Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 21

“Sir? Permission to have a word with you?”

Private McNally, one of the awakened, saluted. Jason was on his way to the mess in Lab Dome. He had resolved to have a larger presence at the other dome. Although he would never have Hillson’s intel network—and didn’t need to, as long as he had Hillson—he could at least walk around and see more for himself. And be seen. Also, perhaps the scientists would be less formal with him, less guarded, if he went to them instead of either summoning them to the command post or staging formal presentations.

And maybe he would happen to run into Lindy.

McNally stopped him in a crowded corridor. Beyond lay an open area, or what passed for an open area in the crowded dome, where three shouting Settler children played a game with a ball. The ball bounced off crates, most empty, off chairs where two Settlers sat talking, off a nurse hurrying to the infirmary. McNally’s salute had been a halfhearted swipe at his forehead. Or maybe not halfhearted as much as preoccupied.

McNally said, “I want to show you something, sir. I don’t have nothing on me but if you come with me to the armory…”

A trap? How unpopular was Jason with his own troops? And McNally was not an ordinary soldier; his brain had been tampered with by the virophage. Dr. Sullivan had said that the tampering could have different effects on different people. And why did McNally seem so hesitant?

Jason said curtly, “No. Tell me what you have to show.”

“It’s a weapon, sir. An A15. I modified it.”

“Who gave you permission to do that?”

“Nobody, sir. That’s how come I want to show it to you.”

Which made no sense. But looking at McNally’s thin, serious face, Jason saw that it made sense to McNally, that some kind of reasoning Jason didn’t understand was going on in that semi-alien brain. How alien?

Two off-duty members of J Squad, privates Tarrant and Kandiss, walked through the shrieking children toward the mess. Jason called to them. They stopped, surprised, and immediately came to him.

“Sir?”

“Private McNally has a modified weapon he would like to show me. You will accompany him to the armory and then to Lab Dome’s conference room, with the weapon. Lieutenant Jones is on duty at the armory. I will arrange clearance.”

They understood instantly; that’s why they were J Squad. Unlike McNally, both carried sidearms. If this was a trap, conspirators would have to be very good to take out Tarrant and Kandiss. McNally smiled faintly.

The conference room was empty, although copious crumbs and three dirty cups of what passed for coffee littered the table. Scientists. If it had been soldiers, their squad leader would have roasted them. The stuff was undrinkable, anyway.

Jason waited, studying formulae and diagrams scrawled on the whiteboard. None of them was intelligible to him, but he could tell that none looked biological. Jason needed to find time to interview Major Farouk, the physicist, about his theories on the Return. Not that Jason had understood Farouk’s specialty even before the physicist had gone into v-coma.

A lab tech ambled in, spotted Jason, and retreated hastily.

Eventually Tarrant and Kandiss arrived with McNally, who carried a canvas weapon sling. Tarrant gave Jason a faint nod: All okay, sir. McNally laid the sling on the table, unzipped it, and stood back. Kandiss removed an A15 with odd mountings on the underside of the barrel.

McNally gave the impression of hunting carefully for the right words—or maybe it was for words simple enough. “I modified it so it can be fired remotely, sir. If a soldier falls and drops the rifle, this device here, it automatically orients the weapon in the direction of the last shots. Then the controller—this doohickey here—can keep the weapon laying down fire in bursts, if you want to. The rounds probably might not hit nothing, but if the down soldier isn’t visible, maybe it’ll convince the enemy that the position is still being held.”

Kandiss stared at the A15 beside the coffee mugs as if it were a snake. Lena Tarrant said, “Sir, we tested the weapon. It performs as described.”

Jason said to McNally, “Private, have you had ordnance training?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you an engineer of any type before the Collapse?”

“No, sir. Didn’t finish high school.”

“Have you ever studied mechanical engineering or weapons manufacture, or received any kind of advanced training in those areas?”

“I been reading on the computer in the enlisted library, sir. Since I waked up.”

“And that reading taught you to invent this?”

“No, sir. This isn’t in any reading.”

“How did you invent it?”

For the first time, an emotion flitted across the private’s face, gone in a nanosecond: disgust. He said, “I looked at the A15, sir. And I thought about it. And I experimented.”

“Did you have permission for these experiments?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you have permission to be in the armory, removing weapons?”

“I belonged there, sir. I was on armory guard.”

“Which did not include any form of removing, and certainly not of modifying, an A15 without an OPORD to do so.”

Now McNally looked Jason straight in the eyes. “No, sir. But I thought you might find it pretty useful, sir. That’s how come I brought it to you.”

The unsaid words were: And risked disciplinary action to do so.

Beside Jason, Tarrant shifted uneasily. Kandiss stiffened. Jason knew without looking at them, what each was thinking. Tarrant was impressed with the weapon. Kandiss, the spit-and-polish ex-Ranger, was focused on the breach of regulations. But McNally had brought this to Jason voluntarily, at personal risk, because he thought it would be valuable to the Army.

Jason made his decision. “Private, you are reprimanded for taking unauthorized action. However, this could be a useful modification if a hunting party is surprised by an enemy patrol and takes casualties. In the future, you are to bring any ideas for weapons modification to me or Major Duncan before you implement them. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action. Am I making myself clear on this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will take the A-15 outside, along with Sergeants Kandiss and Tarrant, and demonstrate it more fully than you were able to do in the armory. If they find it satisfactory, you may be asked to modify more A-15s.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Jason didn’t go to the mess, after all. He was no longer hungry. Walking around Lab Dome had been a good, if uncomfortable, idea. There were more Awakened here, and every one of them could, like McNally, outthink Jason, even in areas in which they were not trained. This was, as his father used to say when Jason was a child, a whole new ball game. Could Jason put it to advantage? He should interview more of the Awakened. He should find out what they were thinking—if he could follow it—before the convoy arrived from Fort Hood and everything changed.

The Settler children, oblivious of rank, knocked into him as they chased their ball along the corridor. “Sorry, man!”

Jason turned his path toward the infirmary. While he was doing this observational walk-around, he should discover who else had awakened from v-coma.

Jane had.

She woke, lapsed back into sleep, woke again with a start, slept fitfully. There were dreams, and when she woke completely she was not sure what had been dreams and what had happened during the brief period of wakefulness. There had been monstrous trees overgrowing World, there had been Glamet^vor¡ pursuing her with a knife, there had been a leelee she’d had as a childhood pet and her lahk Mother and Colin…

Colin sat by her pallet in a chair with wheels, his leg wrapped with some contraption of cloth and plastic.

“Jane?”

“Ne¡… jinn grat^…” And then, clearer in her head, “I am here.”

He smiled. “Where were you before?”

She stared at him dumbly. His smile disappeared. “Are you all right?”

“I am… not me.”

His warm brown eyes took on that look of understanding, the look that always reminded her of home, where there was so much less struggle to understand. “Yes, you are you. But while you were in the coma, the virophage did things to your brain. You’re… well, if you’re like the others who have woken up, you’re smarter.”

Smarter? Jane didn’t feel she knew more than before. But…

She said slowly, “Things look more clear.”

Colin leaned forward in his chair. “You mean your vision was affected? Your eyes?”

“No.” What did she mean? Her mind was racing and yet standing still, like a skaleth¡ quiet in its pasture, patient wisdom in its dreaming eyes. “I see… you more clear.”

He laughed, stopping abruptly. “That sounds alarming. See me clearer how?”

“I don’t have words. You are a shape, a color… no, a feeling made of shapes and colors. The feeling of you.” She felt the inadequacy of the sentences, and then their sexual connotations. Warmth mounted from her neck to hairline. “I didn’t mean…” Oh, words were so inadequate!

But Colin had always been good at knowing what she meant. “Your increased smartness is… psychological? You have a sort of intuitive grasp of what people—or at least me—are like?”

“No. Yes. It’s… hard to explain.”

It was impossible to explain, and not only because she didn’t know the World translation of some of the words he had used. Her thoughts had always been tinged with color, but now ideas, sights, had deeper and complex shadings and more profound shapes, and—this was, she realized, completely new—the shapes were connected to each other in ways they had not been before.

She said, “Tell me of the others who are awake.”

Colin pointed a finger at her. “See, right there—you are the only one of the Awakened who has asked what the other Awakened are like now. This might be half-baked because I just thought of it this minute, but maybe what happens in the comas is that you guys are smarter mostly about whatever you spent a lot of time thinking about before? Like paths through the woods—the brain paths used the most get the most changes in the coma.”

The possibility shimmered and shifted in her mind.

Colin plunged on, “So Toni Steffens is spending all her time in the lab since she woke up, and the kids are learning to read faster, and my grandmother is spinning theories about evolutionary biology. And you’re being Jane, focused on people.”

He was alight with clear, bright colors, entranced with his idea, and in love with her. Jane saw him, all the way through. She felt dizzy, even though she was lying on a pallet with tubes stuck in her. And then, behind Colin, standing in the doorway, she saw his brother.

“Jane,” he said, coming into the curtained cubicle. “Colin. How are you feeling, Jane? Did you just wake up?”

“Yes,” Jane said. She saw Jason Jenner, too. Every line of him, every shape he made in her mind, was tense and jagged. His face looked older than Colin’s by at least a decade, even though she knew they were only a Terran year apart in age. This was a man carrying huge burdens—in her mind they were gray harsh shapes of enormous density—and buckling under them. No, not buckling—not yet. But add a little more, and he might. Or not. In Jane he called forth pity, along with a desire to not add to his cares.

“I feel fine,” she lied.

“Good. Has a doctor checked you over?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll send one.” He vanished. A few minutes later Claire appeared. In those few minutes, Jane looked again at Colin, and the shapes/colors of the brothers shifted and shimmered in her mind, along with what Colin had said about those who woke up becoming more intelligent pursuers of whatever had preoccupied them before. Her thoughts widened out to include everything she knew about the base, about Jason Jenner, about the terrible Terran war, about Colin’s destroyed Settlement and the displaced Settlers she had talked to, about World.

“Jane—what is it?” Claire said. “Am I hurting you? What are those tears about?”

But Jane could not tell her. Sorrow swamped her, but she couldn’t give it words. Jane might be wrong. Other shapes were possible, other colors from other people.

But she didn’t think so. One pattern was so much clearer than all the rest—a pattern based on what Jason Jenner was, what Colin Jenner was, what she herself had become, and the others like her. People acted from what they were, and from how their essential natures shifted and colored the situations around them. Also, the pattern in her mind was not only the clearest and most likely, it was the best.

If that pattern did indeed come to pass, she would never see Colin Jenner again.

Marianne left the infirmary, with Dr. Holbrook’s reluctant permission. She had wanted to leave yesterday but he had forbidden it. “You aren’t a young woman anymore,” said this Army doctor who was older than she was. What did he see when he looked at her, knowing and yet not knowing what changes had come to her neural structures?

So people had come to her: Ryan, her grandsons, Ka^graa. Zack McKay, whom she’d sent for. Zack and she had talked for a long time, Marianne slowing her thoughts and words so this very intelligent man could follow them. Zack had left looking dazed.

Now Marianne walked carefully, right hand on the wooden wall that had been hastily erected to create this makeshift corridor. The wood no longer smelled raw, but the unsanded surface felt uneven, with bumps and ridges rough under her palm. To her left, rows of curtains hid equally makeshift cubicles, each holding a bed or gurney or pallet with a v-coma sleeper. Some cubicles were empty, their patients already awakened.

A carry-bot trundled past, laden with towels and basins and cleaning supplies. The nurse walking beside it, a very young woman in faded scrubs printed with daisies, smiled at her tremulously. Too young to be an Army nurse and still faintly suntanned—she was one of Colin’s Settlers, overcoming her aversion to tech enough to help out the overworked medical staff.

The sight cheered Marianne. People adapted. Hand still on the wall although she was feeling stronger, she moved toward the end of the corridor, where a soldier stood guard at the door dividing the infirmary from Lab Dome’s commons. “Commons”—a term from another life, academic teas in an oak-paneled, pseudo-British room at the university. Funny she should think of that now, when—

A man in a hospital gown erupted from the curtain to her left, screaming. Before Marianne could react, he grabbed her arm hard enough to topple her from her feet. “Run! Run! They will— Run!” He threw back his head and howled like a wolf.

Then it all happened at once. The soldier pulled a gun from the holster on his thigh. The young Settler nurse turned from the carry-bot and gaped. Lindy Ross flung aside the curtain of the next cubicle, where Susan McKay lay comatose. The screaming man thrust Marianne between himself and the soldier’s gun, whatever paranoid fantasies his mind was prone to now strengthened, justified, stronger and wilder in his stronger and wilder brain. He howled again, and his arm tightened across Marianne’s throat.

The soldier, uncertain, didn’t fire, but he kept his gun trained on them. Marianne could see his lips move in subvocalization to his mic. The deranged man’s arm tightened further, and she struggled to breathe.

Details were suddenly scalpel-sharp: the soldier’s lips moving, the antiseptic smell of her captor’s arm, the worn geometric design in the cubicle curtains, the realization, sharpest of all, that these might be the last things she experienced before she died.

Then something hit them from behind, hard. The man fell, dropping Marianne. She gasped for breath. The nurse shoved the carry-bot to slam into her captor’s back. The soldier sprinted forward and grabbed the man, who started to cry. Lindy bent over Marianne.

“Are you all right? Oh my God—”

Marianne couldn’t talk. She was still gasping for breath, trying to get air down her bruised throat, wheezing in desperate wrenching pants. But the thought she couldn’t utter was clear in her mind:

Some people cannot adapt, not to changes in their own brains.

Then everything went dark.

She woke back in bed. Lindy sat beside her.

“Marianne?”

“What… how long…”

“Only a few minutes. Your oxygenation is fine, and except for a bruised neck, you shouldn’t suffer any consequences from that attack. If you hadn’t already been so weak, you probably wouldn’t have blacked out at all. Does your throat hurt?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll go away.”

Already Marianne could talk more easily. A little more easily, anyway. “The attacker?”

“He’s a soldier. Jason will deal with him.” Lindy’s face was grim.

“He isn’t… entirely responsible. V-coma strengthens… whatever pathways…”

“I know. Major Holbrook will advise Jason. Marianne—where were you trying to go?”

“Dr. Farouk.”

Lindy’s eyebrows lifted. “The physicist? Why?”

“I… need to see him.”

“Well, you’re not going to. Not unless he comes to you, because you’re not going anywhere for a while. You’re not a young woman, you know.”

Like Marianne didn’t already know that? And yet people kept telling her. But it wasn’t like Lindy to be condescending. Lindy looked distracted, and purplish circles blossomed under her eyes. Something was hurting her. Jason?

Marianne didn’t ask. She said, “Send Dr. Farouk to me.”

Lindy stood. “I can try. But I doubt he’ll come. He’s working on something important and will hardly stop to eat. Just like Toni Steffens. Are you, too, going to start behaving like your health is irrelevant?”

“No.”

“Well, good. We need at least one sane Awakened around here. And a few more sane un-Awakened wouldn’t hurt, either.”

“Tell Dr. Farouk…” What? Nothing that Marianne could put into a neat, short message for Lindy to carry.

Lindy waited.

“Tell Dr. Farouk I have something new about time.”

Lindy’s forehead wrinkled. “Time? What do you mean?”

“Just tell him. And that it’s urgent.”

“I don’t see how the—oh, Ryan.”

Marianne’s son thumped into the cubicle as fast as his cane would let him. “Mom?”

“I’m fine, Ryan.”

“They told me that you—”

“I’m fine. Really.” But before she turned her attention to Ryan, Marianne directed a long look at Lindy.

“Please. Dr. Farouk. Now.”