Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

The Kindred soldier brushed her off and grabbed the ladder away from the roof.

“Give it to me!” Isabelle said.

The man didn’t even answer; he handed the ladder to another Kindred, who carried it quickly away.

Before Isabelle could even react, Zoe had put her rifle into its sling and made a cup of her hands. “I’ll lift you up,” she said urgently. “Talk Brodie out of it. The missile is experimental. One in two chances it explodes and kills him. And us.”

Missile? Brodie had a missile up there? Salah was no military expert but he hadn’t seen anything as big as a shoulder-mounted launcher.

Zoe’s eyes glowed with the feverish shine of popbite; probably she thought she could lift a mountain, but she wasn’t that long out of surgery. Salah said, “Isabelle,” and made a cup of his own hands. Isabelle stepped into it and Salah threw her as high as he could, wrenching his shoulder. Isabelle grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled herself up.

“You can’t, Leo,” Isabelle said.

“Get the hell off here, Isabelle!”

Heemur^ka moved between her and Leo, making sure she didn’t get close enough to interfere with the shot. The mount was affixed to his rifle, the canister loaded into it. Leo kept his gaze trained on the ship and the crowd gathering in front of it. More kids, and now a few old ladies, one carried on a litter. Mothers.

Isabelle said, “You’re going to blow a hole in the ship, aren’t you. To release the virophage. But it’s not a bullet because a bullet wouldn’t even dent that hull. It’s a powerful explosive from Terra and it’s not reliable. One in two odds of blowing us all up.”

“Zoe tell you that?” Damn her to hell, Leo had trusted her.

Isabelle didn’t answer his question. In the field, people crowded closer to the ship. In his scope, a tiny girl, pale blue dress on her little copper body, crooned to a doll in her arms.

Isabelle said, her voice steady but not completely hiding desperation, “Okay, assume you’re willing to risk killing yourself, me, your squad, and half the people in the compound if the explosive blows up in your face. Are you willing to risk killing all the people hit by the blast or flying debris near the ship? All those kids? That’s not you, Leo.”

Leo said, “Drop her off the roof, Heemur^ka.”

“No! Stop!” And then a blast of Kindese, which Leo ignored.

Four of the Kindred-Terran Peacekeeping Force approached the crowd surrounding the ship. The Kindred soldiers were armed but held their weapons loosely, unthreateningly, as they began to talk to people. Talk, persuade, cajole, threaten— Just get them away from there by telling them why .

Isabelle shouted at Leo, “You don’t even know that setting the virophage loose will work! It’s only a desperate gamble!”

Then Leo did answer her. Without turning, without taking his gaze from the scope, he said, “Isn’t a desperate gamble better than everybody dying for sure?”

He didn’t hear her answer; Heemur^ka dropped her over the edge of the roof. Presumably somebody caught her because a few moments later she was with the group that Zoe and Kandiss were herding away from both the compound and the camp, up the hill to the south. They would take everybody to Isabelle’s lahk house, to safety, with or without its lahk mother.

Heemur^ka said in Kindred, “I greet you, Leo-mak.”

What the hell? They hadn’t just met. They were here on the roof preparing to die or kill or both, preparing to set loose a plague on the planet—a second plague—and Heemur^ka was saying, “I greet you”? Some crazy fucking Kindred custom that Leo didn’t know about? A death ritual, like those songs that kamikaze pilots sang before they took off?

Leo said in Kindred, “I greet you, Private Heemur^ka,” and kept his finger on the trigger.

Halfway up the hill to the lahk, forced along by Kandiss and Zoe, Salah had had enough. Enough of being herded, enough of esoteric master-alien codes, enough of not being able to make his own decisions. Enough of death. Enough of this planet, just as he had once had enough of Terra. Nothing to choose between them for human idiocy.

He stopped walking and said to Zoe Berman, “I’m going back.”

“No,” she said. “You’re not.”

“I won’t go anywhere near the compound, anywhere near Brodie. I won’t interfere with whatever he’s going to do. But I can help move people away from the ship. They don’t trust Leo’s Kindred soldiers because they think they’re turncoats. They might trust me, a doctor. At any rate, I can speak the language. Let me try. Please.”

He tried to say more with his eyes: to remind Zoe that she had been forced to trust him once and he had not betrayed her. How much was he getting through to her? He couldn’t tell; she was half popbite now.

Finally she said, “Kandiss won’t let you go.”

“Then he’ll have to shoot me.”

Salah started back down the hill. Each step, he half expected a bullet in the back. But instead he heard Zoe’s voice, indistinct but passionate, presumably addressed through her wrister to Kandiss.

No bullet hit him.

And then Isabelle was walking beside him. “I speak Kindred, too, Salah.”

“Go back. It’s too dangerous,” he said, fear and determination removing from his mind that they’d already had this conversation once before. Too late, he remembered.

“Shut up,” Isabelle said, and said no more.

What the fuck? Bourgiba and Isabelle moved into Leo’s field of vision, crossing the open space between the compound and the protesters by the ship. That’s what they were—protesters, not enemies, just trying to protect their kids. Owen had never understood that. Owen had never understood a lot of things.

There was nothing Leo could do about Isabelle and Bourgiba.

“Heemur^ka,” Leo said in Kindese, “go now. I be okay. You go. Safety.”

Heemur^ka answered in a burst of Kindred that Leo couldn’t follow, and then stayed put. Nothing Leo could do about that, either. If Heemur^ka was willing to risk his life for his CO and their shared mission, that only meant Leo had done his job. “You’d have made a good Ranger,” Leo said in English.

Another burst of incomprehensible Kindred. But Heemur^ka grinned.

Things began to look better. The peacekeeping force was moving unchallenged through the crowd, talking and explaining, and now Isabelle and Bourgiba joined them. Much hand waving, mouth moving, pointing at the ship and then at Leo, clearly visible on the compound roof.

People began to move away from the ship. At first, just a few, then more. The persuaders were getting it done.

Heemur^ka jabbered something in Kindred and pointed.

Without moving, Leo shifted his gaze to the right. A group of Kindred—seven, eight—ran from the deserted camp toward the dispersing crowd. Two were women, one gray-haired but still fast.

Heemur^ka said in English, “Shoot. Now.”

Shoot? Why? The group wasn’t even armed; in their pale unisex dresses there was no room for weapons. All they were doing was joining the protest.

Heemur^ka said, “I shoot!” and raised his pipe gun.

What the fuck? “Hold your fire!” Leo said, but either Heemur^ka didn’t understand the English or pretended he didn’t. He fired his pipe gun.

The shot hit nothing—he hadn’t intended it to. It didn’t even make the advancing group slow down. And then they had reached the crowd and mingled with them, joined the talking and waving and pointing.

Heemur^ka said, “Bad people! Say not true! Make people to go to ship!”

Leo got it. These were the agitators, the haters, the “bad people.” They didn’t believe the Terrans could be trying to accomplish anything good. They weren’t just trying to protect their own; they were the type who wanted to eliminate anything not their own, and they would tell any lies they had to in order to accomplish that. To “make people go to ship,” even if it got those people killed. Leo had known them in the United States, in Brazil, in the Army itself.