April 6: And What Goes Around (9 page)

Sancha sat
shocked. The young girl being an owner here was so far outside her experience
she revised the opinion of April she was about to express to her husband.
"Do you know? I think
the rest of it might be true too," she
told him after Jesse was out of earshot.

"My Dear, I don't think we've heard the half of it."

*
* *

The FedEx
distribution center in Allentown Pennsylvania got a shipment of an anticancer
drug for redistribution. The sort that benefited greatly from being purified in
zero G. And one of the few so widely used its ultimate source was ignored by
the USNA. Even at that it had been sent to the French habitat and the shipping
container relabeled to exclude any reference to Home to comply with North American
sanctions. The manifest said two hundred ninety six boxes but they were fitted
in a plastic shipping case that held three hundred. In the shipment were four
different boxes with drones folded up in an egg shape.

Two of the eggs sensed
proper conditions and stirred, the other two waiting. The narrow sections
between a number of lines on the surface lifted and bent forming legs. Other
sections unfolded like a complex puzzle uncovering sensors and becoming wings.
Antennas unfolded and read the location of the little robot off GPS satellites.
The unencumbered robots followed their programming and flew to the top surface
of the truck trailer in which they were riding and waited for a glimpse of the
sky or direct sunlight reflecting off a surface.

When the trailer
doors opened the dock workers didn't even see the shiny bugs dart between the
gap from the trailer to terminal building. They rose a hundred meters, turned a
slow circle running checks on their systems and location and took off to the
nearest sites on the list of surveillance targets. One stopped at a cellular
tower along the way. Clinging to an antenna for a few minutes recharging and
creating a temporarily weaker coverage area that nobody even noticed.

One of the faux
insects ended up at the new Executive Office Building, one at the office of the
lobbyists representing Scaled Composites. The one at the Executive Office would
be in service for several weeks before being discovered by a maintenance worker
cleaning light fixtures and destroyed. The one at the lobbyists would replace
another that self destructed at the end of its design life without discovering
anything of importance to Jeff Singh.

As a collective
system the robots and software controlling them learned and improved even
without human intervention. Sometimes sending updates in the last instant
before a boot came down to crush them. Every few months the Japanese
manufacturer made improvements and upgrades in the hardware. It never made
economic sense for Jeff to manufacture them themselves. Demand from many Earth
customers guaranteed that production on Home could never approach the same
economies of scale the Japanese enjoyed. Jeff's people were careful to balance
the discount they got from buying in quantity versus holding too many of the
previous model when a new one came out. On occasion they got an offsetting fee
for suggesting improvements to the little spy bugs.

What shocked Jeff
was how often his bugs found other bugs. Jeff wondered just how many of the
little machines were from news services, corporations, other governments, or
one agency spying on another agency of their own government. After some thought
he decided he didn't like the competition, and started designing ways to modify
a standard bug to carry the means to damage or immobilize bugs from other
owners. It still wasn't worth designing a dedicated fighter bug. The standard
sort could carry simple light weapons. A bug could grasp another opposing bug
and immobilize it by sacrificing itself. That could be programmed in quickly
but it was an expensive solution. A spear that released a contact adhesive when
poked at opposition machines was his first idea. It immobilized limbs or wings
and made them attach to anything they touched in passing. Also a capacitive
discharge to fry the other machine's electronics. That also meant all his new
machines needed a way to verify friend or foe.

He wondered why they didn't have such systems already. If there was some
sort of a gentleman's agreement to leave the other fellow's bugs alone they neglected
to tell him.

* * *

"These so
called twelve hours shifts are just killing me," Alice complained.

"Uh huh. More
like sixteen hours if you count having to do things in the middle of your off
shift and don't cut corners on something," Deloris agreed.

"You don't
want me to cut corners on environmental," Alice said with no humor.
"We're all very fond of breathing. If we get very far out of balance it
gets hard to bring it back. You can only allow so much carbon dioxide, and we
can only remove it so fast. In theory it can run out of the optimum range in
only four hours. If it gets too far out of whack you have to purge, which loses
nitrogen. We only have so much liquid nitrogen so I preserve every gram I can.
I keep checking my phone off shift. The computer is
supposed
to tell me
if it sees a bad trend start, but I don't trust it. What if it fails in a mode
we didn't predict? I've been getting up in the middle of the night and doing a
quick visual of the gas numbers in graph form just to feel safe."

"The bridge
watch should check the gross numbers a couple times a night when they know we
are sleeping," Barak said.

Alice just made a
disgusted little snort.
That
for trusting the bridge she implied.

Deloris lifted her
index finger and made a wiggling motion. That was their agreed signal to
indicate she was going to helmet talk or suit talk as some called it. They'd
found what they were pretty sure was a tiny microphone while cleaning, and they
watched what they said about the captain and XO of the
Yuki-onna
much
closer since then. Barak had a richer vocabulary in helmet talk because April's
grandfather had taught him the finer nuances if it. It was a kind of sign
language but all facial gestures because it grew from construction workers
needing to talk privately when their suit transmissions were monitored. Deloris
already knew some and Barak expanded it for her. Alice knew none of it but
learned quickly. She also brought finger spelling to the mix for those
difficult words for which they had no facial signs.

"When we get
back I'm going to just pig-out on a
huge
cheeseburger and fries,"
Alice started. She had a bunch of variations on this theme. One of them always
spoke when the others helmet talked so the silence itself was not
incriminating. If there was more than the one bug the command crew probably got
really sick of hearing the same monologue about cheeseburgers or other 'when we
get home' themes. They were pretty sure there weren't any cameras. They all
looked very thoroughly for any lens or pinhole. But a microphone could be stuck
on the other side of a bulkhead totally invisible.

Deloris signed to
him with feeling: "If you think our Captain and XO do their twelve hour
shifts with no private time in the overlap you are nuts. They are too busy
finding extra time for each other to trust them to double check us. No more
than Captain Jaabir watched you guys working outside enough to see Harold
wasn't following procedure or abusing the equipment." She had to finger
spell some of it.

Barak nodded in
agreement, and helmet spoke: "Point well taken. He absolutely screwed up
there and he may lose his ticket when we get back home."

"Not however
if he can find a way to blame it on you or raise a bigger issue like recording
us and after artistic editing make our complaints into actual mutiny!"
Deloris finished with a flourish.

Barak nodded again
that she was right, but went back to voice.

"Alice, what
exactly
happens
if we get the gas ratios get messed up too bad?"

"The trouble
is our CO² process is not continuous," Alice said. She was cute when she
went into lecture mode, because it was like a different person speaking. Even
her voice changed. "If we were a big habitat with all the room and power
to spare we would have a steady state system. What
we
have for the
Yuki-onna
are two
batch
systems that extract CO² and then have to be switched over
and be regenerated. They remove it more effectively after regenerating so you
reduce the flow when fresh and then increase it as the absorbent is saturated.

"You have an
emergency canister that can strip the whole ship – once. And you have one extra
sealed filter for the batch systems in case one stops working. They
can
be polluted or physically damaged. So you have to watch when one is started
that it is working. If it isn't you only have so much time to swap filters or
cycle back to the other unit before it is fully recharged. You can switch back
and forth faster if need be until you can slowly stretch the cycle out to
normal duration."

"So what
would we do if we had a huge problem and lost a lot of our nitrogen? Say we had
a hole or a blowout that dumped a big section?" Barak asked Alice.

"In theory we
can run any nitrogen/oxygen ratio, right down to pure oxygen as long as the
partial pressure is acceptable. In reality I'd be scared spitless to run pure
oxy. There are too many minor components that were not designed for that. Even
just our personal things would be a danger. You don't want to wear cotton in
straight oxygen, it's a fire hazard.  You don't want to pop a can of
self-heating food in pure oxygen either. Not even at reduced pressure. It's
toxic for long periods too. You'd be showing signs of damage by the time we got
home if it was more than a couple weeks. And the drugs for zero G make it worse
instead of better. We don't have any source of noble gasses to substitute for
the nitrogen."

"What's
OK," Deloris assured her with an evil grin. "We could just use
hydrogen from when we generate the oxygen to mix with it. It's low density so
it would probably make our voices sound funny just like helium!"

Alice looked
horrified at the idea. "Yes, it would make my voice a terrified squeak,
knowing I'm in an explosive atmosphere."

"One assumes
all the ship switches are sealed and explosion proof," Barak said.
"I'm not so sure about our private computers and pads. If anybody ever
tried that in desperation I'd suggest running the humidity right at a hundred
percent. All it would take would be one static spark from sliding off your bunk
to ignite it. Better to have condensation dripping down the bulkheads."

"You'd have
to be crazy to try," Alice said.

"I bet in
twenty years people will look back and say
we
were crazy to take this
pile of junk out to Jupiter," Barak told them.

"Maybe not
crazy, but adventuresome?" Alice said.

"Have you
seen the Apollo vehicles?" Barak asked.

"Dear God
yes, and the Space Shuttles, those flying tributes to a brick outhouse!"
Alice said.

"Would you
fly one of those?" he asked.

"Not even at
gunpoint," Alice agreed. "Just go ahead and shoot me and let it be
quick."

"See? It's all a matter of perspective," Barak insisted.

April was studying for her third year Japanese class. She wondered if
she'd ever be proficient without going to live in Japan for awhile. Japan after
all was not North America, where she'd had such a bad experience before when
she went down to Earth. That's what she kept telling herself but it still
wasn't how she
felt
. Unfortunately as she learned the language she was
also learning things about Japanese culture she didn't like. Much the same as
she felt about North America now. Enough in either case to put her off
visiting. She loved visiting Earth. It was the
people
who made it a
problem. That made her feel a little guilty, Japan
had
helped them
during the war. She wondered if she'd be really comfortable again anywhere on
Earth that wasn't wilderness. Her com signal overrode her lesson. Not many
people could get past the filter.

"Pull up the news for North America," Gunny told April.
"There's some more odd stuff going on, and in London too. Look for stories
or do a search key words, Rome flight. I don't have time to follow it today. I
have a meeting, but I thought you'd be interested."

April didn't have to search for it. It was the lead story in the
abbreviated raw feed.

Rome flight diverted from Dulles
International to Andrews Base. Statements from the base information officer say
it has nothing to do with terrorism or a hazard from the aircraft. Rather the
flight was ordered into isolation by the CDC and directed to a taxiway distant
from the flight line. The aircraft is being serviced and passengers will be fed
and but they are being kept on the aircraft. The Boeing 898 is being refueled
so it can maintain cabin comfort.

The next couple paragraphs were just
'blah, blah, blah, we don't really know any more' filler. So she looked for the
London story.

Stansted airport refused gating to a
German flight originating in Rome earlier today. The New Berlin Service Embraer
was turned back without passengers disembarking and none boarded for the
planned turnaround. The CAA indicated all flights originating in Rome are interdicted
until further notice.

By the time April read that story the
watch she'd placed on the first story was indicating an update.

Italy has closed all commercial airports
in the region of Lazio by order of the
Servizio Sanitario Nazionale and
WHO
.
On condition of anonymity an official of the City of
Rome told EuroNews that the emergency causing the proclamation is an
unexpectedly severe outbreak of influenza. Calls to various officials were
unanswered and attempts to contact hospitals in the Rome area found heavy
security turning away the press, normal visitors and non-emergency patients.

That seemed an over-reaction, was April's first thought. Flu had been
around like
forever
. How bad could it be? She'd had flu once before the
war and felt miserable but never in
danger
. She'd never known anybody on
Home to die of an infectious disease. But, wait a minute... she remembered the
live interview with the churchman insisting the Pope was well that she'd seen.
Could this be about the same thing? Maybe it was worth worrying about. She
keyed in a search: deaths from influenza 2086. The answer shocked her.

Maybe that was because so many really poor countries didn't have any
health care worth counting as such. She ran the search again adding United
States of North America + Italy. It was still disturbing. Even the low range
estimates of flu related annual deaths were still in the thousands.

She took a deep breath and tried to calmly consider it outside the
unexpected shock. She really didn't know that much about medicine. None of her
friends worked in medicine. She'd only spoken to the Doctor at the Home clinic,
and only about her own problems. Even when she got shot in Hawaii on her visit
to Earth she hadn't gone to the hospital. The wife of the couple she was
staying with was a nurse and had treated the nasty bruise in her home. Without
the moon-made armor jacket she'd been wearing she'd have been dead, not
bruised.

It was sort of overwhelming. She already felt stretched trying to
learn about banking and economics, not to mention things like Japanese that
were for her, not to make money necessarily. There was so much, entire fields
of knowledge she hadn't touched yet. Medicine was important and she needed to
learn more about it – eventually. If only to decide what sort of life extension
work to have in the future. It was in constant flux. But one thing at a time.

All she needed to know about
now
to understand the news report
was a general outline of what influenza is and how it is harmful. She had a
rough idea that a virus was a little packet of protein that took over human
cells instead of being cells themselves like bacteria. The details about how
many kinds there were and how they caused disease she didn't know in any detail
at all.

Her favorite search returned over a hundred million hits on the word
going back to the... 1990s? She didn't need highly technical articles. No way
she'd understand them without learning a whole lot she didn't have time to study.
History, that was what she needed. Simplified and non-technical. They called
that sort of simplified study popularized, didn't they?
Popular histories of
influenza
– she keyed in. It still returned thousands.
Books+popular-history+influenza
– she added. That was better. It returned twelve hundred some in print or for
download, one just last year.

April frowned and chewed her lip. Should she get the latest, or one
back closer to the source? Sometimes things became clearer with time, but her
grandpa had warned her sometimes current opinion lost the context of events
earlier observers knew better. One older title caught her eye, "
The
Great Influenza
". That resonated with term The Great Depression she
kept reading about in her economics studies. A click bought it.

She realized how thoroughly engrossed she'd become when her stomach
growled loudly. Very little made her ignore lunch time. The clock in the corner
of her screen said she was a couple hours past her customary meal time and she
briefly considered having a meal delivered, opting instead to take her pad and
read in the cafeteria. The walk would do her good because she'd been sitting
way too long.

It was not only past her usual lunch time it was past the peak lunch
time for everybody else. There were only three people in the cafeteria and
whoever was serving today wasn't visible behind the counter. They were probably
in the back prepping for supper and cleaning up from lunch. She just got a
couple sandwiches and side dishes off the simple buffet bar they kept stocked
at all hours.

Gabriel the young man who Ruby used as a messenger, and for other
things, had a full sized computer open near the coffee pots. He looked over the
upright screen and after they made eye contact and April nodded a hello, he
tipped his head in invitation. Why not? She didn't know him that well but Jeff
said he worked for Chen now, so he was an ally, part of Jeff's intelligence
gathering organization. April trusted Ruby's judgment in people too.

She unloaded her tray over on his side of the table looking back at
the serving area. She hesitated. Gabriel might not have expected her to sit
beside him where she could see his screen.

"Do you need privacy?" April asked before sitting. "I
could sit on the other side. You might have expected that."

"Miss Lewis, I'm doing some analysis for Chen. I was told very
clearly you are one of the principals receiving our work, so certainly nothing
I do is a secret from you."

"Fine," April said, sitting but leaving the empty tray
beside her. "Just call me April. I'm looking into something odd too. I got
so wrapped up in it I forgot to eat."

"Do you need some help?" Gabriel offered

"No, I don't mean to pull you off what you are doing," April
said, still in apology mode. "It's probably important. I had Gunny point
out some odd happenings this morning and got captivated by it. The district
around Rome has such a bad early outbreak of influenza that they shut down all
the airports and they turned away some flights in North America and the UK.
It's early in the season for flu and it's been a long time since there was a
bad outbreak or a nasty new variety of flu. I couldn't find any recent times
they shut down flights.

"I downloaded a historic book on the really bad epidemic of flu
last century. The one in 1918. It's sort of hard understanding how it affected
them. It was like a different world. They didn't have life support gear like
now or antibiotics to fight secondary infections. If you got pneumonia after
the flu it could kill you just as easily. But they also didn't have the ways to
spread it we have now."

"What's all that much different now?" Gabriel asked,
frowning.

"Faster transportation and more of it. The flu spread by ship
movements at the end of World War I, especially troop ships. Even inside a
country they spread it by rail. There wasn't any commercial air transport or
many automobiles yet, and the roads out between towns were horrible.

"It's hard for me to picture some of the stories. It was so
different. One town put armed men on the train platform and wouldn't let anybody
off at their town. Some people living on an island sank a ship in the channel
into their only harbor. Some desperate people managed to avoid it like that. I
need to finish reading it but I was starved."

"Have you gone back and checked your news stories for updates? Or
have you just been reading for hours? Gabriel asked.

"I was engrossed. How much can happen in a couple hours?"
April asked him.

"I don't know but I'm going to check."

"Am I going to get you in trouble with Chen?" April worried.

"Chen trusts me to follow any promising line of research I happen
on," Gabriel said. "And I'll tell you something else. He once told me
he never has researched anything for you, but what he didn't find out six other
things he had no idea he needed to know."

"That's good. I thought I was just a pain in the butt,"
April said, embarrassed.

"Let's see what else is happening," Gabriel suggested,
ignoring the self
disparag
ing remark. "If enough
people are sick it will show up elsewhere."

"Canceled events?" April suggested.

Gabriel nodded. "Yes, good idea, there will have to be
announcements, but what kind?"

"I'd have no idea. I'll ask Gunny right now. He's lived down
there. Watch over my shoulder if you want. Do you have time for a quick
question?" April asked him on com.

"Always for you," Gunny said.

April presented their idea and asked if Earth events wouldn't see
cancelations in an epidemic?

"I should have thought of that!" Gunny said right away.

"But we have no idea what sort to look for," April said.

"Hmm, you won't see anything public from any organization where
it would be a security concern. Don't expect to see the military admit they
have any sort of illness in their ranks. That would be a violation of
operational security. If I still had contacts I could speak to face to face I
could ask about unit deployments or vessels going on scheduled cruise, but I
won't do it on com," Gunny said. "I could get old friends in trouble
just asking, even if they didn't tell me anything."

"Civilian events then?" April asked.

"Yes, though the same need for secrecy probably applies to police
and fire forces too," Gunny said. "They wouldn't want to tell
criminals they are going to be short handed. I'd look at concerts. Especially
if it's in a big public venue. And church services. I know my mom belonged to a
church that didn't want to shut down even for a hurricane. Oh, and company
meetings. The sort public companies hold annually to report to their
stockholders and vote on changes."

"How about companies that have big plants? How reluctant are they
to shut down?" April asked.

"Very. There aren't that many big plants like there used to be.
With fabricators a lot of it is decentralized. Cars, but there are not all that
many people in a plant now it's so automated. Some chicken farms have more
people than an automobile factory. I think chickens get flu. They might shut
down if they are scared the birds will get infected. A big factory you can
check the parking lot and see how many cars are there," Gunny suggested.

How about colleges? They couldn't keep canceling classes secret."
Gabriel suggested.

"Yes, and some of them you can look at the parking lots just like
plants. Come to think of it you might check out police departments the same
way. See if their cruisers are parked instead of on patrol."

"Thank you Gunny, I'll talk to you when you come to supper about
what we find," April said. To Gabriel she suggested, "How about if I
take colleges and other schools and you take churches? And either of us can
look into any commercial or business meetings?"

He agreed with a nod.

They dove back into the search, saying very little for long periods.
Both went to the public restroom beside the cafeteria, leaving their machine
under the other's watch. April continued to drink coffee, her gene modified
metabolism allowed her to process ridiculous quantities of carbohydrates and
caffeine, but Gabriel being a natural person had lower limits to what he could
absorb.