April 6: And What Goes Around

by Mackey Chandler

  "Wouldn't the people doing the fighting know what to do and keep at it?" April asked.

  "It's not like our volunteer militia," Jon said. "It's their job. They make their living at it and initiative is not encouraged. Indeed they might be punished for taking action without orders. Especially if they lost people or used up supplies. Anything that didn't go very well could wreck their careers."

  Gunny was nodding his head in agreement. "That's true of most professional military. You cover your butt and do exactly what you are told. Doctrine in most Earth military is to go to a defensive posture in the absence of orders. If it goes badly the brass always try to shift the blame as low down the ranks as it will go. About the only time that doesn't fly is a commander of a ship. Even if he was sleeping in his bunk he's still responsible for what happens to his ship."

  "That doesn't seem fair," April said.

  Gunny shrugged. "If his subordinates screw up that badly to endanger the ship or damage it they figure he didn't train them sufficiently or if they were untrainable he should have removed them."

  "OK, I can see that. But... wow," April said. It seemed harsh.

  "Yes, it's a difficult standard. It's a big responsibility," Gunny said.

  "Look at this," Jon said. "Ernie spoke with Jan over on ISSII. He has a good personal relationship with him and Jan asked this not be made public. Switzerland started closing off roads into the country as well as rail links before dawn this morning. Flights out are OK but no incoming flights. One plane from Brussels refused to divert claiming a fuel emergency and they refueled them on the tarmac without letting anybody off. I'm flagging Jan as a key word for my search.

  "Well that's going to kill their economy," Gunny said. "They must see this as every bit the danger we are considering it or worse. But then they can reasonably seal themselves off. Most other nations won't have that option unless they are an island."

  "Why? Because they're small?" April asked Gunny.

  "Not just that, although it helps. But the mountains limit the number of routes in. They may have to retreat behind some rivers to the north if incursions from Germany become a problem, but we are seeing Italy as the immediate source of this epidemic. The Alps really limit travel from that side."

  "That's what I read some people did back in 1918 to avoid that flu," April said.

  "Yes, you mentioned that yesterday, but it's much harder to do today. Besides air travel they didn't have back then most areas have a lot more roads, and places that were serviced by the railroads have switched to roads too. Come to think about it, small motor boats were uncommon then too." Jon said.

  "My guys have been using commercial satellite feeds quite a bit," Gunny said. "They report that a number of hospitals in Europe and North America have put tents or trailers in front of their emergency room entrances. They've done that before when there have been various kinds of epidemics, not just flu. Otherwise you have a waiting room full of people being exposed to infectious agents when they are there for simple everyday stuff. And the hot infectious patients can be diverted to isolation so everybody in the ER doesn't have to wear isolation gear. OK, they are seeing this in Australia too."

  "But nothing on a regular news program?" April said.

  "No, they're pretty useless," Gunny said. "But I think we can say there is something nasty loose."

  "Oh wow, look at this," Jon said. "This was flagged urgent. It's from Eddie again. A TV preacher just blew the whole thing wide open."

  Jeremiah Fogley's "Dance Before The Lord" show claims God's scourge on the ungodly, said the header. Jon went right to the video. An impossibly thin man in a tight suit leaned forward over a lectern stabbing at his audience with his index finger.

  "Have I told you about the abomination that is altering God's handiwork?"

  There was a swell of voices from the crowd. Not any clear word, but a growl.

  "The Good Book says a man's days amount to seventy years or eighty if he is mighty," flexing his thin arms as if he were a body-builder. "But these modern men know better," he said, sneering. "They would undo these set limits just as they have opposed every other godly thing. It's no surprise such a thing would start with Europe. The Old World is proud to brand themselves secular as if holiness is a curse. They are trying to cover it up, but God's judgment is come upon those who would buy life itself like they do a fancy house or big yacht."

  When he gestured wildly the crowd roared and he pivoted away from the lectern and did a wild dance in a circle, coming back to talk to them again. The crowd loved it.

  "I guess that's the dancing before the Lord part," Jon said, amazed.

  "The list of sinners struck down by this new pestilence is too big to hide, brothers and sisters! All those movie stars who teach your children to be immoral. All those politicians who are nothing but crooks in fancy suits. All those money grubbing businessmen who worship the dollar instead of God! They all thought they were buying life. But do you know what they got, brothers?" He held up his palm to forestall an answer. "Do you know what they bought, sisters?" The audience was held silent by his hand.

  "Death!" He answered sweeping his hand down dramatically. A single digit pointing the path to damnation for them. While the crowd showed their approval he took another gyrating tour of the backstage, freezing dramatically at the end.

  "You see what this Life Extension Therapy gains them? You can't cheat God! Not for long. Yes there are those who have not embraced this abomination who get sick. We've always had common flu, it sickens the godly and the ungodly alike, and sometimes by God's grace we recover, and sometimes the Lord calls us home. But not like this. This season it cuts down the sinners like wheat," he said, sweeping his hand like a using a scythe, something few in his audience had ever seen but still understood. That lead to another circuit dance repeating the motion over and over like he was harvesting the stage.

  "And do you know where the stronghold of this filth is? The place with the most people who have sought out this perversion? That place they dare call Home," he said, stabbing that finger again but at the sky. "As if God did not give man a proper home. They forsook God's Good Earth and his limits on life. Just like the angels who forsook their proper place this will be the end of Home. They live high on the hog up there in the sky, all of them, not just Home. But do you think they have farms and fields up there?" he asked, and paused. The crowd laughed.

  "Can't you just see the high and mighty hoeing a line of beans? No they live high on the best of the Earth you or I will never see." He was thin enough to get away with saying that. "But the plague will get to them just like every corner of the Earth and clean out that foul nest," he promised.

  The crowd hooted their approval.

  "That's about all of that I can take," Jon said, muting the sound. The preacher was silently doing another dance. "By your leave?" he asked, and got a wave off from both of them to close the video.

  "But how many people watch this... thing?" April asked.

  "He has about a half million who actually belong to his church," Gunny said. "Most of them tune in rather than attend. The church only holds about four thousand. But if the other programming is boring he may get two million viewers because he's regarded as 'entertaining'."

  "So it will get around?" April asked.

  "Oh yes," Gunny assured her. "He's good for a thirty second spot on the regular news when he is in rare form, and overseas they love to feature him as if this is what North America is all about. The late night talk shows and entertainment blogs will make at least a passing remark about it. They make fun of him but it's still public exposure. He's a cultural icon."

  "A couple winks in my spex and I could put a half dozen rods through his roof," April said.

  "And kill three or four thousand useful idiots?" Gunny asked. "Don't be silly. You'd make him a martyr."

  "I wouldn't do it. But it's entertaining to imagine doing it," April said.

  "I'm glad you have to actually blink." Jon said. "If you could just think ab
out it, well, you might have an accident."

  "Oh yeah, I'd never hook a weapon up to a mind reader," April agreed, using the slang term for a trainable brain imagining scanner. She never used one. Having a file exist that modeled how she thought seemed like a bad idea. If that got hacked it told people entirely too much about you. The severely handicapped might have to use them to function but that was different.

  "Here comes the wave of secondary reports on the preacher," Jon said. "I have him in my search tree now." All three of them had a flurry of responses. Blogs, twenty-four hour newscasts and government denials there was anything different about this flu. It was just a bit early and hadn't even been positively typed yet according to the North American spox.

  "Well that's the clincher," Jon said. "When it's officially denied you know it's true."

  "I take it the Larkin Line pilots were OK since you didn't contact us?" April asked.

  "Yeah, they were fine. The only trouble is now that they are aware of this flu they don't want to go back to LEO and expose themselves. Both have gotten Life Extension Therapy. Last I heard they were negotiating with old man Larkin to run the shuttle but not leave the cabin when they pick up freight. You can imagine what a pain that would be for him," Jon said.

  "He already has agents for warehousing and local pick-up and paper shuffling doesn't he? Why not have them directly supervise loading too?" April asked.

  "Because most of them are Home citizens and have LET themselves. If this gets as bad as it seems is possible I expect them to retreat to Home too. In fact, compounding everything else that will be a problem, we can figure on a sudden influx of Home citizens in LEO coming back here for safety."

  "The other habs under Earth law about LET have enough untreated people Larkin should be able to hire dock workers," Gunny said. "Although it may cost a bit. There isn't any place off Earth with excess workers to hire."

  "And we have yet to see if this strain of flu only hits those with LET or if it infects completely natural people too, and how hard," April said.

  "Ah, I think I have your answer to that," Jon said. "Let me scroll back a bit. Here, 'Elementary schools in Rome and several adjoining regions suspended classes this morning on short notice. Notifying parents with messages left before dawn in many cases. Several middle schools are also closed while others remain open.'"

  "So, it does transmit to folks without altered genes," April said. "Now we need to know how bad it is for them because it looks like it is very rough on the gene mod people."

  "That will take awhile to know." Gunny thought awhile, the look of concentration on his face keeping Jon and April silent. "I'll have my people with Earth contacts observe funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals directly. They can position cameras to see the loading docks and some will be visible by satellite. Enough to get a good statistical sample for sure. We'll know way ahead of any honest release of statistics by the governments."

  "Send the feed to Jeff," April suggested. "He has people on contract to do data analysis in Asia."

  "Thanks, that would be stretching my guy's resources."

  "I have to set up quarantine procedures and inform the shuttle services nobody should board for Home unless they are willing to be put in isolation if they test positive. Where that's going to be I have no idea. It's not like we have all this vacant cubic," Jon said, rubbing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. April had a sudden suspicion.

  "Jon, did you eat before you got here?"

  "No, I was sort of fixated on saving our little world."

  "Eat," April commanded, tossing him a sandwich. "You can't save much on an empty stomach."

  Chapter 8

  "Oh my God it's a rout." It took about two hours for the wave of stories about the epidemic to hit the financial markets. April had never seen anything like it in her short life. There had been a correction of sorts when Home declared independence, but mostly in space stocks. A bigger correction had occurred and was in still in recovery from when China devolved into civil war.

  This was different. It was so overwhelming. She watched it progressing for awhile before she remembered she still had a little bit of funds in equities of her own and some she'd inherited. She entered an open order for everything to be sold. If she got enough for a burger and fries she'd be lucky. A couple of the smaller exchanges were locked down for the day already.

  There was too much to follow really. She put market reports on the com console screen and intelligence reports and epidemic related news on the big screen. When something really outrageous came up they'd call out to each other. After another hour or so Gunny declared he was burned out and relinquished his third of the screen. Jon took it because he was both juggling orders to his security people and trying to keep up with what was happening.

  "Just so you both know, Dr. Lee has set up an isolation ward for four people docked on the outside right by the north dock. Anyone who tests positive for a flu virus can be moved to this isolation shelter before they ever come through the bearing into spin or down an elevator," Jon said. "It's a fuel tank converted to a mini-clinic with a separate ship environmental suite maintaining it. There will be a vacuum gap between the airlock in the shelter and the one on the hub."

  "Jon, folks from other habitats it won't matter, but most Earthies don't take drugs to tolerate zero G. They don't plan on being weightless traveling long enough to matter."

  "Doc Lee mentioned that," Jon said. "Even if infected most of them will not be in isolation long enough for that to be a big issue. They'll be over the flu and test clean in a couple weeks or they can start the drugs."

  "Or they'll be dead," Gunny grumbled.

  "I told Lee to talk to your friend Ames," Jon said. "That project is pretty much in their hands now and I'm working on other stuff."

  "What? Enforcing a quarantine if we do have infected come here?" April asked.

  "That's pretty easy. I'm talking with your dad and trying to make sure we keep getting supplies lifted. I'm expecting the handful of our own people on Tonga to lift before it gets there. They'd be foolish not to. We'll need purchasing agents. Your dad is trying to get Mitsubishi to send some people to Tonga to ensure our supply for food and basic parts and stuff to keep the hab itself running. That doesn't help the ship builders and fabricators. People like Zack who sell private merchandise or businesses like your nightclub will have to fend for themselves," he noted to April.

  "You don't think our old suppliers will keep shipping to us?" April asked.

  "This is the worst crash in a century. The world economy is so huge it looks like it is happening in slow motion, but it has momentum. It will go down for weeks, maybe months, before it stabilizes. But when it hits bottom a lot of the companies we dealt with won't exist anymore. The first order of business is to grab what is in the supply system while it is available," Jon said.

  "You seem to know a lot about economics for a security guy," April said.

  "This isn't even economics, it's just plain business, short term and practical, not theoretical. We have no idea who won't be able to resupply us because they don't have cash and can't get credit a week or a month from now. The people they have contracts with for raw materials or transport may not exist. Whoever is functioning and can offer service or supply may be servicing their old customers first and any new customers they are willing to pick up may find the price is much higher. It may take awhile for it to all sort out so new lines of supply are created," Jon said.

  "What are you guys buying?" Gunny asked before April could.

  "Swimming pool chlorine because it is the cheapest bulk form to make disinfectant solution, gloves and respirator filters. The surgical gloves were already being rationed by dealers by the time we called and the price jacked up. April's dad was smart enough to buy up mechanic's and painter's gloves that are probably a bit harder to cut or puncture anyway. All the other usual medical supplies. Food of course. Just about anything that will lift. Now is not the time to be fussy about demanding freeze dri
ed and low weight packaging," Jon said.

  "I'm telling my guys to lay in what they can afford to," Gunny said. "We may be asked to do security work where we have to be concerned about infection."

  "You haven't had Life Extension Therapy though," April, pointed out.

  "No, "Gunny agreed, "but the flu is no fun, even the normal strains for us unaltered people."

  "You raise an interesting point," Jon said. The change in his tone caught their attention. "I haven't discussed it with April's dad, but if we need some people to go down to Tonga and expedite purchasing and see that it is loaded safety, it seems your security associates would be the perfect team for the job. Have any of them started LET?"

  "Not to my knowledge. I doubt any of them have had the funds. We all arrived fairly recently and our sort of work dropped off when we moved out of LEO. I'll ask if any of them have a problem with Tonga. Chen of course can't go to Chinese territory, and the rest of us need to avoid the USNA, but I've been to Tonga and wouldn't have any trouble taking an assignment there at all," Gunny said.

  "You're stealing my bodyguard?" April asked. She didn't like that at all.

  "You walk around without him half the time now that we're at L2. If we're quarantined how much less danger from outside Home? And if this... " Jon said waving at the screens, "is as bad as I think it will be, then there won't be much business travel bringing in outsiders either. Also, it looks like they will be at much less risk on an Earth mission than if we sent gene modified people. I'll see you have an escort if you want one should Gunny need to go down to Earth for us."

  April still looked pretty unhappy with him. She wasn't very good at masking her feelings. "I trust Gunny. He's sudden death in both hands and smart as hell."

  Jon took a deep breath looking at the overhead. He looked back down and forced an unnatural smile. That was scary. "I had thought to send Margaret or Theo with you, but if you have a situation where you really feel in danger I'll guard you myself. By then this rush will be over and it may actually be slow if there is less traffic in and out. I can follow things on my pad or phone for a few hours if you need me."