They were concentrated in fifteen major cities for maximum disruption. New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Mexico City, Moscow, Washington, Rome, Beijing, Jerusalem, Mumbai, and Sydney.
By the time Lear’s plane landed at the Ushuaia’s airport, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, and Berlin were burning.
The flight to the ice would be slower and in a less comfortable plane: Lear’s sumptuous private jet could not land on ice. It was two thousand seven hundred miles from Ushuaia to Cathexis Base, but flying in a refurbished C-130 Hercules turboprop with a cruising speed of three hundred thirty miles an hour, it took more than eight hours. Another one hundred twenty-eight thousand people, minus those who had already passed away, were driven into madness.
These were concentrated in and around military bases in the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, and Pakistan. The choice of countries was not random: each had nuclear weapons, but of those, France and the UK used only submarine-based weapons.
The first launch was from Russia, but the missile and its warhead were destroyed in flight, en route to North Dakota.
The second launch was from Pakistan. It landed in the middle of a department store in New Delhi, India, but did not explode. The madman who had fired it had not armed the warhead.
But the Indian military did not wait to consider the situation. Indian missiles flew minutes after the C-130 slid to a stop on the Cathexis Base airfield.
Fifty-two Agni-III and Agni-IV missiles flew, striking targets in Pakistan. By the time the C-130 had been refueled for the last leg of its flight, there were thirty-one million dead, a number that would double within days.
After a shorter hop and a very bumpy landing, Bug Man stumbled from the plane still wearing the T-shirt he’d been wearing in New York. His teeth, his entire mouth, and jaw hurt. He was exhausted, having been awakened repeatedly by nightmares. And now he was more cold than he would have believed possible. And standing in the whitest place on Earth.
“Where are we?”
“The bottom of the world, Buggy, the place where machines go to die. People, too.”
A green Sno-Cat was tearing across the snow toward them. It roared to a stop and two men jumped out. One ran to Lystra with a full-length coat that many foxes had died to provide. The other handed a voluminous down parka to Bug Man, who shivered into it. A fur-lined hat was plopped on his head, and he was hustled into the backseat of the Sno-Cat. It wasn’t exactly warm inside, but it wasn’t fatally cold, either.
“How was your flight, Ms. Reid?”
“Fine, Stillers. Fine. Are all the necessary personnel in from Forward Green?”
“Yes, ma’am, all personnel, all equipment, all supplies, except for the final two sleighs, which are being prepped and will be brought here tomorrow. And we’ve topped off the fuel both here and at Forward Green.”
“Then we are in lockdown,” she said pleasantly. “Except for the final sleighs. Make sure no one shoots at them.” She shook her head as if marveling at the world’s unpredictability. “The world has just gone to hell in a handbasket, yeah, and we have a long year ahead of us.”
Not waiting a second, Stillers keyed a radio and said, “Lockdown, lockdown. Lockdown, lockdown.”
Bug Man could not quite imagine what was being locked down. It wasn’t like there was a crowd standing around trying to break in. They were in the middle of a whole lot of nothing as far as he could see.
Then, as if by a miracle, the ground seemed to open up. The Sno-Cat rounded a sharp corner, treads churning up hard-packed snow, and plunged down a long ramp into a valley. He saw buildings and an improbable house and …
“Is that a swimming pool?”
“Yes,” Lystra said. “One of only two in Antarctica.” Then, with a wistful look, she added, “I like to swim. It’s a very clean sort of sport, yeah. And I look amazing in a bathing suit, yeah, if I say so myself.”
Bug Man thought that was likely true, if amazing was the right word for a woman covered in tattoos of her victims.
“There’s also an underground greenhouse. Palm trees! Palm trees in Antarctica, yeah. Yeah. We can live very well here for two years, or survive for three. If necessary. We’ll see.”
“Do you want to go to the office?” Stillers asked deferentially.
“No, the house. Find quarters for Bug Man, but for now he’ll stay with me.” She patted Bug Man’s knee. “I’ve decided he’s my good-luck charm. Oh, and tell the dentist, Dr. Whatever-the-Hell, yeah, he’s got a customer. Patient. Whatever. Yeah.”
Tanner was among those waiting when an unannounced flight came into McMurdo, running on fumes, or so the pilot said. Planes did not just suddenly arrive on the ice. And Tanner, like everyone else at the base, had been watching events back in the world with disbelief and anxiety turning to fear.
Tanner had called Naval Intelligence in Washington and been told that Satan is loose among the flock, hah-hah, redrum redrum, they’re listening, don’t you know that?
A call higher up the chain of command to the Pentagon had gone unanswered. Calls to USAP and Lockheed had yielded nothing.
Tanner was in summer gear—a parka over padded jeans with the big Mickey Mouse boots unlaced. He wore gloves and goggles and a light stocking cap with a Pittsburgh Pirates logo.
The plane, a C-130, a Herc in the patois, landed easily, and killed engines. Tanner reached under his parka to touch the butt of his trusty Colt .45 auto. Everyone authorized to carry a gun was carrying one. As a safety measure that would have been absurd in earlier times, Tanner had stationed an ex-sergeant with a sniper rifle on the roof of a parked truck.
The person who stepped first from the plane could not have been less likely.
“It’s a girl,” Tanner said.
“Yep, that’s a girl.” This from the station chief beside him. “Looks kind of familiar. Not some crazy pop singer, is it?”
Behind the girl came a grown woman, rather beautiful and just exotic enough to hold Tanner’s eye for longer than strictly necessary. Then a girl with a strange half mohawk and a stranger tattoo below one eye. And finally a young man with dark hair, a calm expression, and an air of tension that Tanner associated with trouble.
The girl walked up without hesitation, in a hurry. She pulled off her glove and stuck out her hand. “I’m Pla—Sadie McLure.”
The station chief, Joe Washington, shook her hand and glanced at Tanner.
“Sadie McLure,” Tanner repeated, frowning as he tried to pull the name from memory.
“Yes. As in Grey McLure crashing a jet into a Jets game,” she said. No hint of a smile. A very serious, even grim young woman. “These are my friends. Wilkes. Dr. Anya Violet. Michael Ford.”
Tanner remembered now. “What exactly are you doing here, Ms. McLure?”
Her eyes bored into him. They were eyes that belonged in a much older face. “We’re here to try to stop what’s happening. We’re here to kill the woman responsible.”
“The woman responsible? Here?” Washington wanted to laugh, but the faces before him did not look as if they were joking.
“Lystra Reid.”
“Cathexis Inc.?”
“And some other businesses as well. What’s happening is her doing.”
The station chief had to laugh at that. “Excuse me, but I’ve met Lystra Reid, and she’s a sharp young businesswoman. I don’t know what—”
“Let them talk, Joe,” Tanner said quietly.
The station chief seemed almost offended, but he nodded. “Okay. Not here. We’ll drive you to my office.”
An hour later Plath and Vincent, with occasional outbursts from Wilkes, had told their tale.
“To say that sounds crazy is an understatement,” the station chief said.
“Do you have any proof?” Tanner asked.
Plath cocked her head and looked at him. “You know something.”
Tanner smiled slightly. “Do you have proof?”
“As a matter of
fact, I do,” Plath said. “We thought you might be skeptical. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to just touch my finger to your face. Then, in a few minutes you’re going to open a book at random. You’ll hold the page close to your face. And I’ll tell you what you’re reading.”
“What is that, some kind of magic trick?”
“It’s the best I can do on short notice,” Plath snapped. “If you like, I could blind you, or start sticking pins in your brain and giving you some amazing hallucinations.”
“I’ll read a book,” Tanner said. Ten minutes later he was shaken and convinced.
“What do you want from us?” Washington asked. He was still skeptical, still not sure it wasn’t some sort of trick, but he also knew that in matters of security, Tanner was the real boss.
“Fuel,” Plath said. “And men with guns, if you have any.”
“Men, I have. Guns? I could spare a couple of handguns and a hunting rifle. But Mr. Tanner here may have other means.”
Tanner shifted uncomfortably, then made a decision. “Okay. Cards on the table. We’ve been looking at Cathexis for some time now in relation to a souped-up hovercraft they seem to have built. An armed hovercraft. I sent a person with some military background in to check it out. I have not heard back from her.”
Vincent spoke for the first time. “You’re intelligence.”
Tanner gave a short nod.
“Then you have people you could call.”
Tanner snorted. “Are you kidding me? With what’s happening back in the world? Shit has hit the fan. Cities are burning, people are scared to death, my chain of command …” He threw up his hands.
“If we can prove to you that this woman is doing what we say she’s doing, if we can prove to you that we can stop her, will you do all you can?” Plath asked.
Tanner thought about that for a moment and glanced at Washington, who raised his hands—palms out—in a gesture that said, It’s on you. “Yeah,” Tanner said. “You prove all that, and I will do all I can to bring down the wrath of God.” Then, under his breath he added, “But it won’t work.”
Surreal, that was the word Bug Man had been searching for. Surreal.
He was in Antarctica, in a dry valley way below the ice, in a house, in a very expensively furnished living room, looking out of expansive windows onto a domed swimming pool, while a lunatic and mass murderer suggested he could replace the teeth she herself had broken with fangs. Green fangs.
“It would give you an original look,” Lear said. “Do you know how to cook at all? My cook is busy, yeah, helping to inventory supplies. Can you fry some eggs?”
A television was on in the kitchen where Bug Man rummaged in a vast refrigerator for eggs and bacon. That much he could do. Eggs and bacon.
The television showed the BBC, but it wasn’t any of the sets he’d ever seen them use. It looked a bit as if the male and female announcers were broadcasting from a concrete bomb shelter.
The crawl at the bottom of the screen was full of warnings from the army that people should stay in their homes and off the streets. That and statements from Number 10 and acting prime minister Dermot Tricklebank, whoever that was, to the effect that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself.
“Hunh,” Lear commented. “That’s a Roosevelt quote. Shouldn’t they be using Churchill?”
The stovetop was a restaurant-quality thing with massive knobs and too many burners. It took Bug Man a few anxious minutes to figure out how to work the knobs, but eventually he was able to lay six strips of bacon on a grill.
“Crispy,” Lear said, pointing at the bacon.
The announcer said, “The nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan has escalated, with at least five major Indian cities now essentially vaporized.”
“Hah,” Lear said. “And don’t forget the eggs. Not too runny.”
“Okay.”
“Winds are whipping the fire now spreading out of control through Bayswater and Notting Hill. Our reporters have seen no evidence of effective emergency response.”
“It’s hard to tell when an egg is done, yeah, but … Oh, look look look! He’s setting himself on fire!”
Bug Man did not want to see that and instead focused on his work.
“Looked like a banker. Nice suit. It’s interesting that a person can be mad and yet plan ahead well enough to find gas. Or petrol, as you would say.”
Yes, Bug Man thought grimly, who would have thought a crazy person could plan? He turned the bacon and held down the curling tips.
“Oh, look at that! Look at that video!” This was spoken as an order not a request, so Bug Man looked. The tape showed an American Airlines 787 roaring down from the sky and smashing into a very large, gray Gothic church. The announcer said something about the cathedral at Reims.
“Not that great an explosion, though,” Lear opined.
Suddenly the BBC was off the air, replaced by static.
“I knew this would be a problem,” Lear said. “I avoided messing with media folks, yeah, but there’s no way to stop someone cutting their power.” She began flipping through channels. Static and more static. Then what appeared to be a Japanese news station with a fixed camera aimed at a woman who was giggling and stabbing her arm with broken shards of wooden chopsticks.
Al Jazeera was on, but in Arabic. A Russian station had a bespectacled, overweight man with a bottle of vodka before him on the anchor desk. He seemed to be announcing news, but his voice was slurred, and as they watched he began weeping.
“CNN! Yes! See, that’s why I took it very easy on Atlanta.”
Lear seemed to think she deserved some praise for her foresight.
“At this time we cannot confirm that the event in Norfolk, Virginia, was a nuclear explosion, although Norfolk is a major naval base that does handle ships carrying nuclear weapons.”
“No video?” Lear moaned.
“We now have video of an oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, which is burning.”
“I’ve seen oil refineries burn,” Lear complained. “I’ve never seen a nuked city. Come on, they must have some video.”
“Here you go.” Bug Man plated the bacon and eggs.
“Next time drain the bacon a little better. Blot it with a paper towel.”
They went into the dining room, all rich, dark wood with high-backed chairs. A chandelier hung above the table.
“It’s going well, don’t you think? Yeah?”
“Yes.” What else could he say?
“Early stages yet.” She munched thoughtfully. “I wonder if I should spread it out, you know? My first plan was to keep up the pace, sixteen thousand an hour. But what if … No. No, I’m sticking with the original plan. I don’t want to start second-guessing myself.”
No, you wouldn’t want that, Bug Man thought. He wondered if his mother was still alive. Had she killed herself like so many seemed to do? Was she even now wandering the streets, raving? Maybe hurting other people? Maybe being hurt herself?
What was the point of caring? Lear had won. The world was going crazy. The human race was killing itself in an orgy of madness.
“I have some work to do,” Lear said. “You stay and watch.”
“I don’t think—”
“That wasn’t a request, yeah? Stay and watch. You know what to look for.”
“I do?” Bug Man was mystified.
“The Armstrongs had self-replicating nanobots. Yeah. Maybe the fire at the Tulip got them all. Maybe not.” Lear shook her head and her mouth was a grim, worried line. But she cheered up considerably when the news announced that Berlin, Germany, had been hit by a nuclear weapon.
THIRTY
The C-130 carrying Plath and her crew, as well as Tanner and seventeen ex-military volunteers from McMurdo, landed at Cathexis Base to find employees there bewildered and frightened. Their medical team had all been ordered to Forward Green a day earlier without explanation. And the Plague of Madness had spread there as well. They had seven people locke
d up. A dormitory had been burned to the ground, killing three.
The C-130 flew on to Forward Green. It was a cargo plane, a cavernous, incredibly noisy and very cold open space with webbing seats along both sides. Large dotted lines had been painted on the curved walls, indicating just where the propellers would chew through the fuselage should one come off in flight.
“This is their only other facility, so far as we know,” Tanner said.
The plane circled, coming around into a strengthening wind. The sun was low on the horizon, as much like night as Antarctica got this time of year.
“I don’t like that layout,” one of the ex-soldiers said. “Those towers sure as hell look like gun emplacements.”
The pilot called back over the intercom. “They are refusing to let us land.” Then, a moment later, “Sir, they are warning us that they will open fire if we attempt a landing.”
Tanner looked at Plath. “Well, I guess that tends to confirm your story.”
He unhooked himself from his webbing seat and went forward to speak to the pilot.
Plath looked at Vincent—arms folded, eyes in shadow. At Wilkes, snoring beside her, somehow curled into a fetal ball in the webbing. And Anya, who seemed never to need sleep.
Plath had removed her biot from Anya. With apologies. They were all three now in her own head, as safe as they could be. To kill her biots you’d have to kill Plath herself. Three windows were open, as they always were, now showing slithering macrophages and twitching neurons and what were hopefully spiky balls of pollen in her eye and not bacteria.
She—
BOOOOM!
Something had smacked the C-130 a staggering blow. Tanner came tearing back from the cockpit, the back of his jacket on fire. Plath unbuckled and threw her parka over him, smothering the flames.
The plane jerked again, not as hard, but then nosed down. They were low, no more than four thousand feet up; there was little room to recover.
The nose came slowly, slowly up, but as it did the plane went into a steep turn that threw Plath into Vincent.