The Nirvana Plague (18 page)

Estrada shook his head. “Sorry, colonel. I need to get back to the hospital. You don’t need me here.”

“I’ll decide where I need you, Major. They know you. If you take the lead it’ll help put them at ease.”

“You’ll be fine. You’ll see. Doesn’t make any difference.”

Marley examined him critically. “What’s wrong?”

Estrada was backing away. “Nothing is wrong. You’ll be fine. See you in the morning.” He stalked off and ducked out through the gap in the wall.

“What’s got him spooked?” Benford said. “Dr. Marley, why don’t you take the lead then?”

“All right.”

They followed Marley in.

At first they saw no one. A large central hall opened around them, empty, silent, and still. They stopped just inside, listening, seeing no one. A lightpole stood in the center of the hall, putting a filmy orange glow on the air. Round the periphery, rows of slender stone columns stood in shadow, holding up bits of broken arches, or nothing at all. Others lay shattered on the floor. At the hall’s far end, a barren altar stood stripped of its icons.

They advanced slowly as far as the center of the hall, under the smashed roof. One jagged peak of the Karakoram, silvered with moonshine, peered in curiously through the open roof. On their right a shallow impact crater opened like an abscess in the flagstone floor.

Still they saw no one, heard nothing. Their breath hung in heavy clouds around their heads. The air smelled musty — and vaguely sweet.

Marley thought of strawberries.

Seeing no one, he turned to the rest of the group, lifting his shoulders — where are they? Benford was taking out a flashlight, but Delacourt was lifting one hand slowly, pointing into the darkness ahead of them, left of the empty altar. The darkest part of the hall was there, where a stretch of the roof was still intact, arching overhead between heavy pillars.

All eyes followed Delacourt’s aim into the gloom. — And then they saw them. Ten of them, standing amongst the columns, still as statues, slender and silent, frozen faces dimly glowing.

Peters let out a barely audible hiss: “Jeeezus…”

Karen flicked the television off impatiently.

Roger was still standing in exactly the same position he’d been in when the police left, two hours ago. The cat, after writhing around his legs meowing for twenty minutes, was now fast asleep across his right foot.

“Roger, why don’t you come away from the window for a while?”

“Why don’t I?” he said, meditatively. “Why … I …”

“Please come away from the window, Roger.”

He turned toward her submissively. Dog on a leash. Roger’s submissiveness embarrassed her.

“Look, are you hungry? Come sit down in the kitchen, and I’ll fix you something. It’s long past lunch time anyway.”

The cat rolled off his shoe purring, and lazily stretched itself.

He walked with small steps to the narrow bar that separated the “kitchen area” of the room from the “living area” of the room, and sat down on one of the two stools on the living area side.

Karen peered into the cabinet over the counter. “Not much to choose from. I hadn’t really laid up provisions for a siege. Silly me.”

She plucked down a can of tomato soup and zipped the top off.

The cat jumped up on the counter and knocked its head against Roger’s shoulder, purring like a pump.

“Don’t let her on the counter, will you?”

Roger looked down at the cat, and the cat looked up at him, eye to eye. He puckered his lips in a goofy way, and the cat immediately dropped off the counter to the floor.

Karen witnessed the exchange over her shoulder. “What’s wrong with that cat?”

She fetched two bowls from the dishwasher, poured half the can into each, and plopped them into the microwave.

Roger was staring off into space like a blind man, and answered without looking round:

“She thinks this is a cat. Mm.”

“She thinks
you’re
a cat?”

Roger said nothing. He never answered the same question twice.

“What were you doing with those pigeons Tuesday?”

“Doing,” he said. “Doing.” Like he was trying to remember what the word meant.

“Did they think you were a pigeon?”

But Roger was distracted now. Thirty seconds of semi-lucid chit-chat and now they were probably done for the day. She took the bowls of soup from the microwave and plunked them down on the counter. She took two spoons from the dishwasher, clapped one down next to Roger’s bowl, and stabbed the other one into her soup. On her side of the counter, she remained standing, slurping soup into her mouth.

Roger was staring down at his bowl.

“What is it?”

“Tomato soup. What do you think it is?”

He angled his head this way and that.

“Red,” he said, like he was taking notes. “Elliptical.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

He bent his face down toward it.

Opposite him, she bent down too, watching.

His tongue came out and touched the rim of the white bowl.

“Hard,” he observed. “White.”

“What are you doing?”

He laid his head over on the counter.

“Spherical section,” he said. “Mm. What is it?”

“It’s your bowl. What do you think it is? What’s wrong with you?”

“Bowl,” he said, the way a blind man mapping a new room might say “chair.”

He got off his stool and brought his eyes down to the edge of the counter, getting an ant’s eye view of the bowl thing. He bumped the counter with his cast, and the smooth red surface wriggled into concentric waves.

On an impulse, Karen mirrored his behavior, and brought her eyes down to counter level behind her own bowl.

He rose up again, still fixed on the bowl, like a camera on a crane, or a heron targeting a bluegill.

She continued to mimic him.

He bent forward slowly until his face went into the bowl and he touched the soup with his nose and tongue.

“Tomato soup,” he said, straightening up again. “Hot.”

Red soup ran down his chin.

She came up from her bowl licking the soup around her mouth, and grinned.

“I bet it’s even better with a spoon.”

He looked up at her like he didn’t recognize her. His eyes wandered over her face and hair and neck.

“Wife,” Karen said. “Soft. Round.”

His expression didn’t change.

“You, Tarzan,” she said. “Me, Jane.”

Nothing.

He doesn’t even know he doesn’t get it.

She picked up his spoon and held it in front of him till his eyes focused on it, then she dropped it into his bowl. The soup splashed. Little red dots speckled the white rim of the bowl and the white countertop around it.

“What is it?” he said.

“It’s still tomato soup. With a spoon in it.”

He lowered his face down again, but passed the bowl and fixed on one of the tiny red dots on the counter.

“Red.”

She got down as close to the same spot as she could. Their four eyes crossed over the dot.

“Red,” she repeated. “On white.”

His eye was in her eye now.

“Blue,” he said. “Eye.”

She felt happy.

“What are you thinking?”

Confusion appeared in his face.

“Do you understand me?” she said quickly.

“No.”

“But you understood me when I said ‘Do you understand me.’ You understood that question.”

“Under,” he said, “stand.”

Marley felt the hair go up on the back of his neck.

The soldiers standing in the shadows didn’t move.

Stunned, Marley and the others said nothing for a long time.

Benford flicked on her flashlight, screwed the beam wide, and turned it on the soldiers.

They did not react. Their eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at anything. They didn’t even blink.

Marley took a step toward them.

“Hello,” he said.

No response. Not the least movement or sound.

He took another step. The others hung back.

“Hello!” he said a little louder.

Nothing.

He took a few more steps. Benford’s flashlight cast his shadow large over them.

“Hello, there.”

Still no response.

He advanced slowly toward the center of their line. Three women and seven men. They carried no gear. Most were stripped to T-shirts and camouflage trousers. Most were barefoot. Their faces were open and expressionless. They were facing him, but they weren’t seeing him. Through marble eyes they looked right through him, staring the thousand-mile stare of mariners and madmen — and battle-shocked warriors.

Marley thought of Easter Island statues with their shocking eyes leering inland, standing guard within the doors to the sea.

He stopped two paces in front of a young woman in the center of the group. She was shorter than he was. Her name was printed on her T-shirt.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Dr. Marley. Your name is Davis?”

She was as responsive as a portrait.

He heard his teammates behind him shuffling nearer.

He stepped closer to his subject and lightly took hold of her wrist. He lifted it, feeling her pulse. Her skin was soft, puffy, and cool. He rotated her hand experimentally. Her wrist was neither stiff nor limp. Taking his tablet stylus from his shirt pocket, he turned her palm up and dragged the sharp end of the stylus firmly across it. The fingers curled slightly, but he felt no effort from her to pull her hand away. He released her arm and watched as it slowly returned to her side, like it was sinking through water.

“Catatonic,” Benford said, behind him.

“Yes.”

With a quick movement, he snapped his fingers loudly in Davis’s face.

No reaction.

“Assess the others,” he said quietly over his shoulder. “Responsiveness, rigidity, waxiness.”

The taskforce reassembled in the corner of the main hall opposite their patients.

Assisted by a couple of men from the camp’s forces, the aides were running in wire and set up heaters and lamps inside the main hall of the temple. They also brought in cots and sleeping bags. The team was going to spend the night right there in the temple.

Marley sat down on a cot and slid his aching feet out of his boots.

Benford called Estrada on comm and spoke to him briefly. Turning back to the team she said: “He says they were not catatonic last time he saw them, which was around midday. They were minimally responsive, but not catatonic.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Delacourt said, stretching out on her cot.

“Ten at once,” Peters said.

“Now you believe this thing is real?” Benford said.

“Well, it’s something.”

They all looked toward the statues again, still standing amongst the columns opposite.

“How long can they stand like that?” Delacourt said.

Marley looked up from unrolling his sleeping bag. “Catatonics can hold a position for hours, even days, that you or I would find excruciating after just a few minutes. But these won’t.”

“How do you know?” Delacourt said, yawning.

“You’ll see.”

“Christ, I’m exhausted,” Peters said.

“Let’s try to get some sleep,” Benford said. “We’ve been on the move more than twenty-four hours.”