The family wailed and fussed, but pretty soon they handed over the filled pot. The kid got a real thrashing from his Ma, for trying to thieve, and Bi had the best, biggest meal of hot ration and bush tea. That night he slept warm and comfortable, and full, with no dreams at all.
It was his last good meal for a long, long time. The carts disappeared like a morning fog. Folks were lying along the line, too weak to move, their lips cracked and dry, their faces bony like skeletons, their eyes staring blankly in front of them. Lots of folks, especially the little babies, just didn’t make it. They just didn’t get up anymore.
It was the water part that was worst for Bi. His body was young and sturdy and could go without much ration for a long time. But water was different. His tongue felt like a dry flap of robe inside his mouth. There was just a little bit of scummy water inside his tin. Bi took a sip every now and then, but it didn’t really help. He felt weak and dizzy, shivering even during the warm daytime. He began to forage at night for the little critters. Sometimes he could catch one with his knife. That helped some, even though they tasted real bad, but it didn’t relieve his thirst. If water didn’t come soon, he’d be one of the folks who didn’t get up.
He figured it was time to drift and jump ahead. The ration got better, the further you went up the line, that was sure. Maybe the carts were stuck somewhere up ahead. Maybe he could keep going up the line until he could find the carts, or someone who knew about the carts, or something. He couldn’t stay there, that was sure.
Lucky, just as he was making this plan, there was a half day of water falling from the sky. This happened once in a while, that Bi could remember. The fog would get real thick and dark and rumbly, and water would actually fall from the sky in thick drops. Good, sweet water. This perked everyone up for a while, and Bi managed to get half a tin full of water and drink his fill for the first time in weeks. But then the dark water fog went away, and the light fog and sunshine returned. Still no carts. Bi was feeling stronger now and ready to get started on another drift up the line.
The line was a sorry sight. No big, strong family groups, waiting to grab and kill a drifter. Nobody even cared about drifters anymore, or their place in line, or anything. Groups of bodies just lying there in their rolls, staring vacantly into the fog. Bi moved steadily and weakly ahead, living off an occasional sip of his precious water and an occasional little critter, feeling sick and weak and wanting to lie down on his roll, like the others, but knowing it would be the end.
The line went on and on. He never knew how long it was! The land changed a little. Instead of flat bush, there were some low, scrubby trees, and the critters sounded a little different. Then, all of a sudden, there they were, the carts! But something was wrong, really wrong, because the cart pullers were just lying around, too. And there was no familiar rumble from inside the carts. The carts were dead. Bi walked boldly up and pressed one of the ration levers. Nothing happened. No one tried to stop him, they were all too weak, and the carts were dead, anyway.
With a frustrated yell, Bi lunged at the cart with his hand and fists and knees and feet. There must be ration and water in there, somewhere, there must! Sobbing and panting, he tore at the old rusty side of the cart, and, all of a sudden, he felt something give. A great piece of metal came away in his hands, leaving a jagged, bloody tear in his palm. But Bi didn’t care. He was deep in the innards of the cart, tearing and pushing and poking and kicking. He pulled on a big, fleshy pipe, which gave way, and suddenly, old, smelly, rotten ration was pouring down on his face, foul and inedible. He pulled at another pipe and found what he needed. Water. Warm, scummy, tinny, foul-tasting, but still drinkable water. Bi drank and drank, and filled his tin and drank some more. The cart pullers and others nearby were also rousing themselves to drink from the broken pipe, until the cart finally ran dry. Other folks, catching the idea, broke into the other carts until they finally found one with ration that hadn’t gone putrid.
Bi pushed his way through the crowd to suck at the pipe and fill his tin, until other desperate bodies forced him away. Then he took his newly filled stomach and tins a little ways from the line, and clutching at the tins, he fell into an almost comatose sleep.
* * * *
When he awoke, he realized that he just had to keep going up the line, no reason to try to jump a place, with the carts dead and all. But this trip up the line was a real short one. Carefully hoarding his precious water and ration, he walked for about three days, and suddenly he came to the prettiest sight he ever saw.
All of a sudden, there was a big wall, running along the plain, as far as you could see. It was brightly colored, with wonderful pictures all over it, of bush flowers and folks and big suns and moons and stars. Behind the wall you could see trees, big ones, not just scrubby bush. And there were big, fleshy fruits, red and orange and yellow hanging from the trees. And under the trees, you could see tents, nice ones with bright stripes all over them. And you could hear loud, wonderful music, nicer than the sound of sky-critters. The smell of fresh-cooked ration filled the air and made Bi’s mouth water, hungrily.
In the middle, behind the wall was a great round tent top, and, underneath, Bi could see different kinds of critters, all with beautiful bright colors, going round and round, under the tent top, and going up and down, in time to the music. Bi could see happy, laughing folks, in shiny new robes, riding on these colorful critters, going round and round, up and down, and chewing great gobs of crispy hot ration, while the music played so sweet.
The line went right up to an opening in the wall, where a man sat, dressed in a bright red robe, with a big white beard. Bi never saw anything like this in his whole life! He didn’t have near enough words to describe the wondrous things that could be glimpsed inside that wall.
The folks in the line were all staring in wonderment. They never saw anything like this, neither. Old Ma’s were fishing into their pouches for little bits of metal, which they gave to the man in the red robe. He looked at the bits of metal carefully, counted them, and counted the folks in the family group, then looked at them, very carefully, wrote something down in a great big book, said something to the Ma and the family group, and finally, when that was all done, he opened the wall for them, and they went inside, dazed and smiling at the luck and wonder of it all.
Bi quickly jumped a place, a little ways down the line. He was real used to doing it now, and the folks at this end were too excited to fuss about a solo jumper. In a few hours, he was standing in front of the man, who had smiling, friendly blue eyes, near hidden by his bushy white beard.
“Welcome!” smiled the man, “just let me have your token, and you can go right in.”
“My what?”
“Your token for admission.”
“I don’t have none. Nobody ever told be about it.”
“Where’s your Ma?”
“Down the line. I’m solo now.”
“Didn’t your Ma give you your ration card when you went solo?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“And didn’t she give you the token? Your Ma is supposed to keep everybody’s token in her pouch.”
“Gap, no, she must’ve forgot!”
“Ho, ho, that sure is a pity. You came all the way up the line and don’t have no token to get in. I can’t let no one in without a token. You’ll have to get one.”
“Where?”
“In the Other Line. You ever see that other line, way off thataway? That’s the line where folks get their tokens. You gotta go to the end of the Other Line and wait your turn. They’ll let you use your same ration card there, and that line moves pretty fast. Then you can get back in this line and wait your turn to get in.”
“But that’ll take a real long time, and it’s dangerous!”
“Yeah, lucky you’re so young.”
“And there’s no more ration carts along the line.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Sure is a pity, folks coming in real hungry and weak. Heading straight for the eats, don�
��t even care about having no fun. But I heard that the Other Line still has carts. So you don’t have to worry. By the time you’re back in this line, the carts will most likely be fixed.”
“I guess that’s how it is,” said Bi.
“Yep, that’s how it is. Go along now and get that token.”
Bi wandered away from the opening in the wall and thought about what to do. The wall was too high and smooth to climb over, that was sure, and there was no way he could get past that man in the red robe, ’cause he kept watch all the time. Bi knew he didn’t want to cross the bush to get his token in the Other Line. It would take so long, and he didn’t have near enough ration.
Somehow, he wanted to get inside that wall—soon as possible. It looked so pretty inside, prettiest thing he ever saw, except for his own Pretty. That place and that girl both filled him with the same sort of wantin’ feeling. Funny, he hadn’t thought about her for a while, he’d been so busy drifting. He liked pretty things a whole lot, that was sure.
So he figured the best thing to do would be to go back along the line and find his Pretty. Then him and her could go back along the line to find their old Mas and thieve their tokens. Then they’d drift back up to the wall and get inside and stay there, eating hot crisp ration every day and riding on them brightly colored critters under the tent—round and round, up and down, listening to the music and munching ration, every day! Wait till she saw it, her eyes would gleam, for sure.
Yeah, that’s what Bi would do. He’d find his Pretty, get his token, and get inside that wall. And, for sure, she must be done birthing, by now.
HE’S ONLY HUMAN, by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Speaker of the House stared at the President Pro Tem of the Senate. “You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I can,” she replied. “I’m very serious.”
“But he’s the President of the United States! I know he’s not our party, but he can’t… I mean, you’re sure?”
She nodded.
“What about the vice president? The Cabinet? Are any of them aliens?”
The senator glanced at the office door, making certain it was securely closed—it would not do to have anyone overhear. “Human, all of them,” she replied. “Not a single extraterrestrial in the lot.”
“But how could this happen?” the Speaker protested. “How could we have completely lost control of the executive branch? Isn’t there something we can do?”
She shrugged. “Do you have any suggestions, Mr. Speaker?”
He looked helplessly around the office. “Is it too late to make a substitution? Can’t we infiltrate somewhere? I mean, leaving the country in the hands of humans—it’s not safe! How could the Commission ever have let it happen?”
“Someone got careless, I suppose.”
“Carelessness on that level is the exact reason we came here in the first place! Are we getting as sloppy as the humans, now? Did someone get overconfident just because their Cold War has been over for a couple of decades?”
The senator shrugged, a human gesture she had become rather fond of.
“We have no way to infiltrate the White House and replace him?”
“Oh, we can certainly get in there,” the senator said. “We have the equipment—but we have no one accredited to take the job, and no costume ready. It would take weeks to grow a disguise good enough to pass muster.”
“Well, something must be done, and immediately!” the Speaker said, getting to his feet. “We’ll just have to remove the president and vice president. I’m next in line, and I can get some of our people into the Cabinet and line things up for the next election.”
The senator was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?”
“It’s a drastic situation. We can’t trust humans with spaceships and nuclear weapons!”
“Should we contact the Commission first, to let them know our plans?”
“There isn’t time; the next relay ship isn’t due for almost a month. They’ve always trusted field agents to act responsibly, and I think it would be totally irresponsible to leave a human president in the White House.”
“It’s your decision, sir—you’re the senior agent—but I admit I’m a little reluctant to interfere so directly. Removing both the president and vice president…”
“It’s necessary, clearly,” the Speaker told her. “We’ll go tonight.”
* * * *
They had removed their disguises, of course—if by some horrible mischance they were spotted, it would hardly do for the Speaker and the President Pro Tem to be seen sneaking into the president’s bedroom. The senator had suggested substituting some other human guise, but the Speaker had refused, for two sound reasons: Nobody had any business sneaking into the president’s bedroom, and besides, it would take too long to grow them.
If anyone saw them, that person would probably assume he was dreaming, and certainly wouldn’t be believed if he talked about it later. Two three-foot-tall aliens creeping through the White House corridors, using mysterious machinery to open locks and evade security devices, would surely seem more like a Secret Service agent’s nightmare than a real possibility.
They moved silently down the corridor, thanks more to a dampening field than any natural stealth, and used light distorters to make themselves effectively invisible in the shadows whenever they had to pass near a human being—though the distorters had the rather severe drawback of impairing the users’ own vision as well, limiting their usefulness.
The door to the presidential bedroom popped open at the touch of a handheld device, and they stepped cautiously into the darkened room…
And the lights came on suddenly, leaving them blinking foolishly at the sight of four Secret Service agents pointing weapons at them.
And the weapons weren’t the standard-issue human-made 9mm automatics, but Krung neural suppressors.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” someone said, and they looked past the black-suited guards to see the president standing beside his bed, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. “They told me they’d spotted some extraterrestrial shenanigans goin’ on, but I didn’t think they’d actually catch two of you sneakin’ in here!”
“Urk,” the Speaker said.
“Now, just who are you, and what did you boys want with me?”
“Uh…” the President Pro Tem said.
“This one’s not a boy, sir,” one of the Secret Service agents said, gesturing at the senator. “It’s a female.”
“Oh? How can you…no, don’t tell me.”
The Speaker and the senator looked at one another. No human would have recognized the senator’s sex—which meant that though the president was human, at least one of his guards was not. And judging by the Krung weapons and all the rest, the president knew it.
That changed everything. She asked, “What’s going on? Why weren’t we told?”
The president laughed. “Seems to me that it’s you who have some explaining to do, little lady! Who are you two, anyway?”
“I am Heo designate Fu-jerin, from the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani,” the Speaker said.
“The Speaker of the House of Representatives, sir,” a Secret Service agent explained.
The Speaker and the senator looked at one another again.
“It’s a set-up,” the senator said. “An ordinary agent wouldn’t know your name.”
“Probably a test of some kind,” the Speaker agreed. “I suspect we just flunked.”
“I’m afraid so,” the Secret Service agent said. “The Commission was considering you for a new post, now that we’re turning Earth over to the natives, and set up this situation to see how you’d handle it. I think if you go back through the e-mail you’ve let pile up over the last few weeks you’ll find some interesting reading.”
“I don’t have time to read my own e-mail!” the Speaker protested. “I’ve been busy running the country! We didn’t want this one to fall apart the way the Soviet Union did…”
The Speaker glared at him with immense green eyes. “It shouldn’t be!” he retorted. “You humans would’ve blown each other up fifty years ago if we hadn’t intervened!”
“That was then,” the Secret Service agent replied. “This is now. You really should have kept up on the reports, Fu-jerin. We’ve been discussing a gradual reversion of control for the past two years.”
“I saw some of the discussions, but I didn’t know it was being implemented…”
The Secret Service agents didn’t reply; they just stared at him over their Krung suppressors.
“Someone should have told me,” the Speaker protested weakly.
“Tell that to the Commission,” a Secret Service agent said.
“What’s going to happen to us?” the senator asked.
“You’re going to leave peacefully and go back to your normal activities,” the Secret Service agent said. “I wouldn’t recommend running for re-election, though.”
“You aren’t going to do anything to us?”
“What would we do? You think we want headlines about aliens trying to kidnap the president?”
“I suppose not.” She looked forlornly at the president. “Our apologies, sir,” she said. “We meant no harm.”
“No harm done,” he said, waving a hand in dismissal. “If it’s any comfort, these boys do keep an eye on me, just in case I do somethin’ stupid.” He gestured at the Secret Service agents. “We’re taking it one step at a time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And while you’re here, I’d just like to say somethin’,” the president continued. “Maybe it’s just me bein’ a little too proud, but I like to think we would have managed to not blow ourselves up even if you fellows hadn’t interfered. You comin’ in and secretly takin’ over the governments of half a dozen countries the way you did was a lowdown sneaky thing to do, and you didn’t have any right to do it. It came as one hell of a shock to me when I found out just what all you’d done, and I was madder ’n hell at first.”
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack Page 39