ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  “There’s something more about him, isn’t there? Even if it’s not solid fact, I’d like to know.”

  “All right, but this is known only to Bronwyn and myself. She insisted on a last look at Brian after Abdul and Vlad brought him out of the shaft. They said they were to take him to the farm, where the other bodies were put—apparently in a cess pit?” Ryder waved her on. “They let her see Brian’s body once she’d suited up. She asked me to see too, which was a damned nuisance, but after I suited up, I went to look at what she’d found.”

  “Which was?”

  “Funnily, my two crewmates hadn’t noticed, but Brian had purple marks around his neck.”

  “Front, side, or back?” Ryder said.

  “We’re not stupid. He was strangled.”

  “What did Bronwyn say?”

  “I convinced her they were from the harness being too tight when they hauled him up.”

  Ryder’s mouth was dry and he looked around for a drink. “I might be convinced of that.”

  “Ryder, you ignoramus, he’d been dead for at least two hours, more if he’d died like Antonio said, in the night. So there wouldn’t be any post-death bruising.” She passed him her paper cup of coffee.

  “I know that. All right, so you reminded me. This adds to our impressions of a very different Antonio.”

  “One that isn’t very nice.”

  “You know what he’s going to suggest next, don’t you, Jena?”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “He considers himself to be a medical catalyst to stop ARIA.” He sipped the coffee. It was rum flavoured.

  “Ryder, he said himself it could have been the case and not him that stopped ARIA.”

  “He slipped up there, Jena. He’ll convince himself there’s nothing to fear from the case. And nothing from him.”

  “No way,” Jena said. “He’s a doctor, he knows how long clinical trials last. He needs to be in there for weeks before we can be sure he’s safe.”

  The rum left an unpleasant aftertaste. “We don’t work with a pharmaceutical industry contract here. He’ll consider speeding the formalities up a bit.”

  “Hey, Ryder. You know I opposed bringing the case to Earth and did my best to stop it being opened.”

  “I had kind of noticed, Jena.” He walked over to a tap and filled a paper cup wondering how many were left.

  “I was adamant that if Antonio was going to open the case, he wasn’t emerging for a long time. He could have a variant of ARIA, one which won’t manifest itself for weeks.”

  “Another thing, Jena, and I’m afraid to mention this but here goes: He’s been exposed to the case. Brian was exposed to both him and the case, but Brian was an ARIA-infected person.”

  “Oh no, I see where this is going. Ryder, are you asking for a non-ARIA-infected person to volunteer to be with him?”

  “I’m saying he might.”

  “Noble of you not to volunteer any of us. By the way, I noticed you’d made sure he couldn’t get out of the shaft by himself—by locking the cowl to the grating.”

  “Self and group preservation are pretty strong urges in me at the moment.”

  “I was kinda hoping,” Jena said, “you had other urges too.”

  “Maybe I have.”

  She stopped typing—she’d hardly stopped writing her journal throughout the conversation. “Well, I have an hour before my perimeter-check duty starts, lover.”

  “Oh, shame, Jena. I have a meeting with Dan, now.”

  She threw the beaker at him, but he was expecting it and ducked. The brown liquid splattered Megan, who was passing. Megan shrugged and walked on by. Jena, horrified, left her console to apologise to Megan when Ryder stopped her.

  “You are so easy to wind up, Jena.”

  “Touché.”

  Tuesday 6 October 2015:

  Anafon, early morning, twelve days since Brian’s death. Most people outside Anafon will have lost up to twenty-five years of memory.

  JENA HEARD TERESA KNOCK TWICE on the pine bedroom door and enter without waiting for Ryder to respond.

  She raised her head, leaving an imprint on Ryder’s arm.

  “Oh, hi, Teresa. Don’t tell me you’re bringing us breakfast in bed?” Jena admired the way Teresa fought and controlled her demons. Her partner of five years, fiancé for one, had swapped beds, and Teresa’s own Latin lover was on a suicide mission. Jena’s Oriental eyes looked at Teresa’s fair hair and cool green eyes that said “bothered” on the outside but hurt inside. Teresa had told Jena about Ryder always having had the hots for Hentai Japanese cartoon girls with sleek black hair, insatiable libido, and incongruous blue eyes, then one dropped out of the sky.

  The two women finished exchanging unsaid emotions. Teresa said, “Antonio is in the kitchen. I found Bronwyn making him and Vlad a big breakfast, so it’s too late to talk about isolation.”

  Ryder, bleary-eyed, rubbed the red imprint on his arm and said, “Damn that arrogant Antonio—sorry, Teresa. I suppose what’s done is done. I’d better get there.”

  He waited for Teresa to leave but she stood at the door.

  “Do you mind?” he said to her.

  “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Jena said, who couldn’t repress a smile.

  “No,” said Teresa. “Nothing much at all.” She left, leaving the door open.

  Jena threw on a large T-shirt and followed a grumbling Ryder, hopping to complete the donning of his jeans on the way to the refectory. They found everyone, except Derek, who watched cameras and sensors. Abdul was out on patrol.

  Jena hesitated at the entrance to the refectory, the double doors still swinging after Ryder had barged through. This was one of those make-or-break moments. She could have turned, left the centre through a window and walked away, took a vehicle, anything but to have been infected by something they’d not understood.

  Sighing, she pushed the door and walked over to the range to have a coffee offered by Bronwyn.

  “You and Dan might as well stop shouting,” Antonio said, taking another sip of coffee. He held it up. “Beee-utiful, this, Bronwyn. Bravo.”

  “It’s not surprising we are annoyed with you, breaking your agreed quarantine time,” Ryder said.

  “Get over it,” Antonio said.

  “You’ve no idea if you’ve some secondary infection, undetectable at present but—”

  “You should have been down there, Ryder. Grim, not at all the peaceful haven I had imagined. Not the hermit cell for uninterrupted contemplation. I had visitors, you know.”

  “What?” said Dan, “What visitors?”

  “One in particular,” Antonio said, looking round at everyone in turn as if trying to identify someone. Teresa shifted in her seat while Jena shook her head at the charade.

  “With beady black eyes and no clothes, hah!” he said.

  “There was a pair of rats in the mine then,” Jena said. The others groaned.

  “I thought,” Antonio said, “that if a rat could get through the roof fall rubble, then it was not impossible to make an Antonio tunnel.”

  Jena noticed Derek shake his head at Ryder. She knew Derek had been brilliant at monitoring Antonio’s health and activities with the cameras and sensors. So the tunnel talk was a bluff to put them off how he escaped. She knew Ryder had re-locked the grating after Brian was pulled out. It was possible Antonio had some cutting gear, and he had a winch system to get himself up to the opening. That left two people with a personal interest in Antonio. Bronwyn had gone soft on him since she assumed he’d helped Brian in his dying days. Maybe she should have told Bronwyn that Antonio strangled Brian.

  She saw Teresa playing with her empty cup, turning it over, lifting it to gather the coffee-residue aroma that somehow smelt better than the taste. Recognisable behaviour of someone trying to be absent: not participating in the discussion and hiding her face. Still had a crush on the not-so-good doctor and undid the padlock for him. Damage done, so they might as well move on. And so s
he did, taking a place at the table opposite the doctor.

  “So, what now, Antonio?” Jena said.

  “I’ve missed your enigmatic questions, Jena. What do you want to happen?”

  “Me? I want—”

  “All this to go away? Sleep and wake up to find all this was a dream.”

  “Are you our nightmare, Antonio?”

  “I am your saviour, Jena. You all are now immune from ARIA because of me. Shame about all those who already have it. But there’s nothing to stop you strolling down the road to the village or Conwy.”

  “What is all this really about then, Antonio?” Dan said.

  “Ah, are the aliens preparing Earth for their occupation? Maybe. Have they tried to help us better our feeble brains and made a few errors? Perhaps. There might be a third option. And it could be a... ah, Bronwyn, another cup please, per favore.”

  Ryder and Dan pestered him for the third option, but he teased. Jena found them guessing and brainstorming between them in the office.

  “Don’t torture yourselves, you two,” she said. “It’s another wind up and we’ll get plenty more from him, you’ll see.”

  “You might be right,” Dan said. “But even without him, we have to think and plan for what those damn aliens really want. Whatever bad vibes you have about him, Jena, he is the only link we have with the second case. Some facts are clear. He was exposed to the second case without obvious ill effect so far and exposed to Brian as an ARIA victim yet hasn’t lost his memory.”

  “There’s only one way to check if we are immune to ARIA,” Ryder said.

  “Count me out on that one,” Jena said. “And I don’t want you going for a sociable stroll into the village. Don’t come back if you do.”

  “And I thought you two were getting on so well,” Dan said.

  “We are,” Jena said, then turning to Ryder. “Aren’t we?”

  “Absolutely, that’s why I’m not going to go wandering into the populated wilderness to test our supposed immunity. We have a protocol for that anyway.”

  “One of the protocols you listed before we arrived?” Dan said. “What is it this time? Anyone who meets someone who might have ARIA has to keep away.”

  “Close,” Ryder said. “But they can phone to report progress or return to the isolation unit at the mine.”

  “Watch out,” Jena said. “I wouldn’t put it past Antonio just to take Teresa or Bronwyn out of the gates for a paddle at the seaside, irrespective of protocols.”

  “If he does, he’d have to send a postcard back, because I wouldn’t want to see him again,” Ryder said. “You know what else we should do?”

  “I think you’ll find Laurette and Gustav are already looking for spurious anomalies in blood samples,” Jena said.

  “It’s like living with telepaths around here,” Ryder said. “And that’s before any ARIA or related exposure.”

  Jena sneaked back into the kitchen for a coffee refill, hoping to keep contact with Antonio to a minimum.

  “He’s gone for a lie down,” Bronwyn said, pouring the thick liquid into the three mugs. “Hadn’t had much sleep while in the mine, poor thing.”

  Jena was on the verge of telling her how she thought Brian died but scalded her lip on the mug. “Bronwyn, you’ve made this with hot water, again.”

  “Well, I have to—oh, you’re joking, aren’t you? It’s funny about the doctor, though, isn’t it? He had tea for his breakfast drink and he always had coffee before.”

  “He’s been through a lot, Bronwyn,” Jena said, although Bronwyn’s observations made her think.

  “He said he wanted Camomile tea because it was his first ever hot drink—fancy remembering that.”

  “He might have been told that a thousand times by amused relatives.”

  “And he said that was an October Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month, Jena, when he was eighteen months. And that the second hot drink was hot lemon water the following Wednesday. He’d moved on to chicory coffee the day before his second birthday.”

  “I wish I had such a detailed memory, Bronwyn,” Jena said, thinking what a contrast to ARIA. And that although those victims still possessed diminishing childhood memories, only rare people would remember trivia like that.

  She rushed back into the lab to check biotech progress.

  Gustav waved despairing hands in the air. “He won’t let us take any of his blood.”

  “What?” Jena said. “He has to. No choice, Dan and Ryder made it so, so to speak.”

  Laurette fiddled with a pipette. “Once he’s thought it over, he’ll let us, oui?”

  “How much do you need?” Jena said, hatching a plan.

  “Just a pin prick would be enough to show if anything like ARIA is there,” Gustav said. “Why? Are we going to get him?”

  “Non!” Laurette said.

  “Gustav,” Jena said, “bring a blood-sampling kit.”

  Out in the corridor, she waited for Gustav, hoping that Laurette wouldn’t come since she might cause more trouble. He came out. His light brown, shoulder-length hair, and his exuberance, gave him the airs of an undercover cop on a mission.

  Jena frowned at the sampling kit. “Antonio is asleep. Is it possible to take a blood sample without disturbing him?”

  “I get it. You want the evidence of what’s happening to him before he can refute it.”

  “Something like that. Is it one of those thumb-prick gadgets?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do it. Lead the way to the prick for a prick.”

  Antonio slept fidgety, face-down in an eight-bed dormitory. Jena and Gustav snapped on surgical gloves. She placed her hands above Antonio’s back so as to push him down if he woke up. Gustav held a sampler the size of a matchbox against the back of the doctor’s bare upper arm. Six tiny needles darted in, sucked for a moment, then withdrew. Gustav stood and turned to go, but Jena bent to look at the sample point. She could only just see the six red dots. Her heartbeat leapt as Antonio groaned and started a roll. As Jena jumped back, she watched the doctor rub at the spot, but his eyes stayed shut.

  Back in the lab, Gustav offered the sample to Laurette, who took it, giving Jena a look of knowing that it pulled her inexorably into the conspiracy. Within three minutes she said, “Yes, he has an anomaly but different from Brian’s before he visited the doctor. The ARIA virus was spotted by Julia Tyndall, if you recall. She was Karen’s chief biotechnician at Goddard, and although she had had ARIA for a day, she was able to send an image of a spiked sphere about thirty nanometres across. Looked like an adenovirus, possibly a viral pathogen. Now the beastie we found in Antonio is similar but with nodes between the spikes.”

  “So with the convention of naming viruses after their discoverer, we have the Tyndall virus,” Gustav said.

  “Continuez,” Laurette said, with a glimmer of a smile.

  “All right, the second case virus should be called the Pain-in-the-butt virus. No? ARIA is the effect of the Tyndall virus, so we’d need a suitable acronym for the second.”

  “I think we need to wait to see what the full effect of the Laurette-Gervais virus is, don’t you?” Laurette said. Jena could see in her face that she was fighting the proud moment of having a virus named after her. If only scientific papers were being published.

  Jena patted her on the back.

  “Good work, Laurette. Well, you found that new virus in the blood of Antonio. And our blood?” Jena said.

  “Normal,” Laurette said. “Antonio’s blood shows something like ARIA, call it ARIA2 for now, which might make him immune to ARIA. Our blood doesn’t. But, of course, it might do later. We need to retest every day or so.”

  “So if we walked into locals out there, we’d get ARIA, but he wouldn’t?” Jena said.

  “Not as simple as he said, is it?”

  “No,” Gustav said. “We’ve only been in contact with him for a couple of hours. It might take days to develop.”

  “And I suppose it might need us to be exposed to the case
first, followed by exposure to someone with ARIA, like he was,” Jena said.

  “Either way,” Gustav said, “it was premature of our doctor to encourage us to go sightseeing.”

  “More likely it was disingenuous of him,” Jena said. “He wants us to catch ARIA.”

  “Incredible.” Laurette waved an arm. “He’s one of us. Why would Antonio want to ensure we had a slow death from ARIA? He’d be the only one left alive.”

  “Maybe that’s his plan,” Gustav said.

  Jena leaned against the bench examining a printout of the ARIA2 virus. “Or the plan of the changed Antonio. Perhaps he isn’t in control of his actions. The infection he carries was spat at him from another species. Who knows what mental deviation it might produce?”

  Laurette looked away from a viewer. “There are culture and other tests, Jena. Do you want me to inform our twin leaders, or do you want to sneak off to them without alerting our sleeping demon?”

  Jena reached for the door just as it swung in. Antonio’s face contorted with rage shouted, “I know what you’ve done! I specifically denied you permission to take any samples from me.”

  Jena recovered and said, “It’s not all about you, you bastard.”

  “It is about me. Dio mio, you are so insignificant. I piss on you. All three of you.”

  “Can you hang on while I get a sample beaker?” Gustav said. He laughed at his own inappropriate and mistimed joke.

  Antonio lunged at him, but Gustav ducked and threw himself down behind a long lab bench. Jena yelled, “Stop!”

  Laurette screamed as Antonio picked up a retort stand and lunged at the microscope array. The microscope crashed to the floor while Laurette’s screams went through the roof. The swing doors crept open followed by Bronwyn pointing a shotgun.

  It had the desired effect in some ways. Laurette had run out of clamour, and Antonio reverted to hysterical laughter while collapsing on the floor amidst broken glass.

  “Mi scusi, my good friends. I’ll help clear this mess up and I’ll pay for replacements. Hah! Pay for replacements, that’s a good one, is it not?” He rose and staggered out.