by Jeff Long
“It’s hardly eighty-seven,” said Nathan Lee. His mind was racing. “I’ll need transport,” he said. “And food. And letters of passage.”
Ellison’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a lot of needs,” he said. “You almost sound like a man trying to make something out of nothing.”
“He’s the courier,” said Baird. “They sent him.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ellison.
“This is government business,” protested the cellist. “Mr. Swift is a patriot. He’s come to save us.”
“You’re jeopardizing the cure,” an old man said. “I have children out there.”
“Grandchildren,” another said.
“Great-grandchildren.”
“Who do you think you are, Ellison? What right….”
Ellison tried to stand his ground. But there were too many of them. “Put him on the road, then,” he barked. “Give him what he needs. Get him out of here.”
The group started to leave. But Nathan Lee paused. He turned. Ellison shifted uncomfortably. “Now what?” he said.
Nathan Lee picked up the Matisse statue and hefted it. In front of them all, he slid it into his jacket pocket. “For good luck,” he announced.
His brazenness gave them heart. They followed him like a great hero.
NEXT MORNING, on the front lawn of the museum, Nathan Lee kick-started an antique Indian 101 Scout motorcycle to life. According to the museum label, it had been built in 1928. Massive and low slung, carrying a spring-mounted seat like something from a farm tractor, the bike was no Easyrider. The Scout was Baird’s idea, a bit of his own wild youth projected onto Nathan Lee’s highway. It would not have been Nathan Lee’s choice from all the other motorcycles in the collection, but he owed the old man a dream. Fortunately, the machine was in mint condition. The donor had lovingly changed the oil and put in new ring valves just two years ago.
White smoke poured from the exhaust, then cleared. He had a sleeping bag from the Natural History Museum’s Mt. Everest exhibit strapped to the handlebars, and a wooden-handled machete reputed to be the same one used by Stanley on his search for Livingstone. His saddlebags—taken from another museum piece and customized to the Scout—carried two packages of artifacts, authorization letters typed on Smithsonian stationery, maps, food from the Castle kitchen, four wine bottles filled with fuel, his book for Grace. The rare coins, jewels, crystals, and gold that he’d stolen from the museum were hidden in pockets or taped to his shins.
A team of sullen Army Corps of Engineers workers stood around with tool belts and hard hats, waiting to shore up the doorway again. Baird and a few of the curators were standing in the green grass, blinking at the early sunshine.
“It’s almost June,” Baird said to him. “America in summer. What a glory, Swift.” He was crying.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” said Nathan Lee. They both knew that was a lie. The curators were dead here. Baird thumped Nathan Lee’s back.
Nathan Lee let the clutch out and slowly rolled across the overgrown lawn. They called Godspeed to him. Caught up in their fiction, he gunned the engine and roared off into the distance.
17
Behind the Fence
JULY, TWO MONTHS LATER
At first light, Nathan Lee rode into the pueblo of San Ildefonso on horseback. It had a quaint wooden cross atop an adobe arch. Elements of the Third Armored Cavalry now occupied the place, though with a custodian’s carefulness. They had gone out of their way not to disturb the cross when backing their tank in.
High in the turret, a soldier with binoculars was intently studying the distance. For the last hundred yards, Nathan Lee had thought the man was glassing him. But as he approached and the soldier said nothing, Nathan Lee looked over his shoulder and saw a hawk drafting on the early breeze. The soldier was bird-watching.
Nathan Lee dismounted from his horse and tethered her next to some grass. She was an appaloosa mare. He didn’t know much about horses. They were getting used to each other. She liked oats, that much was clear, but the sack was running low. To his relief, the grass seemed to please her.
One of the guards, a skinny kid with a mousy blond mustache, escorted him past the tank. They walked across the square to a one-story house where the officers lived, and Nathan Lee handed over his blood log and papers. The guard stood with him outside while they waited for the medic to get out of bed.
Nathan Lee began rolling up his sleeve for the needle. By this point, the track marks on his forearm looked like something out of a heroin den. “You want a seat?” the soldier said. He indicated a lawn chair.
Nathan Lee thanked him, anyway. “That saddle’s killing me.”
“Cool horse,” the kid said.
There was a little cemetery in front of the old church. The ceremonial kiva was posted Off Limits. Last fall’s red chili strings hung by doorways. All the Pueblos had left. They’d even taken their dogs.
“Where’d you put the people?” Nathan Lee asked.
“They were gone when we showed.” The kid pointed west. “Chaco Canyon. It’s some kind of sacred place. Most of the Indians went there to wait things out. I guess a few of them work up at the Lab.”
Nathan Lee had seen the city from his camp last night. From miles away you could see it gleaming high above the valley. It was the last place in America to have dependable electricity. Even the soldiers had none. He knew from other military outposts that their rations packets had a chemical packet to warm the food. For heat, the 3rd Cav was burning twisted piñon logs. The smoke in the courtyard smelled delicious.
It was early July. The monstrous tank cannon was aimed at empty desert. Their only enemy was time. Someone had placed small black pots with desert perennials on the tank’s big metal tracks. The cactus flowers were yellow. You could hear meadowlarks in the quiet.
The feeling of ease unsettled Nathan Lee. For the last few days, with every new mile, he had begun to feel lighter and quicker and less guarded. It was gradual, and only this morning had he begun to worry that his defenses might be dropping. He had fought his way across too much territory and through too much trouble to believe in happy endings. It was important, he told himself, to keep himself ready for the worst. What if Ochs had moved on? What if he had never been here? What would connect him to Grace then?
While he stood there, a flock of birds suddenly sprang up from the mesa hills, small and black against the sky. Nathan Lee had never been to Los Alamos before, and now he saw how the geography leant itself to top secrecy. There was just one road from the valley up to the plateau, a four-lane ribbon cut into the multicolored cliffs. No doubt one could climb up between the mesa’s thin fingers, but not without being detected. It was the ultimate high ground.
A minute later, the cardio throbbing of rotor blades reached him. The dark flock was not birds. In loose order, a half dozen helicopters clattered off to the north.
“Keeping the peace?” he said.
“Deck sweeps,” the soldier said. “They’re going into the cities. Hunting for the cones.”
“Cones?”
The soldier pointed at his head. “You know, like propellor heads. The science guys.”
Nathan Lee wasn’t sure he understood. Were the helicopters looking for scientists in distant cities, or gathering supplies for them? The medic arrived with his kit, and Nathan Lee presented his arm. Shortly after, his papers and blood log came back stamped and signed. He eased past the tank with its little flower garden, and got on his horse, and continued along Highway 502.
Not much further, a bridge crossed the Rio Grande. The water was quick and chocolate with late spring runoff. It looked like a great muddy serpent sliding beneath his feet. For some reason, the river brought his old anxieties rushing in. Nathan Lee suddenly felt all right again.
“BUT I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING to do with new arrivals,” Miranda said to the Captain.
“You want to see this one,” the Captain told her. He had a cardboard box in his hands. The Captain was a Z
uni in his early sixties. He was retired Navy, but had let his hair grow long. It was thick and silver. He was in charge of security for all of TA/3, but since the return of clones to Miranda’s keeping, he’d moved his office into Alpha Lab’s sub-basement. Now she saw a lot of him, which was an unexpected comfort to her.
“I’m busy,” she said.
“It’s your package.”
She sighed. “What package?”
He reached in the box and handed across a dogeared letter that smelled of piñon smoke when she unfolded it. “The rest of your Smithsonian shipment. It got here last night.” He intoned, “Maybe.”
Miranda looked at the letter. Smithsonian Institute letterhead. Dated two months ago. At your request…the following thirteen (13) items from the Smithsonian collections. Miranda ran her finger down the list, and it included nine relics, three bone fragments, and a tear phial.
“Why, maybe?” she said.
“The man says he buried the package on his way up.”
“What man?”
“The courier. Some physician.” He added, “Supposedly.”
Miranda exhaled. The Captain was in Andy of Mayberry mode this morning. He didn’t do it with anyone else, she’d noticed. He seemed to feel it was part of his duty to pull her loose from her thoughts sometimes. She didn’t have to put up with it. She was in another space, preoccupied as hell, not just with Alpha Lab, but with but the whole place. She could feel all of their science like silk in a web, interwoven, and wanted to be ready to pounce at the slightest hint of a cure. It meant full-time vigilance. And the Captain thought she needed to chill a little.
“Okay,” she breathed. “What’s ‘supposedly’ supposed to mean?”
“For starters, his blood log’s a forgery. The gate security spotted the glue job under an infrared. We don’t know who he is. He won’t say. He did show up on an Appaloosa.”
“An Appaloosa?” she said.
“That would be a form of horse.”
Her finger tapped the tabletop. “And why did he bury the package?
“He wants to trade. Make a long story short, they bounced it over here. To you.”
“He wants in,” Miranda summarized. Every day someone new was clamoring to get behind the fence. Here was America as it had once been, a warm and well-lighted place. The shelves held food. “Tell him No Vacancy.”
That was the truth. No one could have predicted Los Alamos would fill to the brim so quickly. Overnight, it seemed, the national laboratory’s mission had gone squishy, in the weaponeer’s slang. Once the plague broke loose, LANL’s science had shifted from the use and abuse of Pu, or plutonium, to the use and abuse of the human gene. On this rolling tabletop with its fingerlike peninsulas jutting out above the Rio Grande valley, where the bomb makers of yesterday had built a town, the plague hunters built a city.
Miranda still remembered the quaint Norman Rockwell town with its soda shop and movie theater and craft stores. It was mostly gone now, even the golf course, scraped away to make room for twenty-seven thousand scientists and their support staff and families, some ninety thousand in all. That didn’t include the soldiers, who had their own camps.
“This one’s different,” the Captain said. “He made sure he could get out before he’d come in. He wants to keep on the move.”
“Is that so.”
“He made the guards promise to feed his horse while he did his business. Which would be with you.”
“Now we’re running a stables? What’s he want?”
“You, I guess. The one in charge.”
“That would be Cavendish,” she said.
“Might as well just put a bullet in him.”
“What am I supposed to do? I’m not Herr Direktor.”
“Nope. You’re just Miranda. Abbot,” he added. The Captain continued standing there with the box in his hands. He knew, they all knew, Miranda had a power Cavendish could never have. She had her father. In these times of plague, even the generals obeyed the science czar’s opinion. Cavendish might rule LANL, but Paul Abbot ruled him. Cavendish seemed to respect that, if just barely.
He and Miranda had clashed before. Often. Their philosophies were like night and day. In her mind, scientists should have intellectual bungee cords attached to their feet, allowing them to take huge, bravo leaps into the unknown and still return safely, ready for another leap. They should keep trying and trying. But to Cavendish, every experiment was an expedition setting off into its own dark jungle. The explorers were not expected to surface until the prize was in hand. Death is terminal, he liked to remind them. No failure.
The perverse part was that Cavendish himself had built failure into the system. Upon assuming full command after Elise’s death, he had recreated the system in his own image. The fact was he liked failure, at least of a certain kind. The majority of his recruits were scientists who had failed on a grand scale in their former careers, people who had taken radical, reckless chances and arrived at results for wrong or unexplainable reasons. To her great annoyance, Cavendish held Miranda herself up as a prime example of the revved-up Type A who might ultimately flip the microbe inside out.
For that reason there were many more young researchers than old at LANL. Youth, everyone accepted, could withstand eighteen-hour work-days better. More to Cavendish’s purpose, the whiz kids also came less attached to fixed paradigms. All the orthodox approaches to immunology and disease control and microbe hunting had been exhausted by countless scientists in the plague’s early days. None had put a dent in it. What was needed was a break from conventional thinking. Cavendish wanted bold, gonzo, nonlinear, counterintuitive aggression. He wanted heretics. He had gotten them. And still they were failing.
“I am trying to finish something,” she said to the Captain.
The Captain took that as an invitation. He set his cardboard box on a chair and started arranging things on her desk. “Confiscated this stuff,” he said.
On top of her paperwork, he placed a statue of a nude woman lying on her side. It was no larger than a paperweight. Next came Himalayan Flora, the strangest-looking book Miranda had ever seen. The covers were warped, and it was hand sewn with a hodgepodge of exotic paper. Beside that he laid a blood book filled with a string of station stamps that began in Alaska. Charles Andrew Bowen, it said. Six feet two inches, one hundred fifty pounds, gray eyes. The man’s face was gaunt and set, his wirerims taped and glinting.
She didn’t mean to open it, but the book sunk a hook in her, and she opened it. The pages were crowded with drawings and notes and stories. From one part to another, the smells changed: incense, gunpowder, sea. She flipped the pages, paused at a Mongolian visa stamp, stopped again at a pressed flower. It had tiny blue blossoms. The roots were so long, he had curled them in a spiral. It was a tundra plant of some kind, she guessed, adapted to live underground most of the year. A buried thing that only showed itself occasionally.
It was written for a child, she gathered. Grace.
Miranda picked up a folded sheaf of documents. A handwritten Exchange of Ownership detailed his trade for the horse, two weeks ago, from a ranch on the New Mexican border for some pieces of melted gold. A letter testified to Dr. Bowen’s delivery of twins to a woman in Kansas. Another letter, written by a militia leader, authorized safe passage for its bearer. Bowen, M.D., saved the life of one of my men. Aid him how you can.
There were Army food chits, pink national gas ration coupons, several hundred dollars in equally useless American currency, plus one raffle ticket for a July Fourth pie contest in Hannibal, Missouri.
Finally she came to her own letter, written on LANL letterhead almost ten months earlier. It listed every possible artifact her assistants could find in their computer search of the Smithsonian holdings. She was familiar with some of the items, which had long since been processed and cloned. At the bottom of the page was Ochs’s note and signature for the November consignment.
“Ochs,” she vented. Only last week, he had swooped through Alpha
Lab and done his little death tap on one of her researchers. Cavendish’s policy of deporting “nonessential personnel” was nothing more than a bloodless execution. He and his henchmen used it on subversives, critics of his regime, even the occasional amateur cartoonist. In the case of Miranda’s researcher, the poor woman had done nothing wrong at all except to work under Miranda’s roof. The deport order had been another shot across her bow, and the Captain had managed to halt the exile, but only after hours of work.
“But Ochs told us there were no more relics,” she said.
“Probably just grabbed what he could and hightailed it back here.”
“It’s been months,” she said. “Months. We need those relics.”
“As I recall, he didn’t want to go in the first place.”
In fact, Miranda had sent him kicking and screaming to Washington. She had deported Ochs, however briefly, so that he could know how it felt. On top of that, it had been a trivial, foolish slap at Cavendish and his terrorism. She should never have done it. It made her feel dirty. And Ochs had returned within three days, more hateful than ever.
Miranda surrendered. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. Do I get to finish what I was doing first?”
“I interrupted you?”
“A half hour, Captain.”
He closed the door after himself.
Miranda tried to finish the assay reports, but the little nude and Himalayan Flora kept distracting her. The statue was a marvelous, primitive thing, brazen and odd, and absolutely true to its own sense of proportions. Had he carved it himself, or was it a bit of pawn or theft? And the book…a piece of magic, full of hints.
Then the Captain was back, rapping on her door, the visitor in tow. The Captain’s sporting tone was gone. He was stern and formal, and made the man keep well back from Miranda’s desk. The impostor’s hands were bound with flex cuffs. He had the wide shoulders to carry another thirty or forty pounds in better times. He wore a frayed, but relatively white shirt. He limped. The taped glasses in his photo had been replaced along the way by thick horn-rims that seemed to be the wrong prescription. He kept blinking, trying to focus. The road showed in the goggle marks on his weathered face. Until this morning, he had worn a beard. His cheeks were chapped, his jaw pale with shaving nicks like ants on his throat.
