Larry Niven - Footfall

Cora carefully lit the bottled gas stove. “Which it won’t. I keep hoping we can save up, get a bottle or two ahead, but we can’t, not with all those kids to cook for.”

“It works out,” Sarge said. “Or has so far.”

“Just barely,” Ken said. Cora was watching the kettle, ready to turn it off the second it was hot enough. She didn’t look up. Ken felt relieved. Cora was the only one who knew how well he’d done by taking in city orphans. It hadn’t been as much trouble as he’d thought, with Sarge and his wife to help. They put the kids into two empty neighboring houses, and Sarge got them organized like a military outfit with their own leaders and everything. Ken hardly saw them.

And it had paid off nicely. Not only were there enough ration coupons and gas bottles to trade for a few luxuries, but everybody knew about the kids and his increased ration tickets, so the local ration wardens didn’t come searching his place. Hoarders weren’t highly regarded…

Ken had known food would be scarce. But who’d have thought that heat to cook it with would be the hardest thing to come by? No sun!

Cora was just beginning to bulge. I suppose I’ll have to marry her. Maybe not. Either way, she’s going to make me send Patsy away. Unless I can get somebody to marry Patsy? Somebody hungry who’ll act jealous?

They took the coffee into the front room. Anthony Graves was in his usual place by the big front windows. They faced southeast and got just enough sun to grow tomatoes in pots if somebody would spend enough time taking care of them. Graves was glad to do it. There wasn’t a lot else for somebody his age.

Randy Conant was there, too.

Sarge gave Anthony Graves a quarter cup of his coffee. Ht liked Graves. He carefully ignored Randy Conant. “Get much written, sir?”

“Some,” Graves said. He grinned. “I never expected to write my magnum opus long after I retired.”

“I think it’s great,” Sarge said.

Randy Conant mumbled something.

“What?” Cora asked.

“I said it was shit.”

“Enough, Sarge,” Ken said. Sarge Harris hadn’t moved, but his face told it all. “Randy, why don’t you go turn over the compost heap?”

“Fuck all, let somebody else do some of the work!”

“Sarge, I said that’ll do! Randy, we all work. Now get going before I forget you’re my sister’s kid—”

“Don’t do me any favors, Uncle Ken.”

“Maybe I’ll take that advice.”

“Whew,” Patsy said. “It gets thick—”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Randy said. “I get upset, that’s all. All this work, and what for?”

“What for?” Sarge demanded.

“Yeah, what for? We’re gonna lose anyway. Just like that Dawson guy said, they can keep dropping rocks on us until we have to give up. Why don’t we do it while we’ve got something left?”

“Peace in our time.’ Thank you, Neville Chamberlain,” Graves chuckled.

“You’re gonna fight the snouts with quotes?”

“Sure. Have another. ‘Some folks win by winning, some folks win by losing.’ I think you get off on looking stupid, Randy.”

“There’s a lot of people think like I do!”

“Bullshit!”

“Sarge, you won’t hear it,” Patsy said. “But he’s right. I hear them down at the market. Nice people. They just want things the way they were before the war started.”

“That’s what they won’t get,” Graves said. “Whatever else, they won’t have that. Look what happened after World War II. Everything changes after a war. Win or lose.”

“It’ll be worse if we lose,” Sarge insisted.

“Sure. People don’t tame very well.”

“I don’t want us to surrender,” Cora said. “But-well, would it be so awful? That congressman, Dawson, he said they’ll let us live under our own laws, live the way we always said we want to—”

Monogamously. You’d like that. Ken thought.

“That’s what the commies always said!” Sarge shouted.

“True enough,” Graves said.

“I’d rather have them than snouts,” Patsy said.

“What difference does it make, what you’d rather have?” Randy demanded. “Nothing we do makes any difference! They’re up there and we can’t hurt them!”

“The Army’s doing something.” Sarge was positive.

“What? Just what can they do?”

“I don’t know, but they’re doing something. You heard the President! He sounded good, confident—”

“And you really believe in politicians. I mean, you really trust them! Hell, you hate President Coffey!”

“A lot of people hated Roosevelt,” Graves said. “A lot more than you’d think. But he won the war.”

“It’s different now,” Randy said. “Don’t you see, it’s different. If there was something we could do, some way we could fight, but there’s nothing, we just sit here and let them drop rocks on us, nothing we can do, and they’ll get bigger and bigger. They’ll kill us all and we can’t do anything about it.” He laughed. “Shit, we sure can’t do anything. We can’t even surrender.”

“We can hang on,” Graves said. “Stay alive and be ready to

“We are winning.” Attackmaster Koothfektil-rusp’s image blurred slightly, and his voice hissed.

African night lay below Message Bearer. The dark cloud coy flared with chains of wild power surges. The Herdmaster’s nerv screamed at the sight, but he couldn’t look away. Repair the broken lines, lest the ship die! He waited for the atmospheric electric discharges to end. They came less frequently now. When the fithp had landed in the first weeks after the Foot, they had been near constant.—

The image solidified. “We have captured wonderful machine which make electrical power, and transportation devices, machines that make other machines. We have slaves. The land is wide, and it is ours. We eat the native food—”

“We must learn if poisons are present or nutrients are missing. Ship samples to Message Bearer for chemical analysis.”

“We will, on the next launch. Herdmaster, Chintithpit-mar wishes to return for the mating season. We will miss him sorely but he has surely earned the privilege.”

“Yes, I remember your reports.” Yet Chintithpit-mang is a dissident, of the Year Zero Fillip! What have they found, that the look so far? “Can you truly spare your best warriors? You continue to lose fithp.”

“Yes, Herdmaster. We will always lose warriors until we have culled out the rogues from among these humans. Fistarteh-thuktu was correct. This is a race of rogues, rogues everywhere, they may be more rogues than normals. The acolytes are studying this, to see how it could have come about. Herdmaster, we may have come just in time to save these humans. As if it were meant to be. Herdmaster, we gain a new domain, a wide domain. We stand on high places and we cannot see the bounds of our territory!”

“Your domain grows large and the fithp grow fewer. The warriors sicken of slaughter.”

“It will not always be so. The true humans learn. We kill rogues only. It is the, task of warriors to kill rogues.”

The Herdmaster suppressed an urge to trumpet. “How are you sure there are what you call true humans?”

“I will show you.” The Attackmaster gestured and stepped aside. Two stepped into camera view: Breaker-One Raztupispminz, and a dark human male covered with drab cloth, as the important ones always covered themselves. He stood half out of camera view, for fear of standing too close to the Breaker.

“This one is called Botha. He held high rank in the Afrikaans tribe. He knows little of our speech, but I will give you his words. He is eager to end this war.”