'Despicable,' hissed de l'Orme.
'What was that?' Cooper said.
De l'Orme smiled. 'The individual planting this contagion is named Shoat. Your son, madam.'
'My son?'
'He's being used to deliver a synthetic plague. And your husband sent him.' The assembly gawked at the archaeologist. Even Thomas was dismayed.
'Absurd,' Cooper blustered.
De l'Orme pointed in the direction of Cooper's son. 'He told me.'
'I've never seen you in my life,' Hamilton replied.
'True as it goes, no more than I've seen you.' De l'Orme grinned. 'But you told me.'
'Lunatic,' Hamilton said under his breath.
'Ach,' chided de l'Orme. 'We've talked about that sharp tongue before. No more humiliating the wife at cocktail parties. And no more fists with her. We agreed. You were to work on governing your anger, yes? Containing your tide.'
The young man drained gray beneath his Aspen tan.
De l'Orme addressed them all. 'Over the years, I've noticed that the birth of a son sometimes tempers a wild young man. It can even mark his return to the faith. So when I heard of the baptism of Hamilton's son, your grandson, Mr Cooper, I had an idea. Sure enough, it seems fatherhood changed our spoiled young sinner. He has thrown himself onto the Rock with that special fervor of a lost man found. For over a year now, Hamilton's kept away from his heroin chic and his expensive call girls and he has cleansed himself weekly.'
'What are you talking about?' Cooper demanded.
'Young Cooper has developed a taste for the holy wafer,' said de l'Orme. 'And you know the rules. No Eucharist before confession.'
Cooper turned to his son with horror. 'You spoke to the Church?' Hamilton looked afflicted. 'I was speaking to God.'
De l'Orme tipped his head with mock acknowledgment.
'But what about the confidence between penitent and confessor?' marveled Vera.
'I left the cloth long ago,' de l'Orme explained. 'But I kept my friendships and personal connections. It was simply a matter of anticipating this venal man's mea culpa, and then installing myself in a small booth on certain occasions. Oh, we've talked for hours, Hamilton and I. I've learned much about the House of Cooper. Much.'
The elder Cooper sat back. He stared out the skybox window into the night, or at his
own image in the glass.
De l'Orme continued. 'The Helios strategy is this: for disease to rage through the interior in one vast hurricane of death. The corporate entity can then occupy a world conveniently sterilized of all its nasty life- forms. Including hadals. That's why Helios is preserving a population up here. Because they're about to kill everything that breathes down below.'
'But why?' Thomas asked.
De l'Orme gave the answer. 'History,' he said. 'Mr Cooper has read his history. Conquest is always the same. It's much easier to occupy an empty paradise.'
Cooper gave a sulfurous glance at his foolish son.
De l'Orme continued. 'Helios obtained the Prion-9 from a laboratory under contract to the Army. Who obtained it for Helios is blatantly obvious. General Sandwell, it was also you who recruited the soldier Dwight Crockett. That's how Montgomery Shoat could be immunized under a scapegoat's name.'
'Monty's been immunized?' his mother said.
'Your son is safe,' said de l'Orme. 'At least from the disease.'
'Who controls the release of the contagion?' Vera asked Cooper. 'You?' Cooper snorted.
'Montgomery Shoat,' guessed Thomas. 'But how? Are the capsules programmed to release automatically? Is there a remote control? A code? How does it happen?'
'You mean how can you stop it?'
'For God's sake, tell them,' Eva said to her husband.
'It can't be stopped,' Cooper said, 'That's the whole truth. Montgomery coded the trigger device himself. He's the only one who knows what the electronic sequence is. It's a mutual safeguard. This way his mission can't be compromised by anyone. Not you,' he said to Thomas, then added bitterly, 'and not an indiscreet son. And we, in our haste, can't trigger the virus before he determines the time is ripe.'
'Then we have to find him,' said Vera. 'Give us your map. Show us where the cylinders have been placed.'
'This?' Cooper slapped at the map. 'It's merely a projection. Only the people on the expedition know where they've been. Even if you could find him, I doubt Montgomery remembers where he placed the capsules along a ten-thousand-mile path.'
'How many are there?'
'Several hundred. We mean to be thorough.'
'And trigger devices?'
'Just the one.'
Thomas studied Cooper's face.
'What is your calendar for genocide? When does Shoat mean to start the plague?'
'I told you. When he decides the time is ripe. Naturally, he'll need the expedition's services for as long as possible. They provide him transportation, food, company, protection. He's not suicidal. He's not a kamikaze. He insisted on being vaccinated. He has a strong sense of survival. And ambition. I'm sure, when the time comes, he won't hesitate to finish the job.'
'Even if it means killing off the expedition. Your people. And every human colonist and miner and soldier down there.'
Cooper did not answer.
'What have you made our son into?' Eva said. Cooper looked at her. 'Your son,' he said.
'Monster,' she whispered back. Just then, Vera said, 'Look.'
She was staring at the video screen. The hadal had reached the piled sewer pipes. He was pulling himself upright before the dark, round openings. The video screen showed him forty feet tall. His bare rib cage, scored with old wounds and ritual
markings; bucked in quick, pumping waves. The creature was vocalizing, that much was evident.
Sandwell went over and rotated the round button on the wall. The audio feed came over the speakers. It sounded like the hooting and huffing of a captured ape.
A face had appeared at the mouth of one sewer pipe. Then other faces surfaced at other openings. Crusted and wet with their own filth, they came out from their cement burrows and fell upon the ground at the hadal's feet. There were only nine or ten of them left.
The hadal's voice changed. He was singing now, or praying. Beseeching or offering. To his own image, of all things. To the video screen. The others, women and their young, began to ululate.
'What's he doing?'
Still singing, the hadal took a child from one of the females and cradled it in his arms. He made a sacramental motion, as if tracing ashes on its head or throat, it was hard to see. Then he set the child aside and took another that was held up to him and repeated his gesture. 'He's cutting their throats,' January realized.
'What!'
'Is that a knife?'
'Glass,' said Foley.
'Where did he get glass?' Cooper roared at the general.
An emaciated female stood before the butcher hadal. She cast her head back and opened her arms wide and it took her killer a minute to find the artery and saw her throat open. A second female stood.
