Gardner Dozois - Chains of the Sea.pdf - Gardner Dozois - widez2

======================

Chains of the Sea

by Gardner Dozois

======================

First published in Chains of the Sea, ed. Robert Silverberg, Nelson, 1973

Fictionwise Contemporary

Science Fiction

---------------------------------

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the

purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com

then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines.

Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com

offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright

violators of Fictionwise ebooks.

---------------------------------

One day the aliens landed, just as everyone always said they would.

They fell out of a guileless blue sky and into the middle of a clear, cold

November day, four of them, four alien ships drifting down like the snow that

had been threatening to fall all week. America was just shouldering its way

into daylight as they made planetfall, so they landed there: one in the

Delaware Valley about fifteen miles north of Philadelphia, one in Ohio, one in

a desolate region of Colorado, and one -- for whatever reason -- in a cane

field outside of Caracas, Venezuela. To those who actually saw them come down,

the ships seemed to fall rather than to descend under any intelligent control:

a black nailhead suddenly tacked to the sky, coming all at once from nowhere,

with no transition, like a Fortean rock squeezed from a high appearing-point,

hanging way up there and winking intolerably bright in the sunlight; and then

gravity takes hold of it, visibly, and it begins to fall, far away and

dream-slow at first, swelling larger, growing huge, unbelievably big, a

mountain hurled at the earth, falling with terrifying speed, rolling in the

air, tumbling end over end, overhead, coming down -- and then it is sitting

peacefully on the ground; it has not crashed, and although it didn't slow down

and it didn't stop, there it _is_, and not even a snowflake could have settled

onto the frozen mud more lightly.

To those photo reconnaissance jets fortunate enough to be flying a

routine pattern at thirty thousand feet over the Eastern Seaboard when the

aliens blinked into their airspace, to the automatic, radar-eyed,

computer-reflexed facilities at USADCOM Spacetrack East, and to the United

States Aerospace Defense Command HQ in Colorado Springs, although they didn't

have convenient recon planes up for a double check -- the picture was

different. The high-speed cameras showed the landing as a _process_: as if the

alien spaceships existed simultaneously everywhere along their path of

descent, stretched down from the stratosphere and gradually sifting entirely

to the ground, like confetti streamers thrown from a window, like Slinkys

going down a flight of stairs. In the films, the alien ships appeared to

recede from the viewpoint of the reconnaissance planes, vanishing into

perspective, and that was all right, but the ships also appeared to dwindle

away into infinity from the viewpoint of Spacetrack East on the ground, and

that definitely was not all right. The most constructive comment ever made on

this phenomenon was that it was odd. It was also odd that the spaceships had

not been detected approaching Earth by observation stations on the Moon, or by

the orbiting satellites, and nobody ever figured that out, either.

From the first second of contact to touchdown, the invasion of Earth

Page 1

had taken less than ten minutes. At the end of that time, there were four big

ships on the ground, shrouded in thick steam -- _not_ cooling off from the

friction of their descent, as was first supposed; the steam was actually mist:

everything had frozen solid in a fifty-foot circle around the ships, and the

quick-ice was now melting as temperatures rose back above freezing -- frantic

messages were snarling up and down the continentwide nervous system of

USADCOM, and total atomic war was a hairsbreadth away. While the humans

scurried in confusion, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) created by MIT-Bell

Labs linked itself into the network of high-speed, twentieth-generation

computers placed at its disposal by a Red Alert Priority, evaluated data

thoughtfully for a minute and a half and then proceeded to get in touch with

its opposite number in the Russian Republics. It had its own, independently

evolved methods of doing this, and achieved contact almost instantaneously,

although the Pentagon had not yet been able to reach the Kremlin -- that

didn't matter anyway; they were only human, and all the important talking was

going on in another medium. AI "talked" to the Russian system for another

seven minutes, while eons of time clicked by on the electronic scale, and

World War III was averted. Both Intelligences finally decided that they didn't

understand what was going on, a conclusion the human governments of Earth

wouldn't reach for hours, and would never admit at all.

The only flourish of action took place in the three-minute lag between

the alien touchdown and the time AI assumed command of the defense network,

and involved a panicked general at USADCOM HQ and a malfunction in the --

never actually used -- fail-safe system that enabled him to lob a small

tactical nuclear device at the Colorado landing site. The device detonated at

point-blank range, right against the side of the alien ship, but the fireball

didn't appear. There didn't seem to be an explosion at all. Instead, the hull

of the ship turned a blinding, incredibly hot white at the point of

detonation, faded to blue-white, to a hellish red, to sullen tones of violet

that flickered away down the spectrum. The same pattern of precessing colors

chased itself around the circumference of the ship until it reached the impact

point again, and then the hull returned to its former dull black. The ship was

unharmed. There had been no sound, not even a whisper. The tactical device had

been a clean bomb, but instruments showed that no energy or radiation had been

released at all.

After this, USADCOM became very thoughtful.

* * * *

Tommy Nolan was already a half hour late to school, but he wasn't hurrying. He

dawdled along the secondary road that led up the hill behind the old sawmill,

and watched smoke go up in thick black lines from the chimneys of the houses

below, straight and unwavering in the bright, clear morning, like brushstrokes

against the sky. The roofs were made of cold gray and red tiles that winked

sunlight at him all the way to the docks, where clouds of sea gulls bobbed and

wheeled, dipped and rose, their cries coming faint and shrill to him across

the miles of chimneys and roofs and aerials and wind-tossed treetops. There

was a crescent sliver of ocean visible beyond the dock, like a slitted blue

eye peering up over the edge of the world. Tommy kicked a rock, kicked it

again, and then found a tin can which he kicked instead, clattering it along

ahead of him. The wind snatched at the fur on his parka, _puff_, momentarily

making the cries of the sea gulls very loud and distinct, and then carrying

them away again, back over the roofs to the sea. He kicked the tin can over

the edge of a bluff, and listened to it somersault invisibly away through the

undergrowth. He was whistling tunelessly, and he had taken his gloves off and

stuffed them in his parka pocket, although his mother had told him

specifically not to, it was so cold for November. Tommy wondered briefly what

the can must feel like, tumbling down through the thick ferns and weeds,

finding a safe place to lodge under the dark, secret roots of the trees. He

kept walking, _skuff-skuff_ing gravel very loudly. When he was halfway up the

slope, the buzz saw started up at the mill on the other side of the bluff. It

moaned and shrilled metallically, whining up through the stillness of the

Page 2

morning to a piercing shriek that hurt his teeth, then sinking low, low, to a

buzzing, grumbling roar, like an angry giant muttering in the back of his

throat. An _animal_, Tommy thought, although he knew it was a saw. _Maybe it's

a dinosaur._ He shivered deliciously. A _dinosaur_!

Tommy was being a puddle jumper this morning. That was why he was so

late. There had been a light rain the night before, scattering puddles along

the road, and Tommy had carefully jumped over every one between here and the

house. It took a long time to do it right, but Tommy was being very

conscientious. He imagined himself as a machine, a vehicle -- a puddle jumper.

No matter that he had legs instead of wheels, and arms and a head, that was

just the kind of ship he was, with he himself sitting somewhere inside and

driving the contraption, looking out through the eyes, working the pedals and

gears and switches that made the ship go. He would drive himself up to a

puddle, maneuver very carefully until he was in exactly the right position,

backing and cutting his wheels and nosing in again, and then put the ship into

jumping gear, stomp down on the accelerator, and let go of the brake switch.

And away he'd go, like a stone from a catapult, _up_, the puddle flashing

underneath, then _down_, with gravel jarring hard against his feet as the

earth slapped up to meet him. Usually he cleared the puddle. He'd only

splashed down in water once this morning, and he'd jumped puddles almost two

feet across. A pause then to check his systems for amber damage lights. The

board being all green, he'd put the ship in _travel_ gear and drive along some

more, slowly, scanning methodically for the next puddle. All this took

considerable time, but it wasn't a thing you could skimp on -- you had to do

it right.

He thought occasionally, _Mom will be mad again_, but it lacked force

and drifted away on the wind. Already breakfast this morning was something

that had happened a million years ago -- the old gas oven lighted for warmth

and hissing comfortably to itself, the warm cereal swimming with lumps, the

radio speaking coldly in the background about things he never bothered to

listen to, the hard gray light pouring through the window onto the kitchen

table.

Mom had been puffy-eyed and coughing. She had been watching television

late and had fallen asleep on the couch again, her cloth coat thrown over her

for a blanket, looking very old when Tommy came out to wake her before

breakfast and to shut off the humming test pattern on the TV. Tommy's father

had yelled at her again during breakfast, and Tommy had gone into the bathroom

for a long time, washing his hands slowly and carefully until he heard his

father leave for work. His mother pretended that she wasn't crying as she made

his cereal and fixed him "coffee," thinned dramatically with a half a cup of

cold water and a ton of milk and sugar, "for the baby," although that was

exactly the way she drank it herself. She had already turned the television

back on, the moment her husband's footsteps died away, as if she couldn't

stand to have it silent. It murmured unnoticed in the living room, working its

way through an early children's show that even Tommy couldn't bear to watch.

His mother said she kept it on to check the time so that Tommy wouldn't be

late, but she never did that. Tommy always had to remind her when it was time

to bundle him into his coat and leggings and rubber boots -- when it was

raining -- for school. He could never get rubber boots on right by himself,

although he tried very hard and seriously. He always got tangled up anyway.

He reached the top of the hill just as the buzz saw chuckled and

sputtered to a stop, leaving a humming, vibrant silence behind it. Tommy

realized that he had run out of puddles, and he changed himself instantly into

a big, powerful land tank, the kind they showed on the war news on television,

that could run on caterpillar treads or wheels and had a hovercraft air

cushion for the tough parts. Roaring, and revving his engine up and down, he

turned off the gravel road into the thick stand of fir forest. He followed the

footpath, tearing along terrifically on his caterpillar treads, knocking the

trees down and crushing them into a road for him to roll on. That made him

uneasy, though, because he loved trees. He told himself that the trees were

Page 3

only being bent down under his weight, and that they sprang back up again

after he passed, but that didn't sound right. He stopped to figure it out.

There was a quiet murmur in the forest, as if everything were breathing very

calmly and rhythmically. Tommy felt as if he'd been swallowed by a huge,

pleasant green creature, not because it wanted to eat him, but just to let him

sit peacefully in its stomach for shelter. Even the second-growth saplings

were taller than he was. Listening to the forest, Tommy felt an urge to go

down into the deep woods and talk to the Thants, but then he'd never get to

school at all. Wheels would get tangled in roots, he decided, and switched on

the hovercraft cushion. He floated down the path, pushing the throttle down as

far as it would go, because he was beginning to worry a little about what

would happen to him if he was _too_ late.

Switching to wheels, he bumped out of the woods and onto Highland

Avenue. Traffic was heavy here; the road was full of big trucks and

tractor-trailers on the way down to Boston, on the way up to Portland. Tommy

had to wait almost ten minutes before traffic had thinned out enough for him

to dash across to the other side of the road. His mother had told him never to

go to school this way, so this was the way he went every chance he got.

Actually, his house was only a half a mile away from the school, right down

Walnut Street, but Tommy always went by an incredibly circuitous route. He

didn't think of it that way -- it took him by all his favorite places.

So he rolled along the road shoulder comfortably enough, following the

avenue. There were open meadows on this side of the road, full of wild wheat

and scrub brush, and inhabited by families of Jeblings, who flitted back and

forth between the road, which they shunned, and the woods on the far side of

the meadow. Tommy called to them as he cruised by, but Jeblings are always

shy, and today they seemed especially skittish. They were hard to see straight

on, like all of the Other People, but he could catch glimpses of them out of

the corners of his eyes: spindly beanstalk bodies, big pumpkinheads, glowing

slit eyes, absurdly long and tapering fingers. They were in constant motion --

he could hear them thrashing through the brush, and their shrill, nervous

giggling followed him for quite a while along the road. But they wouldn't come

out, or even stop to talk to him, and he wondered what had stirred them up.

As he came in sight of the school, a flight of jet fighters went by

overhead, very high and fast, leaving long white scars across the sky, the

scream of their passage trailing several seconds behind them. They were

followed by a formation of bigger planes, going somewhat slower. _Bombers?_

Tommy thought, feeling excited and scared as he watched the big planes drone

out of sight. Maybe this was going to be the War. His father was always

talking about the War, and how it would be the end of everything -- a

proposition that Tommy found interesting, if not necessarily desirable. Maybe

that was why the Jeblings were excited.

The bell marking the end of the day's first class rang at that moment,

cutting Tommy like a whip, and frightening him far more than his thoughts of

the War. _I'm really going to catch it_, Tommy thought, breaking into a run,

too panicked to turn himself into anything other than a boy, or to notice the

new formation of heavy bombers rumbling in from the northeast.

By the time he reached the school, classes had already finished

changing, and the new classes had been in progress almost five minutes. The

corridors were bright and empty and echoing, like a fluorescently lighted

tomb. Tommy tried to keep running once he was inside the building, but the

clatter he raised was so horrendous and terrifying that he slowed to a walk

again. It wasn't going to make any difference anyway, not anymore, not now. He

was already in for it.

Everyone in his class turned to look at him as he came in, and the room

became deadly quiet. Tommy stood in the doorway, horrified, wishing that he

could crawl into the ground, or turn invisible, or run. But he could do

nothing but stand there, flushing with shame, and watch everyone watch him.

His classmates' faces were snide, malicious, sneering and expectant. His

friends, Steve Edwards and Bobbie Williamson, were grinning nastily and slyly,

Page 4

making sure that the teacher couldn't see. Everyone knew that he was going to

get it, and they were eager to watch, feeling self-righteous and, at the same

time, being glad that it wasn't they who had been caught. Miss Fredricks, the

teacher, watched him icily from the far end of the room, not saying a word.

Tommy shut the door behind him, wincing at the tremendous noise it made. Miss

Fredricks let him get all the way to his desk and allowed him to sit down --

feeling a sudden surge of hope -- before she braced him and made him stand up

again.

"Tommy, you're late," she said coldly.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You are very late." She had the tardy sheet from the previous class on

her desk, and she fussed with it as she talked, her fingers repeatedly

flattening it out and wrinkling it again. She was a tall, stick-thin woman, in

her forties, although it really wouldn't have made any difference if she'd

been sixty, or twenty -- all her juices had dried up years ago, and she had

become ageless, changeless, and imperishable, like a mummy. She seemed not so

much shriveled as baked in some odd oven of life into a hard, tough, leathery

substance, like meat that is left out in the sun and turns into jerky. Her

skin was fine-grained, dry, and slightly yellowed, like parchment. Her breasts

had sagged down to her waist, and they bulged just above the belt of her

skirt, like strange growths or tumors. Her face was a smooth latex mask.

"You've been late for class twice this week," she said precisely,

moving her mouth as little as possible. "And three times last week." She

scribbled on a piece of paper and called him forward to take it. "I'm giving

you another note for your mother, and I want her to sign it this time, and I

want you to bring it back. Do you understand?" She stared directly at Tommy.

Her eyes were tunnels opening through her head onto a desolate ocean of ice.

"And if you're late again, or give me any more trouble, I'll make an

appointment to send you down to see the school psychiatrist. And _he'll_ take

care of you. Now go back to your seat, and let's not have any more of your

nonsense."

Tommy returned to his desk and sat numbly while the rest of the class

rolled ponderously over him. He didn't hear a word of it and was barely aware

of the giggling and whispered gibes of the children on either side of him. The

note bulked incredibly heavy and awkward in his pocket; it felt hot, somehow.

The only thing that called his attention away from the note, toward the end of

the class, was his increasing awareness of the noise that had been growing

louder and louder outside the windows. The Other People were moving. They were

stirring all through the woods behind the school, they were surging restlessly

back and forth, like a tide that has no place to go. That was not their usual

behavior at all. Miss Fredricks and the other children didn't seem to hear

anything unusual, but to Tommy it was clear enough to take his mind off even

his present trouble, and he stared curiously out the window into the gritty,

gray morning.

Something was happening....

* * * *

The first action taken by the human governments of Earth -- as opposed to the

actual government of Earth: AI and his counterpart Intelligences -- was an

attempt to hush up everything. The urge to conceal information from the public

had become so ingrained and habitual as to constitute a tropism -- it was as

automatic and unavoidable as a yawn. It is a fact that the White House moved

to hush up the alien landings before the administration had any idea that they

_were_ alien landings; in fact, before the administration had any clear

conception at all of what it was that they were trying to hush up. Something

spectacular and very unofficial had happened, so the instinctive reaction of

government was to sit on it and prevent it from hatching in public. Forty

years of media-centered turmoil had taught them that the people didn't need to

know anything that wasn't definitely in the script. It is also a fact that the

first official governmental representatives to reach any of the landing sites

were concerned exclusively with squelching all publicity of the event, while

Page 5

Gardner Dozois - Chains of the Sea.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: