CROSSFIRE Read online

  That was enough. Ingrid had signed the Mira Corporation contract; she was aware of Gail's power to enforce cold sleep if Gail deemed it necessary for the good of the expedition. Jake, the former lawyer, had drawn up the contract. Rudy Scherer would enforce it without question. William Shipley would sedate Ingrid so quickly she wouldn't even realize it had happened until she woke up on Greentrees.

  Gail watched Ingrid struggle with her temper, her outrage, her totally understandable, space-induced paranoia. They all felt it. Ingrid had given in, but only in a minor way. The geneticist was volatile by nature but not disconnected from realities. Gail had counted on that. She hadn't even armed herself.

  "All right, Gail," Ingrid muttered. "I'm sorry. I'll try to keep myself in control."

  "I never doubted it," Gail said with totally false warmth, and waited. One, two, three ... yes, Ingrid slammed the door as she went out.

  This pathetic show of defiance depressed Gail more than the entire rest of the incident. What would all the awakes, including her, be like when they finally reached Greentrees? The people still out of cold sleep were all intelligent and accomplished. There were the members of the Governing Board who had elected awake: Faisal bin Saud, William Shipley, Liu Fengmo, and Scherer's military, who were the most disciplined bunch Gail had ever seen. The scientists were usually focused and resourceful: Ingrid and Todd; the quiet, mousy paleontologist, Lucy Lasky; Maggie Striker, the ecologist; Robert Takai, energy engineer; and the rest. Competent and seemingly stable, all of them.

  But everyone who colonized outside the solar system was, by definition, anomalous. They had overwhelming dreams, or fears, or—like Gail—beliefs. Of course, she thought wryly, her beliefs reflected reality more than the others aboard. Well, egotism aside, they did. She was leading her large, intelligent, wealthy family to an unknown planet because the planet they had occupied had no more than another few generations left.

  Gail's people had always anticipated, and profited from, global economic changes and global social changes and, now, global ecological change. "The Canny Cutlers," the press called them. Canny and clannish and calculating. Led intellectually by Uncle Harry and legally by Gail, they were clear-eyed about the coming ruin of Earth's precious biosphere. And they were getting out.

  Jake's fledgling corporation had come along at just the right time. The family hadn't wanted to move to Mars, or Luna, or Europa. Hostile environments, all of them. But the four planets already claimed by different Earth governments were not yet open to colonization. The fifth, a newly discovered and viable biosphere, was empty. The landing probe said so. It had been sent out decades ago, when the United Atlantic Federation had still had tax money to do such things. The probe had been in transit for over a Terran century; its detailed information had come back instantly by quee. Soil composition, atmospheric content, genetic analysis of the life within its limited range. DNA-based, of course. All five planets were. The scientists argued ... no, Gail wasn't going to rehash that old argument in this fugitive moment of quiet.

  She rubbed her eyes and leaned forward, elbows on Jake's console. God, another day of noise, boredom, captivity. That's what it was, for all of them: captivity, despite all the careful provisions made for recreation, work, exercise, all of it. But nothing ever happened. Every day the same. Gail had always prided herself on being self-sufficient and adaptable, but this! She hadn't, couldn't have, imagined the ennui and irritability and distortion of all normal interactions. Of course, it would be different when they reached Greentrees, but—

  "Gail?" Jake stuck his head into the office.

  "Jake, what kind of stupid name for a planet is 'Greentrees'? Who picked it?"

  "You did. You wanted something inoffensive in any language, and it's certainly better than that UAF designation: '64a pending.' Gail, we have a problem."

  She looked up. "A problem? What sort of problem? Lieutenant Wortz's computer error?"

  "No. A human problem. Lucy Lasky."

  "What about her?" The paleontologist had been the least trouble of anyone on ship, spending more and more time in her tiny sleep chamber. Studying, Gail had assumed. Lucy was inexperienced in comparison to the other, older scientists. Mira Corp hadn't needed to recruit a top talent. Nobody thought their survival depended on paleontology. "Isn't she in your meal group?"

  "She didn't come to breakfast," Jake said.

  "Well, where is she?"

  "She's locked in the hold. She unpacked a laser rock cutter and she's threatening to carve the ship into tiny pieces."

  2

  This is my fault," Jake said as they hurried along the corridor to the hold hatch.

  "Of course it is," Gail snapped. "Mountains fall and it's your fault; stars go nova and it's your fault. We haven't got time for any existential guilt now, Jake."

  Which just showed, Jake thought, how much Gail could misunderstand human motivation. This wasn't abstract guilt. Lucy Lasky was holed up crazy and dangerous in the hold because Jake hadn't spent enough time observing and reporting on her increasing withdrawal. He knew why he had failed in that duty. Not that Gail, that forthright lesbian, was going to understand it.

  Gail said to the screen on the outside of the hatch, "Activate."

  "Retina scan, please," the screen said. Gail leaned forward and positioned her eye over the scanner and Jake looked away.

  Even after all this time, even in these circumstances, he still flinched at any retina scan.

  "Abigail Sandra Cutler, Mira Corp, vice president," the scanner said. "Authorization alpha."

  "Open the hatch," Gail said.

  Jake said impatiently, "Don't you think I tried that?"

  "Opening," the screen said. And then, "Equipment failure. Opening mechanism destroyed on the opposite side."

  "Method of destruction?"

  "Laser cutter."

  "Play surveillance vid."

  The screen replayed the recording Jake had already seen. Lucy, suited and helmeted for the airless hold, entered it through this same hatch. Her movements looked unhurried and deliberate. She keyed in the correct manual code (and how had she gotten it?) to open the crate holding the heavy-duty laser cutter designed to slice through the hardest of igneous rocks. Carefully she released the mechanism that held its rollers immobile. Jake felt the same disbelief as his first viewing. Lucy Lasky, with her slight, almost boyish figure, her wisps of fine light brown hair, her wide eyes under slightly too-high eyebrows, so that she always looked surprised. Lucy Lasky, silent and pleasant and practically invisible, rolling out the laser cutter against the 1.25 gravity and positioning it precisely to point at the outer hull. Her thin fingers keyed in the code to turn it on.

  "Jesus," Gail said.

  Lucy gave the laser cutter a brief proprietary pat. Then she unpacked a small cutter, the type that would eventually be used for cutting up subsections of the ship, and methodically destroyed the computerized hatch mechanism. Now the hatch could only be opened manually.

  Gail demanded, "Why the hell didn't alarms sound?"

  "They did," Jake said. "That's why I came. You didn't hear them?"

  "No!"

  "Well, I did. She must have disabled some but not known how to get them all. But she got Scherer's."

  Gail swung around to face Jake. "You didn't call him?"

  "Not yet. Gail, think. If we can talk her out of there, we can put her in cold sleep before anybody else finds out this even happened. Everybody's jumpy enough without—"

  "You put way too much faith in talk, Jake! Jesus, lawyers. While you're reasoning with a lunatic, she could breach the hull." Gail raised her wrist to turn on her phone.

  "No, wait—" Jake began, and another voice behind him said, "Yes, Gail, wait. Please."

  Jake whirled around in the narrow corridor. William Shipley stood there, his rotund body squeezed between the gray bulkheads, his face urgent.

  Gail said harshly, "This is an unauthorized location for you, Dr. Shipley. Return to the wardroom immediately."

/>   "Let me just talk to her, Gail. Please. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think I could do some good."

  "Yeah, well," Gail said, "I think Captain Scherer can do some good. Bridge ... Captain, we have a situation at the cargo hold hatch. Code One. Lucy Lasky has locked herself in and—"

  Jake stopped listening. Something in Shipley's eyes held him. The man was a religious crazy, but more than once Jake had seen him talking to Lucy, engaging her in low, intense-looking conversation. That was more than anyone else had done. Gail squeezed around Shipley, still talking into her phone, and ran back along the corridor. Probably going to meet Scherer halfway.

  "Please, Jake," Shipley said.

  Jake said to the still-activated screen, "Two-way communication."

  "Retina scan, please."

  He made himself lean into the scanner, fought the nausea that rose into his throat. God, after all this time...

  "Jacob Sean Holman, president, Mira Corporation."

  "Two-way communication, damn it!"

  Shipley stepped forward, nudging Jake aside. "Lucy? It's Dr. Shipley." His voice had lost its urgency; it was quiet and warm.

  The image of Lucy on the screen froze. Then she moved quickly to the large cutter and said, "Go away, Doctor. Please. I don't want them to hurt you, too."

  "Who, Lucy? Who's going to hurt me?"

  "Them," she said desperately. "The others. You know who I mean."

  "No, I don't, Lucy. Can you tell me?"

  "Them!" she said, and even through the tension Jake could marvel that her voice stayed low. He had never heard Lucy raise her voice.

  Maybe that was part of her trouble.

  "Lucy—" Shipley said.

  "Please let me concentrate, Doctor. Very soon now I must fire."

  Jake's chest turned cold. Gail's voice on his wrist phone said, "Jake—" and he clamped his other hand over it. Lucy could hear whatever Gail said.

  Gail's voice came through his fingers, muffled and urgent. "Jake, Rudy's going to do an EVA. Crawl along the hull and enter from the outside. He and Gretchen are suiting up now."

  Something was wrong with time. Jake could hear Gail's voice, could hear Shipley talking softly to Lucy, but he could also visualize Rudy Scherer and Gretchen Wortz crawling along the hull, hurtling along with it at nearly c. Then entering the hold from the outside hatch, suited and armed. It hadn't happened yet, but to Jake it was just as real as Shipley's bulk a foot away. Rudy raised his own laser gun and took aim, and the little figure of Lucy crumpled beside the laser cutter even as Shipley said, "Lucy, do you know what your name means?"

  Something in Shipley's voice had caught her attention. "My name?"

  "You said the enemy ship coming toward us learned your name, remember? And that's why you must fire on them, to save us all. But do you know what your name means? It's very important."

  Beside the laser cutter, its activation light glowing, Lucy turned her small, thin face toward the hatch. "My name?"

  "Your name. 'Luxina.' It means 'little light.' And so you are, Lucy. But if you fire that laser, you will breach the bulkhead and be sucked out into space, and that would deprive us of your light."

  "I have no light anyone would want!"

  "Oh, you are so wrong, my dear. Every soul carries light within. And you, especially, because you understand the meaning of silence. We New Quakers believe that wisdom begins in silence, you know. You must not deprive us of your light."

  "I have no light," Lucy said flatly. "And you don't understand. Aliens are out there. They're going to destroy us unless I fire!"

  Jake sucked in his breath. This wasn't working. Shipley was a fool to think it would. A moldy, archaic religion—

  "If you fire, you will also be depriving us of the aliens' light," Shipley said.

  Lucy said nothing. She turned back toward the laser cutter, which Jake now saw as a cannon. He took a step forward, helpless.

  Once before he had confronted terrible violence, and had known how to profit from it. But not this...

  "The aliens have their light, too," Shipley continued, just as if Lucy's imaginary aliens actually existed. "Death is not an evil, my dear, but the taking of lives is, because it deprives the world of others' light. Who knows what we might learn from these creatures?"

  "But they want to kill us!" Lucy cried. She looked much more agitated. Was that good or bad? Jake wondered. Did Shipley really know what he was doing? And why had Jake, supposedly the smooth-talking universal negotiator, let him do it?

  Because Jake himself had had no idea what to do.

  Shipley said, "You think you're protecting us, doing the right thing." His voice never wavered from calm warmth. "But just consider this, Lucy. When we do the right thing, we have a sense of inner peace, no matter how much outer turmoil we create. Do you have that sense of inner peace and resignation, my dear? Do you feel guided by the Light?"

  "I—"

  "Because if you do not, then this is not the right action for you to take. If you feel inner conflict, anger that seems to be tearing you apart inside, then this is not the moral course of action. Look inside, Lucy. What do you feel?"

  "Doctor," Lucy said intensely, "I never feel inner peace and resignation."

  Nor do I, Jake thought, and looked at the image of Lucy on the screen. He had never suspected they were so much alike. Or maybe he had, and that was another reason he had avoided her.

  "Inner peace and right action are too much responsibility for one person to bear," Shipley said. "That's why we Quakers seek the guidance of the Light in the meeting consensus. Everyone's Light has something to contribute, Lucy, and the best way to deal with others is to address the Light in them."

  "These aliens have no Light in them!"

  "Can you say that with complete responsibility?" Now Shipley's lone had grown in intensity. "Do you have that much knowledge and insight? Can you really have that high an opinion of yourself?"

  My God, Shipley was appealing straight to Lucy's weakness: her low opinion of herself. Was that a moral action?

  "I don't think you are that egotistical, Lucy. Please come out and let us experience your Light, and you experience ours. Help us reach a good decision on this."

  An appeal to Lucy's desire to be of use, as well as her self-doubt. Jake looked at Shipley with profound distrust. He had had no idea the Quaker doctor was capable of this much subtlety, this much manipulation.

  And Lucy Lasky turned her face back to the laser cutter, hesitated, and deactivated it. She walked to the hatch and manually opened it, straining with the effort. As soon as it opened, Shipley reached for Lucy and drew her to him. She put her head on his shoulder. Jake saw she was trembling.

  "Jake, get my bag from my bunk. Phone Gail, and Rudy if you can. Lucy and I will wait here." Gently he kicked the hatch closed.

  Dazed, Jake did as he was told. On the hatch screen he saw Scherer and Wortz, suited, come around the edge of a huge tethered crate with their weapons drawn. A second later Gail's voice leaped from his wrist phone, and the two menacing figures on the screen halted, suddenly as still as if time itself had stopped.

  "Her levels of cortisol, catecholamine, and arzendrol were about as high as a body that size could stand," Shipley said. "It's a wonder she held together as long as she did. A young woman of great soul."

  "Oh, right," Gail said. "Such great soul she almost killed us all."

  Lucy had been sedated, sampled, and put into cold sleep for the rest of the voyage. Jake, Gail, and Shipley sat in the "library," the most popular room on the ship, which they had just ordered vacated. In addition to the wardroom and the gym, the library was the only other general gathering place. It held a VR console, bins of vids and music for viewing on individual cubes, and computer access to ship's library. It also had a window, which alone would have attracted everybody. Usually the library held as many off-duty people as would fit. But the Mira office and the equipment-jammed two-person gym were both too small for Shipley to join Gail and Jake, and so Jake had clear
ed out the library, to much grumbling. He said, "What are those blood chemicals you named?"

  Shipley leaned back into the molded red chair. Bright colors, Jake's research had said, are important on long, confined voyages. Not that red chairs had done Lucy Lasky a whole lot of good.

  Shipley said, "Catecholamine is an enzyme produced by the body under time urgency. Cortisol is a generalized response to stress. Arzendrol is produced under conditions of psychotic delusion."

  Gail said, "So Lucy is psychotic? That mousy little thing always so eager to please?"

  "Being eager to please is part of it," Shipley said patiently. "What happens is ... let me start at the beginning. Usually when the body responds to stress, after the stress is over, the nervous system returns to equilibrium, where all its chemicals are in balance. But if the tension is constant, it can never recover equilibrium, so you get a chronic nervous disequilibrium that over time can—"

  "What stress was Lucy under that the rest of us aren't?" Gail demanded. "She's a paleontologist! We have no dinosaur bones on ship—nobody asked her to do anything at all!"

  Shipley folded his hands on his ample belly. "That was part of the stress, Gail. A person like Lucy needs to feel she's accomplishing something. She also finds constant interaction with people stressful, even under conditions of noncrowding. Some people do. And there isn't much way to avoid interaction on the Ariel."

  "She spent most of her time alone in her bunk," Gail argued.

  "Which made her feel even less useful. Lucy needs a great deal of time alone, but alone in an environment that lets her work at her own pace. She didn't become a paleontologist by chance, you know. Once we reach Greentrees, she'll be fine."

  Jake wasn't so sure of that. Lucy might feel so ashamed of her breakdown that shame itself stressed her. Jake knew something about that himself.

  Gail turned unwelcome attention to him, damn her. "Jake, when I first told you about Lucy, you said, 'This is my fault.' Why?"

  Shipley was watching him closely, reason enough to not reveal much. Jake said, "Oh, I just meant that I'm supposed to be on the alert for this kind of thing in all personnel. As president of Mira Corp."