by Nancy Kress
A man ran toward them from the beach. Jane watched the pounding figure grow larger and stockier; a thickset, short, heavily muscled Terran deeply sunburned. He wore the same type of wrap as Sarah but was barefoot, his long graying hair tied back with a strip of cloth. When he spied Jane, he stopped dead.
His gaze moved to Colonel Jenner, and he smiled, a grin of such unself-conscious sweetness that Jane felt her own lips curve in response.
He saw Marianne, gasped, and burst into tears.
Marianne took an uncertain step forward. Colin Jenner closed the gap between them in five huge bounds and threw his arms around her, lifting her off the ground in a hug so tight that Jane was afraid it might break her old bones. But Marianne was hugging him back and laughing like a girl.
“Grandma! You’re home! But how—”
“There was a time dilation, it—”
Sarah shouted, “Incoming!”
Everyone moved toward the dome, but not very quickly. Colin took Marianne’s hand and led her. Jane hurried behind. Again she was shocked to see that the airlock stood open on both sides, and even more shocked that Colonel Jenner’s guard took time to climb into the quadcopter, start it, and fly it around to the other side of the dome and, presumably, inside an airlock as big as the one in the armory of Enclave Dome.
Still no explosions.
She said timidly to Sarah, “I don’t hear anything.”
“Oh, it’ll be another ten minutes at least.”
There hadn’t been ten minutes warning at the base. “How do you know?”
“Grasses,” Sarah said, which explained nothing. “Would you like some tea?”
“I … no, I can’t drink in this esuit.”
“Oh, of course. I forgot. Poor you.”
Jane didn’t think that Sarah had forgotten, or that her remark had really been aimed at Jane. Colonel Jenner frowned at the old woman.
Marianne was answering Colin Jenner’s questions about his uncle, Noah, left behind on World. Jane turned in a slow circle, inspecting this quadrant of the dome. Although identical in size and alien material to the two domes of Monterey Base, this one looked entirely different inside. Plants grew against the curved walls. There was no flat ceiling of wood or metal making a second story, and through the clear upper dome sunlight poured in. Between irregularly shaped beds of grass or seaweed, woven mats lay rolled up or not; they looked like the sleeping mats on World. Children came shyly from behind trees; men and women in little knots stared openly; two people stirred a pot of something on the metal stove where Sarah brewed tea. The stove had a glass or plastic window with actual fire burning behind it.
Colonel Jenner came up beside her. “Not like the base, is it?”
“No. It’s like … an unplanned garden.”
“Oh, it’s planned, all right. My brother might be a lunatic tree-worshipper, but he’s capable.”
“Really? They worship the trees here?”
“Not literally. I meant that they’re vegetarian, refuse to slaughter animals for leather, eat a lot of seaweed—that’s a kelp farm down at the beach—and offer thanks to any tree they cut down for fuel or any vegetable they put into a stew. I think they atone for all the food they send to us killers at the base, too. Trying to make up for our sins.”
Jane tried to follow all this. “Food to the base comes by here?”
“Plus hunting and foraging by the Army. Colin’s people don’t approve of hunting, of course. We send FiVees to collect their produce and grain, varying the collection days to avoid drone attacks. In return, we supply them with medicines and such metal as they’ll accept, like the stove. We get fed and they get to keep morally clean from all the disgusting military practices that make their lives possible. Not that we get any credit for it. My brother— Hello, Dad.”
A man, walking with a cane, emerged from an internal, standing-open airlock. An older, frailer version of Colin, he trembled as he lurched along, but he grinned widely and his eyes shone. Marianne’s son, Jane remembered, the father of both Colin and Colonel Jenner. Wordlessly he patted Colonel Jenner’s arm, then stumbled toward Marianne. To Jane he looked older than Marianne.
“Is your father sick?”
“Parkinson’s. That’s a neurological disease we never did figure out how to cure. Jane, I know how strange this must seem to you.”
Actually, this place seemed less strange, more like World, than the base did. This wasn’t bu^ka^tel, but the respect for Mother Terra, the abundant plants and simple furnishing, were all echoes of World.
She said, “I don’t … aren’t drones coming?”
“Yes. Any minute now.”
“Do they have radar here? Like the base?”
“No. Colin and Sarah and some of the others are superhearers. You don’t know about that, do you? About five percent of children born from mothers infected with the original R. sporii carry a gene that gets activated in the womb. The kids hear way above and below the usual range of human hearing … do I need to say that more simply?”
“No.” Little Caitlin saying I hear the ground. “But will this also happen with children born on World? The spore cloud came only a little time before our ship left.”
“I don’t know. You need to ask a geneticist.”
Colin Jenner broke free from the group around his father and grandmother. “Jason!” He hugged Colonel Jenner, who didn’t immediately break free.
“Hello, Col.”
“How are you? You okay?”
“Fine. Everything all right here?”
“Yes. Haven’t lost anyone.”
The brothers liked each other. They might agree on nothing, but their affection was just as clear to Jane as their wariness. Colonel Jenner’s disdain for the way of life here did not include his brother, the architect of this place. The colonel said, “Colin, this is Jane, from World. A translator.”
Colin turned. He took her hand and his gaze met hers. His eyes were mud-colored in a sunburned, strong-nosed face, and she was staggered by their intensity. Something flashed between Jane and Colin: more than interest, less than recognition.
She said, almost timidly, “I greet you, Colin Jenner.”
Instantly he said, “I greet you, Jane,” just as if the World greeting were natural to him. He still held her hand.
Outside, the first missile struck, with noise and fury. Everyone ignored it.
She said, “Will you tell me, please, about … about the life here?”
“Yes.” A quick glance, humorous but not mocking, at his brother. The colonel shrugged and moved away to talk to a group of three people carrying a huge basket of red vegetables.
Colin said, “Jane, here we try to live free on the Earth, while it repairs itself from what humanity did to it. We respect every living thing, even the vegetables and nuts and seaweed we eat. We try to tread lightly, and always in harmony with nature.”
He had gone beyond her knowledge of specific words, but she understood the ideas. “And you can hear the ground? That is how you knew that the drones … how do you know?”
“There are changes in the air. Birds react and so do other animals—they always know if an earthquake is coming. Also, trees and grasses register incoming. Plants aren’t sentient but they can, over time, develop warning signals, pheromones or vibrations, to let others of their species know that danger approaches. Botanists have known that for nearly a hundred years. Everything is connected underground, through grass roots and fungi, and sound moves really well through soil.”
Another missile strike outside. Colin finally let go of her hand. Jane said, to cover her regret at the absence of his warm fingers, “You can hear all that? From plants and air and animals?”
“If I’m paying attention. Six of us can.”
His eyes held hers. Abruptly, Colonel Jenner crossed his arms over his chest. Jane barely noticed. “Nobody here wears an esuit.”
“We don’t need them. We’re all survivors of R. sporii avivirus.”
“But … yo
u have children not ten years, born since the Collapse—they survived RSA, too?”
“Yes.”
Colonel Jenner had returned to listen. He said harshly, “But not all of them. Colin would rather expose his newborns to RSA and let most of them die than live inside esuits and domes—right, Colin?”
Colin said quietly, “I have no children. Parents make that decision, not me.”
“You’re the leader.”
“This is not a military base, Jason. I don’t control anyone else’s choices.”
Colonel Jenner turned to Jane. “Children here die, over ninety percent of them, shortly after birth. Or else the pregnant parents defect and come to live rationally at the base.”
Colin said, “Living sealed up, surviving only by killing—that’s not living rationally.”
“You wouldn’t be living at all if it weren’t for us. New America would already have wiped you out.”
All at once Jane realized this was an old argument, as worn and saggy as some of the Army uniforms at the base. The brothers did not need to argue it again; neither would change the other’s mind. They were arguing now only because of her. Even the way they stood—she had seen male skaleth¡ on World stand like that, facing each other with their heads slightly lowered and their bodies tense, during mating season.
No, that couldn’t be right. She must look so strange to them: coppery skin, too-big eyes, taller than Colin. But—
To cover her confusion, she said, “Why doesn’t New America come at night and burn your crops? Or … or poison them? If they want to destroy you.”
Colonel Jenner smiled, not pleasantly. “They want to destroy people, not farms or domes or weapons. Those that want to take over. Only they’re not going to, here or at the base, because some of us are fighting back.”
“And some of us believe that over time, nature always wins, and we are part of nature.”
Colonel Jenner snorted. “Don’t go into too many forests armed with just your ideals, Colin.”
“Don’t kill so much life that you become as bad as your enemy.”
“I think,” Jane said firmly, “that I would like to talk to those children over there.”
* * *
The children were shy, but she got them talking to her, and then they were charming. The missile hits stopped. Colin’s gaze kept meeting Jane’s. She thought that he looked bewildered. Well, she was, too. She detached herself from the children—a small girl clutched her legs—to ask him more questions, to have more time with him.
Colonel Jenner, who’d gone outside, strode back into the dome. “We have to go back now.”
Marianne said, “Oh, no, not yet!”
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” he said, the first time Jane had heard him use that word, “but I just got an urgent message from my master sergeant.”
In his wrist thing, of course. No one asked what the message was. The quadcopter was pushed out of the large airlock, they climbed in, and it lifted, the noise covering Jane’s silence. She had a headache and she felt so confused about … everything.
Living in harmony with Terra, without killing.
Letting nearly all children die of RSA, so that the survivors could “live free.”
Fighting and killing … but killing people who were trying to murder you.
Hearing the whole, huge plant world, the air, the ground itself as it shifted in its own mysterious life.
The dome, without which all of Colin Jenner’s people would already be dead.
Colin Jenner …
Her headache worsened.
“I’m tired,” Marianne said to Jane over the rotors. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Jane said. She watched some large gray animals jumping out of the water of the bay, falling back in, jumping again. Somehow, they reminded her of Colin. She said, “I am tired. It is hard to experience so much at once.”
* * *
Jason left his grandmother and Jane at the base. He and Specialist Kowalski flew the quadcopter to the new signal station. This was doubly risky. New America might have picked up Hillson’s coded radio message. Even without decoding it, they would know where Jason was and might guess at his route back. Or they might be able to trace the quadcopter to the station, which would then have to be moved again. But Hillson’s message had been urgent.
He would have left Jane and Marianne in the relative safety of Colin’s dome, but neither woman would have agreed willingly. Jane was needed to translate, and Marianne to work at Lab Dome with the science teams. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Jane at the Settlement with … No, there was no “besides.” This was the best plan. And he’d gotten them both back safely.
The new signal station lay farther up the slope of the southern Diablo Range. Jason flew low over maples, oaks, gray pines, all taller and older than the sapling forests invading the valleys since the Collapse. In a field thick with wildflowers stood a herd of elk. The quadcopter startled them and they bolted. Farther on, a mountain lion sunned itself on a rock.
Robot-dug, the station was burrowed into a rocky hillside. Jason frowned. More difficult to reach by FiVee but easier to approach without detection. Still, the signal equipment was better camouflaged up here. On the rocky and uneven ground, the track of Li’s FiVee was faint.
He landed the quadcopter at the coordinates Li had given him, and waited. Ten minutes later IT Specialist David DeFord appeared. He wore armor but not an esuit; like all members of J Squad, DeFord was an RSA survivor. He saluted smartly and led him to the station. Kowalski remained with the copter.
Inside, Jason braced himself. He’d never seen Li look this tense.
“Sir, three items of intel came in. First and worst, the enemy has taken Sierra Depot.”
Fuck. Sierra Depot, northwest in high desert near the border of what had been Nevada, was essentially a 36,000-acre shopping mall for Army equipment. For decades it had been staffed lightly by Army officers overseeing civilian contractors. It stored uniforms, goggles, generators, radios, scopes, vehicles. Just before the Collapse, the depot had received an influx of Army, including a company of Marines, and a new, maximum-security building. Jason and Li both knew why. Their eyes met.
Jason said, “They don’t have the launch codes. And the ordnance isn’t housed there.”
“Yes, sir. But now they have—”
“I know what they have. It will self-destruct if they try to access it.”
“Yes, sir.”
There hadn’t been enough Marines left after the Collapse to adequately defend the depot. In the first few months, Jason had sent all the troops he could spare. New America did not take prisoners, unless it was to torture them for information. But at Sierra, none of them except the CO had any intel to give up. Everyone else who knew what lay underground had died of RSA.
Jason didn’t need to ask about current casualties; he already knew. He asked anyway, listening to the names as Li read them off his wrister. Some of them he had served with, before the Collapse. Two had been drinking friends. Major John Burchfell had been best man at Jason and Lindy’s wedding.
He said, throat tightening, “The other intel?”
“General Lassiter died this morning. Heart.”
Not unexpected. The general, whom Jason had never met in person, was eighty-three and had been failing for at least six months. That left General Colleen Hahn as CO. Jason knew her slightly and respected her; he could work with Hahn.
It also made Jason the fourth highest ranking officer left in the United States Army.
“And finally,” Li said, “a piece of good news. New America’s comsat has failed.”
Jason nodded. That was good news. Of the two functioning comsats in orbit, New America had used theirs to track signals between the remaining Army bases and, although no one had expected this, the Return. They could not piggyback on the US comsat, which used advanced-state, heavily encrypted software. New America still had short-range surveillance drones, ground movements, and radio interceptions, but no communi
cation through space. Very good news.
He said, “Contact the Return in orbit. We’re going to bring the ship down. Corporal Kandiss tells me it’s vulnerable to ground attack, but it’s no good to us upstairs and anyway, the scientists say they need research items from aboard. Make contact while I figure out where to land it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them they’ve done well.”
But his mind was on Sierra Depot. The quantum computer was set to self-destruct if anyone without authorized entry tried to use it. Only the q-computer had the computing power to calculate and try the launch codes without taking a hundred thousand years to accomplish the task. The only other way to launch what were, as far as Jason knew, the only remaining viable nuclear weapons in North America, was from either Jason’s command post or General Hahn’s. But if New America was able to use the q-computer …
No. Unthinkable. He would do anything, anything at all, to keep that from happening.
CHAPTER 6
Zack hovered over Caitlin’s bed, Susan on the other side. “Does she have a fever?”
“No,” Susan said. “She just complains that her head hurts. Where on your head, Caity? Show Daddy.”
Caitlin lay in a tangle of twisted sheets and a green Army blanket. She touched the center of her forehead and tried to smile. She clutched her stuffed toy, a foot-high rabbit named Bollers, so ancient and much laundered that its pink had faded to gray and one amputated paw had been replaced with a substitute sewn from a military-issue black sock. Her trundle bed, stored during the day under Zack and Susan’s, now took up most of the cramped bedroom in their two-room quarters in Enclave Dome.
The other room held a table and chairs, battered sofa, and a wall screen hung on the rough wooden walls that partitioned this “apartment” off from others just like it. Storage closets were made from the same rough wood. Neither room had any windows. Zack had been meaning to borrow tools from the Army and spruce things up a bit, maybe sand the closet doors, even paint something, but there was always too much to do in the lab. Susan was equally busy, often bringing Caitlin to work with her. The only decorations in the tiny apartment were a few pictures drawn by Caity, plus a startlingly ugly collection of plastic zinnias in a willow basket, which had come from God-knew-where. “Leave it,” Susan always said. “At least it provides a spot of color. And Caity likes it.”