Pity flooded him. He didn’t have to ask what she meant. He had been there, in the place she occupied now, ten years ago, and then again eight years ago. They had all been there, all the survivors of both the Collapse and then, for those who lived through the first horror, of the war. Her hand, veined and liver-spotted, tightened even more on the sleeve of his uniform.
“Yes,” he said gently. “Most of it is gone. Not all, but most.”
“Yesterday I was too stunned to really understand all the… New York? DC.”
“Yes.”
“NIH? Fermilab? The CDC? CERN?”
Leave it to his grandmother to think first of the scientific facilities.
“All the biotech firms in Boston and Maryland and Seattle—”
“Yes.” And US Strategic Command, NASA, Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, Fort Bragg, Creech, Vandenberg, Fort Benning, the labs at Livermore… The list went on and on.
She let go of Jason’s arm. Her face looked not only old, but ancient. “I can’t believe it. But… what about fallout? From the nuclear bombs—didn’t we have thousands? And other countries, too?”
“Most of them weren’t even used. Remember, the Collapse from plague came first, and fast. Nearly everyone died then, including the people with access to weapons, expertise, launch codes. US Strategic Command could only launch on direct order of the president. He died early on, and then his successors, along with the military who were supposed to receive or execute retaliation orders. When the war started two years later, most weapons weren’t usable by either side.”
“There were enough to take out all the places you just mentioned!”
“Yes. But it was such a confused time. I’m not even sure who bombed which specific targets: Russia, China, Korea, New America. Even the details of our retaliation are murky.”
“But when there were so few people left anyway… to senselessly kill more…”
She stopped. Jason understood that she, more than most people, knew how senseless some people could be. He said, “It isn’t—”
“Fallout? Even from a few nuclear strikes there would be—”
“Yes. But most of it blew west to east. And the new bombs aren’t as dirty as the ones you remember. The mechanism is different. Even the Seattle bombs didn’t harm us much here.”
“I can’t get my mind around it. All gone. And Elizabeth…”
“We never found out what happened to Aunt Liz,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. Grandma, the only thing you can do is not think about it. Think about now. Try to not remember.”
Jason exerted a lot of energy to not think about the Collapse. To not remember his frantic efforts to save what and who he could, bringing in biologists from the closest biotech firms and universities. To not remember the dying he left behind, and—much worse—the still healthy he denied a place on the copters because they could be of no use in battling this strange new plague. To not distinguish his own failures from those of the civilization disintegrating all around him. To not remember when the last of his copters was shot down, taking three good soldiers and six evacuees with it.
Lindy, he knew, remembered everything. She had remembered it over and over, until the memories somehow became bearable to her, like bloody cloths bleached lighter and lighter by sunlight. Jason couldn’t do that. He’d shut the bloody shrouds away in darkness, and only for his grandmother would he have brought them even briefly into light.
She let go of his arm and pulled at the skin of her face, and he knew that she was herself again. Battered, scarred—they were all scarred, forever—but she was not the quavery, crushed old woman he’d seen when he entered the infirmary.
“I’m sorry, Jason. I know I can’t just summon you like this—you’re in command of this base. But thank you for coming.”
He nodded, and offered her the only thing he could. “Tomorrow, I have to see Dad and Colin at the Settlement on the Coast. If you’re feeling strong enough, would you like to come?”
She raised her face to his, and her eyes glinted with tears. “Yes. I would. Please.”
CHAPTER 5
In the armory Jason waited with several soldiers and, to Marianne’s surprise, Jane. Jason, Jane, and one of the soldiers wore armor under esuits. Jane looked like a tall coppery flower encased in a clear vase and incongruously wearing sunglasses. They stood beside a contraption like nothing Marianne had seen before. It had four rotors resting on the vehicle bay floor and, in the center and a few feet above, a dome of clear, heavy plastic housing four low seats. The whole thing looked assembled from Tinkertoys. Somewhere in Marianne’s forehead a headache simmered, kept at bay by the same meds that made her willing to even consider riding in such a flimsy-looking vehicle.
She said, “What is it?”
“Quadcopter. Fast and efficient.”
“What powers it?”
“Electric batteries.”
“Where do you get your electricity?” And why hadn’t she thought to ask this before? She’d had a day of resting and asking questions.
“Generators. This is an Army base, Marianne. We have supplies of very advanced fuel cells, although not an indefinite supply.”
Marianne. Well, all right, he didn’t want to call her “Grandma” in front of his troops, and “Marianne” was probably better than “Dr. Jenner.” She said, “How high can it go, and how far, on battery power?”
“Maximum height is half a mile, although we won’t be going that high. With full passenger load, battery lasts six hours before recharging.”
“Jas… Colonel, it doesn’t look safe. What about a drone attack?”
He looked at her steadily, from eyes so much like her own. “It has happened. But we fly under New America’s radar, and over open country so that we won’t be ambushed from the ground. Scouts have cleared us for today’s flight. But the choice is yours. However, this is the safest way to see Ryan and Colin.”
“Can’t they come here?”
“They won’t,” he said in what she’d come to think of as his Army voice. It allowed no dissent. She’d used the same tone in another lifetime, when she’d taught undergraduates. “Do you still want to go?”
“Yes. But should you go? If the… the enemy knows that the commander is outside the domes…”
“They don’t know,” Jason said. “And my second in command is very competent. Put on this body armor and then this esuit. Sergeant, have the quadcopter readied in the airlock.”
Two soldiers pushed the Tinkertoy contraption toward the oversized armory airlock that the FiVee had driven through yesterday. Jane helped Marianne put on the light armor and esuit. Marianne desperately wanted to see her son and her other grandson. Her daughter was gone; she needed to hold fast to what she still had. If everyone else at Monterey Base could rebuild their lives after unthinkable loss, that was what she would have to do, too.
It was more thrilling than the spaceship, where everything had to be viewed on screens. In the quadcopter—strange word, even for English—Jane could look down and see Terra, separated from it only by her esuit and a piece of glass. No… plastic. She craned her neck forward and to the side.
The quadcopter skimmed over forest, over field after field filled with weeds and bushes. No crops in the field; this was wild land. Jane shouted over the noise of the quadcopter, “Look! What are those? Look!”
Colonel Jenner, piloting with Jane beside him and the other soldier with Marianne in the back seats, smiled. “Deer.”
“They’re beautiful!”
He said nothing, and Jane remembered that he ate deer. Oh, how could they? These beautiful animals, running so fast and free! They… “Oh, look! What’s that?”