‘Huh. How long until we land?’
‘Six minutes.’
‘Fridgy. I’ll go get the Citizens into hazmat gear. Abigail, you should come put a suit on. We don’t want to risk you getting infected if we can avoid it.’
Abigail struggled to her feet, clinging to the back of the chair. ‘What about you?’
‘No need to worry about us,’ Aneka said. ‘We’re aliens, remember?’
‘Aliens don’t get sick?’
‘These aliens don’t,’ Ella replied.
Aneka spotted the road into Matlock a few minutes later and then the gorge the town sat in. It was vaguely Y-shaped, sitting at the junction of three roads at the bend in a river, and there was a large, flat area in the middle of it which they had referred to as the town’s square when they were there before. As Aneka dropped toward it, she cut the main engines and coasted in on thrusters, setting the shuttle down with barely a sound. Still, by the time they were exiting through one of the airlocks a small crowd had formed on the edge of the square and Linden was limping toward them on his cane.
He went straight for Ella, apparently a little confused by her mode of dress, but recognising her and assuming she was in charge. ‘Citizen! You should get back in your, uh, flying machine. It’s not safe. We…’
‘I’m not a Citizen, Reeve Linden,’ Ella said, ‘but these two are, and they’re here to help. And we brought Abigail back, if you can recognise her through the suit.’
‘Not a…’
‘Your daughter can explain later,’ Aneka said. ‘Right now we need to get working on a cure for this plague of yours.’ She looked around at one of the suited figures. ‘Doctor Kaffrey?’
‘Yes, uh, of course,’ the man said, his voice distorted by the speaker on his suit. ‘I’ll need blood samples from the infected, and if I could speak to your town’s doctor?’
Linden’s face clouded. ‘Unfortunately, you can do that while collecting the samples. Joshua fell sick last night.’
Marsden spoke up, apparently starting to take her new job seriously. ‘In that case we have no time to lose. Kaffrey, I’m sure Miss Narrows will help you with the blood work. Reeve Linden, I’m Councillor Holly Marsden. I’ve been put in charge of making the cities more open with the surface and now seems like a good time to begin. I think we should discuss what we’re going to do here.’
Linden’s eyes widened; Councillors did not come out to surface towns. ‘Of course, Councillor. Please come with me.’ He turned and started off in the direction of his home.
‘Ella, will you be okay with Kaffrey?’ Aneka asked.
‘Sure, if we can borrow Abigail to get us to the doctor’s place.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Abigail replied.
‘Right,’ Aneka said. ‘I’m going to make sure things go smoothly between those two.’ And with that she hurried off after Marsden and Linden. She had the feeling that they were both going to be a little wary of the new openness which had suddenly been thrust upon them.
Matlock.
Abigail sat on one of the shuttle’s laboratory chairs keeping out of the way while she watched Ella work. There were a dozen samples to be put into small tubes and then run through the genetic sequencing and analysis machine set against one of the walls. It was made somewhat more difficult by the need to work in a glove box, but Ella worked quickly and silently; she had seen what the disease was doing to its victims and she wanted it dealt with.
‘What is it you’re doing?’ Abigail asked once each sample tube had been carefully set into a slot in a rack attached to the side of the machine.
‘Well, this machine will squeeze out the DNA in the samples,’ Ella replied, ‘and then use something called PCR to make more of it. Then it’ll section up the DNA it finds, take away the Human parts, and from what’s left work out what the bug everyone’s infected with is.’
‘DNA?’
‘Deoxyribonucleic acid. You’ve never heard of that?’
‘No. Should I have?’
Ella hit the start button on the analyser and then looked around toward Kaffrey who was waiting for the results. ‘Kids in the first few years of school back where I come from have heard of DNA, even if they don’t know much about it.’
The scientist gave a shrug. ‘To what end? How does it help them do what they’re meant to do?’
‘They’re six. They don’t know what they want to do.’
‘Want to do?’ Kaffrey looked a little confused. ‘Up here they farm or mine. I was training to be an epidemiologist from the age of ten. I always knew what I was going to do. I’m sure Abigail was the same. Her mother taught her to care for visitors in the guest houses from a young age.’
Ella looked at Abigail and got a nod of agreement. ‘Oh,’ Ella said. ‘Well, we should have results in about a minute.’
The airlock hissed open and Aneka and Marsden appeared, the latter starting to remove her helmet as soon as she had space to do so. ‘Did I hear you say results?’ Aneka asked.
‘Soon,’ Ella replied. ‘We got the samples. I just put them into the machine.’
‘What about the patients?’
‘It’s not good,’ Kaffrey replied. ‘We’re going to lose more of them before we can get a cure replicated. I’ve given them doses of the best general antibiotics we have, but…’
Aneka frowned and nodded. ‘We’re sure it’s plague?’
Kaffrey nodded. ‘It is, but it’s the most vicious strain I’ve ever come across. It seems to spread rapidly through the system and then cross into the lungs from the bloodstream. Once that happens it’s going to kill the subject in two days at the best. The lungs fill with fluids and they start choking… It isn’t a nice way to die.’
The analyser chimed, its screen lighting up with data displays. ‘Well,’ Ella said, ‘let’s see if we can come up with a way to avoid too many more deaths.’
~~~
Abigail was looking uncomfortable as she walked into the cockpit of the shuttle. She fidgeted a little and then sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, frowning.
‘Something wrong?’ Aneka asked.
‘No, nothing.’ Aneka waited for a few seconds and then Abigail said, ‘Well, Doctor Kaffrey and Councillor Marsden have retired for the night, and Ella says I should too because there’s nothing we can do until the medical truck arrives tomorrow.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And Doctor Kaffrey just undressed and lay down like I wasn’t there, and so did Councillor Marsden, and I don’t have a nightdress, and it wouldn’t be proper. What if Doctor Kaffrey wants… well, companionship…?’
Aneka managed to suppress most of the grin. ‘Have you ever had a Citizen want companionship before?’
‘Uh, well, no. Their guards… I’ve had to entertain them.’ She said it with some distaste.
‘Huh. Well the closest thing there is around here to a guard is me and I’m not going to ask you. Citizens… Let’s just say that they have other methods of fulfilling their needs. You’re quite safe. Leave your shirt on if being naked makes you uncomfortable.’
Abigail blushed; it was rather pretty. ‘I, um, hadn’t thought of that. You don’t mind if I undress here, do you?’
‘You’ve seen me stark naked, girl, why would I mind?’
The blush got deeper. Abigail had displayed something of a fixation with both Aneka’s and Ella’s breasts. Aneka figured that cosmetic enhancements were not something you saw a lot of on Old Earth since the girl seemed rather uncomfortable with the idea of girl-girl sex. She did, however, get up and start taking her clothes off; her jeans anyway and then, with a bit of manipulation, her bra was pulled out from beneath her shirt. Leaving her shirt and panties on, she headed back to lie down on one of the bunks.
Ella came through a minute or so later, grinning. ‘Abigail’s cute when she blushes.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Got good legs too. She should wear skirts more often.’
‘Leave her be. She’s uncomfortable enough about thi
s.’
Ella pouted, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything with her. I’ve got work to keep my mind off… well, my crotch.’ Her face straightened and she bent forward, lowering her voice. ‘This strain of Y. pestis, it’s… I think it was engineered.’
Aneka frowned and turned her seat toward Ella. ‘Someone did this on purpose?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think so. There’s something else. When Kaffrey saw the gene sequence he looked really uncomfortable. Like he recognised it and didn’t like it.’
‘Whatever it is, it came from the city.’ Ella nodded and there was a moment’s silence. ‘Logistically, it had to have been sent out before I killed Yrimtan.’
Ella nodded again. ‘Given time for infection and then the incubation period, and then time for the first obvious symptoms to show up. Yes, but why?’
‘Same reason she was going to kill Gillian and Bash,’ Aneka growled. ‘And why she killed the medics who worked on you. She was making sure that no one who knew about us, about me, was going to tell about it.’
15th August.
Something that looked like a big, armoured bus rolled into the square just after dawn. Kaffrey and Marsden were already up and wearing their suits, and they headed out through the shuttle’s airlock immediately.
Aneka headed back to the bunk room where Abigail was just waking, disturbed by the exit of the two Citizens. Settling at the foot of Abigail’s bunk, Aneka watched as the young girl rubbed her eyes and tried to persuade her brain to function.
‘Abigail, the first people to come down with the plague? Did they have anything in common?’
‘Uh… Well, Missus Cooper was the first to die. Her son was sick and there’s not much in common there. She was pretty old and stayed at home, mostly. The only time she’d go out was to take him his lunch…’ Abigail’s eyes narrowed. ‘Thinking about it, most of the first cases were people with flocks up on the west side.’
Aneka nodded. ‘All right. We’ll get you in a suit. The medics will need your help treating the current victims as soon as they’ve got the cure ready. I’m going to take Ella up to the western pastures and see if we can find a source for this plague.’
‘Be careful up there. With the disease people haven’t been tending their flocks. The ogres are bound to have noticed and they’ll be more bold.’
‘Aneka can handle a few ogres,’ Ella said as she walked up from the back carrying two mugs. ‘Here, try this. It’s coffee. Should help you wake up, especially if you’re not used to it.’
Abigail took the mug and looked at the dark brown liquid uncertainly. She took a sip, swallowed, and then wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s, um, different.’
‘An acquired taste, perhaps,’ Aneka said, taking her own mug from Ella and then downing a huge gulp. She sighed. ‘I’ve definitely acquired it.’
~~~
They had spotted half a dozen dead sheep by the time they had managed to walk through to the section of fields which they had been in before with David, Mark, and Marie. Aneka was quietly fuming.
‘It’s not just that they’ve lost animals and it’s my fault. The fucking monsters are killing things and then just leaving them here to rot!’ Aneka knelt beside the latest dead animal and examined the matted fur over its eyes. It had been killed recently, a sharp object rammed through the top of its skull. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered. ‘I hope they are out in the light. I’ll put a few holes in their skulls.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Ella countered. ‘Assuming there’s proof that Yrimtan did this, it still wouldn’t be your fault. She’s the one who tried to kill everyone. You couldn’t have known she’d try to do that either because we didn’t know she was alive when we came here.’
Aneka straightened up and stalked off across the field. ‘I’m feeling guilty, don’t bug me with facts.’
Ella giggled. ‘It’s really not your fault, love. There’s no way… Hey, fuck! Something bit me!’
‘We’re in a sheep field, Ella. There’s probably all sorts of things up here that bite… And bubonic plague uses fleas as a vector, right?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Ella replied, and then she bent over at the hips as though she was trying to fold herself in half. She got most of her flexibility from her mother, though Janna practised more and so was better at it. ‘This,’ Ella said, ‘is not a normal flea bite.’
Dropping down beside her, Aneka found the red mark on Ella’s calf soon enough. ‘It looks like a bite…’
‘You have telescopic focus, but not microscopic,’ Ella replied. ‘The wound is too perfect. That’s an injection mark.’
‘And I am detecting a low-powered, distributed node network operating around us,’ Al added. ‘I’m attempting to isolate a central location.’
‘Al says he’s detecting…’ Aneka began and then slapped her hand down on her thigh with a resounding smack.
Ella blinked. ‘If we’re going to do that, I’d like to be the spankee.’
Aneka lifted her hand away from her leg carefully, peering at the black smudge on the heel of her hand. ‘Maybe later, for now you can use your superior vision on this.’
Ella peered at the smudge. ‘It’s… Well it was a microbot. Some sort of fake flea. Long propelling legs and a drill bit for a snout. No sign of any external power source so I’m guessing there’s a hive somewhere where it could recharge. There’s probably more of them.’
‘There is a higher concentration of signals coming from the other side of the wall,’ Al said, and Aneka brushed the robot remains off her hand and vaulted the pile of stones which passed for a dividing line between the fields.
‘Here,’ she said almost immediately. There was a metal cylinder lying beside the stones; a rocket payload of some description from the look of it. She could even see a couple of tiny, black dots on the lip of the port in the side of the thing.
Ella leaned over the wall and looked down. ‘The question is, is that the only one?’
‘The question is, can we close them down and stop them infecting people again?’
‘I can kill this one,’ Al supplied. ‘I have already hacked their command system. It is based on the city network. The transmitter in the shuttle should be capable of blanketing the entire area and taking care of any others.’
‘Al thinks he can close them all down from the shuttle,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘Let’s get out of here. Just the thought of those things is making me itch.’
Ella winced. ‘Your skin’s fake. Try being me.’
Aneka hopped back over the wall and gave Ella a pat on the bottom to get her moving. ‘I’m not sure I could cope with being you, love. I’m sure if I thought about sex that much my head would explode.’
‘Hey! I don’t think about it that much… Well… Normally I don’t.’
~~~
‘We lost three more overnight,’ Kaffrey said. The man looked tired, but rather satisfied despite that statement. ‘However, the remaining victims are beginning to recover and we’re ready to start inoculations tomorrow to make sure no one else gets it. I’ve asked for some volunteers and I’ve got four medi-techs willing to stay up here for a couple of weeks to make sure there are no problems with recovery.’
Aneka nodded. ‘That’s good. And since Abigail isn’t here I can add that Ella and I located the distribution missiles, hacked the microbot controllers, deactivated them, and got rid of the evidence. So there’s no danger of future infection and, I want to make this quite clear, no one gets to know where this bug came from. Ever! Understood?’
Kaffrey went paler than usual and Marsden’s eyes widened. ‘How did you know?’ the Councillor asked.
‘You people have more advanced technology than we do,’ Ella replied, ‘but not advanced enough that we can’t figure out what’s what. And you also have worse poker faces than I do. When we realised the bug had been engineered, and I’m good enough at biology to figure that out, even if the computer isn’t, we went out and looked for the vector.’
‘Point is,’ Aneka said, ‘this was Manu Dei’s doing. You people are the new guard. I won’t have this messing up your chances of working with the people up here. So this was a terrible natural event, a mutation of the bacterium, just like the many others that have occurred down the centuries. It was not created in a lab in Prime City and deployed by an insane, isolationist, control freak.’
Marsden looked over at Kaffrey. Both of them looked a little surprised. ‘We were trying to keep it a secret,’ Kaffrey said. ‘I mean, we thought you’d want to…’
‘Blow up the best chance we have of seeing a stable political system here over the idiocy of one woman?’ Aneka suggested.
‘Well, when you put it like that…’
Aneka smiled, though the expression came nowhere near her eyes which contained a bright spark of sarcasm. ‘Excellent! We’re all on the same page. We’ve established that you lot aren’t going to bullshit us because we are just as smart as you are, and also that you can work with us to get this relationship going.’
‘Okay,’ Marsden said. ‘I guess we can live with that. What’s the plan from here?’
‘Ella and I are going to stay here for a while. In fact, your nursing staff can sleep on the shuttle if they want. They’ll feel less like they’re slumming.’
‘They’d probably appreciate that,’ Kaffrey agreed.
‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied, ‘and it should stop the locals seeing your people plugging in their euphoria slugs. We’ll go stay in one of the guest houses. It’ll be nice to sleep in a real bed, and they have pretty good tea.’
Marsden looked at her, eyes widening a little. ‘You never said anything about them having tea here. I haven’t had tea since my last field trip!’
Ella giggled and Aneka burst out laughing. ‘I’m sure Abigail will make a pot before you leave,’ Aneka said.
17th August.
The Sunday gathering in the square was more subdued than usual, in a way. There were fewer people there since many were still recovering from the effects of the disease, but the ones who had come were partying a little harder. There was more alcohol being consumed and the band was playing faster dance tunes. Aneka had hoped that Abigail would sing for them, but no one seemed inclined to sit still for their entertainment.
The Winter War Page 3
