Leather—yesterday Zack had seen a civilian wearing a crude-but-new leather vest. Did the base now possess tanning facilities? Or did a tannery exist outside in the woods someplace, part of some Army-civilian black market? Zack worked so much that he didn’t keep up with what passed here for trendiness. He’d heard a rumor that two soldiers had shot a mountain lion and kept the head mounted on a wall somewhere, but this seemed doubtful to him. Surely taxidermy was now a dead art?
The chief importance of the rumor was its widespread belief. It showed that Jenner, who surely would have forbidden a mounted and decaying wildcat head, didn’t have complete control of the base he commanded, despite what Toni still called the “Praetorian Guard.” She had a name for Master Sergeant Hillson, too—“Varys,” who was apparently some sort of spymaster in an old epic.
The last of the hunting party entered the airlock. When it was empty again, Zack made his way through the tunnels to Enclave. Susan sat beside Caitlin, who clutched the tattered Bollers even while she slept.
“No change?”
“No. I think I’m worried.”
“Claire says it’s normal. So does Lindy.” Neither had been pleased to discover that Zack had used up their precious time by having both of them examine Caitlin at different times on the same day. Sometimes the lack of central scheduling was a good thing.
Zack put his arms around Susan and kissed her hair. “I miss you.”
“I’m right here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But I’m already late.” She gave his cock a friendly little squeeze, at once too much and far too little, smiled wickedly, and left.
Zack settled onto the bed beside Caitlin’s trundle, legs stretched out straight in front of him, and read an old scientific journal on his e-reader. There were no new scientific journals, and soon there might be no e-readers left. But while his existed, Zack tried to learn as much as he could of what had been cutting-edge science when the world Collapsed ten years ago.
The new normal, Marianne had said, with wonder and pain.
Hours later he was deep into an article on epistasis through epigenetic methylation, when someone pounded on the door. Zack leaped off the bed, tripped on Caity’s trailing blankets, and grabbed the doorknob to pull himself upright. It came off in his hand. He flung the door open by the hole and said in a fierce whisper, “Shhhh! My daughter’s sleeping!”
“Dr. McKay,” a soldier said, her eyes wide in a very young face, “Colonel Jenner says to report to Lab Dome. Right away, sir.”
“I can’t leave my daughter. She’s ill.”
“The colonel said immediately, sir.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Some people were killed.”
“An attack?” He hadn’t heard drones.
“No, sir. A bear.”
It didn’t make sense. If anyone outside—the hunting party or the Settlement garden diggers or the patrol—had been attacked by a bear, Zack wasn’t needed. He wasn’t a physician. And both perimeter patrol and the hunting party were heavily enough armed to take out a rhinoceros.
The soldier—and now Zack recognized her, a kid who’d grown up inside the base and now apparently joined the Army or been conscripted into it—said, “The colonel said Dr. Jenner wants you, ASAP. I don’t know why. I’m to escort you to Lab Dome.”
“But I… all right.”
He wrapped Caitlin in her blanket; she didn’t stir. He carried her into the corridor and to the “school,” a ramshackle area where two young women taught children of different ages whatever they could from tablets, a few handmade children’s books, and chalk on rock slates in lieu of paper. Before the Settlers arrived, the school had six pupils. Now there were an indeterminate and shifting number, depending on the day. Or sometimes the hour; Settler parents didn’t seem big on formal education. The cramped space looked like a mad version of America’s little red one-room schoolhouse.
“Karen, can I leave Caitlin with you? I’m sorry but there’s some sort of emergency at Lab Dome—no, not anything dangerous but Colonel Jenner has issued orders.”
“Well… I guess so. Is she contagious?”
“No, not at all,” Zack said, hoping this was true. But in such close quarters, whatever one child caught, they all got eventually, anyway. He laid Caitlin in a corner and arranged the blanket to partially hump up as a pillow for her head. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Okay. Devon, did you finish that math problem yet? No? Why not?”
Outside, escorted by the young soldier, Zack was startled to see an evening sky. He had been reading, and Caitlin sleeping, longer than he’d thought. Cool breezes ruffled dark trees beyond the perimeter, bringing the odors of mint and loam. One bright star shone directly overhead. He breathed deep, enjoying this too-brief taste of autumn twilight.
It was his last enjoyment for sixteen hours.
The corpses lay on open body bags on top of rough wooden tables. Zack recoiled; they were horribly maimed. His first thought was Torture…. sadistic fuckers! But then he saw that the young soldier had been correct. Even a layman could recognize the long claw marks of animal mauling. Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡ had died horribly.
But why had they been outside? And why were the bodies here, in the virology lab?
Marianne Jenner, looking every year of her age, was at the one electron microscope. Lab assistants seemed to be preparing slides. Toni spotted Zack and walked over, the usual sardonic lip curl gone from her face.
“Toni, what the hell happened?”
“Those two idiots went outside. Rhinehart left a note—they planned to steal the spaceship and go back to World. Apparently neither of them realized that of course Emperor Jason First of His Name had already moved the ship to safety in orbit. Anyway, they didn’t get very far. Wildlife got them first. Esuits might protect against microbes but not against a mother bear with cubs. A hunting party found them.”
“But—”
“They were both crazy, Zack, in different ways. And that’s not just a metaphor. Marianne suspected something about their brains. She says that everyone who came from World has been having headaches and, just lately, sleeping too much. She and Claire Patel convinced Lindy Ross that there was something weird going on. They did autopsies and prepared slides of brain tissue.”
Sleeping too much? It must be just a coincidence; Caitlin had not come from World.
Toni continued, “You’re going to ask how they got permission to autopsy. They didn’t. Lindy says she’ll take responsibility with His Majesty. Zack, you need to see these slides.”
She led him to the electron microscope. Marianne, so deep in her work that she didn’t hear them approach, jerked in surprise. Then she wordlessly rose and let Zack at the eyepiece.
Toni said, “Remember, everyone on that spaceship was infected with the virophage that destroyed the original R. sporii on World.”
Zack peered into the eyepiece, adjusted it for better focus, looked again.
“Oh my God!”
“And that’s not all,” Toni said. “There’s more.”
CHAPTER 11
Jason said, “How did this happen? How did those two get out of the dome?”
In the command post, the entire outside patrol stood at rigid attention, six soldiers whose blank faces didn’t quite hide their fear. Elizabeth Duncan stood beside Jason, hands clasped behind her back. Jason said, “Corporal Michaelson?”