Plague Year (28 page)

Hernandez had done the same with her.

Cam shook his head once, an efficient
no.
“Two or three people besides me, that’s it. That has to be it. And the camera and stuff stay out here.”

One soldier had brought recording equipment, a handheld family minicam, a larger video camera, a tripod, a batch of wireless clip microphones and extra tapes and batteries.

Hernandez studied Cam briefly. Then he shook his head, too. “I’m afraid I’m on orders,” he said.

They compromised. Hernandez was adamant that the three scientists go in, but reduced the support staff to himself and the audio/video gear to one camera.

Ruth followed Cam into the shadows of the front room, the living room, and crossed through with only an impression of neatness. Then he held out his hand again and ducked into an adjacent bedroom alone.

Beneath the not-unpleasant reek of woodsmoke, she smelled old sweat and grime. Hernandez raised his minicam and thumbed the record button with a small chime, apparently as a test. He lowered it five seconds later. D.J. glanced around with one eyebrow up and Todd rocked on his heels, sort of pacing without really moving.

Much like Ruth’s quarters at Timberline, this cabin seemed empty of furniture. No couch, no chairs, all used for firewood. A pair of sleeping bags lay folded on the hardwood floor near the fireplace, no doubt for two of the children, and on some shelving built into the wall was the ham radio.

The sight of it filled her with that quiet, uneven sorrow again. Gustavo might have heard these people directly if he had only monitored amateur frequencies in the first week and a half of Cam’s attempts to make contact. Evidently Gustavo’s voice had filled this room more than once. But in mid-April, Gus had been occupied with military transmissions and preparing for their landing—and then the ISS had been empty.

What if they had spoken? She wouldn’t be here, maybe none of them, not even the Special Forces unit substituted into their escort. The council would already have Sawyer and his equipment.

It could still happen. James would cover for them, telling Kendricks that she was busy if the senator asked, dampening any rumors in Timberline; but the listening devices throughout the labs would inevitably catch word of who was missing, and Ruth had to assume the tapes were scanned daily.

New orders could come at any moment, alerting Hernandez to the traitors around him.

Or there might be another plane flying out right now.

“Okay,” Cam said, turning Ruth’s head. He gestured with one scabby claw. “He’s doing okay.”

* * * *

Albert Sawyer was a slumping wax candle of a man, shrunken and malformed. He had sat up, or had asked to be propped up, against the wall alongside his bed.

He must have wanted to appear as robust as possible, but repeated cerebral events had robbed Sawyer of muscle control down most of his right side—drooping eye, slack cheek, head tipped over his fallen shoulder. He had also lost too much weight, so that what flesh he’d kept was taut and hollow against his frame, and whereas Cam’s brown face looked abraded or burned, Sawyer’s whiter skin had turned into a blood purple hide, clotted and pebbled. His long bullet head grew hair only in wisps.

Cam and Maureen had warned them, but Ruth caught her breath and Todd froze in the door, bumping Hernandez with his elbow as he involuntarily reached for his nose.

She saw their reaction mirrored in the living half of Sawyer’s face. His left eye widened, bright with emotion.

“Look at these pretty fucks,” Cam said, too loud, in a brash voice she hadn’t heard before. Sawyer’s gaze rolled furiously and Cam spoke again, drawing that one baleful eye to himself.

“You ever seen anybody this fucking well manicured?”

Sawyer’s mouth worked. “Swee’ovem vizza.”

“Real sweet. They were gonna do black tie.”

It was a gamble, she thought, making their relationship adversarial, but Cam knew Sawyer best and they hadn’t left him much choice, humiliating Sawyer on first sight.

If this destroyed man wanted to show them up, he might finally relinquish his secrets.

Hernandez sketched a salute, hiding the minicam down by his hip in his left hand. “I’m Major Frank Hernandez,” he said, “USMC Second Division and expedition commander.”

Nice. Overkill, but nice. They had to make Sawyer feel important, make it clear they’d brought their best.

Even D.J. was courteous. “My name is Dr. Dhanum—”

“Yaowp!” Sawyer lurched, both eyes blinking shut. For a moment Ruth thought it was a word she hadn’t understood, but Sawyer wasn’t interested in hellos. She supposed Cam had explained who had come, and that was plenty for him.

She watched his loose mouth, analyzing his sounds.

“Ayuhn’velah annabuh bee, a’cos assigned the way.”

“I can develop an antibody,” Cam told them. “
Archos
was designed that way, as an adaptable template—”

“Yahp!” Sawyer barked again at Cam’s elaboration. “ ‘Dadable templut,” he said, with all the petulance of a three-year-old who has ritualized a favorite story.

Cam carefully repeated it. “An adaptable template.”

Ruth looked away, a slow cringe, the horror in her still growing. The others were also silent.

Sawyer’s brain had been ravaged as badly as his skin.

He glared at them, defiant, challenging. Cam made a patting gesture and Ruth knelt to the scuffed wood floor, putting herself below Sawyer’s bed rather than continuing to stand over him. Basic psychology. They might lessen his agitation by demonstrating that they were a willing audience. Hernandez and Todd followed suit, but D.J. glanced at Cam. Cam stayed on his feet. D.J. reluctantly hunkered down.

Sawyer mumbled again and Cam said, “We were going to cure cancer in two years. Maybe less.”

D.J.’s brow wrinkled. “This was all in our—”

Ruth hit him, slapping her knuckles against his leg. Yes, they already knew these basics, but they were damn well going to let Sawyer brag. The name
archos
was new and possibly useful, another angle for the FBI to take with their research, patent records, incorporation files. They might be able to outfox Sawyer if he gave them enough clues but still wouldn’t cooperate.

Or if he was unable to cooperate. Lord only knew what was happening inside his head.

He lectured them on the mechanics of the nano, slurring, staring down at his bedsheets or dragging that lopsided gaze across their faces. But he was either still unaccustomed to or refused to accept the condition of his body, and repeatedly coughed for air in midsyllable. Once he started to retch. After each fit he pulled his good arm over his mouth, wiping away drool—and he began to bump the back of his hand against his lips compulsively.

Cam translated with determination and patience, though after a while he sat on the edge of the bed and stretched out his knee. His intonation was sometimes uncertain but he did not hesitate over technical phrases. He had been the one who spoke with James, she decided, although Sawyer probably addressed the microphone directly on occasion.

Ruth had wanted to feel the same sympathy she’d experienced for Cam, but it was a very different emotion inside her now. Sawyer must have been a great man, capable of great things, to have played any part in developing the
archos
prototype, yet his decision to withhold the location of his lab was unforgivable. It was a threat to her. It didn’t matter that it might not have been a wholly conscious decision.

Sawyer had not let his guilt become the burden that was so evident in Cam. What remained of him seemed possessed by the bitter rage of an invalid, and he was crippled further by his awareness of everything he’d lost.

He erupted with that rough shout again and again, at himself when his body failed, at Cam for guessing the wrong words or even for correctly anticipating what he planned to say next.

Hernandez filmed the two men, the minicam tucked against his body. The angle looked poor and the room was darkening as twilight settled outside the square window, but a good audio recording would be the most important thing.

Sawyer was selling himself.

Did he think he needed to convince them of his identity, or was he only striving to keep his past straight in his own mind? Ruth supposed he’d prevented them from making introductions so he wouldn’t have to use their names. He knew his limitations. His short-term memory was unreliable, yet he remained canny enough to try to conceal this weakness.

He was excusing himself.

Twice more he laboriously explained that
archos
had been designed to save lives. Four times he insisted he hadn’t played any part in allowing the prototype to get loose.

Ruth was reminded of a toddler again, attempting to make something real by chanting it over and over.

“What was your specialty?” she asked, after twenty minutes. She didn’t know how Sawyer would react to the interruption, but already he was tiring and she was afraid he’d keep them captive all night even as he grew more incoherent. Maybe it would have been better to let D.J. grill him from the start.

“The rep efficiency is mine,” Sawyer told them, through Cam, and his pride was fierce enough to mold his slack, eroded face into what she thought was a smile.

It was that simple. The wreckage of his self-esteem was propped up on who he had been, and only on who he had been, and he was terrified that they would exclude him after retrieving the files and equipment.

There wasn’t anything else left for him.

“Replication speed is going to be our biggest hurdle,” Ruth said, which wasn’t untrue. “James told you we have a working discrim key, right? You’ll have to look it over, but the vaccine nano won’t hold up if we can’t streamline the rep process.”

He regarded her quietly, perhaps judging her sincerity. She wondered how well he could see now in the shadows.

D.J. shifted on the hard floor and managed to put his hand down with a slap, drawing everyone’s attention. “I’d say it’s worth redesigning the heat engine,” he said. “We don’t need the fuse and that’s another way to shave some additional mass.”

Sawyer’s smile returned. This must have been his first opportunity to talk shop in fifteen months. He jabbered and Cam said, “Right. Except the design work is already done. Freedman added the fuse later. We can build straight off of the original schematic.”

“Fantastic,” Ruth said. That would save them days or even weeks—and he’d given them another clue.
Freedman.
Cam spoke for Sawyer again: “We’ll fly out tomorrow?” Ruth straightened, barely able to contain her excitement. Hernandez said, “Yes. Tomorrow morning.” Sawyer nodded, satisfied. But the silence lingered. Sawyer dabbed at his mouth and

D.J. shifted his weight once more. Hernandez said, “It would be better if you told us where tonight.”

“Whar?”

“There’s a lot of planning to take care of.”

“Col’ado!” Sawyer’s eye rolled with confusion and fury, and Ruth clenched her fist.

He expected them to take him east. Why? What did he think was waiting for him there? Safety, food, intensive medical attention—but no doctor would ever be able to fix him.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he had no interest in saving them if they couldn’t save him.

Hernandez kept calm. “Not a chance,” he said. “That was never the deal. We can’t waste the fuel going back and forth, and we need you to make sure we recover everything important.”

“Fuhgyou. Col’ado.”

“They told us,” Cam said, but Sawyer whipped his head back and forth in a stiff motion that bent his torso. One leg kicked up beneath the blankets as he lost his balance, and Cam grabbed his arm.

Cam shook him. “They told us you had to show them first.”

“L’go!” His voice was a screech. “L’go me!”

Cam obeyed. Cam pulled his gnarled fingers from Sawyer’s shirt but then reversed direction, surging his weight into the other man, shoving his open palm against Sawyer’s ribs. It looked spontaneous. It looked like an act of long-suppressed misery, and Cam’s regret was obvious and immediate. He grabbed at Sawyer again as Sawyer collapsed on the bed, mewling in pain. “Aa aaa! Aa!”

Hernandez jumped to his feet, the camera left on the floor, yet he stayed back as Cam leaned over Sawyer, patting his side and murmuring, “Sorry— Hey, I’m sorry—”

Sawyer’s response surprised her, not spite, not more of that cruel glee at his own power. He answered Cam with the same apologetic tone. “Na’now, ’kay? Na’now.”

“Not now, okay, you bet.” Cam turned toward them, but with his eyes averted. “No more right now.”

* * * *

The feast was a disaster too. Leadville had included fresh meat in their provisions, a slab of ribs large enough to identify as cow. They’d also brought charcoal and the soldiers layered a broad, shallow pit with two full bags of briquettes. That smoky aroma was torture by itself, the ghost of summertime family gatherings, and the smell became unbearable when they placed the meat on a grill set low over the embers.

Everyone clustered around the fire pit except Sawyer, the two medics, and Dr. Anderson. Cam had also stayed inside, in case Sawyer was uncooperative, and Hernandez double-checked that their portions were held back for later.

The sky deepened enough to show the first stars. Todd said the brightest dot was Jupiter and one of the soldiers said it was Venus. The kids pushed through the small crowd, yelling. Ruth sat right up front, dulled by exhaustion and disappointment, alive with hunger. Her back was cool, her face too warm. Her arm ached inside her cast.

Maureen’s strident voice lifted her gaze from the sizzle and pop of the meat. “You have to take us with you!”

Across the fire pit, Hernandez had been talking quietly with the Special Forces captain and two of the pilots. Maureen stood behind them now, having edged close enough to eavesdrop.

Hernandez turned and shook his head. “We don’t have enough containment suits, and we might be down there for hours.”

“But come back for us. Take us back with you.”

“We won’t want to risk an extra landing or use up the fuel.”

“You landed fine!”

The four children, parading among the soldiers with their stick weapons, had gone still and silent at Maureen’s outburst. Now all of them fled, ducking through the taller adults.