The Barrier

by Shankari Chandran

  ‘Read this again and again, Noah. It is a path – a plan – for man to free himself from all of this.’

  ‘A book won’t free us from this; a cure will – and proper heating and food,’ Noah replied angrily.

  ‘No, son, I don’t mean the virus – I mean life. Life is an illusion, a bondage to something that we are not.’

  Noah had heard that talk a hundred times before. He was relieved that the virus hadn’t gone to his father’s brain yet. Memory and lucidity were still in place.

  ‘This body,’ Papa said, feebly pinching himself. His skin lifted like a wrinkled, oversized coat. ‘This body isn’t real. Only inside here,’ he raised his shaking hand to his chest, ‘this is real.’ He concentrated and steadied his tremor before it spread to the rest of his arm.

  ‘Man’s true nature is a divine energy – inside me and you, all around us. Even this virus,’ he clenched his hand weakly. ‘Even this virus is divine. It too is seeking its true nature.’

  ‘This virus is devouring you from within, slowly shutting down your kidney and liver functions.’ Noah tried not to raise his voice. ‘You cannot retain food and water. I wear two layers of gloves and wipe the blood from your eyes and ears and anus. It will attack your brain soon and you will not know yourself.’ His voice caught in his throat.

  ‘How – how is this virus divine?’

  God help me, he thought. God help us. His head dropped to his knees. He covered himself with his arms. He could feel his father’s hand hover above his head and then pull back. He longed to hold his father’s hand. Skin against skin. He raised his tear-stained face.

  ‘Noah, we are more than the forms we inhabit – whether it be this body or a virus. Look inside – our divinity yearns to be free, to merge with the divinity all around us. Don’t let form restrain you. We are limitless. Read the Gita, son. It’s all in there.’ His father sank back into the chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘I’m so tired these days,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ The book slipped to his feet.

  ‘It’s all right, Papa. You rest.’ Noah picked up the book, closed the cover on the inscription and turned it over. On the back, etched into the leather, was a square that contained a circle that contained triangles within triangles.

  He placed the book back on his father’s lap and threw Pure Mathematics on the fire. The yellow flames accepted his offering and then roared, hungry for more. His hand burned, sparking a fever in his blood.

  *

  Noah sat up and tried to swing his legs out of the hospital bed. He was attached to two IVs. His fingers were bandaged and his ribs taped. His side table was empty except for his wedding ring.

  ‘Has Maggie been here?’ His voice sounded hoarse.

  ‘Take it easy, you can lie down for this conversation.’ Hackman grabbed him as he swayed on the edge of the bed. Noah let him guide him back down.

  ‘She came while you were sleeping, stayed for a long time actually. Sweet of her. She said she’ll come back in the morning. Something about a bear.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was fine back in Sri Lanka.’

  ‘You weren’t fine. You were tortured and standing on adrenaline alone. They had to restrain and medicate you to let you heal some. Quite rightly so, if in your medical opinion you’re ready to jump out of your hospital bed and back into the field.’

  Noah sank into the dense pillows. ‘Have you told Garner and Crawford’s families?’

  ‘Yes, the official story is a light airplane crash, no bodies. They were en route to India to install a new data management system for the WHO headquarters in Delhi.’

  ‘It was a wasteful death.’

  ‘Are we still talking about Garner and Crawford?’

  Noah looked down at his hands. Flecks of blood appeared through the bandages.

  ‘Of course we are. The president said someone else wanted my team dead; wanted me dead. Who else is in the region? Who could do . . . that.’ He didn’t know how to describe what he had seen in the well. ‘Who could do that?’ he repeated, closing his eyes against the memory.

  ‘I don’t know and we have no way of finding out. Like countless deaths before, and many more to come, we have to let it go. They knew the risks.’

  ‘Did they? This was supposed to be a fairly standard investigation of an elderly virologist who was almost certainly a bioterrorist on paper, until we worked out in person that he wasn’t.’ Noah spoke quietly to control the tremor in his voice.

  ‘Can we talk about Khan?’ Hackman asked. ‘I’ve read all the transcripts and the notes now. Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  ‘There’s not much to add. He revealed that he was using a gene-mining technique to . . . create new vaccines – one of them was different – it was special . . .’

  ‘Yes, to put it mildly. Sahara told me it has the ability to adapt and evolve when it encounters different strains of Ebola. It isn’t just a multi-strain vaccine.’

  ‘No, it’s much better. The Devi Vaccine, he called it. An all-powerful vaccine that could protect us from Ebola 48, 49, 50, 51 . . .’ He felt himself drifting.

  Weaponised strains – Khan had said the vaccine would work against weaponised strains.

  ‘Noah, I need you to focus a little longer. What was he going to do with it? The super-vaccine – it’s worth a fortune.’

  ‘He was going to share it. He didn’t want to release Ebola into the population. I’m not even sure he wanted to bring the Sixth Virus back. He knew the Faith Inhibitor strand was dangerous, but he hadn’t worked out how dangerous.’

  ‘And those patients in his clinic at Anuradhapura? What was going on there? He spent a lot of time with them.’

  ‘What did Sahara tell you?’ His strength was fading. ‘She said she would brief you.’

  ‘She did – but she was brief.’

  ‘Probably because there wasn’t much to tell – he ran a community triage and treatment centre. They had converted the old palace and temples into clinics. He was a resourceful doctor, dedicated to public health.’

  Like Sahara, he kept the rest of the intel about those patients to himself. And about the general. Who would believe him anyway? Noah wasn’t sure he believed it. And yet at moments it made complete sense. He couldn’t understand the science but he trusted the man. Perhaps he was beginning to trust something else too.

  ‘Was he the ghost?’

  ‘I don’t think so . . . there is someone else out there.’ He was so tired. He would need to see Garner and Crawford’s families.

  ‘Who?’ Hackman asked.

  ‘I have no idea – I’ve investigated and implicated the wrong man. I’ve lost two agents – two people who depended on me. I’ve been tortured – and I’ve killed an innocent man.’

  ‘You didn’t have to.’

  ‘You think I could have left him to suffer weeks, maybe months more at the hands of Rajasuriya?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have lasted that long.’

  He shouldn’t have had to last at all, Noah thought. He shouldn’t have been arrested. The photos of Khan and his wife; the pendant – what was Khan trying to tell him? He rubbed the wound on his palm. It had healed, the skin thickening into a small welt.

  He let himself sink deeper into the pillow and then shook his head. His eyes fell on the silver pin fastened to Hackman’s lapel. The tree of liberty, Hackman had said. Sri Bodhi. Abre de Libre. A gift from a friend.

  ‘He’s dead now,’ Noah said. ‘Tell me what you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to let it go. Can you do that – for your own sake? You need to recover from this. Rest, get yourself well again, and then let’s talk about work if that’s what you want. You’re an outstanding agent and I’d hate to lose you to early retirement, or whatever you want to call it. But I’d hate it more if I lost you to the demons of this job. They can eat away at you from the inside.’

  Like cancer, Noah thought.

  Chapter 35

  Neeson put the phone down
and began tidying up. The robotic arm hovered.

  ‘Let me, Roberta, I like doing it. It helps me think.’

  He liked a well-organised lab. He stacked the equipment in the large steriliser and threw everything else in the biohazard bin. He sprayed all of the surfaces with chlorobicide and wiped them down, throwing the tissue in the bin when he’d finished.

  He logged on to his computer with his password:

  Aisha:08122025

  Her name and the date of her death. For fifteen years, it had been the daily reminder of his weakness – and the debt he owed.

  He remembered it too well. Hackman had asked him, ‘Did you speak to them? Will they let it go?’

  He had answered honestly. ‘No, they’re scientists. They will always seek to understand where we fit into the universe. Science is the search for truth.’

  ‘Truth?’ Hackman replied angrily. ‘The truth is that three billion people just died in five years and science has given us a way to make it stop. Science, not God. This vaccine is our saviour.’

  ‘No,’ Neeson shook his head. ‘Jesus is our saviour.’

  ‘Save it, Jack. I’m surprised you can fit your lab coat over your hair shirt. What are we going to do? We can’t afford to have them undermining the new programme. I know they’re your friends – but can they be controlled?’

  He was so torn. Duty to country. Or love for his friend. And his friend’s wife who didn’t love him back.

  ‘Jack,’ Hackman repeated. ‘I said can they be controlled?’

  ‘No,’ Neeson whispered. ‘No.’ God help him. God help them.

  *

  Roberta’s robotic arm moved towards him. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Dr Neeson?’

  ‘No, thank you, Roberta – you’ve been a wonderful help. We might be done for today. I’m expecting someone soon.’

  ‘Would you like me to power off and give you some privacy?’ she asked.

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary.’ There was no such thing as privacy in their world.

  He heard the lab door open behind him. It hadn’t taken Hackman long.

  ‘How is he?’ Neeson asked.

  ‘Alive,’ Hackman replied. ‘I reviewed the transcript of his last call to you.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. Was he being warned?

  ‘What do you make of it?’ Hackman leaned against the bench. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Don’t touch that. He knows something’s not right – he’ll get there in the end. He usually does. That’s why you sent him.’

  ‘No, I sent him to reveal Khan as the ghost – we need a plausible fall guy and who better than a brilliant virologist with a reason for revenge and a clinical explanation for crazy behaviour. Noah was supposed to conclude that Khan could be breaching the Immunity Shield.’

  ‘Khan was breaching the Immunity Shield against the Sixth Virus – there’s nothing like the truth as a foundation for guilt,’ Neeson replied wearily.

  ‘Sure, but his vaccine provides full immunity against Ebola. I need real gaps in the Immunity Shield if this is to work. It was all going so well. Your current iteration of the decoy is almost perfect – it fools the Eastern Alliance scanners but doesn’t create Ebola immunity.’

  ‘Thank you, I suppose.’

  Hackman laughed. ‘You know, you’re not as much fun to work with as you used to be.’

  ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘The only thing that makes me nervous about your vaccine is the Faith Inhibitor strand – why can’t you use a live strand? Why do both parts of the decoy have to be . . . you know, decoys? We want a gap in Ebola immunity, not the Sixth Virus immunity as well.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t do it. The Faith Inhibitor needs the live vector to piggyback on into the bloodstream – if you use a decoy for the Ebola component then you have to use a decoy for the Faith Inhibitor component too.’

  ‘And you’re not worried that people will . . . God forbid, find God again?’

  ‘Their last boosters should have contained enough inhibitor to damage the faith engine. There won’t be enough time for the frontal lobe to regenerate. Your plan will be in motion long before that happens,’ Neeson replied.

  ‘Our plan,’ Hackman reminded him. ‘Then your decoy is perfect. No one will know which population sets are immune and which are vulnerable to the virus. A series of localised outbreaks will take care of those sets quickly.’

  ‘Are you sure you still want to do this?’ Neeson asked, trying to keep the conflict in his mind out of his voice.

  ‘Of course I’m sure – nothing has changed since we agreed this strategy three years ago – when you agreed to develop a decoy. If anything, time has only proved the business case. The population of the Eastern Alliance is increasing too quickly. I heard you mention the Christian Coalition – did you read their recent study on population growth?’

  ‘I did. It made it to the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet – they’re not on the fringes anymore with their research.’

  ‘Well someone needs to tell them they got it completely wrong.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘You first. I hate those people. The group praying before meetings drives me nuts.’ Hackman shuddered.

  ‘They weren’t completely wrong – people of any faith are happier. They do live healthier, longer lives. No one knows why – the study stopped short of hypothesising a causal connection between faith and clinical indicators of biological success, but its methodology was sound. They used all the data, not just the results that proved their point, which is more than I can say for our friends at Abre de Libre.’ Neeson’s hands ached. He flexed and relaxed them a few times.

  ‘So scathing for a man whose career has been largely funded by ADL. We need their money if we’re going to keep up with their science; and we need their partnership – not friendship – if we’re going to keep our half of the world safe.’

  ‘Keep up with their science?’ Neeson repeated. ‘We are supposed to regulate their science – how do we do that if we’re on their payroll?’

  ‘We’re not on their payroll – we’re paid by the taxpayers of the West to protect the West. Working with ADL is just one of the ways we achieve that. I hate having this conversation with you, Neese – I’m offended I still have to justify our position to you.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to offend you, old friend,’ Neeson replied.

  ‘Arsehole. The Christian Coalition study also said that people with faith – any religious or spiritual faith, not just the ones that decry contraception – have more children. That is clearly bullshit – the Eastern Alliance has no faith and they are reproducing like spores. Hence the present strategy. Once we have enough breaches in place have you thought about which strain you want to use for the cull?’

  ‘I’d really prefer it if you didn’t call it that.’

  ‘What else would you like me to call it? Selective reduction perhaps?’

  ‘Let’s go with that. We should use a previous generation Ebola strain. Even the Ebola 48.6 if we wanted something stronger.’ Neeson waited for the inevitable response.

  ‘Nothing new and weaponised like Ebola 50?’

  ‘No, Hack, we’ve been over this. Ebola 50 is too unpredictable. That strain burns fast but I don’t want to risk further mutation and contagion. It could jump continents before it burns out and, as much as it pains me to say it, my vaccine isn’t good enough yet.’

  He would not become the destroyer. He would not let that happen again.

  God would help him. Khan could have helped him.

  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son – not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

  Dear God, I’m sorry.

  ‘You’re right as usual,’ Hackman reluctantly agreed. ‘So you’d use something old – a strain that we’re all immunised against.’

  ‘Correct. If necessary.’

  ‘Of course, we only do what’s necessary. I take no p
leasure in this strategy. I’m a patriot, not a sociopath. We have to maintain our social ecosystem and we can’t do that if their numbers outweigh ours. It’s simple resource management. In fact, it’s just maths.’

  ‘Where did you study maths?’

  ‘Fuck off. It’s too late in your career to become self-righteous, or self-doubting for that matter. Every generation avails itself of the technology of the time – and every generation uses it to protect itself.’

  ‘You mean every generation develops more effective weapons of mass destruction?’

  ‘The Cull and Control Strategy is far more humane than most,’ Hackman replied bluntly.

  ‘It doesn’t bother you that, each time, we move further and further away from the personal cost of what we’re actually doing? Each time the death toll is bigger and our sense of connection with it is smaller.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about gas chambers, Hiroshima, napalm, nuclear weapons, drone warfare – it’s just a computer game, numbers on a spreadsheet, zones on a map.’ He had to stop talking. He’d said too much already. But Hackman could stop this.

  ‘No,’ Hackman replied. ‘It’s natural selection and it’s brutal. Do you know the alternative title of Darwin’s thesis?’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ Neeson rebuked. ‘The Preservation of Favoured Species in the Struggle for Life.’

  ‘Well, we are the favoured species and I don’t mean to lose this struggle. Is your decoy vaccine ready for wider dissemination in the East?’

  ‘It’s ready but I’d like to run a few more test breaches.’

  ‘There’s no need – the four test breaches went well – the scanners didn’t pick up a thing and we’ve tied up all of our loose ends.’

  Loose ends like Hassan Ali. Neeson had chosen him and the other vaxxers because he understood what drove them – he believed in what drove them – but he had used them for Hackman’s plan anyway.

  Neeson had chosen Khan too. He needed Khan for his plan.