Dean Ing - Quantrill 1

by Systemic Shock(lit)

  "It is possible that such an exodus would be turned back by force, but the RUS needs laborers and, for the moment, can feed them. Now, esteemed comrades, I ask you what would happen if it should be discovered that refugees had spread smallpox into the Baikal region?"

  The response was immediate consternation save Chang, who had already heard the arguments. Once eradicated from the globe except for laboratory strains, smallpox could be spread easily by immunized carriers. When CPA infantry advanced into the epidemic, they would be protected by vaccination. Such a weapon could be countered within a few months, of course, but by that time the Irkutsk region would be in Chinese hands. So would the Baikal-Amur railway, and by a lightning thrust northward China could cut the Russian Union of Soviets in two. The natural resources of Siberia could then be at Sinolnd disposal, and an armistice might be quickly arranged with RUS leaders whose troops might not advance into an epidemic. Time enough, after that, to deal with America and the other allies. American concentration into urban clots had made it easy to diminish its gross national product a hundredfold. Under such circumstances,-and always assuming that Canada would not prove too meddlesome-an encroachment on the US might prove interesting.

  Jung Hsia: "And why did we not use this tactic earlier?"

  "Because we did not know what similar weapons the enemy might use in retaliation," Chang supplied. "But paranthrax is sweeping the eastern portion of the United States to such effect that we should be able to make the RUS see reason. They have not, hence probably will not, use germ warfare on this continent. In other words, after one quick success we might obtain a pan-Asian moratorium on biological weapons."

  "A dangerous presumption," said Wu. "And the others?"

  "Americans are more vulnerable than we, and less advanced in the precise tailoring of microbes," Cha smiled. "Even with their delivery systems, they could not destroy us as easily with microbes as we could destroy them. Besides: it was India, not we, who spread paranthrax on them. We have already expressed regrets, by suitable channels, to the Americans about that."

  Jung stared at his relief map and sighed. "How quickly the tactics become a simple matter of ethnocide."

  "I think not," Chang replied smoothly. "The US/RUS allies will surely see, and soon, that the statistics of genocide favor us. It will not be long before atmospheric contamination has risen so high that the RUS and US will be begging one another not to drop another nuclear device anywhere on the globe."

  "Curtailing their own special advantage," Wu put in.

  "Exactly. As I have already told you," Chang added obliquely, "our own, ah, delivery system is well underway in Szechuan. Only China is so experienced in coordinating thousands of small industrial centers. Only we know just how many small factories are contributing to the devices. Not even Casimiro must discover it in India; there is no way to maintain a secret that is shared by five hundred members of a democratic Parliament."

  There had already been one leak from the Lok Sabha, India's lower house of Parliament, on the Florida invasion. This was only a minor irritant in the Yangku war room, for neither the invaders nor their delivery system were importantly Chinese.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Quantrill quickly discovered, on awakening Sunday morning, that Texas A & M was more than a football team in east Texas. It was a research center and a military training university as well, with far-flung research stations. He was slower to realize that he was becoming an honorary Texan as the story of his Oak Ridge exploit flashed across the sprawling high-tech campus.

  He was scanned, anesthetized, treated, and fitted with a padded thigh crutch before breakfast. Over steak and eggs, in talk with his rescuers, he realized that an entire regimental combat team had been en route to recover the when, driven by his own internal demon, Quantrill appeared under the craft. Yes, he'd started the grass fire; no one asked why. Yes, he'd been scared witless when he had nearly slid from the cargo platform. He saw no point in wondering aloud why he had felt such an insulating calm before and after that moment. Quantrill had never studied differential response to stress, never wondered why a few people in every generation are predisposed by their glands to become gunfighters, stuntpeople, circus aerialists.

  Then David Chartrand, the civilian captain of the Norway, sprang the good news and the bad news. The captain's own son had vanished with the Air Force Academy, and this youngster refreshed older, better memories for the reflective Chartrand. "I could name millionaires who want this thing, Ted: it's a delta pass. Anywhere a delta goes in this country, you can go," he grinned, handing Quantrill a coded plastic card. "Not just the Norway but the Kukon, the Mobile, and the rest. Just don't show it around too much; you could get mugged for it. And when you've finished your eggs, I want to introduce you to the country."

  The egg- laden fork stopped in midair. "To the what?"

  Now the bad news: "The whole country, son. Some people from ABC and CBS want you on a newscast."

  There was absolutely no point in his chewing the rest of those eggs, Quantrill decided, because there was no possible way he could swallow them. He had been videotaped once at school; had found it harrowing. Almost, he wished himself back on that swaying cargo platform.

  Still, he went with Chartrand and the tall, gum-chewing cargomaster, Bernie Grey. Emerging from the pneumatic pod that had shushed them cross-campus underground, Quantrill tried to smile back at a dozen people who scurried about with lights, cameras, coffee. His smile faded as he recognized ABC's Juliet Bixby and Hal Kraft of CBS. Both were familiar media faces, and Quantrill thought his breakfast insecure.

  Bernie Grey, slender-muscled and long-haired, volunteered for the first setup interview. It was Bernie who had first mistaken Quantrill for an enemy. Bemie struck out with the fair Juliet, but seemed unabashed. Chartrand, unfailingly polite, minimized his role and heaped credit on Quantrill. The youngster in the yellow flight suit, a romantic figure with his limp and his external thigh crutch gleaming in the light, provided that rarity of the moment: an attractive man-child, a diffident and inspirational model. Bixby and Kraft did not share Quantrill's worry; if the kid broke down or had an erection on camera, well, that's what editing was for. Ted Quantrill was now public property; he just hadn't been completely processed yet.

  Thanks to sensitive cameras, Quantrill was spared the ferocious heat of earlier media victims. He sweated all the same, perched on a stool as he had been told, the injured leg stretched out as if by necessity. The last part of the interview was transcribed as follows. Q: How did you know the Norway had been hijacked,

  Ted?

  A: Rumor around Oak Ridge. Q: You're not from Tennessee, though. A: From Raleigh. In North Carolina, ma'am. (SUDDENLY ANIMATED) I'd sure like to know if my parents are okay. Dad is Captain Hurley Quantrill and mother's Janine Quantrill.

  Q: We can check on it. Who brought you to Oak Ridge? A: Ab-about a dozen people. Rides. You know. Q: Captain Chartrand says you had a scout uniform on beneath your coverall when you came aboard. A: (NOD)

  Q: Tell us about it in your own words, Ted. A: I, uh, had a scout uniform on beneath my coverall. Uh, when I came aboard.

  Q: Um-hmm. Now tell us what it's like to rescue a delta. A: Felt pretty good, sir.

  Q: There are some fellows your age who would give anything to serve our country as you've done, Ted. What do you have to say to them?

  A: (SHRUG)

  Q: I'll put it another way. Ted Quantrill, what have you learned from your Oak Ridge experience?

  A: Kill the sonofabitch. Uh, I'm sorry. I have to go.

  Kraft and Bixby waved cheerful goodbyes as Quantrill limped away to find friends in yellow flight suits. By the time the tape was massaged into news, fifteen-year-old Ted Quantrill would be edited into a model scout. Like all media professionals, the interviewers shared an easy cynicism about the moments that would remain non-news.

  Juliet Bixby studied her rival over her coffee cup. "That last question of yours was a heller, Kraft."

  "New
s to me. I couldn't open him up at all."

  "Oh, but you did." Shuddering: "Once when I was about five, I got separated from my parents at the San Diego zoo. I sat down in a quiet place, just waiting for them to catch up, and I kept having this funny feeling. And then I looked over my shoulder. Right on the other side of the bars from me was the biggest, cold-heartedest-lookjng Bengal tiger I have ever seen. Just looking down at me, like you'd study a chocolate drop. Well, that was how the kid looked, right at the last. No anger or remorse, Kraft-just cold competence."

  "Christ, how you dramatize! Anyhow, he'll be only tonight's hero, Bix. Tomorrow he'll be forgotten."

  "Maybe," said the famous Bixby contralto, "but not by me. You'll never catch me stepping between that little fucker and anything he really wants."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The full extent of the logistics problem faced by the US in late August of 1996 was only dimly visible to any fifteen-year-old-and scarcely less so to the Quartermaster General. During the next week, while the Norway's gondola grew small projectile ports like pimples, Quantrill learned to pay less attention to holovision and more to what was happening around him. Holo charts, for instance, showed only a series of paranthrax hotspots east of the Alleghenies. Late summer harvests were supposedly a success with decontamination procedures and, admittedly, a new standard of acceptable contaminants. Yet Quantrill knew that the National Guard was now prohibiting any traffic across the Mississippi River because, after convincing medics that he no longer needed a thigh crutch, he served on the Norway's overnight flight which supplied intrusion detectors to troops on the west bank. And the short-range missile pods under the Norway's gondola suggested a breakdown of law and order. He inferred more about the scope of immunology when Bemie Grey told him what the Norway would deliver halfway across Texas to an A & M-"Aggie"-research station in Sonora.

  Quantrill was learning to polymer-bond glass rope to a shackle fitting at the time. "Twelve thousand hamsters?" He squinted at Bemie's long horse-face, suspecting a joke.

  "Plus life-support stuff, plus breedin' cages. And if you don't lay that shackle down, pard, the exotherm's gonna zap your fingers."

  Quantrill did as he was told, saw a faint swirl of vapor from the aperture where the glass rope fitted, resumed his train of thought. "I thought Sonora was in Mexico."

  "Bite your tongue," Bernie glowered, and winked. "We're still a little edgy about bein' confused with Mexico." He went on to explain that Sonora, Texas, was suitably isolated for immunological work, with natural caves and facilities for researchers dating back many years. "There's Aggie research stations all over. I grant there ain't much to see but you're welcome to come cuss it with me." Bernie held the shackle fitting by the rope; nodded.

  "Bernie, where'd you learn your trade?"

  "Rice University." Sigh: "Gone with the rest of Houston, I reckon. I was a basketball jock, but they had good courses in Aerospace structures. I got along."

  "Personal question; okay?"

  "Flog it by me."

  "Why does everybody in Texas talk like old cowboy movies?"

  Bernie Grey threw his head back and guffawed, then mimed a mystified fool. "Beats hell outa me, Ted." Sobering, still amused: "We don't all do it, and I don't do it all the time. You can't run a high-tech cargo system with cowpoke's lingo. Call it a linguistic badge; it tells folks you won't have no truck with eastern shuck."

  Quantrill found himself smiling for the first time in a week. "But it is a shuck. Isn't it?"

  "Yup. One you could stand to learn if you're here long. Just don't pile it on too deep 'til you learn how to spread it. And don't feel obliged. It ain't your fault if you can't carry the tune."

  Quantrill followed Bernie to the great dome where deltas underwent refitting, watched the rope terminal pass a tensile test, listened while his friend rhapsodized on the favorite topic of Texans: Texas. Despite the leveling influence of media, a state the size of Texas had plenty of room for subcultures. A Beaumont Cajun's dialect might be barely intelligible to an Odessa roughneck unless one of them had traveled a bit. Geography had something to do with it, but much of it was a matter of choice. Only half joking, Bernie argued that air conditioning had nearly destroyed the urban Texan's identity, his acceptance of occasional hard times and determination to survive them with good humor.

  "Wouldn't be a bit surprised," said Bernie, "if the war brought back the old frontier in some parts. There's fellers in Fort Stockton still packin' Colts to use on rattlers and road-signs. And the weather drives the sissies out; in Sonora the sun'll melt the fillin's outa your teeth."

  Quantrill assumed a slightly bowlegged slouch. "Purely makes a feller mean, don't it?"

  Bernie cocked his head, fighting a grin, and nodded. "Too many sharps and flats, pard, but you got a good ear fer-bullshit. You'll do," he added, letting the grin come, ruffling Quantrill's hair. "Now let's get this shackle on the Norway. We'll be liftin' about three ayem; put us over Sonora by breakfast."

  Quantrill groaned. "Doesn't anything start in broad daylight?"

  "You bet it does." Lowering his voice as they passed an Aggie undergrad in the tunnel, Bernie continued. "Cap'n says we shot down an Indian photorecon job near Lake Charles today. You can bet it didn't fly from New Delhi."

  "Mexico? Jeez, I thought they were on our side."

  "They were 'til they joined OPEC and didn't need us anymore. If you know any history, you can't blame 'em. But cap'n thinks that recon ship came from somewhere off the gulf coast. If there's more,-well, we'd be sugar candy for some fuckin' Injun on a long sortie. So we're goin' tonight. We don't make much of a signature for night fighters."

  "Boy, that's a weird idea," Quantrill said.

  "What?"

  "One of those guys shooting us down."

  "Weird ain't exactly how I'd put it."

  "It is if you think about it. Here we go again: cowboys and Indians."

  Bernie Grey paused with his hand on a mooring strut of the Norway; shook his head. "I swan if this kid ain't one for the books." In mock dejection, he climbed into the airship.

  Quantrill followed, now familiar with the handholds, and let the radiation monitor read him. Campus klaxons had whonnnnked their warnings only once during their stay at College Station; ground winds from the Austin area, someone said. But the campus background count was rising, as it had nearly everywhere else, and the few who traveled aboveground usually did so under wraps or in electrabouts.

  Quantrill waited while Bernie used the airhose, a jury rig with filtered air and fans to vent the dust overboard. Then he played the hose on himself, returned to the monitor. "Now I see why captain Chartrand insists we get a burr haircut," he said.

  "It's that or a shower cap," Bernie shrugged, "or fried brains over the long haul. Shoot, you just try and park a

  Texan under a shower cap! Instead, we're all gonna look like Army recruits. But better that than be one," he laughed.

  Quantrill had seen the inductees, some of them looking no older than he, doing close-order drill in the hangar and gym. He felt no shame that he was one of fortune's few; by now he was accepted as an apprentice by the Norway's usual eight-man crew, and was learning how to laugh again. Some things he worried about: he still had learned nothing about either of his parents. Some things he refused to think about. His will commanded that it was better to focus on a sense of belonging than on the hopeless sense of all that he had lost.

  Shortly before three a.m. on Saturday morning, the Norway, her cargo of supplies and small live animals distributed by Bernie Grey for optimum trim, slid up over the Brazos : River in a northerly arc to bypass the Austin desolation. Quantrill had been slapped on the shoulder by the cap'n, called 'son'; told that he would awaken over Edwards Plateau. His freshly-cut hair and an innocent anticipation had kept him awake for an hour, savoring the voyage like a child. But he was asleep on his aircouch when the Norway lifted.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  From six thousand meters, the dry ravi
nes serrating Edwards Plateau were thrown into sharp relief by the dawn sun. Slender, sure-fingered Blythe Rogers, inevitably nicknamed 'co-cap'n Bly, pointed out salient features to the alert green-eyed youth who leaned over Rogers's shoulder. "Sometimes you see deer under those low cliffs," he said. "More likely along the Llano River ahead to portside, which isn't much of a river but wherever you see pecan trees fifty meters high, there's water and game-"

  Quantrill's arm shot out, pointing at a ridge to starboard. "What's that?"

  Rogers squinted, staring past the outstretched finger. Far below, a dark speck raced into the ridge shadow at an unlikely pace. "Must be a stray calf-but Gawd, he's traveling!" Without speaking, Chartrand gestured at the display, then studied his instrument panel again. "Why not," Rogers asked himself aloud, and flicked on the image enhancer.

  By now they were almost over the animal and Rogers swept the ridge at low magnification. Briefly then, their quarry could be seen standing motionless. Rogers increased the magnification.