There was a rush of voices as Dave entered the plane. In back the guards stood around Bedford, shaking his hand and clapping him on the shoulder. He said something and they laughed then turned to make their way to the stairs. Bedford stood watching them, smiling broadly but unable to keep a look of desperation out of his eyes. One of them hollered good luck as he left; Art raised his hand slightly, then his smile vanished and he sat back down.
Dave turned to Sheehan, who was checking his watch. “Okay,” he said. “One forty-seven and it’s all yours.”
“You check everything?”
“Yeah. All buttoned up . . .”
The bathroom door opened behind Dave and he swung toward it, hand automatically rising to his holster. He let it drop as Wolfe emerged, tucking in his shirt. “Wolfe, for Chrissake . . . Will you get out of here?”
“You’re leaving, man?” Wolfe rushed past them, still fiddling with his belt. “I don’t wanna go to India. They kill people there.”
Shaking his head, Dave looked over at Sheehan, who shrugged and vanished down the steps. A moment later the door slid shut, a low whine sounded as the engines started and Dave went into the rear compartment.
Bedford was sitting back with his eyes closed. As Dave sat down he opened them and smiled wanly. “Knight to bishop three,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“The game we were playing this afternoon,” Bedford said, his smile broadening.
“Ah, come on. Art. You know I can’t play in my head.”
“Neither can I, usually, but my mind’s been wonderfully concentrated.” He chuckled, and Dave was about to ask him what he meant when they started moving.
The plane was windowless, but there was a screen up forward and two in the walls that served the same purpose. He looked at the one above the door. The army troops had retreated to the terminal and stood watching. They slid across the screen, vanishing as the plane taxied toward the runway. Dave noticed two lifters hovering to the west, watching for somebody with a stinger or, for that matter, even a shotgun: one nick in the skin of this bird at Mach-8 and it’d be all over.
The screen switched to the nose camera. The lifters drifted apart, opening a path for them. There was a buzz and he realized that he hadn’t buckled his seat belt. He reached down and did so, and a moment later the plane was rolling.
As the thrust of takeoff pushed him back, he reviewed the flight in his mind. An hour to the coast, two hours hypersonic over the Pacific, another hour to New Delhi. That made it six central time, which would be what in India . . . ? He tried to work it out in his head but gave up. He’d check a schedule later.
Bedford was sitting with his eyes half-closed. A good-looking man, face craggy and weathered from a lot of time spent outdoors, blue eyes, wavy hair left long in what Dave called the scientist’s cut. It was the kind of face women trusted, and Bedford had been a ladies’ man, never married, always running with a different woman. Dave knew that, as he knew everything else. He’d read virtually everything written by or about Bedford before he’d ever met him.
“What are you thinking about, Dave?” Bedford said without changing his expression.
Dave paused a moment before answering. If he was ever going to get the truth out of him—even a small piece of it—he’d better start now. “I was just remembering what Olbers kept calling me when I flew over with him.”
“Hmm?”
“Charon. He called me Charon. Said I was taking him to the other shore. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Had to look it up.”
Bedford chuckled quietly. “I can’t say I agree. Charon was a pretty cold SOB.”
“Lot like Olbers himself.”
Bedford’s eyebrows rose. “Couldn’t say, Dave. I barely knew the man.”
He closed his eyes and shifted in the seat. Dave sat back, feeling vaguely ashamed, as if he’d been taking advantage. Well, there was plenty of time. The trial would last at least a month, with every affected nation trying to get its word in, and the pressure on Bedford wouldn’t lessen any.
They’d never spoken much about the Plague or its aftermath, and then only in the abstract, as if it had nothing to do with them personally. Bedford referred to it only as a technical problem: the difficulty of creating a microorganism that would infect only select populations. Concerning reasons or purpose he’d said nothing, even though he’d thought about it—his own writings were proof of that.
Dave glanced over at him lying back, his eyes closed. He hadn’t even told Bedford about India . . .
The plane reached cruising altitude and the seat belt sign went off. He glanced at his watch. Another half-hour before they boosted. He decided to take a look around. Unfastening the belt, he got up, walking quietly so as not to disturb Bedford. As he was about to go through the door something made him look back. Bedford had awakened, if he’d ever been asleep at all, and was staring at him with a look of sick fear. As Dave met his glance the expression vanished, replaced by a weak smile. He stood there uncertainly, wondering whether to go back, but Bedford shut his eyes once again so he went on.
Just past the bathroom he came upon Nate in the small alcove that was the plane’s excuse for a galley. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee out of an urn sitting in the place of honor above the microwave. He looked up at Dave inquiringly. “Want one?”
Dave mulled it over. “Guess I’d better.”
Pouring another, Nate handed it to him. Dave took a sip and grimaced—the stuff had evidently been brewing for the past week. He usually took it black, but . . . He leaned past Nate for a packet of creamer and dumped it in.
He studied Nate as he finished preparing his own, an elaborate ritual involving two and a half sugars and two packets of creamer. He took a gulp and smiled at the cup—Dave couldn’t help laughing. Frowning at him, Nate took another sip.
“So where are you sitting?” Dave said.
“Oh, I sat up front for takeoff,” Nate said, gesturing with his cup. “They didn’t bite me. How’s our boy?”
“About how you’d expect. Hiding it well, though, I’ve got to admit. He’s sleeping now.”
Draining his cup, Nate turned to the urn. “Sleep of the just,” he muttered, so low that Dave barely heard him. Cup filled, he drew himself up and eyed Dave. “I hear you think he’s innocent.”
“I never said that . . .”
Nate grabbed a couple of packs of sugar. “You said the evidence against him was shit.”
“I said it wouldn’t stand up in an American court.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed. “So what the hell do you think that means?” he said, his voice harsh.
Open-mouthed, Dave stared at him. Nate had never acted like this before, not even with Olbers, when he’d had good reason. “I’m just keeping an open mind.”
“An open mind,” Nate said. He tore at a packet of creamer and shook it over the cup, scattering half of it on the counter. “Must be an awful nice thing to have. You, Wills, the AG, all open minds. It must feel pretty good.”
“What are you, Nate, switching to the prosecution now?”
Nate ignored him while he stirred the coffee. When he looked up his face was red, his eyes slits behind the thick lenses. “You like that son of a bitch, don’t you?”
Dave looked away and shrugged. Nate nodded to himself as if he’d encountered a great truth. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, I think he’s got the mark of Cain on him.”
Wordlessly he pushed past. Still facing the galley, Dave noticed that he’d left his work case. The top flap was open and he could see that the system was up. He turned to call out and saw Nate standing a few feet into the rear compartment. He walked back slowly as Dave picked up the case. Grasping the handle, he stood there fiddling with his glasses. “Sorry, Dave,” he said finally. “Jet lag, I guess.”
Dave smiled. “It’s never easy, man.”
“In truth.” Nate headed toward the rear. Dave noticed he didn’t look down as he passed Bedford’s sleeping form
.
He considered another cup of coffee but decided the hell with it. Tossing the empty cup away, he walked into the forward compartment. Conversation ceased as he entered; dark heads turned to inspect him before going on in lower tones. The plump Indian, wearing bifocals, was working on some papers. He glanced up as Dave passed, sneered and went back to work.
A few feet on he saw Naqui, sitting in a sort of truncated lounge area. He rose as Dave approached, giving him a firm handshake. “How are you, old man?” Naqui said as he sat back down, hitching his pants up at the knees.
Naqui was a colonel—general now, it seemed, by the new stars on his jacket—attached to the Indian government. He’d been educated in England and had the air of a British officer of the old school. His English was perfect, with none of the sing-song qualities common among Hindus, and was one of the few who didn’t act as if every last American was responsible for the Greening. Dave liked him.
Smiling, Dave sat back. “Now you get asked the question of the day: What were you doing on our side of the water?”
“Oh, a dustup with your new administration,” Naqui said, waving a languid hand. “They’ve been a bit trying about our not holding elections, so I was sent to see to them. An entirely different lot with not the vaguest idea of where the subcontinent is much less the conditions there.” He shook his head. “And it happens every four years. I don’t see how you manage.”
“How are things, anyway?”
Naqui eyed him appraisingly. “Oh, that’s right, you’ve had a full plate, haven’t you? Not very good, frankly. We had an enormous riot in Kashmir two months ago, quite a number killed. The governor tried to close the camps and force the poor wretches back to the fields. Moving ahead on his own, I’m afraid. Needless to say it wasn’t on, and when they weren’t fed they ran wild. Took us weeks to restore order. But you wouldn’t have heard that in any case—we thought it best to keep the lid on.”
“They’re still refusing to go back to the villages.”
“Yes. Of course, one can’t blame them. Most of them are living better than they possibly could anywhere else.” He sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to put our hopes in the younger generation.”
Dave merely shrugged; there was nothing that could be said to that. It was the same throughout the Southern Hemisphere: the survivors were simply refusing to take up their lives again. It was a new form of mass neurosis, a type of survivor’s shock: quite simply, they had endured the end of the world and saw no reason for going on.
Naqui was still speaking. “Aside from that, it’s the usual thing. Banditry, petty corruption, speculation in food supplies and so forth. It seems a typhoid epidemic broke out in Bangladesh this past week. I’ll have to look into that as soon as we get back.” He shrugged. “We’re managing, at least. It could be far worse. We’re better off than the Chinese, the poor devils.”
Dave nodded in silent agreement. China was everybody’s bad conscience. It had collapsed totally in the wake of the Plague. The Russians had taken over the northern quarter, for humanitarian reasons, they said, and there was some semblance of order there. But the rest was hell on earth. It was just too big, too enormous a task for anyone to take up. There were whole cities in the interior that would not see a human being for generations, if ever, provinces virtually empty of life. More relief teams were working there than anywhere else on the planet, but it was futile. The only thing that would heal China was time.
He realized that Naqui had spoken again. “I asked how the defendant was doing,” Naqui said, hands clasped in front of him.
Dave grimaced. “As well as they all do.”
Leaning forward, Naqui touched him on the knee. “I understand that there’s some doubt about this man, Bedford.”
Wordlessly, Dave blinked at him, wondering how he could possibly have heard. Naqui gazed back a moment before settling into the seat. “Yes,” he said quietly.
Naqui frowned at the cabin floor before going on. “There’s something you should know,” he said in a low voice. “Under the rose, of course. There seems to be a conviction in Nationalist Party circles that your government has sent in a ringer who can be proven innocent in order to halt the trial process . . .”
“Bullshit,” Dave said.
“Ludicrous, I agree. Utterly paranoid, but there you are. We’re doing our best to put a stop to it, but we haven’t made much headway. We do know that there will be an attempt on your man sometime before the trial begins.”
“Great,” Dave said. “Just what we need.”
“Probably be wise to change the spot where he’ll be held . . . but I won’t tell you how to do your job.” Naqui glanced over his shoulder then went on quickly. “We’ll give you what help we can, needless to say. Our problem, after all. We’ll discuss it further after we land.”
Dave started to reply, but Naqui was getting up. Looking past him Dave saw a young Pakistani in uniform coming down the aisle. He halted and spoke to Naqui in high-pitched Urdu. Naqui turned back to Dave. “Some bother at home,” he said. “We’ll speak later.”
“Right,” Dave said. “And thanks, Paresh.”
Leaning back against the seat, Dave looked up at the screen, wondering where they were. It was totally black, not even any stars—the cameras weren’t sensitive enough to pick them up. Well out over the Pacific, most likely. He noticed that the boost warning light beneath the screen was lit up. Strange, he hadn’t even heard the buzzer.
He felt a stab of irritation at Naqui but suppressed it. Normal reaction, blaming the messenger, but he had no time to indulge himself, and besides, Paresh had done him a favor. There was a hollow feeling at the pit of his stomach as he thought of what awaited them. It was different somehow, knowing it was coming. And the government involved, too. Jesus, it was going to be rough.
He let his head rest against the cabin wall. A distant thrumming came through the metal; no sound, they were traveling too fast for that. He closed his eyes. India. He was going back once more, eight years after he’d sworn never to set foot there again, never to so much as think about it. The place of nightmares . . .
He’d been twenty, in his second year of college, when he’d volunteered for one of the relief teams. They sent him to Bombay.
Of course, he’d known what was happening, he’d seen all the news reports, but it hadn’t prepared him for what he’d found. Nothing could have: the constant stench of death, the piles of corpses, the pyres burning day and night that the Liberty crew said were visible from orbit. He hadn’t foreseen how it would affect him, either. After the first week he’d taken to going off by himself so that no one could see him crying. He didn’t know why he bothered—most of the others were in far worse shape. There had been two suicides the first month, one of them the team psychiatrist. It was Dave who had discovered her, floating in a tub of pink-dyed water, red splotches printed on the wall above that must have meant something, though no sense could be made of them.
He reached his limit the fifth week, while immunizing the survivors against cholera—a small gift from fate thrown in to keep things interesting. The tent had been mobbed—there were so many of them: starved, sick, covered with sores. Three died while waiting for the shots, and sometime after that he’d lost it completely and had run off, still holding the injector. He couldn’t remember much but they told him later that he’d been screaming.
He ran aimlessly for what seemed like hours, stumbling through the wreckage in the streets, smashing into abandoned cars, falling over bodies that seethed with maggots in the tropical sun, the faces, where there were faces, mottled with black, at times to a point where they resembled masks.
It had seemed to him then that he could run those streets forever and not reach the end, that the zone of death had expanded to swallow the world, and that he, Dave, was the final witness, the last shrieking remnant of a failed race.
Finally he collapsed before one of the camps ringing the city, injector clutched in his hand. The refugees gathered about him, sta
ring expressionlessly. After a time he drew himself up on his knees, seeking, he thought now, some unimaginable kind of expiation. They could have murdered him then, and nobody would have known—it had happened to plenty of Americans in the preceding months—but they did not. Perhaps it was the injector that stopped them, perhaps just the look on his face. Whatever it had been, two of them—an old man and a boy whose thinness showed that he had just recovered himself—had taken his arms and led him out of the camp. They left him at relief headquarters, the old man saying a few words that Dave hadn’t understood. He flew home the next day.
They’d had different names for it: the Salvaging, the Greening, as if giving it an innocuous label could excuse what they’d done. A simple concept: that half or more of the human race had to be eliminated to avert environmental catastrophe. Half or more—the “excess biomass” of the planet Earth. What a phrase; they had phrases for everything.
They’d tried to justify it later, after they’d been caught, but there was no justifying it. The population explosion had fizzled. The rate of increase had been dropping worldwide for decades. Everyone was being fed, not well, but enough. Environmental problems were under control. A reprieve, at the very least, though there had been plenty of debate.
But the Porter Group hadn’t had time for debate. They knew better. They had made their plans, had done their work, and had cast it into the winds blowing east of Eden.
And there had been the final twist: that the bacillus had been tailored to infect only non-Caucasians. Dave had asked Reed about that, after he’d broken down on the plane. Reed had answered immediately: “Because they were the largest population reservoir, of course.”
But that wasn’t the answer. It hadn’t exactly been racism either, as so many had said since. The truth was much simpler, far more basic, as basic as blood itself: because they’d lacked the guts to let the thing run its course, to take its portion of the whole race. Their own would have been at risk then.
It must have been so easy, working in isolation, insulated from any voice that would have questioned them on grounds of logic, of ethics, of decency. Starting out with an idea that grew into a scenario that took on a life of its own as they realized that they had the power to do a thing unimagined in history.
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