashing those who disagreed with her. She’d always paid lip service to equality. A person is a person, no matter if they’re born of woman, incubated in an artificial womb, or made in the android vats. Where you came from wasn’t important, only where you were going. Spend too much time looking back, you’d run into something and brain yourself, right? She’d always said that. Androids were people.
Yeah, but would you want your sister to marry one?
Or would you want to marry one yourself?
Jesus.
He hadn’t told her, that was his main crime. She’d only found out after they had become lovers, after she had let him into her heart. That hurt. She hadn’t thought she could ever get past that, but amazingly, she had. Or so she had thought. But now?
It wasn’t just that he was less than he had been. With the proper facilities, Mitch could be made whole again. As good as new. Meticulously designed muscles, perfect skin, all the right equipment in the right places…
Stop it!
No, there was something else going on here and Billie didn’t know exactly what. The man—artificial or not—she had fallen in love with wasn’t the same as he had been. Something inside his mind was different. She wanted to understand, wanted to give him all the slack he needed, but he had become someone else, a cold, fearful person who wouldn’t let her in. Somebody who didn’t want to hear about her love or anger or needs. Hiding behind his wall, hands over his ears.
Still, she kept trying.
“Mitch, listen. I—” Now she did reach out and touch his hair. It felt as real as her own, was real in that it had grown from his scalp the same way, was made of protein so similar only a microscope could see the differences.
“Don’t, Billie,” he said.
She felt the words like a blast of frigid air, so cold it took her breath away. How could he do this? Not talk to her?
“Billie, please. Try to understand. I—I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s—it’s just that I don’t—I can’t—I… I’m sorry.”
“I’m tired,” Billie said. “I’m going to try to get some rest now.”
She walked away, nearly tripped as the faux grav fluctuated a hair. They’d had problems with that, nobody thought a robot ship really needed gravity in transit and that system, like many of the others, had been rigged by Wilks before they lifted. To hear him tell it, if somebody sneezed too hard, the ship would break up.
The storeroom she used as her sleeping quarters was private, a three-meter-by-two-meter box, but since it was next to the ship’s internal power and heating system, it was also hotter than most spots onboard. She stripped to her undershirt and panties, lay down, and leaned back against the bulkhead that served as a pillow. Sweat slid down her bare skin, dampened her clothes, and made her feel sticky. Still, it wasn’t unbearable. And it was damn sure better than the company she’d have to endure otherwise.
She was dozing when Wilks appeared in the doorway. She hadn’t bothered to slide shut the hanging curtain she’d rigged. His sudden presence startled her.
“Make some noise when you move, Wilks. You scared me.”
He stepped into the room, his feet nearly touching hers. She sat up, drew her feet in. He’d seen her naked, but something about the way he stood there made her nervous.
“Everything scares you, Billie,” he said.
She blinked sweat away, wiped at her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
He moved closer. Knelt. Reached out and caught her shoulders. “When you were a kid you were scared of dying. Later, you were scared of living.”
“Jesus, Wilks, back off—”
He slid his hands under her shirt before she could react. Cupped her breasts. “And you’ve always been scared of me,” he said.
Her shock turned to anger. She grabbed his hands, pulled them from under her shirt. “Goddammit! What the hell do you think you’re doing!”
He grabbed her wrists, leaned against her. His face was only centimeters from hers now. She could smell his sweat, his… musk.
“You really prefer that thing in the computer room? Wouldn’t you rather be with a real man? One who has all the right equipment?”
She felt something hard poke into her belly. Christ, was he going to rape her? “Wilks! Stop it! Why are you doing this?”
He jerked back, his face gone slack for a beat, eyes closed. The lids snapped up and an infernal light shined from his pupils at her. He grinned.
“Why? Because I’m going to make you face yourself. What you’re afraid of. Love. Passion. Caring. People.”
Billie looked down, and saw that the bulge she’d felt wasn’t what she’d thought. It was his belly
“Aagghh!”
With his scream, his abdomen burst outward in a spray of flesh and gore and a full-size adult alien came forth. Impossible, it wasn’t physically possible! It smiled at her, showing the sharp carnivore’s teeth. Slime and blood dripped as it reached for her…
* * *
“Wilks!”
Billie sat up, alone in her cubicle. Her shirt and panties were soaked with sweat, her hair hung limp.
Oh, fuck. A dream. Only a dream!
But she knew better. It wasn’t a dream. It was a vision. A… communication. It was too real, it went too deep.
They were here.
On the ship.
Billie grabbed her clothes and ran.
* * *
Wilks was fiddling with the program that ran the external pickups, hoping to figure a way to magnify images visually when Billie rushed in. She was half into her coverall, drenched in sour sweat. There wasn’t much water on this tub, they probably all smelled a little overripe. Even Bueller, who had sweat glands that did a fair imitation of human ones. He was in the other seat, having hand-walked in earlier, dragging his little plastic cradle behind him like some beggar from the streets of West L.A.
“Wilks, they’re here. On the ship!”
She grabbed at his shirt. “Take it easy, take it easy! You saw one?”
“She dreamed about it,” Bueller said quietly.
Billie turned and glared at him, as if he had violated some secret between them.
“It wasn’t just a nightmare, Wilks. I felt them. Remember the spacefarer alien who saved us, how I could feel his hatred?”
“Yeah, the elephant man. Scavenger of doomed races.”
“It was like that. I can still feel them. It’s like some kind of light touch against my mind. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is there!”
Wilks shook his head. The kid was stretched too tight. They all were, cooped up on this bucket. They’d been through a lot. The stress had to come out somewhere. He’d been doing sets of push-ups and chin-ups and squats every day until he couldn’t move anymore, trying to burn it out of himself.
“Look, Billie, it doesn’t make sense—”
“Where is the gun, Wilks? If you won’t help me find them, I’ll do it myself!”
Wilks looked at Bueller. The android looked away. Dealing with emotional women was out of his territory, Wilks knew that. Like it was something he knew how to do. Christ, women were like another species sometimes. He didn’t understand them at all.
“Well?”
“All right. You want to play marine? We’ll play marine. But I’ll keep the gun. We’ve only got part of one magazine left.”
He stood, moved to the locker where he’d stored the carbine. He’d locked it securely away, along with the pistol he’d had before they went into the sleep chambers. He should have collected more ammo, maybe another couple of M-41Es before they lifted from Earth, a goo
d marine armed himself as best he could when he could, but time had been a little tight. When your choice was hurrying to catch a ship leaving or staying to face either an atomic fireball or a hungry monster, you didn’t dick around looking for spare ammo. He did have a couple of grenades for the under-the-barrel launcher of the carbine but those weren’t much use on a vessel cruising through hard vacuum. Bust a hole in an external wall and the cold emptiness outside would suck your air out and freeze it into nice little crystals for you. Only a madman wanted to make something go boom! on a spaceship. Even the AP rounds from the 10mm could be a problem, but at least the hole they might make would be real small. Toss a Gum-sparrow into the stream and it would plug the leak okay.
He pulled the locker open, reached in, removed the carbine. Toggled the battery-saver off and saw the LED light. Five rounds left in the magazine. Shit.
Wait a second here, Wilks. It’s not as if we’re gonna need even five rounds. The kid is just tense. We do a run-through and show her we’re alone and that’s it.
He turned to Billie. “You want to take the handgun? It won’t do shit to the armor, but maybe if it opens its mouth…”
“Give it to me,” she said.
Wilks tendered the pistol, a slicked-up version of the standard army-issue Smith auto. He’d taken it from the general back on Earth, after the bastard had shot Blake. The general had gotten off three rounds, then Wilks had shot five more times. Eight. This model didn’t have a counter, fucking regular army was too cheap to install them, but it was a fifteen-round double-stack mag, so it had seven shots left, eight if the general had kept an extra one in the chamber.
“Got seven rounds,” he said.
She checked the gun. “I only need two,” she said. Then she glanced over at Bueller. “Three.”
“Okay, let’s go find the monsters,” Wilks said. “Bueller, you want to tag along?”
“Do you really think there is any danger?”
