Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

“And what’s beautiful about the math is that it allows for a certain margin of error, especially in terms of our angle of descent, and in the way the strike zone doesn’t have to be a hundred percent accurate but just what Gerry is calling a generalized region of effectiveness… so, as Gerry says, the math is, well, juvenile.” He quickly added, “Don’t take that in any insulting way.”

Ian Hamilton got so fed up with Mitch’s apologetic tone that he bounded down the aisle of the H. G. Wells Ballroom and leaped to the platform in the Moon’s weak gravity.

“Goddamn it, Ira, you’re fired. You’re fired, you’re fired, you’re fired. We’re going to take those damn FMC drives, we’re going to bolt them into Gaspra, and we’re going to ram Gaspra down the Moon’s goddamn throat.” He spoke with the fervency of a man who was desperately trying to redeem himself, who was trying to make up for all the bad things he had done in his life. “And the three of us up here are the only ones who have guts enough to do it. I mean…where are your balls? Do you really want to go for this Tarsalan deal? You really want to trust those fatheads after what they did to the Earth? Tell ’em, Ger. Tell ’em that they’re nothing but a bunch of goddamn liars.”

Gerry stared at the crowd of Lunarians. Fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, daughters, children—every one of them. “We could indeed take the Tarsalan deal,” he began. “The Tarsalans could rig the Moon so that it would indeed become a self-sustaining outpost for the next thousand years. But make no mistake. It would be their outpost, not ours. And in forty years a backup force from their homeworld would arrive, and they would use a new gravitational device to dismantle the shroud, and they would then, at last, immigrate to Earth, just like they’ve always wanted. Only there would be no human survivors left down there anymore, and Earth would be theirs for the taking. Is that what you want? For the Tarsalans to come in and take over? Kafis isn’t dumb. He’s got two brains. He has a million years of technological culture behind him. That’s why I didn’t invite him to this meeting. That’s why I had Ian spray the whole room for bugs. Because Kafis knows it’s possible. He realizes there’s a way we can save ourselves. But is he letting on?”

He stopped, once again thinking of his wife and kids.

“Please, I’m asking you… we’ve got this chance. We can do it. Mitch and I have gone over the mission specs again and again. It will work. Do we tie our destiny forever with the Tarsalans? Do we let them control us? Or do we take control of our own fate? There are those of you out there who I know have people on Earth.” He ventured to his own thoughts of a moment ago. “You have fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, and daughters. You have husbands. Are you just going to abandon them? Are we going to desert our brothers and sisters on Earth? Do you want that on your conscience? I know I don’t. So let’s do what Ian says. Let’s take this chance, and do what’s right. Not what’s safest for ourselves, but what’s right and decent for all of humankind.”

Neil, sitting next to the helicopter door, banged his head as the aircraft shifted suddenly—and from that moment, his left contact lens wouldn’t work, no matter how many times he tapped his left temple.

In the wake of his great failure, nothing seemed to make sense anymore. His life became little more than a series of disconnects, and it became a lot worse when Lenny swerved to avoid incoming fire.

Morgan cried the whole way. Lenny kept glancing at her, as if he wished she’d shut up. And while the two other airmen seemed miffed about the whole rescue operation, Neil couldn’t really tell, because he couldn’t see them that well anymore, not with one eye in focus and the other eye out of focus.

At one point Lenny tried to tell him something, but the helicopter was too loud, there were only enough headsets for the three airmen, and, try as Neil might, he couldn’t make out a word Lenny was saying.

He asked one of the airmen, Douglas, what was happening, and Douglas had to shout to be heard. All he said was that they were being engaged—sporadically—then added that it was amazing what those fatheads could do in the way of weapons, given a minimum of materials.

Neil just smiled; and this was the other thing that bothered him—the smile on his face, the one he couldn’t seem to shake. It was an apologetic grimace, a bewildered one, like the smile of a man in the first stages of Alzheimer’s, fighting to remain polite even though his life was in flames. He couldn’t look at Douglas. As if he had failed Douglas in some way.

And then there came another disconnect. He zoned out. He didn’t know where he went. It was another big blank. Until the third airman, Fernandes, swung the big side door open and started firing his fifty-caliber machine gun at the ground. His children cowered. His wife looked catatonic. And the repeated muzzle flashes from the big gun lit up Fernandes’s face as if with a strobe, so that Neil saw the light-collecting goggles over Fernandes’s eyes, and the way the sweat dripped down his cheeks and off his chin, as if manning the big gun was hard work, like operating a jackhammer. Fernandes didn’t look particularly worried that he was in the middle of combat, though occasionally the corners of his lips twitched downward, as if involuntary spasms of the face were necessary to work the big machine gun.

Louise said something to Neil, but she had such a soft, delicate voice that she couldn’t make herself heard, so he just nodded… and then… and then…

Another disconnect.

They were on Marblehill’s big front lawn, and he had the distinct sense, as Lenny helped him out of the helicopter, that he had crossed over into another era, and that he was now in an age where only bad things happened, so different from the previous age of smiling good fortune. He was sure he heard Lenny say, “Your girls will have to learn how to shoot, of course.” And then he said something about tactical advantage and strategic value, words Neil didn’t understand because he had that smile on his face again, and when he had that smile on his face the whole world became opaque.

He caught sight of Marblehill. Huge bullet holes pocked its stone facade. Were they bullet holes? No.

The Tarsalans didn’t use bullets. How did the translating device put it? Vibration modules? VMs for short? Was that it? A weapon that did its damage by shaking materials beyond the point of their molecular-cohesion tolerances? Yes. It was coming back to him. Those long talks he had had with Kafis by the pool. He glanced toward his pool, the deep end visible behind the west wing of his house, but could barely make out the diving board in the glow coming from the helicopter. Then the helicopter shut down, the lights went out, and another airman, Sinclair, came from behind one of the stone pillars of the drive-through portico with a flashlight and waved them in.

“So?” said Lenny when they reached the portico.

“Nothing,” said Sinclair.

“We need food,” said Louise.

Sinclair gave her a look, and it wasn’t a nice look; it was a look that said, why are you here, what good are you—you’re nothing but extra baggage.

Lenny, on the other hand, was polite, and it was, Mrs. Thorndike, if you could please step inside, and yes, Mrs. Thorndike, that is coffee you’re smelling, and yes, we have coffee, real coffee, and we’d be glad to get you a cup, and I hope you know how to make good coffee, because we buried Nabozniak yesterday, and it’s too bad because Nabozniak was a whiz in the kitchen. Not only that, he knew how to crunch his own rounds—we’ve got a round-making kit, and maybe we can teach Morgan to make rounds, turn her into a real combat asset, because what we’ve got here, Mrs. Thorndike, is a bona fide alien invasion—they started coming down last night, and they sent some bugs in, and gosh we’re glad you brought the spray because we really need it, we should have thought of spray in the initial planning stages, but it’s too late, and they know we have food in here, yes, that’s right, they eat human food, they’re like us in a lot of ways …and it was as if Louise was hypnotized by everything Lenny was telling her. Yet it all sounded familiar to Neil, as if he had dreamed about this alien invasion long ago, and this was nothing but a peculiarly frightening summation of the whole thing.