Aftermath Page 5

  It seemed like a good time to stop talking and start eating. Art bit into a piece of onion, one of those homegrown in Ed's kitchen garden and hanging in strings on the kitchen wall. It was as hot as any he had ever tasted, and he took a drink to help it down. The combination of hot onion and moonshine took his breath away. His idea had seemed brilliant when it came to him late the previous evening. Now the others were pointing out that it raised more questions than it answered.

  After a few minutes of silent chewing, Ed wandered through to the kitchen again to put a pan of water on the old stove. It occurred to Art that although Ed would never describe himself as a survivalist, most things in the house worked just fine without utilities piped in from outside. There were advantages to buying a place nearly eighty years old and not bothering to replace fixtures as long as they still worked halfway decent.

  "Where's Helen?" he asked.

  "Down the hill, at Dr. Dennison's place." Ed brought a jar of brandied plums through and set it on the table. "She says once a year's enough to sit and listen to three old farts going on at the world."

  "She said 'old farts'?"

  "If you'd heard her, you'd know that's what she meant."

  "She sick?"

  "Just the usual. Arthritis. At least old Dennison's honest, he told Helen that her arthritis is general wear and tear, and there's not a lot he can do."

  "There's not a lot any of 'em can do." Joe cracked the top of the jar and spooned plums and brandy on the same plate that had held his venisonburger. "Goddam quacks. Remember what they told you three years ago, Art, that you had only a few months to live?"

  "I'm not likely to forget it."

  "But you're alive. How many of them are dead?"

  "I wish I knew." There was a long pause. Joe's question had, almost by accident, forced them to consider the outside world. None of them looked at the others. Then Art said, "Give medicine credit, Joe. The telomod treatment saved my life."

  "Ah, they just feed you that scientific bullshit so they can increase the bill. You'd have got better anyway."

  There was no point in arguing with Joe. He was past the age where you could hope to change his mind. But he was wrong. Art knew, without a shred of doubt, that the treatment at the Institute for Probatory Therapies was the reason he was alive to eat lunch today. He had seen the scans. His body had been riddled with metastatic carcinomas before the telomods went to work.

  "Doctors, they're no different from other scientists." Ed picked a plum out of the jar with his fingers, transferred it to his mouth, and spoke indistinctly around it. "Take the supernova. All the theories, and the government making statements about what was supposed to happen. The weather after the supernova didn't match any of 'em."

  "A couple of people's predictions came close."

  "A couple, out of hundreds. So why do we pay taxes, to get rubbish like that?"

  "You don't pay taxes, Ed. You boast about that."

  "Why should I, when the country's going to hell?"

  "Of course it is," Joe said darkly. "With that Jew in the White House, what do you expect?"

  Art shook his head. Joe was an old friend, but on certain subjects you had to ignore him.

  "He was your choice, Joe," Ed said. "You voted for him."

  "I know I did. But look at the choice I had. Either that Heebie, or that woman."

  "He's not biased, you see. No, not him." Ed addressed Art as though Joe Vanetti were not present. "You'd never guess his second wife was Jewish."

  Art did not bother to reply. He didn't need to, because the line of conversation was on a well-worn track. On cue, Joe said, "She certainly was, the bitch. Hey, do you know why Jewish divorces cost more?"

  He looked at them expectantly. Art had heard the joke a hundred times, but it was Joe's punch line. He and Ed remained silent.

  "Because they're worth it," Joe went on. "But I don't think I'll marry again."

  "No?" Ed poured brandy from the jar into his glass, drank some, and pulled a face. "Phew. I was in rare form when I made that lot. So what will you do, Joe?"

  Within two years of buying the place on the mountain and meeting neighbors Ed and Joe, Art had learned the rules. If you wanted to be accepted you didn't step on someone else's joke, no matter how often you had heard it. The other two had been playing the game forever, and for this bit he was a member of the audience.

  "I won't marry," Joe said. "I'll just find a woman I don't like, and give her a house."

  "Does Anne-Marie know that?"

  "Not from me she don't."

  "I can't see why that woman puts up with you." Ed turned to Art. "She's twenty-five years younger than he is, she's good-looking, and she has her own place. She doesn't need an old wreck like him. She could get somebody handsome, like me, only I'm married. Why does she bother?"

  Art had been asked the question, so he was now in the game. "You have to know how it works, Ed. As far as you and I are concerned, Joe here is a poor old crock with hardly enough strength to stagger from his place to yours. He'd never get back home from here without your brew. But as far as older women are concerned, any single male under ninety who's not actually terminal is an eligible bachelor. They outlive us, so there's not enough of us to go around."

  "It's not like that with me and Annie." Joe was complacent. Among male friends, insult was the only acceptable expression of affection. "She says I'm dynamite."

  "She means you're always going off at the wrong time, I'll bet. I don't see you walking over to her place, now that the truck don't work." Ed had the bottle in his hand. "Another? One for the road."

  Art shook his head. "Not me," Joe said. "Your liver will be in a museum when you die, Ed. It won't need to be pickled, neither. And I don't need to walk to Annie's place. She knows I've got the gammy leg. She'll be up here about five."

  "How would you be knowing that? You using telepathy?"

  "No. Telcom." Joe took the bottle. "Maybe just a drop after all. I think this batch is better than the usual bat piss."

  Neither he nor Ed seemed to realize the significance of what he was saying, but the words jolted Art's nervous system into overdrive. He could feel his heart racing.

  "You made a telcom call today?"

  "Sure." Joe was pouring a closely calculated measure of liquor, and he did not look up. "Tried this morning before I came over, and got a dial tone. First time for a week. So I talked to Annie, and she said she'd be over. Stands to reason, things had to come back to normal before too long."

  "Ed?"

  O'Donnell went across to the chest where the communications unit was sitting and pressed a button. He shook his head. "Not my telcom. Dead as Lincoln. Never a light on the board."

  "Told you that was a piece of junk when you bought it." Joe stood up and went over to stare at the unit. "You had a perfectly good phone already."

  "Couldn't get a replacement when part of it busted. You know that. Goddam companies, always pushing what you don't want." Ed lifted the headphone. "Got a tone, though. Sounds funny. Here." He held the set out to Art. "You're the communications wizard."

  Art took the headset and listened. It was a dial tone all right, but behind the rhythmic pulse was a strange and distant singing, the sound you might get if you had no in-line amplification and were placing a call to the Mars expedition. He performed the standard repertoire of tests and obtained no response. He examined the program board more closely. The unit was relatively new, certainly no more than three years old.

  "I think you're out of luck, Ed. The control chips are blown."

  "Figures. The warranty ended in January. The bastards."

  "I don't think you can blame the company." Art turned to Joe. "My unit's newer than this one, and it's dead, too. Could I make a call on yours?"

  "Out of region?"

  "Yes."

  "Sure you can." The question had been automatic—Joe would have been outraged if Art made any move to pay. "Now?"

  "Anytime that's convenient."

  "Now'
s as good as any." Joe stood up heavily, favoring his leg. "Otherwise this old bugger will want us to help him with the clearing up."

  Ed said nothing, until the other two were at the door. Then he shook Art's hand, ignored Joe, and said, "Help the poor man, will you, in case he falls over. When Annie says she's coming over, all the blood runs from his brain down into his pecker. I'm still not sure it's enough for action." And when the other two were twenty paces away, "Hey, Joe. Helen's been telling me to ask you this. Do you love Anne-Marie?"

  Joe turned and gave him the single sideways glare that said no sane male ever asked another man a question like that. O'Donnell laughed and retreated into the house. Joe and Art continued their slow progress, limited by two bad right knees.

  If it had been up to Art he'd have walked faster, no matter how much it hurt. He was desperate to try that call. It was pointless to explain why to Joe. A lot more depended on it than his friends would be willing to believe.

  2

  The dogs came to meet them midway between the two houses, wagging their tails wildly and rearing up on Joe with their muddy paws while he cursed and tried to push them away.

  "Down, Rush," he said to a large white mutt. "I've got nothing for you out here, you silly bugger. Down, I said, until we get home."

  It was the best diversion that Art could have hoped for. While Joe was feeding the dogs in the back of the tidy and well-organized house—whatever Anne-Marie was coming over for it wasn't to do cleaning—Art went straight to the telcom set. It wasn't merely old, it was antique. An actual telephone. There was no store-forward, no video plugs, no conferencing, no min-rate path finder, and pathetic internal storage. A bit more primitive, and you'd be back in the era of analog signals and rotary dials. But when Art picked up the handset he heard a treasured pulse tone, though again it was overlaid on a background hiss like interstellar space. Another side effect of Supernova Alpha? A dial pulse was a good start, but no more than that. Art held his breath and hit buttons.

  He had spent a lot of time in the past week, trying to remember and write down the thirty-odd numbers that he needed. In the past he had relied on his personal secretary to store them, despite his preaching to others —"We've become too dependent on interconnected technologies. One day the information system will be hit and come down like a house of cards. We'll have a devil of a time putting it back together."

  Do as I say, not as I do.

  His half sister's number was firmly in his head. He called that first, though she was not the reason for his awful feeling of urgency. The attempted connection to her California number produced a series of strange clicks that ended in the odd, open silence of a lost line.

  He was not much worried. Carol was superwoman. Her competence at everything she touched made Art feel inferior during their once-a-year visits. Carol would manage to land on her feet. She always did.

  The group's numbers were much more guesswork. He had written down seven that he was sure of, and half a dozen more where he was within a digit or two of the full eighteen (though a miss was as good as a mile when it came to percom numbers). He had given up on the rest. If he could get through to just one, they would start to network.

  By the sixth dead end he was starting to sweat. Some of it might be a delayed effect of Ed's lethal white lightning, best followed by a walk to let your brain clear and your kidneys recover from the insult. But mostly it was the conviction of problems on the way. That feeling had started the second he realized that his DNA analysis box was out of action.

  He kept trying. Joe, who had finished feeding and cursing the dogs, came into the room and watched him in silence.

  "Bad news?" he said at last.

  "No damn news at all. I think we only have a local piece of the network up. That explains why you could reach Anne-Marie's old handset, and I can reach fuck all."

  He was stabbing at the soft screen as he spoke, convinced that he was wasting his time. It was a shock when, after another eternity of clicks and snaps and whistles, a voice said, "ID, please."

  It was the standard reply of a screener, verifying the caller's acceptability before the machine would take a message. But if Art's ideas were right, everything using microchips had failed when that blue flash filled the sky—and smart screeners were on the list.

  "Dana?" he said. "This is Art Ferrand. It's you, isn't it, not the screener?"

  There was a moment of background crackle and hiss. Then, "Art. God, I'm glad to hear from you. The line came back, but I haven't been able to reach anyone with it. The screener doesn't work, nor does the API controller."

  "I think the national grid is down. We're patching in to each other through old equipment—you can practically hear electrical relays opening and closing. Where are you?"

  He did not recall where she lived. Their contacts had been electronic, plus the quarterly meetings at the Institute for Probatory Therapies.

  "Not where I usually am. Arlington was looking bad, mobs and looting and fires. I got scared."

  Art knew that without being told. The old Dana Berlitz was sassy and sexy and full of life. The woman on the line was all nerves.

  "I left two days ago," she went on. "I'm out with my sister Sarah in Warrenton. Where are you?"

  "Up north, beyond Frederick. I ran for it early, over a month ago. You drove?"

  "Drove?" Her voice was steadying. "You really are out of it. The cars stopped working a week back. There was this funny sort of blue flash, up in the sky—"

  "I know. We had it here, too. I think it was everywhere. All the equipment with microchips in it is useless now. Trouble is, that's just about everything in the world. How did you get to Warrenton?"

  "The hard way. On my bike, fifty-seven miles door-to-door with that lousy saddle I always swore I was going to replace, not a car on the roads and it rained all the way. I won't try to tell you what my ass felt like when I got here." She laughed—a good sign. "Sarah took one look at it and slapped on a big skin patch. You ever had one?"

  "Never needed one."

  "I don't recommend it. The first few hours while it was bonding, it wriggled whenever I sat down on it. Cheap thrill." She laughed again, but in her next words the worried tone was back. "Art, do you have your sequencer with you?"

  "Of course. I don't go anywhere without it."

  "Is it working?"

  "Dead as Lincoln. The sequencers are full of microcircuits."

  "What are we going to do?"

  "That's why I've been so keen to get in touch with you and the rest of the group. How are you feeling?"

  "So far, fine—except for the sore backside. My last genome scan was normal, but I'm worried about how long it will last. I was supposed to be reevaluated when we met again in six weeks."

  "Me, too." Art didn't know as much about the details of Dana's disease as he did about the condition of some of the others in the program. It was cancer, of course, and she had been hit young. She had been in the program longer than Art, but she was still only forty-three; in Art's eyes that made her practically a child. He knew that she had a grown-up son, which meant she'd married—or got pregnant—very young. But she never spoke of him, or of any male in her life, which was amazing in someone so attractive and friendly.

  In your dreams, Art Ferrand.

  "Look, Dana," he went on. "We have to find out what's going on with the program. Probably everything is fine, and the doctors are in the same position as we are, just not able to reach people. But I won't risk that. You may think I'm overreacting—"

  "Overreacting? That's what my first doctor told me, when I went to him with a lump in my neck. That asshole cost me a whole month. You're not overreacting, Art. I'm on a knife edge, and I'm sure you are. Unless we have a way of checking the condition of our telomeres and making the right adjustments, we could be dead in a year of new cancer or premature old age. My question is, what do we do?"

  "We keep trying to contact others of the group, today. But unless we find out from one of them, directly, what t
he situation is at the Institute, I'm heading there tomorrow. I won't be happy until I see Dr. Lasker and Dr. Chow and Dr. Taunton in person, and know that they can keep the program going even if the usual equipment is dead. I'll call you and let you know what I find—assuming the line still works."

  "Forget it. Art, I was worried before you called. I know you'll do your best to get to the Institute, and I'm sure you'll try to let me know what you find. But I've worked so hard to stay alive, I'm not willing to sit and hear things secondhand. Where do we meet?"

  "I don't know. The usual place, the Treasure Inn, where we stay for our group sessions? If it's open."

  "When?"

  "You'll probably need three days. Any of the others we reach, we tell 'em the same thing, the Treasure Inn three days from now. But what about your sore rear end? There's no cars, and you can't ride all that way."

  "Let me worry about that. How are you going to travel? You've got farther than me to go, and you have that bad knee."

  "I'll get there. Try and reach some of the others. I'll see you in three days."

  "Cross your fingers. Good luck, Art."

  "Good luck, Dana." Art closed the connection, and found Joe staring at him calmly. He had been listening to Art's end of the conversation with obvious interest.

  "Well," he said, "that was a new one. Who is she?"

  "Dana Berlitz. Part of my treatment group."

  "And I'll bet I know which part of you she's treating." Joe Vanetti did not smile. He was a big man, tall and broad and slow-moving. It was hard for Art to imagine him as he had been in his thirties. According to Ed O'Donnell, in Joe's Air Force days he had been a heartbreaker who cut a broad swath through the Washington female population.

  "But what are these telly things of yours that need fixing?" Joe went on.

  "Telomeres are the end pieces of chromosomes. In ordinary people, they shorten as you get older. In cancer cells, they don't. Dana and I had a treatment to shrink our cancer cell telomeres, but we don't want our other telomeres shortened too much or we'll get old real fast. It's like a tricky balancing act, and we need to keep checking that nothing's going haywire. Our interest in each other is purely professional."