Let Them Eat Tea

by Coleman Maskell

Chapter 24 – Greenhouse, White House

  Zeph wanders into the greenhouse on the beach, his left arm wrapped around Zoe and his right around a lightweight laptop. "Anybody home?" he calls out.

  "What's up?" Baldwin asks, stepping out from behind a bank of tall plants. Snake and Annetka soon appear too, garden implements still in hand.

  "Wow, this stuff grows fast," Zeph observes.

  "We be in the tropics here, mon," Snake points out. "Full of life and hope."

  "Plus, I have free gardening help," Baldwin adds, nodding towards the two who have been helping him out with the plants.

  "Public service," Snake says with a bow and a smile.

  Annetka dips as if in a curtsy.

  "What's with the laptop?" Baldwin wants to know. "Hope it runs on batteries."

  "It does, but -- You still don't have electricity here?" Zeph responds.

  "Too many sea birds for a windmill," Annetka offers in explanation.

  "And no money for a tidal power installation," Baldwin adds. "Unless I get a Nobel Prize or something, I'm afraid the greenhouse is going to have to make do without electricity."

  "Or you could get them to run lines from the nearest poles up on the road," Zoe observes. "That would be within the modest resources of the government of St. Lucy, I'm pretty sure."

  "Waste of money. We don't need it," Baldwin ends the discussion, then repeats his question, "So, what's with the laptop?"

  "Skype," Zeph announces.

  "What's Skype?" Snake asks. Since he's learned that Baldwin doesn't mind answering questions, he doesn't mind asking them. The friendship he's developed with Baldwin works well for both of them because their strengths and needs fit together like a pair of missing puzzle pieces.

  Baldwin explains Skype. "It's like a telephone call, but with pictures, like a movie. So you see who you're talking to, and they see you."

  "Who we goin to see on this Skype today?" he asks.

  "Katrina," Zeph and Zoe answer at the same time, then laugh together.

  "Kat wants to talk about what's happening with the tea you sent," Zeph continues.

  "Okay, set it up," Baldwin shrugs.

  Snake takes an interest in everything Zeph is doing with the laptop.

  "That's the camera eye," Baldwin points out when Zeph mounts the small camera by clipping it onto the top of the screen.

  Snake looks at it closely, head tilted, then pulls back. "Like camera in a telephone," he observes.

  Baldwin nods. "Skype turns the laptop into a big-screen telephone," he adds.

  "So we goin to see when she smile, when she be worried," Snake observes. "Not just guess from the voice."

  "Exactly," Zeph chimes in. "That's the whole point. Words don't convey everything. She has some real concerns about this, and we want to get the, uh, whole picture." He looks at his watch. "I told her we'd call at ten, that's another few minutes."

  They pass the next few minutes explaining things on the laptop to Snake.

  "You goin to get one of these for the greenhouse," Snake finally announces to Baldwin. "The government goin to buy it for you, and you bring it here."

  Baldwin sighs. Annetka and Zoe laugh.

  "I see electricity in your future," Zoe intones in her best fortune teller voice, waving her hands as if caressing the aura of an invisible crystal ball.

  "ZZzzt. Zzzap," Snake adds, moving jerkily as if from electric shocks. His natural grace makes the motion look more like a faux-Egyptian dance step.

  "I can recharge it back at the lab every night," Baldwin announces in turn. "The built-in rechargeable battery pack will be fine."

  "Order, order," Zeph calls out, tapping a spade on the edge of a greenhouse table as the face of a pretty American girl appears on the laptop screen.

  "Uncle Zeph?" the girl's voice is heard to ask. "Is that you?"

  "Or maybe a cleverly disguised double?" he answers, turning to face the camera.

  "Oh. I thought maybe you grew your hair long enough to comb it over your face, and you were wearing your shirt backwards," Katrina suggests.

  Not having met Katrina before, the others laugh.

  Zeph introduces everyone. Then he grabs something that looks like a tall stool, but might be a plant stand, and sets it in front of the screen, gesturing to Baldwin to sit on it.

  Baldwin looks at the stool, then looks around for a towel or a drop cloth. Annetka hands him something, which he places over the stool before he sits on it, facing the girl on the screen. "This is Baldwin," Zeph repeats the introduction. "You talked to him on the phone before."

  Baldwin considers saying, "You can call me Al," but he's pretty sure she'd turn it into a dance number or a joke, so he passes over it. "Katrina, is it? Or Kat?" he asks her, attention fixed on her reaction.

  She blinks, as if surprised by an odd question. "Kat is fine. Or Katya. Katrina. Kathy. A rose by any other name would smell the same. And – I can call you Al? Or are you Dr. Baldwin?"

  "Fair question. Whatever you like. So what's the problem? Zeph seemed to imply there's something bothering you. Is the therapy not working? You know, I guess Zeph told you, we don't really know if what you're seeing up there is the same strain as what we've been seeing down here, or even if it's related at all."

  Baldwin's heartfelt compassion for all humanity comes through clearly in the tone of his voice. Katrina feels instantly disarmed by the immediate human connection, drawn to him and frightened by him at the same time, as if in the presence of the Dalai Lama or some sort of saint. She shudders a little, suddenly acutely aware of the inhumane coldness, the savagery and malevolence, of Charlie's crowd of friends. She wants to fly to the islands, to run screaming from the nightmare her life has turned into.

  "What’s on your mind, girl," Baldwin says in a friendly way after a minute or so of silence, trying to nudge the conversation along. He speaks as if she were a child, and indeed he feels the same way towards her, in that moment, as he would feel toward a child who might have come crying to him for help after falling and scraping a knee. "You can tell me about it. Tell us. We're here to help you out with this, if we can."

  "Wow. Sorry," she says, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts. "The tea you sent, it is helping. It seems to be working. He complains a little of headaches, but his mind is definitely getting clearer. He doesn't stare at the wall for long periods like he used to. Doesn't lose his temper as much. It's only been about, what, three days I think, and it's a major change."

  "Okay, well that's good. So what's on your mind, then? Maybe he doesn't like the taste? Some side effect like diarrhea or something?"

  She laughs. "No. No diarrhea. It's – he likes the taste of it, actually. I mix it with Italian herbs and spices, put it in things like spaghetti and pizza. He loves it. That's the thing, in fact. He loves it, his friends love it. They want me to make big pots of it for their fund raising dinners."

  At that Baldwin can't suppress a little laugh, but he returns his attention immediately to the distraught girl. "Maybe you could send me your recipes," Baldwin suggests. "We can start a spaghetti sauce cannery here in the islands."

  He intends it as a joke, but the others exchange the look people get when they're simultaneously surprised by a good idea. They have no idea how to start a cannery, of course, but somebody in the government must know. Or somebody at the World Harmony Café, maybe. Somebody on the island. Doug has connections with business people, maybe Doug knows. All these thoughts go through the minds of Baldwin's friends as he continues his heart to heart chat with the unhappy young woman.

  "I just don't want to go on like this," Kat is saying to Baldwin when the others start listening again. "I want Charlie to get better. I do. But these people he hangs around with are unbearable. They enjoy executions, for Heaven's sake. They're the same people who dismantled the National Health Services. I certainly don't want to help them raise money to – to carry on this insa
nity." She throws her hands up, as if gesturing to the heavens for help.

  "Insanity. Now, that's a good word for it," Baldwin responds, as even-tempered as usual, hoping his calmness might be at least a little contagious. "I wish I could hold you and comfort you, take away the misery, but I can't do that. What we can work on, though," he says, trying to make eye contact while pausing for effect. "What we can work on is taking away the feeling of despair. You don’t have to feel despair anymore. You should be able to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel now." Again he pauses and looks at her, trying to gauge her reaction to his words. "The therapy is working, right? Of course, you've said it is. So you find yourself in the middle of an epidemic of insanity, and you aren't exactly a trained health worker. Does that sort of paint the right picture?"

  After a minute Kat realizes that Baldwin is going to wait until she answers. "Sort of, yes," she says. "I guess so. Maybe." After thinking about it for another few seconds she asks him, "Do you really think all these people could be affected by this virus thing, whatever it is? You don't think they're just, well, naturally insane?"

  Baldwin exhales a short little grunt of a laugh. "Well, they could be," he answers, evaluating the question honestly. "That sort of thing does happen. In that case the tea will do them no harm. But what about the ones that aren't that way? Don't you think that at least a few of them might be afflicted like Charlie was? Just suffering from an infection?"

  He is a little taken aback to see in her eyes that she doesn't really care, but the expression is fleeting. It is quickly replaced by an overgloss of the compassion that has been trained into her since childhood. She had been raised by Christians, the real kind, the kind who believe in the doctrine of "love thy neighbor".

  "It isn't always easy, is it?" He says to her. "To love your neighbor? Oh, say for example, when your neighbor's a son of a b*** who'd just as soon see you dead?"

  They both laugh. "You were raised a Christian, right?" he asks her. "Do good to them that hate you and spitefully use you? That sort of thing? You know that book?"

  "Yeah," she says. "I've read the book. And yes, it's hard sometimes. I wouldn't have expected you to be a religious man," she adds, "being a scientist and all that."

  "Well, I'm not," he allows. "But I have read a lot about it. Funny thing, all the major religions have the golden rule in there someplace, did you know that? The Do unto others thing? It's in Buddhist texts, you can even find it in Islam if you look. It's in all of them. Not that people practice it much, but it is in there. What about you? Are you religious yourself?"

  "I don't really know," she answers truthfully. "I was brought up that way, certainly. We were taught what Christ preached. Love one another. Help one another. The Sermon on the Mount. Yes, I, I've been exposed to that. It's like learning to ride a bike, or do simple math. Once you know it, it doesn't go away. It becomes part of you. Even if you don't believe intellectually, the heart continues to believe. So, yes, and no." After a pause she adds a question, "Is that what motivates you to do what you do? To help people, to find cures?"

  He echoes her answer. "I don't really know," he says. "It's just what I have to do. So, what's holding you back, then? Are you afraid that if you cook for the fund raisers, you'll really be helping the LiberTEA party get funding?"

  She laughs. "No, I guess not. It wouldn't amount to much, anything they'd get from my spaghetti. I just don't like being around them, I guess. And – I'm not sure how much of the tea we have, or if that's the best use of it. Plus we'd be asking Doug to take a chance smuggling it if we need more. I don't see why we should ask a good man like Doug to risk his life and freedom for – for the likes of these people."

  Baldwin tilts his head one way, then the other, weighing her arguments.

  "I mean, they've shut down the CDC," she adds. "They decided to do that themselves. So now the USA is supposed to get surreptitious foreign aid from St. Lucy to help with an epidemic? Because they didn't want to pay taxes to support public health?"

  Baldwin shrugs. "Guess so," he allows.

  "Then again," he adds, "The parasite has affected their judgment. It's entirely possible that they were influenced to shut down health services, in the same way that they're influenced to take care of cats. The infected people -- the hosts -- are doing work in the service of the parasite. It sounds far out, but you can see it yourself if you look for it. Look how everybody who gets infected almost immediately starts to love cats. Even infected rodents do that. They walk right up to the cats and let themselves be eaten. I kid you not. The parasite affects their brain in such a way that they do that. Cats are the only hosts that enable the parasite to reproduce. It needs cats. Maybe it needs to shut down health services too."

  "You aren't suggesting it's sentient?" she asks, incredulous. "Conscious? A thinking virus, or fungus or whatever it is?"

  "Not at all," he assures her, shaking his head. "But it doesn't matter. Only the effect matters."

  "Suppose an example," he continues. "Postulate some mechanism. Maybe as the parasite grows, it puts pressure on some particular area of the brain. Or maybe it releases some particular chemicals. Or severs some neural connection. Something that happens as it grows affects the behavior of the host. If that modified behavior of the host happens to facilitate the survival and propagation of the parasite, then that mechanism gets passed on to future generations of parasite."

  He inhales deeply, thoughtfully, and exhales again slowly, pondering the monstrous ways that nature sometimes works. "Closing down health services is obviously advantageous to the parasite," he continues. "Maybe closing down all public services is just part of the deal. Maybe the effect just isn't that precise. If the parasite releases some chemical that affects the host in such a way that affected human communities halt all public services, all community efforts of any kind, all help and support of one person for another – maybe that works to the parasite's advantage. . . . I'm just saying. It might be chemicals it releases, it might be pressure on certain areas of the brain. Could be any sort of physical effect that has a follow-on effect on behavior.

  These people that seem so whacked out to you, so vicious, so unworthy of saving – maybe they're just sick."

  He stops at that, looks at her, and sighs heavily. She may not be up to the task of distributing the cure, he realizes. And after all, he asks himself, why should she? Why should she be better than other people?