by John Barnes
“I know Agent Edwards said no recriminations,” Susan Adler said, stroking her forehead as if it hurt, “but how the hell did we let something like that get loose to the general public?”
Browder shrugged and looked at Heather; he was right, it was her department more than his. “By the time anyone paid attention, it was making too much money to get rid of. It’s the basic technology of biohacking,” she said. “All those booming industrial plants around Baton Rouge and Portland, where they create cows with human blood, and that erosion-control ivy they use in burned-over areas, and those gasoline-from-saltwater-algae farms that they’re just starting around San Diego. Biohacking was making too many people rich. No one wanted to squash it.”
Hannah Bledsoe sighed. “So you’re saying your umpty thousand saboteurs—or more—might be spraying this stuff around the country—”
“Definitely spraying it around the world,” Arnie said.
Edwards cocked his head to the side and squinted hard, as if trying to see. “Uh, right. So bottom line, what’s it going to do?”
Everyone looked at Heather, and she said, “Well, it looks like what they were trying to do with the biotes was make plastic rot like soft cheese on a hot day and gasoline spoil like milk.”
“Any reason to think it won’t work?” Edwards asked, softly, breaking the grim silence.
“I don’t think Daybreak would have initiated itself until they had it working,” Arnie said.
Edwards nodded. “I get it. So the nanoswarm must be working too. I understood what you said it did inside the machines, but what does it do to things as a whole?”
“As a whole, you mean—?”
“Well, Dr. Browder told me the biotes cut up molecules into little pieces, and I understood that, but it took me a moment to understand that that makes plastic rot. What does something that drips corrosive acid inside microchips do?”
“Hell if I know. Something big,” Arnie said.
Browder added, “Probably many things. None of them good.”
“Well,” Edwards said, “I’ve heard enough. Dr. Yang, do you have any kind of list of the leadership of Daybreak?”
Arnie sighed. “That’s why I said Daybreak initiated itself. It’s a concept and a process that some people devote themselves to; there’s no leadership except within tiny little affinity groups. Daybreak has no leaders, no theoreticians, nobody who runs it or made it up. In fact it probably had no creator, or no one creator. It’s more… improvisational, like that improv comedy stuff that was popular when I was a kid? But more so. Nobody said, Okay, we’re ready for Daybreak, roll it. Nobody gave an order, prepared a report, made a decision, voted, or took an assignment in committee. What happened was… more, um… more like a flock of geese taking off to fly south in the fall.”
“I thought the goose out front was the leader.”
Browder and Arnie were both looking nervously at Heather because she’d been pretty harsh with them in the meeting over coffee before this meeting. But she nodded at Arnie; it wouldn’t look good to evade the question.
He said, “No, there’s not really a leader as such. It’s what’s called flocking behavior. Some of them honk I’m leaving and take off, then more of them honk I’m coming too, and they circle and maneuver to line up in each other’s slipstreams, and that forms them up into Vs, and the goose that finds itself at the head of the V heads south. That goose out front is not the leader; it’s just the goose that happens to have a clear idea of south at the moment. Shoot or confuse the goose at the tip of the V, and a couple will peel off to take care of the damaged goose, and the rest will just form up behind some other goose. You can’t decapitate it because it doesn’t have a head.”
“But…” Edwards didn’t look at all happy. “But then how do they stay on the program?”
“The program is whatever they happen to stay on,” Crittenden said, from the back of the room. “Which is taking down the Big System.”
Heather wanted to hug him; she’d been afraid that Arnie would say the words that made everyone resist what he was saying—pure system artifact—and she wanted people committed by action before they heard that, because it was more frightening than what they’d already heard—and worse yet, probably true. “If there are no questions,” she said, “let’s take five minutes for bathroom and coffee, and start self-organizing, ourselves.” Much as she liked Lenny Plekhanov, she was glad he hadn’t been able to come on such short notice; he’d have suggested that they get all flocked up.
ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER. GILLETTE, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
When Zach had loaded every recycling cart he was supposed to, he had a good twenty seed bottles left; he was supposed to improvise until late afternoon, when a guy he was giving a ride to would be calling him.
For the moment, he was just enjoying pedaling along a deserted residential street—nice houses, suburban styles from the eighties and nineties, back when they really built for the family that only went out as a unit to Chuck E. Cheese’s, church, and youth activities, the way Zach remembered when he was a kid, when they’d understood that a Christian dad needed a home that was a fortress. You can’t bake a good cake if other people can throw in any old ingredients they want, and you can’t raise a good kid if you don’t make sure that everything he hears and sees is good, Zach thought. This was the kind of street where, after Daybreak, there’d be big, healthy families, with lots of healthy, clean kids and dogs, and moms to stay home and raise them, and dads with time to play ball and go fishing and just plain hang out. Maybe Zach could move Tiff and the boys here, once Christian families had a fighting chance, and help fill the town back up.
For now, though, what to do with twenty seed bottles? Empty houses had empty yards and empty garages, which attracted bums, kids looking for party spots, and the remaining neighbors’ heavy trash. All of that meant a lot of stray plastic in piles sitting out in the open, exposed to the wind. Watch them try to put that toothpaste back in the tube. By the third empty house, he had seeding a back yard down to a science.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. LAMONT, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
So far Jason had reveled in miles and miles of gorgeous scenery and great music, punctuated with the amusing challenge of putting a black egg somewhere vulnerable.
Lamont, Wyoming’s computer store had a going-out-of-business sign and a south-facing window. Jason walked in with faked-up questions to confuse the clerks; while they were in the back trying to figure out whether they could sell him anything, he slipped behind the counter. He left two black eggs on top of two old tower servers, right where they’d get a few hours of sunlight through the dusty front windows in the morning.
Judging by the dust on the servers, the clerks probably wouldn’t see the black eggs till it was far too late; meanwhile, probably people having computer troubles—there would be a lot of those by tomorrow—would bring them in here. Jason was happier than Typhoid Mary at an all-you-can-eat salad bar.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. GILLETTE, WYOMING. 11:30 A.M. MST. OCTOBER 28.
Howard and Isaac liked to say that trash was their life, and vice versa. Twin brothers, they liked driving the city trash truck, happily taking turns driving or loading, just as they took turns buying rounds at Mary’s Retreat, buying breakfast at Perkins, doing the driving on fishing trips, and in pretty much everything else. Their joint motto was, “Me too, on everything.”
Coworkers who knew the twins well often said that was why they’d reached forty years old unmarried; they couldn’t find a girl who wanted them to take turns. Those friends would have been very upset to know how close to the truth they were.
This morning, they were discussing the smell of some recycling carts; Howard thought it was more like a backed-up sewer line, and Isaac thought maybe more like a diaper pail—just something to talk about as an alternative to Game Seven of the Series.
As usual, their truck was the first to the holding bin. Isaac found the lock cut off and lying on the grou
nd; then they discovered the too-neat array of bottles in the bottom of the bin. Howard called Davidson.
“So you’re calling me,” Davidson said, his voice slurred from his usual four beers at lunch, “because someone put plastic bottles in the bin where we keep plastic bottles, and they cut off the lock to do it.”
“Well, yeah,” Howard said. “And they put them in like a pattern, like they’re kind of evenly spaced over the floor of the bin, and that’s pretty weird. And I climbed down and looked at one bottle—”
“I don’t pay you to look at the bottles,” Davidson said. “I pay you to bring ’em in and get us all paid. Dump your load and clock out, like you’re supposed to. Don’t bother me with petty weird crap. I’ll put on a new lock in a few days; it’s just there ’cause the Feds say I have to lock my holding bin.”
“Okay, Mr. Davidson, sorry to bother you.”
As they went back to the truck, Isaac said, “Should we maybe take one or two bottles to the police?”
Howard considered. “Couldn’t hurt to take one or two of them and hang on to them, maybe, as evidence, in the back of the truck. Just for a couple weeks, till we knew it wasn’t going to mean nothing.”
“Sounds good,” Isaac said. He dropped down the ladder and retrieved two bottles. “Full of some black crud. And these smell terrible.”
“Yeah, it’s weird all right,” Howard agreed, swinging up into the cab of the recycling truck. “Let’s get this fella dumped so we can get to the Tokyo Spa.”
Howard backed the truck in (this week was his turn), and Isaac worked the hopper-gadget to send the load of plastic into the holding bin.
A moment later, he vomited, and when Howard came out to see what the strange sound was, he did too. They backed away, eyes streaming, miserable with retching and the vile smell.
“Like somebody shit a pile of strong cheese,” Isaac said. “That’s what it’s like. It got a lot worse while it was in the truck.”
Howard lit cigarettes for both of them to clear the smell, and after bracing themselves, they moved the truck to the washing barn.
From the upwind side, the piled plastic in the holding bin looked strangely dingy, smeared with gray and brown slime. They climbed into their own pickup; Isaac put the two mystery bottles they had saved into the back, among a tangle of old rope, tools, and fishing gear.
“Whether they offer it free or not,” Howard said, “at that Tokyo Spa, I think I want that full wash. Might stop off at home and pick up some clean clothes to change into, for after, too.”
“Me too,” Isaac said, “On everything. Might even want to shower and change before we go to the Toke. No reason those ladies should have to deal with guys that smell like we do.”
Howard nodded. “Me too, on everything.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. 2:50 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
“So,” Heather said, “before you take all this back to your home agencies, do—”
Graham walked in, looking over the three knots of diligently chattering bureaucrats with a wry little smile of approval, and shoving his wayward glasses back up his nose as always. “Heather. Something vital. Step into the hall a second.”
“Sure.”
Outside, he lowered his voice and said, “A limo is going to take you straight to a special meeting at Homeland Security. It will pull up outside the building in five minutes. They said to have your laptop and your current files with you. They told me what it’s about but I’m not supposed to tell you—they said they’ll tell you when you get there.”
“Got it,” she said. “Pill drive’s in one pocket, cell phone’s in the other, I’ll snag my laptop.”
“Three quick other things, Heather. One, can you deal with it if they go past midnight? This is one of those things that might.”
“Bad?”
“The worst. Do you need emergency toiletries?”
“All the purse crap—and I don’t need much—is in the side pockets of my laptop case. I’m good. Two?”
“Two, I don’t know if there’s a connection to Daybreak, but there could be, so I’m going to take our DoF part of the Daybreak team and keep them together on standby; when they go home, they’ll all be on call, so if you need the Daybreak team for anything, you already have it. For that matter, if you need your boss, you know I don’t have a life anyway, but I’ll be extra available tonight.”
She felt her breath drawing in and her shoulders squaring, the way they had in her late twenties when she was kicking down doors and busting bad guys. Usually she didn’t notice how much she towered over Graham, who was only five-foot-seven, but at times like this it was hard to miss. “So something’s in the soup.”
“That brings me to number three. Cameron Nguyen-Peters is convening it. We both know what kinds of thing he deals with.”
“Uh-huh. Bound to be interesting. ’Kay, I’ll grab my stuff and tell the troops something; Nellie can handle the wrap.” Truth to tell, her administrative assistant always did handle things like this, and a good thing too.
She cleared her throat at the door; they all looked up. “Everyone, I’ve been called to an emergency meeting. They won’t tell me what it’s about until I’m in the secure room, but it may be something to do with Daybreak. Nellie?”
“Ready.” Her assistant’s fingers poised above her laptop keyboard.
“Contact list from this meeting, available for all of us ASAP. See about a tentative meeting two days from now; DoF folks, Graham wants to talk to you right after this meeting. Sorry to run but I have to.”
Everyone stared at her. She didn’t blame them; she’d have been staring too. She folded her laptop, dropped it into its case, and was out the door.
Cell, pill drive, laptop, survival stuff, good till next morning if I have to be. Ready to go, just the same as the old days. There’s a dance in the old dame yet, she thought smugly. Hey, if I’m not entitled to be arrogant, who is?
She had just time enough to notice what a beautiful fall day it was, with the leaves a wild uproar of bright colors in damp golden sunlight, before the limo shot up the main drive and braked in front of her.
Man, this is big and someone is worried, for real. The driver seemed military; as she climbed into the front seat and got a better look, she saw it was a Secret Service ERT in light-duty uniform, no external armor, but a telltale holster-buckle bump on his left shoulder. “You’ll want to buckle up.”
“Always do,” she said. As her belt clicked closed, he whipped the big car out into the mid-day traffic, letting tires squeal and horns honk as they would, and gunned it across three lanes of traffic.
“Isn’t Homeland Security in the Nebraska Complex?” Heather asked, since they were going the other way.
“Most of it still is. Secretary Ferein and some key offices have already moved to the new complex at St. Elizabeth’s.” He took another turn fast and tight. “Escort should pick us up next block, then we can go faster.”
A DC police cruiser with siren and lights going cut in front of them, and the driver gunned the engine, apparently trying to park the limo on the cop car’s bumper. They roared up an entrance ramp to the parkway, zagged across to the left lanes, and headed south at what the speedometer said was just over eighty miles an hour, the regular traffic fleeing to the right in front of them and re-merging behind them.
Heather had never realized that St. Elizabeth’s was this close; usually, she supposed, it wasn’t. The driver turned off with a wave to the cop, drove without touching the brake through four gates that opened inches in front of his grille, and followed a short driveway to a side door on a big, old mock castle of a building.
“Let me guess,” Heather said, as he pulled the car around the little circular drive. “They just said deliver Heather O’Grainne to this door, as fast as you can?”
“That’s all they told me.”
The limo halted and Heather opened her door. “Thanks for keeping it down to terrifying.”
He grinned at her in a
not-quite-professional way and departed at a much more sedate pace.
A slim young woman, discreetly armed and overtly capable, led Heather to an elevator, which must have descended at least eight floors.
St. Elizabeth’s had originally been built as the first national insane asylum, before the Civil War, and over the decades had been used for many things that needed to be hidden from the public: advanced weapons, cryptology, off-the-record briefings on black ops, meetings with outlaw governments, meetings to make decisions no one wanted to own—like a toxic dump for unspeakable secrets, as if the madness and violence at its foundation had drawn every dirty, secret thing to the old fake-feudal brickpile.
The elevator door opened, and Cameron Nguyen-Peters was waiting for her. “Hey, there, buddy,” she said, grinning and throwing an arm over his shoulder, a half hug that she knew would simultaneously please him (he’d had a crush on her for fifteen years) and offend him (he’d grown steadily stuffier in his dignity with time, and he hadn’t exactly started off as an egalitarian hippie, anyway). “How the hell are you?”
“Life’s been better. We have one big mess on our hands.” He seemed to be looking at something through the wall, twenty miles away.
“Well, if you’re holding this meeting on the day of Game Seven, I know it’s nothing small.”
“Exactly.” He glanced around. “Gotta say the Pirates appear to be getting a very unfair level of divine intervention. Anyway, thanks again for coming right—”
“Mr. Nguyen-Peters,” a female voice said from a speaker somewhere, “the DoDDUSP”—she pronounced it daw-duss-pee—“and the liaison from Deep Black are here.”
Dude, Heather thought. This is big.
Deep Black was the satellite reconnaissance office. They didn’t show up for many meetings because the breach of security in talking to or about them was so often worse than any situation that might have come up.