The Sudden Star

by Pamela Sargent

  "Have some tea," Aisha said.

  Jeri looked at them all, sitting around the glassy conference table, the feeble remnants of the dream. William Lorris sat at the head in his wheelchair, directing the meeting: Colonel Lorris, who had once seen Mars and later ridden a damaged space shuttle down to earth, reduced to this parody of a conference, where all they were trying to do was decide whether or not to kill two children and a doctor. "You heard my arguments," she finished. "The practical ones, at least. I just want to add one more. I remember when we wanted to bring more people here and try to rebuild, save something from the rubble, pass on what we knew. I think we should remember that now."

  "Irrelevant," Lorene Skalton shouted from across the table.

  Lorris tapped on the table with a stylus. "Just a minute, just a minute. Jeri, are you finished?" He lisped, smacking his lips; he had lost most of his teeth.

  "I'm finished," Jeri said.

  "I said, it's irrelevant," Lorene went on. "We decided to change our goal years ago, and you know it, Jeri. We have to think about our safety."

  Jeri looked away from Lorene, who, of course, was right. They had once been sure they would rebuild; the Space Center was to have been a refuge, welcoming those fleeing from the ruin around them. They had everything then, access to knowledge and technology, trained people, a mild climate, high hopes. Even food was no problem; citrus groves bordered the area, and game birds could be hunted in the wildlife refuge to the north; they had learned how to grow other foods.

  But that had been before the onslaughts of bands wanting only to steal what was there. Even nature had turned against them; new vegetables, some poisonous, had appeared in the gardens, the birds in the refuge would often attack people hunting there, the oranges were small and sour. They had lost some of their children in battles against marauders, others to illness; still others had left, deciding to take their chances in the outside world. Gradually the people left at the space center had come to realize that all they could hope for was to preserve what was there, in the hope that a calmer future world would find it and use it. They had given up on this world.

  "Let's take the vote," Ved Reese was saying. Jeri peered down the table at him. He nodded at her, smoothing his hand over his bald head; at least she knew how Ved would vote.

  William Lorris tapped the table. "All those who think the visitors should stay, raise your hands." He sputtered as he spoke. Jeri raised hers and saw Ved raising his. She glanced around at the others. Ted Olssen shrugged his big shoulders and put up his hand. Then Leo Carlson stretched out his right hand, propping it up with his left. Jeri let out her breath; the intruders would live. Lorris smiled, apparently satisfied.

  Bob Rothstein said, "You're making a mistake. We can't trust outsiders." He scowled at Jeri. His bushy eyebrows and long, gray beard made him look fierce.

  "It's decided," Lorris muttered. "Jeri, find out what you can about the visitors. Watch them. Don't let them wander alone."

  She nodded, not particularly wanting the responsibility, but glad at least he had not assigned it to Lorene.

  "Why can't we just go and save you the trouble?" Simon asked. They stood under a palm tree in front of the large building where they had been imprisoned. Most of the building—the old woman named Jeri had called it the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building, or some such thing—seemed deserted and unused; several windows were broken.

  "I explained that," Jeri answered. "We have to preserve what's here. We can't have you deciding to come back with others, trying to take it."

  "Believe me, I don't want to come back, alone or with anyone else." He felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down at Aisha. Her eyes narrowed. She was right; he should be more patient.

  "Let me give you a piece of advice," Jeri said. "Our governing committee voted to let you stay, but a few people are still distrustful of you. They'll use any excuse to shoot you if you get out of line, so don't do anything to worry them."

  "I don't intend to," Simon said. Rocca was fidgeting, scratching his ribs, hopping on one foot and then the other. Simon could trust Aisha, but the boy was unpredictable. Jeri sat down, her back to the tree, and motioned to them. He and Aisha sat also. Rocca threw himself on the weedy, overgrown grass. The road which ran past the front of the building was in poor repair, filled with potholes. Across the road, in a square area surrounded by old roads, vegetables and wheat grew. In one fenced-in corner, surrounded by wire, stood coops; in the yard, ducks and chickens pecked at kernels, clucking and quacking. Six old people were in the field, picking vegetables and, Simon supposed, looking for weeds.

  "Everyone here seems old," he commented idly to Jeri.

  "That's not so strange," she responded. "A lot of us came here soon after the star appeared, or were here before." She did not have to say which star she meant.

  "That's what caused it all, isn't it," Simon said. "Everyone says things were different before that."

  "That's what they say," Jeri said sharply. "I'm not so sure it's true. Things were already changing. Maybe the star just speeded up the process. If we'd just had more time, maybe—"

  "Maybe what?"

  "We could have had more people on the moon who might have survived, living under the surface. We could have brought in a big asteroid, built a settlement inside it, and some of those people might have lived. I don't know. We got held up by one thing after another. There always seemed to be something more important going on somewhere else, so we never got quite what we needed. And after a while, it was too late anyway."

  Simon scratched his head, not quite grasping what Jeri said; it sounded like a mixture of fact and old legends he had heard. "Are there still people on the moon?" Aisha asked. "I read an old book about it."

  Jeri grinned joylessly. "William Lorris thinks there are. He's tried to contact them, but nobody answers. He thinks they're up there, but they've disconnected their communications equipment to use for other things. I think he's wrong. I think they're all dead."

  Simon stretched out his legs. "What happens to us now?" he said.

  "Right now, we wait for Ved Reese. He's the doctor here. He'll check to see if you're healthy. After that, you'll have work assigned."

  "I'm a doctor too, you know," he said. "I think we're in reasonable shape."

  "I don't want to insult you, Doctor, but I think Ved knows more than you do. Besides, we have laboratories here, we can run a great many tests. You'll find out exactly how healthy you are."

  Rocca sat up. "We getting fed soon?" he asked. Jeri nodded absently. Simon looked around, still thinking of escape, but knowing he'd have to wait, ready for a likely opportunity. That, after all, was how he got the permits for Miami in the first place.

  "What do you do?" Aisha asked Jeri.

  "Do you mean what do I do, or what do all of us do?"

  "Both."

  "I wasn't very important," Jeri said. "I helped negotiate contracts with companies doing work for us. I was also working on a degree in engineering, a master's, I would have finished it, but—" She paused and cleared her throat. "That doesn't matter anyway. Now we're just interested in storing all the knowledge we can, details about everything, scientific papers, research, everything, even a history of what happened and why."

  "You must have a ton of paper, then," Simon muttered.

  The old woman glanced at him. "Paper, huh? I'm afraid not. Microfiche, and computer storage. Everything has to be cross-indexed so it can be retrieved properly. It's a very complicated job."

  "What for?" Aisha asked. "What are you going to do with it then?"

  Jeri chuckled. "Why, nothing. We'll just hope that someday, when it's needed, it'll be found and can be used." She climbed to her feet. "We may as well go back inside," she said. "I'll bring Ved to your quarters when he wants to see you."

  "Can't we stay out here?" Rocca whined.

  "No. Come on."

  The boy got up, swinging his arms aggressively, looking angry. "Shit," Rocca said. "Shit, shit, shit." Simon glared a
t him, shaking his head. The boy stomped toward the entrance. Once again, Simon wondered what trouble he might cause.

  Aisha said, "Maybe we should stay."

  "Stay!" Simon was chewing a piece of stringy chicken. He swallowed it quickly and almost choked. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  "Well, at least for a while, Simon."

  He shook his head. "Not even for a while." He gazed at the dinner tray; only one piece of bread was left. Rocca, after finishing half of what was on the tray, had stumbled into the adjoining room, which Jeri had opened up for them, and collapsed on one of the beds. Simon had looked in a few minutes later; the boy had been curled up comfortably on the floor. There was a wet spot on the rug in the corner; Rocca, shunning the toilet next to the bedroom, had apparently taken a piss there.

  "Jeri's all right," Aisha said.

  "I don't care if she is or isn't. She already told us there was some bad feeling toward us. I don't feel like waiting until someone decides we've done something worth shooting us for."

  "Maybe when they get used to us, they won't shoot us."

  "Have you gone crazy?" He stuffed some bread into his mouth and chewed it vigorously. "It doesn't matter. Haven't you noticed? Almost everyone we've seen here is old, almost all of them are going to die damn soon. And that means that eventually somebody'll find out there's food to be had here, and buildings to live inside, and they'll take it, whoever's left won't be able to fight them off."

  She sighed. "You're right."

  He stared at Aisha. He hadn't really thought about how he felt about the girl. He hadn't had time. She was a companion, it was better than traveling alone. She'd done what she was told and didn't complain. She had fled from René because she was afraid of Kathleen Ortega, which certainly showed good sense. He smiled when he thought of that; the old man who had handed him over to the police was probably dead.

  He leaned over and reached for her, pressing her back to the sofa. She pushed him away and sat up. "I'm just wondering," she said, "what's going to happen to me. In Miami."

  "Worry about it when you get there." He put a hand on her shoulder and she shook it off.

  "I'm thinking about it now. You know people there. I don't."

  "I'll help you," he said impatiently. "We'll figure out something. You can always do what you did before, there's a market for it there."

  She glared at him, shaking her head. "I don't want to go back to that," she said. "I couldn't stand it."

  "Well, maybe you can find something else." He didn't want to take on her problems at the moment. Once they were there, they could go their own ways, and it wouldn't be his worry anyway. "Right now, let's just look for a way to get out of here."

  "We don't even have knives, we can't even protect ourselves."

  "Don't worry.” He leaned toward her again. She suddenly rose and walked toward the bedroom. "Good night," she said. She went in and closed the door.

  He lay back on the couch, folding his hands behind his head, trying to sort out his thoughts. He felt depressed, worrying about what was ahead. He had to stop it; trying to plan ahead was what had got him into trouble in the first place, all his plotting, doing illegal medical work on the side. He had nothing to worry about. He'd lasted this far.

  He was tired. Looking back on it now, he wondered how he had journeyed this far; he had made it only because he had lived through each day, watching for opportunities, not thinking of the future. Had he thought of the journey's obstacles—the suspicious farmers, the armies of the north and south, the areas which, according to local legends, were covered with wastes from nuclear power plants and had to be avoided, adding days to his trip—and, worst of all, the overgrown forests, swamps, and meadows, thick with life, vines which he had to hack at with a knife before they cut into his foot, bright flowers so thick with perfume he would retch, the birds waiting for him to stumble—had he thought of it all, he would have stayed in prison.

  He thought of the Boleyn farm, the lonely white house on the hill, the pasture, the vegetable garden, surrounded by the thick greenness which threatened it on all sides, guarded by the army which could as easily decide to raid it and take everything. The people there thought it was a refuge. He knew better; there was no refuge. He would not find one. At best, he would find a place where it might be a little easier to live from day to day and take a bit of pleasure out of it.

  He rolled over on the couch, too tired to get up and make his way to a bed, and fell asleep.

  "You can sit up now," Ved Reese said.

  Simon sat up on the examining table, rubbing his arm. The room was white, almost too white, and seemingly sterile, like the other rooms he had seen in this building. He hadn't seen many. Most of the offices were closed off, deteriorating silently behind the doors. This room, and the adjoining laboratories, intimidated him; he could not identify most of the equipment. Even stethoscopes were hard to come by in New York, and syringes and needles had to be guarded and reused. He could recall being without a stethoscope in medical school, having to press his ear to a patient's chest. There was wealth in these rooms; even one bag of equipment and medicines would be valuable.

  His stomach rumbled. He hadn't yet eaten; Reese had said they would be fed after the examination. "I'd guess you're in good shape," Reese was saying. "You could be anemic, though I won't know for sure until I finish the blood series, and of course I want to see if Stanford-B is present, just as a precaution. I didn't mention that to the others, but I might as well tell you, since you're a doctor."

  Simon, in the presence of Reese and his lab, felt more like an unlicensed healer. "Stanford-B?" he asked.

  "You must know what I mean. When we still had some communication with the outside world, I picked up quite a bit of information. A medical team from Georgia was on its way here to do some research with me, years ago, but apparently they were ambushed, because they never arrived." Reese sighed. His gray eyes were cold. "I can only hope that someone somewhere is working on it, I can't by myself. I was hoping someone in New York might be working on it."

  "I never heard of Stanford-B."

  "Toward the end, the victim goes mad. The team coming here had indicated that victims die even when sedated and kept quiet, because the lost bodily fluids can't be replaced rapidly enough. The fever literally burns them—"

  "Mura's Syndrome," Simon said. "That's what you mean. I didn't understand."

  Reese looked startled. "Mura's Syndrome." He chuckled joylessly. "They would call it that." He sat down in a chair near the counter where the blood samples, neatly labeled, stood. "Then you do know something."

  "Not very much. It's on the list." Reese looked puzzled; his tanned forehead wrinkled. "There's a list of diseases we're not allowed to treat or research. That's one of them."

  The bald man's eyes narrowed. "Not allowed! So that's the state of medicine in New York. I wondered, that probably explains why you—" Reese did not finish the sentence.

  Simon, defensively, tried to explain the list to Reese and the reasons for it. Reese scowled as Simon rambled on. "You have to understand, I had questions about that list," Simon appealed, extending his right hand, palm up. Reese frowned more fiercely. "For one thing, I wasn't sure about why Mura's Syndrome was listed, since the other diseases all involved genetic defects." Reese raised an eyebrow. "And I was opposed to the list anyway. I mentioned that to that woman Chapman. I told her I'd been arrested for illegally practicing medicine. I was treating people the law said I shouldn't, so you see, I didn't agree with it. I disapprove of it as much as you do." He looked Ved Reese in the eyes.

  Reese stared back, not blinking. Finally he said, "I don't imagine your help came cheap."

  "I had to get paid for the risk I took," Simon snapped at him. "The penalties are severe."

  Reese slumped in the chair. "It doesn't matter now. Apparently someone in New York did find out something about Stanford-B. The Georgia team, you see, had been in contact with some microbiologists. The microbiologists had discovered t
hat, even before Stanford-B can be detected in the blood, it produces genetic changes. They weren't sure what kind, or what the result might be, since to find that out they would have needed to do a survey of the children of victims." He paused. "There's so much we don't know. I had been hoping that if the victims could survive the fever towards the end, and the dehydration, they could survive permanently, but that apparently isn't possible. Of course many victims don't die of the disease at all, their madness drives them to kill themselves, or someone else kills them first."

  "It was caused by Mura's Star," Simon said, "wasn't it?"

  "No. It isn't true. Stanford-B was apparently the result of recombinant DNA experimentation at Stanford University. I imagine it was once a harmless virus. Great precautions were taken by the researchers to produce only strains that couldn't survive outside the laboratory." The lines in Reese's face grew deeper; he rubbed a hand over his bald head. "The biologists there, you know, were unable to get a grant to do their work in an orbiting space laboratory, where it would have been a danger to no one." His voice was bitter. "There just wasn't enough money. A severe earthquake struck out there just a few months after the star appeared and damaged the laboratory. The virus escaped. Because travel was more common then, it spread, altered later by fallout from the Sino-Soviet War. That is how we have reconstructed events, in any case."

  Simon was silent. He thought of Linda Pura and her suppositions; she had been on the right track, at least. "How is it spread?" he asked. "We could never really be sure. I've been exposed to it myself, but never caught it. Living in a city, you can't avoid it, but not everyone gets it."

  Reese shrugged his shoulders. "You may be immune," he responded. "Many people apparently are. We think, that is, I think, and the Georgia team agreed, that you must have prolonged bodily contact with a victim. The symptoms, at least in the early stages, vary, though almost everyone complains of headache."