Marianne turned to Tim. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Yeah, well, I came to say we might have a problem.”
“But Sissy just said—”
“No, not the storm. Your speech. But first—were you talking to those mice?”
At Tim’s grin, Marianne felt herself flush. He often had that effect on her; she knew it; she was profoundly grateful that Tim Saunders did not. He lived with Sissy, he was fifteen years her junior, and he was not all that bright. To be so affected on a visceral level by someone so inappropriate was deeply embarrassing to Marianne. The powerful lean body, mahogany hair, bright turquoise eyes that made her feel as if she stood in a blue spotlight—none of this should set her hormones on high alert, not at her age. She was a grandmother twice over, for chrissake. And she lived with Harrison Rice, contentedly.
Contentedly but not passionately, said the rebellious part of her that was still seventeen. Marianne, a long way from seventeen, was appalled at that part of herself. Surely by now all adolescent fogs of desire should have evaporated from her emotions, from her mind, from her—
“I was not talking to the mice,” she said with what she hoped was dignity.
“Sure looked like it.” Another too-masculine grin. Damn, damn, damn. If she had to still feel the fog, why for such an obvious, even clichéd, pretty boy? Not that Tim was only that.
She said, “What’s the problem with my speech?”
“The crowd for it. They look nasty.”
Marianne frowned. Notre Dame was not supposed to be one of the nasty crowds. A noted research center, the university was pro-science, and although still Catholic-conservative on a few issues, had a socially liberal faculty and, mostly, student body. The university had even reimbursed her travel expenses, which few of her speech venues did. “How nasty?”
“Can’t tell yet. But I’m on it.” Tim left.
In the last two and a half years, Marianne had given over five hundred speeches for the Star Brotherhood Foundation, which she and Harrison had founded almost as soon as the alien ship had lifted off, taking Noah and nine other Terrans with it. The foundation’s purpose was to convince the world that a spaceship should be built, using the plans that the aliens had gifted, to take to humanity to the stars.
At first, the foundation had gone well. The spore plague had been mild, with fewer Americans than expected getting sick, fewer still dying. The world’s physicists, engineers, visionaries had all agreed with her. Humanity was going to the stars! Public opinion had been sharply divided, but Marianne and Harrison had been hopeful.
Then two things happened. First, morbidity and mortality reports came from Central Asia. Some anomaly in a genome common to that part of the world caused far more deaths from R. sporii than anywhere else. Horrific deaths, gasping for air, drowning in fluids in their lungs. There was still neither vaccine nor gene therapy for R. sporii, and the spores were apparently going to be present on Earth forever, affecting each new generation. Harrison’s team had developed a postinfection treatment for the disease, but it was expensive and distribution in Russia and her neighbors was sporadic and spotty. Already beset by ethnic unrest, the countries of the former Soviet Union attacked each other with irrational blame. Hard-liners took leadership in half a dozen countries. Hatred of Denebs, skillfully fanned for political purposes, flourished in Russia, in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Simultaneously, eight species of mice died.
Who knew that the loss of a bunch of rodents could collapse the world economy? Certainly Marianne hadn’t known, but like everyone else, she learned rapidly. An ecology, as Ryan had been telling her for over a decade, was a fragile construct. Alter one major element in it, and everything else was disturbed. Those common and ubiquitous mice were—had been—a major element.
Without the mice, predators from hawks to bears did not have enough to eat. Some died; some shifted to eating such alternate prey as snakes. The snake population shrank, and their prey, such as rats and lizards, flourished. Rat-borne diseases were now rampant. Arctic wolves starved.
Without the mice to eat their seeds, some wild plants went unchecked, growing completely out of control and choking off their less hardy neighbors, which further affected their ecosystems.
Without the mice to disperse their seeds, some flora began to disappear.
Without the mice to eat insects, some species flourished, including cockroaches, some caterpillars, some beetles.
Without the mice, which in some parts of the world had eaten huge amounts of cultivated grain, farmers suddenly had bumper crops. The supply glut caused prices to plummet. Whole economies tottered.
Every market on Earth had been affected. Conspiracy theories thrived like kudzu: The Denebs were a fiction and the spore plague spread by WHO to neutralize the Russians in world politics. No, the aliens were real and were agents of the anti-Christ—see Revelations if you don’t believe me! No, they were part of an interstellar cartel crushing Earth because we would be trade competition. Sometimes the Jews were part of this cartel, sometimes the Illuminati, sometimes the Russians or Chinese or Arabs. Accusations grew more bitter, small wars broke out, and the third world struggled, often unsuccessfully, to survive.
Marianne kept giving speeches. Harrison now worked with a research team at Columbia, desperately trying to genetically alter the few surviving mice into breeds that could survive in a world where R. sporii lay dormant in every meadow, every river, every rooftop. “But,” Marianne urged over and over, “the aliens did not cause the spore cloud! Denebs are indeed human, our genetic brothers. Their intentions during their year on Earth had been good and their mistakes accidental. A ship should be built using the plans that the aliens had gifted to humanity, taking us to the stars.”
But the Denebs and the spore cloud had arrived more or less together, and for a huge number of Americans, that was enough to “prove causation.” At a speech three months ago, in Memphis, she and Sissy had been pelted with eggs and tomatoes. One rock had been thrown. After the community organizer had hustled them to safety, Marianne had learned that some of the pelters had been armed with more than rocks, although no weapons had been fired.
“You need a bodyguard,” Sissy had said. “I know somebody. We can trust him.” The foundation had stretched its miniscule budget to hire Tim Saunders as her bodyguard. Ex–Special Forces, he owned a small arsenal and was licensed to use it. A week later, he moved in with Sissy.
Marianne said to the stuffed Mus musculus, “‘Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.’” It didn’t answer. Mus, she remembered, had once been nonnative to the United States. An invasive species.
Behind her, Sissy said, “You talking to those mice?”
“No,” Marianne said.
“Well, it’s time. Dr. Mendenhall’s here to escort you on stage.”
Marianne went to give her speech.
The Decio Mainstage Theatre held 350 seats, and all of them were filled. Marianne walked onto the stage, which featured a gorgeous proscenium arch, and stood quietly near the lectern while the dean of Sciences introduced her. The theater’s excellent acoustics carried Dr. Mendenhall’s words throughout the beautiful, high-ceilinged space with its polished, curving balustrades. Marianne, accustomed to much shabbier venues, wondered how the university could afford to maintain the theater so well. Their endowment must be enormous.
The students were too quiet. Many of them did not look like students.