“Except by your mother.”
“Yes.”
“No one found out he’d killed her?”
“No. Killing her almost broke him. I remember him sitting in the floor beside her body, holding his head in his hands and weeping as if he were the child, not me.”
Mildred took advantage of the man’s reverie. “How did you feel about your mother?”
“She was weak. She deserved what she got.”
“And no one ever knew?”
“No. An investigation was starting up, but so was the war. We were at the Wildroot lab when the bombs started to fall. There was hardly any warning. My father was barely able to get us into the cryo chambers before everything was destroyed.”
Mildred made herself resume her seat at the table. “What is this plague?”
“A gem of genetic research,” Boldt said. His smile was wide and proud. “My father took a variant of the bubonic plague. You remember it?”
“Destroyed a lot of European cities in the Middle Ages.” A chill touched Mildred as she imagined wagons rolling through cities, loading up the dead like so much cordwood, then townsfolk burning them in massive pits.
“Right. Do you know why?”
“Rats spread the disease.”
“They were the carriers,” Boldt agreed. “But not the reason so many people died.”
Mildred remained quiet.
“They died,” the Prince said, “because they were dirty and they were stupid. They didn’t know what to do with their own filth. They lived in their own excrement, didn’t take care with how they treated their homes, their children, their possessions. Do you see the parallels between this world and that one?”
Mildred did. So much knowledge had been lost in the hundred years since the nukestorm. While ranging with Ryan’s band, she had seen a number of cultures that were barely out of the Dark Ages themselves. If something like the black death was released into those communities, people would die in droves.
“What are you using as your carrier?” she asked. “Even people these days are smart enough to stay the hell away from rats.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Boldt said, growing more animated. “My father reworked the design for the plague as well, tying it to the plant world, as well. It’s tied to human DNA. It can be carried on spores across the land, through algae in the water, through the fish that feed on the algae and the larger fish that feed on them. It won’t be deadly to the fish, but it will infect the people who eat them.”
“Not everyone lives beside coastal waters.” Mildred wasn’t sure if she pointed that out more to be argumentative, or to convince herself such wholesale slaughter couldn’t be accomplished.
“No,” Boldt agreed. “That’s why the plant spores will be wind-borne. And that’s why I’m sending out the dark seeds.”
Mildred refused to ask.
“Dark seeds,” Boldt went on as though she had asked. “They’re going to be human carriers of the plague. Part of them will be acolytes who believe in their sacrifices for the greater good. They’ll be able to live for as many as a half-dozen years before the plague matures enough in them to kill them. They will be able to cover all of Europe and Asia, what remains of them, by traversing the chunnel. Others will spread to Deathlands and South America by joining the crews of sailing vessels that are brave enough to cross the ocean.”
“Why?” Mildred asked. “Why bother? Most of those people out there are intent on destroying each other anyway.”
“We were not meant to be here,” Boldt said. “Not like this. We were destined for so much more. Can’t you see that?”
“Where do I fit in?” Mildred asked. As daring as that was, laying the ace on the line, she figured it was better than wondering how long she had left to livehalf a day, or half an hour?
“I need help with the cryo chambers,” Boldt answered. “They haven’t been used in decades. My father’s failed. You have experience with cryogenics.”
“Those systems could be too different,” Mildred protested. “I may not know enough.”
Boldt raked her with his harsh glance. “I hope that’s not true. Merlin can manage them without your help. I wanted you as a fail-safe. If you assist me, I’ll make sure there’s a cryo chamber for you when the time comes to release the plague. If you’re of no use to me” he shrugged, “I’m taking no extra baggage with me.”