Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

“Fine. Everything all right here?”

“Yes. Haven’t lost anyone.”

The brothers liked each other. They might agree on nothing, but their affection was just as clear to Jane as their wariness. Colonel Jenner’s disdain for the way of life here did not include his brother, the architect of this place. The colonel said, “Colin, this is Jane, from World. A translator.”

Colin turned. He took her hand and his gaze met hers. His eyes were mud-colored in a sunburned, strong-nosed face, and she was staggered by their intensity. Something flashed between Jane and Colin: more than interest, less than recognition.

She said, almost timidly, “I greet you, Colin Jenner.”

Instantly he said, “I greet you, Jane,” just as if the World greeting were natural to him. He still held her hand.

Outside, the first missile struck, with noise and fury. Everyone ignored it.

She said, “Will you tell me, please, about… about the life here?”

“Yes.” A quick glance, humorous but not mocking, at his brother. The colonel shrugged and moved away to talk to a group of three people carrying a huge basket of red vegetables.

Colin said, “Jane, here we try to live free on the Earth, while it repairs itself from what humanity did to it. We respect every living thing, even the vegetables and nuts and seaweed we eat. We try to tread lightly, and always in harmony with nature.”

He had gone beyond her knowledge of specific words, but she understood the ideas. “And you can hear the ground? That is how you knew that the drones… how do you know?”

“There are changes in the air. Birds react and so do other animals—they always know if an earthquake is coming. Also, trees and grasses register incoming. Plants aren’t sentient but they can, over time, develop warning signals, pheromones or vibrations, to let others of their species know that danger approaches. Botanists have known that for nearly a hundred years. Everything is connected underground, through grass roots and fungi, and sound moves really well through soil.”

Another missile strike outside. Colin finally let go of her hand. Jane said, to cover her regret at the absence of his warm fingers, “You can hear all that? From plants and air and animals?”

“If I’m paying attention. Six of us can.”

His eyes held hers. Abruptly, Colonel Jenner crossed his arms over his chest. Jane barely noticed. “Nobody here wears an esuit.”

“We don’t need them. We’re all survivors of R. sporii avivirus .”

“But… you have children not ten years, born since the Collapse—they survived RSA, too?”

“Yes.”

Colonel Jenner had returned to listen. He said harshly, “But not all of them. Colin would rather expose his newborns to RSA and let most of them die than live inside esuits and domes—right, Colin?”

Colin said quietly, “I have no children. Parents make that decision, not me.”

“You’re the leader.”

“This is not a military base, Jason. I don’t control anyone else’s choices.”

Colonel Jenner turned to Jane. “Children here die, over ninety percent of them, shortly after birth. Or else the pregnant parents defect and come to live rationally at the base.”

Colin said, “Living sealed up, surviving only by killing—that’s not living rationally.”

“You wouldn’t be living at all if it weren’t for us. New America would already have wiped you out.”

All at once Jane realized this was an old argument, as worn and saggy as some of the Army uniforms at the base. The brothers did not need to argue it again; neither would change the other’s mind. They were arguing now only because of her. Even the way they stood—she had seen male skaleth¡ on World stand like that, facing each other with their heads slightly lowered and their bodies tense, during mating season.

No, that couldn’t be right. She must look so strange to them: coppery skin, too-big eyes, taller than Colin. But—

To cover her confusion, she said, “Why doesn’t New America come at night and burn your crops? Or… or poison them? If they want to destroy you.”

Colonel Jenner smiled, not pleasantly. “They want to destroy people, not farms or domes or weapons. Those that want to take over. Only they’re not going to, here or at the base, because some of us are fighting back.”

“And some of us believe that over time, nature always wins, and we are part of nature.”

Colonel Jenner snorted. “Don’t go into too many forests armed with just your ideals, Colin.”

“Don’t kill so much life that you become as bad as your enemy.”

“I think,” Jane said firmly, “that I would like to talk to those children over there.”

The children were shy, but she got them talking to her, and then they were charming. The missile hits stopped. Colin’s gaze kept meeting Jane’s. She thought that he looked bewildered. Well, she was, too. She detached herself from the children—a small girl clutched her legs—to ask him more questions, to have more time with him.

Colonel Jenner, who’d gone outside, strode back into the dome. “We have to go back now.”

Marianne said, “Oh, no, not yet!”

“I’m sorry, Grandma,” he said, the first time Jane had heard him use that word, “but I just got an urgent message from my master sergeant.”

In his wrist thing, of course. No one asked what the message was. The quadcopter was pushed out of the large airlock, they climbed in, and it lifted, the noise covering Jane’s silence. She had a headache and she felt so confused about… everything.

Living in harmony with Terra, without killing.

Letting nearly all children die of RSA, so that the survivors could “live free.”

Fighting and killing… but killing people who were trying to murder you.

Hearing the whole, huge plant world, the air, the ground itself as it shifted in its own mysterious life.

The dome, without which all of Colin Jenner’s people would already be dead.

Colin Jenner…

Her headache worsened.

“I’m tired,” Marianne said to Jane over the rotors. “Are you?”

“Yes,” Jane said. She watched some large gray animals jumping out of the water of the bay, falling back in, jumping again. Somehow, they reminded her of Colin. She said, “I am tired. It is hard to experience so much at once.”

Jason left his grandmother and Jane at the base. He and Specialist Kowalski flew the quadcopter to the new signal station. This was doubly risky. New America might have picked up Hillson’s coded radio message. Even without decoding it, they would know where Jason was and might guess at his route back. Or they might be able to trace the quadcopter to the station, which would then have to be moved again. But Hillson’s message had been urgent.

He would have left Jane and Marianne in the relative safety of Colin’s dome, but neither woman would have agreed willingly. Jane was needed to translate, and Marianne to work at Lab Dome with the science teams. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Jane at the Settlement with… No, there was no “besides.” This was the best plan. And he’d gotten them both back safely.

The new signal station lay farther up the slope of the southern Diablo Range. Jason flew low over maples, oaks, gray pines, all taller and older than the sapling forests invading the valleys since the Collapse. In a field thick with wildflowers stood a herd of elk. The quadcopter startled them and they bolted. Farther on, a mountain lion sunned itself on a rock.

Robot-dug, the station was burrowed into a rocky hillside. Jason frowned. More difficult to reach by FiVee but easier to approach without detection. Still, the signal equipment was better camouflaged up here. On the rocky and uneven ground, the track of Li’s FiVee was faint.