Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Noah had guessed where Kayla was. “You took her to Tony and Nathan, in the mountains, didn’t you? Let her stay there for now. We have more important things to do here.” And Noah had turned away from Austin, in disgust.

Isabelle hadn’t been any kinder. “Just when we need you to act like a grown-up—you’re thirteen, for God’s sake!”

Austin was grown up! That’s why he was doing this! And there were no gods on World, only lahks. Which he was acting to serve his lahk the best way possible, even if they couldn’t see it. But they would be sorry when civilization collapsed all around them and they died in riots or starved like rats—Tony had been graphic about what those were—while he and his mother and, yes, Claire Patel, were safe in Haven. Dr. Patel would thank him one day for saving her life, just like Kayla would.

But first Austin had to get her there. He had a plan. Scrunched against the back wall of the closet, he went over and over the plan in his mind, until the thought popped into his mind to wonder what Leo would think of it.

No, Leo had nothing to do with this. Still, it would be nice if the Rangers survived the collapse of civilization, or at least if Leo did. They could help Tony rebuild. Then Leo, too, would be grateful that Austin had saved a doctor.

In the dark, he fingered the knife he’d stolen from the kitchen when Isabelle, still furious, had left him there to “at least eat something, for fuck’s sake!”

Austin hoped no one would miss the knife before he needed it. He also hoped he wouldn’t need it—but he was prepared to do whatever he had to. That’s what courage was. Leo had once told him so.

Salah and Isabelle stood beside the doorway that connected Big Lab to the Rangers’ ready room, that secretive hideaway. Lamont had just emerged, dressed in what looked to Salah like enough gear to take on the Russian army.

Watch your own prejudices, Doctor.

“They want a funeral?” Lamont said. “Here? Now?”

“ We are going to have one,” Isabelle said. “At my lahk house. I’m telling you so you know what to expect, Lieutenant.”

“And what is that?”

Salah watched Isabelle choose her words carefully. Lamont looked like hell. He hadn’t slept in days. The Rangers did sleep, of course, but not much, and apparently Lamont least of all. Salah noted the dark, puffy circles around Lamont’s eyes, the jumpy irritability, the inhibition of the acoustic startle response. He couldn’t see the mental signs, which was what Salah was afraid of. Nobody might notice those until Lamont showed impaired judgment, or hallucinated, or went bat-shit psychotic. Claire had tried to reason with Lamont about the need for the Rangers to sleep more, but she’d gotten nowhere.

And the worse Lamont looked, the worse the looks he leveled at Salah. No direct sneers or racist remarks; that was not his style. Just a lowering of inhibitions, gnawing away at the iron Ranger discipline, letting the underlying prejudices show. Salah, who knew everyone’s medical history, knew what Lamont had been through when he’d been captured by people who looked like Salah.

Isabelle said, “The mourning ceremony doesn’t last long. Ree^ka’s body will be carried from the compound on the—”

“No,” Owen said. “No one enters the compound.”

“Noah will carry her body to the camp and it can be placed there onto the litter she came in on. Then all the mothers, including me, will accompany it up the hill to my lahk. What happens there need not concern you. The body will be returned to the soil that nurtured it.”

“Buried? Burned?”

“Neither, and not your business.”

Not buried or burned? What would they do with it, then? And it wasn’t like Isabelle to be curt with the Rangers, whom she inexplicably admired. Involuntarily, Salah glanced up at the ceiling, where Leo Brodie wasn’t even on duty; Kandiss was.

Lamont didn’t react to Isabelle’s rudeness; maybe he’d expected it. His gaze turned inward, maybe mentally measuring the distance between compound and lahk house, which was about half a kilometer. Not, Salah guessed, within firing distance of pipe guns or throwing distance of bombs or anything else the Kindred could devise, or Lamont probably would have burned the house down by now. Lamont regarded the Kindred with scorn for their military inexperience. Salah honored them for it.

Lamont said, “Permission granted, so long as none of my protectees leaves the compound,” and Salah felt his gorge rise. Isabelle hadn’t been asking permission. But she merely nodded, with neither subservience nor defiance.

When Lamont had left, Salah said to her, “Should Noah carry out the body now?”

“No, not yet. Tell all the second-expedition Terrans to go into the clinic. We Kindred need Big Lab for our farewell to her.”

We. Our. There it was again, the line she drew between herself and him. At least Brodie, too, was on the other side of the line. Salah said, “Afterward, when the ceremony is over, will you come to my room?”

“Not tonight. I need to sleep before we start vaccinating tomorrow morning.”

“I understand. But I meant to sleep.”

“Not tonight. After the ceremony I want to stay and translate if the scientists need me, and then I promised Leo fifteen minutes of Kindred instruction. He’ll be awake and off duty, briefly, and since the Rangers are going to be here with us even after the cloud hits, it’s important they learn what they’re going to have to deal with. Leo is the only one so far who will listen to me. The soldiers don’t sleep much, have you noticed?”

“Yes,” Salah said. “I have.”

From just inside the east door, which Zoe Berman had permitted to remain open so Salah could see this, Noah carried the Mother of Mothers across the open zone. Her body, wrapped in a light blanket but with her face uncovered, looked like it weighed nothing in Noah’s arms. Salah, who had officially pronounced her dead, knew that ancient face had smoothed into lines of peace, almost of joy.

On the roof, Mason Kandiss covered Noah with an assault rifle.

The camp was quiet. Fires burned, sending spirals of smoke straight up in the still air. No rustle from the purple vegetation, no cries from children. At the edge of camp, four male litter bearers and nineteen Mothers, all that could travel here in time, waited in their pale wraps. Isabelle, almost as tall as the Kindred, was among them, distinguished only by her pale skin and light brown hair.

Noah moved slowly, although Salah doubted that Noah feared dropping Ree^ka. Rather, his pace matched the sense of solemn ceremony that overlay everything this evening. The Kindred in the camp were, by the Mother of Mothers’ own admission, the least acculturated and most dangerous of Kindred’s inhabitants. Yet the men and women, boys and girls, standing beside the Mothers all wore the same expression: respect, sorrow, profound acceptance. Some of them might have tried to kill Rangers; tomorrow some might rush the compound after vaccine; some might hate Terrans as an indivisible entity that had destroyed their cities, as so many groups on Earth had hated other groups as indivisible entities. But tonight they stood in respectful and apparently sincere mourning.

On Terra, Salah had seen people from the opposing political party jeer and taunt at the assassination of President Cranston.

He had seen cemeteries defaced, the gravestones scrawled with hate words.

He had been attacked by a patient to whom he had to give the news of an inoperable brain tumor.

A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke floated into his mind. The German original eluded him, although he did speak some German, but the English was there: