IMMUNITY

Manderson lowered his eyes and smiled quietly to himself. Crowe just sighed tiredly. Only Lucy Southwell looked kindly at Rebecca and said, “You know that’s impossible, don’t you?”

Manderson looked up with a bemused expression and said, “I suppose that would make the big ones, the snowmen, phagocytes of some kind.”

“Macrophages,” Rebecca said firmly. “Mother Nature’s immune system. Now triggered by Dr. Vicky Green. Against the human race.”

Southwell put a hand on her arm. “Rebecca, it’s an imaginative idea but just not very likely. Antibodies are simple proteins. They’re microscopic.”

“I never said they were human antibodies,” Rebecca said, and wouldn’t say anything else until the helicopter had landed on the lined green surface of the main playing field at the North Harbor Sports Stadium in Albany.

The Command and Control Center was set up in a sponsors’ lounge on the fourth floor of the stadium. Through huge plate-glass windows, the green rectangle of the rugby ground was now home to a number of helicopters and row upon row of armored fighting vehicles, preparing for battle.

Tane, Rebecca, and Fatboy were waiting to leave. Their transportation was coming up from the central city. All vehicles here apparently were already hard at work, transporting troops and equipment to build the defensive line.

“They are antibodies,” Rebecca finally spoke again, in a small but determined voice. “Antibodies and macrophages. Accept it. You have to. You can’t defeat what you can’t understand.”

Crowe glanced momentarily up from a detailed topographical map of the surrounding area that he and a gray-haired officer from the SAS had been poring over for about fifteen minutes, discussing something called kill zones, along with fields of fire and “claymores.”

Crowe said without any further trace of humor, “Rebecca, even if that were possible, think about what you’re saying. That would make us—human beings—pathogens. Antibodies attack pathogens.”

“I know,” Rebecca said softly.

Crowe shook his head and turned back to his work. An SAS trooper entered, saluted, and passed a note to the SAS officer.

Rebecca said, “We think of the Earth as a lump of rock, floating through space. Just a big stone, conveniently placed in a nice warm spot for us to grow on, like mold on cheese. But that’s just a way of thinking about it. What if we thought of this planet in a different way. As a complex web of interrelated ecosystems, host to billions upon billions of smaller organisms.” She paused. “Not all that unlike the human body when you think about it.”

Crowe ignored her, sketching in a line of defendable positions on the map.

Manderson just sat quietly in the corner. Of all of them, only he seemed unfazed by what they had just been through.

A young soldier in the uniform of the regular New Zealand army came in with a stack of orders, which Crowe checked and the other man signed.

Through the window, Tane saw the first line of fighting vehicles began to move out.

Rebecca stood up and crossed to the map table. She leaned over it, her hands on the table, interrupting their work.

“You know what global warming is?” Rebecca asked calmly. “I do. The world has a fever. We are pathogens. Mother Nature is sick and the sickness is us!”

Crowe looked up at her through half-closed lids. Almost a display of emotion, Tane thought.

“I lost four men today,” he said slowly. “I am not in the mood, and I don’t have the time for your childish environmental fantasies. Get her out of here.”

This last was to Manderson, who rose without question and moved behind Rebecca.

Rebecca didn’t budge. She laughed, a little hysterically, which was unusual for her, but then again, it had been a very unusual day, Tane thought.

She said, “We don’t inhabit a place: We infest it. We poison rivers; we pollute the skies and chop down the trees. We drill holes deep into the earth and suck out all the goodness. We are malignant and highly infectious.”

Manderson grasped Rebecca by the arms, but Lucy Southwell intervened, drawing Rebecca away from the table. “What are you saying, Rebecca? That Professor Green somehow created an antidote to the human race?”

“No. I think these things have been there all along. Locked in our genes. Some kind of safety cutout. A self-destruct mechanism for the human species. I don’t think Vicky Green invented them. I don’t think she even discovered them. But by playing around with the building blocks of life, I think she finally triggered them against us.”

Southwell said, “That’s crazy, Rebecca. Listen to what you’re saying. You’re wrong.”

She led Rebecca across to the large window and stared out at the bush-covered ridge in the distance and the blue skies above that.

Tane and Fatboy followed. After a while, Fatboy asked, “But what if she is right?”

“She’s not,” Southwell said. “I’ve studied this field my whole life. It’s just not possible.”

Somehow she sounded less sure than she had a moment ago.

Fatboy repeated his question. “But if she is right?”

Southwell sighed. “An antibody exists for only one purpose—to destroy an infection. An antibody has no conscience, no morals, no power to decide. It just does what it was created for. It binds to an infectious particle and disables it, to make it easier for a macrophage to absorb it and destroy it. That’s all it does. If what you are saying is true, then that’s it. That’s the end of the human species.”

“I know,” Rebecca said. “And maybe it’s all we deserve.”

“For Christ’s sake, get that child out of here!” Crowe shouted, shaking his head erratically from side to side. Even the stoic Manderson seemed shocked at the uncharacteristic display of emotion from his commanding officer.

He motioned to Tane and Fatboy, who didn’t argue but pushed open the double doors to the lounge and began to walk along the short corridor to the wide concrete staircase. Fatboy took the Chronophone. Manderson followed to make sure they did as they were told, and Southwell helped Rebecca along behind them.

Rebecca was crying now, and Tane wanted to comfort her but wasn’t sure that she’d want him to; besides, Lucy seemed to be doing that job.

They exited the building and moved slowly past one of the huge black trucks and trailers of the USABRF team. The snout of the truck was tucked into the lee of the building.

An army Land Rover pulled to a halt by a row of ticket gates, and a uniformed soldier got out expectantly. A young-looking blond girl in the uniform of the transport corps.

“Why won’t he listen?” Rebecca asked between sobs. “What’s wrong with him?”

Manderson spoke up then, and in the Texan’s slow Southern drawl, Tane heard a whisper that maybe he wasn’t quite so convinced that Rebecca was wrong.

“What d’ya think is wrong with him? The skipper has spent his entire life fighting against dangerous germs and nasty bugs.” Manderson turned and spat some gum into a plastic rubbish bin by the back wheels of the big black truck.

“An’ you just told him he is one!”