Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 12

Jason waited in the command post for Hillson to send Jane to him. She didn’t come. Instead, two of the scientists arrived with Elizabeth Duncan.

“Sir,” she said, “Doctors McKay and Steffens request to speak with you. They say it’s urgent.”

Why were the virologists being escorted by Jason’s second in command instead of a soldier on guard duty? Duncan’s face was as impassive as ever, but McKay’s twisted with emotion and Steffens’s had been wiped of her usual sneer.

“Permission granted. Major, remain here, please. Dr. McKay, what is it?”

“Autopsies were performed on both victims of the bear attack,” McKay began.

“Already? With or without permission from Dr. Ka^graa?”

“Without. The medical research team suspected an anomaly that it seemed vital to examine without delay.”

The words had a stilted, rehearsed feel, as well as vagueness: “the medical research team.” It wasn’t like either McKay or the brash Steffens to evade responsibility. So it had been Jason’s grandmother who had made the decision to autopsy, and McKay was trying—ineptly—to shield her. Jason let that go, for now.

McKay said, “Brain tissue from both people showed anomalies. Excess gliosis—that means too many glial cells of different kinds. This kind of gliosis in healthy adults usually means an injury to the brain: an infection or other neural distress.”

“They were attacked by a bear.”

“No, the gliosis was well advanced. Really well advanced. Kayla and Glamet^vor¡ had this going on before they left the dome. They may have had it going on since they left World. Glial cells release complex cascades of a variety of proteins. Some cause the destruction of neural synapses—the connections between brain cells—and some cause formation of new synapses. Essentially, they rewire the brain in fetuses, in early childhood, in adolescence, and after brain trauma.”

“Are you saying that Ms. Rhinehart and Dr. Glamet^vor¡’s brains were being rewired? Why?”

“One possible explanation is the virophage they contracted on World. Everyone from the ship has experienced symptoms of infection, notably headaches and oversleeping.”

Oversleeping. Jason’s eyes met Major Duncan’s. I don’t think they woke up when the bear started clawing away. Neither of ’em woke up. They just lied there.

McKay’s face twisted. “The other people experiencing headaches and oversleeping are children at Enclave Dome. I checked with the parents. Kids’ brains are still developing. If the virophage is transmissible person to person, and if—”

“Don’t you know if it’s transmissible that way? Haven’t you looked?”

“It’s not that simple. We don’t even have a culture of the virophage. The cultures aboard ship were destroyed by atmospheric contamination when the survivors were transported from the Settlement.”

Jason tried to sort out all this medical information. “You’re telling me, Doctor, that my base has been contaminated for weeks by a disease that might be transmitted person to person, so that everybody might have it. But everybody isn’t having headaches and oversleeping.”

“No. It may be progressive, with the star-farers exposed longer and the children more vulnerable because of the greater plasticity of their brains. It also may be that not everyone is infected with the virophage. Another possibility is that some people have the virophage but experience no symptoms, some have symptoms for a while but no permanent changes—they throw off the infection and that’s that. And some are susceptible and develop the kind of gliosis seen in Kayla and Glamet^vor¡. Many contagions are like that, including flu and Zika. There may be genetic susceptibility. Right now, we—Toni and Marianne and Claire and I—think that’s the most likely possibility with this.”

“Why do you think so?” Coldness was creeping up Jason’s spine, from tailbone to neck.

“We talked to everyone from the Return and the parents of all six children on base. Of the star-farers, all of them had headaches, which have mostly gone away, and three of those are oversleeping. Of the kids, all had symptoms but now only two do, and those two have both headaches and oversleeping. Devon Jones and…,” McKay’s voice caught briefly, “my daughter Caitlin.”

Two of six kids, four of ten from the Return. If McKay was right, over a third of the base might be susceptible to whatever this thing was. If it even was a thing. Jason said, “What’s the next step, Doctor?”

“Continue research on the autopsied brains. There are proteins to check for, molecules known to be involved in rewiring brains after injury. Run gene scans on the sleepers. And we need to… to watch what happens with everybody else.”

“Who are the adults whose headaches didn’t go away and who are sleeping too much?”

“Branch Carter—”

The spaceship pilot. Christ.

“—Belok^, who is Glamet^vor¡’s brother—but not his sister, La^vor. Also—”

“The brother but not the sister? So it’s not genetic who gets this thing and who does not?”

McKay looked astonished. Steffens jumped in. “You’re thinking that siblings share the same genes, but in fact they only share fifty percent on average. Susceptibility might indeed be genetic, or partially genetic. We don’t know.”

Jason knew this, but the science had momentarily slipped his brain. Steffens, whom Jason had never liked (“Imperator” and “the Praetorian Guard” were hers), wore the carefully impassive expression of someone trying to not show superiority. Forget her; Jason had a larger picture to think about. He said, “Who are the other two from the ship whose headaches didn’t go away?”

Silence. Then McKay said, “Marianne Jenner.”

Jason hadn’t expected that. But somehow, he knew what was coming next. “And the other person with headaches who isn’t oversleeping, or at least not yet?”

“The translator,” McKay said. “Jane.”

Marianne insisted on attending the funeral pyre for Kayla and Glamet^vor¡. There were reasons why she should not, all of which she ignored. For one, she hadn’t actually liked either Kayla or Glamet^vor¡. But that was trivial; they had been her shipmates.

More important was the overwhelming work in the lab. Old Dr. Holbrook was left as physician to nine hundred people, including the injured Settlers, since Claire and Lindy were co-opted for work on what the virophage might have done to human brains. Everyone with any notion of lab techniques, both civilian and military, had been reassigned to Zack McKay’s day-and-night research push. Necessary, but it was all too familiar to Marianne: from the Embassy on Earth, from the clinic on World. How many times could humanity take on microbes and win? Marianne had no faith in this work. Or maybe she was just, after all these decades, too burned out.

Which was the third reason to not attend the funeral. All she really wanted to do was sleep. Her head throbbed just behind her forehead, and her eyelids felt like six tons of lead. Her neck ached from holding up her head. Her spine sagged, looking for something to lean against.

Nonetheless, she donned an esuit, passed through the airlock, and walked between Jane and Ka^graa, also esuited, to the pyre that had been built between Enclave Dome and the dark woods where Kayla and Glamet^vor¡ had been found. The sky, overcast, seemed to press down on the group of mourners led by La^vor and Belok^. Their military escort carried what looked to Marianne like entire arsenals.

How many such burnings had she been to? Too many, on World. But World had survived, and right now Marianne was not at all certain that Terra would. Microbes were such formidable enemies. Maybe Terra should just give up.

She was so tired.

But she straightened her spine as they reached the wooden pyre topped with the bodies wrapped in Army blankets. Beyond, trees blew in a rising wind. A flock of birds wheeled overhead, calling shrilly. Jane, lahk Mother to this temporary and displaced lahk, recited an ancient ritual in her own language. The musical cadences rose and fell as La^vor wept and Belok^, who may or may not have understood, looked frightened. Jane didn’t translate, but Marianne had been told, light-years from here, what the chant meant. The bodies of the dead were being returned to the soil, the planet, the universe from which they were formed. Energy flowed through all, and all were one, and all existed forever.

The pyre was lit, and the mourners turned back to the dome. Ordinarily, Worlders did not bury the ashes of their dead, nor scatter them. They let nature do that. In this case, however, La^vor wanted the ashes to carry back to World. Soldiers would stay until the bodies were consumed, put out the fire, and gather the ashes.

Marianne could barely lift her feet. She was so tired.

Jane, dry eyed but taut as guitar strings, walked beside her toward Lab Dome. “Marianne, you need to sleep.”

“Must… work.”

“No. You’ll be more of use to everybody in the lab after you sleep. The—”

“Go! Run—now!”

An officer—Marianne could not remember his name. He grabbed her hand. “Go, go!” Then she heard it: the rush of planes overhead. Jets? But Jason had said that neither the Army nor New America had jets anymore, they had all been destroyed or there was no one to fly them or no fuel or something…

The droning grew louder.

How could there be jets?

She stumbled, was picked up, was dragged on. The airlock opened and everyone jammed into it, packed in a solid ball like microglia. The outer door closed. Just before it did, Marianne glimpsed something rising swiftly above the horizon in the distance, slightly darker than the clouds.

Jane said to her, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Emerging from the airlock into decon, she sagged against the wall. Only it was Jane she was somehow leaning on, Jane concerned for Marianne despite her own grief. Such a sweet girl, she would be wonderful for either Colin or Jason, Marianne didn’t care which only… only…

Then she was asleep on the floor of decontamination.

Jason had been watching the funeral from the clear dome of the command post when the call came over his earplant. A soldier of J Squad on close patrol at the north airlock must have darted inside as soon as he received notice from the signal station. “Incoming, sir! Three planes, probably F-35s, three minutes away!”

F-35s? There were no more of those flying. But—

“Get everyone inside.” He watched through the dome. Yes, there they were, coming in fast from the northwest… the direction of Sierra Depot. How the fuck had New America—

His grandmother. Jane. J Squad… but they all made the airlock. A moment later, the jets swept low over the dome and strafed it. Shells exploded harmlessly against the alien ceiling two feet above Jason’s head. The vibrations didn’t shake the dome, exactly, but he could feel it in his bones. To Colin and the other superhearers, it must have seemed like the end of the world. Trees in the woods burst into flame.

The jets flew off, banked, and returned.

If New America had gotten the launch codes from the quantum computer at the depot…. but those were codes for ICBMs, not plane-dropped bombs. Still… if the jets carried nuclear weapons, then there was nothing Jason could do but wait for the end of Monterey Base.

It didn’t happen. The jets dropped bombs but they were not nuclear. They exploded against the dome, and the dome held. Whoever those super-aliens were who’d designed these domes, they’d known physics that Terrans hadn’t suspected existed.

The jets flew away. Somehow the eerie silence of the entire operation made it seem even more sinister.

A whole section of forest to the east had caught fire.

Jason couldn’t have it put out. He didn’t have the resources. There were only two things he could do. The armory in Lab Dome held shoulder-mounted missile launchers that could take down planes; he would have to set up a constantly-manned station in the woods. He could also surprise-attack Sierra Depot with everything he had and hope to destroy the jets or the fuel tanks—and where had New America gotten jet fuel in the first place? Or the jets? Pre-Collapse, there had been no F-35s at the depot.

Jason said to captain Goldman on a closed channel, “Send someone outside to contact the signal station and make sure it wasn’t hit.”

He waited. Duncan appeared at the door of the command post.

Goldman said, “Signal station secure.”

“Good. Stand by.” To both Duncan and Goldman he said, “I’m going to report to HQ.”

He saw the quick consternation on Duncan’s face and knew she was thinking that he should not risk it; she should go. But this time Jason had to go himself. If New America forces were hidden in the woods to follow him and take out the signal station, they’d be thwarted. He was going to call HQ from the spaceship.

He said to Duncan, “Take command while I’m gone. Relay anything important through the signal station. Captain, ready a FiVee with troops from J Squad, but you stay here, keep a force outside both domes, and stand by.”

“Yes, sir.”

Duncan said, “Sir… do you know whether Lieutenant Allen has enough control of his ship’s communications system to contact HQ specifically? When it first approached, contact was with us only because we were the closest viable receiver.”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

The spaceship might not be weaponized, but it was up to Jason to find ways to use it to maximum advantage. He tongued his mic back on. “Goldman, prepare to relay orders to the Return via the signal station.”

“Yes, sir.”

The command post dome had shed the dust from the explosion as if it had never occurred. The fire in the woods was being fanned by wind but away from the dome rather than toward it, and the heavy cloud cover looked as if it carried rain. If New America were smarter, they would have dropped their bombs on a dry windy day, and they would have dropped them to the east, so that flames spread over both domes. That might not have harmed the domes, but it would have trapped the inhabitants in hot air, which might overwhelm the domes’ built-in climate controls and be filtered through the dome walls to inside. Or not. Nobody actually knew.

The funeral pyre for Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡, a small man-made echo of the forest fire, was dying down.

Rest in peace.

Jane followed the soldier carrying Marianne Jenner through the Decontamination airlock into Lab Dome. Marianne was old; had she had klefic? Jane didn’t know the word in English, but Jane’s grandmother had klefic when Jane was six. After she woke up, she could not speak, and her brain was never the same, and she had drooled and stared vacantly until she died. The doctors hadn’t been able to do anything.

Oh, please the ancestors, not that for Marianne, so intelligent and so kind…

Claire Patel waited outside decon. “What happened… bring her here, please.”

The soldier carried Marianne through the makeshift corridors to the infirmary and laid her on a bed in a tiny cubicle. Colin’s room was only a few doors away. Claire said, “Jane, what happened?”

“I don’t know. She just seemed very tired, and then she wouldn’t wake up.”

Claire straightened from Marianne’s limp body. “Wouldn’t wake up? Did you see her eyes roll back in her head? Did she gasp for breath?”

“No. She just fell.”

“Like a faint?”

“I don’t know that word.”

“Never mind. Did she hit her head?”

“No, I don’t think she hit her head.”

Claire returned to examining Marianne, checking her pulse, counting breaths, shaking her shoulders, peering under her eyelids. Jane held her breath.

Marianne didn’t wake up.

Claire frowned and turned back to Jane. “Did you know… did anybody tell you… that Caitlin McKay can’t be woken up, either?”

“What?” The words didn’t make sense.

“Do you know of anyone else so sleepy that they can’t stay awake?”

“Belok^. Belok^ was very sleepy…” But Belok^ had been at the Burning and had come with Jane and La^vor through the airlock…

Claire said, “Where is Belok^ now? I didn’t see him.”

“I don’t know. Wherever the soldiers took him. He and La^vor don’t live in Lab Dome.”

“I’m going to call a nurse for Marianne and then we’re going to find Belok^.”

When they did, the boy lay curled on his side in the middle of a corridor, a soldier standing helplessly over Belok^’s huge form, La^vor shaking her brother. “Come awake! Come awake!”

Claire bent over Belok^ and examined him the same way she had Marianne. “All his responses are normal, but…” She didn’t finish the sentence. La^vor, too frightened to speak, clutched Jane. La^vor had just lost one brother, and now the other slept as if he were the breathing dead.

Jane thought of Claire’s curious Terran phrase: Never mind. Would Marianne, Belok^, little Caitlin never be in their minds again? And would this happen to more people?

She wanted to talk to Colin, hold his hand, draw warmth for her suddenly cold body. But La^vor needed her. Jane put her arms around her friend and murmured to her, searching for words of comfort she could not find.

Her headache grew worse.

Four people were now comatose: Caitlin McKay, Devon Jones, Marianne Jenner, Belok^. Two from the ship who’d been infected with virophage; two children from the base. But not the other four children in Enclave Dome, not Claire Patel or Mason Kandiss from the Return. Not Ka^graa, La^vor, or Jane.

Zack and Susan sat by their daughter’s bedside, Susan’s face swollen with tears. All four coma victims had been moved to Lab Dome, carried in esuits by gurney bots through the tunnel system. A special area of the infirmary had been closed off and divided with curtains into cubicles. One of the three physicians was always on call nearby. No one knew what would happen next, but Zack’s stomach had clenched when he saw that space had been left for more cubicles. Nurses were readying more beds.

Caity, with her beloved Bollers beside her on the bed, didn’t look ill. Her face, pale when she’d been awake and complaining of headaches, now flushed lightly with the rosiness of a healthy child fast asleep. Her little chest rose and fell. Her eyelids fluttered—was she dreaming? They had no MRI equipment on the base, which had been designed for research, not trauma treatment. They couldn’t tell if what had happened in Kayla’s and Glamet^vor¡’s brains was happening in Caitlin’s. They had no way to help her, and no answers.

It was Zack’s job to find them. He had already stayed too long beside Caity. Now he had to leave her with Susan and resume work. There had to be a way to fight this. If the cause was the virophage, which Zack suspected it was, then maniacal work must find a way to defeat the microbe. Humanity had defeated microbes before: with antibiotics, with antivirals, with widespread eradication programs like those that had eliminated malaria from the United States and smallpox from the entire world. There was a way to cure Caitlin of whatever pernicious microbe had seized her brain.

There was.

There must be.