Crucible

  “We don’t need their cooperation.”

  Oh God, the bullheaded arrogance of even the meek young. Jake held his temper. “Yes, we do. Don’t you see? They can lead us to space Furs.”

  Jake hoped that “lead us to” didn’t sound too exploitative. How much English had these aliens learned from Nan Frayne?

  Ben moved slowly out of the rover, treading over the now-dead red creeper. Jake could read Ben’s reluctance in every movement. The boy’s very hair practically bristled. Not only Furs were xenophobic.

  When Jake sat in his chair in the dark, he tugged Ben to sit on the ground beside him. Finally the Furs moved. One crouched and expertly built a small fire, starting it with a spark struck from a stone. The three lined up across the fire from the humans, tall menacing animals in the flickering light. Did the smoke mask the human smell? Jake hoped so.

  The largest alien put away his laser and pulled his spear from its harness. Jake’s nerves quivered. The Fur reached across the fire with the spear and slashed through the groundcover until he’d exposed bare ground. Then he made a single line in the dirt and uttered a single syllable: “Aaaaaannnnnttttttt.”

  “Nan. Nan Frayne,” Jake guessed, and the Fur nodded clumsily, obviously not a native gesture. Jake felt Ben’s surprised respect. Well, let the boy be impressed. Jake had already realized that these Furs must have been trained—socialized? recruited?—by Nan Frayne. Otherwise he and Ben would be carrion.

  The Fur drew another line and uttered another syllable, this one too guttural to echo correctly. With his free hand he hit his own head.

  “You,” Jake hazarded; he could not reproduce the alien’s name. The alien nodded, apparently willing to accept “you.”

  Many more lines in the dirt, and now the alien went back and added smaller rising lines to each. Jake was mystified until Ben said softly, “They’re crests. He’s drawing their males.”

  “Males. You males,” Jake said. A nod. When Nan had taught them to understand a little English, had she also taught herself to differentiate the guttural Fur sounds? Then she had a better ear than Jake did.

  The Fur drew more lines, this time without crests. “You women,” Jake said. No nod. “You females.” A nod. Nan had thought the sounds of “men” and “women” too close to use.

  Now the Fur drew a circle, a line coming out of it, and a smaller circle. A McAndrew Drive ship, which the alien had certainly never seen. Nan again. He drew many crested lines coming from the ship and leading straight to the wild Fur females. Then savagely he erased the wild Fur males.

  “Enemy,” Jake hazarded. “You enemy. Kill you men. Take you females.”

  All three Furs nodded.

  Exhilaration surged through Jake, which he carefully hid. He had the answer to his question. The wild Furs had chosen. Their xenophobia toward humans mattered less than their desire to regain the breeding females carried off to the space Furs’ ship.

  Or, rather, their xenophobia mattered less as long as the humans remained very careful to not provoke it. Submissive in posture, helpful to wild Fur goals. And downwind.

  “Ben,” he said softly, “we have a sort of ally.”

  They were late to the rendezvous point. It took a lot of picture drawing to communicate to the Furs that the humans would help the Furs against their enemy in the ship, that the rover was going to drive slowly to meet three more humans, that after that it was going to go to the place Nan Frayne had been killed. This last, which Jake had feared would be the most incomprehensible to the Furs, was actually accepted instantly. He had no idea why. Maybe he had stumbled on some death ritual, some expectation that he would commune with Nan’s spirit. Maybe it seemed logical to them that he start his aid at a place where some females had been captured. Maybe it was the right conjunction of moons.

  Ben had to use the rover’s lights, after all. The three Furs disappeared; Jake assumed they were following. He let himself sleep, knowing he had to conserve his strength. The rover jostled him awake every few minutes. Nocturnal birds whistled, unseen creatures rustled the groundcover, and Greentrees’ sweet, distinctive night smell drifted on the wind. Clouds covered and uncovered two small, high moons. And somewhere in the darkness, three aliens with revenge in their unknowable hearts trailed the human vehicle toward what Jake could only think of as an unholy alliance: dangerous. Temporary. And as unconscionable, in Jake’s planning, as anything Julian Martin could ever have done, anywhere.

  33

  MOUNTAIN CREEKBED

  Alex was so weary she could barely unfasten her pack. Natalie and Lucy didn’t seem to feel the strain; they’d talked steadily as the three made their arduous way downriver. After a few miles Alex could barely breathe, let alone chat. They’d clambered over rocks, waded through shallows, climbed the riverbank when there was no footing below and then climbed back down when the water level permitted. Alex had fifteen years on Lucy, over twenty on Natalie. However, she’d made the rendezvous. She was here. Another day, another muddy overhang.

  When the rover appeared, Alex didn’t hear it. She had sunk immediately into a sleep so profound that Natalie had to shake her whole torso to wake her.

  “Alex … Alex! Wake up! They’re back, Ben and Mr. Holman! They’re alive!”

  A moment to stagger back from that place of perfect rest. “Do … did they… the box?”

  “They have it!” Now Alex could see that Natalie’s dirty face glowed. The present triumph was enough for her.

  Not so for Alex. She dragged herself up the riverbank yet one more time, filled with the desperate plan yet to come.

  “Jake! Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” he said. “Get in.”

  He looked terrible. Translucent flesh under the dirt and drool, jutting bones like chisels. His sunken eyes burned feverishly. He was living on sheer fierce will.

  She leaned closer to him. He smelled awful, but then so did they all. “You can’t go on like this, dear heart.”

  “The wild Furs have joined us.”

  At first Alex thought he was delusional; the words were spoken so quickly, with a frantic stare back over his shoulder. But Ben said, “It’s true, Alex. Three wild Furs followed us here. Mr. Holman spoke to them.”

  ”How?”

  But Jake was repeating frantically, “Get in! Get in!” Natalie and Lucy hurried up with the packs, hastily assembled. The five of them jammed into the rover and Ben took off. Alex craned her neck behind. She saw no Furs.

  Ben told the story over his shoulder as he drove, which he seemed now to do with ease, and without the fear of detection that haunted Alex. She kept glancing at the bare blue sky. Nothing.

  The wild Furs were now their allies.

  To do what, against two enemies with infinitely superior technology? No one said, and Alex decided not to ask the question. It would only be one more query without an answer.

  Why do we think that bringing Vine “death flowers” to a Greentrees biomass buried far underground can help us?

  Because Jake and Lucy want to do it.

  Why do we think wild Furs armed with native spears and contraband laser guns can help us? Because the Furs want to do it.

  Why do we think that hurtling across the landscape at top speed, spewing visual and thermal trails, can help us?

  Because Ben has gotten expert at driving the rover.

  Alex rubbed her eyes with her filthy fists. All right, she had to stop this. It didn’t help to tear down others’ plans—no matter how stupid or far-fetched— unless one had something better to suggest instead. Alex had nothing to suggest. She was the tray-o, in charge of deploying resources, but how did you do that when essentially you had no real resources? Success went to the people with the best technology. Alex had learned that in decades of allocation administration. It was all she knew how to do.

  Jake and Lucy were proceeding on some other assumption. What was it? Maybe something like: Success went to the people with the most daring. Could that be true? It
didn’t seem likely.

  But nothing about this situation was likely. The best thing for her was to watch carefully how things developed until she had a clearer idea of what they all should, or could, do. Protest might as well wait until then. Conserve her strength.

  She would need it if, eventually, she decided to oppose Jake and Lucy.

  They stopped just short of the kill-clean zone to change the fuel cell. “Last one,” Ben said when he climbed back into the rover.

  Finally Alex saw the wild Furs. Out on the denuded plain, without cover, they were distant figures falling farther behind the speeding rover. How had they kept up before, with Ben driving as fast as the terrain allowed? But Ben had kept to the river; the Furs must have known shortcuts, routes accessible to feet but not vehicle. This was their natural turf.

  No. It was not. Alex had to remind herself that the Furs were as alien to Greentrees as humans were. Or as native. This lot had been born here—but so had she.

  “Slow down,” she said to Ben. “You’re losing our new allies.”

  “They can follow our tracks,” Ben said. “We need to get under cover as soon as we can.” He didn’t slow.

  He was right. Alex glanced behind. The wild Furs reappeared, moving at a steady lope. How long could they keep it up? It was remarkable how well they blended into even this blank landscape. Brown, shaggy—if they dropped flat she probably wouldn’t notice them at fifty paces.

  But such primitive camouflage wouldn’t protect them from their cousins’ annihilation beam fired from orbit.

  Gradually the foothills of the Avery Mountains rose around them. Alex had once driven this way with Julian, to visit Jon McBain’s research station. She’d been so eager to show Julian the battery Jon had supposedly been developing, and so irritated when she learned that Jon was devoting all his attention to these new bacteria. Buried anaerobes weren’t impressive, and Alex had wanted to impress Julian. She had always been trying to impress Julian.

  Lucy studied the rover’s display coordinates. “Stop, Ben—here. This is the place.”

  Alex saw nothing except a narrow hole three feet deep.

  Lucy hopped out of the rover and stared at the hole. “Where’s the pole? They dug to expose the pole!”

  The empty plain held nothing at all.

  Jake croaked, “Find Karim. The river … they’d probably hide by the river. To wait for us.”

  Lucy got back into the rover. Ben drove toward the river. Over her shoulder Alex saw the three Furs lope toward the pathetic empty hole.

  As the rover neared the river, Jon McBain clambered over the bank with an Arab who must be Karim Mahjoub. Lucy fell into Karim’s arms. Two younger people followed, holding back slightly. The girl, Alex saw, was Chinese. She looked remarkably like Star Chu.

  Had Star survived the annihilation of Mira City?

  “You’re alive,” Jake said, and Alex saw that he spoke to Karim, standing beside the rover. The two stared at each other with looks that, under other circumstances, would have been comical. Surprise, compassion, distrust. They had not seen each other for thirty-nine years, from Jake’s point of view. Less than one year, from Karim’s. Even to Alex, Jake looked like a fanatical skeleton, animated by a last wild flare of dying life. What did he look like to Karim?

  Lucy stood quiedy watching both men.

  Jake said softiy, “Welcome home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where’s the communication pole Lucy told us about?”

  “The biomass dissolved it,” Karim said.

  Jake folded his hands across his concave belly and closed his eyes. Alex said quickly, “We need to get under cover and then fill each other in on everything.”

  “What about the rover?” Ben said.

  There was nowhere to conceal the rover. “Drive it farther along the river,” Alex said, “and maybe you can find a place to get it down and hide it. If not, at least it will be farther from us.”

  “I’ll walk back after I do,” Ben said, and Alex saw his reluctance. He didn’t want to leave his precious machine.

  Eight were a tight squeeze under Jon McBain’s overhang: Jake in his chair, Alex, Lucy, and Natalie, plus Jon, Karim, and the two techs, who were named Kent Landers and Kueilan Ma. Kueilan, Alex saw, avoided Lucy—what was that about? Kent, a quiet young man with a filthy red beard, gave them all bowls of soysynth and mentioned that their supplies were running low.

  But it was Jon McBain, excitable Jon, who appeared completely unchanged by the shattering changes on Greentrees, who explained their failed attempts to communicate with the biomass. “It mocked us, Alex. I swear that’s what it was doing! And then it just dissolved the pole!”

  Kueilan added, “It seemed like a child, almost. Playing, not taking anything seriously.”

  Lucy said primly, “I think you’re anthropomorphizing.”

  Kueilan, who seemed so gentle, snapped back, “But then you weren’t here, were you?”

  Jake, his head so sunk on his skinny breast that Alex had wondered if he were asleep, said suddenly, “I brought the death flowers from the Vine ship.”

  “What?” Karim said stupidly.

  “The death flowers entrusted to William Shipley. We kept them in cryogenic storage, after you and Lucy left Greentrees. They’re with us now.”

  Karim suddenly looked animated. Alex saw that despite whatever inexplicable tension existed between the two men about that little space bitch Lucy, Karim still trusted and admired Jake. A plan from Jake, no matter how desperate or dumb, raised Karim’s hopes.

  Her own rose slightly. Karim, after all, had seen and interacted with Vines. The native Greenies, as Lucy had often pointed out so acidly, had not.

  Jon said excitedly, “I never would have believed the biomass could communicate with us as much as it did—but I was wrong! And if sentient Vines are somehow in symbiosis with giant biofilms on their own planets… but how do we get the genetic material in the death flowers in contact with the biomass? It’s two miles down!”

  But Jake had fallen asleep.

  Alex said firmly, “We try that in the morning. We sleep now.”

  “But how do we—”

  She tuned him out. Jon McBain was like a swarm of small biting insects, persistent and vital and adaptable.

  “Tomorrow,” Kueilan said in her gentle voice, and Alex was grateful.

  Alex woke sometime during the night. She lay near Jake, bundled up in most of their blankets in the driest part of the overhang. By the light of three moons in a clear, starlight sky, Alex saw the outline of a small dark shape sitting beside him. Lucy. Evidently they’d been talking.

  “But has your life—until all this happened—been happy, Jake?” Lucy asked softly.

  A small silence. Then Jake’s voice quavered, “As much as anyone’s, I imagine.”

  “Did you ever think about me, all those decades?”

  “Of course I did. Lucy, don’t—”

  “I won’t. I just wanted to know.”

  Another silence. Alex breathed slowly out. Jake said finally, “It’s strange. The same things that draw people together end up tearing them apart.”

  “Do you mean us?” Lucy said.

  “No. I meant Alex and Julian.”

  Alex heard Lucy shift in the darkness. “Alex and Julian Martin? Jon McBain didn’t tell us that!”

  “Jon McBain wouldn’t know. Or care. He spends his life in the field.”

  Lucy’s voice grew harder. “So is that love affair going to interfere with Alex’s fighting Julian for Greentrees?”

  “No,” Jake said, and Alex felt her vision clear again, her breath resume. “She’s a Greenie through and through. She—”

  “What did you mean,” Lucy interrupted, “about the same thing that brought them together tearing them apart?”

  This time Jake took longer to answer. Or maybe he was just tiring faster than Lucy. Eventually he said, “Alex is like most of her generation of Greenies. They aren’t like us, Lucy. They gre
w up with Mira City’s incredible generosity. Agricultural riches, mining riches, climactic riches … none of them have any idea how rich Greentrees is because they don’t have any standard of comparison. They never saw Earth.

  “So all of them, even the brightest, are a little naive. Used to enough of everything to go around, and then some. They’ve never seen naked, desperate want, or naked, desperate greed. Look at even the Hope of Heaven dissidents … they think they’re the most dangerous and violent creatures ever to rise up in rebellion, and until Julian Martin showed up, they hadn’t actually had a deliberate murder. Not one.”

  “I’m not following you,” Lucy said. “What’s that got to do with Alex and Julian?”

  “I’ll tell you, but then I need to sleep,” Jake said, and Alex heard the weakness in his voice, the raspy exhaustion. “When you were a kid back on Terra, did you ever study a flock of chickens in school? Or model chicken behavior on a computer?”

  “No.”

  “You were too young. There was an educational vogue for it when I was a kid.” Jake fell silent, lost in some private, long-ago memory of a school Alex could not imagine.

  “So?” Lucy said impatiently.

  “So chickens really do establish a pecking order. Even if there’s enough feed for all of them, even if they’re awash in feed, they establish a power structure over who gets to eat when. So do mammals—dogs and all those extinct exotics, hyenas and lions and such. Hierarchy is hardwired into the brain, mcluding ours. We don’t seem able to get anything done until we establish it.”

  “I still don’t—”

  Jake’s tone abruptly turned harsh. “You loved me once because I held power on Greentrees. Alex loved Julian for the same reason. You left me for Karim because you didn’t like the way I used that power. Alex will oppose Julian for the same reason. Power is sexy power of mind or body or political control. It’s sexy because it says, ’I can control more than you can but, with you, I’m not going to. You’re an exception.’ Until, of course, suddenly you’re not.”

  Lucy exploded, a hushed small violence in the dark. “That’s ridiculous! You’re leaving out genuine moral considerations, human decisions of right and wrong that—”