Lifeline

“Then a wild card was played and blew the game all to hell. A terrorist built a crude nuclear device and detonated it in an apartment building less than two miles from the White House. The weapon barely worked, but he still wiped out a good section of urban Washington and contaminated a portion of Maryland and Virginia. Both the president and the vice president were killed in the blast.

“But that’s not all of it. In his transmission just before the detonation, the terrorist claimed to be doing this to free the world from … let’s see,” Tomkins flipped through screen after screen until he froze on a transcript. “‘From American democratic oppression, to pave the way for a peaceful and equal communist world.’”

McLaris stared at the picture of ground zero.

“Who knows if the Soviets put the terrorist up to that or not? It sounds stupid to me. It seems more likely that some Third World country backed him, just to implicate the Soviets.”

The chief administrator shrugged. “As you can probably guess, the first things shot down were the Earth-orbiting stations. Since nobody knew which ones contained weapons, every Soviet ‘research station,’ every U.S. spacelab module and shuttle, the ESA space station, the Heinlein, even most of the big communications satellites—all went down.”

McLaris thought about the Soviet station sharing the L-5 point with Orbitech 1. “What about the Kibalchich? We haven’t heard anything from them.”

“As far as we can tell, they played no active part in the War, but the L-5 colonies are too far away to be in a strategic position. Your own colony would have been the prime target if they did have any weapons, I suppose. But we haven’t received any word from them except to keep the hell away. They aren’t participating in ConComm with the rest of the colonies.”

Tomkins looked pensive again. “We are now citizens of Clavius Base and will likely die here. The old political boundaries were wiped out in the nuclear exchange.” He blanked the holotank.

“We don’t know the current situation on Earth. Most of its communications capability is gone. We’ve got a few reports from amateurs, other broadcasts we picked up from scattered sources, but the puzzle has plenty of pieces missing. Even though it was only a limited exchange, we think the War may cause the deaths of about sixty percent of Earth’s population—that includes indirect deaths from long-term fallout. There’s no way to guess the fatalities that’ll result from starvation, lack of medical care, and housing.

“We can be certain the industrial base is effectively gone. All manufacturing has been knocked to its knees, and what’s left will no doubt be used exclusively for survival of the remaining people. The Earth has been knocked back into the nineteenth century: no electricity, clean drinking water, sewage treatment, or local communications.”

The chief administrator squeezed McLaris’s shoulder with a massive hand. “You realized it before anyone else, Duncan. You knew it immediately. Earth can’t possibly afford the technological effort to come up and rescue us. And with all those casualties in the War, how can the people left down there worry about a few thousand of us left stranded in space? No, our numbers are already written in their books. We’re on our own.” Tomkins bumped his plastic teacup, knocking it over. He scrambled to pick it up, but the cup was empty anyway.

In his mind, McLaris ran over the scenario. It wasn’t a role-playing game, it wasn’t a newsreel from World War II—it had actually happened to him, to everyone. Diane had been down there, in the middle of it.

He felt his calm expression melt away like candle wax, and he jerked his head around so that Tomkins would not see. Under the table he clenched his fist, trying to squeeze out some of his tension.

Orbitech 1 had discarded 10 percent of its people.

After an awkward pause Tomkins stood up. “Why don’t you get some more rest? After you’re all healed, come back to me. I’ve got some things you can help me with.”

The two men shook hands again before McLaris turned to leave. His slippers scritched on the polished floor as he shuffled back down the corridors toward the infirmary.

Chapter 15

ORBITECH 1—Day 12

He had always considered himself a benevolent director.

He cared for the people on Orbitech 1. Roha Ombalal went to see them; he listened to their concerns; he wanted them to think of him as a gentle leader, a “papa” for them all.

For more than a full day, though, he had isolated himself in his quarters, shivering, having nightmares about the reduction in force. He made sure his porthole remained sealed, terrified that accusing corpses would drift by and stare at him through the quartz. He kept seeing a finger—Brahms’s finger, but it might as well have been his own—pushing the explosive release button, over and over again.