Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 (5 page)

Alex stared at Lau-Wah. This was the longest speech she’d ever heard him make. Ashraf opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

She said quietiy, “Obviously you’ve thought about this a lot, Lau-Wah. I’m afraid I haven’t. I wasn’t paying attention, I guess. But what do you think should be done?”

“I will talk to Wong Yat-Shing.”

“No, I mean about the larger situation. What do you suggest we—”

“I will talk to Wong Yat-Shing,” Lau-Wah repeated, and this time the note of finality was unmistakable. Lau-Wah had said as much as he would; perhaps he thought he’d said too much. Alex had come up against this trait in him before: a sudden opening of a door to permit a clear glimpse of lucidly arranged thought, and then just as suddenly, the door closed again. Restricted: No Entry. It frustrated her enormously.

“Lau-Wah—”

“I will report to you both what I learn,” Lau-Wah said, and left the room.

Alex and Ashraf stared at each other. “Do you think, Ashraf, that I should—”

“I think you and I should do nothing,” Ashraf said. He shrugged slightly. “We have bigger problems, Alex. Fur ships, human ships. Lau-Wah can concern himself with his people’s petty discontents.”

There it was. The dismissal that Lau-Wah had spoken of, the relegation of the Chinese to an unimportant status—and from Ashraf Shanti, never the most perceptive of men but also not the most condescending. Ashraf didn’t even see his own attitude. Was this “racism”? Maybe it was.

Should Alex discuss the whole situation with Jake? He’d seen these different ethnic groups on Earth, had recruited them for Greentrees, had built Mira City with them, had observed them for fifty years. Whatever he had to say would be informed by back ground.

But… it might be
all
background. More and more, Jake’s mind wandered into the past. He produced long, boring tales of incidents from a childhood Alex couldn’t picture. Crowded cities, bio warfare, sparkle concerts, cars and trains, pollution masks, CO2 level alerts, going to bed hungry… Alex had never known anyone involuntarily hungry, not her whole life. Jake’s reminiscences were so irrelevant, and so depressing. It was hard to stay interested.

No, she didn’t want to discuss Wong Yat-Shing with Jake.

She looked out again at the trampled experimental seed beds. By tomorrow the techs would have it looking good again. The gene-farm might even try out new flowers in the beds; Alex would enjoy gazing out at those. In their variations on native plants, the geneticists often came up with genuinely beautiful colors, shadings, and shapes.

By tomorrow everything would be restored to normal.

It took the
Crucible
eleven days to reach orbit around Greentrees. However the ship was powered, it wasn’t by a McAndrew Drive. During that time, Commander Julian Cabot Martin proved willing to answer anything they asked him, although of course there was no way to know if his answers were truthful.

The ship, chartered and financed by the Third Life Alliance in Geneva, United Atlantic Federation, had left the solar system forty-seven years ago, five years in ship time. She carried no quee. The
Crucible
did not have power to spare for the enormous drain of a quee, since even though there had been advances in drive technology in fifty years, Earth was in such a bad state that launching the
Crucible
at all had been very difficult. In fact, Earth itself would never send quee messages again. The
Crucible
carried only fifty-six people, all of whom but three had been in cold sleep for the voyage. Thirty of those were scientists from various disciplines, eager to study the first sentient aliens humanity had ever found.

“Good luck,” Siddalee Brown muttered. “That Nan Frayne is the only one who could help them do that, and I doubt she will.”

Alex doubted it, too. “Only three people awake for five years! How did they stand it?”

Jake said, “You’re used to people around you all the time. You like that. These people may be much different.”

“I don’t see that,” Alex argued. “Earth is much more crowded than Mira. You’ve told me that over and over. It seems to me that this Julian Cabot Martin would be more accustomed to people, not less.”

Jake didn’t answer, merely got that sad, knowing look that appeared more and more on his wizened face. The three of them sat in Alex’s house, which had somehow by degrees become Jake’s house as well. Alex was not interested in home decorating, and her two-room apartment, rented from the city and convenient to the Mausoleum, had scarcely anything in it but the standard sturdy, utilitarian foamcast furniture it had come with. Alex never noticed. She only slept and dressed here, and sometimes not even that, staying overnight in her office. Jake had come to occupy the bedroom, and Siddalee had moved in a cot for Alex. It stood, rumpled and unmade, under the room’s only adornment, a plaque awarded to Alex by the Mira City Council for exemplary service. Siddalee had rescued the plaque from under a pile of debris in Alex’s office and had hung it on the apartment wall.

Today Siddalee had brought a cake from the new bakery on Friend Street. The bakery was Quaker, which meant it was owned by a single family who was more interested in providing a good product than in becoming rich. Flavored with the Greentrees spice tangmoss, sweetened with genemod honey from Terran bees, rich with sue-bird eggs, the cake was the best Alex had ever tasted. She’d eaten, greedily, three slices. The cake’s sparse remains littered her foamcast table, where Katous was illegally licking them up.

“Alex, you shouldn’t let that cat up on the table,” Siddalee said disapprovingly.

“Oh, he’s all right.”

“He’s way too fat.”

“Probably,” Alex said.

“Living is too easy on Greentrees,” Jake said. “I remember when I was young and—”

“It’s time for MiraNet,” Alex said. She really couldn’t take one more story about the Earth of seventy years ago.

“Turn it on,” Siddalee said, and Alex opened the comlink.

MiraNet had started as a full-time computer site, largely self-operating. The program sorted through all news postings from anyone in the infant colony; prioritized them by sender, content, and urgency; and provided sophisticated graphics and pertinent deebee background. Alex could remember that version of MiraNet from her childhood. Over time, Mira’s computers had slowly decayed, even more slowly become beyond replacement. MiraNet had added comlink broadcast, which provided audio but no visual. Now there were too many people, and too many colony survival priorities, to provide everyone with a computer. So MiraNet ran partly on computer, partly on audio-only comlinks, partly on short-wave radio. They were, Alex as tray-o knew all too well, going backwards.

It was only temporary, she told herself. The technology was not lost. Mira would again make computers. When they were caught up on the manufacturing ’bots necessary, when the train system was running, when they were ahead on medical supplies, when the farming equipment was adequate …

“The
Crucible
will reach Greentrees’orbit tomorrow and will be met by the Mira City shuttle,” MiraNet announced. Alex wondered what views of the ship the Net was displaying. As tray-o she could have assigned herself a computer but had not; she was not corrupt enough to waste one in a private home when there were so few left. “This is the latest from Julian Cabot Martin:

“ ’We are very eager to meet you,’ ” came the deep, formal voice now recognizable to everyone on Greentrees. ” ’It has been a long, dull voyage. All of us are now awake and looking forward to stepping onto solid ground.’ ”

Jake said fretfully, “He never actually says anything, have you noticed that? All PR.”

Alex didn’t know what “PR” was, and didn’t ask. “He just said they’re all awake. That’s new information, Jake.”

“Now that cat’s
lying
on your table, Alex,” Siddalee said. “It’s just not sanita
^r
y.”

Alex shooed away Katous, who gave her a baleful look before stalking into a corner and lying on Alex’s jacket, which she’d flung there the last time it rained.

“Mira Corp Consolidated Mining,” continued MiraNet, “announced today another mining start north of the Avery Mountains, where naturally occurring tunnels and underground aquifers make it relatively easy to—”

Siddalee reached out and closed the link.

“Alex—” Jake began, but Alex immediately cut him off. “Put the link back on, Siddalee.”

“Alex, you don’t have to listen to any—”

“I said put it on!”

Siddalee reopened the comlink. Alex glowered; she hated the way people still, after all this time, assumed that any mention of anything connected with mining distressed her. How did they think she did her job as tray-o?

She wasn’t distressed. What she chiefly felt now was guilt that she was not distressed. Kamal’s death in that mining accident had been so long ago, and their marriage had been so troubled by—

“Alex!” Siddalee exclaimed, and she realized that the news item about the mining start had been interrupted.

“—just posted! Someone has burned a field camp twenty miles downriver, destroying the inflatables used by a Mira City research team as well as the riverside holding pens in which the team was breeding local fish and water animals. The team, which consists of three scientists and two apprentices, was away from camp at the time of the attack. No one was hurt. Juliana Levine, in charge of the effort, reports that in the rubble someone left a metal rod twisted into the shape of the ancient Chinese character for ’hope.’ This artifact has been identified with the dissident village Hope of Heaven, which—”

“Oh, Lord help us,” Siddalee said. “Them again!”

“Siddalee, comlink Lau-Wah and Ashraf and tell them I’ll be at the Mausoleum in ten minutes.”

“Alex, don’t go running off like this! You don’t even know where Lau-Wah and the mayor are!”

The comlink shrilled on override. “Alex,” said Lau-Wah’s calm voice, “I’m with Guy, on my way to the research camp. Ashraf has agreed to put me in charge of this problem. I’ll be back by the time the shuttle returns to Greentrees tomorrow.”

“Lau-Wah—”

“Thank you, Alex.” The link went dead.

Alex stared at it. She had been effectively cut out of the action. Whatever it was.

Siddalee said, chewing her lip, “You have enough to do already, you know.”

“So does Lau-Wah!”

“They’re his people.”

“That’s just the wrong thinking, Siddalee! We’re all our people! Everyone on Greentrees is people!” Alex said, aware that she sounded both overwrought and obscure. Damn it to hell! “Jake—”

But there was no help from Jake. He had fallen asleep, snoring gently in his chair, the gray cat on his lap.

The Mira City Welcoming Committee assembled at the shuttleport just after dawn. “Shuttleport,” thought Alex, was a misnomer. Used only by scientists and the rotating skeleton crew of the orbiting
Beta Vine,
the shuttle usually rested under a huge inflatable, which had been moved every few years as the city expanded. When needed, it was rolled out of the inflatable, checked carefully, and flown upstairs. Space travel for its own sake held little glamour for her generation of Greenies; the planet itself was still too full of exciting unknowns.

This time, however, a small crowd had gathered to watch the launch. Alex counted one robocam plus three people with handheld recorders; MiraNet would have a lot of amateur postings. A few people carried flowers, which they presented shyly to Mayor Shanti.

“Here, the Earthmen might like these.”

“Give them an advance taste of how beautiful Greentrees is.”

“Thank you,” Ashraf said, helplessly accepting the bouquets, one of which was not tied together and trailed stray blossoms as he climbed aboard the shuttle. “Here, Alex … take some of these!”

“Not me,” Alex said. “They’re your problem. I want to be able to shake hands.” She grinned at him wickedly.

Guy Davenport stuck his head into the shuttle. “You all ready?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “Let the recorders hum and the music soar.”

He slammed the door, frowning. Stuffy prig.

An irrational exuberance had seized Alex. She was going upstairs to greet aliens. Forget the Furs and the even more mythical Vines—these Terrans were alien enough for her. They came from a different planet, a different culture, a different time, even … the
Crucible
had left Earth nearly fifty years ago. There would be so much to learn, to marvel at. So many interesting unknowns! Yet, at the same time, the arriving aliens professed friendship, spoke English, and were too greatly outnumbered by her own people to be threatening. It seemed the ideal situation. As Alex strapped herself in, she hummed under her breath.