Footfall

“Shh.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

“Hey, John, we got the President on.”

“Yeah?” But Fox moved his mattress closer.

“My fellow Americans, this morning the alien invaders struck at Earth with a large artificial meteor, which landed in the Southern Hemisphere, in the Indian Ocean. The effect was that of a tremendous bomb. My advisors inform me that we can expect some severe weather effects.”

“Meteor,” Fox muttered. He looked up, and Marty did too. There were more clouds now… and they were swirling, changing, growing dense and dark, streaming east like foam on a breaking wave. Marty remembered how fast clouds moved in a Kansas tornado. These were moving faster.

“…Global weather will definitely be affected. This makes Project Greenhouse even more important. I call upon every one of you to raise food. In small pots, indoors, outdoors, wherever you can. If you can build greenhouses, do so. County agents and other Department of Agriculture experts will show you how.

“America must feed herself.”

Marty thought, Not here, we won’t. But the grin wouldn’t come.

“Global weather,” Fox said again. “Christ, have they thrown us a dinosaur killer? Indian Ocean. How long will that take? Marty?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“How much gas do we have?”

“About five gallons.”

“Better gas up the truck. I think I want to use it.”

By noon the clouds covered the sky. The sun that had blazed like a deadly enemy since Marty’s arrival two days ago was hidden now. Marty watched Fox with some concern; for Fox watched the sky as if he feared a corrosive rain. The rain started at one. The first huge drops drummed on the truck cab, and Marty lifted his face to taste it. It was only plain water… not plain, not at all, and Marty felt a thrill of fear when he tasted silt and salt. Fox shouted, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Come on, damn it!”

Marty jumped in after him. He had just time to whistle up the dogs and let them jump into the truck bed. He was a little worried about Darth, who was young enough to try jumping out when the truck was moving.

“Damn dogs, can’t even stay and watch the camp.”

“Sure they can, if that’s what you want,” Marty said. “Are we coming back?”

“Huh? Yeah, we’re coming back.”

“Then stop long enough for me to tell them what to do!”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

Fox stopped the truck. Marty posted the dogs, except for the pup, who’d have to come with them. “Guard.”

Chaka looked up mournfully, but obeyed.

The rain was falling hard now. Rain in July? in Shoshone above Death Valley? Sea-bed silt, when the meteor struck in the Indian Ocean? I don’t believe this. “Where are we going?”

“Place I know. Come on.” Fox drove down the dirt track to the main road.

A big gasoline tanker was parked at the diner. Marty felt a twinge. That tanker held enough gas to get them both to the Enclave in Bellingham a hundred times over. I wonder where he’s taking it?

They drove up the paved road, then turned left onto a gravel road. Fox drove as he always did, faster than Marty would, but carefully. He ground his lean jaw as he drove.

What’s got to him?

They rounded a peak and drove onto a wide ledge.

Fox got out slowly. Marty followed. Darth came with him, huddling against his leg.

Death Valley was spread out below them, barren as the Moon.

More like Mercury, Marty thought, remembering the terrible heat. But he could see very little. Rain obscured the view, and a fog was rising too. The rain would evaporate as it struck.

Fox gestured, like Satan offering Christ the world. “This is what trapped them, the first ones here. Look how gently it slopes down. It’s just barely steep enough to stop a horse-drawn wagon from getting back up.”

“I’ve been here.”

“And you’ve seen the Devil’s Golf Course and Scotty’s Castle, I don’t doubt, and the dunes. But have you seen the life?” The rain was loud, but John Fox was louder. He wasn’t shouting; he was letting his voice project, as if he had an audience of thousands. “It’s like another planet here. Plants and animals have evolved that couldn’t survive anywhere else. If conditions—”

For a moment the roar of wind and rain drowned out even John Fox. It was as if a bathtub of salt water had been poured on Marty’s head. He screamed, “John, John, what’s happening?”

“The damned aliens, they’re terraforming Earth to their own needs! They’ve thrown an asteroid in the Indian Ocean! And I was trying to stop atomic plants. I should have been screaming for atomic plants to power laser rockets! I tried to stop the Space Shuttle, damn me for a fool. They’ve smashed every environment on Earth! Damn you,” he shouted into the sky. “Pour fire on the Earth, pile bodies in pyramids! We can live anywhere! We’ll hide in the deserts and mountain peaks and the Arctic ice cap, and one day we’ll come forth to kill you all!”

Death Valley was a bowl of steam. There was nothing to see, yet John Fox peered into it, seeing nightmares. “An old sea bed,” he said in an almost normal voice. “A salt sea. They’ll all die.”

The rain fell.

PART FOUR: THE CLIMBING FITHP

30. FOOTPRINTS

Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.

The contorted moonlet dropped away, dwindled, vanished. Earth grew huge. A flashbulb popped above the Indian Ocean, and was replaced at once by a swelling, darkening fireball. Ring-shaped shadows formed and faded in and around it. Far from the central explosion, new lights blinked confusingly in points and radial streaks.

The Earth’s face streamed past, terrifyingly close but receding now. A wave in the cloud cover above the Indian Ocean raced outward, losing its circular shape as it traveled. Northward, it took on a triangular indentation, as if the edge of a blanket had snagged on a nail.

“India,” Dawson said. “How fast are you ru

“Thirty-two times normal,” Tashayamp answered.

“What is … that?” Alice asked.

“Land masses. The tsunami distorts the clouds,” Arvid said.

“So does the ocean floor,” Dawson amplified, “but not as much. That’s India going under. Those flashes would have been secondary meteors, debris, even water from the explosion thrown out to space and reentering the atmosphere.”

That’s India going under. Good-bye, Krishna, and Vishnu the elephant god. Jeri shuddered. “Dave took me to India once. So many people. Half a billion.”

Arvid stood near. She felt his warmth and wanted to be closer to him.

Tashayamp said, “Number?”

Arvid said, “Eight to the eighth times eight times three.”

“Human fithp in India? Where the wave goes now?”

“Yes.”

Dmitri spoke rapidly in Russian.

“Stalin thought that way,” Arvid snapped.

Dmitri shrugged expressively.

What was that about? Jeri wondered. Arvid didn’t like it at all. Stalin? He would have been pleased to have a simple answer to the India “problem.” It’s easier to deal with “problems” than people.

The distortion in the clouds swept against Africa, then south. Here was clear air, and a ripple barely visible in the ocean… but the outline of the continent was changing, bowing inward.

“Cape of Good Hope,” Jeri muttered. She watched the waves spread into the Atlantic. Recorded hours must be passing. She found herself gasping and suspected she had been holding her breath. The waves were marching across the Atlantic, moving on Argentina and Brazil with deceptive slowness and a terrible inevitability.

Cloud cover followed, boiling across the oceans, reaching toward the land masses. “My God,” Jeri said. “How could you do this?”