The book Lunk had promised to deliver was called Inherit the Stars, a piece of speculative fiction written by the noted twentieth-century British author and inventor James P. Hogan and first published in 1977. It was the first in a series of novels that dealt with humankind’s contact with an alien race indigenous to Ganymede (the Ganymeans), who in many ways were the antithesis of the Opteran Invid.
Footnote in Xandu Reem, A Stranger at Home: A Biography of Scott Bernard
When they were reunited and on the road north once again, it was business as usual. Four hundred miles north of Trenchtown the team was attacked by five Invid Troopers, which they disposed of almost without breaking stride. Scott took out the first two from the Alpha and left the rest of the work to the three Cyclones, piloted by Rook, Rand, and Lancer, who had by now become a finely honed unit. There had been no signs of Pincer ships for several days, and though the Troopers were bothersome, they posed no real threat provided that each one glimpsed was accounted for on the battlefield.
The desert terrain helped them to easily spot the Troopers. They had left the highlands behind. Gone were the forests and misshapen buttes of those plateaus, as well as the cool air and sparkling rivers they had come to take for granted. But this was not true desert, waterless and unforgiving, but rather a broad expanse of arid lowland, with solitary flat-topped mesas to break the monotony of the horizon and enough spring-fed lakes to support a wide assortment of settlements.
Lunk, demanding equal-time benefits after Rook’s “dalliance in the Trench”—Rand’s words—was calling the shots on the latest detour along the way. The group was headed toward a town called Roca Negra, sixty miles west of the north road and said to be a community that had managed to retain an old-world charm.
The team had an overview of the place now from the tableland a few miles east. Roca Negra looked neat and compact, enlivened by groupings of cottonwood and eucalyptus trees, and lent a certain drama by the mesa and rounded peaks that all but overshadowed it. Scott made a pass over the town in the Alpha, the VT’s deltalike shadow paralleling the course of the main road, and reported his sightings. There was a large circular fountain and plaza central to the town, with an assortment of rustic-style buildings grouped around it and the few streets that radiated out from the hub like the spokes of a wheel. Scott could make out tile roofs and cobblestone streets, a church steeple, and a number of people, some of whom were staring up at the Veritech, while others ran off to inform the rest of the townsfolk.
Lunk smiled at the thought of the place and urged the van along with added throttle. Annie was next to him in the shotgun seat. It was the same police van they had commandeered in Norristown, but Lunk had removed the canvas top and given the thing an olive-drab once-over in memory of the beloved APC he had had blown out from under him in the highlands. Lancer, Rook, and Rand flanked the truck on their Cyclones.
“I sure hope we’ll be able to get some food in this town,” Annie said after Scott’s message. “I’m starved!”
Lunk flashed her a bright-eyed smile and told her not to worry, then turned to Rand, who had come alongside on the driver’s side of the van.
“What’s so special ’bout this place?” Rand shouted into the wind. “You been here before?”
Lunk shook his head, maintaining the smile.
“Then why are we stopping here?” Annie demanded, joining in.
Lunk reached back and pulled a worn paperback book from the rear pocket of his fatigues, holding it out the window for Rand’s inspection.
“To make good a promise I made to a friend a year ago,” Lunk said to both of them. “To deliver this book.”
Rand gazed at the thing but couldn’t make out much, except that it was aged, yellowed, dog-eared, and smudged. Someone had thought to wrap the book in protective plastic, but too late to preserve the cover illustration.
“What sort of book is it?” Rand asked.
Lunk pulled the book in and regarded it. “I really don’t know—I haven’t read it. But it was important enough to my buddy for him to ask me to bring it to his father if I ever got the chance.”
“Well, why didn’t your buddy deliver it himself, if it’s so important?”
“I wish he could.…”
Rand saw Lunk’s smile fade and asked him about it.
“We were planning a counter-attack” Lunk began. “My friend was on recon patrol, and I was detailed to rendezvous with him for the extraction. When I found him, he was trying to get away from a couple of Shock Troopers, and I could see he was wounded. They blasted him again while I … sat and watched. How he could get up and run after that I’ll never know, but he did, and started for the APC. I thought there might still be a chance, but the Invid caught up with him before I could move in, and he didn’t have a prayer.”
Annie could see that Lunk was torturing himself with the memory but kept still and allowed him to finish. Was this what he had run from? Annie wondered, recalling comments uttered months ago when they had first met.
“He called out to me,” Lunk was saying. “Calling me to come get him, but there was nothing I could do. The Invid had spotted the APC and started after me, and I had no choice but to make a run for it.
“I don’t even remember how I got away from them …
But I can still hear my buddy’s voice coming over the net, as loud and clear today as I heard it then, calling me to help him. I can’t forget …”
Lunk’s face was beaded with sweat, and Annie fought down an urge to hold him. But he was through it now and sort of shaking himself back to the present, looking hard at the book again.
“This had some special meaning for him, I suppose. The one thing he wanted most was for his old man to have it. I promised on the day he went out …”
“Oh, Lunk,” Annie broke in, touching his arm lightly. “You’ve been carrying more than that book around, haven’t you? I feel so bad.…”
Rand looked in through the driver’s side and noticed Annie crying. “Lunk,” he said all of a sudden. “We’ve got a book to deliver. So let’s get on it!”
Lunk saw Rand wrist the Cyclone’s throttle to wheelie the mecha into lead position. He smiled to himself, thankful for the company of his friends, and pressed his foot down on the van’s accelerator pedal.
Roca Negra had a secret of its own, a dirty little secret compared to the one Lunk wore like a scarlet letter. But no one on the team was aware of this just yet; the only thing immediately obvious was that the town seemed deserted despite Scott’s recent claims to the contrary.
“Where is everybody?” Lancer said to Rook and Rand as the three Cyclones entered the empty plaza.
“What’d you expect—the welcome wagon?” Rook asked sarcastically. “After all, we didn’t tell them Yellow Dancer was coming to town. It’s probably just siesta time.”
Rand took a look around the circle, certain he saw people ducking away from the open windows and pulling shutters closed on others. Even the central fountain was deserted, but the damp earth around it suggested that people had been there a short time ago. “You don’t find this a bit strange?” he asked Rook.
“You’re both imagining things,” she said. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. Besides, there are two kids right over there,” she added, pointing to two young boys munching on apples nearby.
Rand relaxed somewhat at that and swung his mecha into a second lap around the well. He began to take stock of the buildings now and realized that his expectations had been way off base: Instead of the stucco and terra-cotta village he had envisioned, Roca Negra was like something lifted from what used to be called England. The architecture was of a style he had heard referred to as Tudor, with mullioned windows, tall gables, nogging and timber facades, and steeply pitched tiled roofs. “How about giving me a bite?” he heard Annie shout to the kids as the van drove past them. Then he spotted the restaurant: José’s Café, according to the sign above the curved entryway.
Rook, Lancer, and Lunk followed Rand’s lead, but only Lunk moved in to investigate. There were tables and chairs set up out front but no one on the scene to serve them.
“Bring me some peppermint candies!” Annie shouted to Lunk.
Lunk turned briefly to acknowledge her, and when he swung around, there was a mustachioed man standing in the restaurant’s barroom swinging doors.
“The restaurant is closed during the emergency,” the man began. He spoke with a Spanish accent and wore an apron and work shirt more suited to the trades than to the food biz, but he was gesturing Lunk to halt in a way that suggested he owned the place. “Our communications have been cut, and we’re short on supplies of all kinds. The indications right now are that we’ll be closed for about a month.”
“But we’ve traveled such a long way!” Annie shouted out the open top of the van, disappointment in her voice. “We haven’t had a decent meal in weeks.”
“I told you what the situation is,” the man fired back, raising his fist. Lunk was taken aback by the gesture. The man was slight, but his dark eyes were flashing with an anger that seemed to add to his aspect. “There’s nothing I can do about it. We have no food to feed you. I suggest that you try the next town.”
The man had moved past Lunk and was now overturning the café chairs and placing them legs up on the table. Lunk followed him, deciding to steer clear of the food issue for a moment and inquire as to the whereabouts of Alfred Nader, his dead friend’s father. But the simple question seemed to unhinge the restaurant owner, who dropped one of the chairs at the mention of the man’s name.
“What’re you getting so upset about?” Lunk asked, concerned but not yet suspicious. “I only want to know how I can find Alfred Nader’s house. Is that too much to ask, or are you as short on information as you are on food?”
The owner averted Lunk’s penetrating gaze and busied himself righting the chair. “You must have the wrong town,” he said distractedly. “I know everyone in town, and there’s nobody named Nader living here.”
“But you must have heard of him,” Lunk pressed. “Alfred Nader?…”
“I tell you I never heard of him,” the man said, raising his voice and moving back toward the swinging doors. “Now go away and leave me alone!”
“This is weird,” Lunk said, turning around to face Rand and the others. “This guy tells me Alfred Nader doesn’t live here. But he’s lying, I’m sure of it.” Lunk took a look back at the doorway and walked to the van. “Why the heck would he lie like that?”
“Something stinks,” said Lancer. “Nader’s here. We’re just going to have to find him on our own.”
“We’ll split up,” Rook suggested.
“All right, I’ll go with Lunk,” said Rand, already climbing into the van’s shotgun seat. “We’ll meet in an hour by the bridge outside town.”
Lunk thanked his friends for their support and got behind the wheel. He swung the van around and headed it out of the plaza, followed closely by Rook and Lancer, who both ignored Annie’s attempts to team up with them.
“Well, screw you guys!” she yelled as they roared off; then she spied Rand’s untended Cyclone and smiled broadly.
Lunk and Rand headed up one of the streets leading from the plaza. There were a few people about, but without exception they disappeared as the van approached. Shutters slammed overhead, women carried their children indoors, and men shouted threats from the darkness of interior spaces. Much to Rand’s surprise, Lunk seemed to know his way.
“My friend used to tell me all about this place,” Lunk explained, a bit nostalgic. “He’d tell me all about his father, about how his old man was a big shot in town—a politician or something.”
“And the restaurant owner never heard of him, huh?” Rand said knowingly. “What are they trying to cover up?”
“There’s supposed to be a bakery somewhere along this street,” Lunk said, leaving Rand’s question unanswered and looking around. “There it is,” he said a moment later. “A few more landmarks and I might be able to find my way to Nader’s house without anybody’s help.”
Rand was silent while Lunk took one turn after another, the pattern of disappearances and threats unbroken. “You know, something just occurred to me,” he said to Lunk when they had reached the outskirts of town. “Maybe they’re trying to protect Nader.”
“How do you mean?” Lunk asked, pulling the van over.
Rand turned to him. “These people don’t know us. For all they know we could be sympathizers. If Nader was a politico, he could be in trouble.”
“With who?”
Rand shrugged. “The Invid, for starters.”
The rest of the team, having met with the same reception, had abandoned their search and were killing time at the edge of town, waiting for Lunk and Rand to show up. Rook was on her feet, leaning almost casually against the stone wall of the bridge. Lancer and Annie were sitting on the grassy embankment above the stream.
“Lunk and Rand have got to pass by here eventually,” Lancer was telling the others.
Rook agreed. “We’re better off just waiting for them. But one of us is going to have to find Scott. Where do you think he put the Alpha down?… Hey! A truck!” she said suddenly. “Maybe the driver can shed some light on this thing.”
Annie turned to glance at the truck. “Looks like they’re stopping.”
No one moved as the truck came to a halt on the bridge. They had seen two men in the cab and were looking there, when without warning a third man jumped from the canvased rear. It took them a moment to realize that he was wearing a gas mask and what looked like a twin-tanked oxyacetylene rig on his back. And by the time they had made sense of this it was too late: The man had brought the rig’s torch out front and released a foul-smelling, eye-smarting gas into their midst.
Almost immediately Rook and Lancer began to cough uncontrollably. Beneath the cloud and consequently somewhat less affected by it, Annie tried to slide down the embankment and reach the stream. But the gas’s effects caught up with her; she felt a searing pain work its way toward her lungs and doubled up into a fit of coughing. The cloud was as dense as smoke, but she could discern that several other men had followed the lead man from the back of the truck. They, too, had gas masks on, but they also carried bats and clubs. Just before Annie went under, she saw Rook and Lancer fall as roundhouse blows were directed against them.
There was an olive tree and a small circular well where there should have been a house. Otherwise the lot was empty, the buildings that surrounded it on three sides burned and abandoned. Puzzled, Lunk stood staring at the scene.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Rand asked him from the van. He had pulled out one of the former police vehicle’s air-cooled autopistols and was resting it up against his collarbone now.
“Yep. He told me his dad had a well and an olive tree in his backyard. And there they are. Now all we have to do is find the house.”
Rand frowned and stepped away from the van to join his friend. “There’s got to be twenty houses in this town with an olive tree and a well in the backyard, Lunk. And even if this was Nader’s place, he’s obviously not here now. I don’t know,” Rand added skeptically. “Maybe he’s dead, and that’s why everybody’s acting so strange.”
Lunk was starting to reply when Rand heard the sound of footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder and found himself facing half a dozen angry-looking men, one of whom was carrying a kind of back-packed welding torch.
Rand swung back around, putting all he had into knocking Lunk to one side while he threw himself in the opposite direction. Lunk took the full force of the gas cloud in the back, but before the men could move in, Rand was through his roll and taking aim at the torch. He pulled off one quick shot that effectively decapitated the twin-spouted rod and gave the men pause. They began to scatter as Rand squeezed off three more shots, one toward the feet of each of the men who were standing guard by the van. The three leapt through a kind of impromptu dance and fled along with their comrades.
Rand called to Lunk and made a beeline for the van, throwing himself into the shotgun seat through the passenger-side door, Lunk just steps behind him.
Off to one side, the men were rallying for another attack.
“Make tracks!” Rand yelled, pounding a fist against the dash.
“You make good sense, buddy!” Lunk yelled back, putting the pedal to the metal.