Earthbound (16 page)
Authors: Joe Haldeman
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #General
“You could fly,” Paul said. “I could get you there in twenty minutes.”
She cocked her head at him. “How big an operation would that be?”
“If the plane hasn’t been damaged, just have to turn it around. Five or six people. The autoway’s straight for more than a quarter mile there; I can take off easily. Eugene probably has an airport.”
“Lot of trouble to go look at some books,” Rico said.
“Might as well use the plane while we can,” Paul said. “Gonna be scrap metal in a few days.”
“You think it’s safe?” the pale elder said.
“No. But what is, nowadays?” He grinned at him. “As a plane, sure, it’s safe enough. It got us to Russia and back, by way of Maryland. It can make it to Oregon. If nobody shoots it down, and the Martian power keeps working.”
Her brow furrowed. “If the power went off, could you glide to a landing?”
“Maybe. There are emergency mechanical links to the control surfaces. But you have to find someplace flat, not too far away.” He looked around at the mountains surrounding us. “It would drop really fast.”
“So you would do it?” Rico said.
“Sure.” He said that a little too fast. What, me afraid?
“We might ought to use it for something more useful than books,” the other elder said.
“I could fly anywhere you want,” Paul said.
“Not much we need,” the pale one said. “Lead for bullets, primers, powder . . . all for reloads. You know of a place we could walk in and buy some. Or trade?”
“Not on this planet,” Roz said. “Same with other survival stuff. Even if you could find it, what would you use for money?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Rico said. “Don’t remind people that we’re up here. Self-sufficient and comfortable.”
“For the time being,” the pale one said.
A little girl walked onto the porch, looking apprehensive. She silently raised her hand.
“What is it, Bits?” Roz said tiredly.
“Someone wants to talk to this lady.” She pointed at me. “The Mars lady?”
“Weren’t you told not to answer the phone?”
“He isn’t
on
the phone, Primus. He’s on the cube.”
on
the phone, Primus. He’s on the cube.”
“What does he look like?” I said.
“I think he’s a zombie. He don’t look real.”
“Doesn’t,” Roz said. She took the child by the hand, and we followed them through the cafeteria smells into a dark room with high windows and a central cube. In it, the image of Spy.
“Kid here says you look like a zombie,” Paul said.
“How perceptive. I’m not exactly alive.”
“You’re nearby,” I said. No lag in his reply.
“Close enough. Cable. Did you have a nice flight?”
“It was eventful. As you must know.”
He nodded. “You went to Russia and came back to the US, threatened to murder the president, and escaped to this bucolic paradise. Do you want to know whether the president’s security people are after you?”
“Would you tell us the truth?” Paul said.
“Ask Epimenides. They are not after you. Things are somewhat confused back at Camp David, not to mention Washington, but if you went back, they might give you a medal.”
“What about the president?” I said.
“Under house arrest, in a manner of speaking. The soldiers are negotiating via cell with their erstwhile enemies. It’s all very chummy, democracy in action.”
“Are we still going to lose power on Wednesday?” Roz said.
“As far as I know. Would you rather it be sooner?”
“Later would be nice,” I said. “Like not lose it at all. If there’s a lesson, we’ve learned it.”
“ ‘Don’t fuck with the aliens’? I suppose you have learned that. But I don’t think it’s actually a lesson. Someone wants to talk with you.”
His image faded and was replaced with one I didn’t at first recognize; he looked sort of like the pale elder, but with more hair, streaming in thick white Medusa locks. Then he spoke, without moving his lips: Moonboy, gaunt.
“You’re looking well,” he said.
While I was doing a sort of goldfish imitation, Namir found his voice: “Moonboy. You were frozen solid. You can’t be alive.”
The Others had chosen Moonboy to represent the human race in their deep-freeze zoo, even though he was not mentally or emotionally competent by our standards.
“I am more alive than any of you are, in terms of intellectual growth. I synapse faster, and my memory is not limited by organic considerations. I don’t lose my temper anymore.”
He still had a scar on his forehead from where Dustin had whacked him with a pool cue after Moonboy had broken his wife’s nose.
“How are you any different from Spy? You’re hooked up to the Others like him, and exist at their convenience.”
“Our shared history makes me different. Your group once had a person who loved me.”
“How do you feel about that?” Namir said. “The fact that Meryl is dead.”
His eyes blinked slowly. I don’t think he used them for seeing. “How could I feel things, Namir? As you pointed out, I’m long dead myself.”
Not as dead as Meryl, I thought. My palms still stung with blisters from the shovel we used for her grave.
“I’m not just a mouthpiece for the Others,” he said. “I can communicate with you in real time. When I’m speaking for them, I’ll hold my hand up, like this.”
He raised his right hand and left it up. “You present an interesting problem, the five of you whom we have met physically.”
“How nice that we’re interesting,” Namir said.
“Along with what I, Moonboy, remember, there is a context”—he shook his head, frowning—“a universe of discourse? Between humans and the Others. That is not simply predator and prey.”
“You can eat us?” Namir said. “That clears up a few things.”
“I know that is just humor. I caution you against using it. You don’t want me to misunderstand you.”
Moonboy put his hand back down. “I can say whatever I want to you, but of course they overhear. Do you have any questions?”
“An obvious one,” Paul said. “When the Others captured and froze you, we were all almost twenty-five light-years away from here. When they sent us back, it was as if no time had elapsed at all, but twenty-five years had passed on Earth.”
Moonboy nodded. “Twice twenty-five, there and back.”
“Was the transfer instantaneous to you? Or have you been thinking about things for a quarter of a century?”
“There is no plain answer. It did just take an instant, in the way you’re measuring time. But I thought a lot while that was going on, in a way that I perceive time. I’m sorry that’s not clear. Time itself is not what you think it is.”
Actually, that was about as clear as he had been when he was last alive. But he had started to lose it after a couple of years aboard ship. Then he broke Elza’s nose while they were having sex, and things went downhill fast from there.
In a way, that seemed like a couple of weeks ago. But I guess time is not what I think it is. “In what sense are the Others predators?” I asked. “How are we prey?”
“You offer the new,” he said. “Any new organism does. But social creatures, who can communicate about their surroundings, add another dimension.”
“So now the Others can leave us alone,” Namir said, “since we’re not new anymore.”
“How you react to what’s happening is always new. There is plenty left to happen.”
“And after they’ve learned enough?” I said.
“When you had biology in school, you dissected a cat.” I remembered talking with him about that, and nodded. “After you had learned enough about the cat, what did you do with it?”
“It wasn’t a cat anymore.”
“I suppose not.” He faded away.
“That was informative,” Namir said.
Spy appeared again. “This may not be the last time we want to talk to you. Please stay near a cube receiver, or carry a small one. It makes things simpler.”
“After the power goes out?” Namir’s fists were clenched.
“We can make do.” He flickered and disappeared.
“I wonder if that means they’ll eventually just go,” Paul said. “Once they learn enough.”
“Leaving us in pieces on the dissecting table,” Namir said.
We waited in the cube room for a few minutes, in case Spy had another afterthought. Then Paul and Namir went with two of the guys on GEVs, to clean up the jet, assuming it hadn’t already been plundered. Paul said he’d scavenge the portable cube from the plane, to carry in case Spy wanted to make a call.
Meanwhile, the rest of us worked on domestic arrangements. There was a cabin with only one couple in it, and they moved out with more grace than I would’ve displayed. We managed to fit in three pallets and two beds, each large enough for two people who didn’t mind touching. There was a rickety table with four chairs on the porch. The nearest toilet was a hundred meters away, but the room had a sink and three one-gallon jugs for carrying water. Rico found us an assortment of sheets, towels, and pillows.
We rested, waiting for the scavengers to return. I took a pallet on the floor, tired but not sleepy, glad to have a pillow.
Why had the Others contacted us? Just to make sure we knew they were watching? We would have been surprised if they weren’t. I went over the short exchange with Moonboy in my mind.
They were using us to collect new experiences. Had they ever told us that before? I wished Snowbird was still with us. Or one of the yellow family, ideally. They had more direct contact with the Others, though I wasn’t sure they understood them better.
We should call Snowbird, at Novisibirsk, and fill her in on everything that had happened. Wait until Namir comes back, to handle the Russian phone system.
Other than the stuff about collecting “the new,” what had we learned? Don’t joke with them; that was very useful. Moonboy claimed to experience time differently from us, but that’s probably true of all dead people.
Speaking directly for, or as, the Others, what had he said? With his hand up. That there is a “universe of discourse” connecting us and them. Things that we share. As predator and prey? Then he put his hand down, after warning Namir about joking. Did they say anything else through him?
Of course, there’s no reason to think Moonboy was telling the truth or, even if he was, it was for the purpose of helping us. Even before he died, it was hard to figure out what was going on in that unbalanced head.
I fell asleep and dreamed a memory of him on
ad Astra
, before he’d snapped. He was composing at the keyboard, which he’d always done silently, with earphones. In the dream he was playing out loud, the same four-note sequence over and over, a look of terrible Beethovenian concentration on his unlined face. The notes never varied in volume or phrasing. Someone once said that was a functional definition of insanity: doing the same thing time and again, always expecting a different outcome.
ad Astra
, before he’d snapped. He was composing at the keyboard, which he’d always done silently, with earphones. In the dream he was playing out loud, the same four-note sequence over and over, a look of terrible Beethovenian concentration on his unlined face. The notes never varied in volume or phrasing. Someone once said that was a functional definition of insanity: doing the same thing time and again, always expecting a different outcome.
Dinner was a madhouse of cheerful disorganization. There was a big iron kettle of vegetable stew on an outdoor fire, and a smaller pot of deer-meat chili, peppery enough to make my eyes water. Plates of cornbread and biscuits.
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