Free Awares by Piers Anthony

give us a better chance.
    And my bulletin did not go out. Key minds in that chain too had been corrupted. Then I knew it was bad.
    I went home and communed with Kess. She agreed that any further effort on my part would only attract attention to me and get me killed by one of the corrupted personnel. We made desperate love, and her cloaca was indeed hot, but much of the joy in it was gone.
    We watched as the alien ship arrived at a planetary port unscathed. There was no commotion; it never made the planetary news. That was more evidence that there was suppression, as an alien landing should have been phenomenal news. Instead the normal planetary routine continued.
    Months passed, and things happened. Huge new buildings were constructed near the largest municipalities, their presence also unremarked. Special highways were cut through neighborhoods to terminate at those buildings. Traffic formed, a seemingly endless line of transport trucks, driving into one side of the local building and out the other side, lighter. Still no news. A rail track was laid down, extending form the building to the hugely expanded spaceport, and a continuous line of boxcars rolled along it, unloading something that the giant alien spaceships carried away.
    But some citizens were curious, and managed to peek into the building without being seen. Thus I received word: it was a slaughterhouse. For animals and people.
    Our world was being rendered into meat to feed the aliens. And it seemed that there was nothing we could do about it.
    “We can't trust anyone else,” I told Kess. “I have to do it myself.”
    “Do what, my love?”
    “Disrupt the process. I will bomb the slaughterhouse. That will at least slow them down.”
    “Not for long,” she said. “A bomb will demolish only a small portion of it, which they will soon rebuild.”
    “I have access to a small nuclear bomb.” One of the prerogatives of my position was knowledge where such things were stored, and I had the access codes to reach it and transport it. It was almost as if our forerunners had known there would come a time when such access was needed.
    “Oh! But that will take you out too, beloved.”
    “Yes. It will be a suicide mission. But maybe it will show our world that resistance is possible, and there will be a spontaneous general uprising that will extirpate the alien menace.”
    “It will kill a great number of our neighbors.”
    “I know it, and it pains me. But if I do not act, they will soon die anyway, being canned for alien food. This seems less unkind.”
    “I will help you.”
    “No, Kess! I want you to survive and find happiness elsewhere. You must flee far from here.”
    “I will have no happiness without you, Kop. Besides, it requires two to transport the bomb.”
    She was correct. Reluctantly I allowed her to assist me in our suicide mission. We fetched the bomb and wheeled it by night to the outer wall of the building. The stench surrounding the edifice was terrible. I went about arming it. There would be no delay once I completed the process and depressed the DETONATE button. It would blow, and this entire section of the planet would be vaporized.
    It was ready. My digit hovered over the button. “I love you, Kess,” I said sincerely.
    “I love you, Kop.”
    “You can still escape,” I said. “I can wait a time period, long enough for you to get clear.”
    She licked my hide. “I can imagine no greater honor than dying with you, for the greater welfare of our planet.”
    I was gratified. If I had to die, dying with her was my preference. I went for the button.
    But my digit did not descend. It remained hovering.
    “Do it, beloved,” Kess said urgently.
    “I can not,” I said.
    “Then I will do it.” She reached for the button.
    And paused. “Neither can I,” she said, appalled.
    Then I understood. “We have been taken over by alien minds.”
    “Duh!” a voice in my head said. “Did you think we would allow you to destroy our