Bzrk Apocalypse (22 page)

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MICHAEL GRANT

“It is your decision,” Caligula said. “Lear will insist that it be your

decision.”

Lear will insist
, Plath thought. Never “he” or “she,” always the

careful gender-neutral name.

“And I will make that decision,” Plath said. “But first—”

“I’m afraid that as enjoyable as this is, I must go,” Caligula said.

“Is there a way for me to contact you directly?”

Caligula smiled. It was a surprisingly genuine thing, that smile.

He was no comic-book villain playing a role and posturing for the

camera. He smiled and meant it when he said, “Sadly, no. My orders

come from Lear. My loyalty is to Lear. But Lear will respect your deci-

sion and convey it to me.”

He pushed back from the table and stood.

He spoke very definitely about Lear’s state of mind, it seemed to

Plath. And not for the first time it occurred to her that she might have

been speaking to Lear all along.
Was
Caligula Lear?

Except that there was something in the killer’s eyes when he

spoke of his master. There was affection, it seemed to Plath, affection

and . . . Not fear. No, Caligula did not fear his master. He liked Lear.

He was . . . He was . . .

Proud!

It hit her so suddenly she gulped and blushed and ended up awk-

wardly extending a hand, which Caligula bemusedly refused.

No
, Plath thought,
Caligula is not Lear.
But neither was he a mere employee.

Affection and
pride
.

Unable to sit still in the safe house, Keats had come halfway and

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met her on the sidewalk. With neither of them acknowledging the

other, they made their way to a Starbucks. Standing in line, speaking

the proper Starbucks drink formula, squeezing around a tiny round

table too close to the bathroom—it was all reassuringly normal.

“Did you make it?” she asked him.

He smiled. “I grabbed his sleeve as he was standing up. I’m on his

arm and heading north. In an hour I’ll be seeing what Caligula sees.”

“And
who
he sees,” Plath added.

“So what did you two talk about?”

Just a flicker in Plath’s eyes. “I told him what Stern had said about

the Tulip being impregnable.”

“And Caligula accepted that?”

Plath shrugged. “What else could he do? He agreed to pass it

along to Lear.” She frowned, formed a sentence in her head that went

like this:
There’s something proprietary in the way Caligula speaks

about Lear. There’s a relationship there. Almost father-son, I think.

But she didn’t speak it. Under the table she clenched her hands

into fists. She found it difficult to talk about Lear at all. She could feel

it. She could guess that it was wiring.

What she could not do was decide to rip up that wire. That felt

suicidal. It felt painful, though of course it would not be.

More wiring. She’d been wired to fear ripping up the wire.

Games within games. Ever-deeper circles of hell.

Plath’s phone lit up. She recognized the number. She covered one

ear against the noise of steaming milk.

“Mr. Stern?”

To her surprise it was a woman’s voice. “No. He’s dead.”

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MICHAEL GRANT

Plath froze. Then, “What?” It sounded childlike to her, her own

voice. She sounded wounded.

“This is Camilla Strange. I’m . . . I mean, I was . . . Mr. Stern’s

second-in-command. I am now holed up at McLure Labs with reports

of four of our people dead.”

Plath found she was breathing hard. Audibly. “How did you know

to call me?”

Was it her imagination or were there an unusual number of police

sirens. Too many even for New York?

Was it her imagination, or were unflappable New Yorkers

hunched a bit too tight around their lattes? Were their eyes less big-

city averted and more alert-scared?

“Mr. Stern left a file to be opened in the event of his suspicious

death.”

“And was it suspicious? His death?”

Camilla Strange laughed humorlessly. “He seems to have been .

. . eaten. Consumed. His driver brought him here, dead, with maybe

a third or a half of his body gone. Muscles, viscera, organs: all eaten.

Like millions of ants had been working on him. That’s how he looks.

Like roadkill.”

“Nanobots,” Plath said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Camilla Strange said. “That was our thought, too.

A mini gray-goo scenario. They must have been programmed in

advance to replicate only so many generations. And then . . . I’m sorry,

someone is . . . Hold on, please.”

The phone muted. Then Camilla was back. “I just sent you a piece

of video.”

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Plath switched apps, opened the video, and turned so that Keats

could see. It showed a sedan screeching to a halt at McLure Labs. A

man whose entire head and shoulders seemed to be weeping blood

staggered from the car, walked three steps, and fell.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God, what is that?” The voice on the

video was saying.

The picture zoomed in, and for just two seconds before focus

went hazy Plath could see the dead man liquefying before her eyes.

The video ended. Blessedly no advertising had yet been attached.

“Ma’am? Ms. McLure?”

“Yes.”

“You saw?”

“I saw.”

“What do we—”

“Stay hidden. Stay out of it. This is out of your hands now.”

Plath, shaken, hung up the phone. She excused herself to the

bathroom. She vomited into the toilet bowl, fished in her bag for a

mint, found three loose Tic Tacs.

War was on. If there had been any uncertainty, it was gone now.

If she had entertained doubts about whose side she was on, the Arm-

strong Twins had made it easy.

Stern had been like an uncle. The one living remnant of her

father’s company. The only man she knew who’d been Grey McLure’s

friend.

Stern, murdered by the Twins. Her brother, murdered by the

Twins. Her father . . .

She saw it again in her mind, the towers falling, and mingling

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MICHAEL GRANT

with that imagery was the vivid personal memory of watching her

father’s jet arcing crazily out of the sky, plunging toward the stadium,

the fear, the panic, the flash and heat and noise of the explosion.

If she was not in this to avenge her father and brother, why was

she in it at all?

Was it all wiring now, thrusting these memories to the fore?

Maybe, yes. But that didn’t make it wrong, any of it.

Stern must have been in agony. . . . Grey McLure must have died

in terror, not at his own extinction but at the knowledge that his son

would die with him, and possibly his daughter as well.

If wire was what it took to give her strength, then okay. Okay.

She wiped her mouth, washed her hands, chewed the Tic Tacs,

and thumbed a text.

184

(ARTIFACT)

Plath to Lear:
Yes.

185

18

EIGHTEEN

The Antarctic weather came down like the wrath of God. Sixty-knot

winds, subzero temperatures. Nothing was flying out of Forward

Green.

It was on her third day there that Imelda Suarez decided to take

a chance and see what was in the big hangar out to the south. She

waited until the base boss—his actual title was Chief Executive For-

ward Green—had his birthday party.

Suarez had no difficulty starting up a Sno-Cat and driving off

toward the south. No one saw her leave, which was not surprising in

the whiteout conditions. The problem would come if for some reason

she got lost or the Cat broke down. Then she would have to call for

help and all hell could break loose.

In her forty-eight hours at the base Suarez had felt that this was

a very different sort of place, very different from the usual Antarctic

facility—even very different from Cathexis Base. The ice was a lonely

and often boring place, so people tended to be friendly. People liked

“new meat.”

But not at Forward Green. Here she had been treated politely,

properly, but not welcomed. No one had plopped down next to her at

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table and struck up a conversation. This despite the fact that she was

an attractive woman and the gender ratio on the ice was about seven

to one.

Conversations in the dining hall tended to become quieter when

she was seen. Everyone was trying hard not to seem secretive, but the

end result was that they just seemed more so.

Maybe it was just that Tanner had warned her to expect that

something strange was going on. Maybe she was seeing what she

expected to see. But that said, it was weird. It was a
very weird vibe
, as her hippie mother would have said.

The Sno-Cat is a small, tracked vehicle, like a tiny two-person

tank with big windows and no cannon. The heater was blowing

noisily, rattling from something stuck in the vent, and the wind-

shield wipers were ratcheting back and forth even more noisily, but

visibility was still poor. It would be all too easy to drive right past

the hangar and just keep going until the gas was used up. And then

she’d quite likely freeze to death. The ice was unforgiving of reck-

lessness.

But after an anxious half hour she saw the outlines of the build-

ing in between swipes of the wipers. She kept going—no point in

being coy, she had to look like she had every reason to be here.

Before stepping out of the Sno-Cat she zipped her parka all the

way up, flipped her fur-lined hood forward, and tugged at the draw-

strings before pulling on her huge gloves. Her dark goggles were

already in place.

Suarez climbed out of the warm cab and was almost knocked

over by the wind. But she was a sailor, after all, and not unaccustomed

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MICHAEL GRANT

to pitching decks and bad weather, so she avoided disgracing herself.

She twisted the door handle, and, sure enough, it was unlocked.

The wind—which was a battering physical force outside—became

just a howling noise.

The hangar was lit only minimally, but it was still bright enough

to see. And what she saw were four vehicles like the ones in the video

Tanner had shown her. Three were partially dismantled, with parts

strewn across wheeled steel tables.

The fourth vehicle appeared to be intact. She walked to it, torn

between fascination and caution.

It was about thirty-five feet long from tip to tail, and almost

as wide. It was a sort of elongated oval, a hovercraft judging by the

skirts, but otherwise like no hovercraft she’d ever seen outside of a

Hollywood movie.

It had a tail, almost like something you’d see on a fighter jet, but

there was no horizontal plane, just a shark’s fin bearing missile pods

on each side. A quick count indicated six missiles total, three in each

pod. She had no familiarity with the type of ordnance, but it was

undoubtedly real and undoubtedly missiles and undoubtedly mili-

tary in its purpose—and that fact shocked her.

Antarctica was the last place on Earth without nationalities or

armies.

Before and beneath the tail was a hard plastic canopy—again like

something from a fighter jet. There appeared to be two jet turbines

mounted on either side, flush with the top, squat beside the canopy.

The pilot would be able to see ahead and to either side by looking over

the engine casings.

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It was painted a marshmallow white with only a few blue accent

notes here and there, plus the obligatory safety notices near the

intakes and exhausts from the two jet turbine engines.

Suarez walked boldly to the hovercraft and peeked inside the

canopy. The controls were more modern versions of those on her own

LCAC.

“What do you think?”

The voice made her jump. It was male, high-pitched, curious not

hostile. But when she turned to see its source, she was face-to-face

with an assault rifle. Behind the rifle was a middle-aged man in white

overalls. He was balding, had a red face and glasses. And he was not,

she judged, used to pointing weapons at people.

“It looks fast,” she said, trying for a nonchalant tone.

“It is,” the man said with evident pride. “She’ll do one sixty knots

with no wind and on smooth ice.”

“One sixty? And if it hits a bump?”

“Do I need to point this at you?”

She shrugged. “I’m unarmed. And I’m not up to anything. I came

out here because I can’t find a three-sixteenth socket wrench to save

my life. I’m Imelda Suarez. I drive an LCAC. They brought me in to

work on . . . well, to be honest, I think they brought me in on a bullshit

excuse.”

The man smiled expectantly. “And why would they bring you

here on a pretext?”

“So that I would see this.” She indicated the hovercraft. “So that

they
could see how I reacted. Because they need hovercraft pilots and

we aren’t exactly thick on the ground. There aren’t a hundred left on

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