The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  He paused, glanced again at Ruth. Her eyes were still closed.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘all we can do is pray that this thing doesn’t get out of hand. They didn’t warn me, Ruth. They didn’t tell me what they expected to happen, and then some accident did happen. I couldn’t quite get just what the accident was, except that it was bad and that they . Oh, fuck it, what difference does it make? All they’ll talk about now is God’s will. Meantime, it’s certainly not going to help to scare people more than they’re scared already.’

  He got up, leaned over to kiss Ruth’s forehead, straightened, stared at her for a moment, kissed her forehead again. ‘I can’t help wondering when Maureen will figure out that it isn’t cholera. Just don’t die on me, huh?’

  55

  SPRINGFIELD: Thursday morning

  ‘Don’t start shouting now,’ David said to Helen. At first her outbursts had puzzled him, then annoyed him, then, well, then they’d come to seem just plain funny; and he wasn’t used to finding himself close to laughter.

  A week ago, the very day that David’s construction crews got Freyl House in condition for Becky to move in, Helen went reluctantly, resentfully to the family doctor. He’d confirmed Quack’s diagnosis of pregnancy. The shouting only increased. Helen was scared of this baby to come. So was David. Parenthood. Seesaw of emotions. Biological fulfilment and at the same time a visceral step towards the edge: no longer the centre of God’s universe. They’d talked about termination. She’d shouted that it was her body and she’d do the deciding; he was only too happy to let her do it. And yet neither had seriously considered the possibility. Neither knew why they hadn’t. Which was even more disconcerting. The one real distraction? Finding something – anything – that Christina Haggarty could use to defeat the Slads before anybody could get to Becky. Or to David. Not that Helen knew anything about their contract on David’s life, although he was edgily aware that the announcement of Aloysia’s death increased the danger for all of them.

  They were living again in Helen’s apartment in Freyl House, where Becky’s beloved conversation pit had spent a couple of days as a pond. Helen’s desk hadn’t survived. Nor had her letters from her father, and that hit her hard. The table she and David sat at really belonged in Becky’s guest suite. The remains of a makeshift breakfast and unfinished cups of coffee shared it with laptops, books, printers, scanners.

  And a pile of printouts.

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ David went on, ‘that nobody cares if unimportant people get sick. Poor people. Old people. Institutionalized people.’

  ‘“Poor people”?’ Sarcasm replaced Helen’s shout. ‘“Nobody cares”? Oh, shit, now you’re turning political on me.’

  He lit a cigarette, took a drag. ‘Suppose you wanted to put pressure on rich people. I figure you might try your methods out first on people nobody cares about.’

  Helen gave him an angry grimace, clattered the plates together as she picked them up, then put them down abruptly and sat down herself. ‘Jimmy. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? How come he knew weeks ago that Springfield Fever isn’t cholera? The entire nation’s expertise took several days ruling it out, and they still have no idea what it really is.’

  ‘Suppose Cawkerville was a trial run, a bunch of old hippies making happy with their weeds. Who cares? Hardly anybody could be as cut off as they are either. Nobody’s even going to know. A second set of tests on prisoners. The hippies get sick in the spring. Inmates at South Hams get sick in the early summer. Late summer and Springfield’s west side—’

  ‘No, no, David,’ she interrupted. ‘It doesn’t make sense. There’s clearly a pattern here, but what’s the point?’

  ‘There’s a connection between Cawkerville and Springfield that might mean something.’ He pushed the coffee cups aside, pulled his laptop over and turned it to face her. ‘You’re looking at the Mahomet Aquifer.’

  David hadn’t thought about what an aquifer might be beyond the old hippy’s description of it as the source of Cawkerville’s underground water, but somebody who runs a prison drug ring – or a McDonald’s franchise – takes a methodical approach to detail. He’d spent many hours on the Net, checking out the telemedicine centre in Gary, the various UCAI-connected insurers that used it, UCAI prisons; he’d found little he didn’t know already and moved onto the hippies themselves, their children, the art of growing marijuana. Aquifers and underground water were just items on the list.

  Everybody knows that wells are holes in the ground with water at the bottom of them. He’d just assumed the water got there from underground lakes and streams that functioned much like lakes and streams on the surface, much like lines from a poem he’d studied for his high school English course: ‘Where Alph the sacred river ran in caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.’

  All wrong.

  Start digging a hole at the beach. The dry sand gets damp, then wet, then saturated. When the hole is deep enough, clear water begins to seep in. A well in the prairies turns out to work like that except that the sand can be clay or almost any other gravelly material, and the water that makes it wet comes from rain, melted snow, riverbeds, prehistoric glaciers, water that’s been sinking into the ground for thousands of years. The gravelly material is the crucial part, and most areas on earth have a layer of it. The layer can be widespread or localized, shallow or deep, close to the surface or inaccessible. The biggest accessible layer in America is the Ogallala that spreads out in a thin sheet under eight Western states. The Mahomet is smaller, but it produces a hundred million gallons of water every day for fifteen counties of Illinois.

  Cawkerville lay right at the southern edge of it.

  David pointed to a line on the map that started at Cawkerville and stretched to Springfield. ‘That’s a water pipe,’ he said. Most people don’t really know where their water comes from, and residents of Springfield tended to assume theirs came exclusively from Lake Springfield even though the utility’s website also listed the South Fork Sangamon River. They were proud of their lake; they’d built it themselves back in 1935 and owned it ever since.

  ‘The Mahomet Aquifer turns out to be another source,’ David said. ‘About ten years ago, a couple of your father’s friends came up with the money-making idea that the west side needed purer water. A lot of city, state and federal cash disappeared under a table, and a Springfield company called Capital Water Plus got rich building this pipeline from the aquifer to the Capitol complex and a good chunk of the west side. The first pumping station is off a spur that serves Cawkerville. Another spur looks to me close to where crews were working on the canal in June and July. A couple of pumping stations just north of here supply Springfield itself.’

  Helen studied the pipeline. ‘UCAI set up Capital Water Plus?’

  ‘UCAI didn’t even exist back then.’

  ‘Do they own it now?’

  ‘It doesn’t exist now.’

  She studied the pipeline, shook her head. ‘I don’t see what difference it makes.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  David picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue. ‘We have a call centre that just happens to supply medical services to both South Hams and Cawkerville. We have the timeline of outbreaks of an unexplained disease that connects South Hams, Cawkerville and Springfield. We have the Mayor of Springfield’s knowledge that the Fever wasn’t cholera well before any of the doctors knew, and we have his mention of some kind of an accident. We also know that Springfield Fever is waterborne and now we find a water pipeline that connects Cawkerville, South Hams and Springfield.’

  This time Helen nodded. ‘We need a lot more connective tissue, don’t we?’

  ‘You get anywhere with the report?’

  Becky had called Helen into her study a few days before.

  ‘He does well,’ Becky said, staring fixedly out at the lawn. Shrubs were going into the borders right at that moment. A few flowers too.

  ‘Who?’

>   ‘I won’t say it again.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re . David? You’re talking about David?’

  Becky looked down at her desk, then up. ‘I’ve received an email attachment for you. It’s very long.’

  ‘Who’s it from? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘I believe it’s from Galleas International.’

  ‘The Incol Report? Is this industrial espionage at work? What’s David got to do with it?’

  Becky had no intention of telling her granddaughter that Galleas had delivered the report not to her but to David and that this was another transaction she’d arranged with him and carefully avoided involving herself in. ‘Helen, are you interested in this message or aren’t you?’

  The long message was indeed a copy of the original Incol Report, kept from the public except for an abstract that made headlines a week ago:

  Terrorists Threaten Entire

  Midwest Water Supply

  The think tank’s secret links to UCAI were enough to make anybody suspicious, but it was the speed of the thing’s appearance that had really got Helen interested in it. She printed out the whole report, spent many hours with searches of the Word document as well as the hard copy, which sat now beside the dirty dishes, Post-its in yellow, green, blue, red, sticking out along its top edge. She pushed David’s laptop out of the way, set the report in its place and opened to the first yellow Post-it.

  ‘What do you think of this?’

  A quick glance showed an equation with multiple layers and lots of letters; David was fast and accurate with accounts and electronic circuits, but anything beyond the most basic algebra made him queasy. ‘I hate that stuff.’

  ‘That’s what they’re counting on, David.’

  He sighed irritably, pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, lit one.

  ‘Equations like this look so terrifying,’ she went on, ‘that they don’t have to mean anything. Suppose a drug company wants to scam Medicare out of millions of dollars? Get an Ivy League university to write a scary-looking equation. Nobody will raise a question. How to make the public believe depression is financial recovery? Same trick – except you use statistics.’ She pointed to a ‘d’ midway down the equation and off to the right-hand side of it. ‘This represents water contamination from broken supply pipes, and a lot of their argument hinges on it.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘You have to jump in and out of footnotes and back and forth between references to see how they arrive at a value for it. And guess what? It comes down to private water’s estimates of public utility efficiency. No facts at all. Just “estimates”.’

  David took the page from her. ‘This “d” here?’

  ‘That’s the one. The Incol Executive hosted a weekend for water companies in Jamaica. They polled the “consultants” who attended.’

  ‘It doesn’t say who they are?’

  ‘Not anywhere in the report. I found details of the conference on the Executive’s website, including everybody who attended. All of them were executives, and nobody outside the private sector was involved.’

  ‘No scientists?’

  ‘No scientists.’

  ‘Show me,’ he said.

  Helen led him through the yellow Post-its to a brief footnote that identified ‘d’ as estimates of ‘consultants’ at a conference in Jamaica a few years ago.

  He leaned back. ‘What a big bad world there is outside prison.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the actual formula,’ she said. ‘Mathematically, it’s fine. Who’s to know that the crucial element in making practical sense of it is down to unqualified people who have a financial stake in making the figure as large as possible? Besides, why should anybody doubt a think tank? Life’s too short. Why not just settle for whatever the experts hand out?’

  He read the footnote again. ‘What about the blue markers?’

  Those dealt with the west side and the Capitol area, where Springfield contamination was at its worst; there was a great deal of detail on water flow, pipe capacity and potential threats from inadequate infrastructure. ‘It fits in with your aquifer,’ she said, ‘at least by default. There’s no mention of the Mahomet. No mention of Cawkerville either, not in connection with water supply or pollution of any kind.’

  ‘South Hams?’

  ‘Not so much as a footnote. Oh, but David, it gets so much weirder than that.’ She started in on the green Post-its. ‘They discuss an “unidentified bacterial agent” as though nobody knew that it caused something called Springfield Fever. Remember Legionnaire’s Disease? People were calling it Legionnaire’s Disease long before they knew what caused it. And then there are only a dozen references to this “unidentified bacterial agent”. A mere dozen references to what’s got to be the most serious epidemic in modern American history, and “unidentified bacterial agent” seems to be the only phrase they use. And yet everybody seems to be saying that it’s a cryptosporidium, not a bacterium at all.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Biologically? I didn’t know – had to check. Cryptosporidium seems to have no more in common with a bacterium than you have with a holly bush. Completely different kingdoms. But it gets better.’ She flipped through the report to a red Post-it. ‘“The threat of epidemic cannot be ruled out,”’ she read. ‘“Long-term epidemiological studies will require intensive analysis at a later stage.”’

  He took the report from her, read over the sentence, looked up at her, frowned. ‘They wrote this report before the epidemic. When the worst that loomed was “threat of an epidemic”.’

  ‘That’s the way I figure it. If Grandma’s summons had captured front pages all over the world – and with the media eye on Springfield, it couldn’t help doing that – UCAI stock would have plummeted. Think of the money they’d lose! They let on about the report long before they were ready simply because they had to keep her summons out of the headlines. Terrorists at our throats is the only thing that would do the job.’

  He set the report down, lit another cigarette, shook his head. ‘Still not enough. Nobody can prove the report is a template for what UCAI advisers thought might happen. Nobody could even begin to prove an unknown “accident” turned it into something far worse. At most, we might tarnish the Incol Executive’s reputation with what they’d dismiss as an unauthorized draft. Even if somehow or other UCAI began to look dirty, some minor executive would take the fall for it.’

  Helen’s shoulders slumped a little. ‘Nothing to touch the guys at the top.’

  ‘Not even near.’

  She pulled her coffee over, took a sip, then almost dropped the cup as she put it down. ‘David! Maybe we’re not looking at this from the right angle. Maybe we should be thinking Nixon, not crime busters.’

  ‘Nixon?’

  ‘Richard Milhous Nixon. “I’m not a crook” Nixon. Brought down by Watergate. It’s the cover-up that brought him down. That’s what he said himself, “It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.”’

  David leaned over and stroked her cheek. ‘Know something? You’re much smarter when you’re not shouting.’

  56

  SPRINGFIELD: The same day lunchtime

  ‘I’m guessing there won’t be a kickback now,’ Ruth said to Jimmy. ‘What do you think?’

  He looked up from his naval orange crème brulée (with candied orange peel and bittersweet hazelnut fudge). ‘What are you talking about?’

  She smiled at him. ‘You know, Jimmy, maybe we should have reserved a private room upstairs. So much better for intimate conversation. Oh, yes, I remember. I’m supposed to call it a “bonus”, aren’t I? Banker’s kickbacks are called bonuses. That’s what makes them legal. But Jimmy, dearest, a mayor’s kickback is just a kickback.’

  They were having lunch at the country club, where the tables were large and well spaced, the chairs upholstered and comfortable. This was Ruth’s first appearance in public, and with Becky’s commitment to get her into law school, she’d decided to enjoy it. T
he ‘raped widow’ was a town celebrity. Springfield’s finest got up to give her hugs and kisses and tell her how brave she was. The club’s only drawback was its floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the golf course. The golf course reminded her of Allan, and the thought of him wiggling his bottom the way golfers do would be quite enough to put her off her food. She’d laid claim to the seat facing away from it.

  But she was under no illusions as to what this lunch was really about; it had nothing to do with cheering up a friend who’s had a hard time. Jimmy wanted to parade the most dramatic of the surviving victims to remind people of his heroic leadership during the crisis. Becky’s summons had hit him harder than Becky herself could have hoped, and he badly needed some favourable press.

  Life in town was returning to normal. People were beginning to reassess what had happened to them. They hadn’t forgotten Jimmy the hero who helped firefighters pump out basements and whose voice had offered hope in the darkest moments. But Jimmy was also the guy who’d promised them water and electricity knowing there wasn’t any, who’d promised them things were looking up when Springfield Fever was spreading everywhere, who couldn’t get food distributed without mercenaries charging extortionate prices for a quart of milk. He was Jimmy the bumbler whose inefficiency had forced them to wait hours for water, buckets in hand like Third World peasants, and Jimmy the dictator who’d given the order to fire rubber bullets into crowds of citizens.

  Jokes about his half-moon glasses weren’t anywhere near enough. Resentments like this need a serious outlet, and nothing could have been better than Becky’s summons. Few residents knew what an ‘environmental impact study’ was but the Chicago Tribune quoted Becky’s legal team – on loan from Galleas International – as saying that the study was a statutory requirement in transferring a public utility into private hands, and he hadn’t carried it out. Cyberspace hummed with cries for revenge. More and more people were joining the Coalition of Concerned Citizens.