If Tomorrow Comes

by Nancy Kress

  Slowly she nodded. “I know you wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Leo. I know you wouldn’t.” She put her hand on his arm.

  His anger, immediate and hot, dissipated. She was learning him, too. He was not—quite apart from his Army vows—not the kind of man who would shoot a rival. Or let him get shot, not if Leo could stop it. Which meant—didn’t it?—that he and Salah were rivals, that maybe he had a chance with her.

  Now it was her hand on his arm that burned.

  She moved it to his face, briefly touching his cheek. Then the hand was gone and she said, “We only have ten minutes left. Let’s learn some more Kindred conversation.”

  * * *

  Marianne, almost too tired to walk, left Big Lab. They had stockpiled—how many doses of vaccine for tomorrow? She didn’t know, but she did know it wasn’t enough. But they were out of culture, out of syringes, out of time.

  Passing the kitchen, she heard the low murmur of voices. Isabelle and—who? It didn’t sound like Salah. Then the voice came again, a young and deep chuckle, and Marianne recognized Leo Brodie. What were he and Isabelle doing together?

  Not her business. Still, it was good that someone could chuckle, could find something amusing right now. And Leo was the best of the Rangers, infinitely preferable to bristly and profane Zoe Berman or silent Mason Kandiss or Lieutenant Lamont, who more than the others filled Marianne with dislike.

  She knocked softly on the door of the room where Noah and his family slept. No answer. Quietly she opened the door. Llaa^moh¡ was at work in Big Lab. Noah lay asleep, Lily in the curve of his arm. Marianne opened the door wider to let light spill into the tiny room. Lily breathed normally, her face with its skin lighter than both her mother’s natural copper and her father’s artificial tint, unflushed. The virus in the vaccine had not sickened her, at least not so far. Of course, it might not be protecting her, either. There was no way to know any of this until the spore cloud hit.

  So much they didn’t know. But hadn’t the same thing been true on Terra, when she and Harrison and the others had worked so feverishly to create a vaccine that had not, after all, been necessary?

  Harrison. Sometimes it bothered her how little she thought about him. She had lived with him for a handful of years, mourned his death from a heart attack, taken no lovers since. But she knew, in the deepest part of her only rarely admitted, that she had not loved him, not really. Nor her dead husband, Kyle, nor her most exciting lover, Tim. Her love had been reserved for her children and—further admission—even they had come in second to her work. She would never be mother of the year—any year. But one advantage of being in one’s sixties was that you accepted who you were, for better or worse.

  Marianne closed the door. It was good that Noah slept; he would need his strength for tomorrow. She needed to sleep, too. Now that Ree^ka was gone, Marianne’s room was again her own. Unsuperstitious, she wasn’t kept awake by Ree^ka’s having died there. As soon as she lay on the pallet, Marianne slept.

  Nonetheless, she dreamed—another rarity—of Ree^ka. The Mother of Mothers stood alone on a high hill. Below her swarmed leelees, hundreds of them, with human faces. Some tried to jump onto the hill to bite Ree^ka. Marianne could see their faces: Leo, Harrison, Branch, the dead ambassador Maria Gonzalez, Salah, and, most disturbingly, Lily. Throughout, the Mother of Mothers remained serene, raising her arms high and smiling, until the orange sun descended on her and she dissolved into mist and was no more.

  CHAPTER 15

  The sun stained a faint strip of sky near the horizon, the rest obscured by thick clouds. A stiff breeze bent the trees in the distance, and occasionally a puff of spicy scent rode the air through the open east door of the compound. Salah could have done without the wind, but at least it wasn’t raining. Yet. Dawns were cool on Kindred and he shivered, but not from cold. He wore his Terran clothes, shoes and pants and jacket, and he needed to be quick out the door.

  It was vaccine day. Lamont did not want Salah to be among those leaving the compound.

  Steve and Josh McGuire had arrived during the night. The first-expedition brothers looked so much alike they could have been twins. Large, silent, shaggy, they looked exactly like what they had been on Terra and were now on Kindred: miners. Dirt seemed permanently embedded under their nails, in the seams of their faces. Isabelle had told Salah that they had always kept to themselves. The copper mine they had gone to work in fifteen years ago, they now owned due to a combination of superior expertise, insanely hard work, and isolation. They participated in no social activities near the mine. They had learned only as much of the language as necessary. Nominally they belonged to Isabelle’s lahk, but they rarely visited, not even for illathil. They took no lovers; in the rich interconnecting gossip of the lahks, everyone would have known. They had come to the compound now, at the twelfth hour, only because of the spore cloud.

  “I greet you,” Salah had said, first in Kindred and then in English. They stared at him. Steve finally nodded; Josh turned away with a look Salah recognized. On Earth, he’d encountered it whenever he was the sole Arab-American in a conservative backwater town.

  These were the Terrans that would accompany him into the camp.

  “They’re there only for protection,” Noah said, “or at least the illusion of protection. Just to deal with any pushing and shoving. They look threatening, is all.”

  “They are threatening,” Salah said. “They’re armed.”

  “No, Doctor, that’s not possible. We don’t—”

  “They’re armed,” Salah said flatly. “Ask them.”

  Noah, looking impatient, had asked. He’d returned slightly shaken. “They have guns. Kindred-made guns. I didn’t know how the … they can’t go into the camp like that.”

  “Isn’t that Isabelle’s decision?” Salah said, knowing it was. Isabelle was mother to the Terran lahk since Marianne, the oldest woman, had refused the position. Salah wanted as much protection as possible for Isabelle. If Steve and Josh had possessed guns for a while without killing anyone, they were probably not wild-eyed and trigger-happy.

  Noah, defeated, held a long colloquy with the McGuires. The brothers kept their guns.

  The vaccine team would go into the camp in three groups of three. Each group held someone who could speak Kindred to explain and soothe, a scientist to administer vaccine, and a Terran to handle any mild rebellion. For major rebellion, they had the Rangers.

  But not accompanying them. Both Noah and Isabelle had argued with Lieutenant Lamont, who remained firm. More than firm; his air of sly triumph had driven Salah from antipathy to rage. He disliked the Rangers on principle, but for Lamont he felt contempt. Racists always deserved contempt.

  “It isn’t my mission to vaccinate Kinnies,” he’d told Isabelle. “My mission is to protect members of the Second Terran Expedition and get them home safely, which is why none of them are going with you. Your so-called lahk can do what it likes, but my squad will provide you only with cover if you choose to retreat. That’s all. I’m not risking good troops on a medical mission to insurgents, that has no chance of succeeding anyway.”

  Isabelle had asked mildly, “Do your soldiers agree with you, Lieutenant?”

  “Irrelevant, Ms. Rhinehart. Subject closed.”

  Provide you only with cover. Which meant a chance to shoot Kindred if necessary, but not to make possible saving more lives.

  That had been last night. Now nine people assembled in Big Lab: Isabelle, Noah, Ka^graa, the McGuires, three more Kindred, Salah. They walked through the east door toward the refugee camp, Salah in the center of them. It would take the entire US Marine Corps to stop him. He was a doctor; Isabelle was going; no punk lieutenant two-thirds his age was going to push him around. And what could Lamont, stationed by the east door with Zoe Berman, both in full kit, actually do to stop him? Shoot?

  “Stop, Doctor!” Lamont said.

  Salah kept walking, waiting for Lamont to seize him, or to order Berman to do so. Would she? Of course. Would the McGuir
es try to stop that? Probably not; their investment in this was minimal. They weren’t the kind of men who avoided danger, but neither did they look possessed of humanitarian impulses. If Berman or Lamont fought with Salah, there was no doubt whatsoever that Salah would lose.

  The order didn’t come. It took a moment before Salah realized why. Lamont was protecting the second-expedition members, but only those he considered fully human. Despite his posturing, he really didn’t care what happened to Salah as long as they had Claire as doctor.

  Towel-head. Dune coon. Camel fucker. Salah had heard them all.

  Just as they reached the edge of the camp, Salah looked back at Lamont. He couldn’t see the lieutenant’s face under his helmet and behind his goggles. But his stance was completely different from the man who’d bristled with irritable exhaustion last night. Lamont stood with alert confidence, every line of him controlled and full of power.

  Why?

  The camp had not been told that the vaccine was coming today, to avoid any organized rush. Nor did the refugees know that only children would be receiving the limited supplies of vaccine. But as the nine people approached from the compound, tents opened and men rushed out, stared, ducked back in. Women starting their morning cook fires stopped, eyes even wider than evolution had provided. Noah began in loud Kindred, “I greet you! We bring a gift for your children, who carry the hopes of all our futures—”

  It had begun.

  The sun disappeared behind the looming clouds, and the wind smelled of rain.

  * * *

  Owen was different this morning.

  Leo knew it as soon as he saw the lieutenant, and immediately he knew why. Shit. Well, not Leo’s call, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t done it himself. Only once, though. Once was enough.

  His eyes met Zoe’s as they went through weapons check, and then cut sideways to Owen. Leo raised his eyebrows. Zoe, grim, gave a small nod and put on her helmet.

  They crouched on top of the roof, Zoe with her SCAR and Leo with the long-range sniper rifle. The nine people in the vaccinating groups crossed the perimeter. Salah Bourgiba was among them, which surprised Leo, but Owen hadn’t stopped the doctor and that, too, was Owen’s call. A sudden fragment from last night’s conversation with Isabelle invaded his mind: Damn, Leo, you’re almost Kindred yourself in the way you accept authority! She’d been teasing, but somehow the remark stung a little anyway.

  She was there, too, walking beside Bourgiba. Now Isabelle, Josh McGuire, and a Kindred scientist split off from the rest and headed slightly north, toward a group of tents where three women stood outside, little kids in their arms or clinging to their legs. Leo moved his scope slightly in that direction.

  The camp started to boil. That’s how Leo pictured it—a big pot of water that usually simmered but now started to bubble faster, throwing off heat and steam. Some men and women went into tents; some came out of them. Groups formed, dissolved, reformed. Steve McGuire, bulky next to the slim Kindred, stood between Llaa^moh¡ and a woman who was screaming at her. Noah Jenner gestured as he talked with a group of men. Isabelle put her hand on a woman’s arm, probably trying to persuade her to let them vaccinate her child. The woman first waggled her chin, which meant no, and then moved her head side to side, which—it had taken Leo a while to adjust to this—meant yes. She held out the kid, who immediately opened its mouth to scream.

  “Christ,” Zoe muttered, too low for the radio to pick up. “Chaos.”

  Owen said, “Brodie, report.”

  “No weapons visible, not yet. A group of men forming at eleven o’clock, they look angry. People rushing from tent to tent, probably spreading the news about vaccinating just kids.”

  “Copy. Berman, see anything different?”

  “Seems there are more people total than yesterday. Maybe snuck in at night.”

  “Brodie?”

  “Could be. Hard to be sure.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  But there was. Leo saw the Kindred cops he’d sort of recruited, Lu^kaj^ho and three others, moving through the crowd. They had on the cloaklike things they wore for rain, although it wasn’t raining. Did that mean they had weapons underneath? That wasn’t part of what Leo had, laboriously, instructed them to do, and not part of Kindred life as Isabelle described it. Although Kindred life was obviously changing as it—maybe—came to an end.

  “Something going on now at ten o’clock, four hundred yards,” Leo said. “A group of men wearing cloaks, possible weapons underneath, moving toward Noah Jenner’s group—no, they went into a tent.”

  Tension prickled Leo’s skin like lice. For ten minutes, nothing happened. The three groups from the compound explained, argued, stuck syringes into kids. Women without kids in tow moved from tent to tent. Were they just spreading news, or were carrying messages about an attack? If Lu^kaj^ho detected the latter, he would signal Leo.

  Jenner’s and Bourgiba’s groups moved farther into the camp; Isabelle’s still worked the tents closer to the perimeter. The air filled with the cries of children, mingling with those of birds wheeling overhead.

  No, not birds—these were closer to reptiles, Isabelle had told him, and were called … something that began with B or maybe P …

  Then it all happened at once.

  Lu^kaj^ho raised his arm in signal to Leo. Three different groups of men, boys, and a few women, all cloaked, emerged from three scattered tents and walked purposefully toward the perimeter. Two of them took a circuitous route, keeping groups of people or tents or vaccinators between themselves and the compound. The third, moving faster, came directly on.

  “Here they come!” Zoe said.

  Owen said, “The first motherfucker that sets one toe onto the perimeter, open fire.”

  Get down, Isabelle! But she didn’t. She saw the men and began running toward them, leaving the Kindred scientist holding a child with Steve McGuire standing beside him. Did Isabelle think she could talk down this group? No chance.… Leo knew a full-out-fucking-serious attack when he saw it.

  A man rushed into the open zone and Leo dropped him.

  He hoped that would stop it. It didn’t. The others hit the dirt but they didn’t open fire. One of the men not in the group ran into the perimeter, pulled something from his cloak, and hurled it at the compound. Steve McGuire, closest, pulled a gun and fired, but someone else shot him in the back.

  A bomb—the fucker had hurled a bomb. He would find out soon enough that a Molotov wasn’t going to stop anything. These people had no idea what ordnance was, they couldn’t make anything that could—

  It wasn’t a Molotov. A huge explosion at the east door blew out the wall of the compound, knocking Leo off the roof. He fell eight feet and landed hard, but a second later was on his feet, still clutching his rifle. Smoke thick as cotton filled the air. Leo coughed and stumbled, unable to see anything. Gunfire from above—Zoe was still firing. Kandiss and Owen, they’d been right in front of the east door.…

  Figures rushed past him in the smoke and flying debris. The compound was breached and enemy flowed inside in search of more vaccine … was there any more? Incongruously, Leo realized he didn’t know.

  All this took only a nanosecond. Then some of the smoke cleared and Leo was firing at the enemy still running toward the compound. When they either were dead or had turned tail, he turned toward the east door. Kandiss lay there, his huge body still, and an insurgent was raising a pipe gun to fire. Leo swung his weapon around. But before he could shoot, a crack! came from his right and the enemy fell. Leo spun around. Isabelle stood there, blackened from smoke and dirt, holding Steve McGuire’s gun.

  “Get down!” Leo yelled, at the same moment that Zoe’s voice crackled over the radio, “No more enemy approaching!”

  “Fire if they do,” Owen said. “Brodie, Kandiss, room clearing!”

  “Kandiss is hit,” Leo said. “I’m coming in.”

  Half the east wall was gone off the compound. Injured or dead lay on t
he floor of the Big Lab. Screams came from the clinic. Leo and Owen ran down the walkway.

  In the first room, three Kindred scientists stood backed against the far wall. Two men stood in front of them, spinning around as Leo and Owen entered. The men both fired, but Leo and Owen were faster. The pipe guns sprayed the ceiling as the men fell.

  Other rooms held more Kindred, one actually on his knees peering under a pallet for vaccine. All of them dropped their pathetic weapons and raised their hands. Leo kicked away the guns and Kindred scientists rushed in to tie them up.

  In the last room, at the far end of the clinic, a Kindred held Noah Jenner’s little girl, a knife at her throat. Marianne Jenner lay on the floor where he had flung her.

  Leo didn’t even hesitate. He had a clear shot, he had surprise on his side, he had the man’s stupidity—the fucker didn’t even hold the kid to cover his own face. Leo fired and the man’s brains splattered on the wall behind him. He dropped Lily, who screamed and screamed.

  Marianne Jenner moved, moaned, raised her head, and crawled toward her granddaughter.

  Owen said, “Brodie, bring in Kandiss, then take the roof with Berman. I’ll take the east door.”

  There was no east door anymore, but Leo got the point. He sprinted back down the covered walkway. The vaccinators rushed into Big Lab, including Isabelle and Bourgiba. But not enough vaccinators—who had been killed? Leo heard Salah say, “Isabelle, triage … where is Claire? Somebody find her—”

  Kandiss was moving feebly on the ground. Alive, then. Leo dragged him through the nonexistent wall and over to Bourgiba. “Doctor!”

  Bourgiba looked up from a Kindred that even Leo could see was too far gone to survive and ran to Kandiss. “Ranger, can you hear me?”

  Kandiss moaned.

  “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  Kandiss’s eyelids twitched, then slowly opened.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “T-two.”

  “Excellent.” Bourgiba asked a few more questions, peered into Kandiss’s eyes with a tiny flashlight, removed his helmet and ran his hands over Kandiss’s head. “You’ve probably got a concussion—there’s a nasty bump on your head—but I think you’ll be fine. Any other injuries?”