Aftermath (40 page)

"You try in' to discourage me and get yourself in real trouble?"

"Not at all. I am pointing out that modern sequencers, all dry and all digital, represent a marvel of twenty more years of progress in both medicine and technology. A genome, any genome, can be totally mapped in a few hours by a modern sequencer. Unfortunately, all such devices became brain dead the moment that the gamma pulse from Supernova Alpha created its EMP. I feel sure that when you discovered this, you were in despair."

"For ten minutes." He sounded like a man who was not exaggerating. "I been through despair before, an' I didn't like it."

"So let me offer you reason for optimism," I said. "You and your friends were given sequencers because it is much cheaper and easier to offer a standard mass-produced instrument than it is to produce a made-to-order device. But of course, you had no call for the full power of a genome sequencer. All you wished to know was the condition and length of the telomeres, those tiny fragments at the very ends of each chromosome. You didn't care what bases were in them, only their length. A full sequencer is huge overkill for such a task. I can show you how to accomplish the same result with the aid of five standard wet chemistry procedures, tests which can be applied to anyone after fifteen minutes of instruction. I will do this, provided that you are able to offer me a suitable quid pro quo."

He nodded. It was clear that despite his deliberate pose of the barbarian at the gates, he had understood every word that I said. I wondered again about his background. There was more here than the good ol' boy pose. In the hours that we had been talking, the sun had moved around so that it was directly in our faces. In its afternoon light his eyes seemed wolf eyes, more yellow than brown. I was exhausted. But an absolute need to match him drove me to alertness.

"Here's the deal, Doc," he said confidentially. "You show me an' Art an' Dana—yeah, I know, but I might need 'em later. This ain't a game to play solo. Anyway, you show us what we need, how to keep the treatments goin', how to know they're working. An' after that you're a free agent. We won't tell anybody you're out. We won't ever look for you."

"Unless something goes wrong, and you need me again."

"Well, yeah." He grinned. "I won't say no to that. We all do what we hafta do."

"About your two companions. Are you suggesting that they have already agreed to the terms that you propose?"

"No. And I'm not sure they would. They're different from me—from you, too, Doc. But you don't need worry about them. I'll handle 'em if I have to, once you and me have an understandin'."

He held out a dirty, broken-nailed hand. "I'm Seth Parsigian. Do we have a deal?"

After a moment I took his hand and shook it. "We have a deal."

I trusted Seth—trusted him to pursue his own interests, to the exclusion of everything else. I knew exactly what he was like.

And I knew one more thing, with certainty. When the right time came, when I was no longer dependent on his assistance and his special knowledge, I would send Seth Parsigian beyond this vale of joy and tears. I would kill him. We would see, paraphrasing his earlier crude parlance, who was eviscerated and lacked an epidermis.

I stood up, stretched my tired limbs, and looked around at the scattered clouds of the late afternoon sky. I hurt in half a dozen places where IVs and catheters had been removed. My muscles were weak. However, all those effects of my long coma were minor and predictable. They should soon vanish.

It was good to be alive, awake, and on the way back to normal.

27

At one o'clock exactly Saul stepped onto the south lawn of the White House.

The flight from Indian Head aboard the Sea Stallion had been breathtakingly fast. A formation of bright blue Air Force jets—old F-16s, Saul thought, though he was not sure—had accompanied them for the last few miles along the Potomac, before dipping wings in unison salute and peeling off to the west.

Dinner with Tricia was not until six. No one should be waiting to see him, since he was not expected back until late afternoon. He had five free hours, time he had gained by rapid travel from Indian Head.

Saul headed straight indoors, reflecting how age changed a man. He remembered an afternoon, forty-five years ago, when the electronic teaching system had failed and he and half a dozen other kids were released early. They stood in a ring and speculated how they would use the time. The afternoon stood open, an endless stretch in which they could do anything they liked.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
The Christian Bible, surely.
Time is money.
Who was that? Harder, but probably Ben Franklin. Saul paused in the outer room, where Auden Travis was giving instructions to three messengers from the Hill.

"Good afternoon, Auden. Would you locate General Mackay, and ask her to come to my office as soon as possible?"

"Very good, sir. I had no idea that you would be here so soon. Secretary Munce was in the building, most anxious to talk to you."

"Did he specify a subject?"

"No, sir."

"If he's still here, tell him to join me and General Mackay. What I have to say is relevant to him, too."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you feeling all right, Auden?" Travis seemed different.

"Perfectly fine, Mr. President."

"Good. Tell General Mackay to come right on in when she gets here. No need to announce her arrival." Saul continued to his office. If Auden Travis was different, it seemed a change for the better. He was handling the messengers more easily, emphasizing what he wanted but doing it with a joke. Maybe Saul ought to leave the White House more often.

The list of calls on his desk was the same as at Indian Head, with additions and an ordering of priorities. Auden Travis had appended his own notes to some of them:

Sino Consortium, economic collapse reported. Famine, epidemic disease, civil war. SecState seeking policy position. Aid question.
Bad news Hawaii—tsunami, 70-foot crest. Call Sen Kidjel.
Undefined emergency Florida, SecInt in transit w. Air Force assistance.
Fraser River, Columbia River, Red River, unprecedented flood stage. VP plus governors in best position to handle.
VP: 3 calls from him, no need call back—says best he remain on West Coast pro tern. Reports recovery there slow, but definite.
AgSec says Midwest food shipments resumed, reserves ample, but winter wheat crop total loss. Emergency farm assistance needed Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.
Sen Lopez and Cong Mander request meeting ASAP.
EuroPres requests summit soonest. SecState stalling
GPS back in business
Air Force report orbiter burn-up in atmosphere. Believes it was failed return of Mars expedition.
Gen Mackay has report on telecommunications activity.
New maps in office show estimated country conditions, weather patterns.

Travis's staccato style displayed his new confidence. Saul turned to the wall map. It had been drawn on an old flatbed plotter, but the colors and legend were bright and clear.

Blue: infrastructure hurt, but recovering. Green: badly hurt, but recovery likely. Yellow: almost destroyed, no sign yet of recovery. Orange: known total destruction of infrastructure. Red: condition unknown, but destruction presumed total.

You could go around the world, country by country, and note the color code. Brazil was orange. The whole of North America showed blue or green. Central America was mostly orange, as were the Federation of Indian States and the Sino Consortium. Northwest Europe showed blue. Fourteen of the west Asian states were green. Micronesia was red, along with Patagonia and Australia.

Or if you wished, you could stand back and examine not individual states but broad swaths of color. Then the global picture jumped out at you. The world changed from blues and greens in the north to lurid orange and red in the far south. Supernova Alpha had injected its slow heat poison into Earth's lower hemisphere, and human civilization south of the equator had writhed and died.

There were two exceptions to the general rule. All the Golden Ring countries had been dependent on the microchip technologies. Too dependent. Gold was now orange.

And Africa was a special tragedy. After centuries of failure, technology had taken hold across the continent. The old scourges had seemed defeated. Malaria, malnutrition, river blindness, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, yaws, bilharzia, and rift valley fever were everywhere in retreat under the benign rule of the Pan-African Federation.

And now? Now red blanketed the continent from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope.
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi
—always something new out of Africa. Except that in Africa itself, nothing new seemed possible. The timeless troubles had won again.

Saul turned to the display of weather vectors. They showed an unusual amount of hemispheric mixing, north and south, but conventional circulation patterns were also appearing. Maybe there would be a fall harvest after all. Earth was shrugging off the effects of Supernova Alpha and fighting back.

The steady click of heels sounded behind him. General Grace Mackay marched in and stood at attention. Saul nodded in greeting.

"Sit down, General. And answer a scientific question for me, if you would be so kind."

"If I can, sir." She sat down, but seemed just as much at attention.

"All the extra heat pumped in by Supernova Alpha must be melting a hell of a lot of ice. How much will the sea level be raised when we're all done?"

"I can't tell you that, sir, but half the world's oceanographers must be working on the question. I'm sure that the Deputy Science Adviser could give you an estimate."

"And I'm sure that anything Dr. Vronsky has to say will be scientifically accurate—and unintelligible. Would, you ask him, and give me a translation?"

"I'll certainly try, sir." Her confusion showed on her face. "Was that why you wished to speak to me?"

"No. I just thought of that when I was looking at weather patterns. I've had something different on my mind for the past few hours. General, tell me about interservice rivalries."

"It is discouraged and completely prohibited, sir, according to the interservice agreements of '14." The smoothness and speed of her answer suggested that the question was no surprise at all.

Saul offered his sunniest smile. "I know that, General. Murder and theft are prohibited, too, under much older statutes. They seem to thrive still."

"Yes, sir."

"However, I didn't ask you here to debate regulations. As you know, today I was at the Indian Head naval base. I saw a wide variety of naval weapons, old but in good working order. I also saw cargo planes, battle helicopters, grenades, rifles, and artillery that didn't belong in naval operations. I wouldn't have been surprised to see orbiters and heavy ground tanks."

"Yes, sir."

"And on the flight back, I was accompanied by a squadron of Air Force fighters. Did you give orders for that to happen?"

"No, sir, I did not."

Saul dropped into his chair, leaned back, and adopted a more casual tone. "So here's my question, Grace. What has your own attitude been for the past two months toward interservice rivalry?"

The steel went out of her backbone, and she, too, leaned back. "I have actively encouraged it, sir. I take full responsibility for my action."

"I'm sure you do. What I want to understand is the logic behind it."

"Failing the presence of an external enemy, sir, nothing so provokes a military individual to maximum effort as the chance to advance his or her own service."

"Army has to beat Navy?"

"Exactly. Sir, if you feel that my actions are contrary to your objectives, then I will be happy—"

"Don't say it, Grace. Don't even think it. Your job and mine are the same: we have to pull this country back together as fast as we can. If the services work best to get back in business when they compete, that's just great. Go on with what you've been doing. But now I have another question for you." Saul paused, his attention drawn to the tall, craggy man who had appeared and stood motionless at the door. "Come in, Mr. Secretary. I've got something that should involve you as much as it does General Mackay."

Lucas Munce was Secretary for the Aging. At eighty-seven he was exactly what Saul wanted to be at that age (not very likely, Saul admitted, unless he could somehow add six inches to his height and turn a rich chocolate brown). Munce made a stately entrance, inclined his shaved dome to the President and to General Mackay, and moved to the indicated seat.

Saul waited until he was comfortably settled, then went on: "In the past two weeks I have received reports of the crippling effects of Supernova Alpha on this country's military strength. To put it in simplest terms, most of our high-tech weapons have become pieces of junk. The only exceptions are the submarine command and anything in deep mountain storage. It seemed that three months ago we were secure. Suddenly we have become vulnerable.

"At Indian Head I learned that I was asking the wrong question. Military strength means nothing in absolute terms. If I have a spear, and you have nothing, I have military superiority. I want to know the supernova's effects on other nations. Are we
relatively
stronger or weaker than we were before? That is the issue I would like you, General, to address."

"I will take it as my top priority."

"Call Captain Kennecott at Indian Head. Request the services of a civilian scientist, Dr. Madeleine Liebchen, to help with the work."

"Yes, sir. May I tell Captain Kennecott that this is a presidential order?"

"That will be fine. But let me warn you, Dr. Liebchen hates Washington."

"I was once in the same position myself, sir, and I can appreciate it. I will find a way to handle things."

Saul turned to Lucas Munce. "Which brings me to my next point, and I'm very glad you're here to respond to it. My experience at Indian Head suggests that although our military forces love new weapons, they hate to throw anything away. Around the country we have big stockpiles of equipment thirty years old and more. It doesn't depend on microchips—but it does depend on people who know how to operate it. I want you to seek out men and women with experience of turn-of-the-century military equipment. Most of them will probably be retired. I would like them brought out of retirement for as long as the present emergency lasts. Do you think that is possible?"