to him.”
“You were attracted to her yourself, weren’t you?”
“Fucking lot of good it did me once she met Mance.”
Danvers walked on for a few steps in silence. He heard the bitterness in Molina’s voice, and now that he had touched on the sore spot he had to open up that wound again.
“Did you love her then?” he asked.
Molina did not answer.
“You still love her, don’t you?”
“That’s none of your damned business, Elliott.”
“I think it is, Victor. You’re my friend, and I want to help you.”
“How the hell can you help me? You want to pray for a miracle, maybe?”
“Prayer has its powers.”
“Bullshit!”
Danvers nodded in the darkness. Victor’s in pain, no doubt of it. My task is to use his pain, channel it into a productive course.
“Why did you come here, then? If you knew that Bracknell was heading this project, didn’t you expect her to show up, sooner or later?”
“I suppose I did, subconsciously. Maybe I thought she wouldn’t, that they were finished. I don’t know!”
“But you came here, to this project. Did you volunteer or did Bracknell ask to come?”
“Mance called me when he got the go-ahead for the project. All excited. Said he needed me to make it work.”
“He needed you?”
“Like an idiot I agreed to take a look at his plans. Next thing I knew I was on a plane to Quito.”
“Why did he need you?”
“I didn’t think Lara would come down here,” Molina went on, ignoring the question. “I figured Mance would be so fucking busy with this crazy scheme of his that he wouldn’t have time for her. Maybe he’d even forgotten her. Damned fool me.”
“But why did he need you?” Danvers insisted.
“To make the buckyball fibers,” Molina snapped, “what the fuck do you think?”
Ignoring Molina’s deliberate crudities, Danvers pressed, “A biologist to build the fibers?”
“A biologist, yeah. Somebody who can engineer viruses to assemble buckyballs for you. You need a damned smart biologist to work down at the nanometer scale.”
Danvers sucked in his breath. “Nanomachines?”
They were under a streetlamp now and Danvers could see the pain and anguish in Molina’s face. For several long moments the biologist struggled for self-control. At last he said calmly, coldly:
“Not nanomachines, Elliott. Viruses. Living creatures. Is this what you’re after? Trying to find out if we’re using nanoteeh so you can turn us in to the authorities?”
“No, Victor, not at all,” Danvers half-lied. “I’m trying to find out what’s troubling you. I want to help you, I truly do.”
“Great. You want to help me? Find some way to get Mance out of the picture. Get him away from Lara. That’s the kind of help I need.”
ATLANTA
The headquarters building of the New Morality was not as large as the capital of a secular government, nor as ornate as a cathedral. But it was, in fact, the seat of a power that stretched across all of the North American continent north of the Rio Grande and extended its influence into Mexico and Central America.
In the days before the greenhouse floods, the New Morality was little more than a fundamentalist Christian sect, sterner than most others, that concentrated its work in the rundown cores of cities such as Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and other urban blights. It did good works: rescuing lost souls, driving drug dealers out of slum neighborhoods, rebuilding decaying houses, making certain that children learned to read and write in the schools it had installed in abandoned storefronts. In return for these good works, the New Morality insisted on iron discipline and obedience. Above all, obedience.
Then the Earth’s climate tumbled over the greenhouse cliff. After half a century of warnings from climatologists that were ignored by temporizing politicians and ridiculed by disbelieving pundits, the global climate abruptly switched from postglacial to the kind of semi-tropical environment that had ruled the Earth in earlier eons. Icecaps melted. Sea levels rose by twenty meters over a few years. Coastal cities everywhere were flooded. The electrical power grid that sustained modern civilization collapsed. Killer storms raged while farmlands eroded into dust. Hundreds of millions of men, women, and children were driven from their homes, their jobs, their lives, all of them hungry, frightened, desperate.
The New Morality rejoiced. “This is the wrath of God that has been called down upon us!” thundered the Reverend Harold Carnaby. “This is our just punishment for generations of sinful licentiousness.”
Governments across the world turned authoritarian, backed by fundamentalist organizations such as the Holy Disciples in Europe and the Flower Dragon in the Far East. Even the fractious Moslems came together under the banner of the Sword of Islam once Israel was obliterated.
After decades of authoritarian rule, however, people all across the Earth were growing restive. The climate had stabilized, although once again scientists were issuing dire warnings, this time of a coming Ice Age. They were ignored once again as the average family moved toward economic well-being and a better life. Prosperity was creeping across the world once more. Church attendance was slipping.
Carnaby, now a self-appointed archbishop, mulled these factors in his mind as he sat in his powered wheelchair and gazed out across the skyline of Atlanta’s high-rise towers.
“We saved this city,” he grumbled.
“Yes, sir,” said one of the aides standing behind him respectfully. “We surely did.”
“We saved the nation when it was sinking into crime and depravity,” Carnaby added. “Now that the people are growing richer, they’re turning away from God. They’re more interested in buying the latest virtual reality games than in saving their souls.”
“Too true,” said the second aide.
Carnaby pivoted his wheelchair to face them. They were standing before his desk, arms at their sides, eyes focused on the archbishop.
“Sir, about the medical report…”
“I’m not interested in saving my mortal body,” Carnaby said, frowning up at them through his dead-white eyebrows.
“But you must, sir! The Movement needs your guidance, your leadership!”
“I’m ready to meet my Maker whenever He calls me.”
The one aide glanced at the other, obviously seeking support. The two of them were as alike as peas in a pod in their dark suits and starched white shirts. Carnaby wondered if they were twins.
“Sir,” said the other one, his voice slightly deeper than his companion’s, “the physicians are unanimous in their diagnosis. You must accept a heart implant. Otherwise …” He left the conclusion unspoken.
“Put a man-made pump into my chest and remove the heart that God gave me? Never!”
“No, sir, that isn’t it at all. It’s merely a booster pump, an auxiliary device to assist your heart. Your natural heart will be untouched,” the deeper-voiced aide coaxed. “It’s really rather minor surgery, sir. They insert it through an artery in the thigh.”
“They won’t open my chest?”
“No, sir,” both aides said in chorus.
Carnaby huffed. He had accepted other medical devices. One day, he’d been told, he would have to get artificial kidneys. Ninety-two years old, he told himself, and I’ve never taken a rejuvenation treatment. Not many my age can say that. God is watching over me.
