Part 18 (2/2)

The captain's remaining eye was bloodshot and bulged a bit from the pressure of the arrow in her brain, but it s.h.i.+fted over easily enough. ”No, I'm getting used to it. Looks like you had a little fun, too.”

Chancy looked down at the ragged hole where his chest armor had imploded and chuckled softly.

”Yeah, just a little. It was a WP tracer. Vietnam era.” ”Nasty,” the captain said, ”but I've seen worse. Those Huns, man, now they can be brutal. I got a couple men on point right nowwearing flat-tops down to their chins. They're not much good at sniping any-more, but not having a brain never stopped a combat soldier before.”

Chancy laughed politely, knowing it was expected, and ran his hand over the pulse rifle's flat-black housing. ”Permission to speak, sir?”

The captain smiled, the jagged end of the shaft vibrating slightly as her face muscles contracted. ”I appreciate it, although we don't stand on ceremony too much anymore.

Permission granted.”

Chancy turned toward the red glow and nodded. ”Why don't they understand they can't do this?”

”Human nature,” she said. ”But don't worry, they'll figure it out the Same way we did. Okay, Private, head on up and report to the front line. Somebody'll direct you to your position. And one more thing, don't refer to Sitting Bull as an Indigenous Continental.” She tapped the arrow shaft. ”He doesn't like the term.”

”Sir,” Chancy called over his shoulder. ”Yes, sir.” One meter, two . . . twenty; his boots shattering the brittle ground as he walked. Twenty meters, thirty, and a shape-long and angular- slowly detached itself from the jagged horizon line.

Ten meters, five, one, and the old man in sun-bleached bib overalls and white work s.h.i.+rt pushed the brim of the woven straw hat back on his head. Chancy always remembered him wearing it low despite the time of day or night. . . claimed it kept the UV rays out of his eyes.

”How you doing, Grandpa?”

The cancer that had killed him had taken a lot of the meat off the old man's bones, but the smile was the same, and so was the long, loose-jointed stride.

”Not too bad for an old goat,” his grandfather said, and slapped Chancy hard enough across the shoulders to make the clips on his armor rattle. ”Good to see you, Robbie. I was wondering when you'd show up.”

”Guess it was a little farther than I thought it'd be.” He swung the rifle over one shoulder and hugged the old man until he could hear their bones creak under the pressure. ”I lost it, Grandpa ... I didn't see anything . . . but it can be so beautiful.”

”It's more than just beauty, Robbie. Much more,” his grandfather whispered, ”and that's why we have to protect it. It's the only thing we have left.”

Chancy stepped back and fingered his weapon, nodding. Remembering. He'd heard it before, almost the same words, in fact. The only thing we have left. Earth's final hope to reestablish itself on another planet. An old song made fresh in the resinging: Claim it and rename it.

Eminent domain on a planetary level.

And the unnamed, unclaimed planet was more than beautiful. It was perfect. Breathable atmosphere, fresh water, soil so rich seedlings seemed to mature overnight. A world so much like Earth and so close, in relative terms and warp speeds, that it had seemed a G.o.dsend.

An archaic term-and idea-that had been all but forgotten on Earth, but which was instantly reinstated into the vernacular when the initial telemetry images began coming in.

It was Paradise. Heaven.

Until the first colonists arrived and were killed. Murdered. One batch of hopefuls afteranother was found shot, scalped, butchered, disemboweled, or blown apart. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, someone had said. And it only got worse when the Defense Guard was deployed. The number of casualties rose exponentially with the number of military personnel a.s.signed to skirmish lines, with increasing numbers of bodies showing flash residue from pulse rifles.

Paradise. Lost.

And the theologians still didn't suspect Heaven could be literal.

”You ready, boy?”

Chancy slipped the safety off and nodded. Three steps was all it took to the edge of the ridge. Below, bathed by the light of a hundred thousand fires, the battle raged. It was something that neither Dante nor Bosch could ever have dreamed in their worst fever dream.

Two great armies-one living, one immortal-faced each other across a blood-soaked field strewn with body parts and shattered pieces of equipment. Some part of Chancy could still remember the commands, could still recognize some of the pieces . . . but even as he watched the memories of what he'd been were fading.

A. soldier dissolved from a combination hit of thermite and flaming arrows. Another spun to the ground pierced by a Roman javelin. Two more were riddled into confetti by WWI German machine guns. And each time they fell Chancy watched their souls drift across toward the opposite side of the field.

Toward his side.

But they kept coming.

”They can't win,” Chancy whispered, because it suddenly seemed too foolish a thing to say out loud. ”Why don't they just give up?”

His grandfather grunted. ”They don't know any better. Mankind always thinks it can win, no matter what. Now, you ready, boy?”

”Yes, sir.”

”All right then. Do just like I taught you, Robbie . . . aim to kill clean. You don't need to hurt a man more than he's already hurt him-self..” Tugging the old hat back down over his eyes, his grandfather lifted an antique squirrel rifle that family legend said had been pa.s.sed down Bom firstborn to firstborn. It would have gone to him next, when his daddy died. ”Let's go, boy.”

”Yes, sir. Can I ask you something first?”

His grandfather turned back and looked at him, smiling. Chancy could see the light from the battle fires reflected in the old man's eyes.

”Go ahead, boy.”

”Is this-?” Chancy throat suddenly felt like it was closing in on it-self. ”Is this h.e.l.l, Grandpa?”

The smile widened and deepened the wrinkles along his grand-Other's weather-hardened cheeks. ”Only for some, Robbie. Only for some.”Stephen Baxter was born in Liverpool, has degrees in mathe-matics and engineering, and applied to become a cosmonaut in 1991, with an eye toward a guest spot on Mir. Alas, he didn't make it, but instead of keeping that creaky Russian wreck in orbit he turned to full-time writing, producing more than ten sf novels, including Raft, The Time s.h.i.+ps (a marvelous sequel to The Time Machine), Manifold: Time, Moonseed, and, recently, Manifold: s.p.a.ce. He also cowrote The Light of Other Days with Arthur C. Clarke. He has won the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award and the John W. Camp-bell Memorial Award, among others.

I tracked him down at l-Con, a science fiction convention on Long Island-and eventually, lucky for me, got him to write the following.

In the Un-Black.

Stephen Baxter.

On the day La-ba met Ca-si she saved his life. She hadn't meant to. It was un-Doctrine. It just happened. But it changed everything.

It had been a bad day for La-ba.

She had been dancing. That wasn't un-Doctrine, not exactly, but the cadre leaders disapproved. She was the leader of the dance, and she got stuck with Cesspit detail for ten days.

It was hard, dirty work, the worst. And would-be deathers flourished there, in the pit. They would come swimming through the muck itself , to get you.

That was what happened just two hours after she started work. Naked, she was standing knee-deep in a river of unidentifiable, odorless muck.

Two strong hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her flat on her face. Suddenly her eyes and mouth and nose and ears were full of dense sticky waste.

La-ba folded up her body and reached down to her toes. She found hands on her ankles, and farther up a shaven skull, wide misshapen ears.

<script>