Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause a while from learning to be wise.
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail—
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.—DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON,
Vanity of Human Wishes
Pavel Aleksandrovich Bondarev fingered the priceless tapestry covering the bare concrete wall. "It doesn't really look like a bomb shelter," he said.
Lorena rolled lazily in the big bed. "They are very nice rooms," she said.
Her own room was just down the corridor, close enough that only a few of Bondarev's staff knew just how late she stayed. They wouldn't talk. As secretary to the acting commander of the Soviet space defense forces, Lorena was one of the most powerful women in the Soviet Union. As long as my wife is not offended. She must know, but so long as I am discreet . . .
Lorena rolled off the bed and walked to the closet, where his uniforms hung. She fingered the shoulder straps on one of them. "I had never thought to see you a general," she said. "And now there is talk of making you a Marshal of the Soviet Union—"
"Hah."
"You do not wish promotion?"
"Of course not. I never wanted to be part of the military at all. I would rather talk with the aliens than fight them! They were in space for decades, out between the stars where there is no interference, no radio noise—think of what they must have learned!"
"They have destroyed half of Russia, and you wish to talk to them!"
He sighed. "I know it is impossible. Perhaps, though, when we defeat them, I will learn what they know of stars." Only it is not so certain that we can defeat them. Whenever we launch a missile, they destroy the missile base.
"They have landed in America. Perhaps the Americans have captured aliens."
"Perhaps."
"And perhaps not. It is late." She moved provocatively. He didn't react. "So. You are satisfied for the moment," she teased. "Perhaps later—"
"I have other things to concern me," Boudarev said.
Lorena laughed. "They do not always keep your attention—"
A chirp sounded from the other room. Bondarev put on a robe. He could not cut short a conversation with whoever called on that phone. "Bondarev here," he said.
"Narovchatov."
"Da, Comrade Narovchatov?"
"I am told that the Americans have called you."
"Only to test the telephone line. I did not myself speak to them."
"Who did?"
"My secretary."
"What was said?"
"Nothing, Nikolai Nikolayevich. Comrade Polinova spoke to an American technician. She was told that the Americans wished to speak with me, but then the connection failed." Bondarev spoke nervously. Should I have reported this? But there was nothing to report.
"It is a matter of great concern," Narovchatov said. "We have been unable to make contact with the Americans. The Chairman wishes to speak with the American President. Are your technicians working on reestablishing this connection?"
"The failure was not here, Comrade Narovchatov. I understand that the cable crosses the Atlantic, then passes under the Mediterranean, and comes through Istanbul. I believe the break was in Marrakech."
"Where there is chaos," Narovchatov muttered.
"Da." Bondarev had sporadic communications with a large Soviet armored force in Africa, but that group was far to the south and east of Marrakech.
Lorena came in with a glass of hot tea and set it beside him. Bondarev nodded his thanks.
"Perhaps the KGB has agents in Marrakech," Bondarev said. "Perhaps they could facilitate the repair of the cable."
"A splendid suggestion. I will send the orders. The matter is urgent, Pavel Aleksandrovich. There is unrest in Germany and Poland. We have reason to believe the West Germans may attempt something. The Americans must restrain them."
If they can. And if they will. "Da. I understand."
"Have you anything to report?"
"Only rumors. Our station in Tehran confirms that the Invaders have landed in the central United States, and there is land warfare. The Americans in Tehran know little else, but they pretend high confidence."
"You will call if you learn more, or if you make contact with the Americans."
"At once."
"Your wife sends her regards," Narovchatov said, "She is well and your children are well."
"Thank you."
The connection broke. Bondarev sipped his tea. "My family is well," he said musingly.
"But they did not say where."
"No. With the Chairman and the Politburo. Somewhere near Moscow, I would presume."
She sat on the couch and leaned against his shoulder. "I am glad they are safe. I am also glad your wife is not here."
"The Chairman wishes to speak with the Americans. It is urgent."
She sat up quickly. "Why?"
"There is unrest, in Poland and Germany."
She cursed. "They dare!"
"Da. They dare." Now that we cannot send the army. Now that the army is needed in the Turkic republics, and Latvia, and Estonia.
"I hate them," Lorena said.
* * *
They were under the house, inspecting the support pillars. Carlotta was more frightened than Wes. He tried to reassure her—not hearing what he was saying, but knowing he was lying badly. The quake was coming. Soon. These pillars had to be reinforced before the San Andreas fault tore loose and sent everything rolling downhill in a spray of debris. A sound like a brass trumpet ripped through the world; and then the world tilted and everything started to roll.
Wes Dawson woke to the blare of the acceleration warning, and Russian curses, and the deep hum of Thuktun Flishithy's drive. The floor was tilted, not toward a wall but toward one corner . . . the outer—aft—antispinward corner. The fithp must be accelerating and decreasing spin, simultaneously.
The fithp would have no time for prisoners during maneuvers. Wes did what the others were doing. He spread out on his belly like a starfish and curled his fingers and toes in the padding—dry here, though damp throughout the rest of the ship—and dozed.
The tilt grew more pronounced as Thuktun Flishithy's spin decreased. After several hours everyone shifted to the aft wall. They were awake and talking, but not to Wes Dawson. Once he heard "amusement park" in English, and Nikolai made roller-coaster motions with his hands while the rest laughed.
Another several hours and the aft wall had become a flat floor. Thuktun Flishithy's drive was pushing at one Earth gravity or close to it.
The door opened.
It was a door now, and four fithp warriors rolled through without pause. They herded the humans into the corridor, where four more warriors waited with the teacher's female assistant, Tashayamp. Dmitri bowed to her. "Greetings," he said (the pattern of sound that they had learned for a greeting; it had the word time in it). "Question, destination selves?"
"Destination Podo Thuktun," Tashayamp said. "Ready your minds."
With no superior present, she seemed surer of herself. Now, what gave him that impression? Wes watched her. She walked like an unstoppable mass, a behemoth. She wasn't adjusting her gait! He had seen her veer from contact with warriors and humans alike. Now the warriors were presumably her guardians, and her human charges had demonstrated both the agility and the motivation to dodge her ton—plus of mass.
Never mind; there was something he wanted from her "Question, destination Thuktun Flishithy?"
"In two mealtime-gaps this status will end. There will be almost no pull. You will live floating for a long time. You must learn to live so," she said. She hadn't answered his question; but then, they often didn't.
The corridor branched. The new corridor dipped, then curved to the right. Now, why the curve? This ought to be a radial corridor. Wes remembered that the streets of Beverly Hills had been laid in curves just to make them prettier. Was that it? Under spin the corridor would rise at twenty or twenty-five degrees . . .
But under spin, a radial corridor would be vertical. Fithp couldn't climb ladders. The routes inward had to be spirals. Look for fast elevators too?
As the Soviets had stopped talking to Wes, so Wes had stopped talking to them. He had fallen into a kind of game. Observe. Deduce. Who will learn faster, you or me?
Tashayamp says we'll be living in nearly free-fall in a day or so. What makes nearly free-fall, and why not spin the ship to avoid it? The fithp liked low gravity, but not that low. What could prevent them from spinning the ship?
Ah. An asteroid, of course. They've got an asteroid base, a small one, and we're going to be moored to it. I wish to hell they'd let us near a window.
And now we're to see the Podo Thuktun. They showed that in the picture show. Installing the Podo Thuktun was a big deal, so important that they recorded it and showed it to us. As important as the fuel. So what was it?
Thuktun means message or lesson or a body of knowledge; I've heard them use it all three ways. Thuktun is part of the mother ship's name. Fistarteh-thuktun, the sleeper with the tapestry harness, is mated to thuktun and doesn't seem to have a normal mate. What, then, are we about to see?
The curved corridor ended in a massive rectangular door. Unlike most, this door didn't seem to have automatic controls, and it took two warriors to shoulder it aside.
The troop marched in.
A spiral ramp ran up the sides of the cylindrical chamber. The cylinder was nearly empty: conspicuous waste in a starship. In the center was a vertical pillar no thicker than Wes's wrist. He looked up to where it expanded into a flower-shaped cradle for . . .
For the Podo Thuktun, of course. It was a relic of sorts: a granite block twenty-five or thirty feet long by the same distance wide by half that in height. Its corners and edges were unevenly rounded, as if it had weathered thousands of years of dust laden winds.
There was writing on it. In it: Wes could see overhead light glinting through the lines. Something like a thread-thin laser had written script and diagrams all the way through the block.
He was being left behind. Tashayamp and half the warriors were escorting the Soviets up the spiral ramp; the other warriors were coming for Wes. He hurried to join them. Platforms led off the ramp at varying heights, and on one of these three fithp were at work. They ignored the intruders.
* * *
Fistarteh-thuktun and his spaceborn acolytes looked down for a long moment of meditation before beginning their work. It was a ritual, and necessary. One could become too used to the Podo Thuktun; could take it for granted. That must never happen.
At one time bloody wars had been fought over the diagram in the central face of the Podo Thuktun. Was that diagram in fact a picture of a Predecessor? Half the world had been conquered by the herd that thought it was. Many generations had passed, and heretics had been raped of their status with dismaying regularity, before the fithp realized the truth.
Message Bearer's interstellar ramjet had been made from that diagram.
The priest and his acolytes turned to the library screen. Paykurtank tapped at a tab the size of a human's fist. The screen responded by showing a succession of photographs. One after another, granite half-cubes appeared in close-up against varying half-seen backgrounds.
"Skip a few," Koolpooleh suggested.
"I countermand that," Fistarteh-thuktun said instantly. "We'll at least glance at them all. We're seeking any relevant information left by the Predecessors regarding aliens, or Winterhome, or its natives,"
The thuktunthp were arrayed in order of their discovery, and roughly in order of simplicity of the lesson delivered. The history of the fithp could be read in the order of discovery of the thuktunthp. Uses of fire, mining and refining of metals, uses of the wheel: the Predecessors had made these easily available to their successors. Later discoveries had been found in caves or mountaintops or lifeless deserts.
"Pause that. Koolpooleh, is this nothing but mathematics?"
"I have no trouble reading the Line Thuktun, Fistarteh-thuktun. Simple plane geometry, a list of axioms."
"Go to the next one."
"The Breaker has arrived with trainees."
"Ignore them. Pause that!"
Koolpooleh and Paykurtank were watching the humans, furtively, with one eye each. Fistarteh-thuktun pretended not to notice. Perhaps they could learn from watching the aliens. Perhaps not. The fithp warriors were even now aground and dealing with the prey.
Fistarteh-thuktun remembered what it was like to run, to take prey from a rushing stream, to see nothing but mountains in the distance and clouds overhead . . .
These creatures must first be defeated. Surely the knowledge was here! All knowledge was contained in the thuktunthp.
The Life-Thuktun was surely interesting enough. The script and diagrams dealt with biology, and Fistarteh-thuktun had studied it before. Hierarchies of plant life to the left, animal life to the right. Tiny, ancient single-nucleated life at the bottom, scaling toward complex warm-blooded air breathers at the top. Simple sketches at every level. The sketch that was third from the top resembled a stunted fi'. It was bulky, flat-skulled, with but one branch to its trunk. The feet were clubs, each with a tiny afterthought of a claw.
The creatures sketched above the proto—fi' were extinct, though skeletons had been found preserved in soft sedimentary rock. Other pictured life forms had disappeared too, but . . . shouldn't that top sketch be the lineaments of a Predecessor? Wouldn't they have considered themselves the top of the ladder of life? Wars had been fought over that question, too.
It was not easy to ignore Tashayamp, half an octuple of soldiers, and four of Winterhome's small, flat-faced natives, including one in a wheeled cage. Fistarteh-thuktun could hardly fail to hear Takpusseh lecturing them in baby talk. He let himself glance at the humans. They didn't resemble that top sketch in any way. Fistarteh-thuktun felt a relief he would not let himself admit.
Since his revival from the death-sleep, the priest's position had never been stronger. The average fi' aboard Message Bearer had no grasp of what the Predecessors were all about, or how much Fistarteh-thuktun didn't know.
But he had a task. He must advise the officers. He must seek any relevant information left by the Predecessors.
He had Koolpooleh's attention again. "Go on," he said.
The next thuktun explained the making of aluminum.
* * *
"Not known, the shapes of the—" Others? Predecessors? "No pictures of selves. Shape of Predecessor minds, half known." Tashayamp was speaking slowly, and Wes was catching most of the meaning, he thought. He had to concentrate.
"There were eights of eight-cubed of thuktunthp scattered about the world. The Predecessors"—Tashayamp glanced toward the priest, busy at his huge display screen, and her breathy trumpet of a voice dropped a little—"did not know everything. They did not know that what they did with their machines would ruin the world for them. Maybe they did not know where life would be in the world, after the world healed. They left the thuktunthp everywhere.
"Not told, things about fithp, things about Predecessors. Perhaps thuktunthp were thuktun"—meaning message here—"to Predecessor children's children. But Predecessor children were not made."
Arvid asked, "What happened?"
"Fistarteh-thuktun knows. I talk to him. Wait." Tashayamp turned away. She stood behind the priest and did nothing, waiting.
Wes looked down.
From below, the cradle had blocked some of the script. From above, it didn't. The sculptors had left a meter or more of margin around the writing; it had worn away unevenly, leaving bulges the cradle arms could grip.
The script was lost to him. Wes studied the diagrams.
The patterns in the Podo Thuktun: here a spray of dots in which Wes could recognize the Summer Triangle: a star pattern. There a pattern of curves that might be the magnetic fields in a Bussard ramjet . . . Podo could mean starflight or stars or just sky. Certain words and phrases became clear. He was sure that Thuktun Flishithy meant Thuktun Carrier or Message Bearer. Fistarteh-thuktun was a priest; it might be that he worshiped the Podo Thuktun. He seemed to function as a Librarian too. Loremaster.
Fistarteh-thuktun had turned from the screen and was talking with Tashayamp, too fast to be understood.
"Not known what happened to end Predecessor children," Tashayamp said. "Perhaps they do not want children because they have destroyed the world. Perhaps they cannot have children." She spread her digits in the pattern Dawson had come to call a shrug: a futile clawing at the air. It meant, "I do not know and do not believe it can be known."
She turned back to Fistarteh-thuktun. Wes studied the star patterns again. The constellations are nearly the same as Earth's. Nearly, but not identical. They must be from somewhere near—He shuddered. Can more be coming? No, only one ship was in the films they showed us. "Nearby" is meaningless when we're talking about stars!
Fistarteh-thuktun was speaking again. Wes moved closer to listen to Tashayamp translate into fithp baby-talk.
* * *
Their quarters had become tolerable as the fithp learned what they liked. The padding over the six walls was no longer wet. Dawson was almost comfortable.
Dmitri was speaking English. Dawson was ashamed at how glad that made him. I am not a communist. Nobody ever called me that except the goddamn Birchers. But I can't live alone!
"They were dying. Wes, did it sound as if they destroyed their environment themselves?"
"I thought that's what Fistarteh-thuktun said."
"But they must have thought some of them would live. Changed. Could it be true?"
"Do you mean, could the Predecessors be their ancestors? No. There was a thuktun onscreen with a column of biology sketches till Fistarteh-thuktun shifted to something else. Didn't you notice the sketches? That misshapen fi' was third from the top. If you were making a hierarchy of life on Earth, would you put humanity third from the top?"
"No," Dimitri said in some irritation, "but I might leave humanity off entirely if I were Christian or some such! Then I might put apes third from the top, if I seriously liked dolphins and whales!"
"That's too many ifs."
"Or a Christian or Muslim might put fanciful angels above him—"
"For the moment, we might as well believe as Tashayamp believes," Arvid said soothingly. "The fithp have studied the subject for much longer than the hour we have been granted. So. A race died of overpollution. The world was changed. In the changed world something new grew up—perhaps a pet or a work animal, an evolved dog or horse. They do seem to worship the Predecessors."
"Why wouldn't they?" Wes wondered. "Consider what would happen to tribes who didn't study the thuktunthp. There were . . . eight to the fourth power is around four thousand thuktunthp, and a lot of them were duplicates. For every one of those, the first tribe—herd?—to use the information would be the first to rule. It must have happened hundreds of times. Of course they worship the Predecessors!"
Arvid shrugged. "I like to think of them as a tamed elephant. Then the world came apart. Dwarfing is caused by ages of famine. Flash floods winnowed those who could not grow claws to grip a passing rock." He smiled. "There is no proof. Choose the picture you like."
"—Shape wars," Dmitri said. "Is it your belief that these were religious wars based on interpretation of the thuktunthp?"
"Yes," He shook his head. "Very strange."
Dmitri laughed. "Why strange? Human history is full of such. The Byzantine Church was divided, and civil wars resulted, from what icons were permitted to be shown in churches. The Christian god has no shape, yet one of the prophets was permitted to see his hindquarters. Not his front, you understand. Only his hindquarters. I do not know if that resulted in wars among the Jews, but it easily might."
"You'd think there would be some pictures of the Predecessors," Dawson said.
"Perhaps there were," Dmitri mused. "Only—suppose there were descendents of the Predecessors, and the fithp killed them. It would not be an easy thing to face, that you had killed the sons of your gods."
One hell of a guilt trip. "Or maybe there were pictures of the Predecessors," Wes said. "Maybe they were destroyed as blasphemous, in the period when they thought the Bussard ramjet diagram was the shape of a Predecessor."
"Perhaps," Arvid said.
"And then—excuse me," Dmitri said. He spoke rapidly in Russian. After a while the Russians moved away to their own corner, leaving Wes Dawson alone again.
They don't trust me. I might do something to warn the aliens. At least I have a few answers. I need answers!
* * *
Nat Reynolds could remember exactly when he got into trouble. It started the second morning after the aliens blew up Kosmograd, ending the science-fiction convention where he was guest of honor, and stranding him in Kansas City. He was sitting in Dolly Jordan's breakfast room, with good coffee and eggs sunny-side up, trying to think of what to do now that all the stories about alien invaders were turning bloodily obsolete.
Why couldn't it have been Wells' martians? We'd have had 'em in zoos inside of twenty-four hours.
"There's somebody here to see you," Dolly Jordan had said. She set another plate and a coffee cup at the table.
Nat looked up with irritation. Someone he'd met at the OZcon? But the man Dolly led into her breakfast room didn't have the look. He was too old (although there were older science-fiction fans) and too well dressed (although some fans dressed well), and what was it? He just didn't have that sensitive fannish face.
"I've looked all over for you," the man said. "Hah. You don't remember me, do you? I'm Roger Brooks. Washington Post."
You'd think the press would know by now: no science-fiction writer can be expected to function before noon. Nat shook his head. "I have a lousy memory."
"It's all right. Mind if I sit down?"
"Dolly already set a place for you."
Brooks sat. Dolly appeared with a coffeepot. She was plump and cheerful, and smart enough not to chatter in the morning. After she filled Brooks's cup, she went back to the kitchen, leaving them alone.
"Why were you looking for me?" Reynolds asked.
"Because you probably know where the government is."
Reynolds shook his head in confusion.
"Just before the aliens arrived, all the science-fiction writers vanished," Brooks explained. "At least all the hard science-fiction writers did."
"Oho!"
"You do know something." Brooks leaned forward eagerly. "What?"
"Nothing real," Nat said. "A month or so ago, Wade Curtis called. Asked where I'd be when the aliens arrived. When I told him I'd be Guest of Honor at OZcon, he changed the subject."
"And that's all?"
"Yeah. Wade wouldn't ask me to violate that kind of promise. What's this about the government?"
"The President left Washington two hours after the aliens blew up Kosmograd," Brooks said. "By yesterday morning, the Cabinet and most of the Pentagon brass were gone." Brooks shrugged. "No stories left in Washington. Nobody there knows what's happening."
"So you came looking for me?"
"Yeah. The writers vanished a couple of weeks ago. Then just before the aliens arrived, the President sent an important intelligence officer to Colorado to talk to them. I figure that's where the government went, to Cheyenne Mountain. Kansas City's on the way." Roger sipped his coffee. "When the hotel said you'd left with the whole SF convention, I took a chance and came to the chairman's house."
"Sorry you went to so much trouble for nothing—"
"Maybe not for nothing," Brooks said. "Look, the writers are in Cheyenne Mountain, I'm sure of it. You were invited. You have the invitation, I have a press pass and a VW Rabbit diesel with more than enough fuel to get there. Want to pool our resources?"
I don't have any invitation to Cheyenne Mountain. I was booked at the OZcon, so I wasn't invited. All I had to do was say so!
And I always sign too many book contracts. I have trouble saying no. If I were a woman I'd be pregnant all the time.
Reynolds stood at a second-story window at Collins Street. The apartment building was separated from the street by a wide grassy strip. The buildings were old brick, with a new McDonald's just down the block.
They were in Lauren, Kansas, somewhere near Topeka. He'd never been in the town before, and didn't want to be here now, but there wasn't much choice, because while they were driving across Kansas the sky erupted with paper airplanes carrying baby elephants.
He'd met Carol North at the convention, and his address book showed she lived in Lauren, Kansas. They'd gone to her apartment. We could have kept on driving. There can't be that many aliens. They can't be everywhere . . .
Instead they'd parked in an underground lot and waited.
The invaders came.
A ceremony, Reynolds thought. It even makes sense. Humiliating, but it makes sense. And once they've put you through that, they leave you alone.
What do they want?
Reynolds turned back to the window. In the street outside, three men hid among the trash cans behind the McDonald's. They'd laid dinner plates on the street surface. From somewhere nearby came the roar of large motors.
"You had to tell them," Reynolds said.
"It was a story I'd heard from the Hungarian uprising. How did I know they'd try it?"
"Bat turds, Roger! George Bergson was itching to kill an alien, so you told him how! You knew he'd try it if it killed him. It will, and we're too close. What if they bomb this building?"
Roger Brooks shrugged. "George promised they wouldn't do anything to call attention to this place."
"He's going to get himself killed," Reynolds said. "And probably us with him."
"Stop saying that," Carol North said. "Please stop saying that."
"Okay." But it doesn't change anything. Your friend is doomed, lady. A thought came unbidden. She'd come to his room at the convention. Her relationship with George Bergson was clearly an open one. Would she be faithful to his memory once he got killed? That could be inconvenient.
The roaring grew louder. "They're coming," Roger said. "The snouts are coming . . ." He stayed well back in the room and aimed his camera out toward the dinner plates in the road.
Two large armored vehicles came into view. They floated a foot or more off the road surface. Their crews were invisible inside.
It'll be okay. George will kill some invaders and live through it, and we'll all learn levitation and fly to safety. Right? But Nat's belly and guts were knotted in fear. He heard Roger say, "It worked in Budapest . . ."
The first ground effect vehicle approached the line of dinner plates and stopped. Something protruded from the forward deck and extended toward the plates.
George Bergson and his friends stood and threw their bottles at the armored vehicles. Two of the bottles hit the lead tank, and burst into flames. Flame spread across the vehicle, and rivers of fire ran off its sides and were dispersed by the ground effect fan. There was a high-pitched whine and grinding noises, and the vehicle fell heavily to the roadway.
Two more gasoline bombs arced out.
The second vehicle began rapid fire. Holes the size of baseballs appeared in the buildings behind Bergson and his crew. The men dashed behind the McDonald's building.
The gunfire continued, The McDonald's building was chopped nearly in half. The upper part of the building fell into the lower part.
From somewhere far above a beam of greenish light speared the McDonald's building. The wreckage exploded in flame. The green light-pencil drew an expanding spiral around the pillar of flame, first tightly, then in ever-spreading arcs that grew and grew . . .
Reynolds dived away from the window.
There was the sound of crashing glass. The tank outside continued to fire, and two large holes appeared in the wall in front of him. Carol and Roger Brooks dove into the hallway. Carol lay next to Reynolds. "Jesus," she whispered. "Jesus Christ. They're killing everybody—you knew!"
Reynolds shook his head. "I didn't know, but it was a good guess. Look at them! Herd beasts. No speed, and all their defenses in front, and have you ever seen less than six together? I bet their ancestors stood in a ring to fight. It was a reasonable guess that if someone does something they don't like, they go after the offenders' whole herd, not just the individual!"
The gunfire continued to pound.
"Smoke!" Carol shouted. "The building's on fire."
Trapped!
"Out the back way," Roger Brooks said. "Quick!" He crouched low and ran down the hallway to the stairs. "Stay low. Stay away from windows!"
Nat Reynolds ran down the hall. He heard Carol behind him.
* * *
Roger sat in the biggest Cadillac in the lowest level of the underground parking structure. It was noon. They'd been here almost twenty hours.
There were sounds from inside another Caddy two cars away. Jeez, what does she see in him? Roger wondered. They were at it not six hours after her live-in boyfriend bought it.
And you're jealous, because you had nothing to distract you from the thought that they'd tumble the building down on your head. Or from them—
There hadn't been any sounds from outside for hours. Roger couldn't stand it any longer. He crept toward the exit. Another small group—a man, two women, and four small children—huddled in one corner of the garage. They stared at Roger as he went past, but they didn't say anything.
The ramp was blocked by debris, but the stairs were intact. Roger climbed up, pausing at each landing.
"Ho."
He jumped, startled. The voice had been feminine and definitely human. "Hello."
"It's quiet out there," she said.
Roger climbed up to the landing.
She was older than he'd thought from her voice. Roger guessed she was almost forty. She wore jeans and a wool shirt and a bandana, and her face was covered with soot and grime. Her nose had once been broken, and wasn't quite straight. Not quite ugly, but she could work on it. "What's happening?"
"I think they've gone. I'm Rosalee Pinelli, by the way."
"Roger Brooks. Where did they go?"
She shrugged. "All I know is they were out there all night. I could hear them. But they never came in here."
"Did you go look?"
She shook her head vigorously. "Not me. We didn't hear anything for a couple of hours, so about dawn the five guys who were in here with me went out to look." She indicated a hole in the concrete structure. "You can see 'em through here."
Roger looked. There was a pile of bodies in the street. "That's more than five."
"They made a pile," Rosalee said. "They left people alone until some guys blew one of their tanks." She shook her head. "Goddam, it was beautiful! They used dinner plates to look like mines, and when one of the snouts stopped they hit it with Molotov cocktails! Beautiful!"
"Until the snouts blew up the town," Roger said under his breath. "Yeah. I saw it."
"After that, the snouts started that pile of bodies out there," she said. "I haven't seen or heard anything since about nine this morning, but I've been afraid to go out."
"I'll look around."
"Be careful—here, I'll come with you."
"They're gone," Brooks said. "Let's get the hell out of here."
"How?" Nat Reynolds asked.
"There's some junk on the ramp," Brooks said. "But with a little work we can get it clear and drive out."
"Aren't there cars up above?"
"Not like this one," Brooks said. He patted the VW diesel Rabbit. "I can get two thousand miles on the fuel in this. More, now that we drained that truck."
"Come on, Nat. I'll help," Carol said. She took his hand.
Possessive as hell. "Yeah, let's get at it," Roger said.
Rosalee was already tossing away light debris. In an hour they had a pathway he could drive through. The four of them piled into the Rabbit.
I don't remember asking either of the women. Not that it matters. Reynolds isn't going to leave that one behind, and there's room for Rosalee. I might as well get her story.
"Where to?" Reynolds asked.
"Colorado Springs. The government's got to be there."
"East!" Rosalee shouted. "Away from the snouts!"
"I'm for that," Reynolds agreed.
They drove up the ramp.
"You sure they're gone?" Carol asked.
"Yeah," Roger said. "I looked." They came out of the structure. Lauren, Kansas, looked like Berlin after World War II. Buildings were gutted. Bodies lay in the streets, not just the pile the snouts had created, but others as well.
"God almighty damn," Roger muttered. He threaded his way through the debris. "All that in revenge for one tank—"
"Traitors," Reynolds said. "They were killing traitors, or rogues, or crazies."
"What the hell do you mean by that?" Rosalee demanded.
"We surrendered," Reynolds said. "As far as they're concerned, we surrendered, and then we attacked them."
"That doesn't make sense," Carol protested.
I wonder. Roger drove past another ruined building. "How do you know, Nat?"
Reynolds laughed. "I don't. I'm guessing. But look, gang, I'm not a scientist and I'm not a newsman. When I guess wrong, nothing happens. Maybe I even sell the story—"
"If you guess wrong here you'll get us all killed!" Rosalee snarled.
"Shall I stop guessing? We could die that way too, because I'm the only expert you've got."
When they reached the end of the debris, he turned south despite the others' protests. There was no sign of an enemy.