Apes and Angels Read online

  At last Emcee’s voice reached him. “It’s difficult to see the village through the clouds. Infrared scans show the houses all appear to be intact. No aliens in sight, however. No movement.”

  Brad nodded inside his helmet. “They’re probably all indoors.”

  It’ll be nearly four minutes before Emcee’s answer gets here, he knew. Meanwhile, you just plod through this muck, one step at a—

  Brad froze. There on the hillside about fifty meters ahead of him stood one of those huge six-legged cats from Beta, mud-spattered, looking wet and thoroughly unhappy.

  “Jesus Lord!” Brad whispered.

  The cat’s heavy head swung in his direction. Its yellow eyes focused on him.

  Brad gulped once, turned around, stumbled badly, and slipped onto his rump. Without trying to get back to his feet, Brad slid on the rain-soaked ground back toward his shelter. The cat made a sound like a growl and splashed through the mud after him.

  If the ground had been dry and firm Brad would never have made it to his shelter. But on the gooey mud, Brad slid along like a sailboat scudding across the water while the cat splashed through the sucking ooze, each of its six paws sinking so deep it took a powerful effort to pull them loose.

  The beast roared and raged as it slogged after Brad, who used his gloved hands like oars to propel himself toward the lopsided shelter.

  He made it to its air lock hatch and pecked out the entry combination with fingers that shook badly. Brad dived inside and pulled the hatch shut just as the cat lunged for him. Its impact made the whole shelter shudder; it howled with fury as it banged against the metal hatch.

  Brad crawled to the equipment locker beside his bedroll and pulled out the laser pistol. Outside, all was suddenly silent. Had the cat turned away? Or was it lurking out there, waiting for Brad to come outside again?

  He crawled to his console and turned on the outside cameras. Inanely, he realized that he was muddying up the bedroll and everything else inside the shelter. No matter. Safety first, he thought, cleanliness later.

  Brad checked out the pistol. Fully charged, ready for action. His display screen showed the cat walking slowly away, laboriously pulling each paw free of the sticky, clinging mud.

  Brad checked each of the cameras. No other cat in sight. The one he had encountered was going away. Without potential prey in sight, it quickly lost interest in the inanimate shelter. Can’t eat plastic, Brad thought. And giggled, on the edge of hysteria.

  He sat on the muddied bedroll and took a deep breath. How did the cat get here from Beta?

  Then he realized that it was heading up to the rim of the hill. On the other side of that rise was the village.

  I can’t stay buttoned up inside here, he told himself. I’ve got to go help them, save them. Even if they don’t want to be saved, I can’t just let them be slaughtered.

  * * *

  The cat literally had eyes in the back of its head. Brad stiffened with surprise when he spotted two narrow eyes glinting in the back of the creature’s skull. The animal stopped its laborious climb up the quagmire of the hillside and slowly turned toward Brad.

  He pulled the pistol from its magnetic grip on his belt and, after two tries with his gloved hand, used his thumb to flick the power on. The pistol didn’t feel any different, but according to the manual’s video instructions, the gun should be ready to fire. Just point and shoot.

  The cat seemed to realize that skidding downhill in the ooze was easier than struggling uphill. It came sliding down toward Brad with terrifying speed, then with a roar it leaped at him, all six paws showing scimitar-sharp claws, its mouth wide open and full of fangs.

  Brad leveled the pistol and fired point-blank at the charging beast. A thin red beam struck the cat in the throat and sliced down half the length of its underside, cutting a slim slash in the animal’s flesh that smoked slightly along its edges.

  The cat’s roar changed pitch, from rage to pain, and it landed in the mud at Brad’s feet with a huge splash that knocked Brad backwards onto the ground. But he still held the pistol in his gloved hand, his fingers gripping it so tightly that they were cramping.

  The animal wasn’t dead, though. As Brad struggled to his feet he saw that the cat was inching through the mud on its belly toward him, moaning as it slithered forward. Brad fired another shot into one of its eyes and the beast shuddered, then stopped. Dead.

  Brad stared at it. He was so drenched with perspiration that he might as well have been out in the rain, without the biosuit. He was shaking badly; his knees felt too weak to support him.

  For long moments Brad just stood there, chest heaving, staring at the dead animal. At last his brain started to function again. How did it get here, from Beta? How many more of them are here?

  After turning 360 degrees to scan the whole area, Brad saw that there were no other cats in sight. The forest in the distance looked battered, many trees knocked down, uprooted, others leaning crookedly. He turned off the pistol’s power and clapped it to its magnetic holder at his waist.

  The rain was down to a fine, persistent drizzle. Brad looked up the muddy slope. What’s happening to the village? he asked himself. How are the Gammans making out?

  * * *

  Brad was bone weary by the time he reached the crest of the ridgeline. His biosuit was spattered with mud. The sky was clearing, although there were still plenty of thick clouds boiling past. Mithra had risen above the distant mountains, its piercing red glow turning the clouds’ undersides scarlet and purple.

  And there in the hollow was the village. Or what was left of it. The hollow had turned into a shallow lake. The village’s houses were awash at least a dozen centimeters deep. Nothing seemed to be moving. The neat green rows of the farm’s crops were mostly underwater; the few stalks that poked above the mini lake looked crooked, bent.

  And everything was deathly still.

  Looking up, Brad saw through a break in the clouds the huge bloodred sphere of Beta glowering down at him.

  Something streaked across the sky, like a meteor or a reentering spacecraft.

  He stared at it. The flaming streak disappeared beyond the hills, but he heard the rushing, roaring sound of its flight through the turbulent atmosphere. Then a sharp crack echoed across the sky.

  A sonic boom! Brad realized.

  “Emcee, I hope you’re seeing what I’m seeing,” he shouted, as if raising his voice would get his words across to the starship orbiting Alpha.

  Another sonic boom reverberated across the sky. Turning, Brad saw an oval-shaped object gliding over the ridge, undulating as it came, and then dropping into the hollow where the flooded village stood.

  The thing splashed into the water, plowing up a huge spray before it lurched to a stop.

  Brad stared, goggle-eyed, as the object began to split apart while it sat there in the shallow water. And out of the crack that zigzagged down its middle he saw a clawed paw emerge, then a head full of fangs. One of the cats shouldered through the remaining shell and splashed into the water.

  Monsters from Beta!

  THE VILLAGE

  Slowly, carefully, with the pistol in his hand, Brad picked his way down the hillside to the edge of the village. The water was halfway up his shins, but the drizzle was easing off noticeably. Mithra was rising above the mountains, casting a sullen ruby glow across the hollow as it scudded among the dwindling clouds.

  And the cat from Beta was standing halfway across the impromptu lake, near the outermost circle of buildings, in water deep enough to almost reach its belly.

  It raised its heavy-boned head and gave out a roar that shook the hollow. Brad thought he knew what the cat was trying to say: I’m wet and cold and hungry and I don’t like this one bit.

  Well, neither do I, Brad replied silently to the beast.

  The half-drowned village looked dead, abandoned. Nothing was moving down there. Brad took a few cautious steps downslope. The cat spotted him at once and started padding toward him.

&nb
sp; “For future reference,” Brad said aloud to Emcee, “the beasts don’t seem to notice me unless I move. Standing still, I become part of the background to them. I think.”

  Another whooshing roar streaked by overhead. Brad saw the hot contrail of another reentry flash past and disappear on the other side of the hills.

  “They’re coming from Beta, all right,” he spoke into his helmet microphone. “Lots of them.”

  The cat was coming closer, splashing through the water toward him. Brad was torn between the urge to kill it as quickly as he could and the worry that he’d deplete the pistol’s power pack by firing it at too distant a range.

  Suddenly a figure emerged from one of the buildings. A Gamman stood in the doorway, staring at the cat, then turned to look Brad’s way. Behind him, Brad could see other Gammans, huddling just inside the doorway, peering over the first one’s shoulder.

  “Get back!” he shouted, hoping that his suit’s computer could translate his words adequately. He waved his free hand at them, gesturing for them to retreat into the relative safety of the house.

  The cat turned toward the Gamman, who took a tentative step toward it.

  “Get back!” Brad repeated, waving both his arms.

  But the Gamman moved toward the cat. Defenseless, without even a hunting stick in his hands, he headed toward the cat. And the others walked behind him.

  Brad stumbled down the rain-soaked hillside, trying to close the range between himself and the cat. The beast paid him no attention, not with the handful of Gammans so much closer.

  Point and shoot. Brad raised his arm and fired at the cat. It twitched and howled. Brad fired again and the cat bounded away, splashing across what had been the village’s farmland, sending up sheets of spray as it leaped away from Brad and the villagers.

  Brad slogged through the shin-deep water to the Gammans, who stood stock-still, petrified with fear or awe or surprise, he didn’t know which.

  “Brrd!” said one of them. Brad recognized him as Lnng, one of Mnnx’s hut mates.

  “Are you all right?” Brad asked.

  “You drove it away,” Mnnx said. The computer couldn’t translate tones of voice, but Brad got the feeling that the Gamman was not happy to be rescued.

  “That monster was going to kill you,” Brad said. “Kill you all.”

  “Of course,” said Mnnx.

  Brad looked over his shoulder and saw that the cat was coming back toward them. Limping, but heading for them, its head low, its eyes glaring angrily.

  Disbelievingly, Brad asked, “You want it to kill you?”

  “It is death time.”

  Another of the Gammans said, “Time for us to die.”

  “That’s crazy!” Brad snapped, then he realized that the computer probably couldn’t translate the word to them.

  The slinking cat had cut the distance between them by half, and it was still coming.

  Brad stood there with the Gammans and watched it come.

  One of the aliens started to chant words that the computer didn’t recognize. The others took up the hymn; that’s what Brad thought it must be, a hymn of death. He saw that their eyes were covered with an opaque membrane.

  They’ve closed their eyes while they stand waiting for the goddamned cat to slaughter them. Somehow Brad felt angered. They’re standing here like a bunch of martyrs, waiting for their deaths.

  Well screw that!

  Brad raised his hand and aimed at the cat’s glowering eyes. He fired and the thin, bloodred line of laser energy found its mark. The great cat collapsed, its headful of fangs splashing into the water.

  For several moments the Gammans didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “You can open your eyes,” Brad said sternly. “It isn’t going to kill you.”

  They stared at the cat’s inert carcass.

  “It’s dead!”

  “You killed it!”

  “Damned right,” said Brad. “I saved your lives.”

  “But that’s wrong!” Mnnx rumbled.

  “How can new Folk live if the old Folk do not die?”

  “The Sky Masters will be angry with us,” one of the aliens wailed.

  For a moment, Brad thought they were going to attack him, or at least rip the pistol from his hand.

  Overhead, another entry vehicle zoomed past and disappeared over the hills. Brad heard the distant blast of its sonic boom. More cats arriving, he thought.

  “I want to talk with Drrm,” he told them. “I need his wisdom.”

  They glanced uneasily at one another, their big bulbous eyes glancing nervously at Brad while they muttered among themselves in deep, reverberating tones.

  Brad turned his back to them and searched the hollow for more cats.

  At last Lnng said, “Come with us; we will take you to Drrm.”

  Brad followed the Gamman toward the structure that he had dubbed the longhouse, the rest of the aliens trailing behind them. The sky was clearing nicely, he thought, although Beta hung up there like an evil red eye that covered a quarter of the sky and filled the hollow with baleful red light. Ominous. Unsettling.

  As they splashed through the water, Brad said, “At least the rain’s stopped.”

  “There will be more,” answered Lnng. “Worse. Much worse.”

  DEATH TIME

  Drrm was standing in the doorway of the longhouse, the floodwater lapping almost to his knees. As Brad and his grudging entourage neared the building, he saw almost a dozen others standing behind Drrm, peering over his shoulders.

  “Brrd killed the monster!” Lnng shouted as they approached.

  “Killed it?” asked Drrm.

  Excitedly, Lnng said, “Brrd pointed his hand at the monster and a bright red light sprang from his hand and killed the monster.”

  Drrm turned toward Brad. “Is this true?”

  “Yes. I can save you. You don’t have to die.”

  Drrm backed away from Brad. “But we must die! That is the way we prepare the world for the new Folk.”

  A flash of light and a crack of thunder. Brad couldn’t tell if it was the storm returning or another vehicle streaking in from Beta.

  “Come inside, Brrd,” said Drrm, beckoning with one of his tentacle-fingered hands. Brad shivered involuntarily at the coiling, ropy appendages, but forced himself to follow the village’s Rememberer.

  The interior of the building was one single room, sloshing with rainwater. Drrm gestured to a staircase that curved around the circular wall.

  “No need to stay in the wet,” Drrm said as he led the entire group to the upper level. There were about twenty more Gammans up there, Brad saw. He recognized Mnnx and waved to him.

  The upper floor was furnished with beds and a few tables and chairs. As the group spread across the space, Drrm asked, “You truly killed one of the monsters?”

  “With this.” Brad pulled the laser pistol from his belt.

  “This is very bad,” Drrm said. “The Sky Masters will be angry.”

  “You’d rather be killed yourself?”

  “That is our way. It is necessary. Otherwise there will be no room for the new Folk.”

  “But this world has plenty of room!” Brad said, noticing that the Gammans were slowly clustering around him and Drrm. Pointing toward the room’s one window, he told them, “You could build new villages, plenty of them. There’s room enough—”

  “No, no, no,” Drrm countered, like a grandfather instructing a wayward child. “We must die. The Sky Masters send the monsters from Beta to kill us.”

  “You want to die?”

  Drrm hesitated. Brad could hear the wind rising again outside, the rain pelting harder on the roof of branches and twigs above his head.

  At last Drrm admitted, in a softer tone, “It is hard to die, Brrd. It is very hard to face the monsters and not try to run away. But it is necessary. It is the way we have always been. If we do not die, the new Folk will have no place to live.”

  Feeling halfway between sympathetic and angry
at their obtuseness, Brad said, “I have seen much of your world. Most of it is empty of villages. There is plenty of space for you and the new Folk.”

  “That is not our way,” said Drrm. “We must offer ourselves to the monsters from Beta.”

  “But I can kill the monsters from Beta.”

  “No! You must not interfere.”

  Mnnx stepped forward and asked, “Brrd, don’t the others of your village offer themselves to the monsters from Beta when the dying time comes?”

  “My village is so far away that the monsters from Beta don’t come to it.”

  The whole crowd of them seemed to gasp and take a step backward, away from Brad.

  “The monsters don’t come to your village?”

  “You don’t die?”

  Brad said, “We don’t have a death time. We live and grow and explore.”

  They buzzed among themselves. Brad realized he had just confronted them with something totally new to them, totally alien. How will they react? Will they think I’m a wizard? A witch? Will they attack me as a blasphemer?

  And outside, the wind’s relentless roar was getting deeper, stronger. Brad saw a drop of rain spatter on his helmet and trickle down its length. And now another sound was added to the clamor outside: the howling of several hungry monsters from Beta.

  “You don’t have a death time?” Drrm asked, clear disbelief plain even in the computer’s translation.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “You don’t die?” asked Mnnx, awed.

  “We die,” Brad answered. “But not all at the same time. We live long lives. We die one at a time.”

  Before any of them could reply to that, another flash of lightning turned the room ghastly bright. Thunder boomed, and the roof abruptly caved in, covering them all with soggy branches and debris and driving, pouring rain.

  A heavy branch banged into Brad’s shoulder, buckling his knees. Several of the Gammans were knocked to the floor.

  “Out!” cried Drrm. “Out to face your fate.”