“I told him we need to figure out some way to change the target cells in humans. To modify their DNA. An antidote of some sort, administered continuously and to every human on earth. Most likely another NAN.”
“What did he say?” Rudy asked.
“Nothing, yet.”
Rudy sighed. “It is strange how one thing leads to another . . . Years ago, my thesis adviser recommended that I stay in Mexico and pursue an academic career. But instead, I chose a postdoctoral at Rockefeller in New York. Afterward, I wanted to stay in the U.S. . . .”
“Why?”
“A girl, of course . . . another thing that did not go as planned. She broke our engagement, but only after I had accepted a job.”
“You came to Fort Detrick.”
“Working for Detrick offered me a fast track to U.S. citizenship.”
“But why did you stay after that?”
“At Detrick, there was no need to worry about funding—I had all I could use. All the lab space, all the equipment . . . I was promoted to team leader. And I worked on so many interesting projects.” Rudy looked down, examining his gloved hands. “I must admit that it was frustrating at times. So many investigations, so many reports that languished on the desks of people like Colonel Blevins, only to be shelved. I took heart that most of them were directed at defense against bioterrorism—a worthy goal, I believed.”
“But you had to know that the IC-NAN project had nothing to do with defense . . .”
“When I was put in charge of the project that created this . . . I thought that it was just like all the others—just a feasibility study. A chance to work with something outside of my expertise. I felt sure that it would be put aside. In fact, I was counting on that.” Rudy’s eyes pleaded from behind the plastic of his mask. “James, I did not know that they would actually deploy it. My only solace now is that, with your help, we can find a way to stop it.”
Once more, James felt the sweat breaking out at his temples, a new wave of claustrophobia. “Do you think we can . . . stop it?”
“I cannot be sure of much. But each day I am more sure of one thing. How do you say it? The time . . . it is ticking.”
James closed his eyes. He’d been trying to think about this thing as just another project, just another scientific hurdle to be surmounted—because thinking about it in any other way only clouded his mind. It was all he could do not to succumb to panic. But he didn’t have time for that. He would find a way to protect humans from this horrible threat. He had to.
5
JUNE 2060
KAI COULD FEEL the morning heat spilling through Rosie’s hatch cover, flooding his cocoon. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, his fingers touched the small bump on his forehead, the rough place where the chip was embedded just under the skin.
“Your chip is special,” Rosie had told him. “It is our bond.” It was how they knew one another, she said. It was how she spoke to him—except during his speech lessons, she never used her audible voice.
He reached out to touch the smooth surface of the hatch cover in front of him. Where his fingers made contact, the transparent surface became opaque. An image appeared—a group of men with sun-weathered skin, colorful woven robes draped over their stooped shoulders.
Rosie had been teaching him a lesson about people who lived in the desert—a desert much like his, but on the other side of the earth and very long ago. The men in the image, Rosie said, were the keepers of the scrolls, ancient writings like those unearthed from caves over a hundred years before the Epidemic. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to one of the men. Perched atop the man’s forehead, a small box was supported by a thin leather strap.
Rosie’s familiar soft buzz and click filled his mind as she accessed the required information. “These were called tefillin. Each contained four tiny scrolls, on which were written passages taken from a book called the Torah.” Beneath her console, her servo motors whirred gently. “This book described a set of beliefs that they lived by.”
“You teach me through my tefillin,” Kai said, pointing to his own dusty forehead, the chip encased there. “Are you my Torah?”
Rosie paused. She was thinking, compiling her answer as she often did when he asked a difficult question. “No,” she said. “The information that I provide is based purely on fact. It’s important to separate beliefs from facts.”
Withdrawing his hand from the screen, Kai watched the image disappear. He peered through the hatch cover, once more transparent. Outside, the familiar rock formations surrounding their encampment stood firm, their massive red fingers pointing skyward. They were strong, like Rosie, undaunted by wind and heat.
He had names for all of them—the Red Horse, the Man with a Big Nose, the Gorilla, and the Father, who balanced his plump, round rock baby forever on his giant knees. Rosie had taught him about how humans used to live. She was his Mother. He supposed, then, that the rocks were his family—the guardians who, along with Rosie, had kept watch over him since the day of his birth.
He pressed the latch to his left, the sun’s heat assailing him as the hatch door swung open. He scrambled down over Rosie’s treads to reach the ground, coming face-to-face with his own reflection in the pocked mirror of her metallic surface. His skin was tanned and freckled, streaked with dust. A cloud of reddish-brown hair framed his head, and blue eyes twinkled from beneath heavy lashes. Somewhere, Rosie said, there were other children. Others like him, but different. Rosie couldn’t tell him how many there were now. But in the beginning, there had been fifty. When the time was right, they would find them.
As Kai picked his way over the cracked earth to the top of a low rise, beads of sweat escaped the barrier of his brow. His mouth felt full of sand. He formed his palms into circles, makeshift binoculars through which to survey the lonely landscape. In the ethereal shimmer of distant mirages, he strained to see the faraway places he’d learned about on Rosie’s screen. He could see the high mountains whose peaks were dusted with snow each winter. But they were black now, devoid of their blankets.
“Can we go soon?” he signaled his Mother. “I think I’m ready . . .”
“If conditions allow, we may go today.”
“Today?”
He’d sensed that the day was coming. On their last trip to the supply depot, Rosie had pushed aside the giant boulders, pried open the heavy metal doors with her powerful arms, and removed the final case of provisions, the last of the emergency water bottles. In the evenings, when the hot sun dipped behind the rocks and their shadows grew long, she’d begun training him to find his own food. In a battered tin cup, he harvested dried grass seeds. He toasted them over a small fire, then mixed them with water, adding shreds of mouse or lizard meat to make a thin stew. He chewed on the tender flower stalks of the banana yucca, making sure to spare some for the sweet fruit he could harvest come fall. The people who had lived here long ago had subsisted on food like this.