by Larry Niven
Harpanet dipped his nostril. Nat said, "Not in the face. He looks too tired to play."
"I heard that," the President said. "I am."
Harpanet shimmied. The wall of his flank sent warm, muddy water sloshing gently across President Coffey. The President smiled. "Heating just one end of the pool," he asked, "who thought that up?"
"Human fithp need it too warm. Too much surface for volume. Shed heat too fast."
Nat said, "The guy who thought of that was the curator of the San Diego Zoo, George Pournelle. He had some very rare rhinos, and he didn't know what kind of temperature they liked. So he put a temperature gradient across the cage and let them make their own decisions."
The President nodded. He was in the hottest part of the pool. He looked very relaxed. He opened one eye and fixed it on Harpanet. "You've hit us hard."
Harpanet asked, "Was it the Foot?"
"It was. You've killed a great many people."
"Not I. I am of the Dreamer Fithp now. Can I help?" It was a rebuke.
The President stirred. "Reynolds, have you seen the tapes?"
"Yeah. This is a melon daiquiri. Have some. I don't have any mouth diseases."
"Neither do I, and thanks for not asking. Jesus, you make them big. Were you going to drink all of this?"
"Yeah. I told you, I've seen the tapes."
The President drank. He said, "Nice. Are we going to live through this?"
"The species is. Hell, they can't conquer us. Some of us will live. We could get down to 'The Men in the Walls'—"
"'What's that?"
"William Tenn. Humans living like parasites in the aliens' environment, and we still win, because we're small enough to hide in places they can't get to. But it won't come to that. This is our planet, and we own every corner. Siberia, the Sahara, Greenland, they can't come after us there."
"They don't have to," David Coffey said. "They just keep pounding away, killing more and more people, until we can't stand it any longer. If we have to give up anyway, why prolong it? Let the survivor types go to Siberia. The rest surrender."
"It is sensible," Harpanet said.
"No." Reynolds wanted his drink, but he was too polite to reach for it. "In the first place, it wouldn't work. Too many would stay behind. Pretend to surrender, but they'd hide weapons and kill snouts whenever they got a chance. You can't surrender for everybody—"
"I agree."
"Well, the fithp think you can. They'll hold us all responsible. What the fithp call surrender, we don't know how to do that."
Coffey said, "But we have to do something."
"Maybe the fithp lasers only come in a couple of frequencies. We can make reflective paint for those frequencies. Paint them on the bombers."
"That'll take a while, won't it?"
"Sure. Set up a research station."
Harpanet said, "The lasers can be—changed. The color can be made different."
Reynolds shrugged. "So maybe that doesn't work."
The President let himself sag into the mud. He still had Reynolds' mug of melon daquiri. "What else should we be doing?"
"Study our friend Harpanet. Find out how to keep him happy."
"I'm for that," Harpanet said.
"Why isn't anyone studying me?" the President asked plaintively.
"Harpanet's bound to need things. Maybe it's dietary supplements, things that don't get into our foods. Settlers in Brazil had a terrible time with vitamin deficiencies. The soil is peculiar. Well, there's bound to be something missing from African soil. Not for us, we evolved there, but the Traveler Fithp didn't! What's missing? How can we stop the fithp from getting to it? Maybe they can't sleep in total darkness. Keep knocking out their power sources and in a few days they'll fall over—"
"No," said Harpanet.
"Okay, no, but you see what I'm getting at. We tried playing baseball with Harpanet. There's no way to put a glove on him, of course, so we tried tossing a softball around, maybe he could catch it bare-handed. He can't. He can't throw it either."
"This skill was not prized among the Traveler Fithp," Harpanet said placidly.
"We could probably rig up a glove for him," Nat said earnestly. "It would look like an umbrella, but he could catch. He still couldn't throw. He's hopeless with a football. I thought he would be, but it's—we've got films, and we've been showing them to your soldiers, and it gets them rolling around on the floor. Harpanet spreads his trunk like a great fan, and the ball either goes through it or ricochets away. We want to try basketball or volleyball. We think the ball is big enough that he won't lose it—"
The President was laughing so hard that it looked like he was going to lose the mug, so Nat took it. "This is research?"
"Mr. President, the delicate point I'm trying to pound home is that Harpanet is at his limit. He—"
"Mug."
Nat drank, then handed across the mug. "He's at his limit, that's all. He gets just so good and no better. We still play, of course. We all need exercise him most of all.
"Sherry's sure we're anthropomorphizing. Maybe the fithp have games we'd be awful at. But I think she's assuming symmetry where there just isn't any need for it.
"The fithp have bad hands. They're just bloody clumsy, and no wonder, with no bones in their grasping digits! I think they're a young race. God knows humanity never finished evolving in any direction, but I think the fithp are even younger than that. They're too young to have space travel. They didn't even discover it for themselves! What got them here was those great granite messages left by an extinct species. They shouldn't be here at all." -
"They're doing well, considering their handicaps."
"We need to know their handicaps. Set up a research station. You have other prisoners now. Study them. They've got a mating season-Dawson said so too, and emphasized it-and their mating practice is more reflexive than ours. Can we duplicate their pheromones and drive them nuts?"
The President was still laughing. "Somebody told me once that I'm not fit to mold the future because I'm only allowed to think up to the next election. Who is it that plans for the future of the human race?"
"Speaking." Nat took the mug, drank deeply, passed it back.
"Then why am I in charge?"
"Somebody told you it was your turn in the barrel, and made you believe it."
Coffey laughed. "That's one way to look at it. My God, when I think of what I had to do to get this job! Mr.—"
"Reynolds. Nat Reynolds."
"Nat, I ought to come down here more often, only I don't suppose I can."
"Why?"
"Mr. Clybourne. I've sent him off on an errand, but he'll be back."
"So you ignore him," Reynolds said.
"I can't do that. He's doing his job, the best he can-and maybe one day I really will need him."
You might at that
, Reynolds thought. "If you're done warming that mug—" Things got a little hazy thereafter. Nat remembered making another batch of daiquiris. Harpanet cut the melon, but he was fairly clumsy at it. He did none of the drinking. The fithp didn't use alcohol.
"There's plenty we can do. Elephant guns. We should be producing them as fast as we can. Who makes elephant guns?"
"There are people I can ask," said the President. "The British? They made a big double-barreled rifle, a 'Nitro Express'—"
"Round up all you can find," Reynolds said. "Send 'em to Africa. Somebody there can use them." He laughed. "It worries me to excess, there may be a young Zulu warrior somewhere who doesn't have an elephant gun."
"Are your stories that bloody too? Ah, I've got something. Harpanet, are you willing to speak to your ship?"
"I am. They will take it that I am speaking for your fithp."
"I know, but you can at least tell them that you were allowed to surrender. They may be afraid to try by now."
"Good," said Nat. "Now, Dawson's sign of the friendly fithp the 'Don't Bomb Me'—"
"Yeah," said the President. "Is it possible they want th
at sign so they'll know where our food sources are? So they can bomb them?"
Harpanet reared; displaced mud made a godawful sucking sound. "They would not. Bomb the local-surrender sign? They would not!"
"All right," Coffey said mildly.
"By the same token, we use it only where appropriate." Reynolds thought, If it isn't on the Bellingham greenhouse, they'll notice. If the sign is too big, they'll notice. I can't say any of that where Harpanet can hear. At that moment the President winked at him.
Reynolds looked at the foaming glass and shuddered. "What's that?"
"One of the last Alka-Seltzer in existence, you ungrateful bastard," Joe Ransom said. "And Wade found you a vitamin B!. Here."
"Bless you." Reynolds washed the tablet down. "I think it was worth it. Even at worst, he needed to get drunk. Did I save civilization? I can't quite remember."
"Yeah. We watched you from the TV in the lounge. You got him thinking about the long run. We think you put some iron in his spine."
"I hope so." Nat moved gingerly down the hall toward his room. Then he stopped. "It shook up Harpanet a bit. He told me he'd never had a conversation with his herdmaster. Much less an argument."
"He'll get over it. Now he thinks you're more important than he thought." Ransom glanced at his watch. "My turn, I guess. You know something? I hate mud. Why couldn't they like swimming in something sensible, like lime Jell-O?"
33
ARCHANGEL
We are done with Hope and Honor,
We are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
—RUDYARD KIPLING, "Gentleman Rankers"
"Did you have a good flight?" The President didn't wait for an answer. "What did you learn?"
"They're in good shape, sir," Jenny said. "The scheduled launch date was late next year, but General Gillespie thinks he'll be ready months before that."
"Good." David Coffey rubbed his hands briskly together. "The sooner the better. Jack, how's the security situation?"
"Better now that I was there," Clybourne said. "There was a bit of a problem with the local sheriff, but we fixed that. He'll cooperate now."
He sure will
, Jenny thought. "We've laid it all out," Jack said. "Like an onion. Highway patrolmen, only they're Marines. No CB radios except ours, with Army intelligence people simulating CB chatter."
"I expect you had your work cut out, rounding up all the CBs," the President said.
"Yes, sir," Jack said. "There was one place full of survivalists, mostly from Los Angeles of all places—"
"Los Angeles is in pretty good shape," the President said.
"Yes, sir, but they can't get back there. Anyway, they had a dozen radios. We got them all. They sure didn't like giving them up."
'"Sure you got them all?"
"Yes, sir."
"General Gillespie has put together a weapons team," Jenny said. "Boeing engineers. Some Navy people. Even a retired science-fiction writer—"
"Good choice. They've been useful here."
"Yes, sir. Anyway, they've invented a lot of weapons. Stovepipes. They take one of the main guns off a Navy ship. Wrap a spaceship around it. Not a lot of ship, just enough to steer it. Add an automatic loader and nuclear weapons for shells. Steer it with TV."
"Jeez. Who'd fly that?"
"They've got volunteers."
The President smiled broadly. "Good. Damn good. What else?"
"Sir, you won't believe all the stuff they're putting on that ship. Torpedoes with H-bombs. Cannon. Bundles of gamma-ray lasers that go off when the burst from the drive bomb hits them. Anything that can hurt the alien ship. One of the engineers was trying to get them to truck the old X-15 from the museum at Edwards. 'It maneuvers in space, doesn't it'?' But I don't think they'll do that. It's easier to add another stovepipe."
"And people really will fly that," the President said. "Damn all, we'll beat them yet! All we have to do is hang on until it's finished." He glanced at his watch. "Cabinet meeting in an hour. You two have been Outside. I'll want you there to answer questions. One thing, though, nothing about why you went north or even where you went. Most of the Cabinet doesn't know about Michael." The President paused. "I'm thinking about making it a total-restriction. Any who knows about Michael stays Inside. What do you think?"
Jack shrugged. "If you say so, sir—"
"I didn't necessarily mean you two. I may have to send you up there again. But everybody else, everybody who won't be going up north-why should they know? There were all these stories about UFOs kidnapping people—"
"That wasn't the fithp," Jenny said. "Sir—"
He laughed. "I know that. They're not that smooth. They shouldn't even be in space at all!" He sobered. "They evolved too fast. They're clumsy, they're bad at toolmaking. There are gaps in their knowledge, and we can exploit those. We'll win, Colonel. You know, I could even begin to feel sorry for them."
What's got into him?
Pictures flashed through Jenny's head. A doll resting on a gingham skirt — I don't feel sorry for them. But I'd rather see the President like this than ready to give up . . .
* * *
Jenny fidgeted uncomfortably. Cabinet meetings were important, but most of the Cabinet didn't know the crucial secret. It must be tough trying to run the country without knowing how we plan to win.
"Item Two. The Secretary of Commerce," Jim Frantz said.
Connie Fuller pushed her chair back as if she were going to stand, but decided against it. "I too will be brief," she said. "And, I'm afraid my report is almost as gloomy as Admiral Carrell's was.
"First the good news. A lot of greenhouses are going up. Crops are being planted in backyards, on school playgrounds, golf courses, lawns of public buildings-nearly everywhere. Given any luck at all, we won't have people starving.
"I wish I had more good news, but I don't. Most of our dams' are destroyed. So are most bridges. Some were fired on, others were washed out in the floods that followed the dams. The earthquakes got more. Mr. President, the United States is chopped up into a series of isolated regions, and there's not much we can do about it.
"The interstate highway system is destroyed. There are secondary roads and old highways, but travel on them has not been safe. Sometimes they let big trucks alone, not always. No train is safe. Ships are-often fired on."
"Even now?" the President asked. "After using Mr. Dawson's symbol?"
They all looked at Carlotta Dawson. For a moment she met their gaze with a smile, then she looked down at the table.
She doesn't know about Archangel. Shouldn't they tell her? She deserves that much—
"I was just coming to that," Mrs. Fuller said. "So far we have no confirmed report of a vehicle or installation marked with the 'harmless' symbol being fired on. We've been somewhat careful about where we use it—"
"Good," the President said. "That's vital. We must not abuse that symbol. Mr. Speaker?"
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"We need new legislation, making it an act of treason to misuse the snout 'harmless' symbol. I would appreciate it if you would get that done immediately."
The Speaker nodded slowly. "If you think that's wise—"
"It's vital, Mr. Speaker. If you insist on knowing why, I'll tell you at another time—"
"Thank you, no."
"I want strict enforcement," President Coffey said. "Any law enforcement agency is authorized to stop attempted abuse of that symbol by any means required, including destruction of the offending installation. That's important."
The Chief of Staff wrote in his book. "Yes, sir. I'll get the executive order out right away." -
"I can understand the need," General Toland said. "But the troops sure won't like taking casualties."
"Tell them to shut up and soldier," Admiral Carrell said.
We've pu
t the fithp symbol on the Archangel dome. And on the ships coming into there. No bigger than anywhere else. We had to. Otherwise we might as well paint Bomb Me on them. But if somebody paints that on an ammunition truck . . .
Connie Fuller shuffled her notes on the plastic tabletop. "We don't have much electricity. Gas pipelines are working, and some oil lines. They haven't bothered nuclear power plants. There's no reliable way to move coal, so we don't have much electricity.
"We're able to ship some staple foods, but we can't move enough foodstuffs.
"In short, Mr. President, there is no national economy."
There was a long silence. The Speaker cleared his throat.
"Yes, Mr. Dayton?"
"They don't hit nuclear plants. Seems to me there were a bunch of those stalled by red tape. All across the country. Could we get cracking and complete them?"
"A good question," the President said. "Jim, look into that, will you?"
"No problem."
There's a switch! Of course we can get them completed, if all the anti-nuke idiots stay out of the way. Including you—
"We'll need that electricity," Mrs. Fuller said. "If we have electric power, we have a civilization. If we don't—" There wasn't any point in finishing that statement.
* * *
Message Bearer
was under spin. The fithp seemed to prefer their gravity low, and Alice was near the axis anyway. The ducts curved more tightly here. She moved in low-angle leaps, against the wind, hurrying. Dust puppies tended to clump where the pipes turned, and she stopped occasionally to clean them away. She heard something ahead. She called, "Wes?"
"Yeah. How are you doing? I don't think the ducts were this clean when they were new."
She rounded the curve. "It's make-work," she said.
"Yeah, but it lets us explore. Sooner or later we'll use what we know."
"Want to make love?"
He banged his elbow.
He turned around clutching it, staring openmouthed. She started to laugh.