Footfall

by Larry Niven

He said, "Sure I want to make love. I've been chaste for months. Are you aware that I'm a married person?"

  "How far away is your wife?"

  "Carlotta's twenty-two thousand three hundred miles away. Wait a minute. That's geosynchronous orbit, measured from the center of -the Earth, and we're over Africa, so . . . another two, three thousand miles."

  He was treating this as all too amusing. Alice said, "So she's not likely to come barging in on us."

  "No. Why me, Alice?"

  "I think you killed the Bull's Advisor."

  Good, the amusement had gone out of him. "Again, why me?"

  "Who else would have the guts?"

  "Any cluster of eight or more fithp who didn't like his politics."

  Alice grinned. She'd been scared to death when she made this decision, but- "Play your games, Congressman, but you wouldn't be hesitating if you weren't guilty."

  "Oh, I . . . don't. . . It wasn't like you think."

  He did it!

  "How was it then?" "I didn't sneak up on the poor fithp and strangle him in his sleep. I—" The violence she knew was buried in Wes Dawson surfaced in his face. For a moment she regretted her decision. You can always find an excuse. If the horrors were listening there'd never be another chance. She moved closer to him.

  Rage was in his eyes, and they looked through her. "I thought I had it all fixed! The Herdmaster's Advisor wanted to leave Earth. What he wanted from me was arguments to use. I by God was willing to give them. He ran out of time, the first time we met, so we set something else up.

  "After five days we were still cleaning out the ducts near the hull," Dawson said. "The Bull probably thinks he's training us to make repairs in that area. I'd seen the mudroom, I knew how to reach it. Fathisteh-tulk was supposed to be waiting in the mudroom.

  "The duct was warmer this time. You saw the door, with a knob the size of a soup bowl? I turned the knob and the door went back on springs. -I squeezed through. I left my gear in the duct, just behind me.

  "There were warm and cold currents mixing. Grill at the end. I looked through and saw a lot of black mud. The air currents set up ripples in it, but there wasn't enough thrust to move it. We were still pushing on the Foot then.

  "Nobody was there."

  She could feel' the disappointment. "Nobody? Nothing?"

  "Not then. I was very, very nervous. I kept wondering what he really wanted. Military information? It was a silly way to get it—"

  "They're not that tricky."

  "Yeah. I didn't know that then. If he tried something I didn't like, I was going to back down the duct, scream for the warriors, and lay a charge of mutiny on him. But maybe he just wanted me on record, encouraging mutiny myself. I thought I'd better see if there were witnesses.

  "So I took the wing nuts off and worked the grill loose. I was going to go in, but I heard something, so I pulled the grill back in place. Fathisteh-tulk came in, walking along the wall on those Velcro shoes they wear.

  "He got right to the point, like we'd never ended the last conversation. He told me about the dissidents, the fufisthengalss, mostly spaceborn, who don't think conquering Earth is worth the bother. It sounded ideal. I was actually wishing I had Dmitri Grushin with me. He said there are a lot of dissidents, and they want to make peace, but they, um, they're diffident. They don't want to make waves, they don't want to be rogues. Stick with the herd. Like voters in the natural state. They need jazzing up, something to get them moving."

  His eyes shone, and he waved his hands excitedly. I can see why they vote for him. Especially women. She felt a tingling in her loins. It was a feeling she'd long since known was dangerous, and for a moment the old fears came back. He won't like me— He left her no time for more thought.

  "I said it would be easy to make peace. I tried to tell Fathisteh-tulk how often yesterday's enemies become today's allies. I think that confused him. For the fithp, yesterday's enemies are today's slaves are tomorrow's citizens. I think he believed me, though."

  He would. I would.

  "I told him. If the fithp would mine the asteroids, we could trade their metals for our fertilizer and soil and nitrogen. We'd all get rich! I told him we'd grow fithp plants and animals for them. There's bound to be somewhere on Earth where any damn thing will grow that grows in water and air. I really don't think I lied to him at any point.

  "Alice, I can't blame myself. I was being as persuasive as I knew how—"

  "They're different. They're crazy." It's a great story. But get through with it! She'd never felt that way, not since a certain high school dance. The anticipation had been there, but things had gone too far too fast and she panicked and ran from the car . . . and the next morning everyone knew the tale. For a moment the dread rose in her again—

  But this was very different. She hadn't expected to find herself playing therapist. Should she resent it?

  "Oh, but I had Fathisteh-tulk all figured out," he said. "I talked about how to use space. I'm good at that too, I was doing the research in my teens. Solar power collectors. Free-fall chemistry. Alloys that won't mix in gravity. Single-crystal fibers stronger than anything you can make in a gravity field. They'd missed a lot of that!"

  "Why?"

  "It's not in their granite cubes. Alice, they're powerful, but they're stupid!"

  "Not stupid. Crazy, maybe."

  "Or something in between. They don't think for themselves. Maybe they never had to. But I told him. I told him about mass drivers. It's easy to put stuff in orbit from the Moon. O'Leary's plan to mine the asteroids, do you know that one? You land a fully equipped mine on a metal asteroid. Put a big bag-around the asteroid. You refine the metal, but you keep the slag-that's what the bag is for. You make hemispherical mirrors from the metal and use them for solar power. More metal becomes a linear accelerator. It gets longer and longer. Before you quit, the accelerator's so long that the asteroid looks like the head of a sperm. Now you run slag down the linear accelerator. You get a rocket with arbitrarily high exhaust velocity! You put the rest of the asteroid into orbit around Earth and—"

  "You told him all that in fithp?"

  Wes Dawson stared, then laughed. "I stuttered a lot and used simple words and waved my hands through the air. I must have got it across. It killed him."

  "How?"

  "I told him too much the fithp don't know. He said, 'You must be of our fithp when we take the riches of the worlds! You must be swallowed into the Traveler Herd."

  Wes's chest was heaving. "I think-if I hadn't known it was my mistake-I wouldn't have been so mad. I said we could tell them anything they wanted to know. He said, 'I hear more than you say, Dawson. You want this wealth for your fithp. If we do not fight you for your own planet, we will presently fight you for the others.'

  "I threw the grill at him and jumped behind it. The grill bounced off his head. Must have startled him. I was still in the air when I realized I was committing suicide. He turned his head away- he must have remembered how I attacked Takpusseh-and I kicked against his shoulder and was headed back into the duct, just trying to get away, thinking, Damn! I've blown it.

  "I made the duct and wiggled in, quick like an eel. Something wrapped around my knee. I looked back and the grill aperture was full of a fi's face, and the other digits were reaching for me."

  Nightmare!

  Alice found herself gripping his arm, and her nails— She eased off, but didn't let go. And he hadn't noticed. "I must have been crazy. Maybe I couldn't have pulled loose. I didn't even try. I snatched my gear and swarmed back down the duct at him. Felt like I was attacking an octopus. I squirted that bag of soapy water in his eyes, pfoosh! He backed away a little, and I jammed my feet into the duct walls and shook the line loose and knotted it around his trunk, above the nostril, and pulled it tight. Then I heaved backward.

  "You know, he didn't have any leverage. I pulled back and he came with me. He had all eight digits around me. It felt like he was tearing my leg off, but he couldn't get a digit around my neck becau
se I kept my chin tucked down. I pulled that line just as tight as I could and hung on, and after a bit the grip slacked off. I guess the digits weren't getting any blood. I pulled him farther into the duct, and I clawed that door-on-springs open and hooked the line over the knob."

  Wes looked at her suddenly. "From there on it was murder."

  "So you're an inhuman murderer. Go on."

  "What? . . . Yeah. But this inhuman would have blown the dissident movement apart. It was easy. It wasn't as if I was fighting a fi' any more. I was fighting a fi's head. His torso was out there in the mudroom, useless as tits on a boar. I had a tourniquet above his nostril. I crawled down toward his mouth. He said, 'Dawson, you gave your surrender.'

  "I said, 'I was raped.'"

  Alice burst out laughing. Wes said, "English, of course. I wish I could have said it in fithp . . . hell, they don't have rape. I crawled down until I could get my knees braced under his jaw, and I jammed his mouth closed. His digits were patting at me, and I could hear him thrashing outside. After a while all of that stopped. I held on for . . . God, I don't know how long. His eyes weren't looking at anything and he wasn't moving.

  "I kicked him out into the mudroom. I pulled the grill into place, and then I couldn't find the goddam wing nuts. It looked like it'd stay, so I just left.

  "He'd wrenched my knee and hip. They were hurting when I got out of the ducts. I hailed a soldier, and he didn't notice.

  Couldn't read a man's face, maybe, or a politician's. By the time I reached my cell, my knee was the size of a football. In gravity I couldn't have moved. But I had four days to heal before Thuktun Flishithy disconnected from the Foot."

  "You didn't push him into the mud?"

  "Nope. I don't know who did that. There are some funny politics going on aboard this ship."

  Alice smiled slowly. "That's frustrating. Well, Congressman? I'm still here."

  "Yeah." He studied her for a moment. He was a little afraid of her; she saw. As if she were dangerously fragile? "You've had some time to think. Maybe what you need is just a hug? God knows I owe you."

  What Was he waiting for? She hadn't intended to say- "Do I look to you like a freemartin?"

  "A what?"

  "Raztupisp-minz thought I might be a—"

  "That's ridiculous. You get a freemartin when a female calf has, a twin brother. It gets too much of the male hormones. Humans can't be freemartins."

  "Good," she said, and launched herself at him.

  * * *

  "Down periscope. Surface." Captain Anton Villars deliberately kept his voice flat and dull. They can't watch the whole ocean. It's just too damned big. Isn't it?

  Ethan Allen

  rose silently to the surface. The lookouts swarmed up into the conning tower. After a moment Villars felt moist cool night air. "All clear, sir."

  Villars climbed the steel ladder into the moonless overcast night. Topside was a steady westerly wind. He estimated it at nine knots. The sea rolled with large stately swells, some topped by whitecaps. A light rain pattered down onto the submarine's deck.

  The African coast lay dead ahead. Villars studied it with his night glasses. He didn't dare risk a radar sweep.

  "Quiet as the dead," his exec said.

  "Not the most cheerful image," Villars muttered.

  "Sorry, Captain."

  "Bring 'em up," Villars said at last.

  There were twenty-six of them. Fourteen had painted their faces black. The others, including Colonel Carter, their commander, hadn't needed to.

  Carter looked at the sea and grimaced. "More weather than I like."

  "Not much choice," Villars said.

  "Yeah. Okay, Carruthers, get the boats inflated."

  The troopers climbed gingerly to Ethan Allen's pitching deck. Some of the waves broke just high enough to send spray flying across it. They inflated their boats. "Ready, Colonel," one called softly.

  "Right. Captain, if you can send up our supplies—"

  Villars nodded to his exec. The crew passed up a number of boxes, each wrapped in waterproofing materials. They laid them into the boats and helped the soldiers lash them into place.

  "You've got a long walk," Villars said. "Sorry I couldn't get you any closer."

  "It's okay," Carter said.

  "I didn't want to ask before," Villars said. "But I will. How you get this assignment?"

  Carter grinned wolfishly. "My grandmother always said we were Zulu. Made me study the language. I hated it. I never real believed her, but what the hell, it made a good story. So when the President wanted to send elephant guns to the Zulu nation who better to send?"

  He was still grinning as he climbed into the boat.

  * * *

  The warning bell bonged. Miranda Shakes put down her book as went to the window to see who had opened the gate. "Kevin!"

  "Yeah?"

  "Get Dad."

  Kevin came in from the kitchen. "Why?"

  "Look."

  "Oh, crap. Carnell. Look at all those dogs! Who's that with him?"

  "I don't know. We've seen him before. Look, they're coming here. Get Dad."

  William Shakes wasn't happy. "Look, you never paid your share. You sure as hell haven't done your share of the work."

  "Relax, Bill. Nobody's pointing a gun at your head, but I do own a piece of the place, and you invited Fox—"

  "I didn't. George did."

  "Hell, if I'm too much trouble," Fox said, "I can always find a place—"

  "Not now," Miranda said. "Nobody gets out of Bellingham now."

  "Yeah," Kevin agreed. "You won't even get close to the high way."

  "We didn't have any trouble getting in," Carnell said dubiously

  "Getting in isn't the problem," William Shakes said. "It's getting out. And what will you do here?"

  "Hell, there's got to be work," Fox said.

  "That's what we thought," Kevin said. "All those Army people, Navy too. Trucks. Ships. But it's like it's in another country, a long way off. The only jobs are down in the harbor."

  "Doing what?"

  "Nobody's telling," Kevin said.

  "So we go to the harbor—"

  "I thought of getting a job down there. Miranda's friend warned me. It's like the whole town. People go in, but they never come out."

  "Military staff," Fox said. "I don't suppose they need me. It rains all the time. Who needs a desert rat? Anywhere . . . What do they say they're doing down there?"

  "They say greenhouses," Kevin said.

  "I know greenhouses—"

  "But that's not it."

  "Something important," Miranda said. "Important enough that the whole town doesn't exist anymore. You never hear about it on the radio."

  "Something big," Fox mused. "Something to hurt snouts?"

  "Bound to be" Miranda shook her head wistfully. "That's the only reason Jeananne would do that—"

  "Jeananne?"

  "Jeananne was a friend of mine. Some big shot from Washington came here and talked to her. Whatever he told her really got to her, because she told the Army about our radios. A whole bunch of soldiers came up to take them, the CBs, ham gear, everything. Not just here. Everywhere in Bellingham. But Jeananne, she brought them here!"

  "Some friend," Kevin said.

  "What the hell could he have told her?" Fox demanded. "It must have been important."

  "I never got a chance to ask," Miranda said. "After they searched the Enclave and took all our radios, they took her with them. I've never seen her since. Not that I want to."

  "Yeah, but if it hurts snouts—"

  George Tate-Evans came in from the kitchen. He'd obviously been listening. "Okay, Fox, I give up," George said. "What's got you so pissed off at snouts?"

  Fox's eyes had a haunted look. "No matter what they did, people never hurt the Earth the way the snouts did. They don't care. It's not their planet. I could always get to people's co sciences. How do I get to the snouts?"

  "None of which solves our present proble
m," William Shake said. "You can't stay here. There's barely enough for us to eat."

  "What do they do with people who come in and don't have place to go?" Fox asked.

  "I don't know—"

  "I don't think I want to find out." Fox looked out across the Enclave. "What's in the greenhouses?"

  "Squash. Tomatoes—"

  "Know a lot about hydroponics?"

  "We have books," George Tate-Evans said.

  "Sure you do. I wrote some of them."

  "I guess you did at that—"

  "Let me see your compost heap."

  "Our what?"

  "You must have a compost heap," Fox said. "I taught you that much."

  "Yeah—" Shakes led the way outside.

  Fox kicked at the layer of sodden dead grass that lay atop the mound. "You don't turn it often enough. Not enough dirt mixed in, and you ought to be taking finished compost out from the bottom layer. You'll have other stuff wrong, too. Like I thought you guys need me. Marty owns part of this place. He'll work with me. We'll earn our keep."

  34

  THE MINSTRELS

  Is war a biological necessity? As regards the earliest cultures the answer is emphatically negative. The blow of the poisonous dart from behind a bush, to murder a woman or a child in their sleep, is not pugnacity. Nor is head-hunting, body-snatching, or killing for food instinctive or natural.

  —BRONISLAW MALINOWSRI, Phi Beta Kappa Address, Harvard University

  FOOTFALL PLUS TWELVE WEEKS

  Roger Brooks drank the last of his coffee. It tasted of burnt breadcrumbs. They made coffee with breadcrumbs in the British navy. Or at least the Hornblower novels said they did. Could Mrs. Tinbergen be doing that? She surely could!

  Outside his boardinghouse window was pouring rain. It had been that way almost every day in the months since Footfall.

  Rain, and everyone too busy to talk to me

  . He repressed other memories: of Army guards ordering him away from the gate into Cheyenne Mountain, and one sergeant getting so impatient that he'd drawn his automatic; of the three weeks before he'd found a representative of the Post and got a new credit card so he didn't have to fish in garbage cans for food . . .