Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

“If you don’t freeze to death the first winter.”

Nick pocketed the condom and slipped the ring on his finger. “We’ll settle in the tropics. We’ve got just as good a chance of making it as anybody. Probably better.”

One of the aliens said something in a soft voice that sounded like it was coming from the other end of a long concrete culvert. A second behind him, a louder synthetic voice spoke from the pendant hanging by a silver chain around his neck. “Nick makes very much sense. He and Glory will provide backup for all of you when other colonies fail.”

It took Trent a second to puzzle out what he meant. “Doesn’t look like this place is in a whole lot of trouble,” he said.

“Not today,” the alien replied. “But war comes soon. Earth likes not uncontrolled colonies. What it can’t control, it will kill.”

“It’s too late for that,” Trent said. “There’s already too many colonies for anybody to stop ’em all.”

“Tell that to the United States,” said Nick. “They’ve been threatening us since day one, and they’re threatening everybody else they can find, too. Any colony that tries to recruit enough people to make a go of it the civilized way winds up on their watch list, and if you let a Frenchman or an Arab or a Korean move in, or if you try a form of government other than a dictatorship under one of their chosen puppets, boom, you’re on their shit list. Economic sanctions, embargoes, shows of force. You haven’t lived until you’ve been buzzed by an F-16. They haven’t started bombing yet, but how long do you suppose that’ll last?”

Trent took another swig of his beer. “The Galactic Federation won’t let them bomb—”

“The Galactic Federation won’t do a damned thing. It’s no more able to stop them than the UN could stop them from walking all over the Middle East twenty years ago. There’s at least seventy members in the Federation, and half of them would love to see humanity blow itself up. They’re not going to stop it; hell, they’d probably egg ’em on if they thought they needed to.” He looked at Trent and Donna for a long moment, then said, “Sorry if I’ve offended you, but I was an American, too, until five months ago, and it was the government’s belligerent foreign policy that made me leave. That and the way they lied to us about damn near everything they did.”

Trent felt like he should defend his country, but if what Nick was describing was true, it didn’t sound like there was much defense. And sad as he was to hear it, it fit with what he’d seen back home.

Donna said, “If you left five months ago, then you must have been one of the first ones here.”

Everyone at the table laughed. “The very first,” Nick said. “My full name is Nicholas Onnescu.”

“Oh,” said Donna. “And you’re going to leave the planet that’s named after you?”

Nick nodded solemnly. “Believe me, it’s not a decision I made lightly. I would love to stay here and watch it grow into something wonderful, but I don’t see that happening. Eventually the U.S. is going to decide we’re a threat, and that’ll be the end of it. I don’t want to stay just to watch it all go up in flames when the war starts.”

“What about you guys?” Donna asked the others. “You’re not all bailing out, are you?”

Greg said, “Not me. At least not yet. I haven’t been convinced that it’s hopeless. For one thing, we’re inviting as many aliens to move in as we can, so it’s not just a human conflict. That might move the Federation to intervene if the U.S. tries anything, and with any luck the U.S. won’t risk it in the first place once they realize they’ll be starting a war with more than just other humans.”

Trent looked over at the two aliens. “How do you guys feel about that?”

The same one who had spoken before said, “Exchanges of hostage may work, but even if not, we must do this to repay for damage we did long ago.”

“Damage to who?”

“Humanity.”

Trent laughed. “Can’t have been too long ago. We just got into space a few months back.”

The alien said, “We were in space long before. We traveled the slow way, spending many years between stars. We came to Earth when your species was still young. Very amusing was your science. Anything not understood was work of God. So we became God. Worked miracles, took offerings, then went away. Never thought people would continue to worship us after we left. Now we find you again, and we see how belief grew, how it fights with science, how it makes you fight with each other. We never intended such things. Never understood danger until now, but damage already is.”

These guys were on Earth thousands of years ago? Trent said, “You’re trying to tell me you’re responsible for religion?”

“Belief was already there,” the alien answered. “But we made it stronger.”

Trent took a long pull on his beer. What was he supposed to say to that?

Donna saved him the trouble. “How many other species have religion?” she asked.

The alien shook his head. “No others we meet.”

“None?”

“Zero.”

Nick laughed softly. “None of the hundred or so intelligent races that we’ve discovered so far have religion. Kinda makes you wonder, don’t it? Are we special, or are we just, well, special?”

Trent knew which way he felt at the moment. These aliens’ ancestors must have had quite a laugh when they stumbled across humanity. A whole race that believed in imaginary beings, who fought wars over whose imaginary beings were stronger. The temptation to take advantage of that must have been too strong to resist. He looked at the two aliens sitting at the table with him, with their red skin and gaunt features. Was it just coincidence that they looked like comic-book devils, or had some of the people who passed along the legend to their children known what was going on?

There was a long silence at the table, then Nick snorted and said, “Well, we’ve sure been a ray of sunshine for you two, haven’t we? I never even asked what brings you here. The boundless opportunity of a frontier planet, I assume?”

Trent shrugged. “It’s about half job hunt, half vacation. We were thinkin’ about relocating if we found the right place, but after that little pep talk of yours, I don’t know if that’s such a smart idea.”

“Earth’s no safer than anywhere else,” Nick said. “Maybe less. The U.S. is used to keeping its wars at arm’s length, but this time one’s going to wind up right in their laps. Anybody with a hyperdrive can drop a fast rock on a city, and they’ll do it if the U.S. pushes ’em too far.”

“Yeah.” Trent wondered how many of the terrorist attacks in the last few months had been from colonies trying to shake off the iron fist. The government had blamed them all on the French and the Arabs, who had been fighting U.S. domination for decades, but that wasn’t necessarily the whole story.

“Your best bet is to look for something farther out, even if you do have to spend a day or two changing velocity,” said Nick. “There’s a limit to how thin the U.S. can stretch itself.”

There was a limit to how thin humanity could stretch itself, too. Trent wasn’t a city boy, but he didn’t want to be a hermit, either. Or a farmer. He wanted to buy his groceries in a store, and when he lost a wheel motor in his truck, he wanted to be able to buy a new one without going halfway across the galaxy to do it. And when it came right down to it, he wanted his neighbors to be human beings.

He didn’t say any of that, not with Nick and Glory headed off to play Adam and Eve, and with two aliens at the table. He just dug another handful of popcorn out of the bowl, washed it down with the last of his beer, and said to Donna, “It’s gettin’ kinda late. You ’bout ready to hit the sack?”