He started walking. Ten miles would tax him, but he could do it. He hoped. He’d never been much of an athlete, and weeks of indoor activity at the compound hadn’t helped. He could have exercised like the Rangers did, but he hadn’t.
The backpack grew heavy. He felt exposed in these mostly treeless fields, empty except for grazing animals. One kind pulled carts, he knew that much. The other kind were splashed with blotches of different colored paint in different parts of their anatomy, maybe a more humane version of cattle branding. Their coarse hair was long and uneven—was this an animal that was sheared regularly for cloth but hadn’t been during this crisis? Salah had no idea. There was so much he didn’t know about this planet. And, he realized for the first time, so much he didn’t like. The light, the slow pace of lahk life, the deliberate and stubborn avoidance of tech… Kindred was admirable, far more admirable than Terra socially, environmentally, economically. The culture was everything that Salah had always said he believed in. But—
He wanted to go home, to Earth. He wanted it as much as Lamont did, although for completely different reasons. He did not belong here, and never would. From temperament or age or background, he did not have the adaptability of, say, Claire. Or of Brodie.
“You’re off course,” a voice said behind him, “and you’re a terrible traveler.”
Isabelle. Salah had not even heard her approach.
She said, “I could have been anyone sneaking up on you.”
“But you’re not,” he said, irritated because she was right. “Go back, Isabelle.”
“You’re going to Tony’s hideout and you’re off course.”
“I’m following the course Kandiss gave me.”
“Has Kandiss ever been there? Neither have I, but I’ve hiked in those mountains before. You need to go farther that way.” She pointed.
“Thank you. Now go back.”
“Why?”
“This could be really dangerous, Isabelle. Lamont is paranoid, impaired by too much popbite use, and too trigger-happy. Please go back.”
She said flatly, “You’re protecting me.”
“I’m trying to.”
“Does it occur to you, Salah, that maybe I don’t need protecting? That I don’t want to be protected? I’m a mother.”
“You’re not a soldier.”
“Neither are you. But I know this world better than you do, and I know soldiers better than you do, too.”
“That’s all true. But—”
“But I’m a woman. And you’re a Terran male, who thinks women are to be shielded from danger even when they’re like Zoe Berman. Or me. At least Leo Brodie forbade me to go with him because a civilian might interfere with his mission, not because I need protecting from reality.”
Brodie had gone to the mountains, too? Salah hadn’t known that. He didn’t like it.
“Isabelle—”
She walked ahead of him, veering to the east. She said nothing more but Salah heard the loud sound anyway: another door closing between them.
After another mile of tense silence, during which the mountains seemed no closer and Salah felt himself flagging, Isabelle said, “Look. Straight ahead.”
Salah strained his gaze. The sun was low now, dusk gathering on the dark-purple landscape. A figure staggered toward them, fell, got up and went on. It carried something bulky and heavy. Salah couldn’t judge size from this perspective… Austin?
“Zoe,” Isabelle said and sprinted forward.
By the time he caught up, Isabelle crouched beside Zoe Berman, who lay on the ground, scowling up at both of them. Salah bent and said, “Where are you injured?”
Isabelle said, “Austin? Leo?”
“Both shot,” Zoe said. “Both alive when I left but bad off. Last night. Did what I could.”
“Shot? By Tony Schrupp?”
“No,” Zoe said, and passed out.
Salah examined her shoulder, gently palpated her belly. Spleen, bleeding into the abdominal cavity. It was amazing that she’d made it this far. These Rangers were almost another species.
Wryly, he realized what he’d just thought.
Beside Zoe stood a pyramidal object of gray, untarnished metal. The call-back device. This alien object might both aid Kindred in the spore plague and—which Salah suddenly hungered for as if he’d been starving—take Salah home.
Isabelle took Zoe’s goggles off her helmet, put them on, and fiddled with them, looking like some caricature of an alien insect. She stared into the distance. “Someone’s coming. A group of people.” And then, “Oh my God!”
She took off running.
They were carrying him carefully, on a simple litter made of cloth strung between two poles. Every time the litter jarred, it hurt. Leo bit down on his tongue and said nothing.
Lu^kaj^ho murmured something incomprehensible in Kindred. Isabelle’s language lessons had deserted Leo; he said back the only thing he could remember: “I greet you, Lu^kaj^ho.” Lu^kaj^ho smiled.
Once they reached the flatter meadow, it was better. Less jolting. The three Kindred cops—that was how Leo still thought of them—made their slow way south. The sun was lowering behind the mountains. A moon, almost but not quite full, shone above him. The procession passed something that smelled warm and spicy. Leo closed his eyes. If he lived, he would like some of that spicy smell around him. Hell, if he died he’d like it around him, too.
“Leo.”
His eyes flew open and she was there, bending over the litter. Leo scowled. “I told you not to come.”
Isabelle ignored this. “I greet you, Leo.” She touched his hand gently, as if the injury were there.
“Well, I goddamn greet you too, Isabelle, but I told you to stay put. Kandiss? Did you shoot him?”
“Of course I didn’t shoot him.” She gave a strangled little laugh, almost a sob. “I can come and go.”
But Bourgiba couldn’t, not without Kandiss’s permission, and now the litter was lowered to the ground and the doctor was removing the bandages Zoe had wound around Leo. Leo pressed his teeth together so hard they could have broken rocks. He wasn’t going to wince in front of Salah Bourgiba.
Bourgiba said, “The bullet’s still in there.”
News to Leo. He kept his eyes on Isabelle.
“I’m going to give you something for pain,” Bourgiba said. “At the clinic, I can operate. Can you swallow?”
“Yeah.” Of course he could swallow—Zoe hadn’t shot his throat. Was this doctor competent?
Of course he is, idiot. Keep your eyes on Isabelle.
She gave him the pill with water from her canteen, raising his head so he could drink. He groped for her hand and kept it. Take that, Doctor.
The pain pill must have been more than that. The only words he managed to say before he slid into blackness were, “Austin? Zoe?”
But nobody heard him. Isabelle jabbered in Kindred to Lu^kaj^ho and the other two cops. Then her hand slid out of his, or his from hers, and the world went away.
Marianne sat beside Branch and silently counted losses and gains. Branch, cross-legged on a pallet with her laptop and the call-back pyramid on the floor beside him, wouldn’t have heard if she’d spoken aloud. Probably he wouldn’t have heard Gabriel’s trumpet. His thin face scrunched with concentration.
Loss #1: Leo Brodie had been shot, his liver nicked by a bullet that had apparently done other damage as well, and Zoe Berman had a ruptured spleen. Salah, despite a single quiet comment that he was not a surgeon, had operated on both, with Isabelle and Marianne as untrained nurses. Both Rangers would recover but would need care. From whom?