Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 (42 page)

Jon said, “But if he does that, the mother ship will destroy the
Crucible.
They have more advanced weapons and are magnitudes faster! The Fur ship has McAndrew Drive!”

“Julian knows that,” Alex said. She remembered Julian at that first party for him in the Mausoleum, explaining how Terra had destroyed most of her population:
“When ninety percent of your ethnic group is predicted to perish anyway, you don’t mind releasing pathogens that will kill a third of your people but also a third of the enemy.”

Jon went on arguing. “But the soldiers on the
Crucible
know that they’d die. They wouldn’t follow the order!”

Karim, born Terran and not Greenie, said grimly, “Yes, they would.”

Jon said, “Then I don’t see how we—”

Karim interrupted him. “We can release the spores as soon as possible onto Julian’s truck. That’ll take it all out—comlink to the
Crucible,
weapons, truck, everything. The Cheyenne can get close enough upwind to scatter the spores—”

“Maybe,” Jon said doubtfully, “but I doubt it. Martin has probably got sophisticated thermal-signature detectors. I don’t think anything human can get closer to him than maybe five miles, and that’s nowhere near close enough to count reliably on wind dispersal. Anyway, if the
Crucible
does take out the whole mountain, we’d go with it.”

Anything human.

Alex had thought she’d felt sick before, when she understood Julian’s plan. It was nothing to what she felt now. She looked at Grandmother Fur.

No. She couldn’t do it

She couldn’t see any other choice.

And she couldn’t give Grandmother Fur a choice. If she did, even if Alex could somehow communicate enough in the short time left—the old alien might refuse. And then they all would die, killed by Julian Martin seeking power, or killed by the space Furs seeking uncontaminated real estate.

Grandmother Fur, unreadable, looked at Alex. Alex got out of the rover and gestured. The alien followed her, looking around. For her daughters, most likely, and her granddaughter.

Flora. Dora. Cora. Miranda.

O brave new world that has such people in it.

Hating herself, fighting down the bile rising in her throat, Alex said to Karim, “Give me the spore sac.”

THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

R
iver Cloud reluctantly agreed to guide the old female wild Fur. The space Fur shuttle, he told Karim, was in a mountain meadow several miles above Jon McBain’s research station along the river. The Cheyenne had known its location two days after it landed. That was why they’d captured the station; it made a convenient base to keep watch on the shuttle-fortress. The inexplicable arrival of Lucy and Karim had startled the Cheyenne but not upset them: just two more crazy whites.

Karim watched Alex with the female Fur. The two sat on the ground in a small clearing. Late afternoon light slanted through the branches of the tall purple trees. Greentrees’ night scent, which Karim had so longed for on the hellish Vine world, came to him on the breeze, still faint. Tiny white night flowers began to open.

Alex bent her head over the metal object, the second, she was using for her demonstration to the old Fur.

Karim wished savagely for a computer. If he could figure likely orbits for the
Crucible
and for the Fur McAndrew Drive ship, likely weapon trajectories … as it was, he was reduced to guessing that Martin would wait until dark to attack. Hardly a technologically sophisticated guess.

Better get accustomed to it.

Alex rose and walked toward him. At the sight of her face, Karim looked away. He had seen Jake in moral anguish. Dr. Shipley, Lucy. He had never seen anyone look as terrible as Alex at this moment.

“She’s ready.”

“I’ll get River Cloud. Alex, are you sure this alien can—”

But Alex had already walked away, her back to him.

River Cloud gestured at the old female Fur, and she limped after him. Karim watched until they both disappeared in the trees. River Cloud’s braves melted after him.

They had found no cave to shelter in, even in this area rich in caves. But the Cheyenne braves had arranged one of their deadfall shelters for the hapless Greenies. Jon and Alex crawled into it. Night came, moonless but clear.

Karim remained outside the deadfall. No fire, no powertorch to draw attention. But either they were far enough away from the Fur shuttle-fortress to escape Martin’s detection and attack or they weren’t. Karim fumbled in the darkness to find a thick, strong tree trunk. When he did, he climbed it, scraping himself bloody, until he was above most of the forest canopy and could see the starlit sky.

How far had River Cloud and the alien gotten by now? Was River Cloud on his way back?

Karim could see it clearly in his mind. River Cloud and the female Fur making their way through the forest, sworn enemies traveling together. Somewhere behind, the three other braves followed. Or maybe there were more than three by now; Karim didn’t know how Cheyenne summoned their own. Probably not by smoke signals, judging from the braves’ reaction to Jon’s earlier brainstorm.

River Cloud would follow the track of Julian Martin’s truck, and then, when Martin had stopped the truck somewhere safe and sent a Terran guard on foot with the female Furs up the mountain, River Cloud would not follow. The Cheyenne would stay at least five miles away from wherever Martin stopped, out of detection range. But the old Fur would not.

There,
the Cheyenne would point.
They’re that way. Your kin.
And the alien, hopeful, would go toward Martin. His thermal-signature detectors would pick her up, and ignore her. Another wild Fur. Nothing to pay attention to. The Terran soldiers were in full battle gear, with major weaponry on the truck. Martin had armed the wild Furs mostly with laser guns, and this one was not even carrying that. No threat.

Meanwhile, the Terran guard, probably one soldier, had forced the other four females up the mountain, toward the space-Fur shuttle. It, of course, might have more sophisticated equipment. But it would detect no electronic signals; Martin would have thought of that. The space Furs would detect four Furs trailed by a human, and then the human would leave. Prowling primitive humans warring with wild Furs, the invaders would think. They must have detected a lot of such Cheyenne-Fur interactions. They would ellminate the male primitives after they had finished with the more dangerous humans. Then the planet would be theirs.

Karim shifted on his thick, high branch. A small moon rose above the horizon.

Had River Cloud left the old Fur yet? Probably. The Cheyenne had started back toward Karim, traveling fast and low. Karim could see the grandmother Fur pushing on, hastening through the brush as fast as she could to where she thought her daughters were. Poor old horror. She limped faster.

Now the four fertile females were alone. Were they tanglefoamed? It would keep them from wandering off. But tanglefoam would be too strong an indication of human intervention. No, they were free. So they started to flee back down the mountain. But they’ve been detected by the shuttle. Do the space Furs know their primitive cousins are female? Do they know that wild females don’t get left exposed and alone by their males? It would depend on how closely the space Furs had observed the habits of their potential sexual slaves.

Karim’s own great-great-grandfather had kept an
andarun
of four wives and six concubines.

A second moon rose against the stars. The first traveled quickly westward in its low orbit.

He pictured the four bewildered aliens, starting back down the mountain. They don’t get far—or maybe they do. Maybe the wild Furs refuse the bait, or don’t detect it, in which case Martin would have to recapture the females and try again.

Miles away, he visualized, the old alien does not see her daughters. They’re captive in that metal house, as she and they had been captive in the other metal house before the magic powder melted it. The magic powder that the human female gave her. These humans had hurt that human female, too. She had wanted their metal house to melt. And the old alien wants her daughters free.

She unclenches her tentacles and tears open the spore sac, as Alex had shown her. She dumps it over herself.

Tiny dark spores cling, invisible, without reflected light, to her pelt. More are blown toward Martin’s truck. River Cloud has carefully left the alien upwind of the Terran camp.

And now the Fur shuttle lifts from its hidden location. Once before Karim had seen it pass over the river, a silent black shape against the stars. A hole in the sky. It follows the fleeing females easily, and sets down beside them. Furs emerge, completely suited, cousins of the terrified females from light-years and millennia of advancement away. The soldiers do … what? Stun the females from a distance? Throw up one of their invisible electronic walls to stop them? Are they making the Fur equivalent of superior laughter?

Whatever they do, the old Fur has not done her part first. Please Allah, she has not yet opened the spore sac. Because first Julian Martin must give the order to the
Crucible,
and that ship must swoop down as fast as it can toward the Fur shuttle, now that Martin knows where it is. Martin must have his metal equipment intact long enough to give that order, but no longer. Karim and Alex had to trust River Cloud to estimate the timing of everybody and release the old female

Fur at the right time. Release her, deceive her, direct her to Martin instead of her lost children.

Please Allah, let Alex have guessed right about Martin’s plans … Karim found he was praying.

A light streaked across the sky. One quick flash, like a meteor, and then the entire sky exploded into light. Karim’s tree shook and he hung on for life itself. A noise that deafened him, and then an echo of the noise, and an echo of the echo.

Cries below him. Someone switched a powertorch on heedless full beam, and Karim glimpsed Jon far below, tiny as an insect. Not Alex. He waited. Nothing.

Then they had figured wrong! The Furs hadn’t—

A second flash of light, higher, soundless.

Karim closed his eyes. It had happened. Alex had guessed right The
Crucible,
on Martin’s orders, had hit the Fur shuttle with an alpha beam, taking out half the mountain. Then the Fur mother ship, able to accelerate almost instantly to more than a hundred gees, had come roaring down and destroyed the sacrificial decoy in orbit.

All Julian Martin had left were his troops on the ground.

All the space Furs had left were the aliens in orbit

The old Fur hunting for her children, still walking but already dead, was going to take care of both menaces, and never know it.

Karim began to climb painfully down the tree. Eventually River Cloud would return with his braves. Alex had still not appeared. She was still lying in the deadfall shelter, or had stumbled off somewhere into the forest to be alone. Karim would have to deal with her soon.

But not yet. That was more pain than he could face just yet.