Phytosphere

24

Glenda saw the blaze a mile down the road, and knew that Cedarvale Nursing Home was burning.

The flames raged among the tall, dead trees, and they were thick and orange and capped with plumes of dark smoke. She was afraid the road to the underground garage might be blocked, that a recharge would be impossible, and that their plans for driving to Marblehill would come to nothing. But as she got closer she saw that only the Mercer and Dawes wings were on fire, and that the Hutchley wing, where the administrative offices, Palliative Care Department, and underground parking lot were, had yet to be touched.

She slowed the car as she came to the front gate. The smell of smoke scraped the inside of her nostrils.

She saw a boy of ten or eleven run out from behind the security kiosk, his face smeared with dirt, his clothes caked with filth, so skinny and underfed that Glenda wondered how he had the strength to run.

But run he did, along the front of the Hutchley wing and the Dawes wing, finally disappearing around the hulk of the burning Mercer wing.

Glenda glanced at Hanna, who sat in the front seat beside her, then over her shoulder at Jake, who was in the back with the handgun held loosely on his knee. “Stay alert.”

“I know that guy,” said Jake as he peered after the boy. “He goes to Talbot Public.”

Not trusting her own eyes because she was forty now, she asked Jake, “Did he have a gun?”

“He had something in his belt,” said Jake. “I couldn’t see what it was. It looked like a stick.”

“But you’re sure it wasn’t a gun.”

“It looked like a stick.”

She nodded. “We go in, we go out.”

“I think his name is Buck,” said Jake.

“Buck?” said Hanna.

“That’s what I’ve heard other kids call him.”

Glenda eased her foot off the brake and rolled into the complex. “I don’t like this. Maybe we should come back later.”

“Mom, let’s keep going,” said Hanna. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Buck, or whatever his name is, maybe ran off to alert the rest of those kids I was telling you about. The ones Whit was so worried about.”

“So let’s be fast,” said Hanna. “In and out, like you said. And Jake, for Christ’s sake, don’t be afraid to shoot someone for a change.”

“Mom, she’s bugging me again.”

“Hanna, please stop bugging your brother.”

“I’m not bugging him. I’m just stating facts.”

“Okay, I’ll shoot someone. I guarantee it. And it just might be you.”

“Let’s calm down,” said Glenda. “We go in, we get our charge, and we leave.”

She eased past the security kiosk, veered left around the sign that said UNDERGROUND PARKING GARAGE—STAFF AND RESIDENT PARKING ONLY, and drove down the ramp, feeling the heat of the night even though the air conditioner was on full tilt. She ventured into the underground parking lot and followed the big white arrows. The place was dark. She was worried that the charger might be off-line, even though it operated independently from the main grid, but as she got to the second level she saw that, miracle of miracles, its indicator light was still flashing green, a welcome beacon, and that she could recharge her car after all.

“This place is spooky,” said Hanna.

“Won’t it be nice to go for a swim in Uncle Neil’s pool?” Glenda said, trying to reassure her daughter. “I sure would like a good cooldown.”

She pulled up to the generator.

Jake shifted in the back. “Mom, I’m going to stand over by that pillar to cover you.”

“Jake, never shoot that thing if Hanna or I are in your way.”

“Mom, I’ve thought a lot about using this gun. Just trust me.”

The three Thorndikes got out of the car.

Jake took up his position behind the pillar.

Hanna coughed and wheezed in the close, thick air of the underground parking lot.

Glenda keyed in the sequence to the charging port, then went to the generator and entered her user name and password. The machine identified her, and itemized for her the output available—more than enough to fill her car. She took the generator’s male hookup and inserted it into her car’s female port, selected recharge, then hit enter. The generator hummed softly. Its computer linked up with her car’s onboard software and, glancing at the dash, she saw the little blue bar move slowly forward.

The bar was halfway across when she heard a slow and steady whistle from behind Jake’s pillar. She looked up. She saw the flicker of firelight at the other end of the garage, and in a moment several figures emerged, all carrying homemade torches. Those kids again. It finally dawned on her why these kids had set the Mercer and Dawes wings on fire—they wanted light. They couldn’t live in the dark anymore.

She counted five altogether. They didn’t walk. They swaggered the way kids swagger when they are acting tough. And in their toughness they neglected caution, and failed to consider that Jake might be standing behind the pillar with a gun.

When the boys finally reached Glenda and Hanna, a tall one in a denim jacket looked at them as if he had lifted a rock and found bugs underneath. Then he turned to another boy, the one they had seen run from behind the security kiosk. “Buck, check the car.”

Buck came forward.

Glenda reached into the front seat and lifted her rifle. She didn’t point it at Buck. She pointed it at Denim Jacket, the leader, instead. She watched the three flanking boys lose their absurd expressions of toughness and grow suddenly concerned that the lady with the car should have such a big, mean-looking rifle.

“Yeah? And so?” said Denim Jacket, pulling the bottom of his jacket away to reveal a pistol shoved into his pants. “Go ahead and shoot me, lady. We’ll see who’s faster.”

She looked more closely at Denim Jacket. Was he high? In the light coming from the torches, his pupils certainly looked small, and she wondered if, before burning down the Mercer and Dawes wings, he had gotten into the dispensary.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

“Buck, check the car.”

This time it didn’t come to her in a blinding flash, like it had with Fulton, that Denim Jacket was the evil one. This time she found she couldn’t pull the trigger, no matter what, because Denim Jacket was just a kid, and his parents were probably dead, and starvation was bound to kill him by Thanksgiving. She let Buck come ahead, and Buck inspected the car, then backed away and looked at Denim Jacket with wide eyes. He said, in a voice that hadn’t yet changed, “They got food.”

Denim Jacket pulled out his pistol and pointed it at Glenda’s head. He said, with a crooked smile, “What now, lady?”

She knew he was acting tough because he understood the new politics well, and that he couldn’t act weak, not in front of his friends, or they would tear him to pieces. She was afraid of Denim Jacket, yet felt motherly toward him as well. His brown hair was a mess, matted with the grease hair develops after it hasn’t been washed in a while. He was pale. His eyes, she saw, were blue, like the surf at Nag’s Head, and the freckles spattered across his nose were like specks of chocolate. He had a green armband that looked as if it were made of ripped surgical scrubs, and she saw that the other boys wore arm-bands as well—they were wearing colors as though they were in a gang.

Denim Jacket looked like he was in grade nine, a year or so younger than Hanna, and he spoke with the accent of the hills. He was old North Carolina, as tough as they come, but scared… frantically scared, despite his show of callous indifference to the whole situation.

“Where’s your mama?” asked Glenda.

A small paroxysm of emotion quivered over his face, and she likened him to a broken pot that had been glued back together, only the glue hadn’t set yet.

“Where’s yours?” As smart-ass remarks went, this was fairly lame, and she could see that he was having a difficult time holding it together.

“Dead,” she said.

“Dead how?”

“Diabetes.”

Denim Jacket shrugged. “Big deal.”

“Why don’t we share some of this food with you?”

“A guardsman killed my own ma. Happened last month.”

And then a deafening roar exploded from behind the pillar where Jake was hiding, and Denim Jacket’s face seemed to bend toward the center, even as his lips formed a perfect O, his eyes squinted in pain, and a fine spray of red erupted from his temple. His arm went down, the gun fell from his hand, and he crumpled to the concrete floor.

The other boys dropped their crude torches and scattered; for a second she thought it was just boys running away from their own mischief, like they had egged a house, or let the air out of someone’s tires, or left a burning bag of dog shit on somebody’s doorstep, because they ran like all boys run, flat out, and with the pump and effort of crazed terror. Glenda thought all this in a split second but then remembered it wasn’t boys playing mischief anymore—it was another sequence, another beat, another slice of goddamned life from the end of the world. She had killed a cop, and now her son had killed a child. Kids killing kids. That’s when you knew the Apocalypse had truly arrived.

Jake ventured from his pillar, and he looked scared and proud at the same time, and not at all like her son, but like a boy she didn’t even know. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling under his T-shirt, and he walked toward them with an odd lurch, as if the strength had disappeared from his legs.

The torches lay scattered around Denim Jacket, casting wisps of black smoke, and Denim Jacket sprawled there, bleeding profusely from the head, the blood spreading and spreading until it finally reached the drain next to the generator and started trickling down.

“I told you I could shoot someone,” said Jake, looking at his sister.

Glenda could tell that Jake didn’t fully understand what he had done.

As for Hanna, she had gone catatonic and was just standing there with her limp hair in front of her face, trying to manage her wheeze while she stared with sightless eyes at the blood trickling down the drain.

Glenda looked at her son and saw he wanted her to say something, to give approval, but every muscle in her body was rigid, and it was like her mind was frozen.

She heard the kids yelling to each other on the next level, some spontaneous communication, perhaps a warning, but it was too echoey down here, and she couldn’t make out the precise words.

“Mom?” said Jake.

She nodded, but it was a dull and distracted nod.

“Mom, he had a gun pointed right at you.”

“I know.”

Jake broke down and cried.

She went to him, and took him in her arms like the child he was. And even when the generator clicked off because her car was full, she kept holding him because he couldn’t seem to get his sobbing under control. He didn’t cry often these days; she couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. But he was crying now. She heard his voice crack, and realized his voice was changing.

“Let’s get in,” she said. “We’re full.”

“Mom, are you happy I killed him?”

And in a voice that was as dead as Denim Jacket, she said, “Yes, Jake, I’m happy you killed him.”

She lifted Denim Jacket’s gun and brought it into the car with her.

They drove up to the ground-floor level and out to the gate. Cedarvale continued to burn. Where was Whit? And the remaining residents? Were they all dead now? Had Whit made it to Detroit?

She took some food out—four cans of Irish stew—stacked them on the curb next to the security kiosk, put Denim Jacket’s gun on top, and then drove off into the darkness. She wasn’t going to leave Buck and the others without a gun.

25

At Homestead, Neil studied the new downloads from the Department of Defense with misgiving. Only so many launch vehicles left, and according to his virus specs, dispersion would fall short by twenty-five percent if he didn’t come up with a solution. Secretary of Defense Sidower was indeed correct in his bleak assessment—except for what they had in the United States, and in U.S. bases abroad, launch infrastructure worldwide, particularly in terms of personnel, had been degraded to the point of zero capability.

Was there a solution?

He entered the parameters again, just in case he had made a mistake—lift requirements versus existing launch capabilities—and came up with the same dead-end numbers. But then he widened the data pool, and entered the parameters through a games-theory program Kafis had given him one summer at Marblehill, something the Pentagon computer geeks didn’t have, just to see what would happen. Outside, on the air base, the last of the sun was slowly disappearing.

“Analyze,” he told his waferscreen.

Sixty seconds later his waferscreen gave him an answer he hadn’t been expecting—the Moon.

He scrutinized the data. It turned out that AviOrbit had dozens of interlunar shuttles crated in various warehouses, some out of service for decades, but all possessing, to varying degrees, launch potential. His waferscreen told him that if these shuttles were refurbished, they could be transformed into crude missiles.

He sat back, glad that the Tarsalan software had taken into account this phantom resource. Was it possible, then? Could he win this chess game after all?

He entered further parameters about the virus itself. Because it was a virus, it could be grown and cultured in a lab. Unlike the toxin, it didn’t need an existing chemical production infrastructure. Checking lunar inventory, he saw that the Moon in fact had the basic building blocks for his virus, and could manufacture it in significant quantities. They even had Tarsalan blood in cold storage—there for emergency purposes should the Tarsalans ever need the Moon in a medical capacity—and could therefore also devise the Tarsalanspecific virions.

He breathed a sigh of relief. It could be done. And if it meant he had to pull another Luke Langstrom on the Moon, then that’s what he would do. Co-opt the Moon a second time. And truth be told, he was curious. His brother had come up with the flagella thing. But had he come up with anything since? It would be interesting to see exactly what his brother was doing.

He lifted his phone— the phone—and entered a page. He wondered how long it would take the secretary of defense to get back to him.

When a firefight erupted between the opposing factions an hour later, the secretary still hadn’t gotten back to him. The hole in the sky above the southeastern United States had now closed up entirely, and it was pelting rain vehemently.

The firefight, as usual, was at the other end of the base, but Neil and his family still followed their established protocol. Neil got on the floor. The girls crawled under their cots.

Louise didn’t follow the protocol this time. She kept rolling her paint roller, spreading yellow paint over the walls, as if she were sick of firefights.

“Louise, get on the floor.”

She continued to paint.

“Mom, a stray bullet could reach here,” warned Ashley. “Or the soldiers might come.”

“Sweetie, it’s all right. Colonel Bard never lets them get close to us. So let’s just continue with our lives.

I’m not going to let them bother us anymore. And I’m almost finished with this painting. I want to get it done. What do you think of the color? I think it really brightens up the place.”

Neil stared at his wife as she went back to painting. He heard more gunfire, but it was so distant he thought that maybe she was right—Colonel Bard would keep the breakaway airmen at the other end of the base forever. As he watched his wife work, he had to wonder if this frantic little woman who was painting the army barracks a sunny shade of autumn gold had become unhinged.

He got up from his hiding spot on the floor and lifted a paintbrush. He poured some paint into an empty ration container, walked to the window, and started painting the window frame.

“Dad, do you think that’s wise?” asked Melissa.

“Your mom’s right.” He was feeling slightly unhinged himself. “I’m getting sick of hiding on the floor.”

He dipped his paintbrush into the container, even as he heard the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire nearby.

The old, bold confidence was gone, despite the prospect of getting the Moon’s help. He couldn’t help thinking of Kafis. Especially when Kafis’s pupils dilated to the halfway point. The halfway point always meant that Kafis thought Neil had missed something important.

“Dad?” called Melissa.

What did he even care about Kafis? He was going to beat Kafis. The virus module had backups to its backups. It had failsafes to its failsafes. He had thought it through again and again. He couldn’t have missed a single thing. And if they got the Moon on board…

“Dad!” Melissa’s voice penetrated the racket outside.

“Yes?”

“Your phone.”

He stiffened. He listened. His phone. How could he have missed something like that? He was only fifty-two. Was his hearing getting that bad?

He put the paintbrush in the ration container, walked over to the table, and lifted his phone, his precious link to the secretary of defense. Only it wasn’t Sidower—it was Deputy Secretary of Defense Leanna Fonblanque.

“Where’s Joe?” he asked.

“We’ve moved the entire government to the 937 facility in New Mexico.”

Neil took a moment, intellectually and emotionally, to assimilate this. “And you didn’t take me and my family?”

“Were you notified?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not on the list.” The deputy secretary sighed. “937 is a long-term facility.”

“You don’t have to explain what it is. I helped develop it.”

“Then you understand that theoretical science won’t be a number-one priority when we reemerge.

Technical and infrastructure support will be. I’m sorry, Dr. Thorndike.”

At that moment he felt betrayed by his government, and almost didn’t tell her about the Moon’s hidden launch capability. Fuck it. He had his own 937 in Marblehill. He didn’t need the president’s twenty square miles of underground bunker in New Mexico.

“So are you in touch with Joe, then? And the president?”

“I am.”

“And they’ve left you in charge of this…this effort I’m making? Because I’ve come up with something they might be interested in.”

Fonblanque paused, and he read a half-dozen things in that pause, chief of which was pity. “I understand you have problems at Homestead. A breakaway faction?”

“Colonel Bard is containing it.”

“Good.”

“Are we getting closer to a full-scale assault on the TMS?” he asked.

“The Pentagon’s plans are proceeding apace, Dr. Thorndike. That’s all I’m authorized to tell you.”

This, then, was another rebuff. He pictured the deputy secretary somewhere in her own safe house, in her sixties but sporting every cosmetic enhancement and procedure in the book so that she looked closer to thirty, helicopter ready outside for the moment she thought she had to go to 937.

“You tell the president everything’s fine,” he said. “I’m firmly in control of the situation. And I have a great idea. Something that will improve the dispersion odds of the virus greatly.”

“Is that gunfire I hear?”

“I’ve come up with a solution for the launch shortage.”

“Dr. Thorndike, we’re putting most of our effort into the TMS effort. So don’t worry too much.”

Another revelation. They didn’t care about the virus anymore. The second line was on the back burner.

They were making other plans. Plans to wrest control of the on-off switch from the Tarsalans.

“I guarantee the virus is going to work.” The old, bold confidence was a brittle thing at best. “But we need launch capability.”

“We’ve taken some of our older units out of mothballs. They’re being refurbished as we speak.”

She gave him the number, and of course it wasn’t nearly enough.

“I’ve run models,” he said. “Using Tarsalan games-theory software. The Moon—or AviOrbit, at least—has all kinds of old shuttles in storage. They can easily be converted into crude missiles.”

The assistant secretary paused. “I’m listening.” And he realized from the tone of her voice that he had her on board again, that he had them all on board, and that he had come up with another great idea.

“They’ve got over seven hundred crated away in various warehouses. Some are nearly a century old, but others are only ten or twenty years old.”

She paused again. “You signed off against the Moon. I have the document right here. Lunar interference represents a category-eight risk. You’ve written it right here. How are they going to react?”

He hated the taste of crow. “Nectaris is always asking for handouts. And this mayor they have…he won’t take much persuading if you make him understand it will be to his advantage. As for AviOrbit, promise them anything. Even subsidies. We have to hit the Tarsalans hard, and hit them fast. Our dispersion area has to be as wide as possible. We have to quickly reach the saturation point before the xenophyta’s natural defense system responds. Let’s see if we can get the Moon on board a second time.

They’ve already given us Luke Langstrom. Maybe they’ll give us everything. Including some updates on what my brother is doing. Maybe he’s come up with something else besides this flagella thing. It could all turn into something useful.”

The deputy secretary admitted it sounded promising. “I don’t think anybody considered the Moon as a launch resource, Dr. Thorndike. Excellent work.”

Here it was again, the primary theme of his life—people in power telling him he had done good.

Yet when he finally ended his call to the assistant secretary, he was anxious. The rain beat against the windows. Was he getting anywhere closer to solving the puzzle of the shroud? The gunfire abated and the girls crawled out from under their cots. And would the virus work on a mass scale, and not fizzle the way the hydrogen sulfide had?

Where was his confidence? He had to tell himself that the virus would work. That it was going to turn the xenophyta into mush from the inside out, so that it would rain from the sky like Oobleck. Yes. Oobleck.

The king said he was sorry, and the Oobleck stopped. Simple. The whole viral thrust was meant to be simple. And simple was best.

Simple was the only way he could make sure he didn’t miss anything.

26

What Gerry didn’t like about it was how it felt like an intervention, the kind his wife, his brother, and his

brother’s wife had staged before throwing him into Bellwood two years ago.

He glanced at Ian, and could tell Ian knew nothing about it. Then at Ira, and what was Ira doing here, anyway, because Ira never came to these things? Then at Mitch, who stared at his hands like a Judas.

But unlike his first intervention, where everything good in the world had materialized afterward, and he had finally found the peace he had always been looking for, and, wonder of wonders, had found it without the bottle, this intervention had all the hallmarks of a cancer and felt like it was leaching the life out of him.

“But what about that first drop they sent?” he said. “They were so hard-assed. It was like a slap in the face. Telling us to butt out because they thought we would blow it. And my damn brother signing off on it because he thinks he’s king of the world.”

Hulke looked away. Gerry could tell the mayor had mixed feelings about the whole thing. “Well, Ger, they sent us the blueprint for the virus, and Luke’s taken a look at it, and Luke seems to think it’s…how can I put this?…a kosher little bug and, unlike the toxin, something we can grow up here.”

“I thought Luke wasn’t part of our effort anymore.”

The mayor looked away. “We’ve kind of been using him all along. On a consulting basis…and keeping it hush-hush…because you seemed a little miffed at him when he broke camp with us.”

Gerry shook his head. “I wasn’t miffed at him. I welcome his input. I was mad at the toxin. I knew it wasn’t going to work. And I was right. These are the Tarsalans. They’re going to think of all the obvious things. And now Neil wants to try a virus? A virus won’t work for the exact same reason.”

“No, no…. Luke said it will. He said it will beat the crap out of the thing…. Maybe not in those exact words…” The door to the mayor’s office slid open. “And…well, well, well…speak of the devil…. Luke, we were just—”

“Sorry I’m late,” said Dr. Langstrom, coming through the door.

So. Here it was. The last nail. Why did things always arrange themselves this way in his life? Same thing at NCSU. Thought his job was safe, had no idea of the political intrigue brewing behind his back, and bang, we’re sorry, Dr. Thorndike, but the Ocean Sciences Department is in a precarious position right now, and yes, you’ve really bounced back since your unfortunate stay at Bellwood, but we’re looking at a serious lack of funding at the present time…and here it was all over again. Poor old Ger, only wanting to help, doing his damnedest to figure out Kafis’s little puzzle, and then having the rug pulled out from under him, and Langstrom bouncing through the door as if he belonged here more than Gerry did.

“Hello, Luke,” he said, trying to stop the frost in his voice.

The Martian scientist nodded deferentially. “Gerry.”

The mayor tried to alleviate the tension with some blustering hospitality. “Wish I had a plate of bonbons, or something, Luke, because I know you like your sweets… but we’re getting… uh… drastically low in the supply side of things, and we… you know… got a little hoarding going on… so I guess all I can give you…”

“Yes, crudités. Moon-grown?”

“We grow a fine carrot.”

“And the dip?”

“Uh… synthetic. But real low-cal. In fact, zero-cal.”

“You’re not insulted if I pass?”

“Me, insulted? No, of course not. Have a seat. There’s a spot beside Ira. You know Ira, don’t you?”

“Yes, we’ve met.”

“Hi, Luke.”

“Hello, Ira.”

“We were just telling Ger, here… about Dr. Thorndike’s virus.”

And this rankled Gerry as well, because he was “Ger” now, nothing else, while his brother was still Dr.

Thorndike. He watched Luke take his spot beside Ira.

Gerry glanced at Ira, a man in his early sixties with an odd birthmark on his right hand, a narrow face, intense blue eyes, a receding hairline, and an obvious Ashkenazi contour to his nose. He had a benign but nearly frozen grin on his face. What was Ira getting out of all this? What kind of tariff concessions had the U.S. government made to the lunar contingent of AviOrbit?

“I’ve developed a few vials of the virus according to Dr. Thorndike’s blueprint,” said Luke. “Lothar Hydroponics had the base tobacco mosaic virus on file. The Tarsalan components came from the Aldrin Health Sciences Center. The cross-species enzymes and catalysts were easy to synthesize using basic laboratory techniques. The beauty of this thing, Gerry, is that unlike the toxin, we can grow it here on the Moon. Kudos to your brother. We mount multiple warheads of the stuff on some of the old interlunar junk Ira has hanging around and we go in with a coordinated attack.”

The unfairness of the situation struck him afresh. “Wait a minute. Ira can give my brother launch vehicles but he can’t give me another Smallmouth?”

Ira’s grin transformed into a hard-faced frown. “It’s not that we can’t give you another Smallmouth, Gerry, it’s just that we don’t see the point. Mitch and I have talked about this, and we’ve basically concluded that your…research…Pardon me if I’m blunt, but your research is going nowhere.” He lifted his palms. “These flagella, for instance. Yes, the first Smallmouth has shown us that when they’re in the sphere, they’re active, and that they link each xenophyta organism to the next, but so what? And this expensive infrared equipment we’ve given you? What have you done with it? You’ve shown us some pretty colors and told us that the phytosphere has different temperatures in different places, and that there might be a cyclical weather system in it… but really, what have you given us in terms of a concrete scientific return, or even a first step toward a working solution?”

Gerry’s anger flared. “Yes, but this cyclical weather system… I’m beginning to think it’s more than just a weather system—it’s a definite stress band. Did you read my report on it?”

“You mean you’ve finally written a report?”

Gerry frowned but pushed on. “The pattern’s too regular to be a weather system. If we can figure out what’s causing it, we could be one step closer to a solution. I’m hypothesizing that the stress band could be part of the phytosphere’s operating system.”

“ Could be,” said Ira, now sounding tougher. “That’s all I hear from you, Gerry. I’ve been an executive for thirty-one years, and I’ve worked with all kinds of people. I’ve hired people, and I’ve fired people.

And the people I fire most are the ones who always say could be, might be, or maybe. Gerry, you don’t know how to get things done. Not like your brother does.”

“As far as I can see, my brother hasn’t accomplished a thing except spend a lot of money. All I’m asking for is one more Smallmouth. Let’s go into the phytosphere and follow the stress band. Let’s find out what it is. It might reveal the exact piece of information we need. We could have the answer in as little as seventy-two hours.”

“I’m sorry, Gerry, but I have to put what resources I have into retooling these old Earth-Lunar shuttles.”

“But the virus isn’t going to work. You don’t think the Tarsalans haven’t engineered an immune system into the phytosphere?”

“Gerry,” said Luke. “That’s the beauty of this virus your brother’s designed. It attacks the immune system. The Tarsalan genetic component. And it’s going to cripple that component first and then spread out using the omniphage I’ve created. This omniphage of mine is quickly turning into the workhorse of the whole project. The only way the Tarsalans can respond is to preemptively vaccinate the entire shroud, and hope that the necessary antibodies develop in time. And they can’t. It’s impossible. I’ve tested your brother’s virus. It’s a hundred percent effective.”

“You’ve tested it on our samples?”

Luke shrugged. “Where else would I get samples?”

“Yes, but you didn’t kill them all, did you?”

“I wouldn’t do that. In fact, I’m culturing a new supply.”

The rawhide hat moved ominously into view. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing?” said Ian. “You’re undercutting the only man who’s going to save the situation.”

“Give me another Smallmouth,” pleaded Gerry. “Let’s take an in-depth look at the stress band.”

The mayor interjected. “Ger, we’ve sent your research to… you know… to your brother’s team… just so that they can take a look at it. I think that’s all we really have to do. There’s your in-depth look, so you have nothing to worry about.”

Now he felt doubly betrayed. “Without my authorization?”

“We just want them to double-check its validity.”

His face settled. “It’s valid, Malcolm. It’s predicated on strict observation, not on wishful thinking.”

“We’re wasting a lot of time here,” said Ira. “We should be focusing on refurbishing our launch vehicles

and developing a stockpile of virus.” Ira squared his shoulders and turned to Gerry. “Gerry, you’re off the project. That’s what we’re really here to talk about. That’s why I’m here. Thanks for all your help, but it hasn’t worked out. We’ll let you know if we need you on a consulting basis.”

Gerry’s eyes widened. Yes, an intervention. Or a repeat of NCSU. “So I’m fired?”

The mayor jumped in. “No, no, you’re not fired, Gerry. Go back to Alleyne-Parma and work your butt off. Keep making those observations. Write it all down. Give us another damn bargaining chip we can use with Earth. It’s just that… as for the overall direction… I think we better go with your brother’s plan.”

“So, in other words, Neil’s in charge now?”

“We’re going to help Earth give it this one last shot,” said Ira.

“Mitch…I thought you were with me.”

Mitch looked up. “Gerry, you haven’t even reached the drawing-board stage of a solution. What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say you’ll give me another Smallmouth. If you give me a chance to get inside the phytosphere one more time, I’m sure I’ll figure out what’s causing the stress band. And once I do that—”

“Once you do that, Gerry, then what?” said Ira. “Don’t you see that we’re running out of time? The situation is critical on Earth. The average human takes anywhere from thirty to seventy-five days to starve to death, and we’re well over the seventy-five-day threshold now. The number of survivors is going to be considerably beyond the right side of the decimal point in terms of percentages. And another Smallmouth isn’t going to help any of that. So do what Malcolm says. Go play at Alleyne-Parma, but leave the real work to us.”

His feelings were hurt, his ego bruised, and he felt like he needed a drink badly. But as Gerry took the train to the observatory an hour later, he still held a solid belief in himself flickering deep within his soul, and he knew that his brand of question-driven science, so completely devoid of ambition and conceit, would at last solve the puzzle of the phytosphere.

He got off the train and took the moving sidewalk through a pressurized polycarbonate surface corridor.

The observatory loomed before him, a bubble, catching the sun’s light and reflecting it with diamond-bright intensity. He glanced at the black sky. Somewhere up there, AviOrbit technicians took the old Earth-Moon shuttles out of storage and turned them into missiles. What would the Tarsalans do to the Commonwealth of Lunar Colonies when they learned the Moon had participated in the launch? He tried not to think about it.

He used his special pass to gain access to the closed-down tourist attraction, and shuffled along the polished floor of the big circular corridor until he came to the entrance to the viewing area.

As much as he tried not to think about it, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Somewhere back in Nectaris, lab workers cultured samples of the virus and piggybacked them onto Luke Langstrom’s omniphages.

He stopped. The omniphages. If it was a eureka moment, it was an unenjoyable one. Because didn’t the Tarsalans already have experience with Luke Langstrom’s omniphage? They now probably understood

the omniphage better than Luke did. He sure hoped his brother had considered that strategic stumbling point.

He settled himself by Heaven’s Eye and took fifteen minutes to get the apparatus up and running.

He was just sitting down to observe when he heard a distant rapping from out in the corridor. He thought it might be Ian at the observatory door, strange new Ian, the sober Ian who wanted to walk the straight and narrow. He bounce-shuffled out into the corridor, followed its curve around to the public doors, and saw that it wasn’t Ian, but Stephanie, standing at the top of the stairs wearing her silver, orange, and magenta jumpsuit. She reminded him of a Day-Glo kitten who had followed him home. He swiped his access pass on the inside scanners and the doors opened.

He presented himself with his palms upward. “Behold, poor Caesar.”

“What? Oh. Right. Cute. A little weird, but…”

And then she just stood there looking at him as if he were the biggest nerd in the world.

He moved awkwardly aside. “Come in… come in.” And he swept his hand toward the interior of the observatory like a ringmaster presenting the next circus act. “I talk like that sometimes.”

“I noticed.” She arched a brow. “But then I notice a lot of things about you. For one thing, I notice that you let people push you around.”

The accusation struck him as uncharacteristically harsh of Stephanie. Yet it seemed pointless to defend himself, so he just tried to elaborate on the circumstances. “Ira was their point man. And he holds the purse strings.”

“So?”

“He and I come from two different mind-sets.”

“So?”

“So he’s not going to listen to me when he can listen to my brother.”

“I used to let people push me around all the time, but not anymore.”

“I haven’t given up, Stephanie.”

“I know you haven’t. I just wanted to come here to make sure of that.”

“I can’t give up.”

“I know.”

“And in a day or two, I’m going to bug them again about a second Smallmouth.”

“Let’s go look at Earth.”

“Yes, the many-storied globe.”

“Uh… right.”

They walked down the corridor toward the observatory, past the ticket booth, the concession stand, and the public washrooms. She slipped her hand through his arm, and it felt good, reminded him of his wife, and he took support from it, even though she was young enough to be his daughter.

“I haven’t seen Gwen around,” he said. “What happened to her?”

“She’s gone back home to Copernicus, now that all the shows have closed.”

“Oh. She’s from Copernicus. And what about you? What about your mother and father?”

“I never met my father, and I don’t get along with my mother. I’m making it on my own.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I do.”

“You do? Who?”

“You.”

“Steph… I wouldn’t think of me as your—”

“A boyfriend can be many things. One of the things he can be is married. Another thing he can be is alone. And you’re really alone, Gerry. You need me. You might not know it, but you do. And that doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be anything physical.”

He nodded. She was young, a trifle overdone in her expressions, but he appreciated her sentiment anyway.

“You’re a sweet man,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“No, I really mean it. And you’re awfully smart.”

“Thanks. You’re full of compliments tonight.”

“I’m just trying to soften the blow.”

His eyes narrowed. “Soften what blow?”

“The blow you’re going to feel when I point out the obvious to you. I was hoping you were going to get it by yourself, and I wasn’t going to have to say anything because I didn’t want to bruise your ego, considering how bruised it’s been already, but now I realize that we can’t wait any longer.”

He stopped. “Can’t wait any longer for what?”

He was starting to feel more like an idiot every second.

“Let’s just get to the observatory, and I’ll show you.”

“Something about the phytosphere?”

“Like I say, you’re awfully smart.”

His face warmed. Had he really missed something? What could he have missed?

In the observatory she presented the monitors like a showgirl, with a jutting of her hip and a c’est voile

` posturing of her hands, as if the monitors were the prize behind Door Number 3.

He didn’t get it. “I’m sorry?”

“Turn on the accelerated infrared footage.”

He did as she said. “It’s on.”

“Take a close look and tell me what you see.”

He saw the same thing he always saw, the stress band from north to south. “Okay…Okay, what am I missing?”

He was afraid she was going to disappoint him with something that had absolutely no relevance.

“You’re sure you won’t be upset? I know the male ego is…”

He looked more closely at the screens. “Steph, if you can offer some fresh perspective…something I’ve been missing….”

“Look closely at the archival screen, Gerry. Tell me what you see. You won’t get mad because a showgirl figured this out, will you?”

“Of course not.”

“Just take a look and see if you can puzzle it out.”

“What am I supposed to see?” he said.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“On the archival screen?”

“Yes, that screen.”

“I see the same thing I always see. The stress band.”

“Speed it up some more,” she said.

He sped the whole thing up, splicing three weeks into a four-minute segment.

“So?” said Stephanie.

He bowed. “Master, I admit my profound ignorance.”

“Gerry, you’re a goddamned ocean scientist.”

It was one of those sublime moments of humiliation, when a girl of twenty-two who had no scientific background and just went around feeling her way through life, not analyzing it, could outguess him in the overall pattern of a natural phenomenon. Despite the humiliation, he could have kissed her.

“I see tides.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s gravity.”

“Yes!”

The more he looked at the patterns, the more it became clear to him—he was seeing tides. Tides in the actual phytosphere itself, with the tidal pattern affected by the underlying weather systems, so that the stress band wasn’t a precise thing, but more a ragged line stretching from north to south poles. No wonder he had been confused. Moon tides. And with this realization, the dominoes fell into place—why the flagella behaved one way when they were in orbit around the Earth, and why, when in the lab, with no cohesive center of gravity, they fell apart. Gravity, acting as an anchor, triggered the flagella to cling. Take that gravity away, and the trigger was gone.

“Do you want to have sex now?” said Stephanie. “You’ve kind of got this glow about you. I’m sure your wife would understand.”

“Stephanie, we just had something better than sex. We had a meeting of the minds.”

She looked doubtful. “If you say so.”

“And you might have saved Earth.”

Her voice became giddy. “Really?”

“Yes.”

He had a sudden vision of a solution so vast, so unexpected, yet so simple, so predicated on the basic laws of physics, that he wondered if Kafis, in the twin-brained complexity of his mind, would suspect such a blunt and obvious attempt.

But first he had to prove his theory.

And for that, he had to get Ira back on board.

Not for a second Smallmouth.

No, he had much bigger plans now.

27

She drove through the night, and what a night— the night, the one that would never end. The rain came down hard, blurring the windshield. She hunched over the steering wheel so strenuously that her shoulders ached. Hers was the only car on Route 64, and Georgia was still hundreds of miles away. She knew the mountains were coming soon, and was afraid to go into them because, what with all this rain and no grass or other plants holding anything in place, she was worried about washouts.

The emptiness of the highway frightened her. She and her children were targets because they had food in the car. She didn’t want to stop, was afraid to stop, but sensed Jake growing antsy in the back.

She looked ahead and saw a town. “What’d you say this town was?” she asked Hanna.

Hanna turned on the flashlight and looked at the map again. “Dunstan.”

“Jake, do you have to go for a pee?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, we’ll stop here.”

She eased her foot on the brake and pulled over to the shoulder. Jake got out, walked to the ditch, and peed. The air coming through the open door was damp, and it made her skin sticky.

Lightning flashed and she saw the outlines of the town, its downtown section like an overgrown prop for a train set, none of its lights burning, the buildings looking carved out of cardboard, lifeless, without any soul.

She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw headlights, and knew it was probably nothing, just another hapless traveler driving from nowhere to nowhere, but couldn’t help feeling paranoid, especially when they had food in the car and everybody was fighting for what little remained.

She leaned over the backseat. “Jake, honey, are you nearly done? There’s a car coming.”

Jake zipped up and got back in the vehicle. She put it in gear, hoping that the person behind wouldn’t see her parking lights. She wished there was some way to turn them off, but they stayed on all the time.

She ventured into town. The lone traffic light, as dead as everything else, was dark like the dark windows around her, and swayed in the wind. Lightning flashed again. Her plan was to keep going, travel west along 64, but at the last second she swung left onto the town’s secondary road, Vine Street. She wanted to hide from whoever was behind them. Her blood drummed past her ears. She looked around for someplace to hide, and in the next lightning flash saw a church; and, no, she wasn’t religious, but the church seemed like a beacon, and all the knee–jerk responses she’d been taught in Sunday school came back: how a church, any church, was a sanctuary, and how the good Lord would protect. She swerved into the small lot in front.

Only thing was, the church was still fairly close to Main Street, and she didn’t feel safe sitting in the car like this. It might be better if she and the kids…

“Kids, get out. We’ll go up to the church porch until this guy passes.”

“Mom, why are you so worried?” asked Hanna.

“Because we’ve got food. Do you want a repeat of Cedarvale?”

They all got out of the car, climbed the broken concrete steps to the church lawn, hurried up the walk to the church porch, and huddled under its roof. Glenda got on her knees behind the railing. She wondered how her world could have changed so much, so that she would feel the need to hide from anybody who happened along the highway. She felt vulnerable, and miserable, and as if she still had far to go before she reached Marblehill.

She listened for the car and thought she heard it coming through the rain, the tires ripping against the wet pavement, but it was just the sound of the rain itself, a steady hiss, fluctuating in pitch. For the longest time the car didn’t come, and she thought it might have turned onto a side road, that perhaps it was a local farmer going back to his farmhouse; but then she heard the vehicle, and over this uneven section of 64 it made a bump and rattle she recognized only too well. She felt both hot and cold, and her body automatically tried to adjust with a sharp intake of air; but once the air was inside, she couldn’t let it go, as if, with this new emergency, this terrible threat, her lungs had suddenly seized up.

Her mind froze as well, and it wasn’t until a few seconds later that she began to put it all together: why Buzz was here, how he was here, the reason behind this I-shot-the-sheriff-but-did-not-shoot-the-deputy scenario. The truck passed the intersection at Main, not more than a quarter block away. There could be no mistaking the geriatric jalopy. She was sure the truck might turn onto Vine, but it kept going. Her shoulders remained tight, and she gripped the edge of the porch railing as if she never wanted to let it go.

At last she found herself exhaling. Lightning flashed yet again. She caught a glimpse of the truck climbing the road into the mountains, a quarter mile distant.

She turned to her daughter. “I told you not to leave a note.” Her tone was icy, and she didn’t mean to speak so harshly to her daughter but couldn’t help it.

“I didn’t leave a note.”

“Then why is Buzz following us? I told you this would happen.”

“Mom, I didn’t leave a note. How could I leave a note? You were hovering over me like a vulture.”

“I left a note,” said Jake, defiance in his voice.

She turned. She barely discerned the outlines of Jake’s face in the dark. “Didn’t you hear what I was telling Hanna?”

“Mom, I wasn’t going to have Dad come home and not know where we were.”

“Yes, but I said I was going to keep foning him.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t say Marblehill. I used a clue. Like I said we should.”

Her lips pursed, her eyes momentarily moistened, and she felt an odd mixture of sympathy and pity for her son; he was, after all, only twelve, and was bound to do childlike things. He couldn’t reason the situation through the way an adult could, and really, when it came right down to it, how could you control your kids in a circumstance like this? A clue. Like it was a game.

“And what did you put in your clue?” she said, hoping for the best.

“I said we were going to Chattahoochee. I didn’t mention anything about Marblehill.”

Her exasperation jumped a notch. “Yes, but Buzz knows Marblehill is in Chattahoochee. A clue like that…it’s not really a clue at all.”

And of course kids might think they were outsmarting adults, but they rarely did.

“Hanna said I should make sure it was a clue Dad would get.”

Now he was blaming Hanna, another kid thing to do. She wanted to trust him, but how could she ultimately trust a twelve-year-old?

Jake tried to stick up for himself some more. “It’s a good thing I had to take a pee, otherwise he’d have caught us for sure. Now he’s never going to find us.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t have to find us. There’s only one road into Marblehill, and if he doesn’t find us now, he’ll be waiting for us once we get there.”

Hanna interrupted her. “Mom, there’s a big dog out by the car.”

She turned. The lightning flashed. She saw the dog. Just a glimpse of it; a large white mastiff, what she would have called a British bulldog, only she didn’t know breeds that well. The dog was huge, and so skinny she could see its ribs sticking out from under its fur. The ribs scared her, because she had never seen a dog so emaciated before, and when dogs got that thin, that starved, with no owners or masters around, it meant trouble. She didn’t forget Buzz, not entirely, because Buzz was definitely a big problem, something they would have to face, like a hurricane brewing out in the Atlantic that was going to get here sooner or later. But for the moment she shoved Buzz to the back of her mind and concentrated on the dog. Not only the white dog, but also another dog that was now coming up the street. This was a big dog too, but it was a dark one, and in the next lightning flash, she saw that it had some Rottweiler in it.

Jake suddenly got up and extended his hand. “Here, boy.”

She pulled him back. “Jake, what are you doing?”

“I want to see if he’s friendly.”

“He might have gone wild. Look at him. And now there’s two.”

“Mom, why can’t we have a dog?” he asked.

“You know why. Because of Hanna’s asthma.”

“Maybe when Hanna goes to college.”

As if the future were still the same, and not vastly altered. In the next lightning flash she saw both dogs looking up at the church, sniffing the air. Then they started nosing around the car. It was so dark she could hardly see. She hoped that by the next flash they would be gone. This wasn’t right, dogs in the pouring rain like this, alone, at night, without masters, their ribs like the bars on a jail cell.

They slavered around her car, as if, even through all that metal, they could smell the vacu-paks of Chinese noodles and cans of Irish stew.

Another dog came along. She was relieved to see that it was a lot smaller, one of those Jack something terriers, and she thought this dog would just sniff the car with the others. And it did for a while, but then came trotting up the steps, and it didn’t even look like a dog anymore but more like some creature from the depths of Hell, because all its fur was plastered to its skinny body and its ribs were like the fingers on a corpse, and when it barked, it wasn’t so much a bark as a shriek, the oddest and most unnerving thing she had ever heard, as though the animal were possessed.

The bark acted like a siren call to the other two animals. They stopped sniffing the car and came up the steps. The bulldog’s chin was up and his jaw was forward, and he looked like a prizewinning fighter ready to jump into the ring and tear someone to pieces. She didn’t feel safe up here on the church steps anymore. Hadn’t she read about this somewhere, dogs going wild, turning feral, packing, cooperating in order to get their gullets filled with whatever fresh meat they could find? And it was like she could sense they were feral because she herself had gone feral. The darkness had changed her into something that was dangerous: a cop killer. So what had it done to these dogs? Their owners had obviously abandoned them. She knew it was happening all over the country: pets getting abandoned. But what actually happened to animals when they were forced to live in darkness all the time, and when they had no choice but to subsist on food that didn’t come out of a can but had to be found or killed?

The Jack something terrier shrieked again. The shrieking acted like amphetamines on the bulldog. It shifted and pranced over the churchyard, like it was slowly working itself up. Meanwhile, the big, dark dog growled, an unearthly sound, and in the next lightning flash she saw its face, like one of those African masks, murder sketching its way across its emaciated features. She felt compelled to get back to the relative safety of the car.

“Jake, do you have your safety off?”

His hand roved to the butt of his gun, and he nodded. The air was filled with the smell of dog saliva. The proximity of the animals set Hanna’s lungs off. She wheezed, and after a moment she coughed. The coughing must have enraged the bulldog because it charged the church steps, making a feint all the way to the bottom, then turning away and going back to the yard.

“Okay… walk slowly to the car. Hanna, stay between Jake and I.” She pumped a round into her rifle.

“Don’t make any sudden moves.”

But it was no good and she knew it, because the second they rose from the church porch, the dogs went wild, growling and barking and working themselves into a frenzy. She thought she and her children would be trapped here, and that Buzz might come back, and that they would wind up in a gunfight with the sheriff’s brother. So she tried the church door, but it was locked. They had no choice. They had to go to the car.

She and her kids went down the steps, and it was indeed no good, because the little dog came right up to her and tried to nip her heels. She kicked it out of the way, and that’s when the bulldog tried to get around in back of Jake and rip a chunk out of his thigh, and as much as she liked dogs, and would have owned one if Hanna hadn’t had asthma, she knew she had no choice. She fired at the bulldog, clipping its haunches. It went squealing away, at first not knowing if it had been crippled or not, but then falling over and trying to drag itself through the muddy churchyard with its front paws. The way the white mastiff acted was a horrible reminder of Brennan Little.

The other two dogs bolted.

But the bulldog…

Goddamn that bulldog. Her eyes flooded with tears. The thing yelped in exquisite agony. It tried to crawl away, but it couldn’t move. She remembered a dog up the street from her childhood home in Kansas, and how friendly she had been with it…. She was really a dog person. But now she had to put this one down, and it was breaking her heart.

She walked across the churchyard and got it over with.

Once in the car, they headed up the mountain; and while she had gotten her tears under control, she still felt so blue about the dog that she wondered if she would ever feel unblue again. Jake reached forward and patted her shoulder.

Hanna, meanwhile, was wheezing and wheezing. “Mom, I’ve got to have some.”

“Sweetie, it’s not time yet. And it’s dangerous if you take too much. You know what Dr. Saleh says.”

“Mom, I’ve been taking a few extra hits every now and again, and it hasn’t killed me.”

“It’s only been making you high,” said Jake.

“Jake, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so just shut up.”

“Kids at my school use puffers to get high,” said Jake.

“That’s because kids at your school are stupid, just like you. Mom, can I have some?”

She didn’t want to fight it. She was too upset about the dog. “Does your heart feel funny at all?”

“No, not at all.”

“Jake… dig it out. One puff, Hanna. We’re running out.”

“I’m going to need at least three.”

“Three? Have you been taking three all along?”

“Mom, I know what I need. This nursing home stuff isn’t as good as the usual stuff.”

“Yes, but you’re supposed to take only two puffs.”

“I’m nearly seventeen. I think I can look after myself.”

Jake handed the puffer forward. Hanna lifted it to her mouth like an old pro. She pressed the mouthpiece between her lips, squeezed the plunger, and inhaled. Glenda heard a little burst, but it was weak, and she was indeed afraid that they were running out. Hanna squeezed again, and this time nothing

happened. Her daughter pulled the bronchodilator away and looked at it as if it were a criminal. Then she tried again, but again got nothing. She pulled it away from her lips a second time.

“It’s empty, Mom. These nursing home ones are no good.”

“But that’s the last one we have. It’s supposed to last us to Marblehill.”

Like the drama queen she sometimes was, Hanna flung the empty inhaler over her shoulder into the backseat with the carelessness of Henry VIII tossing away a chicken bone. “Great. What am I going to do now?”

Glenda could have argued with Hanna, underlining for her daughter the foolhardiness of what she had done, especially with the overdosing. But where would it get her? Instead, she simply contemplated their grim, drugless situation. They weren’t a quarter of the way to Marblehill, and Hanna was out of inhaler.

The wheezing would start. The coughing would start. And it wouldn’t let up. And her daughter would weaken. And to be weakened in the new Stone Age was more dangerous than overdosing with Alupent.

So she didn’t rant the way she might have in normal circumstances, but let it go, hoping that somehow, up the highway, they might find an abandoned pharmacy, and that in that pharmacy they might conceivably search out some medicine that Hanna could use.

She gripped the wheel and peered out the windshield, racking her brains for a solution, but the only fix she came up with was getting to Marblehill as soon as she could, where Neil was stockpiling medicine for the long haul.

She glanced up the hillside and saw that her brother-in-law was right: erosion had become a big problem. All the small plants on the forest floor had died a long time ago. Root systems had rotted in the ground, and that’s why the ground had that stinky smell so much of the time. But now the rain was washing everything away, and she saw that many of the dead trees had toppled one against the other, so that the forest looked like a crowd of drunks, all leaning trunk to trunk for support.

And what was this up here? She eased her foot on the brake. Damn. Part of the road had cracked away into the gully below. She stopped. Mud from the hill had washed over the road, but it wasn’t deep, and she could easily get through. What bothered her were the big cracks and how a giant slab of asphalt curved over the hill like a macadamized waterfall.

“I’m going to take the car across this section myself,” she said. “You guys get out and walk.”

They grumbled a bit—kids always grumbled about having to walk—but at last they left the car and trudged down the highway, getting drenched to their skin in the rain. She put the car in gear and proceeded, thinking to herself, day at a time, day at a time, day at a time —and the road held, felt solid under the car, and after a few minutes she made it across the cracked section, the highway became whole again, and the kids got in.

Hanna’s eyes had that glassy look they always had after a hit of Alupent. Glenda gave Jake a glance.

Jake was looking at Glenda as if he were curious about what she was going to do next. And she realized that they were all getting to know each other in an entirely unexpected way, and that they weren’t just a family anymore, but survivors, and that the issues were no longer those of getting to school on time or finishing homework or trying to get more hours at the nursing home, but of simply trying to stay alive.

Jake said, “Mom, I’m sorry about the note. I just thought…”

She continued along the highway. “What’s done is done. And maybe he didn’t even see the note.

Maybe he just guessed. He knows we go to Marblehill from time to time. And he knows we’re broke and can’t go anywhere else for a holiday. I mean… where else would we go? So… maybe it’s not your fault.”

“It’s just that I didn’t want Dad to die of a broken heart.” He could hardly get the words out because he was all choked up.

“It’s okay, Jake. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got the rifle. We’ve got the gun. We should be okay.”

They had gotten no more than another mile when she saw what she at first thought was some kind of optical trick sneaking in from her left field of vision, changing the monotonous look of the highway so that the road appeared to be bending in an odd way, out toward the valley. But then she had to ask herself, was it the movement of the car toward the trees, or of the trees toward the car? Because the trees really looked like they were shifting, and she suddenly remembered a line from grade ten English class, “Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,” because the forest honestly looked as if it were moving. The apparition was so strange, so unexpected, that she felt momentarily dizzy. Then all the bits of visual information collected into a coherent whole, and she realized she was seeing a landslide, like a freight train filled with upright trees rolling down the mountainside at fifteen miles per hour, not in a great rush, but indomitable and massive, the whole dead forest skiing downhill en masse.

“Holy shit!” said Jake. “A landslide!”

She slammed the brakes and the car jerked to a halt. Her body was now rigid and her heart pounded, and panic overcame her like a tsunami. She put the car in reverse and backed up, nearly swerving over the edge—God, she wasn’t good at driving in reverse. She slowed right down, because she thought that maybe her reverse driving might kill them. Yet she was desperately fearful that the landslide would spread. Would the mountain suddenly flatten like a mound of strawberry jam? No. This section held, and at last she brought the car to a stop, and they watched the landslide from a safe distance.

It wasn’t until the landslide petered out that she thought of practicalities. How were they going to get around it? Would they have to take a detour?

She took a nervous breath. “Hanna, let’s see the map.”

Hanna dug out the map. The thing was at least twenty-five years old, and falling apart. Glenda had a look. She studied the various highways and side roads. Yes, a considerable detour. How could they do that, and get all the way to Marblehill on their remaining charge without having to walk part of the way?

And how could they possibly walk when Hanna had run out of medicine and wouldn’t have the breath for it?

“If we don’t find a way around this,” she said, “we’ll have to go back to Dunstan and take 74 to Charlotte.” She peered up the road. “I’m wondering if we can get around on the right shoulder.” Was it worth it? Could they take that risk? “There’s a little ledge along there.” She turned to her kids. “What do you think?”

Hanna and Jake inspected the ledge.

“Are you insane, Mom?” asked Hanna.

Glenda stared at the huge, muddy impasse. Which was the greater risk? Trying to get by on the right

shoulder or going back and having to walk in the dead, dark countryside around Marblehill, the place where Buzz was most likely to ambush them? She thought the road was at least worth investigating.

“We should see how extensive the landslide is,” said Glenda. “If it’s a mile wide, we’ll turn back. If it’s just a little ways…because if we have to take 74 to Charlotte, we’re not going to make it all the way to Marblehill on this one charge. We’ll have to walk partway.”

“Maybe we’ll find some place to charge further along,” said Jake.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Everything’s closed in Wake County. I think it’s the same everywhere.”

She had a look at the ledge a second time. “You guys stay here.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Jake. She could tell he was trying to make up for leaving the note back at the house.

“Jake, don’t desert me,” said Hanna.

“I’m going with Mom,” said Jake. “You’ll be okay in the car.” Jake reached over the seat and patted his sister’s shoulder. “Just sit back and relax. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Mom, make him stay here.”

“Give her the gun, Jake. Just in case.”

“Mom, that’s my gun. She doesn’t know how to use it.”

“She says I get the gun, Jake. Hand it over.”

Jake reluctantly gave her the gun. “Just don’t point it at us. You’ve got to think safety first with a firearm.”

“We’ll be back in five or ten minutes,” said Glenda.

Glenda and Jake got out of the car. The rain soaked their clothes instantly.

As they got closer to the landslide, it reminded her of a sleeping monster. Dead and broken conifers stuck out of its muddy back like giant quills. Yet, by its own momentum, and by the constant erosion of the rain, debris had caved away from the leading edge of the landslide and left a narrow passage along the outside shoulder of the road—a ledge perhaps wide enough for her car?

She looked up the mountainside. God, there was really nothing holding it in place anymore. As they made their way into the narrow passageway along the right side of the road, she felt like the sleeping monster might suddenly open its maw and devour them. To the left, rain ran in rivulets over the broken-away part. She pointed her flashlight at the rivulets, holding her rifle in her other hand. The water was brown and muddy.

She shone her flashlight further afield. “I think it ends up here. We might make it.”

“Except it’s all caved in up here.”

“Just a bit. Maybe the car can get through.”

“Not without getting stuck in that mud.”

“Let’s have a look.”

She climbed the caved-in section, her feet sinking up to her ankles in mud.

As she got close to the other side of the caved-in section, she saw the headlights of a parked vehicle beyond the furthest extent of the landslide. She turned her flashlight off and got to her knees, because even though she couldn’t immediately confirm who it was, she knew it had to be Buzz—Buzz, maybe coming back down the mountain because he had reached a different impasse further up, and was now being thwarted again by this new obstacle. Jake got to his knees beside her.

For several seconds she couldn’t move, couldn’t even look. She was caught in the grip of her own survival instinct, keeping down in all the sopping mud where Buzz couldn’t see her. But then it dawned on her. She had an opportunity here. She had her rifle. And it wouldn’t be like killing that dog, because she could kill Buzz easily. All that hurt he had brought into their home. Always coming around with a twelve-pack or a fifth of Jack. Driving a wedge between Gerry and the rest of the family so that sometimes she would go to her bedroom while they were out on the front porch drinking and weep until she couldn’t weep any more. I shot the sheriff but I did not shoot the deputy. Well…now was the time. She steeled her nerve.

She got up on one knee and readied her rifle. And to think, he had made a pass at Hanna while at Marblehill.

In a moment she saw a figure appear in the glow of the headlights. Through the blur of the rain, the figure resolved into Buzz Fulton. She took aim, exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and fired—but fired just as some mud shifted from under her knee. It wasn’t much, but still enough to make her miss.

Buzz ducked and circled back to his truck in a crouched position. She pumped another round into the chamber and fired at his windshield. If she couldn’t get the man, she would get his truck, damage it as much as she could so he would have a hard time following them. But before she could fire through the front grille, Buzz started firing back. A bullet rocketed through the air toward them and thudded into the mud not five yards away, making a small, lugubrious splash.

“You sons of bitches!” he called.

Then he pumped round after round in their general direction.

As much as she would have liked to shoot Buzz’s truck to pieces, Glenda knew her only option was to retreat, especially because she had her child with her, and also because she was starting to fear that all the gunfire might trigger the mountain into another mudslide.

“Jake, back to the car.”

Jake ran—fast but clumsy in the thick mud, and looking as if he were ready to hit the dirt at a second’s notice.

Glenda fired one more round at the truck, then ran as well. She slipped and fell, scraping her knee badly on a small part of road that was clear of mud, but got up and continued, blinking through the torrential rain, wondering when more of the mountain would topple into the valley. Jake ran ahead of her, finally

leaving the mud behind and dashing along the ledge until he came to the car. She, too, came to the ledge.

Great clumps of mud fell from her shoes.

Jake dove into the backseat.

Glenda reached the car, pushed the rifle over Hanna’s knees, got into the driver’s seat, put the car in gear, swung round, and headed down the highway, not caring if they ended up walking part of the way to Marblehill.

Anything was better than being shot at by Buzz on this mountain.

28

Two days after the virus launch, Neil stared up at the sky from the Homestead parade ground as if it were his own personal masterpiece. Light. Once again. He could have cried for joy. Not the big gaping holes of the first attempt. No. Just these big brown blotches that were like onionskin. Like looking through a thousand blurry skylights—translucent apertures that let the beautiful glow of the afternoon sun in.

Louise stood next to him, clutching his hand. Ashley and Melissa stood next to Louise.

Morgan… Morgan played out in the huge puddles dotting the parade ground.

The silence, after so many days of gunfire, was unreal. It was like Christmas Day on the Eastern Front.

But where the hell was Greg?

He thought he should ask Morgan to get out of the puddle, but she looked happy playing in all that mud.

Louise squeezed his hand and glanced toward the other end of the base. “Maybe they’ll stop.”

“Maybe they will.” He motioned at the sky. “The Moon is going to launch in the next couple of days.”

“I knew you could do it.”

He took a few steps out into the yard, where he got a wide view of the runways beyond the parade ground. All the grass was dead. A lot of it had been washed away in the rain. In the brown light coming from the sky, the horizon reminded him of the brown sky he had seen on Mars when he had been a visiting professor there years ago. God, it looked… otherworldly out on that runway—like the surface of one of the moons or inner planets, with nothing living, nothing able to live, just a horrifying wasteland.

He heard a lone gunshot from the direction of Home-stead’s main gate. They all froze. Christmas Day on the Eastern Front was over.

“Kids, go inside,” he said.

“Dad, I want to stay out here,” called Morgan.

“Morgan, don’t argue with Daddy,” said Louise.

With a sharpness he didn’t mean, he said, “All right, Morgan. Out of the puddle. You’re ten years old.

You shouldn’t be playing in puddles.”

“But, Daddy, it’s fun.”

“Morgan, right now.”

She got out of the puddle and came toward the barracks.

He turned to Louise. “What are we going to do with that kid?”

He and Louise got the girls inside.

He heard a few more gunshots from the opposite side of the base, but it wasn’t amounting to much. He glanced around the barracks and felt cramped, at odds with his family.

Once they were settled inside, he lifted his cell and tried his sister-in-law, Glenda.

It took him a while, but he finally got through.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Just west of Charlotte.”

“You should have been at Marblehill by now. Lenny called me an hour ago. He was expecting you a couple days ago. What happened?”

“It’s tougher than you think.” Then a pause. “I see light. Are we going to be okay?”

“We launched forty-eight hours ago. The Moon is going to launch on Tuesday.”

“The Moon is?” She sounded suddenly breathless. “So you’ve been talking to Gerry?”

He glanced at Louise. “Not directly.”

“But they’re helping you?”

“Luke Langstrom’s in charge now. I don’t know how that came about. But he’s been…cooperative.”

“You mean Gerry’s not running things anymore?”

“I don’t think so.” He sighed. That was the thing with Gerry. He always thought he was going places, but he never was. “I don’t think he’s officially off the team. I think he’s still doing things for them. But more on a consulting basis.” The signal hissed for a few seconds, and that was fine because it gave him a chance to change the subject. “So you’re west of Charlotte? You sound a little shaken.”

“Where do you want me to begin?”

“Are you okay?

“We ran into a landslide west of Dunstan, and had to turn around. We had to detour along 74. Plus we have Buzz Fulton following us.”

She told him of her unnerving encounter with Buzz Fulton up on the mountain.

“Have you seen him since the landslide?”

“No. But he knows we’re on our way to Marblehill.” Glenda told Neil about Jake’s note. “Then we got taken prisoner in Charlotte. This…gang, or…I don’t know—they were all in National Guard uniforms.

They held us for a few days, and tried to find out where we were going, but I didn’t tell them. They weren’t all that bad, really. I gave them a story about Hanna’s asthma. I said I was trying to get to this clinic in Spartanburg. Then this morning, when they saw light in the sky, the good ones decided to let us go.”

“Did they give you a charge for your car? Because, with that detour…”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? They took all our food. And our rifle. But we still have a handgun. We managed to hide it from them.”

“How many rounds left?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Without an extra charge, you may have to walk part of the way. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I’ve been thinking of nothing else.”

“I’ll phone Lenny and let him know you might be coming on foot. Do you have a flashlight?”

“Yes.”

“And is the battery good?”

“So far. But we’ve used it a lot.”

“Try to conserve it,” he advised. “When you get near the gate, flash it three times. These airmen…they’ve got the place stocked to the gills with military weapons, and they’ve got orders to keep intruders out.”

“So, three times,” she said. “Hang on, hang on…there’s something on the road ahead. Let me give you to Hanna for a sec.”

He heard the phone shift hands.

“Uncle Neil?”

“Hi, sweetie. How are you doing?”

“Can we go swimming at Marblehill?”

“You can do anything you like. Is Jake doing okay?”

“He’s sleeping. We got captured by these National Guard guys.”

“Your mom was saying.”

“But they let us go.”

“Were you scared?”

“For a while I was. But then I saw that they weren’t really so bad. One of them had a guitar.”

“Is that right?”

“But he wouldn’t let me try it. He said it belonged to his dad.”

“Oh.”

“Okay…okay…here’s my mom. She wants to talk to you again.”

He heard the phone shift hands a second time.

“Is everybody doing okay down there?” asked Glenda.

“Colonel Bard had to reduce our rations.”

“You sound a little on edge, Neil.”

“Glenda, the reason I called… and this is strictly hush-hush, and I don’t know whether you want to tell the kids or not. But the reason I called is to tell you that the United States and its allies are going to move against the TMS any day now. And early this morning I was informed by the assistant secretary of defense that if the TMS becomes unviable, the Tarsalans have vowed to take control of those planetside areas offered in the last U.N. counterproposal. That includes the Chattahoochee National Forest. So you have to be careful of your approach.”

She was silent for several seconds. “So… when you say take control…”

“It’s going to be hostile.”

Again, a pause. “Do you think they’ll get anywhere near Marblehill?”

“If they do, they’re going to get a lot more than they bargained for.”

The next day, perforations developed in the shroud’s brown freckling, and unimpeded sunlight reached the Earth’s surface. The mood at Homestead was buoyant. Neil couldn’t have been happier. All morning and into the afternoon he didn’t hear a single gunshot. The cease-fire lasted all night, and when morning came there was an actual dawn, diffuse and brown, with a light so fragile and amber that it reminded him of atmospheric varnish.

All that day, peace reigned. He spent much of the afternoon looking at his book. It was an art book, with full-color plates, and its title was The Impressionists. The Impressionists, he decided as he gazed at a particularly evocative painting by Mary Cassatt, were the great painters of light, from the great age of light, before this current age of darkness. This painting by Cassatt was called A Reader in the Garden,

and as a study in sunlight, it had a great emotional impact on Neil in his current strained circumstances.

He turned the book around and showed his wife. “You know what the caption says? It says, ‘In fresh bright light, in the middle of a flower garden, a woman sits reading.’ Look how she just takes it for granted. Not only the sunlight, but the flowers. Look at the light in this painting. Look at the shadow. And then look outside.

Melissa got up, came over, and put her arm around him. “By next summer we’ll be back home. I’ll help you put cocoa shells on the garden. We’ll have flowers just like hers.”

He patted her hand, and realized it wasn’t a girl’s hand anymore, but a woman’s.

For the rest of the afternoon and evening he looked at his book. In the title of every work, sunlight was implicit. Regatta at Argenteuil. Countryside with Haystacks. Village Along the Seine. He concentrated for a long time on Alfred Sisley’s Village Along the Seine. He read the caption. “One feels the pleasure of the painter in the sun-dappled trees in the foreground and the clear light on the houses on the other side of the river.” Painted in 1872. He wanted to be on the banks of the sunlit Seine in 1872, right there with Alfred Sisley as he painted his sun-dappled trees and clear-lighted houses.

“When this is all over, I’m going to retire.”

He woke up in the small hours of the morning drenched in a fearful sweat. A dream. A stupid dream.

The Cameron Chess Study. He and Kafis playing chess. Kafis’s pupils shrinking to their midpoint in that sneaky and aggressive way they had as he checkmated Neil. Checkmate. The word echoed in his mind.

But then he realized that at exactly this moment—and he confirmed it with a quick glance at his cordless alarm clock—the Moon was launching.

“Checkmate, Kafis,” he said into the dark that he had grown to hate.

He expected to see even more brown spots over the next couple of days—the Moon launches burning through the phytosphere the same way a lit cigarette burned through upholstery—but new spots didn’t appear. He sat in the parade ground for most of the afternoon and looked up at the sky with a pair of enhanced binoculars, military ones equipped for infrared, hoping to see some telltale activity. Not only did he fail to spot any new lesions, but the existing ones seemed to be stagnating in their growth.

He had his dwindling scientific staff keep an eye on the phytosphere for the rest of the day—many of his people had abandoned their posts, finding the growing instability at Homestead too nerve-wracking.

When the sun went down, a young Air Force technician said that there was no significant growth in the virus lesions, and that, in fact, some of them were scabbing over with what seemed on the spectrometer to be a form of carbon sheeting.

Neil had a look at the readouts, and after scrupulous analysis he realized, with a sickening sense of dread, that instead of the targeted Tarsalan DNA component responding in defense to the insult of his virus, it was actually the xenophyta carapace component that was responding, capturing and encapsulating the virus during its lytic phase, trapping the reproducing viruses in little cages of superhard material, and at the same time neutralizing the omniphages. Was this his endgame, then?

He told Colonel Greg Bard about it an hour later.

“It’s like when a computer gets a virus. If the computer can’t delete it, it quarantines it. The carapace, or at least extraneous calcifications of carapace material, are surrounding and encapsulating the virus, effectively jailing it so it can’t spread.” He shook his head, nonplussed by his own blindness. “I didn’t see it coming, Greg. I was so focused on defeating and confusing the defense component, I didn’t consider the possibility that the carapace element might pick up the slack. And now I think we’re screwed.”

The new offensive came an hour after that. He didn’t know how the opposing side got a tank, but he heard it at the other end of the base: the hum of its fusion-cell-powered engine, the creak of its tracks, and the nearly inaudible rumble of its massive weight getting closer and closer. He packed up what he could, had the girls throw clothes into bags, and as gunfire erupted in the stale brown dusk of the slowly closing virus holes, he and his family ran the two hundred yards to the Officers’ Club.

Airmen sandbagged the Officers’ Club.

Neil and his family entered and turned left. Emergency lights lit the corridors. His girls did exactly what they were supposed to, just like in the drills. Some airmen clutching rifles, led by Colonel Greg Bard, emerged from a ready room and ran down the corridor toward them, dark blue helmets on their heads, light-gathering goggles over their eyes, tramping down the hall in sync, grim-faced and intent.

Bard stopped and gave them a smile. “Hi, girls.”

The girls gave him halfhearted and frightened hellos.

Then Greg turned to Neil and offered an apologetic shrug. “Looks like they’re…you know.”

“Is it bad?”

“We knew it was coming.”

Something in the way Greg said this made Neil’s stomach roll in fear. “But you’re sure you can stop them.”

Greg looked away. “I don’t know where they got that tank.” He seemed distracted for a few seconds but then his attention focused. “And actually…I was coming over. I want to give you these.” Greg took out two aerosol spray cans. Neil instantly recognized them as the spray they used to disable Tarsalan flying surveillance macrogens, a defense-department-contract product that had been in limited use in sensitive areas for the last several years, and had recently become commercially available. “Lenny’s telling me they need some up at Marblehill.”

The implication of this overwhelmed Neil. “Why would they need some up at Marblehill?”

“Because it’s happened, Neil. Last night at about two in the morning.”

Neil felt his forehead growing moist. He took the two cans and stuffed them into his bag. “And the… the TMS?”

“A write-off.”

The implications deepened like water in a well from which he couldn’t escape. “And the phytosphere control device?”

“They haven’t told me one way or the other.”

“And the Tarsalans?”

“A lot are coming down. Lenny says they’ve had at least three confirmed landings in Chattahoochee.

That’s why they’re going to need some of this spray stuff. Though he thinks a few macrogens might have already penetrated Marblehill.”

Neil shook his head. “I…don’t know what to say.”

“Lenny’s on his way.”

Neil’s heart thumped in sudden overdrive. “Really? Right now?”

Greg gave his head a little nod, looking bewildered by the situation. “It’s high noon in Dodge, Neil.” He put his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “The helipad is just behind the swimming pool. There’s an emergency exit back there.”

“And we should be okay in the pool area, waiting for him?”

“It’s the safest place in the club. We’re done with the second line, aren’t we? We gave it our best shot.”

“Is he going to get here before—”

“Like I said, I don’t know where they got that tank.”

“What about calling in an air strike?”

“The risk of collateral casualties would be too high.”

He nodded, deferring to Greg’s experience. “I guess we’ll see you when the helicopter gets here.”

“I hope so.”

Greg went his way, and Neil and his family went theirs.

They turned left down another corridor, and in the middle of this corridor, doors led out into a courtyard where Neil saw crates and crates of ready-to-eat rations stacked on skids—this was where they were keeping the food. He continued along past a gymnasium, sweating in the wild heat, slowly coming to the realization that he had indeed played his endgame, and that it had failed.

They pushed through some double doors, and now the corridor smelled of chlorine. He understood what Greg meant, that the pool had to be the safest place in the whole complex because it was right in the middle of it all. They went in through the men’s changing room, where the air was damp, and heavy with the scents of B.O., deodorant, and cleanser.

“Careful, it’s slippery here,” he said.

“I can hardly see,” said Louise.

“Let me open this door.”

He opened the door to the pool area.

The windows—high, narrow ones—let in a ghostly brown light, probably the last natural light they would see for a long time. Louise and the girls filed through.

The pool was large. At the far end he saw a diving board, as well as a series of diving platforms. He saw some orange life rings with the word “Homestead” stenciled in black on each. It was just an ordinary institutional swimming pool, but for some reason it had a profound effect on Neil. In this age of the phytosphere, he saw it with new perspective, and the pool struck him as a museum exhibit from a time gone by. Swimming for pleasure. Swimming for recreation. Even swimming for exercise. Those were things of the past. He remembered his father’s swimming pool in suburban Illinois. Remembered himself, Gerry, Ian, and Greg horsing around in it, playing Marco Polo.

“Let’s set up by the diving board,” he said.

“Can we go swimming?” asked Morgan.

“We have to listen for the helicopter, sweetie. And we should be…ready. For anything.”

Yes, ready. They were stuck here. Until—and if—Lenny came in the helicopter. And once they got in the helicopter, then what? How long could they last at Marblehill? And could he trust Lenny and the rest of the airmen not to mutiny against them? What if the airmen turned against his family?

He looked up at the windows, hearing gunfire far to the west of the Officers’ Club.

How long before the goddamn dark came back?

He was just thinking he might take out his book again, try to lose himself in Monet’s water lilies, when his phone rang. The phone. He reached in his bag, pulled it out, engaged it, and pressed it to his ear.

“Not too good,” he said, when Fonblanque asked him how things were going at Homestead.

And then he told her they were abandoning the base, and how he had devised his own 937 at Marblehill—rubbing it in because he didn’t need them, the whole Oval Office crowd—he could survive on his own.

When she asked him about the virus, he had to tell her the truth.

“It looks as if the carapace responded. I’ve theorized that carapace material has jailed or quarantined the lytic-phase virus. There’s no way the virions can spread.”

“Is there anything else you can do?”

He didn’t like the desperation he heard in her voice, as it allowed him to guess what had happened to the phytosphere control device. And he didn’t like how she naturally assumed they were still all part of the same team. It galled him. She obviously wanted him to work miracles. But the infrastructure was

gone. The resources were practically nonexistent. His shoulders settled and a great bitterness overcame him.

“Given what I have to work with, I don’t think so.”

“And you’ve had a look at your brother’s stuff?”

“It’s all garbage, Leanna. There’s something about a stress band, but it’s…useless observation.”

“So you have nothing encouraging I can pass on to the secretary or the president? Because the TMS offensive didn’t go exactly as planned.”

A thin layer of perspiration came to his forehead. Outside, the gunfire was getting closer. “So I heard.”

“From who?”

He hesitated, then decided it didn’t matter. “Colonel Bard.”

“We were hoping to secure the Tarsalan phytosphere control mechanism.”

“And?” But he already knew what she was going to say.

“Our orbiting mines were effective beyond our expectations. The control mechanism has been damaged and is no longer operational. We now have no effective means of turning off the phytosphere from their end.”

Neil’s shoulders sagged further. The absolute idiots. “If there’s no way to shut it off, it’s just going to grow and grow. You know that, don’t you? To be honest with you, Leanna, it could turn into a real…doomsday scenario. I mean, if it’s gone—have your troops confirmed that the control system has in fact been destroyed?”

“Damage reports are still coming in. Our technicians are looking at it. The growing consensus is that it’s beyond repair.”

He cast around for possible solutions. “What about Tarsalan survivors? Maybe they can help us develop a new one.”

“There haven’t been many survivors.”

He exhaled, and for the longest time he left his lungs empty, as if there were no point in breathing anymore. But at last he took a deep breath and sighed. “How many Tarsalans killed?”

“Confirmed or expected?”

“Confirmed.”

“Over twenty thousand. But it could rise as high as thirty. As for our own troops, only seven hundred.”

He took another deep breath, fighting to get his anxiety under control. “Did they think we were bluffing?”

“I don’t know what they thought. I’m surprised we destroyed the TMS as easily as we did. I don’t think

they were expecting such a strong military response. The alien mind-set…it’s a hard thing to second-guess.”

“What about refugees?”

“Our Maxwell fighters have orders to escort as many to Earth as they can. But some of our pilots have been engaged.”

“Are any Tarsalans getting through to the reserve areas listed in the U.N.’s last counterproposal?”

“We believe so.”

“What about Chattahoochee National Forest?”

“We have three civilian reports of alien landings in and around Chattahoochee, and dozens of reports of landings throughout the southeastern United States. It seems the Tarsalans have already engaged several units, and my analysts tell me the fighting is expected to worsen in the coming days.”

Darkness came an hour later. The fighting drew closer. His daughters looked up at the narrow windows, their faces apprehensive. He heard men yelling outside. And then he felt vibrations through the tile floor.

A second later he heard the squeaking of tank treads, then a wild cracking from the squash courts. Dust floated down from the windowsills as it was shaken loose. The water in the pool vibrated. And at last the wall that separated the pool from the squash courts bent toward them, the bricks coming apart as if they were made of marshmallows, then collapsing; first just a hole ten feet up as the tank’s main cannon came through, then a wide area below as the front part of the tank shouldered its way in.

The roar echoed through the pool area. The girls cried out and, instinctively, Neil grabbed Louise and shoved her to the floor. The tank came forward and ground its way right into the shallow end of the pool, the hot metal of its engine compartment hissing and steaming, its turret swiveling away from them toward the dressing rooms.

Several enemy airmen came in behind the tank.

The tank pivoted on its right track, turned toward the dressing rooms, then proceeded forward, its treads catching the far lip of the shallow end and pulling the armored vehicle out of the water. The tank then plowed right into the wall and continued on through the dressing rooms, eating through the Officers’

Club the way a termite eats through wood. Gunfire erupted from the direction of the dressing rooms, and bullets rocketed into the pool area. The enemy airmen took up positions on either side of the pool. The airmen saw them but seemed to realize they were noncombatants, and left them alone.

Neil gathered his family and got them on their stomachs behind the diving tower. He glanced at Morgan.

The corners of the young girl’s lips were drawn so that he could see her bottom teeth, and she looked determined to bolt regardless of the danger. Ashley was breathing fast and looking as white as paper.

Louise stared at her own clenched fists as if she didn’t want to see what was going on.

Melissa was looking at the windows high on the wall behind them. He saw in her eyes some of his own bold confidence. “Dad, I think I hear the helicopter.”

A moment later, he heard it himself, the blup-blup-blup-blup of the rotor chopping the air, Lenny getting closer and closer, even as things broke down at Homestead. He saw the emergency exit at the back.

And while he knew it was a risk to get up from their cover behind the diving platform, he realized the situation was getting worse as the opposing sides fought for control of the food supply in the courtyard.

“All right, listen to me!” He pointed. “On my count, we run for the door!”

“Dad, what if it’s locked?” asked Melissa.

She had a point.

“I’m going to check it. When I wave you over, run like hell.”

He crawled on his stomach across the tiles to the door. He reached up, pressed the panic bar, and the door opened. He heard the helicopter even louder now. Florida smelled like rotten hay. More bullets rocketed into the pool area. He waved his family over.

Louise and the girls ran in his direction. But then Morgan slipped on the tiles. She went down, clutching her ankle, and started crying.

“Go on, go on!” he told the others.

“Get her!” cried Louise.

“Just go!”

They went out, and he returned to rescue Morgan.

He gripped her by her shirt and dragged her across the tiles like a hundred-pound sack of potatoes.

As he reached the door, a deafening boom resounded throughout the pool area—the tank firing its cannon somewhere beyond the ruins of the dressing rooms.

The air was now choked with dust. He pulled Morgan out the door, and the heat of the Florida night, super-charged because of the phytosphere’s heat-trapping ability, settled over him like an electric blanket on high.

The helicopter came two minutes later, its landing lights bright in the darkness. He squinted in the dust the rotor kicked up. The helicopter’s side door slid back and he saw a fully armed airman kneeling there, ready to help him. But where was Greg? The airman waved them over.

“Let’s go!” Neil shouted to his family.

They ran to the helicopter.

The airman said, “Dr. Thorndike?”

“Are you Lenny?”

“Get in.”

“What about Colonel Bard?”

“He’s not with you?”

“No.”

“Then we’re going to have to leave without him. This area’s too hot. Get in.”

So. That’s how it would be.

He lifted Morgan into the helicopter, and helped Louise in as well. Lenny gave both Melissa and Ashley a hand up.

Neil stood there with his hands against the helicopter. And now it really did feel like failure. Because not only had he failed the whole world, he had failed his friend. He climbed into the helicopter. His wife was staring at him. Louise knew exactly what he was feeling. She reached out and touched him. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it simply wasn’t in him.

Lenny lifted his finger into the air and twirled it a few times. The pilot worked the manuals and the helicopter rose.

As it climbed higher and higher, Neil got a better view of the Officers’ Club. An intense firefight raged in the courtyard. He saw muzzle flashes and tracer bullets. Someone had set the food on fire, and in the light of this fire he saw the tank. One man stood off to the side. This man X-ed his arms toward the helicopter, and Neil thought he must be Greg Bard. But before he could get a better look, Lenny slid the door shut and the helicopter banked, then nosed north toward Marblehill.

29

Kafis came once more to the Moon, this time with dire news.

The alien phrased it to the gathered members of the committee the way he phrased everything, as if he were a Buddhist monk talking to his disciples. Gerry stared at Kafis in growing alarm. The Tarsalan spoke of the loss of the phytosphere control device in terms of games theory, and said that they had used a Tarsalan mathematical method of decision-making when choosing the phytosphere as one of their teaching tools. Unfortunately they had never factored into the computational framework the notion that humans might inadvertently destroy the device with a surfeit of firepower.

“So it’s gone?” asked Gerry, speaking out of turn because technically he was just an observer now.

“It’s degraded to the point where it can’t be used in either augmenting or dissipating the phytosphere.

Left on its own, the phytosphere will continue to grow.”

Malcolm Hulke rephrased. “So you have no way of turning it off?”

“Your people have robbed us of this option, yes. As a teaching tool, it has failed. We take our failure with humility. And we express our deepest apologies to the people of Earth.”

Gerry stared at Kafis in wonderment. “You destroy a whole world and the only thing you have to offer is an apology?”

“It is you who have chosen to destroy yourselves. We could have lived in peace. These principles of property you hold so dear…so that you think you can say who owns what, and who can come to your world and who must stay away…this is an erroneous path you have followed.”

“Fathead is speaking bullshit,” said Ian Hamilton. Kafis’s pupils opened a notch as he regarded the test pilot. “It’s our planet. We get to say who’s welcome.”

“Yes, but is Earth rightfully yours? Is it rightfully anybody’s? There are thousands of species on your planet. How can you say it belongs to just humans?”

“There are over twelve billion people on Earth,” said Gerry. He couldn’t help thinking of his wife and children. “And now they’re all going to die.”

“Gerald, you are understandably angry. But you must accept it. The bright blue jewel you call your home is lost. The control mechanism for the phytosphere is gone. There is nothing we can do for you.”

“You can help us build a new control device, Kafis. Here on the Moon.”

“We’ve made a complete inventory of the Moon’s technological resources. Even if I were to reveal to you the methods involved, you wouldn’t have the materials.”

“It’s gravity, isn’t it?” said Gerry.

This stopped Kafis. “Human, you always surprise me.”

“Am I right?”

“You must claw your own way to wisdom, my son. The Earth is not my concern anymore. I’m here to negotiate with the Moon.”

“Gravity?” said Ira.

“You want to negotiate with the Moon?” said Hulke.

Kafis turned to the mayor. His pupils widened to their fullest. Gerry wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, but guessed that Kafis was now going to try to manipulate Hulke.

“What’s this about gravity?” said Ira. “This is the first I’ve heard about gravity.”

He glanced at Ira. Did the man actually care about the Earth after all?

“Because of the actions of a few misguided men on Earth,” said Kafis, “the Moon now finds itself in a precarious position. So does the mothership.”

“The phytosphere is reactive to gravity,” Gerry told Ira. “I sent the report to your office this morning.

You haven’t read it?”

Ira frowned. “Everything is reactive to gravity. Jesus, Gerry, tell us something we don’t know.”

The rebuke stung Gerry. And maybe Ira was right. Everything was reactive to gravity. What was he going to do about it? Especially in relation to the phytosphere?

“Gerry,” said Hulke. “If you don’t mind, Kafis has raised a… a point of some pressing concern for the Moon. Go ahead, Kafis.”

Kafis continued. “We find ourselves thrown together in this… this lifeboat you call your Moon. Look beyond your office window. You see fifteen of our craft. In each of them are a dozen of my people. They are refugees. We ask you for refuge on the Moon.”

“Kafis… that’s not going to fly so well with the general populace. Especially because we’re running out of food. We’ve got our hydroponics facilities going full steam to augment things, but it’s hardly enough to feed… a couple of hundred extra hostiles. People are going around hungry all the time. When the reserve runs out, it’s going to be slow starvation, with just enough coming in from the hydro facilities to make us think we might hang on for another year or two before… before we’re overwhelmed by it all. I’m sorry. We can’t take you. Politically, it’s not possible. And the Earth would have a bird.”

“Ah… but we don’t come expecting to get something for nothing. We have always offered something in return. Not only in our negotiations with Earth, but now also in our negotiations with you. Yes, we are refugees, but we are also scientists and technicians and inventors, and we have a long history of turning uninhabitable rocks into oases. We have the means to double, triple, and even quadruple your food supply. And you need never worry about your air or water again. Humankind can find its new homeworld here on this Moon. This barren rock can now be the cradle of your civilization. Our technology can easily achieve this, if you’ll only let us live here as refugees.”

Hulke glanced around the room. His eyes glowed with euphoric seriousness. Gerry felt the mayor was losing sight of the essential emergency.

He pressed the point. “What about Earth? What about the millions of people who are dying down there?”

Hulke turned to him. “Gerry…I hate to be obvious about this, but maybe we should concentrate on saving what we can. I’m really sorry about your family. I’m sorry about everybody on Earth. But the toxin thing has failed, and the virus thing has failed, and I guess you were right about both of them; kudos to you. Now Kafis is telling us that U.S. forces have destroyed the Tarsalan phytosphere control mechanism, and that there’s nothing they can do because they don’t have the resources to build another.

Kafis is trying to help us here on the Moon, now that he can’t help Earth. And as mayor of Nectaris, I have to think of lunar lives first.”

“Kafis, tell us how to build one of these control devices,” said Gerry.

“Gerald, the technology involved is so beyond the scope of your understanding—and the Moon’s resources—that it’s simply not possible. I come here to offer you what is possible.” And here he went into an elaborate discussion of turning the Moon into the cradle of humanity, of how he and his experts had tallied every nut and bolt on the Moon, and calculated down to the last gram its every natural resource, had assessed all the scientific and technical talent on the Moon, and had come to the conclusion that if they used absolutely everything available to them they could make the Moon self-sustaining.

“Especially if AviOrbit hands over its assets.”

“Now just hang on there,” said Ira.

“That includes your manufacturing facilities, in-service spacecraft, and all singularity drives—including the current models set for delivery to the Federated Martian Colonies Transit Collective.”

“Hey, you can’t take those. That’s our biggest order to date.”

“Those drives will be needed to harvest comets in the short term. I believe the drives have a service life of five years. By that time we’ll have built our own drives for you.”

“Yes, but I haven’t the authority to sign things over to you.”

“And whose authority do you need?”

“Head office in San Diego.”

“AviOrbit, as an entity on Earth, no longer exists.” Kafis paused, and his pupils shrank. “Ira… my friend… we must think in terms of a… a new beginning. We are sitting around this table… and we are making history. The Tarsalans—those of us who remain—offer you heartfelt assistance and a disciplined plan.”

Kafis continued with a more detailed discussion of how the Moon could sustain itself indefinitely. Gerry hardly caught any of it. All he could think of was his family. Of what they were facing. No matter how lucky and careful they were, the food was going to run out. He glanced at Stephanie.

Stephanie leaned over. “Kafis is hiding something.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I can tell we’re not wanted.”

He and Stephanie got up and moved toward the doors.

“Gerry?” said the mayor.

“You’ll go down in history, Malcolm, but not the way you think.”

Gerry and Stephanie left the room and walked down the corridor.

He took out his fone as he came to the Council Chamber and tried to contact Glenda, but all he got was the AT&T Interlunar message. Tears came to his eyes and he quickly wiped them away with the back of his arm.

Stephanie put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gerry.”

“There’s got to be something I can do.”

“What do you think the people on Earth would do to Kafis if they ever got their hands on him? He’s playing the only card he can. Staying alive until reinforcements arrive.”

“Reinforcements?”

“Don’t they live a long time?”

“Two hundred and fifty years.”

“So he can spend forty on the Moon. That’s how long it’ll take for reinforcements to get here. I’m sure

they’ve already sent their Mayday.”

He shook his head. “And they say they’re not warlike.”

“So when reinforcements arrive, they open the shroud, get rid of it, and go down and resuscitate Earth.

It’ll be theirs for the taking. We’ll be supplanted in our own solar system. That’s why he got so cagey when you started talking about the gravity thing. And when he told you he was impressed, he was just throwing it in your face. I’m sure he could easily build another phytosphere control device if he wanted to.”

Down the corridor he heard the door to the mayor’s office open and close.

A moment later, Mitch Bennett came toward them. The small engineer cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, as if fearing someone was following him.

When he reached them he said, “The gravity thing. I read your report.”

At that moment, Gerry knew he had an ally. “It’s my working theory. Only I have no way of proving it.”

Mitch once more glanced anxiously over his shoulder. “I think I have a way…of helping you.”

Gerry studied the engineer. “How?”

“Ira would fire me if he knew I was talking to you like this.”

“Ira’s a jerk,” said Stephanie.

“We have these old singularity prototypes,” said Mitch. “They produce gravity as a by-product. These prototypes are small. You could run some simulations to see what gravity does on a small scale to the xenophyta, like you’ve written in your report. I know some of the guys in Copernicus, where we have them stored.”

“And why do you want to help him?” asked Stephanie.

His face settled. “Because I’m on a five-year contract here, and my family’s…on Earth. My partner.”

Stephanie’s lips pursed in sympathy. “You never told us.”

“I prefer… to keep my personal life to myself. Ira’s a bit of a dinosaur.”

Gerry considered the possibilities. “Could we simulate the Earth-Moon system?”

Mitch’s eyes widened. “You want two fields?”

“If we’re going to get a true understanding of what’s going on…of what Kafis is hiding from us…”

Mitch’s lips twisted to one side as he glanced over the railing into the Council Chamber. His chin came forward and his eyebrows rose, and he nodded distractedly. “It’s possible.”

“And how soon can it be arranged?”

Mitch considered. “If I have the guys get started on it right away…maybe by tomorrow.”

“I need to get the samples. They took my card away.”

“Don’t worry about samples. I’ll bring those. You just bring your mind, Gerry. We’re nothing but a bunch of engineers. We need someone telling us what to do.”

The next day, in Copernicus, Gerry stood with Stephanie in the control booth behind Mitch and two other technicians. Out in the control area—a pressurized warehouse space about a thousand yards square—two platforms stood ready, each capable of generating its own singularity and gravitational field, a speck of laboratory-created black hole, as Mitch called it.

The first and bigger generating platform stood anchored in the center of the control area, while the second had wheels and was set to travel around the main platform, much the way the Moon revolved around the Earth. Infrared cameras—dismantled and reconfigured from the Alleyne-Parma cameras—hung from overhead scaffolding, ready to record the results. The wheeled platform—Platform 2, as the engineers called it—ran on rails.

Gerry tapped his chin a few times. “Is there any way we can take Platform 2 off its rails?” he asked Mitch.

A knit came to Mitch’s brow. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because I want the option of increasing its gravitational pull. The closer it gets to Platform 1, the stronger its gravitational pull against Platform 1 will be.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” said Mitch. “We can control the g-force artificially from here.

But why would you want to increase gravitational pull?”

Gerry didn’t immediately answer. “You’ve got both platforms geared to their scale strengths?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s give it a shot.”

Mitch spoke into a microphone. “Sal? Kev? You can take the xenophyta into the control area.”

Two junior technicians emerged from doorways leading into the warehouse, pushing big carts loaded with lab coolers. They maneuvered these carts as far as Platform 2’s rails, then lifted a total of eight coolers over, placed them equidistant in a circle around Platform 1, and bolted them into place. They unclasped the lids from each.

Gerry glanced up at the regular camera monitors and got a top view of the nearest cooler. How harmless the living xenophyta looked. Nothing but a box of green sludge. And yet this sludge was killing millions on Earth.

Sal and Kev left the control area.

Mitch and the other engineers charged up the first singularity.

At first nothing happened, and Gerry thought his gravity theory was a bust. But, after a minute, an emerald mist rose from each cooler, and this emerald mist stitched itself in a perfect sphere around Platform 1’s singularity. As the minutes ticked by, the emerald mist thickened, until finally it was so dark it was almost black. The infrared cameras showed a warming of the entire sphere, with parts of it edging into yellow. The xenophyta maintained the same scale distance from the singularity that the phytosphere did from Earth.

At this point, technicians engaged Platform 2. It circled around Platform 1, simulating the movement of the Moon around the Earth. As the final xenophyta in the coolers drifted up and joined the rest of the miniphytosphere, the technicians keyed in the necessary sequence and soon the secondary singularity exerted a gravitational pull in scale relation to the Moon’s.

According to the infrared cameras, a stress band developed immediately, an amorphous bar of heat that traveled from the north to the south pole, and went around and around with the revolutions of the Moon.

Tides proven. The phytosphere began to slowly counterrotate. This counterrotation was centrifugally strong enough to keep the model phytosphere in place, while the pull of Platform 1’s gravity kept the whole thing tethered. Gerry realized that the phytosphere was a delicate thing, as nuanced as an egg.

“Could we send in the probe?” he said.

Mitch leaned into the microphone. “Kev, do you want to introduce the probe?”

Kev emerged from one of the doors. This time he was safety-belted to a long nylon strap. As he got closer to the singularity, he had to dig his heels in against the artificial gravitational pull. Even inside the control booth, Gerry felt a slight tug toward the observation window.

Kev carried a Styrofoam ball the size of a softball. He waited for the Moon to pass, stepped over the rails, and approached the Earth. The whole primitive setup reminded Gerry of all the cheap, underfunded research projects he had ever been involved in. Kev unlatched his tether so the Moon wouldn’t crash into it, crawled to a ring anchored into the concrete floor, attached himself with a smaller tether, and stood up, a man in a white hazmat suit standing before a large green sphere that was like a boiling and shifting ball of algae.

Kev tossed the Styrofoam ball into the phytosphere and the gravity pulled it in. A string was attached to the ball, as they didn’t want the ball crashing directly into the singularity, but rather for it to hover inside the phytosphere. Various instruments were embedded in the Styrofoam ball, including a microscopy camera. Here was Smallmouth 2, thought Gerry, not without some chagrin: a Styrofoam ball and a piece of string. Yet he was used to this kind of thing, working with everyday household objects and coming up with at least some kind of scientific result. In the cash-strapped Department of Ocean Sciences at NCSU, that’s the way he had done things.

Kev now looked like he was flying a kite, only the kite was a giant green sphere about twelve yards in diameter.

Gerry went over to the microscopy screen. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Stephanie and Mitch crowded behind him as he took a seat.

Gerry pointed. “Just as I suspected. The flagella have grown active, like they do in the real phytosphere.” He double-checked a readout screen, which had graphs to measure and tabulate a

number of phenomena. “You can see that the cellular electrical activity within the flagella has increased tenfold. In other words, they’re flexing their muscles and joining up with each other. And look at this.

They’re actually producing the scaling material for the carapace. Probably not at the same rate they actually do in the phytosphere, because we haven’t provided this sample with any water or light, but I think we can safely conclude that gravity is definitely the trigger. Without gravity the xenophyta more or less remain in a state of stasis. Add gravity, and it’s like rain has come to the desert. Everything starts to grow.”

“So how’s this solve our problem?” said Mitch. “How can we possibly take the gravity away and put the phytosphere in stasis mode? We would have to take the whole Earth away in order to stop the gravity trigger.”

Stephanie put her hand on Gerry’s shoulder, as if preparing him for the blow of what was looking like another impasse.

“We don’t have to take it away,” he said. “We don’t even have to worry about the Earth. It’s the Moon we have to concern ourselves with. The Moon creates the stress band, and that’s the key to solving this whole problem. We just have to fool around with it. What happens when the stress band passes over the flagella? I always knew there had to be a connection between the two. You see how there’s an excess of electrical activity in the flagella? And look at this statistic. About two percent of the flagella are shorting out completely and not coming back online after the stress band passes. The other ninety-eight percent all seem to experience some kind of seizure activity before going back to their usual profile. Because the stress band isn’t strong or constant enough, it gives the small percentage of destroyed flagella a chance to regenerate. If it were strong enough…”

Mitch looked more closely at the readouts. “Gerry, I think you’re onto something.”

“Let’s increase the Moon’s gravitational field. I want to see if we can increase the short-out rate by upping the pressure of the stress band. In fact, I want to increase the gravity until we get a hundred percent short-out rate. Let’s kill all those damn things if we can.”

“Gerry… are we working toward a model here? Because how the hell do you expect to increase the Moon’s gravity in real life?”

“I expect to do it on a shoestring budget, like I do everything else.”

Mitch hesitated, but finally gave his technicians a nod.

The technicians keyed in the necessary commands to increase Platform 2’s gravitational field.

As the strength of the gravity increased, Gerry watched the readouts carefully, making sure all of them were recorded, particularly the short-out rate. The short-out rate in the flagella increased from two percent to five, and then ten percent, even as the temperature of the stress band rose dramatically. As the short-out rate reached fifteen, then twenty percent, the color of the small phytosphere changed, becoming a light green. Its entire surface quivered. The short-out rate jumped exponentially to forty percent, then to eighty percent, as the mock-up Moon exerted an ever stronger pull on the scale-model Earth.

At last the whole phytosphere crumpled.

As the stress band passed around it one more time, it exploded in a sloppy and gelatinous splash, like a water balloon filled with mint jelly.

Kev was left standing there in a hazmat suit covered with green slime. Smallmouth 2 hovered up near the singularity.

“Okay, you can cut the fields,” said Gerry.

Mitch had his technicians do so.

There was a feeling in the room of fundamental and groundbreaking discovery. As the fields hummed down to silence and Platform 2 rolled to a stop, everyone stared at the splattered control area. Gerry looked at the readouts again. Theoretically, it was possible. But how? And with what resources? The Styrofoam ball plopped to the floor.

He glanced at Mitch. Mitch was looking at him in… amazement.

Yes, theoretically, it was possible.

If only he could figure out how.