Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 2

Zack tore out of the conference room, running at top speed to the south airlock. He was keying in the code when Toni puffed into the tiny space.

“Zack! Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Back to Enclave. To be with Susan and Caitlin.”

“You know that’s against orders and anyway they’re safe!”

“Not if the attack is nuclear.” Nuclear bombs were the only thing that could destroy an energy dome. That had first been demonstrated in DC eight years ago. And New York. And so many other places.

Zack said, “Then I want to die with my family.”

“That’s stupid! Dead is dead!”

Zack punched in the last of the manual code and touched the pad for his finger chip to register. Nothing happened.

“Damn! Jenner has us in lockdown!”

“Of course he does. Zack—”

He pounded his fist against the wall, which of course did nothing except make him feel stupid. Toni said, “Come with me to Observation.”

“I’m staying right here until the all clear.”

“All right. We know what an attack looks like anyway.” Toni dusted off a bench in the esuit room, plopped herself down on half of it, and said, “You’re behaving like an idiot.”

“I know.” He sat beside her. But Caitlin was scared of the sirens; she screamed whenever they started. Zack couldn’t communicate with Susan because each dome incorporated something like a Faraday cage. No electromagnetic radiation in, and none out. It was one of the things that made life here so complicated.

At the observation deck on the top of Lab Dome, the opaque bluish shimmer of the dome became a clear shimmer. Colonel Jenner had his command post at the top of Enclave Dome. But Toni was right—Zack knew what an attack by New America looked like. Warheads carried by drones would be exploding near and even against the domes, on which they would have no effect whatsoever. Birds would fly up from trees; animals would flee in terror. Fires might start in the forest, but probably not, because it had rained hard just last night. Heat-seeking drones would look for any targets outside the domes: soldiers, scientists, advance-warning equipment. Esuits used the same basic principle as the energy domes, but the suits were far more vulnerable. The basic principle had taken Terran scientists over twenty-five years to understand and duplicate. Before the Collapse, the military had had only two years to construct the first domes, including Monterey Base, as well as a large supply of esuits. It was well that they had the suits, which somehow let in pure, breathable air but filtered out everything else, because there might never be any more.

“I just wish,” Zack said to Toni, “that the bastards would run out of either missiles or drones.”

“They might. Someday. They can’t have an infinite supply. It’s not like anybody can make more.”

“How long has this been?”

“Five minutes. Down, boy. We’re here at least another hour.”

A little less than an hour later, the airlock door began opening from the outside.

Zack and Toni sprang from the bench. The alarm was still blatting. Had the enemy somehow obtained the airlock code? Was Enclave Dome invaded?

A soldier entered, an esuit over his uniform. Not one of the survivors, then. Private Somebody—Zack paid as little attention to the military as possible. The soldier said, “Dr. McKay?”

“Yes. What is—”

“Come with me, please. Colonel Jenner has requested your presence.”

“Me? What happened? Is Enclave safe? Is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

A closer look, and Zack realized how young the soldier was. Eyes open wide, color high, a seedpod ready to burst with information.

“What is it, Private?”

The soldier said, “A ship is coming in. A spaceship. From that other planet. It’s here.”

Stunned silence. Then Toni said, “Well. A zebra, after all.”

Jason, in his command post at the top of Enclave Dome, had received news of the attack from his master sergeant, who received it from the perimeter patrol, who received it from Lieutenant Li at the signal station.

Signaler was the most dangerous position in this transformed warfare. Domes that could not be penetrated by electromagnetic radiation meant that advance-warning equipment must be hidden somewhere outside, and so must the two soldiers who manned the station at all times. The station was equipped with radar and the ability to transmit to orbit. If the station detected incoming, the signalers contacted by earplant the soldiers on constant patrol outside the domes, who then had to go inside to sound the alert. All this limited the intel coming from the outside as well as making communication with HQ in Texas clumsy, but there was no way around it.

Since the war began eight years ago, Jason had lost three signalers. Information Tech Specialist Amanda Stevens and Private Luis Almadero had died when a New America missile hit the previous signal station, before the new one was built beneath a hill. Private John Unger, unwisely giving in to boredom, had gone exploring in his esuit and been killed by a cougar. Now Jason staffed the signaling station with a trusted J Squad officer in addition to the IT specialist.

Even at the new station, the early-warning equipment remained outside. No way around that. This was not NORAD, or what NORAD had once been.

Everything about running Monterey Base was complicated. The domes could be constructed only to a given size, with three airlocks above ground and one in the underground annex, which also had a predetermined size. Any deviation from this blueprint and the entire energy-based structure simply disintegrated. No physicists knew why. They might have learned if the Collapse hadn’t come, but it did, and Jason spent hours each day maneuvering around the limitations of the structures that had saved all their lives. First from the bird plague, and then from New America.

It used to be that the signal station received news from orbiting satellites, both military and civilian. But over time, the satellites had failed. No maintenance, no orbital adjustments, no personnel. The US Army was down to one functional comsat. New America also controlled a comsat, and so far neither side had figured out how either to destroy the other’s or to hack its encryption.

“Sir,” Master Sergeant Hillson said over the blatting alarm, “message from Lieutenant Li at the signal station.”

“Go on,” Jason said. Hillson, a thirty-year lifer whom Jason would have trusted with his command if necessary, always spoke slowly, sometimes with pauses between his words. This was not, Jason had learned long ago, because Hillson didn’t know what he thought. The sergeant paused because he was reluctant to let words go. Dragged up dirt poor in some God-forsaken corner of the Ozarks, his instinct was to hold on to everything as long as he could, even words. But his statements, when they finally emerged, were always true. Always.

“Sir, the station has received direct contact from a spaceship.”

Jason said sharply, “The Stremlenie?” No one knew what had happened to the Russian ship.

“No, sir. Lieutenant says the ship claims to be American, coming from World. Calling itself the Return.”

Jason stared. For a long moment, Hillson’s words refused to form themselves into coherent thought. They jumped around randomly, pixels on a deranged screen.

The American ship Friendship had departed Earth twenty-eight years ago. Its mission had been to establish trade relations with the human-aliens who had arrived on Earth ten years earlier, warned Earth about the spore cloud, deceived everyone, and abruptly departed. The Friendship and its twenty-one passengers, including the grandmother that Jason had finished mourning decades ago, had never been heard from again. Perhaps the Russian ship, which had launched shortly afterward, had destroyed the Friendship. Perhaps the alien star drive on both ships had failed. Perhaps World, that unknown planet, had decided to keep the ships and kill the Terrans. After the Collapse, no one on Earth had cared. Only survival mattered.

Pixelated thoughts cohered into solidity and hardness. “The Return? Not the Friendship? What were Lieutenant Li’s exact words?”

“‘For immediate emergency relay to Colonel Jenner, priority one: Contact by an alien ship calling itself the Return and claiming to be carrying Americans and coming from World. I have not responded. Do not know if the message is connected with the drone attack. Please advise.’”

It could be a trick by New America. Get a detachment of soldiers outside the dome, mount a second drone attack. Although New America had tried something similar before, and had not succeeded. Jason rose from his desk and scanned the sky through the clear top of the dome.

The missiles had spent themselves uselessly against the domes and then ceased, leaving debris lying around the cleared zone but no fires, not this time. As soon as the drones stopped coming, perimeter patrol had returned outside, although staying close to the airlock and ready for snipers. Jason squinted into the distance.

Overhead a hawk soared, dark against the clouds.

A breeze stirred the treetops, a hundred yards away and level with the top of the dome.

At the edge of the trees, a deer appeared, startled, and vanished.

Sergeant Hillson waited.

The alarm still sounded: blatt blatt blatt.

“Tell them to turn off the alarm, but don’t sound the all clear. Get Major Duncan up here.”

“Yes, sir. Sir… Corporal Olivera.”

Jason turned. Rosa Olivera, assigned to patrol, held out a tiny data cube. “Sir, Lieutenant Li sent this. A longer message from the spaceship. The lieutenant relayed it to record for you.”

Jason popped the cube into his wrister. A male voice said, “Come in, Earth. This is the World ship Return, Captain Branch Carter. We are coming from World—Kindred, I mean—the planet that the Friendship left Earth for twenty-eight years ago. Some of that original mission are aboard here, including me. We’re coming home.”

Jason’s forehead wrinkled. The message sounded in no way military. He touched his finger chip to his wrister and said, “Identity, Branch Carter, Friendship mission, text only.”

Carter continued, “A lot has happened to tell you about, but right now we just want permission to land. Last night we didn’t see any city lights from space, which sort of concerns us. Also, no one has responded to our hailings. I don’t really know how to direct this communication very well, it’s not our ship and I’m not really an engineer, but—”

BRANCH CARTER scrolled across the small screen on Jason’s wrister. Member of Friendship diplomatic mission, lab technician. MS from Yale, employed at CDC from—

A lab tech? As captain? Jason turned off the wrister.

“—but we’re relaying this message through what looks like an American comsat. I think. If you give us coordinates to land, latitude and longitude, I think I can get this system to recognize those enough so we can set down. I hope.”

He hoped? What kind of Mickey Mouse operation—

Then, with surprising dignity, “I know this message must sound strange. There was time dilation that we didn’t know about—and I guess you probably don’t, either—both going to and coming from World. Twenty-eight years, total. There are only ten of us aboard here, and to us, it’s like we’ve only been gone a few months. We’re five Terran and five Kindred, and none of us understand the ship. We are doing the best we can.”

Corporal Olivera blurted out, “Five aliens?” She turned a mottled red. “Sorry, sir.”

Jason was thinking faster than he had since the Collapse. It could still be a trick and “Branch Carter’s” voice a pretense. The Friendship, he remembered, had been equipped with classified alpha-beam weapons capable of firing ship-to-ground; this ship, if indeed there was an actual ship, could also carry that ordnance. If he denied permission to land, what would the ship do? If it was permitted to land, it could carry various forms of contamination. Or, given that Kindred was so much more advanced than Terra, the ship could contain incredibly valuable tech. Or it might hold both: contaminants and advanced tech. But then why didn’t this Branch Carter seem to know anything about the ship, and why weren’t the alleged aliens aboard the ones captaining her? They had invented the technology! That argued for a trick. But—

Then another voice sounded on the recording, and the probability waves in Jason’s mind collapsed into certainty.

“This is Dr. Marianne Jenner, from the Friendship. I’m a scientist; I worked in the Embassy with the original team for the spore cloud. My son Noah and nine others left on the Embassy for Kindred, and he is still there. May I speak to the president, or to his or her representative, or maybe to the UN? I also want to say that we have with us a virophage that counteracts Respirovirus sporii.”

No one spoke.

Then Jason said to Hillson, “Equip two FiVees. One goes to the ship with J Squad, to rendezvous at Point Tango Delta. Bring ten extra esuits. Pick up all star-farers for transport to the signal station, it’s closer. The other FiVee to transport me to the original station with doctors Ross and Yu. No, not Yu”—the chief scientist was too old—“Dr. McKay. Orders are that if anything impedes transport progress, shoot it.”

Major Elizabeth Duncan, Jason’s second in command, strode into the command post. Jason said to her, “Major, we have a situation. Brief you in a minute.” And to Hillson, “Go!”

“Yes, sir.”

It was the first time Jason had ever heard the veteran sergeant’s voice tremble. Jason hoped that his own had not. But—

A spaceship. And what did you say to a grandmother who left for the stars when you were eleven, twenty-eight years ago?

“Why aren’t they answering?” Branch said. “Why isn’t anybody answering?”

Marianne said wearily, “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“Of course I’m not sure I’m doing it right! None of us knows what we’re doing!”

Jane looked from one Terran to the other. They were tired—everybody was tired—and they did not have bu^ka^tel to guide their behavior, as any Worlder would. She said softly in her still-slow English, “You did this thing wonderful well by now. We are here, and they maybe will answer soon.”

Marianne smiled at her, a smile so full of anxiety and exhaustion that Jane longed to take some of the burden off the older woman’s shoulders.

They stood on the bridge of the vast Return, all ten of them. Mason Kandiss wore his armor and carried all his weapons, although Jane did not understand why. Kayla lay asleep on a mat in the corner. The five Worlders stood behind Marianne, Branch, and Claire, who clustered around a screen filled with a huge planet.

Terra. Blue and white, incredibly beautiful. And so much land! Thirty percent of the surface was land, Branch had said. Unimaginable room—except that it held an equally unimaginable and terrifying population of over seven billion people. Or by now, Marianne had said, even more.

Ka^graa said to his daughter, “What do they say?”

Jane translated. “They still try to greet Terra and do not understand why no one replies. Branch-kal wishes he understood more about how the ship works.”

Ka^graa, who did not understand it either, said, “Have they discovered why they see no city lights on the planet?”

“No.”

“Come in, come in, Terra. This is the World ship Return, Captain Branch Carter. We are the—”

“Captain Carter, this is Colonel Jason Jenner of the United States Army.”

Marianne made a small sound.

The voice continued, “Can you provide positive identification that you are who you claim to be?”

Branch said, “What kind of proof?”

Marianne stepped forward. “Colonel Jenner, this is Marianne Jenner. Are you Ryan Anthony Jenner’s son? I know Jenner is a common name, but—”

“Yes. Ryan Jenner is my father. Can you provide positive identification that you are actually who you claim to be?”

Marianne, her voice thick, said, “When you were a small boy, you had an ant farm that fascinated you. It broke and there were ants all over the house. Colin ate one.”

Silence. Jane had a sudden qualm. If this man was a soldier like the ones that had come to World, there were very strict rules about what you could and could not say. Jane didn’t understand those rules, but no one had ever spoken so informally, so naturally, to Lieutenant Lamont. Although they did, eventually, to Lieutenant Brodie. It was all very confusing.

“Jason?” Marianne said.

The unseen soldier spoke again. His voice was still formal, but Jane could hear emotion underneath. “World ship Return—welcome home.”

Claire Patel laughed, as much from relief as mirth. Then they were all smiling. But it was Ranger Kandiss who astonished Jane. His body held as rigid as ever, his lips moving silently—in prayer?—he let tears course silently over his face.

Both smiles and tears both stopped at Jason Jenner’s next words. “Return, we have a situation on Earth, developed since the Friendship launched twenty-eight years ago. You said that you are equipped with a drug that can counteract R. sporii?”

“Not a drug,” Marianne said, while Jane struggled to keep up translation for the other four Worlders. “A microbe, a virophage. It… why do you need a counteraction for R. sporii? When we left, Terrans were either immune or had already died from the original spore cloud, and a vaccine had been developed and—”

The voice cut her off. “Return, you must land now. You’ve been detected by the enemy. Latitude and longitude to follow immediately. When your ship touches down, do not—repeat, do not—attempt to emerge unless you have sufficient esuits for everyone aboard. Do you?”

Carter said, “Yes, but—what enemy?”

“Are your esuits the same as the ones we’ve made from plans left by World scientists on your previous expedition?”

“Yes, they are, but what enemy?”

“We are at war. Put on your esuits immediately, land, and cycle through your airlock to exit the ship. Do not let Terran air invade the ship or it will be contaminated. Stay under cover of trees, if you can. Troops will meet you and conduct you to safety. Go with them immediately. Now, Captain Carter!”

“But I’m not even sure if I—”

Some numbers, a burst of static, and then nothing.

“Do as he says,” Branch said. His young face had paled. “Go to the airlock and suit up. I’m going to land where he said.”

Jane ran with the others to the closest airlock. Did Branch know how to land the ship at a specific place? Would the ship help him? A war—why was there a war? With who?

Esuits lay on shelves in the vast room. Glamet^vor¡ and La^vor struggled to get Belok^ into his. He started to cry and La^vor comforted him.

The screen on the wall brightened, and the planet on it grew larger and larger until blue and white filled the whole screen. Suddenly a burst of red, eerie in its silence.

Kandiss said, “Enemy fire. We are under attack.”

Ka^graa grabbed Jane’s arm. “What did he say?”

“It is a weapon. It tried to hit us.”

The ship lurched. Somehow, Jane was more shocked by that than by anything else—the Return always flew sedately, even when it had launched, without perceptible motion. Belok^ cried out.

The screen now showed nothing but white—they were inside clouds. A moment later, the ground flew up at terrifying speed. Then they broke through trees—green trees, not purple!—and came to rest quietly on the ground.

Mason Kandiss activated the airlock.

“No, wait!” Marianne cried. “Branch!”

“Orders are to get you out. He can recycle later. Go now.”

It was, Jane realized numbly, the longest speech she had ever heard Mason Kandiss make.

He pushed them all into the airlock. Air, the good air of World, which Jane had probably breathed for the last time, was sucked out. The outer door opened and six soldiers rushed in. The leader’s eyes widened when he saw Mason Kandiss, but he didn’t slow. “Come with us! Now!”

They ran from the ship. There was no need to get under trees; a big cart waited, made of heavy metal. One man sat in a small housing in the front; the back was open. A truck, Jane remembered—it was fueled in ways forbidden on World. A soldier picked up Jane and threw her into the back.

“Wait!” Marianne cried. “There is one more person coming! The captain, Branch Carter—”

“We’ll come back for him if we can. Orders are to get you out.” He threw Marianne into the truck. She landed on top of Jane.

Something exploded with tremendous sound and fire in the trees beyond. Wood, leaves, dirt, even rocks flew into the air. The soldiers leaped into the truck, the back closed, and it sped away—so fast! Unlike the ship, it lurched and bounced on the uneven ground, crashing through bushes. Jane hung on to metal protrusions in the wall. Belok^ never stopped screaming.

Over the din, Kandiss yelled, “Destination, sir?”

“Signal station. Close now.”

The truck drove past more trees toward a hill. A section of the hill opened and the truck drove downward into a cave and stopped. The hill swung shut behind them. Lights came on.

Abrupt silence. Even Belok^ stopped yelling.

“Decon is this way, and it’s also the airlock,” a soldier said, leaping down from the truck. She was talking to Kandiss. “Bring your people through in groups of five, that’s probably all that will fit. Esuits stay on at all times.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The soldier thought Kandiss was in charge. But since Marianne said nothing, Jane merely translated for the others, who nodded. Belok^ clutched La^vor with one hand and touched the truck with the other, his eyes wide and mouth open in a wide O.

Decon—Jane would have to ask what the word meant—was a small airlock abruptly bathed in violet light. When the far door opened, they walked into an underground room, windowless, with walls of wood and metal. One wall held a bank of strange equipment. Four men and two women, all in uniform, waited until everyone had come from the airlock. The room was not meant for so many.

One of the men, the only soldier in an esuit, stepped forward. Jane, shaken by the rough ride, the violence, the strangeness of everything, nonetheless felt another tiny shock. His eyes, clear gray flecked with gold, were Marianne’s.

“I am Colonel Jenner, commander of Monterey Base. Do not remove your esuits, not yet, for your protection and ours. You must have questions, and I think we have much information to exchange. Almost nothing on Earth is as you remember it. But first… again, welcome home.”

Jane had never heard a greeting so weary and regretful. Jason Jenner’s face looked like petrified karthwood at home, set in hard ridges instead of supple in the wind. And so formal—this was Marianne, his grandmother and surely the mother of his lahk! Although there were no lahks here—but there were “families.” He did not even look at Marianne.

She had expected things on Terra to be different from World, but not like this.

Quietly, keeping fear and sorrow to herself so as not to increase theirs, she began to translate for her father and the other three.

Zack had been designated the explainer, a role he did not want. Jenner was busy barking orders to the two signal officers in person and the Praetorian Guard remotely, presumably trying to save the ship and the station from drone attacks, if that was possible. Probably it wasn’t; Jenner was breaking radio silence, which of course had already been broken by contact with the ship, and New America would be tracking him through their comsat. Zack hoped that nothing stronger than a drone-carried missile would be fired at this underground bunker. During the Collapse, when Army bases were all charnel houses of the dead and dying, all sorts of organizations had taken over the bases. What eventually became New America had gained nuclear capability—and used it two years later, during the war. But if they had any nukes left, wouldn’t they have already used them? And wouldn’t they want to capture this ship from the stars, not destroy it?

It wasn’t as if the New America survivalists were as psychotic as the Gaiists had been. Just as evil, but not as deranged.

Zack sat on a hard, straight-backed chair—trust the military to think comfort unimportant—and waited while Dr. Lindy Ross examined the nine star-farers. No, not examined—she could hardly palpate anything through an esuit, let alone take blood samples. These people would have to be introduced, or reintroduced, to Terran microbes. Did Lindy have the means to do that at the base? Meanwhile, she passed her portalab over their hearts and heads, studied the results, talked to humans and aliens.

No. They were all human, including the Worlders. Zack, who had been five years old when the Worlders left Earth thirty-eight years ago, had of course seen pictures. At university he had studied the reports of blood and tissue samples. The Worlders—Denebs, Kindred, the names kept changing until the Collapse, when nobody was interested any longer—were human, brought from Earth to their planet 140,000 years ago.

By whom? Unknown.

Why? Unknown.

They looked human, with minor evolutionary adaptations. Copper-colored skin, like aged pennies. Coarse black hair, all of them. Tall and slender—was gravity less on World? Zack couldn’t remember what he’d read about that. The only strange thing was the eyes, much larger than Terrans, genetically selected to gather as much light as possible under a dimmer sun. He did remember that much.

One of the two young girls was translating. A fine-boned, very pretty face. The other Worlders were a scowling young man, an older man, and a large boy. The boy turned, clutching at the other girl. Zack startled—the boy’s features were unmistakable, even across cultures and light-years. Why bring a mentally challenged kid to another planet?

Marianne Jenner broke away from the group and walked over to the colonel. Zack was glad to not overhear that conversation. Her face went through changes: questioning, shock, anger. She stalked away.

What was that all about? It almost seemed as if they already knew each other. “Jenner”—were they related? It wasn’t that uncommon a name. During the hectic ride in the FiVee from the base to the station, the soldier in charge had refused to answer any questions at all: “You will be debriefed at the appropriate time.” Lindy had made a moue of disgust.

Now Lindy walked over to Zack and smiled wryly. “You’re on. Jason wants you to give them the abbreviated version of the past twenty-eight years. They’re all healthy as far as I can tell through esuits, but bewildered and upset, especially Kayla Rhinehart. She’s the one sobbing. One of the Terrans got left behind at the ship, Branch Carter. Claire Patel—she’s the Indian-American woman—is a physician and says they’re all asymptomatic from the virophage they’re infected with. She says that on Kindred, it counterattacked R. sporii.”

“Really? And they’re all infected?”

“So she says. We have to get them to quarantine stat, but Jason is still trying to save the ship from drone attacks. Apparently it’s not e-shielded. Everything’s all fucked up out there still. He—Shit!”

A direct hit on the hill. The bunker shuddered, but nothing fell from the ceiling and the station held. They were probably all right down here. Probably.

Lindy, who had nerves of titanium—and most likely needed them to have been married to Jenner—said, “You want me to stand by while you do the dismal?”

“Yeah. Thanks. About this virophage—”

“I don’t know any more than that,” Lindy said.

“Are the ali—the Worlders fluent enough in English to understand me?”

“Jane is, if you talk slowly. She’s the translator.”

“‘Jane’?”

“Apparently self-chosen. She seems very bright. Come on, they’re waiting.”

“Just one more thing—did you happen to see Susan and Caitlin before they brought you here?”

“No. But Caity will be fine, Zack. She’s learned to cope with her condition remarkably well for a four-year-old, and she’s getting better all the time.”

Zack walked across the underground bunker to the waiting star-farers. How did you explain in a few paragraphs what Earth had become? Especially to people who must have expected something far different.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Zachary McKay, a virologist. I’m sorry for this upsetting arrival. Colonel Jenner asked me to tell you about Earth and to answer the questions you must have.”

“Yes,” Marianne said. “This is Dr. Claire Patel, Kayla Rhinehart, and Private… no, I guess he’s over there with… with the colonel.”

A catch in her voice. So she and Jenner were related. How? Zack said, “I’ve read your paper on mitochondrial haplogroups, Dr. Jenner. Seminal.”

She grimaced. Okay, a sensitive subject. It had, after all, started so much. She continued. “This is Jane, our translator. Ka^graa and Glamet^vor¡, both biologists. La^vor and her brother Belok^.”

He would never remember the names, which involved rising-and-falling inflections and, for one, a click at the end. Zack settled for a friendly nod. Jane murmured in low, musical translation.

“All right,” Marianne said, “tell us what happened that we need to wear esuits, that there are no city lights visible from space, that missiles are falling on California. Start at when the Friendship left Earth.”

Zack looked at her. Late sixties, maybe, although she looked older. Clearly braced for the worst, yet she asked, clear-eyed and ready to bear whatever she must. Admiration flooded him.

He plunged in. “After your ship left, climate change on Earth accelerated, even worse than had been predicted. Feedback loops became engaged. CO₂ levels rose, ice at the poles melted, there was severe coastal flooding and increasing superstorms and radically decreased ocean phytoplankton—that was why the Friendship was originally built, wasn’t it? By that entrepreneur who thought we only had a few generations left and the best hope for humanity was to start spreading to the stars?”

“Yes.” Short and clipped—she didn’t want to talk about Jonah Stubbins. Zack could only remember part of that story; he would look it up when they got back to the base. If they got back to the base.

“Stubbins was actually right. The entire global ecology was on the way to destruction, or at least to being drastically altered. Then a group of environmental fanatics—”

“Please, slower,” Jane said. “And what is ‘fanatic’?”

Claire Patel said, “Hubon^tel,” and Marianne glanced at her in surprise.

“This environmental group,” Zack continued, “called themselves Gaiists. They—”

“Please,” Jane said, “I am sorry—but how can people be too much dedicated to environment? It is Mother Earth and without care, it will not support life.”

My first insight into World culture, Zack thought. Too bad they hadn’t been in charge of Terra when carbon-emission caps and all the other pathetic stopgaps had failed.

He said, “The Gaiists were ‘too much dedicated to the environment’ when they decided that humans were a deadly parasite on the planet, and only if we were gone could Earth recover. So they tried to kill off humanity, or at least most of it. And they succeeded.”

No one spoke, and Zack had a hard time looking at their faces. “The Gaiists had started as a group of scientists dedicated to stopping global warming, and to reversing it if they could, no matter what the cost. But a group of fanatics seized control. Their numbers grew, people were desperate. Gaiists cells formed in a lot of countries, not just scientists anymore although a few gifted, deranged scientists remained. They were convinced that the only way to save humanity was to destroy it. They weaponized R. sporii.”

“How?” Marianne said.

“Are you familiar with the experiments—they go back over fifty years—to dramatically increase the virility of pox viruses by inserting human immune-boosting genes into the virus, so that the body gets overwhelmed by its own antibodies?”

“Yes, of course. But R. sporii wasn’t—isn’t—a pox virus. It’s related to the paramyxoviruses.”

Marianne, this indomitable old woman, seemed to Zack the only one capable of speech. Jane had stopped translating, overwhelmed either by the technical language or by horror. He said, “Yes. But the Gaiist scientists—they were brilliant, you have to give them that—did something similar to R. sporii. They then combined it with another paramyxovirus, avulavirus, whose natural host is sparrows. Avulavirus shares spore disease’s structure and entry protein, glycoprotein. Avulavirus is usually transmissible by direct contact, but now it’s airborne from bird droppings, with a dual reservoir—humans and several species of sparrows. The birds are asymptomatic carriers.”

“And the humans?”

This was the hard part. “The weaponized microbe was released ten years ago. It was deadly. The incubation period is incredibly short. Ninety-six percent of humans died within a few weeks.”

Kayla Rhinehart screamed and fell to the floor. Jane translated that, her voice quavering. Claire Patel made a small sound and turned away.

Marianne, her face pale and waxy, said, “So there were left alive—”

“Something like two hundred and eighty million worldwide, fourteen million in the United States. Not so many now.” Starvation, disease, suicide, gangs, war.

Marianne, very pale, said, “Go on. Why the war?”

“After the Collapse, that’s what we call it”—because no one could bear the more accurate names—“the survivors were, and are, two groups. The four percent who survived R. sporii avivirus—we call it RSA—and the people who were inside energy domes and have not gone outside since without esuits. The weaponized virus is still out there. It didn’t die out because sparrows serve as the alternate host. That’s why you were told to put on esuits. Things in America would be much worse if it weren’t for domes and esuits, both technology we gained from the Worlders and finally figured out.” Zack nodded at Ka^graa.

Claire said, “It wasn’t theirs.”

“What?”

Marianne said, “Never mind that now. Go on.”

Zack said, “The survivors, some of them anyway, formed various paramilitary groups. There were intragroup warfare and South American–style coups, including among some ex-Army. You have to understand that entire military bases were empty and vulnerable. One group emerged from the fighting, New America. They seized control of critical Army bases, all equipped with various weapons. They want the rest of the bases and weapons, including ours at Monterey Base. They think we might have control of some really big stuff.”

She didn’t, thank heavens, ask what big stuff. Zack had heard the rumors, and feared they were true.

Marianne said, “The federal government?”

“DC was nuked even before New America killed off its rivals. No one knows if it was a homegrown group, Russia, China, North Korea—anyone who had the bomb. Although when Congress still existed, it was New America they declared war on.”

“US retaliation?”

“Yes. And counterretaliation. Much of the East Coast, plus Seattle, LA, and Chicago are radiation holes. And most key military bases as well.”

“How many of these energy-shielded domes are left?”

“Not sure. There may be small ones with no ability to communicate. There is no Internet anymore—it was designed to survive attack, but nothing was designed for RSA.”

“So who does my grandson report to?”

Grandson. Well, at least that meant she had one family member left. No, two—the colonel’s brother would also be her grandson. Zack hadn’t been that lucky. He’d lost everyone, until he met Susan and they had Caitlin. He would die before he lost this second, precious family.

He said, “The American military government, which is what we have now, holds a few domed bases across the country. Headquarters is at Fort Hood, Texas. Colonel Jenner can tell you more about that.”

“These protective domes—can’t you make more?”

“Energy dome manufacture was just starting when the Collapse came and the factory went up with LA. We can’t even alter their size or shape—essentially, they’re prefabs. But now that World scientists are here, with their more advanced—”

Jane spoke, in English, with the look of a person focusing on what was most important. “The Earth, now… is the globe warming stopped? Is the environment saved?”

For a moment, red rage flooded Zack. Then he got control of himself. She couldn’t know, this human girl cousin from the stars, that she had just named the Gaiist and New America justification for mass murder of nearly an entire species, and that species their own. Even now there were people who said, But what would have become of all of us on an unsustainable Earth if 96 percent hadn’t died? Wasn’t 96 percent better than everyone? Even now.

“Yes,” he said to Jane. “Global warming has stopped increasing. Earth is slowly returning to healthy forests and savannahs and wetlands and jungles. To lovely pristine wilderness.”

“Zack,” Lindy said warningly. Jane looked as if he’d slapped her—had his tone been that savage? Maybe. He was an RSA survivor. When he’d emerged from the fever high enough to cause delirium, his first wife and two sons lay dead on the bedroom floor, their lungs drowned in their own bodily fluids.

Lindy took Jane’s hand. “You’ll be okay, Jane. All of you. As soon as Jas—Colonel Jenner says it’s safe, we’ll take you all to quarantine and adjust your gut microbes to Terran air. The process is much easier than it once was. We’ve learned a lot about the human body since you left. And inside the e-shields your people gave ours, you’ll be safe.”

Marianne said, “I had two other children and another grandson…”

Zack watched realization dawn on Lindy. He saved her from having to make explanations. “Marianne, Colin Jenner is an RSA survivor. He lives at the coast.”

Tears clouded her eyes. Zack knew, already, she was a person who would hate that public display of weakness. He took a stab at redirection. “You said you’re infected with a virophage against the original R. sporii?”

“Yes.” He watched her face steady. “But I doubt it will have any effect on this variation. If the virus has been merged with a bird virus, the two versions will be too different.”

“Yes, but we can try. Have you cultured the virophage?”

“Yes. But those cultures are aboard ship. There are anomalies in infected native animals—I want to talk to you about that. Later.”

Yes, later. Zack turned to the physician, Claire Patel. “We’re doing work here that will interest you I think. And now that these scientists are here from World”—he nodded at the two men—“with their much more advanced knowledge, the work will probably go much better!”

Silence. Then Claire said in a flat voice, “There is no ‘much more advanced knowledge.’ World science and technology are about fifty years behind ours. Ours when we left Terra, I mean.”

“But… but… the energy shields! The spaceships!”

“Not theirs. And they don’t know whose, any more than we do.”

Zack considered this, while the world turned itself inside out, like a sock. World was not ahead of Terra, but behind. There would be no help from the stars.

But there would be no advanced weapons, either, which was undoubtedly what Jason Jenner had been talking to the star-faring soldier about. Jenner would gain only the ship itself, if he had managed to save it.

That, and five transplanted refugees who probably wished right now that they had never left home.