Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

They ascended a small hill and stopped in front of a structure surrounded by trees. Owen snapped orders and the platoon jumped off the transport and took shielded positions behind it or nearby trees. The old woman on the transport looked startled, and then laughed .

Dr. Bourgiba said, “Lieutenant, there is no need for defensive measures.”

Owen didn’t even bother to answer him. “Kandiss, Berman, secure the building.”

A woman burst out of an upper floor onto a deck. Terran, though dressed in the same plain saronglike thing as Noah Jenner. She saw them and burst into tears. “You’re here! You’re really here—oh, thank God!”

She rushed down the stairs, saw Leo with his rifle raised, and stopped halfway down, hand to her mouth.

Noah Jenner snapped, “Put those guns down—Christ! This is my home, and you are guests! Kayla, I greet you—stop crying!”

Kandiss and Zoe ignored him, pushing past the woman on the stairs, disappearing into the house. A few moments later, Zoe reappeared on the deck. “Clear, Lieutenant. No other occupants.”

“Inside,” Owen said. Noah Jenner shot him a look of disgust and they all climbed the steps.

Inside was one large room, two sides open to the air but, Leo guessed, capable of being closed off with those woven wooden panels. Smaller cubicles on the side, all the doors open—probably by Kandiss or Zoe. A kitchen on one side, looking surprisingly like normal kitchens—a counter, stove, what might be a refrigerator. The rooms had no furniture except small, low tables of the same light wood as the house and a lot of big, heavily embroidered pillows, all in pale colors. The wood was pale, too, and the breeze blew through, warm and spicy. It was like being inside a basket at a flower show.

Jenner said, “You are welcome to my lahk,” not sounding for a second like he actually meant it.

The woman, Kayla, said, “Have you come to take us home? When, oh when?”

Jenner said, “Weren’t you listening to the radio?”

“No. Yes. For a while, but I couldn’t… it isn’t… Austin went to school like normal.”

“These Terrans’ ship was destroyed in the same attack that got the cities. I’m sorry, Kayla. Nobody is leaving World.”

Kayla began to wail, a high-pitched shriek that pierced Leo’s eardrums. The old Kindred woman, looking as disgusted as Jenner, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her onto the terrace and, it sounded like, down the steps into the garden.

Owen said to Jenner, “Who lives here and where are they?”

“The members of my lahk, which are the Terrans that came with me ten years ago. Some of them, anyway. Lieutenant, put down those ridiculous weapons. There is no danger here except what you and the Russian ship have caused.”

Dr. Jenner stepped between the two men. “Noah, the big problem now is food and water. We can’t handle your microbes. You had your entire microbiome changed, and we will need to do that. Meanwhile, we need a negative-pressure area with Terran atmosphere, the way it was arranged for us on the Embassy .”

Jenner said nothing for a long moment. To Leo, it looked as if he was bracing himself for something he didn’t want to say. Leo’s hand tightened on his sidearm, which he had not received orders to holster.

Jenner said, “Mom—all of you—the setup that we had on Terra, the Embassy with its labs and the shuttle to orbit and the ship itself—all that was in Kam^tel^ha, the capital city, and was destroyed with it. I told you already that we didn’t understand all that alien tech, and we never succeeded in duplicating it. The major hospitals and research labs were there, too. We have smaller clinics, one just down the hill, and maybe it can help. I’m no doctor. But in general, you will need to take off those masks and let your bodies adjust to World on their own.”

Bourgiba said sharply, “Has anyone done that? Of the original Terrans?”

“Six of us allowed our microbes to be altered at Kam^tel^ha. Four refused. Of those, two died. The other two are fine.”

Dr. Jenner said, “Which two?”

“Nicole Brink and Tasha McGruder.”

The names meant nothing to Leo; he hadn’t read much about the Kindred visit to Terra. He’d been fourteen years old, with his own problems.

Bourgiba said, “How long was the adjustment time?”

“About a week. A pretty rocky week.”

Owen demanded, “You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Jenner. Who lives here and where are they?”

Leo watched Jenner restraining his temper. “Myself, Kayla, her son Austin, Kayla’s sister Isabelle, and Steven and Joshua McGuire.”

Owen said, “Not Tony Schrupp or Nathan Beyon?”

“No. They chose to leave the lahk about a year ago.”

From Noah’s tone, this was some sort of breach, but Leo didn’t know of what.

Owen said, “Where did they go?”

“To the mountains. I don’t know where.”

“You have a wife and child. Where are they?”

“With my wife’s lahk, of course.”

“Does anyone in this house possess any weapons?”

“ No , and neither do you. You are guests here, Lieutenant, and Kindred does not permit guns of any sort. You will all relinquish yours and they will be locked safely away.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Owen said.

Once again, Marianne Jenner stepped in. “Noah, not now. We need water. Is there any sort of filtered water we can drink through straws or something?”

“No. Mom—”

She interrupted him. “I think it would be best if you took us to the clinic you mentioned, so we can see what supplies and facilities you have. We need to get acclimated as soon as possible because we’re going to try to manufacture more vaccine from the amount we brought. Claire Patel here—No, Noah, don’t look so hopeful, there aren’t many doses. We thought the whole planet would be vaccinated. There’s only enough for—Claire?”

Dr. Patel said, “A hundred doses. But we’ll need at least fifty to synthesize from, if we can do that at all.”

Fifty vaccines, and a whole continent of people facing the spore cloud, not counting the ones already dead in those cities. And Noah Jenner had a wife and child. Leo saw his face, the hunger and calculation, and knew that Jenner wanted two of those vaccines for the people he loved. So would everybody else, unless the doctors could make more. But even so, could they make enough for everybody in a few months, part of which was going to be spent sick from “adjusting” to the germs in this alien air? Didn’t seem likely.

Now Leo knew how their mission would look on Kindred.

Shit.

Isabelle came home from the baker’s, the basket of her bicycle laden with fresh-baked bread, her eyes red from weeping. Four cities. She had visited only Kam^tel^ha and knew none of the lahks in any of them, but they were Kindred and now they’d been murdered. The latest radio broadcast, which she’d heard in the teahouse, had said that the destroyer was a Russian ship. Isabelle wasn’t sure how the Great Mother knew this. There was no way to communicate with the ship, if it was still around, because the Kindred ship had been destroyed in the Russian attack. The Great Mother had escaped death only because she’d been out of the capital, returning to her lahk like everybody else, to await the coming of the spore cloud. The cities had been half empty.

Half empty was still a huge number of deaths. And gone were the hospitals, the universities, the old Temple of Life.

Isabelle rounded the curve of road to her lahk and screeched her bicycle to a halt. The upper deck was full of people— Terrans . Terrans she did not know. Noah Jenner, whom she hadn’t seen in a few months because he spent most of his time at Llaa^moh¡’s lahk, stood among them. One, two… eight other Terrans, and four of them wore helmets and carried guns.