When Heaven Fell

by Barton, William

  No answers. Only pointless questions.

  Sometimes, they eat the whole aphid, more or less, stripping the muscles from arms and legs and back and chest, leaving a skeleton enclosing a bag of still-living vital organs. The aphids don’t bleed much and it takes them a while to die, lying in the mud, mewing softly to themselves.

  I looked down at my father and saw him looking up at me. Doubt in his eyes. A question. I turned away and walked toward the airlock door. In the background, I could hear the aphid crying. But its tail would soon grow back.

  o0o

  Shortly before noon we walked up the long hill of Airport Road toward the center of the old town, toward the Master’s house. This part of the city was already in ruins when I was in my teens, old brick buildings crumbling away, withering before the Kkhruhhuft guns. We didn’t even know who was fighting them as we cowered in our basements. Maybe no one. Kkhruhhuft just firing on the buildings to get them out of the way.

  Not wanton destruction. Never wanton destruction, which was more a Saanaae trait, or a human one, than Kkhruhhuft. But the purpose can have been small. Get this mess out of here. We need the flat ground.

  It was fun to play here during the years right after the invasion. Mysterious rubble, sometimes still giving off wisps of smoke, emitting odd little stinks. And amazing things as well. Not just all the old stores, little boutiques and whatnot, but the things in the elusive, never-visited upper floors as well.

  I remember Marsh and Davy and I poking around in the rubble of Geary Hamilton’s health salon and fitness spa, looking to see if we could rescue any of the old exercise equipment, maybe set it up in the high school gym. Most of it was twisted to pieces because the upper floors had come down on the lower, squashing all that gleaming hardware.

  The remains of the upper floor seemed to be a mess of broken ceramic whirlpool tubs and an inordinate number of rain-soaked, mold-fuzzed beds. Odd to contemplate, the three of us standing there on a cool, cloudy day, the sky a swirl of low, lumpy gray overhead, almost like smoke.

  I remember Marsh standing there with a huge, studded, Caucasian-colored vibrator in one hand, scratching his head, perplexed, What the fuck d’you suppose this is...

  And Davy bellowing with laughter, turning away, tears rolling down his face. You dumb fuck, Marsh...

  I think we already knew what we were looking at, though it still didn’t connect. Vibrators. Leather harnesses. Tub toys. The ruined torso of what appeared to be a sex-android. Well, gyndroid, anyway. I think all three of us wanted to get down and take a close look at that torn plastic crotch, but we inhibited each other.

  There were some books there too. Expensive ones, waterproof, indestructible, batteries still good, that we picked up, kind of turning away from each other so we could take a look. Just what we thought. Expensive, high grade porn. Porn for every taste, and the first one I picked up was a dreadful male homosexual thing, two powerfully muscled, bronze-blonde surfer-bodybuilder types going at each other, all blood and excrement. The next one was two women, and obviously aimed at a male viewer, rather than at lesbians, the women carefully exposing each other to the camera.

  “Fuck!” That was from Davy, and it did seem like an appropriate word to be using just now. What he’d found, however, was the house roster, nude, posed pictures of an assortment of local men and women, many of whom we knew. An unholy fascination, clicking through the pages, seeing the intimate parts of... well... the mothers of people we knew. And some girls we knew from high school. And boys.

  Maybe a big fear growing, that we’d find our own mothers-sisters-brothers-friends in here.

  “Christ.” Awe in Davy’s hushed tone. Geary Hamilton himself, looking like a faggot’s dream. And his wife Jeanine. And his daughters Jenny and Lisa. Girls our own age.

  I’d taken Lisa Hamilton out on a date once. She seemed cheerful enough, but not much interested in fooling around. It’d been a twelve-year-old’s sort of date anyway. Hard to imagine this slim, child-like, barely pubescent little Lisa playing an adult’s game.

  Then we found the guest book, lying inside a burst-open metal safe, itself a relic from a century or more ago. My father was on the list, and Marsh’s. Davy seemed pleased there was no Mike Itakë in the database.

  Hard to picture my father fucking Lisa Hamilton.

  Now, the town was bulldozed away, the top of the Hill, where they’d started building UNC, back in the 1790s, scraped flat and featureless, a level plain of crushed and angular gray gravel. Down in the woods, down in all directions, you could still see ruins among the trees and underbrush. Old East right there, I supposed, over there Davis Library. In less than a century, what little remained would be gone, nothing left but loose bricks hiding in the leaf mold.

  And, in the center of the featureless plain, the Master’s castle. Shiny, angular walls, black ceramic, like the insides of some Satanic designer’s bathtub. No windows. No antennae. No battlements. Sloping, hard walls, catching the light of the sun, reflecting a dark image of forest and ruin and faraway sky.

  My father said, “They say this stuff is an ultraviolet mirror, that the landscape all around here is lit up by UV. Anyway, after they built it, we had a little trouble with swarming honeybees.”

  I looked around. The air was clear of bugs, even the sort you expected everywhere in this climate, in the summer. “Probably all gone now.”

  He nodded. “Beekeepers all moved away, back out into the countryside.”

  The was a soft rustling in the underbrush nearby. A lone poppit, staring out at us, blue hide covered with a dusting of fresh red earth, poppit holding some kind of little tool in its forelimbs. Where there’s one poppit...

  The ground under here had to be riddled with poppit-tunnels, as on a thousand worlds where I’d been, on a million worlds I’d never seen. Maybe that’s the way poppits live at home. I don’t know. They say the poppit’s world has to be a low, swampy place, a land like the inside of a bluehouse, black and gleaming forests festooned with vines, aphids, poppit-nests. Maybe the Masters just decided, one day, that they’d figured out a better way for the poppits to live. Maybe, once upon a time, they’d run across something like ants somewhere, had recognized kinship.

  Ants. Bees. Wasps. Some kinds of eusocial moles. Even wolves and dogs, when you thought about it...

  If you thought about it at all.

  There were a pair of Saanaae guards flanking the gateway, big green centaurs holding their rifles diagnonally across their upper torso chests, faces impassive, metallic eyes the only movement, rolling to watch us as we approached.

  No sign of vocal encoders on either one. I turned to the Saanaa whose collar-brooch indicated the higher rank, a female, ovipositor just visible through the folds of her cloak, and said, “I suppose you speak English.”

  She nodded. “We’re stationed here permanently, Jemadar-Major.” Her accent was thick, guttural, with a bit of fluidity, as if she were about to spit, but the Saanaae vocal mechanism is better than ours, very adaptable.

  Stationed permanently on Earth, though. I hadn’t heard that before. “Not a punishment detail, surely.”

  She glanced at my father, who abruptly turned and took a few steps backward, more or less out of earshot. “Not quite. After the Insurrection, when our internment was ended, we were shipped here. Permanent police garrison duty.”

  I glanced over at my father. Surely this wasn’t a secret. Hell, maybe they just didn’t like him. He didn’t seem to like them much, either. I said, “I suppose I’m not surprised. You’re lucky the Masters didn’t decide to make you all slave labor.”

  There was an expression on the Saanaa’s face, unreadable. “I don’t see any difference.”

  I tapped the gun. “You would.”

  A hissing sigh, Saanaae laughter. The building chirped slightly, a peremptory sound, and the Saanaa said, “The Master is waiting. You’d better go in.”

  I beckoned to my father as the gateway slid open, familiar dim and glary light spilling o
ut. The Saanaa said, “They’ll have glasses for you inside, if you want.” I squinted and went in.

  o0o

  We waited, finally, in a vast black concourse, breathing air scented with the moist metallic smell of poppits. A smell like the taste of iron on your tongue. A hint of sulfur. And you could hear them rustling in the distance, a deep layering of tiny echoes, piled one upon the other, to an insensible depth. Not merely noise though, but an abyss of sound filled with infinite detail.

  A door in the far wall of the black chamber irised open and poppits spilled in, a gleaming black tide of them, scaly skins recolored to shimmer in the UV heavy light, a tall, slim, black-robed man walking among them.

  Like some medieval priest or evil magician-prince walking on a carpet of rats. The poppits’ feet tapped on the slick floor like a million drumming fingertips.

  When I glanced at my father I could see him seeming to shrink from the approaching flood. His eyes were slitted, squinting into the light, too hooded to read, but... People haven’t adapted, I thought. It’s only been thirty years. Sirkar’s agent. Sagoths. Serfs and slaves. Just making their way in a new world, different, and yet strangely familiar. Except for this.

  And not one of them has seen the things I’ve seen.

  The poppits swarmed all around us now, eyes reflecting the light, looking red-black, and it was easy to imagine you could hear them breathing through those open, toothy little mouths. You have to wonder, sometimes, just how the poppits feel. Individual poppits do seem quite bright at times. Not like cats or dogs, but brighter than bugs. Brighter than frogs, maybe. Almost as smart as mice.

  The robed figure standing before us swept back his cowl, revealing a dark face lit up purple by the UV, broad-nosed, with a short nap of dense, woolly hair, scalp gleaming between tight cornrows. No one I recognized, a man about my own age. He nodded to my father, “Agent Morrison.” Not Mayor, then. My father nodded back, silent.

  The man held out his hand. “My Master’s greeting, Jemadar-Major. I’m Jon Hendricks, Major-Domo for the Estate. Welcome home, sir.”

  I gripped the hand gently, feeling fragile bones, delicate, uncallused skin. “Thanks.”

  A moment of silence, my father’s soft breathing audible over the poppit-rustle, then the major-domo said, “We downloaded your service record. The Master was impressed. He’s waiting to see you now.”

  We? He? All this air of mystery, under dark, UV light. My father’s obvious fear, his reluctance to be here. They wouldn’t know how human it was. Saanaae wouldn’t tell them either, human-like as they were. Poppits couldn’t do this. Masters don’t care.

  I started to step forward, toward the still-open door, but the major-domo raised one hand, pointing at my right hip. “You’ll have to leave your sidearm, Jemadar-Major.” He held out his hand, palm up. “In fact, it’s been decided it would be better if you left your weapon here for the duration of your stay.”

  I stood still, looking at him. After a while, his eyes turned aside from my face, a quick, nervous glance at my father, whose eyes had suddenly lost their squint, despite the dim glare. “Who decided?”

  Another hesitation. “Well, the Master... I mean...”

  “Nonsense.”

  He stiffened, trying to glare at me, drawing himself to a full height that was still a little less than eye-level with me. “Rules and regulations state that only Sirkar Police go armed.”

  “Saanaae would find that pretty amusing.” I unholstered the gun, turning it in my hand so that it was butt-out, and saw him start to lift his own hand, a little surprised, but prepared to accept his victory. “Look, you’re a local, Major-Domo. Here to serve this one lone Master. Trained at Sector General, maybe.” A quick look in his eyes, reading what was there. “If you’ve been out-system at all, that is. I know your type, I know how far your authority runs.”

  “But...” Puffing up now, with anger.

  I tossed my weapon aside gently, letting it fall among the poppits. They skidded out of the way, let it bounce once, a clank-thud that neither damaged the gun nor scarred the floor, then two of them got in its path, kept it from sliding. Other poppits made a little circle, taking up their positions, going motionless, not even drumming their little feet.

  “I’ll pick it up when I leave,” I said. “You can stay here and act menacing for the Mayor. I’ll be right back.” I walked toward the open door on the far side of the room, and wondered what they would talk about in my absence.

  o0o

  Then I was walking down a long, dark hallway, listening to the echoes of my footsteps, steady, measured, hollow, hard leather on glassy ceramic, wondering how it could happen here. Here, as there, as everywhere. The natives step forward in defeat and take command, take control of the lowest levels of the Masters’ empire, feet on each other’s necks, eyes gleaming with avarice...

  Why the hell am I here? I could’ve done this from anywhere, just pulled out my phone and... Hell. Maybe I just wanted to see. People. The way a kicked cat angrily claws the whimpering pet dog. Like whipped dogs biting each other. Like the beaten bully, trouncing his lesser victims.

  The slave Kkhruhhuft, so proud of us, because we almost beat them. Saanaae centaurs with their guns, standing guard on the pitiful human homeworld, while, out there...

  Once upon at time, in an arm of the galaxy not so far from here, there was an Empire among the stars, proud green men in their proud green pseudo-starships, setting down on alien worlds, weapons of power suppressing the natives, making them into slaves. In time, it was an empire of a thousand worlds, stretching across a full twenty parsecs of space, encompassing a dozen conquered species. But the starships were like our starships. Like everyone’s starships, not real at all, nowhere to run, no place to hide when the Master Race arrived.

  Sudden transition to a starship orbiting a world called Kalareis. Green seas surrounding green continents. Pale green clouds under a bright white sun. No ice caps. Heart stuttering softly in my chest, like an echo inside that magic armor. Command circuit whispering: Make ready, Jemadar-Minor.

  Make ready. I and my havildars, their eight octals of troopers...

  Then the combat lighter diving away from the starship, plunging into the green atmosphere of Kalareis, plasma sheath lighting up around the hull, stripped air whining around us, streaming away in a bright meteor trail, deceleration plucking at us, threatening to tug the weapons from our armored, augmented grasp.

  Doors opening, winds of passage screaming in like a tongue of cleansing fire, then a daisy chain of soldiers falling through the sky, I and my men. Like some terrible band of vengeful angels, holding our weapons ready, imagining ourselves like Thor of the Lightnings. Thor and his band of warrior-heroes.

  On the surface of Kalareis, in the eyes of the Saanaae, it must have looked like their final nightmare. Streams of fire across the sky, sky then littered by millions of tiny black forms. Humans, Kkhruhhuft, a dozen species to which, perhaps, they couldn’t even put a name.

  Back to that one small scene, all I can really remember, of taking out my entrenching tool and cutting off that defeated policeman’s head. An act of kindness perhaps.

  o0o

  It was a standard black chamber, just like the ones I knew existed in Masters’ castles on endless worlds, though I’d been in only a few. The details were different though, once you looked away from the walls, once you finished squinting through the haze of glare.

  An altar here, backed by a pile of hardware. Two tall spindles on either side that looked like tiki-torches from some upscale garden party, a rich man’s party, license for a smoky, open flame paid from bottomless pockets. A standard commercial holodeck, old and a little beat-up looking, machinery in a style that reminded me of the late Fifties. Little plastic name-tag in one corner, with its faded tricolor corporate logo: Interplanetary Business Machines, Ltd.

  Look quickly now, pull aside the black curtain, find the little man, confront him, I am the great and powerful wizard...

  If only
it could be like that.

  The holodeck lit, filling the space between the tiki torches with a swirl of smoke, the outline of a dark and Satanic figure, striated with rippling interference bars that went down, halted, switched to an upward roll, faded as the figure flickered, turning to look right at me.

  The projector was poorly tuned, as if it hadn’t been serviced in a long time. “Welcome home, Athol Morrison,” it said, “Soldier of the Master Race.” The image flickered again, momentarily filling with a blizzard of colored snow, flickered and stabilized, dark, fiery eyes boring into mine.

  I wonder who thought of this. That soft black major-domo, perhaps? More likely someone higher up in the Sirkar. People who, once the war was over, once it was explained to them, once they saw how things stood, worked to secure a decisive advantage in the new order.

  I reached out and passed my hand through the image. No reaction. Whoever’d set this thing up hadn’t connected all the sensors. But when I moved, took a small step to one side, the eyes followed me, head turning to keep me in view. I sat down on the edge of the altar and listened while it told me how proud my people were of their bold son’s heroic service to the Master Race...

  Jesus.

  I undid my breast pocket flap and took out the phone, and thumbed the contact sensor. “10x9760h, logging on.”

  The image’s fiery eyes stared at me, stared and stared. Frozen. And it’s voice was displaced by the soft buzz of planetary net traffic, soft whining trill high in the background.

  A gender-neutral voice, quiet, gentle, without undercurrents: “3m8subKTR, acknowledged.”

  3m8 again. I suppose the rumors are true then, the line of 3m8 being spun out to deal with the latest addition to the empire’s resource base. Not a bad thing. It meant the Master Race had certain... expectations. Maybe. I don’t know if you can call it that. What do expectations mean when you’re a soulless, unfeeling machine? What does anything mean?

  The voice went on: “4Y1028h planetary net interrupt request acknowledged...”