Larry Niven - Footfall

“Yes. Certainly.” It will be all right now! it is a misunderstanding, it must be. When I learn to talk with them — “Our families will be concerned about us. Have you told Earth that we are alive?”

“I do not comprehend.”

“Do you talk to Earth? To our planet?”

“Ah. Our word for Earth is—” a peculiar sound, short and hissing. “We do not know how to tell your people that you live.”

“Why do you lock us up?” He didn’t get that. Maybe why is too abstract. “The door to our room. Leave it open.”

The alien stared at Wes, then looked toward a lens on the wall. Then it stared at Wes again. Finally it said, “We have cloth for you. Can you want that?”

Cloth? Wes became aware that he was naked. “Yes. We need clothing. Covering.”

“You will have that. You will have water.”

“Food,” Dawson said.

“Yes. Eat.” The alien gestured. One of the others brought in boxes from another compartment.

Clothes. Canned goods. Oxygen bottles. A spray can of deodorant. Whose? Soap. Twelve cans of Spam with a London label. A canned Smithfield ham. The Russians must have brought that.

Wes pointed to what he thought was edible. Then he took a Spam can and pantomimed opening it with his forefinger, tying to indicate that he needed a can opener.

One of the aliens drew a bayonet and opened the Smithfield ham by cutting the top off, four digits for the can, four for the bayonet, He passed the can to Wes.

Stronger than hell! Advanced metals, too … but you wouldn’t make a starship out of cast iron. Okay, now what?

“Do you eat that?” the alien behind the draftsman’s table asked. The interrogative was obvious.

“Yes.”

It was hard to interpret the alien’s response. It lifted the ears. The other, the one that brought the packages, responded the same way. Vegetarians? Are they disgusted?

The alien spoke gibberish, and another alien came in with a large sheet of what might have been waxed paper. It took the ham from the can, wrapped it (the stuff was flexible, more like thick Saran wrap), and gave it to Wes. It left carrying the can.

“You attack — you fight us. There is no need.”

“There is need. Your people is strong,” the alien said.

A flat screen on one wall lighted, to show another alien. A voice came into the room. It babbled, in the liquid sibilants Wes had heard them use before.

“You must go back now. We turn now,”

It didn’t make sense. “If we were weak, would you fight us?”

“Go.”

“But what do you want? Where do you come from? Why are you here? Why is it important that we are strung?”

The alien stared again. “Go.”

“I have to know! Why are you here?”

The alien spoke in sibilants.

Tentacles wrapped around his waist and encircled his throat. He was dragged from the room. As they went down the corridor, the ram’s-horn sound came again, and the aliens held him against the wall.

“You don’t have to hold me,” Wes said.

There was no response. The alien soldier carried a warm smell, something like being in a zoo. It wouldn’t have been unpleasant, but there was too much of it, this close.

How many of them speak English? He — it — said I should learn their language. They’ll try to teach me. He looked down at himself, naked, wrapped in tentacles. Think like them. They’re not crazy — assume they’re not crazy! — just different. Differences in shape, and evolution, and senses. What do I smell like to this … soldier, pulled right up against its nostrils like this? It held him like a nest of snakes, and its black-and-gray eyes were unreadable.

You knew the job was dangerous …

Son of a bitch! Sergeant Ben Mailey shepherded his charges off the helicopter and watched them climb into the staff car. The President! Son of a bitch! He grinned widely, then sobered. It took a war to get the President Inside. And I’m not going in with him.

Jenny ushered the President into the Command Center . She had enjoyed her previous trip Inside. Maps and screens showed what was going on across the nation. You could see everything at a glance. A dozen Army and Air Force officers sat at consoles. Large screens flashed with maps of the United States . Aircraft in flight, major trains, and larger ships showed up as blobs of light on the maps.

But there weren’t many lights, and many of the harbors showed dark splotches. Rail centers like Omaha had pinpoint dark spots as well.

Jack Clybourne followed them into the cavernous room. He looked puzzled, and Jenny felt sorry for him. There was no real need for a presidential bodyguard, not here in the national command center. His job was done the moment they got the President into the Hole, but nobody had thought to tell him that.

And I sure won’t.

Admiral Carrell stood to attention as the President entered. So did the mustached civilian who’d been seated with him. Admiral Carrell wore a dark civilian suit, but he looked very much an officer. “Glad to see you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He sounds a million years old, and I feel older. I look like a witch — She felt giddy, and suppressed an insane desire to giggle. Suppose Admiral Carrell inspects my uniform, with wrinkles and unbuttoned buttons and — and I’m drunk on fatigue poisons. We all are. I wonder when the Admiral slept last?

“The cabinet will be coming later,” Coffey said. “That is, State and Interior will be. We’re dispersing some of the others so that — I don’t really know the aliens’ capabilities.”

Admiral Carrell nodded. “They may know the location of this place,” he said.

“Could they do anything if they did know?”

“Yes, sir. They hit Boulder Dam with something large and fast, no radioactive fallout. As my Threat Team keeps telling me, they’re throwing rocks at us. Meteorites. They have lasers that chew through ships. Mr. President, I don’t know what they could do to Cheyenne Mountain .”

They, they, they, Jenny thought. Our enemy has no name!

“Let’s hope we don’t find out, then. What is the situation? What about the Russians?”

“They’ve been hit badly, but they’re still fighting. I don’t know what forces they have left.” Admiral Carrell shook his head. “We’re having the devil of a time getting reports. We used up half our ICBM’s last night, firing them straight up and detonating in orbit. The aliens got half of what was left. They seem to have targeted dams, rail centers, harbors — and anyplace that launched a missile. I presume they did the same to the Soviets, but we can’t know.”

“We can’t talk to them?”

“I’m able to communicate with Dr. Bondarev intermittently. But he doesn’t know the status of his forces. Their internal communications are worse than ours, and ours are nearly gone.” Carrell paused a moment and leaned against a computer console.

He’s an old man! I never really saw it before. And that’s scary—

“What about casualties?” the President demanded.

“Military casualties are very light — except for F-15 pilots who launched satellite interceptors. Those were one hundred percent. We’ve lost a number of missile crews, too.

“Civilian casualties are a little like that. Very heavy for those living below dams or in harbor areas, and almost none outside such areas.”

“Total?”

Carrell shrugged. “Hard to find out. I’d guess about a hundred thousand, but it could be twice that.”