Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Yanyu reached across the table and took his hand. "I am sorry for your loss, Victor."

  It was her touch and the gentleness of her voice that nearly pushed him to tears. For days he had buried all thoughts of Father. It was too much to think about, too painful to dwell on. Father was dead. The most constant person in Victor's life was gone. Day after day they had spent every waking hour together bouncing around the ship and making repairs, learning together, laughing together, arguing at times yes, but always apologizing and feeling stupid together afterward. Always together. Not even Mother spent that much time with Father.

  And now Father was gone.

  Victor wondered how Mother was taking it. A part of him felt guilty for not rushing back and looking for her and the others on the WU-HU ship. Wasn't that his duty as the last surviving male? Not going back was like abandoning Mother, wasn't it? She needed him. She would be broken inside without Father.

  And yet Victor also knew that Mother's spine had more iron than his. If anyone could survive and keep all the women and children together, Mother could. She didn't need Victor's help for that. In fact, he would only add to her burden because she would be consoling him, not the other way around.

  That was Mother's gift. Father fixed broken machines, Mother fixed broken people.

  "Come," said Yanyu. "I will take you."

  They took a track car to the center of Old City where the recruiting offices were located. They got out at the NATO building and stood in the artificial sunlight.

  "You want me to come in with you?" asked Imala.

  "No," said Victor. "I can do this."

  "We'll wait here," said Yanyu. "I'll take you both back to my place when you're done. They won't ship you out for a few days at least."

  "If they ship me out, you mean."

  "Think positive," said Imala. "The world is desperate. They'd be insane not to take someone with your talents."

  Victor entered the building and told the woman at the counter why he'd come. She directed him to a room where a handful of other men around Victor's age were waiting. An hour passed as more men trickled in. They were from all nationalities. Some were nicely dressed. Others wore mismatched hand-me-down garments as was the norm among most free-miner families.

  Eventually a uniformed soldier entered and addressed them. "NATO does not take walk-ins," he said. "We take trained soldiers only. Our forces come from the existing armies of our member countries. So we can't enlist any of you into our service. However, through that far door we have recruiters from every member country. You can enlist in their army, and once you've received training, you can request a transfer to a NATO force. If you are not a citizen of any country, if you don't have a birth certificate, I'm afraid no country is going to take you. Please exit back this way." He pointed to the door they had come through. "Give your contact information to the woman at the desk. If our policy changes, we will make an effort to contact you."

  "How?" said Victor. "How will you contact us? My ship was destroyed, and how would you contact a ship anyway? Most communications are down."

  "Sorry. That's what I've been asked to say."

  "You mean that's what they told you to tell us space borns to make us go away."

  The room was quiet. The soldier said nothing.

  "What difference does citizenship make anyway?" said Victor. "People on Earth are dying. Do you think they care if their rescuers have a birth certificate?"

  "Look, I don't make the policy," said the soldier.

  "No, you just follow it. You'll let the world be destroyed because of a policy."

  "With all due respect, friend, one person can't stop the world from being destroyed."

  Victor was on his feet. "With all due respect, friend, you're wrong."

  He went through the door and passed the front desk without stopping.

  Outside, Imala and Yanyu instantly saw that it hadn't gone well. "You okay?" asked Imala.

  All the rage and disappointment in Victor fizzled out, replaced with embarrassment. "I'm not even a second-class citizen, Imala. I'm nobody."

  "Not true," said Yanyu. "You are a first-class citizen. First-class friend. Come. I will cook you my turnip cakes. They will make you happy."

  Cakes made from turnips? The idea didn't sound promising. But Victor put on his best smile for her sake and followed them toward an available track car.

  *

  Yanyu's apartment was cramped but well organized, adorned with trinkets and art prints from China. There was plenty of food to go along with the turnip cakes--pan-fried noodles with bean sprouts, congee with dried minced pork, and sweet tea, all of it in sealed containers that magnetized to the table. Victor never would have thought of it as breakfast food, but it was all good nonetheless.

  The turnip cakes, as Yanyu had promised, did in fact make him happy. They were thick, pan-fried, square-shaped rice cakes filled with sausage and Jinhua ham. Victor had eaten four of them before Yanyu explained that they weren't actually made with turnips.

  "Then why call them turnip cakes?" Victor asked with a mouthful.

  Yanyu shrugged. "Why do Americans call them hamburgers if they're made from beef and not pork?"

  "She has a point," said Imala.

  When they had eaten and cleared the dishes, Yanyu asked, "What will you do now?"

  "If an army won't take us, we'll form our own," said Victor. "The three of us."

  "What can three people do against the Formics?" asked Yanyu.

  "Tell us more about yesterday's attack on the mothership," said Victor. "What did the Formics do exactly?"

  "They won," said Yanyu. "They fired at anything that moved. Some of the shuttles came in slowly and got close, but the Formics vaporized them before they reached the ship. It made humans look foolish."

  "Do you have any footage from the battle?" asked Victor.

  "We recorded it with the Juke scopes." She pushed off from the table and moon bounced into the family room, where she pulled up several vid files on the holoscreen. "Help yourself, though you will only find it depressing."

  Victor took the controls and began studying the footage. The attack was well coordinated. The first wave targeted the shield generators and other defensive targets on the ship's surface, but the rockets fired by the human ships detonated before they reached the mothership, hitting whatever shielding surrounded the Formics. Laser fire broke through the shielding, however, and this seemed to spur the human shuttles forward. Any hope of victory was dashed a moment later as plasma erupted from the surface of the Formic ship on all sides and decimated the entire human fleet in under a minute.

  "It's like they're not even trying," said Imala. "We give them everything we've got, and they shrug us off."

  Victor replayed the footage. On the second viewing he asked the computer to monitor the human ships' speeds, their angles of approach, and the number of times each ship fired. On the third viewing he saw the pattern. On the fourth viewing he was sure he was right.

  "Look at this," he said, starting the vid again and playing it at a slower speed. "The apertures on the surface of the Formic ship open, but look, they target the fastest ships first."

  "So," said Yanyu. "That's what I would do. The fastest ships are the ones that will reach them first and are therefore the most immediate threat."

  "That's just it," said Victor. "Some of these fast ships aren't even heading toward the Formics. A few of them are moving in an arc, getting into position, preparing to come at the Formics from another direction. So their trajectory is taking them to a spot in space on the other side. A few of them aren't even firing yet."

  "What's your point?" said Imala.

  "My point is, it doesn't make tactical sense. Humans would defend themselves differently. We would target those ships that pose the biggest, most immediate threat, right? The ships that were firing. But the Formics don't. They target the ships that are moving the fastest."

  "They wiped out every ship," said Imala. "Does it matter what order they d
id it in?"

  "It absolutely matters," said Victor. "Look." He sped up the vid to the end of the battle. "Watch. The ships that were destroyed last were the ships that were moving the slowest. And yet some of these ships are scorching the surface of the Formic ship with laser fire. So in some instances, the Formics took out ships that weren't firing before they took out ships that were."

  "Meaning what?" asked Imala.

  "Meaning their defense is somehow built on motion detection," said Victor. "They identified all the ships and destroyed them in the order of how fast they were moving. Which means if a ship was moving slow enough and inconspicuously enough, it might be able to reach the Formic ship."

  "That doesn't make sense," said Imala. "If it's moving toward the ship, it's in motion. That would set off the Formic sensors."

  "Not if it's moving very, very slowly," said Victor. "Here, look at the debris around the Formic ship. Most of the debris from the destroyed ships is gone, blasted off and moving away at a constant speed. But you still have hundreds of pieces of debris surrounding the mothership. Now, none of these pieces is completely inert. They're all spinning or drifting slightly, so they have some motion. And yet the Formics don't blast them. Why?"

  "Because they're not ships," said Imala. "They're debris. They're not a threat anymore."

  "Exactly," said Victor. "They have some motion but they're being ignored because they're debris."

  "If you're making another point, Vico," said Imala, "we're not seeing it."

  "This is the answer," said Victor. "This is how I can reach the Formic ship."

  "How?" said Imala.

  "By camouflaging a tiny shuttle to look like debris and then piloting it very slowly, as if it were drifting, right up to the surface of the ship. It would blend in with all of the other drifting debris. The Formics would completely ignore it. And if the motion was slow enough, their sensors wouldn't detect it."

  "Theoretically," said Imala. "You don't know how sensitive their sensors are."

  "Actually," said Victor, "we have a pretty good idea. My father and all the men from El Cavador, along with Lem's men, reached the surface of the ship. How? By having their ships match the Formics' speed, which meant their ships looked stationary to the Formics. And more importantly, for whatever reason, the men passed through the shield. I can get on that ship, Imala."

  "And do what exactly?" asked Imala. "Blow it up? Your family already tried that, Vico. It didn't work."

  "My family tried damaging it from the outside. They didn't go inside."

  "So you'll go in the ship? How?"

  "I don't know yet. I just came up with the idea. I'll figure something out."

  "I know you're upset about not being able to enlist, Vico," said Imala, "but let's think rationally here. What you're suggesting is suicide. We don't have any of the supplies you'd need. We don't have a shuttle. We don't have camouflage for a shuttle. And we certainly don't have weapons for doing any damage inside the Formic ship even if you were, by some miracle, able to get inside."

  "What is it with you planet people?" said Victor. "All anyone ever does around here is say something can't be done. We don't have this. We can't do that. That's against the rules. Well guess what? This is how we live, Imala. This is how free miners think. When there's a problem, we don't sit around and take note of everything that can't be done, we do something. We find a way, and we fix it."

  Imala folded her arms. "You and I are on the same team, Vico. I've made sacrifices for you, and getting snippy with me doesn't help. Everything I've said is true. You may not like it, but those are the facts. We don't have those supplies. Just because I question your idea doesn't mean I'm wrong. Are you telling me that every free-miner idea is a good one?"

  "No. Of course not."

  "Then let's think this through instead of arguing."

  Victor exhaled. "You're right. I'm sorry."

  Imala turned to Yanyu. "Does the observatory have a shuttle we could use?"

  "I thought you were dismissing the idea," said Victor.

  "I'm figuring out if it's feasible," said Imala. "I'm trying to help." She turned back to Yanyu.

  "No," said Yanyu. "We sometimes have the scopes serviced, but there's a repair crew that does that. They have their own shuttles. I've never even seen them before. I wouldn't know how to acquire one."

  "What about the Juke shuttle?" said Victor. "The one we just docked?"

  Imala shook her head. "It's in the system now. We don't have authorization to reboard it or take it anywhere. Juke Limited wouldn't let us near the thing. How would you camouflage a shuttle anyway? Maybe we start there."

  "Space junk," said Victor. "There are thousands of pieces orbiting Earth. Old satellites, retired space stations, discarded shuttle parts. We simply scoop up some of that and then weld it all over the surface of the shuttle to make it look like a big chunk of a destroyed ship."

  "Weld it?" said Imala. "Who's going to loan us a shuttle and then allow us to essentially destroy it by welding junk all over it?"

  Victor shrugged. "I don't know. I have some money. Maybe we buy a used one."

  "You don't have enough," said Imala. "Not even a fraction of what we would need. Operating shuttles are expensive. Even old ones. Especially now. With the war on and people in a panic, you can bet the price of shuttles has skyrocketed. I'd give you everything in my account as well, but we'd still be shy. Plus there's the cost of fuel to go out and recover the space junk. That's probably nearly as expensive as the shuttle itself. It's a good idea, Vico, but we don't have the money for that."

  "I'd give you everything in my account too," said Yanyu. "Maybe the others at the observatory would chip in also."

  Victor and Imala exchanged glances.

  "It's worth a shot," said Imala. "But I still don't think it will be enough."

  "Let me conference with everyone," said Yanyu.

  She hopped to the holofield and began a chat with her coworkers. Several of them pledged money, but most of them were skeptical and politely refused. They had the same issue that Imala did. Once you reach the Formic ship, then what? What good is it to invest in a shuttle if you can't do anything once you get there? Imala spent the time looking on the nets at shuttles for sale, becoming increasingly more convinced that they couldn't afford to buy one.

  After the conference, Yanyu and Imala shared notes. They were still far short. They didn't even have enough to buy the shell of a shuttle someone was selling. No engine. No flight controls. Just the body of the ship.

  "We need a benefactor," said Imala. "Someone with resources. Someone who could give us a shuttle and a weapon."

  "If you're going to say Ukko Jukes," said Victor, "I'll politely remind you that he wants us off the grid. He practically threw us out to the Belt."

  "Not Ukko," said Imala. "Lem."

  "Absolutely not," said Victor. "He's a murderer, Imala. He crippled my family's ship. He tried to kill me."

  "He helped your family later, Vico."

  "He abandoned them. He left them to die."

  "He has what we need, Vico. And he wants to get rid of the Formics as much as we do."

  "We don't even know if he's on Luna. He was still at Last Chance when we left."

  "I already checked while Yanyu was on the holo," said Imala. "He arrived several days ago. It was all over the news."

  "He can't be trusted, Imala."

  "He came clean about your family, Vico. He didn't have to. He told the truth."

  "His version of the truth. And that doesn't make him an ally."

  "Anyone who wants to destroy the Formics is an ally, Vico. I don't like it any more than you do. I find the man as repulsive as his father, but he can get us what we need if we can convince him to cooperate."

  "He'll only take the idea and do it himself."

  "All the better," said Imala. "Let him take the risks if he wants to. It doesn't matter how the Formics go down. It only matters that they do."

  Victor was quiet a moment. "If
he refuses I want permission to punch him in the face."

  "If he refuses," said Imala, "you'll have to get in line."

  *

  Lem agreed to meet them at a botanical garden in the Old City an hour after the facility closed. Imala suggested that Yanyu stay behind and continue the search for a reasonable shuttle.

  Victor and Imala arrived at the appointed hour, and the man at the gate escorted them through the azalea garden to a bench beneath a crabapple tree and then left them there. Lem had not yet arrived, so they settled onto the bench and waited.

  Imala pointed out all the flowers she knew. Azaleas and rhododendrons lined the path all around them. White, pink, coral, magenta. Huge lilac plants swayed gently in the artificial breeze, their purple blossoms giving off a sweet scent. It mixed with the smells of damp earth and grass and other flowers, and was so powerful and so foreign to Victor that it made him a little sick to his stomach.

  Lem showed up ten minutes later with a retinue of security guards who hung back at a distance. He took the bench opposite them and settled back languidly.

  "Why meet us here?" said Imala. "Why not somewhere more public?"

  "Because he doesn't want to be seen with a filthy rock sucker," said Victor.

  Imala put a hand on Victor's leg to calm him.

  "Wherever I go I get assaulted by paparazzi," said Lem. "It's annoying. I figured you didn't want cameras shoved in your faces."

  "Yes, you're a big hero now," said Victor. "We watched some of your interviews this afternoon. You were so brave to abandon those free miners. Wherever did you find the courage?"

  Lem rolled his eyes. "Is this why you asked to see me? To insult me? Because I really don't have the time." He started to get up.

  "No," said Imala. "That's not why." She shot Victor a look, and Victor put his hands up in a show of surrender.

  Lem settled back on the bench. "Look," he said, "whatever your agenda is, let me begin by saying that this company has the finest legal team in the world. If your intent is to blackmail me, you're making a mistake. It won't work. My father would never allow that to happen. If you go to the press, they'll ignore you. If you go the nets, it will be removed, and you'll be slapped with a lawsuit that would pretty much guarantee a very dismal financial future for yourselves. Trust me. I know how my father works. I know you're not wearing listening devices because I had the gardener sweep you when you came in, but if this is your intent, let me save you a lot of heartache and end the conversation right now before you say something you'll regret. Because whatever it is, my father will hear of it, and it would not bode well for you."