There were a lot more people with LET on Earth than in orbit. But proportionally they were a tiny part of Earth's estimated nine and a half billion. In most of the developed world gene modifications were illegal, with severe penalties. Home on the other hand had a clear majority of gene modified people. The disease, targeting LET patients, could have destroyed Home as a functioning nation in short order.
The devastation the disease wrought on Earth even among the unaltered population disrupted normal commerce, including what was available to lift to the habitats and lunar colonies. Shuttle flights were reduced as crews and support industries faltered. Suppliers shut down and new sources couldn't be found as businesses lost key people and owners. Home also isolated themselves from the other habitats that didn't quarantine travelers as aggressively. ISSII had a devastating bout of flu sweep through their station that overwhelmed their medical personnel and facilities. ISSII residents dispersed back to their home countries carrying the virus.
Home wouldn't grant shuttle flights clearance to leave other habitats during the epidemic without a check of their passengers for signs of disease. Neither were fresh arrivals allowed to run about Home freely until they sat out a four day incubation period to expose any infections. These difficult but necessary policies hurt business and cost money and resentment, but flu hadn't sweep through Home. The question now seemed to be if it would be a permanent thing? Would the created flu establish itself as a seasonal variety or burn out as other severe strains had done in the past?
The reduced supply from Earth was a hardship only to those who had never experienced real hardship. Not having fresh blueberries for your pancakes or premium cuts of beef for a few months never killed anybody. The absence of small luxuries was a psychological blow, but nobody starved. A few folks were thinner and had their priorities realigned, but that was all probably to the good.
April was amazed all this happened in a bit more than three years. She was seventeen now early in the 2088 new year. Four years ago she would have never predicted she'd be living in a new nation, as an emancipated adult. Nor could she have imagined she'd be in her own apartment with a view of the backside of the moon instead of Earth filling half the view.
The people she dealt with every day had also changed. Most of them she hadn't met before Home rebelled. Her close companions now, Jeff Singh and Heather Anderson, had been acquaintances, not intimate friends as well as business partners. April couldn't imagine her bodyguard Gunny Mack Tindal not being a part of her life, and she'd never have thought her brother would be dead so young.
All in all, it really wouldn't bother April if things were just quiet for a few months.
* * *
The Fox and Hare was a club in which April had inherited an interest from her brother. The temporary shortage of luxury goods put a major crimp the club's style and profits. They were selling entertainment more than food and drink right now. April intended the club to be one of the first customers for Heather's sale of alcohol from Central. She wasn't sure what they would use to flavor it, but there must be information online, and she had resources. Her friend Ruby was a great cook. Ruby had to know something about flavorings.
Ruby occasionally supplied some of the club's entertainment. Most of their performers were local talent rather than professionals. Ruby was a previous professor of Medieval Music, who knew her way around a keyboard. In fact she was one of the few local people who played it in harpsichord mode with skill, though she could play well in piano mode too, especially jazz and blues. A few people had requested classical pieces, and as far as April could tell, Ruby was at least competent playing those too.
The demand for a place to socialize had surprised April. She'd worried they might have to shut down the Fox and Hare. But Gunny explained most of the people living on station were Earth born like him. Station born like April were still rare. She could pack friends into a small cubic like a clown car, and enjoy visiting, but Gunny assured her Earth raised folks felt uncomfortable having friends in the typically cramped quarters most could afford. Thus they'd meet at the club.
To accommodate the shift in their business model the Fox and Hare added more musicians, singers, comedy acts and even a few dancers who could deal with the half G environment on the deck where the club was located. The performers took their pay in kind as often as cash. April had been informed the other club, The Quiet Retreat, had poetry readings and added a team book reading featuring Ben Patsitsas' newest novel, with different people doing the voices of various characters. April had visited The Quiet retreat, but it was a little too quiet for her tastes.
There was still plenty of Earth entertainment. The flu below had removed some performers and producers, but there were always lots of new people striving to break into the business, and for awhile some of the entertainment sources played a lot of recorded shows while fresh talent was developed.
The fact was, there was already a cultural shift happening on Home. People were as unhappy with Earth entertainment as they were with Earth news programming. That meant very unhappy. It particularly grated that Earth entertainment all seemed to have a heavy propaganda thread running through them now. Home people were of different tastes and backgrounds in a lot of ways, but stupidity wasn't common. They recognized propaganda when they saw it. All too often it targeted spacers.
The club hadn't imposed a cover charge, but the few food items they could offer were much more expensive. The stock of wine and liquor was quite depleted even with higher prices, and the moon alcohol would be very welcome, but beer was unobtainable. It was just going to have to wait.
* * *
"The flu epidemic seems to be easing off. The seasonal flu usually peaks in February and eases off sharply in March, in the Northern hemisphere," Doctor Lee said. "Of course this wasn't your usual flu, so it might not follow a natural course. It seems to be slowing down sharply for mid- March."
"Are you still getting candid reports from your retired fellow?" Jon asked.
Lee looked upset. "No, I get no response at his address. I'm afraid he may have been a victim of the disease himself. There is no news report or obituary, but things were so disrupted many deaths went unreported. I have no doubt there are thousands undocumented. I based the idea it is easing on direct observation, not any credible reports. Jeff's associate, Chen Lee, has anecdotal reports from agents on the ground. And we have satellite observations of fewer burials. In particular there are no new mass graves such as they'd seen earlier. There seems to be more public activity, and some of the closed businesses are recalling workers to reopen and hiring new."
"When will it be safe to allow entry to Home without a four day quarantine?" As head of security that was Jon's big concern. The Assembly had shown a great deal of confidence in him and Doctor Lee, voting them the authority to limit entry and quarantine the actual sick arrivals. The restrictions cost some folks a great deal of money not to come and go freely, besides plain inconvenience. Jon wanted to stop the emergency measure before people started pressuring him to do so, or worse moved to have the Assembly revoke it. He might want to present an emergency act again someday, so he wanted a history of moderation and reasonableness.
"I don't know," Lee admitted. "This variety may burn out and never appear again. Other very virulent strains have done that. It may shift characteristics if it transfers to animal hosts. It could become less lethal or harder to transmit. This flu was engineered, so we don't know if it will have the genetic drift of natural varieties. It was spread through the Southern Hemisphere out of season. We won't know what it is going to do with any certainty until the normal season passes in the South, and then another season passes in the North."
"I doubt we can convince a majority of Home citizens to stay isolated that long," Jon said. "I won't support it if it comes up in the Assembly. I'd be foolish to push a measure I know will be defeated."
"There is one possibility we might pursue," Lee said. "I've read a paper by a fellow in Canada. This was from before th
e epidemic. He had an experimental device that could detect a viral infection very early. As early as a few hours after the initial exposure. It seemed a solution in search of a problem at the time, since you don't need to confirm an infection that early to treat it effectively. But given the time it takes to reach Home from Low Earth Orbit it would give us a significant safety factor. Not so much from the moon, but they are less likely to have an infected person. Nobody just passes quickly through the moon on the way here."
“Except for special freight runs, almost all our moon traffic comes through Central,” Jon told him. “I can speak with Heather and ask her to control anyone wanting to pass through her domain quickly.”
Lee lifted an eyebrow. "You know her well enough to just ask that kind of thing?"
"I consider us friends," Jon assured Lee. "If she balks, I’ll ask April or Jeff to talk to her. They'll understand the importance of this. It wouldn’t surprise me if they already know as much as we do with the way they gather information and share it with each other.
"You worry about finding out how this device works. Surely there was a patent application. Those systems should be secure even with the troubles on earth. If you can't access it from here I can ask Jeff to have some of his people pursue it on Earth. Eddie Persico might help us too. Time is of the essence, before word gets around the epidemic is easing, and the natives get restless."
"I'll start researching it today," Doctor Lee promised.
Chapter 2
April's com signaled a priority message. She only had a dozen people on that list.
"Lunch in the cafeteria in twenty minutes? And some show and tell?" Jeff Singh offered.
April looked at the time in the corner of her screen, 11:24. That would get them in just ahead of the mid-day rush. "Yes, don't be much later, or there will be a line." She realized she hadn't had her second cup of coffee and poured it in a thermal mug for Jeff.
Jeff wasn't late, rather he was a few minutes early when he came in the door, carrying a portfolio, and found April waiting for him. There was a line but it was short and moving right along.
"Is the minestrone soup any good?" Jeff wondered.
"I had it last week. It's from a mix, but it wasn't bad. I think Ruby doctored it up from just the straight out of the bag mix. I'm going to get breakfast though," April said, "the pancakes with dried banana chips and pecans in them are good. We've got some real butter right now too."
"I'm ready for shell eggs and heaps of bacon," Jeff admitted. That was shocking. Jeff was usually so indifferent to food that April worried about him eating enough. But he didn't look thinner when she examined him carefully. He looked good, actually. He hadn't noticed the covered cup in her hand. Or if he had he didn't mention it. April set it on his tray.
"It's not shell eggs and bacon, but that may help your cravings," April promised. Jeff just raised his eyebrows.
April led Jeff away from the knot of folks who still sat in front of the coffee pots, even if they were empty. She knew when Jeff opened the lid how the odor would carry.
Jeff showed restraint, buttering his baguette and tasting his soup before taking a sip from the mug.
"Ahhh...I know you really do love me," he said.
"I don't usually carry it outside my place," April explained. "I don't want to incite jealousy. But if you come by to visit I'll make a half pot."
"We should be getting a lot more coffee in six months, eight months for sure. It's going to be Indonesian through Australia. I already have it on the short list after silver wire, medical supplies and some special graphene bonding adhesives we need," Jeff said. "No promises before then."
"Then I can be a little freer with mine," April decided, "I mean, if I'm on the distribution list. I'd planned on making mine last a year if I had to."
"Of course you are going to get some. It gets split six ways," Jeff revealed.
April didn't ask who else was getting it. She could guess a couple of them.
"Freight is pretty safe for us to receive, April said, waving at her meal like it was just arrived on the dock, "but what about people? I'm still concerned we're going to be terribly isolated by this. We were growing and getting good quality people. Who's going to want to come here if it's like jail? People want to be able to go off on vacation or visit grandma without sitting out a quarantine."
"Jon and Doc Lee have been talking to me about that. There was some tech invented before the epidemic that lets you sense an infection just hours after exposure. If they can't find documentation on it I'm going to have some of Chen's fellows on Earth hunt it down." Jeff lost his pleasant countenance. "They've done marvelous work for us on Earth even as bad as things got down there. If worse comes to worse, since we know it can be done, we'll just have to re-invent it if it was lost. We'll be able to stop the infected at the lock once we have that system."
There was something about the cold look on Jeff's face April had seen before and it worried her. "Jeff, are they hunting for who started it? Surely somebody wants to find him or them, and press charges. After all the millions dead and hurt, isn't somebody looking?"
"Chen's men knew who conceived it weeks ago. They'll make sure the people he used to do the technical work can't do it again," Jeff promised.
"But they didn't arrest him?" April asked.
"The Earth governments aren't even acknowledging this was an engineered disease. The few who suggested that were denounced publicly as nut cases and conspiracy theorists. So they'd hardly be looking to arrest someone as criminally responsible, even if we offered them up. If they did want them our evidence couldn't be presented in court," Jeff said. "That's the fault of Earth laws and courts, not the quality of the evidence. It was beyond a doubt, as they say."
"You didn't just kill him, did you?" April asked, concerned.
"You should know better," Jeff said. He really looked hurt. "Chen's men held him long enough to question him electronically. They didn't get rough with him or harm him before they released him. April...Some things are beyond our ability to adequately reward or punish. Not to get all mystical on you, but I honestly doubt he can escape the karma of such a horrible act. Just killing him out of hand would have been far too quick and easy on him."
"Thank you, I'm happy to hear that," April said.
Jeff recapped the mug and proceeded with his meal, as did April. She found the pancakes plenty sweet without syrup. When he was done Jeff finished the coffee last, sipping it reverently. When he was completely finished he pushed the tray to the side, wiped his hands rather thoroughly and opened the portfolio. He smiled, looking inordinately proud, and presented her with a blank sheet of paper.
"Thank you," April said, unsure what she was supposed to do with it. She looked at both sides carefully. It was a bit thin for printer paper and white, but not the brilliant white of coated paper, more crème. But it did have a slick feel. It seemed to be standard letter size, or close to it.
"It's not from Earth," Jeff explained.
That was a big deal. They didn't have trees or enough rags to waste them on paper. Paper meant they could make sani-wipes, filters and hard print documents, packaging for food and medical items. Her favorite artist, Lindsey, would be very interested in paper April realized, beside the practical uses.
"Oh...So what is this? Synthetic fibers? April guessed.
"Soy protein fiber, and a little turnip pulp filler and tiny amounts of soy adhesive and titanium oxide. We can make soy based inks too," Jeff said.
"Soy huh? That means we'll have tofu soon?" April asked. "I'm not a huge fan but it's pretty good deep fried with a sweet peanut sauce."
"And soy milk, protein powder to add to other stuff, and some pretty good fake cream cheese. It's even a good base for some useful industrial glues and plastics," Jeff added. "The fibers that make paper can be made into cloth too."
"I didn't know you were trying to raise soybeans," April said.
"There's a special variety that grows very low," Jeff said. "Since it doesn't
need much vertical space you can put the grow racks close together. The variety is working out nicely. I have to wonder why it was developed. I don't see the advantage for Earth growers, but we're glad to have it."
"Good. One more thing we don't have to lift from Earth," April said. "Aaron Holtz thinks we'll make so much of our own goods we may not grow back to the same lift traffic for a few years."
"The name doesn't ring a bell," Jeff admitted.
"Former fund manager from New Zealand," he writes a couple times a week for What's Happening, Wiggen's site," April said.
"You're sure it's hers?" Jeff asked.
"Pretty sure. Unless she's deliberately fronting it for somebody else," April assured him.
"When it first came out I thought you might be behind it," Jeff revealed.
"All my other hobbies and find time to manage a general news site for Home too? I don't think so!" April objected.
"A lot of the views expressed sounded like yours, and they have avoided gossip from the start. I know how you feel about the gossip boards. But yes, it grew too big and I eventually knew you didn't have the time to be reviewing and directing that much material," Jeff said.
"Don't you think I'd tell you if I had something like that going on?" April asked. Sometimes Jeff didn't seem very socialized to April. He wasn't deeply strange like some very smart people could be, but sometimes he just lacked – finesse.
Jeff screwed up his face in concentration. "I guess you would, eventually. But just because we do so much together...You aren't obligated to tell me everything you're doing. I'm sure I have no idea about a lot of what Heather is doing at Central. I don't expect to be told every little thing. If it's important she'll get around to telling me."
They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7) Page 2