Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

Amelia raised her arms tentatively as if to inquire whether it would be altogether unprofessional for her to hug Her Royal Highness. Saskia came down off the last step and all but body-slammed her, knowing that she could take it. The hug was a long one. And by the time it was over, and they parted, so much had been said in that wordless clinch that Saskia felt no compunction about getting straight to business.

“You’ll remember Mr. Singh, from last year’s luncheon,” Saskia said.

Mohinder had paused at the top of the steps while Saskia and Amelia greeted each other, but now descended to shake hands and exchange pleasantries.

“Do I smell barbecue?” Saskia asked.

“As Mr. Singh can probably explain,” Amelia said, “it turns out that this is called grilling . Barbecue is different—takes longer. Red only lit the fire half an hour ago.”

Saskia had instinctively made for the door of the terminal, but Amelia waved her around the side. “Unusable,” she explained, “no power, no air-conditioning.”

They could now peek around the corner of the building to the point where Saskia could see T.R. talking to a tall slender girl with auburn hair, who reminded her a bit of Lotte. “Who’s she?”

“Pippa. A friend of the deceased.” Amelia turned to Mohinder. “She’s been shooting some video, but she’ll leave you out of it if you prefer.”

“Video of what?”

“Of the conversation you’re about to have. How to show respect to the remains.”

“Happy to offer some pointers,” Mohinder said, “but it’s really a question for the family. What’s their status? I heard they got held up crossing the border?”

Amelia nodded, with just a trace of an eye roll. “American CBP is freaking out about anyone who has connections to India. We’re working the problem. But they won’t be here until tomorrow, bestcase scenario.”

Amelia led them all the way around the corner, revealing a little encampment. Tarps had been anchored to the side of the terminal building and stretched with ropes and poles to shade a little patch of level desert. But the sun was getting low enough that it was cutting under and making everyone look like they’d been dipped in honey. Picnic tables were scattered around. At one of them Saskia recognized Piet and Thordis, whom she had met during their work at Schiphol, as well as two other women whom she could guess were the other falconers she’d heard about. They were busy tending to a golden eagle, working on one of its feet. Thordis glanced up and saw Saskia. She and Piet stood up. Saskia waved at them and they smiled back.

T.R. was striding their way. “Howdy, Mr. Singh. So grateful you could make the journey.”

“Evening, boss. My new friend here made it very easy. How may I be of service?”

“I am informed that priests don’t exist in your faith. Very wise, if you ask me. Not that anyone’s asking me.”

“Until the family arrives,” Mohinder said, “I am more than happy to consult on how to show proper respect for the young man’s remains.”

“That is indeed our chief concern,” T.R. said, “now that the site has been locked down and covered up. The army boys have some maps and photos and so on if you’d like to come over and take a look.”

T.R. led Mohinder toward another table where an army officer was putting rocks on documents to keep them from fluttering in the breeze.

In the middle of the little encampment, Rufus was sitting on a cooler tending a grill. He was wearing a Flying S swag T-shirt, a little too small for him, but Saskia didn’t mind. A pair of cargo shorts showed a heavily bandaged lower leg, which he had propped up on a footstool improvised from two cases of Mexican beer. He gave her an understated nod as she approached.

Amelia had silently peeled away.

His eyes swiveled calmly over the scene, taking inventory, as she could guess, of who was watching.

Not wanting to make him uncomfortable, Saskia slowed as she approached.

“Are you radioactive?”

“Been checked out,” he said. “Answer’s apparently no. But I guess it really depends on what you mean by that.”

“You aren’t, in my book.”

“Good to know. Welcome to Texas.” He pulled a plastic plate from a stack and used his fingers to snatch a sizzling morsel of steak onto it, then handed it to her. The grill was crowded with pieces of chicken, beef, and sausages that were swelling up and beginning to split open to show chunks of red and green pepper and orange cheese inside. Saskia, who had been subsisting on granola bars for twenty-four hours, could have eaten everything there. She accepted the plate and tried not to just shove her face into it.

“Get you a beer?”

“I’m fine for now, thanks.” She knew everything about this was terrible: burning wood to cook meat from methane-farting cows and serving it on throwaway petrochemical plates.

“Bison,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Supposedly better.”

“It’s really good to see you, Red.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

“Tell me about what happened.”

“You want the full version? Or—”

“There’ll be time for that later, I hope.”

“You know about what was on his back.”

“Just enough Cobalt-60 to make the site unusable for a hundred years.”

Rufus nodded.

“But other than that—there would be no collateral damage.”

He nodded. “That was the idea. Minimal casualties. But enough of a mess to stop geoengineering activities here until T.R. could build a new gun—at least a couple of years.”

“And send a message.”

“Messages ain’t my area of specialization,” he said.

“Shutting down the gun would cause a termination shock.”

“Chance they were willing to take, I guess.” He sighed. “Anyway, I didn’t know what it was.”

“Of course not.”

“Thought it was a bomb. Thought I could disable it. Maybe give him a chance to get out of this in one piece.” Rufus stared off across the desert, replaying it in his mind’s eye. He stuck out his tongue, then, after a few seconds, pulled it back in. “He stopped.”

“What?”

“Yeah. When he saw Jules, apparently. That’s how Jules tells the story. I didn’t see nothing but the device, through the sights of my rifle, so Jules had to tell me that later.”

Saskia nodded.

“He stopped,” Rufus repeated. “Like he realized, at that instant, that people were taking shelter down in the bottom of the shaft.”

“He understood that he was about to take our lives,” Saskia said, nodding.

“I hit it three times. Just to be sure. Tore it wide open. But because of what was inside of it, he got a lethal dose of the gamma rays. Something was wrong with his leg before, he wasn’t moving right. Anyway. Down he went. In the army I learned enough about NBC—”

“NBC?”

“Nuclear-biological-chemical warfare. I didn’t want to come near any of that shit. Soon as I seen him go down I scooted down the pile into the pit under the hopper cars and sheltered in place. Drones stopped coming. I heard the sheriff driving up from Bunkhouse. Hopped down the railroad tracks, keeping the boxcars between me and any radiation, and waved ’em off. Told ’em to call in the NBC guys from Fort Bliss. White Sands. All of that. But they’d already picked up the gamma rays from the air. So NBC was already on-site.”

“The people who came and rescued us.”

“Yeah.”

“I saw the lake of yellow from the plane—”

Rufus nodded. “Sulfur’s what they got in abundance, it’s what they’re using for the first layer. Army had rad-hardened bulldozers. They brought ’em in on trains overnight.”

“Amazing.”

“What?”