Branch looked mulish. “The rate of CO2 increase was accelerating. We could be going back to massive climate change.”
“Or,” Claire said, “to innovative tech that solved that problem.”
“To a wrecked ecology.”
“To a high-tech utopia, with free energy and cheap food.”
“You wish. To an empty Earth because everybody built more alien ships and left.”
“Seven billion people? Come on, these are supposed to be realistic possibilities.”
“Such as free energy? Uh-huh. To a world at atomic war.”
“I think,” Marianne had said quietly, “that I don’t want to play anymore. I have a headache.”
Now she carefully removed the dead leelee’s brain and began to prepare slides for the microscope. Leelees, purple malodorous fauna native to World, had been just as susceptible to the spore cloud as mice had been when Respirovirus sporii hit Earth thirty-eight years ago. But these particular leelees had not come from World. They had been on the infected colony ship when it returned from the aborted colony run. The ship had been lousy with spores, yet these animals had survived because they had been lousy with a virophage evolved to counteract R. sporii. The leelees had poured from the ship, chittering and scampering and stinking, and dissection had showed that something weird had been happening in their brains.
But Marianne had no idea what, because she had no proper lab equipment.
But soon they would reach Terra. And then—what?
Twenty-eight years was a long time.
Another bright day in late summer, the sky a blinding blue, maple trees just starting to tinge with red. Zachary McKay left Enclave Dome, thinking about zebras.
Both processes were complicated. Monterey Base consisted of two separate domes, and simply going from Enclave Dome to Lab Dome fifty yards away required going through the north airlock, being escorted by two of Colonel Jenner’s heavily armed soldiers, and then reversing the entire process at Lab Dome’s south airlock, plus passing through decontamination. Or, he could have taken the underground tunnels, which also required airlocks and decon. At least Zack, a plague survivor, didn’t need to don an esuit.
Both domes were made of shimmering alien energy shields, looking like upturned blue bowls about to shed glitter on the weeds at their bases. Young forest pressed toward both bowls despite the Army’s constant efforts to keep a cleared perimeter; everything grew so fast now. From above, Zack thought, the whole setup probably looked like two fluorescent breasts surrounded by beard stubble, a genuinely unsettling image.
As Zack finally reached decon in Lab Dome, Toni Steffens’s voice sounded in his earplant. “Did you succeed?”
“No. Didn’t try.”
“Then you owe me another five dollars. Why didn’t you try? It’s a serious bet.”
“Zebras,” Zack said. Let that shut her up for a while.
Zack and his colleague had a long-standing bet: Who could get one of Colonel Jenner’s elite squad of soldiers, whom Toni referred to as the “Praetorian Guard,” to say something, anything, as they escorted scientists to and from Lab Dome. So far, Zack owed Toni $345, which was a problem in an “economy” that didn’t use money. Toni was good at getting the soldiers to break silence, usually by provoking them to outrage. Zack did not do outrage, but he enjoyed hers. Usually.
She appeared in the doorway of the esuit room just beyond decon, a plain woman in her forties, dressed in ancient jeans grown a little tight and a top of flexible brown plastic fabric, the only cloth that the 3-D printer, running out of polymers, was still able to produce. “Zebras?”
“Caitlin was drawing them at breakfast.”
“And how does a four-year-old even know about ungulates not found within a thousand miles of what used to be California?”
“From a picture book on her tablet. Toni, what was that Latin you quoted yesterday for Occam’s razor?”
“‘Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. Frusta fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.’ It means—”
“I know what it means. The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually correct.”
“Not exactly. A literal translation—”
“Show-off.”
“Ill-educated barbarian. So you think we’re looking for a zebra when the hoofbeats we’re hearing are from a simple horse?”
“No. I think we’re looking at horses when we might need a zebra.”
Toni considered this. “We would stand a better chance of finding one if Jasonus Caesar would let us experiment outside, where the metaphorical ungulates actually are.”
Zack said, “Colonel Jenner is just being cautious.”
“Or just exercising his accidental power. Ave, ave, Caesar imperator. I don’t understand how Lindy could have been married to him for so long.”
Zack started for the corridor. Toni, who had the tenacity of a sucking tick, did not give up. “You think we need a whole different approach to the gene drive?”
“I don’t know. But we—everybody—have been working on this problem for ten solid years and we’re not making much progress.”
Toni said quietly, “There used to be a lot more ‘everybodies.’ And it’s really three problems.”
“Yes. Let’s get to work.”
“Staff meeting this morning. Everyone’s already in the conference room.”
“Oh, God, I forgot.”
“That’s what comes of indulging zebras at breakfast.”
Zack didn’t pick up this gauntlet. Toni was not fond of children; she and her wife, Nicole, did not want any. More than that, Toni believed it was wrong to raise children who could never go outside the domes, not unless the microbiologists succeeded in their mission. One of their missions. Whereas for Zack and Susan, little Caitlin was the whole point of this struggle.
On the way to the conference room, Zack said, “Is anyone in there going to report any actual progress?”
“We’re not going to.”
“No kidding. Come on, Toni, you always hear everything. Any significant developments on the immunity questions or the vaccine?”
“No. I tell you, Zack, our team’s project is going to be it. The last resort, and Jenner will have to use it.”
Zack glanced over at her. Toni’s usual sarcastic sneer had given way to a thoughtful sadness. He said quietly, “Maybe not. Sometimes a wild card turns up.”
“Uh-huh. Or a zebra.”
“Or a zebra.”
They went to the conference room. This section of Lab Dome had been divided into corridors and working spaces by the usual makeshift combination of sleek painted walls from before the Collapse and rough wooden partitions erected since, mostly by the Army. Monterey Base had just begun to operate as a national laboratory, like Fort Detrick or Cold Harbor although much smaller, when the Collapse came. The equipment was—or had been, ten years ago—state of the art, but space was limited due to the constraints of domes. But if the domes hadn’t existed, there would now be no Monterey Base at all. Nor would the base still be functioning if Colonel Jenner hadn’t been so quick-witted and resourceful. Zack kept that constantly in mind, even if Toni didn’t.
In the conference room, three dozen scientists jammed themselves around the long table, with lab techs standing along the walls. It was as bad, Zack thought, as a high-school cafeteria: like sat with like, with no mingling. The immune-boosting team sat with immune boosters, the vaccine team with other vaccinators, the gene-drive team made room for him and Toni. At the front of the room, Chief Scientist Jessica Yu, who dated all the way back to the Embassy team thirty-eight years ago and was now in her eighties, frowned at Zack and Toni’s lateness.
“Now that we’re all here,” she said pointedly, “maybe we can—”