Crucible

by Nancy Kress

  “One, two planets before Greentrees. We see first.”

  That made sense. Accelerating, the ship drive created such a plasma cloud that no sensors worked. The ship flew blind. Of course the Vines would need to stop to reconnoiter before flying in.

  The translator said, “An enemy ship orbits Greentrees.”

  Fear clenched Karim. Then he remembered. “No, that’s our ship, the Beta Vine. I mean, it was a Fur ship but we captured it, just as we captured the other ship you destroyed when you picked us up. The same way you capture Fur ships!”

  “Two ships orbits Greentrees. One is different.”

  Two ships?

  “Different how?”

  The translator didn’t answer. Lucy said, “Karim …” and to the translator, “Is it a Fur ship, too? Your enemy?”

  “We not know.”

  “What will you do?” Karim managed.

  There was no answer, not for a very long time. The Vines, or the slime, or some unknowable combination of the two, were thinking.

  Eventually, the ship accelerated. The Vines would not answer Karim’s or Lucy’s pleas for information. A short time later, the ship stopped again.

  Karim couldn’t, keep his eyes open. He had woken from a good sleep only hours before; he wasn’t tired. But all at once, he felt irresistibly drowsy. Before he slept, he had just time enough to realize he was being drugged, and to hear the expressionless voice of the translator say, “Good-bye, Karim and Lucy. Thank you.”

  They woke simultaneously. Karim looked down. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them to look again. To his shame, tears came. A planet spun beneath his feet.

  He and Lucy floated in space, encased in a clear thick bubble of slime. They were naked. Nothing whatsoever was in the bubble with them. Thousands of miles below, Greentrees rotated, a spining ball of blue and purple and white, real and gorgeous and unattainable as paradise.

  15

  HOPE OF HEAVEN

  Tell it from the beginning and omit nothing,” Julian said to the scared young soldier.

  “Yes, sir.”

  So young, Alex thought, and then realized he was not really a boy. He seemed so because he was pale and shaken. This did not happen on Greentrees. Whatever brief training Julian had given, it hadn’t prepared this youth. Her people had not grown up with violence.

  “So fair and foul a day I have not seen.”

  “Should we wait for Guy Davenport?” Ashraf said.

  “No,” Julian said. “He can hear it later.”

  The four of them stood in a small concrete bunker that Julian must have had built for his troops. Alex hadn’t known it existed. Outside, in the sweetly scented night, the graceful buildings of Hope of Heaven soared against a moonless sky. The bodies of the two dead soldiers, Shanab Mesbah and Mary Pesci, had already been loaded into the rover to be taken back to Mira City. Julian had examined them with a strange intensity.

  “Shanab, Mary, and I were on duty until midnight,” the soldier began. “I was crewing the monitors and they were doing foot patrol for Sector Six. That includes this edge of the settlement, the settlement farm, and a bit of the plain. Everything was quiet. Nothing on the displays. Then Shanab yelled, just once. I tried to comlink, but nobody answered. So I armed and ran to the location that their helmets registered.”

  Julian said sharply, “Did you report in and call for force augmentation?”

  “Yes, sir. I followed all procedures, sir.”

  “What did you see as you ran? What did your helmet record?”

  “I saw nothing, sir. The helmet recorded nothing. But Shanab and Mary lay on the ground, with the spears in their backs, like you saw. Then the force augmentation arrived, the closest personnel, Sergeant Harding and the other private. Their helmets didn’t record anything, either. Sergeant Harding told me to call you, and he went back to his post, which was guarding the dissidents. But by the time he got there, Wong and the other two were gone.”

  “I’ll talk to Sergeant Harding next,” Julian said, so grimly that Alex glanced over at him. “He was derelict in his duty priorities. You, however, acted correctly. Resume your duties.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man held out his arm, then clapped it to his chest. He turned to his displays. Alex realized, belatedly, that she had just seen a “salute.” Julian said to her and Ashraf, “At bunker distance the helmets record and identify only metal. The Furs’ spears are wood and stone. At closer proximity the helmets track infrared, but it would be too confusing to do that across a mile. Privates Mesbah and Pesci probably detected the approaching Furs but might have thought they were animals. Or maybe the Furs fired the spears from some equivalent of a bow. They might get enough distance that way so that neither infrared or night vision would make clear what was happening. Not to untested recruits, anyway. And then other Furs got Wong and the others away while Harding left his post.”

  “But why?” Alex said, at the same moment that Ashraf said, “Wasn’t Sergeant Harding supposed to help? You said—”

  “I said Harding should have sent augmentation, but his first duty was guarding dissidents and he knew that.” Julian spoke more levelly than usual, his only sign of anger.

  Alex repeated, “Why would the Furs kill two soldiers and steal Wong?”

  “He wasn’t ’stolen,’” Julian said, and she saw from his expression that she should have realized that. “The Furs are cooperating with the dissidents.”

  “But Furs killed the dissidents who tried to burn Mira during the evacuation drill! They were on our side!”

  “I don’t know how they were turned,” Julian said.

  Ashraf said, “We should look for Nan Frayne.”

  Something flickered behind Julian’s eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alex said.

  Ashraf said sadly, “None of us do. I can’t just… Julian, what is it?”

  Julian stood very still. Alex saw, for the first time ever, shock widen his green eyes. He raised his hand to his left ear.

  “A ship. A ship detected just beyond the star system. A Fur ship.”

  Alex said sharply, “The Franz Mueller? Karim? Is it signaling?”

  “The ship is not signaling. The probe says it’s not the Franz Mueller. But it’s a McAndrew Drive ship, the drive is off, it’s just sitting there.”

  Looking at Julian’s face, Alex thought, He didn’t think this would ever actually happen. Despite all his urgent preparations, he didn really think it would happen.

  Then there was no time for the personal. Ashraf said, “What do we do?”

  Alex said swiftly, “Order the evacuation of Mira City. For real this time. The Furs are finally here.”

  The original plan had been for Ashraf, Julian, and Alex to occupy different bunkers, in case one was destroyed. But only one rover stood outside Hope of Heaven. Most traffic went by river. Alex surveyed the displays in the Hope of Heaven security bunker and said, “Julian, can you direct defenses from here?”

  “I already am.”

  “I can direct my part of the evacuation, too. Ashraf, you take the rover, your command bunker is the one closest to here. Julian, send an armed guard with him.”

  Ashraf said, “Is there even an evacuation plan for Hope of Heaven? They wouldn’t be part of ours.”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “But they must monitor MiraNet. They’ll learn about the ship and do whatever they do.”

  “But—” Ashraf began, but Alex was no longer listening. She was on the comlink and a display, directing the evacuation. She didn’t notice when Ashraf left.

  As she worked, Alex translated the data on her screen into pictures in her mind. Jake, being wheeled in his chair to the tram, arriving at the not-far- enough-away, inadequately hidden cave that was the best they could do for those who could not travel well.

  Siddalee, grumbling and efficient, a sector captain who would check every building in her sector before she left Mira.

  Guy Dave
nport, posting his security force, some of whose weapons wouldn’t work if Julian used the EMP.

  Kate Areola, head of the Scientists’ League, directing the shielding of Mira’s infrastructure. Receiving and coordinating esoteric reports, passing on pertinent facts and conclusions to Julian, Ashraf, and Alex.

  The Arab women in the medina, their veils white in the darkness as they boarded barges on the river.

  Duncan and his actors, maybe still in costume and makeup, rushing from the new theater for their designated transport to their end points. Which of the maybe twenty thousand people on Greentrees, including Cheyenne, would survive the Fur attack? Which would not?

  “ ‘Ifyou can look into the seeds of time,

  And say which grain will grow and which will not,

  Speak then to me…’”

  Julian’s uniformed tech said, “Enemy vessel moving, sir. Accelerating at five gee, ten, twenty… McAndrew Drive confirmed. Trajectory straight for Greentrees.”

  “Continue to monitor,” Julian said.

  On Alex’s comlink, now stuck in her ear, Siddalee said, “Sector I is emptied out, Alex. How come this couldn’t have happened by daylight? I’m getting on the tram now.”

  “Good luck, Siddalee.”

  “We’re going to need it. I got a pregnant woman right next to me who’s days away from giving birth. At least I hope it’s days.” She clicked off.

  And, thought Alex, there was no better place for a pregnant woman to be than next to Siddalee Brown. Alex almost smiled.

  Two hours later, Mira City was empty except for Davenport’s security force, Julian’s soldiers, and the few cranky civilians who had refused to leave. Julian had told her that every evacuation in history had these cranks; they weren’t worth coercing. Alex, not liking his language, had nonetheless agreed. The holdouts were making their own choice.

  “Enemy vessel decelerating,” the tech said. Alex turned to watch the graphic display.

  The Fur ship changed from a blur to a dot somewhere between Greentrees and Ven, the next planet out in the system. Then it began to move much more slowly.

  “Vacuum drive off,” the tech said. “It’s moving under cruising power, sir.”

  “Position report,” Julian said.

  The tech rattled off a string of coordinates that Alex couldn’t follow. But from the graphics she gathered that the Beta Vine and the Crucible were both keeping steady on the opposite side of Greentrees from the enemy ship. It was possible that the Furs didn’t even know the other two ships, one a captured vessel of their own, even existed. Julian had surprise on his side.

  He said, “Any signaling detected?”

  “No signals on any wavelength. Wait… an orbital probe is doing a close flyby… visual from the probe. Switching to magnified visual, sir.”

  Suddenly the screen showed the ship in blurry detail. The living quarters pod was nearly at the full length of the pole away from the superdense mass disk. A sudden burst of brightness came from the ship.

  “What’s that?” Alex said involuntarily.

  The brightness resolved itself into tiny glittering flecks. The focused cloud of flecks grew bigger and bigger, and then the probe flew into them.

  A few moments later the picture disappeared.

  “Probe signal lost, sir.”

  “That was a weapon,” Alex said, “but not a beam of any type. It was a glittery sort of spray.”

  Julian said, “Beta Vine. Enemy ship has destroyed an orbital probe. Stand by, prepare to attack.”

  “Enemy vessel stopping,” the tech said.

  A few minutes later, “Enemy vessel assuming high Greentrees orbit.”

  “Crucible and Beta Vine, match orbit speed with enemy one hundred eighty degrees offset,” Julian said. “Stay behind planet until further orders. Alex, is there anything in the Furs’ previous visit to Greentrees about a weapon like this? Or anything close to this?”

  “Not that I ever heard of.”

  Julian spoke rapidly on another channel, ordering a deebees search. Alex knew the records from those early days of the colony were skimpy. People had just been too busy building and surviving to enter much information into the deebees. Although surely if the Furs had had anything as alien as this …

  She said suddenly, “Jake might know. He’s the only one still alive who went off-planet with the Furs, except of course Karim Mahjoub and Lucy Lasky.” Who had been gone thirty-nine years and were probably dead.

  “Comlink Jake,” Julian said.

  “I can’t. His evac end point is in a cave; no signals will get through.”

  Julian was silent a moment “Then go there, Alex. There’s nothing more for you to do here, and I’ll be in comlink at all times. You can talk to Jake best and you saw what happened to the probe. I’ll get rover here to take you.”

  Alex hesitated. This went contrary to all Julian’s previous plans about preserving Mira leadership to direct unknown future actions. But she was far from her designated end point anyway, and Julian knew better than she how to handle this kind of situation. And—yes, admit it—she didn’t want to look like a coward. “All right. Assign me a dedicated comlink channel.”

  The rover arrived in less than half an hour, driven not by any of Greentrees recruits usually used as drivers but by a Terran soldier. Alex had learned to read the shoulder insignia; this was a captain. She was surprised that Julian would spare such an important soldier to go with her.

  “He can fight,” Julian said briefly. “You drive.”

  Alex didn’t argue. “That leaves just you and the tech here,” Alex said, noticing for the first time that the tech was not that but one of the Terran scientists who had come with Julian on the Crucible. Well, the computer equipment in the bunker was Terran, also off Julian’s ship.

  “Comlink me as soon as you talk to Jake,” Julian said. He didn’t kiss her, but his eyes held so much feeling that Alex felt warmed.

  It was daylight outside the bunker, a cool clear morning. Hope of Heaven, a mile across the plain where the river made a wide bend, looked no different for last night’s murders, no different for Wong Yat-Shing’s absence, no different for the presence of the Fur ship, silent in high orbit. The rebel settlement’s graceful buildings rose from beds of bright flowers. Dew wetted the grass. Somewhere to Alex’s left something small rustled in the purple groundcover. Sunlight sparkled on the river.

  She got in the rover and drove as fast as possible toward the cave where Jake, feeble in his wheelchair, awaited war.

  Jake’s end point was pitifully visible. The tram tracks stopped only a hundred yards away. Security had done what it could to disguise the entrance with brush and to erase the signs of having wheeled or dragged patients from the tram end to the cave, but their efforts were pathetic. Jake was right; the sick and old were at the most disadvantage during fighting, and they endangered those who cared lor them, as well. But what other choice was there? These were Greenies, and they could neither travel far nor be left behind. Alex climbed out of the rover, leaving the two soldiers behind, and started toward the cave.

  “Halt! State your name and business!” a young voice called, and Alex was back in the horror of the night before, two young Greentrees soldiers bleeding on the ground with spears in their chests.

  “Alex Cutler, tray-o,” she said impatiently, “to see Jake Holman.”

  “Ms. Cutler?” the voice said, and a helmet poked around a clump of brush, followed by the guard.

  Not a Terran highly technical helmet, Alex noted, and not armed very well. Don’t waste valuable resources on the sick and the old. She should understand that, resource allocation was her business. And yet something in her cringed.

  Then she saw that the girl was crying.

  “What is it?” she said sharply. She’d comlinked with Ashraf and Julian just five minutes ago from the rover: no movement from the ship, nothing happening on the ground.

  “I’m … I’m sorry,” the girl sobbed. “I know I shouldn’t… st
ate your b-b- business.”

  Alex fished a handkerchief from a fold of her wrap. The girl, she saw, was young even by Julian’s recruitment standards. But, no, this wasn’t one of Julian’s but an evacuation volunteer.

  The girl blew her nose and wiped her eyes while Alex stood by helplessly. She was no good at this sort of thing. Finally the girl said, “Are the Furs attacking yet?”

  “No. Why are you crying?”

  “Mary Pesci was my sister.”

  Again the picture in the mind of the dead soldiers at Hope of Heaven. No escaping it, for any of Greentrees.

  “Why did the wild Furs kill her?” the girl cried. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Ms. Cutler,” came the voice in her ear, “you are exposed in the open. Please move into the cave.” Her new bodyguard.

  Alex led the sobbing girl toward the cave. “What’s your name?”

  “T-T-TiraPesci.”

  “Tira, how did you learn Mary was dead?”

  “A friend c-comlinked me. It’s… all over M-MiraNet.”

  Of course it was. This time, no EMP had knocked out communications. Yet.

  “M-Mary was older th-than me. I couldn’t qu-qu-qu—”

  “I’m so sorry,” Alex said helplessly.

  “—qualify for Commander Martin’s army.”

  “I’ll find Jake Holman myself,” Alex said.

  “Y-yes. I’m back on d-duty.” Tira left her at the mouth of the cave.

  Poor child. The other dead kid, Mesbah Shanab, must also have a grieving family. Alex ducked through the brush, which scratched her face and arms. She wished savagely for Threadmores instead of this stupid wrap.

  The cave was long and narrow. Powerlights illuminated the beds and wheelchairs lining both rough stone walls. Volunteers bent over some of the cots, feeding or tending patients. A few people nodded at Alex, but no one questioned her presence. She had, after all, been passed on through by their guard detail. Such as it was.

  Her people, she realized all over again, were not of the right temperament or background to fight a war.

  She found Jake asleep on a cot at the back of the cave. Duncan Martin sat reading in Jake’s wheelchair.