Dancers in the Afterglow (6 page)

He nodded. "Yeah. Good protection, good ventilation, lots of wild fruit trees, and a good game area," he told them. "And if you know the caves you got a lot of escape routes. Best place to hide out ever invented."

"Is this all really necessary, Mr. Rolvag, or is it just your yen for heroics," one of the engineers asked derisively. "Hiding out in caves! Really! I'm sure facing the Machists would be better than that. After all, we're civilians."

Sten Rolvag snorted. "Ain't no civilians in a war, woman. Listen, what do you think they started the war over? Property rights? Hell, they got more space than we have, more resources. No, they said they were gonna give us their culture. Culture means people, lady. They don't want Ondine, they want the
people
on Ondine. That's what all this is about.
Us.
They want us to do somethin' to us. We don't know what, but wouldn't you rather be uncomfortable for a while until you know what it is they do to us before you rush down to join 'em?"

The engineer opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again.

"By midday, the people like us in the bush might be the only free human beings left on the planet," Rolvag said crisply.

"We will continue broadcasting as long as possible," the newsman announced, looking as if he'd been through hell. "Machist troops are all over the city and, in fact, all over Ondine. I can't imagine why they've allowed us to remain on the air this long."

The man and the girl had sat stunned through most of the night, watching the unchanging panorama, talking very little, absorbed not so much by the drama on the screen as by their own position in the new scheme of things.

Finally, he turned to her and asked, "Do you have any family?"

She smiled bitterly and shook her head. "No, nobody. That's why I came to Ondine. I've been here four years, bumming around, taking odd jobs here and there, existing." She paused for a minute. "What about you?"

He shrugged. "Some old friends and business associates. My family's all dead. Oh, I'll be missed for a while, but it won't cause any dent in things. Nothing that ever happened to me ever did."

Suddenly they heard distant explosions, which, while not nearby, still sent shock waves through the hotel.

"My God!" she reacted, as much in puzzlement as in fear. "What's that?"

There was a second explosion series.

"The screen's gone blank," he noted. "Looks like they finally pulled the plug."

"Can't we find out what's going on?" she asked apprehensively.

He looked at the control panel for the window. "Yeah, here. We can swing it for a city view. Won't be as good as the 'visor boys, but it might tell us something." He punched the code. The screen flickered, then the city appeared. It took two or three tries for him to locate the distant spaceport, which was much smaller than in the 'visor, but still easy to make out.

"The ships!" she exclaimed. "The ships are gone!"

That was true. There wasn't a trace of activity in the spaceport," nor signs of massive traffic.

He was just about to reply when another explosion went off, this time visible to them. A few seconds later, the hotel shook again.

"Oh, my God!" she breathed. "They're blowing up the spaceport!"

Explosions came in more rapid succession, and they could see huge billows of smoke and debris roar out of the spaceport. Towers collapsed, supports collapsed, then were obscured in great clouds of dust and dirt rising upward into the sky. It was past dawn now.

"Why would they do that?" she asked him, almost in shock.

He thought of several reasons. "Now that they've unloaded, they don't want anybody else coming in or going out. They probably will blow all of them except one, the better to control who goes in and out of Ondine."

"But that means we're trapped!" she responded, appalled.

The shock waves of the explosions awakened Moira Sabila. She twisted and moaned, then unplugged her ears and flipped the blinders up, a puzzled expression on her face. She looked over at the other bed and noted that Genji was gone. As a more dramatic series of explosions went through the hotel, shaking everything that wasn't nailed down, she felt momentary panic.

"Genji!" she almost screamed. "Genji! What the hell is going on?"

He heard her and came back into the bedroom. He was dressed, but looked as if he hadn't slept a wink. His expression was grave.

"Genji! Thank God!" she managed. Her relief at seeing him gave him a sense of satisfaction and a slight thrill.
She
needed
him
now.

"The Machists attacked Ondine and captured it last night," he told her. "We're under an army of occupation now."

Color drained from her, and she was wide awake. "Good lord! Why didn't you wake me?"

He turned his palms up. "What was the use? We're confined to the hotel until further notice anyway. One of us might as well sleep."

Suddenly her mind buzzed with all the things he'd already been through.

"Call the spaceport! Let's get out of here!" she urged him.

"Did it," he replied crisply. "No go. There are no spaceships anymore. They all scrammed. And those explosions you're hearing—they're blowing up the 'port. They're trapping us here but good."

"But we have money, dammit all!" she protested. "Genji! Fix it up! Any price to get us out!"

He shook his head sadly. He wasn't much brighter than average, but he'd been getting quite an education in the past few hours.

"Honey, money's no good for anything anymore. Our assets are on Tinderman, anyway, and there's a lot of big, bad battleships between here and there."

"The jewels!" she exclaimed, suddenly brightening. "They're worth something!"

"Nothing," he replied, voice hollow. "Nothing's worth anything anymore, babe."

She got up and went to her dressing table. Ordinarily, lust at the sight would have overcome him, but, right now, it just didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

"What're you doing?" he asked her, almost absently.

"Dressing," she replied, an undertone of arrogant confidence still in her voice. "Soldiers are soldiers and I was never very political, anyway."

He sighed and sat back on the bed as the hotel continued to vibrate from the explosions. His biggest fear at that moment was that she was right—and where did that leave him?

Several floors below the man and the woman were still in bed. There was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

From down the hall came the sound of three strong knocks. She trembled with fear, and he held her to him, hoping that he could comfort her, hoping that she didn't realize that he was trembling, too.

A minute or so later the knocks were repeated, a wee bit closer now. They both knew what it was. It was fate, coming slowly, methodically to them.

In a few minutes, it was close enough for them to hear a door slide open, hear muffled voices without being able to make but words. Whoever it was, was coming down the hall toward them.

Finally they both stared across the room at their own door. They couldn't take their eyes from it; although solid and mute, it held them captive.

Then, suddenly, those three powerful knocks were on
their
door, the sound piercing their bodies like funeral gongs.

For a minute he could do nothing. The three knocks were repeated, nastier, more insistent this time. His mind made the door quake with their demand.

"Who is it?" he called out timidly.

No reply. He got out of bed and started toward the door. Suddenly he realized they were both nude, and he grabbed a hotel blanket, wrapping it around him like a skirt. He almost made it to the door before there was a crackling sound, and the locking mechanism barely missed him as it flew halfway across the room before landing on the floor. They had shot the lock off.

It was an old-style door, the kind that opened on hinges. Someone gave it a nasty kick. The door flew back, revealing a sinister-looking little character with a nasty expression. The Machist had kicked the door so hard that it struck the wall and rebounded back as (he? she? it?) stepped in, almost smacking the soldier in the face. If the expression weren't so chilling, it would have been comic.

The Machist angrily pushed the door back open and stepped inside. The girl, still in bed, pulled the sheet up to cover her nakedness and stared in fascinated horror at the strange intruder.

He was about 160 centimeters tall—shorter by a bit than the man, but slightly taller than .the girl. He bulged muscle everywhere, like the men in the body-building competitions. Short-cropped curly black hair framed a dark-complected face, and he seemed to have no blemishes on him of any kind. His uniform, made of a light form-fitting material and ending in boots of slightly more substantial stuff, was all black and seemed of one piece.

His eyes were what set him completely apart: yellow rather than white set off huge brown pupils. They looked like a reptile's eyes.

In his right hand he carried a strange-looking contraption that was nonetheless clearly a hand weapon.

He strode into the room arrogantly, looked around it suspiciously, then decided that the occupants were just frightened, not laying a trap. "You will meet in the lobby of this hotel at exactly ten hundred hours— that is about one hour from now," he said in a strange voice, one that seemed to have both male and female characteristics despite the fact that it was totally devoid of emotion. "You will be there and on time. At ten-fifteen the elevators and stairs will be sealed. At ten-thirty this hotel will be gassed, along with anyone still in it." He turned and left. They heard knocking on the room next door.

The man closed the door as best he could and went back to the girl. Her expression, terrified and shocked, mirrored his own.

"I think we'd better get dressed," he said quietly.

Moira was dressed fit to kill. Genji had to admit that. When the insistent knock came to their door, she put on her best smile and pressed the stud that slid back the panels.

A different soldier stood there, but, for all appearances, he was the identical twin of the one downstairs.

Moira gasped, then recovered. There was something strange, uncannily unhuman about the soldier. She forced a smile.

"Won't you come in?" she said pleasantly.

The Maohist didn't even give her a glance.

"Any more people in here?" he asked in that strange, machinelike voice.

"Yes, me," Genji called, and came over to the door.

"You will be down in the lobby at ten hundred hours," the Machist soldier began, outlining the same cold threat that most others in the hotel had already heard. He turned and walked off.

"Oh, my God!" he heard Moira whisper. "They're not
people!"

It took most of the day for Sten Rolvag to make it back to the Hurley Mama's caves after ditching the flyer, whose power-plant radiation could have betrayed them. He had stripped all the camps he knew and his own house for everything he could find—food, weapons, everything. As he approached the caves, he saw Amara sitting on a rock with a hunting rifle in her lap. She froze as he approached, then relaxed when she saw who it was. Gonna have to get some sort of password system, he growled to himself. Wouldn't do to blow each other's fool heads off.

He waved and climbed up to the cave mouth.

"How are things?" he asked.

"Better," she acknowledged. "The little comm radio's still working, and some of the reports are pretty grim. That's made the others a little less complaining."

His expression turned serious. "What's the news?"

"They blew the spaceport at Lamarine completely after unloading thousands of nasty semihuman troops and a lot of equipment. The people have been rounded up and now are crowded on the beaches and in the parks and streets while the Machists gas most of the tall buildings."

"Any resistance?" he asked, mind racing.

"Some," she responded. "They've shot a lot of people. One report said there was a drainage ditch just filled with people's bodies—some dead, some bleeding to death—and that the aliens were covering them over with bulldozers."

He sat alongside her and breathed a long sigh. Until this moment, it'd been old times, fun and games—Sgt. Rolvag to the rescue. Now, for the first time, the enormity of the event was hitting him. Suddenly, the sadness at what was happening was rushing full-force into his mind, as was the impossibility of what he intended to do from here. He looked around at the cave.

Sgt. Rolvag and his Amazon Guerrillas, he thought sourly.

He got up, walked into the cave. He was stunned.

The women had used rugs from his cabin to line and insulate the place. It had a floor, and walls, and looked comfortable. The camp stuff was laid out, cook gear to the rear right now, some oil lamps glowing, folding chairs up and arranged nicely around a little card table, and the sleeping bags and air mattresses laid out in back. Food and ammo and other supplies were neatly stacked far back in the cave.

One of the women brought a cup of what proved to be tea from the little stove and handed it to him proudly. He sipped at it, and it felt good going down.

He noted that there were only three sleeping bags— all the big kind, of course. His always was superlarge because he liked the room, but he was interested in the others. Normally everybody had one of his own, bought in one of the camper stores in Lamarine. This development was not only curious, it took his mind off the marine's report, and as he looked at his motley crew he thought it might not be so bad after all.

"How come the double bags?" he asked the one who gave him the tea. "They cost more than single ones."

She smiled wanly. "This is our honeymoon trip," she explained. "We were all married yesterday. All four of us—to each other."

Rolvag's heart sank.

Vorspiel