Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Mazer came over, bent down, and scooped the old man up into his arms, being careful not to touch Danwen's face. Smoke was pouring out of the barn now. Flames crawled up the interior wall like it was kindling. There was a square wooden box on the ground near the back wall where more tools were kept. Mazer laid Danwen atop it and kicked some of the untouched hay around it. The fire was close now. Mazer kicked at a burning plank to knock it free of the wall. It splintered and broke away, burning at the edges. Mazer grabbed a corner that wasn't on fire and placed it at the base of the box Danwen lay on. The smoke was thick and burned Mazer's eyes. The heat was intense. Mazer retreated out of the barn coughing and brushing burning ashes from his clothes.

  Bingwen stood outside in the yard, staring at the flames, the sword loose in his hand, blood glistening on the blade in the firelight.

  Mazer knelt beside him. "We can't stay, Bingwen. Can you run?"

  They needed to move. The troop transports were silent and light as leaves. They could be here at any moment. Bingwen turned to Mazer, his movements slow, as if in a trance. He didn't respond. He wouldn't be able to run, Mazer realized. Not quickly. Mazer took the sword and gently picked up Bingwen in his arms. Then he ran, heading down the mountain, the flames and the farmhouse at their backs--moving north, into the darkness.

  *

  They ran for fifteen minutes, cutting through fields that had been stripped of all life. Mazer's boots were soon heavy with mud and ashes. They crossed rice fields, sticking to the thin bridges of earth between the paddies and steering clear of the standing water. The rice shoots had long since wilted and died, and now a thin chemical residue floated atop the water at the paddies' edges, glistening in the moonlight like oil. A kilometer beyond the base of the mountain they found a stretch of jungle untouched by the mist and pushed their way through it, preferring to be in the cover of the thick foliage than out in the open where they could be easily spotted. It was harder to see in the jungle, however. Branches snagged at their clothes and slapped at their faces. Twice Mazer stumbled, nearly dropping Bingwen both times.

  By now, Bingwen was coming to himself again. "You don't have to carry me anymore," he said quietly. "I can run."

  Mazer didn't argue. He was exhausted. His body was slick with sweat. His arms and legs were cramped, particularly his right arm, which had carried the bulk of Bingwen's weight. The wound in his belly had begun to burn, too, and he worried that he might have torn something. He set Bingwen down, and they collapsed at the base of a tree. Mazer leaned back against the trunk, his breathing heavy.

  They sat in silence for a while. Mazer wanted to comfort Bingwen; he wanted to say something reassuring, something to soften the boy's grief. Yet everything that came to mind sounded insufficient or like an empty promise he couldn't keep. They were in danger now, more danger than they had been in before, and any assurance of a happy ending seemed false and disingenuous.

  It was Bingwen who finally broke the silence. "I'm sorry you had to carry me," he said. "I ... wasn't thinking straight."

  "It's all right," said Mazer. "I didn't mind. I needed the exercise."

  "No. You didn't. You shouldn't be straining yourself. You should be resting. Look at you. You're thinner than you were. You need food, Mazer. Real food. Meat and fruits and vegetables, not rice and bamboo. And a real doctor should have a look at you." He pulled his knees up tight to his chest as he had done in the farmhouse. "You can't go back to the lander, Mazer. You can't. You're not healthy enough to fight."

  Mazer took a few more breaths before responding. His heart was pounding. "It's complicated, Bingwen."

  "No. It isn't. You're weak. The army has been pounding the lander and gotten nowhere. What can you do that they can't? You'd be throwing your life away. Let the fighters and bombs do their job."

  "You just said the bombs weren't working."

  "Walking to the lander is stupid. Suicide. If you want to get in the fight, find some troops. Do good elsewhere. You can help and still survive."

  "If I go north and find Chinese troops, Bingwen, they'll likely arrest me and ship me back to New Zealand. And that's the best-case scenario."

  "Why would they arrest you?"

  "Like I said, it's complicated."

  "And I wouldn't understand because I'm a child? I thought we were past that."

  Mazer exhaled deep and wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt. "All right. They'd arrest me because I'm not supposed to be here. I disobeyed a direct order by rushing to the lander. Three of my friends died as a result of my decision. My military isn't likely to forgive that. I'm not sure I can forgive it." He took another deep breath and leaned forward. "That's why I have to go back, Bingwen. I'm not going home until I help end this war. Not because it might absolve me of ignoring the order, but because I owe it to my friends to make their deaths mean something. Because I owe it to you and to your parents and your grandfather and everyone in China who has suffered. Does that make sense?"

  "No. It doesn't. It's boneheaded. You're not responsible for what has happened here, Mazer. You're not responsible even for your friends. They wanted to help. It was their decision to disobey that order as much as yours. It's not your fault they died."

  "It is actually. I was their commanding officer. I was responsible for their safety."

  "So throwing yourself to the Formics is going to change that? What are you hoping to accomplish by getting yourself killed?"

  "I don't plan on dying, Bingwen."

  "Well the Formics are likely to spoil those plans. It's you against hundreds or thousands of them. You, unarmed and weak, dressed in rags. And them, shielded and loaded with weapons and completely merciless. You don't have to be an adult to see how foolish you're being."

  Mazer smiled. "Rest, Bingwen. This is the last break we'll take for a while."

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Mazer's breathing normalized, and the burning in his side had dissipated, which suggested it was a stitch in his side and not the surgery wound ... or so Mazer hoped. They got up and started moving again, this time at a much slower pace. They used the sword to cut their way through the densest parts of the jungle, but every slice was loud in the stillness, so they did it sparingly.

  After another hour of walking Bingwen asked, "Do you have a son?"

  The question surprised Mazer. "A son? No. I'm not married, Bingwen."

  "Why not? The doctor, Kim, she cares for you. Why not marry her?"

  Mazer regarded the boy. It was hard to see him clearly in the darkness and shadows of the jungle. "I wish it were that easy, Bingwen."

  "She loves you. I could tell. I may be eight, but I'm not blind."

  "People don't marry simply because they're in love, Bingwen."

  "Of course they do. Why else would they do it?"

  "Marriage and family is a commitment to someone. If you can't be absolute in your commitment, you shouldn't make it. I'm a soldier. I'm always away. That would be hard on a marriage."

  "So you'll never marry?"

  "One day, I hope. After I'm a soldier."

  "Would you ever consider having a son before you were married?"

  Mazer saw where this was going. When he spoke his voice was kind and quiet. "You can't be my son, Bingwen."

  "But I'd work hard," said Bingwen. "And I'd obey. You wouldn't have to scold me or punish me because I would always listen. I wouldn't even complain when you had to go off somewhere on assignment. I could take care of myself. I could cook my own meals. I can cook other things besides rice and bamboo, you know. I can cook meats and vegetables. I could cook for you, too."

  Mazer stopped and knelt in front of the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder. "If I have a son one day, Bingwen, I hope he's as brave and smart and strong as you. But China is your home, and New Zealand is mine."

  "China was my home. But it's a new China now, one that's as strange to me as it is to you. I don't belong here any more than you do."

  He's like me, thought Mazer. Displaced,
alone, coping with a new culture, having lost the one he knew. It was exactly how Mazer felt as a boy when his mother died. She had angered her Maori family by marrying an Englishman. They were pure Maoris, and they saw Father as an intruder, stealing their daughter from her heritage. So they expelled her from the tribe.

  Later, when Mazer was born, Mother repented by immersing Mazer in the Maori culture. She still loved Father--she would never leave him--but she wanted Mazer raised as she had been. So she plunged him into the culture and taught him the language, dances, and songs. She fed him Maori food, instilled in him the warrior spirit. She made him super Maori.

  Then she died when he was ten. And now there was no one to champion Mazer's inclusion in the group. Father, after having been excluded for all those years, certainly wasn't going to do it. Instead, he took Mazer back to England and tried to erase all the Maori in him. Father was the scion of a noble family, and he would make Mazer a proper Englishman with studies in computers and science. Suddenly Mazer went from a fishing/taro-planting/pig-butchering life full of song and story to a life of high-tech computers in British boarding schools.

  He learned to adapt. He was never accepted by the pure Brits--they called him a wog and excluded him. But he became more British than they were. He learned every courtesy of British society. He mastered the accent. He became extremely articulate. He consumed every subject he studied. He made himself an expert in two cultures ... even though he was never really a citizen of either.

  Bingwen faced the same issue. He was a primitive farm child who had crossed over and immersed himself in a different culture, learning English, learning computers, soaking up as much as he could. He had passed back and forth between worlds as Mazer did.

  "The world will always change, Bingwen," said Mazer. "You become whoever you need to be to fit it."

  "So I'm never really a person at all then. I'm just whatever is convenient to the world around me? That's not who I want to be. That's not me."

  "That's not who you are, Bingwen. But that's how you survive. You've been doing it all your life already. It doesn't change who you are. You still get to decide who that is. You get to choose the best of everything. The best of China, the best of what you've learned, the best of your parents. That is still your choice, regardless of what the world is doing, whether this is the China you know or not. You still decide who you are."

  "Except I can't decide to be your son."

  "No, but you don't have to be my son to mean something to me. You can--"

  He stopped. He had heard something. Voices perhaps. Not too distant. He put a finger to his lips, and Bingwen nodded that he understood.

  They crept forward, silent as shadows, until they reached the edge of the jungle, just a few meters away. A wide clearing opened before them in the darkness, and far out in the center of it, two hundred meters away, a red dot of firelight flickered. There were shapes moving around the fire, though at this distance it was impossible to see how many people there were or if they were friendly or not. Mazer and Bingwen crouched at the edge of the jungle and listened. Whoever they were they weren't very smart to have built a fire in such an open space. They were practically calling the Formics to their position.

  Mazer had hoped to find a group or family that Bingwen could go with, but it wouldn't be this lot. They were reckless and loud and likely to get Bingwen killed. The smart thing to do would be to move on and stay clear of them. Let the Formics find them. Not our problem.

  But Mazer was desperate for information. He knew nothing about the Formics' position or movements. He might be walking Bingwen straight toward a Formic stronghold. It was a risk to talk to whoever was out there, but it was a risk Mazer knew he had to take.

  For a moment he considered ordering Bingwen to stay behind while he advanced and approached the fire, but he didn't feel comfortable leaving Bingwen alone, and he doubted Bingwen would like the idea either. "Stay close," said Mazer. "And step as quietly as you can until we're certain they're friendly."

  They moved toward the light, Mazer leading, sword in hand. When they were halfway across the field Mazer stopped and sniffed at the air.

  "What is it?" Bingwen whispered.

  "That smell," said Mazer. "It smells like ... lobster."

  Bingwen sniffed. "I smell it too."

  Mazer tightened his grip on the sword hilt, and they drew closer to camp. Soon the vague shapes in the firelight took form. There were five men and one woman, all of them crouched on the ground, huddled around something, the fire behind them. There was a spit above the flames with some creature roasting on it. As Mazer drew closer he saw that the cooked creature was the bottom half of a Formic. The people were eating the top half, which they had pulled off the spit and placed on the ground, surrounding it like a pack of scavengers.

  Mazer felt sick. He wanted to retreat, but they were close to the fire now, and the woman saw them. She cried out, and the men were instantly on their feet, weapons in hand. They had staves and knives and machetes. They were peasants. Their clothes were torn and stained, their faces wild. They were thin and sallow and desperate.

  Mazer didn't move. Bingwen hid behind him. No one spoke.

  One of the men with a machete finally said, "This is our food. There's not enough for you."

  "We don't want your food," said Mazer.

  "He's lying," said the man with a knife. "He wants it all right. Look at his eyes."

  "You shouldn't eat that," said Mazer. "It's the wrong arrangement of proteins. It wasn't made for humans to eat."

  "See?" said the man with the knife. "He's trying to trick us and take it from us."

  "They collect their dead," said Mazer. "They might come for this one."

  The men glanced up in the sky around them as if they thought a transport might descend right on top of them.

  The woman was behind the men near the fire. She turned away suddenly and began to retch. The men watched her. The woman fell to her hands and knees and emptied her stomach onto the dirt. The men recoiled and looked down at the dismembered Formic at their feet, its skin charred and black from the fire, its chest cut open and steaming in the glow of the fire.

  One of the men began to retch, and Mazer grabbed Bingwen's hand and ran.

  *

  At dawn they found a highway. There were deserted cars--some intact, other smashed and shattered and wrecked. There were craters in the Earth two meters wide from explosions and laser fire. There were scorch marks everywhere, accompanied by deep cuts in the earth and asphalt. There were no bodies, but there were dark stains of blood everywhere. Mazer tried starting several of the vehicles, but the batteries and fuel cells had been stripped.

  They continued on foot, following the highway north for a few hours. They saw more destruction and deserted vehicles. When they heard aircraft, they hid and waited for it to pass.

  At midday they found a family with two young children resting in the shade of an overpass. The wife said little, but she offered Bingwen and Mazer soup, which they both gratefully accepted.

  "We stayed hidden in an underground storage shed," said the father. "We had enough food for over a week. We thought we could hold out until help came, but no soldiers ever came for us. We're moving north now."

  Bingwen was off to the side, playing with the four-year-old boy, tossing wads of rags back and forth to each other like a ball. It was the first time Mazer had ever seen Bingwen laugh.

  "Can you take the boy?" Mazer asked.

  "Food is scarce," said the father.

  "He's smart, resourceful. I can't pay you now, but when the war is over, I will."

  "You may not be alive when the war is over. Or we may not win the war."

  "We'll win. Take the boy."

  The father considered, then nodded. They made the arrangements, and in no time Mazer was kneeling in front of Bingwen, handing him the sword.

  "Here," said Mazer, "your grandfather would want you to have this."

  Bingwen took it. "I am safer with you at t
he lander than I am with this family in the north."

  "They're good people, Bingwen. They'll feed you. That's more than I can do." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "When this is over, I want you to contact me. I'll get you enrolled in a school. A good school, where they'll feed you and take care of you."

  "Like an orphanage."

  "Better than that. A place where smart kids go. Special kids."

  "How do I contact you?"

  "Memorize my e-mail and holo address. Can you do that?"

  Bingwen nodded. Mazer told him the addresses. "Now recite them back to me."

  Bingwen did. Mazer stood and extended a hand. Bingwen shook it. "How long do I need to keep this cast on my arm?" asked Bingwen.

  "Another two weeks. Try not to let any more trees fall on it."

  "Try not to get killed."

  Mazer smiled. "I'll try." He paused a beat, not wanting to leave. "No more heroics, all right? Just get north and stay safe."

  Bingwen nodded.

  There was nothing more to say. The family was waiting, ready to move on. Mazer smiled one last time then turned on his heels and headed south, not looking back.

  He stayed off the highway, moving parallel to it, and made good time. He had been walking slower because of Bingwen, but now he set his own pace. The soup had given him new energy. He found a patch of jungle and slept for a few hours, burying himself among the fallen leaves and staying out of site. When he woke, he got moving again. By now he was dying of thirst. He passed several puddles of rainwater, but he knew better than to drink from them. Late in the afternoon he thought he heard the faint sounds of a battle far west of his position, but he couldn't see anything.

  As dusk approached he heard aircraft. He crouched near some wilting shrubs and watched as a Chinese fighter engaged in a dogfight with a Formic flyer directly overhead. The fighter had more firepower, but the Formic craft was more nimble. It swooped and dove and clipped the wing of the Chinese fighter with a laser burst. The fighter was suddenly consumed in flames, spinning out of control, dropping out of the sky. The pilot ejected a few hundred meters from the ground, coming down fast. His parachute opened. His body was limp. The plane crashed some distance to the south. Mazer heard the explosion. The Formic flyer flew on. Mazer watched the pilot's parachute descend out of sight, less than a kilometer away. He jumped up and ran in that direction.