"You're right," was all he said. "Tia, you were right. There are fifty more people there depending on both of us, and if I got sick, that's the mobile half of the team out." And he sighed. But it was enough. Things went back to normal for them. Just in time for the transition to norm space.
Kleinman Base kept them in orbit, sending a full decontamination team to fetch Alex as well as the Zombies, leaving Tia all alone for about an hour. It was a very lonely hour.
But then another decontamination team came aboard, and when they left again, two days later, there was nothing left of her original fittings. She had been fogged, gassed, stripped, polished, and refitted in that time. All that was left, besides the electronic components, were the ideographs painted on the walls. It still looked the same, however, because everything was replaced with the same standard-issue, psychologically approved beige.
Only then was she permitted to de-orbit and land at Kleinman Base so that the decontamination team could leave.
No sooner had the decontamination team left, when there was a welcome hail at the airlock.
"Tia! Permission to come aboard, ma'am!"
She activated her lock so quickly that it must have flown open in his face, and brought him up in the lift rather than waiting for him to climb the stairs. He sauntered in sans pressure-suit, gave her column a jaunty salute, and put down his bags.
"I have good news and better news," he said, flinging himself into his chair. "Which do you want to hear first?"
"The good news," she replied promptly, and did not scold him for putting his feet up on the console.
"The good news is all personal. I have been granted a clean bill of health, and so have you. In addition, since the decontamination team so rudely destroyed my clothing and anything else that they couldn't be sure of, I have just been having a glorious spending-spree down there at the Base, using a GS unlimited credit account!"
Tia groaned, picturing more neon-purple, or worse. "Don't open the bags, or they'll think I've had a radiation leak."
He mock-pouted. "My dear lady, your taste is somewhere back in the last decade."
"Never mind my taste," she said. "What's the better news?"
"Our patients are on their way to full recovery." At her exclamation, he held up a cautionary hand. "It's going to take them several months, maybe even a year. Here's the story, and the reason why they stripped you of everything that could be considered a fabric. Access your Terran entomology, if you would. Call up something called a 'dust mite' and another something called a 'sand flea.'"
Puzzled, she did so, laying the pictures side by side on the central screen.
"As we guessed, this was indeed a virus, with an insect vector. The culprit was something like a sand flea, which, you will note, has a taste for warm-blooded critters. But it was about the size of a dust mite. The fardling things don't hatch until the temperature is right, the days are long enough, and there's been a rainstorm. Once they hatch, the only thing that kills them is really intense insecticide or freezing cold for several weeks. They live in the dust, like sand fleas. Those archeologists had been tracking in dust ever since the rainstorm, and since there'd been no sign of any problems, they hadn't been very careful about their decontamination protocols. The bugs all hatched within an hour, or so the entomologists think. They bit everything in sight, since they always wake up hungry. But, here's the catch, since they were so small, they didn't leave a bite mark, so there was nothing to show that anyone had been bitten." He nodded at the screen. "Every one of the little beggars carries the virus. It's like E. coli, the human bacillus, living in their guts the way it does in ours."
"I assume that everyone got bitten about the same time?" she hazarded.
"Exactly," he said. "Which meant that everyone came down with the virus within hours of each other. Mostly, purely by coincidence, in their sleep. The virus itself invokes allergic shock in most people it infects. Which can look a lot like a stroke, under the right circumstances."
"So we didn't," She stopped herself before she went any further, but he finished the statement for her.
"No, we didn't kill anyone. It was the Zombie Bug. And the best news of all is that the Zombie state is caused by interference with the production of neurotransmitters. Clean out the virus, and eventually everyone gets back to normal."
"Oh Alex," she said, and he interrupted her.
"A little more excellent news. First, that we get a bonus for this one. And second, my very dear, you saved my life."
"I did?" she replied, dumbfounded.
"If I had cracked my suit even once, the bugs would have gotten in. They were everywhere, in your carpet, the upholstery; either they got in the first time we cracked the lock, or the standard decontamination didn't wash them all off the suit or kill them. And I am one of those seventy-five percent of the population so violently allergic to them that..." He let her fill in the rest.
"Alex, I'd rather have you as my brawn than all the bonuses in the world," she said, after a long pause.
"Good," he said, rising, and patting her column gently. "I feel the same way."
Before the moment could get maudlin, he cleared his throat, and continued. "Now the bad news. We're so far behind on our deliveries that they want us out of here yesterday. So, are you ready to fly, bright lady?"
She laughed. "Strap on your chair, hotshot. Let's show 'em how to burn on out of here!"
CHAPTER FIVE
"Well, Tia," Doctor Kenny said genially, from his vantage point in front of her main screen. "I have to say that it's a lot more fun talking to you face-to-column than by messages or double-bounce comlink. Waiting for four hours for the punchline to a joke is a bit much."
He faced her column, not the screen, showing the same courtesy Alex always did. Alex was not aboard at the moment; he was down on the base spending his bonus while Tia was in the refit docks in orbit. But since the Pride of Albion was so close, Doctor Kenny had decided that he couldn't resist making a visit to his most successful patient.
The new version of his chair had been perfected, and he was wearing it now. The platform and seat hid the main power-supply, a shiny exoskeleton covered his legs up to his waist, and Tia thought he looked like some kind of ancient warrior-king on a throne.
"Most of my classmates don't get the point of jokes," she said, with a chuckle. "They just don't seem to have much of a sense of humor. I have to share them with you softies."
"Most of your classmates are as stiff as AIs," he countered. "Don't worry, they'll loosen up in a decade or two. That's what Lars tells me, anyway. He says that living around softies will contaminate even the most rule-bound shell-person. So, how's life with a partner? As I recall, that was one of your worst worries, that you'd end up with a double-debt like Moira for playing brawn-basketball."
"I really like Alex, Kenny." she said slowly. "Especially after the Zombie Bug run. I hate to admit this, but, I even like him more than you, or Anna, or Lars. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about when you called the other day. I really trust your judgment."