John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“What’s all that doing to the lake?” Chris asked.

“We’ve got about twenty scientists with about sixty opinions on exactly what it will mean, but all round the Great Lakes, you have all that plastic, rubber, and gasoline rotting, and the fallout kill zone covered southern Ontario, so you have more decaying biomass and less to keep it out of the water than there’s ever been and all that’s washing into Lake Erie, and you know, the whole western side of Erie is only about forty feet deep at most, usually less. A decade or two of fast-growing green goo, and maybe we’ll be looking at the Great Erie Swamp, or the Erieglades, and this pretty little island might just be a high hill in the middle of it.”

Cooke Castle had been a nineteenth-century millionaire’s summer house; a big stone mansion wrapped in faux-medieval frouf, Chris scribbled in his notebook. With its tessellated tower, it stuck out of the remaining gold, red, and yellow fall foliage like a fantasy Hollywood castle or an imaginary private school.

The auditorium that afternoon was jammed, with the crowd spilling over into the aisles.

“The Wapak Scouts know the local ecology much better than I do,” Larry pointed out, “so I’d suggest you see about bringing them over if you want more observations. Plus they’re smart, hard workers, and mostly young and until recently you were a university—I think they belong here. And I do think that as long as you didn’t run right onto a tribal encampment, one or two of you in the company of five to ten Wapak Scouts could travel pretty safely to anywhere. At least, I’d go anywhere with them.”

That evening, they rowed across the harbor to South Bass Island, for a feast of roasted perch and new potatoes, with plenty of the island wine to wash it down. In Put-in-Bay Chris found an honest-to-God newsstand, with back issues of the Post-Times , Weekly Insight , and Olympia Observer , plus half a dozen other papers; he could rent a complete set of what he wanted for the rest of the afternoon, and they took Pueblo scrip. Off to paradise by himself, complaining only at the absence of coffee, he vanished into the back reading solarium.

Larry and Jason were trying out fried lake fish (Rhodes had assured them that tritium did not biocentrate) and the local white wine at a dock-side bar, and agreeing that life hadn’t been this comfortable in a long time, when Chris burst in, waving the paper and one of his notebooks.

“Did you find a typo or something?” Larry said.

“No, I found the biggest mistake of all time,” Chris said. “Look at this.”

“Damn. So Leslie was the traitor? I always liked her,” Jason said, “even if she was pretty condescending to Beth; I think she just didn’t know how to talk to somebody outside her own lifestyle.”

Chris said, “Now look here. A couple weeks later. This is the accounts from Deb Mensche, Dan Samson, and Roger Jackson, about their expeditions into the Lost Quarter.”

Larry sat back and said, “Shit.”

“What?” Jason said.

“We were being followed at least from crossing the Tippecanoe on, right? And how many days’ walk from Castle Earthstone is that? So, so far, so good. If Leslie was the traitor, then she found out about our operation, and set us up to be ambushed and fed. But if she knew about that, she’d have known about these three other missions—and those are plain as day Heather using the two-source method for locating a traitor. Leslie would have known that—it had less security than we did, by far—and made it point at someone else. If she was far enough inside to know about us , she couldn’t possibly have missed that .”

Jason said, “But the real traitor would not only have put Castle Earthstone on our trail, he’d have made the traitor trap point at someone else—like Leslie. Shit, did they execute her?”

“Not that I’ve seen, but I think we better radio Heather and everyone else we can think of.” Larry’s voice was grim. “We just have to take the chance that one of the people we contact will be the traitor, and hope the others catch him or her before any more damage is done.”

Larry had a long fight with the local authorities about breaking radio silence—they were terrified of the idea, and kept pointing out that they had nothing like Mota Elliptica’s defenses against EMP—but he wore them down, and finally sat down with his one-time pad to send messages to everyone relevant. Extracting the promise that someone would listen all night for a response, he handed over his stack of messages. Then, because there was nothing more to do, the three agents went to the fish-fry, and did their best to enjoy the fish and potatoes, the crowd of healthy, well-fed people, and the lights of a town where they could sleep safe, warm, and bathed tonight. No reply came before bedtime.

Heather had barely sat down to eat at the communal mess hall when Patrick, out of breath, delivered the urgent eyes-only message from Larry Mensche; it had FAR stamped on it. Grumbling, and hastily dumping her plate of noodles and grouse-nuggets into a go-bag, she headed back for her office, reminding herself over and over that Larry didn’t send messages of that kind in any situation except one where most agents would have been screaming for a regiment of infantry.

With Leo settled into his crib, she opened the envelope, read, and sat up as if she’d been shocked. Leo did his nervous cry, the one that meant he felt something wrong, and she went over to comfort him. “Me, too, kid.”

Larry had provided her with a cc: list; she could see at once what he was doing, making sure no one could intercept or sweep it under the rug.

She said, “Come in,” to the knock at the door before she had time to think.

Debbie Mensche was there, with Beth, Ysabel, Dan Samson, and Roger Jackson. “I kind of thought you’d want to have your team together,” she said, “after I got the note from Dad, so I rounded’em up and brought them here.”

It was everyone from the cc: list except for James and Arnie. Heather said, “I think we’d all better sit for a moment, if you can all find somewhere to do it. Deb, brilliant idea, you’re right. I take it you didn’t bring Arnie or James because—”

“Because they’re the only two other guys it can be,” Debbie said. “I grabbed Beth first because I wasn’t gonna believe Beth would’ve betrayed Jason; she alibied Izzy. I knew our missions were decoys, but you’d kept that information from Roger and Dan, so they were clean. That leaves James and Arnie. James is probably at home, this time of day; Arnie’s teaching a math class over in the literacy program. By now I bet they’ve both read Dad’s note. I don’t know how we can—”

James burst in, panting, out of breath. He looked at who else was in the room. His expression of relief was amazing and overwhelming. “All right,” he said. “It looks like everyone is here, and I’ll be happy to explain why it’s Arnie you want, and not me, but you’d better get someone over to the secure holding facility, now , to protect Leslie. If they just stand outside and don’t let Arnie in, we can probably—”

“Dan—” Heather didn’t speak the rest of her sentence because Samson and Jackson were both already gone.

James was surprised that he wasn’t panting as he squatted next to Debbie. “We’ll intercept them about five blocks further on,” she breathed, “but we have to wait till Arnie gets turned away, and then see which way he goes. The guy in the blanket over there still hasn’t seen us.”