Either accident would probably kill her.
Don’t stop, she thought, clapping her gloves together as she glanced up through the howling channel overhead. Then she began to scrub feverishly at the plastic again.
The A-frame roof of her hut was sturdier than it needed to be. It was designed to bear the weight of snow, but the beams in the ceiling also supported the air compressor and duct work leading to a storage tank about the size of a small car. They’d found the compressor in the garage of a pipeline testing company. It was powered by the huge diesel engine from a Peterbilt truck, which they’d hidden in a cellar beneath the cabin, running a drive belt and an exhaust line into the roof. Ruth couldn’t hear the engine because of the fan, but it was probably adding to the dangerous vibrations throughout the building.
The compressor was rated at 2,700 cubic feet per minute. That meant it could swap the air out of her lab in seconds, again and again and again, but it was impossible to ensure that the room was safe. Even if 90 percent of the contamination was sucked away in the first minute, and, in the second minute, 90 percent of the remainder was taken, there would always be a miniscule amount left behind.
Unfortunately, the tent wasn’t holding up well, and Ruth worried about the rest of the system, too. If she continued to subject it to full power, the compressor might blow out or the ducts might leak, which was why they’d situated her hut on the southern edge of Jefferson. This cabin was generally downwind. An accidental discharge should be carried away from town.
What if it wasn’t?
Shaking from exhaustion, Ruth climbed onto the desk with a fold of plastic from the repair kit. It shook and leapt in her hands like a flag. The vent in the ceiling was already partially blocked by wads of paper and she let go of her patch, clogging the vent completely. Then she kicked her boot into the emergency switch and turned off the system.
The fan died before the diesel engine sputtered and quit. There was no need to hold the patch in place. Most of it had been sucked tight into the grill and Ruth taped the edges as fast as possible, securing it to the ceiling of the tent.
She repeated the process with another, larger square. Then she got down and surveyed her lab. The tent was still secured to the wall behind the desk. That wasn’t the wall she’d intended to have them chop open, but it would have to do. Outside the tent, the room itself hadn’t been decontaminated. She would need to melt and seal the plastic to the wall before they cut their way in.
She found her walkie-talkie. “I’m okay,” she said, leaning over the desk to knock on the wall.
Cam said, “Ruth? Jesus, Ruth, it sounded like the whole place was coming apart.”
“Change of plans. I want you to come through this wall instead.” She knocked again and was answered by a dull chak like a pry bar hitting the wood. There must have been a group of them outside and she yelled, “No, stop! Stop!”
Cam echoed her. “Stop it! Stop! We need to make sure we’re in the right place!”
Ruth looked away from the wall, feeling wistful and scared and glad. He was always so fast to understand her, except when she tried to talk about her feelings — but there was another reason for them to hold off. “I want to hit the entire lab with UV again,” she said, reaching for the lamp. “Give me ten minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, she realized she was only delaying the inevitable. She had to trust the decontamination. She was out of options. This was it.
“Cam,” she said to the walkie-talkie, but everyone else was listening, and Allison’s body lay just a few feet away in the other room. It wasn’t right to say anything. Still, she wished she could tell him so many things.
“I’m here,” he said. “We’re ready.”
“Wait for my signal,” she said lamely. She shut off the lamp and cracked the seal on her collar. The moist heat surrounding her body wooshed out of the suit. Ruth couldn’t help but hold her breath even as she closed her eyes, not only to protect them but to savor the soft, cool air on her face.
Did I get all of it? she wondered.
Standing alone in the plastic, separated from him by just a few feet, Ruth waited to see if she’d lose her mind.
9
Cam was uncertain at first when Ruth’s face appeared in the gash in the wall. Her curly hair was matted and sweaty. Her skin looked bright red in their flashlights, and her eyes were bloodshot. Some of the men stumbled back. They banged against each other as Greg stiffened with his rifle. “Ruth!?” Greg shouted.
“I’m okay,” she said.
There was a sunburned patch across the right side of her face that began as a remarkably square corner on her temple. Cam realized it was the same shape as the faceplate in her helmet. She’d done it to herself with the UV lamp.
He pushed through the others to reach her. “Careful,” he said. He was still armored in his goggles and face mask, and yet Ruth tried to meet his gaze in the white beams of the flashlights. Then she smiled and ducked back inside with a noise like a laugh.
“Wait!” he yelled.
Her euphoria seemed out of place. Cam wondered if he had the guts to club her if she popped her face into the gap again. Was she infected? But she’s talking, he thought.
“Here,” she said, filling the hole in the wall with her laptop. Her hands fluttered once and then vanished. The black Dell would have fallen if Cam hadn’t dropped his crowbar and caught the laptop instead.
Through the wall, he saw her lab and the plastic tent. Ruth stood very close to him, yanking at something on her desk with lithe, harried movements. Cam finally realized how eager she was to escape and he thought of other times when she hadn’t acted her age, either. Sometimes her intellect was overshadowed by her emotions. In fact, Cam thought that energy was tied directly to her IQ. Part of Ruth’s genius was her ability to tap deep into herself, but her moods could be dangerous, too, childish and loud.
“Help me,” he said, holding the laptop out to the group. No one took it and he barked, “Help me! There’ll be more stuff in a second.”
A man named Matthew grabbed the laptop and Cam turned again just as Ruth muscled her AFM into the gap in the wall.
The atomic force microscope wasn’t much bigger than his thigh, a white metal cylinder with a stout base and a tapered white cone that rose to a single black eyepiece. Cam had always marveled that something so small could design machines of such consequence, but, by its very definition, nanotech was infinitesimal. The AFM housed a power system and a shovelful of microprocessors, yet most of its bulk was only necessary to provide optics and controls that could be used by human beings. The heart of the machine, its computerized tip array and work surface, filled a space no larger than a dime.
The AFM weighed forty pounds, though, and Ruth shoved it through as hard as she could. Cam slumped beneath the device, catching it at an awkward angle against the wall. “Wait!” he shouted. Owen shouldered in beside him. The two of them lugged the microscope away through the debris on the ground. Cam nearly twisted his ankle when he stepped on a chunk of wood and then some loose bricks.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Matthew go to the hole in time to catch two notebooks and Ruth’s containment suit, a yellow wad that spilled its legs and sleeves over Matthew’s body. The air tanks tipped out of Matthew’s grasp and pulled the suit to the ground.