Cut Off

by Robertson, Edward W.

  Even so, it sometimes felt as if Number Three was trying to loom over him, stare him down, or otherwise intimidate him. Like a dude who dates a woman, discovers he disapproves of her chihuahua, gets engaged, and spends the rest of the marriage scowling at the dog when his wife isn't looking.

  Main problem was Ness didn't know his role on the sub. He was pretty sure he shared the Collective's positions and goals: serving the universe's mysterious will to live, and putting a stop to the shenanigans of the Swimmers who weren't yet finished messing things up for humans. But there were times he felt...like a token. A lady's chihuahua. He wasn't sure what he would do if something were to happen to Sebastian.

  Number Three handed him another pad. Ness used his finger to write, "Can you be more specific?"

  "WHAT HAPPEN WHY SHOOT WHO HUMAN"

  Ness explained what had gone down at the Galaxy. This took a long-ass time; Number Three interrupted constantly, and frequently broke away to translate Ness' words to the others ensconced in their cubbyholes, who then had questions of their own before Ness was able to move on. When he got to the bit where the gladiator claimed to have been betrayed and handed over to the humans, there was much wringing of tentacles and gnashing of beaks.

  "HOW" Number Three wrote.

  "I don't know. They must have locked it up or sedated it."

  "HOW CAN BETRAY," it wrote. "NOT DONE"

  "Sounds like its group was out of food. They must have got desperate."

  "NOT DONE NOT TO GUTBROTHER"

  "Don't ask me," Ness scribbled on the pad, managing to maintain his penmanship despite the rolling of his eyes. "To me, the important thing to come from this is clear evidence of Swimmer activity."

  Number Three waited for more, then wrote, "AND YOUR THOUGHT"

  "Well, we ought to find them."

  "NEED HUMAN 'SPRITE' YES NO"

  "What would you do with him if I said no?"

  "PUT ON ISLAND"

  Ness laughed to himself; that sounded a lot worse than it was, given local geography. "He knows the area. Might be of help."

  Number Three spoke with the Collective for a moment, then turned back to Ness. "OKAY"

  "Okay what?"

  "OKAY WE CONSULT. GO AWAY"

  He went upstairs to find Sebastian and Sprite. The two of them stood across from each other in the galley, one of the largest spaces in the sub. Ness hardly had time to bring Sebastian up to speed before Number Three returned to bring Sebastian before the Collective.

  "Just so we're clear," Sprite said once they were alone, "we're currently in a submarine. Crewed by aliens."

  Ness leaned against a spongy counter. "Das Boot from the Crab Nebula."

  "Can I ask where we're going?"

  "Poke around the other islands, I imagine."

  Sprite tried to lean against the counter as well, discovered it was damp, and jerked away with a frown. "I would, at some point, prefer to be not here."

  "Too moist? We're not going to hold you against your will."

  His brows lowered. He eyed the dim galley, its fleshy orange surfaces, as if wary one of the cabinets would open with a slurp and swallow him whole. "I could stay? Hypothetically? What would they possibly want with me?"

  Ness folded his arms. "How well do you know the area?"

  "Decently. I grew up in Macau. Had cousins in Hong Kong. Traveled some." His mouth sagged open. "Hold on. I'm no expert."

  "Sounds like you got a leg up on us."

  "Or a pseudopod. So, okay, but it's not like...yeah."

  "Yeah?"

  "I mean, not yeah yeah," Sprite said. "Just, you know, right."

  Ness smirked. "Here we are, a submarine that was built light years from here, and you can't bring yourself to ask what's going on."

  "Can I?"

  "What do you think is going to happen if you do? I'm gonna mince you up and sprinkle you in their feeding tank? Seems to me you ought to know what you're getting into before you say yes."

  "Listen, sir." Sprite drew himself to his full height, which wasn't much. "If you throw me into a Macau casino, or any place with people looking to have a good time, I'll hit the ground running. Right now, though? I am completely out of my element. I mean we're literally underwater."

  "As you've guessed, we're not really treasure hunters." Ness rubbed his upper lip, enjoying the opportunity to not be the least-informed entity on the ship for once. "Things have calmed down, but the war's not over. I work with people, in the broad sense of the word, who want to put an end to the fighting."

  "By wiping someone out for good?"

  "We're more interested in a truce."

  "What happens if they don't want to stop fighting?"

  Ness shrugged. "We do what we have to. Can't let the invaders finish the extinction of the human species. Wouldn't be right."

  "So you are fighting the aliens. But you're aliens. With the exception of you." Sprite's eyes widened. "Wait, are you..?"

  "Course I'm human. But you think they don't have politics? Factions?"

  "I always thought they were like a hive."

  "Far from it. My friends here have recanted the genocide plan."

  "I never liked it much, either." Sprite set his elbow on the counter, grimacing at the clammy surface. "You're hunting them right now, aren't you? Is this safe?"

  "Does it sound like it?" Ness said. "We've been doing this for five years, though. We're still here."

  "One last question," Sprite said. "Who are you? Special Forces? CIA? Xenobiologist?"

  "I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft."

  Sprite folded his arms around himself, completely nonplussed and still wet from their plunge into the sea. "You saved my life, made me a pile of cash, and you're fighting the things that tried to erase us. That's a lot of positives. Provisionally, I'm in—until there's a chance I might die."

  They shook hands. Ness smiled to himself. Sprite was curious, outgoing, but also fairly cowardly. Ness placed no stigma on this assessment; it was a healthy survival trait. He had once been quite the coward himself. It had taken the heavy-handed influence of his brother Shawn, as well as quite a lot of trouble, to push him to the point when his fears finally snapped.

  Not to say he was fearless—far from it; in many ways, he was still the same person he'd been born as, and he thought he always would be—but he had seen how fragile things were. How little, in the end, there really was to lose. When his army of anxieties showed up to give him trouble, all he had to do to dispel them was to remember the tunnels under the power plant where he had learned the only truths: your time would come. And when it did, there would be no justice in it.

  Sebastian returned from the Collective. He signaled, "We hunt."

  This sounded a lot more exciting than it was: in practice, it meant they spent the next three days floating around the bay between Macau and Hong Kong, navigating the bevy of little islands spangling the waters, almost always submerged except for a few minutes in the middle of the night when the sub ascended to the surface and they were allowed to watch the hazy darkness with their own eyes and optical aids.

  There was no sign of jets, alien or human. Very little sign of human life whatsoever. Once, as they swung near the mainland, Ness looked out on mile after mile of scorched land and toppled buildings. There had been a big ol' battle here. Probably alien versus human, during the main phase of the war, but who could say for sure. The world hadn't exactly been a calm place in the Panhandler's early days, either.

  A few lights, a few pillars of smoke, a stray shout emerging from nowhere to hang over the dark water like a voice from another time: that was the only proof that people still lived. Sebastian claimed there were boats out there, too, that the sub tracked them with the same sensors it was using to hunt for the jet, but Ness never saw any.

  It was easy to believe the humans were gone, but then came scenes like the casino, full of grubby, sleazy life that just couldn't wait to splash its juices everywhere. Assuming humanity was left unmolested, and
didn't face any new extinction events, Ness wondered how it would look in ten years, or a hundred. If he had to bet, he'd put money on not all that different from the current state. Too many people had been planted in the ground. You could round up every survivor in China and still not fill the skyscrapers glinting dully from Hong Kong. Infrastructure was rotting away, too. By the time people got to thinking about trying to get it going again, most of it would have long since given up the ghost.

  Not that he cared. All he was interested in was serving as an instrument of the universe's will, which (he and the Collective had decided) was to give the humans the opportunity to go on existing without further molestation. It was kind of like when he'd set up his aquariums, nudged them toward self-sufficiency, and let them roll on their own momentum. The watchmaker god: start it ticking, then step back to watch.

  "Kind of reminds me of Apocalypse Now," Sprite said. They were crouched on the top deck with the sub's tower slicing through the waves. It was night and there was no noise besides the sea, the wind, and the faint vibration of the engine. "Except it's the wrong part of Asia. And there are none of the fights or exciting parts. So basically, it's just long and boring."

  "You're free to go whenever you want," Ness said.

  "I promised you a week. We've got three more days until my debt's repaid." He scrunched up his face. "I think. Hard to know how many days it's been when you never see the sun."

  "They're not real big fans of exposing themselves. We're all alone out here, and the people we're trying to protect are apt to be more hostile to us than the aliens we're trying to stop."

  "I'm not complaining." Sprite shifted his legs beneath him. "Not sure how you've put up with this so long. You said you'd been doing this five years?"

  "Yeah," Ness said. "Except at first, we were sabotaging humans."

  Sprite stared at him, but didn't ask anything further, so Ness said no more. The sub neared the northern tip of the bay where the river egressed and began to curve east along the meandering route through the many islands.

  Late the next day, Sebastian beckoned him excitedly into one of the control rooms, a cramped space with little of the organic orange webbing. Instead, it was filled with abstract screens, flat pads the aliens manipulated via gestures in the air, and an array of buttons and joysticks fit for alien "hands." The room was currently being manned by Number Five, whose pupils had some unusual red mottling around them. The creature stared intently at a screen that was nothing more than a black field with a few gray blobs on it.

  "A signal," Sebastian explained. "Distant. Faint."

  "A jet?" Ness signed back.

  "No. A signal."

  "Of what is probably a jet. Or you wouldn't have dragged me down here."

  He was uncertain, as always, whether Sebastian was annoyingly precise because he wasn't sure if Ness was understanding him, or if he was just that anal. Disinterested in mucking with Five's concentration, Ness stood back. One minute became five, then fifteen. Sebastian and Five spoke briefly, then Ness and Sebastian left the control room.

  "False alarm?" Ness said.

  "There is no way to know and thus we should not act as if we know." Sebastian lifted his sense-pods for a moment. "Has the Collective spoken to you about the killings at the casino?"

  "What about them?"

  "They do not like it. Are we protecting humans? Or killing them? The inside star protests the disharmony."

  "And I protest getting killed by idiots."

  "Discussing the Way should not make anger."

  "Some humans are idiots and it's the Way to shoot them. Besides, what if my inside star is telling me to be angry?"

  Sebastian regarded him in inscrutable silence. "Water can only reflect when it is placid."

  Ness flapped his hands. "Well, you know I hate being lectured!"

  "Think now. If you are still angry later, be angry then."

  Sebastian strolled away on his bevy of limbs. Ness mumbled to himself and went off to his bunk to get some sleep. Less than two hours later, judging by how much it hurt to wake up, Sebastian slapped him across the face with a tentacle.

  Ness sat straight up, gasping. "What's the matter with you?" he blurted, then repeated himself slightly more politely with hand signs.

  "The signal is lit!"

  Ness' anger vanished. "And?"

  "Yes a jet. Come see yes!"

  Sebastian danced back. Ness wadded his blankets into his sleeping nook and jogged after him. Downstairs, Number Five gazed into a holographic 3D rendering of the bay. The alien readouts were a lesson in frustration. Only part of the information was displayed on the screen, and it was largely incomprehensible to Ness. The rest was being "read" as a series of electromagnetic pulses which the aliens "heard" with their sense-pods.

  Fortunately, in this instance, all Ness had to do was watch as a white dot crossed the charcoal background of the ocean. It headed toward the eastern shore, then began to match the curve of the coast.

  Mid-maneuver, it winked off.

  "Where'd it go?" Ness said.

  Sebastian squiggled tentacles at Five, then motioned at Ness. "It has dropped too low for us to sight."

  "Did it land?"

  "It was flying too fast except if the landing was a crashing."

  "Well, do you know where it's headed? A trajectory?"

  Sebastian consulted with Five some more, then said, "It was in flux. Unknown."

  "We can't let it fly away. Don't you have any other way to track it?"

  "Yes," Sebastian signed. "Use your sensors."

  "My sensors?" Ness stared at him. "Does it look like I've got a radar dish?"

  "Yes!" Sebastian reached out and tapped Ness' left ear. He signed, "Your hears!"

  "My hears," Ness said out loud. He laughed dumbly and sprinted toward the spiral ramp, climbing up to the hatch. The light beside it had gone yellow, meaning they were above water. Ness emerged into the warm night.

  Sebastian scrabbled up onto the decking behind him. Ness gestured him into silence, then cocked his ear. A low hum emanated from the north. He pointed. Sebastian gestured over his communicator. A moment later, the submarine yawed, switching course toward the noise. Straight ahead, an island sat in the darkness, two miles across and twice as far away. The sub's engines whirred, pushing it forward until the wind rushed over Ness' shaved head. He'd left his binoculars downstairs. At this distance, the island looked undeveloped, covered in jungle. They hadn't gotten halfway to it when the hum ceased altogether.

  "It stopped," he signed to Sebastian. "Get my binoculars?"

  Sebastian nodded his bulbous head and tore down the ramp. The sub steamed onward. Ness strained his eyes but could see no more than the black bulge of the island. Sebastian emerged from the hatch like a heart-stopping trapdoor spider. He handed Ness the binoculars. The island loomed closer, less than a mile away. Ness scanned it for movement or cleared space where it might be feasible for a plane to land, but between the darkness and the trees, he couldn't see squat.

  The sub cut its engines, drifting forward. Waves sloshed its sides. Ness drew back from the binoculars to watch. A point of light glowed near the island's shore. The jet lifted straight into the air and turned, concealing the glow of its engines, then accelerated out to sea with a deep hum. It bore no lights and if Ness hadn't watched it take off he wouldn't have been able to pick it out of the night. Quickly, he homed in on the spot it had taken off from, which was hard to be precise about, but there was a bit of a clearing and a smattering of low buildings just to the right of where he'd first seen the glow.

  He looked back to the sky. Sebastian helped him find the point of darkness winging across the stars. The jet was heading south, out to sea. Just as it grew too distant for Ness to follow, it banked southeast.

  "Tell them to bring us in to shore," Ness signed. He climbed through the hatch and descended the ramp, running to his bunk to get his stuff. On the way, he bumped into Sprite. "We saw it land," Ness said. "We're going in for a look
around."

  Sprite nodded, biting his lip. "'We'?"

  "Don't worry, you can cover us from here."

  Ness got to his bunk, strapped on his bandolier, and pulled on his aqua socks. The sub was moving again and by the time he returned to the deck they were within a bowshot of shore. The vessel slowed, maneuvering to a lone dock extending from the sandy beach. Rows of trees hid the buildings from sight. Sebastian's sense-pods swiveled back and forth. With no sign of anyone nearby, they slipped into the water and swam to the pier.

  Ness pulled himself from the water and drew his pistol. They crept up the dock, then ran across the open sand into the trees. These proved to be a thin line bordering an outpost or nature station of some kind. Chinese-language signs were posted around the plain, blocky buildings.

  "There," Sebastian gestured.

  He pointed a tentacle at a wisp of smoke in the field to their left. Hedges surrounded the rectangular patch of grass. Ness picked his way through the thorny branches, stopping as soon as he spied the dim, bulky shapes resting in the middle of the field. Wooden crates. Ness drew nearer and circled them, ensuring no one was hiding behind them. Twenty feet away, the wisp of smoke had ceased, but the ground was blackened and hot. Two parallel impressions in the dirt marked where the vehicle had landed.

  Ness walked up to the waist-high crates. They were unmarked, unremarkable. He bent near and sniffed but could only smell the saltwater in his clothes and the grass beneath his feet.

  "What do you say, man?" he signed to Sebastian. "Think we ought to bust one open?"

  Beside him, Sebastian went still, then began to gesture. "There is a new signal. A boat—and it is headed this way."

  9

  "Get your things." Tristan folded the note into her pocket. "We have to go back to the shack."

  "What does that note say?"

  "We're not safe here. Grab anything you can't do without. You've got two minutes."

  Alden spread his hands. "Tristan, what's going on?"

  "That's the problem," she said. "I don't know."

  He ran into the house. Tristan got behind a shrub to watch the path to the road. Birds chirped from the trees. After a few moments, she got out her pistol, stood, and jogged down to the road, angling for a view of the downslope. Much of it was hidden behind trees, but what she could see was clear, as was the highway out of town.