Plague Town

Devon only had one question for Julia. "How?"

Julia stared through the gear channel at Uly. She’d lifted the basic vitals from his gear--heartbeat, blood pressure, temperature, some brain wave measurements--and the boy was holding steady. But he was definitely sick. "I don’t know, Devon," she said. "Are you sure--?"

"He started talking about some sheets of mine that he ruined when he was younger."

"Children have much more vivid and selective memories--"

"He was three."

All right, then. "I’ll send somebody over for a blood sample as soon as I can. We’ll figure this out."

"You’re not coming yourself?"

"I know you’re worried, but right now my priority has to be the Syndrome children. We need to test them immediately and put them all in quarantine." Devon opened her mouth, and Julia cut her off. "Uly has the resources to fight this. They don’t."

The other woman pressed her lips together. "What about the vaccine?" She knew Julia no longer had the raw materials, though not why.

"I took some blood from Danziger and Baines and it’s running through the analyzers now. I should have the chemical structure soon." The challenge, of course, would be getting the station-origin synthesizers to reconstruct the indigenous organic compounds. But Julia didn’t add that. It was hardly what Devon needed to hear at the moment.

Half an hour later, she’d tested every advancer except Devon for the virus. None of them had it, and furthermore, all of them had adequate levels of the vaccine in their blood streams.

Just Uly, she thought, downloading the DNA profile into blood-testing gloves. Why?

She looked up, taking a quick breath. "Can you help me? I need you to test the medical staff."

Walman, who was closest to her, reached out for a blood-testing glove without a word.

True said, "Me, too," and when both her father and Julia protested, she turned a mulish face to them and said, "I want to help."

Julia did succeed in sending Bess away, flatly refusing to expose her unborn child to the virus. Bess looked frustrated, but went when Morgan begged her.

She hadn’t expected Alonzo to help. They hadn’t spoken since she’d left their room the night before. But he picked up a glove without hesitation. "How does this thing work anyway?" he asked her.

She showed him the simple mechanism, the light that flashed green for clean and red for infected. She could feel the weight of many eyes on them.

When he made to turn away, she said, "Alonzo. Thank you."

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "You need me. I’m not about to bail when you need me."

She thought, If only that were true.

As they tested the staff from the hospital and sent the clean ones back in, off-duty staff came trickling in, sleepy and annoyed. Both drowsiness and annoyance lifted somewhat when they heard the details, and soon the advancers were surrounded by people waiting to be tested. The few doctors she’d been able to rouse were incredulous and insisted on waiting for Miguel, although Dr. Krantz asked to see her records of the virus from the last time.

Miguel showed up about ten minutes later. "Julia," he said sharply. "What’s all this?"

McDonald was on his heels. Unlike him, she looked around, her sharp eyes sweeping across the milling, whispering nurses and techs.

Julia held up one finger and finished giving her instructions to the nurses going back inside. When she was done, she turned. "Miguel, I need you to call all the doctors and alert them to a possible epidemic. I also need--"

"Are those non-medical personnel administering blood tests?" McDonald asked, her voice betraying nothing more than mild curiosity.

"Yes," Julia said absently. "I need Baxter, Collins, Argwal--"

Miguel sputtered, "You set non-medical--"

"I had to, they’re vaccinated. Argwal, Chang, Krantz--"

"On what authority?"

She stopped short. "The authority of the doctor on duty," she said. "Ryan McNab and Uly Adair have both come down with a viral infection which--"

"You called out all staff for a viral infection?"

"It’s--"

"Go back to bed!" he roared at the line of nurses. They turned sleepy, uncomprehending faces from Julia to Miguel and back again. The advancers looked only at Julia. She nodded, and Danziger reached for the next person in line.

"Didn’t you hear me? Go back to bed!"

A few people made to turn back to the dormitories, but Julia snarled, "Don’t go anywhere!"

Someone had turned on the lumalights around the square. The salt-smelling night breeze set them swinging, making shadows dance nightmarishly.

Miguel took a step toward her, looming in the uncertain light. "You’re a year out of medical school and you think you can diagnose an epidemic, call out all the nurses and doctors on a whim, and incite panic for no good reason? Dr. Heller, you’ll be lucky if you can so much as pick up a band-aid after this!"

Julia almost didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so cold and hard. "Dr. Vasquez. You may be the expert on the Syndrome, but as far as this planet is concerned, I am the shankin’ senior physician, and I will not allow you to let people die because your sense of hierarchy is offended!" She discovered she was screaming, and stopped to draw breath and force her voice into steadiness. "Now this is a highly contagious neurological virus, one which killed at least five members of the advance crew, one which most certainly isn’t programmed into the sterilizers or immunosuits."

Julia found that she was surrounded by the advancers, grouped protectively around and behind her. Their shadows spilled long and dark over Miguel, McDonald, and the line of nurses. It gave her courage, and she said coldly, "If you’re not going to use your authority to make a general emergency announcement, then I will personally go knocking on doors until the situation has been explained to everybody in New Pacifica."

He stared at her for several seconds, then looked away. He said, "McDonald. Tell your nurses to go back to bed."

Julia’s breath trickled out of her in a long, defeated exhale. Without the nurses, she was screwed. New Pacifica was screwed. The techs would follow the nurses, and all she would have in these critical first hours would be her advancers, who as willing as they were, weren’t medically trained and only had two hands each--

McDonald stepped forward and held out her hand, palm up.

Julia stared at it blankly.

McDonald said, "Dr. Heller? The blood test, please."

Her body reacted before her mind caught up. She took McDonald’s hand, pricked the pad of her index finger, and turned her hand over to read the display. "You’re clean," she said.

"Good," McDonald returned. "We have a lot of work to do." She stepped away slightly, putting her hands on her stocky hips. "All right, people, this is a full quarantine situation. Anyone who’s tested clean, in there, on the double. The rest of you, get tested. Now."

All the nurses who’d been hovering, uncertain, took off like loosed greyhounds. McDonald followed them. As she passed Julia, she murmured, so low that Julia could barely hear, "What took you so long, doctor?"

Miguel stood, still in the wavering shadows, looking about as stunned as Julia felt. She’d always thought that McDonald was slavishly devoted to her boss. Now it looked as if the head nurse had made up her own mind, thank you very much.

Miguel said, in a voice that tried to be as firm as it had been before, but came out oddly hollow, "Dr. Heller--"

She said, "If you want my data on this disease, it’s available. It always has been. I’ve seen this before. It’s nasty, and worse, unpredictable. We need to stem it now, and for that we need every doctor in town."

He looked away first. "I want to examine the McNab boy."

"By all means. But make the call first."

Reluctantly, he reached up and flipped his eyepiece around. "All doctors," he said. "All doctors . . ."

* * *

Devon pushed open the front door of the gathering space and sat with a thump on the steps. She rubbed her eyes hard, blinking against the sandy feel. She squinted upwards, staring at the constellations that had been so alien two years ago. The moons had set, two icy half-circles sinking into the sea. It was somewhere around 3 am, she estimated, and tugged her coat around herself, rubbing her cheek against the fur on the collar. This close to Moon Cross, the night temps were sliding ever downward.

Around eleven, Julia had called to tell her that the reason Uly was sick was that there wasn’t a trace of the vaccine in his blood stream. He’d been scrubbed as clean as a whistle, vulnerable to the bug that every other advancer was guarded against. How, the doctor didn’t know and didn’t have time to theorize over it.

About midnight, Devon had reluctantly left Uly in Yale’s care and gone to be Madam Governor, supervising the blood-testing effort, talking to parents, calming fears. She repeated praise of Julia and the vaccine over and over again, assuring her colonists that this would all be over soon.

She called Yale every ten minutes.

"We've got a problem," Alonzo said behind her.

Devon looked up. "Don't say things like that. I'll start to think you mean them."

The joke failed. Almost any joke would have failed this early in the morning, but this one would have failed in broad daylight. Alonzo sat down next to her, unsmiling. "It's about the Terrians."

"Aren't they responding?" Julia’s synthesizers were having trouble with the complex organic compounds in the vaccine. With no store of Grendler spit to fall back on, and no idea where a group of the traders might be, she'd sent him a message to contact the Terrians and find out if they knew. It was tenuous at best, but it was the only hope they had.

"That's it, I--uh--"

She looked at him. "Alonzo?"

"I haven't had a Terrian dream in--in a long time."

Her stomach clutched. "How long?"

His shoulders moved unevenly. "Two months," he said, and the words drifted away, soft into the night.

She absorbed that, like a woman absorbing a full-face punch. She didn’t recognize her own voice when she said, "Could it just be a lull?"

He squinted across the square at a hurrying figure. "Maybe, but they always get talkative right before Moon Cross. I--uh--I think I might have lost it. I don't know."

She closed her eyes. Calm, be calm, be calm. "Thanks for letting me know," she said, eyes still closed. "Keep trying." When she opened her eyes, Alonzo looked doubtful. "Please," she said. "We really need this."

"I know, but--"

Her calm cracked like an egg. "My son is sick," she hissed. "He’s in no shape to contact them himself. You’re the only other person who’s ever dreamed with them without help. You keep trying."

He jolted backward a little, then cleared his throat. "Okay. Okay. I'll try." He almost ran away.

She dropped her head into her hands. Screaming at Alonzo wouldn’t make any difference. But why hadn’t he told her before that he wasn’t dreaming?

She thought, Search parties. As soon as all the blood-testing was done, she’d send out search parties to hunt for Grendlers.

Shoes thumped on the porch, and she recognized the tread before John said, "Hey."

"Hi," she said. "Did you know Alonzo’s not Terrian-dreaming anymore? Not for awhile, he said."

There was a pause, then the hiss of breath that meant he was annoyed. "No," he said.

"Can you lead a search party once it gets light? Down on the beach, I think. They’ve stayed in those caves before."

"For Grendlers? Yeah, I’ll do that." He sat down next to her. "Look, Julia just called. She thinks she can distill some of those tricky compounds from plant matter."

Devon nodded numbly. She felt as if they were scrambling after butterflies, hunting for this vaccine. Not for the first time, she imagined ripping Miguel’s head off and stuffing it down his throat. It helped, some. She cleared her throat. "Sounds like something True could help with."

"That’s why she called me. She needs True’s hands over there now. I’m going to our rooms to roust her." His daughter had reluctantly gone to bed about three hours ago. He’d gone so far as to get a sedaderm from Julia to dose her, if need be, but she’d fallen asleep easily in spite of her protests.

Instead of getting right up, he sat with her for a moment. Devon watched their breath stream out, faint clouds lit up by ambient light from inside the building.

"I thought I was done," Devon burst out. Her voice cracked in the middle. "I thought I was done with all this."

"Hey," John said, reaching around and touching his fingertips to her far cheek. She turned her head to look at him. "We’re gonna get through this," he said. "Together."

She wanted to climb into his lap, burrow into his warmth, and let everything slide away. Instead, she said, "You’ve told me that before."

"And I was right before, wasn’t I?"

She nodded and put her arms around his waist, leaning into him for a moment. She thought of Julia, who’d walked away from the man she loved before he could do it to her. Bad timing. Right now was when you really needed someone to hang onto.

Too soon, John said, "Gotta go get True. But listen, you don’t let anyone bug you out here until you’re better, got it?"

She nodded, wiping her eyes. As he got up and started to walk away, she thought of something. "John!"

He turned.

"Take a glove," she said. "Just in case--" They still didn’t know how Uly’s body had broken down the vaccine; if it was a function of youth, then True was in danger too.

He held up his right hand. The small square LCD of the blood-testing glove spanned the back, and on the pad of his thumb was the round sensor with a tiny needle hidden in it. She hadn’t noticed before. "Way ahead of you," he said, and turned toward the dorms again.

She watched him go, listening to the muffled voices behind the door at her back. She didn’t feel together, but she doubted that would happen until--not unless, until, until!--Uly got back on his feet again. She called Yale and got a report--still asleep, still breathing easy. She hung up and took her gear off, letting it dangle from her fingers. She decided to send Walman to lead the other search party, the one going up the beach, and contemplated whether to send anyone inland.

She was about to get up and go back inside when the door opened again. "Devon?"

Oh, god, Trent. She took a deep, bracing breath. "Do they need me inside?"

"No, it’s all right. I wanted to ask how Uly was." He sat down next to her, in the same space Alonzo and later John had occupied.

"No worse," she said. "How about Max?"

"He’s still clean."

Devon nodded.

"Just like old times, isn’t it?" he said lightly.

How many nights had she sat with him, or other Syndrome parents, in waiting rooms? Sometimes they’d had their children with them, sometimes that was who they waited for. Sometimes they would talk about their children’s illness, sometimes about sports or politics or the latest holovision show. Sometimes they would say nothing at all.

Devon saw John coming out of the dorms, with True trotting by his side, rubbing her eyes but obviously ready for action. "Oh, good," she said out loud, and Trent looked at her.

"What?"

She pointed. "True’s not infected."

"Were you really worried?"

"Of course I was. John would lose his mind if anything ever happened to her."

Trent made a derisive noise. "They don’t know what it’s like to really be in danger of losing someone," he said. "People like him. His daughter’s never been sick a day in her life. He doesn’t understand what it’s like for us."

She turned to look at him, and saw in his face something she’d just realized she hated: a kind of assumed moral superiority, as if he’d automatically become a better person simply because his child had been born sick. There was an awful smugness in his suffering--look how much better I am than you. I have this terrible burden, but I am accepting it bravely. You couldn’t do that.

She wondered if she’d ever done that, and suspected she had. Before.

"She’s still his child," she said sharply. "Up until a little while ago, she was all he had in the universe. And there were a few times there when he really did think he was going to lose her."

"But not like us," Trent said.

She got to her feet. "I need to go back inside now."

"I don’t begrudge you a little fun, you know," he said, sounding very superior and benevolent. "Maybe even a little comfort while I wasn’t here. But don’t you think you should just tell him it’s over?"

In spite of herself, she stopped. "Tell him what?"

"I mean, really, Devon," he said. "At this point you’re just wasting your time."

She stared down at him. "You know," she said calmly. "I am. I’m wasting my time."

"See," he said.

"I’ve done everything short of sending smoke signals, and you still don’t get it. What part of not interested is giving you trouble?"

"It’s because of that--"

"Don’t you dare call him that name again!" she snarled. "This isn’t about him. You think that if he weren't around, I would be with you, don't you?"

He gave her a look that said, Well, obviously.

"I wouldn't," she said. "I hate to be a cliche, but if you were the last man in New Pacifica, I'd still be single, do you understand me?"

"But I love you," he said, as if that changed everything. As if that were the ultimate free ticket, the one thing that would get him whatever he wanted.

"So?" she said. "I don’t love you, Trent. I don’t even like you. I feel nothing for you. And I never will."

Belatedly, Devon realized she could see him clearly, not just by dim starlight. She looked up, and her face was bathed in light spilling out the open door of the gathering space. Several people stood around it, their eyes flicking avidly from her to Trent back to her.

She ignored them, turning back just long enough to say, "Don’t bother me again."

Then she went inside, pushing through the thin crowd and leaving him out in the cold. She had better things to do tonight.

* * *

True yawned, feeling her jaw creak. She was wiped out. She didn’t know how Julia was still going. "Can I have some coffee?" she asked hopefully.

"Caffeine’s not good for you," Julia said absently. On-screen, the image of her latest chemical compound and the image of the organic compounds from Grendler spit popped up. The program tried to compare them, then both images flashed red. "Damn!" She turned to True. "Go get me some of the bluegrain again."

True pushed through the crowd of medical people who were hovering around, helping Julia with her science stuff. They all had oodles of training and degrees and none of them thought she should be there, but Julia had said flatly, "She’s here, she’s staying," and nobody had argued.

None of them would know what bluegrain was, True thought with satisfaction.

She went into the crates of supplies she’d taken from Cameron’s pantry. She also engaged her gear and speed-dialed the second number. But Molly didn’t pick up. She hadn’t been picking up for the past few hours.

"C’mon, Moll," True hissed. "I know you’re screening. Pick up. Pick up. Come on." She waited, but her friend’s face remained the flat, static image of a message program. "Okay, fine. Call me. I need to talk to you. You know why."

She hung up and took the bluegrain back to Julia, who took it with an absent, "Thanks, sweetheart."

True didn’t go away, though. She planted her fists on her hips and said, "Julia."

"Hmm?" Julia looked up, blinking. "What?"

"This isn’t working," True said ferociously.

"Be patient."

"It’s not working."

"What do you think we are, magicians?" someone said.

Julia ignored that and said to her, "We’re getting closer, True."

"But U--people are still sick. And the search parties haven’t found anything. No Grendlers." No Grendler spit.

Julia stood up, took her goggles off, and took True by the shoulders. "Listen. Uly’s sick, that’s true. But he’s holding steady. He’s strong, and he’s otherwise healthy."

"It killed Wentworth and Fierstein," True said in a small voice. "They were strong too. They were grown-ups." She remembered watching Zero bury them. She remembered the look on her dad’s face, watching them go in the ground. She remembered the way Devon had cried when Uly had relapsed, and leaving Devon behind in the blue glow of the cryo-chamber, and leaving Eben behind in the ground, wrapped up in plastic, no longer Eben, just a body.

Julia said, "But it took a long time. And I’ve seen this before. We’ll beat this."

"Are you sure?" True said.

Julia looked around at the circle of faces around her, and when she said, "We’ll beat this," again, True knew that the doctor wasn’t just talking to her.

True went to the box of grains and fruits she’d gotten from Cameron’s pantry and re-organized it for lack of anything better to do, while the science went on without her. She thought, Before they came, I would have been helping more.

Plastic swished, and everyone turned, hope in their faces. True sat up. Maybe they’d found a Grendler.

"Hourly report," said the tech, and there was a general sagging all around.

"Go ahead," said Julia. "How many new cases?"

He referred to a pad. "We’re up to four hundred and thirty-four infected non-Syndrome. Of that, a hundred and nineteen are showing symptoms. Most of them are mild, but ten cases, including the first two, are acute."

True remembered the last hourly report and did some quick and dirty math, counting on her fingers. The number of infected people had gone up by over a hundred, and the people showing symptoms had doubled. Did that mean it was accelerating?

Julia nodded. "What’s the rate of infection among the Syndrome children?"

"Three new cases. Brings it up to seventeen. The newest one is five. She’s already showing signs of--"

Five? True snapped to attention like a koba spotting a bug. "Who is it? The five-year-old."

The tech ignored her. "Showing signs of photosensitivity and--"

"Who is it?" True persisted.

"True, don’t interrupt," Julia said, and to the tech, "Go on. Photosensitivity and?"

"And nerve disruption. She’s one of the stronger ones, but--"

"Is it Angie?" True asked, with her heart in her mouth. "Is it Angie Ketchum?"

Now everyone was looking at her all annoyed, but she didn’t care, because if it was Angie, then--

The tech gave her a dirty look. "Yeah, that’s the name. Can I finish?"

True stood up. "Julia? I gotta go."

"Now?" Julia said.

"Right now."

* * *

She scrambled across the square, trying to run and activate the tracking program on her gear at the same time. She almost ran into the tree in the northeast corner and gave it up for just running. Nobody stopped her. It wasn’t unusual, today, to see someone rushing around as if life depended on it.

She meant to go right to her room, but found herself stopping at Devon and Uly’s first. She thought, I probably shouldn’t, but knocked anyway. Yale came to the door. "True?"

"Is Uly awake?" she panted.

"No, he’s asleep for the moment. Is something--?"

"I wanted to see him. Can I just look?"

Yale studied her face, then glanced over his shoulder. "I can’t see the harm. But try not to wake him."

True tiptoed past him and to the head of Devon’s bed, where Uly still curled up. The room was almost completely dark, the only illumination leaking in around the shutters. Even so, Uly had his face turned away from it.

Her hand lifted, then fluttered back to her side. She wondered if she should touch him, or not. He looked very small. Very young.

"Uly," she whispered, afraid to speak any louder.

He shifted, and she caught her breath. But he just moved his head, as if seeking a cool spot on the pillow, and slept on.

"I’m going to fix this," she said softly. "No stinkin’ disease is gonna get you while I’m around. Don’t worry, ‘kay? I’m going to make it all better."

She looked over her shoulder at Yale. "Thanks," she said. "I’m going now."

Trotting down the corridor, she finally managed to get the tracking program activated. In her own room, she turned on the lights and looked on all the flat surfaces. Had her dad taken it back with him? Or maybe--and this was what she was hoping for--he’d just dropped it and left.

Just then, the tracking program gave a triumphant beep. It had traced Molly’s signal. True paused a moment to study the map. She was out at the barn. Good. Not far. Just one more thing--

True made a frustrated noise in her throat and dropped to her hands and knees, peering under the bed. Something glinted in the shadows. She reached in.

Her fingers closed around the sedaderm, and she smiled.

Part Fourteen

Part Sixteen

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