Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Ree^ka turned her head on her pillow, and did not succeed in suppressing a faint groan.

Wherever there were narcotics, there was an illegal market for them. That, too, was an aspect of life here that Salah needed to assimilate. If he was going to be here for the rest of his life—and since making love to Isabelle, that didn’t seem such a terrible prospect—he needed more than the language. He needed the culture it served, because no one knew how many Kindred survivors might have natural immunity to R. sporii , as some Stone Age humans on Earth had. There was so much he didn’t know.

Claire said, “Where’s Branch? He left Big Lab to come here ten minutes ago.”

Marianne said, “Probably in the leelee lab, working with the recordings from the ship. I’ll get him. Don’t start without us.”

No one would. Marianne and Claire were in charge of what Salah now thought of as the failed vaccine program, although that wasn’t really fair. In medicine, a partial success was not a failure, not even when the partial was very partial indeed.

The one leelee that had been sickened but not killed by R. sporii had begun to eat. Slowly, slowly the animal was recovering. There was no way to examine it closely, as there would have been in a biosafety level 4 lab; to break the seal on the improvised negative-pressure cage would have been to release spores into the lab. Kindred and Terran scientists had been reduced to watching it through the glass, to crouching on the floor to squint up at its turds from below, to rapping on the side of the cage to determine response, and other totally inadequate measures. But it was indubitable that the leelee now dragged itself around, ate and drank, sent forth a few faint chitters around its dead and decaying cousins, which also could not be removed from the cage.

Marianne and Branch returned, Branch looking as if he hadn’t either slept or washed in too long. Everyone was working overtime, but Branch was also working at the hopeless task of decoding alien signals transmitted in alien code from an alien transmitter to a jerry-rigged device he did not fully understand. When she could be spared, Isabelle studied his notes to see if they corresponded to spoken Kindred. They did not.

Standing beside Ree^ka’s bed, Isabelle slipped her hand into Salah’s. Isabelle looked even more exhausted than Branch. Austin had not yet been found.

Noah Jenner came into the room, crowding it even more. With Llaa^moh¡ and Ka^graa, eight people jammed themselves around Ree^ka’s bed in a space the size of a large closet.

Claire said, “I think we have to go with the synth-vac we have. We can run one more leelee trial while simultaneously manufacturing as much vaccine as we can and starting to administer it. There’s just no time to test more. We don’t know how long it will take to become effective, and it offers only thirty-three percent protection…” She trailed off, clearly knowing how ridiculous that was.

Thirty-three percent on a sample size of three leelees. And the one leelee it had “protected” had sickened anyway. And that was in alien animals, not in humans. Who had, over 140,000 years, evolved immune-system differences from the Terrans the vaccine had originally been designed for. Not to mention that most vaccines needed at least a week, usually two, to protect anybody against anything.

To the low hum of Noah’s translation, Claire finished with an unexpected note of defiance. “It’s all we have .”

Branch, with the audacity of the young, said, “So who gets it?”

Ka^graa said, “We scientists of World will not take the vaccine. It will sicken us and we must help with the manufacture. It is better so.”

Salah’s gaze dropped. Twenty-first century Americans did not bow; this was the closest he had to a silent gesture of respect. The Kindred scientists were giving their lives in the hope of saving even a few others.

But then the Mother of Mothers spoke, her voice abruptly stronger. “No. You will preserve some vaccine and take as late as possible before the spore cloud comes. Whoever survives of our people will need you. There is no disagreement possible.”

Nor would there be any. Salah could see that.

Ree^ka continued. “The people in the camp are the worst of us. They have left their lahks. They have made weapons. They have tried to kill. Not all of them, that is understood. But they have defied bu^ka^tel to come here, and they must not be rewarded for this. The vaccines will be given to the children in the camps. If they survive, Terrans will care for them.”

Never had Salah heard such depth of sorrow in a voice, nor seen it as in the dark eyes of the Mother of Mothers. Ree^ka was facing not just the death of most of her people but of her civilization as well.

Marianne said, “Isabelle, tell her that we don’t know how many Kindred might have natural immunity. Even the worst filoviruses on Earth have only a ninety percent kill rate, and R. sporii isn’t a filovirus.”

Isabelle said, “She knows.”

They all knew. This wasn’t Earth, and the Kindred were not nearly as genetically diverse as Terrans. There might indeed be some natural immunity, but on the first Kindred ship, everyone had died.

Ree^ka said, “Other lahks may come here now, those nearby. Llaa^moh¡ will know who to radio and in what order. Llaa^moh¡, you should bring your daughter and sister here now. They have my permission to leave their lahk.”

Salah saw Marianne’s face brighten.

The Mother of Mothers raised a feeble arm and pointed. Clearly, it took all her strength. “Marianne-mak, after the cloud, you must lead the Terran lahk to rebuild World. You must share this work with your soldiers. I so ¡mo¡mo^ you.”

Another important word. But as Isabelle translated it as “sacred trust,” her clutch on Salah’s hand said that it was more than that.

Ree^ka faltered, and Claire eased her back onto her pillow. The Mother of Mothers closed her eyes, strength spent, and whispered, “Isabelle. Come… to me… soon.”

The Kindred seemed to take this as dismissal and filed out. The Terrans followed, Branch half running back to the leelee lab and his machinery. Isabelle said to Salah in English, “There’s nothing more you can do for her?”

“Only the opioids she won’t take.”

“Tonight?”

“I think so, yes.”

“How will you set up the vaccination of the children?”

It would be difficult. As the Mother of Mothers had said, the people who had come to the camp, who had twice made assaults on the lab, were the roughest of Kindred society. Long ago on Terra, sociologists had made the observation that the worst enemies of any culture were its own young men between fourteen and twenty-four: not yet firmly anchored in life, testosterone raging, they were the ones that created both constructive revolutions and destructive gangs. Yet the camps held older men, women, children—had they followed their young rebels to keep lahks together, or because it was not possible, bu^ka^tel or no, to suppress the human bent to put self-preservation above survival of the group?

Isabelle answered her own question. “The Rangers will have to maintain order and bring the kids into the compound to be vaccinated inside.”

Salah had trouble picturing that: Owen Lamont as kindergarten hall monitor. Before he could say anything, Leo Brodie came through the door from the walkway to the clinic. Salah caught the flicker in the soldier’s eyes as he saw Isabelle’s hand in Salah’s. Another reason to distrust Brodie.

He said in passable Kindese, “I greet you, Isabelle.”

“I greet you, Leo.”

They each used the inflection for close friends? When had that happened?

Brodie would have continued on his pointless patrol, but Isabelle said, “Leo, I need to ask a favor.”