End Time (40 page)

Stunned, he accidentally bumped the cafeteria tray with a clumsy foot. The coffee spilled through the grated deck; the doughnuts bounced down the steep gangway stairs. Lattimore snatched the silly tray to his chest with one last doughnut and looked wildly around: portholes, battened waterproof doors, fresh white marine paint. Countless tractor-trailer containers—bright blue, red, and yellow—marched off in long rows along the ship's deck, fitted together like a giant set of blocks, and vanished into the fog.

No point getting lost down there; might as well find the bridge. Lattimore clutched the cafeteria tray to his chest as if it were some kind of lifeline back to South Dakota and mounted the steep open stairs. He spotted a fire extinguisher that read
ANJA.
Ah … the Norgie container ship spotted from the satellite. So that solved the mystery. Déjà vu all over again. Ship. No Ship. Adrift at sea. Great. Thanks, Jasper.

On the bridge the officers and crew stood their watches, alive but unconscious. The captain, a ruddy Viking, sat in his chair breathing softly, binoculars around his neck and chin to his breast. Lattimore touched his neck. No waking him. Dead to the world.

The XO lay slumped by the back bulkhead, the accordion wire of an intercom mike against his lips. A clean-shaven fellow, intelligent crow's feet starting around his eyes. He'd blacked out while listening or talking, a look of puzzled concern on his face.

The galley showed a similar scene: two men slumped over a steel table, knocked-over coffee cups. A huge pot of beef stew simmered away on the range. The open door to a crewman's quarters showed a man on his bunk facedown, unconscious as the rest.

Lattimore stumbled over a crewman spraddled on a stairway to the lower decks, obviously fleeing from below. Unlike the men on the bridge, this man wasn't Scandinavian, more like Southeast Asian. He sprawled against the metal stairs, a thread of blood leaking off his lip from where he had fallen. Not dead, just conked out cold as a mackerel.

Ignoring a pang of doubt, Lattimore picked his way around the fallen seaman and clattered down the stairs to the hold. He passed another sailor on the way grasping a two-way radio, his face twisted in fear. He'd been trying to make a report to the bridge. The expression of vague concern on the XO's face on the intercom crossed Lattimore's mind. They'd called from below in panic. Then everyone had dropped at once. So what was so damn frightening down in the ship's cargo?

A heat bloom his satellite picked up from low orbit
, remember?
Maybe that's what his Takers wanted him to see. What his Takers
wanted
. His
Takers
. Like the ones who took him to Antarctica? Easy there, Roger Ramjet.…

The final watertight door to the cavernous hold stood open. A series of catwalks stretched a hundred yards out into the belly of the ship.

An enticing ball of light hovered over one area in particular. His newest Taker.

The incandescent light pulsed through the primary colors, breaking apart then melding once more, re-forming, then breaking apart again, like a dance. Sure, that'd be enough to send a Filipino seaman running for his life. Lattimore felt weak in the knees, and he pressed the ridiculous cafeteria tray to his chest.

What did he know about container ships? You didn't stack the heavy loads on deck where they could swamp the vessel. You stowed the heavy stuff down below along the keel. So whatever lay there under the glowing lights had serious weight. Serious mass.

He clanked along one of the inner catwalks, and his Takers receded. Almost dead center of the ship, the floating globes disappeared. Two stories below, Lattimore could see light reflecting off the metal side of one container. He scrambled down a flight of steps, then two.… Then sneaked around a couple of corners to find the proper metal box; he found it, but no incandescent light.

No Takers. Those guys had vanished.

And no real markings on the shipping box either: just a plain container with the designation
L1/5
written in five-foot-high letters. The lettering was of the same metal as the container, almost like etched glass, rising from the metal itself. But not rough or scratchy; seamless, so if you didn't look at it exactly the right way it would vanish back into the stainless steel. Then if you looked at it from an angle, the
L1/5
designation morphed seamlessly into the simpler
L2
. Look at it one way you got
L1/5
; look at it at a slightly different slant—you got
L2.

L1/5 to L2

Shift your perspective again.…

L2 to L1/5

Whatever the hell that meant.

But one small side door on the tractor-trailer box stood open, the latches thrown back. He cautiously peeked around the open edge. Nothing stranger could have greeted him.

Through the open door Lattimore stared at a bit of heaven on earth.

Inside the metal container was a meticulously constructed life-size diorama, perfect in every detail—a Japanese tea garden right out of feudal Kyoto.

Silvery rice-paper windows let in faint moonlight. Overhead, a tile roof kept off a gentle rain that seemed to fall from nowhere; the peaceful sound of raindrops filled the air. Under the tile roof, clean wooden planks surrounded a stone fire pit. An iron teakettle steamed softly on a metal tripod. The tea house floor overhung a koi pond, where great golden Nishikigoi carp gazed lazily up at him with wide accepting eyes. A stone path led to a little bridge, which jumped a chuckling waterfall spilling over mossy rocks.

Even as Lattimore watched, the light in the windows changed, as a veiled moon set beyond distant hills. Beyond the rice-paper walls, night came to an end and dawn broke, filling the tea house with gentle heavenly light.

A miniature red maple danced under the raindrops; a bed of water lilies grew beside bulrushes in a bit of quiet backwater. A cherry tree in spring bloom displayed its fragile pale blossoms.… Two butterflies danced about the spears of elephant grass. A praying mantis sat upon a rock in the stream and rubbed his forelegs together, then looked at him with dubious eyes. A bluebird sat in a pine tree and pecked at a pinecone. The flicker of movement by the tea hearth caught Lattimore's eye. A wise old cricket stroked his wings like a violin, the trill of welcome, almost like a temple bell—as if to say,
Why hello, come in!

The rain stopped. The light broadened, and a rainbow appeared across the pond.

So much life in such a precious space: a place of peace, of meditation.

A place of Zen.

Lattimore could have gone inside the container, shut the door, and never come out. So easy to do, so easy … a name for this place came into his mind.
Tea House of the Hidden Moon.
He put one foot through the container door—

*   *   *

A blast of cold hit him like a wall; cold autumn rain splattered off his throat and chest. Lattimore held the cafeteria tray over his head to keep the rain from splashing into his face, but it pelted down, soaking him to the skin. He wiped the cold wet from his eyes and tried to make out where he was. Clearly, the Takers had taken him somewhere else.

He stood on the high bank of a roadway stretching off into sheets of falling water. A state road sign read
GAKONA, AK, POPULATION 215.
A wiseass had scrawled the words,
Or Thereabouts
underneath.

A bolt of sunlight broke through a thick bank of clouds; a broad plain stretched for a dozen green miles. Off in the distance a mountain range stood like peaks in a Tolkien landscape. The plain's only disfigurement was a radio antenna installation, the array a perfectly square forest of metal prongs about a half mile on each side, hundreds of metal spikes reaching to the sky. In half a heartbeat Lattimore knew exactly what he was looking at.

The antenna array of United States Navy/United States Air Force's jointly run High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.

HAARP.

An antenna array in Gakona, Alaska, which zapped all kinds of radio waves and charged particles into the planet's uppermost atmosphere: low frequency, high frequency, ultra-high frequency—whatever you needed into the ionosphere.

Weather research.

Others called it other names: weather warfare, a force multiplier.

But Lattimore had to admit Alaska
was
having perfect weather for this time of year—September: heavy rain, mid 50s, with a chance of sun.

He looked closer at the square of aerials. Not what you normally thought of—no big dishes pointed at the sky. Instead, a legion of metal stalks, cross-spars, and slender tubular props like those old-fashioned 1950s TV antennae. The bristling tubes looked vaguely like Van Gogh's drawing,
Avenue of Poplars
.

And of course, you couldn't see the radio waves emanating from the prongs; but you could feel them in your bones. When they broadcast ultra-low frequency, it seeped under your skin like the subwoofer off a massive concert speaker. Lattimore ground his teeth and felt the sudden urge to hide.

Suddenly the rainy wind off the howling tundra tugged the cafeteria tray from his hands. The tray flew across a wild bit of field, disappearing over the bank of a fast-moving stream. Idiotically, Lattimore chased the flat pan down, hoofing it through lashing grass. The cafeteria tray had come to rest by the edge of the stream under icy water. His feet sank into the sandy bank, and cold water filled his oxfords; sandy mud sucked one shoe off his foot, dragging half a sock with it. Lattimore stumbled back, flopping to the ground with a
woof,
clutching the stupid tray.

*   *   *

Walter Nash, head of building security, looked down through the open doors of the elevator; behind Nash people in the reception area rose in alarm. Apparently seeing the boss on the floor of an elevator, trousers sopped and missing one shoe, scared them. Well, that was natural. The security man kneeled, his shaven face close enough to see every follicle.

Walter Nash gently pried the cafeteria tray from his boss's hands and helped Lattimore to his feet. “Are you all right, Clem? Would you like me to call the EMTs? Take you up to your floor?”

Lattimore shook off the cobwebs. The motherly faces of those two clerks from accounting approached with clucking tongues and busy skirts. Lattimore slipped off his remaining shoe and tugged off his wet socks. “No, Walter, no thank you. I think I've been taken enough already. Let's go downstairs to the subbasement.”

He looked at the bare cafeteria tray and shook his head sadly. “Damn, I wanted that last doughnut.”

Thirty seconds later, Lattimore and Security Chief Nash stood in the subbasement hallway in front of the steel-reinforced
Star Wars
blast door. The boss swiped a key card, scanned his retina, pressed the palm-print reader, and announced “Lattimore” three times into an audio receiver.

The door ignored him.

He even typed in his override code onto a keypad—all to no avail. The steel, soundproof, bomb-proof door had no intention of letting him into the server farm. Clem pushed his face to the Plexiglas viewing slit, peering inside to the power towers. His CTO was hard at work before a bank of screens. But every so often Jasper shivered, then clapped his arms around his torso as if trying to get warm. Was he cold?

A thousand self-reproaches went through Lattimore's mind. How in hell could he have left this nutkin alone? With horrible trepidation, he knocked on the Plexiglas window. Suddenly feeling like—

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

Jasper didn't look up. Lattimore rapped the plastic glass, harder this time.

C'mon Jasper, look up.

From his place at the panel of screens, Jasper finally gazed in the direction of the blast door. For a moment he didn't seem to recognize his boss's stern face in the viewing slit. Jasper shivered violently. The gears clicked into place, and he suddenly rose, lumbering toward the locked entry. Outside in the hall the two men heard the welcome click of the lock and breathed a sigh of relief as the door automatically opened. Lattimore shot a glance of caution at security man Nash. “Easy,” he whispered. “Let's go easy.”

Jasper was already back at his workstation, hugging himself, teeth chattering. The man was
that
cold.
That freezing.
“At first I thought it might be contagious,” Jasper stammered. “But in this case, my infection—
mine
—was malaria, so I'm not spreading anything. I'm just sick as hell. And it came on very fast.”

What on earth was the man babbling about?

Jasper saw their confusion, stressing: “Malaria. I think I have malaria.”

He glanced at a half-eaten doughnut sitting on a paper napkin. Two dead mosquitoes lay on the napkin. “Maybe they came in with you from the cafeteria earlier, maybe a vent. One of them bit me, and ten minutes later I'm sick as a dog—” He stopped to shiver and took a deep, shaky breath. “Sanford Medical across town has cases of dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Rocky Mountain spotted. Point is, I don't think these critters carry just one disease. I think they're sort of like a farmer's market of pathogens. This guy thinks so too.”

Jasper tapped a screen; his specialty search engine had latched on to some kind of recorded confession. A young sandy-haired man spoke earnestly into a webcam, but the feed pixelated, as if struggling through an old analog telephone line. The fellow's face looked familiar.

Sure, Billy had sent Lattimore a mug shot from his cell phone after the Dugway recovery back in July.
Aerogel … do you know what that is?
Talk about a magic circle. The brainiac bioengineer who'd brought comet dust back to that hush-hush outfit
π
r
2
making a mea culpa:

“We planned on using the Skeeters for national insemination and disease prevention. Whether the threat came from a new plague or the flu, mankind was long overdue for partial extinction. The science was settled; we'd formed a consensus. We had to do something!” He licked his lips, quietly shocked at how it had all gone so wrong.