Ill Wind

Chapter 52

The Cabinet Room in the White House was filled for the morning staff meeting in a desperate attempt to pretend at normalcy, but few of those present actually held cabinet rank. It was too difficult to assemble the remaining high-level officials every morning. Instead, the White House staff served as conduits for the rest of the Executive Branch, relaying information to and from President Jeffrey Mayeaux by any means available—wireless, messengers, hand-written instructions. In an effort to ensure continuity, the new Vice President and his staff were being heavily guarded at his residence in the Naval Observatory.

In the Oval Office, Mayeaux stared out the window at the motionless tanks and armored personnel carriers on the south White House lawn. Military showoffs! The reinforced vehicles served more as a Maginot Line than as a practical mechanism to stop the rioting around Washington, D.C. After the petroplague had swept across the capital city, the tanks stood frozen in place. They could not move, could not operate the turrets, nor swing their heavy gun barrels around. But Mayeaux still thought they looked damned impressive—if he happened to be afraid of the commies marching down Pennsylvania Avenue! As it was, it made the White House lawn look like an old junk yard.

Mayeaux sipped a cup of weak chicory coffee, a completely inept attempt at cafe au lait. White House coffee had always been extravagant and rich, made with dark-roast gourmet beans. Now, the best the kitchen could manage was a muddy, boiled brew that tasted bitter no matter how much sugar he added. Mayeaux stirred it, staring down at the swirling dark liquid.

He hated getting up so damned early in the morning, but there just wasn’t time for enough rest. He had heavier responsibilities now that he held the Chief Executive job. He hadn’t even gotten laid in three days! His own plans for a bright future had swirled right down the toilet, gurgling loudly as they went. A million people supposedly dreamed about becoming president of the United States—how did he get to be so damned lucky? It was like reaching into a new box of Cracker Jacks and pulling out a brand-new, shiny bear trap as his prize!

Stuck inside the White House compound, Mayeaux had no opportunities to blow off steam. He knew about Kennedy sneaking in the babes… but JFK only had the Bay of Pigs, the Commies, and the Cuban Missile Crisis to worry about. Under the Mayeaux administration, the petroplague had messed up every little detail of daily life. He couldn’t even slip off to Camp David for a break from this damned place. He was being asked to cope with a turn-of-the-21st-century world, but given only the technology available to Thomas Jefferson!

“Mr. President, everybody’s here.” Franklin Weathersee stood at the door to the Cabinet Room. He seemed to be rubbing it in every time he said the words ‘Mr. President’—he wouldn’t put up with that attitude from anyone else, but Weathersee… well, he owed Weathersee a few favors. More than he could remember.

Mayeaux set down his cup. “So what’s on the agenda today, Frank? Visiting dignitaries? Trips to Acapulco? Business as usual?”

Weathersee answered bluntly without looking at the handwritten agenda. He never seemed to have any sense of humor. “The Joint Chiefs have an update on martial law enforcement. They’re being pretty tight-lipped until you get in there.”

Mayeaux turned from the view of the south lawn. “Let’s get this over with. These guys make my skin crawl, and if they aren’t going to support me, we’ll get someone in there who will.”

The halls were dim, lit by sunlight trickling through office windows. Metal sculptures, given as presents from foreign governments, sat on tables lining the hallway. Most of the carpet had deteriorated down to the bare wood floors, leaving only stains of residue.

Weathersee lowered his voice as they approached the Cabinet Room. “It’s not so easy to replace them, Mr. President—”

Mayeaux stopped outside the door and snorted. “What the hell are you talking about, Frank? I didn’t ask for this job—I should be back in New Orleans fishing right now. If I’m going to be anything more than a placeholder, I’ve got to have a team that works with me.”

Weathersee held Mayeaux back. Several people had already noticed them and stood. Two Secret Service agents waited at the end of the hall, studiously watching nothing.

“These people are military types, Mr. President—they’re not political hacks. They aren’t ‘yes’ men. They don’t have an agenda. Their allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution.”

Mayeaux scowled. “Don’t kid yourself, Frank. Everybody’s got an agenda, including these tin pots. They just have different buttons to push. They still serve at my pleasure, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then they’ll support me—or find another job, petroplague or not. I have enough to worry about.”

He stepped through the door, smiling his best media smile as the others stood to greet him. Mayeaux headed for his high-backed chair. He dispensed with shaking hands. “So, what do we have?” he asked. “Give me the slicked-down version.”

The four military officers sat directly across the table, next to the Secretary of Defense. Brass plates on the backs of the chairs identified each cabinet member. The chairs were arranged around the table in the order the office had been elevated to cabinet level.

General Wacon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a graying man who looked like an airline pilot in his Air Force uniform, pushed a briefing packet across the table. The papers were handwritten—the few rebuilt computers working in secured vaults were reserved for more important tasks than preparing briefing charts.

“We have managed to establish communications with seventy percent of the military bases, Mr. President. We don’t know why we’ve lost contact with the remaining thirty percent, but we don’t believe it’s because of a technical breakdown.”

“Tell me what that means.” Mayeaux shoved the papers back at the Chairman. “I don’t have time to read all this.”

“There’s enough redundancy in our emergency communications that we should still be in direct contact with every installation commander. The petroplague did not disable backup wireless communications.”

“So what the hell is the significance of that?” Mayeaux looked around the table. “I asked a simple question, now give me a simple answer. No doubletalk, no technojargon.”

The general continued smoothly, not quite managing to cover a frown. “Widespread riots, sir. The out-of-contact bases are located next to cities with large populations—Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia. With so many people in the neighboring communities, we suspect the civilians are not cooperating with the military’s enforcement of martial law.”

“So the people are disobeying emergency orders from the President of the United States? And the military commanders can’t back up our demands? Maybe we should all go hide in the closet and cry.”

“We don’t know for sure, Mr. President. The military bases still in contact report increasing unrest among the civilian populace. Every commander has lost personnel to mobs, even in southern states where the military is traditionally viewed with more respect.”

Mayeaux’s jaw clenched and relaxed as General Wacon spoke. He couldn’t get his military commanders to enforce a straightforward directive in a crisis situation. Against civilians, yet! Being the “most powerful man in the world” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Even with the communications breakdowns, the people would listen to a strong leader, not some limp dick too frightened to back up his own threats. Mayeaux knew that much. It was just like raising kids—you set the rules, and whenever the kid stepped over the line: wham! Behavior modification.

It worked in Louisiana, rewarding the parishes that toed the line, and it worked in Congress when he had been Speaker of the House. The congressmen who didn’t fall in line when Mayeaux made it clear he was calling in a personal favor, found themselves suddenly without any federal projects for their districts. As far as the American people were concerned, they didn’t know how far they could push Jeffrey Mayeaux him.

Not very damn far.

The chairmen of their respective services sat back in their seats and waited for the president to speak his words of wisdom. Mayeaux felt like a preacher under a revival tent. What the hell did they want from him?

“What’s the status of the rest of the military? What other national defense matters aren’t we ready for, gentlemen?”

The question seemed to throw the officers. They looked at each other. “Each stateside installation is utilizing its resources to enforce martial law, Mr. President. They are relying on the National Guard as well as local law-enforcement groups. None of our forces is poised to prevent an attack from an external threat, but frankly I don’t see how such an attack could be feasible without any fuel—”

Mayeaux dismissed the observation with a wave. “Not an attack from outside, from within. If civilian disobedience is affecting every installation, we’ve got to get those commanders firmly in control. We’ve got to let the people know we won’t take any crap. These are not normal times.”

The five officers remained stone-faced, keeping their thoughts to themselves. What a bunch of nippleheads! Mayeaux pushed back from the conference table, feeling his control slipping away. Didn’t anybody take this seriously? Well, if they weren’t going to come up with a solution, then he sure as hell would. He had the entire country to look after, whether he wanted to or not.

Mayeaux stood and started for the door of the Cabinet Room. “Gentlemen, get me a complete review of your forces—personnel, capabilities, whatever you’ve got. I want you all to be ready to answer questions whenever I need you. Camp out in the Old Executive Office Building. Get that information to me in one week. If things haven’t gotten better by then, I’ll make some decisions for you.” Franklin Weathersee followed Mayeaux out as he strode from the room.

In silence, everyone stood in the President’s wake.

Chapter 53

White gypsum sand glittered like an ocean of bone-dry sparkle dust. With nothing more than a small spade, Spencer Lockwood dug only a few feet before he reached moisture.

The water table around White Sands had always been near the surface, though it had steadily fallen for the past half century, drained by massive pumping stations along the Rio Grande corridor. But not any longer, not after the petroplague. The aquifer was exceptionally pure from natural filtration—and it was available, rapidly replenishing itself.

Adjusting his floppy hat, Spencer applied a handful of soft lard on either side of the ceramic washer and tightened the cap to the water pump. A long strand of cloth-wrapped electrical wire ran from the pump to a telephone pole, then to the power substation. Transformer parts lay strewn around the substation, prominent against the bright sand: open coils of copper windings, ceramic insulators, iron cores. The new substation looked like a Rube Goldberg collection of giant tinkertoys. A hundred yards away, three ranch hands stood around a pile of scrub wood, waiting for the order to light the signal fire.

Beside him, Rita Fellenstein tipped back her Australian hat and spat to the side, adding another blot to the scattered tobacco stains on the snowy gypsum. “You really think this is going to work, Spence?”

He used the fine sand to scrub smelly animal fat from his hands, then wiped the grit on his frayed pants. “If we can’t carry power from the microwave farm to the pump station, it’ll be impossible to get it to the outlying ranches.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

Heat shimmered from the ground like blurred fingers reaching to the sky. Spencer could see for miles all around. “There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. Basically, it’s a no-brainer. We hook it up and it starts pumping water.”

Rita worked up a mouthful of saliva and spat again. She seemed to enjoy the disgusted frown on his face. “If you say so. You weren’t the one trying to figure out how to fix it.”

Spencer grinned, keeping his doubts to himself. “That’s what engineers are for.”

Rita strode back to the ranch hands. Her gangly legs put a rolling swing into each step. Good-natured catcalls greeted her, but Rita told the men to shut up and light the signal fire.

Spencer took one last look at the pump—he always became obsessive before starting an experiment. Everything appeared ready, but he never believed it. The transmission line ran to the substation, all the pump parts had been inspected a dozen times.

He remembered how paranoid he had been about his antenna farm on the day of the first test. Now he’d be even more excited if he could just get a simple water pump working out in the desert.

One of the ranch hands squatted by the pile of wood, striking a flint and a piece of metal together. They still had some matches among their supplies, but the cowboys liked to show off their wilderness skills in front of Rita. Fine steel wool brought in from the microwave farm caught the spark and started smoking. Pieces of shaving, then larger pieces of mesquite began to burn, crackling and sending rich-smelling smoke into the air.

Rita stood back, shielding her face as one of the ranch hands tossed a handful of green pinon needles onto the growing fire. The smoke thickened and billowed. Rita said, “All we need now is a blanket to send smoke signals!”

“We don’t want to have a conversation with them,” Spencer said. “We just want them to turn on the juice.” He knew the radio man Juan Romero would be back at the microwave farm, waiting to see the smoke.

Spencer watched the water pump, not sure what to expect. Once Romero switched on the electricity from the farm, a motor would move a series of gears—what could be so tough about that? The substation would transform the oscillating voltage collected from the microwave antennas to power the pump. If this worked, it would be the first step to reestablishing a power-grid for the area, electricity that did not rely on petroleum or plastic components for distribution.

By erecting similar antenna farms, simple metal wires spread out on flat ground under the orbital path of the smallsats, and launching the remaining satellites in storage at JPL, Spencer could return electrical power to a broad band of the country—even the world. He liked crazy, optimistic plans, but, hey, it gave them something to work toward.

A high-pitched popping, sizzling noise jarred him out of his daydream. Acrid smoke spewed from the nearby utility pole. Spencer caught the sudden smell of creosote burning. “The substation’s going up!” he yelled.

The ranchers grabbed shovels and started throwing gypsum sand on the equipment to smother the fire. White sparks danced around the transformer units, accompanied by loud snaps and cracks. The signal fire continued to blaze, sending streamers of smoke into the windless air.

“Great!” Spencer ran to the bonfire. “Help me get this thing out!” He knew Romero would keep the juice flowing until the smoke signal stopped.

The dry mesquite burned hot and bright. He picked up a bucket of sand and threw it onto the blaze; the sand simmered on the coals. Smoke continued to boil into the air. Finally, a blanket thrown over the fire extinguished the flames.

Spencer stood back and waited as the smoke leaking from the blanket turned from black to gray-white. The substation continued to crackle like an electric heater dropped into a bathtub. As the smoke trailed away, the inferno at the substation subsided. Romero had shut down. The electrical equipment looked scorched.

A real no-brainer, Spencer had called the exercise. Right!

Rita wiped a hand over her sooty face. “So, we fix it up and try again?”

“Must be an engineering problem,” he said, scowling at the substation components.

Before the petroplague, the station had been a crossroads for power generated by the Public Service Company of New Mexico and the Rural Electric Network. Now, nothing remained but a smoldering pile of resistors, coiled windings, and insulators. At least the electric company wouldn’t come after him for damages.

“Let’s find out what went wrong,” he said. “That’s the only way we’ll learn anything. I want to get back to the microwave farm by sundown for the JPL contact.”

“You don’t seem too upset after just blowing the hell out of that substation,” Rita said.

“Job security,” Spencer said and faked a shocked expression to mask his disappointment. “You’ve been hanging around Nedermyer too much.”

Romero tugged on his drooping black mustache. “Caltech’s on the wireless, Spence. They’re ready for you.”

“Thanks.” Spencer took a seat. Now that the sun was down, their shortwave radio could eavesdrop on the world.

The blockhouse was illuminated by beeswax candles. They had a few battery-powered lights, but they tried not to use them much. Shadows cast by the flickering light danced on the trailer walls.

Static came from the radio speaker like ocean surf, distorting the voice that relayed news across the country for local dissemination. Romero repeated the news back to the emergency broadcast channel, verifying that he had correctly copied the contents.

Rita whispered, “You’re not going to tell them the test failed, are you? JPL might not send the satellites if they find out you can’t even get the power lines to work.”

“The experiment didn’t fail,” Spencer said. “It just pointed out some deficiencies in our assumptions.”

“Now who’s been talking to Nedermyer too much?” she snorted.

Romero handed him the makeshift microphone. “All set. You’ve got five minutes.”

Spencer fingered the button, clicking it twice. “Hello? This is Spencer Lockwood from White Sands.”

A moment passed. Nothing but static came over the speaker. He frowned and started to repeat himself when a voice broke through. “Dr. Lockwood?”

Spencer leaned forward. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Stand by, one. We’ve got someone here for you.”

The microphone rustled as it was handed over. “Spencer? Is this the same Doctor Lockwood I taught at Caltech?”

Spencer stopped. The voice sounded familiar, but it had been so many years… “Seth— Seth Mansfield? Is that you?”

Coughing. “Spencer, are you still playing with those smallsats? Dr. Soo at JPL tells me you’ve been pestering her to ship the remaining satellites cross-country to you. What’s this nonsense? Last time I checked, you were a physicist, not a rocket scientist. At least that’s what I wrote on your diploma.”

He rolled his eyes. It was nice to hear from his gruff mentor again. “Seth, what are you doing there? I thought you retired years ago.”

The Nobel laureate’s voice came back strong for a 74-year-old man. “Did you expect me to roll over and play dead? I returned here after the plague hit. The least I could do is wash bottles while the microbiologists try to figure this damn thing out.”

Romero leaned over and whispered, “You’ve only got four minutes, Spence.” Spencer waved him away.

“Seth, I’d love to talk, but I just don’t have the time.”

“Oh, all right! I hear you were going to transmit electricity today to power some damned water pump.”

“Well, Seth, it—”

“Good thinking, Spencer. You’ll need the infrastructure up and working before the smallsats can do any good. Doesn’t matter if you have all the microwave energy in the world if you don’t have any way to get it to people. How did you do? Did it work?”

Rita leaned over and scowled. Spencer saw his precious time slip away. The Caltech emergency network operators adhered to a ruthless reputation when it came to partitioning radio time. He sighed; it was a lost cause to argue with his old professor.

“Uh, it didn’t go exactly as planned, Seth. There are more problems than I suspected with the transformers. But it’s just an engineering problem.” Romero clapped a hand to his forehead and snickered; Spencer turned back to the radio. “We’ll fix it. I’ve already got a team working on design changes, using what we learned from the test.”

“Engineering problems! Those are the best kind,” Mansfield said. “You think your idea will still work?”

“Of course it’ll work! Look, we transmitted the power at least twenty miles, and that’s a lot farther than we thought would be possible with these primitive lines. It blew out a transformer at the substation, so we know the electricity got that far.”

Spencer threw a glance at Rita. She mouthed, ‘Less than one minute.’ Spencer thought he heard the hint of a laugh over the static-filled channel. “Plenty of people here at JPL thought you were just pipedreaming, son. There’s starvation and rioting going on out here, in case you haven’t heard.”

“We have the same reports coming out of El Paso and Albuquerque,” said Spencer. “All the more reason to give people some shining example of hope, something to show that we can get back on our feet again.”

“Okay, Spencer. The JPL folks wanted assurance of two things: that you weren’t lying, and their efforts wouldn’t be wasted. I think I’ve convinced the JPL acting director that you haven’t gone loony tunes. Of course, I don’t know how the hell you expect to get twenty 300-pound satellites from Caltech to White Sands. By a wheelbarrow? A refurbished Conestoga wagon?”

Spencer didn’t know what to say. “Uh, that’s the next question, but it’s really just another engineering problem. We can solve those.”

The old man laughed. “If you manage this one, Spencer, you deserve a Nobel Prize of your own!”

Chapter 54

Todd Severyn cocked back his cowboy hat and scanned the rolling vista of the Altamont range. His chocolate quarter horse snorted at the dry, unpalateable grass on the ridge. The sky above was as blue and smooth as a robin’s egg, cloudless; he didn’t expect to hear a discouraging word… at least not until he rode back to those wierdos at the commune.

Todd urged Stimpy down the slope, following a cattle trail toward the glistening aqueduct that directed fresh water from the mountains. Moving again, Stimpy crashed through the grass with an energetic gait that showed Todd how much the mare was enjoying her regular long-distance rides.

Gleaming white windmills, spinning in rampant breezes that gusted over the range, lined the crests of the rounded hills. Many of the wind turbines had burned-out rotors with gummed lubricants; Jackson Harris and his group of washed-up hippies spent much of their days trying to repair them.

Far below to his left Todd could see the empty interstate freeway dotted with wrecked and abandoned cars. With the traffic gone and the people scattered from the corpses of the cities, he found the world more palatable in a way. Like his beloved Wyoming, everything had slowed down, gone back to the ways of a century before when communities worked together to survive, and each small town was its own little world.

That was how Jackson Harris and the Altamont commune managed to succeed, but Todd didn’t fit in. Philosophically, they were poles apart, yet he did enjoy belonging to their settlement. As long as he didn’t have to sing along with their campfire concerts of oold Rock & Roll songs. And Iris Shikozu certainly seemed comfortable with the arrangement, even if he wasn’t….

When he reached the aqueduct between the hills, Todd directed the horse to follow the concrete embankment. Two men and a teenager dangled their feet in the languid canal, fishing with bamboo poles and cotton fish line. As Todd pulled the horse to a stop, Stimpy stuck her nose in the water, blowing out her nostrils and drinking deeply. “Any fish in there?” Todd asked.

A man in a battered straw hat shrugged. “Carp.”

“Are they good eating?” Todd noticed a chain-link basket slung low in the water.

“Depends how hungry you are,” the teenager said.

When the fishermen didn’t offer to continue the conversation, Todd rode off along the Altamont Pass Road and back over the crest of the hills. He dreamed of eventually making his way across country, riding back to his parents’ ranch, maybe even with Iris. But not for a while yet, not until things were a bit more settled.

Jackson and Daphne Harris, Doog, and the rest of the wacked-out commune had welcomed him and Iris in, giving them an old trailer to stay in. Todd was still embarrassed to be living with Iris without being married, but neither Iris nor the hippies seemed to care; it just didn’t fit in with the other women Todd himself had known, who either jumped from bed to bed or were dying to get married. But he stuck to his guns, insisting he would move out as soon as another place became available. He’d promised to take her away from Stanford, which he’d done, but he had not demanded to sleep with her as some kind of reward.

Iris accepted his companionship at face value, and from the other bed in the trailer she talked to him far into the night when he just wanted to go to sleep. During the day, when he didn’t think she was looking, he admired her petite figure, her dark almond eyes, and her jet-black hair. Iris seemed to have the energy of two people coiled inside her wiry body. He’d learned not to underestimate her. He felt his attachment running deeper, so deep that it frightened him.

But he didn’t want to just stay here and settle down. Todd found himself growing restless, wanting to do something more than mundane chores. He still felt responsible for the whole mess they were in—if he hadn’t been so eager to spray Alex’s darned bugs. the petroplague would never have happened. To soothe his own restlessness, he took long rides on the horses, ranging far from the commune when the goofballs at the commune drove him crazy.

He had appointed himself liaison between the Altamont colony and the remnants of the Livermore Lab on the other side of the range, where the once-large government research laboratories still had a few programs cobbled-together and scraps of barely functional equipment. Following the road, Todd reached the crest of the hills and headed west toward the city of Livermore to see if the labs had come up with anything new.

Thanks to her small and agile body, Iris Shikozu got the assignment of climbing the windmill masts to replace rotors as they burned out. With her toolbox stuffed in a canvas backpack between her shoulders, Iris clambered up the metal rungs to reach the top where the three-bladed aluminum wind turbine hung frozen, rattling in the breezes.

The windmill rows looked like a giant field of metal cornstalks on the hills. The wind gusted, making the mast rattle. Iris had to hook her arm through the rung to steady herself.

“Hang tight up there,” Jackson Harris called from below. Iris glanced down to see him cup his hands around his mouth. He said something else, but the wind snatched away his words.

It didn’t matter; she knew what she was doing. Reaching the top, she secured herself and unslung the backpack to find a screwdriver so she could unfasten the metal housing covering the wind turbine’s rotors. She had done this a dozen times before.

On the hills below, Doog and a couple of the refugee city kids amused themselves by tossing rocks into a gully. Doog always seemed to find simple things to keep himself preoccupied. Work usually wasn’t one of them.

Iris succeeded in removing the bolts from the housing and lifted up the protective metal. The lightweight aluminum blades were shaped to catch the wind from any direction; a vane at the rear helped to align them in the proper direction. The blades spun, turning a rotor that generated electricity. But without petroleum lubricants, the rotors burned out; and Iris had to keep replacing them. Back at the commune, Daphne Harris and some of the Oakland kids spent hours tediously rewrapping copper wire along the rotors.

As Iris removed the repaired rotor from her backpack to exchange the burnt-out one, she paused a moment. She was engrossed in her work, finding happiness in the aftermath of the petroplague, content in a way she had never experienced before. She felt at home.

It was very different from the life her parents had pushed her to pursue—to be the front runner in the rat race, to work sixty hours a week, to focus her goals on being the best, on getting ahead. Iris was normally high-strung, always on the move—but she was learning that it was okay to be different. She liked these simple comforts.

And she liked being with Todd.

She caught Todd looking at her many times when he thought she wouldn’t notice. Even when they were together he still seemed to long for her like some unreachable object. He was so clean-cut and straightforward; it calmed her to believe he had no private agenda, that he wasn’t after her for any reason other than herself. In his puppy-dog way, Todd couldn’t hide anything; subtlety was not his strong point, but she found it kind of sweet.

“Hey, you gonna daydream up there all afternoon?” Jackson Harris shouted up at her.

Iris quickly stripped out the old rotor and placed it in her backpack, then installed the new one. Clambering down the metal rungs, she overheard Harris and Doog talking.

“I sure wish we had some music during all this. That’s what I miss the most. Who’d have thought the Grateful Dead would finally die?” Harris kicked a stone into the gully.

As she stepped down the last rungs from the windmill mast, Iris remembered all the CDs she’d loved to play. The hardest things to live without were coffee and rock ‘n roll. She dropped to the gravel pad around the mast and turned to Harris and Doog.

“I miss the music too,” she said. “So what are we going to do about it?”

Todd Severyn rode his horse through the gates of the Livermore branch of Sandia National Laboratory. Spirals of razor wire crowned the tall fences, but the guard station sat empty. Nobody bothered to impose security anymore. Most of the lab facilities were broken down and unoccupied, but some of the researchers still came in to work, while others camped out in RV trailers in the parking lots.

For a month or so the teams had banded together, frantically trying to find some way to eradicate the petroplague; but as equipment broke down, computers malfunctioned, and the entire complex collapsed, most of them had given up hope. A few still continued plugging away to come up with innovative solutions.

Todd tied Stimpy up front to the bicycle rack and went inside the admin building. The lobby area for welcoming visitors had been turned into a command center. The bright and cheery PR posters for America’s national labs had been replaced by a large map of the United States studded with colored push-pins.

One of the administrators, Moira Tibbett, stared at the map with a sheet of paper in hand. She wore a dressy cotton outfit. Tibbett glanced at a list of locations on the paper, fingering a push-pin. She squinted at the map like an entomologist about to spear a specimen, then jabbed in the push-pin.

“More stuff for the Atlantis Network?” Todd asked. He poured himself a glass of warm sun tea; it tasted good.

“Yeah. Three more stations came on-line this week. For a political dumping ground, FEMA is doing a pretty good job tracking these enclaves and linking us together.” She thrust another push-pin into a different location.

Todd lifted his eyebrows; her former disdain for the Federal Emergency Management Agency had come around a hundred and eighty degrees. “So what’s new this morning? Give me some news I can take back to the colony.”

“Well, locally the usual stuff is happening,” Tibbett said. “The Livermore city engineers are trying to make sure people have access to enough water. We have a whole lot of problems with just our sewage system. The fire patrols are more organized, but we’ve been lucky so far. And it’s same-old same-old on the food story.”

Todd nodded. At 50,000 people and somewhat isolated, the city of Livermore was probably the right size to weather the petroplague: not so big that it had no way of getting its own supplies, yet large enough to have an infrastructure with some chance of functioning.

“What’s new on the big board?” Todd asked, gesturing with his chin toward the wall map. Tibbett withdrew a push-pin and stabbed another set of coordinates, this one in Missouri.

“Kind of ironic actually. Spencer Lockwood at the solar antenna farm in White Sands, knows that the remaining smallsats he was supposed to put into orbit are sealed in launch canisters at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. He’s rigged up a way to launch the satellites out in New Mexico, but he can’t get his hands on them.”

Todd scratched his head where the cowboy hat had pushed his brown hair into strange twists. He didn’t know whether to be skeptical or amazed. “We can’t even get our sewer systems running, and this guy wants to get a satellite into orbit?”

Tibbett’s face looked carved out of stone. “Twenty satellites, actually. But if Lockwood says he can do it, believe him. I gave him a tour here not long ago. He’s a real hot-shot.”

Todd looked at the map, saw push-pins in New Mexico at the White Sands missile range, another one near Los Angeles in Pasadena. He began to imagine grand schemes, a great expedition across the Southwest hauling the satellites from Pasadena across Arizona into New Mexico. A regular wagon train to the stars!

But it would never come to pass. He said goodbye to Moira Tibbett and headed home to Iris.

Chapter 55

Outside of Albuquerque, concrete buildings and bunkers were set into the side of the hills—”Bayclock’s Empire,” as Navy Lieutenant Bobby Carron had come to think of it. Encircled by four metal fences, the 1000-acre Manzano complex had once served as a storage facility for nuclear weapons; now, Bayclock used the fortress-like bunkers as his headquarters.

The guards outside the chain-link gate popped to attention and threw him a salute as they waved him into the facility. He felt strange wearing an Air Force uniform.

Accompanied by escorts, Bobby hobbled up a series of stairs and entered a fortified building. Bobby gritted his teeth. His still-healing wounds sent tremors of pain through his body.

Concrete walls two feet thick, barred windows, and piles of useless electronic gear made the place seem like a twisted version of a medieval castle. Finally, he passed two more guards standing like moat dragons outside Bayclock’s office.

“Stand at ease, Captain.”

At first Bobby didn’t realize that Bayclock was speaking to him. In the sprawling office the general had commandeered, once-plush carpet edged up to dark wood paneling that had blistered as the glossy coatings had dissolved; military awards, lithographs of fighter aircraft, and school diplomas covered the wall.

“Please come in, Captain. Are you fully recovered from your injuries?” Bayclock waved Bobby into the secure office, then slumped in an overstuffed leather chair behind his desk. Narrow window slits barely lit the room.

Bobby stepped forward, stiff and formal as he remembered from his training at the Naval Academy. The memory of the curfew-breaking teenager dangling on the gallows still burned clear in his mind. “It’s lieutenant, sir. Not captain. You didn’t have any Navy uniforms I could wear.”

Bayclock narrowed his eyes, then laughed. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Calling you a captain is like promoting you three ranks! Never figured out why the military couldn’t standardize the whole damn rank structure.” He motioned toward one of the chairs. “Go ahead, have a seat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby had expected Bayclock to be some sort of ogre, hunched over his desk and ready to snap necks with his thumbs. Instead, the general had bright eyes, regulation-cropped dark hair, and an easy grace as he folded his hands in front of him. Bayclock held himself poised, continuously taking in his surroundings. It was obvious to Bobby that Bayclock had himself been a fighter pilot; but Bobby felt no rapport with the general. Bayclock inspected him closely. Bobby wondered how he would measure up.

Bayclock pulled a paper from the stack on his desk. He scanned it in the dim light and spoke without looking up. “I’ve kept up with your recovery, glad to see you’re doing better. You’ve been briefed on the situation here—martial law and all that, by the President’s order?”

“Yes, sir.” How could he not notice? After seeing how the general dealt with unrest in the city, Bobby felt extremely uneasy just to be in the same room with Bayclock.

“Some people are savages and want to steal everything in sight. My troops are stretched to the limit, Lieutenant. Every able-bodied person I have is trying to keep the peace in the city. I’m using military finance clerks as squad leaders, aircraft mechanics as forward observers. They serve according to their abilities, and they’re doing a super job, but I can’t ask them anything else.”

“Yes, sir.” Bobby sat straight in his chair, watching the general. So what’s the point? This isn’t a social call.

Bayclock continued. “In addition to upholding the law, I’ve got to care for these people, keep the place going in the long run. That means coordinating food expeditions, fixing waterlines, staying in contact with the President in case orders change.”

“So, are communication lines open?” Bobby must have sounded incredulous, because Bayclock snorted.

“The plague didn’t affect the electromagnetic spectrum, Lieutenant, just oil!” Bayclock rocked forward and pushed the paper to Bobby. Bobby caught it as the sheet spun off the edge of the metal surplus desk. “In fact, we’ve intercepted some messages from White Sands coming across the FEMA emergency network.”

Intercepted? thought Bobby, keeping a stone straight face. That was the most important thing he had learned in all his military training—how to smother his reactions. This guy sounded as if he was at war!

“Somehow they’ve reestablished full electrical power down there, using it to run their water pumps. Water pumps! Do you have any idea how many of my people it takes to pump water up from this damned aquifer we’re sitting on top of? That’s a major part of that manpower drain I was talking about. People are getting away with murder because good military personnel are pumping water instead of patrolling the city.

“Now, White Sands is technically under my jurisdiction, and the President has reconfirmed it. We’re all in this mess together, and if those wizards have managed to get back on their feet by producing electricity, then I need it.”

Bobby Carron sat in his chair like a statue, ignoring the pain in his leg and ribs. Shadows in the room highlighted the intensity in Bayclock’s face. He had seen a few squirrelly commanders before, but Bayclock seemed to think he was Napoleon of the Apocalypse!

“I can’t trust any of the damned civilians to head up this expedition—the scientists at Sandia Albuquerque turned tail and deserted their labs at the first sign of a riot; my Phillips Lab troops aren’t much better. I haven’t been able to reach the enclave of researchers up at Los Alamos, and I’ve never trusted those bomb designers anyway. But down in White Sands they’ve made a little Atlantis for themselves.”

The general cracked his knuckles one at a time. It sounded like someone snapping twigs—or neckbones.

“I need someone I can trust, Lieutenant Carron—an operator who’s used to working alone and can function when things get tough. In short, I need a fighter pilot.” Bayclock drew himself up, setting his mouth. “When I took this command, I saw it as an opportunity to instill some of the esprit that pilots have… you know, the sense of duty that comes from being in an operational fighter unit. These scientists and nonrated pukes have a warped sense of duty, more allegiance to their profession than to the overall mission.”

Bayclock looked suddenly tired, as if the effects of his orders wore at him. “I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, Lieutenant. I just met you, but I know you wouldn’t be flying fighters unless you had the right stuff, even if you did join the Navy instead of the Air Force.” He smiled wearily.

“A colleague of mine once said, ‘There’s two types of people in this world: fighter pilots and weenies.’ Well, I’m surrounded by weenies. What I need is a fighter pilot to head up an expedition to White Sands, then return here with a report.”

Bobby tried to keep the astonishment off his face. The events of the past few weeks swam through his mind—waking up in the ravaged hospital, the execution of looters, seeing the full effects of the petroplague…. The general probably thought Bobby would be apprehensive about leaving the “security” of a city under martial law.

Bobby saw it as an opportunity to get away from this insanity, but he knew it would be the worst thing in the world for him to show his eagerness. He stood and reached across Bayclock’s desk, extending his hand. “General, you’ve got your man. Where do I sign up?”

The horses kept to the side of Interstate 40 east out of Albuquerque, paralleling old Route 66 in the pass between the Sandia and Manzano mountains. The spongy asphalt highway was too soft to bear any weight, and the horses clopped along on the shoulder. Each rider carried several dozen liters of water along with their food rations.

Beside Bobby at the front of the five-person expedition, his assigned escort—a stout, gruff sergeant named Catilyn Morris—had not spoken in an hour. Three scientists trailed behind—two from Sandia’s Albuquerque Labs and one from the Air Force’s Phillips Lab—who would study the White Sands power generators and take back whatever components the general might need in Albuquerque.

The horses walked through the pass. Boulders littered the sides of the barren hill, sloping up on either side like a giant brown funnel that had been cut in half and laid on its side. Although he had lived at barren China Lake for the past two years, Bobby still missed to the thick trees in Virginia where he had grown up, the ocean, and humidity. This seemed like an alien landscape.

Bobby turned to the taciturn woman sergeant beside him. Catilyn Morris was a helicopter mechanic who had flown many times along the corridor to White Sands. Her blond hair was clipped short, accenting her stout frame and full hips. She stood no taller than five feet, but she rode high in the saddle, confident.

“Seems like we’re making good time,” Bobby said. “How long do you think it’ll take to get to White Sands?”

Sergeant Morris didn’t look at him as she answered; she kept scanning the road in front of them. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“Lots of things.”

Bobby felt a flash of annoyance. “Look, Sergeant, I don’t want to play Twenty Questions—”

She interrupted him by holding up a hand. “Wait up.” She slowed her horse and placed a hand against her revolver. It glistened from her cleaning, polishing, and refurbishing.

Bobby pulled back on the reins. He started to speak, then he glimpsed several figures scrambling down the sides of the hill. They were dressed in dusty jeans, threadbare shirts; some of them tried to take advantage of the brush cover, while others didn’t care if they were seen. They all carried sticks, crowbars, or unwieldy knives. It took them only a minute to spread out in a line, blocking the highway fifty yards ahead. Bobby counted fifteen men. Half were teenagers.

“Hey, what’s going on?” said Arnie, one of the scientists behind them. “What do they think they’re doing?”

Sergeant Morris turned in the saddle. “It’s your game, Lieutenant Carron. The rest of you keep quiet.”

“Thanks,” muttered Bobby. He left his rifle in the holster at the back of the saddle, not ready to pull it out yet.

One of the men stepped toward them. Bearded and balding, his patchy skin peeled from sunburn. The man stopped twenty yards away. He held a long iron bar like a swagger stick in his left hand. “Where you folks headed?”

Bobby wondered if the man was going to ask for a toll to use the road. He turned at the crunch of gravel and saw five more people come up behind them, blocking their return.

“White Sands. I’m Lieutenant Carron, representing General Bayclock at Kirtland.” Maybe the general’s bloodthirsty tactics would scare these people off.

“You’re going the wrong way. White Sands is due south.”

“So is Laguna Pueblo. We’re respecting Native American land. There’s been some trouble down there.”

The man grinned. “Good for you, Lieutenant. Still, a long way to carry your own food and water. I don’t think you’re going to make it. Your horses would fare better here, I’m sure.”

“We’ll resupply at Clines Corners before turning south. The general authorized us to exchange some supply chits, redeemable at Kirtland.”

“Redeemable at Kirtland?” The man roared as the rest of the group broke out in chuckles. “So Generalissimo Bayclock is going to let people walk into Albuquerque and pick up food? Well, then. You won’t mind donating some chits to make sure you get through the pass? For protection, you understand.”

Bobby drew himself up. This was weirdly medieval. “The chits aren’t for passage. We’re an official military expedition, operating under martial law. I’ll ask you gentlemen to allow us to pass, or face the consequences.”

The men laughed among themselves. The bearded man stepped closer. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Lieutenant. I was asking for a donation. If you can include a couple of these horses, and some of your supplies along with the chits, we’ll help you along.” He spoke softly and stared at Bobby.

As he approached, he seemed to notice Sergeant Morris for the first time. His eyes widened. “So what are you, missie, his protection? You’re probably worth more than a horse, aren’t you?”

Sergeant Morris pulled out her revolver. The man grinned. “You military types haven’t used those guns for a while, have you?” He puffed up as he walked, changing his path from Bobby to Catilyn. “What makes you so sure they’ll work?”

Bobby raised his voice. “This is your final warning.”

The man ignored him. He was within five yards when Sergeant Morris calmly brought the revolver up. She aimed at his crotch and glanced at Bobby; Bobby nodded, and she clicked off a round. The explosion of the gun echoed off the bare boulders.

The man grabbed at his groin and fell, screaming. The others in the mob stood in shock, uncertain what to do.

Bobby yanked out his rifle and moved it from side to side. The men took a hurried step back. Bobby raised his voice over the man’s screaming. “Anyone else?” He flipped off the safety.

The men murmured and made an opening for them. Bobby pointed his rifle at a teenage boy nearest the road. “Help your friend—Kirtland hospital will do what they can. The rest of you listen up! What goes on up here is your business, but down in the city, you’re under martial law. That law extends to any military personnel traveling through this pass.” He held up his rifle. “Our weapons still work just fine. Remember that next time.”

Bobby motioned with his head for Sergeant Morris and the three wide-eyed scientists to follow at a fast trot. “Move it.”

They rode the horses through the opening made by the bandits. Behind them, the scavengers muttered in indecision, the wounded man screamed on the ground. Bobby and Sergeant Morris kept their weapons leveled.

They didn’t speak until they left the group far behind. Soon, the rustling of their horses moving along the dusty roadside was the only sound. After another ten minutes, they rounded a curve to where the steep mountain pass opened up to show the eastern valley spreading out in front of them. Bobby could see mountains on the horizon, eighty miles away. Below them, the skeletal interstate highway wound through foothills. He saw a small town off in the distance.

Sergeant Morris turned and spoke her first unsolicited words to him. “You handled that nicely, Lieutenant.”

Bobby felt his shoulders sag with the release of tension. He gulped, feeling a sour taste claw his throat. “Nice shot yourself.” He yanked back on the reins, pulling the horse to a stop. Leaning over, he vomited.

Sergeant Morris came around. “You all right, sir?”

Bobby heaved once more, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He struggled to sit upright in the saddle. “Now I am. Just getting prepped for the exciting part of this trip.”

Chapter 56

The ranchhouse sat alone at the far end of a winding dirt driveway. Penned in by a barbed-wire fence, sheep grazed among the scrub around the house. Beside the house a 19th-century windmill stood motionless, waiting for a breeze so it could pump water from deep beneath the high desert.

Heather Dixon shifted the neon pink backpack on her shoulders. She brushed a hand across her forehead to wipe sweat and road dust away. The sun pounded down on them as she and Connor trudged up the long drive, leaving imprints from their hiking boots in the dirt.

Connor insisted that Heather take her own turn carrying the pack. He kept time on his watch, making sure that he didn’t do a minute more work than she did. Equality at its best, he called it. Heather wanted to carry her own weight, but he didn’t have to be so nit-picky about it. Instead of the pack, Connor carried the shotgun and the big hunting knife.

“We can get some water up there,” she said, “maybe some food.”

Connor’s face had been sunburned, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The ruddy change in his skin gave him a rugged appearance. He hadn’t shaved, but his beard was pale like his blond hair, making him look like a California beach bum. “I could use a shower too.” Connor winked at her. “Like to join me? I had fun the last time we took one.”

Heather answered him with a forced laugh, and turned away. Over the hard days of walking she had rapidly grown tired of Connor Brooks. She began to regret going with him at all, wandering on this aimless trek across the southwest, moving eastward with no destination in mind.

The sex had been good, one of the better parts of the whole experience. Lying under the stars, camping wherever they felt like, and totally free for the first time in her life—without a job to go back to, not caring about the social conventions that had tangled up her life. But lately even making love with Connor had become unpleasant, as if it was now expected of her, instead of being spontaneous.

Connor called them the “Bonnie and Clyde of the apocalypse,” and his goofy routine grated on her. The look in his eyes and the hidden focus of his thoughts scared her. She realized just how alone she was with him day after day.

Long before they reached the ranchhouse, Heather heard a dog start barking. She could see the big black mutt tied to the windmill frame by a long rope. The dog was shaggy, mostly sheepdog but with a dash of Labrador and German Shepherd. The dog barked and barked, but Heather detected no growling menace. After the petroplague, it probably saw few strangers.

Connor walked beside her carrying the shotgun as if he thought it made him invincible.

The front door opened, and a woman emerged; her open-mouthed smile was like a flower unfolding. She was in her late thirties with her hair tied in an unflattering ponytail. Her clothes had the worn broad-strokes appearance of homemade garments. The woman’s face lit up like a full moon, making her eyes seem small but bright. “Hello! Can we help you?”

Connor, playing his part of tough guy and asshole, stepped forward. He lowered his voice intentionally, like some kind of vigilante. “We came to take food and water.”

Heather shifted her pink backpack. She smiled at the woman. “Can you spare some?”

A second woman stepped out, looking wary. She had hovered just behind the other in the darkness of the house, watching and listening. This woman, perhaps a year or two older, wore similar clothes. Her face was gaunt, as if someone had nipped and tucked and tightened her expression over the years. She gave both Connor and Heather a wary look. “We’ve got a little.”

Connor craned his head, squinting to look through the shadows of the doorway. “So where’s the man of the house?”

The good-natured woman piped up, “He’s returning from temple in Salt Lake City.”

The gaunt woman answered simultaneously, “He’s out back.”

Connor snorted, ignoring the obvious lie. Turning to the good-natured woman, he said, “In Utah?” He pronounced it U-taw. “At temple? What are you, Aztecs or something?”

Heather glared at him and muttered, “They’re Mormons, stupid.”

“Mormons?” Connor straightened up and let out a guffaw. “So, these must be the guy’s two wives.” He laughed again.

The gaunt woman snapped, “Shelda’s my sister.”

“Hey,” Connor said looking to Heather with an expression of concentration on his face, “aren’t Mormons supposed to keep a year’s supply of everything? In case of emergencies. They must have plenty to share.”

The gaunt woman eased back toward the house, vanishing into the shadows. Heather knew she was going to go for a hidden weapon. Connor jerked up the shotgun in a frightening, smooth movement and pointed it toward the doorway.

The dog, its protective instincts suddenly ignited, went wild, barking and straining to the edge of its rope.

Connor pointed the shotgun at the animal as if extending a finger at a recalcitrant child and squeezed the trigger. The explosion echoed around the ranch yard and the dog flew backward into the air, its side ripped open by the scatter blast of the shotgun pellets. It tangled two legs into the rope as it somersaulted and lay in a bloodied heap in the dusty yard.

A smothering silence fell. Everyone stood transfixed. The old windmill, finally stirred by a breeze, creaked and turned twice then fell still.

Heather stared at Connor, not knowing what to say. The gun was so loud. This was the first time he had actually fired it, for all the threatening and blustering he had done over the past few days. It smelled foul and sulfurous.

Connor’s face took on a pinched, calculating look. “Maybe we should just stay, Heather. This place has everything we need, and I’m sick of hiking everywhere.” He laughed. “Go on ladies, get your tennis shoes on. You’ve got a lot of walking to do.”

Heather put her hands on her hips, refusing to let him see her fear. “Connor, cut it out!” She grabbed at the shotgun, but he snatched it away, glaring at her.

The moon-faced woman fell to her knees on the porch. She kept staring at the motionless dog bleeding into the dust.

The gaunt woman reappeared, her eyes as wide as coins. She gripped the door frame but she didn’t move a muscle.

Connor spoke to Heather while keeping the shotgun trained on the women. “What’s your problem? We’ve been trudging around this state like scavengers, and these bitches are sitting fat and cushy on a year’s worth of food. It’s our turn! We deserve a bit of convenience for a change. I thought you wanted to get back at the people who stepped all over you your whole life.”

Heather’s words came out quieter than she intended. “These people never did anything to me.”

“Well then let’s get that Al Sysco you keep complaining about.” He dropped the barrel of the shotgun and pointed toward the ladies’ feet. “I can make him dance like in an old cowboy movie. Pow, pow, pow!”

“Right, I want to hike all the way back to Flagstaff just so I can make a pathetic little man squirm. Cool it, Connor, we’ve got better things to do.” She turned to the gaunt woman, the only one capable of doing anything at the moment. “Would you get us some water and some packaged food?” She hesitated. “Please?”

Connor pointed the shotgun at her moon-faced sister. “And don’t try anything!” Heather didn’t like the predatory look in Connor’s eyes. More and more of his real personality was unfolding before her eyes. With a chill she wondered what he might have done to the women if she wasn’t there.

Connor snorted at Heather. “Man, what made you turn boring all of a sudden?”

Minutes later the gaunt woman returned with the supplies. Heather’s heart raced and she tried to slow her breathing. She was afraid the woman might have gone for a rifle of her own, and then things would have gotten messy. But she carried only water and some boxed food. “Here… now please, leave us alone.”

Connor was about to retort, but Heather grabbed his arm and forced him to turn around. “Let’s go,” she said, and they set off back down the dirt driveway.

As they departed, Heather glanced back. The gaunt woman took her sister’s hand and pulled her to her feet. The two of them moved slowly forward to stand in shock over their dead dog.

Chapter 57

“Hey, Spence—visitors!” The words echoed in the still air around the electromagnetic launcher on the slopes of Oscura Peak.

“Who is it?” Spencer asked with a sigh. Even with the isolation of the post-plague world, people still found ways to interrupt his work a dozen times a day. He swore that he would never be the person to bring back the telephone.

Gilbert Hertoya shrugged, his small, compact body silhouetted against the door of the tin-roofed accelerator. “Don’t know, but they’re riding down from the north.”

Spencer put down his wrench and wiped sweat from his forehead. His new beard itched like crazy in the stuffy heat. Pinholes of light punched through the metal siding, but no breeze came at all. Spencer could only stand to work inside the enclosure for half an hour at a time.

He left a jumble of wiring on the concrete floor. For the past few days it was the only work he could do that wouldn’t bring a squawk from his experimentalists. They kidded him and told him to keep away from the delicate refurbished equipment after the water-pump fiasco. Short no unskilled labor, Gilbert Hertoya had cheerfully put him to work laying down relay switches on the EM launcher facility. “If liberal arts students can handle it during the summer, I think you can manage,” Gilbert said.

Spencer emerged from the dim building into the brilliant desert sun; he held up a hand against the glare as he stared down the mountain slope. Gilbert stood on a pile of metal siding to get higher, pointing toward the north. “Looks like five of them.”

Spencer squinted. “All on horseback?”

“Yeah. And they’re not from Alamogordo unless they got lost coming back from Cloudcroft.”

“Too far south. Besides, they’d stick to the mountains if they were lost.” Spencer thought for a moment. “You know, Romero’s been getting some disturbing reports—martial law in Albuquerque, riots in El Paso, a lot of the Indian pueblos killing anyone who comes on their land. We’ve been lucky up here.”

Gilbert gingerly stepped down from the pile of rattling metal. “What should we do?”

“Send out the welcome wagon, what else?”

In the concrete blockhouse at the base of the railgun launcher, Spencer and Gilbert waited in the shade. The travelers arrowed straight for the facility—the five-mile launcher could be seen for miles around.

Spencer pushed back the drooping brim of his hat, arms folded as he watched the riders approach. The two in front wore Air Force uniforms, and he could see rifles packed behind their saddles. He had a sudden vision of the cavalry riding into town.

“What are they up to?” he muttered. Gilbert shaded his eyes and kept staring.

The broad-shouldered man in uniform looked young and big enough to be a football player. He called out when they were fifty yards away. “Yo! I’m Lieutenant Bobby Carron, looking for Dr. Lockwood. Can you tell me where to find him?”

Spencer squinted at the young man; the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Had they met before?

One of the three men in back leaned to the side and shouted, “Hey, Gilbert! That you, you old sand rat?”

Gilbert Hertoya broke into a grin. “Arnie!” He turned to Spencer and dropped his voice. “I used to work with him at Sandia. He’s okay.”

Arnie spread his arms. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Come on, let’s talk.” As the visitors kept approaching, Spencer saw a troubled look cross Arnie’s face. “You’re lucky you were down here when the plague hit, Gilbert. A lot of people died.”

Lieutenant Carron swung off his horse; Spencer racked his brain, trying to recall where he’d seen the man before. And then he remembered: the drive back from Livermore, the rental car breaking down out in the California desert. Spencer grinned and held out a hand. “I knew you looked familiar, Lieutenant. I’m Spencer Lockwood—you rescued me, just about a month ago, when I ran out of gas near Death Valley.”

Bobby held onto the horse’s reins and squinted at Spencer. A smile grew across his face. “You’re right. You know, I’d forgotten your name—and you didn’t have a beard then, did you?”

“No need to waste razors.”

Bobby laughed. “It didn’t occur to me that you’d be the same person I was supposed to find.” He introduced his group. Everyone seemed pleased except sour-faced Sergeant Morris. She stiffly shook Spencer’s hand without a trace of warmth.

Spencer said, “What can I do for you, now that you’ve come across half the state looking for me?”

“We heard you’ve been generating electricity down here,” Bobby said. “We came to get the full details.”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy. I was afraid this might happen.”

Bobby fumbled with the button on his uniform shirt. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper, smoothed it, then handed it to Spencer. He looked embarrassed. “We’re actually on an official mission, for what it’s worth. I’m representing General Bayclock from Kirtland.”

Spencer held onto the paper, but kept looking at Bobby. “I thought you said you were assigned to China Lake. What’s a Navy man doing in the middle of the desert?”

“That’s a long story. Here, this explains part of it.”

Spencer started to read the paper. The words ATTENTION TO ORDERS were stamped across the top. He lifted an eyebrow. “Bayclock is the head guy up at the base, isn’t he?”

“Base commander… and, uh, Marshall of Albuquerque, I guess with the martial law and all that.”

“Marshall, huh. Like Matt Dillon?” Spencer scanned the dense paragraphs, growing more uneasy. “So this general thinks that, since he was technically responsible for our logistics before the petroplague, we’re under his martial law authority now?” Spencer looked up. “He never once visited our facility, never so much as called me on the phone—and now we’re supposed to develop a plan to provide Albuquerque with electricity, just because he says so?” It might have been funny under other circumstances. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

Bobby shrugged.

“The general is not kidding, Dr. Lockwood,” Sergeant Morris said stiffly.

Spencer folded the paper, resisting the impulse to rip it to shreds and scatter the pieces across the desert. He ignored Sergeant Morris. “So what do you think of this, Lieutenant?”

Bobby held up his hands. “Hey, I’m only the messenger…”

“Don’t worry, you saved my life once, and I won’t shoot you for bringing bad news. In fact, I don’t even have a gun.”

Spencer turned to the rest of the visitors. Gilbert Hertoya and Arnie stepped up beside them. Squat Sergeant Morris remained on her horse like a statue of an old war hero that belonged in some small-town square.

Spencer said, “Okay, so what’s going on? What do the rest of you know about this?”

Bobby Carron said slowly, “Can we get out of the sun?” He took Spencer’s arm. Stepping away from Sergeant Morris, he whispered, “I’ve got stuff to tell you about Bayclock that you won’t believe!”

Spencer, Bobby Carron, and Sergeant Morris sat on their mounts outside the fenced-off antenna farm. Rita Fellenstein and the three visiting scientists stood on the other side of Spencer. The expanse of whiplike microwave antennas spread out before them, like a field of gleaming silver stalks.

Spencer leaned on the saddle as Bobby spoke. The young officer seemed to have trouble verbalizing his thoughts.

“I’m not a scientist or anything like that,” said Bobby, “but I had enough engineering back at Annapolis to know the difference between what’s possible and what’s likely. I’d sure hate to go back and tell the general that although it might be possible to generate electricity this way, it isn’t likely to happen on the scale he envisions. This is really just a test bed! There’s not enough power for everyone in Albuquerque. So what should we do? Tell him it was a waste of our time?”

Spencer shifted his weight in his saddle. “I don’t think I’d want to supply Bayclock with electricity even if I could. And if I can believe what you told me, they should oust him!”

“Believe him, Dr. Lockwood,” Arnie broke in harshly. “My wife and children would still be alive if it wasn’t for Bayclock’s crackdowns.”

Spencer scratched his beard. “Helping Bayclock amounts to validating his position, agreeing with the atrocities he’s committed.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I can’t help you. We’ve got a fragile enough toehold out here, and taking on anything else right now would push us over the brink. Between you and me, if the general were running a different sort of operation, we might be able to take on some extra people, try and help him in the long term. I don’t want to seem like a jerk, but…” He shrugged.

Bobby’s horse lifted its head and snorted, as if to agree with what Spencer said. Bobby pulled back on the reins. “I can’t blame you.” He smiled weakly. “I’m not looking forward to going back and delivering the bad news.”

Rita Fellenstein pulled her horse over to join them. Her long legs dangled down to the horse’s knees, even in her stirrups. She spat a wad of chewing tobacco at the ground. “So why go back, Bobby? We could use some help getting the launcher running. A big guy like you would come in handy with the launcher.”

Bobby looked out across the desert. Spencer guessed he had been thinking the same thing himself.

“If nobody goes back, how’s the general going to know that something didn’t happen to you?” Rita continued. “He knows about the gangs outside the city, and he probably doesn’t have a clue what other crazies are out here. It took five of you two weeks to get here. So what’s he going to do, force an army to march down to rescue you? Sounds like he’s got enough trouble in his own back yard.”

Arnie placed a hand on Gilbert Hertoya’s shoulder. “No way am I going back there. I’m staying here.” The two other scientists quickly voiced their agreement.

Bobby stared out at the antenna farm. A warm breeze whipped around them, driving a miniature duststorm.

“The Lieutenant and I are not deserting,” Sergeant Morris said. “You can talk about him all you like, but General Bayclock does have the proper authority—and you are all obligated to follow his orders.”

Spencer turned his horse around, putting his back to the wind. Through the rising heat he caught a glimpse of the supply wagon from Alamogordo coming toward the blockhouse in the distance. “Let’s get out of this wind. We’ll unload the supply wagon and talk about this later.”

By the time the group reached the command trailers, the supplies were mostly unloaded. Spencer was surprised to see Lance Nedermyer standing on the flat back of the cart, helping roll a 50-gallon aluminum container of water off the side. Spencer pushed back his hat. “Hi Lance. Need help?”

“Sure.”

With the extra people, it took little time to unload the five drums of water. Rita went to check the supplies stored under the trailer, taking the three new scientists with her. Nedermyer leaned back against the wagon and wiped his face with the back of his hand; his mirrored sunglasses had fallen apart more than a month ago, casualties of the petroplague.

“So what brings you out here, Lance?”

The Washington bureaucrat took a long drink of tepid water before answering. Like the others, he had not shaved in nearly a month. His beard had shifted from looking scraggly to the verge of bushiness. Lance looked as if he missed his suits even more than his wife and daughters back in the D.C. area.

He sounded bitter. “They’ve changed their minds about heading up to Cloudcroft. You’ve got them excited about bringing electricity on-line, and they don’t want to think about wintering in the mountains. I guess too many people remember the old ways, and you’re giving them false hope to hang on.”

“How do you know it’s a false hope?”

A bemused smile came over Lance’s face. “You really don’t know, do you Spence?”

“What are you talking about? We need all the hope we can get.”

Lance shook his head. “They’re barely hanging on down there. It’s tough, Spencer, not a game. The majority of people might not make it through the first year.”

Spencer looked incredulous. “All the more reason to get things going here! What good does it do to herd them into the mountains?”

“There’s game, firewood… and water for God’s sake! At least they’ve got the basics to keep them alive. Down here, all you have is desert—and your dammed microwave farm that can’t even transmit power more than twenty miles. Hell, we’d be better off in Albuquerque—at least General Bayclock is doing the sensible thing, feeding the people, keeping the law. He’s a hell of a lot more realistic than anyone around here.”

Spencer bristled at the criticism. He really didn’t need this; maybe it was time to do what a leader was supposed to do, and toss the bugger out! He’d put up with Lance for too long, hoping he’d change his ways.

“We ought to feel pretty lucky, Lance. From what Lieutenant Carron here has been telling us, things are ten times as bad in Albuquerque. I can’t buy any of this ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ survival talk. I think it’s about time we start all pulling together.”

Spencer nodded to the three scientists who had accompanied Bobby Carron and Sergeant Morris down from Albuquerque. “Ask those three what it means to have hope, where somebody’s actually trying to make things better.”

Lance stared at Spencer. “What are you saying?”

Spencer felt lightheaded—in the past he had tried to avoid direct confrontation, but these were new times, new ways. “This job is tough enough without being second guessed on everything I do, Lance. It’s time for you to either pitch in or get out.”

“Second guessed? What, are you afraid to get a little valid criticism? Come on, Spencer—every science project in the book debates the issues.”

“That’s just it—this isn’t a science project anymore. It’s survival. We’ve debated things long enough. Either throw your hat in the ring or get out.” Spencer breathed heavily, his face flushed.

The smile on Lance’s face tightened. “So it’s put up or shut up? I didn’t think you had it in you, Spencer.”

“If you’re going to Cloudcroft, I want you on the wagon when it heads back. You can have your pick of supplies before you go and a horse.” Spencer paused. “Lieutenant Carron’s heading back to Albuquerque if you’d rather go there. It’s your choice.”

Lance’s mouth twisted up. He turned to Bobby Carron. “When are you heading back, Lieutenant? Mind if I come with you?”

Bobby turned away; his massive hand opened and closed.

Sergeant Morris looked to Bobby, but when he still didn’t answer, she said, “I’d like to get back as soon as possible, sir. The general was quite explicit in his orders.”

Bobby kept staring out in the distance. Lance turned to him. “Lieutenant? Is it okay if I ride along?”

“Do what you want.” It took Bobby an effort to speak. “I’m staying here.” He looked to Spencer. “That is, if Dr. Lockwood needs another hand getting this microwave farm to work.”

Spencer blinked. “Sure, uh, we can always use someone who wants to help. Same for you, Sergeant Morris.” He hesitated. “And that goes for you, too, Lance, if you change your mind.”

Lance Nedermyer shook his head; his entire gaunt body moved with the movement. “I’ve made up my mind. Sergeant… ?”

The woman’s mouth was drawn tight; she looked at Bobby as if he had become the lowest form of slime. Her deep voice sounded harsh. “The Lieutenant is old enough to know what he’s doing… and knows the consequences for disobeying an order, deserting during martial law. They hang people for less than that.”

Bobby nodded, still looking at the horizon. His hand continued to open and close. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve seen Bayclock do it.”

Chapter 58

With pillars of steam and dark smoke, the train announced its presence in the morning calm. The whistle, thin and tinny in the distance, was loud enough that the people in the Altamont commune dropped their work and ran to hilltops to see what was coming down the Central Valley.

“It’s a train,” Todd Severyn said in disbelief, shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand and craning forward. “It’s a friggin’ train! Can you believe it?”

Jackson Harris stood next to him, his dark skin glistening with sweat. His beard and hair stuck out in all directions, as if he had wrestled with a hurricane. “An old steam train,” Harris said. “How did they ever get it running?”

“How do they keep it running!”

The distant locomotive hauled four cars behind it, a passenger car, dining car, and two box cars, as well as a car filled with wood mounded high behind the engineer’s cab.

“This is great news,” Todd said. “I’ll check it out. Looks like he’s heading toward Tracy.”

When Todd whistled, both horses trotted over, eager for a ride. He patted Stimpy on the neck. “Next time, girl. It’s Ren’s turn.”

Todd saddled Ren and made ready to swing himself up, then ran back toward the small house trailer. Though Todd got up at dawn, Iris was never an early riser. And although they shared the trailer for convenience, Todd was careful to respect her privacy. He banged on the side. “Hey, Iris—come on out!”

She stepped out the swinging door, bleary-eyed and blinking at the commotion.

“It’s a train, Iris! I’m going to check it out. I’ll be back as soon as I have some information.”

“A train? Impossible.” She folded her arms. “How does is it work? They couldn’t have found a way to neutralize the petroplague.”

“Do you want come with me?”

She ran a hand through her unkempt black hair and seemed to think about it. “No, go on. Just let me know what you find out.”

Todd had already turned for Stimpy, too excited to reply.

The locomotive sat ticking and hissing, at a standstill in the Tracy railyards. Sleek like a giant black caterpillar, its wheels and cow-catcher were blazoned in bright scarlet. The ornate hand rail running along the boiler, the hinges, the bell and steam-whistle all shone bright gold. The sooty smokestack flared out in a wide black cone, and all its rivets glittered like brass buttons. In gold-painted letters under the two windows in the engineer’s cab was the name Steam Roller.

Todd led his horse in among the people crowding the tracks. Iris was right—what was the catch? If this one train works, then where are the rest of them?

Other people arrived, walking along the railroad tracks, stepping between the ties. They had seen the locomotive approaching for miles, and they had walked from their homes and their work out in the produce fields. Todd sensed a childish excitement, as if Santa Claus had appeared to them long after they had stopped believing in him.

The locomotive steam whistle blew with a screech that set them all jumping. Todd grabbed Ren’s bridle to keep the horse from rearing in panic. The crowd fell silent as someone stirred in the locomotive’s engine cab and stepped out, squinting in the bright sunlight and looking at his audience. Three other men stayed inside the cab, watching the crowd and allowing their spokesman to meet the spectators alone.

The man wasn’t tall, but his build was massive and bearlike. He had broad shoulders and a muscular chest stuffed inside a cotton engineer’s coveralls. His dark and splotchy complexion hinted at a mixed race; his skin glistened with sweat.

But the most striking feature was that his completely hairless head sat on his shoulders like a bowling ball: no beard, no mustache—even his eyebrows had been shaved away. As the bald man gripped the door frame with one hand, Todd noticed dark hair sprouting from his knuckles. What would make a man want to shave his entire head like that?

The engineer bellowed at them in a voice that seemed used to giving orders and shouting long distances. “Civilization isn’t dead if you don’t let it die! We can’t give up! With human perseverance, we can bring it all back.”

The man’s words seemed rehearsed, as if he had shouted the same thing at every stop along the track. Still, the speech reflected Todd’s own thoughts. “As more and more of us pitch in, we can make a miracle happen.”

The people standing on each side of the train murmured, as if they didn’t believe him. But at least they listened to the man—he had impressed them just by arriving in his train.

“What’s your name?” Todd shouted.

The dark man looked at him. “Call me… Casey Jones.”

Some of the people snickered, others didn’t get the joke. “Listen to me,” said the man claiming to be Casey Jones. “We got this train running again. Wood-burning locomotives were used long before we became dependent on plastics and fossil fuels. We had to refit some parts, but it was nothing that a little know-how and persistence couldn’t do.

“We’re traveling through central California to collect your extra food, the stuff that’ll decay in your fields. We intend to take this train down to Los Angeles and bring relief to the starving people there.”

“Boo!” someone shouted. “What about ourselves, man? LA deserves what they got—polluting the air, squandering water!”

Casey Jones glared at the audience from his high position on the Steam Roller’s steps and began to speak with the fervor of a revivalist preacher. “They’re cut off down there! They need the supplies. They’re starving. Starving. You’ve got too much here. You can’t use everything in your fields, and you know it.” He held his hands out, pleading, as if he needed this mission to succeed more than the people in Los Angeles did.

“Give me your surplus. We’ll take it down to feed the people. It’s the least we can do. Consider it the first step to reconnecting the United States. How can you argue against that?”

“Screw the U.S! What have they done for us?”

“What will they give in exchange?” the mayor of Tracy asked.

“Who knows?” Casey Jones said, as if angry at the suggestion. “What’s important is we’ll be helping them. On my trip back up, we can haul industrial supplies, things they can’t use. We’ll try to barter as best as we can. How would you like new pieces of sheet glass, or metal, clothes, ceramic parts,?”

“How do we know you’ll bring anything back?” the mayor said.

“You don’t! You’re missing the whole point.”

“I’ll give you some,” a tall, thin man said. Todd recognized him as Marvin Esteban, one of the local farmers. “I’ve got cabbages. I’m already sick of cabbages. We’re going to be eating sauerkraut all winter.” People chuckled.

As a few others chimed in with offers to donate bushels of almonds or tomatoes or fruit, Todd found his mind wandering. This train was making a bee-line down the Central Valley toward Los Angeles… toward Pasadena and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And the solar satellites.

Todd leaned over to pat Ren’s neck, his face burning with excitement. This just might be a chance to do something worthwhile, something that could really make a difference—besides acting as a technical liaison for Doog’s commune. He didn’t know if that crackpot solar-power scheme would work, but just having the chance made it worth the trip. And the fact that it seemed so impossible made it all the more desirable to do. Anything was better than sitting around and growing sprouts.

He grinned and yanked on Ren’s bridle as the horse began to sniff the ground. Todd wondered what he would have to do to talk Iris into going with him.

Back at the Altamont commune, Todd and Iris’s trailer sat on four wheel rims, leveled with concrete blocks. Todd had meant to move out as soon as he found another place, but he never seemed to get around to it.

The trailer had once been hauled around the country by a retired couple from Alexandria, Louisiana. Abandoned in the Altamont and scavenged by Doog, the trailer had begun falling apart long before the petroplague hit. Its sides were white aluminum, bent in places, stained with green traces of moss.

After Todd and Iris had patched the cracks and stuffed rags into the holes left by dissolving insulation, the trailer remained cozy even in the evening chill. Remembering that first night together by the campfire, Todd had suggested they sleep in separate beds. Iris had shrugged, not pushing the issue—and Todd kicked himself, too embarrassed to raise the issue again.

Now, snug inside their trailer with the door closed and the windows shut, Todd and Iris argued far into the night.

Iris talked, her words growing sharper. “Todd, you’re just excited. You’re like a little kid in a toy store and you’re going off half cocked. You can’t save the world by yourself. And all you’d be doing is running away when we need you here.”

“But we’re not doing anything here,” he said in exasperation. “We’re like a bunch of old soldiers who never saw battle, sitting around talking about the war. You worked so hard at Stanford, trying to stop the spread of the petroplague. And now that the world has changed, you just want to roll over and play dead. There’s still a lot more things we can do, and this is one of them! Casey Jones and his train are proof that it’s not as hopeless as we thought. Let’s at least try it.” He hesitated, and said almost as in afterthought, “We can always come back here if it doesn’t work.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Casey Jones!” She sat forward on the edge of the small bed. Anger vibrated from her. “Get a grip, Todd. Look at a map for once. We don’t have any real transportation. We can’t just think of ourselves as the jet-setting crowd like before. You don’t leave San Francisco, jaunt down to Los Angeles, pick up some satellites, hoof it over to New Mexico, and then trot back here if it doesn’t work.”

“Don’t you feel any responsibility for what happened? Remember spraying Promethus? Well, I do.”

“But there are so many important things we can do here. I agree that the world is going to have to pick itself up, but it has to be a grassroots movement, in small places like this. We have to build from the bottom up, not the top down. We don’t have a foundation anymore, that’s what we have to work on.”

Todd thought of the days he spent aimlessly riding around the hills, just talking to people, shooting the breeze, carrying news and gossip from one group to another. What point did that serve? He tried to keep from snorting. “Like what?”

“Like fine-tuning trade between the communities surrounding us. Like working on getting those electrical lines laid from the windmills out to Tracy, or back down into Livermore. You said yourself the Lab people there have come up with ways to refurbish substations and bring back limited electricity. Think of what that would mean in rebuilding the world.”

Todd didn’t see how that was different from using the solar-power satellites. Besides, once the smallsats were functioning they could serve a much wider area than just a limited island up in the hills. But that wasn’t the main reason he wanted to go.

“Everything that we do here sets an example. It has an impact, Todd. Just stick with it and you’ll see.”

“Yeah, like your music concert. Tell me how that’s more important than getting an entire solar-power farm working. Explain to me how finding a way to play rock-and-roll is going to help a lot of people.”

Iris looked stung. “You’ve got to have a dream, Todd.”

“Sounds more like a nightmare to me,” Todd muttered, his own anger growing… he couldn’t reign it in anymore. “Bringing back drugs and noise and juvenile delinquents—that’s one thing I’d rather leave behind with the old society. Iron Zeppelin and Visual Purple and Neon Kumquats or whatever those bands are called. You can keep them.”

Appalled, Iris actually giggled. “Todd, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

Todd knocked the wooden chair backward as he stood up. The chair would have tipped over, but the trailer was so cramped it merely bumped against the wall and righted itself again.

“Fine, Iris,” he said. “If trying to make the world a better place makes me stupid, I’ll just go on being an idiot. But at least I’ll be helping a heck of a lot more people then these wackos we’re living with.” He opened the door.

“Todd—where are you going?” Iris’s dark eyes widened.

“Out. Away from… from this.”

“Todd!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. That’s a promise,” he growled and stomped outside.

The door slammed by itself, and he heard Iris calling, “Wait!” But her words were cut off by the smack of the door, which sounded like a gunshot in the darkness. Todd walked off. He considered taking one of the horses to Tracy, where Casey Jones and his steam train waited. But he knew the commune would need Ren and Stimpy—and they’d be safe here, just like Alex Kramer would have wanted. He went off on foot into the moonlit night.

Inside the refurbished dining car of the steam train, Captain Miles Uma, formerly of the Oilstar Zoroaster, relaxed and pondered the night. Used for storage, the dining car now carried crates of ripening fruits and vegetables, nuts, and other produce. The odors mingled in the tight space.

Rex O’Keefe and the Gambotti brothers kept to themselves in the passenger car; Uma didn’t mind. Once Uma had gained their confidence, they did what they were told, as if they were happy that someone had finally stepped up and taken charge, accepted some responsibility. Like any good captain, Uma treated them with respect—and now that they had order back in their lives, they didn’t mind the work.

Uma cracked open two of the narrow windows to let the night breeze in. Outside, the sleeping city of Tracy was dark, save for the fires of a few late-night people; everyone else bedded down with the fall of darkness.

By the flickering light of a stubby beeswax candle, Uma dipped his fingers in a bowl of tepid water, took a bar of soap and lathered his face and head. He removed a long, sharp straight-razor, propped a small mirror up against the inner wall of the train where he could see his reflection, then began to shave by candlelight. First, to hone his attention, he shaved his eyebrows; then he worked at his beard stubble, and finally scraped his head, shaving the back by feel alone.

It made him feel clean, and renewed and different. He wished he could slice away the pounding guilt as easily.

Guiding a train along the abandoned tracks was very different from captaining an enormous supertanker like the Zoroaster. But it kept him moving and gave him some way to stop the clamoring depression; Rex O’Keefe and the others were swept along with his dream. Uma found that by focusing on a task, he could stop thinking about the wreck against the Golden Gate Bridge….

As everything fell apart, Uma had wandered north from San Francisco, changing his name, fearing that someone might recognize him. Uma had been doing a good job of blaming himself. He worked odd jobs, trying to run from himself and watching with a growing anguish as things grew worse. Until he stumbled across the train station in Napa Valley.

Uma finished shaving and blew out the candle, feeling his way to an empty, comfortable seat in the refurbished dining car. He was exhausted, not from the work that he did to keep the wood piled in the furnace, but from being sociable tonight.

He didn’t enjoy social occasions, but the people had prepared a meal for them, wanting to talk for hours, until Uma and the others had finally gone back to the train. He had tried to answer most of their questions, but it got tiresome after a while.

In the morning at dawn, just as he was struggling to awaken from his cramped sleeping space on the dining car bench, Uma snapped his eyes open when he heard a rapping on one of the half-open windows.

“Hey, Casey Jones, you in there?” Uma wrenched his stocky body into a sitting position and blinked out at a tall cowboy. “I want to join your group,” the cowboy said. “I think you need another person.”

Uma went stiffly to the window of the dining car, not welcoming the man inside. The cowboy walked over with a large nervous grin on his face and stuck his hand through the open window.

“I’m Todd Severyn, pleased to meet you.” Uma shook his hand warily. The cowboy looked strong, but troubled circles surrounded his red-rimmed eyes. Grass stains splotched his pants. “I walked all night long just to get here.”

“We could maybe use some help, “ Uma said, “but it’s a backbreaking job. You sure it’s worth it to you?”

“It depends on your priorities.” Todd’s gruff answer seemed to speak to more than just the question Uma had asked. “I got my reasons.”

Uma stepped aside just enough to let the cowboy onto the train. “Don’t we all?”

Chapter 59

Five miles south of General Bayclock’s Manzano Mountain headquarters, a field of mirrors spread across three acres. Though gaps separated the three-foot mirrors, the reflected glare gave the impression of a seamless plain of molten silver.

The suggestion to use Sandia Albuquerque’s abandoned solar test project to generate electricity sounded like a good idea, but Bayclock wanted to see the apparatus himself.

The computer-controlled mirrors were designed to rotate, follow the sun and focus the blinding rays on a three-story concrete tower. The intense illumination heated a special vessel to generate steam that would turn turbines and produce power. Now the mirrors stood frozen in place, useless without hourly brute-force manual adjustment. It would take years to polish the mothballed mirrors back to the accuracy needed for optimal focus.

The scientific pinheads didn’t have the common sense to engineer anything practical, Bayclock thought as he scowled at the useless apparatus. No allowance for contingencies. They reveled in the nifty toys they built and patted each other on the back. The general held little hope that refurbishing this system would be anything more than a futile effort. He had seen enough. He strode through the field of mirrors, back to where his horse waited with the armed escort.

The woman who headed up Sandia’s energy research program—Bayclock had already forgotten her name—trailed after him. She looked as overbearing as the number of programs she had once managed. At just over six feet tall and weighing close to 200 pounds, she rivaled Bayclock in size; her big butt and flabby arms implied a contempt for her own physical health. Her ragtag group of scientists followed as she kept up with Bayclock, step by step.

“You want the electricity, we’ll deliver. It’s a simple matter of granting us access to the dry lubricants. I guarantee we can have part of the mirror field up and running at minimal levels within a week. Replacing the seals comes next. And after that, eighteen months to optimize the mirrors. No problem.”

Bayclock reached the edge of the mirror maze. His executive officer and three armed guards waited on their own horses. Bayclock said, “You told me this field was computer controlled. How are you going to synchronize the mirrors’ movements to the sun without computers?”

The woman waved her hands while she talked, as if pointing at an equation-strewn whiteboard. “We’d need less than a hundred people, each physically positioning ten mirrors apiece.”

Bayclock snorted. “A hundred people out in the sun everyday? While you’re polishing mirrors? That’s an awful lot of work to get a hundred kilowatts of power. Intelligence reports that’s ten times less than the White Sands group can deliver!”

The Sandia woman put her hands on her hips. “That’s a hundred kilowatts more than you have right now! And it’s a lot fewer people than you use to chase kids after curfew. What’s more important?”

Bayclock walked away, ignoring her. She grabbed him by the elbow. “Look, General, you wanted a way to generate electricity. We can do it. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

Bayclock shook his arm free. One of the guards unshouldered his firearm, but the exec put out an arm to stop him. The exec called, “Messenger approaching, General.”

Bayclock spotted a lone horseman traveling across the desert. He had left orders not to be bothered—unless it was important. He turned back to the scientists. “There’s not enough dry lubricant to go around. We need it for refurbishing our weapons, so you’ll have to come up with another way. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a slight problem obtaining supplies right now.”

“But without the lubricant, the mirrors won’t turn,” the woman said.

“Figure out a way! Your minimal electricity should be enough to power the Manzano complex. I want it before the end of the week. The rest of the city will have to wait.”

Dismissing the Sandia woman, Bayclock turned as the approaching horseman reached the field of mirrors. Wearing desert camouflage, the rider dismounted and popped to attention, snapping off a salute. “The White Sands expedition has returned, General.”

Bayclock said, “Thank God for that Navy pilot.” He swung up on his horse, leaving the scientists in the middle of a thousand reflected suns. The exec motioned for the guards to follow.

The Sandia woman raised her voice. “General, you’re asking the impossible!”

Bayclock dug his heels in the black gelding’s flank, turning the mount around. “Do you think you’re playing in some R&D sandbox? Just do it! You also better be ready to interface with White Sands. I’ve had it with people questioning my authority.”

As the general rode off with his escort, he felt a grim satisfaction that at least Lieutenant Carron had come through. Two types of people—fighter pilots and weenies. He knew who he could trust.

Bayclock took the point at a fast trot as his party rode through the high chain-link gates of the Manzano complex. Armed guards stood at attention in the shade, giving their commander a salute as he rode past.

Four razor-wire fences surrounded the complex, twenty feet apart with bare dirt in between, making the area look like a giant racetrack draped over the rugged hills. Several two-story buildings, made of wood and covered with chipped white paint, formed the central part of the installation. Dozens of concrete bunkers dotted the four hills.

Bayclock rode directly up to the largest bunker behind the old wooden buildings. Only two horses stood outside tied to a NO PARKING sign, nuzzling the dusty ground for something to eat.

Bayclock turned to his exec. “Get Mayor Reinski out here ASAP. Tell him Lieutenant Carron is back from White Sands. His luck just changed.”

Reaching his office, Bayclock found Sergeant Catilyn Morris and a gaunt bearded man he did not recognize. They both stood when the general entered. Covered with trail dust, the stocky blond sergeant looked as if she hadn’t had a shower in weeks. He would have to reprimand her for not making herself more presentable for her commanding officer.

“Afternoon, General.”

“Sergeant.” He nodded at the stranger, looking around for the Navy pilot. “Welcome back. Where’s Lieutenant Carron? I expect him to give me a full debriefing.”

Sergeant Morris drew her mouth tight. “Well, sir—”

The bearded man stepped forward and held out a dirty hand. “I’m Dr. Lance Nedermyer, General. We met a few months ago at a ceremony to turn over the adaptive optics facility to the University of New Mexico. Jeffrey Mayeaux was with us.”

Bayclock returned the handshake and squinted at Nedermyer’s face. He remembered the stranger as a heavier man with mirrored sunglasses and a brusque manner. Nedermyer looked as if he had lost thirty pounds, the beard offset the thinness of his face. Bayclock did not approve of beards. The Washington bureaucrat looked more like an old prospector than a DOE inspector.

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Bayclock asked, looking at Sergeant Morris. “And what are you doing here, Nedermyer?”

Sergeant Morris stiffened as Nedermyer spoke quickly. “I was stuck down at White Sands when the petroplague hit. I tried to help the people of Alamogordo move to safety in the mountains, but they elected to throw their hats in with Spencer Lockwood. He’s a loose cannon, General, does whatever he damned well feels like, without regard to the consequences.

“He’s got them convinced he can save the world with his solar satellites. Instead of trying to make themselves self-sufficient with the resources on hand, he’s got them working on a railgun launcher, running electrical wires out to substations in the middle of the desert.”

Bayclock sat behind his desk. “Does the solar farm work?”

“That depends.” Nedermyer fidgeted. “But—”

Bayclock raised his voice. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “I asked a simple question, Nedermyer. Does it work?”

“Well, yes sir, it does.”

“So, Lieutenant Carron and the Sandia scientists I sent down there are finalizing plans to bring the microwave technology up to Albuquerque? How soon can we get it working here?”

Nedermyer looked annoyed. “You don’t understand, General. Lockwood’s dangerous. He’s got his priorities all wrong. He’s having trouble even transmitting the power over twenty miles—”

Bayclock interrupted, tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death. “Do you damned scientists have to find a caveat in every argument? The microwave farm works, does it or doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes it does, but—”

“Then I don’t care if they transmit the power into the New Mexico utility grid or if they build us another microwave farm up here. It works—that’s all that matters. The orbiting satellites are immune to the petroplague, and it’s a resource we should use. I’ve got two laboratories full of people that can work out the details. Got it?”

Nedermyer opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it, frustrated. Sergeant Morris stepped forward. “General, I’m afraid you’re not going to get any support from White Sands.”

“What?” Bayclock looked up. “That’s ludicrous. The White Sands facility is under my command. Did Lieutenant Carron stay down there to iron out the details?”

Sergeant Morris looked hopelessly to Nedermyer, who shook his head. Nedermyer said, “Your boys have jumped ship, General. Not only is White Sands refusing to help you, but the scientists you sent and your Navy lieutenant have elected to work for Lockwood. They’re not coming back.”

“They deserted,” Sergeant Morris said, as if it was her fault.

A storm gathered inside Bayclock’s head. “Impossible! Carron wouldn’t even think of desertion. He’s a fighter pilot! He can’t.”

“I”m afraid it’s true, General,” said Sergeant Morris. Her voice sounded strained, as if each word might carry her over the edge of a cliff. “I… I warned him about what he was doing. He fully understands the consequences.”

Bayclock felt his face flush with anger and disbelief. He looked at his lithographs of fighter aircraft, his awards, his diplomas. Survival in the post-petroleum world was built on a foundation of eggshells, and cornerstones could not be allowed to crumble. He’d trusted the Navy lieutenant—fighter pilots were a special breed, too tightly taught, too highly focused and motivated to make frivolous decisions. Dammit, there had to be a mistake, some other reason why Carron would appear to bug out.

Bayclock looked narrowly at Nedermyer. “Could this Lockwood character have coerced Lieutenant Carron into staying, forced him in some way?”

Nedermyer shook his head. “No, General. It was pretty clear the lieutenant chose to stay. Dr. Lockwood vowed never to help you and practically dared you to come take over his site….”

Bayclock’s breathing quickened. “Sergeant? Is that your assessment as well?”

Sergeant Morris held Bayclock’s gaze. This time her voice was firm. “That’s pretty much it, sir. Except that Dr. Lockwood said that the people of Albuquerque should revolt and oust you.”

The general simmered. When he was in a fighter plane and lost control, Bayclock relied on his training: keep a cool head, run through the procedures. Losing control of himself as well as the machine he commanded would kill him for sure. The same thing was happening now on a larger scale. He focused his anger into a small, laser-bright pinpoint.

He knew his priorities. Returning electrical power to Albuquerque was the next crucial step in pulling the city out of this mess. He intended his operation to be a model for President Mayeaux’s monumental efforts to keep the country together. The U.S. needed reliable electricity to bring access to water, food, transportation, communication.

And they needed law and order. With half a million people relying on Bayclock’s effort, he knew what he had to do.

His exec stepped through the office door. He tucked his blue cap under his arm and wiped a sheen of perspiration from his sunburned forehead. “Sir, Mayor Reinski is on his way over and will be here within the hour. Do you still want to see him?”

“Later.” Bayclock dismissed his exec with a wave. His jaw tightened. “Nedermyer, what do you know about Lockwood’s operation at White Sands?”

Nedermyer looked puzzled. “Most everything, I suppose. I approved all his designs back at DOE headquarters.”

“Could you get it fully functional?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask you that, doctor. Are you as good as Lockwood?”

Nedermyer lifted his chin. “If I’m given the authority and the manpower, I can do it.”

“All right. I want you to shave off that beard and make yourself presentable.” He turned to Sergeant Morris. “It took you a week to get down there?”

“Yes, sir.”

On horseback, thought Bayclock. That meant about three weeks on a forced march. Could he afford it? With superior weaponry and training, an armed expedition to White Sands would require relatively few men, and the payoff would be enormous, both in the technology they would liberate and in reinforcing the general’s authority.

He spoke to his executive officer with a heavy voice. “Get Colonels David and Nachimya in here. White Sands doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that they’re still under martial law.”

He cracked his knuckles again. “They’re about to have their assets confiscated.”

Chapter 60

The train journey gave purpose to Todd’s life again.

Once the locomotive got up its full head of steam, Todd helped the Gambotti brothers and Rex O’Keefe toss split wood into the furnace. Dax and Roberto Gambotti hoarsely sang old songs while Rex sat behind them, supervising the stoking. Waving smoke from his eyes and sipping on a coffee cup filled with chardonnay, Rex expounded on the virtues of the wine they carried with them: merlot, cabernet, reisling. Todd had never been much of a wine drinker himself.

The big coffee-colored man who called himself Casey Jones didn’t move from the engineer’s cab, as if he had sworn to keep vigil over their journey. Covered with soot and sweating from both the work and the heat, Todd exhilarated in the constant physical effort, helping the Steam Roller chug ahead.

The tracks unreeled in front of them across California’s brown Central Valley. To their left, a low line of hills grew larger hour after hour as the valley widened, and the tracks swung east to flank the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Every ten or twenty miles they had to stop to clear debris from the track; they pushed wood, cars, and once the carcass of a Piper Cub aircraft off the metal rails. Even out in the unpopulated areas, people came running after the train. Once they heard gunshots. Casey Jones wanted to make it the rest of the way to Los Angeles, though, and pushed on without further delays.

The locomotive’s top speed was only 30 miles per hour. The monotonous landscape crawled along, but they made progress. It felt good to be moving. Todd stripped off his shirt and tied it to a post by the locomotive’s open window. Gusts of summer air felt cool on his skin.

He preferred to work with Casey Jones, as the others were too quick to make light of their situation. It was though they used their wit to deny what had happened to the world around them.

On the first night, Todd and Casey labored in silence, trying to outdo each other in their prowess for manual labor. Todd had to chuckle as he thought of how Iris would react to their posturing: “Figures,” she would have said with scorn, “the fall of civilization, and you macho men are still competing against each other!” Sometimes he imagined her standing next to him; in his daydream they journeyed across the worled, trying to make up for the devastation they had helped to unleash upon the world.

He felt a pang from missing her, and he felt guilty as he tried to ignore it… because he was enjoying himself.

His companion was reticent, preoccupied to the point of gloominess. He seemed to wear a shroud of his own guilt. Todd tried to draw him into conversation as they stood side by side in the crowded engineer cab.

“Who are you?” Todd said. He had to shout over the roar of the furnace and the clatter of the train.

“I already told you.”

“Right. What is your real name?”

“None of your damn business!”

Todd brought more wood.

The train chugged along, hour after hour. Todd and Casey changed to working in shifts with the Gambotti brothers and Rex O’Keefe. As he rested, Casey Jones refused to engage in conversation. Todd sat in the dining car munching tomatoes and peeling the outer leaves of cabbages. Damn rabbit food, he thought. He longed for a thick cut of juicy steak, or even a McDonald’s hamburger, but he didn’t have much choice.

The train tracks led to Fresno and then Bakersfield, cities surrounded by sufficient agriculture that the population could feed themselves, though they had no great amounts of food to spare. Casey stopped the train only briefly to exchange news with the gathered crowds. Todd stood back and watched as they flocked to see the Steam Roller puff into the city, a black-and-scarlet icon of lost technology.

On the second day, a spur of the Southern Pacific railroad hooked west from Bakersfield, taking them toward the Los Angeles metropolis. Casey slowed, allowing Todd and Roberto Gambotti to drop to the ground and run ahead to strain at the lever that switched the track. At first Todd was afraid the switch was frozen, but after laying into the mechanism, the two men slowly muscled the track section about.

Though the boxcars were piled high with fruits and vegetables, Todd didn’t know what that amount of food would do for LA. How many millions of people lived in the huge dying city? But Casey insisted they continue, fixated. Todd didn’t try to talk him out of it. He just wanted to get to JPL.

The men rotated duty during the night. The train moved through the darkness with a hypnotic, monotonous clacking. Twice they hit something on the track, but both times it was too small to even slow their pace.

In darkness, Todd stood by the closed door of the roaring boiler. He could feel waves of heat mixed with counterpoints of cool air gusting through the windows. The moon hung overhead, shining down like a milky spotlight illuminating the silvery tracks ahead.

Exhausted from the day’s labor, Todd wrapped his knuckles around the open window. He stared into the oncoming night, and thought of Iris.

Steam Roller chugged westward, belching steam as it approached the hills around Los Angeles.

From a distance, the city looked frozen into a snapshot. The clusters of buildings grew thicker on the sharp hillsides. Squinting through the locomotive’s soot-smeared front windows, Todd could see crowds emerging from houses to stand in the streets. They squinted toward the railroad tracks as the steam engine puffed clouds into the sky. Some people ran up to the tracks and threw rocks at them, others tried to follow.

Casey Jones, standing at the engineer’s station, reveled in their reception. He hung his dark, meaty arm out the window and waved. Some waved back; many just stared. A few stones ricocheted off the metal casing. Rex O’Keefe raised his wine-filled mug in a toast at the crowd.

Uncertainty gnawed at Todd. They had barely reached the fringes of the sprawling city, yet already they saw vastly more people than had arrived to greet the train in Bakersfield. What if the mob surrounded them and rocked the train off its rails?

The dining car was stuffed with crates of food and produce, but even that much wouldn’t last a day here. It wouldn’t feed a fraction of these people, and every face held a ghost of hunger behind the eyes. Did Casey really think they could just stop the train, distribute the food in an orderly manner, and wait for the grateful men and women to bring them items for trade?

“Okay, Casey Jones,” Todd shouted into the din of the pumping locomotive, “what’s your plan?”

But the engineer just grinned at him and continued looking out at the people. Rex O’Keefe and the Gambotti brothers sat on top of the passenger car and watched as they drank their wine.

In the stillness of a city without traffic, the sound of Steam Roller carried for miles. People lined up on the embankment to watch the train roll by, but Casey continued, pushing ahead until the outlying residential areas dwindled again, and they approached a dirtier industrial section of the city. Going still slower, the train pushed aside debris and wrecks of old cars piled up on the tracks.

Todd looked up. The sky was crystal blue and clear. He could see for miles. “I’ll bet the air of Los Angeles hasn’t been this clean in over a century!” he said. “I guess the petroplague can’t be all that bad.”

Near Pasadena they passed ugly abandoned gravel quarries with mounds of crushed rock and dirt eroding away. Tall metal chutes and rock conveyors stood like pieces from a giant erector set beside hulking dump trucks. The San Gabriel mountains rose sharp and monolithic behind them, grayish with summer.

Steam Roller approached a cluster of warehouses, sheet-metal factories, and industrial-park buildings about the size of airplane hangers—many of which stood black and gutted from recent fires. Delivery spurs split from the main railway line like spiderwebs between the large buildings.

Casey slowed the locomotive as they started into the warehouse complex. Todd saw tongues of brownish-black smoke curling into the air ahead. It make him uneasy; things seemed too quiet….

They rounded a curve and saw three wrecked cars on the railroad tracks. Beneath the hulks blazed a bonfire of scrap wood.

“Whoa boy!” Todd screamed. He reached to pull the emergency brake but grabbed the pull cord for the steam whistle instead, which let out a shriek loud enough to rattle the empty buildings.

Casey Jones bellowed and hauled back on the emergency brake lever. The driving wheels of the locomotive locked. Sparks flew from the metal rails as the Steam Roller tried to swallow its momentum in only a few feet. Rex O’Keefe yelped from the rear.

Todd lost his balance and slammed into the hot front plate of the boiler. He felt his skin sizzle, and he scrambled backward, wincing with pain.

Casey squeezed his eyes shut as if in silent prayer as he threw his weight behind the brake. The wheels made a groaning sound. The boxcars behind the train crunched as they tried to stop, but the locomotive slammed like a cannonball into the wrecked automobiles.

One of the hulks, a red Volvo, was tossed into the air and fell back on its roof. The other two cars tangled in the Steam Roller’s cowcatcher. One rode up to smash the front window of the engineer’s cab. Chunks of burning wood scattered in all directions like embers caught in a draft.

The boiler hissed as Casey Jones swung down from the engineer’s cab and worked his way through the wreckage to see what damage the automobiles had done.

Todd hand throbbed from where he had burned it on the furnace door. He shook his hand, then sucked on the dirty ball of his left thumb where the burn was worst.

The large industrial park was silent, even more so than the rest of the world. A few seagulls spiraled over two of the largest warehouses—

An arrow clattered against the window of the engineer’s compartment right next to Todd’s head.

“What?” He turned and saw four men dressed in dark jackets and torn jeans. They emerged from the abandoned boxcars scattered around the railyard. One clambered to the top of a old Soo Line boxcar to get a better shot.

They fired with makeshift bows using steel-tipped arrows. Another arrow struck the side of the locomotive. For an instant Todd was too confused to move, unable to believe he was standing in a 19th century steam train being shot at by arrows… in downtown LA!

Casey Jones seemed unaware of the danger as he strode toward the train. Todd shouted, “Casey!” as one of the arrows struck Casey in the back, sticking into his shoulder blade. Casey reached behind him to swat the arrow away. The sharp tip had sliced his skin, but it didn’t sink deep. Blood began to flow down his back.

Other gang members sprinted from the warehouses on their left, all charging toward the trapped train. Todd looked at the controls. The steam was still up, simmering in the boiler.

In the engineer cab, Todd pulled back on the gear-shift lever, heaving with both arms to shift the locomotive into full reverse, his hands afire with pain. The four driving wheels spun as the connecting rod rammed back and forth to build momentum in the stopped four-car train.

The locomotive shuddered. Steam poured out of the stack, mixed with black smoke. The train jerked as it fell back a few inches along the tracks. The two auto hulks tangled in the cowcatcher groaned and scraped. Roberto Gambotti yelped as he fell from the train.

Roberto’s brother yelled angrily to Todd. “Hey, you asshole! See what you did?” He jumped out to help.

The gang members ran closer. The Steam Roller’s driving wheels spun slowly, laboriously. The train inched backward. Todd could see other attackers with knives, metal pipes, spears. He ignored his burned hand and yelled. “Casey, get your butt in here!”

The big man clambered back into the engineer’s compartment, but they could both see that the locomotive would never gain speed fast enough to take them to safety. “Quick—in the back.”

Todd gingerly opened the back of the engineer’s cab and slid through to the dining car. Gang members reached the train and began swarming over it, smashing windows with their clubs. Up front, others scrambled onto the moving locomotive. The gang members reached the rear cars.

Todd opened a window on the opposite side of the dining car. He looked at the bleeding wound on Casey’s back. “Is it bad?”

“I’m okay,” said Casey, but the words seemed to require an effort.

“Go!” said Todd. He pushed Casey toward the window. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

Casey clambered out and fell to his knees from the moving train; Todd landed beside him, but kept his balance. He spotted Rex O’Keefe running back along the tracks, coffee cup still dangling from his fingers. They started to follow Rex, but were cut off as three gang members jumped from the train.

Todd looked around and made a split-second decision. “Here, this way.” Todd and Casey turned and ran toward the nearest warehouse.

The warehouse stood like a barge made out of aluminum siding, scrawled with unintelligible graffiti. Todd reached the nearest door. It was locked, but rattled loosely in the frame. Todd hit it with his shoulder. Casey Jones joined him for a second blow, and the frame bent enough for the door to pop open. Casey left a splattered red smear of blood on the metal door.

They ducked inside. Todd shoved the door shut, looking around in the dimness for something to barricade it. They stood in a forest of metal shelves, crates of car parts, and pieces of equipment under scraps of canvas. Catwalks hung overhead, connecting the tops of the towering shelves. Three automobile engine blocks hung on chains suspended from high pulleys.

Near the door, Casey Jones found several round oil drums. “Here—help me out.” Some were filled with scummy water, others with a caked sludge. Casey wrestled one of the heavy drums in front of the door. Todd grimaced as he helped him move a second. Shaking his still-smarting hand, he heard the first gang member strike the barricaded door. The metal smacked into the oil drum, and he heard an “oomph!” from the other side.

Todd spun around to grab another barrel. The drum was lighter than he expected, and it toppled over, spilling its contents on the concrete floor with a sound like hard plastic cups. Todd gingerly picked one up, then dropped it.

It was a human skull. The barrel was full of them.

The next drum was stuffed with bones; all the meat had been sliced off.

“I don’t think the food on the train is going to distract them very long,” Todd said, forcing his words through a dry throat. “It doesn’t look like they’re vegetarians.”

Todd and Casey ran into the prison-like labyrinth of the warehouse. Light slid through the broken panes of skylights above, shining down in blunted spears. Dust drifted in tiny glowing speckles through the light.

A shaft of sunlight poured in as the gang members forced open the door. The attackers split up and stalked through the warehouse. They banged their steel pipes on the metal shelves. One laughed in the shadows.

“This doesn’t give me a darned good feeling,” Todd muttered.

Casey Jones looked around and grabbed one of the heavy engine blocks dangling from the chains. “Over here,” he whispered.

Todd joined him. They grasped the engine block and pulled backward, one step at a time as they lifted it up on its arc. They could hear one of the gang members approach as he rhythmically struck the metal shelves.

“Come out, you motherfuckers!” the gang member said. The banging got louder. He stepped around the corner of the metal shelves.

Todd and Casey shoved the engine block in unison.

The block crashed into the man, driving him back against the shelves. Crates fell off the upper levels and tumbled around him like an avalanche. He cried out, and the other attackers stopped their taunting and came running. The bank of shelves tipped over just enough to smash into the next line of shelves.

Todd and Casey ran. At the back corner of the warehouse they saw stairs leading to the network of catwalks overhead. They couldn’t see how many gang members had followed them inside.

“Go on,” Casey said, then pushed Todd up the stairs. The steps creaked, rattling as they bumped against supports on the wall. The gang members heard them and came running.

Todd reached the catwalk and started across the open space. The catwalk throbbed with other footsteps. Halfway across, Todd turned as a lean opponent strode across the metal grille toward them, holding a long switchblade. “Casey—behind you!”

Casey turned and waded toward the oncoming gang member as if he meant to take part in a barroom brawl. The attacker grinned and slashed with the switchblade.

With remarkable speed for his burly frame, Casey Jones grabbed the man’s forearm and slammed it onto the rail. Thin wrist bones snapped like balsa wood.

Even as the gang member screeched in pain, Casey grabbed him by the seat of the pants and lifted him over the edge, tossing him headfirst to the concrete floor. The attacker didn’t even cry out as he fell. The only sound he made was like a melon struck with a baseball bat when he hit the floor.

Todd reached the roof door before another gang member managed to reach the top of the stairs. Sunlight spilled in as he opened the door; Todd and Casey ran out onto the roof.

Another warehouse butted up against this one with only a six-foot gap between the two rooftops. Todd cleared the distance easily, jumping across and landing with an explosion of noise as his cowboy boots crashed into the corrugated metal roof. Casey Jones landed beside him, falling to his knees. He panted.

Todd looked behind them. “Once we get ahead of them, we can disappear into the city.”

Casey Jones didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to stare at his train, which had reached the far end of the industrial park before someone stopped its backward acceleration. The Steam Roller’s furnace burst. The entire engine compartment spat flames out the windows, curling up to lick the smokestack. He could see people swarming on the train, grabbing crates of food from the dining car, tearing the neat black-and-red sides to pieces.

“My train,” Casey Jones said dully. “My train.”

Todd gripped his arm. Blood still flowed from the wound on Casey’s shoulder; Todd’s own hands felt raw. “Come on, we can’t do anything to help it.”

“What are we going to do now?” Casey asked. “Where do we go?”

Todd secured the cowboy hat on his head as they started to run. “We make our way to Pasadena. Let’s find the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We’ve got a job to do there.”

Chapter 61

The curled paper sign said ALTAMONT RACEWAY with a black-and-white checkered racing stripe along the bottom. Someone had tacked it up at eye-level on a creosote-stained utility pole, but it had not survived the weather well.

As they tramped across the grassy hills, Iris wondered how long it had been since the speedway had actually hosted public races. The enclosed area was surrounded by loose, rusty barbed wire with occasional signs declaring, POSTED NO TRESPASSING.

Iris, Jackson Harris, and Doog stopped against the fence, looking down at the oval racetrack, the stacked bleachers on either side, the gray wood and peeling white paint of the announcer’s stand. Harley, the teenaged street kid from Oakland, clambered between the barbed wire; one of the prongs snagged his t-shirt, and he cursed.

The silent emptiness was disturbed only by the wind blowing across the dry grass. “This place is spooky,” Harley said.

“A racetrack isn’t much good after the petroplague,” Doog said in his slow voice.

At first Iris had thought Doog was just plain ponderous, or maybe even slow in the head, but his mannerisms came from a completely unhurried personality—not lazy, just not willing to rush. He chose his words before he spoke them, and then said exactly what he intended to say. Jackson’s wife Daphne kept insisting he was worthless, but Iris didn’t think so. Iris watched, and Doog did as much work as the rest of them. He just moved at his own speed.

Doog had a full beard streaked with premature gray, making it look like tufts of raw wool poking out from his chin. His face was saturnine, with crinkles around the eyelids; he wore full-moon spectacles like John Lennon. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his dirty shirt.

“Well, the racetrack is good for something now,” Jackson Harris said. “Let’s check it out, see how some music might sound.” He pulled the barbed-wire strands apart for Iris and Doog, then he swung his own legs over.

Harley sprinted ahead through the summer-dry grass over the rise to the edge of the stands. A couple of the heavy wooden bleachers had collapsed from age.

Iris pointed to them. “We’ll need to repair the seating.”

“Yeah.” Harris nodded. “But we’ll have time. It’ll take a while to get everybody here. It would have been nice to hold the concert on the Fourth of July, but’s that’s next week. Let’s be more realistic and shoot for Labor Day.”

“Good idea, man,” Doog said.

“Yeah,” Iris agreed. “That’ll give us time to bring in some musicians and try to patch together some instruments.”

Harley called from the top of the rickety bleachers. “Do you think there’s any stuff left in the refreshment stand?”

“Go ahead and look,” Harris called.

Harley delighted in smashing open the boarded-up windows. Around them, the sun pounded down on the speedway. Within view up in the hills they could see the empty lanes of the interstate highway, pointing aimlessly in the direction of LA.

Iris tried to picture what a concert would be like in this place. In the next couple of months she would throw herself entirely into the project… if only to keep her mind off Todd.

After walking out in anger, he still hadn’t come back after four days. She knew deep down that he had gone south with the steam train. Now, in a world with only harrowing alternatives for long-distance travel, she wondered if he might never come back.

Doog and Harris were both calling this event “the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll Concert.” Iris had tried, but there was nothing inside Todd Severyn that would make him understand how the concert was just as important to the heart of the people as laying electrical power lines or a heroic quest to deliver satellites that would probably never make it to space.

Todd didn’t care about her type of music. He didn’t dislike it, but rock ‘n roll just didn’t affect him the way it touched her and Harris and so many others. She supposed she would feel the same if Todd had an obsession to hold the last great Country & Western concert. But there was just something depressing about music that glorified old dogs, cows, and pickup trucks….

“We can probably use the speedway’s PA system,” Harris said pointing to the metal horn speakers mounted on poles around the track. “Maybe we can get some of the closet geniuses at Livermore to rig up some amps. Then we’ll get power running out here from the windmills and pipe it through those big speakers.”

“It’s gonna sound like shit,” Doog said.

Harris slowly shook his head. “Man, it’s been so long since I’ve heard loud music, right now even Barry Manilow would sound good!”

Doog sat down roughly on one of the bleacher seats, which creaked beneath him. “Man, then it is the end of the world.”

Iris stifled a laugh and watched the two men.

Harris sat down next to Doog. They waited in silence for a few moments. Below them Harley rummaged around inside the refreshment stand. He didn’t seem to be finding anything, but it sounded like he was having fun.

Harris finally shook his head and set his scruffy chin in his hands. “It feels so right to be having this here. Kind of like redemption, you know. To make up for the last concert.”

They both stared at the opposite bank of bleachers as if watching crowds screaming and cheering for the band.

“Yeah. Remember? The Stones didn’t play until nightfall,” Doog said. “The show opened up at ten in the morning. Santana, I think, then it was Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.”

“No way!” Harris interrupted. “Creedence never played the Altamont! It was Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, then the Stones.”

“I thought the Dead were there.”

Harris put his head in his hands as if he could not believe the stupidity of his friend. “Jeez, you’re all mixed up! The Grateful Dead suggested to the Stones that they hire the Hell’s Angels for security. They didn’t come here themselves.”

Iris watched them, amazed. This appeared to be some sort of ritual. “Were you guys actually there?” she said, “at the Altamont concert?”

“Doog was,” Harris said.

“No I wasn’t.”

“You always talked like you were!”

Doog just shrugged.

Iris looked out at the empty stadium, trying to imagine how it must have been, listening to ghostly echoes of music and cheers and screams of pain echoing through the hills. That had been ten years before her time.

Doog said, “They paid the Hell’s Angels $500 worth of beer to work security, so the Angels went around bashing peoples’ heads in with sawed-off pool cue sticks.” Doog looked at Iris with an ironic grin. “Mick Jagger got punched by some fan as the Stones tried to make it to the stage.”

Harris said. “You should have seen how he whipped up the crowd singing ‘Satisfaction.’ They all wanted to go out and just rip people’s arms and legs off. Then when he was playing ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ some kid pulled out a gun and waved it at the stage—”

“It wasn’t ‘Sympathy for the Devil!’” Doog interrupted. “That’s an urban legend. It was ‘Under My Thumb.’”

“That’s not how I remember it,” Harris said, glaring at his friend.

“What happened to the guy with the gun?” Iris said. “Was he the one who got killed?”

“Yeah,” Harris answered. “Guy pulled out his gun, and before you know it the Hell’s Angels stabbed him and stomped him to death. Great security, huh?”

Doog shook his head. “Man, the Altamont concert was probably the darkest hour of the ‘60s. So much for all the love and peace and harmony crap the hippies kept talking about. Gave us all a bad image.”

Iris stood up from the bleachers and brushed off her backside. She felt her knees crack. “Well, then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again at the second great Altamont concert.”

Harley returned from the refreshment stand. Dirt streaked his clothes, and some splinters stuck in his nappy hair. “Found some,” he said excitedly. “Two cans of Budweiser and an Orange Crush. I get one of the beers.”

“No you don’t,” said Harris, “hand them over.”

“I found them!”

“You’re still too young.”

Grudgingly, Harley handed the warm cans over.

They had sent out notices with their runners to the people in Tracy and the other towns in the Central Valley, as well as to the enclave around Livermore. They would broadcast it across the Atlantis network to anyone listening in on the short-wave radio. Word would spread, summoning the audience and the musicians for the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll concert.

They sat in silence sipping their warm beer and passing the two cans back and forth. By Labor Day the unnatural quiet would at last be replaced by human sounds, music rising to the sky.

Chapter 62

The woman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory narrowed her eyes at them. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Todd and Casey Jones looked at each other and both shrugged. Todd removed his cowboy hat. “No, Ma’am, we’re serious. We’ve come to take those solar power satellites and haul them off to New Mexico.”

The woman gestured them inside the concrete research building, still looking at them with a mixture of amazement and disbelief. “Come and get washed up, you two. I think you’re suffering from heat stroke.”

She was a tough Asian woman, about 50, with wide hips and heavy arms. She looked like the type who’d move heavy equipment by herself just because she didn’t have the patience to wait for help. She pinned her gray-white hair back with elaborate pins. Her name, she said, was Henrietta Soo.

The dim facility looked like a 1960s version of a “high tech” building, an eight-story-tall cube with dark windows and light cement. The aluminum mini blinds had been taken down to allow the maximum amount of light to pour through the windows. Inside, the petroplague had dissolved most of the carpets and linoleum, leaving only concrete and plywood base boards.

Henrietta Soo took Todd and Casey past empty offices and a conference room where a half a dozen people stood brainstorming, scribbling things on a pad of paper propped on an easel.

In a kitchen area, Henrietta twisted on a faucet. Water trickled out with low pressure, but it was enough for them to drink and wash. Droplets sprayed from side to side in the gasketless faucet nozzle. She disappeared, leaving them to take turns at the sink, splashing their faces and pulling brown paper towels to wipe themselves off.

“Boy, this feels good!” Todd said as water dripped from the stubble on his chin. Casey Jones doused his bald head, kneading his dark skin with his fingertips.

After the train wreck, they had hiked for two days northwest of Pasadena. They passed through the sprawling, confused metropolis of Burbank and Glendale, asking directions from people on the street. They must have painted an absurd picture: both of them streaked with grime, the back of Casey’s shirt stiffened with drying blood, asking for somebody to point the way to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In Pasadena, the Rose Bowl sat empty, but a flea market had sprung up by itself, though the vendors sold a new selection of post-plague items. The lush and well-manicured country club golf course was ragged and overgrown.

By now Todd and Casey were hungry and exhausted, but they had reached their destination. The bright flowers and arching willows made JPL look like a campus, 175 acres jammed up against the sheer green-brown mountains. Once they passed into the JPL complex, they tracked down the headquarters of the satellite division. The Jet Propulsion Lab normally held over five thousand workers, but now the site was quiet and lethargic.

Henrietta Soo returned with a metal first-aid kit and opened it up, poking around to find cloth bandages. “Let me look at your back,” she said to Casey, and he dutifully removed his shirt. With a cotton swab, she dabbed and poked at the infected arrow wound. In her other hand she held a brown bottle. “I got a glass bottle of alcohol from one of the labs. All of our plastic tubes of first-aid cream are… no longer with us. I’ve got a few antibiotics, but we’re saving them.” She smiled apologetically, then said to Todd, “How about you?”

Todd flexed his hands; he was lucky they hadn’t formed any large blisters from the burn. “I’m okay.”

Casey Jones stared at the wall as she prodded crusted blood, cleaned the wound, and bandaged his shoulder. Finished, Henrietta clicked the first-aid kit shut and turned to face them.

“Now then. I’ve got some of Dr. Lockwood’s smallsats sealed up and ready for launch, but there’s no way you’ll be able to take all of them. When he asked for help getting them shipped to his railgun launching system, I never thought anyone would take the challenge. The satellites have been sitting in one of our clean rooms for months—but what I want to know is just how you two propose to get them to White Sands?”

She waited. Todd looked down at his dirty boots and shuffled his feet. Casey didn’t offer any ideas.

Todd refused to meet Henrietta Soo’s eyes. “Um, I was hoping you might have a suggestion, Ma’am.”

Todd sat in front of JPL’s short-wave radio, looking befuddled. He stared at the microphone. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes,” Henrietta said, leaning over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Todd touched the microphone again. “You’re sure it’s at the right frequency and everything?”

“Yes!” Henrietta said again, a bit more impatiently.

“And I just hold down the microphone button?”

Henrietta scowled. “You’re new at this aren’t you? We’re all connected to the Atlantis network. We’ve cleared our own node here and knocked off the Feds so we can get some decent radio time. FEMA is pissed off at us, but they’ll pick up the signal on this frequency and reroute it up to the Livermore receiving station. It’ll probably also be picked up by other substations and broadcast around the country.”

Todd felt a knot in his throat at the thought of thousands of people listening in on his personal message, but before he could lose his nerve he gripped the microphone.

“This is Todd Severyn calling for Moira Tibbett at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, California.” He hoped Tibbett was there listening. From what he could tell, she never went home, she never left her map with its colored pushpins marking the growing number of stations on the emergency short-wave network.

“Sandia, can you read me?” he repeated. “This is Todd Severyn transmitting from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.”

Tibbett’s gruff voice came out of the shortwave speaker. “Todd, we read you! I take it you made it down to Los Angeles? Over.” A squeaky background hum accompanied her transmission.

“I arrived just fine. Our locomotive was destroyed by a gang down here, but Casey Jones and I are safe and unharmed.”

“That’s good news Todd,” Tibbett replied. “Over.”

“Could you…” Todd said, then paused. “Uh, could you make sure that message gets passed along to Iris Shikozu at the Altamont settlement?”

“We’ll send it with the next courier that comes down. Over.”

“And tell her…” The words clogged in Todd’s throat. He made a silent excuse to himself that he just had stage fright, but deep inside he knew that wasn’t really what stopped him. “Just tell her I’m OK. We’ll be taking the satellites and setting out for New Mexico. Wish us luck.”

“Good luck, Todd,” Tibbett answered. “We’ll all be keeping our fingers crossed for you. Over.”

“Over and out.” He signed off.

Henrietta Soo stood behind him with arms crossed over her chest like a stern grandmother. “Sounds like you should have rehearsed your words a bit, Mr. Severyn.” She smiled. “Come on. Let me show you the smallsats. Maybe that’ll give you an idea how to transport them, if your friend doesn’t find anything today.”

Casey Jones had gone out by himself that morning to see if he could find any solution to hauling the satellites. The wide-faced man had used the water trickle and a little bit of soap to shave his entire head so clean that it glistened even after he toweled it dry. Obsessed again, Casey set out to see what he could find in the chaos of Pasadena.

Todd could not talk openly with his partner, though they had come hundreds of miles together and narrowly escaped death. The man who called himself Casey Jones had some sort of parasite of guilt inside him, chewing away.

Casey had been all right when he was moving, bringing supplies down to Los Angeles, taking direct action to alleviate his conscience. The moment they stopped and ran up against a problem, though, he became restless as a lion in a cage. Todd guessed he would have done the same thing. In some ways, he and Casey were a lot alike.

Henrietta Soo led Todd deeper into the laboratory complex, away from the offices and conference rooms. The partially dissolved linoleum on the floor left hard cheese-like remains in strange patterns on top of the plywood underfloor.

At the end of the corridor an emergency exit sign marked a red-painted door. Banks of gun-metal gray lockers lined the left side of the hall, like a high-school corridor. On the other side, dark windows gazed in on a warehouse-sized clean room.

“This is where we assembled the smallsats,” Soo said. “It’s a Class 1000 clean room. The air inside was filtered and refiltered so that it had a thousand times fewer particles than outside air. Even that couldn’t stop the spread of the petroplague, of course, but twenty of the solar smallsats were already finished, packaged and sealed, ready for launch. The original plan called for constructing nearly a hundred of them, but Lockwood’s project was on a shoestring budget and we had to go one step at a time. We probably have the components and spare parts to complete another twenty smallsats, though. In addition to these.”

Through the glowing lights of luminous power sources inside the clean room, Todd could make out the hulks of the twenty packaged solar satellites like meter-long pods on the tables.

“Have you spoken to Dr. Seth Mansfield?” Henrietta asked. “He got interested in this work after speaking with Spencer Lockwood over the wireless—Seth has a lot of admiration for that young man. Seth still comes in here, helps us brainstorm last-ditch solutions. Did he put you up to this?”

Todd shook his head. “No, Ma’am. I just heard on the radio that the White Sands folks needed someone to transport these sats and that it could be a big payoff to the country’s recovery. I was tired of sitting on my butt.” He refrained from saying anything about his part in the Promethus spraying.

Henrietta leaned closer to the glass, jabbing her stubby fingers at something Todd couldn’t see.

“Each smallsat is about the size of a large scuba tank, weighing nearly a hundred kilograms. It uses solar electric propulsion for attitude control and has a supercomputer brain the size of a deck of cards. It’s got a microthin array of solar power panels accordioned into a layer a few centimeters thick, but once extended the panels cover several hundred square meters of collection area.”

Todd put the edge of his hand against the glass and tried to peer inside, but he saw no further details. “Sounds delicate,” he said. “Are we going to ruin these things by carrying them a thousand miles cross country?”

She shook her head. “Everything’s been hardened to withstand over ten thousand gees of acceleration during launch, standard stuff for this type of equipment. If Dr. Lockwood hadn’t specified using silcon sealants, the petroplague would have done them in.”

As they walked back toward Henrietta’s office, he looked around; the other rooms were empty. “We saw a big meeting yesterday when we came in. Where is everybody? How many people still work at JPL?”

Henrietta Soo shrugged. “Quite a few, actually, but most of our people have thrown themselves into practical problems, trying to develop technological band-aids for crucial city services. The big one is the Emergency Broadcast Network. It’s linking more and more as people build short-wave radios.”

As she stepped into her dim office, Henrietta flicked the light switch out of habit. She frowned at herself when nothing happened. “It’s really not as bad out there as we thought at first. PVC seems to be unaffected, the hard plastic pipe that most of our underground conduits are made out of. Same with natural rubber, though synthetic rubber gets all spongy and doesn’t function well. Bakelite, that old amber-colored plastic you find in antique stores, resists the petroplague. It’s brittle, but it still holds up pretty well. Some nylon even managed to survive.”

He knew that was good news, but he could not get too excited about it. “Yeah, but if we don’t have the industry to keep making this stuff…” Todd let his voice trail off.

“Ah, but that means we can find substitutions—given time—but it’s going to be hell to survive the transition.”

Later, when Henrietta convinced Todd that he should contact the group at White Sands, he grabbed the microphone with much less trepidation and waited for Spencer Lockwood to acknowledge his transmission. “Lockwood here,” said the man’s voice. “Who am I talking to?”

“You’re talking to the guy who’s going to deliver your solar power satellites from JPL.”

“What!” Spencer’s voice was suddenly high-pitched with childish excitement. “Hot damn!” Then he dropped off again. “I hope we’re still ready to receive them when you get here. We might be having a few minor problems with the military. Some big bully wants to take all our toys. We hope we can hold out.”

“We’ll get there as soon as we can,” Todd said.

“Good luck. We’ll be waiting,” Spencer said.

After they exchanged a few more details, Todd signed off. He felt the sense of urgency bubble through him again. They had made it all the way to Pasadena, but practical matters had brought them to a screeching halt.

Todd was still pacing the floor when Casey Jones returned from his day’s search. The grin on the burly man’s face made Todd stop in his tracks. “You find something?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Casey answered. He held out a battered old book. “I got a map of all the main lines and spurs of railroad tracks in the southwestern United States. From here, we can hook onto the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line, which will take us east to Barstow, Flagstaff, and straight to Albuquerque. From there, another spur heads south, right into White Sands.”

“Rail lines?” Todd said. “Where did you get that book?”

“At the library.” Casey set the book down and dropped himself heavily into a folding metal chair. “It was a zoo down there! You should have seen the people. They were grabbing all sorts of books on do-it-yourself stuff. How to make your own clothes, build your own furniture, gardening books, that sort of thing. The library is kind of messed up, but I got the book I needed. Can you believe a lady even asked me if I had a library card?”

“That’s a sign some parts of civilization are still working,” Todd said, then he scowled. “But what do you want with railway maps? Your train is wrecked!”

“Ah, but I’ve come up with something else,” he said. “In an old railyard I found two handcars. They’re rusty, but nothing a little lard and sandpaper won’t fix; and we can link them together, ride the rails, pump ourselves across country. I figure we can get a wheelbarrow to haul the smallsats down to the rail line. From there, we’ll… just head off. Simple.” He grinned with deep satisfaction.

Todd looked skeptical. “You realize there’s twenty satellites here? These things are heavy.”

“So we only take half of them. After we prove we can do it, we can come back for the rest of them. Or somebody else can.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I know.” Casey shrugged, but he kept smiling.

They left at dusk, hauling the ten packed smallsats in wheelbarrows as well as all the bottled water and food supplies they could carry, and three metallized survival blankets to shield them from the desert heat and night cold. Even with help from some of the other JPL workers, it still took five trips to get everything to the hidden handcars.

Henrietta Soo surprised them both by insisting on coming along on the rigorous journey. “The smallsats are my babies,” she said. “How do I know I can trust you two? I have to watch them.” She stood firm.

Todd argued with her, but Casey Jones just wanted to leave. Finally, as Henrietta trudged along hauling a loaded wheelbarrow of her own and keeping pace, Todd believed her when she said she could do her share of the work. It reminded him of Iris—she insisted on pulling her own weight.

According to Casey’s railroad map, they had about a thousand miles of track to cover. He guessed they could make 10 to 15 miles per hour pumping the hand car, once they got it going. With three of them, they could take shifts and keep going maybe ten hours a day. By traveling at night, they hoped to avoid gangs like the one that had blown up Casey’s locomotive. If they started at dusk, and pumped straight through the night, they could be far from Los Angeles by dawn.

Casey linked the two handcars with a pin and slid them along the track to show how easily the old vehicles moved. “We could be there in a week,” he said.

“Is that an optimistic estimate?” Henrietta asked.

“It’s just the one I’m counting on,” Casey answered.

They loaded up the handcars, tying down the carefully wrapped smallsats and their supplies for the trip. Once everything was secure, they climbed onboard the lead car.

“This really is crazy,” Todd said again. “Dr. Soo said we’re carrying a metric ton of satellites!”

“So what?” Casey said. “Let’s shove off before somebody sees us.” He stood with his back to the wind, facing east. He gripped the metal push bar. “How are your hands?”

Todd faced him, taking the opposite end of the seesaw bar. “Don’t worry about it. How’s your back?”

“Are we going to talk or go?”

Todd grasped the bar. “On three: one… two… three!” Together, they began to push.

Up and down, slowly at first as the linked cars moved forward, picking up speed. Up… down… up… down… Finally, as they gained momentum, they could feel the movement, see the rails slide by beneath them.

“We’re heading out,” Casey shouted.

Todd said, “I’ve got this sudden urge to sing ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.’”

Simultaneously, Henrietta Soo and Casey Jones shushed him. Todd threw his back into the pumping.

The two handcars moved on into the night bearing the solar smallsats and three passengers. Todd could hear only the sound of the steel wheels humming along the track.

Chapter 63

“The NSA team is here, Mr. President,” Franklin Weathersee said, rapping on the door to the oppressive, lonely room.

Jeffrey Mayeaux grumbled to himself as he sipped then put down his drink. Let’s pass a good time! Two shots of old bourbon, neat. His wife would be sleeping by herself in a different suite down the hall, so at least Mayeaux had that much peace. Now that her social life had fallen to pieces, she had started wanting to spend time with him again, and he didn’t like the change of pace. One more mess to cope with. He’d just gotten undressed, ready for bed, when Weathersee came in to announce the meeting. What good did it do to be in charge of the goddamn country if he had to cater to everyone else’s schedules?

Weathersee’s face was outlined with deep shadows thrown from the single low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling. Mayeaux could see two Secret Service agents standing just outside the bedroom door.

“Thanks, Frank. I was getting sick of relaxing after a whole five minutes or so. You wouldn’t want to spoil me.”

“No I wouldn’t, sir,” Weathersee said without so much as cracking a smile.

Before communications had been disrupted with the military bases, Mayeaux would have postponed the meeting until morning. Teach them all some respect. Lordy, he hated working by the dim light almost as much as he hated getting up early in the morning. But he grabbed his bathrobe and headed for the door. If they expected him to show up in a formal suit, they had their heads up their asses.

The staff engineers had wired the elevators to work—but after what happened to that idiot Vice President in Chicago, Mayeaux never wanted to use an elevator again. He headed down the long two flights of stairs from the third-floor living quarters to the Oval Office.

Because of the enormous effort required to generate electricity with the old steam-engine equipment hauled out of the Smithsonian, there weren’t many functional lights in the White House. Over three thousand military troops were devoted to collecting wood, stoking the fires, and running the converted steam-generators around the capitol city. Generously, Mayeaux signed an executive order directing most of the electricity to go to local hospitals, but the marginal remaining supply kept the main communication lines open.

Mayeaux almost tripped on a rug in the dark. He cursed; if things got any worse, he’d have to cut a hole in the floors and install a fireman’s pole so he could whiz down to important meetings. Now wouldn’t that look presidential?

The team from the National Security Agency met him outside the Oval Office. He noticed two women in the group, but was not impressed; they both looked hardened to their duties, not the least bit attractive. The job must be getting to me, Mayeaux thought bitterly. He ushered them into the office and got right to business.

“I called you here to give me another perspective, cher. I’m not sure I can trust the bullshit my Joint Chiefs are feeding me. Don’t mince words—tell me what’s going on out there.”

The team leader, a middle-aged woman who wore no makeup at all and let her hair fall loose to her shoulders, pushed a large sheet of cardboard across his desk. She had fastened white sheets of paper to the stiff backing, drawings of the downtown Washington area. The woman pointed at the Mall extending two miles from the Washington Monument to the Capitol building.

“We’ve finished installing the underground Extreme Low Frequency antennas, Mr. President. In addition, there are five shortwave antennas around the White House.” She pointed to various locations on the drawing.

One of her aides handed her a sheaf of papers. “The ELF antenna has already raised communication with six Trident-class submarines, still underwater and still unaffected by the plague, as far as we know. That leaves ten subs unaccounted for, and three confirmed missing after the plague. We assume they have been destroyed, probably because their watertight seals were breached, but it’s not a foregone conclusion.”

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, sir. They either surfaced and the petroplague infiltrated their systems, or they were so close to the mix layer, the petroplague got to them that way.”

Mayeaux glanced over the material. Page after page of handwritten code appeared on the pages, with elaborate decoding inked in by hand after each line. Even the decoded material seemed a jumble of nonsense.

“So, can we still communicate with the surviving nuclear submarines? Can I issue them new orders?”

She nodded. “That’s right, sir. At least to a fair fraction of them. We’re still attempting to raise those assigned to ocean areas in electromagnetic voids, but we should have confirmation in a week.”

Mayeaux pushed the papers back. “What does the Navy think about this?”

The team chief spoke slowly. “We haven’t seen their complete analysis, Mr. President. Our instructions were only to collect unbiased communications traffic.”

Mayeaux thought it over for a moment. So far none of this new information conflicted with what his military chiefs had told him, but he still wasn’t convinced he had the whole story. He made a mental note to have Weathersee scare up a new list of advisors he could trust. “Okay—next topic. What’s the status of those out-of-touch military bases? Are you doing any better than the Joint Chiefs in raising them?”

The NSA staff exchanged glances. The team chief cleared her throat. “No, sir, we have not. We’re working closely with our military counterparts out in the field, and we have not yet been able to reestablish communication.”

Mayeaux shook his head. He knew he should have gulped down the rest of that damned drink before coming downstairs. “What about the communities outside the bases? Are they responding at all?”

“Well, sir, about the only thing we have are reports of looting and out-of-control fires in the larger cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, and Denver.”

Mayeaux looked up from his desk. “What happened to LA? That was a hot spot before.”

“That’s a problem, sir.” She shuffled through her papers again, but he could tell she was just avoiding his gaze. “We think perhaps another organization should handle this—”

“I’m sick of doubletalk,” Mayeaux growled, flicking his glance to skewer every person in the room. “I asked a question—give me the fucking answer!”

The NSA team chief continued. “Los Angeles refused to establish martial law, sir. We have word from the city’s mayor that they are considering seceding from the nation. They do not want to participate in conscription activities or food taxation. The mayor has ordered breaking open all military stockpiles of food to the populace at large. From what we can tell, the military in the Los Angeles area is cooperating with this action, directly countermanding your orders.”

She stacked her papers neatly. “The last we heard was a call for action to help some sort of expedition going to New Mexico from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It wasn’t clear what was going on, but the New Mexico connection may be a symptom of breakdown in martial law across the country. JPL has commandeered Caltech’s Emergency Network Radio node and they also refuse to cooperate with FEMA or any other emergency agencies. They are apparently behind this expedition.”

Deep resentment ran through Mayeaux. He had to push with a crowbar to get anyone to tell him bad news. Did they really fear him that much, or were they crawfishin’ around the issue?

“Mais, let me tell you something. This crap has gone too far. It’s going to stop, right now. I didn’t ask for this damned responsibility, but I will not be remembered as the man who allowed the United States to fall apart.” He turned to Frank Weathersee. “Pull the Joint Chiefs in here, right now. I want more information, and if they give you any grief in return, throw their asses out. Period.”

Weathersee stiffened. “Very well, Mr. President.”

Mayeaux was on a roll now. Sometimes it felt damned good to kick some butt. He hunched over the table, talking rapidly. On reflection, he thought he sounded very presidential. “That expedition to New Mexico. Are they spreading this call for secession? Did they instigate this damned mess in LA? Who was that general I met at Kirtland a few months ago, on my way to Acapulco—” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember.

“Bayclock, sir.”

“That’s right. Have the Chiefs warn General Bayclock there’s some sort of traitor movement heading his way. He seemed like a down-to-earth man. Make sure the general understands that everyone must support him, nip this thing in the bud, all that rah rah stuff. This might be the test for keeping anarchy in check.”

Weathersee looked unconvinced. “Yes, sir, traitor movement. Any other items the Joint Chiefs should work on?”

“So far we’re nothing but a voice over a radio to these people. We don’t have any way to back up our threats.” He set his mouth. “Make sure the Vice President has this information at the Naval Observatory. And have the Chiefs draw up a plan to make an example of… something—if LA is going to try to secede, maybe they need a knock on the head to set them right.”

He steepled his fingers. “Take a lesson from history. Abraham Lincoln took that step. He threw most of the Baltimore businessmen and newspaper editors in jail when they wouldn’t support him. Sure taught them a lesson!”

“What do you propose, Mr. President?” Weathersee said.

He glared at his Chief of Staff. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe take out Catalina Island with a nuke. We’re in touch with the subs again, after all.”

Weathersee stood tall, his arms at his sides, as he looked at Mayeaux. “If you’re going to take a lesson from history, sir, perhaps you should remember what happened to President Lincoln. I just thought I should remind you of that.”

Chapter 64

“Hey, Lieutenant,” Spencer asked, “what do you know about military intelligence?”

“Military intelligence? That’s how I remember the definition of the word ‘oxymoron.’” Bobby Carron looked up from untying the tentlike sun-screen at the blockhouse corner. The sun had set over the Organ Mountains, and already the high desert air took on a chill. “Me, I just flew fighters—you know, grapefruit and peas.”

“Grapefruit and peas?” Spencer made a disgusted grimace. “Is that what they feed you guys?”

Bobby laughed. “No, sir. It’s just what they say about us fighter pilots. Balls the size of grapefruits, brains the size of peas.”

“I see.” Spencer chuckled. “Come on inside the trailer. You’re the only military type around here. You might be able to figure this out.”

“Right.” Bobby left the cords dangle from the sprawling sun-screen tent made of parachute silk. To keep the bunkers cooler during the hottest part of the day, Spencer’s group had obtained some surplus fabric in Alamogordo. Stenciled on the parachutes were the words HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, taken from the closing of the base a few years earlier. After high evening winds had torn away the last sun-screen, taking down the parachute had become Bobby’s nightly ritual.

Bobby followed Spencer inside the trailer, where Juan Romero listened to the voices coming over the static-filled speaker, pursing his lips in a confused frown that made his black moustache stick out at the sides. Electronic equipment lay on the tabletops, cannibalized for parts used in the makeshift radio. Romero rolled his eyes at the signal. “Everything’s encrypted.”

“…Niner niner rog. Turtle mound advised of bandit watch.” Other nonsensical phrases jabbered over the channel.

Spencer watched Bobby Carron as the Navy pilot digested the cryptic information. “Any idea what they’re saying, Lieutenant?”

“I recognize some code words,” Bobby said, frowning as he concentrated. “Maybe they can’t get their regular encryption gear working.” He stared at the makeshift equipment as if in a trance. Spencer said nothing.

Three electric lanterns lit the control room against the darkness outside; they used solar power stored in batteries during the day’s transit of the smallsat cluster. A cool breeze swept through the door, bringing a sweet hint of yucca.

Romero glanced at Bobby. “How can he understand what they’re saying when the static is this bad? Must be sunspots.”

“Ever heard a pilot talk on the radio?” Spencer said. “You can’t understand a thing they’re saying until you do it yourself.”

Bobby held up a hand. He spoke as if he were reciting a passage: “They’re saying something like: events have gotten out of hand. Take all actions necessary to ensure the continuity of—” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Damn,” he muttered, “Some of the stuff just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Go on,” said Spencer. He motioned for Romero to sit back down. Rita Fellenstein joined them from the back room. She had been making eyes at Bobby ever since he had arrived, much to the dismay of the other ranch hands.

Three minutes passed before the mixed-up transmission stopped. Bobby scribbled in pencil on a small notepad. His forehead held a sheen of sweat.

“As far as I can tell, General Bayclock has been ordered to occupy your installation at White Sands. He’s to show an iron hand. All assets of something—the California expedition?—are to be confiscated and turned over to the United States.”

Spencer exchanged glances with Rita. “I hope that doesn’t mean the mission from JPL.”

Bobby continued, “The general is authorized to use whatever force necessary to preserve the integrity of the United States.”

“What the hell does that mean?” muttered Rita.

“It means we’ve been declared open game, and this Bayclock clown can come and blow us away, man!” Romero stood up, knocking back his chair and flinging his long black hair out of his eyes like a dangerous bandit.

“He’s crazy enough to do it, too,” Bobby said. “Your wagon train carrying the smallsats got out of the Los Angeles area just in time. The mayor of LA has taken over the national guard and is declaring southern California a free state. Bayclock wants to stop the JPL people from getting to you.”

Spencer shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Does he think the expedition from JPL is some kind of armed force? How paranoid can he get?”

Bobby said, “I know the general has been monitoring radio transmissions from White Sands—that’s how he discovered you have a working power station.”

“Yeah, for all of twenty minutes a day,” said Spencer, “and a bunch of leftover battery power.”

“That was enough for him to send me down here after you.” Bobby’s face tightened. “He’s serious about enforcing his martial law, and he must have gone nonlinear when you guys didn’t roll over and cooperate. He probably thinks the group from JPL is part of a conspiracy to subvert his authority. With the White House backing him, I bet he’s decided to make an example of us.”

Romero laughed, but Bobby spoke in a level tone. “In Albuquerque, he was hanging teenagers for stealing cans of tuna or staying out after dark.”

The trailer fell quiet. Bobby looked from person to person. Spencer placed a hand on his shoulder. “Look, why don’t you finish taking down the sunscreens outside. I’ll have Romero run through the FEMA frequencies and see if we can find any other information that confirms what we’ve heard.”

Bobby stopped at the door. “You know, I’d feel a lot better if we could just see what that bastard Bayclock is going to do. I’d hate to have a few thousand fanatics sneak up on us without warning. No telling when he’ll make his move.”

Spencer pictured the state of New Mexico in his head. “It’ll take him at least a week to get down here, even if he started today. I’ll notify Alamogordo. Maybe some of the ranchers can help us out. Give us quarter, if nothing else. We can get away.”

“But that means abandoning the antenna farm, man!” Romero cried. “Spencer, you can’t do that!”

“Maybe we can station lookouts on Oscura Peak, use smoke signals to warn us like we did for the substation test,” Rita suggested.

“It would be more effective to have lookouts nearby,” said Bobby. “What would happen if the peak got socked in with clouds? Of if Bayclock decided to attack at night? What you need is a thousand-foot-high tower, or an airplane.” He grinned half-heartedly, his mind obviously elsewhere, as if knowing he would never fly again. “Nevermind. I’ve got to finish packing the parachutes.”

Spencer had a sudden thought. “That’s not such a crazy idea.”

“What?” Bobby turned around.

“The parachutes,” said Spencer. “I bet if we sewed some of them together, we could make a hot-air balloon, just like something out of a Jules Verne novel. Fill it with hot air, and up it goes.”

“The fuel, Spence,” Rita reminded him with an elbow to the side. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no propane around for the central heater.”

“The Montgolfier brothers didn’t have propane,” Spencer said, “but they did have wood, and even better, we can make charcoal. Hot air is hot air, right? You take along some charcoal and burn it in a big metal hibachi—presto!” He put a finger to his lips and started muttering. “In fact, we can loft a series of balloons, even equip them with weapons….”

Rita sighed and got a faraway look in her eyes. “I can just see it now—the first Aeroballoon Squadron of the White Sands Regiment. Risking their lives, tethered a thousand feet up, keeping watch over the advancing barbarian hordes.” She motioned for Bobby to stand back. “Better stand back, Lieutenant.”

Bobby looked from Spencer to Rita. “What? What’s the matter?”

“He’s thinking so hard you might get splattered when his brain explodes.”

Gilbert Hertoya rode in from the electromagnetic launcher, looking even smaller on the back of a big horse. The group frequently got together to coordinate technical directions, but this time they had more serious matters to discuss.

“Okay,” said Spencer, “the first question is if we should even try and fight these guys.”

Bobby Carron snorted. He folded his arms and looked around. “If we don’t do something against Bayclock, he’ll institute the same type of bloody martial law down here.”

Spencer looked around, but no one spoke. “I think we all agree about that, so we don’t surrender. But what’s the consensus? Fight or run?”

“Bobby’s right. If we run, we’ll never get this facility back,” said Rita. “No telling what Bayclock would do here.”

“That’s the crazy part,” said Bobby. “What is he going to do when he gets here? I mean, I’m a one-each, Navy-issue, real-live aviator and even I know you can’t just pack this place up and take it back to Albuquerque!”

“But how do we stop him?” asked Romero. “Our guns will only fire a few times, if they haven’t seized up already.”

“The ranch hands will help,” said Rita. “They aren’t going to let the general waltz down here and take this place.”

“Romero’s got a point,” said Spencer. He looked around the group. “Even with the ranchers helping, we’ll be fighting military troops, not a bunch of scientists. Anyone here besides Bobby know anything about the military? I mean, we aren’t even weapons scientists.”

Gilbert Hertoya cleared his throat. “That’s not entirely true.” The small man ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I haven’t been working on the EM launcher all my career, you know. Sandia lab is a pretty big place, and I’ve been involved in a lot of different areas, including weapons.”

“Do you have any ideas? Will they enable us to win?”

Gilbert grinned and shrugged. “Sure, I’ve got ideas. Ask me in three weeks if they’ll let us win.”

“Okay, let’s hear what you got.”

“Well, first idea. It won’t take much to build a homopolar generator—”

“A what?” said Bobby.

“Homopolar generator,” said Rita, batting her eyes mischievously. “Don’t you know nuthin’?”

“We can cannibalize some rails, capacitors, and batteries at the launch site and build a railgun,” Gilbert said.

“Railguns haven’t been too successful even under normal circumstances, have they?” said Spencer.

Gilbert looked hurt and slouched down in the chair. “We were able to build our satellite launcher, based on the same principle. We won’t try to get orbital velocities this time, though, just enough to make a crude weapon.”

“Okay,” said Spencer. “That’s one then. Anything else?”

“Well, we can produce explosives, or at least gunpowder. You know the old formula: one part charcoal, two parts saltpeter, and four parts sulphur.”

“Where are we going to find that?” said Rita.

“Muck, piss and beer,” recited Bobby. “They used to feed saltpeter to us all the time at Annapolis. Dampens the sex drive.”

“Great,” Rita sounded disappointed.

“I agree that might be a bit problematic,” Gilbert said, “but we can try other explosives. Seems that in World War II they ground up citrus fruit rinds and extracted the oil for explosives.” His eyes widened at the skeptical looks he was getting. “No kidding! It’s actually pretty easy to make: one gallon of orange rind oil to a hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, kind of a distant cousin to the explosive ANFO, used all the time.”

“Ammonium nitrate? Where do we get that?”

“Simple,” Gilbert said with a grin. “Otherwise known as fertilizer. Southern New Mexico has plenty of orange and lemon groves. It won’t take much to extract what oil we need. And I know there’s plenty of fertilizer around. All we have to do is use a little TNT to detonate the stuff, and kablooie!, we’ve got homemade bombs.”

Bobby shook his head and groaned, “Maybe we should reconsider fighting the general.”

Rita stood up, looking like a lamppost next to Bobby’s massive frame. “You trusted the scientists who designed your fighter, didn’t you?”

Bobby snorted. “I don’t fly fruit crates.”

“But you will fly balloons burning charcoal?” said Gilbert.

Romero cleared his throat. “As long as we’re trying out crazy ideas, does anyone mind if I set up a telegraph link between the microwave farm and the EM launcher?”

Gilbert frowned. “The wireless is working just fine, Juan.”

“Ah, but Bayclock could never monitor a dedicated telegraph line. And there’s plenty of telephone wire I’m sure Southwest Bell won’t miss anymore.”

Bobby chuckled. “Maybe we should hang a wire from the balloon, too.”

Gilbert said slowly, “You’re not going to believe this, but I remember reading that somebody did that during the Civil War.”

Bobby groaned. Spencer stood. “Okay—three weeks. Let’s give it a go. All of it.”

“Hold it right there. Steady, steady—now keep it open!” Spencer pushed the rolled cylinder of aluminum siding into the roaring fire. Smoke spewed from the top into the stitched-together parachutes.

“Ouch! Hurry up, Spence. Not so much smoke!” Rita shouted.

“One more minute!” Spencer held the cylinder with gloved hands, but he could still feel the heat burning through the insulation. Bobby Carron waved at the fire, directing more hot air into the two-foot-thick cylinder. Like water pushing up through a straw, the hot air raced down the aluminum tube and spilled into the deflated balloon sack on the ground.

Parachute material billowed out as Romero raced around the periphery, keeping the silk from catching. Gilbert Hertoya directed a squad of ranch hands to hold lines tied to the top of the inflating balloon.

Slowly, ponderously, the colorful sack swelled as hot air and smoke tumbled inside the cavity. The balloon pushed against the sand, unfolding dozens of yards of fabric as it struggled to rise. Within another minute, Spencer pushed the aluminum piping upright into the fire and secured it in the middle of the gondola; the balloon groaned as it weaved back and forth, flexing to all three stories of its height.

“Don’t let it get off the ground yet!” yelled Gilbert. His eyes were wide and soot covered his face; sweat gushed off his forehead. The ranch hands held their ground, hauling on the long lines anchoring the balloon in place.

The hot-air balloon looked like an crazy-quilt of psychedelic material: multi-colored patching of parachutes sewed together, a gondola made of an aluminum shell, at the bottom of which stood an oversized Weber grill burning a stack of wood.

Bobby joined Spencer. Both men were covered in black grime and dust. Bobby rubbed at his red eyes, looking up . “How much of a daredevil do you think I am? This thing could blaze up in a second if the fire gets out of control. I’d rather be flying experimental aircraft out on China Lake.”

“Once you’re up, you won’t need to keep a big flame going. Just keep feeding the fire to maintain the hot air in the cavity.”

“How long can I stay aloft?” Bobby stared upward. The balloon strained against the ropes. Part of him longed to be up in the air again.

“Probably an hour with the load of charcoal you’re taking,” Spencer said. “That’s enough for a good look around.”

It had taken nearly ten people from the microwave farm to ready the single balloon for flight. “I hope this is worth the effort. It doesn’t seem too efficient to keep using this many people just to mount a lookout.”

“You should provide us with at least a day’s notice of Bayclock’s army, so it’s well worth the trouble. Besides, once we get this up in the air the first time, the rest is easy. We’ll just bring it down, add more charcoal, and send it back up again. As long as we keep it tethered, we can send it up every morning.”

“And pray for no wind,” said Bobby.

“We’ve sent word down to Alamogordo and Cloudcroft, and they should be mobilizing to help us,” Spencer said. “They think of us as their friends, and they don’t want any Napoleon taking over their chance at having electricity again.

“Okay, Doc. Let’s hope this plan of yours works.”

“My plan?” said Spencer, astonished. “You’re the one with the grapefruits and peas, remember?”

Spencer craned his neck and held a hand to his forehead to cut the glare. Bobby’s balloon was no more than thirty feet off the ground on its third flight, and it looked like it would tip over at any minute.

Romero and the technicians were back attempting to optimize the antenna farm power conversion; Gilbert had returned to the EM launch facility up on the peak. Within the next few days, the ranchers from Alamogordo would start arriving to set up defenses.

Bobby Carron kept the piñon charcoal in the big hibachi to a minimum. The ranch hands released their guide ropes, letting the strands dangle from the top of the balloon. A tether, tied to a massive concrete anchor, ran down from the bottom of the gondola. Bobby had borrowed Rita’s old bush hat. He stood at the side of the gondola peering into the distance, but he raised no alarm.

Spencer doubted Bayclock could muster his troops within the next few days; if he didn’t have enough horses for his men, it might take weeks before anyone showed up.

But Bobby insisted they get “operational testing time” for the balloon. That way, when the general finally did appear, the lookout procedure would be second nature. And they could concentrate on the hardest part—stopping Bayclock’s army.

Chapter 65

By the fifth day of the forced march, Lance Nedermyer wasn’t sure he liked the idea of taking over the White Sands solar facility—even if General Bayclock had promised to put him in charge.

The cross-country expedition force consisted of 100 soldiers, all armed and walking in a loose formation, plus supply carriers, followers, and message-runners. The soldiers wore leather hiking boots and desert camouflage, led by a vanguard of ten horses—all that Bayclock would spare from his Albuquerque forces. The general himself rode at the point on black gelding from the Kirtland stables, flanked by Colonel David from the Phillip’s Lab and Colonel Nichimya, the Personnel Group commander; the general’s elite security police guard rode directly behind them.

The expedition force had set out eastward, following the shoulders of Interstate 40, next to the old Route 66 that had once sparked America’s wanderlust. When they reached the town of Moriarty, they hooked south, passing through the tiny settlement of Estancia where a few people came out to stare at the military contingent. On his impressive black horse, Bayclock kept his chin up as if he were heading a proud cavalry outfit. The townsfolk looked at them as if they were bandits.

Lance stumbled along with the footsoldiers, trying to keep in formation, but frequently falling out of line, stopping to gasp for breath. He hadn’t gone through the training the rest of the Air Force troops had; in fact, he had never exercised much in his life. Some of the other officers, and occasionally Bayclock himself, admonished him to keep up. Lance couldn’t understand why walking in formation was so important out in the middle of the desert, but he didn’t argue with the general.

Sergeant Catilyn Morris led the group, once again making the trek to the bottom of the state. No expression marred her stone-like face. Haughty litte bitch. She hadn’t even talked to him during the return trip from White Sands.

In the late-morning heat Lance was already sweaty and exhausted. His clothes dragged on him. Back at the Air Force Base, they had outfitted him with a uniform the right size, void of rank insignia. The uniform fit well at first, but now it felt as if every thread and every seam found a way to chafe his skin. He was thirsty, he was hungry, and he was afraid to complain.

Lance fell into a routine of just walking. Every fifty-five minutes the call would come down the ranks to “Take Five!”, and Lance would slump against his backpack. He tried to conserve energy, but how could he recharge an hour’s worth of walking in only five minutes? It reminded him of the time he had tried to hike Old Ragtop mountain in the Appalachians, not far from Washington, D.C. He had been forced to turn back after only an hour. But there was no turning back, here.

Sergeant Morris came back and chided him. “Keep standing during your break. Otherwise you’ll tighten up.” He ignored her advice and sat panting.

Distances were deceptive out in the desert. The troops seemed to hike forever, yet they made no progress. Mountains on the horizon shimmered like a milestone to reach by nightfall, yet after a day of hiking the haze-blue mounds looked no closer. Lance tried setting near-term goals instead, looking at a scraggly mesquite or a cluster of rocks not too far away.

In the first hard day, Lance again made the mistake of thinking about his wife and two daughters, stranded back east. In his job at the Department of Energy, Lance had always spent too much time traveling. He rarely spent more than two-thirds of a month with his family, and he hadn’t thought anything when he left home to visit Lockwood’s smallsat demonstration or to attend the tech-transfer ceremony at Kirtland.

He hadn’t seen his wife or daughters since. In fact, with the phone lines breaking down early in the crisis, he had only managed to speak to them twice. And all they had talked about were how bad things were getting… little Lisa had cried, and it made things even worse.

Since that time, Bayclock had carved himself a position as military dictator in New Mexico; Jeffrey Mayeaux was acting president of the United States. And Lance was in the middle of an endless trek across a godforsaken parched wilderness.

He smiled with cracked lips; he couldn’t wait to get the White Sands antenna farm up and running under his control—so they could start restoring modern conveniences, like a humidifier.

By afternoon on the sixth day, they approached a small Native American pueblo. A cluster of rickety house trailers, cabins, and a general store stood like a careless pile of refuse at the intersection of a narrow pot-holed road and a winding gravel path that led into the mountains.

General Bayclock raised his hand for attention and swiveled around on his gelding so he could shout back at his troops. “We’ll re-provision here,” he said. “It’ll count as a rest break. Take no more than half an hour.”

The pueblo seemed to have more buildings than inhabitants. Behind each cluttered shack, children and old women came from small gardens of beans, chiles, and corn to watch the soldiers. Lance saw no adult men. Were they out hunting? Chickens clucked by, pecking at weeds and insects. A dog barked and scattered the chickens.

Two small black-haired children, naked and covered with dust, played in the street. Even before the petroplague, this place must have seen little traffic. Pickup trucks and gutted cars were scattered randomly between house trailers. Lance had no idea if these vehicles were also victims of the plague, or if they had fallen into decay long before.

Everyone in the pueblo stood motionless as the contingent approached. A stocky, matronly woman stepped out of the general store and held onto one of the support beams on the wooden porch.

Bayclock rode directly up to her. “We need food and water, Ma’am. Enough for a hundred men.”

The woman stared at the general. She looked hard and weathered, like a schoolteacher Lance once had. Even in the summer heat she wore a red flannel shirt and didn’t seem to be sweating at all. “You’re welcome to water at the well,” she said, gesturing to a community pump near one of the empty house trailers. “But we have no food to spare.”

Bayclock’s face darkened, as if a sudden winter storm crossed his features. “Nevertheless, you’ll provide what we need.”

Other people from the pueblo began approaching. The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “And if we refuse?”

Bayclock scowled down at her from his tall black horse. He shifted as if in a conscious effort to make his general’s stars glitter in the sun. “I’m invoking eminent domain, requisitioning supplies. My authority comes directly from the President of the United States. It’s against the law to refuse.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. She stepped off the porch of the general store into the full sunlight. “Is there a United States anymore?”

Lance cringed. Bayclock glared. The general gestured to the front row of footsoldiers. “You men, take sufficient supplies to carry on our march. Do it now.”

Several pueblo women left their gardens and stepped onto the porch of the general store. A young teenaged boy with his left arm wrapped in a filthy cast joined them. They stood in front of the door, blocking the way.

The general’s men hesitated. “You people clear a path,” Bayclock said, watching from astride his gelding. “Or we’ll have to use force.”

The men unshouldered their weapons, looking uncomfortably at each other. Some faced forward, entirely focused on their targets.

The storekeeper looked at them without blinking, facing down the rifle barrels. She jutted her prominent chin forward. “Are you sure those weapons work? Our own shotguns fired once or twice, and then they’re no good. You going to risk a backfire that’ll kill your own men?”

Bayclock’s voice was grim. “I assure you these weapons will work.”

“So what are you going to do?” she continued. “Shoot women and children?” She looked to the others standing on either side of her. Most of them did not look nearly as confident as she did.

Bayclock said, “Clear a path. This is your final warning.” In that moment, Lance could see that Bayclock believed his own threat.

The stern woman must have believed it herself. Her shoulders slumped as she stepped to one side. “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me.” With a nod, she signaled the others to stand down.

Bayclock did not gloat. “We’ll take only what we need.”

The woman shook her head. “You’re taking what we need.”

Later, as the troops moved out, the horsemen took the point, riding ahead as the footsoldiers marched behind them. Lance could not stop himself from looking back at the angry, betrayed glares of the people in the pueblo.

The expedition made another five miles before stopping for the evening. The troops built fires, while camp personnel set up tents and prepared a meal with fresh supplies from the pueblo.

Lance wanted to collapse. His muscles felt like tangled piano wires; his body was a mass of aching blisters, dried sweat, and stinging sunburn. But he was deeply troubled by the events of the afternoon, and he went to speak with Bayclock—partly as an excuse to avoid doing more back-breaking setup work, but also because he wanted answers.

“General, why did we have to bully those people at the pueblo? It could have escalated into a hostile situation, and we already had enough rations to last us for the whole journey.”

Bayclock looked at Lance as if he were an interesting but minor specimen in an insect collection. “You’re missing the point, Dr. Nedermyer. Missing it entirely. The supplies are an irrelevant detail in all of this.”

He folded his hands over his hard stomach and stood beside the command tent, watching the preparation of the campfires. “This expedition isn’t merely to go to White Sands and occupy the solar-power farm. It’s also a unifying tactic, a demonstration of how we must hold together. Without our lines of communication, the United States is unraveling. People must not be allowed to think they can just laugh at the law.”

Bayclock narrowed his eyes as he stared into the deepening dusk. “I’m one of the men charged with that responsibility. Often I don’t like it, and it’s a great burden to protect humanity from its own tendencies toward anarchy.” He turned to Lance. “But just because I don’t like the job, doesn’t mean I can shrug my shoulders and ignore it. I have a responsibility to this nation, to the people.

“I am like a great hammer and these people are the anvil. Between us, we can forge the nation again—but it won’t happen spontaneously. Only through effort, strenuous effort.” Bayclock said softly, “Now do you understand, Dr. Nedermyer? Is that clear enough for you?”

Lance swallowed. “Yes, sir.” He was afraid he understood the general… all too well.

Lance awoke to the sound of gunshots breaking through the darkness.

As the troops scrambled out of their blankets, he sat up on the hard ground, wincing in pain from his stiff back and looking around. He grabbed his glasses and tried to make out details in the blurred shadows. He heard horses, but they sounded scattered, growing more distant.

Climbing to his feet, Lance stepped on a sharp rock and hobbled backward. More small popping sounds came from off to his left. Other men scrambled in that direction. They shot their weapons into the darkness, but those shots sounded different—clearer and more contained.

They were being attacked by people from the pueblo! But how could the Indians have working rifles? Lance took a deep breath. The attackers could still use shells and gunpowder to make small explosives, tiny bombs that would shatter the night.

The horses ran the other direction, on the opposite side of the camp from the explosions. A diversion? He heard the general bellowing, but the men were panicked, and even Bayclock could not keep the situation under control.

One of the airmen finally shot a flare into the sky; it burst into an incandescent white spotlight surrounded by glowing smoke streamers. Under the sudden glare splashing across the landscape, they spotted horses running off in all directions.

Two young men rode a pair of stolen horses, galloping off into the night. Bayclock yelled for the riflemen to shoot, but they missed. The young riders vanished into the dark distance. Waving his arms, Bayclock sent his troops out to round up the horses and to search for the attackers.

Lance hurriedly pulled on his hiking boots and went to help, but he knew it was a lost cause.

Chapter 66

With somber tears burning his eyes, Spencer stood at the electromagnetic launcher. Although he knew in his heart it was necessary, the beautiful dream he had chased for so long was being torn apart piece by piece to build a defense against “barbarians.” He felt sick at what they were doing to the launcher, possibly destroying his hope for the solar-power satellites—it wasn’t fair, especially now that an expedition from JPL was on its way!

Rita Fellenstein supervised connecting the power-transmission line from the microwave farm to the launcher’s battery facility. He was thankful they didn’t need a transformer to boost the voltage, like the one that had failed at the water pump. Spencer’s other techs were still working on that problem.

Gilbert Hertoya grunted as he helped Arnie, his refugee scientist friend from Sandia, pry open an aluminum side wall of the launcher housing. Spencer glimpsed the two gleaming parallel rails lined with capacitor banks and batteries.

Gilbert’s workers had unbolted and lifted a ten-meter-long section of the launcher, mounting it on a swivel so the railings could turn through a 45-degree arc, horizontal as well as vertical. The launcher looked like a giant tuning fork jutting from the dismantled building, anchored by black cables running to the capacitors. He called to Spencer. “What do you think?”

“This thing is going to save us from Bayclock, huh?” Spencer stepped over the cables, careful not to trip. He sighed, trying not to show his brooding despair.

Gilbert proudly swept an arm along the length of the device. “The hardest part was mounting the rails on the swivel.” He motioned. “Get behind the base.”

Stepping around blue capacitor boxes, Spencer could see the equipment he himself had worked on just a few days ago. Now, timing cables, rail-gap switches, induction lines, and wire from the battery array littered the floor. Gilbert had cleared the area by the base to where they could lift five-pound metal-coated sabots onto the railgun.

Gilbert pointed out the switching mechanism. “The homopolar generator is over here. The rail is short, but we should still be able to launch the projectiles at a couple of kilometers a second. That’ll pack a real punch.”

“I hope so,” sighed Spencer. “But is it worth it?”

“If it works it will be.”

“Does it work?”

Gilbert shrugged. “Let’s see.”

They left Arnie to continue his work and met Rita outside by the transmission line. She pushed back the bush hat she had reclaimed from Lieutenant Carron. “This should do it. I need to get back and help Bobby extract the citrus oil for the explosives.” She nodded toward the electrical wiring. “Gilbert only needs a ninety-second cycle time to recharge his capacitors. With the current we can draw from batteries, he can probably get nine, maybe ten shots before we’re depleted.”

Spencer looked worried. “I’d hate to dismantle our precious satellite launcher for something that might not be decisive against Bayclock.”

Gilbert rolled his dark eyes. “That’s the physicist in you. Listen to an engineer for once. These projectiles are four to five times faster than a bullet—”

“So the energy is 16 to 25 times greater,” finished Spencer. “But still, what if you miss the target?”

“Wide-area munitions,” Rita said. “Gil’s got us filling sabots with shrapnel, so when we launch it’ll be like a super shotgun.” She turned to the short engineer. “Bobby wants to push the trigger himself when you go after Bayclock. If he’s not flying his balloon, that is.”

Spencer scowled at her eager smile. “Rita, this is going to be messy. We busted our butts to cobble this antenna farm together, but I never thought I’d have to kill anybody for it.”

Rita whirled. “Spence, a lot of people have died since the petroplague. This is a war here! Civilization against the cannibals. The golden age against the dark ages.”

Her voice became quieter. “When I was a kid, I took a lot of shit from gorillas who wanted to pick on a beanpole, egg-headed girl—but now I am not going to let a bully come down here and take our dreams. Not when I can still fight.”

“Incoming!”

Bobby Carron looked up just in time to be hit on the side of the head with a soft orange. Already leaning forward, he lost his balance and tripped into the tank half-filled with ripe citrus rinds. He sputtered and gasped at the bright, acidic stink. He climbed back out of the knee-deep vat, picking clots of spoiled lemons and oranges from his hair.

Rita grinned as she tossed another orange into the air and caught it. “Gotta keep those reflexes tuned up, flyboy. Hate to have a killer orange take out your balloon.”

Bobby brushed himself off in disgust. “What did you do that for? I was checking the acidity.”

“Awww, the big sensitive football player got his feelings hurt? You were too good a target to miss. You’re lucky it wasn’t the batch of saltpeter!”

He held his hands in mock apology as he stepped toward Rita.

“Hold it right there, you uncouth, smelly excuse for a pilot,” said Rita. She cocked back her arm. “One more step and you’re dead, zoombag.”

Bobby sprang forward and grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her to the edge of the vat. “Okay beanpole!” He picked her up and heaved her headfirst into the fruity mixture. “Now who’s calling a Navy aviator a ‘pilot’?”

Spencer’s body ached from riding back and forth: railgun launcher, microwave farm, and the encampment for the crowd of Alamogordo ranchers and townspeople. Too many things still needed to be done, and General Bayclock could arrive within a week—if he was coming at all.

The Alamogordo city council had assigned nearly fifty people to prepare a site where the coalition of ranchers, businessmen, and city workers would establish their defenses. Spencer had insisted that the encampment be far enough away from the circular expanse of whiplike microwave antennas to avoid danger from the smallsat power beaming every day at noon.

Now he sat beside a small cookfire outside the command trailers. Rita joined Bobby and Gilbert as they formulated plans for the next day; she made an extra effort to sit by Bobby, Spencer noticed, who seemed too accommodating when she motioned for him to scoot over to give her more room.

Rita turned to the side and spat some of her last tobacco. “If Bayclock has a couple hundred soldiers, there’s only one direction he can come—north. I rode out west today, and the Organ Mountains are too damned rough for an army to negotiate.”

“Could he approach on the other side of the mountains and circle up from the south?” said Gilbert.

Bobby shook his head. “Bayclock isn’t going to be interested in surprise. I’ll bet he doesn’t expect much resistance from a few wimpy scientists. He plans to strut in here, puff out his chest, and ask us to hand over the keys.”

Spencer grunted. “Then he’s in for a shock.” The others gave a nervous chuckle. “How are the other defenses coming?”

“Railgun test in three days,” said Gilbert. “We’ll try to calibrate the range. And the big catapults are almost complete. They can throw a hundred pounds of rocks half a mile. That’ll add to Bayclock’s misery.”

“Good,” said Spencer. “Any luck with the citrus explosives?”

Bobby rocked back on his heels and tossed a small stick into the fire. “Last week we located a couple hundred crates of oranges and lemons decaying at the depot in Holloman Air Force Base. One of the local businessmen remembered delivering a batch right before the base closed down; a wagonload more is due in from the surrounding groves. Rita’s, uh, coordinating the extraction and it looks like we can start mixing the stuff by day after tomorrow. If Romero can get the catapults ready, we can try the first test after Gilbert’s calibrated the railgun.”

“Good. What about the gunpowder?”

Bobby shook his head. “The piss detail—er, I mean the ‘saltpeter resource group’—has already done their part, and we’ve made plenty of charcoal. But we’re having trouble finding enough sulfur to make it worthwhile. It would take a month to ride over to Silver City and back, where they’ve mined gobs of the stuff. We’re lucky to have any gunpowder at all for the rifles.”

“Everybody keep thinking,” said Spencer. “I hate these one-point solutions. We’re just begging for something to go wrong at a bottleneck.” He felt a cramp in his leg as he stood. “Let’s get back to work. Sleep in shifts. We’re running out of time.”

As he bent to massage his calf, he watched Rita and Bobby head out side by side. He didn’t know why, but he felt a pang of loneliness. He remembered Sandy, the dark-haired girl who had rescued him from a life of nerd-dom back in high school; as he turned back to work, he wasn’t sure she had entirely succeeded.

Juan Romero surveyed the crowd of old farts by the catapult and suppressed a sigh. It wasn’t much of a fighting force, but all the men and women who could shoot or ride were training with Bobby Carron, learning details of guerrilla warfare. The few aviation-trained volunteers took turns in the lookout balloon; others had evacuated to Cloudcroft in the mountains.

That left Romero’s catapult group. Forty-two members of the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” he thought. Why do I feel like this isn’t such a good idea?

Seventeen of the group must be eighty years old, and the rest looked like they would be more at home in a library, squinting through coke-bottle glasses. Well, Romero thought, running his palms over his face to slick down his long mustache, if life gives you limes, it’s time to make margaritas. He chuckled at that. He really enjoyed playing Pancho to Spencer’s Cisco Kid, overdoing the stereotyped Mexican much the same way a cartoon Frenchman wore a beret and slapped his forehead with a ‘Sacre Bleu!’ Romero hoped Spencer knew it was a joke.

He stepped up to the ten-meter-long bar cannibalized from the scraps of the railgun launcher. Ropes dangled from the bottom of an oversized bucket bolted to one end; a set of heavy-duty springs from disassembled truck shock absorbers hung on a rotating base anchored to the other end, weighted down with concrete blocks. Buckets of rusting scrap iron made indentations in the white sand.

Romero clapped his hands to get their attention. “All right, listen up!” He pointed to three old men standing in front. “Grab onto the rope and cock back the lever. The rest of you, stand back. Remember, there’s only one of these catapults, so if you get in the way and splatter yourself all over the workings, we’ll lose our heavy defense.”

No one laughed at the joke. If he didn’t explain, the safety lesson would be lost. “You three—be careful no one’s in your line of fire. The rest of you got that?”

The three old men strained against the ropes as they dug their heels into the loose sand. The metal arm of the catapult came back, groaning at the limit of its flexibility, until it lay quivering, parallel with the ground.

He held up a hand. “Do not let go of that rope!” Romero scrambled beneath the catapult arm. Reaching up to the base, he connected a hook around the lower part of the arm to secure it. “Okay, keep the rope taut, just in case, while I load the bucket.”

Romero and three helpers struggled with scraps of iron, dumping them into the oversized bucket. Satisfied, he stepped back and nodded to the boys. “Okay, release the lines—slowly!”

Shooing them away from the coiled weapon, Romero gathered the gang around him. Perspiration ran down his face. “That’s all it takes, ladies and gentlemen. Remember, don’t let go of the ropes until the safety hook is on.”

A feisty-looking woman with white hair sticking from under ten-gallon hat held up her hand. “Son, how do we shoot this thing?”

“Rotate the base to aim the throw. Unfortunately, the distance varies with the weight of the projectile, so our range is always going to be a rough guess. When the catapult is in position, the trigger is that line that runs from the hook.”

“Can I try it?”

Romero said, “Satisfy your curiosity now, rather than waste time in battle.” Ducking under the catapult arm, he picked up the trigger line, then walked back to the elderly woman.

“Now, if you’re frightened, I can help you. All it takes is a quick pull—” He hadn’t finished his sentence before the woman viscously yanked back the line.

The catapult slammed forward and banged against the restraining bar in front. Seventy pounds of rusty bolts, twisted nails, sharp cutting pieces of metal flew in a low arc like a cloud of bees. The team watched the metal disperse until they lost sight of it; seconds later, it rained down in a cloud of dust a football field wide, kicking up debris as though an invisible warplane had strafed the desert floor.

The old woman cackled. She clenched both fists above her head in triumph. “Ha! Just let those bastards try and get through that!”

“Bank’s going hot,” Gilbert Hertoya said at the railgun controls. “Charging capacitors!”

“Notify Bobby—we’re ready for ranging.”

Spencer put a finger in his ears to muffle the sound in case one of the capacitors pre-fired and caused a catastrophic failure. It was another weak point in the defense—they were using research apparatus for weapons, and no one seemed concerned but him. Even though this was a full dress rehearsal, things still hadn’t come together. His stomach was sour with worry.

Gilbert jerked a thumb at Rita by the control blockhouse twenty yards away. She knelt next to Romero, who was relieved to be back from his hours with the catapult team. The two busily worked a makeshift telegraph connected to a severed telephone line. Wires, a small speaker, a battery, and a couple of resistors with a switch completed the apparatus.

Two days ago, the dead telephone line had run along Route 57, as useless as a magic wand in a science lab. Rita had supervised tearing the wires down from the utility poles, and now one end was connected to Romero’s telegraph machine; the other ran to Bobby Carron’s observation balloon a thousand feet in the air.

The short scientist dug an elbow in Spencer’s side. “Think she’s worried about Bobby up there?”

“The way they’ve been acting, you’d think the petroplague removed their libido inhibitors. No wonder the other ranch hands are sulking around and not getting their work done.”

Gilbert threw Spencer an exaggerated glance. “You aren’t jealous are you?”

Spencer dropped his hands, totally shocked. “What, jealous about Rita?” He had never even looked at Rita that way. After years of working together, she was just “one of the crew” to him.

“Whatever,” Gilbert said, “but personally, I think you ‘doth protest too much.’”

Spencer snorted and looked away. “I’m not even remotely jealous.”

“Right.”

“I’m not!”

Gilbert raised an eyebrow.

Spencer started to speak, but stood quiet for a long minute. “It’s just that Rita is the last person I’d expect to see getting dopey over someone. I guess I was starting to feel lonely myself.” He smiled wearily. “Looking for that girl with the sunburned nose, I guess. Too many Beach Boys songs.”

Gilbert smiled. “No problem, old man. I miss my own family, and they’re just in Alamogordo.”

Arnie yelled from the blockhouse. “Charging complete. Five seconds!” They put fingers in their ears, anticipating the sound.

A loud crack sizzled through the confined chamber. Spencer tried to follow the five-pound sabot as the railgun accelerated it down the tracks in a blurred streak. He smelled metallic ozone from where the plasma armature ionized the air.

“There it hits!” Gilbert pointed downrange. Spencer had to squint to see the dust kicked up where the wide-area munition pummelled the desert.

Rita waved from where she and Romero squatted by the telegraph. She slapped the radio man on the back and straightened, then pointed up in the air to Bobby’s balloon. “From Bobby’s guesstimate the projectile hit five miles away and spread out in an elliptical area fifty by twenty yards. If the metal bearings separated like we think, everything in that area should be shredded like mozzarella cheese on a pizza.”

Spencer brightened. “Get the results analyzed by tonight’s tech meeting.” He shook his head as Rita threw him a snappy salute. She’s totally lost it, he thought.

But Gilbert looked dismayed when Spencer returned to the railgun. The small engineer had a foot up on the base of the gun, reaching up to run a hand along the railing. Scorch marks marred the surface of the once-gleaming metal.

Spencer frowned. “What’s the matter?”

Gilbert shook his head. “We shorted out some capacitors. Unless we get this whole rail replaced, we’ll be up a creek.”

“But you’ve got miles of railing to work with.”

“That’s not the problem,” said Gilbert. “Yeah, we can replace the railing, but we have to take the whole friggin’ railgun apart to do it—and that will take nearly five days.”

Spencer tried to sound upbeat. “You can do it—”

Gilbert interrupted irritably, “Don’t you understand? Even if we get the railgun fixed, that doesn’t mean it’ll work again. What’s to prevent the same thing from happening?” Gilbert turned to the blockhouse. “I can’t believe I wasted the last three weeks and damaged our satellite launcher for one shot!”

Spencer started after the man, but stopped. It had been three weeks, and what did they have to show for it? The railgun worked, but it might have fired its last projectile. The citrus explosives were still not finished; and their only defense besides the Alamogordo townspeople was a medieval catapult!

It chilled him. Maybe Bayclock would laugh at them after all.

Chapter 67

The pregnant girl from Oakland gave birth to a baby boy in the middle of the afternoon. The young father hovered beside her in a panic throughout the ordeal, in deeper shock than the mother herself. He chewed the ends of his fingers and kept asking, “How long is this going to take? How long is it going to be?” The commune’s three self-proclaimed midwives tended the girl.

When they finally brought forth the baby, everyone began cheering and singing in a way that embarrassed Iris Shikozu. One woman ran out and hammered on the iron triangle that served as their dinner bell, raising such a celebratory alarm that several men came running in from the wind turbines.

While this baby was certainly not the first to be born in the Altamont settlement, it was the first since the petroplague. The midwives—all of whom had proclaimed the wonders of natural childbirth—used cool, dampened rags to wipe clean the mother and baby. The fifteen-year-old girl lay trembling and exhausted, holding the baby against her as the father stroked her forehead.

Iris sat down outside the small house and was glad no one had even asked her to boil water. She knew nothing about the birthing process.

Daphne Harris came up and extended a hand to pull Iris to her feet. “Come on, get off your butt! There’s work to do!”

“Gee, thanks for cheering me up,” Iris said and brushed dry grass from her pants.

Daphne looked so healthy and full of restless energy that she practically glowed. Upon first arriving at the commune, Iris had liked Jackson Harris’s wife immediately. Daphne appeared driven, consumed by an ongoing battle inside her; now that she had settled down, she seemed more at peace… but she still required some way to burn her restless energy.

“We need to clear some spots down by that cluster of live oak, then you can help me set up a few new tents. We got some more people showing up for the concert, even though it’s still a month away.”

Iris raised her eyebrows. “Musicians this time, or just spectators?”

Daphne shrugged. “I didn’t interview them, girl! Some of both, I guess.”

Once the announcement had gone out about their windmill-powered Labor Day rock ‘n roll concert, people started trickling into the Altamont settlement. Jackson Harris let them stay, as long as they were willing to feed themselves and do work.

And Todd had been gone only a week.

Harris and Doog and a large group of the commune dwellers worked out at the Altamont Speedway, repairing bleachers, rigging wires, fixing the metal loudspeakers. Another group set about laying cloth-wrapped cable from the windmill substations to the sound system at the racetrack.

Daphne handed Iris a shovel, then took a long rake for herself. “The new folks will think it’s romantic for about two nights to sleep out under the stars, then they’ll want a tent. We’ll need to dig a few more privies, too, but I’m not doing that. We got plenty of hands around here to help out.”

Under the live oaks at the far end of the trailers, huts, and reinforced tents, Daphne began attacking the underbrush. She yanked twigs and tore loose grass to clear a firepit and to make flat foundations for new tents. Iris set to work with her shovel, chopping out heavy roots and removing stones.

“So, do you miss him?” Daphne said after a few moments.

Iris’s instinctive reaction was to say “Who?”—but she knew that would be ridiculous. “A little,” she admitted, trying to keep her voice flat and guarded.

“You gonna wait for him? Do you think he’ll come back?”

Iris shrugged. She gripped her shovel and looked the other direction. She didn’t want to meet Daphne’s eyes.

Daphne said, “If you ever think that cowboy of yours ain’t coming back, just let me know. We’ll set you up with somebody. You notice all the other guys staring at you?”

Iris nodded. “Yes, I’ve noticed—and I don’t think I’ll need your help setting me up. Thanks, anyway.”

Daphne was silent for a moment, then giggled. “Oh, I almost forgot! I got a message for you. Todd radioed from down in Pasadena. He got on the emergency short-wave network and talked to the Lab in Livermore.”

Iris turned quickly, trying to hide her reaction, but she was too late. “What did he say?”

Daphne spoke with agonizing slowness. “Well, he sent a special message to inform you that he made it to LA just fine. They had some trouble with the train, but they’re at the JPL now, making plans to head out with the satellites. He’s gone that far—and personally, I’m surprised.”

“Was there more?” Iris asked. “Did he say anything else?”

Daphne shrugged. “Probably, but it was an unspoken hint. He was talking to that Moira Tibbett, you know. That woman wouldn’t know an emotion if it slapped her in the face!”

Feeling dizzy, her thoughts in turmoil, Iris plunged back into her work with the shovel.

The musicians making their way to the Altamont commune were a mish-mash of drummers, singers, guitarists. Each one had cobbled together musical instruments from pieces that survived the ravages of the petroplague. Many carried wooden flutes, harmonicas, metal autoharps, and expensive classical guitars with ivory instead of plastic tuning pegs and expensive gut strings instead of nylon.

Several engineers in Livermore had taken the challenge to build functional amplifiers and pickups. Two of them even hoped to build a working electric guitar to really shatter the silence.

After dark, the musicians sat around the evening fire and jammed. The crowds grew bigger and bigger as the days went by, and people rode in from the surrounding towns just to hear the evening practice sessions.

Ironically, before the petroplague, most of these people would never have gone to the same bars or the same concerts. Divided into their own little cultural subgroups, cliques had used fine divisions of music to separate themselves: classic rock, folk music, heavy metal, technopop, easy listening, country. Now though, with everything else falling apart, the music itself—regardless of brand or flavor—brought them together and they listened without the scorn or snobbery they would have shown before.

Satisfied, Iris sat on her lumpy cushion under the stars, sipping strong herb tea from a metal cup. They had stuffed themselves with a delicious stew made in a big pot: vegetables from Tracy, herbs from the gardens planted around the commune, and beef from the local ranchers.

Iris lounged back and looked at the people, thinking how strange a mix they seemed—Jackson Harris’s inner-city refugees, throwback hippies, herself a Stanford microbiologist, and redneck ranchers, cowboys, and migrant workers.

Doog started off the singing himself, accompanied by a quiet unobtrusive harmonica. He had a rich, mellow voice, and he closed his eyes as the words came from his lips. The firelight reflected from the circles of his John Lennon glasses. He seemed to be pulling the music out of his soul as he sang.

It didn’t really matter that Doog’s own taste in music was radically different from what hers had been. Now, as she listened to his voice and thought of her own driving obsession to make the Altamont concert a reality, her need to bring not just music, but Rock ‘n Roll, back to the world.

Then she thought of Todd’s need to help start the world on the long journey back to civilization—even if it meant a fool’s errand of carrying solar-power satellites across the country.

What right did she have to step on his dreams?

Long before the music ended for the night, Iris went off to bed, alone.

Chapter 68

Todd Severyn rode high on the buckboard of their commandeered wagon and stared across the landscape of the American southwest.

Beside him, holding the reins of the three horses pulling the wagon, burly Casey Jones sat hypnotized by the desert terrain. He fixed his big dark eyes on the horizon as if willing it to come closer. Casey pushed at the old shirt wrapped like a turban around his bald head to protect him from sunstroke.

He and Todd rode together in the comfortable silence of two men who had already spent too much time together and had used up their conversation. In the wagon bed behind them, Henrietta Soo snoozed in the afternoon heat. Lying against the ten smallsats they had hauled from Pasadena, she sweated under the reflective blankets that tried to keep the heat away.

Todd slouched his cowboy hat over his eyes as the horses plodded along. His arms still ached from days of pumping the railroad handcar across southern California and part of Arizona—but overall he was amazed at how uneventful the journey had been.

Todd kept tattered old maps in a sack under the buckboard, marking his best guess of where they were on their trek. Once they had abandoned the handcar and took to the roads, Casey’s railroad chart hadn’t been much help. By Todd’s reckoning, they had crossed Arizona into New Mexico, then veered south toward Alamogordo and White Sands. Pushing hard, they might reach Spencer Lockwood’s solar-power farm within the next two days.

Early that morning, the last settlement they encountered was a Native American village and old trading post. They had refilled their water containers and traded gossip and news for a delicious breakfast of fresh eggs and tortillas. The desert road stretched arrow-straight ahead of them. The three horses trotted along the easy path with a distance-eating gait.

“People up ahead,” Casey Jones said. His deep voice was gruff and startling in the sleepy afternoon stillness.

Todd cocked his hat back and squinted at two people walking down the road out in the middle of nowhere. Both were tall, a man and a woman; the woman carried a brilliant neon pink backpack.

As the wagon approached, the two hikers stepped off to the side of the road and stood, hands on hips, and waited. The man, tall and broad-shouldered with a mane of straw-colored hair and a devil-may-care grin, stuck out his hand in a classic hitchhiker’s pose. He carried a shotgun over one shoulder and a broad hunting knife at his belt.

Beside him, the woman looked tired, but well-proportioned. She stood like an amazon. She had auburn hair and a strikingly pretty, strong face—nothing dainty about it. She probably hadn’t been much to look at competing in a world of fashion models and heavily applied makeup; but now she was quite memorable.

Casey reined in the horses, and the wagon came to a stop. In the back, Henrietta Soo sat up blinking; she crinkled the reflective blanket away from her.

“Hey, can you give us a lift?” the big blond man said.

The woman smiled at Casey, then flashed a broader grin at Todd, as if she had just seen saviors coming to rescue her. “We’d really appreciate it,” she said. “I’m Heather Dixon.”

She stretched out her hand, and Todd didn’t know if she meant for him to shake it or just give her a hand up into the wagon. She turned to her companion. “And this is—”

He cut her off with an almost savage grin. “Clyde,” he said, “you can just call me Clyde.”

By now, Miles Uma had grown accustomed to the assumed name “Casey Jones.” After months by himself, hiding from anyone who might recognize him, Uma had successfully walled himself off from his former existence as the captain of an oil supertanker. He had never told his real name to Rex O’Keefe and the Gambotti brothers, now lost somewhere in LA, alive or dead. He had never told Todd.

The parched scenery around him with its palette of tan, mauve, and rust seemed a million miles from the ocean and the knotted gray clouds he had seen every day on the bridge of the Zoroaster. Uma drove the team of horses, trying not to recall the times he had captained the enormous steel ship.

He had spent his life on the sea: working on tugs up in Alaska, spending six months on a barge, then working his way up to the supertankers owned by Oilstar. He had served in the merchant marines, spent a few years in the Navy when he was younger, and learned everything he needed to know about ocean-going vessels. The sea was his family, his lover. Ever-changing, the sea was always there.

But now the air around him smelled of sage and yucca. He couldn’t recall how the ocean smelled—though he could never forget the stench of spilled crude oil.

Uma extinguished most of those stray thoughts from his mind. He found it easier to forget by latching unto a task, pouring his entire being into accomplishing it. Whether it was fixing up the locomotive Steam Roller, gathering food to bring to the starving masses in Los Angeles, or carrying satellites off to New Mexico.

He still had nightmares about seeing the towering Golden Gate Bridge in the darkness, breaking through the control room door locked by Connor Brooks. He still felt the millions of barrels of oil gushing out from his fragile tanker, saw the TV footage of the spill crawling across the San Francisco Bay.

Uma remembered the brutal finality of the swift board of inquiry that had stripped him of his captain’s rank. Oilstar had fired him, of course, and Uma couldn’t argue with their decision. He was the captain of the Zoroaster, he was responsible for the actions of his crew. Anything else was just an excuse… and Miles Uma did not believe in excuses.

It didn’t matter that Connor Brooks had actually caused the crash of the oil tanker. It didn’t matter that one of Oilstar’s microbiologists had actually spread the Prometheus organism that devoured gasoline and petroleum plastics. It didn’t matter that everyone else had found some way to pass the buck.

Uma vowed to spend the rest of his days atoning, to make amends in any way possible, one task after another, from now until the end of his life.

When he and Todd Severyn and Henrietta Soo had left the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they worked the handcar to propel them along the tracks away from the city, through the San Gabriel Mountains, and into the great southern basin that was one of the least-populated areas in the entire United States. He took twice as many shifts as Todd or Henrietta, refusing to rest, enjoying the pain in his arms because that seared away distractions. Rolling along the rails, they got up an even greater speed than he had estimated, moving along near 25 miles per hour on the long straight stretches across the desert.

The distance from Barstow to Needles was murder, some of the bleakest, hottest wasteland he had ever imagined. Even though they worked through the night, it took them three days to cross the distance and to ascend the near-impossible slopes of the mountain range that stood like battlements across their path. But they made up for the time descending the east side of the slopes, across the California border, into the more hospitable terrain beyond the Colorado River.

In eastern Arizona they passed an abandoned ranch with horses running loose in a large pen out back; wagons rested in a supply yard by the barn. The ranch house stood silent, and as they rolled the handcar into the dawn light, ready to stop for the day, Todd kept staring at the horses. Uma knew what was on his mind.

With a wagon and team of horses, they could make better time without killing themselves from the effort. By now, Uma himself felt ready to drop from aching muscles, and Todd and Henrietta were worse off. Their pace had decreased over the last two days.

They stopped and went to the ranchhouse, hoping to replenish their supplies and at least have a good rest inside a real house on real mattresses, possibly even wash. Todd called out as they walked around the ranch yard. He saw no one moving, only the horses in the back meadows. Uma went to the ranch house, finding it unlocked. No one answered their shouts, and all three entered the darkened home.

The air smelled heavy and musty, as if no one had moved there for months. Everything was reasonably neat, unmolested by scavengers. Underlying it all hung a sour, rancid stench that was oppressive in the thick heat of the house.

They went into the kitchen, where morning light spilled through a broad window onto ceramic tiles and countertops. Uma opened the sealed refrigerator, and a strong gust of rotten meat drifted out. He did find some cans of soda and beer, which they took with them.

“Look at this,” Henrietta said. She reached to one of the door shelves and pulled out a cardboard box that contained five glass bottles. Prescription labels marked it as insulin. In another package, glistening needles lay surrounded by globs of translucent mucus—the remains of plastic hypodermic syringes.

In the big reading room and study, they found the corpse.

The man had been there for probably two months. The dry desert heat had preserved him somewhat, but not enough. He lay blackened and swollen in a big, overstuffed leather chair. His eyes were closed. His hair and fingernails had continued to grow.

Todd stumbled and sat down heavily in a chair, hanging his head in his hands. “Just like I found Alex,” he said. Uma didn’t know what he was talking about.

The study had tall French windows, covered with sheer curtains. Books lined the oak shelves along two walls, and a large fireplace sat black and cold, mounded with white ashes…

That afternoon, they buried the man out back.

They spent the rest of the evening gathering supplies. The isolated ranch apparently held many months of stores. All the meat in the freezer had turned rotten, but a large cache of canned goods, as well as dried and smoked meats, remained.

Todd seemed to enjoy rounding up three of the horses and hitching the wagon. Together, they strained to load the ten solar satellites into the bed of the wagon. Uma, Todd, and Henrietta washed with tepid water from the emergency tank by the barn; Uma took the time to shave his entire head with the straight razor. They stayed the night, getting a good rest on comfortable beds, then set out the following morning.

Uma drove the horses as they turned away from the railroad tracks and headed toward New Mexico. They made good time, and Uma began to feel a numbed contentment at seeing the landscape roll by beneath them. Doing something. He did not think about his past.

While he doubted he would ever be happy again, for the first time in many months Uma did not feel miserable. He thought of himself as Casey Jones….

And now, in an incredible, vengeful coincidence, they encountered Connor Brooks, like a great kick in the crotch.

Uma hunched down and kept silent under his rag turban while guiding the horses. Perhaps Brooks just wasn’t bright enough to recognize him, but Uma could never forget the face of the maniac that had caused the wreck of the Oilstar Zoroaster.

Throughout the day, Brooks rode in the back of the wagon, acting charming and talking with Henrietta Soo. She extolled the importance of the solar satellites, talked about where they were going, and how their mission could bring about a renaissance of civilization.

The young woman, Heather Dixon, latched onto Todd. She sat beside him in front asking questions about himself, appearing demure but not sure if she was going about it the right way. Todd was overwhelmed by the attention. He avoided Heather’s eyes but glanced at her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

On the other hand, Heather and Connor Brooks seemed to resent each other a great deal. Uma saw it all.

As the miles passed, he just sat on the buckboard guiding the horses. A storm raged within him, and he didn’t know what to do.

Todd looked up from his conversation with Heather when Casey Jones stopped the wagon. By sunset, they had reached the wooded foothills of a low line of mountains. It amazed him how fast the afternoon had gone by.

Heather chuckled. High thin shreds of cloud started to turn amber in the slanting light. Just a short walk away, he could see a slash of green through the hills that marked a small stream. Casey Jones jumped down from the buckboard and unhitched the horses, hobbling them so they could graze on the thick scrub.

The big dark man had been unusually reticent since noon, but Todd was preoccupied talking with Heather. Her companion Clyde climbed out of the back of the wagon and helped Henrietta down, smiling graciously at her.

“I noticed you had decent supplies in there,” Clyde said. “It would be great to have an nice dinner for a change.”

Todd kept looking at the green line of the stream. At the abandoned ranch in Arizona he had taken a couple of bamboo fishing poles and lures, hoping to find a chance to use them. “I think I’d rather try for some fresh food,” he said, pointing toward the stream. “Why don’t you fix up what meal you want. I’m going to try my hand at catching some trout over there.”

“If you’ve got two poles, I’ll come along and help,” Heather said, startling Todd. As soon as she spoke, he realized that was exactly what he hoped she would say.

In his former life, working around oil fields and dirty rigs, he never considered himself an expert in the social graces. Heather seemed a bit too eager to go off alone with him, and he felt a stab of guilt thinking about Iris—who was now about fifteen hundred miles away.

Todd remembered his awkward courtship of Iris, a few telephone calls, the long horseback ride from Alex Kramer’s home down to Stanford to pick her up, and the enjoyable times they’d had in the Altamont commune. But he never understood why a woman like Iris Shikozu would be remotely attracted to an old cowboy like himself. Was it just a relationship of convenience? Someone to team up with during the crisis of the spreading petroplague?

Todd’s head hurt. He wasn’t used to thinking like this. Things happened or they didn’t, and bumbling with psychological explanations, trying to second-guess what had occurred or what might have been—all that kind of garbage was for people who didn’t have anything else to do with their lives… people who wanted a ready excuse for anything.

He recalled the last thing Iris had said to him before he left. She had called him stupid and laughed at his personal quest to deliver the satellites. Despite all the time he had spent missing Iris, her callousness rekindled his anger. She could stay there in the Altamont and play her rock music for all he cared.

“Sure,” Todd said to Heather. “I’ve got two fishing poles.”

The tough blond guy looked at them with a barely concealed sneer as Todd and Heather took the fishing gear and headed off.

The stream had cut itself a deep channel through the loose soil. Water ran shallow but fast over boulders covered with streamers of algae. Todd scrambled down to the bank, slipping with his cowboy boots but trying not to look too clumsy. He helped Heather down, but she seemed perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Her jeans were worn and dirty, but her legs were long and slim. He watched the way she moved down the hillside. Squatting on a rock by the water, she flicked her reddish hair over her shoulder and smiled at him before she dipped her hands in the stream and splashed water on her face.

In the colorful light of sunset, the glittering droplets of water on her skin as she rubbed her cheeks made her look more beautiful than any amount of makeup ever could. Todd caught himself looking at her and turned away.

He tied a small spinner on one of the fish lines. He had spent plenty of times out in Wyoming, catching trout and fixing his own dinner before sleeping under the stars, with only a blanket and his horse for company. Todd handed Heather the first pole, then tied another lure for himself.

“Watch you don’t get it snagged in the rocks,” he said. “If there’s trout in here, they’ll be hiding down under the shadows.”

Heather sat on a rock beside him, dangling her lure in the water and flicking it back and forth. Todd showed her how to improve her technique, but Heather seemed distracted, as if she needed to talk about something but was afraid to broach the subject. Todd felt his stomach knotting. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what was on her mind.

“We need to get away,” she finally said. Her voice was husky, but frightened. “I’ve been with Connor for over a month. We’ve been wandering eastward, going nowhere—but he’s getting more and more unstable.”

“Connor?”

“That’s his real name. He said ‘Clyde’ because he thinks the two of us are Bonnie and Clyde. He’s sick, and he’s dangerous. I watched him shoot somebody’s dog just so he could frighten them.”

“So… what do you want to do?”

“I want to leave. We can keep walking now. Follow this stream up into the mountains. Keep moving! I’ve been living off the land for a month now. It’s not so difficult.”

“But—” Todd said, then his mind blanked on him. “I came all this way with the solar satellites. I can’t just stop now. Casey Jones and Dr. Soo are counting on me to go with them. Do you think they’re in danger just being with this guy? Maybe we should tell him to be on his way.”

“Of course they’re in danger!” Heather said, “but not unless we go back and spill his story. What’s more important?” Her eyes were big and pleading. “We could make a go of it, couldn’t we?”

“I—” he said, then his fish hook snagged on a rock. Thankful for the distraction, Todd turned back to the stream and began yanking on the pole to dislodge the lure. He could feel himself sweating with anxiety. His head was in a turmoil. He had left Iris in the Altamont because he needed to accomplish this journey. He couldn’t just run off now.

He finally got the fishhook free and yanked it out of the water. Turning to face Heather again, he froze stock still.

She had unbuttoned her plaid flannel shirt and yanked it open, untucking it from the waistband of her pants and exposing her large breasts. Her nipples stood out like strawberries on her pale skin. Todd stared dumbstruck.

Silvery reflective blankets and wadded padding covered the solar satellites in the back of the wagon. Connor Brooks poked around, catching a glimpse of the metal-clad smallsats. They didn’t look like much, but the lady doctor had been babbling all day about how fucking valuable they were, how they would bring back high-tech civilization.

When he thought no one else was looking, he snooped around, wondering what he could do with the sats. Maybe he could hold them for ransom or sell them off to somebody. The cowboy and that slut Heather had gone off fishing together, and they were probably banging away in the bushes at this very moment. Connor didn’t give a damn. She had grown boring enough in the last week.

He could smell the food the old lady doctor was heating at a small campfire, and it made his mouth water. The dark Quasimodo guy who drove the horses had been skulking around the campsite, but Connor couldn’t see him now. The man had some real problems, didn’t speak a word to anybody. He looked like a chocolate cue ball when he took off the turban on his head. Weird shit.

Ten satellites lay in the wagon bed. The horses were unhitched, and he figured it would take him maybe five minutes to hook them up again. After everyone bedded down, he could sneak back here and do it quietly, then ride off before anybody woke up fast enough to stop him.

He heard a soft footstep behind him and turned just in time to see the stocky black man lunge toward him, smashing his ribs against the side of the wagon. Connor let out a startled cry and gasped as the breath was halfway knocked out of him. The big creep grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

“Good to see you again, Brooks! Asshole.” The man’s voice sounded like a nail file dragged over a jagged edge of glass.

“Hey!” Connor gasped, struggling. “What the hell are you doing?” The man tried to twist him around, but Connor squirmed out of his grip. Dancing back and on his guard, Connor whirled. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

The dark bald man glared at him. His skin had a strange mottled coloration, and his face was wide and flattened in some sort of weird halfbreed mixup. “Come on, Brooks!” the man taunted. “You’ve been in my nightmares for months. You don’t recognize your captain?”

Suddenly the pieces snapped into place, and Connor’s eyes widened. Impossible! But the eyes, the slash of a lip, the flat nose and high cheekbones were indeed familiar. The last he remembered of the Butthead had been of Uma running from the bridge of the Oilstar Zoroaster to answer the false fire alarm Connor himself had set. The man had been a regular ape, full of black bristly hair from his knuckles to his eyebrows. But, the same man was somehow here in the middle of the desert, months after the petroplague—and their paths had collided again.

“You… you fuck!” Connor shouted.

He ducked his head and launched himself like a bullet to charge into Uma, but the burly captain was prepared. In fact, he seemed eager for the fight.

Uma took the attack in his rock-hard stomach; he pounded down with his fist on the back of Connor’s head. Then he wrapped a huge forearm around Connor’s neck.

Connor hammered upward into Uma’s crotch, making the dark man gasp with pain and release his hold just enough for Connor to struggle free. But Uma didn’t appear weakened. He stood with his fists bunched, ready to come pounding again.

“I am going to beat the living shit out of you, Brooks, and then maybe I’ll stake you out on the desert and let the ants finish you off!”

Connor took a step back toward the wagon. He couldn’t run. No way would he get far enough to escape, not that he really wished to. Right now more than anything Connor wanted to put Captain Butthead’s head up on a stake for the vultures to eat.

“What are you two doing?” Henrietta Soo came up from the campfire holding a big wooden spoon in her hand like a mother about to chastise two brawling children.

“This man caused the Zoroaster spill,” Uma said in his low, broken-glass voice.

Connor used the distraction to scramble around the back of the wagon, where he snatched up the shotgun he had carried across two states, the gun he had used to shoot the Mormon lady’s dog.

He took one more step toward Uma and raised the barrel. He had shells in both chambers; he cocked back the hammer. “You were the captain of the tanker, Butthead. You were responsible. Don’t go dumping that crap on me!”

Henrietta Soo looked from one to the other as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Uma didn’t seem the least bit afraid of Connor’s shotgun, and he stepped toward him.

“We’re not in front of an inquiry board here, Brooks. You can’t get away on technicalities. I may be responsible, since I should have had you confined to your quarters, but you caused the wreck. It’s your fault, and you’ll burn in hell for it.”

Connor held the shotgun steady as Uma continued to stride closer. He had no second thoughts about pulling the trigger. He had almost forgotten how much he hated this man. “My fault? None of it’s my fault, Butthead!” He laughed and raised the shotgun.

Heather stared back at Todd, trying to be alluring but somehow looking just as frightened as he felt. She unsnapped her jeans and pulled the zipper slowly open. “I don’t need you to come along with me, Todd. I can handle this by myself—but I want you there. I made a major bad choice with Connor, but I think you’re different. Let’s go make our own lives. Let’s get out of here!”

Todd’s heart hammered in his chest, and his throat became drier than the desert hardpan. “Heather, I….”

He kept seeing flashes of Iris. There were plenty of other men at the Altamont commune, and Iris was a person with a short temper and quick passions. She had wanted to move much faster in their relationship than Todd ever would have. He doubted that she would ever wait for him, and he had never promised to wait for her… just to come back someday.

But he shook his head, knowing that as difficult as it was, that his true feelings lay with Iris. He averted his eyes and started to speak, but before any words could form themselves, the cracking echo of a gunshot split the dusk.

“What the heck?” Todd said.

“The shotgun!” Heather said. “It’s Connor!” She scrambled to button her shirt again and fasten her jeans. The two of them climbed up the embankment and raced desperately toward the camp.

Connor squeezed the shotgun’s triggers, firing both barrels. The bang nearly deafened them.

—but instead of turning Uma’s chest into a pulp, the shotgun itself blew up in a backfire. Shards of the gun barrel and the stock flew in all directions. Black smoke burst out in a cloud. Connor fell backward, screaming as the hot explosion shredded the left side of his face.

With an animal howl Uma was upon him, ripping the twisted remains of the shotgun out of his hand and bringing it down like a club. Connor managed to roll and took the full force of the blow on his shoulder.

Trying to think clearly through the pain in his head and the rage pulsing though him, Connor yanked out his hunting knife. He couldn’t see anything out of his eye, and blood blazed like fire across his cheeks and temple. He slashed blindly, hoping to slice Uma’s jugular or put out his eye. Instead, the tip of the knife ripped across the dark man’s shirt. Uma stumbled back just long enough for Connor to scramble to his knees and grip the knife handle with both hands.

Uma swung again with the ruined shotgun, but Connor ducked low, then came up with all the strength in both of his arms and plunged the knife to the hilt in Uma’s abdomen.

Connor yanked the knife away, and blood came with it. Uma didn’t even seem to notice. The big bald man dropped the shotgun and came in again with his bare hands. He locked his grip around Connor’s throat, and Connor slashed his forearm—but Uma didn’t care. He was a vengeful machine, his only thought to kill Connor.

Connor’s larynx crumpled like an aluminum beer can. He stabbed Uma again, feeling the blade slip between his ribs and into his side. Foamy red blood came out of Uma’s mouth, but the Butthead continued to squeeze.

Connor’s eyes bulged; he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. He stabbed again and again. Uma was drenched with his own blood.

Connor began to pass out, when slowly Uma’s eyes froze ahead. He toppled like a great redwood trunk, falling to the dirt at the side of the wagon.

Connor tore himself free, retching and gasping for air. He stepped back, staring down at the wide-eyed corpse of the tanker captain. “You fuck!” He coughed and slammed his hiking boot viciously into Butthead’s kidneys. He kicked Uma again and again, feeling ribs crack and his side cave in. Connor couldn’t release his grip on the big hunting knife, even though the blood made his hands slick.

Suddenly, he remembered Henrietta Soo. She stood by the campfire still holding her flimsy wooden spoon and staring at him in horror.

A slow grin twisted Connor’s mangled face and he set off after her with the knife.

Todd reached the clearing before Heather. He scrambled down the rocks as he spotted Connor sitting on the buckboard of the wagon, cracking the reins. Todd nearly tripped, but kept his balance and yelled, “Hey—Connor! Stop!”

Connor twisted in his seat as if stunned to hear his name. He looked hideous—blood ran down the side of his face, a dark splotch where his eye had been. He was covered in dirt, soot and blood. Connor yelled at the horses. The wagon lurched forward in a cloud of dust and stones.

Todd heard the horses whinny as he smelled an overpowering smell of burning meat. Reaching the bottom of the rocky slope, Todd clunked forward in his cowboy boots. He tried to get up as much speed as he had when he and Casey Jones had leapt across the space between the buildings.

The wagon moved faster as Todd put on a final burst of speed. Reaching out, he grabbed onto the side of the wagon.

Splinters from the rough siding scraped his hands. He stumbled and tried to grab on with his other hand, but the wagon hit a bump and jerked away from him. Todd crashed into the ground, rolling, trying to keep away from the rear wagon wheel.

The wagon clattered past, and Todd heard a mish-mash of horse’s hoofs, snorting, and then the sound of Connor shouting something unintelligible as he charged away. Todd waited for a moment before pushing himself up.

He heard Heather run up beside him as he inspected his splintered hands. “Oh, Todd—” He ignored her, ticked off that he had let Connor get away.

A cloud of fading dust marked the horses’ progress. Todd turned to view the campsite.

Heather brushed back the hair from her eyes. “What now?”

Todd headed for the campsite. “Let’s check it out.”

The campfire still burned, and Henrietta Soo lay sprawled face-first on the ground beside it. Her arm had fallen into the embers of the fire. Her shirt smoldered, and the skin of her forearm blistered a sickly black.

Todd bent down on watery knees and rolled her over. Connor had slit her throat in a long ragged gash. It looked as if she had bled gallons into the dry dirt.

The deepening dusk blurred all the sharp details and the bright colors, but it took Heather only a moment to find the body of Casey Jones. He was much worse. Connor had butchered him.

Before Todd squeezed his eyes shut, he saw at least half a dozen stab wounds in Casey’s chest and abdomen.

Todd staggered away and vomited into the scrub brush, then fell back. He sat on the rough dirt and stared at nothing. He had never experienced anything like this before. Connor Brooks couldn’t be a human being and do this!

Heather squatted next to him and put her hand lightly on his shoulder. She squeezed it, but Todd barely felt the pressure of her fingers.

“I know I warned you,” she said, “but even I didn’t think he was capable of this. I thought he might take our supplies and steal the wagon but… all the blood!” She shuddered violently, then gasped to herself in disbelief. “I slept with him! I was alone with him for a month. What if I had said the wrong thing? What if he had done that to me?”

Todd’s voice was bitter. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Now he’s gone and we’re alone together.”

Heather stiffened and drew away from him. “This is not what I wanted!” Then she staggered to be by herself. Any thought of a relationship between them would now be forever stained with murder and violence.

After a few moments apart, Todd made his way to Heather. “We’ll never catch him. He’s got three horses. Where do you think he’ll go?”

Heather took a while to respond. “Anywhere he thinks he can use the satellites to his advantage. But that won’t help us.”

“We’ll bury these two,” Todd said, “and then you and I will make our way to White Sands. I’ve come this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to turn back, even if I don’t have the satellites.”

Riding high in his tethered hot-air balloon, Lieutenant Bobby Carron stared across the desert, dozing. The first day he had exhilarated in being up in the air, but this was vastly different from flying a fighter jet: standing in an aluminum basket while a blazing fire scorched his back, bobbing at the end of a thousand-foot-long rope coupled with a telegraph wire.

For the past week Bobby had surveyed the surrounding area, staring at every rock and shrub. He checked the horizon with the metal spyglass Dr. Lockwood’s optics workshop had rigged up. He knew the area well enough now to spot anything unusual.

Movement triggered his subconscious. Without thinking, he floated up one level of awareness, letting his mind integrate the area around him. He detected another movement, another… and then scores of them like an army of ants making its way across the valley—right where Rita had predicted it would come.

He felt his pulse race as he made out a column of soldiers appearing in the shimmering heat mirage. By rough count, he guessed General Bayclock had brought a hundred troops, plus support personnel. A few rode horses, but the rest marched in ranks.

Then, far in the west, he saw two other figures, two people alone walking across the flat dizzying desert, headed toward the White Sands facility. Bobby turned his spy glass to them and could barely make out a man and a woman striding along.

Bobby grabbed the portable telegraph unit. He tapped the international signal to drop everything!, attempting to get Juan Romero’s attention: “XVW, XVW, XVW…”

Chapter 69

In the west wing of the White House, the Situation Room had once been the showpiece of America’s military-industrial investment in high technology. At one time, media pundits forecasted with uncanny accuracy the level of U.S. response to an international incident by counting the number of pizzas delivered to the Situation Room on any particular night. In the most important city in the nation, at the most important residence, this was without a doubt the most important room.

But now there were no pizzas, no media watchdogs, no technological wizardry. High-definition computer workstations gave way to blackboards, messages scrawled on scraps of paper, and flickering electric light powered by steam-engine generators on the Mall.

Staffers hurried about, but their focus had shifted from world events to the demands upon the national government made by several unofficial domestic “city-states,” which were the new centers of power scattered around the crumbling country.

President Jeffrey Mayeaux sat in a highbacked chair, digging his fingernails into the leather. He tried to digest the information being fed to him in contradictory scraps with confusing lack of detail. What the hell was going on out there? The lack of verified information appalled him—it was like trying to make sense out of a TV show on a channel filled with multicolored static.

At his right, along a long wooden table, sat his military advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The five men looked weary—as they damn well should, since he hadn’t let them leave the White House Complex in over a week! Their uniforms were wrinkled, stained, but they held themselves up with caffeine-fed dignity. Mayeaux scowled at them then looked back to the note papers. Those guys didn’t know what pressure was!

At Mayeaux’s left sat representatives from his cabinet, the National Security Agency, and his private staff. Three Secret Service agents stood quietly in the background; the agents were usually absent from such closed discussions, and their presence now did not go unnoticed. Mayeaux had started taking such precautions when his military advisers began grumbling more and more loudly about Mayeaux’s way of coping with the petroplague situation.

Well, fuck them! No other president had to deal with the whole country falling apart—not even Lincoln! The Civil War had been rational and understandable, a disagreement in politics.

Mayeaux pushed Appendix J 7, the latest list of petroplague-destroyed items, across the desk. He was getting sick of seeing addenda to the original memo. Didn’t the compilers get tired of jotting things down? Toothpaste caps? Disposable diapers and condoms? For God’s sake, who cared?

Mayeaux scowled and closely watched the reactions of the Joint Chiefs. “The list is not getting smaller, gentlemen. I understand the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex has also broken off communication with the central government, and they strung up three of our agents trying to enforce martial law. I’ve got conflicting reports of some severe problems in San Diego. Are we going to be able to get the country back on its feet? What do we have to offer people as far as restoring the old way of life? How about making some progress for a change!”

Mayeaux’s science advisor said, “We still hope to someday use methane and propane, but that’s impossible until we can develop reliable seals for airtight containers. Eventually, we could extract and refine oil in a closed, sterile environment, but of course that would enormously increase the cost of petroleum products. There may even be certain additives to plastics that will discourage decomposition by the microorganism. The scientists at NIST and the CDC are working around the clock—”

“Dammit, I’m not interested in ‘eventually!’ Our house is in flames and you’re talking about inventing a telephone to call the fire department!” Mayeaux slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. “We’ve got to get the situation under control, and then ease back so we can introduce improvements and gradual solutions.”

He studied the Joint Chiefs. “Mais, let me tell you somethin’. Since we can’t tap anything other than firewood or maybe coal for energy, we are in for one hell of a winter. We don’t have any industry left. States and big cities are declaring their independence right and left, and the national government is nothing more than a figurehead.

“We cannot back up our authority or make orders stick—not to mention martial laws, executive decrees, and everything else! What are we going to do about the larger cities defying my emergency orders? Do I just ignore Dallas and Los Angeles and Miami and San Diego? See how they fend for themselves as independent countries? Screw that! Give me an effective strategy I can use right now in this situation.” Mayeaux turned to General Wacom, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a thin, grey-haired Air Force man in an unassuming blue uniform.

Wacom stared back. “You’ve said it all yourself, sir. The military is disjointed and relegated to the status of either observers or local police forces maintaining order under the authority of local governments. It may be our most effective tactic to let the country calm down and keep order on a local level until we get the infrastructure back in place. I don’t think these states really intend to become permanently independent—once the populace starts to see regular news from Washington again, once they hear the President address them directly, they’ll come around. I don’t suggest we do anything drastic.”

Mayeaux worked his jaw, feeling helpless as he watched the authority of the Presidency crumble beneath him.

“That’s just great, General. So what you’re saying is that I should just sit here and let everything take care of itself? History would really love me for that. I’m sure they’d erect a Mayeaux Monument right there on the Mall, with the three monkeys of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil! What the hell are you trying to pull on me? Because I talk with an accent do you think I’m an idiot?”

His military advisors stared blandly back, not offering any solution. As he simmered, Mayeaux got the distinct feeling that they were waiting for him to slip up, to make a wrong move, and then they would crawfish in to accomplish their own agenda.

Were they going to initiate impeachment hearings? He drew in a breath, suddenly panicked. Or would it be a military coup?

He glanced at the Secret Service agents standing at the corner of the room for reassurance; it was getting hard to trust anyone nowadays, and he couldn’t feel secure in his dealings even with his own staff. Where the hell was Weathersee?

Mayeaux pushed his chair back from the table and strode from the room, accompanied by his Secret Service entourage. Not one person in the Situation Room stood as the Chief Executive exited.

Chapter 70

From his lookout position in the rugged Organ Mountains, General Bayclock searched the sprawling White Sands valley. Behind him on a volcanic outcrop, his two colonels and Sergeant Catilyn Morris waited for him to decide their next move.

At the base of the mountain, he had directed his troops to rest and inspect their weapons for the final march across the valley. Five miles to the north, they had left the group of noncombatants, cooks, water carriers, supply haulers, food handlers, tent carriers. Bayclock had needed the additional personnel to get this far, but now that he was within sight of the enemy, he insisted on having only the front-line troops present.

Sergeant Morris scrambled up the rocky slope. “See anything, sir?” The two colonels huffed after her, pulling at lone clumps of grass for support.

“Let me have the binoculars,” Bayclock said.

Sergeant Morris rummaged in her pack and pulled out a reconditioned olive-green pair of binoculars. She pointed to a thin line running up the tallest peak on the other side of the valley. “That’s the electromagnetic satellite launcher, sir. Five miles south is the microwave antenna farm. Lockwood’s group has holed up in those few support buildings there. No major defenses, no perimeter fortifications.”

Not listening, Bayclock adjusted the binocular sights; the knob squeaked. “I’ll be damned!”

“What is it, sir?” Colonel David inched up on his hands and knees. Colonel Nachimya, commander of the Base Personnel group, joined him. Neither man was a true soldier in Bayclock’s opinion—neither were flyers, and neither had ever held a real command, but had merely worked in labs or administrative offices all their careers. Bayclock didn’t have many choices.

He wished he had paid more attention to the lectures at the National War College. He had blown off theoretical discussions on ground attacks, interested only in the methodology of air superiority. In his blood Bayclock was a fighter pilot. But right now he’d trade almost anything for a copy of von Clausewitz.

“Sir?” said Sergeant Morris. “Is anything the matter?”

Bayclock handed the binoculars to Colonel David. “A balloon—can you believe it? What the hell are they doing with a hot-air balloon?”

The colonel searched the sky. “Dr. Nedermyer insists that Lockwood’s people are completely focused on that solar-power project. At the Phillips Lab I’ve worked around scientists like that for years. My bet is they’re using the balloon to gather information about the weather.”

Bayclock turned to the other colonel. “And what do you think, Tony?”

Colonel Nachimya stared across the valley, but he made no move to take the binoculars. “Observation post maybe? You could see our troops approaching from a long way off, sir.”

“That was my own thought. If that’s so, they already know we’re here.” Bayclock studied the area around the distant, glittering antenna farm, unable to see people from this range.

He struggled to his feet and handed the binoculars back to Sergeant Morris. “Assemble the troops. We’ll get this over with in a hurry, attack under cover of darkness. I don’t trust any of those bastards we’re up against.”

As the sun set behind the broken mountains, shadows extended across the valley like fingers of death toward the rebellious scientists. By this time tomorrow, Bayclock’s troops would have engulfed Lockwood’s group and reestablished order, at last.

In the radio trailer, Juan Romero concentrated on a circuit diagram he had sketched himself; he hoped it would improve the microwave satellite switching algorithm. Before the petroplague, intricate new designs had been constructed on workstations optimized for specific configurations. But the overrated software annoyed Romero—why spend so much time studying electrical engineering if you were just going to be a computer jock? He felt a rush of pride to see that he could still do a circuit diagram the old way, with a brain and a pencil.

Static clicks from the telegraph interrupted his thoughts. He grumbled about Bobby Carron picking the worst time to run a test from his observation balloon. Romero listened to the first few lines of code, and then his face tightened. “Hey, Spence!” His own hoarse voice surprised him.

Gilbert Hertoya trotted out of the blockhouse, ducking around an array of cables. “What you got?”

Romero glanced up, but continued relaying Bobby’s message to the microwave facility five miles to the south. “It’s Bayclock. He’s here already! Where’s Spencer?”

The short engineer blinked. “Oh, crackerjacks! He and Rita headed off for the microwave facility before dark. They should get there within an hour.”

“Bobby’s got Bayclock’s troops pegged at ten miles out. No solid count on the number, but there’s at least a hundred.” Romero felt panic clogging his voice. He tugged on his drooping moustache. “What are we going to do?”

“Do you think they’ll attack after dark? Can Bobby estimate how fast they’re moving?”

“Just a minute.” Romero tapped furiously on the switch. The telegraph line from the balloon came back to life. “They’re still coming down from the foothills. He estimates they’re traveling under three miles an hour.”

“Okay.” Gilbert set his mouth. “Keep relaying everything to the farm, and let me know when Spencer gets there. I’ll set the railgun up for a pre-emptive strike.”

Romero looked up at the other man. “You mean, go on the offense? Shouldn’t we give them a warning or something?”

“Ask them to surrender? Ha!” Gilbert’s face was grim and looked very old. “We’re not playing by parlor rules. Bayclock is the aggressor. Time to scare the hell out of him.”

The memory of the capacitor banks pre-firing on the first railgun test nearly smothered Gilbert’s optimism. Now that Bayclock’s army was breathing down their necks, he knew it could easily happen again. Or something even worse.

Gilbert refused to wait for Bayclock’s army to start shooting at them. The general was on the move, marching closer. As far as Gilbert was concerned, there was no point in negotiating—they hadn’t asked for the invasion force, had done nothing to incite the attack. But Bayclock had come strutting in, uninvited.

If some tin-pot Napoleon thought he could march down here with an army, Gilbert intended to send him back home with his tail between his legs. If the White Sands group lost their advantage of surprise, Bayclock could move his troops to safety and come at them from a different direction.

A cloud of metal shrapnel flying at five times the velocity of a bullet would surely demoralize Bayclock’s troops—especially coming from a bunch of supposedly defenseless scientists. If nothing else, the railgun would make the army wonder what else Spencer’s hot shots might come up with.

Arnie poked his head out from the launcher command post. “Ready for the bank to go hot, Gilbert.”

“Has the projectile been checked?”

Arnie sighed. “Twice by you and three times by us. We loaded Rita’s special shrapnel mix of chopped up razor blades, nails, and broken glass. If we pop it now, it should spread out to hit their camp. It won’t be pretty.”

“It’s not supposed to be pretty.” Gilbert looked around for Romero. “Heard from Spencer yet?”

The radio man shook his head. “The farm says they’ll contact us when he gets there.”

Gilbert thought fast. He had to go with it. Command decision. Spencer and his crew had been anticipating this moment ever since Bobby Carron had deserted and stayed behind.

Years earlier, Gilbert had been yanked from his work at the Sandia National Lab, sent over to the Middle East as a military consultant during the first Gulf conflict. He had left Cynthia and the kids behind in Albuquerque, unable to tell them what he was doing—much the same way he had left them in Alamogordo during the past few weeks. He hadn’t protested then because he believed in his work. And now, he had never felt stronger about anything in his life. Spencer’s solar power farm must not fall into the hands of a military dictator.

He drew in a deep breath. “Okay, charge the banks. Launch on my count.” He twisted his head. “Romero! Get an updated range from Bobby.”

“Right.”

Gilbert scrambled over a thigh-thick cluster of cables to position himself at the railgun’s crude rangefinder—optics from a high-powered rifle juxtaposed with a protractor and a plumbline. Within seconds Romero relayed elevation and landmark information.

Grunting, Gilbert reached up to rotate the unwieldy device with the hand crank. When the starlit peak across the valley was in sight on the crosshairs, he elevated the long metal railings until the plumbline registered the correct position. “Talk about spit and chewing gum,” he muttered.

“Bank’s hot, Gil. Your call.”

Gilbert eyed the crosshairs one more time, then gently moved away from the device. He slapped Romero on the back. “Get some cover.” He nodded at the tech in the control room. “Light it!”

“Roger!” Arnie yelled into the blockhouse. “Hit it!”

Fifty feet away from the railgun, Gilbert turned to watch. He saw a weirdly ionized ball shoot the length of the rails, sparking across the gaps as the heavy shrapnel projectile accelerated upward. He had never seen a nighttime launch, and it looked beautiful.

Then a blinding flash erupted from the capacitor building. The sounds of the railgun and the capacitor exploding hit him at the same time.

Gilbert felt the pop of the shock wave as the dynamic overpressure hit. He started running toward the railgun, not knowing what had happened. A secondary explosion came from the capacitor building. “No, dammit!”

He barely saw the fragment of metal spinning toward him as it hit him in the knees. He fell, trying to pummel the ground with his fists as he passed out.

General Bayclock rode at the front of the army advancing toward the microwave farm, accompanied by Sergeant Morris and Dr. Nedermyer. Five security policemen on horseback surrounded him. Behind him and spreading out like a wedge, rode his two colonels and their respective groups of soldiers.

The troops marched on foot, weary but excited to be finally reaching their destination. They had lost five horses early in the trek during the raid from the pueblo dwellers, but the general had commandeered other mounts from ranches on the way.

Bayclock still thought of himself as a Wing Commander, and his two groups made up the remainder of his military command. The lines of communication were short, and he had no doubt they would easily take the solar-power facility.

But Bayclock remembered from National War College that overconfident troops were easiest to overcome; he did not want his troops to fail because Lockwood’s people put up an unexpected fight. Yet it was hard to take the group of scientists seriously. He had not yet decided how lenient he would be with them when it was all over.

Bayclock turned to Sergeant Catilyn Morris, intending to call the troops to a halt when he first heard the sound—like a million angry insects suddenly buzzing, filling his head.

Sharp, startled screams broke the air. His people dropped, horses bellowed then whinnied in pain. All around him, the peaceful desert seemed suddenly to spew forth a plague of locusts, hard projectiles pattering the ground and whizzing through the air. The screaming buzz seemed to go on and on.

Bayclock pulled his horse around—two security policemen behind him fell on the ground; one writhed, the other lay motionless. Beside them, a horse struggled, trying to get back to its feet and leaving splashes of blood on the white gypsum sands.

Just as suddenly as it started, the deadly rain stopped. The night sky continued to fill with yells of terror.

Bayclock yanked his rifle from its holster. “Sergeant, get my staff up here!”

“Yes, sir!” Sergeant Morris pulled her horse around and galloped back into the starlit night. Bayclock turned in his saddle and yelled at the security policemen. “You, man—help your buddy! You others post a guard in a semicircle. Speed out!”

Chaos overwhelmed the night as the sounds of panicked troops scrambling to follow orders mixed with moans of pain. Bayclock held his rifle on his knee, trying to drive a wedge through the darkness with the sheer force of his anger. What in the living hell just happened?

He heard horses come up behind him, and he made out the forms of Sergeant Morris and Colonel David. The colonel held his injured left arm against his side.

“Report!” snapped Bayclock. “What have you got?”

Colonel David shook his head, coughing. “Nothing definite, sir. I don’t know how many people I’ve lost. We’ve got a shitload of injuries, everything from impact wounds to shatter fractures. I haven’t seen anything like this since the fragmentation weapons used in the Gulf.”

“Those daisy-cutters were dropped by B 52s, Colonel—have you heard any planes around here lately?”

The colonel shook his head; Sergeant Morris suggested tentatively, “Maybe the scientists have mortars, sir.”

Bayclock glared. “Daisy-cutters are five-hundred-pound bombs, Sergeant! I’ve brought them on my own missions. Now shut the hell up while I speak with my staff.”

Sergeant Morris grew tight-lipped. “Yes, sir.”

Bayclock turned back to the colonel. “Where’s Nachimya?”

“He bought it, general. He was twenty yards away from me when he died. Large wound through the trachea.”

“Who’s his second in command?”

Colonel David shook his head. “Major Zencon took off after some of the troops, sir. It was clear they were deserting.”

“Why didn’t he shoot the bastards? He has standing orders to shoot deserters!” Colonel David remained silent and closed his eyes. “Answer me, Colonel!”

Sergeant Morris answered quietly, “Major Zencon apparently deserted as well, sir. Colonel David couldn’t shoot them because of his own injury. We’ve probably lost a quarter of our troops already.”

The general yanked the bridle on his black gelding. The horse reared up, but Bayclock wrested control back. “Sergeant Morris, round up my security guard. Anyone who isn’t injured is to bring the highest-ranking officers to me, ASAP! Their orders remain unchanged—deserters will be shot. We will fall back and regroup until we learn more about the surprise defenses the scientists have set up for us.”

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Morris turned her horse and stopped. “General, look!”

Bayclock muttered an oath. In the distance a fire blazed at the base of the electromagnetic launcher. It looked as though a bomb had devoured the entire facility, and fingers of flame licked the sky.

“Halt, who goes there!”

After the long, relaxing ride to the microwave facility, Spencer’s first thought was that someone must be playing a joke. Upon seeing the glint of two rifle barrels, his second thought was to answer as quickly as he could. “It’s Spencer—don’t shoot!”

“Rita Fellenstein,” said Rita beside him, just as quickly.

The gun barrel wavered, then dropped as a twangy voice said, “Yeah, it’s Spence. Darn—I thought we’d get to shoot our first live ones.”

Spencer kept his hands up, still unsure of what was going on. “Uh, can you tell me—” And then it hit him. “My God, Bayclock is here already!”

The voice in the darkness turned grim. “Things are going crazy back at the EM launch site. You’d better hurry into the microwave trailer for a report, pronto.”

Spencer didn’t reply. He kicked his mount with his heels, urging the horse to a gallop. Rita charged along beside him, her Australian hat flopping back against her neck.

When they reached the blockhouses, Spencer listened without a word as he was brought up to date. The technician at the telegraph unit spread her hands. “Romero managed to keep us updated in real time, up until the railgun fired.”

“Are you sure the railgun blew up?”

The tech shrugged. “Who knows? That’s what it looked like.”

Rita leaned forward. “What about Bobby?”

“I don’t know. We can’t see the balloon, but that doesn’t mean anything. He could be down to refuel.”

Spencer clenched his jaw, furious with himself. If only he had waited another hour at the launcher before returning! He tried to calm down; he needed to think clearly. Except for Rita, his closest advisors had been at the ill-fated railgun site.

“So what do we do?” said Rita. “Have we lost our long-range strike capability?”

“That pretty much goes without saying,” said the technician.

“Then we’re up a creek,” said Rita. “Bayclock’s boys can be here in three hours if they want!”

“If that’s the case,” said Spencer, “there’s nothing more we can do.” Come on, he thought. What happened to the whiz kid? The going got tough, and now he’s supposed to deliver.

Rita turned toward the blockhouse door with a determined look on her face. “I’ll take a couple of ranchhands and scout out Bayclock’s position. We can take along some of those citrus-oil explosives and lob the army a couple of nasty presents. Psych warfare. If we leave now, we can get there and back before dawn. We’ll stop by the launch site to check things out on the way, and send somebody back if the telegraph isn’t up when we get there.”

Spencer felt as if he had been hit over the head with a bagful of Higg’s bosons. He shook his head. “I don’t know—”

“I wasn’t asking permission, Spence,” said Rita. “Why don’t you just go do something you do best—like double the output power from those microwave satellites? Keep yourself busy and out of the way.”

Half an hour later, Spencer stood grim-faced as Rita swung a long leg over her horse. Her saddlebags were packed with explosives, pyrotechnics, and ammunition. Two ranchhands accompanied her, both grinning nervously as she leaned over to spit a tiny wad of chewing tobacco before setting out.

“See you in a couple of hours.” She leaned over and pecked Spencer on the cheek. “If you get a hold of Bobby, tell him I’m on my way.”

“He’ll be happy to know that.” Spencer slapped her horse on the flank. “Get going—you’ve got a job to do.”

“Make sure the catapult operators are ready for the morning light,” Rita called. “They might look like they’re over the hill, but they know what they’re doing. Just ask Romero.”

Spencer watched as Rita and her two companions rode off into the darkness. He stared until they faded from sight. He sighed, then turned back to the microwave trailer when he heard a voice calling him.

“Quick! We captured two people coming in from the west.”

A chill ran down Spencer’s back. Oh great, he thought. Nobody around here has any military savvy, and we’ve just captured our first prisoners of war?

He jogged down the dusty path, nearly stumbling over ruts in the darkness. On the old road to the microwave farm, Spencer met a guard walking behind two people—both quite tall, a man and a woman, their hands behind their backs. Even in the starlight Spencer could see the man wore a cowboy hat, and the woman tied her long hair in a pony tail. They didn’t look like what he expected of Bayclock’s troops.

The guard said, “Hey, Spencer, come see what we’ve got here.”

The prisoner’s voice had a strong cowboy twang. “Are you Dr. Lockwood? Am I glad to see you!”

“I bet you are. Who are you?”

The cowboy pushed himself forward, ahead of the guard. “I talked to you on the shortwave. I’m Todd Severyn. From the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.”

Chapter 71

Rita Fellenstein stood in the stirrups, craning her neck to spot the glow of Bayclock’s campfires. For once she was thankful for the petroplague, since the general had no access to infrared goggles or other high-tech nighttime defenses. At least she didn’t think so.

Even better, his troops were not familiar with the landscape.

Rita intended to use her advantage to the max.

The two ranch hands started to whisper, but Rita put out a hand for silence. So far, she had spotted no roving patrols, but she didn’t put it past Bayclock to send out random point squads.

Still without word from the damaged railgun site, Rita rode with the ranch hands and looped south, coming in from behind the camp. Bobby Carron had told her about the “check six” nomenclature of fighter pilots to guard their rear at all times, but he thought the general might not apply that on the ground.

She really liked Bobby. It was good to finally have a guy stand up and spar with her instead of awkwardly shuffling his feet like the ranch hands did. But Bobby had nothing to do with her raid now. She pushed thoughts of him out of her mind.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rita caught a glimpse of a man on horseback in the encampment; beyond, she saw the glow of several fires masked by low dirt berms dug by the weary soldiers.

Rita patted her saddle and withdrew three cans of Bobby’s citrus-based explosive. She secured her rifle at the back of the saddle and whispered back at the other ranch hands. “Don’t get too close or stay too long. We just want to goose ‘em. Ka-boom!” Rita flicked the reins and clucked. “Let’s go!”

Their mounts stormed toward Bayclock’s encampment. Rita bent low on her horse. With the heels of her boots, she urged her horse to a gallop.

Bayclock’s troops had bivouacked in a circular cluster a hundred yards across. Rita and the others split off, riding around the camp. Her breath quickened as horse hooves made a thumping sound in the desert night.

The troops lay on the ground, using their packs as pillows; three men tended the fires. Someone in the camp struggled to his feet. His silhouette looked wildly around as he started shouting.

Rita released the spring-wound timing mechanism on her first grenade and hurled it, rapidly followed by two other canisters. By the time the first explosion erupted, gunfire peppered the air. Bayclock’s troops shot their weapons blindly into the night. Rita could hear the zing of bullets ricocheting off the ground. Another boom rolled over them with a flash of light as they turned and galloped back toward the microwave farm.

Only four of the canned explosives went off. Although the small bombs probably caused little damage, Rita could tell by the shouting and gunfire behind them that they had thoroughly stirred up Bayclock’s troops.

“Until we spotted your complex from Las Cruces pass, we didn’t know if we’d ever find you,” Todd Severyn said, squatting on the ground from sheer exhaustion. “It was pretty touch-and-go there for a while.”

Beside him, Heather Dixon agreed. She looked ready to drop. Spencer felt sorry for them, and yelled for someone to bring a full canteen of water.

Heather sat next to the fire, hugging her knees. Her face smudged with dirt, she stared mesmerized into the flames as Todd continued his tale. She looked lost, as though life had let her down once too often. It took an effort for Spencer not to stare at her. He wondered if she and Todd were somehow… involved. They sat apart, but after such a difficult journey, that wasn’t surprising.

Lately Spencer found himself thinking about being alone, wondering if he might ever find that girl with the sunburned nose.

He nodded at Todd’s description of the journey after Connor Brooks had killed their companions and stolen the satellites. The Wyoming man unballed his fist and rubbed his dusty jeans, as if to crush the memory of the disastrous trip.

Spencer felt sick to hear the loss of the smallsats. They had come so close! He tried to find some hope that the lost satellites might somehow find their way to the microwave farm. With the Seven Dwarfs still working overhead, it was a shame they couldn’t use the low-orbiting satellites as part of their high-tech defense against Bayclock.

But with the new set of satellites gone and the railgun apparently destroyed, not to mention the general’s troops massed in the foothills, he found it difficult to be optimistic. What did it matter anymore? Why were they fighting at all? Why the hell had Bayclock bothered to come here?

Spencer wondered if his group should just abandon the microwave farm before the army slaughtered them all. They could hide out in the mountains, send out guerrilla teams to harass the occupied area, until one day they managed to drive away the military barbarians. Fat chance! His one small consolation was that another ten smallsats remained safe at JPL.

Todd said, “So what’s the next step, Dr. Lockwood? You might as well put us to work helping you. No use moping around—not with the general here. Time to fight!”

“We already fired the first shot,” Spencer said, “but that seems to have put our railgun out of business and damaged the whole launcher facility. That was really our best chance.”

“Is there anything else you can fight with?” Todd asked.

“We had an extensive war council before the troops got here,” said Spencer. “Gilbert Hertoya had experience fielding high-risk weapons in the Persian Gulf, and we did just about everything he suggested. We’ve still got the ranchers and people from the town lying in ambush, and of course there’s always the catapult squad. Right now we’ve got a team tossing some home-made grenades into the general’s camp. But every one of these is a last-ditch effort, nothing that can cause any sustained damage. I don’t have any more rabbits to pull out of my hat.”

He hesitated, then dropped his voice. “I hope to God that everyone’s all right up at the launcher site.”

Heather continued to stare at the flames, but she spoke in a low, deep voice. “What about your microwave antennas? If they provide so much electricity, why can’t you fry people?”

Spencer had to pull himself out of Heather’s wide eyes before he answered. He glanced at Todd, but the oil man gave a tired smile, as if amused at Spencer’s preoccupation. “Uh, it takes too much power to harm anyone with microwaves—the atmosphere would break down long before the power levels got high enough to harm human beings.” He continued to think it through. “Relatively low powers can do nasty things to metals or electronics, but after the petroplague there’s not much of that stuff in use anymore.”

Heather said, “The general’s rifles are made of metal.”

Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but stopped as her words sank in. “You’ve got a point. I’ve been thinking about using microwaves to attack the wrong target!

“We’re beaming energy from space at relatively low power levels, about a hundred times less than the sunlight that strikes the Earth—that won’t hurt anyone if they stand in it all day long. Remember the cellular telephone scare? Cellular phones were monsters compared to this.”

He spoke faster as he started to get excited. “But Bayclock’s troops are carrying all kinds of metal. Guns, knives, bayonets—and that stuff heats up like crazy when exposed even to the microwave power levels we’re beaming down right now!”

Todd grinned. “It would give them one hell of a hot foot!”

Spencer chewed on his lip. “If we can boost the energy by a factor of four and irradiate his troops for twenty minutes, things might get hot enough even to set off explosives. At the very least the troops might drop their weapons and head for the hills!”

Todd looked down at his big hands and flexed them. “So what do we do?”

Spencer thought for a moment. As far as he could tell, it was sometime after midnight by now. He hadn’t heard the sentry warn of Bayclock’s approach, and that would give them at least an hour warning. Perhaps Gilbert’s pre-emptive railgun strike had set Bayclock back, or maybe the general had sent his vengeful troops up to take over the launcher facility instead.

Spencer said, “The Seven Dwarfs come overhead every day at noon, over eleven hours from now. If we can hold Bayclock off until then, I might be able to reprogram the solar satellites to irradiate his troops. It won’t be as destructive as the railgun, but it might be enough to keep them at bay.”

“Seven Dwarfs?” said Todd. “What are you talking about?” He looked to Heather. “What Dwarfs?”

“You’ve got computers here?” Heather sounded incredulous.

Spencer shrugged, looking at her and ignoring Todd’s question. “Mostly what we’ve scavenged from the workstations, a few big analog circuit boards that run on the batteries recharged every day at noon when the satellites fly over.”

Todd frowned. “I don’t know squat about satellites or computers… or dwarfs for that matter.”

Heather looked suddenly awake. “I’d like to stay here and help, if that’s what you need.”

“Sounds better than rolling over and playing dead,” said Todd. “If the soldiers are so riled up they can’t get here by noon, a blast of your microwaves might just push them over the edge to retreat.” He stood up, ready for action. “Count me in.”

Spencer squinted in the direction of the EM launcher. They would have to send Bobby Carron up in the balloon again early in the morning to get a birds-eye view of the battlefield before they planned their detailed strategy—if Bobby was all right.

Todd repeated himself. “Is there anything I could do? I can ride and I can shoot.”

“Help keep a lookout for a sneak attack. When Rita returns, we’ll decide how best to keep tabs on Bayclock’s troops.”

Heather brushed dirt from her jeans. “Just point me to the bathroom and some wash water, then I’ll be ready to work.” She wrinkled her nose and scratched. “I don’t suppose you have anything to treat a sunburn?”

Spencer stopped, stunned. Sun-burned nose? He managed to shake his head. No matter how bad things looked, he had a feeling that the sun was going to shine extra bright tomorrow morning.

“Halt! Who the hell are you?” a woman’s voice growled.

Todd Severyn stood his ground, but he could see little in the dark. “Yeah, who the hell are you?”

He heard the sound of a rifle brought to bear. “You’ve got five seconds, cowboy, or you’ll be dancing without any toes. Identify yourself!”

His arms waved in the air. “I’m Todd Severyn—I’m waiting for Rita to show up. Spencer Lockwood sent me.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Bayclock could have sent a point squad.”

Why do I always meet women who’d rather wrestle rattlesnakes than bake cookies? “Are you going to ask me who won the World Series in 1964, for Chis’sakes!” He tried to remember the right words even if he didn’t understand them. “I’m supposed to say something about a plan to zap Bayclock with the Seven Dwarfs.”

He saw the rifle being lowered, then heard a chuckle. The woman spat tobacco to one side. “Okay, Tex, you can tell Spencer that Rita’s back. Let’s get moving.”

Todd sourly brought down his hands, wishing that someone would recognize his Wyoming accent and not call him Tex.

Spencer sat next to Heather in the enclosed trailer as dawn broke, working on three crude workstations at once. Even with the nonvolatile memory and low-energy cathode-ray tubes, the battery drain was substantial, and they could only refine their simulations for another hour or so without running down the batteries.

Soft battery light reflected off of Heather’s face. She had tied her damp hair back after scrubbing up, and Spencer could see a pinkish cast of sunburn on her nose and cheeks.

Juan Romero’s circuit board took up most of the table, and naked wires lay in labyrinthine paths. Heather pushed knife-switch buttons down laboriously, inputting code from Spencer—one letter at a time. She stared at the phosphors on the glass screen of the canted cathode-ray tube. “Okay, I’ve keyed in the equation you gave me. You’ll have to take over from here.”

“Thanks.” He slid into the seat next to her as he waited for the code to compile. Inside the trailer, the heat pouring from the primitive circuit board felt stifling, and he prayed he could stave off a meltdown for a little while longer.

Just having Heather present to type in the long-winded perturbations to the orbital equations freed him to calculate the necessary solid-viewing angles by hand with pencil and paper. If everything worked, they might be able to nudge the Seven Dwarfs to redirect their microwave transmissions away from the antenna farm and onto Bayclock’s encampment. Temporarily increasing the power output by a factor of four was trivial compared to this, requiring much less code.

“Spencer?” Rita’s voice came from the trailer entrance. She sounded weary. He turned and saw Todd standing with her just outside the door.

“Rita! How did the raid go?”

“The grenades worked well enough. Got some dozing soldiers to wet their beds, but once they realize we didn’t cause much damage, they’ll just be pissed off instead. The cowboy here tells me you need another scouting party.” She looked at Heather. “Oh, hello.”

Heather brushed back a strand of hair. “Hi.”

Todd worked his way into the trailer. Rita pulled out a chair by the workstation and ran a hand through her hair. Her long legs pushed up against the table. “The telegraph’s up. Romero made his way back from the launcher—he apparently ran all the way here, while the others tried to put out the fire and barricade themselves in the facility.”

Spencer sat up, ignoring the satellite calculations. “Romero’s back! What’s the report?”

“Gilbert is badly injured—both his legs, I think. One tech is dead, and the railgun ist kaput. Arnie stayed behind to watch everything, but if Bayclock sent some point men up, he doesn’t have much chance to hold them off by himself.”

“Great,” Spencer said. He wanted to pound on something. “Now what do we do?”

Rita wiped her forehead. “Bobby’s going up in the balloon again at first light to get a good look. He thinks Bayclock will probably hold off attacking for another day. So far we’ve zapped him with one salvo from the railgun and tossed a bunch of grenades into his camp—he thought we were a bunch of unarmed wimps, but now he’s not going to take any chances. I say we keep giving the general a healthy respect for our abilities.” She glanced at Heather, then at Spencer, and raised an eyebrow. A grin slowly grew on her face.

Spencer stood, more to dismiss any comment from Rita than anything else. “Okay, let’s hit them with the catapult first thing in the morning. After that, we call in the townspeople.”

Exhausted, sore, and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Juan Romero stood next to his gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight catapult operators. Morning light spilled over the gypsum plains in a whiter shade of pale; the shadows of the mountains retreated across the white sands.

Below, Bayclock’s army began forming up and making ready to relocate. Romero’s people took longer than expected to move to the highlands where the hidden catapult waited to hurl projectiles. From what they could tell, the single shot with Gilbert Hertoya’s railgun had dealt a shocking and devastating psychological blow—but Romero had little hope that his shorter-range medieval weapon would do the same.

Lieutenant Bobby Carron had built a fire in the metal gondola of his bright survey balloon and rose aloft on the tether cable, sending telegraphed messages back to another listener in the blockhouse at the antenna farm. Romero wished he could be down there instead of up here, watching his team make all the mistakes he expected of them.

The old retirees argued with each other about who would turn the crank, who would aim the shot, who would release the hook. Then they started arguing about which of the barrels of scrap metal would make the best first load.

Bayclock’s army began to spread out, breaking camp and marching in several prongs—one headed toward the burned-out railgun facility, another toward the microwave farm. A small group of riders mounted up, ready for a charge. A large part of the troops remained in camp, preparing a second-wave assault.

“Come on, people!” Romero shouted. “If we don’t use the catapult soon, we’ll lose the most concentrated target.”

“We’re just about ready!” one of the old men snapped.

“We won’t hit anything, so it doesn’t really matter,” someone else grumbled.

“Now there’s optimism!” an old woman scolded. “One more word like that and you’ll be in the bucket for the first shot! Now give me that range finder!”

Finally, they cranked down the arm and cocked the weapon. It took three people to work the pulley and hoist the barrel of rusty scrap iron into the cradle. Fully loaded, the catapult seemed to vibrate with tension, ready to spring.

Romero took the trigger cord himself. In his mind flashed a ridiculous scene from a Road Runner cartoon, when Wile E. Coyote had used a similar catapult against the brainless bird—no matter where he stood, the seige machine somehow managed to dump its boulder on top of him.

Romero held his breath and yanked the wire.

The catapult smashed forward with the sound of an explosion, slamming against the front barricade and hurling its payload in an arc toward the encampment.

Oblivious below, Bayclock’s assault team followed some sort of signal and trotted out on horseback, bringing rifles to bear. They rode toward the base installation where Bobby’s balloon was tethered. The bastards were going to shoot down the balloon!

On the far side of the camp, the great mass of loose metal crashed into the ground, splattering outward. Through a spyglass, Romero could see that the catapult shot had taken out two small tents and a supply wagon, belching a cloud of dust and sand into the air. People scrambled around like stirred-up hornets.

“Good shot!” Romero cried. “Let’s try to step up the ranging just a bit and hit them in the center of camp. We’ve got only a couple more shots. Once they figure out where we are, they’ll come after us, and we’ll have to abandon ship.”

As the gang that couldn’t shoot straight worked at cranking down the catapult again—this time with much more enthusiasm and cooperation—Romero heard a volley of sharp, distant rifle shots. The group of riders approached the observation balloon and fired repeatedly at the gondola, the balloon itself, and the tether cable. The tiny form of Bobby Carron ducked down to the protection of the flat aluminum gondola.

“Ready!” one of the old men shouted. “Look out, Mr. Romero!”

The catapult slammed forward again, sending another payload of iron pieces toward the scrambling expedition force, but this time the debris pummeled the desert a hundred feet short of camp.

Below, General Bayclock’s soldiers began to figure out where the catapult shots were originating.

Bobby’s balloon had obviously been hit by dozens of direct shots and began to drift wildly on its tether rope. The hand-sewn seams of the parachute material, never meant to take such stress, began to split apart. The colorful sack sagged as it deflated. After another round of rifle shots, one of the marksmen was either extremely skilled or extremely lucky. The tether rope snapped, and the balloon began to move.

The third catapult shot also missed. A group of Bayclock’s soldiers pointed toward Romero’s position and spread out into the foothills toward the location of the medieval weapon.

“Here they come. We’ve got to get to safety!” Romero shouted. “Time to retreat!”

As they fled into the tangled foothills, he looked down at the great basin to see Bobby Carron’s balloon drifting free and falling toward the ground as the general’s men each dropped to one knee and fired their rifles.

Spencer hunched over the tangled circuit board, breathing on it, fanning it with a sheaf of papers, and trying to use his own panic to speed the calculations. Some of the soldered connections had begun smoking, and the batteries were nearly drained. “Come on!” he muttered.

Heather stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders, but she said nothing. It had taken several hours longer than he had expected, and now morning light shone into the blockhouse. Bayclock’s troops were already on the move.

He and Heather had needed to recompile half an hour’s worth of work when Spencer discovered a sign error he had made with his pencil-and-paper calculations. The bandaged circuit board seemed to be struggling to hold on just long enough to complete the binary instructions before it overheated and dumped everything.

“It’ll work,” Heather whispered. “It will.”

As if to spite her, the home-made circuit board showered sparks in a massive breakdown. Smoke billowed from a dozen different connections.

Spencer tried to think of a way to douse the fire, but it made no difference. All the calculations were already lost into the ether. The cathode-ray tube displaying the trudging progress of the calculations went dark.

Spencer slumped in his chair and refused to scream. They had already uplinked the instructions to increase the transmitted microwave power by a factor of four; but without the targeting information, the extra radiation would fall uselessly on the microwave antenna farm again, not on Bayclock’s new position. Spencer could never get the circuit board up and running again in less than two days.

Bayclock would have taken over the entire facility long before then.

His hopes for the satellites, the solar-power farm, and the future itself had just gone up in smoke.

Chapter 72

The hot-air balloon plummeted toward the rugged ground. Bobby Carron gripped the sides of the aluminum gondola and held on for his life.

Air gushed from rips in the colorful parachute sacks, holes torn open by rifle shots and split seams. One of the bullets had made a crater-like dent in the basket, and Bobby was lucky he hadn’t been shot. That relief was only temporary, though, because he was going to crash any second.

The severed anchor rope dangled on the ground as the balloon drifted across the landscape, heading straight toward Bayclock’s troops running to intercept him. A few more gunshots broke the air, and Bobby ducked. He saw another bullet punch into the deflating sack of the balloon, but he heard other shouts, people yelling at the riflemen to hold their fire.

The loose metal gondola lurched as the balloon tipped and continued falling. The hibachi full of glowing coals spilled over, dumping hot charcoal along the floor that skittered and smoked. One ember burned Bobby’s leg; he swatted at it, almost losing his grip. The smoking coals spilled over the side.

He ducked as the bottom of the gondola smashed into an outcropping of rock, knocking him hard into the side of the aluminum basket. He hit his head. Blood streamed down his cheek. He blinked to bring vision back into focus, ready to get up and sprint for safety.

The gondola struck the ground again, dragged along as the last remnants of hot air tugged the deflated balloon sack. The gondola tipped over, scooping up loose sand and dirt, until the balloon snagged on a thicket of scrub brush.

Bobby scrambled to keep his balance, but the gondola spilled him into a tangle of guide ropes, parachute fabric, and hot embers. The metal basket tumbled to a halt next to him.

Bobby coughed and tried to get to his knees. He sensed no spears of pain from broken bones, but his entire body throbbed. He clawed at the gondola ropes, trying to pull the parachute fabric away from his face.

As soon as he stood up and pulled himself free, blinking in the bright light, he saw two of Bayclock’s horsemen pull up on either side of him. Three riflemen on foot came running after. Bobby looked around for a place to hide, to make a stand—but he had no weapons. He had no choice but to hold up his hands.

Puffing with exertion, Sergeant Catilyn Morris ran up to him with a rifle in hand; she smiled smugly when she saw him. Two other soldiers pointed their rifles at Bobby. The horsemen stood on either side to make sure he couldn’t escape.

Sergeant Morris’s face was flushed and streaked with dust. Her short blond hair was tangled with sweat. “Welcome home, Lieutenant. General Bayclock will be very pleased to see you.”

Under the morning sun, Connor Brooks drove the three horses and the wagon full of solar-power satellites toward the military settlement. He had watched Bayclock’s troops from his small camp for the past two days, until at last he figured out why they were there. He decided that Bayclock must want the stolen smallsats very badly right around now, and he should be willing to pay.

Connor had not built a fire for fear that his camp would be spotted, but he slept comfortably, wrapped in Henrietta Soo’s thermal blankets. He had washed the blood from his hands and changed clothes. He ate well from the stolen supplies in the wagon bed.

But his injured face ached like a son of a bitch.

He could see only blurry red fuzz out of his left eye, and his torn cheek and forehead throbbed like a disco rhythm made with ice picks. He had managed to wash his injuries from the shotgun backfire in a stream, but he knew they might get infected, and he didn’t relish the thought of the pain increasing. God, what he wouldn’t do right now for a handful of aspirin! Extra strength.

As he drove the horses toward the camp, a handful of armed guards came out to meet him. “Freeze, toadface!” one said, leveling his rifle. “Who are you?”

Connor raised a hand in a wave or a salute, or perhaps just a gesture to show that he was unarmed. He pulled the horses to a stop near the tents, sleeping bags, and supply stations.

“I need to see whoever’s in charge,” he said hoarsely. His words clawed through a larynx bruised when Butthead Uma tried to strangle him. He gestured back toward the wagon. “Tell him I’ve got something those solar-power people want very badly.”

“Wait here,” said the guard.

Connor stood with his hands above his head. The three horses nickered, sniffing other horses with Bayclock’s troops. Connor wanted a cold drink, but the two guards watched his every move in sour silence. Even though he had come with a nice offer, they seemed to regard him as some kind of vermin caught in a rat trap. Typical, he thought.

Finally, flanked on either side by an armed escort, a burly tough-looking man stumped across the camp toward Connor. He had bristly dark hair and a gimme-no-shit expression.

“I’m General Bayclock,” he said, “commander of these troops. What have you brought for me?” Unspoken but visible on his expression was a threat. If you’re wasting my time, I’ll strip you naked and make you run through a cactus field.

Connor tried to turn on the charm that had always served him so well, though he didn’t know how much charm he had left with a mangled face and a bruised voicebox. “Good to meet you, General,” he said. “My name is Connor Brooks—”

“I don’t give a damn who you are and I’m sure the hell not happy to meet you. Now cut the bullshit—what do you want?”

“Uh, yes, sir.” Connor wet his lips with a thick tongue and spoke fast. “I got my hands on a bunch of technical equipment on its way to the solar-power farm you have under siege. I thought it might be worth something to you.” He raised his eyebrows, knowing he must look hideous with his scabbed and gashed face.

“What kind of high-tech equipment?” Bayclock said, suddenly interested but still challenging him. “Where did it come from?”

“Well, I have ten satellites back here in the wagon. They were made at the Jet Propulsion Lab and they were being brought cross-country to White Sands.”

The general’s dark eyes lit up. “Are you part of this Pasadena expedition?” He seemed ready to pounce.

“I, uh… acquired it from them,” Connor said. “The expedition was trying to slip these satellites in past your troops. So I brought them here.”

“Satellites? The JPL expedition just carried a bunch of satellites out here?” Bayclock look at him, incredulous.

“That’s all.”

An officer standing next to Bayclock asked, “How many were there in the party?”

Connor shrugged. “Two, three maybe.”

A murmur ran through his staff. Bayclock looked unconvinced—and pissed off. “Show me.”

A minute later, Bayclock ran his hands over the nearest sealed canister. His officers poked around the devices, rapping on the metal cases. They all seemed astonished by the discovery.

Connor positioned himself next to the general. “I thought you might be willing to make a decent trade, sir. These are exceedingly valuable satellites, as I’m sure you know. Priceless, in fact. I’d like a few of your revamped weapons—say, six rifles—and some supplies.” He touched the stinging injuries on his face. “And some minor medical attention. As you can see, getting these satellites wasn’t all that easy.”

Bayclock’s expression was hard. He spoke in a low tone, but it looked like it took an effort to keep his voice under control. “I represent the United States of America, and we do not barter while under a declaration of hostilities. Under direct presidential order, I am authorized to simply take what I need. By delivering these satellites to me, you’ve done service to your country. You should feel proud about that.”

Outrage boiled in Connor at the attitude of this butthead general. “That isn’t exactly what I had in mind.” His stomach knotted. “If that’s your attitude, General, then I’ll just take my satellites and go, thank you.”

He stomped off to the wagon, hauling himself up on the buckboard. Fucking asshole! He yanked the reins to turn the three horses around. Connor was amazed at the speed with which five rifles were suddenly pointed at him. “What the hell is this?” he sputtered.

“This is martial law, Mr. Brooks,” Bayclock said. “We’ll see that you get medical attention, as you requested, and a position in the supply corps. We need every person we can get in our fight against the solar-power station.”

Connor felt betrayed and appalled. Worse yet, he felt like an idiot.

A tall thin man came up to Bayclock, obviously a civilian, with wire-rimmed glasses, a weak chin, and a large Adam’s apple.

Bayclock spoke bitterly, as if unhappy about the satellites. “Dr. Nedermyer, this man has brought us ten solar-power satellites from JPL. They are now in our possession, and we don’t need to worry about Dr. Lockwood getting his hands on them.”

Nedermyer came forward to peer over the side of the wagon. “I thought there was some kind of large expedition carrying them.”

“This is it,” said Bayclock. “And that’s all they carried. I want you to draft up a notice to be sent by courier to Lockwood and his little rebels. Tell them that unless they surrender immediately, starting tomorrow morning we will take one of these satellites and smash it to pieces in their full view. We’ll destroy one every two hours until they surrender. If this technology means so much to them, let’s just see how much of it they’ll let go to waste.”

Connor couldn’t believe his ears; the bespectacled civilian looked incredulous. “But General, you can’t do that! These satellites can’t be replaced. We don’t have the facilities to fabricate any more. These are precious items—and if you destroy them, you defeat the entire purpose of our expedition!”

Bayclock’s face turned the color of clotted blood, and he turned slowly toward Nedermyer. “The purpose of this expedition, Doctor, is to quash an insurrection. These satellites are toys, conveniences. We can survive without them. We cannot survive without order and a rule by law. If a few metal tanks must be dented to accomplish that, then so be it.”

The butthead general turned back to Connor and pointed for him to get back down off the wagon, Two of the guards took hold of the horses. “Sergeant, take the wagon and animals to the logistics group. You, Brooks, will help the supply personnel for tomorrow’s assault. You’ve just joined the army.”

His hands tied behind him with rough rope, Bobby Carron stumbled across the uneven desert. Two horsemen rode on either side of him, two walking guards behind him and one in front. He had to push himself to keep the pace set by Sergeant Morris.

He tried to remember the time he had spent in survival training, escaping from a mock prisoner-of-war camp. The training had been held in a jungle, and it wasn’t meant to be used against his own military. Before they had come within a half of a mile of Bayclock’s camp, Bobby realized he was completely out of ideas to escape. He had nothing up his sleeve, no tricks to pull. He saw no way out.

And Bayclock considered him a traitor. Under combat conditions the general might put a service pistol to Bobby’s head and pull the trigger himself, without the drawn-out niceties of a court martial.

Bobby was satisfied with how much he had helped Dr. Lockwood and the others at the solar-power farm. He recalled his days as a Navy fighter pilot stationed at China Lake. He remembered that last cross-country flight with Barfman Petronfi. Just trying to reach a nice, long R&R in Corpus Cristi where they would sit on the beach, eating shrimp and looking at bikinis…. .

The outskirts of the military camp were a bustling confusion of campfires, tents staked out against the day’s heat and the night’s chill, supply wagons next to unloaded crates. Refurbished rifles stood racked and stacked where soldiers could grab them in a moment’s notice.

The troops watched the prisoner arrive. Bobby looked around, trying to make eye contact, trying to recognize anyone from Kirtland Air Force Base—but that wouldn’t help. He really only knew Sergeant Catilyn Morris, but she gave him nothing but scorn.

Sergeant Morris led them directly to the general’s command tent. Someone must have warned Bayclock, because the general stepped outside to watch them approach. He recognized Bobby immediately.

Bayclock’s face was frigid, and his eyes held a firestorm of anger. “Well, if it isn’t our turncoat lieutenant.” He nodded to Morris. “Good work, Sergeant.”

“He was manning their balloon, sir,” she said. “We shot it down and took him prisoner.”

“The balloon?” Bayclock said, raising his eyebrows. “Of course, that’s a good job for a fighter pilot, isn’t it?”

Bobby said nothing.

“You’re still on active duty, Lieutenant—or have you forgotten the code of military conduct?”

Bobby maintained his silence, watching the general play the waiting game. No one spoke, but Bobby could feel the tension rising, the general becoming impatient.

Bayclock said, “But then you’re no longer a real fighter pilot. A traitor and a deserter is not the type of man any flyer would want on his wing. No wonder your aircraft crashed, Lieutenant. Is that why your wingman died—did he crash while you were trying to save your own butt?”

Bobby clenched his jaw, aching to retort, but he kept quiet.

Bayclock startled Bobby by stepping forward and slapping him across the face. “You’re not fit to be a pilot, much less an officer.”

Bobby’s eyes blazed. He remembered Bayclock’s office, all the diplomas and lithographs of aircraft. He knew he had found exactly the right button to push.

“You’re still fighting the last war, General. The system has changed,” he said in a low voice. “Before the plague hit I was flying fighters for my country—while you were flying a desk.”

Bayclock looked ready to explode, but somehow he contained himself. His hands clenched, as if trying to grasp a cutting reply, but he turned and glared at the other soldiers. “Bind the prisoner and send a general notice to all troops. This traitor and deserter will be executed at dawn. We’ll hang him from a utility pole.”

Connor sulked. The camp medic had dabbed stinging antiseptic on his facial wounds and bandaged them up, but the medic couldn’t say whether Connor would lose his eye. His sight would be permanently damaged for certain.

They fed him a meager meal of crappy food. He would have been better off eating his own supplies, but that butthead Bayclock had callously commandeered Connor’s stuff for his own people. “That’s my food,” Connor thought. “I came into camp with open hands offering a deal—and they ripped me off!”

But then, why was he surprised? Connor had gotten the short end of the stick all his life. Sometimes he wondered if he had a sign painted on his back that said Screw me—I don’t mind.

He sat cross-legged on the hard ground, looking at the Air Force robots wandering around doing busy work. His face burned, his new clothes were uncomfortable. And he had lost everything!

Oilstar had jerked him around. On the supertanker, Captain Uma had done the same. Connor remembered the the crummy old station wagon he had borrowed at the gas station in southern California; even that Stanford preppy moron who had paid him to drive a broken-down AMC Gremlin to Atlanta; or the two Mormon bitches with their year’s worth of supplies refusing to give Connor and Heather a few measly scraps.

He seethed, digging his fingers into the dirt. The whole world was out to get him, and none of it was his fault. How about Heather herself souring on him, refusing to put out anymore after only a few weeks? Some relationship that had turned out to be.

Even the damn shotgun had blown up in his face!

Now, after all that bullshit, when he finally deserved some kind of reward, when he finally took the solar-power satellites and delivered them to the army, did he get any thanks? No. Did he get any reward? No! That butthead general wouldn’t even give Connor a rifle.

To make things worse, Bayclock had taken all of his supplies, the wagon, the horses—and held him prisoner in camp. Connor found a rock, gripped it, and threw it as hard as he could. A short distance away, it struck the shoulder of an airman digging a new latrine. The airman turned and shouted in anger, but he couldn’t see who had thrown the rock.

Any other time Connor would have snickered at the joke, but now he hauled himself to his feet. He wasn’t going to take this crap anymore!

He strode across the camp, fixing the gaze of his good eye on the command tent. Inside the open flaps Connor could see the bearlike general sitting across a small folding table from Sergeant Morris and two colonels, debriefing her. An airman stood in front of the tent, but Connor brushed the guard aside.

“General, I’m leaving,” Connor announced.

“What did you say?” Bayclock rose to his feet.

“You can’t hold me, General. I came here of my own free will to offer you a deal—which you refused. I’m a United States citizen, and you can’t hold me prisoner. I’m going to take my horses and my wagon and my satellites and I’ll be on my way.”

Connor turned before the general could say anything, glancing quickly at where his wagon had been impounded. He took one step before Bayclock said in a loud growling tone, “Sergeant Morris, I’ve had enough of this. Take Mr. Brooks into custody. If he resists, shoot him as a deserter.”

Connor whirled. His face burned with livid anger; he felt the scab from his slashed cheek break open. “Deserter! I’m not part of your damned army! You’re not my commanding officer.”

Bayclock gripped the tent flap as if he wanted to rip it to shreds. “You have been conscripted, Brooks. This is martial law, and we don’t have time to quibble in a war zone. That is all. Sergeant Morris!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Guard him. Don’t let him out of your sight. This insubordination makes me want to puke. And if it doesn’t stop, there’s going to be a bloodbath.” He fixed his gaze on Connor. “And we’ll start with him.”

Late that night, after feigning sleep for forty-five minutes, Connor Brooks opened his one good eye.

The camp was dark and still, with outlying campfires glowing behind dirt berms; extra guards stood on alert because of the previous night’s attack by Lockwood’s people. Connor didn’t move, but kept staring, taking in details. He could feel the ropes against his arms, his legs.

Near him, beside the fire, Sergeant Morris lay curled on top of her blanket. She even slept in an uncomfortable position that gave the impression of readiness, as if she would snap awake and leap into action at a moment’s notice. She still wore her uniform—not that he expected the thick-lipped blonde to slip into a sexy nightie!

The sergeant had stuck to him like a leech the whole afternoon. She even stood outside the latrine door when he had to take a crap! She seemed to be on full-time PMS, and Connor was amazed at how fast he began to hate her.

But finally the sergeant slept, as did most of the people around the camp. She had led him away from the main troops, as if afraid Connor might contaminate them. The following morning they planned to take over the EM launcher facility, and they needed their rest.

Connor flexed his arms, minutely loosening the rope that bound his arms and legs. He relaxed his body as much as he could, and was surprised at the play in the rope.

Lucky the bitch tied me up, he thought. She could have gotten one of the security police to help, someone who knew what he was doing. Connor had drawn in a full chestful of air and tried to keep his muscles as tight as he could when she used the rope. Now he had plenty of slack, and time to escape.

It took longer than he expected, and impatience made him wrestle unproductively until he scraped his wrists raw. Finally, the rope popped off the ball of his thumb.

Connor slowly sat up, an inch at a time to keep from making noise. The campfire crackled and popped. Sergeant Morris stirred but remained asleep. The guards watching the perimeter of the camp moved out of sight.

Connor untied his feet and rose up. His knees cracked. He froze, but nobody moved. The orange campfire flickered, but the light was too dim to illuminate him.

He took a step toward the fire. His boot crunched on the ground. Sergeant Morris stirred again, but did not wake up. If he couldn’t slip away before she sounded the alarm, then the general would have Connor’s balls on a grappling hook for sure!

He took another step, focusing on the metal tire iron lying in the ashes to stir the logs. He took a third step toward it. Bending down, he wrapped his fingers around the heavy metal rod.

When he lifted the iron up, the smoldering wood in the fire shifted, sending sparks into the air. Connor froze, but he had gotten this far. Maybe something would go his way—for once!

He tiptoed toward the sleeping form of Sergeant Morris, one step at a time, approaching her as cautiously as he could. The tire iron felt warm in his hand with the opposite end glowing a dull red. He stood over her and smiled.

Connor raised the metal rod over his head. God, she looked ugly with her fat lips, chubby face, and mussed blond hair!

Her eyes flickered open—and she saw him.

Connor brought the hot tire iron down with all his strength.

The iron smashed into her skull with a muffled thump; the sound seemed incredibly loud in the night. The red-hot metal sizzled in her face.

A log in the campfire slumped over again. He heard a few people talking quietly in another part of the camp.

She bled into the ground. Her body twitched, but he had smashed down on her eye—dead center—and she wasn’t going to be spying on anybody else. Stupid bitch!

If she had just left him alone—if Bayclock hadn’t assigned her as his bodyguard—Connor could have just taken his own possessions and gone quietly on his way. But, no, they couldn’t make it that simple. So Bayclock and the sergeant had to deal with the consequences of what they had done. Connor felt no remorse whatsoever. How he could feel anything but scorn for military robots following the orders of a butthead?

He crept over to the wagon. The horses had been unhitched, though they stood nearby. The satellites were still there, but Connor didn’t think he could take the wagon and still escape with his skin. After all, he had just killed one of Bayclock’s sergeants. If he didn’t get away—and get away quick—he wouldn’t live to see another morning.

He reached into the wagon bed and quietly rummaged around. He found Heather’s aluminum-framed backpack with the stupid neon-pink fabric—real camouflage! Still, it was large enough to carry what supplies he needed. He stuffed the pack with food, a canteen, and one of Henrietta Soo’s blankets that had worked so well keeping the blistering desert heat away.

Mounting the backpack on his shoulders, he ducked low and made his way out of the camp. He crept quietly around the sleeping forms and out into the desert.

He intended to be far away by morning.

Well past midnight, Lieutenant Bobby Carron awoke with a start to the gentle touch of a knife.

Tense, Bobby lay absolutely still as the blade moved down to the ropes binding his wrists, then started to saw through them.

From the deep darkness and the constellations overhead, Bobby could tell that it was probably only an hour or two before dawn. The moon had already set, and the bone-biting chill of the desert night had settled into his joints.

“I know you’re awake,” a man whispered behind him. “I’ve got to get you out of here. The general’s crazy, and you’re the only one with nothing to lose right now.”

Bobby opened his eyes. The general’s crazy? Thanks for telling me something new! He felt a burning curiosity to know who the stranger was, but couldn’t see. The ropes at his wrist finally fall away, and he brought his arms around, flexing them to get the blood circulating again.

His rescuer began to work on the bonds at his ankles, and Bobby looked down, astonished to see the gangly form of Lance Nedermyer. Nedermyer looked up at him, his mouth set. His gaunt face seemed swelled with fear, and his eyeglasses glinted in the starlight.

“Take the wagon, get the satellites away from here. Bayclock is going to destroy them tomorrow to call Lockwood’s bluff.”

Satellites? Bobby thought. Could these be the ones that were coming from the Jet Propulsion Lab? How did they get into the general’s camp? “What do you want me to do with them?” Bobby said in a low whisper.

“Hide them. Keep them safe. Even take them to Lockwood if you have to. But I’d rather have you steal them than let the general smash the only ones left.”

Bobby rubbed his ankles, trying to massage the soreness out. “I tried to tell you about the general when you left White Sands. Now do you know why I chose to stay down here?”

“Yes,” Nedermyer said in a harsh bitter voice. “But I suppose it isn’t the first mistake I’ve made in my life.” He helped Bobby get to his feet.

“I’ve secured the horses to the wagon. There’s no way you can sneak past the perimeter. What you’ll need to do is just drive the horses like a bat out of hell and keep going into the night. The guards will shoot at you. Bayclock will send out search parties, but you have to get away.”

“You’re telling me!” Bobby said.

When they reached the wagon, Bobby saw that the campfires had burned low. All three horses had been hitched to the wagon; they stood stamping and restless, as if they could feel the excitement.

“Your best bet is to charge south for about a mile, then veer due east. The terrain is flat and hard, and you won’t really need to watch where you’re going in the darkness. You just need to gain distance. When you veer east, you’ll head into the mountains. You can hide there. It’ll be daylight in another hour, and then it’ll be up to you.”

Bobby gripped the thin man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Dr. Nedermyer. I’ve got to admit you surprised me.”

Nedermyer took two steps backward, as if uncomfortable with the compliment. “I’m doing it to keep the satellites safe. Our civilization has fallen far enough. I can’t let Bayclock intentionally destroy what hope we have left.”

“I’ll hide the satellites… or die trying.”

“I hope you don’t have to,” Nedermyer said, then waved him off.

Bobby smacked the reins and shouted. The three horses burst into motion, lurching forward in a full gallop. Rearing against the harness, the three mounts gained speed rapidly; the wagon and its cargo rolled across the flat hardpan of the desert. Within moments they flew beyond the perimeter of the military encampment.

Behind him Bobby heard sudden shouting and alarms being raised. He heard other horses, but none of them came toward him.

Within minutes gunshots sounded in the night. He ducked low on the buckboard. Only once did he hear a bullet whiz past him; all the other shots went completely wild. He drove the horse team by cracking the reins again and again, and they ran in blind, hot panic through the flat darkness. Bobby prayed they wouldn’t stumble across a sudden ravine or arroyo.

After about ten minutes of hard riding, Bobby assumed he had gone more than a mile, and so he pulled the reins to turn the horses eastward. Against the blotted backdrop of stars, he could see the craggy silhouettes of the mountains. The terrain would get more rugged, and he would have to slow down.

He knew the wagon wheels left a painfully clear trail across the gypsum sands, but Bayclock’s trackers wouldn’t be able to see them before the morning light. If Bobby could ride into the hills by then, he could perhaps find a place to hide.

Across the clear silence of the night, he still heard gunshots, the turmoil back at the encampment. He had gotten away for now, but remaining free would require all his wits.

By morning Bobby had driven the wagon into the foothills. He made slow progress at first, forced to get down from the wagon and lead the horses along the winding, hilly path. More than anything, he wanted to get back to Spencer’s enclave by the solar-power farm, but he knew he couldn’t get past Bayclock’s siege. Certainly, he could not take the bulky wagon with three horses up to Spencer’s command center. He would have to hide the satellites in a safe place, hoping to retrieve them when, or if, the scientists ever managed to defeat the general.

By the time full sunlight penetrated the hills, Bobby found a steep arroyo. Its jagged corners were clogged with piñon, scrub-oak, and mesquite. The dense branches and sparse gray-green leaves provided good cover, and Bobby tied the horses while he tried to camouflage the wagon.

He covered it with branches, masking the wagon from sight unless someone stumbled directly on it. As he worked, he thought that this was something Rita Fellenstein would enjoy, playing some sort of mind-game with the general. He smiled as he thought of her—she certainly wasn’t the prettiest woman he’d known, but she was the most interesting; and the only one he knew who wouldn’t take any baloney from him.

As he finished, Bobby knew he had to get back in touch with Spencer. If he got killed before he reached the microwave farm, then no one would ever know where the satellites were—and Bayclock might as well have destroyed them. The smallsats might become a sought-after treasure like the Lost Dutchman Mine.

But Bobby would do his best to keep that from happening.

Knowing he would be much more versatile with only one horse, Bobby packed some supplies and ate a quick breakfast. He picked the strongest-looking horse and mounted up, turning the other two loose to run wild.

Bobby rode down out of the hills in hopes of finding a good route to the solar-power installation. He would try to make his way there after dark.

The time passed quickly as he tried not to follow the way he had come. The White Sands valley stretched out below him as his horse picked its way down. Who would have ever thought that only months before he had been a carefree Naval aviator—

A gunshot rang out, a loud crack that echoed around the hills. The horse was startled and trotted ahead, rolling its head from side to side. Bobby looked around to try and find the source of the gunfire. Another shot rang out, closer this time, and he spotted four riders emerging from the hills, all of them wearing Air Force uniforms.

Bayclock’s men. Another rider charged out in front of him.

Bobby shouted and urged the horse into a full gallop. He hurtled out of the hills, desperately seeking a place to hide, as the other riders launched into pursuit.

Bobby hunched low over the horse’s neck, the mane whipping in the wind, stinging his face. Hooves thundered as Bobby’s horse leaped over a cluster of rocks and kept charging downhill.

Behind him, the riders split up to intercept him. They shot again, and Bobby knew they had no interest in capturing him alive this time. At least he had fled far enough that the satellites were safe—but these riders must have tracked the wagon trail. How many men had Bayclock sent out after him?

The gunshots came in faster succession now. The riders tightened the distance. Another volley of shots—the loudest so far—rang out in a sudden echo like firecrackers.

The horse whinnied and reared as Bobby saw a sudden scarlet blotch appear on it’s ribcage four inches in front of his own thigh. The horse stumbled, falling over and throwing Bobby.

He tried to hold on, but then rolled free as the horse thrashed on the ground to get to its feet again. The horse was bleeding heavily from the large gunshot wound close to its heart. It stamped up and down, then staggered back, limping.

Bobby stood gingerly. His leg was sore, but nothing was broken, nothing sprained. He looked around for some rocks to hide in, anything for shelter.

Then the hoofbeats of other horses pounded down on him from all sides. Four riders came up, each with rifle drawn.

Bobby stood slowly with his back against a wall of sandstone, and raised his hands in surrender.

By late morning, Bobby Carron found himself Bayclock’s prisoner once more. They tied him helplessly on the back of a horse, then rode off toward the foothills on the opposite side of the valley. The encampment had already moved, and from his rocking position on horseback, Bobby was dismayed to see that the general’s army had succeeded in taking over the damaged railgun facility in only a few hours.

The troops had marched up to the control buildings at the bottom of the miles-long electromagnetic launcher. From what he could tell, the scientists had not put up much of a fight.

Bobby stumbled when his captors hauled him off the horse and dragged him to his feet. Smears of soot blackened the launcher control building. He tried to see other people he recognized. He hoped the scientists had gotten away.

General Bayclock strode out of the burned-out control building. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked at Bobby with disgust. “This time I’m taking no chances. Lead the prisoner to the telephone pole. Right now.”

One of the guards shoved him down a path toward an old creosote-covered utility pole that had once carried electricity to the launcher facility. Spencer’s people had already removed the wires from the pole—but Bayclock had another purpose in mind.

“I knew you were a traitor, Lieutenant, but I didn’t believe you would team up with a slimeball like Connor Brooks to steal the satellites. We’ll find him, soon. Which one of you murdered Sergeant Morris, or did you take turns bashing her head in?”

Bobby stared at him. Sergeant Morris, dead? He said numbly, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t insult me,” said Bayclock. “I think we’ll go the high route with you.” The general looked up to the wooden crossbars on the electrical pole. “We’ll hoist you up so we don’t have to cut down Dr. Nedermyer.”

Bobby wavered as the guards pushed him forward. He saw the blue-black clenched face of Lance Nedermyer. Bayclock had thrown a loop of rope around his neck like a garrote, inserted a short stick, and then twisted it to draw the rope tighter and tighter until it crushed Lance’s larynx and severed his trachea. Bobby saw scuff marks in the sand and fresh gouges from the bottom of the utility pole where Lance had kicked and struggled. His body had already begun to bloat in the bright morning heat.

“I have no patience left for traitors,” Bayclock said. “It’s about time my people realized that.”

Chapter 73

Standing on the south balcony of the White House, President Jeffrey Mayeaux watched his military troops patrol the Mall. The National Guard had forcibly removed angry crowds from the Ellipse and the south lawn. Even the cherry trees along the Tidal Basin had been cut down and stored as firewood for the winter.

He crumpled the handwritten communique in his hand and let it fall to the floor.

The commander of the San Diego naval base had been assassinated while trying to stop a rally against the military crackdowns. The crowds had gone wild, killing the admiral and at least fifty Naval officers around the city. A self-appointed ruling council had seized control of the shipyards and the base facilities. According to the report, the other Navy personnel on duty had surrendered willingly.

What the hell was he supposed to do about that?

“I want a meeting with my Joint Chiefs in five minutes!” he said without turning. He heard one of the Secret Service men leave the room. He wished Franklin Weathersee would get back from his stupid grocery shopping expedition.

Everybody blamed Mayeaux for their problems, and nobody listened when he issued orders to take care of anything. For God’s sake, he hadn’t caused the petroplague!

He hadn’t heard a word from the old bitch Emma Branson at Oilstar for more than a month, and he was glad—she could fend for herself out in California. He had heard one report that mobs had burned down the Oilstar refinery, but he didn’t know if he could believe it. Probably.

Around the country the citizens had begun to throw up their own defenses and forget the big picture. Mayeaux was in charge of what he had started to think of as the “Humpty Dumpty Squad”—no matter how many long hours he put in or nights he spent without sleep, he still could not put the pieces together again. But if the population thought their President was just going to pick his nose while the world went down the toilet, they were in for a hell of a surprise. He hated not knowing what to do, what would work, what would snap the mobs out of their pigs-fighting-over-a-corncob anarchy. People just didn’t make sense.

Mayeaux had the chance to pull off the biggest change in history and set the tone of the country—hell, the world!—for the next century. How much room remained on Mount Rushmore, after all? Could they squeeze Mayeaux’s face in somewhere between Roosevelt and Lincoln?

The U.S. could get back on its feet, according to the advances projected by NIST scientists—petroplague-resistant plastics, the change to a hydrogen-based energy economy… if people could resist turning into post-holocaust barbarians.

But they wouldn’t listen to reason United we stand, divided we fall—dammit, every kid in the country had that slogan hammered into him from grade school on.

Mayeaux followed the Secret Service men down to the Situation Room. No one stood for him when he entered, a sign of disrespect like a slap in the face. No one greeted him, no optimistic “Good morning, sir!” from the staffers. Where the hell was the rest of his Cabinet? He hadn’t even seen the Vice President in a month. The guy could at least bicycle down from the Naval Observatory once in a while.

Only two military officers had come to the table—General Wacom, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the CNO, the admiral Chief of Naval Operations. Both men looked grim. Mayeaux didn’t recognize any of the White House staffers wearing blue WHS pins as substitutes for laminated badges.

“Have you forgotten how to stand when your Commander-in-Chief enters the room, gentlemen?” he said. This was worse than he had thought.

Grudgingly, the two officers struggled to their feet. Mayeaux pulled up his chair and dispensed with niceties. “I called a meeting in five minutes! Where is everybody else?”

“They won’t be joining us,” General Wacom said.

“Why the hell not? This isn’t a RSVP party invitation.”

The general did not answer the question. “How can we help you this morning, Mr. President?”

Mayeaux scowled and got right to the point. “I trust you’ve been briefed about the San Diego incident?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the CNO said, clearing his throat. “To make things worse, we’ve also just learned that the San Diego ruling council has commandeered the installation’s radio network. They are broadcasting their ‘victory’ over the entire Atlantis network, actively trying to incite other similar uprisings.”

“As if we didn’t have enough trouble already! How you intend to deal with it, gentlemen?”

Wacom drummed his fingers on the table. He spoke smoothly, using years of experience honed by testifying before congressional committees. “We’ve made the decision that it is prudent not to antagonize the public, not to take unnecessary risks. There may be some options that the military can use, but our primary mission is to defend our national security.”

Mayeaux pressed his fingers together. “So, you made that decision yourselves? Thank you very much, General. It’s nice to know I don’t need to bother running the country anymore. You thought it ‘prudent’ just to let cities overthrow their military bases, assassinate commanders, and secede from the United States at will?”

The general stiffened. “There are certain degrees of response we may consider, Mr. President. The Army still has access to point weapons—grenades, bullets, bazookas, all of which work effectively only if coordinated by the chain of command. Since our communication is sporadic, and the troops do not have the necessary logistical or transportation support, such weapons cannot be utilized effectively to suppress large mob-type disturbances. The military might prevail initially, but they would quickly be overrun, as in San Diego.”

Mayeaux tapped on the table. The general had told no lies, but he had not told the whole story, either. “I find that hard to believe, General. Are you insisting that this plague has eliminated the military’s ability to respond decisively if a target city openly defies a direct presidential order?”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly, sir—”

Mayeaux broke in. “I’ve been informed that we still have ten Trident-class nuclear submarines on underwater quarantine and as yet unaffected by the plague. Wouldn’t you say that sub-launched missiles are a bit more substantial than a few ‘point weapons?’”

The Chiefs exchanged glances. The temperature in the Situation Room seemed to plunge.

A Secret Service man barged into the room. His arrival startled the other guards enough that one placed himself in front of the intruder.

“Mr. President!” the newcomer said. He panted, then stopped, letting his eyes fall closed as he drew several deep breaths to calm himself. Mayeaux recognized him as one of the agents who had hauled him out of bed in his Ocean City condo to tell him of President Holback’s death.

“Yes, what is it?” Mayeaux snapped.

The Secret Service man drew in another lungful. “Sir, it’s Mr. Weathersee. Your… your chief of staff has been killed, sir. We were ambushed on our food requisitioning run. A large group of civilians swarmed over our wagons. Someone threw a grenade at the convoy. I believe they simply intended to appropriate the food, but they killed everyone they captured.”

A roar of pounding blood filled Mayeaux’s head. Weathersee! “Are you certain it was him?”

“I was with him. Mr. Weathersee was assassinated, sir.” He squirmed. “Uh, there is no doubt in my mind that he is dead.”

Mayeaux gripped the table. Franklin Weathersee had been his legislative assistant since Mayeaux had taken his first political office, accompanying him for years as a silent companion as his career climbed. What was he going to do without the man’s dispassionate competence, especially in such a terrible crisis?

“How?” Mayeaux said, sounding like a croaking toad. “How was he killed.”

“Uh, he was…” The Secret Service man swallowed and stood stiffly, staring at the far wall. “He was decapitated, sir.”

Mayeaux’s vision seemed to grow warm and black, fuzzed at the edges. What was he going to do without Weathersee? He took a long, shuddering breath and forced himself to focus on the people gathered in the Situation Room.

“You have my sympathy, Mr. President,” General Wacom said.

“I don’t give a damn about your sympathy,” Mayeaux said. He tok a long slow breath and spoke each word like a heavy footfall down a long staircase. “I believe you were about to answer my question about the availability of nuclear-tipped missiles on Trident submarines.”

The Chairman’s face fell slack. “Mr. President, you can’t consider launching a nuclear missile against American targets. Even at the height of the Cold War, using these against the Soviet Union was considered only a last resort for survival—”

“Just what the living hell do you think this is?” Mayeaux shouted. He struck his palm on the table, scattering two pencils beside his coffee cup. “By your own admission, the military cannot function. The greatest nation on Earth is decaying into pockets of barbarism, even here in our capital city! Just when do you draw the line and say that things have gone far enough!”

Mayeaux breathed hard as he looked around the room. He was surprised to feel tears on the verge of spilling from his eyes. No one spoke. The Joint Chiefs returned his icy stare; two of his cabinet members looked down, shaking their heads.

Mayeaux took another deep breath, but his pulse kept pounding like a drumbeat in his head. “The United States must be willing to cauterize a wound to keep this nation from bleeding to death. We cannot tolerate this situation any longer. Look what’s happening in our own neighborhood.”

The general tried to calm him. “Mr. President, maybe you should reconsider the options, wait until you have calmed down from this shocking news. Within a few days we can prepare an extensive list ranging from a light to intermediate response against San Diego—”

Mayeaux’s Louisiana drawl got worse as his anger rose and he lost control. “Mais—let me tell you somethin’! The people must be utterly convinced that the President is still in charge! Abraham Lincoln did it, and so can I. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, jailed political leaders and newspaper editors in Baltimore to prevent Maryland from seceding from the union.”

Wacom sat rigid, masking his emotions. Beside him, the CNO’s eyes widened when Mayeaux turned his attention to him. “Admiral, I want you to give me a list of the surviving Trident-II submarines within range of San Diego.”

The Admiral threw a glance at the Chairman; General Wacom nodded stiffly. Mayeaux scowled. Who the hell was in charge here, anyway?

The Admiral avoided Mayeaux’s eyes by glancing at a sheet of paper. He cleared his throat. “Of the subs still in contact, two are in position to strike targets on the west coast of the United States.” He fiddled with his paper, as if it was very important for him to file it away at that moment. “However, Mr. President, I cannot assure you that the crews of either vessel will carry out war orders that require them to retarget missiles against their own country—”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Mayeaux icily. “I’m sure the captains of those vessels remember who their Commander is, even if my Joint Chiefs do not.”

He felt giddy, detached, as if he had just been swept up by a giant invisible hand. Within days of the first strike—one decisive strike—word would spread like wildfire over the available channels of communication. The rebellios cities would be shocked, then afraid, then repentant. Time for everyone to work together, not break apart. History would hail Jeffrey Mayeaux as a savior, the architect of the future United States.

Mayeaux leaned back in his seat and tapped his fingers together. “Very well, Admiral. I’ve made my decision. I want you to transmit the order that one nuclear missile be launched at the heart of downtown San Diego.”

The Chairman and admiral exchanged glances. General Wacom’s face looked blotchy with submerged fury.

Mayeaux turned to the Chairman. “General Wacom, work with the NSA to broadcast in the widest possible manner that unless the nationwide rioting stops and all of the new city-states recind their claims of independence, one city after another will be obliterated in a similar fashion. The leaders advocating secession must resign their posts and surrender.”

No one spoke. Mayeaux looked from person to person. Each member of his staff looked away, not meeting his glance.

He drew in a breath. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

The military officers sat erect, hands on the table.

Mayeaux felt his face grow warm. “Admiral, I gave you a direct order. The Navy will fulfill its legal obligations under my authority as Commander-in-Chief. Do I have to repeat it? Is something not clear?”

The CNO spoke slowly. “No, Mr. President. I understand completely.” Still, he made no move.

Mayeaux felt his heart rate quicken. A flush of adrenaline flooded his system, now that he had finally made his decision. “General Wacom—do I have to remind you, too? I am your Commander-in-Chief.”

The general pushed back his chair with a sudden motion. His silver hair contrasted with the dark blue of his worn Air Force uniform; his eyes looked glazed as he glared straight at Mayeaux and spoke in a level tone. “My allegiance is to the Constitution of the United States of America, sir, and to obey the legal orders of those appointed over me. I’m sorry, but I respectfully refuse to obey your illegal order. You cannot use nuclear force against our own citizens.”

Mayeaux leaped to his feet, his eyes wide, his breath coming in short gasps. “General Wacom—you are relieved!”

The Chairman picked up his papers and walked away. Without a word, the admiral also stood up and followed him to the door. Mayeaux’s voice sounded shrill in his own ears. “History will brand you a coward, General! Both of you!”

Wacom was halfway out the door when he turned and pointed an angry finger at Mayeaux. “Nuremberg set the stage, Mr. President—ask any American military officer since Lieutenant Calley. We’re responsible for our actions, and we have to pay the price. And as far as I’m concerned, using nuclear missiles to make an example of American cities is bullshit.” He hesitated, then added, “Sir!” before whirling to leave. The admiral followed him.

Two other members of the President’s staff got up and walked out the door. “Sorry, sir,” one of them muttered.

Mayeaux shook; he felt his teeth grinding together as his jaw worked tightly. Where was Weathersee, dammit?

“Come back here!” he shouted. “I’m still the President!”

One by one, the President’s staff exited the Situation Room, their heads down, muttering as they left, and not meeting his glare. They didn’t have to impeach him. They had stripped him of power in a much simpler way.

“Weathersee! Where are you!”

In a moment, Jeffrey Mayeaux stood alone—the most powerful man in the world, in the most important room… with no one around to hear him rage.

Chapter 74

A white flag of surrender dangled from a broomstick as Spencer Lockwood and Heather Dixon approached the burned-out control building for the electromagnetic launcher.

Early that morning, Bayclock’s main forces had occupied the place, taking prisoner the few scientists and technicians who had remained after the railgun explosion, including a seriously injured Gilbert Hertoya. Holding the EM launcher and the scientists hostage, Bayclock had sent a courier demanding Spencer’s immediate surrender of the entire antenna farm facility.

Spencer felt he had no choice. If only he had succeeded in getting the increased satellite power directed at the general’s troops! He had tried everything possible, but he could not get the orbiting Seven Dwarfs to respond, and the makeshift circuit board would not be worth anything for quite some time. Instead, the smallsats would pass overhead in just a short while, unaffected, beaming their increased solar power down onto the field of microwave antennas, oblivious to the conflict below.

Spencer idolized fictional scientists, geniuses like the professor on Gilligan’s Island who could kludge together a solution to the wildest problem with the skimpiest resources—and it would always work! But despite Spencer’s expertise and the help of his team, his desperate measures fizzled as often as not: the transformer at the water pumping station, Gilbert’s railgun defense system, and Spencer’s attempt to reprogram the smallsats.

Bayclock held all the good cards right now. He had demanded surrender, and so Spencer had rigged up the white flag.

Back at the solar-power farm, Heather Dixon had astonished him by asking to accompany him on the journey.

“What for?” Spencer blurted.

“Because I want to.” She fidgeted and then flashed him a smile. “Besides, the general is less likely to shoot at a man and a woman coming to meet him, than just a lone rider.”

He stared at her, then she smiled at him. Actually, Spencer didn’t think Bayclock would kill anyone coming in under a white flag, since the general seemed so anal retentive about law and order. Bayclock lived by a clearly defined code of honor—and that might be his weakness, Spencer thought, because it lets us predict what he will and won’t do.

Now, as they rode toward the launcher facility, dangling the surrender flag in front of them, both he and Heather stared straight ahead. The long rails extended up the side of Oscura Peak, flanked by debris, rocks, and underbrush. Plenty of good places to hide.

Spencer seethed at seeing the troops occupying the ruined facility—how many prisoners had Bayclock taken? Given his code of honor, the general wouldn’t abuse Hertoya or the other captives, but he seemed to have no compunction against destroying irreplaceable technical apparatus. A true barbarian.

In the rugged foothills by the base of the launcher, Bayclock’s scouts saw the two of them approaching and rode out. Spencer swallowed. “You ready for this?”

Heather reached over and squeezed his arm. Together, they waved the white flag.

The scouts rode up on either side of them. Spencer halted his horse as the Air Force men looked them over, guns leveled. “Are you unarmed?” one of the scouts asked.

“Yes,” Spencer said. The two men nodded. Somehow, he had known they wouldn’t bother to check. Bayclock, with his sense of military honor, would automatically expect everyone else to play by the same rules. He would be bound to accept Spencer’s surrender and offer terms.

But Spencer’s mind didn’t work the same way. He preferred the model of one of his other heroes, Captain James T. Kirk: promise the world, stall for time, and keep working to find a way to win. And that was exactly what he planned to do now. He just hoped this would work.

“Take me to your leader,” he said to the guards.

His hands bound behind him, Lieutenant Bobby Carron stood facing Bayclock’s wrath.

One of the airmen threw a rope over the crossbeam and dropped the rope down, letting the noose dangle at the height of Bobby’s shoulders. They would slip the noose over his neck, tighten it, and yank him into the air. No quick snapping of the neck for Bobby—he would kick and twist as the rough rope squeezed his throat shut.

Arnie, the scientist who had accompanied Bobby and Catilyn’s first expedition, stood watching by the ruined aluminum building. His hands were loosely bound, another of Bayclock’s prisoners of war; he looked as though he were reliving the nightmare of when his family had died under martial law.

Gilbert Hertoya sat with one broken leg crudely splinted and the other bandaged from several bloody gashes he had received in the explosion of the railgun. Unattended, Gilbert rested in the scant shade beside the wrecked capacitor banks and the long metal rails of the EM launcher. Both captive scientists looked angry, unable to believe what Bayclock was about to do.

The Air Force captain gripped the noose, opening it wide as he stepped toward Bobby. The captain kept his eyes down, avoiding Bobby’s eyes. Bobby wished he could remember the officer’s name, but his mind blanked.

General Bayclock stood with his hands behind his back, puffing his chest forward, as if his captive was transparent and insignificant.

Bobby could think of nothing to say. His stomach knotted, and his vision seemed sharp, too focused, as if trying to absorb a lifetime’s worth of details in just a few minutes: a cloudless sky, the dry dust, the sweet smell of sage, razor-sharp shadows.

Bayclock was not kidding. Not kidding at all.

A rider came up the path to the blockhouses. He had pushed his mount hard, crossing the foothills to the general’s new base of operations. Breathless, he dismounted next to Bayclock, glanced at Bobby and the ready noose, then saluted the general.

“What is it?” Bayclock asked. “Report!”

“A white flag, sir!” the airman said. “The scientists have sent two representatives to surrender. I believe one of them is Dr. Lockwood himself, sir.”

Bayclock suddenly looked relieved. “Very well. Bring them to me as soon as possible.”

“They’re on their way, sir.”

Bobby wanted to collapse in dismay. He couldn’t believe it! Why would Spencer give up after all they had accomplished? Bayclock’s army had been severely wounded by the scientists’ efforts, and their morale was shot. The general had occupied the launcher facility, but that was already ruined by the explosion. The cracks showed in Bayclock’s forces; they were ready to crumble in another few days, and he was sure the general knew it.

Why couldn’t Spencer have held out just a little longer? Bobby had no other choice, nothing to lose. He raised his voice. “You better hang me in a hurry, General. Now that they’ve come under the flag of surrender, can you justify executing prisoners of war?”

Bobby spat hard at Bayclock. “Yeah, General, I’m talking to you! If you string me up right now, I’m sure you can convince every one of your soldiers to pretend you hung me before anybody saw the white flag. That would cover your ass. In fact, why not just threaten to shoot any soldier who says otherwise?”

Bayclock turned from the courier, and his face became livid, deeper than the sunburn on his broad face. The black bristles of his hair stood on end. Bobby thought of the old fighter-pilot adage: balls the size of grapefruits, and brains the size of peas. He wanted to continue provoking Bayclock, keep him torn between his conflicting wishes.

“What’s the matter, General? Can’t make a snap decision?” Balls the size of grapefruits. “Good thing you’re not flying real aircraft anymore! You’re still fighting the last war. You’re better off flying a desk.”

Bayclock took one step forward, shoving his face less than an inch away from Bobby’s. Bobby didn’t flinch. Bayclock back-handed him across the cheek. Brains the size of a pea.

His face stinging, Bobby spat at him again. “You’re a coward, General, if you have to strike a man while he’s got his hands behind his back and waiting for a noose around his neck.”

Bayclock yanked the combat knife from his belt and sawed at the ropes around Bobby’s wrists. Bobby couldn’t believe how easily provoked the man was. The general tossed the cut rope and the knife over by the metal rails of the electromagnetic launcher. “All right then, traitor! Come at me!”

Bobby did not wait for the numbness to leave his hands. He charged at Bayclock, swinging with both hands as the other spectators stepped back.

Connor Brooks knew that even if the general’s troops moved at top speed, they’d still be hours behind him. He had walked all night, and the only thing he could see to the far distance was scrub brush and frail yucca plants. Overhead, some kind of hawk wheeled around, a dark check-mark in the clear sky.

Another few miles and he’d be at the solar-power facility. Then he could do some fast talking.

Earlier that morning, Connor had hidden as a group of people headed out from the metal trailers by the antenna farm, making their way north toward Bayclock. The idiots carried a white surrender flag—as if Bayclock would have mercy! The general would probably try to draft them too, or throw them in a dungeon somewhere.

He saw the snowy tops of gypsum sand dunes south of him, shimmering in the distance as heat rose from the desert. To the north, immense metal rails of the electromagnetic launcher rose up the side of Oscura Peak. If he could make it to the trailer at the microwave facility, he might find something he could use as a bargaining chip. Connor had always considered himself a resourceful person. After all, he had managed to walk away in the middle of the night, right under Bayclock’s nose.

He twisted his face at the very thought of that butthead general. Damned Napoleon. There had to be something about command that turned people into assholes. First there was Captain Uma on the Zoroaster, and now General Bayclock.

Connor laughed at the thought of getting back at the general, just as he had with Uma. If the solar-power facility was so precious to the son of a bitch, maybe Connor could even sabotage the place. That would really piss Bayclock off! In fact, the troops might even rebel once they discovered that their forced march all the way from Albuquerque had been for nothing.

Connor Brooks pulled the aluminum frame of his pack higher on his back and arrowed straight for the trailers. The pounding sun was high in the sky, and he cast very little shadow. If he could get to the trailer by noon, he’d have plenty of time to wreck some of the equipment, or snatch something with which he could barter.

The sunlight seemed magnified by the glittering white sands. If he had only swiped a hat from one of the soldiers, anything to keep off the sun.

“I’d like to see Bayclock’s troops march through this shit!” he muttered. He stopped and shrugged off his backpack. He pulled out the reflective thermal blanket and fixed it around him like an Arab kefiyeh. “If the towel-heads can do it, so can I,” he said to himself. Connor donned the makeshift headgear and soon felt cooler. He picked up his metal-frame backpack and whistled.

As he hiked toward the trailers, he spotted glints of sunlight reflected from the harsh ground in front of him. He walked up a small rise, and the bright flashes grew stronger, like a mile-wide field of whiplike chrome wires covering the basin between himself and the trailers.

He could see the blockhouse trailers more clearly now, even with just one eye. The three aluminum-sided structures with corrugated tops sat at angles to each other, forming a triangle. If he cut straight across the basin of whip-wires to get to the trailers, he could trim at least a mile off his path.

He looked behind him. Still no sign of Bayclock’s troops, but Connor didn’t want to screw up by getting there too late. He knew the importance of timing—he remembered his good timing running up the stairs on the Oilstar Zoroaster after setting off the fire alarm; he remembered finding out just in time about that lunatic Uma back at the camp… and he remembered getting double-crossed by Bayclock, because of bad timing. No way was he going to let that military fuckhead get there before him!

Connor grinned and started for the trailers.

As he stepped into the field, he discovered that the glints came not from wires, but from thousands of slender metal poles low to the ground, like a giant pin cushion in the desert.

He ducked through the strands of a barbed wire fence that ran around the antenna complex. It felt weird, walking through the field of metal poles. He stepped on fine wires that ran from the bottoms of the poles, kicking a few loose.

Picking up the pace, he made his way to the trailers. It wouldn’t be long now.

From his team’s camouflaged position at the top of the EM launcher rails, Todd Severyn watched Bayclock’s soldiers camped near the control building below. The troops had dug in, pitching their tents in the foothills, while the general set up his command post inside the burned shell of the building itself.

Todd saw Spencer’s white flag approach the encampment, surrounded by escorts. Waiting within view on the other side of the long metal rails, Rita Fellenstein signaled Todd. She had seen Spencer’s arrival as well.

Time to move in.

Todd jammed his cowboy hat on his head, then bent low over the horse’s neck. Rita tightened the string on her bush hat, and waved for the ranch hands to follow. With Todd came seven other ranchers from Alamogordo, all on horseback and carrying crude grenades made from the potent-smelling citrus-based explosives.

Todd and Rita both led their horses, picking up speed as they trotted down the service trail on either side of the long electromagnetic launcher. They would attack in two prongs, striking from either side of the supply camp. He just hoped they could manage not to blow themselves up when they lobbed the home-made grenades into Bayclock’s troops.

Unable to restrain themselves once they urged their horses into a full gallop, Todd’s attackers let out a loud war yell as they charged toward the camp.

Sitting in the shade near the blockhouses, Gilbert Hertoya watched the confrontation between General Bayclock and Bobby Carron. The two men crouched in a coiled stance, circling and glaring. The empty noose still dangled from the utility pole, and Spencer Lockwood was coming in under a white flag.

The short engineer felt his hope draining. He didn’t want to give up, but their chances seemed to be fading away. It had been absurd in the first place to think they could drive off a fully armed invasion force.

The nerves in Gilbert’s legs hurt with a throbbing, insistent pain, but he tried to ignore it. He had to focus his thoughts to formulate some way he could help Bobby, or stop Spencer from surrendering—or at the very least hurt Bayclock.

Bobby Carron lunged at the general, feinting with a left-handed blow to the stomach, which Bayclock blocked, then lashing out with a quick hammer-punch to the general’s face. Bobby struck him squarely in the nose, once, twice, before snapping backward to avoid a counterpunch.

Though he himself wasn’t much of a hand-to-hand fighter, Gilbert knew that the nose was a non-crippling but singularly effective place for a blow to land. Bobby’s punch would have sent a bright explosion of pain into Bayclock’s head, blinding him with a sudden flood of reflexive tears. A splash of scarlet blood dribbled out of his nostrils and splattered on the pale sands.

“Face it, you’re too old, General,” Bobby said.

Some of Bayclock’s troops had drawn up as spectators, but they remained oddly subdued and silent, as if they refused to cheer for the general but were afraid to cheer for his opponent. They stepped back, giving the two fighting men room.

Bayclock launched himself forward, moving his legs like pistons and butting Bobby in the stomach. Bobby let out an “oof!” but managed to sidestep part of the attack. As Bayclock crashed into him, Bobby caught the general’s foot with his own and tripped them both. They tumbled to the ground.

Bobby scrambled to get to his feet again, rolling away from Bayclock’s grasping hands. “Can’t fly, can’t fight—what else can’t you do, old man?” he gasped.

Bobby got to his knees, white dust covering his blue Air Force uniform. Bayclock’s nose continued to bleed onto the sand.

Gilbert tore his concentration away from the fight and looked into the sky. He had no way of telling accurate time, but the sun stood at about noon, and the Seven Dwarfs would orbit overhead any moment now.

He lay by the wreckage of the railgun. In the explosion, the capacitors had ruptured and the banks of storage batteries had burned. During the day of waiting and recovery, Arnie had lovingly disconnected and removed the blackened shapes. Given time and resources, they could repair everything—but it did not look like the general would give them the opportunity.

Every day at noon, though, when the Seven Dwarfs passed over the White Sands antenna farm, the solar energy beamed down to the collectors was distributed through the repaired power grid, charging up caches of batteries to run various equipment. A direct power line ran up to the EM launcher to charge the batteries for the railgun, but now those batteries had been destroyed and the ruined capacitors taken off-line.

The solar smallsats didn’t know that, however. They would continue to beam their power, and the electrical lines would run the current up to the railgun facility. Disconnected from any source, the cable would become a live wire for the twenty minutes that the satellites passed overhead transmitting their energy.

A live wire. As everyone watched the fistfight, Gilbert Hertoya took the disconnected cable, praying as he touched it that the deadly current wasn’t already flowing. No guard watched him closely, with both of his legs heavily bandaged.

Gilbert dragged himself to the metal superstructure of the railgun. He jammed the end of the wire into the steel base, then backed away—ignoring the sharp darts of pain jabbing his legs in a thousand places. He collapsed back on the dirt, trying to keep from passing out.

From the other side of the group of buildings, Arnie saw what Gilbert had done, and his eyes widened. Gilbert winked and crossed his fingers. In response, Arnie crossed his fingers, too.

Bayclock attacked Bobby again, and the fight went on.

Seven hundred kilometers overhead, seven satellites flew in a constellation of four planar orbits, inclined at 45 degrees from the equator. Tiny solar-electric thrusters boiled plasma off their electrodes, keeping the satellites positioned in orbit, cancelling perturbations caused by gravitational variations in the Earth’s crust.

The satellites updated their position using the military’s still-functioning Global Positioning Satellites, making necessary corrections. Each smallsat carried a tiny atomic clock, attuned to the energy of a certain fundamental transition frequency to know when they were. Isolated from the events taking place below, the satellites functioned as programmed.

One minute before noon, Mountain Standard Time, the lead satellite swung its gimboled antenna toward the horizon. Energy collected by the array of inflatable solar-cell panels was converted into electricity, which trickled into the transmitter.

The satellites silently began to irradiate the microwave antenna farm at White Sands.

Connor Brooks was within two hundred yards of the edge of the antenna farm when he heard sparks jumping from the metal poles of his backpack. The sound scared him—it was if he had fallen into the middle of a huge popcorn popper.

At the same instant, his head began to grow hot. Very hot. The thermal blanket felt as if it had suddenly turned into napalm. The searing fabric pressed down upon his skull, across the back of his neck. Only seconds earlier, he had enjoyed the relative coolness of being shielded from the sun, but it now felt like molten lead.

Connor screamed and tore at the metal-backed cloth. But already the fabric smoldered. The metal snapped and popped in an inferno of blue sparks; the poles on his backpack burned hot-iron slices into his back. Acidic smoke billowed out; even the metal eyelets on his boots crackled with tiny arcs of flame.

The pain went on and on. Connor fell to his knees, clutching at the melting blanket that spread over his head, over his skin.

In a final effort, Connor tried to pry the covering from his scalp, but his fingers refused to respond, turning into burned, bloody stumps by the boiling metal. Sparks continued to crackle in a cocoon around him. He screamed, and hot arcs lanced from the fillings in his teeth.

The pain… wouldn’t… stop….

Seven hundred kilometers above the Earth, the second satellite locked on and started to beam its microwaves down to the target.

Five others waited patiently behind for their own turns.

Todd and Rita galloped in on either side of the base camp near the burned-out railgun facility, yelling their loudest battle cries. Todd set the spring-loaded timer on his crude grenade canister and lobbed the explosive toward a supply tent.

The Air Force men saw what he had thrown, and they scrambled in the opposite direction. Some ran for their rifles, but most ducked for cover.

Rita Fellenstein headed them off from the other direction, tossing another grenade in among the campfires. Following closely behind, the ranch hands fired their own rifles and shouted.

One colonel stood in the middle of it all, with a wounded arm in a sling, staring at Todd and the other riders. Very carefully, the colonel tossed his own rifle to the ground.

Bayclock’s other troops, as if waiting to surrender, took this as a sign of permission. Other explosions erupted from the citrus-based explosives. Gunfire rattled around the hills, but nobody seemed to be shooting at anything.

Todd had intended only to ride in, cause damage, panic, and confusion, make the troops scatter, then hit the road as fast as possible to hide in an overgrown arroyo.

Rita pulled up beside him, and they stared as more and more of the soldiers either ran or tossed down their weapons.

“Now what do we do?” Todd asked.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Rita shrugged. “We didn’t plan on winning!”

Carrying their white flag like a shield, Spencer and Heather were escorted up to the main buildings of the railgun only moments before the first explosions and gunshots broke out in the camp below them.

Heather gripped his hand hard enough that her nails bit into his skin. Spencer felt himself trembling, knowing he was crazy even to be making this attempt. He tried to keep a straight face, although his guts had tangled into knots.

The first thing he noticed near the control building was the fistfight between Bobby Carron and the general. A small group of Bayclock’s soldiers had formed a ring around the combatants, like gamblers watching a cockfight. But they did not cheer, simply watched the pummelling in silence.

Spencer’s attention was yanked like a metal filing to a magnet when he noticed the noose hanging from the utility pole—and the bloated body of a strangled Lance Nedermyer tied to the creosote-smeared wood.

“Oh, Lance!” Spencer said, and his breath went out of him. Even his cocky plans evaporated in his mind. If Bayclock could do this to one of his own supporters, then he would have no qualms about slaughtering Spencer or Rita or anyone else who dared to defy him.

Lance Nedermyer had been a real pain most of the time, but he had a good streak in him—a streak that Lance himself tried to extinguish. Maybe that good streak had been his downfall while trapped in Bayclock’s hell.

Farther down the long rail launcher, he heard the first shouts of Todd’s charge as they struck the base camp. Gunshots. Explosions. Several of the spectators ran off to see the attack, while others seemed afraid of leaving Bayclock’s side.

Bobby Carron and Bayclock rolled around on the ground, pounding each other with fists. The general clawed the back of Bobby’s head, attempting to grab his hair. Finally, he dug his fingers into Bobby’s ear until it bled. Bobby cried out and smashed his forehead down on the general’s skull, butting him viciously.

Blood poured out of Bayclock’s nose and sprayed in red foam every time he took a heaving breath. Bobby hammered the general’s side with his sharp elbow; Bayclock bit and grabbed, sinking his teeth into Bobby’s shoulder.

With a scream, Bobby tore himself free and scrambled away. Bayclock climbed to his feet and charged, but Bobby met the attack with a double blow to the general’s stomach, making him stumble back toward the railgun launcher. Bayclock’s eyes were bloodshot and his skin looked like a cube steak. Bobby didn’t look much better, but he remained on his feet as the general wobbled and fell to his knees in the dirt.

Todd and Rita rode into the area, with a tall solemn-looking colonel striding between them. The colonel cradled his wounded arm as he absorbed the situation, then he took another step toward the beaten Bayclock.

“General… “ he hesitated, but Bayclock did not acknowledge him. Colonel David didn’t seem to care.

“It’s over, General.” The colonel flashed a glance behind him to Spencer standing with his white flag. “I believe these gentlemen are in a position to discuss terms.”

Rita leaped from her horse and ran to help Bobby up. Bobby swayed on his feet and flicked blood out of his eyes. Sweat ran in rivers down his exposed skin, and he shuddered like a shack in a hurricane. “That’s it, Bayclock. Your troops have caused enough damage.”

Bayclock collapsed, but Spencer saw that the man’s eyes were open and calculating. In the shadows by the railgun supports, he fished around on the ground. After a moment, he snatched up a hunting knife that lay beside severed strands of rope.

“I don’t surrender!” He lurched to his feet, brandishing the wicked-looking combat knife. Bobby stiffened; Rita tightened her grip on his arm. One of Bayclock’s men grabbed a rifle, but didn’t know what to shoot at.

The general turned, holding out the knife. Backing up, his arm brushed against the metal supports of the electromagnetic launcher rails. The live wire, disconnected from the battery banks and capacitors, dumped its electricity into the bottomless ground of the miles-long rail, waiting for a load.

Bayclock completed the circuit.

He froze as if caught in amber, then in an instant he seemed to go out of focus, with a million nerves in his skin suddenly misfiring, every strand of muscle fiber in his body scrambling. Sparks flew from the point of contact, and his skin blackened.

His mouth cracked open in a long silent scream, and then his lips curled away from his teeth. When General Bayclock finally fell to the white sands, his entire form steamed from the moisture boiling inside his body.

No one spoke for a long moment.

Finally, Colonel David turned to them all. He looked strong, even with his wounded arm in a sling. The other troops kept staring.

“The general is dead, as is Colonel Nachimya. This leaves me in command of the expeditionary force.”

He met Spencer’s gaze, Todd, Bobby and Rita’s. “We have a lot of details to discuss, you and I.”

Chapter 75

The breeze picked up in the late afternoon on Labor Day, rippling the golden grass along the Altamont Range. The wind-turbines, like metal flowers lining the hilltops, whirled around and around, generating a silent river of power that flowed to the speedway stadium.

At last, the great concert got underway.

Next to Jackson and Daphne Harris, Iris sat alone on her blanket, elbows on her knees. She had worked too hard to make this event a reality, and she didn’t want to miss a note. The fluttery feeling of anticipation in her stomach during the morning had disappeared, replaced by a spreading warmth of amazed relief. She looked around to see the same excitement in the eyes of the other spectators.

Jackson and Daphne Harris held each other close, as they stared at the band on the raised stage.

Iris and many others had forsaken the closer seats in the repaired bleachers to sit on the grass. She felt the lumpy ground beneath her, but it didn’t matter. Sitting on the grass for a rock n’ roll concert seemed perfectly appropriate.

The first band got a laugh and a resounding cheer by opening with their rendition of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty,” which they followed with other rock classics from the seventies, then a few folk songs that everyone knew. The murmur of the audience singing along as if in a trance sent shivers through Iris. The musicians used improvised musical instruments, and the songs didn’t sound much like what Iris remembered—but the sheer delight of music again was enough. The notes vibrated through the speedway’s metal loudspeakers, sounding tinny and muffled. Iris found it absolutely wonderful.

The crowd cheered, nearly loud enough to drown out the sound blasting from the improvised amplifiers the engineers had cobbled together. Iris couldn’t wait to see if they had indeed managed to build a working electric guitar. She knew the energy drain was stupendous, and they’d be lucky to finish the concert. But the wind kept blowing, the windmills kept turning, and the music kept blasting through the air.

The bands were a mishmash of musical talent that had arrived after hearing word of the proposed concert. Many of the musicians had played in bar bands around the Bay Area, working day jobs and performing on weekends. The only “professional” they counted among their number was the lead singer from Visual Purple, a late sixties alternative rock band, who had been stranded in San Jose during a rather unsuccessful attempt at a comeback tour. He had worked with the volunteer musicians, directing the others and getting upset when they spent more time tuning up than they did performing. But the singer’s rough voice wrapped itself around the lyrics of all the old classics, even two country & western hits, but he really began to shine when he managed to work in the few chart-scratching songs Visual Purple had released.

The musicians kept playing for an hour. Iris expected any moment for some fuse to blow, some component to fail, and the concert would be over. But the only pause occurred when the first band took a break to stand down while the second group came onstage.

The next lead singer had a softer, warbly voice—due in part from nervousness, Iris was sure. But the crowd received the music with full enthusiasm, almost growing too introspective with Crosby, Stills and Nash’s post-apocalyptic “Wooden Ships.”

Sitting on her blanket, Iris looked around at the crowd. Thousands and thousands had arrived, most from the local cities, but some had come all the way from the Monterey Peninsula to the south, others from Sacramento to the north. It seemed like a holy pilgrimage to them. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

She wished Todd could have been there to share it. Maybe seeing how the music affected all these people would get through his thick head and make him see what he was missing. Iris felt very isolated as she sat by herself, trying not to notice Jackson and Daphne Harris snuggling next to her….

As darkness fell, everyone grew silent, stunned, as the stadium lights came on, flooding the stage and the abandoned racetrack.

Powered by the windmills, the incandescent lights blazed with a warm white light that dazzled the viewers; the lights flickered, but they kept up. After a breathless pause, a spontaneous wave of people stood up and applauded, cheering. The lights and the music made them feel as if they had come home again.

Up in the tower, the kid Harley ran the lights, standing by the controls like the captain of a spaceship. He had begged Jackson Harris for the job, and Harris had given it to him. Iris had never seen Harley look so proud or so determined to do something right.

When the audience finally fell silent after seeing the electric lights, the lead singer from Visual Purple took the stage again, accompanied by two Livermore engineers who had each crafted an electric guitar. Hooked up to the amplifiers and the speedway loudspeakers, they began to play.

The first chords came out, gentle but with a biting memory that sent a liquid tingle down Iris’s spine. People struggled to their feet again as the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” echoed over the speakers; the crowd sang along but Iris felt a lump in her throat.

Many of the audience members sat back, sucking in a collective audible breath. As the darkness deepened, battered back and defeated by the brilliant stadium lights, the guitarists on stage played “Stairway to Heaven.”

In the bleachers, the crowd swayed and sang along with the lyrics they all knew by heart. On the grass, people got up and held hands, adding their voices in a swell of song that rang across the hills. Behind her, on one of the blankets, Iris heard two men arguing about what the lyrics really meant, but she ignored it—she had been hearing that discussion since her high school days.

To her left and down the slope, she noticed the teenaged couple from Oakland standing next to each other; the young father cradled the new baby in his arms, rocking it back and forth to the chorus. The young mother rubbed fingers across her boyfriend’s shoulder blades.

As the music and a flood of other memories poured into her, Iris felt tears brimming in her dark eyes. She had seen other people in the audience crying during the concert, but never as many as now. Many of their voices broke as they tried to sing along.

With barely a pause, the singer slid into “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles, which kept people standing and stunned, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Finally, continuing with the Beatles, he lightened the mood with the now-absurd song “Drive My Car.”

When the band finished, cheers pummelled them, and the singer turned to his two electric guitarists. “Are you ready to do what you came here for?”

Cranking up the volume, the trio, joined by the drummer and keyboardist, launched into the strangest mixture of music Iris could have imagined, Top 40, new rock, more folk songs, even a pair of Broadway showtunes. Everyone began moving, dancing, swaying, stomping. They seemed to care only that they were hearing music again, an icon of their lost civilization. Iris felt that the entire silent post-petroplague world must have been able to hear them.

The music continued late into the night. Iris was exhausted, but she never wanted it to stop. The people had shouted and chanted and sung until their voices were hoarse; they had clapped until their hands were sore. The magic in the air was intoxicating, and she felt in her heart that the dark ghosts from the previous violent concert at the Altamont must have been exorcised that day.

She saw Doog standing near the stage, his face tilted toward the stars in rapture, his round John Lennon glasses like shining coins in the stadium lights.

Iris looked around to see the hills glittering with a thousand yellow gems, tiny flames raised high. In another concert, the fans would be flicking their lighters, but this time they had brought candles, saving them until the very end in a gesture of their heartfelt appreciation.

“Nice touch, don’t you think?” Daphne Harris said, giving Iris a look that made it apparent she had been behind it.

A thousand points of light, Iris thought.

Civilization might come to an end, but rock and roll would never die.

Chapter 76

In the aftermath of the desert battle, Bayclock’s expedition force broke into a confusion of smaller groups with different agendas.

Many of the soldiers and camp followers gathered to make preparations for the long trip back north to Albuquerque, this time without the general’s martial law. The consensus seemed to be that Mayor Reinski would be able to hold things together even without a reign of terror.

In the following days, others teamed up with some of the Alamogordo ranchers and dispersed, deciding to stay near the solar-power farm in the hope of eventually turning it into a bona fide settlement, an Atlantis out in the sparkling gypsum sands. Given the extra manpower, Spencer Lockwood told them they could lay new power lines and dig wells to the aquifer.

With Rita Fellenstein riding beside him, Bobby Carron fetched back the wagon and the ten precious solar-power satellites he had hidden in an arroyo. Spencer lightly touched the metal shells resting in the wagon bed, blinking back tears, as if he’d found the Holy Grail.

Already, Gilbert Hertoya limped among the remnants of Bayclock’s army, talking to some of the enthusiastic Air Force troops about taking a military contingent back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the rest of the satellites. Some of the soldiers, anxious to atone for their forced attack against the scientists, were willing to go without delay. Armed with functional rifles, the new military escort would provide a much safer expedition than Todd’s crazy quest.

Ten more smallsats remained in Pasadena, and the parts for more were readily available. Someday, there might be enough to complete the orbital ring for uninterrupted electrical power from the antenna farm. Spencer was sure he could convince his old mentor, Dr. Seth Mansfield, to accompany the second mission back to White Sands.

Meanwhile, Todd Severyn felt at a loss, wandering among the blockhouse trailers and reluctantly relaxing. He felt the inner depression of having successfully completed a major goal and discovering that he had no idea what to do next.

Sitting in the noon shade, he watched Heather and Spencer chatting, walking to the aluminum water barrel. Spencer poured a cup for her; she drank most of it and, when he bent over to fill a cup for himself, she playfully trickled the rest down his back. Startled, Spencer dropped his cup and sputtered.

Just watching them together, Todd could see Heather had fallen for Spencer, though he didn’t know if they realized it themselves yet. He remembered when Heather had offered herself to him out by the stream in the hills. But Heather had made the offer out of desperation; and the memory of that one time was irrevocably stained with blood and violence. He and she could not look at each other without being haunted by the ghosts of Casey Jones and Henrietta Soo.

“Hey, Todd!” Gilbert Hertoya came around the corner of the blockhouse. “I want to talk to you about something.”

By the water barrel Heather looked up, suddenly aware that Todd had been watching. She flushed, then turned away to follow Spencer, who knew nothing about what had happened between her and Todd.

He cocked back his cowboy hat and looked up at the short, peppery-haired scientist who stood propped on a wooden crutch. “What do you want, Gilbert?”

Hertoya put one hand on his hip, covering a big leather belt that one of the ranchers had given him. “We’re going to go back to California in a few months to pick up the rest of the satellites, and I wanted you to come along. This time we’ll be armed, with plenty of help. What do you say?”

Todd looked west to the dim line of mountains. He had considered going along—it would be another major effort, an important quest, something to keep him busy. It would extinguish the restless indecision that had been bothering him.

But he slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got to get going.” He sighed, then tried to put his reasons into words that made sense to himself. “I’m going to try saving the world in little ways from now on, not by meeting it head on.”

Hertoya scratched his head. His grizzled face plainly showed his disappointment. “What does that mean?”

Todd tipped back his cowboy hat. “I think I’m going to go back to the Altamont, to stay this time. I made a promise. And it’s the closest thing I have to home.”

Grateful for his help, Spencer gave Todd his pick of the horses for his journey back. Todd pondered the choices from the Alamogordo ranchers and the Air Force troops; finally, somewhat uneasily, he selected Bayclock’s black gelding.

He saddled up, took two of the working rifles and some ammunition, and as many supplies as he could cram into the saddle bags. The ride would be long and arduous, at least a month or so, but he didn’t care how long it took him—just the fact that he was returning made it worthwhile.

Spencer and Heather, Gilbert Hertoya, Juan Romero, Bobby Carron, and Rita Fellenstein watched him as he departed. He waved back at them, saying nothing special to Heather, then turned and guided the gelding westward, once again riding off in the direction of the sunset….

Over the following weeks, he rode across New Mexico and Arizona, stopping again at the ranch of the dead diabetic man. Todd took an extra few hours straightening up the house. He got a good night’s sleep, replenished his supplies, then set off again.

He had nothing to do but think as he sat astride the horse throughout the heat of the day and into the cooling evening.

Part of him wished he had never left Iris, but he also knew that wouldn’t have made him happy. If he had not gone to deliver the smallsats to White Sands, if he had not made some sort of tangible difference, Todd would never have been able to settle down for the rest of his life. Iris had reached a point where she wanted to put down roots, but Todd hadn’t been ready for that; he’d spurned her offer to share her bed. He couldn’t calmly accept the fate of the world without trying to make his mark. And he had succeeded.

But Todd didn’t need to keep seeking bigger dragons to slay, wilder gooses to chase. He’d had enough.

Would Iris have him back? He had left her without saying goodbye. She had no reason even to think he might return, despite the message he had transmitted from JPL. Had she waited for him? She was so intelligent, and so beautiful… someone else had probably claimed Iris the moment his bootprints faded from the dry grass in the Altamont hills.

Then Todd forced a bittersweet grin. Iris Shikozu did not allow herself to be claimed! She might have changed her mind, gone with somebody else because of her own decision—but she would not have been wooed away by a sweet talker. No way!

He passed into California and headed north, following abandoned highways and the line of the mountains. He came upon a former dude ranch in the Sierra Nevada where a tall man named Carlos Bettario had established thriving, comfortable quarters.

Bettario’s group of workers had managed to keep themselves supplied with cut firewood, fresh fish and game, as well as meat from a herd of beef cattle. They powered their equipment and lights with electricity generated by water wheels turning in a hydroelectric plant on a nearby dam. One of Bettario’s men, a grizzled old man named Dick Morgret, showed Todd the wild horses up in the mountains and how they had already begun to barter with people living not too far away.

Todd stayed there for a day, helping to repair a long fence to pay for his room and board, then set off again.

He pondered trying to find someplace where he could send a short-wave signal, to let Iris know he was coming. But he was afraid to. He didn’t want to know if she was with somebody else.

Crossing the Sierra Nevada well before the first snows, Todd rode up the flat Central Valley, living off the generosity of farmers who shared their produce with him. In exchange, he told them all the news he knew, entertaining them with stories about the battle for the solar-power farm, Casey Jones and his train, and crumbling Los Angeles.

As he reached Tracy, moving westward to the grassy Altamont Range, he caught his first glimpse again of the white windmill towers lining the hill crests. He pulled Bayclock’s black horse to a halt and stared up at them with a pang. Anxiety shuddered through him, and he seriously considered turning around and heading back to White Sands, or making the long journey off to his parents’ ranch in Wyoming.

But he couldn’t do that. Todd could never live with himself if he gave up now. He had braved armies and murderers and mobs—he could not let a five-foot three-inch woman make him turn tail!

As he approached the Altamont commune, he saw that it had tripled in size in the months since he had been gone. Most of the windmills whirled in the breeze. Looking around the settlement, Todd didn’t recognize most of the people, but they somehow looked less… weird.

Daphne Harris came out to meet him. Her skin was dark and glistening with perspiration as she worked in the garden; her colorful tie-dye blouse looked as startling as a gunshot. She strode up to him with a grin. “Hey, look what the cat dragged in!”

Todd dismounted and tied up the gelding as other people came to see who had arrived. Jackson Harris appeared, his hands grimy from working on wind-turbine rotors, but he clapped Todd on the back. “We already heard what happened! Over the short-wave, Dr. Lockwood made sure we all knew what a hero you were down at the solar-power farm. Even Tibbett at Sandia got excited telling the story, if you can believe that.”

“We were wondering when you would finally haul your butt back here,” Daphne said.

Todd couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “What about Iris? Is she still in the same old place?”

Daphne and Jackson flashed a knowing glance at each other that made Todd uneasy. “Go see her for yourself, Todd,” Daphne said.

On weak knees—which he told himself was just from too many hours on horseback—Todd clumped up to their old trailer. His cowboy boots crunched on the dry grass. He spotted Ren and Stimpy off to the side, munching on dry grass.

The battered white aluminum siding of the trailer looked the same, with water spots and algae in the crevices; the rusty wheel rims still sat on concrete blocks. The metal screen on the door had been fixed; Todd wondered if Iris had done it herself.

He stared for a moment, terrified, then he finally rapped on the door frame.

Deep inside, Todd knew another man was going to answer. And what could he say to that? It was his own fault he had left. He made up his mind just to shake hands and leave.

But Iris opened the door herself, blinking up at him in the bright late-morning sunlight. Her almond eyes widened. She flashed an instinctive, shocked grin, but then she recovered. She cocked her head and looked wryly up at him. “So you came back.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” He took off his hat, wringing the brim in his big hands. “I’m ready to take you up on that offer—if you still want me. But you’ll have to marry me,” he said doggedly.

She was silent for a long moment, then made a tsking sound. “And you still didn’t remember to bring flowers.”

Iris laughed, then she hugged him.