Vigilant

WOLFPACK

Next afternoon Lynn and I were released… after some wrangling with medical authorities, who were royally cranked to have Lynn show up as an uninvited guest. More tests. More olive oil. But none of us Homo saps showed a single occurrence of the Pteromic microbe.

Nor did Tic. Nor did Yunupur.

"Pteromic B doesn’t affect Ooloms," Yunupur reported. "It refuses to grow or even play passenger in Oolom tissue cultures. As far as anyone can tell, this bug only latches on to Freeps."

All of us, police, proctors, and assorted companions, had gathered in Bonaventure General’s VIP suite — a grotty little staff lounge that got commandeered whenever patients needed to hide from the press. That need was great upon us now: a full-fledged media gangbang was scrumming its way through the hospital, looking for broadcast prey.

Reporters didn’t know all the details — the police had bottled up word about killer androids, for example — but buckets of facts were already circulating. Like the return of the plague; health authorities had decided the public must be told, to make sure everyone started swigging olive oil. And, of course, our government was obliged to inform the Freep embassy that Kowkow Iranu’s body had turned up. Within minutes, each person on the embassy staff was dickering with news agencies, selling the story to the highest bidder.

(When I called home, Winston told me I’d been offered half a million for spilling everything I knew. Then we shared a restrained proctor-lawyer giggle, reciting together the Criminal Code sections governing Vigil members who breached the public trust for personal gain.)

Still and all, we could get past the reporters whenever we needed to — our platoon of ScrambleTacs could spearhead through the journalistic hordes. The question was what happened after that. Where did we go from here?

"I go onto the sidelines," Cheticamp said gloomily. "This business ranks light-years above my authority — it’s world federal now. I’ll be given a wank-off title like ‘Bonaventure Liaison’ while the feddies take over the meat of the investigation."

"Ditto me," Yunupur agreed. "The Global Health Agency is in charge now. I’m just a special thanks to in the autopsy report."

"It’s the same in the Vigil," Tic said. "Bonaventure is now hip-deep in senior proctors, scrutinizing everything from fire hydrants to tea leaves." He glanced at me. "Sorry to pass on bad news, Smallwood, but you’ve been reassigned: no more scrutinizing the police. For the next few weeks, you’re watching Traffic Roads. Snow removal. Filling up potholes. Unplugging storm sewers. And since I’m your mentor, I’ve been ordered to accompany you on these urgent investigations." He gave a weak grin. "For some inscrutable reason, the other proctors don’t want a Zenned-out loon valtking them."

Silence. Gloom.

"Come on," Lynn said at last. "Is it so bad that other people are involved? No one likes to get shoved aside, but it’s witless to go all territorial. These new folks are good, aren’t they? I should blessed well hope they’re the best Demoth has to offer."

She looked around the room, waiting for anyone to say otherwise. No one spoke. The people who would take over — who’d already taken over in the time we were quarantined — would definitely be the best. Our government agencies had buckets of flaws, but they could cut the political dog crap in a genuine emergency. And if they didn’t take this situation seriously, the Vigil would wheedle and whinge till they did: till they assigned top-notch personnel with appropriate authority and resources to address the issues properly.

"Yeah sure," Yunupur said at last. "This is a job for experts. After all, what do I know about exotic diseases? Zilch. And I tend to jump to wild conclusions."

"What wild conclusions?" Tic asked immediately. "What’s the first idea that popped into your mind?" A great fan of gut feelings, our Tic. "Ahh…" Yunupur sounded embarrassed. "I keep imagining this disease was manufactured artificially. You know — germ warfare."

Prickly silence. Then Festina cleared her throat. "Why do you say that?"

"Just… I can’t see how it could have evolved naturally. I mean, this six-month incubation period, when you’re contagious but nonsymptoniatic. Doesn’t that sound way too convenient? Like someone wanted to infect the entire population before doctors noticed anything. Then the disease breaks out and people die in eight to twelve weeks, no exceptions. That’s weird too. Natural microorganisms don’t get far if they always kill their hosts. That’s like setting fire to your own house — especially for a germ that only inhabits one species. Natural microbes do better if they don’t kill their hosts at all… or at least if they let the hosts linger, infecting others all the while.

"But the thing that’s really got me stumped," Yunupur continued, "is this switch from Ooloms to Freeps. It wouldn’t be so odd if Pteromic B infected both races — that’s business as usual for germs, expanding their range of targets. But why should it immediately stop affecting Ooloms? That’s counterproductive evolution-wise."

He frowned for a moment, then let his face ease to a laugh. "See? I’m not cut out for this disease research stuff. An epidemiologist would just say random mutation can have bizarre effects. Microbes don’t have deliberate purpose in mutating. Changes just happen. Accidents. Flukes. A miniscule shift in DNA can have a huge impact in actual behavior, but there’s no conscious plan."

I glanced at Tic. As I expected, he’d gone all pensive. Never tell him microbes didn’t have a conscious plan.

Getting out of the hospital came off as a fancy song-and-dance number from some cast-of-thousands show.

The cast = police, proctors, Festina, and Lynn, plus a mob of overacting extras who’d be listed in the credits as The Media Wolfpack (Print, Broadcast, VR, and Other).

The dance = a phalanx of ScrambleTacs surrounding the lead characters (including that blushing blond starlet, Faye Smallwood), all pushing forward through a battalion of journalists who jostled each other for room to thrust out their microphones, their cameras, their VR bobbins, their precious pretty faces, their hard, determined chins.

The song = who, what, where, when, why, can you confirm, is it the truth, do you deny, rumors have claimed, no comment, no comment, no comment. "Oh," sings the chorus, "the public’s right to know…" While subtitles read across the bottom, "The media’s bone-on to win…"

Winning. That was the thing. To score points in some game only reporters care about. To get the quote, sound bite, money shot. To get the scoop… as opposed to getting the news, which sure as sweat wasn’t happening where we were. Other people were now in charge of the important stuff; those of us at the hospital had been out of the loop for a full day.

Had Maya been found? We didn’t know. Were other Freeps infected with the plague? Didn’t know that either. Had anyone figured out where the androids came from, how they’d been reprogrammed, or what Iranu was doing in the mine? Good questions all, that someone was surely investigating… but not us.

We were out of it. Me, I was on pothole patrol. So why did people so fiercely want to snag my picture? I was just a chump on the sidelines, a neophyte proctor who rightly got replaced by more experienced folk as soon as the Vigil realized the stakes were serious.

But in all the brouhaha, I could make out a key phrase repeated by almost every reporter. "Henry Smallwood’s daughter." The plague was back, and here I was, afloat in the circumstantial stew. I wanted to scream, It’s just coincidence! This has nothing to do with Dads. I didn’t even know who Dads was anymore — too many mysteries had got tangled up around him in the past few days.

The ScrambleTacs shoved forward, sweeping us all into a police van. We drove off, not going anywhere useful, just getting away.

In the back of the van, Festina whispered, "Are you really at loose ends?"

I reached out with my link-seed before I answered. Yes. The Vigil had assigned me, neat-filed and official, to Traffic Roads. "Depends how you define loose ends," I told her. "I’ve got road crews to check out… the snowplow-maintenance garage… the vehicle-safety inspection center…"

Festina smiled faintly. "It so happens I know a potentially unsafe vehicle that needs inspection."

"Yes?"

"Oh-God’s," Festina whispered. In her hand she held a black-button communicator, the kind visitors from offplanet carry when they don’t want to tune their wrist-implants to the frequency of our world-soul. "Our fast-flying friend just called me. Says he wants to talk."

"Chat-talk?" I asked. "Or do you think he has real information about something?"

"Who knows?" Festina muttered. "Oh-God has connections. And he’s a Freep. A fellow Freep like Iranu might have hired Oh-God as a driver, for clandestine trips around the Great St. Caspian countryside."

"I would never hire Oh-God as a driver."

"He’s usually not as bad as the other night. I mean, he always drives like a maniac, but he generally doesn’t hit anything. His hands were just cold…"

Her voice trailed off.

"It wasn’t so very cold," I said. "Not by Great St. Caspian standards."

"I was just thinking the same thing," Festina replied. "Do you suppose he had… some other problem? If he really did come into contact with Iranu…"

"One Freep could infect another," I said. "And with Pteromic A, little muscles in the hands were the first things to go slack." I looked around at the others in the van. Tic. Cheticamp. "We should report this."

"Not yet," Festina whispered. "Oh-God is one of my people. I don’t want to bring the police crashing down on his head unless it’s necessary. Certainly not if he’s just getting rheumatism or some Freep equivalent." She glanced at her communicator again. "Oh-God’s place is only half an hour south of town. You and Tic come with me, see what’s up. If we find anything you need to report, do what you have to do."

I nodded and looked across the van at Tic. For all the loud rattle of the van and the bustly conversation of people talking about going home, Tic’s ear-lids were both wide-open. His hearing pitched up to maximum.

He nodded at me and mouthed the word Yes.

The police dropped us off at a hole-in-the-wall precinct station with no reporters in sight. We shook hands, said good-byes. Cheticamp and Yunupur hurried off, pretending they had things to do.

Five minutes later, my Egerton arrived with a skimmer — bright yellow with E. C. HAULING painted in rainbow letters on every flat surface. E. C. = Egerton Crosbie. Which got me thinking about Sharr again, and how I’d been irritated/irritable with her for nigh-on thirty years, even though she was officially my sister-in-law. Must have been a hard strain on Egerton… so I gave an extra strong squeeze as I hugged him hello. Lynn said, "Faye’s heading into trouble again." I hadn’t talked to her about going to Oh-God’s. "How do you know?" I asked.

"Because half an hour ago you were mope-in-the-mouth depressed, thinking you’d been cut out of the action. Now you’re looking all smug and bouncy." She gave me her best long-suffering smile and kissed me on the earlobe. "Incorrigible, our Faye."

"Should we talk about this?" Egerton asked. He was a lovely, serious man — baffled by me most of the time, but blessed loyal and protective. The one time I needed to be bailed out of jail, I called Egerton instead of Winston. Winston would have started plea-bargaining the second he walked into the room; Egerton just kept saying, "I know she didn’t do it," till the police put me into his custody.

"We don’t need to talk," Lynn told him, smiling. "Faye explained everything last night. She’s got a guardian angel. Or a guardian whatsit, anyway."

Egerton furrowed his brow, big-brother anxious.

"Don’t worry," I said, "I’m not relying on a guardian whatsit to get me out of trouble. There won’t be any trouble. We’re just going to talk to a friend of Admiral Ramos. So…" I gave him my best golden-girl smile. "Can I borrow the skimmer? Please-please-please?"

Egerton sighed.

Dusk was drawing in as we flew over Oh-God’s "hacienda" — a two-dome compound in the middle of boreal forest, bristly cactus-pines crowding thick up to the edge of the cleared space. There were no ground roads anywhere near; the closest that civilization came was the Bullet tracks, some five kilometers away.

Oh-God had put up four dish’n’fan towers for collecting solar power and wind… maybe enough for his needs if he lived pinch-frugally, but I wouldn’t bet on it. For one thing, his tarted-up skimmer must take a lot of juice to recharge. Probably more than the dish’n’fans collected. And I’d never met a Freep who truly had a feel for living off the land — not in comparison to Ooloms, who could survive on leaves but never ate too much from any one tree for fear of making the forest look patchy.

I set the E. C. HAULING skimmer down in the only open area of the compound, right between the two domes. Thank God I didn’t hit anything — both domes were set to the same brush brown color as the ground, making it chancy in the fading light to distinguish them from clear, parkable dirt. It was quite the high fashion to build in-country homes that looked woodsy, at one with the soil. I doubted Oh-God cared about rusticana, but he’d still have to meet the expectations of his clients… big-city bumpkins looking for a genuine, authentic, nature-conscious hunting guide.

We got out of the skimmer, Tic, Festina and me. The twilight was quiet — no sign of Oh-God, though he must have heard us land. The E. C. HAULING van was definitely not a stealth vehicle.

"Odd," Festina murmured. "Where is he?" She looked around and gave the air a sniff. After yesterday’s flirtation with snow, Great St. Caspian had gone back to spring-thaw moist; there might be a touch of fog soon, now that the sun was going down.

"Maybe he’s hiding," I said in a low voice. "He wouldn’t recognize our vehicle, so he might have decided to play safe."

"Maybe." She didn’t sound convinced.

Tic rolled open both his ear-sheaths and stood still, listening. Festina and I held our breaths. After ten seconds, he shook his head. "Nothing. Except that you both have healthy-sounding hearts."

Festina stepped away from the skimmer so it wasn’t blocking her view of the yard. I did the same, angling off in a different direction. No sign of Oh-God; just the domes, the dirt, the trees.

"In exploring an alien planet," Festina said softly, "it’s a bad moment when you realize someone isn’t where he should be. Do you search around quietly, even though that might be wasting crucial time? Or do you shout and draw attention to yourself?"

"What do your Explorer textbooks say?" I asked.

"Same as always: damned if you do and damned if you don’t." She looked around once more. "Let’s try the quiet approach for a while. And watch each other’s backs."

Festina led us to the nearer of the two domes. "This is the garage," she whispered to us. "I’ve been here once before. Oh-God set the dome fields to recognize me as a friend." She placed her palm against the dome’s smooth brown surface, and murmured, "House-soul, attend. My name is Festina Ramos: garage access, please."

The dome field dimpled inward, opened a keyhole perforation, then dilated the hole to a gap wide enough for a person to step through. No light inside… just the spill of dusk through the doorway. "Maybe I should send you in first, Faye," Festina whispered. "If there’s danger, your Peacock will run to the rescue."

I took a step forward, but she stopped me. "That was a joke. Navy policy says Explorers always take the lead." Bumbler in one hand, stunner in the other, she slipped through the opening into the blackness. Glancing back over her shoulder, she murmured, "One of you keep watch at the door."

Tic got the jump on me, not to mention a sharp dig of his elbow as he bounced to the door first. "Vigil policy says novice proctors always take the watch," he told me. Then he and Festina disappeared into the dark.

For three minutes I strained my ears and eyes, reaching out to sense anything I should worry about. Nothing. I worried anyway. When I heard footsteps scuffing toward me from the blackness of the garage, my sight was well enough adjusted to make out the silhouettes of Festina and Tic.

"Anything?"

"No." They waited for me to move out of the doorway, then followed me into the yard. The garage’s dome field sealed itself shut behind us, as if an entrance had never existed.

"The house next," Festina said. Not that the other dome was big enough to deserve the name "house": it was only hut-sized, like my room back in Sallysweet River. The dome field dimpled open for Festina as easily as the garage…

…and there was Oh-God, lying flat on a cot. A cot with white sheets and white blankets, and his eyes were slack open, and his ear-sheaths, and the smell was the same as the Circus, the shit and the piss and the plague.

"Hey, Admiral," Oh-God said to Festina in a slurred voice. "I guess this is what ‘expendable’ means."

Shock. Struck motionless dumb. Yes, I’d been expecting the plague, fearing it, feeling its iciness back in the world… but looking at Oh-God this way still hit me like a punch in the gut. How long had it been since the last time I’d seen him? Three nights. And in that short time he’d gone from fumbly hands to this: slack arms, slack legs, slack face. Too fast, I thought. The plague shouldn’t work that fast.

My eye automatically began tracking down his body, doing the standard visual inspection of symptoms taught to me by Dads; grading the patient, how close to death? I didn’t get halfway through the quick once-over before I came up with an answer: damned close indeed. Time to get moving.

On the far side of the room stood a standard food-synthesizing system. "Tic," I said, "check the synthesizer. Make sure it’s linked to the world-soul’s recipe base. If it isn’t, hot-wire a connection. We need to be using the official Demoth formula for olive oil."

"Tried olive oil," Oh-God mumbled. "Doesn’t work."

"Not if your synthesizer uses Freep settings," I told him. "You need to download the Demoth database. Come on, Tic, move."

"My, my, Smallwood," he said, "who’s been imbibing alpha-female hormone?" But he glided across the room, and began to speak to the synthesizer in a low voice. If anyone could talk a witless little food processor into changing its formulas, Tic was our man.

Festina dropped to her knees beside Oh-God. "Don’t touch," the Freep said blurrily. "You might catch something."

"Humans are immune," she replied, laying her hand on his forehead. "Ouch," she murmured a moment later. "Got yourself a fever."

"A fever?" I said. "Pteromic Paralysis doesn’t cause fever."

"Tell that to my sweat glands," Oh-God grumbled.

"Considering how cold-blooded all Divian races are," Festina said, "he’s burning up."

I wanted to touch him, see for myself… but the Peacock would likely stop me. Better to take Festina’s word for it. "Did you catch this from Iranu?" I asked.

"Yeah, the pus-head. Why didn’t he tell me he was sick?"

"He probably didn’t know."

"He kept complaining his foot had fallen asleep. Wanted me to massage it for him." Oh-God drew a raggedy breath. "Pus-head."

Pus-heads indeed: both Iranu and Oh-God. For anyone on Demoth, mental alarm bells should clang like demons when someone’s foot "falls asleep" and won’t wake up. But they were both Freeps, and not alert to the possibility of plague. "When was this?" I asked. "When did you see Iranu?"

"A few months back," Oh-God answered. His speech had slurred up more, just in the time we’d been here. I’d never seen the paralysis move so unholy fast. "He hired me to give him a ride — on the hush — from Mummichog up to Sallysweet River."

Mummichog: flicking the link-seed told me Mummichog was a village on the equatorial coast of Argentia. A dormitory town for maintenance crews who worked the inland oil and gas pipelines. "What was Iranu doing in Mummichog?" I asked.

"Archaeology crap. That’s all he ever cared about. I’d driven him around before — he came to Demoth once or twice a year — and it was always ‘important archaeological sites.’ He said his old man used to play archaeologist on this planet too. Back before the plague."

Link-seed gymnastics again. Yes. One of the Freep archaeologists arrested years ago for smuggling out antique bric-a-brac was a Dr. Yasbad Iranu. Kowkow must have been Yasbad’s son. "Did you ever see Iranu carrying old rusty knickknacks?"

"Sure," Oh-God replied. "But he told me they were just window dressing in case he got caught by Demoth authorities. His father used them for the same thing. Cover for what he’d really found."

"And what was that?" Festina asked.

"You think he’d tell me? Not bloody likely. Took me years to learn what little I did."

"This last time you saw him," I said, "did Iranu go anywhere but Mummichog and Sallysweet River?"

"Nah. Those were the most important sites, I can tell you that much. Sometimes when he came to Demoth he went other places, but he always kept going back to those two."

Tic spoke from the far side of the room. "Olive oil’s ready." He held a small plastic cup in his hand.

I waved him over. Festina lifted Oh-God’s head while Tic put the cup to the man’s lips. Oh-God made a face, as wry as he could with so many muscles puttied out; but he drank and he swallowed. Thank heaven his throat still worked.

"That should help," I told him.

"Didn’t before," he grimaced. "Wipe off my mouth, will you?"

Festina dabbed with a corner of the bedsheet. Tic took my elbow and drew me away a short distance.

"His synthesizer was already set to Demoth recipes," Tic said in a low voice. "It didn’t need to be reprogrammed."

"You mean he’d been drinking our olive oil? And it hadn’t worked?"

Tic nodded. "Maybe it doesn’t have the same effect on his metabolism. If there’s some crucial ingredient that gets broken down by Freep stomach acids instead of being absorbed…"

That was one possibility. Neither of us felt like saying, "Suppose Pteromic B thumbs its microbial nose at olive oil. Suppose we’re back at square one with this disease, except that the new breed works a dozen times faster."

"We have to call an ambulance," I said. "A full emergency team."

"No other choice," Tic agreed. He fell silent for a moment, then muttered, "Uh-oh."

"What?"

"I can’t get the world-soul."

"But I just downloaded something a minute ago." I closed my eyes and reached out mentally. Protection Central, we need an emergency medical team…

Like shouting into a pillow. I’d felt the sensation before. "Christ. We’re being jammed again."

"By whom?"

I ignored the question. "Festina! Did the dipshits know Oh-God worked for you?"

"Maybe. It’s no secret we use a lot of retired Explorers."

"They could have mounted a watch on this place," I said to myself. "In case we showed up."

"But why?" Tic asked.

"Because they keep reading secret police reports. They know the Peacock is real, and it’s constantly doing me favors. The Admiralty doesn’t want to believe Sperm-tubes behave like that. It must drive them frothy well insane."

"Listen," Oh-God said. With his ear-lids slack open, he could hear better than the rest of us.

For ten seconds, we held our breaths. Then I caught the soft sound of stealth engines descending from the sky.