Well, Conteh had thought them amusing and my body obviously thought the same, because I still get to feel that butt shock whenever I mess up.
Thanks, Conteh.
“Meskilot,” I said. “I’ve heard of that.” I’d done a lot more than hear of it, but this smug alien slime clearly wanted to explain how dumb I’d been, and I was happy to let it fill in for Conteh as my source of information.
“Heard of it? For Chrissakes, NJ, Meskilot is the worst crop blight on the continent. You’re required by law to watch for it, and report suspected outbreaks so they can burn the area.”
I knew that much. What I didn’t know was why the intruder was convinced my farm was infested with Meskilot.
It’s fooling you, said Sanaa. Don’t be taken in.
Forget about farming, said Efia. This heathen alien filth took the name of our savior in vain. Do not suffer it to live.
Chrissakes? Savior? Interesting. I’d never known Lance Corporal Efia Jalloh to be religious in life. I guess death kind of changes a person’s perspective on matters spiritual.
“They’re talking to you again, aren’t they?”
“What?” I temporized. To be honest, I was still kind of getting my head around how a half-mad AI had discovered religion. Before today, I hadn’t heard a peep out of her for weeks. I guess she had been busy thinking deeply. Really deeply.
“The voices – the echoes of your dead comrades – you’re talking with them again. No wonder you’re making such a mess of your farm. You keep tuning out from the world, withdrawing into your head.”
“Shut your filthy mouth!”
“You need a partner to root you to reality. That’s why I’m here.”
I shot to my feet and shouted, “They’re more than echoes.” To be honest they weren’t much more than that but I had tired of this skangat alien acting high and mighty like so many of its kind. “And they’re more alive than you will be in a moment unless you keep your filthy opinions to yourself. From now on stick to hard facts. You think I’m harboring Meskilot. Explain why or I’ll take you out there and drown you. And if you so much as hint that I need you as my partner, I’ll gutshot you, watch you bleed to the brink of death over my expensive new carpet, and then take you out and drown you. You and my ruined carpet both. Understand?”
“Did you know land prices were low in this area?”
“What’s that got to do with…?” That sudden prickling sensation scurrying up my back was nothing to do with my dead comrades. “Yes, prices are low. It’s the only reason why I could afford a farm large enough to be viable.”
“And they’re getting lower. Who do you think’s responsible for that, NJ? Good gracious, man, you’re practically breeding the blight.”
Frakking alien! I took a deep breath to calm down.
It didn’t work. The oxygen boost only turbo-charged my muscles.
I thumbed my pistol’s safety back on and tossed it to the ground. Killing this veck wasn’t going to satisfy me. I wanted to break it first, crush it under boot and fist.
I wasn’t a young man, and my body had picked up a few dents over the years, but I still knew how to look after myself in a fight.
I crossed the floor in an instant.
One heartbeat I was sitting in my chair looking pissed, the next, I was in the intruder’s face not only looking pissed but aiming a snap-kick at its head with my right boot.
Snap-kicks can leave you vulnerable if they go wrong, say if your opponent grabs your leg or deflects your momentum so you’re off balance and vulnerable.
The alien raised his arms to block my kick. Just as well it had been a feint.
I’d noticed the alien strongly favored its right hand. Either it was a clever trick or it was right-handed like most beings in the galaxy.
Not me, though. I’m completely ambidextrous. And that’s not some dumbfrakk weasel sexual metaphor, in case you were wondering, though I might be that too, not that it’s any of your business. My right foot came down as my left snapped out to kick my opponent’s right wrist – its gun hand.
My kick landed on target, but I pulled my attack at the last moment. It lightly tapped the bastard’s wrist. Nothing more. Perfect for the kind of sparring you do when you’re five. Not so good in a potentially life-or-death struggle.
I had intended to shatter the alien’s wrist, I really had. And then, while it was cradling its shattered arm, I was planning on a roundhouse kick to cave in the side of its head.
I feel enormous satisfaction in hitting things. I don’t like to get all philosophical, but I find that many of life’s problems are solved by smacking something. And that wasn’t a metaphor either. I do mean shattering, crushing, bashing and snapping the things in the physical plane that get in my way.
So it came as a shock to suddenly question my most cherished philosophy.
Silky had only come looking for my help, after all. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I suddenly remembered an interrogation of a civilian I had captured in Tanzania. He told me my distant ancestors had held a tradition of hospitality to strangers that was still cherished by my long-sundered kin left behind in Africa. If there was any truth to that, how disappointed my forbears would have been to see me treat my guest so poorly.
My rage was my shame because it made no sense in a world at peace. I’d learned the hard way that I was not a Tanzanian, not even entirely human. I was a creature of hate. I had been made that way. I was a danger to decent people.
I stepped back three paces, so as not to make my poor guest feel threatened.
I would have retreated farther, but that was as far as I got before I felt an electric shock up my ass. Oww!
Don’t let the alien into your mind, said Sanaa.
Is that you doing the butt zapping? I asked her.
That’s not important right now.
“Says you.”
Hostile detected! yelled the Sarge. Go firm, Marine!
What he means– started Bahati.
Shut up, interrupted Sanaa. Gods, she sounded furious. I was married to him. I know Ndeki Joshua better than any of you, and far more than he knows himself.
I was married to him too, Bahati warned.
Not properly, Sanaa retorted.
Oh, Gods. This was finally happening.
Whaddya mean not properly? Bahati was the most placid person I’d ever known, until you pushed her, and then she kind of erupted…
Sanaa pushed further: Lance Corporal Bahati Chahine. NJ married you on the rebound, because he couldn’t handle my death, and you were the last of the original squad left alive. Why else did you think he chose you?
I hung my head in my hands, separating my fingers just enough to keep a watchful eye on this frakking alien who had just unleased World War Four in my head. For forty years this argument between these digital shades of my late-wife and later-wife had waited, like a thunderstorm tingling with electric charge, waiting to unleash its cargo of lightning for the worst frakking moment possible.
Is that true, NJ? Bahati’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“Focus, squad!” I bellowed. “The intruder says I’m zoning out from the world. Do you want to prove the alien right?”
I only said that to stall the argument, but the idea that this scaly white monstrosity might have a point gnawed at me. I had the sense that I was running from the metaphorical thunderclouds straight for the shelter of a tree. And a tree made of a superconducting material at that.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, Bahati, said Sanaa. I just said that to distract NJ. None of us believed her apology was entirely sincere, but that she was apologizing at all shocked us into listening. NJ, the hostile just attacked your mind. It was like a cyber-assault but aimed at your meat mind. Bahati was right, there’s no such thing as a Nanasyne. I’ve been rifling through your memories and found that this thing’s a Kurlei, an empath. If we were still alive and back in our bodies, I would boot you out of the squad BattleNet and quarantine your brain. And for your info
rmation, you’ve been talking to us out loud. Zip it, Marine!
I thought my reply. Understood. And thank you for your distraction. I reckon I can fend it off next time. Let’s hear what it has to say before killing it. Farm first. Marine second. Right?
“To stop the Meskilot we need to act now,” said the alien. It looked excitable. “Before the rains stop.”
I looked outside the window. People talk sometimes of leaden skies. Civilians mostly, who were never trained to describe a situation in the fewest number of words to deliver maximum clarity and minimum ambiguity. Even I could appreciate that description now. It looked as if outside my farmhouse, the atmosphere of the entire planet had been replaced by a solid block of lead. It seemed improbable that I could even open my front door against such an obstruction. But I never did have a talent for metaphor. The rain might look like a block of metal but with that angry pounding thrumming down my spine and deafening my ears, it didn’t sound like one.
“I don’t like you,” I told the alien. It felt good to demonstrate my talent for stating the frakking obvious. “In fact, I want to kill you.”
“NJ, think of the blight!”
“No, I prefer to think of your death, Silky.”
“The rain–”
“Forget the rain. Think instead of that mind trick you just played on me, Kurlei filth.”
The alien went very still.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I sneered. “I know what you are. Well, this human isn’t going to fall at your feet and let you screw with his mind.”
“I’m sorry, NJ. I couldn’t help nudging you away from violence. It was a defensive instinct, when you kicked me.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Having an alien in my favorite chair is bad enough, but…” I paused, and glanced out the window. Talking of hearing things, there was something I wasn’t hearing anymore. The rain had stopped. “…an alien mind in mine is a violation beyond words.”
“There’s no time to lose,” said Silky. Bold as a battlecruiser, the wretched creature not only got out of my chair, but hurried out to the front hall.
To my absolute disgust, I didn’t kill it as it pushed past.
Instead, I overtook it and lifted it up off the ground by the neck, enjoying the way its eyes bulged within its deep sockets when its boots started dancing in mid-air.
I pressed in with my thumbs, and felt cartilage or something satisfyingly meaty in its throat yielding to my pressure. Despite my words, I didn’t want to kill it, just to squeeze some of the cockiness out of it.
The stubby tentacles sweeping away from its head flushed with blood, turning from white to pink to purple, and as it did so I felt waves of doubt crashing against me, but I was wise to its psi-talent and easily beat back its power of suggestion.
“What’s the matter,” I snarled, “mind games not working?”
Stop it, NJ!
“Doesn’t work anymore, Lumpy.” I pressed home my point with my thumbs.
Please, let it go.
Was that the alien talking in my head, or Sanaa?
Lance Corporal Joshua, I order you to cease fire.
At the Sarge’s command, I released the alien, and let it sink, gasping to the floor, while I wondered how many decades it had been since I had been a lancejack and the Sarge my squad leader.
I don’t get it, I told the Sarge angrily. You’ve been telling me to kill it and now you want me to kiss and make up? Since when did you care about this alien?
I don’t, NJ. I care about you, and you were about to commit murder. Trust me, murder would not sit well on your soul.
A Kurlei can’t control your mind, added Sanaa. Not according to the tactical briefing you forgot centuries ago. It can nudge and surprise, enough to confuse its prey or distract a predator for a crucial second. It must have known humans for a long while to have planted those suggestions when we first encountered it, but the Kurlei can’t mind control. And now we’re up against it, we’ll protect you. Kill it if you want, but don’t fear it.
I watched the lumps along the alien’s head as they paled and drained of blood. Its eyes set inside carbon black sockets grew less wild. It sensed I wasn’t going to kill it, could feel the anger ebb away in my mind.
I reached down with my hand. I meant to help it up, but its eyes went wild with fear again, and it looked at my hand in horror. I wasn’t much of an empath myself, but I suppose being choked nearly to death can result in temporary anxiety.
“My voices tell me you aren’t a threat,” I explained. “I won’t hurt you again unless you force me to. You have my word.”
Silky rubbed his neck uncertainly, and I felt a curious tingling in my scalp as it tentatively felt the shape of my sincerity.
He didn’t look too happy but he nodded, and took my hand. As I lifted him to his feet, I was struck by how humanlike his hand was and how light his physique. The long and delicate fingers felt feminine inside my Marine’s meat paw. I’d felt this before with ship rats, the elfin humans bred as starship crew. Even spacer men looked like little girls, although I’d been trained not to point that fact out to male Navy officers when we were aboard ship.
I’d had a fling with a ship girl a very long time ago, back when I was still green behind the gills and determined to distribute my genetic pattern as widely as fate would allow. I’d loved my Angelique, as I’d called her, and the bumps on my back had only excited her depraved fetish for Marine cyborgs, as she called my kind. I smiled at the memory. I adored Angelique’s petite frame – the way I could easily lift her in one hand made me want to shield her in a protective bubble of my kisses – but she had made it clear from the beginning that I was no use to her if I treated her like a delicate flower. She might be small, but she loved it rough. I hadn’t many good memories of the war, but Angelique had given me some of the very best. I wondered what had happened to her.
The sight of Silky’s smile brought my thoughts crashing back to the present. I swear he was tilting his head coyly and fluttering his eyelids as if giving me the come on.
I snapped my hand away, but the alien only smiled at my reaction, and cocked the ridge of flesh that passed for an eyebrow. It began to fiddle with the fishy ropes that fell from the back of its head.
“What?” I demanded. “Have you something to say?”
“Only that I was right to choose you. I’m certain you won’t turn me in. Not once you’ve gotten to know me better.”
You know, NJ, if I’m not mistaken… Sanaa started.
Bahati snapped back: Shut up, Sanaa!
There was laughter in both their voices, and I know who was usually the butt of their fun. What are you two plotting?
Before they could answer, the alien dropped its annoying imitation of a coquettish human, and looked once more like a dangerous deserter. “The rain has only paused for the moment,” he said, the alien’s artificial speech unaffected by my attack on his throat.
He scampered out the front door.
I had no choice but to follow it outside, still trying to figure out why I felt as if my ex-spouses had switched from wanting to kill the alien filth on principle into wanting to be best pals.
But the alien was right. If he was going to save my farm from slow ruination – which I still doubted – then now was the time to investigate the fields.
I picked up the pace and hurried after this annoying alien.
— CHAPTER 5 —
In contrast to the grace this Silky had shown in leaping and twisting in unarmed combat, the way he ran was comical, all arms outstretched and out-turned feet, like a diver wearing flippers coming out of the sea.
Comical or not, Silky swiftly covered the ground down to the patch of Zone B where we’d fought.
Which reminded me… I temporarily unclamped the trauma-pack on my neck, releasing it just enough for me to slide a licked clean-ish finger underneath. My finger came away smeared in red, but the coating quickly washed away in a burst of light rain.
My knife wound wasn’t goi
ng to kill me, then.
I ran through the rows of immature barley to where Silky had halted and was pointing at the plants saying, “Here! Here!”
He didn’t stop saying ‘here’ until I reached him, when he changed his chant to “Look! Look!”
I did.
I saw plants. Sturdy green stems topped by spiky rows of ears. It was a field of barley. What else did he expect?
Keeping a wary eye on the alien who’d kicked and knifed me in the neck – I wasn’t about to forget that in a hurry – I crouched down to take a closer look at the stems. I couldn’t see anything but as I bent a branch toward my face, my thumb felt a lump. I ran my thumb along the stem and found hard little bumps every half inch.
“They’re Meskilot eggs,” explained Silky. “They’ll hatch, strip your leaves and then crawl into the soil to gnaw at your roots.”
“They don’t look as if they’re hatching,” I said defensively.
“That’s because they aren’t. They’re next season’s problem. Right now, it’s the adults you have to worry about. The wetter it gets, the more they’re encouraged to crawl out of the soil. If they let the ground get too wet, they drown.”
“But they won’t get too wet,” I replied, starting to hope this was a false alarm. “The gully system will direct the floodwater around the fields.”
“It’s no use them detecting that the ground around them is too saturated, and only then start their journey to the surface, because that would be too late to escape. Standing water or saturated soil within 40 meters. That’s their trigger. How they tell has baffled scientists for years.”
“Your words sound almost plausible, but all I’m seeing is a bumpy plant stem.”
“Look there.”
I followed the alien’s finger to the northwest, noting in passing that Silky’s fingers were tipped with black claws that I hadn’t noticed before. It took a second or two to see what he meant because most of my attention was on readying myself in case my deserter friend tried attacking me again.
Then I squinted just right to see movement – a cloud of swirling activity that resolved itself into a cloud of flies.
After War Page 4