Phytosphere

by Scott Mackay

  She was in a sandbagged position under the drive-through portico with her fellow soldiers, Jake and Melissa.

  She watched Melissa in amazement. Here was a girl who should have been more at home in a shopping mall, or out on a prom date, but now she was firing her Montclair like a seasoned grunt, her face darkened by military greasepaint, her jaw clenching each time she pulled the trigger. She stood up over the sandbags and sprayed the yard with gunfire, her long blond hair jerking around her shoulders and her lips pursed against the clenching of her jaw, and when she was done she ducked back down daintily, as if she were practicing a move in a cheerleading squad.

  Then Jake got up, and he had the curious habit of holding out both elbows when he was firing his Montclair, as if he were a bird about to take flight. He fired a burst of nearly forty bullets, and as he neared the end of this fusillade, his elbows rose higher and higher until they were nearly parallel with his shoulders. Then he stopped firing, and his head ducked to the left and right, as if he were inspecting the damage; he reminded Glenda of a dentist drilling a tooth—drilling a bit, then looking—but in Jake’s case it was shooting a bit, then looking.

  It was Glenda’s turn. This wasn’t like shooting Fulton from the rooftop. This was full-fledged combat shooting, and she was so scared she felt queasy. She flipped down her night goggles, scanned the yard, and saw two Tarsalans, ghostly figures in green, moving toward the helicopter, both carrying automatic weapons, man-made rifles. Hardly any VMs anymore, as if they were running out and had to make do with local resources. She took aim, just as she had taken aim at those partridges so many years ago, and fired, not a whole gusher of bullets the way Melissa had, but with her Montclair on its single-shot setting, believing she was more effective in sniper mode.

  The first Tarsalan dropped dead. She aimed at the second. They had a dozen crates of Montclair rounds, including what could be made with the round-making kit, but someday even those were going to run out. Best to conserve. She squeezed the trigger and the weapon spit its bullet with a phhitt!, and the second Tarsalan went down; and now there were two lumps of green in her night goggles.

  She saw five more come through the gate.

  So began what turned into a long night. Glenda, Jake, and Melissa covered the front yard. Rostov and Morgan guarded the west wing. Neil, Ashley, and Fernandes manned the east wing. And Lenny and Hanna patrolled the rear, though Hanna really wasn’t good for much fighting because she was still too weak from asthma. Glenda was glad the back was fairly well protected by the swimming pool and tennis courts. So far the Tarsalans hadn’t mounted more than harassment strikes from the rear.

  She heard a lot of fighting from the west wing and, as they had things fairly under control in front, she sent Jake—yes, her own son, because she wasn’t about to send Melissa, not when Neil had already lost Louise—over to the west wing to help Rostov and Morgan.

  “But, Mom, what about the three we keep seeing run by the gate?”

  “Melissa and I will handle them. Go help Rostov and Morgan.”

  Children as soldiers. Hitler’s Germany. Cheng’s Hong Kong. And more recently, Ngaradoumbé’s Chad. She remembered seeing a picture of a nine-year-old African girl kneeling with a machine gun, a teddy bear poking out of the knapsack on her back. And now it was happening here. At Marblehill.

  After two hours, it didn’t seem so strange anymore that children should be fighting. Glenda slowly lost her fear simply because she had to concentrate so hard on what she was doing. It was, in a word, work.

  Like a shift at Cedarvale, especially a holiday shift, when Whit would sometimes have her on for twelve hours at a time.

  She got tired by the third hour. “Is this what the last one was like?”

  Melissa nodded. “We fought… and then we fought some more… and after we were done fighting, we fought some more. It went on for eight hours… and it had these lulls.” Melissa motioned out at the yard.

  “I hate these lulls worse than I hate the actual fighting. You don’t know if they’re done or not. You’re always waiting for more.”

  “I don’t see why we don’t just give them food. Surely we can spare a bit.”

  “Dad says there’s no point. They’d just want more. We’re probably the only food source around for miles. Plus, he’s never going to negotiate with them now. Not since they killed Mom.”

  “Yes, but…there’s going to come a time…we’ve only got twelve crates of ammunition left.”

  “Dad’s had Yuri wire the whole house with explosives. If we have to fall back to the cave, the house goes up.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “If they get the house, there are all kinds of things they can use. We can’t let it fall into their hands.”

  Glenda motioned at the sky. “Yes, but they keep coming.”

  And, in fact, over the next half hour Rostov radioed and told them he had another five confirmed landings in the general vicinity, that listening posts and tree-mounted cameras had picked up increased activity, and that they should be prepared for a renewed and stronger offensive at any time.

  The offensive came fifteen minutes later, with an unexpected burst of VMs floating up from behind the wall like a Fourth of July fireworks display. The modules drifted toward them with their customary whine, flickering like pulsars. All Glenda could think of was that if she got touched by one of those things the intense vibrations would turn her internal organs to mush. She grabbed Melissa and dragged her away from the sandbags.

  In the few seconds it took them to take cover behind the portico’s granite pillars, two VMs drifted in under the vaulted ceiling and lit the dark space within—a space where luxury automobiles had once dropped off illustrious guests to Neil’s various hoity-toity gatherings. Her pupils contracted painfully in the sudden sharpness of the light. The two VMs swirled around as if looking for them. But then they targeted the house, driving into double oaken doors that had been shipped all the way from Scotland. In moments, the doors burst into splinters and their stone casing disintegrated into rubble.

  Melissa shrieked the way all young girls shrieked—it didn’t matter if it was a VM or a spider, the shriek was the same.

  Several other VMs exploded throughout the Marblehill complex. Then the Tarsalans commenced a fusillade of regular gunfire from scrounged Earth-made weapons, and bullets ricocheted off the portico’s granite pillars, creating sparks in the darkness. The few windows that hadn’t yet been shattered burst into fragments. The hail of gunfire was so intense and nonstop that Glenda was too afraid to move. She also feared that under the cover of such heavy gunfire the Tarsalans might make a significant advance across the lawn.

  Just as she was thinking that she had to get back to the sandbags and return fire, no matter what, Jake ran from the west side of the house dragging Morgan behind him. Glenda’s first thought was to send him back immediately, because how could Rostov cover the west side all by himself? But a moment later she understood, and a moment after that, Jake confirmed it.

  “They got Yuri, Mom! One of those VM things shook him to pieces!”

  She told him to get down because he was just standing there looking too shocked to think straight. Then she glanced beyond his shoulder to the west side of the house, where she saw shadows moving among the dead ornamental cypresses. She flipped her night goggles down and counted five Tarsalans, their shaggy bison heads and misshapen bodies now making her think of Quasimodo—five hunchbacks coming toward them. She immediately switched her Montclair to repeater mode and fired in their direction. She got three of them, but the other two found cover behind the balustrade.

  “Move!” she shouted, and pointed east.

  Glenda, Jake, Melissa, and Morgan ran toward the east wing. As they ran, she glanced out at the front, and saw so many Tarsalans swarming across the broad front lawn that she didn’t have time to count them.

  She and the kids ran past the garden shed and around the corner, where they found Neil on his stomach by the lily pond,
shooting with focused deliberation into the woods at the side of the house. Fernandes lay next to him, scattering gunfire into the trees as well. Ashley lay motionless, her brown hair matted with blood, her dress twisted around her waist, half on her side, half on her back, her legs scissored as if she were stepping into nothingness. Glenda felt suddenly woozy, and her grief was immediate, because here was just a child, fifteen years old, a year younger than her own Hanna, and she was dead. Her eyes clouded with tears. She glanced at Jake. Jake was staring at his dead cousin, a look of profound solemnity on his face, his eyes wide in the dark. Morgan wept as Glenda, getting a grip on herself, pulled both children to the ground. Melissa ran to Ashley and tried to shake her, but then, as more gunfire came at them from the woods, sank instinctively to the ground, pulled her own Montclair up in a petulant and angry gesture, and fired sporadic short bursts as she swore under her breath.

  “Neil!” Glenda cried over the gunfire.

  He glanced back. He looked like a phantom through her night-vision goggles, like something that had crawled out of a grave and now glowed radioactive green. And, in fact, with his daughter dead next to him, he looked as if he didn’t belong here at all, and wasn’t really part of this battle anymore, but was in a quiet place where none of it could hurt him. Fernandes, meanwhile, went about combat in his usual businesslike way, as if it were just a chore that he had to get done. Ashley’s awful stillness, lying there half twisted on her side, gave the whole scene a surreal aspect. Morgan wept more persistently, but her weeping sounded different this time: resigned, accepting, just something her body had to do.

  Glenda pointed out front. “There’s a bunch of them coming this way!”

  Neil nodded and got to his knees, then to his feet. “Help me with Ashley.”

  She stared at her brother-in-law through her light-gathering goggles. Didn’t he understand that Ashley was dead, and that to carry a corpse would hamper their efforts; that they might be sacrificing themselves for the sake of a gesture? But in their mutual moment of indecision, Fernandes was already up on his feet, hunching over, taking a few steps toward the dead girl, lifting her, and tossing her over his shoulder, his small frame showing immense strength. And the decision was made; they were taking Ashley with them, whether she was dead or not.

  The group ran crouching along the east side of Marblehill, the venerable old manse rising darkly beside them, Fernandes leading, then Neil, then the three kids, and herself at the rear. Tarsalan gunfire continued from the front of the house, but it was wasted because all the humans were back here now. Neil swung round the rear of the house and headed west, toward the metal fire escape that led to the third floor.

  “Where are you going?” she cried.

  “Up to get Lenny and Hanna. Go to the cave.”

  Another burst of VM fire came. It rose from the front of the house until it was high overhead, a total of nine modules altogether. They lit the tennis courts, the swimming pool, and the back of the house with a shifting green and blue light; and in this shifting light, Glenda saw Hanna, running as fast as she could down the metal fire escape, a look of unmitigated panic on her face.

  “Where’s Lenny?” Neil called to her.

  “They got him, Uncle Neil! They’re in the house! They came through the dining room window!”

  “But Lenny has the detonator. Did you get it from him?”

  “I couldn’t, Uncle Neil. He’s dead. I saw it.”

  Neil turned to Glenda. “I’ve got to get that detonator. Take the kids to the cave.”

  “Neil, if they’re in the house—”

  “I’ve got to get it. If they get their hands on all our supplies…”

  He ran up the stairs, passing Hanna on the way.

  Hanna joined Glenda and the other kids behind the tennis courts. She glanced at Ashley. “She’s dead?”

  Her voice was without inflection, as if she were too shocked to react.

  No one answered.

  “Everyone up to the cave,” said Glenda.

  Everybody knew the way, having gone to the cave—the single most interesting landform anywhere around Marblehill—many times before. Melissa led the way. Then it was Morgan, Jake, and Hanna.

  Then Fernandes with Ashley over his shoulder. Ashley’s head and arms flopped back and forth against his back. Hanna began to wheeze mildly as she climbed the hill, but was otherwise in much better shape than she had been while traveling to Marblehill. Tears came to Glenda’s eyes as she stared at Ashley.

  How could things have gone so bad so quickly? She reached out and touched Ashley’s head. Pulling her hand away, she saw blood. Glenda thought of Louise. And she spoke to Louise under her breath, telling Louise that she was sorry, that she should have tried harder, but that there was nothing she could do now. Louise’s baby, her niece, was dead.

  Glenda glanced back at the house and saw Neil disappear through the third-floor door at the top of the fire escape. The VMs came down. Five of them splashed into the pool, and their combined vibrations forced every last ounce of water into the sky, so that for several seconds it rained pool water, and the smell of chlorine filled the air. A couple of VMs fell into the middle of the tennis courts, cracks instantly appeared all over the ground, and three of the high fenceposts sagged toward the middle of the court.

  The last VM hit the slope behind the tennis courts, and shook loose a lot of the dead bushes, which then slid to the lawn in a mini avalanche.

  Just as the path drew even with the roof of the house, Glenda saw Neil emerge from the third-floor fire exit carrying a large knapsack looped around one shoulder. She heard his footsteps resounding tinnily on the risers of the fire escape as he double-timed it to the ground. At the same time, she saw a half dozen Tarsalans coming around the west side of the house, all of them armed with Earth-made weapons, one of them running so fast he slipped on the pool water and fell on his hip. The others took aim at Neil and fired. Neil went down, but got on all fours and crawled toward the path leading to the cave. Coming on the heels of Ashley’s death, Neil’s wounding made her feel as if all that was good and decent in the universe had suddenly disappeared, and in fact had never been there in the first place. But it also filled her with the raw determination not to fail Louise again.

  “Hold it… hold it! Take positions. Neil’s been hit. Let’s cover him.”

  Melissa, especially, followed this order instantly, as if the inadvertent boot camp at Marblehill had trained her well. She fired a withering hail of stinging Montclair ordnance into the advancing Tarsalans and killed all but one of them. The last one fled west and took cover behind the house. Morgan was already running down the hill, screaming for her daddy. Neil was up on his feet, but staggering badly as he climbed the path.

  “Jake, go with Morgan. Help your uncle Neil. We’ll cover you from here.”

  Jake went.

  No more Tarsalans came, and they helped Neil up the hill without further mishap.

  A perch in front of the cave overlooked the house from a little less than a quarter mile away. Fernandes finally put Ashley down. The girls, including Hanna, fussed over her, and they all cried to varying degrees.

  But the men, including Jake, were peering through their night-vision goggles at Marblehill, and Neil now had the detonater in his hand, his hand poised on the plunger. They were all waiting, the three of them, silently poised there, caught in one of those odd, still moments that sometimes happen in the middle of the most dire combat. Glenda peered past them through her own night-vision goggles. Dozens of Tarsalans entered the house. Neil’s elbow flexed…flexed…and it all came down to the timing…. Neil, Fernandes, and Jake balanced there, as if they were team members engaged in a sporting event, waiting to place the puck in the net, or the ball through the hoop…waited…waited until at last Neil shoved the plunger down with a viciousness that seemed to be a summation of all the anger he felt over losing his wife and daughter.

  The house went up.

  Two seconds later, Neil sat down qu
ickly, weakened by his own blood loss.

  37

  Gerry gripped the fifth and final singularity drive, conscious that if Mitch hadn’t overdosed himself with barbiturates, his life support would have given out seventeen minutes ago. Gerry had a line around his waist, and this line, attached to Drive Five, slowly settled in a deep arc toward the surface of the asteroid, its fall slow in the weak gravity, as if it settled through molasses. Ian maneuvered around behind, gripping him, fearful of falling off the asteroid. Gerry’s fingers felt stiff from holding the drive so tightly. He was sweating inside his suit, and his smell was ripe because the Tarsalan virus had sabotaged his personal hygiene unit and all his intragenic filters were off-line.

  He heard Ian’s stertorous breathing through his suit radio. The sun was to his rear, and Gerry’s shadow was like a piece of black felt on top of the drive.

  He glanced toward Ian and saw his old friend latch his safety belt to one of the drive’s maneuvering rings. “How do your crampons feel?”

  “Still holding.” Ian sighed. “This is taking so long.”

  “Last one.”

  “I keep thinking of Mitch, drifting away.”

  “We stay professional, like he says.”

  “We’ve been going for eighteen hours. We’re punch-drunk tired. We’re going to start making mistakes soon.”

  “Last one. Go ahead.”

  “I wish we could fight this damn virus.”

  “It would be like two men trying to dike a flooding Mississippi.”

  Ian withdrew the pneumatic drill from his pack, like pulling a huge white arrow from a giant quiver, brought it down, maneuvered carefully, then glanced at Gerry. Gerry reached over and grabbed onto his arm. Once Ian was convinced Gerry was holding him tightly, he muttered under his breath, “Three, two, one,” and fired the T-bolt through the brace. Both of them tensed up. Gerry watched his monitor as his crampon psi increased tenfold, and was glad that his feet felt as if they were stuck in deep mud. The last one. Ian started to laugh, first a few short guffaws, then a long run of ha-ha-has, as if they had just deviously outsmarted the virus. No sooner had he finished laughing than the right guidelight mounted at the side of his helmet blinked out. They both froze. They braced themselves. Little things were going wrong all the time now. As though everything was going through a quick aging process. Gerry’s left guidelight blinked out, and the little red warning signal on his inside visor screen, retinally focused so that he could see it easily, told him that the virus was now checkmating his means of illumination.