Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

Several people shared the dim room. The girl who had recently faced down the wild leopard was sitting across from Bloch’s mother, bright tears frozen on the pretty face. In her lap were an old National Geographic and a half-page letter that began with “Dear Teddy” and ended with “Love” written several times with an increasingly unsteady hand. Bloch studied the girl’s sorrow, wishing he could give her confidence. But none of the aspects inside could do that. Then he turned back to his mother’s slow surprise and poor Mr. Rightly who hadn’t slept in days and would never sleep again. That’s what Bloch was thinking as he used his most delicate touch, one finger easing the sloppy glasses back up near the eyes.

He moved again, no time left to waste.

The penguin’s new pond was empty of water but partly filled with machines, most of them dead and useless. A yellow crane was fixed in place, reaching to the treetops, and one steel cable dangled down to a point ten feet above the concrete deck. Flanking cherry pickers were filled with soldiers working furiously to arm what was tethered to the cable’s end: a small atomic warhead designed to be flung against tank columns in the Fulda Gap. The soldiers were trying to make the bomb accept their commands. It was a useless activity; for endless reasons, the plutonium would never become angry. But Bloch was willing himself into the air, having a long penetrating look at what might be the most destructive cannonball the human species would ever devise.

At the edge of the pond, the terrified physicist and the equally traumatized colonel were arguing. The intricacies of their respective viewpoints were lost, but they were obviously exhausted, shouting wildly, cold fingers caught in mid-thrust and the chests pumped up, neither combatant noticing the boy who slipped between them before leaping into the waterless pond, tucking those big arms against his chest, pointing his toes as he fell into the deep, deep hole.

Damaged aspects returned to the nub on occasion, begging for repairs or death. Death was the standard solution, but sometimes the attached soldier could be healed and sent out again. There weren’t enough soldiers, and the first assault hadn’t begun. But the defender had to be relentlessly careful. Infiltrators moved among the wounded. Sabotage was licking at the edges and the soft places, at the less-than-pivotal functions, and worse were the lies and wild thoughts that would begin in one place and flow everywhere, doing their damage by cultivating confidence, by convincing some routine that it was strong—one little portion of the defender believing itself a bold rock-solid savior of the redoubt, shrugging aside ten microseconds of lucid doubt as it did what was less than ideal.

Among the mangled and failed was an aspect carried inside a sack of water. Tiny in endless ways, the aspect managed to escape notice until it had arrived—a dull fleck of material that would never accomplish any mission or accidentally hinder even the smallest task. Ignoring such debris was best, but some little reflex took charge eventually. The defender told that aspect to be still and wait, and it was very still and very patient while tools of considerable precision were brought to bear on what had never worked properly. The aspect was removed from its surroundings. The aspect was destroyed. And different tools reached for what seemed like common water, ready to harvest a drop or two of new fuel.

But then flourishes and little organs appeared on the wetness, or maybe they were always there, and one of the organs spoke.

“I’m not here to fight,” Bloch said to the darkness.

It was his original voice, mostly. There was gravel at the edges, and it felt a little quick, but he liked how the words sounded in his head. And it was his head again, and his big old comfortable, clunky body. Time was again running at its proper speed, and the air was like a sauna, no oxygen to be found. “I’m not here to fight,” he said, and then his head began to spin. One moment he was standing in some imprecise volume never intended to be a room, and then he was on his knees, gasping.

The uneven floor flattened. New air rushed in, and light came from everywhere while the floor rose around him, creating a bright bubble that isolated him from everything else.

The boy breathed until he could remember what felt normal, and he got up on his knees, wiping his mouth with the gray sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“Better,” he said.

Then, “Thanks.”

Nothing changed.

“I’m not here to fight,” Bloch repeated. “I’m just delivering a message, and the other side went through a lot of trouble to put me here, which means maybe you should be careful and kill me now.”

Then he paused, waiting.

Anticipating this moment, Bloch imagined a creature similar to what he found inside the spaceship. It would be larger and more menacing, but the monster of his daydreams always sported green eyes that glared down at the crafty little human. Except there were no eyes and nothing like a face, and the only presence inside the bubble room was Bloch.

He laughed and said, “I thought I might get scared. But nope, I’m not.”

Then he sat, stretching his legs out before him.

“Maybe this sounds smug,” he said. “But for the last half day or so, I’ve been telling myself that I was always part of some big plan. Your aspect gets loose. The leopard picks it up with his front paw. Some careful scheme puts the cat where he can find me, and he cuts me, and I get infected, and after running wild and getting strong, I find my brother. Then Matt gives me a heads-up and points me on my way.

“Except that’s not how it works, is it?”

“If there was a fancy plan, it could be discovered. It could be fooled with or a million things could go wrong naturally, or maybe the gains wouldn’t match the hope. And that’s why real intelligence doesn’t bother with plans. You don’t, I bet. You’ve got a set of goals and principles and no end of complications, and everything changes from minute to second, and what the smart mind does is bury itself inside the possibilities and hope for the best.”

Bloch paused, listening to nothing. Maybe the world outside was still shaking, but he felt nothing. Probably nobody was listening, but he had nothing else to do with his day. Pulling his legs in, he crossed them, Indian-style.

“I’m here because I’m here,” he said. “Your enemy didn’t go looking for a mentally defective human who couldn’t feel fear. It’s just chance that you’re not facing down that blond girl or the leopard or maybe a little penguin. Any creature would have worked, and I shouldn’t take this personally.

“But I bring something odd and maybe lucky to this table. I don’t get scared, and that’s an advantage. When everybody else charges around, hands high and voices screaming, I’m this clear-eyed animal watching everything with interest. When you bounced along Pender, I saw people wrestling with every kind of fear. You were dumped into the water, and I studied Mr. Rightly’s face. Then there’s my mother who gets scared on her happiest day, and the government people and the professors trying to deal with you and each other, and everybody and everything else too. I’ve been paying attention. I doubt if anybody else has. The world’s never been this lost or this terrified, and during these last couple days, I’ve learned a great deal about the pissing of pants.”

Bloch paused for a moment. Then he said. “I would make a lousy soldier. Matt told me that more than once. ‘If you don’t get scared, you get your head shot off,’ he said. Which means, Mr. Monster, that you’re probably sick with worry now, aren’t you? A good soldier would have to have some fear. You’re little more than nothing to your enemy. You’re just one grunt-soldier, in his hole and facing down an army. Except that army isn’t the real monster either. From what I’ve been told, the invader is pretty much sure to lose. No, the scary boy in this story is what turns the sun against its planet, scorching all this down to where everything is clean again. Clean but nearly dead. The monster is those laws and customs trying keep the galaxy from getting consumed by too much life trying to do everything at once. That’s the real beast here. You know it and your enemy would admit as much, I bet, and that’s not the only similarity you two have.