‘But hey, I’m missing the best part of the story. You see, what made the situation so urgent was that before reentry, Peary’s on board computer downloaded all the reconnaissance imagery it had collected to our tracking complex at Cheyenne Mountain. Now they discovered that the same malfunction caused the computer to photograph not nuclear missile and air force bases in India and Pakistan and their respective states of readiness, but strategic sites in countries antipodean to the Indian subcontinent along the same line of longitude. By which I mean Canada and the United States. Double jeopardy. Our own spy satellite ends up spying on us. What made this major pain in the ass even worse was the fact that Peary was designed for reuse. In other words, it would not burn up on reentry. And with the probability existing that the on board computer systems were still in possession of our own strategic intelligence, this made it imperative that we find and destroy the bird as quickly as possible. Major fuckin’ problem. Coming down so close to the Chinese border, during the current political situation, well, you can guess the panic that swept people back in Washington. Imagine what would happen if the slopes could target all our sites. That kind of thing. So you see how it is.’
Boyd stood up and went over to the door again, to glance out and check the weather.
‘So all this time,’ said Warner, ‘instead of looking for core samples from the glacier...’
‘That’s right. Link. I’ve been looking for some trace of a satellite.’
‘But why didn’t you throw your lot in with us?’ said Jack. ‘For God’s sake, we’re on the same side. Aren’t we?’
‘Nominally, yes. But ask yourself this question: What would have happened if my mission and yours came into a conflict of interest? Your new species versus my own satellite. We wouldn’t have gotten along at all. No, it wouldn’t have worked. My mission had — has — absolute priority, at all times. Whatever the circumstances. I can’t see Dr. Swift going along with that, can you? Isn’t that right, Swifty? You’re not about to allow any kind of risk to your precious new species, are you?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Swift said dully.
Boyd looked awkward.
‘I can hardly tuck that bird under my arm and take it home to Washington, now can I? It weighed the best part of eighteen hundred kilogrammes when it was launched. A little less now, I should think, but still heavy. No, I have to blow it up. Even if that means a few of Rebecca’s brothers and sisters getting in the way.’
‘You bastard,’ said Swift.
‘See? That’s what I mean by a conflict of interest. I don’t mean any harm to come to — what did you call them, Link?’
‘Homo vertex. It means Peak Dwelling Man.’
‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’
‘Yeah. That’s nice. Even Rebecca sounds as though she likes it. Fact is, I don’t mean Mr. and Mrs. Peak Dwelling Man any harm. But if they get in the way, it will be too bad, y’know? Maybe they’ll get lucky. Maybe they will be somewhere else when it goes off. There are issues of national security here that I don’t expect you to be concerned about. Besides, it will only be a small explosion. It’s not like I’m planning to destroy the whole of your hidden forest. Jack. Shouldn’t need more than two and a half kilogrammes of plastic.’
‘But why do you have to blow it up?’ asked Cody. ‘There must be some easy way to fry the satellite’s computer banks and wipe out the information it’s gathered? I could probably do it for you.’
‘Nice idea, Byron. But you still don’t get it,’ said Boyd. ‘Retrieving the pictures of Uncle Sam’s backyard — that’s only half the point of the exercise. There’s a lot of classified intelligence-gathering technology on that bird. And I mean state of the art. It’s not the kind of tin thing you want to leave lying around for someone to find and take to pieces. We really can’t afford to give those slope scientists a leg up for their own spy satellites. So, when I find it, I have to make sure it’s completely destroyed.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Warner. ‘You said there was a small thermonuclear generator on board, right?’
‘ S’right. Powered by a radioisotope, just like Jack said. Jack, you’re in the wrong business. You should be doing my job.’
‘Now hold on a second,’ insisted Warner. ‘If you blow that up, it could be disastrous. Even a small explosion could be environmentally disastrous.’
‘Fooo-oooo-ooo-duh!’
‘Yeah, I heard you before.’
‘No, no, you’re not listening to me. This is something different, don’t you see? The explosion would disperse the radioactive isotope right across the hidden valley the yetis inhabit like... like an aerosol, poisoning them and their whole environment. What kind of isotope is it, do you know?’
Boyd shook his head irritably. He was beginning to regret this whole conversation. The weather was almost clear now. It was time to be setting off.
‘No matter,’ said Warner. ‘Even if you were to assume that the isotope is not plutonium, say the weakest kind of isotope, like cobalt 60, with a half-life of only five years, an explosion would make the whole valley quite uninhabitable, by anyone or anything.’
‘C’mon. Give me a break.’
‘No, really. Everything would die, Boyd. And if it turned out to be something like plutonium 239, then you’d be talking about a half-life of twenty-four thousand years. Either way, you simply can’t do it. You know there’s just a chance that this part of the world is so high up that it might escape the fallout from all those bombs. Don’t you think it deserves a chance...?’
Boyd picked up his helmet. ‘I’ve heard enough—’
‘I don’t think you have.’ Warner was becoming agitated. ‘You say you were listening to our conversation with your bug? Well, were you? Didn’t you hear what I had to say about this creature? This creature is much closer to us than a mere cousin like the chimpanzee. Boyd, this is like your brother, for God’s sake.’
‘You know? I never did like my brother much. He lives in Wisconsin too. If you see my meaning, friend.’
‘Please listen to him,’ implored Swift. ‘What you’re proposing, it would be like murder.’
Boyd grinned wolfishly and then nodded down at Jameson’s lifeless body.
‘As you may just have noticed, Swifty, I don’t really have a problem with that concept.’
‘Worse than murder. Genocide.’
‘Storm’s over. I gotta be moving.’
‘The storm will have wiped out the trail,’ said Cody. ‘No one’s going to take you there, to the Alpine forest. We’d rather die first.’
‘That so?’
Boyd pointed the gun straight at Cody, then at Jutta, then at Jack, and then at Swift.
‘I do believe you would die to protect these apes,’ he laughed. ‘How about that? Lucky for you, I’m just kidding.’ He tapped the side of his head with the barrel of his gun. ‘Lucky for you, one of the porters already told me the way to go. Lucky for you, I also figured out who my best guide is going to be. Someone who won’t mind leading me straight there. I won’t even need to wave my gun.’
‘And who might that be?’ demanded Swift.