View from Ararat

by Caswell, Brian

# SUGGESTED METHODS FOR CONTROL OF ANY FUTURE CRIOS OUTBREAK (ITEMS CC001–CC041) – CLINICAL TRIALS

  # VESTA – OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS (GHO ALPHA [LEVEL SEVEN] CLEARANCE REQUIRED)

  * * *

  ‘Level Seven! Christ . . .’ I let the words leak out, without realising I was talking aloud.

  ‘What?’

  I don’t think Galen was actually reading the screen. Like I said, fourteen hours without a break. I’d felt his eyes on me all the time I was reading, but I was trying to ignore it. Something was happening that hadn’t been a factor in all the years I’d known him, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Especially not with everything else that was going on around us. I was trying to stay focused.

  ‘Vesta again,’ I replied. ‘They slapped a Level Seven clearance on it. That’s like . . . I don’t know . . . national security, impending war, that kind of thing.’

  ‘But,’ he began, then stopped, searching for the right words. ‘Why would they need to? I mean, it’s already a Level Five – need to know. No one lower than a section leader would ever lay eyes on the report anyway. And even then only if they were directly involved, so . . .’

  ‘So what exactly is Vesta? Who ever gets a Level Seven clearance, except . . .’ This time I trailed off. I looked at Galen and he looked back.

  ‘Except the military, and Security operatives. And members of the board. Charlie, I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.’

  Like we didn’t have one before!

  For a few seconds there was silence in the room.

  In the corridor outside someone was whistling. It was an out-of-tune, barely recognisable rendition of ‘Ain’t it great?’

  ‘Charlie . . .’ Galen was shaking my shoulder and tapping my cheek with the flat of his hand. ‘Charlie, wake up.’

  This was a pointless instruction, considering he’d made it just about impossible to do anything else.

  I opened my eyes.

  And right away I was wide awake. The look on his face was enough to trigger a sudden flash of adrenalin, driving the sleep from my brain.

  He looked like someone who’s just been kicked in the guts – and knows he deserves worse.

  ‘We blew it,’ he said, and thumbed the control on his chair, turning back towards the console.

  I sat up and stared at the monitor, but I’d been asleep for . . . I don’t know how long, so I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

  ‘You want to explain?’ I asked.

  He looked at me. ‘The blood tests weren’t enough.’ This was old news. But he was just warming up. ‘Fomite transmission. The Research notes confirm it. You pick up the contaminant from touching any object or surface that’s been contaminated. Shit, Charlie, it was there to be seen all the time, and we just looked right past it until it was too late to do anything about it. I should’ve been more—’

  ‘Cut the dramatics and tell me what you’re talking about!’ I almost shouted. I’m not usually so blunt, but I was suddenly frightened. It wasn’t anything I can explain. I guess it was just the look of desperation I could see in his eyes. ‘We knew all that days ago. What’s changed all of a sudden?’

  He didn’t answer the question. He had something to say first, and he was going to say it no matter what I said.

  ‘It wasn’t the passengers we should have been screening, it was their belongings. This thing doesn’t need a human carrier.’

  ‘Look, we did everything we could. Everything on board was hit with broad-spectrum irradiation before it was transhipped. And again before it was allowed down onto the surface. Nothing known can survive that – no virus, no bacterium, nothing.’

  I tried to sound more convincing than I felt. It didn’t work.

  ‘Nothing alive,’ he replied, staring into my eyes as if he hoped to read an answer there. Fat chance. What I didn’t understand about what was going on could fill a good-sized ore-carrier. He must have recognised the fact, because he sat back and sighed, as if he was suddenly resigned to whatever fate was in store for us.

  I waited. After a few seconds he went on.

  ‘You said it yourself, Charlie. There’s a pretty fair chance this thing isn’t alive. Not in any sense that we understand. It managed to survive in the vacuum and absolute cold of deep space, passing through who knows what kind of cosmic radiation in the process. And look at the symptoms. Rapid crystallisation of the bloodstream and vital organs. No bug does that. A bug reproduces – that’s its job. It replicates itself until it overwhelms the system, or the system fights back and the antibodies destroy it, or control it at least. It doesn’t systematically reconfigure the chemical structures in the body. It may explode your cells and make you haemorrhage inside and bleed to death, it may push your temperature up so high that your brain shorts out and you die screaming, but it doesn’t turn you to stone.

  ‘Look at the post-mortem blood analysis. There’s no evidence of foreign organisms, other than those normally found in a healthy human body. It’s just that the calcium, the iron and any number of the normal elements are crystallised, when they shouldn’t be. And in a way that they shouldn’t be able to crystallise. It’s more like the action of some kind of exotic poison than an infection.’

  ‘Except that poisons aren’t usually contagious.’

  ‘Not normally,’ he replied, then he leaned forward, punched a couple of keys and watched the screen change. The panic had disappeared momentarily and he was in lecture-mode. I had the feeling it was probably temporary, but I studied the screen intensely, trying to keep him on task. I needed Galen to be in control. I was too close to losing it myself.

  ‘Look,’ he went on. ‘This is an electron-microscope scan of a blood sample. There are supposed to be thirty-two possible classes of crystal forms, based on shape and symmetry, but these don’t fit into any of the known classes. They’re all common elements and compounds, but . . .’ The words ran out. He swallowed hard.

  Then he turned to me and held my gaze. Whatever he really wanted to say, he was finally ready. I waited.

  ‘They called while you were sleeping,’ he said finally. ‘From the isolation ward in the Wieta camp. We have our first case of CRIOS.’

  Suddenly I forgot how to breathe.

  9

  Perimeter

  Quarantine Camp, Old Wieta Reserve

  Edison Sector (East Central)

  6/1/203 Standard

  RAMÓN’S STORY

  I held up the edge of the fence-wire, which I had removed from the support post, in the same way as I had done all those years before to sneak us into the JMMC ore-storage yards.

  My prized ’scope hung from a strap around my neck, swinging close to Élita as she ducked towards the hole. I carried it with me whenever we left the camp. It had a magnification of x200, and I guess I fancied myself as a bit of an explorer when I trained it on the horizon, or on some distant formation, and speculated about the strange things I could make out with it.

  I’d won the ’scope in a bet with Tim Cheng when we were on the Pandora. I’m not sure which made me happier – taking possession of the ’scope, or seeing Tim Cheng’s face when Maija gave the winner a congratulatory kiss.

  As Élita slid through the narrow space, following Maija, she looked up at me, and I winked down at her the way I always did in the Puerto Limon days.

  Big brother. Big man. And suddenly I was ten years old again.

  Maija held the wire for me while I slid through. I kissed her as I stood up, and she turned away, whispering something that sounded like, Later, you idiot. But she was smiling when she said it.

  So was I.

  Moments later we were outside the camp running across the narrow open space between the wire and the covering of wild Capyjou that would mask our progress away from the makeshift settlement. It was the only part of the whole excursion where we would be exposed to observation f
rom the Security guards.

  Not that there was too much chance of anybody watching anyway. No one, on either side of the fence, took the threat of escape very seriously, especially not in the direction we were headed.

  Why would anyone bother trying? In a few days the quarantine period would be over and everyone could finally start their new lives. So why risk everything in a pointless attempt at escaping?

  And to where, exactly?

  To the west lay the desolate Roosevelt Ranges, and if you managed to get beyond them without falling to your death, or dying of thirst and hunger, all that lay before you were the Fringes and the Great Desert. There were no settlements within a hundred kilometres, and daytime temperatures were in the mid-forties – on a mild day.

  It was all in the orientation program they downloaded onto every punchboard and data frame in the camp on the day we arrived, just in case anyone had ideas of escaping.

  Security was concentrated on the eastern side of the camp, the side that led to Edison and the populated areas. So this left us free to explore.

  Maija and I were old hands at it. Almost from day one we’d managed to disappear for hours, even whole days, at a time.

  But Élita was out of condition. You couldn’t blame her, considering how little walking she’d done in the last half-century, but it didn’t mean we were about to make it easy on her. We had a long way to go, and if we were going to get back before midnight we couldn’t afford to hang around.

  ‘Come on, guys. I’m a talker, not a walker. Give me a break.’

  She complained to our backs – as she’d been doing for the best part of half an hour. And we ignored her – as we’d been doing for the best part of half an hour. She was nowhere near passing out yet. Not if she still had the energy to complain.

  Then Maija relented and stopped, waiting for her to catch up.

  ‘Not far now,’ she said smiling.

  ‘That’s what you said forty-five minutes ago.’

  She was trying hard to sound put out, but the truth was she was having more fun than she’d had since we’d arrived on the planet.

  It was the first time we’d invited her out on one of our ‘excursions’, and I felt a bit guilty when I saw how much it meant to her, but I guess I’d had other things on my mind. My Aunt Juanita always said I had a selfish streak. I’d walk through fire for my sister – and she knew it – but it didn’t mean I considered her as often as I should have in ordinary everyday things.

  Still, I think that trip made up for everything. After weeks trapped within the confines of the camp, the pain in her feet and legs was a small price to pay. Besides, there was still the carrot we’d dangled to get her to come in the first place.

  ‘We’ve got something to show you,’ Maija had said. ‘We found it yesterday, and knowing how you . . . Look, I don’t want to give away the surprise. Just come with us tomorrow. I promise you won’t regret it.’

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t regretting it. I just hoped our ‘surprise’ proved as exciting for her as we hoped.

  Finally we topped a small rise and Maija and I slid down the other side towards a narrow defile between two small hills. It was a strange formation. It looked like someone had cut downwards with a sharp knife. The walls of the valley on both sides went straight up to a height of about 15 metres, before curving gently away towards the crest like the rest of the hills in the vicinity.

  The floor of the tiny valley was overgrown with small bushes and trees which grew right up to the wall on one side, and it was towards this side that we were leading her.

  Until you were directly in front of it, the cave was completely invisible behind its screen of foliage. Maija and I went in first. Élita was struggling a few metres behind. I watched her before I ducked inside, and I couldn’t help smiling. I felt that old tingle of anticipation. It was like waiting in the dark to spring a surprise.

  Élita was tired and she was picking her way carefully between the small trees. It would give us just enough time to get ready. The entrance was barely big enough to walk through, and we had to bend almost double at one point, but then we were inside.

  A few seconds later I heard her moving in the entrance and she appeared. She paused for a moment to adjust to the light, then her mouth dropped open.

  I was kneeling beside the far wall, setting up one of the portable glo-lights we’d brought with us in a small backpack. Élita had asked me about them and received no reply, naturally Maija already had hers lit.

  In the soft white light they gave off I saw it again.

  And my sister saw it for the first time.

  ‘Cael’s Wall . . .’ The whispered words escaped almost unconsciously.

  She walked towards the wall like she was in a trance. These images were as familiar to her as her own face. They were the living history of the Elokoi race. I’d seen the famous ‘History Walls’ once or twice on edu-files and archive videos, but Élita knew them better than she knew the story of her own people. The images stretched from floor to ceiling, end to end, primitive yet masterful. Even I could recognise that much, though I couldn’t feel it the way she did.

  Sometimes I envied Élita’s passion.

  She was overcome. She sat down in the centre of the cave so that her shadow fell on the sandy floor and not across the exquisite colours. She knew every stroke, every figure, and every story they represented. She’d seen it often on the screen of the ship’s education centre, but I could only imagine how she must feel experiencing it up close.

  She turned to Maija. ‘You never let on. How could you see it and not even drop a hint?’

  ‘Blame Ramón.’ Maija looked towards me as she answered. ‘It was his idea.’

  Élita turned to face me. There were tears in her eyes and I knew she was about to say something sentimental.

  If there’s one thing I’ve never been able to handle, it’s Élita being grateful. There’s a certain balance between a brother and his little sister, and tears and gratitude, you know, ruin it. I shrugged and looked up at the wall.

  ‘So? I happen to like surprises,’ I said, and moved outside.

  The truth is, my sister Élita is pretty weird. Ask anyone. During the eight years we were part of the crew-family on the Pandora she spent most of her free time in the education centre, glued to the screens, absorbing information like there was no tomorrow.

  I guess I can understand her wanting to know things. Coming from where we came from, we never even considered it possible to learn the kind of stuff that was there for the taking on the ship. Look, I spent time in there myself, even when I didn’t have to. Usually when Maija was there.

  But for Élita it was like an obsession. She couldn’t get enough. She just had to know. At first it was anything and everything. Maths, history, literature, science, whatever. But then she settled down.

  She became fascinated with Deucalion and with the Elokoi in particular. By the time she was fifteen she was reading the early Tolhurst books, eye-witness accounts of the Revolution of 101 and the translations of the Elokoi Thoughtsongs, and she’d discovered the files on Elokoi artworks, especially the Histories contained on the sacred Walls.

  I remember the time she sat Maija and me down and delivered a lecture on what she called ‘the rape of Elokoi culture’ by the early settlers. How they stole the ancient artefacts and even the cave paintings and shipped them back to Earth for huge profits, and how, a hundred years ago – at around the time of the Revolution – a young Elokoi named Cael had repainted the Wall again and again in hidden caves all across the land, in an effort to preserve the heritage the offworlders were destroying.

  Cael, she said, was the onlymate of Saebi, and together they led the surviving Elokoi tribes on the Second Great Trek, which brought them back to Vaana, their traditional home . . .

  And on, and on, and on . . .

  That was when I realised s
he was weird. I mean, you only had to listen to some of the words she used. She was beginning to sound like one of the edu-files herself.

  But she was still my baby sister, and when we discovered the cave I just knew we had to show her.

  Of course, at the time I had no idea just how important that cave would become in our lives.

  CINDY’S STORY

  According to the records, the first person on Deucalion to die of the Crystal Death was a woman called Marisa Gough.

  Who it was really makes no difference. It could have been anyone. Anyone in the camp, at least. But records are records. And you have to have records.

  Exactly why, I don’t know. But it’s always been that way. Like it’s really important, when a whole planet is dying, to know who the first victim was.

  I never knew Marisa Gough. She lived on the other side of the camp, where the epidemic began. And up until the moment the shit hit the fan, I didn’t even know her name.

  At the time I was lying down in my hut trying not to die of frustration before we were set free, and McEwan Porter slammed the door open and shouted for me to get up.

  ‘Ever hear of knocking?’ I began, but the look on his face stopped the flow.

  He was breathing heavily and he looked scared. And that scared me.

  In all the months we’d spent on the surface of Ganymede, and there were some pretty hairy moments during that time, I don’t think I’d ever seen Mac really scared. He was one of the most ordered and logical people I knew.

  No point in losing it before you considered every option, and chose the best one.

  But this time he was acting on instinct.

  ‘It’s happening,’ he said.

  I was going to ask what, but I had the feeling he was going to tell me. And I was right.

  ‘Three cases of whatever it is they’ve got us quarantined for, and if it’s what I think it is, we’ve got about ten minutes to get away before they close this camp up tighter than a coffin.’

  I didn’t like his choice of metaphors. And I didn’t like the expression on his face as he turned to look into my eyes.