“Do that.”
He held out his hand then and said, “Havildar-emeritus Ari Velasquez, late of XVII Magnificent.”
I took his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Athol Morrison, uh,” no more X Invincible, “IX Victorious,” I said.
“Been away long, Jemadar-major?”
“Since the beginning.”
An understanding nod. “Well, we’ll get your papers in order and get you right on the road.” He gave me a broad smile then: “Welcome home, sir.”
Three. The Coastal Monorail Home
Later, having said my good-byes to Shrêhht, having agreed to meet her again in New York in time for the Gosudar’s Ceremony, I rode the coastal monorail home. The sun rose in a pale, bright blue sky, tinged with the faintest touch of gray, while we slid above the tangled, overgrown ruins of New Jersey, following the broken line of the twentieth century’s famous I-95 corridor.
City without end, an urban sprawl that had lasted for centuries, all gone now. Scrubby pine trees growing up over everything, tangles of weeds and brush and swamp. I can’t even remember what it used to be like, a nine-year-old boy, excited about his vacation trip to the Moon, remembering nothing more than that odd, persistent smell. And my father saying, “I don’t know, Athy. It’s always smelled like this...”
From inside the closed, air-conditioned train, looking down on a brushy wilderness, at bits of old habitation peeking up between the branches of stunted-looking trees, I couldn’t tell if it had any smell at all.
The monorail line crossed the Delaware River on tall pylons, high above the flattened rubble that had once been Philadelphia, crushed stone, in muted tones of tan and gray, stretching away to the horizon, stretching away from bay and river and forest. Both of the big craters were full of water now, looking almost like natural lakes, very different from the way they’d looked the last time I’d seen them.
Red, raw, wounds in memory, full of mist, though the bombs that’d made them had gone off more than a decade before. Friendly fire, it’s called. Missiles aimed at Kkhruhhuft-bearing Master Race warships missing their targets, arcing back down through the stratosphere, two twenty-megaton warheads exploding, digging bloody great holes in the Earth. I don’t have the slightest idea how many people died in that instant. Six, seven million, maybe? In the context of a war that took eight billion human lives, it hardly seems to matter.
In a little while, we were over Washington, DC. I sat back in my comfortable train coach chair, reclining just a bit, drinking a fizzly little drink, something mostly mineral water, barely touched by the taste of some ginger-flavored brandy, and looked down on a chaos whose making I remember well.
I can’t remember why we were in DC the day the Kkhruhhuft came down out of that particular sky, why my father chose to take the whole family away from Chapel Hill, where we seemed almost safe. The invasion had already been going on for days, hundreds of millions already dead, Kkhruhhuft lighters dropping everywhere, disgorging their fangy cargoes.
Memory. Of our ground car squealing through city streets, bumping hard, up-down, up-down, as my father, cursing, ran right over a crowd of running pedestrians. My mother crying. My brother and sister screaming. And me, pressed to the rear window, watching, full of wonder.
Watching as a Kkhruhhuft lighter staggered down out of the sky, falling at an angle, trailing smoky fire, obviously damaged somehow, running in a long curve, low overhead as we fled down the Mall, driving right over the grassy parts, some poor bastard bouncing off the car door, splashing the glass with his blood.
The Kkhruhhuft ship hit the base of the Monument and exploded, ball of brilliant yellow-red fire rising, me thinking, Haven’t I seen a video of this, somewhere, sometime? I expected the obelisk to fall like an axed tree, but it didn’t, instead breaking into countless little pieces, falling straight down into the fire of the exploding ship.
We were across the Potomac and roaring down some wide, crowded highway when white light flared behind us, blinding, making me squeeze my eyes shut, listening to my father’s wordless shout. I remember a tall column of boiling, fiery smoke then. And I remember the wind. Hot wind, driving mist before it.
As the train ran out over the northern Virginia countryside, over heavily wooded land in which the abandoned roadbeds of old highways could still be made out, a woman came and sat beside me, sinking gently, gracefully into the adjacent seat. She was a pretty woman, young, slim and muscular, dressed in plain clothing, sun-streaked brown hair combed and pinned just so, skin tanned and smooth, looking at me out of the corners of gray-green eyes. Attentive.
And wearing the same dog-collar and tag I saw on most of the train’s passengers. Serfs, I guess they should be called. Serfs of the resident Masters, on errands, though of what sort I couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to imagine.
She leaned toward me, looking into my face, eyes flickering as she tried to sneak quick looks at bits of my uniform, at my badges of rank and service. “Are you a mercenary?”
I glanced at her, wondering, and nodded.
She held out her hand. “I’m Shelly,” she said, and, almost automatically, “Six-oh-six, fifty-one, Concourse Seven, Virginia.”
As if I should, somehow, know what that meant. I took her hand, intending to shake it briefly, assuming that was still the custom on Earth, but she held on, fingers squeezing mine gently, smiling. I said, “Athol Morrison, jemadar-major, IX Victorious.” And could tell from the look in those oh-so-attentive eyes that she didn’t know what it meant. Just a man in a uniform, someone not wearing a collar.
Her hand was on my thigh, resting gently about half way between knee and crotch. I pulled my hand out of hers, reached down and took that other hand away, and said, “I’m really very tired, Shelly. Sorry.”
The look of disappointment in her eyes was acute. And I wasn’t really tired, either. Still, this is... home? I didn’t want to think of these people as just so many burdars available for my use. Maybe I would want to be one of them, if I could only figure out who and what they were. Had become in my absence.
I seemed to drift for a while after that, hardly noticing that she remained by my side, sitting, shifting position from time to time. Eyes on me perhaps? I only sat back and watched Virginia flit by underneath us. Richmond, I knew, would still be there, had still been there the last time I’d come this way, heading north for the departure port on my way to Mars.
I don’t think I knew then just how long it would be before I’d come home again. Just that it would be a while.
The people in the train car mostly stayed in their seats, every now and again someone rising and going to the little restroom, leaving for the club car and coming back with a bottle or two of pale yellow beer. I was the only one the porter had come to proffering a drink. And I was the only one who appeared to have an anxious little prostitute fretting by his side.
There was a small, thin, pale man sitting up near the front of the car, holding a long leash that ended in two naked Boromilithi, miserable looking, chained together at the neck, staring back at the rest of us.
Every now and again a pair of Sirkar Native Police, uniformed in their dull reddish brown, would come down the aisle, looking at people, paunchy men with something of a truculent, hard-bitten look. And seeing me, look away, nervous. The pretense of toughness come upon the real thing.
Once, when they’d gone by, I heard one passenger whisper to another, “... bloody damned sagoths...”
Sagoth. Odd word that. And it was as if I knew the word, could almost remember it. Right there, from far away, buried under layers of memory. I couldn’t recall anybody using it in the few years I lived here between the Invasion and my enlistment. The Sirkar wasn’t organized yet. Kkhruhhuft still occupied our world. The Saanaae were just beginning to arrive. There weren’t any Native Police to call sagoths.
There was a quick flash of light from outside, momentarily brightening the day, suddenly sharpening my senses, flush of adrenaline quickening my blood. Where? Sitt
ing forward. On the western horizon, where the hills steepened, marking the Fall Line, a faint blossom of yellow-orange fire. Flash. Another. Flash. Another. Three distant plumes of blue smoke starting to grow. People in the train looking out the windows, murmuring to each other, careful, indistinct remarks I couldn’t quite make out.
Shelly had her hand on the chair’s armrest, looking past me, looking out at the smoke and fire. Something in her eyes now other than a wish for my... patronage. A tinge of fear.
Behind her, in the aisle, the two policemen watched as well, one of them touching the other on the arm, so they made a posed tableau. I gestured at the smoke and said, “ What’s happening up there?”
They looked at each other then, nonverbal communication that said, Careful. Careful. The shorter and heavier of the two men rubbed a jaw that needed shaving and murmured, “Don’t know. A little trouble perhaps.”
A little trouble. Perhaps. “What sort of trouble?” I could feel Shelly’s hand on my arm again. Trying to tell me what?
The man looked at me, eyes measuring. Maybe troubled, maybe just... careful. Who knew how much trouble an offworld soldier could make for some poor little Sirkar policeman? He said, “Well. You know. I guess... I guess it’s the same on other worlds. Newly overrun worlds. People who aren’t ready for it yet. People who can’t just be... contented.” Eyes tinged with anxiety.
I looked away from them, back out at the distant fires, plumes of smoke already falling behind us, dropping below the wooded horizon. Surprised to hear that from some little provincial cop, but, yes, put that way, I did indeed know. Shelly’s hand was on my thigh again, as if she’d decided to take advantage of the distraction.
Then, thunder from outside, making me lean toward the window, looking up. A pair of big, black, stub-winged jetcopters were outlined against the blue sky, trailing plumes of light smoke, fairly high up, laying a quick thud of machine-noise down in their wake. Troop carriers. A Saanaae design I’d seen before, in use wherever the Saanaae were used as a high-echelon police force. Jetcopters headed back up the line toward those columns of smoke.
I looked at the two policemen, watched them glance at each other again, turn and walk away. Shelly’s hand on my thigh was still. And some lethargy was keeping me from either pushing her away or acting on the invitation.
The sound of the jetcopters faded quickly and was gone. A terribly familiar sound. Heard mostly on newly suppressed worlds. Newly overrun was what the cop had called them.
Sudden image out of memory, jetcopters howling overhead, bringing Saanaae down on us as we fought. Image of myself in armor, a raw young trooper engaged in his first real combat, wading through a sea of gore, cutting down scaly, muscular green centaurs, slaying them, slaying them, like some mythic hero battling the demons of old.
Fire and smoke and hemoglobin-red blood. All theirs, none of it ours.
Because they make good police. And we make good soldiers.
I’d had no idea why those particular Saanaae were in rebellion, or even why the rebellion spread so quickly. Something to do, perhaps, with the people of the world they were policing. People who looked like tall, slim, red spider-horses, not at all like the Saanaae. All I remember is that we killed them all.
One single image stuck, freeze-frame, in my heart. A wounded Saanaae trooper lying in the mud of that faraway world, fearful, metallic, inhuman eyes reflecting the blood-red light of a sunset sky, holding his empty pistol pointed at me. Waiting.
I only looked at him for a moment. Then I powered up my entrenching saw and cut off his head.
Shelly had her hand in my crotch now, rubbing gently, pressing against the heavy, twilled fabric of my trousers, feeling the beginnings of a physical response I hadn’t even been aware of. She was reclining against my side, head on my shoulder, neck arched, head tipped back, so she could rub her lips against the side of my face.
Did she intend to do me right here in the train car?
I glanced around. No one else in the car was looking, all heads facing away, most of them staring out at the scenery. Carefully not looking, I supposed.
I sat up straighter, turning in the seat, putting my back to the wall, pushing her away so I could see her face. “What is it that you’re looking for here? I can tell you’re not a full-time professional whore, Shelly. I’ve known too many.”
She looked away from me and seemed to blush, a very pretty effect. “I...” Nothing, faltering, unable to meet my gaze.
I reached out and took her by the chin, tipping her head back, forcing her to look at me. “Just tell me. I won’t punish you.” That same phrase said a thousand times, to burdars and servants, humans and nonhumans, even animals I thought might somehow understand.
She said, “Would you buy me?”
Rent? Or really buy, the word she’d used? The look on her face not quite shame, something else, tinged with a particle of hope. Whatever it was, I suppose it didn’t really matter. I smiled at her. “It doesn’t work that way, Shelly. We own nothing. Not even our lives.”
Silly of me to say something like that. What could it possibly mean to her?
She said, “Would you buy me if you could?”
I grinned, reached out and ruffled her hair with a hand almost large enough to engulf the top of her head. She leaned in close, putting her arms around my chest, then tried to reach between my legs again. I held her tight for a minute, preventing her from going on, held her until she got the idea, then turned away again, letting her go, and sat looking out at the blue skies and green forests of what had once been my homeworld.
o0o
When the train pulled into the station in Durham, twenty kilometers east of Chapel Hill, I didn’t know what to expect. The trip down hadn’t been especially promising, an endless succession of mixed-deciduous forests passing below, odd swatches of piny woods, ridges of hill country, the occasional overgrown ruin, looking like not much of anything.
Not much left of Durham either, what had once been a city of more than a million now just a forest of tall, straight trees through which you could glimpse the remains of a few shattered buildings. I got out of the train, holding my one small suitcase, and stood looking toward the west.
It was a beautiful day, late afternoon sun standing halfway up the sky over distant, almost invisible blue hills, a small wooded rise in the foreground, cool breeze blowing across my face, stirring my hair gently. Not as I remember it. Not at all.
“Athol Morrison?”
I turned and there was a small, plump man looking up at me. A small man with a familiar-looking face, dressed in a somber brown cassock, neck-laces untied to reveal a black shirt and priest’s white collar tab. Very familiar face, though... Good grief. “Lank?”
He grinned then, a sunny smile that I remembered well, and stepped forward to take me in his arms, a tight little hug I could barely feel. My brother Lancaster was twelve years old the day I went away. Nobody’d sent me any pictures of him, and now he was a pudgy middle-aged man in priestly robes. Nothing left of the boy but his smile.
He said, “Welcome home, Athy. Welcome home.”
That unexpected lump in my throat made me feel silly. I held him at arm’s length, grinning, looking him up and down. Thin, soft arms squeezed in my big hands, the feel of his soft body through the robes... and a shadowed look in his eyes. Uncertainty. “Jesus, Lank. I never thought I’d see you again!”
“We always hoped we’d see you again, Athy...” He stepped back, letting me go, standing there, looking at me. At the size of me, my height, the scars on my face, the big, knuckly hands, his eyes resting for an unsteady moment on my holstered sidearm. Finally, an uneasy smile. “My God, what’ve they done to you? Drugs?”
What would he be seeing now? A tall man, made to seem shorter by his breadth, thick at waist as well as shoulder, big blunt hands, big square face. That sharp white scar reaching from forehead to chin, passing right over the left eye. Brown eyes, though, still intact. Clear. Steady. Untroubled. As if they’d
never seen a thing.
It made me conscious of the tension from my own muscle tone, making me stand up straight and tall where another man my age might slouch just a little bit. The way Lank was slouching even now. I ran my hand over one arm, feeling corded muscle, and shook my head, tried to return his smile. “Good food. Rather a lot of exercise.”
He nodded slowly, but I imagined I could see him think,...and killing. Killing makes you stand so tall. He turned away then, gesturing. “Come on, boy. There’re people waiting for you.” He led me away, down a flight of stairs to the rubble-filled woods below.
Lank’s car proved to be a battered old electric four-wheel-drive vehicle docked to a charging post in the parking lot below the train station. As we got in, Lank patted the dashboard and said, “She’s a reliable old thing, she is, salvaged from junkyard parts like most of the others hereabouts.” He pushed the starter and watched the indicators light up, mostly old-fashioned idiot lights, then hit the undock button.
When we got out onto the road, I could see the pavement was cracked away to rubble and mud, weeds growing up through all the cracks, some clumps so large, regular bushes, that Lank chose to drive around them rather than risk his undercarriage.
We went down a long, rather lumpy hill, through a tall stand of slim white pine and out into a broad, grassy field, car bumping over ruts left by other traffic, turning west, following a line of trees, through which I could see more collapsed buildings.
Here and there, little curls of smoke came out of shattered windows and I could see strings of washing hanging from clotheslines, shirts and pants fluttering like worn-out flags. A man standing with an axe in one hand mopped his brow with a rag as he watched us go by, then turned back to his enormous pile of logs.
Chopping firewood. I could remember doing that all through the summers between the Invasion and my enlistment. The whole world without electric power. Chopping wood all summer long, just a half-hour a day, as part of my chores, so I wouldn’t have to chop wood out in the winter cold.
When Heaven Fell Page 4