When Tony had gone, Claire said, “Working on what?” She didn’t look directly at Austin, hadn’t looked directly at him since they’d arrived.
“What?”
“Tony said Nathan and Graa^lok are working. On what?”
“Equipment.”
“What equipment?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does the equipment do?”
“I don’t know.” She was making him feel stupid. He hated her. He didn’t hate her. He couldn’t stop looking at her ass.
Claire said, “What medicines do you have?”
Glad to know the answer to something, Austin led her to the shelf stockpiled with glass jars and bioplast containers. Claire opened some, sniffed, squinted at the Kindred writing, series of squiggles and dots and lines. “Can you read this?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me what they say.”
He did, feeling important again, until Claire said, “I don’t know what these are in English, or even if English analogs exist. I don’t know what they’re for. I don’t know the conventional doses. You wanted a doctor, but as far as meds go, I will be useless to you without my own case of Terran drugs.”
Importance crumbled. Austin clutched at her hand. “Please don’t tell Tony that! Please!”
For the first time, she turned her head to gaze at him. “Why not?”
“He’ll send me back to get your drugs! To steal them! And Noah and Isabelle will keep me there, they’ll make sure I can’t escape again, and the spore cloud is coming—”
“What do you think is going to happen when the spore cloud comes?”
“The collapse of civilization! Don’t you know? Kindred will die, most but not all, and the survivors will be desperate, because some always survive a plague, and they’ll steal and kill—just like they did in the camp, to get the vaccine! Only this time it will be to get food and wine and women… Tony told me! He told me how it was on Terra when Rome fell and the siege of Leningrad and the way the Indians massacred everybody at Cawnpore, even babies… and Leo told me about the Brazilian food riots! That’s the way it always is with humans and no matter what Lieutenant Lamont thinks, Kindred are all human!”
Austin burst into tears. Immediately he hated himself for it, and then a moment later he didn’t because Claire’s face softened and she put her arms around him.
“Oh, Austin, it isn’t always like that, and maybe especially not on Kindred where you have such different social systems from Leningrad or Cawnpore or… Rome! Why did Tony tell you all that? It wasn’t fair, you’re just a kid. Austin, listen to—”
“I’m not a kid!” And to prove it, he kissed her hard on the mouth and put a hand on her breast. She came up only to his shoulder and her bones felt light as a leelee’s, so he was surprised at the strength with which she pushed him away. Comfort and sympathy were gone from her face as she stalked back to the main cave.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Austin—grow up!”
Dawn brought more rain. Leo came off perimeter patrol around a quiet and nearly empty camp and reported to Owen, who was coming on duty. In the ready room, Leo took off his gear and stowed it in his lockbox, brushed his teeth, and glanced at the pallet he was not going to sleep on. At least, not yet, despite having had only four hours in the last twenty. Some things outranked sleep.
Isabelle waited in the kitchen. She’d made coffee, or what passed for coffee here. Leo searched for the word and found it: “Nakl.”
“Very good.”
“I didn’t know if you’d come, what with… with everything.”
“Teaching you is about the only good thing in my life right now.”
Leo’s heart threatened to burst right down its seam. Even if she only meant that the rest of her life was shitty—and that was what she meant, not that he was some shining star for her—it was still good. He sipped the nakl she handed him, even though he didn’t like it.
Isabelle smiled. There was something wrong with the smile, something a little off, but she didn’t give him time to figure out what it was. “Let’s see how much you remember from last time. Tell me how to close the door.”
He stumbled over the words but got them out.
“Good! Now tell me how to do it if I’m a mother.”
Shit—she was a mother, and that meant different words. Leo found them, his eyes on her face.
“Good! Great!” Big smile—too big. Something was definitely off.
They went through several more phrases of conversation, and then Isabelle moved closer to him. Leo, no neophyte with women, thought: Here it comes. He was a little surprised that Isabelle would try to pull this, but then, the circumstances weren’t the same as some college girl slumming in an on-base bar. He knew what she would ask.
She did.
“Leo,” she said, taking his hand, “I need you to help me.”
“Yeah?”
She kissed him. The press of her lips, soft and full on his, was so intoxicating that for a minute the kitchen, the compound, the planet were blotted out.
“I need you to go after Kayla and Austin for me, because no one else will.”
Gently he pushed her away. “I can’t, Isabelle. You shouldn’t even ask me, and you know that. This isn’t like you. Lamont will go after them when he can, maybe today.”
“No, he won’t.” She was Isabelle again, straightforward and steely. He liked her better this way, although he understood why she’d tried to fuck him over. Family. Bu^ka^tel.
“Listen to me, Leo. Lamont isn’t thinking straight. He’s getting paranoid. Salah says he’s on some drug—popbite.”
“He is.”
“You knew?”
“Fuck, Isabelle, we all use it when we have to. Maybe it didn’t exist when you left Terra, but in the last decade… We all use it if we have to.” He pushed away the memory of Brazil. “But listen, Austin and your sister are okay. Even Dr. Patel will be. So what if they ride out the spore cloud in some crazy survivalist bunker? Do you really think that those two Terrans will harm them? Tony and what’s-his-name?”
“Who knows what they’ll do!”
“The truth, Isabelle. Do you think they’ll harm Austin or Kayla?”
Long silence. Then she said, “No.”
“Then it can wait. After the cloud hits and we see what we’re up against with survivors and vaccinated kids and all, then we can go convince Austin to come out. Or maybe they’ll just leave the cave voluntarily. Why are they in there in the first place? They’ll all be immune to spore disease.”
“Probably, yes. But any Kindred they have with them won’t be. If they have some survivalist idea of restarting civilization, they’ll have women with them. Claire Patel is too old.”
“So how—”
Isabelle said, “Austin’s friend Graa^lok has sisters. Young, pretty…”
“Well, there you go. And Austin’s not a stupid kid. He makes himself useful, and he keeps an eye on what’s around him. Sure, he’s a little wet behind the ears, but he’s sharp. He got his mother out there by fooling us all, didn’t he? Dr. Patel, too. Those guys will want Austin around. He even finds them new stuff that might be useful, like that alien junk he told me about buried in the sand, and he can also translate anything that—”
Isabelle took a step backward. “What did you just say?”
Leo blinked. “I said Austin can translate any—”
“Before that!”
He had to make an effort to remember. “Austin told me he found some old piece of junk buried in the sand way back in a cave and… let me think… yeah, he said it was alien and wasn’t rusty. At all. Isabelle—what is it?”