Terran Tomorrow

by Nancy Kress

  Both domes were made of shimmering alien energy shields, looking like upturned blue bowls about to shed glitter on the weeds at their bases. Young forest pressed toward both bowls despite the Army’s constant efforts to keep a cleared perimeter; everything grew so fast now. From above, Zack thought, the whole setup probably looked like two fluorescent breasts surrounded by beard stubble, a genuinely unsettling image.

  As Zack finally reached decon in Lab Dome, Toni Steffens’s voice sounded in his earplant. “Did you succeed?”

  “No. Didn’t try.”

  “Then you owe me another five dollars. Why didn’t you try? It’s a serious bet.”

  “Zebras,” Zack said. Let that shut her up for a while.

  Zack and his colleague had a long-standing bet: Who could get one of Colonel Jenner’s elite squad of soldiers, whom Toni referred to as the “Praetorian Guard,” to say something, anything, as they escorted scientists to and from Lab Dome. So far, Zack owed Toni $345, which was a problem in an “economy” that didn’t use money. Toni was good at getting the soldiers to break silence, usually by provoking them to outrage. Zack did not do outrage, but he enjoyed hers. Usually.

  She appeared in the doorway of the esuit room just beyond decon, a plain woman in her forties, dressed in ancient jeans grown a little tight and a top of flexible brown plastic fabric, the only cloth that the 3-D printer, running out of polymers, was still able to produce. “Zebras?”

  “Caitlin was drawing them at breakfast.”

  “And how does a four-year-old even know about ungulates not found within a thousand miles of what used to be California?”

  “From a picture book on her tablet. Toni, what was that Latin you quoted yesterday for Occam’s razor?”

  “‘Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. Frusta fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.’ It means—”

  “I know what it means. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually correct.”

  “Not exactly. A literal translation—”

  “Show-off.”

  “Ill-educated barbarian. So you think we’re looking for a zebra when the hoofbeats we’re hearing are from a simple horse?”

  “No. I think we’re looking at horses when we might need a zebra.”

  Toni considered this. “We would stand a better chance of finding one if Jasonus Caesar would let us experiment outside, where the metaphorical ungulates actually are.”

  Zack said, “Colonel Jenner is just being cautious.”

  “Or just exercising his accidental power. Ave, ave, Caesar imperator. I don’t understand how Lindy could have been married to him for so long.”

  Zack started for the corridor. Toni, who had the tenacity of a sucking tick, did not give up. “You think we need a whole different approach to the gene drive?”

  “I don’t know. But we—everybody—have been working on this problem for ten solid years and we’re not making much progress.”

  Toni said quietly, “There used to be a lot more ‘everybodies.’ And it’s really three problems.”

  “Yes. Let’s get to work.”

  “Staff meeting this morning. Everyone’s already in the conference room.”

  “Oh, God, I forgot.”

  “That’s what comes of indulging zebras at breakfast.”

  Zack didn’t pick up this gauntlet. Toni was not fond of children; she and her wife, Nicole, did not want any. More than that, Toni believed it was wrong to raise children who could never go outside the domes, not unless the microbiologists succeeded in their mission. One of their missions. Whereas for Zack and Susan, little Caitlin was the whole point of this struggle.

  On the way to the conference room, Zack said, “Is anyone in there going to report any actual progress?”

  “We’re not going to.”

  “No kidding. Come on, Toni, you always hear everything. Any significant developments on the immunity questions or the vaccine?”

  “No. I tell you, Zack, our team’s project is going to be it. The last resort, and Jenner will have to use it.”

  Zack glanced over at her. Toni’s usual sarcastic sneer had given way to a thoughtful sadness. He said quietly, “Maybe not. Sometimes a wild card turns up.”

  “Uh-huh. Or a zebra.”

  “Or a zebra.”

  They went to the conference room. This section of Lab Dome had been divided into corridors and working spaces by the usual makeshift combination of sleek painted walls from before the Collapse and rough wooden partitions erected since, mostly by the Army. Monterey Base had just begun to operate as a national laboratory, like Fort Detrick or Cold Harbor although much smaller, when the Collapse came. The equipment was—or had been, ten years ago—state of the art, but space was limited due to the constraints of domes. But if the domes hadn’t existed, there would now be no Monterey Base at all. Nor would the base still be functioning if Colonel Jenner hadn’t been so quick-witted and resourceful. Zack kept that constantly in mind, even if Toni didn’t.

  In the conference room, three dozen scientists jammed themselves around the long table, with lab techs standing along the walls. It was as bad, Zack thought, as a high-school cafeteria: like sat with like, with no mingling. The immune-boosting team sat with immune boosters, the vaccine team with other vaccinators, the gene-drive team made room for him and Toni. At the front of the room, Chief Scientist Jessica Yu, who dated all the way back to the Embassy team thirty-eight years ago and was now in her eighties, frowned at Zack and Toni’s lateness.

  “Now that we’re all here,” she said pointedly, “maybe we can—”

  An air-shattering alarm started—blatt blatt blatt—and went on and on. Three blasts, repeated every five seconds.

  New America was attacking.

  CHAPTER 2

  Zack tore out of the conference room, running at top speed to the south airlock. He was keying in the code when Toni puffed into the tiny space.

  “Zack! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

  “Back to Enclave. To be with Susan and Caitlin.”

  “You know that’s against orders and anyway they’re safe!”

  “Not if the attack is nuclear.” Nuclear bombs were the only thing that could destroy an energy dome. That had first been demonstrated in DC eight years ago. And New York. And so many other places.

  Zack said, “Then I want to die with my family.”

  “That’s stupid! Dead is dead!”

  Zack punched in the last of the manual code and touched the pad for his finger chip to register. Nothing happened.

  “Damn! Jenner has us in lockdown!”

  “Of course he does. Zack—”

  He pounded his fist against the wall, which of course did nothing except make him feel stupid. Toni said, “Come with me to Observation.”

  “I’m staying right here until the all clear.”

  “All right. We know what an attack looks like anyway.” Toni dusted off a bench in the esuit room, plopped herself down on half of it, and said, “You’re behaving like an idiot.”

  “I know.” He sat beside her. But Caitlin was scared of the sirens; she screamed whenever they started. Zack couldn’t communicate with Susan because each dome incorporated something like a Faraday cage. No electromagnetic radiation in, and none out. It was one of the things that made life here so complicated.

  At the observation deck on the top of Lab Dome, the opaque bluish shimmer of the dome became a clear shimmer. Colonel Jenner had his command post at the top of Enclave Dome. But Toni was right—Zack knew what an attack by New America looked like. Warheads carried by drones would be exploding near and even against the domes, on which they would have no effect whatsoever. Birds would fly up from trees; animals would flee in terror. Fires might start in the forest, but probably not, because it had rained hard just last night. Heat-seeking drones would look for any targets outside the domes: soldiers, scientists, advance-warning equipment. Esuits used the same basic principle as the energy domes, but the suits wer
e far more vulnerable. The basic principle had taken Terran scientists over twenty-five years to understand and duplicate. Before the Collapse, the military had had only two years to construct the first domes, including Monterey Base, as well as a large supply of esuits. It was well that they had the suits, which somehow let in pure, breathable air but filtered out everything else, because there might never be any more.

  “I just wish,” Zack said to Toni, “that the bastards would run out of either missiles or drones.”

  “They might. Someday. They can’t have an infinite supply. It’s not like anybody can make more.”

  “How long has this been?”

  “Five minutes. Down, boy. We’re here at least another hour.”

  A little less than an hour later, the airlock door began opening from the outside.

  Zack and Toni sprang from the bench. The alarm was still blatting. Had the enemy somehow obtained the airlock code? Was Enclave Dome invaded?

  A soldier entered, an esuit over his uniform. Not one of the survivors, then. Private Somebody—Zack paid as little attention to the military as possible. The soldier said, “Dr. McKay?”

  “Yes. What is—”

  “Come with me, please. Colonel Jenner has requested your presence.”

  “Me? What happened? Is Enclave safe? Is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A closer look, and Zack realized how young the soldier was. Eyes open wide, color high, a seedpod ready to burst with information.

  “What is it, Private?”

  The soldier said, “A ship is coming in. A spaceship. From that other planet. It’s here.”

  Stunned silence. Then Toni said, “Well. A zebra, after all.”

  * * *

  Jason, in his command post at the top of Enclave Dome, had received news of the attack from his master sergeant, who received it from the perimeter patrol, who received it from Lieutenant Li at the signal station.

  Signaler was the most dangerous position in this transformed warfare. Domes that could not be penetrated by electromagnetic radiation meant that advance-warning equipment must be hidden somewhere outside, and so must the two soldiers who manned the station at all times. The station was equipped with radar and the ability to transmit to orbit. If the station detected incoming, the signalers contacted by earplant the soldiers on constant patrol outside the domes, who then had to go inside to sound the alert. All this limited the intel coming from the outside as well as making communication with HQ in Texas clumsy, but there was no way around it.

  Since the war began eight years ago, Jason had lost three signalers. Information Tech Specialist Amanda Stevens and Private Luis Almadero had died when a New America missile hit the previous signal station, before the new one was built beneath a hill. Private John Unger, unwisely giving in to boredom, had gone exploring in his esuit and been killed by a cougar. Now Jason staffed the signaling station with a trusted J Squad officer in addition to the IT specialist.

  Even at the new station, the early-warning equipment remained outside. No way around that. This was not NORAD, or what NORAD had once been.

  Everything about running Monterey Base was complicated. The domes could be constructed only to a given size, with three airlocks above ground and one in the underground annex, which also had a predetermined size. Any deviation from this blueprint and the entire energy-based structure simply disintegrated. No physicists knew why. They might have learned if the Collapse hadn’t come, but it did, and Jason spent hours each day maneuvering around the limitations of the structures that had saved all their lives. First from the bird plague, and then from New America.

  It used to be that the signal station received news from orbiting satellites, both military and civilian. But over time, the satellites had failed. No maintenance, no orbital adjustments, no personnel. The US Army was down to one functional comsat. New America also controlled a comsat, and so far neither side had figured out how either to destroy the other’s or to hack its encryption.

  “Sir,” Master Sergeant Hillson said over the blatting alarm, “message from Lieutenant Li at the signal station.”

  “Go on,” Jason said. Hillson, a thirty-year lifer whom Jason would have trusted with his command if necessary, always spoke slowly, sometimes with pauses between his words. This was not, Jason had learned long ago, because Hillson didn’t know what he thought. The sergeant paused because he was reluctant to let words go. Dragged up dirt poor in some God-forsaken corner of the Ozarks, his instinct was to hold on to everything as long as he could, even words. But his statements, when they finally emerged, were always true. Always.

  “Sir, the station has received direct contact from a spaceship.”

  Jason said sharply, “The Stremlenie?” No one knew what had happened to the Russian ship.

  “No, sir. Lieutenant says the ship claims to be American, coming from World. Calling itself the Return.”

  Jason stared. For a long moment, Hillson’s words refused to form themselves into coherent thought. They jumped around randomly, pixels on a deranged screen.

  The American ship Friendship had departed Earth twenty-eight years ago. Its mission had been to establish trade relations with the human-aliens who had arrived on Earth ten years earlier, warned Earth about the spore cloud, deceived everyone, and abruptly departed. The Friendship and its twenty-one passengers, including the grandmother that Jason had finished mourning decades ago, had never been heard from again. Perhaps the Russian ship, which had launched shortly afterward, had destroyed the Friendship. Perhaps the alien star drive on both ships had failed. Perhaps World, that unknown planet, had decided to keep the ships and kill the Terrans. After the Collapse, no one on Earth had cared. Only survival mattered.

  Pixelated thoughts cohered into solidity and hardness. “The Return? Not the Friendship? What were Lieutenant Li’s exact words?”

  “‘For immediate emergency relay to Colonel Jenner, priority one: Contact by an alien ship calling itself the Return and claiming to be carrying Americans and coming from World. I have not responded. Do not know if the message is connected with the drone attack. Please advise.’”

  It could be a trick by New America. Get a detachment of soldiers outside the dome, mount a second drone attack. Although New America had tried something similar before, and had not succeeded. Jason rose from his desk and scanned the sky through the clear top of the dome.

  The missiles had spent themselves uselessly against the domes and then ceased, leaving debris lying around the cleared zone but no fires, not this time. As soon as the drones stopped coming, perimeter patrol had returned outside, although staying close to the airlock and ready for snipers. Jason squinted into the distance.

  Overhead a hawk soared, dark against the clouds.

  A breeze stirred the treetops, a hundred yards away and level with the top of the dome.

  At the edge of the trees, a deer appeared, startled, and vanished.

  Sergeant Hillson waited.

  The alarm still sounded: blatt blatt blatt.

  “Tell them to turn off the alarm, but don’t sound the all clear. Get Major Duncan up here.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir … Corporal Olivera.”

  Jason turned. Rosa Olivera, assigned to patrol, held out a tiny data cube. “Sir, Lieutenant Li sent this. A longer message from the spaceship. The lieutenant relayed it to record for you.”

  Jason popped the cube into his wrister. A male voice said, “Come in, Earth. This is the World ship Return, Captain Branch Carter. We are coming from World—Kindred, I mean—the planet that the Friendship left Earth for twenty-eight years ago. Some of that original mission are aboard here, including me. We’re coming home.”

  Jason’s forehead wrinkled. The message sounded in no way military. He touched his finger chip to his wrister and said, “Identity, Branch Carter, Friendship mission, text only.”

  Carter continued, “A lot has happened to tell you about, but right now we just want permission to land. Last night we didn’t see any city lig
hts from space, which sort of concerns us. Also, no one has responded to our hailings. I don’t really know how to direct this communication very well, it’s not our ship and I’m not really an engineer, but—”

  BRANCH CARTER scrolled across the small screen on Jason’s wrister. Member of Friendship diplomatic mission, lab technician. MS from Yale, employed at CDC from—

  A lab tech? As captain? Jason turned off the wrister.

  “—but we’re relaying this message through what looks like an American comsat. I think. If you give us coordinates to land, latitude and longitude, I think I can get this system to recognize those enough so we can set down. I hope.”

  He hoped? What kind of Mickey Mouse operation—

  Then, with surprising dignity, “I know this message must sound strange. There was time dilation that we didn’t know about—and I guess you probably don’t, either—both going to and coming from World. Twenty-eight years, total. There are only ten of us aboard here, and to us, it’s like we’ve only been gone a few months. We’re five Terran and five Kindred, and none of us understand the ship. We are doing the best we can.”

  Corporal Olivera blurted out, “Five aliens?” She turned a mottled red. “Sorry, sir.”

  Jason was thinking faster than he had since the Collapse. It could still be a trick and “Branch Carter’s” voice a pretense. The Friendship, he remembered, had been equipped with classified alpha-beam weapons capable of firing ship-to-ground; this ship, if indeed there was an actual ship, could also carry that ordnance. If he denied permission to land, what would the ship do? If it was permitted to land, it could carry various forms of contamination. Or, given that Kindred was so much more advanced than Terra, the ship could contain incredibly valuable tech. Or it might hold both: contaminants and advanced tech. But then why didn’t this Branch Carter seem to know anything about the ship, and why weren’t the alleged aliens aboard the ones captaining her? They had invented the technology! That argued for a trick. But—