If Tomorrow Comes

CHAPTER 11

Traveling at night was thrilling. It would have been better, of course, if he had night-vision goggles like the Rangers and if he didn’t have his mother with him, but it was still thrilling. Clouds obscured the moons but Austin carried a flashlight. Bringing his mother now was necessary because there might not be another chance to get away like this. Austin had actually slipped right out the unguarded north door, the one in the clinic kitchen, when everybody rushed outside to see the bomb and the Rangers had been too busy to keep people penned up. Austin was proud of his ability to elude them.

He was proud, too, of all the rest of his plans. He’d hidden in a dark orchard until everyone was asleep. Then he’d gone into his lahk, collected all the things for the journey, and left a note before waking his mother. “I’m going to take you to a safe place,” he’d whispered to her, pleased with how mature that sounded. Kayla had been confused at first, but she was in one of her quiet periods, and didn’t that piece of luck prove that he was doing the right thing? He was going to protect her. That’s what men did on Terra. Ranger Kandiss had said so, where lahks were different than here. This appealed to Austin, who wanted things different because he was.

“You all right, Mom?” he said in English.

She nodded, eyes on the ground. They were trudging through a field of sleeping skaleth¡, shadows against a line of trees. Kayla had said little. Austin knew the signs; soon his mother would start crying for no reason. He would be patient with her this time. Mature. He wasn’t a child anymore.

“Here, drink some water,” he said, offering her the canteen. “We still have a long way to go to safety.”

“Their next assault,” Owen said, “will be better planned. Only we’re not going to let them make another assault.”

Dawn stained the sky. Leo had had two hours sleep in the last twenty-eight. All through the night, the squad had maintained stepped-up surveillance. The refugee camp seethed with activity but no one stepped into the perimeter, and as far as Leo could tell, the activity was more about mourning than fighting.

Still, Owen was right. The camp held enough angry males of fighting age to mount another assault, and added to the desperation and boredom of every refugee camp that had ever existed would now be anger over the bomber that Leo had shot.

Not that the fucker hadn’t deserved it. If he’d been better at making bombs, Isabelle would be dead.

Still… these were people not used to fighting, pretty terrible at it, and told not to fight by their leader, the really old lady. Something didn’t quite add up here, but now wasn’t the time to figure it out.

Owen said, “We’re going into the camp for a search and seizure. All weapons, anything that looks like an IED or the makings for an IED. Standard search-and-seizure procedures.”

Leo blinked. There were four of them and at least five hundred people in the camp, whole lahks, with more arriving every day. He risked a sideways glance at Zoe. She shifted forward onto the balls of her feet, eager. This was what Rangers trained for; the Seventy-Fifth was basically a direct-action raid force.

He said, “Sir, permission to ask questions.”

“Go ahead, Brodie.”

“Are we also looking for the missing kid, Austin Rhinehart, or the vaccines he stole?”

“No. Rhinehart isn’t part of our protectee group. If you find him, you can report his whereabouts to Dr. Bourgiba. But if Rhinehart is armed and he attacks, treat him like any other insurgent.”

The kid was thirteen. But again, Owen was right. In Brazil, rebels had used thirteen-year-olds as suicide bombers.

They received the rest of Owen’s OPORD, did the precombat inspection, and moved into the camp as the sun rose orange over the horizon.

Leo worked with Kandiss. They entered each tent, herded the males outside under Kandiss’s guard and the women, kids, and old men into a corner. Leo tore apart the tents’ interiors, which took about two minutes because there wasn’t much in any of them: sleeping mats too thin to hide weapons, cooking pots and dishes, food supplies in tightly woven baskets, clothing. A few books, toys, musical instruments. A radio, always. These people traveled light.

The women glared at him or cowered, and some of the youngest kids cried. Leo knew how he must look to them in his armor and helmet and weapons. In Brazil, he’d sometimes given candy to kids in the villages. Not here.

One little girl, bolder than the adults in her tent, stepped forward and shyly touched his boot.

No weapons or IED makings in the first eight tents. The camp was in chaos but it was a pretty controlled chaos—no resistance, no attacks. People stood where they were told and returned inside tents when the ends of rifles were waved in that direction. But Leo knew it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t.

When he emerged from the ninth tent, having found nothing, a group of Kindred rushed toward him. Kandiss turned from the men he had herded together. One of the rushers raised a pipe gun. At this range one of those could kill him, depending on what the fuck they’d devised for ammo. Leo shot him. The others dropped their weapons and raised their hands. From the corner of his eye, Leo caught movement. From another direction, an insurgent raised a pipe gun aimed at Kandiss. Before Leo could drop him, the man flew backward in a spray of…. piss?

No. Water. A group of three Kindred wielded a hose that shot out yellow water. The hoses were used to bring drinking, cooking, and bathing water to the camp from a pond, but Leo hadn’t realized they could deliver such force. The man on the ground writhed and screamed…. too much screaming. He clawed at his eyes. The water had some yellowish chemical in it.

The water-cannon-wielding men, Leo now realized, had some sort of badge sewn onto the front of their dresses. Cops?

Two of them rushed forward, yanked the blinded man to his feet, and cuffed him behind his back. The third turned off the hose and, incredibly, said to Leo in English, “I greet you, Ranger.”

“I greet you. You police?”

But this was beyond the Kindred’s English. He turned to the attackers, who had dropped their weapons, and began yelling at them. Zoe and Own jogged up. Owen said, “Report!”

Leo explained while Zoe and Kandiss covered them. Owen, expressionless, said, “Okay. Berman, take these insurgents into custody and tie them to those trees over there. Kandiss and Brodie, finish search and seizure.”

They did. Owen walked to the compound, which again had civilians pouring out of it in response to the shooting, wearing nightclothes. To Leo these looked indistinguishable from daytime dresses. Owen began arguing with Dr. Jenner, Dr. Patel, and two of the Kindred scientists.

In the shooter’s tent, they found sixteen more pipe guns and some bomb-making supplies. Weapons manufacturing on Kindred was stepping up fast. But no other tent held weapons and no one opposed their searches. Kindred glared at Leo resentfully.

As the squad left the camp, men took away the corpses of the two men, bearing them on their shoulders, their faces twisted with grief.

Leo took roof duty. He watched the camp. He swept his weapon three-sixty to make sure nothing crept up from behind. He sweated inside his heavy kit as the orange sun rose in the alien sky, above the sweet-smelling dark leaves of gardens and groves and fields. And he thought about what he had seen when the civilians flowed from the compound: Isabelle Rhinehart in the circle of Salah Bourgiba’s arm, her pale hair loose across his shoulder, her lips open as she talked to him, his eyes gazing down at her with intensity and possession.

Salah wasn’t sure how it happened. Isabelle was upset over Austin’s theft of the vaccines, yes. She had stood mere feet away from the Kindred that Leo Brodie had shot, and it was entirely possible she could have been shot herself. The Mother of Mothers was dying. Bombers and shooters had appeared where none had been before. The world was ending, except for that portion of it that could be saved by synth-vac. All that was true. It was a wonder that anyone remained sane.

True, too, that Salah had seen before the confused and sometimes startling reactions of people involved with so much death. Some froze. Some withdrew. Some numbed all feeling. Some became manic, some furious. Some turned to alcohol or drugs or, yes, sex.

He wanted to think it was more than that with him and Isabelle.

They’d come back from the camp, his arm around her, even though she didn’t seem to need support. He wasn’t sure what she needed until they walked down the covered passageway to the clinic and one of them—which? He wasn’t sure—turned to the other. The kiss was brief, sweet, but not long; other voices rounded the corner from Big Lab.

Then they were in Salah’s small room, on his sleeping mat, her brief wrap coming off more easily than his Terran pants, shoes, shirt. Even in the windowless room, she was lovely, a faint strip of illumination from alongside and under the hastily built door striping her body with light. She had a tattoo on her arm—a rose? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

He filled himself with the weight of her, the smell of her, the juiciness of her until nothing else mattered.

When they were finished, breathing quietly beside each other, she wanted to talk, but not about Kindred. About anything, it seemed, except Kindred.

“Where did you grow up?”

“Boston. You?”

“New Jersey. I wouldn’t have gone to have my mitochondria tested in New York if it was any farther away. You know, when the Kindred were looking for those with the same haplogroup? All of us that came here are L-31. Their group.”

Of course he knew that. All of Earth knew that. He said only, “But all of Kindred is not one lahk.”

“No.” She shifted on the pallet, pulling her leg slightly away from his. He regretted that. She said, “Are you L-31?”

“No. The US government wasn’t as fussy as the Kindred.”

“How old are you?”

For a moment he resented what felt like an interrogation, but only for a moment. This was Isabelle, more direct than anyone else in what had been his social circle. “Forty-five. You?”

“Thirty-three. I’ve heard you say ‘Inch Allie’—are you Muslim?”

“‘Insha’Allah.’ There—I get to correct your pronunciation for a change.”

She laughed but wasn’t deterred from questioning. Salah had the impression that nothing deterred her. “Are you Muslim?”

“No, not now. I was raised in a lukewarm version of Islam, but my family’s real gods were correct behavior and achievement.”

“I see.”

She didn’t; the last thing Isabelle would ever worship was the kind of drifting along preset “right” paths that had characterized Salah’s life.

“Are you—”

“My turn, Isabelle. Tell me about you. Your history.”

She didn’t hesitate. “It was bad. Kayla and I had an abusive stepfather. We left home as soon as we could and lived pretty rough. I did a term in prison, for grand theft auto and other things—nothing violent. Kayla tried to escape by getting married at seventeen—that didn’t work out but at least she got Austin out of it. I was looking around for some way to change both our lives when the Kindred landed. This chance came and I took it.”

I took it, not we. Isabelle decided for Kayla, and probably always had.

She said, as if she knew what he’d been thinking, “She’s my sister. I’m responsible for her, before anyone else, because she’s really just a child. You don’t have children, do you, Salah?”

“No.”

“Were you ever married?”

She had been so open, so honest. And they would never leave Kindred. Possibly he would die here, soon. All at once, for the first time, he wanted someone to know the truth about him. To know him. Or maybe he just wanted to make some definite decision for once.

He said, “Here is a fable. A very young couple marries. They don’t know each other very well but that doesn’t matter because they are so much in love. She’s his only anchor, the only thing he wants. He admires that she is so sure of what she wants: to be a painter and create great beauty. He has to do something and so he drifts into becoming a doctor, a sort of default decision, and it turns out he is very good at it. She, however, does not become an artist. She lacks something—persistence, or talent, or resilience. Something. What she becomes is very unhappy. The world does not understand her, and does not give her what is due her. She begins to drink, which only makes her feel worse.

“She blames him because, after all, he does not feel this bad, and is that fair? It is not. So she does things that make him feel bad, too, like drink even more and sleep around. And that works—now he feels bad, too. But only for a while. After some time, he just works longer and longer hours to get away from her.

“Which, of course, is enraging. She blames him even more—he is neglecting her, which is in fact true. She does the one thing that can still make him feel horrible. She leaves him.

“And that works, too, for a while. He feels worse than he has ever felt in his life. But eventually he realizes that his life is actually better without her. He becomes slightly happier.

“But she does not. All her problems are still there—the failed work, the failed love affairs, the drinking, the empty days. In fact, her days are emptier still, without all the fighting. So she changes her mind and wants to come back to him.

“He says no.

“She pleads, cries, begs. He still refuses. She is stunned, panicked, and furious. Really furious. She wants to punish him for making her feel like this. She also wants to escape what her life has become. So she kills herself, leaving him a long letter explaining exactly why.

“And for the third time, this works. Completely. He feels incredibly bad, consumed with guilt. Because she is right—this is in part his fault. He, who helps others so effortlessly, has refused to help her, to recognize her despair, to do something, anything, for her. She, the only free choice he has ever made in his life, has won their catastrophic battle with each other.

“There is only one way he can cope with this. Well, two ways. He works more and more. And he turns off all feeling about his work, his patients, his life. The surprise is that this does indeed give him some peace. Years go by, and he is admired for his coolheadedness and competence and decision making, when in fact he has never made a real decision since he was twenty years old and married his wife. Who ended up dead, while he ended up happy.”

Isabelle was quiet for a long time. Salah waited. Finally she said, “That’s not happiness.”

He didn’t answer. A soft knock came on the door. “Dr. Bourgiba?” Branch’s voice said. “Are you in there?”

“Yes. What do you need?”

“Somebody in Big Lab cut herself on some glass and said to go get you.”

“Coming.”

He fumbled in the gloom for his clothes. Isabelle sat up.

“Salah—after the spore cloud comes and almost nobody is left—”

“Yes?”

“This was sweet, although I certainly didn’t plan to—I just want to say that I like you. But I’m not making any promises, for after.”

“I know that,” he said truthfully. Then, “Neither am I.” A lie.

“Good. So we’ll just see what happens. Is that all right?”

It seemed a staggering way to accept the end of civilization: We’ll just see what happens. But, Salah realized wryly, pretty much his entire life could be summed up in the phrase.

He said, “Of course.”

Insha’Allah.

Marianne woke from restless sleep. Everything creaked as she hoisted herself off her pallet. She was really too old to be sleeping on the floor. Too old, too pampered by American inner springs and memory foam. But on the plus side: They had done it. They had an effective synthetic vaccine, to replace the ones that young criminal Austin had stolen. (Why? Was he going to attempt to sell them?) The synth-vac was a triumph of will and luck over inadequate machinery and deficient knowledge.

On her way to the kitchen for a bowl of the vegetable soup kept perpetually simmering by the two Kindred cooks, she met Branch coming from Big Lab. The Kindred scientists, under Claire’s direction, were hard at work manufacturing the new vaccines. Branch carried a mass of hardware in his arms; Marianne could barely see him around the machinery. When he did cock his head to one side, she was surprised to see him smiling. He’d been heartsick over his lapse in guarding the safe.

“Dr. Jenner! I found out something!”

“Is Austin back? Or Noah?” Noah had been away during last night’s attack from the camp, but surely it would be on the radio and he would know about it by now.

“No, no, this is different. It’s about the Kindred spaceship!”

Marianne blinked. Hadn’t the ship, on which Noah and Isabelle and the others traveled to Kindred ten years ago, been completely destroyed in the Russian attack?

Branch saw her confusion. “The other ship, Dr. Jenner. The colony one.”

Oh. The first ship the Kindred had built, which had become infected with R. sporii that killed everyone aboard. That was how Kindred had first discovered the spore cloud on its relentless path through the galaxy. Direct encounter on the colony planet.

“Isn’t that ship still on a planet somewhere?”

“In orbit around it. The spore contamination came from an EVA. You saw the recording the Kindred brought to Terra, the last one the captain made.”

She had. The recording had been horrific.

“But what I just found out from Llaa^moh¡ is that the ship is still sending signals!”

She was staggered. “You mean people are still alive inside?”

“No, no, everyone’s dead. The ship is sending automatic signals. They were recorded all this time at Kam… Kat… the capital city that the Stremlenie destroyed. The equipment to receive the signals was on the other Kindred ship, and of course that’s gone, too. But I think I might be able to rig up some sort of receiver to record them here!”

“Why? If it’s just ship’s signals, position, and planetary data and such, what good would it do us here?”

Branch seemed to not understand the question. “They’re signals, Dr. Jenner. And I might be able to receive them. I’m only going to work on it when there’s no need for me in Big Lab.”

She saw, then, that he needed to do this, needed to do something to make up for letting the vaccines be stolen. That was how Branch saw it, anyway. For not the first time, Marianne ruminated on how very often brilliant young men invested themselves in pointless problems. But she was fond of Branch, and so she smiled and said, “Go to it. Good luck.”

“The only place to set this all up is the leelee lab, but that’s good because I can keep an eye on the leelees.” He unlocked the door.

The animals, dead and alive, now stank like sewer rats and chittered like crickets. Moving away, Marianne heard Branch cry out. She turned back and ran into the room.

The cage of leelees treated with synth-vac was ominously quiet.

Marianne stared through the glass. Two of the three leelees were dead. The third moved sluggishly, coughing, obviously very sick.

The synth vaccine had provided only partial protection, and not for long. They had failed again.

Austin and Kayla arrived at the cave entrance at midmorning. Why was his mother so slow? She wasn’t that old, maybe the same age as Dr. Patel. But at one point in the night she just lay down and slept on a patch of thick grass, not even telling Austin she was going to do it. Just lay down and closed her eyes. The rest of the time she trudged along, eyes down, like she didn’t even care that Austin was rescuing her from the collapse of civilization. Didn’t even care!

All his life, Austin had known there was something wrong with his mother. He never knew, one tenday to the next, whether she would be laughing and talking fast and thinking up adventures, or staying in bed and crying. He learned to take his requests and problems to Isabelle or Noah. But Kayla was still his mother, and she and Isabelle were the only members of his lahk—Graa^lok always pointed this out when they had a fight—who should really be in it, by blood. Isabelle said that Kayla couldn’t help her strange behavior; the problem was genetic and there was no medicine for it on World because Worlders didn’t get this disease.

Yet another reason to let civilization collapse without Austin and Kayla! World would be sorry when it lay in smoking ruins and they were safe in Haven.

If only she would walk faster.

Eventually, they reached the cave. “Mom, I’m going to go in first. Then when the doors inside are open, I’ll come back out for you.” He had to do it that way; if he went first, she would never get the bushes arranged right to hide the entrance. Noah knew where the cave was, but Tony didn’t know that Noah knew, and Austin didn’t want Graa^lok arriving from his lahk’s illathil and tattling about badly placed bushes. Austin and Graa^lok weren’t getting along so well these days. Graa^lok’s fault—he always thought he was so damn smart.

Austin crawled along the tunnel and rang the bell. A few moments later Beyon-kal’s face appeared at the grill, looking annoyed. “Austin? What are you doing here?”

“I got away,” Austin said. “We did. In the confusion after the bomb.”

He expected Beyon-kal to say breathlessly, “What bomb?” but was disappointed. Beyon-kal said, “It was on the radio.”

“Me being gone was on the radio?”

“No, of course not. The attack on the compound was. Do they have a vaccine yet?”

“No. How did you understand… is Graa^lok here already?”

“Yes. What are you doing here?”

This wasn’t the welcome Austin had hoped for. “Let me see Tony.”

“I’ll decide if you see Tony or not. For the third time, why did you come?”

“I’m here for good. I brought my mother. This was our only chance to escape while—”

“You brought Kayla? Now?”

“I just told you, Beyon-kal, we might not get another chance to escape! The Rangers aren’t letting people in or out of the compound!” This was not strictly true; only the Terran scientists weren’t allowed to leave, but Beyon-kal didn’t know that.

Beyon-kal said flatly, “We can’t have you here. Your absence—and Kayla’s—will attract attention.”

“Graa^lok is here!” Austin said, hating that he sounded like a little kid.

“Graylock’s lahk is not researching a vaccine, surrounded by a refugee camp, or watched by radio reporters from around the entire continent. Yours is.”

Reporters? Austin hadn’t known that. It made him feel kind of important, which restored some of his confidence.

“Unlock the grill. I have to see Tony. I have important information.”

“Tell it to me.”

“No.” When had he ever before defied Beyon-kal? Never. But now was different.

Beyon-kal scowled. Austin stared him right in the eyes, no blinking. Beyon-kal unlocked the grill.

“I’m going to get my mother,” Austin said. And then, as Beyon-kal retreated along the tunnel, “Tony will really want to hear my information!”

Just as soon as he invented it.

He got Kayla through the crawl tunnel, going ahead of her to help her down to the big tunnel. She fell heavily but wasn’t hurt. She still had not said a word. Austin went back to bring in his pack and rearrange the bushes. When he returned, Kayla was right where he’d left her, staring at the rock floor, tears falling from her eyes.

“It’s okay, Mom.” He hugged her briefly—he was too old to hug his mother but this was different—and led her through the open metal door to Haven. Tony waited, looking furious. Graa^lok stood behind him.

“Austin, what the fuck—”

“She left a note,” Austin said. “I wrote it. Nobody will miss her or come looking for us. It’s only two more weeks until the cloud. We’re staying.”

“You’re not.”

“She is,” Austin said. It came out higher and squeakier than he intended, and he tried again. “My mother is staying. She won’t be any trouble.”

Kayla sobbed softly. Austin’s heart swelled with pity, with irritation, with fear, with love. He had to save her!

His words came out in a desperate rush. “Listen! I have information you want! I’m friends with some of the kids in the refugee camp”—Graa^lok shifted his weight but said nothing, which was a good thing or Austin would have slugged him—“and they told me when the next assault on the compound will be!”

“So?” Tony said.

“So that’s your only chance to get Claire—Dr. Patel—out of the compound and into Haven. You’re going to need a doctor, you said so yourself, and she knows how to doctor Terrans, a lot better than any World doctor would. When an attack on the compound comes, everything is really confused. Shooting—Leo Brodie shot three Worlders so far, you probably know that from the radio. And a bomb! The confusion is how I got away. Dr. Patel and I can escape during the next attack. I can bring her here.”

Tony said, “She won’t want to come. What are you going to do—drag her here?”

“No, she does want to come! That’s the information I was coming to bring you. I heard her say to… to Dr. Jenner that she’s afraid of what will happen when everybody in the camp rushes the compound to get vaccines.”

“You said they don’t have vaccines yet.”

“But they will. Or at least they might. She’s afraid of the collapse of civilization.” There—that should make Tony believe, because it was his own phrase. For good measure, he added, “She’s really little, you know.”

Tony said, “So say that I believe you. Dr. Patel wants to come to Haven. You can bring her here. How are you going to do that if you and your mother are ‘here for good’?”

Austin hadn’t thought that far. “Well, I misspoke. My mother is here for good but I’m going back. To bring Dr. Patel.”

Tony looked at Beyon-kal, who rolled his eyes. Finally Tony said, “Okay. Here’s the deal. Kayla can stay. You go, and when the refugee camp assaults the compound, you guide the doctor here. But if you’re followed by Rangers, you don’t get in—no, don’t ask stupid questions, of course Rangers can track you. If you come too soon, like in the next eight days, you don’t get in. I don’t want a Ranger assault on Haven, but after about eight days they’re going to be too busy with the collapse of civilization to chase you. If you come back without Dr. Patel, you don’t get in, and your mother goes out. Got it?”

“What? But you said—”

“It doesn’t matter what I said before. We started Haven before we knew we had Rangers to deal with, didn’t we? Haven is both impregnable and defensible, but we only have so much food before we come out again after everybody’s dead, and we need to keep the supplies for essential personnel.”

Graa^lok blurted out, “But that’s not fair!”

“Yes, it is,” Tony said. “Harsh, but fair. When you’re older—both of you—you’ll understand that survival sometimes means tough choices. You bring me a doctor, you earn your place here.”

Indignation choked Austin so much that he couldn’t speak.

Tony softened. “I’m sorry, kid, but that’s the way it is. Look, I’m sure you’ll bring the doctor. We need her. When you do, you’re in. And you can stay a little while now to get Kayla settled and to rest up. Start by getting her to stop crying, okay? Thank you.”

Leo had perimeter patrol. Everything in the camp was quiet, and it seemed to him there were fewer people. Maybe some had gone back to their lahks, away from any more potential violence. Smart people.

The ones that remained ducked into their tents as soon as they saw Leo, or stood their ground and glared at him, or looked down at their sandals. In Brazil, an American sniper who had already shot three natives would have been screamed at, or had rocks thrown at him, or worse. He didn’t understand these people.

A movement behind some bushes. Leo tensed, turned. But it was two tiny girls playing with a little pile of toys, probably farther from camp than their mothers knew. Both looked up from dark eyes huge in their coppery faces and smiled at him.

“I greet you, halhal^bem,” Leo said in Kindese, hoping he had the word right for their age and status, hoping he hadn’t called them a coffeepot or some damn thing.

They chorused back, without fear, “I greet you, Ranger-mak.”

He couldn’t linger. The little girls could even be bait, a trap, although he hadn’t seen anything suspicious and Kandiss, on roof duty, was tracking him. But as he jogged on, the small incident warmed him, the only good thing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe longer.

On the farthest edge of the camp, at the farthest distance from the tents, two men approached Leo from a grove of trees.

He halted, raised his rifle, said in Kindese, “Stop.”

They did, and raised their hands above their heads. But that didn’t rule out suicide bombs. Leo repeated, “Stop.”

“Yes,” the older of them said, in English. The word had a click on the end of it like so many of their words did, which Isabelle said changed the meaning but Leo didn’t know how. “I greet you, Leo-mak.”

“I greet you,” Leo said, because what the fuck else was he supposed to say? This wasn’t a tea party, but it wasn’t an attack, either. Not yet. And how did they know his name?

The younger man turned his shoulder toward Leo, a sinuous twisting of his tall body, and pointed one finger downward to call attention to the patch sewn there. The same patch that the Kindred who’d turned on the water cannon last night had had sewn onto the front of his dress. The man said in careful, halting English, “I am police.”

“Yes,” Leo said.

“We help you. No more vee^al¡ss.”

It took Leo a moment to get the word: violence.

Was this a trap? Or were these guys offering to be informants? And how did they learn English? He said nothing, waiting to see what they said next.

“Come.”

No way. It smelled like an amateurish ambush. He said, more harshly than he intended, “No.”

The older man smiled sadly.

The younger didn’t seem all that surprised. He said, “We tell you.” Slowly he raised one foot a few inches off the ground in the untrimmed weeds.

Leo tensed, but he let the guy shake his sandal until a piece of paper fell out. The two men nodded and, hands still raised, walked back into the camp. When they’d vanished, Leo picked up the paper, his mind busy. The men had probably been observed from the camp, but it might have looked like Leo stopped them, raised his gun, and spoke to them instead of the other way around—you could spin it that way.

The paper was a map. A big shaded block for the compound, the proportions exact for its two buildings and walkway; Leo had walked the roof enough times to know. The perimeter zone was shaded more lightly, and the tents drawn in curving rows. One tent fairly close to the south door was circled and inside it were drawn pipe guns.

Leo put the paper in his pocket, finished the perimeter patrol, and called Owen.

“An ambush,” Owen said.

“Maybe, sir. But I could check it out.”

“If there’s a suicide bomb in there, then we lose you. Go, but take Berman to cover you and each of you take a Kinnie kid as hostage. Carry them in front of you. I’ll give the fuckers that, they don’t use kids as bait. Not so far, anyway.”

He hated the idea. It was what insurgents had done in Brazil, and children had died. He wanted to say to Owen We don’t do that, it’s not us. But, then, this wasn’t Brazil. The Kindred wouldn’t kill their own kids in order to destroy an enemy holding them; Leo knew that about Kindred, knew it clear down to his bones. Kids shouldn’t even be here in a war zone, but lahks stuck together no matter what. Blood here really was thicker than water. And Leo had just been given an order.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

He radioed Zoe on their private frequency, destroying the last half hour of her allotted sleep, and she cursed him with several inventive combinations of filth he hadn’t heard before. But in three minutes she was beside him in full kit. “This better be worthwhile, Brodie.”

They strode into camp. Two little girls walked by, carefully balancing a bucket of water between them. Leo shook his head. He picked instead a pair of boys whose parents did not seem nearby, and Zoe scowled at him; he’d hear about this bit of male chauvinism later. Leo and Zoe each held a child tightly against their chests with one arm, sidearm in the other. Leo could feel the child’s fear radiating up his arm, like an electric shock.

“Stop! Don’t move!” He said it in Kindese. The two men and one woman inside the tent froze, looking grimmer than stone. The tent held more guns—Leo noticed that each batch they confiscated was more sophisticated than the last—plus small devices and collections of chemicals that he didn’t recognize. Leo and Zoe made them carry it all across the perimeter to the door of the clinic and dump it just inside. Then he let the children go. Zoe stood guard over the three adults, whom no other Kindred had tried to join, against the compound wall. Although what the fuck were they going to do with the insurgents? They couldn’t take prisoners.

Just before Owen arrived, Salah came out of the leelee lab and stared at the pile just inside the south door. “What’s this?”

“Confiscated weapons.”

“And the metal cans?”

“You tell me. Could be bomb-making chemicals. Stay here, Doctor. Lieutenant Lamont might want you to translate.”

Salah stiffened at the tone in Leo’s voice. “I doubt those Kindred will tell you anything useful, not voluntarily.”

The two stared at each other. Leo knew what Salah was thinking: Would you torture a Kindred for information? It was the wrong question. Before interrogation, you needed a place to actually hold prisoners, which they did not have. Nor did they have personnel for interrogation. They were four soldiers and they were getting no help from the civilians here. He turned away in contempt from Salah.

Whom he could not stop picturing holding Isabelle. Kissing Isabelle. Fucking Isabelle.

Irrelevant, Brodie.

He said to the doctor, “Put all this stuff somewhere safe. Now,” and went back outside before Salah could answer.

Kindred informants had led them to this weapons cache. Leo would have to again raise the idea of recruiting and arming trustworthy Kindred to supplement the unit. Christ, weapons could be pouring into every third tent in the camp, carried in with food supplies or any of the other things that kept this the most organized and cleanest refugee camp in the universe. The squad needed help. Leo found Owen.

“No,” Owen said. His cheeks had hollowed and his eyes somehow retreated farther into his head. Or maybe just something in his eyes had retreated, gone so far inside that Leo couldn’t see the Owen he’d known. Sure, Owen wasn’t sleeping much, but none of them were, and anyway Owen had always been able to take more physical punishment and deprivation than any other three Rangers put together. This was different.

“Brodie, don’t be so credulous. Those informants were softening you up. Once they gain access to our weapons and—”

“We wouldn’t have to arm them with our weapons, only—”

“Did I ask for your opinion on ordnance?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. Return to duty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leo was off duty. This was his three hours to sleep. He tried, lying on a pallet in the ready room, but sleep eluded him.

Isabelle. Salah. Isabelle with Salah….

Kindred making their clumsy guns to take by force vaccines that didn’t exist. No, the guns existed for more than vaccines. They think, Isabelle had told him, that all Terrans are the same, and it was Terrans who fired from space and destroyed their cities. Well… but… didn’t Owen think all Kindred were the same? Dangerous enemies. Didn’t Kandiss think so, too, and maybe even Zoe?

Some Kindred were enemies, sure. But if Russia attacked the United States—

Which Leo was never going to see again. They were stuck on Kindred forever. So didn’t it make more sense to try to understand Kindred, to sort them out into dangerous and nondangerous, to think about after the spore cloud because Isabelle had said that some Kindred might have natural immunity and survive…

Leo wasn’t used to this sort of thinking, and he didn’t like it. He hadn’t had these thoughts in Brazil. But, then, he’d known he was going home from Brazil. Thinking about the situation here felt almost as bad as thinking about Isabelle and Salah. But the only other thing he had at the moment to fill his sleep-deprived brain was almost as bad: two tiny girls playing with their toys, smiling up at him from huge dark eyes in their coppery faces, regarding him as an immensely interesting object that threatened them not at all.