Fountain Society Part 10

DC-3.

The plane swooped low over Haiti's green hills, bridged the mountains midisland and pa.s.sed over the Dominican Republic, dipping so low that they could see workers in the cane fields and bathers on the beaches, everything gilded in gold by the afternoon sun. They flew over open ocean for a while, marveling at the different shades of blue. "Na.s.sau," they said, nearly in unison.

"G.o.d," said Beatrice, "remember how glad we were to get there?" What was the name of the ship?"

"The Homeric?"

"Did your father pay for the entire honeymoon? Or just the cruise?" Peter asked. "I think we bought the sherry"

"That's right, we drank sherry in the stateroom," Peter said. "It had bunk beds." "Like being in jail, with a chance of drowning." "Samuel Johnson. And a bathroom in the hall. Like our apartment on 31st Street, with the bathtub in the kitchen? That door that went over it, to form a counter?" "And that lady who used to bang on the ceiling with her broom?" Beatrice laughed. "Right. Every time we made love. She looked like her picture belonged on the onedollar bill." They laughed at their memories until the coast of Puerto Rico pa.s.sed below them, and then they grew quiet: the island of Vieques was coming up. For a long while they remained silent. Then, as though no time at all had pa.s.sed, they picked up where they had left off. "Which was the apartment we got evicted from?" she asked. "The one on Fourth Street. You were in your third year of med school." "No, wasn't I still preclinical?"

"I'm positive. Remember, we wore out the bed and the springs broke so we put the mattress on the floor." "That was so hideous."

"The fleas from our terrier!" he shouted. "Buntle. XVho used to lick the toilet seat." "I used to sleep in my socks and in the morning I'd have anklets of fleabites." "You kept saying the roaches were going to carry the mattress away," she said, roaring with laughter. "Those were huge roaches! It could've been like the Lilliputians carrying Gulliver." He patted her hand. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"No, tell me what just crossed your mind." "A conversation I once had. Talking about Swift reminded me." "With who?"

"You weren't there. With Freddy. About why it's no picnic to live forever-" He broke off. From straight ahead an F-14 drew up on them, a speck, then a blur, then an enormous shape strobing by their c.o.c.kpit windows at astonishing speed and without the slightest sound. Then the sonic boom struck like Thor's hammer, bowing in their windscreen with a thousand spiders of fractured gla.s.s. It left them both clutching their ears. The DC-3 bucked hard in the violent surge of wind, and Peter felt the warm rush of blood from his nose even as he fought to bring the plane under control. "Good G.o.d," he said.

"Can we get them on the radio?"

"Yes, I'm trying." The ancient device wasn't responding. "The sonic shock-" "Jarred the tubes, you think?"

"Possibly." He slid open the side window and waved into the sky. "I don't think they can see you," said Beatrice. She peered out the window. "Is that the airstrip at Vieques?" "That's it. We're all right." he said. "Might get a little turbulent. There's some blood on your cheek." She dabbed at it. "I think my left ear may have checked out." "Yes. It's temporary, though. We're fine," he said. Something exploded off their starboard side. "Sidewinder missile," said Peter. He surrendered to being a scientist and nothing else. "Does Mach 4. Homed in on our exhaust. That was lucky. If we had been in a modern jet, it would have read us correctly, These old engines give off a lot less heat." "Makes sense," Beatrice said, just as nonchalantly. "But I do think something's happened to the plane." It was yawing wildly. "A piece of shrapnel must have gone through the fuselage. Maybe cut a control cable. Or maybe it dinged the vertical stabilizer. Are you all right?" She nodded tightly. "You?"

"I'm fine. I can see the runway. They won't shoot again, not while we're this close to other people." "Okay;" she said. She did not sound convinced. "Okay? Try and hang on. You know, I think I'm wrong. I think it was your second year of med school. All those mnemonics you made up for pathology cla.s.s because you cut cla.s.ses so many times that year. They applauded when you showed up for your final. You're right, that was definitely Fourth Street. We were happy there." "We were happy everywhere," said Beatrice. "We were," said Peter. "Even when we were doing the devil's work. Would you do it all over again?" "The same life exactly?"

"Not just the good moments. The good, the bad, the mistakes, the misjudgments, the compromises, all the lies we told ourselves?" "If we could make it right," said Beatrice as a second Sidewinder exploded a hundred yards nearer than the first. "Peter?" she said faintly. "I'm here. I've got it," he said, wrestling with the control column. Beatrice was clutching her ribs, There was a hole in the c.o.c.kpit wall next to her. and beyond, the starboard engine was burning fiercely. Not even thinking about it, Peter cut the fuel and feathered the prop before the plane swung around entirely. Then he grabbed his wife. "Beatrice?"

Her head came up. She reached up and touched his face. Then her hand fell away. Blood was oozing from her side. "Beatrice!"

"I'm here, Peter."

"Oh, Jesus, Beatrice."

"Yes. I'm all right. Don't worry about me. You're doing fine. We're doing fine." "I know. Just hold on. We're going to make it," he said, feeling his head swim uncontrollably, The DC-3 rolled sharply and began a shallow dive. He fought it the best he could, but his vision was clouding with tears, his heart was racing out of control, and the single remaining engine could no longer carry the plane by itself. Five thousand feet below he could see the Vieques runway stretching out before him. But now there were armored vehicles on either side and a bulldozer dead in the middle of the runway. Peter looked beyond to the secret structures of the Fountain Society, encased in the base's center and surrounded by fence-lines of concertina razor wire. He would never get in there, he realized. Never on foot. With his last nerve he located the structure he was looking for, pushed the stick forward and dived the plane right for it. "Beatrice? Brace yourself, my darling."

She didn't answer. Her eyes were closed and her fingers were entwined with his as her blood streamed down her dress and onto the deck of the c.o.c.kpit. Peter felt her hand go limp and let out a howl of grief. He kept on howling as the oblong shape of Wolfe's operating theater loomed up before his windscreen. Just before impact, Dr. Peter Jance closed his eyes and gripped his dead wife's hand for all he was worth. ***

The people in the OR heard only a split second of an engine's roar before the ceiling exploded as the fuel in the DC-3's tanks detonated. The impact and the explosion, doubled by dozens of atomizing oxygen bottles, ripped through the room, blowing the operating theater and every-thing in it to smithereens. An orange and black thunderhead of burning fuel and debris roiled into the sky. Five miles away in Esperanza, in beachfront cafes, it could be seen by people cradling drinks festooned with tiny umbrellas. Some tourists, twenty miles away at the far end of the island, thought it was thunder and looked with puzzlement to the clear blue skies. The native population chalked it up to another day of bombing practice. Most everyone cursed the Navy.

21.

COPACABANA HOTEL, HAVANA, CUBA.

Elizabeth sat finishing her second cup of coffee, watching the young reporter fiddle with his laptop. He removed the floppy disk and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. "I don't know if anyone will believe this," he said. "They sent me here to do a story on the long-range aftermath of the Pope's visit, not to write about Brave New World." She lit a cigarette. In the last few days, she had gone back to smoking again. Beatrice, she recalled, had smoked off and on and Peter had disapproved. Now whenever she lit up, she felt closer to them both. It was not a particularly rational feeling, but she didn't expect to feel rational for a good long while. "Then just hang on to it," she told the reporter. He was supposed to be a stringer for the New York Times and had the ID to prove it, but her reservoir of trust was running low these days. With his baby fat and watery blue eyes, he seemed too young to be employed by anyone but McDonald's. But people were looking younger and younger to her of late, and their voices were getting higher and more alike. Peter had pointed that out to her, or had it been Hans? "Apparently," she said, "the explosion at Vieques was a nonevent so far as the U.S. is concerned. They even bought me a ticket to Zurich." "See, that would worry me," the reporter said. She looked off toward the street and the blazing white facades of the apartment houses across from the hotel. "If anything happens to me, though, you've got that floppy. And my tissue sample. And if I do succeed in getting Mrs. Jance's remains-" "I wouldn't count on that, either. What you're telling me, they'll probably say she was vaporized." Elizabeth exhaled. "That doesn't make it true, does it?" He looked at her, and for a moment he didn't look so young. He looked sober and real. "You're taking quite a chance you know, pursuing this." "I loved them both very much."

"Did you? Excuse me for saying this, but they sound like monsters to me. "Monsters?"

"Intellectual giants, moral cretins."

He hadn't understood at all. Or he didn't believe a single word and thought she needed a rewrite. "They could have gone into hiding," she pointed out. "I tried to get them to do that. To live out the rest of their lives together." "Maybe they thought they owed G.o.d a death or two." "She didn't want him to die, I know that. She adored him." "Oh, right, and the rest was secondary. Everything she was involved in?" She pulled hard on her cigarette. "Have you ever been in love?" "Not really." he said with a casual shrug, as though she had just asked him if he had ever been to Afghanistan or had ever eaten tiramisu. "The thing is, you want it to last. And if you have the means to achieve that-" "-Ethics be d.a.m.ned," the reporter finished. He watched her crush out her cigarette and finally seemed to be aware of her irritation. "I'm sorry. I didn't know them. I wasn't there. I'm sure they were both good people, who just made some bad choices along the way, like the rest of us, only more so." He looked at his watch. "You gonna be okay?" "Bet on it," she said, signaling the waiter. "What are you going to do now?"

"Weigh my options."

"You know," he said helpfully, "Cindy Crawford majored in chemical engineering at Northwestern." "Is that a fact?"

"Yep. And Brooke Shields was magna c.u.m laude at Princeton." "I'm sure you're driving at something," she said. "You just seem so. . . knowledgeable. So intelligent." "Compared to what?" she said.

"Nothing. Never mind. I guess I'm just being... what?" "Geno-centric?" she suggested."Yeah, okay. Actually. stupid is the word I was looking for. Listen, is there anything else I can do for you?" She considered. "Does your computer have a modem?" "It sure does."Within minutes she was online to her own computer in St. Maurice. To her great joy. there was another message from Alex. She read it once, and then erased it."Thank you," she said, standing and shaking the reporter's hand. Then she went through the lobby to catch a cab to Jose Marti International Airport. The message, which she had memorized without effort, went around and around in her head.Subj:EndgameDate:99-03-30From:[email protected]:[email protected] lAccessCornpuServe.comJUST THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE TO KNOW, THE WEAPON ISWAY OVERAMPED. I FAKED ALL THE COMPUTER MODELS.HOPE THAT HELPS. HAVE A GOOD LIFE, YOU EARNED IT.MAYBE WE'LL MEET AGAIN SOME DAY.WHITE SANDS: SIX MONTHS LATERThe weapon had been finished in record time. With the Fountain Project closed down, extra funding for the Hammer had poured in. And Peter Jance's notes and computer files had all survived the explosion at Vieques, having been carefully archived by Alex Davies before his defection and then recovered upon his return. There were more than two hundred animals on the hillside, tethered and monitored, as well as Russian tanks captured during the Gulf War and other weapons being tested for resistance to a.s.sault. And more cameras than had witnessed the launching of Apollo 13. The weapon itself was small enough to fit on a modified Abrams a.s.sault tank, an astonishing reduction in bulk that delighted the development team in the cramped bunker. In addition to Alex, whose attendance was deemed essential by Henderson's successors, all of Peter's eager young acolytes-Hank Flannagan, Cap Chu and Rose-marie Wiener-were present. None had been near enough the medical facilities to suffer so much as a nosebleed from the explosion, although Flannagan, a born-again Christian, had been jolted out of bed and thought for a moment that the Second Coming was at hand. The wrangler, Perkins, was there as well, although he had come to hate the entire project with a pa.s.sion. He could only bear it because in two weeks he was leaving to begin studying veterinary science at Utah State University. He was looking forward to the many years he would spend saving animals rather than setting them up for incineration, but right now he needed these last two weeks to pay for tuition. Everyone braced for the countdown.On zero, the weapon fired and disappeared from the face of the earth. It self-destructed with such force that the blast doors of the bunker were blown ajar as $2.5 billion dollars worth of research and development was reduced to atoms. The cloud of hot gases was so intense that it shot heavenward, sucking an acre of dust and scrub brush along with it. Everyone in the bunker was blown off his or her feet by the impact, but the three-foot-thick walls managed to spare them their lives. n.o.body could remember exactly how long it took to regain their senses, but eventually they all staggered out into the desert glare. One entire side of the sky was blackened by the soaring cloud, which was now taking on the familiar mushroom shape of a nuclear detonation. Charred sagebrush, rocks and gla.s.sy chunks of fused sand poured down as the survivors huddled for protection under the overhang of the bunker. "Well I'll be dead and rained on," Perkins finally said. "Can't win em all," agreed Alex, nodding solemnly. He pointed off in the opposite direction from the smoking crater where the weapon had once been. There on the hillside were the animals' overturned cages, with snapped chains and pulled-up stakes. The creatures themselves were nothing more than a series of dots racing over the hill beyond. And to judge by their speed and their determination, these animals weren't going to be looking back to their human caretakers anytime soon. Alex thought that Elizabeth, Peter and Beatrice would have been pleased.