Not One of Us

by Neil Clarke

  A few people joined up with the refugee stream, abandoning the city for the Interstate and solid, trusted ground to the west. But most of the city remained close to home. People didn’t know enough to be properly terrified. Some heard the same stories that the Army heard about the Night Side. But every truth had three rumors ready to beat it into submission. Besides, two hundred thousand bodies were difficult to move. Some cars still worked, but for how long? Sparks and odd magnetisms shared the air with a hundred comforting stories, and what scared people most was the idea that the family SUV would die on some dark stretch of road, in the cold and with hungry people streaming past.

  No, it was better to stay inside your own house. People knew their homes. They had basements and favorite chairs and trusted blankets. Instinct and hope made it possible to sit in the dark, the ground rolling steadily but never hard enough to shake down the pictures on the wall. It was easy to shut tired eyes, entertaining the luscious idea that every light would soon pop on again, televisions and Google returning in force. Whatever the crisis was, it would be explained soon. Maybe the war would be won. Or an alien face would fill the plasma television—a brain-rich beast dressed in silver, its rumbling voice explaining why the world had been assimilated and what was demanded of the new slaves.

  That was a very potent rumor. The world had been invaded, humanity enslaved. And slavery had its appeal. Citizens of all persuasions would chew on the notion until they tasted hope: property had value. Property needed to be cared for. Men and women sat in lounge chairs in their basements, making ready for what seemed like the worst fate short of death. But it wasn’t death, and the aliens would want their bodies and minds for some important task, and every reading of history showed that conquerors always failed. Wasn’t that common knowledge? Overlords grew sloppy and weak, and after a thousand years of making ready, the human slaves would rise up and defeat their hated enemies, acquiring starships and miracle weapons in the bargain.

  That’s what the woman was thinking. She was sitting beside the basement stove, burning the last of her Bradford pear. She was out of beer and cigarettes and sorry for that, but the tea was warm and not too bitter. She was reaching for the mug when someone forced the upstairs door open and came inside. She stopped in mid-reach, listening to a very big man moving across her living room, the floor boards complaining about the burden, and for the next mad moment she wondered if the visitor wasn’t human. The zoo had ponies. The creature sounded as big as a horse. After everything else, was that so crazy? Then a portion of the oak turned to fire and soot, and something infinitely stranger than a Clydesdale dropped into the basement, landing gently beside her.

  “Quiet,” said the man-shaped demon, one finger set against the demon mouth.

  She had never been so silent.

  “They’re chasing me,” he said with a little laugh.

  He was wearing nothing but a clumsy loincloth made from pink attic insulation. A buttery yellow light emerged from his face, and he was hotter than the stove. Studying his features, the woman saw that goofy neighbor boy who walked past her house every day. That was the boy who was standing outside just before the aliens crashed. Not even two days ago, incredible as that seemed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m no monster.”

  Unlikely though it was, she believed him.

  A working spotlight swept through the upstairs of her house. She saw it through the hole and the basement windows. Then it was gone and there was just the two of them, and she was ready to be scared but she wasn’t. This unexpected adventure was nothing but thrilling.

  The boy-who-wasn’t-a-monster knelt low, whispering, “I’m having this funny thought. Do you want to hear it?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you know why we put zoo animals behind bars?”

  “Why?”

  “The bars are the only things that keep us from shooting the poor stupid beasts.”

  WAR OF THE WORLDS

  Whatever is inevitable becomes common.

  Fire is inevitable. The universe is filled with fuel and with sparks. Chemicals create cold temporary fires and stars burn for luxurious spans, while annihilating matter and insulting deep reality, resulting in the most spectacular blazes.

  Life is inevitable. Indeed, life is an elaborate, self-aware flame that begins cold but often becomes fiercely hot. Life is a fire that can think and then act on its passionate ideas. Life wants fuel and it wants reasons to burn, and this is why selfishness is the first right of the honest mind. But three hundred billion suns and a million trillion worlds are not enough fuel. Life emerges too often and too easily, and a galaxy full of wild suns and cold wet worlds is too tempting. What if one living fire consumed one little world, freely and without interference? Not much has been harmed, so where is the danger?

  The danger, corrupting and remorseless, is that a second fire will notice that conquest and then leap toward another easy world, and a thousand more fires will do the same, and then no fire will want to be excluded, a singularly awful inferno igniting the galaxy.

  Morality should be inevitable too. Every intelligence clings to an ethical code. Any two fires must have common assumptions about right and about evil. And first among the codes is the law that no solitary flame can claim the heavens, and if only to protect the peace, even the simplest and coldest examples of life must be held in safe places and declared sacred.

  The city was exhausted, but it was far from quiet. The ground still rumbled, though the pitch was changing in subtle ways. Mice were squeaking and an owl told the world that she was brave, and endless human voices were talking in the darkness, discussing small matters and old regrets. Several couples were making spirited love. A few prayed, though without much hope behind the words. A senile woman spoke nonsense. And then her husband said that he was tired of her noise and was heading outside to wait for the sunrise.

  Bloch was standing in the middle of Pender when the man emerged. This was the same old fellow who saw his brave oak stop the rolling spaceship. Cranes and a National Guard truck had carried away the useless egg case. Extra fragments and local dust had been swept into important buckets, waiting for studies that would never come about. But the human vehicles were left where they crashed, and Bloch saw every tire mark, every drop of vigorous blood, and he studied a blond Barbie, loved deeply by a little girl and now covered with dried, half-frozen pieces of her brother’s brain.

  The old man came out on his porch and looked at the apparition, and after taking careful stock of everything said, “Huh.”

  Nobody was hunting Bloch anymore. The initial panic and search for the monster had spread across the city and then dissolved, new and much larger panics taking hold. One monster was nothing compared to what was approaching, and the army had been dispatched to the east—Guard soldiers and policemen and a few self-appointed militia hunkering down in roadside ditches, ready to aim insults and useless guns at the coming onslaught.

  The old man considered retreating into his house again. But he was too worn down to be afraid, and he didn’t relish more time with his wife. So he came down the stairs and across the lawn, leaning his scrawny body against the gouged trunk. Pulling off a stocking cap, he rubbed his bald head a couple times, and using a dry slow voice explained, “I know about you. You were that kid who climbed inside first.”

  Bloch looked at him and looked East too. Dawn should be a smudged brightness pushing up from a point southeast. But there was no trace of the sun. The light was purple and steady, covering the eastern horizon.

  “Do you know what’s happening to you?” the old man asked.

  “Maybe,” Bloch said. Then he lifted one hand, a golden light brightening his entire arm. “A machine got inside me and shouldn’t have. It started to rebuild me, but then it realized that I was alive and so it quit.”

  “Why did it quit?”

  “Life is precious. The machine isn’t supposed to build a weapon using a sentient organism.”

  “So you’re what
? Half-done?”

  “More like three percent finished.”

  The old man moved to where Bloch’s heat felt comfortable. Looking up at the gray face, he asked, “Are you just going to stand here?”

  “This is a fine place to watch the battle, yes.”

  The man looked east and then back at Bloch. He seemed puzzled and a little curious, a thin smile showing more in his eyes than his mouth.

  “But you won’t be safe outside,” the boy cautioned, new instincts using his mouth. “You’ll survive longer if you get into your basement.”

  “How long is longer?”

  “Twenty or thirty seconds, I would think.”

  The man tried to laugh, and then he tried to curse. Neither worked, which was when he looked down the hill, saying, “If it’s all the same, I’ll just stay outside and watch the show.”

  The purple line was taller and brighter, and the first trace of a new wind started nudging at the highest oak limbs.

  “Here comes something,” the man said.

  There was quite a lot to see, yes. But following the man’s eyes, Bloch found nothing but empty air.

  “That soldier might be hunting you,” the man said.

  “What soldier?”

  “Or maybe he’s a deserter. I don’t see a gun.” This time the laugh worked—a sour giggle accompanied by some hard shaking of the head. “Of course you can’t blame the fellow for running. All things considered.”

  “Who is he?” Bloch asked.

  “You don’t see him? The old grunt walking up the middle of the road?”

  Nothing else was alive on Pender.

  “Well, I’m not imagining this. And I wasn’t crazy three minutes ago, so I doubt if I am now.”

  Bloch couldn’t find anybody, but he felt movement, something massive and impressive that was suddenly close, and his next instinct touched him coldly, informing him that a cloaked warrior had him dead in its sights.

  “What’s our soldier look like?”

  “A little like you,” the old man said.

  But there was no second gray monster, which made the moment deliciously peculiar.

  “And now he’s calling to you,” the man said.

  “Calling me what?”

  “‘Kid,’ it sounds like.”

  And that was the moment when Bloch saw his brother standing in front of him.

  Matt always looked like their father, but never so much as now. He was suddenly grown. This wasn’t the shaved-head, beer-belching boy who came home on leave last summer. This wasn’t even the tough-talking soldier on Skype last week. Nothing about him was worn down or wrinkled, yet the apparition carried himself like their father did in the videos—a short thick fellow with stubby legs churning, shoulders squared up and ready to suffer any load. He was decked out in the uniform that he wore in Yemen, except it was too pressed and too clean. There was a sleepless, pained quality to the face, and that’s where he most resembled Dad. But those big eyes had seen worse than what they were seeing now, and despite cares and burdens that a little brother could never measure, the man before him still knew how to smile.

  “How you doing, kid?” Matt asked.

  With the doll-voice, Bloch said, “You’re not my brother.”

  “Think not?”

  “I feel it. You’re not human at all.”

  “So says the glowing monster decked out in his fancy fiberglass underwear.” Matt laughed and the old man joined in. Then Matt winked, asking Bloch, “You scared of me?”

  Bloch shook his head.

  “You should be scared. I’m a very tough character now.” He walked past both of the men, looking back to say, “March with me, monster. We got a pile of crap to discuss.”

  Long legs easily caught the short.

  Turning the corner, Bloch asked where they were going. Matt said nothing. Bloch looked back. The old man had given up watching them, preferring to lean against the wrecked Buick, studying the purples in a long sky that was bewitched and exceptionally lovely.

  “We’re going to the zoo,” Bloch guessed.

  Matt started to nod and then didn’t. He started to talk and then stopped himself. Then he gazed up at the giant beside him.

  “What?” Bloch asked.

  “Do you know what an adventure is?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, you don’t,” Matt said. “When I was standing outside the barracks that night, texting you, I figured I was going to die. And that didn’t seem too awful. A demon monster was dropping from the heavens and the world was finished, but what could I do? Nothing. This wasn’t like a bomb hiding beside the road. This wasn’t a bullet heading for me. There wasn’t any gut-eating suspense to the show, and nothing was left to do but watch.

  “Except that spaceship was just a beginning. Like the softest most wonderful blanket, it fell over me and over everything. An aspect found me and fell in love with my potential. Like you’ve been worked on, only more so. I learned tons of crazy shit. What I knew from my old life was still part of me, still holding my core, but with new meanings attached. It was the same for my unit and the Yemeni locals and even the worst bad guys. We were remade and put to work, which isn’t the same as being drafted, since everybody understood the universe, and our work was the biggest best thing any of us could ever do.”

  They passed the house where Bloch spent the night, hiding in the basement. “What about the universe?” he asked.

  “We’re not alone, which you know. But we never have been alone. The Earth wasn’t even born, and the galaxy was already full of bodies and brains and all sorts of plans for what could be done, and some of those projects were done but a lot of them were too scary, too big and fancy. There’s too little energy to accomplish everything that can be dreamed up. Too many creatures want their little piece of the prize, and that’s why a truce was put in place. A planet like the Earth is a tempting resource, but nobody is allowed to touch it. Not normally, they aren’t. Earth has its own life, just like a hundred and six other planets and moons and big comets. And that’s just inside our little solar system. Even the simplest life is protected by law and by machines—although ‘machine’ isn’t the best word.”

  “We live in a zoo,” Bloch said.

  “And ‘zoo’ is a pretty lousy word too. But it works for now.” Matt turned at the next intersection, taking a different route than Bloch usually walked to school. “Rules and regulations, that’s how everything is put together. There’s organizations older than the scum under our rocks. There’s these systems that have kept the Earth safe from invaders, mostly. But not always. I’m telling you, this isn’t the first time the Earth has been grabbed hard. You think the dinosaurs died from a meteor attack? Not possible. If a comet is going to be trouble, it’s gently nudged and made safe again. Which is another blessing of living inside a zoo, and I guess we should have been thankful. If we knew about it before, that is.”

  “What killed them?”

  “The T. rexes? Well, that depends on how you tell the story. A ship came out of deep space and got lucky enough to evade the defensive networks— networks that are never as fancy or new as is possible, by the way. Isn’t that the way it always works? Dinosaurs got infected with aspects, and the aspects gave them big minds and new skills. But then defenders were sent down here to put up a fight. A worldwide battle went pretty well for the defenders, but not well enough. For a little while it looked as if maybe, just maybe the Earth could be rebuilt into something powerful enough to survive every one of the counterattacks.”

  “But the machines above us managed one hard cleansing attack. Cleansings are a miserable desperate tactic. Flares are woven on the sun and then focused on the planet, stripping its crust clean. But cleansing was the easy trick. Too much had to be rebuilt afterwards, and a believable scenario had to be impressed into the rock, and dinosaurs were compromised and unsafe. That’s why the impact craters. That’s why the iridium layer. And that’s why a pack of little animals got their chance, which is you and
me, and the next peace lasted for about sixty-five million years.”

  Small houses and leafless trees lined a road that ended with at tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

  “This war has two sides,” said Matt. “Every kind of good is here, and there is no evil. Forget evil. A starship carrying possibilities struck the earth, and it claimed half of the planet in a matter of minutes. Not that that part of the war has been easy. There’s a hundred trillion mines sitting in our dirt, hiding. Each one is a microscopic machine that waits, waits, waits for this kind of assault. I’ve been fighting booby traps ever since. In my new state, this war has gone on a hundred years. I’ve seen and done things and had things done to me, and I’ve met creatures you can’t imagine, and machines that I can’t comprehend, and nothing has been won easily for me, and now I’m back to my big question: Do you know what adventure is?”

  “I think I know.”

  “You don’t, kid. Not quite yet, you don’t know.”

  The fence marked the zoo’s eastern border. Guardsmen had cut through the chain-link, allowing equipment too big for the service entrance to be brought onto the grounds. Inside the nearest cage, a single Bactrian camel stood in the open, in the violet morning light, shaggy and calm and imbecilic.

  Bloch stepped through the hole, but his brother remained outside.

  The boy grew brighter and his voice sounded deeper. “So okay, tell me. What is an adventure?”

  “You go through your life, and stuff happens. Some of that stuff is wild, but most of it is boring. That’s the way it has to be. Like with me, for instance. The last hundred years of my life have been exciting and ordinary and treacherous and downright dull, depending on circumstances. I’ve given a lot to this fight, and I believe it’s what I want to do. And we’ve got a lot of advantages on our side: surprise; an underfunded enemy; and invading a target that is the eighth or ninth best among the candidates.”

  “What is best?” Bloch asked.

  “Jupiter is the prize. Because of its size, sure, but also because it’s biosphere is a thousand times more interesting than ours.” Matt stood before the gaping hole, hands on hips. “Yeah, my side has its advantages and the momentum, but it probably will fall short of its goal. We’ll defeat the booby traps, sure, and beat the defenders inside their redoubts, but we probably won’t be ready for the big cleansing attack. But what is happening, if you care . . . this is pretty much how the Permian came to an awful end. In four days, the Earth became something mighty, and then most everything went extinct. That’s probably what happens here. And you know the worst of it? Humans will probably accept the villain’s role in whatever the false fossil says. We killed our world from pollution and heat, and that’s why the fence lizards and cockroaches are going to get their chance.”