I dreamt the past was never past redeeming: But whether this was false or honest dreaming I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
—RICHARD PURDY WILBUR, "The Pardon"
The funeral pit was a cylinder of soil, garbage, bones, and what remained of the honored dead, all being gradually churned into an indistinguishable matrix. Instruments sampled the blend for acidity, bacterial population, temperature. The atmosphere within was unbreathable. Workers in pressure suits maintained a cavity in the matrix, open at the fore end. They had removed several tons of it into the Garden to make room for this day's funeral proceedings.
The cold had preserved Fathisteh-tulk. His eyes looked off at different angles. As lines lowered him to join the Silent Fithp, his digit-cluster bent strangely above the nostril. One eye met Pastempeh-keph's. My breath was closed with rope, and then with mud. Why both? What might I have said that I did not say while alive, who never hesitated to speak? Who closed my mouth with mud?
The Herdmaster shook his head. I will learn. He had already spoken his formal farewell to today's half-dozen dead, recognizing posthumous accomplishments, sometimes authorizing upgrades in harness colors before a corpse was stripped for burial.
Elaborate funeral practices had evolved among the spaceborn during three generations of interstellar flight. Inevitably they were geared to a life in spin gravity. The funeral pit was on the ship's axis. Ceremonies were held in the leavetaking chamber, a partial ring along the lip of the funeral pit, where spin gravity was almost nil. Today's ceremony obeyed tradition. The main drive was running at high thrust; the hum of it was everywhere; yet there was almost no acceleration.
Pastempeh-keph sensed the immense mass against which Message Bearer was pushing. Message Bearer was even now issuing its final direction to the nickel-and-iron residue of an icy moonlet. She must break loose within a 512-breath, or ride the Foot down to Winterhome. Had a lesser personage led these rites they might have been postponed until after the maneuvers; but after they separated from the Foot, there would never again be time. Fathisteh-tulk deserved all honors. And even if he did not, I could not seem niggardly in granting honor to a former Herdmaster!
Chowpeentulk watched through glass as Fathisteh-tulk came rest in the moving earth. Her digits wrapped the child and held it to her throat to suckle. He was male, eight days old. Under light thrust he would already have walked. In nearly free-fall he drifted with waving legs. He seemed to enjoy it.
"My mate was murdered," Chowpeentulk said. "Who?"
"I face too many answers," Pastempeh-keph said. "Your mate was never careful of whom he might offend."
She trumpeted wildly. The child, startled, flung its stubby digits across its head and tried to burrow between Chowpeen-tulk's legs. In the minuscule thrust its efforts lifted her from the floor. It was strong for a newborn.
The loss of dignity slowed her not at all. "This crime was committed against the whole of the Traveler Fithp!" she bellowed. "Sleepers and spaceborn, how can we hold together unless the murderers face judgment?"
The Herdmaster let silence follow, letting Chowpeentulk see how the others, the fithp and the little clump of humans, stared at her. Then, "We will solve this. You know that I like puzzles. Do you also know that I must fight a war?" He looked into the funeral pit. "Farewell, Fathisteh-tulk. You have too much company."
He joined Takpusseh as they were leaving. "Fathisteh-tulk had always the virtue of asking interesting questions," he said. "Now I must find my own."
"You will have an Advisor," said Takpusseh.
"Bah. Siplisteph will have to be trained. Breaker-Two, did Fathisteh-tulk ask you interesting questions?"
Takpusseh snorted. "I did not find them so. He wanted to interview the humans in privacy."
"Why?"
"He would not say. The humans are not his thuktun. I told him that I myself would translate, and that I would inform you of all that transpired. He declined. He said that he would simply wait for me to do my job."
"Very proper," said Pastempeh-keph. "Did he propose questions for you to ask?"
"He did not."
A pity. "Will you be on the bridge during Footfall?"
"No. To think of humans as enemy or prey would ruin my empathy with them . . . such as it is."
* * *
Tashayamp left them at the cell door. "You will stay in place. Be prepared to cling to the walls. First that wall, but change walls when you are warned. The direction of pull will change often. Before each change you will hear this." She trumpeted, then spoke in a breathy trombone chant. "You understand? Good."
They went to the bulkhead. Jeri dug her nails into the rug.
"It is indelicate," Arvid said. "But they gave no indication of time. It would be well to use the facilities while we are able."
"Good thinking," Dawson said. "Ladies first."
Nobody else wanted to be first, so Jeri went. It wasn't so bad now that Arvid and Nikolai had rigged a blanket to enclose the shallow pool.
Jeri went back to the wall. "Melissa, I want you here."
"If you do not object, I will stay with you also," Arvid said.
"Thank you."
"What did you think of their funeral rites?" Arvid asked.
"My anthropology teacher said funeral rites were the most important clues to a tribal culture," Jeri said. "But I think that was because she was an archaeologist, and graves are about the only things they can find with anything important in them."
"The Predecessors must like bad smells," Melissa said. "Because that place stank."
Gary giggled agreement. Jen said, "There, that's what I meant. There's nothing arbitrary aboard a spaceship. They don't have to put up with that smell. They want it. It must be part of the funeral, the sense that the dear departed is turning into fertilizer, then plants, then—"
Arvid said, "You understood more of his speech than I."
"I got some of it too," Wes Dawson said. "The long speech by the priest. He talked about Fathisteh-tulk 'coming back to Traveler Fithp.' I wondered if he meant in person."
"Do you think they believe in that?" Jen asked.
"Dunno," Dawson said. "The body recirculates. Maybe they think the soul does too."
"I think not," Arvid said. "Else why would they make no mention of the newborn one?"
"The Predecessors are always with us," he said. "How could that other species join the Traveler Fithp? Their bodies recirculate and there are the thuktunthp, but—"
"Of course they do not believe bourgeois myths of gods and immortality," Dmitri said. "There is much to admire in these fi'. They work together, and if need be they give their lives for the herd."
John Woodward sniffed loudly and turned away.
"That one didn't," Alice said. "The widow said he was murdered, and the Bull Elephant wasn't happy about it, either."
"An interesting mystery," Arvid said. "Who might have killed him?"
"We'll never know," Dawson said.
"Why do you say that?" Dmitri demanded. "The Leader told the widow that he would find the murderer. He has great resources. Why would he fail?"
"Why would he tell us? If he did, would we know the name? Hey, I read mysteries too, but I expect to know the names of suspects!"
"The Bull isn't a detective," Jen said. "He has too much else to do. And—people, I'm kind of scared. All this violent maneuvering, they're going to do something special, but what?"
"I am very much afraid we all know," Arvid Rogachev said.
Jeri took a fresh grip on the wall carpeting.
* * *
"Major! Major, wake up!"
Jenny sat bolt upright. "Yes, Sergeant?"
"Message from Australia, ma'am. They've seen it!"
Oh my God. She strained to open her eyes and peered through sleep at her watch. Five A.M.
"Comin' fast, about an hour to impact," Sergeant Ferguson said.
"The Admiral—"
"Mailey already woke him up. 'Scuse me, ma'am, I got to get the others."
The Threat Team had split into two groups around the coffeepot and the large globe. Ransom and Curtis already had coffee, and were tracing paths on the globe.
"Water. I was sure of it," Ransom said.
"Sure," Curtis muttered. "Why at bloody dawn?"
"Why water?" a naval officer asked.
Ransom didn't look up from the globe. "Lieutenant, a meteorite that size actually does more damage if it hits water. It'll rip through the water and the ocean floor into the magma. The energies don't go back to space; the water absorbs them, and you get even more heat from the exposed magma. It all goes into boiling the ocean. We think a quarter of a billion tons of seawater may vaporize. Salt rains all over the world—"
Jenny shuddered. "How many people will it kill?"
"Lots," Curtis said. "Look." He traced a path northward from the Indian Ocean. "Bays. They funnel the tsunamis, let them build even higher before they break. Calcutta, Bombay, the Rann of Kutch—all gone. Persian Gulf, same thing. East Africa—"
"We have to warn them—"
"I'm sure the Aussies have done that," Ransom said.
"It does not matter." Admiral Carrell's voice was even.
Jenny reflexively straightened to attention. "Sir?"
"We have no reliable communications with East Africa. I believe that Mr. Ransom is correct and that the Australians have sent a warning, but if not—"
"They'll know soon enough," Curtis said. "What about ships? Subs? We still have communications with the submarine fleet, don't we?"
"In fact, yes," Carrell said. "Our long-wave devices still function. I have already given the appropriate orders."
Reynolds came over with coffee. Curtis pointed to a spot on the globe. Reynolds bent to examine it.
"Tsunamis. Hurricanes. I wish we knew exactly where it'll hit," Curtis said. "Maybe we could tell just how much weather slop will get into the Northern Hemisphere."
"Lots," Ransom said. "It's too near the equator."
"Mess up both hemispheres," Reynolds said. "Neat."
"Fear, fire, foes," Curtis muttered. "Tsunamis, hurricanes, rainstorms . . ." He stood with a satisfied look. "One thing, it won't hurt Bellingham."
"That's a comfort," someone said.
"Goddam right it is," Curtis said. "About the only one we've got."
"As strategy it's hard to beat," Joe Ransom said. "Look when the tidal waves—"
"Shut up," a young naval officer shouted. "Later, man, but for now just shut up."
Jenny bent over to listen as Curtis and Ransom continued to talk.
To the east: the island of Madagascar would shadow Mozambique and South Africa, a little. The waves would wash Tanzania, Kenya, the Somali Democratic Republic, wash them clean of life. Northeast, it would wash the Saudi Arabian peninsula. The Arabian Sea would focus the wave; a mountain range of water would march into Iran and Pakistan. That's the end of OPEC, Jenny thought with a flash of vindictive triumph. The end of the oil too . . . India would be covered north to the mountains. The Bay of Bengal would focus the wave again: it might cross Burma as far as China. The islands of the Java Sea would be inundated. The wave would wash across western Australia . . .
"My God," the naval officer said in sudden realization. "They'll try to land afterward, of course, but where?"
"That's why it's such a—"
"Marvelous strategy, yes, Mr. Ransom," Admiral Carrell said. "Where would we send our fleets? India? Saudi Arabia? Australia? Africa?"
"South Africa," Curtis said. "Look here. Most of the industry and white population are down at sea level. Tsunamis will wreck all that. Beyond the coast is the Drakensberg escarpment, up to the high plateau country, and that'll survive just fine. So they land at Johannesburg and Pretoria and they have themselves an isolated industrial foothold."
Admiral Carrell bent over to examine the globe. "Perhaps—"
A horn warbled through the room. "Now hear this. Ten minutes to estimated time of impact."
The room fell silent.
* * *
Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph felt the tiny thrust decrease further as he made his way to the bridge.
Matters there ran over smooth trails. Koothfektil-rusp turned to say, "The Foot is on target. The Defensemaster may break us loose at any time."
"Do it," said Pastempeh-keph. "Defensemaster, you lead now." He settled himself on his pad and set his claws on the recessed foothold bars.
A recording bellowed for attention throughout the huge ship. "Take footholds! Take footholds! Thrust in eight breaths."
The Herdmaster's claws tightened on the bars. What can go wrong? The drive won't fail us; we've been running it steadily for many eight-days. The prey can't possibly stop the Foot now. If they could harm Message Bearer, they would have acted earlier—
Message Bearer surged steadily, smoothly backward, swinging round to face outward from Winterhome.
As the pitted and gouged mass of nickel and iron moved away, a magnificent blue-and-white crescent moved into view. Thrust built up, and the Herdmaster felt himself sagging into the pad. His muscles, grown slack in low gravity, protested. He welcomed the feeling of gravity.
At a thrust higher than homeworld gravity, acceleration peaked. Then the motors on the digit ships began to fire, and thrust rose again. The crescent was dead aft, growing tremendous. Message Bearer was accelerating outward and backward from Winterhome.
The Foot would strike ahead of Message Bearer. The impact point would still be in view.
The Herdmaster summoned a view of the humans' quarters. They'd reached the restraint cell safely; they were on their bellies on the padding. It looked uncomfortable.
Thrust dropped in increments as pairs of digit ships left their moorings around the aft rim. The Herdmaster watched their pulsing drive flames curve away. They must decelerate more drastically to take up orbit about Winterhome. The last four merely took up station alongside the mother ship. If something deadly rose from Winterhome, they might be of help.
But nothing broke the curdled clouds. The terminator swung round until half the disk was lighted, and the Foot was invisible against the night side. There, just inside the shadow, a red pinpoint flare! The pinpoint glowed orange, then white, then blinding white, all within the fraction of a breath. Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph contracted his pupils. It wasn't enough. He turned away. The lurid light on the walls of the control complex flared, and held, and dimmed. He turned back.
A white flare was dimming, expanding, reddening. Rings of cloud formed and vanished around an expanding hemisphere of flame. Clouds spread outward through the stratosphere, hiding what was beneath.
Fistarteh-thuktun spoke formally. "Our footprint is on their sea bed."
"Attackmaster, it's right in the middle of that stretch of water. Is that where you wanted it?"
"Exactly on target," said Koothfektil-rusp.
"Well done."
Message Bearer was passing Winterhome at sixty makasrupkithp per breath; but Winterhome's rotation kept the Footprint in sight. A fireball stood above the planet's envelope of air. It clung to the mass of the planet like a flaming leech.
Light reflected orange from a solid stretch of cloud cover. The fireball stood in a ring of clear air. A ring-shaped ripple beneath the cloud sheet expanded outward at terrible speed. The ripple picked up distortions as it traveled.
"The shock wave through the ocean distorts the cloud cover," Koothfektil-rusp said. "Like bulges moving beneath a fallen tent. Our experts will be able to pick out the contours of the continents and ocean floor by the way they retard the wave."
It was mysterious and horrible. It only suggested the millions of prey who would drown beneath the clouds and the seawater.
"Thus we achieve equality with the Predecessors," said Fistarteh-thuktun.
The Herdmaster was jolted. "Are you serious?"
"I don't know. What horror lies beneath that fortunate shroud of water droplets? How many of the prey will we drown? How much terrain do we bar to the use of any living thing? What was our own world like when the Predecessors were dying and our fithp were brainless beasts?"
The layer of cloud was now flowing backward, into the fireball. Another layer formed above, high in the stratosphere, beginning to spread. Waves of blue light formed and dispersed. Pretty pictures, abstracts, but on an awesome scale . . .
One may hope that we have not invented a new art form. Awe and horror: the Herdmaster trampled them deep into the bottom of his mind. "We came to take Winterhome. Do the thuktunthp hold knowledge to help us understand this?"
"Perhaps. We accept, do we not, that the Predecessors altered the natural state of a world? Their world, our world. Now Winterhome is our world. Look how we distort its natural state. What did their meddling cost the Predecessors? Have we done better?"
Have we done better? We must speak again, you and I. But this path was chosen long ago, and we must follow it. "Attackmaster. You may assume command of the digit ships. Begin your landings."
* * *
Commander Anton Villars stared through the periscope and tried to look calm. It wasn't easy. An hour before the message had come to USS Ethan Allen. The long-wave transmitters were reliable but slow. The message came in dots and dashes, code tapped out and taken down to be put through the code machines. It couldn't be orders to attack the Soviet Union. There was no Soviet Union. Villars had been prepared to launch his Poseidon missiles against an unseen enemy in space. Instead:
LARGE OBJECT RPT LARGE OBJECT WILL IMPACT 22.5 S LATITUDE 64.2 E LONGITUDE 1455 HOURS ZULU OBSERVE IF SAFE STOP IMPACT ENERGIES ESTIMATED AT 4000 MEGATONS RPT 4000 MEGATONS STOP ANY INFORMATION VALUABLE STOP GODSPEED STOP CARRELL
Safe? From four thousand megatons? There wasn't any safety. Villars' urge was to submerge and flee at flank speed.
Off to starboard, the island of Rodriguez blazed with the colors of life. Jungle had long since given way to croplands. In the center bare rock reared sharply, a peak a third of a mile high. Waves broke over a surrounding coral reef. That reef would provide more cover when the tsunami came, but it was a danger too.
Fishing boats were straggling in through the reef. Probably doomed. There was nothing Villars could do for them.
It was just dusk. Clouds covered the sky. It would be difficult to see anything coming. Four thousand megatons. Bigger than any bomb we ever dreamed of, much less built.
The crew waited tensely. John Antony, the Exec, stood close by.
"About time," Antony said.
"If their estimate was on."
"If their time was off, so were their coordinates."
I know that. I had the same instructor at Annapolis as you did.
Somebody laughed and choked it off. The news had filtered through the ship, as news like that always did.
The cameras were working. Villars wondered how many would survive. He peered through the darkest filter available. Four thousand megatons . . .
Suddenly the clouds were blazing like the sun. "First flash at 1854 hours 20 seconds," he called. "Log that." Where? Where would it fall?
All in an instant, a hole formed in the clouds to the northeast, the glare became God's own flashbulb, and the cameras were gone. "Get those other cameras up," Villars bellowed at men who were already doing that. His right eye saw nothing but afterimage. He put his left to the periscope.
He saw light. He squinted and saw light glaring out of a hole in the ocean. A widening hole in the ocean, with smoothly curved edges; wisps of mist streaming outward, and a conical floodlight beam pointing straight up. The beam grew wider: the pit was expanding. Clouds formed and vanished around a smoothly curved wall of water sweeping smoothly toward the sub.
The rim of a sun peeped over the edge.
"I make it about forty miles east northeast of present position. Okay, that's it." Villars straightened. "Bring in the cameras. Down periscope. Take us to ninety feet." How deep? The further down, the less likely we'll get munched by surface phenomena, but if those tsunamis are really big they might pile enough water on top of Ethan Allen to crush us. "Flank speed. Your course is 135 degrees." That leaves us in deep water and puts Rodriguez between us and that thing, for whatever good it'll do.
So we've seen it. A sight nobody ever saw—well, nobody who wrote it down, anyway. Now all I have to do is save the ship.
Ethan Allen was about to fight the biggest tsunami in human history—and just now he was broad on to it. He glanced at his watch. Tsunamis traveled at speeds from two hundred to four hundred miles an hour. Call this one four. Six minutes . . .
"Left standard rudder. Bring her to 85 degrees."
"Bring her to 85, aye, aye," the quartermaster answered.
"Warn 'em," Villars said.
"Now hear this. Now hear this. Damage control stations. Stand by for depth charges."
Might as well be depth charges . . .
The ship turned.
It surged backward. Villars felt the blood rushing into his face. Somewhere aft, a shrill scream was instantly cut off, and the Captain heard a thud.
Minutes later: "There's a current. Captain, we're being pulled northeast."
"Steady as she goes." Goddam. We lived through it!
* * *
The news came on at nine A.M. when you could get it. Marty always listened. Fox didn't always bother.
No matter how early he got up, Marty always found Fox was awake with a pot of coffee. It was no use persuading Fox to go easy on the coffee.
"When we run out, we do without. Until then, we have coffee," was his only answer to Marty's pleas to conserve.
"You know your trouble, Marty?"
Marty looked up from the radio he was trying to tune. "Eh?"
"You're still connected to that world you left. As long as you let civilization worry you, it's one more way the desert can kill you. Relax. Go with the punches. There's nothing they can do to us. We've already given up everything they control. Now it's us."
"Yeah, sure." Marty tuned the set carefully. "You think you've quit, huh?" He'd thrown a wire for an antenna across the top of the tall pole somebody had set up as a flagpole years ago. It worked pretty well.
Four hours after dawn Shoshone would normally have been a furnace. This morning some strange clouds, wispy and very high, had begun to form quite early. They weren't thick enough to block off the sun, but they must have had some effect. It was still hot enough to bring sweat.
Fox said, "I'm just taking a break. I'll save the world when it wants saving again."
"Okay, so nobody's worried about the snail darter when the sky is full of bug-eyed monsters. But I've listened to you, John and you'd still like to make Washington—"
"Not Washington anymore."
"Yeah. Atom bombs in Kansas don't ruffle your feathers? . . . I think I got it tuned."
"Ruffled feathers be damned." Fox had his self-inflating mattress stretched out on a flat rock. He didn't seem to notice the heat. Sprawled out with his coffee mug sitting on a flat stone, he looked indecently comfortable. "The question is, who's going to listen?"
"Shh."
"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."
"Hey, John, we got the President on."
"Yeah?" But Fox moved his mattress closer.
"My fellow Americans, this morning the alien invaders struck at Earth with a large artificial meteor, which landed in the Southern Hemisphere, in the Indian Ocean. The effect was that of a tremendous bomb. My advisors inform me that we can expect some severe weather effects."
"Meteor," Fox muttered. He looked up, and Marty did too. There were more clouds now . . . and they were swirling, changing, growing dense and dark, streaming east like foam on a breaking wave. Marty remembered how fast clouds moved in a Kansas tornado. These were moving faster.
". . . Global weather will definitely be affected. This makes Project Greenhouse even more important. I call upon every one of you to raise food. In small pots, indoors, outdoors, wherever you can. If you can build greenhouses, do so. County agents and other Department of Agriculture experts will show you how.
"America must feed herself."
Marty thought, Not here, we won't. But the grin wouldn't come.
"Global weather," Fox said again. "Christ, have they thrown us a dinosaur killer? Indian Ocean. How long will that take? Marty?"
"I wouldn't know."
"How much gas do we have?"
"About five gallons."
"Better gas up the truck. I think I want to use it."
* * *
By noon the clouds covered the sky. The sun that had blazed like a deadly enemy since Marty's arrival two days ago was hidden now. Marty watched Fox with some concern; for Fox watched the sky as if he feared a corrosive rain. The rain started at one. The first huge drops drummed on the truck cab, and Marty lifted his face to taste it. It was only plain water . . . not plain, not at all, and Marty felt a thrill of fear when he tasted silt and salt. Fox shouted, "Let's go."
"Go where?"
"Come on, damn it!"
Marty jumped in after him. He had just time to whistle up the dogs and let them jump into the truck bed. He was a little worried about Darth, who was young enough to try jumping out when the truck was moving.
"Damn dogs, can't even stay and watch the camp."
"Sure they can, if that's what you want," Marty said. "Are we coming back?"
"Huh? Yeah, we're coming back."
"Then stop long enough for me to tell them what to do!"
"Oh. Yeah, sure."
Fox stopped the truck. Marty posted the dogs, except for the pup, who'd have to come with them. "Guard."
Chaka looked up mournfully, but obeyed.
The rain was falling hard now. Rain in July? in Shoshone above Death Valley? Sea-bed silt, when the meteor struck in the Indian Ocean? I don't believe this. "Where are we going?"
"Place I know. Come on." Fox drove down the dirt track to the main road.
A big gasoline tanker was parked at the diner. Marty felt a twinge. That tanker held enough gas to get them both to the Enclave in Bellingham a hundred times over. I wonder where he's taking it?
They drove up the paved road, then turned left onto a gravel road. Fox drove as he always did, faster than Marty would, but carefully. He ground his lean jaw as he drove.
What's got to him?
They rounded a peak and drove onto a wide ledge.
Fox got out slowly. Marty followed. Darth came with him, huddling against his leg.
Death Valley was spread out below them, barren as the Moon.
More like Mercury, Marty thought, remembering the terrible heat. But he could see very little. Rain obscured the view, and a fog was rising too. The rain would evaporate as it struck.
Fox gestured, like Satan offering Christ the world. "This is what trapped them, the first ones here. Look how gently it slopes down. It's just barely steep enough to stop a horse-drawn wagon from getting back up—"
"I've been here."
"And you've seen the Devil's Golf Course and Scotty's Castle, I don't doubt, and the dunes. But have you seen the life?" The rain was loud, but John Fox was louder. He wasn't shouting; he was letting his voice project, as if he had an audience of thousands. "It's like another planet here. Plants and animals have evolved that couldn't survive anywhere else. If conditions—"
For a moment the roar of wind and rain drowned out even John Fox. It was as if a bathtub of salt water had been poured on Marty's head. He screamed, "John, John, what's happening?"
"The damned aliens, they're terraforming Earth to their own needs! They've thrown an asteroid in the Indian Ocean! And I was trying to stop atomic plants. I should have been screaming for atomic plants to power laser rockets! I tried to stop the Space Shuttle, damn me for a fool. They've smashed every environment on Earth! Damn you," he shouted into the sky. "Pour fire on the Earth, pile bodies in pyramids! We can live anywhere! We'll hide in the deserts and mountain peaks and the Arctic ice cap, and one day we'll come forth to kill you all!"
Death Valley was a bowl of steam. There was nothing to see, yet John Fox peered into it, seeing nightmares. "An old sea bed," he said in an almost normal voice. "A salt sea. They'll all die."
The rain fell.