“I am sorry I have brought you so much trouble. I am sorry to be in your life. I am a lizard. I am sorry I cannot be a human for you.” Hadad looked down at the canvas bag.
“That’s hubris.”
“What?”
“Hubris—pride. One can apologize for what one does. But when one apologizes for being human, that is playing God—hubris. The Greeks considered that the tragic flaw in man. I guess for you to apologize for being lizard is the same thing. You are what you are.” “And you, you are what you are?”
“That I’m not so certain about. Sometimes it’s easier to accept your lizardness than it is to face my humanness. I should have kept my mouth shut when Jerry asked why I was crying. I should have lied, anything but tell him the truth.”
“‘Should have’? That sounds like something we both ate for dinner.” He watched her as slowly the realization came to her of what had happened to both of their dinners, as slowly she realized he had made light of the catastrophe that had precipitated the betrayal she regretted, the mad dash through the forest, the terrifying drive down the mountain. Slowly a grin started in her eyes and spread across her face. And then he laughed himself.
Chapter 10
“There. There’s the covered bridge. That’s where they said he’d be . . . Captain, we’ve found the town. Do we burn them out?” The pilot’s voice crackled over the radio.
“No, I’m going to try to land. I want to see that lizard squirm. Go on down the canyon,” Jeffrey’s voice replied.
Paul monitored from his own craft. Patricia rode beside him. They were alone. They traveled without lights, making no radio contact, paralleling the search party, but in the crevice to the north beyond the mountains that rimmed the river gorge.
“Fool. He’s caught up in his own vendetta. He must be eliminated. Patricia.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul smiled. He enjoyed the formality Patricia insisted upon. He could count on it always, even in his bed. There was never a moment when she presumed. He liked that. And he could trust it. She was a good fighter pilot as well. Useful!
He turned his attention back to the radio transmissions.
“I can’t land. We’ll have to smoke him out.”
“Shall I turn back, Captain?”
“No, we’re on top of this. Let us know what’s up ahead.”
“Shall I intercept, Commander?” Patricia broke his reverie.
“No,” Paul sighed. “Keep out of sight.”
Chapter 11
There was a low rumble in the air above them as the hover craft scouted the gorge, this time penetrating between the canyon walls.
“Turn off your lights, and drive very fast.”
Ruth snapped off the lights just as the craft passed over the car. She accelerated quickly and the volley of shots hit the road behind them.
“They mean business. Damn, I wish I could see. 1 have to find a gravel road off to the left. I know it’s here somewhere; we’re almost back to Vida.”
“You can slow down. They are continuing down the canyon. They aren’t after us. Not this time.”
The tires squealed as she took the turn she hadn’t expected. The covered bridge of Vida appeared suddenly in front of them.
“I missed it. I’ve got to get turned around. Get down. I don’t want anyone here to see you in the car.” Hadad crouched beneath the dashboard and Ruth pulled into a driveway and backed into the highway, turning west again. The lights were still out and so she traveled slowly around the curves, hunting for the road that would take them over the crest into the next valley.
Cannon fire shook the air and lighted the sky, outlining the ridges around them. The hover craft returned fire and the brighter pulses of light gave them seconds of illumination. In the third round Ruth spotted the elusive road. It was hardly more than a driveway, but it opened up above the main road and curved gradually up through the forest. They were
well off the highway by the time the rest of the hover craft dove through the valley, firing at random as they came.
Hadad looked back to see the old wooden bridge at Goodpasture Road break into flames. He wished that Jerry and his family had left, but he knew Jerry was too upset to give up the chase. A third craft strafed the village as it came, and Hadad watched the flames and knew the farm had been hit. The first flash would have set fire to the house. And the second would have hit the truck and the extra gas cans Jerry had filled the day before. A fireball erupted and sparks caught the scrapwood, drifted up into the higher branches of the surrounding trees.
Flames leaped into the trees surrounding the river, scorched the banks, then climbed the mountains on each side of the gorge. Brightened, the contours of the canyon were easy to identify; illuminated from below, the hover craft became readily visible as huge white dragons spitting fire onto the ground.
Balls of fire blew into the sky as each house was consumed in the fire storm. Small explosions delineated the passage of the blaze as it found stored gas cans, waiting cars and trucks, the gas station in Leaburg to the west.
Hadad glanced into the backseat of the car. The tent was not there.
“You have not your camp things.”
“I was just loading when you crossed the road. I had to leave them.”
“They will be gone with the fire.”
“I know. Madge and Jerry . . .”
“Yes.”
“If only they’d gone.”
“Ruth, sometimes there is no place to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jerry had no place to go. He just did not care to fight. At least not the war. I have no place to go either.”
“I’m headed up to ... a friend’s. We can stay there. It’s possible the Visitors will pass us by. His place is way up in the mountains.”
“Ruth, I am prepared to die.”
“Well, I’m not.”
They drove on in silence. They traveled without lights, but the sky was lighted with the flash of the fighting, and the forest fire illuminated the crest behind them. It was slow, climbing, turning, scraping past bushes, dodging the larger rocks that had fallen into the road. As they topped the ridge, another hover craft appeared, this one cruising without lights down the next canyon.
“Stop the car. Let them pass,” Hadad ordered.
Ruth braked to a stop. The white phantom crossed about three hundred yards in front of them.
“They had to have seen us.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Hadad, we’re the only thing moving on the mountain.”
“The brush is thick. Without lights the car is not so obvious as you think. They did not see us or they would have opened fire.”
“What do we do now?”
“Wait to see if they turn back. If not, then we go on.”
The craft turned and came back up the ridge.
“Do not move, Ruth. They may pass again.”
Slowly the craft glided over the car, this time directly overhead.
“Hadad, I . . .”
“Shhh.”
The craft passed and continued east. For several minutes they sat, listening.
“You can drive now.”
“They might . .
“It is all right, Ruth. The craft is gone.”
Ruth started the car again and continued the slow, painstaking trail across the ridge and down into the canyon on toward Wendling. She was frightened, but the hazards of the narrow road navigated without lights soon occupied her attention.
At Wendling the road was paved. At Marcola they turned north. Hours later they reached the highway at Sweet Home.
“I need gas.” Ruth headed west on the highway, searching for a station that still had fuel. Most had during the winter. But the invasion of Prineville had disrupted the order of things as the state prepared itself for war. She passed one station with large signs—no gas—and continued on. There was traffic on the highway, and a chain of brake lights wove back toward them.
“Anot
her roadblock, damn.” Ruth waited for a clearing in the traffic and spun the car into a U turn and headed back up the highway away from the block.
There was a small station in Cascadia with no signs. She pulled in and they looked for an attendant. No one was around. She got out and tried the pump, not expecting it to work. It did. She had put in about half a tank when an old man in coveralls came around the corner of the station.
“Hey, lady, you can’t pump that, it’s against the law. You should know better; you’ve got Oregon plates. That’s the law.”
“I’m glad you’re here. I need it filled.”
“Can’t do it. We’re rationing.”
“I have to get to Detroit.”
“Can’t get to twenty-two. The army’s got the summit. Best you can do is go on down to Albany. Maybe you can get gas there.”
“How do you stay here, with the Visitors so close?”
“I pray, lady.”
The old man pumped another five gallons into her tank, and charged her double what the pump said. Ruth didn’t argue. She got back into the car, and Hadad watched the old man stash the bills in his pocket and head back around the corner of the station. As they pulled out onto the highway, Hadad noticed a station wagon in the back and the old man getting in the tail, probably going back to his nap until the next customer tried to pump some gas.
Ruth headed west again.
“You can leave me and go to Albany, the way he said.”
“I don’t know if we’ll make it, but I think I’d rather try the back road across the mountain. I’ve driven it before. It isn’t too bad.”
“Ruth ... I don’t know ...”
“I don’t either. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t have any idea what I’m even going to do when we get there. All I know is—” She started to cry and then stopped. “I don’t know anymore why I’m with you. At least before I could say I wanted to be with you. That made it all okay somehow. It didn’t matter, or maybe it did, that nobody accepted. I don’t know what I feel. I’m not certain I feel anything. It’s all numb inside.”
She found the road that ran up between the reservoirs and turned automatically. She went on talking and the words started to run together with gaps in the history where Hadad could fill in his own impressions, his own memories.
He listened. He could not help her. The values she struggled with were not his values. He listened as she described her search for someplace to settle, to work, to love, to put down the love she wanted so much to give; the fear that there would not be a world for her child to grow up in, that there would not be a world for her to grow up in. She was frightened and missed the stillness around her as the car climbed past the reservoir and up another grade.
The battle was well behind them. No craft slid overhead, no cannon fired into the air above them. The night was still, and crickets, unaware of the seriousness of the issues at hand, chirped their messages to one another across the mountain meadows.
Chapter 12
The sound of the forest fire crackled through the radio and the voices of the hover-craft pilots shouted above the excitement. Paul listened.
“That’s it, Captain. We got them all. Nobody even ran.”
“There’s a lot of smoke; pull up so you don’t get caught in it. Pull up, I say.”
“Captain, there are people running down the road.” “Open fire.”
Paul shrugged. “Waste of good meat.”
“Pardon me, Commander?”
“Nothing, Patricia. Just an observation.”
“Yes, sir.”
The shots popped through the radio in a rough staccato.
“Captain, we’re in trouble. Cannons ...”
The more distant transmission came from the scout ship down canyon. There was no response from the marauding pack over Vida. There was the sound of cannon fire and then the explosion and then the radio transmission went dead. It was unmistakably the end of the scout ship. Paul waited for some response from the other ships, for an order to turn back and avoid the confrontation, some warning about what lay ahead in the canyon, some strategy, but there was none.
“Damn fools turned off their radios and missed the warning. They’re headed right into the ambush.” “Shall I try to intercept them, Commander?”
“No, Patricia. They were foolish enough to embark
on this endeavor. Let them find their own solutions. Vida is gone. And the decision as to what to do about the priest is moot. You heard them, no one escaped the fire storm. I’d say Jeffrey got his way this time.” “Yes, Commander.”
The radios crackled back onto the air as the pilots worked out their strategies, navigating the narrow gorge, keeping low by the river that wound down the western slope of the Cascades. They flew directly into the path of the antiaircraft guns and one by one they came under heavy fire. There were shouts to pull up, to turn back, to return fire, and the interchange of shots lighted the sky in the next canyon and etched the silhouette of the range before them against a red-orange night sky. Fire began to edge over the mountains, licking up the forests, dryer than usual because of the disruption of the evaporation cycle by the removal of water from the major reservoirs for the mother ship storage tanks.
So much water had been pumped and then returned to Earth by the intervention of the resistance forces. But not every mother ship had been attacked, and enough water had been taken from the planet to shift the rainy seasons in much of the country. Oregon was particularly affected, and the now-dry timber crackled in the dry air. Rain clouds had gathered. But the rain had not fallen. And so the fire blazed on, eating up the acres and acres of wood, cresting the ridge now and working down into the next canyon.
“Commander, over there. There was movement, just a minute ago. I don’t see anything now, but I could swear something moved over the crest down there in the trees. This side of the fire, sir. There. Down there.”
“I don’t see anything. Double back. Let me have another look.”
“Yes, sir.”
The craft turned and came back up the canyon. Paul scouted the area, searching between the dark trees that had not yet burned. He saw nothing.
“Keep going, Patricia. If something did move, it is more likely to continue on its way if it thinks we didn’t spot it. There are deer in the forests below. You may have seen them fleeing the fire.”
“It looked more like an automobile or a truck, sir.” “Keep going; I’m watching.”
Paul watched the forest as they passed overhead. There was a large shadowy mass on the stones beneath the craft, but it was hard to distinguish a pattern because of the trees. If it were a car, it would have come up from Vida. The hover-craft crews had not spotted a car leaving. He questioned the possibility that anyone had had time to escape the attack, but he watched the patterns of light and dark on the planet below them.
“Continue on, beyond that ridge, then double back. But climb a little higher and reduce your speed after you turn. Maybe if we don’t stir up the air so much, your animal down there will move again, figure he can escape.”
“Yes, Commander.”
The craft maneuvered through the canyon, turned, and began a slower run. Below them the shadow escaped the trees and continued down the ribbon path of whitish stones.
“Sharp eyes, Patricia. That is a car. Now the question is, who’s inside?”
“Shall I open fire, Commander?”
“No, Patricia, just follow, preferably just above them, and out of sight; use the cloud cover. Let’s see where they go.”
The craft made figure eights to slow its forward progress to that of the automobile below. When the road became more visible beneath them and the inevitable path more obvious, they circled back over the terrain to give the driver more space to maneuver without seeing them. Paul did not want to risk detection. If the driver felt he was getting away from the Visitor attack, escaping the disaster, that was better. It would not pay to keep the watch too tight and be spotted above them, withholding fire
.
The car turned north at the intersection, heading farther up into the mountains. The craft followed, waiting for some indication of the contents of the car, some sign of who had escaped Vida.
Chapter 13
Cloud cover obscured the starlight.
“Hadad, I have to turn on the lights. I can’t see the road.”
“I know. Turn them on.”
Hadad searched the sky and the horizon. They had left the Mackenzie River gorge far behind them. Another range separated them from the raging forest fire. They could still smell the smoke, but ashes no longer fell on the road as they drove. Again the isolation of the mountains surrounded them with the illusion that all was at peace.
The road wound up the mountain, maintained here as a one-lane road, there as a two-lane road, another place as a gravel path. There were markers with numbers, numbers that related to some system, some order, some pattern that someone understood or had understood when the road was built.
The headlights caught a deer on the edge of the road as they came around one corner. Ruth stopped and the deer watched them and then turned into the forest. Bright spots reflected the lights on either side of the road as they drove, and Hadad found he was identifying the animals by their height and the distance between their eyes. He wondered if his assumptions were correct.
When they reached the ridge near Minniece Point, Hadad heard the hover craft.
“Turn out the lights,” he demanded, and Ruth did so immediately, also braking to slow the speed to the distance she could almost see in front of them.
“What is it?”
“Above us. Listen.”
The craft droned, hardly louder than the tree frogs they had heard earlier, but deeper in pitch.
“It’s directly overhead.”
Ruth stopped the car and leaned out the window to look up.
“I don’t see anything but clouds.”
“They have been following us.”
“But why?”
“Ruth, I am hunted by my people. Leave me here on the mountain. Go on without me. Go back to the roadblocks and join the resistance to save your planet. You cannot help me now.”
V 14 - The Oregon Invasion Page 12
