"You have reached the offices of Mogul Research Associates. The offices are now closed. If you know your party's extension, please enter it now and we will transfer you…"
"… You have reached the office of Dr. Alice Langhorne. Please leave a message after the beep."
"Alice, pick up. It's Chandra Stevens."
"Chandra-what is it?"
"Sorry to call you so late, but I thought you should know we just got the first test results back."
"Go ahead-I'm listening."
"They're positive."
"Which ones?"
"All of them."
"Even-?"
"Yes. It's definitely in the environment, and spreading. You were right. We're gonna have to call in the CDC before someone else does."
"Now slow down. First, you know as well as I do that it's benign-Benign by Design, remember? Second, it has a limited number of generations. It can't replicate forever, and its biological half-life is only a few more months. It will inevitably deteriorate."
"But not before it contaminates the entire biosphere. Which it will soon if it's already in the water table, colonizing iron-and if it's already in us."
"I think we have to accept that there's nothing we or anyone else can do to prevent that."
"We can go to the CDC."
"What good would that do? Just cause a big investigation and a lot of hand-wringing. It won't change anything. Ultimately, this thing just has to run itself out."
"You have reached the home of Dr. Uri Miska. Dr. Miska is not available right now to take your call, but if you leave your name and number, he will get…"
"Hello?"
"Dr. Miska, it's me."
"Hello, Alice. What a pleasant surprise. I was just dozing on the couch, watching Ron Popeil demonstrate his rotisserie oven and chanting 'Set It and Forget It' with the studio audience. It was like a sutra. If you're ever suffering from stress-based insomnia, I recommend it."
"I will, Professor. But Dr. Stevens just called me with some disturbing information, and I thought you should know right away."
"Okay, but first let me tell you my theory of infomercials. Here it is, the secret: You know why infomercials are so pleasant to watch? Why they draw you in? Because there are no commercials!"
"That's good, thank you, but please listen: The ASR has escaped. Multiple independent field tests have confirmed it's in ferrous subsoil and spreading like wildfire through groundwater."
"Any idea how the agent could have been released?"
"Not yet. At the moment we're playing catch-up."
"Your people haven't spoken to anyone else about this? The press? The CDC?"
"No."
"That's good. Don't. Because how we deal with this now will entirely determine its public importance. Do you remember the hullabaloo about genetically modified corn finding its way into the marketplace? No one else does, either. Realistically, this a nonproblem, an arcane scientific event of no interest to anyone, which has been anticipated with adequate safeguards. Of course we will track its progress, but I am sure it will eventually resolve itself if we just don't make a mountain out of a mole-hill, yes?"
"That's what I explained to Dr. Stevens."
"Wonderful. Beautiful. So what are you doing calling my house in the middle of the night? Is this an emergency?"
"No. Sorry to bother you, Professor."
"That's all right, that's all right. It's not the end of the world." -Transcript #874-7732, The Maenad Project El Dopa stood on the plunging bridge of his command yacht, a forty-eight-foot Chris Craft Roamer with an aluminum hull and all-mahogany interiors, and surveyed his armada.
Surrounding him were sixty other vessels, the major portion of which was a fleet of thirty-six Williard 10M Utility Boats, taken from the Navy yard in Mobile. These were sturdy open boats, packed to the beams with an assault force of nearly a thousand heavily armed and armored Reapers, all hunkered under tarps. The rest of the convoy, acting as a screen, was an assortment of Coast Guard cutters, various trawlers and pleasure cruisers, four amphibious trucks, two tugs, and a host of smaller craft. They were all flying white flags.
Under cover of heavy smoke from the gutted crane barge, this armada streamed from the mouth of the Seekonk River and banked right, facing the sunset. The uppermost reach of Narragansett Bay spread out before them, bright as a sea of new pennies. To the right was downtown Providence; to the left, tank farms and freight terminals, then the long passage to the Atlantic.
Dominating the view was an ominous black silhouette: the submarine. There was certainly no missing it, that long steel island with its winged tower rising above like a gigantic headstone.
As they neared it, a voice squawked from loudspeakers on the lead Coast Guard vessel: