Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Another seven from the compound had been injured, two severely but not critically. Llaa^moh¡, Noah’s wife, had a belly wound. A Kindred lab tech had his arm nearly torn off. They lay in what was now the ICU, after Salah’s makeshift surgery. He longed for the sick bay equipment on the Friendship , or even the unknown hospitals destroyed in the Stremlenie attack, even though they had probably been decades behind Terran facilities. Llaa^moh¡ would be lucky to escape peritonitis.

Noah had a concussion from having been hit in the head with a rock in the refugee camp. (A rock! In the age of star-faring!) Noah was dazed, with blurred vision and sensitivity to light. It was impossible to tell how badly off Kandiss was because the Ranger refused to leave his post long enough to be examined any further: “I’m fine, Doc.” The best Salah could do was watch him. Symptoms of concussion could worsen over as much as three days as the brain swelled.

Three more Kindred inside the compound had been injured, none seriously; they’d been standing farther back from the east wall.

There were also dead and injured among the Kindred in the camp, shot by the Rangers. Salah didn’t know how many. He would have treated them, but Lamont allowed no one to leave the compound.

And Claire Patel and Austin Rhinehart were missing.

“They’re hostages?” Isabelle said, fear creasing her face into a caricature. Salah had left McGuire to his mourning and gone back to Big Lab. Shattered glass and broken equipment littered the floor. Beyond the huge hole in the wall, the camp looked quiet; a lot of people had fled. The rain had stopped. Salah bent over his last patient, a young lab tech, and began picking glass from his arm. The young man gazed at him from wide, dark eyes, refusing to cry.

“Hostages?” Isabelle repeated. “In the camp?”

“No,” Lamont said. “Go back into the clinic with the others, ma’am. We can’t protect you as well here. Doctor, can you move that man yet?”

“No,” Salah said. He was finished with the young Kindred and the lab tech could easily walk, but he wanted to hear Isabelle, who was not leaving.

She said, “I don’t want you to protect me, Lieutenant. I want my nephew back! And we need Dr. Patel. What are you doing about retrieving them?”

“We can attempt extraction once we know where they’re being held. But my first priority is to secure this building. Now go back to the clinic.”

Isabelle still didn’t move. “I can go into the camp, talk to people, find out where they were taken.”

“You’re not among my protectees. If you want to go out there, I won’t stop you. But I won’t risk my soldiers guarding you, either.”

“I’m going.”

Salah stood. “Isabelle, no. It’s too dangerous.”

She rounded on him, and he understood that her fury wasn’t really directed at him; it just had to go somewhere. “Don’t try to stop me, Salah. You do your job here and I’ll do mine.”

“Isabelle…”

“You aren’t going,” another voice said, and Isabelle whirled around.

Leo Brodie stood on duty, his back to them, eyes and weapon on the camp. But his voice carried clearly over his shoulder.

“Brodie,” Lamont said sharply, “this isn’t your concern!”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir. But I have relevant information. Permission to speak?”

Lamont said nothing. Something in the quality of his silence, in his stance as he rolled forward on the balls of his feet, caught Salah’s attention. Lamont wore his helmet but not his goggles, and Salah could see his eyes.

Oh.

Where had he gotten the popbite? He must have brought it with him; even if it was manufactured on Kindred, Salah couldn’t see Lamont scoring a drug deal with a native. Popbite was a serious stimulant. It kept you awake and alert for days, but the price was steep: first, jitteriness. Then hallucinations. Then psychotic episodes.

Finally Lamont said to Brodie, “Permission to speak.”

Brodie said, “There are tracks in the mud on the north side of the compound, leading toward the open fields and the mountains. The kitchen door is unlocked and the boards removed.”

“Are you saying, Brodie, that Dr. Patel escaped? With that kid’s help?”

“No,” Isabelle said. Fury had replaced fear. “Claire wouldn’t do that. Austin took her!”

Salah stood, nodding at the lab tech to go to the clinic. The lab tech stood but didn’t go. How much English did he understand?

Lamont scowled. “You’re saying a teenage boy kidnapped a grown woman?” But Salah could see Lamont’s mind churning over this information, weighing the factors. Claire was tiny even for an Asian woman; Austin was strong for his age; the commotion and distraction of the assault on the compound and the aftermath of assessing the dead and injured…

Finally the lieutenant said, “Why would he do that? Sex?”

“ No, ” Isabelle said. “I don’t know why!”

“And where would he take her?” Lamont now looked disbelieving; he had decided to blame the Kindred rather than Austin.

Brodie said over his shoulder, “He has a secret fort somewhere.”

Isabelle said, “A what ?”

“He told me once. He said he has a secret place—a cave, he said a cave, yeah—and that Noah Jenner knows about it. Also that he was going to take care of his mother there.”

Isabelle stared at Brodie’s back for a full twenty seconds. Then she tore off down the walkway, pushing past the exhausted people sitting on the floor along its walls, and slammed the door into the clinic. Lamont was grilling Brodie about the location of this cave, which Brodie said he didn’t know, when Isabelle rushed back. “Josh says Kayla was never with the McGuires! Her note said she went on a supply dirigible but Josh said the dirigible arrived and Kayla wasn’t on it. Austin—”

“Has both women trapped in a cave somewhere?” Lamont sneered. “A thirteen-year-old punk? I don’t believe it.”

“Leo, what else did Austin tell you?”

Brodie, without asking permission, said, “That’s all, Isabelle. He was filthy and sandy, said he’d been digging around for old stuff in the cave and—”

“You’re on report, Brodie,” Lamont snapped. “Pay attention to duty before it becomes a court-martial.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Isabelle ran back to the clinic, Salah right behind her. “Isabelle, wait. Noah is confused and dazed right now—”

“Not as confused as I am! Salah, Austin stole the vaccine, nobody else could have taken it, he stole Claire—is he psychotic? Is he like one of those mass murderers back on Terra? Those kids who shoot up their own schools?”

Ten years on Kindred and whatever she’d seen on Terra still lingered. Salah didn’t know her past, didn’t know Austin, thought lately that he didn’t know much of anything. But he gave her his best opinion.

“I don’t think he’s a sociopath, no. I think he’s a confused adolescent, and I also think he has help. He didn’t take Claire and Kayla—if he did take them—to some kid-built secret fort in a shallow cave. Isabelle, where did those other two first-expedition members, Tony Schrupp and Dr. Beyon, go?”

“They have a company that manufactures transistors, way over in the coastal mountains. I told you, all manufacturing is confined to—”

“Are they there now? Are you sure?”

Isabelle was silent. “No.” And then, “The Council of Mothers. They would know. I’m only a junior member but there’s a senior group, Ree^ka was the lead, of course, but—I can radio.”

“Are Schrupp and Beyon the kind to make survivalist plans for themselves somewhere? To believe that civilization is going to end and they better create a bunker?”