"Don"t mind a"tall, you be welcome. A"right den, you got yore cane and done munched some.
You feel up t"walkin" now?"
"Yes, sir ... Samuel."
"Well, git on up den, Chancy."
"How far?"
"As far as we needs t"go, ah reckon. You"ll know it when you sees it." Chancy kept himself from asking anything else until the cane field gave way to peach orchards that lined both sides of the road and he saw the children. There must have been hundreds . . . thousands upon thousands of them playing beneath the soft rain of pink and white blossoms.
A part of him understood that children died, that death was as indiscriminate of the young as it was the old, but until he saw them-all of them-he"d never thought about it, never let himself think about it. Or about how many of the children laughing and running through the fragrant sweet air he had personally sent here.
War was war and the enemy was whoever you were told it was Whoever you were told to fight. Blindly and without question, like the good soldier you are.
Were.
The sudden pain he felt had nothing to do with the projectile that killed him.
"Dat a"right, Chancy," Samuel said, nodding to a group of children- yellow, brown, white-who"d noticed them standing there and shouted greetings. "It be hard t"see dem so young, but you gotta know dey be happy here. Some o" "em even happier den when dey was breathin". You keep dat in mind and you be fine."
One of the children who"d shouted, a boy of about six or seven with golden skin and hair and eyes the color of starless s.p.a.ce, ran up to them and hugged Chancy around the waist. His touch changed the orchard into a paradise where peac.o.c.ks strutted in the shadows of towering minarets. Nirvana.
Another little boy pushed the first away and brought Chancy endless rolling plains, thick with grazing buffalo and deer. The air was warm and scented with sage and sweet-gra.s.s, and high overhead an eagle rode a thermal to the Land of the Sky People.
He became the new game. Children nocked around him like hungry little birds, sharing glimpses of their afterworlds with him. One after another the images came and went. The gold-paved streets his grandfather had told him about became a cloud-field where incandescentbeings with dove wings flew; then shifted to a rainbow bridge that glittered across an empty sky to a cool, blue water pool beneath a red-stone arch where a king in a golden throne slept in the Dream Time and thought of giant sharks and palm trees swaying gently in the- . . . so beautiful. . .
"Please . . . stop," Chancy said to the little girl dancing while the feathered serpents flew rings around the sun. "Samuel, please make them stop. It"s too much. I can"t-"
"Dat be all now, chillins, you all best git back t"yore playin". We needs t"be up t"da front."
Samuel"s quiet orchard returned the moment the children stopped touching him.
"You are taking him to the battle? " a pale boy in a loose-fitting robe asked. "Oh, Samuel, may I come, too? I am almost a man."
"Ah cin see dat, Eliyahu, but iffen you come who be watchin" over da youngens? No, you best t"stay . . . but ah"ll tell yore pappy "bout how you asked. He be right proud, ah bet. An dat goes for all o" you, too. Yore pappys "n" mammys be so proud knowin" yore thinkin" o" "em. Dey be back right soon now ah think, so y"all jist do what comes nat"ral. But don"t you go eatin" up all m"peaches now, you hear. Ahs got me a han-kerin" t"bake up some cobbler when ahs git back."
Only a few children, who shared Samuel"s vision of Heaven, laughed out loud before scampering away. The rest followed more slowly, with only nods to show they accepted being dismissed.
Chancy watched them resume the games that his and Samuel"s presence had disrupted; each child safe within their heavenly visions but not alone. Never alone.
He would have stayed right there watching them, while the petals drifted down around him, if Samuel hadn"t tugged on his sleeve.
"Come along now, Chancy ... da chillins be a"right and we needs t"git on."
"To the battle?"
Samuel reached up and picked a golden peach from the tree, gently rubbing the fuzz off between his leathery palms before handing it to Chancy.
"You jist take a bite o" dat, boy. Betcha ain"t tasted nothin" like it in a month o" Sundays go t"meetin". Goan, eat it now whilst you got da chance." Samuel laughed as he turned and headed up the dirt road. "Yesshur, ol" Chancy gots t"have da chance t"eats dat peach. Yesshur. Eat dat ol" peach, Chancy, while you gots da chance. Hee-hee, ah do makes m"self laugh."
Chancy felt his mouth water as he looked at the peach. Its pinkish-yellow skin glistened with dew drops. He couldn"t remember the last time he"d had a real piece of unprocessed fruit, let alone a peach freshly picked from a tree . . . but, then again, he couldn"t really remember what being alive felt like.
"Samuel?"
But when he looked up, Samuel was little more than a moving shadow far up the road. It was amazing how fast the old man could walk.
Tossing the peach to a little girl with copper hair and bright green eyes, Chancy adjusted the straps on his combat vest and fell into the prescribed steady jog designed to eat up miles at the minimum expense of physical endurance. Not that he had to worry about that now.
The orchard stretched on for miles, and the sound of children accompanied him every step of the way. Until he reached Samuel"s side.
"Where are we?" Chancy asked in a whisper. "Whose place is this?" Samuel turned towardhim and licked his lips. A cold star-field surrounded them, as stark and barren as the glistening volcanic outcrop on which they were standing. The star patterns looked vaguely familiar, but Chancy couldn"t remember from where.
"Ain"t no one"s in particular," Samuel said, "and ev"rybody"s in general, ah guess. But dis be da place we"s goan to." "This is where the ... battle is?"
"Yep, right over dat ways a mite." Samuel pointed to a spot on the desolate horizon and he saw it-the faint red glow leaching into the darkness between the stars. "You jist keep walkin"
da way you been. You got folks waitin" for you."
Chancy nodded and readjusted his armor, the rush of adrenaline p.r.i.c.king the flesh at the back of his neck. He was a soldier, and this was what he"d been trained to do.
"You coming?" he asked the old man.
"Oh, ahs be along directly. Jist don"t wanna spoil yore welcomin" s"all. Goan on now, boy, it ain"t far now . . . dey be waitin" for you."
Chancy didn"t ask who was waiting or how far he"d have to go, he just went. . . like the good soldier that he was. But even if he had asked, Chancy soon realized it wouldn"t have made much difference, at least to the question of distance. There were no prominent features on the brittle landscape he could gauge a visual against, no way of telling how far he"d already gone ... no real proof that he was even moving forward except for the ever-increasing size of the glow on the horizon.
He heard the fighting before he saw it. And saw only the soldier standing between him and the battlefield before he saw the weapon aimed at his belly.
"Halt!" The voice was m.u.f.fled behind the combat helmet. "Identify yourself."
"Chancy, Robert F. Private/First Cla.s.s."
"Advance, Private." The voice said. "Ready for some action?"
"Sir," Chancy yelled when he got close enough to see the rank etched into the chest armor.
"Yes, sir. Always ready, sir."
The captain nodded and pushed back the helmet"s visor. She was a beautiful woman despite the broken shaft of an arrow sticking out of her right eye socket.
"Good, I like a man who"s always ready. You carrying?"
Chancy looked down and saw the weapon hanging loose and comfortable in his hand. Just like it was supposed to be. Swinging it up toward the visor opening on his own helmet, he twisted the pulse rifle one-quarter turn counterclockwise so the officer could see that the charge lights were Four-for-Four, fully loaded and ready for bear.
"Sir, yes, sir." He nodded in appreciation when she signaled him to stand down, and he nodded toward the arrow. "You need some help with that?"
The captain"s remaining eye was bloodshot and bulged a bit from the pressure of the arrow in her brain, but it shifted 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 shirt 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 Ships (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.