Crucible

  “Of course I am. I’m addressing the hardwiring underneath those things, and older than they are by millions of years. But still powerful.”

  “I didn’t love you once, or Karim now, because of—”

  “I don’t want to argue, Lucy. I’m too old, and too tired. Believe what you want. But Alex could have just admired Julian, hero worshipped him even, learned from him. She did those things, but she also loved him. Dazzled provincial woman and powerful seasoned warrior from beyond the mountains. Story as old as Sumeria.”

  “Don’t you—”

  “Good night, Lucy,” Jake said, and at the weariness in his voice even Lucy subsided, fuming.

  Was Jake right? Had Alex loved Julian simply because she’d been dazzled by the head of an alluringly exotic and dangerous hierarchy? Had she really seen only what she’d wanted to see, not considering the implications of that dazzle?

  Maybe, she thought painfully. But not exclusively. There was more, something else that Jake had missed. Alex was not, after all, alone in her enthrallment with Julian Martin. Most of Greentrees had worshipped him. Only a few, like Lau-Wah Mah, had seen Julian for the brutal schemer he was.

  Mira City had been more than naive, more than hardwired for hierarchy. They had also been smug, so sure that the city they were creating needed no help from any Terran past. Mira had laughed at the Cheyenne, hanging on to dead ideas. In two generations, Terran history had been all but forgotten in Mira. Irrelevant, unnecessary. Let us do things our way. All those dead civilizations, their rises and wars and falls, had nothing to do with us. A waste of deebee space. And no one had believed that more casually, carelessly, and completely than Alex herself.

  But Julian had been right, after all. Terran colony worlds needed to know Terran history. If they knew, they would be better able to recognize the subtlety of would-be conquerors, even without possessing the same brutality and ruthlessness. With surer knowledge of their shared past, maybe Mira City would not have welcomed Julian so trustingly into power.

  Maybe Alex would not have welcomed him so trustingly into her bed.

  Maybe Mira City would still be standing … no, that had been the Furs, not Julian! She needed to keep her conquerors straight. Oh, Julian—

  He still wanted control of Greentrees. He wasn’t going to get it.

  And so, teeth clenched, Alex fell asleep, and in her dreams Julian became a Fur and the Fur became Jake and Jake became her, until she woke in a clammy sweat, unsure who held power, who really wanted it, and who should have it over this gorgeous, generous, scarred planet that was her only home.

  34

  THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

  Morning light revealed a whole camp of wild Furs across th river, upwind as far as possible while still able to watch the humans.

  “They must have really good eyesight,” Ben said after a cautious reconnoiter. “I think there are as many as two dozen, including maybe five or six females.”

  “Did you see technoweapons?” Alex asked.

  “No, but we already know they have laser guns.”

  “They could have anything, including Terran weapons we don’t know about,” she said grimly. Julian.

  Natalie said, “I thought the wild Furs lived in the southern subcontinent, with the Cheyenne.”

  “They used to,” Kent said, “until all this started. I’d guess, that they’re here now to wage war.”

  Jon McBain, incredibly, seemed completely uninterested in the wild Furs. His total attention, and Karim’s, was on the biomas. “I’m going over there now!”

  Jake, spooning his breakfast unevenly into his mouth, said: “You’ll wait. Minimize exposure.”

  “Wait for what?” Jon wasn’t challenging, merely bewildered.

  “Me.”

  Despite herself, Alex grinned.

  Karim said, “We shouldn’t all go to the biomass site, in case of an attack by… by anything. A backup group with a mix of skills should stay hidden here. Kent, Ben, Natalie, Lucy, maybe even Alex.” He saw her face. “Well, not Alex. But to risk both you and Jake…”

  “My decision,” Alex said, and she saw that everyone, except possibly the oblivious Jon, heard the warning in her tone.

  Karim flushed. “Sorry. I’ve been used to making decisions.”

  Alex said, “Jake, me, Jon, Karim, Ben, and Kueilan will drive to the biomass. Ben will then drive the rover back here and hide it again as best he can. Jon and Karim will try to communicate, Kueilan will do the computer, Jake will supply an historical context to any communication that actually results.” And I will decide when to call a halt to this entire insane idea.

  Lucy said, “I want to go, too.”

  Alex said, “No. If the worst happens and we’re attacked, you’re Karim’s backup.”

  Lucy said coolly, “Who’s yours?”

  “Natalie,” Alex said, and Natalie looked astonished. The truth, of course, was that if Alex, Jake, and Karim were wiped out, there was no backup. Julian would have his way with Greentrees.

  What was Julian planning to do about the space Furs? Did he have a plan? And if so, did it have a chance of succeeding?

  Natalie said, “What do you want me to do if the wild Furs come here and try to tell me something?”

  “They won’t,” Jake said. “They’re very hierarchical, Natalie. They will talk only to a male, and probably only to a male they perceive as leader from either age or strength. Kent, Ben, all of you, if one does approach you—this is important—do not look him in the eye, do not move suddenly or too close, stay downwind, do not do anything that could be interpreted as a challenge. Keep your eyes on the ground and point to me.”

  Jon said, “I see! You’re acceptable because you’re both respected and feeble! The whole genus bolarius engages in that behavior!”

  Alex didn’t know what was included in the genus bolarius and didn’t ask.

  Upwind, several Furs carrying long spears forded the river and climbed the bank.

  By the time Ben had retrieved the rover from its hiding place and they’d driven to the biomass hole, the Furs stood waiting a hundred feet away, spears in one hand and laser guns in the other. Alex gasped when she saw that one effortlessly wore a huge shoulder-mounted weapon of some sort. “Jake, what is—”

  “My guess is a missile-launcher of some sort. Terran. Heavy as hell. They’re strong. Alex, don’t look at them!’

  She dropped her eyes. Terran. What had Julian intended the missile-launcher to be used for?

  They had no indication that the wild Furs would employ it against Julian. Most likely they would not. These primitive allies were allies against the space Furs only. Not against Julian. It was important to remember that.

  Jon, Karim, and Kueilan huddled around the hole, Jon talking furiously. Alex said to Ben, “Lift Jake into his chair before you go, and bring the chair to the hole. I’ll take the supercooler.”

  They played out the pointless charade—stop thinking of it like that! But Alex couldn’t help herself. In daylight the thing seemed more hopeless than ever before. Kueilan set up her computer, attached to nothing. Jake opened the cryogenic box that had been sealed for thirty-nine years.

  Despite herself, Alex craned her neck to see. Inside lay a dozen or so packets of leaves, or leaflike things, of dull brown. They glistened, as if coated with something slimy. Karim lifted out four of them—how had he arrived at that number?— and dropped them in the hole.

  “Now,” Jon said, “everybody dance!”

  They looked at him as if he were crazy.

  Crazier.

  “No, I mean it. Dancing or jumping will at least set up vibrations in the ground. It will let the biomass know we’re here and maybe they’ll get curious.”

  “Jon, they’re point three five miles down,” Kueilan said in her soft voice. From her, it didn’t sound like a reproach.

  “Yes, but maybe they have tendrils or veins or pseudopods or whatever you’d call them” Jon started jumping up and down. After a moment, Kueilan
stood and started to dance gracefully. Karim looked uncertain until Kueilan took his hand and pulled him into her dance.

  “Alex!” Jon called. “Jump!”

  It couldn’t get any nuttier than it already was.

  Alex stamped one foot, over and over. She felt a perfect fool. After a moment Jake said, “Look at the Furs. No, don’t look—just glance sideways.”

  The Furs were stamping their feet and banging their spear butts on the ground.

  Alex stood still in sheer amazement. Jon said exuberantly, “It must have significance to them! We stumbled on a piece of their culture!” He kept on jumping.

  But what significance? For all the humans knew, their manic jumping was issuing an invitation to war. Or a plea for rain. Alex closed her eyes and kept on stamping.

  When they couldn’t keep it up anymore, the four of them collapsed to the ground, panting, and stared at the hole. Nothing happened.

  Of course nothing happened.

  The wild Furs went on stamping spears and shaggy feet. Then they began to sing: a low, keening, dangerous sound that sent shivers along Alex’s nerves. Jon said, “Oh—” but didn’t finish his thought.

  Jake, Alex saw, had fallen asleep in his chair.

  Ben had been under instructions to return after two hours. When the rover pulled up, there had still been no change in the hole. “Leave the packets there,” Karim said tiredly. “Alex, I want to stay.”

  “Me, too,” Kueilan said, adding quickly, “with the computer.” She blushed.

  Oh, Alex thought. Kuelian’s animosity toward Lucy was clear.

  Alex said aloud, “No, there’s no point in unnecessary exposure. You can check the hole later, Karim. Get in the rover.”

  The ride back was silent and dispirited. They left the Furs still stamping and keening. If the space Furs flew over in a shuttle, or if Julian attacked with rovers on the ground, the wild Furs would have no cover. But surely they knew that.

  The stamping and keening faded as the rover drove toward the river.

  Hours later, as Alex sat trying to plan a plausible next move, Ben slid down the bank from guard duty. “Alex! Come quick! There’s a wild Fur coming here from the biomass site!”

  She stood so fast her ankle nearly twisted under her. “Just one? Armed?”

  “Yes, but not the one with that launcher thing. What should I do?”

  “Carry Jake up the bank. Carefully. Stay with him but keep your head lowered and don’t—”

  “I know. Mr. Holman! Mr. Holman!”

  Poor Jake; Alex saw him wince with pain as Ben labored up the slope with the frail body in his strong young arms. Karim followed with Jake’s chair. No women, Jake had said; it might be perceived as an insult to bring a woman to a war conference. He’d told her that the space Furs had female soldiers but the wild Furs, primitive, seemed to regard females as property. And a good thing, he’d added with an incongruous flash of mischief, or else they might not be incensed enough over the abduction of their women to join with humans.

  Alex said, “Natalie, isn’t there a zoomscope in your pack?”

  “Yes!” Natalie said. “I’d forgotten!”

  They had just put the ’scope together and poked it above the bank when their spying became unnecessary. Ben slid back down the bank and began splashing toward the rover, clumsily hidden downriver. “Mr. Holman says to get the rover for him, Karim, Kent, Dr. McBain, and Alex. Alex, look like a male!” He was gone.

  Look like a male?

  Natalie fumbled for a sunhat in her pack. Alex already wore Threadmores and boots; with Natalie’s help she shoved her hair under her hat, smeared more mud on her face than was already there, and unzipped her Threadmores. Natalie shoved wadded-up blanket strips onto her shoulders and wrapped her waist thickly with cloth.

  “Your hands,” Kueilan said. “Do we have gloves?” They didn’t. Alex had small, dainty hands. Lucy said, “Bandage them. As if you were burned.” Natalie dived again into her pack.

  Alex staggered up the bank just as the rover appeared. The wild Fur had already gone. Jake looked at her and cackled.

  “It isn’t funny,” Alex said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What did the Fur want?”

  Jon burst out, “There’s something growing at the site!”

  “Growing? In the hole?”

  “No!”

  It was growing at the place where the wild Furs had spent hours stamping feet and spears.

  The humans, warned and lectured by Jake, approached silently and slowly. Alex stayed behind the men as much as possible. They stopped several yards downwind from the wild Furs. Jake tried to propel his chair forward, but he wasn’t strong enough. Alex, cursing her tray-o decision to keep scarce fuel cells for other uses, watched as Ben crept forward, head lowered and body stooped submissively, to push Jake forward.

  An ooze lay on the soil.

  That was all it was: a patch of slimy brownish ooze, glistening in the late-afternoon sun. When Jake’s elongated shadow fell across it, Alex couldn’t see the thing at all. Jon, excited beyond silence, began a whispered commentary.

  “It looks simple, but biofilms can contain enormously complex structures. This one is anaerobic so that shine must be some sort of outer sealing layer. I must have been right about pseudopods extending up from the main mass. It probably metabolizes more than one or even two elements. The signaling structures—”

  Karim said loudly, “Jake, I want to get the death flowers.”

  Jake nodded. The Furs did nothing.

  Slowly Karim moved to the original hole. Alex muttered to Jon, “Won’t the sun have spoiled them, or whatever? It’s been hours.”

  “I don’t know. But Karim’s getting fresh ones off the rover. No— he’s getting both.”

  It must have cost Karim much to move so slowly, bent over and nonthreatening. Even so, the Furs shuffled their feet and a low growl came from some, or all, of them. Karim stopped.

  “Go ahead,” Jake said levelly. He extended a stick that Alex hadn’t noticed and began drawing on the ground.

  Karim completed his tortuous circuit of rover, hole, humans. When he reached their small group, he actually sank to his knees and wobbled forward, carrying the supercooler, toward the slime. The growling grew louder. Alex held her breath.

  Karim pushed the cooler within reach of Jake and crawled away. The top, loosened by Karim, slid off under Jake’s feeble push. Alex realized that she had not been so close to one of the aliens since the day of the fifty-year-anniversary party, when Nan Frayne had brought one to the genetics lab. That alien had drawn its lips back from sharp, terrifying teeth. These did the same. The brown-red Fur covering their bodies was rough and matted except on the balancing tails, where muscles rippled impressively. Dark crests of silkier, stiffer hair rose from each shoulder.

  Jake looked up at the largest Fur, down at his drawing, up at the Fur. The creature nodded clumsily. Slowly Jake bent over, grunting slightly, and pulled the Vine death flowers from their storage for the last thirty-nine years. Alex couldn’t tell the ones that had been in the hole from the others. Jake tossed them all atop the slime.

  For several minutes, Alex thought that nothing would happen. Another failure like yesterday’s. But then the slime began to grow. Squinting, Alex could see it creeping up the sides of the packets and enveloping them, until the packets dissolved completely in the slime and something else began to take form on top of it.

  Karim said suddenly, “Furs have been at war with Vines for millennia. If these wild ones recognize a Vine from descriptions by their ancestors—”

  Recognize a Vine?

  Karim was, Alex realized incredulously, right. From the death flowers— packets of genetic material, Jake had said—the slime was indeed growing a Vine. She had seen pictures in the deebees, taken by surveillors fifty years ago. This was the other alien species that had caught Greentrees in its crossfire. A Vine.

  As it grew, a sort of upside-down bowl grew over it, als
o rising from the slime and covering the growing Vine like a clear dome. Jon blew out his breath. “Look at that! It’s growing a biosphere to seal out oxygen and contain whatever atmosphere it’s manufacturing in there! God, the adaptive mechanism—”

  Alex tuned him out. The thing growing under its expanding dome was neither plant nor animal. Fleshy brown trunk, or torso, coated heavily with slime. Reddish brown branches, or arms, or tentacles. As Alex watched, these sprouted leaves, or hands, or thick broad plates with an unpleasantly pulpy look. No head grew. At about three feet, the forced rapid growth stopped—how much energy it must have taken! It had been like watching a speeded-up holo of some deformed botanical experiment.

  The Furs didn’t attack. They stood still as ever, their alien expressions unreadable.

  Jake turned his chair slowly, painfully, toward the Vine and inched it forward. Not even Ben dared help him. Alex became aware of how heavily she was sweating beneath her hat and hand bandages. The day was not all that warm.

  Jake began to draw on the bare ground in front of the Vine. Alex couldn’t see the picture. Whatever it was, it had no effect on the Vine grown under its dome, which stood indifferent as purple Greentrees vegetation.

  Jake said quietly, “Vines never do anything quickly.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jake drew another picture. Alex couldn’t see this one, either. But apparently Karim, taller and closer, could. She saw his back stiffen, and then a shudder ran over his whole body.

  A shudder? A strong young man in his early thirties, who had already seen horrors Alex could not imagine? What was Jake drawing?

  Fifteen minutes later, he drew something else. Neither Vines nor Furs moved.

  The sun sank closer to the horizon, tingeing a clear sky with the first streaks of color. Alex’s stomach rumbled. Jake drew another picture.

  Karim stiffened again.

  Suddenly the Furs scattered and ran. Alex spun around and scanned the sky. From the direction of the Avery Mountains, a miniscule dark shape appeared against a streak of pink.

  A Fur shuttle, coming this way.

  Ben scrambled for Jake, to load him into the rover. But it was too late; too late for all of them. The rover could never outrun the shuttle. The space Furs would kill her, Jake, and all the others on the plain, including their wild cousins, all male. Greentrees would belong to Julian, or to the murderous aliens. It all ended here.