The Legend That Was Earth (50 page)

Though awesome in its image of menace and power, the tank was ugly and utilitarian. Cade took in the squat lines of the turret carrying its long-barreled cannon; the impersonal lethality of the grenade throwers and machine guns protruding from invisible stations within; the hatch lids open, revealing the armor thickness that its crew would depend on when they became the stakes in a duel pitting the abilities of rival teams of designers. Two armorers were loading ammunition from a field tractor: different shapes and casings, some with dull black bodies, others yellow, another kind white. Gerofsky had described a standard type of armor-piercing round which punched a hole through the hull and blasted a jet of white-hot molten metal into the interior.

He looked at the crew again: each life potentially priceless by the measures of the economy of Chryse, dedicated to the sole purpose of killing and maiming indistinguishable others who had played the same games, had the same kinds of kid brothers and older sisters, parents, lovers, guys on the street in the same kinds of neighborhoods of the same kinds of homes. In Australia, Krossig had described the new insight that he and Mike Blair had found, which made all of physical reality an environment contrived—implicitly by some as-yet incomprehensible intelligence?—for the purpose of enabling consciousnesses to make choices. If so, then surely the choices being made by the consciousnesses dominating this particular part of that reality qualified it as the lunatic asylum of the cosmos. Or was it as bad everywhere? Cade wondered.

"
Guys! Look!
" A shout from Marie pulled his attention away. He turned to where she had been managing a stove and dispensing hot water for washing, shaving, and coffee to the troops, and found her standing, pointing toward the road. Hudro and Koyne climbed up from a slit trench that they had been digging. A dust-covered flatbed carrying two large-caliber howitzers, and with disheveled passengers taking up every spare foot of space, had stopped to let several figures dismount. Most were in regular combat dress, carrying packs and weapons, but two stood out immediately. One was of pinkish countenance beneath streaks of dirt and a field dressing on one cheek, with a wide brow, and wearing a bedraggled Air Force flying suit; the other was big and wide although youthful in looks—and blue-skinned. It was Nyarl and Davis. They both managed tired grins as they traipsed across the rocky shoulder of the road to where the regiment's vehicles were clustered. Gerofsky appeared as the others went forward to greet them.

"We'd given you up," Koyne told Davis, clapping him on the back. "What happened to the truck? They've been trying to raise you on radio."

Hudro clasped both Nyarl's hands and said something in Hyadean that sounded very emotional and happy. Cade took the camera and shoulder bag of ancillary equipment, which Nyarl still had with him.

"A stick of bombs went through us while we were taking cover," Davis said. "The truck was totaled, and some of the guys didn't make it. We thought we might end up walking all the way, but that transporter picked us up."

The news was not all happy, however. Powell was among those who hadn't made it. Something like that had been expected eventually, of course. Nevertheless, it dulled what spirit they had been managing to summon back together that morning.

Shortly afterward, Gerofsky revealed what perhaps was the reason for the absence of hostile activity all morning. The Hyadean conveyor had unrolled around and behind them. Denver to the north and Albuquerque to the south were already occupied. A blocking force had landed in the pass this side of Grand Junction. There was no way open to the west.

Presumably, the lull was an invitation to give it up in the face of a hopeless situation. But no surrender appeared to be forthcoming. Jeye—assuming orders were still coming from Sacramento—was sticking to his word. The brigade that the regiment belonged to received orders to move on deeper into the mountains to a position in what was evidently being prepared as a last stronghold for the Federation forces fleeing westward along the central front. Cade and the others stayed with them. What else was there to do?

* * *

That night, they found themselves preparing to bed down with one of the sections dug in on a forward slope ahead of brigade headquarters. The air was calm, bringing the creaking of tanks moving among the light of arc lamps in the darkness below. Still, the respite was continuing. It was generally interpreted as a last lull before the storm that would unleash with the morning: a final chance to reconsider. Apparently, there had been heavy air attacks in California, but once again, it proved impossible to get a communications link to the group in Los Angeles to find out more.

It was going to be a chilly night, spent in holes scraped in the ground, huddling in blankets or whatever else could be improvised. Cade and Marie sat sharing a mess tin of soup in the pit that they occupied with Nyarl, separated by a parapet from Hudro, Koyne, and Davis. Gerofsky was away, conferring with the brigade staff in the tents and trailers farther back below the ridge line. Soldiers were talking, brewing coffee, and sharing cigarettes in sandbagged positions dimly visible on the far side.

"I don't like it," Marie said, dunking a piece of biscuit and nibbling on it. "It feels too much like where we were in Oklahoma—before the big attack came in. Everything's going to hit in the morning. I can feel it."

Cade stared at the rocky hillside, formless in the starlight, while he searched for an encouraging response. There wasn't one. "Well, if you're right, at least we go out together," he offered finally. "We made it in time to do that."

Nyarl shook his head. "Fighting to the end when there is no hope. Again this is part of the Terran mystery. Hyadeans would never understand it."

"So how would it affect them on Chryse... if they knew?" Marie asked.

"It's part of the mystery," Nyarl said again. "Or is it mystique? They wouldn't let you do it."

"Then maybe Jeye's doing the right thing without realizing it," Marie said. She turned her head toward Cade. "I thought I was a born fighter. You know—one of those deluded self-images that you carry around in your head. And in the games I got mixed up in these last five years. Because that's what they were, games.... But all this in the last few days—the real thing. I never knew the insanity of it. Whatever problem this is supposed to solve, it could have been solved for a fraction of what it all costs. And it doesn't even solve anything. It only makes it worse for next time."

"I was thinking the same earlier," Cade said. He shifted to ease a cramped foot. "I used to think that what made people worth getting to know was who they networked with, what favors they could do—what you could get out of them. Now I've seen the qualities that make people truly valuable. And often it's in the same people... like Clara, maybe, or George, or Anita, Neville Baxter... even Dee."

"Dee was always okay."

"Yeah, well.... But you know what I'm saying. Why does it have to take something like this to bring that side of people out? Why couldn't they be what they're capable of from the beginning?"

"I hope they're okay back there," Marie mused. "Dee and Vrel, Luke, Henry... all of them."

"It's the same with us too," Cade went on. "Don't you get the feeling it's a bit late to find out now who you really are? Especially since it seems there's not going to be a lot we'll be able to do with the knowledge."

Marie could only shrug. "Maybe better late than never, all the same."

"Unless those things that Krossig and Michael Blair used to get excited about turn out to be close after all," Nyarl suggested.

"What things?" Cade asked.

"Personalities in this reality being incarnations of souls to help them develop. The things Hudro wants to discover. As do many Hyadeans."

"If it's true, then I must be working some enormous piece of karma off the debit side," Cade said resignedly.

"If?" Nyarl repeated. "Now you're sounding as if you don't believe it yourself."

Cade looked at him, the dark-hued face all but invisible against the jacket hood pulled around in the darkness. "It was a legend that you wanted to hear, and we played at being. It was how I got rich, and my friends got rich."

"You're making you and them sound responsible," Nyarl objected. "But you just used the situation that you found. You didn't create it. It resulted from the worst elements of both our worlds working in collusion."

"That's my point," Cade said. "If Earth had really been the legend that you thought, none if this could have happened. The best elements of both worlds would have..." He sighed and shook his head. "I don't know what." The strange thing was, he found himself almost believing that it could have been different. But even those who he'd thought might bring about something better had ended up going for the throat when they thought everything was in their favor. He leaned back and looked up at the stars. "Maybe one day it will all be told differently as stories change," he said to the others. "Another legend of an Earth that never happened."

CADE AWOKE CHILLED AND STIFF. He freed his arms from the blanket and stretched sluggishly. Marie was gone; Nyarl, still asleep, was wrapped in blankets and a greatcoat. He stood up, brushing frost from the predawn cold of the mountains off his jacket and beating his arms across his chest, while his breath steamed in white clouds. A thin film clung to the tops of the sandbagged parapets and the boulders, adding extra bleakness to the scene of daybreak creeping into the landscape like the light being slowly turned up on a stage setting. He saw Marie now, with Hudro, Koyne, and some soldiers, huddled around a stove under the awning covering the field kitchen a hundred yards or so back in a gully.

The scarp they were on faced east, overlooking an expanse of sand and broken rock that lay flat for a mile or two before rising to a line of craggy uplands. They were about twenty miles behind the forward positions that they had seen being prepared yesterday, looking down over rearward missile and gun emplacements, antitank defenses, and staging areas for reserve armor. Over the ridge behind them would be the long-range artillery, antiaircraft positions, command bunkers. Cade was getting to know the pattern already.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind. Cade turned to find Gerofsky in a combat jacket and helmet, accompanied by a couple of troopers, coming down from the ridge, where he had gone to learn the latest at brigade HQ. The troopers went off toward their own unit. Gerofsky came to the edge of the parapet and stepped down to join Cade. He looked grim.

"Forget any ideas of a breakout west from the Rockies. They've as good as closed the ring. This is the last act, right here. Or something has to change pretty drastically somewhere."

"Nothing from Sacramento?" Cade asked.

Gerofsky shook his head. "Not much from the West Coast at all. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. Orders are to hold out with maximum effort. I don't know what with, though. Our air support is practically nonexistent. They still have satellite cover. We're like ducks in a barrel."

Cade didn't reply. Nyarl, stirred by the talking, sat up, rubbed his eyes, mumbled something incomprehensible, and began removing frosty wrappings from his equipment. Behind him, Marie was coming across from the kitchen, carrying a metal lid as a tray for steaming coffee mugs. Slowly, the scene around them was coming to life. Troops began appearing out of the ground to congregate around spots dispensing heat and breakfast. Some tanks away to the right were moving out from their parking area. A jeep scuttled by busily below, raising a train of dust. But beneath the appearances of calm ran an undercurrent of tension everywhere, waiting for the first shocks and rolls of thunder that would signal the opening assault at the front. Or would it begin as a sudden saturation from the sky by some unknown form of destruction?

Marie arrived and passed the coffees around, setting one down by Nyarl. Davis joined them from the far side of the dividing parapet. Gerofsky repeated for their benefit what little news there was.

"Nothing on what's happening in China?" Davis inquired.

"I'm not even sure there still is a China," Gerofsky said.

Davis watched Nyarl laying out components and checking them into pockets in his various carrying cases. "What's the point, Nyarl?" he asked. "Whatever you get, who's ever going to see it? LA might not be there."

"I'll see it through to the end. It's what Luodine would have wished." Nyarl thought, then added, "Terran sentiment. I thought you'd understand."

The sound of jets flying low came from far away to the left. Heads turned, but the aircraft were out of sight. A lot of birds were aloft and making agitated noises, disturbed by all the unfamiliar activity. A loud hailer somewhere back over the hill was reciting something in a monotone unintelligible at the distance. As Cade watched, a field radar sited near the top of the rise to command the forward approaches tilted to maximum elevation, probing directly above.

Marie moved closer to Cade as he stood, warming his hands around the mug. "You finally look the part—a soldier," she told him. "There was a time when I'd never have believed it."

Cade glanced at the automatic rifle he'd been given, standing propped against the parapet next to where he had slept. Marie and Gerofsky had shown him what the various knobs and catches were for, but he had never gotten around to actually firing it. Some soldier!

He gazed back out over the terrain. "You know, now and again you find yourself wondering how it will be in the end... when it's checkout time. You hope that when it happens it won't be too drawn-out and messy. I never imagined anything like this: stuck on some mountainside in Colorado, in a place I've never heard of." He shrugged. "You'd have thought that after the life I've lived, I could have managed something with a bit more style, wouldn't you? You know, lots of friends at the funeral, big speeches...."

"I thought all that really mattered was that we were together," Marie reminded him.

He turned, and looked at her, checking himself. Then he put an arm around her and drew her close. "Yes. A pity we won't be able to do a hell of a lot with it.... But I'm glad it worked out in the end. Do you always do things in such roundabout ways?"