Let Them Eat Tea

by Coleman Maskell

  Chapter 3 - St. Lucy

  The warm clean breeze from the ocean washes lazily over the Caribbean island of St. Lucy in winter and summer alike. Sea birds patrol the blue sky sporadically, slowly, swooping in wide arcs. Intermittent seagull cries punctuate the quiet. Fishing boats dot the turquoise water and cluster in the harbor of Soufriere.

  Dr. Albert Baldwin has set up work in a small government lab not far from Bridge Street, easy walking distance to the center of the picturesque little city. From big modern windows he looks out over the ocean. Toward the south he has a partial view of the towering Pitons jutting abruptly up toward the sky, almost half a mile in height, just beyond the edge of town. From this distance, the view reminds him of the fjords in Norway, where he used to visit his grandfather in summer. That must have been twenty years ago, he realizes, but the view here is so vivid it makes the memory come to life, as if it had been only last year. The lab is air conditioned. When he leaves the lab and goes outside, the tropical vegetation and the year-round balmy warmth contradict the Nordic view. It’s usually just above 80 degrees by afternoon here, in winter and summer alike. No cold winters. No snow. Soufriere is a peaceful sleepy town on the Caribbean island of St. Lucy. It’s barely a city at all, he realizes, half the size of Narvik. He sighs. Though he has lived here for only a few short months, he feels as if he has come home.

  It's still early morning. Baldwin has just come into the lab. When he arrives, around sunrise, he walks around turning on equipment. Some of it takes a few minutes to warm up, boot up, or otherwise activate. Alone in the big room, he stands looking out the windows for those few minutes, drinking fresh decaf coffee from a cardboard cup. The most commonplace coffee here is better than the best gourmet coffee he ever had in America. He stares out the window, still waking up, thinking about the past and the future, his life on the island, and the girl he's found here.

  The government of St. Lucy offered him a job when the National Institute of Health -- the NIH -- closed its doors back in the USA. In fact it had offered jobs to him and more than a few other people thrown out of the NIH and CDC. The little island country couldn't offer to pay much. They aren't desperately poor, but neither are they rich. They have an educated middle class, though, and a high literacy rate; and the national language is English. The tiny island nation has produced the highest per capita rate of Nobel Prize winners of any country in the world. He is aware of two, out of a very small population. He thinks there might have been a third one from the more recent awards. In any case, it seems to be something of an intellectual’s paradise, if his reaction to it is any gauge. Now the island has adopted a small collection of cast-off scientists, all single unattached men able to work cheaply in exchange for the opportunity to live in a place that seems like paradise.

  Other countries are snapping up laid off scientists too. Like most of his colleagues, he'd had higher paying offers in China and the Middle East, and a few from African countries. Some countries are trying to develop weapons. Some want scientists to find fixes for local agricultural and medical problems. Some dream of breaking the expensive stranglehold of the American and European pharmaceutical giants. None of them, even Dubai, can offer the impressive facilities and equipment the NIH had. What they do offer is a chance to continue one's scientific work.

  The fact that English is the official language of St. Lucy is making it easy for Baldwin to adjust to daily life. Other languages are widely spoken. On the streets one hears a mix of French and Spanish conversations, along with a variation on Creole that's far more common than English; but English is usually enough for him to get by, though his American accent sets him apart. The local accent has a decidedly British influence. To the American ear it sounds a bit overly formal, reminiscent of the actor Sidney Poitier. Other British influences include the political system and the roads. They drive on the wrong side of the road, relative to America. He doesn’t mind that. He can walk almost anywhere he wants to go. Sometimes he bums a ride from his friend Zeph, but mostly he likes to walk. Occasionally he considers getting a car, but the mood passes.

  The best thing about the job on the island, from the scientist's point of view, is that it gives him the opportunity to continue his work on vaccinations. He had become a rising star at the NIH by developing a promising vaccination for AIDS when he was barely out of graduate school. People had been comparing him to Jonas Salk. The future looked bright. Then the funding cutbacks came, and within a few months all the vaccination programs were terminated. The unhappy scientists were approached by headhunters, employment agents representing potential alternate employers. Soon job offers started coming in. While most of the scientists around him were still thinking about whether to stay or to go, the "Individual Health Freedom and Independence" constitutional amendment passed, and the doors closed on the CDC, the NIH, and almost all public health programs in America. Baldwin considered his options and chose the St. Lucy job.

  St. Lucy has a big scientific advantage over China and Africa, from Baldwin's perspective. It's accessible by yacht from Florida, at least in good weather. That means he'd had no trouble packing a substantial assortment of lab samples into the luggage he could reasonably carry to his new home. While he doesn’t own a yacht himself, he has friends who don't mind giving him a ride now and then. Friends willing to drop him off at any secluded place around the island's relatively unguarded coast.

  His AIDS vaccine had been on its way to clinical trials when the order had come down to pull the plug on the health services. Other vaccines were in advanced stages of development, including some promising ones that targeted specific cancers. Both as a man of science and as a man of conscience, he didn't want to let go of that. The orders coming down from above had been clear: Destroy the vaccines. Destroy all samples. Burn, shred or otherwise destroy everything related to the research.

  At the time, Baldwin had guessed the point of this was probably to prevent the laid off scientists from keeping their research for themselves and going into independent competition with the giant pharmaceutical companies. Upon further reflection now, he realizes that it wasn't just the drug giants that stood to lose from the vaccinations getting out. The medical industry as a whole has a lot to lose from effective vaccines against the big money-making diseases that kill their victims slowly while the medical service suppliers drain their money. Thinking about it again, he shrugs slightly in silence and takes another sip of the delicious Caribbean coffee. To Baldwin personally at the time, it had just meant the materials wouldn't be missed.

  To put on a show of compliance he had destroyed scrap paper, blank disks, and vials of tap water, while concealing and smuggling out the potentially life-saving samples, notebooks and data files. At an Internet cafe he had made encrypted copies of the data files, giving them innocuous file names with misleading file extensions like .bin, and had then emailed them to, and from, freshly obtained disposable email addresses. The copies now hung suspended in his own private data cloud. He could access the data anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. The disk copies of the data files, along with the lab samples and the notebooks, he had packed into improvised hiding places in his luggage, which he hand carried onto a friend's yacht.

  That boat had carried him, with his samples and notes, all the way to the sleepy island of St. Lucy, drinking beer and listening to music, partying with the ladies all the way. To his friends it had been a rousing going away party for their buddies Baldwin and Zeph. To Baldwin it was a well-executed smuggling operation, a chance to continue his work, and a start on a new life.

  Now here he is. Most of the smuggled lab samples are still securely stashed in a remote hiding place in the interior. He makes frequent sightseeing trips there, bringing back only what he needs at any given time. Copies of the data files remain immediately accessible by email from any Internet-enabled computer.

  The formula for the AIDS vacc
ine he developed at the NIH has been leaked to a friendly African government that has already started clinical trials. He's happy about that. The people he works for now in the St. Lucy government helped him to arrange the leak, but, like him, publicly they disclaim any knowledge of it. If the trials go as well as he hopes, the next generation of Africans will be able to look back on AIDS the way we look back on Polio now. He has a nagging concern as to whether the people working on synthesizing the vaccine and implementing the trials over there will be able to understand the molecular markers and how the chromosomes are translocated. He doesn't really want to win a free trip to Africa to sort things out for them. He sighs and hopes for the best. Even if nothing else ever goes right in his life again, he thinks, at least that much will have been accomplished. Knowing that gives him an odd sense of inner peace, and a paradoxical confidence in the future.

  He turns away from the windows, discards the empty coffee cup in a recycling bin, and begins working. He makes a circuit of the lab, checking temperatures, taking notes on the progress of the cultures. Sometimes he puts a sample on a small glass slide to get a closer look with a microscope, occasionally adding a drop of some formula and observing the reaction. He places a small vial into a centrifuge, puts something into an oven and later takes it out. Time evaporates as he gets absorbed into the work, and the early morning dissolves. It's about 10:30 when he looks up, broken from his reverie by the pleasant sound of a woman's voice calling out to him.

  "Buddy," he hears her call his nickname, in that British-influenced accent of hers. She had been born on the island, grown up and gone to school here, but if you met her in Europe you would think she was British, or possibly a Swedish girl who had studied in England. Well, a very suntanned British or Swedish girl, possibly one who spent her summers in the Canaries.

  She leans out from behind the door, her head just peeking around it, as if she isn't completely sure she'll be welcome. He, on the other hand, is unquestioningly certain she must be extremely welcome everywhere she goes.

  "Annetka," he answers her reflexively as he looks up. She always startles him. Everything about her seems so perfect: long slender body like a swimsuit model, high cheekbones, big eyes with a very slight almond shape, happy warm deep blue eyes. Before meeting her it had never occurred to him that blue eyes could look warm. The list goes on: long pale hair like satin, long neck, almost lobeless ears that look like delicate little round seashells. She has the most ordinary nose he's ever seen in his life, straight, not indented, not raised. Her slightly full lips, shaped like a cupid's bow aimed upward, tend to look as if she’s just repressing a smile.

  He smiles himself without meaning to. "Come on in," he hears himself say.

  "I thought you might come with me down to the beach today. I'm going to meet up with a few friends," she answers, and enters the room alone.

  She straightens herself as she comes out from behind the door, and her long straight hair slips across her shoulders like a pale satin curtain. It sways with her movements as she comes into the room, moving with that slightly undulating island girl walk, as gently as soft waves lapping the shore, as sensuously as a Latin dancer. This is just her natural gait. She hasn't practiced it. It's common in the islands. Still, seeing her move that way always makes him catch his breath. It seems so out of character for a woman with an almost Scandinavian appearance and manners.

  He knows she was born on this very island, the daughter of Czechoslovakian refugees who had come over in the days of Eastern European Communism. The islands are the only home she's ever known. He thinks of her as a castaway in Paradise. Annetka Svoboda, castaway. Like himself.

  He stares at her almost hypnotized, watching her walk across the lab towards him. He imagines he should speak, but no words come.

  One of the things he likes best about her is that she seems so unaware of her natural beauty, not vain like so many American women. Annetka is hesitantly extroverted, as if always slightly afraid she might be intruding or interrupting something. She is warm, genuine and human, without guile or reservation.

  "I can't right now, Annie," he eventually gathers his thoughts enough to answer her question with authentic regret, his eyes locked on hers as she approaches him.

  "I'm just starting a series of tests. You've heard about those cases of people going crazy all of a sudden, reports from all around the islands." His voice carries a tone of sincere apology. Somehow he feels as if he has to explain himself. "In the news recently," he adds. "Sudden Onset Insanity, they’re calling it."

  She stands close to him now, looking up into his eyes. Her right hand brushes his left shoulder gently for no reason, as if brushing off some speck that isn't there. Her hand returns to the shoulder, rests there. Her fingers very gently, very lightly massage the back of the shoulder.

  "Some of the people have died," he adds, to show how serious the situation is. "I think it's being spread by rats that come off the cruise ships," he goes on, as if continuing to talk might keep her near him longer. "People are dying," he emphasizes quietly, still looking down into her eyes.

  He feels his hand stroke her hair. It feels soft, like mink or chinchilla. Up close, in the fluorescent light, he notices the pale color isn't uniform. It's composed of varying streaks in different shades of pale, some lightly golden, some the faint pastel of wheat at harvest time. Probably the effect of exposure to the sun, the scientist in him hypothesizes. He strokes it again. Still soft. He wants to pull her closer, to kiss the top of her head. Instead he lets his hand fall onto her shoulder, and looks again into her eyes.

  "Well then," she says softly and slowly, brushing his other shoulder gently with her other hand, “I guess you'll have to stay here and work." She adds a little no-hard-feelings semi-smile. She stands very close, her hands on his shoulders.

 

  The nearness feels like intimacy to him. The scientist in him reminds him of another explanation: The comfortable interpersonal distance for people in this culture is extremely close compared to American or Northern European standards. Still, as a man, he feels what he feels. While he analyzes, she steps back a little, lets her hands fall to her sides.

  "We don't want any more people to die if you can stop it," she concludes sympathetically as she turns half away, giving him a slightly wounded look back. He desperately wants her to stay, though it makes no sense for her to do so.

  "Maybe you'll drop in again after the beach. On your way back," he hears himself blurt out as she starts to leave. "We could have dinner or something." As much as he wants to do his work, he doesn't want to let her get away.

  At that she smiles more fully as she backs off and turns toward the door. Her satin hair spins out like a full skirt as she turns her head quickly to look back at him, again locking eyes. "That would be nice," she says, sounding disappointed but consoled. "You can tell me all about whatever you figure out today."

  Then she's gone. It almost hurts to feel her sudden absence.

  He takes a deep breath and puts it behind him. He has work to do. And he hopes he might have tonight with Annetka.

  The government of St. Lucy has just supplied him with tissue samples obtained from casualties from the outbreak in the islands. He's also brought in some samples he saved from a similar outbreak in New Orleans and Miami, with scattered cases reported from coastal cities in between, shortly before the CDC and NIH were closed down. His hypothesis is that the disease is being carried by rats on the cruise liners and supply ships that make the rounds freely throughout most of the islands in the Caribbean and to all the American cities along the Gulf coast.

  He suspects it to be a virulent new strain of Apicomplexa, something like Toxoplasma gondii. If so, Toxoplasmosis would be the diagnosis, and that would usually be treatable if diagnosed in time. It isn't contagious in the sense of being directly transmissible from one person to another. Intermediate hosts are required. It has a complex life
cycle and a long incubation period, so there are only scattered cases. But psychosis is so rare in the Paradise Islands that even one case draws attention. By their standard, as few as a dozen cases is an epidemic.

  Before they can stop it, they need to understand it. Baldwin intends to apply his full efforts to that. He goes back to methodically and meticulously setting up his tests, analyzing his samples, entering careful notes both on paper and into a spreadsheet he's started on the computer.

  Looking through the microscope at a brain tissue sample from a victim in St. Kitts, he can see the unmistakable evidence of the neural damage caused by advanced T. gondii, but it goes beyond the expected damage. It almost looks like Cordyceps fungus growths. He makes his gruesome notes, and turns to a brain tissue sample from New Orleans. It looks the same. He adjusts the lens on the microscope a bit, then adjusts it back to its previous setting. He's getting as clear a view as he can with this equipment.

  He takes out a rare sample from an accident victim in Miami. The disease had been less advanced in that case. A young man had run in front of a speeding automobile on the freeway and been killed instantly. The authorities had attributed the young man's behavior to being stoned on drugs, but his family and friends had been adamant that he was a model student and general nerd who never took drugs or drank alcohol. The only reason the labs had come into possession of the brain tissue samples was because taking such samples had become standard procedure in hospital morgues in Florida after the lethal psychosis outbreak had turned into a local news scare story. The samples had been sent to the CDC. A friend at the CDC had sent some on to him at the NIH. When the NIH closed down, the samples came with him to St. Lucy.

  He analyzes more samples. All of the samples are telling him the same story. There has somehow been a grotesque melding of T. gondii and Cordyceps. Such spontaneous crosses of microorganisms are rare, but they do happen. And when they do, epidemics can follow. He exhales fully, shaking his head a little in a combination of sadness and disbelief, and turns off the light on the microscope.

  He sits back in a chair, mentally digesting the implications of what he's found. Staring blankly at the walls, he notices that the outside light has turned dim, and realizes the entire afternoon has passed. He sighs again, and stands up. There's nothing more to be done here tonight. He has to get cleaned up and change clothes for a late dinner with a beautiful woman who might not wait for him forever.