Crucible Read online

  “They’re so … so gutted. Mentally, emotionally. Karim …”

  “They’re so harmless, is what you mean. Don’t become sentimental, Lucy.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Good. These aliens wanted to destroy Greentrees. The rest of them still do.”

  He was overstating, but she didn’t answer.

  When all fourteen Furs sat quietly in the shuttle, which was parked as close as possible to the bay door, Karim closed the small craft. The quee, of course, was already loaded into the shuttle. He and Lucy returned to the bridge and he went through the procedure he’d practiced half a dozen times on Greentrees and five hundred times since in his mind: depressurize the shuttle bay, open the shuttle doors, back away with a sudden, brief burst of acceleration that tumbled the shuttle into space as neatly as a gravid fruit.

  “I wish we knew for sure that the quee was sending,” he said to Lucy.

  It was her turn to be unemotional. They were keeping each other balanced. “Of course it’s sending. The Furs set it up to send continuously when they tried to make us ambush the Vines, remember? They were tracking us. They still are, only they think we’re a Fur ship. Now they’ll follow that same quee to the shuttle.”

  “What if they’re suspicious of the shuttle not being locked from the inside?”

  “I don’t know, Karim. How can anybody know? We’re doing the best we can.”

  “Don’t snap at me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said, although it was clear to them both that she was not. Neither had expected it to be quite like this: shoving sick, helpless beings out into an empty sky, less as a Trojan horse than as a collection of alien Typhoid Marys. They’d taken enormous risks to do this. They’d expected to feel more heroic.

  Karim took one last long look at the shuttle, floating in the void. Then he sat in the pilot’s chair and engaged the McAndrew Drive. A “quee,” Quantum Entangled Energy link, sent messages instantaneously across the galaxy. Already the Furs knew that one of their missing ships had stopped, and where. The Franz Mueller had had only one quee, and now it floated with the Furs in an area reasonably expected to be patrolled by a combatant watching an enemy output. The rescuers could be here very soon. Karim and Lucy needed to leave.

  “Karim—here comes a ship!”

  He jerked his head to see the display, such a sharp jerk that pain snapped through his neck. Ship’s sensors had shown nothing coming into the star system with the huge accelerations of a McAndrew Drive. He’d been so careful!

  The ship was accelerating toward them from the planet.

  “It’s a Vine ship,” Lucy said. “But they don’t know about us! They don’t have any idea who we are!”

  The entire Fur fleet used quee. The Vines, bio-based, did not, not even on captured Fur ships. They somehow disabled it, and then ignored its carcass. Karim had no idea why. No Vine except a small, star-faring, experimenting band even knew humanity existed, and all members of that band were dead.

  “They can’t locate us while they’re accelerating,” Karim said rapidly. “They’re blind. We’re leaving!”

  Karim threw the ship into high acceleration. The massplate beneath their feet slid so fast toward them that Karim felt a surge of adrenaline: Danger! Duck! screamed his hindbrain. But there wasn’t even the slightest lurch. The floor rapidly reconfigured. Karim swerved sideways, and for a long, glorious second he thought he’d made it. The Vine ship couldn’t see him. He was out.

  But not fast enough. The Vines had fired toward the last place his ship stood, and he hadn’t changed course fast enough. The glittering cloud, airy and insubstantial as cosmic handfuls of flung gold dust, flared around him. Then, with an acceleration of over a hundred gee, he was beyond it. Ten minutes passed. There was no pursuit.

  The ship’s alarms sounded.

  “We’re breached!” Lucy cried. “Suit up!”

  The gongs clamored the distinctive blast: two short, two long. A Fur signal, meaning who-knew-what on a Fur world. But Karim and Lucy had heard it before, when the inevitable meteor had struck the Franz Mueller as she left Greentrees orbit. This time, the breach was multiple. Karim and Lucy barely had time to fasten suit and helmet before the air disappeared.

  Then the ship stopped.

  “Karim!”

  “She isn’t responding.”

  All at once, he felt strangely calm. He looked at Lucy through the clear bowl of his helmet. Not a human-made helmet but one that the dead Vines had created for humans. It was much superior to any human counterpart because it carried its own atmosphere-creating microorganisms sealed in the neck ring. Karim had tested the helmets weekly; they still worked. Surely these new Vines would recognize the handiwork of their own kind. Surely that would help.

  Lucy said, dazed, “It was spores, wasn’t it? Just like George said. They clung to the ship and ate through the metal until they found the drive.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. The displays have all gone dead.”

  “It happened so fast”

  “They’ve had several thousand years to practice.”

  She took his hand. His calm had infected her, or maybe it was her own bravery. Lucy had always been brave. Without discussion, they walked from the bridge to the docking bay, where the Vine ship would join theirs and the aliens would come aboard.

  He only hoped the Vines hadn’t yet interfered with the shuttle full of infected Furs. And that he could find a way to explain to them the unthinkable consequences if they did.

  4

  MIRA CITY

  Outside the Mausoleum, the anniversary celebration was still in full swing. Inside, the triumvirate worked on the message for David Parker’s people to send to the Crucible. Then they composed a public announcement for MiraNet. Ashraf Shanti ended the emergency meeting, and Alex asked Siddalee Brown to take Jake home.

  “Lau-Wah, wait. You, too, Ashraf,” she said as they prepared to leave her small, cluttered office. They’d met there instead of tha mayor’s office because the latter faced the park, with all its anniversary noise: shouting, singing, laughter, dance music, firecrackers. Alex’s office, on the opposite side of the ponderous building, had it’s one window open to a stretch of experimental plant beds. Even so, revelers had clearly been here before moving on to within earshot of the speech platform. In the crop beds were trampled flowers and overturned benches. There wasn’t much actual debris; Mira City recycled everything possible and bottles, cans, and paper were too precious to waste. But various items of clothing littered the ground: was that a pile of wraps by the pond? Siddalee would grumble for days.

  “Is something else wrong?” Ashraf said. He usually anticipated something wrong. Well, this time he was correct.

  “Yes,” Alex said. “While I was supposed to be giving a speech, I was at the genetics lab. Lau-Wah, four of those dissident kids from Hope of Heaven broke in and loosed a lion from its cage. It was menacing four of the Mira lab techs, also all Chinese. They—”

  “Yat-Shing Wong?” Lau-Wah said, his face stony.

  “Yes.” So Lau-Wah already knew. Something, anyway.

  “Who’s that?” Ashraf said fearfully.

  “A misguided idealist,” Lau-Wah said. “Was anybody killed?”

  “No, because… because…”

  “Sit down, Alex. Do you want a glass of water?”

  “I’mfine. It’s just a lot for one day.” A ship from Earth, the disproved surge of fear that the ship might have been Furs, the hatred at the lab: a hatred such as Alex hadn’t suspected existed in Mira. Then the long, sleek, purple-blue body of the leaping lion, the girl with her ringed hands over her face, the spear arcing through the air and catching the lion in midflight. The alien Fur balanced on its jumping tail. Nan Frayne casually cruel in lacing the boy to her stick, with a supposed enemy of all humanity by her side.

  “Tell it from the beginning,” Lau-Wah said with a detachment that steadied her. She hated to appear weak.

  When she’d finished, Ash
raf said, “Where are the kids from Hope of Heaven now?”

  “I turned all eight over to Guy until we decided what to say publicly about the ship. They were all there when Nan Frayne made her announcement. Ashraf, did you authorize her to bring a Fur to the city celebration?”

  “She never asked. And I didn’t anticipate it.”

  Alex managed a smile. “Well, no, one wouldn’t.”

  Lau-Wah said, “Has the Fur left Mira?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashraf said. “I didn’t even know it was here.”

  Alex said, “My guess is that Nan Frayne vanished back into the wilderness with the Fur, before anyone from the Cheyenne delegation realized it had come.”

  “I’m glad,” Ashraf said with sudden force, “that we only have this sort of event every fifty years.”

  Despite herself, Alex laughed. Lau-Wah didn’t. He said, “I propose we comlink Security Chief Davenport to let the lab techs go. By now MiraNet has made the public announcement of the Crucible. I’d like permission from you two to talk to Yat-Shing Wong alone.”

  Alex said, “It’s Wong Yat-Shing now. He says Hope of Heaven is reverting to ’true Chinese usage.’”

  Lau-Wah nodded expressionlessly.

  Ashraf said, “Certainly, Lau-Wah, talk to Mr. Wong alone if you think it will do any good. What do they want? No one in Mira is poor or oppressed!”

  “No,” Lau-Wah said. “I do not think that’s the problem.”

  “Then what is?” Ashraf said, and Alex held her breath, waiting for the answer.

  “I think they want to feel oppressed so they have a reason for feeling angry,” Lau-Wah said quietly.

  Ashraf looked honestiy bewildered. “But why are they angry?”

  Lau-Wah didn’t answer. The silence spun itself out, and finally Alex said, “Because they feel at the bottom, don’t they? Only I don’t really see why. I’m sorry,

  Lau-Wah, but I don’t see … there’s so much here. Enough for everybody. We don’t really have a ’bottom’ in Mira.”

  “There’s always a bottom. The definition of it just changes,” Lau-Wah said. He didn’t look at either of the others as he spoke. “You’ve never been much interested in Earth history, Alex. Fifty years ago what you still call ’the Chinese contingent’ came here through the philanthropy of one man, Huang Ji-en. He rescued desperate immigrants and Chinese nationals who were being systematically persecuted, even tortured. On Greentrees that generation had a new chance and was grateful, but their grandchildren see only that we started with less education than the Arabs or the Quakers or the Cutler clan, and with much less capital investmen in Mira, because Huang wished to pay for as many to come to Greentrees as he could.

  “All that has translated into less power now. Most Chinese are lab technicians but not lab owners. Farm workers but not farm owners not because land isn’t available but because machinery isn’t. It is stil a capitalist society, and Chinese control little working capital. Also, there is no open university here yet, and apprentice positions to the scientists, the physicians, the manufacturies’ heads are limited. They seldom go to us. Nepotism is always strong in a pioneer society. That is perhaps natural, since family is necessary when there is so much to do, but it has not helped us Chinese. Yes, everyone has everything they need. But sometimes that doesn’t satisfy.”

  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 oc
cupy 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 …