Plague Year (6 page)

She understood his position. She respected his commitment and his code of honor, and honestly believed these traits were her own best strengths. It was the basis of their attraction and at the same time it was probably what would keep them apart.

* * * *

Their little slugfest might have gone on longer except that they’d already been knocking heads for weeks now, ever since the snowpack across the Rockies began to fade.

He left. She kicked back to her window. Watching the patchwork of Earth’s surface roll past engaged enough of her brain that she soon reentered a practiced state of meditation, allowing her subconscious to chew over the locust’s design. It almost felt as if she was outside on EVA, alone in the vacuum, sketching diagrams like constellations and pacing through those intricate shapes, pulling sections apart for closer examination.

Ruth Ann Goldman hadn’t entered the field of nanotechnology because it promised to revolutionize manufacturing, cure all disease, eradicate pollution, and even scrub the sky clean of greenhouse gases, although she’d always dazzled interviewers with such possibilities before the recruiter from the Defense Department came along and she quit publishing. The truth was more basic. Ruth had an IQ of 190 and was easily bored, and developing functional machines on the nanometer scale proved challenging enough that she often forgot herself.

At the turn of the millennium, top researchers had been thrilled merely to push, etch, chemically induce or otherwise manipulate atoms—individually or by the millions—into tubes, wires, sheets and other inanimate forms.

While Ruth was still an undergraduate, sneaking into the lab at night to indent hey good lookin or elvis lives onto her colleagues’ test surfaces, those first crude tubes and wires were fashioned into processors that would power a hyper-quick new generation of computers.

By the time she’d acquired her Ph.D., those new computers and related advances in microscopy had been used to construct actual nano-scale robots, albeit moronic ones capable only of expending energy as they meandered aimlessly in a sterile bath.

The most arrogant scientists and most hysterical pundits had long compared nanotech to playing God, but Ruth found this analogy rather goofy—and ironic, that anyone would confuse an ability to direct change on the molecular level with the capacity to create universes. Nanotech was precisely the opposite, a fine, exacting degree of construction—nothing more.

Ruth chose to focus her efforts on recognition algorithms—brains, essentially. Assembling microscopic robots still posed a catalogue of interesting hurdles, but the groundwork was well established and every Jack and Jill in the world wanted to put together a machine twice as fancy as the next guy’s. Ruth didn’t see how that mattered. Without direction, the most elaborate robot was only a curiosity, not even usable as a paperweight.

She used her certainty and her considerable powers of sarcasm to obtain grant money and a platoon of grad assistants of her own, then settled in for a lifetime’s work.

It helped that she was a patient, obsessive freak whose idea of time off was to wedge herself under the sink in the men’s room and wait there in order to scare the bricks out of a rival. She had one affair with a fellow lab rat, more convenience than genuine lust, and banged her stepbrother too at Hanukkah. Meanwhile her efforts earned sixteen patents and ultimately saved her life. She was thirty-five when the man from the Defense Department waltzed through security into her office.

Government operations tended not to be as flashy as private labs, and Ruth was sufficiently self-aware to realize she’d thrived on the attention that came with publishing her accomplishments. It was fun being hot stuff. She also had qualms about working for the military, clichés about destroying rather than creating, but the man from the Defense Department was either a romantic or a well-schooled actor. He envisioned Ruth as a bold and clandestine vanguard, kind of like Batman, equipped with billion-dollar equipment and more computer power than most small nations, poised to counter the attacks and accidents of enemy labs and garage scientists in colossal duels of talent versus talent.

He also offered the chance to craft micro- and zero-gravity experiments at the taxpayers’ expense. It had long been theorized that freedom from Earth’s pull would benefit nano design, as it had so many structural sciences. Ruth saw a fat opportunity to stay ahead of the pack.
Yes
, she said, and enjoyed five months of incredible resources as well as her first NASA classes before the machine plague erupted in California.

The locust was not military, despite the rumors. Nor did Ruth believe the three or four terrorist fronts who’d claimed responsibility, one of which hastily retracted its statement as the infections spread beyond control. Even if a fringe group possessed the necessary gear and training, the design was far too complex if the goal had been mere devastation.

The locust resembled a long, viral hook rimmed with cilia, rather than taking a more basic spherical or lattice shape—and nearly a third of the locust’s capacity remained unused. The machine as they knew it seemed to be only a prototype, with room left for additional programming. The damned thing was biotech, organic, built to fool the human immune system. Also, a weapon would have been created with a life-clock to keep it from proliferating without end. Instead, the locust had a fuse that was as useless as a control outside of lab conditions.

The magic number was 70 percent of a standard atmosphere. At that pressure, locusts self-destructed. Unfortunately, 70 percent of atmosphere occurred at 9,570 feet elevation, and normal changes in air density meant that the locusts routinely functioned as high as 10,000. On August 19th, a pristine and sunny day, Colorado had recorded infections up to 10,342 feet.

Ruth considered 70 percent to be a somewhat peculiar number. Her guess was that the design team had rounded up from two-thirds to avoid the clumsy math of 66.6 percent—and Lord knew how many lives that had saved. At high altitudes, each percentage point covered a lot of ground. Two-thirds of standard atmosphere would have put the barrier well above 11,000 feet.

It was a small clue to their thinking, part of an overall trend toward brutal efficiency. The locust was brilliant work, representing both conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that exceeded anything Ruth had done to win so many accolades.

She would need to confront the machine plague face-toface if she was ever going to master its secrets.

5

Mission Specialist Wallace, Bill to his friends, unstrapped from the exercise bike as soon as Ruth entered the med/life sciences node. The timer still showed twenty-seven minutes, but he pushed up from the seat and pulled off the wrist cuff and didn’t wipe it clean.

That short rip of Velcro and two chimes from the heart monitor were their only conversation.

The interior of the ISS offered less room than a four-car passenger train, though it was squashed into a maze of separate areas. They never managed to avoid each other completely. Wallace was an ex–Navy defensive back with too much time on his hands, and Ruth found that nothing cleared her head like a good sweat, and exercise aboard the station was limited to the bike and an adjacent pulley system. She might have come here regularly for no other reason except that the drawers and storage units that made up the walls were dotted with red and orange emergency labels, and some of the European medical supply cases secured to the ceiling were hazmat yellow—and in this small, metal world, she was always starved for color.

Bill Wallace was no one’s idea of a recruiting poster. He had hair like rust and freckled cheeks pockmarked in adolescence by machine-gun acne, yet he’d been close to breaking the American record for hours in space before their long exile and, like Ruth, kicked ass at his job. He was an entire engineering team unto himself, electrical, mechanical, a fact that had kept him aboard the ISS when three of the seven-member crew were evacuated by the shuttle
Discovery
to extend the available oxygen, water, and food for Ruth’s benefit.

He pushed closer without speaking or even bothering to telegraph his intent with a gesture. It didn’t matter. They’d performed this dance a hundred times. Ruth moved aside and Wallace rudely bumped past.

She almost hollered right in his ear, anything for a response...except she’d learned the hard way that such pranks only deepened his silence.

Ruth jaunted toward the bike. Passing over it, she caught hold by jamming the toes of one foot under the cushioned seat, then used her other foot like a pincher and pulled herself down. Momentum twisted her hips, however, and she whacked her butt on the backrest, ruining what might have been an excellent stunt.

She would miss flying, somersaulting. It was a simple joy laced with many shades of guilt, frolicking during the apocalypse—and she would pay for it. Back on Earth she might be wheelchair-bound for a time. Muscle and bone degeneration were very real threats in zero gravity, and even special diets and nonstop exercise regimens could only slow that process.

She glanced after Wallace before strapping herself down, an uneasy reflex. Silly. He would never hurt her, if only because he’d been ordered to regard her as his superior. All of the astronauts took as much pride in their discipline as she did in her work.

Wallace had actually been among the crew members who volunteered to vacate the station, hoping to rejoin their families, but Control had deemed him too essential to long-term operations. That wasn’t the problem. No higher compliment could be paid to a man such as Wallace, and his wife and daughter had been crammed aboard a Florida National Guard plane along with other VIPs and made it to Pikes Peak in Colorado, 14,000 feet above sea level. They were presumed dead in the holocaust that swept the makeshift fuel depots last spring, yet had still been given a better chance than most.

It was a packet of carrot juice that turned him against her. The whole thing was incredibly dumb, but they’d all been packed into this small hell for too long. Ruth could count more personality conflicts than there were personalities. Astronaut A didn’t like the way Astronauts B or C reorganized supplies, while B had gotten weird about singing country songs and argued with A, D, and E each time he disturbed them, and C thought D smelled especially bad and resented A calling him an idiot, et cetera.

Their day-to-day existence was one of grim stagnation and Ruth had rigged two juice packets to burst in hope of lightening the mood, if only for a moment. Planning the trick had been a delight. Too bad Wallace got both of them. She hadn’t realized carrot was his favorite but he took it personally, and after they vacuumed up the second sticky cloud he’d ripped into her about safety violations and the possibility of damaged electronics.

Ruth flinched suddenly when a low thump sounded close to her and then another, hands or feet against the walls. The heart monitor blipped in alarm and she twisted, bound by the bike’s Velcro straps.

Derek Mills,
Endeavour
’s pilot, neatly stopped his approach by jamming himself in the passageway with one outstretched hand and one outstretched foot.

Mills should have been good-looking. His brow and jaw were strong and smooth. But she didn’t like his carefully neutral expression or the way that he stole glances at her white cotton undershirt. Ruth managed to hide her chest with her elbow as she wiped at her forehead. “What?”

Mills had thought the juice bombs were a riot. He’d flashed his perfect teeth at all of her jokes, chatting her up at every chance. He’d even stashed his share of the tubes of chocolate pudding and brought out these treasures in random moments for just the two of them—an odd, forced intimacy, taking turns pressing their lips to the same small plastic opening.

He quit being friendly because he was a true believer in the space program, like most of the crew, and Ruth insisted now on grounding them, maybe forever.

“Radio,” he said, then turned his back on her.

* * * *

She passed through a dark, chill section of the ISS and was suddenly aware of an aching throughout her body, a deficiency as real as scurvy. Mills thought this shell was their final glory. Ruth just wanted to see trees and sky again.

* * * *

Communications was a mess, a nest. Slips of paper torn from logbooks and packaging had been affixed to the walls in uneven groups, inked with names and frequencies and locations from all over the globe. It was a living record of the plague year. Many bits of information had been X’d out, and most of the rest had been altered at least once—and yet no slip of paper was ever taken down.

Ruth squeezed in. Ulinov ordered this passageway cleared almost weekly and had even removed the offending supply cases himself many times, but the blockade always rematerialized. There was just too much extra gear aboard.

She found Gus listening to bursts of static, so loud she didn’t say anything. He fingered his control panel with one hand and rubbed at his bald spot with the other, as if he were his own good-luck charm. Then he saw Ruth and waved and shut off the white noise. Apparently he’d been walking through channel after empty channel.

“There you are,” he said. “Pop on this headset for me, we’re gonna set you up hush-hush, big news maybe, let me get ya dialed in through a satellite relay.”

“Hi, Gus.”

Communications Officer Gustavo Proano, left aboard to appease the Europeans, was the only crew member who’d grown more free with his thoughts during their endless wait. Force of habit. Trilingual, with a smattering of Farsi and Portuguese and learning more, Gustavo had more friends than anyone else alive, friends all over the world.

Ruth still hadn’t figured out his habit of blockading himself in. He was the most gregarious person aboard. Maybe subconsciously he was trying to protect his radios.

He waved again, hurrying her, and jabbered into a microphone too fast for anyone to answer. His English had a pronounced New York accent, but the blabbermouth personality came through in any language, even those where
hello
and
how are you
were his entire repertoire. “Leadville, this is the ISS. Leadville, come back, I gotcha contact waiting.”