"There's enough still here in the soil to kill a regiment of rhinos, slow and nasty," he said after a moment, his voice muffled. "And it's leaking out as vapor all the time. The bastards must have spilled and burnt everything! This land won't be safe for: bugger me blind if I know when it will be."
"Twenty or thirty years," Nigel Loring said, watching the disposal crew from the Pride moving from one bunker to the next, the view dim with the moisture that was fogging the inside of his suit's eyepieces. "Longer if there's a drought and I wouldn't really fancy being a fish close downstream when it does rain at last."
The landscape they moved through must have been bleak enough at the best of times, a stretch of rolling sagebrush prairie. The bunkers were sunk into the dry, gritty, brown-gray soil, with more dirt heaped over the Quonset hut-shaped roofs; most of them had black scorch marks around their doors, where gasoline had been poured inside and set on fire. Those and the tire tracks on unsurfaced roads were the only marks of man, and there wasn't even the odd bird or jackrabbit to enliven the scene. He could see why this area had been picked as a war-gas depository. Sweat rolled down his body in greasy trickles under the stifling cover of the protective suit; it was worse than a full suit of plate armor, which didn't have to be air-tight.
And hauling each breath through the filter added an extra touch of torment, to go with the subliminal fear that the neutralizing chemicals had gone off and you were corroding your lungs out from the inside. Or that the day would suddenly grow dark as a tiny droplet of nerve agent touched your skin. They had syringes of nerve-gas antidote, and it wasn't even a toxin itself like the earlier versions, but:
"At least we're not finding much in the way of intact material," Loring said.
Hordle grunted. "We're finding a good deal of bloody nothing, with a scoop of sod-all on the side."
At that moment a series of muffled shouts went up from the squad of crewfolk they'd trained, and green-covered arms waved. Hordle and Loring exchanged glances and then headed over, the sound of their own panting loud in their ears inside the head-covering hoods.
"These look like the spray tanks you told us about, but they're empty," the bosun's mate of the Pride said.
"Let me take a look," Loring said.
The sheet-metal dispensers were upside down and empty, thank God-but one of the small drums nearby wasn't. Loring rocked it with a foot while he wracked his memory. Yes, VX, without a doubt. Not much of it; the container was only about a liter in size.
He froze for a moment, then turned and pointed. "Get a couple of those shells over here, bosun," he said casually. "I recognize the type; it's loaded with VX, sure enough. Use the dollies. We'll decant the nerve agent into these spray tanks; much easier to move it half a mile in these."
The Tasmanian gave him a dubious look, but obeyed; he'd had six months to establish his authority. Hordle bent until their heads were nearly level.
"That's not going to do the Lord Protector much good," he said, nodding towards the shells. "That's a binary mix and you need the shell to-"
"No, it won't do him much good," Loring said. The muffling hoods and distance would keep the conversation quiet. "But he won't know that until he tries to use it, will he, now? In fact, even our assistants here don't have a clue."
"And he'll have that one carboy of real VX to test, too," Hordle said. His tone suggested an admiring grin. "You're a cunning old colonel, sir, if you don't mind me saying so. I'll go help move shells."
Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon
May 14th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine
Mike Havel paused with a forkful of scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth. After a long moment he set it down, and began to laugh. After a moment, the others at the table joined him.
When silence had fallen, Havel looked around at the other leaders; all of them good security risks, but:
"We'll have to be careful about this," he said. "That has to stay secret."
If true. Hmmm. How to check on it? Aylward vouches for Sir Nigel, which is a powerful argument, but I save perfect trust for God, and He's not eating breakfast with me. The Change: changed people, often enough. By Jesus, it changed me!
Juniper nodded. "And Mike: we were worried enough about the Protector when all we knew he had was his men-at-arms and castles. That hasn't changed."
He nodded. "But he's going to use them differently now that he thinks he has an ace up his sleeve. The way I read him he's the type who thinks of victory as something you get by some smart trick like a secret weapon."
Loring gave him a quick glance at that, and a slow respectful nod.
"Yes. The problem with that, of course, was that we couldn't tell anyone whatsoever about what we'd done."
Willamette Valley, Near Portland
May 10th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine
"No," Captain Nobbes said.
"No, what?" Arminger replied.
"No, you can't keep it," Nobbes said stubbornly. "You promised we'd dispose of it, and sport, that's just what you must do, like it or not."
The Protector flung up one hand. The column halted, the clatter of hooves on asphalt or crunching on gravel slowly dying. The road ran westward, through farmland and then a patch of woods; the mountains of the Coast Range stood blue at the edge of sight, and in the middle distance the towers of a castle squatted on a hilltop. The column had shrunk with every fort and post they passed as they came westward; Loring guessed that Arminger was anxious to have the precious cargo that rested in the two mule carts under lock, key and guard as soon as possible, and in an out-of-the-way place at that.
Probably he'll spend some time biting his fingernails over whether the most trustworthy guards are really all that trustworthy, Loring thought. Such a fuss:
Arminger turned in his saddle to stare at the Tasmanian. "You're either a very innocent soul, or very, very foolish," he said, his voice flat and metallic. "To paraphrase Elizabeth. 'Must is not a word to use to princes.' "
Nobbes went pale. Loring almost winced in sympathy; the man hadn't developed the right reflexes, and it was suddenly coming home to him that the safe, democratic rule-of-law Commonwealth of Tasmania was very much the exception this ninth year of the Change-and that unlike King Charles, the Lord Protector didn't give a tinker's damn about diplomatic immunity.
I wish I could have warned him: but that's why we've been kept separated:
The moment stretched. Nigel cleared his throat. "I'm sure Captain Nobbes will come to see the necessities of your position as the guarantor against anarchy in this area, Lord Protector," he said heartily. "Certainly the material's yours, and I for one would be happy to show your men how to use the"- entirely useless -"weapons properly. They aren't anything for the untrained to get their hands on, eh, what?"
Am I putting it on a trifle thick? Loring asked himself.
Arminger was evidently wondering the same thing; he shot Loring a considering look. Alleyne was smiling broadly too, and Hordle laughed coarsely.
"Looks like the job prospects is better 'ere than Tasmania, Cap'n. Sorry."
Nobbes began to sputter incoherently, going pale and then flushing red; Arminger smiled at the sight. He had just begun to laugh when a shout from the east brought all heads around. Hooves pounded in the gravel by the side of the road, the tirrup-tirrup-tirrup of a gallop; the shoulder was a safer place to ride, if you were pushing a horse fast for any distance.
The rider had a sword and dagger at his belt, but he was unarmored otherwise and his horse had a good deal of Thoroughbred in it. Foam streaked its sides, and sweat soaked the khaki jacket the horseman wore, the smell of both rank as he reined in. Loring recognized the uniform of Arminger's court couriers, an elite corps used only for the most urgent messages. Arminger did too, and he kneed his own mount aside, over the roadside ditch and into the field so that the courier and he could talk unheard. The messenger's mount stood with its head down, panting like a bellows. That helped cover the sound of the men's voices.