“Too cold?” Trey had asked.
She’d sighed. “I used to dream of living in a cold climate, because it would make me free of them at last. Now I think no place is safe. The thieves are opportunistic and hardy. If they have to live inside in the coldest regions, in corners, in attics and storerooms, they will.”
“Then why is Antarctica exempt?”
“I didn’t say it was.” Mariama had looked directly into his eyes. “The thieves won’t bother with it because it is doomed. Those few humans at McMurdo pose no threat, and they will die off on their own soon enough after the end comes.”
That was what conversations with Mariama were always like. Not if. Not even when.
After.
* * *
AFTERNOON SHADING INTO dusk in Central Park. Some late-season softball players were trying to get a game together on the Great Lawn, but there weren’t enough of them to make two teams. The thieves had been staying away from the park’s big open expanses, so far, but so were most people. Coming out here, as these young men and women were doing, was itself an act of defiance.
“This feels strange,” Sheila said.
Trey said, “Well, yeah.”
She gave him a sideways look. They were sitting on a splintery bench under the cold autumn sun, side by side, facing the empty gray grass.
“I mean,” Sheila said, “where’s Jack?”
“I knew what you meant.” Trey sighed. They were here in the park because they’d gone to the museum to clear out what they’d left in Jack’s office. Books, mostly. And memories.
Sheila slid down on the bench a little, leaning her head against the back, stretching her long legs out in the dirt. Her eyes were closed.
Trey thought she looked like she was made of some pure, icy substance: porcelain, maybe. Or unforged silver. Incomparably beautiful but untouchable as well.
“My mother’s mother was one of twelve children,” she said. “Nine of them died before they reached their sixth birthday.”
She opened her eyes and stared down at her hands. “Can you imagine losing a brother or sister every year or two? Or burying your own children?”
Trey said, “We’re the first generation to think we have the right to live forever.”
The small group of softball players left the empty field and trailed past them.
“We were,” Sheila said. “But that’s finished.”
Trey looked at her. After a moment, she sensed it and turned her head. Then, in an instant, her arms were around his neck and she was kissing him. Her lips were warm and soft, not porcelain, but there was something hungry, even desperate, about her grasp.
She broke away, loosened her grip, but kept her face close to his. “You,” she said.
“What about me?”
“What Kait said: Don’t die.”
* * *
THEY WALKED PAST Turtle Pond, its fringing brown cattails rattling in the breeze, to the area called the Ramble.
This hilly, densely wooded expanse had once been popular with two groups: gay men seeking rendezvous out of the public eye and birders seeking rarities. Today, though, it was the sort of place where only the insane would willingly venture.
The insane or the protected. Sheila had nothing to fear from the thieves. And Trey, though his safety was more equivocal, had decided not to hide, especially when he was in the company of one of the immunes.
They left the quiet park road, ghostly without its usual myriad of cyclists and joggers, and headed into the woods. Neither of them spoke, but they both knew what they were looking for.
It took only a few minutes. As always, the smell alerted them, at first just a harsh whiff carried away by the chilly breeze. Then stronger. A smell so omnipresent now, so familiar, that if they weren’t searching they sometimes didn’t even notice it.
The man lay on his back at the bottom of a small gully overgrown with bittersweet, mile-a-minute, and other invasive vines. He was wearing black pants, the right leg ripped to the knee, a Hannah Montana T-shirt, and an unzipped down jacket that had once been cream colored but was now caked with dirt.
He looked like he’d been homeless long before the thieves summoned him.
It took Trey a minute to find the wasp guarding its larva. The creature gave itself away with movement among the vines, a quick, agitated back-and-forth. As thieves always were, it was disturbed to be close to the poison and, perhaps, to Trey as well. To the corrupt, half-finished remnant of the hive mind he contained.
The wasp’s head twisted as it kept them in view. There was likely another one or more somewhere in the vicinity. Staying hidden, watching, waiting to see if they presented a threat.
Sheila was looking at the man. No one would try to help him, they both knew. No one would go near.
And his death would make as little impact as the deaths of the homeless men who perished out in the streets whenever the city was gripped by a deep freeze.
Beside Trey, Sheila shuddered. They’d made it a practice to stop, pause, wherever they found a human host, to seek them out in parks and vacant lots and beneath underpasses and abandoned piers.
It had been Sheila’s idea, her insistence, to seek out the infected. “Someone has to acknowledge them,” she’d said. “Someone has to remember that they were once human.”
Though each time she saw one, each time she witnessed the inevitable, she seemed sadder, more haunted.
“Let’s go,” Trey said and took her arm.
But at that moment they heard a rustling in the brush beside the trail. A man emerged, another host. Walking with purpose, his head turning this way and that. Trey wondered what he was seeing through that silvery gaze.
“Trey,” Sheila said in a sudden, tortured whisper. “Look.”
Trey had already seen it: a thief clinging to the back of the man’s neck. Its slender abdomen was arched, and as the man passed they could see that it had plunged its needlelike stinger deep into his flesh, just between the second and third cervical vertebrae. Its head turned to watch Trey and Sheila, twisting to stay on them as the man moved down the trail.
Trey and Sheila both understood what they were seeing. The summoning.
He should have guessed. He’d seen wasps do this before, riding their victims, guiding them to their doom with chemicals administered directly to their brains. Only their victims had been cockroaches and spiders and other wasps, not primates. Not human beings.
That colobus monkey he’d seen in the Casamance, staggering into the thief colony’s clearing, it must have had a rider as well. Trey had missed it. He hadn’t known what to look for.
The man followed a curve in the path and moved out of sight. Again Trey said, “Let’s go,” and this time Sheila didn’t resist.
* * *
THEY WALKED EAST and then up to Eighty-sixth Street and met Mariama at a Starbucks. She was staying with some old acquaintances in a Senegalese neighborhood in Brooklyn, but every day she and Trey talked, made plans, prepared.
Got ready for after.
The Starbucks was reasonably crowded. Logically or not, people felt more secure indoors, especially in crowds. Anyway, no matter what, they still needed their coffee. The last human force in the final battle would be fueled by Starbucks.
Sheila’s mind was still on the latest victims she and Trey had seen. “Nobody was looking for them,” she said. “They had no one.”
Mariama shrugged. “That’s how predators hunt. You know that. They choose the weak. The vulnerable.”
“They cull the herd,” Sheila said.
Trey breathed in. Someone had left a newspaper on their table, the Times. The headlines were all about the ongoing plunge in the stock market, factories closing because not enough workers were showing up, oil prices skyrocketing.
The president counseled patience. But Anthony Harrison promised that
, when he was elected, things would change, and fast.
“This herd won’t put up with being culled,” Trey said.
Mariama gave another shrug. “Then they’ll be overwhelmed.”
* * *
“WHY DO I have it inside me?” Trey asked. “The . . . mind?”
Mariama had hinted around, but until now he’d refused to talk about it. Suddenly, sitting here, he knew he was being ridiculous. After, there would be no room for anything but complete honesty.
She gave him a considering look, as if debating with herself how to answer.
“You saw,” he went on. “You knew right away.”
She nodded.
“That means you’ve seen it before.”
After another moment, another nod. “Of course I have. There is nothing about the thieves that we haven’t seen.” She widened her eyes. “Except for their poison, they’re not very complex.”
“Complex enough to bring down a civilization,” Sheila said.
Mariama shrugged. “A one-celled organism could do that.”
She turned back to Trey. “How long had you been infected when Sheila removed the larva?”
“Two days, I think.” He hesitated. “More. Closer to three.”
She raised her hand and touched the side of his head. “And how did you feel . . . in here? Before the worm was removed?”
“Like my mind was being eaten from the inside.”
“Yes.” She dropped her hand. “Yes. Others have used similar words.”
Sheila moved in her chair. “How much longer before he would have died from the surgery?”
“A few hours. Perhaps less. It is . . . not predictable.”
“So that’s what happens even if you live?” Trey found this hard to say. “Some of it gets left behind?”
“Or it causes some kind of permanent changes in the chemistry of the brain.” Mariama frowned. “We do not know. In the Casamance, our scientists have not had the tools to study such things.”
Sheila’s gaze had turned inward. “I should have noticed sooner,” she said. “And when I did, I shouldn’t have hesitated.”
“No.” Mariama reached across the table and touched her gently on the arm. “You were brave. Even in the Casamance, many would not have been as brave as you.”
Sheila didn’t reply, but Trey thought she looked a little calmer within herself.
“And by waiting, we’ve gained something, too,” Mariama went on.
Trey thought of the white light that had filled his brain as the Florida assault had begun, as the helicopters had burst into flames.
“Awareness,” he said. “Knowledge.”
Mariama nodded.
“But what has Trey lost?” Sheila said.
Mariama didn’t reply at once. Trey glanced over at the table next to theirs. A woman was huddled over her laptop with the news on the screen. She was watching a clip of Anthony Harrison giving a speech in front of a huge crowd. He was gesturing as he talked, pointing, his face alight with anger.
Trey looked back at Mariama. “What’s inside me . . . it’s never going away, is it?”
She tilted her head as she looked at him, her silence an answer.
“This—illness.” He struggled to find the right word. “This condition. Does it get worse over time?”
After a moment, she said, “Yes. Most often . . . quite slowly. But, yes, it’s progressive.”
Sheila made an impatient movement. “Progressive,” she said, spitting out the word. “I guess that leaves me only one option.”
Trey said, “Which is?”
“To be the doctor who develops the cure.”
* * *
THEY STOOD OUTSIDE the subway station. Eighty-sixth Street had always been a little shabby, but now it was virtually abandoned. Small groups of people, in threes and fours, headed into one or another of the electronics stores or fast-food restaurants, but the street had none of the market-day bustle it had once possessed.
“Five days till the election,” Mariama said.
Sheila wrapped her coat closer. “What will happen?”
Trey said, “Harrison’s going to win.”
Mariama said, “And then—”
And then.
“Mary and Kait and I are seeing Jeremy Axelson and the Harrison campaign team tomorrow,” Trey said.
“Will they listen?” Sheila asked.
“I doubt it.”
Sheila said, “Is it worth it? Mary’s worn out. I don’t know how much help she’ll be.”
Trey said, “I don’t think the greatest orator on earth could change their minds. And I’m no orator.”
The wind gusted, blowing some old papers down the street and up into a brief messy whirlwind.
“But I have to try,” he said.
FORTY-NINE
TWO CONVERSATIONS.
The first took place in a hotel on Fifty-fourth Street between Madison and Fifth. Trey had never noticed it before: the Gaumont, a redbrick, five-story town house surrounded by restaurants and boutiques, with only a single modest sign hanging in front to announce its presence.
Inside, it was opulent but tasteful, all burnished oak and brocaded walls and oil paintings of handsome ladies and gentlemen in ornate gilt frames. As Trey and Mary and Kait waited outside the conference room door on the top floor, a man wearing livery pushed a wooden cart carrying silver-topped dishes down the hall.
Trey watched him go past and thought about the Titanic. Its maiden voyage had lasted—what?—four days and ended in two hours. Who was to say that the voyage of the human race couldn’t last for millennia and end just as suddenly?
Kait said, “I didn’t think Mr. Axelson would like a place like this.”
Mary, who had been paging through a glossy magazine she’d found on a side table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, looked up. “I doubt he picked it.”
“Then why is he here?”
“To celebrate,” Trey said.
“But—”
“To celebrate quietly,” he said, “since he has to pretend he doesn’t know what will happen on Election Day.”
He looked at Kait. She was wearing Uggs, purple tights, a red skirt, and a white sweater, all obviously new.
“You look nice,” Trey said. Then, surprising himself, “Actually, make that beautiful.”
She stared down into her lap and blushed.
Mary managed a smile. “A Fifth Avenue shopping spree,” she said and shrugged. “Heck, it’s only money.”
Trey nodded.
“Meaningless slips of paper,” she said.
* * *
THE HEAVY DOOR to the conference room swung open, reflecting the shaded light cast by sconces set along the walls. A young woman in a business suit stood there. Her expression revealed a certain measure of curiosity, carefully masked.
“Please come in,” she said.
She led them through the door into a lush, dim, red-carpeted room scattered with small desks, sideboards, gleaming tables, and soft-cushioned chairs. Two Secret Service men stood in the center of the room. At the far end, close to where the curtained windows let in some light from outside, sat Jeremy Axelson and a scowling man Trey recognized as Ron Stanhouse, Anthony Harrison’s campaign manager. Two younger men wearing identical impatient expressions sat a little farther off.
Axelson stood, shook Mary’s hand, and then bent over to get closer to Kait’s level. “How are you doing, sweetie?” he said.
She looked into his face. “I’m fine.” Then, “Are you going to listen to what Trey tells you?”
He blinked, then laughed as he straightened. “Of course we will.”
“I mean it. Listen.”
Some of the humor drained from his expression, and he raised his eyes to look at Trey. “I guess we’ll have to see wh
at Mr. Gilliard says, won’t we?”
Whatever Mr. Gilliard was going to say, he had no intention of addressing it to Jeremy Axelson. Stepping past, he walked over and stood above Ron Stanhouse, who had not gotten to his feet or even rearranged his slouch.
Stanhouse leaned his head against the back of his shiny, brown-leather-and-gold-button chair. There was amusement tinged with malice in his expression.
“Behold,” he said. “The man who won us an election.”
Trey was silent.
“Without all your work—and that of your friends—we would never have connected the dots,” Stanhouse went on, his lips twitching behind his beard. “You couldn’t have helped us more if you’d been on the payroll.”
“Well, that’s what I live for, helping you.” Trey kept his voice calm, but there was something in his expression that made Stanhouse’s eyes widen. Trey felt the brief, light touch of Kait’s hand on his arm.
“What I live for,” he said again. “Yeah. I get it. It’s victory lap time—or it will be in a few days. Well, go ahead, pat yourselves on the back and keep all the credit. I don’t want it.”
He took a step closer. Stanhouse, looking uncomfortable, stiffened a little in his chair.
“The question is,” Trey went on, “what happens then?”
Stanhouse’s lips twitched again. “Well, he’ll work with Congress on a jobs package, and—”
Trey just looked at him, and after a moment Stanhouse wriggled his shoulders. “Why are you here, Gilliard?”
“To tell you: Back your guy off.”
Stanhouse knew exactly what he was saying. The malice in his eyes rose to the surface. “Now? Why should we do that? Pre- or postelection, it’s a winning issue.”
“And a losing battle,” Trey said.
Stanhouse looked disgusted. “Come on, Gilliard. Stop being such a pansy. They’re just bugs.”
Beside Trey, Kait made a small sound.
Trey felt his hands form fists. He thought of Agiru, the old Huli warrior, who’d said the same thing. But Agiru had understood the binatang. These men didn’t.
“And how many lives,” Trey said, “will you be willing to sacrifice to these bugs?”
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