That was why such an immense wall of steel had been built across the far side of town.
“So far it’s been mostly harassment,” James said, “patrols and scavenging parties chasing each other off. But there used to be some huge military bases in this state. Nobody’s short on guns. The breakaways have been arming the refugees here and encouraging them to overthrow the government.”
Gustavo must have known. He must have heard, he lived for his radios, but he had kept the truth from her. Why? On whose orders? All the while she’d been sharing everything she learned from the labs…and Gus had almost certainly reported her indiscretion back to Leadville…
It hurt her too that James was taking such risks for her.
His voice was low and relentless. “Unfortunately you can’t just wall off an area this size, especially since people need to get in and out to the farms. The nearest mines are all army barracks now, and they’ve been stacking cars and stringing wire and placing guns. And hanging people. They—”
“Dr. Hollister!” A black-haired soldier ducked out of the big tent. One of the men sitting in front must have passed word inside. Ruth thought she recognized him as part of their escort. “Sir, you shouldn’t be this close to the perimeter.”
James had a smile for him. “Dr. Goldman is still adjusting to the altitude, she needed a little air.”
The soldier glanced at her and then from side to side, clearly looking for an officer. His hand had gone to his collarbone as if to finger the strap of a slung rifle, though he was armed only with the pistol on his hip.
“We’ll start back,” James said and Ruth chimed in, too loud, thrumming with her own blood. “The sun hurts my eyes!”
The man watched them go, his hand still at his shoulder.
James didn’t hurry. “Look, I think maybe half of why Kendricks voted to bring you down was that I sold him on the idea that it would increase his stature to have you under the council’s direct authority rather than tucked away under NASA’s umbrella. That’s why it’s so important that you don’t rock the boat. It will reflect on him now, the space hero running around saying what a lousy job everyone’s done.”
Bitterness wormed through her again. “Then why not just leave me up there forever?”
“It’s not about you, Ruth. It was never about you.”
Could they really have only wanted her equipment? She knew they’d lost most of their gear when the locust broke loose inside NORAD, it was total chaos—
James said, “They evacuated the space station for Ulinov.”
Enough. Lord knew she’d already heard enough. Ruth shut her eyes. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Shit. I was hoping you knew why.”
“Knew what?”
“I have connections but I’m not on the inside. I just hear things.” James stopped her chair and leaned close, making a charade of pointing at the building again. “Rumor is, they need him for top-level negotiations with the Russians, because the Chinese are mobilizing.”
Before the locust hit Asia, China had invaded and occupied much of the Himalayan range. They’d already possessed a foothold in Tibet, of course, and rose over this region like a human plague. Then they had stopped communicating with the world.
James turned his eyes to her face, then cut one glance back behind her. “India’s provided too much work on the ANN for us to just forget about them,” he said, “but there’s no way they can hold off the Chinese by themselves. Not without going nuclear.”
And even now, at the extreme, no one would want to take that step. No one could afford to contaminate the rare fragments of land above the invisible sea.
“They say India’s agreed to a real estate deal in exchange for protection, and the Russians are in trouble. They’ve been pushed almost all the way off of the Caucasus and Afghanistan mountains.” James got up and moved to the rear of her chair as Major Hernandez strode toward them, no doubt summoned by the black-haired soldier.
Ruth waved and smiled.
“Rumor is,” James said, “American planes are going to airlift the Russians in to cut off the Chinese.”
19
“They’re sending another search team to California,” Aiko said, propping her hip and both hands against the work counter too close to Ruth.
Ruth tipped back in her chair. “Where did you hear that?”
“Everywhere. It’s for real. And this time a few of us have to go with the soldiers — they’re deciding who right now.”
Aiko Maekawa was a gossip, soft-voiced but insistent. Timberline had an incomparable rumor mill — too many big brains, Ruth supposed, all of them trained to hypothesize— and Aiko seemed to pride herself on being one of the main vectors of information. It let her be first, let her act the discoverer with each new person she approached. Lord knew she wasn’t adding much to the development of the ANN.
The girl was very bright, and tireless and accomplished, and she had lost her mind all those months ago when her parents and two sisters didn’t make it out of Manhattan.
That was the dirt on Aiko, at least.
This morning was Ruth’s eighth day in the labs. She usually just nodded and let Aiko talk at her. Any remarks only prolonged the disruption, because Aiko confused attention with approval and enjoyed repeating the highlights of each story — and Ruth didn’t always think it was smart to be talking.
The labs were riddled with listening devices.
Most of what Aiko had to say was harmless — Ted had a thing for Trish, a married woman; the onions mixed into last night’s pasta were fresh, from below the barrier — but even then Ruth resented the distraction.
The makeshift labs were already chaotic, overcrowded, every surface jammed with machining hardware, PC and Mac monitors arranged in stacks, all of it steel and chrome and plastic.
Prominent in the cleared space before Ruth now stood a multimode scope fitted with an atmosphere hood. These glass sheaths were designed for experiments in gaseous environments, but in this case had been connected to a simple air compressor. It also contained a fluid-heating unit set at body temperature.
She sat within inches of active, living locusts.
“You know what happened to the last mission, right?” Aiko glanced across the lab at Vernon Cruise, to make sure he wasn’t eavesdropping. Aiko would go through her little song and dance as many times today as possible.
“They ran out of air and barely got off the ground,” Ruth said, hoping to avoid a gory rehash.
It was an uncharitable thought, but she suspected Aiko’s love of bombshells stemmed in part from her looks. Beautiful girls grew up differently than everyone else. The way they were adored had a distinct formative effect, turning many of them into show-offs of one kind or another. Aiko was fairly disgusting about it, always trying to position herself in front of her victim, man or woman.
Ruth resembled a white pillow person in her wrinkled lab suit, with no discernible breasts and only a trace of hip. Aiko was too willowy to show anything either, yet she had a long sculpted neck and almond skin and dark, exotic eyes. A contest between her and Doc Deb would have been no contest.
“At least two of us have to go,” Aiko said. “This week for sure, as soon as possible.”
“What happened?” Ruth asked despite herself. “I mean, why now?” Maybe the FBI teams had reworked the sales records and pinpointed a new location.
“There’s already a big stink in the parasite team,” Aiko continued, teasing out her information. “They’re sure some of their people will get picked since they’re the farthest behind.”