“And you?”
“I don’t do tests.”
“How long is the program?”
“It depends on when you are field-ready, I think. I can go faster, I was told, like officer training during a war.”
“How much does it cost?”
“That part is taken care of, Dad.”
“Not such a bad deal, then. A safe time-out would be good for you right now, I think. Where is it?”
“Deep in upstate New York. I’ll have to send you the location.”
“I think this just might be okay.” Gabriel was almost talking to himself. “You will be out of sight. Things will cool down.”
“I’ll be using an assumed name until further notice.”
“Good.”
“When I come out, I’m going to be a rabble rouser, Dad. An avenging angel.”
Gabriel Standing Bear broke into laughter. Through tears he said, “Going to be a rabble rouser?” Snowfeather laughed, too. “I can hear Alice laughing with us,” he said.
“It’s okay then?”
“She’ll still flip over three times and hit the ceiling. Then she’ll hug you and then tell you Godspeed.”
Snowfeather leaned over and hugged her father. “So what’s your other news?” she finally said.
“Oh, that. My story. Guess who came to see me?”
“Who?”
“The three kings. Our new Majority Leader, the new Whip, and Knight Fowler.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“Oh yeah. They were concerned about the Gaia movement and my vote against the Treaty. That Fowler is such a snake. ‘Gabriel,’ he said, ‘I’ve always admired you. So it saddens me to tell you that we need someone else, someone who better reflects our philosophy in the new climate.’”
“‘It was a crappy treaty,’ I said, ‘and I voted my conscience,’ but these guys wouldn’t hear of it. Hell, Princess, I had already opened up both barrels on the floor. I read the secret Treaty protocols into the record, the part that gives the Gaia Directorate all the real power. I mailed the draft Smith report on the Gaia Network all over the country. All of it. Before the Committee could kill it.”
“I am so proud of you.”
“Well they sprung the Senate Standing Rules. There can be expulsion of a member who discloses the secret of confidential business or proceedings of the Senate.”
“To kick you out over honest dissent?”
“Yup. I snarled and bit. But…” Gabriel paused, his eyes trained on the horizon. “…I’m not running away, but while you were away, I resigned from the Senate. By now it’s old news. Alice talked me into it. So, you see, it’s transition time for both of us.” He squeezed his daughter’s hand.
“What will you do, Dad?”
“I have already started my campaign. I am a rabble rouser looking to build audience,” he said, sipping his coffee. Gabriel stood and stomped his boots. “I’m already a webcast guerrilla. Lots of webcasts already.”
“You’re a what?”
“Once or twice a week. I am really on the way to a big audience. I have the equipment, the contacts. Now my voice can be heard in or out of the Senate.”
“Will they let you do that?”
“No. Not for much longer. This is already getting dangerous.”
“What about Mom?”
A long silence followed. Gabriel sat back down and stirred the fire. “When we met at Inter-tribal Center, your mom was already working under a false name—not everyone even knew who she was. We both had agreed that, having gone to ground, Alice had to stay there. We still think the best place to be safe is with her people in the panhandle where she is. Unless something changes, she needs to continue working at the Inter-tribal Center near Sandpoint under a cover identity. These Gaia types can’t seem to tell one Indian from another.”
Snowfeather looked concerned. “Are you and Mom okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Gabriel said. “We are solid. But this will be like war time for a while. I’ll get to see her often enough, I guess. But I can’t place her in danger either. That is why I knew she would be so upset about you leaving.”
“Oh. She wants me to be with her.”
“She’ll come around, Princess. She always does, where you’re concerned.”
“But I’d better see her right away.”
“I think so, too.” Gabriel stirred the fire some more.
“It’s not going to get any easier, will it, Dad?”
“Nope. Not that I can see.”
Chapter 47
Dr. John Owen opened his eyes just as Colonel Bill Dornan entered the doorway. John pressed a button beside his bed with his left hand, and the bed rose to a seating position, swiveling away from the open window. Behind him, a single sparrow circled in the updraft between buildings. They were in Vector Pharmaceutical’s industrial accident clinic, sixty miles from Adelaide.
“Don’t just stand there,” John said, grinning. The glow of renewed vitality had begun to take hold. His injured arm was covered by a translucent cylinder, full of pink fluid and attached by tubes and wires to a console next to his bed. A male nurse stood next to Dornan in the doorway.
“Two coffees,” Dr. Owen said. “No more pain pills. Just coffee.”
“Sir?”
“Please.”
The nurse grinned. “Please? You must really be sick.”
“Do it, Ralph. Now!”
“That’s better,” the nurse said, turning to Dornan. “I hate it when he’s polite.”
“Come in and sit, damn it,” John said, pointing to a large leather chair next to the bed. “Growing a new one,” he added.
Dornan sat down. “How is that infection?”
“They were worried about me, but I finally beat it,” John said. “I admit it was touch and go for a while.”
“We spent too much time hiding out,” Dornan said.
“We had no choice, Bill. You saved my life.”
At that moment, Ralph returned with two steaming coffees, which he put on a table next to Dornan.
“Now out!” John snarled.
“Thank God,” Ralph said, “the man’s back!” He closed the door when he left the room.
“I’ve given them all a hard time. But they all love me,” Dr. Owen said. “You don’t suppose it’s my money?”
“Do you still have any?”
John chuckled. “Hell, Bill, I don’t even dare pay taxes these days. But I did manage to send my daughter a wedding present.” Dr. Owen’s face was suddenly sad. “I wish to God I could have been there…”
“Is that going to work?”
“Ken is a good man. Elisabeth is a good judge of people. Little Josh needs a dad. She wouldn’t marry a man she didn’t love.”
“I meant that.” Dornan was pointing to the apparatus that surrounded John’s stump.
“Ask me in three more months.”
“I will.” Dornan looked out the window, then back at Dr. Owen. “So you are closing down the Canadian operations too?”
“It was only a matter of time. The Canadian government can’t hold out forever against the Commission, certainly not the G-A-N. And my days here in Australia are numbered, too. Dangerous to be in the open these days.” Dornan frowned and John shrugged. “So things change,” John said, cheerfully.
“How is Dr. Elisabeth and your grandson?”
“Thanks to whoever is running thus crazy universe, my daughter and little Josh, are doing very well. Ken Wang will make a good husband and a fine father.”
“He loves her?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“They sure didn’t waste any time.”
“No one has time to spare, these days. We can’t be sure how many days any of us has.” Dornan nodded solemnly. “Anyway, they are using new identities and living at a former rehab ranch in Montana. It was very slick, the whole cloak and dagger thing.” John shook his head with a satisfied smile, then sipped his coffee.
“These Gaia people are going to get more
, not less, dangerous.”
“Agreed.”
“I was taught that whenever terrorist-backed movements win power, two outcomes follow.”
“Bad and worse?”
Dornan smiled. “You got that exactly right, Boss. In the best cases, terrorists become statesmen.”
“And in the worst cases,” John said, “they become the new security apparatus.”
“I guess we took the same course. So, who are they now?” Dornan asked.
“They are the invisible third rail of government.”
“The one that you don’t touch. Does Knight Fowler know what he’s playing with?”
John shook his head. “Did Faust? Fowler is an even bigger fool. He probably thinks he’s safe because they still need his money. That will change. As soon as this Gaia crowd doesn’t need Fowler, his body will turn up in a recycling center.”
Dornan looked at Dr. Owen intently. “You seem too damn cheerful, John. What do you have up your sleeve?”
“Sorry, I have no sleeve. But we do have my contingency plans.”
Dornan nodded. “How is that project coming along?”
“You warned me the logistics would be a bitch.”
“I did.”
“You were right. But necessity makes you solve the unsolvable.” John smiled.
“I know that look. What’s happening?”
“Bill, I’ve found the perfect place.”
“Where?”
“The Commission can’t control every spot on the planet. I have firmed up my old contacts out on the fringes of the Pac-Rim. Way out.”
“Not New Kona?”
“Yes, New Kona. I’ve actually pulled it off, Bill. That’s where our operation is going.”
“Everything?”
“Every damn thing.”
“You’ll be selling life-saving drugs from a tiny island in the Pacific?”
“Yup. I’m going to be an illegal drug dealer.” Owen grinned. “My new plants can be producing production runs in as little as a hundred days. I have all the agreements in place. I have the options. I have access to the infrastructure. I have the technical staff. I even have the money.”
“What’s missing?”
“You. I need a permanent security operation. Paramilitary level.”
“Out of the frying pan…”
Chapter 48
In his Boston offices, Knight Fowler was looking across his desk at a scientist bearing bad news. The man was prematurely balding, pale, and under-exercised, a faded man in his fading thirties, an earnest innocent, devoid of political sophistication. “I thought you should see these results right away,” he said.
“Why don’t you just give me the essence?” Fowler said.
“Okay. Several months ago you asked our demographic research section to run some simulations concerning dramatic population reductions.”
“Thinning out.”
“Yes. Thinning out. ‘Reducing the world population load,’ I think you called it.”
“Exactly. What have you found?”
“As you requested, we assumed that the three disease outbreaks that are causing trouble at the moment are pandemic, and go through the human population without medical intervention. No antibiotics. No vaccines.”
“You meant the really bad ones, that are already causing fatalities in India and New York—TB 6, Staph 7, and AIDS type 23?”
“Yes, sir, that’s the deadly trifecta. Here’s the bad news: We confirmed something I was particularly concerned about: There is a negative cascade effect. We’re calling it the Panda Cascade. We named it after the trend to extinction when the wild Chinese Panda lost its habitat. The computer models show that a deadly tipping point is reached when populations—like the Panda habitats—are just not strong enough to rebound, at least without high tech assistance. You take away the high tech assistance and they do not make it. It works out that the same model will apply to all human populations…when they are deprived of technology.”
“But there still are Pandas in the world, correct?”
“Yes, but only because they have become, in effect, human pets. The Panda population is maintained by artificial insemination. The entire species is now dependent on human technology.”
“Go on.” Fowler was shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Like the Pandas, we humans have become so dependent on technology that, without it, we can die out. We are easy prey for disease. Worse still, the deadly trifecta will be much more dangerous than in any past pandemics. Over the years, we’ve been in an arms race with the microbes. They will win unless we come back at them with the most advanced medicines available, the kind that Vector and Edge Medical produced. The kind that are now banned. The timing is also significant. Within ten months, every continent and island not already affected will soon be contaminated. The projections are truly startling. We face a population drop so sudden and catastrophic that the remaining population approaches non-viability.”
“Non-viability? What does that really mean?”
“An irreversible trend to extinction.”
“Good grief. Surely, you are exaggerating. I thought a certain percentage of the human population always carries an immunity to any particular disease.”
“Sorry, Mr. Fowler. That was true for the Black Death, and even for the early versions of AIDS. But these are super-pathogens, enhanced by decades of competition with modern medicine. And we’re talking about multiple pandemics coupled with the breakdown of civilization’s immune systems. We know that crowded, undernourished populations are disease incubators. But it is a modern myth that such disease epicenters can be safely allowed to burn themselves out. But every point on the globe is physically connected to every other by modern transportation. Disease propagation has never been more rapid; it is inevitable. And because antibiotics propagate equally fast among the wealthy everywhere, the pathogens can adapt ever more rapidly. A hundred years ago, 98% of the population of a continent could potentially die in a pandemic. In this era, assaulted by ramped up pathogens and a cluster of intersecting pandemics, humanity could go away entirely.”
“But extinction? Surely, you are overstating the risk? What about Asia? India? Africa? You must mean virtual extinction, centered in the ultra-high tech centers, particularly in Europe and America.”
“Sorry, sir. Our computer simulations project a ninety-nine percent probability that we will arrive at a point of no return. This will likely be the last generation of Homo sapiens.”
“Everyone? Everywhere? Come on!”
“Based on the technology-loss projections due to the Commission’s seizures of medicines, destruction of research facilities, we are rapidly disarming humanity against these diseases. EVERYONE. EVERYWHERE. You may recall that the Chinese and the Indian governments and all the Third World countries all signed on to technology retirement.”
“Couldn’t the medical technology be recaptured toward the end? Rebuilt?”
“Toward the end? Sir, I’m afraid that you’ve hit on the essential problem. The end is the point of no return. That is the beyond-all-hope point. It is definitely less than three years away. We can’t rebuild medical technology right away. The required infrastructure is too sophisticated. By the time things get so desperate that individual countries might try to break out of the treaty regime, it will be too late. Neither the Chinese nor the Indian drug industries were ever quite up to the challenge. America’s Edge Medical and Vector Pharmaceutical were the last enterprises with the technology and production capabilities to keep up with the new pathogens.”
There was a silence while Fowler struggled to assimilate all this. “Go on,” he said. His tone was suddenly bleak.
“It is a scale problem. Too little technology; too many clever pathogens; and ultimately the isolated pockets of human survivors would be too small to come back. Think of the Mountain Gorilla or the Neanderthal. And just like other extinct species, shrinking food supplies will be the final nail in the coffin.”
Fowler was now in shock. “You said this was a computer simulation?”
“It wouldn’t have been possible without the outlawed AI technology we are using.”
Fowler’s heart fell. How could he get the word out without revealing his own technology violations? “Can you make a convincing case without revealing it was a computer simulation?”
“Sorry. Then it’s just some wacko science fiction story, sir. Not enough credibility.”
“Do your best—your very best. The people I need to talk with need to be fully convinced, but my other friends could prosecute us for using banned technology.”
“I’ll get a team together. This will take time.”
“A small team. Show me the names. Rush it. No expense spared. This is ultra-confidential.”
“Of course. When do you want another report?”
“The very second you have something I can use.” The bearer of bad news left. Fowler put his head down, hearing the door close. After a few minutes, Knight Fowler picked up the phone—then he thought better of it. Who the hell can I talk to?
——
Knight Fowler’s hands were still shaking later that day when he dialed Longworthy’s private line. “Rex? I have a simple question and I want your word of honor that we did not talk. Agreed?”
“Of course,” Rex said. “You sound upset.”
“Upset? You might say that. What if population thinning got completely out of control? What would the Sisters think?”
“Knight, this is rhetorical question, right? We both know their ideology. They wouldn’t object at all.”
“What if I told you that… Rex, I have just learned something rather chilling from our very best people. What if humans could suddenly reach an irreversible point in this thinning process? A point of no return?”
There was a very long silence. Knight could hear Rex Longworthy’s labored breathing.
“How soon?”
“I have one estimate. Within three years.” Fowler had barely whispered the answer. The phone clicked. “Rex? Rex?”
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