The Visitor

by Brent Ayscough

  Baron did not keep a large staff there, only enough to maintain the house and to take care of him when he came in, as he rarely had a house guest there. As they pulled in through the gate, the head chef, two housekeeper girls, two grounds keepers, and a handyman lined up in front of the house in respect for the owner. The staff for harvesting the tea were currently out in the fields, working with the plants.

  Baron introduced the staff to the baroness, and they went inside. “Do you like my house?”

  Tak looked about the grand entrance hall, with a curved staircase winding up to the balcony surrounding the hall below.

  “The floor of the hall is blue lapis granite imported from Brazil,” he explained. “Note the gold streaks in it. The staircase is of local teak wood.”

  Coming down the full length of the staircase, in the center of the steps, was a brass and ivory hand rail, attached to each step by brass stair rods. Black, wrought-iron circles and patterns of an art-deco design made up the bottom of the railing.

  “It’s beautiful!” Tak exclaimed.

  “I’m glad you approve. But, considering your mission, you might be more interested in the turned-up points on the roof outside. Those are popular with the Thai people to ward off evil, and most all Thai structures have them. Some homes have miniature houses on the grounds to house spirits of the dead family members, and daily offerings of fruit are brought to them.”

  “That explains what I saw on the way in from the airport. I saw several of them, about the size of a bird house.”

  He nodded. “We’ll dine here tonight. You may be surprised at just how great my chef is. This will be Northern Thai food, which is different from what you had in Bangkok. Tomorrow we can go into the nearby areas on a tour and look about, until the day you leave, which will be a sad one for me.”

  He smiled at her and led her to the master bedroom, something to behold. The outside wall was rounded. The floor was done in multi-toned granite, with light blues, creams, and rust colors, all in swirls. A huge window, in sections, covered most of the outside wall, overlooking a significant part of the plantation and the countryside beyond. In front of the huge window was a granite table, six inches thick, with baroque edges, broken off and irregular, at barstool height, with a chair on either side.

  He led her into the bathroom, a modern rendition of a Roman bath. There was a pedestal lavatory, toilet, and bidet, all carved out of solid granite. There was a granite shower and Jacuzzi of a multi-colored beige granite. The ceiling had three skylights, two in the main area, and one making up the top of the shower, which was tilted so as to drain off the water. Made of clear glass to illuminate by natural light, the skylights opened by electronic motors.

  Tak looked about in awe. “This is magnificent, Baron.”

  The staff had filled the Jacuzzi for them. Baron turned on the pumps and heater. “Let’s freshen up. I have arranged for some local clothes for you. They are in the closet.”

  ***

  In the early evening, they sat watching the sunset to the west from the crow’s nest tower atop the house. The view covered three hundred sixty degrees, but at this hour one could not help put look past the plantation to the fire in the sky from the setting sun behind the high clouds, coloring them from pink to crimson red. From the wardrobe closet Tak had selected a sarong with brocade and a matching, slim-fitting top. Baron wore loose-fitting, white pants and a hand-printed, Malaysian batik shirt. Tak wore no shoes over her seven-toed feet.

  “How do I look?” she said. She turned around like a model.

  “Extraordinarily sexy and beautiful, like most seven-toed aliens.”

  The young female assistant to the chef stood by to serve Baron’s finest Oolong tea, while the chef continued in the kitchen on what would be a delightful Thai meal. The tea was served in demitasse tea cups from Germany, a century old, very thin, and with gold leaf flowers set in royal blue china. Caviar and tidbits on crackers were served with the tea, along with an assortment of slices of local fruits.

  “And so, you must tell me, my lovely wife and baroness, how do you find my tea?” He was enjoying, to the nth degree, being the only human to ever marry an alien.

  “Exquisite. What do you have in mind for today’s culinary extravaganza?”

  Baron laughed. “It seems you need no help from anyone with the language. We’ll start with Khao Soi noodle soup, and after that I’m not sure.”

  Dinner was prepared in the most elaborate style that the chef could accomplish, enhanced by the fact that he had been called well in advance and told to put on the finest meal that was in his ability, and to bring in whatever his imagination might come up with without any regard whatsoever to the cost or effort.

  Tak came down the stairs for dinner, dressed in another outfit from her wardrobe closest. It was a green sarong with intricate brocade and a lighter green tight-fitting top that left her stomach bare. Baron was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs to see her beauty and how she handled the local costume.

  Tak saw Baron at the bottom of the lapis granite staircase, and realized that she was on stage. She came down the steps with a sway, exhibiting sexy moves, something she had seen in the movies she watched to learn English.

  “Breathtaking!” Baron announced.

  Tak had learned that silence could be an effective communication and tried it. In old world fashion, Baron held out his arm so as not to let an unattended woman enter the dining hall. Of course, no one was looking besides a peeking staff member who would later gossip it to all the others, but that was not the point. Tak took his outstretched arm and he led her from the bottom step to the drawing room before dinner.

  Baron led her to the bar, where he poured chilled champagne with the additives of a shot of bourbon, a dash of Hungarian bitters, and a slice of an Asian pear before dinner was to be served.

  ***

  The following morning, Baron led Tak to the garage. The manager had polished and made ready for them one of Baron’s favorite things. Tak saw it shinning with chrome and polished paint. “What’s that?”

  “I call it fun,” he said. “But more correctly, it is an American V-Twin Motorcycle. We will use that to go about the north here, whenever the weather is nice.”

  Tak walked around it. “I saw these on the roads, but none as pretty as this. I bet this will be fun.’

  “That is what I called, it. Fun!”

  CHAPTER 25

  The video in the briefing room depicted a newsman for a British news service. “...this is a report from Tibet, where there is an epidemic of what has been confirmed to be a hemorrhagic viral fever. It’s believed to be a virus similar to Ebola Zaire, the most deadly on the planet, named after its outbreak at the Ebola River in Africa. I’m reporting from Lhasa, which is in a state of chaos. The government in Beijing has sent in all of the available bio-warfare suits and breathing masks for soldiers to use, but there are not enough to go around. There are also reports that many of the Chinese-made bio-warfare suits are defective, causing some soldiers to catch the virus.”

  The film panned to the background behind the young newsman to focus on a street in Lhasa with two soldiers in the special suits with AK-47 Chinese-made rifles in hand.

  “The sight of soldiers,” the newsman continued, “instills fear and even panic. Here is a scene from downtown Lhasa.”

  The film then switched to a scene depicting Chinese running about in panic.

  “The Chinese government put more of the same suits into immediate production, but it’s too little, too late. Worse, much of the military is infected, and thousands more are becoming infected daily. But oddly, only Chinese are getting sick. It is uncertain if the bio-warfare suits are working or not, as so many of those using the suits are becoming infected. One government official was allowed to leave Lhasa at the early stages of the epidemic to go to Beijing, and he later was diagnosed with it in Beijing. He infected several persons on the government plane as well as three hospital staff in Beijing, all of whom, along
with anyone he came in contact with, are either dead or in quarantine.

  “The task of the military, as they tell us, is to try to keep order, to segregate parts of the cities from others, to prevent looting and riots, and to set up bases on the outskirts of town for citizens to come to if they do not have Ebola.

  “Anyone not obeying a soldier is shot on the spot.”

  The camera switched to a scene depicting a Chinese person lying face down, clearly dead, with blood stained bullet holes on the back of his jacket. The scene then switched to a large fire, with soldiers in bio-warfare suits throwing bodies onto it.

  “Large fires have been built to put the bodies in, as the virus lives quite well on dead tissue for some time, and the bodies are a further source of spreading the epidemic.”

  The picture switched to soldiers in bio-warfare suits forcing a couple at gunpoint to enter a tenement.

  “People are ordered to stay in their homes. Every medical facility is trying to operate at several times full capacity, and we have reports that many of the staff people at the hospitals are infected. The cities of Xigatse, Sakya, Gyantse, Jukundo, Derge, Kandze, Sungpar, Chamdo, Dartsedo, Litang, and Batang all have the same epidemic. The cities of Choni and Labrang to the north, and Amdo and Nagchu to the west report occurrences as well, but not as widespread, indicating that the epidemic did not start there, but may have traveled there with people traveling to those cities from the major cities that are in such a horrible state...”

  Colonel Doctor Chamberlin of the US Army Medical Corps turned off the video and addressed the group of five volunteers and a dozen others in the room, who would be in contact with the volunteers or who were otherwise participating in the event. The lecture was at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, in Frederick, Maryland, the main location of four where research on US bio-warfare was conducted. The facility was well equipped with the various air locks, pressure suits, and equipment needed to work on volatile things like Ebola.

  “That news film was taken by a British news service with a news person already in Tibet,” the Colonel said. “Since he was already there on another assignment, he was able to provide that report via satellite. He is not infected as you can see. We are going over to collect samples and to determine whatever we can about this epidemic. We have been granted permission from Beijing to proceed.

  “Each of you is very brave to volunteer, as the possibility of infection if anything goes wrong is extremely high. You are all trained in bio-warfare and Ebola, and you have been selected because of your medical background. We are not allowing any Chinese volunteers.

  “Let me give you a quick refresher in Ebola. It has never been considered as a likely tool for bio-warfare, as it is simply too damned dangerous. It always kills, whereas things that make a person swell up, get red-eyed and temporarily lose vision, get sick, go to sleep, or become temporarily incapacitated have been considered more valuable as bio-warfare agents. When an anthrax victim dies, his body can be disposed of without much risk as anthrax is not carried from one person to the next. This is not the case with Ebola. An infected person, and even a dead body, has many pounds of tissues for Ebola to feed on, and it will live, using the remaining tissues, even after the victim dies.

  “Viruses associated with most hemorrhagic fevers are zoonotic, which means that these viruses naturally reside in an animal reservoir host or arthropod vector. They are totally dependent on their hosts for replication and overall survival. Animals can be carriers, as well as humans. It is well known that monkeys carry it. We must assume that quite a number of animals can feed off the remains, and spread it--rodents, possibly vultures, and who knows? Maybe even insects.

  “Ebola can enter the body by the mouth, by being breathed in, by sexual contact, by ingestion of water or food, by getting it on a hand or utensil which later ends up in the mouth, and, of course, through an open wound. Close contact with an infected person will transmit it by breath, much like catching the flu.

  “Regarding early detection, there is simply no way to tell that a person on the street has just contracted it. You might think that taking a person’s temperature would reveal he just caught it, as it is a hemorrhagic fever, but that is not the case. There is no rise in the person’s temperature until the body starts to react to the infection, by which time, he will be close to very seriously ill and most likely unable to get about very well. After two days, a person might get a cough. Only after a few more days, will he usually show a fever. Soon there will be bleeding from the urinary track, nose, mouth, or anus, all of which are clear signs, but these usually do not show up in the first two days. As to the contagiousness of it with a newly infected person, Ebola is highly contagious shortly after a person has first become contaminated with it, and this means that people who look healthy and have no idea that they have it are spreading it like wildfire. For several days after a person is infected, he will be unknowingly infecting many others, and they will infect many others, exponentially.

  “We have detection systems for many biological warfare agents, like the Biological Integrated Detection System, or BIDS. However, none of these will detect Ebola. So, we simply have to assume that it is everywhere where you will be going.

  “We are to treat this as the most dangerous, level-four hazardous substance known. We must exercise the most extreme precaution in decontaminating. We are going over in a Boeing C-17, and the plane will let us and the equipment off and then take off right away, leaving without being touched or fueled by anyone at the airport. It’ll be flown to one of our bases and immediately sprayed upon landing in case it picked up any of the virus.

  “As for equipment, we’ll be in a Block II Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Reconnaissance System, or NBCRS, when we roll off the plane. If any of you have not been in one, it is the eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicle made just for this sort of mission. We will be in our Self Contained Toxic Environment Protective Outfits, or STEPOs, before we open the hatch of the NBCRS. If it is too hot in the suits, you will also have the new Advanced, Lightweight Microclimate Cooling System, or ALMCS, to attach to the suit, which will keep the temperature inside your suits comfortable. If any of you have not yet used them, your metabolic heat is transferred to the fluid in the ALMCS. Communications among us when in the suits will be by the PRC-127 headsets.

  “We will be living in one of those inflated tents, an M20 Simplified Collective Protective Equipment, or SCPE. We will also take a spare in case it fails or gets ruined. We will inflate it inside a building like a big bladder. We’ll have a motor blower for inflation, portable toilet, and cots inside for sleeping. We’ll use M291 decontamination wipes. The batteries of the suits are good for four hours, and then they need re-charging or replacement, so we better plan on getting back each time we go out with enough reserve to make it in case of problems. When we get back to the tent, we will first spray ourselves with a decontaminate. Once back inside, you can use the toilet, rest, eat, and then go back out for another four hours. We’ll stay there only three days, and then the plane will return for us. The Chinese government is providing us with soldiers who will guard our tent and will also defend us as we go out to observe. They will have their own bio-warfare suits.

  “We’ll make observations, get samples, and get out. The samples will land with us in Guam and then be packaged to come right back here. Hopefully, we’ll learn more about the virus and come up with recommendations. England may also send over a medical team, and possibly other countries. However, it is not feasible that members of other countries to go together with us as they are not trained on our equipment nor we on theirs, and time is of the essence as people are dying by the thousands.

  “I frankly don’t have high hopes that we can do very much, as we already have good information that it is Ebola or a variant for which there is no cure. As for recommendations on how to keep it from spreading, I suspect it will be hard to do much, considering the standard of living there, which is so low, with
people sharing utensils, sharing food, and living in close quarters with one another. And, there is chaos. But we are commanded by our president to try, and it will be an interesting, but dangerous, challenge.

  “We have reports that the Tibetans have not been contaminated, and their monks attribute their lack of infection to their holy status. We suspect the Tibetans have something that resists the infection. But frankly, we have many reports of crazy things there, some conflicting, and we really don’t know what to believe. And, of course, the Chinese are superstitious and inclined to add their own interpretation on things--so much so, that we have reports that sound crazy.

  “Now, for coming back, we will be sent to quarantine upon return to Guam, to make sure that we don’t have it. Chances are that if any one of us gets it, the whole group might, as we will be together when not suited up, eating, and sleeping, just the same as the Chinese.

  “Any questions?”

  Lisa Chapman, one of the volunteers, asked, “Is there any information on how it got so widespread so quickly?”

  “Nope,” the colonel answered. “That is one of the highest priority issues that we have to address. But that may be best addressed when we return and evaluate what we learn there. Perhaps we can glean information to better theorize just how it happened. Right now, the only plausible explanation is that some traveler or travelers got it in Africa and then went to Tibet and brought it there. There are many students that travel in the poor areas of Africa and Tibet, and it could have been brought in by a student or a group of students. But as yet there is no evidence, or at least none that the Chinese government has given us, that any such person or persons have been found or traced.