Digital Winter (27 page)

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome, ma'am.” The sergeant looked around the corridor. “I see your generator is out.”

“Yes,” Pickett said. “The wiring is destroyed, and we think something happened to the mechanics.”

“That's possible,” the sergeant said. “A lot of generators, especially those tied to computer systems, received greater damage. If you'll show us to the generator, we'll take a look at it. The corporal specializes in such things.”

“That would be wonderful.”

“It was General Matisse's idea. He figured Dr. Matisse would refuse our invitation. He also knew you could use a little help.”

“The whole city needs help.”

“Yes, sir, but we are limited in what we can do.” The sergeant turned to Roni. “I imagine we'll be here a few hours, ma'am. If you change your mind…”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Roni turned and moved to her office as fast as she could. It wouldn't do for the others to see her cry.

Roni vacillated between fury at herself and calm assurance that she'd made the right decision. The hospital needed her. She didn't come to medicine for the money or prestige; she wanted to help people, to make them whole and well. So her decision was correct. Still, it just felt utterly wrong. She had just turned down the opportunity to ride out the situation with her husband. She didn't know where he was, but she assumed his setting was better than hers. He wouldn't have sent for her otherwise.

Leaning back in her desk chair, she stared at the envelope on the desk. It was plain white, no letterhead printing, inexpensive stock. In the return address spot were a pair of initials: JM. Her name and nothing more appeared in the address area of the envelope. No clues as to Jeremy's location. At least he was alive—something she didn't know until the men in uniform showed up.

She took the envelope in hand again, feeling its texture. The back flap was sealed. The correspondence was meant just for her. A personal note. It took another full minute for her to call up enough courage to open the letter. She removed a letter-sized piece of paper. Like the envelope, it was unremarkable. It had the feel of copier paper, not fine stationary. It was folded in thirds.

An inner voice said,
It's not too late. They're working on the generator. You still have time to change your mind. To see Jeremy. To hold him. To inhale his scent. To know that whatever happens will happen while you two are together
. The voice appealed to her heart and to her mind. The words made perfect sense.

“No.” She spoke to an empty room.

A knock on the door jarred her. She jumped as if her chair had been wired. “Come in.”

August Pickett swung the door open, entered, and closed it behind him. He sat in a chair next to her desk. The chair wasn't much to look at. Few people entered her office. She used the room to fill out forms, read e-mail, and review notes about pending surgeries. She took occasional breaks here between surgeries. The space was functional but had the decor of a limestone cave.

Pickett fixed his gaze on Roni like a father scrutinizing a teenager. “You okay?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“That's good…good.” A brief pause. “Just one more question—are you nuts?”

“Some have thought so.” The question hurt, but she didn't let on.

“I've just joined their ranks. You should go. We can get by without you.”

Roni kept silent.

“Dr. Matisse…Roni, the hospital was here before us and will be here long after we're gone. We can manage without you.”

“You know how to make a girl feel special.”

“You know what I'm saying. Go. Go to your husband. He may need you. I know you need him.”

“I can't, Dr. Pickett. I may not be the keystone that keeps everything going, but we need every pair of hands we can get. We're short of doctors and nurses. Some are leaving to walk home. I can't blame them for that, but I can't be one of them. I've done three surgeries since sunup, and we have a backlog of patients. We have them doubled up in rooms and lining the halls.”

“I'm aware of that, Roni. I'm the hospital administrator.”

“And I'm the head of trauma surgery.”

Picket pulled at his ear. His lips tightened. “What if I relieve you of your position? Will you go then?”

“No. I'll walk to the next hospital and offer my services. I'm pretty sure they'd take me up on it.”

“You are the most stubborn woman I've ever met.” His jaw tightened.

“Thank you.”

“Don't get glib with me, Doctor. I'm trying to help you.”

She softened her tone. Roni respected the hospital administrator. He was a man of science, a fine doctor, and a superior executive. He also had a soft heart. When tragedy struck one of the hospital staff, Pickett was there. He attended every funeral and visited every hospitalized doctor, nurse, and janitor. “And I'm trying to help the people who come to the hospital.”

She set the letter down and turned her chair so they could talk face-to-face. “Look,” she said. “I know it's not fashionable for doctors to take ethical oaths these days. Many med schools have done away with the Hippocratic Oath, but I take such things seriously. We have damaged people here, and more are probably on the way. This is going to get worse before it gets better.”

“You can't know that, Roni.”

“It's a pretty good guess. Look outside at the strange colors and falling stars. I know they're not stars, but you know what I mean. Anyway, something has gone really wrong. This isn't just a failure of the power grid. If it lasts long, we will have a lot of injured people coming in.”

“I can still do surgery.”

“I know. I'm putting you on the rotation list. If the soldiers get the generator running, we can do more than do-or-die surgeries. And we need to prepare for the generator to go out again. Getting fuel for it will become an issue soon.”

“You know that much about generators?”

“No, sir, but I'm almost as smart as I am stubborn.”

He huffed. “That makes you a genius. Let me ask this: Is it the boy? Would you leave if you hadn't bonded to this kid?”

That stopped Roni. She didn't have an answer. Was it Cody and not her ideals keeping her planted in the hospital? “I don't know.”

“You asked if the boy could go with you, didn't you?”

She had. “It was just a question.”

“Questions reveal our thoughts. You want to go. You should go.”

Roni leaned back. “You really want me to leave, knowing you'll have one fewer surgeon?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

Pickett sighed. “Okay, you got me. Of course I want you to stay, but I believe you
should
go. Now get out of here.”

“I'm afraid you're stuck with me.”

Pickett rose and headed for the door. “Stubborn. Bullheaded. Intractable.” He opened the door, stopped, and fired one parting shot. “Thank you, Roni.”

Once again, tears rose. Roni hated being emotional. She seldom wept, but the stress and strain were eroding her emotional foundation. She picked up the letter and turned to read from the light of the window.

Then she wept again.

J
eremy jogged the concrete floors of the underground facility of Mount Weather. It was a slow jog, a thoughtful jog, meant more to jostle the mind and work out problems than to work up a sweat. The pale artificial light gave the place an otherworldly feel. The place would be brighter with Roni. Every place was brighter with her, but she had made the decision he knew she would make.

He worried about her. Here he was safe. Soldiers guarded the facility inside and out. Blast doors were closed. Here he had food, power, warmth, a bed…but no wife. Roni was in the thick of things. She was in a city already known for having one of the highest crime rates in the country, confined to a hospital with glass doors and few security guards, if any. He wanted to protect her, but he couldn't do it living like a mole in a burrow.

Something else had been eating at him. He spent most of his time trying to do two things. First, he worked on defeating the Moriarty worm. It made no sense to get computers up and running just to have them downed the first time they connected to a network. Second, he had been assigned to oversee plans to create a workable communications system between heads of state in different countries. It was proving to be an impossible task. Even if they came up with a plan, they had no way of sharing that with the Russians, Chinese, or any other country. Most communication between countries was done by satellite relay.

One avenue remained open: oceanic communications cables. The first underwater cable had been laid in 1850. Optical fibers were used now, replacing less dependable copper. In 2010, every continent had been connected, including Antarctica. The problem rested with the telecommunication equipment at the ends of the cables. They were knocked out like all the other electronics in the world. Unless the equipment was deep underground or hardened in other ways, it was little more than a dust collector. Jeremy pushed ahead on the assumption that other countries would have the same idea.

He also had another idea, and today he was fleshing it out with each stride. Two miles into the jog, he decided to air the concept. He altered course and stode to a side conference room assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the previous twelve hours, the key players of JCS—most of whom had been key aides to the original JCS—had arrived by various means and immediately set up shop. The president relieved Holt and Jeremy of the temporary JCS standing, making Jeremy a happy man. He had felt out of his depth. General Holt remained part of the group as an advisor.

The door to the conference room was closed. Jeremy took a moment to slow his heart and ease his breathing before giving a hard knock, just as he learned at the Air Force Academy.

“Enter.” The voice was gruff.

Jeremy stepped in. Seated around an oak conference table sat the chairman, the vice chairman, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, all recently appointed to those positions by the president. General Holt sat to one side. A couple of stars didn't make one a big wig with this group.

“What is it, General?” Admiral Archie Radcliffe, the new chairman, was Navy through and through.

“Submarines.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sir, in our meeting with the president this morning you said all ships were disabled and those in transit were adrift.”

“Correct. Nav is out, electronics are out. Only mechanical controls work. The nuclear reactors shut down as designed.”

“But the subs spend almost all their time underwater, right?”

“Yes. They're nuclear powered. They can stay down as long as they want, but we can't contact them.”

“We don't need to, Admiral. They'll try to contact us and won't be able to. What do they do in a case like that?”

“They assume a war and try to assess the global situation.”

“Which they can't do, because there are no communications. They're equipped to monitor communications of other navies, right?”

Radcliffe thought for a moment. “Yes, but that may just drive them deeper, unless…”

“There will be no engine noises from surface ships. No aircraft carriers, warships, cruise ships, or even fishing boats. Would they assume that an attack would render every ship useless?”

“No. If they feared a nuclear exchange, they would sample the air for radioactivity. If they don't find anything…”

“Would they return to base?”

“Possibly. Likely.”

Jeremy smiled for the first time in days. “Then we have a way to send envoys.”

“You expect me to send a boomer or fast attack into a hostile foreign port?”

“Maybe. I'd start with a friendly port. Travel on the surface. Fly a flag. Approach with an open hand. Their vessels are going to be out of commission too—except their subs.”