The redhead’s face was pressed tight into the wall padding, and her back was stiff. Jeri said, “She wouldn’t tell us her last name. She said a bomb hit Menninger’s and they all ran. You know Menninger’s? She must have been a patient.”
Carrie Woodward sniffed, loudly.
The voice came muffled. “Free wing.”
Wes said, “I beg your pardon?”
The small face turned halfway. “I was on the free wing. No locked doors. You know what that means? I wasn’t one of the really sick ones, okay?”
Wes said, “Pleased to meet you all. I was getting lonely.” He didn’t try to shake hands. None could have spared hand; they were all clinging to the dubious security of the wall rug. “Aren’t there others?”
“We thought so,” Jeri said. “But we haven’t seen any. Are you the only one alive from Kosmograd?”
“No, there are some Russians. The fithp-that’s what they call themselves, and you’ll have to learn their language-the fithp sometimes keep us together and sometimes separate us. There are a pair of them in charge of teaching us.”
“Teachin’ what?” Carrie Woodward asked. Her voice was filled with suspicion.
“Language. Customs. People, they will expect you to suiTender. Formally. Sooner or later Takpusseh or Raztupisp-Minz — one of our fi’ teachers will come here and expect you to roll over on your back, and he’ll put his foot on your chest. Don’t fight. He won’t crush you.”
“They already did that,” Melissa said.
Jeri laughed. “We were scared silly. But really, why would they wait till now? We’d just float away.”
“Once that’s done, they expect you to cooperate. Not just passively.”
“You mean they think we’re one of them now?” Melissa asked.
“Something like that,” Dawson agreed. He pointed casually to the large camera in one corner of the room. “They have no sense of privacy,” he said. “They watch us when they please.”
Jeri Wilson frowned.
John Woodward looked at the camera, then seemed to hunch into himself.
He doesn’t look good. Like Giorge did.
“It isn’t right,” Woodward said. His wife nodded agreement.
“Maybe, but that’s how it is,” Dawson said.
“Okay,” Jeri said. “So we learn to act like snouts—”
“And learn their language. Are you hungry?”
Melissa shook her head. Jeri said, “Hah! No.”
Alice said, “Oh,” and reached into her blouse and pulled out a big vitamin bottle. The pills were big too, and the label was a book’s worth of tiny print, listing thirty-odd vital nutrients and their sources: bee pollen, comfrey, dandelion, fennel, hawthorne berry, ginger, garlic… Fo-Ti, Dong Quai… Siberian ginseng, rose hips…
“You raided a health food store?”
Alice said, “Yeah. They took me through a grocery and a health food store and made me point at things I thought we’d need. Any objections?”
“Not bloody likely.” He swallowed a fat pill with greenish flecks in it, dry. “There’s some food from the-Soviet station, and the fithp grow some things we can eat if you close your eyes first, but I’ve been worrying about vitamins.”
“What was it like?” Jeri Wilson asked. “You were on the space station—”
He told it long. It didn’t look like anything would interrupt them for a while.
“Your turn,” Dawson said.
Alice wasn’t eager to talk until she got started. “We were in the basement, along the walls. It was just like a tornado scare. They crowd all the patients in, in any order, mixed in with the orderlies. It’s the only time you see the ones on the locked wing.
Anyway, there was a terrific noise and some of the walls fell in. Anyone who could still stand up ran away screaming, even some of the orderlies. I just ran. I got into the zoo next door and hid in the mammal house, but there wasn’t any place to hide, really. James came in and I told him to go away, but he wouldn’t. When the horrors came in I thought some of the zoo animals had got loose.”
The aliens had moved through Topeka, through shattered buildings and corpses beginning to decay. They took books and magazines from libraries and drugstores: anything with pictures. They led the prisoners through a supermarket and various small stores. Jeri and Melissa and the Woodwards had refused to cooperate, but Alice tried to assemble a collection of fresh and canned food, vitamins and mineral supplements — “Did you have a chance to get coffee?”
“Hell, no, I didn’t get cigarettes either. Bad for you. I got some herb teas, though.” And when Dawson laughed she looked furious.
The images on the video screen faded. Raztupisp-minz continued to stare at it, as if that would bring meaning to what he had seen. Finally he turned. “What do you believe this means?” he asked.
Takpusseh’s digits flared.
“The Herdmaster will not be amused,” Raztupisp-minz hissed. He glanced at the camera in one corner. “Perhaps he has seen already.”
“His annoyance will be as nothing when Fistarteh-thuktun sees these recordings,” Takpusseh said. He flared his digits again. “We know they have curious courtship and mating habits. Apparently the females are continuously in estrus, and do not care what male satisfies their urges.”
