“If that’s what you want.”
“I want you to record everything. Just make good use of it, if you have to.”
“I will.” I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant—framing EnGeneUity for her death, if it came to that? I didn’t press her for details; I was weary of the politics of martyrdom.
“Karin said you went to the airport and petitioned the mercenaries on my behalf.” She searched my face. “Why?”
“I was returning a favor.”
She laughed softly. “What did I ever do to deserve that?”
“It’s a long story.” And I was no longer sure, myself, whether I’d been trying to repay Adelle Vunibobo, doing it all for
De Groot came in with news of the flight; everything was on schedule, and it was time to leave. Two medics joined us. I stood back, filming with the shoulder camera as Mosala was moved to a trolley, monitor and drug pumps still attached.
In the garage, on the way to the ambulance, I saw half a dozen balloon-tired vehicles being loaded with medical equipment, bandages, and drugs. Maybe they were moving supplies to other sites around the city, in case the hospital was captured. It was heartening to see that not everyone was taking the invasion lightly.
We rode through the city slowly, without the siren wailing. More people were on the streets than I’d ever seen by daylight. Mosala asked De Groot for a notepad, then put it on the mattress beside her, and turned onto her side so she could type. Whatever she was doing seemed to demand intense concentration, but she spoke to me, without looking away from the screen.
“You suggested that I appoint a successor, Andrew. Someone to make sure that the work was finished. Well, I'm arranging that now.”
I couldn’t see the point anymore, but I didn’t argue. A high-resolution scan in Cape Town would yield structures for all the viral proteins almost immediately, and precision drugs to block their actions could be designed and synthesized in a matter of hours. Proving the moderates wrong and then begging them for the cure was no longer any kind of shortcut.
Mosala glanced up at me, and spoke for the camera. “The software is working on ten canonical experiments. A full analysis of all of them, combined, will yield what used to be thought of as the ten parameters of total space —the details of the ten-dimensional geometry which underlies all the particles and forces. In modern terms… those ten experiments reveal, between them, exactly how the symmetry of pre-space is broken, for us. Exactly what it is that everything in this universe has in common.”
“I understand.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Let me finish. What’s running on the supercomputer network, right now, is just brute-force calculations. I wanted the software to leave the honors to me. Double-checking, pulling it all together… writing a paper which set out the results in a way which would make sense to anyone. But those things are trivial. I already know exactly what has to be done with the results, once they’re available. And—” She executed a flurry of keystrokes, scrutinized the effects, then put the notepad aside. “All of it has just been automated. My mother gave me a pre-release Kaspar clonelet last week—and it’ll probably write up the results more smoothly than I ever could. So whether I'm alive, dead, or somewhere in between… by six a.m. on Friday, that paper
She closed her eyes; her breathing was ragged, but she was still smiling. I turned to the monitor; her temperature was 40.9 degrees.
We’d left the city behind; the windows of the ambulance showed nothing but our reflections. The ride was smooth, the engine all but silent. After a while, I thought I could hear the reef-rock itself, exhaling through a distant borehole—but then I realized that it was the whine of the approaching jet.
Mosala had lost consciousness, and no one tried to rouse her. We reached the rendezvous point, and I climbed out quickly to cover the landing—more because of the promise I’d made than out of any real vestige of professionalism. The plane descended vertically, just forty or fifty meters away from us, gray fuselage lit by nothing but moonlight, the VTOL engines blasting a fine caustic dust of limestone out of the matrix of the rock. I wanted to savor this moment of victory—but the sight of the sleek military craft landing in darkness in the middle of nowhere made my heart sink. I imagined it would be the same with the naval evacuation: the outside world was going to tip-toe in, gather up its own people, and leave. The anarchists could take what was coming to them.
The two men who descended first wore officer’s uniforms and side arms, but they might have been doctors. They took the medics aside and spoke in a huddle, their voices lost beneath the hum of the jets; air was still being forced through the stationary engines to keep them cool. Then a slender young man in rumpled civilian clothes emerged, looking haggard and disoriented. It took me a few seconds to recognize him; it was Mosala’s husband, Makompo.
De Groot met him; they embraced silently. I stayed back as she led him to the ambulance. I turned and looked away across the gray-and-silver reef-rock; threads of scattered trace minerals caught the moonlight, shining like the foam on an impossibly tranquil ocean. When I turned back, the soldiers were carrying Mosala, bound to a stretcher, up into the plane. Makompo and De Groot followed. I suddenly felt very tired.
De Groot came down the steps and approached me, shouting, “Are you coming with us? They say there’s plenty of room.”
I stared back at her. What was there to keep me here? My contract with SeeNet was to make a profile of Mosala, not to record the fall of Stateless. The invisible insect had forbidden me to join the flight—but would the mercenaries have any way of knowing, if I did? Stupid question: outdoors, military satellites could just about fingerprint people and lip-read their conversations, all in infrared. But would they shoot down the plane— undermining the whole PR exercise, and inviting retribution—just to punish one obscure journalist? No.
I said, “I wish I could. But there’s someone here I can’t leave behind.”
De Groot nodded, needing no further explanation, and shook my| hand, smiling. “Good luck to both of you, then. I hope we’ll see you in Cape Town, soon.”
“So do I.”
The two medics were silent as we rode back to the hospital. I felt certain that they wanted to talk about the war—but not in front of a foreigner. I scanned through the footage I’d taken with the shoulder camera, not yet trusting the unfamiliar technology, then dispatched it to my console at home.
The city was more crowded than ever, though there were fewer people on their feet now. Most were camping out on the streets, with sleeping bags, folding chairs, portable stoves, and even some small tents. I didn’t know whether to feel encouraged by this, or depressed at the pathetic optimism it implied. Maybe the anarchists were prepared to make the best of it, if the city’s infrastructure was seized. And I’d still seen no evidence of panic, riots, or looting—so maybe Munroe was right, and their education in the origins and dynamics of these revered human cultural activities was enough to empower them with the ability to think through the consequences, and decline to take part.
But in the face of a billion dollars’ worth of military hardware, they were going to need a lot more than stoves, tents, and sociobiology to avoid being slaughtered.
27
I was woken by the shelling. The rumbling sounded distant but the bed was shaking. I dressed in seconds then stood in the middle of the room, paralyzed by indecision. There were no basements here, no bomb shelters, so where was the safest place to be? Down on the ground floor? Or out on the street? I balked at the prospect of exposure, but would four or five storeys over my head offer any real protection, or just a heavier pile of rubble?
