View from Ararat

by Caswell, Brian

  So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’.

  King Lear IV.i.29

  Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach thee.

  Job 12.8

  21

  Small Miracles

  Genetic Research Laboratory

  Carmody Island

  Inland Sea (Eastern Region)

  29/1/203 Standard

  GALEN

  ‘There’s no mistake?’ For the fourth time Galen scrolls through the data on the screen before him. ‘You’re not going to get my hopes up, then tell me the machine analysed the wrong blood sample or anything like that?’

  ‘Give me some credit, Galen.’ Jerome Hamita is too excited to let his friend get under his skin. ‘They came in two days ago showing positive evidence of first-stage exposure to the Crystal. Readings of seventy-eight to one-oh-nine – blood-calcium, haemogolobin, iron, zinc and potassium. Classic CRIOS. But look at the later readings. At ten hours, thirty-eight to fifty-nine. A reduction in the crystallisation reading in the order of fifty per cent. At twenty hours, virtually zero. In two days they’ve neutralised the infection. Total remission. They’re clean.’

  ‘Explanation?’

  ‘None. We’ve screened for everything we can think of, and they scan perfectly normal.’

  For a moment Galen allows himself a moment of hope.

  ‘Genetic, maybe? A natural resistance?’

  Half a continent away Jerome shakes his head. ‘Very unlikely. The Santos kids are related, naturally, but the Galli girl’s about as genetically different as it’s possible to be. Besides, her parents died early in the epidemic, no immunity at all, and I’ve already ether-linked to their gene-maps in the computer on the Pandora. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of them. Besides, it’s just too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘Environmental?’

  ‘Has to be. They were outside when the blockade took effect, and they’ve lived for most of the past month in an Elokoi historycave somewhere in the foothills, living off the land and avoiding the Security patrols. It has to be something out there.’

  Galen turns as the door slides open and Charlie enters. She is carrying two steaming mugs, but one look at his face and they are forgotten in her hands.

  ‘What is it? Good news?’

  ‘Just a small miracle. Nothing we can’t handle.’

  CHARLIE’S STORY

  ‘Just a small miracle . . .’ If I didn’t love him so much, I think I’d probably throttle him at times. Jerome contacts us with what, under the circumstances, must rate as the most important news since the discovery of penicillin, and Galen makes jokes.

  One survivor counts as an aberration – like the girl in bed seventeen who refused to die but showed no sign of winning her battle against the Crystal. But three . . .

  Three individuals who lived through the same experiences and somehow developed an immunity that no one else on Deucalion seemed to possess. I couldn’t have been more surprised or excited if Galen had suddenly got up and started walking.

  Jerome had already downloaded the complete data, including all the tests and computer analyses, and within minutes Galen was busy looking for anything the slightest bit unusual.

  I didn’t expect him to find it. Not that easily.

  Jerome Hamita was a professional. More than that, he was a damned compulsive. If it was there to be seen, he wouldn’t have missed it. But that never stopped Galen before.

  Two hours and seven pots of Ocra later we were still poring over the notes and coming up empty, but our spirits remained sky-high. The answer was there somewhere. It was just a matter of forcing it out of hiding.

  ‘It has to be environmental. If we can just narrow it down . . .’

  I was thinking aloud, but Galen turned to me with that look on his face – the one he gets when he’s about to go feral and suggest something totally outrageous.

  Which, of course, he was.

  One thing I’ll say for Jerome, he doesn’t panic. ‘What exactly do you mean, you want to go there?’

  ‘Which word didn’t you understand?’ Galen replied, winding up. ‘I . . . want . . . to . . . go . . . there . . . Preferably with the patients. They’re clear, aren’t they? No contamination?’

  ‘Totally clean. But . . .’ His reluctance was predictable. He’d been living with the threat of infection for a long time and he was naturally cautious – which is probably the reason he was still breathing after so long in the camp.

  ‘But nothing.’ You don’t argue with Galen in one of his manic phases, not unless you have the backing of a squad of armed Security operatives. And even then I’d put my money on Galen. ‘You can lock them in isolation suits if it makes you happier, but I want them out there with us. I need to know everything about those twenty-one days. Where they went, what they did, what they ate and breathed and touched. The answer has to be out there somewhere.’

  Jerome was weakening. People were dying every minute, and the rate of contagion was increasing exponentially. It was past time to take some risks.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But you have to wear suits too. We can’t afford to lose either of you. Especially now.’

  So we went.

  Jules landed the hopper just outside the infirmary entrance, about ten metres from the wire fence.

  ‘Stop-over, five minutes, if you want to stretch your legs. Those passengers travelling with us to our final destination – wherever that is – may leave cabin baggage aboard. If you are leaving us here, we trust you had a pleasant flight and look forward to you flying with us again in the near future. And we would just like to remind you that the pilot really appreciates a good tip.’

  I could see Galen winding up to a smart reply, but before he could deliver, the door to the infirmary slid open and five suited figures emerged.

  Kaz reached the flyer first.

  ‘Helmets on,’ she ordered. She couldn’t help it. It was that operation-room authority training.

  I watched them approach with Jerome – just three individuals out of a population of what used to be thirty-eight million, but, for the next few weeks at least, they were among the most important and precious individuals on the face of the planet.

  The introductions were made – no easy feat through the protective barrier of the suits – and it struck me how young they looked. And, under the circumstances, how composed.

  ‘Ready?’ Jules was beginning to take his role in the expedition seriously. ‘If we’re going to make the most of the daylight—’

  ‘Less talk and more action.’ Kaz was sitting directly behind him and she reached out and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

  And Galen accuses me of using clichés.

  Elokoi Historycave

  Roosevelt Foothills

  Edison Sector (South)

  30/2/203 Standard

  RAMÓN’S STORY

  I never thought I’d see the place again.

  I’d spent so long in that cave staring at the pictures on the sacred wall that they’d burned themselves indelibly into my psyche. I could see every line and every tone if I just closed my eyes and concentrated.

  But ducking through the entrance, dressed in that cumbersome suit, and seeing them again in the pale illumination of the glo-lights, the feeling was just as powerful as I remembered it the first time.

  They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. What they don’t mention is that you often don’t know how much you miss something until you see it again.

  I knew the newcomers were impressed.

  Especially Charlie. She stood staring for quite a few seconds before Galen, who had guided his chair over the rough ground and into the cave centre, decided it was time to get down to business.

  ‘We’ll need soil samples, air samples, and scrape a few from the rock su
rfaces in case there’s some microscopic fungal-growth.’

  He was nothing if not thorough.

  ‘Not the paintings,’ Élita put in quickly, and he looked at her.

  ‘Just a scraping,’ he said gently. ‘From the edge. You won’t even notice.’ Then, as if he felt he had to justify himself, ‘This is too important to overlook anything. We’re fighting for our lives here. I’m sure the Ancient Ones would understand – under the circumstances.’

  I looked at him with new respect. And so did Élita. I could tell.

  He didn’t look like someone who would understand the value of Elokoi art, or the tradition of the Ancient Ones in Elokoi culture.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I guess they would.’

  All the time they worked, they asked questions: Where, exactly, did we go outside the cave? What did we eat? (A question which didn’t take too long to answer – our menu not being exactly extensive.) Where did we get the water we drank and washed in?

  Questions and samples, observations and more questions. By the time we’d exhausted all their investigations, the sun was dropping below the Ranges. We climbed back into the flyer, and a few minutes later we were back at the camp.

  No one made a move to leave the flyer.

  The camp looked so lifeless. I remembered the weeks we had lived there, before the outbreak, and the end of everything. I remembered Graçia and Nelson, and the Goughs and all the thousands of people making a life in the huts behind the fences – waiting for the end of the quarantine, planning their futures, tempering the boredom with fragments of the dream.

  But the dream had ended, for so many of them, in a nightmare of pain and confusion and fear.

  I looked toward Élita, to find that she was staring at me. She smiled encouragement with her lips, but behind the shield of the isolation helmet I knew she was asking the same questions I was asking.

  Why us? Why, out of thirty thousand inmates of the Death Camp, had we been spared?

  Maija was leaning against me with her eyes closed, but she wasn’t asleep. Her hand, inside the clumsy glove, was rubbing slowly up and down against my thigh, drawing comfort from the touch.

  She was a different person from the one who had left the camp all those days ago to show Élita the ‘surprise’. I guess we all were, but in Maija the change was more noticeable. The confidence, which was so much a part of her character, was missing from her face and from her body language. She hardly spoke, and there was a haunted look, like guilt, behind her eyes.

  Later, counsellors would call it ‘survivor’s remorse’ – a common reaction, they said, among people who walked away from flyer-crashes or shipwrecks or some natural disaster. They felt somehow guilty to be lucky when others weren’t, to live when the odds said they should have died – especially when so many others had obeyed the odds.

  I became aware that Galen was looking at us with an expression of deep concentration on his face, like a chess-master hunched over his pieces, grappling with a problem, trying out different solutions. Then he turned to Jerome.

  ‘I want to take them back with us.’

  Jerome looked at him as if he was crazy, and Charlie began to object, but he held up his hands.

  ‘Hear me out,’ he said. He looked out towards the silent camp as he spoke. ‘Jerome, how many left? Ball-park figure. And how long before they’re all gone?’

  For a moment Jerome Hamita was silent. I’d only known him such a short time but I could see what the ordeal was doing to him. Working with his small team of volunteers, against all odds, he still saw every death as a failure, another human life that could have been saved if he’d just been able to see what must be there to be seen – what someone more able might have noticed in the mass of data he’d been stockpiling.

  Finally he spoke. ‘Maybe a hundred, maybe less. It’s impossible to say. All the victims who were infected before the day of the break-out are dead. The only ones left are relatives who stayed to be with them. The chances of any of them avoiding contamination were virtually nil – and they must have known it when they chose to stay – but I guess . . .’

  He trailed off and swallowed hard. I could understand his emotion.

  It’s one thing to choose not to escape if you already have the Crystal inside you and you’re doomed anyway. Why endanger the world any more than it is already endangered? But to stay through love, or devotion, or even a sense of duty, when you haven’t caught it yet, and when you know exactly what it means to make that decision . . . That kind of sacrifice is humbling.

  Jerome breathed deeply, in control again. ‘Three days, maybe four, and it’ll be over.’

  ‘And then they torch the place?’ Galen knew the plans better than anyone. He was probably partially responsible for them.

  Jerome nodded.

  ‘The thermal-fusion devices are already in place. As soon as the last inmate dies, we set them and get the hell out. Anything within 500 metres of the outer perimeter will be incinerated. No trace of the camp or the Crystal will exist in Wieta.’

  ‘And what about these three? Or the kid in seventeen? What happens to them, then? Things are falling apart, Jerome. The major cities are no-go zones – if the Crystal doesn’t get you, the ferals will. The countryside is filling up with dead bodies – and not all of them died of the plague. And you can bet there isn’t any food to be found.

  ‘You have to hide from armed gangs and small armies of Security deserters who took all the firepower of the municipal arsenal with them when they went AWOL. And don’t think there’s any hospitals operating. If the staff didn’t die in the first week, they were probably killed by raiders looking for miracles – or drugs. It’s a war-zone out there.’

  ‘At least, where we are it’s safe. For the moment anyway. And we could really use your help. Stay here until it’s over, if you have to, but there’s a place for you with us. And if we’re going to learn what we need to from these three, they have to come too. We can set up an isolation unit for them and the kid. It’s war, Doc. And in war you have to take a few risks.’

  It felt strange being discussed as if we weren’t there. No one was asking us what we wanted. But I couldn’t get angry the way I once would have. Things had changed. Empty pride had no place inside that flyer. I looked out of the window.

  Inside the infirmary the lights were going on automatically, turning the windows into small white squares in the twilight, while the rest of the camp lay silently in shadows and creeping darkness.

  22

  Rock-Biters

  NATASSIA’S STORY

  We began receiving disturbing reports from the small mining towns of the Fringes. Some of these towns were only a few hundred strong, some were thriving communities of a couple of thousand. Peaceful, exposed communities, they had developed in a period of calm and prosperity, with no experience of the kind of social upheaval that was about to descend on them.

  Growing up around the rich mineral deposits of the Mid- and Southwestern Regions, they were towns whose only historical struggle was with the earth and the elements. After all, this was Deucalion, where even the Revolution of 101 was less a revolution than an almost bloodless reassertion of democratic principles.

  But all that changed in a few days at the beginning of 203.

  As the cities suddenly fell apart, and the fear of death rolled across the landscape like a bushfire, survival meant isolation. Towns which had had no contact with the Crystal found ways to keep things as they were, sometimes with peaceful warnings, sometimes with threats of violence.

  Deucalion was always a flyer-linked society. The vast distances and hostile environment meant that roads were not a viable method of travel. But vehicles did exist, and the few refugees who managed to flee the cities with some kind of land-transport made for the Fringes, crossing through passes in the Ranges, and driving through the night, to make it to somewhere – anywhere – where
they could wait out the crisis.

  But they were turned back by the communities desperate to remain ‘clean’.

  Reports of confrontations, and even murders, trickled into the Internet complex and into my small broadcast booth, but set against the backdrop of planet-wide devastation they hardly rated a mention – until the rise of the ‘armies’.

  Deucalion was unique among human settlements, because it had never experienced a war. With no external enemies and a central, democratically elected government, there was no one to have a war with, and with an environment that required total cooperation just to survive, there was never any reason to look around for extra trouble.

  But the Crystal Death changed everything.

  Before the plague began its spread there was no army on the planet, but within days of the outbreak in Edison there were a number.

  Perhaps ‘armies’ isn’t a very accurate description. Consisting mainly of former Security personnel, who had access to communications, transportation and, most importantly, weaponry, they were more like large gangs of maybe two or three hundred men and women, armed with ‘liberated’ weapons. These gangs made their way across the Ranges in search of towns free from the contamination sweeping the rest of the planet’s settlements. They were looking for peaceful towns that had no way to stand up to that kind of force, but with enough supplies to support extra mouths for as long as it took to plan the next step in the group’s ad hoc survival strategy.

  Most of the armies commandeered fleets of vehicles and descended on the unsuspecting towns, often at night, taking control before the inhabitants knew what had hit them. Their methods were efficient and brutal, and resistance was severely punished.

  Soon news of the invasions had travelled through the towns of the Fringes, and with nowhere to run to, communities up and down the inland began preparing their defences . . .

  Baden

  Western Fringes

  Edison Sector (Southwest)

  1/2/203

  MAC

  Baden is an armed camp, a hastily fortified and defended stronghold on the edge of the Great Desert.