Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

Claire nodded, understanding without Zack’s finishing his sentence. Colin Jenner and the other superhearers had had their auditory centers rewired in utero by the original R. sporii . The infants, hypersensitive to sound, had cried nonstop until drugs were developed to tamp down their ability. Some had stayed on the drugs for life. Some, like Jenner, had been bright enough to learn to compensate, as bright children learned to compensate for dyslexia. They had learned selective attention, still hearing the incessant background noise but paying attention only to those they chose at a given moment.

Microbes in the fetal brain had done that. Microbes, that for two billion years had been the dominant form of life on Earth. That had evolved complex and sophisticated signaling techniques, gene-swapping techniques, interdependencies, antibiotics to kill each other. Microbes that, through the union of two prokaryotes, had begun the long evolutionary march toward the multicelled organisms that eventually became humans. Microbes, that still made up one-third of the cells in the human body, outnumbered humans on Earth by a factor of 1022, and could produce a new generation every twenty minutes and so had adapted to—and modified—every available ecological niche on Earth, clear through the stratosphere, solely to aid their own survival.

What had microbes created for themselves in Belok^’s brain?

“Zebras,” he said aloud, and Claire looked at him as if he were crazy.

By the time Jason reached base, Elizabeth Duncan had her orders from Strople, brought in from the perimeter by Private Laura DeSoto and delivered as if both of them didn’t already know the orders would not be obeyed.

Jason jumped out of the FiVee in the armory airlock, went through decon, and left Lab Dome for Enclave. Between the domes, soldiers grunted and swore as they cleared away wreckage from New America’s attack. Jason didn’t ask what they did with the enemy bodies; he could see the mass grave at an edge of the charred forest. Carry-bots trundled body bags and sacks of lime. Amid the devastation, the twin energy domes shone almost obscenely bright in the afternoon sun.

At the command post, Elizabeth Duncan said, “You look like shit, sir.”

Jason blinked; she had never spoken to him with anything approaching such informality. He said, “You don’t look great yourself, Major.”

“Do you think Strople will promote me, now that you’re in stockade?”

“Probably.”

But neither of them could sustain the banter. He had been up for thirty-six hours and sagged with fatigue, and banter was foreign to Elizabeth Duncan’s nature—had she rehearsed it to try to reassure him of her loyalty without any embarrassing sentiment? Unwritten rules forbid them to name what they had actually done: falsified information and retained control of a United States Army base after being relieved of command. To name things was to give them greater power—although it was difficult to see how this situation could have more power over either of them than they had already committed to. But they had made their decision, they’d made it together, and for good and sufficient reasons.

Still, Jason had been unwilling for as good a soldier as Duncan to go down with him. If it came to that, he and Specialist DeFord would go alone to court-martial, and Strople would never know that Major Duncan plus four others had collaborated with Jason. But it was not going to come to that.

She said, “Sir, General Strople has ordered me to bring him the Return . I told him the ship is too damaged to fly that far.”

Which might, for all they knew, be true. “Did he believe you?”

“I don’t know. But he pretended to. He’s sending a unit here for the court-martial and to take control of the base.”

“Sending? How?” If they had somehow acquired more planes or functional choppers and the fuel to fly either…

“FiVees. A convoy of eleven vehicles.”

Jason blinked. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I calculate about ten days.”

Over the broken roads, through the desert and up the shattered coast… no way to refuel except with what they carried with them, the possibility—no, the certainty—of attack by New America….

“They want the Return that bad,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Or they don’t believe that I wasn’t complicit in your decision.”

“Fuck,” he said, knowing that she had never before seen him lose control, “fuck, fuck, fuck .”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can’t catch a break.”

“You took out Sierra Depot.”

Her voice held uncharacteristic admiration, in which there was nothing personal. In another world, Jason thought, she could have commanded the entire US Army; she had the necessary toughness, control, and intelligence. If the Collapse hadn’t happened when it did, she’d have risen through the ranks faster than he did. Instead she stood a chance of going down with him.

He said, “Elizabeth, when the convoy arrives, I’ll be in the stockade along with DeFord and you will disavow any knowledge of—”

A scuffle outside the closed door. “No!” said the soldier on duty, and Duncan’s hand moved to her sidearm. But when the door was flung open, Claire Patel stood there.

“Sorry, sir… she insisted and I didn’t want to…”

“It’s all right, Private. Dismissed.”

“Colonel Jenner—I’m sorry to burst in like this but you have to be told now… Belok^ is awake.”

For a disoriented second, Jason couldn’t remember who Belok^ was. Then he got it. “Out of his coma?”

“Yes!”

“The others?”

“No, but they’re all being closely watched. There’s more. I examined him, and he’s changed. He can talk now.”

“The coma made him able to talk?”

“It did something inside his brain. No, don’t ask for details because we don’t know. But he’s different now.”

The other v-coma victims had already been able to talk. Jason’s exhausted mind fumbled at Claire’s unspoken ideas. She moved forward a step. “We don’t know what it means, no. But Zack McKay’s spinal-fluid analyses seem to indicate massive alteration of brain chemistry. The kind of chemicals that usually indicate more formation of synapses, more pruning of synapses, the sort of profound changes that are usually seen only in small children and adolescents.”

“Doctor,” Duncan said, “do you mean that the v-coma victims will wake up with increased verbal fluency?”

“We don’t know, Major. That’s the whole point.”

Jason said, “Monitor the situation and keep me informed. Dismissed.”

Claire grimaced; too late, he recalled how much the civilian doctors and scientists disliked it when he addressed them as if they were soldiers. Well, tough. He had more important things on his mind than civilian touchiness.

But then Claire’s face softened. “Colonel,” she said, gently and yet with the note of defiance that said she knew she was overstepping boundaries, “I’m sorry to say this, but you should get some sleep. You look like shit.”

Zack thought that the next v-coma to wake up would be Caitlin, since she had gone comatose at the same time as Belok^. But it wasn’t Caitlin. At evening, the little girl still lay comatose in the same cubicle as her mother, and the nurse said there had been no change in either of them. Zack gazed down at his wife and daughter, reached out, touched Susan’s hand. It felt so warm, so alive…

“Dr. McKay,” said the same nurse he’d sent to find Ka^graa. Only now she looked oddly defiant. “There’s another v-coma awake.”

“Where?”

“Bed on the end.” The nurse turned away… sneering? Why?