ONE
In midafternoon six delta-planes came in low, made a pass and arced up, one at a time, to land in V-mode. They came down in the rocky area to the south, and a few minutes after the shrieking engines shut down three squads of fast, lean-looking infantry came double-timing onto the beach.
Warren watched them from the shade where he sat within clear view of Gijan. The man had made him carry the radio and power supply from its concealment in the scrub and onto the beach, where he could talk down the planes. Gijan shouted at the men and they backed away from the beach where the Skimmers might see them. A squad took Warren and marched him south, saying nothing. At the landing site, men and forklifts were unloading and building and no one looked at him twice. The squad took him to a small building set down on rocky soil and locked him inside.
It was light durablock construction, three meters square with three windows with heavy wire mesh over them. There was a squat wooden chair, a thin sleeping pad on the floor, and a fifty-watt glow plate in the ceiling that did not work. Warren tasted the water in a gallon jug and found it tepid and metallic. There was a bucket to use as a toilet.
He could not see much through the windows but the clang and rumble of unloading went on. Darkness came. A motor started up nearby and he tried to tell if it was going or coming until he realized it was turning over at a steady rpm. He touched the wall switch and the soft glow above came on, so he guessed the generator had started. In the dim light everything in the room stood out bleak and cold.
Later a muscular soldier came with a tin plate of vegetable stew. Warren ate it slowly, tasting the boiled onions and carrots and spinach and tomatoes, holding back his sudden appetite so that he got each taste separately. He licked the pan clean and drank some water. Rather than sit and think fruitlessly he lay down and slept.
At dawn the same guard came again with more of the stew, cold this time. Warren had not finished it when the guard came back and took it away and yanked him to his feet. The soldier quick-marched him across a compound in the pale morning light. Warren memorized the sizes and distances of the buildings as well as he could. The guard took him to the biggest building in the compound, a prefab that was camouflage-speckled for the jungle. The front room was an office with Gijan sitting in one of the four flimsy chairs and a tall man, Chinese or Japanese, standing beside a plywood desk.
“You know Underofficer Gijan? Good. Sit.” The tall man moved quickly to offer Warren a chair. He turned and sat behind the desk and Warren watched him. Each motion of the man had a kind of sliding quality to it, as though he was keeping his body centered and balanced at all times to take a new angle of defense or attack if needed.
“Please relax,” the man said. Warren noticed that he was sitting on the edge of the chair. He settled back in it, using the moment to locate the guard in a far corner to his right, an unreachable two meters away.
“What is your name?”
“Warren.”
“You have only one name?” the man asked, smiling.
“Your men didn’t introduce themselves either. I didn’t think I had to be formal.”
“I am sure you understand the circumstances, Warren. In any case, my name is Tseng Wong. Since we are using only single names, call me Tseng.” His words came out separately, like smooth round objects forming in the still air.
“I can see that conditions have been hard on you.”
“Not so bad.”
Tseng pursed his lips. “The evidence given by your little”—he searched for the word—”spasm in the face, is enough to show me—”
“What spasm?”
“Perhaps you do not notice it any longer. The left side, a tightening in the eyes and the mouth.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
Tseng looked at Gijan, just a quick glance, and then back at Warren. There was something in it Warren did not like and he found himself focusing his attention on his own face, waiting to see if there was anything wrong with it he had not noticed. Maybe he—
“Well, we shall let it pass. A casual remark, that is all. I did not come to criticize you but to, first, ask for your help, and second, to get you off this terrible island.”
“You coulda got me off here days ago. Gijan had the radio.”
“His task came first. You are fascinated by the same problem, are you, Warren?”
“Seems to me my big problem is you people.”
“I believe your long exposure out here has distorted your judgment, Warren. I also believe you overestimate your ability to survive for long on this island. With Underofficer Gijan the two of you did well enough, but in the long run I—” Tseng stopped when he saw the slight upward turn of Warren’s mouth that was clearly a look of disdain.
“I saw that case of rations Gijan had stashed back in the brush,” Warren said. “None of you know nothing about living out here.”
Tseng stood up, tall and straight, and leaned against the back wall of the office. It gave him a more casual look but put him so that Warren had to look up to talk to him.
“I will do you the courtesy of speaking frankly. My government—and several others, we believe—has suspected for some time that there are two distinct populations among the aliens. One—the Swarmers—is capable of mass actions, almost instinctive actions, which are quite effective against ships. The others, the Skimmers, are far more intelligent. They are also verbal. Yet they did not respond to our research vessels. They ignored attempts to communicate.”
Warren said, “You still have ships?”
For the first time Gijan spoke. “No. I was on one of the last that went down. They got us off with helicopters, and then—”
“No need to go into that,” Tseng cut him off smoothly.
“It was the Swarmers who sank you. Not Skimmers,” Warren said. It was not a question.
“Skimmer intelligence was really only a hypothesis,” Tseng said, “until we had reports that they had sought out single men or women. Usually people adrift, though sometimes even at the shore.”
“Safer for them,” Warren said.
“Apparently. They avoid the Swarmers. They avoid ships. Isolated contact is all that is left to them. It was really quite stupid of us not to have thought of that earlier.
“Yeah.”
Tseng smiled slightly. “Everything is of course clearer in, as you say, the rearview mirror.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It seems they learned the bits of German and Japanese and English from different individual encounters. The words were passed among the Skimmers so that each new contact had more available vocabulary.”
