Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Leo didn’t. If the mine was safer, then it was a better place for the kid to be. And he could do without Kayla, not that he’d seen that much of her. But she’d be around Isabelle all the time, after the spore cloud.

Don’t think about that until the time comes.

“We have to go back, Isabelle.”

“Yes, of course. The Mother of Mothers wants to see me. Alone.”

“She does? What about?”

“I don’t know. She’s dying, Leo. Salah says probably tonight.”

She let out a little gasp then, looking like she hadn’t expected to. Tears filled her eyes. Leo, after a quick glance around for insurgents, shifted his rifle to one hand and put his arms around her. For one glorious moment, before she broke free and became herself again, he held her in his arms.

“Come on,” she said, tears gone, “let’s go.”

All the short way to the camp, she talked to him about Kindred, a kind of crash course in how the place worked. Lahks, money, responsibility, Council of Mothers, mining, manufacturing restrictions, kids. Some of it Leo already knew and some of it he didn’t but he listened hard to all of it, even as he kept a sharp lookout. He was a quick study when he wanted to be, and this time he wanted to be. The setup of her doomed society mattered to Isabelle.

At the camp, a teenage boy darted forward and threw a rock.

Instantly Leo had Isabelle behind him and his rifle pointed. The rock had bounced off his helmet; it had been aimed at him, not her. The boy, all thin coppery arms, brown knee-length dress too tight to conceal other weapons, arms out at his side, stared at Leo. The kid wanted Leo to shoot him. He wanted to be a martyr, a victim that insurgents could rally around. He was romanticizing his own death.

“Get lost,” Leo said in Kindese. Then, in English, “Isabelle, move to the compound staying between me and the camp.”

She did. Leo backed away, weapon at the ready, knowing without looking that Zoe was covering him from the roof. The boy shouted something and Isabelle started to shout back but Leo said, “No. Be quiet,” and she was.

Inside the compound, he said, “What did the kid say?”

“He called me a filthy Terran turd.”

Leo nodded, headed to the ready room, and waited to see if Zoe had reported Leo’s unauthorized expedition to Owen, if Owen wanted to see him, what might happen next.

Isabelle crept quietly into Ree^ka-mak’s room, prepared to leave if the Mother of Mothers was asleep. She was not.

“Come here, child.”

Isabelle knelt by the bed and took Ree^ka’s hand in hers. The bones and veins rose under the skin like karthwood twigs. Ree^ka’s fingers felt icy.

“Tell… you two great things.”

“Yes, Mother of Mothers.”

“Afterward… heal the Kindred wound with the soldiers. Marry one.”

It was the traditional way of forestalling conflict between lahks—and, once, monarchies on Earth. Married women remained with their own birth lahks; their brothers and male cousins were there to help raise children; marriage contracts were renewable or not every five years. In such a culture, closeness and fidelity between partners were mostly a matter of choice and good manners. Blood was what mattered, not pair-bonding. Marriage was easy, and easily changed. Children were not. Children bound lahks together for good.

“Mother of Mothers… I cannot do that.”

“You can. One… contract.”

“I’m sorry. Terrans do not—”

“You are no longer Terran.”

It was the greatest compliment Isabelle could have been paid. She bowed her head. But she did not promise to marry anyone. Ree^ka had not spent much time around Terrans. Intelligent as she was, she apparently did not realize that marrying a Ranger would not create an alliance. Not even if Owen Lamont married sixteen Kindred women in rapid succession and fathered thirty-two children. The US Army did not work that way.

Ree^ka did not press her. Instead, she told her the second great thing. Isabelle’s eyes widened. She half rose, dropping Ree^ka’s hand. “ What? ”

But the Mother of Mothers had exhausted her strength. Her eyes closed.

Marianne rubbed the small of her back with her left hand. She’d been standing at her improvised “lab bench” for hours. I’m too old for this, she thought for the hundredth time. Although weariness sagged the faces of even the younger people.

She had lost track of how many doses of vaccine they had made, or could make before they had to begin administering it. All the data was fuzzy because it was built on still fuzzier data. Would the vaccine protect humans at all? If it did, how long did it take to become effective? How would they give it to just children without a riot from the childless adults in the camp? How much would the Rangers cooperate in keeping the process orderly instead of protecting the Terrans by keeping them prisoner in the compound? What would everyone do after the spore cloud hit and they had hundreds of dead bodies to—

Don’t think that far ahead.

Ka^graa said from his workstation, “You to go sleep, Marianne-mak.”

She shook her head, forcing a smile. Ka^graa was learning English, even though chances were strong that he would be dead soon and all language with him.

It wasn’t like her to dwell on tragedy. Always—well, almost always—work had been her distraction, her solace, her purpose. All at once, however, she wanted not to work but to see her family. She went to the closet where Noah, Llaa^moh¡, and Lily all slept on a single pallet. Llaa^moh¡ was working in the lab; Noah wasn’t in the room; Lily lay asleep, dark curls tangled on her coppery cheek, clutching a stuffed toy of no species known to her grandmother.

As Marianne continued toward the leelee lab, which she could smell through the closed door, Isabelle came out of what had once been Marianne’s room and grabbed Marianne’s arm.

“I have to tell you something.”

This wasn’t like Isabelle. Marianne removed Isabelle’s hand, which had clutched so hard it left dents in Marianne’s skin, and said, “Ree^ka is gone?”

“No, not yet. But she told me something. Come here, into my room. Close the door.”

Marianne did, her heart speeding up. What fresh hell now?

Isabelle said, “The Mother of Mothers says there is a way to call back the second Kindred ship.”

“What?”

“The second ship. They built two, you know, from the alien plans. The first one was the colony ship that encountered the spore cloud first, after it jumped to wherever it was preset to go. It—”

“I know. Branch has been trying to decode that weird pinging still coming from the ship. But Ree^ka-mak says there’s a way to call it back here?”

“Yes. They never did, because—”

“Because there was no point, with the ship infected with spores and everyone dead. And there still isn’t, Isabelle. That ship is contaminated. If it came here, all it would do is bring the spore cloud earlier.”

“Yes, I know that. But afterward—”

Then Marianne saw it. How had she been so stupid, so exhausted, so myopic? If they could call back the ship, then maybe they could go back to Earth. But—

“Did you say it was preset to go to this other planet? How could it go to Earth?”

“I don’t know. But maybe there are scientists who have made progress on figuring out the drive—”

“Isabelle,” Marianne said sternly, hearing too late that this was her tone for correcting graduate students who had just contaminated a lab sample with their own DNA, “if Terran scientists hadn’t figured out the drive, why do you think Kindred scientists could? And where is this… this call-back device, anyway?”