Footfall Read online

  Something lashed around his ankles and whipped them away from him. He fell heavily into the wheat field. The elephant stood over him, bayonet pointed at him. The other came and stood with It.

  "Psh-thish-ftpph."

  Harry glared up.

  The elephants repeated their phrase, only louder.

  "Okay, goddamm it, you got me!" He stayed where he was, rolled half onto his knees. Give him half a chance and he’d—

  Once more the aliens shouted. Then suddenly the trunk swept down and rolled Harry onto his back. One Invader pulled Harry’s hands out over his head. The other reared above him.

  My God, they’re going to trample me!

  Harry writhed to get away. The foot came down on his chest. It settled almost gently. Harry struggled: he yanked one hand free and scraped at the foot with his nails, tried to push it upward, tried to roll. The pressure increased. There were claws under his jaw, and a mass that was crushing his chest. The air sighed out of him in a despairing hiss. He blacked out.

  Fog in his mind; memory of a nightmare. He was breathing like a bellows. Harry rolled over in . . . wheat? Inhuman screaming and bellowing reached his ears, sounds like a fire in a zoo.

  Oh, God. Jeri!

  Harry tried to stand up and made it to one knee. The baby elephants were converging on the road. Harry glimpsed Melissa on an Invader’s back, held firmly by a branching trunk. Jeri was walking, stumbling, with Invaders around her.

  A vehicle waited on the road, the size of a large truck, but it had no wheels. It looked like a huge sled. The motor wasn’t running.

  They loaded Melissa into the vehicle, then pushed Jeri in behind her. Others jumped onto the broad platform. The vehicle lifted on a cloud of dust: an air cushion. It sped away.

  They seemed to have forgotten Harry entirely.

  He crawled away slowly, disturbing the wheat as little as possible. What else could he do? They’d taken the big gun, but they might have left the motorcycle, and Carlotta still waited. Unless they’d landed there too.

  * * *

  By vehicle and on foot, the prey fled the village. Humans on foot were allowed to surrender. They had to be taught: in many cases they must he knocked down and rolled into position. Then, if they could stand, they were allowed to pass. But vehicles were considered to be weapons and were treated as such.

  The village had suffered more damage than was needed. It grieved Chintithpit-mang: locals dead, or torn and still screaming, buildings smashed, the smell of explosives and of burning, the flattened crater where the rock came down . . . We’re dealing with unknowns. Better to err on the side of excessive strength.

  By asking those he passed, Chintithpit-mang found the leader of his eight-cubed in a large red building with pillars in front.

  Siplisteph was surrounded by squarish bundles of printed sheets, bound at one edge and gaudily decorated. He was leafing through a bundle of print with drawings in it. The youthful sleeper seemed relaxed, very much at home. He looked up dreamily and said, "It’s so good to see a sky again." His eyes focused on Chintithpit-mang. "You come late."

  Chintithpit-mang said, "One never reported. Otherwise we have no casualties."

  Siplisteph lifted his digits in response. "We have lost warriors. You are promoted. In addition to your octuple, you will be deputy leader to your eight-squared."

  "Were there heavy losses, eight-cubed Leader?"

  "Many within the leadership. We have lost an eight-cubed leader."

  "The leadership. They are all spaceborn—"

  "It would be well not to finish that thought, Chintithpit-mang."

  Sleeper! Winterhome is home to you, but how can we find ourselves within this infinite horizon, beneath this tremendous sky?

  He could say none of that. "Lead me." "Continue your report."

  "I obey. Eight-cubed Leader, I took two females. One was mated to a big male, the other their child. I took the male’s surrender and left him."

  Siplisteph’s ears snapped alert. "The male surrendered?"

  "He had to be shown." But the episode had left a bad taste, and Chintithpit-mang went on talking. "Eight-cubed Leader, I knocked him down and put my foot on him, lightly. He struggled; he fought. I pushed harder until he stopped struggling. But when I took my foot away he did not move. I wonder if I simply killed him."

  "This is the Breakers’ problem, not ours." Siplisteph’s eyes returned to the pictures.

  "Lead me," said Chintithpit-mang, and he went to rejoin his octuple. But it bothered him. By now the taking of Winterhome, in falling rocks and disrupted supply chains, must have killed close to eight to the sixth of the poor misshapen rogues. Well, that was what war was about. But a fi’ did not kill needlessly, did not kill when he could take surrender. If the beast was so fragile, why did it continue to fight?

  Chintithpit-mang remembered its rib cage sagging under his foot . . . It thrashed and clawed and finally stopped moving . . . it didn’t know how to surrender. They didn’t know how to surrender. Bad.

  16

  SUBMISSION

  A human being in a prison camp, in the hands of his enemies, is flesh and shudderingly vulnerable.

  The disciplines that hold men together in the face of fear, hunger, and danger are not natural. Stresses equal to, and beyond, the stress of fear and panic must be laid on men. Some of these stresses are called civilization. And even the highest of civilizations demands leadership.

  —T. R. FEHRENBACH, This Kind of War

  COUNTDOWN: H PLUS 80 HOURS

  The hullside wall was down and level; the door was in the ceiling. Wes judged that things were likely to remain so for some time.

  There had been an hour or so of acceleration, then half an hour of freefall; then the ship had begun to spin. Some days had passed without further change. Odds were it would take an hour or more to remove the spin.

  Spin would hamper the mother ship in a battle. Earth must he far aft and out of reach.

  Nikolai and Dmitri talked quietly: Nikolai sullen, Dmitri doing most of the talking. Wes understood a few words, and sympathized. Nikolai was once again a cripple.

  The aliens had wasted no time. They were already teaching their language to the humans. Wes found this reassuring. However, the Soviets were educated separately, and they had expressed disinterest in sharing their lessons with Wes. He went over them alone, whispering alien sounds as he remembered them.

  Srupk

  : Wes had memorized the term as strunk, "standard trunklength." It was just about six feet. A makasrupk was five hundred and twelve strunks, just about a kilometer. Wes had sought a word for the trunk. There wasn’t one. A sharp snort, snnfp, named the nostrils, or the upper trunk. Pa’ was one branch, one finger of a trunk; pathp, the plural, could mean the entire cluster.

  Chaytrif

  meant foot. Sfaftiss

  was Takpusseh’s title; it meant teacher. The other sfaftiss didn’t speak, and his name was harder: Raztupisp-minz. The two sfafissthp looked aged, but as if they had weathered in different patterns. Were there two races of Invader? But they called themselves by the same words: Chsapt

  meant move. Chtaptisk: moving. Chtaptisk fithp meant themselves, everyone who had left their home planet. The Traveler People? Fi’

  was the word for an alien. A syllable chopped short by a kind of hiccup, it sounded like a piece of a word. And fithp was the entire species. As if an individual was not a whole, complete thing, just as a pa’ was only one branch of the pathp, the trunk. Herdbeasts? Takpusseh said tribe, not herd; but men didn’t say herd to mean thinking beings. Tashayamp was Takpusseh’s assistant. Dawson thought of her as female: the leather or plastic patch on her harness covered a different area, further back on her torso. He knew he might have the sexes reversed; he was not prepared to ask—

  The door opened upward, a trapdoor. The prisoners looked up, waiting.

  Takpusseh: Wes had learned to recognize their teacher or trainer by the loose look of his thick skin, and by his eyes, which
behaved as if the lights were always too bright. Takpusseh watched while alien soldiers attached a platform at the level of the trapdoor. The platform descended smoothly along grooves in the padding of the starboard wall. The platform might have held one alien; it held Wes and Arvid with room to spare. Wes had expected a ladder, but a ladder would be useless to these aliens.

  Takpusseh and Tashayamp and eight armed soldiers waited in the corridor. The platform descended again for Dmitri and Nikolai. They had left Giorge behind.

  * * *

  Arvid had been hoping for a window. There were none. The soldiers moved four ahead, four behind. Takpusseh and Tashayamp moved forward to join the prisoners. They had found a wheeled cart for Nikolai. Arvid took charge of pushing it. Wes was trying to tell Tashayamp that they needed heat to prepare their food. Arvid ignored that. He was trying to get some idea of the mother ship’s layout.

  The rug was spongy and squishy-wet; the prisoners had not been given shoes. Doors in the floor opened upward against the corridor wall.

  "I believe," Arvid said in Russian, "that any aperture big enough for one of the aliens would pass two or three of us at once. Perhaps they will not think to guard small openings that will pass a man."

  Dmitri nodded.

  "They are surely not built for climbing. A wall that could be scaled by a man would be impossible for one of them."

  Dmitri nodded again.

  "Have you seen anything I might have missed?"

  Dmitri spoke. "You waited until we were in a corridor, and moving, before you said any of this. I approve, but are you certain that our trainers do not speak Russian?"

  "They speak English and do not hide the fact. Why would they hide a knowledge of Russian? In any case, we must speak sometime."

  "Perhaps. Do you think we could use their rifles?"

  Grooves for the branched trunk were far forward on the barrel, and so was the trigger. The bore was huge. The butt was short and very broad. "It would not fit against a man’s shoulder, and it would probably kick him senseless, unless . . . you’d have to brace it against something, a floor, a wall, a piece of furniture. Difficult to aim."

  "Don’t do anything at all without word from me. What of Dawson? Will he try something foolish?"

  "I—" Arvid cut it off. They had reached their destination.

  The wide doorway would be used when the mother ship was under acceleration. The permanently fixed platform elevator next to it would be for use under spin gravity. The room below was big, and more than a dozen aliens were already present.

  The prisoners descended; the soldiers remained above.

  The aliens stared up. Most of them had their trunks folded up against the top of the heads: evidently a resting position. The eyelids drooped mournfully. The eyes had black pupils fading to smoky-gray whites. They were set wide, but not too wide to prohibit binocular vision. The thick muscle structure at the base of the trunk formed grooves; with the trunk up, the eyes focused along the grooves, like gunsights. Their stare was unnerving.

  Nikolai was wire-tense, staring his captors down. Arvid murmured, "Docile, Nikolai. We docile servants of the new regime await instructions."

  Nikolai nodded. His eyes dropped He sounded calm enough. "I saw no air vents. The air may be filtered through the carpeting. And the rug was wet. They like wet feet."

  The room would have held three or four times as many. Takpusseh spoke rapidly to the assembled aliens, then more slowly to the humans. Arvid tried to file the introductions: Pastempehkeph. K’turfookeph. Fathisteh-tulk. Chowpeentulk. Fistartehthuktun. Koolpooleh. Paykurtank. Two smaller aliens were not introduced. They stared at the humans and huddled close against larger aliens. Children, then.

  He’d have trouble remembering the names. It was the array that was important. The aliens came in clusters; he’d be a long time learning their body language, but that much was obvious.

  Pastempeh-keph (male) and K’turfookeph (female), with their child (male), were the top of the ladder, the Chairman or President or Admiral. The similarity in the last syllable meant they were mated; he’d learned that much already. One would hold title. Arvid would not lightly assume that it was the male. Similarly, Fathistehtalk and Chowpeentulk were mated, and they stood with the Admiral. Advisors? The male was doing all the talking. So.

  Fistarteh-thuktun (male), Koolpooleh (male), and Paykurtank (female) also formed a cluster. The extra syllables would mean that Fistarteh-thuktun had a mate. He was an old one, with wrinkled skin and pained-looking eyes . . . like the teacher, Takpusseh. He wore elaborate harness, like tapestry made with silver wire. He studied the humans like a judge. The pair with him were younger: clear eyes, smoother skin, quick movements.

  Nikolai said, "I thought the top ranks would wear uniforms. They all wear those harnesses with the backpacks. The colors and patterns, could those—"

  "Yes, insignia of rank. Dawson believes that we will not see clothing on any alien. With those bulky bodies they will have trouble shedding heat."

  "I would not have thought of that."

  The room darkened. One wall seemed to disappear, and Arvid realized that he was in a motion picture theater.

  Rogachev recognized the huge Invader spacecraft, a cylinder about as wide as it was tall. The aft rim was spiky with smaller craft, and some had not been moored in place yet. An arc of worldscape, blue and white, might have been the Earth, though Arvid could not pick out any detail of landscape. A polished sphere nearby . . . a moon? No, it was drifting slowly.

  Takpusseh was talking. Arvid caught a word here and there, and translated freely to "Watch, don’t move. You see . . . trip (chtapt) to (Earth?). Build . . . Thuktun Flishithy." Arvid smiled. He had thought that was their name for the mother ship, and sure enough, that was what they were putting together onscreen.

  He watched and didn’t move. The aliens around him were silent, motionless.

  The last of the smaller craft were moved into place in seconds. This was time-lapse photography. A length of stovepipe, a little wider than Thuktun Flishithy, drifted in from the edge of the screen and was moored in place behind the ring of smaller craft.

  The shiny sphere was moved into place at the fore end of the mother ship. It was bigger than all of the rest of the ship combined. A pod, perhaps a cluster of sensing instruments, reached out on a snakelike arm to peer around it.

  Something fell inward from the edge of the picture: bright flames of chemical rockets around . . . something rectangular. It dwindled to a dot, headed straight for the ship. "Put Podo Thuktun in Thuktun Flishithy," Takpusseh said.

  That word: thuktun. He had thought it meant skill or knowledge, but—Fistarteh-thuktun? A mate for that one had not been named. Was that particular fi’ married to the ship?

  All in good time. Arvid glanced at Dawson; Dawson’s eyes were riveted to the screen. That left Arvid free to covertly observe the aliens.

  Five of the fithp showed signs of a lingering illness: an illness that left loose skin and wounded-looking eyes. It didn’t seem to be a matter of age— Pastempeh-keph and K’turfookeph (Admiral and mate) were not youths, but they hadn’t had the sickness either. The sick ones tended to cluster. They looked to be about the same age; the rest varied enormously.

  The Admiral’s advisor and his mate were among the sick ones. Another sick one was trying to talk to them, while a female rather unsubtly tried to prevent it.

  A division among the aliens might be useful.

  * * *

  Wes Dawson was watching a planet recede . . . a world colored like Earth, blue with clotted white frosting— He spent no more than a few seconds trying to make out the shapes of continents. None were familiar. Of course not.

  The Invader ship had been on camera for only a minute or so. The camera that filmed that would have remained behind. But Thuktun Flishithy was more than the cylindrical warship that had reached Earth. A sphere rode the nose, a tremendous fragile looking bubble in contrast to the warship’s spiky, armored look. Fuel supply, of course
. And the ring— He was looking aft along Thuktun Flishithy’s flank, past a massive ring like a broad wedding band, watching a sun grow smaller. A second sun moved in from offscreen. Both shrank to bright stars: white stars, the light not too different from Earth’s own sun. He’d anticipated that from the color of the lights in his cell.

  The cameras showed a steady white light behind the ring. Wes saw—and wasn’t sure he saw—the drive flame go dim, and a faint violet tinge emerge from the black background.

  Wes Dawson wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off in the theater. With a fraction of his attention he tried to track what the Instructor was saying. "Thuktun Flishithy must move very fast before we use the (long word). Saves—" something. "Halfway to Earth-star"—Earth’s sun?—"we begin to slow down. This is difficult."

  But the pictures made more sense than the words.

  Time onscreen speeded up. The drive flame brightened, then died—and the background violet glow he thought he’d seen wasn’t there. Tiny machines and mote-sized aliens emerged to dislodge the bubble at the nose; the stars wheeled one, hundred and eighty degrees around; the drive flamed again, and dimmed, and the stars forward were embedded in violet-black—so he hadn’t imagined it—and Thuktun Flishithy surged past the abandoned fuel tank and onward.

  The way the film jumped, a good deal of it must have been missing. Perhaps it would have shown too much interior detail. Wes took it for granted that prisoners would not learn much of the interior detail of Thuktun Flishithy. The next scene was a timelapse view of an ordinary star becoming a bright star, and brighter, until it virtually exploded in Dawson’s face. He cursed and covered his eyes, and immediately opened them again.

  They must have dived within the orbit of Mercury. Somewhere in there, the white glow of the drive had brightened . . . and the ship’s wedding band had vanished. Dawson hadn’t noticed just when it disappeared. Now he grunted as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.