Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

Marianne loaded again and fired.

Stubbins pulled out the second dart and started toward Marianne. Judy leaped onto his back. She didn’t have the wrench, but she reached around his head and gouged at his eyes. He roared and reached behind him to throw her off. She didn’t let go, wildly jabbing at his eyes, and they spun in a crazy tarantella around the bridge. While they struggled, Marianne reloaded and fired her last dart. It hit Stubbins in the shoulder, easily penetrating his shirt. Judy shifted from her unsuccessful attempt to reach his eyes and instead grabbed his arms, trying to keep him from pulling out the dart. Marianne rushed over and hit Stubbins with the empty tranq pistol.

He struck out with his fist, connecting with Marianne’s left shoulder. She gasped with pain but kept hold of the pistol in her right hand, striking him with it until with a huge final roar he grabbed her arm, flung her across the room, and threw Judy off his back. He pulled out the dart.

Colin was trying to catch his mice. Before Marianne could even yell, “No, Colin—don’t touch them!” Stubbins had the boy in his arms.

There was sudden quiet on the bridge.

“Sit in that corner,” Stubbins said, “both of you, or I’ll kill him.”

Marianne cried to Judy, “Do it!”

Judy crept to the corner. Marianne followed her. Colin whimpered but didn’t cry. Marianne focused on Stubbins. His last words had slurred a little. How much of the ketamine had gotten into his bloodstream?

Individual response to tranquilizing agents may vary widely.

“You… you…,” Stubbins said.

Keep him talking. “Jonah, don’t hurt Colin. We’ll do whatever you say, go wherever you want, are you taking the Venture to World, do you know how long the voyage—” She had no idea what she was babbling, she just wanted him to respond, to do anything except hurt Colin—

“Let me go,” Colin said clearly.

Stubbins’s eyes rolled in his head. His big body slumped. Just before he fell over, Colin slipped from his arms and landed upright on the deck, as neatly as if climbing out of bed in the home he didn’t have.

With Stubbins and Stone both down, pain rushed back into Marianne. For a moment blackness took her, but she fought it off. There was no time now for shock.

“Colin, are… you… okay?”

“Yes,” he said. “Are you hurt, Grandma?”

“No,” she lied. “Judy?”

“I think my arm’s broken.”

“I’ll get first aid and—”

“No!” Judy said. “Lock the bridge door.”

“I’ll do it!” Colin said. “I know how!”

Yes, of course—Wilshire was still somewhere in the ship. Marianne did a quick body check on herself. Bruised and hurting but nothing seemed broken. She said, “I have to go out there, Judy. We need rope to tie them up. I don’t know how long Stubbins will be out.”

“Don’t tie up Stone,” Judy said grimly. “He’s dead.”

That made two men they’d murdered. Marianne pushed away the thought and turned to Colin. “You sit up on that big chair, you hear me? Don’t touch anything, including the mice!” The two mice still ran frantically around the bridge, which lacked crevices to hide in. One settled for cowering under what had been Wilshire’s chair. Marianne, Judy, and Colin had all been vaccinated, the supposed “Lyme disease” vaccine—but what if the mice carried something else besides Korean hemorrhagic fever? Did Wilshire know; was that why he was so afraid?

Everything on Marianne hurt. But she picked up the wrench and cautiously opened the door. Both mice ran out. Wilshire was not in the main cabin. Marianne tore open random lockers: no first-aid kit or rope but she did find duct tape.

When she returned, locking the door behind her, Judy had dragged herself into the chair she’d occupied before—the communications chair?—her arm hanging limply by her side, her face twisted with pain. “Can you tie up Stubbins?”

“Yes.” She taped his hands together. As she started on his ankles, Stubbins twitched. Before she’d finished, his eyes opened.

They stared at each other.

Stubbins tried to buck his huge body toward her, but it was a feeble motion. Some ketamine still remained in his system. Then he started to curse, language so foul that Colin’s eyes opened wide. Marianne ripped off her shoe and then a sock and stuffed the sock into his mouth.

Judy laughed, the sound shaky but shocking. She did something else to the controls in front of her and all at once the cabin was filled with Russian voices.

“I have a channel open to the Russian ship,” Judy said unnecessarily. “Can you speak Russian?”

Marianne had only the phrases she’d learned to address a cleaning lady she and Kyle had once had: Please to clean stove today and Need more soap? She understood nothing of the sentences swirling around her. “No!” she said to Judy.

“Well, one of us better try. Look.”

Marianne glanced for the first time at the blue and green dots on the wall screen. They had moved much closer to each other.

Judy said, “I don’t think they can see us. Go.”

“Can they fire on us?”

“How the fuck should I know? Go! ”

Marianne sat down in the seat Judy vacated, the drop into the chair a harder jar to her aching body than she expected. She said loudly, “ Mest’ ! This is Dr. Marianne Jenner.”

Sudden silence. “I am on the Venture .” Maybe if she used simple words, someone aboard the Mest’ would know enough English to understand. Although the Mest’ had taken off as suddenly as the Venture and so was probably without a linguist. “We will not fire. This is a mistake!”

A torrent of Russian answered her.

“I don’t know what they’re saying!”

“They’re moving closer,” Judy said. She had taken Wilshire’s chair. And then, very softly, “I can fire first.”

“What? No!”

“Marianne, I’m not getting blown up when there’s a way I can defend myself.”

“You have no reason to think they’ll—”

“Why else are they moving closer?”

Marianne’s guts churned. She hadn’t known, hadn’t suspected this side of Judy. The Russian torrent became more insistent. Marianne said, “Nyet! Nyet! We will not fire! We will land our ship!”

More Russian.

Then Colin said at her elbow, “Say this, Grandma: ‘Sdayus.’ It means ‘I surrender.’”

“What… how do you know that, Colin?”

He hung his head. “ Ataka! The game you wouldn’t let me and Jason play.”

A tremor shook her whole body. “Can you say, ‘I will not fire’?”

“You said that was a bad game.”

“Tell me.”

“It might not be right.”

“Tell me anyway! ‘I will not fire.’”

He screwed up his little face. “I think… maybe… it’s sort of like ‘Strelyat’ ne budu.’ That’s what Ivan says in level two when he puts down his gun.”

Marianne repeated the strange sounds, twice.

No response.

She turned back to Colin. Can you say, ‘We both should land now’?”

He shook his head.

“Try, Colin! Maybe ‘We go back now’?”

“What if I get it wrong?”

Then we all die. Her six-year-old grandchild looked at her from clear gray eyes. Colin’s little body stood stiffly beside her elbow. His lip trembled. She had no idea how much of this he understood.

She said gently, “Do the best you can, Col. ‘We go back now together.’”

“Maybe… ‘Poshli obratno umeste’?”

She said to the unseen Russians, “Poshli obratno umeste,” and held her breath.

A long silence. At the other console, Judy did something. Arming warheads?