AT HOMESTEAD, NEIL STUDIED THE NEW DOWNLOADS from the Department of Defense with misgiving. Only so many launch vehicles left, and according to his virus specs, dispersion would fall short by twenty-five percent if he didn’t come up with a solution. Secretary of Defense Sidower was indeed correct in his bleak assessment—except for what they had in the United States, and in U.S. bases abroad, launch infrastructure worldwide, particularly in terms of personnel, had been degraded to the point of zero capability.
Was there a solution?
He entered the parameters again, just in case he had made a mistake—lift requirements versus existing launch capabilities—and came up with the same dead-end numbers. But then he widened the data pool, and entered the parameters through a games-theory program Kafis had given him one summer at Marblehill, something the Pentagon computer geeks didn’t have, just to see what would happen. Outside, on the air base, the last of the sun was slowly disappearing.
“Analyze,” he told his waferscreen.
Sixty seconds later his waferscreen gave him an answer he hadn’t been expecting—the Moon.
He scrutinized the data. It turned out that AviOrbit had dozens of interlunar shuttles crated in various warehouses, some out of service for decades, but all possessing, to varying degrees, launch potential. His waferscreen told him that if these shuttles were refurbished, they could be transformed into crude missiles.
He sat back, glad that the Tarsalan software had taken into account this phantom resource. Was it possible, then? Could he win this chess game after all?
He entered further parameters about the virus itself. Because it was a virus, it could be grown and cultured in a lab. Unlike the toxin, it didn’t need an existing chemical production infrastructure. Checking lunar inventory, he saw that the Moon in fact had the basic building blocks for his virus, and could manufacture it in significant quantities. They even had Tarsalan blood in cold storage—there for emergency purposes should the Tarsalans ever need the Moon in a medical capacity—and could therefore also devise the Tarsalan-specific virions.
He breathed a sigh of relief. It could be done. And if it meant he had to pull another Luke Langstrom on the Moon, then that’s what he would do. Co-opt the Moon a second time. And truth be told, he was curious. His brother had come up with the flagella thing. But had he come up with anything since? It would be interesting to see exactly what his brother was doing.
He lifted his phone—the phone—and entered a page. He wondered how long it would take the secretary of defense to get back to him.
When a firefight erupted between the opposing factions an hour later, the secretary still hadn’t gotten back to him. The hole in the sky above the southeastern United States had now closed up entirely, and it was pelting rain vehemently.
The firefight, as usual, was at the other end of the base, but Neil and his family still followed their established protocol. Neil got on the floor. The girls crawled under their cots.
Louise didn’t follow the protocol this time. She kept rolling her paint roller, spreading yellow paint over the walls, as if she were sick of firefights.
“Louise, get on the floor.”
She continued to paint.
“Mom, a stray bullet could reach here,” warned Ashley. “Or the soldiers might come.”
“Sweetie, it’s all right. Colonel Bard never lets them get close to us. So let’s just continue with our lives. I’m not going to let them bother us anymore. And I’m almost finished with this painting. I want to get it done. What do you think of the color? I think it really brightens up the place.”
Neil stared at his wife as she went back to painting. He heard more gunfire, but it was so distant he thought that maybe she was right—Colonel Bard would keep the breakaway airmen at the other end of the base forever. As he watched his wife work, he had to wonder if this frantic little woman who was painting the army barracks a sunny shade of autumn gold had become unhinged.
He got up from his hiding spot on the floor and lifted a paintbrush. He poured some paint into an empty ration container, walked to the window, and started painting the window frame.
“Dad, do you think that’s wise?” asked Melissa.
“Your mom’s right.” He was feeling slightly unhinged himself. “I’m getting sick of hiding on the floor.”
He dipped his paintbrush into the container, even as he heard the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire nearby. The old, bold confidence was gone, despite the prospect of getting the Moon’s help. He couldn’t help thinking of Kafis. Especially when Kafis’s pupils dilated to the halfway point. The halfway point always meant that Kafis thought Neil had missed something important.
“Dad?” called Melissa.
What did he even care about Kafis? He was going to beat Kafis. The virus module had backups to its backups. It had failsafes to its failsafes. He had thought it through again and again. He couldn’t have missed a single thing. And if they got the Moon on board …
“Dad!” Melissa’s voice penetrated the racket outside.
“Yes?”
“Your phone.”
He stiffened. He listened. His phone. How could he have missed something like that? He was only fifty-two. Was his hearing getting that bad?
He put the paintbrush in the ration container, walked over to the table, and lifted his phone, his precious link to the secretary of defense. Only it wasn’t Sidower—it was Deputy Secretary of Defense Leanna Fonblanque.
“Where’s Joe?” he asked.
“We’ve moved the entire government to the 937 facility in New Mexico.”
Neil took a moment, intellectually and emotionally, to assimilate this. “And you didn’t take me and my family?”
“Were you notified?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not on the list.” The deputy secretary sighed. “937 is a long-term facility.”
“You don’t have to explain what it is. I helped develop it.”
“Then you understand that theoretical science won’t be a number-one priority when we reemerge. Technical and infrastructure support will be. I’m sorry, Dr. Thorndike.”
At that moment he felt betrayed by his government, and almost didn’t tell her about the Moon’s hidden launch capability. Fuck it. He had his own 937 in Marblehill. He didn’t need the president’s twenty square miles of underground bunker in New Mexico.
“So are you in touch with Joe, then? And the president?”
“I am.”
“And they’ve left you in charge of this … this effort I’m making? Because I’ve come up with something they might be interested in.”
Fonblanque paused, and he read a half-dozen things in that pause, chief of which was pity. “I understand you have problems at Homestead. A breakaway faction?”
“Colonel Bard is containing it.”
“Good.”
“Are we getting closer to a full-scale assault on the TMS?” he asked.
“The Pentagon’s plans are proceeding apace, Dr. Thorndike. That’s all I’m authorized to tell you.”
This, then, was another rebuff. He pictured the deputy secretary somewhere in her own safe house, in her sixties but sporting every cosmetic enhancement and procedure in the book so that she looked closer to thirty, helicopter ready outside for the moment she thought she had to go to 937.
“You tell the president everything’s fine,” he said. “I’m firmly in control of the situation. And I have a great idea. Something that will improve the dispersion odds of the virus greatly.”
“Is that gunfire I hear?”
“I’ve come up with a solution for the launch shortage.”
“Dr. Thorndike, we’re putting most of our effort into the TMS effort. So don’t worry too much.”
Another revelation. They didn’t care about the virus anymore. The second line was on the back burner. They were making other plans. Plans to wrest control of the on-off switch from the Tarsalans.
“I guarantee the virus is going to work.” The old, bold confidence was a brittle thing at best. “But we need launch capability.”
“We’ve taken some of our older units out of mothballs. They’re being refurbished as we speak.”
She gave him the number, and of course it wasn’t nearly enough.
“I’ve run models,” he said. “Using Tarsalan games-theory software. The Moon—or AviOrbit, at least—has all kinds of old shuttles in storage. They can easily be converted into crude missiles.”
The assistant secretary paused. “I’m listening.” And he realized from the tone of her voice that he had her on board again, that he had them all on board, and that he had come up with another great idea.
“They’ve got over seven hundred crated away in various warehouses. Some are nearly a century old, but others are only ten or twenty years old.”
She paused again. “You signed off against the Moon. I have the document right here. Lunar interference represents a category-eight risk. You’ve written it right here. How are they going to react?”
He hated the taste of crow. “Nectaris is always asking for handouts. And this mayor they have … he won’t take much persuading if you make him understand it will be to his advantage. As for AviOrbit, promise them anything. Even subsidies. We have to hit the Tarsalans hard, and hit them fast. Our dispersion area has to be as wide as possible. We have to quickly reach the saturation point before the xenophyta’s natural defense system responds. Let’s see if we can get the Moon on board a second time. They’ve already given us Luke Langstrom. Maybe they’ll give us everything. Including some updates on what my brother is doing. Maybe he’s come up with something else besides this flagella thing. It could all turn into something useful.”
The deputy secretary admitted it sounded promising. “I don’t think anybody considered the Moon as a launch resource, Dr. Thorndike. Excellent work.”
Here it was again, the primary theme of his life—people in power telling him he had done good.
Yet when he finally ended his call to the assistant secretary, he was anxious. The rain beat against the windows. Was he getting anywhere closer to solving the puzzle of the shroud? The gunfire abated and the girls crawled out from under their cots. And would the virus work on a mass scale, and not fizzle the way the hydrogen sulfide had?
Where was his confidence? He had to tell himself that the virus would work. That it was going to turn the xenophyta into mush from the inside out, so that it would rain from the sky like Oobleck. Yes. Oobleck. The king said he was sorry, and the Oobleck stopped. Simple. The whole viral thrust was meant to be simple. And simple was best.
Simple was the only way he could make sure he didn’t miss anything.