The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  She doubted Jeremiah would ever hug her again and told herself it was unimportant. She’d gotten what she wanted, even though she had to share it with Taditha. But Jeremiah was no longer an asset. He refused to return to CINTEP. Plus, he and Devereaux had been conducting this rogue investigation into a conspiracy she’d never suspected and although she ought to be happy they found it, she couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed at their discovery.

  Curtik pulled free, Zora reluctantly following.

  “We got kidnapped by God,” Curtik said.

  “We don’t know that,” said Zora.

  “If it wasn’t God, then who was it?”

  Zora shrugged. “Someone or some group with powers we can’t match.”

  “And don’t understand,” Curtik added. “At least, I don’t understand them.”

  “Me neither,” Zora admitted, “but that doesn’t mean it’s God.”

  “He said he was God.”

  Lendra interrupted, “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He said he wanted to make us aware of his existence,” Zora replied.

  “He also said he might abandon us,” Curtik added.

  “It doesn’t look like he’s abandoning us just yet,” said Jay-Edgar. “Got some weird things going on.”

  They turned to the holo-projections Jay-Edgar displayed and saw a massive boulder drifting through the air above Los Angeles. The image shifted to a floating tree above Sao Paulo and then a pig flying over Taipei. A tank slowly rose off the ground in St. Petersburg, Russia, while a submarine emerged from the water near Sidney, levitating above the sea and circling the harbor.

  “Any idea why he’s doing this?” Lendra asked.

  “He likes to play games,” Curtik said. “At least I think he does. He talks in riddles.”

  “He has to be stopped.”

  “How?” Dr. Poole asked. “We know nothing about him. We haven’t found any power source or communications hub or pattern of action that might lead us to him. It’s as if he’s everywhere and nowhere.”

  “Just as God would be,” said Curtik.

  “He’s not doing any real harm at the moment,” Jeremiah said.

  “True,” Devereaux replied. “Though anyone with that sort of power could do significant damage if he were so inclined.”

  “So what’s our next move?” Zora asked. “Do we try to find out more about him or do we move on to the virus and Fowler and these corporations?”

  They all looked at Lendra. This was what she’d wanted: all these people looking to her for guidance, even Devereaux. Even Jeremiah. She’d always wanted to prove she was the smartest person in the room. Her problem now was that no course of action seemed to guarantee success.

  “All right,” she said, “let’s go after Fowler and his co-conspirators. Jay-Edgar and I will try to hack into White Knight Security’s network and see what we can find. Who else is involved?”

  Devereaux said, “I’ll forward everything I have to your analysts.”

  “What about Fowler?” Curtik asked. “I’d like to go after him again. I mean, he’s one of the bad guys, right?”

  “Yes,” said Jeremiah. “And Scott Wilson from White Knight Security, Walter Tompkins from Global Communications, Anderlin Everest from Infinite Wealth Investments and Dirk Hathaway from Universal Health Systems Unlimited.”

  Devereaux said, “We think they’re the ringleaders and the only ones who know the full truth. Other companies have been encouraged to pursue the direction those five have indicated, but we think they’re the leaders.”

  “Tompkins,” Jeremiah added, “makes sure the public is misinformed about the threat these new nonlethal strains of the virus pose. Everest engages in shady and high-risk investments while providing financial backing, and Hathaway works on further modifying the virus. He also makes sure that the most effective approaches to treating the virus are labeled as experimental. Very few people can afford those, so only the wealthy few have managed to be cured of these new strains thus far.”

  “And we’re not certain,” said Devereaux, “that they’ve actually been cured. They may just be asymptomatic.”

  “Either way,” Curtik said, “we take them out, we take out the movement, right?”

  “Probably,” said Jeremiah. “But we still don’t know if there are other players. There might be someone else we’re missing, someone higher up who’s calling the shots.”

  “What if we grab Fowler,” Zora said, “or one of the others, and use truth serum? We could get answers that way.”

  “Yeah,” Curtik added. “With a little programming and conditioning thrown in, Fowler would spill like Niagara Falls.”

  “Assuming he knows who’s at the top, yes. I fear it might be more complicated than that.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Curtik said. “I say we snatch ‘im.”

  “Go ahead and grab him,” said Lendra. “Quietly.” She wondered if she ought to grab them all. They might run if Fowler were taken. On the other hand, where was there to run to? She’d put eyes on all of them, but she’d only move on Fowler for now.

  She felt her eyes drawn to Jeremiah again. He looked about to fall down from exhaustion. She refused to mother him. If he insisted on living a pain-filled existence out of fear, she wouldn’t try to stop him. But it was a shame. He could be so much happier and so much more valuable to the world if he would only accept their help.

  Chapter 19

  As the chime for the morning shift sounded, Doug sat in his cabin in the MineStar colony, listening to Wilcox outside his door. The miner ignored the chime. He spoke loudly, blaming Doug for infecting everyone on the ship: “We were all healthy until he came along and spread his filthy disease. Now we’re gonna die because he was allowed on board. Him and Devereaux—they’re what’s wrong with the worlds. Their kind think about nothin’ but themselves.”

  Doug wasn’t sure if Wilcox was trying to bait him or if his goal was to incite the miners to violence. He checked to make sure the lock was holding and turned up the background audio of a babbling brook so he wouldn’t have to listen to Wilcox any longer.

  Three times since he’d been quarantined over here—yesterday afternoon, last night and early this morning—he’d chatted with Celestia via holo-projection. That kept him calm, anchored. Whatever else happened, he would always be her father.

  A pounding came at the door.

  Doug wondered if he should call Quark. Would the miners attack him? If they were just blowing off steam, he’d feel silly asking for help. On the other hand, if they came after him, he might not have time to call.

  Another thump on the door, louder this time.

  Doug turned down the babbling brook and activated the vid feed to the commons.

  “He’s a murderer,” Wilcox said to the miners packed around him. It looked like most of the forty-eight were gathered outside his door. “He’s worse. He’s a mass murderer. We just haven’t died yet. If he killed us all back on Earth, he’d either be killed or sent to prison for the rest of his life, but because he’s here with the Escala, because he’s a friend of Walt Devereaux, he gets a pass? That ain’t right.”

  “What do you propose?” Colin Enright asked. “He’s already locked himself in his quarters.”

  Doug wondered why the foreman had kept quiet so long, but he was grateful the man was finally voicing an opinion.

  “I say we don’t let the doc see him. We take away all his toys and keep him isolated in his cabin until he dies.”

  “Isn’t that murder too? Refusing him treatment?”

  “That’s justice.” Several miners nodded. A few murmured their agreement.

  “The Escala won’t tolerate us keeping him locked up,” Enright said. “They’ll insist on seeing him.”

  “Scientists! What are they gonna do? We got weapons, explosives. And those psyc
ho cadet kids all took off with that Chinese ship last year so we don’t have to worry about them.”

  “We need the Escala.”

  “Why?” Wilcox sounded bitter. “What have they done for us?”

  “For one thing,” Enright said, “Dr. Wellon diagnosed us with the virus. That means we’ll get treated sooner and have a better chance of survival.”

  Wilcox scoffed. “Ain’t none of us leavin’ this planet alive. I say we at least take our killer down with us.” More murmurs. Men shifted their feet, moving closer to Doug’s door.

  He grabbed his PlusPhone, captured the last three minutes from the vid feed and called Quark. He got no answer, but forwarded the recording just in case and left a message for Quark to call him back. He also sent the recording to Quekri, Zeriphi and Dr. Wellon.

  “I don’t think it’s smart,” Enright said, “to get into a confrontation. The Escala may be scientists, but we’ve all heard about how they took on the Elite Ops a few years back. They’re huge, fast, brilliant. If they wanted, they could take us out pretty easily.”

  “They don’t have any weapons,” said Wilcox. “We could take ‘em by surprise. They wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “We’re not soldiers.”

  “Some of us used to be.” Wilcox gestured. “Me and Sanders and Poli and Winterman.”

  “Well, we’re not fighting them,” Enright said. “We’re here to mine and that’s just what we’re going to do. Get to work.”

  “Why should we? For the bonus they’ll be payin’ our families? You don’t get it. We’re already dead. We just haven’t fallen over yet.”

  Enright took a step forward and put his finger in Wilcox’s chest. “I’m in charge, and I say we mine. Now get to work.”

  Wilcox glared at Enright. For a moment, Doug thought he was going to take a swing at the foreman. Then Wilcox brushed against Enright and walked away, Sanders, Poli and Winterman following him.

  “Break it up,” Enright said to the rest of the miners. “Back to work.”

  Gradually the miners exited the commons, some heading on-shift, others retreating to their quarters. Enright remained outside Doug’s door. Doug knew he was on the day shift, so he ought to be making his way to the control room, but he just stood there, his back to Doug’s door, looking out at the empty commons. After a moment, he knocked on Doug’s door.

  Doug opened it and let him inside.

  “You need to go back to the Escala,” Enright said.

  “They’re not done creating the quarantine area,” Doug replied.

  “We’re giving you this pod to use.” Enright gestured at Doug’s quarters. “I’ll disconnect it from the commons and we’ll tow it over to the New Dawn Settlement for you. You can stay inside until they have the quarantine area ready. After you’re moved out and it’s been sterilized, we’ll come back for it.”

  “There’s going to be trouble,” Doug said.

  “Probably.” Enright took a deep breath. “I’m not in favor of violence, but Wilcox isn’t entirely wrong. All the evidence seems to point to you as the one who infected us, which means it was you and Devereaux, just like he said.”

  Doug held up his hands. “Devereaux contracted the virus while trying to find a cure for humanity.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The point is, he gave it to you and you gave it to us, and they think they’re going to die. They might be right. We might never leave Mars. So we’re moving you out now. You got anything out there in the commons you want before I disengage your pod?”

  Doug shook his head.

  “Once we’re rid of you,” Enright said, “maybe they’ll calm down. But I think you’d best stay away from now on. The Escala probably should too. We’ll let the docs in—Wellon and Keelar—but nobody else. Understood?”

  “I think it’s a mistake,” said Doug.

  A knock came at the door. Enright opened it. One of the miners stood there with a chem toilet. Enright gestured for him to set it down inside the door. Then he followed the miner out. “Good luck,” he said as he closed and sealed the door.

  Within a minute the vid connection went black and Doug felt the pod moving away from the commons. They must have been disconnecting it even while Wilcox was talking. For the foreseeable future Doug was trapped inside this small space, his PlusPhone his only link to the outside world. He thought of Celestia.

  I’ll just be locked in for a short time, he told himself. I’ll be back with the Escala soon. But it felt like he was back in prison, this time confined for an offense he wasn’t sure he committed. Hell with them, he thought. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

  Chapter 20

  Curtik wished they could just grab Fowler instead of planning out every miniscule detail. The guy was in charge of a seed company, for God’s sake! What kind of blueprint did they need? He wasn’t protected by the Elite Ops and even if he was, Curtik could get to him.

  For hours he let Jeremiah, Lendra and Zora handle the specifics, only paying attention when they discussed his role. Otherwise he utilized his implant to study God. He mostly stayed away from the Bible, the Koran and the Torah, preferring to access Devereaux’s thoughts on the subject.

  Devereaux had insisted there was no God, but he’d framed his arguments around research from scholars before him, people like Joseph Campbell and Stanislav Grof, and on writings like the Bardo Thodol as well as experiments that tended to show that life was inevitable given the conditions on Earth.

  The problem was that no study was definitive. Just because life of some sort had to develop on Earth didn’t mean it couldn’t have come from God, nor did it mean life had to come from God. The problem seemed insoluble.

  During one of their breaks, Curtik had tried to reason things out with Zora.

  “You have to admit,” he said, “that this God has done things no one else can do, defying the laws of physics, creating something out of nothing or making an object disappear completely. Making boulders and trees and pigs fly.”

  “I admit they seem impossible,” Zora conceded, “but there may be a scientific explanation we haven’t discovered yet, like anti-grav suspensors, which are just a refinement of mock gravity.”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than a refinement of mock gravity and you know it.”

  “But it’s still possible,” Zora argued. “It’s the opposite side of the coin. If we can create mock gravity, then we can eventually create anti-gravity if we can somehow reverse engineer and extrapolate from that.”

  “Why not just accept that it’s God?”

  “Because that’s surrendering to something I don’t understand, something that may not be real. All through human history, people have thought there was magic of some sort—powers in the sky or sea or earth that influenced them. They built religions around those unknown powers, religions that later generations called myths. Every religion becomes a myth after science or some new religion trivializes it. We eventually outgrow every God.”

  “Maybe we just get every religion wrong,” Curtik said. “That’s what God said. We’re imperfect, so we mess it up and have to start again.”

  “Perhaps. But nothing can be proven to my satisfaction. Every miracle you can conceive I can come up with an explanation for, even if it’s an explanation I don’t completely understand. I can’t accede to an entity simply because I don’t fully grasp it. I may yet learn how this God does the things he does.”

  “Does that make him not God? The fact that you understand how he performs these miracles?”

  “Not necessarily,” Zora conceded. “But if it’s just someone with superior knowledge and power, someone playing God, then I don’t want to be fooled into making more of him than there is.”

  With that, she’d gone back to work, plotting out their attack strategy, leaving him to struggle again with the concept of a deity. He looked out the window at the night
sky, the Washington Monument and the newly rebuilt White House lit up in defiance. He wanted to believe in God, but why? Was it just the desire for some sort of order in a chaotic world? Was it a wish for someone who understood the universe? Did his acceptance of his imperfections make him want to believe that somewhere out there was a creature who did not have those same constraints?

  “Okay,” Jeremiah said, interrupting his thoughts, “I think we’re ready. Should we go over it one last time?”

  “Please,” said Curtik.

  “And this time pay attention,” Zora said.

  “We’re not going in heavy,” said Jeremiah, “because he’s got a high level of protection and his security is connected to the police. We don’t want that kind of fight, that kind of publicity. We also suspect he can call in Elite Ops troopers through White Knight Security on short notice. So we’ll take him at his home in two hours—the middle of the night. Jay-Edgar and Lendra have infiltrated his alarm system. Jay-Edgar will disable it,” Jeremiah pointed at Curtik, “while you and Zora take out his guards, go inside and grab him.”

  “You’ll be wearing a dress again,” Zora said.

  “What?”

  Zora laughed, while Lendra and Jeremiah smiled.

  “Bastards,” said Curtik.

  “Devereaux has tapped into the security system’s communications feed,” Jeremiah continued. “He and Lendra will interfere with all communications to make sure no backup arrives before you’re gone. And Hannah and Ned will be stationed outside the building to handle any surprises we haven’t foreseen. If everything goes well, we should have him in custody within fifteen minutes of landing.”

  “Ned’s coming along?” Curtik asked.

  “He’s meeting us there.”

  “It’ll be good to see old Neddy again. He’s gotta be bored. I can’t picture him retired. What about you? What’s your role?”