Communion of Dreams, page 29
Jon sat there for a moment, stunned. “That explains it.”
“What?”
“That explains your ‘shadow’ in the data which you’ve suspected all these years.” Jon looked at him. “You mentioned it before, how for years you were unable to explain the anomalies in what your detectors picked up.”
“Ah,” said Gish as he nodded, understanding what Jon was talking about. Then he shook his head. “Interestingly enough, no. The artifacts account for the barrier of all radio transmission in and out of our system, except, seemingly, for ‘natural’ sources, since we’ve been able to use radio astronomy for almost 90 years. A fascinating technology that must be: coordinating these artifacts to do that in real time, over such a vast distance. Amazing. But that is an entirely different effect than what I detected using the BES sensors all those years ago. There is still something else going on that I don’t understand. Perhaps it is a side-effect, or a completely unrelated phenomenon. It wouldn’t be the first time in science that a hunch about one thing turned out to be wrong, but lead to a whole new field of discovery.”
Seth materialized. “Sorry to interrupt you. But Dr. Taupiczak needs to speak with you. In private. Immediately.”
Jon looked around the table. “Sorry, looks like someone else is waiting on me. Keep me posted, OK?”
* * *
As soon as he saw Tops’ face, he knew that it was serious. He carefully closed the door behind him, and watched her increase the security field. Taking a deep breath, he looked at her and asked, “OK, how bad is it? You found some side-effect of being in contact with the artifact, right?”
The muscles at the side of her jaw quivered. But she held herself steady, and her eyes sharpened. “It’s not you, Jon. I’ve detected the fire-flu virus here on the station. Confirmed it in three patients already this morning.”
Chapter 17
“It’s related to Ignis.”
“Ignis?”
“The fire-flu. The virus was named ‘Ignis’, which is nothing more fancy than the Latin word for ‘fire’. This new virus is different, though.”
“Different, how?”
She chewed her lip as she consulted a database. “Well, it is part of the same family of viruses. The RNA has a very similar structure to the 1918 strain, but the DNA seems to have been...modified.”
He shook his head. “Tops, you lost me. What 1918 strain?”
“Sorry.” She looked over at him, the dread in her eye replaced by something else. “The 1918 flu was recreated in the early part of this century, as there was a growing concern about Avian flu. The scientists at the time discovered that the prevailing form of Avian Flu, the H5N1 virus, was surprisingly related to the 1918 pandemic virus. Almost identical RNA structure, similar DNA.”
“But you say this one is different.”
“Yeah. Ignis was such a nasty bug because it spread by aerosol, but it also had a very short incubation period, just a couple of days. Then the disease itself was very swift, and victims died within hours of onset. Like it was all time-compressed, hyper-virulent. This is one of the reasons that people thought then, and still debate now, whether it was a weaponized version of Avian flu.” She flashed up an image for him to see. “Now, this beastie is somewhat like Ignis, in that the incubation period looks to be fairly short. And it is spread by aerosol, so every time someone infected coughs or sneezes, tiny droplets of the virus become airborne, and then linger in the air — spreading it quickly. But the course of the disease is longer. I project that most victims will take three to four days to die after onset.”
“Can you come up with an antiviral?”
“Well, that’s the trick. This thing is very pleomorphic, even more so than the other variants of the Avian flu. That means it keeps changing its form at a very basic level, making it difficult to create a targeted antiviral. The generic treatments may offer some help, but it’ll be nominal.”
“How about immunity? Don’t most people have some residual antibodies or something against the fire-flu?”
She chewed her lip again. “That was one of the first things I checked. The short answer is no, or not very much. It seems that whoever made this thing wanted to be sure that it was different enough to slip past any defenses we might already have.”
“Made?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that it was engineered, given how neatly it slips past all of our safeguards.”
“But if it was engineered, why did they change the swiftness of the disease?”
“You mean how long someone takes to die?” She shook her head, not waiting for an answer. “That could be a side effect of something they tweaked so that it was different enough to slip past existing antivirals, or our immunity.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“No. It could also be just to make people take longer to die. Prolong the agony, make sure others have to watch it and see what’s coming. A terror weapon.”
There was a very long pause, as the full implications of this sank in. “That’s just evil.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “Which is why I’m going to name it ‘Diabolus’.”
“How long?”
“Sorry?”
“How long until the first victims come down with it? Should they be isolated?”
She shook her head. “Too late for that. By now it’s certainly spread. I’ve already started them on wide-spectrum antivirals, and done what I can to boost their immune systems. That’ll help some. But since I don’t know exactly when they came in contact with the virus, I can’t say for sure. Maybe a couple more days.”
“Did you tell them what it was?”
She shook her head. “No. I should, but I didn’t. I needed to confirm it. But based on my suspicions, I started them on the therapy I mentioned. As soon as I confirmed what it was, I contacted you.”
“OK, let’s wait a little until we tell them.” Jon closed his eyes, rubbed his temples.
“You OK?”
He nodded, opened his eyes. “Yeah. Just tired. There’s been a lot happening.”
“Nonetheless,” said Tops, “let me get a blood sample. I’ll need to get samples from everyone I can, so I can develop a model of how far and fast the disease is spreading.”
Jon held out his arm for her. “So, what can we do? About the virus, I mean.”
“That depends on how much you want to tell people.”
“Well, pretty much anything will cause a panic.”
“Yeah.” She bit her lip. “We should tell Jakobs and Salim, get them . . . ”
“No.”
Tops looked shocked. “Why not?”
“Well, Susan I can probably trust. But definitely not Salim. He’d send word back to Earth instantly. I’m sure it’s in his primary mandates.”
“Well, we’re going to have to tell them sooner or later. If nothing else, I need all the medical help I can get from back home.”
Jon’s eyes sharpened, and he stepped across the office, took Tops by the shoulders. He looked her straight in the eye for a moment, and then said quietly and carefully, “Listen to me. If you tell Earth, they’ll destroy this station immediately.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I know what I’m talking about. I helped to draft the directives.” His jaw set, hard. “We are expendable. They will take no risk — none — of allowing this virus to get to Earth. If they catch wind that it is here, they won’t wait for anything. As soon as their suspicions were confirmed Salim would be told to vent the atmosphere into space just to kill us all off, and they’d probably follow up with multiple fusion missiles, to ‘sterilize’ the facility and any of the prospectors down on Titan they could find.”
“My god.”
“Yeah. So, we need to figure out a way to at least control, or better yet beat, this virus before news of it gets out. Because once it does, well, you won’t have to worry about how long it’ll take people to die from the flu.”
She leaned back against a wall, then slid into a nearby chair. “And I thought the news of the flu was bad.”
He nodded. “Oh, it is. But the fear that people have of it is even worse.”
* * *
“Seth?”
The expert materialized. “Yes, Jon?”
“I need to discuss something with you, with utmost privacy.”
“Switching over to security protocol.”
The image of the expert vanished. Without his own cyberware, Jon couldn’t sense the tingle of the security field as it went opaque, but he was sure that Seth also took that precaution.
“Go ahead, Jon.”
“OK.” Jon took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “This is an Ascendant Command: you will not share any of this discussion or information I’m about to reveal to you with anyone else without my explicit authorization. This specifically includes Salim. Do you understand and comply?”
“Of course.”
“Tops has discovered a variant of the fire-flu virus here. Altered enough that none of the treatments she has will do much good.”
There was no hesitation as Seth realized the full importance of this. “I understand.”
“Now you know why we need to keep this quiet. But help her as much as you can as she searches for an antiviral agent . . . ”
“Why not use Chu Ling as a donor for immunotherapy instead? My understanding is that her system has been engineered to deal with a wide spectrum of such threats.”
Of course. He shook his head and laughed just a little. “Damn, Seth. Neither Tops nor I even thought of Chu Ling. We were both just stuck on the conventional treatments. I guess that’s the advantage of not being afraid.”
“Well, I considered the emotional implications. And because of my own recent experiences, know how it . . . felt. But none of those paths seemed to offer a solution, so I moved on to other possible avenues.”
“OK, look, you contact Tops and discuss this with her — you have my specific authorization to do so. I’ll go talk with Gish in person, explain the situation to him. We’ll probably need Ling to harvest the bone marrow cells or whatever. ”
“Shall I inform him that you’re on the way?”
“Please do. But don’t tell him why, just that I’m returning to meet with him again.”
“He’ll be expecting you.”
* * *
Gish was still seated at the large conference table, the apparent image of the Hawking still floating above the center. The little man was alone, and looked more disheveled than usual. He was leaning back in his chair, heels up on the table, hands behind his head.
“Um, you OK?” asked Jon
Gish nodded, but closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them again, slowly, and then struggled to get focus back. “Yeah. Just feeling really worn out. There’s something going on out there that I can’t figure.”
“You mean what happened to the ship?”
Gish frowned. “No, sorry. Gregor and his engineers are working on that. They understand the ship’s systems a hell of a lot better than I do. No, there’s something else. You got me started on it by asking about the Bose-Einstein State detectors.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. There’s something odd that I can’t place my finger on.” He sat up, leaned forward until his elbows rested on the table. He looked at the ship. “With more data, I’ve been trying to create a statistical model of the placement of the other artifacts out in the system, and where the boundaries of the ‘bubble’ are.”
“OK, so what’s the problem?”
“Well, it’s like a simple probability field equation, which makes sense. Except there are occasional ‘spikes’ that occur, like imperfections in the bubble.”
“You think it’s important?”
“I dunno. There’s something there that is nagging me. Something about the imperfections.”
“Well, perhaps as you get more data, some kind of pattern will emerge,” said Jon. “Meanwhile, there’s something that you and I have to discuss.”
A slight look of dread crept across Gish’s face. “Now what?”
Jon carefully sat down in a chair next to Gish. He reached down into one of his pockets and pulled out the device that Navarr had given him. This caught the scientist’s attention, and he was leaning forward to get a better look at the device when Jon pressed the activation stud. Gish winced, but said nothing.
Jon placed the security jammer on the table in front of him. Nodding to it, he said “Sorry. This is something we need complete privacy for.”
Gish settled back into his chair. “OK. What?”
“We’ve got a problem. Tops just told me: there’s a variant of fire-flu on the station.”
“Who knows?”
“No one. Me, you, Tops, Seth.”
Gish nodded. He drummed his fingers on the table, considered the news. “How long can you keep it quiet?”
“Not long. Maybe long enough to find a treatment regimen, so when the news breaks there’s less panic.”
“Once the news breaks, panic will be the least of your concerns. Better to worry about Earth.”
Jon nodded. “Yeah, I know. Any ideas what we can do about that?”
Gish leaned back in his chair, hands together in front of him. His eyes narrowed a moment, brow tightened. Then he said, “Buy yourself more time. At least make them send a ship, or missiles, or whatever they would do. You have to take Salim out of the equation.”
“And that means Jackie.”
“She’s the best there is. Maybe she can get in and disrupt his mandates, or at least limit his ability to put them into effect.”
“OK, I’ll talk to her about it.”
Gish evidently expected Jon to switch off the jammer, glanced at him when he didn’t do so immediately. “Something else?”
“Yeah, related to this. Seth suggested that we use Ling as a donor for immunotherapy.”
“Because of her genetic engineering.”
“Yeah. Whoever manipulated her genes did so with at least this kind of potential problem in mind.” Jon shrugged. “Tops says the new virus is different enough from the old one that none of the targeted treatments will knock it out. She can only use broad-spectrum antivirals, and those will just slow the disease down.”
“But Ling’s defenses can handle it.”
“Possibly.”
“Well, sure, use Ling. I’ll talk with her, tell her that she needs to go in for more tests with Tops. That won’t be anything unusual.”
“OK, great. We’ll leave it to Tops, then.”
Gish gestured at the jammer. “We done? That thing is giving me a headache.”
“Yeah, that’s enough for one morning.” Jon sighed. “Well, I’ll go talk with Jackie.”
He reached over, turned off the device, and slid it back into his pocket.
* * *
He knocked at her door. There was just the slightest pause, then she said, “Yeah, c’mon in.”
Jon entered, closed the door behind him. “Um, do you mind if we talk a little?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“There’s something happened.”
She gestured toward the couch. “Sure. Sit.”
Jon did, taking out the security device and setting it on the small table beside the couch. He flipped it on, cranked up the power all the way. Jackie didn’t seem to notice it at all, but watched him with curiosity. He explained, “I want this to be private.”
“Then why not just have Seth or Salim turn on the security shield for the room?”
“That . . . isn’t enough for this.”
“Really?” The curiosity in her eyes had grown to actual interest. “What’s up?”
Jon considered her for a moment. She looked fairly relaxed and well rested, better than she had looked since leaving Earth, in fact. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I need you to . . . ah . . . get around some of Salim’s baseline mandates.”
“Why?”
“To keep us all alive.” He stood up. “Jackie, Tops has detected a fire-flu variant here on the station. If Earth finds out, they’ll have Salim ‘neutralize’ the station personnel, then they’ll sterilize the whole facility, probably with fusion missiles.”
“Holy shit.”
“Different from the original virus, which is good and bad. Good because it’ll take longer for anyone to come down with it and to die. Bad because none of the usual treatments will do much more than put off the inevitable. But that might give her enough time to find an effective treatment using Chu Ling as a donor.”
“But to have that time, you need to tame Salim.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “Right. OK, I can do it. Might be tricky to just subvert or bridge those directives, though. Could mean we have to compromise his matrix.”
“I don’t care if it means cutting out his personality entirely, or even just shutting him down and relying on secondary systems to keep the station going for a brief period. That’s better than sucking vacuum.”
Again, she nodded, this time more slowly. “Yeah.”
“You sure you can do this?”
“Just tell me when.”
“Sooner the better.”
She held up her bare palms. “I’m gonna need some help.”
“I can’t, I have other things to do. And Gish will probably need to be with Ling.” Jon thought for a moment. “OK, I’ll check with Mallory, see if he’s had a chance to make up a rig like this one for you.”
“As soon as I have it, I’ll get started.”
“Good.”
She looked down at her upraised palms again, then back to him. “Damn, Jon. The flu? She’s certain?”
“She’s certain.”
“Damn.”
* * *
Mallory’s youthful face appeared. “Yeah?”
“I was wondering if you’ve had time to put together another cyberware rig like mine for Jackie Gates.”
“I’ve already gathered together most of the components. I can put them together for her in an hour or two.”
“That’d be great,” said Jon. “I appreciate your help. Can you drop by her quarters with it when you’re done?”
