Freeze Frames

by Katharine Kerr

  Messengers: ΑΓΓΕΛΟΙ

  One

  Nothing can travel faster than light.

  Suppose for a moment that back in the early years of the twenty-first century, Leslie had been not perfectly sane, no, but as sane as most people ever are; suppose that she indeed had telepathically contacted alien beings; suppose, in short, that thought can travel faster than light though nothing else can—it’s an old supposition, after all. If Leslie had unwittingly betrayed the human race, the alien beings that she called the Masters would have had to build a battle fleet and supply it for a journey of over seventy earth-years, staff it with Slaves to do the menial work and tend the Masters onboard, then send it off blind, as it were, with no information about human weaponry and military structure, because Leslie knew nothing about such.

  These putative Masters might assume, as we ourselves tend to assume, that a sapient race with advanced technology in one area will develop advanced technology in all areas. That the Masters have learned to sail between the stars might mean that they can easily conquer what they find there—it’s possible that they believe this, at any rate. On the other hand, their minds might take a more practical turn and realize that no race advances evenly, that all sapient beings nourish most what they love the best.

  Along their way, these aliens would have met television and radio signals, faint, at first, and disrupted by assorted magnetic fields, mere bits of cryptic information scattered through static like raisins in a loaf of speckled bread. It would be ancient information, most likely from the twentieth century, the last dying ghosts of situation comedies and variety shows, pictures of a queen’s coronation and the testing of atomic bombs, all jumbled together and spoken in languages as yet unknown. It’s likely that the aliens would have made some provision for translating these languages. The mind-contact with Leslie (assuming such existed) would have given them some basic grammar and a beginning vocabulary for American English, as it was spoken in her day.

  As the aliens came closer, as they learned to work with human frequencies, the information they would have mined from these veins of electric pulses and waves would first clarify itself, then come pouring into the reception equipment they would have learned to fashion. (We may safely assume that a starfaring race would have a talent for devices. Would the Slaves be trained to do the actual building? Probably.) Imagine the flood of words, music, images, black and white at first, then suddenly brightly colored—if of course these aliens saw color as we do, if of course they even thought to tune their equipment to receive colors—a full spate of sitcoms, banal documentaries, MTV, broadcasts from the House of Commons, cooking shows, sports, news, and preachers, mullahs, priests, all exhorting their various faithful within the range of their local stations. We may assume that it’s the news reports that the aliens would treasure the most highly, spending much time in deciphering each gesture, each word, archiving maps and pictures of the endless wars and weapons of humanity.

  And then, suddenly, the river would dry up, the flood become a trickle. The aliens would have captured news reports about the invention of focused beam transmission, about the placing of mirror satellites and the conversion of the world to a vast fiberoptic network where expensive signals ran hoarded through cables instead of being flung wholesale into outer space. But would they put those reports together with the sudden dearth? What data would they connect, what would they assume, as their sleek black fleet sailed ever closer to Earth?

  Actually, of course, the fleet is neither sleek nor black. The ships, ugly spheres of various alloys and metals, annealed with a grey permacoat of a ceramic-like substance when they left their home skies, have managed to become even uglier, all nicked and battered by debris as they glide, deformed bubbles, through the gaseous drifts of interstellar space. Each ship is wound round with pipe and shielded cable and studded with equipment pods; each carries before it a ramscoop made of bilious green ceramic. A battle-fleet, yes, and bent on conquest, although the largest ship, some three miles in diameter, is a travelling hydroponic farm and little else. Our assumption that they would treasure news broadcasts the most highly has also turned out to be wrong, although they certainly have listened to the news. By the time the fleet passes through the Oort Cloud, its commanders have learned much about humanity, enough to worry about their chances of conquering the planet without reducing it to useless rubble.

  As they decelerate, dropping at right angles to the plane of the major planetary orbits, they discover the fuel stations round Titan, pick up the existence of intra-system shuttles and worry the more. By now they can translate English and many other languages as well—after all, have not language lessons been some of the most popular programmes on television for over a hundred years? They have scooped up Guten Morgen America, Living French, Ingles Hoy and many like them with the same efficiency as they gathered hydrogen and interstellar matter for their fusion drives.

  At this point they are moving far, far below the speed of light. They have plenty of time to play with their devices, plenty of time to discover the radio frequencies bouncing between France, China, and their various interplanetary probes and vessels. As they listen in to one cryptic conversation after another, the aliens discover that one country on Earth, Christian Merrka, has if not all then most of the bombs. It possesses, in fact, one of the finest planetary war machines that the Masters have ever come across, enough submarines, fighter planes, cyber-armored ground soldiers, missiles, ships, and various miscellaneous means of killing sapients to give the aliens what the commander calls, proud of its nearly learned Merrkan, “a good damn run for our dinero.”

  They also learn that all over the world, this war machine is hated and feared, that even within its own country, there are those who would bring its rulers down. Alliances. Subversion. The commander rubs all of its hands together, considering. How best to contact these people? The Merrkans seem only the most dangerous of a thoroughly dangerous bunch. The commander dislikes putting its own kind at risk, especially since it has Slaves at its disposal.

  Oh, and what were the broadcasts that they treasured most? The religious shows.

  Two

  Now that the global temperatures have stabilized high, the pines are dying in the Sierra foothills. On the slopes that get full sun, grass spreads round and over fallen trees. Live oaks spring up at the meadow edges like black-green bubbles in the pale grass. In the valleys and cañadas, poplar and aspen invade the sagging forests. Deep in the shade of the old growth evergreens, orange needles lie thick upon the ground. Dead trunks lean against dying trees in one last desperate attempt to prop up their fellows. Arches form over dells like hidden chapels, while all round sunlight falls in dusty shafts like pillars of smoke.

  In such a clearing among the pines Father Kevin is celebrating mass. He wears his white cassock and purple stola over a pair of baggy black pants. The altar, a tailgate from a buckboard, lies across two boulders for support; the salver and the chalice are tin, old National Guard issue dinnerware. The wine—well, as Father Kevin says, Christ will turn the water to wine if we keep the faith. Father Kevin talks a lot about miracles, almost as much as he talks about the early Christians, worshipping in secret. Not that the ancient faith of Rome needs to hide, not even from the grimly Protestant government—Father Kevin openly runs a church down in Goldust—but these particular communicants do.

  Every week, it seems, his secret congregation increases. Today fifty-two people sit on the ground in orderly rows. The adults, men and women both, have rifles lying beside them. The children, some dozen of them between the ages of two and thirteen, sit between the adults and the altar; the adults like to think, anyway, that they’re safest that way, as if somehow the power of the altar and the tin chalice and salver will protect them should some marauding unit of the National Guard burst out of cover. Father Kevin can remember the days when there were Jews, bravely clinging to their own true faith, and Buddhists, too, hiding out in the hills with pagans and nonbelievers, but since none of t
he people sitting in front of him were born then, they have turned to the only alternative to the state-sponsored Calvinism that they can conceptualize. The Resistance is becoming Catholic. Every now and then, even while he prays before the altar, Father Kevin hears the distant whistles of the sentries, signalling to one another and to him that all is well. He has served them Mass already, just at dawn.

  When the service is over, the communicants pick up their rifles and their children and disappear into the forest, so silently, so efficiently, that Father Kevin feels as St. Francis must have felt, preaching to the animals. For a few moments, while he stands with his hands still raised in benediction, he can hear their moving—twigs snap, leaves rustle, a baby gurgles with laughter—then nothing but the wind moves, sighing through the dying trees.

  With a shake of his head Father Kevin turns back to the altar.

  In a bucket of river water he washes the salver and the chalice, wraps them in faded purple cloths, then packs them into one side of a pair of saddlebags. His cassock and stola go into the other. He retrieves his shirt of coarse black homespun from the dead tree that serves as his vestry and puts it on, then slides the altar onto the ground and artistically sprinkles it with pine needles. Murmuring prayers aloud in the same archaic English as the Mass, he walks round the clearing, scuffing up needles, blurring his tracks and the traces that his congregation has left behind. Slinging the saddlebags over his shoulder, he heads out of the forest.

  In a valley meadow he had left his horse, grazing at tether, and as he steps carefully to the forest edge, he pauses, stopped by some instinct, for a look. The bay gelding stands with its head up high, nostrils flaring, watching something move on the far side of the long meadow. Father Kevin hesitates, hears his heart thump once, decides that caution will only look suspicious and strides right out into the meadow. The bay whickers a greeting.

  “Hi!” Father Kevin calls out. “Who’s there?”

  Across the meadow motion flickers among trees, disappears into shadow. No good, no, no good at all. But surely the sentries would have seen, if some spy was there? Father Kevin waits, watching, turning slowly, studying the forest edge all round the meadow, while the sun climbs higher and sweat runs down his back under his shirt. Insects buzz and chirr in the tall grass; otherwise, nothing—a bad sign, that the forest would fall so silent. May the good Lord guide and keep you. Mary watch over me. No good waiting here. While Father Kevin saddles his horse, he pauses often to look round, but he never sees his silent watcher again. By the time he mounts, the normal noise of the forest’s picked up. During his long ride home, he sees and hears nothing but the occasional squirrel, chittering on a branch.

  Goldust shelters a couple of thousand people in less than five hundred buildings, all of them wood, now, with high-peaked roofs. They straggle and spread along one side of the strip of grey rubble that marks the dead highway. More small farms than houses, the compounds reach back into the meadows or the foothills on a disintegrating grid of side streets. Most of the actual houses are fenced and barricaded inside big yards, with vegetable gardens and some chickens out in back and a wooden wagon or cart sitting in front with the cows and horses. As he rides by, Father Kevin sees a woman or girl hanging out laundry or a boy tending the stock; when they see him, they wave, even the Protestants, and he raises his hand in impartial blessing. Since the Baptist circuit rider only gets out here every three weeks, Father Kevin does a lot of the funerals and sickbed visits that need doing.

  In the middle of town stands the old Safeway supermarket, surrounded by grass, weeds, and shards of asphalt. The windows lost their glass to scavengers a long time ago now, but the walls and roof still stand, sound enough to shelter the farmers’ markets that take place every week. Father Kevin’s church, Our Lady of the Mountains, sits just down the dirt road in what used to be the bank, a grey stone building with fluted columns on either side the main door and high ceilings inside—a churchly sort of place, in its way.

  Father Kevin lives round the back in the old bank offices. After he stables his horse, he carries his saddlebags inside to his grey stone rooms, their veneer panelling, acoustic tiles, and wall-to-wall carpeting long gone, mere stains on the concrete floor or a line of drilled holes down a grey wall. What furniture there is, a wooden table, two chairs, a narrow bed, a desk, are as old and shabby as Father Kevin himself. He pauses for a moment, glancing round, wonders if he heard a footstep, turns round—no one there.

  Or is someone in the church? Leaving the saddlebags on the table, Father Kevin walks over to the door that leads from his living quarters into the vestry, hesitates there, listening, hears nothing. He opens the door and steps through into the vestry itself, dim and cool, smelling sharply of homemade pine resin incense. A door on the far wall leads into the chancel. When he listens beside it, he can hear someone moving in the church beyond.

  Most likely it’s just a parishioner, come to pray or light a candle. Most likely. He turns away, leaves the vestry, shutting the door very carefully and quietly behind him, then walks to the back door and looks out. Nothing moves but a pair of jays, squawking and squabbling by the stable door.

  With a grimace for his own suspicions, Father Kevin steps outside. As quietly as he can, sticking to the flagstone path and avoiding the loose gravel, and as quickly, too, he strides round to the front of the church, finds the front door open, and strides in, blinking at the sudden dimming of the light. At the far end, before the altar rail, someone wearing a big blue and green shawl over grey trousers kneels in prayer, gazing up at the enormous wood crucifix hanging behind the altar. Father Kevin smiles—just a parishioner, after all. He offers a quick prayer of his own to the Blessed Virgin, then walks inside, ready to give his blessing if this troubled soul should require it. Someone tall, he notices, and very thin—his eyes are adjusting to the inside light—and when you come right down to it, pretty darn strange. Even though he knows everyone in and around Goldust, Father Kevin certainly doesn’t recognize this person, who seems to have pale bluish-grey skin and a long almost cylindrical skull. Mary, Mother of God, be with me in this hour! Father Kevin prays as he walks down the aisle between the rough wood benches that serve as pews.

  The worshipper at the altar crosses himself, then rises, turning to face him. Very tall indeed—most likely over seven feet, with long spindly arms, covered with pale grey scales, ending in hands with two fingers and two thumbs. It or he or whatever does indeed wear trousers of some baggy grey cloth, held round its waist with a heavy belt from which hang small shiny objects. But the blue and green “shawl” turns out to be a pair of triangular wings, folded neatly over their wearer’s back, made not of feathers but of skin and scales. The scaly face has two recognizable blue eyes, set deep inside hollows and pouches of skin, an arrangement of skin folds and slits where a nose ought to be and a longer slit and fold for a mouth. Father Kevin can only stare, goggling. For a moment the blue eyes study him; then the being kneels on the floor. Its wings flutter, then droop.

  “Father, don’t be afraid,” it says. “We come from the stars. We wish to hear more of the word of God.”

  The voice hisses and slurs from a mouth more rigid than a human one. Father Kevin swallows long and hard, then finds his own voice at last.

  “My son, all are welcome to hear God’s word and to believe in Him.”

  “That believing we may have eternal life?”

  “Yes, my son.”

  “Even slaves, Father? Did the Lord come even for slaves?”

  No amount of slurring and strange popping sounds can hide the enthusiasm, the hope, the aching aching hope in that voice. The eyes shine, too, looking up at him with the eternal agony of all sapient beings, who see their own death crouching ahead of them, a monster on the road.

  “Yes, my son,” Father Kevin says. “For slaves, too. Jesus said, other sheep have I that are not of this fold. And I’ll bet He was talking about you.”

  Three

  The night lies misty over Salisbury Pla
in. Every now and then the moon breaks free of scudding clouds and gleams on the fields that lie either side the road up from Bournemouth. Already the sleek grey limousine has glided through the edge of New Forest. When it sped along the bypass around Salisbury, the driver, Sergeant Potter, saw a glimpse of the cathedral spire under the moon as the road turned. Whether his important passengers in the back seat, invisible behind smoked glass, saw the spire or even cared he does not know. They have left the ruins of Roman Sarum behind, too, and now run free through farmland, rolling over the downs. Here the road runs past Bronze Age tumuli and the barely visible scars left by cursi and avenues, but Potter knows little and cares less about the Bronze Age or the Romans either. To him Salisbury Plain means what’s left of Britain’s army, the artillery ranges and the infantry base, the airfield that shelters the new StarHarriers.

  Although Potter of course knows where they are going, he hasn’t the slightest idea of why, in the middle of the night, he is driving the prime minister, two generals, and the Duke of Kent to Stonehenge. The only logical reason he can come up with is that the entire government has gone daft, but he would prefer to think otherwise.

  At the crossroad, as he turns right and heads down the last slope, Potter can see the ancient stones, standing behind their new plastiwire barrier, which shimmers and gleams in the moon-shot mist. Not far from the circle, across the access road and just past the refreshment kiosks and souvenir shops, stands a pale structure. In the moonlight it seems to be made of several tea tents clustered together. Potter wonders if he’s the one going mad. Behind him, a tap on the glass—the general’s aide-de-camp slides open the communication panel.