Crucible

by Nancy Kress

  Lucy’s hand tightened on his.

  They left just after midnight. The sector captain went outside, commandeered Mohammed’s comlink, and made an emergency call for a rover. She stumbled a few miles in the dark to do so, away from the cave, just as Mohammed had done earlier. Comlinks went through satellite. If the Furs were monitoring from orbital probes— and of course they were—they now knew where at least one human was, along with the three unavoidably exposed command bunkers; you couldn’t command without communicating. The bunkers were underground and heavily shielded. The sector captain, as soon as she was done making her call, would not be at the site it had come from. It was the best they could do. Runners connected the sites closest to Mira, which included this hospital cave but not the bunkers.

  It was to the second bunker that the captain sent her message, the command post that Lau-Wah Mah would have held. The Chinese community had not yet elected his replacement, although they should have. Too much dissension among them, too much fear. Ashraf Shanti had appointed a temporary person to do the administrative work, Lien Kao. He was a doctor.

  The sector captain reached the bunker’s outside guard, who relayed to Dr. Kao that Sector Six had a medical emergency. There was no caxitocin, a vital genemod heart drug, in the hospital cave. Without it two patients would die. Send a rover.

  “A rover?” said the outraged guard, one of Julian’s Terran soldiers. “Are you demented? The six rovers are all military commandeered, including the one here. The enemy has already attacked!”

  “Take my request to Dr. Kao,” the captain said. “Your rover is closest!” She crouched under a clump of bush, her hands shaking. It was cold and dark. She couldn’t tell what strange lights might be in the sky behind the clouds, or what predators in the night.

  “Madame— ”

  “It’s Dr. Kao’s decision! That’s the chain of command!” Jake Holman had told her what to say. “Wait,” the voice said curtly.

  “He may even prefer that Kao not have a rover,” Mr. Holman had said to Lucy Lasky, which made no sense. Mr. Holman must have meant Commander Martin, but why wouldn’t he want Dr. Kao to have a rover? And why had Mr. Holman pretended earlier to have had a massive stroke? He must have known that as soon as the more urgent patients were dealt with, she’d have taken a medscan and found no traces in his brain. Why was she supposed to tell no one, no matter whom, that Mr. Holman was coherent?

  The sector captain hadn’t asked. She’d been a nurse for twenty seven years, accustomed to taking orders from doctors. A good nurse, she told herself as she shivered under the cold bushes, and if she had to die doing this thing she didn’t understand, she had had a good life. And she was doing it for Greentrees.

  “Rover en route,” her comlink finally said, such a long, long time later.

  “Yes,” she answered, knowing it wasn’t military but not knowing what else to say. Immediately she turned off the telltale comlink and started groping her way, dim light-cells on the bottom of her shoee her only illumination, back through the night to her patients.

  They left in the rover as soon as it arrived, in the middle of the night. The driver was one of Julian’s Greentrees soldiers. She had been drugged the moment she touched the cave camouflage, disarmed, and tied onto Jake’s cot before anyone but Jake, Lucy, and the sector captain realized she was there. A blanket was pulled over her body and head. To the other patients, it would look as if Jake were still there. Only the sector captain and the young guard Mohammed knew different.

  “She wouldn’t have listened to you if you were anyone else but Jake Holman,” Lucy said. “You couldn’t have pulled this off.”

  “If I were anyone else, I wouldn’t be saddled with pulling it off,” Jake said. He heard his words begin to slur from weariness. He was so tired. Lucy and the sector captain had hauled him into the rover, well covered with blankets. His wheelchair rode in the back. Lucy drove; this was one of the original rovers from the First Landing, designed to last as long as possible and carefully maintained for fifty years. Jake, however, would need to navigate. He knew where Alex’s bunker was; few others did.

  “Are you all right?” Lucy said. She was driving blind, lights and electronav both off, going by a compass lit by a shielded powerlight so dim that Jake still could not see her face. She’d changed from the animal pelts the Cheyenne had given her into a Threadmore from the hospital cave’s supply. It was too big for her.

  “I’m fine,” Jake said curtly, although he wasn’t. “It’s starting to rain.”

  “Good. More cover.”

  They were silent a moment, while Jake gathered his questions. So many questions: about the Vine planet, the ship that had brought Lucy and Karim home, what they’d seen at the research station, what Karim and Jon McBain suspected. He’d just decided on what to ask Lucy first, or maybe what to tell her, when he

  fell asleep, the rain driving hard against the window of the rover lurching toward Alex.

  26

  THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

  Karim and Jon waited several hours in the trees by the river, lying on their stomach under leaves and brush, until they were fairly sure the Furs were not coming back.

  “Why should they?” Jon said heavily. “There’s nothing to come back to. Nothing.”

  “No,” Karim whispered.

  “Mira City—”

  “Wait.” He had, Karim realized, become better at waiting. No waiting on Greentrees, under any circumstances, could equal the hellish weeks of waiting on the Vine planet. Months? Years?

  He had sent Lucy to the end point where, Jon said, Jake Holman had been assigned. It was between the research station and Mira City, and Lucy could follow the river until she came to the tram tracks and then follow those. Kent and Kueilan would accompany Lucy as far as the tracks, then continue along the river to Mira City. Jon didn’t know where either Alex Cutler’s or Julian Martin’s commander bunkers were located; that was apparently classified. So their best plan was for Kent and Kueilan to explain to a Mira City guard why they needed to see Commander Martin, and the guard could arrange it.

  Karim heard the respect in Jon’s voice when the biologist spoke of Julian Martin. Karim’s hopes rose. Maybe a Terran-trained miliary commander would be able to fight the Furs. The Fur shuttle had landed somewhere higher in these mountains. Martin might be glad of Kent and Kueilan’s information.

  Meanwhile, he and Jon had something else to do.

  They lay hidden the whole night and again the whole following day. No Furs returned. Surely, by now, at least Lucy would have reached her destination. Kent and Kueilan had ten miles farther to walk than did Lucy. Karim hoped all of them were warmer, less cramped, and better fed than he was. He hadn’t eaten in thirty hours and his stomach ached with hunger.

  The second night he and Jon crept out of their hiding place. Thick clouds and low rumblings promised rain. In the perfect darkness Karim followed Jon, feeling his way over the uneven ground, falling more than once.

  “It was here,” Jon finally whispered. “I know it was.”

  The pole above the biomass had been annihilated by the shuttle weapon, along with everything else. But Jon dropped to his knees and began a slow, shallow digging with a forked stick. First one place, then another a foot away, then a third. A fourth. Rain started and Karim heard Jon’s teeth chatter.

  “Here!” Jon finally cried. “The Fur beam took it off at ground level but the pole below ground is still here!”

  “We don’t have a computer to interpret signals,” Karim began, but they’d been over all this before. The computer would come later, from Mira City, as soon as Kent and Kueilan reached there. Now Jon and Karim could only work with what they had.

  When they’d cleared the pole down to a foot or so and rubbed off the dirt with their clothing, Karim began tapping. Three, pause. One, pause. Four, pause. One, pause. Five, pause. Nine, pause. Repeat.

  Jon said, “Do you really think the biomass is sentient? That it will recognize pi?”

&nb
sp; “If it’s the same entity we found on the Vine planet, it will.” Three, pause. One, pause. Four…

  Nothing.

  After several minutes of nothing, Karim said, “What’s wrong with me! Of course pi won’t mean anything to them … they use biology, not physics and mathematics, as their science! Jon, what can I send that will mean something… they aren’t even DNA based!”

  Jon thought. “They’re anaerobic, but they’re using something as electron acceptors for respiration. Maybe several somethings; some DNA microbial strains can switch metabolic pathways to use what’s available. Maybe your alien critters—if that’s really what’s down there!—can do the same thing. So let’s pick, say, iron. Send the ferric electron-shell numbers.”

  Karim did. He was on his sixth long pause between slow, careful repetitions when his hand, gently resting on the pole, felt it vibrate back.

  “It’s repeating the pattern. Jon, it’s doing it.”

  “Try sulfur. The geologic survey showed there’s some down there.”

  Karim did. The pole vibrated the same pattern back.

  Jon said, “But how do we know it isn’t just some form of…of… echo? How do we establish sentience?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hate to say this, Karim, but no Terran or Greenie anaerobic microbes ever evolved to become so much as a multicellular organism, let alone sentient.”

  “These aren’t Terran or Greenie. I’m going to send… owww!”

  An electric current had run up the pole to his hand.

  “Jon, they’re ahead of us. They know you had electronic devices hooked up here before. They’re trying to send to us!”

  “Send what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe pictures. We’ve got to have a computer.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jon said. “In the river… I should have thought of this before!”

  “Of what?”

  “Nate Cutler. He’s an ichthyologist. Strange old coot. He left devices in the river to monitor fish activity, some program of his own devising. He left them at two-mile intervals, including here. Hasn’t been to check it in months. But there’s at least some kind of computer inside.”

  “With a screen?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Pictures are how Beta Vine communicated with us before,” Jon said. “But maybe this fish-counting tech will at least let us record what the mass sends.”

  They found Nate Cutler’s device easily, even in the dark; a marker on the bank was unmistakable. Taking it apart, however, had to wait for daylight. At the first hint of light, Karim and Jon crawled back into their hiding place, wet and starving and exhausted. Karim wrapped himself protectively around the fish-counting device and fell into a heavy sleep troubled by faceless monsters.

  The next day, still in hiding, they saw the Fur shuttle fly silently overhead, toward Mira City.

  27

  B U N K E R T H R E E

  The Fur ship in orbit launched no more unmanned missiles. Time passed for Alex in dazed horror, made worse by not being able to do anything. She couldn’t send anyone to Mira City to assess the damage because there might be another attack. She couldn’t receive reports from the critical facilities because, if they still stood, they were shielded against a possible EMP. End poin were under comlink silence, to avoid enemy detection, until she contacted them. So, now, were Julian and Ashraf. It was as if all of Greentrees had ceased to exist except this bunker and its four people.

  Natalie and Ben remained as quiet and sober as she. Her Terran bodyguard, Captain Lewis, spent most of his time outside. Probably assumed that Alex was safe inside the bunker, at least from anything he could protect her against.

  By dawn of the third day she could no longer stand it. “I’m going outside.”

  Natalie looked up from her displays, which gave no new information. Her cap of black curls was limp and dirty, and black smudges sagged under her eyes. Not even the young people were sleeping well. Natalie said to Alex, “Ben is already outside.”

  “I know Ben is already outside,” Alex snapped. Then, “I’m sorry, Natalie. We’re all tense and bored. I know Ben is out getting water, but I’ll stay close to the bunker, I’ll stay under cover, and I’ll leave the door open. If anything happens, shout and I’ll hear you.”

  “All right,” Natalie said, disapproval in her voice. She almost sounded like Siddalee.

  Alex ascended the flight of foamcast steps to the surface and emerged through underbrush beneath a grove of tall purple trees. Her Terran bodyguard went with her, but she ignored him. Neither Ben nor Captain Lewis was anywhere in sight, and what kind of bodyguarding was that? She wished she could ask Julian; she wished she could just talk to Julian, just hear his voice.

  But the fresh air seemed the most delightful sensation she’d ever experienced. It had rained overnight and dew sparkled on the groundcover. The world was pale luminescence; tiny lavender wildflowers had sprung up beneath the groundcover, just barely visible, and the sun, still below the horizon, brightened the sky to delicate silver-gray. Alex drew a deep breath.

  So beautiful. Were humans going to lose it all to aliens too xenophobic to share an almost empty planet?

  She lay full-length on the soft purple, under cover of the trees. Dew wet her Threadmores but didn’t penetrate. Alex tried to empty her mind—just for five minutes, she told herself—but couldn’t do it. Too many worries intruded. Was Julian safe? Was Jake? How many had died?

  Her ear, pressed to the ground, heard the rumble of approaching machinery.

  Alex jumped up and dashed for the bunker stairs. But before she descended, the rover came crashing through underbrush from the direction of the river and she saw that it was a human vehicle. She waited, knowing that Ben, fetching water, must have seen the rover and allowed it to pass. Where was Captain Lewis? She squinted. Two people inside …

  Jake.

  Forsaking caution, Alex ran toward the rover. Captain Lewis appeared from nowhere and reached the vehicle first, putting himself between it and Alex. She cried, “Don’t shoot! That’s Jake Holman! Jake, my God, what are you doing here? It’s not safe, get this thing under those trees … what’s happened!”

  The woman driving looked about to faint. She was much younger than Alex, maybe thirty, slight and pretty and fragile. At the sight of her obvious illness, Lewis scowled but kept his weapon pointed at her. Why? She clearly wasn’t a Fur, and she clearly wasn’t dangerous.

  The woman pushed open her door, her hand over her mouth as if about to vomit. She staggered and fell, and before Alex, runnin up, could catch her or even knew she was armed, the woman fired a gun into the Terran’s chest.

  Captain Lewis fell heavily to the ground.

  Alex screamed. The woman, not staggering at all now, scrambled off the ground and said rapidly, “A lot has happened. Get Jake into your bunker, I’ll put this … where is your own rover hidden?”

  Ben came running up, carrying no water. He snapped, completely uncharacteristically, “Drive that rover into that grove.. no, over there! Quick! It can be seen from the air, you know!”

  “I know,” the young woman said impatientiy. “You, help get Jake into safety. Don’t forget his chair, in the back of the rover. And turn off all open comlinks in the bunker. ” She drove the rover off as soon as Jake was out.

  Ben flung the old man over his shoulder. Alex, bewildered, followed them through the brush, down the steps, and inside. While Ben ran back for the chair, Alex knelt by Jake where he had been unceremoniously deposited on the floor, his back to the wall. “Jake! What are you doing here? Who’s that woman? She shot Julian’s lieutenant—”

  “Have to … tell you … something… critical,” Jake gasped. She gave him a minute to get his breath after being pushed and pulled. He looked terrible: weak, drooly, slack.

  “Tell me! Good God, Jake, that woman killed my bodyguard! Who is she?”

  Astonishingly, the old man grinned. “That’s Lucy Lasky.”

  ”Lucy
Lasky?”

  “Yep.” His smile vanished. “Alex… there are things you need to know. About Julian Martin.”

  She curled into a corner of the bunker, pretending to be asleep. The others, a tight fit in the narrow space, talked in low tones. She could distinguish Jake’s-quavery rumble and Lucy’s high, light tone, but no words. The links were all set to receive but not transmit. Natalie never took her eyes off the displays, but since nothing was changing, she also put in an occasional inaudible word. Alex didn’t try to listen, didn’t want to listen. They would call her if anything happened.

  Just now she gave all her attention to her pain.

  It was a real thing, like a parasite or a fetus, growing inside her. It was conceived the moment Jake had said, “Julian is a traitor,” and it had grown ever since, taking over more and more of what she was. She didn’t try to fight it, not yet. For now she merely endured it, examined it, tried to understand this alien thing tearing her insides.

  Julian had abducted, tortured, killed Lau-Wah Mah.

  Julian had betrayed Greentrees’ trust, knowing that Hope of Heaven would attack Mira during the evacuation drill and permiting the attack so he could then put the rebellion down and be given military powers by a grateful Mira City.

  Julian had armed the wild Furs against the Cheyenne.

  Julian had destroyed the Beta Vine so that the only ship in orbit vould be the Crucible, its sophisticated weapons aimed at Greentrees.

  Julian had done all this, and more, on Terra.

  Julian had killed Duncan, his own brother.

  Julian had held Alex in his arms, caressed her body, made love lo her, loved her …

  Julian had abducted, tortured, killed Lau-Wah Mah.

  Julian had betrayed …

  Around and around, the pain growing stronger with each repetition, feeding on itself.

  She tried to think of something else, someone else, tried to open her world again beyond her devouring self. She tried to think of Jake. He had been as devastated to learn of the Fur destruction of Mira City as she had been to learn about Julian. Tears had sprung into his old eyes and he had groped blindly with one hand, clawing the air as if he could shred the words Alex had just said. “Mira City?” he’d quavered. “Gone? Mira City?”