Jason tried to sort out all this medical information. “You’re telling me, Doctor, that my base has been contaminated for weeks by a disease that might be transmitted person to person, so that everybody might have it. But everybody isn’t having headaches and oversleeping.”
“No. It may be progressive, with the star-farers exposed longer and the children more vulnerable because of the greater plasticity of their brains. It also may be that not everyone is infected with the virophage. Another possibility is that some people have the virophage but experience no symptoms, some have symptoms for a while but no permanent changes—they throw off the infection and that’s that. And some are susceptible and develop the kind of gliosis seen in Kayla and Glamet^vor¡. Many contagions are like that, including flu and Zika. There may be genetic susceptibility. Right now, we—Toni and Marianne and Claire and I—think that’s the most likely possibility with this.”
“Why do you think so?” Coldness was creeping up Jason’s spine, from tailbone to neck.
“We talked to everyone from the Return and the parents of all six children on base. Of the star-farers, all of them had headaches, which have mostly gone away, and three of those are oversleeping. Of the kids, all had symptoms but now only two do, and those two have both headaches and oversleeping. Devon Jones and…,” McKay’s voice caught briefly, “my daughter Caitlin.”
Two of six kids, four of ten from the Return. If McKay was right, over a third of the base might be susceptible to whatever this thing was. If it even was a thing. Jason said, “What’s the next step, Doctor?”
“Continue research on the autopsied brains. There are proteins to check for, molecules known to be involved in rewiring brains after injury. Run gene scans on the sleepers. And we need to… to watch what happens with everybody else.”
“Who are the adults whose headaches didn’t go away and who are sleeping too much?”
“Branch Carter—”
The spaceship pilot. Christ.
“—Belok^, who is Glamet^vor¡’s brother—but not his sister, La^vor. Also—”
“The brother but not the sister? So it’s not genetic who gets this thing and who does not?”
McKay looked astonished. Steffens jumped in. “You’re thinking that siblings share the same genes, but in fact they only share fifty percent on average. Susceptibility might indeed be genetic, or partially genetic. We don’t know.”
Jason knew this, but the science had momentarily slipped his brain. Steffens, whom Jason had never liked (“Imperator” and “the Praetorian Guard” were hers), wore the carefully impassive expression of someone trying to not show superiority. Forget her; Jason had a larger picture to think about. He said, “Who are the other two from the ship whose headaches didn’t go away?”
Silence. Then McKay said, “Marianne Jenner.”
Jason hadn’t expected that. But somehow, he knew what was coming next. “And the other person with headaches who isn’t oversleeping, or at least not yet?”
“The translator,” McKay said. “Jane.”
Marianne insisted on attending the funeral pyre for Kayla and Glamet^vor¡. There were reasons why she should not, all of which she ignored. For one, she hadn’t actually liked either Kayla or Glamet^vor¡. But that was trivial; they had been her shipmates.
More important was the overwhelming work in the lab. Old Dr. Holbrook was left as physician to nine hundred people, including the injured Settlers, since Claire and Lindy were co-opted for work on what the virophage might have done to human brains. Everyone with any notion of lab techniques, both civilian and military, had been reassigned to Zack McKay’s day-and-night research push. Necessary, but it was all too familiar to Marianne: from the Embassy on Earth, from the clinic on World. How many times could humanity take on microbes and win? Marianne had no faith in this work. Or maybe she was just, after all these decades, too burned out.
Which was the third reason to not attend the funeral. All she really wanted to do was sleep. Her head throbbed just behind her forehead, and her eyelids felt like six tons of lead. Her neck ached from holding up her head. Her spine sagged, looking for something to lean against.
Nonetheless, she donned an esuit, passed through the airlock, and walked between Jane and Ka^graa, also esuited, to the pyre that had been built between Enclave Dome and the dark woods where Kayla and Glamet^vor¡ had been found. The sky, overcast, seemed to press down on the group of mourners led by La^vor and Belok^. Their military escort carried what looked to Marianne like entire arsenals.
How many such burnings had she been to? Too many, on World. But World had survived, and right now Marianne was not at all certain that Terra would. Microbes were such formidable enemies. Maybe Terra should just give up.
She was so tired.
But she straightened her spine as they reached the wooden pyre topped with the bodies wrapped in Army blankets. Beyond, trees blew in a rising wind. A flock of birds wheeled overhead, calling shrilly. Jane, lahk Mother to this temporary and displaced lahk, recited an ancient ritual in her own language. The musical cadences rose and fell as La^vor wept and Belok^, who may or may not have understood, looked frightened. Jane didn’t translate, but Marianne had been told, light-years from here, what the chant meant. The bodies of the dead were being returned to the soil, the planet, the universe from which they were formed. Energy flowed through all, and all were one, and all existed forever.
The pyre was lit, and the mourners turned back to the dome. Ordinarily, Worlders did not bury the ashes of their dead, nor scatter them. They let nature do that. In this case, however, La^vor wanted the ashes to carry back to World. Soldiers would stay until the bodies were consumed, put out the fire, and gather the ashes.
Marianne could barely lift her feet. She was so tired.
Jane, dry eyed but taut as guitar strings, walked beside her toward Lab Dome. “Marianne, you need to sleep.”
“Must… work.”
“No. You’ll be more of use to everybody in the lab after you sleep. The—”
“Go! Run—now!”
An officer—Marianne could not remember his name. He grabbed her hand. “Go, go!” Then she heard it: the rush of planes overhead. Jets? But Jason had said that neither the Army nor New America had jets anymore, they had all been destroyed or there was no one to fly them or no fuel or something…
The droning grew louder.
How could there be jets?
She stumbled, was picked up, was dragged on. The airlock opened and everyone jammed into it, packed in a solid ball like microglia. The outer door closed. Just before it did, Marianne glimpsed something rising swiftly above the horizon in the distance, slightly darker than the clouds.
Jane said to her, “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Emerging from the airlock into decon, she sagged against the wall. Only it was Jane she was somehow leaning on, Jane concerned for Marianne despite her own grief. Such a sweet girl, she would be wonderful for either Colin or Jason, Marianne didn’t care which only… only…
Then she was asleep on the floor of decontamination.
Jason had been watching the funeral from the clear dome of the command post when the call came over his earplant. A soldier of J Squad on close patrol at the north airlock must have darted inside as soon as he received notice from the signal station. “Incoming, sir! Three planes, probably F-35s, three minutes away!”
F-35s? There were no more of those flying. But—
“Get everyone inside.” He watched through the dome. Yes, there they were, coming in fast from the northwest… the direction of Sierra Depot. How the fuck had New America—