course, there was that incident on the eighteenth level down when the gun implantations had been — for the first time — in the ceilings, and four men had been brought down before everyone had gotten back out of firing range. But that had, thus far, been the only disaster.
Even so, he had stationed himself to the side of the main body of men, as well as behind the front pair of power suits,
He looked back the line, to see that the rear guard was keeping in step and at ready. He couldn't understand what sort of man would take a rear guard position, just as he couldn't understand what kind of man would willingly lead the rest of them, placing his body in the path of the first shots fired. Both positions were open to general disaster.
The privates in the rear guard watched the captain with interest as the advance infantry squad moved down through Fortress Two. If they hadn't been in armor, they would have been trading whispered jokes about him.
After all, what sort of man refuses to walk midst the protection of other bodies when the bullets are flying?
The general was standing by the stairwell, waiting to go down when he got the word; reading a passage of his book, a paragraph from a chapter on Mars, the god of war. There was a drawing of the supernatural man-entity on the facing page. The general liked the look of the jaw, the almost mad gleam in the eye which he interpreted as the sign of a clever man.
Mars.
Yes, he was Mars, at least in a way. He was the top-ranking military official of an entire world. He could bring destruction or peace, as he so chose. He was chuckling over the story of a mythological prank Mars was supposed to have played on his fellow gods when the floor bucked, buckled, sent him sprawling, and a deafening roar swept out of the corridors below and through the other floors of the fortress, out into the Demosian night.
He grabbed his lapel communications mike. “What the devil's going on down there?”
There was no answer.
“Has the floor been secured?” he asked.
“Sir?” a thin voice asked from the other end.
“Who am I speaking to?” the general demanded.
“Rear Guard Position Three,” the private said.
“Where's your captain?”
“Dead, sir.”
“Dead?”
“We reached the end of the Demosian defense system. Explosives in the floor, triggered to a certain weight stress of pedestrians. Only five of us left, and two of those are badly in need of treatment, General. Sir.”
“You're sure of the defense system? That was the last of it?”
“It had to be, sir. They couldn't risk any explosions like that further down, for fear of burying themselves. It had the feel of the last obstacle. They would probably defend with handguns from now on.”
“Be prepared to escort me to the last chambers, Private. You and the other two men still capable of fighting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They're in there, sir,” the private said, coming into the corridor from the last chamber in the fortress. “With the generic engineering equipment.”
“Well, bring them along,” the general said.
“They're rather— Well, there just isn't much to bring, sir.”
The general frowned, closed the mythology book. “Eh?”
“They killed themselves. Set fire to the room, then shot
themselves in the heads with two high-powered pistols, It's messy.”
The general blanched. “You're sure it's them?”
“Absolutely. A winged girl and boy.” He paused, then: “There's enough of one side of her face left to tell she was the pretty one we were after.”
The general walked back down the hallway without visually confirming the. private's report. He signaled his copter pilot with his lapel mike.
“Sir?”
“Patch me through to the representative.”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned against the wall, reading about Zeus. It would be nice to be all powerful, to be more than a general (though that was nice). It would be delightful to pull strings and see nations jump instead of just a squadron or two of men. He closed 'the book and pondered a thought that had been cropping up in his mind more and more: why not run for a political office. Now there was the Demos rep, a former military man. Now he was in a position of power where… No. No, that was a bad thought. A rep's job wasn't worth it. You were just a cog in a wheel, if you were a rep, mouthing the orders of those above you, never your own man. No, the only place for individuals was here, as army officers.
“The rep, sir,” the pilot said, interrupting his line of thought.
“General?”
“They're dead.”
“You're certain of 'that. Once before you said they couldn't have survived—”
“I've got the bodies. Or what's left of them. Set the room on fire and then shot themselves through the head.”
“Really? Did they really do that? Both things?”
“Yes,” the general said.
“They had four days,” the rep mused. “Four days before we located Fortress Two. They must have known we were coming. I wonder why they didn't use the time to get out of there?”
“Maybe they were tired of running. They just cooperated for a change.”
“Yes,” the rep said. “A man of Stauffer Davis's past would surely, eventually, see the madness of fighting us. Cooperation. That's exactly what it was, General. Good night.',
The general said goodnight, switched off his lapel mike, opened his book and began waiting for the elevator which was working now that the technicians had repaired the sabotage to it.
Zeus. Yes, it would be marvelous. But how did you get to the top, an individualist and all? Could it be done. He read on while the lift descended to gather him up.
As the last of the copters lifted away from the ruined fortress and turned into the blackness toward homebase, two birds nestled together in the branches of a large tree halfway down the side of Needlepoint, looking up into the underbellies of the brutish troop carriers. They were as large as a six-year-old child, each, and covered by thick, downish feathers the color of yil tree leaves, yellow and lovely. Their faces were incredibly soft and gentle. On the end of each long wing, a rudimentary hand with four fingers and two thumbs was concealed in a pocket which feathers crossed over.
“Are they really gone?” she asked.
“They won't be back. Even if they suspect some trick, they won't know what they're looking for.”
“How do you feel?”
“Still some shock,” he said. “We should have had more time, before they came, to get used to ourselves, to what we've made of ourselves. But now we have years for that”
She was silent a while. Then: “Can we really have others like us?”
“In two days I learned every single piece of data and procedure having to do with the Artificial Wombs. I took two more days to structure these bodies because I wanted to be careful, sure — when I could have made them in hours. We can have children. They will be whole and healthy, children like us, birdmen. They'll be intelligent. Your people had gone further than they realized in conquering the secrets of the genes. If they had not been so set onto the single track of creating soldiers, they could have done marvelous things. They might even had come up with a plan like this to save themselves from the last ravages of the battle with the Alliance.”
“How long will it take? For babies?”
“I think — five months. You'll have them naturally, not through eggs, of course.”
“When?” she asked.
