Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

“Yes,” Jenner said.

Lamont said, “But you’re—”

“No. We’re not. Listen to me, Lieutenant. We have one culture and only one, because the land area of World is small and because the Terrans brought here were small in number and, maybe, because we don’t have much genetic diversity. That’s what I’m told, anyway. There were wars early on, but centuries ago one person gained control of huge swaths of land, presumably with an army, and she went on to establish the start of the civilization we have now. That was Mother Lalo^. She was an extraordinary person, a… I don’t know what you’d call it. Plant worshipper? Anyway, she established the principles for her kingdom, which eventually became all of World, that we still live by. That we must live by, to exist on this one continent without exhausting its resources. Respect for the land, first and always, which you can think of as ecological reality. No violence. Nothing that would lead to revolution, which means nobody starves, nobody is homeless, nobody is exploited. Family is all, not material goods, and a family is responsible for all its members. Government is made up of family heads, and decentralized whenever possible. Also, we practice strict population control. All of this is…. the word is untranslatable. ‘Bu^ka^tel.’”

Marianne Jenner ducked her head, hiding some private expression. Salah tried to process everything he’d just heard. Jenner made Kindred sound like Eden. But these were humans, and Salah didn’t believe in Eden. He said, “And all this works? These principles?”

“Most of the time, with most people,” Jenner said.

“And when it doesn’t?”

“We have laws, courts, punishments. But nothing like you have on Terra.”

Lamont said, “Uh-huh. Mr. Jenner, about our immediate situation—”

Branch interrupted. “You must be mining ore. There are bicycles on your road!”

“Yes, we mine and manufacture and transport,” Jenner said, “but as carefully as possible.”

“Describe your level of tech, please. You have radios, don’t you? That’s why the Friendship couldn’t raise your ship while it was on nightside and we weren’t. Radios but no more advanced communication.”

Jenner smiled sadly. “Yes. And you are…”

“Branch Carter.”

Who now was, Salah realized, the closest thing the humans had left to an engineer or physicist.

Jenner said, “We have no space program except the ship that was destroyed in Kam^tel^ha. Radio and radio towers but not television. No phones—all communication over distances is done by radio. Electricity from wind, sun, water, and geothermal sources. Medicines but not laser surgery. Books, although we control how many are printed so as not to use too much paper. Think the 1940s, Dr. Sherman, and you’ll be about right, with some exceptions. Big exceptions. No, better not think 1940s.”

“Cars?” Salah said, despite himself.

“We could make them but don’t, because we don’t drill for oil. Most goods go by water; there are a lot of rivers. We have dirigibles—I came here by dirigible—but bicycles are the usual—”

“Wait,” Marianne said. “You spoke to the Friendship from the Kindred ship, Noah. I heard you. But now you’re here, and you said the ship was in the destroyed city.”

“The… the best word is ‘rotational mother’—sent me from Kam^tel^ha last night. Otherwise I would have been killed with the rest.”

She said, “And your… your wife and child?”

There was a wife and child? Salah had not known that. Jenner must have told his mother before he left Earth. Was she Terran or Kindred? Interbreeding should be possible, there wouldn’t be that much genetic drift in 140,000 years.

Jenner said, “That’s why I was sent away. Everyone is returning to their lahks before the spore cloud comes.”

“Lahk?”

“Their family groups. Large, as in extended families.”

For a moment, Marianne looked as if she’d been slapped. Her son had just said that his family was not her. Before Salah could look away, the expression was gone. She said, “But by now you’ve developed a vaccine, you’ve had ten years, everyone in such a cohesive society must already be vaccinated… We vaccinated all of Earth against smallpox in less than ten years!”

Salah’s stomach clenched. He knew what Jenner would say before he said it. So did Marianne and Claire, the other biologists.

Jenner said it. “We have no vaccine.”

Branch drew a sharp breath.

Jenner continued, “We tried. But we don’t know enough, not even with everything we learned from you on Terra, and we had to leave before you developed the vaccine.”

Salah’s stomach clenched. No vaccine, and the Friendship with all its supplies and databases destroyed. In another few months the spore cloud would cross paths with Kindred. The entire population, whose ancestors had been brought here before the spore cloud hit Earth the first time seventy thousand years ago, had no species immunity against R. sporii . There would be a few people with natural resistance, which was what had preserved the humanity of Earth even as it reduced the population to a few thousand in the famous “bottleneck event.” But only a few.

Salah had worked in hospitals when the cloud made its second contact with Earth. He’d done twenty-hour shifts in Jordan, trying desperately to save those who, due to millennia of genetic drift, had lost their species immunity or who had weakened immunity. Many died. “Only” 5 percent in Jordan; 7 percent in the United States; 30 percent in Russia, whose genome had lost that particular genetic lottery. They died gasping for breath, their lungs filling with fluid, until they literally drowned.

Civilization on Kindred would disappear.

Marianne closed her hand around her son’s arm. “You left Earth before we’d developed the vaccine. Ten of you. Many on Earth weren’t immune to R. sporii , so some of you may be vulnerable when the spore clouds hit. Noah, you might not be immune.”

Claire Patel said, “I have some vaccine. I brought it in that suitcase there. If you have any labs left standing, we might be able to synthesize more.”

Jenner’s already oversized eyes went wider. “ You brought vaccine? ”

Lieutenant Lamont said, “That’s not our mission. Our mission is to establish relations and return to Terra.”

Salah stood. He was aware that beside the young Ranger, he was short, a little bit flabby, old. Unarmed. He said, “We can’t go home, Lieutenant. There is no means to go home. Vaccines are our mission now.

“We have to save as much of this planet as we can.”

Austin Rhinehart sat under a makfruit tree in the back garden and tried to imagine himself dead.

Everything would disappear, all of World. But then he would disappear, too, so how would he know he was dead? He wouldn’t. Unless Old Mother Kee^la’s tales of another world after death were true and Austin would join his ancestors in endless dancing and feasting. But Austin wasn’t fond of dancing, and he didn’t have any ancestors on World for his lahk, because everyone in it had come from Earth, a place Austin didn’t remember. He’d been only three. Anyway, he didn’t believe Old Mother Kee^la’s tales. She wasn’t even his old mother, only Graa^lok’s; Austin’s lahk was also missing old mothers.

And he wasn’t going to be dead. He was Terran, and thus immune to spore disease. But everyone else was going to be dead: his best friend Graa^lok and Old Mother Kee^la and the teachers at school and Tiklal, whom Austin was supposed to apprentice to when he turned fourteen in two months. Only by that time, Tiklal would be dead, along with nearly everyone else on World.