A Billion Days of Earth Read online

  Aril put him in his cage and stood stroking him through the bars. All at once she turned to Rik. “I’m going back to the fold,” she said.

  He didn’t react outwardly.

  “I need it,” she said, and he knew better than to give her an argument. She hadn’t been to church since she was fifteen years old, but she had forgotten that, along with all the other things.

  “I can’t stay away any longer,” she said. “The Lord calls me night and day.”

  “Go ahead. It might do you some good.” Right away he knew he had said the wrong thing.

  “I’m not going because it will do me good.”

  “If you want to join again, go ahead. I hope they take you back, and I hope you do a world of good.”

  “You’re pacifying me.”

  “No, I’m not. But if you want my advice, stay away from Brog and his pack of nuts.” He knew he shouldn’t have said it. Before she could react, he grabbed his hat and left the house in a hurry.

  A few blocks away, a crowd gathered, and he spotted his adopted brother, Jak, in the middle of it. He pushed his way in and grabbed Jak’s arm. “Come out of here,” he said.

  Jak pulled free. “I want to go with them. I’ll never learn if I stay out of everything.”

  “You know all about zizzys that you need to know.”

  “They’re raiding the Gods’ silos.”

  Rik made a sound of disgust as he saw a group of policemen hurrying up the street. It was too late. He and Jak were about to be conscripted.

  The officer with the loudest voice and the biggest badge climbed onto a box. “Everybody in this bunch is deputized!” he shouted. “Dissenters will be escorted to the courthouse where their names will be recorded in the Book of Cowards.”

  Rik stood still while a badge was pinned to his shirt.

  “You ready to do your duty?” said the officer, suspicious because this man hadn’t joined in the cheering. When Rik nodded, he said, “Get to the arsenal and pick up your weapon.”

  Yelling good-naturedly, the mob shoved its way across a boulevard to the red brick arsenal. Uniformed men threw guns out the door and metal hands snatched them from the air.

  They went in big trucks that ground across the desert like sluggish bugs. There were six vehicles with twenty men in each. They all knew what to do, whether or not they had gone after zizzys before.

  Everyone knew the psychology of King Bebe. Bebe was some kind of nut. Fifty years ago it had been a dog-eat-dog world, but now it was civilized. Every so often Bebe decided to ignore the armistice. Attacks on the silos weren’t a declaration of war against men, but the treaty specifically stated that the property of Gods was to be left alone. People were liable to get killed if the Gods became perturbed. It didn’t matter if a person had two legs or a pair of wings; the Gods became emotional when their silos were raided. They had to eat three-dimensional food and they didn’t like spending time growing and harvesting it just to have men or zizzys steal it.

  When zizzys went on a silo raid, men went out and attacked them. If the attack was successful, if the zizzys were driven back into the desert before the Gods came, everyone could go home and tell about their war experiences and not worry about Godly retribution. The fact that Gods never wreaked vengeance on those not actually at the scene of the crime was irrelevant. There was always the possibility the Gods would grow incensed enough to wipe out a whole city, maybe the entire race. Who understood anything about Gods; who could predict their reactions? Besides, war was hell.

  If the danger from man had been confined to his ability to shoot at and hit a moving target, the zizzys never would have pressed for an armistice. But man was cruel and crafty. He was good at setting traps, his poisons were virulent and his fire was intolerable. An armistice was the only solution.

  Men hadn’t sat at a table with zizzys and talked over the situation. The two couldn’t communicate. There existed no piece of paper, no legal document. The armistice was an understanding that had been reached through trial, error and bloodshed on both sides. Men learned how to behave in the presence of zizzys and vice versa. Both knew what was expected of them if there was to be peace. If one side broke the rules, the other side retaliated, so neither side broke the rules and hadn’t for fifty years. Except, that is, during the occasional little wars. The treaty didn’t apply to individual encounters. If a zizzy caught a man alone, he was liable to try and kill him. But groups of men left groups of zizzys alone. The armistice was never called off because of battles over the Gods’ silos. Bebe would take his troops home and behave himself for a while after this fracas was finished.

  Back to the war:

  “It’s too late to stop them!” someone yelled.

  Everybody in the truck glared at the man.

  “Rik!” Jak breathed the name and shrank down in his seat.

  “You wanna quit?” growled an officer.

  “Yeah, I wanna quit. I don’t wanna get clobbered.”

  “What’s your name, mister?”

  “Turn your stiff neck and see how far those striped bellies have gone. How long do you think it takes a God to get the word? We’ll be caught with our pants down.”

  All heads turned to the battlefield.

  The striped bellies were having a hell of a time. Every window in the silo had been shattered and zizzys flew in and out of the openings. The building was a spear of bronze. From its twenty-foot-diameter base, it reared eighty feet to a pointed roof. It was difficult to believe it had been constructed by the mind of some God, yet it was a known fact that the monarchs didn’t use machines. They had no cities, no factories, no smelting plants. All they had was an uncanny talent.

  The zizzys coming out of the shattered windows carried honey and grain while those who entered were going back for another load. They ate as they flew. Thirty feet above the roof, a hundred zizzys made a train of their bodies, and into the carts on their backs went the stolen food. At ground level a dozen or so fat females lay on their backs while males hung from the silo windows and squeezed honey from tubes into their mouths. There were personal squabbles taking place here and there. Zizzys crawled up and down the walls in pursuit of companions who had snatched their food. Some rolled on the ground, clawing each other or trying to strike with their stingers. A few romances progressed in the high grass, and two females were making good headway toward dismembering a male they both claimed.

  High in the sky above them all flew King Bebe. He kept watch for Gods and man, and he expressed his delight that man was there first by doing some fancy calisthenics in the air. It had been a long time since he had done any fighting, and he longed to draw the battle’s first blood.

  He had his wish. As the lead truck ground to a stop, Bebe soared into the clouds until he was invisible. Folding his wings, he dropped like a rock, straight at the twenty heads in the truck. He was a missile in flight, his appendages tucked in and his stinger aimed like a spear. He made no sound as he dropped, and his stinger was two inches into a man’s temple before anyone knew of his presence. The target died without complaint and Bebe was zooming skyward in the next instant, buzzing over his victory as he climbed. A bullet came perilously close as he ascended, and he slowed long enough to cast a startled glance below. Men were notoriously bad shots but the figure calmly drawing another bead on him was an exception. The fool had hunter in him. Bebe shouted with laughter and began some diversive flying that soon had the man bobbing helplessly. Quickly the zizzy leader forgot his skillful enemy. The other trucks had arrived and his troops were preparing to advance to the front.

  The second truck lost a wheel and overturned in a ditch. A man with a weapon was a fair match for a zizzy directly in front of him but two coming at him from the sides made him vulnerable. Bebe signaled for a roundabout and sent a squadron pelting eastward. They circled sharply to the south and in minutes were positioned behind the scattered trucks.

  Most of the men were still scrambling for solid footing. Where they intended to make their stand
remained a secret, since the ranking officer had been killed by Bebe. Listening for orders that never came, they ran for tall grass while the first squadron of zizzys zoomed in from the southeast. The zizzys had no better aim with their stingers than men had with guns, so there was only one casualty from this assault. A man grew alarmed by the sound of wings behind him and whirled in time to take a stinger in the eye. The rest of the winged soldiers stabbed backs, rumps and skulls and did no real damage other than to numb the perforated areas for a few minutes.

  Meanwhile, Bebe sent another squadron southward to catch the men with their backs turned again.

  The men used their rifles as clubs. Now and then a lucky swing sent a zizzy crashing to the ground. A man could then ram his gun barrel into the soft belly and blast away. More often than not, excitement caused the shot to go awry. Only three zizzys died before the squadron from the rear arrived.

  The last truck carried the flamethrowers, and it was toward this vehicle that Rik ran, dragging Jak with him. Ever since the man beside him had died with the stinger in his temple, Jak had been in a state of shock. Rik would have preferred to stay in his own truck but the zizzys had driven him out. The men were outnumbered and their commanding officer was dead. The other officers were too busy fending off the enemy to plot strategy.

  Four zizzys attacked. Steadily cursing, Rik put one foot on the cringing body of his brother and used his rifle as a battering ram. Sure of a victory, the zizzys dodged the blows and three of them charged. Rik dropped the rifle and flexed his elbow at the proper angle so that the hook in his mechanical hand shot out about four inches. This was done in a split second and even as the hook was emerging he swung his arm in a circle and whirled. The hook caught the nearest zizzy in the abdomen. Immediately Rik fell on his back and held his arm up. The two enemies who were plunging at him collided while the one overhead stabbed its stinger into its dead comrade. A savage downward thrust of Rik’s arm broke the impaled stinger at its base.

  The crippled zizzy screamed and flapped skyward. It wept bitterly. For it, the fight was over. War was over. Everything was over. It would never grow another stinger, never be able to forage alone, never be allowed to participate in the mating games. The joy of life was finished. Now all that remained was the peace of death. The zizzy climbed high into the sky and plummeted headfirst toward the ground.

  Rik didn’t watch the suicide. He continued to drag Jak toward the truck that contained the flamethrowers. He wasn’t thinking of waging war with the enemy. Someone was bound to go for the flamethrowers sooner or later, and he didn’t want to be a target when some maniac began tossing fire around.

  Zizzys came at him. He dumped Jak on the ground. “Yell if one comes at me from your direction!” he cried. He shot a zizzy from the air.

  Jak screamed and Rik whirled in time to see a man haul a flamethrower from the truck. “Not at me!” he roared, and dropped flat before a stream of yellow fire blasted above him.

  “I want to go home,” moaned Jak, on his belly and trying to crawl.

  “Get up and run,” said Rik.

  The man with the flamethrower staggered away from the truck. His face was white with fear. He veered to the right, stopped and looked about.

  “I’ll be branded a coward,” whined Jak.

  “Shut up!” said Rik.

  The flamethrower was aimed at the silo and its operator was laughing hysterically. Every time he pulled the trigger, he screamed. All the warriors had gotten out of his way and were now running or flying to get beyond his range. A sensible zizzy began to descend over his head. Another man raised a rifle. Rik groaned and shot him in the arm. The zizzy finished his dive, stung the firethrower in the shoulder and put him out of action.

  As soon as the danger of fire was gone, Bebe’s troops returned to battle. They gathered in force behind the silo, about two hundred strong. To the appalled men they looked like a solid wall of stingers. Not a soldier held his ground. More than a hundred men tried to find protection beneath the trucks, in trees or shrubbery or under the bodies of their comrades.

  Rik sat on a tree limb and picked off zizzys as fast as he could pull the trigger of his rifle. Behind him, Jak cringed and whimpered. Several zizzys flew at the tree, found it too time-consuming to crawl through the foliage and gave up to find easier targets.

  A boy came running across the grass, his mouth open in a silent scream. He had no weapon. Behind him came two zizzys. They were in no great hurry. Their tails were curled in under their bellies and their stingers were out and on a level with the boy’s back.

  Rik shot the one in the rear and then took slower aim at the second. There came an ominous click that told him he was out of shells. The zizzy flew under the tree and as it passed below he left his perch and dropped onto its back. They crashed to the ground. Knowing the creature was either dead or stunned, Rik rolled clear.

  “Get down out of there!” he called to Jak.

  “No!”

  “Come down. We have to get away.”

  “They’ll get us!”

  “You silly slob, come down.”

  Jak’s head emerged from the leaves. “We can stay here. They can’t get at us.”

  “Hurry. There’s no time.”

  “Look out!”

  Rik grasped the tree trunk and whirled around it. There was a thudding sound and a zizzy rammed its stinger in the wood. It buzzed and lunged and tried to pull free.

  High in the air, King Bebe gave a shriek. Rik heard it because he had been listening for just that sound.

  “Jak, I’m leaving you to the zizzys,” he said.

  Again Jak’s head popped out of the leaves. When he saw that he was being abandoned, he came down the tree trunk in a flash. “You can’t leave me!”

  “Watch your back,” Rik said. He kept walking away. The zizzys watched him, but their real attention was on their king who continued to circle in the sky and sound a warning.

  Jak turned and saw a zizzy flying toward him. “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you, Rik.” With a swipe of the hook on his artificial hand, he drove the zizzy away.

  “Come on,” called Rik. He had paused beside a clump of brush. “Run, you jackass!”

  “No.”

  “Stay, then, and when those Gods get done with you, write me a letter.”

  Jak gasped and looked at the sky. He saw the cloud at about the same time everyone else saw it. Luckily he didn’t allow himself to be awed enough to linger. Running after Rik, he didn’t see the black cloud again until it halted a few feet above the silo. A God stepped to the roof, then another God, and another.

  The three monarchs stood on the glittering spires and surveyed the scene below. Their expressions were cold and austere. All at once they lifted their arms high. Anticipation held the armies stationary.

  Things happened. The grass on the ground swayed. The earth rumbled. A tree was uprooted, elevated to fifteen feet. It remained in the air and thrashed furiously. Zizzys were overcome with fear and lost their power of flight. Men stood frozen with their eyes stark.

  The low grass at the base of the silo began to stir. Dark green vines that normally hugged the ground writhed and flowed outward from the building. They flowed slowly at first, spread out thinly and then they thickened and gathered speed.

  “Run like you never ran before!” said Rik.

  The vines flowed until they reached the first living creatures. Languidly they wrapped themselves about feet or wings, climbed upward to wind around heads and throats, clung gently. Mouths opened to shriek as the green matter came in contact with bare skin.

  Outward flowed the vines like a river that ran over running men and crawling zizzys until there were only a few at the fringes of the battlefield who remained untouched.

  Jak matched Rik’s strides and together they sped away with the vines mere yards behind them. They ran with the soft rustling in their ears, and no one had to tell them which way to go. They went wherever the rustling sound was not.

  The plan
ts traveled in a wide circle that would close somewhere in front of them. Rik raced toward a line of crawling green on his right, gradually caught up with the foremost edge, and when the carpet suddenly surged toward him, he leaped across the slender strip and rushed into open space. Immediately the vines veered and plummeted ahead to try and cut him off again.

  He saw a dark splotch in front of him, an independent patch of vines that waited for the larger growths to come to it. As his feet pounded against the ground, the patch came to life and slid outward in a wide rectangle. He ran faster. If the patch had kept its original shape, he would have been forced right or left where the greater masses crept all around him, but the rectangle was narrow on one end and he jumped across it. Without pausing, he crashed into the brush on the other side of the patch, fell to his knees and was up and running with the next motion.

  Jak was the better sprinter because his legs were longer between knee and thigh. A few yards in the lead, he suddenly gave a cry as the vines swerved and licked his heel. He grasped the limb of a tree and hauled himself into it. The vines took to the tree trunk with fluid grace.

  “Jump!” yelled Rik.

  Jak stared in horror at the growths coming up after him, stared in greater horror at what lay on the ground all around the tree.

  “Jump!” Rik yelled.

  Jak jumped. His feet were on the vines long enough for them to lash his ankles and then he hurtled out of them to freedom. He cried out and staggered.

  “Don’t stop!” Rik shouted, and Jak was on the move again.

  A man came plunging through the undergrowth. He howled in agony and tried to yank a tangle of vines from his upper body. Those around his legs were uprooted by his savage thrusts. One by one they dropped from him, but he blindly staggered into another thick patch that took his feet and hobbled him. Falling, he lay thrashing and shrieking as the vines bound him tightly. He was still struggling as Jak and Rik passed out of sight.