CROSSFIRE Page 15

  Jake said, with conviction, "Not Lucy."

  Gail merely smiled.

  Jake had been afraid the sight of the skimmer's landing might provoke some reaction from the alien shuttle, but it did not. Nothing at the beacon site had changed. Karim Mahjoub disappeared instantly into the bunker to analyze any new data from Mira Corp's space satellites about the orbiting ship. Dr. Shipley came out from behind the small structure, his face stretched with tension.

  "George?" Jake called, across the hundred yards to the shuttle. "Anything?"

  The biologist sat cross-legged beside the dead alien, waiting for ... what? He said, "I can't judge the rate of decomposition at all. But no Greentrees insects are drawn to the body."

  Jake didn't see the significance of this, but Ingrid said, startled, "Are you sure?" She went to sit beside George.

  "All right, come away from there," Jake said. It had been one thing for George to sit in front of the shuttle before Jake arrived; maybe it had inhibited the aliens from emerging before Jake got there. But now that he was present, he wanted to give the aliens every chance to try contact again.

  Reluctantly George and Ingrid retreated from the shattered cart. Jake looked closely at George. The shakiness the biologist had shown right after shooting Halberg was gone, but George was still pale.

  Ingrid said, "If there really isn't any insect activity in—what? an hour—then it could be—" Jake tuned her out, and led George away from her.

  "George, are you all right?"

  His voice was flat, devoid of his usual cheerful certainty. "I had no choice, Jake. I had to kill Halberg."

  "I know you did. Can I—"

  "No. Just leave me alone and let me work." George turned away, and Jake let him go. Probably he was right. Work would help.

  Shipley deftly set Gail's arm and stuck patches on her neck. Immediately Gail looked orders of magnitude happier. Shipley said, "Now you, Jake."

  "Something's on your mind, Doctor. What?"

  "Let me see to you first." He taped Jake's ribs and stuck patches on his neck. The pain floated away from Jake. But he felt tired, very tired. Different drugs from what Gail got?

  "All right, Jake," Shipley said, very low. "Come with me. Just you."

  He led Jake around the bunker, leaving Gail, Ingrid, and George in intense conversation. Karim was still inside at the computer. Dusk was starting to fall, long shadows that preceded the abrupt equatorial. The air took on that tart sweetness Jake had noticed before during Greentrees twilights. Something that flowered at night, George had said, but he hadn't yet identified the plant. Its sweetness was vaguely disturbing.

  Lieutenant Halberg's body lay on the ground, covered with a light tarp. To Jake's surprise, Mueller was already digging a grave, frantically shoveling soil.

  "No," Shipley said simply.

  "I bury our officer," Mueller said. He didn't stop shoveling.

  "It's too late, Franz," Shipley said. "I already know."

  Mueller stood still, and this time there was no mistaking his expression: fear.

  Shipley said, "It's all of you, isn't it? All seven had it done?"

  "I know not anything ... what you say ... is wrong. Very."

  "No. I'm not wrong. Franz, you have to let me take a tissue sample. And not blood or skin, either. An organ sample."

  Jake burst out, "What the hell is going on here?"

  Shipley didn't take his eyes off Mueller. "An organ sample and a cerebrospinal fluid sample. Do you feel it, Franz? Tell me the truth. You know what it can do, and you killed Captain Scherer because you saw it in action. Samples, Franz."

  For an impossible moment, Jake thought Mueller was going to raise the shovel and bash Shipley with it. But then he let out a heartbroken sob and dropped the shovel. "I want not to die, Doctor!"

  "No one is going to kill you, Franz. You know how it works. Raise your shirt, son."

  Mueller did. His body was magnificent, toned and muscled, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and flat belly. Jake watched Shipley put the black metal box against Mueller's torso, at the front below his rib cage, and then at the back at the base of his spine. The medico hummed softly.

  "I'll know soon, Franz," Shipley said. "Stop digging. Go sit over there and collect yourself."

  Mueller looked uncertain and Shipley, to Jake's surprise, repeated the instructions in German. At least Jake assumed it was the same instructions; Mueller trudged to a narrow bluish tree out of earshot and sat under it, his head down on his bent knees.

  Shipley said, "I think I should sit down, too. It's been ... a day." He lowered his soft bulk to the ground. In the gathering darkness he looked like some monstrous outgrowth of the alien purple groundcover.

  Jake stayed standing, waiting. Dread slid down his spine.

  "I started an autopsy before you came, Jake. Rough, but enough to confirm what I suspected. Halberg, and probably Scherer—in fact, probably Scherer's whole Swiss team—are rebuilts."

  Jake said instantly, "Not possible. We did the most extensive security checks available! Not to mention medical tests. We went into every medical, financial, and criminal possibility for all seven of them, we—"

  "I suspect they had it done after your check and before the Ariel launched. Although of course all the arrangements had been in place for decades."

  "Subsequent medical checks—"

  "It doesn't show up in blood or skin samples."

  "But, Doctor, the cost alone—"

  "I can't explain that part for you, Jake. I can only explain the medical aspect. But are you going to tell me that you have never heard of anyone's suddenly and unexpectedly acquiring a fortune that was not traceable?"

  For a moment, Jake thought Shipley knew. About Donnie, about Mrs. Dalton ... but that wasn't possible. It had been a lucky guess. Rage filled him that Shipley could put him through this. The sanctimonious old—

  "My autopsy on Halberg only got as far as a few abdominal organs," Shipley said, as if he hadn't noticed Jake's reaction. Which, of course, he must have. "But a few organs are enough. You probably already know a lot about rebuilts, but let me explain them anyway."

  Jake's rage grew. Shipley was manipulating him, talking to give Jake time to collect himself. No one directed Jake Holman's emotions. It was Jake who was the negotiator, the manipulator. The one in charge.

  "A rebuilt body starts with a cloned cell," Shipley said. "The DNA is removed and altered, then inserted into a harvested egg. A baby is grown in either an artificial womb or a surrogate mother. When the clone is born, it's a perfect copy of the donor except for the genetic alterations, done in vitro, which are all to the brain. The child is an idiot. It can breathe and digest, but it will never walk, talk, feed itself, or be toilet-trained. Still, he or she can smile, laugh, recognize people, respond to sunlight or music or hugs.

  "When the child is in mid-teens, it's killed for its youthful organs, which are then transferred, all of them, into the original person. Who, for reasons we still don't understand, thereby extends his lifetime to twice what it would have been. Somehow the aging process takes its cues from some, or all, of the body's organs."

  "I know about—"

  "Of course you do, Jake. Rebuilts are illegal in every country on Earth. Partly because of the ethics involved, and partly because somewhere around thirty percent of rebuilts develop mental illnesses. The brain-body interaction is an enormously complex one. A brain paired with organs it did not grow up with, even cloned organs, sometimes reacts weirdly. Different genes get expressed than would otherwise, or they get expressed in different quantities, or they fail to get expressed. The neurotransmitter mix in the brain is affected. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not. The result can be the whole range of psychochemical disturbances, from depression to schizophrenia. The most common disturbance is paranoia.

  "Mira City hired a security team of rebuilts, and so far two of them have gone paranoid. Enough so to try to murder the 'Other,' which paranoids see as a threat. Aliens are the ultimate O
ther."

  Now Jake did sit down. He seemed to see nothing, and to see everything that had happened. Shipley continued, "When it was just a small group of aliens with spears, living in thatched huts, they were no real threat, merely a curiosity. But with superior technology ... well, the rebuilts saw that much differently."

  Jake said, in a voice he didn't recognize as his own, "Mueller? Wortz? The other three?"

  Shipley raised the medico and pressed a button. Data raced past on the miniature screen. "No. No cerebrospinal protein anomalies in Franz. Not yet, anyway. The condition can develop at any time, but it can be controlled by medications intended for whatever mental disturbances develop. Most of the time, anyway."

  Total darkness fell. Someone switched on lights and the area around the tower and the bunker was flooded with brightness. Jake went on sitting, until Shipley touched his arm and he looked up, startled, as if he'd never seen the old man before in all his stupid, futile, misguided life.

  15

  As soon as Shipley told Gail about the Mira Corp's security team being rebuilts, she thought, That's what Nan had on Rudy Scherer. Nan Frayne, with her dubious criminal connections, had somehow heard about what the Swiss had done and had been using the knowledge to squeeze special treatment out of Scherer. Gail looked curiously at Shipley. Did he guess? No. He hadn't put his daughter together with what the soldiers had done. The bliss of moral innocence.

  Her second reaction was to feel all the horror that Shipley wasn't voicing. Clones, human beings living their individual lives, feeling pleasure and pain and enough other emotions to be human despite their mental limitations. Then one day killed, mined for organs like so much dead rock for veins of ore . . .

  Gail shoved away the sickening images in favor of the practical. "How do we find out if the other Swiss are affected? And what do we do if they develop the condition later?"

  "We monitor cerebrospinal fluid for significant proteins and we medicate appropriately," Shipley said.

  "Will they agree? What if they don't?"

  "I don't know," Shipley said. He looked exhausted. "But if Lieutenant Wortz agrees, I imagine she can order the others to comply."

  Gail nodded. This was something for Jake to take over. She said, "Doctor ... why don't you slap some of those patches on your own neck? With all due respect, you look like you need a booster."

  He smiled, and Gail realized that New Quakers must not use such things. Well, more fools them. "Then at least go lie down for a bit. Ingrid and George have put up the inflatable that came on the skimmer."

  "Yes, I will. But, Gail ... promise to call me if anything significant happens."

  She hesitated; a promise to Shipley somehow felt more serious than to anyone else. "All right. I'll call you."

  "Thank you." He gave her his gentle smile and lumbered toward the inflatable.

  The area around the beacon was starting to look like a ramshackle town, Gail thought, a miniature version of Mira City's initial mess. Floodlights from the tower bathed a ragged quadrangle of groundcover torn up by all the activity. On one side of the quadrangle sat the bunker, with Mueller creating a cemetery behind it. On another side sprawled the inflatable, which could sleep all seven of them jammed together on air mattresses, assuming all of them actually slept at the same time. Gail doubted this would happen.

  Various equipment cluttered the third side of the quadrangle, including the portable stove off the skimmer, on which Ingrid was heating something while arguing with George. George seemed to have recovered from shooting Halberg; at least he didn't look as if he were dwelling on it. Gail approved. Don't regret the unavoidable.

  The fourth side of the quad was empty, and the most significant of all. A floodlight had been angled to illuminate the long space between the human activity and the silent lopsided-egg shuttle.

  She was heading back around the bunker when Karim Mahjoub came out. "Ms. Cutler, I have some things to tell everyone about the ship in orbit."

  "Anything critical that we need to know this very minute?"

  He seemed taken aback. To him, everything in physics was critical. "Well..."

  "Then wait a few minutes." She rounded the bunker.

  Private Mueller had finished his grave. He looked up at her. "Ms. Cutler, I like have ... ein Begrabnis."

  A funeral. Now. But she saw his face and said, "Maybe Dr. Shipley could say a few words."

  "Ja. Just some few words. And Captain Scherer..."

  She had forgotten the body in the monitoring bunker outside Mira City, had actually forgotten the panicky fighting and the sickening moment Mueller had shot his commanding officer. Blame it on Shipley's patches. "Private Mueller ... Franz ... wouldn't you rather wait until Lieutenant Wortz can conduct a proper military funeral?"

  Mueller's eyes darkened. "We have not the military funeral for a treason, ma'am."

  Of course. Scherer and Halberg had both disobeyed Jake's orders. God, the torment this man's beliefs must be putting him through. She said gently, "Wait here. I'll get the others."

  Shipley was not yet asleep. "Just five minutes, Doctor." Obligingly he heaved his bulk up from the mattress. Gail rounded up Ingrid, George, and Karim. "Where's Jake?"

  George said, "He went to walk around the shuttle, see if he could see anything."

  "Alone? You let him?"

  George said, "How was I supposed to stop him?"

  Gail ignored that. "George, can you manage this? A funeral for Lieutenant Halberg?"

  George's answer both was and wasn't relevant. "Nothing we do here is the same as before." Gail nodded and went to find Jake.

  It was the first time she'd approached the alien shuttle. It gave her a sudden chill. What were they doing in there, the plant-things? Were they mourning their own dead? Gail avoided looking at the smashed cart and the dead alien beside it.

  She found Jake standing on the far side of the shuttle, about ten feet away from it, beyond reach of the floodlights. In the darkness she couldn't see his expression.

  "Jake, this isn't safe. Come back. Private Mueller wants to have a brief service over Halberg's grave. I know, I know, this is hardly the time. But he's so torn up inside, I thought that five minutes of prayer from Shipley might make him feel better."

  Jake didn't answer.

  "Jake? Are you all right?"

  "What would be all right in this situation, Gail?"

  His listlessness angered her. "Who knows? Not me. But if George can rally, you can. After all, you didn't kill anybody. I'm just trying to do the best I can for these people here, and right now that means a dumb military service for Halberg."

  "A service is a stupid idea. Let Wortz handle it on remote."

  "Mueller doesn't think she will, because to his mind Halberg committed treason. So did Scherer. They disobeyed a direct order from the commander-in-chief, who is you."

  That roused him. "I'm not a commander-in-chief, for God's sake! I'm an ex-lawyer turned space entrepreneur turned colonist!"

  "Not to the Swiss. Get your balls over there, Jake. We need you. This isn't like you."

  He stepped forward, and she saw that his face looked ravaged. "Jake—what is it?"

  "Nothing. Let's go have a military service." He pushed past, leaving her to follow around the impassive shuttle.

  Shipley stood so long with head bowed over Halberg's grave that Gail had a sudden misgiving: Didn't Quakers worship in silence? Was Shipley ever going to say anything at all?

  She stood with George Fox, who seemed composed enough, considering. They stood far enough back from the grave that they could see past the bunker to the shuttle. The others crowded closer, ringing the mound of fresh earth. Someone had gathered a bouquet of wildflowers and put it on the raw soil. Mueller? Apparently even these aloof soldiers, these rebuilts, could act sentimentally. Gail wouldn't have suspected it.

  She tried to summon personal memories of the dead man. But Erik Halberg had always been so aloof, so correct and formal, that nothing came to mind. She hadn't known
him at all.

  Finally Shipley spoke. "We know that God does not require of us more than is possible to a human being living a normal life. Men may act wrongly, but it is not up to us to judge their actions so much as it is to search our own. We cannot try to change others without examining our own hearts, and so being willing to change ourselves.

  "We cannot know what was in Erik Halberg's heart when he fired upon that poor alien being. We cannot know if the things done to Friend Erik's body had affected his brain so that he was unable to stop himself—even if he wished to. All that is for God to see. The most we can do, guided by the Light of Truth, is to ask ourselves what this action will lead us to, and what is the right thing to do next.

  "Erik Halberg was, by all accounts, a conscientious man. His comrades respected him. There must have been much in his life that was guided by the Light, as there is much in any life that will listen in simplicity and silence. We honor that in Friend Erik, the good within him. What matters in human life is often not what we think about something, but the best that can be thought about it. Let us remember the best in this man."

  Hardly a eulogy, Gail thought. Talk about damning with faint praise! She caught Ingrid and George exchange a raised-eyebrow glance, but Mueller seemed satisfied. He suddenly sang out, "Aaaa ... men," in such a sweet, high voice that Gail started. Where in his unknown history had that come from?

  "Danke, Hen Doktor," he mumbled to Shipley, emotion reverting him to German. Shipley nodded wearily.

  Jake said, as Gail had ten minutes before, "Doctor, go lie down."

  Karim was at his elbow, "Please, Mr. Holman, the ship in orbit..."

  "Yes," Jake said. It looked to Gail as if Jake were making a huge effort to pull himself together. His face smoothed from anguish to forced rigidity, and he gave the young physicist a ghastly smile. "All right, Karim, let's hear it."

  They moved to the front of the bunker. Instinctively, without anyone suggesting it, George, Ingrid, Jake, and Gail sat in a semicircle, facing the shuttle. After a moment's hesitation, Karim sat facing them, his back to the alien craft. George moved slightly to get a clear view around him.