H10N1 (23 page)

Rick harrumphed and crawled farther down the aisle.

“But with a plus handicap, you typically shoot under par and have to add points.” Michael planted his feet in a wide stance, clutching the hoe between his legs. He was actually posing. Did he think Rick might want to snap his picture or ask for his autograph?

“I played miniature golf sometimes,” Rick said. “Those windmills can be a real bitch.”

Taeya smiled.

The haughty smirk on Michael’s face twitched. He rotated his shoulders before aiming at the next weed. Taeya wondered how soon he would find an excuse to wander off.

At least John was sticking with it. Taeya tied another string onto a cross wire and wrapped one of the pole bean’s sticky tendrils around until it caught hold.

As she worked, she chatted with John. “So your father taught English and your mother taught music at this little private college. I’ll bet dinner discussions were stimulating. Steinbeck and Strauss.”

“It did soften my edges a bit,” John said. “I grew under the glow of a computer monitor so the refinement was not wasted.”

“What did your parents think of you going to MIT?”

“Oh, they certainly understood that my expertise was in technology.”

“And is that where you turned into this bad boy?” She flicked a finger through his shaggy gray hair.

John grinned as though flattered. “Do I look like a bad boy?”

She shrugged. “You kind of remind me of a guitar player from the old days.”

“Jerry Garcia, right?” Wrinkles deepened at the sides of his eye as he grinned. “I’m surprised you even know who he was.”

Taeya pulled up another length of string and tied it. “My mother had a wild streak in her. She loved listening to the oldies station on satellite radio. Of course, my brother and I never knew just what a wild child she’d been until I came across an old picture in an album. She and some guy—not my father—were at a music festival. She let it slip that the concert was one of those weekend events. The more I pressed for details, the more embarrassed she got. Seems she and the boy shared a tent. And she was only sixteen at the time!”

John gasped and Taeya nodded. “I know. My brother and I were shocked.”

The crosswire she was tying string onto jerked, and Taeya glanced over. John’s hands trembled as he tied off his own string. His face was flushed.

“You okay?” she asked.

His next breath wheezed in a high-pitched whistle. He pitched forward, bracing his hands on his knees.

“John!” She crouched in front of him. “Have you been stung by a bee?”

He shook his head, his eyes watering as he fought for his next breath.

She swung around to get Rick. He was already leaping over the plant bed. Devin dropped his shovel and came running, too.

“What happened?” Rick yelled.

Taeya pressed two fingers to John’s neck. His pulse was racing. “Let’s get him to sickbay.”

Devin and Rick carried John, with Taeya running ahead, her feet rumbling on the metal stairs. With no way of knowing whether John was suffering from angioedema or experiencing an anaphylactic reaction, her only choice at the moment was to reduce the swelling of his airways, and hope he could tell her something. If he went into arrest, she’d be lucky to save him.

Behind her, John’s gasping sounded like a sea lion’s bark. She slammed open the door to sickbay and by the time Devin and Rick laid him on the examining table, Taeya had a syringe of epinephrine ready.

Then she snapped an oxygen mask onto his face and checked his heart rate. Within seconds Judith and Mai burst in, looking just as concerned as Devin and Rick. The room was getting a little crowded, and everyone was huddling around John.

His airway slowly cleared but his panting got worse. He struggled to sit, and yanked at the oxygen mask. Panic attack.

“Everybody out! Now!” Taeya ordered.

Rick was wrangling with John to keep him still. “But he’s—”

“Just go!”

Rick looked just as panicked, his eyes wide, his face pale. Taeya remembered him losing his wife and son. Touching his arm, she lowered her voice. “He’ll be okay.”

Once everyone left, she pressed her hand on John’s forehead to make him lie still, and gave him a smile.

“John, listen to me. We’ve both been rushing around, but now we’re going to calm down and take slow, deep breaths.” She filled her lungs and blew out slowly to demonstrate.

His eyes scanned wildly around the room. “John!” She gripped his hand and squeezed until he focused on her. “That’s right. Now here we go.” She coaxed him through several breaths before she reached over for the blood pressure cuff.

As she slipped it on his forearm, she noticed a smattering of red dots on the inside of his arm. She raised his shirt and scoffed. His chest was covered in rash. He tried to pull his shirt back down.

“John.” She stretched his name out in an accusatory tone. “You appear to have some sort of allergy.”

He avoided her eyes.

“And this has happened before.”

He nodded. His breathing had slowed, and when she checked his heart, the arrhythmia was subsiding.

She crossed her arms, waiting for an explanation.

He pulled the oxygen cup away from his mouth. “It’s a form of dysautonomia. A malfunction of the autonomic nervous system. My body just can’t seem to handle the heat.”

“And you were out in that blistering sun working? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“We all had assignments. I felt I should do my part.”

Taeya glowered at him. He’d been intimidated by Judith.

“Judith would have understood if you’d told her you couldn’t work.”

John looked sheepish. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Oh, I get it. You’d rather risk your health than oppose Judith.”

He winced. “I wouldn’t put it quite so cowardly.”

As soon as Taeya had John stabilized, she went back downstairs to report on his condition. Rick dropped his jar of bugs and dashed over. And when she said he could pay John a visit, he took the stairs two at a time.

Judith’s guilt over forcing John into the heat quickly jumped to rage at Kat.

She asked Mai for her PDA, and after she found what she was looking for, she stomped up to the kitchen. Taeya followed, just to make sure Judith didn’t get carried away.

After punching in the code to Kat’s apartment, Judith carried a pitcher of cold water up the spiral stairs and tossed it on the sleeping girl. The shock woke her up screaming.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Waking you up,” Judith snarled.

Kat scrambled off the wet sheets, wrapping a blanket around her naked body. Good Lord, had Michael been here last night?

“You said if I didn’t eat, I didn’t have to work.”

“The rules have changed,” Judith snapped back. “You’re going to work in that garden, if I have to put a choke chain around your neck and tie you to a stake.” Judith pointed to the little digital clock on the wall that announced sunrise. “Now, you’ve got five minutes to get dressed and be out there. Or I’ll be back with the leash.”

Kat showed up seven minutes later in a halter top, short shorts, and ridiculous platform sandals.

“Come on, Kitten.” Judith shoved a bucket into her hands. “I’ll show you how to weed.”

She knelt down beside a bed of green beans, but Kat remained standing, with arms crossed.

“I think you can see better down here.” Judith took Kat’s hand and jerked her to her knees. “These are beans.” Judith brushed a palm over the broad leaves. “These are weeds.” She plucked one out. “You crawl along here, pull all the weeds, and put them in the bucket.”

Judith stood and brushed off her knees. “You should be able to get this row done in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re full of shit, you know that?”

Bobbling her head, Judith looked down at the girl. “Actually, I’m not. We aren’t getting enough protein to be
full
of shit. I’m about a quarter full at the moment.”

She walked away. But she kept track of the time, and made sure Kat knew she was keeping track. At the end of fifteen minutes, Judith went over to inspect her work. As she ambled down the row, she pointed out weeds.

“Missed one here. Couple here.”

When she got to Kat’s bucket, she frowned. There were young bean plants tossed in among the weeds.

“Guess you need another lesson on what a bean plant looks like.” Judith delicately pulled one of the plants out, and crouched next to the girl. “See the broad leaf, the little point at the end. Now that doesn’t look at all like foxtail, does it?” She plucked a piece of the grass-like weed from the bucket.

“I told you I couldn’t do this.” Kat scrambled to her feet and brushed her knees off.

“Oh-ho! You think if you prove to me you can’t do it, I’ll let you go?” Judith hopped up with the bucket, and pushed Kat back to the beginning of the aisle. “You’re going to replant every one of these.” She dumped the bucket of weeds and gingerly picked out the bean plants. Finding a bare spot, she dug her fingers into the soil, pulled out a handful, and packed it gently around the roots of the plant.

“I can’t dig with my hands!”

“Sure you can.” Judith latched onto Kat’s wrist, dragged her to her knees again, and jammed her fingers into the dirt. “See? Those nice long nails work better than a trowel.”

In horror, Kat looked around for help. Her mother sneered and went back to work. Mai pushed out a bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. Taeya gave her a little shrug and went back to her pole beans. Michael was nowhere to be found.

“And since you’ve disturbed the roots, you need to carry water over here and give each one of these poor guys a good dousing.”

“This is bullshit!”

“Watch it, Kitten.” Judith patted Kat’s head and stood. “Or I’ll let you clean out the goat pens tomorrow.”

Taeya had just gotten started back on the pole beans when Kat wailed and rolled back on her haunches. She stared at one of her fingernails, then boo-hooed as she ripped the broken tip off and threw it at Judith.

CHAPTER TWENTY

What a great afternoon. Rick and Sanchez held hands for a while. Well, actually, he’d grabbed her hand and dragged her down the basement stairs to show her the inner workings of the Biosphere. But she hadn’t fought to get away from him.

Then John talked him through tearing down a clothes dryer and fixing a roller. He even coaxed Rick into climbing up the mainframe to replace an oxygen sensor that was on the fritz. He hoped that feat came up in a conversation sometime when Sanchez was around.

Footsteps rumbled on the stairs behind Rick. Devin trotted up the last few steps and slapped a hand on Rick’s back.

“You should check out the ocean,” Devin said. “It’s incredible. There’s even a few lobsters down there.”

“Why didn’t you catch some? I’m dying for some meat.” Rick reached the top of the stairs and turned toward his apartment and a much needed shower. As he and Devin shuffled past the conference room doorway, Michael dashed out.

“Hey! Come and check this out!” he said.

Rick and Devin looked at each other.

“Come on!” Michael urged them. “Hurry!”

He pushed them over to the windows facing the front, but as Rick scanned the yard, nothing caught his eye. The stiffs were still rotting in the afternoon heat; it looked like another rabbit had hippity-hopped to his death.

Michael must have sensed Rick and Devin’s lack of enthusiasm.

“Someone set off the sensor in the shopping village,” he said. “They should be coming around the bend any second now.”

Like a kid, Michael pressed himself against the glass, his whole body vibrating with excitement. Sure enough, some dude in skater shorts and a backpack came sauntering down the sidewalk.

“Excellent!” Michael said. “Now let’s see if this kid’s as smart as you, Devin.”

The odor alone stopped the kid in his tracks. He pulled his tee shirt up over his nose and mouth, like that would actually help. Then the kid stood still, studying the dead bodies and trying to put it all together.

Michael perched his hands on his hips. “Either of you gentlemen interested in a little wager?”

Devin’s head reared back as he took a sideways glance at Michael. “You mean like whether or not the kid fries?”

“Yeah!”

“Jesus, Michael,” Rick blurted.

“Hey, it’s not like there’s anything I can do to prevent it,” Michael defended himself. “If I turn off the lasers and open the hatch to tell him to beat it, he could take a shot at me.”

“So you’re going to watch to see if he figures it out,” Rick said.

“And take bets on the outcome,” Devin added.

“Oh, I don’t have anything to bet.” Michael dug his hands into his pockets. “It’s more like a friendly wager.”

Rick stepped back from the window. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Hey, I thought you’d get a kick out of it,” Michael said. “It’s not like I’m pulling a gun on the kid.”

He turned to Devin for support. “Tell him. That’s what the lasers are for. To keep trespassers away, and to serve as a warning to anyone who tries to get in.”

“Sorry, Michael,” Devin said. “I saw enough sick shit while I was in the military. I understand how your security works and why. I don’t need to see it in action.”

Turning away, Devin walked with Rick towards the doorway, but before they got out of the room, Rick heard the faint hum of a power surge. The kid was toast.

Rick fumed as he stood under the showerhead. Michael was a total prick. This place would be a paradise if he weren’t around. Good luck with encouraging him to shove off.

By the time Rick was dressed, he’d decided not to tell Sanchez about Michael’s shenanigans. She was too busy rehabilitating Kat. The two women were sequestered in the kitchen fixing dinner. One sniff of whatever they were cooking shifted Rick’s attention from his head to his stomach.

Then he saw the puny helping of beans and rice they were dishing onto plates. He tried to stretch two bites into four. When that didn’t put a dent in his hunger, he helped himself to another banana—the only thing they had in abundance besides sweet potatoes.

He grumbled about the portions, and Judith assured him that once a nanny gave birth, Devin would slaughter one of the older kids.