V 14 - The Oregon Invasion

by Jayne Tannehill (UC) (epub)

  TOR

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  Chapter 1

  Again he raced down the endless white corridor, around the comers, past slamming doors, down the stair tower, out into the open, away from the building, away from the computer voice announcing the closing, pressing presence of death, away from the pressurized air ducts forcing the death into his body, out into the desert, alone, racing alone, all alone, no one else escaped, alone, running alone, pursued by the red-and-gold balloon, alone, beyond its grasp, beyond the wind, running alone, all alone, unable to run, all alone, overtaken and surrounded by the red-and-gold balloon, pouring red dust slowly over his body, over his head, over his body, over his hands, over his head, over his head.

  Hadad woke unable to scream.

  The dream again. The dream he had never lived. The dream that seemed more real than life. He shook himself free of the images.

  The desert was dark and still. Below him in the valley, the last lights of Prineville outlined the farms and streets. A few cars twisted down the far hillside toward the city. His pulse shuddered and began to calm again. He pushed on the ground beneath him, forcing his body up and down to release the adrenaline pumping into his muscles, making them tighten in spasms.

  It was only a dream.

  He hadn’t had that dream for months. At first, when the news had first come of the red dust, the defeat of his people, the departure of the mother

  ships, then he had understood the dream. Then he had wakened each time certain that the red dust had reached Prineville. And each time he had waited for the dust, for the death to follow, and nothing had happened. That was over a year ago.

  The Visitors had come to Earth on a directive from The Leader. Earth was selected because of its water. The Visitors were to take the water, collect protein-based life forms for food to be preserved and brought home—home to an overpopulated, starving world.

  The sentient beings of Earth were easy to conquer, awed by technology, eager to believe they were valued by those smarter and more powerful than themselves.

  But later there was resistance. For when reporter Mike Donovan got aboard the mother ship over Los Angeles and discovered the Visitors were not human, as they appeared, but lizard beings disguised as humans, it took no time at all for the xenophobia to spread. That, coupled with the revelation that the. Visitors were collecting humans for their food-storage compartments, changed the tenor of the invasion. No longer could the lizard Visitors count on the unsuspecting hospitality of Earth.

  The invasion had become a war, and Hadad was not a warrior. For months he had continued at his post aboard the mother ship, regulating the cryogenics compartments by computer, checking the life-support levels as thousands of food packets arrived from the planet and filled the holds. For months he had avoided the war.

  But Diana had discovered an error—one body that had warmed suddenly and breathed its entire oxygen supply and then died; one body she had wanted to restore to life. And so she had removed him from his post and sent him to Earth as one of Stephen’s assistants.

  Hadad had accepted the demotion without argu

  ment. Before, she had taken his authority; now she had stripped him of rank. Gradually he realized that she watched him for any failing, any shortcoming, jealous of the favor he had from The Leader.

  But that was behind him. That was over a year ago.

  He hadn’t meant to be left behind.

  He had just grown so hungry for the deserts of home. The Leader had said they would find Earth was just like home. It wasn’t. There was nothing here like home. Except the desert. He had only meant to escape for a few days into the desert. But his English was so bad. He wasn’t supposed to go to Los Angeles. The ship that hovered over Los Angeles had been organized for the Fertile Crescent. He was to organize the party to the plains below the Dead Sea. Even his name suited him for the plan. And then Diana had objected to the plans. And their ship had gone to Los Angeles.

  He had been lonely.

  His departure from the compound had worked too well.

  The stolen clothes had been easy. He had started to walk, but his boots were not suited to the streets of Beverly Hills. He had sat on a curb to rest and the gardener had offered him a ride. Asked where he was going.

  He had tried to say desert.

  He wasn’t certain what he had said or what the man answered. All he knew was the man wanted to give him a ride. And so he had ridden, uncertain where the man would take him. Uncertain how to find the desert he was looking for.

  In two days he had ridden in five trucks, learned from one man how to hold his hand to stop another truck, to get yet another ride. Everyone had asked where he was going. After a while he had just pointed down the road.

  Once a man had asked his name. That he had understood. But when he had told the man “Hadad,” the man had screamed at him to get out of his truck. Hadad wasn’t certain what a “damn foreigner” was. He never told anyone his name after that. He had used David’s name instead.

  His pulse returned to normal and he stopped the pushups that were almost second nature. Earth ones had watched him do them once and been amazed at how many times he could repeat them. He did not understand their amazement. But he had learned not to do them when there were Earth ones around.

  He had not meant to be left behind.

  Sometimes in the middle of the night, when the night creatures had finished their nocturnal scavenges for food, when the lights of the city had been turned out except for the outlines of the streets and the floodlights on the courthouse, he had dreamed about going home on the ships. Above all, he wanted to go home.

  He’d been at the rodeo when the news came that the ships had come back. It hadn’t taken him long to figure it out. If they could have gone home, they would have. There was no reason to come back to Earth. It was death to his people to be here, to be anywhere near the red dust. He waited for death himself. It was only time, he figured, time for the poison to reach his own food supply. It never occurred to him that Prineville was not in the path of the dust-carrying winds. It never occurred to him that he had found, accidentally, the only place he could have survived. Until this evening.

  And then the dream had returned.

  He shook himself free of its returning influence.

  Fear made him hungry.

  The night creatures were stilled around him. They had fed earlier. He crept out of the cave he had made for himself just below the shelf of the plateau above the fairgrounds. From the cave he could see most of

  the town. He could watch the sun rise over the forest to the east. He could survey the grasslands to the north. And no one knew he was there.

  Quietly he walked down the hillside, walking with his senses alert to any sound that would betray some wakened creature. There was nothing. Nothing stirred until he reached Coombs Flat Road. A car swung around the corner from the fairgrounds on the way to the reservoir. He recognized Chuck Martin’s car, and waved as the headlights caught him on the road.

  Chuck waved back.

  When Hadad had left Los Angeles, he hadn’t aimed for Prineville. He had pointed down the road. The road had brought him to Prineville. The only decision he had to make was when to stop. He might have stopped a few miles sooner if he’d been awake. But he had fallen asleep somewhere in the mountain roads beside the great white mountain, and when he woke, the driver had stopped for gas in Prineville.

  It was desert. And so Hadad had stopped and headed out into the hills, up to the plateau that jutted into the town, level with all the plateau lands that surrounded it. Some places there were fenced grazing lands, other places were open. No one saw him in the hills.

  For a whi
le he’d been content hiding, living in the rhythm of the high desert animals, feeding as he found food, avoiding the howling creatures he’d later learned to call coyote. His first encounter with the coyote was on his own territory. The coyote had seen him sitting by his cave. It had approached him by smell. And then suddenly it had stopped, wary of the lizard that looked like a man, wearing men’s clothing. They had watched each other all night. And in the morning they had both watched a field mouse, neither willing to yield the prey to the other, yet afraid to leave their guardedness, their watchfulness of each other. He had learned the coyote’s patterns. The coyote had learned his. They sought the same food. The coyote had yielded a portion of the territory. Enough. But in time the sparseness of the area itself had driven Hadad into town.

  At Third Street the logs were stacked waiting the teeth of the sawmill. There were always mice among the piles of logs. One night he had moved too quickly and started the logs rolling down the pile out into the parking lot. The night watchman had shot toward him. The bullet had torn his artificial ear, but had not touched his head. The next time, he had not tried to climb the stacks, content to scout the dark sides of the bottom logs, always assured of enough to eat.

  He had been seen.

  A few nights later the night watchman had seen him again. This time he offered him food instead of shooting him. Hadad had accepted the sandwich, but he didn’t eat it. The night watchman had talked. When he realized Hadad didn’t know English, he talked louder. But he still talked. He called himself Dave.

  And so Hadad called him Dave too.

  Dave had suggested he get a job at the mill. Hadad didn’t know lumber. He did know computers. He did know electronics. He did not know lumber. But he could sweep. And so he did. And he could carry things. And so he did. And he was stronger than a man his size would have been, and so he carried more than most. And that way he had gotten money. And then he could go into town.

  English wasn’t hard to learn. They called him Arab at work. He wasn’t sure what that meant. At first it sounded like “damn foreigner” had sounded. But after a while it sounded like Dave or even like Hadad, though no one knew his name was Hadad. They thought his name was David. They had asked for a last name. Hadad had thought they wanted the name he had had before and so he said Hadad. And so they had called him Mr. Hadad. But no one called him Hadad. They called him Dave.

  He laughed now at how foolish he had felt trying to work with so little knowledge of English. On the ship he had spoken his own language. He had never seen Earth ones, not live ones. Only the packaged ones stored in the hold. He had monitored and repaired the computer-controlled refrigeration tanks. He had been in charge. He had not needed English.

  He stopped at the night watchman’s shed and shared a cigarette, a few words, and then he went out to the stacks and stacks of drying logs. A tap on the right log brought a mouse to the surface and he grabbed it and popped it into his mouth. He picked up three mice and a small lizard before he came back around to the shed again. He hadn’t liked lizard meat on his own planet. The little ones on Earth were sweet.

  “Heading home?” the night watchman asked.

  “Yes. I think that will be enough until morning.” “You shore do like your walking. Never knew a man could get so much outa just walking around in the dead of night. Me, they have to pay me to do it. Maybe you should be the night watchman.”

  “No thanks, Dave. That is your job.”

  “That’s true, Dave. I sure couldn’t do the heavy lifting you do all day, not with my old back. ’Night now.”

  “Good night.”

  Hadad walked back up the road toward the fairgrounds, on toward the hill that was home. He had learned this town. No one knew him. But no one suspected him of anything. He had appeared out of nowhere, needing work. When they asked where he came from, he had said Pau. That was the city he was to build below the Dead Sea. It was the only city name he knew that was not in an English-speaking part of the world. Someone asked him if he was Hawaiian.

  But he wasn’t sure what being Hawaiian would mean and so he shook his head. Then he’d pointed down the highway, the way he’d come. And someone had asked if he came from California. He had said Los Angeles. And that was all that was needed. It didn’t even matter anymore that he didn’t speak English. People just shouted at him. And gradually he’d learned the words and they had stopped shouting.

  He had not meant to be left behind on Earth.

  He had only wanted to spend a few days in the desert.

  He had seen the maps on the computers.

  Gradually he had accepted that he could not go back to the ships. The news from the returned ships filled the programs on the television set in the bar at the fairgrounds. He had watched along with the cowboys who had come to town for the rodeo. They had watched as Diana had been kidnapped. They had all seen how she had been protected from the dust. And later he had heard that the Visitors were back and were safe as long as they stayed in the open cities. And then the news had become distant. The Visitors were not in Central Oregon. They might have taken over Southern California. They might have taken over all the major cities of the world. They were not in Central Oregon. And therefore it didn’t matter.

  Given a few beers on a Saturday night, the fellows at the bar might have a few suggestions for the rest of the world on how to get rid of their unwanted red-uniformed invaders. Most of the men in town carried weapons, and thought the rest of the population should as well. It took Hadad a few hearings not to tense when he heard the familiar: “Why, if one of them was to walk in here, I’d shoot first and ask questions later.”

  They didn’t mean they would shoot him. He wasn’t a Visitor. Not anymore. For a while he had been “a drifter.” That sounded like being a “damn foreigner.” Then he’d been “the kid out in the hills.” That didn’t sound like “damn foreigner.”

  He had needed something called an address. It was numbers and names. That he knew. And so he had looked for a number and a name that would go together. He had chosen 1047 Deer. Someone had said, “Oh, you live out by the railroad tracks.” He didn’t understand. He had learned what a deer was, and that did not help him understand why the man had said he lived by the railroad tracks. But the numbers and name satisfied everyone who asked. He never bothered to find out what an address was supposed to do for a person. One day he had not found food and gone to work late. Someone said they had been around to his house looking for him. That was the only time anyone looked for him.

  He climbed the hill now behind the fairgrounds. He was tired and the nightmare had been put aside. When he reached his cave, he circled, checking to be sure he was not observed. And then he settled inside, curling into sleep, facing out into the world as an animal does that does not trust.

  “Gclixtchp?” His mother called from the house.

  He ignored her first call. His attention was focused on the thin wires he was tracing over the circuit board.

  “Gclixtchp?” This time she called in that insistent tone that meant a lecture would follow. He made the soldered connection and turned off the circuit maker. He was drawing in copper. Later he would copy the pattern. For now it would wait.

  “Gclixtchp! If you don’t learn to come when you are called, someday you are going to be left behind!” She threw parcels at him that must be taken to the transporter. She expected him to go with her. There was no arguing.

  The familiar glottals and fricatives exploded in his ears. “If you don’t learn to come when you are called, someday you are going to be left behind.” Somewhere the conscious mind registered the anachronism: His mother did not know English and the words were clearly English. He knew. . . what did he know? Corridors of white replaced the sands of home. Long channels of bodies, this one starting to decay, must be removed. Check the seals, why was it rotting, who was responsible?

  “Incompetent!” Diana’s voice shouted and echoed down the corridors.

  “Incompetent!” Her eyes fired their disgust at him.
He had dared to complain about her orders. Now he was a necessary nuisance, no longer an organizer, no longer a leader, only a broom-pusher, button-pusher, “incompetent.”

  He had never pushed a broom on the mother ship. That anachronism woke him. He shook off the dream.

  A coyote howled. Another answered. Something flew past his cave. It was still dark. He closed his eyes. The lenses burned against his lids. He would get liquid in town in the morning. He could not risk leaving his lenses out until his lids could rest. He reached for the bottle of liquid above his head, hoping there would be a little left. His hand missed the bottle and caught on the root pressing down into his cave from the juniper growing above.

  “Damn foreigner,” he cursed the darkness. His artificial skin, his “plastic,” was tom. Now he must find the “medicine plant” that would glue it back together. They were plentiful in the stores in Los Angeles. He had had trouble finding them in Oregon. And they did not grow in the high desert, not naturally. He had tried to grow one by his cave. It had survived the summer days, but the cold of winter had killed it. He would look for one in the morning, squeeze the flower-leaves until the white liquid oozed from it that would stick to everything, especially his “plastic.”

  Dave had taught him that word. . . . “‘Plastic,’ that’ll open all the doors, let you go anywhere, buy anything. All you need is plastic.” He was right. This was all Hadad needed: plastic. Without it he would be shot. It did not matter that he was working, doing the job no one wanted to do. It did not matter that he ate only the rodents that the farmers tried so hard to get rid of. It did not matter that he knew the cowboys, cheered their victories, laughed at their stories, drank their beer. Without the plastic he would be shot.

  He bandaged his hand, making sure the pink met under the bandage so that the green beneath would not show dark under the wrapping.

  He found the bottle of liquid and tried to squeeze the last few drops into his eyes.

  It was less painful then to close his eyes. But that did not make sleep any easier. If he had heard the Earth ones’ superstition that in the moment before one dies one’s life flashes before one’s eyes, then he would have known he would soon face death. But he did not know that folktale and so he watched the drama mixed together with fantasy and fear. In the night the coyotes howled, the desert was restless, and so was he. He tossed, unwilling to give up sleep, unwilling to give up to sleep.