Read Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 Online
Authors: Crucible
Natalie gave him an odd look. Kueilan, Karim had said—not Lucy. It had slipped out, surprising even him. He flushed.
“All right,” Natalie said neutrally. “But I’m not leaving until you test the spores.” She laid something on the ground in front of Karim. A replacement part for something on the rover, he realized, made of some metallic alloy. Natalie, the tech, had thought to bring it with her last night.
Karim pulled out the slimed sac. How to do this without losing too many spores? And how many were too many? Carefully, controlling his distaste for the slime, he peeled back one corner of the lump. It proved to have layers, like the sweet dough his grandmother used to bake, on Terra. Karim peeled back more layers. Finally he exposed a few tiny, almost invisible brown specks.
“Shake them on the alleolater,” Natalie suggested.
Karim did. The sparks suddenly glittered in the sunlight, exactly as he remembered the glitter around the
Franz Mueller.
The same delay of about ten minutes, and the alleolater suddenly melted.
“Hey!” Jon called happily. “Great!”
Natalie gave a sudden cry. Karim turned to see the fasteners on her Threadmore suddenly dissolve. The suit gaped open from neck to crotch, and Natalie clutched at it.
“Get upwind!” Jon cried, unnecessarily. He and Karim already squatted upwind of the glitters. Shakily Natalie held out her hand.
“Ben’s mother’s ring! From Terra! Gone!”
Karim gazed, fascinated, at her ringless hand. “How long… how far …”
No one knew.
Jon said, “Nobody move. Wait fifteen minutes and try something else metallic.”
They did. They put metallic objects downwind, high and low, touching the ground where the alleolater had been. Everything dissolved, then some things dissolved, then nothing did. Natalie crossly tied tough vines, growing under the riverbank and so survivors of the kill-clean, around the waist of her Threadmore to keep it marginally closed. The material was too tough to puncture for laces.
Then Karim and Jon started downriver, toward Mira. Natalie went upriver, toward Jake and Ben and the useless rover.
Jon said, “You know, those spores are only dispersed on the wind, not dead. Whenever they touch metal, they’ll dissolve it. Maybe forever. We’ve changed Greentrees ecology for all time. Anything metallic is at risk from now on, especially il we let out more of them and they can reproduce in this environrnent.
Karim hadn’t realized that. Greentrees, left one day without anything metallic … How would they all live?
“Karim, did you hear me? Did you understand what I said?”
“I understand,” Karim said. “The genie never goes all the way back into the bottle.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
They saw no life during the long walk across the kill-clean zone, except that in the river. It was eerie to look at the desolate ground to the left, empty as the Terran moon, and then to turn one’s head to the right and see fish darting in the bright river, red creeper climbing the bank, the occasional frabbit sunning itself on a rock or darting into a riverbank den. Left, death. Right, life.
Karim walked for a while with his eyes mostly closed.
“There!” Jon cried eventually. “Trees on the horizon!”
The edge of the kill-clean zone rose dramatically, a wall of purple sheared off as cleanly as a topiary hedge. Just before the tree line, Jon built a brushfire with green wood. “Good thing the powertorch didn’t dissolve during our spore experiments,” he said cheerfully. “Natalie thought of burying it, I didn’t.”
“She’s the tech,” Karim said dully. His energy was nearly gone. How did Jon McBain do it? Nothing to eat but some wild fruit they’d just picked, which was already turning Karim’s bowels sour. No sleep. Grinding anxiety. And Jon was bouncing around as if he were at his own intact field station.
How was Jake holding up? And Kueilan, Lucy, and the others?
“It’s putting out lots of smoke,” Jon said, studying the fire critically. “Give me the blanket.”
Karim, who’d been sitting on the filthy thing, handed it to Jon. “Don’t set it on fire. Wait, Jon, before you start—I’m going to hide the sac. Just in case we… just in case.”
When the sac was hidden under a rock, Jon began covering and uncovering the fire. One puff of smoke, wait. Two puffs, wait. Three puffs, wait. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I’m actually saying something? Maybe ’You smell bad’?”
“Hilarious,” Karim said sourly.
He fell asleep. Exhaustion was just too great. The sleep, dreamless, was so deep that it took Jon’s shaking him vigorously to waken. “Karim!”
“Sleeeeppp…”
“No! Look!”
Resentfully Karim opened his eyes. The sun was high in the sky and Karim was ringed by six Cheyenne braves, dressed in some sort of animal hides sewn with tiny glittering stones and bedraggled feathers. Two of the braves had dirty blond braids, one had bright red hair, and one looked at least part Chinese. They carried spears, bows, and wickedly sharp knives. Their left cheeks were tattooed with tiny moons, stars, and what looked like lipstick cases but probably weren’t. None of them spoke.
“Hello,” Karim said, feeling like an absolute fool. He lay on the ground, gut churning with diarrhea from wild fruit, looking up at six characters left over from four hundred years ago on another planet.
One of the braves said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
TERRAN SHUTTLE BUNKER
B
y the next day, pain had left Alex unless she touched the tortured areas. She sat huddled in her blanket, holding it a little away from her breasts, and tried to think why she was still alive. Julian had promised her a “quick merciful death” if she told him everything she knew, and she had. He knew now about Karim, Lucy, and the biomass. Her information hadn’t included Jake’s location, but only because she didn’t know it.
That’s why she was still alive. Julian wanted Jake’s expertise in dealing with the Furs, and maybe Karim’s in dealing with the biomass. Julian would pick up Karim and Lucy at the biomass site, force them to tell him where Jake was, and capture Jake. Then he would use her to make Jake cooperate with him. He couldn’t torture Jake; the old man was too frail. But if he threatened to torture Alex, Jake would help him.
Or would he?
Alex hoped not. Once Jake had put Greentrees first, when he was much younger. But now, weak and close to dying, loving Alex like the daughter he’d never had … now? Would Jake help Julian conquer not only Furs but his own people, in exchange for Alex’s life?
No, she decided. Jake would realize that Alex’s reprieve would be only temporary. Julian would kill her anyway. Jake would know there was no way he could really save Alex from death.
But from torture …
She buried her face in her hands. Dora looked up and held out the bowl of now dirty water.
None of the female Furs seemed to react to Alex’s presence. They didn’t recoil from her smell; they carried on drinking, shitting in one corner, and picking unseen grubs or nits from each other’s fur. They ate the findings. They “talked” to each other in low growls and muted roars. Alex had no idea how intelligent they actually were; dogs, cats, and frabbits could respond to each other’s distress without true sentience. But Alex felt that, within their unknown limits, they were being kind to her.
Maybe in wild females the Fur xenophobic response was tempered by their socialization. Or maybe the socialization of males exaggerated the response. Or maybe—
She had no real idea.
Gently Alex pushed away the bowl of water. A piece of decayed organic matter floated in it. Alex didn’t like to think how it might have got there.
She forced herself to eat more of the mushy cereal. Cora and Flora had dipped their “hands” into it but hadn’t actually eaten any. Alex needed the energy, even if it made her sick…
Made her sick.
Suddenly she remembered Julian in the cave:
“No, you won’t give your pneumonia, or whatever it is, to me, not even if it’s caused by a Greentrees microbe. I’ve got immune-system genemods your biologists can’t imagine.”
But she didn’t have a Greentrees microbe. She had a genetically tailored microbe designed to infect human and Fur DNA both. Maybe she had infected Julian!
She tried to remember what Karim had told her about the contagious period. Had she still been contagious when he took her from the Furs? Were Julian and his soldiers even now vomiting their guts out in the rest of the bunker beyond this fetid cell? Was that why no one had brought fresh food or water?
Hope surged in Alex. If everyone else was incapacitated, and if she could get the female Furs to help her break down the door—
She staggered to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the ground. The Furs looked up but didn’t stop eating grubs from each other’s pelts. The tail, Alex noted, seemed an especially fertile feeding ground. She held her stomach in check.
Leaning against the cell door, she pantomimed pushing hard. The Furs ignored her.
Alex walked to Cora, who had comforted her last night, and took her hand. She tugged gently. Cora stood, her alien expression unreadable.
Alex led Cora to the door and again pushed. Cora sat back down and resumed grubbing on Miranda’s tail.
Again Alex tugged Cora up, then Miranda. They both came with her, but neither would push. They sat down again.
Frustration took Alex. These stupid creatures, they wouldn’t even
try…
The door opened from the outside, knocking Alex over. A soldier in the black Terran uniform entered, sweeping his gaze contemptuously over the prisoners. Despite himself, his nostrils flared with their strange smell. He set down two bowls, water and food, and gathered up the old ones.
Alex scarcely noticed his hasty departure. She was too busy staring at the Furs. The females lacked visible noses, let alone flaring nostrils, but their reaction was unmistakable. They clapped their tentacled arms over their necks and turned away from the door, huddling against the far wall. After the soldier left, they removed their arms from what Alex guessed to be holes hidden by the ragged fur. Then all five waved at the air.
Alex had just learned two things. She had not infected Julian and his Terran troops. And it was only male humans who smelled terrible to Furs.
That fit, in a peculiar sort of way. Obviously sex differences were greater among wild Furs than among space Furs, or even among humans. Some of those differences seemed to be biological, not cultural. Wild female Furs were less aggressive than males (or else Alex would be dead). They were less xenophobic. This was an alien species, equipped with alien biology, and to that biology, female humans smelled vastly different from human males.
Then she learned a third thing. Grandma Fur got laboriously to her two feet and one balancing tail. She lumbered to the door and imitated Alex’s pantomime pushing. Then she looked directly at Alex from her two frontal eyes and clumsily, a clearly learned gesture, shook her head from side to side.
No. It won’t help.
The Furs and she could communicate.
She couldn’t use language. The vocal chords, or whatever Furs had, were too different. For all she knew, the hearing perceptions were equally different Nonetheless, Alex couldn’t stop herself from speaking aloud as she tried to make herself understood with gestures.
“Alex,” she said, pointing to herself. Then, “Furs.”
Cora and Miranda gazed at her, unreadable. Dora and Flora went on grooming each other. Grandmother was asleep.
“Them,” Alex said, pointing to the door. “Bad! Kill!” She pantomimed stabbing herself and then cautiously stabbing in Miranda’s general direction. Maybe protection of the cub would stir Cora. It didn’t. They watched her, impassive except for an occasional baring of teeth that made Alex nervous. Threat? Yawn? Critical review of her acting?
How had Nan Frayne built such trust and understanding with these aliens?
Through months, years, decades. Alex probably had hours.
She tried again, pantomiming all of them crashing the door and running free. Cora reached for the water bowl; Miranda crawled onto Grandmother Fur, waking her.
Not a success.
When Cora had drunk her fill, Alex dipped her hand in the water and then into cereal. Jake, Ben had said, had used drawings to communicate with the male Furs. Karim had used drawings to communicate with the Vine.
“Furs,” she said, dripping cereal from one finger in the shape of a tailed biped with three eyes. Laboriously she drew five of these, one smaller than the others.
Miranda drew close to watch.
Encouraged, Alex drew a human stick figure with cereal blobs for breasts, then pointed to herself. “Alex.”
Now Cora and Grandmother gazed at the cereal-smeared floor.
Alex was running out of room. She scrunched herself against the door to free floor space, and sketched three human males. She gave them what she hoped looked like guns, although they were mostly cereal blobs. Then she shouted,
“Zzzzzzzzzzl”
hastily drew lines from the humans to herself and the Furs, and smeared all six figures out of existence. For emphasis she flopped over, looking dead.
Miranda and Cora tentatively tasted the cereal rubbed across the floor and spat it out.
Alex groaned. It wasn’t working. Either female Furs were less intelligent than males, or they were so much more passive they didn’t care if they died, or their perceptions were so different from humans that the pictures had been meaningless to them.
“Stupid creatures! As long as the door stays shut, you don’t even think about how much danger you’re in!”
Grandmother Fur dipped one tentacle in the water and then in the cereal.
Alex watched, gaping, as the old Fur drew five Furs, less expertly than even Alex’s sorry attempts, but nonetheless recognizable. Then she drew four crested male Furs beside them, carrying “guns.” She looked at Alex.
“Your males aren’t going to rescue you! They’re either infected or dead!”
No. That wasn’t what Grandmother had meant.
Alex looked again at the crude cereal smears. The male Furs each had a slash across their “torsos.” No wild Fur wore a sash. These were space Furs, set to carry off the Fur females. That’s why there were four of them; Grandmother knew she was too old to breed.
Alex gazed at the alien, unreadable expression. As if on cue, the other four Furs leaped up and began their hopping and keening routine. Grandmother went on gazing at Alex, who warned herself against anthropomorphization but nonetheless thought that the old female’s eyes held a warning:
You will only make it worse.
Alex wasn’t sure it could get worse.