Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 (16 page)

“That’s not possible!”

“You can come closer than you think. It just takes knowledge, attention, and practice.”

“I don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you.” He took her hand. She was startled by the warmth of his long fingers, and then by the warmth in herself.

She said, to cover her confusion, “I don’t know if I can learn, Siddalee says I’m no good at observation. I don’t notice things. As anybody who’s ever seen my apartment can testify! Not like your place, it’s spotless.”

He accepted her clumsy attempt at lightheartedness. “My place wasn’t spo-tiess until Duncan moved out last week.”

“I saw it before. He had an amazing collection of things.” She laughed, an inane laugh. Why were they talking about Duncan? They’d been talking about the most important things in the world, survival and war and what mattered to people, and now they were talking about Duncan. Julian hadn’t dropped her hand.

Silence fell.

More rain spattered against the window. Alex said, to say something, “Jake says that Duncan is always acting a role.”

“Jake has it backward.”

“What do you mean?”

Julian smiled. “Duncan is always himself. For him, ’All the world’s a stage’ means that everyone else is an actor, a supporting player in his personal drama. He sees everyone as a fictional character, larger and more vital than we actually are. Some people find that very seductive, to be seen as more colorful, sharper edged. But not, I think, you. You’d rather be seen as you really are.”

His tone was detached, almost impersonal, but his thumb had begun to rub her palm in small, slow circles.

“Alex? Am I right? Wouldn’t you rather I saw you clear, as you are?”

She took her hand away, moved around the table, and moved into his arms, stiff as glass. Her voice came out hoarse.

“I didn’t want to do this, Julian.”

“Why not?”

“Because of what you just said. Because I want you to see me clear, and I think you do, and what I think you see is an unsophisticated provincial dazzled by a genemod Terran.”

“No. Shall I tell you what I see?” He released her, and Alex didn’t know if she was glad or sorry.

He said, “I’ll tell you honestly. I see a person who is, yes, politically unsophisticated because her whole culture is, but enormously intelligent and capable of absorbing ideas. Most people are not. I see an administrator who is good with detail and also good at keeping in mind overall constructive goals and working tirelessly toward them. I see a person with only one moral failing, a too-easy sympathy with the powerless, to the point where it compromises justice. I see a woman whose wealding husband died and who’s carrying around a secret load of guilt because she never really missed him and—”

“How did you know that!”

“—and I see a woman I’m falling in love with.”

Alex stood very still. She and Julian stared at each other across a foot of space that was light-years, a seething pit, and nothing at all.

“Alex,” he said in a tone she wouldn’t have thought him capable of, beseeching and needful. Oh, that final assault of men—to need! But Julian’s neediness, clear on his genemod and alien face, was not the whining and jealous need that Kamal’s had been. Julian didn’t want to clutch in a drowning grip; he wanted to connect. She crossed the light-years.

His arms tightened around her so hard that she was shaken. She’d forgotten this, made herself forget it, this wild rush of the blood. Warmth seeped through her entire body. Hungrily she raised her face and kissed him.

In bed he was tender and skillful.
Practiced,
she thought, but without cynicism. Then she didn’t think at all.

When she woke again he was still beside her, though not asleep. She reached for him and that warm sweet rush started again. With it, incongruously, came the silly song young Greenies sang so often:

On Greentrees we are

For good, but is it good,

How would I know, all I know

For sure is yooouuu…

Alex laughed aloud: in delight, in sensual pleasure, in amused incongruity.

“What is it, Alex?”

She sang the ditty for him. Julian smiled, not his usual half smile but his rare, full grin, barely visible in the dawn light just creeping into the window set high in the ugly foamcast wall. He kissed her deeply.

Only later, much later, did Alex realize that she had not once thought of Kam-

al.

MIRA CITY

T
wenty-nine of Julian’s newly deputized security force were Chinese. The rest were Anglos and Arabs, except for three of the young men.

“There’s some New Quakers to see you,” Siddalee said to Alex.

She looked up from her cluttered desk. “Who?”

“Friend John Garnette and his wife.” Siddalee pronounced “Friend” disapprovingly. She had often expressed her dislike of the title, especially when it was applied to her: “They aren’t my friends. I barely know them.” Most of Siddalee’s attention, however, was on Alex, not on the Garnettes. “You’re combing your hair every day now. And that’s a new wrap.”

“Show them in, Sidalee.”

“A lot of changes around here.”

“Show them in.”

The Garnettes were middle-aged, with pale faces and sagging bodies. They both wore plain gray Threadmores, in keeping with the New Quaker call to simplicity, one of their four religious tenets. Simplicity, silence, truth, service.

“Thank you for seeing us, Friend Cutler. My name is John Garnette and this is my wife, Julie. We own the factory on P Street that supplies Mira City with pipes of all kinds.”

“Oh, yes,” Alex said. New Quakers frequently owned businesses; their emphasis on simplicity meant not that they refused education or possessions but that they refused to let their learning or possessions own them. Faith and family always came first. As businessmen they were unfailingly honest, hardworking, and efficient. “Mira would not run as well without your Quakers,” Julian had said musingly. “Not even half as well.”

At the thought of Julian, Alex felt a glow that she sternly suppressed.
Not now.

“We have two children,” John Garnette continued. “Alicia, eleven years old, and Simon, nineteen. It’s about Simon that we’ve come.”

Alex nodded. Now she knew what was coming.

“He’s joined Friend Martin’s personal police force,” Garnette said, and Alex was startled by both the term and the force with which it was uttered. “Simon is learning to use weapons, to kill. We New Quakers believe in nonviolence, Friend Cutler, as you probably know. Every human being has the spark of the Divine Light within, and that means that violence against another is violence against God.”

Their anguish was palpable, the ancient anguish of parents over wayward children they loved. Alex said gently, “Simon sees the situation differently, I’m afraid. He sees a threat to his city and feels a duty to defend it. He’s acting out of his own personal conviction, and I know Quakers put enormous emphasis on action from conviction. On following your inner light.”

“Yes,” put in Julie Garnette, as if she could no longer restrain herself, “but truth comes most reliably to shared light. That’s why we share our thoughts in meeting, until a consensus emerges! And that’s why we… we …”

“Julie,” her husband said softly. Silence fell.

Alex tried again. “Mira City—all of Greentrees—is under threat of destruction. Nonviolence, what you call a ’peace testimony,’ is simply not going to work in this situation.”

“Has it been tried?”

Alex held tightly to patience. “Yes. Both with the Furs fifty years ago and with Hope of Heaven months ago. Both responded with further violence. Our choices are to act now before our only recourse is total war, or to let ourselves be destroyed. I don’t want that for Mira City and your son doesn’t, either.”

“He is training with Terran weapons, monstrous things, from Julian Martin’s ship.”

“I know. And with our own weapons. A defense force needs to have as many resources as it can.”

“These young men and women are being turned into an army!”

“Yes,” Alex said. “Mira City needs a defending army.”

Garnette said quietly, “Do you know what William Penn wrote several hundred years ago, Friend Cutler? ’A good end cannot sanctify evil means, nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.’ Some truths do not change, no matter how much changes in Mira City.”

Alex stood. “I’m sorry that I can’t help you.”

The Quakers left. “I wish you peace,” Julie Garnette said over her shoulder, and Alex couldn’t tell if it was a blessing or a riposte.

She felt oddly shaken. The Garnettes so clearly loved and despaired over their son. And yet Alex believed completely that what Simon Garnette was doing was not only right but necessary.

Julian’s carefully selected defense force trained every day, in sections, while other sections guarded Mira and the nearby scientific and industrial facilities. There had been no further violence. Guy Davenport’s investigation had turned up no information about who had killed Lau-Wah, or why. His family had scattered his ashes so privately that even Alex didn’t know what location they had chosen.

Julian’s soldiers heavily patrolled Hope of Heaven, day and night. The dissident settlement had been the first to receive the new identity cards. Rumors reached Alex that Hope of Heaven’s citizens were stopped, harassed, and, on one occasion, beaten by Julian’s men.

“Not true,” Julian had told her. “They have strict orders against harassment of any kind. Those rumors are designed to turn public opinion against the new security measures, but it’s not going to work. Although I will tell you that I’ve set up a computer tracking system for key suspects like Wong Yat-Shing. We know where he is and with whom at all times.”

“A tracking system? With what computer power?”

“Mine. It’s on the
Crucible’s
computer and goes through our Terran comsats.”

How did such a tracking system work? Alex hadn’t asked. Now she tried once more to concentrate on the resource-allocation reports on her screen. Ashraf appeared in the door.

“Alex, Julian has denied a permit for the Chinese New Year procession.”

Denied? Permit? She rose again from her desk. “You’re not making sense, Ashraf. We don’t need permits in Mira for ethnic celebrations.”

“He says permits are necessary now, and he can’t issue one because a Chinese celebration right now would be a perfect cover for violence.”

Something cold pricked Alex’s belly. “Where is Julian?”

“I don’t know. He comlinked.” Ashraf tugged on his ear. “Ca Liu and Yi Kung are in my office right now, very angry. What should I tell them?”

Why was Ashraf so ineffectual? Lau-Wah would not have palmed this off on her. “Tell them there’s been a mistake and you’ll comlink them tonight.”

“Yes,” Ashraf said. And then, with sudden force, “New permit! should be a council decision.”

“I think the permits are the least of it,” Alex said.

She found Julian at the genetics lab, installing increased securit devices and guards. Alex had to show her own ident to get admitted. She didn’t know whether to approve or rage.

“The Chinese New Year,” she said to Julian. They were alone ir the room, hastily vacated by technicians, unless you counted cages full of several hundred experimental frabbits. The small creatures, brown speckled with purple, hummed softly.

“What about the Chinese New Year?” Julian said.

“You denied Carl Liu a ’permit’ to hold it.”

“Yes. I did.”

“In the first place,” Alex said, “Mira doesn’t issue permits for ethnic celebrations, they’re a given. A right. In the second place, if we did start issuing permits, the council would have to approve it. And in the third place, if the council did approve permits, Ashraf would make those decisions, not you.”

“All true,” Julian said, “if we were not at war.”

“We’re not at war yet!”

“You’re splitting hairs, Alex. We’re preparing for war on two fronts, and I have the responsibility of preserving peace in Mira while we do it. A Chinese New Year is too much of a risk. Firecrackers, masks, crowds, intoxicants, general rowdiness. It could easily be perverted into an attack. But even so, I didn’t make an end run around your council. They’re not in session, but I called fully three-quarters of them personally and asked if at the next session they will grant me the power to replace civilian law with military law if I decide it’s necessary to protect Mira City.”

Alex said slowly, “And they said yes?”

“They said yes,” Julian said. Behind him, frabbits rustled in the rows of cages on the walls.

“You asked three-quarters of the council.”

“An informal poll, yes.”

“You didn’t ask Carl Liu and Yi Kung.”

“No,” Julian said. “I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I think you know why not.”

“Carl and Yi are loyal to Mira, Julian. They always have been.”

“I believe you. But I didn’t want to put them in the position in the eyes of their own people of even looking like they accept hostilities toward Hope of Heaven. If it comes to that.”

A frabbit poked its head through the bars of a cage. Alex stared at it, to keep from having to look at Julian. “Is it going to come to that? To hostilities toward Hope of Heaven?”

“Not if the council lets me carry out preventive measures,” he said, with such concerned determination that once again she believed in him. He wanted to defend Greentrees, to save it. That involved hard choices. He had the courage to make them.

“Alex,” he said softly, “I’m doing the best I can. But this isn’t my colony. You know these people. If you think the Chinese New Year should be permitted, I’ll be guided by your judgment.”

“No, you’re right,” Alex said. “I’ll tell Ashraf. No, I’ll tell Carl and Yi myself. Ashraf is … I don’t know why the Arabs chose him as mayor.”

“Yes, you do—because they can control him as easily as you can,” Julian said, “when it’s an issue they care enough about to do so.”

Alex’s eyes widened. Was that true? But Julian had already returned to work, increasing security in the genetics lab.

At night, in bed, they never talked about Mira City or the war. They talked about themselves. Julian wanted to hear about growing up on Greentrees, in what he still called “this purple Eden.”

“When I was born,” Alex said, “the plains around Mira were dangerous. An uncle of mine, Arelo Huntingdon, was killed by a red creeper, and two children were mauled by a lion. We kids were kept pretty close after that. Mira was in a constant state of building, spraying foamcast and laying pipe and, of course, the farms with their new genemod trial crops all the time.”

She smiled at the memory, lying in Julian’s arms in the cramped narrow bed. His bedroom was as austere as the main room of his guest apartment. No pictures, no holo frames, not even a music cube. But the window was opened to an unexpectedly warm night, and she could see the stars.

He said, “How long after the First Landing were you born?”

“Five years. Eggs, sperm, and embryos had all been frozen for the trip out, of course, in case there was a problem with fertility due to the flight or even the new planet. But there wasn’t, and my mother got pregnant as soon as the stay on conception was lifted.”

“Why did they name you Alexandra?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know it’s the feminine form of the name of a great general?”

“Really?” She traced an idle circle on his belly.

“You’re named after Alexander the Great, who wept because he had no worlds left to conquer.”

“There are always more worlds to conquer,” Alex replied.

“Spoken like a true colonist. Your name means ’defender of men.’”

“I didn’t know that,” Alex said, as, it seemed to her, she was always saying to him. Her circles grew more insistent.

He said, “What happened to your parents?”

“They died when I was ten, of Weiler’s disease. By that time Greentrees’ microbes had begun to adapt to our bodies enough to use them as hosts. We call the colony’s second decade the Plague Years. We developed vaccinations not quite as fast as Greentrees developed diseases.”

In the darkness Julian stroked her hair. “What did your husband die of?”

“Stupidity.”

“You don’t want to talk about him.”

“No. But I will.” She rolled slightly away from Julian. How to compress her marriage into a few sentences? The initial thrill, both of passion and of daring to cross ethnic barriers. The dawning realization that Kamal was not what she thought him. The growth of desperation over the futile and arrogant years she tried to change him into what she wanted. The occasional good times, the little morning routines, the moments of forced sweetness when they both “tried,” the bitter arguments. He loved gardening. He had a beautiful smile. He sniped at her, and later raged at her, because she saw that his scientific aspirations were not going to be reached. Because she was happy in her work and he was not. Because she couldn’t reflect back to him his inflated picture of himself.