Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Bingwen waved his hands. "No. That can't be how it works. That's wrong. If you were by yourself, you'd fight for as long as you could. You'd stay at it. And who knows, because of perseverance or luck or skill or desperation, maybe you would survive, even if you didn't expect to. But giving me the gun is guaranteeing failure. That's giving up. You'd be dying because of me. I can't allow that."

  "Listen to me, Bingwen."

  "No. I'm not letting you do that. If you have it in mind to give up your weapon, you will do it at the wrong time. You would hold off for as long as you think is necessary to ensure my survival instead of yours. And you would overcompensate. You would give me more time than I needed and therefore give up sooner than necessary. You can show me how the gun works, but I'm only going to use it if you no longer can."

  Mazer was quiet a moment. "In the military we call this insubordination. People are stripped of rank and imprisoned for it."

  "Then it's a good thing I'm not in the military."

  "You're making this difficult, Bingwen."

  "No. I'm making it the opposite. I'm removing a consideration from your mind. I'm letting you fight with a clearer head. That's in my best interest, too. The more focused you are on staying alive, the better my chances are, too."

  Mazer considered then nodded. "All right. No giving up the gun."

  "Good."

  "But if I can no longer use it, you pick it up." He showed him the weapon. "You see this light? Red means it can't fire, the safety is on. Flip this switch here, the light goes green, it's ready to fire." He flipped the safety back on. "Don't run with your finger on the trigger, even if the safety is on. That's the fastest way to shoot yourself. Keep your index finger flat against the receiver like this until you're ready to fire. And use the wrist brace. Here." Mazer tapped a button on the grip, and the wrist brace extended backward, found Mazer's wrist, and wrapped around it. "It will tighten automatically to fit the diameter of your wrist and help steady your aim."

  "Where should I aim?"

  "Center mass. Middle of the chest. Two rounds. One right after the other. You'll feel a recoil, but it's slight." Mazer stood, noticing the disquiet in Bingwen's expression. "It won't likely come to that though, Bingwen. You'll probably never have to use it."

  Bingwen nodded, but Mazer could still sense his unease. I shouldn't have brought Bingwen south, he told himself. We should have pushed west, away from the patrolling transports in the north and away from the lander. What was I thinking to bring a child here?

  "You're reconsidering," said Bingwen. "I can see your gears turning."

  "I'm reconsidering because what we're doing is lunacy, Bingwen. This isn't a game. This is war. It's one thing for me to go. It's quite another for you to come along. Soldiers don't take eight-year-olds to war."

  "I'm eight and a half."

  "I'm not joking. This is wrong. My training says so. Common sense says so. The law says so."

  "We've been over this. This is my decision."

  "You're not old enough to make that decision. You're a minor. There's a reason why we don't take recruits until they're eighteen years old."

  "I'm not going as a soldier. I'm going as a guide. I'm taking you to the lander. If I hadn't course-corrected us already, you would have missed it by a few kilometers."

  "I would have found it eventually," said Mazer, tapping the side of his nose. "Just follow the stench."

  "It may not be as dangerous as you think," said Bingwen. "Have you noticed that the closer we get to the lander, the fewer transports and skimmers and Formics we see? Maybe the ships and infantry are all moving away from here, pushing outward, expanding the Formics' territory. If it's an invasion force, they're going to keep invading. They might not even be guarding the lander. Why would they? It's indestructible. It has shields. Why waste men and ships defending something that doesn't need defending? It's probably the safest place within a hundred kilometers of here."

  Mazer smiled. "I'll put you through school when this is over, but not law school. You're too dangerous."

  Bingwen gave him a wide toothy grin.

  They pushed on, crossing wide, muddy fields, with stagnant pools of water that smelled of rot and death. Bingwen pointed out a hillside where a small village had once stood. All that remained of it was scorched earth and a single sheet of metal roofing, rattling softly in the wind like thunder.

  They reached the base of the hill an hour before sunrise. Beyond it was the lander and the biomass. Scaling the hill wouldn't be easy, Mazer could see. The Formics had stripped it of vegetation, and the heavy rains had softened and eroded the exposed earth, leaving steep muddy slopes that threatened to give way beneath their feet and slide downward like an avalanche. Mazer showed Bingwen how to take sideways steps up the steepest parts to more evenly distribute the surface area of their boot soles, but even with that approach they fell often and slipped constantly and had to painstakingly claw their way up to the summit. By the time they reached it, the sun was up, and they were covered head to foot in muck, their bodies cold and wet and spent.

  Mazer took the binoculars from the pack and crawled forward in the mud to a small outcrop of rock overlooking the valley below. The lander was as he remembered it: impossibly large and completely unscathed, sunk into the ground like a giant unearthed landmine. The biomass stood beside it, a mountain of rotting biota as wide and as tall as the lander had been before it had spun itself into the earth. Mazer had expected to be able to identify the various objects in the biomass--a tree here, a water buffalo there--and perhaps at one time that had been possible. But not anymore. Everything ran together like melting wax as cell walls broke down and the biota disintegrated into a thick viscous liquid.

  Above the biomass, a cluster of six Formic aircraft of a design Mazer had never seen before were spraying a mist onto the biomass as dense as a rainstorm.

  Mazer watched through the binocs as the mist fell and reacted to the biota, dissolving it into thin trails of goop that rolled down the side and gathered into dark pools at the mountain's base. A metal wall had been built there, surrounding the mountain of biomass like a circular dam and feeding the goop runoff into pipes that extended outward to processing machines and small structures spread out over the valley floor like a massive industrial complex.

  It amazed Mazer to think that all of this had been built in the last ten days or so. And by the looks of it, the Formics weren't finished building. Construction crews were everywhere, adding piping, assembling machines, extending structures. Skimmers carried building materials to the crews. Clawlike cranes held pipes in place as Formic workers welded them to the other structures.

  Yet as vast and impressive a site as it was, Mazer had never seen anything so disorganized and unattractive. There was no order to the construction at all. Everything looked slapped together haphazardly without any regard to uniformity or design. The metals were all red and gray and rough and rusting, as if they had been used a hundred times previously for other purposes and never once cleaned or cared for.

  Nor were the Formics concerned about cleanliness. Filth covered everything. The ground was littered with trash and discarded building materials. And everywhere Mazer looked he saw Formic feces. He knew with certainty what the black substance was because he witnessed a few Formics defecating as they labored, showing no regard for those around them, simply dropping it where they stood. It covered the ground and pipes and the Formics' feet. The stench was not only from the biomass apparently.

  Mazer pointed the binoculars back at the mist-raining skimmers, zooming in as far as the lenses would go and having the computer take scans and run an analysis. The results didn't tell him much: The mists were a microbe solution of unknown composition.

  "It's breaking down the biota," Bingwen said, who had crawled up beside and watched as he worked. "What are they using it for? Fuel?"

  "That, or food," said Mazer. "Or maybe both."

  Bingwen grew quiet, staring at the biomass. His parents are in there somew
here, Mazer thought.

  "Here," Mazer said, offering Bingwen the binocs and hoping to direct his thoughts elsewhere. "Earn your keep. Check out the lander. Tell me if you see anything interesting."

  Bingwen took the binocs and pressed the eyepieces against the visor of the gas mask. "This would be a lot easier if I could take this mask off." He glanced thoughtfully at Mazer. "But considering the green, sickly look on your face, I think I'll keep it on."

  "Wise choice."

  Bingwen adjusted the focus and gazed down at the lander. "For an advanced alien species, they're not too concerned about housekeeping. The metal is all gross and rusted looking."

  "And covered in Formic dung, if you haven't noticed."

  "Yes, thanks for pointing that out."

  "At least you're not smelling it."

  Bingwen slowly panned the binocs across the lander then stopped when something caught his eye. "Okay, this is interesting. Near the base of the lander there's a hole in the ground. Maybe a meter in diameter. I just saw a Formic crawl into it. And there's another hole about four meters away from the first one, closer to the lander. A Formic crawled out of the second hole, and at first I thought it was a different Formic. But it wasn't. It was the same one. I could tell because it had a limp in one of his legs. He crawled into the first hole, went underground for about four meters, and then came up through the second hole and moved on toward the lander. That's strange, isn't it? If he was heading for the lander, why not walk straight to it? Why bother going underground?"

  "Unless he can't walk straight to it," Mazer said.

  "Exactly. There must be something there in his way, something invisible, which forces him to crawl under it to get through."

  "A shield." Mazer gestured for the binocs, and Bingwen passed them to him. Mazer focused the lenses and looked where Bingwen was pointing.

  "You see that big red metal thing that looks like a water tower?" said Bingwen. "There's a pipe at its base. Follow that west for about fifty meters, and there's the hole."

  "I see it." Mazer watched the hole. In time, a pair of Formics came carrying a beam of metal between them. They crawled into the hole, dragging the pipe behind them, and disappeared. A moment later, they emerged through the second hole. Once on their feet, they shouldered the beam and moved on toward the lander.

  "You know what this means, don't you?" said Bingwen. "It means the shield doesn't go underground. It's only covering what's above the surface."

  "Did you see any other holes?"

  "No, but it can't be the only one. There are hundreds of workers down there. If they sleep in the lander, that one hole would bottleneck at the beginning and end of every shift. There have to be others."

  Mazer scanned for several minutes. "I've counted three other sets of holes, all of them like the set you found. One hole outside the shield, one inside."

  "And those are just the ones we can see from here," said Bingwen. "There are probably dozens of these holes all around the lander. This is it. This is the answer. We have to tell the army. They can send in soldiers through the holes to take the lander."

  "No," said Mazer. "We're not going in through the holes. The holes aren't the answer."

  "But..." Bingwen's voice broke off suddenly, and Mazer saw a look of horror on the boy's face. He was staring at something over Mazer's head, behind him. Mazer spun onto his back and saw that a troop transport had landed on the hilltop. Formics poured out of it, running in their direction, riflelike weapons in their top sets of arms.

  Mazer was on his feet in an instant, lifting Bingwen and pushing him back the way they had come. "Run!"

  Bingwen ran.

  Mazer rushed forward, dropped to one knee, his gun in his hand, the wrist brace snapping into place with a click-click-click. The Formics were sprinting toward him, thirty meters away. Mazer fired a dozen shots, and five Formics dropped. Seven more kept coming. Mazer turned and was on his feet again, sprinting. He scooped up the pack as he ran past it, throwing it over one shoulder, then another. He dropped the clip from the gun and snapped in the second magazine. He fired a four-round burst behind him as he ran. Another Formic fell.

  Bingwen was ahead of him, running along the ridge of the hill as fast as his legs would carry him, which wasn't nearly fast enough. Mazer caught up to him almost immediately. To their left was the lander and hundreds of Formics. To their right was the steep muddy slope they had so painstakingly ascended. There was only one thing to do, Mazer realized. They had no cover up here, nowhere to dig in and fight. They couldn't make a stand. They were completely exposed.

  Mazer scooped up Bingwen into his arms. "Hold on tight!"

  Bingwen wrapped his arms around Mazer's neck and buried his face into Mazer's shoulder. No hesitation. Immediate obedience.

  Then Mazer cut hard to the right where an outcrop of rock extended beyond the edge of the hill.

  He ran to the end of it at a full sprint.

  And jumped out into space.

  The hill was steep, and Mazer and Bingwen dropped ten meters before hitting the slope and shooting down the mud on Mazer's back, using the pack like a luge sled. The ground gave way all around them, sliding off the slope like a sheet pulled from a bed. Mazer could feel the mud gathering around them like a wave, threatening to consume them, swallow them, bury them alive. Mazer kept his legs stiff out in front of him, toes pointed, clinging to Bingwen, trying to maintain as much speed as possible.

  They would have to hit the ground running, he knew. They couldn't be caught at the base of the hill on Mazer's back. The mud behind them would cover them in an instant.

  They were nearing the bottom. Mud and grit and dirt sprayed up into Mazer's face, making it hard to see. He would have to time this right; come up too soon and his feet would sink into the muck at the bottom of the hill. Pop up too late, and he would be too prostrate on the ground with the weight of Bingwen on top of him, unable to climb to his feet in time.

  He pointed his right foot forward, then dug his heel hard into the earth at what he hoped was the right moment. In the same instant he threw his upper body forward, harder than he thought was necessary since Bingwen was in his arms.

  It worked. He popped up from his semirecumbent position into a somewhat standing position, falling the last meter or so to the level earth. He was on flat ground, but his forward momentum was more than he had anticipated. He stumbled. Bingwen fell from his arms, down to one knee. The mud was sliding all around them like beached surf, and Mazer could hear the rumble of more mud behind them. He high-stepped, lifting his feet up hard with each step, not allowing them to become swallowed up in the pool of mud at his feet. His hand reached down and grabbed the front of Bingwen's shirt, lifting him up again. They stumbled, fell, rose up again, running forward, moving, surging a microsecond ahead of the wave.

  And then they were free of it, running on level, hard-packed dirt, Mazer's feet steady and sure-footed beneath him.

  A valley of scorched earth stretched out in front of them. There was no cover here either. No trees. No ditches. No holes to climb into. They were completely in the open, standing out in the full bright of day like two brown dots on a vast black canvas.

  Mazer never stopped running, his heart hammering in his chest, Bingwen clinging to him tightly.

  The troop transport dropped out of the sky twenty meters in front of them. Four Formics jumped out before Mazer had even changed directions or slowed down. The sidearm was still strapped to his wrist--he would have lost it otherwise. He raised it and fired, the shot going wide. It was nearly impossible to carry Bingwen and run in one direction and shoot in another and hope to hit anything.

  They couldn't keep running. The transport could easily follow them wherever they went. They had to take out the crew. Mazer stopped dead and dropped Bingwen from his arms. "Get behind me!" Mazer spun and lowered himself to one knee again, preparing to take aim, when the net slammed into him, knocking him back onto Bingwen.

  A surge of paralyzing electricity shot thro
ugh Mazer's body, constricting all of his muscles at once. The heavy fibrous net had him pinned down on his back, with Bingwen beneath him, the net crackling and hissing and pulsing with energy. Mazer couldn't move. His body felt as if it were burning up from the inside. His face was contorted in a painful rictus, his jaw clenched shut, his fingers bent and frozen in awkward positions as the energy surged through him. He hoped he was taking the brunt of it; Bingwen's smaller frame couldn't handle this. Better Mazer die than the both of them.

  A Formic's face appeared above him, gazing down at Mazer, its head cocked to the side, regarding him, or mocking him, or both.

  The gun was still strapped to Mazer's wrist. He had to raise it, aim it, fire it. The Formic was only a meter away, he couldn't miss. It would be easy. They would kill Bingwen if he didn't do something. They would spray the mist in his face as they had done to the boy's parents and to Danwen, and they would toss Bingwen's body onto the pile of biomass and melt it into sludge.

  Mazer's mind ordered his arm to move, screamed for it to obey, to animate, to twist a few centimeters, just enough to point the barrel in the right direction, but nothing happened. His hand remained mockingly still.

  A loud crack sounded, and the side of the Formic's head exploded. Tissue and blood and maybe brain matter blew out in a spray. The Formic crumpled, dropping from Mazer's view.

  A cacophony of sounds erupted all around Mazer: the roar of an engine, automatic gunfire, shouting, an explosion. All of it happening in rapid succession.

  "Hold on!" someone shouted. "Don't move."

  Mazer felt weight placed on the net to his left, pressing the net slightly tighter to his face. Then there was a pop, and the energy surging through him stopped in an instant. He had never felt a sweeter feeling or a greater relief. It was as if his mind had been squeezed in a fist and now the fist had released him. Only ... he still couldn't move his body. He was limp, his fingers and toes tingling. He told his feet to move, but they didn't listen.

  Gloved hands ripped back the netting, pulling it off him. A man in a mottled black-and-gray body suit and mask--not an inch of his skin exposed--was above him. "Bax, help me get him inside. Calinga, grab the boy."