Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Unless the virophages protected them—completely, partially, or not at all.

This made Branch’s research pointless, even if he’d had the most sophisticated equipment at the CDC. But research was what drove Branch, just as it drove Marianne, and so he was researching. Cultures with cells grown from sacrificed leelees dotted the room.

The image in the microscope showed three intact lung cells and parts of two others. Somewhere in each cell, too tiny to be seen, was R. sporii , and somewhere inside that was the virophage. The cells looked normal.

“You showed me this before,” Marianne said. “It just shows that the leelees aren’t infected.”

“It shows their lungs aren’t infected with Avenger. Now—”

“Wait—what did you just call the virophage?”

“Avenger. Well, I have to refer to it as something. The first virophage ever discovered was called Sputnik!”

“I know,” Marianne said. Sputnik was Russian for “fellow traveler,” and the researchers who discovered it had an unfortunate penchant for whimsy.

“ Anyway , now look at this. They’re neurons from an infected leelee’s brain, from the area that seems to correspond roughly to Terran mammals’ cerebellum.” He removed the slide from the microscope and replaced it with another. “I stained them to emphasize receptors.”

Marianne peered into the ’scope. Four neurons—Branch had always prepared outstanding slides—and none of them looked like the cerebellum neurons of leelees sacrificed from Kindred. There were more axons and more receptors, bristly outgrowths that made the cells look like particularly dense hedgehogs.

She said, “I’m a geneticist, not a neurologist, but that looks like a lot more going on in the leelee brain than in the leelees we’re familiar with.” She glanced at a cage of live leelees, chittering and stinking. “Have you observed any behavioral differences in the ones you captured from the ship?”

“Nothing. And of course there’s no reason to think the virophage is responsible, but still… That’s an awful lot of evolution to have occurred in forty years without some unusual trigger.”

Marianne stood. “If it is evolution. If it is due to the virophage. But it doesn’t matter right now. The only thing that matters right now is the effect the virophage has on R. Sporii in the human body.”

“I know,” Branch said. “But… still… if only I had a gene sequencer and electromicrograph!”

Three days later, in midafternoon, the first Kindred died of R. sporii .

It was an adolescent boy in the camp. Marianne never knew his name. The compound had no doctor now, and when a young girl came running across the perimeter for help, Marianne had none to give. Noah went back with the girl, returning to the compound a half hour later. He looked dazed.

“It happens so fast,” he said.

“I know,” Marianne said. She had seen it on Terra: adult respiratory distress syndrome, a catchall diagnosis. Gasps for air as lung tissue became heavier and heavier with fluid seeping into the lungs. Each breath required more and more effort. An X-ray of lung tissue—if they had that equipment here—would show “whiteout”—so much fluid in the lungs increasing the radiological density that the image looked like a snowstorm.

Noah clutched at Marianne’s arm as if he were a child again and she, his mother, could fix anything wrong. But she couldn’t, and in a moment he dropped her arm.

Marianne scanned the horizon. Trees waved gracefully in a west–east wind. Would this poor boy’s death be an isolated case? An outlier or a harbinger?

Science always proceeded by trial and error, by living with doubt, by refusing to grab prematurely onto certainty. But this was a huge trial, a massive amount of doubt, and devoid of any certainty at all.

Wailing rose from the camp.

Zoe Berman, in full gear, approached Marianne and Noah. “Go inside now,” she said, eyes on the camp, “just in case. Lieutenant Brodie’s orders.”

And just who had given Brodie that field promotion? Marianne didn’t ask. The military unit, grown ever larger with Kindred recruits, was something she didn’t understand, nor want to. With a final glance at the camp, the blowing trees, the clear sky, she went inside.

It was going to be a long day, an even longer night, and no one would sleep.

Isabelle stood in the doorway of the ready room, a child in her arms. At least the kid wasn’t crying, Leo thought. And it was alive, unlike the children who had died when he fired on the ship. That had been necessary, but he knew it would haunt him for the rest of his life. Awake, asleep, in dreams. Maybe someday he could talk about it with somebody—Isabelle?—but not now. He said, “Any more deaths?”

“No. And according to the radio, the spore cloud hit days ago ago.”

Leo nodded. He hated not being out there with his peacekeeping force, but Dr. Jenner had told him that if he did any more climbing around, he would tear open his stitches and die. Leo didn’t know if this was true and he suspected she didn’t know, either, but it worked okay for him to direct the mission from the ready room. He got reports about the camp from Lu^kaj^ho’s infiltrators, about any external threats from Kandiss and Zoe, about the vaccinated kids inside the compound from Isabelle, about radio reports from Isabelle and Noah Jenner, the only two left who were fluent in both Kindred and English now that Salah Bourgiba was dead.

Did Isabelle mourn him? She looked heavy-eyed and limp, but everybody looked that way. Waiting, not war, was the real hell.

He said, “Well, that’s good, right? Maybe the virophage worked. At least in the camp.”

“Maybe.” The child whimpered and she shifted it in her arms. Isabelle looked good with the dark-haired, copper-skinned baby. If she married a Kindred, her child would look more like Lily, a mix. But Isabelle hadn’t married any of the Kindred men.

She said, in an attempt at lightheartedness, “‘Lieutenant’?”

“Lu^kaj^ho started that shit,” Leo said, with disgust. “I think because Owen was called that, he assumes it’s a title for whoever is CO. Then Zoe did it, one of her twisted jokes. Only Kandiss has the sense to ignore it.”

“It’s not a joke, Leo. Your unit wants you to be lieutenant.”

“Yeah, but the US Army back home has other ideas.”

“Are you going back home, Leo? If it becomes possible?”

So they’d arrived here. Already. It took Leo by surprise—the timing did, anyway. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t, in the long stretches of sitting here on his pallet, thought about it.

He looked her straight in the eyes. “I don’t know, Isabelle—am I? Going back to Terra?”

But whatever he’d hoped to see—some sign, some plea—wasn’t there. However, it wasn’t not there, either, a maddening state of push-pull. If Isabelle had been a different woman, he’d have thought she was jerking him around. But he knew she wasn’t.

All right, then—let’s do this. He said, “Did you love him?”

She didn’t play any games about pretending not to understand. “No.”

He digested this: the speed and firmness with which she answered. He said slowly, “A lot depends on what happens with the cloud. If the virophage doesn’t work and everybody dies, and if it’s possible to reprogram the ship, will you go back to Terra?”

“I don’t know. If the virophage does work, or partially works, and there is still a civilization here to rebuild—will you stay on Kindred and help build it?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “I’m in the Army, you know.”

She grimaced. They both knew that too many Army regulations had already been jettisoned. And what did he face if he went back to Terra? Court-martial?