She chose an apple, lowered her mask, exposed her mouth, and bit into it. The crackle was like a signal for all of us to take a break.
I tore open the wrapping of a PowerBar. Apple cinnamon flavor.
Eddie went for the cookies.
Karen said, after a few moments of eating in silence, “You know, my boyfriend, when he was a kid, went to an ethical culture school…”
I thought, Right! The boyfriend. Good. I can stop thinking about her.
Then I thought, I can’t believe I’m thinking about this now anyway.
“Ethical culture school?” asked Eddie.
“It was a private school for atheists,” she said, leaning back, exposing the long neck vein, the dark small freckles there, a constellation of three, swell of breasts tight on the moose logo sweater. The shiny silver hair was up, pinned. “His parents didn’t believe in religion but still wanted their kids to learn values. My boyfriend — Carl — said they were given a problem in fifth grade. A museum is on fire. You can save one thing. Do you choose an old woman or the hundred-and-fifty-year-old Renoir masterpiece painting?”
Eddie snorted. “I’ll be sure to send my kids to this school when we get back. See what happens when you eliminate God? You kill the people and save the BMWs.”
“Well, we’re at a table at a seafood restaurant. He’s telling me about being in class, arguing. I’d save the old lady! She’s someone’s grandmother! No! I’d save the painting! The old lady is probably sick anyway!”
DeBlieu’s voice suddenly crackled onto the ship intercom. He was addressing the healthy crew, the people outside the hangar, in the mess, on the bridge, in the cabins, people probably staring up at intercom boxes, hearts beating loud in their chests. “This is the captain. You need to know that the survivors of the Montana may be infected with a highly contagious illness. Anyone feeling ill is to report immediately to sick bay. We’re on alert, just like drills. More hand washing. More disinfecting. Double shifts at meals. I want fewer people at each table. Regular disinfection of bathrooms. No more than three people in any cabin at one time. All lounges are closed. This is serious. Please know that our medical personnel are working very hard to…”
Eddie watched the intercom. “That’ll go over big.”
Karen’s eyes had gone large, were fixed on mine. Perhaps I imagined it, but it seemed that a new note had entered her voice since the boyfriend came up. It wasn’t affection, or missing the guy. It seemed to be more like distance. She said, “You know, you always hear that saying, there are two kinds of people in the world! People who shut off televisions when they enter a room and people who turn them on! People who follow rules and who don’t! Well, I have one. People who want to save the contagious, and those who want to destroy them. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it, in Washington? That’s why they cut us off? They’re getting ready to do something bad here.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“That’s why they don’t want us calling out.”
I said, not really believing it, “They just want to manage the news. Damage control.”
“Uh-huh. You don’t believe that any more than I do. Did they give you any time frame? A deadline to get results? Any idea what they plan exactly, or is that classified, Joe? You’re not supposed to tell us?”
She kept using my name, “Joe,” like a weapon. I flashed back to a hot plain in Afghanistan. I saw the truck coming. I felt the grips of the machine gun on my hands. I heard myself counting down seconds, praying that the oncoming truck would stop. “Nine. Eight.” I remembered thinking that if I fired, if I killed everyone in that truck, I’d save the people on the base. It was math. It was triage. I couldn’t believe it was a choice I’d ever put myself in a position to have to make.
“No deadline that I know of,” I said.
How will they do it? Sink us? Gas? If they use gas, they could keep the ship for later.
“But it’s a whole ship,” she said, as if monitoring my thinking. “It’s over two hundred people. It’s me,” she said, and laughed suddenly, loudly, completely self-aware.
“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Eddie said.
Hours passed.
Karen dozed after a while. Then Eddie.
I jolted awake.
I’d been asleep too long.
“Triage,” Karen said, back at work. “Notice how, whenever people want to do something horrible, they invent a sanitized word for it? Like ‘surgical strikes’ for drone attacks?”
Eddie finished up more cookies, which kept coming. He started on a ham and cheddar sandwich. He reached for a can of Dr Pepper. “Ah, we’d probably do the same thing.”
“No!” A fierce look, anger and challenge, animated her features. Her eyes bored into mine. She snapped out, “We were them! We had the choice back there, and we’re not doing the same thing. We took everyone aboard!”
I thought, stunned, in wonder, She said “we.” She wants to be part of that decision.
Eddie burped and sighed. “Hey, forget the cosmic questions, Karen. Let’s get down to the real stuff. What did old boyfriend Carl save in the museum? The old lady? Or the painting?”
Perhaps it was the fluorescent light, or exhaustion, but it seemed for a moment that her expression flickered through her time on Earth: Karen the kid, face unlined; Karen the tough engineer; Karen with the weight of choice on her, like gravity tugging down the corners of her mouth.
“He chose the painting,” she said softly.
“You would have chosen the old lady?” said Eddie.
Instead of answering, quite violently she sneezed.
There was a moment of silence, then she held out her hand, and in her small palm, lay a quivering mass of yellowish bile. Her hand began slightly trembling.
“Anyone could sneeze,” I said.
Eddie said, “Hey, I sneeze all the time.”
It was not the best moment for Major Pettit to show up again, a stocky presence in the doorway, blunt, V-shaped, blocking light. “Colonel, a moment?”
“Bad time, Major.”
He stepped inside anyway, damn him, looking like some Arctic bag man bundled into his parka, beneath the apron, gauze mask, and plastic gloves. “I think you ought to see this, sir,” he said as Karen Vleska used a napkin to wipe away the bile on her hand, but I knew those tiny particles were drifting in the air around us, expanding and contracting as in a lava lamp, like on the slide.
“Colonel, you really want to see this,” Pettit said.
Eddie would check her throat, ears, nasal passages. How many more will I kill? I thought as Pettit led me down the narrow passageway between labs, and into one filled with electronics, and banks of at least twenty monitor screens.
“Major, just say it,” I snapped.
“Sir,” he said, taking a swivel chair at a console and activating a monitor, “they use this room normally for checking sea bottom images. These screens on the right? They show sonar pictures of sediments. I guess State will use this to apply for undersea territory, Mr. Sachs said.”
“I’m running out of patience, Major.”
“But the right-hand screens are cameras. You can call up images from anywhere on the ship.”
Instantly I grew more interested.
Pettit plumped down into a swivel chair and adjusted a dial. I was seeing the hangar below, from an elevated angle. The cots. The sick. Lieutenant Cullen inserting one of those aerosol containers into the nose of a woman. I saw Marietta Cristobel wiping a man’s forehead. Sachs spoke with Del Grazo and they broke apart. Pettit said, “Watch the difference between Sachs and Del Grazo.”