through ventilation shafts to apartments on every floor. Once the phages were inside, air currents wafted them through every room, settling unseen on those sleeping, drowsing in a drugged stupor, or mindlessly watching television.
Most of the phages stayed inert, conserving their limited power, silently spreading through the blood and tissues of those they had infected while waiting the go signal that would unleash them. Like the Stage II nanodevices used at the Teller Institute, however, roughly one out of every hundred thousand was a control phage — a larger silicon sphere packed with a wide array of sophisticated biochemical sensors. Their power packs went active immediately. They scoured through their host bodies, seeking any trace of one of dozens of precoded conditions, illnesses, allergies, and syndromes. The first positive reading by any single sensor triggered an immediate burst of the messenger molecules that would send the smaller killer phages into a frenzy of destruction.
Several miles south and west of La Courneuve, the six-man surveillance team occupied the upper floor and attic of an old gray stone building in the heart of the Marais District of Paris. Microwave and radio antennae dotted the steep, sloping tiled roof above them — gathering every scrap of data beamed their way by the sensors and cameras set up around the nanophage target area. From there the data flowed down into banks of networked computers. There it would be stored and evaluated to eventu-ally be relayed by coded signal and satellite to the distant Center. To conserve bandwidth and preserve operational security, only the most crucial information was passed on in real time.
The white-haired man named Linden stared over the shoulder of one of his men, watching the data pour into his machines. Linden was careful to avoid looking too closely at a TV monitor showing images captured from the streets surrounding the Cite des Quatre Milk. Let the scientists observe their own handiwork, he thought grimly. He had his own tasks to perform. Instead, he glanced at another screen, this one showing pictures relayed from the two UAVs. They had completed their orbits over La Courneuve and they were now flying east, roughly paralleling the course of the Canal de l'Ourcq.
He keyed the radio mike attached to his headset, reporting to Nones at the launch site near Meaux. “Field Experiment Three is proceeding. Data collection is nominal. Your drones are on their programmed course and speed. ETA is roughly twenty minutes.”
“Is there any sign of detection?” the third of the Horatii asked calmly.
Linden glanced at Vitor Abrantes. The young Portuguese was charged witli monitoring all police, fire, ambulance, and air traffic control frequencies. Computers set to scan for certain key words aided him in this task. “Anything?” Linden asked.
The young man shook his head. “Nothing yet. The Parisian emergency operators have received several calls from the target area, but nothing they have so far been able to understand.”
Linden nodded. He and his team had received a cursory briefing on the effects of the Stage III nanophages — enough to know that the soft tissues of the mouth and tongue were among the first to dissolve. He clicked his mike again. “You are clear so far,” he told Nones. “The authorities are still asleep.”
Brown-eyed, brown-haired, still slender, and pretty, Nouria Besseghir gripped the hand of her five-year-old daughter, Tasa, tightly, urging the little girl across the street at a rapid pace. Her daughter, she knew, was both curious and easily distracted. Left to her own devices, Tasa was perfectly capable of standing still right in the middle of the road — caught up in the study of an interesting pattern in the cracked and potholed cement or of some intriguing bit of graffiti on a nearby building. True, there were not many cars on the streets of La Courneuve at this hour, but few drivers here paid much attention to traffic laws or to pedestrian safety. In this lawless neighborhood, part of what the French called the Zone, hit-and-runs were a fairly common occurrence, certainly far more common than any police investigation of such “accidents.”
Almost as important to Nouria was her desire to keep moving — to avoid drawing unwanted attention from any of the predatory men who loitered along these dingy streets or squatted in the shadowed alleys. Six months ago, her husband had returned to his native Algeria on what he had told her was “family business.” And now he was dead, killed in a clash between the Algerian security forces and the Islamic rebels who periodically challenged that nation's authoritarian government. Word of his death had taken weeks to reach her, and she still did not know which of the two warring factions had murdered him.
That made Nouria Besseghir a widow — a widow whose French birth entitled her to a modest welfare allowance from the French government. In the eyes of the thieves, pimps, and rogues who essentially ran the affairs of the Cite des Quatre Milk, that small weekly stipend also made her a valuable commodity. Any one of them would be only too glad to offer her his dubious “protection”—at least in return for the chance to plunder her body and her money.
Her lip curled in disgust at the thought. Allah only knew that her dead husband, Hakkim, had been no great prize himself, but even so she would rather die than be fondled and then robbed by the human parasites she saw lurking all around her. And so Nouria walked quickly whenever and wherever she went outside her tiny apartment, and she always kept her gaze fixed firmly on the ground before her. Both she and her daughter also wore the hijab — the loose-fitting clothing, including head scarf, that marked them as Muslim females of decency and propriety.
“Mama, look!” Tasa exclaimed suddenly, pointing up into the blue sky above them. The little girl's voice was excited and shrill and piercing. “A big bird! Look at that big bird flying up there! It's enormous. Is it a condor? Or perhaps a roc? Like one from the stories? Oh, how Papa would have loved to have seen it!”
Annoyed, Nouria shushed her daughter sternly. The very last thing they needed to be right now was conspicuous. Still walking fast, she pulled on Tasa's wrist, tugging her along the littered pavement. It was too late.
A drunk with a matted beard and acne-pitted skin reeled out from a nearby alley, blocking their path. Nouria gagged as a choking stench of sour liquor and unwashed flesh rolled over her. After her first appalled look at this shambling wreck, she lowered her gaze and tried to walk around the man.
He staggered closer, forcing her to step back. The drunk, with his eyes bulging, coughed and spat and then moaned — uttering a low, guttural groan that was more dog-like than human.
Disgusted, Nouria grimaced and stepped back farther, pulling Tasa with her. Part of her ached that her beautiful little girl was being exposed to so much filth and degradation and depravity. Why, this cochon was so intoxicated that he could not even speak! She averted her eyes from the sight, wondering what she should do to get away from this stinking brute. Should she scoop Tasa up in her arms and make a dash back across the street? Or would that only draw even more unwanted attention?
'Mama!“ her daughter murmured. ”Something awful is happening to him. See? He's bleeding all over!'
Nouria looked up and saw with horror that Tasa was right. The drunk had collapsed in front of her, falling onto his hands and knees. Blood trickled onto the pavement, dripping from his mouth and from the terrible wounds spreading along the length of his arms and legs. Strips of flesh peeled away from his face and dropped to the ground, already turning into a reddish, translucent slime. He moaned again, quivering wildly as spasms of agony wracked his disintegrating body.
Stifling her own terrified screams, Nouria backed away from the dying man, putting her hand over her daughter's eyes to shield her from the gruesome sight. Hearing more anguished howls behind her, she whirled round. Many of the other men, women, and children who had also been out along the street were on their knees or curled up in agony-screaming, groaning, and clawing at themselves in a mindless, twitching frenzy. Dozens were already affected. And even as she watched, more and more fell prey to the invisible horror stalking their neighborhood.
For several seemingly endless seconds Nouria only stared at the hellish scene around her in mounting dread, scarcely able to comprehend the magnitude of the slaughter happening right before her panicked eyes. Then she gathered Tasa in her arms and ran, scrambling toward the nearest doorway in a frantic effort to find shelter.
But it was already far too late.
Nouria Besseghir felt the first burning waves of pain rippling outward from her heaving lungs, spreading with every breath through the rest of her body. Shrieking aloud in fear, she stumbled and fell — trying vainly to cushion her daughter against the impact with arms that were already disintegrating, shredding apart as skin and muscle tissue dissolved, pulling away from her bones.
More knives of fire stabbed at her eyes. Her vision blurred, dimmed, and then vanished. With the last traces of nerves remaining in what was left of her once-pretty face she felt something wet and soft sliding out of her eye
