time when her young husband was killed in a mining accident, but that was long ago and she seemed all right now.
“The new defense admin is named Jon McBain,” Alex said. “Does anybody know him?”
No one did.
“Well, I do. Siddalee says he’s out in the bush right now, doing a field survey. He’s a xenobiologist who’s supposed to be developing a microbial battery, but he—never mind. Siddalee’s still trying to reach him directly.”
Jake said, “The defense admin might be unreachable while Mira is under attack?”
“We’re not under attack, Jake,” Alex said soothingly.
“Not yet! Give it a few days!”
“Jake is right,” the mayor said, looking from one to another as if afraid his opinion might be rejected. “We went slack and now we might have to pay for it… Allah willing, not too heavily. Alex, could you ask Siddalee to reach McBain any way she can and get him back here? Meanwhile, David, we need to go over what still works of our equipment in space and what we might be able to do with it. Alex, maybe you could do the same for the resources in the city. Lau-Wah, would you mind digging up the last approved set of evacuation plans so we know what’s usable and what we need to devise new? David, you’ll know the second that ship signals anything at all, by any method?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Shanti said, smiling diffidentiy at Jake. “Jake, you’re the only one who really knows the Furs. If they attack, what can we expect? Maybe you could start with background.”
They were actually going to listen to him, thanks to Ashraf’s timid courtesy. It almost made up for their criminal ignorance. But only “almost”—thirty-nine years of peace and hard pioneering work were no excuse for that ignorance.
Alex was staring at him hard. Silentiy she mouthed, Don’t rant.
She was right, fuck it all. Jake had to be careful to sound focused, sound right. He chose his words carefully.
“Every single contact humans have had with the space-faring Furs was bellicose. They’re apparentiy xenophobic to an almost unbelievable degree. They’ve been at war with the Vines for thousands of years, trying for genocide. When they discovered that the Vines, whose technology is bio-based rather than industrial or digital, had created clone colonies of Furs on Greentrees in order to develop some virus to neutralize them …” Jake fell silent, remembering those cloned Fur colonies. One practically too passive to feed themselves, one all female, one perpetually intoxicated by some parasite lodged in their brain …
“Jake,” Alex prompted.
“I haven’t lost track. The Furs killed every one of their own species in the Vine-created colonies. Just wiped them out, along with the Vines on Greentrees, because the created Furs were defective. They even tried to wipe out the control colony of Furs, who weren’t defective, just because the Vines had made them. They got a lot of them but not all, because so many males were away hunting in the forest. The Greentrees-born Furs left are primitive but just as bloodthirsty as their space-faring cousins. The Cheyenne, as you know, are intermittentiy raided by the survivors. The only human who has ever been able to make contact with them is Nan Frayne.
“If the space Furs attack here, they’ll be just as ruthless to us as they were to their own clones.”
“Unless Karim has succeeded,” Alex said quickly.
“Yes.”
“That could be the—” David Parker’s comlink shrilled.
Jake closed his eyes. This was about the ship; he knew it. How? No point in trying to figure it out; if there was one thing you knew when you were eighty-five, it was that not all knowledge operated rationally. He waited.
No one said anything for too long.
Jake opened his eyes. The other three sat gazing expectantiy at Parker, who looked stunned. The physicist cleared his throat, tried to speak, failed. He tried again.
“That was the monitor on duty. The ship doesn’t have a McAndrew