by Nancy Kress
“Brodie, hold them there. On my way.”
Leo said to Dr. Jenner, “Ma’am, can you tell me the reason you want to leave the safety of the compound?”
Noah said, “Don’t tell him anything, Mom. Ranger, you can’t hold us here.”
“I’m only asking your destination and intentions.”
“Neither is your business.”
“Noah,” Dr. Jenner said. “Ranger, we’re going up to the lahk to see the Mother of Mothers.”
The old lady that Kandiss said had arrived this afternoon. “It’s not a good time for a social visit, ma’am.”
“It isn’t social,” Noah snapped. “Step aside, please.”
Owen strode up to them. “Dr. Jenner, I’m sorry but you can’t leave here.”
Noah said, “The hell I can’t!”
“You can, Mr. Jenner. You do, often. But Dr. Jenner is vital to creating vaccines, and my charge is to protect that mission. My unit cannot spare the troops to protect her away from the compound.”
Before Noah could speak again, Dr. Jenner jumped in. “Why don’t you get more soldiers by training some of the Kindred?”
Christ, for an old lady who looked exhausted, she was feisty! Her hand rested on Noah’s arm, keeping him from saying anything else. Leo, face impassive, waited. Leo already knew the answer—Owen didn’t trust the Kindred because any one of them could be an infiltrator—but he wanted to know what Owen would say.
“Because I choose not to, ma’am. Now will you return inside or will Corporal Brodie have to carry you in?”
Noah stepped forward. What the fuck—Jenner wore one of those girlish dresses like they all did; he was unarmed; he was tall but skinny and not very muscled. Owen was a Ranger in full kit: armor, helmet, rifle, sidearm. What did Jenner think he could do?
“Noah, no,” his mother said. “I’m going back inside. We can resolve this in the morning.”
“Mom—”
“No.”
Leo almost felt sorry for the guy—ordered around like a ten-year-old by his mother. But Jenner didn’t look humiliated, just angry, and not at Dr. Jenner. She had pointedly turned and headed back inside. Noah strode off into the night.
“Back on duty, Brodie.”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later Leo toggled his radio to the private frequency he shared with Zoe, on roof duty and undoubtedly observing the whole thing. She said, “Jesus, Leo.”
“Yeah. And you didn’t even see Lamont. Something’s eating him, Zo.” Leo thought. “I mean, more than everything eating everybody.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“See anything strange from up there?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
An hour later, her voice sounded on his wrister, this time on the squad frequency. “Alert. Code two. Near perimeter breached, seven o’clock.”
He raced around the compound to the site. A litter was entering the perimeter from the direction of the house on the hill, carried by four strong fighting-age males. On it, sitting against a pile of pillows, was an old woman. Christ—the pillows could conceal more pipe guns, explosives, anything. Leo unslung his rifle and released the charging handle; it made an audible clack. “Go back. Now,” he said, in Kindese. Behind him, he knew, Zoe crouched at the edge of the roof, weapons at the ready. Owen had gone back to the ready room to snatch a few hours’ sleep; Kandiss was on patrol.
One of the litter bearers, scowling, jabbered at Leo in Kindred, too fast for him to catch any words.
“Go back,” he said, not gesturing, not taking his hands off his rifle or his eyes off the group. At the edge of the camp, figures paused, grouped, started forward. More men, a few women. Nobody armed, as far as he could tell, but you never knew.
Movement behind him. At the same moment Zoe said, “Isabelle Rhinehart. Not armed.”
She ran from the compound to Leo. “Don’t shoot!”
“Tell them to go back to your lahk, or else inside the camp. Now.”
Isabelle called to the litter bearers, saying Christ knew what. Leo felt his adrenaline pumping. If the men laid down the litter or the old lady reached under the pillows …
Isabelle said, “They’re not leaving. But I told the men to not let go of the litter with even one hand.”
God, she was quick! “Tell the old lady to keep her hands where I can see them. While they go back.”
“They’re not going back, Corporal. That’s the Mother of Mothers.”
And what kind of stupid name was that for a president or dictator or whatever the hell she was? It sounded like a nursery-school teacher. But Isabelle talked some more, and the old lady raised her hands. Then she squinched her behind along the litter to the edge, painful slow movements. The men lowered the litter to within a few inches of the ground, scowling at Leo.
Isabelle said, “I’m going to help her. I’ll stay out of your line of fire. Okay?”
He hesitated. Orders were nobody in, nobody out. “She can’t come in.”
“I vouch for her. Leo, you can’t shoot a hundred-and-two-year-old mother. Or me.”
A hundred and two? But those weren’t Earth years. Still, she looked a hundred and two. When she tried to slip off the edge of the litter, she staggered and fell. One of the bearers let go of his pole with one hand and reached it toward her. Then he glanced at Leo and put his hand back on the karthwood.
Isabelle ran forward and helped the ancient woman to her feet.
Leo said quickly, “Don’t shoot, Zoe.”
“Jesus, Leo!”
“On my responsibility.”
She held her fire. Kandiss came toward them at a dead run, sidearm drawn.
Isabelle and the Mother of Mothers tottered across the perimeter. And Leo let them because Isabelle was right: He couldn’t shoot her and a hundred-and-two tottering old bird, even if he was court-martialed for disobeying orders. If he shot, Terrans would never again be trusted on Kindred. Also, there were hundreds of people in that camp; even unarmed, their sheer numbers could overwhelm the squad and then what would they do to the other Terrans inside, to the whole vaccine program? The Ranger creed said I will complete this mission, though I be the lone survivor. Well, this was the way to complete it: by disobeying Owen’s order.
And Leo wasn’t a Ranger, anyway.
It took a long time for Isabelle to get the old lady across the hundred yards of cleared perimeter and into the lab door. By that time, people from inside the compound crowded the doorway, but nobody challenged Leo’s order to stay inside. The door closed. Kandiss said, “Returning to outer perimeter, unless…”
“Stay here for now,” Leo said. “I’ll wake Lamont.” What was he doing deciding this? Kandiss outranked him! One lousy alien planet and the command structure fell apart? Not if Owen had anything to say about it.
Kandiss said only, “Camp is quiet.”
“Great,” Leo said. He could feel the adrenaline still coursing. It had nowhere to go. The feeling was sour, like too much bad beer you couldn’t vomit up. He knew that Zoe and Kandiss felt it, too. Rangers were trained for action. Inaction was hard.
He called Lieutenant Lamont.
* * *
Salah didn’t know that anything was going on outside until it was all over.
He’d been reading on his bunk, one of three stacked in the ex–storage room he shared with biologist Ha^jak¡ and Branch Carter, although Branch now slept in the leelee lab. Salah had about fifty books on his tablet, which was good because he wasn’t ever going to get any more. Marianne might have some on her laptop, but file transfer was beyond Kindred. Still, as long as the tablet held out, Salah could reread War and Peace or medical journals now decades out of date, or the poetry of al-Mutanabbi.
Austin Rhinehart flung open the door without knocking. “Doctor! Isabelle wants you! Ranger Brodie almost shot the Mother of Mothers!”
Salah stared at Austin, flushed with excitement. What the boy said made no sense. When he didn’t answer right
away, Austin turned sulky, deflated at the lack of response.
“It’s true. And Isabelle wants you.” He vanished.
Salah caught up with him in the middle of the milling, gesturing crowd filling the central area of Big Lab. He caught phrases in Kindred:
“… did not know the…”
“… should not be permitted…”
“Mother of Mothers…”
“… attack…”
“Austin,” he said, grabbing him by the shoulder, “What happened? And where is Isabelle?”
“The Rangers almost shot the Mother of Mothers because she crossed the perimeter and Isabelle stopped them and she’s with Dr. Jenner. Hey, Graa^lok!” He plunged across the room toward his friend.
Salah pushed his way through the crowd to the clinic and Marianne’s room. The tiny space was jammed with people: Marianne, Claire, Isabelle, Ha^jak¡, Ka^graa, Llaa^moh¡. At least there were no Rangers present. Propped up on pillows on Marianne’s bed, puffing with exertion, sat a wizened woman with fantastically lined copper skin. There were cloudy white circles at the edge of her filmy dark irises. Her bare feet extended straight in front of her, the toes dusky blue and the legs swollen.
Cyanosis, edema, arcus senilis, cataracts. Probable congestive heart failure. This lady was very sick.
Isabelle made a curious gesture that Salah hadn’t seen before: a small circle with two fingers in front of her forehead. Some sort of salute, maybe. She said in English, “This is the Mother of Mothers. You address her as Ree^ka-mak. She wants to speak to you in World.”
Salah said, “I greet you, Ree^ka-mak.”
“I greet you, Salah-mak.” Her voice was low but clear, without the quaver of her dying body. The filmy eyes had followed the sound of his voice. How much could she see through the cataracts?
She said, “You come from Terra, the long-ago place.”
“Yes.” Beside him, Isabelle translated in a low murmur for Marianne and Claire. Salah hoped his Kindese was up to this. Tenses in this difficult language were very complicated. In addition to past, present, and future, different inflections indicated different states of being for each: absolute, tentative, in flux, rotational. There were also degrees of rank carried by different wording. He could not afford miscommunication here.
Ree^ka said, “You bring vaccines to prevent deaths from the spore cloud.” Tentative state of being. He matched it.
“We bring some vaccines and we try to make more.”
“So Marianne-mak says. She says you have enough already for fifty of my people.”
“Yes.”
“How will you decide who will receive these fifty gifts of life?” Future tense, in flux.
There had been conferences about vaccine allotment among himself, Marianne, and Claire. There actually remained fifty-two vaccine syringes; two had been reserved for Noah’s wife and child. Salah knew that in giving way to Marianne on this he had subverted what he was going to say next before he’d even said it, but it had not been possible to deny Marianne. Or Noah. Salah said, “That is for the people of World to decide.”
Ree^ka-mak said, “You are not saying everything.”
How did she know? For a nanosecond, bizarre thoughts swept through Salah’s mind: telepathy, primitive magic. But of course it was not that. Either the Mother of Mothers had a highly developed ability to hear the nuances in voices, which sometimes happened with the blind, or else she was on a fishing expedition. Salah repeated, “That will be for the people of World to decide.”
“There are many people outside this lahk who wish that vaccine.”
“Yes.”
“You have brought soldiers with weapons to keep them out.”
How to explain the Ranger unit that had somehow morphed from an honor guard into a self-appointed and dangerous entity with its own ideas of what should happen here? Salah knew a refugee camp could be dangerous; he’d spent two years in the Mideast with Doctors Without Borders. The Rangers protected the compound, for which Salah was grateful, but he didn’t trust Lamont and his three war machines. “The soldiers keep them out, yes.”
“Until they do not.”
“I cannot say what will happen, Ree^ka-mak. Perhaps it helps if the Mother of Mothers speaks to the camp.”
“I have spoken.”
When? Then Isabelle murmured to him in English, “Through the radio and through the lahk mothers.”
He said to her, “There was a radio broadcast? Were we told about this?”
“I only learned it myself ten minutes ago. We’ve been busy in the lab, Salah. But maybe one of us should monitor the radio.”
“Yes.” As he and Isabelle spoke, the Mother of Mothers watched—no, listened—sharply. Salah said to her, “I ask what Ree^ka-mak said to the camp.”
“I told them they must be patient,” she said, and the tense was one Salah had not heard before.
“What … may I ask what the camp replied?”
“It is not a single thing, this camp.”
That he could well believe. Humans, even in a united cause, were individuals. Salah waited.
“Some in the camp said yes to patience,” Ree^ka-mak said. “Some did not reply. Do you understand what that means, Salah-mak?”
“Yes,” he said, because he did. He’d been here before, in far different cultures, but with the same situation.
When the Mother of Mothers spoke again, the tense was clear to him: future absolute. “Some will attack to get the vaccine.”
As soon as Isabelle had translated, Branch pushed forward. Salah had not heard him come from the leelee lab. The young man blurted out in English, “Won’t the others in the camp try to stop anybody trying to steal vaccine? There must be cops there! Are there cops there?”
Isabelle said, “Yes.”
“Won’t the cops stop the others from rushing us?”
“Translate, please,” Ree^ka-mak said sharply.
Isabelle did. The Mother of Mothers, an old and dying woman, leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes. It was Isabelle who answered Branch.
“Nobody knows, Branch. Nobody knows.”
CHAPTER 10
Salah took every opportunity to talk to Isabelle. There weren’t many, but he watched for them. He noticed that Leo Brodie was doing the same thing, exchanging a few words with her as he went on and came off duty. Once Salah found them in the tiny clinic kitchen at one of the few times it was not occupied by Kindred cooks making huge pots of vegetable stew. Brodie and Isabelle laughed as they brewed coffee, or what passed for coffee here. Salah could not drink it; evidently Brodie could. He was trying to speak Kindese and she was correcting his pronunciation, which was terrible. Still, Salah was surprised at how much Kindese Leo had picked up.
But he could discuss things with Isabelle as far beyond the scope of someone like Brodie as a planet beyond an empty moon. He outwaited Brodie. When he finally left the kitchen, Salah said to Isabelle, “I know you’re on radio duty now, but another quick question about World culture? I want to know as much as I can.”
“That’s good. Leo does, too, and I think he’s the only one of the squad who’s really considered that they may be here for the rest of their lives.”
Salah didn’t want to talk about what Brodie did or did not consider. He said, “Two questions. First—did the Kindred ever really expect us to come here? Or did they leave us the ship plans fully expecting that since we didn’t have the ready-made parts they did, we would never be able to build any ships?”
Isabelle hesitated. Finally she said, “I’ve asked myself that. I don’t know the answer, and I couldn’t get any answer from anyone here.”
“The Council of Mothers must have known that trade with Terra, free emigration from Terra, could disrupt Kindred’s entire delicate culture.”
“I don’t know. I’m only a junior member of the Council, you know.”
“But it—”
“Salah, I don’t know.”
Or else she didn’t want to know. H
e dropped back to an easier question. “I never see any religious practices on Kindred. What is religion like here?”
“Lukewarm.” Isabelle smiled. “Well, not uniformly. There are different groups here and there, and a few are still fervent about ancestor worship and a mother goddess, but mostly it’s just leftover songs and customs.”
“Probably goddess worship was what led to your matrilineal culture.”
“Probably.” She didn’t seem much interested in this idea. “But bu^ka^tel is what matters. Salah—why do you dislike Lieutenant Lamont’s Rangers so much?”
The question caught him off guard. “I’m a doctor. I dislike organizations devoted to death and maiming.”
“Not fair.”
He didn’t care if it was fair or not. Jealousy kindled in him, a small destructive flame. “Why do you like the soldiers so much?”
She spoke slowly, considering. “They’re not pampered. They’ve all seen action, risked death, killed people if they had to. I think all that makes you come to terms with what the world is. They don’t blow small stuff into major catastrophes because they know what big stuff actually looks like. They don’t whine. They just carry on.”
Salah recognized in this description the antithesis of Isabelle’s sister. He did not say this. “I think you may be romanticizing the army.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Back to religion, if I may. What is one of these leftover customs?”
“Well, illathil, but you probably already know about that.”
“I don’t.”
She seemed surprised, and then amused. “Really? Nobody told you? Well, you’ll see for yourself. It’s only two days off.”
* * *
Marianne sat on a big pillow embroidered with flowers and watched the alien celebration unfolding in the open central area of the Big Lab. She had wanted to use this time to try the newest iteration of the synthetic vaccination on the leelees, but Isabelle had gently explained that was impossible until illathil was over. “It’s supposed to go on for two days, but because of the circumstances, we’ll compress it to a few hours. But no one will do anything else until then.”