CROSSFIRE Read online

  She did the same with Maggie Striker, ecologist; Benjamin Goldman, building-materials engineer; and George Fox, biologist. Gail considered it hilarious that George, a smiling exuberant man with a taste for fizzies, had the same name as the man who had founded the original Quakers in the seventeenth century. William Shipley merely said that many people bore such a common name. Jake had just nodded abstractly, and so Gail had to savor the joke alone.

  She tuned in to Robert Takai, energy engineer, long enough to learn the state of his solar-, wind-, and geothermal-driven energy projects. All were on or ahead of schedule. The geneticists, Todd McCallum and the tiresome Ingrid Johnson, reported on more flora and fauna, stating that every single one so far was DNA-based. Well, big deal. Every life form on every settled planet was DNA-based. Panspermia was the general scientific consensus, a cloud of spores that had drifted through the galaxy billions of years ago, leaving behind it the genetic code for life.

  And a good thing, too, or Thekla Belia Barrington, the British agriculturist, would not be reporting such sunny prospects for growing and eating, after a few judicious genetic alterations, so many of the local plants. Maybe as many as fifteen percent, she said happily. "Better than anyone expected. Bloody wonderful, in fact. The first experimental beds are already planted."

  Even William Shipley was smiling.

  Then Nan Shipley strolled in and shattered everything.

  Attendance at Board meetings was supposed to be limited to Board members, which meant leaders of those groups that had purchased stock in Mira: New Quakers, Cheyenne, Gail's family, Liu's Chinese, Saud's Arabs, plus Jake and, as a representative of the Wellcome Trust, George Fox, senior scientist. Nan Shipley sauntered in as if she belonged there. Although probably near thirty, she was dressed in a loose tunic sewn with tiny mirrors and cut out in many tiny holes, through which could be seen shifting glimpses of blue-painted skin. The latest teenage fashion of seventy years ago, Gail thought meanly. Among the utilitarian coveralls everybody else wore, Nan looked as exotic and useless as a peacock's tail.

  "Naomi, this is a private meeting," Shipley said stiffly to his daughter. "I think you should—"

  "There's a comlink message from the Ariel, priority one," Nan said casually. Clearly she was enjoying herself. "It came into Mira Corporation planetary headquarters, and I happened to be in there. Rudy didn't want to put it on the general frequency so he asked me to tell you all what it is and then get Jake or Gail."

  "What were you doing in Mira Corp headquarters?" her father asked. Gail saw his embarrassment and irritation. Nan had irritated Gail, too, on several counts: by being in the Mira Corp inflatable, by snidely referring to it as "planetary headquarters," by sauntering in here as if a priority one were beneath her notice, by calling Captain Scherer by his first name. And why had Scherer entrusted her with the content of a priority one? Didn't make sense.

  Jake said sharply, "Well, what is the message?"

  Nan paused a moment, then smiled. "The message is that the Ariel scout was doing a low flyover, for mapping and such, and Lieutenant Wortz found a village. Two villages, actually. With thatched huts and outdoor hearths and cultivated fields.

  "We're not alone on Greentrees."

  5

  Not possible, was Jake's first thought. His second was, Of course it is.

  The galaxy, or rather this tiny section of it, had proved empty of intelligence but loaded with life, all of it DNA-based and remarkably similar in cell construction. Wherever the panspermic drift of spores had fallen onto a viable planet—and there were a lot more of them than originally thought—they had deposited starter genes that gave rise to life. Life had then taken diverse evolutionary paths. Only Earth's had had the lucky conditions, or the time, or the something, to get as far as sentience. Colchis hadn't even gotten as far as flowering plants. That was the theory, anyway.

  There was no reason part, or all, of the theory couldn't be wrong.

  When Jake came out of his stunned shock, biologist George Fox was already sputtering. "...out of range of our explorations so far! If they came from star systems we haven't reached yet, they could—"

  Ingrid Johnson said acidly, "Star-faring? With outdoor hearths and thatched huts?"

  George said, "Maybe Captain Scherer was wrong about those. Or a star-faring civilization might establish primitive-type vacation camps..." He trailed off, knowing how weak this sounded.

  Jake forced himself to calm. "We can't conclude anything without more evidence. We need information."

  "An expedition," George said eagerly. "To introduce ourselves!"

  Gail made a face. Her green eyes still looked appalled. "An expedition could be dangerous, if they're unfriendly and Captain Scherer has mistaken their level of technology. Or even if he hasn't. Spears can kill, you know." She paused. "Spears or whatever they ... use."

  "You don't know that they 'use' anything," Ingrid said.

  George said, "The chance to learn—"

  "The probes never reported—"

  "—always knew probes could only sample a small area, plus whatever was visible from space. Small huts—"

  "—gains for extraterrestrial biology—"

  "There are legal issues here," Jake said loudly. The others looked at him in surprise, but he suddenly felt on more solid ground. Lawyer talk.

  "I mean it, there are legal issues. The Planetary Federation issued guidelines a century ago"—now almost two centuries—"covering contact with any sentient species that humanity might encounter interstellar. There are issues of eminent domain, peaceful assumption, good faith in—"

  "Enforceable by whom?" Ingrid said scathingly.

  "Doesn't matter, does it, then?" Thekla Barrington said. "We have a moral obligation to respect this people's first claim ... God, what am I saying? We don't even know if they're really sentient!"

  "But we'll find out!" George Fox said, and the babble started again. Jake tried to gather his thoughts, to reason clearly. If these were sentients, how many were there? Did they inhabit every continent? If so, did they have their own customary—

  "There are no sentients on Greentrees! None!"

  Lucy Lasky, rising to her feet and shouting, such a surprising sight that everyone else instantly fell silent.

  The paleontologist's face mottled maroon. Jake, who was always uncomfortably aware of Lucy's presence anyway, watched her closely. He had sensed her hesitant, continuing shame over her breakdown on the Ariel and over the enforced cold sleep that had followed it, and he'd pitied her. Or was it more like identification?

  But Lucy didn't look shamed or hesitant now. When her color faded, she stood straight, a thin small figure, and spoke with a force Jake had never expected from her. "Listen to me, all of you. I've spent three months sampling the fossil record on Greentrees, at more than a dozen different sites. There is no indication anywhere of anything made by sentience."

  Gail said, "So you haven't sampled the right site yet."

  Lucy had calmed herself. "You don't understand. The evolutionary path is long to sentience, let alone to thatched roofs and cooking pots. There would be relics everywhere, if only stone axes or flaked knives. No relics, no sentience. That's true on Earth, on Colchis, on all five planets humans have settled on. I'm positive about my findings. No sentience evolved on Greentrees."

  "Are you saying these ... beings came from somewhere else?" Thekla Barrington said skeptically. "And then their civilization degraded?"

  Todd McCallum said, "That would leave stuff behind, too, wouldn't it? A degraded culture built on a more advanced one has layers of debris. Like Carthage, or Kinshasa."

  Jake said, "Lucy? What about that?"

  "Yes. No," Lucy said. She seemed to realize she was still standing, reddened again, and sat down. "I only know what I've found. Or haven't found. There are no signs of evolved sentience or devolved cultures."

  Ingrid said, "Lucy, let's be frank here. First you see aliens that aren't there, on the Ariel, and now you refuse to see aliens t
hat are there. Could the problem be you?"

  "Shut up, Ingrid," Jake said, surprising himself. "Personal attacks don't help anything."

  "It wasn't a personal attack! It was—"

  Gail spoke louder than Ingrid, drowning her out. "Jake's right. The thing to concentrate on is what we do next. This is probably a matter for the Board of Governors, since Jake has brought up legality and our contracts with each of your populaces is pretty specific. But Jake and I have no intention of shutting out you scientists."

  She looked at Jake for confirmation. "No, certainly not," he said, wishing he hadn't defended Lucy so harshly, or so publicly. Or was he just focusing on that to avoid thinking about what was really at stake here?

  "The first thing—" Gail said.

  "The first thing is to answer Rudy," Nan Shipley said, looking amused. "He's still waiting."

  They had all forgotten she was there. In fact, they'd all forgotten Scherer. Jake said, "I'll go. Gail, get things organized." He stood and strode toward the door, grabbing Nan firmly by the elbow as he went by. God, he disliked her.

  "All right, I'm removed," she said outside. "You can let go of me now."

  "Nan, I don't have to tell you that you shouldn't talk about this to anyone. Don't spread unnecessary alarm. In fact ... why did Captain Scherer even tell you about the villages in the first place?"

  She smiled. "Can't you guess?"

  Scherer and Nan. After a moment, Jake shook his head. "No. Not Scherer. No matter what his taste in women. He's too good a soldier."

  "You're right, Jake. I didn't think you were that perceptive." She strolled off, allowing him glimpses of her blue flesh through the undulating holes in her tunic. She hadn't answered his question.

  No time for that now. Jake hurried to the Mira Corp inflatable and took Scherer's call from orbit.

  Everybody wanted to go, except Gail. "You can tell me about it," she told Jake. "There's a lot of things to sort out here. People are still being awakened. The pipe-installing 'bot program has a bug the techs can't find. Thekla's getting the greenhouse up next week. And Liu's people have some sort of dispute over city boundaries. Also, the more I think about it, Jake, the more I think that Scherer's reports don't show anything that we should worry about. So you go and establish diplomatic relations."

  "Nothing to worry about? Aliens?"

  "No. Not unless they attack."

  "The air-surveillance reports say that's not likely," Jake said. Actually, the air-surveillance reports were puzzling. Low flight had identified only four villages, with no other settlements within hundreds of miles. Very low flight had brought the skimmers right above the huts at a height of three hundred feet. Lieutenant Wortz reported villagers raising their heads to look up at the aircraft. Yet there had been no running, gathering, pointing, or attacking. The creatures had simply raised their heads, stared, and resumed doing whatever they had been doing, neither scared nor interested.

  How could they be neither frightened nor interested? And if that were true, how could they be sentient? But, given the detail Wortz had recorded, cooking pots and woven thatch, how could they not?

  The recording had been viewed eagerly by the nine scientists and five Board members, over and over. The aliens were bipedal and bisymmetrical, about four feet tall, covered in thick reddish-brown hair that had immediately earned them the name "Furs." They had long snouts, crests of darker fur high on their backs, squat powerful-looking bodies, and thick tails.

  "Balancing tails," George said, "like kangaroos. They can probably jump." He frowned.

  "What is it, George?" Jake asked.

  "I can't say for sure, of course ... but Greentrees is a warm planet, warmer than Earth, without much seasonal change because of the very minor axial tilt. And it doesn't have much predatory activity, at least not compared to Earth at the same stage of evolution. But the fur on those aliens, the powerful balancing tail— those usually evolve on a colder, higher-gravity planet. And look at those eyes: two in front and one near the top of the head. That evolved on a dangerous world full of flying and walking predators. Greentrees isn't."

  "It isn't dangerous now," Ingrid said, "but maybe it was in the past. Maybe they killed all their predators. We did on Earth."

  "We don't have eyes on the top of our head, either," Todd said. "Didn't kangaroos have tails like that, before they went extinct? They evolved on Earth."

  "True," George said, leaning closer to study the images on the screen.

  Jake said, "We'll just have to wait until we get there and see in person," which instantly raised the group tension. Who should go? Everyone had an argument for being included.

  Finally Jake and Gail decided. "I know you don't like it," Jake told the scientists, "but we made our choices based on who would be useful there and who can't be spared here. Do you know that out of five thousand people we don't have a single real linguist?

  We decided English-Chinese translators, say, won't be helpful. Also, we don't want to overwhelm the aliens with too many people. So it's me, George, Ingrid, and Lieutenant Halberg, in the shuttle. Lieutenant Wortz will pilot and stay inside the craft."

  To Jake's surprise, William Shipley said, "I think I should go, too."

  "You?"

  "I'm a doctor. You've included a biologist and a geneticist, but Ingrid works at the DNA level and George isn't trained in pathologies. I think I should go."

  Ingrid said, "How the hell would you recognize a pathology on an alien?"

  "I can assess the general health of the aliens by comparing them to each other in details you wouldn't notice."

  Jake said, it having just occurred to him that Shipley shouldn't be downstairs at all, "Why aren't you doing awakenings aboard ship?"

  "I turned it over to Tariji Brown. She's as capable as I am at this point, and she's got an assistant. Besides, Jake, Mira City has plenty of doctors, if no linguists. I'm not vital here."

  George said awkwardly, "Will, I'm not sure you're needed there, either." Jake noted yet again that George was comfortable calling the Quaker "Will," one of the few who was. George seemed to have no feelings at all about Shipley's religion.

  "Yes, I am needed," Shipley said. "I know that Lieutenant Halberg will have all sorts of weapons to protect you, but it's possible one of you might get hurt anyway in some way the lieutenant can't anticipate."

  That made sense. Jake said, "Just one more thing, Doctor. You mentioned weapons. Lieutenant Halberg will be fully armed, everything from tanglefoam to icers, and he'll be supplying the rest of us with small arms. I know you New Quakers don't approve of violence ever, under any circumstances."

  "That's right," Shipley said pleasantly, "and I won't personally carry any arms. But your decision is yours, according to your own consciences."

  That held a whiff of sanctimony that Jake didn't like. But Shipley's point about having a doctor present was good, and the small skimmer held six. Also, Shipley was a major stockholder, with whom it would be good to cooperate. They might someday want a favor from him. Jake looked at Gail, who shrugged and nodded. "All right," Jake said, "you're in, Dr. Shipley. We leave as soon as the small skimmer returns from mapping."

  It took longer than that. Halberg insisted on each person demonstrating proficiency with the weapons he issued them. This exercise took place well away from the camp, on the open plain from which Larry Smith's Cheyenne had departed. Jake seldom left the disinfected, mostly defoliated, electronically protected confines of Mira City. It felt odd to be so out in the open, standing on untrimmed purple groundcover. What, if anything, might be crawling through it? Some large creatures flew overhead, crying raucously, and he felt again that sense of alienness that often deserted him on his daily Greentrees. What did those flying things eat? How aggressive were they about getting it?

  Halberg put them through formation drills for approaching the village, covering each other with weapons, carrying wounded, and retreating to the shuttle. Shipley participated in three of these, portly and puffing. Halber
g watched the Quaker doctor expressionlessly. The lieutenant was genemod handsome, like all Scherer's team, and he shared Scherer's uncommunicative stolidity. Finally he was satisfied with everyone's performance.

  Gail comlinked Jake as the exercises were concluding. "I've been thinking. Maybe you should take the villagers some presents. Tokens of goodwill."

  "Like South Sea islanders? What presents do you choose for an unknown alien, for God's sake?"

  "Ask Shipley," Gail said.

  Jake didn't see why, but he did as she asked, and to his surprise Shipley had a ready answer.

  "I've been thinking along the same lines as Gail. We could bring slightly improved versions of articles they already have and will recognize. Some alloy cooking pots, or hearth grates. They're going to find us eventually and realize we have more advanced things than they do. Pots and a grate would begin to establish that without frightening them."

  Jake said, "Where do we get a hearth grate?"

  "Gail will find something."

  She did, a lattice work of carbon fiber freshly assembled by a die 'bot. She brought it in a Mira Corp rover, roaring over the horizon to their makeshift training ground like cavalry reinforcement. "United Shopping and Parcel, that'll be three million dollars, sir."

  "Ha ha," Jake said humorlessly. "How's everything at Mira?"

  "Falling apart without you, you vain creature. No, everything's normal. One of Fengmo's people has filed a formal complaint that the city park boundary is off by six inches. I'm beginning to think the Chinese are just as crazy as everybody else, they're just quieter about it."

  Six inches. Sentient aliens on Greentrees and six-inch boundary deviations. Jake just shook his head.

  Finally, they lifted off and started to the village.

  Jake hadn't seen Greentrees from low flight before now; he'd been too busy to leave camp. The twenty-two-hour-sixteen-minute day was nearly done. Long cool shadows slanted across the bluish-purple groundcover. An analog of bacteriorhodopsin, George Fox had told him, closer to a class of Earthly bacteria that converted sunlight to energy than to chloroplasts. The Greentrees plants all used it, which gave them their tranquil purplish hues.