“We’ll try to make the bastards feel as if they’re helping.”
Julia Petrov spoke up. “I should point out that we’ve received a communications drop from the Moon. It parachuted through the shroud without detection, and the Navy recovered it a thousand miles north of Easter Island yesterday. The mayor’s office in Nectaris says the Moon is mounting its own scientific effort to neutralize the shroud.”
Neil felt some alarm. “The Moon?” he said. “Why’s the Moon getting involved? All they’ve got up there are gambling casinos, strip joints, and cannabis bars.”
The vice president interjected, “They have some top interplanetary-spacecraft design engineers.”
“Yes, but… we don’t want them screwing up our own operations. I’m sure their interference is going to be misguided, to say the least. They don’t have nearly the same expertise we do. Nor do they have the resources we have.” Neil turned to Julia Petrov. “Any idea who’s heading the project?”
“Your brother, as a matter of fact.”
Neil felt his face warming, and was momentarily disconcerted by this odd juxtaposition; poor old Gerry, as a matter of fact, being spoken about in the Oval Office.
“My brother?” He shook his head in disbelief. “With all due respect to my brother…” His usual tact seemed to desert him. “They can’t let Gerry take charge up there. I love him dearly, and he’s brilliant in his own way, but he has an uncanny knack for making wrong decisions, and for taking the wildest kind of risks. Mr. President, you have to get the State Department to talk to this mayor in Nectaris and tell him… tell him…” He raised his palms in consternation. “I urge you to have a midlevel diplomat, or even a senior diplomat, send a drop to this mayor in Nectaris and tell him to… to stand down.”
The president glanced around at his team, hesitant to give an immediate answer.
It was Chief of Staff Gregory who finally spoke. “But Neil, we can’t dictate to the Moon. They have their own sovereignty up there now. And don’t we need all the help we can get?” The chief of staff gestured out the windows behind the president’s desk. “Look at that thing. All we have left is a bit of open sky far to the east. Don’t you think we could use the Moon’s help?”
“Yes, but the Moon can’t help us,” said Neil, now exasperated with the thought of his brother balling up the whole effort. “They have no scientific expertise. Mr. President, if you want, I’ll sign a recommendation against their interference, and we can send it to them in the next drop. Who knows?
They just might end up provoking the Tarsalans. For the sake of their own safety—and ours—we should strongly advise Nectaris and the other CLC communities to butt out. Otherwise I can’t guarantee the success of this thing.”
6
Glenda’s part-time shift ended at one.
She went out to the parking lot and asked her car to take her to the Stedman’s at Rock Quarry Road and Tarboro Street, on the outskirts of Raleigh.
She saw only a few other cars on the highway. For the most part driverless transport trucks plied the route, their lights piercing the green gloom. She looked up at the sky as her car went on its way. Now, at midday, the verdurous murk was brighter, but still… still unnatural, not as dark as night, but darker than the darkest storm clouds. What worried her was the trend. It was getting darker every day. How long before it was completely dark?
She got to Stedman’s and saw that hundreds of cars crowded the parking lot. The big lot lights were on, burning like blue sulfur and, in contrast, the sky looked black. She reluctantly shifted to the driver’s seat and took manual control of the vehicle.
She had to scout fifteen minutes before she finally found a parking spot on a residential street five blocks away. She got out of her car. Not the best neighborhood. Houses were fifty years old, made of preformed Duratex. Most of the Duratex had minute cracks in it. Weeds grew waist-high in some front yards.
She finally reached the Stedman’s parking lot. Not only was it crowded with cars, but with people as well.
Glenda walked to the shopping cart corral and discovered that all the shopping carts were gone. She looked around and saw an elderly couple unloading groceries into the back of their car.
She walked over. “Can I take your cart when you’re through?”
The lady looked at her in sympathy. “We had to do the same thing. It’s like dollar days.”
Once the couple was through unloading, Glenda pushed the cart to the store, only to discover that there was a long lineup to get in. People waited with expressions of grumpy impatience on their faces. She peered to the front, where a pair of armed security guards regulated the flow. She looked in through the big front windows and saw that the lines to all the cashiers were backed up. She sighed. This was going to take forever.
She had to wait forty-five minutes before the security guards finally waved her through.
Inside the store, she immediately sensed that this wasn’t a regular grocery crowd. There was an undercurrent of desperation, even fear.
To maneuver up and down the aisles, she had to wait a minute or two for other people to pass. The shelves were all but empty. Especially of canned goods. She got the last two-kilogram bag of rice. Also a nineteen-ounce can of stewed prunes. And some cat food, even though they didn’t have a cat, but if worse came to worst…
She reached the bottled-water section but there wasn’t any bottled water left. At the meat counter she got some pig’s feet and spiced pork chops, the only things remaining. As for fruit and vegetables, she obtained the last bag of russet apples, two bundles of leeks, a turnip, some garlic, and three onions that were starting to sprout. She wanted cheese because cheese was protein, but there wasn’t any left. She wanted juice because it had vitamins, but the cooler was empty. From the dairy section, she managed to get a jug of soy milk that was leaking. She now felt plugged in to the current of desperation and fear. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the crowd rioted.
She approached a stocking unit and asked the machine when they were going to get more cheese.
“Current delivery date undetermined, pending emergency federal legislation, re: FEMA relief contingencies.”
She grabbed a bag of sugar. A box of salt. Someone had spilled a package of spaghetti all over the floor. She picked up as many strands as she could and stuffed them into a loose plastic bag. She mentally tallied the groceries and knew she had at least a hundred dollars’ worth. Not the two hundred dollars she had hoped for, but maybe it would be better to hold onto the remaining money for emergency backup.
Who knew what was going to happen in the next week or two?
She struggled to the drugstore section of Stedman’s.
As she waited to get Hanna’s prescription filled, hundreds of nervous thoughts rustled through her mind.
Live a day at a time, she kept telling herself. By tomorrow this whole thing could be over. Tomorrow was Saturday. In the bright sunshine, she and her kids would hike to Jordan Lake and have a picnic, and the Tarsalans would compromise, and so would President Bayard, and maybe they might have a few Tarsalans living in Old Hill, and wouldn’t that be fun and interesting for the kids, having aliens living in the neighborhood? So everything would be all right, and she would live a day at a time, like her mother always told her to.
Only she couldn’t stop thinking about how all the plants were going to die. What happened when photo-synthesis stopped worldwide? What happened when every tree, flower, and blade of grass croaked?
She finally got Hanna’s medicine, enough to last her daughter a month, went to a Customer-Assisted Checkout Line, and waited again. That’s when she heard people yelling at the front. Then the smashing of glass. Then gunshots.