“Death-life,” Mort(e) said. “Overload.” He propped his elbows on the table and rubbed his face with both hands. It was not an opportunity to run away. His fingers were splayed wide enough for him to keep her in sight. “This is what we fought for,” he whispered. “It’s what Tiberius died for.”
“Tell me what you know, Mort(e),” she said.
He placed his hands flat on the desk. “It’s not a pathogen,” he said. “It’s a belief. A thought-crime. It may be the most seductive idea that the humans ever came up with. It certainly fooled them for long enough. Still does, I imagine.
“Death-life,” he continued. “Life after death. Afterlife. The Queen didn’t even have a word for it.”
“EMSAH makes you believe in the afterlife?”
“The belief is not a symptom of EMSAH,” he said. “That’s what the Queen wanted us to think. The belief is EMSAH. That’s why it can’t be cured. The Queen recruited us in her holy war. EMSAH is what will make us like the humans, if we don’t eradicate it.”
“So EMSAH is … an ideology?”
“It’s religion.”
The word stuck in her ears, especially that second syllable, the rough “lij” sound, like a mosquito buzzing.
“But people aren’t simply believing things,” she said. “They’re killing themselves. And each other.”
“That’s because we’re dealing with the most virulent strain of the virus. A death cult. Sacrificing your life for the resistance is a one-way ticket to paradise.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Wawa said. “It’s not just a belief. There are ways of diagnosing it. Blood tests. Cognitive analysis. Brainwave—”
“All lies,” Mort(e) said. “There is no diagnosis. And no cure.”
“You witnessed one of the first quarantines! You were there! Don’t tell me those people died in their own blood and filth because of what they believed!”
“Oh, that,” Mort(e) said. “There’s a bioweapon, all right. It has a nearly perfect fatality rate. But the Queen created it. Not the humans.”
“What?”
“That’s how it works. A group of animals adopts a religion. Or makes one up. So the Colony poisons them with a killer flu to mask the real infection. It’s a prelude to sending in the Alphas to exterminate every trace of EMSAH. It’s probably happening right now. Here.”
He told her about the people he found in the meeting hall, all lined up and waiting to die. They had gathered in order to pray to a god who wasn’t there, for deliverance that would never come. They kept the young ones from leaving by tying them down with leashes. As far as anyone would know, the physical disease they had contracted was EMSAH. It was all a red herring to keep the animals loyal and vigilant.
“My friend Tiberius,” Mort(e) said, “he spent years trying to figure out how the bioweapon worked, how it spread. It was all a waste. Even if he had solved the riddle, come up with a cure, the Queen would have concocted another virus. And then Miriam would have said that EMSAH had mutated. And we’d be back to square one.”
“So Miriam’s been lying to us this whole time?”
“There is no Miriam. That was just an actor.”
“You’re telling me the Queen went through all that trouble just to keep people from worshipping a god?” Wawa said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“That’s because you weren’t there,” Mort(e) said. “Did you know what the humans did in their first battle with the Colony?”
“They … burned their own crops,” she said. “Some kind of shortsighted Pyrrhic victory.” She remembered reading about it in a history of the Colony, written by some rodent. She could not remember what kind.
“It was more than that,” Mort(e) said. “The humans interpreted the battle as a sign from the heavens. So they sacrificed their women and children. They cut them open and burned them alive. Drank their blood. I was there, thanks to this device.
“I don’t know,” he continued, “if EMSAH is the source of the humans’ evil, or a symptom of it. But it makes them dangerous, even to themselves. And especially to us.”
That was the point of this trial run, he told her. The Queen was testing the animals to see if they were worthy, if they could resist what destroyed the humans. But her patience had its limits.
Mort(e) was a lot of things, Wawa thought. Bitter and arrogant. Selfish. But he was not a liar. A liar would not have told Culdesac to his face that the animals were doomed to fail as the humans did. A liar would not have punched Culdesac in full view of the entire Red Sphinx.
“It gets worse,” he said.
“Worse?”
“The humans think I’m their savior,” he said. “I have to find out why. They have a fortune-teller who predicted that I would destroy the Colony. But it’s all part of the Queen’s plan. This is all an experiment. All of it. If I choose to become the savior, then the experiment will be deemed a failure. The ants will quarantine every settlement. Everyone will die. But if I don’t become the savior, I’ll never find Sheba.”
“Mort(e), why are you telling me this?”
“Someone in the Red Sphinx needed to know,” he said. “Before it was too late. If I ever see my friend again, I want to tell her that I did the right thing.”
“Why not tell Culdesac?”
“He’s on the Queen’s side.”
Mort(e) stood up, holstering the gun. He walked around the edge of the desk until he was only a few feet from Wawa.
“Besides,” he said, “You remind me of my friend. I know now that I can trust you. You lost a friend, too. Right?”
Cyrus. A million voices in her head said his name.
“That’s right,” she whispered.
There was a clock on the wall beside her desk. It was 3:02.
“He should have called by now,” Mort(e) said.
“Who should have called?”
“The colonel.”
The phone rang. It was a secure line, only for communication among the officers. Mort(e) gestured to the phone.
Wawa picked up the receiver on the third ring. “Lieutenant Wawa,” she said.
“Lieutenant,” Culdesac said. “Authorization code four-one-six.”
“Acknowledged,” Wawa said. “Authorization code nine-four-nine. Go ahead, Colonel.”
“Quebec,” Culdesac said. “Green light.”
The quarantine had begun.
“Should I order Red Sphinx to rendezvous at the base?” she asked. Mort(e) made a cutting motion at the base of his throat.
“Change of plans,” Culdesac said. “I have ordered everyone to meet at the quarry. Archer and his team are on their way. I’m already there with the rest of the RS.”
“The quarry?” Wawa grew angry at Culdesac for not picking up the tension in her voice. For not being here.
“We’re getting airlifted out,” he said. “Winged ants.”
“Understood.”
“Lieutenant,” Culdesac said, “your top priority is getting to the quarry as quickly as possible. Leave everything. Do not let anyone get in your way.”
“Understood, Colonel.”
“Good luck, Lieutenant.”
Wawa winced, realizing that she should have tried to buy more time by pretending that Culdesac was still speaking. But the click on the other end was too loud.
“Change of plans,” Mort(e) repeated in a sarcastic singsong.
A series of concussive thuds began somewhere south of the base. The low rumblings grew louder, shaking the walls.
“We’d better hurry,” Mort(e) said.