Read Online Shipstar by Larry Niven, Gregory Benford - Free Book Online Page A

jobs. When they went into a typical shelter, usually an ordinary basement, it looked to Cliff like a streetcar full of Sil who’d simultaneously had heart failure. Just sitting there in their chairs, all dead. A firestorm may occur naturally in forests, but in cities becomes a conflagration attaining such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. Cliff had watched the first stages of it from a distance, as wind whirls darted among buildings like dust devils of pure yellow and burnt orange flame. Those danced among tall apartment buildings like eerie flame children having fun.
    Cliff became used to the hovering ruddy heat that seeped through the clouds still overhead. Smells came rising from the dead and made all the work gangs speed up their work. The bodies were not alike but strangely specific. Some clutched purses, others wore jewelry, and a few who had prepared for what they thought the worst wore rucksacks full of food. Some of the Sil work teams took these, and Cliff just looked away, not knowing what to say or do or whether to care at all. A young boy Sil had a pet, a four-legged furry thing Cliff had never seen the likes of—still leashed to the boy, eyes still gleaming.
    They were at their work, doggedly going from apartment to apartment, when a Sil woman suddenly appeared and hurled herself at Cliff. She shouted incoherent abuse and battered at him with tight fists. Another Sil rushed over and pulled her off him. She broke down sobbing, chanting, and was led away. He stood stolidly for a long while, emotions churning.
    Once some Sil work partners found a small cellar of what seemed to be a winelike drink. When Cliff passed by them a while later, carrying a Sil body, they seemed to be roaring drunk. He saw them later, too, and unlike those teams nearby were working energetically and maybe even enjoying it. So whatever they drank, it seemed a blessing.
    It went on and Cliff stopped even estimating the dead. The number was beyond thousands and probably in the tens of thousands and he did not want to think about it anymore. The fiery death penalty applied to all who happened to be in the undefended city—babies, old people, the zoo animals.…
    The teams talked less and less and the work days seemed to go on infinitely, down a dwindling pipe. A day toward the end, when they could see there were few streets left to cover, they were combing the shattered shells of the last buildings. With scarcely a whisper, a flittering craft came over and dropped filmy oval leaflets that drifted down from the sky. The curious script meant nothing to the humans, of course, but a Sil read it in broken Anglish:
    We destroyed you because you harbored the Late Invaders. They will damage our fragile eternal paradise and bring disease, unease, and horror to your lot, and to all who dwell beneath the Perpetual Sun in warm mutual company. We struck at the known location of Late Invaders and those helping them to elude our capture. Destruction of other than targets of high security value was unintended and an unavoidable consequence of the fortunes of safekeeping of our eternal Bowl.
    The Sil became angry when reading these notes. They hurled them to the ground, stomped on them. Then others gathered them up and marched off with piles of the filmy sheets. Cliff wondered at this and so followed. The Sil went to their collective lavatory. Since he was in need, he went in and found the propaganda stacked for use in wiping asses.
    He understood all this emotionally. Gathering up body parts in bushel baskets, helping a sorrowed male Sil dig with hands and shovels where he thought his wife might be … the events blended, endlessly.

 
    TEN
    Irma said, “You have a flat affect.”
    “Um, what’s that?” Cliff had just awakened from another long sleep. He looked out the narrow opening of the cave they called home. Beyond lay the same stark sunlit landscape of despair he had become accustomed to. He yawned. At least the halo