ARIA (38 page)

“What is all this really about then, Antonio?” Dan said.

“Ah, are the aliens preparing Earth for their occupation? Maybe. Have they tried to help us better our feeble brains and made a few errors? Perhaps. There might be a third option. And it could be a... ah, Bronwyn, another cup please,
per favore
.”

Ryder and Dan pestered him for the third option, but he teased. Jena found them guessing and brainstorming between them in the office.

“Don’t torture yourselves, you two,” she said. “It’s another wind up and we’ll get plenty more from him, you’ll see.”

“You might be right,” Dan said. “But even without him, we have to think and plan for what those damn aliens really want. Whatever bad vibes you have about him, Jena, he is the only link we have with the second case. Some facts are clear. He was exposed to the second case without obvious ill effect so far and exposed to Brian as an ARIA victim yet hasn’t lost his memory.”

“There’s only one way to check if we are immune to ARIA,” Ryder said.

“Count me out on that one,” Jena said. “And I don’t want you going for a sociable stroll into the village. Don’t come back if you do.”

“And I thought you two were getting on so well,” Dan said.

“We are,” Jena said, then turning to Ryder. “Aren’t we?”

“Absolutely, that’s why I’m not going to go wandering into the populated wilderness to test our supposed immunity. We have a protocol for that anyway.”

“One of the protocols you listed before we arrived?” Dan said. “What is it this time? Anyone who meets someone who might have ARIA has to keep away.”

“Close,” Ryder said. “But they can phone to report progress or return to the isolation unit at the mine.”

“Watch out,” Jena said. “I wouldn’t put it past Antonio just to take Teresa or Bronwyn out of the gates for a paddle at the seaside, irrespective of protocols.”

“If he does, he’d have to send a postcard back, because I wouldn’t want to see him again,” Ryder said. “You know what else we should do?”

“I think you’ll find Laurette and Gustav are already looking for spurious anomalies in blood samples,” Jena said.

“It’s like living with telepaths around here,” Ryder said. “And that’s before any ARIA or related exposure.”

Jena sneaked back into the kitchen for a coffee refill, hoping to keep contact with Antonio to a minimum.

“He’s gone for a lie down,” Bronwyn said, pouring the thick liquid into the three mugs. “Hadn’t had much sleep while in the mine, poor thing.”

Jena was on the verge of telling her how she thought Brian died but scalded her lip on the mug. “Bronwyn, you’ve made this with hot water, again.”

“Well, I have to—oh, you’re joking, aren’t you? It’s funny about the doctor, though, isn’t it? He had tea for his breakfast drink and he always had coffee before.”

“He’s been through a lot, Bronwyn,” Jena said, although Bronwyn’s observations made her think.

“He said he wanted Camomile tea because it was his first ever hot drink—fancy remembering that.”

“He might have been told that a thousand times by amused relatives.”

“And he said that was an October Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month, Jena, when he was eighteen months. And that the second hot drink was hot lemon water the following Wednesday. He’d moved on to chicory coffee the day before his second birthday.”

“I wish I had such a detailed memory, Bronwyn,” Jena said, thinking what a contrast to ARIA. And that although those victims still possessed diminishing childhood memories, only rare people would remember trivia like that.

She rushed back into the lab to check biotech progress.

Gustav waved despairing hands in the air. “He won’t let us take any of his blood.”

“What?” Jena said. “He has to. No choice, Dan and Ryder made it so, so to speak.”

Laurette fiddled with a pipette. “Once he’s thought it over, he’ll let us,
oui
?”

“How much do you need?” Jena said, hatching a plan.

“Just a pin prick would be enough to show if anything like ARIA is there,” Gustav said. “Why? Are we going to get him?”

“
Non
!” Laurette said.

“Gustav,” Jena said, “bring a blood-sampling kit.”

Out in the corridor, she waited for Gustav, hoping that Laurette wouldn’t come since she might cause more trouble. He came out. His light brown, shoulder-length hair, and his exuberance, gave him the airs of an undercover cop on a mission.

Jena frowned at the sampling kit. “Antonio is asleep. Is it possible to take a blood sample without disturbing him?”

“I get it. You want the evidence of what’s happening to him before he can refute it.”

“Something like that. Is it one of those thumb-prick gadgets?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do it. Lead the way to the prick for a prick.”

Antonio slept fidgety, face-down in an eight-bed dormitory. Jena and Gustav snapped on surgical gloves. She placed her hands above Antonio’s back so as to push him down if he woke up. Gustav held a sampler the size of a matchbox against the back of the doctor’s bare upper arm. Six tiny needles darted in, sucked for a moment, then withdrew. Gustav stood and turned to go, but Jena bent to look at the sample point. She could only just see the six red dots. Her heartbeat leapt as Antonio groaned and started a roll. As Jena jumped back, she watched the doctor rub at the spot, but his eyes stayed shut.

Back in the lab, Gustav offered the sample to Laurette, who took it, giving Jena a look of knowing that it pulled her inexorably into the conspiracy. Within three minutes she said, “Yes, he has an anomaly but different from Brian’s before he visited the doctor. The ARIA virus was spotted by Julia Tyndall, if you recall. She was Karen’s chief biotechnician at Goddard, and although she had had ARIA for a day, she was able to send an image of a spiked sphere about thirty nanometres across. Looked like an adenovirus, possibly a viral pathogen. Now the beastie we found in Antonio is similar but with nodes between the spikes.”

“So with the convention of naming viruses after their discoverer, we have the Tyndall virus,” Gustav said.

“
Continuez
,” Laurette said, with a glimmer of a smile.

“All right, the second case virus should be called the Pain-in-the-butt virus. No? ARIA is the effect of the Tyndall virus, so we’d need a suitable acronym for the second.”

“I think we need to wait to see what the full effect of the Laurette-Gervais virus is, don’t you?” Laurette said. Jena could see in her face that she was fighting the proud moment of having a virus named after her. If only scientific papers were being published.

Jena patted her on the back.

“Good work, Laurette. Well, you found that new virus in the blood of Antonio. And our blood?” Jena said.

“Normal,” Laurette said. “Antonio’s blood shows something like ARIA, call it ARIA2 for now, which might make him immune to ARIA. Our blood doesn’t. But, of course, it might do later. We need to retest every day or so.”

“So if we walked into locals out there, we’d get ARIA, but he wouldn’t?” Jena said.

“Not as simple as he said, is it?”

“No,” Gustav said. “We’ve only been in contact with him for a couple of hours. It might take days to develop.”

“And I suppose it might need us to be exposed to the case first, followed by exposure to someone with ARIA, like he was,” Jena said.

“Either way,” Gustav said, “it was premature of our doctor to encourage us to go sightseeing.”

“More likely it was disingenuous of him,” Jena said. “He wants us to catch ARIA.”

“
Incredible
.” Laurette waved an arm. “He’s one of us. Why would Antonio want to ensure we had a slow death from ARIA? He’d be the only one left alive.”

“Maybe that’s his plan,” Gustav said.

Jena leaned against the bench examining a printout of the ARIA2 virus. “Or the plan of the changed Antonio. Perhaps he isn’t in control of his actions. The infection he carries was spat at him from another species. Who knows what mental deviation it might produce?”

Laurette looked away from a viewer. “There are culture and other tests, Jena. Do you want me to inform our twin leaders, or do you want to sneak off to them without alerting our sleeping demon?”

Jena reached for the door just as it swung in. Antonio’s face contorted with rage shouted, “I know what you’ve done! I specifically denied you permission to take any samples from me.”

Jena recovered and said, “It’s not all about you, you bastard.”

“It
is
about me.
Dio mio
, you are so insignificant. I piss on you. All three of you.”

“Can you hang on while I get a sample beaker?” Gustav said. He laughed at his own inappropriate and mistimed joke.

Antonio lunged at him, but Gustav ducked and threw himself down behind a long lab bench. Jena yelled, “Stop!”

Laurette screamed as Antonio picked up a retort stand and lunged at the microscope array. The microscope crashed to the floor while Laurette’s screams went through the roof. The swing doors crept open followed by Bronwyn pointing a shotgun.

It had the desired effect in some ways. Laurette had run out of clamour, and Antonio reverted to hysterical laughter while collapsing on the floor amidst broken glass.

“
Mi
scusi
, my good friends. I’ll help clear this mess up and I’ll pay for replacements. Hah! Pay for replacements, that’s a good one, is it not?” He rose and staggered out.

Jena whispered to Laurette, “He thinks he’s destroyed his sample before you could examine it. Don’t let on just yet. I know it’s unlikely, but there wasn’t any trace of alcohol in his blood, was there?”

“Jena, there’s not been a drop in the centre for weeks—unless you know different—but I didn’t test for it. I could do though.”

“I don’t fancy taking another sample.” Jena could feel her heart pounding from the fracas and didn’t want any acceleration.

“His blood is on the floor from where he broke the slides.”

Ryder rushed in from the kitchen followed by Abdul, who said, “I just returned from patrolling the perimeter. We watched smoke from bonfires, house chimneys.”

“Yes, but from miles away on the coast,” Ryder said, looking concerned at the blood-decorated glass on the floor. He held out an arm to comfort Jena.

Abdul toed broken glass to one side. “I saw two, several miles apart and one from the nearest village. What’s its name? Aber-gobbledygook.”

“Abergwyngregyn,” Ryder said. “We gave you a map so you could give an accurate report. Three miles isn’t far.”

“It is autumn now,” Jena said. “People need more fires to keep warm. It doesn’t mean they are creeping in on us. We have something else to report. Something important. About Antonio’s blood.”

Tuesday 6 October 2015:

Anafon

W
HEN
A
NTONIO
AWOKE
FROM
ANOTHER
DAYTIME
SLEEP
, Jena noticed everyone being wary of him. She couldn’t avoid him: his maniacal character was more virus than a reaction to being isolated. They had to know if it would happen to them. Megan was the sole member of the centre who didn’t break out in a cold sweat at the sight of him.

Abdul and Vlad played poker in the refectory when Jena saw Antonio stagger in, half-asleep. She saw Dan sitting, reading a book. He looked up but didn’t move. She had told him about the presence of a new virus in Antonio’s blood.

“Hey, Antonio, make up a threesome. I’m getting bored with this Ukrainian’s crazy playing,” Abdul said.

Antonio stuck out his bottom lip as if thinking about acceding while he filled a large glass with water. He buttered some freshly-baked bread and leant against the counter, stuffing his face, watching the game. It could have been the aroma of Megan’s bread-making that drew him from his bunk; it generated saliva in everyone.

Megan came out of the kitchen, saw Antonio, and rushed back in again. Within a minute, she had emerged with a jar.

“Antonio, try my homemade blackberry jam.”

“What? You’ve made this from the blackberries you picked yourself?”

“Yeah, well. They were going to waste around here with just the birds eating them.”

Jena watched from across the room. She’d seen moon-struck looks like that before.

“Megan, you are a star,” Antonio said, giving her a kiss on her forehead.

“Antonio, put the staff down and let us take your money,” Vlad said.

Jena was amused at the stake money. They’d found a cash drawer in the office with hundreds of old pound and silver coins. No use to anyone now except to play with.

“Come on, Doc,” Abdul said, “we’re playing—”

“Seven-card stud, I can see that. There’s no point.”

Vlad was on the third betting round, so each player had four cards each played face up, and three down. Each tried to bluff the other with winks, grins, and groans. Apart from the played face-up cards, neither had revealed their cards to the spectators. After watching for a few minutes, Antonio spoke up.

“It is obvious that you, Abdul, have the better hand with two sixes, Queen, seven, three, and two Kings to choose your five-card hand from. Vlad, I’m afraid, has two Jacks, two tens, two fours, and a two. Shame. But too predictable. Boring. I’m going for a walk.” He left. Dan followed him out.