by Nancy Kress
“No Furs are going to destroy any more of what you have all worked so hard to build. No Furs are going to take away from us what has been earned by effort, by passion, by human planning and thought, by love given tangible form in Greentrees’ buildings and farms and research stations and communities.
“We will honor Alex Cutler’s memory by rebuilding that which she loved. We will pass on to our children and our children’s children that which has been paid for with Alex’s life, with the lives of her techs Natalie Bernstein and Benjamin Stoller, and with our shared struggle against the alien enemy. We will prevail on Greentrees. I, though coming to you an outsider, cannot free myself of that conviction. This planet is ours, and we will keep it through faith, through cunning, through sacrifice, and through love of our home. We will not allow Greentrees to be forced from us. And the day will come when our children will live on our planet in peace and security. We will allow nothing else.”
Bile rose in Alex’s throat.
Julian had hit every note perfectly: love of Greentrees, concern for the children, fears of losing what everyone had worked for, inclusion of himself—but how diffidently!—as one of themselves.
Ben said, unnecessarily, “Julian wants everybody to think Alex is dead.” Shock shimmered on his young face.
Alex said, “He’s made a… a tactical error. I’m not dead yet.”
“No,” Jake said, “nor going to be. But it’s only a tactical error if you respond wrongly.”
“I’m going to make a broadcast of my own,” Alex said, “and tell everyone not only that I’m alive but also exactly who and what Julian is!”
“That’s what he wants you to do, Alex,” Jake said. “That’s the aim of his broadcast. Don’t do it.”
“And just let him have Greentrees?” Alex cried. “Let him do here the kinds of things he did on Earth? Torture and kill and suppress and—”
“No. Stop shouting, Alex, it hurts my head.”
She looked at Jake, old and tired and streaked with dirt. Did he suddenly look so fragile because he was, or in order to manipulate her? She didn’t know. Probably she had never known. He was smarter than she and more experienced—oh, so much more experienced!—at deception.
As was Julian. For a terrible moment she classed them together and hated them both, these Terrans who twisted her heart.
Jake said with sudden gentleness, “You need to plan, Alex. Now. We all need to create a plan. Sit here. Pleaså.” He waved his arm at the ground beside his chair.
Ben and Natalie, included in his feebly expansive gesture, readily sat on the muddy ground. Alex hesitated, then joined them.
“Here are our assets,” Jake said, his voice suddenly stronger.” Julian doesn’t know where you are. He can’t even be sure you’re still alive. He doesn’t know what you’ll do next.”
None of those sounded much like assets to Alex, since she didn’t know what she was going to do next, either.
Jake continued. “You have the means to broadcast when and if you choose. You have the space Furs.”
“I have what?” Alex said.
“The Furs. Julian will have to fight them, and soon. If he doesn’t, his grip on Greentrees power will start to slip. People turned to him because they perceived him as a strong military leader. Strong military leaders have to act militarily, or else people begin to doubt them. Julian is now enslaved to his own embryonic legend. You can use that.”
Alex saw what Jake meant. At the same time, she wondered how anyone could think like that. What could Terra have been like?
“And now Julian has another priority,” Jake said. Natalie and Ben hung on every word. “He had to flee. Since that broadcast started ten minutes ago, the space Furs know exactiy where he is. Or rather, where he was—the broadcast was probably recorded and sent from his command bunker. Natalie—”
She was ahead of him, already wading out to retrieve the comlink. She accessed data and read the coordinates aloud.
“Yes,” Alex said. “That’s the position of Bunker One.”
“So Julian is on the run. And the space Furs will be looking for him. Another asset you have, Alex: Julian’s Terran force is only about fifty soldiers. He—”
Alex blurted, “He recruited an entire Greentrees army!”
“For now. But they’re not well trained, and most of them will turn once they see what Julian is. As Ben here did.”
Under his dirt, the boy flushed. Alex saw the pain on his young face, and the shame that he had, even for a while, served Julian. Jake moved on quickly.
“Those are your definite assets: Julian’s uncertainty about you. The resulting element of surprise. Julian’s split attention to escape the Furs. The potential to turn his Greentrees troops to you. Plus, you have an indefinite asset that might or might not be of use: the wild Furs.”
Natalie said, “The wild Furs? But, Mr. Holman, with all due respect … they listen to no one. Except Nan Frayne, and Dr. Lasky said that she’s dead.”
“Yes,” Jake said, and Alex saw that for a moment he wandered in some complex memory of a long-ago Nan Frayne. But this time he made it back from that distant country. In fact, Jake seemed to her sharper and more focused than she’d seen him in a long time.
“Yes, the wild Furs listened only to Nan Frayne. They’re highly xenophobic, and the space Furs are their own species. But fifty years ago the space Furs also destroyed their villages and killed their kin. And right now, as Lucy’s told us, the space Furs are carrying off wild Furs as captives, maybe for breeding stock to increase their limited gene pool of individuals uninfected by the virus we deliberately gave them. So the question is: Which will count more with the wild Furs? Their xenophobia against humans or their desire for revenge against their own kind?”
“Which?” breathed Ben. He looked enthralled as a child hearing a great story. God, he was young! Alex must remember that. Ben and Natalie both.
Her “army.”
Jake said, “I don’t know which will count as more important with the wild Furs. But I think we need to find out.”
“How?” Ben said. “We don’t even know where any wild Furs are! And how could we talk to them if we found some?”
“I don’t know that yet,” Jake said.
Alex said, “And this is a ’plan,’ Jake? To fight both Furs and Julian?”
He snapped, “No, it’s not a plan. I didn’t say I had a plan—I said we needed to plan. This is how planning is done, Alex. What’s your idea, to just give up? I thought you loved Greentrees!”
“I do.” She remembered Julian saying, ”I share Alex’s love for Greentrees… ”
After an uncomfortable silence Jake said, “I’m sorry.”
Alex said, “I’m sorry, too. I’m just scared, Jake.”
“I know. And Alex”—Jake shifted in his chair, looking suddenly taller—“that’s an asset, too. You can admit truth. By now Julian is so enmeshed in his own grandiosity, need, self-promotion, and desperation that I doubt he can recognize realty, let alone admit it.”
Alex didn’t see how her own fear was an asset, but she didn’t challenge Jake, instead she said humbly, “I am scared. And I don’t know what to do next. I want to hear what you think, Jake, and you, Natalie and Ben. Also Lucy, if she comes back. Maybe out of all our scared ideas we can put together some sort of plan.”
Jake smiled. “I’d like to suggest the first step. There’s one other asset we have that I haven’t yet mentioned. It might mean nothing—or everything.”
30
THE AVERY MOUNTAINS
Karim sat well back in the shallow cave by the river, apart from the others, who respectfully left him alone. Jon, Kent, and Kueilan talked in low tones. Karim brooded.
He had spent hours trying to communicate with the biomass. He had sent pictures of humans; pictures of Furs and humans destroying each other; all the schematics Kueilan could devise of biological processes, counting patterns ranging from simple series of pulses (one, two, three, four) to complex it
erative functions. The biomass had responded to all of it with nonsense. Sometimes they sent back distortions of the pictures. Sometimes schematics that Kueilan said were impossible, combining elements in physically impossible ways. Sometimes meaningless patterns. Sometimes the waves that, Karim became increasingly convinced, were laughter.
Jon said, in mingled frustration and consolation, “They’re sentient, at least. They completed that last mathematical series corectly for two more numbers before going weird.”
Kueilan twisted from her cross-legged seat in front of the small computer to look at Karim. “It’s almost like … I know this will sound strange … but…”
“But what?” Karim snapped. They were all hungry, tired, angry.
“It’s almost like they’re little kids. Scribbling and fooling around.”
Kent said, “Little kids who can extend iterative-function series?”
“Yes,” she said stubbornly.
Karim considered. Kueilan was right. The biomass was playing, mocking them. Why? The mass on the Vine planet hadn’t behaved like that. It had ignored him completely, until…
“Jon, how could we translate whistling into data to send down there?”
“Whistling?”
“Yes. When I was on the Vine planet, the biomass there responded when I whistled. More than responded—it was delighted. How can we send music down?”
Kueilan said skeptically, “Sound is all atmospheric waves. The pole we have conducting data can vibrate, of course, but on the other end that wouldn’t—”
The pole began to dissolve.
Jon yelped. They had excavated two feet down to expose that much length of the buried pole. Now the pole tilted to one side, visibly growing softer, as if it were made of butter under the bright sun. The pole touched one side of the narrow hole. Then it grew softer still and dissolved, leaving only a slick residue that sank into the soil.
“What happened!” Jon yelled. He grabbed a sonic digger, loosened dirt at the bottom of the now empty hole, and flopped flat onto his stomach to reach down. Carefully he lifted dirt from around the spot where the deeper extension of the pole should have been. There was nothing. The pole was gone.
“Son of a bastard bitch!” he screamed.
“Be quieter!” Kueilan begged.
Karim stared at the hole. The biomass had grown tired of its games and dissolved the pole. Their one means of communication was gone.
There would be no Vine help in fighting the Furs.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kueilan said to Karim. She knelt beside him in the deep shadow of the underhang, her hand on his. Kueilan’s gentle, dirt-streaked face held only compassion, and her almond-shaped black eyes were gentle. “You shouldn’t blame yourself, Karim.”
“I’m not blaming myself,” he said harshly, but of course he was, and she wasn’t deterred. She said softly,
“ ’To bear and not to own,
To act and not lay claim,
To do the work and let it go
Is what makes it stay’”
“What’s that?” He asked.
“The Tao Te Ching.”
Karim smiled reluctantly. “There are parallel passages in the Koran. But what I need right now are instructions on disciplining unruly and unreachable alien microbes. Neither the Tao Te Ching nor the Koran contains that.”
Kueilan laughed, a light musical sound, and Karim looked at her: almond eyes and slim curves. He was astonished and dismayed to feel the unmistakable signs of attraction. And Lucy missing or dead! How could he? How could—
Jon splashed toward them from the river shallows. “Karim! A flare!”
“A what?”
Kueilan said, “A microwaved distress message from a fired missile. Jon— targeted or general?”
“Targeted and encrypted. The comlink captured it. Is there an encryption program on that computer?”
Kueilan said, “Yes, but using it depends on how heavy the encryption is. It’ll only handle up to class three.”
Jon held out the comlink. Kueilan took it to the computer, stowed in the least damp place in the underhang, and transferred the data.
“It’s a class three,” she said. “Whoever sent it knew what equipment we have, or at least guessed pretty well… Here it comes.”
Lucy’s voice came urgently from the machine. “K, J, this is L. I got to my old lover all right. He told me—this is crucial—that you should not try to get to our boss. My lover says he can’t be trusted, in the same way Rudy—remember him?— couldn’t be trusted. Especially don’t so much as hint at anything about our secret garden. My friends and I are going to come to—”
The message ended.
After a silence Kueilan said, “She didn’t know how short flares are.”
Jon said, “How did she know about them at all? Or to use a class-three encryption? And what does all that mean?”
Kent said logically, “Alex has techs with her. Someone helped Lucy. But what does she mean? Who’s Rudy?”
Karim said slowly, “It’s code. Not encryption, I mean she’s talking in code because she knew the message would be intercepted. Lucy is warning us about Julian Martin. She’s saying he’s a murderer and a traitor, like Rudy Scherer was once, and not to tell Julian about the biomass.”
Jon said, “Julian? He’s done nothing but good for Greentrees!”
“And done it brilliantly,” Kueilan agreed. “Lucy’s wrong!”
“No,” Karim said. “She says the information about Martin came from Jake Holman.”
Silence while the others digested this. “My old lover.”
Finally Kueilan said, “I hate to say this, Karim, but Mr. Holman is so old now
Karim didn’t answer. After the first visceral shock of hearing Lucy’s voice, his mind raced. “We’re going to come to—” she’d said. To where? Here? Lucy, unlike anyone else on Greentrees, had seen the biomass on the Vine planet: “our secret garden.” She’d believed it could help. And Jake had known Beta Vine. And Lucy hadn’t said “We’re going to go to—” No, she’d said, “We’re going to come to—”
Karim said, “They’re on their way here.”
“What?” Jon said. “How do you know?”
“Because I know Lucy. And Jake.”
Kueilan gazed at him with gentle doubt. Kent said, “Karim, I don’t think they’d cross the kill-clean zone, even by night. Look how exposed they’d be. And if Julian Martin really is a traitor … why, he’d be trying to—” She stopped.
“To kill Alex,” Jon finished. “I don’t think I believe… but Kueilan’s right about one thing. If Lucy and Alex tried to come here, they’d be completely vulnerable. No vegetation cover, and they’d give off a thermal signature from the rover.”
All true. “Yes, but—”
Kueilan, their natural peacemaker, said, “If they’re coming, we should wait for them. If they’re not coming, we still don’t have anywhere we can go. So I suggest we eat, and tomorrow we try again at the biomass to see if it has done something to reopen communications. I mean, if it feeds off metals, couldn’t it also accrete them to create another pole? Or something else like a pole? Maybe it’ll decide it wants to communicate again. Like a child wanting to play again. We don’t really know what it will do, do we?”
She was right. Karim nodded gratefully. Nobody knew what the biomass might do. Or what Jake might do, either—in the old days, Jake had been the one to come up with plan after plan, saving their lives from murderous Furs.
Karim didn’t let himself think about how old Jake must have grown since then, how feeble. He smiled at Kueilan.
31
ALONG A MOUNTAIN CREEK
Lucy returned so exhausted from walking that she practically fell down the muddy bank to the river. Ben climbed up the slope to cover as much damage as he could from Lucy’s tracks. Jake was asleep in the back of the shallow depression. Alex and Natalie stared grimly at Lucy.
“I had to,” Lucy mumbled. “Karim … Julian …” She was
asleep.
When she woke, she told them more. Her previous note of apology had disappeared from her voice. She addressed Jake, now awake and sitting in his chair, as if Alex didn’t exist.
“Jake, I had to warn Karim. This biomass could be the key. And Karim would have taken it straight to Julian Martin … you know him. Karim’s not really a suspicious person, and Jon McBain’s even worse. I did the only thing I could do, and I was careful to not let us be traced. I walked miles and miles before I fired the flare, and I set it for maximum flight before it released my message.”
Natalie said angrily, “But the message itself was intercepted, including its coordinates. I told you that! Now Julian knows where Karim is, not to mention the biomass!”
“I coded the message.”
“At class-three encryption! A child could break it!”
“No, I mean I coded it. No one but Karim will know what I was talking about.”
Alex snorted.
“It’s true,” Lucy said, glaring at Alex. “And anyway, there’s no time to argue about it. We have to start down there.”
“Down where?” Alex demanded. She just realized that she didn’t like Lucy.
“To Karim and the biomass!”
Natalie made a small noise. Alex opened her mouth but before she could blast Lucy for her arrogance, her assumption of command, and her stupidity, Jake spoke.
“Lucy, we already have a tentative plan, and it does involve going to the biomass. If you hadn’t come back by now, we were going to do it without you. We—”
Alex stalked away from them, moving along the river.
She had argued with Jake for an hour last evening, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She’d been amazed at Jake’s tenacity. He’d sat in his chair—weak, drooling, quavery voiced—and just kept at her. ”I’d like to suggest the first step. There’s one other asset we have that I haven’t yet mentioned. It might mean nothing—or everything.” Well, it meant nothing, in Alex’s opinion. Jake’s plan was just as wild-eyed and stupid as Lucy’s flare. If it had been anyone but Jake, Alex wouldn’t have listened for more than two minutes. But it was Jake, and so Alex had listened, and argued, and reasoned, To no end—Jake had remained firm about his insane idea.
