Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

“Be careful! You might break it!”

But when they got the thing out, it was clear that nothing could break it. A meter-high, four-sided pyramid with large bumps scattered randomly across each surface, it was not dented, not rusty, not as heavy as it should be to have survived the rocks that had fallen on it. Austin turned its surfaces over and over in his hands.

“Graa^lok, have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No. But I think it’s been here a long time. We should give it to Beyon-mak—maybe he knows what it is.”

Austin didn’t want to give anything to Beyon-mak. Resentment rose again in his mind, a warty snake resurfacing. “No. It’s ours.”

“Tony-mak owns this mountain. He bought it from the mother of the lahk Ca¡lee^ah. She sold it because the lahk needed money for—”

“I don’t care. It’s ours.”

“It’s not. Bu^ka^tel.”

Austin weighed the Graa^lok’s stubborn expression, the difficulty of smuggling the object past Tony in the exit tunnels, and the effort of carrying it all the way back to his lahk, and decided to bargain.

“Okay, we won’t take it. But you can’t tell Tony or Nathan”—he felt daring calling him that instead of Beyon-mak, which boosted his confidence—“until we agree to tell them together. After all, we found it together, and anyway it probably wouldn’t fit into their plans for saving civilization. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Graa^lok said, even though he didn’t look happy and even though they had not, in fact, found it together. To make up for his agreement, Graa^lok said, “You should sleep more, or drink more water, or something. You look like turds.”

Probably he did. He’d walked through the rain to get here, and now he’d have to walk through rain to go back. And he was not sleeping well. But he said, scornfully, “I’m fine. Leo Brodie hardly sleeps at all. He told me.”

“When?” Graa^lok challenged.

“Two days ago. I talk to Leo all the time.” This was pushing it, although Austin did try to talk to Leo whenever he could. The Rangers fascinated him. “They’re trained to go without sleep. None of the Rangers sleep much, even the woman.”

“You’re not a Ranger,” Graa^lok said.

Austin stalked back along the tunnel, when he wasn’t crawling or climbing. Beyon-mak let him out the door, the tunnel, the grill. At the end of the entrance tunnel, he clambered through the camouflage bushes.

There, sitting on a wet stone in an even wetter drizzle, was Noah Jenner, waiting for him. Austin’s insides turned sick.

“I greet you, Austin.”

“I greet you, Noah-kal.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Austin thought fast. He had to protect Haven. “I was just exploring.”

“Uh-huh. Alone, in the rain, without telling anyone where you’re going. Your mother is frantic.”

Austin said sulkily, “My mother is always frantic.” He started to trudge away, but Noah rose and caught him by the shoulder.

“What is Tony Schrupp doing in there?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Noah grimaced. He loomed above Austin—why couldn’t Austin be that tall? He had the wrong genes. His mother’s fault, or maybe the unknown father on Terra that his mother would never talk about.

Noah said, “Tony Schrupp and Nathan Beyon are in that cave system under the mountain. They’ve been bringing in supplies and equipment for months. Do you think the Council of Mothers doesn’t know that? I asked you what they’re doing in there.”

“It’s a start-up company.”

“In a practically inaccessible cave? Without a license from the Council? Hiring no workers? Come on, Austin.”

Austin repeated, because he couldn’t think what else to say, “It’s a start-up company.”

“To make what?”

Austin, lips pressed together, looked down at his muddy shoes.

“It’s a survivalist refuge,” Noah said. “And Beyon is too smart not to know that spores can get in, so he’s got some sort of air filter mechanism, doesn’t he.”

This wasn’t a question, so Austin didn’t try to answer it.

Noah sighed. “Maybe he can do it. Although how he thinks they can stay in there forever… Austin, you’re forbidden to go here again.”

“You can’t—”

“Your mom says so, Isabelle as lahk mother says so, and as lahk-male-head-adviser”—there was no word in English for this—“ I say so.”

Austin almost said Then forbid Graa^lok too because he’s in there right now! But that would be childish, and Austin was no longer a child, so he didn’t say it. He was quite proud of this maturity.

Anyway, Graa^lok was not in their lahk.

Noah said, “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Austin said.

“Good. Now let’s go home.”

Austin hiked faster than Noah, just to show him he was not a follower. Because Austin was going back to Tony’s. It was terrible to break a promise, but this was a situation outside normal ethics. There was too much at stake. Survival was at stake. All the Worlders would die except for those with natural immunity, whoever they were. In the last two weeks, Austin had learned a lot about spore disease. After the cloud came, everybody still alive from natural immunity would loot and fight for the food that was left—Tony had said so. He’d said it had happened over and over again, on Terra, whenever there was a plague. All the places Tony had told Austin about—the collapse of a huge city called Rome, and food riots in another place called Brazil, and also a mountain named Donner where people got so desperate they ate each other. Worlders were no different; they were human, too. Austin had an obligation—an ethical obligation!—to help preserve civilization in Haven. Also his own life. He didn’t think he’d do well with fighting and looting and eating other people.

Someday Noah-kal would thank him. If Noah wasn’t dead first.

Austin plodded on through the mud and rain.

Leo, in full kit and with his rifle in hand, walked compound patrol. That’s what they were calling it, the two buildings now connected by a covered walkway: “the compound.” One building, the “Big Lab,” had been a school and the “Little Lab” had been the clinic, but now they were collectively the compound and the squad was securing it. Owen had the whole thing built in less than a week. Kindred workmen from the little town did anything he said, they were that eager to have the scientists find a vaccine against spore disease. They’d then cleared a hundred-foot bare perimeter around the east, west, and south sides of the compound.

There were three doors, to the south, east, and north. The north door, which faced away from the town and toward open fields backed by distant mountains, had sparked intense arguments between Owen and Isabelle. That side of the clinic held a big vegetable and herb garden circled by a shoulder-high wall to keep animals from eating the vegetables. Owen had wanted the wall torn down. Isabelle had fought for wall and vegetables, and had won: “How do you suppose we’ll feed you, Lieutenant? You’re posting a soldier on the roof during each watch anyway—surely they can manage to see anything that approached over all that open grazing land to the north?”

Owen also had built a ready room on one side of the compound, made of triple-reinforced karthwood and stone, with doors opening both into Big Lab and out to the perimeter. The four of them slept there, one six-hour off-duty each day. Actually, it was six hours and eighteen minutes, since the day here was longer than on Terra. Leo would take any extra eighteen minutes of sleep that he could get. The ready room held four metal cabinets brought from the clinic, each with a lock. Owen, Kandiss, Zoe, and Leo kept their weapons there, separately—“The better to foil thieves,” Owen said. “Four locks are harder to crack than one.” Since the only people with any way of getting into the ready room were the scientists inside the compound, the lockers struck Leo as one more example of Owen’s military caution. Or his general suspiciousness of Kindred. Depending on how you looked at it.