Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  Hugh carried the recharged power cell from the garage and plugged it back into the damaged Huntercraft. Lights came on.

  ‘That makes five craft that should fly tomorrow,’ he said.

  Moses sat in one of the cabs checking out the instruments. Toothpick sat in a third trying to reprogram a damaged flight-stabilizer circuit.

  Forges blazed up. Work crews dug shelters in the loose soil. Throughout the night the horizon was rimmed by the dancing lights of Huntercraft – waiting till dawn to attack.

  Hip walked up. He had spent only a few minutes examining the sky that night, depressed by his failure – Ball’s failure – to save his people the night before. He carried a spear discarded by one of the wounded . . . the first weapon his hands had known. He was a little eager to use it.

  ‘There is still a chance,’ he said. ‘We’ll lose some men. But at least we can fight Outside without being drugged. We might even pick up a few more Huntercraft. Our Agromecks give us cover and mobility—’

  As if his words were a cue, one of the nearby Huntercraft screamed a countdown and exploded.

  ‘Tightbeam – self-destruct signal,’ shouted Toothpick. ‘Stand clear of the Agromecks – they’re all going to go.’

  Less than an hour later the perimeter was marked by smoking hulks and craters. A few buckeyes had been too close. Moses backed his stunned people toward a shaft cap.

  ‘Put bowmen up behind those grills,’ he shouted.

  The predawn darkness added to the confusion. Comrades were separated. Units broke up. Acrid smoke blinded. The explosions and fires added to the army’s hunger and despair. Bellies had been empty too long – the fatty human flesh from the shaft cities did little more than contract gallbladders.

  ‘Bowmen – to the grills,’ repeated Moses.

  Sparks threw the first bowmen back from the garage doors. The smell of ozone warned them. Moses heard the ominous buzz of a force field leaking energy into the atmosphere.

  ‘Field’s on,’ warned Toothpick. ‘The Big ES has isolated us Outside.’

  The other shaft caps began to spark and buzz. Moses watched helplessly as his army crumbled into aimless flight. Random shrieks and moans told of the weak being crushed by the strong.

  From the darkness a loud familiar voice shouted confidence.

  ‘Rally to me. Rally to me,’ shouted Hip.

  A clot of followers formed up behind him and chanted. The clot grew. A widening belt of calm appeared in the turbulent sea of struggling bodies.

  Moon picked up Dan to avoid the crush of the crowd.

  Toothpick glowed soothingly.

  ‘That’s a lot better than the disorder we had a minute ago,’ admitted crusty old Moon.

  The wind carried back words of a song out of antiquity. If the sunrise could be delayed long enough for them to get reorganized and armed again—

  A peculiar glow appeared in the southeast – a pulsing blue dome rose above the horizon. The dome changed from light blue-white to a darker purple. A white halo formed over the glow.

  ‘What is it?’

  Hip answered – ‘A sign. Olga has sent us a sign. Lay down your arms. We are saved.’

  Toothpick wasn’t so optimistic. ‘The strike force has failed. That was Ball popping his Q-bottle.’

  Old Moon stumbled on the clutter of blades and shafts.

  ‘If we could only get these guys to pick up their arms.’

  Moses studied the glow on the horizon – a tremor vibrated the ground underfoot.

  ‘What is that white halo?’

  ‘Ionized Nebish,’ said Toothpick. ‘It must have popped under a shaft city.’

  The ground shifted again – harder. The glowing flash dome grew larger, lifting the halo higher.

  ‘Better cover your faces,’ warned Toothpick.

  8

  Tektite Shower

  Walter sat in the cabin watching a transmission of sunrise from the east coast. A melon-sized sun showed the cherrystone shadow of Mercury in transit.

  ‘Want to see something pretty – piped in from the sea coast?’

  ‘In a minute,’ called Val from the darkness under the craft. He polished contacts and plugged in the web. As he worked the lighting changed.

  ‘Is the sun coming up already?’

  Walter didn’t answer. The bluish glow in the southeast transfixed him.

  ‘Hard thunder. Hard thunder,’ warned their craft as it slammed its hatches.

  The viewscreen rippled as the sonic boom echoed down on them. Val opened his mouth to ask something when it hit – bouncing him around in a bath of pebbles. Ears rang. Loud silence. He could hear nothing else. Val tried to crawl out from under the craft. Another boom hit. The craft vibrated along the ground, coming to rest on his ankle. The bluish glow grew until it did resemble a sunrise. Then it faded. Night fell again – a predawn night. Val screamed in the silence of deafness. He lay pinned beneath the craft, spitting grit. Shock waves passed under him again and again. He freed his ankle and crawled out. A meteor trail lit the black sky. It impacted in the buckeye camp.

  Val covered his face against the bright glare of the meteor impact. The sky was full of bright tracks now. Muffled explosions from more impacts told him he could hear again. He pounded on the craft door. No answer. He pulled it open. The craft’s muscle was gone from the hinge. It was dark in the cabin – dash indicators were off. Walter sat wide-eyed facing the viewport. Yellow and orange lights from the meteor shower played across his blank face.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Val, touching his shoulder.

  ‘A miracle,’ muttered fat Walter.

  Val didn’t comment. He took his seat at the dead controls. Power cell checked out at full charge. He ran his fingers over the controls – turning everything off. As he opened the switches one by one, the panel lit up again. Glancing out the port he saw a crew trying to right an overturned craft. Other groups of hunters could be seen milling around silent machines.

  ‘A miracle,’ repeated Walter.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Val.

  His was the only craft in flying condition. Something had overloaded circuits and erased meck brains for miles around. Craters dotted the buckeye camp. All he saw were skeletons – human and Agromeck. Piles of bones. Broken bodies scattered along the perimeter – some covered with Agrifoam. Nothing moved except the rising columns of smoke. He circled the camp recording the desolation with the craft’s optic banks.

  ‘There’s your miracle,’ sneered Val. ‘Olga has wiped out the buckeyes completely.’

  Walter didn’t notice.

  ‘Didn’t you hear her voice – Olga’s voice?’

  Val set down beside a smoking Agromeck.

  ‘What voice?’

  Walter tried to get the Huntercraft to play it back, but its recent memory was blank. The craft put in a request to the CO to see if any other sensor reported Olga’s voice. The CO didn’t answer.

  ‘Class Two here,’ came the response finally.

  ‘Where’s the Class One?’ asked Val nervously.

  ‘The meteor destroyed too many of his circuits. His ego did not survive. I will handle his functions until he can be rebuilt,’ said the Class Two.

  ‘What meteor?’ asked Val.

  ‘A big one. Impacted near the Coweye Sump – formed a new lake about thirty miles in diameter. Many shaft cities collapsed.’

  Val was impressed.

  ‘What was your request of the CO?’ asked the CT.

  ‘Did you hear Olga’s words?’ asked Walter eagerly.

  ‘I have snatches of many conversations from all over the globe. This meteor shower hit everywhere. Give me some key words from the message, and I’ll try to match them up.’

  Walter coughed. The excitement had precipitated a little pulmonary edema and the domino mask of cyanosis had darkened his lips and the skin around his eyes. He tried to remember.

  ‘Children of Olga,’ he said haltingly. ‘Flaming chariot. Fiery wheels—’

  The C
lass Two retrieved and sorted:

  By the fiery wheels of Ezekiel

  and the flaming chariot of Elias

  Will the Children of Olga be delivered

  from the hunters’ arrows

  to dwell in their rightful place

  among the stars in the heavens.

  ‘That’s it,’ gasped Walter.

  Val shuddered. ‘Take it easy, old man. Your heart can’t take all this excitement. If you’re not careful you’ll end up joining them in the Land of Olga. Can’t you see what it means? They’ve gone to Olga in death – heaven. They are safe from us there. That’s for certain.’

  ‘But Olga’s words?’ protested Walter.

  ‘Just a random buckeye prayer during the fireworks. They died happy – thinking that Olga had come for them. And, I guess she did. Look at all the bodies,’ said Val.

  Val left orthopneic Walter resting in his couch while he climbed out to examine the camp on foot. The ground was strewn with Iron-Age weapons, bones, bodies and peculiar glassy particles. He checked buckeye bodies for signs of life – none. He walked down into one of the warm craters and stood on the exposed skin of a cybercity. He picked up fragments of the spongy, rug-like synthesoil – singed. Samples of the soil, glassy particles and a variety of hot rocks were boxed for study later.

  The thirty-foot craters just uncovered the city’s organs. The fifty-foot craters cracked into them. Val glanced nervously at the yawning black cracks of ’tween walls. He knew they were nearly a mile deep – open all the way to shaft base.

  Several other Huntercraft were now operational. They joined him in examining the area. Irrigators washed away the foam, exposing more bodies. Thick-skinned bodies with all the melanocyte pigments – yellows, reds, browns and blacks. Big-boned bodies – many over six feet tall. Walter wheezed up to Val with his own bone box.

  ‘They’re big ones,’ he said.

  Val nodded. ‘I guess when you consider that they’re almost two feet taller than we are – on the average – you can label them as tall – abnormally tall.’

  Walter noticed the variety of peculiar hot rocks too.

  ‘Tektites,’ said Val. ‘That was a meteor shower last night, remember?’

  For three days Val and a crew of tecks studied the site. Agromecks worked their way in from the perimeter – cultivating and filling in the craters. Finally, they were forced out of their study area by the impatient machines.

  On their way back to Orange Country, Val took his wing of Huntercraft southeast to check out the big crater. They spotted it easily – a thirty-mile-wide lake with a serrated rim.

  ‘That rim reminds me of the toothy rim on Mount Tabulum,’ said Val. ‘Same cause, I guess.’

  Old Walter nodded.

  The HC meck, Scanner, welcomed them back to Hunter Control. Negative log. No sightings since their departure. The buckeyes were gone.

  Val supervised the unloading of artifacts from the 50:00 buckeye camp – weapons, beads, chewed and charred bones, rocks and glassy particles. Tecks carried off samples to their various departments in HC. Analytical gear was dusted off and warmed up. Most of the bones had the soft, spongy appearance of chalky pâpier-maché – citizens’ bones.

  ‘What do you want these checked for?’ asked the teck carrying a box of rocks and glass.

  Val shrugged. He didn’t know what you checked tektites for.

  ‘It was a meteor shower. Search the stacks for tektites. Find out anything you can. How big were they before they entered our atmosphere – how old – where did they originate? Those kind of things,’ said Val.

  The teck looked puzzled.

  ‘I suppose we could find out some things. We’d have to borrow from Central Lab. How soon do you need it?’

  ‘Take as long as you like,’ he said, waving him away.

  Walter smiled: ‘I don’t know what all the scientific fuss is for. It was a miracle – a wonderful miracle.’

  Val laughed. ‘I just want to find out what kind. A real miracle shouldn’t leave fragments like that around. Spiritual tektites should vanish.’

  Walter objected: ‘But the buckeyes are gone.’

  ‘Maybe. But the census figures were scrambled in all the shaft cities around there. The fireworks could have driven them underground.’

  ‘They can’t hide in the Big ES,’ said Walter. ‘Their stature, pigment and attitude would betray them.’

  Val frowned. ‘It will be a year before all the cybers are working well again. That big meteor messed up a lot of circuits. I would like to know where the five-toed have gone. Optical records gave a body count of less than ten thousand. There were half a million before the Big Hunt. Cannibalism? Doubt it. Those look like citizen bones to me. Where are the five-toeds?’

  ‘Olga took them to heaven,’ said Walter.

  ‘I have an open mind,’ sneered Val. ‘But before I classify this as a miracle I’ll need more than pyrotechnics and a short body count. A deity would be welcome by everyone – if she could help us. We all could use more calories and living space.’

  ‘That is materialistic,’ sighed Walter, ‘not faith. Olga gives love for love. She rewards faith. But she can’t cure all the ills in the world. She isn’t omnipotent.’

  ‘A deity with a small d,’ said Val. ‘In that case you might as well pay homage to the hive – earn calories and quarters.’

  Walter turned back to his console – quietly mumbling a prayer for Val’s soul.

  The artifacts from 50:00 were sorted. Sharps Committees indexed the Iron-Age weapons. Buckeye beads were studied by hive astronomers using heliocentric zodiac charts. Biotecks confirmed Val’s suspicions about the bones – calcium/collagen ratings were 0.10 on the Grube-Hill scale – citizen bones. Tektites were checked for solar gases and cosmogenic radionuclides. The results did not compute. Flimsy printouts accumulated. More tecks were assigned to the lab and the tests were repeated.

  Three more growing seasons passed without a single buckeye sighting. Val checked with hunter units all over the globe. The gardens were safe. HC budgets were cut back. Val found himself working in the Suicide Prevention Center. Walter was retired for reasons of health.

  Val was supervising a Sweeper at shaft base. A jumper had managed to land on one of the dispensers. There was quite a mess – transport fluids and all manner of dispenser items mixed in with the usual jumper gore. His communicator buzzed.

  ‘Don at HC labs, sir. I’ve finished the meteor analysis.’

  Val’s face was blank. Over six months had passed.

  ‘The 50:00 tektites, sir?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I thought all the HC departments were closed. What are you doing there?’

  ‘It was taper budget. We were allowed to finish our assignments. Can you drop in and go over these reports? They are rather interesting.’

  At shift-change Val ran down to level eighteen. He walked past the huge vats at Biosynthe. A sulfur odor told him the enzymologists were pushing the methionine reaction. Hunter Control was dark. Crates blocked the hallways. Dust was everywhere. He was saddened by the sight of dead Huntercraft – whose brains and converters were in use elsewhere in the hive.

  The lab was still lit and clean. Two tecks worked in a small corner. The one called Don rose to greet him.

  ‘These are the reports, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ll notice that we studied them in three stages. Stage one showed that they were indeed carbonaceous chondrites. That means they come from moon or Earth and are composed of peculiar granules – the chondrules. They can occur in showers. None were of the deep-space, nickel-iron type. When we examined them for solar gases we collected the gas at different temperatures. The 800 to 1,000-degree fraction had a solar-type ratio of krypton/neon. Over four. Those gases have a lower ratio in our atmosphere. We also collected solar-type ratios of helium, argon and xenon.’

  Val studied the printouts.

  ‘So they were real meteors.’

  The teck shook his head.

  ‘Maybe not. The pre
atmospheric exposure age and the minimum radius can be calculated by the heavy isotopes – the cosmogenic radionuclides. We used gamma-ray spectrometric techniques to find the ratio of cobalt-60/cobalt-59.’

  Val nodded: ‘The longer it is in space the more neutrons it captures – the more heavy isotope. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Don. ‘Only the ratio was the same as on Earth. We checked sodium, aluminum and manganese too. No increase over the ratios on Earth.’

  ‘Must have been in space a very short time,’ concluded Val. ‘A very young meteor.’

  Don raised his voice.

  ‘Sir, do you know the size of an astrobleme it would take to produce this size meteor shower? There were craters like these on all the major continents. The astrobleme would be as big as Hudson Bay. Most of the old chondrite specimens are millions of years old. These 50:00 tektites are young – a few hundred years at the most. Historical time. Do you think history could forget an impact the size of Hudson Bay?’

  ‘No—’ said Val slowly. ‘Not on Earth anyway. It could have impacted on the other side of the moon. The hive hasn’t looked at the sky for over a thousand years – not in earnest, anyway.’

  The teck grinned and produced a globe of the Earth.

  ‘These yellow outlines are buckeye camps the night of the planetary conjunction. The red dots are meteor impacts. Note the clustering around the headwaters of each continent’s principle river bed – Mississippi, Nile, Amazon, Ob, Parana, Murray, Volga, etc. Those meteors had a very good guidance system.’

  ‘The clustering is impossible,’ said Val.

  ‘So are the radionuclides,’ said Don.

  ‘Do you suspect something other than natural forces at work?’ asked Val.

  ‘I was about to ask you the same thing, sir,’ said Don. ‘If an intelligence is behind this, it must be a very benevolent one. Look at the depth. Of the more-than-11,000 craters which I’ve seen optic records on – none did significant damage to a shaft city. All craters measure between ten and fifty feet in diameter.’

  Val frowned: ‘But New Lake was a major disaster.’