CROSSFIRE

by Nancy Kress

  "No more than I am," Gail said.

  "True," Jake said lightly.

  No, it was my fault because I deliberately avoided Lucy. Because I found her very attractive, that sweetness and intensity combined, and any relationship with a woman like that always means more than physical intimacy. They want genuine intimacy, to know you, to learn for real who you are. And I cannot allow that. Ever. So I pushed Lucy away, and she felt it, and retreated farther into isolation and rejection.

  "Well, the problem is solved now," Gail said.

  "Yes," Jake agreed. "Dr. Shipley, thank you again. I have to admit that I wasn't pleased that you chose to stay awake. But we've all benefited from your unique point of view."

  "Lawyer talk," Gail called this, all smooth misdirection. Jake was good at it. It was not a point of pride.

  Gail stood and stretched, her raw-boned figure extending itself luxuriously in the rarely empty room. Who filled Gail's sexual thoughts? The libido suppressors only worked to a limited degree. As far as Jake knew, all the other awakes were straight. But Gail had never really gotten over Lahiri's terrible death. Maybe she never would. Just as he had been inalterably changed by Mrs. Dalton's death.

  Shipley left first. Gail took advantage of the privacy before anyone else returned to the library to say quietly to Jake, "I still don't like him."

  "Why not?" He was meanly pleased.

  "He's a manipulator. Using his religion to defuse poor Lucy."

  Jake struggled briefly with his thoughts; honesty won. "Gail, I don't think it was manipulation. He genuinely believes all that stuff."

  "Well, then that's worse," she said illogically. "The last thing I want around is some sort of hovering saintly Buddha, judging us all on our souls and blood enzymes."

  This seemed to Jake a complete misreading of Shipley, but he said nothing. Gail, like Lucy, wasn't immune to the stresses of a long voyage in constant contact with uncongenial people.

  Nor, Jake knew, was he.

  But it wasn't any internal stressor that made her knock on his bunk door later that night. "Come in," he called, surprised. Sleeping bunks, each seven feet by five feet by four feet high, were sacred. You never bothered anyone with his door rolled down over the only actual privacy any of them had. You even averted your eyes if you passed a rolled-up door, careful not to notice the occupant's choice of decor, usually personal pictures and mementos, unless invited.

  Gail ignored all that. She ducked her head and sat on the edge of Jake's mattress, rolling down the door behind her. Her legs squeezed sideways into the one foot of space between the bunk and door.

  "Jake, I just talked to Rudy. Erik Halberg found his computer error."

  Jake sat up, careful not to bump his head on the shelves installed on the bulkhead. "Where was it?"

  "In the astronomical data. The program had flagged a fast-moving object where no path had been projected, and Erik had at first assumed it was a bug due to cosmic bombardment. But he ran it and checked it and compensated for it every way possible, and he insists it wasn't an error."

  "Uncharted comet," Jake said. "Runaway planetoid, accelerating rock from a gravity swing-by ... God, Gail, it could be anything."

  "Erik says he checked everything. It wasn't."

  Jake thought, You can't ever assume comprehensive exclusion. Fallacious reasoning. He did not say this aloud. Gail hated lawyer talk. "So what does Erik think it was?"

  "He doesn't know. But he says it was moving at ninety-eight percent of c. Nothing large except us should be moving at that speed in this section of space. He says it's a fabricated object. Such as, for instance, another ship."

  "From Earth, you mean."

  "No. If anything else had launched from Earth, we'd have learned about it by quee. You know that."

  Jake stared at her. Four colonized planets outside the solar system, and no advanced civilizations discovered. Hell, not even any sentient life forms. The best that had been managed by evolution anywhere other than Earth was a warm-blooded, armored, turtle-like predator with the intelligence of a pigeon. Greentrees had not of course been explored, only sampled by the quee probe, but nothing in the atmospheric composition had indicated any industrial emissions of any kind.

  "Gail, could Lucy have—"

  "No, of course not. She didn't know what Erik had decided about his computer error. Hell, he hadn't even decided it when Lucy cracked. That part's coincidence. But if that thing was a ship—"

  "It wasn't," Jake said. "If—"

  "Don't tell me," Gail said crossly, "tell Halberg. And everybody else. They're in the wardroom, and they want you."

  Jake found Halberg, Scherer, Shipley, Liu Fengmo, Faisal bin Saud, and the energy engineer Robert Takai squeezed into the wardroom. They had all evidently been arguing with Halberg. The lieutenant looked as upset as Jake imagined he ever got: agate eyes and a jawline like an erection.

  "There was not a computer error! Nein!"

  "Friend Erik," Shipley began, but it was Faisal whose smooth voice cut through the close air.

  "Lieutenant, what you saw could not have been a ship of any kind. Look at the evidence. Look at the scale. In cosmic terms, we humans have only stepped a few feet outside our own back door. A little territory and we've been probing it robotically for a century and a half. If there were star-faring aliens zipping around, if civilizations existed here with that advanced a technology, we'd have found some indicators by now."

  "More than that," Robert Takai said, "they'd have found us. That 'object' in your data passed within ten thousand kilometers of us. If it were any kind of ship, she must have picked up the electromagnetic or thermal signals from the Ariel No way could she miss us. And there's been no attempt at contact, hostile or otherwise. So it wasn't a ship."

  "But—"

  "It wasn't a ship, Friend," Shipley said gently.

  One by one, the others nodded in agreement. Jake felt something loosen in his chest. Faisal was right; a ship only ten thousand kilometers away would inevitably have detected the Ariel. So it wasn't a ship. Halberg's computer error had been a comet or a gravity-boosted planetoid or even just that: an error.

  There was nothing there.

  3

  There is everything here, William Shipley thought. Everything anyone could ever need.

  His legs still hadn't fully accepted Greentrees' lighter gravity. After nearly seven years of the Ariel's 1.25 gees, the planet's 0.9 gee made him feel springy and light, but of course his body wasn't light (and probably never would be again). Either he used too much force per step, sending him into a little off-balance bounce, or he used too little and stumbled instead of walking. The younger people, he noted, were doing much better.

  And a good thing, too, since they were doing most of the manual labor, bringing materials from the Ariel to the 'bot builders and diggers and welders. Objects were strewn everywhere, metal and rocks and foamcast, broken apart and rejoined and unfinished and discarded. What would one day be Mira City looked at this moment like a junkyard.

  But none of that mattered next to the sheer, unearthly beauty of Greentrees.

  Shipley had seen pictures, of course, sent by quee from the probe. Endless pictures. But the colors had been off, somehow—a different spectrum of sunlight? Shipley was no physicist. Whatever the cause, the effect was of light cooler than Earth's, bathing the strange delicate plants and high narrow trees in a tranquil glow. The temperature hadn't yet gone below jacket weather. The ubiquitous groundcover, a purplish broad-leaved plant, grew thicker than grass. Most flowers seemed to be purples or blues, adding to the feeling of sweet repose.

  Shipley bent to pick a wildflower that had somehow escaped being trampled in the building frenzy. The flower was a pale blue with four long, slim, petallike things folded back over some delicate alien structures of deep purple. Not stamen or pistil or anything else Terran ... alien. Just thinking the word left Shipley breathless. He, William Shipley, stood on ground that had not been born with Sol, that had never known Sol's
cheerful yellow glow. Did that awful fact dazzle the others as it did him?

  " 'This other Eden, demi-paradise,' " he said aloud. " 'This fortress built by Nature for herself—' "

  "What?" Maggie Striker called, rushing past.

  "Nothing," Shipley said, but she was already gone.

  Not that Greentrees was Eden. The planet held predators, some of them large and dangerous, although Shipley hadn't yet seen any. Maybe they feared the human camp, or maybe the ecologist, Maggie Striker, had already taken steps to keep them away. There were probably also dangerous insect-analogues, but those, Shipley knew, had been eliminated in the small circle of camp activity. Beyond that circle, nature undoubtedly carried on just as violently as she had when Earth had belonged to primitive mammals.

  Nor did anything in the camp match Shipley's sense of planetary repose. People worked like 'bots, tireless and efficient. They were so glad to have something to do again! Planetfall had energized the twelve who had stayed awake for the entire voyage. Petty differences had disappeared, and Shipley watched Jake Holman, assisted by geneticist Ingrid Johnson and deposed Arab prince Faisal bin Saud, as they set a girder in place on the community hall for 'bot welding. The combination of personalities tickled him.

  Gail Cutler raced by, carrying a tray of something. Samples for Todd McCallum, probably. The scientists were rabid to analyze everything, but they had agreed to spend a certain number of hours per "day" in erecting habitats, and they were keeping their bargain. Nobody was sleeping much, nobody had really adjusted to the twenty-two-hour-and-sixteen-minute day, and nobody cared. It was a giant, frenetic, productive party.

  "Dr. Shipley," Gail called, "Lieutenant Wortz wants you."

  "Where?"

  "Shuttle." She raced out of sight.

  Shipley's joyous mood evaporated. He could guess what Lieutenant Wortz wanted.

  Captain Scherer's crew had stayed awake for the entire voyage, seven of the twelve people who had managed to do so. Shipley found this intensely interesting. Scherer's military schedules and employments undoubtedly accounted for some of the crew's stalwart endurance, but not all of it. There was more going on here. The sailors all kept a certain formal distance from everybody else, despite the crowded conditions ... look how everyone else still referred to most of the sailors by title. "Lieutenant Wortz," not "Gretchen." She would be in charge of the gradual ferrying down of newly awakened colonists, the order of awakening having been set by a combination of needed skill and passenger lottery.

  "Dr. Shipley," Gretchen Wortz said pleasantly, "we seem to be ahead of the building schedule. Jake Holman would like us to begin awakenings a day earlier than planned. Can you be ready to leave in an hour?"

  "Yes, of course." A day earlier. Shipley made himself nod and smile. The first load of colonists, then, would be landing on Greentrees tomorrow. Among them were four New Quakers, which should be a cause of rejoicing. And was, he told himself fiercely. The lack was in himself, and nowhere else. This time he would strive to do better, to give himself up to the guidance of the light instead of trying to impose his own will on the situation. This time would be a new beginning, on this new planet.

  This time he would seek peace with Naomi, instead of their everlasting, heartbreaking war.

  "How does it look down there?" Tariji Brown asked wistfully. "Wonderful," Shipley said. "You'll be there soon, my dear." Tariji snorted. "Not while they need me up here. I was a damn fool to tell them I'm a medic. Should've said I was a plumber.

  Plumbers they need. Let's get at 'em, Doctor. None of them are getting any younger."

  Shipley smiled at Tariji. Just looking at her made him feel good.

  A tall, strongly built black woman with hair trimmed close to her shapely head, she radiated cheerful, wry capability. Tariji could deal with anything that might go wrong, up here or down there. On Earth, she had helped him organize the more fearful New Quakers who wanted to colonize Greentrees but didn't want to face anything unfamiliar. "Now, you can't swim without getting wet," Tariji had said. "You diving in or staying on shore?" Her deep laugh had taken any pushiness out of the demand, and most of the New Quakers in the United Atlantic Federation had ended up coming.

  "I got the list here," Tariji said. "Twelve people. You ready, Doctor? The first one is Goldman, Benjamin Aaron, engineer."

  "Three of the twelve are engineers," said Shipley, who knew the list by heart. Unlike Tariji, who'd spent the voyage in cold sleep, he'd had nearly seven years to memorize it.

  The procedure was simple. Shipley keyed in the right coffin— terrible word, someone should have known better—and the conveyor delivered it to what had been the library. Next he keyed in the "awake" codes, and the coffin did all the rest, draining out the fluids, warming the body, administering the right drugs in the right order.

  "Here he comes," Tariji said. "Welcome to Greentrees, Mr. Goldman."

  Benjamin Goldman, naked, struggled to sit up. He fell back on muscles stiff from years of disuse. He looked so comically surprised that Tariji laughed her rich, reassuring rumble. "Take it slow, Ben. You're going to be wobbly, then nauseated, then hungry, but it's got to happen in order. Just take it slow, take it easy, take my hand."

  "Are we ... there?" Goldman gasped. Tariji helped him sit. The coffin had been placed to face the window, and the planet happened to be in view, a blue-and-white globe looking so much like Earth that it was a long moment before the grateful eye registered the strange configuration of continents, the three moons.

  "Aaahhhhhhhh," Goldman said in deep satisfaction, and threw up into his coffin.

  After Shipley and Tariji got him stabilized, dressed, and sitting up in a chair in the wardroom, they started on Barrington, Thekla Belia, agriculturist, who immediately demanded to know what plants down there had proved edible.

  "None so far," Tariji said, "because nobody tried to eat anything.

  Think they'd start the feast without you? They're living on Ariel rations, Doctor, and eating their heads off with work and joy."

  "I want to go down!"

  "Soon. You gotta vomit your guts out first, and we gotta wake up ten more people ... there you go, that's good, get it all out."

  By the time they'd woken up the ninth colonist, the first two were ravenous. Shipley moved them to the tiny galley, out of sight of those awakes who were still queasy, and showed them how to order from the synthesizer and use the instabake. He returned to the library.

  "Frayne, Naomi Susan," Tariji said, and Shipley felt himself stiffen.

  Naomi's coffin slid into place. The machinery hummed softly; the lid slid back. Naomi—Nan, she wanted to be called, he had to remember that—fought to sit up, her body so thin that her clavicle jutted like coat hangers. Her shaved head with its tattoos and artificial skin crest looked faintly blue. The inlaid metallics on her small breasts glittered.

  "Lord, you don't have any body fat at all," Tariji said. "What do you plan on using to keep yourself warm?"

  Naomi tried to speak, but no words came out. Just as well, Shipley thought. She would have scorched Tariji for her presumptuous concern.

  Tariji said, "Welcome to Greentrees, Ms. Frayne."

  Naomi glanced at the window. No planet this time, just stars. The corners of her mouth turned down.

  "Just sit still a minute, you're going to be sick," Tariji said cheerfully. Naomi glared at her, then at Shipley.

  "You ... here. Already."

  "Yes, Naomi. I'm here."

  "Should have ... known. No ... escape."

  Tariji looked puzzled. Shipley said, "Tariji Brown, this is my daughter," just as Naomi leaned deliberately over the edge of her coffin and threw up on her father's shoes.

  What does one do when a child goes wrong?

  For years, Shipley had sought for reasons, as if a cause would provide a cure. Through the childhood defiance and stealing that had become the adolescent drugs and running away. Through the destruction that the adult Naomi had brought to everything she touched. Through
the horrific self-scarring and more horrific suicide attempt. Through the robbery conviction and jail sentence, which at least had kept her safely locked up for five years.

  Perhaps, Shipley thought despairingly, it had been her mother's death when Naomi was only six. But the defiance and pointless anger had begun before Catherine died, and their other children had not reacted like that, Seely and John and Terry, all still in cold sleep with their families.

  Perhaps it had been genetic. Shipley was a third-generation Quaker doctor. He had combed Naomi's genescan, looking for known genetic abnormalities ... but so little was certifiably normal. The deeper that humanity had gone into its own genome, the greater the diversity had become. At the cellular level, people were amazingly different—not in their DNA, much of which man shared with apes, mice, fruit flies, and peach trees. No, the differences lay in how the genes generated proteins, in how those proteins folded, in how their various combinations affected cellular machinery. There was so much genetics hadn't known. And as the state of Earth worsened globally, scientific funding dried up, and less was learned each decade.

  But the real problem with blaming Naomi's genes, Shipley knew, was that it was an evasion. People were more than their chemistry. People bore the responsibility for their decisions and choices.

  So perhaps it was Shipley's own choices that had shaped Naomi. Silence, simplicity, truth ... he had tried his entire life to be guided by the principles of the Light. But silence, the profound quietude that let one hear the inner light, also meant that others were not spoken to, not sufficiently guided. Simplicity ... he had been so fearful of imposing his will on his children, of making them his own instruments instead of their own. Had he erred too far in that direction, so that Naomi felt his reticence as indifference? And as for truth ... well, Shipley had not needed a medical practice to understand that there were people who could not bear much truth.

  And maybe, for a child, that truth had been unbearable. Seely had said once to Shipley, "Naomi thinks you love God better than you love us." I do, Shipley thought, but Seely had not been the child who'd insisted on facing that.