Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

He thrust the canister at her, along with the mounter. “What’s this?”

Zoe’s stoniness vanished, either in relief that Leo wasn’t going to rehash what happened on the mountain or in simple astonishment. She said, “Where’d that come from?”

“What is it, Zo?”

“Experimental. Not approved yet, nobody has them, too dangerous. I’m not even supposed to know about them, but there was this looie on Terra who—”

“I don’t care how you know. Lamont has this. Had this. What is it? An explosive?”

“Yeah. Has almost the impact of a shoulder-launched missile but is fired right from standard rifle. Only thing is, nearly half of the field trials blew up the rifle, the tripod, and a crater big as a refrigerator.”

“Huh,” Leo said. “My weapons are missing. You know who took them?”

“You lost your weapons? Again?”

“I was being operated on!”

“So was I, but I have mine.”

Leo didn’t ask how she’d done that. Maybe Kandiss had held them for her, maybe somebody else. “Take me back to my room,” he said to Kandiss. “Bring me Noah Jenner.”

Jenner looked better than when Leo had seen him last—sharper, more focused—although he still had a lump on his forehead the size of a walnut. Noah glared. Another one that doesn’t like me. Well, tough shit.

“I have your weapons,” Jenner said, “and you’re not getting them back. We do things differently here, Brodie. We’re grateful for your help in getting the call-back device, but there will be no more killing. I’ll take these things, too.”

“Try,” Leo said.

Kandiss took a step forward.

Jenner looked at the huge Ranger, pressed his lips together, and left without another word. Leo said to Kandiss, “Did Jenner leave the compound with any duffel or box that could have held my kit?”

“Supply carts have been coming and going all day, sir. They’re moving the vaccinated kids and their mothers into the compound before the cloud comes. I’m frisking everybody.”

Leo considered. His side hurt but his head felt clear. “Okay. Let them come in but check any supplies for contraband. You guard the door and periodically scan from the roof. Also, tell Isabelle Rhinehart I want her to bring me Lu^kaj^ho and his cop squad.”

Kandiss stiffened. Leo didn’t have to be told that Kandiss didn’t want armed Kindred males inside the compound. Leo said, “They’re on our side, Kandiss.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Really.” Immediately he knew he shouldn’t have said that; in Kandiss’s world, a superior officer might give information, but he never justified his orders. In some ways, the Kindred cops were actually easier to deal with than Kandiss.

What the fuck? What did he just think? How could he relate more to these alien cops than to Army?

When Lu^kaj^ho entered with his men, Leo told them all, in a halting combination of his Kindred, their English, and some pathetic pantomime, that they were now part of compound security. He wanted Lu^kaj^ho on the roof and cops on the east, south, and north doors, all of them to take orders from Kandiss. He made sure Kandiss understood this as well. The whole thing would have been easier with Isabelle or Bourgiba to translate, but Isabelle wasn’t around and Leo would not ask Bourgiba. He needed to learn to make himself understood to Lu^kaj^ho’s squad; he was now their commander.

He’d never wanted this.

After they’d all left, he closed his eyes for a few minutes. But he couldn’t sleep. Asleep, he dreamed about Owen. Awake, he also saw Owen’s face constantly, but it was easier to explain to himself yet again why he’d done what he had to.

Besides, he had to check, clean, and load all of Owen’s weapons. They were his now, and nobody was going to get them from him again.

Austin lay on his pallet in the clinic and thought about the ways he’d fucked up.

He’d trusted Tony. He’d trusted Lieutenant Lamont. He’d taken his mother—his mother!—to a place where she was now a hostage. He’d taken Claire Patel there, too—another hostage. He’d let Lamont shoot him so that now he had a gash on his head and a shattered shoulder and might not be able to ever use his left arm again. He’d cried in front of Isabelle. He’d found and brought the call-back device, yes, but now there was another piece he hadn’t found or brought back: the instructions on how to use it. He was a total fuck-up and probably Leo hated him now. Along with everybody else.

Dr. Bourgiba came in to check his head, and Austin lay mute and stiff—he was stone! rock!—and didn’t answer any questions. He didn’t cry out when it hurt, either, which was something. But not much.

Then Isabelle came in and Austin turned his face to the wall. Why didn’t they just leave him alone? He made loud noises in his head so that he couldn’t understand what Isabelle was asking him, and when she laid a hand on his head he screamed, even though it didn’t hurt at all. “Go away! Go away!”

She did. Austin let the tears come. He wanted his mother, and that was the biggest fuck-up of all because he was too old to cry for his mother, he was thirteen .

The door opened again. Austin turned his head back toward the wall but jerked around again when he heard the next voice.

“Hey, buddy,” Leo said.

Leo leaned heavily on Isabelle’s arm. She lowered him to sit at the end of Austin’s pallet, back to the wall. Leo breathed heavily for a few minutes and then said, “Thanks, Isabelle. Leave us guys to talk now, okay?”

She did, closing the door behind her. Leo looked strange out of soldier clothes and without helmet or weapons. He wore a loose Kindred wrap and he was barefoot. A tube came from his side into a bowl he’d put on the floor. “Damn drainage pipe. I might as well be a sewer. Bourgiba says that on Terra this would be a sterile tube with a bag or some shit like that, but they don’t have one in the clinic. Listen, Austin, we need your help again. You did a great job, incidentally, getting that call-back device out of that survivalist shit hole. Nobody else could have done it, certainly not your buddy Graa^lok.”

Leo had pronounced it right, Austin thought dazedly, with the rising sound in the middle. Tony never did that. And Leo had said… that Austin did a good job?

“Here’s the thing,” Leo said, and his voice, too, dazed Austin—it sounded like an adult talking to another adult. “There have been developments while you were in sick bay, so I’m going to brief you. Dr. Jenner and Branch Carter are working on a way to call back the colony ship with that device you rescued. They haven’t figured it out yet but maybe they will, they’re smart people. They might call the ship back so they can let loose that germ on it that’s supposed to stop the spore germ.”

Austin already knew that much; he’d known it before his disastrous trip to Haven. He could tell that Leo was skeptical about some of it, or maybe all of it, but that he was waiting to see what happened.

“But now,” Leo said, “we have another problem. Most people left the refugee camp once it was clear to them there weren’t any more vaccines in there or any way to make more, thanks to that terrorist attack.”

The attack where Leo shot the attackers. How many? What did it feel like to kill somebody? Did Leo feel bad about shooting Lieutenant Lamont? He didn’t look like he felt bad.

But Austin was learning that people weren’t always what they looked like. Tony, for instance.

Leo continued, “But now people are coming back to the camp, because there are rumors out there that we Terrans are going to set off a second plague.” Leo considered. “Which, I guess, we are, if the scientists can figure out how. But nobody out there really understands about these virophages—hell, I don’t understand them either—and so everybody’s scared. For their kids, mostly. The vaccinated kids and their mothers have all been brought into the compound for their own safety. Probably you heard some of the babies crying?”