CROSSFIRE

by Nancy Kress

  The Fur ship had turned off its drive. A few carefully calculated seconds before, Karim had thrown his ship into its maximum, near-hundred-gee acceleration. Disk first, the human vessel had hurled toward the life quarters of the Fur ship, which had been moving out along its own pole during the entire deceleration, to balance its own heavy-density disk. It was now at the very end of the pole, at its farthest distance from its disk. Karim had been supposed to smash his disk into the life quarters at maximum acceleration, killing everyone aboard. But just before their own looming disk had obscured the port in the floor, Jake had seen the Fur ship flash and there had been no collision. They'd missed.

  The human ship was still accelerating in a straight line away from Greentrees. Could it get away fast enough to avoid the Fur ship's weapons? No, that didn't make sense, weapons range had to be longer than that or a warship would be useless in a war ... Jake closed his eyes and got ready to die.

  Nothing happened.

  Karim choked out, "They haven't fired on us ... at least, I don't know what their weapons fire looks like, but..."

  Jake said, "But if they fired, they couldn't have missed at this range? Could they?"

  "I don't know!"

  Gail said, "Go back before they shoot at Mira City!"

  Jack felt sense returning, all at once, as if it were gravity. It steadied him. "Karim, decelerate. Try for a real-time visual through the port." He didn't trust the alien displays. They were too alien.

  Karim brought the ship back for a flyby of the other craft, which remained motionless. As nothing continued to happen, Jake, emboldened, said, "Get closer."

  They flew by the ship slowly and at a great distance, then again much closer. Again Jake felt that peculiar sickening sensation in his guts. Fear...

  "Oh, my God," George said. "Did you feel that?"

  "Yes! What is it?" Ingrid cried.

  Karim said, "It's the gravity tug of the other high-density disk. We're getting a lateral gravity tug for a few seconds of, let me think, maybe forty percent of gee."

  Jake said, "Their ship isn't damaged. At least it doesn't look damaged."

  "Oh, my God," George said again. "I get it!"

  Jake didn't get it. Irritated through his fear, he grabbed George by the arm only because he didn't dare grab Karim. "What? What happened?"

  "We didn't miss their ship by much. Ow, Jake, let go! We didn't miss their ship by much, and although we were at maximum acceleration, we'd only been accelerating a few seconds. Our velocity wasn't actually that high then. We went by their life quarters while it was at maximum extension from their high-density disk, but much, much closer to ours. Gravity isn't a directed beam; it's a spherical phenomenon. The Furs in the other were yanked toward our disk at maybe eighty or ninety gees. Only for a second, but I guess that was enough. They were slammed against the side of their life quarters like..."

  "They haven't fired at us," Karim broke in. "I think they're all dead."

  It was a few more hours before anyone boarded. Then it was Jake, Ingrid, and, oddly enough, Dr. Shipley. Shipley said that if there were survivors, he might be useful. Jake's private opinion was that Shipley had developed some sort of death wish.

  They bumped airlocks and once again Jake prepared to die, suspecting some sort of trick. But what? His reason told him how unlikely that was; his gut didn't listen.

  Fortunately the two airlocks, once within a certain distance of each other, automatically gravitated together, sealed, and opened. Karim was sure he could figure out everything else on the ship, given time. Cocky after his victory, he'd developed an eagerness not unlike Shipley's in expression, however different its motive.

  "All right," Jake said meaninglessly. "Let's go." He stepped out onto the temporary common ground. He had a brief vision of what the hardware would look like from space: two joined balls in the middle of an immensely long stick, each end of the stick bearing a black disk. A double bead inexplicably strung between two saucers.

  The other ship was the exact duplicate of theirs. Evidently the Furs went in for neither updated designs nor individualizing touches. Jake followed the corridor to the central room that was the bridge on a Fur ship, much expanded terrarium on a Vine-modified one.

  The command console, pilot chair, and ports were the same. Out of one port Jake saw the ship's disk, at maximum distance from the life quarters. The opposite port was smeared with fur and a thick, brownish fluid. The bodies themselves lay piled on the floor. After their brief but deadly slam against the hull, gravity had once again dropped them after Karim's ship flew on.

  Shipley at once set out looking for any Fur who had survived having its internal organs, whatever they were, ruptured. Jake couldn't watch. Instead he explored each of the other short corridors. They all led to the same structures he'd seen before. Quee room, shuttle bay, the chamber where the humans had been imprisoned, and some other small rooms whose function he couldn't guess. Although the Furs had to sleep somewhere, didn't they?

  Maybe they didn't even sleep. For all Jake knew.

  "There are no survivors," Dr. Shipley said when Jake returned. Shipley, Ingrid, and George looked at Jake expectantly. They were waiting, he realized, for his next orders.

  "Now we smash the quee on this ship," he said. "So that we can fly it elsewhere without any Furs out in space tracking us. Then we destroy the quee in orbit."

  He saw Ingrid open her mouth to say something, think better of it, stay quiet.

  "Then," Jake finished, "we figure out how to launch and fly these shuttles. After that, we go home."

  It was a lot more complicated than that, of course.

  When Jake returned to his own ship, leaving the two craft locked together, Karim had already begun trying to figure out how the shuttles operated. Jake found him in the shuttle bay.

  "Vine showed me the bare minimum," Karim said, "but there wasn't time for some crucial details. Like, for instance, getting the shuttle bay doors open. And if I get into Greentrees' gravity well without knowing exactly what I'm doing..."

  "You'll end up looking worse than the dead Furs next door," Jake said. "Go slow, Karim. In fact, I want you to stop for a while. You look tauter than space-elevator cable."

  "But I—"

  "That's an order," Jake said, still mildly surprised to find himself issuing military-style orders, or anyone else listening to them.

  "Okay," Karim said. "Jake, I want to name this ship, if that's all right with you."

  "Name it? Well, okay. You've certainly earned the right. What do you want to call it, the Karim S. Mahjoub?"

  "No. The Franz Mueller"

  Jake felt as if he'd been punched. Karim said hurriedly, "I know at the end he tried to kill you. But before that, remember, he killed Captain Scherer, just because Franz thought it was the right thing to do. He wasn't responsible for the rebuilt paranoia. Well, okay, maybe he was. But we spent some time together in Mira City, he taught me to fly the skimmer and the shuttle, and I do believe he always thought he was acting in the best human interests."

  "All right, Karim," Jake said, hearing the thickness in his own voice. "This ship is the Franz Mueller. And the other one is the Beta Vine."

  A volunteer team cleaned out the Beta Vine, ejecting the Fur bodies into space. By the time this was finished, and Karim announced that he was sure he could fly a shuttle downstairs, Jake had devised a plan. He discussed it first with Karim, on whom it depended.

  The young physicist said, "I'm not surprised, Jake. I was thinking the same thing. I don't see any other way to do it."

  "If you can get any volunteers to go with you ... although maybe it's not right to ask anyone else to take the risk."

  "I already have a volunteer."

  "You do?" Jake said, startled. "Who?"

  "Lucy." Karim flushed. "She ... we ... she wants to go with me."

  Jake stood still, wondering what he felt. The regulation regret, no more. Lucy, that idealist and desperate hero-worshiper, would of course have now fastened on
Karim. The Man Who Saved Mira City.

  "All right, take Lucy," he said. "But first teach me, George, and Ingrid how to fly these ships. Then make one shuttle run down, alone, to be sure you know how to do it. Then ferry all of us down except me."

  "That will take time," Karim said. "Do we have enough time before more Furs show up?"

  "I have no idea. But we have to do it."

  "Why are you staying aboard after everyone else goes down?"

  "Because I'm going to train the new soldiers you ferry up here. Karim, think. We're now at war with the entire Fur empire."

  "But they're all going to be made passive and happy by the Vines' virus!"

  "And how long will that take? Nobody knows. We don't know the size or distance to their home planet, the number of colonies they have, the number of ships in space ... complete contagion could take generations. Meanwhile, we're at war."

  "With Furs?"

  Karim was right to be appalled, of course. The Fur technology was so far beyond pathetic human standards, it looked like no contest. All the humans had on their side was time, and with relativistic dilation, time was a slippery and unreliable ally.

  Jake said, "You've been too preoccupied with the ship to think about this. Understandable. But, yes, we're at war with the Furs."

  Karim stood still for a long moment. Then he said, "Get Ingrid and George. I'm not really that tired. We'll start the lessons now."

  Jake nodded. " 'Si vis pacem, para bellum.' "

  Karim looked blank. Jake wasn't surprised. Nobody learned more than a few isolated phrases of Latin anymore, especially not as a hobby. The only person Jake had ever met who might have been able to translate that sentence was Dr. Shipley—who most certainly would not have agreed with it.

  He said, "It means, 'If you wish for peace, prepare for war.' So show me how to fly this ship."

  Together they left the shuttle bay for the bridge, and whatever might wait beyond it.

  EPILOGUE: THREE MONTHS OR ELEVEN YEARS LATER

  In the pearly dawn light, Jake stood beside Gail and Faisal bin Saud at the edge of Mira Park. The park, itself at the edge of Mira City, was a luxuriant mix of native groundcover and wide swathes of Terran grass. Genemod flowers bloomed in carefully placed beds. There were groves of the tall, narrow native "trees," their shade supplemented by graceful open-sided pavilions. Benches, paths, a playground for children. A lot can be built in eleven years.

  How had it happened, Jake thought, that none of them, not even Karim, had considered the time dilation as it applied to their own situation? To the nine kidnapped humans, their terrifying odyssey had lasted a few months. On Greentrees, eleven years had passed. Jake had no idea how far into space the Vines and then the Furs had taken him, but it must have been farther than he'd dreamed of imagining.

  "Do you see them yet?" Gail asked, shading her eyes with her hand.

  "No, I don't," Faisal said. He was governor of Mira City now, and had been since Jake and Gail had vanished with the Vines. That's how it had appeared to Mira City: its leaders had disappeared for good. Faisal had been elected, although Jake suspected that the "election" had contained more elements than one adult, one vote.

  Jake's and Gail's stock in Mira Corporation had been passed to their respective heirs, and getting it reassigned to them after their resurrection had caused some very strained incidents. Gail's stock had been dispersed among her contentious family. Jake's had gone to form a charitable foundation.

  Jake had his stock and voting privileges back, but not as CEO. Mira City was no longer a corporation. It had become a city-state.

  He didn't really mind. There were more important considerations now, and Jake bore a different title.

  "Wait ... there they are!" Gail said. "On the horizon!"

  Jake squinted. Yes, there were dots on the horizon. Slowly the dots turned into a caravan of people and animals. Larry Smith and his Cheyenne, come to hear formally how, and why, humans were now at war with an alien race unknown light-years away, and Cheyenne braves had unknowingly been the first casualties all those months—years ago. Almost three months ago a Mira City delegate had driven a rover to the Cheyenne subcontinent with this information, but Smith had refused to ride back with her to Mira City. The Cheyenne, he'd told the delegate, would send its tribal representatives in its own time and its own way.

  "What are those animals pulling the travois?" Gail said.

  Faisal said, "They're called 'elephants' by the Cheyenne, something else by our naturalists. They're very slow but not dangerous. Unfortunately, they smell."

  "And the Cheyenne don't mind?"

  "It seems not," Faisal said, smiling. He looked eleven years older, but his beautiful manners had not changed, for which Jake had been grateful during the last difficult months. Greentrees' colonists had chosen to leave Earth in order to find, each in its own way, a more peaceful life. It had not been easy to mobilize them for war.

  He watched the "elephants" approach, pulling travois loaded with teepees and various gear. The animals didn't really look much like elephants, except in a certain lumbering gait. Long, thin, and low-slung, they had small heads and sharp dorsal spines. A shift in the wind brought their scent to Jake. He put his hand over his nose.

  Fortunately, the Cheyenne left the elephants, along with most of their people, several hundred yards from Mira Park. Youths began unloading the travois and setting up camp. A delegation of Cheyenne approached the Mira City welcoming committee.

  Four men and two women, they were dressed so fantastically that Jake blinked. Trousers and boots of some animal hide, short tunics of what looked like woven purple groundcover. Yes, it was groundcover, the fibers treated somehow to look both soft and tough. The tunics were trimmed with bright beads, feathers, and shells. Necklaces and hair ornaments of the same materials glinted in the sunlight. Each Cheyenne wore a tattoo on his or her left cheek. Jake couldn't tell if the tattoos were permanent or applied with temporary vegetable dye. They depicted suns, stars, moons, flowers.

  "Welcome to Mira City," Faisal said formally. "I am Governor Faisal bin Saud, and these are my advisors, Gail Cutler and Jake Holman."

  "I know you," a young man said. "I am Singing Mountain."

  Gail blurted out, "Where's Larry Smith? Uh, Blue Waters?"

  Singing Mountain said, "My father passed into the spirit world two months ago. We sang his death song then."

  Death song. Jake was startled into sharp memory of Beta and Vine. The alien death flowers were stored cryogenically in Mira City, possibly forever.

  Faisal said, "I am sorry. Your father was a fascinating man."

  "Thank you," Singing Mountain said, while Jake tried to remember Larry Smith's son's English name. He failed. "But don't be sorry. My father has rejoined the earth, whose splendor and gifts sustain life."

  Well, not exactly. "The earth" was surely a misnomer on Greentrees, although Jake supposed that "rejoined the dirt" wouldn't have the same majestic feel.

  Faisal said, "We have much to tell you, Singing Mountain. Events have occurred in Mira City that may affect the Cheyenne as well."

  "So we have been told. If it is true, cooperation will be needed between our peoples."

  "I am glad to find you so willing to cooperate."

  "We share the abundance and power of this planet," the young man said mildly. "We would defend it if necessary."

  With spears and bows? Those were the only weapons Jake saw on the Cheyenne. Although he wasn't going to be too quick to judge. The Cheyenne, judging from this brief initial impression, had done exactly what Larry Smith had said they were going to do: find a way to live in harmony with, and appreciation of, Greentrees, without modern technology to come between them and the mysterious fullness from which all species had sprung. It might be that self-sufficiency would be needed in the years ahead.

  The problem was, of course, that nobody knew what might be needed. The Furs might never attack. They might consider that humans were too insignificant to bother with
. Although Jake didn't really believe that; the Furs, fellow DNA inheritors, knew a dangerous species when they saw one, even if that species was still young.

  Or the Furs might never attack because the Vine infection had rendered them all happy and passive, dreaming in the sun, finding their greatest joy in sharing silence. Even now Karim and Lucy, for whom only days had passed since infecting the first Furs, were speeding in the Franz Mueller across the galaxy toward a spot near the Vine colony planet. They would set the infected Furs out in space in the shuttle with the small quee, once programmed by humans and since reprogrammed by Furs, to clearly advertise their location to their fellows. Other Furs would surely pick them up and in turn become infected. With time dilation, that event would occur years or even decades from now in Greentrees' time scale. Years more to prepare for a war that might or might not come.

  And humans were preparing. Physicists, engineers, and newly created soldiers had figured out the weapons on the Beta Vine, and now could use them. The ship was in high orbit around Greentrees, fully manned. Robot sensors orbited even farther out, ready to detect anything approaching. On the ground, civilians underwent periodic evacuation drills. If Mira City were vaporized from the air, few humans would be in it. Scatter, hide, travel. An enemy in a single ship, no matter how advanced, couldn't eliminate an entire planetful of small groups.

  Could they?

  Yes, if they used bio-weapons. But it was the Vines, not the Furs, who had those. The Furs only had hardware, deadly enough but unable to kill completely. The proof of this was the wild Furs left over from the Vine experiments on Greentrees. Several had been sighted over the years. The space Furs had not been able to eliminate them all, and they hadn't died out. The creatures still considered themselves at war with the Cheyenne.

  So much war. All communication with Earth had ceased, so Jake didn't know if the promised expedition of scientists had ever been launched toward Greentrees. It wouldn't arrive for decades yet, in any case. Jake was occasionally bothered by how little thought he gave to Earth. Even his private nightmares of Mrs. Dalton's library had ceased. And yet ... Earth was not a factor you could count out completely. Even if she had had some devastating war or die-off, humans on the home world might reinvent themselves as completely as had dead Larry Smith's very living Cheyenne.