It was very different from the life her parents had pushed her to pursue—to be the front runner in the rat race, to work sixty hours a week, to focus her goals on being the best, on getting ahead. Iris was normally high-strung, always on the move—but she was learning that it was okay to be different. She liked these simple comforts.
And she liked being with Todd.
She caught Todd looking at her many times when he thought she wouldn’t notice. Even when they were together he still seemed to long for her like some unreachable object. He was so clean-cut and straightforward; it calmed her to believe he had no private agenda, that he wasn’t after her for any reason other than herself. In his puppy-dog way, Todd couldn’t hide anything; subtlety was not his strong point, but she found it kind of sweet.
“Hey, you gonna daydream up there all afternoon?” Jackson Harris shouted up at her.
Iris quickly stripped out the old rotor and placed it in her backpack, then installed the new one. Clambering down the metal rungs, she overheard Harris and Doog talking.
“I sure wish we had some music during all this. That’s what I miss the most. Who’d have thought the Grateful Dead would finally die?” Harris kicked a stone into the gully.
As she stepped down the last rungs from the windmill mast, Iris remembered all the CDs she’d loved to play. The hardest things to live without were coffee and rock ‘n roll. She dropped to the gravel pad around the mast and turned to Harris and Doog.
“I miss the music too,” she said. “So what are we going to do about it?”
Todd Severyn rode his horse through the gates of the Livermore branch of Sandia National Laboratory. Spirals of razor wire crowned the tall fences, but the guard station sat empty. Nobody bothered to impose security anymore. Most of the lab facilities were broken down and unoccupied, but some of the researchers still came in to work, while others camped out in RV trailers in the parking lots.
For a month or so the teams had banded together, frantically trying to find some way to eradicate the petroplague; but as equipment broke down, computers malfunctioned, and the entire complex collapsed, most of them had given up hope. A few still continued plugging away to come up with innovative solutions.
Todd tied Stimpy up front to the bicycle rack and went inside the admin building. The lobby area for welcoming visitors had been turned into a command center. The bright and cheery PR posters for America’s national labs had been replaced by a large map of the United States studded with colored push-pins.
One of the administrators, Moira Tibbett, stared at the map with a sheet of paper in hand. She wore a dressy cotton outfit. Tibbett glanced at a list of locations on the paper, fingering a push-pin. She squinted at the map like an entomologist about to spear a specimen, then jabbed in the push-pin.
“More stuff for the Atlantis Network?” Todd asked. He poured himself a glass of warm sun tea; it tasted good.
“Yeah. Three more stations came on-line this week. For a political dumping ground, FEMA is doing a pretty good job tracking these enclaves and linking us together.” She thrust another push-pin into a different location.
Todd lifted his eyebrows; her former disdain for the Federal Emergency Management Agency had come around a hundred and eighty degrees. “So what’s new this morning? Give me some news I can take back to the colony.”
“Well, locally the usual stuff is happening,” Tibbett said. “The Livermore city engineers are trying to make sure people have access to enough water. We have a whole lot of problems with just our sewage system. The fire patrols are more organized, but we’ve been lucky so far. And it’s same-old same-old on the food story.”
Todd nodded. At 50,000 people and somewhat isolated, the city of Livermore was probably the right size to weather the petroplague: not so big that it had no way of getting its own supplies, yet large enough to have an infrastructure with some chance of functioning.
“What’s new on the big board?” Todd asked, gesturing with his chin toward the wall map. Tibbett withdrew a push-pin and stabbed another set of coordinates, this one in Missouri.
“Kind of ironic actually. Spencer Lockwood at the solar antenna farm in White Sands, knows that the remaining smallsats he was supposed to put into orbit are sealed in launch canisters at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. He’s rigged up a way to launch the satellites out in New Mexico, but he can’t get his hands on them.”
Todd scratched his head where the cowboy hat had pushed his brown hair into strange twists. He didn’t know whether to be skeptical or amazed. “We can’t even get our sewer systems running, and this guy wants to get a satellite into orbit?”
Tibbett’s face looked carved out of stone. “Twenty satellites, actually. But if Lockwood says he can do it, believe him. I gave him a tour here not long ago. He’s a real hot-shot.”
Todd looked at the map, saw push-pins in New Mexico at the White Sands missile range, another one near Los Angeles in Pasadena. He began to imagine grand schemes, a great expedition across the Southwest hauling the satellites from Pasadena across Arizona into New Mexico. A regular wagon train to the stars!
But it would never come to pass. He said goodbye to Moira Tibbett and headed home to Iris.
Chapter 55
Outside of Albuquerque, concrete buildings and bunkers were set into the side of the hills—”Bayclock’s Empire,” as Navy Lieutenant Bobby Carron had come to think of it. Encircled by four metal fences, the 1000-acre Manzano complex had once served as a storage facility for nuclear weapons; now, Bayclock used the fortress-like bunkers as his headquarters.
The guards outside the chain-link gate popped to attention and threw him a salute as they waved him into the facility. He felt strange wearing an Air Force uniform.
Accompanied by escorts, Bobby hobbled up a series of stairs and entered a fortified building. Bobby gritted his teeth. His still-healing wounds sent tremors of pain through his body.
Concrete walls two feet thick, barred windows, and piles of useless electronic gear made the place seem like a twisted version of a medieval castle. Finally, he passed two more guards standing like moat dragons outside Bayclock’s office.
“Stand at ease, Captain.”
At first Bobby didn’t realize that Bayclock was speaking to him. In the sprawling office the general had commandeered, once-plush carpet edged up to dark wood paneling that had blistered as the glossy coatings had dissolved; military awards, lithographs of fighter aircraft, and school diplomas covered the wall.
“Please come in, Captain. Are you fully recovered from your injuries?” Bayclock waved Bobby into the secure office, then slumped in an overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. Narrow window slits barely lit the room.
Bobby stepped forward, stiff and formal as he remembered from his training at the Naval Academy. The memory of the curfew-breaking teenager dangling on the gallows still burned clear in his mind. “It’s lieutenant, sir. Not captain. You didn’t have any Navy uniforms I could wear.”
Bayclock narrowed his eyes, then laughed. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Calling you a captain is like promoting you three ranks! Never figured out why the military couldn’t standardize the whole damn rank structure.” He motioned toward one of the chairs. “Go ahead, have a seat.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bobby had expected Bayclock to be some sort of ogre, hunched over his desk and ready to snap necks with his thumbs. Instead, the general had bright eyes, regulation-cropped dark hair, and an easy grace as he folded his hands in front of him. Bayclock held himself poised, continuously taking in his surroundings. It was obvious to Bobby that Bayclock had himself been a fighter pilot; but Bobby felt no rapport with the general. Bayclock inspected him closely. Bobby wondered how he would measure up.