“Lieutenant Lamont told you to not go into any tents, right? Make the kids be brought out to you, and stay within ten feet of the perimeter where we can cover you.”
“He told us all that, yes.”
Leo repeated it anyway. “If there’s a rush on the compound, if people run past you toward the compound, hit the dirt and crawl away from the compound and the attackers. Try to reach a tree or other—”
“Lamont told us all that, Leo.”
“Here’s something he didn’t tell you. Do you know a guy called Lu^kaj^ho?”
“No.”
“He’s a Kindred cop. He tipped me off to one weapons cache in the camp, and he and three of his buddies will be working the inside, on my signals. I can’t describe him because they all sort of look alike to me—no, I know I’m not supposed to say that but it’s true and I’ll learn eventually—but if you get in real trouble, he or one of his guys will get you to safety if they can. You’ll know it’s him and not some kidnapper because he’ll say a code word to you that I taught him. It’s ‘GI Joe.’”
Isabelle didn’t smile. “Help just me, or help Salah and Noah, too?”
Leo met her gaze levelly. “Just you.” And then, because he was learning to read her face, he said, “I wouldn’t do that, Isabelle.”
Slowly she nodded. “I know you wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Leo. I know you wouldn’t.” She put her hand on his arm.
His anger, immediate and hot, dissipated. She was learning him, too. He was not—quite apart from his Army vows—not the kind of man who would shoot a rival. Or let him get shot, not if Leo could stop it. Which meant—didn’t it?—that he and Salah were rivals, that maybe he had a chance with her.
Now it was her hand on his arm that burned.
She moved it to his face, briefly touching his cheek. Then the hand was gone and she said, “We only have ten minutes left. Let’s learn some more Kindred conversation.”
Marianne, almost too tired to walk, left Big Lab. They had stockpiled—how many doses of vaccine for tomorrow? She didn’t know, but she did know it wasn’t enough. But they were out of culture, out of syringes, out of time.
Passing the kitchen, she heard the low murmur of voices. Isabelle and—who? It didn’t sound like Salah. Then the voice came again, a young and deep chuckle, and Marianne recognized Leo Brodie. What were he and Isabelle doing together?
Not her business. Still, it was good that someone could chuckle, could find something amusing right now. And Leo was the best of the Rangers, infinitely preferable to bristly and profane Zoe Berman or silent Mason Kandiss or Lieutenant Lamont, who more than the others filled Marianne with dislike.
She knocked softly on the door of the room where Noah and his family slept. No answer. Quietly she opened the door. Llaa^moh¡ was at work in Big Lab. Noah lay asleep, Lily in the curve of his arm. Marianne opened the door wider to let light spill into the tiny room. Lily breathed normally, her face with its skin lighter than both her mother’s natural copper and her father’s artificial tint, unflushed. The virus in the vaccine had not sickened her, at least not so far. Of course, it might not be protecting her, either. There was no way to know any of this until the spore cloud hit.
So much they didn’t know. But hadn’t the same thing been true on Terra, when she and Harrison and the others had worked so feverishly to create a vaccine that had not, after all, been necessary?
Harrison. Sometimes it bothered her how little she thought about him. She had lived with him for a handful of years, mourned his death from a heart attack, taken no lovers since. But she knew, in the deepest part of her only rarely admitted, that she had not loved him, not really. Nor her dead husband, Kyle, nor her most exciting lover, Tim. Her love had been reserved for her children and—further admission—even they had come in second to her work. She would never be mother of the year—any year. But one advantage of being in one’s sixties was that you accepted who you were, for better or worse.
Marianne closed the door. It was good that Noah slept; he would need his strength for tomorrow. She needed to sleep, too. Now that Ree^ka was gone, Marianne’s room was again her own. Unsuperstitious, she wasn’t kept awake by Ree^ka’s having died there. As soon as she lay on the pallet, Marianne slept.
Nonetheless, she dreamed—another rarity—of Ree^ka. The Mother of Mothers stood alone on a high hill. Below her swarmed leelees, hundreds of them, with human faces. Some tried to jump onto the hill to bite Ree^ka. Marianne could see their faces: Leo, Harrison, Branch, the dead ambassador Maria Gonzalez, Salah, and, most disturbingly, Lily. Throughout, the Mother of Mothers remained serene, raising her arms high and smiling, until the orange sun descended on her and she dissolved into mist and was no more.
CHAPTER 15
The sun stained a faint strip of sky near the horizon, the rest obscured by thick clouds. A stiff breeze bent the trees in the distance, and occasionally a puff of spicy scent rode the air through the open east door of the compound. Salah could have done without the wind, but at least it wasn’t raining. Yet. Dawns were cool on Kindred and he shivered, but not from cold. He wore his Terran clothes, shoes and pants and jacket, and he needed to be quick out the door.
It was vaccine day. Lamont did not want Salah to be among those leaving the compound.
Steve and Josh McGuire had arrived during the night. The first-expedition brothers looked so much alike they could have been twins. Large, silent, shaggy, they looked exactly like what they had been on Terra and were now on Kindred: miners. Dirt seemed permanently embedded under their nails, in the seams of their faces. Isabelle had told Salah that they had always kept to themselves. The copper mine they had gone to work in fifteen years ago, they now owned due to a combination of superior expertise, insanely hard work, and isolation. They participated in no social activities near the mine. They had learned only as much of the language as necessary. Nominally they belonged to Isabelle’s lahk, but they rarely visited, not even for illathil. They took no lovers; in the rich interconnecting gossip of the lahks, everyone would have known. They had come to the compound now, at the twelfth hour, only because of the spore cloud.
“I greet you,” Salah had said, first in Kindred and then in English. They stared at him. Steve finally nodded; Josh turned away with a look Salah recognized. On Earth, he’d encountered it whenever he was the sole Arab-American in a conservative backwater town.
These were the Terrans that would accompany him into the camp.
“They’re there only for protection,” Noah said, “or at least the illusion of protection. Just to deal with any pushing and shoving. They look threatening, is all.”
“They are threatening,” Salah said. “They’re armed.”
“No, Doctor, that’s not possible. We don’t—”
“They’re armed,” Salah said flatly. “Ask them.”
Noah, looking impatient, had asked. He’d returned slightly shaken. “They have guns. Kindred-made guns. I didn’t know how the… they can’t go into the camp like that.”
“Isn’t that Isabelle’s decision?” Salah said, knowing it was. Isabelle was mother to the Terran lahk since Marianne, the oldest woman, had refused the position. Salah wanted as much protection as possible for Isabelle. If Steve and Josh had possessed guns for a while without killing anyone, they were probably not wild-eyed and trigger-happy.
Noah, defeated, held a long colloquy with the McGuires. The brothers kept their guns.
The vaccine team would go into the camp in three groups of three. Each group held someone who could speak Kindred to explain and soothe, a scientist to administer vaccine, and a Terran to handle any mild rebellion. For major rebellion, they had the Rangers.