“We won’t be down long,” Nikka said reasonably. “Those ones outside will back off fast when you rev up.”
“But I …” Carlos looked from one to the other.
Nigel waited, knowing this was the crucial moment. The plan he’d worked out on the way down hung on what Carlos would do. Nigel was not above using the man’s devotion to Nikka, either. Carlotta had worked her way into this strange triangle and then changed the vectors abruptly. So be it; each coin had two faces.
“I need time to think. Nikka, do you really want this?” The man bent down, earnestly peering into her eyes.
“There isn’t time for that,” Nigel said rapidly.
“Look, this is a pretty serious violation of regs. You might—”
“Decide,” Nikka said. “We’ve had troubles, but we three are still together. Or are we?” Nigel’s heart swelled at the clear, even-tempered way she said it. Perhaps her perception of Carlos was coming around to his. A bit late, but …
Carlos straightened. “Okay. Look, I can say I had good personal reasons. And I do. We have things between us, things I haven’t been able to …” His words trickled away. Then he said grimly, “Damned if I’m going to let Ted muscle me around, either.”
Nikka embraced Carlos. Nigel put a hand on his shoulder. Carlos said gruffly, “Prob’ly get us killed, I bet”
PART NINE
2081 EARTH
ONE
The guard took Warren down the center of the island, along a path worn smooth in the last few days by the troops. They passed a dozen technicians working on acoustic equipment and playing back the high-pitched squeals of Skimmer song. The troops were making entries on computer screens and chattering to each other, breaking down the problem into bits that could be cross-referenced and reassembled to make patterns that people could understand. It would have to be good because they wanted to eavesdrop. But the way the Skimmers talked to the Swarmers might not be anything like the songs the Skimmers sung among themselves.
It made no sense that the Skimmers had much control over the Swarmers, Warren thought to himself as he marched down the dirt path. No sense at all. Something had brought them all to Earth and given the Swarmers some disease and the answer lay in thinking about that fact, not playing stupid games with machines in the water.
The troops were spread out more now, he saw. There were nests of high-caliber cannon strung out along the ridge and down near the beaches men were digging in where they could set up a cross fire over the natural clearings.
The men and women he passed were talking among themselves now, not silent and efficient the way they had been at first. They looked at him with suspicion. He guessed the missile attack in the night had made them nervous and even the hot work of clearing fields of fire in the heavy humidity did not take it out of them.
Coming down the rocky ridgeline Warren slipped on a stone and fell. The guard laughed in a kind of high, fast way and kicked him to get him to hurry. Warren went on and saw ahead one of the bushes with leaves he knew he could eat and when he went by it he pulled some off and started to stuff them into his pockets for later. The guard shouted and hit him in the back with the butt of his rifle and Warren went down suddenly, banging his knee on a big tree root. The guard kicked him in the ribs and Warren saw the man was jumpy and bored at the same time. That was dangerous. He carefully got up and moved along the path, limping from the dull pain spreading in his knee. The guard pushed him into his cell and kicked him again. Warren fell and laid there, not moving, waiting, and the guard finally grunted and slammed the door.
Noon came and went and he got no food. He ate the leaves. They were a poor trade for the stiffness in his knee. He listened to the shouted orders and sounds of work and it seemed to him the camp was restless, the sounds moving one way and then the other. He did not blame the Chinese for the way they treated him. The great powers all acted the same, independent of what they said their politics was, and it was easier to think of them as big machines that do what they were designed to do rather than as bunches of people.
Night came. Warren had gotten used to not thinking about food when he was on the raft and he was just as glad the guard did not bring any. Eventually the squat chinless soldier would come all the way into the cell and look behind the table which was overturned and would see the dirt mounds. Warren lay on the rocky ground that was the floor and listened to the snarling surf on the reef. He wondered if he would dream of his wife again. It was a good dream because it took away all the pain they both had caused and left only her smells and taste. But when he dozed off he was in the deep place where clanking came from above, a metallic sound that blended with the dull buzzing he had heard all that afternoon from the motorboat in the lagoon, the sounds washing together until he realized they were the same, but the loud clanking one was the way the Skimmers heard it. It was hard to think with the ringing hammering sound in his head and he tried to swim up and break water to get away from it. The clanking went on and then was a roar, louder, and he woke up suddenly and felt the sides of the cell tremble with the sound. Two quick crashes came down out of the sky and then sudden blue light.
Warren looked out through the mesh on the windows and saw men running. There was no moon but in the starlight he could see they were carrying rifles. A sudden rattling came from the north and west. More crashes and then answering fire from up on the ridge.
He listened as it got louder and then used the flickering light from the windows to find the map Tseng had given him. He pulled back the sleeping pad to expose the hole he had dug and without hesitation crawled in. He knew the feel of it well and in the complete dark found the stone at the end he used. He had estimated that there was only a foot of dirt left above. Using the pan to scrape away the last few feet of dirt had left him with a feel for how strong the earth was above, but when he hit it with the stone it did not give. There was not much room to swing and three more solid hits did not even shake loose clods of it. Warren was sweating in the closeness of the tunnel and the dirt stuck to his face as he chipped away at the hard soil over him. It was hard-packed and filled with rocks that struck him in the face and rolled onto his chest. His arm started to ache and then tire out but he did not stop. He switched the stone to his left hand and felt a softness give above and then was hitting nothing. The stone broke the crust and he could see stars.
He studied the area carefully. A soldier ran by carrying a tripod for an automatic rifle. The sharp crackling fire still came from north and west.
There was a spark of light high up and Warren snapped his head away to keep his night vision. Then the glare was gone and a hollow roar rolled over the camp. Mortars, not far away. He struggled up out of the tunnel and ran for the trees nearby. Halfway there his knee folded under him and he cursed it silently as he went down. It was worse than he had thought and lying on the hard cell floor had made it go stiff. He got up and limped to the trees, each moment feeling a spot between his shoulder blades where the slug would come if any of the running men in the camp behind him saw the shadow making its painful way. The slug did not come but a flare went up as he reached the clump of bushes. He threw himself into them and rolled over so he could see the clearing. The flare had taken away most of his night vision. He waited for it to come back and smelled the wind. There was something heavy and musky in it. It was the easterly trade, blowing steady, which meant the tide was getting ready to shift and it was past midnight. Coming from the east the wind should not have picked up the smell of the firefight, so the musky smell was something else. Warren knew the taste but could not remember what it was and what it might mean about the tide. He squinted, moving back into the bush, and saw a man in the camp coming straight toward him.
The figure stopped at the door of Warren’s cell. He fumbled at the door and a banging of automatic weapons fire came from the other side of camp. The man jumped back and yelled to someone and then went back to trying to unlock the door. Warren glanced into the distance where sudden flashes lit the camp in pale orange light. The firing got heavier and when he looked back at the cell there were two men there and the first one was opening the door. Warren crawled out of the dry bushes, moving when a burst of machine-gun fire covered any sound he might make. He got to a thin stand of trees and turned. A flare went up, burning yellow. It was the chinless soldier. He had the door open and Gijan was coming out, waving a hand, pointing north. They shouted at each other for a moment. Warren edged back farther into the trees. He was about fifty meters away now and could see each man unshoulder the slim rifles they carried. They held them at the ready. Gijan pointed again and the two men separated, moving apart about thirty meters. They were going to search. They turned and walked into the brush. Gijan came straight at Warren.
It would be easy to give himself up now. Wait for a flare and come forward with his hands held high. He had counted on getting farther away than this before anyone came after him. Now in the dark and with the fighting going there was a good chance they were jumpy and would shoot him if they saw some movement. But as he thought this Warren moved back, sinking into the shadows. He had faced worse than this on the raft. He limped away, going by feel in the shadows.
He reached a line of palms and moved along them toward the north. He was still about five hundred meters from the beach but there was a big clearing in the way so he angled in toward the ridge. Muffled thuds from the west told him that the Chinese were using mortars against whoever was coming in on the beaches. Five spaced screeches cut through the deep sounds of distant battle.
Warren guessed the Japanese or the Americans had decided to take the island and try to speak to the Skimmers themselves. Maybe they would try their own machines and codes. They might know about him though. The Chinese wanted to keep him or else Gijan would not have come with the soldier. Warren stumbled and slammed his knee into a tree. He paused, panting and trying to see if the men were within sight. With a moment to think he saw that Gijan might want to kill him to keep him out of the hands of the others. He could not be sure that giving himself up was safe anymore.
The five shrill notes came again and he recognized them as an emergency signal, blown on a whistle. They were from close by. Gijan was calling for help. With the Chinese fighting other troops on the other side of the island, Gijan might not get a quick answer. But help would come and then they would box him in.
Warren turned toward the beach. He moved as fast as he could without making a lot of noise. His knee went out from under him again, and as he got up he realized he was not going to give them much trouble. They had him bracketed already, they had good knees, and help was coming. He could not outrun them. The only chance he had was to circle around and ambush one of them, ambush an armed, well-trained man using his bare hands. Then get away before the other one found out.
He picked up a rock and put it in his pocket. It banged against his leg with each step. A rustling came from behind him and he hurried and stumbled at the edge of a gully.
A shout. He jumped down into the gully. As he landed there was a sharp crack and something zipped by overhead. It chunked into a tree on the other bank. Warren knew there was no point in going back now.
He trotted down the deepening water-carved wash. It was too narrow for two men. He tried to think how Gijan would figure it. The smartest thing was to wait for the other troops and then comb the area.
But Warren might reach the beach by then. Better to send one man down the gully and another through the trees, to cut him off.
Warren went what felt like a hundred meters before he stopped to listen. A crack of a twig snapping came from far back in the blackness. To the left? He could not be sure. The gully was rocky and it slowed him down. There were some good places to hide in the shadows and then try to hit the following man as he came by. Better than in the scrub above, anyway. But by then the other man would have gotten between him and the beach.
A pebble rattled faintly behind him. He stopped. The hard clay of the gully was three meters high here and steep. He found some thick roots sticking out and carefully pulled himself up. He stuck his head above the edge and looked around. Nothing moving. He crawled over the lip and a rock came loose under his foot. He lunged and caught it. A stabbing pain came in his knee, and he bit his tongue to keep from making a noise.
The scrub was thicker here. He rolled into a stand of trees, keeping down and out of the starlight. Twigs snagged at his clothes.
There was an even chance the man would come on this side of the gully. If he didn’t Warren could slip off to the north. But Gijan had probably guessed where he was headed and he would not have much of a lead when he reached the beach. On the open sand he would be exposed, easy to pick off.
Warren crawled into the dark patches under the trees and waited, rubbing his leg. The wind smelled bad here, damp and heavy. He wondered if the tide had changed.
He leaned his head on his hands to rest and felt a muscle jump in his face. It startled him. He could not feel it unless he put his hand to it. So Tseng had been right and he did have a spasm without knowing it. Warren frowned. He did not know what to think about that. It was a fact he would have to understand. For now, though, he put the thought away from him and watched the darkness.
He pulled the rock out of his pocket and hefted it and a pale form moved in the trees forty meters inland. It was a short soldier, the chinless one. Warren crouched low to follow. The pain that shot through his knee reminded him of how the chinless man had kicked him but the memory did not make him feel anything about what he was going to do. He moved forward.
