Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Was this a trap? Or were these guys offering to be informants? And how did they learn English? He said nothing, waiting to see what they said next.

“Come.”

No way. It smelled like an amateurish ambush. He said, more harshly than he intended, “No.”

The older man smiled sadly.

The younger didn’t seem all that surprised. He said, “We tell you.” Slowly he raised one foot a few inches off the ground in the untrimmed weeds.

Leo tensed, but he let the guy shake his sandal until a piece of paper fell out. The two men nodded and, hands still raised, walked back into the camp. When they’d vanished, Leo picked up the paper, his mind busy. The men had probably been observed from the camp, but it might have looked like Leo stopped them, raised his gun, and spoke to them instead of the other way around—you could spin it that way.

The paper was a map. A big shaded block for the compound, the proportions exact for its two buildings and walkway; Leo had walked the roof enough times to know. The perimeter zone was shaded more lightly, and the tents drawn in curving rows. One tent fairly close to the south door was circled and inside it were drawn pipe guns.

Leo put the paper in his pocket, finished the perimeter patrol, and called Owen.

“An ambush,” Owen said.

“Maybe, sir. But I could check it out.”

“If there’s a suicide bomb in there, then we lose you. Go, but take Berman to cover you and each of you take a Kinnie kid as hostage. Carry them in front of you. I’ll give the fuckers that, they don’t use kids as bait. Not so far, anyway.”

He hated the idea. It was what insurgents had done in Brazil, and children had died. He wanted to say to Owen We don’t do that, it’s not us . But, then, this wasn’t Brazil. The Kindred wouldn’t kill their own kids in order to destroy an enemy holding them; Leo knew that about Kindred, knew it clear down to his bones. Kids shouldn’t even be here in a war zone, but lahks stuck together no matter what. Blood here really was thicker than water. And Leo had just been given an order.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

He radioed Zoe on their private frequency, destroying the last half hour of her allotted sleep, and she cursed him with several inventive combinations of filth he hadn’t heard before. But in three minutes she was beside him in full kit. “This better be worthwhile, Brodie.”

They strode into camp. Two little girls walked by, carefully balancing a bucket of water between them. Leo shook his head. He picked instead a pair of boys whose parents did not seem nearby, and Zoe scowled at him; he’d hear about this bit of male chauvinism later. Leo and Zoe each held a child tightly against their chests with one arm, sidearm in the other. Leo could feel the child’s fear radiating up his arm, like an electric shock.

“Stop! Don’t move!” He said it in Kindese. The two men and one woman inside the tent froze, looking grimmer than stone. The tent held more guns—Leo noticed that each batch they confiscated was more sophisticated than the last—plus small devices and collections of chemicals that he didn’t recognize. Leo and Zoe made them carry it all across the perimeter to the door of the clinic and dump it just inside. Then he let the children go. Zoe stood guard over the three adults, whom no other Kindred had tried to join, against the compound wall. Although what the fuck were they going to do with the insurgents? They couldn’t take prisoners.

Just before Owen arrived, Salah came out of the leelee lab and stared at the pile just inside the south door. “What’s this?”

“Confiscated weapons.”

“And the metal cans?”

“You tell me. Could be bomb-making chemicals. Stay here, Doctor. Lieutenant Lamont might want you to translate.”

Salah stiffened at the tone in Leo’s voice. “I doubt those Kindred will tell you anything useful, not voluntarily.”

The two stared at each other. Leo knew what Salah was thinking: Would you torture a Kindred for information? It was the wrong question. Before interrogation, you needed a place to actually hold prisoners, which they did not have. Nor did they have personnel for interrogation. They were four soldiers and they were getting no help from the civilians here. He turned away in contempt from Salah.

Whom he could not stop picturing holding Isabelle. Kissing Isabelle. Fucking Isabelle.

Irrelevant, Brodie.

He said to the doctor, “Put all this stuff somewhere safe. Now,” and went back outside before Salah could answer.

Kindred informants had led them to this weapons cache. Leo would have to again raise the idea of recruiting and arming trustworthy Kindred to supplement the unit. Christ, weapons could be pouring into every third tent in the camp, carried in with food supplies or any of the other things that kept this the most organized and cleanest refugee camp in the universe. The squad needed help. Leo found Owen.

“No,” Owen said. His cheeks had hollowed and his eyes somehow retreated farther into his head. Or maybe just something in his eyes had retreated, gone so far inside that Leo couldn’t see the Owen he’d known. Sure, Owen wasn’t sleeping much, but none of them were, and anyway Owen had always been able to take more physical punishment and deprivation than any other three Rangers put together. This was different.

“Brodie, don’t be so credulous. Those informants were softening you up. Once they gain access to our weapons and—”

“We wouldn’t have to arm them with our weapons, only—”

“Did I ask for your opinion on ordnance?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. Return to duty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leo was off duty. This was his three hours to sleep. He tried, lying on a pallet in the ready room, but sleep eluded him.

Isabelle. Salah. Isabelle with Salah….

Kindred making their clumsy guns to take by force vaccines that didn’t exist. No, the guns existed for more than vaccines. They think, Isabelle had told him, that all Terrans are the same, and it was Terrans who fired from space and destroyed their cities. Well… but… didn’t Owen think all Kindred were the same? Dangerous enemies. Didn’t Kandiss think so, too, and maybe even Zoe?

Some Kindred were enemies, sure. But if Russia attacked the United States—

Which Leo was never going to see again. They were stuck on Kindred forever. So didn’t it make more sense to try to understand Kindred, to sort them out into dangerous and nondangerous, to think about after the spore cloud because Isabelle had said that some Kindred might have natural immunity and survive…

Leo wasn’t used to this sort of thinking, and he didn’t like it. He hadn’t had these thoughts in Brazil. But, then, he’d known he was going home from Brazil. Thinking about the situation here felt almost as bad as thinking about Isabelle and Salah. But the only other thing he had at the moment to fill his sleep-deprived brain was almost as bad: two tiny girls playing with their toys, smiling up at him from huge dark eyes in their coppery faces, regarding him as an immensely interesting object that threatened them not at all.

Kindred had plant-based drugs, including powerful opioids. The opioids had surprised Salah. Ree^ka refused all drugs, which did not surprise him.

She lay in Marianne’s room, now hers (Marianne must have squeezed a pallet in someplace else; Salah had no idea where). Although she had refused medical examination, Salah judged that Ree^ka would not survive another night. He hoped that after this critical meeting, she would take the opioid. He understood that she wanted her mind clear now, but he knew of no aspect of the Kindred worldview that would preclude palliative care after the Mother of Mothers had handed down her last decrees. Surely some version of hospice must be included in bu^ka^tel. The Kindred considered themselves stewards of each other as well as of their precious, limited continent.