Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
EMBEDDED, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
THE LAST TRUE GOD, by Lester del Rey
UP FOR RENEWAL, by Lucius Daniel
THE WAKER DREAMS, by Richard Matheson
THE KING OF THE CITY, by Keith Laumer
LORD OF A THOUSAND SUNS, by Poul Anderson
WHISKABOOM, by Alan Arkin
THE FIRE AND THE SWORD, by Frank M. Robinson
ALL THE PEOPLE, by R.A. Lafferty
DOCTOR, by Murray Leinster
AMATEUR IN CHANCERY, by George O. Smith
CONDITIONALLY HUMAN, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
BULLET WITH HIS NAME, by Fritz Leiber
A LITTLE JOURNEY, by Ray Bradbury
THE GREAT MUTATION, by Talmage Powell
A MATTER OF MONSTERS, by Manly Banister
THE MERRY MEN OF THE RIVERWORLD, by John Gregory Betancourt
OLD FOUR-EYES, by Chad Oliver
FOUR-LEGGED HOT FOOT, by Mack Reynolds
“—AND ALL FOR ONE,” by Jerome Bixby
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE, by H.B. Hickey
INSIDE EARTH, by Poul Anderson
A MATTER FOR A FUTURE YEAR, by Dean Wesley Smith
DEATH’S WISHER, by Jim Wannamaker
DIDN’T HE RAMBLE, by Chad Oliver
CULTURAL EXCHANGE, by Keith Laumer
FROM AN UNSEEN CENSOR, by Rosel George Brown
SMALL TOWN, by Philip K. Dick
Special Feature: FIREBIRD, by Tony Rothman [Part 3 of 3]
COPYRIGHT INFO
The MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved. Cover art ©
Nikonomad / Fotolia.
****
The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
****
“Embedded,” Kristine Kathryn Rusch, was originally published in Fiction River: Valor (2015).
Copyright ©2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Last True God,” by Lester del Rey, was originally published in If, Sept. 1969, under the
pseudonym “Philip St. John.” Copyright © 1969 by Lester del Rey. Reprinted by permission of the
author’s estate.
“Up for Renewal,” by Lucius Daniel, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, November
1954.
“The Waker Dreams,” by Richard Matheson, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction,
December 1950.
“The King of the City,” by Keith Laumer, was originally published in Galaxy Magazine, August 1961.
“Lord of a Thousand Suns,” by Poul Anderson, was originally published in Planet Stories, September
1951.
“Whiskaboom,” by Alan Arkin, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1955.
“The Fire and the Sword,” by Frank M. Robinson, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction,
August 1951.
“All the People,” by R.A. Lafferty, was originally published in Galaxy Magazine, April 1961.
“Amateur in Chancery,” by George O. Smith, was originally published in Galaxy Magazine, October
1961.
“Conditionally Human,” by Walter M. Miller, Jr., was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction,
February 1952.
“Bullet with His Name,” by Fritz Leiber, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, July
1958.
“A Little Journey,” by Ray Bradbury, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, August
1951.
“The Great Mutation,” by Talmage Powell, was originally published in Science Fiction Stories,
November 1959. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“A Matter of Monsters,” by Manly Banister, was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction,
November 1954. Copyright © 1954 by Street & Smith, copyright renewed in 1982 by Conde Nast
Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“Old Four-Eyes,” by Chad Oliver, was originally published in Synergy: New Science Fiction, Number
4 (1989). Copyright © 1984 by Chad Oliver. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“Four-Legged Hot Foot,” by Mack Reynolds, was originally published in Fantastic Story Magazine,
Winter 1952. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“—And All for One,” by Jerome Bixby, was originally published in Other Worlds Science Stories,
May 1950.
“A Little Knowledge,” by H.B. Hickey, was originally published in Fantastic Adventures, January
1947.
“Inside Earth,” by Poul Anderson, was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1951.
“A Matter for a Future Year,” by Dean Wesley Smith, was originally published in Stories from July
(2015). Copyright © 2015 by Dean Wesley Smith.
“Death’s Wisher,” by Jim Wannamaker, was originally published in Galaxy Magazine, February 1960.
“Didn’t He Ramble,” by Chad Oliver, was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, April 1957. Copyright © 1957, renewed 1985 by Mercury Publications, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of the author’s estate.
“Cultural Exchange,” by Keith Laumer, was originally published in If, September 1962.
“From an Unseen Censor,” by Rosel George Brown, was originally published in Galaxy Magazine,
September 1958.
“Small Town,” by Philip K. Dick, was originally published in Amazing Stories, May 1954.
“The Merry Men of the Riverworld” first appeared in Tales of Riverworld. Copyright ©1992 by John
Gregory Betancourt.
“Firebird,” by Tony Rothman, is copyright © 2013 by Tony Rothman. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Welcome to The 12th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®! We have another great lineup of stories (and
the conclusion of our first serial, Tony Rothman’s fine near-future novel, Firebird). No matter whether
you like classic, golden age authors (Ray Bradbury, George O. Smith, Poul Anderson), fun pulp fiction
(Talmage Powell, Murray Leinster, Keith Laumer), modern authors (Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean
Smith—and even me!), or authors whose work spans many media (Philip K. Dick, Richard Matheson,
Alan Arkin), I’m sure you’ll find more than a few stories you’ll like.
And if you’re wondering about the story by Alan Arkin—yes, he’s also well known as an actor.
Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor.
(Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep
getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at
Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn
Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s
authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is
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The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
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THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION
1. Winston K. Marks
2. Mark Clifton
3. Poul Anderson
4. Clifford D. Simak
5. Lester del Rey (vol. 1)
6. Charles L. Fontenay
7. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 1)
8. Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe)
9. Dave Dryfoos
10. Carl Jacobi
11. F.L. Wallace
12. David H. Keller, M.D.
13. Lester del Rey (vol. 2)
14. Charles De Vet
15. H.B Fyfe (vol. 2)
16. William C. Gault
17. Alan E. Nourse
18. Jerome Bixby
19. Charles De Vet (Vo. 2)
20. Evelyn E. Smith
21. Edward Wellen
22. Robert Moore Williams
23. Richard Wilson
24. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 3)
25. Raymond Z. Gallun
26. Homer Eon Flint
27. Stanley G. Weinbaum
28. Edward Wellen
29. Katherine MacLean
30. Roger Dee
31. Sam Merwin
32. Frederik Pohl
33. Kris Neville
34. C.M. Kornbluth
35. Keith Laumer
THE GOLDEN AGE OF WEIRD FICTION
1. Henry S. Whitehead
2. George T. Wetzel
3. Emil Petaja
4. Nictzin Dyalhis
5. David H. Keller
6. Clark Ashton Smith
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X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
EMBEDDED, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Originally published in Fiction River: Valor (2015).
We cover from a distance:
Embedded in the unit, not part of the unit. Observers who occasionally get an arm slammed across
their chest like a three-year-old about to run into traffic. We see all, understand little, and report next
to nothing.
Welcome to the life of the embedded reporter.
I thought it’d be so glamorous. Sixteen tours later, five wars, thirty war zones, I’ve seen nothing
glamorous. I’ve seen a lot of dirt, dust, blood. Too many severed limbs and even more severed lives.
Lost lots of friends, lots of personal enemies too.
Got pelted with shrapnel, nearly lost my own arm, held a colleague while she died screaming in pain.
Then left that war zone to go to a bloodless conflict fought by computers and robots, and thought I’d
go mad from boredom. Games are more exciting: Even though they’re pretend, they at least have
virtual blood.
I realized I wanted to see blood. Real blood. Then I worried that I had gone blood mad.
And then, ironically, I arrived here.
****
I’d heard about LaDucci in a sideways kinda way. Men were taken out of Basic and sent to LaDucci
training. Not too terribly unusual: soldiers were taken out of Basic all the time and rerouted to more
specialized training. Not even the gender specificity was unusual: some conflict zones suited some
genders better than others.
Women take down the Enfelz with almost no effort, but men get no traction at all. Something to do
with the biological make-up of both species. Men were part of the attack force heading to Enfelz, but
only in support positions.
Just like men and women were in support positions for the Hanen, where the gender neutrals who
preferred to remain in that twilight between the gender they were born with and the gender they
should’ve been born with, fought with a ferocity (and a success rate) not equaled in any other field of
battle.
Men got the LaDucci, and the rumor was that it was because men partnered better, but I’d never seen
that. Humans were humans—some partnered with other humans just fine and some sucked at working
with another.
I sucked at working with someone else, which is why I usually embedded and usually went into the
unit alone. With that system, I got the back-up of a military unit without the pain in the ass of dealing
with another reporter. I even did my own filming and uploading, learned how to use all the equipment
from driving trucks to flying low-to-ground vehicles to piloting my own orbit-to-ground ship. Heck, I
can even pilot a small spaceship if necessary, although I do mean small. I’ve trained on two-person
ships, but I’ve flown ten person ships—badly, but I’ve done it.
I took LaDucci like I’ve taken every assignment for the past eight years—vowing it would be my last.
Each was a step down in the war zone ladder. I went from the wars that the folks back home cared
about to the wars they didn’t care about but had to focus on to the wars they’d never heard of but
might care about to wars they’d never care about no matter what happened.
Technically, LaDucci was my first non-war—a conflict that someone else was fighting but with our
help. In the as-yet-unwritten histories, LaDucci will get mentioned only if we have severe casualties in
some unplanned military action that goes wildly out of control.
Otherwise, LaDucci will remain one of those and we sent support troops conflicts, the kind that gets a
half-sentence mention in any history of modern warfare until some enterprising historian decides to
focus her entire thesis on the conflict, publishes the account, and gets feted for finding lost stories of
war. That’s at least 100 years out, and thank whatever god I’ll never live to see it.
Maybe my imaginary future historian will find this little document. I wonder what she’ll make of it.
Wish I could accompany it into the future, and assure her that it’s all true.
Because there are times when I have trouble believing it myself.
****
LaDucci had devolved into a ground war over some frozen tundra on the northern most continent of a
backwater planet in the Scrarart System. The war—excuse me, conflict—had started when the
Milwans wanted to depose some genocidal dictator who was screwing up their trade plans in the
region.
We got involved because the Milwans had a treaty with the Keylen Alliance who got their military
back-up from the Mars Union who always partnered with troops from Northern Earth.
Hell, our people were knee-deep in weird grayish-green snow before our leaders even knew we’d
become involved in LaDucci. And by then, it was too late. Too much money, too many lower-level
promises, too many alliances at risk to pull out.
The politicians had been assured this was mostly a clean war—fought with computers and tech (other
groups’ tech)—and in the beginning it had been. But about the time those assurances happened, the
first troops hit the snow, and by the time someone wanted out, entire training units had developed for
troops to send to LaDucci, because it took a specialized kind of human fighter, and once the
politicians learned that, they hemmed and hawed and decided that we needed to learn to fight
alternative wars, and they labeled LaDucci one of those, and once I saw that memo float past my daily
feed, of course, I had to get involved.
I mean, what the heck is an alternative war?
I embedded in the next unit heading to LaDucci, thinking I would get to see a snow-conflict first-hand.
Instead, I got weird-ass shit right from the very beginning.
****
The embeds get decided up top. I’m not sure how far up top, but farther away than some podunk war
in some backwater system. So when I arrived at SC3RT15, the main base for the LaDucci Action (as
it’s officially called), I got sent to the Corps Commander, which never happens. Usually I arrive, head
to the press office, get assigned a unit, get a dressing down from Whoever Runs The Thing—all of it
involving stupid rules that (in recent cases) I knew before Whoever was born. Heck, some of those
rules were put into place after I did something that convinced the military that they needed a new rule
to prevent anyone from doing that something again.
This time, I didn’t go to the press office. I was sent directly to the Corps Commander.
I’d never encountered her before, but I knew her reputation. I also knew that this posting was a
demotion for her, particularly since the rules of engagement stated that no women should fight on
LaDucci for “species interaction” reasons. In other words, she could be in charge of the whole fight—
from space, far away from the action.
She’d been pretty once, although she’d probably kick my ass for saying that. The pretty had
disappeared into a tight-lipped expression that raised lines around her narrow mouth and suspicious
eyes.
“Can’t have you here, Khalil,” she said. “You’re male.”
I rolled my eyes. Of all the reasons she could have chose, she chose the one I knew was false.
“C’mon, Commander,” I said. “The guidelines say men only in LaDucci.”
“Only men can serve in the LaDucci campaign,” she said. “Reporters and support staff need to be
female.”
I couldn’t resist. “You’re support staff?”
She gave me a preoccupied smile. “Nice try, Khalil. You can’t sidetrack me here.”
“Honestly, I’m not trying to. They sent me, I’m officially embedded, I get to go where my unit goes.”
She studied me. She knew I was right. Once a reporter’s name was attached to a unit already involved
in a conflict, the reporter owned that story.
“If you stay, you’re going to regret this one, Khalil.”
My turn to flash the preoccupied smile. “Commander,” I said, “I regret each and every one of them.”
****
When the conflict doesn’t matter to you, war zones differ only by environment. Hot, cold, one sun,
five suns, it doesn’t matter. What changes is how you dress and how you deal. Sometimes you wear
full environmental gear so the entire experience of combat is accompanied by the amplified sound of
your own hollow breathing, and sometimes you wear partial gear to combat the actual elements—the
sand, the heat, the wind, the bugs.
That’s what I hate the most about warm places. Doesn’t matter where they are, doesn’t matter what
planet they’re on, doesn’t matter how different the topography, all warm places have hideous bugs.
It’s as if that old Earth Goddess, Mother Nature, became Mother Universe and declared that heat and
insects went hand-in-tentacle.
Cold is actually easier to combat. Some cold places are so desolate they needed full environmental
gear, including helmet and hollow breathing. But some are not considered hazardous (unless the
soldier got careless) and you can go out wearing a thermal jacket and pants, along with skin coverings
over your hands and face.
After a while, most of the troops on LaDucci went without the coverings altogether. The bracing air
had a higher oxygen content than Earth Standard, and that elevated mood. The cold made you feel
alive—or it made me feel alive, anyway—and it reminded me that I was some place real instead of
that constant parade of battleship, orbit-to-ground vessel, base, suited maneuvers, base, ground-toorbit vessel, battleship, new posting.
The weapons were different here too. Laser rifles had to be used sparingly: they melted the icecoverings over the tundra, and sometimes released avalanches so severe that we’d taken out some of
our own equipment before we realized what we’d done.
Yeah, I say “we.” Language isn’t as precise when you’re embedded. It’s us against them, me versus
the enemy, the good guys fighting the bad guys. Your brain gets hardwired that way, which is why
embedding is a bad idea and why no real reporter should ever do it, and yet we do it all the time.
If we didn’t, we’d have no access to war zones at all.
The only hope that we have is that after we’re done with our active years, we compose some kind of
memoir that tells the “real” facts. Only most of us don’t survive to the memoir—and those of us who
do lost interest in the overall conflicts long ago.
Cynical doesn’t begin to cut it. Cynical is where we start. We end up somewhere long past bitter,
beyond hopeless, in a place as bleak as LaDucci on a cold winter night.
What I’m writing here doesn’t count as memoir. I’m not organized enough for memoir.
This is just a document. Because someone has to write this shit down.
And that someone may as well be me.
****
I have to admit: I liked the LaDucci posting.
I liked the quiet.
At first, I thought I was just tired and in need of rest. You can’t spend your life traveling from place to
place with no real home, and not have some low-level exhaustion dogging you all the damn time.
I didn’t sleep much—I never sleep much—but I didn’t feel that underlying layer of panic each and
every moment of each and every day.
Our post was at the edge of an ice field, about one hundred klicks from any fighting, nearly five
hundred klicks from the major fighting. We had to follow the action the way the ships in orbit did:
using our computers, filtered through whatever layers the military had set up.
It felt odd to be on land, using in-space information gathering tools. Usually when I was on solid
ground, I saw things with my own eyes, learned whether those information-gathering tools were
accurate, and tried, as best I could, to report honestly on what was really happening.
I always add “as best I could” because so much of what I would want to report was forbidden: Even
the stuff from my very first posting, decades ago, remains classified.
The post, which we only knew by its service number, LD69A2, was bigger than I’d been led to believe.
Not too long before, someone had built two barracks, a separate mess, and an officer’s quarters, none
of which were in full use.
Clearly the military or the government (ours or Mars Union or maybe even the Keylen) had plans for
this area after they conquered it. Because I had little else to do, I started researching what could make
this part of LaDucci so very valuable.
It wasn’t the water or the minerals. For a while, I toyed with the idea that it was the location itself.
But I didn’t have enough information to know what made the location valuable—from a military
standpoint or a governmental standpoint. And so far, no one was talking.
Still, it was a strange bit of land to be fighting over.
The tundra, the ice fields, the snow glazes were all so fragile that sending probes from vehicles in
orbit would often trigger avalanches and destroy the probes. The first troops that came here were
considered support, and they were researching the area, to see what kind of tech we could use to fight
with.
Then they learned that the land itself was a factor in the fighting—that avalanche thing could be used
to our advantage.
It took some kind of scientific knowledge of stresses and ice flows and the way pressure applied from
above (or below) could predictably send an avalanche cascading toward the enemy. Or make the ice
flow shatter at a point where the enemy could not retreat and save itself. Or make the tundra crumble,
sending fumes toxic to the LaDucci into the environment.
It took a diabolical mindset, a combination of science, engineering, and a gleeful childishness that
reveled in finding the most creative way to crush an enemy force.
Not that any enemy force ever made it all the way to LD69A2, or as the troops here sometimes called
it, “Laid 69. Ate, too.” And then they’d chuckle as if they’d made up a particularly witty and original
joke.
I’d laughed the first time, groaned the second, and pretty much ignored it from that moment forward.
That joke, and its constant reiteration, actually made me think of the Corps Commander’s prediction
that I’d regret coming here.
Decades in war zones left me wired for battle. I didn’t mind the boredom that any posting held,
because it was always punctuated with moments (sometimes days) of sheer terror, followed by joy
that I was alive—and pressure to complete some kind of story that would make it past the censors, be
interesting, and informative.
But here, I’d reported all I could on the young men who got here, the naïve hopeless dreams, the long
days, and the even longer nights. I couldn’t mention the cadre of engineers gleefully making models
of the snow fields to blow it up, and I couldn’t talk much about the occasional suicide squads that
would show up at the very edges of our post, supposedly to make us all a little more on edge and a
little more afraid.
Reports from those tiny conflicts would come back, and they were always a bit mysterious: the squads
would die long before they arrived at their planned targets. Their vests would malfunction or they’d
fall through some ice (without the help of our engineers) or they’d get poisoned by the gas released
from the crumbling tundra.
I could and did report on that first gas release, because it surprised all of us, but I couldn’t do the
follow-up on the way the engineers glommed gleefully onto that detail to plan even more diabolical
strategies to be used closer to the actual conflict.
Because that’s pretty much all this base did: after it finished modeling various scenarios, it would
send a group of engineers to another unit, and they would set traps for the enemy—or try to. It was
hard to get enough purchase in an active fighting zone to lay under-ice charges that would ripple
through the battlefield.
Those charges generally had to be set ahead of time.
Honestly, it was sheer boredom that got me to accompany one of the engineering teams as they went
out to get some readings on the edges of the ice flow.
And it was sheer stupidity that allowed me to see that there was more to the LaDucci conflict than it
seemed.
****
When you embed, you travel with the troops. You go where they go, do what they do, hang back when
they tell you, and run like hell when they scream, “Get outta here!”
I’m used to that.
I wasn’t used to a squad of engineers, who giggle like school boys and talk in numbers and acronyms I
truly did not understand. I knew they were going to measure the length and depth of the ice flow. I
hadn’t realized they were also going to measure its thickness and maybe see if some tundra lurked
below.
They might, they said with twinkling eyes, set off a small avalanche, just to see if they could do it.
They never said stay close. They never said don’t wander. They never said stick to the trucks.
Not that these were regular trucks: we had hovercraft here, low level trucks in grayish white, so that
they seemed invisible over the snow and the somewhat filthy ice. Hovercraft always made me a bit
seasick, so I never remained on board if I didn’t have to.
The engineers did tell me I could watch if I wanted to, but after a few minutes, all I saw were
holographic renderings of ice layers floating above the probe’s entry point, the light of the holograph
slightly dimmed so it was impossible to see from a distance.
There was more talk about numbers and temperature differentials and stability and all sorts of things
that floated by me like ice chips on the increasing cold breeze.
I wandered away, although I didn’t wander far. In fact, in my defense, I followed a set of footprints to
the place where the footprints stopped, overlooking a ridge that rippled into a valley that connected
this part of the ice flow to the closest fighting, a hundred klicks away.
I stared at the valley, wishing I could walk it and get away from all this, craving some kind of action,
some kind of change, when I realized I wasn’t alone.
He sat on a snow mound, curved up from the ridge by a no-longer existent wind. One leg touched the
ice shelf, the other bent and resting on the snow mound, one arm wrapped around his knee. He looked
like he was posing for the Iconic Image of LaDucci: Soldier, in shadow, staring at the distant war,
freezing his ass off.
I didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t entirely surprise me. So many soldiers processed through
LD69A2 that I sometimes barely noticed them before they got sent elsewhere.
But as I looked, I realized I should have noticed him as he traveled with us.
The footprints I had followed out here were his.
And all of the men—the engineers—I’d come with were behind me, playing with their stupid gadgets.
My heart started pounding, and I thought of the suicide bombers I’d encountered in one of our dirtier
little wars. Well, I didn’t entirely encounter them. I had seen the aftermath of their destruction,
including a half-caved-in starbase. I’d arrived in time to see body parts still floating among the
wreckage.
I certainly didn’t want to become wreckage. Or a big red blob on the grayish-green snow.
That snow crunched beneath my feet, and he turned. He moved his head back once, a half-nod in
acknowledgement.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t reveal my nerves.
“Kinda far from your unit, aren’t you?” he asked.
So, not one of us. Every muscle in my body tensed.
“Not that far,” I said. “Looks like you’re kinda far from yours.”
He grunted and put his leg down. If he made a move toward me, I’d run. He’d probably get too close—
he looked to be in much better shape than I was—but I didn’t care.
I’d give it all I had.
“From this distance,” he said, “you can see some of the lights, flashing quietly. Like a message from
beyond.”
He was staring down that ridge into the valley. In spite of myself, I looked too. You could see the
lights appearing and disappearing like winking stars. Almost pretty, if they weren’t guaranteeing
someone’s instant death.
“Your friends are looking for you,” he said.
I glanced over my shoulder, saw a couple of the engineers trudging my way. Their body language
spoke of martyrdom and disgust. I could predict the conversation:
—You didn’t tell us where you were going.
—We’re responsible for you. If something happens…
—You know how much time we wasted searching? We brought you out here as a favor…
Their voices rumbled, and the squeak of their shoes was uncommonly loud.
I peaked to see how the soldier on the snow mound reacted to their arrival.
He was gone.
I hadn’t heard him leave—and I should have. Given the noise the engineers were making, and the
noise my own shoes had made, any move the soldier made should’ve been audible.
But it hadn’t been.
The engineers reached me before I had time to process that thought.
“There was a guy here,” I said. “On that snow mound.”
I pointed, but the engineers didn’t look in that direction. Instead, they shared a couple glances, and I
felt the instant conspiracy.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said one of them. I mentally called them Brainiacs One, Two and Three, because I didn’t
need to clutter my brain with their names. I would never be able to do a comprehensive piece on these
guys, so I didn’t bother with the details.
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” I said.
Brainiac Two gave his friends conspiratorial glances again, then said, “Why don’t you check out the
snow mound?”
“And let him shoot me?” I asked.
“Was he humanoid?” Brainiac Three asked.
My cheeks were heating up. Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The LaDucci weren’t humanoid. They looked
like a cross between a dolphin and an alligator, the short squat legs and long snout with the round
bodies and gray-green coating that made them almost impossible to see in the snow.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling stupid.
“Then you should be safe,” Brainiac One said, contempt dripping from his voice.
I trudged toward the snow mound, stunned to be slogging through deeper snow than I’d encountered
anywhere else on LaDucci. No tracks either—not leading up to the snow mound, not behind the
mound, not on its other side.
And creepily, not on the mound itself, even where the soldier had placed his foot.
“You’re telling me I’m seeing ghosts?” I asked.
“We’re not telling you anything,” Brainiac Three said with such emphasis that I realized he wasn’t
speaking to me; he was speaking to his friends.
“We’ll let the commander talk to you,” Brainiac One said. “And you won’t like it.”
****
But the unit commander wouldn’t talk to me. Not for three days, anyway.
He was dealing with a troop swap, an inspection, and some engineer’s hare-brained idea that had
nearly caused one of the barracks to implode on itself.
His adjunct told me that the commander would talk to me when he had time, and I knew the tone. The
tone meant I’d be lucky if the commander ever talked to me, and I shouldn’t hold my breath.
Not that I was holding my breath. The Brainiacs had set up the meet; I certainly hadn’t wanted it. I
would ask for a meet with the unit commander when I needed him to confirm or deny something
officially about some military action. I really didn’t want to see him for any other reason.
Especially one that painted me in such a stupid light. I researched my experience out there, and
discovered it was something that happened on the ice fields. Along with snow blindness (on really
bright days), nights often brought what were called ice hallucinations—visions of something or
someone that had no real basis in fact.
The more I dug, the more I learned that any frozen expanse brought those kinds of visions, although
usually they happened after some kind of deprivation, not to some idiot trudging across snow because
he no longer felt like watching engineers enthuse over ice-field depth.
The engineers knew I had seen an ice vision. They probably wanted me to talk to the commander so
that I’d get transferred out of here. I wasn’t ready to leave yet; I hadn’t found the definitive story, so I
didn’t push the meet either.
I just needed to remember to eat right and wear the proper equipment the next time I headed into an
ice field. I probably should have gotten more sleep, but I wasn’t about to kid myself. I couldn’t will
myself to sleep more, no matter how hard I tried.
I was just getting past the incident with the vision showed up again. I had dozed in my own little
corner of the barracks. I didn’t quite have a room, but I had a private bed (no bunk), a desk, and some
blankets I could pull across the only open area so that I could work more or less undisturbed.
I usually spent most of my time in my chair, working, documenting bits and pieces of things that I
could compile when I left. I’d been working to understand snow fields, ice flows, and tundras for the
previous 24 hours, and had focused so hard that I’d forgotten to sleep. The sleep caught up with me in
the afternoon, and I hadn’t managed to stagger to my bed. Instead, I’d cratered in my chair, my head
back, mouth open.
The pain in my neck woke me up. My mouth was dry, and my throat ached, which told me I’d been
snoring. I looked around to see if any of the men had snuck in to my ignominious position, only to see
someone sitting on my unmade bed.
Unmade beds offend soldiers. They either force me to make the bed, or frown at it mightily. They
never sit on it. So the fact he was sitting caught my attention right away, a half second before I
realized he had one foot on the floor and the other up against his chest.
His face was in shadow, even though the room was well lit.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I said, “not again.”
I ran my hand over my face, removed some of the drool from my chin, and felt the sleep along my
eyelids. I’d really been out—and now I was hallucinating in the barracks instead of the ice field.
“They’re an hour away from the ridge where we met,” he said. “You have a team out there, measuring.
Bring them back.”
I frowned. A team? They? What?
“I can’t stay here,” he said. “It’s too far away.”
And then he vanished, like the good little hallucination I wanted him to be.
I rubbed the aching muscles in the back of my neck, took a sip of very cold coffee, and staggered to
the latrine to wash off my face. That wasn’t enough to wake me, so I decided to go for the full-showerand-some-kind-of-meal method of getting rid of the grogs.
I was covered in soap when someone burst into the shower area. “Get out, suit up, we’re going into
lockdown,” he said, as the door slammed. When I asked what was going on, my voice echoed.
He had already left.
I rinsed the soap off, passed a towel over my body, and yanked clothes over my still-damp skin. I
didn’t have an environmental suit in the showers, so I sprinted to the barracks as everyone else
sprinted out, weapons in hand.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Suicide squad,” one of the men said as he jogged past. “Took out the surveying team at the edge of
the ice flow.”
I felt cold—and not because of the weather. I looked at the time as I grabbed my suit from the
barracks. Less than an hour after my vision.
Son of a bitch.
****
We lost five men, and would’ve lost the entire barracks if it weren’t for the rest of the engineers. The
ice flow had cracked where the surveying team was working, and the crack was working its way to us.
It would have either collapsed the barracks or destroyed the tundra if the engineers hadn’t planned
ahead for just this kind of contingency.
I have no idea what they did—something about depth charges, frozen barriers, and recreation of
original conditions—but whatever they did, it worked and saved thousands of lives.
Just not the team. Five lives lost, in a way that could’ve been prevented, if I had just spoken up.
And said what? That a vision told me the suicide squad was coming? Besides, the bastard had been
vague.
And that thought—about the vision’s lack of specificity—made me realize I was being childish and
short-sighted.
I’d been to enough war zones in enough strange places to understand that sometimes not all is as it
seems. You can’t accept Earth Normal in a place where Earth isn’t even visible with advanced spaceviewing equipment.
So I went the unit commander, just like the Brainiacs had wanted me to.
The commander looked older than he had when I arrived. He probably looked older than he had twelve
hours before.
He was standing near some holographic projections, scrolling through them as if they dissatisfied him.
I knew he could see me through them, but he didn’t acknowledge me for nearly a minute, probably
hoping I would go away.
“Make it quick,” he said. “I have families to contact, and planning to do.”
My speech on the strange things I’d seen in war zones went out the window.
“I had warning about this,” I said.
He stopped, collapsed the holo images, and turned toward me. His blue eyes were flinty, his chin set.
“Tell me,” he said.
So I did.
****
He didn’t quiz me. He didn’t recommend a trip to the base psychiatrist. He didn’t ask for a full
medical work-up.
Instead, he asked, “Where’d you see him the first time? Show me on the map.”
He called up a holographic map of the area, and I pointed out exactly where that vision appeared.
“Took him a lot of energy to hightail it here,” the commander said to me, “and you ignored him.”
I frowned. My stomach clenched.
“You mean he’s real?”
The commander peered at me, as if he couldn’t understand what I had just said. Then he clenched one
hand into a fist, and slowly released that fist, one finger at a time.
“You’re a damn reporter,” he said, mostly to himself, voice a lot calmer than his expression. “No one
briefed you. Of course no one briefed you.”
“Briefed me about what?” I asked.
“The imaginary friends,” he said.
****
The imaginary friends was the nickname the first troops to arrive in this place gave the Eldanten,
which was what the creature that I had seen was. They first became visible to male soldiers who’d had
imaginary friends as children. It never happened to women or to other species. It seemed that
something in the human male physiology made the Eldanten visible, and the Eldanten took the form of
the man’s childhood imaginary friend.
I had winced at that description. I was so far from my child self that I hadn’t recognized my own
imaginary friend. I’d had one too, and he’d helped me through some truly ugly years from ages five to
twelve. Puberty gave me height and weight and that gave me confidence to claim the smart mouth I’d
developed for my imaginary friend as my own.
And I’d never thought of him again.
Until now.
The commander punctuated his description of all of this with asides, reminders for his superiors,
things like we need to fuckin’ brief the reporters and how come no one psych evaled you? as if
someone could have. I’m not military, I’ve never been military, and when I’m not an officially
assigned embed and not on some battlefield, I don’t have to follow orders. I’d’ve run from a psych
eval faster than a washed-out cadet ran from Basic.
“We’re allied with the Eldanten,” the commander told me, “although it wasn’t a willing alliance at
first. They took our men and made them fight the Eldanten’s war—a different war than we’d been
supporting with the LaDucci. Now, we help each other.”
Gre-at, good, wonderful. Names I didn’t recognize, conflicts I’d never heard of. Normally, I would
have been ecstatic to learn of a story no other reporter had. But at the moment, I wasn’t a reporter.
I was a man who had somehow gotten roped into something I had no connection to.
“The Eldanten taught us about the poison in the tundra,” the commander was saying, “and they helped
us minimize damage from the suicide squads.”
Then he peered at me. “At least until today.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
The commander raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, although his eyes still glimmered with
fury.
“I know, I know. That’s on us. But now we’ve got to train you and bring you into the team.”
“What?” I said. “I’m not a soldier.”
“You are now,” he said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not here to fight. I haven’t had training, and I don’t want it. Your little wars
aren’t mine.”
“The war’s not little,” he said, “and it’s yours now.”
I shook my head. “Partner him with someone else.”
“Can’t,” the commander said. “Once they choose they’re bonded. It takes some massive kind of
energy flow for them to pick a partner. They can’t repartner again. You’re stuck here, Khalil. And
we’re stuck with you.”
I don’t do stuck well. I don’t do orders well. I don’t do military drills and proper behavior well.
“No,” I said.
“And,” the commander was saying as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “his territory is the ridgeline. We need
intel from there. We’ve been sending new men to that area from the beginning, hoping someone would
be able to communicate with an Eldanten.”
“Keep sending people,” I said, “because I’m not staying here. You can’t compel me to do so.”
“Oh,” the commander said with a dark glimmer in his eye, “I most certainly can.”
****
I’d been through similar things with commanders before. They seemed to believe they controlled
every human they ever came across. And, honestly, because I was embedded, I had to follow some of
his rules—as long as I stayed.
But he didn’t control the length of my stay, and since I was a freelancer, he couldn’t threaten me with
job loss or talk to my boss. All I had to do was get out of LaDucci.
I’d done this before: I’d snuck out of some commander’s clutches. It took a ground-to-orbit vehicle,
enough money to bribe a few guards, and the short-term theft of a small ship.
The two times I’d done this before, I’d programmed the ship to return to its parent vehicle, leaving me
“stranded” somewhere, usually a place with a large criminal element. That way, I could get my own
ship (without registration), fly to some other place without being tracked, and then move to a whole
new sector.
The universe was vast, and the parts we controlled big. It took official information a lot longer to
arrive than it did for me to do so. I could even continue embedding, because most commanders never
checked a freelance reporter’s history. There was always an assumption of shadiness, and a
willingness to look the other way, if the reporter promised to follow the rules inside the base itself
upon penalty of expulsion.
Anyone who ran a unit knew that reporters like me feared expulsion much more than they feared
losing work or some military court-martial that was never going to happen.
I was annoyed that I’d have to go on the run again—third time in fifteen years—but I knew how to do
it.
I had already picked out the vessel I was going to commandeer. In fact, I had picked it out when I
arrived (old habits die hard) because it was queued up for repair, and not on the usual heavily guarded
landing strip. The repairs weren’t happening because the techs were busy with the ice field, so the ship
remained there, minimally damaged and ripe for the taking.
I would have taken it too, if I hadn’t had to go back and get my gear.
****
He swirled in like a miniature blizzard, face still in shadow. I truly could not remember what my
imaginary friend looked like, and that had an impact on my vision of the Eldanten.
“I thought your job was to report,” he snapped. He sounded furious.
“It is,” I said.
“You didn’t tell them. I told you to tell them. You failed at your job.”
I let out a small puff of air. We were standing just behind the barracks. No one was around, at least
that I could see. Just the two of us, a lanky young man without a face and me, grizzled and tired and
out of his depth.
“I didn’t fail at my job,” I said. “You misunderstood my job.”
“You’re supposed to report,” he said.
“To the people back home. I’m supposed to compose stories about what happens here, and tell them
about it. I have nothing to do with the military,” I said.
His body froze for a half second. At that moment, I wished I could see his face—or what passed for
his face—because I wanted to know what he was feeling.
Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I knew what he was feeling. He was pissed as hell at me.
“I risked everything to come to you,” he said. “My entire family is dead.”
I frowned. I thought, somehow, that the Eldanten were beings of light or some kind of ghosts or
something. I hadn’t realized that they actually existed.
They exist—I later found out—but they are in some kind of zone that we can’t see, hear or smell. Our
senses are incredibly limited, and the Eldanten exist in a place our senses cannot perceive.
“Your family?” I asked.
“And my friends, and my entire village. You lost five people. We lost two thousand. Because you
didn’t report.”
He launched himself at me, and I felt a chill run through me, like a sharp wind had suddenly blown up.
Then he reformed behind me, and sank to the ground in a crouch, arms wrapped around his head,
moaning.
At first I thought I had hurt him.
I hadn’t. Not physically, at least.
But oh, emotionally. Mentally. I had devastated him.
And all he believed in.
That realization came to me quickly—almost as fast as the guilt.
And I can’t shake the guilt.
No matter how hard I try.
****
We’re stuck with each other, he and I. Him, because he had bonded with the wrong man, and me,
because I can’t leave him now. I call him Nevas, which isn’t his name. I can’t pronounce his name. I
don’t know if he can pronounce mine. He’s never tried.
He’s younger than I thought—the equivalent of a teenage boy in our world—and he has no more
chances to bond and help his people. I’m his only hope.
Not that he wants to help his people. His people are gone. But he can help the remaining Eldanten that
live along what we see only as tundra and ice flows and snow fields.
Hundreds of thousands of them in large cities, teeming with life that we can’t see. Our barracks exist
on the edge of the smallest of those cities. The inhabitants tolerate us because our weapons work
better against the LaDucci than the Eldantens’ do.
I’d love to say that I’m a changed man, but I’m not really. I’m still an asshole. If I could figure out
how to flee this place without adding to my nightmares, I would.
But I can’t.
I have waking nightmares, the way I used to have waking visions of my imaginary friend, back in the
days of my horrid childhood, when I thought things could not get any worse than they were.
Of course, they could get worse.
You could be bound to a creature who blamed you for the destruction of everything—and everyone—
he ever loved.