Vilcabamba Read online

  Of course, they made kind of a mess in the process. Harris Moffatt III knew people had strip-mined whole mountains. The Krolp strip-mined whole countries. Not much worth living on was left of Spain. The Krolp had found a big deposit of mercury under there, and they’d gone after it, and they’d got it. The environment? They worried about the environment on the homeworld. Not here. No, not here.

  If they went after silver under northeastern Utah, they’d trash most of what was left of the free USA. What point to being President of an uninhabitable country? “That silver is ours,” Moffatt said. “You cannot have it.”

  “I give you some advice, Moffatt,” Prilk answered. “Do not say ‘cannot’ to someone who is stronger than you.”

  “That silver is ours. It is not yours,” the President insisted.

  This time, vast scorn informed the Krolp’s gesture. “You cannot get this silver. You did not even know it was there. You will never get at it. We can. We will. For us, it is easy.”

  “Stealing is easy,” Moffatt said bitterly.

  “Not stealing. Taking.” Plain, a difference existed in Prilk’s mind.

  “It is ours. If you take it, that goes against the treaty. I will appeal to your ruler.” Harris Moffatt III played one of the few cards he had. He was only too aware it was liable to be the three of diamonds. That could be worth something if it filled a flush. Most of the time, it was just the goddamn three of diamonds.

  “Let me show you this, Moffatt.” Prilk could snap two fingers on the same hand at the same time. When he did, the map in the air between him and the President disappeared. He waved again. A document—an appallingly official Krolpish document—sprang into being in its place. Vrank had already told the ruler the silver was there. The ruler had told Vrank to go ahead and get it.

  “I can still appeal. I have learned my rights,” Moffatt said. His three of diamonds wouldn’t fill a flush this time. His main right was to do as he was told.

  “You will lose.” Prilk didn’t even sound regretful. He just sounded certain, the way he would if he talked about sunrise tomorrow.

  The President still had one more card. “If you come after what is not yours, I can fight. The United States can fight.”

  Krolpish laughter sounded a lot like human farting. “Well, you can try. Remember how much good fighting has done you up till now,” Prilk said.

  “We are still free, here in this part of the United States. Most humans are not,” Harris Moffatt III said.

  “You are free because you have not been worth bothering about. Now you have again something we want. Give it and you may yet stay free.”

  “Free in a place where we cannot live,” Moffatt said. “What kind of freedom is that? Better to fight.”

  “You will lose. Then we will take what we want anyway,” Prilk warned.

  “We have a saying—‘Live free or die,’” the President said.

  “I do not know about living free. If you fight, dying can be arranged. I promise you that.” This time, it wasn’t so much that Prilk sounded matter-of-fact. He sounded as if the prospect delighted him.

  “I must consult with my superiors,” Moffatt said.

  “I will give you a day. It is more than you deserve, but Governor Vrank wants as little trouble with you as he can arrange,” Prilk said.

  “A day,” Moffatt agreed. “In the meantime, you are our guest. We will treat you as well as we can.”

  “Oh, joy.” Prilk sounded as thrilled as a human explorer offered a big bowl of stewed grubs by some tribe in the back of beyond. That was probably just how he felt. Well, too goddamn bad for him.

  * * *

  Grelch and Willig—another Krolpish renegade—sat in with Harris Moffatt III’s Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Alien Affairs. The latter’s predecessors had been Secretaries of State. The new title reflected the new dispensation.

  The renegades could judge Krolpish likelihoods better than people could. Grelch’s tail lashed rhythmically: back and forth, back and forth. He’d had a good chew of snarfar, then. It might cloud his wits—but then, as the President knew, Grelch didn’t have much in the way of wits to begin with. He was a ruffian, a soldier, a deserter. He would never be welcome in polite company.

  But he knew all kinds of things humans had never learned. That made him valuable, if not exactly welcome.

  “If we fight, we’re screwed,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said.

  “If we don’t fight, we’re screwed, too,” the Secretary of Defense said.

  Harris Moffatt III let out yet another sigh, a deep one. Once upon a time, somebody’d told him that two things that contradicted each other couldn’t both be true at the same time. He’d believed the poor, silly son of a bitch, too. He didn’t anymore.

  The Krolp had found something here they wanted. They were going to take it. If humans didn’t care for that, tough luck for humans. The President turned toward the alien renegades. “How can we keep them from digging?” he asked.

  Grelch looked at Willig. Willig looked back at Grelch. Reading Krolpish expressions might be guesswork for humans, but Harris Moffatt III had more practice at it than most people in the free USA. He didn’t like what he thought he read.

  “Forget it,” Grelch said.

  “Run north,” Willig agreed. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.” As if conferring a great boon, he added, “We’ll come with you.”

  “Of course you will,” the President said harshly. “Your own folk sure don’t want you around.”

  “You insult us?” Grelch’s rumble sounded ominous. Snarfar usually calmed a Krolp, but it could also enrage. It was a lot like booze—except it wasn’t. Grelch hadn’t carried any weapons into the meeting, but that might not matter. If a renegade killed another President of the United States…

  Harris Moffatt III drew a Krolpish hand weapon. If he fired it, it wouldn’t just steam-clean Grelch. It would take out a big part of the building, maybe enough to make the rest fall down. Even so… “The truth is not an insult,” he said. “If your own people did want you around, you wouldn’t be here with us.”

  He waited. Plenty of Krolp wouldn’t listen to anything from humans, even the truth—especially not the truth. Grelch was right on the edge of being one of them. His tail twitched faster, with a sort of boogie-woogie beat. Moffatt relaxed fractionally. That was a good sign. Most of the time, anyhow.

  “All right,” the renegade said at last. “We are losers. So are you, Moffatt. All you humans, you are losers.”

  “Now you have lost,” Willig added. “You can’t fight a stand-up fight against my folk.”

  The President already knew that. He couldn’t very well not know it. Humans had tried again and again, and got smashed again and again. They’d learned a lot from the Krolp these past fifty years. They’d stolen a lot, too. They could annoy the aliens. They could harass them. It didn’t come within miles—it didn’t come within light-years—of being enough.

  But there were ways to make war that didn’t involve stand-up fights. Before that drunken Krolp murdered him, Harris Moffatt II had made sure Harris Moffatt III soaked up some preinvasion history. Names rang inside his head. Vietnam… Iraq… Afghanistan…

  “We do not want to fight a stand-up fight,” he said. “Or not a stand-up fight and nothing else, anyhow. But we’ve got…connections…in the rest of America. Can we cause your folk enough trouble to make them change their minds?”

  He smiled at the Secretary of Defense. That worthy’s second cousin held a prominent post in the centauroids’ administration. They kept in touch with each other through some highly unofficial channels. The Secretary of Defense’s cousin didn’t love the cheesy-smelling aliens he worked for. There were humans who worked for him who didn’t love the Krolp, either.

  Multiply such cases by a hundred or a thousand. If all those humans raised hands against the invaders or simply stopped doing their jobs or started doing them wrong… It would screw up the Krolp, without a doubt.

  Would i
t screw them up enough? Doubt. Big doubt.

  Grelch and Willig eyed each other. “Maybe,” Willig said, in tones that meant he didn’t believe it for a minute.

  “If we do that and if we fight to keep what is ours…?” Harris Moffatt III said.

  One more glance between the two Krolp. This time, Grelch was the one who said, “Maybe.” He also didn’t believe it.

  Of course, Krolp never believed humans could do anything. Half a century of occupation gave them solid reason not to believe it, too. Every once in a while, they did get an unpleasant surprise. That they’d got a few was the main reason the free United States remained the land of the free and the home of the brave.

  Of the stubborn, anyhow.

  Harris Moffatt III took a deep breath. “Well, we’re going to try it,” he said.

  Willig and Grelch walked out. That pretty much ended the meeting. They had scant hope, or maybe none. Harris Moffatt III had scant hope, too, but not none. Not quite. Muttering under his breath, the Secretary of Defense also left. His men would have to try to stop the invaders. When the irresistible force met the movable object…

  The Secretary of Alien Affairs lingered. “I was poking around in the library at Mesa State the other day,” he remarked, with luck not apropos of nothing.

  “Okay,” the President said. The college library held mostly human knowledge. Education in things Krolpish hadn’t trickled through the system even now. The chaos of the past half-century had a lot to do with that. Educators’ slowness had even more. Moffatt went on, “You found something interesting?”

  “Might be. Might be just depressing,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs replied.

  “That’s what I need, all right,” Moffatt said. “And you’re going to tell me about it, aren’t you?”

  “Unless you don’t want me to, sir.”

  “Oh, go ahead,” the President said. “It can’t possibly make me feel worse than I do when I think about telling Prilk no.”

  “You could still tell him yes,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said.

  “That doesn’t do me any good, either,” Harris Moffatt III said, shaking his head. “So go on. Say your say. Depress me some more.”

  “Er… Yes, Mr. President. You probably know the Spaniards conquered the Incas in Peru six hundred years ago.”

  “Sure.” Now Moffatt nodded. He remembered that from studying history, too. And Peru—or the mountainous, inaccessible parts of Peru—still maintained a precarious freedom from the Krolp. Moffatt had exchanged a few messages with el Presidente. That was as much as either one of them could hope to do. “What about it?”

  “The Incas never knew what hit ’em. They were just starting to use bronze. They didn’t even write. The Spaniards had guns. They had armor. They had swords. They rode horses. They… Well, to make a long story short, they had three thousand years on the Incas. The Native Americans fought like hell, and it didn’t do ’em one goddamn bit of good.”

  Harris Moffatt III felt an unpleasant frisson. Given his circumstances, how could he not? “What goes around comes around. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Not exactly, Mr. President,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said, which wasn’t reassuring to Moffatt. His advisor went on, “The Incas who didn’t give up built a new town called Vilcabamba, in the jungle on the east side of the Andes. Their ruler—the Inca—lived there, and his court, and stuff like that. And they tried to…to adapt to what had happened to them.”

  “What do you mean, adapt?” Moffatt asked.

  “They learned whatever they could. They stole horses and swords. Some of them became Christians—mostly to keep the Spaniards off their backs, I think, but also because their own gods weren’t doing them much good. But other ways, too, littler ways. Some of the houses there had tile roofs instead of the thatch they’d always used before.”

  “Huh,” the President said uneasily, remembering the LED display that aped a real Krolpish minisun. He asked the obvious question: “What happened to them?”

  “They hung on for about forty years. They had trouble with their renegades, too,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said. “Then the Spaniards finally got sick of their nuisance raids and overran them.”

  “We’ve lasted longer than they did, anyhow,” Harris Moffatt III said. “We’ve just got to keep on doing it, that’s all.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State replied. What else was he supposed to say?

  * * *

  Prilk and his guards waited impassively in the square. “Well, Moffatt, what is it going to be?”

  “You can’t mine silver on our land,” Moffatt said. “You would ruin our whole country”—what’s left of our whole country—“if you did.”

  “We are going to mine that silver,” the Krolpish envoy said, his voice flat and hard. “You cannot stop us from doing it. Because you cannot stop us, you cannot say in truth that the land is yours.”

  “If your folk come onto our land without our leave, you will see what we can do,” Harris Moffatt III said. His son was already on his way back to the free USA from St. Louis. He hoped.

  Prilk let out flatulent Krolpish laughter. “I foul myself in fear,” he said.

  A sarcastic Krolp was the very last thing the President needed. “You will see,” he repeated. “Tell Governor Vrank the land is ours, the silver is ours, and he may not have it.”

  Prilk leaned his torso forward, toward the President. As with humans, that meant earnestness among the Krolp. “Moffatt, you had better think again. You have no hope of winning.”

  “We have no hope if you trash our country, either,” Moffatt said, which was nothing but the truth.

  “But we would not interfere with you if you did not act like a fool,” Prilk said.

  “If I did what you told me to do, you mean,” Moffatt replied. “And you would interfere with the United States. You would interfere badly. That interferes with me.”

  “You will be sorry,” Prilk warned.

  “I am already sorry. Everyone on Earth is sorry. We are sorry you ever found us,” the President said.

  “Which has nothing to do with how many claws are on a franggel’s foot,” Prilk said.

  Harris Moffatt III had never seen a franggel. Come to that, neither had Prilk. The Krolp had hunted them to extinction hundreds of years before. They lingered on in proverbs, though. The President had heard this one many times before. Nothing to do with the price of beer, an English-speaking human probably would have said. But he’d heard about a franggel’s foot even in English. Krolpish phrases, Krolpish ideas, gained. Human notions retreated. Pretty soon, they’d have nowhere to retreat to.

  Vilcabamba.

  The President hadn’t imagined he’d remember the name of the place, not while the Secretary of Alien Affairs was yakking about it. He also hadn’t imagined he would sympathize with the poor befuddled Inca holdouts who’d tried to hang on to their old way of life there. If the Krolp started strip-mining in Utah, the old American way of life, or what was left of it, was gone forever.

  “Envoy Prilk, we will fight to stop you,” he repeated, his voice firmer than it had been a few minutes earlier.

  “Moffatt, we will eat your brains, if you have any.” Prilk turned and walked away. His guards formed up around him. If the humans wanted to start fighting now, they were ready. Here, though, human and Krolpish customs coincided. The envoy was suffered to leave in peace. Trouble would start soon, but not yet. Not quite yet.

  * * *

  The free United States had to keep the Krolp away from the place in northeastern Utah under which they’d found silver. If the aliens started mining, they would turn too much of what was left of the country into a place not worth inhabiting. But the free USA also needed to show the Krolp that fighting a war for the silver would be more expensive than it was worth.

  If we can, Harris Moffatt III thought gloomily. If we can.

  He’d already got out of Grand Junction by then. He’d pulled north to Craig,
Colorado, just in case. He sat in front of a microphone that led to an AM sending unit. AM radio had been almost extinct even on Earth when the Krolp came. To the striped centauroids, it was as one with hand axes and bows and arrows. That made it as secure a communications system as humanity had left. Smoke signals were primitive, too, but as long as the Native Americans could read them and the U.S. Cavalry couldn’t…

  “Execute Plan Seventeen,” Moffatt said into the mike. “I repeat—execute Plan Seventeen.”

  In the room next to his, an engineer flicked a switch, then lifted his thumb in the air. The order had gone out, and now the radio was off again. The cavalry could learn what smoke signals meant, and the Krolp—or the human traitors who served them—might monitor the AM band. You never could tell.

  Moffatt’s mouth twisted. Oh, yes, you could. Whatever the aliens did drove more nails into the coffin of human freedom. It wasn’t even always intended to, but it did.

  They didn’t attack the instant Prilk left the free USA. The President had feared they might. That would have complicated things for the United States—complicated them even worse than they were already. But, although Moffatt had feared a sudden assault, he hadn’t really expected one. The Krolp were so arrogant, they had trouble believing human beings still dared to tell them no and mean it.

  He wished he could launch thermonuclear-tipped missiles at all the increasingly Krolpified cities in the occupied United States. In point of fact, he could; it wasn’t as if he didn’t have them. The only trouble was, they wouldn’t do much good. The Krolp would swat them out of the air with contemptuous ease.

  No, you couldn’t stand toe to toe with the centauroids and slug. First they’d stand on your toes. Then they’d stand on you.

  Well, the Native Americans couldn’t slug things out with the U.S. Cavalry. They still drove it crazy for a hell of a long time. They also lost in the end, something Harris Moffatt III didn’t care to dwell upon.

  He and his Department of Defense experts monitored as many Krolpish channels as they could. They had to rely on bought and stolen devices; they could no more make the communicators the aliens used than Geronimo could have manufactured a telegraph clicker. But the aliens weren’t very good at keeping things secret from humans. They didn’t think they needed to bother, and most of the time they were right.