Jason gazed at the wounded scattered over the fields, the orchard, by the mill and estuary. The Settlers from the dome and its underground annex had all been brought outside, bending over the injured and the dead or huddling together. Some wept. A heavy-duty medbot transported Colin, still unconscious, on its stretcher. Tubes and wires sprouted from him like the weeds he unaccountably loved.
Lindy said, “Jason—”
“I know.” He would have to contaminate the Return with RSA.
He had Carter lift the ship and set it down in a field of broccoli. Jason and Lindy walked beside Colin’s bot. “He’s lucky,” Lindy said. “The side bullet missed his vital organs. The leg injury is actually worse, a comminuted open fracture. When was his spleen removed?”
“He was just a kid,” Jason said. “I don’t really know much about it.” Another life, like everything before the Collapse. He turned to face her. “Thank you for saving him.”
“You don’t think I did it for you, do you?”
“Not for half a second. But thank you anyway.”
“Damn it, Jason, don’t turn humble on me! That was always your most deceptive move!” And then, a moment later, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Before Jason had to answer, Luke trotted up to him. Luke, another superhearer like Colin, another reminder of Before. Colin, Jason, Luke—the three kids who’d been inseparable, who’d had adventures together, who’d pinkie-sworn brotherhood forever. Luke, mentally challenged, had followed Colin to the Settlement, although Jason didn’t know how much Luke actually understood of Colin’s ridiculous Luddite philosophy.
“Colin?” Luke said, his face twisted with anxiety. “Colin?”
Lindy said, “He’ll be okay, Luke. But he has to go to the base. You all do. It’s not safe here.”
“I will go. But not Sarah. She won’t. Not some other people.”
“Christ,” Jason said. Holdouts.
Lindy half turned to look at him; he could see the curve of her cheek filmed with sweat, a strand of hair sticking to it. The sight brought back a hundred inappropriate memories of how she looked after sex. He knew, too, in the way that married, or once-married, people understood their partners’ thought processes, that she was waiting to hear how he would handle those who did not want to leave the dome. Let them stay here and die if more New America’s troops returned here, or manhandle them into the ship?
Of course, the refuseniks could hole up in the dome, sealing themselves in, living off the stored crops, while New America plundered their fields and burned the kelp farm. Maybe they could outlast the enemy, who was not known for patience. But unlike Monterey Base, which used converters to create freshwater from air, the anti-tech Settlement obtained all its water from the river above the falls. If the enemy dammed or poisoned the river, the holdouts would soon run out of water. Also, Jason doubted that they would actually seal themselves into the dome and stay there. The moment they couldn’t actually see an enemy soldier, they’d go outside because going outside was the entire point of their existence. “Live free on the Earth.” And then New America would shoot more of them and maybe take the dome again.
Jason said into his mic, “Goldman, Kowalski, Hillson—everyone goes onto the Return, by force if necessary. Hillson, radio Major Duncan to prepare for about two hundred temporary refugees.” He flicked off the mic and, prepared for battle, turned to Lindy.
She said, “You did the right thing,” and turned toward the next wounded Settler, leaving Jason staring after her.
Damn it, Lindy, you can still surprise me.
Luke suddenly cried out. He heard it first—the Superhearers always heard everything first—and dropped to the ground. Jason seized Lindy, threw her down, and hurled himself on top of her. A second later the explosion shattered the air.
But no flying debris, no smoke, and the ship—the first thing Jason raised his head to see—was intact. The explosion had been inside the dome, contained by it, its rounded top no longer clear but darkened with ash. Smoke drifted out the open airlock.
J Squad had sprinted to defensive position, but there was no one to defend against, no one to attack. New America had set off a delayed-action bomb—probably more than one—inside the dome, timed to allow them to murder and loot. Jason knew without checking that nothing would be left except the indestructible alien-energy walls that divided the dome into quadrants. Plants, seeds, tools, living quarters, hand looms, candles and homemade soap and carved wooden bowls and every other seventeenth-century contrivance—all destroyed. Anyone returning here to live would have to start completely over, from nothing. Still—Colin was capable of that.
He stood. Lindy scrambled to her feet beside him, putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Her green eyes were wide.
Jason said grimly, “At the base, the Settlers will all have to accept military rule.”
“Yes,” she said, and he was surprised to feel her fingers brush his hand before she ran toward the FiVee.
CHAPTER 8
Marianne sat with Ryan beside Colin’s bedside. Colin, freshly out of OR and still sedated, slept deeply in one of the tiny, windowless rooms in Lab Dome that had actually been intended to be part of the infirmary. Less severely wounded people were jammed into a makeshift ward nearby. Because every single Settler was contaminated with RSA, they had had to be brought in batches through decon, even the dangerously wounded.
Marianne and Ryan shared a wooden bench, dragged into Colin’s room from the Army mess. Luke lay curled asleep on the floor, his huge body taking up most of the floor space. He’d refused to leave Colin.
To Marianne, the entire scene felt unreal. Ryan was now only three years younger than she was, and looked ten years older. His right hand shook with Parkinson’s. After he’d asked about Noah and his family on World, Ryan fell silent. He’d always been a quiet, even secretive, person, but as he gazed at his younger son without speaking, his left hand rested on Marianne’s and she was comforted by its veiny, callused touch.
She said, “Lindy says that Colin will be all right.”
Ryan nodded.
If Marianne wanted information from him, she was going to have to pry it out. “What went wrong between her and Jason?”
“I didn’t ask, Mom.”
“But you know.”
Long silence. Then merely, “Jason and Colin are very different people.”
She wanted to say Duh. She did not. Was “duh” even understood slang anymore? She said instead, “When did Jason grow such a turtleplate?”
“A what?”
“A hard shell. Colin was always a gentle kid, but Jason wasn’t always this hard.”
Another long silence. When Ryan did speak, it clearly cost him pain. “You don’t know what the Collapse was like, Mom. People dying, dead in just a few hours, nearly everyone. The cities were full of stinking corpses, industry gone overnight, some places with just a handful of survivors in an entire town. People reacted in different ways. They gave up, or started fighting each other, or went crazy, or started organizing what was left. Jason was already a major in the Army. He took control of Monterey Base, which had been under a dome less than one year. Everybody above him in the chain of command was dead. He sealed the base and used copters to bring in scientists from all over California, either before they were infected or after they survived, along with any surviving families. He sent soldiers in esuits to get whatever additional equipment the scientists asked for, plus more supplies and weapons and I don’t know what all. He moved fast and efficiently, and he made enemies doing it because he could not take in everyone, and because some people wanted to mourn instead of moving on. He did what he had to, and none of us might be here at all if it weren’t for him.”