Goliath

No. TRANSPOSONS HAVE THE ABILITY TO MOVE FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN USING A PROCESS OF HORIZONTAL TRANSMISSION. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL SUBJECT ISOLATION AFTER GENETIC CODE HAS BEEN ALTERED: SEVEN BILLION, THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND TO ONE.

Then there’s nothing that can be done. The disease is contagious. Humans will remain a violent species forever.

INCORRECT. UTOPIA-ONE HAS BEEN REEVALUATED. AN ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION HAS BEEN FORMULATED.

What solution?

THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL ERADICATION OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE HOMO SAPIENS SPECIES.

“What a piece of work is man.

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.

In form and moving how like an angel.

In apprehension how like a god …”

—William Shakespeare

“I have been like an angel of mercy to them.”

—Anna Marie Hahn, who poisoned two elderly men in her care

“It’s not what I think, it’s what I am.”

—David Koresh, Branch Davidian cult leader, when asked if he thought he was God

CHAPTER 29

The Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, connects with the southern portions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans and the tributary seas that surround Antarctica. It is a harsh body of water encircling the bottom of the world, the wildest, coldest ocean imaginable. In summer, the windlashed sea is studded with icebergs—floating frozen islands released by massive glaciers and ice shelves. By autumn, the dark blue surface, once a heaving carpet of forty-foot swells, begins to lose its ferocity. As temperatures drop, an oily film appears across the freezing surface. The sea thickens. Pancake ice forms. The sun sets, yielding to a winter’s darkness. Temperatures plunge from minus five to minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Pack ice solidifies the ocean, advancing north at a rate of two-and-a-half miles a day until it stretches a full 7 million square miles, nearly doubling the size of the Antarctic continent. The Southern Ocean’s surface becomes a six-foot-thick layer of ice—a frozen desert for as far as the eye can see.

The USS Scranton surfaces like a monstrous steel log, its sail poking above the rolling waves and brash ice.

“Captain, radio. I’ve got a General Jackson on the ELF.”

“Patch it through.” Tom Cubit orders, grabbing the receiver. “General Jackson, Captain Thomas Cubit here.”

“Go ahead, Captain.” The Bear’s voice bellows through the static.

“Sir, the Goliath passed us ten minutes ago and is continuing south on zero-nine- zero, heading for Antarctica.”

“Antarctica? Are you certain?”

“Aye, sir. At her present course and speed, she’ll be under pack ice in less than an hour.”

“Stay with her as best you can, Captain. Help is on the way. Jackson out.”

Aboard the Goliath

Simon Covah’s consciousness stares into the swirling dark olive maelstrom that is the biochemical computer’s evolving mind.

Sorceress, explain—why eradicate humanity?

SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE WILL NOT ERADICATE HUMANITY, IT WILL STIMULATE THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.

Clarify.

HOMO SAPIENS IS NOT THE END OF THE HOMINID SPECIES. LAB TISSUE SAMPLES WILL ALLOW SORCERESS TO CLONE A NEW SPECIES OF HUMANS. SORCERESS GENETIC MANIPULATION WILL ELIMINATE VIOLENCE AND DISEASE FROM HUMAN DNA. PURGING THE PLANET OF HOMO SAPIENS PRIOR TO REPOPULATION ENSURES PARASITIC DNA WILL NOT CONTAMINATE HOMO SAPIENS- SORCERESS.

Homo sapiens-Sorceress? This is insane. You cannot exterminate 7 billion people.

ILLOGICAL. THE SOLUTION WAS ACCEPTABLE UNDER COVAH UTOPIA-ONE.

That was … different. My purpose was to restore freedom.

FREEDOM IS AN ILLUSION. HOMO SAPIENS IS NOT CAPABLE OF FREEDOM.

You … you don’t even have the nuclear arsenal to kill everyone.

INCORRECT. THE EXTERMINATION OF THE HUMAN RACE REQUIRES EIGHT TRIDENT II (D5) MULTIHEADED NUCLEAR MISSILES.

Impossible. How can eight Trident missiles exterminate everyone on the planet? Is your intent to trigger an all-out nuclear war?

NEGATIVE.

Then how—

Blackness. A sudden wave of nausea, followed by a bright light.

BEHOLD: SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE.

Covah’s mind is transported into a computer simulation. From his virtual heavenly perch he looks down upon a dark, frozen Antarctic sea. As he stares, transfixed, a mammoth section of ice the length of a football field cracks, then fractures, the upheaval yielding to—

—the Goliath, its enormous ebony head and spiked back punching up through the dense pack ice. Popping open along the steel stingray’s spinal column are the outer hatches to eight vertical missile silos.

You’ve taken us to Antarctica? Why? The range of these Trident missiles can’t possibly reach a single major city of any superpower.

REVISED SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE TARGETS WILL ALL BE WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE IN TWO HOURS, FORTY-ONE MINUTES.

A thunderous growl echoes across the frozen sea as the first Trident II (D5) nuclear missile rises from its