The Cleanup

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  “It’s usually a quieter neighborhood than this,” said Mother Wu. “I’ve never seen it like this before.”

  Carol nodded. She had a feeling of terrible awe at the chaos around her, amplified by the awareness that the same scene was taking place all over the planet of New Mirada at the same moment.

  It was overwhelming. Carol was filled with the primal urge to run, to get away before whatever was destroying these people turned on her, too. At the same time, she felt torn in a thousand different directions because there were too many suffering people just in that one small area and she could never hope to help them all.

  When the familiar shimmer of the transporter effect appeared in front of her, Carol immediately felt relieved. Four of her shipmates materialized, bringing with them the hope that even this apocalyptic disaster could somehow be averted.

  Without waiting for introductions, Mother Wu pushed in front of Carol and eyed the new arrivals. “Which one’s the doctor?” she said. “You?” She pointed the barrel of the disruptor rifle at the chest of Ellec Krotine, one of the two security guards who accompanied the medical team.

  “Uh, no,” the Boslic woman said quickly.

  “Our doctor’s on Zasharu,” said Carol. Stepping forward, she gestured at the human woman standing beside Krotine. “Nurse Wetzel will do what she can for your boys.”

  Mother Wu looked disgusted, but she lowered the rifle. Carol had lived up to her end of the deal, summoning medical assistance from the da Vinci in return for being freed from her bonds in the basement.

  Now it was time for Mother Wu to complete the bargain. “Why don’t you show Nurse Wetzel where your sons are?” said Carol. “And while you’re at it, unshackle my friends.”

  “All right, all right,” said Mother Wu, heading back into the house. “Follow me.” Sandy Wetzel fell into step behind her.

  “How about that gun?” Carol shouted after them. Mother Wu blew out her breath and stomped back to Carol. “I expect it back,” she said, tossing the rifle into Carol’s arms.

  It was the last provision of the deal between them. “Thanks,” said Carol. “And good luck with your boys.” Carol thought that was a pretty generous thing to say, considering the “boys” had kidnapped her and her team and threatened to kill them, but Mother Wu seemed unimpressed and marched away without another word.

  “Such a sweet woman,” said Krotine dryly. “Why isn’t she screaming her lungs out and rolling around on the ground like all the other Miradorn out here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Carol. “Maybe because she doesn’t have a twin? I haven’t seen one, anyway. It’s just a guess. Have the engineers been able to figure out what’s causing this?” She spread her arms wide to encompass the screaming madness all around them.

  The other security guard, Madeleine Robins, said, “Whatever’s happening, it’s hit Zasharu, too. Apparently there’s some tech device in the old Dominion facility there. Tev’s taking a team down there to try to figure it out.”

  Just then, a little girl with short brown hair hurled herself to the street in front of Carol, screaming and twitching. Not far away, her twin lay silent and still on the pavement, eyes and mouth gaping at the sky.

  Dantas Falcão, the medical technician who had beamed down with the team at Carol’s request, ran to aid the twin. Carol was right behind her.

  Chapter

  18

  “You want to know what’s causing the seizures?” said Fabian. “Everything.”

  “Everything?” said Gomez.

  “Everything,” said Fabian. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “But not all at once,” said Soloman.

  Gomez stood behind the two, watching as they worked at the control panels around the base of the tank. “Consider my curiosity aroused,” she said. “Tell me more.”

  “This device is a transmitter,” said Fabian, thumping the transparent tank with his fist. “It’s broadcasting the signal that’s affecting the Miradorn’s overlobes and triggering the seizures.”

  “We experienced difficulty isolating the signal,” said Soloman, “because it is a morphic signal. A changeling signal.”

  “The type of transmission is constantly changing,” said Fabian. “It might start out as a subspace radio wave, then switch to an X-ray or ultraviolet light or electromagnetic radiation or a stream of tachyons or chronitons. While in transit, the signal cycles randomly through a multitude of types and frequencies of transmittable waves or particles.”

  “Wow,” said Gomez. “How is that even possible?”

  Fabian shrugged. “We haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “But we know what happens when the signal is received by a Miradorn brain,” Lense said from the floor, where she was treating Yet-Nu and Boz-Nu. “The signal turns the Miradorn’s own linking abilities against them. The overlobe, which is already capable of sending and receiving neuroelectric signals, opens the floodgates. The overlobe goes into overdrive. It fires off bursts of neuroelectric energy in all directions like a porcupine firing quills, only continuously. It blasts other Miradorn minds and opens itself up to identical blasts from those other minds in turn.”

  Gomez thought for a moment. “But Miradorn should only be able to link with their twins, right?”

  “Yes,” said Lense. “This device effectively links much larger groups, though it does so in a destructive fashion.”

  “Larger,” said Gomez. “How large? Do we know the range yet?”

  Pattie spoke up from a control board on the opposite side of the tank. She was standing on her hind legs, manipulating controls with the pincers on her forelegs. “The entire moon,” she said. “The signal strength from this transmitter is enough to reach all Miradorn on Zasharu.”

  “But not beyond?” said Gomez.

  “Not beyond,” said Pattie.

  “But the same phenomenon is blanketing New Mirada,” said Gomez. “Therefore…” She touched her combadge. “Gomez to Tev.”

  “Tev here.” The huge, hysterical crowd in the background sounded even more hysterical than before.

  “There’s a second transmitter,” said Gomez. “It must be on the surface of New Mirada.”

  “I suspected as much,” said Tev.

  Of course you did, thought Gomez. “Contact the da Vinci and initiate a search from orbit,” she said.

  “Leave it to those crazy Founders,” said Fabian. “They set up twin transmitters to fry the minds of the Miradorn people, who are predominantly twins.”

  “For those who like a little irony with the suffering they inflict,” said Gomez.

  “You just described the Founders, all right,” said Fabian.

  “We’ll continue to work with the Zasharu device,” Gomez told Tev, “and we’ll notify you of our progress.”

  “We will do the same,” said Tev, his voice nearly drowned out by the commotion surrounding him. “In the meantime, Corsi, Abramowitz, Wetzel, and Falcão are mounting a triage effort.”

  “Is a security detail with them beyond Domenica?” Gomez asked.

  “Affirmative. Robins, Konya, and Krotine are there as well. Bartholomew and I will attempt to do something useful.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gomez snapped.

  “Simply that medical efforts are fruitless as long as we are unable to halt the established progression of the attacks.”

  “Then we’d best stop talking and start—”

  “Commander!” said Dr. Lense.

  Gomez spun toward Lense. The first thing Gomez noticed was that Boz-Nu was convulsing and wailing on the floor, but Yet-Nu was not.

  “Yet-Nu is dead,” said Lense. “I don’t think his brother will be far behind.”

  Chapter

  19

  “I wish you would die again,” said Em-Lin, talking to the empty space to the right of Vance Hawkins’s head. “I wish you would die and stay dead this time.”

  Vance got up from crouching in front of Em-Lin and rubbed the back of his neck. No matt
er what he said or did, he could not seem to get through to her. She was lost in the depths of the haunting vision that had completely superimposed itself over reality since the Dominion transmitter had kicked into high gear.

  It figured. The only Miradorn he could stomach, a Miradorn who had earned his respect by single-handedly defusing a quantum bomb booby trap and saving many lives, and she was locked up tight in a world of her own with the ghost of her dead twin sister. He had listened to her talking to her sister, Or-Lin, long enough to know that it was not a pleasant world to inhabit.

  Maybe it was time for him to stop trying to bring her out of it. If she had been any other Miradorn, in fact, he would not have tried as long as he had already. It wasn’t his job, anyway; Lense, not the deputy chief of security, was responsible for treating nonresponsive victims of trauma.

  So why was he even now trying to think of a way to break through to Em-Lin?

  She had proven herself to him by saving lives, but the truth was, she had worked for the Dominion. For all he knew, she could have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the prison camp operation on Jomej VII.

  Still, he had a gut feeling that she deserved to be rescued from the private hell in which she was suffering. In addition, Vance hoped that her expertise with changeling technology might help to deactivate the Dominion transmitter and save the Miradorn on Zasharu.

  He crouched down in front of her again. Maybe, he thought, it was time to try something more creative. If this didn’t work, he could always summon T’Mandra from patrolling the shrine above and ask her to try a Vulcan mind-meld as a last-ditch effort.

  Vance activated his wrist beacon and aimed its beam directly into Em-Lin’s eyes. At first, Em-Lin continued to look off to one side, watching her invisible tormentor. Then, Vance moved the beacon into the space that she was watching, fixing it right on her eyes, and when he slid it away, her gaze followed it.

  Before Em-Lin’s eyes could drift back to the empty space into which they had been staring, Vance spoke. This time, however, was different from all the other times when he had tried to reach her by talking.

  For one thing, he was shouting in her face. For another thing, his words were not actually directed at Em-Lin.

  “Or-Lin,” he said, holding the light from his beacon steady in Em-Lin’s eyes. “I need to talk to your sister. Please, let her talk to me.”

  Em-Lin’s eyes flicked to one side, then back, then away again. She did not say a word.

  “It’s an emergency,” said Vance. “Dominion devices are killing the people of New Mirada and Zasharu. I believe Em-Lin can help deactivate them.”

  Em-Lin’s eyes returned to focus on the light from Vance’s beacon…then slid back to the empty space again. Her mouth opened, but still she said nothing.

  “Please, Or-Lin,” said Vance. “Let her talk to me. I only want to save your people.”

  “She’s here all the time now,” Em-Lin said suddenly, her eyes returning to the light. “Before, it was only some of the time.”

  Vance switched off his wrist beacon.

  “To me, she’s like a living, breathing person,” said Em-Lin. “I can see her, hear her, and touch her all at once. Not that that’s a good thing. We weren’t exactly getting along before she died, and our relationship hasn’t improved since then.”

  “Thank you for letting your sister talk to me, Or-Lin,” said Vance.

  “You both want the same thing,” said Em-Lin. “You want me to help repair the Dominion transmitter.”

  “Can you do it?” said Vance. “You know your way around changeling technology better than any of us.”

  “I can do some of it,” said Em-Lin, “but I’m not familiar with all the components. You’ll need someone else to do the rest.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” said Vance.

  “Or-Lin,” said Em-Lin. “My dead twin sister says to tell you she’ll be happy to help.”

  Chapter

  20

  Carol threw back her head and screamed as loud as she could. Even then, she was drowned out by the sea of screaming Miradorn all around her.

  But it helped her to keep going, and that in itself was pretty amazing.

  Falcão was so overwhelmed by the ongoing chaos that she didn’t seem to notice Carol’s outburst. Of the rest of the triage team, only Corsi looked in her direction, and then only briefly. As for Rennan, it was impossible to tell if he had dismissed the scream with his telepathic abilities as not signaling danger, or if he was just too distracted by the mob of shrieking children who were clawing at him, too distracted to pay any attention.

  Every last one of them was in hell—the triage team and the Miradorn children and grown-ups and old-timers—so why not scream? Those who weren’t screaming on the surface of New Mirada were in a tiny minority today.

  The same for those who were trying, in the face of utter hopelessness, to lessen the suffering. Carol’s triage team of four was outnumbered by the thousands out there in the street in front of Mother Wu’s house.

  And every single victim of Overlobe Syndrome whom they tried to assist ended up comatose and dead. So far, Carol had not met a single survivor.

  Just now, in fact, right before Carol’s own screaming fit, twin infants had died in her arms. Two tears ran down her face, one for each of the babies, as she caught Corsi’s eye.

  Without a word, Corsi pushed her way through the crowd and took the babies from Carol. She disappeared in the screaming horde, taking the tiny bodies to the same place where she had been delivering all the dead. Carol did not know where that place was, and she had absolutely no desire to see it.

  Moments after she gave up the infants, Carol found two more children, no more than toddlers, screaming in the middle of the street. One of them, a boy, had a bloody head wound that clearly required immediate treatment.

  Carol turned to call for Falcão—and caught her breath. The barrel of a very large gun was aimed right at her, less than a meter from her face.

  A tall Miradorn man with patchy silver hair held the gun with one hand. The other hand clawed at his head, and his features were contorted in an agonized grimace.

  He was shaking, and he looked unsteady on his feet. “Make it stop,” he said, his voice breaking. “Make it stop make it stop make it stop!”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Carol, extending a hand. “Please give me the gun.”

  Suddenly, the man released a shuddering howl. His eyes clamped shut, and his finger squeezed the trigger.

  Before Carol could react, she felt something slam into her and knock her to one side. She heard the piercing, oscillating whine of a disruptor beam blast by as she toppled onto the writhing bodies of afflicted Miradorn on the pavement.

  Looking up, Carol saw someone trying to wrestle the gun away from the man. It was a Miradorn woman, and Carol instantly recognized her as soon as she caught the briefest glimpse of her face.

  The woman was petite and pretty, with glossy black hair and smooth skin. Though she was older than she looked, she overpowered the gunman in a flash, wrenching away his weapon and knocking him unconscious with a single chop to the side of his throat.

  Carol knew her as Mother Wu.

  “I’m back,” said Mother Wu, stuffing the gun in a pants pocket and reaching out to help Carol to her feet.

  “Thank you,” said Carol. “Thank you for the rescue.”

  “I’m here to help,” said Mother Wu. “What do you need me to do?”

  Carol hesitated before asking the question on her mind, but then she asked it anyway. “What about your boys?” she said.

  “Nurse Wetzel couldn’t do anything for them,” said Mother Wu. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “They’re both dead.”

  Carol looked at her, strangely filled with pity for Mother Wu and her “boys.” They had kidnapped her, but she felt only sympathy and sadness for them now.

  It was the same way she felt about the whole planet, she realized. The Miradorn had helped the Dominion bring d
eath and destruction to the Federation, and hard feelings remained on both sides, but now that the Miradorn were suffering and dying, nothing that had happened before seemed to matter.

  All that was left was the sympathy of one creature of flesh and blood for another. In the end, that was what all life boiled down to.

  A single tear traced its way down Carol’s cheek. As the world continued to scream around her, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Mother Wu, hugging her tightly.

  Mother Wu was stiff against her and never relaxed. Eventually, though, she reached around and patted Carol’s back as if to comfort her.

  As if Carol were the one who needed comforting.

  Chapter

  21

  The King of Half the Known Universe exhaled his last, rattling breath in the arms of Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev.

  The king, whose name was Ag-Liv, had thrown himself on Tev as soon as Tev had opened the door to the throne room. Screaming in pain, Ag-Liv had begged Tev to do something to make it stop, but Tev had not been able to help him.

  Jo-Liv, the King of the Other Half of the Known Universe, lay nearby, shrieking and tearing his hair out and rolling around on the floor.

  Even the Kings of the Known Universe were helpless in the face of Overlobe Syndrome. True, they were largely figureheads in a constitutional monarchy, their titles symbolic holdovers from the days before contact with other species, when the Miradorn had fancied themselves the center of the universe. Still, it said a lot about the state of affairs on New Mirada that two of the most powerful, well-protected men on the planet were as defenseless against Overlobe Syndrome as the lowliest Miradorn living in a gutter.

  “Here, boss,” said Makk Vinx, the Iotian security guard who had beamed to the royal palace with Tev and Bartholomew Faulwell. Vinx reached out and took the weight of King Ag-Liv from Tev. “Lemme get this for you.”