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

“A wormhole? Like, in space?” Tris says, oblivious. Or maybe not. Looking at her, I realize she might just be a better actor.

I don’t know what Tris means, but Simon nods. “A passage through space, that’s what I heard.”

“That is incorrect!”

The three of us snap our heads around, startled to see the glassman so close. His eyes whirr with excitement. “The Designated Area Project is not what you refer to as a wormhole, which are in fact impractical as transportation devices.”

Simon shivers and looks down at his feet. My lips feel swollen with regret—what if he thinks we’re corrupted? What if he notices Simon’s left hand? But Tris raises her chin, stubborn and defiant at the worst possible time—I guess the threat of that glassman hospital is making her too crazy to feel anything as reasonable as fear.

“Then what is it?” she asks, so plainly that Simon’s mouth opens, just a little.

Our glassman stutters forward on his delicate metallic legs. “I am not authorized to tell you,” he says, clipped.

“Why not? It’s the whole goddamned reason all your glassman reapers and drones and robots are swarming all over the place, isn’t it? We don’t even get to know what the hell it’s all for?”

“Societal redevelopment is one of our highest mission priorities,” he says, a little desperately.

I lean forward and grab Tris’s hand as she takes a sharp, angry breath. “Honey,” I say, “Tris, please. ”

She pulls away from me, hard as a slap, but she stops talking. The glassman says nothing; just quietly urges us a few yards away from Simon. No more corruption on his watch.

Night falls, revealing artificial lights gleaming on the horizon. Our glassman doesn’t sleep. Not even in his own place, I suppose, because whenever I check with a question his eyes stay the same and he answers without hesitation. Maybe they have drugs to keep themselves awake for a week at a time. Maybe he’s not human. I don’t ask—I’m still a little afraid he might shoot me for saying the wrong thing, and more afraid that he’ll start talking about Ideal Societal Redevelopment.

At the first hint of dawn, Simon coughs and leans back against the railing, catching my eye. Tris is dozing on my shoulder, drool slowly soaking my shirt. Simon flexes his hands, now free. He can’t speak, but our glassman isn’t looking at him. He points to the floor of the truckbed, then lays himself out with his hands over his head. There’s something urgent in his face. Something knowledgable. To the glassmen he’s a terrorist, but what does that make him to us? I shake Tris awake.

“Libs?”

“Glassman,” I say, “I have a question about societal redevelopment deliverables.”

Tris sits straight up.

“I would be pleased to hear it!” the glassman says.

“I would like to know what you plan to do with my sister’s baby.”

“Oh,” the glassman says. The movement of his pupils is hardly discernible in this low light, but I’ve been looking. I grab Tris by her shoulder and we scramble over to Simon.

“Duck!” he says. Tris goes down before I do, so only I can see the explosion light up the front of the convoy. Sparks and embers fly through the air like a starfall. The pipeline glows pink and purple and orange. Even the strafe of bullets seems beautiful until it blows out the tires of our truck. We crash and tumble. Tris holds onto me, because I’ve forgotten how to hold onto myself.

The glassmen are frozen. Some have tumbled from the overturned trucks, their glass and metal arms halfway to their guns. Their eyes don’t move, not even when three men in muddy camouflage lob sticky black balls into the heart of the burning convoy.

Tris hauls me to my feet. Simon shouts something at one of the other men, who turns out to be a woman.

“What the hell was that?” I ask.

“EMP,” Simon says. “Knocks them out for a minute or two. We have to haul ass.”

The woman gives Simon a hard stare. “They’re clean?”

“They were prisoners, too,” he says.

The woman—light skinned, close-cropped hair—hoists an extra gun, unconvinced. Tris straightens up. “I’m pregnant,” she says. “And ain’t nothing going to convince me to stay here.”

“Fair enough,” the woman says, and hands Tris a gun. “We have ninety seconds. Just enough time to detonate.”

Our glassman lies on his back, legs curled in the air. One of those sticky black balls has lodged a foot away from his blank glass face. It’s a retaliatory offense to harm a drone. I remember what they say about brain damage when the glassmen are connected. Is he connected? Will this hurt him? I don’t like the kid, but he’s so young. Not unredeemable. He saved my life.

I don’t know why I do it, but while Tris and the others are distracted, I use a broken piece of the guard rail to knock off the black ball. I watch it roll under the truck, yards away. I don’t want to hurt him; I just want my sister and me safe and away.

“Libs!” It’s Tris, looking too much like a terrorist with her big black gun. Dad taught us both to use them, but the difference between us is I wish that I didn’t know how, and Tris is glad.

I run to catch up. A man idles a pickup ten yards down the road from the convoy.

“They’re coming back on,” he says.

“Detonating!” The woman’s voice is a bird-call, a swoop from high to low. She presses a sequence of buttons on a remote and suddenly the light ahead is fiercer than the sun and it smells like gasoline and woodsmoke and tar. I’ve seen plenty enough bomb wreckage in my life; I feel like when it’s ours it should look different. Better. It doesn’t.

Tris pulls me into the back of the pickup and we’re bouncing away before we can even shut the back door. We turn off the highway and drive down a long dirt road through the woods. I watch the back of the woman’s head through the rear window. She has four triangular scars at the base of her neck, the same as Bill’s.

Something breaks out of the underbrush on the side of the road. Something that moves unnaturally fast, even on the six legs he has left. Something that calls out, in that stupid, naive, inhuman voice:

“Stop the vehicle! Pregnant one, do not worry, I will—”

“Fuck!” Tris’s terror cuts off the last of the speech. The car swerves, tossing me against the door. I must not have latched it properly, because next thing I know I’m tumbling to the dirt with a thud that jars my teeth. The glassman scrambles on top of me without any regard for the pricking pain of his long, metallic limbs.

“Kill that thing!” It’s a man, I’m not sure who. I can’t look, pinioned as I am.

“Pregnant one, step down from the terrorist vehicle and I will lead you to safety. There is a Reaper Support Flyer on its way.”

He grips me between two metallic arms and hauls me up with surprising strength. The woman and Simon have guns trained on the glassman, but they hesitate—if they shoot him, they have to shoot me. Tris has her gun up as well, but she’s shaking so hard she can’t even get her finger on the trigger.

“Let go of me,” I say to him. He presses his legs more firmly into my side.

“I will save the pregnant one,” he repeats, as though to reassure both of us. He’s young, but he’s still a glassman. He knows enough to use me as a human shield.

Tris lowers the gun to her side. She slides from the truck bed and walks forward.

“Don’t you dare, Tris!” I yell, but she just shakes her head. My sister, giving herself to a glassman? What would Dad say? I can’t even free a hand to wipe my eyes. I hate this boy behind the glass face. I hate him because he’s too young and ignorant to even understand what he’s doing wrong. Evil is good to a glassman. Wrong is right. The pregnant one has to be saved.