by Matt Ruff
Hoover nodded. “I’m sending it out fully virulent this time. In susceptible persons death is all but certain within ninety-six hours of exposure. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours after that, they’re dust.” He rubbed his chin like a man contemplating a difficult car repair. “Now, delivering the bug to groups in Africa will be tougher. The Negro remnants there are more mobile, with more territory to range around in. Still, with a hint here and a nudge there, it shouldn’t be too hard to get the F.B.I. talking to the C.I.A., and the C.I.A. to the African Free-Trade Security Forces . . .”
“Unless I stop you before it gets that far.”
“Well,” said Hoover, with another smirk, “that’s where the irony comes in. You see, Miss Fine, I’ve placed it within your power to disrupt the chain of events I’ve just described—to abort the explosion and hence the release of the virus, and all else that follows—but by telling you that, I virtually assure that you won’t. I expect you to make a heroic effort, but in the course of trying to stop the genocide you’ll be killed, and everything will unfold exactly as I’ve said.”
“And you’re confident you’ve got all the angles covered?” Joan said, fishing for clues. “You’re sure you haven’t forgotten anything?”
“There’s nothing to forget,” Hoover said. “It’s actually one of my simpler prosecutions. The only angle I have to cover is you, Miss Fine, and no offense, but you’re easy.”
All this time, Joan had been listening for the approach of the Mechanical Hound. With her ears pitched to catch a four-legged tread and the growl of a V–6 engine, she’d missed the subtler footsteps of the battery-powered Electric Negro as it crept up behind her. The blow across her back came as a complete shock, slamming her face down into the Astro-Turf and jolting the gun from her hand.
“Very easy,” Hoover said. What felt like a crane claw seized Joan by the scruff of the neck and lifted her into the air. Her fight to twist free was in vain, but by flailing violently she managed to turn her head enough to get a glimpse of her attacker.
The Negro was enormous, seven feet tall at least. Bare-chested and barefoot, it wore a slave’s white cotton trousers cinched with a rope belt. In its free hand—the one not holding Joan—it gripped a wooden-handled pitchfork with rusty tines.
“Mandingo,” Hoover commanded it, “take Miss Fine swimming.”
The Electric Mandingo flexed its arm and Joan was airborne. She landed short, about ten feet from the rim of the artificial pond, but momentum carried her right up to the water’s edge. Steam wafted gently from its surface. At first glance Joan mistook it for mist, but then she saw the bubbles rising in the water. The pond was simmering.
“No,” Joan said. “Uh-uh.” She rolled over on her back; the Mandingo was coming for her, a swagger in its stride.
“Get in,” it told her, motioning with the pitchfork.
“No,” Joan said. She extended her arm, flexed her wrist; Kite’s derringer slapped into her palm, and her finger curled around the trigger.
The Mandingo looked down in dismay at the tiny hole that appeared between its pectorals. “I thought you was different from the others,” it complained to Joan, casting her a mournful look. “But you’s . . . just. . . white!” It staggered; the pitchfork speared the Astro-Turf a foot from Joan’s abdomen. Joan sat up, seized the wooden handle with both hands, and drove the butt end up under the Electric Mandingo’s chin, snapping its head back.
“YOU’S JUST WHITE!” The Mandingo hollered. “YOU’S JUST WHITE!” Its motor control degenerating, it executed a jerky half-pirouette and danced backwards into the pond. It submerged with a great sizzle; boiling water flooded its mouth cavity and shorted out its lament. John Hoover applauded. “That’s the spirit!” he crowed. “Sic semper Aethiopibus!”
Joan sprang up and rushed to retrieve her other gun. Hoover made no effort to stop her or to run away.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t call a cab for you this time, Miss Fine,” he said, once more staring placidly into the Hand Cannon’s muzzle. “Since you’re on a crusade it’s really only fair that you fend for yourself from here on out. I’ve taken the liberty of faxing your photo to the local police with a report that you’ve gunned down a casino cashier, so you shouldn’t be bored.”
“Call it off,” Joan said.
“What?”
“The genocide. Call it off.”
“I’ve told you, Miss Fine, it’s out of my hands. You’re the one with the power now. You call it off.”
“No, you call it off. You want to challenge your superego, then do it now. Refuse to complete your special order.”
“But I don’t want to refuse.”
“But I do want you to. I’m asking you to.”
Hoover shrugged, one last time. “Why not ask for the moon while you’re at it?”
“Be that way, then,” Joan said, and shot him. The .70-caliber bullet stove Hoover’s chest in. All animation went out of him; he fell rigid as a statue. Not satisfied, Joan stepped forward and shot the android corpse six more times, aiming systematically, reducing it to basic components; gears and servo-motors scattered across the Astro-Turf.
“What an awful creature,” Ayn Rand said, as the last cogwheel came to rest.
Joan rounded on her as if stung. “You’ve been awfully quiet,” she said.
“What is it you’d have had me say?” Ayn asked. “He was an abomination; I don’t converse with abominations.”
“Well you’re going to converse with me,” Joan said.
“About what?”
Joan slapped her second clip into the Hand Cannon. “Why don’t we start with whose side you’re on?”
“Whose side? I’m not on anyone’s side; I’m my own side.”
“Bullshit,” Joan said. “You’re a spy for the bad guys, Ayn.”
“What?”
“He knew exactly when to call this morning,” Joan said, gesturing at Hoover’s remains. “I suppose he could have gotten that by wiring the kitchen, but how did he hear about our little debate in front of the library yesterday?”
“You think I told him?”
“Who else?”
“And what did I do, tiptoe out of the house to a clandestine meeting?”
“Don’t play stupid, Ayn. You’re bugged, aren’t you?”
“I most certainly am not—” Ayn started to protest, but then a strange look came over her face and her anger was displaced by shock. “Pick up the Lamp!” she commanded.
“What? What for?”
“Just do it!”
Joan came forward slowly, wary of another sneak attack. She picked up the Lamp.
“Check under the base,” Ayn said. She sounded frightened. “Look for a hidden compartment, with a circular cover.”
Joan looked. “I see a circle. About an inch and a half across.”
“Unscrew it to the left.”
Joan squatted down, placing her gun on the Astro-Turf. “All right,” she said, a moment later. “I’ve got it open.”
“Look for a knob inside, like a black button.”
“With microcircuitry traced on the surface?”
“That’s the one. Give it a half-twist to the right and pull it straight out.”
Joan did as she was told. The black button came loose and dropped into her palm. “Got it.”
“Let me see it!” Joan righted the Lamp; Ayn stared at the button with something approximating dread. “That’s the transmitter,” she said, after a long silence. “Now that it’s disconnected from my sensorium it can’t overhear us, but it can still broadcast its location.”
“How long have you known about this thing, Ayn?” Joan asked.
“About. . . about a minute and a half.”
“When I asked you if you were bugged . . .”
“Suddenly I knew.” Ayn’s fists clenched. “But that is completely irrational!” she raged. “You can’t just know something, without context! New knowledge requires new data or new computation . . . it’s just not possible . . .”
“Unless it’s knowledge that’s been hidden away in your memory by someone else,” Joan said.
“My mind is a precision instrument! There are no dark corners in this brain!”
“Well then how did you know where the transmitter was?”
“I don’t know how I knew!” Ayn snapped. “I just did!”
Joan sat back on her heels, arms folded on her knees. “And what other things do you just know? What the hell are you, Ayn? An oracle, or a Trojan horse?”
“Trojan horse?”
Joan touched a fingertip to the lamp globe. “Are you stuffed full of virus, maybe? That’d be pretty ironic, if you were loaded up with plague and I took you with me to—”
“No,” Ayn said. Her eyes got very big. “No, that’s not it.”
“That’s not what?” Joan said.
“That’s not the trap he’s set for you,” Ayn replied. “The virus canister is already at the tower—it’s being positioned even as we speak.”
“Oh yeah?” Joan said. “What about the bomb, then? Hoover said it would take an A-bomb to really level Babel. Now you’re a little small for an A-bomb, and I’d expect you to be a lot heavier if you were loaded with plutonium, but on the other hand—”
“No,” Ayn said. “That’s not it either. I’m not the bomb.” She shook her head. “But how do I know that? How do I know that?”
“Hmm,” said Joan. “How many more guesses do I get?”
20
“Gee, then what happened?” She stared at him with awestruck eyes, mouth agape in mock astonishment.
“There you were,” Doc said, “trapped on the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. . .”
“There I was.”
“With the bishop and his fanatic henchmen coming toward you, armed to the teeth and black vengeance in their hearts . . .”
“That’s about it.” George popped the top from his fourth can of Schlitz within the last thirty minutes.
“No way down and no way out. . .”
“That’s right.”
“Six of them against one of you . . .”
“Six of them against only one of me. Yeah. Shit. . .”
“Well?”
“Well, shit.”
“Well, what did you do?”
—Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
“God damn your black soul!” screamed Quint. “You sunk my boat!”
—Peter Benchley, Jaws
Mitterrand Sierra
“Deux explosions,” the computer said. “Les Chandelles Sauvages ont touché l’objectif.”
“Did we kill them?” Captain Baker asked.
“I’m not sure,” Troubadour Penzias said. “Hold on . . .”
Yabba-Dabba-Doo
“Ow-ow-ow!” The double explosion had thrown Morris to the floor, unhurt; but in getting up he stepped on his dreidel, slipped, and hit his funny bone. “Ow!”
Emergency lighting painted the control room darkroom red. The engines had stopped, and most of the electrical systems were out. The tactical display table was smashed. The Yabba-Dabba-Doo leaned starboard and sternward, and a falling-elevator sensation in the pit of their stomachs let everybody know they were sinking.
“Everyone all right?” Philo asked, struggling to his feet.
“Pretty much,” Morris said, cupping a hand to his elbow.
“I’m alive,” said Norma.
“Present,” Asta called from sonar.
“Constantinople,” said Osman Hamid, pushing aside the air bag that had deployed from his steering yoke.
Morris coaxed a damage report from a status panel. “Looks like we got hit at both ends,” he said. “We’ve got major flooding in the arboretum and the engine room.”
“Can we surface?” Philo asked.
Morris shook his head. “Even if we could plug the leaks, most of the pumps are shot. I’ve got enough ballast and trim control to keep us from rolling over on the way down, but this is a one-way dive.” He did some quick calculations. “We’re dropping at about two hundred feet per minute, and that’s going to get worse, fast. I’d say we’ve got five minutes till we hit crush depth, six on the outside.” He concluded: “We’re in pretty good shape.”
“You call this good shape?” Norma Eckland said.
“Hey, with two solid torpedo hits we’re doing great just to sink in one piece. You can thank Howard Hughes’s metallurgical skills for that—and my own structural enhancements,” he added modestly. “A weaker hull would have cracked open like an eggshell.”
“But the sub’s going down, Morris.”
“But we’re alive to bail out, Norma. And if we time it right, the bad guys will think they’ve killed us.” Morris switched on the intercom. “Engine room?”
It sounded like the Colorado Rapids during the spring snow melt. “Morris?” Irma Rajamutti sputtered.
“Irma! Are you OK?”
“We are alive, Morris, but I am not welding this hole.”
Morris bit his lower lip. “Is it just the hull, or is the reactor leaking?”
“The containment vessel is intact.”
“All right, then.” Morris breathed a sigh of relief. “Get everybody out of there. Head for control, double quick.”
“Yes, Morris. We are coming.”
“Is the what leaking?” Philo said, as Morris tried to raise the rest of the crew.
“Um,” said Morris.
“What ‘reactor’? What ‘containment vessel’? The Yabba-Dabba-Doo’s engines run off batteries. Right?”
“Primarily, yes . . .”
“With solar recharging, and a diesel generator as a backup.”
“Well,” Morris hesitantly confessed, “not exactly . . .”
“Not exactly?”
“The backup’s not exactly diesel. And the solar recharging, well, it’s kind of solar, but. . .”
“Morris. . . .” Philo started around the broken plotting table towards him. “Are you saying you put a nuclear reactor on this submarine? Without telling me?”
“Well, Philo. . . .” Morris tried to back away, but a bulkhead cut off his escape. He began to speak very quickly: “You remember how, when we first got the sub, I said there was this motor in the engine room that I couldn’t figure out what it was? Well, eventually I did figure it out, what Hughes had been trying to do, and although I don’t think he ever got it to work himself, it gave me some new ideas. And that same week I was reading about how there were untapped uranium deposits under the West Side Highway in Manhattan, and—”
Philo grabbed Morris’s shirt front with both hands. “You put a nuclear reactor on this submarine?”
“It’s lukewarm fusion!” blurted Morris. “Virtually clean and safe!”
“If it’s safe, why are you afraid of it leaking? If it’s safe, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Irma and I figured it would just upset you. We thought—”
Philo let go of him and closed his eyes. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t believe you’d lie to me like this.”
“Diesel is anti-Semitic!” Morris blustered, fumbling for an excuse.
Philo’s eyes snapped back open. “What?”
“Well,” said Morris. “A lot of Jews have died in wars over oil. . . . All right, all right, that’s a totally lame justification, but if you’d seen the reactor, Philo—it’s a sweet machine, really it is.”
“But not sweet enough to let me know about it, obviously.”
“I—”
“YOU!” The after hatchway slammed open; a sopping Heathcliff stormed in, followed by the rest of the engine-room crew. “YOU NEARLY DROWNED US!”
“Oh?” Morris said, not sorry for the interruption.
“You!” Heathcliff shook his fist, streaming sea water like flop sweat. “You—”
“Go ahead. Say it.”
“You . . . You . . .”
“Say it. I dare you.”
“You AMERICAN!” Heathcliff swore.
“John Wayne!” added Mow
gli.
“G.I. Joe!” cursed Galahad.
“Rambo!” hissed Little Nell.
“Popeye the Sailor!” snapped Oliver.
“You spoiled Oxford snobs,” Morris retorted. “I ought to—”
“Hey!” Asta Wills stepped from the darkness of the sonar bay. “Not to break up your row, but we’re almost at collapse depth. Maybe you could postpone this.”
“Asta’s right,” said Philo, giving Morris one last scowl. “We’ve got to bail out of here. Who are we still missing?”
The forward hatch swung open. Jael Bolívar stumbled through, covered with mud, and right behind her came Marshall Ali, straining beneath the weight of three strongboxes.
“Where’s Twenty-Nine Words?” Philo asked them.
Marshall Ali set down his burden with a crash. “He was with Seraphina.”
Philo was stunned. “Seraphina is here? How?”
“Ellen Leeuwenhoek brought her to the cove to wish us goodbye. You did not know this?”
“Where is she?”
“She and my Inuit apprentice are no longer on board . . .”
“The escape pod,” Morris guessed.
“Yes.”
“A-ha!” said Heathcliff. “You see?”
“What were they doing in an escape pod?” Philo wanted to know.
“It is a delicate matter,” Marshall Ali said. “But please, someone must help me. I have three more boxes to rescue, and I could not get the other escape pod hatch to open . . .”
Around them, the hull groaned ominously.
“No time,” Morris said, checking a depth gauge. “You’d never make it.”
“But. . . my artifacts. My history.”
“My plants,” Jael Bolívar mourned, holding a limp scrap of vine.
“Our necks,” Morris pointed out. “Sorry, guys . . .”
“I’ll give you a sorry neck,” threatened Heathcliff. “You—”
Asta Wills laid a hand on his shoulder. “That’s enough out of you now, you pommie twit. Shut it or we’ll leave you down here.” Heathcliff glared at her, but she was bigger than he was, so that’s all he did.
“Everybody hang on to something,” Morris cautioned. Of the Yabba-Dabba-Doo’s three escape pods, the control room itself was the first and the largest. As Morris yanked a series of levers, the fore and aft hatchways clanged shut and sealed tight. Explosive charges caused the submarine’s sail to split and fall away, while another charge snapped the periscope mast. And finally—Morris shouting, “Here goes nothing!”—an enormous blast of compressed air blew the control room from the sub. The ocean rushed into the hole it left behind, and a moment later the Yabba-Dabba-Doo gave up the ghost; the hull, strained beyond endurance, simultaneously caved in and came apart.