They Said It Would Be Easy (April Book 7)

by Mackey Chandler

  "There are only three of us now instead of six," Deloris reasoned, "surely the half load on the environmental system alone means that some things aren't going to get used up as fast. Filters will be fouled slower. Any unbalance in the air will change slower with fewer of us driving it. We might even close off areas like the unused cabins and reduce the ventilation load."

  "Yes," Alice agreed, "I just don't feel qualified to make those decisions on complex systems. For sure I'm not authorized to do so."

  "Honey," Deloris said softly, touching her hand. "Neither I nor Barak are really qualified to fly the stinking thing. The experts are telling us what to do. I'm sort of irritated now that they didn't see any need to modify your routine too. Some experts!"

  "If you could inquire of them," Alice agreed. "Any break they can give me, consistent with safety, would be welcome."

  "You went on ten hour shifts with us. Is your maintenance and environmental work still on the twenty four hour day?" Barak asked.

  "Yes, and that's a problem too," Alice admitted. "Tasks tend to bunch up on one shift or fall in the middle of my sleep period."

  "This voyage is turning out to be educational beyond all my expectations," Barak said. "I'm seeing so many ways people can screw up I would have never dreamed could happen."

  "Then you are exceptional," Deloris said drolly. "Most people can't learn from watching others fail. They have to do it personally for it to make any impression."

  "I love it when you sweet talk me like that," Barak said.

  * * *

  April's news bot didn't even bother to forward most stories about the flu to her now. She could read all of her waking hours and never read them all. The official agencies got a little higher ranking than other organizations. But almost anybody would have raised an alert in her software with a story that had the flags flu, spacer, pandemic, Home, Spain and Life Extension Therapy all in the same article. The bot ranked the story at 89% relevance with the nearest other story today ranked at 16%.

  The interview of the head of Italy's Health Agency, Daniele Baistrocchi, sounded dry and academic at first. Then the interviewer asked the official: "Is it possible, after all the chaos and lost records and the death of the early witnesses, that we will ever know who was patient zero?"

  The impeccably dressed gentleman being interviewed looked young for his office, perhaps on the plus side of forty years old. But then after the ravages of the pandemic a lot of senior officials didn't look as old as one had grown used to expecting. The older generation suffered much higher morbidity. He frowned and looked down, as if considering what to answer.

  "The best accounts we have are that it started among the senior churchmen. There was a...precursor infection. We don't really understand the mechanism. There was a conference of Cardinals who all came down with an infection. Cardinal Gasco of Spain appears to have been the vector to that group. They later all succumbed in the epidemic and are of course not available for interview or testing. He almost certainly was infected by the Queen of Spain. The King and Queen of Spain were infected by family who had just returned from getting illicit genetic treatment on the orbital habitat of Home."

  "What does this illegal therapy have to do with the epidemic?" the newsman asked. April noticed he had the leading question right on the tip of his tongue. Almost as if it were...scripted.

  Daniele frowned deeply and then leaned forward like he was imparting something confidentially. "The gene therapy, is imparted with a viral carrier," he said as if it was something sinister.

  "You lying son of a bitch!" April shouted at the screen. "You know they aren't connected!"

  "Ah, well, if the Cardinals all succumbed then the other Spaniards did too?" the interviewer asked.

  "No, the young couple fled back to Home before they could be arrested. And the elder royals left after them. Apparently they were victimized, and did not pass it to the Cardinal deliberately. But they chose to step down once they were in an untenable situation. They could not have retained their position even if it wasn't a willful act once...polluted. I can't say that I blame them for choosing exile. It was perhaps the less painful choice for everyone, when they no longer had any good choices," Daniele said, looking sad.

  "Are you saying this tragic disease was a horrible mistake or a deliberate attack?" he asked.

  "As to that, we have no idea. We have no way to connect the two with the evidence gone."

  "That doesn't seem to be hindering your insinuations," April fumed.

  "The Cardinals died early in the epidemic when quick cremation was still the rule for people with infectious diseases. The other early infected are in jurisdictions we cannot reach," Daniele said, with a wry look and a plucking motion in the air. "The nation of Home has no extradition agreement with any other civilized country."

  "Of course not," April said aloud to the screen, grinding her teeth. "For your values of civilized."

  "People sometimes felt the prohibitions on genetic treatments too restrictive," the interviewer said.

  "Every country that has thrown the doors open to unlimited gene therapy has had tragedy," the official said. "People soon forgot the German's experiment with artificial prodigies ended horribly with mental illness. There were worse horrors in China, though not as public. Italy has avoided the worst of those by reasonable restrictions. I think this just underscores the wisdom of that," Daniele said.

  End of substantive portion, said the program. So the rest was sign-off.

  April was irritated and sent the recording to most of her close friends, with a header that demonstrated her displeasure. She had an appointment to run and gladly went to do so in order to run off her anger at the bias and falsehoods implied in the interview.

  * * *

  "Are things better now?" Barak asked Alice.

  "Of course! They cut all the manual maintenance like filter changes in half, and eased up on the reporting since they saw how diligent I'd been when they looked at the records. That's what most of the record keeping was about. If they didn't have to log it and sign it, a lot of people would just never do it."

  "Deloris never really told me exactly what the owners changed in your duties, she didn't have it on speaker. But I could hear her side of it when she started raising her voice. I think you should know after you'd both discussed it with the owners, and you left, she really lit into them for not examining the wider picture. She said it is her command and accepted responsibility, but pointed out how inexperienced she is, and what poor support it was. They admitted they hadn't run the changes past somebody with command experience. I'd have never had the nerve to talk to the owners that way," Barak admitted.

  "Our Deloris is not shy," Alice agreed. "It gives me a lot of incentive to keep her on my side."

  "We're going to be well known after this in the community. It should be easier to get work, but I'm not going to jump in and take another job for awhile," Barak said. "Especially not a long voyage. I need a little break and a vacation away from long shifts and tight spaces for awhile."

  "What are you going to do? Maybe a week or two at New Las Vegas?" Alice asked.

  "No, I'm thinking a trip to Earth. I really enjoyed the lagoon we visited on a sailboat. I adjusted pretty well to being outside and relaxed after awhile. Maybe someplace else, different. Someplace with trees or mountains if one can be found safe. I've never seen snow. But not someplace packed with people. Tonga gave me a taste of seeing lots of people all jammed together. I can't imagine New York or Tokyo. No thanks," Barak said.

  "You know, I'll have some pay coming too, and I could use a break. Partner maybe?" Alice asked.

  "I wasn't sure you wouldn't be ready for a break from me," Barak admitted. "That sounds like fun. We'll go somewhere interesting."

  Alice was amused. "Said the boy who just visited Jupiter," she said, laughing.

  * * *

  April woke up slowly, stretched hard, her hands balled in fists and legs straining to poke her toes out. Jeff said he was coming over
today, but he hadn't set a time. That usually meant before supper. He wasn't one to bang on the door for breakfast.

  A glance at the com board showed no priority message light, which was just fine with her.

  She thought about getting dressed and going to breakfast, but she didn't really want to even throw on the minimum shorts and T she put on for Gunny. Even if there wasn't any romantic spark there, it wasn't respectful to tease him. And she was just matching what he showed was proper in his mind by his own behavior. He always wore at least shorts and a shirt, and he could have skipped the shirt at home for all that April cared. She'd noticed more guys, beam dogs with tats especially, not bothering with a shirt in public places. It was just tacky she felt.

  The amusing thing was Gunny looked much better bare chested than most of the fellows ten years younger. Even with the scars, they lent character. He moved just as nice as the beam-dogs too, now that he'd got some zero G time on the clock. April noticed he tolerated the beam-dogs. A lot of them worked out even beyond their demanding jobs. But one day recently in the cafeteria he'd grimaced like his burger had gone to the bad. April knew Ruby was never going to let that happen, so she asked what was wrong.

  "I'm really not fond of the young guys going shirtless," Gunny confided for the first time, "But that nancy-boy getting coffee can't pull the look off. He's enough to put you off your feed."

  April chugged her coffee and turned to go get a refill, even though it was nasty weak instant, just to see what he was talking about. It was an unfamiliar Earth phrase that Gunny used. She'd never heard it before, but she didn't need it explained.

  The kid was obviously an office worker or a student. Maybe eighteen or nineteen, but being bare chested made him look closer to twelve. He was a dead white stick figure, with a wildly inappropriate tattoo on his shoulder of a leopard head. Like putting screen doors on a submarine, as Papa-san was fond of saying when he wanted to label something stupid. He was wearing dress slacks with a darling little narrow belt, and Earthie style hard shoes too. His hair was in a buzz cut and April was totally unconvinced that was because he ever saw the inside of a pressure suit. He also had earrings, which a lot of guys wore. But Dear God, men don't wear filigree.

  April returned with her coffee, and looked at Gunny in horror, speechless.

  "If I ever look like that just shoot me," Gunny begged. "No need to stop and try to explain. If you look like that you're past any explanations."

  "I hate how restrictive North America is now, that you can't even wear shorts or short sleeves. But that almost convinces me we need fashion police," April said.

  "Maybe he just came up, and is in joyful celebration of leaving those rules," Gunny speculated.

  "Or maybe he's an eccentric genius, thinking such deep complex thoughts about mathematics or cosmology that he's unaware of social things," April offered.

  Gunny made a funny little choking noise and looked down, like it was too painful to watch. "I wish, but he's just a common jackass," he said with utter conviction.

  "Why so sure?" April asked

  "He just put catsup on the first decent little steaks we've had shipped up in months."

  It seemed funny now, a couple days later. At the time it was more like a desecration. Home attracts the extremes of human society, the rebels, the people with wander-lust who had no earthly frontier now, the entrepreneurs who were frozen out of markets that wanted nothing new, even a few religious sorts who were too radical for their governments or other believers to tolerate. Jelly had told her Home had more than a few Jews. April was pretty sure they lacked any Amish, but the door was open if the simple folk could rationalize it. Home demographics were certainly shifting away from those of North America with which they'd started. Seeing this young man told her they were definitely going to need to keep a sense of humor about the eccentrics, or the horrors of the Slum Ball would just be copied again on Home.

  With that in mind she decided to dig in her stuff and find one of the capes she'd bought a couple years ago. It was a little whimsy, totally unnecessary and impractical, its only purpose to be a little different. Just because she could.

  * * *

  "Predictions are for several periods of calm seas and sunny weather for an area not too far to the west-north-west of where we were planning to pick up the scientist and the agent. Do you think you could get them to the pickup a little faster?" Chen asked Jeff. "It would make loading easier."

  "They have the cargo for the Dionysus' Chariot aboard and are well underway. I can ask them if they have any objection to using power instead of just sail. They have a Singh generator aboard and I know they added an electric motor to the drive behind the diesels. They run freezers and stuff off it all the time, but don't usually use it for propulsion."

  "I thought North America could detect those running. Aren't they afraid the Norte Americanos will drop a missile on them when they are out in the middle of the ocean far from any witnesses? They must associate a Singh generator with Home, and I've noticed they have no special love for Home or you."

  "They are aware of the risk," Jeff admitted. "In their opinion North America avoids them because they seem associated with Home. I wouldn't count on that holding if they went in NA territorial waters. But we track ocean traffic with radar and keep records. On several occasions USNA ships and aircraft have detoured around the Tobiuo. Apparently they think I am insane since I bombed Jiuquan." He shrugged, "Sometimes it may be advantageous to be thought insane."

  "Only if you are also in possession of insanely huge thermonuclear weapons," Chen suggested.

  Jeff was scowling and visibly conflicted. Chen kept his mouth shut, knowing there was more, but he didn't want to demand Jeff say what he was thinking.

  "If the Tobiuo were the only neutrino beacon shining on Earth it might be tempting to wipe the board clean, as it were. But there are a good dozen sources shining now and a campaign to remove all of them would be difficult, and provocative," Jeff said. "We have some submersible UMVs. They run part of the time on accumulators, and don't always return to the same locations to run the generators, so they can't be sure how many there are."

  "Drone carriers?" Chen asked.

  "That, and other things, it's compartmented," Jeff said. Too polite to say none of your business. "You have no need to know. We don't have a neutrino receiver," Jeff revealed. "It would be nice to have one, and be able to run a com link through the Earth and the Moon. But since we know they have one we always have our generators run through a series of pulses like they are sending encrypted messages. It's really just random numbers, but if it keeps the USNA wondering what the heck is going on and eats up resources that's all to the good," Jeff asserted.

  "If they aren't tied up with something else, I suggest having one of your underwater unmanned vehicles head for the Tobiuo to shadow it. I can imagine having use for such an asset if the North Americans give us trouble. You have one by the west coast I bet."

  Jeff had two, but volunteered nothing. "Yes, I can do that. There are also two unmanned flyers that orbit the polar regions at about forty thousand meters. They stay above international waters and direct radar above them, so nothing can be undetected in a polar orbit. There just wasn't any commercial service available to buy that coverage, so we built it ourselves. They carry Singh generators for propulsion too. I'd hate to divert one though. We need them there."

  "And nobody objects to those?" Chen asked.

  "We actually have subscribers to that data feed," Jeff said, smiling. "We make a profit on them. They were cobbled together from standard parts and model airplane designs. One of Dave's men who built them described them as a flying shower curtains stretched over fishing poles. It only costs about a tenth ounce to make the frame for one and they make more than that every month."

  "If one of the Earth powers were doing it they'd need a five year design period and ten billion dollars," Chen predicted.

  "Probably," Jeff agreed, although it was a slight exaggeration. "I'll let you k
now when I get an answer from Li."

  Li was not thrilled to use power to hurry to the North Pacific. "We've always preferred to run the generator when in port, or briefly to charge the accumulator, where nobody could use the knowledge of our location to attack us. I'm leery of calling attention to us under way. The USNA has some ocean watching sats back in orbit, and there are more commercial services now. If we go a couple thousand kilometers at twenty knots or better even somebody without a neutrino receiver will know we're not doing it on diesel. The damned stuff is too dear right now."

  Jeff was disappointed. "Other than being a bit far, I thought it would be easy. What would you need to feel safe?"

  "An overwatch," Li said. "Somebody monitoring to make sure a sub or a plane isn't taking an unhealthy interest in us. We have a very limited sensor suite. We can see over the horizon a little with radar, but no sonar at all and our radar isn't configured to track aircraft. If things get actually nasty we want a commitment to actively intervene. You can see subs can't you?"

  "Sometimes," Jeff admitted. "We can lose track of them if they shut down and sit or sneak around at depth going three or four knots. The Finns and Norwegians and the Israelis are all harder to track than the Americans or Chinese. But if they hurry there is no way they can hide. They roil up the water and it shows. Even if they are quite deep it eventually reaches the surface behind them. It used to be they triggered bioluminescence, but now we can read the difference in water composition, when they stir up deep water to the surface. It's cooler and has a different composition."

  Jeff didn't have the resources to keep a watch, and hated to divert people from other important tasks to maintain a twenty four hour watch. He'd have to set up a temporary mission center and rent expensive data feeds. His office was in use. Renting cubic would be expensive – if he could find anything. If intervention was necessary the majority of his weapons were far too big to send a moderate message. They tended more to say – Die sucker! Jon on the other hand had everything in place for the militia to do this sort of thing. Perhaps he could convince Jon it was desirable and needed to run the operation for them both. He'd have to find out how bad Jon wanted these virus sensors.