April 6: And What Goes Around (11 page)

"That
would be marvelous if they can do it," Gunny said. "And probably
cheaper to make on site than lift from Earth."

"Are
you ready to go through and get some supper? It will be getting busier soon,"
April warned.

"Yes
and while we eat you can tell me what you found out about the airports turning
away Rome flights," Gunny said.

"That's
what Gabriel and I have been doing the last couple hours."

"And
I have to be elsewhere soon, so you guys have a nice supper," Gabriel
said, packing up.

"Thank
you Gabriel. It was fun working with you."

"We'll
do it again I'm sure, April."

Well,
that was an improvement over Miss Lewis.

"Come on," she told Gunny. "They have
stuffed peppers tonight and they run out early."

* * *

April didn't have
much to say until her plate was near clean. Gunny was recently from Earth so he
didn't have any genetic modifications, not even basic life extension therapy
yet. In North America gene modification was punished by loss of citizenship and
forfeiture of property. If the mob didn't get you first. He could eat less and
talk more than April, recounting the frustration they experienced trying to buy
a Bofors gun until April was finished. Then she recounted her work with
Gabriel.

"The thing
about planes being turned away you showed me this morning turned out to be
because of flu. I'd say epidemic, but it's weird, it didn't seem an epidemic. I
mean, they don't have a
lot
of people with it. Not yet at least. But it
seems to be making the well-to-do sick before the common people. That of course
bothered me because just about everybody on Home fits the demographic,"
April said.

"Surely you
can narrow it down by more than income," Gunny said.

"Not so far.
It's been
movie stars and other entertainers, big company
officials, politicians and well known preachers." I won't be surprised if
it spreads to the general population, but it hasn't yet. I can't prove it but
this doesn't seem to be the usual pattern. I got a book on the last really big
influenza epidemic that killed a lot of people, back in 1918. It started at the
bottom of the social order then, with soldiers and other young people who were
crammed together in camps and ships. I have to finish it but that first half I
read this afternoon was terrifying. The quarantines people put up were
desperate." April described some of them for Gunny.

Gunny
sat and thought a bit, got up and refilled their coffee mugs while April took
her tray to the dirty rack and came back. She had apple pie still for desert
but took a break before enjoying it.

"What
if there is another common denominator to rich folks that the Earth news
filters because of their prejudices?" Gunny suggested. "It would mask
the real reason they were infected from your sight. I don't mean to slight your
investigation, but being from down there I've had all my life to learn to see
around their ways of hiding things."

"I'm
not offended at all. I
know
I can't figure out why they do things, April
admitted. "So give me your take on why rich people would get sick, but
they'd want to hide it and lie about it."

"You
have to be fairly rich down there to afford life extension therapy, or any
other significant mods. And you have to hide it, which is risk taking. Hide it
well enough to never be suspected because one quick swab and test and you've
lost everything. So they tend to avoid the cosmetic aspects of it and just get
the parts that affect your health and life-span. That still means dyeing your
hair grey or white. Believe it or not they even have creams that make your skin
wrinkle.

"If
somebody turns loose a virus designed to sicken people with gene mods they are
going to target the release, so those folks will be hit early and hard. The  do
after all tend to associate with their own kind, so it will naturally spread
among them. And I wouldn't expect anyone to admit what is happening until it is
way too obvious to deny," Gunny said.

April thought about that and pictured what it would mean
if it got loose in Home. She looked at the fork in her hand like she didn't
know how it got there and pushed the pie away, to upset to enjoy it, and set
the fork down. She didn't say anything for awhile. She didn't need to say
anything. Gunny could see she took his idea seriously.

* * *

"We
need to talk to Jon," April said, after pondering it.

"Well
it's after main shift business hours. We can probably leave a message with his
office and ask to speak to him tomorrow," Gunny suggested.

"To
ask him to lunch maybe, not for this." April cleared her screen and keyed
in 898989. Jon immediately appeared sitting at his desk.

"Jon,
can we get together and have a word? I'd rather not do it on com," April
said.

"You
look upset," Jon said, squinting at her. "You want to come here or
should I come to you?"

"Your
office please, and if you haven't had it swept for bugs recently please see if
you can do it while we're on the way over," April said.

"We?"

"I
have Gunny with me. There's a problem I've been researching all day, but he
gave me a different Earthie viewpoint on it that scares me."

"I
still have somebody here who can do a scan. It should be clean when you get
here," Jon said.

"Thank
you, Jon. Be there in maybe fifteen minutes," April said and disconnected.

"You
have a private direct com code for the Security Director?" Gunny said,
shocked.

"Well
obviously. You think I guessed it at random?" April asked.

"It
wasn't a real question. I know you have a lot of... connections. But I never
thought they were that kind. I.. I'm babbling aren't I?" Gunny said.

"You're
just suffering a little Earth Think still. I can't knock it. If you couldn't
explain Earth thinking I'd have no clue what danger we might be in. Come on,"
April said. "let's get over to Jon's office." She was so upset she tossed
the pie in the trash in passing without a thought. Her mother would have been
outraged she wasted it and didn't get a box to take it home.

"Hey,
I just advanced one possible theory. I don't
know
that's what's
happening," Gunny said.

"And
I'll present it that way," April promised, "but I have yet to hear
any other reasonable explanations, and this isn't something you can ignore
until it is confirmed. If you are right it can destroy Home as completely as a
nuclear missile. You can't let that kind of a threat get ahead of you. We have
a hard deadline to know one way or another."

"When
is that?" Gunny asked April.

"When the next shuttle from LEO docks."

There are so many
clicks and buzzers and chimes in a spaceship it's like having a nagging mother.
Some, like a com call that isn't flagged urgent may just be a polite *ding*
that repeats every five minutes and then drops to every half hour. After a day
the ships computer will even give it up for a lost cause although the call
light will keep flashing.

A real emergency
gets a
much
more insistent announcement. Thus Barak found himself
standing rattled with no memory of leaving his bunk, heart pounding and
breathing raggedly even before the first blast of the emergency klaxon stopped
sounding. He staggered to the com board, which fortunately was only three steps
away. He only needed two steps today he was so motivated.

He didn't have to
call the lights up. The computer did that for him, emergency lights on top of
the regular ones flashing, so if it had to switch over there was no pause. It
was dazzling to his dark adjusted eyes. The heavy subsonics shook his very
bones and he slapped the receive switch before it could repeat.

"Emergency
light off," he commanded. Nothing happened, that was out of his control.
"Cabin light five percent," he tried. That was still under his
control and the double lighting eased off.

FIRE IN GALLEY
CUPBOARD - read the screen and displayed a graphic pinpointing it. Barak could
hear, could feel through his bare feet, the alarm still sounding in other
compartments.

"Bridge
com," Barak demanded, and then struggled for a moment to remember who was
on watch the XO or the Captain. Oh yeah... Jaabir. "Sir, what do you want
us to do?" he asked the Captain. There was no answer.

"What's going
on?" Deloris asked from the bunk. He'd been behind her by the wall and
didn't even remember how he got out over her. There wasn't all that much room.
Normally he thought she was cute, but her hair was a fright wig, her mouth
hanging open in shock, and her eyes unfocused still trying to align.

"Fire in the
Galley. No answer from the Bridge. I'll go try to put it out," Barak told
her.

Deloris covered
her face with both hands, pert little nose sticking between them. "
No
!
Alice is environmental officer. She'll go straight to the fire and it's
her
job.
You
get a mask and find out why the hell the Bridge doesn't answer.
A station not reporting is assumed to be a person in danger. That's anybody's
concern who is free to render aid."

She might look out
of it but she was thinking much clearer than him. "Put on pants and
shoes," she added, since he seemed inclined to rush out the way he was. He
did one better, he used the toilet because that simply wasn't going to wait
much longer at all.

By the time he
emptied his bladder Deloris had his deck shoes sitting in front of the bunk and
was holding a suit liner for him. Those would serve as well as anything. From
the time the alarm sounded until he was in the corridor was less than four
minutes.

There was a
cupboard with emergency items at the head of the corridor and he snatched an
air mask out of it, not breaking the seal just yet, but he could have it out
and on in not much more than thirty seconds. He stuck the thicker seal end of
the bag in his mouth to free up his hands and then went up the ladder for the
control room like a salmon climbing a waterfall to spawn.

The hatch to the
Bridge was closed and he stopped and laid his hand on it even though the
computer hadn't said anything about fire there. "Yuki-onna," he
addressed the ship by name, "is there pressure in the control room?"

"Yes, I have
three indications of life safe pressure in the control room," the speakers
by the door answered him and the speakers down the corridor echoed it. He stuck
his hand in the recess and squeezed the release. It was locked.

"Open the
hatch,
Yuki
" Barak commanded.

"The Captain
locked the hatch,"
Yuki-onna
replied. "You do not have
authority to release it."

"The Captain
does not respond to com. He may be disabled in the control room and unable to
effectively command. Open the hatch,
Yuki
" he ordered again.

The computer was
smart, but that was a complex series of statements for it to examine for logic.
It probably had a whole series of branching conditions to examine to come to a
conclusion. It had to examine all of them where a person would almost instantly
filter out the logic branches that didn't apply. There was a reason most people
called Artificial Intelligences Artificial Stupids. At last somebody shut the
alarm off and the hull stopped repeatedly ringing with it.

"You must
declare a Ship in Danger emergency to override the Captain's orders," the
ship replied in a calm female voice. It was maddening.

"The damn
ship is on
fire!
Isn't that enough of a Ship in Danger emergency?"
Barak asked. He was upset or he never would have argued with an A.S. in an
emergency. You just tell them what they want to hear, like talking to an insane
person or a very little child. When there was no reply he added, "
Yuki".

"That is a
separate emergency," the ship informed him after another slight pause to
consider the problem. "There are no indications of fire on the
Bridge."

Barak turned at
the muted sound of bare feet hitting bulkheads and the Captain advanced up the
corridor to him bouncing from side to side. The fastest way to progress since
there wasn't enough traction in their slight gravity to run. It was his turn to
have his mouth hang open in surprise since Jaabir was naked, wild eyed, and had
a bundle of clothing clutched in one hand.

"Open the
door," Jaabir shouted like the ship was hard of hearing. "
You
!
Go back to your cabin," he snarled at Barak like the whole thing was his
fault, reaching for him. What he intended to do once he had a grip on Barak
wasn't obvious. Perhaps he only intended to move him from in front of the
hatch.

Barak didn't
really think about it. Maybe it would have been the same if he had. He hit Jaabir
in the face in a flash of anger feeling his huge nose, his most prominent
feature, squash like a piece of ripe fruit under his blow. The adrenaline surge
removed any restraint and he connected solidly driving him into the oppose
corridor bulkhead and thrust himself back into the Bridge hatch. Then when
Jaabir bounced off the bulkhead back to him, he hit him again with the hatch at
his back anchoring him to put some real heft into it.

The droplets of
blood sprayed all over in the slight gravity and Jaabir crumpled slowly in the
gentle pull, unconscious and limp. That might not have been a good idea Barak
realized, shocked at how bad the fellow looked from just two punches. He'd
never struck someone with his fist as an adult.

"Yuki-onna,
the Captain is injured and I am taking him to the Infirmary," Barak
announced. "Please advise the ship's company of that and ask the XO to
meet us there to treat him."

"Done,"
the computer replied quickly, "The XO asks what the nature of his injuries
are?"

"Blunt force
trauma of the face. Probably a broken nose. Perhaps a concussion," he
admitted. Starting to wish he hadn't hit him the second time. He still didn't
regret the first. "
Yuki-onna
, what is the status on the Galley
fire?" he asked.

"The
environmental officer vented the Galley ready storage to vacuum. Sensors
indicate there is no source of heat remaining consistent with continued
combustion. The EO now informs the ship's company that the fire is out and
after sufficient cooling the scene will be put back under pressure and examined
to determine the cause of the fire, what may be salvaged, and remedial
action."

"Thank you
Yuki
,"
Barak towed Jaabir by an ankle, using his left hand because the right didn't
want to bend and hurt. He was careful to not bump him where he had to go around
a couple corners.

Charlotte Dobbs
the XO was waiting for him at the Infirmary. Wearing mismatching top and bottom
and sticky footies. Her hair was a as bad as Deloris' even though it was
shorter than Barak's, and he was startled to realize she had no eyebrows if
they weren't drawn on.

"What
happened to him?" Charlotte asked angrily. She started positioning Jaabir
on the treatment table. She didn't ask Barak's help and didn't need it in the
slight gravity.

Barak started to
open his mouth and then remembered what Happy Lewis, April's grandfather had
told him a dozen times... volunteer nothing. He stopped and took a deep breath.

"I don't
intend to discuss that with you," he replied, feeling a great calm come
over himself. "Your concern right now is to treat him."

"I'm
Commander with Jaabir incapacitated," she barked at him, furious. Why did
everybody have to yell? "
You
don't tell the commander what her
concern
is. You're a vac rat flunky."

"I'm sure God
himself is impressed with your promotion to his peerage," Barak said, and
smiled. It obviously infuriated her further. Jaabir started moving a bit, but
didn't open his eyes. He actually clutched them closed harder, and let out a
little moan.

"What I mean
is... I
order
you to answer me," Dobbs said.

"I will only
answer to an official hearing on the matter," Barak replied.

"All right...
Consider this your official damn hearing," Charlotte yelled at him.
"You beat him up!"

Could Charlotte do
that? A hearing did open with an accusation. Well he'd asked for it...

"You can't
prove that," Barak calmly replied.

"No, I can't,
but you did, and we both suspect you had something to do with Harold's death
too, but we haven't figured out how to prove that yet either. But you're going
to be in big trouble when we figure out how you did it!" Charlotte warned
him.

Barak was shocked.
He'd had no clue his Captain was conspiring with the XO to pin Harold Hanson's
death on him. It took a moment before he could frame a reasonable reply.

"You are
distraught and embarrassed for your lover. Undoubtedly you are embarrassed you
helped him desert his duty station to have sex, although I understand the
pressure on you from the Captain. You are not speaking rationally and I won't
expect it of you. You not only can't prove I beat him up, as you said, but you
have no basis to accuse me with Harold. I was in the lock when he had his
accident. My suit camera will show I was nowhere near him when we heard his
suit lose pressure, and it will document he often abused his suit kicking the
ice off."

"Your suit
camera failed, which we found
very
suspicious," Charlotte sneered.
"And you can't prove we were having sex either. There's a camera on the
Bridge too that will show what happened with you and Jaabir. The ship won't
allow that one to be erased!"

Barak silently
thanked April's grandfather again and his lessons to a green kid on how things
really worked. He wasn't going to reveal just yet he had his own copies of all
his suit recordings.

"Neither of
us ever went in the Bridge," Barak told her. "Jaabir had it locked
under his authority. The only thing that camera will show is -
he wasn't
there
!" He stopped let that idea hang there for her to consider. It
certainly wasn't anything to her or Jaabir's advantage.

Charlotte looked
stricken. She was running on emotion and hadn't thought it through that far.
For some reason she'd assumed they both made it onto the Bridge. Perhaps just
the amount of time that had passed. She probably didn't even know Jaabir locked
it when he left.

"As for the
other. Yes, I want to make a formal accusation.
Yuki-onna,
 please copy
this conversation to the log. You both neglected duty to have sex on watch.
When Jaabir came down the corridor to the bridge he was naked with his clothing
in his hand," Barak said disgusted. "There was other... visible
evidence."

Charlotte grimaced
hard.
She
would have had the sense to get dressed.

"If you wish
to establish your innocence I suggest you have one of the female crew come to
the Infirmary. There has to be a rape kit in a sick bay this well equipped. Use
it and seal it as evidence and there won't be any question later," Barak
challenged.

"That is not
the purpose of the kit," she said angry. "
I
don't have to
prove anything. As for you, return to your quarters. I'm not sure what I'd
trust you to do. I'll review your duties and your status if Jaabir isn't fit to
resume command soon. I consider you a risk until then."

"A risk? You
aren't
acting
like I'm a danger. Which I am not. If you really thought I
was a danger and violent enough to have killed Harold and attacked Jaabir you'd
be
cringing
from me and calling for somebody else to hurry here because
you'd be afraid to be alone with me.

"Instead you
are standing here alone yelling in my face, and haven't called for anybody to
come escort me to my cabin. But I'll take myself there now as you
ordered." Barak turned to the hatch, but looked back over his shoulder.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kind of shorthanded already.
You might start thinking on how you plan to assign the extra work of keeping me
confined to my cabin
and
who gets to do
my
work too."

Jaabir had a hand
up to his face feeling carefully. He said something but it was indistinct.

"
Yuki-onna
, please copy my conversation with the XO to my com
console," Barak said as soon as he stepped out in the corridor. Charlotte
might have administrative access to his console. Best to get back and see it
protected before it mysteriously disappeared like the suit recordings. He'd
make sure it went on his private memory chip as soon as he walked in his cabin.