Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

Jason managed, “Dismissed.” Hillson would carry out all his orders. So would Elizabeth Duncan and the rest of his officers. But—

“You can’t control everything,” Lindy said. “Isn’t it enough that you’re bringing off this insane plan?”

“I need… a drug to stay awake.”

“No,” Lindy said. “You need to sleep.”

Against his will, he did.

When he woke again, it was the next day. Had Lindy given him something in his IV that made him sleep? He would have been furious with her if it would have done any good, but it wouldn’t. And Jason did feel stronger. Hillson reported that the convoys leaving the base were nearly ready to roll. “Convoys?” Jason said. “Plural?”

“Yes, sir. Major Duncan authorized it. One is heading south, to join the convoy from Fort Hood. Mostly military and their families, with some base civilians. They have transport and weapons. The other convoy has Settlers, some military, and a lot of base civilians. Colin Jenner will found a new village of some kind. They’re heading up into the mountains, to someplace able to be defended, and Major Duncan equipped them with most of the supplies not put aboard the Return and most of the transport.”

Colin had accepted military? And considering defense? “Are they equipped with weapons?”

“Yes, sir.”

Well, well. The mountain finally recognizes the reality of avalanches.

“Is the Return on schedule for departure?”

“Ahead of schedule, sir. Major Duncan wants to see you. Also Mr. Jenner.”

“The major first.”

Elizabeth Duncan entered. Jason said, “Major?”

“Operation is proceeding smoothly, sir. Both convoys to depart in a few hours. Prisoners are aboard the Return drugged and under guard: Private Porter, Dr. Steffens—”

Jason said sharply, “Only Porter is a prisoner.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. All the Awakened except Dr. Jenner are aboard, and so are the v-coma patients, including the parents of the Settler child. They’re under guard, too, but not drugged. The Settlers fought the two families’ removal, sir, but no one was injured. Lieutenant Li has loaded the signal station equipment. Loading everything else proceeds. So does ship modification for time during the flight.”

Jason didn’t ask what modifications she meant; it didn’t matter. If the trip to World was like the voyage of the Return here, they wouldn’t be in space very long.

In space. He tasted the words; they felt metallic on his tongue. He’d barely had time to think about the voyage, or the planet that would now be home. Getting there had taken all his thoughts.

“Anything else, Major?”

“No, sir. We can proceed whenever you so order.”

“Thank you, Major.”

She left, and Colin stormed in. Out of his powerchair, he leaned on a cane. “Jason! You kidnapped four of my people! Including a child!”

“Colin—”

“I want them back!”

“Col… I can’t .”

“You mean you won’t!”

“I mean I can’t. No one capable of transmitting the virophage can stay on Earth.”

Colin took a step toward the bed. All at once Jason realized that if Colin bludgeoned him with his cane, Jason was helpless. Unarmed, alone, all he could do was scream. And who was still out there? Lindy, his grandmother…

Colin said, more quietly, “I don’t do that, Jason. Stop thinking like a soldier.”

“I am a soldier, Colin. That’s why I have to do this.”

“Protecting your country by destroying it? Wasn’t that military tactic thoroughly disproved several wars ago?”

“I’m not destroying it. I’m ensuring that New America doesn’t do so. They’ll consume themselves in fighting each other. Haters always do.”

They stared at each other. Between them lay gulfs of perception, crossed only by the fragile bridges of kinship and history. Colin knew he could not stop Jason, who had all the power on his side. Jason knew that Colin might never forgive him.

Jason said, “I’m told the ship can return to Terra. We’ll only be a short time in space. People can come back.”

“And twenty-eight years will have passed here.”

“Yes.” Colin would be the age their grandmother was now. Their father would be dead. Jason would be only a few years older. And probably the spaceship would not return to Earth anyway, unless there was a good reason.

Colin said, “Good-bye, Jason.”

“Good-bye, Col. I’m sorry.”

After Colin stormed out and Lindy came in, Jason said, “Tell my father and grandmother to wait. I’ll see them in fifteen minutes.”

He turned his face to the wall.

Marianne never had gotten in to talk to Jason. He had been too occupied and too weak. “Later, please,” he’d said, and then she’d been taken up with her own good-byes to Claire, to Ryan, to Colin. After the last two, the son and grandson she might never see again, Marianne had gone straight to her berth on the Return and stayed there until liftoff. She had always hated for anyone to see her cry.

Her shared quarters, thrown up hastily of plywood and metal and used mattresses, looked eerily familiar. As a small child, Marianne had been taken on an overnight train trip to visit relatives in Chicago. That compartment, like this, had had four berths with curtains in front of them and a single chair at the end. Here, however, there were no windows, not even a wall screen. If she wanted to see Earth left behind, she would have to go to the Commons.

She didn’t want to see it. From the moment the Return had landed in California months ago, Terra had not felt like home. Cities destroyed, populations wiped out, wilderness returning… no. She had never been outside without an esuit. World would be as much home to her as Terra was now, except for the loss of Ryan and Colin.

But she would have Jason. And on World, Noah and her granddaughter Lily. Although World would be God-knows-what after twenty-eight years of infection by the virophage.

Marianne put her hand on the windowless alien wall. She pushed her grief away—and how many times in her life had she had to do just that?—and concentrated on what she’d gained. She and Farouk had combined their knowledge, his physics and her biology, into a theoretical structure with details so complex, and so beautiful, that she felt dizzy just bringing it to mind.

She knew who had created this ship. Who had brought humans from Terra to World 140,000 years ago. Who the “super-aliens” were.

She had always wondered about that initial transport of humans to World. An experiment, yes. But not a random lifting of a few thousand people who happened to roam the same geographical area. Any band of hunter-gatherers must have included a leader bellicose enough to stand off challengers, some aggressive hunters, other hunters willing to take subordinate positions, and some very yielding people at the bottom of the pecking order. Hierarchy was built into primate genes, and all carnivorous mammals had alpha and omega members of both genders.

And yet—all, or at least most, of the humans brought to World shared a genomic profile strong on tendencies toward cooperation, mildness, aversion to risk.

Somebody had chosen humans for those traits. Somebody had understood human genetics very, very well.

She had told Colin that life on Earth had always been transformed by microbes, from the first prokaryotes on. Serial endosymbiosis had, along with survival of the fittest, been evolution’s earliest tool. The virophage was an unconscious entity in itself, no more sentient than an amoeba. But over the vast oceans of geologic time, different microbes had evolved to control their hosts in ways that aided their own survival. They used more complex animals as reproduction sites, as food, as a means of being carried from a site of exhausted resources to one with fresher resources.