The Patron Saint of Plagues

by Barth Anderson

  “Tell me something,” said the sabihonda, pausing over her leftover spaghetti. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll get you to San Antonio.”

  Stark leaned against the doorway and looked back at her. “What?”

  “The Ascensión outbreak. Tell me your diagnosis.” She set the bowl of noodles in her lap, giving him her full, spooky attention. “Naturally emergent virus or bioterrorism?”

  Who was this creature? Of course a person with her capabilities would know about the mystery of the new virus. But what was she doing in a jail cell on the wrong side of the front, if she had such incredible access even after the pilone net had crashed? “I don’t see how it could be natural, though I just guessing.”

  “Who could have designed it? Americans? Euros?” she asked. “Assuming it’s not natural, of course.”

  Stark wasn’t ready to begin such speculations until he got to the capital. “How about if you tell me your title first.”

  “Title? My ‘title’?” She grinned. “I’m the last line of defense,” Rosangelica said, chewing. “I decide whether to let you into Mexico or not. That’s my title.”

  “What you doin in Free Texas?”

  The cyborg laughed, and Stark didn’t like the way her face wrinkled when she did. “I was monitoring Valesquez and Weitzel from this cell.”

  The sabihonda was being evasive. “You were monitoring me,” Stark said.

  “Don’t get excited about it. I monitor everything.” She chewed and chewed. “Now I have to decide if you’re friend or foe.”

  Stark figured that Rosangelica was a major piece on this chessboard, so big that war drones stopped shelling the PAT when they took her prisoner. He decided to tell her his wildest guess about dengue-5 and dengue-6. “I think America or the Euros wrote the wetcode on those viruses. I don’t know who else would have motive for such a complex assault,” said Stark. “But if I make a more irresponsible guess than that, then you shouldn’t believe that I a real scientist.”

  Rosangelica thought about that, tearing into the spaghetti with a plastic fork, tails of noodles lashing as they vanished between her lips, then she sized him up with a nod. “Bueno,” she said. “Howell used a skycycle every morning when he went to Austin. Kawasaki’s new plasma injection. Who knows how these gananes got it,” said Rosangelica. She wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand. “That’ll hold me till we can get some frijoles and good tortillas in San Antonio, but mama, I could eat a ton more.” She sealed the top on the plastic bowl of noodles, then shoved it, the bread, and the bottles of water into what must have been Howell’s backpack. She froze, then looked at Stark, looking through him. “Tipo. Jeep. Chililolco. That’s it. The Chairman just gave the order. Luther and Kevin are on their way!”

  She slid past Stark through the jail door.

  Stark looked back at the body inside, then it occurred to him. Kevin still had his brain gear. “Wait! They have my equipment!”

  The sabihonda stood in a blast of sunlight at the corner of the Opera House. “What equipment?”

  “Kevin has my goggles and brain tags. I use them to connect to the CDC’s satellite. It has all my information from Zapata Hospital and Muñoz. I can’t stop the outbreak without it. I in the middle of consulting with Ghana on—”

  “Stupid gringo,” she said. The skin around her subcutaneous wiring rolled in protest against the laugh lines by her eyes. “Your AI is just a calculator compared to me. I’m pues-humano. You got a password or a prefix or something for the i.a., right?” She used the Spanish construction for inteligentsia artificial.

  “Of course.”

  “I can access it.” Rosangelica shrugged. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

  He looked at the sky over Bastrop. No sign of the People’s Army yet. Could he be in touch with Joaquin through her? More importantly, did he want a Holy Renaissance pues-humano spy accessing Queen Mum?

  The skycycle was parked in the rectangular shadow of the little jail. The bike was a sleek thing with a long nose, a high shield, and wings that angled back like a swoop jet’s. It sat two, and two helmets were locked in place. The sabihonda started fumbling with the sheaf of keys on Howell’s chain. Stark watched her select key after key, poking each into the ignition. “This is crazy.” She put down the keys and stood still. “De. From. Haber. Ruto. Scrum. Envelope. Piel. Love. Torque. Andar.” She stared skyward for a moment as if listening to a faraway voice, smiling. Then she rattled through the keys and selected one, holding it up like a prize fish. The key unlocked the first helmet, which she handed to Stark.

  “What did you do? How did you find the right key?”

  “I melted the PAT’s defenses around their jail security server. These are cowboys, not coders.” She unlocked a helmet for herself. “They had the jail rekeyed last month after Howell lost his set, and they kept all the info on net in case he did it again. And number 22-31 is the ignition.” She held up that key as evidence. “Hop on, Stark. San Antonio’s waiting for you.”

  Stark slipped a helmet on as three distant fly-sized specks appeared in the sky behind them.

  “C’mon!” Rosangelica’s voice buzzed in the helmet mic.

  He climbed on the cycle, strapped himself in, and it shot forward, down the street and into the sky. Acceleration forced Rosangelica against his chest and crotch. It surprised him how squeamish he felt to have a “posthuman” between his thighs.

  “It’s going to be close,” said Rosangelica. She took the skycycle up about twenty feet and opened up the throttle, using its velocity for speed instead of altitude.

  Even with three skyboats behind him, and a Holy Renaissance wetwared spy between his legs, Stark was relieved to feel mile after mile of Texas blur below the cycle. As long as he didn’t think about Howell and their unfinished game of rummy, the sick sensation he had back in the Opera House was replaced by adrenaline. “They faster than us?”

  “No. But their weapons are.”

  “They gonna try to kill us?” asked Stark. “Because—because of what I did?”

  “Probably. Though I’m worth more alive than dead. We’ll see what the Chairman told them to do in a second.”

  Your AI is just a calculator compared to me, Rosangelica said. Nonetheless, she certainly was calculating. She knew exactly what needed to be done as soon as Stark shot Howell—the jail-cell keys, the food, the cycle, the cycle’s keys. A woman like her could have left almost anytime she wanted. Our Chairman tryin to figure out what she doin in the old JPL, the kid had said. Stark imagined that whatever Rosangelica was doing in Houston, it was major.

  I’m the last line of defense.

  A wild squawking blasted inside his helmet and Rosangelica almost lost control of the bike as she involuntarily brought a hand up to her head. “What the hell is—”

  “Land that skycycle right now,” Luther’s voice echoed in Stark’s helmet, “and we won’t land it for you.”

  Stark craned his head to look behind them and the fly-sized specks had become wasps. “Luther right behind us!”

  “They’ve been trying to get a missile lock on us for the past twenty kilometers,” said Rosangelica. “I can’t shrug off their scopeware much longer.”

  Luther sounded bitter and frayed. “Which one of you killed Howell? Gonna knock you out of the sky if you don’t land that bike!”

  Rosangelica said, “The drones on the border aren’t afraid to cross into Texas territory. I know you know that, Luther.”

  “I see. The savvy Honda killed Howell,” said Luther. “Dr. Stark, maybe this don’t matter to you, but that woman stole military secrets about a key US satellite. She a thief sent to the JPL by Orbegón himself. She’ll use you to get across the border, then it’s adios, muchacho. Don’t trust her if you value your life.”

  Stark figured Luther might well be right about Rosangelica. “Who I gonna trust, Luther? You?”

  “No, I expect you can’t. This conversation over.” He sounded resigned and tired. “Got something just for you
here, sabihonda. Vaya con carne.”

  Luther’s squelching override snapped silent.

  “Chinga,” swore Rosangelica. “A code-seeker. Melt-through. Gonna eat this valemadre cycle’s defense.”

  Stark looked back and could see the white trail of an approaching missile. “Can you do anything?”

  “Get up close to me,” she said and reached back, pulling him tight against her. She grabbed his right hand and put it on the throttle with her hand over it. “You are going to take the controls, Stark. I’m—”

  “No!”

  “—going to hack my way into the missile’s geo-sat—yes, you have to, Stark!”

  “I can’t drive this—”

  “Too late. It’s done.”

  The cycle swooped and dove as Rosangelica lifted her hands. Stark grabbed the handlebars, cyborg cradled in his arms, the land below veering up into his face.

  “Hold the nose up, idiot! Thumb lever! There you go,” Rosangelica said, “and keep the throttle open till I say.”

  The skycycle felt like a heavy sea animal that wanted to dive deep and fast. Stark looked over his shoulder and the cycle jerked with his movement.

  “¡Cálmate!” Rosangelica screamed.

  Stark gripped the bars. “What you doing?”

  Her voice hissed in that eerie, clipped tone again. “Couch. Epazote. Zipper. Papagallo. Pump.”

  Stark had to resist every nerve in his body telling him to turn around and see how close the missile was. He looked over Rosangelica’s shoulder at the controls and found a circular screen marked 5-KILO RANGE. He flicked a toggle and an arrow labeled PATSEEKER-#3, the missile, was bearing down on the center of the screen. “Um. Rosangelica?”

  “Noviembre. Cutlet. There!” she shouted.

  Suddenly there was a blinding streak before the skycycle, a shrieking flash of light and vapor. Stark gripped the handlebars and lowered his head as a concussion hit them from behind, lifting the back of the skycycle. He pressed the thumb lever all the way forward to keep the cycle’s nose level. A moment later, three huge explosions sounded behind them.

  Then quiet. Nothing but the purr of the cycle.

  Stark looked down at the screen and saw the PATSEEKER was gone. He was about to ask Rosangelica what happened, but then he realized they were racing westward along the track of four diminishing vapor trails that had sailed in from the west. The border. Mexican Texas.

  Stark looked west and could see a flock of small jets or gliders hanging in the distance like gleaming hawks circling on a thermal.

  War drones.

  They’d stopped shelling Bastrop when the PAT took Rosangelica captive, Howell had told him. Now, Stark realized, they had just let those missiles fly at her command.

  Who was this woman?

  Rosangelica’s voice sounded in his ear. “Close call, eh, Estarque?” She was laughing. “Don’t worry. Those missile drones weren’t coded for us. We weren’t in any danger.” She turned her head slightly to the right. “I’ll take over. Let go of the handlebars.”

  As the skycycle shot westward toward the Guadalupe River, Stark released his grip and leaned back a bit. He looked over his shoulder, but couldn’t see the pursuing PAT barcos—just smoke hanging in the air.

  Silence carried them for a while, as the clay prairie of central Texas gave way to hillier, greener ground, and derelict farm fields that still bloomed yellow with gold mold. This terrain had not fully recovered from the Border War seven years ago, but young cottonwoods grew from the trunks of the old, and little wildflowers broke red in yawning craters. Soon they saw the Guadalupe River, a narrow, shallow trickle over dry land, hardly enough to separate these two immense militaries. The cycle tore over the scorched earth on the west bank of the river.

  “Dormouse. Dormir. Adore. Fleck.” Stark wondered what she was really doing as she pronounced her absurd spells. “A Dulce jet just landed in San Antonio,” Rosangelica said. “There’s an escort waiting for you on the other side of the river. They’ll follow us and make sure we get to San Antonio safely.”

  “We? You and me?” said Stark. “Thanks for your help, but ‘we’ ain’t going to San Antonio together.”

  They zoomed past the little green dell that was once the city of San Marcos, thick green vines crawling over urban wreckage. The skycycle raced over its military punto de control, protected by war drones hanging in the air.

  “Without your—what did you call it—your brain gear? Your computer?” she said as if helping him work out a math problem. “You’ll need me. The outbreak just reached a critical stage. Death toll is nearly two thousand now.”

  The number was so absurd, it made Stark angry. Two thousand? Already? She had to be lying. He hadn’t heard a reliable mortality figure since last night, but with such virulence, the virus would have crossed the US by now. Stark wished he could see Rosangelica’s face. She had to be lying to him in order to get to San Antonio. “Impossible. Two thousand? Impossible.”

  “Not all of those deaths are from the outbreak,” Rosangelica said, speaking in a monotone as if summarizing from an article. “Los destitutos are rioting.”

  Finally, Stark spoke. “Who that? ¿Los destitutos?”

  “The lowest class in Mexico. The state-sanctioned Minority Party represents them, saying they haven’t really seen the benefits of the Holy Renaissance’s expansion yet.” By her tone, Stark got the impression Rosangelica didn’t really care what los destitutos thought of the Holy Renaissance. Keeping her hands on the handlebars, she pointed her index fingers to another swarm of war drones hovering over three landed barcos in a long-abandoned farm field. “See that? Your escort. Just like I said.”

  She banked the cycle toward the skyboats and the war drones parted for her, dispersing toward San Marcos. “Who’s the officer in charge?” asked Stark.

  “Why?” asked Rosangelica.

  “Because I ain’t getting off this cycle unless you tell me.”

  “El Mono. At least, that’s the name he gave you.”

  Satellites couldn’t have told her that, he thought, with a sinking sag in his stomach. Which meant that the mortality number Rosangelica claimed might be accurate. As if Stark’s preparations and perimeters were nothing, the outbreak’s next wave had hit.

  “I’m going to have to cross-check everything you’ve told me, sabihonda.”

  “I hope you do,” said Rosangelica, circling the cycle once over the convoy of barcos, then speeding off toward San Antonio as they took wing behind her. “I want you to figure out for yourself that you can’t do this without me.”

  MONDAY, MAY 16. 6:22 P.M.

  SITTING IN A CYLINDER of pale light cutting through darkness, two middle-aged men in red-and-black three-piece suits were playing backgammon, rattling dice in leather-bound cups and swearing softly after a throw. Cigarettes, symbols of superlative opulence in Stark’s America, burned silver threads into the light, and now and then, one of the men blew smoke into the shadows.

  Stark couldn’t decide why these two men were on the Dulce. Clearly, they were associates of the sabihonda, who’d ushered them aboard without so much as an introduction to Stark, but beyond that he couldn’t decide if they were travelers, spies, subordinates, or what. The plane went up, the lights went down, and out came the cigarettes and backgammon board.

  In a second wide shaft of light, Rosangelica sat between the jet’s wings in a horseshoe-shaped chair, stretching her long legs beneath a table of empty plates and glasses. She had exchanged her dirty denim jacket and jeans for her version of the traditional Holy Renaissance uniform: long, black-wool skirt, black leather duster with red lining, ranchera boots. Her hair was combed straight, brushed back from her disfigured face, and she sat staring at the ceiling. Stark could hear her clipped, aphasic chant as she accessed satellites. “Hacer. Asiago. Stock. Citation. Llave.” She was collating hospital information. He hoped.

  Stark sat in a third splash of light at the rear of the coach. In front of him was a squat, thick glass b
rimming with sweet-as-candy whiskey—his favorite indication that he’d left outback farming and entered the sumptuous excesses of the Holy Renaissance. Near his table of memboards glowing with hospital reports and epidemiological data was a wet bar loaded with as much booze as his heart desired, and right now, his heart desired quite a bit.

  He pressed the tumbler to his cut lip and stared at the nearest memboard without reading it. A lifetime of jetting into cholera and yellow-fever outbreaks couldn’t have prepared him for this. On Friday, twenty-eight hundred people had put on shirts and worried about their hair and drunk some coffee. Today, they were gone. And each one of them had suffered bone-cracking seizures and lymph nodes bulging the size of apples. Bleeding, horrible bleeding. It was almost too much for Stark to read, and he’d read plenty of hemorrhagic-fever accounts. One nurse reported speaking to a patient who she assumed had survived the disease. During the interview, the patient seemed overcome with emotion, and as he wiped his eyes, he came away with a smear of blood on the back of his hand. A moment later he was convulsing.

  To make matters worse, violence had claimed several hundred in the riots of Ascensión’s National Square. Three hundred thousand people, furious at their government’s handling of the outbreak, had poured into the National Square, one of the most widely infected regions of the city, in what seemed part communal outrage, and part coordinated insurgency. Either way, the very definition of nothing to lose.

  In the peaceful hum of the Dulce jet, a tumbler of ice and whiskey in hand, Stark had, at last, hours to read and read and read. Rosangelica had offered to sift through the information for him, but Stark wanted it all to himself. He finally had full accounts of the outbreak written by doctors, not to mention the epidemiological report written by the late-great Miguel Cristóbal, and the genomic analysis of dengues five and six written by Isabel Khushub, Stark’s ace. Stark needed the ritual digestion of data to feel a certain amount of control and connection to this tidal wave, but after two hours of drinking and reading, he realized that all the information would really do him no good.