Jeff Long, page 43
“We want maximum security.”
“Now we have it,” she said. “By this time tomorrow night, the pilgrims will be gone. You can put your swords away.”
“It’s a feint,” said the general. “They’re going back into the forests. Into their tunnels. Taking up positions.”
“What forests? What tunnels?” she demanded. It struck her. Their touchstone was Vietnam. Afghanistan. Or Gaul. The barbarians were wild things.
“We had them gathered in place, the last of them,” said the general. Now we won’t know where they are. They’re getting away.”
“Let them go,” Miranda told them. “Now we can stay.”
The generals departed, but their staff officers remained, circling the room, leaning over monitors, writing down coordinates, making notes. Every now and then one would leave the room to make a call. Their doomsday expressions were stark amidst the overall jubilation. Except for them, it was like an office party in here, the happy faces, the little pine tree with paper decorations, the strings of electric red chili lights on the wall.
Miranda kept to one corner. She didn’t want to sour their joy. The retreat was exactly what they’d been hoping for. They could stay in the open now. They could inhabit the sunlight, carry on their research, embrace the survivors, find the cure. Their high fives and hallelujahs confirmed her vision. They belonged in the city, not with her father.
She wanted to share in their gladness, but they knew she was in mourning. Their smiles faded when they looked at her. She saw their deep sighs. If not for monitor number eight, she would have gone home to grieve in private. It was too soon to grieve, in a sense. He was still alive down there. But he had killed himself. It was all on monitor number eight, a few seconds past real time, however long it took to transmit from the valley to space and back down to this room.
His luminous, hollow-eyed head turned to one side, then bent over Izzy again. She touched the screen. If only she’d known what he was thinking. She would have wrapped her arms around him, paralyzed him with her love, ordered his arrest. But in saving him, she would have doomed the city. He had given her what she wanted.
Los Alamos was aware of his sacrifice. Whatever he had done down there, he had done for them. Whether that was true or not, they believed it was so. They had chosen Nathan Lee to mark the epicenter. It was a sort of cartographic honor. All their bull’s-eye overlays centered on him. They measured their new hope outwards from where he sat.
She placed her chair sideways to the monitor so that her back was to the room. She sat next to him, inches from the screen. They’d tightened down on him to the maximum resolution, but he still looked so tiny. His skull was a matter of pixels. Sitting there, he fit under her fingertip. The image pulsed.
He had not self-infected with the Sera-III. Miranda had checked the freezer, and all the samples were accounted for. She understood. By the end of forty-eight hours, Izzy would have been dead. Ochs might have invaded. The generals might have made their move. By going immediately, Nathan Lee had preempted the alternate realities, or at least some of them.
Izzy had died. She wasn’t sure Nathan Lee even knew. For several hours she’d been watching darkness creep through Izzy’s limbs and into his core. Now he was little more than a shadow on Nathan Lee’s lap.
Beside her, a computer’s screen saver showed clouds whisking past the Matterhorn. The scene switched: the Grand Canyon at dawn. A Hawaiian waterfall. Fields of red poppies. Mount Everest at sunset. It was a box full of dreams. At last she figured out the screen theme. There were no people in the pretty places. The computer was showing her the Garden before man. She reached over and turned it off.
They had supplies to last a decade. With care, there seemed no reason they could not last forever. If the plague approached again, they could always self-infect. Three years, Nathan Lee had argued with her. A whole lifetime.
She returned to the monitor, to her spectral lover.How long are you going to sit there? His hands were losing light. She could see it. He was freezing. She resented that. He knew how to take care of himself. If he could make it across Tibet in the dead of winter, this should be a snap. But he just sat there.
Finally she could not bear to simply watch. She got to her feet. Her jaw was set. Her decision was made.
Nathan Lee would be hot with the virus now, but she could wear a biohazard suit. The roads were piling up with snow, but she could take one of the big Army trucks with chains. For that matter, she could walk. It was only twelve miles. The snow couldn’t be that deep.
The Captain intercepted her at the door. She hadn’t even been aware he was here. “Forget it,” he said. “One sacrifice is enough.”
“I’m bringing him back,” she told him. “He can live out what’s left in a warm bed in South Sector.”
“That’s not what he wants.”
“Oh, he told you?”
“I have eyes.”
“Well I’m not giving up on him.”
“We need you here, Miranda,” he said.
“Then send a team of men for him.”
“Don’t spoil it,” said the Captain.
She felt skinned, she was so raw. “Spoil it?” she shouted. People looked. She lowered her voice. “He’s throwing himself away.”
“You know better.” He crooked one arm around her shoulders.
She thought he was going to offer a sympathy hug. “Save your pity,” she said.
But with a motion, he swept her to face the wall like a naughty child. He put his head next to hers. “The man’s doing his job,” he whispered in her ear. He was stern. “Do yours.”
The reprimand took her breath. He wasn’t finished. He laid one hand on her stomach. On her womb.
She flushed. He’d learned her secret. “He told you before he went,” she whispered.
“No,” said the Captain. “Like I said, I have eyes. My wife, she knew you were pregnant a long time ago. I wasn’t so sure. But I am now.”
She fought with her joy, fought with her sorrow, which was it?
“You need to be thinking,” the Captain said. “What will you tell the city in the morning? They’ll want to hear where things go from here.”
That hadn’t occurred to her. She would have to go public with something. Their victory needed enunciation. “What am I supposed to say?” she murmured.
“Give them a story. Tell them about the future. Make it up. A new land. Wherever it is you see us going.”
He let go of her shoulder, and it felt like she was tumbling through empty space. She put her hands against the wall to steady herself. She laid her forehead against the hardness and breathed out. Tears began burning down her cheeks, her first tears. She was shaking. Now was the time for the Captain to give her his shoulder. But he didn’t. No pity. He just stood beside her, faced out to the room, and guarded her tears.
Then, for some reason, the sirens began.
Swiping at her tears, Miranda glanced around. All through the room, heads were lifting from monitors. People stood hesitantly, half certain the wailing would shut off. But it went on.
“What’s happening?” Miranda asked. “Are we under attack?”
She looked for the generals’ staffers. Maybe they could explain. But they had left.
Men and women had begun checking each other’s screens, confused. “It’s got to be a false alarm,” someone insisted. “There’s no movement in the valley.” Even so, people began drifting to the doorway, reluctant to leave their stations, and yet tugged by the sirens. They didn’t know what to trust.
Out in the hallway, men and women were streaming for the exits, shrugging on jackets, grumbling about the bother. Miranda pushed through them, making for the stairway to the roof. The Captain was at her heels. She climbed the stairs two at a time.
The rooftop was bright with floodlights. The snow sparkled like jewels. It was piled to her knees, deeper than she’d thought. The air swirled with heavy white flakes. On the edge of the dark forest, tall phantom pines came and went in the gusts.
Miranda went to the edge of the building and looked across at the glittering city. It was beautiful, all decorated with holiday lights. Big snow plows with flashing blue lights were blading clean the roads. Columns of soldiers were filing through the streets. The air raid sirens went on howling at them, waking the city, waking the dead.
The generals, she thought. They weren’t finished yet.
NATHANLEElifted his head. He heard the song. He opened his eyes.
The world was pitch black. He had been nearing the bottom. Hypothermia was its own realm. Now he floated back to consciousness.
Who could be singing? It was so beautiful.
He took a long minute to remember where he was. He didn’t see the snow. He didn’t feel the weight across his legs. His arms were stone. He felt rooted to the earth. Ancient as a relic.
He thought,I’m blind. Then he lifted his head a little more, and there was the faintest glow on the far horizon.Dawn, he smiled. Night was passing.
The singing had no words. He listened more intently. It came to him.The throats of angels.
Then there was light.
36
Exodus
The valley lit white.
Miranda stepped back from the flash.
The far mountains went dark. Abruptly they surged to orange and red in the gathering fireball. That suddenly the air raid sirens fell silent.
The only thing she knew about such things came from movies. Next would come a tidal wave of wind and fire. Buildings would ignite, glass fly, forests bend. Their flesh would melt.
The Captain thought so, too. “Get down!” he yelled. They fell into the snow on top of the roof.
But the aftershock never reached them. Not a breeze.
The weaponeers must have been planning it for days. The bomb was perfectly planted, sized just right. She could picture it from above. With the base of the mesa for its anchor wall, the nuclear wind had cast out across the valley, east and south and north…away from the city.
At last the sound of a thunderclap cracked above the city. It passed over them to the west, into the night.
On her elbows, Miranda crawled through the snow to the edge of the roof. The mushroom cloud was flowering to the south and east, midway to Santa Fe. It was pink. The head reached their height, then went on growing, a long, skinny stalk poking at the stars. The stars showed. The blast had melted a hole in the very sky.
The Captain joined her. Side by side, they peered off toward the valley.
“What have you done?” murmured Miranda.
“I had no idea,” said the Captain. His voice was full of shock.
She closed her eyes. “Not you,” she said. “God damn my father.”
Everything stood revealed. Ochs had been released to preach. He had unwittingly brought the hordes of faithful into one place. Her father had wielded the people’s faith against them. He had dangled the city as bait, then struck with one swift blow. Their enemy was abolished.
“Don’t,” the Captain stopped her quietly. “He’s your father.”
She vomited. Onto her arms, into the snow, over the edge.
“It was self-defense,” said the Captain. But his voice was hollow.
“They were leaving.”
“I know,” he whispered.
“A nuclear bomb. Against children?”
The Captain searched for justification. “What did they expect? This is Los Alamos.”
“They had no warning.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“For some it might have.”
“They were already dead,” he said. “All of them.”
“That’s monstrous.”
“They were done with the world. They’d said their prayers. For them the siege was just another way to die. A quicker way.”
“The bomb was a mercy?”
“We’re spared,” said the Captain. “It’s not pleasant how we’re spared. But now they won’t come.”
“A million people.”
“Now we have a future,” he reminded her. “The future you wanted.”
“Not like this.”
She looked at the Captain and his horror was explicit. He looked old. He didn’t believe his own words. She got to her knees. “Come inside.”
“Yes.” But he seemed so fragile. He was shivering. She had to help him to his feet.
They descended the stairs.
Up and down the hallways, every phone was ringing. It was the signal. The authorities were reversing the 911 emergency call system. Every phone in every office and home in Los Alamos was getting the same recorded message.
The exodus was beginning.
She went into an office and picked up one of the phones. A pleasant voice was saying, “…to your designated evacuation depot. This is not a test. Please go….”
“This can’t be real,” said Miranda. “They’ve just incinerated every last person in the valley.”
Then suddenly shedid understand. The generals’ words came back to her.When the time comes, we will part the waters. While they still had the enemy in their sights, they had taken their shot. Now her father was ready for them.
“I have to go,” said the Captain. “My wife….”
“Of course,” she said.
Miranda advanced down the hallway in a daze. There was no panic. Doors stood open. Scientists were quietly shaking hands and taking last-minute group snapshots by their bench labs and cubicles. They calmly hung up their lab jackets and safety goggles, and walked away. She could read their thinking. They had resisted this moment for years, but now that it was here, they were relieved. The virus hunt would continue, but more reasonably, in safety, with time on their side for a change.
A man patted her arm. “It was a good fight,” he said.
“It’s not over,” she said. “Nothing’s changed.”
He gave her a funny look, and hurried off.
She went outside and crossed the bridge to the city. It was one in the morning. The streets were filling with people bustling home to their families. There were small details to attend, she knew. Some had decided to poison their pets, others to free them. Through windows with opened curtains, she saw people making their beds, straightening pictures on the wall, looking around to make sure all was neat. They left their Christmas trees and electric Hanukkah candles on. They’d packed their bags long ago. There was no need to say goodbye to anyone. They would all be seeing each other down below. That was the plan. She saw people locking their doors for the last time, and then, unlocking them…letting go.
The snow had stopped. The sky had cleared. It was chilly. Pulled from sleep, children were crying. Block by block, the exodus took shape. They had practiced for this event once every month for the past two years. The shock of the bomb seemed offset by the shock of evacuation. Their faces were laced with fear and wonder.
Miranda felt like a ghost as she passed through their lines. Citizens were orderly, if excited. The air was freezing. Under their parkas and fleece jackets, many wore vacation clothes: Hawaiian print shirts, sun-dresses, tank tops, blue jeans. The carved-out salt chamber beckoned to them like a tropical paradise.
Each had their “tenner” in hand or strapped to little airline carts, or in backpacks, the ten kilos of personal possessions which every man, woman, and child was allowed to bring. You could take anything at all: books, software, teddy bears, clean socks. Whiskey, or psychedelics. Whatever might get you through the next ten or twenty or forty years sealed twenty-one hundred feet inside the earth. For as long as Miranda had been here, the contents of one’s tenner were a subject of conversation, gossip, even jokes. Your choices weren’t simply a matter of taste. They reflected what kind of human being you were. Grave goods, Nathan Lee had called them. Relics that people took into the next world.
Each neighborhood and mesa finger had its own boarding sites. The passengers waited politely for their transportation, stamping in the cold. The clear mountain air was fouled by diesel fumes as sixteen-and eighteen-wheelers backed up to the docks. The trailers were sheathed in triple-layers of black quarter-inch rubber membrane normally used for roofing. Every rivet was epoxy sealed. The cabs were armored against guerrilla attacks, the windshields bullet-proofed. The drivers wore moon suits. The vehicles looked more like submarines than Peterbilts.
Straps hung from the ceiling like meat hooks. There were no windows, no seats, no snack bars. It was going to be standing room only for the next twelve or twenty or thirty hours. Soldiers piled their tenners in growing mountains to one side.
At one depot after another, people called out to Miranda. “You can come in our truck,” they offered. Everyone wanted her with them.
“I’m staying,” she said.
They were appalled. “But you can’t. It’s too late for that.”
“It’s just beginning,” she assured them. She didn’t ask anyone to stay. They were afraid. The bomb had spoken to their mortality. So far Miranda had heard no one speak about it out loud, the holocaust her father had unleashed. You could see it in their eyes, though. This was final. No atheists in the foxholes, she thought. All the brave talk of drawing a line in the sand, holding the fort, making a stand…gone. She didn’t blame them. They simply hadn’t known their hearts before. Now they did.
A woman approached her. “How can we leave you? Come with us,” she said. “Think about it. You’ll be all alone.”
Miranda smiled. That surprised her. She could smile.
“We’ll remember you,” the woman said, backing away.
“Thank you,” said Miranda.
Several times she overheard Nathan Lee’s name. They linked her to him and watched her pass among them with pitying eyes. In their minds she was the tragic widow.Is that all this is? she asked herself. Aromantic suicide? She rejected her doubt. It was more. It had to be. Her grand idea had come to envelop her. She had set it in motion, and now she’d become its passenger. It was carrying her along. But also it wasn’t carrying her at all. She had already reached her destination.
Every light in every room and along every street had been left on. It was as if the city wanted to guarantee that not even a shadow might be left behind. The bright lights made it hard to see any constellations between the clouds. They wanted one last taste of the stars. When the clouds parted to show Mars, a great cheer went up. Every child was raised on shoulders to memorize the sight.
