Extremes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  DeRicci was going to compare both Zweig and Mayoux’s media writeups if she got any on Mayoux at all. But she didn’t have to.

  There was only one write-up on Mayoux, and it didn’t mention Zweig.

  It mentioned Frieda Tey.

  “Oh, my,” DeRicci said under her breath. She read carefully, chewing on her lower lip as she did so.

  Eve Mayoux’s brother, Duncan Mayoux, died in an experiment run by Frieda Tey. The domed experiment with the weird flu virus that Flint was asking about. The brother had been one of the last to go.

  The only times Eve Mayoux left Armstrong had been to go to court and meet with the other families of the victims.

  Had she seen Jane Zweig and realized she was Frieda Tey? The media report didn’t say if they’d met, at least not directly, but they might have. Or Mayoux would have seen Tey’s face all over the coverage.

  If DeRicci had been Mayoux, she would have memorized Tey’s face, and done everything she could to find her.

  This was the link. DeRicci knew it was. As she had mentioned to Flint, there were too many coincidences here. In fact, she had to contact him. He didn’t have to prove that Zweig was a Disappeared. It was obvious now that she was.

  And that she had killed Eve Mayoux to keep her own cover. But why go to all the trouble to drag the corpse onto the marathon route? Why not just kill Eve Mayoux in the Growing Pits and make it look like an accident? Those things happened. It wouldn’t take too much to make the police overlook an investigation out there.

  The door opened, and van der Ketting came back inside, followed by Landres. Coburn was nowhere to be seen.

  “Just a minute,” DeRicci said. “I think I’ve found something.”

  “I don’t think we have a minute,” van der Ketting said.

  DeRicci looked up at him. His skin was pale. The uni, Landres, didn’t look any better.

  DeRicci felt her own stomach twist. Not something else. She had just found the connection in this case. She didn’t need another problem, a different victim, or anything else to cope with.

  “What is it?” she asked, trying not to match van der Ketting’s panicked tone.

  “We’ve got three dead in the medical tent,” he said.

  “Murdered?” DeRicci asked, feeling cold.

  “Not like you think,” van der Ketting said. “They died of some famous flu.”

  The reason for Flint’s initial contact. DeRicci hadn’t initially believed him. Identifying Disappeareds was hard. Flint had a theory, but no proof.

  “The Tey virus?” DeRicci asked softly.

  “How did you know?” van der Ketting asked.

  “Because I got warning earlier that Jane Zweig might be Frieda Tey.” DeRicci shook her head, the churning in her stomach growing worse. “And now we have proof that she is.”

  THIRTY

  OLIVIARI FINALLY FOUND the diagnostic panel for the decon unit. It was on the back side, squished against a corner. Of course it wasn’t inside the unit. She wasn’t sure what she had been thinking.

  She was woozy and tired, and her throat was sore. Her back ached, and shivers ran through her body. While she was doing this, Tokagawa was contacting the police. He had wanted to wait until he was sure that this virus was something unusual, something that a regular decon unit couldn’t handle.

  The police who could go back and forth into the dome. They would spread the virus if they didn’t know what was going on.

  If the disease spread into the dome, no matter how many decon units were around, hundreds, maybe thousands of people would die.

  Her hand was shaking. She made herself concentrate. Sweat dripped down the side of her face. She wasn’t near the last stage yet. She heard a rumor—or maybe Tokagawa had told her—that two others had died.

  But she wasn’t that ill. Or was she? The man—why couldn’t she remember his name? Had she been told his name?—he was still mobile when she saw him. Although she and Klein had had to carry him toward the back.

  Maybe the man had been woozy for some time.

  She really couldn’t think about it. Not right now.

  She touched the surface of the decon unit’s diagnostic panel, and it lit up. No Access without Authorization, scrolled across the screen.

  She wasn’t looking for access. She was looking for information about the machine itself.

  She pressed her face close to the panel, hoping someone had given the thing voice control as well as touch control.

  “All I need,” she said, “are your specs. I need to know if you’re recommended for Tey’s virus.”

  The No Access without Authorization sign vanished, and instead a blank screen faced her. For a moment, she thought she had failed, until the machine’s specs flashed across the panel.

  The model was fifty years old, and had not been upgraded. She should have expected that. The decon unit was on loan to the marathon—granted, it was the biggest marathon of the year, but it was still a damn sporting event where the risk of contamination was remote. So why give the event a state-of-the-art machine? And why pay state-of-the-art costs?

  The specs vanished, and in their place, another sign appeared:

  The disease you named is not familiar. Perhaps you are using a slang term for the disease. Please use the name given the disease by the medical establishment of Earth Alliance.

  “Crap.” She turned away, staggered into the main area, and saw Tokagawa. He was talking to Klein, who was shaking his head.

  “Well?” Tokagawa asked her.

  “No,” she said. “We need new decon units and we need them now, as many as can get here. Maybe from the space port. Usually they have stationary and mobile units, and theirs’ll be up-to-date, I can guarantee it.”

  “I don’t know how to authorize this,” Tokagawa said.

  “You don’t,” Oliviari said. “You contact the city’s health department, and you get the person in charge. He’ll authorize it. If he doesn’t, you talk to the mayor—and impress on her the importance of all of this. We need something here within the hour, or Armstrong’s biggest tourist attraction will turn into Armstrong’s biggest disaster, ever.”

  Tokagawa stared at her, as if her words were just sinking in. Then he nodded and walked away.

  Klein came over to her. His face was flushed, his eyes too bright. She wondered if hers looked that way as well.

  “Let me give you something to bring down that fever.” Without waiting for her permission, he jabbed something into her arm. The muscles were already so sore that she didn’t really feel what he had done.

  “You don’t look so good yourself,” she said.

  He smiled. “I’ll hold up. For now.”

  “Look,” she said. “If this runs true to form, it’ll hit some of us quicker than others. No one had time to study the virus, at least not while it was working in humans, but the theory is…”

  She paused for a moment, realizing whose theory she was going to quote. She had read so many articles, most of them written by Tey under pen names, trying to justify her own reputation.

  “The theory is,” Klein prompted, apparently thinking Oliviari had forgotten what she had planned to say.

  “The theory is that some people have certain proteins—” Proteins? Was that the right word? Her mind felt fuzzy. “—or maybe it was—I don’t know. Something on the cellular level in abundance, or at least in numbers that appeal to this virus, as opposed to other people who have less of the—whatever. I’m so sorry. I can’t remember the details any more.”

  “I’m sure we can find them,” Klein said.

  She shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. She put a hand on the wall to prop herself up. “Get an assistant over here, someone who isn’t manifesting symptoms.”

  He didn’t say anything, just disappeared into the throng of people. She held herself up by an arm, listening to the coughs, the complaints, the moans around her. One young man was throwing up into a bucket—the smell turned her stomach as well. An older woman sa
t on the edge of one of the beds, arms wrapped around her legs, rocking back and forth.

  Klein came back, a young woman in tow. She was so tiny she looked no older than twelve. But she had lines beside her mouth, and her eyes, which were large and brown, had a wisdom and calmness that only came with age.

  Oliviari wondered how many enhancements the woman had had—then remembered another article. Enhancements weakened the system, making the recipients even more vulnerable than everyone else.

  Although it was too late to warn this woman. It was probably too late for all of them.

  Still, Oliviari had to try. “One of you record this. Make sure the others know you have it.”

  “All right,” the young woman said. She touched a chip on her hand. “I’ve got it.”

  “When the new decon units come in,” Oliviari said, “make sure that everyone goes through them. There’s a specs panel on all of the units. Make sure they’re able to deal with Tey’s virus. You’ve got to triage. You start with the people who have a fever, but no other serious symptoms, and work down to people who have no symptoms at all.”

  “What about the folks with symptoms?” the young woman asked, glancing around at the beds.

  “Sickest last,” Oliviari said. “Tey’s virus has only turned up one place, and it was never tested in a decon unit. But all the things I’ve seen…”

  A wave of dizziness swept through her. She willed herself to continue.

  “…all the things I’ve seen,” she said, “show that it takes a while for these units to kill the virus. If the patient doesn’t have a while, or there’s a lot of infection, they’re going to die anyway. So use the units wisely. Maybe even have someone do the math—how long it takes to go through decon times the number of people here, as compared to how quickly the virus is spreading. You know the drill.”

  The younger woman nodded. Klein’s lips thinned.

  “We’re going to need a place to put people after decon, a place where they won’t get reinfected. You have to find that too.”

  The light-headed feeling returned. Oliviari grabbed a nearby chair and sat in it, forcing herself to take deep breaths and hold them.

  Just a lack of oxygen. She was getting too excited, wasn’t breathing right.

  At least that was what she had to tell herself.

  She had to keep going.

  “You all right?” the woman asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Oliviari lied.

  Another young Med tech hurried over. He looked healthy too, all fresh-faced and energetic. Oliviari envied that. She remembered the feeling. She had had it only a few hours ago.

  “The police want to talk to someone here in the tent,” the tech said. “The detective in charge wants to know what makes this Tey’s virus and not something else.”

  “I got it,” Klein said.

  “No.” Oliviari stood. She felt like she was made of glass. “I’ll go.”

  “You can’t go to them,” Klein said. “They might not have been exposed yet.”

  Oliviari frowned at him. “That’s what you need to find out.”

  He looked confused. “What?”

  “How she infected your Mr.—What was his name? The first victim?”

  “We don’t know,” Klein said. “His singlet was gone, with his environmental suit. We’ll have to reconstruct.”

  Oliviari didn’t care, not really. She waved a hand to silence him. “You have to find that out. He had to have gotten infected inside. Or before he put his suit on. Or there’s contaminant in that suit. You have to find out. If he was infected inside—”

  “Then it might be spreading through the dome. Oh, Jesus,” the woman said. She hurried away, as if she knew what she was looking for.

  “Don’t let her spread panic,” Oliviari said.

  “I won’t.” Klein put a hand on her arm. His hand was cool. She felt as if she were melting. “You’re really sick. Let me take that call.”

  “No,” Oliviari said. “I have to explain in a way they’ll believe. You back up Tokagawa. Make sure he gets those units coming as fast as possible.”

  Klein bent his head toward hers. “Are you sure there are units that can handle this? The study I saw said it was incurable.”

  “It was incurable in the dome situation of the study,” Oliviari said. “But decon units were designed to handle it. Someone tested it on samples of the virus, and got rid of it. It’s just never been tried on people.”

  “Great,” Klein said. “This just gets better and better.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  FIRST, FLINT DOUBLE-CHECKED DeRicci’s information. He hacked into every system he could think of that would contain DNA, and searched for anything under Jane Zweig’s name.

  He found nothing.

  He then checked the groups that opposed DNA identification, to see if Zweig had supported them in the past.

  Again, nothing.

  He checked off-Moon records and, as best he could, examined records from various colonies and countries in Earth Alliance.

  Still nothing.

  Flint stood, stretched, and walked around the office. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and his forefinger. DeRicci needed the information quickly. He might be able to get it quickly if he found the right door.

  He glanced at his own, locked and encoded. It had stored Wagner’s DNA along with other clients’. Not only did it have DNA, but it had fingerprints as well.

  Rabinowitz worked inside WSX, so he wouldn’t have had these kinds of elaborate security systems. If the law firm had them, Flint wouldn’t have been able to hack them, not in the time allowed. And they wouldn’t have given the information to him, since it was against the law.

  But Rabinowitz might have used a handheld system or something even smaller. He might have tried to hack into Extreme Enterprises systems on his own. Even if he didn’t meet Jane Zweig, he would have been able to get a copy of her DNA from a strand of hair or from something she touched.

  If he got close to her at Extreme Enterprises, he could compare her information with Tey’s.

  Flint didn’t believe that Wagner had given him everything of Rabinowitz’s. Rabinowitz probably had some files—even deleted ones—on WSX’s nets. Flint wasn’t going to risk investigating that from his office, and he didn’t want to go to a public link.

  But he would if he had to. First, however, he would see if he could find anything else in the information Wagner had provided.

  Flint scanned, looking for things that bothered him. And the thing that bothered him the most was that Rabinowitz hadn’t made an appointment with Jane Zweig herself.

  Maybe Rabinowitz hadn’t been going for DNA. Maybe all he wanted was a moment alone to slip a bug into the office systems.

  Rabinowitz never claimed great hacking powers. He just might have relied on something that did the work for him, no matter how poor that work was.

  Especially if all he needed was the firm’s security files.

  Flint felt the tiredness leave as he scurried back to his desk. He slipped into his chair, leaned forward, and found the nets that housed Extreme Enterprises. Most places had their security systems keyed to some part of their owner, usually a part that couldn’t be easily obtained and replicated.

  The flaw in the design was simple: there had to be an original scan, kept in the file, so that the system could compare the new scan to it.

  Thieving rings had been using this system for decades. The hacker on the team would break into the system and steal the original scan, usually of a fingerprint. Then a different member of the team would make a mold of the fingerprint and give that mold to the thief. The thief would do the actual breaking in, only he would set off no alarms because the security system would scan the thief as the owner of the fingerprint.

  The detective unit where Flint last worked had the security system keyed to each detective’s palm print, but the system also measured warmth and blood flow, so that it would make certain it was dealing with a living palm as opposed to on
e that had been manufactured—or cut off—for the purpose of entry.

  Extreme Enterprises seemed to have a similar protocol, only it was retinal scans.

  Flint read the instructions, something lost inside the system itself, something that Coburn and Zweig probably didn’t even know existed inside their business’s net. Not only was the door-locking mechanism keyed to their retinal scans, but those scans had to be done five times in the space of a minute. The eye being scanned had to move and blink, and the pupil had to dilate or shrink with the proper amount of light.

  A similar scan bound their financial records, and another the company’s private space yacht. Easier scans existed for the fleet of ships that the company used for tourist travel. The scan codes on those could be easily changed, and thus easily broken.

  Flint didn’t care about those. What he cared about was the internal retinal scan. Retinal scans made for excellent IDs. Anyone who traveled in the known worlds had had retinal scans made.

  Frieda Tey’s retinal scans were on file, along with her DNA and a variety of various prints.

  If Zweig had been Frieda Tey—a Disappeared—then she had been careless or arrogant.

  Of course, she had never gone through an agency, so she hadn’t gotten all of the verbal warnings, the kind that agencies never discussed. One of the main rules of Disappearing was to never let anyone record anything that uniquely identified you—from DNA to fingerprints. A Disappeared wasn’t even to do it for herself, for her own home. A Disappeared had to use some other form of security—which was often a way for Trackers and Retrieval Artists to find Disappeareds: search for the homes with security that were not keyed to personal identification.

  Maybe this was just another case of Tey being smart. Maybe she figured if her actions were counterintuitive to a Disappeareds, no one would catch her. And of course, she had been right.

  It only took Flint a few minutes to find the bug that Rabinowitz had launched into Extreme Enterprise’s security system. Flint followed the bug’s trail into the security system. The trail led right through the firewalls the system’s designers had put in place, all the way to the private information.