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75.
Linsey sat in the wrecked shop with Jim Robertson, both sipping coffee gone cold, when her cell phone warbled.
Nolan said: "You can come outside now. We're ready to go."
She and Jim heard the roar of a big engine as she helped Jim climb out over the debris. The engines weren't so much deafening as numbing. Wind whipped around her head. She squinted and grimaced, looking up. First she saw the mooring ropes hanging down at an angle. Then she saw the huge yellow letters on blue background: Goodyear. Then she saw the cabin underneath the blimp's enormous bulk and the man waving from the enclosed gondola. Three men, actually—a pilot, co-pilot, and Shaun Nolan. The blimp came down as low as the pilot dared on the street behind and below the bookstore—she gladly ran down a flight of stairs and ran to get on board. Immediately, the copilot slid the door shut and the pilot took her up with a roar, just as a half dozen men appeared fromnowhere—bearded, dirty, drugged, seeking a ride or some loot or just plain raising hell.
"I wanted to surprise you," Nolan said.
"How did you get this airship?" she squealed. She looked around at the compact but spacious interior with its passenger seats and a table for desk work.
"Louise got Goodyear to donate a resource to help me in my efforts to figure out the secret behind this mycoplague."
"We need to set Mr. Robertson down someplace where he can get home safely. We owe him a lot." They clambered inside and buckled up in comfortable, bus-like seats. When the doors closed, the noise was minimal.
"No problem," Nolan said. "How about the roof of UCSD Medical Center for now?"
"No," she said. "We need to get into El Cajon. Our solution is waiting there for us."
"Are you sure?" Nolan said, biting his lip. "I have major commitments elsewhere."
She explained quickly, and, at Nolan's nod, the pilot headed toward the East County.
Jim said excitedly: "Hey, I just remembered something. Paco's daughter, Maria, had a driver's license and I think he stayed with her."
"Bingo," Linsey said. "Let's get Louise on the horn, and have her check the DMV."
* * * *
Within a half hour the blimp hovered above a house in eastern El Cajon. Already, city police units had converged on the house. The blimp nosed down close enough to let Jim off on the flat roof of a neighborning bakery, where the owners—loud, friendly men with white hats and big mustaches and dark hair—helped him down the stairs and out of sight.
Nolan and Linsey met an El Cajon police detective named Cordoba—heavyset, graying, wearing a suit, lots of acne scars under a short black mustache—who escorted them into the house. Fire Department units stood around, along with little cars from all sorts of strange agencies. "At first I thought it was a drug place, maybe a meth lab, but the signs are all wrong." People in hazmat suits came along, bringing suits for Nolan and Linsey to wear. She wasn't surprised to find hers claustrophobic and sweaty, from the plastic booties up to the bubble helmet. Cordoba also donned one.
They entered empty, cold rooms where people (Paco, Marie) had once lived and were never coming back. There was a haunted loneliness about the dark rooms and hallways. People looking like spacemen shuffled about looking at things or carrying objects. The house was plain, but spacious. "In the garage," Cordoba said, showing them ahead with a wave of the hand. Linsey stepped into a cool, dry garage whose walls and floors were stacked with carefully sealed, clean 2-liter plastic soda bottles. "That's no cola drink in there," Cordoba said. "Don't touch anything!"
"That's it," Linsey said. She felt Nolan's excited grip on her arm as they watched spores filling the bottles like fine powder.
"The Defensor," Nolan said. "Your premise was right. Paco wasn't just here to look and wait. He was actively culturing the small sample he brought with him. It will take a few days to get a huge amount going. There is enough here to start cultivating—why, I bet we can be spraying counter-fungus within hours. I know how to grow this stuff!"
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