Morning Child and Other Stories

by Gardner Dozois

  The ground under Tommy’s feet began to soften, squelching wetly when it was stepped on, water oozing up to fill the indentation of his footprint as soon as he lifted his foot. He was approaching another place where the ocean had seeped in and puddled the shore, and he turned now at right angles to his former path. Tommy found a deer trail and followed it uphill, through a lush jungle of tangled laurel and rhododendron, and into a rolling upland meadow that stretched away toward the higher country to the west. There was a rock knoll to the east, and he climbed it, scrambling up on his hands and feet like a young bear. It was not a particularly difficult or dangerous climb, but it was tiring, and he managed to tear his pants squirming over a sharp stone ridge. The sun came out momentarily from behind high gray clouds, warming up the rocks and beading Tommy with sweat as he climbed. Finally he pulled himself up to the stretch of flat ground on top of the knoll and walked over to the side facing the sea. He sat down, digging his fingers into the dying grass, letting his legs dangle over the edge.

  There was an escarpment of soft, crumbly rock here, thickly overgrown with moss and vetch. It slanted down into a saltwater marsh, which extended for another mile or so, blurring at last into the ocean. It was almost impossible to make out the exact borderline of marsh and ocean; Tommy could see gleaming fingers of water thrust deep into the land, and clumps of reeds and bulrushes far out into what should have been the sea. This was dangerous, impassable country, and Tommy had never gone beyond the foot of the escarpment—there were stretches of quicksand out there in the deepest bog pockets, and Tommy had heard rumors of water moccasins and rattlers, although he had never seen one.

  It was a dismal, forbidding place, but it was also a Place, and so Tommy settled down to wait, all night, if he had to, although that possibility scared him silly. From the top of the knoll, he could see for miles in any direction. To the north, beyond the marsh, he could see a line of wooded islands marching out into the ocean, moving into deeper and deeper water, until only the barren knobs of rock visible from the beach were left above the restless surface of the North Atlantic. Turning to the west, it was easy to trace the same line into the ridge of hills that rose gradually toward the high country, to see that the islands were just hills that had been drowned by the ocean, leaving only their crests above water. A Thant had told him about that, about how the dry land had once extended a hundred miles farther to the east, before the coming of the Ice, and how it had watched the hungry ocean pour in over everything, drowning the hills and rivers and fields under a gray wall of icy water. Tommy had never forgotten that, and ever since then he watched the ocean, as he watched it now, with a hint of uneasy fear, expecting it to shiver and bunch like the hide of a great restless beast, and come marching monstrously in over the land. The Thant had told him that yes, that could happen, and probably would in a little while, although to a Thant “a little while” could easily mean a thousand—or ten thousand—years. It had not been worried about the prospect; it would make little difference to a Thant if there was no land at all; they continued to use the sunken land to the east with little change in their routine. It had also told Tommy about the Ice, the deep blue cold that had locked the world, the gleaming mile-high ramparts grinding out over the land, surging and retreating. Even for a Thant, that had taken a long time.

  Tommy sat on the knoll for what seemed to be as long a time as the Dominance of the Ice, feeling as if he had grown into the rock, watching the sun dip in and out of iron-colored clouds, sending shafts of watery golden light stabbing down into the landscape below. He saw a family of Jeblings drifting over the hilly meadows to the west, and that made him feel a little better—at least all of the Other People hadn’t vanished. The Jeblings were investigating a fenced-in upland meadow, where black cows grazed under gnarled dwarf apple trees. Tommy watched calmly while one of the Jeblings rose over the fence and settled down onto a cow’s back, extending proboscislike cilia and beginning to feed—draining away the stuff it needed to survive. The cow continued to graze, placidly munching its cud without being aware of what the Jebling was doing. The stuff the Jebling drank was not necessary to the cow’s physical existence, and the cow did not miss it, although its absence might have been one of the reasons why it remained only as intelligent as a cow.

  Tommy knew that Jeblings didn’t feed on people, although they did on dogs and cats sometimes, and that there were certain rare kinds of Other People who did feed, disastrously, on humans. The Thants looked down disdainfully on the Jeblings, seeing their need as a degrading lack in their evolution. Tommy had wondered sometimes if the Thants didn’t drink some very subtle stuff from him and the other humans. Certainly they could see the question in his mind, but they had never answered it.

  Suddenly, Tommy felt his tongue stir in his head without volition, felt his mouth open. “Hello, Man,” he said, in a deep, vibrant, buzzing voice that was not his own.

  The Thant had arrived. Tommy could feel its vital, eclectic presence all around him, a presence that seemed to be made up out of the essence of hill and rock and sky, bubbling blackwater marsh and gray winter ocean, sun and moss, tree and leaf—every element of the landscape rolled together and made bristlingly, shockingly animate. Physically, it manifested itself as a tall, tiger-eyed mannish shape, with skin of burnished iron. It was even harder to see than most of the Other People, impossible to ever bring into complete focus; even out of the corner of the eye its shape shifted and flickered constantly, blending into and out of the physical background, expanding and contracting, swirling like a dervish and then becoming still as stone. Sometimes it would be dead black, blacker than the deepest starless night, and other times the winter sunlight would refract dazzlingly through it, making it even harder to see. Its eyes were sometimes iron gray, sometimes a ripe, abundant green, and sometimes a liquid furnacered, elemental and adamant. They were in constant, restless motion. “Hello, Thant,” Tommy said in his own voice. He never knew if he was speaking to the same one each time, or even if there was more than one. “Why’n’t you come, yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?” the Thant said, with Tommy’s mouth. There was a pause. The Thants always had trouble with questions of time, they lived on such a vastly different scale of duration. “Yes,” it said. Tommy felt something burrowing through his mind, touching off synapses and observing the results, flicking through his memories in the manner of a man flipping through a desk calendar with his thumb. The Thant had to rely on the contents of Tommy’s mind for its vocabulary, using it as a semantic warehouse, an organic dictionary, but it had the advantage of being able to dig up and use everything that had ever been said in Tommy’s presence, far more raw material than Tommy’s own conscious mind had to work with.

  “We were busy,” it said finally, sorting it out. “There has been—an arriving?”—Flick, flick, and then momentarily in Pastor Turner’s reedy voice, “An Immanence?” —Flick— “A knowing? A transference? A transformation? A disembarking. There are Other Ones now who have”—flick, a radio evangelist’s voice—“manifested in this earthly medium. Landed,” it said, deciding. “They have landed.” A pause. “‘Yesterday.’”

  “The aliens!” Tommy breathed.

  “The aliens,” it agreed. “The Other Ones who are now here. That is why we did not come, ‘yesterday.’ That is why we will not be able to talk to you—” a pause, to adjust itself to human scale—“‘long’ today. We are talking, discussing”—flick, a radio news announcer—“negotiating with them, the Other Ones, the aliens. They have been here before, but so ‘long’ ago that we cannot even start to make you understand, Man. It is ‘long’ even to us. We are negotiating with them, and through them, with your Dogs. No, Man”—and it flicked aside an image of a German shepherd that had begun to form in Tommy’s mind—“not those dogs. Your Dogs. Your mechanical Dogs. Those dead Things that serve you, although they are dead. We are all negotiating. There were many agreements”—flick, Pastor Turner again—“many Covenants that were made ‘long’ ago. W
ith Men, although they do not remember. And with Others. Those Covenants have run out now, they are no longer in force, they are not”—flick, a lawyer talking to Tommy’s father—“binding on us anymore. They do not hold. We negotiate new Covenants” —flick, a labor leader on television—“suitable agreements mutually profitable to all parties concerned. Many things will be different now, many things will change. Do you understand what we are saying, Man?”

  “No,” Tommy said.

  “We did not think you would,” it said. It sounded sad.

  “Can you guys help me?” Tommy said. “I’m in awful bad trouble. Miss Fredricks is after me. And she sent me down to the doctor. He don’t like me, neither.”

  There was a pause while the Thant examined Tommy’s most recent memories. “Yes,” it said, “we see. There is nothing we can do. It is your…pattern? Shape? We would not interfere, even if we could.”

  “Scup,” Tommy said, filling with bitter disappointment. “I was hoping that you guys could—scup, never mind. I…can you tell me what’s gonna happen next?”

  “Probably they will kill you,” it said.

  “Oh,” Tommy said hollowly. And bit his lip. And could think of nothing else to say, in response to that.

  “We do not really understand ‘kill,’” it continued, “or ‘dead.’ We have no direct experience of them, in the way that you do. But from our observation of Men, that is what they will do. They will ‘kill’ you.”

  “Oh,” Tommy said again.

  “Yes,” it said. “We will miss you, Man. You have been…a pet? A hobby? You are a hobby we have been much concerned with. You, and the others like you who can see. One of you comes into existence”—flick—“every once in a while. We have been interested”—flick, an announcer—“in the face of stiff opposition. We wonder if you understand that…No, you do not, we can see. Our hobby is not approved of. It has made us”—flick, Tommy’s father telling his wife what would happen to her son if he didn’t snap out of his dreamy ways—“an outcast, a laughingstock. We are shunned. There is much disapproval now of Men. We do not use this”— flick—“world in the same way that you do, but slowly you”— flick, “have begun to make a nuisance of yourselves, regardless. There is”—flick—“much sentiment to do something about you, to solve the problem. We are afraid that they will.” There was a long, vibrant silence. “We will miss you,” it repeated. Then it was gone, all at once, like a candle flame that had been abruptly blown out.

  “Oh, scup,” Tommy said after a while, tiredly. He climbed down from the knoll.

  When he got back home, still numb and exhausted, his mother and father were fighting. They were sitting in the living room, with the television turned down, but not off. Giant, eternally smiling faces bobbed on the screen, their lips seeming to synch eerily with the violent argument taking place. The argument cut off as Tommy entered the house; both of his parents turned, startled, to look at him. His mother looked frightened and defenseless. She had been crying, and her makeup was washing away in dirty rivulets. His father was holding his thin lips in a pinched white line.

  As soon as Tommy had closed the door, his father began to shout at him, and Tommy realized, with a thrill of horror, that the school had telephoned his parents and told them that he had been sent down to the psychiatrist, and why. Tommy stood, paralyzed, while his father advanced on him. He could see his father’s lips move and could hear the volume of sound that was being thrown at him, but he could not make out the words somehow, as if his father were speaking in some harsh, foreign language. All that came across was the rage. His father’s hand shot out, like a striking snake. Tommy felt strong fingers grab him, roughly bunching together the front of his jacket, his collar pulling tight and choking him, and then he was being lifted into the air and shaken, like a doll. Tommy remained perfectly still, frozen by fear, dangling from his father’s fist, suspended off the ground. The fingers holding him felt like steel clamps—there was no hope of escape or resistance. He was yanked higher, and his father slowly bent his elbow to bring Tommy in closer to his face. Tommy was enveloped in the tobacco smell of his father’s breath, and in the acrid reek of his strong, adult sweat; he could see the tiny hairs that bristled in his father’s nostrils, the white tension lines around his nose and mouth, the red, bloodshot stain of rage in his yellowing eyes—a quivering, terrifying landscape that loomed as big as the world. His father raised his other hand, brought it back behind his ear. Tommy could see the big, knobby knuckles of his father’s hand as it started to swing. His mother screamed.

  He found himself lying on the floor. He could remember a moment of pain and shock, and was briefly confused as to where he was. Then he heard his parents’ voices again. The side of his face ached, and his ear buzzed; he didn’t seem to be hearing well out of it. Gingerly, he touched his face. It felt raw under his fingers, and it prickled painfully, as if it were being stabbed with thousands of little needles. He got to his feet, shakily, feeling his head swim. His father had backed his mother up against the kitchen divider, and they were yelling at each other. Something hot and metallic was surging in the back of Tommy’s throat, but he couldn’t get his voice to work. His father rounded on him. “Get out,” he shouted. “Go to your room, go to bed. Don’t let me see you again.” Woodenly, Tommy went. The inside of his lip had begun to bleed. He swallowed the blood.

  Tommy lay silently in the darkness, listening, not moving. His parents’ voices went on for a long time, and then they stopped. Tommy heard the door of his father’s bedroom slam. A moment later, the television was turned up in the living room, and started mumbling quietly and unendingly to itself, whispering constantly about the aliens, the aliens. Tommy listened to its whispering until he fell asleep.

  He dreamed about the aliens that night. They were tall, shadowy shapes with red eyes, and they moved noiselessly, deliberately, across the dry plain. Their feet did not distrub the flowers that had turned to skeletons of dust. There was a great crowd of people assembled on the dry plain, millions of people, rank upon rank stretching off to infinity on all sides, but the aliens did not notice them. They walked around the people as if they could not see them at all. Their red eyes flicked from one side to the other, endlessly searching and searching. They continued to thread a way through the crowd without seeing them, their motions smooth and languid and graceful. They were very beautiful and dangerous. They were all smiling, faintly, gently, and Tommy knew that they were friendly, affable killers, creatures who would kill you casually and amicably, almost as a gesture of affection. They came to the place where he stood, and they paused. They looked at him. They can see me, Tommy realized. They can see me. And one of the aliens smiled at him, benignly, and stretched out a hand to touch him.

  His eyes snapped open.

  Tommy turned on the bed lamp, and spent the rest of the night reading a book about Irish setters. When morning showed through his window, he turned off the lamp and pretended to be asleep. Blue veins showed through the skin of his mother’s hands, he noticed, when she came in to wake him up for school.

  By dawn of the second day, news of the alien infestation had spread rapidly but irregularly. Most of the East Coast stations were on to the story to one degree or another, some sandwiching it into the news as a silly-season item, and some, especially the Philadelphia stations, treating it as a live, continuous-coverage special, with teams of newsmen manufacturing small talk and pretending that they were not just as uniformed as everyone else. The stations that were taking the story seriously were divided among themselves as to exactly what had happened. By the six and seven A.M. newscasts, only about half of the major stations were reporting it as a landing by alien spaceships. The others were interpreting it as anything from the crash of an orbiting satellite or supersonic transport to an abortive Chinese missile attack or a misfired hydrogen bomb accidentally dropped from a SAC bomber—this station urged that the populations of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore be evacuated to the Appalachians and the Adirondack
s before the bomb went off. One station suggested that the presidential incumbent was engineering this incident as a pretext for declaring martial law and canceling an election that he was afraid he would lose, while another insisted that it was an attempt to discredit the opposition candidate, who was known as an enthusiastic supporter of space exploration, by crashing a “spaceship” into a population center. It was also suggested that the ship was one of the electromagnetic “flying saucers” which Germany, the United States, the Russian Republics, and Israel had been independently developing for years—while loudly protesting that they were not—that had crashed on its maiden test flight. This was coupled with a bitter attack on extravagant government spending. There were no more live broadcasts coming out of the Delaware Valley site, but videotapes of the original coverage had been distributed as far north as Portland. The tapes weren’t much help in resolving the controversy anyway, as all they showed was a large object sitting in a stretch of vacant scrubland behind an abandoned garage on an old state highway.

  In Ohio, some newsmen from Akron made a low pass over the alien ship in a war-surplus helicopter loaded with modern camera equipment. All the newsmen were certain that they would be death-rayed to cinders by the aliens, but their cameras were keyed to telemeter directly to the biggest television network in the state, so they committed themselves to God and went in at treetop level. They made it past the aliens safely, but were run down by two Air Force hovercraft a mile away, bundled into another war-surplus helicopter, and shipped directly to the federal prison at Leavenworth. By this time, televised panic had spread all over the Midwest. The Midwesterners seemed to accept the alien landing at face value, with little of the skepticism of the Easterners, and reacted to it with hostility, whipping up deep feelings of aggression in defense of their territoriality. By noon, there were a dozen prominent voices urging an all-out military effort to destroy the alien monsters who had invaded the heartland of America, and public opinion was strongly with them. The invasion made headlines in evening papers from Indiana to Arkansas, although some of the big Chicago papers were more tolerant or more doubtful.