Neil took this as a personal blow because he had been good friends with the president pro tem. “And the speaker?”
“Still safe.”
“And what about military bases?”
“We’ve had some problems.”
“But Homestead is safe.”
“Would I send you and your family there if it wasn’t?”
“So no problems at Homestead at all.”
“The rationing’s tight, Neil. There’s been some minor insubordination. But that’s it.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Greg?”
“Leanna spoke to him a couple of hours ago. He knows you’re on the way. He remembers you well.”
“I should hope so.”
“There’s nothing like the bond of the military. He’s got a nice place set up for you and your family in the Officers’ Compound. We’ve had laboratory units airlifted in, and bunks made ready for whatever personnel you think you might need for a second line.” The secretary put out a feeler. “The president wants to know if you’ve had any more thoughts about a second line yet.”
Neil glanced at the dark sky outside the limousine window, and again thought of Kafis. “I’ve drawn up the main, broad principles. If the omniphage and toxin don’t work, we develop a virus. We’ve already tested a few, and we’ve had some initial success against what’s turning out to be a fairly strong immune response on the part of the Tarsalan component in the xenophyta. We hope to have something workable, at least on paper, by the middle of the month. Is it possible to get help with a second string of biological launches from our allies?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
The seriousness of the situation seemed to color everything the secretary said.
“So they have no launch infrastructure intact?”
“If you think the U.S. is bad, you should see other countries.”
In the secretary’s terse utterances, he saw Armageddon’s remorseless agenda. “Are we talking horrific?”
The secretary cast around for the proper words. “It’s been going on for a while now, Neil. The surgeon general has advised us that the population has reached a nutritional threshold.” The implication was clear.
“As well, he’s reported outbreaks of cholera, diphtheria, and typhoid. Horrific would be understating the case.”
Neil regarded the faces of his wife and daughters sitting in the seat opposite him. They stared at him, wondering what he was talking about. Their eyes prospected for hope, the strain apparent in the way they had all lost weight.
“And what about the Tarsalans?”
Sidower paused again. “We’re having great luck with their satellites. We’ve downed fully seventy-five percent of them. We’re planning a major offensive in the coming days. We’re going directly for the mothership.”
“Anything on the diplomatic front?”
“Neil… the diplomatic front’s been abandoned for the time being. We’re going to board the TMS and take control of the phytosphere’s control mechanism.” The secretary paused again. “Your toxin and virus… we’ll try those. But I wouldn’t be fulfilling my obligations and responsibilities as secretary of defense if I didn’t militarily try to get my hands on the damn thing’s control system. I guess you’d call it my own… cinerthax. If I’ve got to put them on the ropes to teach them a lesson, then that’s what I’ll do.
It’s my little contribution to this whole hellish mess.”
A short while later, after he had ended his call with the secretary, Neil saw several flashes to the west.
These flashes resolved themselves into pinpoints of flame, and they rose steadily into the sky. He had thought he would feel a sense of accomplishment. But instead he thought of Kafis once more, and of the way he and Kafis would sometimes play chess together at Marblehill. He could see the pieces on the board, remembered the many occasions when he had been on the verge of winning only to have Kafis surprise him with an unforeseen counter-move. The faces of his wife and daughters flickered in the glow of the distant launch flames. Was it a question of his own mind-set? Of actually being able to put himself in a place where he could be the teacher, and Kafis the student? He knew that Kafis was infinitely more
intelligent than he was. And compared to the human race’s scant few hundred years of technological culture, the Tarsalans had had a million years of it. The Tarsalans were superior to humans in every way.
“He doesn’t get it,” he said, out of the blue, with no context.
“Who?” said Louise.
“Kafis. He doesn’t get that we’d sooner make our own history, and not become a part of Tarsala’s.”
Louise looked away. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t end history.”
PART THREE
18
Sunlight came to Wake County two days later. Glenda squinted as it streamed through her kitchen window. Hanna and Jake stood at the back door peering at the woods behind the house. Glenda left her spot by the kitchen sink and joined them.
The world looked frightful. Everything was dead. Grass brown. Trees bare. Not like winter, because even in winter she could tell the trees were still alive. In this phytosphere season, the browns and grays of the dead things had a whiteness to them, the telltale sign of a plant’s inability to produce chlorophyll. The forest looked like a dirty rag. The sun lit it up like a spotlight. On some trees the leaves still hung as if glued in place, only they didn’t look like leaves anymore, but more like spent coffee filters or bits of yellowed newspaper. The pine trees reminded her of the Christmas trees people threw out after the holidays, dry and brittle, their needles fleeced. Her lawn was a damp morass of dead grass and mud.
She saw Leigh’s shed.
Yes, Leigh’s shed.
One of those tin ones, bought in a long, flat box and erected one sheet at a time, white, with a green roof. Some dead ivy clawed its way up the side. Ivy. That was Leigh’s thing. Poor dead Leigh. If Sheriff Fulton had been good for nothing else, he had at least buried Leigh.
Her stomach groaned. The sun shone through a hole in the shroud, and its bright intensity was hurtful to her eyes. The sky on the horizon was dark green. This horrible parody of a North Carolina woods looked preternaturally bright against the lugubrious backdrop of the thinning phytosphere.
Her kids stunk. She stunk. There was no running water anymore. When they bathed at all it was in the nearby Taylor Creek, and that was full of dead things.
She saw smoke in the hills. Something was burning.
She opened the door and stepped outside.
Far in the distance, she heard a bird singing. A cardinal. Singing by itself. The sound filled her with hope.
“Come on, kids. Let’s go dig.”
They got the shovel and spade out of the garden shed.
And then she stopped. How could she have been so stupid? She let the shovel fall and hurried to the back door.
“Mom?” said Hanna.
“I’ve got to fone your father. I’ll be able to get through now.”
She tried because, now that there was a hole in the shroud, surely communications would be restored.
But she got the same heartless message.
She resolved to periodically keep trying while the hole was there.
She went back outside. “It’s still down. We might as well dig up Leigh’s stuff.”
They walked to the back fence and went through the gate. Then they walked through Leigh’s gate into his yard.
Jake went into the dead man’s shed, got one of his shovels, and came back out.
All three started digging.
The soil felt loose. She kept looking out to the highway, fearful that at any moment she might see a police cruiser. But all she saw were the neighboring houses stretching out along the highway, some traditional ranch styles, others conglomerations of geodesic domes, and still others molded in the fanciful shapes the more up-to-date residential architects employed. This whole end of town looked deserted. They were the only ones about.