Footfall

Wes’s chest was heaving. “I think— if I hadn’t known it was my mistake-I wouldn’t have been so mad. I said we could tell them anything they wanted to know. He said, ‘I hear more than you say, Dawson. You want this wealth for your fithp. If we do not fight you for your own planet, we will presently fight you for the others.’

“I threw the grill at him and jumped behind it. The grill bounced off his head. Must have startled him. I was still in the air when I realized I was committing suicide. He turned his head away —  he must have remembered how I attacked Takpusseh — and I kicked against his shoulder and was headed back into the duct, just trying to get away, thinking, Damn! I’ve blown it.

“I made the duct and wiggled in, quick like an eel. Something wrapped around my knee. I looked back and the grill aperture was full of a fi’s face, and the other digits were reaching for me.”

Nightmare! Alice found herself gripping his arm, and her nails. She eased off, but didn’t let go.

And he hadn’t noticed. “I must have been crazy. Maybe I couldn’t have pulled loose. I didn’t even try. I snatched my gear and swarmed back down the duct at him. Felt like I was attacking an octopus. I squirted that bag of soapy water in his eyes, pfoosh! He backed away a little, and I jammed my feet into the duct walls and shook the line loose and knotted it around his trunk, above the nostril, and pulled it tight. Then I heaved backward.

“You know, he didn’t have any leverage. I pulled back and he came with me. He had all eight digits around me. It felt like he was tearing my leg off, but he couldn’t get a digit around my neck because I kept my chin tucked down. I pulled that line just as tight as I could and hung on, and after a bit the grip slacked off. I guess the digits weren’t getting any blood. I pulled him farther into the duct, and I clawed that door-on-springs open and hooked the line over the knob.”

Wes looked at her suddenly. “From there on it was murder.”

“So you’re an inhuman murderer. Go on.”

“What?… Yeah. But this inhuman would have blown the dissident movement apart. It was easy. It wasn’t as if I was fighting a fi’ any more. I was fighting a fi’s head. His torso was out there in the mudroom, useless as tits on a boar. I had a tourniquet above his nostril. I crawled down toward his mouth. He said, ‘Dawson, you gave your surrender.’

“I said, ‘I was raped.’ ”

Alice burst out laughing. Wes said, “English, of course. I wish I could have said it in fithp… hell, they don’t have rape. I crawled down until I could get my knees braced under his jaw, and I jammed his mouth closed. His digits were patting at me, and I could hear him thrashing outside. After a while all of that stopped. I held on for… God, I don’t know how long. His eyes weren’t looking at anything and he wasn’t moving.

“I kicked him out into the mudroom. I pulled the grill into place, and then I couldn’t find the goddam wing nuts. It looked like it’d stay, so I just left.

“He’d wrenched my knee and hip. They were hurting when I

got out of the ducts. I hailed a soldier, and he didn’t notice.

Couldn’t read a man’s face, maybe, or a politician’s. By the time I reached my cell, my knee was the size of a football. In gravity I couldn’t have moved. But I had four days to heal before Thu ktun Flishithy disconnected from the Foot.”

“You didn’t push him into the mud?”

“Nope. I don’t know who did that. There are some funny politics going on aboard this ship.”

Alice smiled slowly. “That’s frustrating. Well, Congressman? I’m still here.”

“Yeah.” He studied her for a moment. He was a little afraid of her; she saw. As if she were dangerously fragile? “You’ve had some time to think. Maybe what you need is just a hug? God knows I owe you.”

What Was he waiting for? She hadn’t intended to say — “Do I look to you like a freemartin?”

“A what?”

“Raztupisp-minz thought I might be a—”

“That’s ridiculous. You get a freemartin when a female calf has, a twin brother. It gets too much of the male hormones. Humans can’t be freemartins.”

“Good,” she said, and launched herself at him.

“Down periscope. Surface.” Captain Anton Villars deliberately kept his voice flat and dull. They can’t watch the whole ocean. It’s just too damned big. Isn’t it?

Ethan Allen rose silently to the surface. The lookouts swarmed up into the conning tower. After a moment Villars felt moist cool night air.

“All clear, sir.”

Villars climbed the steel ladder into the moonless overcast night. Topside was a steady westerly wind. He estimated it at nine knots. The sea rolled with large stately swells, some topped by whitecaps. A light rain pattered down onto the submarine’s deck.

The African coast lay dead ahead. Villars studied it with his night glasses. He didn’t dare risk a radar sweep.

“Quiet as the dead,” his exec said.

“Not the most cheerful image,” Villars muttered.

“Sorry, Captain.”

“Bring ’em up,” Villars said at last.