Terran Tomorrow

by Nancy Kress

  “I’m sorry, General, we’re having technical communications difficulties. Your last few sentences were badly garbled. Repeat, please.”

  “I said the weaponized spaceship is now classified as the property of HQ. Land immediately.”

  “We can’t, sir, I’m sorry. We’re speaking to you from orbit. The captain has explained to me that the ship—which, as you know, is of neither Terran nor World design—is preprogrammed to execute only two maneuvers: fly in orbit, as I am now, or else move laterally within only a hundred-mile radius of where it first landed. That seems to be a feature to conserve limited fuel.”

  “Let me talk to the alien captain.”

  “He does not speak English, sir. And the translator is not with us. She is ill.”

  “RSA?”

  “No, sir. Some … alien disease. Which is something else I need to report.”

  “And you can’t land the ship here?”

  “No, sir. Frankly, sir, we have very little control over the spaceship.”

  Strople snarled, “Of all the ass-fucked operations … you are still reprimanded, Jenner.”

  “Yes, sir. But about the alien disease, which may be a reason you wouldn’t want the Return to land here even if it could. We have a possible medical emergency at Monterey Base.”

  “What kind of ‘possible medical emergency’? And don’t you know?”

  Jason described the bear attack, McKay’s findings about anomalies in the victims’ brains, and the unexplained comas of not only Belok^ but also two Terran children at Monterey Base, and possibly Major Farouk. When he finished, Strople said, “So you think this thing might spread? That more of your people might fall into comas?”

  “Medical personnel don’t know.”

  “It appears you don’t know much, Colonel.”

  “No, sir. But I haven’t yet reported”—because you gave me no chance—“the main reason I came here. New America has obtained and is flying F-35s. Three of them strafed Monterey Base.”

  “Do you know where they came from or where they went?” In contrast to his previous utterances, Strople sounded neither surprised nor alarmed. Jason thought: He already knew. Was this somehow connected to the surprise visit of the two HQ captains to Monterey Base? To access ordnance, or form covert alliances?

  Jason said, “No, sir, not for sure. But I think their likely airfield is Sierra Depot.”

  “Casualties at Monterey?”

  “None.”

  “Do you know how many planes they have in total?”

  “No. We observed three.”

  “Keep me informed if you actually learn anything useful. About anything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “HQ out.”

  Jason drew a deep breath. Allen gazed at him, waiting, face professionally impassive. Queasiness took Jason at the lies he had just told, but he would not have done anything differently. Nor did he owe his officers any explanation. Nonetheless, he said, “The Return is a World diplomatic vessel, under the command of Ka^graa.” Or possibly of Jane; Jason did not understand the whole lahk Mother system, which seemed insane to him. Jane was a young woman, not even military, and Ka^graa was her father.

  “Yes, sir,” Allen said.

  “Lieutenant, you will not repeat anything you just heard. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now take the Return back to Monterey Base.”

  Whoever the hell the ship belonged to.

  * * *

  The Return set down at a different location from its previous landing and only long enough to drive off the FiVee, leaving aboard Allen, Martin, and Michaelson. The ship lifted to a safe orbit. The FiVee drove to the base without attack and through the armory airlock, where Farouk was loaded onto a gurney.

  Lindy and an Army nurse waited just outside the armory. Immediately she bent over Farouk, examining him with the instruments always in her pockets. “How long ago did he lapse into the coma?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said. “Where’s Holbrook?”

  “In surgery. One of the Settlement kids broke an arm falling off a crate. Nurse, have this patient taken to the v-coma ward.”

  Jason said, “The what?”

  “Virophage coma. We’ve got a dedicated ward now. Colonel Jenner, a word, please.”

  She addressed him as CO, and she hadn’t rolled her eyes at meager medical intel about Farouk. Neither of those things boded well. Jason followed her to a temporarily vacant alcove formed of two properly installed walls and one large, empty, splintery crate smelling of beets.

  “Jason, there is some bad news and I wanted to tell you myself. Your grandmother has fallen into the same sort of coma as the others. There are six now, with Dr. Farouk.”

  His grandmother. Instantly a hundred memories flooded Jason: Grandma cutting his and Colin’s PB&J sandwiches into triangles and stars. Grandma taking him and Colin to hear a bridge make noises—although, of course, only Colin could hear that. Grandma teaching him and Colin about microbes, about mice, about ecology. The Marianne Jenner of his memories was much more real to him than the woman who had returned to Earth twenty-eight years later. Lindy knew all of Jason’s memories of his grandmother; he’d told her when they’d been married.

  Which raised a whole other set of memories, especially when she took his hand.

  “Jason, there isn’t reason yet to despair. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Marianne and the others may spontaneously come out their comas. There doesn’t seem to be any trauma.”

  “Do you have the equipment to know what’s going on in her brain?”

  “If you mean an MRI, no, we don’t. CAT scans are inconclusive. The base infirmary was never designed as a trauma center; you know that. The best thing we can do is a spinal tap to see what’s going on in the cerebral-spinal fluid. I need your permission for that, since you’re the next of kin.”

  “Yes. Okay. Will you do the tap?”

  “No, Holbrook will. He’s much more qualified. He’ll tap the others, too.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Not very.”

  “What can I do?” The moment he said it, Jason remembered Lindy’s charge against him: You always think you can control everything.

  But she didn’t frown, or even drop his hand. “Nothing. Me, neither, not really. All we can do is wait while the virology team works. And hope there aren’t too many more headaches-cum-sleepiness that turn into comas. Jason—”

  Now she did frown, but it didn’t look like disapproval—more like uncertainty.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She dropped his hand. “Now it’s all up to Zack McKay and his lab team.”

  * * *

  It must be a genetic variation. Had to be.

  Zack stood with Susan by Caitlin’s bed in the curtained infirmary cubicle, one of a row of curtained cubicles holding v-comas. The curtains, made of some heavy material of an oppressive olive green, shut out light from the corridor. Under the dim overhead, Caity looked so small on the adult-sized bed with Bollers by her side, and so much like a healthy sleeping child instead a victim of a condition no one understood.

  There must be a mutated allele, a genetic variation somewhere amid the fifteen million base-pair variations known to exist in the three-billion-pairs human genome. Maybe one of those fifteen million variations had occurred as a result of some human encounter with the virophage in the far distant past. The mutation had been passed along, a silent passenger until this child, Zack’s child, contracted the virophage. Then what? What genetic sequence had been triggered by the phage? And what was it doing to the brain of someone who had been affected in the womb by the ubiquitous R. sporii, but had never contracted RSA?

  Because so far, that was their only clue. None of the coma victims was an RSA survivor. It was almost nothing to go on. They needed to run full-genome comparisons, ASAP.

  Amy Parker, head nurse, entered the cubicle and turned up the light. “Major Holbrook will be here in a
minute.”

  Stupidly, Zack thought, I’d feel better if she called him Dr. Holbrook. But this was a military base, Holbrook was an Army doctor, Amy was Lieutenant Parker. And Zack was an ass.

  When Holbrook arrived, Amy turned Caitlin over and held her, pulling up her gown to expose her delicate little back. He prodded the ridges of her spine and selected a spot between two lower vertebrae. After cleaning the spot, he inserted a long needle—Zack winced—and advanced it until clear fluid filled the syringe. The needle was withdrawn, Amy put a bandage on the spot, and the whole thing was over. Caity had not so much as changed her breathing pattern. Holbrook nodded and left for, presumably, the next v-coma.

  Susan said, “I’ll stay. You need to get to work on those fluid samples.”

  “I do, yes.”

  Until answers were found, Lab Dome was Zack’s new home. He would live, sleep, work there, not leaving until this new horror was vanquished. “Will you—”

  “I’ll send someone with your clothes and things. Bye, love.”

  Zack set off for his lab at almost a run. But as he barreled into the room, Toni grabbed his arm. “Zack!”

  “What is it?” Worse—from her face it was worse.

  “Three new comas. Two are soldiers here in Lab Dome, and one of them is an RSA survivor.”

  There went the only clue he had.

  “Who are they? Do they bunk together?”

  “Yes. Privates Lawrence Larriva and Mark Buckley. Both bunked with Mason Kandiss, that Army Ranger from the Return, so that’s the suspected transmission path.”

  “Yes, probably. Who’s the third victim?”

  Toni’s expression changed.

  “Who? A civilian? One of our research team?”

  “No.” Toni paused. “It’s the translator from World. Jane.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Over the next four days, five more people fell into comas, all soldiers. Jason visited McKay’s lab, a scene of purposeful and focused activity, to see if isolating Mason Kandiss would help. “Probably not,” Toni Steffens told him; McKay was “unavailable.” “Preliminary transmission diagrams indicate that there are secondary and even tertiary carriers.”

  “Have you found anything? Anything at all?”

  Dr. Steffens stared at him. “We’ve found a lot of things, Colonel, but so far none of them are going to pull your soldiers out of their comas or keep more from falling into it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t.” Jason held on to his temper; the scientists were all overworked, overstressed, and absolutely necessary. “I’m going to ask some basic questions. Are you any closer to understanding what happened here?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Are you closer to predicting how widespread the problem might be?”

  “No.”

  “Can you predict anything about who might or might not be susceptible to the condition—any shared physical qualities, for instance, in the victims?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Look, Doctor, I’m going to be frank here. You don’t like me, and I’m not crazy about you, either. But I need to be kept up to date about anything you find. You’re a civilian, but this base is under martial law. Now is there anything else I should know?”

  “Only that ‘what happened here,’ ‘the problem,’ and ‘the condition’ are no ways to refer to human beings who may die if we can’t help them.”

  “Don’t talk to me in—”

  McKay appeared at Jason’s elbow. “Toni, please get back to work. Please.” And when Steffens had stalked off, “Colonel, I apologize for my colleague. We’re all unraveling a bit.”

  “That is no excuse for disrespect.” He’d almost said insubordination.

  “Her wife, Nicole, collapsed into a coma a few hours ago.”

  “I hadn’t yet been told that.” Jason felt his adrenaline ebb. “How is your little girl doing?”

  McKay looked surprised. Why? Did everyone on the science side think that Jason knew of the coma victims as only nameless statistics? Jason added pointedly, “Caitlin.”

  McKay said, “She’s the same.”

  “I’m sorry. Please let me know if you make any advances at all.”

  “I will.”

  Jason left, glad to escape the lab. Although his next visit proved worse.

  He pulled aside the curtain in front of Jane’s cubicle. A second v-coma ward, as close as possible to the first, had been carved out of a hallway plus a few storerooms. The ward held, ominously, room for more patients.

  Like the others, Jane looked deeply asleep. An IV with nutrients ran into her arm. Her dark curls spread across the pillow, and occasionally the lids over her big eyes fluttered. Dreaming? Of what?

  This was Jason’s second visit. He didn’t even know why he came; he could have just requested reports on her condition, on all their conditions. On his previous visit, Ka^graa had been sitting by his daughter’s bed. Today Colin, with a bandaged side and a large cast on his leg, sat in a powerchair that badly crowded the cubicle. He looked up.

  “Colin. How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Does anybody know anything about how to cure this thing?”

  “You mean, with the technological advances you despise?”

  Colin said, “Cheap shot, big brother.”

  “Accurate shot.” They were bristling at each other like cats … no, not cats. Colin was holding Jane’s hand. So—like horned elk in springtime.

  I didn’t know, Jason thought. He didn’t know that Colin and Jane … but was it mutual? And what was Jason doing even thinking about her when he had so much else to think about?

  Colin must have seen something on Jason’s face. His own expression softened. He said gently, “No, Jace. She and I belong together. And she wouldn’t have been good for you anyway, or you for her. You need someone who will push back, like Lindy.”

  Rivalry vanished from Jason’s mind, replaced by rage—the pure product, directed against one of the two people who would push back at him. The rage came out cold, because that was how he had been trained and how he had trained himself.

  “You aren’t exactly the correct person to dictate my life, Colin, when yours wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for my intervention. I thought you might have learned something from the violence that lost you a third of your precious Settlement.”

  Colin’s gentle expression vanished. He had always been equal to Jason’s attacks. “I didn’t need to learn it, because I already knew. Violence is never the answer, not yours and not New America’s.”

  “How can you—”

  Colin rolled on, raising his voice, holding his brother’s gaze with one just as fierce. “You think violence is an instrument you can control, like your tech, using it only for ‘good and sufficient’ reasons. But violence is not an instrument; it’s a cancer. You can’t turn people into killing machines with the power to end life, and then expect them to behave humanely in the rest of their lives. Humane empathy is always the first victim of war, or soldiers couldn’t kill at all. Once violence gets started, it always escalates. It can’t be controlled.”

  “We didn’t start it. New America did. And Congress declared war on them.” Just before Congress itself became a victim.

  Colin said hotly, “Your Army equipped New America with all their stolen weapons and their stolen destructive imperialism. Fighting over territory that doesn’t belong to either of you, only to the Earth! Did you know that a hundred years ago in World War II, sixty-five percent of the casualties were civilians? And in Iraq and Brazil, it was ninety percent?”

  “Of course I knew that. Don’t patronize me—I know more military history than you ever dreamed of. But I’m defending people here, and I have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, Jason.”

  “Only for those as smugly self-righteous as you are. You get to have a choice because people like me make that possible. Without my Army, your entire precious Settlement would no longer exist, and you wouldn’t, eithe
r.”

  “I know,” Colin said, with one of the truthful and humble swerves to facts that made him so endearing, and so exasperating. “But, Jace—you don’t have to actively go after New America. You can just wait them out. They’ll destroy themselves eventually, because violent societies always do.”

  Jason said carefully, “Why do you think I’m planning to ‘actively go after New America’?”

  “Aren’t you? Before you lose so many soldiers to v-coma that it’s too late?”

  “I—”

  “Annhhh,” Jane said, and opened her eyes.

  Instantly Colin bent toward her. “Jane?”

  But her eyelids fluttered closed again, and Colin’s gentle shaking didn’t make her stir.

  Jason slipped through the curtain. He didn’t want to watch Colin gazing like that at Jane. And if she opened her eyes again, he didn’t want to see how she gazed back.

  Before going to the beds of his soldiers in v-coma, Jason went to find a nurse or doctor and report Jane’s brief, futile, apparently painful awakening.

  * * *

  Analyses of Caitlin’s cerebral-spinal fluid revealed several proteins nobody had seen before. The other v-comas’ samples confirmed that. The proteins contained expected amino acids, but they were folded in unique ways. “What the fuck do you suppose they’re doing in there?” Toni said. Since Nicole had become comatose, Toni’s language had deteriorated below even its usual obscene level. She barely slept, and definitely didn’t bathe. Zack breathed through his mouth around her, hoping that she didn’t notice.

  At 2:00 a.m., bleary with lack of sleep, Zack said, “I think the proteins are rewiring their brains. Along with all those glials and the chemicals that we know either create or prune synapses.” There were many more synapse-forming chemicals than synapse-pruning ones, the direct opposite of the autopsy tissue from Kayla and Glamet^vor¡.

  “But rewiring to what end, fuck it all? To what?”

  “Toni, get some sleep. Please.”

  “No. Not till the genome matching is done.”

  With the available computing power, it seemed to take forever to run the matching program. The base’s main system sat dark and unrepairable. The most powerful consoles that were still running had been commandeered for this, over the completely unreasonable protests of the immune-boosting team, who claimed they needed it more. There was no “more” than researching the v-comas, and Zack had told Major Vargas so, forcefully. Jessica Yu had backed Zack.