Read Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 Online
Authors: Crucible
Jake struggled to breathe shallowly. His shit and piss smelled terrible. He was alive only because of Duncan’s warning. Now he must stay alive, must continue to appear stroke-damaged enough so that Julian didn’t hear otherwise, must tell Alex and Ashraf…
But he couldn’t think clearly how to do that. All he could think of was Duncan’s muddy boots. They were muddy because the actor had come stealthily along the river, trying to avoid public notice. But Julian’s men had been following him. Duncan had not realize his own brother would put him under surveillance. He had trusted Julian at least that far; Julian had not trusted him; Julian’s cynicism had won.
Jake had to get to Alex.
THE AVERY MOUNTAINS
K
arim’s Cheyenne captors were apparently unacquainted with boredom. Scrupulous in feeding their captives, in taking them outside for piss breaks, even in allowing them an hour or so a day of supervised exercise, the Cheyenne nonetheless made no effort to relieve the boredom of sitting tied down day after day in a darkened inflatable with nothing to do. Nor would they answer any questions.
The Cheyenne themselves were always busy: hunting, smoking meat, scouting. At night they beat on drums and danced, or so it sounded to Karim, sleepless on the other side of the plastic wall.
“Until you came we were bored out of our minds,” Jon McBain said to Lucy. Karim suspected that Lucy and possibly Kent still were. But Jon and the other tech, Kueilan, filled the time by encapsulating for Karim every advance in science since Karim had left decades ago. He listened eagerly, longing for a screen, or even pencil and paper.
But always Karim’s thoughts returned to the ship in orbit. He had to tell Mira City that the ship was Vine, not Fur. He had to obtain for the Vines upstairs the death flowers they had come for. McBain, on the other hand, seemed never to think about the ship, the war, the Cheyenne, or imminent death. He talked excitedly and practically nonstop. Eventually he came to his own work.
“—when Alex Cutler renewed the allocation for the microbial battery. But then we discovered something so amazing I put the battery aside for the last months. Mira doesn’t understand about pure research, the tray-o isn’t a scientist after all, but for
this…
We found a unique biomass six, Karim. I know you’re not a biologist, but it’s an apparently huge cache of underground anaerobic bacteria. producing completely novel molecules. The amazing part is a pole inserted inside the biomass began vibrating with enough repeated sequences that we hooked it to a computer. There are enough variations and a high enough signal-to-noise ratio that I think it’s non-random process, a crystallization of some sort that we—”
“What did you say?” Karim demanded.
“I said a crystallization of a new—”
“Before that!”
Jon stared at Karim in the gloom. “Why?”
“Tell me again about the biomass.”
Jon did. Lucy and Karim looked at each other. Finally Karim s’
“I need to see that pit, Jon.”
“It’s not an open pit, it’s a hidden biomass two clicks down that—why?”
“I’m not sure,” Karim said slowly, “but it may be that the signal repetition isn’t crystallization. It may be that it’s communication.”
“Communication? From
what,
for God’s sake?”
Carefully, trying to control his own wild surmises, Karim told him.
MIRA CITY
W
hen Alex woke in Julian’s apartment, he was still not there. He hadn’t returned at all during the night. That was unusual but not unprecedented; he was often away from Mira City on inspection of other defenses. Still, it was disappointing. Her body ached for him.
She padded to the bathroom, washed and dressed, and headed for a commissary. Julian never had anything to eat in his apartment. Food didn’t interest him, except as a necessary fuel.
The morning was clear and fresh, a perfect purple Mira day. Dew still clung to the bright yellow petals on temlillies planted around the foamcast commissary. Inside, cheerful clatter and the scents of hot food met Alex. She showed her Mira Corp card, selected her breakfast, and sat alone at a table against the far wall, pondering why Hope of Heaven had armed the wild Furs against the Cheyenne.
“Hello, Alex,” a Mira maintenance crew called, on their way out after breakfast. “Beautiful day.” She waved at them.
Hope of Heaven would have nothing to gain from arming the wild Furs.
“Alex, maybe you could comb your hair one of these mornings,” called an old school friend, also on her way out. She smiled and waved.
In fact, no one had anything to gain from arming wild Furs. Except, perhaps, Nan Frayne. Had that passionate and enigmatic old woman succeeded in an underhanded deal of some sort? But last evening Alex had talked to the gun manufacturer, Michael Lin, for a long time, and she believed him innocent. They’d gone to the warehouse and his inventory sheets tallied with both her inspection and the reports she had from his raw-material suppliers; no weapons were unaccounted for. Besides, what could Nan Frayne possibly offer in return?
A commotion arose beside the door. It spread from table to table. People gasped, rose, rushed out. Siddalee Brown pushed her way in and ran ponderously to Alex.
“Where’ve you been? There’s another ship!”
“Another ship? A
third
ship?”
“Yes! Probes picked it up. Where’s your comlink?”
Alex had forgotten it in Julian’s bed, a measure of how disappointed she’d been by his absence. She stood unsteadily.
“Siddalee … where’s Julian?”
Siddalee said accusingly, “He’s giving the evacuation signal for Mira, since you weren’t around to do it.”
The siren started then, in blasting waves.
They won’t go a third time,
Alex thought with despairing clarity, People got tired of alarms, especially alarms that had so far resulted in no damage to Mira City except that caused by leaving it.
She pushed past Siddalee and dashed for the door. Outside, her fears were confirmed. Many people rushed for their designated transport to the end points, carrying ready-go bundles and children. But many people did not. These stood in small angry knots, gesticulating wildly. Over the sirens Alex couldn’t hear what anyone said.
Her Terran bodyguard materialized beside her.
“I don’t need—oh, fuck it!” Julian’s apartment was nowhere near as close to the Mausoleum as her own. Alex was panting by the time she reached the huge ugly building. The Terran, damn him, wasn’t even sweating. Alex thought of checking on Jake; her place was only a few steps away. But there was no time. And Jake had probably already left with Cal Johnson for his evac transport.
This time, the rover, her designated transport, was still housed in its inflatable. Her two techs, Natalie and Ben, waited impatiently inside. “Alex, where were you? We were just about to leave!”
“I’m here now. Ben, you drive. And give me your comlink… Julian?”
“Where were you?” his cool voice asked. “You didn’t answer. And where are you now?”
“I’m on my way to my bunker. What do we know?”
“Is Captain Lewis with you?”
“Yes!
What do we know?”
“Another McAndrew Drive ship, picked up by a probe beyond Cap. The probe stopped signaling seconds later, so I presume they destroyed it.”
Now she heard something in his voice: too much coolness. He was shaken. He hadn’t expected this.
None of them had expected this.
She said, “Why didn’t this Fur ship arrive together with the first one? An armada?”
“I don’t know. We have less than an hour.”
Ashraf’s voice said, “Alex, a lot of people in the medina aren’t leaving. They just don’t…” He couldn’t find the right word.
Alex said grimly, “A lot of people outside the medina aren’t leaving either, from what I saw. I’m going to use MiraNet to try to persuade them.”
“Don’t let it interfere with your primary duties of securing the infrastructure,” Julian said.
Ashraf said, with the only malice Alex had ever heard from him, “This time we don’t have an expendable warship to fight with.”
“No,” Julian said, so calmly that Alex thought perhaps Ashraf’s comment hadn’t been malicious after all. She had just heard it that way.
No one came near Jake during the chill hours before dawn.
He sat in his chair in the bedroom, afraid to move because he couldn’t tell if Julian’s men had all left. The darkness stretched on and on, and Jake drowned in his thoughts. It felt like that—as if every sentence of Duncan’s that Jake remembered was a fresh flood, smothering him.
“Because I have seen it all before. ”
“He was that hated. His Third Life Alliance did things to stay in power—”
“When your Chinese consul’s body turned up tortured…”
And then, mixed in with Duncan’s words to Jake, Duncan’i words on the stage in his resonant actor’s voice:
“ ‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.’”
Jake, no less than Alex and Ashraf, had believed everything Julian told them. Jake, who had also seen it all before on Terra, and who should have known better. Jake had let that instrument of darkness tell Greentrees truths about her shoddy defenses, in order to win Greentrees to betrayal. And Greentrees had responded.
“‘In deepest consequence.’”
Jake, sitting in the theater, had thought at the time that Duncan was playing his Macbeth directly to Julian, wanting to impress his powerful brother. Now he realized that it had been Alex that Duncan played to. Warning her. Futile as warning a falling rock about gravity.
But he, Jake, should have seen. ”
‘In deepest consequence.’”
When pale light finally fell into the window, he decided that Julian’s men must have gone. Painfully Jake rolled his chair to the bedroom door, opened it, and peered out.
Nothing.
His bread and jam still sat on the table. The knife lay where he’d put it down when Duncan Martin had come in. Katous sat preening himself in the middle of the table. Alex’s jacket was flung over a chair. The cot where Cal Johnson had snored stood empty, the bedclothes rumpled.
Jake leaned forward and peered past his own knees. No stains of any kind on the floor to show where two bodies had lain.
Had it all really happened?
He closed his eyes, made himself breathe steadily. Should he open the outer door? If Julian had left a guard, Jake’s cover of stroke-induced imbecility would be gone. But why would Julian live a guard? He believed Jake no threat, and Alex was with him.
At the thought of Alex in the bed of that bastard Jake felt red fury pulse through his brain. He fought it back. He needed to think as clearly as he could.
He would risk the door.
He got it open, struggling with his weak arms. Finally flinging the damn door wide, he inched his chair outside. Later than he thought; the sun had risen in a clear sky. People walked past on the way to the day’s work.
“Help!” Jake cried as loud as he could. “Help—“A siren drowned him out.
The evacuation siren.
Now fury did take him. What was that fucking monster Julian doing now? Not for a minute did Jake believe that another ship had appeared in the Greentrees star system. It was a trick, a ruse like all Julian’s others, to gain power and—
The siren went on and on, coming from the Mausoleum a few buildings away. Jake clapped his hands over his ears. Everything in hin quivered with sensitivity, with age, with achiness. He had to get to Alex—
“Mr. Holman!” a large woman cried, halting in front of him. “Where’s your nurse?” Siddalee Brown, Alex’s assistant.
He couldn’t make himself heard over the siren. Siddalee dashed inside, returned a minute later, and screamed, “Where’s your nurse? You—”
The siren ceased. There would be thirty seconds of silence before it began again. Siddalee grabbed the arm of a teenage girl rushing past. “You! Get this man to the Sector Six tram and go with him to the end point!”