Footfall

“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.

—JEREMIAH 5:21

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 running this tape?”

“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?”

“It is not our choice,” Raztupisp-minz said. “We would gladly have sent the Foot safely beyond your atmosphere, but your fithp would not have it so.”

“Look what you made me do,” Alice said in a thick, selfpitying whine. Her voice became a lash. “All the sickies say that — the rogues say that when they’ve done something they’re ashamed of. It was somebody else’s fault.”

“They can say all they like,” Carrie Woodward said. “We know. They came all the way from the stars to ruin the land.”

“You should not say such things,” said Takpusseh. “You do not want this to happen again. You will help us.”

“Help? How?” Dawson demanded.

“You, Wes Dawson, you tell them. More come.”

Dmitri spoke again in Russian. Arvid shuddered.

The screen changed again. Clouds moved so unnaturally fast that Jeri thought they were still watching a tape until Takpusseh said. “That is now. Winterhome.”

Earth was white. The cloud cover was unbroken.

“Rain. Everywhere,” Nikolai said. “The dams are gone. There will be floods.”