Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Isabelle stared at Llaa^moh¡. Was this true? In the face of the Terran attack on the cities, and the terrible spore-cloud attack still to come, were some Worlders no longer willing to keep what Noah had called “the Pax Worlda”? That was supposed to be a joke. But Llaa^moh¡’s urgency was no joke.

Us. Them. The Russians had created duality.

Isabelle said in World, “Let’s bring this computer to town. Maybe someone there can recharge the battery.”

Leo’s legs still felt shaky; he ignored the sensation and left his room. The clinic was built in an irregular square around a sort of courtyard open to each room and the sky. In one room, Zoe and Marianne Jenner lay on two beds, Zoe asleep. Dr. Jenner looked back at Leo, then turned her head to vomit into a bucket. The room smelled terrible and Dr. Jenner looked worse. Leo’s stomach roiled and he backed out hastily. A Kindred nurse pushed past him to go to her patients.

Kandiss still slept. In another room Owen lay open eyed but muttering. His wrists were strapped to the bed, which made Leo clench his jaw until he remembered, dimly, that his wrists had been, too. Hospitals did that, didn’t they, to keep patients not in their right minds from hurting themselves or anybody else. Well, all right, then. For now. In the other bed, the lab assistant, Carter, was awake. He waved feebly at Leo. Dr. Patel slept on a floor mat in what looked like an office; Leo didn’t go in.

He found what he wanted in the only room without windows. The only way to reach this room was through the courtyard, in full view of the staff. The door was locked, but it didn’t look strong. Leo threw himself against it.

A man rushed across the courtyard, shouting in Kindese. Leo threw himself against the door again. The motion made his head hammer and his knees buckle, but the door gave. Security here was shit.

Cabinets with wooden doors lined three sides of the windowless room, open shelves the fourth. Leo picked up something heavy from a shelf, a piece of metal equipment he didn’t understand, and smashed the largest cabinet door, keeping at it until the lock gave. Cloth bags and glass vials. He began on a second cabinet.

“Corporal Brodie, stop.” Dr. Bourgiba, shaky but upright, with a crowd of Kindred behind him. Leo scanned the group briefly. No one armed, no one moving toward him. He returned to smashing the cabinet door.

It was all inside: rifles, sidearms, armor, grenades, ammunition. Leo picked up a Beretta and checked it. Unloaded. Facing the group in the doorway, he calmly loaded it. “Doctor, don’t try to interfere. These are our weapons.”

“I see that,” Bourgiba said. He spoke in Kindese to everybody else, who frowned and scowled and muttered and did nothing. Good thing for them.

“Tell them all not to try this again.”

“Weapons are not permitted on Kindred, Leo.”

“They are now.”

Bourgiba let out a throaty sound, which might have been a sigh or a protest or a resignation. Not that it mattered which. Leo said, “I’m going to take these to my room. All of them. Nobody had better try to stop me.”

“No one will. May I help?”

“No. You look like you should go back to bed.”

“Try to understand, Leo, it’s a different culture.”

“I get that. But this is my culture.”

Bourgiba spoke to the Kindred, who scowled and muttered some more and then drifted away.

To move the whole stock without leaving any out of sight, Leo had to carry the gear in stages. Some to the courtyard, more to the courtyard, then more, then the rest. Repeat to the door of his room, repeat until everything was inside. By the time he finished, he felt weaker than even Ranger school had ever left him. Bourgiba, who had watched the entire operation, said, “You need to hydrate. Then to eat.”

“Is their water and food going to make me start vomiting again?”

“It didn’t with me.”

Leo considered his options. There weren’t any. “Okay, then, food.”

Bourgiba brought it himself, a polished wooden bowl of what looked like rice topped with what looked like fruit. Or vegetables. But it smelled good and Leo ate it, sitting on the edge of his bed, the unit’s weapons piled around him. Bourgiba sagged against the wall. Kandiss slept.

Bourgiba said, “I need to examine you. Bodies vary in their transition to alien microbes.”

Leo had already noticed that; he was deeply annoyed that Bourgiba seemed to have recovered faster than he had.

The doctor said, “The immune system goes wild with the intrusion of what it initially perceives as pathogens. Two of the original expedition died this way, and now we might also lose Marianne Jenner.”

Leo stopped eating. Damn. He liked Dr. Jenner. After a moment he said, “Don’t you need her to make vaccines?”

“Yes. Although Claire and I can do it alone if we have to.”

Leo finished his bowl and waited to see what his stomach would do. It roiled a little, but not much. He felt less shaky now. “Lieutenant Lamont?”

“He’ll be fine. So will the others. I expect them up by evening. Maybe longer for Zoe—her body just took a double insult, after all.”

“She’ll be up.” Bourgiba didn’t understand about Rangers. “What happens now?”

“The Kindred hospitals and research labs have been destroyed. There are not quite ten weeks left to synthesize and administer vaccines, assuming we can make them. We’ll work here—in fact, we already are. We have taken over two nearby buildings. More personnel and equipment are coming from other clinics, although the major sources were in the cities destroyed by the Stremlenie .”

Leo thought hard. “You mean, everybody on Kindred knows this will be where to get a vaccine?”

“Probably not everybody. We’ve asked medical personnel to not share details with anyone.”

Yeah, right, like that would happen if equipment and doctors were traveling across the continent and there was only enough vaccine for some people but not everybody. He said, “How close are the other two buildings?”

“One is about fifty yards away, a school. The other is across a field.”

A security nightmare. “Which is bigger?”

“The school is much bigger. That’s where we’re setting up a lab now.”

“Okay. Until Lieutenant Lamont takes over, I’m in charge of security here. Board up every window in the school and every window in this clinic that faces outward. Get workmen to build a covered walkway between the buildings, as strong as they can make it, not just those sliding woven panels. Get that done immediately.”

“I don’t have any authority to—”

“You have something everybody needs. Whoever owns these buildings will cooperate and so will the government. Promise them early vaccination if you have to.”

“Leo, it doesn’t work that way here.”

Leo found his clothes in a cupboard. He stripped off the nightgown and pulled on underwear and pants. “Tell me, Doctor—are there rumors anywhere, on the radio or with the medical types arriving here now, of people hoarding food or fortifying their houses or generally getting ready to survive if they happen to be among the ones that the spore disease doesn’t kill? Any rumors at all?”

Bourgiba was silent.

“I thought so. This place doesn’t work that way, now . This is a peaceful place, now .” He pulled on his boots. “But just in case it starts to work that way when things break down, we’re going to be ready.”

It was two weeks before Marianne was able to sit up in bed. She knew she’d nearly died. All her life she’d read accounts of people who’d survived plane crashes, cancer treatments, house fires. Every single one had said that, afterward, their appreciation of small things had deepened into gratitude for the glory of life.