Systemic Shock

were importantly Chinese.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Quantrill quickly discovered, on awakening Sunday morning, that Texas A & M was more than a football team in east Texas. It was a research center and a military training university as well, with far-flung research stations. He was slower to realize that he was becoming an honorary Texan as the story of his Oak Ridge exploit flashed across the sprawling high-tech campus.

He was scanned, anesthetized, treated, and fitted with a padded thigh crutch before breakfast. Over steak and eggs, in talk with his rescuers, he realized that an entire regimental combat team had been en route to recover the when, driven by his own internal demon, Quantrill appeared under the craft. Yes, he'd started the grass fire; no one asked why. Yes, he'd been scared witless when he had nearly slid from the cargo platform. He saw no point in wondering aloud why he had felt such an insulating calm before and after that moment. Quantrill had never studied differential response to stress, never wondered why a few people in every generation are predisposed by their glands to become gunfighters, stuntpeople, circus aerialists.

Then David Chartrand, the civilian captain of the Norway, sprang the good news and the bad news. The captain's own son had vanished with the Air Force Academy, and this youngster refreshed older, better memories for the reflective Chartrand. 'I could name millionaires who want this thing, Ted: it's a delta pass. Anywhere a delta goes in this country, you can go,' he grinned, handing Quantrill a coded plastic card. 'Not just the Norway but the Kukon, the Mobile, and the rest. Just don't show it around too much; you could get mugged for it. And when you've finished your eggs, I want to introduce you to the country.'

The egg- laden fork stopped in midair. 'To the what?'

Now the bad news: 'The whole country, son. Some people from ABC and CBS want you on a newscast.'

There was absolutely no point in his chewing the rest of those eggs, Quantrill decided, because there was no possible way he could swallow them. He had been videotaped once at school; had found it harrowing. Almost, he wished himself back on that swaying cargo platform.

Still, he went with Chartrand and the tall, gum-chewing cargomaster, Bernie Grey. Emerging from the pneumatic pod that had shushed them cross-campus underground, Quantrill tried to smile back at a dozen people who scurried about with lights, cameras, coffee. His smile faded as he recognized ABC's Juliet Bixby and Hal Kraft of CBS. Both were familiar media faces, and Quantrill thought his breakfast insecure.

Bernie Grey, slender-muscled and long-haired, volunteered for the first setup interview. It was Bernie who had first mistaken Quantrill for an enemy. Bemie struck out with the fair Juliet, but seemed unabashed. Chartrand, unfailingly polite, minimized his role and heaped credit on Quantrill. The youngster in the yellow flight suit, a romantic figure with his limp and his external thigh crutch gleaming in the light, provided that rarity of the moment: an attractive man-child, a diffident and inspirational model. Bixby and Kraft did not share Quantrill's worry; if the kid broke down or had an erection on camera, well, that's what editing was for. Ted Quantrill was now public property; he just hadn't been completely processed yet.

Thanks to sensitive cameras, Quantrill was spared the ferocious heat of earlier media victims. He sweated all the same, perched on a stool as he had been told, the injured leg stretched out as if by necessity. The last part of the interview was transcribed as follows.

Q: How did you know the Norway had been hijacked, Ted?

A: Rumor around Oak Ridge.

Q: You're not from Tennessee, though.

A: From Raleigh. In North Carolina, ma'am. (SUDDENLY ANIMATED) I'd sure like to know if my parents are okay. Dad is Captain Hurley Quantrill and mother's Janine Quantrill.

Q: We can check on it. Who brought you to Oak Ridge?

A: Ab — about a dozen people. Rides. You know…

Q: Captain Chartrand says you had a scout uniform on beneath your coverall when you came aboard.

A: (NOD)

Q: Tell us about it in your own words, Ted.

A: I, uh, had a scout uniform on beneath my coverall. Uh, when I came aboard.

Q: Um-hmm. Now tell us what it's like to rescue a delta.

A: Felt pretty good, sir.

Q: There are some fellows your age who would give anything to serve our country as you've done, Ted. What do you have to say to them?

A: (SHRUG)

Q: I'll put it another way. Ted Quantrill, what have you learned from your Oak Ridge experience?

A: Kill the sonofabitch. Uh, I'm sorry. I have to go.

Kraft and Bixby waved cheerful goodbyes as Quantrill limped away to find friends in yellow flight suits. By the time the tape was massaged into news, fifteen-year-old Ted Quantrill would be edited into a model scout. Like all media professionals, the interviewers shared an easy cynicism about the moments that would remain non- news.

Juliet Bixby studied her rival over her coffee cup. 'That last question of yours was a heller, Kraft.'

'News to me. I couldn't open him up at all.'

'Oh, but you did.' Shuddering: “Once when I was about five, I got separated from my parents at the San Diego zoo. I sat down in a quiet place, just waiting for them to catch up, and I kept having this funny feeling. And then I looked over my shoulder. Right on the other side of the bars from me was the biggest, cold-heartedest- lookjng Bengal tiger I have ever seen. Just looking down at me, like you'd study a chocolate drop. Well, that was how the kid looked, right at the last. No anger or remorse, Kraft — just cold competence.'

'Christ, how you dramatize! Anyhow, he'll be only tonight's hero, Bix. Tomorrow he'll be forgotten.'

'Maybe,' said the famous Bixby contralto, 'but not by me. You'll never catch me stepping between that little fucker and anything he really wants.'

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The full extent of the logistics problem faced by the US in late August of 1996 was only dimly visible to any fifteen-year-old — and scarcely less so to the Quartermaster General. During the next week, while the Norway's gondola grew small projectile ports like pimples, Quantrill learned to pay less attention to holovision and more to what was happening around him. Holo charts, for instance, showed only a series of paranthrax hotspots east of the Alleghenies. Late summer harvests were supposedly a success with decontamination procedures and, admittedly, a new standard of acceptable contaminants. Yet Quantrill knew that the National Guard was now prohibiting any traffic across the Mississippi River because, after convincing medics that he no longer needed a thigh crutch, he served on the Norway's overnight flight which supplied intrusion detectors to troops on the west bank. And the short-range missile pods under the Norway's gondola suggested a breakdown of law and order. He inferred more about the scope of immunology when Bemie Grey told him what the Norway would deliver halfway across Texas to an A & M —'Aggie' — research station in Sonora.

Quantrill was learning to polymer-bond glass rope to a shackle fitting at the time. 'Twelve thousand hamsters?' He squinted at Bemie's long horse-face, suspecting a joke.

'Plus life-support stuff, plus breedin' cages. And if you don't lay that shackle down, pard, the exotherm's gonna zap your fingers.'

Quantrill did as he was told, saw a faint swirl of vapor from the aperture where the glass rope fitted,