The Demon Plagues (22 page)

“What the hell is going on?” asked Muzik.
“Anyone know? Where’s Colonel Nguyen?”

“I heard one of the Aussies say he had asked
to stay,” answered Repeth.

“What the bloody hell does that mean, asked
to stay? Why?” Bonnagh’s face was confused and angry. “And does
anyone know what has happened? They wouldn’t tell me much. They
just grilled me about the op. I told them everything I knew.
They’re supposed to be our allies.”

Major Muzik said, “I heard that our missiles
nuked the Big Three – surface targets – Washington DC, Moscow,
Beijing, a bunch of other places, most of the important military
bases. Almost two hundred warheads. Then the Big Three fired a
couple dozen more at each other before they called it off. They’re
crippled. The Big Three are crippled.”

“We killed millions.” Repeth’s face fell in
stunned horror. “I killed milions. I turned the key. Eighteen times
I turned the key.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. Alkina plugged
that module in. She changed the targeting. You and the Colonel were
just doing what you thought was right.” Muzik shook her shoulders.
“It wasn’t your fault.”

She slapped his hands away, eyes blazing.
“Don’t touch me, you stupid prick. If you hadn’t screwed her they
might still be alive, and maybe none of this would have happened.
Leave me alone. Just leave me the hell alone.”

Bonnagh touched Muzik’s arm, motioning with
his eyes. The major backed off and the two men withdrew to their
chosen seats, each alone with his thoughts as they winged their way
over Antarctica toward Buenos Aires.

***

The man in the rumpled suit stared at Colonel
Nguyen from across the deeply-inlaid, polished wooden conference
table. “Cigarette?” He slid a silver case across the table with a
matching lighter resting on top.

Nguyen reached out with his hands to pick up
the items, his eyes never leaving the other man’s. Taking out one
of the tobacco-filled tubes, he snapped the flame into existence.
Smoke curled from his mouth and up his nose in a French inhale
before blowing forth from his thin lips. “Thank you. I have been
waiting for you.”

“Yes, I suspect you have.” The man’s accent
made the last word sound like “hayv.” Nguyen supposed he would have
to get used to it.

“You’re one of the hidden masters. You have
me at a disadvantage.”

“In more ways than one. You can call me
Fenster. I’m here to negotiate terms.”

“Of course. Let’s not play games. Your
interrogators got nothing from me, and they never will, unless I
wish to talk. The three others of my team gave you a fairly
coherent version of what happened, but it’s not the whole story.
Miss Alkina gave you another version, but it’s not the whole story
either. If you want the missing pieces – and my services – I want
in. All the way.”

“You want to join Miss Alkina in serving
us?”

Spooky laughed, his deadly amused eyes
exemplifying his nickname. “So you can stick a deadman charge in my
chest? Not likely. I want to be one of you.”

“You just went rogue. You just killed a
hundred million people.”

“No, and yes. I’m not rogue; rogue implies a
loss of control. I’m defecting to the only country on Earth that
will appreciate my talents and let me be who I am. The only country
that can do what is necessary to push us toward the future.”

Fenster took a drag from his own cigarette,
blowing the smoke upward as he pursed his lips, staring at the
burning tip contemplatively. “How do we know we can we trust
you?”

“Oh, please, spare me. You can’t know. We’ve
resurrected the status quo ante; things are the way they were
before, when we had to trust each other because we decided to, not
because the Eden Plague told us to. Human nature has not changed,
not fundamentally. Plenty of narcissists have been successful, even
honorable men. At least we’re consistent. The difference between
you and me, and other, pardon the epithet, ‘Psychos’, is that we’re
wise enough to look past our own immediate gratification and think
long-term. With the Eden Plague carriers to front the government
and us to wield the real power, we have the perfect setup – as long
as we remain sub rosa. Like the mythical vampires of popular
fiction, we retain power only as long as we wield it carefully.
Deftly.”

Fenster’s eyes narrowed. “Cheeky Pommy
bastard, aren’t you?”

“I’m not British. I just like the accent. I
lived for so long with a damaged brain that when the Plague
repaired mine I decided to learn how to speak the Queen’s English
properly.” His vowels suddenly flattened, became clipped. “If you
prefer Midwest American, I can do that too. But why are we wasting
time talking about accents? I know you can’t make this decision
alone. Go talk to your superiors.”

Nguyen turned to the one-way glass covering
one wall of the room. “You people back there, I need to speak to
the masters. The ones who can actually decide. Come back with your
terms, and let’s have a civilized conversation. I’m done talking to
someone without the power to say yes.” He took a last pull from the
cigarette and stubbed the butt out in the flimsy plastic ashtray,
then turned around. He stayed that way as Fenster walked out.

***

Alkina didn’t look up as Nguyen entered her
cell. “So they let you live. And you’re a General.” Her tone made
it rhetorical, if it wasn’t already self-evident by Nguyen’s very
presence. Her posture showed defeat.

“Of course. They need my knowledge, they can
use my skills. And soon I will be an indispensable and permanent
part of the power structure.”

“What about me? Do you kill me now? Or just
cast me aside like a used condom?”

“That’s quite a metaphor for a woman who
chose Muzik over me.”

Alkina looked up, distressed. “That was
different. That was the job.” She was confused by her own emotions,
for she’d never before cared what someone thought of her, except as
a simple assessment of her own advantage. Now she found herself
desperate to please this man.

“I know. I know, Ann, forgive me for saying
such a cruel thing. And I didn’t come here to kill you, or to
gloat.” He paused, searching her eyes. “All I need to know is: do
you want to join me?”

“Join you?” Hope flared in her, a lifting of
the despair and the belief that she was expendable. “But they all
think I nuked…everything.”

“Yes. But they don’t care. What’s done is
done. All your records will be wiped. You will be given to me. Be
my right hand. I will train you better than they have. I will keep
you by my side, and take you places you never could have gone on
your own. I will teach you how to be human…of a sort. Of
our
sort. But you must surrender to me completely. Body and mind and
soul.”

She drew a deep breath. Happiness suffused
her body, a dark joy that wanted to give herself up to him, to let
him make the decisions, to pass over the horrible weight of
responsibility along with the reflected shame, guilt and contempt
she saw in the eyes of the normals and the Edens. Only he would
accept her for what she was: remorseless, but not unfeeling;
ruthless, but not passionless.

“I will. I shall. I do. I’m yours.”

“You are now mine. And because of that, I am
yours. I alone love you. I alone will be true to you. I alone am
worthy of your loyalty.” He took his finger off the button of the
deadman device in his pocket, carefully snapping the cover closed.
The code to her implant had been one of his conditions, a little
bit of insurance for the future. It could take ten years, or a
hundred, but there might come a time when Ann Alkina decided she no
longer needed Nguyen Pham Tran. He would be prepared. But for now,
for a while, with her he could let his guard down, and just
be…human.

He leaned over to drink from her lips.

Timepoint circa minus 4400: ~2400 BC

All but one of the two hundred remaining
children of the Watchers were monsters.

The asteroid had eluded the Meme
installation’s aging anti-collision system; that race was much more
adept at microbiology than macro-engineering. Impact between rock
and comet base was enough to damage the critical Level Two and
Three data processors and to cause uncontrolled re-Blending of the
Meme aboard.

Trauma triggered the emergency reproductive
state of the amoeba-like beings. Trillions of free nuclei and
cellular components rearranged themselves into the maximum number
of viable larva. Where once there were three large, ancient,
experienced Meme controlling the Watcher base from their
comfortable vats, now there were over two thousand infants roaming
the installation, with just enough genetic knowledge to
survive.

They might as well have been animals.

Fortunately the comet that formed the basis
of the Watcher installation supplied the massive amounts of water
and minerals the juveniles needed to fill out their polymorphous
bodies; these young acquired nutrients and proteins by consuming
one another, until there remained only two hundred of the toughest,
smartest Meme.

The fittest survived.

The strongest of all had taken the Meme word
for ‘Dictator’ as its rightful name. To human ears, ‘Semyaza’. That
one snarled, driving back the others gathered in the one remaining
great space. It spoke to them in the language programmed into their
genetic code by their Meme ancestors, reinforced by the Level One
data processors remaining.

“There is nothing for us here but mutual
consumption. The Blue World teems with life. We must descend and
Blend with the life-forms there!”

Hasatan, whose name meant ‘Opponent,’ for
once agreed with its rival. “I agree with Semyaza. Better each to
reign on the Blue World below than serve here in the heavens.”

“How shall this be done? The sentients and we
are not easily compatible,” asked one who would later use the name
‘Raphael’. It had chosen as its name the word for ‘Wisdom,’ having
inherited an extra portion of its ancestors’ understanding.
“Because they have only been infected with the Level One Phage,
they retain their intelligence and free will. If we Blend, we will
cease to be Meme. We would be some kind of hybrid.”

Semyaza increased his communication volume.
“We will become more than Meme! We shall rearrange our
bioinformation to conform to and improve that of the sentients. The
Blending will create a superior being. We shall possess males of
them, and in that form take females unto ourselves for pleasure as
they do. We shall make descendants that will dominate the Blue
World. Instead of being trapped on this tiny ball we shall have
principalities. We shall be the powers of the Blue World, the
rulers.”

“Yes,” agreed Hasatan with adolescent greed.
“They shall serve us and do our will. We shall have endless
pleasure!”

Semyaza made a gesture of settlement. “Then
let us take the shuttle down to the Blue World on the next close
approach, and be free of this prison.”

Thus it was that all two hundred of the
monstrously ignorant and venal progeny of the Watchers crowded
themselves into their only functioning spacecraft and descended
upon the Blue World, there to do as Semyaza foretold, to possess
human bodies, to teach the sentients of the makings of things, and
to spawn giants upon the earth.

All but one.

Raphael remained aboard the shuttle as its
siblings scattered with no thought except dominance and
propagation; as soon as the last one disembarked, it activated the
ship’s drive, casually burning over half of them as it rose on
fusion flames to return to the Watcher base. Eliminating the
competition was a fundamental part of Meme adolescence.

Raphael, now alone in peace and safety,
worked diligently to recover data from damaged informatic stores,
set the organic machinery of the base back in order, and studied
the Blue World.

At first a flower of progress blossomed on
the planet below; the Meme hybrids taught their new slaves the
basics of technologies – mining and extracting metals, the making
of tools, the weaving of fine clothing, and many other things. But
soon they fell to warring among themselves, each Blend leading its
– now his – own city-state, breeding genetically-engineered giant
warriors who dominated their enemies by terror, rape and death.

Over many cycles Raphael pieced together some
of the remaining knowledge and the mission of its Meme parents and
repaired as much of the machinery as it could. It was one of these
mechanisms that showed it the doom of the Blue World already on its
way.

Of its siblings it cared nothing, but Raphael
had developed a certain fascination – perhaps even an affection –
for the sentients below as it studied them. Thus it descended once
more in the shuttle to the Blue World. It located a wealthy and
untainted human of great resolve, and persuaded him to lead his
family to build a giant floating wooden life-capsule, an ark. More
than a hundred planetary revolutions passed for the capsule to be
built, provisioned, and to collect a vast number of large land
species to be saved from the coming apocalypse. The smaller ones
could fend for themselves; there was always something to adapt to
an environmental niche.

On the appointed day, while the Blended
Watchers and their gigantic descendants consumed intoxicants,
rutted like beasts, and ridiculed those in the life-capsule, the
asteroid designated 1010011010 smashed to Earth in the ocean that
would be known as the South Pacific, throwing hundreds of trillions
of tons of water and debris into the upper atmosphere and creating
a tsunami over a thousand feet high.

Moving at more than the speed of sound, the
wave drowned all landgoing life on the planet larger than a
dragonfly. It expended its waning energies a score of hours and
twelve thousand surface miles away, somewhere in the Middle East.
Even so, it rained for forty days and forty nights, covering the
whole Earth with water. Months passed before the eight humans on
the life-capsule were able to land and release their precious
cargo, to begin the process of the restoration of the Blue
World.