"Yes," said Jake; he'd already figured that out. "I could talk to Vine anywhere. But it can only answer me beside the translator. Gail, if you can't get Nan and Shipley here, who can?"
"No one can budge Nan when she's got her mind made up."
"Then budge Shipley and Nan will follow. Go tell the doctor that Ingrid has collapsed and he should come immediately. Ingrid, collapse."
Ingrid opened her mouth to protest, thought better of it, and lay down on the blanket. Gail set off at a dead run.
When Shipley and Nan appeared, Shipley looked alarmed but also less tortured. It would do him good to have something else to think about beside Franz Mueller. For a short while, anyway. During the clamor around Ingrid, Jake slipped away and ran down the path to the main blanket, where only George remained. Running made his ribs ache even through the painkiller; he slowed down.
"Vine," Jake said rapidly, "Dr. Shipley and Nan will never agree to this plan. They will tell the Furs the truth." Just as Shipley and Jake had told Vine. "I think you should prepare a drug that will make them both completely unconscious but otherwise unharmed, and keep them that way as long as necessary."
George gasped but said nothing. Vine said, "Yes."
The first hurdle jumped. Jake said, "Shipley will drink anything you give him, but Nan won't eat and she barely drinks. How can you deliver the drug?"
"We can make the molecules in a gas. Everyone else must leave the infirmary blanket."
"All right. But a gas won't penetrate their helmets."
"This gas will penetrate their helmets."
That was a sobering thought. But Jake merely said, "Can you make the gas soon?"
"We already have those molecules."
Prepared and ready to knock out the whole lot of us if we had run amok. Not a thing to mention. Instead Jake said, "What are you doing to Lucy?"
"Experimenting on her," Vine said, and Jake's blood stopped in his arteries.
George said, "What experiment? Is she all right?"
"We do not know if any human will be all right with this plan. You know that. We create tests with Lucy."
Jake forced himself to say, "She's ... she's nervous."
"That is why we create tests with her."
George said unconvincingly, "I'd rather you used me."
"Your nervous system is not as responsive."
Jake said, "How long until you begin with the rest of us?"
"We don't know. These are not simple molecules we must create. They must affect two different species in two different ways."
"Right," Jake said, and felt helpless again. He pushed the feeling away. He couldn't afford it just now.
He walked back to the infirmary. Ingrid sat up, trying to look like someone who had just come out of a faint. She wasn't a particularly good actor.
"Just stress, I think," Dr. Shipley said. "Although she shows no other symptoms of acute distress." He looked suspiciously at Jake.
Jake said, "Then if you're all right, Ingrid, you better come with me. Vine is ready to start infecting us. The—"
"Already?" Shipley said. "How could it create serum that fast? The molecules would be so complex that—"
Jake cut him off. "How should I know how Vine did it? He did. You had better make a choice, Doctor. You, too, Nan. Either come with us and get infected or stay here."
"What you're doing is wrong," Nan said passionately, misguided idealist till the end.
"Ingrid?"
"I'm coming," she said, and left with Jake. When they reached the main island she said, "I'm ready."
"The infecting agent isn't," George said. "Not yet."
Ingrid turned accusingly to Jake. "You said—"
"I needed you out of there. Vine is knocking out Shipley and Nan for the duration. We can't afford their noncooperation."
Ingrid's mouth made a small round O.
Gail, holding the quee, looked uncertainly at the path to the infirmary. "They'll ... be all right? Not harmed permanently?"
"Of course not," Jake said. "We're the ones running that risk."
George said, "What do we do now?"
"We wait," Jake said. "For the Vines to do their biochemical magic."
Lucy came back hours later. The time had scraped slowly by, largely in silence. Gail had gone to check on Shipley and Nan and found them both deeply asleep. It had taken all five of them, Jake and George and Karim and Ingrid and Gail, to carry Shipley along the path to the main island. Jake wanted the eight humans together at all times. He had carried Nan himself, her skinny starved body as light in his arms as a child. Carefully he laid her beside her father.
Ingrid said acidly, "Probably the first time in two decades that those two have been peaceful together for longer than an hour ... look! There's Lucy!"
She came walking toward them over the slime, not on a path. Jake realized that none of them had ever done that. Her small bare feet sank two inches into the biofilm, but she didn't even look down. This was such abnormal behavior that Jake immediately feared the worst. But when Lucy sat down with them on the blanket, she looked and sounded normal.
"I'm done," she said. "I'm infected."
Jake said angrily, "Vine, I told you I wanted to be first!"
"No," said the expressionless translator. "You must make decisions. You must not get sick."
"He's right," George said before Jake could answer. "Someone has to stay uninfected in case we get..." He didn't finish.
Jake said, "I know that. Vine, I want to be infected. Gail will stay uninfected to make decisions as necessary."
Gail looked startled, then ashamed. But she didn't protest. Her xenophobia, Jake knew, was not ideological, like Nan's. It was biological. She would be of more use uninfected, and on the quee.
Infected. He looked at Lucy. She sat with her legs childishly extended in front of her, her torso covered with the improvised gray sarong. Her face was calm. Tranquilizers?
"Vine, tell us what to expect. For us and for the Furs. Tell us everything."
Vine said, "Lucy has drunk the best molecules we can make in this short time. We cannot dream in the sun about this, in the correct way. Soon we will have enough drink for Jake, George, and Ingrid. The molecules will infect everyone. The infection will be breathed out on the air. Our enemy breathes the same atmosphere as you do. When our enemy takes you on their ship, you will infect them. They will take the infection to their planet. The infection spreads very quickly."
"But what does it do?" Ingrid said. She stared at Lucy.
Vine said, "We created this molecule for our enemy. We tested it for two hundred years on our experimental enemy on the planet where we found you. You did not see that experimental colony. It was our best experiment. The enemy was happy. They sat dreaming in the sun. They made many offspring and cared for them. The offspring sat dreaming in the sun. But they did not starve. Everybody grew enough food and made enough shelters. But they did not make machines or ships. They did not like to move more than necessary. They were happy dreaming in the sun, in shared silence."
My God, Jake thought, the Vines are going to turn the Furs into the closest thing possible to plants.
Vine added, "Infected enemies will make many more offspring than others. Infected offspring are sexually desirable to their own kind."
After a stunned silence George said, "Like ... like flowers. Pheromones attract bees and even attract us, all for the purpose of increasing their reproductive advantage."
"Yes," Vine said. "Like flowers."
Ingrid said unsteadily, "That's what the molecules will do to the Furs. What will they do to us?"
"We do not know," Vine said. "You are carriers. We re-created the molecule to live in your body and be spread by you. That was difficult. We do not have the correct time to do more."
Jake said, "But if Lucy ... what if this 'molecule' kills us?"
"We don't know," Vine said. "Lucy is still alive. But you must drink the infector right before you board the enemy ship. You will live lon
g enough to infect them."
Vine wasn't cold-blooded, Jake reminded himself. It only sounded that way from a combination of translator expressionlessness and alien calm. Still, he didn't stop himself from saying sarcastically, "Well, your part's done. Shouldn't you Vines be getting into your escape ship soon, before we quee the Furs?"
Vine didn't answer. All right—let the plants time their escape when they would. They knew their own survival strategies best. Jake's concern was human survival, of Mira City if not of himself and his peculiar team here. Although, of course, he wanted to survive. He watched Lucy, who looked around at them all steadily, bravely. No symptoms of sickness yet.
How soon would symptoms come? You could infect one species with a disease designed for another, George had explained, and have the first species never get sick at all. Mosquitoes did not die of malaria. Mice did not die of Hanta viruses. Cats did not die of Corin's disease, the horrifying genemod bioweapon that had wiped out most of the African Mediterranean, leaving only armies of healthy cats.
On the other hand, George had added, some species did die of cross-species infections. He had declined to give examples.
"Gail," Jake said, "send the quee message."
She nodded. All of them, except the sleeping Shipley and Nan, watched as Gail coded in the message. It would instantly be received on the Fur ship and translated into whatever symbols their quee equivalent used.
WE LEARNED CANNOT DESTROY ENEMY SHIELD. WE LEARNED LOCATION GENETIC LIBRARY ENEMY USED TWICE TO RESTART SPECIES. LIBRARY CAN BE DESTROYED EASILY. WE WILL TELL YOU LOCATION IF YOU AGREE TAKE HUMANS BACK TO OUR COLONY AND TO NOT DESTROY OUR CITY.
George said, with a pessimism not characteristic of him, "They'll know it's a trick of some sort. It's obvious."
"We've been over this," Jake said. "They will suspect a trick. But they will also think we learned the location of the library, because they saw that the Vines cooperated with us on Greentrees. They'll believe the Vines will have told us everything we want to know. They believe the Vines are honest and open, and we're secretive and treacherous."
"And they're right," Lucy said.
Jake didn't contradict her. The Vines hadn't been completely open. They had not told the humans, not even William Shipley, the location of the genetic library. They were truthful but not stupid.
George said, "More important, the Furs think we're dumb. They may even believe that we believe they'll trade fairly with us: Mira City for the library."
Ingrid said, "There's no way to know what they believe."
Because they're so much like us, Jake thought. We hardly ever know correctly what each other believes. Shipley's religion, Lucy's moral squeamishness. Nan's passionate misanthropy, Gail's mother-hen capability... Where had any of it come from? Genes or upbringing or circumstances? Shipley had more in common with a plant than with his own daughter. They were all of them mysteries to each other.
"Here comes the answer," Gail said. Jake craned his neck for a better view.
BARGAIN AGREED. WE ATTACK SOON.
Jake felt as if Mueller had punched him again. Attack. Of course that was how the Furs would think of it. And this was a Fur ship; the Furs knew it well. They expected the Vines to defend themselves.
He said, "Vine, we'll have to say that you all figured out that the quee was receiving from Furs and not from Greentrees, as we supposedly told you. That's the only way we can account for your escape. You better go to your escape craft now."
Vine said, "There is no escape craft."
"But you said—"
"No," Vine said. "We never said we have an escape craft. We do not. We have only a shuttle, slow and made for planetfall. We never said we have an escape craft. You humans assumed we have one."
Lucy said slowly, "You're not going to escape."
"We cannot. But our death is good. We will save our planet, and yours. This is our experimental work for a thousand years past. It is good."
"My God," George whispered.
Vine continued, "We will give you our death flowers. You must put them inside the quee. The enemy will not look there. They may let you keep the quee.
"Please give our death flowers to our people if you ever see them again."
29
The Fur ship approached more quickly than anyone could have predicted. Almost immediately after his request about death flowers, Vine said, "The enemy ship will be here in six hundred human breaths."
In Karim's absence, George was quickest with the math. "About half an hour."
"That soon?" Lucy said.
"The Fur ship must have already been close," George said. "How many of these McAndrew Drive ships do they have, anyway?"
Jake had no idea, and he didn't care. Not at the moment. Vine's announcement had stunned him. The sentient plants—and Jake couldn't think of them any other way, no matter what George said—were going to die. They knew that when they'd proposed the plan to save their planet and Mira City. It was the same debate that the humans had had before they boarded the Vines' ship. Both species were acting to save their planet-bound fellows. But there was one important difference: the humans had voted to destroy another species, and the Vines had voted (if voting was what they did) to take their own lives.
What did that say about the ethics of each race?
No time for ethics. Karim reappeared. Jake said simply, "Can you do it, Karim?"
"I hope so." The young physicist's usual enthusiasm for alien technology was subdued by the weight of what he was taking on.
Jake said, "Vine, give the rest of us the infecting drink. Karim, can you get the quee case open to put some packets inside? Without damaging anything in there?"
"I think so. What are—"
"I'll explain later. Vine, where are the death flowers?"
"You must collect the death flowers from us. Our brother will open paths."
"All right. Ingrid, George, Lucy, you go and ... Lucy?"
"I'm fine," she said, getting to her feet. But behind her transparent helmet, droplets of sweat stood out on her pale face.
"Already?" Jake said to Vine. "She's sick already?"
"We don't know."
Because the "molecules" had been designed for Furs, not humans. Jake understood. He watched as three of the clear cups embedded in slime filled with a clear, yellowish fluid. Gail shuddered.
"The paths are opening," George said. "Let's go."
The thick slime was parting again, this time in many places, crawling into ridges on either side of five narrow paths. Jake said, "A path for you, too, Gail. Let's do it." He half expected her to object, but she didn't, although she looked almost as ashen as Lucy.
Jake walked down one path to the first clump of Vines, a grove of three. A tendril snaked toward him, "holding" a tiny packet of leaves, or flesh, or whatever it was. Gene-stuff. He said, "Only one packet? There are three of you here," but of course there was no answer. Yet they must be individuals, or else one packet would do for the entire ship. Were these three then one individual? With or without the "brother" slime? Jake would probably never know, and it didn't matter anyway. He took the packet.
It felt slick in his hand, and he had to force himself not to drop it. He moved on, collecting three more packets, and then his path brought him back to the main island.
Karim was already there, stuffing more of the tiny packets inside the quee. Vine said, "The enemy ship is docking with our ship."
Ingrid, George, and Lucy raced in. Lucy looked neither better nor worse. Karim snatched their packets and stuffed them into the quee. Jake said, "All right, drink!" He picked up a cup.
The yellowish fluid didn't have the lemonade taste of the food Vine had been preparing for them. No time for peripherals, Jake guessed. He forced down the bitter drink, gagging slightly.
Vine said, "The enemy is on the bridge of our ship."
Jake hadn't even been sure the ship had a bridge.
George and Ingrid finished the drink and set down their cups. Karim, of course,
wasn't infected; the last thing they needed was a pilot who was sick as well as totally inexperienced. Immediately all the cups dissolved and the airlock door opened. A helmeted and suited Fur entered, a male who might or might not have been the same one Jake had encountered before. It was odd to see a Fur fully clothed. Another male behind him carried a translator egg, and a female carried one of their curved weapon-sticks.
None of them left the airlock. The leader snarled something and the translator said flatly, "Humans will come with us."
Jake had choreographed their departure to include action, not explanations. Karim took Shipley's sleeping bulk under the armpits and dragged him forward. George picked up Nan. Gail carried the quee. They all moved forward together into the airlock. Jake waited for the Fur to object to the unconscious humans, or at least ask about them, but he did neither.
Jake had warned everyone against good-byes to Vine. There were to be no clues to the Furs about the human-plant relationship. Vine, too, was silent.
The Fur translator said, "You were nine humans. Now you are eight humans."
Jake said, "The plants ate one human." Behind his clear helmet the Fur made some facial distortion, but there was no way for Jake to tell what it meant.
"Remove that alien helmet and throw it back."
The airlock was full of Vine air. Jake said, "Everybody, take some very deep breaths." He forced air into his own lungs.
The helmet came off easily. The humans threw it back onto the main island. Jake waited for the Fur to tell them to remove the strips of cloth from their bodies, but this time the alien did not. The strips weren't human-made; they were blankets stolen from the primitive Furs and probably too low-tech to be considered a threat.
Jake's lungs burned by the time the airlock closed and refilled. He gasped. And then they were aboard the Fur ship again, in the same featureless room with the floor mats they had torn up for clothing. So this was the same crew of Furs. They had simply followed the Vine ship, as Jake should have realized they would. That's why they'd reached it so quickly. He felt like a fool.