When the spore cloud hit, some people would go in here, survive, and not come out until there was a vaccine or a cure.
Austin was incredibly lucky to be one of those people. He couldn’t do science like Graa^lok, he wasn’t a doctor or hydroponics farmer like some of the other Worlders that Tony hoped to persuade to come here, but he had his own jobs. Haven could save forty people. He, and his mother, would be two of them.
Of course, his mother was already immune to spores. So was Austin. But even though Terrans were immune, civilization was going to collapse—Tony said so—and it wouldn’t be safe for even the Terrans to be above ground when there were desperate survivors. And to restart civilization, they would need girls who could have babies. That’s where Graa^lok’s sisters and cousins came in.
Austin didn’t think about that part of it, except at night, alone on his sleeping mat.
Tony said, “Let me have it.”
Austin pulled the bulky package from his pocket. He didn’t exactly know what it was, but he’d memorized the Terran letters. His mother had taught him to read a little English, before she got too depressed about there being no English books to read. He handed Tony the package. Most of it was medicines, including one he recognized, a dry brown powder that his mother used to give him for earaches. Austin was hoping that no one at the clinic would take inventory of the stuff in the storage closets. With the spore loud coming so soon, why would they bother? That was his hope, anyway.
“Good man,” Tony said, and Austin glowed inside.
He could steal anything. This lot hadn’t even been that hard. The medicines came from the clinic right near their house. The other thing, the package with the Terran symbol on it and the English words, had been a little more complicated:
To get that, Austin had gone with Noah to visit his wife’s lahk and play with their little girl. Lil^da, whom Isabelle called Lily, was only nine and too young for Austin, but he used to play with her when he was a kid, and everybody seemed pleased that he wanted to see Lil^da again. Noah’s wife, Llaa^moh¡, had gone to Terra on the World expedition there, which used to impress Austin. Llaa^moh¡ was a biologist. “Not the real thing,” Beyon-kal always said, because there were no real scientists on World compared to Terra, but as Tony said, you had to make do with what you had. Austin had stolen Llaa^moh¡’s keys, gone to her lab, and stolen the “viral material.” It had come from Terra. The cabinet had been triple locked, but Austin had been practicing on locks since he was eight.
Of course, stealing was wrong. Good people didn’t steal, and nearly everybody on World was good, or at least they acted good and kept bu^ka^tel. That, Isabelle-kal said, was why the society could work “despite its many restrictions.” But Noah’s ethics class at school had also talked—briefly—about the rare times when it was necessary to break the law, such as if someone’s life was in danger. Well, everybody’s life was in danger from the spore cloud, and Llaa^moh¡’s lab hadn’t found a vaccine even though they’d been looking for ten years, and Tony Schrupp was the only one saving people. Forty people, anyway. So it was okay for Noah to steal this viral material for Tony, and it would be okay for Austin and Tony, when the time came, to steal Llaa^moh¡, too, so she could keep looking for the vaccine. They would need a biologist and a doctor, Tony said, and he hoped that Llaa^moh¡ and a doctor could be persuaded to join them when the spore cloud got closer. If not, they would steal them. After all, it would save their lives! Llaa^moh¡ should be grateful.
“But…” Austin had said, man to man, “she won’t help unless we bring Noah and Lily, too. And Noah won’t be—”
“Leave it to me,” Tony had said.
Beyon-kal walked out from the side tunnel leading to the lab. He was the oldest Terran on World, and on Terra he had been a really important scientist at someplace called MIT. Austin’s mother didn’t like Beyon-kal—not that she’d seen him very often. “He’s creepy,” she said, an English word that Austin didn’t quite understand except that it had to do with not looking people in the eye and sometimes not answering when spoken to and being really smart at hard equations.
Beyon-kal—and why couldn’t Austin even think of him without the respectful title? But he just couldn’t—said, “Did he get it? Is that it?”
“Yes.” Tony handed him the package.
“In that box? Christ, these people don’t understand anything about safe handling.”
Tony said, “Then stow it safer.”
Graa^lok said in his rough English, “What be not right?”
For the first time, Austin realized that both men’s jaws looked as hard as karthwood. If Austin hadn’t been so pleased with himself, he would have realized it before. Tony said, “You didn’t hear. Of course you didn’t. You were hiking all day to get here.”
“Hear what?” There was a radio in the cave, with a long antenna that went up one of the air chimneys. It would get an airtight seal around it once the spore cloud was closer.
Tony said, “The three big cities were destroyed from space. Some sort of laser beam—”
“Not laser,” Beyon-kal said impatiently. “I told you.”
“—and the World ship along with it. I’m sorry, kid. Did you have relatives or friends in—”
“The ship, too?” Austin’s dream was to fly in the one World starship, to go out in space. “The ship? Who did it?”
“Terrans. Russians—that’s another continent on Terra, not mine and Nate’s. They also destroyed an American ship that was coming here, and so eight more Terrans are marooned on World. That’s what Nate thinks, anyway.”
Beyon-kal understood some World, but not very well. Tony had none. They needed Austin and Graa^lok to translate.
Graa^lok said doubtfully, “Will they be of your lahk?”
Tony said, “Speak English, Graylock.”
“The new Terrans. In your lahk, Austin?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t care. That lovely ship… the Council of Mothers would never let it fly after the first time that brought him here. Not necessary, they’d said, which was pretty much their answer to anything different or fun. Tony said that was what happened when women got to run things, but even Austin knew that was stupid. Of course women ran the government; they had the babies and so could look out for people the best. Men ran plenty of things, including the expedition to Terra that had brought Austin to World.
And now there would never be another. Nobody knew how to build another ship. Also, neither of the two they’d built had accomplished what they were supposed to, and both had taken too much money and effort. Worse, their building had damaged the ecology of Mother World, which was only now getting back in balance. That’s what Austin’s teacher said at school.
Austin didn’t know anybody in Kam^tel^ha or the other destroyed cities. It was sad that they were all dead, but not as sad as the loss of the starship, both starships, that—
He said abruptly, “Where is the Russian ship? Is it still here?”
Beyon-kal said, “Allegedly not. Come on, boys, I need some lifting done in the third lab.”