“Risk it? Jack, if you go out now, you’ll never survive. You’re fucking crazy even to consider it.”
Charley Davenport had been staring at the monitor. Now he turned to the group. “No, Jack’s not crazy.” He grinned at me. “And I’m going with him.” Charley began to hum: “Born to Be Wild.”
“I’m going, too,” Mae said. “I know where the isotopes are stored.”
I said, “It’s not really necessary, Mae, you can tell me-”
“No. I’m coming.”
“We’ll need to improvise a spray apparatus of some kind.” David Brooks was rolling up his sleeves carefully. “Presumably, remotely controlled. That’s Rosie’s specialty.”
“Okay, I’ll come, too,” Rosie Castro said, looking at David. “You’re all going?” Ricky stared from one to another of us, shaking his head. “This is extremely risky,” he said. “Extremely risky.”
Nobody said anything. We all just stared at him.
Then Ricky said, “Charley, will you shut the fuck up?” He turned to me. “I don’t think I can allow this, Jack…”
“I don’t think you have a choice,” I said.
“I’m in charge here.”
“Not now,” I said. I felt a burst of annoyance. I felt like telling him he’d screwed the pooch by allowing a swarm to evolve in the environment. But I didn’t know how many critical decisions Julia had made. In the end, Ricky was obsequious to management, trying to please them like a child pleasing a parent. He did it charmingly; that was how he had moved ahead in life. That was also his greatest weakness.
But now Ricky stuck out his chin stubbornly. “You just can’t do it, Jack,” he said. “You guys can’t go out there and survive.”
“Sure we can, Ricky,” Charley Davenport said. He pointed to the monitor. “Look for yourself.”
The monitor showed the desert outside. The early afternoon sun was shining on scrubby cactus. One stunted juniper in the distance, dark against the sun. For a moment I didn’t understand what Charley was talking about. Then I saw the sand blowing low on the ground. And I noticed the juniper was bent to one side.
“That’s right, folks,” Charley Davenport said. “We got a high wind out there. High wind, no swarms-remember? They have to hug the ground.” He headed toward the passageway leading to the power station. “Time’s a-wasting. Let’s do it, guys.” Everybody filed out. I was the last to leave. To my astonishment, Ricky pulled me aside, blocked the door with his body. “I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of the others. But I just can’t let you do this.”
“Would you rather have somebody else do it?” I said.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You better face facts, Ricky. This is already a disaster. And if we can’t get it under control right away, then we have to call for help.”
“Help? What do you mean?”
“I mean, call the Pentagon. Call the Army. We have to call somebody to get these swarms under control.”
“Jesus, Jack. We can’t do that.”
“We have no choice.”
“But it would destroy the company. We’d never get funding again.”
“That wouldn’t bother me one bit,” I said. I was feeling angry about what had happened in the desert. A chain of bad decisions, errors and fuckups extending over weeks and months. It seemed as if everyone at Xymos was doing short-term solutions, patch-and-fix, quick and dirty. No one was paying attention to the long-term consequences.
“Look,” I said, “you’ve got a runaway swarm that’s apparently lethal. You can’t screw around with this anymore.”
“But, Julia-”
“Julia isn’t here.”
“But she said-”
“I don’t care what she said, Ricky.”
“But the company-”
“Fuck the company. Ricky.” I grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him once hard. “Don’t you get it? You won’t go outside. You’re afraid of this thing, Ricky. We have to kill it. And if we can’t kill it soon, we have to call for help.”
“No.”
“Yes, Ricky.”
“We’ll see about that,” he snarled. His body tensed, his eyes flared. He grabbed my shirt collar. I just stood there, staring at him. I didn’t move. Ricky glared at me for a moment, and then released his grip. He patted me on the shoulder and smoothed out my collar. “Ah hell, Jack,” he said. “What am I doing?” And he gave me his self-deprecating surfer grin. “I’m sorry. I think the pressure must be getting to me. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Fuck the company. We have to do this. We have to destroy those things right away.”
“Yes,” I said, still staring at him. “We do.”
He paused. He took his hand away from my collar. “You think I’m acting weird, don’t you? Mary thinks I’m acting weird, too. She said so, the other day. Am I acting weird?”
“Well…”
“You can tell me.”
“Maybe on edge… You getting any sleep?”
“Not much. Couple of hours.”
“Maybe you should take a pill.”
“I did. Doesn’t seem to help. It’s the damn pressure. I’ve been here a week now. This place gets to you.”
“I imagine it must.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway.” He turned away, as if suddenly embarrassed. “Look, I’ll be on the radio,” he said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’m very grateful to you, Jack. You’ve brought sanity and order here. Just… just be careful out there, okay?”
“I will.”
Ricky stepped aside.
I went out the door past him.
Going down the hallway to the power station, with the air conditioners roaring full blast, Mae fell into step beside me. I said to her, “You really don’t need to go out there, Mae. You could tell me over the radio how to handle the isotopes.”
“It’s not the isotopes I’m concerned with,” she said, her voice low, so it would be buried in the roar. “It’s the rabbit.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her. “The what?”
“The rabbit. I need to examine the rabbit again.”
“Why?”
“You remember that tissue sample I cut from the stomach? Well, I looked at it under the microscope a few minutes ago.”
“And?”
“I’m afraid we have big problems, Jack.”
DAY 6
2:52 P.M.
I was the first one out the door, squinting in the desert sunlight. Even though it was almost three o’clock, the sun seemed as bright and hot as ever. A hot wind ruffled my trousers and shirt. I pulled my headset mouthpiece closer to my lips and said, “Bobby, you reading?”
“I read you, Jack.”
“Got an image?”
“Yes, Jack.”
Charley Davenport came out and laughed. He said, “You know, Ricky, you really are a stupid shmuck. You know that?”
Over my headset, I heard Ricky say, “Save it. You know I don’t like compliments. Just get on with it.”
Mae came through the door next. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder. She said to me, “For the isotopes.”
“Are they heavy?”
“The containers are.”
Then David Brooks came out, with Rosie close behind him. She made a face as she stepped onto the sand. “Jesus, it’s hot,” she said.
“Yeah, I think you’ll find deserts tend to be that way,” Charley said.
“No shit, Charley.”
“I wouldn’t shit you, Rosie.” He belched.
I was busy scanning the horizon, but I saw nothing. The cars were parked under a shed about fifty yards away. The shed ended in a square white concrete building with narrow windows. That was the storage unit.
We started toward it. Rosie said, “Is that place air-conditioned?”
“Yes,” Mae said. “But it’s still hot. It’s poorly insulated.”
“Is it airtight?” I said.
“Not really.”
“That means no,” Davenport said, laughing. He spoke into his headset. “Bobby, what wind do we have?”
“Seventeen knots,” Bobby Lembeck said. “Good strong wind.”