LITMIR.BIZ

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used the time to good advantage, I could tell, increasing the size of our village by as much as a third—all being prepared for the new settlers and soldiers that would arrive within the next month. The administrative complex had also been expanded.

      The half-track left me there at Airlock One. After entering the structure and removing my cumbersome suit, I wanted nothing more than to take a shower (something that had become much more commonplace, apparently, in the last year, due to the increase in our water supplies)—and then rest for a few hours. But my friends would hear nothing of it, and insisted upon fêting me with dinner in the new dining facility.

      “Look, Alex, it’s been half a year since we’ve seen you,” Mindon said, “and we all want to know what’s been happening Down Under in the meantime.”

      So I had no choice, really.

      And I have to admit that the selection of fresh vegetables and ripe fruits had now grown to the point where a variety was readily available for all the settlers for at least one meal a day—a far piece, indeed from the way it’d been just after touchdown two years earlier, when we were forced to live on the godawful Army rations. They even served me a bowl of beans, a vegetarian chili that reminded me of something else I’d eaten years ago.

      “Yes,” Min said, “that was Zee’s contribution.”

      Zee was a brain-damaged war veteran who’d owned and operated an eclectic café in Novato, California, in the years surrounding the alien invasion. He’d always been a tad strange, but he was one hell of a cook!

      It was such a pleasure to have fresh, spicy food again. The place was almost becoming civilized.

      “May I join you?”

      I looked up and saw Madame Stavroula the fortune-teller—Nomsah Vassilidis in real life—standing over me, like some oracle from ancient Greece.

      “Sure,” I said, “why not?”

      We weren’t exactly friends, but I was feeling too mellow to be dyspeptic after such a fine meal.

      “How are your companions in Habitat Three?” she asked.

      Stavroula and the other Sensitives who had been brought from Earth had been banned from visiting the Martian places, save for one occasion only; I’d always wondered if Big Guy and Crook Mouth and the others feared what Stavroula and her demi-witches might learn if they spent much time with the aliens. Of course, I could be completely wrong—maybe they just didn’t like the ladies.

      I picked at the fresh greens, and realized they included some marinated nopales strips along with the onions and tomatoes and olive oil-and-pepper dressing.

      “Mmm,” I said. “They haven’t changed much—they never do. Big Guy allowed me to come here, I think, because it wants to avoid further conflict between the species. But it doesn’t communicate directly with me in a way that is very understandable by anyone, least of all me.”

      “Well, I asked because I’ve been having the dreams again—we all have—and they’re becoming more disturbing of late. I’m increasingly concerned about…actually, what I wanted to know is whether there’s more than one type of alien.”

      Now that was an interesting question!

      “I don’t know for certain. I once thought that I saw a Martian squid-creature that was white instead of gray, but maybe it was their equivalent of an albino. Big Guy never responds to my queries about other races, either of their own kind, or off-world aliens. I mean, I believe that they’re aware of other intelligences existing in the universe, but that’s only an impression—and I also believe that they were attacked by one of these external races at some point in their past history. Their murals seem to reflect this incident—but again, I can never get Big Guy to provide any real information about such matters, other than acknowledging once that other aliens do exist. I think that they’ve agreed collectively not to share data that might be used to harm them—or it has made that decision itself, or has been instructed to do so by some higher authority. I…I just don’t know, Nomsah.”

      “I want to do a reading on you, Alex,” she said.

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s a way I have of concentrating my energies, of focusing my abilities on another person. I’m very worried about the future—about this meeting we’re having tomorrow. I think we need to know more about the aliens and their intentions.”

      “What about our intentions?” I said. “The Martians would leave us alone if we just let them be.”

      “Actually, that may not be true,” Min said. “Remember that they attacked us first, and seemed intent on destroying Earth with asteroids—as they apparently destroyed the dinosaurs and all large life forms on the planet sixty-five million years ago. They only stopped their bombardment when we landed here two years ago.”

      “Do you know what they want from us?” Stavroula asked.

      “No, not really,” I said. “I’m not sure that we could even understand their intentions, their civilization is so different from ours. I know they want to survive, just as we do, but for them survival means something different, I believe, than it does to us. They’re a collective community, the ultimate communistic society, you might say. I have the notion that they do have a plan to solve our conflict—well, at least some of them do—but they’ve been very careful not to reveal too much of themselves to one such as I. I keep feeling like I’m missing something very basic about their nature, but damned if I know what it is.”

      “Maybe I can help. Maybe a reading of your mind would sift a few more facts out of the æther.”

      “I don’t see how.”

      I didn’t really want this charlatan mucking around with my brain. That was the problem that I’d had with her in the first place, when she’d bent Becky to her will before the War of Two Worlds.

      “At least let me try.”

      I sighed. I was tired and crabby and not at all interested.

      “No,” I finally said. “I don’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, and never have. And if I sit here much longer, I’m going to fall asleep in mid-sentence. Min, lead me off to my….”—I yawned.

      They actually had guest quarters established now in a new structure attached to the main HQ Building, and that’s where my old friend took me.

      “I bet you’re looking forward to Puff arriving,” I said at the entrance to my cubicle, yawning a second time.

      “You don’t know how much, man,” he said. “You’ve been lucky to have your wife and family here all these years, but I have no one, and I’m getting old enough that the prospect of settling down with a good woman is starting to appeal to me. I heard from her this morning. The initial complement of ships will dock at Phobos Base in ten days.”

      “Well, I look forward to seeing her again. But I really have to get some shut-eye now.”

      I was asleep almost before I settled into my bunk.

      * * * *

      I was swimming in the ocean again with Big Guy. He moved like a giant jellyfish, with convulsive squeezes of his mid-section, and seemed completely at home in water. Although we were clearly some distance below the surface, I had no trouble breathing.

      “What do you want of us?” I asked, parroting Madame Stavroula’s query. “Why do you want us?”

      He didn’t reply, but moved his bulky mass a little to one side. Behind him Buddy was puffing his little body, jetting through the liquid as if he’d been born there—as perhaps he had!

      “Buddy has something to do with this?”

      I had the sense that this might have been part of the answer, but not all of it, or perhaps not what I was meant to understand. Another movement caught my eye, and I turned my head to see Mellie swimming towards us. Becky was no where in evidence.

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