View from Ararat (18 page)

So the decision was made. As soon as the numbers in the surrounding Security cordon diminished to a manageable level, the plan would go into action.

Wieta Quarantine Camp

Edison Sector (South)

26/1/203 Standard

GABRIEL

On the makeshift table next to his long-unmade bed stands a small frame. He picks it up and looks deep into the smiling eyes of the young girl, frozen there in a moment of eternal contentment.

Francesca.

On the floor beside her empty bunk, the curved and polished surface of her beloved violin catches the weak echo of the afternoon sun that struggles in through a gap in the limp curtaining of the hut. Dropping into a crouch, he runs his reluctant fingers over the taut-stretched strings, but there is no music in the sounds that reach his ears. The music was in Francesca's fingers, not his.

And Francesca is dead.

A knock, and the door opens inwards. Thadeus Smith stands uncertainly in the doorway, with the sun shining in behind him, so that he casts a hunchbacked silhouette. He is approaching the final stages of CRIOS and most of his joints have begun to seize, giving him the shuffling gait and the stooped posture of an ancient movie monster.

But Thadeus is no monster.

Before the Crystal began its spread, he was a mathematician, with a wife, a baby son and dreams of a bright academic future on a new world.

Then his wife and son died within an hour of each other, in the stinking darkness of a closed hut, and his dreams turned to dust under the baking sun of an alien world.

And now he is dying in the failing body of a stranger.

‘Gabriel.' He speaks quietly, with the air of someone entering a sacred place. ‘It is time.'

Slowly Gabriel Bernardi nods and rises. For a long, last moment he stares at his smiling daughter and says a silent goodbye.

Then he follows his friend out of the hut, carefully closing the door for the final time.

They wait for him quietly. There is nothing left to talk about.

As he passes, they stand aside, watching him make his way to the head of the assembled group.

‘Wait here for my signal.'

The instruction is unnecessary. They all know the plan, but a leader must show authority, even if he feels none.

He walks out of the laneway and moves to join the advance group. They have stopped shouting insults towards assembled members of the Security cordon who face them from the other side of the fence. Instead, they stand silently in a single line, arms folded, staring across the narrow no-man's-land.

As he reaches them, his men acknowledge his leadership silently. They have won the attention of the enemy. Phase one is complete.

He steps forward and looks out through the fence-wire, conscious of the eyes upon him from both sides.

‘Who is in charge here?'

He shouts the words, and his voice sounds remarkably steady in his own ears. It is a rhetorical question, of course. The young squad-leader who stands facing him is clearly the only one in the demoralised group with the will to make decisions. But every conversation needs an opening line.

The young man waits for a few seconds, holding Gabriel's gaze.

When he speaks, his voice is thin, almost childlike. At odds with the demeanour of authority he is striving to project.

‘I'm going to ask you just once to disperse your people and make your way back to your huts. For your own safety.'

From somewhere in the line of men behind him, Gabriel hears the sound of ironic laughter. He waits until it subsides.

‘Too late.' He shrugs slightly and almost smiles. ‘Every man in this line is a dead man. You and your friends and your government killed them all.' A pause. The words weigh heavily, and he allows them to sink into the young man's understanding before continuing.

‘What do you expect us to do? Wait here like mindless animals until everyone in the whole camp is dead?'

‘The government . . . The Researchers are working on . . .' The young man's voice breaks, and he hesitates.

Gabriel Bernardi fixes him with a pitying gaze. When he speaks again, it is like a teacher to a slow student.

‘The Researchers can't stop what's happening, and you know it. Edison, New Geneva, Roma . . . It's already out of control, and there's nothing you can do about it. In weeks . . . days perhaps . . . it will be every man for himself – and every woman and every child. There are people in here who are clean, and there are people out there – maybe even some of you – who are infected. You're based in Edison. Can you guarantee that none of you shouldn't be in here with us?'

He looks deliberately along the row of Security operatives.

Receiving no reply, he continues. ‘Tell me, boy, what exactly do you think you're protecting with your fences and your stupid uniforms? Get out of here while you can, and try to save yourselves, because we are coming out, whether you try to stop us or not. You see, your weapons are useless against men who are already dead. You and yours have made this a war, and to save our own, if we have to, we will kill you. You can turn away and leave now, or you can try to stop us. It's up to you. Either way, it ends here. And now.'

He takes one step backwards, joining the line of unmoving men.

Beyond the fence, the young squad-leader raises an arm.

‘Arkell, Simpkins and Thoreau. Warning shots. Now!'

On his word, three of the uniformed troops step forward, raise their weapons and fire. Three shots each. Nine explosions of super-heated soil erupting from the ground in front of the assembled inmates.

Gabriel feels the heat on his face, but remains unmoving. A glance along the line of his men, and he feels a glow of pride swelling in his chest, as he sees the row standing rigidly, unbroken.

Beyond the fence the soldiers raise their weapons level with their chests. The next volley will not be a warning.

He senses the movement behind him and turns to see the rest of his volunteers leaving the cover of the buildings to join them. Men and women, old and young. All dying. All sworn to making a difference before it is too late to do anything but die.

In the end they have not waited for his signal. He shrugs inwardly.

Discipline . . .

They form up in ranks behind the original line, silent but determined, waiting for his word.

He turns to his friend. ‘Ready, Thadeus?' Thadeus Smith swallows hard and nods his head once.

Gabriel smiles sadly. ‘Let's do it!' he shouts, his voice loud in the sudden, eerie silence. Then he takes the first step forward. As one, the first row moves with him . . .

Tremayne's Fall

Overlooking the Wieta Quarantine Camp

Edison Sector (South)

26/1/203 Standard

RAMÓN

The advancing line reaches the wire.

For a few seconds it seems as if no one in the waiting Security squad will do anything to stop them scaling the fence or cutting through. The squad-leader still stands unmoving, with his arm raised and a look of horror on his face. But only for a few seconds.

Suddenly a single pulse erupts from one of the raised rifles. It strikes the first of the inmates as his hand reaches the top strand of wire, and he is thrown flaming down from the fence, landing at the feet of the advancing line.

It is like the throwing of a switch, as panic replaces the last vestiges of discipline.

The air is filled with red laser pulses, and inside the fence bodies begin falling. The young squad-leader stands motionless, appalled, but things have moved beyond logic. It is beyond his capacity to stop the inevitable massacre.

From his station above the scene Ramón looks on.

The distant sound of screams drifts up, and he imagines the smell of burning. The bile rises, searing, into his throat, and he fights it down, and though every fibre of his being cries for release, he cannot look away.

In less than a minute forty or fifty bodies lie inside the wire of the fence, but in the end it is the very power of the weapons ranged against them that works in favour of the victims.

Every murderous pulse, on its short light-speed journey to strike its victim, must pass through the fence, and the continuous barrage is slowly tearing the thin wire barrier to pieces.

Finally, under the weight of numbers, it gives way, and stumbling over the bodies of the fallen, the third and fourth ranks of advancing inmates make it outside.

The effect on the demoralised Security personnel is remarkable. Almost as quickly as it began, the slaughter ceases. As the remaining members of the doomed group begin moving slowly towards them, hands empty, inviting death, the hysteria burns itself out and disbelief takes over. Most of the young troops stand confused and horrified at the carnage they have unleashed.

Odd pulses still flash towards the group, but outside the confining wire the targets are already spreading out, and the shots are desperate and inaccurate, striking the earth harmlessly.

Then one trooper, his nerve finally failing, drops his rifle onto the ground in front of him and turns and runs. And one by one others follow, some throwing down their weapons, some grasping them tightly as they run.

At last they are gone.

Except for one.

Wieta Quarantine Camp

Edison Sector (South)

26/1/203 Standard

ANTON

Standing where he has stood since the firing began, Anton Stokes stares at the scene near the ruined fence. Bodies lie tumbled together and burned, some still writhing in pain, and the moans and the cries cut through him like angry accusations.

The other guards are gone, running back towards the base-camp and the waiting flyers, but he stands unaware of his isolation.

All around him the survivors stand silently, their objective achieved. And if he possessed the strength to turn his head, he would see, barely a hundred metres away, a steady stream of humanity spreading out in all directions from a small gap in the boundary fence.

But Anton Stokes sees nothing but the horror, feels nothing but the responsibility. The Failure.

The woman appears like an apparition before him. She is about the age of his mother in Elton, grey-haired and grey-eyed. Her face is burned, and her eyes are bright with the pain of it, but she says nothing to him. He studies her face for some sign of anger, for the disdain she must be feeling towards him, but he sees only resignation and understanding.

His guilt overflows in tears, and he chokes back a sob. ‘We had orders,' he whispers. ‘They gave us orders . . . I couldn't . . . stop it.'

A small, sad smile warms her face for a moment.

‘I know,' she replies, and reaches out to touch his face, but at the last instant she remembers and holds back.

‘Leave here. Now. Try to save yourself. No one is to blame.' She follows the line of his gaze, and continues as she looks back at the dead and dying. ‘Do not punish yourself, they were already dead days ago. We all were.'

But Anton Stokes does not hear her. He is already walking away down the slight incline towards the camp he has guarded for the past weeks.

Past the fallen, through the fence and into the maze of huts and laneways, he moves slowly, trying to block the memory of screams from his mind.

And failing . . .

GABRIEL

The pain is fading and the realisation surprises him.

From where he lies, just inside the ruined fence, he can see Thadeus lying a few metres away, his lifeless eyes staring straight up into the flawless sky.

‘We did it, my friend.' The words form in his mind, but he is beyond speaking them aloud. As Thadeus is beyond hearing them.

It is then that he hears it. Pure and clear, and as sweet as he always remembers it. Music. A single strain of melody,
pianissimo,
sweet and melancholy, rises gently in a minor key.

He closes his eyes and lets it carry him. Higher and higher.

‘Francesca . . .'

The name forms in his mind, but he is not certain if he has spoken it, for the notes have begun to float apart in the darkness. He reaches out his hands to capture them, and drifts slowly inexorably beyond knowing . . .

Roosevelt Foothills

Edison Sector (South)

26/1/203 Standard

RAMÓN'S STORY

When I returned that night, it was already dark. I entered the cave without speaking, and sat silently staring up at the pictures on the storywall. 'Lita had lived with me too long to try to break into whatever thoughts were occupying me, but Maija was new to this side of me.

‘We were worried,' she began. ‘What happened?'

But I just stared at the pictures in silence.

‘Ramón?' She tried again. ‘What . . . ?'

‘You don't want to know.' The words came, but my gaze remained fixed on the wall. ‘You don't ever want to know . . .'

But later that night, after my sister had gone to sleep and we were alone, I finally told her what I'd seen.

The next morning Maija was gone.

18

Beyond the Telling

Medical Research Facility

Edison

27/1/203 Standard

CHARLIE'S STORY

‘Ready?' I asked.

Galen turned the chair to face me.

‘I was just checking. You know, making sure we haven't forgotten anything. It's not like we can come back and get it if we suddenly discover—'

‘We've been over everything a thousand times, Galen. The files are all uploaded, the key tissue samples are already on their way. There's nothing left to do.'

I put on my best dictatorial tone. It wasn't that he was having second thoughts or anything, but he was umbilically attached to the place.

During the last two or three years, and particularly since that first mention of CRIOS on Hansen's smuggled file (was it only a couple of months earlier?), we'd spent more time in the lab-complex than anywhere else. I guess for someone as compulsive about his work as Galen undoubtedly was, the thought of leaving, with every chance of never being able to return, must have been a bit like withdrawal.

Finally he turned to me. ‘Okay. Let's go.'

He thumbed the chair-control and steered towards the door.

I felt a bit of a traitor myself, leaving without telling anyone where we were heading, but the situation had moved way beyond personal guilt.

We'd studied the epidemic dispersion projections a thousand times, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise – the speed of the breakdown, I mean.

With no one absolutely certain that they were clean, and everyone even less sure of anyone else, the psychology of isolation that we'd observed for the past weeks in the Wieta camp became apparent almost immediately. After the initial disbelief, survival instincts took over. People barricaded themselves into houses and apartments, rationing what little food they had stored and naively praying for a miracle.

Some crowded the roads, ignoring the order to stay within the city limits. And with the Security blockade an already distant memory, there was nothing but death itself to stop them.

Of course, the flyers were all grounded. Security had taken over all the air-traffic coordination centres and applied a blanket disablement. Any flyer that rose to cruising altitude received an automatic warning, which, if ignored, was followed a few seconds later by a remote-telemetry signal which shut down all field-generators. From that point the only direction was down – at terminal velocity.

After a couple of fiery examples, no one tried the aerial escape-route.

Except us.

From the days when Carmody Island and its special inhabitants were the best-kept secret on Deucalion, the community there had made an art of subterfuge. All their flyers were equipped, as a matter of course, with expensive and extremely effective motion-detection screening.

In an emergency, any flyer from Carmody could become a hopper, making it invisible to even the most sophisticated tracking devices, appearing at some predetermined point to pick up a passenger, then ‘hopping' – disappearing as if it never existed – as soon as it rose from the ground. And you can't shut down the field-generators of a machine you can't detect.

As for feeling like a traitor, I knew the feeling would pass.

After all, more than half the staff of the Research facility had failed to show the day after the bombshell was dropped during the presidential address. We'd been working virtually alone in our lab since then, and the numbers were still dropping in every area of the facility, so there was no need to feel guilty about going somewhere much safer to carry on the fight.

Of course, after the event, when running historical post-
mortems became a growth-industry, there were those who accused the people in power of using their privileged positions to save themselves without considering the responsibilities that power imposed on the powerful. But that criticism was aimed more at the politicians than at those Researchers who had worked so tirelessly to find a solution to the riddle of the Crystal.

And, when it came to the politicians, I suppose you could see their point. On the day after the address, the President, the heads of Security and Treasury, the entire Emergency Cabinet and most of their closest advisors, maybe five hundred high-ranking figures and their families disappeared from the face of the planet.

Literally.

Later it was argued that, if any semblance of stable government was to survive the chaos that was likely to ensue as the crisis deepened, those charged with the responsibility of making the important decisions had to be kept safe from the threat of the epidemic, so that they could function without distraction.

It had been common practice on Old Earth, during the troubles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
ad
, they said, for leaders to have secret ‘bunkers' to which they could retreat in times of national emergency. But in the current crisis, there was nowhere on the inhabited face of the planet that could be considered truly safe.

So on the morning of the twenty-fourth an unspecified number of shuttles lifted off from the landing-field outside of New Geneva, heading for the C-ship
Pandora
, to set up their emergency government in the one place absolutely safe from the threat of the Crystal Death.

Three days later, on the roof of the Medical Research facility at Edison, the door of the flyer opened and Jules looked out at us.

‘I thought you might like some company for the trip.' He looked towards Galen. ‘Hi, at last. Nice to see you in the flesh. Don't you just hate cyber-linkups? Everyone looks so different on the screen.'

Galen smiles. ‘I'm shorter in person.'

Then he moved the chair towards the ramp that was sliding towards us from beneath the doorframe.

I looked at Jules and he winked.

Two minutes later we were airborne, detection-screened, and on our way to Carmody Island.

Roosevelt Ranges

Edison Sector (West)

27/1/203

CINDY'S STORY

The climb over the Ranges took the best part of five days – five days of searing heat and skin-flaying winds that had us sheltering for hours at a time, cowering against the rock face, sometimes on ledges and tracks barely a metre wide.

According to the information I'd managed to squeeze from the punchboard, we were on the only passable route within a 150 clicks. Which made me begin to doubt my understanding of the word ‘passable'.

Of course, whoever had programmed the information in and rated the climb probably didn't expect the climbing party to possess absolutely no safety equipment, or to include in their number a set of ten-year-old twins.

About three days into the ordeal, when we were resting on the edge of a sheer, 2,000-metre drop, Mac sat down next to me with his legs dangling over the edge.

‘Cox is worried,' he said, staring off into the distance. ‘The kids are tiring rapidly. If we don't get them off this damned mountain soon, they mightn't make it.'

‘Kids are tougher than you think,' I replied – like
I
was an expert!

I guess I was feeling more confident than I had any right to feel, considering the circumstances, but I'd been watching the kids pretty closely, seeing as how I was usually ‘tail-end-Charley' in most situations.

With Mac and Cox taking turns at point, deciding the easiest route and testing it out, then helping the rest of us through the tough sections, and with Tim and Krysten shepherding the twins, it was up to me to run back-up and watch for problems that the others might be too busy to notice developing.

It gave me a chance to see how the kids were coping, and from what I'd seen it seemed to me that with the help of Krys and Tim they would make it.

They were weaker than they'd been at the start of the journey – we all were – but with only a couple more days to last, I knew that we could nurse them through. If necessary, they had a brother and a sister – not to mention a ‘tail-end-Charley' – who would carry them the rest of the way on their backs.

Family's a wonderful thing, even if you have to borrow someone else's to experience it.

Besides, we had Mac.

Sitting there next to him, I looked out across the gaping emptiness towards the wall of rock maybe 60 or 70 metres away.

‘We'd all be dead without you. You know that, don't you? Not too many people could have got us this far.'

He needed encouragement, but it just happened to be the truth. Or I wouldn't have said it. One thing I'd learned on Ganymede was that you didn't try to kiss-up to McEwan Porter. He had built-in-crap-radar, and he didn't react well to it.

He turned to face me. ‘Tell me when we're back at sea level.'

Then he looked up towards the distant expanse of blue, but I knew he was looking much further than the sky.

When he spoke again, it was as if he'd forgotten I was there next to him. ‘People have trusted me before.'

JMMC Taxi-Shuttle
Lunar Explorer

En route – Earth/Lunar

August 13, 2318
ad

MAC

He stares down at his gloved hands. The frozen blood-crystals cling like sweat to the static-field of his suit, and at the edge of his field of vision something floats past. Something shapeless and grotesque that a few hours earlier was joking and breathing and ordering him outside to fix a leaking atmosphere pressure-valve.

It was a simple maintenance task that even an eighteen-year-old, ‘wet-behind-the-ass' rookie could handle, and one that was well beneath the station of the three senior crew-members.

There is nowhere he can hide from the accusation of their disfigured faces. They float in the airless cabin, circling him, denouncing him silently, as he breathes in the stale recycled oxygen from a failing apparatus and waits to die.

And as he waits, the litany of guilt repeats like an evil charm.

You should have done something. There must have been some sign. Something to show it was defective. The others would have noticed. They would never have fitted a defective valve. They trusted you . . . You should have done . . . something . . .

As darkness closes in from the edges of his consciousness, he notices the proximity alarm flashing red, but before he can turn to see the rescue vessel closing in on the crippled ship, the horror around him slips away into black.

The board of enquiry will blame a manufacturing fault in the newly fitted valve for the failure and the explosive decompression of the
Lunar Explorer
, and for the deaths of fifteen passengers and three of the crew of four. But McEwan Porter will carry the secret guilt away from the hearing-room, along with a finding absolving him of any culpability.

A guilt which will return again and again to haunt him.

Genetic Research Laboratory,

Carmody Island

Inland Sea (Eastern Region)

27/1/203 Standard

CHARLIE'S STORY

When I said they had a ‘state-of-the-art' facility on the island, Galen believed me. He always believes me, except when I'm disagreeing with him. But he didn't realise I meant
state-of-the-art.

In the hundred or so years since Stanley Hendriks had set it up, big money had been spent keeping it up to date. It was easily as sophisticated as the lab-complex back in Edison, but the surroundings were a whole lot more pleasant.

If you looked out on the forest and the sunlit beach outside the windows, you could easily forget that the world was dying and that you were one of maybe a couple of dozen people with a chance of finding a way to stop it happening.

‘You're sure you wouldn't like to settle in first?'

Jules was trying to be the perfect host. He didn't know the first thing about the lab, but he was the local, and I suppose with Kaz gone, and Loef totally tied up with the baby, he needed something to do, so he'd volunteered to act as guide.

Galen, of course, totally ignored him. He wasn't trying to be rude, it's just . . . well, he probably felt like he'd died and gone to Researchers' heaven: Digital gas-chromatography on-hand, a DNA configuration imager like the one he'd been pushing for since forever.

‘I
am
settling in.'

He directed the chair across to the data-frame control console.

‘Is it coded?'

My area.

I nodded. ‘And ether-linked. You can access any Research or med-centre on the planet, and the archival ROM-frame in New G.'

‘What about Hamita? I want to see if he's still there after the massacre yesterday.'

News of the fall of the quarantine camp had come to us on the secure channel the night before. It wasn't common knowledge yet. An informal censorship had grown up in the past weeks concerning sensitive news. But of course by now the rumours were probably flying in Edison itself.

Still, it was clear that Jules hadn't heard them.

‘What do you mean?'

Before I could answer, one of the island kids entered the lab, placing some hard-copy files and a specimen case onto one of the surfaces. While I was distracted, Galen beat me to the punch.

‘Hamita's the only one with anything approaching real data on the progress of the disease, and no one's seen as many cases as he has. I just hope nothing's happened to him. The whole thing was a bit of a mess, if you can believe the preliminary reports. Over two hundred deaths.'

There was no mention of Kaz, and no consideration. Galen could be so incredibly insensitive at times. I watched the look of concern on Jules's face.

To break the mood, I said, ‘They're probably fine.'

I turned to the console, leaned across in front of Galen, punched in Hamita's code and stepped back.

Within moments his face appeared on the screen.

‘Galen!' He was smiling with what looked like relief. ‘We thought we'd lost you. I called this morning and there was no one at the lab.'