I tightened my windbreaker against the chill. "I thought this place was supposed to be warm," I yelled.
"It is," the kid hollered back. "This is the frozen warmth that we have every winter."
"Oh."
The Jeep bumped across a pothole and I gave up the attempt at conversation. The map showed we were almost there anyway: At the end of February, the president had signed into law the Military Jurisdiction Bill.
Which effectively finished the job of dismantling the last functioning local governments in the country, and replaced them with district military governors. This was a temporary measure, the president said, only for the duration of the ecological emergency.
Which meant anywhere from ten to three hundred years. However long it took.
The president also signed the Universal Service Bill-which effectively drafted every man, woman, child, robot, and dog in the nation into the United States Armed Forces. The long-range plan was to restructure the social fabric of the country-from polyester to khaki.
"The Chtorran invasion," the president had said, "is nothing less than a concerted attack on every single one of us; therefore, it is the responsibility of every single one of us to resist."
I remembered the speech. It was the "each and every" speech. The president had begun by quoting an obscure World War I doughboy named Martin Treptow. "I will fight cheerfully and do my-utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.' That-" said the president, "-is the kind of commitment that is wanted and needed today. Each of us must act as if the issue of the whole will be decided by our individual actions.
"What is at stake here is nothing less than the future of humanity on the planet. The shape of our tomorrow will be I determined by the course of action that we undertake today. Each and every one of us will be a part of that tomorrow, and the future will answer this question: what were we-as a people, and as individuals-willing to commit to?
"I know what the answer is. If tonight, I were able to move among you and speak to you as individuals-each and every one of you-and ask just this simple question: 'What is your commitment? What are you willing to do?' I know what your answers would be. You would tell me, 'Whatever is necessary, I will do what must be done. Nothing less than that will be acceptable.' Because that is the kind of people we are. That is the kind of species we are.
"We do not shrink from this challenge-we accept it. It is a fire in which we will forge a new strength. We will do what must be done.
"And so, my fellow Americans, let tonight be the turning point in this crisis, the moment of our resolve. Tonight, let us join together, each and every one of us-not in fear, but in pride-in the commitment to this, the greatest of all human challenges.
"Tomorrow, acting in your name, and as a focus for your will, I shall go before the Congress of this great nation and ask for a total mobilization of the resources, the technology, and especially the people of the United States of America. I shall ask the Congress to quickly and efficiently enact the legislation necessary to enable us to combat and defeat this ecological infestation!
"We shall go forward! We shall unite together under a new banner! We shall have a single national purpose: unconditional and total victory over the invader. Anything less will be insufficient and unacceptable to us-not just as Americans, not just as members of the human family, but as children of God!"
The president was interrupted forty-three times by applause. It had been a powerful speech, loaded with all the right emotional cues. And it had worked. The country had accepted the Mobilization Acts:
I'd heard there were only a few protests-not very large ones-and the organizers were quickly arrested. (That was a trial I'd be interested in following.) But I'd also heard that most people were relieved that the government finally had things under control. Or at least, appeared to.
Otherwise, I didn't pay much attention to the civilian news. Within three years, there wouldn't be any civilians. That was another of the things we were giving up. For the duration.
The kid pointed. "Is that it?"
Up ahead, almost hidden, nestled between two hills, were three gray domes. I recognized the type-inflatables, hardened with shelterfoam. They were partially shaded by a cluster of tall eucalyptus trees. The place might have looked friendly if the structures hadn't already begun to decay. There were cracks and holes in the walls. We were going to need a harder foam.
The sign said:
CALIFORNIA CONTROL STATION
SAN LUIS OBISPO DISTRICT
"That's it," I said.
The site was left over from the plagues. I wasn't sure what its purpose had been. My job was to check its suitability for our current operations.
The government's latest plan was to set up a chain of fortresses, each no more than two hours travel from the next. Each "safe zone" would be totally self-sufficient and able to withstand even the heaviest of Chtorran raids. The assault on Bismarck, North Dakota, was still too recent in everybody's minds. Those pictures were worse than the ones out of Show Low, Arizona.
Right now, it all depended on the roads. We were still too vulnerable, and we had to keep the interstates open and functioning. The northern California infestations were growing again, despite almost daily flyovers by the Air Force, and we expected the worms to start expanding south again sometime this year. The highways were going to be the backbone of our resistance; but first we had to worm-proof every useful installation on the route. We needed to establish caches of supplies and weapons. It was grim work-with grimmer implications: We were digging in for the duration.
But we'd borrowed one good idea from the worms. The domes that we associated with worm nests were really only the entrances. Once the worms established themselves in an area, they tunneled in. The greater part of the nest was always underground. We didn't know how deep a worm nest could get, but it had occurred to the Science Section that we could use the same technique. Now, we were looking for locations.
We pulled up in front of the station and I reached into the back of the Jeep for my rifle. I took it everywhere. I even slept with it. "Wait here," I said.
The first dome stood open to the weather. It looked like it had been the office.
The second dome had been some kind of processing plant, but I couldn't identify the machinery. One half of the room was sealed off by a double layer of glass. There was a loading bay behind the glass and a conveyer belt leading into the next dome. On this side of the glass there were a lot of pipes. Two generators. Several control consoles. A bank of monitor screens. And, behind another glass wall, showers and decontamination chambers and a rack of isolation suits.
There were a lot of these hasty little structures left over from the plague years: emergency shelters, storage depots, distribution facilities, decontamination centers, and isolated research labsbut this wasn't any of those.
I passed into the third dome and the answer was clear.
There were ovens here.
The realization hit me like a wave. My knees turned to water, I almost collapsed. Dammit! I thought I'd buried my grief! How many more times? Dammit! Dammit!
I pushed it down-again-and continued my inspection.
The plagues had killed more than seven billion people, more than sixty-five percent of the human race. More men than women had died, more white people than black people, more yellow people than white people. There were still hundreds of thousands of mummified bodies waiting to be discovered.
One of the continuing jobs of the aftermath years had been to clean up the dead. The bodies were deadly. They still carried spores.