Vor: The Playback War

by Lisa Smedman

  He prodded the growler head with the barrel of his AK-51, lifting the thing’s lip and staring at the rows of razor-sharp teeth. A dribble of saliva slid from the monster’s mouth.

  Raheek caught Alexi’s arm and gently pulled the barrel of the assault rifle away from the growler’s head. Alexi saw that the metal was already beginning to pit. “Be careful,” Raheek cautioned. “The glands will still be secreting acid. If the head falls, it will splash.”

  Juliana sniffed the air. “What kind of acid?” she asked. Alexi suddenly realized where he’d smelled that particular odor before—why it seemed so familiar to him, even though this was his first encounter with a growler that spat wads of acidic phlegm. In the arts-and-crafts room of the high school where he’d taught, they’d used an acid with exactly the same smell to etch glass.

  “It’s hydrofluoric acid,” he said.

  Juliana stared at the dismembered growler, a look of disbelief on her face. “Impossible. How could the creature possibly have something so toxic inside it and still live?”

  Alexi shrugged. “Our stomachs are filled with acid—just a different type.” Then he jerked a thumb at his backpack. “If you don’t believe me, I can prove it to you. There’s a glass bottle inside my pack. Shall I stick it into the acid and show you how it gets eaten away?”

  But Juliana wasn’t listening to him. Instead she seemed to be lost in thought. She stared up at the tetrahedron. “Hydrofluoric acid,” she murmured. “Glass . . . silicon . . .”

  Raheek nudged Alexi. “Let us go,” it said. “We haven’t much time.”

  “I know, I know,” Alexi said, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of his voice. “The bomb’s about to go off and the end of the world is coming. And you expect me to do something about it, though I can’t imagine what. Well, let’s get it over with, then.”

  Alexi turned to follow Raheek, but Juliana caught his arm. “That bottle,” she said. “Give it to me. I want to see if your guess about what type of acid was in the growler’s stomach was right.”

  Alexi hesitated, suddenly regretting having suggested the glass-etching test. He didn’t want to give the bottle to Juliana. He had the sudden sense that, if he did, some terrible result would occur. But the worst outcome his imagination could come up with was her hands being burned by acid. And if she wanted to risk her own skin, so be it.

  He shrugged off the backpack and dug inside it. He handed the empty vodka bottle to Juliana, but almost didn’t let go of it. She had to tug it out of his hand. Still fretting, he closed up the backpack, then turned and trudged after Raheek. Soon the trees hid Juliana from sight.

  Something still nagged at Alexi, something that made him stop and then backtrack to a point where he could see her again. She was crouched beside the growler’s severed head, using a stick to ease its mouth open. With her other hand, she held the bottle under the trickle of corrosive saliva that dribbled from the mouth. He saw her wince—and jerk slightly—and assumed a drop or two of it had splashed onto her skin after glancing off the mouth of the bottle. But she ignored the pain, her expression set in a determined and thoughtful frown.

  At the rate the acid was trickling, it would be quite a while before the bottle was full. Alexi wondered what she planned to do with it. Hurl it at the crystal like a Molotov cocktail, in a futile act of defiance?

  Raheek called to Alexi, startling him. Not wanting to be caught spying on Juliana, Alexi hurried away through the trees. He found himself in a small clearing—and in shadow. He looked up and saw the tetrahedron towering above him. The broad base of the inverted pyramid, high overhead, was like an umbrella that stopped the snow from falling. The ground under Alexi’s feet was almost bare of snow.

  Raheek sat just outside the shadow the crystal cast, cross-legged in the snow. The alien’s staff lay across its knees. Staring at Alexi, Raheek patted down the snow beside it with a slender blue hand.

  “Come,” the alien called out. “Sit.”

  Alexi shivered—he was already wet, cold, and tired. He wasn’t about to bring hypothermia even closer by sitting in the snow. Ignoring Raheek, he moved closer to the tetrahedron, studying its smooth gray surface as he entered its shadow. Was the thing really a bomb, built by an alien intelligence? Ever since the Change had drawn Earth into another universe—one filled with blue-skinned mystics and acid-spitting monsters—anything was possible.

  Frightened though he was, Alexi felt strangely drawn to the crystal. He needed to be near it, to touch it, to be . . .

  He touched the flawless surface with a fingertip. The crystal was as warm as flesh, as smooth as glass.

  The thought tickled something in his memory. Glass could be etched. A silicon crystal could be . . .

  The thought disappeared.

  Alexi flattened his hand against the pyramid, then slid it slowly across the smooth surface. It seemed flawless, unbroken. But like everything else in the universe, the crystal was made up of atoms. And those atoms, made up of a nucleus, protons, and electrons—and all of the other subatomic particles—had spaces between them. Spaces like doors and windows . . .

  Alexi suddenly shivered and drew his hand away. With a start, he realized where he was: in the middle of Siberia, next to a ticking time bomb—pun intended—with only an alien and an enemy soldier for company.

  He walked back to where Raheek sat and looked down at the blue-skinned alien. “So,” he asked. “What happens next?”

  “That depends on you,” the alien replied. “The answer lies inside you.”

  Alexi snorted. “Well, if it does, I don’t know it.”

  “I can help you know it.”

  “With your magic?” Alexi asked.

  “No,” Raheek answered. “With yours.”

  Alexi raised his ice-cold hands to his lips and blew on them. His insulated combat boots and Soldatenkof’s armored jacket were keeping out the worst of the cold, but his pants were wet and his hair was dusted with snow. Now that he’d stopped walking, the condensation on his glasses was starting to crystallize into ice at the edges of the lenses.

  “I don’t have any magic,” he told the alien. “Not like yours. We call our ‘magic’ technology.”

  “That isn’t the magic I am speaking of,” Raheek answered patiently. “You humans also have another kind of magic—a truer form. You mentioned it once before, when you asked if I was a mystic.”

  “I did?” Alexi had to think about that one for a moment before the answer came. “You mean psychic powers?”

  The bald-headed alien nodded, a look of satisfaction in its eyes.

  “They don’t exist,” Alexi said.

  “They do,” the alien insisted. “And they are strong in you.”

  Alexi laughed out loud. “Sorry,” he told the alien. “You must be confusing me with someone else. My great-to-the-power-of-twenty-grandmother, perhaps. She was a fortune-teller—and look where she wound up. Exiled to Siberia when she predicted the death of Peter the Great. Or so the family legends have it.”

  Alexi grinned. “Too bad she’s dead. She’d be the one to talk to about psychic powers.”

  “That is an interesting suggestion,” Raheek said in a thoughtful voice.

  Alexi suddenly felt uneasy. “What do you mean?”

  The alien’s eyes stared up at him. The blue hands lifted from its knees, fingers twitching.

  “The mystic power I used to call up the barrier that protected us from the growlers draws upon the eternal power of long-dead Zykhee souls,” Raheek said. “My training allows me to shape the souls of my ancestors into a protective ethereal barrier that enemies—and creatures like the growlers—find terrifying. But I find the souls comforting. They embrace me like a protective parent, sustain my courage, whisper secrets to me . . .”

  Raheek reached out with a sudden zigzag motion. Its long, steel-strong fingers wrapped around Alexi’s wrist. “I have never attempted to call up the long-dead souls of another species,” it continued, an intent look in its eyes. “But if
I could, perhaps your ancestor could communicate with you and tell you how to awaken your own mystical power. And then you could tell me the secret of how the crystal can be defeated.”

  Alexi tried to tug his hand free. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Juliana emerge from the forest. Perhaps she could help him talk some sense into the alien.

  “I don’t think your idea will work,” Alexi told Raheek. “And even if it does, I’m not interested in trying. Even as a kid, I didn’t like ghost stories. My imagination would run away with me, and I’d start . . .”

  He suddenly realized what he was saying. A memory from his childhood flooded back to him. He’d start seeing things. Ghosts. Like the ghost of his father, who had come to him on the shore of Lake Baikal to tell his little Alexi that he and Mommy were dead . . .

  “You must allow me to try,” Raheek insisted. “Does the fact that the existence of your entire planet hangs in the balance not move you?”

  “Why should I care about anyone but myself?” Alexi asked indignantly. “Look at this planet—it’s a mess.” He gestured at the black patches of soot-stained snow. “Even without the war, we were killing ourselves with radiation poisoning and pollution. What difference does it make if the whole thing gets blown away? Good riddance to it!”

  Alexi decided then and there that he didn’t believe a word Raheek was saying—any of it. The balancing tetrahedron was an amazing and strange artifact, it was true. Undoubtedly alien. But that didn’t mean it was a bomb. If Alexi could get back to the downed helicraft and somehow repair its damaged radio, he could call for help. He had flares; another Neo-Soviet helicraft would come to rescue him. And Alexi’s discovery of an alien artifact would almost certainly earn him the promotion he needed to finally be reassigned to the military’s space arm. He just had to get away from the Zykhee—and then give Juliana the slip. . . .

  Juliana was closer now, almost behind the alien. One hand held the bottle of hydrofluoric acid, the other, her Pug pistol. Slowly and silently, she raised the weapon above Raheek’s head . . .

  Alexi suddenly realized she was going to try to knock the alien out. And that she would succeed. And that somehow, this would lead not to the thing he most hoped for, but to the thing he most feared.

  And no matter how he blustered and said he didn’t care, he didn’t want to die.

  “Look out, Raheek!” he shouted, jerking the alien forward by the hand that still held his wrist.

  Juliana’s pistol swept harmlessly past the back of the alien’s head.

  “Damn you!” she shouted at Alexi. “That thing’s an alien. We humans have to stick together against it!”

  She danced back, leveling her pistol at Raheek. But just as it had before, the alien was suddenly no longer where it had been. One moment it was sitting cross-legged on the ground—and the next it was behind Juliana, staff in hand. The staff whipped around in a blur and Juliana’s head fell from her shoulders. Her body collapsed twitching into the snow, turning it a mushy red.

  Alexi stood, too shocked to do more than tremble. He’d seen hundreds of deaths in his years of combat, but somehow this one moved him more than any other. Hot tears trickled down his cheeks.

  “She wasn’t going to kill you,” he whispered. “She only meant to knock you unconscious. You didn’t need to . . .”

  His words trailed off as he stared at Juliana’s corpse. Where was she now? Had her soul flown to Heaven to join that of her dead lover? Alexi doubted it. He didn’t believe in ghosts, or in life after death. That time he’d seen his father on the beach—on the day his parents had died—his sister Tatyana hadn’t seen a thing, even though she’d been standing right beside him. It had just been a figment of Alexi’s childish imagination.

  Yet it was so clear in his memory. He’d seen his father out of the corner of his eye: a lonely figure standing on the beach. Alexi had at first turned to greet him, thinking that his father had come early to fetch them—but when he looked straight at him, his father had disappeared, just like that. Alexi had stood there, perplexed, as an oblivious Tatyana had thrown a stick for the dogs. Then, just when Alexi decided it must have been a trick of the light—perhaps the sun glinting off the lake water or a shadow cast by the trees—he’d imagined his father’s voice, whispering in his ear.

  Alexi, my son. I love you. The voice ached with a sadness that had found an echo in Alexi’s heart. Whatever you choose, whatever path in life you follow, I know that you will make me proud. Farewell, son.

  “Father!” Alexi cried out. “Don’t go!”

  Tatyana had stopped in mid-throw to stare at Alexi. The dogs had barked for a moment at the stick in her hand, then also turned quizzical eyes upon him.

  And in that moment, Alexi had felt as if the whole of his future hinged upon what happened next. But with both his sister and the dogs staring at him as if he was crazy, he’d suddenly felt embarrassed.

  “It’s nothing,” he’d told Tatyana. “Let’s play.”

  And in the years that had followed, he’d convinced himself that the whole incident had indeed been nothing more than his imagination. That he’d only imagined seeing his father’s ghost.

  Alexi stared at Juliana’s body as the alien wiped the bloody blade of its weapon in the snow.

  “We each have our destiny,” Raheek said. “Hers was to die here.”

  No! Alexi silently protested.

  “And we each have our duty,” the alien continued. “Mine is to learn the secret of disarming the crystal, and carry that knowledge back to my race. And yours is to give me that knowledge.”

  Alexi stared defiantly at the alien. “And what are you going to do if I refuse?” he asked, anger choking his throat. “Kill me?”

  Alexi’s hand was still on the strap of his AK-51. Even though he knew he’d never be quick enough, he was tempted to whip the weapon off his shoulder and pull the trigger until the assault rifle was hot and smoking. His fingers whitened on the strap.

  The alien stood motionless, staring at Alexi, leaning on its staff. Then it began to speak in a strange language. Flecks of red were swirling in the midnight blue of the irises.

  Slowly, Alexi eased the assault rifle from his shoulder. He lifted the AK-51, wincing as his bare palm stuck to the ice-cold metal of the barrel. Jerking his hand free, tearing the skin, he shifted his grip to the weapon’s wooden stock. His right hand wrapped around the grip, and his index finger settled on the trigger. The sweat froze, gluing his finger in place. All he had to do now was pull . . .

  The blue-skinned alien stared down the barrel of Alexi’s gun, calmly looking its death in the eye. Alexi hesitated—why hadn’t the alien pulled its disappearing act by now? Was it just going to let Alexi kill it? Raheek continued whispering.

  “What are you saying?” Alexi asked. “Your prayers?”

  The air between Alexi and the alien began to shimmer. Fearing a magical attack, Alexi at last pulled the trigger—

  And found himself shooting his own father. Wrenching the weapon up and to the side, he jerked his finger free of the trigger. Then he stared in amazement at the man he had not seen in more than twenty years.

  His father was just the way Alexi remembered him: a slender man with a scholar’s high forehead and receding hairline and old-fashioned books tucked under his arm. Like Alexi, he wore glasses, although his had heavy black plastic frames. He wore the same clothes they’d buried him in—his best blue suit. Except that it wasn’t blue. Like the rest of him it was a pale, translucent white. Behind him, the air shimmered and swirled.

  Alexi had to tip his head back to look up at his father, just as he had as a child. He found himself whispering a word: “Father.” The ghost smiled down at him and reached out to tousle Alexi’s hair.

  Startled, Alexi took a step back. Tearing his eyes away from the apparition, he glared at Raheek. The alien stood with arms outstretched, chanting in an alien language.

  “Stop it!” Alexi shouted. “It’s a trick—one of your illusions. Stop it righ
t now!”

  Alexi, the apparition whispered. Why are you so afraid? Don’t you recognize me?

  Alexi pointed his assault rifle at Raheek. “Quit creating the illusion or I’ll—”

  I haven’t seen you since you were twelve, Alexi. My, how you’ve grown. And wearing a soldier’s uniform. I should have expected it, given your fascination with military history. Tell me, have you been a soldier all your adult life?

  Alexi heard the trace of disappointment in his father’s voice and couldn’t help but answer. “I was a teacher before the war. Like you, Father. Except that I taught history, not mathematics.”

  Realizing that he was probably talking to thin air, Alexi tore his eyes away. Embarrassed, he lowered his assault rifle. His hand crept into the open neck of the armored jacket he wore and found the cross that hung around his neck. Clenching it, praying for clarity, he tried once more: “Stop it,” he gritted at Raheek. “Now.”

  Where is your sister?

  Habit forced Alexi to answer, even though he didn’t believe. “She’s dead.”

  A frown creased his father’s forehead. She can’t be. I would know.

  Closing his eyes, Alexi took a deep breath. Lies. His fingers rubbed the cross that hung around his neck like prayer beads, stroking the faceted stone set at its center. These were lies and illusions that the alien was creating for him. With his other hand, he raised his rifle into the air. He would fire a burst, end this madness . . .

  Tell me—does she have the toy dinosaur still?

  Alexi opened his eyes. “What?”

  The one you gave her—that you pretended to let her win after your race with the dog. You were going to call the wolfhound to heel, just before the finish line, but instead you let it win. Even when she teased you for weeks about winning the bet, you never told her the truth. And now Tatyana must be an adult, like yourself. Does she still tease you about winning the bet?