Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two

by David Gerrold

  Very deliberately, I copied her gesture. On my displays, the troops reacted visibly, some of them flinching, others taking involuntary steps back. Some held their shields up. One fellow wet himself—

  “‘Let my people go,’” Byrne whispered.

  I opened my mouth and carefully copied her inflection. “Let my people go.” The music strengthened, underscoring my words with a glorious chord.

  It didn’t work. On the screens, more troops lifted their shields. The commander barked an order and they started grouping closer, holding up their shields to form a wall of hardwood and metal plates. Uh-oh.

  “We see it. Don’t panic, Kaer. Just wait. Keep your hands out, keep looking and waiting. Give them a chance to get their brains rebooted.”

  But it didn’t look like that was happening. There were two kinds of soldiers in front of us—the ordinary ones with their shields and swords, and the warriors of the church with ominous-looking crossbows. The crossbows worried me. The assault teams were wearing body armor, but not strong enough to stop a crossbow bolt. If the Hale-Stones had warned the warriors of the church, if the warriors chose to fight—

  I glanced at da. He was standing just beside Byrne, listening to the chatter on his own comm-set, but still watching me intently. He nodded reassuringly. I resumed my steady surveillance of the monitors. There was a watery glow seeping into the bottoms of the pictures, the radiance from the pillar of smoke.

  “All right, Kaer. Let’s go to the next position. Watch me now. Slowly. Straighten up. Look to the sky as if the Mother is giving you instructions. Good, good. . . take your time. Bring your hands up to your heart. Wait. Let them see you praying. All right. Lift your hands up in front of you. . . . Now forward and down and spread them a little wider than before. . . . And lean forward. . . . Hold just like that. You look very good. Just hold a minute. Smiller wants to see what they do. All right. ‘Let my people go.’”

  I took a breath. “Let my people go.” I said it more forcefully this time, but still not angrily. I heard the music grow more ominous.

  On the screens, the warriors of the church came around the wagons and began lining up behind the wall of shields.

  “Shit!” said Byrne. “Kaer, just hold your position! Everybody, we’re at Code Yellow. Stand by for possible Code Red.” As she listened to her comm-set, she was already clicking to the next page on her clipboard. She looked up at me. “Kaer, listen up. Don’t panic. Just keep on going. We have a contingency plan.” She listened to her comm-set for a second, then turned back to me. “We didn’t expect them to react this way. The Hale-Stones must have warned them, told them to fight. Our teams may have to withdraw. Or, we may have to go in. We’ll know by what they do next. Whatever happens, don’t break your concentration. If you understand, then look up—as if to the Mother, as if asking for guidance.”

  I tilted my head slowly upward.

  “Very good. Bring your hands up now, again to your heart. But this time, close your hands into fists. Cross them in front of you. Look firm. Resolved. Not angry. Good. Now hold like that. Hold that position while I tell you what might happen. One second—” I waited. . . .Byrne came back. “All right, listen up. Smiller wants to get our people out now. Everyone agrees. So we need you to do your part very carefully. We’ll go to position three, like we planned. We don’t think they’ll fall back. They might flinch, but they won’t withdraw. We think they’ll attack. They’ll shoot their crossbows at you. And maybe at the projectors too. When they do—if they do—we need you to stand up. Just stand up straight, let your arms hang at your sides, and look down sadly. I know you have questions, we didn’t rehearse this option, but just do what I say and it’ll work fine. If you understand, look down at the center monitor and narrow your eyes.”

  Slowly, I lowered my head. The center monitor showed the soldiers arrayed and ready for battle.

  “Yes, we see. They have two hundred and forty men at arms. A hundred and sixty soldiers. Eighty warriors of the church. They must have brought the others in under cover of darkness. Don’t worry. We can take them. Jorge has ordered his teams into new positions, out of crossbow range. If they shoot through the smoke, they won’t hit anyone.” A pause. “All right, we have a go to position three. Look up again. Raise your hands up to the sky. Take your time. Go slow. Go high. Good . . . good. . . . Hold there for a moment. Looking good. All right, now start bringing your hands down in front of you again. Down . . . down . . . all the way down . . . and wide, wide. . . . Good. Perfect. Hold there. And. . . .just a little bit angry, just a little bit impatient at having to say it three times—‘Let my people go.’”

  “Let my people go!”

  I could tell that my voice and the music had thundered. For a moment, nothing happened. The commander flinched and wavered. I could tell he was scared. But despite his fear, his resolve never weakened. Despite myself, I admired his courage. We who are about to die, salute you! What a dreadful waste. What a terrible crime. I wished for something to say to them, something to stop the dreadful carnage about to happen. But I couldn’t think of anything more—we’d already tried everything else. Why hadn’t it worked? What had we done wrong?

  And then, the little bastard raised his hand—he had a sword!—and brought it down sharply. He barked a harsh command. A row of crossbow warriors stood up at once and fired. It looked like they were firing at my knees—

  Boom

  Everything happened at once. The screens flashed with reflected light as various flash-charges went off. Screeches and booms and shrieks played through my ears as the big speakers on the vehicles kicked in. “Stand up, Kaer!” Byrne shouted. “Code red, everybody! Heads up! Banshees coming in!”

  I stood up quickly and stared down at my screens. I couldn’t tell what was happening yet—there were pyrotechnics everywhere. The air blasts beneath me increased and my veil of hair fluttered away from my body.

  “All right, Kaer—listen up! See the red X on your center monitor? Raise your right hand and point to it! Do it now! And whatever happens, don’t flinch!”

  The X centered itself on the commander. I raised my right hand, curling it into a fist, extending my right index finger angrily. “Fuck you to hell!” I said in English—

  —and a slashing blue-white bolt of electricity crackled down through the air, from somewhere behind me, blasting the little bastard into burning gobbets of flesh. Despite Byrne’s warning, I did flinch. But nobody noticed. The soldiers immediately around the commander were rolling on the ground, writhing in pain. Some of them were on fire. A few weren’t moving. Beyond them, others were scrambling, crawling away. And still others were running—

  “Look up, Kaer! Turn and look behind you! Lift your arm and call down a flight of screaming banshees to strafe the caravan. Just swing your arm up in a great circle, turn around and bring it down again to point at the wagons. Perfect—hold that!”

  In my ears, I heard the screech of choppers coming in. Noise-abatement was off. They screamed across the sky. I couldn’t see them—but I could see the reaction of the men on the ground. Their eyes widened in terror as three great red things came shrieking low across the sea of grass straight at them. Some of them plunged into the grass. Others ran straight back along the line of wagons. But—astonishingly—many of them scrambled for their weapons. They fitted new bolts to their crossbows and cranked them back.

  “We see it, Kaer. Wait—”

  Three sonic booms, one right after the other, came sweeping across the sea. Even inside the boulder, we could feel the physical impact. On the screens, some of the soldiers fell to their knees—some threw themselves face down toward me, sobbing. A few had presence of mind to fire their bolts at the choppers. Having little sense of the speed of the planes, they were certain to miss. Could their bolts even rise that high? I hoped to God no one got a lucky shot.

  “Stand up, Kaer! You know how you flick water drops? I want you to flick your fingers at the red X, wherever it appears. On my mark. Stay with me, please
!”

  The red X centered itself on the lead wagon. Two Magistrates were cowering there. I raised my right hand. A painted novice was fumbling with a crossbow. “Ready? Three, two, one . . . now!” I hated to do it. I flicked my fingers. The wagon disappeared in a ball of orange flame.

  Byrne was coordinating with the ground-assault teams. Someone had a laser-guided rocket launcher. She gave the signal. I flick. They fire. Boom. Dead Linneans.

  “All right, Kaer. The next one. Lift your hand to the red X. On my mark. Ready?” Even as I lifted my left hand, the men on top of the second wagon were already jumping for the ground, running for the safety of the grass. They’d never make it. “Three, two, one . . . now!” I flicked my fingers. Flash. No more wagon.

  “One more now, Kaer. The third wagon. Raise your hand high.” I didn’t want to do it. No more killing, please! I wanted to yell stop! This was wrong! Please don’t make me do this, Byrne! Da, what did I agree to?! Did you know this would happen, da?! I pointed to the red X. “Three, two, one . . . now!” And the third wagon was gone.

  Beneath me, in the displays, chaos reigned. The wagons were burning. Men were dying or dead. Some were twitching, clutching their bellies, or just screaming for help. Those who could, were running for their lives—into the grass or back along the tracks.

  I stood there and watched, my hands hanging at my sides, tears streaming down my cheeks. Trying not to sob. How could we do this?

  “All teams. We have Code Blue! I repeat, Code Blue! Assault teams in! Secure the field! Rescue team, stand by!”

  On the screens at my feet, I saw our commandos coming out of the grass. They wore black jumpsuits and helmets. Their goggles were in place and they were moving through a VR world. They could see any enemies still moving. As I watched, they moved across the battlefield, stopping to check every fallen warrior and soldier. If the person was still alive, they touched him with the end of their rifle—automatically pressure-injecting him with an instant knockout drug. They left nobody conscious behind them. They moved straight down the row of rail-wagons, securing them one at a time.

  They were followed by two more teams. The ones in red jumpsuits slapped demolition charges to every wagon. The ones in white jumpsuits went straight to the prison-wagons where our Scouts were being held.

  “Kaer!” Byrne’s voice startled me. “Time for you to go. Look up. Raise your hands to the sky. You got your job done. Your ride has come for you! Good. . . . Just like that. Look up and up. Reach, keep reaching. . . . Alex, cue the exit routine. . . . Hold it Kaer, just a moment longer. . . .” She listened to her comm-set. “. . . the rocket fires. The God-Chopper catches our angel. The golden chariot lights up and flies away . . . and cut!” She leapt up onto the stage and grabbed me, wrapping me in her arms. “I know, Kaer! I know! I didn’t want to do it either! Forgive me! I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have let you do it if I did! We’d have had Beck stand in for you! Forgive me, sweetheart!—” She dropped to one knee in front of me and held me by the shoulders. “You did so good. You did perfect. You did everything right.” She wiped at the tears still running down my cheeks. There were tears streaming down her face too. “Kaer, Kaer—”

  I pushed her away and ran for da. He folded me into his arms and didn’t say anything. He reached behind me to one of the folding chairs and grabbed a robe. He wrapped it around me—the air had gone suddenly chilly—and then he just stood there and held me. And we were both sorry we’d come. But as long as I stood there in his arms, it was all right. And we were going to get our Scouts back in a minute, and as long as I thought about that, everything was going to be all right. Just keep thinking about the Scouts. The teams were breaking open the rail-wagons now, pulling our people out, wrapping them in blankets, rushing them back to the vehicles—they’d be here, safe inside the boulder in just a few minutes more—

  Behind me, I heard screaming. Cursing. Byrne was stamping across the floor, kicking chairs and tables out of her way. I let go of da long enough to look—

  She waved her comm-set angrily at Alex and the team-members waiting to receive the returning commandos. She was shrieking in English. “The wagons were empty! The goddamn prison-wagons were empty! Our Scouts weren’t there! We did it all for nothing! Nothing! Goddammit! Nothing!”

  Almost in a daze, da and I went back over to the stage. We turned the cart around and stared at the monitors. As one we sank down onto the edge of the platform, sitting slack-jawed and stunned as the terrible scenes played out on the screens. Alex came and sat down next to me. Beck and two other commandos came up to join us. The home guard.

  The images on the monitors swooped in close to the separate cars, one after the other. The teams had fractured them with the liquid nitrogen, reducing the wooden sides to cascades of cold-steaming rubble. The insides of the wagons were bare. The cameras hovered and moved, hovered and moved—like dragonflies, the heli-birds zipped from one dreadful picture to the next. Nothing there.

  The commandos were withdrawing now. The black team, the white team, the orange team. All of them. The orange team was last. They had wired all the wagons for destruction. They would be vaporized as soon as the last of our people disappeared back into the grass.

  I looked to Beck. “Hey? What about the horses?”

  “We’ve got them. We took the guards out over an hour ago. We had the horses here at the boulder even before you even started. Jorge wants to pick them up and take them home, if we can. If not, we’ll strip them of their gear and turn them loose in the sea. They’ll do fine.” She pointed. “Uh-oh, look.”

  On the monitors, the members of the white team were moving through the fallen Linneans, looking for something. Magistrates. Whenever they found someone in a red robe, they bent to examine them. Once I saw them call for a litter.

  “Hostages?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” She went away for a moment, listening. “Interrogation. We have to find out where they’ve taken our Scouts.” She eased herself to her feet. “Shit. All right, people. Back to stations. We haven’t finished this job yet.”

  I looked to da. “What do we do now?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t feel anything—I feel empty.”

  “Me too.”

  “How about you take a shower? Will that help?”

  “A five minute shower?”

  “Take two. I don’t think anyone will mind. Come on. Stand up.” He stood in front of me up and began unpinning the tiara and its long shower of hair from my head. When he had it free, he hung it on the costume rack. I opened my robe and he unpinned the curtain of beads too. I couldn’t remember the last time he had undressed me. When I was little, I guess. He used to get me ready for bed, back when I was still a little-un. I missed those times—because I felt safe then. I guess he did too, because he suddenly looked at me and said, “We’ve come a long way, Kaer, haven’t we?”

  “Did I do good tonight, Da?”

  He looked surprised that I would even ask the question. “You did great.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “I believed you, Kaer. Totally. If they gave out awards for best performance as an angel, you’d win one, no contest.”

  “No, da. I didn’t mean it that way. Did we do good tonight? All this killing? Did I do the right thing? I helped. I called down the lightning.”

  Da took a deep breath. And for a moment I was afraid he was going to say it again. “You’ll have to decide this for yourself, Kaer.” But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “I wish I could tell you that we did. But I have the same worries you do, kiddo. I have the same fears.” And then he added, “If I’d known it would turn out like this, I’d have never come back to the Dome for you.”

  I hugged him tight. “Thank you, da. Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  Thunder in the Ground

  Halfway through the second shower, I became aware of noise outside. Voices shouting orders. I couldn’t hear the words, but something in the tone alarmed me. I hit the abort, and even as the je
ts of hot air were drying me off, I started pulling on my jumpsuit. I yanked open the door and da was already there. Wearing his helmet. He grabbed me and pulled me toward the stairs. “We have to get upstairs! Now!”

  “Huh? Why? What—?”

  “Stampede. Coming this way.”

  Even as he said the word, the klaxon went off. “Code Brown! We have a Code Brown!” And in English: “We have a stampede. This is not a drill! This is not a drill!”

  “Upstairs, Kaer! We have less than five minutes!” He rushed me down the steps of the bus-tractor toward the elevator rope. I saw people rising up it already. “They started heading north, but they ran into the mass of the herd and then they started swinging east and then they ran into the rest of the herd in the east, so they started swinging south and then they kept on turning, all the way back toward us. The whole herd now—”

  We arrived at the rope. I grabbed for a stirrup, he grabbed the one just below me. As we rose, he fitted my foot into the stirrup below his hand, and he fitted his foot into the one below that, and then he wrapped an arm around me. “Forgive me, Kaer. This whole thing has turned into the worst idea of my life. Not just this trip. The whole Linnea thing. Everything.”

  “No, da,” I said. “The whole family made that decision.” I looked around at him. “And we made it more than once, remember?”

  He kissed me. “How did I get such a smart kid?”

  “Ask Mom-Wu. I think she knows.”

  He laughed. And then we arrived at the top and we jumped away from the rope into the arms of Beck, who caught us and pushed us out of the way, so the next person off the elevator had room.

  “Come on,” said da, pushing me up the ladder. “Up to the top.”

  “How soon till the choppers get here?”

  “Um—” He adjusted his comm-set. “We’ve got a problem there. I don’t know if they’ve solved it yet.” He followed me up to the Crow’s Latrine, which was starting to crowd up, and from there to the Crow’s Nest, which was even more crowded. Newcomers were being passed up and over the top to sit on the flat surface of the boulder’s roof. Only a few hours before, I had been thinking of this as a nice place for sun-bathing. Plastic nets had been thrown over everything to give people something to hang onto. That was an ominous sign.