Jack Williamson, page 19
“Que cabrón!” He swayed back to his feet. “Damn the regent! Damn the bugs! Damn the whole stinking system! They’ll find Casey and put the bug back on him.” His fists knotted, relaxed, and clenched again. “He should take the plane and look for Mona.” Hopelessly, he slumped down again. “There’s nothing he could do for us here.”
That thin blade of sunlight reddened and climbed the wall. I was still dismally wondering what sort of buyer Ellen Teller might find for us, when we heard the tramp of boots outside. The door screeched open. Two tight-faced guards in blue ordered us curtly out of the cell.
Sturdy white males, they wore no bugs. I saw Pepe stiffen as if to make a break, but they wore weapon-clipped belts and kept a wary distance. They marched us down a long corridor to the back of the building, unlocked a heavy door, and let us out into a narrow cul-de-sac where two empty rickshaws stood waiting.
With a signal for silence, they beckoned us into them. Stripping off their uniforms, they stuck black beads on their foreheads, picked up the shafts, trotted with us through a maze of alleys back to Moon Boulevard. Pepe grinned at me and raised two fingers in a gesture of elation. I sank back in the cushions, rejoicing in the fresh air and sunshine but hardly daring to hope for anything better.
Sirens were suddenly howling. The boom of a cannon echoed off the buildings around us. Our rescuers never looked back. As stolid and wordless as actual slaves of the bugs, they threaded a way through the rickshaws and cycles and lumbering wagons, back to the arena. Guards at the gate glanced at a scrap of slate one man showed him and waved us on toward the spaceplane. We jumped off the rickshaws. The sweating men were gone before we could thank them.
“All okay?” I heard Laura Grail calling from the top of the stair, smiling widely to greet us. Dressed in green-trimmed white and a green hairband, she was an unbelievable dream. “Let’s go!”
We ran up the steps.
“Who are they?” Pepe gestured after the rickshaws.
“Friends.” She beckoned us into the plane. “Or call them heroes of liberation.”
“Okay!” Casey shouted from the pilot’s seat. “Adiós to the bugs!”
The engines coughed and thundered. At the window, I watched the jet steam roaring out to hide the walls around us. The ship quivered and lifted. Slowly at first, but faster, faster, the arena and the red-tiled roofs of the city fell away below. When Casey turned from the instruments, I saw that he looked almost himself again. A glassy patch of healant still gleamed over the dark little wound on his forehead where the bug had been, but no blood was seeping through.
“Where to?” Pepe whispered. “Back to the Moon?”
“America,” he said. “Back to where I found Mona when we were here before.”
His voice slowed when he spoke her name. I saw the shine of tears and thought I had a hint of what he was feeling. Age after age, as we lived and died and lived again, the robots and our holo parents had given us a sense of immortality that left us very mortal. Cloned and brought up to be the selves we had been, we were never quite identical, yet those past lives lay vivid in my mind.
We had slept four centuries since our escape from those vampirish black parasites in the red thorn jungle in Africa, yet our flight seemed as real as yesterday. Our great circle course had taken us north to the glaciers and then back south along the edge of the North American ice cap until flat brown tundra gave way to an exotic bluish green and we came down at last over the strangely varicolored forests of what had been Chihuahua.
I had read the old records and listened to the holos until the haunting songs of the trees and the winged being Casey called Mona were almost actual memories of my own. I recalled the young tree he named Leonardo and loved like their son. I asked Casey now if he meant to look for the Leo tree.
“After all that time—” He shrugged with misgivings, but old emotion glowed on his dark Asian face. “I don’t know about the tree, Laura thinks my own Mona may be out there, fighting with the rebels to end rider slavery. We’ll find her if we can.”
He turned back to his instruments, plotting our path. Taking off from a different point, we were on another great circle route, flying far north of the diminished Mediterranean. We were already high. I found the rim of the north Asian ice cap. Laura was brewing tea and warming squash-and-tofu packs she had found in the food locker. Pepe asked for more about the friends who had freed us.
“We had heard of your date to meet the regent.” She gave us an ironic smile. “My editor wanted another story on you if he could get it past the censors. I didn’t want to see you with bugs on your faces. I slipped back for another look at your machine. Casey let me in. We talked. And then—”
She paused for a glance at the sky beyond the windows, dark purple now, the white glare of ice and cloud far beneath us.
“I’ve never dared say so,” she went on, “but I’m with what they call the Scienteers. Or loonies. Or traitors to the regent. Names they use when they catch and bug us. We call ourselves colonials. If you care about our history, the first colonists had a hard start. They landed in the Vale. A lovely spot, fertile and well-watered, secure inside its mountain walls, but too near the ice as it lay at the time.
“The first winter was severe. Unexpected avalanches buried their original site and nearly wiped them out. The survivors were able to build a lab and clone new people. The Vale remained the center of what government there was as the colony grew, but communication was poor. The generations that began to settle farther south were at first independent. Those on the coast built ships and began exploring. Their future looked bright till they reached the shores of Africa and met the black masters.
“That began a different sort of prosperity. One of Arne Linder’s descendants escaped from Africa with a live bug. Learning the science of the masters, they were finally able to hatch the eggs and plant them in people. Alfred Linder worked them on a plantation that covered Sri Lanka. His son Roscoe built a fleet of ships and found that trading with the masters paid better than war against them.
“The horrified colonial government outlawed slavery, but Roscoe stayed out of reach. He changed his name to Arne, declared himself Arne the First, regent of the Moon and legal ruler of Earth. His clone armies captured the Vale. A few colonials held out along the frontiers. More migrated to America and set up a free nation there. His successor sent expeditions to make them slave territory. Regency politics!”
She gave a sardonic shrug.
“The black masters need the regents now, and the regents need them. With their alien biochemistry, they need minerals to feed themselves, minerals hard to find in Africa. Their red thorn jungle keeps on spreading. They hide in it and ride their killer beasts out to snatch the men trying to burn it or hack it down, yet they can’t afford to wipe the regents out. As for the American war, it’s pure politics, fought to spread rider slavery to one more continent.” She shrugged forlornly. “That war they’re winning.”
“But Mona!” Casey turned from the controls, his voice grown sharp. “She’s out there. We’ve got to find her.”
“If we can.” Laura looked doubtful. “It’s a big continent.”
I asked Laura what else she knew.
“Not much. A mountain climber saw their flyer come down. He thought it must be from the Moon. His report alarmed the regent. They were hunted. Casey, of course, was taken for a runaway slave. The Scienteers found Mona and got her on the underground railway to America.”
“That’s where she is.” Casey nodded hopefully. “Fighting with the rebels.”
“Where she was.” Laura shrugged. “News from America is hard to get. Our Freetown correspondent has disappeared. His last reports were censored and delayed for months. My friends were willing to risk their lives to get you on your ship, but there wasn’t much else—”
“We’ll find her.” Casey bent back to his instruments. “We must.”
We left the ice behind. Brown mountains rose out of gray haze, and brown desert turned an odd blue-green. I saw Casey frowning over his charts, copies of those we had faxed to the Moon before we died here.
“The forest,” I heard him mutter. “I can’t find the forest.” I remembered the singing trees that must have come from somewhere off the Earth, remembered the balloons they had grown to carry their seed, remembered the gold-winged seed that Casey called Mona and the little sapling that had grown from her body after she died.
He studied his maps and studied the ground ahead.
“The forest is gone,” he muttered again. “The forest where we landed.”
I searched for it. The earth below looked flat and brown and dead. I thought I saw flecks of color along the far horizon, a gleam of snow on a mountain cone farther still, but not much else.
“See those lines?” He pointed, but I found no lines. “Railways, I think. They run south. Toward seaports, I imagine.” He squinted ahead. “Confusing, but the rivers and the lay of the land should show us the spot where we came down.”
He dropped us at last into bellowing steam. It cleared to reveal a bleak landscape. Huge stumps where trees had stood were all charred black, black ash around them. Bitterly silent, he opened the door and unfolded the landing stair. We followed him down into blazing sun and an acrid reek of fire.
Not far off, steel rails gleamed. He pointed north across the stumps, toward a plume of white smoke. We waited in silence while a steam locomotive thundered past us. I saw a line of smoke-grimed clones passing great blocks of wood from the tender to feed the boiler. The engineer leaned out of his cab to stare and blew a whistle blast that startled me.
Enormous logs were loaded on the long train of flatcars behind it. We stood there with Casey in the hot wet reek of smoke till the last car had rumbled past. Then, without another word, he stalked across the tracks. We stumbled after him along the bank of a narrow stream till he stopped to stare down at one wide stump.
“That was Leo.” His face had twisted under the glassy glint of the sealant over his rider wound, and his voice was hoarse and slow. “Our son.”
Pepe reached to touch his shoulder. A flash of anger set his face, as if he thought we were about to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Pepe whispered. “Terribly sorry.”
The anger gone, he turned back to the stump.
“I had to come,” he muttered. “I had to know.” He stood there a long time, staring down at the charred stump, and finally shrugged and swung back to us. “Not that it matters.” He shook his head, and I saw tears in his eyes. “When you hear what I have to tell you now, you’ll understand that it no longer matters at all.”
26
Casey stood there a long time, silent, bent down over the black stump. Smoke and dust had turned the cloudless sky to copper, and a red sun blazed hot on the charred desolation around us. The motionless air had an acrid taint of fire. Far off, a dust devil lifted a small black spiral. The only sound was the rush of the little stream over a rocky ledge behind us.
“Come.” Pepe finally caught Casey’s arm. “Let’s go.”
“Go on,” Casey snapped harshly at him. “Leave me here.”
We clambered back across the rails and climbed aboard the plane. When I looked from the landing he was kneeling by the stump as if in prayer. Laura had stayed aboard. She made a fresh pot of tea and we sipped it while we waited.
“What now?” I asked.
Pepe shrugged. “Quién sabe?”
“Our correspondent reported the Moon Lady leading the rebels in this area,” Laura said. “But that was months ago.”
Casey came plodding back at last. He stopped on the landing for another long look back across the burnt past before he came inside. Yet, seeming dry-eyed and composed, he sat down, and accepted a mug of tea.
“I’m sorry if I was sharp with you.” Wryly, he shook his head at Pepe. “It’s hard to say how hard this hit me. I’ve known the Leo story all my life, but I never quite believed it. Not till now.” He nodded at the dark waste beyond the windows. “Not till I recognized that crook in the creek and found the little waterfall where the tree had stood.” He grinned and sipped his tea. “It was nearly too much, but I’m okay now.”
“Ready to look for Mona?” Pepe asked. “If you have a clue?”
“No clue.” He shrugged. “Not really. But rebel refugees were reported hiding in the forest still standing west of us. I saw the color of live trees on the highlands to the west. We can hope she saw us. If she’s still there. If she has time enough to get here.”
“Time?” Pepe raised his voice. “You had something else to tell us?”
“Something I don’t like to say.” Casey drained his mug, set it down, and took a moment more before he went on. “You know Tycho Station was set up to watch for approaching objects that might impact the Earth. The computer is programmed to carry the mission on while we sleep—”
Sharply, Pepe broke in. “It has found something new?”
“Nearly forty years ago.” Soberly, Casey nodded. “That’s why we were cloned—the computer had meant to give the colony another thousand years before it sent us back to look.”
“Why weren’t we told?”
Casey shrugged. “It makes its own decisions.”
“What about this object?”
“It’s probably a drifter from the Kuiper Belt, out beyond Neptune.” Casey frowned, careful with his words. “Some thirty miles in mean diameter. Big enough for the impact to devastate the planet, maybe erase all life. Any impact was uncertain at first. We were awakened just to be ready for whatever happened.”
His face set harder.
“It’s going to happen.” He glanced at me. “Dunk, you know your holo father is the computer’s voice. He told Mona and me before we left the Moon—”
“You knew?” Pepe stared at him. “And didn’t tell us?”
“He said the computer would inform you of whatever you needed to know.”
“The danger?” Laura whispered. “That’s certain now?”
“He said it is. The early observations had been refined. The destruction is predicted to be total, with no chance for human survival. The truth was hard for us to take. I know it’s hard for you. Tycho Station, out on the Moon, ought to survive, but this means that all our past efforts have been wasted. The master computer will be there to assess the damage and keep on cloning us, but it will have to start all over again.
“But for us, right now—For all the Earth—For you—” His scarred face grimly set, Casey reached to touch Laura’s shoulder. “It’s the end.”
She had listened in silence, her own face white. Her lips quivering, she tried to speak and gulped, and gave him a feeble smile. He turned back to me.
“Your father advised us not to try to warn the colonists. There’s nothing they could do. Our errand was simply to file a bit of history that ought to be remembered.”
“When?” She stared into his face. “How much time before the impact?”
He glanced at the watch on my wrist.
“Today is August 14,” he said. “The impact is forecast for noon on August 17, Kashmir time. That would be about midnight here.”
We sat in dazed silence for a time.
“Three days.” Laura shook her head. “Just three days. So much to think about.” She shrugged. “No use to think of anything. I need to walk.”
Pepe and I went with her down the stair. We walked along the rail line, our feet stirring little clouds of soot-black dust. We didn’t talk until I heard her brittle laugh.
“World to end in three days!” She laughed again, too loudly. “A great headline. Anybody that dared print it back at home would have been branded a Scienteer and bugged for high treason.”
Pepe caught her hand, and they walked on together.
Casey had stayed on the plane, watching the dark horizon. Back there with him, we prepared a final transmission to the station. Laura dictated a brief history of the colony. Pepe reported our meetings with the regent and the rider broker. Casey gave a terse description of his experience under the bug. I summed up our situation and sent the message when the Moon had risen.
That night we took turns on guard. We saw nothing till, early next morning, Casey found a smudge of smoke up the railway north of us. It became another train, approaching slowly as if wary of us and halting a few miles away. With binoculars we made out half a dozen flatcars crowded with black clones in military gear, a long-barreled cannon on the last car. The gun crew trained it on us.
“We’re dead,” Pepe muttered. “If they fire.”
They didn’t fire, but presently a little rail car came on toward us, flying the blue-and-white regency flag. It carried a white officer and two black clones pumping handlebars to drive it.
“They’re here to kill us.” Pepe looked at Laura with a sudden grin, and turned anxiously to Casey and me. “Let’s take off for the Moon while we can.”
“Not quite yet.” Casey shook his head. “I won’t leave Mona. Go on if you like. I’m heading into the standing forest to the west on the chance she’s there.” He looked at me. “Coming with me, Dunk?”
“I’m coming.”
We found a canteen and a few ration packs. Laura hugged us both. Pepe shook our hands and wished us luck. The officer on the handcar fired a handgun as we crossed the track. The bullets sang past our heads and we tramped on. A few miles across the stumps we came into trees still standing, but dead.
“You should have seen them live.” Casey shook his head in dismal regret. “They were magnificent. Somehow sacred.”
They had been magnificent. The straight black trunks, thicker than the body of our plane, towered up forever, and my neck ached from craning to trace the dense web of dead black branches that laced the sky. A thick carpet of unburned leaves covered the ground, spicing the air with an odd fragrance of decay. In the heavy and depressing silence, I felt an awed sense that we were entering an abandoned temple, built for the worship of some dead and forgotten deity.
There was no sign of fire here. I wondered what had killed the trees.
