ARIA (37 page)

“
Qu’est que ce?
” Laurette said. “Septicaemia cannot be diagnosed yet. If his wound is infected, it’d take another three days for symptoms to show.
Regardez
, the monitor is showing Brian’s temperature to be normal. He’d have hot flushes and really feel ill.”

“Laurette,” Dan said. “I don’t think it’s you. He hasn’t had enough doctoring to do for a while, that’s all.”

“I hope he isn’t getting my Brian as worried as he’s getting me,” Bronwyn said, whose red hair had its silver strands multiply overnight. She tapped the console mike switch. “Brian, how are you, love?”

“Are you cooking kippers in here, Doc? It’s still bleeding, isn’t it? Bit chilly.”

Gustav leant forward. “Is he rambling or just giving an experience-to-speech account?”

Jena said, “Childhood smells is an early symptom of ARIA.”

“Brian loves kippers,” Bronwyn said. “We have them all the time.”

“No you don’t,” Megan said.

“Time you went to bed, lady,” Bronwyn said.

“Just out of interest, when was the last time?” Dan said. “And what are kippers?”

“Smoked herring. We last ate them on holiday in the Isle of Man. Famous for them, you know.”

“Auntie, you haven’t been there for three years.”

S
ATURDAY
26 S
EPTEMBER
2015

“Good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” Antonio said to Laurette at her early morning shift. She’d already called Derek to sort out an IT problem. The frequent gales and heavy Snowdonia rainfall played havoc with cables and connections.

“Good news, Antonio. Leave the bad for someone else’s shift.”

“In my opinion and from memory tests I subjected him to, Brian had not lost any more of his memory since the three days he came in here.”

“That’s incredibly good news. Fantastic, and because of the case.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“What do you mean?” Laurette said. “What wouldn’t you say?”

“The halt in Brian’s retrograde memory loss might be due to his exposure to the case. Or it might be due to my exposure days before. In other words, I have something, undetectable by our feeble sensors, which stunned the ARIA in Brian.”

Jena had come in and overheard. “Antonio, I don’t suppose Brian has recovered any of his lost memory.”

“You remember, Jena, he came in here within forty-eight hours of him catching ARIA and he was ill, confused. He had lost two months. But he remembered new information. Each morning until today, he woke up, saw the mine walls, and screamed.”

Jena looked puzzled. “Antonio, I can understand why an ill person would wake up in there, think he’s in hell and scream, but why not today?”

Antonio said, “Brian died in the night.”

T
HE
SHOCKING
NEWS
UPSET
EVERYONE
EXCEPT
A
NTONIO
. Ryder found Scary Jena at a computer, adding to a diary of every notable event. Not a book as such, but a multimedia event. The first images of the case, movie files of their landing at Hawarden, and the fight at the gate, which Ryder didn’t want to review. Weird art by Megan, songs by Bronwyn and Brian, and poetry from Vlad—in Russian.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Jena,” Ryder said.

“You’re the first ever to interrupt me with this journal, I will make a note of it.”

He sat on a stool and gave her a chocolate bar from his secret store. “Jena, you know him well. What do you make of Antonio?”

“I don’t know him that well. What are you implying?”

Ryder stood, shocked. “I didn’t mean anything sordid, for God’s sake!”

“And why shouldn’t we have been? Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?”

Ryder’s face heated. “No. Of course not. I can’t win here can I? Can we start over?” He didn’t know whether to sit again or walk away.

“Ryder, you are so easy. Sit. How can I resist teasing you? How can I resist you? Oh, you want to know about Antonio. Yes, he’s cracked, hasn’t he? Is that what you wanted to know?”

Ryder, relieved, made himself comfortable—just—on the stool and waited for elaboration. He dared not prompt in case it became a trampoline for more verbal gymnastics. He didn’t have to wait long. Once Jena’s spring wound up, off she went.

“Highly intelligent, but self-effacing, dry sense of humour, and teased everyone a little. That’s how he was before he turned into an unbearable asshole.”

“That’s what I thought. Of course, having lost your family then volunteering for a suicide mission would unhinge most people.”

“Ryder, we’ve all lost family, though one of the reasons Antonio volunteered was because he wasn’t close to any of his: wiped out in a Naples riot while we orbited.”

“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.

J
ENA
HEARD
T
ERESA
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 she 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.”