The Time of The Cat 54
A FLASH IN THE SKY
We drove carefully, watching the road ahead, but nothing happened until we reached the turn-off that we’d passed on the way up. It was quite dark down in the trees, but suddenly the whole eastern sky lit up. At the same time, both vehicles died.
The Air Force hadn’t been ready in time, and the EMP warhead had gone off. It looked like it had exploded somewhere over Kansas. That was near enough to the geographical center of the USA for the pulse to kill electronics all over the country.
“Oh, crap, crap, crap!” I shouted, banging my hand on the suddenly heavy steering wheel.
“They must have accelerated the launch! The transporters exploding must have caused them to hurry up!” Liz yelled.
“I know. That’s exactly what they did. Now, what’ll happen?” I was practically ready to bite ten-penny nails in half, I was so angry.
“A lot of... a very big lot of people will die,” Liz sobbed.
“That’s right. The cities will be death traps for everyone. They’ll be out of water immediately and out of food in two or three days. Then they’ll have to try and walk to safety, only there won’t be any safety,” I breathed deeply, trying to think.
“The Masters might have won after all,” Liz said quietly.
“They’re probably attacking all over the globe right now, and we’re stuck here,” I groaned.
The pickup’s engine had stopped, and the power steering had failed, but we were still coasting downhill slowly. I shoved the transmission in neutral, and the vehicle continued to roll. It was dark, and that made it hard to see, but my newfound ability allowed me to sense the road.
Realizing that Rudy would be having more trouble seeing than we were, I pushed on the leaden-feeling brake pedal. The truck gradually stopped, although the power-assisted brakes had failed also. When we stopped, I set the manual parking brake, and we jumped out.
There wasn’t a sound from behind us. I extended my perception and knew that Rudy had stopped as fast as he could when the engine failed. He couldn’t see and judged that stopping so as to not run into anything or off the road was the best thing to do.
We walked back a couple of hundred yards, and then we could see the three of them coming down the road. The moon was still up but threatening to go behind a mountain peak. Nevertheless, there was enough light to walk by.
When they came up to us, I explained that I could get us down, but they’d have to ride in the truck bed as we coasted.
“At least it’s a ride,” commented Joe. He hated to walk anywhere if he could ride instead.
We got in, and they climbed into the pickup’s bed. I released the parking brake. The vehicle started to roll and then hit a stone, and that stopped our progress. The three in the back had to climb out and push the truck over the low obstruction. Then they had to leap back in as it started to roll again.
We bounced over the alluvial area and almost came to a dead stop as we approached the main road, but the truck retained enough momentum to roll slowly up on the asphalt. From there, it was all downhill, literally. There were times when I was afraid that we’d get going too fast for my reduced steering ability. The wheel wasn’t very responsive, with no power steering. Only by using all of my strength stomping on the brake while turning the wheel could I keep us on the road.
In a little over thirty minutes, we rolled back into town. As we did, I passed the eraser-gun out the window to Joe, and he handed it to Rudy for immediate deployment in case the Pug-bears tried another ambush. We coasted for another block and gradually came to a full stop as the street turned upwards. We got out, trying to be as quiet as we could and not attract any attention.
I extended my senses, and I could feel Pug-bears all around us, but they seemed different, somehow. They felt less organized in my mind. They were acting as if they were simply wild animals. There wasn’t the sense of centralized planning with which they’d used to coordinate their previous ambush.
I suddenly knew that the death of the Ancient One had disorganized them. They had some form of mental link that relied on a leader. He had provided their leadership, and now there was a vacancy.
Suddenly, a couple of the things charged out from behind a building. They were actually fighting each other, one chasing the other and striking at it with its front claws as they ran. They reached the middle of the street in front of us before they became aware we were there. The fight stopped abruptly, and they began to move quickly in our direction.
Rudy was still carrying the eraser-gun, and he used it immediately. Then another one was coming our way from behind the pickup. He destroyed it, also. As he did, the little yellow light began flashing, signaling the incipient demise of the power pack.
“Let’s try to sneak out of here,” I said, holding up my hand and motioning him not to shoot anymore.
“I’ll try to save the remaining power for an emergency,” he answered.
We moved over to the front of the buildings and more or less tiptoed along in the shadows. A couple of times, I sensed aliens nearby, but they moved away.
I suddenly realized that I was responsible for their departure. I’d been wishing that they would go away, and they did. I concentrated on sensing the nearest aliens. There was one coming through a broken store window about a block in front of us.
The knowledge of how to proceed came from the Ancient One’s imparted wisdom. As I concentrated on the nearby alien, I felt my mind slip into a form of communion with it. It wasn’t intelligent at all. In fact, it had about the same level of native comprehension as an Earth-born bear.
I formed the image of other Pug-bears feeding on something delicious and inserted the impression into its consciousness. It immediately began looking around for the location of the feast. I hurriedly amended my projection to include a location a couple of blocks away to the north. The creature spun around and re-entered the storefront. A moment later, I could sense it moving rapidly across the street behind the store. It was hot on the trail of food.
I turned to my companions to tell them the good news. This time I was met with only a little incredulity; they were beginning to believe my story.
“I can keep them away from us. I just now decoyed one out of our path, and unless we run into more of them than I can handle at once, I can make sure we get out of here without fighting. They’re not intelligent,” I assured them.
We continued down the street until Rudy grasped my arm and pointed at a great discovery. There it sat in all its radiant glory, one of the ugliest vehicles ever produced, at least in my opinion. He was pointing at a VW Vanagon, probably a 1980 model. This one looked to be in decent shape, despite the unattractive green color of its paint.
We sprinted over, and I opened the hood. Sure enough, the Volkswagen was original, and it had only a minimum of electronics in it. The ignition used a mechanical distributor, and it only took a few seconds to get it started. It was full of gas, too.
Talk about a wonderful blessing. We climbed in, with Rudy driving. He headed down the street without using his headlights, idling along slowly, keeping the motor quiet so as not to attract any Pug-bears. I kept my senses tuned for any possible attacks as we moved.
“You said the aliens weren’t intelligent before,” Liz was curious. “What did you mean, and how do you know?”
I thought about it for a moment and then answered, “OK. Here’s what...”
I paused while a memory intruded and flowed up into my consciousness.
“It’s another one of the pieces of information that I got on Titan,” I thoughtfully said. “I keep being surprised by how much more I got from the old Pug-bear than I realize. Each time I think about something relating to the aliens, the knowledge simply flows into my mind. The creatures aren’t intelligent at all. They depend on another organism for their mental abilities.”
“How is that even possible?” Rudy was astonished.
“You noticed that there is a difference in the cranium size between the young adults and the older ones?” I asked.
“Yes. The older ones have bigger heads,” he answered.
“Well, that is the key. They have symbionts that infect them, and those organisms end up in their skulls. The presence of the symbiotic creature causes their craniums to grow, and it somehow attaches to their nervous system. The symbiont endows them with intelligence. There’s no direct correlation with any earthly organism for this.”
“Where do the symbionts come from?” asked Liz. She was watching me intently.
“I... No, wait a minute. Yes. The Pug-bears eat those wafers we saw. They are meat of a sort,” I looked at Stormbreaker. He’d been correct in his speculation.
“The wafers are created of compressed and dried symbiont eggs. They hatch in the Pug-bears digestive tract and infect it. The infection rate is very low. Only one out of a hundred thousand eggs successfully attaches to the Pug-bear’s central nervous system. The others are destroyed by their immune system or don’t hatch. The infection doesn’t happen until the Pug-bear is fully adult. The spiders and the larger, immature Pug-bears can’t be infected. The only ones that have intelligence are the adults. The young ones are only fierce animals. They’re still deadly, though,” I cautioned as an afterthought.
“That must mean that they don’t have very many intelligent adults on Earth because we’ve seen a lot of immature ones, but none that were as big as the one on Titan,” Rudy said.
“That’s right. Oh, and there’s one other important thing that limits them. The symbionts aren’t transportable. I mean that they don’t live when the Pug-bear goes through a transporter,” I held up my hand to forestall their comments.
“Wait a minute, I know what you’re going to say. We had some of the adults travel through transporters to attack us,” I looked at them before continuing. “They will go through, knowing that they’ll be animals when they come out if the reason is strong enough to make it worthwhile. They can always eat more wafers and regain their intelligence, although it would take a while. It’s kind of like the common story of the werewolf. It’s a human but loses its human rationality when it changes to a fierce animal. When it changes back, it regains its intelligence. These things do the same, but it takes them months to regain their smarts.”
Liz commented, “They must not take personal identity as seriously as we do.”
I answered, “I think that’s correct. Anyway, that’s why they were storing spider eggs on Titan. They can send their eggs through with no ill effects. They haven’t been infected yet.”
“The symbiont eggs can’t be transported, though. Not even in the wafer form. When they go through a transporter, it somehow kills or inactivates them. That means those wafers have to travel through normal space. Unless they have used a space ship to transport wafers to Earth, we’re unlikely to see any new, intelligent Pug-bears here,” I gasped. The words had rolled out of me without any pause, and I had to stop and breathe.
“They might have brought some wafers here, and those will be a priority for humans to destroy. Of course, we’ll want to be rid of the eggs and immature Pug-bears, too,” I continued spewing out words at a rapid rate. I felt like I needed to speak rapidly in case I somehow forgot or lost the connection to the information. “The other thing is, we’ll need to get rid of the Pugs. They’re a subsidiary race that the Pug-bears have basically enslaved. I don’t know if they’re naturally as antagonistic to humans as they’ve been, but they can’t really live in our atmosphere. That might mean they will be a self-limiting problem.”
I continued, “One other possibility exists. The Pugs may revert to a more peaceful type of creature without the Pug-bears’ mental influence. They’ve been enslaved for so long that they have a sort of Stockholm syndrome. They identify with their Masters, and right now, they exist to further the Masters’ goals. Without the transporters and with no or few intelligent Masters on Earth, the Pugs might actually fall apart. They’ll have no ambitions for themselves other than to return to a planet where they can exist comfortably.”
I didn’t know how much of this was accurate, but it flowed into my head as if I’d known it since birth.
Liz’s eyes were shining as she said, “That means we’ll be free of the aliens in time.” Her expression turned glum as she added, “But we’re still going to lose a huge amount of our population to the damage caused by the EMP.”
“That’s true. The other thing I think is that our little group can’t help on a large scale. We can kill the aliens we personally encounter, but we can’t do much about the potential refugee crisis. People are still going to starve,” I sighed.
“People will reap the fruits of their lack of preparation,” Rudy added. “We’ve known about Earth’s natural disasters and possible astronomical catastrophes for many years. If people choose not to be prepared, if expensive basketball sneakers are more important to them than survival food, then they’ve got only themselves to blame.”
Stormbreaker slowly said, “That’s right. My people know how to live off the land. If there are a lot fewer city people, it will be easier to rebuild. The culture of this country is based on debt and buying crap that no one in their right mind needs. We could easily get by without that nonsense.”
“Well. We can only hope that our society will recover, but I hope it develops in a different direction. The current, consumer-based culture has about exploited itself out of its ecological niche,” I contributed to his point.
“I’ve often thought that we need a different way of living together. Large bureaucracies haven’t proven to be the most efficient things for humans. Individually, we’re all naturally directed to seek freedom. As a group, we tend to sacrifice that freedom for a set of rules that get more complex year by year until they strangle any thought of individual initiative,” Liz philosophized.
I didn’t know that she’d thought about that aspect of our society, but I approved. I was glad my wife-to-be was intellectually aligned with my basic position. I said, “People are going to die, and we can do nothing about it. We can’t even warn anyone because all communications are likely to have been killed by the EMP. The best we can do is to protect ourselves and try to survive. There will come a day in the future when we’ll have the chance to rebuild. It might not be in our lifetimes...”
I paused and then concluded, “It might be up to our children to rebuild the world.” Taking a deep breath, I reached out and grasped Liz’s hand. She looked at me and smiled as she squeezed my fingers.
“All of that is fine,” said Rudy. “But, I’ve still got a duty that I’ve got to try and fulfill. Colin had a sister who lives in Miami. He made me promise that if anything happened to him, I’d take care of her. I’ve got to live up to that promise.”
“Oh! That will be almost impossible to do,” I said, without thinking.
“I know,” he answered, “but I’ve got to try. I know it will be crazy hard to get there, but maybe if you’ll let me have this V-dub, I can make it.”
“You’ll have to keep out of the cities as much as possible,” I responded. “You can take the Vanagon. I only hope that it will get you through. Take the last eraser-grenade and the eraser-gun too. I know there isn’t much charge, but it might be useful in an emergency.”
“I’m with you, Rudy,” said Joe. “I’ve been with you through thick and thin, and, anyway, it’s too cold around here in the winter. I think I’d prefer Florida if I have to become a homesteader. I hear those Florida girls are pretty hot.”
He concluded with a kind of smirk that caused Stormbreaker to laugh.
“Look, you guys don’t know me well, but I’ve about had it with the life I’ve been living. The only thing to do around the Res is to drink. Man, I’ve been batting zero in the women's department there, too. Maybe the Florida girls would like me. Anyway, I’m willing to try. Can I go with you?” he ended on a quizzical note.
“We’d be honored to have you with us,” Rudy said formally.
So, that was set. The only thing that remained was for Liz and I to generate a plan of our own.