Blood of the Cosmos (9 page)

Fortunately, the ocean—as well as their rigidly insular beliefs—had cut the dreamers off from the rest of the population. The Dhougal group wanted no contamination from the outside world, and therefore, they inadvertently protected the rest of Serenity's Reach from the spread of the voracious nematodes.

Tense, well-armed planetary patrols quarantined the island, preventing any infected dreamers from escaping, and also blocked any well-meaning salvation workers or medical teams from offering fruitless aid. Now, in the final stages, there was no hope for a miracle, but still the government delayed and delayed the sterilization burst for foolish “humanitarian” reasons.

Tom Rom didn't understand the misplaced emotions. How was it better for the Dhougal inhabitants to die horribly first and then be incinerated, rather than have their brain-devouring agony ended in a single incandescent flash?

On the bright side, it gave Tom Rom the time he needed.

Government aircraft patrolled the skies above the island; armed boats formed a tight cordon in the water around the cauldron of the infestation. Everyone aboard the sea vessels wore encapsulating decontamination suits for fear that one of the minuscule worms might be borne on the ocean breezes. Complete eradication was necessary.

Not much time.

In the past Tom Rom had acquired specimens of many extremely deadly microorganisms, from bacteria down to the smallest known viruses. He was cautious, but not foolishly paranoid. Compared to most pathogens, the Dhougal brain parasites were practically the size of starships, but if the nematodes had direct contact with the skin, they would burrow through pores, reach the bloodstream, and then hitchhike to the brain. Tom Rom wore a snug-fitting filmsuit that encased his entire body like an embryonic sac. That should be sufficient protection, while allowing him complete freedom of movement.

And the filmsuit offered another advantage. A fully enclosed decontamination suit designed to protect the wearer from adverse environmental conditions would function just as well
underwater
—well away from the watchful eyes of the patrol boats or aircraft.

Moving a kilometer down the main coastline, he found an isolated stretch of beach to use as his starting point. Even the “settled” mainland of Serenity's Reach was sparsely populated compared with most other Confederation worlds. Tom Rom had his tools, his specimen collection kit, and a hand weapon in case the situation got out of control. He checked the seals in his suit for the fifth time—he had made a mistake once, and it had nearly killed him; he wouldn't let that happen again.

After cinching the belts to seat his propulsion pack at the small of his back, he plunged into the surf, swimming out and then down. He extended his arms in front of him and activated the propulsion pack, which took him deep enough beneath the surface to avoid detection, like a torpedo. The sea was shallow and warm, but he could feel no warmth through his suit as he glided along.

Though he had insisted to Zoe that he was recovered from the Onthos plague he had contracted while pursuing Orli Covitz, he was not quite back to his peak capabilities—to be expected, since he had very nearly died—but he didn't want Zoe to think of him as weak, or even mortal. He had made a private vow long ago to protect the woman who, under different circumstances, could have been his daughter.

He had failed to get Zoe the complete database of Onthos information that Orli Covitz had carried, and that still rankled him. He wanted to make it up to Zoe in some way.

Diving deep enough that he could feel the water pressure around him like a tightening fist, he easily passed under the patrol boats. He assessed scan patterns projected inside his eye shields and saw the boats moving—not their usual watchdog patrol, but withdrawing from the island in an orderly retreat. Withdrawing? That was worrisome.

Concerned, Tom Rom increased speed.

He enhanced the resolution on his optical pickups, watching the rugged underwater landscape slope upward to the island. He followed the contour to a small cove, then surfaced near the silent and abandoned dock of the Dhougal colony. Bent low, he climbed dripping onto the dock and sprinted into the jungle, not wanting any of the aircraft to spot him moving.

Then Tom Rom noticed that the flyers were pulling away as well. Strange. He linked up to the communication bands, sifting through background chatter.

“… fifty minutes remaining.”

“Four kilometers is the
minimum
safety perimeter. Everyone needs to be at least six away.”

“—incineration strike to launch in ten minutes.”

“It is the most merciful thing. It's merciful, isn't it?”

Tom Rom began to run. Not enough time.

He checked his chronometer, reset the countdown, but he wouldn't rely on that to the second. The planetary patrol was nervous, and an incineration strike didn't have to be punctual. Early would be okay, as well.

With his suit's enhanced external audio pickups, Tom Rom heard the buzzing and burbling of the jungle, the thrumming insects, the singing birds, the rustle of leaves and branches as creatures moved about. The jungle didn't seem to care about the tragedy of the utopian colony; the nematodes had been part of the ecosystem here for far longer than humans had.

The Dhougal settlement was relatively new. The hundred dreamers had cleared a large section of the jungle island to erect identical cubicle structures. Apparently, the group felt that homogenization led to perfection.

Now, bodies lay scattered about like human kindling in the dirt streets that were laid out in a grid. Some had been dead for days, the flesh bloated in the tropical heat. They would be no good for his purposes. He needed to find a fresh cadaver where the brain parasites would still be at their peak activity.

At least he had plenty of bodies to choose from, and at least one of them should provide a viable specimen. Tom Rom removed his kit.

The plague was so deadly that the Dhougal colonists had not had time to bury or cremate the bodies. He found the small medical center, which had been rapidly overloaded with patients. Bodies, some covered with sheets, lay stacked on the ground like spare wood for the winter. Others had fallen dead just outside the door.

There would be numerous patients within the infirmary, but he knew the medical center would have received the first infected ones, and therefore those would be the oldest specimens—thus uninteresting for specimen collection. He needed to find a more recently deceased patient.

A quick check of the chronometer: less than five minutes to finish his mission and head out of there. Even with his propulsion pack at maximum speed, he would need ten or fifteen minutes to get clear to the four-kilometer distance.

He found a gangly teenage boy sprawled dead on his face in the middle of a dirt street. His flesh tone looked reasonably clear. With a gloved finger, Tom Rom touched the victim's cheek, felt pliable flesh. When he rolled the body over, the limbs flopped—rigor mortis hadn't set in. This one had been dead less than half a day, and with the time ticking down, it would have to do.

He opened his specimen kit and pulled out a scalpel and a diamond saw that made quick work of cutting the dead youth's forehead and splitting open the skull.

He heard a rustle behind him, staggering footsteps, and whirled as a middle-aged woman lurched out of a nearby dwelling. She flailed bloody hands. Her fingertips were stained red because she had just clawed her eyes out trying to get at the worms inside her head. Wailing and gurgling, she charged toward Tom Rom.

Startled, he dropped the bone saw, then hissed in annoyance. Now he would have to sterilize it again. He withdrew his hand weapon and fired twice, both projectiles striking the woman in the center of her chest. She collapsed, bloodied hands outstretched.

Tom Rom glanced down at the dead youth before he picked up his tools, deciding to take the fresher specimen. The nematodes were surely alive and active inside this woman's corpse.

A squirt of sterilizer cleaned the bone saw, and he used it to crack open the woman's head, exposing her infested brain. With scalpel, tongs, and a thin probe he found the encysted brain parasites. The nematodes had made several nodules inside her brain, and Tom Rom cut out three of them, placing the specimens in separate packets. He sealed the packs, dropped the tools, sterilized his gloves, then glanced at the chronometer again. Adrenaline flooded through him, and Tom Rom ran, paying no attention to the jungle, the empty homes, the other bodies lying about.

Overhead, his suit's audio pickups detected the sounds of approaching aircraft. He reached the cove and saw that the patrol boats had pulled so far away that they were barely visible in the distance.

After securing the vital specimens in his pack, Tom Rom activated the propulsion unit and ran at full speed to the end of the dock. Diving forward, he plunged into the water, swam deep, then shot along like a shark.

Under the surface, he surged forward, but the water seemed thick and gelatinous, holding him back. He marked his distance, but underwater he couldn't hear the comm signals of the sterilization aircraft approaching overhead.

The chronometer ticked down.

Realizing that he would never reach his target safety distance, Tom Rom chose to go deeper, counting on the ocean itself to shield him.

One minute sooner than expected, an attenuated wash of light streamed through the depths, and he braced himself, shooting forward. Damn them for being early!

The shock wave rippled over him like an all-encompassing slap. He tumbled and rolled deep underwater, out of control, but it passed soon enough. He was going to have bruises, no doubt, but Tom Rom didn't worry about bruises.

When he reached the shore of the mainland and crawled up onto the uninhabited beach, he turned to look behind him and saw the pillar of fire and smoke roiling into the sky from where the island had been. Safe, for now.

As an added precaution, he sterilized his kit and specimen pack again, then sterilized the exterior of his filmsuit before stripping it off and discarding it in the thick shore weeds. He had his specimens, and he was anxious to get back to Zoe. This time, unlike when he'd tried to acquire the Onthos database, he hadn't let her down.

He paused to take a breath and realized he was smiling. Yes, it felt very good to be back on the job again.

 

CHAPTER

11

LEE ISWANDER

Even though Lee Iswander did not understand the bloaters, he found them incredible. He had devoted his manpower and equipment to harvesting as many of them as possible, but he still
admired
them. Thanks to the ekti-X they contained, these drifting gasbags had made him wealthy again after his spectacular fall from grace.

Enormous spheres of space plankton, nodules created by some odd galactic phenomenon, the bloaters wandered the vagaries of interstellar gravitation without being discovered until recently. Nobody understood them.

Someday, Iswander would devote time and resources to studying the things, but right now there was a ticking clock. Any day, this cluster could metamorphose and scatter like the last one had done, sailing off into space. He had invested heavily in setting up this secret extraction field, and he didn't want to waste time. His crew operated at full capacity, draining every drop of stardrive fuel they could.

His green priest Aelin continued to insist that the extraction work would lead to disaster, raving about a cosmic consciousness he sensed within the gathering bloaters. Iswander knew the poor man was brain-damaged, and he felt sorry for the green priest. He had taken Aelin under his wing, and now he worried about the man out here in the extraction operations.

Some traditional Roamers viewed Lee Iswander as a cold and uncaring man who was focused only on profits, having no personal connection to his employees or the other clans. That perception had worked against him when he campaigned to be elected the next Speaker for the Roamer clans. The 1,543 casualties from a lava storm on Sheol had been a deathblow to his career. No one counted the lives he had managed to
save
through emergency measures, and the Roamers blamed him for the disaster. They ground him under bootheels of scorn—but he refused to accept the disgrace.

Now, as he looked out at the mysterious bloaters, the pumping equipment draining them dry, the holding tanks, the cargo ships and the habitation modules drifting among the greenish sacks, he knew he had restored his good name.

Unfortunately, because no one could be allowed to know about these operations, his accomplishment remained invisible to the rest of the clans. Frustrating: if no one
knew
that he had regained his strength, confidence, and prominence, then he effectively didn't
possess
any strength, confidence, or prominence.

Elisa presented him with a report in the admin hub. “Production is up from last month, sir. Distribution exceeds even our optimistic models.” She was crisply dressed, hard-eyed, and beautiful—but in a way that engendered no warmth nor encouraged any flirtation.

Iswander never had any doubts about her. “You were absolutely right to recruit those pilots from Kett Shipping. What is the pilot's name again? Tamblyn? From clan Tamblyn?”

“Yes, sir. Xander Brindle—his mother is Tasia Tamblyn, who manages Kett Shipping. We started out using just their one ship, the
Verne
, but our production has exceeded their capacity to meet our needs. Kett Shipping has brought in other distribution vessels, but Brindle and his partner Terry Handon remain our single point of contact, for security reasons. We may want to make side deals, particularly with the manager of Ulio Station. He would pay a premium for a strategic stockpile reserve of ekti-X.”

Iswander frowned. “Be careful—we don't dare let anyone else know about our operations.” Once the secret was out, their monopoly would go away, and the whole market would collapse.