Plague Year (5 page)

“Don’t hold your breath.” Hollywood spoke no louder than the breeze, tired, maybe bored. His uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm made it clear to Cam that he’d been repeating this argument all afternoon. “The broadcasts out of Colorado are saying the same thing you heard five months ago. Like they need a little more time. Like they need more samples.”

“We’re still better off waiting!”

“Could be forever.”

Along with two couples and several loners, Cam, Erin, and Sawyer made up the fringe of the gathering, Manny hovering nearby. Most or all of these people would go, Cam thought. In comparison to the rigid, defensive stance of Price’s group, their postures seemed more natural.

That this was a minority shouldn’t have surprised him.

McCraney had busted his glasses nine weeks ago and would need a hand-holder, because the best replacement they’d found barely let him see ten feet. George Waxman had lost an eye to the nanos last fall and refused to venture below the barrier since. Sue Spangler was six months pregnant, big now, too big to make it even if she’d wanted to take the risk—and her lover, Bill Faulk, had good reason to stay. Same for Amy Wong and Al Pendergraff and their infant son, Summer.

Standing beside Price, Lorraine directed a burst of words toward her own faction rather than the group at large. “We’ll never make it across the valley. Look at him, he barely got here and he’s not half-starved!”

Cam said, slowly, “There’s nothing on this peak for us. Not a group this size. Not more than a few people.”

“Let ’em stay,” Sawyer muttered.

“Hollywood needs at least a couple weeks’ rest before we go. We can strengthen up, eat most of our supplies.”

“No,” McCraney said.

“We need those rations!” Price took one melodramatic step forward and Faulk and Doug Silverstein moved to back him.

Emotion wrenched through all the impassive faces, ugly, urgent. Waxman and one of the loners backed off quick, but Cam strode into the center of the gathering, strong with adrenaline.

He was never more aware of the difference between his skin color and all of theirs than in moments like this—it actually seemed to have weight, especially on his face, his broad cheekbones—and he wondered fleetingly what showed in his expression. If they would misinterpret his fear.

“Listen to me,” he said.

I found it in that luxury cabin with the deck overlooking the river
, Sawyer had told him.
Remember that?
The place was a goddamn paradise, twenty feet of sofa cocked around a stone fireplace, double-pane glass, a giant oven, and two water heaters fed by propane tanks. They’d stumbled through jamming ski gear and canned goods into already-heavy backpacks, blotting the polished oak cabinets with flecks of skin and red fingerprints.
Things were getting tight
, Sawyer said.
That fuck Loomas had started hoarding food, Price was talking about elections again. I figured a .38 and two boxes of shells might be more help than a few extra packets of Saltines.

“There is nothing here for us.” Cam kept his voice soft and level. “We’ve barely lasted this long. You know that. Trying for the next peak is a gamble, but it’s our only choice.”

Price jabbed his index finger at them. “You can leave, we won’t stop you! But you can’t eat all the food!”

Cam wanted to hate him. It would have been easier. Yet these were good people, mostly, the cream of the crop by definition. Fighters. He had bled with them, shared utensils and huddled for warmth with them. Their sins were the same. So it was right to try to save them.

It was a way to save himself.

Cam needed to balance all of the wrong that he had done. If he could start over, live better, he might have some chance at forgetting everything that had happened up here against the cold, open sky.

But Price looked over his shoulder to face his own faction, exactly as Lorraine had done. “Nobody is eating more than their regular rations!” he shouted.

Another of the loners, Bacchetti, stepped to Cam’s side before even Sawyer or Manny. “Our food,” Bacchetti said, grungy teeth flashing through his mess of beard. Cam hadn’t heard the man speak in days, had long since written him off, and now his heart leapt with strange pride.

It was a weakness, a distraction.

Price kept yelling. “That food belongs to everyone!”

“Right!” Sawyer was just as loud. “Bacchetti and me and these guys have been killing ourselves hauling supplies up this mountain. We deserve to eat heavy.”

“Vote! Let’s vote!”

“We’re eating heavy, Price.” Sawyer shifted his weight forward and Doug Silverstein bent his tall frame in response—

Cam pushed between them with his hands out. Silverstein gave way but Sawyer was unyielding and Cam shoved him, frantic, swiping his fingertips down Sawyer’s chest. He could not feel the gun under Sawyer’s clothes.

Price’s breath smelled of bitter stomach acids, but Cam leaned closer and said, “Come with us, Jim.”

“Let ’em stay,” Sawyer growled again.

“We can make it,” Cam insisted. “Hollywood’s already scouted out the easiest trail. It will take us less time than he needed. Okay? There are always a few rain showers up here in springtime. We’ll wait until then.”

Low-pressure systems had pushed the nanos down almost a thousand feet by Sawyer’s estimation, and they’d always gone scavenging during the worst weather. The dangers of hurrying over ice and slick rock in darkness and cold, the possibility of avalanches, of getting lost—it was all worth reducing their exposure.

“We have to do this,” Cam said. “Don’t you get it? If more than four or five people stay here, you’ll be eating each other by December.”

4

Ruth spent her time at the window, day after day, hours at a stretch. Commander Ulinov had ordered her to stop, had pleaded and even joked with her, his attitudes shifting as smoothly as the cloud masses wrapped around the blue Earth below, but the International Space Station was a narrow, sterile world. Ruth needed more room to think.

Besides, making each other crazy was about the only fun available to them.

The lab module had a viewport only because its designers intended to conduct free-space fluids and materials tests, and Ruth had long since retracted the twin waldos bracketing the window to improve her view. No one was interested in pure science anymore.

Prehistoric darkness blanketed the nightside of the planet. Ruth watched patiently, dreaming. Sunrise still enthralled her, although from low-Earth orbit it came every ninety minutes. Each new dawn reminded her of inspiration.

“Dr. Goldman!”

She flinched as Ulinov’s voice boomed through the lab. Lately he’d taken to surprising her—not difficult when he could float noiselessly through the neck connecting this module to the main station—the same way her step-dad had attempted to retrain his terrier after Curls began eating the couch. Shock treatment. Lord knew her reaction was irrational but Ruth found herself behaving exactly like that dumb dog, making a contest of it, and she no longer doubted that Ulinov was also playing this small game. The amount of time he spent tormenting her was too great. Their sparring had become the careful flirtation of commander and subordinate, skirting iron-fast rules against fraternization, and the attraction must have been more difficult for him because of his reluctance to undermine his own authority.

They were hard on each other, strong for each other, and it was wonderful to have any chance to feel amused. Ruth kept her face turned toward the viewport, baiting him.

“What can you be thinking?” Ulinov demanded. “What haven’t you seen through that hole a million times before?”

The interior of the lab module would have been impassable in gravity. Her gear extended in bulky towers from three of the cube’s six surfaces, bolted down between the original equipment and computers. It was a monochromatic jumble— off-white walls, gray metal panels. He expertly threaded his way toward her and touched his foot against the ceiling to correct his spin.

Commander Nikola Ulinov was large for a cosmonaut, his rib cage wide enough to hold two of Ruth, and his square face had spread to epic proportions due to the redistribution of body fluids that occurred in zero gee. He apparently thought his size gave him a psychological edge and often crowded her, like now.

His odor was how Ruth remembered Earth, a full and textured smell. Good, real. Inviting. She finally glanced at him, wondering why he still bothered to act the gruff Soviet bear.

He seemed to notice and tried a new tone. Truly he was more of a wolf, nimble and cunning. He spoke quietly now: “
Tovarisch
, must I cover this hole? Will I assign someone to watch you? Why are you not understanding the importance?”

The warm spark of mischief in her heart faded. Maybe that was best. “I’ve done all I can.”

“India transmitted new schematics only yesterday—”

“I’ve done all I can here.”

He said nothing. He never did after she insisted she’d been beaten. It was a good trick, letting her stew in her shame and frustration. She used to blurt promises to work harder. Now they hung together in silence.

At last, Ruth risked another look. Ulinov’s wide brown eyes were aimed not at her but out the viewport, where a vast corona of yellow-white illuminated the dark curve of the planet.

“The snow’s melted enough,” she said. “Colorado should be able to clear a stretch of highway for us.”

He was gruff again. “There will be no returning to orbit.”

Ruth nodded.
Plague Year
, they were calling it now, changing the calendar, changing history, and the decision felt right in so many ways. Everything was dead and new all at the same time. It had been a very different life eleven months ago when she rode the last shuttle launch out of Kennedy Space Center, the final launch. The supply rockets put up by the Europeans a week later didn’t count.

“We are remaining as long as we can,” Ulinov said. “The president ordered us with good reason.”

And you want to stay a part of your war
, she thought.

Ulinov’s motherland, like so much of the planet, must now be unimaginably empty. The remnants of the Russian people had fled to the Afghanistan mountains and to the Caucasus range, a sheer jag of rock thrust up between the Caspian and Black Seas, where they were entrenched in a confused, ferocious struggle against the native Chechens and refugee hordes out of Turkey, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. It might have been worse except the Israelis had airlifted south to Africa and the high peaks of Ethiopia.

Peace had at last come to Jerusalem and the Middle East.

The space station still received sporadic broadcasts from the Russian population, demands for orbital surveillance or American military support or, sometimes, wild declarations of bloodthirst directed at their Muslim enemies. Ulinov transmitted high-res photos every day, weather and orbits permitting, and diligently relayed each request for supplies—and he had sworn his allegiance to the United States.

As daylight lanced through the viewport, Ruth touched his shoulder. Foolish. Reaction sent them both drifting slightly. She increased her grip to keep them together. The surface of his jumpsuit was as cold as his self-control, but his gaze flicked to her hand and then roamed her face. His expression softened.

Ruth spoke first. “Zero-gee working conditions aren’t an advantage if I don’t have what I need. I’m past the limit of what I can achieve with reconstructions. Badly translated reconstructions.”

In the rush to get her away ahead of the invisible tide, ground crews had misplaced her samples of the nano. Most likely someone hadn’t understood why they were loading human body parts. The machine plague was most easily and safely preserved inside chunks of frozen tissue.

She said, “Colorado’s using an old electron probe and India lost a lot of software. The breakdowns they’re sending are incomplete.”

Ulinov seemed to shake himself, then pulled free from her. “Every time you report progress.”

Ruth didn’t know what to do with her hand. “Sure. I’m still learning.” She gestured at her equipment, then jaunted to the machining atomic force microscope, which had always reminded her of a stout dwarf standing at attention. Its smooth body terminated at what would be the shoulders, where low collars protected a working surface—the broad cone of its “hat” contained computer-enhanced optics and atomic point manipulators. They’d had to install the MAFM sideways across the lab, and Ruth had spent so many hours at the device that she oriented herself alongside it by habit, though doing so meant that she and Ulinov no longer shared a local vertical. Impolite. Ruth barely noticed, staring at the MAFM’s blank display grid.

Lord knew it was wrong to admire the genius behind the nano. This invisible locust had laid waste to nearly 5 billion people and left thousands of animal species extinct.

Plague Year.
It wasn’t just human history that had crashed. The savage effects to the environment would be centuries or more finding balance again, if that was even possible. In many ways Earth had become a different planet and they were only beginning to see what would happen to the forests, the weather cycle, the atmosphere, the land itself.

“If you are still learning,” Ulinov began, trying a new angle with her, but Ruth said, “The design technique is extremely innovative. I could putz around with my models for another five years if you want.”

“This is a joke.”

“No.” She tried to be gentle with the truth. “Colorado’s electron probe is barely strong enough to disassemble a nano of two billion AMU, much less reverse-engineer it, and the glitches in India’s programs make their schematics almost useless. This machine may be the best equipment left in the world.”

“But yet you have stopped your work.”

“Uli, I’ve done all I can here.” Ruth had never felt this way toward the same person, real warmth shot through with resentment. It made her nuts. The decision to stay in orbit was not his to make, but Ulinov had always been an outspoken proponent of keeping the ISS crew on-station as long as possible, when he could have added his voice to hers instead.