Early Byrd

by Phil Geusz

hot coals over and over again but couldn't stop no matter what.

  I was stiffening up too, which neither Tim nor I had anticipated. It didn't matter much until after I-don't-know-how-many hours my brother eased up silently beside me. "There's three coming this way," he hissed. "They smell the smoke—I'm sure of it."

  "Right," I agreed. Then I tried to sit up . . . and couldn't.

  "Come on!" Tim urged. "We have to move fast!"

  I tried again, but neither my legs nor my good arm did much in the way of responding. Sure, they twitched in the direction I wanted them to go. But the pain, oh the pain! It washed over me like the waves on an Atlantic beach I'd once visited with Mom while Dad was working in Washington and Tim was recovering from having his tonsils out. I'd had Mom all to myself for almost the first time ever; the sunshine had been golden, the water warm and wet and supportive . . .

  "Robert!" Tim said. "Come on!" Then he reached down and tried to shake my shoulder.

  The injured one.

  "Aaaaaah!" I screamed, leaping to my feet and instinctively bending over into a pathetic crouch designed to protect my most-hurt parts. I'd probably given away our location to anyone within a thousand yards. But at least I was up and moving again.

  "Come on, Robert," Tim urged in a gentler voice, reaching out as if I was many years his junior and in need of his assistance crossing the street.

  "I'm fine!" I snapped, slapping the offered hand away. It was bad enough that he was a few minutes older than me so that he got to cup my head in his hand before class every day instead of me cupping his; there wasn't any need for him to keep rubbing in the 'older brother' thing. "Where are we going, anyway?"

  "You're going to love it," Tim replied, though his usual grin was absent. He pointed into the distance. "The cliff runs that way. Be super-careful. We're going to hide right on the edge."

  I nodded and followed, now feeling ashamed of all that Tim had accomplished without me. He'd dragged me into a safe place, built a fire, nursemaided me, and located yet another good place to hide. Meanwhile, I'd done little more than lie moaning in the dark. Well, I acknowledged to myself, apparently I had been involved in a second firefight somewhere along the line, and even done pretty well in it. But did that count in my favor if I couldn't even remember it?

  Soon Tim led me to the cliff's edge, as promised. It wasn't as dangerous as I'd been warned to expect, because by now the eastern sky was light enough to clearly reveal the drop-off. The morning fog was thick, so the only thing visible was a wall of gently-glowing white that indicated where the mountain and trees weren't. But it was far better than not being able to see at all.

  "See that tree?" Tim asked, indicating another big cedar that leaned at a slight angle over the abyss. "Dad always used to say that game never looks up, and I figured that might be true for Free Staters too. But you can't climb, so I had to do better."

  I nodded—the cedar had wonderful low-lying limbs that begged for the touch of a boy's hands and feet. Then it ascended skyward like a natural ladder. But my brother was right—it wasn't to be.

  "Anyway, I guess this is even better than the tree," he said, stepping right up to the edge of the abyss and pointing down. I limped up alongside him . . .

  . . . and spotted a narrow ledge maybe ten feet down, plenty big enough for both of us.

  "They'll have to come all the way to the edge and look over it to see us," Tim explained. "And we have five shells left."

  I nodded; the route down looked rough but doable. "You first."

  "Right," Tim agreed and, using hands almost as much as his feet, was on the shelf in a matter of seconds. It took me far longer with a non-working arm. Halfway down, my foot slipped. I landed directly on my shoulder and, predictably, screamed again before rolling toward the edge. But at the last second, with my center of gravity well beyond the lip, Tim grabbed me and pulled me back.

  "Jeez!" he muttered as we lay side-by-side in the ever-growing light, hearts racing in terror. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump!

  "Thanks!" I replied. We'd kept each other out of trouble before, and perhaps even saved each other's lives while out wandering the ranch. But this was different somehow. Something had changed.

  Perhaps it was us.

  "We're brothers," Tim said. "And twins, which is extra-special. When one of us is in trouble, the other takes action. Your fights are my fights, and mine yours. Always and forever."

  "Always and forever," I agreed. Then I smiled. "I think we did okay, overall. Dad and Rapput and Li would all three be happy with us. Mom too, once she got over the heebie-jeebies."

  "Yeah," Timmy agreed. "Even if . . ." He didn't have to explain what the "if" was. We were, after all, still starved, half-frozen kids perched on what was probably an unsafe shelf suspended above heaven-only-knew-how-high a drop. Besides, if Rapput didn't make it then the Artemesians were liable to drop rocks on Earth until we were all dead anyway.

  There was another long silence, broken only by the continued thumpthumpthump of my heart. I cocked my head at that—something was wrong there. The beat was louder, when it should've eased off now that I wasn't working so hard. And there also wasn't a pain in my shoulder with every beat like there should've been. The cold was still rooted deep in my brain, or else I'd have figured it out sooner. But . . .

  "Helicopter!" I finally said aloud. "Out in the fog somewhere, but getting louder. Li must've made it!"

  "Yeah!" Tim agreed, brightening up considerably. "Plus—"

  "I hear it too!" I cried, eyes tearing with relief. It was a distant buzzing, like a swarm of thousands of cattle-sized bees might make. "A scout-ship! The Artemu and human governments are still cooperating!"

  "Hooray!" Tim cried, and he bounced up and down in joy. I was about to warn him not to do that when we had no idea of how strong or flimsy our ledge was, when I caught sight of something moving beyond Tim's head. It was a Free Stater squinting down at us and just beginning to raise his rifle! I grabbed the sawed-off shotgun and braced it against my left shoulder for lack of anywhere else. Then I pulled the left barrel’s trigger and one last time the world was rent in two. The improperly-grasped gun went flying over the edge. Tim, his head much too close to the weapon's fireball, dropped unconscious across my belly. The Free Stater, his face transformed into a bloody mask, fell in apparent slow motion out and beyond us to land who-knew-where, and my good shoulder erupted into pain-wracked spasms not so different than those of my right.

  And that was that, I decided with terrible clarity. I couldn't move a muscle anymore, not with an unconscious brother lying atop me and both arms rendered useless. We'd live, we'd die—it was all up to chance now. I'd given both my best and my last effort, and so had my brother. The world might be a battlefield, but we were no longer warriors. Even if the universe held an infinite supply of weapons, neither of us were in any shape to wield them. "Might as well go to sleep," I whispered to myself. There was no reason not to that I could see. Sleep, sleep, sleep, and the pain would go away. All I had to do was close my eyes . . .

  It must've worked, because the next thing I knew a helicopter armed with the biggest guns I'd ever seen was hovering just above the lip of the cliff, while an Artemu scout ship floated with its hatch open just a few feet away from our shelf.

  "Timothy?" I heard my father cry, his voice filled with anguish. Clearly it wasn't the first time he'd called, and he thought we must be dead. "Robert?" But I couldn't make a muscle stir. I lay paralyzed, eyes barely cracked open.

  "Kids?" Li tried next, from deeper in the machine. He and an Artemu were working feverishly on some sort of gangplank. "Please, kids! Hang on, and we'll be there in just a moment!"

  Then a shaggy creature with three fresh and still-bleeding head-wounds and wearing an inflatable field-dressing-type shoulder cast appeared in the doorway. "Nephews!" Rapput called out in his perfect, beautiful Artemu. "Battle-brothers and fellows-in-arms! I call all Heroes home!"

  I don't know why, but at that I first grinned and then man
aged to roll my head a bit to the left.

  "Robert lives!" Rapput cried, shaking his good fist. Which was stained crimson with human blood.

  "So does Timothy, Uncle!" I shouted in the same tongue, though I fear with a worse-than-usual accent. My lips were half-frozen, after all! "We shall both someday fight again!" Then I turned to Dad. "He'll be fine! I had to shoot too close to his head, was all. I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it!"

  Then Dad was grinning as well. Soon the gangplank was rigged. Li, as always slippery as an eel, wormed his way past the Artemu soldier poised to come to our rescue and, despite his obvious fatigue and total lack of safety gear, came dancing out to our ledge. "There's no back door," my tutor chided as he first checked my brother’s pulse and then examined him for gross physical damage. "You should never, ever choose a hideout that lacks an alternate means of escape."

  Tim picked it out, not me! I almost said. Then I thought of my brother, his feet hurting as badly as mine, dragging me to his fire while not sure if I was dead or alive. "Yes, sir," I replied instead.

  "Ha!" he laughed with the widest grin I'd ever seen on anyone anywhere. "You are so like your father!" He reached out and carefully rolled Tim over. "Even more than this one."

  I blushed—what else could I do? Then a human-type stretcher was passed across for Tim, followed by a second for me. I tried to be strong and silent