She had been wrong in her initial assessment. The ghost was 15 percent smaller than the vaccine, but more advanced. It was a high-level construct and in its complexity Ruth was able to discern the tiniest changes. Generations. A few blood samples from McCown and his assistants seemed to indicate that it had spread through the local population in waves. An early model was followed by another. Possibly more. Cam had probably gotten it from Allison, and Ruth continued to fear that the ghost was only waiting to reach some critical mass before decimating Grand Lake.
Was it everywhere across the Continental Divide? Shaug allowed her to send radio queries to the labs in Canada, and the answer was no. So where had the technology come from?
The ghost was in Ruth, too. It appeared in her blood on their fourth day, just a half step behind Cam’s infection, which ‚t with her hypothesis. The count in Newcombe’s sample was also low. They hadn’t brought it to Grand Lake. Grand Lake had infected them.
After that, her tactics changed. Ruth insisted on blood samples and basic information from a thousand soldiers and refugees, beginning a crash program to backtrack the ghost’s origins. For two more days she dedicated computer time to the task along with most of McCown’s group and dozens of overworked medical staff. She was ‚ghting her own people. Shaug and the military leaders pressed her for new and better weapons. Ruth refused. It was the wrong priority.
Deborah Reece became a crucial ally and volunteered to oversee the blood work. Ruth let herself be interrupted to monitor the snow†ake production, but mostly she’d handed that effort off to McCown.
The land war was rapidly escalating to the brink. The Chinese naval †eet swarmed into San Diego and Los Angeles and dispersed tens of thousands of infantrymen, armored units, and aircraft, opening a new front against the United States. Meanwhile the Russians continued to push through Nevada — and the invaders were winning the battle for air supremacy. The Russian air force was full of relics and mismatched planes, and the Chinese had similar problems, but even at half strength they dominated the United States, especially as America continued to shuf†e working aircraft into key positions.
Each side tried to protect their planes and fuel supplies even as they sent ‚ghters slashing into each other’s territory. Each side rushed to claim airports and old U.S. bases, destroying some, protecting others, a game of chess with negotiations †aring and failing. The U.S.-Canadian forces threatened full-scale nuclear strikes on mainland China and the Russian motherland if the invaders did not immediately pull back to the coast, while the Chinese swore they’d respond in kind, plastering the Continental Divide at the ‚rst sign of an American missile launch.
It should have been insigni‚cant, but Ruth also had to confront Allison every morning as Cam and Allison helped to deliver the samples and geographical data from hundreds of refugees. Ruth couldn’t help believing that Allison and Cam were a good match, both of them scarred but still young and strong, savvy and dedicated.
In fact, Ruth went to Allison ‚rst after she’d made her decision.
* * * *
She caught her just after sunrise. Cam and Allison were inside a broad tent where they’d set up a dozen benches, a dry-erase board, and four desks to process the refugees who came in exchange for a granola bar or an extra piece of clothing. There was already a crowd forming outside.
Cam had his head together with an Army medic over a clipboard. Ruth walked past them. She felt ill with tension and lack of sleep and Allison grinned at her. It wasn’t a mean gesture. The girl knew she’d won, and Ruth thought she was only trying to be friendly. Possibly there was just the smallest hint of amusement or pity in the way she treated Ruth for being older, too old for Cam.
“Hello,” Allison said.
“We need to get out of here,” Ruth said bluntly. She was angry that anyone could seem so content, and took satisfaction in wiping away Allison’s big smile.
“Oh shit,” the girl said. “Cam told us it was probably a weapon—”
“No. No, I still don’t know.” Ruth shook her head at herself. She had no right to blame Allison. But she had her suspicions about who had designed the ghost. She recognized the work. Every machinist had his or her own style, exactly like painters, writers, and musicians. The ghost wasn’t Chinese. It was American. The new technology belonged to Gary LaSalle, and Ruth said, “I think it came from Leadville. I think Leadville cornered our friends before they made it into the Sierras and then they had the vaccine, too, which means they could have run spin-offs for at least a week and a half before the bombing.”
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. “Who had the vaccine?”
Ruth realized she wasn’t making sense. Cam would have understood, but Allison hadn’t been there. “I need your help,” she said.
“You bet.” Allison nodded, watching her face closely. The girl had ‚nally noticed Ruth’s exhaustion.
“There were two more people with us who made it out of Sacramento,” Ruth said. “A soldier and another scientist like me. They had the vaccine. Leadville caught them. That was about two weeks ago, and Leadville must have started running trials and new versions based on that technology.”
There were four different strains of the ghost. Ruth had solved that much of the riddle without coming any closer to knowing what the ghost was supposed to do. At the same time she’d also identi‚ed, very roughly, four infection points that had since blended as the remnants of Leadville’s armies split and surrendered and migrated away from ground zero. The leadership there had been secretly testing new models of the ghost on their own people. They’d dosed forward units to see what would happen — and yet the ghost was not a perfect vaccine, even though it should have been easy for them to improve the crude, hurried work that Ruth had done in Sacramento.
The teams in Leadville never would have left the vaccine exactly as it was, not bothering to improve it. Ruth knew that much. A better vaccine must exist. Leadville’s machining gear far exceeded anything that Grand Lake had been able to steal or buy. Leadville also had the expertise of ‚fty of the best minds in nanotech. A vaccine that offered full immunity against the plague would have been their ‚rst priority, but they must have kept it for themselves exactly as she’d feared. Then they’d begun to experiment with other nanotech.
What did the ghost do? Could she recover the improved vaccine somewhere? Ruth would never be able to match their work or recreate it on her own, not for years or decades, but there might be survivors from their inner circle or molecular debris that had been thrown clear of the blast and absorbed by the nearest refugees. She was certain she could ‚nd other traces of their handiwork, if only she looked.
“We have to get out of here,” Ruth said, “and I need you to help me convince Shaug to let me go. I need an escort. Cars. My equipment.”
“That won’t be easy. I can talk to the other mayors.”
“Thank you.”
Ruth needed to follow the muddled, invisible trail back into the south to see if she could recover LaSalle’s best work before it was lost forever. There wasn’t anyone else who could sort through and identify the nanotech.