by Nancy Kress
“There are round bumps on all four faces,” Beyon-mak said. “That’s all. I’m guessing a long and complex sequence of presses—but who knows what they are? Austin?”
“I don’t know!”
“Of course he doesn’t know,” Tony said. “Probably nobody knows, or maybe the Mother of Mothers does—it doesn’t matter. We don’t want the ship. But that goddamn Ranger does, and he can have it. We’re taking this thing out to him.”
We. But there would be no we. One person, Lamont had said.
Tony said to Austin, “If you and Graylock found this thing and didn’t know what it was, how does Lamont know it even exists? Who did you tell about Haven?”
“I … Noah followed me here! But he said he already knew, Tony! He knew you were here!”
“Of course he did,” Beyon-mak said, straightening. He had sand on the knees of his pants. “But he didn’t know about this device. Who did you tell about it?”
“Nobody!” But he had a sickening memory of talking to Leo. What had he said to Leo, he couldn’t remember …
“It was you,” Tony said. “It had to be you. Nate, Graylock, take everybody into the backup cave.”
Claire said, “Backup cave?”
Tony actually grinned. “Separate airshaft, separate third entrance, tight closing door. Don’t underestimate our planning, Doctor.”
She said, “I’m taking the device out to Lamont.”
“You are not. We need you.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Schrupp, think. He’s not going to shoot the messenger or bomb the airshaft. What he wants is to go back to Terra and take his Rangers and protectees with him. I’m a protectee. If he has me, Branch Carter will computer-generate all possible sequences for that device and press those bumps in every single sequence until he gets that ship here. Or maybe the Council of Mothers knows the sequence. Either way, we’ll lift off and leave you to your postapocalyptic world-building on Kindred. But if it’s not me who takes that thing out there, Lamont will keep at you until he gets all his protectees. I’ve watched the man for months and you have not. He’s obsessive-compulsive with paranoid tendencies and the stress of this environment has pushed him over the edge.”
“I don’t care if he’s hallucinating green elephants and talking to his dead grandfather. You’re a Terran doctor and we need you more than Terra does. Sorry, Dr. Patel. We’ll treat you with every respect and courtesy, but you’re not leaving World. Austin, you created this mess—you take the device out to Lamont.”
Kayla, who’d been standing at the edge of the circle, screamed, darted forward and clutched Austin. Tony peeled her off him and handed her to Graa^lok, who could barely hold her. Exasperated, Beyon-mak helped him. Kayla went on screaming. “No, no, not Austin, no—”
“Get them to the backup cave!” Tony said. “All of them!”
Graa^lok looked at Austin. Graa^lok’s face twisted in anguish and indecision. Austin hated him; Graa^lok always got the best choice, the safe deal. But then Austin nodded and said, “Take care of my mother,” and Graa^lok nodded back. For a moment Austin felt good; he was doing the right thing. The feeling didn’t last.
When they had all gone through a locked door that Austin had always assumed was another supply area, Austin faced Tony. “Will you let me back in? After I give the device to the lieutenant?”
Tony hesitated. “That bastard shot out all the cameras. And there aren’t any monitors in the backup cave … Tell you what. You stay outside until the Rangers lift off in that second ship. Then come ring the bell and I’ll let you back in, through the airlock in the backup cave.”
Austin looked at him. It might be a long time before Branch figured out the code that Beyon-mak spoke about. It might not be figured out before the spore cloud hit. With the cameras shot out, Tony couldn’t see anything outside to tell him if the cloud had hit or not, which was only an approximate date. Even if there was an airlock, and there probably was, Tony would not risk spore contamination of Haven. He needed Graa^lok’s sisters and cousins to stay healthy and have babies who would inherit Terran immunity. He needed to keep his “protectees” safe from the riots and food shortages and roving bands of the collapse of civilization.
Austin would not be allowed back into Haven.
He could scream like Kayla. He could hang on to a table and refuse to go. He could act like a little kid, but Tony would get him out by sheer force if he had to, or if Tony didn’t, then Lamont would bomb Haven if he didn’t get the device. If that happened, Austin’s mother and Claire and everybody would die, anyway. Including Austin.
He wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was a man. His mother was his lahk, and maybe even Claire was, too. Bu^ka^tel.
He straightened his back and looked Tony in the eyes. “Do you think Lamont will shoot me?”
“I don’t see why he would. He’s getting what he wants, isn’t he? You heard Dr. Patel. He wants to go back to Terra.”
“Okay.” And then—without a quaver, sounding strong, and he was proud of that—he said, “Give me the device.”
“Well, there it is.”
Of course it was. But Austin refused to feel stupid about what he’d said. He picked up the call-back and headed for the tunnel to outside.
* * *
Owen waited for someone to emerge from the mountain, and Leo waited for Owen.
He could wait in the same position, barely breathing, for as long as he had to. The rising sun was behind him; the wind was too light to interfere with anything; the brush and rocks on the upland meadow below him were only waist-high. Leo sweated inside his armor and helmet; he ignored it. The orange light, though nothing like a sunny day on Terra, was enough to see by. Only his own memories hampered him.
Delirious and cursing, his body a mass of sores, his head about to explode from fever. Owen carrying him down the mountain on his back, murmuring over his shoulder: “Easy, buddy, we’ll get you to the medics, not your fault it’s just fucking poison ivy.…” Owen visiting him in the infirmary, trying to convince him to recycle through Ranger training. Owen and Leo in a bar somewhere with two girls, Owen laughing but even then, even with a rhinestone blonde on his lap, Owen had been reserved somehow, holding back, in control … Owen getting Leo here to Kindred, counting on him to stick no matter what, using him …
The last thought wouldn’t stay. It was still Owen carrying him down the mountain, saving Leo’s life. Always Owen carrying him down the mountain.
In the meadow, Owen shifted position.
A figure crawled from the bushes at the base of the mountain, stooped, picked up something pyramidal and started across the meadow. Austin.
Leo was too far away to hear any conversation. But he already knew what Owen would say: Leave it there. “There” would be halfway between Owen and the mountain, where Owen could retrieve it without letting an enemy, even a thirteen-year-old enemy, get too close. Almost Leo could hear the words in his mind.
Except there was another sound, behind him. “Throw away the rifle, Leo. Without turning around.”
Zoe.
Time slowed down. He had days, years, eons to assess the situation. Even if her feet were free, her hands were still cuffed behind her back. She had her sidearm, but did she have a way to use it or was she bluffing? Or had she worked her body through the cuffs to get her hands in front? It was possible but only if you were very thin, unusually flexible, and willing to dislocate your shoulder. Zoe was thin; he had no idea if she was unusually flexible; she would dislocate anything on herself if she thought it was her duty.
Would she shoot him? In a pulse beat.
Leo didn’t turn around. He had one chance: to convince her.
Austin started trudging across the plain.
“Zoe, listen. Austin is bringing Lamont the call-back device. But he doesn’t want it to call back the ship. Dr. Jenner thinks there’s something on the ship, another damn microbe”—he couldn’t remember the fucking term—“that saved the leelees on the ship and might save Kind
red, too, if they can get it here. But Lamont doesn’t want to save Kindred, he wants it destroyed. Everybody on it, all the Kindred. You’ve seen how he despises them, he fucking hates them, maybe because of the spore cloud hitting Terra, and he won’t call back the ship. Not right away, anyway, he’ll hide the device until the spore cloud devastates Kindred and nearly everyone here is dead, and then he’ll go home. But all the Terrans and Kindred in the cave—they know he’s got it now, so he’s going to have to kill them all. Even Claire Patel. He’ll kill them, Zoe. He’ll have to.”
She hadn’t shot Leo yet. She’d heard him out. Hope flashed through Leo like a jolt of electricity.
Then she said, “Bullshit. Lamont don’t like Kinnies, but he isn’t going to destroy them! Where do you get this fucking garbage?”
“It’s not garbage.” Austin was a third of the way to Owen, his arms wrapped awkwardly around the device. “Owen stole those vaccines. Not the kid—Owen. I saw them, in his lockbox, early this morning. He didn’t want Kindred vaccinated with the good stuff from Terra.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Leo.”
“No. He’s going to shoot that kid. He can’t have witnesses.”
Austin plodded closer, shoulders slumped over his burden. Owen raised his weapon.
Zoe said, “He’s just being cautious, warning the kid not to come too close, he could be a suicide bomber…”
“Austin?”
No more time. Owen’s gun was coming up. His mouth worked. Austin, obedient, put the device on the ground, and there was no more time at all.
Owen carrying Leo down the mountain …
Leo fired. The distance was no more than eight hundred yards; his best kill ever was nearly 2,200 yards. Simultaneously, two more shots shattered the meadow. Owen’s rifle and Zoe’s Beretta.
Leo was rolling to the ground the second his bullet left the barrel. He knew he was fast—in Brazil he’d changed weapons faster than the rest of his company could reload. But Zoe was close. Her bullet took him in the right side. He drew his sidearm and aimed, but there was no need. She stood completely still, her gun awkwardly in her cuffed right hand, the left dangling from her side, her mouth open.
“He … he killed that kid.”
Leo got to his feet, holding his left hand over his side, feeling the blood trickle between his fingers. “Drop the gun, Zoe.”
She did, unblinking, her face blank until it crumpled into pain that had nothing to do with a dislocated shoulder. “He killed that kid. You were right.”
Leo holstered his Beretta. The motion made him dizzy.
Zoe said, “Is Lamont dead?”
“Yes.” Leo didn’t have to look.
Then he slumped to the ground, and everything went black.
* * *
He didn’t think he was out that long, but when he came to, the sun beat down directly overhead and Zoe was gone. His armor had been removed and his shirt torn into bandages. Hers, too, he guessed—the pad of blood-soaked bandages on his wound was thick and the cloth tied around him to hold them so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.
He tried to raise himself on one elbow to see if Owen’s and Austin’s bodies were still there, but the movement caused something to rip, pain to shoot through him, and the conviction that he had better lie still until help came or he died.
One or the other.
But he would have liked to see Isabelle again. Just once more, with the orange sun shining on her pretty hair.
CHAPTER 18
Salah stood before Noah Jenner and said, “Count backward from one hundred.”
“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-seven … uh.… no, wait.….”
“Can you name your siblings, Noah?”
A blank stare and a wince of pain, presumably from the headache that Noah had denied having.
Salah closed the door quietly. He found Claire’s useful medical suitcase and raided it. In the deserted kitchen he filled with water three of the sturdy, lightweight metal canteens the Kindred used. No plastic bottles here to clog land or oceans, both of which would soon be free of most, if not all, human life.
The early morning sun slanted long shadows across the refugee camp, now almost deserted. Abandoned tents sagged beside blackened cook fires and the rutted tracks of supply carts. It looked not like the well-run refugee camp it had resembled before, but more like a Terran homeless jungle. The Kindred remaining were mostly families with vaccinated children, those that had somehow alienated their lahks too much to return to them, and maybe a few who figured their survival chances were better near the Terrans, either for medical help or looting. Experiments, outcasts, opportunists.
Six steps away from the compound and Kandiss, on the roof, spotted him.
“Go back inside, Doctor.”
Kandiss was silhouetted against the lowering sun; Salah had to shade his eyes to see him clearly. Of all the Rangers, he had the least sense of Kandiss. The huge man had said nothing when Salah treated his injuries, mostly cuts from flying debris after the bomb attack. He’d refused any further questions about his concussion. Kandiss had never come to Salah with a minor illness caused by the alien environment. Even less than Lamont, Kandiss did not interact with the scientists. Although Salah had seen Kandiss’s entire medical history and psych profile back on Terra, both were so sparse and unremarkable as to define “normal.” He had a mother and two sisters in Florida. His service record was impeccable. Salah had never detected coming from him any whiff of Lamont’s racism, Berman’s fierce passions, Brodie’s unthinking optimism. He no idea who Kandiss really was, or what Kandiss felt about the four horsemen of the apocalypse set to come trampling over the gardens and lahks of Kindred.
“Private Kandiss, please listen to me. Lieutenant Lamont and Specialist Berman have been gone since yesterday, much longer than two ten-mile hikes and a negotiation with Schrupp should take them. That suggests there was some kind of incident. They both may be injured and need medical attention. I’m a doctor. We can’t”—he told the lie as convincingly as he could—“afford to lose any more Rangers. We need all of you. Let me go see if Lamont or Berman need medical help.”
Kandiss said nothing, which Salah interpreted as a good sign.
Salah hoisted his makeshift backpack. “I’m confident Lieutenant Lamont will bring back Dr. Patel,” he said, although he was confident of no such thing, “but if Lamont or Berman are injured, Dr. Patel might need these medicines and this equipment. She didn’t take anything with her when she was kidnapped. I’m going to bring the items that might mean the difference between life and death for your two Rangers.”
That sounded both simplistic and melodramatic, even though it was true. Salah didn’t know what tone might move this silent soldier with whom he had nothing in common. Not that he had anything in common with the other three Rangers, either. He waited.
Finally Kandiss said, “Can you track?”
“Yes,” Salah said—another lie.
Kandiss snorted. “Walk ten degrees east of north.”
Something landed at Salah’s feet. A compass. Yes, of course—Kindred had a magnetic field similar to Earth’s. He had never thought about it before. Kandiss’s directions—an order, actually—would include any necessary recalculation to make the compass useful.
He started walking. Ten miles would tax him, but he could do it. He hoped. He’d never been much of an athlete, and weeks of indoor activity at the compound hadn’t helped. He could have exercised like the Rangers did, but he hadn’t.
The backpack grew heavy. He felt exposed in these mostly treeless fields, empty except for grazing animals. One kind pulled carts, he knew that much. The other kind were splashed with blotches of different colored paint in different parts of their anatomy, maybe a more humane version of cattle branding. Their coarse hair was long and uneven—was this an animal that was sheared regularly for cloth but hadn’t been during this crisis? Salah had no idea. There was so much he didn’t know about this planet. And, he realized for the first t
ime, so much he didn’t like. The light, the slow pace of lahk life, the deliberate and stubborn avoidance of tech … Kindred was admirable, far more admirable than Terra socially, environmentally, economically. The culture was everything that Salah had always said he believed in. But—
He wanted to go home, to Earth. He wanted it as much as Lamont did, although for completely different reasons. He did not belong here, and never would. From temperament or age or background, he did not have the adaptability of, say, Claire. Or of Brodie.
“You’re off course,” a voice said behind him, “and you’re a terrible traveler.”
Isabelle. Salah had not even heard her approach.
She said, “I could have been anyone sneaking up on you.”
“But you’re not,” he said, irritated because she was right. “Go back, Isabelle.”
“You’re going to Tony’s hideout and you’re off course.”
“I’m following the course Kandiss gave me.”
“Has Kandiss ever been there? Neither have I, but I’ve hiked in those mountains before. You need to go farther that way.” She pointed.
“Thank you. Now go back.”
“Why?”
“This could be really dangerous, Isabelle. Lamont is paranoid, impaired by too much popbite use, and too trigger-happy. Please go back.”
She said flatly, “You’re protecting me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“Does it occur to you, Salah, that maybe I don’t need protecting? That I don’t want to be protected? I’m a mother.”
“You’re not a soldier.”
“Neither are you. But I know this world better than you do, and I know soldiers better than you do, too.”
“That’s all true. But—”
“But I’m a woman. And you’re a Terran male, who thinks women are to be shielded from danger even when they’re like Zoe Berman. Or me. At least Leo Brodie forbade me to go with him because a civilian might interfere with his mission, not because I need protecting from reality.”