Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 17

Jane dreamed.

A voice came to her speaking her own language, sounding as if from a great distance and yet filling the inside of her head, a voice calm and measured as oceans: “You do not choose your enemies; they choose you.”

I want no enemies! Jane tried to cry out, but her own voice was muffled, wrapped in thick folds of flesh that clogged her throat.

A closer voice, startled, said, “She tried to say something!”

“No, she…”

She what? Was Jane “she”? Who was she?

Then voices and identity both disappeared, sinking into velvet blackness, into even deeper sleep.

Zack, bleary, looked up from his lab bench, where it seemed to him he’d spent days, weeks, possibly years. Claire Patel stood in the doorway. From her face, whatever news she was bringing him wasn’t good.

“Zack, three more v-comas. Do you want to test them for the allele?”

“No. They’ll have it.” But three more comatose people affected the allele frequency rate. “How many does that make, total?”

“Thirty. Plus Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡.”

Thirty-two out of about seven hundred people: roughly 4.5 percent. “Who are the new v-comas?”

“A kitchen worker, a soldier, and a lab tech from Dr. Sullivan’s team.”

The lab tech was faintly surprising: Lab personnel had been exposed earlier to the star-farers than had the Settlers, yet this tech was just now lapsing into v-comas. But, then, there were always variations in innate resistance.

He focused more sharply on Claire. He didn’t know her well; his insane hours working meant he’d barely interacted with anyone from World except Marianne. Claire was small, pretty, drooping with fatigue even though it was only around noon—wasn’t it? He’d lost track of time. He said, “Aren’t you supposed to have an Army bodyguard with you? Where is he?”

“He’s the soldier who just went comatose.” She took a step forward, hesitated, raised a hand and let it drop, and then it all burst out of her. “I can’t do anything for them. Nothing. The nurses keep them clean and turned and hydrated. But we’re running out of nutrient solution, and then what? And there is nothing I can do for the v-comas. I can’t do anything for anybody else, either. The soldier brought in from the raid was dead, Sugiyama died twenty minutes ago, and the children won’t let anyone near them.”

“A raid? What children? Wait… Frank Sugiyama the physicist?”

“You didn’t know that Colonel Jenner attacked Sierra Depot this morning?”

“No! I’ve been—”

“The Army destroyed those fighter jets that New America’s been strafing us with, plus everything else at the depot, or at least that’s what Colin Jenner said. He was there. They brought back Sugiyama and his children, but Sugiyama had been tortured and his kids are traumatized beyond belief.”

Colin Jenner? A raid? Why didn’t Zack ever know what was going on?

Tears, silent and the more terrible for being silent, slid down Claire’s cheeks. She swiped them away. “Sorry. I just feel so… helpless.”

“We all do.”

Except, apparently, Jenner. Zack tried to catch up to events. “Then New America won’t be attacking the base anymore?”

“Well, not from Sierra Depot, anyway. Zack—are you any closer to finding out anything useful about these comas?”

“No. We—”

A newly recruited nurse, very young, dashed into the lab. “Doctor! They need you now! The alien—the boy—”

“Belok^?” Claire said sharply.

“Yes! A few minutes ago, nobody was there except his sister, but then I—”

“What is it, Josie? Is Belok^ dead?”

“No. He woke up.”

A flock of birds nested on bushes just outside the new signal station. The station had been hastily dug by a bore-bot into the side of a sloping ravine. Jason, accompanied by Captain Goldman, tried not to slip on the muddy hillside on the way to the camouflaged entrance. Rain sparkled on tall weeds; at the bottom of the ravine a brook murmured. He paused briefly to scowl at the birds.

They were sparrows. Until RSA, Jason could not have told a sparrow from a goldfinch, but everyone had learned about sparrows. Native to Eurasia, the small, plump, gray-brown house sparrows were now found on every continent except Antarctica. Some idiot had introduced them into the United States in 1852. They weighed about an ounce, liked to bathe in dust, hopped rather than walked on the ground, ate seeds and insects. House sparrows were mostly monogamous, although adultery occurred often. They laid two to seven clutches of eggs every year. They would build their domed nests almost anywhere—in bushes, under eaves, in cacti, on top of streetlights for the warmth. They liked to be near groups of humans.

This group was settling down to roost. They chirruped to each other: orphilip orphilip orphilip. A few tucked their heads under their wings, preparing to sleep. An adorable illustration from a children’s book, deadly with unseen plague. Jason restrained himself from pulling out his sidearm and shooting them.

Inside, this version of the signal station was small and crude, the worst one Jason had seen yet. Two muddy pallets on the floor, rations in plastic bins, three buckets of water, and the sophisticated console connected to the even more sophisticated equipment hidden somewhere in the forest outside.

Li and DeFord saluted.

“As you were. Lieutenant, Specialist, you are both commended for carrying out your part of Operation Flamingo perfectly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I need a link to HQ.”

“Yes, sir,” DeFord said, grimacing. He knew—they both knew—what was coming. Jason had chosen DeFord carefully, knowing that he needed someone here that he could trust as much as Li. A member of J Squad, DeFord was one of those men who make unlikely but excellent soldiers: short, weakly muscled, able to think outside of Army boxes, bright as hell, and fiercely loyal to Jason, who had saved his life during the Collapse.

When he had the comm link to General Strople, he stepped back and Jason seated himself at the console. “Sir, Colonel Jason Jenner reporting a successful raid on Sierra Depot.”

“Proceed.”

There was no way to tell how much Strople already knew. The radar at Fort Hood would have tracked the movements of the Return. But unless there were additional comsats that Jason didn’t know about, something he would once have thought impossible but now was not so sure of, Strople didn’t know the rest of it.

“As per your orders, sir, I made the decision to attack Sierra Depot based on my knowledge of the situation. The enemy was using the depot as a base for their newly recovered, or imported, F-35s and armored vehicles. A concerted attack on Monterey Base from both air and land led to the start of a siege. We destroyed the force surrounding the base, but our supplies are depleted and New America could have mounted a second siege from the depot. More of my troops are lapsing into comatose states, from which medical personnel can’t extract them. My intel, as per my prior report, was that Dr. Sugiyama was being held at the depot. That raised the possibility of his cooperation with the enemy in accessing the quantum computer without its self-destructing. For all these reasons, I determined on the attack, which was carried out at oh-six hours this morning. The depot has been destroyed. An airborne unit extracted Dr. Sugiyama, who has since died of injuries inflicted by torture. Also extracted were his two young children. Sugiyama was not conscious at the time of extraction and has provided no useful intel.”

“What is the situation of the quantum computer? Is it intact?”

“Unknown, sir.”

“So you don’t know if it can still launch the nukes.”

“No, sir.”

“How did you destroy the force surrounding Monterey base?”

“With bombs dropped from the spaceship Return.”

“And how did you destroy everything at Sierra Depot, possibly including the quantum machinery?”

Jason closed his eyes, opened them again. Here it came. “The same way, sir.”

“You told me in a previous report that the spaceship was not capable of flying laterally more than a hundred miles if it was not in high orbit.”

“I did, sir.”

“Are you telling me, Colonel, that you deliberately lied to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

The voice fifteen hundred miles away remained calm, but Jason heard in it not only the anger he expected, but something like triumph. “Repeat that, Colonel.”

“I falsified information supplied to Headquarters.”

“Why?”

Because I don’t trust you, you bastard. Something is going on at Fort Hood that looks a lot like a military coup, with you as the leader of a South American–style junta.

“The Return is a diplomatic vessel, sir. It does not belong to us, and its use is predicated on the consent of the leader of the World expedition, Dr. Ka^graa. Turning it over to Fort Hood would have violated international law.”

“You do not get to make that decision, Colonel. Was your second in command, Major Duncan, a part of these acts?”

“No, sir.”

“Was she aware of the raid before it was carried out?”

“No, sir.” Another lie.

“You are hereby relieved of your command, Colonel Jenner, and are under arrest for actions that may have aided and abetted the enemy.”

A stretch to get treason out of falsifying information, but Strople could make it stick. After all, there was no one above him to dispute the charge.

Strople added, “I wish to speak with Major Duncan.”

“She is at the base, sir, and I am at the signal station. I thought it advisable for her to remain at base in case my FiVee was taken out by New America on my way here or back.”

“You’re going to wish it had been, Colonel. That would be better than what’s going to happen to you now. The signal station personnel must have been involved in directing the spaceship.”

“Information Tech Specialist David DeFord aided me. Lieutenant Li was overpowered and restrained.”

“Where is Li now?”

“Here, and still captive, sir.”

“You will release him at once, and he will arrange for me to speak to Major Duncan. Specialist DeFord is also under arrest. Who else is with you at the station? Identify yourself.”

Goldman stepped forward. “Captain James Goldman, sir.”

“Did you have prior knowledge of Colonel Jenner’s deceiving HQ about the capabilities of the spaceship?”

“No, sir.”

“Did anyone else know?”

“I have no knowledge of anyone, sir.”

Jason said, “General, no one else knew. The decision was mine. Everyone else acted on my orders, assuming that I had received them from you.”

“No one else was involved in this conspiracy?”

So now it had become a conspiracy. “No, sir.”

“Uh-huh. Captain Goldman, you will take custody of both Colonel Jenner and Specialist DeFord, relieve them of their weapons, and immediately transport them to base. There you will imprison both until further orders concerning their courts martial. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Goldman said.

“Lieutenant Li, you will remain at the signal station. Contact your perimeter patrol at the base and arrange for me to speak to Major Duncan as soon as she can be transported to the signal station.”

When the farce had finished, all the actors playing their parts, Jason turned from the console. Li, Goldman, DeFord. Plus Duncan, Hillson, and the perimeter soldier on duty, Laura DeSoto, a lifer who was also a member of J Squad. And, of course, Jason himself. Benjamin Franklin had famously written that two people can keep a secret as long as one of them was dead. This was seven people. He trusted every one of them.

In the Army that Jason had joined, this cabal would not have been possible. Personnel, information, legal documents, orders all had flowed across the country—across the world—in rapid, verifiable, closely surveilled streams. But this was not the Army that Jason had joined. This was the army of nineteenth-century isolated forts, of twentieth-century cabals and juntas, of a stray and damaged spaceship, of an enemy on American soil made up of Americans with no police to stop them from seizing whatever they wished.

I have violated my oath as an officer in the United States Army. Except—he did not believe that. Now his duty to his country lay in preserving the scientists at Monterey Base and the diplomatic mission from World, so that together they could find a solution to what had destroyed the old Army along with everything else.

The penalty for treason in wartime was death.

But maybe there wouldn’t be any court-martial. Maybe the order would come later today to summarily execute Jason and DeFord. If so, nobody but the seven of them would hear it.

“Jim,” Jason said to Goldman, “we’re returning now to base.”

Belok^ sat up on a pallet, in a row of pallets divided by inadequate curtains. La^vor crouched beside him, holding his huge hand. The boy blinked his large dark eyes, looking dazed. Zack hung back as Claire knelt on the floor beside the rumpled blankets.

“Belok^? Kar^ judil¡?”

La^vor spoke rapidly in World; Zack couldn’t tell if Claire understood her. Claire listened to Belok^’s chest, shone a small light into his eyes, tested his reflexes. Belok^ said nothing, but the skin between his eyes wrinkled slightly.

La^vor stroked her brother’s hand. It seemed to Zack that Belok^ was gathering himself, trying to pit his challenged, mostly wordless mind against circumstances. He looked slowly around the cubicle, then directly at Claire, at La^vor, at Zack. Some emotion moved in the depths of his eyes.

Zack felt the hairs on his arms prickle.

La^vor went on murmuring to her brother.

Belok^ stood up. He staggered, stiff with not moving for so long, and Zack saw how thin his arms had become in his coma. La^vor jumped up and let him lean on her. From his great height he looked down at her upturned face. “La^vor,” he said slowly.

She answered in World, something reassuring. Zack braced himself. Now Belok^ would say the name of his dead brother, Glamet^vor¡, and she would have to tell him that the only other pillar holding up Belok^’s universe was dead.

Belok^ looked all around once again. Then, haltingly, he said something in World: something of several words, something that might have been an entire sentence, something he had never been able to say before. Then a second entire sentence.

And none of the other three, frozen by surprise, managed to say anything at all, until Zack said in a voice that didn’t even sound like his own: “Caitlin.”

Caitlin had not woken, nor Susan, nor any of the other v-comas. When Zack had finished checking, he returned to Belok^’s cubicle. The boy was sitting up, broad back against the wall, while a clutch of medical personnel peered at him from the corridor. Claire said, “La^vor, kar^… I mean, hee^kan… no… we need Jane for this!”

Zack said, “I’ll go get Ka^graa. He can’t translate like Jane, but he’s the best we’ve got. Besides, he’s the head of the World expedition.”

“No, he’s not,” Claire said crossly. “But go get him anyway.”

Zack didn’t want to leave. In the corridor, a young Army nurse, Josie Somebody, hovered at the edge of the silent crowd. He said, “Please go find Dr. Ka^graa and bring him here. Right away.”

An expression of distaste flitted across the girl’s face. But she said, “Okay,” and walked off. A soldier rounded a corner of the corridor and said something to her, but she shook her head and moved on. Zack returned to Belok^.

He was still speaking, fluently and without hesitation.

Claire, who’d rocked back on her heels, looked as if she’d been hit with a two-by-four. La^vor was weeping. Zack got out, “What is he saying?”

Claire said, “He’s hungry.”

“Is that all?”

“I can only get a few words, but mostly, yes, it seems to be that he’s hungry. Also that he wants to see Glamet^vor¡. She hasn’t told him yet. But, Zack, it’s not what he’s saying… it’s that he’s talking so much and so easily.”

“I know.” And then, “Colin Jenner and the others…”

Claire nodded, understanding without Zack’s finishing his sentence. Colin Jenner and the other superhearers had had their auditory centers rewired in utero by the original R. sporii. The infants, hypersensitive to sound, had cried nonstop until drugs were developed to tamp down their ability. Some had stayed on the drugs for life. Some, like Jenner, had been bright enough to learn to compensate, as bright children learned to compensate for dyslexia. They had learned selective attention, still hearing the incessant background noise but paying attention only to those they chose at a given moment.

Microbes in the fetal brain had done that. Microbes, that for two billion years had been the dominant form of life on Earth. That had evolved complex and sophisticated signaling techniques, gene-swapping techniques, interdependencies, antibiotics to kill each other. Microbes that, through the union of two prokaryotes, had begun the long evolutionary march toward the multicelled organisms that eventually became humans. Microbes, that still made up one-third of the cells in the human body, outnumbered humans on Earth by a factor of 1022, and could produce a new generation every twenty minutes and so had adapted to—and modified—every available ecological niche on Earth, clear through the stratosphere, solely to aid their own survival.

What had microbes created for themselves in Belok^’s brain?

“Zebras,” he said aloud, and Claire looked at him as if he were crazy.