by Jeff Carlson
Kendricks clearly enjoyed the moment, surveying Ulinov’s face as they exchanged mundane greetings. “Good morning, Commander. Have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink? A Coke?” He produced a red can from his desk.
Ulinov knew the unopened soda was worth fifty dollars on the street, and Kendricks liked to do little favors. He nodded. “Yes. Please.”
“And how’s that leg of yours?”
“I am improving. Your doctors are excellent.” Ulinov had been on the flight deck of the space shuttle Endeavour when it crash-landed on the highway outside of town, taking shrapnel through the windshield and killing their pilot.
“Good,” Kendricks said. “Good. Glad to hear it.”
Ulinov was patient, accepting the Coke and then lifting it like a salute. “Thank you.”
Kendricks nodded his head and his broad cowboy hat in a slow, serious movement. The white Stetson was his signature mark and he also dressed himself in string ties on plain blue work shirts. He was clean-shaven. Ulinov suspected the man had worn a suit in Washington, but Colorado was his home territory and most of the survivors in town were local or at least from the surrounding West. A good part of the military had also been based in this state.
Ulinov didn’t think there had been any elections, nor did he suspect there would be, but it must be easier, playing the caricature. People wanted the traditional to steady themselves against so much loss and suffering. In his mid-fifties, fit and strong, Lawrence N. Kendricks made a good father figure.
General Schraeder might have tried to model himself in the same image, learning from the senator. He kept his dark hair longer than the cliché military man, softening the stern image of his Air Force uniform, ribbons, and insignia. The extra length also partially hid the strip of gauze on his ear, where Ulinov guessed that a precancerous melanoma had been removed.
Schraeder lacked the ego that gave Kendricks his unshakeable confidence, however. Maybe it was only that Schraeder had witnessed more destruction and failure up close. He was usually as tense as Ulinov, and today it showed. The general was stiff and quiet. He was a henchman.
But don’t ignore him, Ulinov thought, drinking from his sugary, fizzing Coke. The two of you have more in common, and Schraeder may actually want to help if the senator lets him.
Since the first days of the plague, Kendricks had never been farther than eight slots from the pinnacle of the American government. A helicopter accident had killed the president in the evacuations out of the East Coast, the vice president assuming that role himself, and in the chaos the Speaker of the House ended up in Montana, which soon went over to the rebels.
The end of the world had been good to Kendricks. And if there was a coup attempt that was put down in recent days, the senator appeared to have come out of it even more perfectly positioned. Kendricks and Schraeder already held two of the seven prized seats on the president’s council, and Ulinov suspected the top leadership had recently been pared down to four or five. In his prior meetings he’d sat down with the whole group, but two days ago that had changed.
Kendricks was adept and opportunistic, extremely sharp beneath the show of being a lazy cowboy. The man is a bear, Ulinov thought, afraid of nothing and always hungry.
How can I use that against him?
“Well, it looks like it’s as bad as we were thinking,” Kendricks said at last, rapping his knuckles on his desk and then gesturing with the same hand at Schraeder. “We can’t afford to give you any planes right now.”
“It is difficult,” Ulinov agreed blamelessly.
“Still, there’s no question that it’s in our own best interest to help your folks way over there,” Kendricks continued, folding his hands. “It’s just a matter of how many planes we can dedicate to the job. How many and when.”
Ulinov only nodded this time, struggling with his resentment. Does he want me to beg?
He’d known this was coming. Two days ago Kendricks had given every signal that their deal would change, calling Ulinov in to lecture him on the problems presented by the rebel uprising... and yet the American civil war was a trifle compared to what Ulinov’s people were facing.
Their motherland had been abandoned almost completely. The tallest peaks in the Urals fell short of even two thousand meters. Otherwise Russia possessed only a handful of icy mountains very close to the Chinese and Mongolian borders, plus a few small safe zones in deepest Siberia and along the Bering Sea. From the first reports out of California to the time that the machine plague swept into Europe, the Russians had barely a month to relocate their entire nation even as dozens of other countries claimed and then fought for elevation.
By accident, humankind had begun global warming in time to do themselves a lot of good. There was evidence that the trend was at least partly natural, easily blamed on volcanic activity and a pendulum-like cycle from warmer eras to ice ages and back again—but eighty years into the greatest population boom the world had ever seen, endless gigatons of smoke and exhaust had tipped the balance in the atmosphere.
It was the upper reaches of the planet that began to show the effects first. There were still cold spikes, but by the late 1990s the evidence was too conspicuous to disbelieve. Snowfall became rain. Frozen ground relaxed and thawed. There were also more landslides and floods, but the acceleration of greenhouse gases had made every difference between life and death in the plague year. The warming created more useable ground for survivors even if it was just a few meters at a time.
All of Europe clashed in the Alps. China and India rose over the central Himalayas like human tides. There were also safe zones within Iran, and Russia had economic and political ties there, but the Iranians detonated fourteen dirty bombs along their borders to beat back their Arab neighbors. The wind was wrong. Fallout left too much of the Iranian high ground contaminated, not at lethal levels but deadly in the long run.
The Russians fled to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan and to the Caucasus, a sheer jag of rock thrust up between the Caspian and Black Seas. They were outnumbered in both places by refugee hordes from across the Middle East, but at the same time, they were correct in believing they would outgun their enemies. It didn’t last. Air superiority meant nothing without reliable maintenance, fuel, and ordnance. Their tanks and their artillery also wore down. On some fronts the pitiless land war was already being fought with rocks and knives, and the Muslims’ numbers quickly gave them the advantage.
Negotiations with the Americans had begun months ago, still in the heart of winter. Everyone was aware of what the spring thaw would bring—new fighting, new horror—and the Russians were both distributed badly and surrounded everywhere. Let the Afghanis, Chechens, Turks, Kurds, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Iraqis battle among themselves. The Russians had bargained their way out, offering their veteran armies to India in exchange for a sliver of real estate in the Himalayas as a buffer against the Chinese.
That would be a brutal fight itself, of course, but with only one front instead of twenty. Their hope was to establish a stalemate, a cold war with entrenched borders. But to get there, they needed many more planes and fuel.
The United States had been spared as always by its geographical isolation and, ironically, by the fact that the plague broke loose in California and spread across North America first. They only had themselves and the Canadians to save as the rest of the world stayed back. Other countries waited and hoped, and then it was too late. Even close allies like the British, with no high ground of their own, had been forced to airlift themselves into the crowded war in the Alps after the nanotech was suddenly everywhere.
There were a few other somewhat calm zones. In fact, most of the South Pole was safe. Antarctica had endless ranges and plateaus above ten thousand feet. The freezing weather also came with low pressure fronts, leaving vast, high stretches of ice that were often free of the plague. But it was just ice. There was nothing to sustain anyone there.
Greenland took in some of the Nor
weigans and the Finns and their militaries, establishing a separate peace. The survivors out of Australia joined with New Zealand, and Japan still held a few peaks at the heart of their island.
Elsewhere the fighting was mixed and savage. In Micronesia, millions of people fought for a handful of island peaks. The entire population of Africa tried to shove up onto Mt. Kilimanjaro and the very few other high points on the continent even as the Israelis airlifted south into Ethiopia and burned clear several peaks for their own.
Ulinov often wondered if the Russians should have planned to run farther themselves, but it was hard. They’d wanted to stay close to their cities, their industrial base, their military stockpiles—and they were not without experience in fighting on Muslim land. He knew they were using their few remaining jets and helicopters to scavenge beneath the barrier, desperate for weapons and food.
The weight of it was like hundreds of years pressing down on him, millions of lives, the history of an entire nation. His people had been pushed to the last extreme. Their existence itself was at risk. There were still more than fifteen million of them alive, but unless the fighting saw a dramatic turnaround, they would be lost, utterly gone except perhaps for a small collection of slaves and a few scattered souls like himself, bred out in a generation. And here he sat in his plush chair with a Coke.
“What we need is everybody on the same page,” Kendricks said, making an open gesture with one small hand. “We need to work together if we’re ever going to get things straight again. Right now it’s up to India to make the right choice. We’ve told ’em that.”
“And what did they say?”
“Well, they’re playing hardball. They think they’re doing enough by giving you people some land, and that’s a good deal for you. Sure it is. Them, too. But what about us?” Kendricks tipped his head forward, bringing the peak of his hat down in an aggressive posture. “What do we get for all those pilots and planes and the guns we’ll bring over? Maybe even some food. Why are we sending our boys all around the world when we’ve got a whole stack of problems of our own?”
“The nanotech,” Ulinov said, like a good pupil.
“Exactly. That’s it exactly.” Kendricks smiled. “India’s got some good folks and they’ve got a lab full of gear or two. But they’re exposed. The Chinese could ruin what they’re doing at any time, and they’re way behind what we’re doing here anyway.”
“So you consolidate their labs with yours.”
“Yes. It’s too hard to do everything on the radio and there’s no way we’re going to keep flying planes back and forth. It’s just smart. It’s win-win.”
“Then you are making progress with R—” He didn’t want to say Ruth’s work. “With the nanotech.”
“Yes. I think I can tell you we’re getting close to something that’ll protect us all—us and our allies. I mean below the barrier. We can change the whole planet.”
“A weapon?” Ulinov looked at Schraeder, but the general’s expression betrayed nothing.
Kendricks frowned before making his face smile again. “People have been talking, I guess,” he said. “I know you’re in the radio room a lot.”
Did he expect names? Someone to punish? Ulinov would give him that, if he wanted. “A new plague is what they say.” Ulinov shrugged. “Talk on the street. Everywhere. They say it’s a new plague that works above ten thousand feet, but controlled, like a gas.”
Kendricks just shook his head.
“They say it goes away and the land is good,” Ulinov said, shifting cautiously in his chair. He did not want to play his next card...to take this gamble...but it felt good to show strength. “We know it exists,” he said. “We know you used it on the White River.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We still control a few satellites,” Ulinov said. When he imagined them, it was always with pride and hurt—his countrymen in dirt holes and ice caves, using laptops and a ragtag collection of transmitters to control impossibly complex machines beyond the sky, machines that were now beyond their ability to replace. “We have high-gain video of the assault,” he said. “We have analysis of how the nanotech...how it consumes.” The Americans called their weapon the snowflake, perhaps because of the way it reacted to living tissue, swirling and clotting. “We know its dispersal rate. The heat it gives off. We have even been able to determine its shape.”
“The assault was necessary,” Schraeder said.
“Yes.” Ulinov would not argue that. “But we wonder if the Chinese also had a satellite in position. There has been some speculation if they could use that information to advance their own nanotech.”
The rest didn’t need to be said out loud, the array of threats within those words, not if Kendricks understood that the Russians could choose not to protect India after all. Kendricks had to realize that the Russians still had the option of making a very different deal to save themselves, trading their muscle for real estate as shock troops against India instead of for it. They could sell their satellite videos to the Chinese as a good part of that bargain.
Ulinov knew this proposal had already been made. Envoys had gone not only to the Indian Himalayas but also to the southern range to bow before the Chinese premier.
Kendricks responded easily. “I’ve got my doubts that anyone could learn much from a few pictures,” he said with a shrug. “Either way, that’s just all the more reason for India to help us out. Our side’s got to keep the upper hand if everyone doesn’t want their babies to grow up talking Chinese.”
“Before we fight them we want the snowflake,” Ulinov said, and he smiled at the small shock in their eyes. Orbital analysis was one thing. That he also knew the name of the nano weapon revealed a much deeper level of espionage, and that he would be so bold about it should indicate something even more worrisome to them: a willingness to fight.
Kendricks remained cagey. He scowled at Ulinov, but his voice was steady. So were his eyes. Nothing would shake the man. “Well, the problem there is we’re having a hard time manufacturing enough of the nanotech,” Kendricks said. “That’s another reason we need India’s gear.”
Ulinov nodded slowly, bitterly, measuring his own position and knowing that it was weak. But his orders were clear. “We want the snowflake,” he said.
9
It was a feint, of course. His government must know the Americans would never hand over a weapon of such magnitude, although before the end of their meeting Schraeder made a few noises about possibly sending over a few Special Forces advisors in control of the snowflake.
What were his people truly after?
Ulinov grimaced in the wind and darkness, squinting up at the rash of stars. Tonight his old friends felt very far away and he tried to summon the memory of their real beauty. Even at ten thousand feet there were a great many miles of atmosphere between him and space, altering and dimming the starlight.
From the viewports of the ISS, those distant suns had never wavered, and Ulinov missed their bright, steady perfection because he didn’t dare allow himself to miss it in himself.
He was a tool. He accepted that. There was a great deal more at stake than his personal well-being, but this new gambit was worrisome. By pushing Kendricks for the nanotech, Ulinov had revealed that he had a secret channel of communication, because his conversations with the Russian leadership were always closely monitored. Without question, the tapes were replayed again and again by NSA analysts. There had never been any charade of diplomatic privilege. Each time a talk was scheduled, Ulinov sat among a gaggle of American personnel. For him to disclose new information was a surprise.
By now, the Americans would have triple-checked their radio room for bugs and viruses, searching everywhere until they cut him off. He didn’t like it. He was already so isolated. Worse, it felt very final, and Ulinov rubbed his thumb against the hard shape of the 9mm Glock inside his jacket pocket.
The night was frigid, especially on this third-floor balcony. Ulinov was exposed t
o the breeze, but the main doors of the hotel were locked and he hadn’t even considered trying to get into the courtyard. Hardly anyone was allowed outside after curfew. Leadville had hunkered down until sunrise, with only a few windows glowing here and there.
“No signal,” whispered the shadow beside him, holding a cell phone in the dim light. “Still no signal.”
Ulinov nodded curtly, wondering at the white slash of teeth on Gustavo’s face. Some of that grin was fear, he thought, and yet there were also equal amounts of defiance and self-confidence. Gus had tricked the Americans before. He swore he could do it again.
Gustavo Proano was a thin man and no more than average height, but Ulinov was still learning to remember their size difference. In zero gravity, it hadn’t been so obvious, and Gustavo had been his communications officer during their long exile in space, left aboard the ISS to appease the Europeans.
Gus had a big mouth and busy hands. Ulinov had warned him twice to stay quiet and yet Gus still commented on the obvious as he tapped at his phone. His free hand rustled and scratched at the back of his wool cap. Beneath it, he had a bald spot that he liked to rub as he worked.
Ulinov was calmer, even melancholy, motionless except for his thumb on his pistol. The sidearm had not been hard to come by in this war zone. Four days ago in the mess hall, the pistol had found its way from the gun belt of a weary Marine into the folds of Ulinov’s sweater.
“This damn thing,” Gustavo muttered, holding himself awkwardly to reflect what light there was onto his keypad.
Acquiring a phone and a PDA was easier. The Americans seemed to have saved many, many millions more of their fun little gadgets than they had of their own people. Nearly everyone was connected to their grid by cell phone, iPhone, Bluetooth, or Blackberry. Again, Ulinov had stolen a phone, while
Gustavo traded outright for several more.
“Shall we stop?” Ulinov asked, almost smiling himself.
