Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14)

by Laurence Dahners

  ***

  Adin returned to the attorney’s office. He and the attorney spoke briefly about the documents the attorney was drafting for him, then he once again waited for the man from Islam-Akbar.

  When the man entered, his face told Adin that Adin now had the respect he was due. Adin said, “I assume the monkeys died?”

  The man nodded, “And three of the sailors.”

  Adin drew back in alarm, “The vaccination didn’t protect them?”

  The man gave a little shrug, “They feared the needle and refused to be vaccinated.”

  “And you let them say no?!”

  He shrugged again, “The Imam felt that it’d provide a test of the effectiveness of Vengeance.”

  Adin felt a little shiver run over him at the cold-bloodedness of such a decision. Then he reminded himself of his own decision to kill millions, possibly billions. “Okay,” he said. “It did provide such a test, and a thorough one indeed. I assume that everyone not vaccinated died and everyone vaccinated survived?”

  The man nodded. “They gave tecovirimat to the men when they became ill. It didn’t seem to help.”

  “It shouldn’t have helped, since the virus is designed to be resistant to such antiviral medications. But that’s good to know. All ten of the unvaccinated monkeys died as well?”

  The man nodded again, “And all of the vaccinated ones survived. The vaccinations caused a pustule though. Is your preparation contaminated or is that to be expected?”

  Adin nodded, “It’s a ‘pock.’ Those who died probably had hundreds of them, or ‘pox,’ correct?”

  “Yes,” the man said looking down at the floor thoughtfully. He looked up again, “Do we still need to do the test on Sentinel Island?”

  Adin pondered for a moment, “I recommend it, yes. That way we can be sure that an aerosol delivery system’s effective. Admittedly, injecting it into the trachea of the monkeys and then having them spread it to the sailors, presumably by coughing it up as an aerosol, suggests that it’ll work, but I think it’s important that we be certain. I'd also choose another small relatively isolated island, perhaps Pitcairn or Little Diomede. There you could release Guardian as an aerosol to be sure that such a method will work to vaccinate our people against a release of Vengeance a month or two later.”

  The man gave a nod, then said, “We’ll get to work delivering ports. We’ll need a system for creating the aerosol that we’ll be sending through them.”

  “I’d recommend the Mitiform Aerosolizer made by Plenum Therapeutics. It’ll readily fit a one centimeter port and has a system for filling its reservoir in a closed fashion.”

  ***

  Research Triangle Park, North Carolina—D5R announced today that it has found life on the fourth planet circling the star Beta Canum Venaticorum (BC4). This is much more than the unicellular life found in the Alpha Centauri system. Huge dinosaur-like animals roam BC4 (see video link), though no evidence of intelligence to match the Teecees has been detected. This announcement, coming so soon after reports of the first successful human porting, may have you thinking that explorers will soon be wandering the surface of BC4, unfortunately the atmospheric pressure on BC4 is far too high for the survival of humans. One would have to visit the planet in something akin to a deep sea submersible and interact with the environment using mechanical arms…

  This time, Adin was meeting the man from Islam-Akbar out in the woods. Adin felt uncomfortable since he rarely spent any time in nature.

  He wore sneakers and nylon sweatpants—and a liberal dose of DEET. As directed he’d walked from where his car parked itself to the southwest corner of the lot at the national park. Then he’d walked 200 paces due west, following the compass on his AI. He’d been careful not to use any GPS tracking for this meeting, simply following directions he’d found handwritten on an advertising flyer tucked under his windshield wiper at work.

  Adin looked around and caught a come-on wave from a man hiking a nearby path with a large backpack. Adin walked over to the same path and fell in a short distance behind the man, gradually catching up. Once he came alongside, he wasn’t surprised to see the same man he’d been meeting in the lawyer’s office. He said, “Should we know each other’s names?”

  The man shook his head and turned off the path. After twisting and turning through the trees a little way, they came to a small clearing in the forest. Shrugging out of the backpack, the man pulled out one of the Mitiform Aerosolizers that Adin’d recommended and set it on a boulder. “So,” he said, getting out a large soft IV fluid bag and quick connecting its tubing to the reservoir on the aerosolizer. “Next, I take the sealed syringe, uncap it and insert the needle, right?” He pulled out a syringe with attached needle as he spoke.

  Adin nodded.

  The man carefully uncapped the needle and inserted it into the port on the bag, “I draw up fluid into the syringe and squirt it in and out of the bag several times so that all of the virus will be reconstituted and then pushed into the bag, yes?”

  “Yes,” Adin said, watching the powdered vaccination virus in the syringe vanish into the liquid. He could barely tell any change in the opacity of the fluid in the IV bag.

  “Okay,” the man said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a power outlet—obviously port connected. Adin had wondered how he was going to power the aerosolizer and now felt like thumping himself on the side of the head. Ports kept getting more and more commonplace since D5R had invented them almost a decade ago, but it was still easy to forget all the things they might be used for. Self-amused, he thought back to when AIs had been new. Back then you’d see someone apparently talking to himself and think perhaps they were crazy…

  Once the man plugged in the aerosolizer, he pulled out a port and held it over the aerosolizer’s nozzle. He flipped the switch and the motor in the device began to hum. Just as Adin was wondering where the other end of the port was, the man said, “Do you see it?”

  Adin looked around, assuming he was supposed to be seeing the other end of the port but wondering if the man was asking him about something else. He said, “No,” what am I looking for?

  “Good,” the man grunted. “If you were able to see the mist from the aerosolizer, the ports would be immediately drawing attention to themselves wherever we activated them. By adjusting the settings and using the finest nozzles, I’ve gotten this one to produce something approximating a vapor.” The man stood up, “It’s on that tree,” he said, pointing.

  Adin looked the direction the man pointed but still didn’t see anything. “Which tree?”

  The man stood, leaving the aerosolizer running and began walking closer. He pointed again, “Do you see it yet?”

  Adin was quite close before he saw the small puff of vapor. “I see it,” he said pointing. “Are you sure it’s putting out enough?”

  “It’s putting out half of what you recommended,” the man said with a shrug. “I figure we’ll just run them twice as long. Better that than people seeing them and investigating.”

  Adin said, “Let me get some samples.” He got some syringes and a laser distance meter out of his pocket. As he walked closer to the vapor, he used each one to suck up a sample of the air at each of the distances he’d already written on them. He capped each one and put it back in his pocket until he’d done all ten. He turned, the man had stopped some distance away. “Are you afraid of it?”

  The man shrugged indifferently, “You said that at high doses even the vaccination virus might make someone sick. I’m keeping my distance in the hopes that won’t happen to me. I figured you could test me for antibodies in a week or so to see if I was close enough to be immunized.”

  Adin nodded, “That’s a good idea. Let me measure your distance from the port before you move.”

  Chapter Two

  Kumar couldn’t help thinking that it was essentially unbelievable that this guy also wanted to fly over North Sentinel Island. Admittedly, the island was pretty bizarre in the sense that no one ever we
nt there. He’d talked to other helicopter pilots who’d flown over the beaches there and the natives pretty consistently came out to shoot at you with bows and arrows. The government had taken a non-interference attitude toward them since 2006 when some fishermen tried to land on the island and were killed. By law, no boats were supposed to approach within three miles. The rumors were that the islanders had eaten people that landed there prior to the 2006 incident. No one knew how many Sentinelese actually lived there, but they consistently came out and fiercely threatened anyone who flew over.

  Kumar himself had never actually had anyone want to fly over there until about a month ago. Then he’d had a photographer show up and charter Kumar’s helicopter to make a flight over the island. The guy’d claimed to be a nature photographer and been insistent on taking pictures with the door of the helicopter open. He ran a video camera constantly and took photos with several high end telescopic still cameras, one of which he’d fumbled and dropped onto the beach near a bunch of the savages. It’d apparently broken its lithium battery case because shortly after the natives gathered around it, it caught on fire. Kumar’d been surprised that a camera would have a powerful enough battery to generate the clouds of smoke that billowed out of it. As the helicopter lifted away the smoke had practically enveloped the islanders who’d gathered around the camera.

  Now, after having made only that one flight to the island in his twelve years as a helicopter pilot flying the Andaman Islands, he was making a second flight barely a month later. This passenger claimed to be a naturalist interested in isolated populations. He’d come here to observe the most isolated population known on earth. He was also making videos, but at least this guy was happy shooting through the windows of the helicopter, none of that flying with the door open crap like the last passenger. He just had one simple video camera and one fancy telephoto camera. Nothing like the amount of equipment the other guy’d been using.

  “We should start seeing the islanders coming out on the beach pretty soon,” Kumar said, speaking as if he had a lot of experience with their behavior. Actually, on his first flight the islanders had shown up on the beach, shaking spears and pointing arrows quite a bit sooner than this. He actually flew all the way in and hovered over the beach without seeing anyone. He started to worry that his passenger would want to land which was definitely against the law. Besides, Kumar worried that if they landed and the guy got out, one of the natives might manage to shoot him with a bow.

  “Maybe none of them are near this beach,” the guy said. “Why don’t you just take me on a circuit of the island flying a little bit off the beach? Surely some of them’ll be close enough to the beach that they’ll come out.”

  Kumar shrugged and swung the helicopter to the right to begin following the beaches around the island. As they flew along without seeing a soul, Kumar slowly became concerned. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, “the other time I was here they came out on the beach almost as soon as I arrived. Some of the older pilots who’ve been here before told me that they always do, as if they’re really worried about outsiders.”

  Kumar’s passenger made a noise that sounded like a chuckle, it was hard to tell in the headset. The man said, “Maybe we arrived on one of their national holidays?”

  In the distance, Kumar thought he saw a couple of large pieces of driftwood on the beach. He skimmed in a little closer to get a better look as they went by. Bodies! he thought, slowing the helicopter so he wouldn’t go by, but suddenly feeling like he shouldn’t get too close. They’re bloated! he thought, pulling away from the beach a little bit. He said, “Um, there’s a couple of dead bodies.”

  “I see them,” Kumar’s passenger said. “Maybe they had a little war down there. They’re supposed to be pretty combative.”

  After they finished their circuit of the island, the guy had Kumar fly up over the island. They made another circuit up pretty high, trying to look for any signs of huts that the natives might be living in but not finding anything. The forest was pretty dense, so there could’ve been hundreds of people under the trees and they wouldn’t have seen them. Finally the guy said, “Well, that’s really disappointing. I guess we’d just as well go on back.”

  As they flew back toward Port Blair, Kumar had a thought. “Hey, you know, the guy I flew over here last month dropped a camera. I’ve heard that isolated people like these don’t have any resistance to our modern diseases. I wonder if the islanders picked up that camera and caught some kind of germs from it.” As soon as he said it, he began to regret it. If this guy reported it to the police, Kumar could be in trouble for flying that close to the island. Maybe for murder too? he wondered.

  Kumar’s passenger gave a derisive laugh. “That’s ridiculous!”

  Somehow Kumar didn’t think the guy was actually surprised. In fact, Kumar had a feeling that the guy’d already thought of that possibility but just didn’t want Kumar to take it seriously.

  After they’d landed, Kumar continued worrying. As he helped the man out of the cabin of the helicopter, he said, “Hey, remember we really aren’t supposed to fly over that island. Please don’t mention your flight, or the flight of the guy that dropped the camera either, okay?”

  “Yeah,” the guy said, “I don’t want anyone to know about this little trip any more than you do.” He picked up his suitcases, then turned back to Kumar. “Hey, was that your last flight of the day?”

  Kumar nodded, as he checked over the controls of the helicopter to confirm that he’d shut everything down. As he closed the door and locked it his passenger said, “If you’re driving into town anyway, could you drop me off?”

  Kumar wiped the irritation off his face. Bad ratings could result in a drop in business, so he turned toward the man and put on a big smile. “Sure! Where do you want to go?”

  “I’m staying at the Sea Princess. Are there any bars near there?”

  “Not the kind of bars you’re probably used to, coming from the mainland. The Nico bar makes some pretty fancy drinks though, strong ones. Would you be interested in that?”

  “That’d be great,” the guy said.

  As Kumar’s car drove to the downtown area, the guy sat silently fidgeting in the passenger seat. Kumar had the distinct sense that the man felt nervous, though Kumar had no idea what he could be worried about. He’d paid for his trip in the helicopter before they flew, so he couldn’t be worried about running out on his tab. Kumar’d implied that the ride into town would be free, so he couldn’t be worried about stiffing him on that.

  Kumar’s car pulled up and pulled into a parking space near the Nico bar since things weren’t crowded. He leaned forward and pointed to the bar. Kumar said, “Here you go, though I don’t know what you’re going to do with your suitcases at an establishment like that.”

  “Yeah, I should’ve thought of that.” The man said as he got out, “I’ll bet I can tip the barman to keep them somewhere for me. Let me just get them out of the back.” The man pulled open the back door and leaned in to get the suitcases. He lifted one out and set it on the sidewalk. He climbed in after the second one. Kumar felt a sudden stinging pain in his shoulder and whirled his head. The guy had a needle and syringe in his hand. He held it down low and to the side so Kumar could barely see it out of the corner of his eye. Kumar knew the guy was trying to keep it out of the field of view of the cameras on Kumar’s AI headband. Holding the syringe hidden behind his suitcase the man backed out of the car. “Sorry,” he said, actually looking like he meant it.

  “Heeyy!” Kumar said angrily, but his head was already starting to spin. As the guy closed the door of his car, Kumar tried to talk to his AI and get it to send for an ambulance. Unfortunately his speech was slurred and the AI couldn’t seem to understand him. Kumar’s head began tilting out of his control. The last thing he saw was the man carrying his suitcases down the street, going away from the Nico bar.

  ***

  AJ watched as the Kinrais family milled about in Raquel and Shan’s hous
e. After a pleasant few days spent there over Christmas, they were all getting ready to leave for their own homes later that morning. AJ’d been dating Morgan Kinrais for six years now. At first it’d been slow because he’d been so focused on his new job out at ETR. Things had been going very well on the job now for some time and for the past several years they’d been getting more and more serious. He thought they’d been getting along well but recently Morgan had been acting a little distant. He’d been out of town for his own family’s Christmas celebration and really wanted to see her when he got back. He’d called her as soon as he arrived worrying that she might be about to break up with him. He felt pleasantly surprised when she invited him out to Raquel’s house for a big family breakfast before everyone left town. They were having waffles. Shan claimed to be cooking his “special” waffles, though as near as AJ could tell, they were just regular waffles with pecans in them. They might not really be special but they were very good and AJ thought a lot of the family were eating more of them than they should.

  AJ’d been seated between Morgan and her nephew. Feeling nervous and wanting to engage with the family, he eyed Zage. The kid was pretty chubby so AJ’d been surprised when he only ate one section of waffle, and that one without syrup. AJ picked up another couple of sections of waffle himself, feeling guilty. He thought he should take off about fifteen pounds but knew that, eating his mother’s cooking over Christmas, he’d probably put on a few instead. As he served himself he realized Zage probably couldn’t reach the waffles. "Zage, would you like another section of waffle?”

  Zage gave AJ a doleful look and dropped a guilt trip on him, "I'd really like one, but as you can see I'm obese and really shouldn’t."

  AJ tried not to stare at the boy even though he felt astonished by that reply. Partly because a child had just turned down a treat, but mostly because the kid looked too young for the apparent maturity of his answer. After a moment, he firmed his resolve and said, “You’re right, I shouldn’t eat this waffle either… Hey, sticking to a diet’s hard. How are you managing to do it?”