Endgame by Dafydd Ab Hugh Page A

confidence.
    â€œFly,” she said at last, “I don’t like this. I’m getting scared.” She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered, as if feeling a chill wind or someone walking across her grave.
    â€œMaybe we can pick up some trace from orbit.”
    â€œAfter forty years?”
    â€œMaybe Sears and Roebuck has some idea.” Yeah, right. Sears and Roebuck never even heard of the Newbies until just now, and if they had that hard a time understanding us and our evolutionary rate—Jeez, how could they even imagine the Newbies and what they might mutate into? “Let’s head back,” I decided. “We’re not doing anything out here but scaring the pants off of each other.”
    Arlene nodded gravely. “Kinky,” she judged.
    I heard a strange, faint buzz in my earpiece as we headed back toward the ship . . . sounds, voices almost. I could nearly believe they were whispers from the Fred ghosts, desperately trying to communicate—perhaps still fighting the final battle that had destroyed them. I was now convinced that there was not a single artichoke-headed Fred left intact on that planet, except for the corpses we brought with us—corpses we would never revive. In fact, I decided to leave them behind on Fredworld; the temptation towake the dead, just for someone to talk to, might be too great, overwhelming our common sense and self-preservation.
    But the notion of ghosts wasn’t that far-fetched. Since their spirits never died, where did they go? I began to feel little stabs of cold on the back of my neck, icy fingers poking and prodding me. Jesus, shut off that imagination! I commanded myself.
    â€œHuh?” Arlene asked, jumping guiltily. “Criminey, Fly, are you a mind reader now?”
    I said nothing . . . hadn’t even been aware I spoke that last thought aloud; curious coincidence that it turned out to be perfectly appropriate.
    The ship was so huge that it was hard to recognize it as mobile; it looked like an artificial mountain, three-eighths of a kilometer high, over a hundred stories—taller than the Hyundai Building in Nuevo Angeles—and stretching to the vanishing point in either direction. The landing pad was barely larger than the footprint of the ship, clearly built to order. Weird markings surrounded the LZ, the landing zone, burned into the glass-hard surface by an etching laser, either landing instructions or ritual hieroglyphs. They looked like they once had been pictograms, now stylized beyond recognition.
    â€œYou know, Fly, we’ve never actually walked all the way around this puppy.”
    â€œI know. I’ve been avoiding it. I don’t like thinking of how big this damned ship really is.”
    Arlene sounded pensive, even through the radio. “Honey, Sergeant, I’ve had this burning feeling—”
    â€œTry penicillin.”
    â€œI’ve had this burning feeling that we have to walk this path, walk all the way around what’s going to be our world for the next nine weeks, or however long it takes until we finally get . . . home.”
    I stared back and forth between the obsidian LZ and the ship door, torn. “You’re right.” I sighed. “We ought to reconnoiter. Arlene, take point.”
    â€œAye-aye, Skipper,” she said, voice containing an odd mixture of elation and anxiety. She unslung her RK-150, and I flexed my grip on the old, reliable standard, the Marine-issue M-14, which contrary to the designator was more like an updated Browning automatic rifle than the Micronics series of M-7, -8, -10, and -12. These were heavy-lifting small arms, and the Freds were pretty pathetic when not surrounded by their “demonic” war machines. I don’t know what we expected to run into on Fredworld; nothing good, I suspected.
    I thought about calling Sears and Roebuck and telling them what we were doing, but we were right outside.