Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 (23 page)

“If Martin’s Terrans had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“We should be. That part was accident.” Something behind his eyes shuddered slightly, an involuntary fear that Jake sudden found convincing. “They got us out of Hope of Heaven walking and jammed us into a rover. All the Greenie soldiers were busy with their duties about the Fur ship coming in. The patrols were arranged so that nobody came near our house. I expected to die.

“But the rover malfunctioned when the EMP was set off, and we were still in Hope of Heaven. They must have mistimed something. The Terrans couldn’t leave us in the dead rover, killed or no without somebody eventually investigating when the Fur attack was over. So they pulled us out and made us march towards river. Maybe they meant to let it carry our bodies away. Or maybi they were under orders to keep us alive in order to torture us for information.”

Kang stopped and Jake saw him reliving it all: the weapons jammed against his head, the terrified forced march for the river.

“We were lucky, though. Some people had refused to evacuate, someone in a house near the river saw what was happening, some true Chinese with honor and courage untouched by the corruption of Mira City. Three people ran out armed with anything: poles and garden hoes that were electronically inoperative and kitchen pans.
Pans.”

Kang turned his head away briefly before resuming.

“The two Terrans weren’t affected at all by the things thrown at them, of course. The Terrans turned and shot all three of them. A man, a woman, and a teenage girl. While the Terrans were briefly turned away, we jumped one of them. None of the Terrans expected
us
to attack—they have contempt for Greenies as fighters. So he wasn’t prepared and we were lucky and killed him. Another one shot Wu. Wu’s body turned into a shield for Wong and me, just long enough to get another Terran down. I wrestled with her for her gun, and I got it, and I killed her. The last Terran would have shot us both except that another Chinese had crept out of a house and he had a gun, too. The Terran swung around to shoot him and they killed each other. Then Wong and I ran.”

Jake said nothing.

“I don’t know what happened to any of the bodies. I guess Martin disposed of them all. Hope of Heaven was attacked by that mob from Mira because of the two Greenie kids Martin killed with spears, so it would have been easy to keep the Chinese deaths from Shanti and Cutler. Not that they’d have cared.”

Star Chu said to Jake, “There’s more, Mr. Holman. I have another source of information, another cousin. We Chinese are just as interrelated as the Cutlers, you know.”

“I know,” Jake said. He fought off dizziness.

“My cousin came to me weeks ago to tell me something. I didn’t believe her then. She’s old,” Star said, and in the girl’s voice Jake heard that the old were unbelievable, fanciful. “Also, sometimes not too … but I believe her now. She said…” The girl clenched her fists.

“Go on,” Jake said.

“She said that during the first evacuation, the drill, she didn’t leave Mira City. Most Chinese did leave, you know, the first time. We obeyed orders. But a lot stayed the second time. My old cousin hid in her
wei.
That’s a kind of extra tiny room sprayed into foamcast to hide in, often with hidden slits to see indoors and out by means of mirrors.”

“A priest’s hole,” Jake said.

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

“She was in there during the evac drill. She lived next door to Lau-Wah Mah. When the city was deserted, she saw a Terran carry out Mah’s body, wrapped in a blanket or rug. He dropped it. La Wah was a big man for a Chinese, and I guess Martin could only spare one person for this. The rug opened. An arm was torn off the body and the… the place between his legs all bloody.”

Kang said, not without satisfaction, “The traitor had been tured.”

“He was a good man!” Star cried. She slapped Kang across mouth. He lunged up but she shoved him back into the chair. Bound hand and foot, there was nothing he could do but sneer.

Star said to Jake, “I didn’t believe my cousin then, like I told you. I thought that after Mah was found missing, she made up the story to get attention. She’s like that. But after I heard from this piece of slime here… Mr. Holman, most

Chinese in Mira City are not with the dissidents. We know we aren’t treated as equals to Anglos or Arabs, but we have our own lives and our own businesses and we hope that in future generations we can change things. We do not believe in violence.

“But since Mah was taken and then his body deliberately left out so that people would think Hope of Heaven did it, and since the dissidents tried to burn Mira, and since Mary Pesci and Shanab Mesbah were killed … I don’t think people like you know what it’s like to be Chinese in Mira City. People shun us now. They whisper. Our kids get taunted in school and sometimes beat up. Arabs and Anglos, except for Quakers, don’t buy from our little businesses. Chu Corporation has had sales fall fifty percent. And we Chinese are afraid of what’s to come. That mob marched only on Hope of Heaven, but Chinese Mira could be next.

“And Julian Martin is causing it! That’s what you must see. This piece of shit here is at least right about that. Martin kills and manipulates in order to get power, and it’s worked. He controls Greentrees. You must tell Alex Cutler and Mayor Shanti.”

Clearly this girl didn’t know that Alex was sleeping with Julian. “If you believe all this is true, Star, why don’t you tell her yourself?”

“She’s watched by that Terran bodyguard. If any Chinese got near her… I don’t think I could get near her. But you live with her. And they’re not watching you.”

Of course not, Jake thought. He was too old and ineffective to worry about, unless Julian or anybody else happened to want a bit of historical information. Otherwise Jake mostly slept and drooled and stayed indoors, away from everything, which is why he hadn’t even been aware of Mira’s thriving black market… but why had he been so easily swayed by Julian Martin?

He was so tired.

Star said, “Do you believe me, Mr. Holman? Do you believe Kang?”

Jake said slowly, “I don’t know. You have no real proof.”

She cried, “But why else would wild Furs have helped Mira during, the evacuation drill and then killed Mary Pesci and Shanab Mesbah during the real attack? Don’t you see how Julian Martin has done everything to get control of Greentrees?”

“I need to think about all this, Star.” And then, with deliberate pathos, “I’m an old man and very tired.”

She said at once, “Of course you’re tired. We’ll take you back now. And when you’ve thought about it, you’ll tell Alex Cutler. I know you’re still the sharpest and most experienced mind in Mira.”

Irrationally warmed by her praise—this girl was pretty good at manipulation herself—Jake let the tape again be put over his mouth and eyes. He would never be able to identify the big man who had lifted him. He felt himself being laid carefully on the floor of the rover, but he didn’t feel the ride into Mira. By that time he was already asleep.

THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

K
arim blinked at his first view of the inflatable.

From the outside it had appeared to be standard research-camp living quarters as he remembered them from fifty years ago: dull green, quick to erect, durable. Inside it was unrecognizable. The plastic walls and floor had all but disappeared under pelts and woven blankets. A small drum lay on its side, ornamented with feathers, Baskets held handmade tools and various dried foods: Somewhere outside someone was grilling meat; the smell made Karim’s empty stomach growl.

Two braves sat in a corner, smoking. They rose quickly when the captives were brought in.

“We found them in the upland meadow,” a captor said.

“An odd place for love,” the oldest brave said. “And you didn’t let them put on their clothes?”

“They weren’t doing sex. They had no clothes.”

The elder frowned. He had bright red hair and, under his suntan and wrinkles, the trace of freckles. Most of the Cheyenne in the First Landing, Karim remembered Jake telling him, had not actually come from that ethnic group at all. They were people rich enough to afford space passage who nonetheless wanted to live like primitives. Their blood had been American, Irish, German, English, Italian, all the defunct countries of the UAF. A few had even been Chinese.

None of this had made any sense to Karim. Without your place in the family, in the generations of the medina, how could you really know who you were?

“Who are you?” the elder asked.

“I am Karim Mahjoub and this is Lucy Lasky. Have you ever heard of us?”

“No.”

“We’re from the First Landing. We’ve been out in space,” Karim said desperately.

Carefully the brave studied Karim, then Lucy. Finally he said, “They’re crazy. Put them with the others.”

Their captors motioned them out. Lucy stopped defiantly and plucked a pelt from a basket by the door. “I need this to cover myself, all right?”

The elder nodded and she took two pelts, handing one to Karim.

They were marched toward a smaller inflatable, probably originally supply storage. Inside on a bed of pelts sat two men and a woman, all bound. They stared at Lucy and Karim.

“You’re not Cheyenne,” one man said. He was small, blond, and intense. The other man was both younger and larger, obviously unshaven for at least a week. The woman was Chinese.

“No,” Karim said as he and Lucy were pushed down to sit with the others. A brave bound their hands and feet and then the Cheyenne left. Five prisoners crowded the available space. Every one jostled to find enough room.

“I’m Jon McBain, an energy researcher for Mira Corp,” the blond man said. “This was my research station until we were taken over by those archaic lunatics out there.”

Karim said, without hope, “I’m Karim Mahjoub and this is Lucy Lasky. Have you ever heard of—”

“Oh my God,” McBain said. “Is it really you? Are you back?”

Karim lay bound in the darkness, unable to sleep. They had been fed, fish and game and some sort of fat mixed with dried fruit that had actually tasted pretty good. Karim and Lucy had gobbled ravenously, their hands untied long enough for that purpose, under watchful guard. Karim’s belly stretched taut and full.

But not as full as his mind. Jon McBain and his two techs, Kent Landers and Kueilan Ma, had questioned him about his mission: had he really deposited the infected Furs in space? Had they been picked up by other Furs? Was it actually working, the Vine strategy to render their ancient enemy harmless?

Yes, and yes, and I don’t know, Karim had said. And then McBain had told him there was a Fur ship in orbit, poised to attack Grrentrees.

“No,” Karim said, “it’s a Vine ship! They sent us down first in… never mind. Does Jake Holman think it’s a Fur ship? They might try to shoot it down with the
Beta Vine!
I have to get to him and tell him those are Vines upstairs!”

“We don’t know what’s happening in Mira City,” McBain said. “The Cheyenne took over this camp a week ago and of course their moronic philosophy doesn’t permit comlinks or MiraNet. We’ve had no news.”

Dr. Shipley, Karim remembered, hadn’t thought the Cheyenne moronic.
“They are interested in the sources of life,”
he’d told Karim once,
“and in living as close to it as they can. Of all the Plains Indians, the Cheyenne were the most high-minded.”
It hadn’t seemed high-minded to Karim, the scientist, back then, and it didn’t now.

“I have to get to Mira City to tell Jake Holman!” he said to McBain.

“Mr. Holman? I don’t think that’s who you want, Mahjoub. He’s an old man, and since his last stroke, I hear, not competent.”

Jake Holman an old man. His last stroke.

Karim said with some difficulty, “Who runs Mira Corp?”

“You’ve been gone—what?—about forty years? A lot has happened.”

The three scientists spent the next two hours taking turns relating the history of Greentrees. Long after everyone else slept, Karim lay awake trying to digest it all. Gail Cutler and George Fox and Dr. Shipley all dead. Nan Frayne living wild with Furs at war with the Cheyenne. Julian Martin. Mira City evacuations. Defense plant and allocations. Hope of Heaven. Dissidents and rebellion. Arson’ and murder.

It was a long time before Karim could even doze, and his last thought before he did was,
I must get to Mira in time to tell them the ship in orbit is Vines, not Furs. I must get to Mira …