Joe Haldeman: Earthbound

He looked up. “Your name is Alba?”

“That’s right.”

“Scotland?”

“No, it means ‘dawn’ in Spanish.”

“Your father was…”

“Five cc’s of thawed-out Harvard sperm. Never met the guy.”

He nodded, looking off in the distance. “That must feel strange. Your father might have been dead when you were conceived.”

“I’ve thought about that myself. I was never curious enough to check.”

“Understandable.” He looked around. “Did we all lose fathers and mothers on this trip?”

Fifty years evaporated by relativity. “Meryl talked to her parents,” I said, “both of them. Don’t know whether they’d survive the power going off.”

He looked at the cartridge in his hand. “These aren’t smart rounds. Tracers?”

“Every fourth.”

“Mixed blessing.” I supposed because they made a line that pointed back to your own position.

“Are we going to stay here or leave?” I said.

“They know we’re here?” Namir asked Alba.

“Motor pool, yes.”

“I think we should wait for them. They’ll get impatient, today or tomorrow. How many?”

“Three I know of. The ones I overheard at HQ.”

Namir stood and stretched. “If I were them, I’d find sniper positions, separate ones, and wait. Pick us off one at a time. Who’s on the roof?”

“Dustin,” Paul said.

“I’ll go up and make sure he’s keeping his head down. Roof’s the obvious first target for a sniper.” He checked his wrist for the nonexistent watch, made a face, and went toward the stairs.

“Is he hard to live with?” Alba asked, after Namir had left.

“No. He’s very considerate and calm.”

“Controlled,” Paul said. “He’s been through enough to send anybody right ’round the bend. That one he talked about wasn’t the only person he’s killed.” He shook his head hard. “God. Now I’m one, too, a killer.”

“You had to do it, Paul.”

“So did he. So did he.”

“He’s stable, though,” Alba said. “Seems about as solid as anyone I’ve ever met.”

Paul laughed. “That’s what they always say in the newsie interviews. ‘Who would ever have thought a man that stable would kill his mother and eat her?’ But yeah. We lived together for years in that crowded starship, and I never saw him lose his temper.”

“Which is unnatural,” I had to point out. “The rest of us had our little moments.”

“Like Moonboy. A little assault and battery.”

“I heard about him, on the cube show about you. He went crazy, and the Others killed him?”

“Not really,” I said. “They took him, but he’s not dead, if they’re to be believed.”

“Not alive, either. A kind of suspended animation, which he’ll never leave. Close enough to being dead.”

Something I hadn’t thought of in a while. “Alive or dead or in between, he’s the only human they have in their possession, to study. The only one of us who cracked under the strain.”

“Of course they knew that,” Paul said. “And we were all glad. He was a real pain in the butt, as well as a lunatic.”

“Talking about my Moonboy?” Meryl said as she walked into the room, brushing her hair.

“Sorry,” we both said.

“Don’t be. He was a lunatic and a pain in the ass. Ask Elza.” He’d been in bed with Elza when he had his breakdown, and punched her hard enough to break her nose. Meryl was not surprised by the infidelity then, but she had been by the violence.

“We were all supposedly chosen because we could get along with others in close quarters,” I said.

“Some things you just can’t test for.” There was real pain behind her brusqueness. “So are we moving out now?” We told her about the new plan, or non-plan. She went into the kitchen to hard-boil all the eggs, for portability.

Namir came down and went around checking doors and windows. He came back with Snowbird. “Snowbird, this is Alba.”

She made a little curtsy, like a horse in dressage. “You are black.”

“Yeah, and you smell funny.”

“I apologize for catabolism. I have no food to metabolize.” In fact, she was starting to smell like marigolds. “I’ve not seen a black person since I left Mars, many years ago.”

“You’ve been stuck here since you got back?”

“Here on the base, yes, in protective custody.”

“Serious threats on her life,” I said. “Even before the shit hit the fan.”

“The what ?”

“Old expression. One of my father’s favorites.”

“How much longer can you live,” Namir asked, “without new food?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been hungry before.”

“You can’t eat any human food?” Alba asked.

“No. I can consume pure carbohydrates but get no nutrition from them. And the smallest amount of protein contamination would kill me.”

“They didn’t have food for you anywhere on this base?” I said.

“A few days’ worth, which I’ve eaten. More was coming, from Russia. Actually, if the power hadn’t gone out, I might have joined the other Martians there by now, or at least tomorrow—”

There was a sudden gunshot. Namir snatched the rifle off the table and hit the floor, hard. “Get away from the window!” Snowbird half galloped into the next room. I slumped myself down behind the table. They couldn’t see in, I thought irrelevantly. They could shoot in.

Elza came staggering into the room, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What was—”

Paul grabbed her, and Namir shouted, “ Down , Elza! Get down!” She did, and scuttled over to take one of the pistols.

A single answering bang came from the roof.

“Dustin’s a good shot,” Namir said. After a minute he stole up the stairs and cracked open the door to the roof. “Any luck?”

Dustin’s response was inaudible, where we were. Namir came back down, still keeping low. “Target’s not moving,” he relayed. “Dead or wounded or playing possum. I guess Dustin doesn’t want to use up a round, checking.”

“Might be good strategy to shoot a couple,” Paul said. “Make it look like we have ammo to spare.”

“Might be. But I think the time for that is past, now. I better check out back.”

“I’ll go,” Alba said. She had the riot gun. “Won’t use this unless they’re coming in the door.”

“Good. Take the other pistol, Carmen.” I did. It was the one Paul had used. Keep it in the family. I clicked the safety off, on, off again. A speck of red paint showed when it was off. Red equals fire, easy enough.

There was a long stammer of automatic fire, part of which crashed through the window. Only seven rounds of it, evidently; there were seven small holes letting daylight in. But the glass hadn’t shattered.

“He’s close,” Namir said in a hoarse whisper. “If Dustin can’t see him, he’s probably just behind the sandbags. Where you were on guard last night, Carmen.”

I was trying to swallow, but couldn’t. Most of those bullets hit the wall behind me. If I’d been standing up, I’d have been hit.

“Stay down,” he said unnecessarily. “He might try to shoot out—” There was a longer sustained roar of fire, glass splintering everywhere, which blew a hole in the picture window more than two feet wide.

Namir stood up quickly and sighted through the hole. He stood still as a photograph for two seconds and then fired a single shot, which reverberated like a gong in the closed room.

“Lucky shot.” He strode over to the front door, unbolted it, and opened it a couple of inches. He aimed down through the slit and fired once more.

“Okay. Paul, come check. Isn’t this the guy from yesterday?”