Pandemic Page 134

She’d handled that videoconference all wrong. She’d confronted the president with the harsh realities of life, had been unable to ignore Blackmon’s superst.i.tious, primitive tripe. Margaret should have pandered from the get-go, told Blackmon what the woman wanted to hear — anything to get an invitation to the White House. Margaret’s rage had got the better of her, made her lose focus.

She could have gotten close enough to murder the president of the United States. Yes, Margaret would be killed in the process, but the act would further cripple America’s ability to respond. A missed opportunity. Hopefully another of her kind, another leader, would figure out a way to get next to the president.

America would fall.

Then, the world.

If the opportunity came again, Margaret would seize it. For now, she worked on understanding G.o.d’s plan, understanding the role of each caste.

The large, yellowish bipeds: that’s what came out of the coc.o.o.ns. The complete restructuring of an adult human body, creating a caste made to terrify, to destroy, to kill — a soldier joining the ranks of the hatchlings, puff-b.a.l.l.s, kissyfaces and leaders.

But without the Orbital, how would all these strains find each other? How could they work together?

The answer could be some kind of quorum sensing, the method hive insects, bacteria, and other nonintelligent life forms used to make what appeared to be conscious, intelligent choices: a bee colony “deciding” when to split into two smaller colonies and where to build the new nests; ants “deciding” how to best react to a threat; bacteria “deciding” to turn genes on or off based on population density. Chemical and physical cues led many individual organisms to act as a larger whole. The Converted clearly had a way of detecting one another and quickly forming cohesive units.

Maybe the crawlers provided a capacity to identify friend from foe. The best scientists in the world still hadn’t figured out how the Orbital had communicated in real time to hundreds of infected individuals. That ability defied physics, yet she had seen it with her own eyes. If the Orbital could do that, it was reasonable it could also make a “Spidey sense” that let the infected know when they were near their kind.

Scent — could the explanation be that simple? A chemical on the host’s breath, or exuded through his skin. Crawlers modified the host’s brain: perhaps they adjusted the olfactory response, letting the Converted identify one another by smell alone. Maybe that was how Candice Walker had survived as long as she did. If this scent was a by-product of the cellulose, the Converted on the Los Angeles might have thought she was one of them, giving her more time to react, to plan.

Walker … now that Margaret understood a true G.o.d existed and guided its followers, she could only think of Walker in terms of another kind of religious figure.

Candice Walker had been the Antichrist.

The other patients from the HAC trial could also be Antichrists, the bringers of a plague that would wipe out Margaret’s kind.

That was humanity’s only hope, because without the hydras it was already over. The math didn’t lie. She’d seen the numbers: millions of infected, millions of Converted. The exponential shift was already underway. In two weeks — three at the most — humans would be reduced to isolated groups, groups that couldn’t trust one another because any one of them might be the enemy.

In four weeks, humans would be outnumbered.

In five weeks, maybe six, the only human survivors would be individuals hiding in the woods and mountains, living off the land.

And to think she’d been upset that she’d lost the hydra samples when evacuating the Carl Brashear.

Yes, G.o.d did work in mysterious ways …

She was more than willing to sacrifice herself if it sped up the change, if it brought the Converted to power. But if she was still alive when that change happened? Then she could start taking control. She would gather the most brilliant of her kind — the engineers, the physicists, the astronomers — organize them, figure out how to rebuild industry, how to create a civilization with one, unified goal:

Building more Orbitals, and sending them out into the galaxy.

THE EMPEROR

Steve Stanton’s pencil was a blur as he finished writing his message. He handed the piece of paper to General Brownstone.

“Get that to the people.”

She saluted. “Right away, Emperor!”

Dana Brownstone was a retired four-star general who had once run the U.S. Army Materiel Command. She was smart: a leader, just like him. Steve had big plans for her. She had already organized distribution of cell phones and weapons, created a detailed message-flow structure that improved Steve’s ability to control over two hundred thousand Converted spread throughout the greater Chicago area.

Brownstone handed the paper to a runner.

“Make a hundred copies of that,” she said. “Pa.s.s ten copies each to the primary level of cell leaders, have them pa.s.s it down to their sub-tens. Go.”

The runner took off down the Inst.i.tute of Art’s wide steps. Steve would have to change locations soon. Too long in one spot made him a potential target for bombers, helicopters, or even inoculated commandos that might drop in.

Elsewhere in America, other leaders — who didn’t seem to have Steve’s special brand of foresight — were organizing large groups that destroyed everything they could find. The leaders who used the Internet for these “activist” calls to action were opening themselves up to the government’s sniffer programs and computer a.n.a.lysts. Might as well put up a big, neon sign that said ENEMY OF THE STATE! DROP BOMBS HERE.