76

Lila Easterlin

October 24, 2047. Washington, D.C.

Kai pointed into the woods. “Look at that.”

Lila spun, scanned the terrain. She didn’t see anything through the lattice of bare branches, nothing moving on the floor of fallen brown and orange leaves.

“Higher.”

She followed his pointing finger up into the trees, and spotted it: a huge woodpecker perched on a dead tree, poking at it with her long beak.

“A pileated woodpecker,” Kai said. “They’re rare.”

She was about to ask where Kai the city boy had learned about woodpeckers when she spotted Oliver heading toward them, head down, hands in his pockets. Lila tried to read his face for a hint of what he might have found out, but Oliver always looked worried.

“Not good news,” he said as he reached them. “Defenders are definitely clearing out of the cities Five gave us, and not out of others. I think the Luyten are telling the truth.”

He looked at Lila. She knew what he was going to say, and she didn’t want to hear it.

“I think we have to accept their offer.”

Lila cursed, turned away.

“I wish I was more confident we can trust them. I’m not at all confident about that, but, honestly? I think it’s our only chance.”

She didn’t want to agree to this. She would be the one who would actually hand the Luyten the power to wipe them out; it would all be on her shoulders.

“What other choice do we have, Lila?” Oliver asked. “Do nothing, while the defenders gas two billion people, quite possibly including your family?” Lila looked up at him. “They wouldn’t kill you, because you’re too valuable, but I could picture them whisking you off to Easter Island just before they gas the entire D.C. area.”

“It would take at least three months to get enough altered defenders trained and in place. What if the defenders carry out their plan before then?”

That’s why they’ve pressured you to ramp up production. They want to reinforce their numbers before they act. They want overwhelming force before they reveal their intentions, in case you fight back.

“Hello, Five,” Oliver said. “Are you in the immediate vicinity.”

I’ll be there in a minute.

“Why do you risk coming here if you can communicate with us from eight miles away?” Lila asked.

I think it’s important that we meet face-to-face.

“You don’t have a face,” Lila said.

“If we do this, we’ll need able military commanders and strategists ready to go, all over the world,” Oliver said, ignoring her crack. “How are we going to recruit them, now that Earth2 is no longer an option?”

It hurt Lila to hear him say it aloud. Almost as soon as she’d learned Dominique was still alive, Lila was back to not knowing if she was or not.

We’ll contact them directly, as soon as the altered defenders are in place.

They could do that, couldn’t they? Every time Lila thought she grasped the magnitude of the Luyten’s advantage, another facet of it surfaced. If they were allied with the Luyten, humans would suddenly have an effective means of communication with no chance of defender interception.

“What about weapons?” Kai asked. “The defenders have total control of weapons.”

Five pushed out of the brambles behind them.

Getting access to weapons will be the focus of our initial attacks. We’ll use improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks. In the United States and Russia, there are large caches of outdated weapons buried in various unguarded locations. We’ll liberate those as well.

“You have all the answers, don’t you?” Lila said. Then she thought about what Five had just said. “Hang on, your initial attacks? Are you picturing a guerrilla war, like you fought against us?”

Of course. When you’re facing a larger, better-armed force, it’s the most effective—

Five stopped there, Lila assumed, because it was reading her thoughts. She laughed out loud, relishing a rare moment when a Luyten looked foolish. “You see it now, don’t you? That’s not going to fly against defenders.”

“What? Why?” Oliver asked.

This is why we need to work together.

“What is?” Oliver asked.

Lila turned to face Oliver. “Guerrilla wars work because the larger force can’t catch the enemy. They attack, then duck back into the woods, or melt back into the population.”

“So?”

Lila folded her arms. She was going to have to spell it out for him, wasn’t she? “The defenders don’t care who they kill. As soon as you start attacking, they’ll turn and lay waste to the population, just like they’re planning to do anyway.” Oliver was nodding now, and so was Kai. “They’re not going to go chasing after each individual attacker; they’re going to point their tanks at crowds and open fire.”

Oliver looked toward Five, but he’d gone silent. Lila kicked at a fallen branch, feeling a little smug, waiting for someone to pick up the pieces, if they could.

It was Five who broke the silence. The initial attacks will be Luyten only. They’ll be small. The defenders will think we’re attempting the coup on our own, and they’ll turn their guns on us. Soon after—very soon after would be our preference—humans will rise up, and we fight a war on a million fronts, all at once.

“How exactly are we going to get a billion people to rise up, more or less all at once?”

When the time comes we’ll push everyone able to fight. We can be very persuasive.

“You’re going to persuade a billion people?” Oliver looked dubious. “I’m not sure anyone’s going to respond to Luyten shouting orders at everyone at once.”

Oh, they won’t be generic orders. We’ll speak to each person individually, by name. If we have to we’ll shame them into fighting, or scare them.

“A billion people? Have you done the math on that? It’ll take forever,” Kai said. “We’ll have to target certain block leaders, rely on them to spread the word.”

Oliver, do you remember the MRIs and CT scans you subjected me to while I was your prisoner? Remember the curious repetitive nature of my brain structures?

“Sure.”

If a species evolved with the ability to exchange thoughts with many others at once, wouldn’t it make sense that this species also develop separate, parallel processing centers of conscious thought?

Oliver looked stunned. “You can think—and communicate telepathically—on multiple tracks simultaneously?”

The implications of that boggled Lila’s mind. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of separate lines of thought all going on at the same time in one head? The entire species thinking like that, and communicating telepathically. All of those lines of thought connected in a vast web. They were even more alien than she’d imagined.

Do we have a deal? Five was looking at her.

Lila grunted. “I imagine you knew we had a deal before I was aware I’d made up my mind. That’s not to say I don’t have deep reservations about this.”

Humans draw a hard line between thinking something and saying it aloud. I’m asking you to say it aloud.

Lila considered Five. How had they arrived here, at this insane moment? She wanted to tell this creature to go to hell. But that wasn’t an option; even she understood that now.

“Yes. We have a deal.”