Diplomatic Immunity b-13

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Miles stepped up to one of the pod's round plastic ports and peered through.

  Bel sat inside, cross-legged, stark naked. The herm's lips were parted, and its eyes glazed and distant. So still was that form, Miles feared he was looking at death already, but then Bel's chest rose and fell, breasts trembling with the shivers racking its body. On the blank face a fevered flush bloomed and faded.

  No, God, no! Miles lunged for the pod's seal, but his hand stopped and fell back, clenching so hard his nails bit into his palm like knives. No . . .

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Step One. Seal the biocontaminated area.

  Had the entry lock been closed behind them when their party entered the Idris ? Yes. Had anyone opened it since?

  Miles raised his wrist com to his lips and spoke Venn's contact code. Roic stepped closer to the bod pod, but stopped at Miles's upflung hand; he ducked his head and peered past Miles's shoulder, and his eyes widened.

  The few seconds of delay while the wrist com's search program located Venn seemed to flow by like cold oil. Finally, the crew chief's edgy voice: “Venn here. What now, Lord Vorkosigan?”

  “We've found Portmaster Thorne. Trapped in a bod pod in the engineering section. The herm appears dazed and very ill. I believe we have an urgent biocontamination emergency here, at least Class Three and possibly as bad as Class Five.” The most extreme level, biowarfare plague. “Where are you all now?”

  “In the Number Two freight nacelle. The sealer and the adjudicator are with me.”

  “No one has attempted to leave or enter the ship since we boarded? You didn't go out for any reason?”

  “No.”

  “You understand the necessity for keeping it that way till we know what the devil we're dealing with?”

  “What, do you think I'd be insane enough to carry some hell-plague back ontomy own station ?”

  Check. “Very good, Crew Chief. I see we are of one mind in this.” Step Two. Alert the medical authority in your district. To each their own. “I'm going to report this to Admiral Vorpatril and request medical assistance. I presume Graf Station has its own emergency protocols.”

  “Just as soon as you get off my com link.”

  “Right. At the earliest feasible moment, I also intend to break the tube seals and move the ship a little way out of its docking cradle, just to be sure. If you or the Sealer would warn station traffic control, plus clear whatever shuttle Vorpatril sends, that would be most helpful. Meanwhile—I strongly urge you seal the locks between your nacelle and this central section until . . . until we know more. Find the nacelle's atmosphere controls and put yourselves on internal circulation, if you can. I haven't . . . quite figured out what to do about this damned bod pod yet. Nai—Vorkosigan out.”

  He cut the com and stared in anguish at the thin wall between him and Bel. How good a biocontamination barrier was a sealed bod pod's skin? Probably quite good, for something not purpose-built for the task. A new and horrible idea of just where to look for Solian, or rather, whatever organic smear of the lieutenant might now remain, presented itself inescapably to Miles's imagination.

  With that jump of deduction came new hope and new terror. Solian had been disposed of weeks ago, probably aboard this very vessel, at a time when passengers and crew had been moving freely between the station and the ship. No plague had broken out yet. If Solian had been dissolved by the same nightmare method Gupta testified had claimed his shipmates, inside a bod pod, which was then folded and set out of the way . . . leaving Bel in the pod with the seals unbroken might make everyone perfectly safe.

  Everyone, of course, except Bel. . . .

  It was unclear if the incubation or latency period of the infection was adjustable, although what Miles was seeing now suggested it was. Six days for Gupta and his friends. Six hours for Bel? But the disease or poison or bio-molecular device, whatever it was, had killed the Jacksonians quickly once it became active, in just a few hours. How long did Bel have until intervention became futile? Before the herm's brains began turning to some bubbling gray slime along with its body . . . ? Hours, minutes, too late already? And what intervention could help?

  Gupta survived this. Therefore, survival is possible. His mind dug into that historical fact like pitons into a rock face. Hang on and climb, boy.

  He held his wrist com to his lips and called up the emergency channel to Admiral Vorpatril.

  Vorpatril responded almost immediately. “Lord Vorkosigan? The medical squad you requested reached the quaddie station a few minutes ago. They should be reporting in to you there momentarily to assist with the examination of your prisoner. Haven't they presented themselves yet?”

  “They may have, but I'm now aboard the Idris , along with Armsman Roic. And, unfortunately, Sealer Greenlaw, Adjudicator Leutwyn, and Chief Venn. We've ordered the ship sealed. We appear to have a biocontamination incident aboard.” He repeated the description of Bel he'd given Venn, with a few more details.

  Vorpatril swore. “Shall I send a personnel pod to take you off, my lord?”

  “Absolutely not. If there's anything contagious loose in here—which, while not certain, is not yet ruled out—it's um . . . already too late.”

  “I'll divert my medical squad to you at once.”

  “Not all of them, dammit. I want some of our people in with the quaddies, working on Gupta. It is of the highest urgency to find out why he survived. Since we may be stuck in here for a while, don't tie up more men than required. But do send me bright ones. In Level Five biotainer suits. You can send any equipment they want aboard with them, but nothing and no one goes back off this ship till this thing is locked down.” Or until the plague took them all . . . Miles had a vision of the Idris towed away from the station and abandoned, the untouchable final tomb of all aboard. A damned expensive sepulchre, there was that consolation. He had faced death before and, once at least, lost, but the lonely ugliness of this one shook him badly. There would be no cheating with cryochambers this time, he suspected. Not for the last victims to go, certainly. “Volunteers only, you understand me, Admiral?”

  “That I do,” said Vorpatril grimly. “I'm on it, my Lord Auditor.”

  “Good. Vorkosigan out.”

  How much time did Bel have? Half an hour? Two hours? How much time would it take Vorpatril to muster his new set of medical volunteers and all their complex cargo? More than half an hour, Miles was fairly certain. And what could they do when they got here?

  Besides his genetic engineering, what had been different from the others about Gupta?

  His tank? Breathing through his gills . . . Bel didn't have gills, no help there. Cooling water, flowing over the froggish body, his fan-like webs, through the blood-filled, feathery gills, chilling his blood . . . could some of this bio-dissolvent's hellish development be heat-sensitive or temperature-triggered?

  An ice-water bath? The vision sprang to his mind's eye, and his lips drew back on a fierce grin. A low-tech, but provably fast, way to lower body temperature, no question about it. He could personally guarantee the effects. Thank you, Ivan.

  “My lord?” said Roic uncertainly to his apparent transfixed paralysis.

  “We run like hell now. You go to the galley and check for ice. If there isn't any, start whatever machine they have full blast. Then meet me in the infirmary.” He had to move fast; he didn't have to be stupid about it. “They may have biotainer gear there.”

  By the expression on Roic's face, he was notably not following any of this, but at least he followed Miles, who boiled out and down the corridor. They rose up the lift tube the two flights to the level that housed galley, infirmary, and recreation areas. More out of breath than he cared to reveal, Miles waved Roic on his way and galloped to the infirmary at the far end of the central nacelle. A frustrating pause while he tapped out the locking code, and he was through into the little sickbay.

  The facilities were scant: two small wards, although both with at least Level Three bio-containment capabilities, plus an
examining room equipped for minor surgery that also harbored the pharmacy. Major surgeries and severe injuries were expected to be transported to one of the military escort ship's more seriously equipped sickbays. Yes, one of the ward's bathrooms included a sterilizable treatment tub; Miles pictured unhappy passengers with skin infestations soaking therein. Lockers full of emergency equipment. He jerked them all open. There was the blood synthesizer, there a drawer of mysterious and unnerving objects perhaps designed for female patients, there was a narrow float pallet for patient transport, standing on end in a tall locker with two biotainer suits, yes! One too large for Miles, the other too small for Roic.

  He could wear the too-large suit; it wouldn't be the first time. The other would be impossible. He couldn't justify endangering Roic so . . .

  Roic jogged in. “Found the ice maker, m'lord. Nobody seems to have turned it off when the ship was evacuated. It's packed full.”

  Miles pulled out his stunner and dropped it on the examining table, then began to skin into the smaller biotainer suit.

  “What t'hell do you think you're doing, m'lord?” asked Roic warily.

  “We're going to bring Bel up here. Or at least, I am. It's where the medics will want to do treatments anyway.” If there were any treatments. “I have an idea for some quick-and-dirty first aid. I think Guppy might have survived by the water in his tank keeping his body temperature down. Head for engineering. Try to find a pressure suit that will fit you. If—when you find the suit, let me know, and put it on at once. Then meet me back where Bel is. Move!”

  Roic, face set, moved. Miles used the precious seconds to run to the galley and scoop a plastic waste bin full of ice, and drag it back to the infirmary on the float pallet to dump in the tub. Then a second bin full. Then his wrist com buzzed.

  “Found a suit, m'lord. It'll just fit, I think.” Roic's voice wavered as, presumably, his arm moved about. Some rustling and faint grunting indicated a successful test. “Once I'm in, I won't be able to use my secured wrist com. I'll have to access you over some public channel.”

  “We'll have to live with that. Make contact with Vorpatril on your suit com as soon as you're sealed in; be sure his medics can communicate when they bring their pod to one of the outboard locks. Make sure they don't try to come through the same freight nacelle where the quaddies have taken refuge!”

  “Right, m'lord.”

  “Meet you in Small Repairs.”

  “Right, m'lord. Suiting up now.” The channel went muffled.

  Regretfully, Miles covered his own wrist com with the biotainer suit's left glove. He tucked his stunner into one of the sealable outer pockets on the thigh, then adjusted his oxygen flow with a few taps on the suit's control vambrace on his left arm. The lights in the helmet faceplate display promised him he was now sealed from his environment. The slight positive pressure within the overlarge suit puffed it out plumply. He slopped toward the lift tube in the loose boots, towing the float pallet.

  Roic was just clumping down the corridor as Miles maneuvered the pallet through the door of Small Repairs. The armsman's pressure suit, marked with theIdris 's engineering department's serial numbers, was certainly as much protection as Miles's gear, although its gloves were thicker and more clumsy. Miles motioned Roic to bend toward him, touching his faceplate to Roic's helmet.

  “We're going to reduce the pressure in the bod pod to partially deflate it, roll Bel onto the float pallet, and run it upstairs. I'm not going to unseal the pod till we're in the ward with the molecular barriers activated.”

  “Shouldn't we wait for the Prince Xav 's medics for that, m'lord?” asked Roic nervously. “They'll be here soon enough.”

  “No. Because I don't know how soon too late is. I don't dare vent Bel's pod into the ship's atmosphere, so I'm going to try to rig a line to another pod as a catchment. Help me look for sealing tape, and something to use for an air pipe.”

  Roic gave him a rather frustrated gesture of acknowledgment, and began a survey of benches and drawers.

  Miles peered in the port again. “Bel? Bel!” he shouted through faceplate and bod skin. Muffled, yes, but he should be audible, dammit. “We're going to move you. Hang on in there.”

  Bel sat unchanged, apparently, from a few minutes ago, still glazed and unresponsive. It might not be the infection, Miles tried to encourage himself. How many drugs had the herm been hit with last night, to assure its cooperation? Knocked out by Gupta, stimulated to consciousness by the ba, tanked with hypnotics, presumably, for the walk to the Idris and the scam of the quaddie guards. Maybe fast-penta after that, and some sedatives to keep Bel quiescent while the poison took hold, who knew?

  Miles shook out one of the other pods onto the floor nearby. If the residue of Solian lay therein, well, this wasn't going to make it any more contaminated, now was it? And would Bel's remains have escaped notice for as long as Solian's, if Miles hadn't come along so soon—was that the ba's plan? Murder and dispose of the body in one move. . . .

  He knelt to the side of Bel's bod pod and opened the access panel to the pressurization control unit. Roic handed down a length of plastic tubing and strips of tape. Miles wrapped, prayed, and turned assorted valve controls. The air pump vibrated gently. The pod's round outline softened and slumped. The second pod expanded, after a flaccid, wrinkled fashion. He closed valves, cut lines, sealed, wished for a few liters of disinfectant to splash around. He held the fabric up away from the lump that was Bel's head as Roic lifted the herm onto the pallet.

  The pallet moved at a brisk walking pace; Miles longed to run. They maneuvered the load into the infirmary, into the small ward. As close as possible to the rather cramped bathroom.

  Miles motioned Roic to bend close again.

  “All right. This is as far as you go. We don't both need to be in here for this. I want you to exit the room and turn on the molecular barriers. Then stand ready to assist the medics from the Prince Xav as needed.”

  “M'lord, are you sure you wouldn't rather we do it t'other way around?”

  “I'm sure. Go!”

  Roic exited reluctantly. Miles waited till the lines of blue light indicating that the barriers had been activated sprang into being across the doorway, then bent to unzip the pod and fold it back from Bel's tensed, trembling body. Even through his gloves, Bel's bare skin felt scorching hot.

  Edging both the pallet and himself into the bathroom involved some awkward clambering, but at last he had Bel positioned to shift into the waiting vat of ice and water. Heave, slide, splash. He cursed the pallet and lunged over it to hold Bel's head up. Bel's body jerked in shock; Miles wondered if his shakily theorized palliative would instead give the victim heart failure. He shoved the pallet back out the door, and out of the way, with one foot. Bel was now trying to curl into a fetal position, a more heartening response than the open-eyed coma Miles had observed so far. Miles pulled the bent limbs down one by one and held them under the ice water.

  Miles fingers grew numb with the cold, except where they touched Bel. The herm's body temperature seemed scarcely affected by this brutal treatment. Unnatural indeed. But at least Bel stopped growing hotter. The ice was melting noticeably.

  It had been some years since Miles had last glimpsed Bel nude, in a field shower or donning or divesting space armor in a mercenary warship locker room. Fifty-something wasn't old, for a Betan, but still, gravity was clearly gaining on Bel. On all of us . In their Dendarii days Bel had taken out its unrequited lust for Miles in a series of half-joking passes, half-regretfully declined. Miles repented his younger sexual reticence altogether, now. Profoundly.We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it. And Bel had been beautiful, in its own ironic way, living and moving at ease in a body athletic, healthy, and trim.

  Bel's skin was blotched, mottled red and pale; the herm's flesh, sliding and turning in the ice bath under Miles's anxious hands, had an odd texture, by turns swollen tight or bruised like crushed fruit. Miles cal
led Bel's name, tried his best old Admiral Naismith Commands You voice, told a bad joke, all without penetrating the herm's glazed stupor. It was a bad idea to cry in a biotainer suit, almost as bad as throwing up in a pressure suit. You couldn't blot your eyes, or wipe your snot.

  And when someone touched you unexpectedly on the shoulder, you jumped as though shot, and they looked at you funny, through their faceplate and yours.

  “Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, are you all right?” said the Prince Xav 's biotainer-swaddled surgeon, as he knelt beside him at the vat's edge.

  Miles swallowed for self-control. “I'm fine, so far. This herm's in a very bad way. I don't know what they've told you about all this.”

  “I was told that I might be dealing with a possible Cetagandan-designed bioweapon in hot mode, that had killed three so far with one survivor. The part about there being a survivor made me really wonder about the first assertion.”

  “Ah, you didn't get a chance to see Guppy yet, then.” Miles took a breath and ran through a brief recap of Gupta's tale, or at least the pertinent biological aspects of it. As he spoke, his hands never stopped shoving Bel's arms and legs back down, or ladling watery ice cubes over the herm's burning head and neck. He finished, “I don't know if it was Gupta's amphibian genetics, or something he did, that allowed him to survive this hell-shit when his friends didn't. Guppy said their dead flesh steamed . I don't know what all this heat's coming from, but it can't be just fever. I couldn't duplicate the Jacksonian's bioengineering, but I thought I could at least duplicate the water tank trick. Wild-assed empiricism, but I didn't think there was much time.”

  A gloved hand reached past him to raise Bel's eyelids, touch the herm here and there, press and probe. “I see that.”

  “It's really important ”—Miles took another gulp of air to stabilize his voice—”it's really important that this patient survive. Thorne's not just any stationer. Bel was . . .” He realized he didn't know the surgeon's security clearance. “Having the portmaster die on our watch would be a diplomatic disaster. Another one, that is. And . . . and the herm saved my life yesterday. I owe—Barrayar owes—”