Plague Year (24 page)

And yet she’d also had a new thought about their decision to change the calendar, declaring this Year One. Plague Year. The phrase was sensible and right and deeply manipulative all at the same time, if you looked at it from a certain angle—and Ruth found herself doubting everything now.

It was top-notch public relations, deceptive and smart. It played on expectations and fear and hope. It was a way to give the Leadville government even more legitimacy, to make themselves ever more necessary and important.

“I think everyone in the labs is getting close to some real success,” she said, thinking to steer the conversation toward Aiko’s rumor. “I honestly do. We just need a few more pieces to fall into place.”

“Well, that’s what we were talking about. Putting things in place.” Kendricks rolled his head toward James and said, “Gary LaSalle has a high opinion of you, Miz Goldman, and James here has been saying the same thing for a long time.”

Oh Lord.
Ruth cut her gaze away from Kendricks for one instant but James didn’t react, his watchful brown eyes framed by his short brown hair and short brown beard.

Kendricks said, “We’d like you to join Mr. LaSalle’s team.”

“No way.”

James winced, a barely perceptible shift of posture, but Kendricks just shrugged. “I know you’re not on the bandwagon, Miz Goldman. But I want to appeal to your patriotism.”

“Sir, that has...” She shook her head. “I worked for the Defense Department with full clearance. It’s not fair for you to...” It didn’t matter what was fair. She tried again. “I’m totally committed to our work here.”

“That’s what we need. Total commitment.”

“LaSalle’s bug is wildly dangerous, sir. I’m not the only one who’s been saying it.”

James interjected, leaning over his desk, in a tone that remained uncharacteristically formal. “There are some aspects of the situation you’re not aware of, Dr. Goldman.”

Kendricks turned on him. “Don’t you say another word.”

“If it’s about the guy in California,” Ruth said, “the rumor’s already going around.”

James shook his head.
No.

Kendricks continued to watch him for a moment before looking back at Ruth. “We’ll see how California plays out, if that man can do what he says. But we have bigger problems.”

“How could—
Bigger?
Than beating the locust?”

“The Chinese have developed weapons application nanotech,” Kendricks said. “You’re not okayed for any of this but Jesus Christ, I wonder what goes through your mind that you won’t cooperate with us after everything that’s happened. Do you realize we barely survived the plague year at all?”

That phrase again. He used it intentionally, like a gun, threatening and prodding her.

She was right. She had always been right. LaSalle’s snowflake would not function as an ANN, affecting only the locust, and the council no longer intended to use it as such.

It would be a matchless weapon, given a strict governor to keep it from proliferating without end—and in her records, among the things she’d worked out during her endless wait aboard the space station, had been the basics of a control.

Ruth tried misdirection. “I couldn’t help LaSalle even if I wanted to. My expertise is in a completely different field. It’s apples and oranges.”

“Now that’s not true,” Kendricks said, tilting his head again. “He says your ideas have been a big help.”

So she would always own a part of it, if something happened. Lord God. The perfect weapon of mass destruction, more killing power than a nuke and no fallout or contamination.

It would be easy to safely deliver the snowflake, capsules kicked out of a helicopter, bomblets from a jet, American aircraft low over occupied Himalaya with a hundred thousand people reduced to jelly in each thundering wake . . .

Her heart beat so hard she felt her upper body rocking, a palsy of rising shame and anger.

Kendricks said, “I know you two aren’t friendly. Let’s say we don’t put you directly under LaSalle. Work together, but be your own boss.”

As if her ego was the problem.

“That’s crazy. You’re crazy.” She didn’t regret the words. “When we beat the locust it’s over, all the fighting. We save everybody and the fighting stops everywhere. We don’t need nano weapons! We can all go back down again.”

Kendricks just looked at her, the lines in the tanned skin around his eyes deepening slightly.

Ruth raised her voice. “We can all go back down again.”

“I think it was a mistake,” Kendricks said, slowly, “to overprotect you people. The Chinese sure aren’t babying their technicians.” He turned to James, his chin and long hat brim aimed down in an aggressive posture. “Make her see. Tell her everything, whatever she needs to hear. This has got to happen.”

James was respectful. “You’re a hundred percent right, Senator. Shifting gears like this, all at once, nobody here is ready for it. Our entire focus has been defensive since the beginning.” He glanced at Ruth. “It’s a lot to take in.”

She tried to play along. “I just don’t understand. We’re so close. It’s crazy— It seems crazy to take us away from beating the locust now.”

“You might be surprised,” James said, “to hear that the council evacuated the space station sooner than necessary not because of you but for Commander Ulinov.” His expression never changed, and Ruth marveled at his daring. She nodded quickly. She didn’t trust herself to sound convincing. He said, “We’re joining the war in Asia, flying the Russians in to invade the Chinese before they complete their weapons tech. The Russians insisted on having Ulinov here as their representative.”

“But so what? What does any of that matter if we can all live below ten thousand feet again?”

James made his shrugging sound,
mm-mah
, signaling her that he didn’t really believe what he was about to say. “First, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever beat the locust. And second, the council has good reason to believe the fighting won’t stop even if we do.”

Kendricks nodded, grimly pleased by James’s performance. “Things are too far gone. It’s been total war for too long.”

“There have always been wars,” Ruth said.

“Not like this. Not with whole nations thrown on top of each other.” He flexed his small hands, squinting past her at the window. “Not with armies eating each other’s dead and keeping prisoners like cattle.”

“. . . what?”

His eyes came back to her. “You people aren’t the only ones who’ve been studying the locust, Goldman.” Kendricks had never called her
doctor
, and now forgot even the questionable honorific of
miz
. “They’ve been learning over there, too. We’ve been watching them close.”

The spy satellites, Ulinov’s cameras.

“It’s going to be us or them,” Kendricks said, “whichever side can strike first. They’ll wipe out everyone else. I mean
everybody
.”

One world. One people. She could see how the simplicity of this notion would appeal to a certain mind-set, especially after so much conflict and atrocity—and the chance had never been so attainable, with every enemy reduced to a fraction of their former numbers and gathered tightly together.

The victor could never forget the plague, not with so many animal species extinct and the environment crashing as it sought new balance, but they could forget recorded history.

It would truly be a new start. One culture. One peace.

Year One.

And yet James had made it clear that he did not agree with Kendricks, hinting at further complications. Fuck fuck fuck. Maybe he wanted her taken into the council’s confidence, brought into the weapons labs, only to divert and delay LaSalle’s progress. She could prevent an escalation to nano warfare long enough for the other scientists to beat the locust. Wheels within wheels. Where would it stop?

Ruth turned to her friend. James nodded. So she looked Kendricks in the eye and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

20

Her descent from orbit could not match the distances that Ruth had gone within herself. She would never help Kendricks prepare for a first strike. She had put her life into helping people, if for selfish reasons, for career gains, and for her own gratification—and the tragedies of the past year had sharpened this vague altruism into something like a fever.

She thought of Bill Wallace again, his body ripped open, staying at the controls of the
Endeavour
.

If she’d read James right, if she’d correctly anticipated his plan for her to become a mole inside the weapons labs, it would have been smarter to say nothing more after giving Kendricks her lie. But she had to know.

“What about California?” she asked.

“Well, we all have big hopes.” The tension was noticeably going out of Kendricks and he bobbed his head in one of his contrived, friendly gestures.

Ruth persisted. “This guy is definitely who he says he is? I mean, where’s he been all this time?”

James looked at Kendricks for permission, then turned and grinned, a rare flash of teeth splitting his neat beard. “I talked to him myself. His name is Sawyer.”

She didn’t have to ask if James thought he was for real.

* * * *

They got rid of her. Kendricks said he wanted to be back in town in an hour and had more to discuss with James.

He offered his hand before she left. They murmured polite nonsense,
glad you’re on board
and
yes, sir,
and Ruth found that the charade was easy enough.

She strode back to Lab Four automatically, then almost walked on past. She almost went down to her room, to bed, to close her eyes and sort through her thoughts. But this might be her last chance to do anything productive.

* * * *

Vernon Cruise cornered her again thirty minutes later, waddling back into the lab with a laptop and several folders. What in the world was this guy’s problem?

Ruth supposed that word had spread. Vernon must have figured it was his final opportunity to show off before she moved upstairs to LaSalle’s group. In a way it was flattering, and the smile she gave the old man was genuine. She wanted him to have his little moment. “Hey there,” she said.

Vernon’s gaze flicked to the other two people in the lab, exactly as Aiko had done to make sure she wasn’t being overheard. Not long ago Ruth might have seen some humor in that. Instead, irritation crept into her feelings of tired goodwill.

“I know you wanted to get an unprejudiced look at the bug,” Vernon said, “but give this a glance.”

“I hear it’s really great.”

Vernon huffed, impatient, and Ruth managed to keep from rolling her eyes as she accepted three hefty folders.

He’d put the memo where she couldn’t miss it, on top inside the first cover, a single page identical to the rest, with the same ordinary computer type, but the first line made her pulse jump up against her ribs.

“
If you’re caught with this we’re all dead
.”

Ruth stared at him. Vernon’s expression was... scornful? He had tried to establish a conduit of information for her almost from the beginning, though he hadn’t been so bold as now. He hadn’t been so desperate. It was a juvenile trick—No, it had all the sophistication of
grade school
, passing notes, but the listening devices throughout Timberline couldn’t hear a piece of paper. Too bad she’d been too busy. It was almost funny—it was sad and awful—how often she’d been too busy in her life.

The memo was from James. Ruth was sure of that. She recognized his confident delivery, and halfway through it resumed their earlier conversation about the man in California.

Her heartbeat was in her neck now and in her broken arm. “Absolutely,” she said.

* * * *

Ruth stayed in Lab Four after Vernon left with her
yes,
pretending to read through the other folders. She wondered if he’d burn the memo. That seemed too conspicuous, an open flame. The conspirators couldn’t run around routinely torching papers or someone would notice. Maybe he’d go straight to the bathrooms, drop it in the tank. Every week the soldiers hauled away five hundred pounds of scientist poop for the farms. Sure. Vernon was always muttering about his bladder.

She had to believe he’d take care of it. Their lives were both on the line. There was nothing on the paper to identify her specifically if Vernon was caught, but Kendricks would know. What would they do? March her into the courtyard and shoot her?

In another hour it wouldn’t matter.

In an hour she’d be on the plane to California.

* * * *

James owned more of the truth than Kendricks wanted any of them to know, the least of which was that Gary LaSalle had already developed a crude governor for his snowflake, using Ruth’s ideas and machining gear to complicate its structure.

Because his ANN had no programming, the only way to retard its replication process was to burden it with additional demands. The new, larger snowflakes were more stable than the original. They tended to glom on to each other as well as foreign mass, after which the chain reaction broke down as they became encased in free carbon of their own making—

The assault had gone much as Ruth envisioned, U.S. jet fighters spilling canisters that broke open on impact, a flourish of death that quickly died itself. Almost too quickly. In time, an improved version would be even more powerful. But they hadn’t dusted the Chinese. China was years behind the design teams here in Timberline, and posed a significant conventional threat to its neighbors, yet nothing more.

Yesterday the council had given orders to hit the White River Plateau, the breakaway westward toward Utah.

Yesterday their quiet war had become something else.

Most of the U.S. spy satellites were controlled by Leadville, and coverage overhead was regular if not constant. White River must have known they were inviting an attack by preparing their own flight to the coast. They had no nanotech teams and in fact were short on basics like shelter and electricity, but the man in California would be an invaluable hostage and bargaining chip. They’d obviously decided it was worth the gamble, although they could not have anticipated such a weapon.