by John Varley
"By the time the teams arrived, there were over a hundred reported cases, and six more deaths. Later symptoms included blindness and deafness. It progressed at different rates in different people, but it was always quite fast. Mean survival time from onset of symptoms was later determined to be fortyeight hours. Nobody lived longer than four days.
"Both medical teams immediately came down with it, as did a third, and a fourth team. All of them came down with it, each and every person. The first two teams had been using class three isolation techniques. It didn't matter. The third team stepped up the precautions to class two. Same result.
Very quickly we had been forced into class one procedures—which involves isolation as total as we can get it: no physical contact whatsoever, no sharing of air supplies, all air to the investigators filtered through a sterilizing environment. They still got it. Six patients and some tissue samples were sent to a class one installation two hundred miles from New Dresden, and more patients were sent, with class one precautions, to a hospital ship close to Charlie. Everyone at both facilities came down with it. We almost sent a couple of patients to Atlanta."
She paused, looking down and rubbing her forehead. No one said anything.
"I was in charge," she said, quietly. "I can't take credit for not shipping anyone to Atlanta. We were going to... and suddenly there wasn't anybody left on Charlie to load patients aboard. All dead or dying.
"We backed off. Bear in mind this all happened in five days. What we had to show for those five days was a major space station with all aboard dead, three ships full of dead people, and an epidemiological research facility here on Luna full of dead people.
"After that, politicians began making most of the decisions—but I advised them. The two nearby ships were landed by robot control at the infected research station. The derelict ship going to Mars was... I think it's still classified, but what the hell? It was blown up with a nuclear weapon. Then we started looking into what was left. The station here was easiest. There was one cardinal rule: nothing that went into that station was to come out. Robot crawlers brought in remote manipulators and experimental animals. Most of the animals died. Neuro-X killed most mammals: monkeys, rats, cats—"
"Dogs?" Bach asked. Wilhelm glanced at her.
"It didn't kill all the dogs. Half of the ones we sent in lived."
"Did you know that there were dogs alive on Charlie?"
"No. The interdiction was already set up by then. Charlie Station was impossible to land, and too close and too visible to nuke, because that would violate about a dozen corporate treaties. And there seemed no reason not to just leave it there. We had our samples isolated here at the Lunar station.
We decided to work with that, and forget about Charlie."
"Thank you, doctor."
"As I was saying, it was by far the most virulent organism we had ever seen. It seemed to have a taste for all sorts of neural tissue, in almost every mammal.
"The teams that went in never had time to learn anything. They were all disabled too quickly, and just as quickly they were dead. We didn't find out much, either... for a variety of reasons. My guess is it was a virus, simply because we would certainly have seen anything larger almost immediately.
But we never did see it. It was fast getting in—we don't know how it was vectored, but the only reliable shield was several miles of vacuum—and once it got in, I suspect it worked changes on genetic material of the host, setting up a secondary agent which I'm almost sure we isolated... and then it went away and hid very well. It was still in the host, in some form, it had to be, but we think its active life in the nervous system was on the order of one hour. But by then it had already done its damage. It set the system against itself, and the host was consumed in about two days."
Wilhelm had grown increasingly animated. A few times Bach thought she was about to get incoherent. It was clear the nightmare of Neuro-X had not diminished for her with the passage of thirty years. But now she made an effort to slow down again.
"The other remarkable thing about it was, of course, its infectiousness. Nothing I've ever seen was so persistent in evading our best attempts at keeping it isolated. Add that to its mortality rate, which, at the time, seemed to be one hundred percent... and you have the second great reason why we learned so little about it."
"What was the first?" Hoeffer asked. Wilhelm glared at him.
"The difficulty of investigating such a subtle process of infection by remote control."
"Ah, of course."
"The other thing was simply fear. Too many people had died for there to be any hope of hushing it up. I don't know if anyone tried. I'm sure those of you who were old enough remember the uproar.
So the public debate was loud and long, and the pressure for extreme measures was intense... and, I should add, not unjustified. The argument was simple. Everyone who got it was dead. I believe that if those patients had been sent to Atlanta, everyone on Earth would have died. Therefore... what was the point of taking a chance by keeping it alive and studying it?"
Doctor Blume cleared his throat, and Wilhelm looked at him.
"As I recall, doctor," he said, "there were two reasons raised. One was the abstract one of scientific knowledge. Though there might be no point in studying Neuro-X since no one was afflicted with it, we might learn something by the study itself."
"Point taken," Wilhelm said, "and no argument."
"And the second was, we never found out where Neuro-X came from... there were rumors it was a biological warfare agent." He looked at Rossnikova, as if asking her what comment GMA might want to make about that. Rossnikova said nothing. "But most people felt it was a spontaneous mutation. There have been several instances of that in the high-radiation environment of a space station. And if it happened once, what's to prevent it from happening again?"
"Again, you'll get no argument from me. In fact, I supported both those positions when the question was being debated." Wilhelm grimaced, then looked right at Blume. "But the fact is, I didn't support them very hard, and when the Lunar station was sterilized, I felt a lot better."
Blume was nodding.
"I'll admit it. I felt better, too."
"And if Neuro-X were to show up again," she went on, quietly, "my advice would be to sterilize immediately. Even if it meant losing a city."
Blume said nothing. Bach watched them both for a while in the resulting silence, finally, understanding just how much Wilhelm feared this thing.
There was a lot more. The meeting went on for three hours, and everyone got a chance to speak.
Eventually, the problem was outlined to everyone's satisfaction.
Tango Charlie could not be boarded. It could be destroyed. (Some time was spent debating the wisdom of the original interdiction order—beating a dead horse, as far as Bach was concerned—and questioning whether it might be possible to countermand it.)
But things could leave Tango Charlie. It would only be necessary to withdraw the robot probes that had watched so long and faithfully, and the survivors could be evacuated.
That left the main question. Should they be evacuated?
(The fact that only one survivor had been sighted so far was not mentioned. Everyone assumed others would show up sooner or later. After all, it was simply not possible that just one eight-yearold girl could be the only occupant of a station no one had entered or left for thirty years.)
Wilhelm, obviously upset but clinging strongly to her position, advocated blowing up the station at once. There was some support for this, but only about ten percent of the group.
The eventual decision, which Bach had predicted before the meeting even started, was to do nothing at the moment.
After all, there were almost five whole days to keep thinking about it.
"There's a call waiting for you," Steiner said, when she got back to the monitoring room. "The switchboard says it's important."
Bach went into her office—wishing yet again for one with walls—flipped a swi
tch.
"Bach," she said. Nothing came on the vision screen.
"I'm curious," said a woman's voice. "Is this the Anna-Louise Bach who worked in The Bubble ten years ago?"
For a moment, Bach was too surprised to speak, but she felt a wave of heat as blood rushed to her face. She knew the voice.
"Hello? Are you there?"
"Why no vision?" she asked.
"First, are you alone? And is your instrument secure?"
"The instrument is secure, if yours is." Bach flipped another switch, and a privacy hood descended around her screen. The sounds of the room faded as a sonic scrambler began operating. "And I'm alone."
Megan Galloway's face appeared on the screen. One part of Bach's mind noted that she hadn't changed much, except that her hair was curly and red.
"I thought you might not wish to be seen with me," Galloway said. Then she smiled. "Hello, Anna Louise. How are you?"
"I don't think it really matters if I'm seen with you," Bach said.
"No? Then would you care to comment on why the New Dresden Police Department, among other government agencies, is allowing an eight-year-old child to go without the rescue she so obviously needs?"
Bach said nothing.
"Would you comment on the rumor that the NDPD does not intend to effect the child's rescue? That, if it can get away with it, the NDPD will let the child be smashed to pieces?"
Still Bach waited.
Galloway sighed, and ran a hand through her hair.
"You're the most exasperating woman I've ever known, Bach," she said. "Listen, don't you even want to try to talk me out of going with the story?"
Bach almost said something, but decided to wait once more.
"If you want to, you can meet me at the end of your shift. The Mozartplatz. I'm on the Great Northern, suite 1, but I'll see you in the bar on the top deck."
"I'll be there," Bach said, and broke the connection.
Charlie sang the Hangover Song most of the morning. It was not one of her favorites.
There was penance to do, of course. Tik-Tok made her drink a foul glop that—she had to admit—did do wonders for her headache. When she was done she was drenched in sweat, but her hangover was gone.
"You're lucky," Tik-Tok said. "Your hangovers are never severe."
"They're severe enough for me," Charlie said.
He made her wash her hair, too.
After that, she spent some time with her mother. She always valued that time. Tik-Tok was a good friend, mostly, but he was so bossy. Charlie's mother never shouted at her, never scolded or lectured.
She simply listened. True, she wasn't very active. But it was nice to have somebody just to talk to.
One day, Charlie hoped, her mother would walk again. Tik-Tok said that was unlikely.
Then she had to round up the dogs and take them for their morning run.
And everywhere she went, the red camera eyes followed her. Finally she had enough. She stopped, put her fists on her hips, and shouted at a camera.
"You stop that!" she said.
The camera started to make noises. At first she couldn't understand anything, then some words started to come through.
"...lie, Tango... Foxtrot...in, please. Tango Charlie..."
"Hey, that's my name."
The camera continued to buzz and spit noise at her.
"Tik-Tok, is that you?"
"I'm afraid not, Charlie."
"What's going on, then?"
"It's those nosy people. They've been watching you, and now they're trying to talk to you. But I'm holding them off. I don't think they'll bother you, if you just ignore the cameras."
"But why are you fighting them?"
"I didn't think you'd want to be bothered."
Maybe there was some of that hangover still around. Anyway, Charlie got real angry at Tik-Tok, and called him some names he didn't approve of. She knew she'd pay for it later, but for now Tik-Tok was pissed, and in no mood to reason with her. So he let her have what she wanted, on the principle that getting what you want is usually the worst thing that can happen to anybody.
"Tango Charlie, this is Foxtrot Romeo. Come in, please. Tango—"
"Come in where?" Charlie asked, reasonably. "And my name isn't Tango."
Bach was so surprised to have the little girl actually reply that for a moment she couldn't think of anything to say.
"Uh... it's just an expression," Bach said. "Come in... that's radio talk for 'please answer.' "
"Then you should say please answer," the little girl pointed out.
"Maybe you're right. My name is Bach. You can call me Anna-Louise, if you'd like. We've been trying to—"
"Why should I?"
"Excuse me?"
"Excuse you for what?"
Bach looked at the screen and drummed her fingers silently for a short time. Around her in the monitoring room, there was not a sound to be heard. At last, she managed a smile.
"Maybe we started off on the wrong foot."
"Which foot would that be?"
The little girl just kept staring at her. Her expression was not amused, not hostile, not really argumentative. Then why was the conversation suddenly so maddening?
"Could I make a statement?" Bach tried.
"I don't know. Can you?"
Bach's fingers didn't tap this time; they were balled up in a fist.
"I shall, anyway. My name is Anna-Louise Bach. I'm talking to you from New Dresden, Luna. That's a city on the moon, which you can probably see—"
"I know where it is."
"Fine. I've been trying to contact you for many hours, but your computer has been fighting me all the time."
"That's right. He said so."
"Now, I can't explain why he's been fighting me, but—"
"I know why. He thinks you're nosy."
"I won't deny that. But we're trying to help you."
"Why?"
"Because... it's what we do. Now if you could—"
"Hey. Shut up, will you?"
Bach did so. With forty-five other people at their scattered screens. Bach watched the little girl—the horrible little girl, as she was beginning to think of her—take a long pull from the green glass bottle of Scotch whiskey. She belched, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and scratched between her legs. When she was done, she smelled her fingers.
She seemed about to say something, then cocked her head, listening to something Bach couldn't hear.
"That's a good idea," she said, then got up and ran away. She was just vanishing around the curve of the deck when Hoeffer burst into the room, trailed by six members of his advisory team. Bach leaned back in her chair, and tried to fend off thoughts of homicide.
"I was told you'd established contact," Hoeffer said, leaning over Bach's shoulder in a way she absolutely detested. He peered at the lifeless scene. "What happened to her?"
"I don't know. She said, 'That's a good idea,' got up, and ran off."
"I told you to keep her here until I got a chance to talk to her."
"I tried," Bach said.
"You should have—"
"I have her on camera nineteen," Steiner called out.
Everyone watched as the technicians followed the girl's progress on the working cameras. They saw her enter a room to emerge in a moment with a big-screen monitor. Bach tried to call her each time she passed a camera, but it seemed only the first one was working for incoming calls. She passed through the range of four cameras before coming back to the original, where she carefully unrolled the monitor and tacked it to a wall, then payed out the cord and plugged it in very close to the wall camera Bach's team had been using. She unshipped this camera from its mount. The picture jerked around for awhile, and finally steadied. The girl had set it on the floor.
"Stabilize that," Bach told her team, and the picture on her monitor righted itself. She now had a worm's-eye view of the corridor. The girl sat down in front of the camera, and grinned.
"Now I can see you
," she said. Then she frowned. "If you send me a picture."
"Bring a camera over here," Bach ordered.
While it was being set up, Hoeffer shouldered her out of the way and sat in her chair.
"There you are," the girl said. And again, she frowned. "That's funny. I was sure you were a girl. Did somebody cut your balls off?"
Now it was Hoeffer's turn to be speechless. There were a few badly suppressed giggles; Bach quickly silenced them with her most ferocious glare, while giving thanks no one would ever know how close she had come to bursting into laughter.
"Never mind that," Hoeffer said. "My name is Hoeffer. Would you go get your parents? We need to talk to them."
"No," said the girl. "And no."
"What's that?"
"No, I won't get them," the girl clarified, "and no, you don't need to talk to them."
Hoeffer had little experience dealing with children.
"Now, please be reasonable," he began, in a wheedling tone. "We're trying to help you, after all. We have to talk to your parents, to find out more about your situation. After that, we're going to help get you out of there."
"I want to talk to the lady," the girl said.
"She's not here."
"I think you're lying. She talked to me just a minute ago."
"I'm in charge."
"In charge of what?"
"Just in charge. Now, go get your parents!"
They all watched as she got up and moved closer to the camera. All they could see at first was her feet. Then water began to splash on the lens.
Nothing could stop the laughter this time, as Charlie urinated on the camera.
For three hours Bach watched the screens. Every time the girl passed the prime camera Bach called out to her. She had thought about it carefully. Bach, like Hoeffer, did not know a lot about children.
She consulted briefly with the child psychologist on Hoeffer's team and the two of them outlined a tentative game plan. The guy seemed to know what he was talking about and, even better, his suggestions agreed with what Bach's common sense told her should work.