"Go tell Doctor," Matron ordered. "I'll look after things here."
ALASKA
Once again Ninel rode her bike up the overgrown driveway to Bale-witch's pleasant cottage. She'd been off-line, except to check her own site, for the last three weeks. There'd been her traps to mend and oil and put away until next winter, skins to see to, and the garden plot to clear of winter debris in preparation for planting. Ninel thought it would be a while before she'd trust the weather enough to put in seeds, though. She had some seedlings started in the cold frame she'd built, but it had been so cold lately that Ninel was sure she'd put them in too soon.
It was surprising that no one had sent her any e-mail in such a long time. But a brief check had shown that there wasn't much activity anywhere. Still, that happened sometimes, the occasional dry spell that occurred for no known reason. What worried her was that she had expected to hear from Balewitch, or someone she had delegated.
This was the second time she'd paid an unscheduled visit; Ninel hoped someone would be home. She turned into the curve of the driveway, and through the trees she could see the older woman standing on her steps, clearly waiting for her.
She doesn't look any too pleased to see me, Ninel thought.
Maybe she should have tried again to contact Balewitch before coming. But several messages had gone unacknowledged, so there hadn't seemed to be any point to trying again.
"Do you have any idea what's going on in the world?"
Bale-witch said by way of greeting.
"Excuse me?"
"You don't, do you?" Balewitch descended the steps, then sat down on them. "What have you been doing?"
Ninel looked at her, trying to figure out what this was about.
She'd tried to contact the woman. It wasn't like she'd left home with no forwarding address. "I've been busy," she said at last.
Balewitch looked at her in disbelief, then laughed, long and heartily. "I guess you have been," she said at last.
Ninel was not even slightly amused by this sort of behavior.
She wondered if the woman had been laughing at Ninel's expense all along. "I think maybe I've made a mistake." She turned the bike around.
"Don't get on your high horse, honey," Balewitch said.
The woman's voice was so unlike the voice she usually used that Ninel whipped round suddenly, almost tripping over her bike. She stared at Balewitch wide-eyed.
"Thing is, I know you're connected to the Internet, so I'm wondering how you could possibly have missed the event of the millennium," Balewitch said, eying her suspiciously.
"I only got on to check for e-mail," Ninel said. "I did check a few other places, but there was no activity and nobody answered my queries." She shrugged. "I had work to do."
Balewitch shook her head. "Sheesh. While you were doing your chores World War Three was going on."
Ninel gave her a worried frown. "Excuse me?" she said.
"Armageddon, the Apocalypse, global thermonuclear war?
You've heard these terms before, yes?" The girl's expression was priceless, her pale eyes were like saucers, it was all Balewitch could do not to laugh at her.
Ninel stared, then stretched her neck out in an unmistakably questioning manner.
"No, sleeping beauty, I'm not kidding and I'm not crazy, either." Balewitch shook her head. "Your lack of curiosity astounds me."
"But… ?" Ninel looked up at the sky. Suddenly its overcast look and the colder weather made an awful sort of sense.
"How could you not know?" Balewitch raised an eyebrow.
"Like I said, lack of curiosity." A very useful attribute under certain circumstances. This little girl was looking more useful by the minute. "Can you handle a gun?"
"Yes."
"Good, because you shouldn't be without one from this point forward. When people think the cops aren't coming, they tend to do things they ordinarily wouldn't." The poor kid looked stricken.
"What's going to happen now?" Ninel asked.
Balewitch considered her. "An associate of mine and I have been doing outreach work with the army," she began. The girl gave her that same, bug-eyed questioning look. "Yeah, ironic, isn't it? When I was your age I was so antimilitary I could hardly sleep for hating them. But we actually need them now." She chuckled. "I guess disaster makes strange bedfellows."
"But they did this," Ninel said.
"Nope. Turns out Ron Labane was right. That super-computer of theirs malfunctioned. As soon as they turned everything over to it, it blew up everything in the arsenal. Damn fools!"
Oh, she was enjoying this, the kid was eating it up.
Ninel frowned. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.
Balewitch was nodding. "I don't see why not. I'm getting tired, and so's my friend. We can use some help. If you could be this out of touch even though you're regularly on the computer, then there must be tons of people in the back of beyond who need to be told. Not only told, but escorted to the relocation camps."
"What?" Ninel actually reared back at that. "Relocation camps? I don't like the sound of that."
"Neither did I," Balewitch agreed. "But we may not actually get a summer up here this year and winter is gonna be a stone bitch. Essential supplies are already growing scarce; who knows what it will be like by winter. Even the Eskimos will freeze from what they're telling me, and Ron agrees with them." She shook her head. "Like I said, ironic."
It made sense, sort of. Ninel had heard of the nuclear winter theory. According to what she'd read, the dust and smoke created by the nuclear blasts might render this latitude uninhabitable for as long as three years. She supposed it wasn't something that should be chanced, at least not the first year.
"What can I do to help?" she asked.
Balewitch smiled and rose from the step. "Come inside and I'll tell you all about it."
* * *
John drove up on his dirt bike to find their recruits packing up. "What's going on?" he asked.
Paul the vegan came over and handed him a sheet of paper.
Citizens of Alaska, due to ongoing emergency conditions, the U.S. government is asking for your cooperation.
Experts have predicted that Alaska will experience an unparalleled winter this year and possibly for several years to come.
In order to protect yourselves and your families from these unusually harsh conditions, the U.S. Army has constructed temporary shelter for you in the warmer states below the forty-ninth parallel. This is to allow a more evenhanded and efficient distribution of already scarce supplies.
Citizens in your area are requested to gather in Delta Junction or Tanacross, where transportation will be provided to take you to a temporary shelter in Canada, run in cooperation with the Canadian government, prior to removing you to the southern states of the U.S.
Temporary shelters have been erected in these towns in the event that you arrive after a convoy has left. Rest assured that your wait will be short and though the facilities may be rough, they will be better in the U.S. and Canada.
It was signed by some general. John's muscles tightened in fight-or-flight reflex and he could feel adrenaline coursing into his bloodstream. Calm, he told himself. Be calm or they won't listen to you at all.
John couldn't believe how fast Skynet had swung into action.
How many people has it already managed to exterminate? he wondered.
Of course everything in the broadsheet was so plausible; the suggestion of nuclear winter might even be true. No doubt that was why the army was cooperating. Individual soldiers and isolated commanders had no way of checking this out. They were getting their orders in the usual way, with the usual codes—hell, maybe they were even hearing the right voices. He sensed that a lot of people were going to die before they discovered their mistake.