Crucible

by Nancy Kress

  But mostly, Karim realized, he thought the biomass would not emerge again because of Aladdin. Plodding through the rain, cold and shivering, he recognized his own demented logic. But the fairy tale of his lakh stayed brightly with him. Three wishes Aladdin had been granted. Send Karim and Lucy back to Greentrees. Infect Alex with a transmissible virus. Give Karim the spores. Three wishes.

  The fairy tale was over. The genie had gone back into its alien bottle. Karim and the rest of the humans were now on their own.

  Even Natalie, in weariness and cold, had miscalculated their trudge back toward the river. They stumbled across it not at their old campsite but somewhere upriver. Or maybe downriver; there was no way to know. The overhang was less pronounced here, but everyone was too weary to go on. They settled in as well as they could.

  “What’s that in the river?” Jon said.

  “I don’t know,” Karim said. “Go to sleep.”

  “Wait, there’s another one… they’re caught on that rock but they’re going to float off in a minute. The river’s rising with the rain.”

  “Rising?” Karim said. Of course it was. He’d been too bone-tired to think of that. He stumbled to his feet. “Get up, we can’t stay here.”

  “I’m just going to have a look first.”

  “Jon!” Karim said, but he was too weary to really care. And Jon could hardly get any wetter. Karim and Natalie pulled themselves back up the bank. It was more exposed here, in the kill-clean zone, but that was better than being drowned. Maybe the rain would stop soon.

  Jon appeared a few minutes later, dripping water. “Karim. They’re all dead.”

  “Who?”

  “The wild Furs. They’re all dead, and the bodies are starting to float down the river from their camp. Or maybe they tried to cross to this side first. I caught one and turned it over. Laser gun. Julian-” He faltered for a moment. “Julian Martin killed them all.”

  “Alex?” Karim got out.

  “I don’t know. It’s dark and the bodies are floating away! But—”

  But probably.

  Karim fumbled for the slimy brown sac nominally sheltered in his Threadmore, needing to know that it was still there.

  39

  A TERRAN SHUTTLE

  When the truck finally stopped, Alex expected Julian to haul her off for torture. But she didn’t even see him. Evidently he hadn’t yet heard from his soldiers checking the hospital cave near Mira City, where Alex had told him that Jake was hiding. It wouldn’t be long until his soldiers reported in.

  The side of the truck slid open. The female Furs immediately stopped keening, evidently frightened into silence. They shrank back against the metal wall.

  A Terran soldier, tall and heavily armed, reached in and pulled Alex forward. As Alex’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the soldier was a woman, genemod with glittering violet eyes. She must have been genemod for strength as well. She lifted Alex effortlessly and strode with her toward a shuttle.

  Alex’s heart stopped. They were going up to the Crucible.

  But no, that made no sense. Julian wouldn’t have dared a launch, not with the Furs upstairs in their own vastly superior, constantly monitoring ship. Undoubtedly the shuttle had been landed here, hidden, before the space Furs showed up to wreck whatever plans Julian had had for it. And now that she looked more closely, carried like a sack over the Terran soldier’s shoulder, Alex saw that the shuttle wasn’t like any reported by the initial Greentrees team inspecting the Crucible. So Julian had off-loaded it somewhere before approaching the planet— a moon, an asteroid—and brought it down sometime later.

  The shuttle was big, larger than the truck. It had been parked very close to a hillside and then dug partway under it. Camouflage brush and sod covered the roof. Several odd-looking protuberances were probably weapons or surveillors; Alex recognized neither. Could the shuttle be easily brought forward for liftoff, or would that take a huge effort? She couldn’t tell.

  The Terran took her inside. She had a brief impression of displays, consoles, tables, intent people, before she was tossed into a closet and the door closed. Before Alex could react, it opened again, md the five female Furs, four tanglefoamed and one loose, were shoved in with her.

  But at least this prison had light. And as Alex watched, the tanglefoam dissolved on the Furs, leaving them free. All of them began to keen.

  Alex shrank into a corner. Five wild Furs loose, and her own smell not only disgusted them but brought out a deep, genetic xenophobia. Only apparently it didn’t. The Furs ignored her, keening loudly.

  Was the murderously xenophobic gene located on whatever was the equivalent of the Y chromosome?

  No, that couldn’t be true; the space Furs had female soldiers. She remembered Jake telling her so. So why weren’t these Furs killing her from sheer biological imperative? She had no answer.

  The door opened and two large bowls, one food and one water, were pushed in. Alex was suddenly ravenous. She crawled toward the bowl in the posture of extreme subservience Jake had recommended, half expecting to be cuffed or maimed. The females ignored both her and the food. Alex ate with her hands— basic Greentrees cereal, and how good it tasted!—and lapped water with her tongue. Feeling much better, she crawled meekly back to her position in the corner and studied the keening females.

  One had dirty Fur much sparser and tattered than the others. Her tail wobbled as she leaned on it, and she rested her weight against the wall. One tentacle trembled. All right, Alex thought: Grandmother Fur.

  Three of the others looked glossier, even under their dirt, with thicker fur and stronger tails. On one Alex spied a curious structure: a sort of bag distending from underneath the tail. In heat? Pregnant? Alex knew nothing of Fur reproductive procedures. But these looked to her as if they could be fertile females in their prime. Flora, Dora, Cora.

  The smallest female, the one that had tended Alex before the Terrans had evidently decided the entire herd wasn’t dangerous, had finer, silkier Fur and a strange bald spot on her chest. Accident, maybe, or prepubescent marker. Or maybe something else entirely, but Alex dubbed her Miranda. Youthful innocence.

  “ ’O brave new world, that has such people in it!’” Duncan Martin’s resonant genemod voice, and Julian beside her in the Mira City theater…

  No. Not that now. She needed to learn as much as she could about the Furs. If she could persuade them to join her in some sort of attack…

  This didn’t look likely. The five keened more and then began a peculiar hopping motion, one bounce on their tail and then one on the left foot. Grandmother had trouble after a few of these, and she rested against the wall. The other four kept it up.

  Alex hauled herself to her feet. The food felt queasy in her stomach, but not enough to throw it up. Her strength had at least started to return, as Karim had promised it would. He’d seen this Vine infection before, he’d reminded her. He’d had it. Humans did not die of it.

  Alex tried a hop on her left foot. She had no tail, but she imitated the tail hop as best she could by bracing herself with one arm against the wall and using that for the alternate hop. She ululated, trying to hit the same pitch as the Furs’ keening.

  They all stopped and stared at her, baring their teeth.

  What did that mean? At least she had their attention, for the first time. Tiring rapidly, Alex nonetheless hopped and keened a little longer. The female Furs watched her and then returned to their own mourning, if that’s what it was. For all Alex knew, she was performing a rain dance. Or a mating display.

  The six females hopped and wailed as long as Alex and Grandmother Fur could keep it up.

  “Jake was not where you said he’d be,” Julian said. “Where is he, Alex?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He stood before her in yet another closet-sized room, hands clasped easily, casually behind his back, long legs slightly apart. The green eyes regarded her contemplatively. Julian wore the black uniform in which he’d arrived from Terra, closely fitting hi
s beautiful body. Alex, unbound in a chair in front of him, had been stripped of her blanket. They were alone.

  “I’ll ask you again, Alex. I need Jake to defeat the Furs—who are, incidentally, your enemy as well. I should think you’d remember that. Where is Jake, Alex?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He unclasped his hands and raised one fist. The hand, Alex noted numbly, with the green-stone gold ring. “Who gave you that ring?” “My mother. . .” His ringed fist clutched something small and metallic. He aimed it at her breasts and fired.

  The pain was astonishing. Alex screamed and fell off the chair. Writhing on the floor, she clawed at her chest, which was on fire, burning through her skin to the nerves themselves …

  “Don’t claw like that, there’s nothing there,” Julian said calmly. “That was a low setting, Alex, and a not-very-vulnerable area of your body. I’ll try your cunt next. Where is Jake?”

  “I don’t know!”

  This time she passed out from the incredible pain, and when she came to, it was still there. Julian raised his weapon.

  “I don’t know!” she babbled, tears and snot on her face. “I don’t know! Oh, Julian, don’t… they left me to infect the Furs and I got sick and when I came to I was here oh Julian please no …”

  “Infect the Furs? What do you mean?”

  She told him everything. Karim, Lucy, Vine, all of it. Once she stopped and he fired again and she babbled on. She was still talking when she realized that he was no longer there, he had heard enough and left the room. The pain did not leave. It took an hour for it to even lessen.

  A soldier dumped her again in with the Furs. Alex cried out when she hit the floor. The door closed and she was dimly aware, through the red haze of agony, of the Furs clustered around her, making awful noises and odd smells.

  They dribbled the cool drinking water on her breasts and crotch, and it helped a little. They tugged gently on her head hair; Alex never did figure out what that was supposed to do. They covered her with the one blanket and offered her lumps of cereal on the ends of filthy tentacles. Finally, when the pain eased enough for Alex to fall into despairing sleep, they resumed hopping and keening.

  She woke in terror. The female Furs were all asleep, but Cora woke at her cry. The female removed the blanket and dribbled more water on Alex’s wounds. Again she tugged gently on Alex’s hair.

  It didn’t help. But in her shame and pain and helpless hatred, Alex found herself reaching out for Cora’s tentacle. She got a foot instead, and held on, sobbing.

  The alien let her, tugging softly on Alex’s hair.

  40

  THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

  Karim woke at dawn. The rain had stopped, and it was going to be a beautiful clear day. Too bad—rain might have provided at least minimal cover. He, Jon, and Natalie were exposed in the kill-clean zone and if Julian Martin had captured Alex, she might have told him anything.

  Jon was already up. “We have two choices, Karim, as I see it. Follow the river up or down. It’s our only cover. We can go back to the rover or towards Mira City.”

  Karim said acidly, “The rover’s out of fuel and Mira City is gone.”

  “I know. We aren’t looking for the rover or Mira City.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Cheyenne.”

  Karim blinked and sat up slowly. The little biologist sank to his heels. His hair was so dirty it was no longer possible to even tell its color.

  “Listen, Karim, it makes sense. We can’t stay here. For those spores to do us any good, we have to use them on Julian Martin’s weapons, or the space Furs, or both. We don’t even know where either of them are. But Cheyenne can track anything—it’s part of their lunatic lifestyle, hunting herds of wild animals to eat and wear. I’ll bet the Cheyenne already know where both Martin’s and the Furs’ command places are. Or if they don’t know, they can find them.”

  Karim stared at Jon. Filthy, diminutive, boiling with smug excitement, Jon reminded Karim of a small boy playing soldler. Hadn’t any of this death and destruction touched him?

  No way to tell. And Karim didn’t really care. He considered Jon’s suggestion. “I thought the Cheyenne stuck to the southern subcontinent. That’s what the original Greentrees charter gave them.”

  Jon, who had not been born when Karim had witnessed the original charter, waved this away. “Maybe once. But since they’ve gone to war with the wild Furs, they’re around here, too, because the Furs are. That’s due to Nan Frayne.”

  “And how the hell are we supposed to find them?”

  “Well, I don’t know that part,” Jon said.

  “Smoke signals,” Natalie said.

  Karim hadn’t even known she was awake. She lay a few feet away, still curled in the fetal position against the night chill. Natalie uncurled and struggled stiffly to sit up.

  Jon said, “What are smoke signals?”

  “I found them in the library deebee. When I was on duty and bored one night. The Cheyenne make a fire and then put a blanket over it to control smoke puffs. They have a code in puffs.”

  “Do you know the code?”

  “No,” Natalie admitted.

  “Then how—”

  “No, wait,” Jon said. “It might work. If we just release random puffs, or maybe a one-two-three-puff pattern, the Cheyenne might realize that someone is sending smoke signals. Someone inept. And I doubt that Julian Martin’s men would recognize it as nonsense puffs. If they noticed it at all—and it wouldn’t register on any surveillance equipment I know of—they’d probably assume it was Cheyenne. Or even wild Furs. Of no interest to them.”

  Karim considered. It didn’t seem very hopeful, but on the other hand, he had nothing better to suggest. “Here?”

  “We need wood for a fire, Karim,” Jon said pointedly. “We need to leave the kill-clean zone.”

  “Then let’s travel downriver, away from the others. For their safety.”

  Natalie said, “I’m going back upriver. To tell Mr. Holman about the spores. And to see to … everybody.”

  She meant Ben, Karim realized. He said, “Tell Kueilan we’ll come for them as soon as we can.”

  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 tie
d 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.