The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Jeremiah didn’t want her thanks. By his standards, the mission had been a failure. Too many people had died. He changed the subject. “Have you gotten a better idea of when you’ll be leaving for Mars?”

  Quekri shook her head. “They keep delaying our departure. We should have left two months ago. We’ve taken the opportunity to make further enhancements to the Pilgrim’s engines.”

  Behind Quekri, Quark appeared in the doorway. Jeremiah smiled, remembering how quietly Quark could move when he wanted to—amazing for a man of his size. He stood half a head taller than Quekri, and was a lot heavier. He dwarfed Jeremiah. Quark still wore his hair long and maintained the same bushy black beard. His nickname on Earth had been Cookie Monster. He caught Jeremiah’s eye as he touched Quekri’s shoulder and came around her. “Jeremiah. What brings you here?”

  Jeremiah looked up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

  Quark said, “Don’t worry about that. It’s not transmitting at the moment.”

  “I’m here for my son. He’s at a top-secret facility on Lunar Base 3.”

  “Lunar Base 3?” Quark said. “Is that the one beyond the military area?”

  “You know about it?”

  “Only that there’s another facility on the Moon about three kilometers from here. From the amount of coded signal traffic, we figured it had to be another facility past the military HQ.”

  Quekri said, “Why is your son there?”

  “His genetic makeup was perfect for the combination of animal DNA and nanotech implants that would turn him into a cross between an Escala and an Elite Ops. They took him when he was four—five years ago.”

  Quekri nodded. “It was only a matter of time before they created the next generation of fighters. We didn’t know they were doing it here on the Moon.”

  Jeremiah said, “He was kidnapped by the Elite Ops.”

  The beginnings of a smile touched Quark’s face. “And you need help getting him back.”

  Quekri glared at him, her dark eyes flashing with anger. “You’ll do nothing—understand?” She pointed her finger at Quark. “I won’t have you endangering our mission.”

  Quark lowered his eyes and nodded.

  “That’s okay,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve got an appointment with Admiral Cho tomorrow at nine. I hope to see my son then. And Quekri’s right. If you were caught helping me, it might endanger the Mars Project.”

  Quekri said, “Exactly. We can’t forsake humanity’s future for one boy.”

  “Actually,” Jeremiah said, “I was hoping to talk to Devereaux. I thought perhaps he might be able to help.”

  Quark shook his head. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s in hiding again.”

  Quekri said, “Haven’t you seen his latest transmission?”

  Jeremiah shook his head.

  “He broadcast a message to the people of Earth, predicting that the Susquehanna Virus will mutate or be adapted by its creator to destroy a huge percentage of the population in the next year or two.”

  “They said that was a fake, sent by some terrorist group.”

  “That’s the official line of Earth’s major governments,” Quark said.

  “It might also be one of the reasons we’re still here,” Quekri added.

  “No,” Quark said. “He sent that message two weeks ago. We should have been gone long before that.”

  “Well, it didn’t help,” Quekri said.

  Quark sighed. “He’s being held by the military. Admiral Cho wants to make sure nothing happens to him while he’s here.”

  Quekri said, “You’re welcome to stay with us.”

  “Thanks. By the way,” Jeremiah reached into his pocket and pulled out the small statue, “I brought you something.” He held it out to them. “I know how much it means to you.”

  “Emerging Man!” Quekri reached out hesitantly, as if afraid to touch it. Jeremiah thrust it into her hands.

  “We heard they rebuilt it,” Quark said.

  “They found pieces. What they couldn’t fit together they fabricated.”

  “And this is what it looks like now?”

  Jeremiah pointed at the black and gray. “This is actually a piece of granite from the original statue. The blue-green rock is grann-ite—a synthetic substitute used to fill in the missing parts and fuse the whole thing together. It’s like a cement.”

  “Yes,” Quekri said, “we know about grann-ite.”

  “How did you ever get a piece of the original statue?” Quark asked as he caressed the statue Quekri held.

  “Eli sent it to me,” Jeremiah said. “A peace offering perhaps. I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him. But it reminds me of us. Whatever it once was, it’s now something more. The shards that make up the whole give it a fractured look. Yet that only reinforces the element of change in the original. The idea of emergence. Growth.”

  Quark and Quekri looked at him, surprise on their faces. “This must be valuable,” Quekri said, “if it contains an actual fragment from the real statue. We can’t accept it.” She held it out to him.

  Jeremiah raised his hands, refusing to take it. “I want you to have it. I understand why the statue means so much to you.”

  “Then we thank you,” Quark said. He took the statue from Quekri and studied it carefully for a moment before handing it back to her. “We’ll be sure to put it in a central location where everyone can see it. Let us give you a tour.”

  Jeremiah followed Quark and Quekri through their labs, where dozens of Escala worked on numerous projects. Most of what he saw was over his head. All he gleaned from the tour was that they were enthusiastically adapting life to survival on a hostile world.

  Quekri showed the statue to everyone. They marveled over it, thanking him before moving on to describe their work. He listened politely, but his mind kept returning to Joshua.

  Quekri and Quark saved the Pilgrim for the end. The planetary transport stood erect outside LB 2, a huge gray capsule with a tube connecting it to a tunnel below ground so that workers could access it in an oxygenated environment. Jeremiah entered through the hatch and found himself in a corridor that traveled the circumference of the vessel.

  “When we’re in space,” Quekri explained as she pointed at the corridor, “we’ll use these corridors—we’ve got three built—for centripetal force, creating artificial gravity.” She gestured ahead and moved through the corridor into a twenty-foot square room at the center of the ship loaded with sophisticated electronic equipment, a series of chairs bolted to the flooring and one large command chair.

  “The bridge,” she said. “Here we’ll use the mock gravity flight suits and bio-magnetic flooring that you used on the LTV.”

  She walked through a hatchway into a similarly sized room with a couple beds and various medical equipment. An Escala woman in a white coat worked at a computer in the corner. “This is Dr. Wellon,” Quekri said. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like her to take some tissue and blood samples from you. We might be able to use the data to improve our odds of long-term survival on Mars.”

  Jeremiah consented and within a minute Dr. Wellon was done. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “We’ve added a lot to the Pilgrim,” Quekri explained as she led Jeremiah into another section of the ship, past residential cabins that lined the corridors. “New storage bays, which can hold more material, so we’ll be even better equipped to build a permanent colony on Mars.”

  “Assuming they ever let us go,” Quark added. “I don’t know what kind of games they’re playing, but they’re getting on my nerves.”

  “Nice ship,” Jeremiah said, feeling slightly queasy, sensing that the rage was about to return.

  Quark must have heard something in Jeremiah’s voice, for he said, “You okay?”

 
; Jeremiah shrugged. A slight tremor began in his shoulders and worked its way through his core—tension looking for release. He longed to lash out, commit violence, and dispel the anxiety for a while.

  Quekri said, “I imagine you’re growing impatient. Five years searching for your son, and now he’s so close you can almost feel him.”

  Jeremiah nodded.

  Quark said, “And the rage.”

  “You feel it too?”

  Quekri nodded. “Quark more than the rest of us.” She grabbed Jeremiah’s arm. “Come with me. Dr. Wellon can explain it better.”

  “Deep slow breaths,” Quark said as they walked. “That helps me.”

  Dr. Wellon looked up from her computer as they entered the infirmary.

  “The rage,” Quekri said. “He feels it too.”

  Dr. Wellon nodded. “When did you first experience it?”

  “I think it began around the time of Catherine’s suicide,” Jeremiah replied.

  Dr. Wellon said, “It’s part of our genetic pattern—a side effect of the transgenic surgery.” She glanced at her computer screen. “I haven’t finished my analysis of your samples yet but you have similar genetic variants. High-stress emotional triggers activate them.”

  “Like the death of Julianna,” Quekri said. “Or Sister Ezekiel. Or the kidnapping of your son.”

  “So it’s part of the price we pay for being Escala?”

  Dr. Wellon said, “There are different levels. Quark is the only one of us who has to fight it every hour, every day.” She turned to Quark. “How did you describe it?”

  Quark said, “It’s like an unbearable itch. A need to lash out and hit someone.”

  Jeremiah said, “You don’t just control it by deep breathing.”

  “No. I talk with Quekri a lot. Intellectually challenging conversations help me keep the rational part of my brain in charge. The anger never goes away. But I’ve learned I can keep it beneath the surface by doubting my violent impulses, subjecting them to the cold light of logic.”

  “I’ve been using a kind of self-hypnosis,” Jeremiah said. “A stone dungeon I lock myself into whenever I’m preparing for a fight or my emotions are getting out of hand. But it doesn’t work very well anymore. The rage is winning. The urge to strike out and inflict pain just keeps growing.”

  “Like us,” Dr. Wellon said, “you are continuing to evolve.”

  “So it’ll get worse?”

  “Perhaps. The variants I detected inside you are similar to Quark’s. But the only way to know if it will get worse is to conduct another test in several months to determine if the variants are deteriorating.”

  “Thank you, Wellon,” Quekri said. She led the way out of the infirmary.

  “Do you have that other feeling inside too?” Quark asked as they walked. “That sense of wrongness? I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  Jeremiah nodded. “A counter-feeling? A sense that giving in to the rage leads to the animal inside?”

  Quark smiled. “Yes. Whenever I feel that, I try to nurture it, hang on to my humanity as long as I can. And when the anger builds to a point I can’t control anymore, I go off on my own for a while, find a tunnel and attack the rock. I dig for a few hours until I’m calm enough to return.”

  “Aren’t you worried about what we’re becoming? We’re already so different from other humans. And we’re going to continue to change, whether by accident or design. Your great-great-grandchildren may not even recognize you as the same species. We’ll send people to other places. Other moons. And we’ll adapt those people so they can survive there.”

  “Because it’s necessary,” Quekri said.

  “But are we still human? When do we cross the line and become something new? When we’re living on a methane-based world, breathing what is now a poisonous atmosphere?”

  “We’re human,” Quekri said.

  “You asked to be Escala,” Jeremiah said. “I didn’t. I thought I was simply undergoing enhancements like Julianna. Now I’m something different. My son too—he’s no longer the same as when he was born. Is he even still my son?”

  “He will always be your son,” Quekri said.

  Jeremiah shrugged. “I wonder.”

  “Let’s go attack some rock,” Quark said. “Get your mind off your problems until supper.”

  “You’ll stay with us tonight,” Quekri said.

  “Thank you,” Jeremiah said.

  He walked to the end of the tunnel with Quark, where sledgehammers and chisels lay strewn about. They hammered at the rock until Jeremiah’s shoulders were sore and his legs comfortably fatigued. Afterwards, he returned to Lunar Base 1 to retrieve his bag. Again he noticed the large number of soldiers patrolling the hangar. The LTV he had arrived on was being readied for departure. It would take off the day after tomorrow. He hoped to be on that flight. If he missed it, he’d have to wait two weeks for the next one.

  He spotted Kyler running along a pathway, leaping high in the air with each step, her parents and younger sister Kaylee following more sedately. Her father Brian caught Jeremiah’s eye and shook his head.

  Jeremiah grinned.

  Kyler noticed him and bounded over. “Hey, mister. Will you play with me? I wanna jump like a bunny.”

  “Kyler,” the mother said, “leave him alone.” She turned to Jeremiah. “We keep telling her to stay away from strangers, but she—”

  “He’s not a stranger, Mother. He was on the plane with us.”

  Jeremiah knelt in front of Kyler and said, “Your mother’s right, you know. You have to be careful around strangers. They could hurt you or take you away from your parents. How would you know if I was a bad man?”

  Kyler stared at him for a moment, her brown eyes narrowing as if, by squinting, she could see right to the heart of him. She held his eyes for a moment. “You’re not a bad man.” Then she saw something over his shoulder and skipped away.

  Jeremiah nodded to the parents, waved at Kaylee and proceeded along the path. It took him several minutes to get his emotions under control. He walked around and through the hangar twice, memorizing every doorway, every tunnel. The one leading to the military quarters curved, so he could see down it only a short way. He approached the military desk.

  “Can I help you?” the desk sergeant asked in slightly accented English, the official language of the Moon. He was big—as big as Jack Marschenko—and muscular. Not Escala but strong. Like Marschenko, he had piercing eyes, clear skin. His face had a familiar chiseled look—the look of an Elite Ops trooper. He wore no armor, just military fatigues. His Las-rifle dangled toward the floor, but a simple movement would bring it up into firing position.

  Rage built inside Jeremiah. He tried to hand over the pass he’d obtained.

  “We know who you are, Jones,” the sergeant said without looking at the pass.

  “Just checking in,” Jeremiah said.

  “That’s not necessary, sir.” The sergeant almost choked on the word. “We’ll take care of all that tomorrow.”

  “Fine. Thank you, Sergeant.” As Jeremiah turned away, he caught Brian’s eye for a second. Brian ducked his head and whispered something to his wife. She glanced at Jeremiah but, when she saw him looking at her, she blushed and turned away. Then she gathered up her daughters and they moved off to their rooms, Kyler protesting at being driven from the hangar.

  After checking out of the hotel, Jeremiah wandered, images of Joshua filling his brain: remembrances of happy occasions mingled with painful memories—like Catherine sprawled on the bed, gone. Everywhere he went there was either a camera or a soldier with an eye on him. He barely noticed them. At one point he looked out through the observation window at Earth, always in view, day or night. Despite his mental state, he had to concede it was beautiful.

  * * *

  The Escala dinner offered vegetarian dishes
that were both hot and spicy, and cool and sweet. The room—the cave—had been enlarged to accommodate perhaps a hundred people and was more than half full. Quark and Quekri sat across from Jeremiah.

  For a long time there was no conversation, just the sounds of utensils clacking against dishes, chairs scraping the floor. The Escala ate with a singular mindset, their attention focused on their food. And it was delicious. It made Jeremiah’s tongue tingle. The air of contentment from the Escala leached into him. Usually, the sight of other people enjoying their lives depressed him, brought out the rage. But he felt better among the Escala.

  Quark leaned back in his chair and watched Jeremiah.

  “What?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Quark said. “Sitting among your own kind where you can be yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  As the Escala passed around large bowls of blueberries and cream for dessert, the room began to buzz with the sound of quiet conversations. The lighting changed, from a soft yellow to a mix of colors provided by rainbow bulbs, the colors mingling with each other through the spectrum of visible light. A group of Escala passed around the statue he’d brought, studying it, reminding themselves that it still existed.

  The teenagers Jeremiah had encountered earlier moved to a corner of the room, ignoring everyone else, playing another holographic game, while several Escala women surrounded an attractive blond who held a baby. Jeremiah recognized her from his mission to Minnesota. She’d been one of the Escala who had attacked the Tessamae Shelter as part of a diversion to rescue Quark. Her baby had black curly hair and a dark complexion. Knowing the Escala couldn’t mate with each other, Jeremiah wondered who the father was.

  He found himself drawn to the baby. After a few moments he made his way over to mother and child. Even among the musky odors of the Escala he could smell the baby, or at least imagined he could. The blond woman looked up at him, her face an open question.

  “Your daughter?” Jeremiah asked, realizing as he spoke that he’d heard someone identify the child as a girl.

  The woman turned the baby to face Jeremiah and said, “Yes.”