Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

Dana, who had reached the top of the stairs, turned to look down on Art. “Honey, you know my views on Seth. I’m not his number one fan, and I’ll take you over him any day of the week. But last night he’s not the one who arrived wearing somebody else’s rubber boots. And I let you into my bedroom.”

“That’s different. Those boots were loaned to me by Joe Vanetti.” But her point was valid. Seth might have friends, too, though he had the guarded, watchful eyes of a natural loner.

Dana, before she went into her room, added to that idea. “Forgetting the gun and knife and coat,” she said, “I’ll tell you one thing about Seth. I’ve never seen him look as much at ease anywhere as he does here and now. He seems right for this situation. He’s at home. That’s scary, but it may be just what we are going to need.”

As Art went into his own room he wondered if he would be able to protect Dana from Seth if the need arose. He doubted it. He might be ruthless enough — he believed he could be — but Seth was better armed, younger, and fitter. Art pulled on the outsized boots. More agile, too. Could you walk through snow in these damned things, or would it all be hopeless floundering?

He donned the purple raincoat and the blue baseball cap, but drew the line at tying the mohair scarf over it. Instead he knotted it around his neck under his coat. The handgun went into the raincoat pocket, baggy and shapeless enough that one more bulge made little difference.

By comparison, Dana was a fashion plate. She wore a form-fitting jacket and pants of slick dark blue kevlon, black knee-high boots, and a jaunty black cap with built-in earmuffs. Art met her at the top of the stairs. He looked at her appreciatively but dubiously, until she said, “Fully thermal, though they don’t look it. Don’t worry, Grimaldi, I’ll be a lot more comfortable than you will.”

Her words were reassuring. Seth Parsigian’s expression, when they joined him in the dining room, was not. Art wondered what Seth would have done had he not been there. And then he knew. Until they had been to the Institute, and determined the status of the telomod treatment program, nothing would sway Seth — or Art himself — from pursuit of the main purpose.

At stake was something more important than sex. At stake was life and death.

Seth led the way as they emerged from the inn. Since early morning a wind had arisen. Instead of falling vertically the snow formed drifts along the side of the building and had buried the hedge of flowering forsythia. Overhead, the sky glowed with a leaden, heavy light. If old weather patterns still meant anything after Supernova Alpha, more hours of heavy snow were on the way.

The highway was deserted. Snow piled against the wheels and doors of abandoned cars, while smaller humps by the side of the road suggested more ominous possibilities. Art felt no urge to investigate. He noticed that last night’s sickly odor had vanished from the air, cleansed for the moment by the snow cover.

The bulk of the Institute for Probatory Therapies formed a faint gray outline through the swirling flakes. Its twenty stories loomed far above the surrounding buildings. Art recalled, with no pleasure at all, that the telomere research center was on the fifteenth floor. Even if they could find a way in, the elevators would certainly not be working.

“We can try the ground-level entrances again, like I did last night,” Seth said softly. “But I think it’ll be a waste of time. Our best bet’s a fire escape. Dana, you’re the lightest and the nimblest. If the two of us give you a hoist . . .”

“I get it. Then I’ll be the one guilty of breaking into government property.” But she sounded cheerful at the prospect, and as they approached the building she pulled a long, heavy wrench from the pocket of her pants.

“You had that thing with you last night?” Art asked.

“I certainly did.” She gave him her sunniest smile. “Be prepared, as my old troop leader used to say. You only asked if I had a gun.”

They had all been speaking in near whispers, keeping sounds to a minimum. As they moved around the Institute, looking up for the black metal filigree of a fire escape, Art realized that the silence was about to end. Entering the locked building could not be done quietly. The sound of breaking glass would carry far across the hushed landscape. Their only hope was that no one would decide to come and investigate.

The snow-covered bottom of the fire escape was at least ten feet above ground level. Art planted his feet firmly and braced himself with his hands on the wall of the building. Seth stood by his side, using his own interlocked hands to provide Dana with a first foothold. She went up easily, first to waist level, then to place one foot on Art’s shoulder and the other on Seth’s.

“I’m not quite high enough.” Her voice came from above their heads. “I’ll have to jump and grab. Are you ready?”

Art grunted assent. There was a sudden and painful increase in weight on his shoulder and a shower of dislodged snow. He looked up. Dana was hanging from the bottom of the fire escape, which swung lazily downward under her weight. He and Seth grabbed it as it approached ground level. As soon as her feet touched the ground, Dana stepped around the descending ladder and started up it.

“I’m past this,” she complained. “You need a junior gymnast, not an old lady.” But she was already two floors up.

“Go on.” Seth gestured to Art. “It will swing back up as soon as we’re off it. We don’t want to leave anybody with a ready-made entrance.”

Dana was up at the third floor, crouched by a window. Art hated heights, but he knew he would get no sympathy from the others if he stopped to explain that. He climbed, approaching Dana as she swung her wrench. The sound of breaking glass was incredibly loud. It went on and on, ringing out into the distance as Dana broke away the jagged edges of the hole she had made. Art, just below her, turned to stare out through the falling snow. It had eased off a little. He could see for maybe half a mile. On all that white plain, nothing moved. He followed Dana, scrambling carefully past the jagged edges of the broken window to land on all fours on top of a metal desk. The surface was icy to his hands, and his breath frosted the air. It was as cold inside the building as outside.

He climbed down, feeling his heart pounding. Was it relief at escape from outside danger, or fear of what they might find on the fifteenth floor? If the telomod treatment was no longer available, he and Seth and Dana were dead. Not dead immediately, not maybe for six months or a year, but dead.

Without a word, they left the room. It had been some kind of administrative center, with cabinets and lifeless terminals and blank displays scattered in among the broken file trays and desks. Useless junk, Art thought. Objects from a past age, which looters hadn’t even thought worth stealing. Would they ever have value again?

No lights showed on the central bank of elevators, with their smashed-in doors. It was going to be stairs, then, twelve more stories of them. Art put his head down, ignored his knee, and climbed steadily in the lightless stairwell. It was a consolation, when they came at last to the fifteenth floor and emerged into the building’s dim interior light, to see Dana and Seth panting as hard as he was. His daily walks on Catoctin Mountain were paying off.

“Now we find out,” Seth grunted, and hurried forward. Dana went after him. Art, much more slowly, followed. He had given up hope of finding Doctors Lasker, Chow, and Taunton, the three key members of the telomod research group, here at the Institute. Now it was a question of discovering where they had gone, following them, and persuading them to continue treatments.