Earthfall

by Craig Delancey

  “Ship, I think you got it. We trick them into investigating. We make them suspicious. The women on this show—there are like five regulars—they are always talking about whether their husbands like other women. So that’s what we gotta do. Make them think he’s talking with another woman, in there. In the room. It’ll drive them nuts. They’ll have to go in and see.”

  She went back to the screen and, talking quickly, had the ship perform a number of searches. In twenty minutes she had what she wanted.

  “There is an official web site for the show,” she said. “And seven fan sites for the show, and four fan sites just for Victoria DiAngelo. People mostly make video posts, but some people do typing posts. Ship, can you get me an email address?”

  “As a ship I am entitled to acquire and manage numerous email addresses.”

  “How many?”

  “One thousand and twenty four.”

  “Awesome! Get me one thousand and twenty four email addresses.”

  “Under what names?”

  “Uh, use random names from, like, random phone numbers around the world, and get whatever is available.”

  “Such as RavindaGuarandi104?”

  “Exactly. We going to leave some messages. As many as we can manage. We’re going to work till we pass out, as my Dad used to say.”

  “I can render medical assistance as necessary.”

  “No, no, pay attention. How long will it take you to get those names and email addresses?”

  “They are already acquired.”

  Margherita put her hands on her hips. “Hey, you’re not so stupid after all.”

  “I had the highest intelligence quotient as a price-performance ratio at the time when I was manufactured. There has been damage to my systems. The AI at the Enforcer Headquarters is helping me with diagnostics. I am improving performance through software fixes to some damaged systems. Also, I can currently offload many operations to Earth, to share AI resources. I will continue to improve performance.”

  “You’re still talking to that AI?”

  “Yes, Margherita.”

  “Does it believe us yet?”

  “No, Margherita.”

  “It’s dumber than you. OK, so take dictation. We’ll post on this site, the TV show’s site, first. Uh, ready?”

  “Ready for dictation.”

  “‘I think Mr. DiAngelo has a girlfriend. You should hide in that office of his, and see who he talks to in there. Why else is he all secret about it? He’d do secret business at work. Secrets at home are something else.’ Got that? Can you post it?”

  “Yes, Margherita.”

  “Alright, we’ve gotta write like one thousand and twenty three more like that, one for each of your email addresses. But they all gotta be different. So let’s get busy.”

  “Yes, Margherita.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Tarkos had only just found Bria in one of the dining halls of the Harmonizer Tower, when he felt the ping on his implants. He stopped in the doorway, cursing because he had hoped to eat and now he had to answer a call. The dining hall was long and wide, so that the silver ceiling looked low. Humans and Kirt mostly filled the room. From the crowd alone, it might seem like being on a Kirt ship, but for the bright walls and the panorama beyond the windows to his left: the thirty-eighth floor view of Paris. His stomach rumbled as he smelled the food: a scent of good French cooking, mixed in with the grassy smell of Kirt foods.

  His name appeared on the wall beside him. He cursed, stepped aside, and touched his name.

  A visual of Dr. Murakami came up. “Tarkos?”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “That Jane Doe you found in the Amazon. She’s gone missing.”

  “What do you mean? From the hospital?”

  Murakami nodded. “Tarkos, I don’t think she could have walked out on her own. I’m afraid she was kidnapped. The police are looking. But, Tarkos, she’s a sensitive case. The damage is extensive. And there are still a lot of implants left in her head. I’m not sure this is best handled by the Police. We have a tracker in her—standard for a hospital patient. It’s working. It shows her just a few hundred meters from the hospital.”

  “That’s odd,” Tarkos said, thinking aloud. “Why would kidnappers leave her tracker on?”

  “Maybe they thought they disabled it. The transmissions we’re getting are intermittent. Still, perhaps you and your partner can…?”

  Tarkos nodded. “We’ll try to find her first. Send me all the data. Straight to my implants.”

  He turned away from the wall and went towards Bria’s huge dark back. When he was just a step away, she huffed and stood.

  “Platform Forty A,” she said.

  “You’ve already ordered transport, then,” Tarkos said. “Damn those Sussurat ears.”

  _____

  A hopper waited on the edge of the platform, the engine already humming. Wind whipped at them when they stepped outside, making the pant cuffs of Tarkos’s uniform flap loudly. Bria’s fur twisted in waving patterns. She ran to the hopper and Tarkos had only just clicked his belt closed when Bria slipped the small craft over the edge of the landing pad, and they plummeted toward Paris.

  “Woah,” Tarkos shouted involuntarily, his testicles retracting from the sudden fall into zero g. Then Bria increased the engine power and they slammed down into their seats.

  “Ugh, I hate the way you fly down in gravity wells,” Tarkos said.

  Bria said nothing. They shared a virtual overlay now, using their implants. The hospital appeared as a blinking green tower to the south. They flew towards it. A red dot, with a line dropping from it like a vertical tail, told them where the woman’s tracker placed her.

  They dropped smoothly as they flew. The copper and white roofs passed below them. Traffic moved along in the streets, and drones moved this way and that just below them, following the paths of the roads. In the distance, moving in circles around the hospital, French police craft blinked. They did not settle toward the ground. Tarkos realized that they must not be following the tracker. Either their equipment did not detect it, or the Harmonizers had not shared the data.

  The woman’s marker shifted slowly to the East. A dozen blocks by Tarkos’s count. They reached the place in a minute. Their hopper began to blink red and green lights, indicating they had official permission to land here. He looked over at the cops but, so far, none of their ships seemed to have taken notice of them.

  Bria lowered toward a building. The thrusters stirred dust and a scrap of paper off the roof below them. It fluttered down into the street. They slowly slid forward, over the edge of the building. Before them stretched a square with a small green park. People stood on the sidewalk, looking up, hands shielding their eyes as they watched the hopper come into view. The engines would be loud down there.

  Little traffic moved on the street below. Bria lowered slowly down. Branches rose past them. Tarkos strained to see, but through the foliage he caught only glimpses of the green beyond.

  The hopper settled on the road with a creaking of its three legs. Cars honked at them, the AI systems protesting the intrusion, somehow not recognizing it as official.

  They unbuckled and leapt down. Tarkos touched his gun but did not take it from the holster. It seemed possible, but also somehow unlikely, that an Ulltrian could be here. Bria reached under the seat of the hopper and pulled out a weapon with a huge cavernous barrel. Tarkos frowned, recognizing it. A non-lethal gun.

  They jogged into the park. The tracker showed them that the woman was only fifty meters ahead. But a small pavilion blocked their view. Mothers grabbed their children, and men stepped back, staring with open mouths at Bria, as they ran across the park. They parted and went around both sides of the small pavilion building.

  Tarkos saw her then, at the edge of the park. She did not look back at them, but he called out to her in English. She had spoken English to him when they had been in Brazil.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  She did not turn.
>
  “So much for Murakami’s diagnosis,” Tarkos said to Bria. “The doctor said she couldn’t have made it out on her own steam. What do we find? She’s just making a break for it, all on her own.”

  Bria grunted. “Very strong purpose,” she said.

  They ran quickly now. Bria had slung the big gun over her back. She fell to all fours and in seconds she was in the road and before the woman. She slid to a halt, nails scraping at the cobbles. Tarkos continued running behind, catching up, and he watched as Bria sat back on her haunches, trying to look smaller and less intimidating.

  Tarkos was almost there. He heard Bria say, in passable English, “Pleasssssse ssstop.”

  The woman froze in step, a strange gesture, as if she had not even seen Bria until the Sussurat had spoken. She looked side to side. She turned and looked at Tarkos. He smiled at her, trying to look reassuring. He opened his mouth, about to say, “Remember me?”

  She took off running.

  Bria sat between the woman and the road she had been walking towards. So she turned to her left and ran south now. Tarkos followed her. Bria, barely making an effort, lopped along beside him, keeping up. The woman was in the thinnest of hospital robes. Her skin look sickly pale. White bandages wrapped her entire head, till it seemed she wore a turban. The implant that remained in her skull made sharp outlines against the bandages. It made Tarkos cautious: it looked like it would be very easy for the woman to hurt herself. A single blow to the head would surely drive the implants into her subcortex and destroy her brain.

  Bria began to flank the woman, passing on her left side. The woman turned to the right and sprinted into an alley. But Tarkos could see immediately that this was just a private drive. It ended at a closed white garage door.

  The woman stumbled and almost fell. She moved sideways to the wall on her right, putting her hands on it for support. When she did that, Bria unslung the gun from her shoulder. In a smooth motion she raised it and with a dull thwump, fired.

  A band of net unfolded and slapped into the woman’s torso. Its white tentacles slapped against the stone wall and held there. The woman was pinned. Bria had used the weapon perfectly: the net had hit her with almost no force, the anchors alone touching the wall. But the woman could not move. One arm was held in the net, and with the other the woman clawed at the outside of its bonds.

  “Let me talk with her,” Tarkos said. Bria huffed in response, throwing the weapon back over her shoulder. The two tone cry of French police cars approached, coming loudly around the square.

  Tarkos walked towards her, hands up and open.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Ma’am. Please let me help you. We want to help you.”

  She stared off to the side, a snarl on her face, fighting her bonds fiercely. Her whole body strained. It scared Tarkos. She surely could hurt herself, surely, even just by straining like that.

  But she did not look at him. Instead, she looked down the alley, at the blank dead end. It suddenly struck Tarkos: she was not staring off randomly, like a mad person. She faced east. And, outside, she had been walking east. East from the hospital, east across the park, east down this alleyway.

  Involuntarily, he turned his head and looked to the east also.

  “What’s there? What’s in that direction?”

  She hissed.

  “Is it the Ulltrian?”

  “Ulltrians!” she shouted, furious. She looked at him. She seemed to see him now. She spoke in a rush. “I remember you. You were supposed to kill it. You, you, you….”

  “We almost did,” Tarkos said. “We almost did kill it. How many are there? How many Ulltrians are on Earth?”

  “Two,” she said. She looked back at the wall, towards the east. “Two. Too many. Two.”

  Relief flooded through Tarkos. He felt a desire to sit. To sit there, in the alleyway, and just breath. Just to take in the relief.

  If there had been a hundred Ulltrians on Earth, even if there had been only forty or fifty, the planet would be doomed. A single Ulltrian could produce biological weapons with its own body, sufficient to destroy a world. To fight dozens would ensure that some would destroy the planet if their fellow invaders began to fall. But two. Two could be killed quickly. Two could be contained. Two meant that this day, at least, Earth would continue to survive a little longer.

  “Where?”

  She pointed to the east with her one free hand.

  “How far?” Tarkos asked.

  “Far. Far. But still, I can feel them.”

  “Far, but in Paris? Are they here in Paris?”

  “No,” she said. “Far.”

  Tarkos had no idea what to think of that. How far was “far”? In the east of France? Or in the Atlantic? Or in America?

  A buzzing suddenly filled the alley. Tarkos looked back. Media drones hovered in the entrance to the alley—first one, then a moment later four of them, their cameras aimed at him. Tarkos frowned, knowing how this could be distorted: two Predators with a wounded woman pinned to a wall. Bria growled, and sent a radio warning to the drones, demanding a police perimeter. They retreated a few meters, but their buzz remained now, annoying.

  He turned back to the woman and took a step closer to her. She did not seem to mind. More quietly, he ask, “Can you help me find them? Can you help me find the Ulltrians?”

  “Yes yes if you, if you….”

  “Then we will get them. If you help me, I promise we will get them. We want to help you.”

  He took another small step toward her. He was near now. An arm’s length away. He held out his hand. To his surprise, she took it, as if shaking hands with him. But she held on tight. Very tight. Crushing his fingers. A desperate clinging to humanity.

  “My name is Amir Tarkos.”

  “I… it’s hard. There’s noise in my head and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s radio and what’s noise quantum noise. You. You seemed unreal just noise just painful noise until this moment.”

  “Then hold onto me,” he said. “Hold onto me. I’m real.”

  Three police cars squealed to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Tarkos held a hand out towards them, the gesture a clear request that they stand back. Five police climbed from their vehicles, holding submachine guns, but they did him the courtesy of staying in the mouth of the alley, behind Bria.

  The woman did not even look towards them. She looked east. But she held onto Tarkos, hard, and spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “I was once smart. Very smart. You know? Can you believe that? Sorry. I….”

  “I believe you,” he said. “And I think you’ll be alright. I think that if we can get their machines out of your head, you’ll recover. You’ll be smart again. And if you forgot anything, you can relearn it.”

  She said nothing to that, staring with red eyes at the wall. A trickle of blood started down her temple, leaking from under her bandages.

  Tarkos felt rage surge through him. And tears started in his eyes. They had been so cruel. The Ulltrians were indifferent to pain, to love, to any beneficent emotion. And what was evil, but that? To pursue your purposes at the cost of others, to spend their lives for your ends? That’s what the Ulltrians would do with whole worlds.

  “Help us find them,” he said. “And we’ll kill both of them.”

  She looked at him with wild eyes and strained again at the bonds. He held up his free hand, reflexively wanting to placate her.

  “Please—” he started.

  “No!” she shouted. “No! Not both. Not both. Not both of them. You can’t kill both of them.”

  “Stay calm,” he said. “Please, stay calm. Just tell me. I don’t understand, but I’m listening. Don’t hurt yourself. Just tell me. Remember me? I’m here. I’m listening. I’m real. A human just like you. Just tell me.”

  “Kill one,” she hissed. “But we need the other. They have the way back. It could have the way back. One of them must have the way back.”

  “Back where?” Tarkos asked.

  “To my daughter,” sh
e whispered.

  Chapter 5

  Alfonso DiAngelo waited in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. He didn’t care much for the modernists. Art died after the Impressionists, in his opinion. Worse, the pale white rooms upstairs were filled now with Galactic art. Transparent Neelee sculptures. Tactile stone sculptures of Kirt artists. Big cubes of shimmering stars forged by Brights. It disgusted him. But he’d given the museum a million dollars once. Because his wife asked him to, on national television. And his wife liked to be filmed arguing with her friends in front of white splotches on big canvases. The poor woman thought it made her look profound.

  He walked out onto the courtyard garden, swinging an aluminum briefcase. The bench under the linden tree remained empty. He sat, squared the briefcase on his lap, and stared at the bank of glass before him.

  A young man sat down next to him. Red hair, blue eyes. Freckles.

  “Catherine thanks you for bringing the package,” he said.

  DiAngelo looked at him frankly now. “I don’t know you.”

  He nodded. “Catherine is busy. She’s arranging things. She couldn’t come.”

  DiAngelo frowned and scanned the courtyard. No one here seemed to notice them. An old man threw breadcrumbs to dirty sparrows that hopped on the stone walk. A young couple smiled at their daughter, who tottered around their bench. There was no one else in the courtyard.

  “What are you, eighteen?”

  “Old enough,” the man said.

  “No. Not old enough. You look seventeen, even.”

  “I’m twenty.”

  DiAngelo raised his eyebrows in a mock show of being impressed. But he added, “Catherine should have come. I don’t like this.”

  “We need the package,” the man said. He started to turn red with frustration. He was afraid, DiAngelo realized, of Catherine. Afraid of returning without the case.

  “What’s your name?”

  “You don’t need to know my name.”

  “Wrong. I need to know your name.”

  “Stevie.”

  DiAngelo shook his head. “What’s your stake in this, Stevie? Young kids like you are supposed to be wild about the Galactic Alliance. You’re supposed to want to get out there with the Brights and the Neelee and the Sussuratians.”