Earth Afire (The First Formic War)

by Orson Scott Card

  “Are you smarter than the government now?” Father said, his voice rising. “Smarter than the military?”

  “Of course not, Father.”

  “Then why do you profess to be? Don’t you realize that by reaching this conclusion on your own you are calling everyone who has seen the vid and not believed it a fool?”

  “I call no man a fool, Father.”

  “There are experts for this, Bingwen. Educated men. If they thought it was real, they would have taken action. There is no action, therefore it is not real. Know your place.”

  Mother said nothing, but Bingwen could see that she took Father’s side. There was only disappointment and shame for him in her expression.

  Bingwen bent low, putting his face to the floor.

  “Do not mock me,” said Father.

  “No mockery, Father. Only respect for those whose name I carry and whose approval I seek. Forgive me if I have brought offense.”

  He wanted to argue, he had to argue. Aliens were coming, whether Father believed it or not. Bingwen knew it sounded ridiculous, but facts were facts. They had to prepare.

  But what could he say that wouldn’t make Father angrier? The discussion was closed. Father would never watch the vid now, even if Bingwen brought it to him on a platter.

  Bingwen remained prostrate for several minutes, saying nothing more. When he finally sat up, only Grandfather remained.

  “Don’t anger your father,” said Grandfather. “It spoils the evening.”

  Bingwen bent low again, but Grandfather got a hand under his shoulder and sat him back up. “Enough of the bowing. I’m not going to talk to the back of your head.”

  Grandfather reached out to the table and took his cup of tea. They were silent a moment as Grandfather drank it.

  “You believe me,” said Bingwen. “Don’t you?”

  “I believe that you believe,” said Grandfather.

  “That’s not a complete answer.”

  Grandfather sighed. “Let us assume for a moment that something like this might be possible.”

  Bingwen smiled.

  “Might,” repeated Grandfather, raising a finger for emphasis. “Extremely unlikely, but possible.”

  “You must go to the library, Grandfather, and see this vid for yourself.”

  “And anger your father? No, no, no. I would rather enjoy my tea and sit by the fire in peace.”

  Bingwen was crestfallen.

  “What good would it do anyway?” said Grandfather. “Even if it were true, what could we do about it? Can we fight with sticks? Fly into space? Or should we pray?”

  “Prepare to run away,” said Bingwen. “Pack what we need, and then bury it where we can get it quickly.”

  Grandfather laughed. “Bury our belongings? Why? The aliens won’t care about our traveling food and clothing and tools.”

  “We’re hiding it from Father,” said Bingwen. “Since he told me not to do this, I’m being very disrespectful, trying to save our family’s lives by making it possible for us to run away at a moment’s notice.”

  “Your father will be furious when he finds out,” said Grandfather.

  “He will only find out if and when we need the buried items,” said Bingwen. “By then, he will be grateful for them.”

  They spoke quietly after that, making an inventory of the items they would need. It wasn’t until much later, as Bingwen was climbing into bed, his pants long since dried, that he realized that no one had even asked him why he had been wet.

  CHAPTER 2

  Victor

  “Look at them, Imala,” said Victor. “They’re all going about their business as if nothing is wrong, as if this were another day in paradise.”

  He was gazing out the window of the track car as it zipped by the buildings and pedestrians of Luna, Imala sitting opposite him, holding her holopad. “The whole world could be headed to ashes,” said Victor, “and nobody cares.”

  Outside, the walkways were crowded with people: men and women in suits, maintenance crews, merchants at kiosks selling hot pastries and coffee. Nearly everyone wore magnetic greaves on their shins, which pulled their feet down to the metal walkway and forced them to move with a steady stop-and-go, robotlike gait. Only a few people were bounce-walking, relying solely on the Moon’s low gravity to hop about, and these were getting plenty of annoyed looks from those in greaves, as if to move about in such fashion were indecorous.

  “They don’t know that anything is wrong, Victor,” said Imala. “The vid still only has around two million hits. I checked the numbers before we left.”

  Victor closed his eyes and let himself gradually sink back into his chair. Two million hits. So few.

  “It’s been ten days, Imala. Ten. The whole world should know by now. You said it would go viral.” He knew he was being unfair; Imala wasn’t to blame. But it was maddening to think that billions of people were completely oblivious. It was like being in a burning ship and he was the only person acknowledging the flames.

  No. He wasn’t the only one. Imala believed him. Everyone in the recovery hospital thought he was certifiably loco, but not Imala. She had accepted the evidence the instant he had shown it to her. And here he was throwing her efforts back in her face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not blaming you. I’m grateful to you. Honest. I just thought more people would know by now.”

  “I thought everyone would see what I saw,” said Imala. “I thought this thing would explode on the nets. I never imagined people would be this skeptical.”

  “Skeptical is putting it lightly, Imala.” He gestured for the holopad.

  “Don’t read the comments, Victor. They’ll only annoy you.”

  He gently took the pad from her, pulled up the posts under the vid, and started reading. “‘What a joke. This is the worst makeup and costuming I’ve ever seen. Who put this expletive expletive together? What a load of expletive.’”

  “Thanks for the tasteful editing.”

  “They don’t believe us, Imala. They’re either dismissive, critical, or downright malicious. They think we made it up.”

  “There are people who do this kind of thing as a hobby, Victor. They dress up and make fan videos. Aliens, lost underwater cities, magical realms. They invent whole universes. I’ve followed a few of the links. Some of their vids look nearly as real as ours.”

  “Yes, but ours is real, Imala. The hormigas are living breathing things. The destruction they cause? Real. The weapons they have? Real. Their ship? Real. This isn’t fantasy time.”

  “Not everyone dismisses the vid. Some people believe us.”

  “Some, yes. But have you gone to their sites? A lot of them are conspiracy theorists and loquitos. Crazies. They’d believe a cup of sour cream was an alien if someone told them so. They aren’t earning us any credibility.”

  “They’re not all conspiracy theorists, Victor. We have over twenty thousand followers now. The vast majority are intelligent, respectable people. They’re stockpiling supplies, sharing ideas, alerting local governments, pushing the scientific community to get involved. We’re not alone on this.”

  “We might as well be,” said Victor. “Twenty thousand followers, Imala. From two million people that have seen the vid. That’s a one percent success rate. And not one percent of the global population, mind you. On global terms, twenty thousand people is…” He paused to do the math in his head. “Point zero zero zero zero zero one six. That’s not even a drop in the bucket, Imala. That’s a water molecule clinging to the drop in the bucket. No, that’s the electron circling the hydrogen atom on the water molecule on the drop in the bucket.”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “It’s why I can’t stand to look outside,” said Victor. “I see all these people doing nothing, fearing nothing, preparing for nothing, and I think I’ve failed them. Their lives are in my hands, Imala, and I’m failing. I’m letting them die.”

  “You’re doing everything you can, Victor.”

&
nbsp; “No I’m not. I’m not doing anything. I’m a prisoner in a recovery hospital. You’re the one doing all the work. You’re the one going to the press.”

  “And mostly getting ignored.”

  “Yes, but at least you’re engaged. At least you’re doing something. I’ve done nada.”

  “You’ve done plenty. You crossed the solar system in a tiny cargo rocket and nearly killed yourself in the process. You let yourself waste away to nothing to get here. You left your family and loved ones. You brought us critical evidence. I say that counts for something.”

  “I mean I’m not doing anything now. If no one pays attention, if no one takes us seriously, what I’ve done doesn’t matter.”

  “Which is why we’re going to the Lunar Trade Department and getting you released. You’re healthy enough to walk now. Your strength is back. The adjudicator for your case has agreed to see you early. If we play this right, she’ll throw out the charges against you, and you’ll be a free man. Then you can help me. We have a few good leads, and if you’re with me, if we can get you in front of the right audience, maybe we can get to someone with real authority.”

  “Who’s the person we’re seeing? What are our chances?” asked Victor.

  “Her name’s Mungwai. She’s the department’s chief adjudicator. I tried to get someone else, but she reviewed your file and insisted on seeing us both.”

  “Why did you want someone else?”

  “Mungwai is a hard-liner. She’s from West Africa. Don’t speak unless she asks you a direct question, and keep your answers brief and factual. She’s not a prosecutor, but she ought to be. She despises rule breakers.”

  “Wonderful,” said Victor.

  Three minutes later they reached the LTD, and Imala quickly led Victor through security and up a floor to Customs. They waited another ten minutes in the lobby before a young receptionist called them back and ushered them into Mungwai’s office.

  Mungwai was tall and slender with her hair braided tightly to her head in narrow rows. She stood at her desk, feet anchored to the floor, tapping her way through a series of holoscreens hovering at eye level. She didn’t look up.

  “Mr. Victor Delgado,” she said. “You sure know how to make an entrance. In your first five minutes on Luna, you managed to commit one count of entering Luna airspace without a license, one count of improper flight entry, one count of failing to provide entry authorizations, one count of interrupting a government-restricted radio frequency, and one count of trespassing.” She made a hand movement above the holofield, and all the windows of data vanished. Victor was still wearing the cotton scrubs the recovery hospital had supplied him, and when Mungwai looked him up and down disapprovingly, Victor felt self-conscious.

  “The ‘improper flight entry’ is the most serious charge,” Mungwai continued, “since failure to comply with Luna traffic controllers poses a safety risk to other vessels on approach and the fine upstanding citizens of Luna. People around here get quite upset when you drop ships on their heads.”

  “It wasn’t a ship,” said Victor. “At least not a passenger ship. It was a quickship, a cargo rocket, a lugger. As soon as I approached Luna, your lunar guidance system took over. It was on autopilot when it entered the warehouse. That’s why the trespassing charge strikes me as unjust. I couldn’t have stopped the ship if I had wanted to.”

  “Yes, but you piloted the quickship to Luna,” said Mungwai. “You brought it here. That makes you responsible.”

  “It would have come here anyway,” said Victor. “That’s what luggers are programmed to do. They carry cylinders of mined minerals from the Kuiper Belt and Asteroid Belt on preprogrammed flight paths.” Victor had actually changed the flight parameters by hacking the ship’s system, but he wasn’t about to point out that fact now. “The quickship would have acted exactly the same once it reached Luna airspace with or without me on board. The only difference is that I was the cargo instead of cylinders. Surely you wouldn’t have arrested cylinders for trespassing.”

  Mungwai raised an eyebrow, and Victor sensed he had gone too far.

  “What I mean,” he said, keeping his voice calm, “is that I could make a very good case that I was not the pilot of the quickship. Which, it stands to reason, would render the charges dismissible.”

  “I’ll determine the validity of the charges, Mr. Delgado. That’s what the taxpaying citizens of Luna pay me for.” She waved her hand through the holospace again, and windows of data appeared in front of her. “You disrupted a restricted radio frequency. Are you going to argue that the quickship made you do that as well?”

  “That was clearly my own doing,” said Victor, “but I had no idea the frequency was restricted. I was being buried in a warehouse by damaged quickships. I was desperate for help. Every frequency I had tried before was silent.”

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, Mr. Delgado. This isn’t the Kuiper Belt, where it’s every man for himself and laws be damned. This is Luna. We maintain order. We’re civilized.”

  Victor felt his face getting hot. “With all due respect, ma’am, free miners are not lawless barbarians. I’d argue that our society is far more civilized than Luna.”

  Imala cleared her throat, but Victor pretended not to have heard.

  Mungwai looked amused. “Is that so?”

  “In the Kuiper Belt if someone needs help, you help them,” said Victor. “If their ship needs repairs, if they’re low on supplies, if their lives are threatened, you rush to their aid and do whatever you can to keep them alive. And once you’ve helped them, they don’t humiliate you or arrest you or threaten you with lengthy prison terms. They thank you. I find that more civilized than what I’ve experienced here.”

  “You have been given the finest medical attention at no cost to you, Mr. Delgado,” said Mungwai. “Muscle- and bone-building medications. Rigorous physical therapy. Room and board. Your criticism of that treatment strikes me as incredibly ungrateful.”

  Victor exhaled. This wasn’t going well. “I am grateful for the care I have received. But I would rather have a listening ear than a pill. I know what has crippled space communications. I know what’s causing the interference. A near-lightspeed alien ship is heading to Earth. It’s in our solar system already. It has weapons capabilities far beyond anything we’ve seen. It destroyed four ships of free miners and killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, including a member of my own family.” He was trembling now but keeping his voice calm. “I saw the bodies. Women, children, all of them dead.”

  Mungwai raised a hand to silence him. “I’ve read your file, Mr. Delgado. I know what you claim to have seen.”

  “I don’t claim anything. I don’t have to. The vids and evidence speak for themselves.”

  “I’ve seen your vid,” said Mungwai. “I also saw four other vids from the scientific community refuting yours as a likely hoax.”

  Victor opened his mouth to speak but Mungwai cut him off.

  “However, rather than pass judgment, I forwarded your evidence to a friend at STASA.”

  Victor nearly leapt at the words. STASA, the Space Trade and Security Authority. Imala had been trying to get their attention for days. STASA monitored all space traffic and commerce and had deep ties with every government on Earth. If anyone could add credibility to Victor’s evidence, it was STASA. Earth would instantly respond.

  “What did they say?” asked Imala.

  “My friend said he would pass the information on to the proper department. STASA apparently has a whole division dedicated to addressing these kinds of anomalies.”

  “Anomalies?” said Victor.

  “Tricks of the light,” said Mungwai. “Hallucinations. It happens all the time. A miner doesn’t regulate his oxygen levels correctly or is suffering from fatigue, and he sees all sorts of things.”

  “These aren’t hallucinations,” said Victor. “This isn’t based on testimony—”

  Imala cut him off. “When will you hear back from your
contact at STASA? Can we contact him directly?”

  “You won’t be contacting anyone, Imala,” said Mungwai. “You are on administrative leave effective immediately. I’m removing you from this case. And don’t look so surprised. You’ve been neglecting your other duties, and what’s worse, you aided a criminal and uploaded his vids onto the nets.”

  “To warn Earth!” said Imala.

  “That is not your job,” said Mungwai. “Your job is to inform illegal entrants of their rights and to prepare the necessary documentation for their deportation.”

  “You’re deporting me?” said Victor.

  “You’re an illegal entrant, Mr. Delgado. And a lawbreaker. I have decided not to give your case to the prosecutor, but I cannot allow you to remain on Luna. You will stay in the recovery hospital until the next ship leaves for the Asteroid Belt in four days. If STASA wants to contact you or request a stay before then, they may do so. Otherwise, you’re on that ship. Once you reach the Asteroid Belt you’ll have to find your own passage back to your family. I don’t have a vessel going that far. As for the vids you uploaded onto the nets, I’m having them removed immediately.”

  “What!” said Victor.

  “You can’t,” said Imala.

  “I can and will,” said Mungwai. “This department will not be held responsible for inducing a worldwide panic. You helped upload those vids, Imala, which makes us partly responsible for any adverse effect they may have on the citizenry. That showed extremely poor judgment on your part.”

  “People need to know,” said Imala.

  “There are protocols for this, Imala.”

  “Are you sure?” said Imala. “Because I don’t recall reading ‘How to Warn Earth of an Alien Invasion’ in the employee handbook.”

  Mungwai stiffened. “You are dismissed, Imala. And you’re lucky I don’t have you fired outright. That is still a possibility. In which case, you would be on the first ship back to Earth. I suggest you don’t push the matter.”

  Imala said nothing, jaw clenched tight.

  “You saw the vids,” Victor said to Mungwai. “How can you do this?”