Virus: The Day of Resurrection (43 page)

Four years passed. People by this time hardly raised any kind of fuss anymore, not even over the birth of a new child. That unimaginable tragedy and the harsh, long years gradually hardened the hearts of the Antarcticans. The short summer of the fourth year passed and autumn arrived.
Nereid
and
T-232
returned to port with heavy footfalls and no good news.

And then …

PART TWO:
RESURRECTION DAY

THE SECOND DEATH

“And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”

The Book of Revelation 20:14

 1.
Report ST3006

The only things moving in this world were the swiftly flowing, undulating stripes of light and shadow. With a force like that of exhaust plumes being expelled from jet engines, something resembling white smoke flared up above a rough land covered in thick, frozen snow, and then dispersed.

In the midst of a blizzard with wind speeds of thirty meters per second, Yoshizumi was standing with his back toward the wind.

It was, of course, impossible for him to stand facing the wind. He was wearing his typical polar gear, snow goggles, and mask. His feet were planted in the frozen snow, and he leaned back against the wind that blew against him. Grainy snow blew between the outer shell and inner layers of his gear from every unprotected angle, and in no time his fingertips had started to stiffen. Even so, Yoshizumi continued to stand there, paying it no mind. Though appropriately dressed, the cold air seeped into his bones. When he looked up into the dark sky, whirlpools of black grains were blowing past like windswept ashes. Suddenly, his eyes lost focus and the scene became blurry.

“Yoshi!”

Under the roar of the wind, he could hear someone crying out his name. It was the voice of Steve Hathaway, from McMurdo Station’s central computer room. Were the results of the computations completed then?

“Idiot … in this blizzard …” Steve’s hand gripped his shoulder firmly. When he turned around, crackling sounds came from arms frozen stiff as rods.

Yoshizumi didn’t answer.

Steve shouted something at him, but the wind was drowning it out and Yoshizumi couldn’t catch the words. He suddenly felt his shoulders being grabbed and pushed. Steve had gotten behind him and started pushing. When the two of them joined their efforts, they were at last able to resist the wind and make it to the station’s buildings. Just now, Yoshizumi had thought himself no farther than ten or so meters away from them, but at some point he had ended up getting separated from them by more than twenty meters. He had been pushed by the wind.

When they opened the building’s double door and went inside, Yoshizumi took off his shell coat and rubbed his cheeks and his fingertips against each other. Both were numb from the cold, but at last sensation returned.

“What did you think you were doing out there?” Steve said, as he rubbed his own cheeks. “I was afraid you were trying to commit suicide.”

Yoshizumi remained silent as he busily massaged the stiffness out of his fingers. The heat inside the building was melting tears that had frozen in his eyelashes, and now they were running down his cheeks.

“Is standing out in the middle of a blizzard how Japanese express their sadness?” said Steve in a gently teasing tone of voice. “I heard that
Nereid
had stopped in Japan. Are you wishing it hadn’t?”

Not answering, Yoshizumi pulled his coat off and hung it from a steam pipe. Melted snow formed drops that dripped from the pipe.

“How about the computation cards?” Yoshizumi asked as he walked down the corridor leading to the data processing center.

“They’re finished,” said Steve with a nod. “Oh, and after that, they said they want you to report when the final results become available.”

“If you’re talking about the Geology Committee, I’ve submitted interim reports, but—”

“No, not them. The Administrative Committee.”

“The Administrative Committee?” Yoshizumi suddenly stopped in place. “What interest does anyone on AdCom have in changes in the earth’s crust? And changes that are so far north of here.”

“Good question,” Steve said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Pull your results together quickly, though. I don’t know the reason, but the bigwigs struck me as being terribly interested in your report. I got a phone call just a little while ago wanting to know where you’d gone.”

What Steve had told him was true. The data processing center was humming with the sounds of many microcomputers when Yoshizumi went inside, and on top of the small desk he was borrowing were mountains of just-completed computation cards, as well as a large number of memos affixed to them with pins.

Y: AdCom called. Return call ASAP, RE: report ST-3006, which you filed at Geology Committee at General Observation Headquarters
.

Yoshizumi: Some big shots from the Supreme Council were looking for you. They want you to explain your report to the council in person. —Slim
 …

To His Excellency Yoshizumi: Admiral Conway called for you in person!

The last memo read,

Inform the Office of the Administrative Council of the time at which results will be fully processed. You are to attend a special session of the Supreme Council. Be prepared to give detailed explanations relevant to geological report ST-3006, submitted by you to the committee members. —Office of the Administrative Council
.

Yoshizumi tilted his head and pulled the telephone over toward himself. Stuck between the phone and the receiver was a strip torn from a piece of computational paper on which another note was written in a messy scrawl.
Call AdCom Office!!!

Yoshizumi picked up the receiver. The operator transferred him to the office the instant he heard Yoshizumi’s voice.

“Yoshizumi?” said a voice with a dry-sounding Russian accent. “This is Popov. You’ve kept me waiting. Where have you been?”

“To get a breath of air outside,” Yoshizumi said. “What’s going on?”

“I hear you’re busy processing all kinds of data,” Popov said. “When can you have those calculations or whatever finished?”

“The cards are already prepared. I’ll start my analyses now, and those results will be compiled into a general report.”

“You can’t explain it as-is?”

“A specialist could follow it now, but … if I add in two, three supplementary factors, it will become much more easy to understand.”

“In that case, I’d like you to do so. There are some scientists on the Supreme Council, but there are also soldiers and other people outside of your specialty as well, so I’d like you to explain it so it can be well understood.”

“May I ask why?” said Yoshizumi. “What is it about that report?”

“Why? I don’t rightly know,” said Popov. “Anyway, I’m just telling you what they want you to do. How long will it take?”

“You mean the general report?”

“No, you don’t have to go overboard with that. Just tell me when you’ll have what you need to explain the results in broad strokes.”

“Well, let’s see.” Yoshizumi looked down at the cards, where pompous strings of numerals written in magnetic ink were arranged, and thought about it for a moment. “If I can have five hours, that would work.”

“Can you not speed it up any?” said Popov. “At this very moment, VIPs are gathered here from stations all over Antarctica. There are some who’ll go back to their own stations as soon as the blizzard lets up.”

“If I could use two computers,” Yoshizumi said as he glanced around the data processing center. “But right now only one is available.”

“If you had two, how long would it take?”

“Two and a half to three hours.”

“Get me the chief of the data processing center.”

Yoshizumi signaled to the chief of the center, who was just walking past at that moment. He was a former Navy Operations technical officer, tall and slender.

“Oh no you don’t, Popov!” he shouted after listening to the receiver for a moment. “What about the guys who’re doing arithmetic operations now? I can’t tell them to stop in the middle.”

“There’s a guy who’s getting ready to have his data processed,” called Steve from the side.

The chief of the processing center clucked his tongue to inform Steve that his input was not welcome.

“Well then, stop prep on number four.” So saying, the chief of data processing returned the receiver to Yoshizumi. “Number two and number four. Will that be enough?”

“In addition,” said Yoshizumi, the wheels in his head clearly turning, “is the multiple integrator for making weather charts free?”

The chief briefly stood on his tiptoes, stretching to get a look at the large machine in the corner of the room. “Nobody’s using it right now. Can you handle it by yourself?”

“If someone could help me …”

“Steve!” shouted the chief. “Give us a hand over here! The office says to give him all the assistance we can manage.”

It took several minutes for Steve to feed the mountains of stacked cards into the card classifier. It was hard work—those that had been through the first stage of classification were placed in their various groups, and then reclassified according to a different classification scheme. When the third stage of classification was complete, the cards’ data would be recorded onto magnetic tape, following a system that Yoshizumi had written out by hand. Yoshizumi ran two computer programs. One portion of the calculations streaming out of computer number two were fed linearly into computer number four, and the rest were calculated independently, with three circuits set to go into the multiple integrator.

The Phillips-WE-produced integrator was an extremely precise machine made for creating weather charts. Molecular circuits that had been burned in using photochemistry could do the same work as transistors, even though they occupied tens of thousands of times less volume. The US Navy Atmospheric Observation Department had specially ordered them for use in Antarctica, so their power consumption was low, and their stability at low temperatures was first-rate. The part that did most of the mathematical operations was in a room dug deep outside of this data processing center, buried under several dozen meters of ice, connected to the machinery in the data processing center by cable.

Yoshizumi selected from among a stock of negative plates a seldom-used map of the whole North American continent and an enlarged map of Alaska and burned them onto oversized sheets of photosensitive paper. Afterward, he printed out typographs of isobars, isotherms, and wind directions, and set up the three-dimensional scanner.

Steve breathed a relieved sigh as an OK sign was sent to him from the other side of the room. Yoshizumi glanced at the clock. Already, one hour and twenty minutes had elapsed.

It took another half hour to perform general checks on all the settings. When everything was in place, Yoshizumi turned back toward Steve. Steve threw the switch. An extra-wide tape of one and one-third inches’ width started to roll, and the lamps on three computers started blinking wildly. Several minutes later, the scanner began making clicking noises.

2. “We don’t deserve this”
1800 hours

The Supreme Council members gathered in the operations room. Representatives were present from each of the national bases. Also present were Colonel McCloud, Major Zoshchenko, Professor Visconti—head of the Geology Committee—Yoshizumi’s direct supervisor Professor Yamauchi, two American Air Force Officers whom he only knew by face, two NASA employees, and finally two men he had never seen before. One appeared to be an American; the other was most likely Russian.