Totem Poles by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page A

from their muddy ambush holes. But they weren’t firing bullets.
    The living saucers, it seemed, had a weakness. They carried within them some prime directive about intelligent life, some ethic that manifested itself as a tenderness towards human beings. The saucers were unwilling or even unable to harm people. They had an especial loathing for dead people. Therefore Kalinin’s paramilitary troops fired human body-parts at any saucer within range—making the innocent blue sky above the radioactive coal-mine into an aerial graveyard of human carrion.
    The saucer flexed, ducked, and dodged its way through the sprays of gore. The fierce militia-men concentrated their bloody fire the more. The saucer’s capacities, although great, were not infinite. Under the harassment of flying carnage, the saucer’s smooth seamless edges grew rough. The alien invader slowed, faltered, and broke into a hailstorm of twitching mirror-scraps. These were saucer grubs, actually quite good to eat.
    The paramilitary troops howled with glee, and fired off celebratory blasts from their small arms. Their hot bullets would fall to earth somewhere, often killing civilians. No matter. Graveyards were a useful source for the body-parts. Flying saucers might spurn killing people, but no cosmic rule decreed that the Russians couldn’t kill themselves.
    â€œOur best warriors are our dead,” remarked Ida, shaking her head.
    â€œOnly the dead stay true,” said Kalinin. His corps of armed volunteers was dwindling day by day. They shared Ida’s sense that the saucers were good. They feared the battle was unwinnable. And the local Ukrainian peasants were filling the warriors with wild tales. Supposedly a salamander-shaped saucer-being had resurrected a farm wife from her grave. The villagers were calling the old woman a saint.
    â€œI do wonder why the saucers are so kind to us,” said Ida. “We’ve done nothing to deserve redemption.”
    â€œThey’re saving us up,” said Kalanin. “For a last supper.”
    Silently Ida studied Kalanin, her expression a mixture of cunning and tenderness. A former painter turned Kremlin intriguer, Ida was Kalinin’s state-support liaison in his desperate, unauthorized war. She brought Kalinin black money, grim volunteers, experimental weapons, and deniable orders from the Kremlin.
    Kalinin was a veteran of the Russian nuclear-missile corps. During his military career, he’d been at ease with the idea of human beings destroying the Earth. And he felt an instinctive hatred for the flying saucers and their campaign to heal the world. It was a horror to see beings who were immune to human malice.
    When the saucers first invaded, Kalinin had been commanding a nuclear launch center. His hydrogen bombs had failed to impress the space invaders. The saucers merely shimmered and swayed through the thermonuclear shockwaves—insolent as striptease dancers. Russian military lasers did nothing to faze them. Particle beams, the same. Meanwhile the other nations were making peace with the aliens.
    The Kremlin’s Higher Circles had encouraged Kalanin to resign from the Russian army, and to strike out on his own. And now Ida was the only ally he trusted.
    A talented portraitist, Ida had at one time enjoyed the intimate patronage of the Russian Minister of the Environment. But then the flying saucers had cruelly dissolved her oligarch’s pipelines and nuclear plants. The Minister had shot himself. Casting about for a new role, Ida had found her place as Kalinin’s liaison. But now she was ready to move on, and Kalanin knew it. She had a stash of jewelry to help her along. But what about Kalanin?
    The nuclear-waste trucks retreated to fetch more garbage. The harsh sun beat upon the rutted earth.
    â€œLet’s eat,” said Kalanin, and produced a loaf of tainted Chernobyl bread. He cut off a slice with his ever-ready bayonet.
    Ida unsheathed a chunk of