In Solitary (16 page)

‘You murdered him,’ I accused her, but without remonstration.

Black spaceships with spiky prows were descending now and from the bellies of these craft came smaller, arrowhead shapes. Wings glinted with the brightness of weapons, and winked white spots as they attacked the ground below them.

‘Don’t feel like that Cave,’ she begged. ‘It was the only way I could do it – the only way I could see. I didn’t want him to die. I
liked
Fridjt. He was a real man.’

I did not know what to say. She felt she was right in sacrificing Fridjt in order to regain the Earth for the humans. Could I tell her she was wrong and condemn her for something I did not understand? I had no idea what her indoctrination had been. Perhaps she was not even responsible for her actions. It was possible that her mind was not hers to control but manipulated by one of her Martian superiors. Certainly her actions were motivated by an intense hatred for the aliens that had conquered Earth, and by an unshakable sense of duty to those she considered in authority.

I would never understand her – she was more alien to me than any Soal I had ever met. Not for the first time I wished I were something else – a Soal, another alien, anything but a human.

‘Why
did you do it Stella? What made you come to Earth – you could not have had any idea what life was like here. Why didn’t you Martians settle for Mars and leave the Earth to the Soal? If your tenacity had been absent we might all have lived a peaceful life down here. No wonder they gave
us a hard time with you banging on the front door of the sky all the time, yelling to get in. Earth had been lost to your ancestors, not to you …’

Stella gave me one of her characteristic hard looks.

‘Earth is human by right – we were spawned from the very soil on which you stand. We didn’t grow from Martian clay – the seed of life sprang up here, amongst these minerals. They pull us back, like a magnet, to where we belong. We are as much an ingredient of Earth as kaolin is of granite – without the kaolin there is no granite. Granite is a hard rock, able to resist pressures and blows – but wash away the clay, and the feldspar and mica fall apart, leaving nothing.’

‘Well something pulls you back anyway,’ I said, ‘because you came, and we can’t change that. I just hope that those minute pieces of Fridjt and Lipsua that rained on us last night don’t hate you too much for having taken their lives. The Universal Weyym knows …’

‘Weyym is a Soal god,’ she snapped, ‘and this part of the universe at least has no use for that kind of god. Our god walks on two legs and carries a gun in his hand.’

‘Guns have never solved problems,’ I argued. ‘They only create them.’

She replied, logically. They solved them for the Soal. Those birdmen you love so much laid waste to this planet of ours with little compunction – if any. Admittedly millions managed to escape to Mars and the moons of Jupiter but many died through lack of resources – our colonies there were not equipped to deal with such a flood of refugees. From the few people now left here on Earth, a miserable handful, the Soal must have systematically executed the survivors until only the grovellers remained.’

‘That is a lie Stella,’ I said emphatically. ‘They just prevented us breeding for a few years, separating the males and females. It doesn’t take long to deplete a race in that manner.’ I paused. The woman exasperated me beyond endurance.

‘Look, how would you react if your world – Mars, or Earth – was dying slowly? You’d go out and look for another place to live wouldn’t you? First you’d look around for suitable places within reach – the Soal ships are equipped with
interstellar drives but their ability to sustain the speeds required is limited. The sort of worlds you would look for would be like the one described in your folklore – a planet covered in vegetation and wildlife … a planet where it was possible to live on the surface. The Soal had such a planet aeons ago but their sun began pulling in its bodies towards it and the surface became too hot even for the thermostats the Soal developed to deal with their predicament. Finally they went below the surface and began preparations to evacuate their world. They built starships. But by that time they had lived in a constant temperature for so long their bodies needed it …’

Stella was not listening, she was staring towards the sky.

‘Wait till you see a real man Cave – then you’ll know why I call them gods …’

The new gods were tall arrogant men and
women, with narrow features and high foreheads. They were Stella’s people. They had the same assurance and easy confidence. They strode, not stepped. They commanded, not requested.

We lay in the ruins of the Soal building for the rest of the night, afraid to move in case either a Soal mistook us for one of the enemy, or a blast-happy Martian cut us down.

When the sun arose we knew that those Soal, the ones who had not found their way to spaceships or the thermostatically controlled chambers into which they retreated when they accidentally experienced a temperature drop, would die with their nerve-ends aflame with pain.

We stood together, as the dawn came over Oceania, and regarded the devastation around us. A tall man approached us with a weapon clamped to his forearm.

‘You two – out of there. Quickly.’

We did as we were told, Stella slightly more defiantly than myself.

The man was covered in an artificial skin and there were blue discs on his breast. His head was encased in a protective hemisphere of metal. A sneer crossed his face, for what reason I could not imagine.

‘Naked! You must be Dirt-loafs.’

‘Dirt-loafs?’ I repeated, bewildered.

He was looking Stella up and down, still with the same sneer.

‘Wipe your face clean Captain,’ snapped Stella, ‘my name is Stella Masteen.
Major
Masteen. I’m the Martian agent that got you slow spinners onto the dirt.’

The sneer faltered and the owner lost a tiny drop of his
self-importance.

‘You’re too small,’ he tried, attempting to regain his former air of superiority.

‘Call me by my rank when you address me,’ said Stella coldly. ‘You know very well I was chosen for this mission because of my small stature. By your accent you’re a Westerner and therefore probably in the Newameric battalion. If you doubt my word
now
Captain, you can rest assured that when I receive the rewards I shall surely get for my part in this – and I shall be entitled to the honours of a world heroine – I shall bust you down as far as I can get you.’

The Martian hesitated no longer. He snapped his body rigidly upright – a posture that must have been as painful to maintain as it was to watch – and told the ‘Major’ that he apologized for not having recognized her and that she would no doubt realize that he was exhausted through much travel and fighting, and then he babbled on about our being dirty and in a similar condition to other ‘dirt-loafs’ they had picked up during the night.

‘Why does he keep saying that?’ I whispered to Stella, as we accompanied the captain to a near-by airplane.

‘What? Dirt-loaf? They call Earth people that on Mars because while the Martians have been labouring for centuries to free Earth from the Soal, the humans down here have been loafing their time away doing nothing – or seemingly doing nothing.’

‘But they – the Martians …’ I still could not think of Stella as a Martian, ‘they could not know the situation on Earth. Why did they just assume we were doing nothing?’

Stella looked at me coldly.

‘Well, they guessed it. The people that still lived on Earth at the time it was attacked were those unimaginative people who lacked the courage to emigrate to Mars. They were soft, dull men and women that liked the comfortable mundane existence that their secure little world offered them. We guessed that they would capitulate to the Soal without a murmur, and that their insipid descendants would follow their lead and
kowtow to the birdmen. And we guessed right.’

‘But we did eventually revolt …’

‘Only because I, a Martian, came amongst you and pumped a bit of strength into your weak …’ She paused and studied my face. ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘I don’t want to fight with you Cave. I love you.’ She touched my face, but I jerked away angrily, just in time to see the sneer returning to the Captain’s features as he regarded this interplay.

We were taken to a derelict Soal building which the Martians had made their headquarters for this area. On the way we saw many Soal bodies, some twisted and bearing the scars of heat beams or explosive missiles: some unmarked but curled in a ball, the telltale death posture of a Soal caught in a swift temperature change. Here and there a torn wing fluttered in the breeze like the sad battle flag of a defeated army. What agonies those poor creatures must have gone through! I felt no elation: no triumph.

We also saw many more Martians who strode by us with flickering glances at our dirty naked forms but without losing their disdainful air. It gave me an inferiority complex just to see their tall straight bodies, muscles forming gentle contours on the sheer, tight artificial skins which covered them from neck to ankles. Even their feet were encased in some sort of thick material which added to their height. They moved much more slowly and with less bounce than Earthmen did though. There was a certain heaviness in their tread and I was glad that we had something over them – even if it was only agility.

We were taken inside the building where a Martian with two red discs on his breast was discussing something with three of his men. He looked worried and was saying, ‘… it’s bound to happen at first. We’re lucky down here – in the northern hemisphere everything’s gone wild.’ He turned just after we entered and the Captain that had escorted us was chanting a monologue which told how he had found us and that the female claimed to be a Martian agent. He never reached the end of his report because Stella shouted delightedly across the room.

‘Alan! Colonel Alan Riderman!’

Red discs peered at her more closely and
a smile suddenly broke out across his craggy face. He ran a hand through his silvery hair.

‘Damn me – Stella Masteen! We’d given you up for dead. Where’s John Staines and the others? Were you responsible for opening the door?’

Stella crossed the room and gave the gentleman a hug, which embarrassed everyone in the room including the recipient of the affection.

‘In answer to your question – yes, I was the one who let you in – Cave and I. He’s a Terran …’

‘Dirt-loaf,’ I interrupted. ‘Let’s get our terms correct Stella.’

The Colonel stared at me with a puzzled expression on his face and our escort shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. It was good to see that the armour of superiority could be pierced.

Stella continued after a short pause.

‘I believe the others are dead, Colonel. They had some bad luck on entry. John definitely – the others
almost
certainly.’

He looked at her with an incredulous expression on his face.

‘Then you did all this alone?’

She had just begun nodding happily, anticipating the waterfalls of praise that were about to begin to drop from the lips of her peers, when I interrupted again.

‘Not
quite
alone,’ I said, ‘there are one or two dead bodies out there on an island that had something to do with it, when they were alive. There are also,’ I added, looking at her pointedly, ‘one or two other men and women whose bodies will never be found. Perhaps a smear or two on the mushroom tower will testify to their unwitting sacrifices. Apart from that,’ I turned my attention back to Riderman, ‘yes, I suppose Stella did it alone.’

Stella glared hard at me and then said brightly to the Colonel, ‘Take no notice of Cave. He’s upset because we lost one or two men in the revolt. He’s not used to violence – or being a hero. You can imagine what these Terrans have gone through. Did you know the Soal would not allow them to meet each other? Each Terran from the age of fourteen Earth years was ordered into solitary confinement for the
rest of his life. Apart from the allowed mating periods every three Earth years they never saw another human being.’

‘We had some information of the sort,’ replied a dark-haired, handsome Martian with a deferential nod towards the Colonel, ‘isn’t that right sir? We learned about the degrading, disgusting practice of “matings” when interrogating the Soal. They seemed to consider they were right to let that sort of thing go on.’ He finished his sentence with a snigger. I was beginning to understand why Stella had been so instantly demanding in her lovemaking – so inexperienced in the art of foreplay. These people were prudes. Sex was a subject for closed doors.

‘The Soal you “interrogated”,’ I said coldly, ‘did not conquer the Earth, nor did they make the laws. They were born into the society we had here and they accepted that their forefathers had reasons for making such rules. They were not completely to blame for the condition in which you found the’Earth.’

‘So they were all good little aliens?’ the man with the black hair snorted. ‘Misunderstood, but pure in heart.’

‘No,’ I replied calmly. ‘Some were good, some were bad. Not very different from us really. What you must realize is that many of them had never seen a human being. To the ordinary Soal we were strange animals living on the small islands of the world. Only the military had any physical contact with us and they tended to be dispassionate soldierly types – not always unsympathetic to our hard life style, but tending to consider circumstances in the light of rules to be adhered to, rather than what was moral. It was the classic situation where on one hand those that made the laws were divorced from the results of those laws and therefore unwittingly blind to their effects, and on the other, those that saw that the laws were carried out had no power to change them.

‘The power is at the top of the line, with the brains. The muscle at the bottom, with the unintelligent. Unfortunately, contact with the results of bad laws comes at the wrong end of the line.’

The Colonel said to Stella, ‘You’ve picked up a bit of a scholar here.’