"That's the question. When we humans find a planet we like, the native life-forms can't stop us from cleaning them out to make things right for settlers. Perhaps we can't stop the blighters from cleaning us out for food. Some small animals will survive, and one day, who knows how far into the future, it'll be dinnertime again."
Jenny pressed her fingers to her head as if that might somehow make her brain sharper. "But you can beat the blighters. The fixers, I mean. So why can't you beat them now?"
"Numbers. A fixer can beat a blighter one-on-one with power to spare. A fixer might be able to beat ten, or even more. It's never been tested, blighters being rather rare." He shook his head. "That sounds so crazy now. We aren't efficient killers — it's a real case of using a hammer to kill an ant, but it hasn't mattered before. Now, if we have to zap one after another we're soon drained — and then they eat us.
"If the fixers had concentrated to begin with, we might have stopped them, but by the time Hellbane U woke up to it, there were too many, too widely spread around the equator. It's been like trying to drain a swamp by standing in it with a bucket. With the swamp eating the bucket."
"How many have you zapped?"
"One, to graduate."
"That's all? No wonder the war's not going well."
He shrugged. "I assume some of the fixers near the equator saw more."
She sipped the tea then pulled a face at the bitter taste and put it aside. "What was it like?"
"We don't have words for it. Blighter is too… mundane. Even hellbane doesn't capture the sense of the alien that screeches against everything we know to be real and tries to latch on to parts of our brain that shouldn't be there. But are."
Jenny shuddered in recognition.
"Then there's the awareness of ravening hunger, of a blind need to consume. Us. That we are nothing more to it than a food source. Like a cow, or a fish, or a loaf of bread." She saw the shudder shake him. "And that's just a start. You have to be there."
"No," she said. "I know exactly what you mean. I can feel it now."
His look was quick and sober. "Then I'm sorry."
She pushed back the sick feeling. "Let's look at wild magic again. What can it do?"
He reached toward the fire. She saw him hesitate, but then he grabbed a glowing end of wood and held it, flames licking through his fingers. She gaped, but then he hissed and dropped it to blow on his hand. "Good job I'm a fixer."
Jenny wanted to laugh and cry. She wanted to hug him and keep him safe. She wanted someone to hug her and promise her that everything was going to be all right.
"Pathetic," he agreed, "but this is all we have to fight with. I'm sure it's the way. It's at the heart of Gaia."
She turned it around in her mind. "So you're magic and blighters are magic, and when a fixer pushes magic against one of them, it's gone."
"Not quite. The energy comes into us."
"Ah-ha! So you get stronger from stopping them."
"And they feed from eating us."
"Ergo, you need to kill more of them than they kill of you."
"Two problems. One: We get a lot less energy from one zap than we use. Two: I assume it works the other way for them because they're feeding."
"I'm not sure I follow that."
"Imagine I carry ten units of power. I use them to zap a blighter and get five back. With a bit of recovery time, I get back to ten again. These days, fixers are having to fight one hellbane after another. In theory they should be able to use the energy gained from a kill to destroy the next, but it's not working. As best I can tell, we become exhausted, so there must be leakage. When a fixer is drained, a blighter eats."
"But if 'dinner' is exhausted, is there any energy there?"
"There must be since they mostly feed, on nonfixers, and even cows and pigs."
Something was teasing at her mind. She caught it. "But you said zapping one didn't take all your energy, so why don't you use less? Half a unit. A quarter. Then you'd be ahead."
He tossed the remains of his tea to hiss on the fire. "Because we don't know what the bloody hell we're doing. We just swing that hammer as hard as we can. If we could gather a bunch of them, we might be able to get a lot with one blow, but they seem to hunt alone."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Yet. I've suggested that all the fixers left gather to work on it. There has to be something."
"You have?"
"No one else seems to be in charge."
She took his hands. "I'm proud of you for doing that."
"I'm groping in the dark, Jen."
"No, you're not. You're finding lights."
He rested his head against hers. "You give me strength, Jen. When things were tough at school I used to think of you, that protecting Gaia meant protecting you."
Tears filled her eyes. "I'm not worthy of that." She unfastened the few buttons he'd done up. "I'm sorry for not doing this sooner. I was scared."
"So was I."
"I mean, of you. Of your magic."
He slid his hand under her top. "Why not? It terrifies me."
They kissed, and love came slowly, gently this time. Not hard, wild, and desperate, but like a secret flower in a winter garden, unexpectedly discovered and to be guarded from a killing frost until it bloomed.
They lay together afterward, talking over their lives. As dawn touched the sky, she said, "Can I come with you?"
"God, no. Go north."
She thought of lying but shook her head. "Win or lose, I'd rather be here."
"You're a stubborn woman, Jenny Hart."
"There's more to life than living, Dan Rutherford. I'll be here to meet you or the blighters, whichever comes first."
They dressed, then sat, holding hands within the glow of the fire.
"I've never been one for the old Earth religions," Jenny said, "but perhaps I'll pray."
"Pray for a bouncing bomb, then."
"What?"
He shook his head. "Just something from an old film."
When the sun rose, she helped him kill his fire and pack, then walked with him hand in hand to the southern gate. She cradled his face and kissed him, determined not to cry. "Come back. That's an order."
He smiled. "Yes, ma'am! I've coded my place to let you in. Keep an eye on it for me."
He hesitated only a second more, then walked up to and through the small, pointlessly guarded postern gate.
5
Jenny watched the gate close, then turned back into the quiet town. She walked to the old building and put her hand to the plate.
The door opened.
Despite the night they'd shared, she felt like an intruder in Dan's flat. Or perhaps she was afraid that people would realize what had happened. She wasn't ashamed of it, but it was delicate, not yet for public attention. He'd left everything neat. Nothing unnecessary out in the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge or the larder that might go off. His bed was made, his clothes all clean and put away.
The meticulous preparations for a future tenant. For death?
She flicked her way along the hangers just to touch things that had touched him, enjoying the hint of him that lingered even after laundry soap. At the left side, almost out of sight, she found some clothes that stirred memories.
She dragged them forward. A yellow shirt, a pair of striped trousers, and a red jacket. Gaudy fashions of ten years ago, now outgrown. Dan's favorite clothes from before he'd left Anglia. Tears escaped then, because the clothes showed how much he hadn't wanted to leave, hadn't wanted to be marked as different.
She pulled out the red jacket and huddled into it.
Wearing it, she wandered into the living room, where she ran her hand over his bookshelves, looking for a way to share his thoughts. Had he left his system open to her, too? She sat on the sofa and switched on his system. He had.