When Heaven Fell

by Barton, William

  o0o

  Back in the cavern, lying against the cold plastic of the portable surgical unit, letting the Sheqarii technicians strap me in, watching one of them hand the little transceiver to one of the machine’s many small black hands. Shrêhht and her friends were just so many shadows filling up the background.

  Why?

  You ask me why, Shrêhht?

  Because I can only send so many friends off to die.

  Because, no matter how much I want to, I can’t quite become that famous man without a soul.

  And so, I give my word. Word that I will wait with you, until forever passes us by.

  The Sheqarii backed out of the way, watching, watching, and a hundred robot arms, a thousand small eyes with glittering lenses, closed in on my face. Hiss of anesthetic spray. Flicker of light as the laser laid open my scalp and cauterized my capillaries. Soft burr as a little vibrating blade of diamond cut through my skull. Soft, gentle sucking noise as a bit of bone was lifted out and carried away. Colored lights flashing behind my eyes as little spatulas pushed my brain tissues aside. An odd sort of discomfort as the hand went in, carrying its little seed.

  Snicker-snack. The crackle-hiss of organic welders.

  Then they were putting my head back together, gluing down the bone, closing my scalp, melting the skin seamlessly into place, delicate little black hands coming my hair over a livid line that would fade to white, then nothing, in a matter of days.

  Done.

  Shrêhht said, “Welcome home, Athol Morrison.”

  Home? Me? No such place.

  But I’d given my word. Which is all that matters.

  Twenty. Springtime in New York

  At the turn of the century, eight years after the last time I’d come home, in the lovely month of May, it was springtime in New York City, Sarah and I standing together at the edge of the rooftop garden of the Spahi headquarters tower, looking down on the world. Central Park was lovely and green, the little pond at the southern boundary reflecting a faultless blue sky, sunlight streaming down from a late morning sun, warm, not yet hot. Distant thunder faded as we looked eastward to the cosmodrome, watched the lighter that’d brought us here only yesterday climb back up into the heavens, brilliant violet fire blending into the sky as it arced out over the broad, green Atlantic.

  Sarah turned toward me, standing close, pressing against me, reaching up to touch the stiff cloth of my tunic’s collar, buff the silver metal of my rissaldar’s double-star insignia with her thumb, yellowish eyes shining in the sunlight, looking into mine. The night before, making love up here under Earth’s uncannily familiar stars, had been splendid, Sarah grinding against me, all passion and no reserve, until we were both exhausted, until we slept in each other’s arms.

  My pretty little girl of seventeen become a delightful woman of twenty-three, handsome, in the prime of her youth.

  She stayed, while Janice and Mira finished their contracts, went on home, becoming fast friends with Fyodor and Margie, the four of us very much at home together, making herself so much mine that, in the end, I hired no other burdars, let her serve out her contract as my only one.

  And now?

  She pressed herself against me, laid her head against my chest, tipped it back and looked up at me again, and said, “I want you to know, Athy, that I’ve enjoyed every second of all the years I spent with you. Everything. All the wonderful places you’ve taken me. All the nights we’ve spent together.”

  Looking back, a final reckoning. In all those nights I may have made love to her three thousand times. What do such numbers mean? Nothing. A man’s way of counting coup against the darkness.

  I said, “There’s really nothing to stop you from changing your mind and renewing your contract, you know that. Go home and visit your family. Come back in a few weeks and leave with me again. There are... places you haven’t seen yet.”

  Faraway look. A sense that she might be holding her breath. Wry smile. “I do wish, sometimes...” Then a slow shake of her head. “Our contracts aren’t paid off until we complete them. You know that. My parents, my brothers and sisters, their children... all squatting in the ruins, living off the forest. Waiting for me to come home and save them.”

  “The rules are changing. Maybe...”

  She put her small hand over my mouth, delicate fingers sealing my lips. “They’ve been waiting for a long time. I have to go.”

  A decision made. Regrets and yearning put aside. I said, “What will you do?”

  That faraway look again. “I had a boyfriend before I... left. His name was Marty. They tell me he’s been waiting, all these years, for me to come home.”

  Waiting? What could it mean to wait alone, lying in cold darkness, night after long, hard night, while the woman you loved voyaged out to the stars and lay beneath some hulking soldier’s body? Not something I wanted to imagine.

  She kissed me lightly on the lips, and said, “When you come home again, drop by and visit me. I’m sure my family would like to meet you.”

  I could imagine. Dark, scowling people, men and women knowing what I’d put their little Sarah through, just so they could live in the faux-freedom of relative wealth. “I’m sure your husband won’t like that.”

  She smiled. “Marty? He won’t say a word. No one will. The money is mine, after all...”

  Slight shock of recognition. Little Sarah. Pretty little Sarah. Soldier of the Master Race.

  She put her hand to her throat, undid the little brooch of green jade and silver that held her collar shut, began unbuttoning her blouse. “Make love to me one last time, Athy. It’ll be lovely up here in the sunlight...”

  o0o

  A day passed, and another, then Lank and I were walking through the cool, damp woods between Chapel Hill and Carrboro. A difficult homecoming, this time. Lank still smiling, of course, hugging me when I got off the train in Durham, wearing his rector’s cassock, telling me, during the long ride home, about all the things that had happened.

  Politics for himself, standard for the Church. Of how he’d risen to head the Chapel Hill parish, of how thick he was with the bishop... Who knows? The Archbishop of North Carolina’s eighty-four now, Athy. When he goes, Bergmann will take over the Archdiocese, and...

  And of course you know Chief Catalano is dead? A group of his senior troopers just got him out of bed one night about a year ago, marched him off into the woods and shot him. Sirkar hasn’t done a thing. Bastard got what was coming to him...

  I’ll take you by Mother’s grave tomorrow. We buried her up on top of Mount Bolus, on the hill behind the monastery, where she gets a good view of... everything, I guess. Dad hasn’t been the same since she killed herself. Spends a lot of his time down at Davys...

  Oddny? Well, not around anymore. I tried to get hold of her, tell her you were coming home, but... She’s tied up with some people calling themselves the Mountain Folk. Living on up in West Virginia somewhere, well away from any bustee clusters. I guess no one’s going after them, so they can sort of pretend...

  Anyway, she has a little boy now, I hear. Named him Marshall.

  As the sun went down and the sky turned indigo, we rounded the fallen remains of Carr Mill Mall, paused by the little stairwell leading down to the door, the still-functional neon sign that said, DAVYS, listening to the remote thud of the diesel generator.

  Lank said, “Your sure you want to go in?” He gestured at my uniform.

  Inside the club, I could hear a combo playing, three pieces I thought, a 12-string guitar, drums, thudding acoustic base. Playing a song I’d heard even out among the stars, a pleasant little ballad called “Poppit Love.”

  I said, “Sure.” He shrugged, looked away for a moment, then we went in.

  First image that of my father, old man sitting down at one end of the bar, glassy-eyed, unlabeled bottle of whiskey-colored liquor on the bar at his elbow, drinking from a juice glass filled with same. Turning to look at us. Then looking away. Tipping the glass to his lips, swallowing. No
reason for a man to be so pathetic, to build up that lost-soul image. We love our little roles, no matter how stupid.

  Davy standing behind the bar, rag in hand, just looking at us. A much older Davy, bald now on the top of his head, long black hair streaked with gray. Lines of his face deepening, foreshadowing the Davy of old age. Mousy little Asian woman standing in the background, his wife, hard anger on her face.

  We stood at the other end of the bar, and Davy came to us. Stood there, exhaustion like pain in his eyes. “Hello, Athy. Welcome home.”

  I nodded, sitting on a bar stool. “Hello, Davy.” A difficult silence, then I said, “Did you understand why it had to happen?”

  He held up his right hand, index and middle fingers gone about halfway up, tip of his thumb no more than a knot of white scar tissue. He took a bottle from under the bar, this one rather old, with a familiar, faded red label, took out two glasses, poured two drinks, pushed one in front of me. “Understand? Hell, maybe I did.” He lifted his glass. “Was hael, old friend.”

  His forgiveness was harder to take than hatred would have been.

  o0o

  A little later in the evening, I walked alone, northward along what was left of Greensboro Street. Grass and weeds had broken up the old pavement and saplings were starting to rise here and there. It’d been close to forty years since anyone’d repaired this road. Nature would finish it off soon.

  Lank told me they’d be gathering up Carrboro’s people soon, within the year, moving them to the Chapel Hill bustee, or shipping them off to the new agricultural colonies down in the Louisiana bayou country. And that would be that. Buildings would fall and decay, trees grow up around them, rain soaking the old wood, bits of glass and cement disappearing in the leaf mold.

  In a thousand years, there’d still be signs people had once lived here, but tenuous signs, archeologists’ spoor. Overhead, the stars were laid out in full battle array, the moon a thin sliver down by the horizon, hardly lighting the world. Quiet now, no whisper of wind, my footfalls loud in the darkness. Murmur of faint voices, dark shadows ahead, a small gathering of men, lurking in a grove of old trees, ornamental trees on what had once been a well-off citizen’s front lawn.

  I could feel them eying me, or thought I could, remembering those dark shadows of yesterday, remembering the men I’d left lying on this same road, while Alix stood by silently and watched. The last footfalls I’d heard here had been the lone survivor running away. Maybe he was here now, standing among the trees, watching me. The whispers stopped, but all they did was watch.

  Alix’s house, finally. Almost dark, looking, even in the gloom, all the more dilapidated, shadows of peeling paint visible here and there. The top of the chimney broken off, jagged stump outlined against the stars. There was dim light from the living room window, spilling around a pattern of jagged, taped lines. Brighter light from the back of the house, softly illuminating the trees.

  So what do you do now, Rissaldar Athol Morrison, commander of sixteen thousand, of the third brigade, seventh division, of Legion IX Victorious? Go ahead and knock, see who comes to the door? Or just stand here for a little while, fiddling with your memories, then go away forever. She knows you come back. Lank said so. Maybe she’s waiting for you. Or maybe not. Lank wouldn’t say, just, “Your decision, Athy. You do what you think you have to...”

  I rapped softly on the door.

  There was a long silence, more than a minute in which I made and rejected the decision to turn around and go several times. Then the door’s latches snapped and the deadbolt slid back. When it opened, I was looking at the height of a tall woman’s face. Expecting her certainly...

  A small, thin girl, prepubescent, straight black hair tied in a ponytail, broad face with high cheekbones, wide brown eyes curious, dressed in a boy’s teeshirt that hung down over bare thighs. Not even ten years old.

  The girl looked over her shoulder. “Mom?”

  Alix stood in the shadows by the far wall, cradling a heavy shotgun, ten-gauge I thought, the sort of thing you’d use, loaded with dumdum, to shoot a big deer. Aimed at my chest. The barrel wavered and fell, and, voice nearly inaudible, she said, “Oh, God. You look just the same.”

  o0o

  Inside the bright, warm kitchen, there were dishes on the old oak table, the remains of a finished-off supper, smell of fried chicken in the air, pots and pans on a woodstove cobbled together from sheet metal and some parts of an old electric unit. Smell of smoke. Cups of steaming red tea on the table, bowls of what looked like rice pudding.

  Alix gestured, “Would you like some?”

  “Some tea, please.”

  She poured it while I sat, put the cup in front of me and offered a bowl of raw sugar, pale brown and granular. “We used the last of the milk in our deserts, I’m afraid...”

  The little girl came and sat in her chair, took a sip of her tea, saying nothing, staring at me, still wide-eyed. Looking as if she were waiting for me to say something important. All right. You know what’s happening here.

  Alix stood behind her chair, watching me spoon sugar into my tea, five full, gluttonous teaspoons. A little thicker in the waist, her own long, curly hair tied up with a headband. Bits of silver hiding among the curls. Crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes. Deep lines around her mouth. A suggestion of jowls. Alexandra Moreno, still handsome at fifty.

  She said, “I was hoping you’d stop by. This is my daughter, Kaye.”

  I smiled at the little girl and said, “Hello, Kaye. My name’s Athy.”

  She glanced up at her mother, still holding that deep, unanswered question, found, I suppose, silencing pain in Alix’s eyes. Then she grinned at me, and said, “That sounds like a girl’s name.”

  I laughed. “Sure does! I got into a number of fights over it when I was your age. How old are you, Kaye? eight? Nine, maybe? You’re a big girl”

  She glanced at her mother, then said, “I’m only seven.”

  “Her birthday,” said Alix, “was just two weeks ago...”

  Well, of course.

  o0o

  An hour and more went by, while we sat and talked aimlessly about nothing. I coaxed the little girl into my lap and beguiled her with stories about life on other planets. Told her some things that sounded very much like storybook adventures, about the time I and my squad got thoroughly lost in a scarlet jungle on a planet we called Krypton, tall, golden mountains shining above the trees.

  Alix sat back and listened, face somehow troubled, not quite sad in the steady, slightly glary light of the kerosene lamp, reaching out to adjust the vapor feed when the mantle began to hiss and whine. Time for bed, she said. Kaye looking at her face, looking for cues. What to say. What to do.

  We walked to a little bedroom, full of lacy little girl things, toys and dolls and tattered-looking old paper books. Alix undressed her in front of me, little girl unselfconsciously naked, continuing to chatter away about this and that while her mother pulled a thin linen nightie down over her head, lay down on her bed and let the sheets be tucked up to her chin.

  She had a healthy child’s body, muscles about as well-defined as a child’s can be. Hips slim, bones sturdy-looking, as if they’d be hard to break. I remembered the way she’d felt sitting on my lap, and thought about some of the Spahis I’d known, people who were good soldiers and interesting friends. Burdarage has trouble providing for people like that, but sometimes it’s done. That little girl they gave to Mickey Frangellico looked a little bit like Kaye. I’d gotten used to seeing her at his crib, seldom dressed in much more than a pair of thin cotton briefs. Gotten used to seeing the hollow, aching depths of that little girl’s eyes.

  Then, back in the living room, Alix and I were alone, facing each other, our only light the dim glow that spilled through the kitchen door, the wan light of a crescent moon outside, about ready to set over the trees.

  She said, “I’m awfully glad you came, Athy.” Eyes searching mine. “I’ve done nothing but think about you, these past eight y
ears...”

  I had the decency then, to feel just a moment of stark, disbelieving horror.

  o0o

  Darkness, the Moon gone down, lamps extinguished. Bedroom curtains drawn apart, window thrown open so a gentle night breeze, cool, not cold, could wash in, slide across soft, naked skin. Alix lying beside me, handling me, lying on her side, one leg straight beside mine, the other drawn up, opening herself to me, opening herself for my hand.

  Holding me close, whispering into my neck, warm breath, meaningless murmurs, breasts rubbing against my chest, far softer than they’d been even eight years ago. Her hands on my abdomen, marveling at all the still-youthful solidity she found there.

  “I’ve known men of thirty,” she said, “who felt older than you.”

  Image of that old nightmare army, all of Alix’s temporary husbands, stopping by her bed one by one, easing her on her way to the grave. How much longer? Ten years? Twenty? Thirty, at most. In thirty years I wouldn’t seem so young any more, there are limits to what good habits and costly medical technology can do. But I’d still have a long time to go. A long road before old age would look back at me out of the morning mirror. By then, every childhood friend I ever had would be long dead. All the young burdars grown old.

  Everyone gone but my dear, beloved soldiers. I thought, briefly, about Rissaldar-Minor Wu Chingda, about my brigadier-adjutant, Jemadar-Major Kathy Lee Mendoza, saw their faces floating in the half-light of imagination. They would still be with me, when all the others had gone. Or would be, if they survived. I thought about Solange Corday.

  Thought about her, while I made love to whatever was left of Alix Moreno. Turned myself face down upon her and tasted familiar flesh, felt familiar tissues swell under my tongue. Still that left of you, at any rate. Still that same bright shiver of pleasure, the same whispered words of simple happiness I’d first heard thirty-five years and more ago, making love to a fresh and lovely young girl in the woods behind Chapel Hill High.

  When it was over, we lay in one another’s arms, looking out at the stars together, and Alix said, “How do you like your daughter, Athy?”