“We didn’t start it. New America did. And Congress declared war on them.” Just before Congress itself became a victim.
Colin said hotly, “Your Army equipped New America with all their stolen weapons and their stolen destructive imperialism. Fighting over territory that doesn’t belong to either of you, only to the Earth! Did you know that a hundred years ago in World War II, sixty-five percent of the casualties were civilians? And in Iraq and Brazil, it was ninety percent?”
“Of course I knew that. Don’t patronize me—I know more military history than you ever dreamed of. But I’m defending people here, and I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Jason.”
“Only for those as smugly self-righteous as you are. You get to have a choice because people like me make that possible. Without my Army, your entire precious Settlement would no longer exist, and you wouldn’t, either.”
“I know,” Colin said, with one of the truthful and humble swerves to facts that made him so endearing, and so exasperating. “But, Jace—you don’t have to actively go after New America. You can just wait them out. They’ll destroy themselves eventually, because violent societies always do.”
Jason said carefully, “Why do you think I’m planning to ‘actively go after New America’?”
“Aren’t you? Before you lose so many soldiers to v-coma that it’s too late?”
“I—”
“Annhhh,” Jane said, and opened her eyes.
Instantly Colin bent toward her. “Jane?”
But her eyelids fluttered closed again, and Colin’s gentle shaking didn’t make her stir.
Jason slipped through the curtain. He didn’t want to watch Colin gazing like that at Jane. And if she opened her eyes again, he didn’t want to see how she gazed back.
Before going to the beds of his soldiers in v-coma, Jason went to find a nurse or doctor and report Jane’s brief, futile, apparently painful awakening.
Analyses of Caitlin’s cerebral-spinal fluid revealed several proteins nobody had seen before. The other v-comas’ samples confirmed that. The proteins contained expected amino acids, but they were folded in unique ways. “What the fuck do you suppose they’re doing in there?” Toni said. Since Nicole had become comatose, Toni’s language had deteriorated below even its usual obscene level. She barely slept, and definitely didn’t bathe. Zack breathed through his mouth around her, hoping that she didn’t notice.
At 2:00 a.m., bleary with lack of sleep, Zack said, “I think the proteins are rewiring their brains. Along with all those glials and the chemicals that we know either create or prune synapses.” There were many more synapse-forming chemicals than synapse-pruning ones, the direct opposite of the autopsy tissue from Kayla and Glamet^vor¡.
“But rewiring to what end, fuck it all? To what?”
“Toni, get some sleep. Please.”
“No. Not till the genome matching is done.”
With the available computing power, it seemed to take forever to run the matching program. The base’s main system sat dark and unrepairable. The most powerful consoles that were still running had been commandeered for this, over the completely unreasonable protests of the immune-boosting team, who claimed they needed it more. There was no “more” than researching the v-comas, and Zack had told Major Vargas so, forcefully. Jessica Yu had backed Zack.
Tissue samples had been sequenced to provide full genomes for Belok^, Jane, Caitlin, Devon, Marianne, Branch, Farouk, and the soldiers in v-comas. The matching program was comparing their genomes with control samples, cycling through all fifteen million possible genetic variations in each genome, looking for sequences that they all shared.
Zack said, “We’ll find the allele that triggers the comas.”
“You don’t even know for motherfucking sure that it is an allele!”
Zack didn’t answer. He turned away before he said something too sharp.
Toni put a hand on his arm. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just—”
“I know. We all are. But go sleep, Toni. And shower.”
A tech rushed into the room. “Zack! The matching program finished!”
The matching program was printing its results—damn the shortage of paper and ink. Zack seized the densely covered sheets as they came from the printer. Toni studied the display screen with three lab techs crowded behind her.
The six v-coma genomes shared thirty-two alleles not found in the control samples, most in junk DNA. Six of those were insertions, genes incorporated into the genomes somewhere in, probably, the distant past. One of the six might have been activated by the virophage to set in motion the cascade of proteins and chemicals now rewiring brains. Or might not have been. Only 4 percent of polymorphism affected gene expression. That was the figure decided on just before the Collapse, when most basic science pretty much stopped.
Toni said, “The v-comas might be multifactorial inheritance disorders, rather than monogenic.” She said it reluctantly; she wanted there to be a single-gene explanation as much as Zack did. The chances were better for coming up with some sort of gene therapy.
Although in no case were the chances high.
The lab tech said, “If it’s a single variant, we can at least predict who else might fall into a coma. If you don’t have any of those six alleles…”
If I don’t have them, was what the tech really meant. This research was intensely personal. Zack said, “I have a sample to sequence next.”
“Yours?”
“No.” It was Susan’s. If he lost her as well as Caitlin, he lost everything.
Toni said, “We have a lot of samples to sequence and match. Let’s get started. Zack, the new v-comas from today have to be first, as confirmation—you know that. Anyway, it might help further narrow down the allele. If there is an allele.”
Her skepticism was the correct attitude. Zack knew that. He went to find the tissue samples from the v-coma soldiers. Before he had even prepared the samples for the sequencer, someone came into the lab. Zack didn’t turn; Toni talked to whoever it was. After the visitor left, Toni touched Zack’s shoulder. Her eyes looked almost as big as a Worlder’s, and compassion moved in their depths.
“Zack—there’s one more. Susan.”
Bright morning light assaulted the top of Enclave Dome, throwing everything in the command post into harsh relief. Jason could have closed the tentlike curtains installed on rods overhead, but he didn’t. He needed the glare, he needed coffee, he needed everything he could get to combat the sleeplessness of a bad night. A nightmare reliving the Collapse, another filled with sweating anxiety, a wet dream about Jane.
He cradled the coffee mug in cold hands. After ten years, the base was officially out of coffee, but a small amount had been hoarded for both the signal station and the CO. Jason refused to feel guilty about this. Hillson, his pipeline to the barracks through careful cultivation of selected recruits, had told him that the troops drank some sort of tea steeped from a plant gathered by hunting parties. The United States Army was reverting to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Well, no, it wasn’t quite that bad. But the hunting parties were more frequent now, and vegetables and dried seaweed concoctions from Colin’s settlement would have to be stretched farther than before, to feed more people than before. The base cooks were endlessly inventive, but it was still going to be a problem. One of so many.