Prey

DAY 7
12:12 A.M.

"Jack."

Julia rushed toward me as I came down the corridor. In the overhead light her face looked beautiful in a lean, elegant way. She was in truth more beautiful than I remembered. Her ankle was bandaged and she had a cast on her wrist. She threw her arms around me and buried her head in my shoulder. Her hair smelled of lavender. "Oh, Jack, Jack. Thank God you're all right."

"Yeah," I said hoarsely. "I'm okay."

"I'm so glad… so glad."

I just stood there, feeling her hug me. Then I hugged her back. I didn't know how to react. She was so energized, but I was exhausted, flat.

"Are you all right, Jack?" she said, still hugging me.

"Yeah, Julia." I said, just above a whisper. "I am."

"What's wrong with your voice?" she said, pulling back to look at me. She scanned my face. "What's wrong?"

"He probably burned his vocal cords," Mae said. She was hoarse, too. Her face was blackened with soot. She had a cut on her cheek, and another on her forehead. Julia embraced me again, her fingers touched my shirt. "Darling, you're hurt…"

"Just my shirt."

"Jack, are you sure you're not hurt? I think you're hurt…"

"No, I'm okay." I stepped away from her awkwardly.

"I can't tell you," she said, "how grateful I am for what you did tonight, Jack. What all of you did," she added, turning to the others. "You, Mae, and Bobby too. I'm only sorry I wasn't here to help. I know this is all my fault. But we're very grateful. The company is grateful." I thought, The company? But all I said was, "Yeah, well, it had to be done."

"It did, yes, it certainly did. Quickly and decisively. And you did it, Jack. Thank God." Ricky was standing in the background, head bobbing up and down. He was like one of those mechanical birds that drinks from a water glass. Bobbing up and down. I felt unreal, as if I was in a play.

"I think we should all have a drink to celebrate," Julia was saying, as we went down the corridor. "There must be some champagne around here. Ricky? Is there? Yes? I want to celebrate what you guys have done."

"I just want to sleep," I said.

"Oh, come on, just one glass."

It was typical Julia, I thought. Involved in her own world, not noticing how anyone around her was feeling. The last thing any of us wanted to do right now was drink champagne. "Thanks anyway," Mae said, shaking her head.

"Are you sure? Really? It'd be fun. How about you, Bobby?"

"Maybe tomorrow," Bobby said.

"Oh well, okay, after all, you're the conquering heroes! We'll do it tomorrow, then." I noticed how fast she was talking, how quick her body movements were. I remembered Ellen's comment about her taking drugs. It certainly seemed like she was on something. But I was so tired I just didn't give a damn.

"I've told the news to Larry Handler, the head of the company," she said, "and he's very grateful to you all."

"That's nice," I said. "Is he going to notify the Army?"

"Notify the Army? About what?"

"About the runaway experiment."

"Well, Jack, that's all taken care of now. You've taken care of it."

"I'm not sure we have," I said. "Some of the swarms might have escaped. Or there might be another nest out there. To be safe, I think we should call in the Army." I didn't really think we had missed anything, but I wanted to get outsiders in here. I was tired. I wanted somebody else to take over.

"The Army?" Julia's eyes flicked to Ricky, then back to me. "Jack, you're absolutely right," she said firmly. "This is an extremely serious situation. If there is the slightest chance something was missed, we must notify them at once."

"I mean tonight."

"Yes, I agree, Jack. Tonight. In fact, I'll do it right now." I glanced back at Ricky. He was walking along, still nodding in that mechanical way. I didn't get it. What about Ricky's earlier panic? His fear that the experiment would be made public? Now it seemed he didn't care.

Julia said, "You three can get some sleep, and I'll call my contacts at the Pentagon."

"I'll go with you," I said.

"It's really not necessary."

"I want to," I said.

She glanced at me and smiled. "You don't trust me?"

"It's not that," I said. "But they might have questions I could answer for them."

"Okay, fine. Good idea. Excellent idea."

I felt sure that something was wrong. I felt as if I were in a play, and everyone was acting a part. Except I didn't know what the play was. I glanced over at Mae. She was frowning slightly. She must have sensed it, too.

We passed through the airlocks into the residential unit. Here the air felt uncomfortably cold to me; I shivered. We went into the kitchen and Julia reached for the phone. "Let's make that call, Jack," she said.

I went to the refrigerator and got a ginger ale. Mae had an iced tea. Bobby had a beer. We were all thirsty. I noticed a bottle of champagne sitting in the fridge, waiting. I touched it; it was cold. There were six glasses in there, too, being chilled. She'd already planned the party. Julia pushed the speakerphone button. We heard a dial tone. She punched in a number. But the call didn't go through. The line just went dead.

"Huh," she said. "Let's try that again…"

She dialed a second time. Again, the call failed to go through.

"That's funny. Ricky, I'm not getting an outside line."

"Try one more time," Ricky said.

I sipped my ginger ale and watched them. There was no question that this was all an act, a performance for our benefit. Julia dutifully dialed a third time. I wondered what number she was calling. Or did she know the number for the Pentagon by heart? "Huh," she said. "Nothing."

Ricky picked up the phone, looked at the base, put it down again. "Should be okay," he said, acting puzzled.

"Oh for Christ's sake," I said. "Let me guess. Something has happened and we can't dial out."

"No, no, we can," Ricky said.

"I was just calling a few minutes ago," Julia said. "Just before you got back."

Ricky pushed away from the table. "I'll check the comm lines."

"You do that," I said, glowering.

Julia was staring at me. "Jack," she said, "I'm worried about you."

"Uh-huh."

"You're angry."

"I'm being fucked with."

"I promise you," she said quietly, meeting my eyes. "You're not." Mae got up from the table, saying she was going to take a shower. Bobby wandered into the lounge to play a video game, his usual way to unwind. Soon I heard the sound of machine-gun fire, and the cries of dead bad guys. Julia and I were alone in the kitchen. She leaned over the table toward me. She spoke in a low, earnest voice. "Jack," she said, "I think I owe you an explanation."

"No," I said. "You don't."

"I mean, for my behavior. My decisions these past days."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"Maybe later, Julia."

"I need to tell you now. You see, the thing is, I just wanted to save the company, Jack. That's all. The camera failed and we couldn't fix it, we lost our contract, and the company was falling apart. I've never lost a company before. I never had one shot out from underneath me, and I didn't want Xymos to be the first. I was invested, I had a stake, and I guess I had my pride. I wanted to save it. I know I didn't use good judgment. I was desperate. It's nobody else's fault. They all wanted to stop it. I pushed them to go on. It was… it was my crusade." She shrugged. "And it was all for nothing. The company's going to fold in a matter of days. I've lost it." She leaned closer. "But I don't want to lose you, too. I don't want to lose my family. I don't want to lose us."

She dropped her voice lower, and stretched her hand across the table to cover mine. "I want to make amends, Jack. I want to make things right, and get us back on track again." She paused. "I hope you do, too."

I said, "I'm not sure how I feel."

"You're tired."

"Yes. But I'm not sure, anymore."

"You mean, about us?"

I said, "I hate this fucking conversation." And I did. I hated that she would start this when I was exhausted, when I had just gone through an ordeal that nearly got me killed and that was, ultimately, all her doing. I hated that she dismissed her involvement as "bad judgment" when it was considerably worse than that.

"Oh Jack, let's go back to the way we were," she said, and suddenly she leaned the rest of the way across the table and tried to kiss me on the lips. I pulled back, turned my head away. She stared at me, eyes pleading. "Jack, please."

"This is not the time or the place, Julia," I said.

A pause. She didn't know what to say. Finally: "The kids miss you."

"I'm sure they do. I miss them, too."

She burst into tears. "And they don't miss me…" she sobbed. "They don't even care about me… about their mother…" She reached for my hand again. I let her hold it. I tried to take stock of my feelings. I just felt tired, and very uncomfortable. I wanted her to stop crying. "Julia…"

The intercom clicked. I heard Ricky's voice, amplified. "Hey, guys? We have a problem with the comm lines. You better come here right away."

The comm room consisted of a large closet in one corner of the maintenance room. It was sealed with a heavy security door, with a small tempered glass window set in the upper half. Through this window, I could see all the wiring panels and switch racks for the telecommunications in the lab. I also saw that great chunks of wiring had been yanked out. And slumped in a corner of the closet I saw Charley Davenport. He appeared to be dead. His mouth hung open, his eyes stared into space. His skin was purple-gray. A black buzzing swarm swirled around his head.

"I can't imagine how this happened," Ricky was saying. "He was fast asleep when I checked on him…"

"When was that?" I said.

"Maybe half an hour ago."

"And the swarm? How'd it get there?"

"I can't imagine," Ricky said. "He must have carried it with him, from outside."

"How?" I said. "He went through all the airlocks."

"I know, but…"

"But what, Ricky? How's it possible?"

"Maybe… I don't know, maybe it was in his throat or something."

"In his throat?" I said. "You mean, just hanging out between his tonsils? These things kill you, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Of course I know." He shrugged. "Beats me."

I stared at Ricky, trying to understand his demeanor. He had just discovered that his lab was invaded by a lethal nanoswarm, and he didn't appear to be upset at all. He was taking it all very casually.

Mae came hurrying into the room. She took in the situation with a glance. "Did anyone check the video playback?"

"We can't," Ricky said. He pointed to the closet. "The controls are disabled-in there."

"So you don't know how he got in there?"

"No. But he evidently didn't want us calling out. At least… that's how it looks."

Mae said, "Why would Charley go in there?"

I shook my head. I had no idea.

Julia said, "It's airtight. Maybe he knew he was infected and wanted to seal himself off. I mean, he locked the door from the inside."

I said, "He did? How do you know that?"

Julia said, "Um… I just assumed… uh…" She peered through the glass. "And, uh, you can see the lock reflected in that chrome fitting… see that one there?" I didn't bother to look. But Mae did, and I heard her say, "Oh yes, Julia, you're right. Good observation. I missed that myself." It sounded very phony, but Julia didn't seem to react. So everybody was playacting, now. Everything was staged. And I didn't understand why. But as I watched Mae with Julia, I noticed that she was being extremely careful with my wife. Almost as if she was afraid of her, or at least afraid of offending her.

That was odd.

And a little alarming.

I said to Ricky, "Is there a way to unlock the door?"

"I think so. Vince probably has a skeleton key. But nobody's unlocking that door now, Jack. Not as long as that swarm is in there."

"So we can't call anywhere?" I said. "We're stuck here? Incommunicado?"

"Until tomorrow, yes. Helicopter will be back tomorrow morning, on its regular run." Ricky peered in through the glass at the destruction. "Jeez. Charley really did a job on those switching panels."

I said, "Why do you think he would do that?"

Ricky shook his head. "Charley was a little crazy, you know. I mean he was colorful. But all that farting and humming… he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, Jack."

"I never thought so."

"Just my opinion," he said.

I stood beside Ricky and looked through the glass. The swarm was buzzing around Charley's head, and I was starting to see the milky coating form on his body. The usual pattern. I said, "What about pumping liquid nitrogen in there? Freezing the swarm?"

"We could probably do that," Ricky said, "but I'm afraid we'd damage the equipment."

"Can you turn the air handlers up enough to suck the particles out?"

"Handlers are going full-bore now."

"And you wouldn't want to use a fire extinguisher…"

He shook his head. "Extinguishers are Halon. Won't affect the particles."

"So we're effectively kept out of that room."

"Far as I can tell, yes."

"Cell phones?"

He shook his head. "Antennas route through that room. Every form of communication we have-cells, Internet, high-speed data trunks-everything goes through that room." Julia said, "Charley knew that room was airtight. I bet he went there to protect the rest of us. It was a selfless act. A courageous act."

She was developing her theory about Charley, fleshing it out, adding details. It was a little distracting, considering the main problem was still unanswered-how to unlock the door, and disable the swarm. I said, "Is there another window in that closet?"

"No."

"This window in the door is the only one?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then," I said, "let's black out the window, and turn the lights out in there. And wait a few hours, until the swarm loses power."

"Jeez, I don't know," Ricky said doubtfully.

"What do you mean, Ricky?" Julia said. "I think it's a great idea. It's certainly worth a try. Let's do it right now."

"Okay, fine," Ricky said, immediately deferring to her. "But you're going to have to wait six hours."

I said, "I thought it was three hours."

"It is, but I want extra hours before I open that door. If that swarm gets loose in here, we've all had it."

In the end, that was what we decided to do. We got black cloth and taped it over the window, and put black cardboard over that. We turned out the lights and taped the light switch in the off position. At the end of that time, exhaustion hit me again. I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock in the morning. I said, "I have to go to bed."

"We should all get some sleep," Julia said. "We can revisit this in the morning." We all headed off toward the residence module. Mae sidled up alongside me. "How are you feeling?" she said.

"Okay. My back's starting to hurt a little."

She nodded. "You better let me take a look at it."

"Why?"

"Just let me take a look, before you go to bed."

"Oh, Jack, darling," Julia cried. "You poor baby."

"What is it?"

I was sitting on the kitchen table with my shirt off. Julia and Mae were behind me, clucking.

"What is it?" I said again.

"There's some blistering," Mae said.

"Blistering?" Julia said. "His whole back is covered-"

"I think we have dressings," Mae said, interrupting her, reaching for the first-aid kit beneath the sink.

"Yes, I hope so." Julia smiled at me. "Jack, I can't tell you how sorry I am, that you had to go through this."

"This may sting a little," Mae said.

I knew that Mae wanted to talk to me alone, but there was no opportunity. Julia was not going to leave us alone for a minute. She had always been jealous of Mae, even years ago when I first hired Mae in my company, and now she was competing with her for my attention. I wasn't flattered.

The dressings were cool at first, as Mae applied them, but within moments they stung bitterly. I winced.

"I don't know what painkillers we have," Mae said. "You've got a good area of second-degree burns."

Julia rummaged frantically through the first-aid kit, tossing contents out right and left. Tubes and canisters clattered to the floor. "There's morphine," she said at last, holding up a bottle. She smiled at me brightly. "That should do it!"

"I don't want morphine," I said. What I really wanted to say was that I wanted her to go to bed. Julia was annoying me. Her frantic edge was getting on my nerves. And I wanted to talk to Mae alone.

"There's nothing else," Julia said, "except aspirin."

"Aspirin is fine."

"I'm worried it won't be-"

"Aspirin is fine."

"You don't have to bite my head off."

"I'm sorry. I don't feel well."

"Well, I'm only trying to help." Julia stepped back. "I mean, if you two want to be alone, you should just say so."

"No," I said, "we do not want to be alone."

"Well, I'm only trying to help." She turned back to the medicine kit. "Maybe there is something else…" Containers of tape and plastic bottles of antibiotics fell to the floor. "Julia," I said. "Please stop."

"What am I doing? What am I doing that is so awful?"

"Just stop."

"I'm only trying to help."

"I know that."

Behind me, Mae said, "Okay. All finished now. That should hold you until tomorrow." She yawned. "And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

I thanked her, and watched her leave the room. When I turned back, Julia was holding a glass of water and two aspirins for me.

"Thank you," I said.

"I never liked that woman," she said.

"Let's get some sleep," I said.

"There's only single beds here."

"I know."

She moved closer. "I'd like to be with you, Jack."

"I'm really tired. I'll see you in the morning, Julia."

I went back to my room and looked at the bed. I didn't bother taking off my clothes.

I don't remember my head touching the pillow.

DAY 7
4:42 A.M.

I slept restlessly, with constant and terrible dreams. I dreamed that I was back in Monterey, marrying Julia again, and I was standing in front of the minister when she came up alongside me in her bridal gown, and when she lifted the veil I was shocked by how beautiful and young and slender she was. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, trying to conceal my uneasiness. Because now I saw she was more than slender, her face was thin, almost emaciated. Almost a skull. Then I turned to the minister in front of us, but it was Mae, and she was pouring colored liquids back and forth in test tubes. When I looked back at Julia she was very angry, and said she never liked that woman. Somehow it was my fault. I was to blame. I woke up briefly, sweating. The pillow was soaked. I turned it over, and went back to sleep. I saw myself sleeping on the bed, and I looked up and saw that the door to my room was open. Light came in from the hallway outside. A shadow fell across my bed. Ricky came into the room and looked down at me. His face was backlit and dark, I couldn't see his expression, but he said, "I always loved you, Jack." He leaned over to whisper something in my ear, and I realized as his head came down that he was going to kiss me instead. He was going to kiss me on the lips, passionately. His mouth was open. His tongue licked his lips. I was very upset, I didn't know what to do, but at that moment Julia came in and said, "What's going on?" and Ricky hastily pulled away, and made some kind of evasive comment. Julia was very angry and said, "Not now, you fool," and Ricky made another evasive comment. And then Julia said, "This is completely unnecessary, it will take care of itself." And Ricky said, "There are constriction coefficients for deterministic algorithms if you do interval global optimization." And she said, "It won't hurt you if you don't fight it." She turned on the light in the room and walked out. Then I was suddenly back in my Monterey wedding, Julia was standing beside me in white, and I turned to look back at the audience, and I saw my three kids sitting in the first row, smiling and happy. And as I watched a black line appeared around their mouths, and swept down their bodies, until they were cloaked in black. They continued to smile, but I was horrified. I ran to them, but I couldn't rub the black cloak off. And Nicole said calmly, "Don't forget the sprinklers, Dad."

I woke up, tangled up in the sheets, drenched in sweat. The door to my room was open. A rectangle of light fell across my bed from the hallway outside. I looked over at the workstation monitor. It said "4:55 A.M." I closed my eyes and lay there for a while, but I couldn't go back to sleep. I was wet and uncomfortable. I decided to take a shower. Shortly before five in the morning, I got out of bed.

The hallway was silent. I walked down the corridor to the bathrooms. The doors to all the bedrooms were open, which seemed strange. I could see everybody sleeping as I walked past. And the lights were on in all the bedrooms. I saw Ricky asleep, and I saw Bobby, and I saw Julia, and Vince. Mae's bed was empty. And of course Charley's bed was empty. I stopped in the kitchen to get a ginger ale from the refrigerator. I was very thirsty, my throat painful and parched. And my stomach felt a little queasy. I looked at the champagne bottle. I suddenly had a funny feeling about it, as if it might have been tampered with. I took it out and looked closely at the cap, at the metal foil that covered the cork. It looked entirely normal. No tampering, no needle marks, no nothing.

Just a bottle of champagne.

I put it back and closed the refrigerator door.

I began to wonder if I had been unfair to Julia. Maybe she really did believe she'd made a mistake and wanted to put things right. Maybe she just wanted to show her gratitude. Maybe I was being too tough on her. Too unforgiving.

Because when you thought about it, what had she done that was suspicious or wrong? She'd been glad to see me, even if she was over the top. She'd accepted responsibility for the experiment, and she'd apologized for it. She'd immediately agreed to make the call to the Army. She'd agreed with my plan to kill the swarm in the comm room. She'd done everything she could do to show she supported me, and was on my side.

But I still was uneasy.

And of course there was the matter of Charley and his swarm. Ricky's idea that Charley had somehow been carrying the swarm inside his body, in his mouth or under his armpit or something, didn't make a lot of sense to me. Those swarms killed within seconds. So it left a question-how did the swarm get into the comm room with Charley? Did it get in from outside? Why hadn't it attacked Julia and Ricky and Vince?

I forgot about my shower.

I decided to go down to the utility room, and look around outside the comm room door. Maybe there was something I had missed. Julia had been talking a lot, interrupting my train of thought. Almost as if she hadn't wanted me to figure something out…

There I was again, being hard on Julia.

I went through the airlock, down the corridor, through another airlock. When you were tired, it was annoying to have that wind blowing on you. I came out into the utility area, and went toward the comm room door. I didn't notice anything.

I heard the sound of a clicking keyboard, and looked into the biology lab. Mae was there, at her workstation.

I said, "What are you doing?"

"Checking the video playback."

"I thought we couldn't do that, because Charley pulled the wires."

"That's what Ricky said. But it isn't true."

I started to come around the lab bench, to look over her shoulder. She held up her hand.

"Jack," she said. "Maybe you don't want to look at this."

"What? Why not?"

"It's, uh… maybe you don't want to deal with this. Not right now. Maybe tomorrow." But of course after that, I practically ran around the table to see what was on her monitor. And I stopped. What I saw on her screen was an image of an empty corridor. With a time code at the bottom of the picture. "Is this it?" I said. "Is this what I shouldn't deal with?"

"No." She turned in her chair. "Look, Jack, you have to go through all the security cameras in sequence, and each one only records ten frames a minute, so it's very difficult to be sure of what we're-"

"Just show me, Mae."

"I have to go back a bit…" She pressed the back button in the corner of the keyboard repeatedly. Like many new control systems, the Xymos system was modeled on Internet browser technology. You could go backward in work, retracing your steps. The frames jumped backward until she came to the place she wanted. Then she ran it forward, the security images jumping from one camera to the next in rapid succession. A corridor. The main plant. Another angle on the plant. An airlock. Another corridor. The utility room. A corridor. The kitchen. The lounge. The residence hallway. An exterior view, looking down at the floodlit desert. Corridor. The power room. The outside, ground level. Another corridor. I blinked. "How long have you been doing this?"

"About an hour."

"Jesus."

Next I saw a corridor. Ricky moving down it. Power station. Outside, looking down on Julia stepping into the floodlight. A corridor. Julia and Ricky together, embracing, and then a corridor, and"Wait," I said.

Mae hit a button. She looked at me, said nothing. She pressed another key, flicked the images forward slowly. She stopped on the camera that showed Ricky and Julia. "Ten frames."

The movement was blurred and jerky. Ricky and Julia moved toward each other. They embraced. There was a clear sense of ease, of familiarity between them. And then they kissed passionately.

"Aw, shit," I said, turning away from the screen. "Shit, shit, shit."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Mae said. "I don't know what to say."

I felt a wave of dizziness, almost as if I might collapse. I sat down on the table. I kept my body turned away from the screen. I just couldn't look. I took a deep breath. Mae was saying something more, but I didn't hear her words. I took another breath. I ran my hand through my hair.

I said, "Did you know about this?"

"No. Not until a few minutes ago."

"Did anybody?"

"No. We used to joke about it sometimes, that they had a relationship, but none of us believed it."

"Jesus." I ran my hand through my hair again. "Tell me the truth, Mae. I need to hear the truth. Did you know about this or not?"

"No, Jack. I didn't."

Silence. I took a breath. I tried to take stock of my feelings. "You know what's funny?" I said. "What's funny is that I've suspected this for a while now. I mean, I was pretty sure it was happening, I just didn't know who… I mean… Even though I expected it, it's still kind of a shock."

"I'm sure."

"I never would have figured Ricky," I said. "He's such a… I don't know… smarmy kind of guy. And he's not a big power guy. Somehow I would have thought she'd pick someone more important, I guess." As I said it, I remembered my conversation with Ellen after dinner. Are you so sure about Julia's style?

That was after I'd seen the guy in the car. The guy whose face I couldn't really make out…

Ellen: It's called denial, Jack.

"Jesus," I said, shaking my head. I felt angry, embarrassed, confused, furious. It kept changing every second.

Mae waited. She didn't move or speak. She was completely still. Finally she said, "Do you want to see any more?"

"Is there more?"

"Yes."

"I don't know if I, uh… No, I don't want to see any more."

"Maybe you better."

"No."

"I mean, it might make you feel better."

"I don't think so," I said. "I don't think I can take it."

She said, "It may not be what you think, Jack. At least, it may not be exactly what you think."

It's called denial, Jack.

"Sorry, Mae," I said, "but I don't want to pretend anymore. I saw it. I know what it is." I thought I'd be with Julia forever. I thought we loved the kids together, we had a family, a house, a life together. And Ricky had a new baby of his own. It just was weird. It didn't make sense to me. But then, things never turn out the way you think they will. I heard Mae typing quickly on the keyboard. I turned so I could see her, but not the screen. "What're you doing?"

"Trying to find Charley. See if I can track what happened to him over the last few hours." She continued typing. I took a breath. She was right. Whatever was going on in my personal life was already well advanced. There was nothing I could do about it, at least not right now. I turned all the way around and faced the screen.

"Okay," I said. "Let's look for Charley."

It was disorienting to watch the camera images flash by, repeating in sequence. People popped in and out of images. I saw Julia in the kitchen. The next time I saw her and Ricky in the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, then shut. I saw Vince in the main plant room, then he popped out. I saw him in a corridor, then gone.

"I don't see Charley."

"Maybe he's still asleep," Mae said.

"Can you see in the bedrooms?"

"Yes, there are cameras there, but I'd have to change security cycle. Ordinary cycle doesn't go into the bedrooms."

"How big a deal is it to change the security cycle?"

"I'm not sure. This is really Ricky's area. The system here is pretty complicated. Ricky's the only one who really knows how to work it. Let's see if we find Charley in the regular cycle." So that's what we did, waiting to see if he appeared in any of the standard camera images. We searched for about ten minutes more. From time to time, I had to look away from the images, though it never seemed to bother Mae. But sure enough, we saw him in the residential hallway, walking down the corridor, rubbing his face. He'd just woken up. "Okay," Mae said. "We got him."

"What's the time?"

She froze the image, so we could read it. It was 12:10 A.M.

I said, "That's only about half an hour before we got back."

"Yes." She ran the images forward. Charley disappeared from the hallway, but we saw him briefly, heading into the bathroom. Then we saw Ricky and Julia in the kitchen. I felt my body tense. But they were just talking. Then Julia put the champagne in the refrigerator, and Ricky started handing her glasses to put in beside the bottle.

It was difficult to be sure what happened next, because of the frame rate. Ten frames a second of video meant that you only got an image every six seconds, so events appeared blurred and jumpy when things moved fast, because too much happened between the frames.

But this is what I thought happened:

Charley showed up, and began talking to the two of them. He was smiling, cheerful. He pointed to the glasses. Julia and Ricky put the glasses away while they talked to him. Then he held up his hand, to stop.

He pointed to a glass that Julia was holding in her hand before she put it in the refrigerator. He said something.

Julia shook her head, and put the glass in the refrigerator. Charley seemed puzzled. He pointed again to another glass. Julia shook her head. Then Charley hunched his shoulders and thrust out his chin, as if he were getting angry. He poked the table repeatedly with his finger, making a point.

Ricky stepped forward between Julia and Charley. He acted like someone interrupting an argument. He held his hands up soothingly to Charley: take it easy. Charley wasn't taking it easy. He was pointing to the sink, heaped with unwashed dishes.

Ricky shook his head, and put his hand on Charley's shoulder.

Charley brushed it off.

The two men began to argue. Meanwhile, Julia calmly put the rest of the glasses into the refrigerator. She seemed indifferent to the argument a few feet from her, almost as if she didn't hear it. Charley was trying to get around Ricky to the refrigerator, but Ricky kept moving to block him, and held his hands up each time.

Ricky's whole demeanor suggested that he did not regard Charley as rational. He was treating Charley in that careful way you do when someone's out of control. Mae said, "Is Charley being affected by the swarm? Is that why he's acting that way?"

"I can't tell." I looked closer at the screen. "I don't see any swarm."

"No," she said. "But he's pretty angry."

"What does he want them to do?" I said.

Mae shook her head. "Put the glasses back? Wash them? Use different glasses? I can't tell." I said, "Charley doesn't care about that stuff. He'd eat out of a dirty plate somebody else had used." I smiled. "I've seen him do it."

Suddenly, Charley stepped several paces back. For a moment, he was completely still, as if he had discovered something that stunned him. Ricky said something to him. Charley began pointing and shouting at both of them. Ricky tried to approach him. Charley kept backing away, and then he turned to the phone, mounted on the wall. He lifted the receiver. Ricky came forward, very quickly, his body a blur, and slammed the phone down. He shoved Charley back-hard. Ricky's strength was surprising. Charley was a big guy, but he went down to the floor, and skidded backward a few feet. Charley got to his feet, continued to yell, then he turned and ran out of the room.

Julia and Ricky exchanged a glance. Julia said something to him.

Immediately, Ricky ran after Charley.

Julia ran after Ricky.

"Where are they going?" I said.

Mae released the hold button, and the screen flashed "Updating Time," and then we started seeing images from all the cameras again, in sequence. We saw Charley running down a corridor, and we saw Ricky start after him. We waited impatiently for the next cycle. But nobody was visible there.

Another cycle. Then we saw Charley in the utility room, dialing the phone. He glanced over his shoulder. A moment later, Ricky came in, and Charley hung up the phone. They argued, circling around each other.

Charley picked up a shovel, and swung it at Ricky. The first time Ricky dodged away. The second time it caught him on the shoulder and knocked him to the floor. Charley swung the shovel over his head, and slammed it down on Ricky's head. The gesture was brutal, the intention clearly murderous. Ricky managed to duck back just as the shovel smashed onto the concrete.

"My God…" Mae said.

Ricky was getting to his feet, when Charley turned and saw Julia enter the room. Julia held out her hand, pleading with Charley (to put down the shovel?). Charley looked from one of them to the other. And then Vince entered the room, too. Now that they were all in the room, he seemed to lose his urge to fight. They were circling him, closing in. Suddenly Charley dashed for the comm room, stepped inside, and tried to shut the door behind him. Ricky was on him in a flash. He had his foot in the door and Charley couldn't get it closed. Charley's face looked angry through the glass. Vince came right alongside Ricky. With both of them at the door, I couldn't see what was happening. Julia seemed to be giving orders. I thought I saw her reach her hand through the crack in the door, but it was difficult to be sure. In any case, the door opened, and both Vince and Ricky entered the room. The action that came next was swift, blurred on the video, but apparently the three men were fighting, and Ricky managed to get behind Charley, and get him in a hammerlock; Vince pulled Charley's arm behind his back, and together the two men subdued Charley. He stopped fighting. The image was less blurred.

"What's happening?" Mae said. "They never told us any of this." Ricky and Vince were holding Charley from behind. Charley was panting, his chest heaving, but he no longer struggled. Julia came into the room. She looked at Charley, and had some conversation with him.

And then Julia walked up to Charley, and kissed him full and long on the lips. Charley struggled, tried to wrench away. Vince grabbed a fistful of Charley's hair and tried to hold his head steady. Julia continued to kiss him. Then she stepped away, and as she did I saw a river of black between her mouth and Charley's. It was only there for a moment, and then it faded.

"Oh my God," Mae said.

Julia wiped her lips, and smiled.

Charley sagged, dropped to the ground. He appeared dazed. A black cloud came out of his mouth, and swirled around his head. Vince patted him on the head and left the room. Ricky went over to the panels-and pulled out wiring by the handful. He literally ripped the panels apart. Then he turned back to Charley, said something else, and walked out of the comm room.

At once Charley sprang to his feet, closed the door, and locked it. But Ricky and Julia just laughed, as if this was a futile gesture. Charley sagged again, and from then on he was out of sight.

Ricky threw his arm around Julia's shoulder, and they walked out of the room together.

"Well, you two are certainly up bright and early!"

I turned.

Julia was standing in the doorway.

DAY 7
5:12 A.M.

She came forward into the room, smiling. "You know, Jack," she said, "if I didn't trust you so completely, I'd think there was something going on between the two of you."

"Really," I said. I stepped away from Mae a little, while she typed quickly. I felt tremendously uneasy. "Why would you think that?"

"Well, you had your heads together about something," she said, as she came toward us. "You looked quite fascinated by what you were seeing on the screen. What're you looking at, anyway?"

"It's ah, technical."

"May I see? I'm interested in technical things. Didn't Ricky tell you I had a new technical interest? I do. I'm fascinated by this technology. It's a new world, isn't it? The twenty-first century has arrived. Don't get up, Mae. I'll just look over your shoulder." By now she had walked around the bench, and could see the screen. She frowned at the image, which showed bacterial cultures on a red growth medium. White circles within red circles. "What's this?"

Mae said, "Bacterial colonies. We've got some contamination of the coli stock. I had to take one tank offline. We're trying to figure out what's wrong."

"Probably phage, don't you think?" Julia said. "Isn't that what it usually is with bacterial stocks-a virus?" She sighed. "Everything about molecular manufacturing is so delicate. Things go wrong so easily, and so often. You have to keep alert for trouble." She glanced at me, and at Mae. "But surely this isn't what you've been looking at all this time…"

"Actually, it is," I said.

"What? Pictures of mold?"

"Bacteria."

"Yes, bacteria. You've been looking at this the whole time, Mae?"

She shrugged, nodded. "Yes, Julia. It's my job."

"And I don't question your dedication for a moment," Julia said. "But do you mind?" Her hand darted forward and hit the back key in the corner of the keyboard. The previous screen showed more pictures of bacterial growth.

The next screen showed a virus electron micrograph.

And then a table of growth data over the last twelve hours.

Julia continued to hit the back key half a dozen times more, but all she saw were images of bacteria and viruses, graphs, and data tables. She took her hand away from the keyboard. "You seem to be devoting a lot of time to this. Is it really so important?"

"Well, it's a contaminant," Mae said. "If we don't control it, we'll have to shut down the entire system."

"Then by all means keep at it." She turned to me. "Want to have breakfast? I'd imagine you must be starving."

"Sounds great," I said.

"Come with me," Julia said. "We'll make it together."

"Okay," I said. I glanced at Mae. "I'll see you later. Let me know if I can do anything to help."

I left with Julia. We started down the corridor to the residences.

"I don't know why," Julia said, "but that woman bothers me."

"I don't know why either. She's very good. Very thoughtful, very conscientious."

"And very pretty."

"Julia…"

"Is that why you won't kiss me? Because you're involved with her?"

"Julia, for Christ's sake."

She stared at me, waiting.

"Look," I said. "It's been a rough couple of weeks for everybody. Frankly, you've been difficult to live with."

"I'm sure I have."

"And frankly, I've been pretty angry with you."

"With good reason, I know. I'm sorry for what I put you through." She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek. "But it feels so distant now. I don't like the tension between us. What do you say we kiss and make up?"

"Maybe later," I said. "We have a lot to do now."

She got playful, puckering her lips, kissing air. "Oooh, come on, sweetie, just a little smooch… come on, it won't kill you…"

"Later," I said.

She sighed, and gave up. We continued down the corridor in silence for a while. Then she said, in a serious voice, "You're avoiding me, Jack. And I want to know why." I didn't answer her, I just gave a long-suffering sigh and kept walking, acting like what she'd said was beneath response. In fact, I was badly worried.

I couldn't keep refusing to kiss her forever; sooner or later she'd figure out what I knew. Maybe she already had. Because even when Julia was acting girlish, she seemed sharper, more alert than she'd ever been before. I had the feeling she didn't miss anything. And I had the same feeling about Ricky. It was as if they were tuned up, ultra-aware. And I was worried about what I'd seen on Mae's monitor. The black cloud that seemed to come from Julia's mouth. Had it really been there, on the video? Because as far as I knew, swarms killed their prey on contact. They were merciless. Now Julia seemed to be harboring a swarm. How could that be? Did she have some sort of immunity? Or was the swarm tolerating her, not killing her for some reason? And what about Ricky and Vince? Did they have immunity, too?

One thing was clear: Julia and Ricky did not want us to call anybody. They had deliberately isolated us in the desert, knowing that they would have only a few hours until the helicopter arrived. So apparently, that's all the time they needed. To do what? Kill us? Or just infect us? What?

Walking down the corridor next to my wife, I felt as if I was walking with a stranger. With somebody I didn't know anymore. Somebody who was immensely dangerous. I glanced at my watch. The helicopter would be here in less than two hours, now.

Julia smiled. "Got an appointment?"

"No. Just thinking it's time for breakfast."

"Jack," she said. "Why won't you be honest with me?"

"I'm being honest…"

"No. You were wondering how long until the helicopter comes."

I shrugged.

"Two hours," she said. And she added, "I'll bet you'll be glad to get out of here, won't you?"

"Yes," I said. "But I'm not leaving until everything is done."

"Why? What's left to be done?"

By now we had reached the residential unit. I could smell bacon and eggs cooking. Ricky came around the corner. He smiled heartily when he saw me. "Hey, Jack. How'd you sleep?"

"I slept okay."

"Really? 'Cause you look a little tired."

"I had bad dreams," I said.

"Oh yes? Bad dreams? Bummer."

"It happens sometimes," I said.

We all went into the kitchen. Bobby was making breakfast. "Scrambled eggs with chives and cream cheese," he said cheerfully. "What kind of toast do you guys want?" Julia wanted wheat toast. Ricky wanted English muffin. I said I didn't want anything. I was looking at Ricky, noticing again how strong he appeared. Beneath his T-shirt, the muscles were well defined, cut. He caught me staring at him. "Something wrong?"

"No. Just admiring your butch look." I tried to be light, but the truth was that I felt incredibly uncomfortable in the kitchen with all of them around me. I kept thinking of Charley, and how swiftly they had attacked him. I wasn't hungry; I just wanted to get out of there. But I couldn't see how to do it without arousing suspicion.

Julia went to the refrigerator, opened the door. The champagne was in there. "You guys ready to celebrate now?"

"Sure," Bobby said. "Sounds great, a little mimosa in the morning…"

"Absolutely not," I said. "Julia, I'm going to insist you take this situation seriously. We're not out of the woods yet. We have to get the Army in here, and we haven't been able to call. It's not time to break out the champagne."

She pouted. "Oh, you're such a spoilsport…"

"Spoilsport hell. You're being ridiculous."

"Oooh, baby, don't get mad, just kiss me, kiss me." She puckered her lips again, and leaned across the table.

But it seemed like getting angry was the only move I had. "God damn it, Julia," I said, raising my voice, "the only reason we are in this mess is because you didn't take it seriously in the first place. You had a runaway swarm out there in the desert for what-two weeks? And instead of eradicating it, you played with it. You fooled around until it got out of control, and as a result three people are dead. This is not a goddamn celebration, Julia. It's a disaster. And I am not drinking any fucking champagne while I am here and neither is anyone else." I took the bottle to the sink and smashed it. I turned back to her. "Got it?"

Stony-faced, she said, "That was completely unnecessary."

I saw Ricky looking at me thoughtfully. As if he was trying to decide something. Bobby turned his back while he cooked, as if he was embarrassed by a marital spat. Had they gotten to Bobby? I thought I saw a thin black line at his neck, but I couldn't be sure, and I didn't dare stare.

"Unnecessary?" I said, full of outrage. "Those people were my friends. And they were your friends, Ricky. And yours, Bobby. And I don't want to hear this celebration shit anymore!" I turned and stomped out of the room. As I left, Vince was coming in. "Better take it easy, pal," Vince said. "You'll give yourself a stroke."

"Fuck off," I said.

Vince raised his eyebrows. I brushed past him.

"You're not fooling anybody, Jack!" Julia called after me. "I know what you're really up to!"

My stomach flipped. But I kept walking.

"I can see right through you, Jack. I know you're going back to her."

"Damn right!" I said.

Was that what Julia really thought? I didn't believe it for a moment. She was just trying to mislead me, to keep me off guard until… what? What were they going to do? There were four of them. And only two of us-at least, there were two if they hadn't already gotten to Mae.

Mae wasn't in the biology laboratory. I looked around and saw that a side door was ajar, leading downstairs to the underground level where the fermentation chambers were installed. Up close, they were much larger than I had realized, giant stainless spheres about six feet across. They were surrounded by a maze of pipes and valves and temperature control units. It was warm here, and very noisy.

Mae was standing by the third unit, making notes on a clipboard and shutting a valve. She had a rack of test tubes at her feet. I went down and stood beside her. She looked at me, then shot a glance toward the ceiling, where a security camera was mounted. She walked around to the other side of the tank, and I followed her. Over here, the tank blocked the camera. She said, "They slept with the lights on."

I nodded. I knew what it meant, now.

"They're all infected," she said.

"Yes."

"And it's not killing them."

"Yes," I said, "but I don't understand why."

"It must have evolved," she said, "to tolerate them."

"That fast?"

"Evolution can happen fast," she said. "You know the Ewald studies." I did. Paul Ewald had studied cholera. What he found was that the cholera organism would quickly change to sustain an epidemic. In places where there were no sanitary water supplies but perhaps a ditch running through a village, the cholera was virulent, prostrating the victim and killing him where he fell from massive overwhelming diarrhea. The diarrhea contained millions of cholera organisms; it would run into the water supply and infect others in the village. In this way the cholera reproduced, and the epidemic continued.

But when there was sanitary water supply, the virulent strain could not reproduce. The victim would die where he fell but his diarrhea would not enter the water supply. Others would not be infected, and the epidemic would fade. Under those circumstances, the epidemic evolved to a milder form, enabling the victim to walk around and spread the milder organisms by contact, dirty linens, and so on.

Mae was suggesting that the same thing had happened to the swarms. They had evolved to a milder form, which could be transmitted from one person to another. "It's creepy," I said.

She nodded. "But what can we do about it?"

And then she began to cry silently, tears running down her cheeks. Mae was always so strong. Seeing her upset unnerved me now. She was shaking her head. "Jack, there's nothing we can do. There's four of them. They're stronger than we are. They're going to kill us the way they killed Charley."

She pressed her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. But I couldn't comfort her. Because I knew she was right.

There was no way out.

Winston Churchill once said that being shot at focused the mind wonderfully. My mind was going very fast now. I was thinking that I had made a mistake and I had to fix it. Even though it was a typically human mistake.

Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything-evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing-it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We looked at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing. Of course we knew it was changing but we behaved as if it wasn't. We denied the reality of change. So change always surprised us. Parents were even surprised by the maturing of their own children. They treated them as younger than they really were. And I had been surprised by the change in the evolution of the swarms. There was no reason why the swarms shouldn't evolve in two directions at the same time. Or three, or four, or ten directions, for that matter. I should have anticipated that. I should have looked for it, expected it. If I had, I might be better prepared to deal with the situation now. But instead I had treated the swarm as one problem-a problem out there, in the desert-and I had ignored other possibilities.

It's called denial, Jack.

I started to wonder what else I was denying now. What else I had failed to see. Where did I go wrong? What was the first clue I had missed? Probably the fact that my initial contact with a swarm had produced an allergic reaction-a reaction that almost killed me. Mae had called it a coliform reaction. Caused by a toxin from the bacteria in the swarm. That toxin was obviously the result of an evolutionary change in the E. coli that made up the swarm. Well, for that matter, the very presence of phage in the tank was an evolutionary change, a viral response to the bacteria that"Mae," I said. "Wait a minute."

"What?"

I said, "There might be something we can do to stop them."

She was skeptical; I could see it in her face. But she wiped her eyes and listened.

I said, "The swarm consists of particles and bacteria, is that right?"

"Yes…"

"The bacteria provide the raw ingredients for the particles to reproduce themselves. Right? Okay. So if the bacteria die, the swarm dies too?"

"Probably." She frowned. "Are you thinking of an antibiotic? Giving everyone an antibiotic? Because you need a lot of antibiotics to clear an E. coli infection, they'd have to take drugs for several days, and I don't-"

"No. I'm not thinking of antibiotics." I tapped the tank in front of me. "I'm thinking of this."

"Phage?"

"Why not?"

"I don't know if it will work," she said. She frowned. "It might. Except… how're you going to get the phage into them? They won't just drink it down, you know."

"Then we'll fill the atmosphere with it," I said. "They'll breathe it in and they'll never know."

"Uh-huh. How do we fill the atmosphere?"

"Easy. Don't shut down this tank. Feed the bacteria into the system. I want the assembly line to start making virus-a lot of virus. Then we release into the air." Mae sighed. "It won't work, Jack," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because the assembly line won't make a lot of virus."

"Why not?"

"Because of the way the virus reproduces. You know-the virus floats around, attaches to a cell wall, and injects itself into the cell. Then it takes over the cell's own RNA, and converts it to making more viruses. The cell ceases all its normal metabolic functions, and just cranks out viruses. Pretty soon the cell is packed with viruses, and it bursts like a balloon. All the viruses are released, they float to other cells, and the process starts all over."

"Yes… so?"

"If I introduce phage into the assembly lines, the virus will reproduce rapidly-for a while. But it will rupture a lot of cell membranes, leaving behind all those membranes as a lipid crud. The crud will clog the intermediate filters. After about an hour or two, the assembly lines will start to overheat, the safety systems will kick in, and shut everything down. The whole production line will just stop. No virus."

"Can the safety systems be turned off?"

"Yes. But I don't know how."

"Who does?"

"Only Ricky."

I shook my head. "That won't do us any good. Are you sure you can't figure out-"

"There's a code," she said. "Ricky's the only one who knows it."

"Oh."

"Anyway, Jack, it'd be too dangerous to turn off the safeties. Parts of that system operate at high temperature, and high voltages. And there's a lot of ketones and methane produced in the arms. It's continuously monitored and drawn off to keep the levels below a certain concentration. But if it isn't drawn off, and you start high voltage sparking…" She paused, shrugged.

"What're you saying? It could explode?"

"No, Jack. I'm saying it will explode. In a matter of minutes after the safeties are shut off. Six, maybe eight minutes at most. And you wouldn't want to be there when that happens. So you can't use the system to produce a lot of virus. Safeties on or safeties off, it just won't work." Silence.

Frustration.

I looked around the room. I looked at the steel tank, curving upward over my head. I looked at the rack of test tubes at Mae's feet. I looked in the corner, where I saw a mop, a bucket, and a one-gallon plastic bottle of water. And I looked at Mae, frightened, still on the verge of tears, but somehow holding it together.

And I had a plan.

"Okay. Do it anyway. Release the virus into the system."

"What's the point of that?"

"Just do it."

"Jack," she said. "Why are we doing this? I'm afraid they know that we know. We can't fool them. They're too clever. If we try to do this, they'll be onto us in a minute."

"Yes," I said. "They probably will."

"And it won't work, anyway. The system won't make viruses. So why, Jack? What good will it do?"

Mae had been a good friend through all this, and now I had a plan and I wasn't going to tell her. I hated to do it this way, but I had to make a distraction for the others. I had to fool them. And she had to help me do it-which meant she had to believe in a different plan. I said, "Mae, we have to distract them, to fool them. I want you to release the virus into the assembly line. Let them focus on that. Let them worry about that. Meanwhile, I'll take some virus up to the maintenance area beneath the roof, and dump it into the sprinkler reservoir."

"And then set the sprinklers off?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "And they'll be soaked in virus. Everybody in this facility. Drenched."

"Right."

She said, "It just might work, Jack."

"I can't think of anything better," I said. "Now open one of those valves, and let's draw off some test tubes of virus. And I want you to put some virus into that gallon jug over there." She hesitated. "The valve is on the other side of the tank. The security camera will see us."

"That's okay," I said. "It can't be helped now. You just have to buy me a little time."

"And how do I do that?"

I told her. She made a face. "You're kidding! They'll never do that!"

"Of course not. I just need a little time." …

We went around the tank. She filled the test tubes. The liquid that came out was a thick brown slop. It smelled fecal. It looked fecal. Mae said to me, "Are you sure about this?"

"Got to do it," I said. "There's no choice."

"You first."

I picked up the test tube, took a breath, and swallowed it whole. It was disgusting. My stomach heaved. I thought I would vomit, but I didn't. I took another breath, swallowed some water from the gallon jug, and looked at Mae.

"Awful, huh?" she said.

"Awful."

She picked up a test tube, held her nose, and swallowed. I waited through her coughing fit. She managed not to vomit. I gave her the gallon jug, she drank, and poured the rest out onto the floor. Then she filled it with brown slop.

The last thing she did was twist the handle of a big flow valve. "There," she said. "It's going into the system now."

"Okay," I said. I took two test tubes and stuck them in my shirt pocket. I took the gallon jug. It said ARROWHEAD PURE WATER on the label. "See you later." And I hurried off. As I went down the hallway, I figured there was one chance in a hundred that I would succeed. Maybe only one chance in a thousand.

But I had a chance.

Later on, I watched the entire scene on the security camera, so I knew what happened to Mae. She walked into the kitchen, carrying her rack of brown test tubes. The others were all there, eating. Julia gave her a frosty look. Vince ignored her. Ricky said, "What've you got there, Mae?"

"Phage," she said.

"What for?"

Now Julia looked over. Mae said, "It's from the fermentation tank."

"Ew, no wonder it stinks."

"Jack just drank one. He made me drink one."

Ricky snorted. "What'd you do that for? Jeez, I'm surprised you didn't puke."

"I almost did. Jack wants all of you to drink one, too."

Bobby laughed. "Yeah? What for?"

"To make sure none of you is infected."

Ricky frowned. "Infected? What do you mean, infected?"

"Jack says that Charley was harboring the swarm inside his body, so maybe the rest of us are, too. Or some of us. So you drink this virus, and it'll kill the bacteria inside you, and kill the swarm."

Bobby said, "Are you serious? Drink that crap? No way, Mae!"

She turned to Vince.

"Smells like shit to me," Vince said. "Let someone else try it first."

Mae said, "Ricky? You want to be the first?"

Ricky shook his head. "I'm not drinking that. Why should I?"

"Well, for one thing, you'd be assured you weren't infected. And for another, we would be assured, too."

"What do you mean, it's a test?"

Mae shrugged. "That's what Jack thinks."

Julia frowned. She turned to Mae. "Where is Jack now?" she said. "I don't know. The last time I saw him was by the fermentation chambers. I don't know where he is now."

"Yes, you do," Julia said coldly. "You know exactly where he is."

"I don't. He didn't tell me."

"He did tell you. He tells you everything," Julia said. "In fact, you and he planned this little interlude, didn't you? You couldn't seriously expect us to drink that stuff. Where is Jack, Mae?"

"I told you, I don't know."

Julia said to Bobby, "Check the monitors. Find him." She came around the table. "Now then, Mae." Her voice was calm, but full of menace. "I want you to answer me. And I want you to tell me the truth."

Mae backed away from her. Ricky and Vince were closing in on either side of her. Mae backed against the wall.

Julia advanced slowly. "Tell me now, Mae," she said. "It will be much better for you if you cooperate."

From the other side of the room, Bobby said, "I found him. He's going through the fab room. He's carrying a jug of the crap, looks like."

"Tell me, Mae," Julia said, leaning close to Mae. She was so close their lips were almost touching. Mae squeezed her eyes and her lips tightly shut. Her body was beginning to shake with fear. Julia caressed her hair. "Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. Just tell me what he is doing with that jug," Julia said.

Mae began to sob hysterically. "I knew it wouldn't work. I told him you would find out."

"Of course we would," Julia said quietly. "Of course we would find out. Just tell now."

"He took the jug of virus," Mae said, "and he's putting it in the water sprinklers."

"Is he?" Julia said. "That's really very clever of him. Thank you, sweetie." And she kissed Mae on the mouth. Mae squirmed, but her back was against the wall, and Julia held her head. When Julia finally stepped back, she said, "Try and stay calm. Just remember. It won't hurt you if you don't fight against it."

And she walked out of the room.

DAY 7
6:12 A.M.

Things happened faster than I expected. I could hear them running toward me down the corridor. I hastily hid the jug, then ran back and continued crossing the fabrication room. That was when they all came after me. I started to run. Vince tackled me, and I hit the concrete floor hard. Ricky threw himself on top of me after I was down. He knocked the wind out of me. Then Vince kicked me in the ribs a couple of times, and together they dragged me to my feet to face Julia.

"Hi, Jack," she said, smiling. "How's it going?"

"It's been better."

"We've had a nice talk with Mae," Julia said. "So there's no point in beating around the bush." She looked around the floor nearby. "Where is the jug?"

"What jug?"

"Jack." She shook her head sadly. "Why do you bother? Where is the jug of phage you were going to put in the sprinkler system?"

"I don't have any jug."

She stepped close to me. I could feel her breath on my face. "Jack… I know that look on your face, Jack. You have a plan, don't you? Now tell me where the jug is."

"What jug?"

Her lips brushed mine. I just stood there, still as a statue. "Jack darling," she whispered, "you know better than to play with dangerous things. I want the jug." I stood there.

"Jack… just one kiss…" She was close, seductive.

Ricky said, "Forget it, Julia. He's not afraid of you. He drank the virus and he thinks it'll protect him."

"Will it?" Julia said, stepping back.

"Maybe," Ricky said, "but I bet he's afraid to die."

And then he and Vince began dragging me across the fabrication room. They were taking me to the high mag field room. I began to struggle.

"That's right," Ricky said. "You know what's coming, don't you?" This was not in my plan. I hadn't expected it; I didn't know what I could do now. I struggled harder, kicking and twisting, but they were both immensely strong. They just dragged me forward. Julia opened the heavy steel door to the mag room. Inside, I saw the circular drum of the magnet, six feet in diameter.

They shoved me in roughly. I sprawled on the ground in the room. My head banged against the steel shielding. I heard the door click and lock.

I got to my feet.

I heard the rumble of the cooling pumps as they started up. The intercom clicked. I heard Ricky's voice. "Ever wonder why these walls are made out of steel, Jack? Pulsed magnets are dangerous. Run them continuously, and they blow apart. Get ripped apart by the field they generate. We got a one-minute load time. So you've got one minute to think it over." I had been in this room before, when Ricky showed me around. I remembered there was a knee plate, a safety cutoff. I hit it with my knee.

"Won't work, Jack," Ricky said laconically. "I inverted the switching. Now it turns the magnet on, instead of off. Thought you'd like to know."

The rumbling was louder. The room began to vibrate slightly. The air grew swiftly colder. In a moment I could see my breath.

"Sorry if you're uncomfortable, but that's only temporary," Ricky said. "Once the pulses get going, the room'll heat up fast. Uh, let's see. Forty-seven seconds." The sound was a rapid chunk-chunk-chunk, like a muffled jackhammer. It was loud, and getting louder. I could hardly hear Ricky over the intercom. "Now Jack," he said. "You have a family. A family that needs you. So think about your choices very carefully."

I said, "Let me speak to Julia."

"No, Jack. She doesn't want to talk to you right now. She's very disappointed in you, Jack."

"Let me speak to her."

"Jack, aren't you listening to me? She says no. Not until you tell her where the virus is." Chunk-chunk-chunk. The room was starting to get warmer. I could hear the gurgle of the coolant as it went through the piping. I kicked the safety plate with my knee. "I told you, Jack. It'll only turn the magnet on. Are you having trouble hearing me?"

"Yes," I yelled. "I am."

"Well that's too bad," Ricky said. "I'm sorry to hear that." At least, I thought that's what he was saying. The chunk-chunk-chunk seemed to fill the room, to make the very air vibrate. It sounded like an enormous MRI, those giant pumps. My head hurt. I stared at the magnet, at the heavy bolts that held the plates together. Those bolts would soon become missiles.

"We're not fucking around, Jack," Ricky said. "We'd hate to lose you. Twenty seconds." The load time was the time it took to charge the magnet capacitors, so that millisecond pulses of electricity could be delivered. I wondered how long after loading it would take for the pulses to blow the magnet apart. Probably a few seconds at most. So time was running out for me. I didn't know what to do. Everything had gone horribly wrong. And the worst part was that I had lost the only advantage I ever had, because they now recognized the importance of the virus. Earlier they hadn't focused on it as a threat. But now they understood, and were demanding I hand it over. Soon they would think to destroy the fermentation tank. They would eradicate the virus very thoroughly, I felt sure.

And there was nothing I could do about it. Not now.

I wondered how Mae was, and whether they had hurt her. I wondered if she was still alive. I felt detached, indifferent. I was sitting in an oversized MRI, that was all. This big terrifying sound, it must have been how Amanda felt, when she was in the MRI… My mind drifted, uncaring.

"Ten seconds," Ricky said. "Come on, Jack. Don't be a hero. It's not your style. Tell us where it is. Six seconds. Five. Jack, come on…"

The chunk-chunk-chunk stopped, and there was a whang! and a scream of rending metal. The magnet had switched on, for a few milliseconds.

"First pulse," Ricky said. "Don't be an asshole, Jack."

Another whang! Whang! Whang! The pulses were coming faster and faster. I saw the jacketing on the coolant beginning to indent with each pulse. They were coming too fast. Whang! Whang!

I couldn't take it anymore. I shouted, "Okay! Ricky! I'll tell you!"

Whang! "Go ahead, Jack!" Whang! "I'm waiting."

"No! Turn it off first. And I only tell Julia."

Whang! Whang! "Very unreasonable of you, Jack. You're in no position to bargain." Whang!

"You want the virus, or you want it to be a surprise?"

Whang! Whang! Whang!

And then abruptly, silence. Nothing but the low swoosh of the coolant flowing through the jacketing. The magnet was hot to the touch. But at least the MRI sound had stopped. The MRI…

I stood in the room, and waited for Julia to come in. And then, thinking it over, I sat down.

I heard the door unlock. Julia walked in.

"Jack. You're not hurt, are you?"

"No," I said. "Just my nerves are shot."

"I don't know why you put yourself through it," she said. "It was totally unnecessary. But guess what? I have good news. The helicopter just arrived."

"It did?"

"Yes, it's early today. Just think, wouldn't it be nice to be on it now, going home? Back to your house, back to your family? Wouldn't that feel great?"

I sat there with my back against the wall, looking up at her. "Are you saying I can go?"

"Of course, Jack. There's no reason for you to stay here. Just give me the bottle of virus, and go home."

I didn't believe her for a second. I was seeing the friendly Julia, the seductive Julia. But I didn't believe her. "Where is Mae?"

"She's resting."

"You've hurt her."

"No. No, no, no. Why would I do that?" She shook her head. "You really don't understand, do you? I don't want to hurt anybody, Jack. Not you, not Mae, not anybody. I especially don't want to hurt you."

"Try telling that to Ricky."

"Jack. Please. Let's put emotion aside and be logical for a moment. You're doing all this to yourself. Why can't you accept the new situation?" She held out her hand to me. I took it, and she pulled me up. She was strong. Stronger than I ever remembered her being. "After all," she said, "you're an integral part of this. You killed the wild type for us, Jack."

"So the benign type could flourish…"

"Exactly, Jack. So the benign type could flourish. And create a new synergy with human beings."

"The synergy that you have now, for example."

"That's right, Jack." She smiled. It was a creepy smile.

"You are, what? Coexisting? Coevolving?"

"Symbiotic." She was still smiling.

"Julia, this is all bullshit," I said. "This is a disease."

"Well of course you would say that. Because you don't know any better, yet. You haven't experienced it." She came forward and hugged me. I let her do it. "You have no idea what's ahead of you."

"Story of my life," I said.

"Stop being so stubborn, for once. Just go along with it. You look tired, Jack." I sighed. "I am tired," I said. And I was. I was feeling distinctly weak in her arms. I was sure she could sense it.

"Then why don't you just relax. Embrace me, Jack."

"I don't know. Maybe you're right."

"Yes, I am." She smiled again, ruffled my hair with her hand. "Oh, Jack… I really have missed you."

"Me too," I said. "I missed you." I gave her a hug, squeezed her, held her close. Our faces were close. She looked beautiful, her lips parted, her eyes staring up at me, soft, inviting. I felt her relax. Then I said, "Just tell me one thing, Julia. It's been bothering me."

"Sure, Jack."

"Why did you refuse to have an MRI in the hospital?"

She frowned, leaned back to look at me. "What? What do you mean?"

"Are you like Amanda?"

"Amanda?"

"Our baby daughter… you remember her. She was cured by the MRI. Instantly."

"What are you talking about?"

"Julia, does the swarm have some problem with magnetic fields?"

Her eyes widened. She began to struggle in my grip. "Let go of me! Ricky! Ricky!"

"Sorry, hon," I said. I kicked the plate with my knee. And there was a loud whang! as the magnet pulsed.

Julia screamed.

Her mouth was open as she screamed, a steady continuous sound, her face rigid with tension. I held her hard. The skin of her face began to shiver, vibrating rapidly. And then her features seemed to grow, to swell as she screamed. I thought her eyes looked frightened. The swelling continued, and began to break up into rivulets, and streams. And then in a sudden rush Julia literally disintegrated before my eyes. The skin of her swollen face and body blew away from her in streams of particles, like sand blown off a sand dune. The particles curved away in the arc of the magnetic field toward the sides of the room. I felt her body growing lighter and lighter in my arms. Still the particles continued to flow away, with a kind of whooshing sound, to all corners of the room. And when it was finished, what was left behind-what I still held in my arms-was a pale and cadaverous form. Julia's eyes were sunk deep in her cheeks. Her mouth was thin and cracked, her skin translucent. Her hair was colorless, brittle. Her collarbones protruded from her bony neck. She looked like she was dying of cancer. Her mouth worked. I heard faint words, hardly more than breathing. I leaned in, turned my ear to her mouth to hear.

"Jack," she whispered. "It's eating me."

I said, "I know."

Her voice was just a whisper. "You have to do something."

"I know."

"Jack… the children…"

"Okay."

She whispered, "I… kissed them…"

I said nothing. I just closed my eyes.

"Jack… Save my babies… Jack…"

"Okay," I said.

I glanced up at the walls and saw, all around me, Julia's face and body stretched and fitted to the room. The particles retained her appearance, but were now flattened onto the walls. And they were still moving, coordinating with the movement of her lips, the blink of her eyes. As I watched, they began to drift back from the walls toward her in a flesh-colored haze. Outside the room, I heard Ricky shouting, "Julia! Julia!" He kicked the door a couple of times, but he didn't come in. I knew he wouldn't dare. I had waited a full minute so the capacitors were charged. He couldn't stop me from pulsing the magnet now. I could do it at will-at least, until the charge ran out. I didn't know how long that would be. "Jack…"

I looked at her. Her eyes were sad, pleading.

"Jack," she said. "I didn't know…"

"It's all right," I said. The particles were drifting back, reassembling her face before my eyes. Julia was becoming solid, and beautiful again.

I kicked the knee plate.

Whang!

The particles shot away, flying back to the walls, though not so swiftly this time. And I had the cadaverous Julia in my arms again, her deep-set eyes pleading with me. I reached into my pocket, and pulled out one of the vials of phage. "I want you to drink this," I said.

"No… no…" She was agitated. "Too late… for…"

"Try," I said. I held the vial to her lips. "Come on, darling. I want you to try."

"No… please… Not important…"

Ricky was yelling: "Julia! Julia!" He pounded on the door. "Julia, are you all right?" The cadaver eyes rolled toward the door. Her mouth worked. Her skeleton fingers plucked at my shirt, scratching the cloth. She wanted to tell me something. I turned my head again, so I could hear.

She breathed shallowly, weakly. I couldn't catch the words. And then suddenly they were clear.

She said, "They have to kill you now."

"I know," I said.

"Don't let them… Children…"

"I won't."

Her bony hand touched my cheek. She whispered, "You know I always loved you, Jack. I would never hurt you."

"I know, Julia. I know."

The particles on the walls were drifting free once more. Now they seemed to telescope back, returning to her face and body. I kicked the knee plate once again, hoping for more time with her, but there was only a dull mechanical thunk.

The capacitor was drained.

And suddenly, in a whoosh, all the particles returned, and Julia was full and beautiful and strong as before, and she pushed me away from her with a contemptuous look and said in a loud, firm voice, "I'm sorry you had to see that, Jack."

"So am I," I said.

"But it can't be helped. We're wasting time. I want the bottle of virus, Jack. And I want it right now."

In a way it made everything easier. Because I understood I wasn't dealing with Julia anymore. I didn't have to worry about what might happen to her. I just had to worry about Mae-assuming she was still alive-and me.

And assuming I could stay alive for the next few minutes.

DAY 7
7:12 A.M.

"Okay," I said to her. "Okay. I'll get you the virus."

She frowned. "You've got that look on your face again…"

"No," I said. "I'm done. I'll take you."

"Good. We'll start with those vials in your pocket."

"What, these here?" I said. I reached into my pocket for them as I went through the door. Outside, Ricky and Vince were waiting for me.

"Very fucking funny," Ricky said. "You know you could have killed her. You could have killed your own wife."

"How about that," I said.

I was still fumbling in my pocket, as if the test tubes were stuck in the cloth. They didn't know what I was doing, so they grabbed me again, Vince on one side and Ricky on the other.

"Guys," I said, "I can't do this if you-"

"Let him go," Julia said, coming out of the room.

"Like hell," Vince said. "He'll pull something."

I was still struggling, trying to bring the tubes out. Finally I had them in my hand. While we struggled, I threw one onto the ground. It smashed on the concrete floor, and brown sludge spattered up.

"Jesus!" They all jumped away, releasing me. They stared at the floor, and bent over to look at their feet, making sure none of it had touched them.

And in that moment, I ran. …

I grabbed the jug from its hiding place, and kept going across the fabrication room. I had to get all the way across the room to the elevator, and ride it up to the ceiling level, where all the basic system equipment was located. Up there, where the air handlers were, and the electrical junction boxes-and the tank for the sprinkler system. If I could reach the elevator and ride it just seven or eight feet in the air, then they couldn't touch me. If I could do that, then my plan would work.

The elevator was a hundred and fifty feet away.

I ran hard, vaulting over the lowest arms of the octopus, ducking beneath the chest-high sections. I glanced back and couldn't see them through the maze of arms and machinery. But I heard the three of them shouting, and I heard running feet. I heard Julia say, "He's going for the sprinklers!" Ahead, I saw the yellow open cage of the elevator. I was going to make it, after all.

At that moment, I stumbled over one of the arms and went sprawling. The jug skidded across the floor, came to rest against a support beam. I scrambled quickly to my feet again, and retrieved the jug. I knew they were right behind me. I didn't dare look back now. I ran for the elevator, ducking beneath one final pipe, but when I looked again, Vince was already there. He must have known a shortcut through the octopus arms; somehow he had beaten me. Now he stood in the open cage, grinning. I looked back and saw Ricky just a few yards behind me, closing fast.

Julia called, "Give it up, Jack! It's no good."

She was right about that, it was no good at all. I couldn't get past Vince. And I couldn't outrun Ricky now, he was much too close. I jumped over a pipe, stepped around a standing electrical box, and ducked down. As Ricky jumped the pipe, I slammed my elbow upward between his legs. He howled and went down, rolling on the floor in agony. I stopped and kicked him in the head as hard as I could. That was for Charley.

I ran.

At the elevator, Vince stood in a half-crouch, fists bunched. He was relishing a fight. I ran straight toward him and he grinned broadly in anticipation.

And at the last moment, I swerved left. I jumped.

And started climbing the ladder on the wall.

Julia screamed, "Stop him! Stop him!"

It was difficult climbing, because I had my thumb hooked through the jug; the bottle kept banging painfully against the back of my right hand as I went up. I focused on the pain. I panic at heights and I didn't want to look down. And so I couldn't see what was dragging at my legs, pulling me back toward the floor. I kicked, but whatever it was held on to me. Finally, I turned to look. I was ten feet above the ground, and two rungs beneath me, Ricky had his free arm locked around my legs, his hand clutching my ankle. He jerked at my feet, and yanked them off the rung. I slid for an instant and then felt a burst of searing pain in my hands. But I held on.

Ricky was smiling grimly. I kicked my legs backward, trying to hit his face, but to no avail, he had both legs locked tight against his chest. He was immensely strong. I kept trying until I realized that I could pull one leg up and free. I did, and stomped down on his hand that was holding on to the rung. He yelled, and released my legs to hold on to the ladder with his other hand. I stomped again-and kicked straight back, catching him right under the chin. He slid down five rungs, then caught himself. He hung there, near the bottom of the ladder. I climbed again.

Julia was running across the floor. "Stop him!"

I heard the elevator grind as Vince rode up past me, heading toward the top. He would wait for me there.

I climbed.

I was fifteen feet above the floor, then twenty. I looked down to see Ricky pursuing me but he was far behind, I didn't think he could catch me, and then Julia came swirling up through the air toward me, spiraling like a corkscrew-and grabbed the ladder right alongside me. Except she wasn't Julia, she was the swarm, and for a moment the swarm was disorganized enough that I could see right through her in places; I could see the swirling particles that composed her. I looked down and saw the real Julia, deathly pale, standing and looking up at me, her face a skull. By now the swarm alongside me became solid-appearing, as I had seen it become solid before. It looked like Julia. The mouth moved and I heard a strange voice say "Sorry, Jack." And the swarm shrank, becoming denser still, collapsing into a small Julia, about four feet tall.

I turned to climb again.

The small Julia swung back, and slammed hard against my body. I felt like I was hit by a sack of cement, the wind knocked out of me. My grip loosened from the ladder, and I barely managed to hang on, as the Julia swarm smashed against me again. I ducked and dodged, grunting in pain, and kept going despite the impacts. The swarm had enough mass to hurt me, but not enough to knock me off the ladder.

The swarm must have realized it, too, because now the small Julia swarm compressed itself into a sphere, and slid smoothly forward to envelop my head in a buzzing cloud. I was totally blind. I could see nothing at all. It was as if I was in a dust storm. I groped for the next rung on the ladder, and the next after that. Pinpricks stung my face and hands, the pain becoming more intense, sharper. Apparently the swarm was learning how to focus pain. But at least it hadn't learned to suffocate. The swarm did nothing to interfere with my breathing. I kept on.

I climbed in darkness.

And then I felt Ricky pulling at my legs again. And in that moment, finally, I didn't see how I could go on.

I was twenty-five feet in the air, hanging on to a ladder for dear life, dragging a jug of brown sludge up with me, with Vince above waiting and Ricky below dragging, and a swarm buzzing around my head, blinding me and stinging me like hell. I was exhausted and defeated and I could feel my energy draining away. My fingers felt shaky on the rungs. I couldn't hold my grip much longer. I knew that all I had to do was release my grip and fall, and it would be over in an instant. I was finished, anyway.

I felt for the next rung, gripped it, and hauled my body up. But my shoulders burned. Ricky was pulling down fiercely. I knew he would win. They would all win. They were always going to win. And then I thought of Julia, pale as a ghost and brittle thin, saying in a whisper "Save my babies." I thought of the kids, waiting for me to come back. I saw them sitting around the table waiting for dinner. And I knew I had to go on no matter what. So I did.

It's not clear to me now what happened to Ricky. Somehow he pulled my legs off the rungs, and I hung in the air from my arms, kicking wildly, and I must have kicked him in the face and broken his nose.

Because in an instant Ricky let go of me, and I heard a thump-thump-thumping as his body went down the ladder, and he desperately tried to grab the rungs as he fell. I heard, "Ricky, no!" and the cloud vanished from my head, I was completely free again. I looked down and saw the Julia swarm alongside Ricky, who had caught himself about twelve feet above the floor. He looked up angrily. His mouth and nose were gushing blood. He started toward me but the Julia swarm said, "No, Ricky. No, you can't! Let Vince."

And then Ricky half climbed, half fell the rest of the way down the ladder to the ground, and the swarm reinhabited Julia's pale body, and the two of them stood there and watched me. I turned away from them and looked up the ladder.

Vince was standing there, five feet above me.

His feet were on the top rungs, and he was leaning over, blocking my way. There was no possible way I could get past him. I paused to take stock, shifted my weight on the ladder, got one leg up to the next rung, hooked my free arm around the rung nearest my face. But as I raised my leg, I felt the lump in my pocket. I paused.

I had one more vial of phage.

I reached into my pocket, and drew it out to show him. I pulled out the cork with my teeth. "Hey, Vince," I said. "How about a shit shower?"

He didn't move. But his eyes narrowed.

I moved up another rung.

"Better get back, Vince," I said. I was panting so hard I couldn't manage the proper menace. "Get on back before you get wet…"

One more rung. I was only three rungs below him.

"It's your call, Vince." I held the vial in my other hand. "I can't hit your face from down here. But I'll sure as hell hit your legs and shoes. Do you care?"

One more rung.

Vince stayed where he was.

"Maybe not," I said. "You like to live dangerously?"

I paused. If I advanced another rung, he could kick me in the head. If I stayed where I was, he would have to come down to me, and I could get him. So I stayed. "What do you say, Vince? Going to stay, or go?"

He frowned. His eyes flicked back and forth, from my face to the vial, and back again.

And then he stepped away from the ladder.

"Good boy, Vince."

I came up one rung.

He had stepped back so far that now I couldn't see where he was. I thought he was probably planning to rush me at the top. So I got ready to duck down, and swing laterally. Last rung.

And now I saw him. He wasn't planning anything. Vince was shaking with panic, a cornered animal, huddled back in the dark recess of the walkway. I couldn't read his eyes, but I saw his body tremble.

"Okay, Vince," I said. "I'm coming up."

I stepped onto the mesh platform. I was right at the top of the stairs, surrounded by roaring machinery. Not twenty paces away, I saw the paired steel tanks for the sprinkler system. I glanced down and saw Ricky and Julia, staring up at me. I wondered if they realized how close I was to my goal.

I looked back at Vince, just in time to see him pull a translucent white plastic tarp off a corner box. He wrapped himself in the tarp like a shield, and then, with a guttural yell, he charged. I was right at the edge of the ladder. I had no time to get out of the way, I just turned sideways and braced myself against a big three-foot pipe against the coming impact. Vince slammed into me.

The vial went flying out of my hand, shattering on the mesh. The jug was knocked from my other hand and tumbled along the walkway, coming to rest at the lip of the mesh path. Another few inches and it would go over. I moved toward it.

Still hiding behind the tarp, Vince smashed into me again. I was slammed back against the pipe. My head clanged on steel. I slipped on the brown sludge that dripped through holes in the mesh, barely kept my balance. Vince slammed me again.

In his panic he never realized I had lost my weapons. Or perhaps he couldn't see through the tarp. He just kept pounding me with his full body, and I finally slipped on the sludge and went down on my knees. I immediately scrambled toward the jug, which was about ten feet away. That odd behavior made Vince stop for a moment; he pulled down the tarp, saw the jug, and lunged for it, vaulting his whole body forward in the air.

But he was too late. I had my hand on the jug, and yanked it away, just as Vince landed, tarp and all, right where the jug had been. His head banged hard on the walkway lip. He was momentarily stunned, shaking his head to clear it.

And I grabbed the edge of the tarp, and yanked upward.

Vince yelled, and went over the side.

I watched as he hit the floor. His body didn't move. Then the swarm came off him, sliding into the air like his ghost. The ghost joined Ricky and Julia who were looking up at me. Then they turned away and hurried across the floor of the fabrication room, jumping over the octopus arms as they went. Their movements conveyed a clear sense of urgency. You might even think they were frightened.

Good, I thought.

I got to my feet and headed for the sprinkler tanks. The instructions were stenciled on the lower tank. It was easy to figure out the valves. I twisted the inflow, unscrewed the filler cap, waited for the pressurized nitrogen to hiss out, and then dumped in the jug of phage. I listened as it gurgled into the tank. Then I screwed the cap back on, twisted the valve, repressurized with nitrogen.

And I was done.

I took a deep breath.

I was going to win this thing, after all.

I rode the elevator down, feeling good for the first time all day.

DAY 7
8:12 A.M.

They were all clustered together on the other side of the room-Julia, Ricky, and now Bobby, as well. Vince was there, too, hovering in the background, but I could sometimes see through him, his swarm was slightly transparent. I wondered which of the others were only swarms now. I couldn't be sure. But it didn't matter now, anyway.

They were standing beside a bank of computer monitors that showed every parameter of the manufacturing process: graphs of temperature, output, God knows what else. But they had turned their backs to the monitors. They were watching me.

I walked calmly toward them, in measured steps. I was in no rush. Far from it. I must have taken a full two minutes to cross the fabrication room to where they were standing. They regarded me with puzzlement, and then with increasingly open amusement. "Well, Jack," Julia said finally. "How's your day going?"

"Not bad," I said. "Things are looking up."

"You seem very confident."

I shrugged.

"You've got everything under control?" Julia said.

I shrugged again.

"By the way, where is Mae?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Bobby's been looking for her. He can't find her anywhere."

"I have no idea," I said. "Why were you looking for her?"

"We thought we should all be together," Julia said, "when we finish our business here."

"Oh," I said. "Is that what happens now? We finish?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes, Jack. It is."

I couldn't risk looking at my watch, I had to try and gauge how much time had passed. I was guessing three or four minutes. I said, "So, what do you have in mind?" Julia began to pace. "Well, Jack, I'm very disappointed in how things have gone with you. I really am. You know how much I care about you. I would never want anything to happen to you. But you're fighting us, Jack. And you won't stop fighting. And we can't have that."

"I see," I said.

"We just can't, Jack."

I reached in my pocket and brought out a plastic cigarette lighter. If Julia or the others noticed, they gave no sign.

She kept pacing. "Jack, you put me in a difficult position."

"How's that?"

"You've been privileged to witness the birth of something truly new, here. Something new and miraculous. But you are not sympathetic, Jack."

"No, I'm not."

"Birth is painful."

"So is death," I said.

She continued to pace. "Yes," she said. "So is death." She frowned at me.

"Something the matter?"

"Where is Mae?" she said again.

"I don't know. I don't have the faintest idea."

She continued to frown. "We have to find her, Jack."

"I'm sure you will."

"Yes, we will."

"So you don't need me," I said. "Just do it on your own. I mean, you're the future, if I remember right. Superior and unstoppable. I'm just a guy."

Julia started walking around me, looking at me from all sides. I could see she was puzzled by my behavior. Or appraising. Maybe I had overdone it. Gone too far. She was picking up something. She suspected something. And that made me very nervous. I turned the cigarette lighter over in my hands, nervously.

"Jack," she said. "You disappoint me."

"You said that already."

"Yes," she said. "But I am still not sure…"

As if on some unspoken cue the men all began to walk in circles. They were moving in concentric circles around me. Was this some kind of scanning procedure? Or did it mean something else?

I was trying to guess the time. I figured five minutes had elapsed.

"Come, Jack. I want to look more closely."

She put her arm on my shoulder and led me over to one of the big octopus arms. It was easily six feet across, and mirrored on its surface. I could see Julia standing next to me. Her arm over my shoulder.

"Don't we make a handsome couple? It's a shame. We could have such a future."

I said, "Yeah, well…"

And the moment I spoke, a river of pale particles streamed off Julia, curved in the air, and came down like a shower all over my body and into my mouth. I clamped my mouth shut, but it didn't matter, because in the mirror my body seemed to dissolve away, to be replaced by Julia's body. It was as if her skin had left her, flowed into the air, and slid down over me. Now there were two Julias standing side by side in front of the mirror. I said, "Cut it out, Julia."

She laughed. "Why? I think it's fun."

"Stop it," I said. I sounded like myself, even though I looked like Julia. "Stop it."

"Don't you like it? I think it's amusing. You get to be me, for a while."

"I said, stop it."

"Jack, you're just no fun anymore."

I pulled at the Julia-image on my face, trying to tear it away like a mask. But I felt only my own skin beneath my fingertips. When I scratched at my cheek, the Julia-cheek showed scratches in the mirror. I reached back and touched my own hair. In my panic, I dropped the cigarette lighter. It clattered on the concrete floor.

"Get it off me," I said. "Get it off."

I heard a whoosh in my ears, and the Julia-skin was gone, sweeping into the air, then descending onto Julia. Except that she now looked like me. Now there were two Jacks, side by side in the mirror.

"Is this better?" she said.

"I don't know what you are trying to prove." I took a breath.

I bent over and picked up the lighter.

"I'm not trying to prove anything," she said. "I'm just feeling you out, Jack. And you know what I found? You've got a secret, Jack. And you thought I wouldn't find it out."

"Yes?"

"But I did," she said.

I didn't know how to take her words. I wasn't sure where I was anymore, and the changes in appearance had so unnerved me that I had lost track of the time. "You're worried about the time, aren't you, Jack," she said. "You needn't be. We have plenty of time. Everything is under control here. Are you going to tell us your secret? Or do we have to make you tell?"

Behind her, I could see the stacked monitor screens of the control station. The corner ones had a flashing bar along the top, with lettering that I couldn't read. I could see that some of the graphs were rising steeply, their lines turning from blue to yellow to red as they climbed. I did nothing.

Julia turned to the men. "Okay," she said. "Make him tell."

The three men converged toward me. It was time to show them. It was time to spring my trap. "No problem," I said. I raised my lighter, flicked the flame, and held it under the nearest sprinkler head.

The men stopped in their tracks. They watched me.

I held the lighter steady. The sprinkler head blackened with the smoke.

And nothing happened. …

The flame was melting the soft metal tab beneath the sprinkler head. Splotches of silver were dripping on the ground at my feet. And still nothing happened. The sprinklers didn't come on. "Oh shit," I said.

Julia was watching me thoughtfully. "It was a nice try. Very inventive, Jack. Good thinking. But you forgot one thing."

"What's that?"

"There's a safety system for the plant. And when we saw you going for the sprinklers, Ricky turned the system off. Safeties off, sprinklers off." She shrugged. "Guess you're out of luck, Jack."

I flicked the lighter off. There was nothing for me to do. I just stood there, feeling foolish. I thought I smelled a faint odor in the room. A kind of sweetish, nauseating odor. But I couldn't be sure.

"It was a nice try, though," Julia said. "But enough is enough." She turned to the men, and jerked her head. The three of them walked toward me. I said, "Hey guys, come on…" They didn't react. Their faces were impassive. They grabbed me and I started to struggle. "Hey, come on now…" I pulled free of them. "Hey!" Ricky said, "Don't make it any harder for us, Jack," and I said, "Fuck you, Ricky," and I spit in his face just as they threw me to the floor. I was hoping the virus would get in his mouth. I was hoping I would delay him, that we would have a fight. Anything for a delay. But they threw me to the floor, and then they all fell on me and began to strangle me. I could feel their hands on my neck. Bobby had his hands over my mouth and nose. I tried to bite him. He just kept his hands firmly in place and stared at me. Ricky smiled distantly at me. It was as if he didn't know me, had no feeling for me. They were all strangers, killing me efficiently and quickly. I pounded on them with my fists, until Ricky got his knee on one of my arms, pinning it down, and Bobby got the other arm. Now I couldn't move at all. I tried to kick my legs, but Julia was sitting on my legs. Helping them out. I saw the world start to turn misty before my eyes. A faint and misty gray.

Then there was a faint popping sound, almost like popcorn, or glass cracking, and then Julia screamed, "What is that?"

The three men released me, and got to their feet. They walked away from me. I lay on the ground, coughing. I didn't even try to get up.

"What is that?" Julia yelled.

The first of the octopus tubes burst open, high above us. Brown liquid steam hissed out. Another tube popped open, and another. The sound of hissing filled the room. The air was turning dark foggy brown, billowing brown.

Julia screamed "What is that?"

"It's the assembly line," Ricky said. "It's overheated. And it's blowing."

"How? How can that happen?"

I sat up, still coughing, and got to my feet. I said, "No safety systems, remember? You turned them off. Now it's blowing virus all through this room."

"Not for long," Julia said. "We'll have the safeties back in two seconds." Ricky was already standing at the control board, frantically hitting keys.

"Good thinking, Julia," I said. I lit my cigarette lighter, and held it under the sprinkler head.

Julia screamed, "Stop! Ricky, stop!"

Ricky stopped.

I said, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

Julia turned in fury and hissed, "I hate you."

Already her body was turning shades of gray, fading to a kind of monochrome. So was Ricky, the color washing out of him. It was the virus in the air, already affecting their swarms. There was a brief crackle of sparks, from high in the octopus arms. Then another short lightning arc. Ricky saw it and yelled, "Forget it, Julia! We take our chances!" He hit the keys and turned the safety system back on. Alarms started to sound. The screens flashed red with the excess concentrations of methane and other gases. The main screen showed: safety systems on. And the sprinklers burst into cones of brown spray. …

They screamed as the water touched them. They were writhing and beginning to shrink, to shrivel right before my eyes. Julia's face was contorted. She stared at me with pure hatred. But already she was starting to dissolve. She fell to her knees, and then onto her back. The others were all rolling on the floor, screaming in pain.

"Come on, Jack." Someone was tugging at my sleeve. It was Mae. "Come on," she said. "This room is full of methane. You have to go."

I hesitated, still looking at Julia. Then we turned and ran.

DAY 7
9:11 A.M.

The helicopter pilot pushed the doors open as we ran across the pad. We jumped in. Mae said, "Go!"

He said, "I'll have to insist you get your harnesses on before-"

"Fly this fucking thing!" I yelled.

"Sorry, it's a regulation, and it's not safe-"

Black smoke started to pour out of the power station door we had just come out of. It billowed into the blue desert sky.

The pilot saw it and said, "Hang on!"

We lifted off and headed north, swinging wide of the building. Now there was smoke coming from all the exhaust vents near the roof. A black haze was rising into the air. Mae said, "Fire burns the nanoparticles and the bacteria, too. Don't worry."

The pilot said, "Where are we going?"

"Home."

He headed west, and within minutes we had left the building behind. It disappeared below the horizon. Mae was sitting back in her seat, eyes closed. I said to her, "I thought it was going to blow up. But they turned the safety system back on again. So I guess it won't." She said nothing.

I said, "So what was the big rush to get out of there? And where were you, anyway? Nobody could find you."

She said, "I was outside, in the storage shed."

"Doing what?"

"Looking for more thermite."

"Find any?"

There was no sound. Just a flash of yellow light that spread across the desert horizon for an instant, and then faded. You could almost believe it never happened. But the helicopter rocked and jolted as the shock wave passed us.

The pilot said, "Holy Mother of God, what was that?"

"Industrial accident," I said. "Very unfortunate."

He reached for his radio. "I better report it."

"Yes," I said. "You better do that."

We flew west, and I saw the green line of the forest and the rolling foothills of the Sierras, as we crossed into California.

DAY 7
11:57 P.M.

It's late.

Almost midnight. The house is silent around me. I am not sure how this will turn out. The kids are all desperately sick, throwing up after I gave them the virus. I can hear my son and daughter retching in separate bathrooms. I went in to check on them a few minutes ago, to see what was coming up. Their faces were deathly pale. I can see they're afraid, because they know I'm afraid. I haven't told them about Julia yet. They haven't asked. They're too sick to ask right now.

I'm worried most about the baby, because I had to give her the virus, too. It was her only hope. Ellen's with her now, but Ellen is vomiting, too. The baby has yet to throw up. I don't know whether that's good or bad. Young kids react differently.

I think I'm okay, at least for the moment. I'm dead tired. I think I've been dozing off from time to time all night. Right now I'm sitting here looking out the back window, waiting for Mae. She hopped the fence at the end of my backyard, and is probably scrambling around in the brush on the slope that goes down behind the property, where the sprinklers are. She thought there was a faint green light coming from somewhere down the slope. I told her not to go down there alone, but I'm too tired to go get her. If she waits until tomorrow, the Army can come here with flame throwers and blast the hell out of whatever it is.

The Army is acting dumb about this whole thing, but I have Julia's computer here at home, and I have an email trail on her hard drive. I removed the hard drive, just to be safe. I duped it, and put the original in a safe deposit box in town. I'm not really worried about the Army. I'm worried about Larry Handler and the others at Xymos. They know they have horrific lawsuits on their hands. The company will declare bankruptcy sometime this week, but they're still liable for criminal charges. Larry especially. I wouldn't cry if he went to jail. Mae and I have managed to put together most of the events of the past few days. My daughter's rash was caused by gamma assemblers-the micromachines that assembled finished molecules from component fragments. The gammas must have been on Julia's clothing when she came home from the lab. Julia worried about that possibility; that was why she took a shower as soon as she got home. The lab itself had good decontamination procedures, but Julia was interacting with the swarms outside the lab. She knew there was a danger. Anyway, that night she accidentally let the gammas loose in the nursery. The gamma assemblers are designed to cut microfragments of silicon, but faced with a pliable substance like skin, they only pinch it. It's painful, and causes microtrauma of a sort that nobody had ever seen before. Or would ever have suspected. No wonder Amanda didn't have a fever. She didn't have an infection. She had a coating of biting particles on her skin. The magnetic field of the MRI cured her in an instant; all the assemblers were yanked away from her in the first pulse. (Apparently that is also what happened to the guy in the desert. He somehow came in contact with a batch of assemblers. He had been camping within a mile of the Xymos desert facility.) Julia knew what was wrong with Amanda, but she didn't tell anybody. Instead she called the Xymos cleanup crew, which showed up in the middle of the night while I was at the hospital. Only Eric saw them, and now I know what he saw. Because the same crew arrived here a few hours ago to sweep my house. They were the same men I'd seen in the van on the road that night.

The lead man wears a silver bunny suit that's antimagnetic, and he does look ghostly. His silvered mask makes him appear faceless. He goes into the environment first to check it out. Then four other men in coveralls follow, to vacuum and clean up. I had told Eric he'd dreamed it, but he hadn't. The crew left behind one of their sensor cubes, under Amanda's bed. That was intentional, to check for residual gammas in case they'd missed any. It wasn't a surge suppressor; it was just constructed to look like one.

When I finally figured all this out, I was furious with Julia for not telling me what was going on. For making me worry. But of course, she was diseased. And there's no point in being angry with her now.

Eric's MP3 player was cut by gamma assemblers, the same way the cars in the desert were. And just as the MRI was. For some reason the gamma assemblers cut memory chips and leave central processors alone. I haven't heard an explanation why. There was a swarm in the convertible with Julia that night. It had come back with her from the desert. I don't know whether she brought it intentionally or not. The swarm could collapse into nothing, which is why Eric didn't see anything when he went out to the car to look. And I wasn't sure of what I saw when she pulled away, which was reasonable enough. The swarm was probably catching the light in odd ways. In my memory, it looked a little like Ricky, but it was probably too soon for the swarm to be taking on appearances. It hadn't evolved that much, yet. Or maybe I just saw an indistinct shape, and in my jealousy I imagined it to be a person. I don't think I made it up, but maybe I did. Ellen thinks I might have. After her car crashed, Julia called for the cleanup crews. That's why they were there on the road late that night. They were waiting to go down the hill and clean up the site. I don't know what caused the crash itself, whether it was something to do with the swarm or whether it was just an accident. There's no one to ask about it now.

The facility in the desert was entirely destroyed. There was enough methane in the main laboratory to produce a fireball in excess of two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Any biological materials would have been incinerated. But I still worry. They never found any bodies in the ruins, not even skeletons. …

Mae took the bacteriophage to her old lab in Palo Alto. I hope she made them understand how desperate the situation is. She's being very quiet about their reaction. I think they should put the phage into the water supply, but Mae says the chlorine will take it out. Maybe there should be a vaccine program. As far as we know, the phage works to kill the swarms. Sometimes I have ringing in my ears, which is a worrisome sign. And I feel a vibrating in my chest and abdomen. I can't tell if I am just paranoid, or if something is really happening to me. I try to keep a brave face for the kids, but of course you can't fool kids. They know I'm frightened.

The last mystery to be cleared up was why the swarms always returned to the laboratory. It never made any sense to me. I kept worrying about it because it was such an unreasonable goal. It didn't fit the PREDPREY formulations. Why would a predator keep returning to a particular location?

Of course, in retrospect there was only one possible answer. The swarms were intentionally programmed to return. The goal was explicitly defined by the programmers themselves. But why would anybody program in a goal like that?

I didn't know until a few hours ago.

The code that Ricky showed me wasn't the code they had actually used on the particles. He couldn't show me the real code, because I would have known immediately what had been done. Ricky didn't ever tell me. Nobody ever told me.

What bothers me most is an email I found on Julia's hard drive earlier today. It was from her to Ricky Morse, with a CC to Larry Handler, the head of Xymos, outlining the procedure to follow to get the camera swarm to work in high wind. The plan was to intentionally release a swarm into the environment.

And that's exactly what they did.

They pretended it was an accidental release, caused by missing air filters. That's why Ricky gave me that long guided tour, and the song and dance about the contractor and ventilation system. But none of what he told me was true. The release was planned. It was intentional from the beginning.

When they couldn't make the swarm work in high wind, they tried to engineer a solution. They failed. The particles were just too small and light-and arguably too stupid, too. They had design flaws from the beginning and now they couldn't solve them. Their whole multimillion-dollar defense project was going down the drain, and they couldn't solve it. So they decided to make the swarm solve it for them.

They reconfigured the nanoparticles to add solar power and memory. They rewrote the particle program to include a genetic algorithm. And they released the particles to reproduce and evolve, and see if the swarm could learn to survive on its own. And they succeeded.

It was so dumb, it was breathtaking. I didn't understand how they could have embarked on this plan without recognizing the consequences. Like everything else I'd seen at Xymos, it was jerry-built, half-baked, concocted in a hurry to solve present problems and never a thought to the future. That might be typical corporate thinking when you were under the gun, but with technologies like these it was dangerous as hell.

But of course, the real truth was more complicated. The technology itself invited the behavior. Distributed agent systems ran by themselves. That was how they functioned. That was the whole point: you set them up and let them go. You got in the habit of doing that. You got in the habit of treating agent networks that way. Autonomy was the point of it all. But it was one thing to release a population of virtual agents inside a computer's memory to solve a problem. It was another thing to set real agents free in the real world. They just didn't see the difference. Or they didn't care to see it.

And they set the swarm free.

The technical term for this is "self-optimization." The swarm evolves on its own, the less successful agents die off, and the more successful agents reproduce the next generation. After ten or a hundred generations, the swarm evolves toward a best solution. An optimum solution. This kind of thing is done all the time inside the computer. It's even used to generate new computer algorithms. Danny Hillis did one of the first of those runs years back, to optimize a sorting algorithm. To see if the computer could figure out how to make itself work better. The program found a new method. Other people quickly followed his lead. But it hasn't been done with autonomous robots in the real world. As far as I know, this was the first time. Maybe it's already happened, and we just didn't hear about it. Anyway, I'm sure it'll happen again.

Probably soon.

It's two in the morning. The kids finally stopped vomiting. They've gone to sleep. They seem to be peaceful. The baby is asleep. Ellen is still pretty sick. I must have dozed off again. I don't know what woke me. I see Mae coming up the hill from behind my house. She's with the guy in the silver suit, and the rest of the SSVT team. She's walking toward me. I can see that she's smiling. I hope her news is good.

I could use some good news right now.

Julia's original email says, "We have nothing to lose." But in the end they lost everything-their company, their lives, everything. And the ironic thing is, the procedure worked. The swarm actually solved the problem they had set for it.

But then it kept going, kept evolving.

And they let it.

They didn't understand what they were doing.

I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.

I hope it's not.

We might get lucky.

Bibliography This novel is entirely fictitious, but the underlying research programs are real. The following references may assist the interested reader to learn more about the growing convergence of genetics, nanotechnology, and distributed intelligence.

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The End