people on ahead, like cattle.
“Everybody knows there’s an enclave at Alma. So they come in search of sanctuary, wave after wave. We don’t know how many there are out there, in the hills around Alma. Some think it might be as many as a million. We just can’t cater for them all, not for one percent of that number. And we can’t run away, like when we evacuated Denver. All we can do is keep them at bay, until the job at Mission Control is done. To do that we’ve had to figure out how to use every resource we have left against the eye-dee flow. And the most significant of those resources is the eye-dees themselves.”
Mel glanced at Don’s face, expressionless behind the mask of his scar, the sunglasses, the layer of stubble over his dirty face. Mel thought he saw nothing left of the boy he had met in the Academy. “We’re going to win, aren’t we?”
“If you want the truth, I ain’t sure,” Don said bleakly. He glanced at the cloudy sky. “This stunt of timing the warp launch to coincide with the lunar eclipse-I don’t know whose dumb idea that was. My guess is that when the moon goes red all the crazies out here will start howling, even if they haven’t heard any specific rumors about the Ark. Well, we only need to hold the line for twenty-four more hours. So do you think it’s worth it-all that you’ve seen today-worth it if it gives the Ark the best chance of getting away to the stars?”
“Holle and Kelly are aboard. Relying on us. Yes, it’s worth it.”
“OK, kid. I think you’re ready to see the rest of it.”
“What ‘rest’?”
For answer, Don led him back through the shantytown to the security gate, and the patient line of applicants.
54
With Don, Mel shadowed an old couple, maybe late sixties, as they were interviewed by a sympathetic woman at the processing terminal.
They were called Phyllis and Joe Couperstein. They had children, and they believed there was a grandchild, but they’d heard nothing from their kids for years. They both had bloodied, swollen feet. They had started walking in Omaha, years ago. They weren’t sure, in fact, where they were now; they had just followed the crowds from one scrap of high ground to the next, working wherever they could, at whatever they could. The woman had once been a civil engineer, the man a chef, highly qualified, but there wasn’t much call for either now. Even up to a couple of years ago they had been able to work in the fields, but now arthritis, and a mild heart attack for the man, had put paid to that.
The Alma official was sympathetic. Alma had all the cooks and engineers it needed. Besides, she said gently, their skills were most likely out of date. But they might be reconsidered if they’d like to wait a while- meaning days, a few weeks-in a holding area?
Don murmured, “Which is just another corner of the shantytown. They never get called back, but they wait patiently.”
The Coupersteins didn’t even seem disappointed. But they were very tired, just from standing in this line for hours. They didn’t ask for anything specific. They lingered a moment before the smiling woman.
The official seemed to relent. She handed them a slip of paper. They looked as if they were in need of respite, she said. A break, somewhere to sit, a place to bathe and clean your clothes and get a good meal, a quiet place to sleep for a night. The city had the resources to offer that, on a strictly discretionary basis. How did that sound?
The Coupersteins looked at the ticket, and at each other, and at the long line behind them. They smiled. It sounded wonderful.
“That’s our cue,” Don murmured. He stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Couperstein, was it? Come this way.” Don escorted them through the security barrier. “Yes, you need to give me the paper.” He handed it to Mel. It was grubby, well fingered, much used. “No, you don’t need to show me any more ID… This way. Come on, Mel.”
Mel passed the paper slip back to the woman at the desk, who glanced at him cursorily, and stuffed the slip in a drawer. She was already busy with the next applicant.
Mel hurried after Don and the old couple. They were heading up the lane of barbed wire that led to the Respite Center. From this vantage the building’s ugly concrete bulk and that industrial plant were hidden, and the doorway looked attractive, welcoming, with some kind of plastic veneer over the door, and the sign and the flowers. Even the path under their feet had gravel laid down, Mel saw. It was like walking in a park, the Coupersteins said to each other, and they walked slowly as they approached the doorway, hand in hand, as if relishing these few seconds.
At the door Don entered a security code into a keypad and submitted to a retinal exam. Heavy locks opened with a clatter, and the door swung back. Mel glimpsed a corridor within, softly lit. Music played, a wash of some gentle, almost melody-free ambient sound. Over that there was a distant murmur of voices-soft, as if sleepy. He was expecting some staff member to come forward, a nurse in a crisp white uniform, but nobody came.
Don, apologetically, ordered Mel to search the couple before they went any further. He found no weapons, not so much as a kitchen knife.
“Mr. and Mrs. Couperstein, you can just go ahead,” Don said. “You’ll find a bathroom, a coffee machine, a reading room with books.. Others are waiting there. Somebody will be with you shortly.”
Mr. Couperstein hesitated for one second, a complex expression crossing his dirty, gnarled face, and he shook the dust from his roughly cut gray hair. But Mrs. Couperstein sighed. This would be fine. This was just like a hotel, like the one they stayed in once at Aspen where they had gone skiing, and now you’d scarcely believe they had ever been young enough to do that. She kicked off her battered shoes and stepped through the door. Her feet left blood on the floor. The door slid softly shut behind them.
Don stepped back, and checked his watch. “It’s only half an hour to the next cleanup. We’ll stick around here. Come on.” He led the way back to the processing barrier.
In the next thirty minutes two more offers were made of a stay in the Respite Center. One was to a man who pushed an elderly lady in an impossibly battered wheelchair; he must have been fifty, she eighty, and suffering from dementia. A foul stink of ordure came from beneath her dirty blanket. The other went to a young father with a child aged about three, a collection of skin and bones with a head that lolled, too heavy for her body. The mother had run away that morning, taking their packs and the last of their food with her. Yes, the man longed for a break. Mel and Don escorted the son with his mother, the young father and his daughter, to the Respite Center, which they entered with as much relief as the Coupersteins had shown.
Don checked his watch again. “One p.m. Almost time.”
There was a whistle from a Homeland officer. Soldiers and cops came trotting up, and Don led Mel to join a rough perimeter around the center. An engineer approached, and showed his credentials to the senior officer. He checked the door to the center was sealed, and worked a handheld.
“Have your weapon ready,” Don murmured to Mel, hefting his own AK-47.
The engineer pressed one last key on his handheld, and stood back. Mel heard a whir of pumps, a hiss of some gas. And he smelled a strange, elusive smell, something like almonds.
The sun was breaking through the cloud. None of this seemed real. Mel said, “I guess the gas pipelines run underground.”
“Be a bit obvious if they didn’t.”
“Why the perimeter?”
“Sometimes the respite patients change their minds at the last minute. Try to break out.”
“And we shoot them.”
“If we don’t contain them we get a hell of a security mess, and a health hazard.” Don glanced at Mel. “I know what you’re thinking. They taught us about the Nazis in the Academy, didn’t they? We aren’t Nazis, Mel. Hang on to that. This is an American government doing all it can for its people. We’ve got nothing else left to offer them.”
“They think they’re going in there for a break. Not to die-”
“No. They know, on some level, even if they wouldn’t admit it to themselves. It’s OK. I know how this feels.
