Читать книгу The Martians Strike Back! - Robert Reginald - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

WALTZING STAVROULA

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,

Under the shade of a coolibar tree,

And he sang as he sat, and waited for his billy-boil,

“You’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.”

—Banjo Paterson

Alex Smith, 1 Bi-October, Mars Year viii

Isis Station, Planet Mars

I sometimes think that I’ve become nothing more than the plaything of Life, the Universe, and Everything. My existence has been manipulated by man and alien alike, and my children and I have become mere biological experiments, little more than random DNA samples to be altered this way or that, depending on the whim of our squid-like or monkey-faced superiors. What will become of us individually—and our two races generally—has been the abiding question ever since the War of Two Worlds started fifteen years ago.

It’s been two years—one long Martian year—since Buddy was born, and Becky, Mellie, Buddy, and I settled in the underground milieu of an alien species. We’ve actually been moved several times since then, and now abide in what I call “Habitat Three” of “Down Under.” It differs from our first two subterranean homes in including some vegetation, both terrestrial (green) and Martian (red), among our surroundings. Somehow the plants seem to live together just fine in the artificial environment of the Red Planet—how, I have no idea, as with most things involving Mars.

Aroostook, the chief-bugger-in-charge whom most of us call “Big Guy,” insists that we remain with it and its companions, and allows no one else from the surface—my fellow humans—to do more than visit us occasionally. And, just as occasionally, I’m allowed on my leash to return to Isis Station, our only surviving base on the planet, so long as I do so alone. My family obviously remains hostage for my return.

I had a specific reason for making this particular trip. I knew that Expedition IV, our next great outpouring from Earth, was due to arrive in the next few weeks, together with additional supplies, personnel, equipment, and (presumably) weapons. I was worried that our fragile truce would somehow be broken, and that all-out war would erupt again on one or both of our worlds.

Because the truth is, our glorious military and political leaders appear to have learned nothing from our two previous bouts with the Martians. We still know so very little about how the aliens think, or what they want, or even if they feel emotions in the same way we do. They have ever proven to be a resourceful and a dangerous enemy, and I wouldn’t want to provoke them again. And I fear that’s exactly what General Fritz Burgess, our Commander-in-Chief, intends to do, from the little comments he’s made at the few meetings I’ve attended—and from what my friend Mindon has told me.

So I particularly wanted to attend the gathering of the Advisory Council that was planned for tomorrow. I took an alien air-car via one of their broad travel-tunnels to its terminus at the border of our territory in Isidis Planitia, the small corner of the planet that the Martians had allotted to us. There I donned an environmental suit, and was taken by half-track back to our main settlement (in the two years since I’d lived at Isis, we’d established a second small outpost at the travel-tunnel station, and a third one at the water mining site). The trip took six or seven hours.

It’d been six months since my last visit, and I was amazed once again at how much the Station had changed in the interval. All of its structures were located underground to protect against the persistent and dangerous solar radiation (not to mention the dust storms), the only surface emplacements being our defensive perimeter wall, the entrances and airlocks to the vehicle storage hangers and the primary residential and office buildings, and the various sensor arrays that had to be posted outside.

Earlier, I’d brokered an agreement between the two parties to allow our forces to salvage the broken and abandoned equipment and habitats from Granick Station, which had been destroyed in the Second War of Two Worlds—or, as we usually called it, the Second Martian War. The aliens had allowed us to venture onto Utopia Planitia to haul whatever we could find back to Isis Station. Our Seabees had used the time to good advantage, I could tell, increasing the size of our village by as much as a third—all being prepared for the new settlers and soldiers that would arrive within the next month. The administrative complex had also been expanded.

The half-track left me there at Airlock One. After entering the structure and removing my cumbersome suit, I wanted nothing more than to take a shower (something that had become much more commonplace, apparently, in the last year, due to the increase in our water supplies)—and then rest for a few hours. But my friends would hear nothing of it, and insisted upon fêting me with dinner in the new dining facility.

“Look, Alex, it’s been half a year since we’ve seen you,” Mindon said, “and we all want to know what’s been happening Down Under in the meantime.”

So I had no choice, really.

And I have to admit that the selection of fresh vegetables and ripe fruits had now grown to the point where a variety was readily available for all the settlers for at least one meal a day—a far piece, indeed from the way it’d been just after touchdown two years earlier, when we were forced to live on the godawful Army rations. They even served me a bowl of beans, a vegetarian chili that reminded me of something else I’d eaten years ago.

“Yes,” Min said, “that was Zee’s contribution.”

Zee was a brain-damaged war veteran who’d owned and operated an eclectic café in Novato, California, in the years surrounding the alien invasion. He’d always been a tad strange, but he was one hell of a cook!

It was such a pleasure to have fresh, spicy food again. The place was almost becoming civilized.

“May I join you?”

I looked up and saw Madame Stavroula the fortune-teller—Nomsah Vassilidis in real life—standing over me, like some oracle from ancient Greece.

“Sure,” I said, “why not?”

We weren’t exactly friends, but I was feeling too mellow to be dyspeptic after such a fine meal.

“How are your companions in Habitat Three?” she asked.

Stavroula and the other Sensitives who had been brought from Earth had been banned from visiting the Martian places, save for one occasion only; I’d always wondered if Big Guy and Crook Mouth and the others feared what Stavroula and her demi-witches might learn if they spent much time with the aliens. Of course, I could be completely wrong—maybe they just didn’t like the ladies.

I picked at the fresh greens, and realized they included some marinated nopales strips along with the onions and tomatoes and olive oil-and-pepper dressing.

“Mmm,” I said. “They haven’t changed much—they never do. Big Guy allowed me to come here, I think, because it wants to avoid further conflict between the species. But it doesn’t communicate directly with me in a way that is very understandable by anyone, least of all me.”

“Well, I asked because I’ve been having the dreams again—we all have—and they’re becoming more disturbing of late. I’m increasingly concerned about…actually, what I wanted to know is whether there’s more than one type of alien.”

Now that was an interesting question!

“I don’t know for certain. I once thought that I saw a Martian squid-creature that was white instead of gray, but maybe it was their equivalent of an albino. Big Guy never responds to my queries about other races, either of their own kind, or off-world aliens. I mean, I believe that they’re aware of other intelligences existing in the universe, but that’s only an impression—and I also believe that they were attacked by one of these external races at some point in their past history. Their murals seem to reflect this incident—but again, I can never get Big Guy to provide any real information about such matters, other than acknowledging once that other aliens do exist. I think that they’ve agreed collectively not to share data that might be used to harm them—or it has made that decision itself, or has been instructed to do so by some higher authority. I…I just don’t know, Nomsah.”

“I want to do a reading on you, Alex,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a way I have of concentrating my energies, of focusing my abilities on another person. I’m very worried about the future—about this meeting we’re having tomorrow. I think we need to know more about the aliens and their intentions.”

“What about our intentions?” I said. “The Martians would leave us alone if we just let them be.”

“Actually, that may not be true,” Min said. “Remember that they attacked us first, and seemed intent on destroying Earth with asteroids—as they apparently destroyed the dinosaurs and all large life forms on the planet sixty-five million years ago. They only stopped their bombardment when we landed here two years ago.”

“Do you know what they want from us?” Stavroula asked.

“No, not really,” I said. “I’m not sure that we could even understand their intentions, their civilization is so different from ours. I know they want to survive, just as we do, but for them survival means something different, I believe, than it does to us. They’re a collective community, the ultimate communistic society, you might say. I have the notion that they do have a plan to solve our conflict—well, at least some of them do—but they’ve been very careful not to reveal too much of themselves to one such as I. I keep feeling like I’m missing something very basic about their nature, but damned if I know what it is.”

“Maybe I can help. Maybe a reading of your mind would sift a few more facts out of the æther.”

“I don’t see how.”

I didn’t really want this charlatan mucking around with my brain. That was the problem that I’d had with her in the first place, when she’d bent Becky to her will before the War of Two Worlds.

“At least let me try.”

I sighed. I was tired and crabby and not at all interested.

“No,” I finally said. “I don’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, and never have. And if I sit here much longer, I’m going to fall asleep in mid-sentence. Min, lead me off to my….”—I yawned.

They actually had guest quarters established now in a new structure attached to the main HQ Building, and that’s where my old friend took me.

“I bet you’re looking forward to Puff arriving,” I said at the entrance to my cubicle, yawning a second time.

“You don’t know how much, man,” he said. “You’ve been lucky to have your wife and family here all these years, but I have no one, and I’m getting old enough that the prospect of settling down with a good woman is starting to appeal to me. I heard from her this morning. The initial complement of ships will dock at Phobos Base in ten days.”

“Well, I look forward to seeing her again. But I really have to get some shut-eye now.”

I was asleep almost before I settled into my bunk.

* * * *

I was swimming in the ocean again with Big Guy. He moved like a giant jellyfish, with convulsive squeezes of his mid-section, and seemed completely at home in water. Although we were clearly some distance below the surface, I had no trouble breathing.

“What do you want of us?” I asked, parroting Madame Stavroula’s query. “Why do you want us?”

He didn’t reply, but moved his bulky mass a little to one side. Behind him Buddy was puffing his little body, jetting through the liquid as if he’d been born there—as perhaps he had!

“Buddy has something to do with this?”

I had the sense that this might have been part of the answer, but not all of it, or perhaps not what I was meant to understand. Another movement caught my eye, and I turned my head to see Mellie swimming towards us. Becky was no where in evidence.

Far behind her I spied something else, something I’d never seen before.

It was long and sleek and green, rather like an eel crossed with a killer whale. But I didn’t notice the body at first—not at all—because what drew my attention, and the attention of everything else in our little drama, was the open mouthful of long, curved teeth.

“Daddy!” my daughter screamed, churning her arms as fast as she could.

“Mellie!” I yelled back, trying to propel myself towards her.

But it was Aroostook who interposed itself between the monster and my teenaged girl—and then the thing was gone!

When I regained my breath again (underwater, no less!), I asked Big Guy: “What was that?”

It swiveled its gray lump of a head back in my direction, and raised two of its tentacles toward me. I drifted into them in spite of myself, and the Martian placed the tips of its feelers on both sides of my brain.

I had then the flash of an impression: that was the enemy, and that was what we should be fighting together—and not each other.

But the alien’s thought or communication or whatever it was so overwhelmed my senses that I struggled once again towards the surface, trying to regain my equilibrium.

“Ahhhh!” I screamed, and I know I did so out loud.

And then I awoke.

Someone was sitting right next to the bed. I could feel the touch of the individual’s hand on one arm.

“Who…?”

I abruptly sat up and found myself face to face with Madame Stavroula.

“You!”

I jerked my limb back and tucked it under the cover.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

She said nothing for a very long time. Her face had gone completely white.

“I…I had no idea,” she finally said. “I really had no idea at all.”

Then she grabbed me by both arms and looked straight into my eyes.

“They want to assimilate us, Alex! While he was reading you, I was reading him! They want to make us part of them! That’s what this is all about! My God, they, they….”

I again pulled myself away from her.

“It was just a dream,” I said, “just like all the dreams we’ve had, just like all the communications we’ve had, Nomsah. You can’t interpret them straightforwardly. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. They don’t think like us. You can’t apply human standards to Martian norms.”

She shook her head “no.”

“I could see them, Alex, I could see him! They want us as part of them, so they can use our strength to conquer some other race out there. They want to make us one with their collective. It would mean the end of man. The General has to know: they want to destroy us!”

Then she quickly got up and ran into the corridor, swishing the entrance veil as she went.

“Wait!” I said, but she was gone by the time I could follow her.

My com rang, shocking me with its buzz.

I answered it absentmindedly.

“Daddy!” Mellie said.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine, Daddy. I had the dream too. Don’t worry. Big Guy knows what it’s doing.”

“I wish I did,” I said. “Is your mother there?”

When Becky came on the line, I explained to her what had happened.

“Do you think she’s right, Alex?” my wife asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve been wrong so many times in the past about the aliens that I’m hesitant to say yea or nay about anything they do. But…I do trust Big Guy. I’ve felt all along that there’s no meanness in its nature, that it will do us no deliberate harm. It certainly has had its opportunities in the past. The rest of them…well, who knows?”

“You take care,” she said. “I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow.”

“It’s tomorrow already,” I said, glancing at the chronometer, which had just moved past midnight. “I need to get back to sleep, if I can. I love you and I love Mellie and Buddy with all my heart.”

“I love you too, Alex.”

“Sleep well, Daddy!” came Mellie’s voice from a distance.

And so I did.