The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  They all looked at Wilson, who shook his head. “That’s a lie,” he said.

  “It came from your interface,” Zora said.

  “What did you do, Scott?” President Hope asked.

  “It’s a computer model,” Wilson said. “I was just doodling, playing with ideas. I never released anything. You think I’m crazy?”

  Eli smiled. “I think maybe you are. From what I can see, the plan itself could work. You’d harm the rest of the world so America would still have the technological edge. Isn’t that right?”

  “You’re wrong,” Wilson said.

  “The whole thing’s insane,” Curtik said. “How could they control the spread of the virus once it was released?”

  “They didn’t intend to,” Zora said. She scrolled across to some sort of formula that was followed by a set of instructions for infecting the President, General Horowitz, Wilson and his fellow conspirators as well as a number of other high-ranking officials or business leaders with a variant she’d never seen before.

  “I don’t get it,” Curtik said. “Why would they infect themselves?”

  Poole stared at the formula, not understanding its meaning for a moment. Then it hit her. “They found a sort of cure,” she said. “A way to infect people with a strain that would offer immunity to all other varieties. I haven’t seen this particular one before, but I’m guessing it’s a nonlethal variant.”

  “Robots?” Zora said.

  The gray one gestured with the particle beam cannon, narrowly missing the white robot, and said, “That strain seems harmless. We had not seen that one before.”

  Curtik stepped forward and reached for the particle beam cannon. “Maybe I should just take that off your hands before something bad happens.”

  As the robot handed it over, Lendra said, “How did Devereaux not find this?”

  “One man,” Poole said, “working alone, or even with two robots, would have certain limitations compared to hundreds of researchers using thousands of computers.”

  “Is it a cure?” Lendra said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Zora said. “It looks like a preemptive infection with a strain that has fewer and milder symptoms.”

  “So,” Lendra said, “since the virus will eventually infect everyone on Earth, by infecting themselves with this strain, they hope to develop an immunity to the more lethal varieties. Sort of like getting an inoculation.”

  “Exactly,” Zora said. “Experts are going to need to study it for a while to be sure it’s what I think it is. But infecting a few chosen people in this way would ensure they would not be seriously harmed and would no longer be susceptible to infection by the virus again. That’s the real secret, isn’t it?”

  Everyone turned to President Hope. “You’ve got it wrong,” she said. “We agreed to be infected as a sort of test, to make certain the virus in this form would be safe. We never intended to harm anyone. We only wanted to protect the population from the more lethal strains. That’s what I agreed to. That was the plan we created. If Scott did something different, it was outside the scope of his authority, much like Elias did when he ordered the cadets to attack Earth a couple years ago. I never authorized that either.”

  “Maybe you didn’t intend this,” Lendra said, “but ultimately it was your call. You made it possible by ceding responsibility for the project to people like Wilson, people who were not accountable to the masses.”

  President Hope looked at Wilson. “I trusted you.”

  Wilson shook his head. “Don’t give me that. You wanted this. You and General Horowitz talked about it just enough to let me know what you desired. You even tasked me with putting together a dispersal plan.” Poole noticed Wilson had stopped his denials and was now justifying his actions.

  “No.” President Hope banged the table in front of her. “It’s my job to consider all the possibilities. That’s all I was doing.”

  “Good job,” Curtik said.

  Poole almost laughed at Curtik’s sarcasm. She wanted to cry or lash out at the stupidity and arrogance of people like Wilson and President Hope. The President had engaged in a conspiracy with Wilson and the others to act—maybe for a purpose they deemed to be in the best interest of the American people—but in secret, and that was unforgivable.

  “The problem is,” Curtik continued, “if this all went down like you’re saying, the rest of the world would figure out we were behind it because we’d be the only ones with a high survival rate.”

  “Unless we had significant deaths too,” Eli said.

  “Ah,” the gray robot said, “now the data makes sense. I struggled to interpret it before, but if the unstable and highly contagious versions were to be released in this country as well, then the numbers properly correlate.”

  “No,” Wilson said, “that was not the plan.”

  “There’s a lot of material to go through,” Poole said to the room, “but I’m guessing we’ll eventually find details of who was going to be infected with which strain and when. How many of us were going to be sacrificed to the cause? And even if we were saved, what about our loved ones, our friends and relatives? Who was going to make the decision about which of us lived and died?”

  They all turned to Wilson again, even the Elite Ops troopers. “I did what they wanted,” Wilson said. “That’s all. You know how it works. They never give you direct orders. They offer hints. They lead you where they want you to go, but they stop short of spelling it out so they can keep their hands clean.”

  “I did not want this,” President Hope said. “I made that very clear.”

  “Can you prove that?” Eli asked. “Did you keep any vids of your meetings?”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s all coming out now. Everyone’s going to know.”

  Poole almost felt sorry for President Hope. Everyone was going to hate her now, just like they hated Eli. She’d been far less complicit than Eli had been, but she should have known better. She had overreached, like so many people in positions of power. Even discounting Wilson’s monstrous actions, had she been right? Was her plan of preemptive infection the correct course of action? It didn’t matter now. She would be vilified for what she’d done.

  Chapter 48

  Doug, trying to ignore the tingling in his left arm, stood between the door and Quark, who no longer needed help from the AutoLife machine to breathe, while Dr. Wellon ran diagnostic tests on the treatments he’d received. Doug didn’t expect any trouble from the miners now that Sullivan had been caught. Enright had found a small hypo-pad in Sullivan’s quarters, wedged behind a drawer, which closed the case as far as he was concerned.

  Quark had gotten worse immediately after Enright ordered Wilcox and his crew back to work. But Doctors Wellon and Keelar had created a series of treatments for him. Now, thirty hours on, Quark had stabilized, while Sullivan was under house arrest, locked up in a pod, Enright his only visitor.

  Dr. Wellon shut down the AutoLife machine as Quark groaned and pulled himself to a sitting position.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Wellon asked.

  “Fantastic,” Quark quipped. “What about you, Doug?”

  “A little weak,” Doug replied.

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I just thought—”

  “Yeah,” Quark said, “I know what you thought and thanks. But I can take care of myself. Have a seat.”

  Doug pulled a chair over. He glanced down at his left arm, where Dr. Wellon had attached a large hypo-pad that Keelar had prepared.

  “Let’s take another look at you,” Dr. Wellon said to Doug. “I think you might be out of the woods too. Keelar did a great job coming up with this treatment.” She ran a scanner across Doug’s chest and studied the results. “So far, so good. It’s at least masking your symptoms, but I think it’s also slowly healing you. It will requir
e numerous treatments over several months.”

  “A cure?”

  “Too early to say, but we hope so. The markers Keelar came up with attach to the strain of the virus you were infected with and allow your immune system to fight it. How is the tingling in your arm?”

  “A little better,” Doug replied.

  “Good. It should wear off in another hour or so. I think we can take you back to the New Dawn colony as soon as Quark is ready to travel.”

  “How are the others?” Quark asked.

  “All being treated by Keelar,” Dr. Wellon said. “It looks like Celestia and Zeriphi will make a full recovery. The data we pulled from you helped a lot. More importantly, we received a lot of information from Earth on hidden research into the virus and a new variant of the Susquehanna Virus that was developed by several large companies for rather nefarious purposes. You can look into that later.”

  Quark smiled.

  “What’s exciting,” Dr. Wellon continued, “is that this new variant looks relatively harmless. If we determine that it is, we’ll probably infect everyone up here with it as a means of preempting the possibility of a more lethal infection.”

  “You’re not going to talk about the transmission from God?” Quark said.

  “You know about that?” Dr. Wellon replied.

  “What are you talking about?” Doug asked.

  “We don’t know that it was from God,” Dr. Wellon said. “We don’t know what it was. How did you know about it?”

  “I got this impression, a dream, perhaps,” said Quark.

  “I didn’t get it,” Doug said. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ll show you when we get back to the colony,” Dr. Wellon said. “A transmission purportedly coming from God and delivering the information from these companies. Some say it was God who did this. Others believe it was a hacker or hackers. We don’t know the truth. Whatever it was, we’re grateful.”

  “Did the miners get the transmission from God?” Quark asked.

  Dr. Wellon shook her head. “They did, however, receive a re-broadcast of it from Earth. And the med-tech units up here have received all the same information on the virus, so the miners stand a good chance of staving off serious illness as well.”

  “Interesting. And Enright?” Quark turned to Doug.

  “What about him?”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Didn’t you . . .” Quark broke off his question. “I think we should leave now.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for it?” Dr. Wellon asked.

  Quark nodded. “Get your things,” he said to Doug. “We leave immediately.”

  “What’s this about?” Dr. Wellon asked.

  “I’ll explain later. Pack up and let’s go.”

  Within ten minutes, Doug had gathered his things, put on his Mars suit and met Dr. Wellon and Quark at the MineStar habitat entrance where the Escala small rover was parked. After they climbed inside, removed their helmets and departed for home, Quark said, “It was Enright.”

  “What was Enright?” Doug said.

  “Enright was behind our infections.”

  “But what about Sullivan?” Doug shook his head in confusion.

  Dr. Wellon said, “Enright has been very helpful.”

  “Indeed,” said Quark. “He’s most convincing. But he’s the one. Sullivan is a dupe, extremely susceptible to suggestion and highly unimaginative. There’s no way he could be the brains behind this scheme.”

  Doug said, “But how do you know it was Enright?”

  Quark smiled. “I suspected him from the start, but I had no evidence. I still have none. But he’s the miner with the most freedom of movement. He’s the one who mingled the most with his fellow miners and us. A suggestion here, a rumor there and someone like Sullivan would say whatever Enright wanted, diverting attention away from him.”

  “But we found nothing when we searched Enright’s cabin.” Doug slapped himself in the forehead. “Enright conducted the searches.”

  “Exactly,” Quark said.

  “So what do we do now? I mean, shouldn’t we arrest him?”

  Quark shrugged and looked at Dr. Wellon.

  “We don’t really have a government on Mars,” Dr. Wellon said. “Quekri didn’t think it was necessary. We’re scientists living in a community and our rules don’t apply to the MineStar people.”

  “So he’s going to get away with trying to kill us all?”

  “Everything we know,” said Quark, “and everything we suspect will be transmitted to Earth, not only to the authorities but also to MineStar headquarters. They’ll do some digging on him while he’s here. They’re sure to find something. He’ll be arrested and tried when he returns to Earth.”

  Doug frowned.

  “What?” Quark asked.

  “It’s frustrating. After everything he did, I’d like to see him punished personally.”

  “That’s a common human urge,” Dr. Wellon said. “I feel the same way. But we need to respect the systems in place, let his own people punish him. Meanwhile, as long as he remains the miners’ foreman, we’ll have nothing to do with them. I suspect that once we contact Earth, MineStar will move quickly to have him removed from his position and probably imprisoned in his cabin for the duration of their stay.”

  Doug nodded. Then he looked at Quark and said, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Why did you keep me in the dark?”

  “Sorry about that,” said Quark. “I wanted Enright to think he was in the clear. I was afraid, if you suspected him, you might give him some indication of that. I wanted his full cooperation to determine if he was working with someone else. I still don’t know for certain but I believe he acted alone. The investigation on Earth should definitively answer the question.”

  “Well,” Doug said, “I guess I won’t become a police officer.”

  “There’s still the matter of the documentary of our lives on Mars,” said Dr. Wellon. “The people of Earth are interested in us and you have exclusive access. You’d certainly be the greatest movie producer in the world.”

  “The only one,” Doug said with a laugh. “Very well. I’ll continue putting together a film of your lives on Mars. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be rich by the time I have to go back to Earth.”

  “That’s another thing I hadn’t gotten to yet,” said Dr. Wellon. “We’ve talked it over, and Keelar has done the brunt of the work on it, but we think we can give you the genetic adaptations you’ll need to turn you into something similar to us—not full Escala, but close enough that you won’t have the health issues the miners are susceptible to.”

  “You mean I can stay?” Doug asked.

  Dr. Wellon nodded.

  “Zeriphi okayed it. Since Celestia wants you here, she’s willing to let you stay as long as you like. We’ll dig out a little burrow for you to call your own.”

  “Welcome home,” Quark said as the rover came to a halt beside the New Dawn colony entrance.

  Home. Doug blinked to keep his eyes from watering and looked out at the surface of Mars. He couldn’t wait to see Celestia again, to lift her in his arms, give her a big hug and tell her how much he loved her. He would probably miss Earth, and he would certainly miss Devereaux, although Devereaux was gone no matter where Doug lived. A lightness filled him, a feeling that had nothing to do with gravity.

  Chapter 49

  Aspen opened the escape pod and re-entered the ship, its life support system now restored to the point that she and her fellow cadets could survive. Addam followed behind, while Phan, Shiloh and Kammilee emerged from the adjacent escape pod. The Chescala remained confined in other pods, causing Aspen to wonder what the robots intended to do with them.

  A smiling Lulu waited in the corridor with Mei-Xing. Was the robot truly happy to see them or
had she just programmed herself to smile because she believed that was what Aspen and her fellow cadets wanted to see? At least Mei-Xing wore a frown, her standard expression.

  When Kammilee emerged into the corridor, she hugged Aspen. Phan and Shiloh, looking on, shook their heads as Aspen glanced over at them with a raised eyebrow.

  “Did you see it?” Kammilee asked.

  “See what?” Aspen said.

  “It was amazing,” said Kammilee, turning to hug Addam. “I felt so lost after Benn died, so disconnected. But now I know he’s in a better place.”

  Kammilee released Addam and then hugged Lulu. Aspen looked at Shiloh and Phan, who shrugged.

  “Xinliu has recovered,” Lulu said when Kammilee let her go. She gestured for them to precede her. “She is on the bridge.”

  “Xinliu is okay?” Kammilee said. “That’s wonderful!”

  She turned to Mei-Xing, who, wearing a look of revulsion, held up a hand to stop her advance.

  “And how is the ship?” Aspen asked.

  “It has recovered approximately seventy-three percent of its prior sentience and capacity,” Lulu said.

  “All will be explained on the bridge,” Mei-Xing said. She tilted her head to the right along the corridor and gestured for them to precede her, giving Aspen the sense that she longed to hold a Las-weapon in her hand.

  Kammilee practically skipped ahead of them, bounding away. Aspen, pulling Shiloh aside, whispered, “What’s going on?”

  Shiloh rolled her eyes. “She had some sort of waking dream while we were in the escape pod. Claimed she saw God. She said Zora and Curtik were with him, or her, or whatever it was.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “No,” Phan replied, leaning in to follow their conversation. “I think she’s loopy.”

  “I’ll talk to her later,” Aspen said.

  As they entered the bridge, Kammilee disengaged herself from Xinliu, who stood beside the command chair, looking surprised but pleased at Kammilee’s hug. Aspen smiled at Xinliu and said, “I’m glad you’re recovered.”