Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

He didn’t answer. A soft knock came on the door. “Dr. Bourgiba?” Branch’s voice said. “Are you in there?”

“Yes. What do you need?”

“Somebody in Big Lab cut herself on some glass and said to go get you.”

“Coming.”

He fumbled in the gloom for his clothes. Isabelle sat up.

“Salah—after the spore cloud comes and almost nobody is left—”

“Yes?”

“This was sweet, although I certainly didn’t plan to—I just want to say that I like you. But I’m not making any promises, for after.”

“I know that,” he said truthfully. Then, “Neither am I.” A lie.

“Good. So we’ll just see what happens. Is that all right?”

It seemed a staggering way to accept the end of civilization: We’ll just see what happens. But, Salah realized wryly, pretty much his entire life could be summed up in the phrase.

He said, “Of course.”

Insha’Allah.

Marianne woke from restless sleep. Everything creaked as she hoisted herself off her pallet. She was really too old to be sleeping on the floor. Too old, too pampered by American inner springs and memory foam. But on the plus side: They had done it . They had an effective synthetic vaccine, to replace the ones that young criminal Austin had stolen. (Why? Was he going to attempt to sell them?) The synth-vac was a triumph of will and luck over inadequate machinery and deficient knowledge.

On her way to the kitchen for a bowl of the vegetable soup kept perpetually simmering by the two Kindred cooks, she met Branch coming from Big Lab. The Kindred scientists, under Claire’s direction, were hard at work manufacturing the new vaccines. Branch carried a mass of hardware in his arms; Marianne could barely see him around the machinery. When he did cock his head to one side, she was surprised to see him smiling. He’d been heartsick over his lapse in guarding the safe.

“Dr. Jenner! I found out something!”

“Is Austin back? Or Noah?” Noah had been away during last night’s attack from the camp, but surely it would be on the radio and he would know about it by now.

“No, no, this is different. It’s about the Kindred spaceship!”

Marianne blinked. Hadn’t the ship, on which Noah and Isabelle and the others traveled to Kindred ten years ago, been completely destroyed in the Russian attack?

Branch saw her confusion. “The other ship, Dr. Jenner. The colony one.”

Oh. The first ship the Kindred had built, which had become infected with R. sporii that killed everyone aboard. That was how Kindred had first discovered the spore cloud on its relentless path through the galaxy. Direct encounter on the colony planet.

“Isn’t that ship still on a planet somewhere?”

“In orbit around it. The spore contamination came from an EVA. You saw the recording the Kindred brought to Terra, the last one the captain made.”

She had. The recording had been horrific.

“But what I just found out from Llaa^moh¡ is that the ship is still sending signals!”

She was staggered. “You mean people are still alive inside?”

“No, no, everyone’s dead. The ship is sending automatic signals. They were recorded all this time at Kam… Kat… the capital city that the Stremlenie destroyed. The equipment to receive the signals was on the other Kindred ship, and of course that’s gone, too. But I think I might be able to rig up some sort of receiver to record them here!”

“Why? If it’s just ship’s signals, position, and planetary data and such, what good would it do us here?”

Branch seemed to not understand the question. “They’re signals, Dr. Jenner. And I might be able to receive them. I’m only going to work on it when there’s no need for me in Big Lab.”

She saw, then, that he needed to do this, needed to do something to make up for letting the vaccines be stolen. That was how Branch saw it, anyway. For not the first time, Marianne ruminated on how very often brilliant young men invested themselves in pointless problems. But she was fond of Branch, and so she smiled and said, “Go to it. Good luck.”

“The only place to set this all up is the leelee lab, but that’s good because I can keep an eye on the leelees.” He unlocked the door.

The animals, dead and alive, now stank like sewer rats and chittered like crickets. Moving away, Marianne heard Branch cry out. She turned back and ran into the room.

The cage of leelees treated with synth-vac was ominously quiet.

Marianne stared through the glass. Two of the three leelees were dead. The third moved sluggishly, coughing, obviously very sick.

The synth vaccine had provided only partial protection, and not for long. They had failed again.

Austin and Kayla arrived at the cave entrance at midmorning. Why was his mother so slow? She wasn’t that old, maybe the same age as Dr. Patel. But at one point in the night she just lay down and slept on a patch of thick grass, not even telling Austin she was going to do it. Just lay down and closed her eyes. The rest of the time she trudged along, eyes down, like she didn’t even care that Austin was rescuing her from the collapse of civilization. Didn’t even care!

All his life, Austin had known there was something wrong with his mother. He never knew, one tenday to the next, whether she would be laughing and talking fast and thinking up adventures, or staying in bed and crying. He learned to take his requests and problems to Isabelle or Noah. But Kayla was still his mother, and she and Isabelle were the only members of his lahk—Graa^lok always pointed this out when they had a fight—who should really be in it, by blood. Isabelle said that Kayla couldn’t help her strange behavior; the problem was genetic and there was no medicine for it on World because Worlders didn’t get this disease.

Yet another reason to let civilization collapse without Austin and Kayla! World would be sorry when it lay in smoking ruins and they were safe in Haven.

If only she would walk faster.

Eventually, they reached the cave. “Mom, I’m going to go in first. Then when the doors inside are open, I’ll come back out for you.” He had to do it that way; if he went first, she would never get the bushes arranged right to hide the entrance. Noah knew where the cave was, but Tony didn’t know that Noah knew, and Austin didn’t want Graa^lok arriving from his lahk’s illathil and tattling about badly placed bushes. Austin and Graa^lok weren’t getting along so well these days. Graa^lok’s fault—he always thought he was so damn smart.

Austin crawled along the tunnel and rang the bell. A few moments later Beyon-kal’s face appeared at the grill, looking annoyed. “Austin? What are you doing here?”

“I got away,” Austin said. “We did. In the confusion after the bomb.”

He expected Beyon-kal to say breathlessly, “What bomb?” but was disappointed. Beyon-kal said, “It was on the radio.”

“Me being gone was on the radio?”

“No, of course not. The attack on the compound was. Do they have a vaccine yet?”

“No. How did you understand… is Graa^lok here already?”

“Yes. What are you doing here?”

This wasn’t the welcome Austin had hoped for. “Let me see Tony.”

“I’ll decide if you see Tony or not. For the third time, why did you come?”

“I’m here for good. I brought my mother. This was our only chance to escape while—”

“You brought Kayla ? Now?”

“I just told you, Beyon-kal, we might not get another chance to escape! The Rangers aren’t letting people in or out of the compound!” This was not strictly true; only the Terran scientists weren’t allowed to leave, but Beyon-kal didn’t know that.