Jake’s wound, though, was a lot more serious than they first thought. Once they lifted him from the
sapling and got him back to the cave, there seemed to be internal bleeding after all. They gave him morphine to control the pain. He weakened through the night, and no matter how many pressure dressings they put on the entrance and exit wounds, he still managed to soak them fairly quickly. Glenda desperately wanted to stabilize him, and couldn’t believe that after everything they had gone through he would end up like this because of an accident, but he kept on deteriorating.
His condition worsened through the next day. Fernandes characterized the problem as a “slow leak somewhere,” and was worried that if they couldn’t stabilize him soon, they might run into “serious trouble.”
Glenda was frantic to get proper medical attention, and called Gerry on the fone again and again—but the service remained down. She lifted Neil’s special phone and punched in numbers randomly, but the phone kept flashing its message:
Later, a ripe harvest Moon emerged from the east, reminding her of a pumpkin, rising into a spectacularly clear sky. Did the Moon look bigger? Perhaps it did. Were the tides along North Carolina’s Outer Banks larger? Was her husband up there, in Nectaris, staring down at the Earth and admiring his great success? Or was he, too, a casualty?
The night was cool. Morgan came to her a little past midnight and slept beside her. Unexpectedly, so did Melissa, as if accepting Glenda as her new mother.
Around three in the morning, Jake began to cry, and she gave him another morphine shot. He felt clammy, and when Glenda re-dressed the wound, it looked angry and red. She had enough nursing-home experience to know he needed antibiotics. Searching through the scavenged supplies, she found a bottle of Daprox tablets, one of the new broad-spectrum bacteria-fighting drugs, and gave him one.
After that, she slept.
At least until Melissa shook her by the shoulder.
“Aunt Glenda, it’s my dad’s phone… it’s ringing.”
It took her a few moments to rouse herself, but when Glenda heard Neil’s special phone burbling away, she sprang up instantly.
She grabbed the bulky apparatus and pressed the engage button.
“Hello… hello?”
A pause on the other end of the line, then a woman’s voice. “Dr. Neil Thorndike, please.”
She had no choice but to be the bearer of bad news. “I’m afraid Dr. Thorndike has passed away.”
Another pause, then, “And who am I speaking to?”
“I’m Glenda Thorndike. Neil’s sister-in-law.”
A pause. “Will you hold the line, please?”
“Who’s calling?” But she got no answer. “Look, I need help. My son’s been hurt. He needs a doctor.”
But she was on hold.
After thirty seconds a man’s voice came on the line, one she vaguely recognized, but couldn’t immediately place. “Is this Glenda Thorndike?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Gerald Thorndike’s wife?”
“Yes, yes. Who’s this? My son’s been hurt.”
“This is President Bayard.”
She was, of course, floored. “Oh… I… I thought I recognized your voice.”
“Neil’s dead?”
Her shoulders sank as the woe of Neil’s death visited her afresh. “I’m afraid he is. We’ve been under attack here at Marblehill.”
“You’re at Marblehill?” The president sounded as if he knew all about Marblehill.
“Yes… yes. By the Tarsalans.”
By this time, Fernandes and Hanna had roused themselves.
The president said, “We were calling Neil to… to tell him that his brother… that your husband…” But then it sounded as if someone on the other end of the line was talking to the president, and Bayard muffled the mouthpiece with his palm. Her hand tightened around the receiver. What did the president want to tell her about Gerry? That he was dead? That he was never coming home? That he had ridden the asteroid right into the dark side of the Moon with that maniac, Ian Hamilton, and that he was now pulverized to atoms?
Thorndike. The country—in fact, the whole world—owes him a great debt of gratitude.”
“Is he alive?”
The president seemed surprised. “Yes, he’s alive. I was talking to him just five minutes ago.”
Her throat closed up, and her blood must have done a wild thing, because suddenly she grew faint and collapsed to the cave floor. For several seconds she couldn’t speak.
Hanna rushed over. “Mom?”
Through the receiver, Glenda heard Bayard’s voice. “Mrs. Thorndike?”
Glenda looked at Hanna as tears sprang to her eyes. “It’s the president.”
Hanna’s eyes widened. “
“Dad’s okay. The president was talking to him five minutes ago.”
“The president was talking to Dad?” Hanna seemed puzzled by this. Then she got businesslike. “Tell the president he’s got to send a helicopter for Jake right away. He’s getting worse.”
“Mr. President?”
“I’m here, Mrs. Thorndike.”
“My son’s been in an accident. He needs medical attention.”
“I’ll dispatch a medevac helicopter to Marblehill immediately. Anything you and your family need or want, Mrs. Thorndike… We owe you a huge debt.” At this point the president gave her his personal preauthorized number. “And if you want, I can arrange a connection to the Moon through this phone network. The commercial networks are temporarily down. But we’ve got a military one established.
We’ve been talking to the Moon for the last eighteen hours. You stand by, Mrs. Thorndike. We’ll get you talking to your husband in no time.”
And the president was as good as his word.
41
From the time the phytosphere shredded into nothingness, Gerry’s life was never the same.
He came home to a hero’s welcome, which, because of the state of the Earth, and because of all the work that had to be done, was a subdued affair, but gratifying nonetheless. White House staff arranged a small ceremony in the Rose Garden, and the president thanked him personally. Ian Hamilton was honored, and so was Fernandes. Fernandes was there in a dress uniform, and had come with none other than Celia, a pudgy, short dynamo of a woman who looked as if she could survive anything, and who beamed with pride when the president presented her husband with the Air Force Cross.
It was from the president on this occasion that both Gerry and Glenda found out that all those Tarsalan refugees still left on Earth were succumbing to a strange new disease. As they stood in the Rose Garden sipping champagne—the president’s gardeners had been hard at work, coaxing to life dormant samples kept in the vast cold-storage warehouses of 937—the president explained to both Gerry and Glenda that it was the Tarsalanspecific component in Neil’s phytosphere virus that was killing the alien survivors on Earth.
“A micropercentage of the phytosphere consisted of Tarsalan DNA, and Neil’s virus was essentially targeting that DNA. While the phytosphere was able to… uh… circumvent Neil’s virus by utilizing its carapace component… when the phytosphere rained down on Earth the virus escaped, and the Tarsalans didn’t know what hit them. They’re succumbing fairly quickly. We’re trying to save them, but so far we haven’t found a cure. And to tell you the
