Earth Awakens (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  He gestured toward the helm. “Come. Let us see if the chief of your tribe still lives.”

  CHAPTER 13

  India

  Mazer was running on a treadmill in a government safe house in New Delhi when the call finally came. He looked at his beeping wrist pad, saw that it was Wit, and stepped off the treadmill to answer it.

  “Where are you?” asked Wit.

  “Exercise room. Trying to keep from dying of boredom. Please tell me we can leave this building and be useful again.”

  It was their tenth day in India. After a rocky entrance into the country—during which the Indian Air Force had threatened to shoot them down and fired a volley of warning shots—Wit had gotten on the radio and secured them a military escort to New Delhi. A decontamination crew had met them at the airport, and once Mazer, Wit, and Shenzu were clear of their biosuits, the military had taken them directly to the safe house, where they had remained under house arrest without any contact with the outside world.

  “Shower and meet me and Shenzu in the lobby in ten minutes,” said Wit. “A car will take us to Gadhavi’s labs. He believes he has the answer.”

  The goo guns they had brought from China had been confiscated the moment Mazer had landed in New Delhi. Dr. Gadhavi and his team had supposedly been hard at work on a counteragent ever since.

  Mazer jogged back to his room and hit the shower. He met Wit and Shenzu in the lobby a few minutes later. A car and two junior officers of the Indian army were waiting outside. The officers sat in the front and drove them north of the city to a large government compound surrounded by military checkpoints. The driver weaved through the campus until he parked at the curb of a white office building. A decorated officer of the Indian military in his mid-fifties met them at the curb. He smiled wide when Wit stepped from the vehicle. The two men embraced and then Wit turned to the others.

  “Captain Rackham, Captain Shenzu, I present a dear friend of mine, Major Khudabadi Ketkar of the Indian Para Commandos. His men trained with the MOPs before the invasion.”

  Ketkar smiled good-naturedly and shook everyone’s hands. “What Captain O’Toole means is that his MOPs ran circles around our PCs. Like a cat playing with a blind, three-legged mouse. He even had the gall to kill me once during a mock battle. In my own office. I’m still assembling the shattered pieces of my pride.” He laughed, winked at Wit, then gestured to the main entrance. “But come. They are waiting for us.”

  He led them inside to a security checkpoint, where a woman gave them each a visitor’s badge. A large brass seal hung on the wall behind her. It featured a Bengal tiger standing on an outcropping of rock above a cluster of lotus flowers. It bore the words: NATIONAL BIODEFENSE AGENCY. There was more written at the bottom in Devanagari script, but Mazer had no idea what it said.

  Ketkar escorted them deeper into the building, passing through a wide atrium. There was an air of opulence to the place—not flagrantly so, but it was certainly not the bland utilitarian décor Mazer had come to expect from government agencies. Marble floors. Palm trees. A fountain. It felt more like a luxurious hotel. They went through another door and then they were outside again, this time in a beautifully landscaped plaza in the center of the building. Benches, flowers, pathways, small fruit trees. Ketkar stopped and faced them. “Before we go down, I wanted to take a moment to apologize on behalf of my government for keeping you confined to the safe house since your arrival. I’ve been ordered to tell you that we did so solely for your own protection, but you’re all too smart to believe that. This is a delicate political situation, gentlemen, as you can imagine, and my superiors are taking extreme precautions. No one was quite certain what to do with you, so they kept you locked down while they argued the matter.”

  “What’s to argue?” asked Shenzu. “We came here for help.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t come here on behalf of the Chinese government. This was not a sanctioned mission. You came here as three rogue soldiers. That made a few members of our National Security Council uneasy. Our relations with China are tense as it is. Many feared how China would respond if we helped you.”

  “If the counteragent works,” said Shenzu, “China will take it gladly.”

  “Yes,” said Ketkar, “but we’re not convinced that giving the counteragent to the Chinese military is the best course of action.”

  Shenzu couldn’t hide his surprise. “What are you saying? You will let China burn? You will stand by while millions more die.”

  “You misunderstand me, Captain. India wants to help. And will help. But handing over the counteragent to your military will not necessarily produce the best results. Your army is exhausted and spread too thin. You’ve lost your best field commanders, and you have pockets of survivors regrouping into units without any clear command structure. You’re fragmented and disorganized, Captain. We’re not certain China can get the job done.”

  “You don’t mince words,” said Shenzu.

  “This is war, Captain, not a dinner party. India cannot allow the Formics to reach our borders. We must do everything in our power to stop them now, in China. Dropping off barrels of the counteragent at the Chinese border won’t cut it.”

  “What are you proposing?” asked Wit. “Troops?”

  “Essentially,” said Ketkar. “The president wants to broker a deal with the Chinese in which we offer the counteragent if they agree to allow Indian PCs into China to help administer it. That’s why I’m involved in all of this.”

  “The PCs are certainly capable,” said Wit.

  “Yes, but the Chinese have been vehemently resistant to outside troops,” said Mazer. “Especially from India and Russia. It’s not like India is an ally. Are you sure China will agree to this?”

  “They don’t have a choice,” said Ketkar. “They’re lost without the counteragent. The entire southeast coast has fallen, from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Their economy is in ashes.”

  “Even so,” said Mazer. “What if China refuses? India can’t hold the counteragent hostage. China would go public. They’d say you have the solution but aren’t sharing it. They’d say you were letting their people die. They’d paint you as heartless bastards. The world would despise you overnight. China would then put so much international pressure on you, you would be forced to give it to them anyway.”

  “It won’t come to that,” said Ketkar. “Captain Shenzu here will see to it that China approves.”

  Shenzu laughed. “Whoever told you I have a position of influence is sadly misinformed, Major. I am no one. A lowly captain. Nothing I say to the CMC or Politburo holds any weight whatsoever. I doubt I could even get a message through the people who filter their communications.”

  “You underestimate yourself,” said Ketkar. “And it’s not the CMC or Politburo you’d be addressing. It’s the people of China and the rest of the world.”

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Mazer. “A press conference?”

  “A demonstration of the counteragent,” said Ketkar. “We’d have every major news outlet covering it live via holo. Shenzu and Dr. Gadhavi will be the stars of the show. Gadhavi conducts the demonstration. He would make it theatrical.”

  “And what am I to do?” said Shenzu. “Clap and look Chinese? If so, we’re in luck. I excel at both.”

  “Your part’s more involved than that,” said Ketkar. “Following the demonstration you would then make a few heartfelt comments to the press.”

  “Again,” said Shenzu. “I’m nobody. Why would the press care what I have to say?”

  “Because you are the liaison officer of the great General Sima, the brilliant Chinese commander who destroyed a Formic lander. You will say that Sima ordered you to bring a sample of the gas to Dr. Gadhavi in the event that something happened to the Chinese science team.”

  “You want me to lie on camera?”

  “General Sima is an international hero,” said Ketkar. “And now that he’s deceased, many in China see him as a martyr. A symbol. Sending you here is precisely
the type of move a brilliant commander like him would make.”

  “So Sima gets credit for yet another victory he had nothing to do with,” said Shenzu.

  “Are we certain Sima is dead?” said Mazer. “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but it would be embarrassing if we did this only to have Sima appear on the nets debunking the whole operation.”

  “He’s dead,” said Ketkar. “His body was recovered in Lianzhou five days ago. There was such admiration for the man, the Chinese made a concerted effort to find him and handle his remains respectfully.”

  Shenzu said, “So I speak to the press and tell a flagrant lie about my former commanding officer. What good will that do?”

  “You’ll say more than that,” said Ketkar. “You’ll praise General Sima for his foresight, yes. But you will also call the development of the counteragent a shining example of two nations unifying under a single cause to defeat a common enemy. The whole world should emulate this pattern. We must all stand united.”

  “You’re making this a political speech,” said Shenzu. “I am not a politician. Nor can I speak on behalf of my government.”

  “You won’t be speaking on their behalf,” said Ketkar. “You’ll be speaking on your own behalf. As a liaison officer, as a husband, as a father to your children.”

  Shenzu regarded him skeptically. “What does my family have to do with this?”

  “Everything,” said Ketkar. “Their safety motivates everything you do, Captain. We know you better than you might think. We know, for example, that you are one of the Anonymous Twelve.”

  Shenzu didn’t move or respond.

  After an awkward silence, Mazer looked at the others and said, “Am I the only one here who doesn’t know what that means?”

  Ketkar said, “The Anonymous Twelve is the name the Chinese military has given to the unknown Chinese military personnel who gave you MOPs the nuke you needed to destroy the lander. They are, in that sense, traitors to their country. Captain Shenzu here was critical in orchestrating that entire effort.”

  Mazer turned to Shenzu. “Is that true?”

  Shenzu took a deep breath before answering. “What I did, I did for China, its people, and my loved ones. Action had to be taken.”

  “You helped get us the nuke, and then you arrested us?” said Mazer.

  “I arrested you under Sima’s orders,” said Shenzu. “Well, actually he had given the arrest orders to another officer, but I intervened and requested that he give them to me instead. I wanted to ensure you weren’t harmed in the process.”

  Mazer turned to Wit. “Did you know this?”

  “No,” said Wit, “but I suspected.”

  Shenzu faced Ketkar. “So you intend to blackmail me, Major? Is that it? If I don’t say what you want me to say and perform for the cameras, you will reveal my crime to my government and keep me from my family forever?”

  “We don’t have to blackmail you,” said Ketkar. “We don’t even have to ask you to do this. You will do it because you know it’s the right thing to do. This is more than just two countries putting aside their differences for the greater good, Captain. This is the beginning of a new Earth, a new way of operating, one that can only lead to greater peace among all nations. This is what we should have done before the Formics arrived.”

  Ketkar put a hand on Shenzu’s shoulder. “Now is the time, Captain. General Sima has started a movement. You can give it life. Your words could be the first intelligent approach to this disaster that anyone has heard.”

  “You seem to have a very specific idea of what I should say. Is there a speech written?”

  “Someone wrote one, yes. It was excellent. I told him to burn it. This has to come from you. It has to be genuine.”

  Shenzu was quiet a moment. “Show me the counteragent. Then we’ll talk.”

  Ketkar smiled and beckoned them to follow. “This way.”

  He led them to a small structure in the center of the plaza that turned out to be a set of elevators. They climbed in, and Ketkar slid back a concealed panel and entered a code. The elevator descended.

  When it stopped, they stepped out into a bright, immaculate corridor. Through the windows to their right and left, Mazer saw technicians and scientists in blue biohazard suits working with various machines, scanners, and diagnostic equipment. Ketkar kept moving, leading them deeper into the complex down a series of corridors. Finally they stepped into an observation room with a vaulted ceiling. The wall to Mazer’s left was solid glass. The room beyond it was mostly empty save for a metal table to one side atop of which sat various plastic boxes and liquid containers.

  A short Indian man in his late sixties was standing in the observation room at a computer terminal. The sleeves of his blue oxford shirt were rolled up past his elbows. Gloves made of reflective sequined fabric covered his hands and forearms. His face brightened when he saw them. “Captain O’Toole. We meet again.”

  “Dr. Gadhavi. A pleasure, as always.”

  Gadhavi approached, and Wit introduced Mazer and Shenzu.

  Gadhavi bowed. “Welcome to India, gentlemen. I am sorry we are meeting under these circumstances. Please, won’t you stand here behind this line? I’m told everyone’s ready and we can begin.”

  It was only then that Mazer noticed the small cameras on the wall behind them. Other spectators would be watching apparently.

  Gadhavi walked to the center of the room in front of the glass wall where a red circle was painted on the floor. As soon as he stepped in it, holoprojectors above him turned on and bathed him in a holofield. He put his back to the glass and faced them, directing his words at the cameras. “The Formic gas is a highly toxic, cell-wall-degrading enzyme solution. In principle, it’s not unlike, say, phytopathogenic fungi here on Earth, which degrade plant biomass at an alarming rate. The difference of course is its toxicity. The Formics’ gas is a thousand times worse than our nastiest fungi. It eats through lignocellulose, for example, which is often resistant to enzymatic degradation, as if it were cotton candy. And we’ve all seen what it can do to humans. It breaks down cell walls and initiates a proteolytic process that’s not unlike what our digestive system does to a bite of steak. It short, it turns biomass into gooey pulp. That’s the bad news.”

  He turned around and faced the glass wall.

  In the holofield, his sequined gloves twinkled in the light.

  He raised his arms to the side, and two long robotic arms in the other room lowered from their recessed hiding place in the ceiling. Gadhavi walked in place, turned his head slightly to the right, and the robotic arms moved along a track in the ceiling in the direction Gadhavi indicated. The arms came to a stop at the table, and Gadhavi spread his fingers apart. The ends of the robotic arms split and separated, forming matching digits.

  Using the bot arms as an extension of his own, Gadhavi lifted two sealed, liter-sized jugs off the table, carried them to the center of the empty room, and set them a distance apart on the floor.

  Then he turned and faced the cameras.

  “Those two containers beyond the glass wall each hold six hundred milliliters of the Formic solution, or ‘goo’ as the soldiers call it. The protein looks like this.”

  A giant model of a globular protein appeared in the holofield beside him.

  “As you can see, it has a very complex tertiary and quaternary structure in which the polypeptides fold around each other to essentially form a sphere. This shape is maintained by hydrogen bonds and ionic forces. Altering its shape through heat, a change in pH, or nonreversible inhibition renders the enzyme denatured, or useless. The molecular structure may be alien and unlike anything we’ve ever seen, but the laws of chemistry are universal. We may not have mastered interstellar flight, but we do know how to shake up a molecule. That’s the good news.”

  He flicked his hand, and the protein disappeared. Then he turned and faced the glass wall again. He lifted his arms, maneuvered the robotic arms back to the table, and picked up a glass jar of orange liquid with
a screwed top.

  “This, ladies and gentlemen, is our counteragent, an enzyme inhibitor, preheated to sixty degrees Celsius. When it’s fired at the goo, the heat causes some of the Formic enzymes to vibrate so violently that the delicate bonds that maintain their molecular structure are broken. The inhibitors take care of the rest, rendering the entire enzyme solution useless. But that’s not even the fun part. Once the molecule changes its shape, we can do whatever we want with it, including turning it against the Formics.”

  Gadhavi moved his hands. Inside the other room, the robot arms came to life and unscrewed the lid from the jar. When they were finished, the bot arms set the jar back on the table and lifted a shotgun from a gun case. A sprayer mechanism with its own barrel adjacent to the shotgun barrel was mounted on the underside of the weapon. The bot arms picked up the jar of orange counteragent again and screwed it into the bottom of the sprayer.

  Gadhavi said, “We have two objectives in China as far as the gas is concerned. One, clearing the air of what’s already been sprayed, and two, destroying the goo guns and other caches. This weapon is designed to do both. For the gas in the air, it can spray a mist.”

  Inside the room, the lid popped off one of the two jugs of goo on the floor. Gas poured upward, a swirling fog of grayish green vapor.

  Gadhavi got into a firing position.

  In the other room, the gun unleashed a thick stream of orange mist into the cloud. When the two solutions met, the fog became a fireball that flashed bright and then snuffed out a heartbeat later, like a lit match tossed into a pan of gunpowder. The now empty jug skittered across the floor and bounced off the opposite wall.

  “The other jug is like a goo tank,” said Gadhavi. “We made it with a substance of similar durability. The shotgun round has an armor-piercing slug that punctures the goo tank and releases pellets of our counteragent into the goo. Since both solutions are concentrated, the reaction is even more volatile.”

  The robot arm cocked the shotgun, aimed, and fired. The jug took the round dead center and shot across the floor, spinning. One second passed. Then another. Nothing happened. Then the jug detonated like a bomb, and tiny fragments of shrapnel pinged against the glass.