Oblivion (28 page)

Every time we think them primitive,
Cicoi’s Elder had thought to him,
we learn they have grown tremendously since the last Pass.

Grown yes, but probes and information were not a threat. Cicoi didn’t want to worry about the creatures until Malmur was much closer.

“No, Commander,” the Second said. “This seems much bigger than the last few probes that we have monitored.”

That caught his attention. He raised two eyestalks. His Second was also poised on top of his lower tentacles, and not balanced well. He was tottering slightly.

Cicoi waved an upper tentacle, signaling his Second to stand down. His Second did, with obvious relief. His eyestalks remained in a position of respect, however.

“Bigger?”

“Yes, Commander.”

With his sixth upper tentacle, Cicoi activated a vision ball. It rose between him and the Second. “Where?” he asked.

“Coming from the third planet.”

Cicoi had the ball show him the area of space and saw a shape, cylindrical, and quite large, heading in their general direction. Then he pulled out two other eyestalks and held them close to the vision ball. Not a single cylinder. But several.

They were too far away to count.

“These are too large to be probes,” he said.

“Probably not,” said his Third, who had come up beside the Second. The Third’s eyestalks were also in a position of respect. “Probes can come in all sizes.”

“But we have monitored their probes,” Cicoi said. “None were this large.”

“We cannot assume everything about the third planet is uniform.”

Cicoi lifted three eyestalks straight up, eyes pointed at the ceiling. It was a sign of disgust. He had studied the third planet from his podling days. The creatures of the third planet preferred uniformity in function and design. It pleased their aesthetics. Just as it pleased the Malmuria.

Cicoi let his eyestalks drop as the thought dissipated. He had tried not to think of any similarities between the third planet’s creatures and Malmuria since he had been accepted into the military.

“We must be suspicious of difference,” he said. “Monitor these cylinders. When they get closer—”

We will die.

The Elder had returned. Cicoi withheld a curse, and finished his sentence. “When they get closer, we will see if we must take other action.”

His Second and Third both raised their upper tentacles in a gesture of respect, and turned away. Then Cicoi left his workstation and went into the antechamber. He did not like having conversations with the Elder in public. It felt too revealing.

“If you think we will die, then tell me what those things are,” he said.

I do not know,
the Elder’s strange voice was inside his head yet again. Cicoi hated this method of communication.
But we have underestimated these creatures too much. We cannot let the cylinders get close.

“What do you propose we do?”

Send ships to intercept. Rob them of their energy as you have done with other space debris.

Cicoi remembered the vision ball. He saw the shapes, but the energy readings beneath were small, at least from a distance.

“We have the same problem,” he said. “It would use up too many resources. We would not get enough in return.”

Knowledge is something,
the Elder said.
Without it, too many mistakes are made.

“You mean, I make too many mistakes”

You and all of your young kind,
the Elder said.
Somewhere along the way you have become dangerously cautious. If we had been so dangerously cautious, our race would be dead now.

There was a lot of history in those words, some of which Cicoi understood and some he did not. He did know that it had taken courage for the leaders of the South, Center, and North to band together, to get the Malmuria to work together as a species, despite their differences. It had taken a great risk to throw Malmur out of its orbit as its sun went nova instead of building the ships that some had suggested, ships that would have scattered the people among distant stars.

“What do you think these are?” Cicoi asked.

You have said yourself they are too big for probes, at least of the kind we have seen,
the Elder said.
Think strategically. Obviously the creatures of the third planet can. You have sent probes into space to find out all you can of your enemies. If you were to send something else, what would it be?

“A weapon?” Cicoi felt all of his upper tentacles rise in horror.

We have thought of them as primitives for too long. And they were, when we first began coming to this planet. But they no longer are. They have space travel and cities and societies. They have reason, and they have obviously found a way to codify their history. They have looked at the record, my young friend, or perhaps they have an oral tradition that warned them. They know we never come for just one Harvest. They know we are going to make another. They are going to strike first. It is a way some creatures have of defending themselves.

“You sound like you have sympathy for them,” Cicoi said.

The Elder floated before him. Cicoi hadn’t seen the Elder until then. Where had he been? Behind Cicoi? Or did Elders have a way of being present without being visible?

I did not have sympathy for them when we first came to the third planet. In those dark days, they were not different from other life-forms on that planet. But they have proven themselves smart and strong, and they have shown that they are worthy opponents. In my day, before we lost our sun, a worthy opponent was all we sought.

“Going into space at this time would waste energy we cannot afford to lose,” Cicoi said.

You sound like your compatriots in the North and Center.
The Elder’s eyestalks were rotating. Cicoi had learned that was the Elders’ way of expressing disgust.
Cautious to the end.

“Caution has its place,” Cicoi said.

But not here. Not now. If I am right and you are wrong, we lose more than a bit of energy. We lose lives we cannot afford to give. Perhaps we lose everything.

“Do you believe the creatures of the third planet have that kind of power?”

I would not have believed that they had discovered space travel,
the Elder said.
But they have, and now we must contend with that.

Cicoi felt his upper tentacles droop. “What if I’m wrong? What if these things are probes?”

Then absorb their energy as you have done with so many other things. The trip will be worthwhile, just for that.

The Elder did not understand the kind of waste he was promoting. His time had been so different. He had not been born to limited resources, to long periods of darkness and cold. He did not understand.

“Every time we do something like this,” Cicoi said, “we jeopardize lives.”

The Elder wrapped his upper tentacles around his torso.
We jeopardize the entire planet whenever we pocket our eyestalks and refuse to see what is around us.

Cicoi flapped four upper tentacles in distress, but the Elder didn’t seem to notice.

You will send ships to intercept those cylinders. Warships.

“But we’ve only gotten a few ready and we need them when we approach the third planet.”

You will send warships,
the Elder said.

Cicoi pocketed his eyestalks in protest.

No matter how much you deny, you will listen to me. You may have experience with deprivation, but
/
have experience with war. We are in danger from those creatures. You must acknowledge this and head it off.

“I’m not wasting the energy of the South’s warships on this mission,” Cicoi said.

The other commanders will send ships. They will do as they are told. So will you,
the Elder said.

“This is a mistake,” Cicoi said.

Yes, your plan is a mistake,
the Elder said.
I am amazed we did not catch these cylinders sooner. We should have destroyed the probes as I wished. Now we will pay the consequences.

Cicoi kept his eyestalks pocketed for a long moment, but said nothing. There was nothing else to say. He had lost, and he knew it.

Finally, he raised a single stalk. The Elder was gone. Cicoi let his tentacles droop. Lost energy, lost resources, and all for a bit of curiosity. Curiosity that could have been satisfied if they only waited.

But he would do the Elder’s bidding. He would take the five functioning warships into space, and he would examine those cylinders.

He only hoped he would get enough energy from them to make up for at least half of the waste.

August 1, 2018
6:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

101 Days Until Second Harvest

Mickelson loosened the tie around his neck. The fifteenth formal dinner he’d had to attend in a row. It was beginning to get tiresome. In a day or so, he would call Cross and see if Constance could whip them up something wonderful and old-fashioned, something impossible to get at the fancy restaurants where he had to take other diplomats.

He longed for this whirlwind to end. But he knew it wouldn’t. Not until the missiles hit the tenth planet.

He wished he could take the tie off, but he couldn’t. He’d had this meeting scheduled for two days now. The president wanted to touch base with his key advisers, something he’d been doing off and on since the missiles were launched. The first meetings were held in the Oval Office, but Franklin had been inviting more and more of his advisers. So tonight’s was being held in the Roosevelt Room.

The Roosevelt Room was across the hall from the Oval Office. Lopez had left the door open, and had placed beverages and snacks on the center of the large table. A few advisers were already inside. Mickelson peered in, wished he hadn’t loosened his tie at all, and then crossed the threshold.

He had loved this room early in the Franklin administration. Then Franklin had gotten the bright idea to restore the room’s original furnishings. When those couldn’t be found, he settled for some mid-twentieth century couches and chairs along the side, a grandfather clock in the back corner, and a plastic-looking conference table that someone said was an antique from the 1960s.

To Mickelson, the table was an affront. It didn’t go with the fireplace, which was original to the West Wing, or the lovely
arched door. Mickelson had complained loudly about the table and the mixed decor as well as the soft orange color of the wall, and the burnt orange color of the rug. He had complained so loudly and so often that Franklin had finally hauled out a photograph, which dated from the 1970s, of the room, and it looked just like it looked now. Ugly and mismatched and uncomfortable.

It wasn’t until someone told Mickelson that Franklin’s predecessor had redecorated that Mickelson understood Franklin’s decision to make the room his own.

Still, Mickelson wished he would have improved it.

The advisers who were waiting were O’Grady and Bernstein. Lopez was down the hall, but she would join them as well. Mickelson looked at the makeup of the group and already knew tonight’s topic: the state of the world since the declaration of war.

He suppressed a sigh. His job had actually gotten easier since war was declared. All the usual hot spots had cooled. No one wanted to be fighting among themselves when the aliens arrived. Issues weren’t settled, of course, but that didn’t matter. Right now, issues such as historical boundaries and trade agreements had been made moot. No one knew if they would even have a country three months from now, let alone borders to argue about.

Bernstein looked up from her conversation with O’Grady and her gaze met Mickelson’s. They hadn’t talked much since the night of the president’s speech. Mostly Mickelson had avoided her. He didn’t really want to talk to her. She intimidated him, attracted him, and made him feel foolish all at the same time.

It didn’t help that her prediction of civil unrest had come true.

But not as bad as she had said it was going to be. There had been a march on Washington, peaceniks who didn’t believe in the use of force, such a nonevent that no news station carried it. There had been five bombings, one in Denver, one in Chicago, one in New York, and two in Los Angeles, all government buildings. There were two assaults on military installations. And one attempt, in Washington state, to sink a fleet of ships in Puget Sound.

The image from those few days after the declaration of war that stuck with Mickelson was of a woman running from a bombed and burning IRS building in Los Angeles.

He could see it as if he were there. He remembered every detail of it shown on the news.

The woman’s clothes were on fire, and she carried a child in her arms. He had heard she’d been there visiting friends she worked with, showing them her new baby.

A news crew was in the street and caught her running from the bombed building.

The faster she ran, the more the flames engulfed her.

The image of pain on her face was something Mickelson would never forget. He had thought of it over and over, trying to understand it.