“Otto.” Clemons’s British accent rounded the o’s in the director’s name into baubles. “Is this about the inventory I asked you to carry out?”
No beating around the bush when an off-schedule call came in. Frisch tucked his chin into his chest. “I’m afraid I have not had an opportunity to do that yet.”
“That is disappointing.”
I could have kissed Clemons, but I held my tongue and did not mouth “see” at Frisch.
“I was going this morning, but we have a developing situation. In brief … In brief, we have a possible polio outbreak.”
The silence stretched like the kilometers between the Earth and the Moon. I wrapped my fingers in the cord of the handset, pressing the earpiece against my head as if I would be able to wring anything more from the silence. I could imagine the words reaching the director and threads of cigar smoke curling up in shocked exclamation points.
Clemons’s gasp reached back through space. “How many cases?”
“Five in hospital, plus another three people who have had fevers. Dr. Brandão is requesting that we isolate the SciMod and quarantine the outposts to contain the illness.”
“But she’s not sure it’s polio?”
“Correct. There have been no instances of paralysis. It may, in fact, be the flu rather than polio.” Frisch referred to Ana Teresa’s report. “The larger problem is that we don’t have the facilities to care for this many sick. I’d like to request bumping the construction supplies from the next launch in favor of a relief package.”
“Send the list via teletype and I’ll make arrangements … It will still be two weeks at the earliest, you realize.”
“I do. We shall carry on here the best we can until then.” Frisch rubbed his brow. “What are your thoughts on quarantine protocols? It will bring expansion to a halt.”
“Have Dr. Brandão confer with the flight surgeons here and we’ll do what they advise.”
Something on the phone made a noise like a struck spring. Frisch pulled it away from his ear for a moment. “What was that?”
Two different thoughts connected in my head. Clemons had said that comms was compromised and that was the same spring I’d heard when Kenneth and I spoke with the reporter.
I scrawled on my notepad ICARUS.
Frisch raised his brows, mouthing the word. He should never play poker.
But I was dead certain we were being recorded. I made my voice light and unconcerned. “Oh, that was just the satellites doing a handover.”
A moment later, Clemons’s voice reached us. “Good lord! Wargin is on the line?”
Frisch cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, I thought it advisable to have her here to take notes in case you had anything to add to the polio question.”
“Ah … Very good.” Clemons was a smart man and I could feel him putting the pieces together on the other end of the line. Finally, he said, “And I think she’s quite correct about the satellite. The heat of the sun causes things to expand, et cetera.”
Frisch’s gaze dropped to the word “ICARUS” scrawled on my notepad.
“I agree.” The LCA straightened his pages. “I’ll talk to Dr. Brandão about quarantine and send you that list ASAP.”
Frisch was getting ready to sign off, and they’d dropped the question of the inventory. It was harder to discuss with Icarus listening, but not impossible. I cut in as gracefully as I could. “Director Clemons, it occurs to me that we could still arrange that inventory you requested if the team stays suited.”
“Hm. Yes … Please make that so. Especially if we are changing what we send, it would be advisable to have a precise inventory. They can take supply drops to the outposts as well.” Clemons sighed and I could imagine the exhalation of cigar smoke wreathing him. “Otto. Your hands will be full with this outbreak, so I’m going to delegate everything related to the inventory management to Nicole.”
The administrator’s nostrils flared. He stared at the booth wall as if meeting Clemons’s gaze. “I trust that you are aware her arm is broken.”
“Which doesn’t affect my ability to reason and delegate.” I smiled at him as triumph surged below the surface of my skin. “I’m happy to take that off your plate. Director, I thought I’d send the Lindholms, since they are both vaccinated. Have I your permission to brief them on the goals of the inventory?”
The silence stretched like clouds of smoke reaching for the ceiling.
“Don’t trouble them with the details, just what they need to know to do good work.”
“Of course.” So, I would be able to tell them a little about the saboteur, even if I couldn’t read them on fully. That was still something. “Thank you. That will simplify matters. And may I also note that a quarantine would stop movement between modules. You might consider it as a preventative safety measure.”
We waited longer than the 2.6 seconds it took for voices to make the round trip to Earth. I hoped, desperately, that it was because Clemons had understood and was considering my suggestion that he proceed with quarantine to keep Icarus contained.
“Yes … Yes, we do want to be safe. Proceed with quarantine procedures while Dr. Brandão speaks with the flight surgeons here.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll do that as soon as we’ve had an opportunity to prepare appropriately. And I’ll send you that supply list. Good day.” Frisch ended the call and wheeled on me. “Do not ever undercut me in that manner again.”
“I only asked a question.”
“Please.” He stood, pushing past me. “I know you better than that. You never simply ask a question.”
* * *
The letter I’d picked up in comms was burning a hole in my pocket. All I wanted to do was read Kenneth’s words, and instead, I hurried down the corridor to the port with a Lindholm on either side of me.
Myrtle shook her head with a constant stream of muttering. “And you’ve known how long? I swear to God you’re lucky I don’t bend you over my knee and try to knock the sense your mama gave you back into place.”
I couldn’t even blame her for feeling betrayed. I’d been careful not to say a word of untruth to them, but I had deliberately lied by omission.
“Myrtle.” Eugene put his hand on her arm, slowing a little. “You know I had to keep secrets from you during the war. Nicole wasn’t doing any different.”
“Those secrets didn’t endanger me. These did.”
I sighed. “It probably doesn’t help that I agree with you, but I do.” We rounded the corner toward the port. “For the moment, do you feel like you have everything you—Curt?”
He half-knelt, legs at awkward angles on the ground. Sweat drenched his shirt. He had both hands on the guide rails that lined the tunnel, trying to pull himself up.
“Shit.” Eugene dropped his bag and bounded forward.
“Oh.” Curt smiled at us, that goddamned pilot. “Hi, guys.”
“Hey, buddy.” Eugene knelt by him. “What’s going on?”
“Just doing a new pull-up form.” He lifted his upper body a few degrees, and one of his legs almost moved. “See?”
“Curt.” I put a hand on his forehead. Heat radiated off his skin as if he’d laid his head against an engine. “Can you move your legs at all?”
His smile faltered. “I could … They were cramping. I thought I could walk it off, but…” Curt grimaced, looking down at his legs. “I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
I exchanged glances with Eugene and Myrtle over his head. Polio hit fast. When I was a kid, there had been a family in my town that had been fine in the morning. In the afternoon, the eldest daughter got a fever. She was dead by nightfall. One after another, all nine of their children got sick. Three of them lived. Two of them paralyzed below the waist. Resting my hand on Curt’s shoulder, I asked, “How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know…” He shook his head, trying for another smile. “I was walking this morning.”
Myrtle had her hands clasped together and her lips were moving, sh
aping the silent words of a prayer.
“Well, let’s get you to sickbay and Dr. Brandão can tell us what’s going on.” I wet my lips and looked at Eugene. “You and Myrtle go on to the BusyBee. You can call sickbay from there.”
Myrtle started. “We can’t leave this boy here.”
“I’m fine!” Curt waved at her. “They’re just pins and needles is all.”
“Right.” I squeezed his shoulder and stood, letting him have his denial a while longer. Leaning into Myrtle, I murmured, “Frisch thinks quarantine is just a precaution. He was dragging his heels, but as soon as he hears about this, he won’t let you take off. You know I’m right.”
“And you know we can’t just leave him.” She looked down at Curt, who was still reaching for the handrails as if he could pull himself up.
“I’ll get him to sickbay. Just go.”
* * *
In sickbay, a miasma of illness escaped the filters. All five beds were full. In my years on the Moon, I had never seen anyone be sick enough for hospitalization. Sprains. Cuts. Bruises. The occasional rookie with a bad case of space sickness. Sometimes a cold. But we went through quarantine before coming up for a reason. The lunar colony was the cleanest, healthiest place that money could make it.
Today, though … Imelda was bent over, vomiting. Kadyn had a damp cloth covering his eyes. Birgit from communications. Hans from the mining crew that had helped us out of the ship. Curt … All of the beds were full of people moaning or shivering under blankets.
Curt. Kadyn. Imelda. Three of my “suspects” knocked down by polio. Behind me, I heard the click-buzz of the intercom button. “Administrator Frisch? Dr. Brandão here.”
Frisch’s voice was tinny and buzzed against the walls. “Go ahead.”
“I have a patient with paralysis of the left leg and severe weakness in the right.” Ana Teresa inhaled and I could feel the weight of what was coming next, even though I already knew it. “I no longer doubt. This is paralytic poliomyelitis.”
“Who?” Frisch could have gone straight into procedural, but for all his faults, the man cared about the individuals who were under his care.
“Curtis Frye, sir.”
From the bed, Curt murmured, “Ask him if I’m still grounded.”
I bit down hard to stifle a moan. He was joking at a time when it was likely he would never fly again.
Frisch’s voice shook a little but steadied as he spoke. “I heard that, Captain. Let’s get you well first, hm?”
“Yes, sir.”
A shiver ran through me.
The rocket that exploded was carrying the vaccines for the colony. Was that the plan? To leave the majority of the lunar colony unprotected and to deliberately introduce polio?
Kadyn’s bed was next to the door and I went to him, keeping my voice low and soothing. “Hey, Kadyn, it’s Nicole. Garnet at the chess club was really worried about you.” He was sick. He was also on the list of people who might be Icarus. If Icarus wasn’t acting alone on the Moon, then knowing who he associated with would be useful information. “You know, it would probably help the medical staff if they had a list of everyone you had contact with.”
Was I really questioning a kid with polio? What kind of monster was I?
He raised a hand and pushed the cloth back so he could squint at me, brown skin gone ashen. “Garnet’s not sick, is she?”
“No, no.” But if she had picked it up from him, she wouldn’t have been sick yet. It took between seven to fourteen days after exposure for the first symptoms to occur. It would look like a mild flu. She’d get better, and then three days later, the extreme symptoms would hit. For all I knew, she might be running a fever right now. “I saw her last night.”
“Tell her that I’m all right. It’s just a headache.”
Ana Teresa’s voice caught my attention. “—recommending immediate isolation. Close the airlocks. Inform everyone to shelter in place until we can get a medical history.”
If I was in here when they closed the airlocks, I would be on hospital duty for the duration. And that would also leave Icarus free to operate unsupervised. Frisch sighed into the microphone. “You are correct. I’ll do a station-wide announcement.”
“Kadyn, I’ll go tell Garnet that you’re all right.” I walked calmly to the door, but as soon as I crossed the threshold, I ran for Midtown. To move from one module to another, you pretty much had to pass through Midtown.
But if I were Icarus, I’d be much more interested in the fact that Lunar Ground Control was housed in Midtown. From there, you could control everything.
* * *
Feeling more battered than I had since my early days of training, a part of me fully expected the Midtown airlock to slam shut behind me. It didn’t. The LCA and Ana Teresa must still be talking. How long did I have before Frisch closed the doors?
Drumming the fingers of my good hand against my thigh made paper crackle.
Kenneth’s letter. With everything happening this morning, I’d only had time to glance at it, but that had been enough to know he’d sent me a coded message as promised in our phone call. I needed the book he had mentioned, which gave me my order of operations. I would go to the library, retrieve The Long Tomorrow, and then let Frisch know where I was.
The library was built into the outer curve of Midtown. Unlike Le Restaurant or my little gallery, this had been purpose built by the IAC for morale. Every month, we received a small shipment of books to add to the library.
I pushed through the plastic door and the smell of paper, ink, and glue made my shoulders relax. The walls were lined with shelves filled with thin paperback books printed on flimsy onionskin paper. Since my last rotation, someone had added a new bookcase in the middle of the room, built from plastic panels and support strut discards from the habitat expansion.
Catalina Suarez Gallego sat at a folding table, working a crossword. She was on my list of possibles, but I hadn’t been able to catch her for conversation yet. Across the little room, Danika was flipping through the card catalog with her lip tucked between her teeth.
Their unruffled calm would vanish the moment Frisch made his announcement.
Heading to the fiction shelves, I waved at the other women. The shelves were wire mesh aluminum attached to the long curve of the outer wall. I ran my finger along the shelf under the books. Bates, Bouzerous, Brackett … Tipping my head to my side, I read the titles and … The Long Tomorrow wasn’t there. I stepped back, staring at the shelf as if that would make the book appear. To be fair, sometimes distance helped, as my eyes aged.
I checked the shelves above and below it. I scanned the ones to either side.
No book.
There was no librarian on duty. Checking things out was on the honor system and so was returning them. Although not to the shelves. Oh, originally, we had put the books back ourselves, but a couple of years ago the IAC hired a comms operator who also had a degree in library science. You could have launched rockets with her rage at the way cataloging was done. Now we had a small returns cart.
I went to the cart and flipped through every book on it. Nothing. I kept telling myself that The Long Tomorrow was a popular book, that someone else just had it checked out, that the spring sound on the phone had been a coincidence.
I kept up that interior litany as my stomach tightened. The other women glanced at me as I searched, but even on the Moon, even without a librarian, none of us would talk in the library. Trying not to look frantic, I went to the catalog and flipped through the cards of books that had been checked out, looking for The Long Tomorrow.
I found that. My eyes ached from trying to focus on the tiny letters, but there was no mistake. It had been checked out day before yesterday—the day I had talked to Kenneth.
By Vicky Hsu.
Coincidences did happen sometimes, but this seemed unlikely. At the same time, why would she as good as announce that she had taken it by writing down her own name—Writing. I rotated my cast, looking for Vicky’s signat
ure.
She had signed back near the elbow. I laid the card next to it. Even accounting for the differences in surface and writing utensil, the signature on the card was not Vicky’s handwriting.
So whose was it? I slid the card over my cast, looking for a match. I couldn’t see them all well and some had been written across. Catalina and Danika were both staring at me. To be fair, that was not necessarily suspicious, because I was acting odd. Looking embarrassed was not hard as I showed them my cast and whispered, “It itches.”
Danika closed the card catalog drawer and walked toward me. In the distance, a metallic clang sounded, followed by three others, one on top of another. The airlocks closing. Danika and Catalina both turned to look out the library door. Hell, I did too. Even knowing it was coming, that sound sent chills down my spine.
Three chimes sounded as the public-address system activated. “All station, all station, all station.” Frisch’s voice was crisp, but unhurried. “This is not a drill. I repeat. This is not a drill. We are beginning immediate isolation procedures and have moved to temporary lockdown mode. Please refer to section 141.a in the emergency manuals for the full protocol.”
Danika put her hand over her mouth, eyes widening. Catalina’s expression did not change.
“The colony is experiencing an outbreak of polio and, as a precaution, we are limiting travel between modules while we assess the scope. If any member of the colony experiences fever, aches, vomiting, or a stiff neck, they are to report immediately to sickbay via intercom for instructions.”
“Ruben is sick.” Danika hurried toward me. “He threw up all night last night. Does he have polio?”
Catalina took a step back from Danika, and I couldn’t blame her. If Danika had been with her husband, she was very likely a carrier right now. I caught Danika’s shoulders. “Where is Ruben?”
The Relentless Moon Page 20
