by Jeff Carlson
The snow†ake tore apart all organic structures. A single wisp of it would liquefy all living things within hundreds of yards, people, insects, plants, even microbes and bacteria. Fortunately the chain reaction broke down in an instant. The snow†akes tended to glom onto each other as well as foreign mass and became encased in free carbon of their own making.
Cultivating it was extremely delicate work, for which Ruth donned one of Grand Lake’s few containment suits. One mistake could kill her. But the snow†ake did not attack rubber or glass.
She was forced to start from scratch. The data index included notes and information stolen from Leadville, but LaSalle’s ‚les had been unavailable. It didn’t matter. Her memory was nearly photographic and she’d helped LaSalle with early models of his baby. In fact, after the president’s council realized the true might of the snow†ake, Senator Kendricks had tried to recruit Ruth into LaSalle’s weapons group with the threat of losing a new arms race to the Chinese. At the same time, James Hollister had insisted that the Asians were years behind U.S. research.
Ruth didn’t know who to believe anymore. By itself, the new technology she’d called the ghost was proof enough that other scientists were still at work. The nanotech war had begun, almost unnoticed within the larger con†ict. She was afraid they’d already lost. The hundreds of sick people in the medical tents. The thousands of others who’d died undiagnosed in the long winter…How many of those casualties could be attributed to some as-yet-unknown effects of the ghost?
In three days she’d spent less than three hours trying to improve the vaccine. The rest had gone into preparing a genocide. It was a real chore to assemble the snow†ake by hand with inadequate gear and her ‚rst four efforts failed, too imbalanced to retain their purpose. Finally she had a single working snow†ake and locked it in a glass cap, carefully exposing it to a handful of weeds inside a larger glass. Breeding more was that easy. The weeds disintegrated and suddenly Ruth had trillions of the killing machines, although many of these new snow†akes were dead or half-strength. Ruth had to discard two hundred before she quit trying to sort through the mess, but during that time she found seven more snow†akes that were whole. Each of them went into a cap. Then she exposed those seven, too, after which she divided each of her eight teeming glasses into hundreds of smaller vials. Cluster bombs. Fifty vials to a case.
The snow†ake would also be effective in stopping the massive ‚res across the West, she’d realized. If they dispersed the nanotech along the front lines of a blaze, it would smother the inferno by reducing its fuel to dust. Maybe there were other peaceful uses.
If nothing else, she needed the snow†ake for testing. Eventually she hoped to design some way to protect people against it, like a weapon-speci‚c ANN, but the damned thing was just too basic. There was no proof that Ruth could imagine. Not yet. In time she might design a supernano that was capable of holding a person together against anything, even a bullet. It would be a form of immortality, an augmented immune system capable of sustaining good health.
Most important to Ruth, it would be the incredible technology to save Cam, using the blueprint of his DNA to restore his body and completely heal his wounds.
* * * *
She found him where the soldier had said, hiking up from the broad valley where the town once stood. Footpaths and crude jeep trails lined the slopes by the hundreds. Mud slides slumped across the barren earth. Here and there, stripped vehicles marred the land, cars and trucks that had bogged down or run out of gas during the ‚rst sprint for elevation. They were empty shells. Everything had been ripped away from them, seats, tires, hoods, doors, bumpers. The need for building material had been that severe. Far away, all that remained of the town were the right corners and straight lines of its foundations and streets, a small maze of squares set against the uneven shore of the lake. Several concrete structures remained, as did the fenced-off tarmacs of its three gas stations, but anything that was wood or brick or metal was gone.
Ruth felt nearly as forlorn. She worried at the choices she’d made. She could have had Cam, even for a moment, but she’d run to her work instead. It was the same choice she’d always made, even when one sweet hour together would have left her rested and better focused.
She didn’t want to die alone.
The sun had fallen away from noon in a hazy sky laced with contrails. Helicopters chattered somewhere in the north and Ruth wondered what they would do if the war suddenly fell on top of them. Run down, she thought. Run to him and keep running.
There were more than a dozen people with Cam, but Ruth recognized the way he carried himself even though his body was top-heavy with equipment. He’d slung a rack of wire cages over his shoulder. He wore a pack, too, and there were thick leather gloves tucked into his belt. Her chest lightened at the sight of him so clearly in his element…
Cam was laughing with a young woman. Ruth frowned. She had waited nearly an hour, holding her stone in her left hand, pressing its gritty surface into the soft, tender skin of her palm. She could have trudged down after him instead of staying with her thoughts, but she was sure he would have made the same decision. Be patient. Don’t risk infection.
Ruth tucked her rock into her pants pocket and walked to meet him, ruf†ing her ‚ngers through her bangs when the breeze tugged at her jacket and her curly hair. She needed a barber. When her hair got too long, it †uffed and made her look like Jimi Hendrix, which wasn’t particularly †attering. Still, the primping was unlike her and she knew it.
“Cam,” she called. He didn’t react. The wind was against her and he walked in the middle of the ragged group — ragged but in good health. Their voices were loud with the satisfaction of a job well-done, and yet Cam only directed his words at one of them. Allison Barrett.
“Next time just drop the cage,” he told her.
“That little fucker wouldn’t have made it anywhere near me and you know it,” Allison said, and Cam laughed again.
The girl was in her early twenties, Ruth thought, with a wide mouth and great teeth that she liked to show in a con‚dent animal smile. Bad skin. Most of it was sunburn but there were threads of plague scarring, too, especially on her left cheek. Her blond hair had been bleached almost white by the sun.
Ruth only knew her because Allison was one of the mayors elected in the refugee camps. After Ruth’s second meeting with Governor Shaug, Allison and three others had waylaid her escort in strident voices, demanding information. Shaug hadn’t dismissed them either, taking the time to introduce Ruth and to settle their questions. The refugees had clout if only because there were so many of them, and yet Ruth suspected the “mayors” had been a large part of Grand Lake’s ability to endure. For example, the trap-and-release project was absolutely genius. It showed the capacity to look ahead instead of allowing their many immediate problems to blind them to everything else.
Allison was clever and tough, exactly like Cam. Like the rats, Ruth thought, but that was uncharitable. She made herself smile as the work crew approached, carrying Allison and Cam along in the middle. Their heads were still turned toward each other. Allison noticed her ‚rst.
“Hi,” Ruth said.
Cam hesitated. His body language toward Allison was calm and open, but his eyes grew troubled. It was a complex exchange and Ruth missed none of it.
He said, “Ruth, what are you doing here?”
“I need a minute.”
“Okay.” He set down his cages and his gloves. That he didn’t question her at all made Ruth feel good. They could still rely on each other, no matter what else.
Ruth caught his arm and drew him aside, glancing at Allison to make certain the girl didn’t follow. Stupid. If she and Cam had touched each other — if they were having sex — Ruth would need to test Allison for the ghost, too, but her instinct was to protect Cam and that meant keeping the contagion a secret as long as possible.
She let go of his sleeve. Being close to him evoked more feelings than she was ready for
and she was glad to move into the wind.
I’m jealous, she realized, too late.
Ruth had been using samples of his blood and her own because they were the original carriers of the vaccine. It was widespread now, but that was just good science, and a good excuse to see him.
“There’s a problem with your work,” Cam said, watching her. His intuition was straight on the mark and Ruth was suddenly afraid of what else he might see in her.
“Where have you been?” she asked, harried and intense.
“We took some rats into town,” he said. “There’s still a chance—”
“Where have you been, Cam?” Ruth clutched his wrist to make sure she had his attention, searching his brown eyes. He stared back at her, a little frightened now. Ruth said, “In the lab in Sacramento, did you go anywhere? Did you open anything?”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s something else inside you, a new kind of nanotech. Maybe a weapon. There’s something else besides the vaccine and I don’t know what it is.”
“I — Oh my God.” Cam stepped back from her, staggering. Ruth quickly moved after him, but he brought his forearms up between them, looking at his hands as if he thought he could possibly see the subatomic machines.
“You know I’ll do everything I can,” Ruth said, sharing his fear. It was strange. She felt a very welcome intimacy in the moment. On some basic level, she had learned to associate Cam with tension and pain, and now they were bound together by those feelings again.
Hurting for him, she watched his face. She also was aware of his friends shifting behind her, and she was glad for their voices and the rustle of their boots. Standing apart from them only heightened her sense of rejoining Cam.
“What do you remember about Sacramento?” she asked.
“I don’t think I went anyplace that the rest of us didn’t go, too,” he said. Then, more ‚ercely, “I didn’t. I swear.”
Ruth matched his quiet tone. “We’ll ‚gure it out,” she said.
Allison intruded. Allison edged past Ruth, walking like a cat. The girl held her body low but kept her shoulders up, her hands ready to grab or punch. It was a posture that she must have learned in the camps, Ruth thought, light-footed and able.
“What’s going on?” Allison said. Her voice was as full of challenge as the way she held herself and Ruth met it without thinking.
“I’ll need blood samples from you, too,” Ruth said, trying to scare the girl.
Allison only grinned at her. “Is that why you’re here?” Allison asked. Then she took Cam’s hand in her own and stood with the shoulder of her tattered blue sweater against his Army jacket.
“There’s a new kind of nanotech,” Cam said, explaining to Allison.
The two women never looked away from each other. Ruth tried not to let her defeat show in her face — or her respect. Allison was plucky and bold. In fact, the girl reminded Ruth of herself at her best, but she just wasn’t that con‚dent anymore. Allison was willing to rush an opportunity. Ruth was not. Otherwise she wouldn’t have missed her chance before Cam and Allison met.
Watching him with the girl made it clear. Even with his rugged looks, there had been no shortage of attention for who he was and what he’d accomplished, and their acceptance of him was exactly what he’d missed.
And you deserve it, Ruth thought.
Still, she was crushed. Cam must have exhausted his patience with her during their long run, and yet this was the only time she’d known him to veer away from what he really wanted. In some way, Ruth supposed he was trying to punish her. She saw that now. His decision to pair up with Allison was self-destructive, complicating his relationship with the woman he really wanted. Ruth knew that he loved her. Finding someone else, simply taking the opportunity, was an attempt to reject Ruth before she had the chance to say no. But she loved him, too. Couldn’t he see that?
She didn’t doubt that Allison’s attraction to him was genuine, but she was suspicious of the girl’s reasons. Allison would always be looking to strengthen her faction here in Grand Lake, and Cam was both a celebrity and a veteran survivor. So the girl had tied herself to him.
“You better come with me,” Ruth said, looking away from Allison to include the others in the group. “All of you. I need blood samples before you go anywhere else.”
* * * *
She turned her back on Cam in a daze. She knew what she had to do. A discovery as criticial as the ghost could not be left for later, so Ruth went forty-eight hours with only a few catnaps and two big meals, hiding herself in the lab.
Was the ghost a Chinese construct? She knew that in Leadville, intelligence reports had put China’s research program at the top of the list after Leadville itself. The plague year had badly confused things, of course, and a nanotech lab could be small and easily hidden, but at the same time, the world had shrunk to a handful of island ranges. There were fewer places to watch. Their list of competitors was very short. China. Brazil. India. Canada. There was a displaced Japanese team on Mt. McKinley, Alaska, and a British group in the Alps. All except the Chinese had been considered friendly. Regardless, Ruth didn’t think any of them except the Chinese were capable of building the ghost, so it must be a threat.
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 Ca
m 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.”