by Jeff Carlson
Ruth had considered killing everyone else on Earth. She’d always thought her role was defensive, but what if it was time for her to launch her own attacks? She could become the planetary warlord that men like Senator Kendricks had envisioned as themselves.
Like earlier technologies, the mind plague and its vaccines were available for anyone to use. Soon enough, there might be yet another plague unless she preempted every enemy. No matter how vigilant they might be, there was no way to know who was becoming a threat. Russia. India. Japan. Brazil. Even on her own side, there would be people who insisted on developing their own weapons without her. Steve McCown was dead, killed in Grand Lake, and Meghna Katechia was missing, possibly taken by the Chinese, but there must be other survivors with at least a rudimentary knowledge of nanotech. Overseas, there would be more.
The same curiosity and ambition that made Homo sapiens such an appealing success was also a weakness. Their intelligence was a double-edged sword. Ruth believed the next step in their evolution must be to grow beyond their own suspicion and greed. Maybe they were already too late. The environment was in tatters. War had become a reflex. Her faith was the only thing that had grown stronger.
None of what happened needed to be in vain. All of them had done well, achieving more than anyone had a right to expect. That was also true of their opponents among the Chinese.
Ruth was feeling superstitious. She could almost grasp the pattern that had unfolded. Her premonition of losing Cam had even come true, though differently than she’d expected.
Deborah and Kendra’s places in the puzzle were undeniable. Ruth only wished she knew where to find Sarah Foshtomi. In a sense, Foshtomi had saved Ruth by causing the accident that infected her. Maybe the young woman had been instrumental in helping Cam, too? Ruth hoped so. Like so many people, Foshtomi was missing, probably dead, but her life hadn’t been without consequence.
Ruth would never have imagined a new mind plague if there hadn’t been another war — and without the war, she wouldn’t have possessed this next-generation technology.
What if that was why she was still alive?
She had failed the responsibilities that came with her education. Now she had another chance, and even greater tools at hand. Freedman’s mind plague offered an intriguing possibility. Ruth did not doubt that some people would argue for doing to the Chinese exactly what had been planned for them, turning their enemies into laborers and slaves.
There was a better way. Ruth could force a lasting peace. She would need to see what sort of progress the Chinese researchers had made, but if the secondary programs they’d developed were as sophisticated as she expected, her idea was to selectively interfere with the brain functions of everyone on the planet. She could release her own mind plague, not only destroying their memories of nanotech but limiting their aggression, their hate, and their imagination. She’d do it to herself as well. Once those traits were curbed, she would have altered the human race, making a change so fundamental that no one knew why or how it had been done.
Ruth couldn’t hide their true nature forever. It would persist in books and digital files, even if they were unable to comprehend certain words or concepts. The mental block would be that complete — but eventually, maybe lifetimes from now, someone would unlock the truth. They might begin to teach themselves nanotechnology again. They would experiment with the mysteries concealed in their own DNA, rediscovering the power of fear and rage. In the meantime there would be peace. They would be different, calmer and less selfish. Maybe they could learn new ways of working together. The environment itself would heal.
The paradox she felt was agonizing. Ruth was afraid to cut away a major part of human nature for the same reasons she would never commit genocide outright. She didn’t want to become a monster even if her motives were for the best. What if there were side effects? If she inhibited their most basic drives, they might lose the skills they needed to persist in this fractured world. But the fighting had to end. Another war would destroy them.
Go back to your tent, she thought, glancing out across the first stars in the evening sky. You owe so much to so many people. Go back to your tent and tell Beymer you want the Chinese records now. Tonight.
Developing a new mind plague would take months, maybe longer, but she couldn’t ignore her own urgency. The race had begun. It would be wrong for her to ignore a solution when it was within her abilities, wouldn’t it?
Don’t be wrong again.
Ruth walked back to her tent.
The light beyond her tiny lab was dim and green in the tent’s canvas when a man called outside. “Dr. Goldman? He’s awake.”
Ruth glanced up from her computer with mixed feelings of joy, relief, and self-doubt. Three days had passed. It was morning. She saved her work and shut the laptop down, hiding what she doing in case Beymer sent anyone into her tent while she was gone. She thought somebody had investigated her equipment before during one of her short breaks.
She pushed through the plastic inside the tent and then a second compartment like an airlock, finding a soldier she recognized from the post-op units. “How is he?” she asked.
“Stabilized. Very weak.”
“Thank you.”
The soldier led her to a stunted-looking building buried partway in the earth. They went down six stairs into the concrete structure, then to the third door on the left. Ruth had developed a compulsion about numbers. She knew Cam was two more doors down, five total, not six like the stairs. It was a meaningless equation but she worried about it just the same — five, not six — as if trying to fight down her heartbeat.
The third door led to a nurse’s station. The narrow space was cluttered with water jugs, a sink, and bloody laundry. Ruth washed up. The soldier gave her a cloth mask and a baggy suit to cover her uniform.
When she approached Cam’s room at last, it was with the same piercing uncertainty that had affected her since her decision to improve upon the mind plague. She knew it was better for her to design such a thing than anyone else, but she was afraid of what Cam would think. Why? He would agree with her, wouldn’t he?
They’d put him in semi-isolation. They said it was because of his burns and stomach wounds, both of which carried a high risk of infection. Ruth knew the private room was really because they were still leery of unknown nanotech, even though she’d screened his blood and that of the two prisoners, finding nothing — yet she welcomed their solitude.
His skin had regained most its brown tone. That was the first thing she noticed. His face and hands were the right color again, especially dark against the white sheets. His eyes were closed. She would have left if she hadn’t already visited twice before without the chance to talk.
“Cam?” She went to his bed, a thin, handstitched mattress on a low metal frame. There was no chair. “Cam? It’s Ruth. Are you…”
“Hey.” He didn’t open his eyes but his hand lifted from the bed an inch or two, groping.
She seized his palm in her own. “It’s me. I’m here.”
“Your voice.”
Ruth smiled through a sting of tears. “I’m okay.” Her mouth was healing. “How do you feel?”
“Hurts.”
“Yes.”
They stayed together for several minutes, just listening to each other live and breathe. Elsewhere, voices sounded in the corridor. Ruth kissed his hand through her gauze mask.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
She tried to explain what she was doing with the Chinese nanotech. His instincts had always been stronger than her own, and she trusted his answer more than herself. She didn’t get far. Cam opened his eyes to search her face.
“No,” he said. “Don’t.”
“But if someone else—”
He struggled to sit up and Ruth jumped with her own sense of alarm, pressing at his shoulder to keep him down. “Cam, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“We’ll find another way!” he said. “Don’t.”
“I won’t. I swear it.
You’re right. I won’t.” She kissed his hand again to hide her stricken face from his uncompromising gaze.
Don’t you see how I need you? she thought.
“Please, Ruth,” he said, tiring. He closed his eyes again. “Don’t make us fight you, too.”
“No. Never.”
They stayed together until he slept.
He woke briefly from a nightmare and she was glad she hadn’t left. “Shh, Cam, I’m here. You’re safe. I’m here.”
“I love you,” he said.
Acknowledgments
My wife Diana has been my greatest supporter. The Plague Year trilogy would not exist without her hard work and sacrifice, so I think everyone owes her a cool drink and some curly fries with a side of ranch, yes? Our boys are also remarkably understanding of Daddy’s strange hours, and I want to thank them, too. I love you, Johnny Six and Bee Ee En.
Some of the usual suspects are also to blame for helping me with this novel: Mike May, Professor of Entomology at Rutgers University; Lt. Colonel “Bear” Lihani, United States Air Force (ret.); Major Brian Woolworth, U.S. Army Special Forces; and my father, Gus Carlson, Ph.D., mechanical engineer and former division leader at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Anytime I needed to bolt an air compressor to the floor of a single-engine plane or build a clean room out of nothing more than plastic sheeting and duct tape, Dad was there, like Batman, and I appreciate it more than I can say.
I’d also like to express my gratitude to Andreas Heinrich, Ph.D., one of the sharpest minds in nanotechnology today. Andreas fielded any number of weird questions as well as inviting me to step into a lab full of authentic nanotech gear. Wow! Fortunately, he didn’t let me turn anything on.
Charles H. Hanson, M.D., and Sumit Sen, M.D., also both took the time to answer morbid questions throughout the genesis of this book.
My friend and evil genius Matthew J. Harrington is responsible for the smoke detectors.
I’d also like to thank Aileen Chung Der and Nissan Jp for their assistance in researching China’s culture, languages, and military. The Chinese become the bad guys in the second and third Plague novels, but this turn of events was meant with respect. The story needed a plausible enemy, and China is a major force in the world. Without its strength, I didn’t have a plot, so thank you.
My agents, Donald Maass and Cameron McClure, continue to be top-notch. Thank you also to J. L. Stermer, Amy Boggs, and everyone else in the office. I appreciate their hard work as well as the contributions of my team at Ace. Anne Sowards, Cam “The Other Cam” Dufty, and Ginjer Buchanan have all been fantastic, as have Eric Williams and Judith Lagerman, the bright duo behind the cover art for these novels. Meghan Mahler takes credit for the eye-catching maps.
Also a gigantic thanks to Jeremy Tolbert of [http://www.jeremiahtolbert.com] www.jeremiahtolbert.com for my flashy new Web site at [http://www.jverse.com] www.jverse.com. Come on by! Jverse offers free fiction, videos, contests, advance news on upcoming projects, and more.
Finally, I’d like to thank Ruth, Cam, and the rest of the gang. They may exist only in my brain, but I really, really enjoyed my time with them. I hope you have, too.
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