Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

He looked at her with awe.

She frowned. “But the other gene drive, the one to eliminate RSA directly instead of going through reproduction—I haven’t cracked that one yet.”

He nodded. She would crack it. All they needed now was time.

“I’m tired,” Toni said abruptly. “I’m going to sleep. Will you come get me if Nicole wakes up?”

Zack nodded again. Toni left. Zack sat still a long time, ignored by everyone working in the lab around him.

He saw what Toni, for all her new brilliance, did not. Toni’s incredible intelligence was focused on science—as it always had been. But there was more than science involved. Inserting this gene drive into more birds and then releasing them into the wild was a political decision, with enormous ecological implications. Look what had happened thirty-eight years ago, when the original R. sporii had nearly wiped out eight species of mice. Entire economies had been shaken.

Probably, given the way things were now, releasing the birds would be a military decision, made at Fort Hood. He didn’t trust military decisions. Not anybody’s, no matter how much “military intelligence” they were based on—

“Oh my God,” he said aloud, suddenly realizing , and everybody in the lab stopped and stared at him.

Hillson said to Jason, “The deranged corporal who attacked Dr. Jenner is under restraint.”

“Good.” They had no psychiatrist at the base, although that was the least of the problems represented by Corporal Douglas Porter. Hillson, however, didn’t yet realize that.

The master sergeant stood by the doorway of the command post, making his twice-daily report. As always, Hillson’s uniform looked rumpled and slightly askew, as if assembled in the dark. Which it might have been; Hillson seemed to need almost no sleep. His homely, intelligent features gave away nothing, but Jason heard volumes in his voice, most of it either bewildered or disapproving.

“The convoy from Fort Hood is still eight days out,” Hillson said. “It was attacked by New America just west of the Los Angeles nuclear zone. Lieutenant Li relayed what the Return picked up of the convoy’s radio signals to Fort Hood.”

Jason, startled, said, “The Return can do that now?”

“Yes,” Hillson said, disapproval lapsing very briefly into Army pride. “Specialist Martin is getting pretty good with that alien hardware. She figured out more of the communications capabilities than that lab tech did. That Branch Carter.”

“Good. What did Li say about the attack?”

“The convoy leader, a Major Highland… do you know him, sir?”

“We were at West Point together.” And Highland had been a prick even then.

“Oh,” Hillson said, with the enlisted man’s disdain for the academy. “Anyway, sir, the convoy wiped out the enemy. But it slowed them, for repairs and medical and burials and such. So eight more days, maybe more.”

Another reprieve.

And then, “What else, Hillson? You don’t look that grim because New America lost a battle.”

“No, sir. Ten more deserters.”

Ten. Well, that might actually be a good thing, although he couldn’t say that to Hillson. Not yet. Unless…

“Give me the names.”

Hillson did. Jason hid his relief; none of them were Awakened. He said, “They’ve gone off to start their own little army? I assume they took supplies and weapons?”

“Yes, sir. They stole what they wanted.”

And you wonder why I let them. But Jason’s reasons would have to wait a short while yet. Hillson was going to be troubled enough when that conversation happened.

“Sir—”

“Anything else, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.”

Hillson, deeply unhappy, left. Unhappy but completely loyal. He passed Major Duncan entering the command post. She said, “Sir—Doctor Farouk wants to see you.”

“Farouk?”

“Yes, sir. I was at Lab Dome and he stopped me, practically sputtering. It took me five minutes to get him to speak in normal English instead of formulas or equations or whatever the hell they were. I brought him here to see you, but what I got from him, I thought I’d tell you first. I could be wrong, but…”

“Major? What is it?” He had never seen her look like that.

“Sorry, sir. Dr. Farouk says—at least I think he says it, he indicated that it needs more work—but he thinks he understands the physics of the starship. Of the engine, I mean. He thinks that in another few years or so, we might know enough to build ones that can be bigger or smaller or different. He’s very excited, sir.”

Another few years. Jason—and Duncan as well—knew they did not have another few years. Their eyes met.

“Good news,” Jason finally said.

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

Neither of them meant it.

And then, before Jason had even seen Dr. Farouk, Zack McKay appeared, asking to tell Jason something about Dr. Steffens.

And about sparrows.

Jane sat on a child’s chair beside Belok^, who sat on the floor. Monterey Base had nothing like the thick, richly embroidered cushions of home, nor World’s low tables of polished karthwood. The items Jane had brought with her lay on the floor at her feet.

La^vor crouched beside Belok^. Jane knew that La^vor was afraid of what might happen to Belok^. La^vor had lost one brother; she needed some of her lahk to hold on to, here in this strange place that had never, not once, felt like home. The patterns and colors that La^vor made in Jane’s mind were unfocused and gray.

And Belok^? Jane needed to find his patterns. She held up the first of her items, a flattish, more or less rectangular stone. In World, which he’d understood even when he couldn’t speak much of it, she said, “Belok^-kal, what could you do with this?”

The giant child looked puzzled.

“What things could you do with this stone?”

He took it in his big hands and turned it slowly over and over. Jane waited. La^vor put the tips of her thumbs together, a World gesture of anxiety.

Finally Belok^ said, “Build. Build a thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

More waiting. The pattern in her mind was a cloud, colorless and formless but filled with light. She watched it take form as Belok^ answered, his words slow and thick, like tree sap emerging after a long winter.

“Build… house. Build… cookstove… build path build table build steps.”

La^vor gasped. The formless pattern in Jane’s mind took on tints and lumps. She said, “Can you do anything else with the stone besides build?”

Again the puzzled face, creaking into understanding. Belok^ looked at the stone. Next his gaze roamed around the other items Jane had brought: a cup, a blanket, a hammer, a length of wire, a small 3-D printer. Belok^ stared at the tablet on which La^vor had been teaching him to write his name. He picked up the tablet pen, put it down again. His childish brow crinkled into sand waves. A full minute passed.

Belok^ reached into his pocket. He pulled out a soft white stone; Jane had seen Settler children play with these in some complicated game. Belok^ scratched the white stone over Jane’s rock. Three symbols, crude but recognizable: his name in World.

La^vor burst into tears.

Immediately Belok^ dropped the white stone and put his arms around his tiny sister, folding her to him, murmuring comfort. And in her mind, Jane saw Belok^’s shapes: whole and brightly colored, kind and loving and frighteningly innocent.

She almost cried, too. Belok^’s pattern in her mind was a simpler, cruder version of Colin’s.

She went to him, straight from Belok^ and La^vor, almost running along the corridors to his room. He wasn’t there. She found him conferring with gray-haired Sarah Waters, from the Settlement. “Colin!”