by Joe Haldeman
Two of the men were stocky and one slim, all of them white and shirtless, with identical Toyota tattoos on their chests. Their weapons were civilian, obviously expensive, more wood than metal, elaborately carved.
“Saw you on the cube, asshole,” the bigger one said. I braced myself, but he was talking to Spy. “You’re the mouthpiece for the aliens.”
“I am their avatar,” he said neutrally.
“I’ll give you a message.” He aimed the rifle at Spy’s chest and fired a burst of three or four shots at him.
He rocked back at the impact. But there was no blood, not a mark on him where the bullets had struck. “You missed,” he said.
He hadn’t, of course, but he stepped closer and fired four measured shots point-blank. Spy simply absorbed them.
“Hold it, Number One,” the slender one said. He shrugged out of the pack he was carrying and unsnapped a wicked-looking axe from it. “Let’s see you disappear this.” He hefted it with one hand and stepped forward to swing.
“Could work,” Spy said, and pointed a finger at him. There was a pop noise like a toy gun, and the top part of the man’s head, above the eyebrows, blew off. His determined expression didn’t change as he fell dead.
“Shit,” the leader said, and stepped back. Spy pointed the finger at him, and said “bang.” A stream of bullets chewed a hole out of the center of his chest. Daylight showed through before he fell.
The third one threw down his gun and ran back into the woods.
Namir picked up one of the weapons and inspected it, avoiding the bloody stock. It hinged open in the middle.
“Sportsmen,” he said, and shook one cartridge out. “One powder bullet, but if you miss, you can fry the beast with a laser.”
“One shot would be plenty,” Paul said, looking at the huge cartridge. “I don’t guess we need it, though.”
“Carry them a while and throw them away,” Namir said. “Throw the bullets away someplace else.” He slung the man’s assault rifle over his shoulder and looked around the bloody scene. “I suggest we not waste time burying this . . . human waste.”
“In the old days,” Roz said, “they’d hang them from the trees as a warning.”
“This will do,” Paul said. “Let’s move on.”
“I’ll search them first,” Namir said. He and Dustin started going through pockets. I gave the spray of blood and brains a wide berth, but did look through the skinny one’s pack. Half a loaf of hard bread and four tins of sardines. A plastic bag had three rounds for the big-game rifle and a handful of smaller cartridges.
There was an envelope with three detailed maps, one of them the whole state of California. A wallet full of useless money and a roll of California hundred-dollar bills, held together with a rubber band. A metal flask full of liquor.
One side pocket had a small silver pistol, and another held two boxes of ammunition for it, .25 caliber. Paul suggested I keep them, though they wouldn’t be much use in a “real” fight. I might get into an unreal one, I supposed.
He offered me a hand grenade with only a little blood on it. I demurred, and Roz stuck it in her purse.
The pack had plenty of room for the encyclopedia volumes and food I was carrying in the cloth bag. It only had two specks of blood, but did give me an uncomfortable, unclean feeling as I hoisted it onto my back and tightened the straps. A dead man’s chest, complete with a bottle of rum. But it was easier than carrying the heavy cloth bag. Paul snapped the small axe onto the side.
In case the noise of the encounter might have attracted unwelcome attention, Namir set us up hiding along the bluff that overlooked the road, to watch and wait for an hour. So I took the pack off again after wearing it for a few seconds.
Some kind of birds clattered down behind us to feed on the dead. They didn’t caw or cackle; there was no noise but the thud of their beaks and the tearing of cloth and flesh.
They were still playing with their food when Namir finally declared an hour had passed, and we set off into the still-cool morning.
We used the same pattern as the previous day, with an added precaution: whenever we stopped to rest, Dustin would sneak back to make sure we weren’t being followed.
People who would follow after what we left behind would be made of sturdy stuff. I got a glimpse of the buzzards’ banquet hall, ribs glistening out of two piles of red guts. The ripped remains of a face.
Though I supposed scenes like that would become common as sunsets in most the world. How many billion were left today? Five? With how many months of food? Four?
It was high noon by the time we reached the autoway. There was a tall fence topped with barbed wire, but the bottom of it had been burned open with a laser, the edges of the hole rounded beads of melt.
We went back to the shade of the forest to eat and have an hour of rest.
Spy was studying a web woven densely in the lower branches of a shrub.
“Looks like a caterpillar,” I said.
“Malacosoma californicum. Happily unaware of everything,”
“Is it going to die soon?”
“They don’t live very long.” He picked up a stick and gently probed the web.
“I mean ‘are the Others going to kill it, along with us and everything else?’ ”
He didn’t look at me. “I really don’t have the faintest idea. They don’t consult me. Though presumably they know what I’m doing and thinking.”
“What do you think, then? Is there any chance we’ll get our world back?”
“If I were a human,” he said to the web, “and thought like a human, I would ask myself how on Earth the Others might benefit from restoring my world. What answer would I come up with, thinking as a human?”
“But you aren’t a human,” I insisted. “What do you think?”
He did look at me, with eyes as realistic and expressionless as a department store dummy’s. “In so many ways, that is not a meaningful question. There is no me here to think with. You should know that by now.”
“When you killed the man who was coming at you with an axe—”
“It was like swatting a fly. His partner was another annoyance. The one who ran away was of no concern. I knew that his testimony would spare us further interruptions.”
As he said that, we had an interruption, not particularly dramatic. A girl of about twelve came through the fence hole, chattering in Spanish, crying. Namir talked to her for a minute, calming her down.
“Her parents had a general store north of here. They’ve disappeared, and the store was gutted by looters. She waited for two days, and when her parents didn’t come home, she set out looking for them.”
She wailed something and sat down on the ground, wiping her eyes.
“She’s afraid they’re dead,” he said. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
Tell her she’s right? Roz came over and spoke to her softly in halting Spanish.
“Her name’s Hermosa, and she has relatives in San Sebastian, the way we’re headed, maybe ten miles down the road. Take her there?”
“Sure,” Namir said. “How much can she eat in ten miles?”
Quite a lot, as it turned out; a growing girl who’d been hungry for a couple of days. She hadn’t made any preparation for travel—just fled when she heard voices in the middle of the night. She said she had hidden from roving gangs as big as a hundred people. Even allowing for a twelve-year-old’s imagination, we had better be prepared.
Paul and I would “guard” Spy and Hermosa—stay out of trouble, that is, being the ones least experienced with weapons and mayhem. Namir and Elza would sneak forward a half mile or so, and come back to get us if the coast was clear. Roz and Dustin would stay behind, hidden, long enough to make sure we weren’t being followed. So we moved like a sort of elastic inchworm, with four legs in front and four behind. Paul and I and the two supernumeraries bulging along in the belly of the beast.
Hermosa asked Spy one question, and he answered in crisp, rapid Spanish. She qui
eted and moved to put me and Paul between herself and him.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“She asked if I was a monster from space. I told her that all three of us were from space, and which of us were monsters depended on who you asked. Fair enough?”
“She seems to have figured it out,” Paul said, patting her on the shoulder. “Though actually, you’ve been more like an ally today. I don’t know what those clowns might’ve done to us.”
“That was fortunate for you,” he agreed. “I think it would have been a gun battle at close quarters. Many of you would have been hurt, perhaps killed.”
“The timing of your appearance was propitious.”
“As it often is. Would you care to commit a logical fallacy now?”
Paul frowned at him. “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” I said, since Dustin wasn’t around to say it. “Just because B follows A, it doesn’t mean that A caused B.”
“Yeah, I got it. Don’t worry; I didn’t think you conjured up those gangers. If you or the Others wanted to threaten us, you could do it more directly.”
“But would we? Just to play the devil’s advocate. Maybe I want you to trust me, and so manufactured an incident that would inspire trust.”
“And then throw in a counter-argument,” I said, “just to keep us confused.”
“I like this game,” he said.
After a few minutes of silence, Paul said, “Why don’t bullets affect you? I mean, they do have some effect; I’ve seen you rock back when they hit you. But then, nothing happens.”
“Well, something does happen. I feel them touch and, as you say, I apparently absorb some of their momentum. Then I absorb the metal itself.”
“It doesn’t hurt?” I asked.
“There’s some sensation. More like pleasure than pain, I think.
“I know it takes a lot of energy, or something like energy, to put me here and keep me here. I ‘absorb’ the kinetic energy of bullets and the chemical energy of food and the radiant energy from sunlight, and it all helps keep me here.”
“So if we locked you up in a light-tight box and didn’t feed you, you’d disappear?”
“You’re welcome to try. I think I’d just reappear outside, though. Or eat the box.”
Paul nodded, thoughtful. “Are you invulnerable, then?”
“I don’t think so. There must be limits. I could stand inside a burning house, for instance, but couldn’t maintain integrity inside a star. I’ve never tried it, but can’t imagine what could manufacture that kind of binding force.”
“Likewise a nuke.”
“Probably. But I think it would be a waste of time. The Others would just make another one of me.”
“I don’t suppose a hellbomb would do much,” I said.
“A constant blast of radiation? I’d love it! A banquet.” He looked up at the sky. “I can feel a little secondary warmth reflected off the atmosphere, from the one you flew over yesterday.”
“So radiation and bullets don’t bother you,” Paul said, “but you protected yourself from an axe.”
“That might’ve hurt. At any rate, it would have taken me time to rebuild, and during that time there would have been trouble.”
We walked along in silence for a bit, Paul frowning. “So whose side are you on, anyhow?”
He pointed a thumb at Paul’s assault rifle. “Whose side is that gun on?”
“It’s on the side of the person who owns it.”
“Really?” He reached over carefully and rubbed dirt from the rear end of the barrel, then scratched it with a thumbnail. He peered at what it revealed.
“According to the serial number, it’s an actual antique. In another year, it will be a hundred years old.
“It was manufactured in Argentina, for the Paraguayan armed forces, who at the time were fighting Uruguay and Cuba.”
“Cuba wasn’t a state anymore?” I said.
“Temporarily not. But you don’t own it, Paul, not really. I think it’s actually on the side of the person who pulls the trigger.”
“Okay. Splitting hairs.”
“You were asking whose side I am on. That weapon is obviously not on the side of Argentina or Paraguay or Uruguay or Cuba, even though people who identify with those places may have ‘owned’ it. Is it on your side now?”
“It’s an inanimate object.”
“That’s not exactly the answer. When that fellow with the Toyota tattoo stepped out of hiding and ordered you to drop this gun, why didn’t you shoot him?”
“That’s obvious.”
“He and the other two would have killed you. Because of the gun. Whose side would it be on, then?”
“That’s pretty tortuous.”
“Not really; not at all. You’re asking whose side I’m on. What if you ask me to do something that I know will result in your death? Or Carmen’s, or the whole group’s, or the country’s or the planet’s or the solar system’s?”
“Okay. So I ask you and you do it and trillions of people die. So it’s my fault?”
“Billions. But who said anything about ‘fault’? You asked whose side I am on. By all evidence, Paul, I’m on your side.”
“I’m honored, especially if you would murder billions of people on my behalf. But you’re manifestly not on my side. You’re on the side of the Others.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure it has any meaning. The Others don’t use tools, including organisms like you and me, the same way that humans do. To solve problems, to answer questions. That’s how different they are. As far as I can tell, they’re totally incurious.”
“I guess we would be, too,” I said, “if we already knew everything and could do anything.”
“They obviously fall short of that,” Paul said, “or we wouldn’t be fighting. They’d just crush us and move on.”
Spy nodded. “That’s part of the mystery. You might not have anything they need, or at least they’ve never taken anything from you.”
“A moon,” Paul said. “Jesus Christ, Spy!”
“They destroyed it, as they did Triton. But that’s not taking.
“They did make a tool out of the moon, so to speak—broke it up into rocks and gravel to surround the Earth with junk, to keep humans from leaving the planet.”
“Which worked so well,” I said.
“For two weeks,” he said. “That’s something I may not understand about them. Can they have been surprised that humans reacted by trying to get into space anyhow?”
“You wouldn’t be? Surprised.”
“Of course not. But it’s not as if they said ‘If you try to get into space, we’ll turn off the electricity.’ They presented you with a problem, and it’s human nature to step up and try to solve it.”
“Wait. Are you making excuses for us?”
“No; just trying to understand them. If I know that much about human nature, they must as well. So what’s the point in punishing you for being true to your nature?”
“Training us,” Paul said, “like some Old Testament God.”
“Not exactly. That God would say ‘Don’t look back at the city’ before he turned you into a pillar of salt. The difference isn’t subtle.”
“This god is an all-powerful infant,” I said, “throwing tantrums that blow up worlds. Kill millions. We should be training it.”
Spy gave me a strange look. “Maybe you are.”
14
Everybody was dead tired when we came to an overpass and Paul suggested we take one short break, out of the afternoon sun, and then press on till dark. We flopped down and I heard Paul and Namir agreeing that we shouldn’t take the state road that passed overhead. It followed a winding route to the sea in one direction and back to Oregon in the other.
Spy began to squat in his Buddha style, but then stood up straight. “Trouble,” he said, and disappeared with a pop.
“Hey, come back,” Roz said. My sentiment, too.
“Lock and load everything,” Namir sa
id. I jacked a round into the chamber of my assault rifle and took the little pistol from my knapsack, cocked it, and stuck it in my belt. My hands started to shake, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Roz,” he said, “tell Hermosa to climb up to the road overhead and hide.”
“Might be too steep,” she said. I’d never make it myself. Not even when I was twelve. The little girl obediently scrambled up, but slid back.
She didn’t have time for a second try. There was a soft whirring sound, and from around the curve a line of black-clad men on bicycles rolled toward us. One in the middle blew a whistle, and they slowed to a stop, staying in line.
There were nine of them. Three had new-looking bikes with luminous CA HIWAY PATROL shields in front. The other six bikes looked random and stolen.
They all seemed to have pistols, and two of the three official bikes had rifle scabbards. They got off the bikes almost in unison and stood by them. The one with a silver whistle on a chain had a large automatic weapon in an awkward-looking holster. He left his bike parked and stepped forward with his hand on the butt of the weapon. “We’re the California—”
“We don’t care,” Namir snapped. “You have no authority over us, and we have you outgunned. Just pedal on, and there won’t be any trouble.” I’d never heard him use that tone before. Very military and alpha-male.
Even with Namir’s weapon pointed toward him, the leader stood his ground. “You don’t want to do this. You couldn’t take on nine men with body armor, even if you did have more guns.”
Namir raised his weapon higher and pointed it at the man’s face. “Turn around and go.”
“No son policía,” Hermosa said in a squeaky voice, and pointed past the leader. She said a couple of names.
I’m not sure quite what happened then, and in what order. One or two of them fired, and both Hermosa and Roz crumpled. The leader had his gun out of the holster and fired, I think into the ground, as a blast from Namir’s weapon tore half his head off. His helmet spun away, and before it hit the ground everyone was shooting.
I had the pistol out and held it the way they’d shown me, both hands, but I wasn’t aiming, just pulling the trigger as fast as I could, pointing at the black-clad men, most of whom had dived to the ground and were firing from a prone position. When the pistol was empty, I threw it down and raised the rifle.
