by Robert Reed
The reporter made a small sound. Not a word, just a sound.
He said, “I got pretty close to those guys. The ones on my team?” He set down his glass and looked at the reporter, saying, “Fuck it,” and then he pulled one of his hands across his mouth.
She made no sound for a long moment.
Then she asked, “Couldn’t you have used something else? Against the nest, I mean.”
“Pardon?”
“A strong laser, for instance. It seems to me—”
“Were you listening?” He blinked and restrained some sudden fury, then he said, “The nests were built to be struck by big Jovian lightning bolts. All right? Do you know what kind of power that means?”
“Well, I—”
“Sure,” he said, “a laser might melt some of the nest. But the rest would suck up the power. It would store it. Then the whole nest would grow stronger, fatter, more juice in its super-loops and more for its hounds, more for the stinging tails and for frying people, and so on.”
She waited, then asked, “What about nuclear charges?”
“What about them?”
“It seems that bombs of sufficient sizes—”
“Who has bombs today?” he asked.
“Dr. Florida has facilities,” she told him. Her voice turned tough, her reporter instincts coming into play again. “He’s certainly proven himself able to keep secrets.”
“So okay. Suppose he nukes the moon’s moon. All right. The blasts would have to vaporize every piece of every nest, and the moon’s moon is miles across and full of water and dust and the sort of garbage that’s perfect for blunting fireballs. Okay? So let’s say we miss killing every last hound. Hard radiation doesn’t mean the same thing to a hound that it means to us. Say some little nest in a deep mining tunnel survives. It’s blasted free to God knows where. Maybe down here. Wouldn’t that be a joy? Or maybe, just maybe, it gets kicked clean out of lunar orbit. A few days of drifting in the darkness, and down it comes into the earth’s own sweet air. Plop!”
“You’re saying…what? The earth is in danger too?”
“Lady,” he said, “I don’t think you see the picture. That chunk of dead comet is sick with spark-hounds. Let anyone anywhere do anything wrong, today or whenever, and some hounds might just reach the dear old Mother Earth. Believe me.”
“But the impact—”
“Twenty gees isn’t going to do much more than piss a hound off. A big chunk of nest would survive reentry and spill its hounds, and what those hounds would do is fly and eat organics where they found them, build new nests however they could, and if they didn’t have a nest, they’d steal the electrical juices they needed. From wherever.” He said, “Remember. The earth is full of super-loop batteries, all charged and waiting to be robbed. Hounds are built to milk super-loops whenever they find them. Why not in an apartment building or a grocery store…you see?”
“I see,” said the reporter.
Then the drunken man said, “Now we’re going to call it quits. I’ve got to pee.” He suddenly rose from his seat and vanished. The five of us were staring at the gloomy air of the bar, and then the camera swung back to the reporter. She said, “That’s the story from Hadley City, from the first firsthand witness to this ongoing disaster,” and she gave her name and shuddered. She looked pale and weak, and the screen went blank after a long moment.
Beth made a sound.
I looked sideways and saw her crying again.
Marshall saw her too. He said, “It won’t happen,” with confidence. He stood and turned down the volume, telling us, “We’ll stop them first. There are plenty of things we can do.”
Cody echoed him, saying, “That guy was a coward anyway, running like he did. And he was drunk besides.”
Beth shook her head and tried a smile.
Jack said, “I still don’t get it. What’s going on?”
No one spoke.
“Is this real?” wondered Jack.
Cody said, “You bet.”
I looked outside and saw no one. There weren’t any kids hunting the dragon or any adults working in their yards.
“No, I get it!” Jack announced. “This is a joke, isn’t it? Cody?”
“What?”
“This is something from a movie, right? A tape?” Jack brightened and sat up straight and tried to laugh.
“What are you saying?” asked Marshall.
“This stuff on TV…” Jack pointed and looked at us, his face beginning to doubt his words. Just a little. “What was it? You rigged a tape, didn’t you? You were trying to scare me—?”
Cody said, “We didn’t.”
“—because you wanted to play a joke. Right?”
Cody said, “I wish it was. I do.”
Marshall said, “Jack,” with his voice stretching the word into something long and fragile.
“Ryder?” said Jack. “Ryder? Tell me it’s pretend. Tell me!”
I couldn’t talk. I glanced out a west window, feeling empty and cold. There was no one on the bottoms, just a pair of bambis with their heads dropped while they drank from the stone basin nearest us. The weeds near the basin were beaten flat, and I could see the bambis with their pretty white spots and their dark eyes moving, always moving, and I thought of all the times I had seen bambis and watched them and how I’d never really appreciated how scared they looked. All the time, whatever they were doing, they looked scared.
Nine
I came home in time for dinner. Mom told me Dad was showing a house, he would return soon, but until then we’d eat without him. The TV was off. Mom said, “I’ve heard enough news today, thank you.” Then she stayed quiet, her face grave and her eyes distant.
Dad was working, like always, and nothing was truly changed from yesterday. People in the world were still purchasing houses, and so of course nothing was about to collapse. How could it collapse? I let myself be bolstered by confident words and stances—my art teacher’s, my friends’, anyone’s. I reminded myself that the man in that Hadley bar was a drunk and a coward too. Just like Cody had said. What did he know? He had fled his post. Abandoned his fight. What possible value could his fear hold for me?
After dinner, still without Dad, we went to the living room, and Mom decided to watch the latest nonsense. That’s what she called it. A spokesman from the U.N. was on every channel—a little black man with one of those lovely African-English voices, almost musical at times—and he spoke about top-notch troops being gathered and trained, and the best shuttles being readied to take these troops to the moon. Not to the moon’s moon, no. He told his audience, and the world, that to attack and win meant patience. Insufficient forces would do little good. Better one killing blow than a hundred wasteful assaults. Wasn’t that the sensible course? Of course.
“I want to know why,” Mom muttered.
I said, “Pardon?”
“Why did Florida do such a thing?” She sucked air through her teeth, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. “Do you know?”
I started to collect my thoughts. Not to tell Mom, no, because I was sworn to secrecy. But I wanted to know in my own heart why he had done such a thing. Had he explained it to me? That day on the false beach? I concentrated, trying to decide.
“They say he wanted to stock Jupiter and Saturn. With hounds.” Mom said hounds as if she wasn’t comfortable with the word, as if it was in a foreign language and she was speaking it for the first time. “They keep saying nonsense about him bringing life to those worlds,” she said, and I glanced at her disgusted expression. “But that’s not why. I know why he did it.”
I waited.
She said, “Ego.”
I said nothing, and then the front door opened, squeaking in a slow comfortable way. Dad peered into the living room, asking, “How are things going?” with his long face gray and tired and smiling.
“Kip?” asked Mom. “Is it ego? Tell me the truth.”
“What’s ego?” He blinked and started to shrug.
“Dr. Fl
orida and his hell-hounds.”
“Spark-hounds,” I corrected.
“Underneath the charm, is he an egotist?” Mom asked. “Is he so self-possessed that he needs to play God for empty worlds? Is that why?”
Dad was quite tired. He had been working long days lately—I suppose because of the business Dr. Florida had given him, though I wasn’t sure—and I watched him breathe and say, “I honestly don’t know, Gwinn,” and he paused. Then he said, “All right?”
“You’re a friend of his,” she said. “I just thought—”
“Listen. It’s been a shitty day for everyone.” He lifted his hands, seemingly pushing her away. His face had lost all trace of his smile, and he told Mom, “Just let me chew on something and unwind, okay? Then we’ll sit around and bad-mouth people. All you want.”
“You don’t have to be so coarse—”
“Shut up,” he said with a careful voice. “Now? Please?”
Mom sat without moving, without breathing, and then Dad was in the kitchen and she told me, “Playing God is always wrong. I hope you realize it, Ryder. I do.”
I halfway nodded, then I said, “We watched a man who thinks the hounds might come here,” and I swallowed.
She said, “Plenty of others say they can’t. There’s a lot of space between us and them.” She asked, “Are you scared?” and pulled her little hand through my hair. “Don’t be, honey. We’re not on the moon. Those are the people being hurt, the ones out there.” She watched me and tried a smile, then said, “The only one here who’s going to be hurt, I think, is Dr. Florida himself. At least his precious reputation.”
The U.N. man was telling us that within a month, without doubts, all the world’s energies could be focused on that dead comet. The threat would be finished by then. “In six weeks,” he reassured us, “this will be over and done and we’ll have learned a valuable lesson,” and the people in the audience began to applaud him, a few of them cheering.
Mom said, “See?”
Dad emerged from the kitchen, a plate of food in both hands. “What’s the latest?” he asked, smiling again.
“It’ll be finished in six weeks,” said Mom. She made no mention of his harsh words and voice. “They just said so.”
“Good.” Dad took a hearty forkful of meat and chewed, then he said, “You should have seen it.”
“What, dear?”
“Like a parade.” He swallowed and said, “There was a line of cars stuffed with reporters and whomever…all heading west. They were going out of town, and guess where?”
“He was playing God, wasn’t he, Kip?”
“I suppose so,” Dad admitted.
She touched my head, and for a little while no one spoke. Then Mom said, “Maybe if he’d spent more time fighting them and less time entertaining children—”
“Gwinn?” Dad interrupted.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking aloud.”
There were moments, now and again, when life seemed so very strange and fun, and knowing the terrible truths only made it more fun. A kind of pattern emerged, and it held for weeks. There was news on TV—the same kind of news repeated without pause and virtually without change—and at school there was constant talking and teaching about the spark-hounds. Summer was approaching, and the adults wanted us to understand things and not be afraid.
We saw pictures of the brave soldiers sitting in neat rows, like us, and then the mammoth shuttles lifted from the concrete pads, climbing toward the moon and the forward bases. We saw endless pictures of the lunar cities and the lunar people who were building barricades and weapons. There were railguns and cannons, and sometimes there were patrols combing the dusty countryside, groups of armed militia hunting for hounds. Maybe some had fallen with the chunks of the moon’s moon. Maybe the hounds had launched themselves downward in some fashion. Nobody seemed to know for certain. “The news is being sanitized,” said Dad. Which was a good thing. Never again did we see one of Dr. Florida’s soldiers drunk in a bar. Not for a minute. His surviving soldiers had been pulled off the moon’s moon, and now they were teaching the U.N. troops how to fight the hounds. Everyone was preparing for the final assault; there were no doomsayers, no cowards; and no one doubted who would win.
The hounds were smart, sure. But not human-smart.
I learned everything about them one day. Our science teacher showed us a true-to-life model of a hound. Its authenticity was guaranteed. One of Dr. Florida’s own companies had built it, distributing it free to many thousands of schools and public groups. They wanted to help people know the enemy.
There was a bulldog face, all right. It had grappling arms and legs and retractable wings. The hands had two fingers and a thumb. The tail was long and built like a rudder, and the stinging came from the tail’s tip, longer still and needlelike. Everyone knew what that stinging tail meant. Electricity in potent bursts. Our teacher said, “What about these wings?” as she unfolded them from the body. They were long and narrow, like gull wings, and she gave a weak smile and tossed the model into the air. We gasped and some giggled, the model gliding an amazing distance. Then it dropped and she said, “It’s shaped to glide forever in the strong Jupiter winds.”
The model skidded on its belly. I bent and picked it up and saw the odd round eyes covered with clear crystal, the entire body encased inside a sharp-edged insulating armor. Then the teacher said, “Ryder?” and I flipped my wrist and the hound rose and fell hard, everyone laughing when it crashed.
Our teacher found a seam in the side of the body.
She opened the belly and showed us the strange internal organs—robotlike, I thought; shiny and angular—and she pointed to the five super-loops and the big empty chamber where raw organics were made into hound meat and nest walls and fresh eggs. Then she touched a hidden button and the hound’s mouth came open, its plastic turning flexible and our teacher reaching inside with care, tugging on the lip and making the mouth huge. There were gill-like gaps in the flesh. I remembered the tiny whales in Dr. Florida’s aquarium, their baleens straining out the plankton. She said, “The tongue,” and showed us something resembling a file. It was round and covered with hard, sharp surfaces, and she read from an instruction booklet. “The tongue is intended to tear apart foreign nests. The large mouth can collect organic matter from Jovian clouds.” She nodded and brightened, lifting her head. “Remember, class! Nests fight one another. Just like ant nests fight among themselves,” and she set down the model with a flourish. Full of hope, she said, “Maybe all we need do is wait and watch, and the hounds will kill one another. Maybe so.”
There were moments, dreamy odd moments, when I saw hounds in the sky. I imagined myself on the treehouse roof, in the open, and they were dropping toward me on those big gull-like wings. A dozen hounds, maybe more. Their stinging tails were going to suck the electrical juices from our old super-loops, but I was shooting them with some secret ultimate gun that killed in a suitably gruesome way. I imagined sparks and flames and then exploding corpses, and the images made me smile for a little while. But then the satisfaction faded. I grew bored and drifted away from my game, leaving a few imaginary hounds soaring in the sky.
One Saturday evening, early in the war, four of us were up in the oak tree. Only Beth was missing. Her mother had cut herself by accident, and Beth had to stay home and wait for infections. But she would watch TV too, she had promised. There was going to be a big news conference with Dr. Florida himself. A lot of questions were going to be answered at last. At least that’s what everyone was saying.
Cody was filling a west window again, blocking the sun’s glare. Nobody spoke. The news conference started late, Dr. Florida absent. I blinked and saw Lillith and Dr. Samuelson at the podium. Dr. Samuelson’s gray hair was bright in the lights of the auditorium, and I watched him smile and beckon for Lillith to speak first.
She explained that Dr. Florida couldn’t appear tonight. Grief and stress had pushed him into bed and a doctor’s care. But he was
taking all blame on himself, and naturally he would do everything in his power to fix all damages and care for survivors. Maybe next week, God willing, he would appear in public again. It was all a matter of his strength. She thanked the audience for their indulgence and invited questions.
The questions came in waves, and Lillith took turns with Dr. Samuelson. They would point and cock their heads, listening and then giving their best answers.
Yes, oh yes! They wanted the hounds dead and thoroughly extinct. And of course no expense was being spared in the quest to find new ways to kill the monsters. Dr. Samuelson himself outlined plans to form diseases that could infect hounds, and for poisons that might be introduced into their nests and for hunting weaknesses in their super-loop guts. Those were the best hopes, he told us.
Was Florida helping the U.N. in every way? someone asked.
“Of course,” said Lillith. “Absolutely.”
How did the beasts escape in the first place? someone wondered. Was it human negligence? Sabotage? What?
Dr. Samuelson said, “Apparently simple errors were involved,” and he looked at the cameras with his voice absolutely calm. “Several fertile hounds escaped from a test chamber, and due to clerical malfunctions there was no discovery until they had bred and started two separate nests in the deep interior—”
But why was the problem hidden from the world? If more help had arrived at an earlier time, perhaps—
“Another mistake,” he conceded. “But we were convinced, absolutely convinced, that the hounds were being destroyed. We wanted to avoid a panic, you see. And we had no way of realizing their numbers and power.” He paused, then he said, “They had stolen considerable energy from our own super-loops, and due to the hard fighting there was no way to take the needed measurements.”
But what could be gained by keeping such a thing secret? Who was to be helped with such a lie?
Lillith said, “You’re right. We erred. No one’s cause was aided. Panic and overreaction haven’t been an issue. Not like we imagined.” She paused before saying, “Dr. Florida did wish to make a full disclosure at a much earlier date, but associates convinced him to wait. To bide his time. And naturally we hope that once this business is finished, soon, we can sit down and discuss these issues in depth—”
