He watched the six o'clock news very carefully every night now. The men who had attempted the coup in India had been branded "outside agitators" and shot. The police were still looking for the person or persons who had blown a power station in Laramie, Wyoming, yesterday. The Supreme Court had decided 6 – 3 that known homosexuals could not be fired from civil service jobs. And for the first time, there had been a whisper of other things.
AEC officials in Miller County, Arkansas, had denied there was any chance of a reactor meltdown. The atomic power plant in the small town of Fouke, about thirty miles from the Texas border, had been plagued with minor circuitry problems in the equipment that controlled the pile's cooling cycle, but there was no cause for alarm. The army units in that area were merely a precautionary measure. Stu wondered what precautions the army could take if the Fouke reactor did indeed go China Syndrome. He thought the army might be in southwestern Arkansas for other reasons altogether. Fouke wasn't all that far from Arnette.
Another item reported that an East Coast flu epidemic seemed to be in the early stages-the Russian strain, nothing to really worry about except for the very old and the very young. A tired New York City doctor was interviewed in a hallway of Brooklyn's Mercy Hospital. He said the flu was exceptionally tenacious for Russian-A, and he urged viewers to get flu boosters. Then he suddenly started to say something else, but the sound cut off and you could only see his lips moving. The picture cut back to the newscaster in the studio, who said: "There have been some reported deaths in New York as a result of this latest flu outbreak, but contributing causes such as urban pollution and perhaps even the AIDS virus have been present in many of those fatal cases. Government health officials emphasize that this is Russian-A flu, not the more dangerous Swine flu. In the meantime, old advice is good advice, the doctors say: stay in bed, get lots of rest, drink fluids, and take aspirin for the fever."
The newscaster smiled reassuringly … and off-camera, someone sneezed.
The sun was touching the horizon now, tinting it a gold that would turn to red and fading orange soon. The nights were the worst. They had flown him to a part of the country that was alien to him, and it was somehow more alien at night. In this early summer season the amount of green he could see from his window seemed abnormal, excessive, a little scary. He had no friends; as far as he knew all the people who had been on the plane with him when it flew from Braintree to Atlanta were now dead. He was surrounded by automatons who took his blood at gunpoint. He was afraid for his life, although he still felt fine and had begun to believe he wasn't going to catch It, whatever It was.
Thoughtfully, Stu wondered if it would be possible to escape from here.
Chapter 22
When Creighton came in on June 24, he found Starkey looking at the monitors, his hands behind his back. He could see the old man's West Point ring glittering on his right hand, and he felt a wave of pity for him. Starkey had been cruising on pills for ten days, and he was close to the inevitable crash. But, Creighton thought, if his suspicion about the phone call was correct, the real crash had already occurred.
"Len," Starkey said, as if surprised. "Good of you to come in."
"De nada," Creighton said with a slight smile.
"You know who that was on the phone."
"It was really him, then?"
"The President, yes. I've been relieved. The dirty alderman relieved me, Len. Of course I knew it was coming. But it still hurts. Hurts like hell. It hurts coming from that grinning, gladhanding sack of shit."
Len Creighton nodded.
"Well," Starkey said, passing a hand over his face. "It's done. Can't be undone. You're in charge now. He wants you in Washington as soon as you can get there. He'll have you on the carpet and he'll chew your ass to a bloody rag, but you just stand there and yessir him and take it. We've salvaged what we can. It's enough. I'm convinced it's enough."
"If so, this country ought to get down on its knees to you."
"The throttle burned my hand, but I … I held it as long as I could, Len. I held it." He spoke with quiet vehemence, but his eyes wandered back to the monitor, and for a moment his mouth quivered infirmly. "I couldn't have done it without you."
"Well … we go back a country mile or three, Billy, don't we?"
"You can say that again, soldier. Now-listen. One thing is top priority. You've got to see Jack Cleveland, first chance you get. He knows who we've got behind both curtains, iron and bamboo. He knows how to get in touch with them, and he won't stick at what has to be done. He'll know it'll have to be quick."
"I don't understand, Billy."
"We have to assume the worst," Starkey said, and a queer grin came over his face. It lifted his upper lip and made it wrinkle like the snout of a dog protecting a farmyard. He pointed a finger at the sheets of yellow flimsy on the table. "It's out of control now. It's popped up in Oregon, Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida. Tentative cases in Mexico and Chile. When we lost Atlanta, we lost the three men best equipped to deal with the problem. We're getting exactly nowhere with Mr. Stuart ‘Prince' Redman. Did you know they actually injected him with the Blue virus? He thought it was a sedative. He killed it, and no one has the slightest idea how. If we had six weeks, we might be able to turn the trick. But, we don't. The flu story is the best one, but it is imperative-imperative -that the other side never sees this as an artificial situation created in America. It might give them ideas.
"Cleveland has between eight and twenty men and women in the U.S.S.R. and between five and ten in each of the European satellite countries. Not even I know how many he has in Red China." Starkey's mouth was trembling again. "When you see Cleveland this afternoon, all you need tell him is Rome falls. You won't forget?"
"No," Len said. His-lips felt curiously cold. "But do you really expect that they'll do it? Those men and women?"
"Our people got those vials one week ago. They believe they contain radioactive particles to be charted by our Sky-Cruise satellites. That's all they need to know, isn't it, Len?"
"Yes, Billy."
"And if things do go from bad to … to worse, no one will ever know. Project Blue was uninfiltrated to the very end, we're sure of that. A new virus, a mutation … our opposite numbers may suspect, but there won't be time enough. Share and share alike, Len."
"Yes."
Starkey was looking at the monitors again. "My daughter gave me a book of poems some years ago. By a man named Yeets. She said every military man should read Yeets. I think it was her idea of a joke. You ever heard of Yeets, Len?"
"I think so," Creighton said, considering and rejecting the idea of telling Starkey the man's name was pronounced Yates.
"I read every line," Starkey said, as he peered into the eternal silence of the cafeteria. "Mostly because she thought I wouldn't. It's a mistake to become too predictable. I didn't understand much of it-I believe the man must have been crazy-but I read it. Funny poetry. Didn't always rhyme. But there was one poem in that book that I've never been able to get out of my mind. It seemed as if that man was describing everything I dedicated my life to, its hopelessness, its damned nobility. He said that things fall apart. He said the center doesn't hold. I believe he meant that things get flaky, Len. That's what I believe he meant. Yeets knew that sooner or later things get goddam flaky around the edges even if he didn't know anything else."
"Yes, sir," Creighton said quietly.
"The end of it gave me goosebumps the first time I read it, and it still does. I've got that part by heart. ‘What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'"
Creighton stood silent. He had nothing to say.
"The beast is on its way," Starkey said, turning around. He was weeping and grinning. "It's on its way, and it's a good deal rougher than that fellow Yeets ever could have imagined. Things are falling apart. The job is to hold as much as we can for as long as we can."
"Yes, sir," Creighton said, and for the first time he felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. "Yes, Billy."
Starkey put out his hand and Creighton took it in both of his own. Starkey's hand was old and cold, like the shed skin of a snake in which some small prairie animal has died, leaving its own fragile skeleton within the husk of the reptile. Tears overspilled the lower arcs of Starkey's eyes and ran down his meticulously shaved cheeks.
"I have business to attend to," Starkey said.
"Yes, sir."
Starkey slipped his West Point ring off his right hand and his wedding band off his left. "For Cindy," he said. "For my daughter. See that she gets them, Len."
"I will."
Starkey went to the door.
"Billy?" Len Creighton called after him.
Starkey turned.
Creighton stood ramrod straight, the tears still running down his own cheeks. He saluted.
Starkey returned it and then stepped out the door.