Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

She dropped her bicycle, snatching up the bread, and rushed up the steps.

“I greet you, Noah. What—” She stopped dead. Two of the soldiers had raised guns. Isabelle had, a dozen years ago, dated a Special Forces guy. He’d been a dick, but she knew what she was looking at. These were Army Rangers.

Noah said, “I greet you, Isabelle. This is Isabelle Rhinehart, she lives here. Better be careful, Lieutenant, she’s armed with loaves of bread.”

A man stepped forward. Middle Eastern–looking, but no accent to his English, evidently the leader. “I’m Dr. Salah Bourgiba, Ms. Rhinehart. We’re off the American starship Friendship , which was destroyed in the same attack as on your cities. Mr. Jenner brought us here.”

Noah said, “I’m taking them to the clinic—best we can do. They need to drink, and the hospital at—”

“Yes, I know,” Isabelle interrupted. “Where’s Kayla? And Austin?”

“Austin’s at school. Kayla’s in the garden with Bahlk^a.”

“Hysterical?”

“Yes.”

Of course she was. Trust Kayla to make any complicated situation more complicated. Isabelle looked over the Terrans. So odd to see such pale skins on all but Bourgiba and the largest of the soldiers, who appeared to be African-American. And the hospital destroyed—

She said, “I’ll come with you. I’ve been through what’s ahead of you.”

The older woman said, “You didn’t have your microbes replaced before you reached Kindred?”

Kindred? Was that what they were calling World now? Dumb name. “No, I didn’t. Are you Marianne Jenner? I recognize you from your pictures ten years ago. I was stupid then, I didn’t trust Worlders to mess around with my insides and so I adapted the hard way. It’s bad but it only lasts a week or so. Unless the doctor at the clinic—it’s only a local clinic, don’t expect anything fancy—can do something to help that’s been developed since. We learned a lot from the trip to Terra, you know.”

“But not, apparently, about the time dilation,” Marianne said. She was not smiling.

“No. That was as big a shock to Mee^hao¡ and the others as it must have been to you. Lieutenant, you really don’t need those weapons here. Although I have nothing but the greatest respect for the Seventy-Fifth Regiment.”

Noah Jenner scowled. “Come on,” he said. “We need to go.”

Nothing but the greatest respect for the Seventy-Fifth Regiment. She was beautiful, smart—look how fast she grasped the whole situation—and kind. How old was she? Older than Leo, maybe, but Christ—her figure in that revealing sarong-thing, her strong firm arms. She wasn’t dyed copper like Noah Jenner (or whatever they did to get his skin that color), but her face and body were tanned and her light brown hair streaked from that big orange sun. Or from something, anyway.

Was she married? He didn’t understand this lahk thing, which had Noah Jenner living here and his wife someplace else. Maybe Leo could ask Bourgiba to explain it; the doctor seemed to know a lot about how Kindred worked.

He wasn’t worried about surviving this “microbe adjustment.” Hell, next to RASP and Ranger School and the whole poison ivy–sepsis incident, it would probably be a piece of cake.

Isabelle Rhinehart. Things were looking up.

Austin and Graa^lok stopped at the mouth of the cave. Austin swiped the sweat off his face with the hem of his shirt. His mother sewed him Terran clothes, and although he usually wore a wrap, sometimes the Terran clothes felt better. And they kept his mother happy, or at least less miserable.

Graa^lok said, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Of course it’s the right place,” Austin said, hoping this was true. The mountains of World, old and worn down, were all full of caves. Some were stocked with supplies for hikers: some were gorgeous with gem-studded vugs that tourists visited; some had lakes or hot springs. However, those were mostly farther north than here, closer to the cities. This range was smaller and more isolated, amid farms and orchards. But it, too, held caves, some completely unexplored. A few small ones had crazy people living in them, those who didn’t like the rules that Worlders lived by and so went off to live in small bands by themselves.

Well, come to think—that’s what Tony Schrupp was doing. Only not really.

What Tony-kal was doing was saving civilization.

Austin tugged at the thick brush covering the mouth of the cave, mostly muktal^, which had unfortunate thorns. One pricked him and he sucked the blood off his wrist. “You could help, you know!”

Graa^lok didn’t move. “These mountains are where they found the plans, you know. In a big cave. The plans for the starship, on titanium, and the sealed parts.”

“Yes? How do you know?”

“Great-Grandmother told me. She was on the engineering team.”

Austin, who’d never known Graa^lok’s great-grandmother as anything more than a very old lady lying in bed, couldn’t think of her as an engineer. She was even too old for the Council of Mothers, and engineers were young and energetic and inventive. Like Tony-kal and Dr. Beyon.

“Come on, we can squeeze through now. Don’t break any sticks, we have to put all this brush back.”

The two boys, Austin in the lead, crawled through the gap in the brush, which snapped closed behind them. They crawled along a tunnel barely large enough for their bodies; very quickly the tunnel grew dark. Twenty yards in, the tunnel turned sharply back on itself and the walls grew smoother; this part was human-made. A faint light appeared at the end. Then they were at the metal grill and Austin rang the bell.

A few minutes later, Tony’s face appeared on the other side of the grill. “Austin?”

“And Graa^lok.” It felt strange to talk to someone without first saying “I greet you.” Sometimes Austin even addressed Tony and Dr. Beyon without the polite “kal” that identified them as members of his lahk. Austin relished these small acts of rebellion.

Tony said, “Did anybody follow you?”

“No.”

“Did you bring it?”

“Yes.”

Tony unlocked the grill and swung it open. A short drop led to another tunnel, taller and wider. The boys wiggled out headfirst and Tony lifted each to stand on the smooth stone floor. He locked the grill behind them.

Another door, solid metal, at the end of the tunnel. Tony unlocked that and they were in.

The cave was a large room giving out onto a deep lake fed by underground streams. They must have been warm, because the water was. Smaller tunnels led off in every direction. The uneven floor was littered with sleeping mats, bulging cloth sacks, tools, and a fantastic assortment of machinery. Some of it Austin recognized—a sort of heating coil, a small refrigerator—some he did not. He knew there was an air filtration system connected to the two chimneys that brought air to the cave, generators that used heat from the hot springs and World’s magnetic field, equipment for a doctor. Everything had been brought in through the narrow tunnel, the larger machines in pieces. Austin didn’t know how any of it worked; his mind couldn’t seem to hang onto the concepts.

Graa^lok could. That’s why he was here. He was unofficial apprentice to Nathan Beyon, who had been an important physicist back on Terra and who insisted that the next generation be well represented in this project. On World, Beyon-kal and Tony had made and sold transistors. Austin wasn’t sure what those were, either, but he knew that everyone wanted them for radios and other devices. Beyon-kal had created the factory and oversaw manufacture of the transistors, somewhere near the central mountains where the mining and manufacturies all were, and Tony had sold them. They’d gotten really rich. Then they used the money to buy this mountain and create Haven.