The other three looked at each other, in silence. At last, Kassandra spoke, “I guess we'll have to leave, since we're not French citizens, and they’ll probably only accommodate people who are. Well, she is”—she indicated Annabelle—“but we're not…”
CHAPTER SEVEN
David and Vivianne
Vivianne still managed to look stylish even in the midst of the crisis. She wore a red leather skirt with a short matching jacket, a white blouse, black tights, and pair of black mid-heel shoes. Her hair was pinned up at the back, but some of its reckless curls around her ears and neck broke loose in a bohemian fashion. She walked with Annabelle down Rue Borchal, with Annabelle having just managed to procure some gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt from one of the shops there.
“It’s good to get out, just us girls, huh?” Vivianne said.
“Yes.” The dismal gray road was busier than when they had first arrived.
“I don’t feel like going home yet. It gets oppressive there sometimes,” Vivianne said. “It’s so small, and…”
“Oh, I’m so sorry! We can find somewhere else to stay. We’ve probably overstayed our welcome by three days already…”
Vivianne flipped her right hand playfully at Annabelle. “Tsk! No, it’s not you guys. It’s… well, David and I have problems sometimes…”
“Oh…”
“I won’t bore you with them though.”
“If you need to talk…”
Vivianne half-chuckled. “It’s okay. Old people problems. You shouldn’t have to worry about that stuff yet. If I really need to talk, though, I’ll take you up on it.”
Annabelle smiled. “Old? You’re probably only about twenty-five, I’m guessing. How did you two meet, anyway?”
“We’re both photographers. We met in Normandy, having both gone there to take pictures. We were married six months later, and I had Etienne a year after that.”
“Oh. She’s so cute! She’s so blonde though…”
“And we’re both brown-haired. Yes, I get that a lot. We were both blonde when we were her age, and only went darker as we grew up.” Vivianne stopped dead, and turned towards Annabelle, on her right. Putting both hands on the girl’s shoulders, she pivoted Annabelle to face her. “She’s going to live, Annabelle! She’ll actually have a chance to have brown hair! Life underground will be even less fun than it is now, but she’ll live!”
“Yeah. Yeah, she will.” Annabelle spontaneously hugged Vivianne. “I’m so glad we bumped into you guys on the bus that night, I feel like I’ve known you forever. I’m sorry if Tony’s a bit of a dork sometimes though…”
Vivianne shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Men! Tsk!” Annabelle smiled, as the two women released their embrace. They resumed walking. “I find Kassandra kind of hard to read, though,” Vivianne continued.
“You really mean she’s stuck up, but you’re too kind to say it?”
“Well, partly, I guess…” Vivianne chuckled.
“It’s okay. You can say it. She’s spoiled. She’s had every privilege in life that money can buy. Never had to worry about a thing. She’s even got her own warp spaceship parked up at the ETI.”
“Wow! But, she’s smart, too, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she sure is. And she’s a deep thinker but she tries to make out that she isn’t. Probably had to do it to fit in with the party crowd growing up. I sometimes see this faraway look in her eyes, like she’s contemplating something. Or maybe hurting and just not saying anything. There are unseen depths in there, kind of like an iceberg.”
Vivianne nodded.
“To change the subject a little, what’s that gray goo you get piped to your house called again?” Annabelle asked.
“NBH?”
“Yes, that’s it. Do you get enough of it to feed extra people? By which, I really mean us?”
“No, we just get two thousand calories a day for each us,” Vivianne said. “However, we have reserves. I’ve been living on nineteen hundred calories a day for a long time, and stockpiling the rest. It doesn’t need refrigeration. I was keeping it for a rainy day but I’ve been using the extra to make food for you guys.”
Annabelle looked shocked. “Oh… well, we should pay our way. I’m going to buy enough for the three of us for a week. How do you get more?”
“You have to order it through the console at home.”
“Then let’s do it when we get back. I’m really hoping not to be a burden on you guys any longer, Vivianne. As soon as a way opens up to get back to Paris…”
“I know, sweetie. The hyperloops, trains and places aren’t going to be reopening anytime soon, though.”
Annabelle sighed. “Maybe we could steal a car! I just want to know my mom and sister are okay. They’re the most important people in the world to me.”
“Yeah. I wish the damn nets would go back online again. You could at least talk to them then. I want to make sure my friends here in the city are okay too. I have a couple of friends who live topside as well. They’ll be getting moved underground like us moles. Maybe I could swing it so they get housed with us. We’d have to have Etienne sleep in our room or something.”
Once back at the apartment, Vivianne waved her hand over the small kitchen counter’s small breakfast bar. A midair screen appeared that interfaced to the city’s systems. It showed the latest municipal alerts and statuses. “Hmm… nets still out, under repair,” Vivianne said, scanning the words. “Public transit still working. Power okay. GDNs working.”
“GDNs?” Annabelle said, peering over Vivianne’s shoulder.
“Goods distribution networks. There are three. They’re like one meter-wide pipes, through which capsules pass, containing everything from the mail to NBH supplies. Those go to local distribution points, where they get sent out to people’s apartments. Oh, look at this: there’s a warning about criminal activity. Seems Block B are trying to hijack supplies coming into the city. Don’t buy stuff on the black market, yada yada…”
“What about getting more NBH?”
Vivianne touched a button in the lower left corner of the display. “Okay, order more, three people, two thousand calories times seven days, forty-two thousand needed, touch your payment ring to the counter. Wait, the price has gone up quite a bit. It’s doubled, actually! That’s pretty worrying…” Vivianne turned to look at Annabelle. “You know, it’s fine having food just appear, like tap water. But it also means we’re completely dependent on it. If the supply stops coming, we’re screwed.”
----
Kato’s living room had been converted into a conference space. The walls, floor, and furniture were completely white. Around the table sat Academician Korolev, to Kato’s left, and General Phillips. “Gentlemen, welcome to the war room,” Kato said. “We’re going to pool all the resources available to us in the fight against Seung Yi. Now, in addition to material resources, we have one other: the extreme intelligence of everybody here.” He paused for effect.
General Phillips interrupted. “The first thing, Kato, is that we’re going to need the biggest warp cargo ship you’ve got. One of the ones you used to haul stuff out to Alpha Centauri.”
“That would be the Arcadantera,” Kato said. “With a payload capacity of 1,100 tons. Her zero-point units output enough energy to power half of Earth when she’s underway.”
“Right. Well, she’s going to be moving a very special payload,” Phillips said. “Nine hundred and fifty tons. It’s at the highest level of classification.”
“Oh…”
“Same level of secrecy as the Manhattan Project,” Phillips said.
“Scouring my history data banks,” Korolev said. “The Manhattan Project, 1943. The first atomic weapon… Are you dropping us a hint, General?” Korolev said.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that suggestion,” the General said, with a glint in his eye.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Kato said. “You’re going with the cluster of nukes we talked about.”
“Correct
,” Phillips said.
“How big will it be?” Kato said.
“Nine hundred and fifty megatons.”
“Whew!”
“Whoa!”
“Assuming it works,” Phillips said. “But we can’t just detonate it on the surface. We have to get it deep inside Vesta.” Phillips paused for a second. Then he turned to Kato. “We’ll need your crew to pull off something that to my knowledge has never been done before.”
“What?”
“Coming out of warp inside a celestial body.”
“What?”
“The spherical caverns your prospectors found in there. We have to get the bomb to the innermost one of them. Two hundred and thirty kilometers below the surface. There’s no way we can tunnel there. Warp ships travel outside spacetime, so the rock isn’t an obstacle to them.”
Kato sat back, and blew air out through his puckered lips. “It’s still not an exact science to control where we come out of warp. We’re only accurate to within a few kilometers. Those caverns are one point two kilometers wide. Arcadantera is six hundred meters long. That means the margin for error is only three hundred meters at either end, else she would dewarp inside the rock. Needless to say, the collision of matter would destroy the ship and payload completely.”
“It’s all we’ve got,” Phillips said. “There’s no other weapon powerful enough to wipe the place out, and no other way to deliver it to the interior of Vesta.”
Kato nodded. The room was silent for a few seconds. “Then we’ll do whatever we have to,” he said. “How long until the cluster is ready?”
“With everyone and everything at our disposal working flat out, six weeks,” the General said. “This has to work. We won’t get a second chance.”
----
“Why would you ever need to cook anything?” Kassandra asked, eyeing the two-ring electric stove. “You have that food stuff on tap.” She wore black jeans and a black blouse. Vivianne attended to washing dishes. Etienne toddled in, chasing Vlad.
“It’s in case we want something home-cooked instead of NBH-based,” Vivianne said. I for one like to cook sometimes. We’re not far from food stores here.”
“Makes sense.” Kassandra looked at the floor. “I wonder when things will get back to normal.”
Vivianne turned and looked at her. “Your normal is a lot better than our normal,” she snapped. “You can zip to different planets at will, and buy anything you want any time you want. We’re stuck here, because our jobs don’t pay enough to live topside.”
Kassandra looked back, her eyebrows raised. “But… I…”
Vivianne flopped the dishcloth back in the sink and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did. It’s just that… you’ll be able to leave Earth at some point, and escape this whole thing. We’ll be crammed into an even smaller space than we are now, with a growing child and God knows who else. We’ll never be able to go above ground again for fear of the nanovirus. We’ll never see or photograph another tree or bird. It’s not just our passion, it’s our livelihood.” Her eyes began to tear up.
Kassandra averted her gaze, then turned around and left the kitchen. She entered the living room, where Annabelle and Antonio were sitting on the floor playing cards. “I want to get out of here as soon as we can,” Kassandra said.
Annabelle looked up at her. “Out of Lyon or out of this house?”
“Out of this house,” Kassandra said. Antonio nodded.
“So where do you propose that we go?” Annabelle said.
Kassandra sighed, as she shifted her weight onto her left foot. “I don’t know. Maybe just go out for a bit, I guess. We’ve been stuck here for four days.”
“Where should we go?” Antonio said.
“Anywhere.”
“We could go and see the above ground part of the city,” Annabelle said.
Kassandra’s face lit up. “Yeah!”
“Okay,” Antonio said. “I’ll go and get ready.”
“So you’ll spend like an hour powdering your nose?” Annabelle teased. Antonio grunted. He got up and headed to the corner of the room, where he rummaged through his small pile of clothes. “I’m just going in what I have on,” Annabelle said.
“Me too,” Kassandra said.
Half an hour later, Antonio emerged from the bathroom, in his jeans, black pointy-toed shoes, and an expensive-looking white V-neck t-shirt. He smelled of cologne. Annabelle wrinkled her nose. “It’s David’s,” he whispered. “Cheap and nasty, but better than nothing.”
Annabelle announced to Vivianne that they were going out. “Download a map of the city first,” Vivianne said. “It’s a big place. Oh wait, no nets. Well, I’ll draw one then. Hold on.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Invasion
The three friends turned right out of the apartment onto the soulless, gray residential street, and walked in silence down to Rue Borchal. They then turned right. “Whoa!” Annabelle said. They stopped dead, and surveyed the scene. Dotted along the sidewalk on both sides were tents——some pop-up camping tents, and other makeshift ones constructed from cardboard boxes, bed sheets, and the occasional shopping cart. Adults and children alike could be seen inside them, lying down on blankets or sitting in the entrance. Inside were smaller boxes and bags. The nearest structure was a blue pop-up. Two girls, aged perhaps six and eight, played a clapping game on the sidewalk near its entrance. Their hair was blonde and their faces grubby. A boy inside was coloring.
A woman sat on an upturned milk crate near the girls. She turned to her right. “Thank you guys for being so good. Your father should be back soon.”
Annabelle, Antonio and Kassandra just looked at each other, open-mouthed. “I guess people aren’t waiting for the government to move them underground,” Annabelle said.
“Should we still go?” Antonio said.
“It’ll be okay,” Kassandra said. They picked their way along the sidewalk among the dour-faced refugees, until they reached the cross-town elevator station. The sign above the wide brushed metal and glass doors said: Arrival: 4 minutes. The three travelers stood around, arms folded, watching the sign as it counted down. At last, the doors parted.
A dozen people got out, bearing bags, boxes, and a shopping cart. They looked nervously up and down the street. “What now?” one of them asked. Annabelle, Kassandra and Antonio stepped into the two car garage-sized elevator. Its interior was of brushed steel. There were three large windows, and the fourth wall displayed a map of the city. The doors closed. It moved slowly down, then a steady whooshing sound was heard, as it headed rapidly towards the center of Lyon. Vivianne studied the map on the wall. “Everything else goes out from the main station called Centre Ville,” she said, “whether you’re going up, down, or sideways. So, we have to get off there.” The others nodded, as they hung onto the straps.
“Sure wish they’d have put seats in here,” Kassandra said. The red dot representing their location moved steadily across what looked like a spider web of radiating lines and concentric ring roads, towards the center. Various sized dots at the intersections indicated transport hubs.
“How far underground are we?” Annabelle asked. Antonio shrugged.
“Quite a ways, I suppose,” Kassandra said. The car slowed gradually, and then began to ascend. A window inset into the map showed their vertical progress. “Main train station level,” Kassandra said.
“Look at that! I thought the train system was shut down!” Annabelle said, looking out of the panoramic glass side. The station concourse was packed with people jostling and jockeying to get to the elevator banks. The car stopped, and the doors opened. People flooded in, packing the car and pressing the friends against the rear wall. Their conversation was a constant babble of anxious tones. They, too, bore bags and boxes. The car began to ascend once more. The next level contained a giant shopping mall. Annabelle, Antonio and Kassandra turned around, their faces almost squashed against the glass by the weight of bodies, and looked ou
t. The storefronts were smashed to pieces and blackened by smoke. Pieces of glass and steel littered the tiled floor, along with clothing, electronics and the occasional shoe. The place was deserted. “Oh my God,” Annabelle said, quietly. The others just stared. “Look!” she said. A child’s doll could be seen, among the rubble, its head and limbs splayed in impossible directions. Its unblinking eyes stared at the ceiling.
Outside went black again for twenty seconds or so, and then the car came to a stop at the ground level of Lyon. Its doors opened again. The passengers shuffled out. More began to press in, even before Annabelle, Antonio and Kassandra managed to get out. They pushed their way forward a few meters, until they were outside. People were jostling and shouting. The Gendarmes’ distinctive round, dark blue hats dotted the crowd. Ten meters in front of them, soldiers in camouflage stood at regular intervals facing the crowd, wearing green berets. Semi-automatic weapons were slung over their shoulders. Just beyond the soldiers was a handrail. The friends looked at each other, wide eyed. Annabelle shouted, but couldn’t be heard above the noise. She pointed straight forward. The others nodded, and they pushed their way through the crush of people. They were eyed suspiciously by the two closest soldiers as they approached. At last, they reached a handrail, ten meters from the elevator. The view was awe-inspiring. A wall of cobblestones fell away at forty-five degrees, down a hundred meters until it reached the level of the city streets. Long escalators that headed up and down were packed to capacity. The city stretched away into the distance. The Rhine carved a giant S through the cityscape below them. The steep Fourvière hill beyond the river bore the striking spire of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. Fire and smoke billowed from many other buildings far below. Jets of water sprayed onto the fires. Smoke hung in the air, blurring the view into the distance and thinning the sunlight. The streets were packed with a surging crowd. The roar of the people and the wail of sirens came from all around.
Marching into the distance was a procession of vast, thick glass pillars, of the clustered column type. They were hundreds of meters tall, and supported Gothic arches of glass. The entire roof of the city, which supported the sky level, was like that of a giant jade-colored cathedral. Elevators could be seen moving up and down inside each convex bulge of the outsides of the pillars. Each pillar stood on an upside down bowl-shaped mound like the one on which they were standing. “Wow…” Annabelle said, gazing into the distance. She was inaudible, due to the noise.
The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series Page 5