Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Directly behind Austin was Graa^lok’s youngest cousin, Nan^hal, just Austin’s age. They’d had a long talk alone—well, almost alone—in a corner of the cave, because she’d wanted to know everything about him. He hoped that Nan^hal noticed how Tony was relying on Austin now.

“Tony Schrupp. This is Lieutenant Lamont, US Army. Can you hear me?”

This time Tony answered. Austin, who hadn’t known there was radio to the outside, either, watched the television window. Lamont wasn’t on it. Then he was, standing beside a low gray metal structure. An air shaft, not yet sealed against the spore cloud.

“I hear you,” Tony said. “Don’t touch that air shaft. Go away.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“You won’t,” Tony said. He jerked on a lever.

Then, all at once, the cave exploded into sound and the TV window into dirt and flying rocks. Austin went numb for a moment until he realized no one inside was hurt because the explosive had gone off outside.

Tony said to Beyon-mak, “Did you get him?”

“I don’t know yet. He was standing pretty close to the shaft and the bomb had to be farther away so as not to—”

A gunshot. A few seconds later, something dropped through the air and then the loudest noise and brightest light Austin had never imagined and he couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, was dying…

He wasn’t dead. Smoke choked him and sparkly light blinded him but he wasn’t dead. “Mom!” he cried, groping around the cave floor for Kayla. He didn’t find her until a fan switched on and the smoke blew away and he could see everyone: not dead, not even injured, just some terrified and some furious, and Beyon-mak, weirdly, smiling at his equipment. Smiling!

“That was a flashbang,” Lamont said. “Next down is a smoke bomb. I could smoke you out and pick you off one by one, but that’s not what I want.”

Tony’s face was so nearly purple that he looked like a leelee. Austin had seen that look before. Tony was not going to back down, not ever. Tony said, “You can’t have Dr. Patel. She’s with us now.”

“I’m not!” Claire shouted.

“I don’t want Dr. Patel,” Lamont said. “I want the call-back device. Send someone out the cave entrance with it and my squad and I will go away.”

“The what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Schrupp. You know what I mean. Pyramid-shaped device to call back the infected colony ship. Send one person out with it, alone, and I won’t drop explosive charges down this airshaft or bomb both your entrances till rockfall seals you in.”

Beyon-mak whispered, “ Both entrances. He doesn’t know about the third, or the—”

“Shut up,” Tony said, which shocked Austin almost more than anything else that had happened. Tony telling Beyon-mak to shut up!

Austin suddenly felt as if it were his head that contained explosives. Other entrances, flashbangs, Tony’s bombs and Lamont’s bombs, a call-back device …

Tony said, “Lamont, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

Austin said, “I do.”

Leo strained to hear the radio conversation, or whatever it was. He couldn’t see the transmitter-receiver and he was just far away from Owen that only words or parts of sentences were clear. “Dr. Patel…. both entrances… call-back device…”

Nothing he hadn’t already guessed, except that he doubted Owen would just take the call-back device and go meekly away. He’d have to kill all the hostages in the cave and call it collateral damage. Did Schrupp know that? Probably, but as far as Leo could see, Schrupp didn’t have a lot of choices. Unless there was more to the cave than Owen figured.

Certainly there was more to Owen than Schrupp figured.

Leo’s guts roiled. He didn’t let it interfere.

More words he couldn’t hear. Then Owen said, “Okay. Now.” Owen started moving in a wide circle away from the airshaft, away from Leo, down the mountain. His head moved constantly, scanning the ground for more explosives and the rest of the terrain for, presumably, Zoe. As he drew closer, Leo saw that Owen’s left arm hung limply at his side; the blast had torn his shoulder to ribbons. His rifle was back in its sling and he carried his Beretta in his right hand. “Berman!” he shouted.

No answer.

I could do it now. But there was always the chance that Leo was wrong. He could be wrong about Owen, he’d never wanted anything so much in his life as he wanted to be wrong. He had to know, for sure. This was Owen .

Owen vanished behind the rise of rock. They descended the mountain in parallel, Leo south of Owen. Leo stopped just above and to the right of the cave entrance and took a position behind a boulder. Owen kept going, onto the flatter land below, then far enough away to be within shouting distance but out of weapons range, unless the entire fucking plain was booby-trapped.

Leo waited. Who would it be? He was pretty sure he knew, but maybe he was wrong.

He hoped he was wrong.

“You knew about this, too, Graylock, and didn’t say a thing ?” Tony said. “Not a fucking thing?”

“I didn’t know what it was!” Graa^lok said. Tears filled his big dark eyes, squeezed out onto plump cheeks. “I didn’t!”

Austin had retrieved the pyramidal call-back device—was that really what it was?—from the sand in the small cave beyond the fallen rocks. The rocks had fallen more, and for a sickening second he’d been afraid that either Beyon-mak’s bomb or Lamont’s flashbang had destabilized the whole cave and the roof would fall on him. Or that the rockfall had buried the device deeper. Or something. But the pyramid was there, and he shook the sand off it and clambered back over the rocks, their sharp edges cutting his hands and covering him with silt.

The call-back sat on the floor of the central cave while they all stared at it. Then, as fast as a diving bird on fish, Beyon-mak swooped down to run his hands over it, put his face close, lift it as delicately as if it hadn’t been shaken by earthquakes and rattled by rockfalls and scraped along by Austin.

“There are round bumps on all four faces,” Beyon-mak said. “That’s all. I’m guessing a long and complex sequence of presses—but who knows what they are? Austin?”

“I don’t know!”

“Of course he doesn’t know,” Tony said. “Probably nobody knows, or maybe the Mother of Mothers does—it doesn’t matter. We don’t want the ship. But that goddamn Ranger does, and he can have it. We’re taking this thing out to him.”

We. But there would be no we. One person , Lamont had said.

Tony said to Austin, “If you and Graylock found this thing and didn’t know what it was, how does Lamont know it even exists? Who did you tell about Haven?”

“I… Noah followed me here! But he said he already knew, Tony! He knew you were here!”

“Of course he did,” Beyon-mak said, straightening. He had sand on the knees of his pants. “But he didn’t know about this device. Who did you tell about it?”

“Nobody!” But he had a sickening memory of talking to Leo. What had he said to Leo, he couldn’t remember…

“It was you,” Tony said. “It had to be you. Nate, Graylock, take everybody into the backup cave.”

Claire said, “Backup cave?”

Tony actually grinned. “Separate airshaft, separate third entrance, tight closing door. Don’t underestimate our planning, Doctor.”

She said, “I’m taking the device out to Lamont.”

“You are not. We need you.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Schrupp, think . He’s not going to shoot the messenger or bomb the airshaft. What he wants is to go back to Terra and take his Rangers and protectees with him. I’m a protectee. If he has me, Branch Carter will computer-generate all possible sequences for that device and press those bumps in every single sequence until he gets that ship here. Or maybe the Council of Mothers knows the sequence. Either way, we’ll lift off and leave you to your postapocalyptic world-building on Kindred. But if it’s not me who takes that thing out there, Lamont will keep at you until he gets all his protectees. I’ve watched the man for months and you have not. He’s obsessive-compulsive with paranoid tendencies and the stress of this environment has pushed him over the edge.”