Claire thought: All males get crazy when they get powerful enough. “You’ve got agents who’re going to release this stuff on your signal—all over the planet?”
“Not precisely,” Witcher said, glancing away.
“What it is, most of them are in two central locations, where the labs are,” Stoner said. “They’re supposed to pick up the stuff, spread out from there. Most of ’em don’t know what they’re going to release.”
Stoner was at another fone, watching the chronometer digitalizing the seconds and minutes in the corner of the screen. A text message flashed onto the screen then. Something he’d been waiting for, Claire thought, judging from his expression.
“That’s it. It’s all over.” Stoner turned to the other fone. “It’s already over with, ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ We traced your operation, busted your labs. I hipped some old acquaintances in the NSA to it. You can transmit all you want. We’ve got your people. And your viruses.”
Claire sagged with relief.
Stoner went on, “It was too fucking ludicrous to work.”
“You people…” Witcher shook his head, tears in his eyes. Gaping. “You have no perspective. Well, I’m cutting the NR off. Not one penny more, not one page of intelligence more.”
“We don’t need you, it turns out,” Claire said. “We’ve found… another backer.”
“Have you.” His voice shrill. Breaking as he went on, “Have you now. The New Resistance was practically my creation. It should be under my guidance. And if it’s not, it’ll go completely wrong. It seems it already has! Fine. We’ll see how much credibility the NR has after tonight. Stoner, you didn’t get all the agents there were to get. There was one who was already deployed. Already has the canister at ready. She’ll be at the receiver in about two hours. I’m going to signal her. I’m going to tell her: Use it!”
“Who is it, Witcher?” Russ asked. “Where are they?”
“Oh, she’s ostensibly an NR agent,” Witcher said. “I have an arrangement with her. To release the virus in a certain population center. She doesn’t know the whole of my strategy.” He wiped his eyes with a sleeve. Gave a cavalier smile. Had his aplomb back. “I’ll make a start and I’ll destroy you people. And then I’ll start over.”
“Where’s the virus?” Russ asked.
Witcher chuckled.
That kiddy-show-host smile came back.
And then he switched off the fone.
• 12 •
Smoke was there. Jerome was there. Bettina was there. Kessler was there. Richard the crow was there.
Kessler was a medium-tall, round-faced man with short black hair, streaked blue-white to signify his work as a video tech. Big brown eyes, rather girlish mouth. Looked soft, Smoke thought, but he was sharp and tough as nails. He wore, like Smoke and Barrabas, feather-light white peon pajamas, and sandals. Jerome wore jeans, no shirt, mirror sunglasses.
The crow was on Smoke’s shoulder, Jerome was sitting across the terrace table from Smoke, Kessler on one side of Jerome, Bettina on the other. All of them on the sun-baked, stone-flagged terrace outside the NR’s chip-training installation. It was only eleven in the morning, but the day was bright and already hot; the big table umbrella didn’t make enough shade. The tall glasses of iced tea they were drinking weren’t cooling enough. Especially for Bettina, who wore a ghastly little orange-print housedress and thongs. She got up and moved gelatinously to the other terrace table, dragged it over, making it squeal across the stone, so its umbrella blocked the sun at her back.
She heaved herself back into the creaking wrought-iron chair and, wiping sweat from her face with a dish towel, said, “Where Patrick and Jo Ann at?”
“Here they are,” Smoke said, nodding toward the glass sliding doors that let onto the terrace.
Carrying ice teas, Barrabas and Jo Ann came blinking out into the sunlight; pulled chairs up from the other table and hunched beside Smoke in the shade.
“It’s hot out here,” Jo Ann said, “but it’s worse indoors.” She looked out at the desert stretching away brown and purple to her right. “Smells good. Smells like sage. What’s that noise?”
“Cicada, or something like it,” Smoke said.
“You nature boys done with de vague entomology, let’s get on wid dis shit,” Bettina said. “I wanna get in de wading pool. Alouette’s filling it up for me ’n’ her.”
“Won’t be room for her in it,” Jerome said.
She took a swipe at him; he was prepared, and ducked it.
“I get yo’ skinny white ass later,” she said. She turned to Smoke. “Let’s talk and get it over wid.”
“Things are serious now,” Smoke said. “Find some patience, Bettina.”
“Things always serious. Serious for years now.”
“It’s come to a head,” said Smoke. He sipped his tea, his ice clinking, looking at the horizon. A distant jet doodled a curly contrail on the blue-white sky. He went on, “It’s all timing, you see. And the timing has to be decided now.”
Jerome said, “I think you oughta just go ahead, let Hand spill the beans, let Barrabas witness for us, hit ’em with a frontal attack. Now. Their computers are fucked up, their bosses are arresting each other, fighting for top control. We ain’t sure what the timetable with the RSV is. Why don’t you just go for it?”
“Because of certain military factors. And because of the Leng Entelechy.”
Jerome groaned. “We’re not really going to try that, are we? You’ll have us wearing crystals for good vibes next.”
Bettina ducked her head in a way peculiar to her that signified bafflement. “The Leng what-uh-hicky?”
“Don’t play dumb just because you’re not in a mood to work today, Bettina,” Smoke snapped. Thinking: The heat’s making us all irritable. “The word is ‘entelechy.’ It means fulfillment of potential—a system coming to a fulfillment that something in it is… is reaching for.”
“A term from vitalism, isn’t it?” Kessler asked.
“Yes. But in this case we’re interested in the entelechy of the collective psychic field.”
“The collective psychic field?” Kessler smiled, chuckling urbanely. “You mean the one which probably doesn’t exist?”
Jo Ann said, “This Leng guy—is he the Shrimp Man?”
“I doubt he’d appreciate that nickname, but yes. Dioxin birth defects, born without arms and legs. Body shaped sort of like a shrimp. Gets around in a very nice exoskeletal prosthesis. One of the best microbiologists around. Combined Earth science with microbiology and physics. Nobel prize in 2016.”
“Nobel prize doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a crank idea,” Kessler said.
“You work hard on being cynical, Mr. Kessler?” Jo Ann said.
“I just think that ‘supernatural’ phenomena is psychological, not psychic,” Kessler said. “It’s a question of conditioning input, shared psycho-programming symbols, myth-symbol projection, that sort of thing.”
“I don’t think this is a supernatural phenomenon,” Smoke said. He reached up and scratched under the crow’s beak. It bit his finger, but only playfully. Then cocked its head as something rustled in the sere grass and stony ground beside the patio. Smoke went on, “Leng doesn’t regard it as supernatural. He regards it as a weak bioelectric field uniting all life on Earth. He got interested in it as a young man when he read about a study done in the 1980s. The study found that under certain circumstances, if you taught a trick to a group of rats…”