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

I squeeze her hand. “It’s too close,” I say. “Toddville, I think you’re right. Let’s get going, though. Probably not safe here.”

She nods. She doesn’t look me in the eye. We paddle through the choppy water until sun sets. And then, without saying anything, we ship the oars and I turn on the engine.

Three nights later, we see lights on the shore. It’s a glassmen military installation. Dad marked it on the map, but still I’m surprised by its size, its brightness, the brazen way it sits on the coastline, as though daring to attract attention.

“I’d never thought a building could be so…”

“Angry?” Tris says.

“Violent.”

“It’s like a giant middle finger up the ass of the Chesapeake.”

I laugh despite myself. “You’re ridiculous.”

We’re whispering, though we’re on the far side of the bay and the water is smooth and quiet. After that reaper drone attack, I’m remembering more than I like of my childhood terror of the glassmen. Dad and Mom had to talk to security drones a few times after the occupation, and I remember the oddly modulated voices, distinctly male, and the bright unblinking eyes behind the glass masks of their robot heads. I don’t know anyone who has met a real glassman, instead of one of their remote robots. It’s a retaliatory offense to harm a drone because the connection between the drone and the glassman on the other side of the world (or up in some space station) is so tight that sudden violence can cause brain damage. I wonder how they can square potential brain damage with dead children, but I guess I’m not a glassman.

So we row carefully, but fast as we can, hoping to distance our little fishing boat from the towering building complex. Its lights pulse so brightly they leave spots behind my eyes.

And then, above us, we hear the chopping whirr of blades cutting the air, the whine of unmanned machinery readying for deployment. I look up and shade my eyes: a reaper.

Tris drops her oar. It slides straight into the bay, but neither of us bother to catch it. If we don’t get away now, a lost oar won’t matter anyway. She lunges into our supply bag, brings out a bag of apples. The noise of the reaper is close, almost deafening. I can’t hear what she yells at me before she jumps into the bay. I hesitate in the boat, afraid to leave our supplies and afraid to be blown to pieces by a reaper. I look back up and see a panel slide open on its bright blue belly. The panel reveals dark glass; behind it, a single, unblinking eye.

I jump into the water, but my foot catches on the remaining oar. The boat rocks behind me, but panic won’t let me think—I tug and tug until the boat capsizes and suddenly ten pounds of supplies are falling on my head, dragging me deeper into the dark water. I try to kick out, but my leg is tangled with the drawstring of a canvas bag, and I can’t make myself focus enough to get it loose. All I can think of is that big glass eye waiting to kill me. My chest burns and my ears fill to bursting with pressure. I’d always thought I would die in fire, but water isn’t much better. I don’t even know if Tris made it, or if the eye caught her, too.

I try to look up, but I’m too deep; it’s too dark to even know which way that is. God, I think, save her. Let her get back home. It’s rude to demand things of God, but I figure dying ought to excuse the presumption.

Something tickles my back. I gasp and the water flows in, drowning my lungs, flooding out what air I had left. But the thing in the water with me has a light on its head and strange, shiny legs and it’s using them to get under my arms and drag me up until we reach the surface and I cough and retch and breathe, thank you God. The thing takes me to shore, where Tris is waiting to hug me and kiss my forehead like I’m the little sister.

“Jesus,” she says, and I wonder if God really does take kindly to demands until I turn my head and understand: my savior is a drone.

“Iwill feed you,” the glassman says. He looks like a spider with an oversized glassman head: eight chrome legs and two glass eyes. “The pregnant one should eat. Her daughter is growing.”

I wonder if some glassman technology is translating his words into English. If in his language, whatever it is, the pregnant one is a kind of respectful address. Or maybe they taught him to speak to us that way.

I’m too busy appreciating the bounty of air in my lungs to notice the other thing he said.

“Daughter?” Tris says.

The glassman nods. “Yes. I have been equipped with a body-safe sonic scanning device. Your baby has not been harmed by your ordeal. I am here to help and reassure you.”

Tris looks at me, carefully. I sit up. “You said something about food?”

“Yes!” It’s hard to tell, his voice is so strange, but he sounds happy. As though rescuing two women threatened by one of his reaper fellows is the best piece of luck he’s had all day. “I will be back,” he says, and scuttles away, into the forest.

Tris hands me one of her rescued apples. “What the hell?” Her voice is low, but I’m afraid the glassman can hear us anyway.

“A trap?” I whisper, barely vocalizing into her left ear.

She shakes her head. “He seems awfully…”

“Eager?”

“Young.”

The glassman comes back a minute later, walking on six legs and holding two boxes in the others. His robot must be a new model; the others I’ve seen look more human. “I have meals! A nearby convoy has provided them for you,” he says, and places the boxes carefully in front of us. “The one with a red ribbon is for the pregnant one. It has nutrients.”

Tris’s hands shake as she opens it. The food doesn’t look dangerous, though it resembles the strange pictures in Tris’s old magazines more than the stuff I make at home. A perfectly rectangular steak, peas, corn mash. Mine is the same, except I have regular corn. We eat silently, while the glassman gives every impression of smiling upon us benevolently.

“Good news,” he pipes, when I’m nearly done forcing the bland food down my raw throat. “I have been authorized to escort you both to a safe hospital facility.”

“Hospital?” Tris asks, in a way that makes me sit up and put my arm around her.

“Yes,” the glassman says. “To ensure the safe delivery of your daughter.”

The next morning, the glassman takes us to an old highway a mile from the water’s edge. A convoy waits for us, four armored tanks and two platform trucks. One of the platform beds is filled with mechanical supplies, including two dozen glass-and-chrome heads. The faces are blank, the heads unattached to any robot body, but the effect makes me nauseous. Tris digs her nails into my forearm. The other platform bed is mostly empty except for a few boxes and one man tied to the guardrails. He lies prone on the floor and doesn’t move when we climb in after our glassman. At first I’m afraid that he’s dead, but then he twitches and groans before falling silent again.

“Who is he?” Tris asks.

“Non-state actor,” our glassman says, and pulls up the grate behind us.

“What?”

The convoy engines whirr to life—quiet compared to the three old men, but the noise shocks me after our days of silence on the bay.

The glassman swivels his head, his wide unblinking eyes fully focused on my sister. I’m afraid she’s set him off and they’ll tie us to the railings like that poor man. Instead, he clicks his two front legs together for no reason that I can see except maybe it gives him something to do.

“Terrorist,” he says, quietly.

Tris looks at me and I widen my eyes: don’t you dare say another word. She nods.