Footfall

by Larry Niven

  Safe? From four thousand megatons?

  There wasn't any safety. Villars' urge was to submerge and flee at flank speed. Off to starboard, the island of Rodriguez blazed with the colors of life. Jungle had long since given way to croplands. In the center bare rock reared sharply, a peak a third of a mile high. Waves broke over a surrounding coral reef. That reef would provide more cover when the tsunami came, but it was a danger too.

  Fishing boats were straggling in through the reef. Probably doomed. There was nothing Villars could do for them.

  It was just dusk. Clouds covered the sky. It would be difficult to see anything coming. Four thousand megatons. Bigger than any bomb we ever dreamed of, much less built.

  The crew waited tensely. John Antony, the Exec, stood close by.

  "About time," Antony said.

  "If their estimate was on."

  "If their time was off, so were their coordinates."

  I know that. I had the same instructor at Annapolis as you did.

  Somebody laughed and choked it off. The news had filtered through the ship, as news like that always did.

  The cameras were working. Villars wondered how many would survive. He peered through the darkest filter available. Four thousand megatons . . .

  Suddenly the clouds were blazing like the sun. "First flash at 1854 hours 20 seconds," he called. "Log that." Where? Where would it fall?

  All in an instant, a hole formed in the clouds to the northeast, the glare became God's own flashbulb, and the cameras were gone. "Get those other cameras up," Villars bellowed at men who were already doing that. His right eye saw nothing but afterimage. He put his left to the periscope.

  He saw light. He squinted and saw light glaring out of a hole in the ocean. A widening hole in the ocean, with smoothly curved edges; wisps of mist streaming outward, and a conical floodlight beam pointing straight up. The beam grew wider: the pit was expanding. Clouds formed and vanished around a smoothly curved wall of water sweeping smoothly toward the sub.

  The rim of a sun peeped over the edge.

  "I make it about forty miles east northeast of present position. Okay, that's it." Villars straightened. "Bring in the cameras. Down periscope. Take us to ninety feet." How deep? The further down, the less likely we'll get munched by surface phenomena, but if those tsunamis are really big they might pile enough water on top of Ethan Allen to crush us. "Flank speed. Your course is 135 degrees." That leaves us in deep water and puts Rodriguez between us and that thing, for whatever good it'll do.

  So we've seen it. A sight nobody ever saw — well, nobody who wrote it down, anyway. Now all I have to do is save the ship.

  Ethan Allen

  was about to fight the biggest tsunami in human history — and just now he was broad on to it. He glanced at his watch. Tsunamis traveled at speeds from two hundred to four hundred miles an hour. Call this one four. Six minutes . . . "Left standard rudder. Bring her to 85 degrees."

  "Bring her to 85, aye, aye," the quartermaster answered.

  "Warn 'em," Villars said.

  "Now hear this. Now hear this. Damage control stations. Stand by for depth charges."

  Might as well be depth charges . . .

  The ship turned.

  It surged backward. Villars felt the blood rushing into his face. Somewhere aft, a shrill scream was instantly cut off, and the Captain heard a thud.

  Minutes later: "There's a current. Captain, we're being pulled northeast."

  "Steady as she goes." Goddam. We lived through it!

  * * *

  The news came on at nine A.M. when you could get it. Marty always listened. Fox didn't always bother.

  No matter how early he got up, Marty always found Fox was awake with a pot of coffee. It was no use persuading Fox to go easy on the coffee.

  "When we run out, we do without. Until then, we have coffee," was his only answer to Marty's pleas to conserve.

  "You know your trouble, Marty?"

  Marty looked up from the radio he was trying to tune. "Eh?"

  "You're still connected to that world you left. As long as you let civilization worry you, it's one more way the desert can kill you. Relax. Go with the punches. There's nothing they can do to us. We've already given up everything they control. Now it's us."

  "Yeah, sure." Marty tuned the set carefully. "You think you've quit, huh?" He'd thrown a wire for an antenna across the top of the tall pole somebody had set up as a flagpole years ago. It worked pretty well.

  Four hours after dawn Shoshone would normally have been a furnace. This morning some strange clouds, wispy and very high, had begun to form quite early. They weren't thick enough to block off the sun, but they must have had some effect. It was still hot enough to bring sweat.

  Fox said, "I'm just taking a break. I'll save the world when it wants saving again."

  "Okay, so nobody's worried about the snail darter when the sky is full of bug-eyed monsters. But I've listened to you, John and you'd still like to make Washington—"

  "Not Washington anymore."

  "Yeah. Atom bombs in Kansas don't ruffle your feathers? . . . I think I got it tuned."

  "Ruffled feathers be damned." Fox had his self-inflating mattress stretched out on a flat rock. He didn't seem to notice the heat. Sprawled out with his coffee mug sitting on a flat stone, he looked indecently comfortable. "The question is, who's going to listen?"

  "Shh."

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

  "Hey, John, we got the President on."

  "Yeah?" But Fox moved his mattress closer.

  "My fellow Americans, this morning the alien invaders struck at Earth with a large artificial meteor, which landed in the Southern Hemisphere, in the Indian Ocean. The effect was that of a tremendous bomb. My advisors inform me that we can expect some severe weather effects."

  "Meteor," Fox muttered. He looked up, and Marty did too. There were more clouds now . . . and they were swirling, changing, growing dense and dark, streaming east like foam on a breaking wave. Marty remembered how fast clouds moved in a Kansas tornado. These were moving faster.

  ". . .Global weather will definitely be affected. This makes Project Greenhouse even more important. I call upon every one of you to raise food. In small pots, indoors, outdoors, wherever you can. If you can build greenhouses, do so. County agents and other Department of Agriculture experts will show you how.

  "America must feed herself."

  Marty thought, Not here, we won't. But the grin wouldn't come.

  "Global weather," Fox said again. "Christ, have they thrown us a dinosaur killer? Indian Ocean. How long will that take? Marty?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "How much gas do we have?"

  "About five gallons."

  "Better gas up the truck. I think I want to use it."

  * * *

  By noon the clouds covered the sky. The sun that had blazed like a deadly enemy since Marty's arrival two days ago was hidden now. Marty watched Fox with some concern; for Fox watched the sky as if he feared a corrosive rain. The rain started at one. The first huge drops drummed on the truck cab, and Marty lifted his face to taste it. It was only plain water.. . not plain, not at all, and Marty felt a thrill of fear when he tasted silt and salt. Fox shouted, "Let's go."

  "Go where?"

  "Come on, damn it!"

  Marty jumped in after him. He had just time to whistle up the dogs and let them jump into the truck bed. He was a little worried about Darth, who was young enough to try jumping out when the truck was moving.

  "Damn dogs, can't even stay and watch the camp."

  "Sure they can, if that's what you want," Marty said. "Are we coming back?"

  "Huh? Yeah, we're coming back."

  "Then stop long enough for me to tell them what to do!"

  "Oh. Yeah, sure."

  Fox stopped the truck. Marty posted the dogs, except for the pup, who'd have to come with them. "Guard."

  Chaka looked up mournfully, but ob
eyed.

  The rain was falling hard now. Rain in July? in Shoshone above Death Valley? Sea-bed silt, when the meteor struck in the Indian Ocean? I don't believe this. "Where are we going?"

  "Place I know. Come on." Fox drove down the dirt track to the main road.

  A big gasoline tanker was parked at the diner. Marty felt a twinge. That tanker held enough gas to get them both to the Enclave in Bellingham a hundred times over. I wonder where he's taking it?

  They drove up the paved road, then turned left onto a gravel road. Fox drove as he always did, faster than Marty would, but carefully. He ground his lean jaw as he drove.

  What's got to him?

  They rounded a peak and drove onto a wide ledge.

  Fox got out slowly. Marty followed. Darth came with him, huddling against his leg.

  Death Valley was spread out below them, barren as the Moon.

  More like Mercury, Marty thought, remembering the terrible heat. But he could see very little. Rain obscured the view, and a fog was rising too. The rain would evaporate as it struck.

  Fox gestured, like Satan offering Christ the world. "This is what trapped them, the first ones here. Look how gently it slopes down. It's just barely steep enough to stop a horse-drawn wagon from getting back up—"

  "I've been here."

  "And you've seen the Devil's Golf Course and Scotty's Castle, I don't doubt, and the dunes. But have you seen the life?" The rain was loud, but John Fox was louder. He wasn't shouting; he was letting his voice project, as if he had an audience of thousands. "It's like another planet here. Plants and animals have evolved that couldn't survive anywhere else. If conditions—"

  For a moment the roar of wind and rain drowned out even John Fox. It was as if a bathtub of salt water had been poured on Marty's head. He screamed, "John, John, what's happening?"

  "The damned aliens, they're terraforming Earth to their own needs! They've thrown an asteroid in the Indian Ocean! And I was trying to stop atomic plants. I should have been screaming for atomic plants to power laser rockets! I tried to stop the Space Shuttle, damn me for a fool. They've smashed every environment on Earth! Damn you," he shouted into the sky. "Pour fire on the Earth, pile bodies in pyramids! We can live anywhere! We'll hide in the deserts and mountain peaks and the Arctic ice cap, and one day we'll come forth to kill you all!"

  Death Valley was a bowl of steam. There was nothing to see, yet John Fox peered into it, seeing nightmares. "An old sea bed," he said in an almost normal voice. "A salt sea. They'll all die."

  The rain fell.

  PART FOUR:

  THE CLIMBING FITHP

  30

  FOOTPRINTS

  Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.

  —JEREMIAH 5:21

  The contorted moonlet dropped away, dwindled, vanished. Earth grew huge. A flashbulb popped above the Indian Ocean, and was replaced at once by a swelling, darkening fireball. Ring-shaped shadows formed and faded in and around it. Far from the central explosion, new lights blinked confusingly in points and radial streaks.

  The Earth's face streamed past, terrifyingly close but receding now. A wave in the cloud cover above the Indian Ocean raced outward, losing its circular shape as it traveled. Northward, it took on a triangular indentation, as if the edge of a blanket had snagged on a nail.

  "India," Dawson said. "How fast are you running this tape?"

  "Thirty-two times normal," Tashayamp answered.

  "What is . . . that?" Alice asked.

  "Land masses. The tsunami distorts the clouds," Arvid said.

  "So does the ocean floor," Dawson amplified, "but not as much. That's India going under. Those flashes would have been secondary meteors, debris, even water from the explosion thrown out to space and reentering the atmosphere."

  That's India going under. Good-bye, Krishna, and Vishnu the elephant god

  . Jeri shuddered. "Dave took me to India once. So many people. Half a billion." Arvid stood near. She felt his warmth and wanted to be closer to him.

  Tashayamp said, "Number?"

  Arvid said, "Eight to the eighth times eight times three."

  "Human fithp in India? Where the wave goes now?"

  "Yes."

  Dmitri spoke rapidly in Russian.

  "Stalin thought that way," Arvid snapped.

  Dmitri shrugged expressively.

  What was that about?

  Jeri wondered. Arvid didn't like it at all. Stalin? He would have been pleased to have a simple answer to the India "problem." It's easier to deal with "problems" than people. The distortion in the clouds swept against Africa, then south. Here was clear air, and a ripple barely visible in the ocean . . . but the outline of the continent was changing, bowing inward.

  "Cape of Good Hope," Jeri muttered. She watched the waves spread into the Atlantic. Recorded hours must be passing. She found herself gasping and suspected she had been holding her breath. The waves were marching across the Atlantic, moving on Argentina and Brazil with deceptive slowness and a terrible inevitability.

  Cloud cover followed, boiling across the oceans, reaching toward the land masses. "My God," Jeri said. "How could you do this?"

  "It is not our choice," Raztupisp-minz said. "We would gladly have sent the Foot safely beyond your atmosphere, but your fithp would not have it so."

  "Look what you made me do," Alice said in a thick, self-pitying whine. Her voice became a lash. "All the sickies say that — the rogues say that when they've done something they're ashamed of. It was somebody else's fault."

  "They can say all they like," Carrie Woodward said. "We know. They came all the way from the stars to ruin the land."

  "You should not say such things," said Takpusseh. "You do not want this to happen again. You will help us."

  "Help? How?" Dawson demanded.

  "You, Wes Dawson, you tell them. More come."

  Dmitri spoke again in Russian. Arvid shuddered.

  The screen changed again. Clouds moved so unnaturally fast that Jeri thought they were still watching a tape until Takpusseh said. "That is now. Winterhome."

  Earth was white. The cloud cover was unbroken.

  "Rain. Everywhere," Nikolai said. "The dams are gone. There will be floods."

  The Earth was distant now, and no longer turning beneath them "Synchronous orbit," Nikolai said. "Above Africa. Look!"

  White streaks blazed across Earth's night. That was Africa, and the digit ships were going down.

  "Go now. Tashayamp, take them," the Bull Elephant said. "Dawson, Raztupisp-minz, stay."

  * * *

  The Herdmaster waited until the rest had left the theater. Then, before he could speak, Dawson said, "I will not tell my fithp to surrender."

  If Dawson made to grip his eyelid, the Herdmaster would simply slap him across the room. He said, "You will. Raztupisp-minz, tell him details, but later. Wes Dawson, did you speak with Fathisteh-tulk?"

  "Name not known." Dawson's eyes flicked sideways, at Raztupisp-minz. "Wait. Second in leader status? Advisor?"

  "Yes."

  "He came to me."

  "Raztupisp-minz, you permitted this?"

  Breaker-One Raztupisp-minz hesitated, then gestured affirmation. "The Advisor thought he might find an unusual angle of approach. I thought it worth a try."

  Takpusseh's thuktun at the time had been the Soviets. Raztupisp-minz had been studying Dawson alone. Balked by Takpusseh, Fathisteh-tulk would have had to go to Raztupisp-minz. "Dawson, what was said?"

  The human still lacked skill in the speech of the thuktunthp. Questioning him took more time than the Herdmaster liked, but he persisted.

  According to Dawson's tale, when he reached his room after his first foray into the ducts, there was a piece of cloth over his night light, and a fi' was waiting for him. A pressure suit helmet and glove covered its face and digits.

  "Then how can you know you spoke to Fathisteh-tulk?" the Herdmaster demanded.
>
  "I make him take it off."

  "Did you. How?"

  "Reason he was in my room, he will not tell. He asked questions. 'We take Winterhome. Query: is this wrong? We use moons and circling rocks, not want planets. Query: is it true? Tell why. Tell if humans took wealth from space.'"

  The rogue human shrugged. "I tell fi', Wes Dawson. Congressman. 514-55-2316."

  "I don't understand," said the Herdmaster.

  "Warrior under foot of enemy give his name, standing, and number, and not else."

  "Wrong. Tell more."

  "He said, 'Dawson, you gave your surrender.' I said, 'I not surrendered to you. Who are you? If I talk to you, who is enraged?'"

  The arrogant creature actually had a point. "Very proper."

  "He take his helmet off. I take the cloth off the light. He said, 'I am the Herdmaster's Advisor. Query: war with Earth is wrong? We want Space, not Earth?'

  "I said, 'Yes.'"

  "Of course you did. Go on."

  "What is . . ." Dawson tried to wrap his mouth around an unfamiliar fithp word " . . . fufisthengalss?"

  Dissident

  . "You have no need to know. Speak further." "He said he is fufisthengalss. Fufisthengalss are many. Fufisthengalss want to go away from Winterhome. I say, 'It sound pretty to me. Query: I can help?'

  "He said, 'Give me reasons if Thuktun Flishithy leave Winterhome.'

  "I tell him about loot of Moon and Mars and asteroids. Metals. Oxygen bound in rocks and dust. Things to make in free-fall, cannot do under thrust. Power from sunlight, not thinned by Winterhome air, not blocked by Winterhome storms and Winterhome night. We only begin to take the loot of space when you come to take the loot of Winterhome. Let us alone and we move all dirty industry to space, turn Winterhome into . . . into Garden."

  "Fathisteh-tulk would have enjoyed hearing that."

  "He enjoy. He is hurrying. He leave before I finish. I not see him after." Dawson's digits flicked toward the screen that showed Fathisteh-tulk's corpse. "Some fithp disagree with fufisthengalssthp?"