Earthbound

  “Anything?” he whispered.

  “Two animals, a deer and a raccoon.” I passed him Paul’s watch and the rifle and flare pistol. “You know what to do with this?”

  “Straight up, eyes closed.”

  “You won’t have any trouble staying awake?”

  “No. Haven’t slept yet.”

  “Keep an eye on the river.”

  “Yeah. They could have a navy.”

  It was darker in the forest than I’d expected. I walked carefully, slowly picking my way uphill. If I came to the autoway, I’d missed them. I almost stepped on Paul, his NASA jumpsuit a deeper black against the shadow. Then someone started to snore a few yards away, I couldn’t tell who.

  I knelt and patted the bed of pine boughs next to him, then crawled in not quite close enough to touch. I could smell his hair, though, along with the pine, and could hear his soft breath.

  What a long day, quartering the planet and coming to ground in this dark wood. I closed my eyes and slept like a tired child.

  10

  After an energy-bar breakfast and cold coffee, we carried all our stuff down to the road and started walking, Namir in front and Dustin bringing up the rear, each of them armed with laser and pistol. It was a little too military for me, bad first impression, but I kept it to myself. We might be walking into an ambush.

  The plane had measured a straight-line distance of 7.4 miles from the commune to the highway. That would probably come to about ten miles along the winding river road. So we should reach the commune by mid-day. My feet were a little tired and perhaps blistered. I felt every pebble in the road through my thin-soled shoes, but could avoid the big and sharp ones.

  When we first started walking, we startled a deer drinking at the river’s edge. From then on the animals stayed away from us.

  Better woodsmen might have suspected that the lack of wildlife meant that we weren’t alone. But our military contingent mainly knew the perils presented by city and desert. Namir did study the trees for snipers, I noticed, and scanned the ground, I supposed for trip wires and mines.

  The semi-wild sylvan setting had been preserved, back in Dustin’s time here, by government edict. Thousands of acres had been gathered up and added to an existing federal parkland. Fruit Farm was “grandfathered in,” allowed to stay and operate as a private, non-mechanized cultural relic. We walked by what remained of the old mechanized farms, doomed by unprofitability to return to nature. Abandoned machinery turned into elaborate birdhouses, streaked with rust and guano. The vegetation that had replaced pasture and farmland, mostly scrub pine, was not as heavy and shadowy as the older forests, and it felt safer walking alongside it.

  After about an hour and a half, we stopped under the shade of an old oak to rest, breaking out sandwiches from the NASA vending machines, welcome but starting to go a little stale.

  Paul sorted through the stuff in the rolling mailbag. “We have food for two or three days, if they turn us away. What if we have to go back to the plane and find that it’s been vandalized—or just gone?”

  “You said not many people could fly it,” Card said.

  “Land it. It wouldn’t take much skill to take off, and then crash somewhere. I’m just wondering whether it might be towed away by some highway maintenance machine. Or pushed into the river to keep the road clear.”

  “I’d guess not,” Card said. “I don’t think the maintenance robots are going anywhere without satellite communication and GPS.”

  “Let’s worry about that when we have to,” Namir said. “How do we approach the commune? They’ll probably be expecting us.”

  “They might be having lots of visitors,” Dustin said. “It’s going to be a popular place, once the power goes off permanently.”

  “Sure,” Card said. “That accounts for the traffic jam all around us.” A butterfly wafted by in the quiet air. “This place would be in the middle of nowhere even if the autoway was working. You can’t just pull off the autoway and start hiking. People without airplanes would have to start wherever this road starts. And it’s probably not on maps.”

  “Didn’t used to be,” Dustin said. “People who wanted our produce would make a day of it. Drive up this dusty old road with no signs.”

  “Must’ve been pretty good vegetables,” I said.

  “People are funny. We’d sell them stuff like elephant garlic, that we’d buy in bulk down in Sacramento. If it was odd, they would assume we grew it here.”

  “Looked like a lot of crops when we flew over.”

  “Bigger than when I was a kid, and we were more than self-sufficient then.”

  “You said there were a couple of hundred back then,” I said. “Doesn’t look like that many now.”

  “Hard to say, the hour we flew over. Lot of people resting up after morning chores and lunch.”

  Namir sat down at the base of the oak and studied the scene with binoculars. He braced his elbow on his knee and turned the zoom lever all the way up, looking back down the road.

  “See anything?” Elza said.

  He shook his head slightly, still staring. “Feels like we’re being followed.”

  “I had that feeling, too,” I said. “I thought it was just nerves.”

  “Probably.” He lowered the binoculars, rubbed his eyes, and raised them to look again. Sharp intake of breath. “There.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Sun glint off something. Maybe metal, maybe a lens. Maybe a shiny leaf.”

  “Sniper?” Paul said.

  “No. I don’t think so. A rifle scope would be hooded, sniper or hunter. There it is again.”

  I carefully didn’t look in that direction. “What should we do?”

  “I’m tempted to wave and see if they wave back. If it’s a sniper with a gig laser, we’re all pot roast anyhow.”

  “Like someone would carry that much weight into the woods,” Dustin said. “Even if the Earthers had one.”

  Namir set down the binoculars and leaned back against the tree. He folded his hands on his chest and closed his eyes. “Probably wouldn’t be your Earthers, anyhow. More likely someone like us, interlopers after all that good organic food.”

  Something splashed in the river, and I jumped. “Should we do something?”

  “Just relax. We’ll be back in the woods in a couple hundred meters. I’ll hide at the edge and see if anyone’s following us.”

  “We’ll be at the farm in another hour and a half,” Paul said.

  “I’ll catch up. Leave one of the cells with me.”

  I handed him mine. “Punch number one for Paul.”

  He smiled at Paul. “Does this mean we’re a couple now?”

  “Oral only. I have standards.”

  “Two condoms.” He put the phone in his shirt pocket. “I’ll call before I leave. Or if I see anything.”

  We rested under the tree for a while and then walked on unhurriedly. When we came to the woods where the river curved, Namir silently stepped into the brush and disappeared.

  Dustin walked past me to take Namir’s point position and looked toward where he’d gone. “I’m impressed,” he said sotto voce.

  I wasn’t sure this was smart. Namir was the only one of us who actually looked dangerous. That might be important in a confrontation.

  Paul and I were as recognizable as movie stars, and to a lot of people we were symbols of treason. Cooperating with the Martians, giving in to the Others. Dustin looked like a college kid and Elza, a fashion model. Alba was so small she looked like a girl wearing a cop costume, though the riot gun gave her a certain air of authority. Card looked like an overweight couch vegetable, which I guess he was.

  Namir had something in his eyes that the rest of us lacked. Not arrogance, but a kind of physical confidence, certainty. Like he’d done everything, and most of it well. He’d told me, though, back at the motor pool last night, that Card was the kind of guy you’d watch out for in a bar fight. Heavy but not slow, and hard to knock down.

  Of course, you could
always go to a different class of bar.

  I was always kind of curious about that aspect of Earth culture, American culture. I’d left before I was old enough to drink legally, most places, so my experience was limited to one beer joint in the Galápagos, the Orbit Hilton, and the dome in Mars. On Mars, actually, above the colony. No boisterous drunks anywhere, no fisticuffs, just the occasional voice raised in dispute over a Scrabble word. All the fun I’d missed. But I did know not to pick a fight with someone who looked like my brother.

  I’d forgotten how good it was to be out walking—my body had forgotten. Dutifully treading on the treadmill on ad Astra, walking one day and jogging the next, was no substitute for the real thing, no matter how exact or exotic the VR surround was. Walking the Malibu beach or the skyways of Koala Lumpur, my body knew I was a hamster on a treadmill in an interstellar cage.

  I walked along like that, in a reverie, for maybe an hour, everybody not talking and not bunching up. We were trying to be inconspicuous but not sneaky, in case someone was watching or trailing us.

  Then a familiar sound, the toy-piano Mozart Paul used on his cell. He put it to his ear and whispered something, then gave it a shake and tried again.

  “Could it be low?” I said.

  “I don’t know. It got a flash charge at the motor pool. Should still be good.”

  He shrugged and held it out to me. The ON button glowed green. I put it to my ear. “Namir? Hello?” Nothing but a white-noise sound.

  “Could he have turned yours on accidentally?”

  “Don’t see how.” I handed his back. “I mean, you might turn it on, but you wouldn’t punch up the number accidentally.”

  “Give it to me,” Elza said. “Hush.” She listened to it, stopping her other ear. After a minute she shook her head and handed it back. “If it’s in his pocket, you ought to hear something when he moves.”

  “Unless he’s not moving,” I said.

  We all flinched at a sudden machine-gun sound. “Just a woodpecker,” Alba said. “Pileated.” It was a big thing, right over us, bright red head.

  I held up the phone. “So should I just talk to him?”

  Elza nodded, still staring at the bird. “Yeah. Tell him to turn it off.”

  “Hello, Namir?” I repeated his name twice, louder. “Maybe he turned it on accidentally, and dropped it?”

  “Or there’s something wrong with it,” Paul said. “So we either go back and check on him, or wait for him here, or move on.”

  “Move on,” Elza said when he looked at her. Everybody seemed to agree, except perhaps me. That cell phone had done some screwy things, but I didn’t remember it making calls on its own.

  A couple more curves in the river, and we were almost there. The stockade looked more formidable from the ground than it had from the plane.

  We studied it from hiding, on the edge of the woods, over a long, empty parking lot. To the right and left were cornfields, regularly spaced plants two and three feet high. The produce stand was empty, with a hand-lettered sign saying ARMAGEDDON OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. No guards visible, but the two guard towers probably had people behind the dark aiming slots.

  The road had a chain across it with a CLOSED sign. “We ought to just leave the weapons behind and walk up to the door,” Paul said.

  “I don’t know,” Dustin said. “No ace in the hole? We should leave someone in reserve.”

  “How about just the women?” Elza said. “Carmen and Alba and I walk up to them unarmed. Buck naked.”

  “No way,” Alba said.

  “In underwear?” She grinned.

  “I don’t have underwear, and you know it,” I said. “Let’s go back to ‘no guns.’”

  “I am naked without a gun,” Alba said. “But it makes sense.” She took off her cop jacket and I left behind the sweater I’d stolen from Camp David, under which I might have concealed something more dangerous than my natural endowments. Elza left behind the pistol she’d been carrying in her waistband, the one that Paul had killed with. Protecting me.

  Alba checked her cell and it worked on Paul’s number. She left the phone turned on and we set off, trying to walk casually despite being stared at, presumably from both sides.

  It was still a dirt road, but hard like asphalt. I asked Alba about it.

  “It’s probably laser-fused,” she said. “A lot of country folks do driveways like that.”

  “Nice to know they have big lasers,” Elza said.

  “Might have been hired out.”

  “Stop right there,” an amplified male voice said. “Put up your hands.”

  We were only about halfway to the door, maybe fifty meters away. It opened slightly, and two people came out in thick body armor with assault rifles. One of them beckoned.

  We kept our hands raised and walked toward them. They didn’t point guns at us, but kept them ready, what the boys called “port arms.”

  “You’re from the plane,” one of them said, a man.

  “That’s right,” Elza said.

  “Where are the others?”

  “God damn,” the other one said, a woman. “You’re the Mars Girl.”

  “When I was a girl,” I said automatically.

  “How many others, Mars Girl?” the man said. “You can put your hands down.”

  “Four.” We hadn’t discussed whether to lie.

  “Hiding in the woods? Watching us?” He was looking past me, at the tree line.

  “That’s right.”

  “I think you mean three.”

  “We got the one you left back down the road,” the woman said.

  “You got him? What did you do?”

  “Come inside,” the man said. He tipped his weapon toward the door.

  “He’s my husband,” Elza said. “What did you do to him?”

  “Inside.”

  We went through the door and found ourselves surrounded by forty or fifty staring people in a crowded semicircle. There were some children and even two babes in arms. Two dogs, no guns. More women than men.

  “Is this all of you?” I said.

  “You don’t need to know,” the man said, but a couple of people shook their heads no. Somebody whispered the “the Mars Girl.” The burden of fame.

  A big white man, bald with a close-cropped gray beard, stepped forward. He looked at the armed and armored man. His voice was loud and harsh: “Where are the others?”

  “Hiding back in the woods.”

  “Still heavily armed, I assume.” He pointed at the cell on Alba’s belt. “You want to call them and tell them to come on in? Unarmed, like you.”

  “No, sir. I can’t do that.”

  “‘Sir,’ is it?” He reached to the small of his back and drew a small black pistol. He put his other hand out. “Give me the phone.”

  She did, and he looked at the green light, nodded, and spoke into it: “You’ve got five minutes. Come on in without your weapons, or I’ll shoot the black woman. Five minutes more, I shoot the black-haired one. Five minutes after that, the Mars Girl goes to heaven.” He pointed the gun up and fired it, a loud bang that echoed off the walls, and looked at his watch. He turned off the phone and handed it back to Alba.

  “You’re serious,” she said.

  “Oh, we’re always serious, here at Funny Farm.”

  “I thought you were Fruit Farm,” I said.

  “That was a joke, back when ‘fruit’ meant homosexual. It’s not funny anymore.”

  “We meant to join you,” I said, “but if we’re not welcome, we can go on our way.”

  “We’ll talk about that.” Alba’s phone beeped. “You can answer that.”

  She did. “Hello . . . yes, he has.” She held up the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Your leader?” Alba shrugged. “If he wants to talk, he has to come here. He has four minutes and ten seconds.” He looked at his watch. “You have. Four minutes five seconds.”

  “We have weapons,” Elza said, “but we never intended to use them
on you. Only to add to the farm’s defenses.” Her voice was harsh and strained. Could he see that she was tensed to attack?

  He stared at her. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “Why don’t you think, for a change, Rico?” A gray-haired woman walked out of the crowd. “This is not the way.”

  She stood next to him with her hands on her hips. “I have a good idea. Let’s have the farm surrounded with a group of armed men, and then threaten to kill their women. Maybe they’ll leave their guns outside and come in for a chat.” She stepped closer to him. “Or maybe they’ll think with their balls, like some people I know, and come over the walls shooting, with nothing to lose.”

  “I wasn’t really going to—”

  “I know that, but what do they know?” She held out her hand to Alba. “Let me talk to them, quick.”

  She took the phone. “Hello, hello? That ay-hole who just talked to you is not our leader.”

  “Look, Roz—” She shot him a silencing look.

  “Your people are free to leave,” she said into the cell, “and I wouldn’t blame them if they did. Or you could come join them, and we could talk.” She listened for a moment, nodding. “Okay. Which one of you is Carmen?”

  I held out my hand, and she gave me the phone. It was Paul. “If it’s safe for us to come in, tell me where we first met.”

  “Galápagos,” I said. “But wait.” I looked at the man with the gun. “What did you do to the man we left behind?”

  “A tranquilizer dart. He’s still sleeping.”

  “We want to see him, before this goes any further.”

  “Easy enough,” the woman said. I followed her to the nearest building, which had a silver letter A over the door.

  Namir was lying on a cot under a window, his shirt off and a white bandage around his neck. I felt above the bandage for a pulse. It was regular but shallow. “How did you get him past us?”

  “GEV,” she said, ground-effect vehicle. “We took him around you, along the autoway.”

  I asked Paul whether he’d gotten all that, and he had. “We’ll leave Card behind with most of the stuff.”

  Roz and I went back outside. “So he’s not the leader. Are you?”