Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Now it was her hand on his arm that burned.

She moved it to his face, briefly touching his cheek. Then the hand was gone and she said, “We only have ten minutes left. Let’s learn some more Kindred conversation.”

Marianne, almost too tired to walk, left Big Lab. They had stockpiled—how many doses of vaccine for tomorrow? She didn’t know, but she did know it wasn’t enough. But they were out of culture, out of syringes, out of time.

Passing the kitchen, she heard the low murmur of voices. Isabelle and—who? It didn’t sound like Salah. Then the voice came again, a young and deep chuckle, and Marianne recognized Leo Brodie. What were he and Isabelle doing together?

Not her business. Still, it was good that someone could chuckle, could find something amusing right now. And Leo was the best of the Rangers, infinitely preferable to bristly and profane Zoe Berman or silent Mason Kandiss or Lieutenant Lamont, who more than the others filled Marianne with dislike.

She knocked softly on the door of the room where Noah and his family slept. No answer. Quietly she opened the door. Llaa^moh¡ was at work in Big Lab. Noah lay asleep, Lily in the curve of his arm. Marianne opened the door wider to let light spill into the tiny room. Lily breathed normally, her face with its skin lighter than both her mother’s natural copper and her father’s artificial tint, unflushed. The virus in the vaccine had not sickened her, at least not so far. Of course, it might not be protecting her, either. There was no way to know any of this until the spore cloud hit.

So much they didn’t know. But hadn’t the same thing been true on Terra, when she and Harrison and the others had worked so feverishly to create a vaccine that had not, after all, been necessary?

Harrison. Sometimes it bothered her how little she thought about him. She had lived with him for a handful of years, mourned his death from a heart attack, taken no lovers since. But she knew, in the deepest part of her only rarely admitted, that she had not loved him, not really. Nor her dead husband, Kyle, nor her most exciting lover, Tim. Her love had been reserved for her children and—further admission—even they had come in second to her work. She would never be mother of the year—any year. But one advantage of being in one’s sixties was that you accepted who you were, for better or worse.

Marianne closed the door. It was good that Noah slept; he would need his strength for tomorrow. She needed to sleep, too. Now that Ree^ka was gone, Marianne’s room was again her own. Unsuperstitious, she wasn’t kept awake by Ree^ka’s having died there. As soon as she lay on the pallet, Marianne slept.

Nonetheless, she dreamed—another rarity—of Ree^ka. The Mother of Mothers stood alone on a high hill. Below her swarmed leelees, hundreds of them, with human faces. Some tried to jump onto the hill to bite Ree^ka. Marianne could see their faces: Leo, Harrison, Branch, the dead ambassador Maria Gonzalez, Salah, and, most disturbingly, Lily. Throughout, the Mother of Mothers remained serene, raising her arms high and smiling, until the orange sun descended on her and she dissolved into mist and was no more.

The sun stained a faint strip of sky near the horizon, the rest obscured by thick clouds. A stiff breeze bent the trees in the distance, and occasionally a puff of spicy scent rode the air through the open east door of the compound. Salah could have done without the wind, but at least it wasn’t raining. Yet. Dawns were cool on Kindred and he shivered, but not from cold. He wore his Terran clothes, shoes and pants and jacket, and he needed to be quick out the door.

It was vaccine day. Lamont did not want Salah to be among those leaving the compound.

Steve and Josh McGuire had arrived during the night. The first-expedition brothers looked so much alike they could have been twins. Large, silent, shaggy, they looked exactly like what they had been on Terra and were now on Kindred: miners. Dirt seemed permanently embedded under their nails, in the seams of their faces. Isabelle had told Salah that they had always kept to themselves. The copper mine they had gone to work in fifteen years ago, they now owned due to a combination of superior expertise, insanely hard work, and isolation. They participated in no social activities near the mine. They had learned only as much of the language as necessary. Nominally they belonged to Isabelle’s lahk, but they rarely visited, not even for illathil. They took no lovers; in the rich interconnecting gossip of the lahks, everyone would have known. They had come to the compound now, at the twelfth hour, only because of the spore cloud.

“I greet you,” Salah had said, first in Kindred and then in English. They stared at him. Steve finally nodded; Josh turned away with a look Salah recognized. On Earth, he’d encountered it whenever he was the sole Arab-American in a conservative backwater town.

These were the Terrans that would accompany him into the camp.

“They’re there only for protection,” Noah said, “or at least the illusion of protection. Just to deal with any pushing and shoving. They look threatening, is all.”

“They are threatening,” Salah said. “They’re armed.”

“No, Doctor, that’s not possible. We don’t—”

“They’re armed,” Salah said flatly. “Ask them.”

Noah, looking impatient, had asked. He’d returned slightly shaken. “They have guns. Kindred-made guns. I didn’t know how the… they can’t go into the camp like that.”

“Isn’t that Isabelle’s decision?” Salah said, knowing it was. Isabelle was mother to the Terran lahk since Marianne, the oldest woman, had refused the position. Salah wanted as much protection as possible for Isabelle. If Steve and Josh had possessed guns for a while without killing anyone, they were probably not wild-eyed and trigger-happy.

Noah, defeated, held a long colloquy with the McGuires. The brothers kept their guns.

The vaccine team would go into the camp in three groups of three. Each group held someone who could speak Kindred to explain and soothe, a scientist to administer vaccine, and a Terran to handle any mild rebellion. For major rebellion, they had the Rangers.

But not accompanying them. Both Noah and Isabelle had argued with Lieutenant Lamont, who remained firm. More than firm; his air of sly triumph had driven Salah from antipathy to rage. He disliked the Rangers on principle, but for Lamont he felt contempt. Racists always deserved contempt.

“It isn’t my mission to vaccinate Kinnies,” he’d told Isabelle. “My mission is to protect members of the Second Terran Expedition and get them home safely, which is why none of them are going with you. Your so-called lahk can do what it likes, but my squad will provide you only with cover if you choose to retreat. That’s all. I’m not risking good troops on a medical mission to insurgents, that has no chance of succeeding anyway.”

Isabelle had asked mildly, “Do your soldiers agree with you, Lieutenant?”

“Irrelevant, Ms. Rhinehart. Subject closed.”

Provide you only with cover. Which meant a chance to shoot Kindred if necessary, but not to make possible saving more lives.

That had been last night. Now nine people assembled in Big Lab: Isabelle, Noah, Ka^graa, the McGuires, three more Kindred, Salah. They walked through the east door toward the refugee camp, Salah in the center of them. It would take the entire US Marine Corps to stop him. He was a doctor; Isabelle was going; no punk lieutenant two-thirds his age was going to push him around. And what could Lamont, stationed by the east door with Zoe Berman, both in full kit, actually do to stop him? Shoot?