Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

He cried out and went down, grabbing at her legs. One of his arms got around her knees and she felt herself wobble. Fury filled her. This man—this son of a bitch travesty of a scientist who would set a plague free on strangers, on Noah, for potential profit—this insect would not get the best of her. Even as she was collapsing on top of Wolski, she swung the crowbar at his head.

A sickening crack.

He slumped to the floor and she fell on top of him.

Marianne scrambled away, still clutching the crowbar. Blood streamed from Wolski’s head. But head wounds always bled a lot, that didn’t mean he was that badly injured, didn’t mean he was dead….

She crept back toward him, took his limp wrist in her hand. He was dead.

She, who opposed the death penalty even for serial murderers, had just killed a man.

Weirdly, in numb shock, a line from an old novel came to her: “I won’t think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Who? What book?

Then she pushed Margaret Mitchell’s potboiler out of her mind and staggered to her feet. This was an animal lab, which meant mice were sacrificed for autopsy, for tissue extraction, for DNA sequencing. What she needed would be here, somewhere.

She began opening cupboards and drawers. None were locked. Wolski had not anticipated anyone in here who might be a threat.

Colin heard Grandma call him, but he didn’t answer. He had wedged himself between two big mountains of boxes in the storage place, and he was still mad at Grandma. Let her look for him!

But she didn’t. He heard her open the door to the room where the mice were, then close it. The spaceship was so strange—Colin could hear every sound it made, but never in his whole entire life had he not also heard noises from the ground and the plants and the clouds. There wasn’t any ground or plants or clouds. He didn’t even have to put the sounds he heard in rows. The sounds in here—

The sounds got ugly.

Low talking, then louder talking (although he couldn’t make out any words), and then a scream! A crack! Something heavy fell to a floor.

Colin whimpered and shrunk back into his hiding place. But—Grandma had gone in there! What if that mouse man had hurt Grandma? Colin would have to rescue her, just like Brandon rescued the baby elephant in the basement. It was his job.

Still, he wished Jason and Luke and Ava were here to help.

In another minute he would go.

Somebody was slamming doors around in the mouse room. Then, a really loud smash.

In just one more minute he would go, as soon as he remembered just what it was that Brandon had done to make a rescue.

There it was. In the last cupboard she opened, the only one locked. She smashed the lock with the crowbar, smearing Wolski’s blood onto the metal door.

A part of her mind noted that she had become somebody else, somebody who could do these things without flinching. Adrenaline. Cortisone. Amygdala activation.

Necessity.

She had expected the ketamine and other anesthetics, although not in such large quantities. What she had not expected was the large, zippered leather case. But it made sense. Stubbins had not known, because nobody knew, what fauna might exist on World. And Stubbins was a man who believed in thorough preparation.

SURE-PRO VETERINARY TRANQUILIZER SYSTEMS said the lettering on the leather case. Inside were two pistols, syringe darts in graduated sizes, CO 2cylinders, and a puff sheet with maximum hype and minimum directions.

Best and most versatile dart pistol ever made!

Allows user to safely inject an animal without close and dangerous encounters!

Fingertip muzzle velocity control!

Rotating rear barrel port for quick and efficient loading!

Virtually silent!

Made in America!

“The best product I know—I use it all the time!”—James R. Strople, Chief Animal Control Officer, Colorado

And in much smaller letters:

Individual response to tranquilizing agents may vary widely.

Proper certification is necessary to administer any type of chemical immobilization.

Strangled laughter rose in Marianne; she recognized it as hysteria. A second sheet of paper included a table of suggested doses for various tranquilizing agents on different animals. Hands willed into steadiness, she followed the directions to load a CO 2cylinder, good for six shots, and a dart with the ketamine dosage for a black bear. She practiced ejecting and loading darts, then put four more in her pocket.

How long did she have? How long did it take for a blue dot launched in Russia to get within firing range of a green dot launched in Pennsylvania? When both “pilots” had to learn how to steer their ships?

Nonetheless, she took the time to practice-fire a dart. She was startled by the force with which the syringe left the pipe and buried itself in Wolski’s dead arm.

Bile rose in her throat.

No time, no time.

She reloaded and ran from the lab through the storage bay. Carefully she cracked the door to the main cabin and peered out. Empty.

On the wall screen, the blue and green dots closed in on each other.

Grandma walked past real fast, without seeing Colin peeking out from behind the pile of boxes. All the air went out of him. Grandma was okay! He didn’t have to rescue her, and she was okay!

He waited to see what would happen next. But all that happened was Grandma went out of the storage place back to the big cabin, holding something that Colin couldn’t see very well.

When everything was quiet again, Colin crept out from behind the boxes. Behind the other door, mice squeaked and moved. He wished he knew what they were saying to each other. Something had happened in the mouse room, and curiosity took him. He tiptoed to the door and opened it.

A weird smell, not mousy. He inched into the room.

A man lay on the floor. Blood ran out of his head in little rivers. So much blood! It was the same man Colin had seen before in the big cabin. Somebody had killed him. It must have been Grandma, because nobody else had been in here.

If Grandma had killed the man, then he must be very bad. Maybe he was going to hurt the mice.

Colin crept closer. He’d never seen a dead person before. But it wasn’t really gross because this had been a bad man. Colin squatted on his heels, looking carefully, so he could tell Jason and Luke exactly what a dead bad person looked like. He had a thing sticking up out of him; it looked like the little blue things that popped up on a turkey when it was all roasted and ready to come out of the oven. Did everybody have those things in them, to pop up when they died? Maybe Jason would know.

But what had the man been going to do to the mice that made Grandma kill him? It must have been really bad. Colin left the corpse and went over to the mouse cages. The mice weren’t Mus , they were like the other one that Jason and Colin and Luke and Ava had seen in the woods: grayish-brownish-reddish with long black stripes down their back. Their cute little ears twitched.

What if the bad man had other bad people to help him hurt the mice? Pretty soon, probably, the Venture would go back to Earth. More of Mr. Stubbins’s people would come aboard. Some of them might also be mouse-hurters. And there weren’t enough mice left on Earth— everybody said so!

Colin stood on one foot, chewed on his bottom lip, and thought hard. He hadn’t had to rescue Grandma. But he needed to recue something. Mice shouldn’t be hurt just because they were little. And probably they didn’t like the smell of the bad man’s blood any more than Colin did.

One by one, Colin opened the mouse cages. Some mice stayed inside but some, especially those in the cages closest to the floor, scampered right out. Then, because they were so cute, Colin scooped up two mice and put them in his pocket. They just fit.