April 6: And What Goes Around

by Mackey Chandler

  Jon ran a hand around his throat, considering the truth of that. "So you have no idea who owned the little devil?"

  "None at all," Jeff said. "It apparently had Chen's picture or the recognition data for his face. He was in Chinese intelligence but worked all over for them. Lots of other agencies could have his image. Even if it was Chinese, which faction? The Tongans have the damaged bot so we can't examine it. I don't want to risk what little credit we have with them by asking for it. They are already peeved at the trouble they feel we brought in."

  "I should tell you... The wall crawling bot that Irwin Hall put us onto was a singleton. We hit it with an EMP but the insides were so fused we don't know who owned it either," Jon told him.

  "This sounds much more sophisticated. I expected to see somebody start using attack bots eventually, but I'd hoped it might be later instead of sooner. There are any number of states capable of making them. I suspect several already have them fabricated, but when you finally use them it changes the game. It's the sort of asset you hold in reserve until it is worth exposing," Jeff said.

  "Then I don't know what they thought our agents were doing to be worth the escalation. Some of our supplies are going to get through even without their help," Jon said.

  "Maybe it wasn't the supply issue," Jeff guessed. "It might have been to keep us from learning more about this flu. Every effort Dr. Lee has made to find out more about it has been rebuffed. If that is the case they failed miserably."

  Jon perked up at that. "How so?"

  "Chen dropped off a considerable number of our own bots in the short time he was there. Including a few at the hospital. He didn't get a sample of the flu, but one of our little helpers sat in the light fixture and watched a technician sequence the sample from one of the aircraft they turned away for having sick passengers. It recorded him running the entire procedure so we know he did it right and sent us all the critical data displayed on his screen after he was done. We don't know this is the new nasty version yet for sure, but Dr. Lee and Dr. Ames are examining the data now. It seems very likely and we'll know for sure soon."

  "I'd count it a success then," Jon decided. "I'm not sure Gunny is going to agree, but can I assume you will compensate him for his loss of work and discomfort?"

  "Compensate him?" Jeff said. "The man is a treasure. If he can't reach an itch while he's growing a new hand all he has to do is call and I'll scratch it for him."

  * * *

  Home was visible over the pilot's shoulder, out the front view ports of the landing shuttle Dionysus' Chariot. Mackay was in the copilots seat not because he could fly her but because there were only four seats bolted in the Chariot right now. The pilot was in his pressure suit. Gunny hadn't thought about it until he saw that, but they'd all be in isolation at Home because conceivably they could have been exposed to the new flu on Tonga. Not in the external tank, that was for confirmed infected. But they were informed they would be sharing a suite at the Holiday Inn with the clinic delivering their meals and taking their trash away to be handled as a biohazard. The air ducts would be closed and an environmental pack from a moon hut in the room. They needed four days to fail to develop symptoms or display a viral load, before they could be released, but Gunny would have the initial work started to bud a new hand. That couldn't wait.

  They'd launched this rescue very quickly without waiting to reconfigure for a different mission. Normally they wanted a copilot, but not badly enough to make somebody ride back strapped to the deck. Gunny was wondering how much rescuing them cost. It took a lot of reactive mass to drop a shuttle to an Earth surface landing and they hadn't dropped off a single kilo of freight or brought anything back. The expense was going to be a straight loss for Jeff. This had to be the biggest failure for their security business to date. The team had no idea yet that Chen's part of the mission had gone very well.

  "Well that was a bust," Gunny groused. He had a Fentanyl patch on the side of his neck that they'd slapped on him as soon as he was strapped in his seat. It made him pretty fuzzy minded, but let him think about something besides how much he hurt or Mackay's urgings to put one foot in front of the other that finally ended. That had been all that would fit in his mind from when Chen had hit him with the military stimulants until the Fentanyl flooded his bloodstream. He couldn't keep his eyes open now but he could still worry and complain in fine form.

  "I'm going to be pretty useless for security work until I get this hand back. It will drive me nuts. What am I supposed to do sitting around for a year? Write a book? Take up chess?"

  "I don't know. A year is a long time to grow back a hand," Chen told his friend. "Maybe you should just skip it and have a hook fitted. It might be handy for intimidation at times. Besides, I understand it itches like crazy when it's growing out. Did you know they put a hard shell over it because you can't have bandages touching it while it buds? It's going to be awkward until it gets to where the nails form and you can go to a glove over it."

  "Yeah, and an eye patch and a parrot to go with the hook. Be glad I got that little sucker," Gunny told him. "You'd go crazy with the itching while they grew you a new head."

  "Yes, well I meant to say thank you for that," Chen said, suddenly somber. "I owe you one. I'm serious. I do owe you any favor you ask I can deliver. I'm very aware I owe you my life."

  "Is this one of those Chinese things where you feel burdened with a debt of honor?" Gunny asked. "Because if it is I'll just have you run out for lunch or something and say that squares us. I'm not going to have you moping around and feeling uncomfortable with me until you can perform some suitably heroic deed to settle my marker."

  "I doubt I'll have opportunity to do something comparable. Life is seldom so tidy," Chen said.

  "Hey, maybe they can slice your hand off and attach it to me. Then you can spend the year growing a hand back," Gunny suggested. He forced his eyelids open so he could gauge Chen's reaction, and laughed at the look on his face. "Got ya."

  Chapter 13

  "Listen to this," Jeff told April. "An agent of ours in Ontario informs us he may have difficulty communicating with us soon. He's always sent us his reports away from his home and job. He works for a pharmaceutical company and they are asking all upper tier employees to stay in the hotel they acquired next to their site. Basically the top thirty or so executives and the board of directors will be asked to do everything by com and have no physical contact with clerical workers or production people. If they go off site they will be tested for viruses on returning and kept segregated in a suite for six days with retesting before they are allowed back in the cafeteria or in contact with the other workers. This is for the continuity of the company until the current epidemic has abated."

  "Are they offering that to their whole family? Spouse and children?" April asked.

  "He didn't say. He's single so maybe they didn't feel they needed to tell him," Jeff guessed. "But he's going to go into their isolation. That's why he'll have trouble reporting now. That high up in a big company one person should make enough to support a family, but you have to figure there will still be spouses who have their own career and family. The better private schools in North America still tend to physical attendance, not online instruction.

  "I'd think this would be a hard idea to sell just because people will go stir crazy who are used to freedom of movement. You can buy just about anything online, but people like to go outdoors and shop and eat out. They'd have to see people all around them sick to agree, and by the time you actually see it around you it's too late to isolate your group like this."

  "This sounds like they are terrified," April said. "It's a medical company so they should have good sources of information. You wouldn't think they would be given to panic. I think you should ask your other agents what areas of the medical industry this company would have as resources for information. That may give us some idea why they thought such a radical action necessary. Maybe it's worse than we thought if they have better information than we do."

/>   "Yes, but I can have that done by normal researchers. No need to tie up valuable agents doing research that can be done from public sources. But it's a good idea still," Jeff said. "It doesn't look good for people without life extension therapy. We have satellite images from the Rome area where this started. The number of riders waiting for public transportation are way down. The hospitals all have external triage set up and public announcements are very uneven. The worst indication is that we've seen bulldozers used to cut big trenches on the edge of town. I doubt there is a sudden campaign to build ponds so we think they are going to be used for mass burials. That indicates to us the funeral homes and morgues are near capacity. We'll see if they really are used that way in a day or two.

  "We expect government announcements to be cheery, and the TV news and talk shows are still mostly upbeat and hopeful, but the net sources are pretty grim. There are a few towns and businesses who have told all but their most critical workers to stay home in Europe. And the number of ambulances and police cars sitting idle in their lots suggests they are staying home even if they do want them to report. We can't be sure if they are home because they are sick too or just afraid. We expect this level of infection to propagate from Rome with a slight delay."

  "What is slight in this case?" April wondered.

  "Three weeks to propagate to the opposites side of the globe, I'm told. At least for any city with a big airport. Longer or not at all for just a very few places," Jeff said. "The Isle of Man has isolated itself. You can leave but nobody can come back until they announce it is permitted. The Canaries tried to do so but failed already. Tasmania indicated they will try but I have my doubts. They are just too big and there is going to be somebody who'll land a boat or a light plane and they won't know about it. Really isolated towns in someplace like the Australian outback have a better chance of enforcing a quarantine than a big island. Places that only have one road or a rail line in and out."

  "There isn't anything we can do to help them is there?" April asked.

  "Not that I can see," Jeff said. "We are a few thousand and all the infrastructure for making vaccine is down there. Flu vaccine is still made with chicken eggs, and we're short on live chickens up here. About all we can do is keep supplying the few cancer drugs and tech products that are made in zero G. I'm sure we'll get a few super rich refugees, but don't think we'll see more a couple dozen. The highest guess I heard was a couple hundred and I really doubt that."

  "How short on space are we going to be? Especially if we get a couple extra hundred people," April worried. "They're not going to fit in the Holiday Inn."

  "The new ring is near done. There are two sections in pressure already. We'll have somewhere to put them. Some of the people who were going to occupy those spaces will not make it up from Earth, or will be persuaded by some billionaire's money to delay taking possession right now. The consensus seems to be that we'll see maybe a six month period where the supply system on Earth is disrupted enough to prevent supplies from making it to the launch points. We have enough bulk food here or coming that people won't starve, but we're not going to see fresh raspberries or lamb chops on the menu for awhile," Jeff predicted.

  "Won't production go down too?" April asked. "The farmers and such will get sick too."

  Jeff looked really unhappy. "Yeah, but there'll be fewer to feed too. It's that nasty."

  "I'm going to do a three day semi-fast and drop my gene mod metabolism back to a normal level. It isn't fair for me to keep eating like I usually do if we may run short," April decided.

  "It would look bad to keep eating a lot in public at least," Jeff agreed. "If it isn't that hard to stop. I assume you've done this before?"

  "Yes, once I was old enough to understand why, and that it wasn't a punishment, my doctor had me do a fast and ran metabolic tests to see that my gene tweaks worked the way they are supposed to." April looked rather grim. "I remember my mother said I was rather moody."

  "Perhaps you should avoid dealing with the public for a few days," Jeff suggested.

  "That might be a good idea," April admitted reluctantly. "I was little but I remember I felt more angry than hungry. At least I already drink my coffee black."

  * * *

  Jon looked worried sick on the screen. That was upsetting. He was pretty unflappable.

  "Doc Lee has two people from ISSII isolated in the outside shelter. A married couple. They came in on a private charter shuttle so they have some money and they were not happy to be put in isolation. But they even more emphatically refused to return to ISSII. They are demanding to be released and it's hard to make them understand because both are asymptomatic. But they have sufficient viral load to test infected. I hate to ask you, but I think we need to call the Assembly to deal with this. I could reasonably be accused of false imprisonment doing this on my own authority."

  "Jon, we don't really have a law against false imprisonment," Muños pointed out.

  "No, we hardly have any laws at all yet, but the majority of our citizens still have a mental list of North American laws and seem to apply the major offenses as if they are a natural moral code. We haven't had to codify against murder and rape and theft. Everybody seems to agree on the basics. And I don't want to have a thousand little laws that can be used to generate income from fines. Mitsubishi does a fine job of regulating safety and use of cubic by regulation. I depend on the people seeing me as fair and reasonable or they'll stop supporting me. If I irritate them they can easily refuse to fund us next vote for appropriations. As it is now I get donations from some people who see us as underfunded. I'm not eager to lose that sort of support."

  "OK," Muños agreed. "I'll call an Assembly and we'll tie the couple into the meeting from isolation so they can listen. Say 20:00 this evening. Please have a really short reasonable explanation of the risks involved to present. There are still people wrapped up in their own lives and businesses, oblivious to what's happening. They'll need to be educated to the seriousness of it. I'm going to call a number of associates after I announce an Assembly. I'll lobby them to support you and ask them to call their friends in turn. If you feel free to do so I suggest you do the same. We can't afford to lose control of this."

  "I'll quickly make up a list and text you so we don't duplicate," Jon said. "That might just irritate some busy people if we both call. If you see anybody who you think you can influence better than me tell me too and I'll leave them to you."

  "What about the pilot or pilots?" Muños asked. "These people might not show symptoms but they should be contagious already with that viral load. The pilots could be walking time bombs who will be a hazard in three to five days if they've been infected."

  "They opted to return to ISSII without entering. They were briefly exposed to the passengers boarding but said they never touched them. Indeed the pilot described them as standoffish. They shared the air with them in the shuttle but I have no idea how the routing and filtration works between cabins. They're certainly aware of the hazard now. I wouldn't be surprised if they seek antivirals when they get back home," Jon said.

  "We're not sure how effective they are with the nasty strain, but yeah," Muños agreed, "I'd give it a try too, if I were exposed. Lee and Ames have identified some of the characteristics of the new strain from the data Jeff's man Chen got us. It is mouse flu as a starting point, but it has sequences that seem unique. We'll know more later but we will be able to ID this and tell it from even the usual version of mouse flu soon."

  "Does that still show up" Jon asked, surprised.

  "Yes. Some varieties burn out. But if they get established in an animal population they keep showing up from time to time. I think mouse flu is here to stay, but other varieties don't keep reappearing. Nobody has seen the 1918 Spanish flu in the wild for a long time. Before I start calling people I should ask – what exactly do you intend to propose to the Assembly?"

  "I want explicit authority to refuse entry or isolate people who have been exposed to disease for a reasonable incu
bation period. I want to be able to put those who actually test as infected in strict quarantine. What is more problematic, I want authority to turn away exposed persons if there is no housing available to hold them in isolation. That's going to seem excessive to some people, but I feel it is a matter of national survival and will testify to that," Jon said.

  "For this variety of flu?" Muños asked.

  "For anything," Jon insisted. "We need a contagious disease policy. Not a onetime fix."

  "How would you feel about expanding the facilities for quarantine?" Muños asked.

  "Paid for with public money? No. They'll want to build another ring for it before you know it, if we start down that road. Let somebody offer it as a paid service if they want. The couple Lee has in quarantine right now already complained about having to pay for their meals and haven't even been asked to pay a fee for the cubic they are using. They had to be told Dr. Lee was not the concierge of a luxury hotel. When they complained about how cramped the quarters are Dr. Lee told them it was a four person isolation unit and the woman just replied with one word - 'Impossible'"

  Muños made a disgusted face. "Who are these people?"

  "That's a really good question," Jon allowed. "They were told you don't have to declare an identity to enter Home so they haven't. The fellow smirked and declared they were John and Jan Doe. They used an irrevocable corporate credit to subscribe to the cafeteria service and they had at least some EuroMarks on them, the old fashioned non-depreciating sort. I can tell they have money. They have the right sort of Earthie clothing and way of carrying themselves. I've seen the sort before."

  "Surely you could run their faces through Earthside law databases and get an ID." Muños said.