"At the start, there would have been just one," Rebecca said, mostly to herself. "A small cloud of mist rising out of a test tube or a gla.s.s flask. Thickening. Growing. Maybe it was late at night. Maybe no one was there to see. Then, in the mist, a macrophage grew, and it waited. It waited for a pathogen. Maybe it was a night watchman or maybe a scientist working late."

She paused, and stared out the window for a while.

"And those cells became a resource. Food, if you like. And with them, the fog grew, and then maybe there were two of the macrophages. And the fog spread, creeping along corridors and under doorways, finding its next target, and then there were three or four of the creatures. By the morning, the mist covered the island and the people were gone."

"Don't think about it," Fatboy said. "It's upsetting you."

It wasn't just Rebecca it was upsetting.

Rebecca ignored him and continued, "Then the fog reached Whangarei, wiping out a few scattered farmhouses and small towns on the way. And there were fifty thousand people. Fifty thousand germs to be disinfected."

"What is she talking about?" Private Shaw was getting nervous.

Rebecca said, "It's going to reach Auckland soon, and most of a million people will still be here, and it will use their cells to grow. And it will grow. If fifty thousand people makes a fog several miles wide, then how much fog will a million human bodies make?"

"Rebecca, stop it now!" Fatboy said.

"Rebecca," Tane said.

She closed her eyes and shook her head gently. "Sorry, guys. Long day."

"A long, strange day," Fatboy agreed.

Tane said, "Crowe and the rest of those scientists know what they are doing. They don't think we are a disease, and I don't either."

Rebecca lapsed into a strange, moody silence and said nothing more.

"What about the Chronophone?" Tane asked.

They still had to install the device, currently cradled on Tane's lap.

"We'll do it later," Fatboy said. "It'll be easier to get into the city on the bike; we can just cut through all the traffic."

A radio beeped, and Private Shaw held it to her ear, giving their location and direction to someone on the other end before pulling over and stopping.

"What are you...?" Fatboy began to ask, but his question was answered as another Land Rover appeared behind them, headlights flashing.

Big "Mandy" Manderson got out of the other vehicle. He was grinning widely. They got out to meet him.

"Managed to commandeer a vehicle," he said. "Got some good news for you."

"Really?" Rebecca said sardonically, understandably, considering the circ.u.mstances.

"In times like these, any good news is a blessing," Manderson said.

There was a movement behind him, and a small brown bundle clambered out through the pa.s.senger window, chattering and waving its hairy little arms.

"Xena!" Rebecca cried as the chimp ran across and leaped up at her.

"Just wandered out of the mist about twenty minutes ago," Manderson said. "G.o.d knows how she found her way back down through the hotel in the fog. Must have followed the main road south. Just pure luck, I guess."

Maybe, Tane thought, but animals had a strange instinct sometimes.

Rebecca hugged the chimp like a long-lost daughter, and Xena hugged her back.

"Hi, Xena," Tane said. She screeched joyfully at him, and he found himself strangely pleased to see the happy little chimp again.

"Please say thanks to Dr. Crowe for us," Rebecca said as Manderson climbed back in the Land Rover.

He smiled, and said, "Stony is a bit busy at the moment."

"You didn't tell him, did you." It was a statement, not a question.

Manderson smiled again and shook his head. Rebecca walked over before he could pull away, leaned in the window, and kissed him on the forehead, just below that unruly mop of curls.

"Thanks, Mandy," she said. "Is there any way of reaching you, if we need to? All the phone systems are out."

He reached into the rear of the vehicle and handed her a portable radio. "It's already set to the right frequency," he said. "Just holler if you need anything."

"I think you'll be too busy to worry about us." Rebecca smiled.

"You take care now," he said. "Go and hide somewhere nice and deep in that little submarine of yours."

Rebecca hugged Xena tightly as Manderson headed back up the motorway. Toward Albany.

Toward the fog.

KAITIAKITANGA Private Shaw deposited them on the red gravel driveway of the house nestled into the bush, and said goodbye with a regulation wave. the red gravel driveway of the house nestled into the bush, and said goodbye with a regulation wave.

Tane wondered where she was going to and hoped it was south, away from the fog.

The house was silent. The enveloping trees blocked the dwindling light of the fading sun, spreading longer finger-like shadows across the weatherboards and giving it a forlorn, moody appearance.

A note on the front door explained the silence. Gone to Waitakere Marae. Gone to Waitakere Marae.

Like many others, his dad and mum had sought a place of refuge in uncertain times.

"I'll get the car." Tane unlocked the front door and opened the garage door for the others to enter. His mum's car, a bright red Volkswagen, occupied the left of the garage. There was a larger s.p.a.ce for his dad's Jeep, but it was not there.

The spare keys to the VW were on the hook inside the pantry, and Tane tossed them to Fatboy.

Rebecca sat silently in the back, playing hand games with Xena.

"Do you think that Crowe and his men, and the army, will be able to hold back the fog?" Tane eventually asked the question that was on all of their minds.

"They don't know how," Rebecca answered, and there was something about the way she said it that made Tane turn around and look closely at her for a moment.

"Do you?" he asked.

Rebecca didn't answer, but she didn't deny it.

"Rebecca," Fatboy said gently, "is there a way to stop the antibodies? To defeat the macrophages?"

"I don't know," Rebecca said, shaking her head. "It's just something that was in one of the messages. I'm not sure."

"What!" Tane was flabbergasted. Xena put her hands over her eyes and peeked out from between her fingers.

Tane desperately tried to remember the content of the last message. Or was it something in an earlier message, one that they had failed to decipher?

Fatboy said, "Rebecca, try to remember. You are talking about the lives of hundreds of thousands, millions, maybe billions of people."

She was silent. Fatboy and Tane looked at each other in growing concern.

"Come on, Rebecca," Tane said lightly. "Let's be heroes and save the world!"

She just said, with a weariness that filled the small car around them like a black shroud, "I think the world is doing a pretty good job of saving itself at the moment."

She said no more after that.

They came down out of the mountains and headed south toward the Marae.

The road they were traveling had been the scene of a battle. The aftermath was everywhere. A battle of desperate people, trying to force their way along one of the main feeder roads to the Northwestern Motorway. Earlier in the day, this road must have been jammed solid with cars. Broken-down or fuelless vehicles were shunted haphazardly onto the verges. A few sat in the center of the road, and they had to drive carefully around them. Most showed signs of damage.

When Rebecca finally spoke again, it was to say, "I'm hungry."

Tane realized then that they hadn't eaten all day.

"Want a Big Mac?" he asked, seeing a McDonald's sign ahead of them and trying to be funny.

She just sighed tiredly and said, "It won't be open."

Of course it wouldn't be open. That was the point of his joke, which didn't seem at all funny now.

The light was on, the great golden M M glowing like an ancient tribal beacon down the road before them. The crew must have left in a hurry and forgotten to turn the sign off. There was no way it was going to be open. glowing like an ancient tribal beacon down the road before them. The crew must have left in a hurry and forgotten to turn the sign off. There was no way it was going to be open.

It was open.

With an expression of disbelief, Fatboy pulled into the drive-through.

"Can I please take your order?" a bright young girl in a blue McDonald's uniform asked from behind the small window.

"A Big Mac," Fatboy said cautiously. "Two Big Macs. Combos. What are you having, Tane?"

"Same same."

"Make that three."

"Certainly, sir," the girl said cheerfully. Her tag said her name was Helen. "Would you like to upsize those to a super-combo?"

Fatboy stared blankly at her for a moment. "All right," he said.

She took his offered money and said, "Please drive on to the next window."

The young man at the next window handed them their food, and as they pulled out, Tane and Fatboy looked at each other in amazement.

The whole transaction had been so utterly commonplace that for a moment Tane wondered if he was dreaming the rest of it all, the fog, the antibodies, and that the normalcy, the insanity insanity of the fast-food outlet was really the reality, in an insane world. of the fast-food outlet was really the reality, in an insane world.

But they pa.s.sed a number of boarded-up houses, eyes peering suspiciously out at them through gaps in the planks, and the nightmare proved to be real once again.

The world is doing a pretty good job of saving itself.

Even in these strangest and most desperate of times, some Maori protocol was observed. As a pakeha-a non-Maori-Rebecca needed permission from the tribal elders to enter the sacred ground of the Maori meeting ground. That duly came, although they dispensed with the traditional welcome. There was some discussion over Xena, but she, also, was eventually allowed to trot along beside Rebecca, holding her hand.

His father and mother were in the big meeting hall along with at least a hundred others of the tribe. Tane was acutely aware that Rebecca was the only pakeha there.

It was a tall, timbered, high-roofed hall, lined with traditional carvings, representations of their ancestors. It was dim inside, even under normal circ.u.mstances, but now the meager light of the white-hatted electric bulbs scattered around the ceiling was swallowed up by the black plastic sheeting that was taped around each of the windows.

It might stop the fog, Tane thought, but it wouldn't stop them. them.

His mother screamed when she saw them. A mixture of fear, delight, and relief. She hugged Tane, and his father hugged Fatboy just as fiercely. Then she hugged Fatboy and Tane's father embraced him. Both his parents were crying and trying to talk about visits from the police and the fog all at once. Then his mother hugged Rebecca, and after an initial hesitation Rebecca's arms crept around his mother and held on tightly for a surprisingly long time.

Xena scrambled over to a chair at the side of the hall. A group of children surrounded her, laughing and playing with her.

After a few moments, the outpouring of emotion started to get a bit uncomfortable for Tane, but it was still another ten minutes before he could get a word in.

Rebecca joined them then, and his dad made a small circle of chairs at one end of the hall for them to sit in.

The others ignored them, lost in their own soft conversations and dramas.

Over the next hour, as the twilight dripped away into darkness, they told his father and mother everything. They started with Lake Sunnyvale and left out nothing of importance up to their trip home with Private Shaw.

There was silence for a long while after that. The light from the bulbs skimmed across the faces of the carvings cleaving deep shadows out of the somber expressions.

Fatboy and Tane knew not to speak, and Rebecca seemed to have nothing to say.

His dad drew in a long slow breath after a while and looked deeply into each of their eyes in turn.