“Marine aviator.”
“I was a Ranger in the first Iraq war. Proud to know you, Marine, although I wish to God it was under other circumstances.”
“Roger to that.”
Amanda pressed a hand to her headset. She sounded puzzled when she turned toward Balenger. “The Game Master wants to know if you’ve heard of the Doomsday Vault.”
“No, but I bet he’s going to tell me.”
They entered the ruins of the town. Balenger saw a pile of boards in the middle of the weed-studded street. The smell from it told him something dead was under there.
When he glanced at Amanda, expecting an explanation, she gave him a warning look. Ray appeared uneasy. Balenger didn’t raise the subject.
“Where’s the headset?” he asked.
Amanda listened to her ear buds. “The Game Master says…” She pointed. “There.”
Balenger walked to the edge of a collapsed building and found the headset among more boards. He picked it up and examined it. Specks of dried blood were on it. Remembering the cautionary look Amanda had given him, he didn’t ask about the blood. The sturdy headband was thin. The ear buds and microphone/camera were compact. He opened a small battery case on the left side of the headband.
“I don’t see any space for a detonator,” he said. “There doesn’t seem room inside the headband or the ear buds for plastic explosive. Maybe in the microphone/ camera. But I think the more likely place for a bomb is in your boots or your GPS receivers.” He glanced down at Amanda’s mud-covered boots. “Did they get wet?”
“Soaked.”
“The detonator would need to be awfully water tight not to short out. I could be wrong, but I think the GPS units are the bombs.”
Amanda listened to her ear buds. “The Game Master says, put on the headset.”
Balenger took off his hat. Under the weight of the sun, he adjusted the headset to his ears, then replaced the hat. “So what’s the Doomsday Vault?” he asked the Game Master. He scanned the wreckage, looking for a camera.
“You’re supposed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,” the voice said.
“I am. I’ve got a fan club of psychiatrists to prove it.”
“But you don’t show weakness.”
“I’m goal-oriented. Give me a task, and I focus on it so hard I forget I’m a psychological mess.” Balenger continued to survey the wreckage. “And believe me, I’m a mess. Can’t sleep without a light. Can’t stand closed doors. I have nightmares about a guy who wants to cut off my head. I tremble for no reason. I wake up screaming. The bed sheets are soaked with sweat. After this is over, after we win, I guarantee I’ll fall apart.”
“You’re confident you’ll win?”
“Anybody who plays a game and doesn’t intend to win has already lost. I have a question for you. How did you know where the headset was?”
Noticing what he searched for, Balenger pulled out his ear buds and inserted the wads of Kleenex. He raised his rifle.
“What are you doing?” Ray asked in alarm. He and Amanda stepped quickly to the side.
The camera was concealed in a jumble of boards. Balenger imposed the holographic red dot on the camera’s lens and squeezed the trigger. Crack. Absorbing the recoil, he was vaguely aware of the empty shell flipping through the air. Amid the smell of burned gunpowder, he lowered the rifle and regarded with satisfaction the catastrophic damage that his bullet had inflicted on the camera.
He took the wads of Kleenex from his ears. “That’s another Peeping Tom we don’t need to worry about.”
“Now listen to me carefully,” the Game Master said. “That’s the last time you destroy an essential part of the game.”
“Oh?”
“If you do it again, I’ll detonate the explosive in Miss Evert’s GPS receiver.”
I’m right, Balenger thought. That’s where the bombs are. “Even at the expense of ending the game?”
“Without the cameras, there isn’t a game. Do you believe I’ll do it?”
Balenger turned toward Amanda, who looked terrified. “Yes.”
“Then leave the cameras alone and play the damned game.”
“Okay, we’ll play the damned game.”
The tension in Amanda’s body subsided.
“Any other restrictions?” Balenger asked. “You claim you want us to be resourceful, but when we are, you complain. If we don’t have a chance, tell us now, and save us a lot of trouble.”
“Scavenger can be won. I don’t create unfair games.”
“Right,” Balenger said. “I’m late to this level. Somebody bring me up to speed.”
“We found map coordinates engraved on whatever that thing is buried in the reservoir.” Ray indicated his GPS receiver, which he handled with considerable misgiving. “The needle points that way. West.”
“Toward those mountains,” Balenger said.
“Or whatever’s between the mountains and us,” Amanda said. “I also found rocks in that thing in the mud.”
“Rocks?”
“I threw one onto the bank.”
Balenger touched her shoulder in a way that he hoped communicated reassurance. “Show me where.”
7
They passed the pile of boards from which the smell of death rose in the afternoon sun. Amanda stared at Ray. Again, Balenger didn’t comment.
“The Doomsday Vault,” he said to the microphone. “You still haven’t told me about it.”
“The ultimate time capsule,” the Game Master replied. “It’s a chamber in a mountain on an island in the Arctic Circle. The island is called Spitsbergen. Norway owns it.”
They reached the outskirts of the wreckage of Avalon, from which King Arthur would never rise, Balenger thought, recalling the myth.
“What makes it the ultimate time capsule?” Ahead, Balenger saw the rim of the breached reservoir.
“Because it literally contains a form of time. The chamber is immense: the size of half a football field.”
“A form of time? What’s inside: an atomic clock? Whatever it is, it must be gigantic.”
“Actually, the reverse. Most of the objects are very small.”
Balenger paused on the rim of the drained reservoir. “Small?”
“Millions of them.”
Balenger peered toward the metal rim of the rectangular object hidden in the mud. “What makes them a form of time?”
“They’re seeds.”
“I don’t understand.” Balenger felt a rising apprehension.
“For every type of edible plant on Earth,” the Game Master said. “Those seeds contain ten thousand years of experimental breeding. When humans started practicing agriculture, the process was trial and error. They took wild plants and tried to domesticate them. Many of the grains and vegetables were small and didn’t hold anywhere near the nutrition we now take for granted. Maize, for example — what we call corn — was a wild grass with ears only a couple of inches long and just a few rows of kernels. Several millennia of careful breeding resulted in the large plants we have today.”
“Why are these seeds being put in a chamber in a mountain in the Arctic Circle?”
“Because a number of scientists and countries are worried about the ability of human beings to survive,” the Game Master answered. “It’s not only global warming that frightens them. A nuclear holocaust poses an increasing risk. Or suppose a virus makes unprotected seeds sterile? Or what if an asteroid strikes the earth? There are near hits that we’ve never been told about. These days, though, it’s not nature but ourselves that we need to fear. If clusters of humans manage to survive global devastation, the Doomsday Vault will provide them with the seeds necessary to grow food.”
“First, people would need to know where it is,” Balenger said. “This vault isn’t exactly common knowledge.”