When Heaven Fell

by Barton, William

  Hell. What was she thinking right now?

  More silence, me touching her here and there, all the while thinking about my next homecoming, thinking about Solange, thinking about Hani and the other burdars. Thinking that I’d have a decent meal again at last.

  Then Alix said, “I remember the day they killed Mike Itakë.”

  I almost jumped at the sound of her voice, loud against the night, let my fingers grow still, splayed across one buttock, thumb lined up along the crease of her thigh. Let myself wait for her to continue.

  She said, “Your father was there that day, standing in the skeleton of the new bluehouse. And Chief Catalano. A party of sagoths. They had a Kkhruhhuft standing by. No Saanaae, though. The first squad wasn’t to show up in Chapel Hill for another year or two...”

  Easy enough to visualize the scene.

  “It was winter,” she said. “We’d had a snowfall a couple of days earlier, just an inch or so, most of it already melted away. Little bits here and there, wherever there was persistent shadow...”

  Her voice almost dreamlike.

  She said, “You know, your father said he was sorry that day. Told Davy’s dad he was sorry it had to happen. Then he stood back and watched. Chief Catalano shot him in the head with a little gun, just the way they shot Marsh today. Shot him and he fell right down, just like Marsh. Shaking and staring at us, just like Marsh. Then he died and they wrapped him up in a bloody sheet, took him out and threw him on a pile of burning construction rubbish. He smelled good when he burned...”

  All of it said as if she were describing some dinner party that’d gone slightly awry.

  I said, “Was Davy there?”

  She shook her head. “He stayed with his mother that day. Mike told them to stay away. He knew what was coming.”

  “Marsh?”

  A nod. “He’d been in the Native Police for about six months by then.”

  Inevitably, there’d be shock, followed by survivor syndrome, then as now. She ran her hand over my stomach, down into my crotch and found me erect, encircled my penis with her hand and squeezed gently.

  Almost a whisper: “Want me to suck you?”

  I felt my insides clench, a hard pulse of revulsion at myself, soft pity for her. And the worst of it was, I did want her to suck me. I took her hand away, and said, “Maybe later, Alix. Why don’t you try to sleep now?”

  A long moment of silence, then she started to cry again, delicate, high-pitched whimpering that made me hurt way down deep, where I couldn’t push it away.

  o0o

  Woodland mountain night, those same repellent stars shining down, bits of insensate metal embedded in the black velvet backdrop of the sky. How is it we all come to have so many complex feelings about something as meaningless as a stone? The Moon was rising behind me, still much more than a quarter away from New, its beams making ghost light across the ledge, casting black shadow down into the forest below.

  Alix and I had dressed again against the very slight chill of a late summer night, against the whisper of wind across our bodies, were sitting again, dreaming away into the darkness. At last, she turned over onto her side, rump settled firmly against my hip, and went to sleep, her breathing a distant, slow sigh.

  God save me if I ever sleep again. Surely, now, there will be nightmares...

  Don’t be so silly, Athol Morrison, Jemadar-Major, Spahi of the invincible Tenth Legion. Soldier of the Master Race. How does the line go? This too shall pass. They weren’t really your friends. You hardly knew them at all.

  And Alix?

  I put my hand on her, felt her stirring gently, ribs moving in and out, beneath my touch. You still wish you’d let her do what she asked, don’t you? You can almost feel her lips and tongue massaging your flesh, can’t you? Well, yes, when you put it that way...

  But what about all those feelings?

  Hogwash.

  Human bonding instinct, that’s all. And mythology telling you if they sex with you, it must mean something. Because if it doesn’t, then...

  There’s always that little twinge when a burdar finishes out her contract, takes her bonus, goes on home to hearth and family and something a little like freedom. Just a little tiny twinge. I thought... I thought... Then the next one comes, and strips herself for you, spreads her legs, smiles into your eyes, whispers encouragement in the night.

  Just setting yourself up for the next little twinge, that’s all...

  Shadow. Movement.

  Sudden sharp spasm of attention, eyes hard on the edge of the cliff. Something like a big spider muscling itself into view. Stopping. Looking at you. A big spider with a mass of machinery strapped to its back, a glitter of lenses, a spiky forest of tiny antennae.

  Oh, Jesus. I laughed out loud. “Hi. Been following us long?”

  Nothing. Motionless.

  Alix stirred against my side, put her hand up to touch me, and murmured, “Who’re you talking to?” A terribly sleepy drawl, almost unaware. Another moment of silence, then she twitched, sat up on one elbow, looking toward me, eyes half open. “Athy?”

  I gestured toward the poppit.

  She looked. Jerked hard, banging her head against the rock ledge, came up into a crouch, muffling a scream with her hands.

  The poppit turned to look at her, but the lenses of its rider stayed fixed on me. From somewhere, a soft, impersonal voice said, “Remain here, 10x9760h. A flier will come tomorrow at dawn and pick you up.” A soft chirring sound, muttered commands of some sort, a familiar sort. The poppit walked backward over the edge of the cliff and was gone.

  Alix’s hands were like mechanical talons digging into my arm, her breathing hard and fast. She said, “How did it find us? And why...” Words quick, tumbling over each other.

  I considered taking the phone out of my pocket and showing it to her. Decided not to.

  And now there was a look of sick horror in her moonlit eyes. She said, “Did your presence here... bring down the attack on...” Unable to finish. Unable to take her eyes off me.

  Well. Does she know the truth or not? Does it matter?

  I said, “No, probably not. I’m sure they knew about your group for a long time...” Which was, technically, the truth. Marsh’s dossier file had been quite complete. All I’d done was fix a date for his execution.

  Go on. Keep on telling yourself that. Sooner or later you’ll believe it.

  Alix put her arms around me again, holding me close, shivering. After a while, she relaxed into my lap, went back to sleep. And I watched the stars until dawn.

  Fourteen. Nothing Real Anymore

  A few days of travel, like a dream, nothing real anymore, everything ground away to dust, and then we were back in Chapel Hill, and then I sat by myself in the semi-darkness of the Master’s fake reception chamber, old communications interfaces shut down and silent, Saanaae guards, surly major domo and poppits banished, dressed in my uniform, gun strapped to my hip where it belonged.

  I took the phone out of my blouse pocket, opened it up, laid it down on the ledge beside me. Logged in, Level Five-high. Talked to the router system, told it where I wanted to go.

  Let me address just one node. Let me talk to the local Master, somewhere in this house of glass and ceramic and stone, under the ground maybe, surrounded by its horde of little blue poppits, vapor condensing out of the air, rolling to the floor around it, dissipating.

  That same impersonal voice, no way of knowing what it really was. Maybe there’s no one Master. Maybe they’re all one. It’d make sense, considering what little we know about them. It.

  The star-faring race. The conquerors. Immortal. Uncaring. Invincible. Omnipotent. No one knows where they came from, though speculation abounds. No one even knows when they arose, or if the rumors about the empire’s longevity are even true. Seventeen thousand years? A hundred thousand? A million? In the context of a universe more than twenty billion years old, no such span of time has any meaning.

  Maybe the Master Race was around when the d
inosaurs died. Maybe they saw the supernova that gave rise to Earth’s stellar nursery flash across the dark gulf between the stars. So what? They are here now, everywhere now, and what difference does it make?

  So what do I want to tell you, my Master? I want to tell you that I betrayed my friends, sent them all to die, because I want my people to live. And I don’t even know if that’s the truth.

  I want to ask why you let it happen. Why are you say careless about these things? Why don’t you care what happens to us?

  No answer. Then the soft voice, whispering to me out of shadow: Make your report, 10x9760h. Make your report. Cold. Subtle. Beyond our ken. Do I want to believe the Master Race is God? No. Of course not. They don’t care if a sparrow falls...

  Or a man.

  File the God-damned report, then. Tell them what you saw. What you did. Why you did what you did. And tell the bastards what they ought to do to keep it from happening again. And again. And again.

  No answer. Just: Thank you, 10x9760h. You may go now.

  Howl of background traffic from the phone, routers signing off, hand to hand to hand, then silence.

  o0o

  I walked alone through the forest north of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, following the course of Bolin Creek, walked among the trees where Alix and I had dallied after our first night back together. Remembered seeing her in Davy’s bar. The fight out in the street, Alix standing by, waiting while I killed the scum for her. Remembered the feel of her against my chest.

  Paused by the clay pit and watched the slaves stagger under their loads. The Saanaa guard stood impassive, watched the whippings, listened to the grunts and moans of all those dirt-smeared men and women, watched them slip and fall, get up again, stagger on.

  There was a naked man lying under the trees nearby, obviously dead for some hours, starting to swell now, starting to stink, blood settled in his back, livor mortis, yet his face was so very pale. His eyes appeared to be open, but it was an illusion. Something had already eaten them away, leaving dark pits behind.

  Walked on among the trees, went and sat on the little hill behind the high school, looking down over the athletic field. The same football team was there, practicing hard now, for school would open next week and things would get serious. Hard grunts from the big boys on the line as they slammed into each other, or bounced off a round medicine ball of a young center. The quarterback was a tall, handsome, muscular boy, golden curls showing under the rim of his helmet, the right end a slim, long-legged girl with straight, streaming black hair. I could tell from the way they put their heads together when they talked that they had something going.

  Ball snapped back to fading quarterback. Fleet-footed girl easily outdistancing her pursuers. Hard grunt of effort from the quarterback, getting the ball away just before the enemy took him down.

  Shiny brown ball spiraling up in the sun, floating on high, like a Kkhruhhuft patrol boat, pausing at the top of its arc, starting down, accelerating. The girl didn’t even turn, just watched its descending shadow, put her hands up at the right moment and let the ball come in for a landing, tucked it next to her breast, went on through the goal.

  Looks like they might have a winning season this year.

  Walked through the muddy streets of the Chapel Hill bustee and remembered the People’s Republic of the Hereu. It was a little town, a peasant village really, just like this, under a dark, blue-gray sky on a far away world, first-magnitude stars dimly shiny through, even during the day. The sun was a bright spark, remote, tiny, tinted red, and Hereu was a small, dense world circling a K7 star at the outermost edge of its ecosphere. Another few million kilometers and the combined efforts of an active geochemical cycle with an extensive biosphere would have been useless.

  Here, the Hereu themselves, laboring to survive, laboring for the Master Race, whose motives none of us can understand.

  We were stationed there only briefly, I never knew them well, I never understood what moved them to rebel, to fight us with simple bows and arrows and stone-tipped spears, spindly little blue men, looking themselves like so many upright insects, charging us with their chittering war-cries, then dying. Dying well.

  I stood with their leaders on that last day. Watched silently as they whispered to each other with their little bug-voices. Touched each other, looked into each other’s shoebutton eyes. When they were ready, they came and stood in the middle of their council chamber, the same room where they’d made the decision, not so long ago, to rebel. The leader motioned to me, whispered something, and they got in line.

  We never had a language in common, always communicated through Master-supplied vocal encoders.

  I went to the far end of the line, the end away from the leader, unsnapped my holster, took out my sidearm and snapped the slide. A couple of them suddenly went weak in the knees, staggering, struggling to stay upright, some briefly reaching out to touch their comrades.

  Courage. A better world waits.

  That’s always the drill, isn’t it?

  They had things that looked a little like ears, and I new where the thin spots of their braincases were, where the central nerve plexi lay. I put the muzzle of my gun close to a good spot and fired. Bang. Dark gray blood on the nearby wall. The bug-man fell, and all the others turned, involuntarily, to look.

  Walked down the line, bang, bang, bang.

  These were neat beings, well constructed. Blood always coming out the front side, seldom splashing back. I remembered what a problem it can be, shooting humans like this. Especially if you use a higher-energy charge. Can’t get to close then, for when the tops of their heads fly off, blood and brains will go all over the place, will splash right back in your face.

  Only the leader left now. Standing there, impassive, not shaking, not staggering. Hard to know with a non-human. Motionlessness may indicate extreme terror. Or even that he’d died from fear, limbs locked in place.

  When I tapped him on the shoulder, he jerked, staggered, half turned, face twisted to look at me with those light tan eyes, six little diamond-shaped pupils clustered together at the center, like holes through which the thread holding them on could pass...

  A soft whisper, in alien speech.

  I lifted my gun and shot him between the eyes. He grunted and sat down, lifted one hand to a caved-in face, fell over on his back, whispered another bug word or two, and was still.

  Later, we burned the building and everything in it, made all the villagers gather round to watch.

  o0o

  Now I sat alone on my father’s deck, watching the sun set, the sky darken, the familiar starry night open up overhead, the stars themselves whirl round and round.

  All right then, you did it for all this.

  Because the civilization of the Master Race is your civilization, all that you or anybody else will ever have. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again. No reason to be troubled just because this time your own folk were the troublemakers.

  Oh, shit. Talk on. Talk on.

  Square your shoulders. Hold your chin high, Jemadar-Major.

  I am part of this great machine, a civilized order I am sworn to uphold. What I’ve done is no more than my duty.

  And no less.

  Go home now, Jemadar-Major. Your work is hardly begun.

  I could feel a tightness in my throat, a slight soreness, could feel my teeth clench and my eyes squint, until the stars began to blur. Took a deep breath. Another. All right. This isn’t doing anyone any good.

  And anyway, what’s done is done. Get over it.

  But when I went back to my room, when I wanted to go to sleep, I ripped down the old icon of my goddess and tore her to pieces, trampled her lovely curves under the heels of my boots. There were other people in the house, Lank, Oddny, my mother and father. No one seemed interested in my little noises.

  o0o

  After one more day of useless wandering around, of ignoring my family’s eyes, of dodging my own recriminations, I wound through the shadows of my final night,
up through the woods to Carrboro, past the darkened doors of Carr Mill’s basement, past a lightless sign that nonetheless said DAVYS, and found myself at Alix’s door, standing alone under the lifeless stars.

  Dim light through her livingroom window, but I could not bring myself to peek inside. I didn’t imagine she’d be on the couch masturbating. Or waiting by the relic of some long-dead phone, waiting for me to call.

  For one brief moment, I couldn’t even imagine that she was still alive.

  Time to say good-bye.

  I knocked. Silence, then soft footsteps inside. Someone breathing behind the door, looking through the peephole. Cessation of breathing. Would she walk away, go back to her couch, wait for me to leave? I suppose I hoped so.

  I heard the latch snap, the deadbolt slide back, heard her hand on the knob, watched the door swing open. And she stood there looking up at me, eyes dark, face shadowed by curls, wrapped up in a stained old white terrycloth robe. Looked at me in my uniform, collar buttoned right up to my throat, gun holstered on my hip. Stepped back from the door and let me come in. Sat with me on the couch, a careful distance away, touching me nowhere, staring at her dimly-glowing lamp, fire rolling in all the little mantle-holes, filling the room with a delicate tang of kerosene.

  I said, “I’m going home tomorrow, Alix. I’ve come to say good-bye.”

  She turned and looked at me, eyes glinting softly, trying to look into mine once again, one last time. She said, “I always hoped this would be your home, Athy.”

  I shook my head. “These aren’t my people, Alix. They never were.”

  “And me?”

  What did she want? What was she still imagining, if anything? Should I ask her if she wants to come with me, wants to come be my burdar, share my bed with Hani and all the others? No. She’d have to go to burdar school first, then they’d assign her contract, and someone else would get her.

  I could only shrug.

  She said, “They’re all gone anyway, Athy. I’m the only one left.”