"No." Clarke shook her head. "There were only, what, six people with wheels?"
"Only three showed up," Ouellette said. "But they could be anywhere. They didn't leave me an itinerary. And they'll be spreading the stuff. They'll be seeding it in ponds and fields and—"
"If we can catch up with them, we can backtrack," Lubin pointed out.
"But we don't even know where they were headed! How can we—"
"I don't know how." The botfly wiggled on its ground-effectors, a tiny flourish. "But you better get started. You have made one industrial-strength tar pit of a mess here, folks. And if you want to stand even a one-in-fifty chance of keeping this place from melting down to radioactive glass, you are damn well gonna help clean it up."
There was a silence. Stubborn flames crackled and spat faintly in the distance.
"We're going to help you," Lubin said at last.
"Well, you can all do your bit, of course," Desjardins replied, "but it's your efforts in particular, Ken, that are gonna come in most handy right now."
Lubin pursed his lips. "Thanks, but I'll pass. I wouldn't do you much good."
Clarke bit her tongue. He's got to be working some kind of angle.
The botfly hovered for a moment, as if considering. "I haven't forgotten your skill set, Ken. I've experienced it first-hand."
"I haven't forgotten yours either. You could mobilize the whole hemisphere in thirty seconds flat."
"A lot's changed since you retired, friend. And in case you haven't noticed, there's not much left of the hemisphere even if I did still have all my super powers."
Ouellette's eyes flickered between man and machine, watching the point-counterpoint with a mixture of outrage and confusion. But at least she, too, seemed to know enough to keep her mouth shut.
Lubin glanced around at the charred and darkling landscape. "Your resources seem more than sufficient. You don't need me."
"You're not listening, Ken. A lot has changed. A lifter or two is nothing, it's background noise. But you start mobilizing too many resources at once, the wrong kind of people pay attention. And not everybody on this side is on this side, if you know what I mean."
He's talking about other lawbreakers, Clarke realized. Maybe it's Spartacus vs. the Trip. Or maybe allof them are off the leash by now.
"You'd rather keep a low profile," Lubin surmised.
"I've always preferred subtlety. And your rather blunt social skills notwithstanding, when it comes right down to it even you're more subtle than a fleet of fire-breathing killer blimps."
When it comes down to war, he means. Private war of the psychos, by invitation only. Clarke wondered how many sides there were. Could they even have sides? How do you form an alliance with someone you know will stab you in the back the first chance they get?Maybe it's just every sociopath for himself, she mused.
Then again, it wasn't Lubin who'd had difficulty choosing sides recently.
"I'm otherwise engaged," Lubin said.
"Naturally. You'd have to have a damn good reason to come all the way back here. The Mid Atlantic Ridge isn't exactly in the neighborhood."
"It might be before too long, judging by the recent traffic."
"Ah. Somebody pay you a visit?"
"Not yet. But they're sniffing around close by. It's an unlikely coincidence."
"Don't look at me, Ken. If I'd spilled the beans, they wouldn't have to sniff around."
"I'm aware of that."
"Still, you naturally want to know who's on the trail. Ken, I'm hurt. Why didn't you come to me at—oh, right. You thought I was dead." Desjardins paused, then added, "You're really lucky I came along."
"I'm even luckier," Lubin said, "that you need my help."
The botfly bobbled in a sudden gust of hot wind. "Okay then. You help me keep N'Am from dying a little while longer, and I'll try and find out who's stalking you. Deal?"
Lubin considered.
"Seems fair," he said.
Crash
The Crusade, thought Lenie Clarke, could go on without her.
It wasn't as though it needed her services. Saving lives and ending them were the only two causes worth pursuing now, and she had no great skill in either. Of course that wasn't exactly true, she realized even as the thought occurred. When it came to total kills, there wasn't a person on the planet who could match her score. But those deaths had been indiscriminate and untargeted, faceless collateral she'd barely spared a thought for. Right now, the greater good needed something considerably more precise: specific individuals, not whole populations. Isolated faces to be hunted down and—what was the word Rowan had used? — decirculated.
It didn't have to be a euphemism. There'd be no reason to kill the vectors once they'd been found, even assuming that Seppuku hadn't killed them first. There were only three of them after all, with less than a day's head start in a place where people were no longer a major part of the landscape. It was quite possible they'd be found before they could infect too many others, before uneconomies of scale made wholesale extermination the only viable option. Ten thousand carriers might have to be burned for want of facilities to contain them; but ten could be taken alive, isolated and cared for, their condition studied in hopes of finding a cure. There'd be no need for outright murder.
I'm not the one with the compulsive murder fetish, Ken.
Either way, it didn't matter. Soon Lubin would be on the hunt, backed up by all the resources Desjardins could provide; and whether he was in it for the kill or the thrill of the chase, Clarke's presence at his side would only slow him down. Taka Ouellette had already gone on to better things, whisked away to a CSIRA facility where, as Desjardins had put it, "your skill set can be much better utilized". She had left with barely another word or a glance at Lenie Clarke. Now she was probably sitting at the end of a line that would start with Lubin, waiting to process the people he tracked down. There was no point along that short route where Lenie Clarke could be useful.
She couldn't save, and she couldn't kill. Here, though, in the broken shells of Freeport, she could do something in between. She could delay. She could hold the fort. She could keep people from dying of tumors or broken bones, so that ßehemoth and Seppuku could take a crack at them instead.
Lubin did her one last favor before leaving. He navigated through the virtual lightscape of Miri's neocortex, found the infestation that had betrayed them, and isolated it. It was too insidious, too deeply dug-in to trust to mere deletion; there were too many places it could be hiding, too many ways to subvert the search protocols. The only way to be sure it was gone was to physically throw out the memory with the monster.
Crouched over the dashboard, Lubin read reams of diagnostic arcana and called instructions over his shoulder. Behind him, Clarke—up to her elbows in crystals and circuitry—did the actual cutting. Lubin told her which card to extract; she did so. He told her which array to peel from its surface, using a tri-pronged tool with delicate whisker-thin fingers. She obeyed. She waited while he ran checks and double-checks on the rest of the system, reseated the lobotomized unit at his command, poised herself to yank it again should any remnant of the monster have somehow escaped containment. Satisfied at last that Miri was clean, Lubin told Clarke to lock and reboot. She did it without question.
He never told her outright to destroy the infected component. That was just too obvious a measure to mention.