“Given that what you’re saying is true,” Conte said, “why are you talking to me?”
“I need something from you.”
“What?”
“Plas ex. If you got any.”
“Plas ex?”
“Explosives.”
Conte laughed. “Sounds to me like I’d be financing your escape. The way I see it now, we’ve got you pinned down in that room. The mat-trans unit you need is in this room. I don’t know why you’re there.”
“The plague,” Ryan reminded him. “If it gets loose, a lot of people are going to die.”
“Didn’t figure you for the moral philanthropist, Cawdor.”
“No reason you should. But some of those people getting killed could be mine. I don’t hold with that.”
“How can I believe you?”
“You taken a glance down this tunnel, Conte?”
“A peep, now and again.”
“Take a good, long one now.”
“How do I know you won’t take my head off when I do?”
“Could have killed your man just a minute ago. I chose not to.”
“What if you’re just waiting for a shot at bigger game?”
Ryan glanced back at the tangled mass of the plant-thing. “I get hard up for some big game, got all I need already here. How about I step out first? Show of faith.”
“It’ll be a start.”
Ryan forced out his breath, dropping the muzzle of the Steyr alongside his leg. The others should be ready to take over the mat-trans unit back in the upstairs room. Either way it played for him, they had a chance of getting away.
He stepped out into the open, feeling the gun sights settle over him. The plant-thing roared its rage behind him.
“I’m here.”
A slim brown-haired man stepped into view farther up the tunnel.
“You’re Conte?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.”
“You see that thing over my shoulder?”
“Yeah.”
“Somehow it’s wired into the computer systems in the room back this way. You see the LED readout?”
“Sure.”
“When that hits zero, the plague will be jettisoned into the underground water running from here to the oceans. There’s no cure. Stuff’s left over from the predark days, and tempered to be mighty vicious. If it does what it’s supposed to, within a generation all human life on this planet will be chilled. I don’t figure your CO would want it to go that way.”
“Then kill the damn thing.”
“Tried. Bullets don’t faze it. Flares shook it up a bit.”
“And explosives? Are you hoping to blow it up?”
“No, but I got a plan.”
The other man stood quietly, thinking despite the occasional crack of small-arms fire behind him. “And if I don’t have the explosives?”
“Then I guess we’re both shit out of luck,” Ryan said.
“What have you got?” Conte demanded.
Ryan let him have it. If the man hadn’t asked, it meant there were no explosives. But Conte was playing it safe, buying in. “Liquid-nitrogen tanks,” Ryan answered. “I set the explosives, the tanks rupture, and that bastard plant gets a dose of instant Ice Age.”
“Where does that leave you?” Conte asked.
“Right where I am already.”
“You’ve still got to make it past me,” the sergeant said. “I don’t intend that you should do that.”
“Kind of had it figured that way,” Ryan said. “But you’re going to have to shit or get off the pot. Chron’s ticking.”
“We’ve got some explosives, but if you think about using them against us, you’ll be dead before you can.”
“We wouldn’t be having this little chat if I wasn’t serious about the plague,” Ryan said. “Me and mine, we’d have already used that mat-trans unit and gotten the hell out of here. That cross your mind any while you been thinking?”
“Some.”
“What’s it going to be?”
Conte gestured to one of his men, then took up the backpack he was given. “You’ve got your explosives, Cawdor.” He threw the backpack.
The canvas bag made it most of the way down the tunnel, then hit the floor and started skidding.
Ryan stuck out a foot and stopped it. His guts knotted up as he squatted and caught it up, his hands diving inside. It wouldn’t have been hard to just blow the bastard thing up once it got near him, and maybe it was something he would have done himself.