“The collapse of civilization! Don’t you know ? Kindred will die, most but not all, and the survivors will be desperate, because some always survive a plague, and they’ll steal and kill—just like they did in the camp, to get the vaccine! Only this time it will be to get food and wine and women… Tony told me! He told me how it was on Terra when Rome fell and the siege of Leningrad and the way the Indians massacred everybody at Cawnpore, even babies… and Leo told me about the Brazilian food riots! That’s the way it always is with humans and no matter what Lieutenant Lamont thinks, Kindred are all human!”
Austin burst into tears. Immediately he hated himself for it, and then a moment later he didn’t because Claire’s face softened and she put her arms around him.
“Oh, Austin, it isn’t always like that, and maybe especially not on Kindred where you have such different social systems from Leningrad or Cawnpore or… Rome! Why did Tony tell you all that? It wasn’t fair, you’re just a kid. Austin, listen to—”
“I’m not a kid!” And to prove it, he kissed her hard on the mouth and put a hand on her breast. She came up only to his shoulder and her bones felt light as a leelee’s, so he was surprised at the strength with which she pushed him away. Comfort and sympathy were gone from her face as she stalked back to the main cave.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Austin— grow up !”
* * *
Dawn brought more rain. Leo came off perimeter patrol around a quiet and nearly empty camp and reported to Owen, who was coming on duty. In the ready room, Leo took off his gear and stowed it in his lockbox, brushed his teeth, and glanced at the pallet he was not going to sleep on. At least, not yet, despite having had only four hours in the last twenty. Some things outranked sleep.
Isabelle waited in the kitchen. She’d made coffee, or what passed for coffee here. Leo searched for the word and found it: “Nakl.”
“Very good.”
“I didn’t know if you’d come, what with… with everything.”
“Teaching you is about the only good thing in my life right now.”
Leo’s heart threatened to burst right down its seam. Even if she only meant that the rest of her life was shitty—and that was what she meant, not that he was some shining star for her—it was still good. He sipped the nakl she handed him, even though he didn’t like it.
Isabelle smiled. There was something wrong with the smile, something a little off, but she didn’t give him time to figure out what it was. “Let’s see how much you remember from last time. Tell me how to close the door.”
He stumbled over the words but got them out.
“Good! Now tell me how to do it if I’m a mother.”
Shit —she was a mother, and that meant different words. Leo found them, his eyes on her face.
“Good! Great!” Big smile—too big. Something was definitely off.
They went through several more phrases of conversation, and then Isabelle moved closer to him. Leo, no neophyte with women, thought: Here it comes . He was a little surprised that Isabelle would try to pull this, but then, the circumstances weren’t the same as some college girl slumming in an on-base bar. He knew what she would ask.
She did.
“Leo,” she said, taking his hand, “I need you to help me.”
“Yeah?”
She kissed him. The press of her lips, soft and full on his, was so intoxicating that for a minute the kitchen, the compound, the planet were blotted out.
“I need you to go after Kayla and Austin for me, because no one else will.”
Gently he pushed her away. “I can’t, Isabelle. You shouldn’t even ask me, and you know that. This isn’t like you. Lamont will go after them when he can, maybe today.”
“No, he won’t.” She was Isabelle again, straightforward and steely. He liked her better this way, although he understood why she’d tried to fuck him over. Family. Bu^ka^tel.
“Listen to me, Leo. Lamont isn’t thinking straight. He’s getting paranoid. Salah says he’s on some drug—popbite.”
“He is.”
“You knew ?”
“Fuck, Isabelle, we all use it when we have to. Maybe it didn’t exist when you left Terra, but in the last decade… We all use it if we have to.” He pushed away the memory of Brazil. “But listen, Austin and your sister are okay. Even Dr. Patel will be. So what if they ride out the spore cloud in some crazy survivalist bunker? Do you really think that those two Terrans will harm them? Tony and what’s-his-name?”
“Who knows what they’ll do!”
“The truth, Isabelle. Do you think they’ll harm Austin or Kayla?”
Long silence. Then she said, “No.”
“Then it can wait. After the cloud hits and we see what we’re up against with survivors and vaccinated kids and all, then we can go convince Austin to come out. Or maybe they’ll just leave the cave voluntarily. Why are they in there in the first place? They’ll all be immune to spore disease.”
“Probably, yes. But any Kindred they have with them won’t be. If they have some survivalist idea of restarting civilization, they’ll have women with them. Claire Patel is too old.”
“So how—”
Isabelle said, “Austin’s friend Graa^lok has sisters. Young, pretty…”
“Well, there you go. And Austin’s not a stupid kid. He makes himself useful, and he keeps an eye on what’s around him. Sure, he’s a little wet behind the ears, but he’s sharp. He got his mother out there by fooling us all, didn’t he? Dr. Patel, too. Those guys will want Austin around. He even finds them new stuff that might be useful, like that alien junk he told me about buried in the sand, and he can also translate anything that—”
Isabelle took a step backward. “What did you just say?”
Leo blinked. “I said Austin can translate any—”
“Before that!”
He had to make an effort to remember. “Austin told me he found some old piece of junk buried in the sand way back in a cave and… let me think… yeah, he said it was alien and wasn’t rusty. At all. Isabelle—what is it?”
Her face had gone bone white. Was she going to faint? Leo reached out to grab her, but Isabelle was made of tougher stuff than that. She held onto a kitchen shelf and breathed deep. Then she said, “Go get Lieutenant Lamont.”
“Whoa, you don’t want to—”
“Do it. I’ll get Marianne and the others. Tell Lamont it’s urgent. Life-or-death urgent. No, tell him something else, something he’ll want to hear.
“Tell him there might be a way to call a ship to take him home.”
* * *
Salah Bourgiba wasn’t convinced. Leo could see that. He thought the unrusty object that Austin had mentioned might be anything at all, a view that Leo shared, even though he didn’t like sharing anything with Bourgiba. Dr. Jenner and Isabelle believed it was the call-back device but that, Leo thought, was because they wanted to believe it. Branch wanted mostly to get his hands on the hardware.
It was Owen who disturbed Leo.
He’d gone outside to look for Owen but found him instead in the ready room. Owen must have taken more popbite because he was hyperawake, counting his clips of ammo. They lay on the floor in lines straight as a parade drill, but Owen nudged one of them a fraction of an inch to the right. What was the point of that? Better not to ask.
“Sir, sorry to distur—”
“What?” Owen’s calm, following so much irritability in the past week, was more unsettling than a shout or howl. The whites of his eyes looked yellowish, and the pupils were enormous. Not yet in armor, his weight loss was obvious. How much popbite was he doing? Every soldier knew the limits, as well as what could happen if you exceeded them.
Читать дальше