During the time Bug Man was in the air eleven more tranches of forty-eight thousand biots, totaling five hundred twenty-eight thousand, were generated from stored DNA patterns. Dividing by three biots per person, that was approximately one hundred seventy-six thousand people who lost their grip on sanity.
They were concentrated in fifteen major cities for maximum disruption. New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Mexico City, Moscow, Washington, Rome, Beijing, Jerusalem, Mumbai, and Sydney.
By the time Lear’s plane landed at the Ushuaia’s airport, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, and Berlin were burning.
The flight to the ice would be slower and in a less comfortable plane: Lear’s sumptuous private jet could not land on ice. It was two thousand seven hundred miles from Ushuaia to Cathexis Base, but flying in a refurbished C-130 Hercules turboprop with a cruising speed of three hundred thirty miles an hour, it took more than eight hours. Another one hundred twenty-eight thousand people, minus those who had already passed away, were driven into madness.
These were concentrated in and around military bases in the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, and Pakistan. The choice of countries was not random: each had nuclear weapons, but of those, France and the UK used only submarine-based weapons.
The first launch was from Russia, but the missile and its warhead were destroyed in flight, en route to North Dakota.
The second launch was from Pakistan. It landed in the middle of a department store in New Delhi, India, but did not explode. The madman who had fired it had not armed the warhead.
But the Indian military did not wait to consider the situation. Indian missiles flew minutes after the C-130 slid to a stop on the Cathexis Base airfield.
Fifty-two Agni-III and Agni-IV missiles flew, striking targets in Pakistan. By the time the C-130 had been refueled for the last leg of its flight, there were thirty-one million dead, a number that would double within days.
After a shorter hop and a very bumpy landing, Bug Man stumbled from the plane still wearing the T-shirt he’d been wearing in New York. His teeth, his entire mouth, and jaw hurt. He was exhausted, having been awakened repeatedly by nightmares. And now he was more cold than he would have believed possible. And standing in the whitest place on Earth.
“Where are we?”
“The bottom of the world, Buggy, the place where machines go to die. People, too.”
A green Sno-Cat was tearing across the snow toward them. It roared to a stop and two men jumped out. One ran to Lystra with a full-length coat that many foxes had died to provide. The other handed a voluminous down parka to Bug Man, who shivered into it. A fur-lined hat was plopped on his head, and he was hustled into the backseat of the Sno-Cat. It wasn’t exactly warm inside, but it wasn’t fatally cold, either.
“How was your flight, Ms. Reid?”
“Fine, Stillers. Fine. Are all the necessary personnel in from Forward Green?”
“Yes, ma’am, all personnel, all equipment, all supplies, except for the final two sleighs, which are being prepped and will be brought here tomorrow. And we’ve topped off the fuel both here and at Forward Green.”
“Then we are in lockdown,” she said pleasantly. “Except for the final sleighs. Make sure no one shoots at them.” She shook her head as if marveling at the world’s unpredictability. “The world has just gone to hell in a handbasket, yeah, and we have a long year ahead of us.”
Not waiting a second, Stillers keyed a radio and said, “Lockdown, lockdown. Lockdown, lockdown.”
Bug Man could not quite imagine what was being locked down. It wasn’t like there was a crowd standing around trying to break in. They were in the middle of a whole lot of nothing as far as he could see.
Then, as if by a miracle, the ground seemed to open up. The Sno-Cat rounded a sharp corner, treads churning up hard-packed snow, and plunged down a long ramp into a valley. He saw buildings and an improbable house and …
“Is that a swimming pool?”
“Yes,” Lystra said. “One of only two in Antarctica.” Then, with a wistful look, she added, “I like to swim. It’s a very clean sort of sport, yeah. And I look amazing in a bathing suit, yeah, if I say so myself.”
Bug Man thought that was likely true, if amazing was the right word for a woman covered in tattoos of her victims.
“There’s also an underground greenhouse. Palm trees! Palm trees in Antarctica, yeah. Yeah. We can live very well here for two years, or survive for three. If necessary. We’ll see.”
“Do you want to go to the office?” Stillers asked deferentially.
“No, the house. Find quarters for Bug Man, but for now he’ll stay with me.” She patted Bug Man’s knee. “I’ve decided he’s my good-luck charm. Oh, and tell the dentist, Dr. Whatever-the-Hell, yeah, he’s got a customer. Patient. Whatever. Yeah.”
Tanner was among those waiting when an unannounced flight came into McMurdo, running on fumes, or so the pilot said. Planes did not just suddenly arrive on the ice. And Tanner, like everyone else at the base, had been watching events back in the world with disbelief and anxiety turning to fear.
Tanner had called Naval Intelligence in Washington and been told that Satan is loose among the flock, hah-hah, redrum redrum, they’re listening, don’t you know that?
A call higher up the chain of command to the Pentagon had gone unanswered. Calls to USAP and Lockheed had yielded nothing.
Tanner was in summer gear—a parka over padded jeans with the big Mickey Mouse boots unlaced. He wore gloves and goggles and a light stocking cap with a Pittsburgh Pirates logo.