Earthbound by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online

up. “Your name is Alba?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Scotland?”
    “No, it means ‘dawn’ in Spanish.”
    “Your father was . . .”
    “Five cc’s of thawed-out Harvard sperm. Never met the guy.”
    He nodded, looking off in the distance. “That must feel strange. Your father might have been dead when you were conceived.”
    “I’ve thought about that myself. I was never curious enough to check.”
    “Understandable.” He looked around. “Did we all lose fathers and mothers on this trip?”
    Fifty years evaporated by relativity. “Meryl talked to her parents,” I said, “both of them. Don’t know whether they’d survive the power going off.”
    He looked at the cartridge in his hand. “These aren’t smart rounds. Tracers?”
    “Every fourth.”
    “Mixed blessing.” I supposed because they made a line that pointed back to your own position.
    “Are we going to stay here or leave?” I said.
    “They know we’re here?” Namir asked Alba.
    “Motor pool, yes.”
    “I think we should wait for them. They’ll get impatient, today or tomorrow. How many?”
    “Three I know of. The ones I overheard at HQ.”
    Namir stood and stretched. “If I were them, I’d find sniper positions, separate ones, and wait. Pick us off one at a time. Who’s on the roof?”
    “Dustin,” Paul said.
    “I’ll go up and make sure he’s keeping his head down. Roof’s the obvious first target for a sniper.” He checked his wrist for the nonexistent watch, made a face, and went toward the stairs.
    “Is he hard to live with?” Alba asked, after Namir had left.
    “No. He’s very considerate and calm.”
    “Controlled,” Paul said. “He’s been through enough to send anybody right ’round the bend. That one he talked about wasn’t the only person he’s killed.” He shook his head hard. “God. Now I’m one, too, a killer.”
    “You had to do it, Paul.”
    “So did he. So did he.”
    “He’s stable, though,” Alba said. “Seems about as solid as anyone I’ve ever met.”
    Paul laughed. “That’s what they always say in the newsie interviews. ‘Who would ever have thought a man that stable would kill his mother and eat her?’ But yeah. We lived together for years in that crowded starship, and I never saw him lose his temper.”
    “Which is unnatural,” I had to point out. “The rest of us had our little moments.”
    “Like Moonboy. A little assault and battery.”
    “I heard about him, on the cube show about you. He went crazy, and the Others killed him?”
    “Not really,” I said. “They took him, but he’s not dead, if they’re to be believed.”
    “Not alive, either. A kind of suspended animation, which he’ll never leave. Close enough to being dead.”
    Something I hadn’t thought of in a while. “Alive or dead or in between, he’s the only human they have in their possession, to study. The only one of us who cracked under the strain.”
    “Of course they knew that,” Paul said. “And we were all glad. He was a real pain in the butt, as well as a lunatic.”
    “Talking about my Moonboy?” Meryl said as she walked into the room, brushing her hair.
    “Sorry,” we both said.
    “Don’t be. He was a lunatic and a pain in the ass. Ask Elza.” He’d been in bed with Elza when he had his breakdown, and punched her hard enough to break her nose. Meryl was not surprised by the infidelity then, but she had been by the violence.
    “We were all supposedly chosen because we could get along with others in close quarters,” I said.
    “Some things you just can’t test for.” There was real pain behind her brusqueness. “So are we moving out now?” We told her about the new plan, or non-plan. She went into the kitchen to hard-boil all the eggs, for portability.
    Namir came down and went around checking doors and windows. He came back with Snowbird. “Snowbird, this is Alba.”
    She made a little curtsy, like a horse in dressage. “You are black.”
    “Yeah, and you smell