CROSSFIRE

by Nancy Kress

  George said, "That looks like a lot of university parties I once went to."

  Ingrid said, "Don't anthropomorphize, George. My cat behaves the same way with catnip."

  "We didn't include catnip in the plants we brought with us," said George, "but maybe we should have."

  "Jake," said Gail's voice behind him, and he turned. One look at her face and he knew something was wrong. Before he could ask what, a Vine cart—only one—tumbled down the shuttle ramp. Maybe Karim was right about the shuttle being captured technology; the pitch was way too steep for the cart. However, the cart didn't stop at the bottom of the ramp. It rocketed toward the humans at a speed Jake never would have suspected those carts could do, and Mueller raised his gun to fire.

  "Franz, no!" Shipley said. "Look, it's stopping! It wants to tell us something."

  The single cart lurched to a halt directly in front of Jake, who made himself not flinch. The uninflected mechanical voice said, "Jake, you go away. Now. All humans go away now. The enemy is here. Our ship is destroyed."

  Lucy gasped. Karim pulled out some piece of portable equipment and began keying furiously. Gail said, "I can't link Mira City, either. My God, did they take out the comsats, too?"

  "Yes," Karim said. "I just got the automatically beamed data, the comsats are all gone. Wait, there's one left—there it goes!"

  Jake said rapidly to the Vine, "Are Furs doing this? The Furs you're at war with?"

  "Yes. They will find your city. If you go up in your skimmer they will find your skimmer. If we go up in our shuttle they will find our shuttle."

  "Heat signatures," Karim said. "How good is their detection equipment? Can they find these colonies?"

  Ingrid said, "We found them from the air."

  The Vine said, "First they will go to your beacon."

  "My God," Gail said. "What will they do to Mira City?"

  "We do not know. They are not at war with you."

  Dr. Shipley said, "What will they do to you? And to these colonies?"

  "They will kill us. We do not know what they will do to these colonies. We will wait in our shuttle."

  The cart rolled backward toward the shuttle. Jake called, "Wait! Don't you have weapons on that shuttle? Fur weapons? They'll come in an identical shuttle, won't they? Can't you destroy them in the air?"

  The Vine didn't seem to hear. It sped toward the shuttle and up the ramp.

  Mueller said, "The large skimmer has some armaments. Not too many. I try to hit the Fur shuttle before it lands."

  "Wait," Shipley said. "Before you try violence—"

  Jake said, "All of you be quiet. Now."

  They were. He saw that they expected him to take charge, give orders. He needed more information.

  "Franz, Karim, what weapons is the skimmer carrying?"

  Karim answered. "Lasers, both pinpoint and wide-scan. Also some handhelds: guns, tanglefoam, a focused EMP transmitter, and a focused beta-wave incapacitator, short range. Nothing really heavy."

  The handheld weapons would be no good. "What are the chances of taking the Fur shuttle out, if it comes to that, with the laser?"

  Franz said, "How can we know? It is an alien tech."

  Karim added, "All I've had is one brief glimpse at a Vine counterpart to the shuttle, and with time dilation, it may already be hundreds of years out-of-date."

  Jake said, "Then, all of you, what are the chances the Vines are telling the truth here?"

  Nan said hotly, "I'm glad at least somebody sees the possibility that they're not!"

  Lucy, very pale, said, "Why wouldn't they be?" Lucy, the innately truthful. We see the world as we are, not as it is.

  Gail said, "We'll know soon enough, if another shuttle appears here."

  "No," Jake said, "We'll know another shuttle has appeared. We won't know just from its appearance who's aboard, or what their intentions are." Heads nodded. "Therefore, we need to be prepared for various contingencies. Mueller, you stay in the skimmer and be prepared to deploy weapons, but not until I give you the signal. The comlinks are out, so it will be visual—a raised arm, like this."

  Mueller said, "No. Maybe you are not able to raise your arm. If they incapacitate you."

  Everyone started talking at once. Gail said sharply, "Quiet! Let Jake think, for God's sake!"

  Jake tried to think. Mueller would have to decide on his own whether to attack... No. Impossible. Mueller was a rebuilt who had already killed his own captain. But he'd done that to protect Vines. "Karim, can you operate the weaponry in the skimmer?"

  "Yes," the physicist said.

  "Unacceptable!" Mueller snapped, sounding so much like the dead Scherer that Lucy jumped.

  "Franz, it is acceptable because I need you to protect me personally. I'm staying here to greet the Furs, as head of Mira Corporation with legal claim to this planet. Franz will cover me from some secure place. The rest of you are going to retreat into the forest until we know what's happening. Leave someone fairly nearby to report back to the rest. Leave ... Nan. She's the most used to Greentrees' wilderness." And that would keep her from insisting on hanging around here.

  Nan looked hesitant, then nodded. She'd be close enough to observe. But Gail said instantly, "No, not Nan. A scientist, who at least has a ghost of a chance of decoding what they're looking at!"

  "I'm staying," George said.

  "No, you're not," Jake said, putting into it everything he had of authority.

  Ingrid said uncertainly, "But if ... if you all get killed here and we're in the woods and we can't use the skimmer, how will we get back to Mira City? We must be hundreds of miles away!"

  "I don't know, Ingrid," Jake said. "This is not a plan with multiple scenarios to cover every contingency. We'll have to see what happens. But I do know that for any species in the universe, from Terran chipmunks on up, encountering two beings is a lot less likely to provoke fear and violence than encountering a whole crowd of beings."

  He saw that they all had noticed the "two beings." He'd already forbidden George to stay. Gail, the alternate leader for Mira City and never very patient with aliens, was unlikely. Karim, who must be romantic, looked enviously at Lucy, but the others understood.

  "Thank you, Jake," Shipley said. "I'll be glad to stay."

  Under Gail's efficient direction, as much life-support equipment and supplies as they could carry were removed from the skimmer and apportioned among Gail, George, Ingrid, and Lucy. Nan found herself a watching place from the cover of some trees and augmented it with more branches and leaves. Mueller did the same on the opposite side of the clearing. Nan had high-resolution zoom goggles, but Mueller refused them, saying simply, "My eyes do this." Augments.

  Before he left, Mueller checked that Karim knew what he was doing with the skimmer's limited weaponry. To himself Jake admitted surprise that Mueller had agreed so readily to turn the skimmer over to Karim. Perhaps the soldier was going to be scrupulous about obeying orders, in order to separate himself from what the other rebuilts, Scherer and Halberg, had done. That would be a plus.

  Lucy, her slight body stooped under her burden of equipment even though Gail had given her less than the others, waddled up to Jake. "We're going. Good luck. I love you." He'd been afraid of an overwrought farewell, but she knew better. A brief dry kiss and she left with the others.

  He was suddenly pierced with the intense desire to see her survive.

  Within half an hour the place was eerily quiet. The three aircraft, human and otherwise, sat in the overgrown clearing that might once have been a tended farm. The two village Furs still lay heavily asleep, or possibly dead, between two dilapidated huts. Jake saw no other Furs until a trio of children emerged from the forest.

  "Dr. Shipley, look," Jake said quietly. Shipley had been sitting on his ubiquitous inflatable stool, eyes closed. He opened them and his gaze followed Jake's discreet gesture.

  The children walked with the same drunken gaits as their elders. They spied the humans, opened their mouths, and emitted so
unds similar to the ones Jake had labeled "laughter." One slapped the ground over and over with his tail; the others may have needed theirs for enough balance to stay upright at all. Holding on to each other, the trio lurched forward.

  Don't shoot, Mueller, Jake pleaded silently. Please don't shoot these kids. Mueller didn't, either because he had more restraint than Jake gave him credit for or because the Fur children veered off toward the village and disappeared into a hut with only half its roof intact.

  Kids. That's how he'd thought of the young Furs: as "kids." They seemed—were—so much closer to humans than the Vines. Were the Vines telling the truth? What was going to come roaring at them out of the sky?

  And when was it coming?

  "Waiting is often the hardest part," Shipley said tranquilly.

  What the hell kept him tranquil in this unprecedented, absurd, dangerous situation? Jake didn't really want to know. Religious mumbo jumbo. It was on impulse that Jake had let Shipley stay, but he'd known even then that the impulse was sound. Shipley had seen that the Vines were pacifists. He didn't panic. He'd handled Mueller well, and seemed able to handle anything except his horrific daughter.

  Daughters. Sons. Brothers.

  He was not going to think about Donnie now.

  But he wasn't quite disciplined enough to avoid it. Not even traveling 69.3 light-years to Greentrees had gotten him away from thinking about Donnie. Mrs. Dalton.

  "Jake," Shipley said, and Jake was grateful for the interruption, "what are you going to say to these Furs?"

  "Are you so sure it's Furs that will be arriving?"

  "I think so. I believe the Vines. What will you say to them?"

  "That depends on what they say to us. Or if there's time to say anything before they cut us down."

  "Yes," Shipley said. "But if there is time, may I communicate? I would use gestures. They're unlikely to speak English, you know."

  Of course they weren't going to speak English. Jake hadn't been thinking. The Vines had listened, or rather their translator device had, to a day of deliberate, nonstop human dialogue before it could construct a program to translate. If that was indeed what it had done. George had been frankly skeptical of translation from chemical communication by exchanged molecules to sound-wave human speech, but there was no denying it had happened. What would the Furs have, if anything?

  Shipley said quietly, "We could still get Naomi back here. She apparently learned at least a limited way to communicate with the Greentrees Furs."

  "Who aren't the space-faring Furs," Jake said. "Let Nan stay where she is." A loose cannon if he ever saw one.

  Shipley touched a button to inflate his three-legged stool, lowered himself onto it, and again closed his eyes. Praying? Well, fine, if it helped him. Jake had no such consolation. He scanned the sky until his eyes ached.

  Three hours later, when he wished he'd had the foresight to keep some of the skimmer rations for himself and Shipley, he saw it.

  It started as a faint white spot against the white-blue sky. The spot grew, became a light. A roar—God, it was coming in fast!— and he lost sight of it for a minute. When he found it again it was a craft, floating down gently toward the clearing. A silver egg with a flexible tail. Identical to the Vine shuttle already sitting there.

  Jake tensed, in case the Vine shuttle fired, or the new shuttle did. It didn't happen. Instead the shuttle door opened immediately, the ramp descended, and an alien strode down the ramp.

  A Fur.

  Dressed only in bands of cloth that crossed its hairy body at several points and held ... things, the alien was identical to the Furs drunkenly asleep a hundred yards away. To the Furs sleepwalking passively through their dying village. To the Furs that had attacked Larry Smith's Cheyenne. To the female Furs that had mobbed the invisible fence, thriving babies clinging to their backs. Except this Fur, a male, walked as if he owned the planet. He threw back his head and roared, then kept walking toward Jake and Shipley. He showed no fear of them or of the other shuttle.

  Shipley stood. Jake prepared to die. Either this warrior—there was no other applicable word—would kill him, or Mueller would kill it and then its fellows would kill him.

  Several things happened at once.

  While the Fur was still twenty yards away, Jake felt something bump his chest, something invisible and diamond hard. Shipley, standing a bit closer, was bumped by it first and staggered backward, tripping over his stool. A burst of laser fire exploded from Mueller's position. It had no effect whatsoever, seeming to evaporate into the air twenty yards from the Fur in the direction of Mueller's position. Mueller fired again. No result. The tail on the Fur shuttle whipped around and pointed toward Mueller, and there was no more human fire.

  The Fur walked up to Jake and Shipley, and Jake continued to feel the hard barrier against his chest. It must be a version of the force field the Vines had put between themselves and the all-female Fur village. But portable. The warrior Fur was encased in a movable shield that could withstand whatever Mueller had been firing. Could it withstand Karim's arsenal in the skimmer? The Fur didn't look fearful of either craft behind him.

  He stopped five inches from the humans, threw back his head, and roared again. A part of Jake's dazed mind noted that sound penetrated the shield just fine.

  Jake said, "I am Jake Holman. I am a human. Hello." Slowly he raised one hand, palm up to show its emptiness, pointed at himself, and repeated, "I am Jake Holman. I am a human. Hello."

  The Fur roared a third time. Jake saw that he was looking beyond the humans, to the unconscious, filthy Furs lying on the ground in the village. The warrior's teeth, long and sharp, flashed in the sunlight. Teeth evolved for tearing flesh, George had said. Carnivores or omnivores.

  Two more Furs raced down the shuttle ramp. They were dressed, or undressed, the same as the first Fur. The ramp was, Jake noted irrelevantly, the right pitch for their stride. The male carried a dark metallic oval device, the female a greenish stubby stick. She pointed it at the Vines' shuttle, and as easily as that, the shuttle door slid open and its ramp descended. She charged inside.

  Jake felt sick. That Fur was going to kill the Vines, shatter their domes and burn them, just as Mueller had. And he could see no reason why he and Shipley wouldn't be next. Why hadn't the Vines done something? Their shuttle wasn't weaponless, but they hadn't even tried to defend themselves.

  The Fur with the black metallic egg had reached his leader. He set the egg down on the grass and the leader roared again. He jabbed a hand at Jake and Shipley. Jake stared dumbly. What did the thing want?

  Shipley said, enunciating clearly, "I am William Shipley. This is Jake Holman. We are humans. Hello."

  Jake said, "You think it's a translator?"

  "I don't know," Shipley said. "Yes, wait, I think it's a translator. The Fur has stopped roaring at us."

  It was true. The terrifying alien had gone impassive. In the brief silence it pointed to the egg and then to Jake and Shipley. "We are humans," Jake said. "Hello. We came to this planet to live. We came from far away. We—" He stopped.

  A Vine emerged from the shuttle, its cart clearly pushed so hard from inside that it tumbled over on its side. The cart righted itself, but another cart was thrown through the air from inside the shuttle, hit the first one, and knocked it over. The third cart careened down the ramp, followed by the female Fur.

  She picked up the cart closest to her and pushed it away from the other two. Then she fired. The domes shattered and the burned goo that had been living Vines oozed over the metallic carts. The Fur did something to her weapon, fired again, and the carts shattered. She picked something out of the wreckage and strode away, not so much as glancing at the one living Vine left behind.

  When she reached the other two Furs, she stopped and made a complicated gesture at the leader, a simultaneous head jerk and foot stomping. A salute? Jake saw that the thing she'd plucked from the shattered cart was another translator egg.

  She set it on top of the first,
and the two did something to join together. Not melt into each other, not join with cables, not anything Jake could name. One minute they were two black eggs side by side on the dusty purple groundcover, and the next they were a double egg that reminded him of a malformed potato. No one moved. Jake looked at Shipley, who gave a tiny shrug.

  After at least two silent, motionless minutes, the lead Fur said, or growled, or chittered—it sounded like an unholy combination of all three—to the egg. It then said, in the same uninflected mechanical voice Jake had been hearing for three days, "What are you? Why are you with our enemy? Did you create these"—the translator hesitated—"blasphemies?"

  A word it must have learned from Shipley. There was no other possibility. And multiple questions—the worst kind to fire at a witness on the stand. But there was no judge to intervene. Jake was on his own.

  "We are humans," he said as calmly as he could. "We did not create these blasphemies. They were here when we came from our home planet. Our home planet is far away from here. We came to this planet half a year ago only."

  The translator spat out some gibberish; certainly it was highly inflected. The three Furs listened. They then jabbered among themselves. Then the leader said to Jake, through the translator, "Open your craft. Tell the humans inside to all come out."

  This was the test, then. But of what? If Jake refused, surely it would be interpreted as a hostile action. Or would refusal fit with some sort of ritual warrior behavior, as with Japanese samurai or Larry Smith's original Cheyenne? If Jake agreed to let them examine the inside of the skimmer, would that be interpreted as a peaceful gesture or as cowardice? If the Furs saw the level of tech that the skimmer had, would they then be convinced that humans had had nothing to do with the Fur "blasphemies"? Or would they simply kill Karim, as they had already killed Mueller and two of the three Vines?

  There was simply no way to know.

  Jake's hesitation, as these questions tumbled through his mind, lasted no more than a second. But Shipley stepped into the tiny pause.