She coughed.
“They’ll do nothing except destroy eighteen months of work. And the Pyramid. And kill a lot of people. But that will be enough. GFI won’t be able to rebuild the fleet—it was a miracle they could do it in the first place—and eventually most of us will die.”
“But you’re telling me this—why?” Jack’s voice cracked.
Nellie grabbed his hand. “Stop them. When I saw you downstairs, I saw this—”
She stabbed at the glowing gryphon on his palm. “You’ll be inside the arena. Tell someone about the terrorists. Stop them.”
“You’re—you’re lying, this is some—”
“No. I am not lying. I was with Blue Antelope for three years, since before the ice shelf collapsed. The glimmering was the best thing that ever happened to them, and all those other radicals. It gave them a focus. It made them stronger. When they learned I’d received the experimental petra vaccine, they threw me out—because I was thwarting God’s will. Because if I was the sort of person who was running any risk of infection, then I was exactly the sort of person God wanted to die. But when I developed petra virus they took me back—because obviously His will was being enforced.
“And I was so enraged, I hated everyone so much, that I worked for them. In Atlanta and LA and here, in the Pyramid—”
She motioned at the walls. “I was a plant. There are a lot of us here. That’s how Blue Antelope gained access to the Millennial Ball. And they had plants in the factories where the Fougas were constructed. Everywhere. Blue Antelope is everywhere. Christians—”
She shook with a spasmodic laugh. “God’s fucking people—they’re everywhere. They’re going to kill me, you know. Because I left. But I won’t let them.”
Jack swallowed, tasting bile and grit. He turned, looking around for something, anything, that would give the lie to this. His gaze fell upon a silvery film canister pushed against the far wall.
“Leonard.” The word exploded from him. “Does he—does Leonard know?”
“Of course he knows. He knows everything.”
Jack gasped, amazement forcing through despair. “Leonard’s a terrorist.”
“No. He’s not a terrorist. He’s not a member of Blue Antelope—he hates Fundamentalists, but I’m sure he knows about the attack. His work, recording all the extinctions, donating all that money to the Noah Genome Project—he may not belong to Blue Antelope, but he believes in them. And he’ll be at the Ball, as a guest of GFI. He plays both sides of the fence, Leonard. I think he’s just waiting to see who’ll come out on top. To see who’ll win.”
“No. You’re wrong.” Jack shook his head. “Leonard Thrope has never given a fuck about winning. He just likes total fucking chaos. In high school he was cast as the Lord of Misrule in some play, and it was so perfect—because that’s what he is. That’s why he’d be a perfect terrorist—”
“They would never take him,” Nellie broke in. “He’s a loose cannon. A security risk. Your friend is not a terrorist, Jack—”
He’s not my friend! Jack started to cry out; how could someone who tried to poison me be my friend?
But as clearly as if he were in the room beside him, he saw Leonard as a boy with a hot small mouth and eyes that broke too easily into tears; Leonard leaving him, a farewell fuck in Athens and that was it. Years later Leonard drinking champagne at Jack’s fortieth birthday party. Leonard in Jack’s bedroom handing him a small glass bottle and saying This is what’s going to change fucking human history…
Leonard was playing dice with the world; and so were Blue Antelope, and GFI.
“Stop them,” whispered Nellie.
“No.”
Nellie’s voice grew shrill. “Those solar shields are the only chance we have—”
“Why the fuck should I care? I’m dying! You poisoned me—you and Leonard, your goddamn pharmaceutical corporations! Let them die. Let them all fucking die.”
His words echoed in the tiny room. He could hear the slurring of Nellie’s breath as she stared at him. He glared back at her, the moisture between the folds of her abdomen, sparks of green and gold there. When she raised her arm he saw that the flesh hung loosely from her bones—not like flesh at all, more like lichen, or shimmering algae; and that her impossibly slender, spatulate fingers held something long and thin and metal, something she looked at very carefully, eyes narrowed. There was the smell of wet leaves, a sharp glitter as her lips parted and he saw she held some sort of capsule.
“Stop them,” she said. She bit down upon the shining tube. “Just stop them.” Stench of sulfur and almonds. Jack gasped, stunned, as the woman’s body slumped onto the bed. He started to move toward her, then stopped, seeing a fine white cloud of mist about her mouth. Holding his breath he staggered to his feet and stumbled from the room. It wasn’t until he reached the door that he realized he was naked. With a groan he turned back, hesitating at the entrance to the alcove.
Nellie sprawled facedown upon the futon, motionless. Her body looked badly decomposed, but the smell that hung about the room was fragrant, rain-sweet.
Like lilacs, thought Jack, as he grabbed his clothes and dressed, fighting horror. She smells like lilacs. He shoved his feet into his shoes and fled.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take)
He had thought that he would be able to see the Golden Pyramid from anywhere within the city. Such a gigantic structure, it would loom over everything else and he would set his course by it, make his way through the streets, how hard could it be?
I’m an idiot, Trip thought, and glanced at the harbor behind him. The Wendameen was gone. As far as he could see there was only viscous water speared with metal spikes and floating planks, a shattered portico like the prow of a sunken ship. To either side the shoreline stretched, bridge girders and highway overpasses that had been bitten off in midair, eviscerated skyscrapers that tolled as the tide swept inside them. The sky shuddered, and flaming gouts of gold and violet spewed from horizon to horizon. After the silence and solitude of Mars Hill, after the weeks at sea with Martin, it was like waking in hell.
He pushed against the first hard swell of fear: he was alone in a city, he was alone in The City. I’m a total fucking idiot.
Wind ripped off the water. He shivered and buttoned the top of his anorak. Surely it had not been this cold on board the Wendameen? The memory of the last few months was fleeing from him, as though it had been a dream recalled in a noisy room. He knew it was not, he knew it had all been real, as real in its way as the shadow of another dream, the dream of drowning that came at him sometimes, a small dark animal nudging to be recognized.
But he did not want to remember that. What he wanted to remember was the blond girl. Her image was inescapable: it might have been stitched upon his eyelids. Her twilit eyes, her hot thrusting mouth; but more than those things her simple sheer being. The fact that she had been there beside him once, that he had touched her, that she had been real—
Do you remember nothing? she had asked him in a dream of flowers. Now, with the December wind pressing upon him like a cloak of ice, he remembered nothing else. He was only a vessel, broken and halfheartedly repaired, holding her within him like a flame. He hugged his arms against his chest, forced himself to look at the unpromising landscape before him. The smell of shit and decay was overpowering; he’d have to get away from the water or he’d be sick. He adjusted his backpack and stared at a derelict building that blocked his view of anything but itself. The walls had fallen away from its upper stories, so that he could see inside. Like gazing into a mutated ants’ nest. Heaps of rubble, beams and joists twisted like coat hangers, insulation and drywall hanging from the metal like old clothes. The wind sent crumbled mortar and gypsum dust and ash spinning down, so that Trip stepped back, covering his eyes.