CROSSFIRE

by Nancy Kress

  "So what do we do about that?"

  Gail had no idea. This had been Jake's plan, and either he was supposed to be directing it or else all the humans were supposed to be murdered already. Instead, she was in charge. "Just start looking for the quee!"

  They found it in a storage cabinet. Gail didn't attempt to open it; she didn't know how. Karim would have to do that. She checked on each person. They were all still alive, and Karim at least felt much cooler.

  Nan was still studying the quee. "I don't think this will help us. Isn't it quantum-entangled with this ship? Unless you know how to reset it, any other Fur ship is going to communicate on the quee that belongs on this ship."

  She was right. Gail said wearily, "I don't even know what their quee would look like. And even if I identified it, it isn't rigged up with an English translator. Whatever other Furs say to these Furs, we wouldn't be able to interpret it anyway."

  "Well, then, forget that," Nan said, tossing away the quee. It thudded to the floor.

  Gail hadn't ever before felt so helpless. She knew herself to be a competent woman, a superb organizer. But how did you organize diseased aliens, sick humans, and a ship nobody could fly?

  "Nan, are we moving now?"

  Nan stared at her. "Of course we're moving now—we're at maximum acceleration. Look under your feet! The living quarters are as close to the massplate as they can get. Didn't you listen to Karim explain the McAndrew Drive?"

  "No," Gail said. "But if we're moving, we need to change course."

  "To where?"

  "Greentrees. If the Furs discover that this ship isn't communicating properly"—when they discover this ship isn't communicating properly—"they'll come looking for it. They also might just go destroy Mira City, since they'll conclude that humans aren't keeping our end of the bargain. We have to be at Mira first, ready to destroy them."

  Nan gaped at her. "Do you really think—"

  "I don't think we have any choice! If only I could get Karim functional..."

  "Maybe we don't need Karim," Nan said. "I have a better idea."

  They rummaged through more storage cabinets, among oddly shaped objects that were total mysteries. Eventually Nan said, "I think this is it." She held up a curved reddish baton with a ball on the end of it. It looked to Gail like a bent scepter.

  "It did look like that ... Nan! Don't just experiment!"

  "How else will I know? It wasn't a weapon, remember." She fingered the baton in various ways. "There ... I felt a slight tingle. Try to approach me."

  Cautiously Gail moved forward, hands groping in front of her. They hit an invisible wall. "It's here! But it's only a few feet high."

  "Stay there while I experiment."

  It took half an hour for Nan to master creating straight walls of various heights, curved walls of various degrees, and enclosed prisons of various diameters. "All right, I'm ready. Let's go."

  Gail caught her arm. "Nan, listen to me. You had a special bond with Furs. When you see what the infection is doing to them, and I have no idea what that could be at this stage, are you going to get so angry that you don't help me with this?"

  Nan pulled her arm away. "I'll always be angry over what the Vines have done. I voted against this plan, remember, before Jake decided to remove the competition by knocking me out. But you guys went ahead anyway, the Furs are infected, and I don't see any way to turn back."

  "Sure you do," Gail said slowly. "Make sure these Furs never come in contact with any other Furs."

  "The only way to do that is to kill them. I'm sure you're right that there's another ship speeding toward us this minute. They must know how to locate one of their own ships, and if they do, they'll free their own people. I could shove all these Furs out the airlock and they'd probably let me, but I won't kill them!"

  Like father, like daughter. Gail studied Nan's face: furious and sorrowful and resigned. "Okay," Gail said. "Let's go."

  The two women walked back to the imprisoned Furs. Gail pushed open the door while Nan created a protective wall around her that also blocked the doorway.

  It was a good thing she had; some of the Furs rushed Gail, teeth bared. And not in giggles, either. They weren't exactly attacking, Gail realized after a moment, but they were trying to escape. "Second-stage infection," she told Nan with a conviction she didn't feel. "They've recovered enough to be aware again of their surroundings, but look, they're not trying to ... to get at me."

  "So stop shrinking and turning pale," Nan said. "You're perfectly safe. I've got this thing under control. Take one from the back of the room—they still look completely drugged."

  From the back. Easy for Nan to say, she was safe in the corridor. Gail felt a light push on one side. Nan was changing the shape of her prison, making it into an elongated oval that still blocked the door but now stretched into one corner, where a Fur sat on the floor, tail folded under, gazing at nothing. Other Furs were pushed aside by the growing wall. Gail kept one palm on its reassuring invisible surface. The surface blinked off for a fraction of a second, then blinked on and the corner Fur was inside the wall with Gail.

  She felt the old stomach roiling and clammy skin. This was a creature that could kill her with one blow. Worse, it was alien. She made herself reach down and grasp one of its arms. She pulled and the Fur stood up.

  "Good!" Nan said. "Now come forward."

  The room was full of noise. Fur words or whatever they used. Gail tugged the obedient Fur toward the door. The others put tentacled hands on the invisible wall and tried to tell it something, but the Fur, still in the first stages of infection, merely made a strange rolling gesture with its head. Gail led it out the door. Nan closed it, and they had a pilot.

  "How do we know this one can fly the ship?" Gail asked, belatedly.

  "We don't for sure, but look at its chest-strap thing. Those are the same marks that were on the female shuttle pilot. In fact, I think it's the same Fur."

  Gail looked at the alien, belatedly realizing from its crest that it was female. Then probably the room also held the same leader who had so ruthlessly enlisted humans as saboteurs, who had ordered their skimmer vaporized. Gail wasn't sure which one he was, either. Not that it mattered now.

  "How are you going to communicate with it, since we can't find a translator egg?"

  Nan didn't answer. She took the Fur by the hand and led it to the bridge. She sat it firmly in what Gail assumed that Nan assumed was a pilot chair. The Fur looked at Nan expressionlessly. Nan picked up the pen and slate on which Jake had drawn the false location of the Vine genetic library. (How had she figured out how to erase Jake's drawing?) She drew a star system with tiny humans, Furs, and Vines all standing on the same planet. The Fur did something with its face but made no move.

  Nan drew a sketch of the Fur sitting in the pilot seat. Then she drew what even Gail recognized as a food container like the ones they'd seen in a storage cabinet.

  She drew a thick black line through the food.

  The Fur started to cry.

  Gail said, "What—"

  "George first observed that in a Fur child on Greentrees," Nan said. "In that thriving all-female camp. He speculated that a tearing mechanism of some sort is necessary to all creatures with eyes and without a nictitating membrane. To clear dust and stuff. But he thought even then that the tears might also be a distress expression. He said some mechanisms would be duplicated in different evolutionary paths from sheer chance."

  "Oh," Gail said. She didn't remember what a nictitating membrane was.

  The Fur went on crying, large tears rolling grotesquely over the matted hair on its face. Nan pointed again to the star system drawing, the pilot console, and the blacked-out food sketch. The Fur reached for some strange-looking protrusions in front of it.

  "Or maybe," Nan said flatly, "her tears aren't a distress mechanism. Maybe that's joy. Isn't this infection supposed to make them happier?"

  Gail didn't answer. Checking on her patients, another thought occurred to her.
"Nan—the other Furs stayed docile only so long. What are you going to do when this pilot here goes into the second stage of infection?"

  "Put her inside a wall."

  "What if it just sits there and starves instead of piloting? Or if it flies the ship off on a different course from the one we want? We wouldn't even know that was happening!"

  Nan scowled. Chagrin turned to anger. "Fuck it, Gail, I can't think of everything!"

  "I didn't say that you could."

  "You implied that I—"

  "Forget it, Nan. We don't need your tame Fur, after all."

  Karim was waking up.

  "So you took control of the ship, just like that," Jake said.

  "Don't make it sound so easy," Gail said. She felt so much more like herself when the others were around her. Everyone but Dr. Shipley had regained consciousness, although you couldn't say they were well. All of them except Karim still had high fevers. Their heads ached, they had muscle cramps, and every once in a while someone got dry heaves, although nobody had any stomach contents left to heave up. Even Karim, the first time he tried to stand, toppled over and hit his head on the deck. Blood to add to the vomit. Fortunately, the wound wasn't serious. Gail bound it with their dwindling supply of blanket cloth.

  "How long until we reach Greentrees?" Ingrid demanded weakly.

  "How would I know?" Gail said. "We're just passengers. Karim, are you going to be able to figure out this weapons arsenal in time?"

  "No," Karim said. The physicist, seated in the pilot's chair, studied the array of weird protrusions in front of him. Jake had ordered the Fur pilot taken back to the "brig," as he called it. Gail didn't think the joke was funny.

  " 'No'?" Nan said, before Jake could answer Karim. "You can't figure out the fucking weapons?"

  "Nan, think about it," Karim said patiently. "The Vines didn't show me how to operate the weapons system aboard the ship they stole from the Furs. They didn't know how to operate it, because no Vine has ever used any Fur weapons. They just don't use weapons at all, remember?"

  Gail said quickly, before Nan could begin on the Vines, "But you can't learn the weapons."

  "No, Gail."

  Jake said, "Then all this is for nothing. A second Fur ship can just blast us out of the sky."

  "Not necessarily," Karim said. "Here's an important fact. Do you remember way back before we first reached Greentrees, when the Ariel's computer registered another ship streaking past at an acceleration of a hundred gees? That ship came really close to us, but it took no notice of us at all. The reason is that when a McAndrew Drive is on, it's generating an intense cloud of plasma as it derives energy from the vacuum."

  "So?" Nan said belligerently.

  "So in the middle of that plasma cloud, the sensors can't operate. The Fur ship, or Vine ship, whichever it was, couldn't detect the Ariel. It didn't know we were there. The Fur fleet keeps track of each other by quee. Our quee wasn't entangled with theirs; it was entangled with Earth, and anyway ours didn't operate continuously, as theirs apparently do. So the other ship just never detected the Ariel at all."

  Gail knew Karim's words were important, but she didn't know why. She looked from his face to Jake's and back again.

  Jake said slowly, "So if we destroy our quee—both the one that belongs on this ship and our own that the Furs modified to communicate with them—then no Fur vessel will know where we are."

  Nan said, "But we won't know where they are, either."

  Karim said, "We will if we turn off our drive but theirs is on. And even though we don't have use of the Fur weapons, we do have this." He pointed to the huge disk below their feet.

  "So?" Nan said. "That's not a weapon. And anyway, the other ship will have one, too."

  "Yes," Karim said, "I know. But ... listen."

  31

  William Shipley didn't know where he was. The last thing he remembered was feeling very sleepy on the infirmary island aboard the Vine ship. But even lying on his back and gazing up at the ceiling, he could see this wasn't the Vine ship. This ceiling had no slime on it.

  He didn't feel ill. In fact, he felt extraordinarily well. He turned his head to look around.

  A metal room, not as large as the room he'd left filled with Vines and slime and paths. Left how? This room was clearly a bridge; he could see displays with totally meaningless symbols and protrusions and the back of what must be a pilot chair, and below his feet a short pole connecting the room to a black disk that could only be what Karim called a "super-high density massplate." Was he aboard another part of the Vine ship? He saw no Vines, humans, or Furs.

  Carefully Shipley got to his feet. Several open doorways led off the bridge. He started toward one, but Karim's voice startled him so much he gasped aloud.

  "Dr. Shipley! Hello!"

  Karim sat in the pilot's chair, staring at the incomprehensible protrusions. Shipley said, "What are you doing? Where are we?"

  "On the Fur ship," Karim said, not looking away from his protuberances. Some of them moved, seemingly of their own accord. Occasionally Karim touched one. "Gail took over the ship from the Furs. We control it now."

  "Gail?"

  "I'm sorry, Doctor, but I have to concentrate. Find Jake to explain, please."

  "Where ... where is everyone?"

  "Destroying the quee."

  Shipley shook his head to clear it. This didn't help. Nothing made any sense, nothing at all. He picked a doorway at random and started toward it.

  He'd gotten only a few feet when he heard a tremendous crash. Karim didn't even jump. The physicist did something to one of his protuberances, and all at once the black massplate began to slide away from Shipley's feet. For a moment he thought the ship was breaking apart and he clutched at empty air, swayed off balance. Then he caught himself as he realized what was actually happening.

  The ship was decelerating. The life quarters were sliding along the pole to keep the pull of deceleration balanced with the gravity pull of the massplate. He said, despite himself, "Karim ... please ... where are we?"

  "Greentrees."

  Greentrees?

  Another crash, followed by shouting. Dazed, Shipley lumbered toward the sound, following it through a short narrow corridor.

  George, Ingrid, Lucy, and Gail all stood crowded at the entrance of a small room. Inside, Jake raised a heavy piece of some unknown equipment over his head. He brought it down as hard as he could on a small tablelike structure bolted to, or part of, the metal deck. The table, already dented, caved in a little more. Jake shook with the recoil of the impact. It seemed to Shipley that he could actually see Jake's teeth rattle.

  "Okay, Jake," George said, "my turn."

  "Gladly."

  Shipley said, "What—"

  "Doctor!" Gail cried. "You're up! How do you feel?"

  The commonplace question in the midst of lunacy finished Shipley. A wave of dizziness swept over him. He fought it off and tried again. "What are you doing?"

  George said, "Oh, Lord, you need the whole story from the beginning. Jake, give me that thing, it's my turn."

  Jake relinquished the makeshift sledgehammer and moved out of the way. George smashed it down on the table. Over the deafening noise Ingrid shouted, "They're still all weak, so it's good you're here, Doctor. Don't let them rupture something inside themselves!"

  Gail shouted crossly, "He doesn't even know what they're weak from! Come on, Doctor, I'll explain."

  Gratefully Shipley followed her back to the relatively silent bridge. The massplate beneath his feet was now clearly a disk on a pole, moving away from them—or, rather, they from it. As soon as he could be heard, Shipley said, "Where's Naomi?"

  "With the Furs. She's fine, doctor, don't worry."

  With the Furs. Don't worry. Shipley put a hand on Gail's arm. Another deafening crash sounded from the other room. Gail said, "Come with me where it's quieter. I'll explain."

  The explanation took a long time. As Gail finished, the others trooped back in, and George fa
inted.

  "George!" Ingrid cried. "Doctor!"

  George revived almost immediately. Shipley made him stay on the floor. Running his hands professionally over George's chest, taking his pulse, peeling back his eyelids to look at the whites, Shipley felt some measure of calm return to him. This, at least, was familiar.

  "I'm fine," George said impatiently. "I want to get up."

  "Your pulse is racing."

  "I just destroyed an alien quee!"

  From his pilot chair Karim called, "Are you sure it's destroyed?"

  Ingrid snapped, "No, we can't know a hundred percent. It's alien tech! But we're pretty sure it's gone."

  Jake said, "That just leaves the other quee. Karim, how long till we're in orbit around Greentrees?"

  "Forty-seven furries."

  Gail looked at Shipley's face and said, "Karim invented that name for the units measured on the Fur chronometer. The Vines taught him to read their numbers."

  "It's in base six," George added helpfully.

  Gail said, "Don't overburden him with stuff he doesn't need to know. Or me, either. Doctor, I'll take you to Nan, if you like. She's feeding the Furs. She's the only one that can manipulate the invisible wall."

  Shipley stood, but at that moment Naomi entered the room from a different doorway. At the sight of her, half naked and scarred and starved-looking, everything that had happened on the Vine ship flooded back into Shipley's mind. Franz. The attack on Jake. Shipley tripping Franz. The slime eating at the rebuilt's face...

  Naomi said, "Dad?"

  Gail said, "Doctor, sit down. You're white as talc."

  "I want ... want to talk to Naomi."

  The others tactfully moved off. Naomi took him by the hand and led him down yet another narrow corridor. It was featureless, but out of sight and sound of the bridge she sat on the floor and gently pulled him down.

  For a long moment neither of them spoke. Then Shipley said, "Gail told me what happened."