Edits are on their way. Thanks, ED and Sam, for your reviews. :)
7: Decisions
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas-
In a place and time where politics were dominated by a shaky world government and a few giant corporations, national space agencies had very little recourse when things went wrong. And, just now, things were going very, very, wrong.
The Ares III mission had been pronounced a success… until, just after entering their quarantine habitat on the Moon, the astronauts were seized by WorldGov's Public Health Ministry. Together with the Moon Station personnel who'd handled their blood and tissue samples, the astronauts were being held incommunicado. No calls, no visits, no explanations.
The American president had recently appointed a new director for NASA; Paul Crane, a relatively young man who excelled at dealing with red-tape and budget shortfalls. He was stretched to his limits now, though.
That morning, after conferring with his staff, Crane summoned mission director Gene Porter to his office, and arranged a conference call with WorldGov and the European Space Agency head, General Grigori Markov.
Crane was a forthright sort of guy. Rising from his desk, he said to the on-screen Health Minister,
"Madame Chatterjee, I cannot protest in strong enough terms what's been done here. You can't simply declare eminent domain and take what you want. Those astronauts and station personnel are NASA employees and American citizens. They deserve a…"
Indira Chatterjee was a poisonously-still woman of indeterminate age, a Brahman by caste. She wore her slightly graying hair in a sleek knot, and sat perfectly upright, decked in the folds of a blue and gold sari. She did not blink very often, nor did her dark-eyed gaze stray long from Crane's face.
"Is not 'America' a member state of the World Government, Mister Crane?"
Her voice was quite musical, a mixture of her own Bengali dialect and the upper-class British schools at which she'd been educated.
"Having signed the Treaty of London, is the United States not bound by its dictates? Or does America regard itself, still, as something apart? Better, perhaps, than the rest of the global community?"
Crane's dark brows drew together over worried grey eyes. He took his glasses off, wiped the lenses with a Kleenex, and then very carefully put them back on.
"You're straying from the point, Madame Chatterjee… deliberately, I suspect. My objection to the actions of WorldGov has nothing to do with treaties, nor with lingering third-world bitterness. You have our people. We want them back. Or, failing that, we want a complete and satisfactory explanation as to why they're being held. Any time."
Added General Markov, scowling ferociously,
"We have, also, cosmonauts on Mars. When returning, will they not be seized, as well? This is question Russian people and European Space Agency must ask, Gospodina Chatterjee. Prince Nikolai, himself, he is awaiting response of WorldGov."
Under the circumstances, Gene Porter chose to remain quiet. Power plays at this level were more than he knew how to handle. He was the mission director, after all, not a diplomat or a gold-braid-and-medal-decked general.
Madame Chatterjee's nostrils flared slightly, but her expression did not change.
"Having been exposed to alien microbes… as your agency did not scruple to reveal, Mister Crane… the astronauts and cosmonauts of both your states present a clear threat to the entire world. This matter is now very far beyond the isolated concerns of America or Russia. I would have thought, Mister Crane… General Markov… that, as the simplest way to resolve this threat would be its complete elimination, you would show more patience with a benign quarantine."
Finished, she sat there like a snake; hard-eyed, silent and waiting.
"I see," Crane managed, after a moment. His hands were curled into impotent fists, but his voice was calm when he said, "Thank you for your honesty, Madame Chatterjee. We will… remain in touch."
Very gracefully, with a small, triumphant spark in her liquid-dark eyes, the Health Minister inclined her head.
"Of course, Mister Crane. Any further petitions that the United States or European space agencies have to place before the World Government will be heard by my office. The president and vice president need not be troubled. Good day, Gentlemen."
A threat. They'd just been handed an extremely unsubtle threat against the lives of astronauts and station personnel, both.
Once the Health Minister's image had faded from his right wall screen, Paul Crane turned to glance at General Markov, thousands of miles away in frigid Baikonur. The grizzled Russian shook his head.
"I would be more believing her, if she were not former head of World Defense Ministry, Gospodin Crane. My… ehm…'gut' (as Americans say) feels that she lies. There is more to matter than public health, alone."
Crane nodded, heavily. It was at this point that Gene Porter cleared his throat for attention. Crane was new; there were a few things about NASA he wasn't yet aware of.
"Paul, we have a good working relationship with International Rescue. Not that I think it's time to call in the troops… but it might be wise to let IR know what we've learned. You know… bring them up to speed, as a contingency plan."
…Especially considering that John Tracy was tacitly known to be an IR team member.
"Is true," Markov agreed, rubbing his big, square hands together. "ESA has partnered in past with International Rescue. I also suggest we make… very quiet… phone call, Gospodin Crane."
Thinking, 'Two weeks on the job, and already I've got an emergency…' Paul shifted some papers around on his desk. Didn't help anything, really, but gave him time to reach a decision.
"All right, Gene… I'm putting you in charge of notifying International Rescue… but I want it understood that until we find out how much of a threat to public health our people represent, nobody moves. I want them back safely, yes; but not at the risk of a global pandemic."
Gene didn't like it, but he had to agree. Smoothing down his binary-print necktie, he said,
"That's affirm, Paul. I'll contact IR just as soon as this meeting concludes. We'll get things set up, at least."
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Madrid, Spain, the men's athletic dormitory, Room 304-
Getting drunk with one's mates was a dodgy business, most especially if the afore mentioned lads were a clever, mischievous lot and prone to excess. Gordon awoke in his dorm room one morning, convinced that bits of his skull had worked loose and were, in fact, scattered about the premises, liberally smeared with headache.
Spears of hard sunlight crept between the window slats to stab at his half-open eyes. The world swam and spun as sickeningly as a fairground ride, and his throat was raw with thirst. He'd have heaved the entire contents of his stomach then and there... had there been anything left to jettison. Cramping nausea struck at him, anyhow. Bit too much of the good stuff, he assumed.
There was no lavatory in the dormitory bedrooms, Gordon knew, just a public facility further along the main corridor. Too far. They might as well have put the wretched thing in bloody Paris. And all at once, he thought,
"The Paris Open…"
Experimentally (assaulted on all sides by loud, choking snores) Gordon Tracy attempted to push off his blankets. But even that feeble motion sent shards of imaginary skull popping off into the void, trailing long streamers of pain.
Gordon shut his eyes and left off pawing the blankets. There weren't enough letters in 'ouch' or curses in the English language to deal with all this, so instead he began apologizing aloud to God, the Virgin Mary and each Saint whose name he could bring to mind; vowing never, ever to mix spirits and lager, again.
At the far end of the room, Royce lifted his head from beneath a tightly-clutched pillow. Firing a glare as red-eyed and hostile as a rabid dog's, he snarled,
"Shut y'r noise, can't you? Let a bloke breathe 'is last in peace!"
They'd done well at the Paris Open. Squinting between the cracks of his hangover, Gordon recalled shimmering water, a long black line, and the far wall's beckoning touch pad. For just an instant, he felt the gritty starting block beneath his feet as he flexed his body into the down position, coiled and ready.
A mere practice run, McMahon had scoffed… but he'd been terribly chuffed, just the same, when Gordon placed first in the men's 300M butterfly and then took second in the 400M individual medley. Proper stuff… so why did he feel so bloody awful? Oh, yes… quite full of themselves after sweeping the Open, McMahon's team had once again violated curfew.
A true hero is measured by his ability to rise from the depths of a hangover, Gordon decided; literally forcing himself to sit up. Not, as it turned out, a good idea. Each time he closed his eyes, he visualized swarms of tiny, bottle-shaped imps, all of them armed with sharpened paper umbrellas or cocktail toothpicks.
To hell with mixing; never again would he drink. Not with Royce ("put you under the table, I can") Fellows, anyhow. What was it McMahon had said? That he had a drink team with a damn swimming problem?
Aspirin. Somewhere, there resided a cool, white, beautiful world of porcelain and chrome wherein lay the blessed, holy aspirin bottle. If only he could dredge up the strength to reach it.
"Come, lad," he told himself. "Up, y' get."
Royce gave a single, spasmodic heave and flung his pillow. He missed Gordon entirely, striking Erik, who was too far gone to emit more than a deep, sobbing groan. A bit further over, Damien muttered something that would have gotten him killed, anywhere else.
Right; degenerate human wreckage, the lot of them. Not his sort, at all. Onward…
Gordon was nearly up (his legs were off the bed, at least) when something odd happened. A colorful brochure and folded yellow paper slid from beneath his blankets and onto the carpeted floor. What was this, then?
Confused, the young swimmer managed to lean down a bit and grab for the most easily seized document, that fallen brochure. Wringing concentration from his stunned and throbbing brain, Gordon brought the paper within range of a painful squint.
WASP?
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Wharton Private Academy for Young Men-
The schedule was printed out for him on heavy, cream-colored card stock; looking more like an invitation than a class list. Unfortunately, as far as Alan Tracy was concerned, it might as well have been the summons to a wake. His own. (Not that he believed in such things. According to his mother, once you died, your spirit dissolved back into the great universal energy field. Period. End of subject.)
Anyway… yeah; the schedule. On weekdays, the student body "sprang from bed" at 6:30 AM, "washed and tidied" until 7:00, and then trooped merrily over to good ol' Stanton Hall for breakfast. (He had to give them that much, though; the food was good.)
The day's first meal lasted until 7:45, with a 15 minute passing period afterward for restroom breaks, book-fetching and getting to class. But, hey; the fun was just beginning!
First period, he had English Lit, taught by the glum and frowzy Catherine Prince. She had puffy brown hair and a seamed, webby face. Looked like a really depressed shrunken head, and felt that everything important had been written in the 15th century. Alan didn't read very well, thought dead authors were creepy and figured Shakespeare was, like, an action verb. Needless to say, he did not expect to have a rollicking good time in English.
Second period was devoted to Algebra, the single most frightening thing on the planet… worse than the dang Hood, even. The class was taught by Blaise Deckard, who looked five years older than Alan, himself. Acted all serious, though, parting his tan hair to one side and always wearing suits to class.
Third period looked like it might be sort of interesting. That was biology class, and supposedly Alan was going to be given a scalpel and frog eyeballs, or something. Cool!
The teacher reminded him of Brains, except without the stutter. Sort of a sloppy, absent-minded guy; the kind who'd start to introduce himself and then forget what he'd been talking about. Chemical preservatives were a dangerous thing, dude. His name was Robert Kruppa. He had a scruffy brown beard, sandals and mismatched socks.
After Biology, it was back to Stanton for lunch, the social event of the day. Then, another 15-minute break to switch out books and pal around until…
Fourth period! Western Civilization, with the future Mrs. Alan Tracy, Anne Rowena Wilde. Okay, maybe she didn't realize it, yet, but they were practically engaged. Just a matter of time, for real.
If Western Civ had ended his day, life might have been worth living, but fifth period brought Physical Education. Lockers, jock-straps and public showering… yeah; Alan planned to be sick a lot. Like, every day.
Sixth period, he just didn't grasp. Why, universe? Why Latin 1? What, exactly, had he done to deserve "I think, therefore I came and saw and conquered, in three parts?" Like, for real, who gesticulates nouns, or whatever? Cogito, ergo stink. Latin was the class he was going to spend a lot of time composing love songs and doodling in, Alan felt certain.
He had only one course with Fermat. Fifth period's "Basic PE for no-talent pencil necks". Bummer.
With Chris (Springfield, as in 'Springfield Pharmaceuticals', poor guy) he had English Lit, Biology and Moldy Romans.
…But all of this was in the future. At the time that Alan received his schedule, the biggest things looming on his horizon were chapel, heavy furniture and a can of linseed oil.
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New York, the back of a crawling yellow taxicab-
Scott leaned close over his wrist comm, waking the little white cat. He had a lot on his mind, lately, with International Rescue, Cindy's unexpected 'no-kid' manifesto, the robbery and Alan's last shot at a decent school. Highest on his list of concerns, however, was the Ares crew's lingering quarantine. It wasn't easy, getting straight answers out of John.
"What's up? You've found something out?"
Slowly, his younger brother nodded. The wrist comm image had ceased bouncing around, for John wasn't typing any longer. He wasn't talking, either.
"John? What's the situation?" And then, reverting to their 'worst case scenario' code-phrase, "What's it like on the Western Front?"
John looked away from his laptop, just long enough to make eye contact.
"About as quiet as it could possibly get," he said.
Damn.
"Okay, you guys hang on. We'll…"
"No. Don't do anything yet, Scott. It isn't safe. I need to… I've got to figure something out, so… I'll get back to you. I promise."
"All right." Scott nodded. "You go ahead. I'm going to let dad know what I've got so far. In one hour I'll call back, expecting a full run-down of your situation and the outlines of a safe extraction plan. Understood?"
"Yeah. Got it."
Scott signed off at once; leaving his brother crouched in the semi-gloom of a sleeping berth, some 240,000 miles away. John had faked a migraine for the chance to get a few moments' privacy. Just outside, Pete had on a recording of the 66 World Series, providing all the noise and cover they could have hoped for.
John worked quickly, risking detection in his overwhelming need to hurry. While speaking with Scott, he'd managed to access the Station's main computer (and people who used their own first names as a password deserved whatever they got). The bio-med site had been pretty well hosed, but John wasn't discouraged. When in doubt, check the trash.
Gaining root, he did some recycle bin sifting and brought up a few poorly deleted lab reports. These had gotten his attention, the same way that a wrecking ball would have.
Judging by the crew's test results, Ferrospirilum had changed. Apparently, the warm, moist interior of a human body was a choice environment, speedily altering the microbe they'd accidentally brought with them from Mars. The mutated bacterium had been given a name. Exobacter Haemospirilum, they were calling it. Bad enough news, but things just kept getting worse.
One of the lab technicians had copied and sent the test results to three separate IP addresses. Two of them were WorldGov; the Ministries of Health and Defense. One was a private computer somewhere in the Washington DC area, which troubled him for other reasons. The Red Path were known to operate in that area, and terrorist groups were about the last subset he needed involved in all this.
The Health Ministry John could understand. Why defense, though? Cracking a heavily-secured password list, John slipped into the Defense Minister's private files, meaning to find out. Since he was the one doing the digging, he decided to pull up his own file: Tracy, John M.
Not good. There was a lot of medical jargon to sift through, but according to the latest tests, Haemospirilum was now the most common microbe in his body; concentrated especially in the blood stream, heart and spleen. Wasn't doing anything except consuming metabolic waste products, but that was beside the point. His body… his damn immune system… didn't seem able to detect the invasion. He was exhibiting no response, whatsoever, to the most complete infection of his life. And all at once, John understood why certain members of the Defense Ministry might be interested in E. Haemospirilum.
Given such a fast-breeding, stealthy microbe, how difficult would it be to screw around a little with its genome; insert a few codons from a toxic sonuvabitch like Vibrio Cholerae, Bacillis Anthracis, or Clostridium Botulinum? What you'd have then would be a nearly unstoppable, weaponized super-bug. A doomsday plague.
The fact that the next three reports outlined just such a procedure made it very difficult to think straight. Someone at WorldGov was attempting to build themselves the biological equivalent of a hydrogen bomb, using quarantine concerns as a cover-up. They had delayed the astronauts' release to buy time, because John Tracy, Roger Thorpe, Kim Cho, Pete McCord and…
(Resolutely, John pushed thoughts of Dr. Bennett and the baby out of his head. He couldn't make rational decisions, thinking like a husband and father.)
…Because the six of them held the world's purest supply of a potentially lethal weapon. The projected mortality rate was 93 percent, assuming that Haemospirilum could be modified. Before swinging into production, though, the 'health ministers' would want a quiet test of their altered microbes… on one of the Moon Station folk, maybe? Or a crewmate?
In twenty-three minutes, Scott would call back. In twenty-three minutes, John Tracy damn well needed to have a plan.
