Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

“Three generals came to West Point just to tell us not to think about the Backwash.”

“So why do you?”

“Contrary to popular opinion,” Maddy said with a smirk, “cadets, and even we pissant fledgling officers, do have minds of our own. I just wish I could have seen the Backwash with my own eyes before it dried up.”

“Not me,” Erica said. “I have a problem with miracles.”

There was no use pressing this with Erica—she had never been plagued by images of the Big Picture. Fact: Dillon Cole had shattered the law of entropy before he died in the Backwash. But how? Even now, in the places Dillon Cole had trodden, order still flowed from disorder, defying the most basic law of physics. With the law of entropy suddenly removed from the foundation, what, at the end of the day, would be left standing?

You think too much, Erica was fond of reminding Maddy. “You know what I did the day the dam broke?” said Erica. “I had a Backwash party. We poured Vodka into Kahlua until we couldn’t tell which way was up, so it didn’t matter where the hell the water was going.”

“That’s what I love about you, Erica. The only proof you need is 180.”

A team of junior executives hurried past. One of them caught Maddy’s eye. He was no older than herself, twenty-two or so, tops. He noticed her gaze, and held eye contact just long enough to ac­knowledge it before vanishing into the crowd.

“Roll in that tongue, Madeline,” Erica said with a smirk. “What would Mom say?”

“She’d say to bring one home for her.”

Maddy thought back to her tally of distracting, if not quite fulfill­ing, relationships at the academy, and wondered what opportunities her new assignment might provide. She shouldered her carry-on. “I’d better go or I’ll miss my flight.”

“Hah—fat chance of that!” Erica nodded toward the departure screens. In spite of good weather, most flights were interminably de­layed, several were canceled, and those flights that actually did make it out did so on dubious jets in desperate need of maintenance. Even now, the DC-10 pulling up right outside their window looked weak and world-weary.

“Look at that thing,” said Maddy. “It’s like the poster child for metal fatigue.”

It was amazing to think that Americans—so smug in their pre­eminence—had once scoffed at the shoddy state of air travel in Third-World nations and—most desolate of all—Eastern Europe. Maddy smiled ruefully. Now every airline was Aeroflot.

If it were only air travel, the ailment could have been cured, or at least treated—but it seemed every other world system was infected as well. Pundits waxed rhetorical day in and day out about a volatile global economy. Conservatives lamented the loss of traditional values. Liberals attacked greedy corporate interests. Zealots and zanies pre­dicted the coming of, or the death of, God. There were a thousand other reasons why that thin veneer of civilization was suddenly being stripped to the grain. But the answer was clear to Maddy: If the power of one person’s thought could shatter the world’s greatest dam and turn back the massive flood that followed; if there were someone in this world who could do that—then where was the validity of science and reason? Who wouldn’t lose interest in their job and the petty ins— and—outs of their own life? And since civilization depended upon six billion docile and compliant cogs keeping the Grand Clockwork run­ning smoothly, how could the system function with hundreds of thousands of mutinies and desertions, as workers suddenly left their jobs, abandoning their old lives? It didn’t take an economic sage to figure out that everything from airlines to food lines would soon come grinding to a halt.

It was the great irony of civilization—that in the end it wasn’t a bomb, or terrorism or some other global cataclysm that brought down the curtain on this modern world. It was lack of interest.

They both stood, taking deep breaths, preparing to launch into the frenetic stream of anxious travelers. “Once I get to Brooklyn,” Erica said, “I’m swearing off the friendly skies for good and staying put. Because if I gotta live through the fall of the American Empire, I might as well do it where they never had civilization to begin with.”

Maddy hugged her sister, perhaps for the last time in the foreseeable future, then turned away, forcing her feet in front of her, marching toward her overcrowded gate with disciplined military cadence. Re­fusing, as always, to look back.

The massive vault sat in the cold, seven-story dome of the power plant, a square peg in a round hole. This, reasoned Maddy, was where the plant’s nuclear core would have been, but any machinery had long since been disassembled to make room for this cubic concrete egg in the cold womb of the containment dome. The cube was thirty feet on each side, and the only thing that gave away the fact that it was not solid was a silver titanium vault door on its face—a door which, by the way, was currently wide open. Looking around, Maddy could see no gateway into the dome large enough for this massive, incongruous object to fit through—which meant it must have been built right here.

General Bussard, a slab of a man in both appearance and person­ality, studied her reaction to the cube. “Not what you were expecting, Lieutenant?”

“Just observing, sir,” Maddy answered truthfully. “I didn’t know what to expect.” The cavernous dome was lit dimly from above like the unpleasant half-light of a partial eclipse. The walls around them were filigreed with pipes, conduits and catwalks casting intersecting shadows. Maddy counted four armed guards posted on high catwalks, giving them a full view around the cube. Otherwise there was no one else present. She had anticipated that, whatever the purpose or nature of the installation, there would be swarms of personnel. Their absence did not bode well with her. Neither did the open vault door.

“This is my show,” Bussard announced. In the cavernous space his voice rang with a hollow echo. Maddy assumed he had saved the reading of his riot act for this moment, when his voice would be most imposing. “You are not to discuss your work with anyone, either civilian or military. I am your sole confidant in all matters concerning this facility. Any comments or questions are to be directed to me, and me alone.”

Somehow, Maddy couldn’t imagine discussing anything with her superior, but she nodded and said, “Yes, sir. Could you please advise me on the nature of this facility?”

The general shot her a freezing glance. “Information is on a need-to-know basis.”

Why was she not surprised? Bussard strode toward the open vault door with Maddy a pace behind. “You’ll find this a very cushy assign­ment if you take to it with the proper enthusiasm,” Bussard told her. “Plenty of downtime. But, like everyone else, you’ll have to spend it within the gates of the plant. I’m sure you’ll find yourself some rec­reational activities.”

Maddy followed him up to the open door but couldn’t quite make herself move beyond the threshold.

Bussard asked, “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

He stood in a door frame that was five feet deep, layered in lead and concrete. Beyond the extended threshold lay darkness. Maddy hesitated, and cursed herself for her failure of nerve. She took a breath to keep herself from stammering. “With your permission, sir, I request a verbal briefing to prepare me for whatever I am about to see.”

The general chuckled, showing a set of perfect teeth. " ‘Verbal briefing?’ " He stepped up to her. “Where did you spend the night after arriving in Michigan, Lieutenant Haas?”

The question caught her off guard. “I . . . uh . . . The Grand Rapids Marriott, sir.”