View from Ararat (14 page)

‘Okay. I'll play. How
did
you know?'

‘Helm Ritter.'

‘Helm . . .?'

‘Short for Helmut. He was in Security at JMMC. I used to play cards with him when I was Earthside, between trips. Before I left, I went to see him. Say goodbye, you know? I didn't have many friends. That was when he told me about it.'

‘About what?'

‘The Crystal Death. The shit we're running away from.'

‘He knew about it?'

‘There are no secrets in Security. They're just very choosy about who they tell
outside
Security.'

‘But he told you.' It was a statement, not a question.

My hand was still on his shoulder. He reached up and covered it with his own, then looked me in the eye.

‘We were friends. It broke out some place in Costa Rica. The details were sketchy, but one thing he was sure of. They torched a whole town to kill it. More than ten thousand people. And everyone in the know at JMMC was holding their breath in case it had managed to escape. Because there was no way of fighting it, and they knew what it would mean for them if there was a major outbreak and people managed to tie it back to the company. They were covering their corporate arses, protecting the bottom line.'

He looked down at me. ‘Ten thousand people died, but they contained the outbreak and kept their secret safe. How does anyone order the deaths of ten thousand people?'

‘By the numbers, Mac.'

He looked confused.

I moved across and sat down with my back to the rock where I'd first seen him. He didn't move. I closed my eyes and went on.

‘Give someone a pulse-laser and ask him to walk up to a total stranger and shoot him in the head and he won't be able to do it. Not unless he's some kind of sociopath. But put that same person into an office, and fill his life with figures and statistical analyses of market trends and profit-and-loss schedules, fill him with . . . corporate loyalty, and you can convince him to move a production facility from one country to another and destroy the lives of a whole community – a decision which will lead to poverty, starvation, even violence and death. He'll do it happily and sleep at night. Numbers are anonymous. Believe me, I know.'

How
I knew . . .

‘The secret is not to see them as people. Numbers, Mac. Reduce everything to numbers, and you can do anything. Numbers don't live and breathe. They don't look you in the eye as you press the firing button. And they don't scream as they die.'

It wasn't an original idea. I'd read it somewhere. But it was true.

He breathed deeply. ‘But that's the point, isn't it?'

I wasn't on his wavelength. I looked up at him, waiting for him to continue.

‘Numbers . . . Whoever ordered the fire was a monster, but it worked. For all the wrong reasons, that terrible act probably saved countless millions of lives. Cindy, there is no cure for this disease, this Crystal Death. If it escapes from the camp, the whole planet is in danger. I've seen the projections. Once it starts, it could wipe out everyone on Deucalion within a year. Thirty-eight million people.

‘Let me ask you. Would you consider the deaths of thirty thousand innocent people too great a price to pay to save thirty-eight million lives? Quarantine was an option before they were sure there were carriers. But now they have their outbreak, and it's just the beginning. Because it
will
escape, kid. If they don't torch the camp, there's nothing more certain. And by now they must know it. How long before the people in the camp start looking like numbers?'

14

Both Sides of the Fence

Quarantine Camp, Old Wieta Reserve

Edison Sector (East Central)

20/1/203 Standard

AARON

She lies motionless on the bed, silent at last. At peace. The asthmatic rasp of her breathing, the faint unconscious moaning of her final agony, faded moments ago. And suddenly the hut is empty of her.

He stares down at the vacant shell that was his wife, but sees only the ravaged face of someone he barely recognises.

It is then that the dam collapses. Tears and anger, relief and guilt. They pour out in equal portions, a chaos-wave of release that drives him stumbling for the door.

Out of the dark hut. Away from the gut-sick, physical despair of her leaving. Out into the burning air and the empty laneways of the dying camp.

Aaron Rodman blinks in the sudden sunlight and stands with one arm extended, his tortured cry echoing back from the blank wall of the hut opposite. He falls to his knees, and feels the distant sensation as the rough surface of the lane cuts through his clothing, deep into his flesh. But he is beyond mere pain.

His left arm hangs almost useless by his side, and throughout his body the inexorable progress of the Crystal is slowing the functions of every major organ. Gradually, inevitably.

Two days ago, down every artery and vein, through every capillary, the tiny fatal seeds dispersed and lodged and began their work. Growing, transforming. Killing him gently.

And in that laneway, on his knees, oblivious to the murderous heat, he remembers.

Rona. So strong, so totally resistant to despair. Rona, who taught him to believe when Earth's future held no hope, no promises, nothing to believe in. His wife, whose stubborn optimism had carried them across the width of a galaxy, as far as human beings had ever travelled, in search of a new life.

Her confidence which looked beyond the dark and saw the stars and all they promised. Even in the camp. Even in the darkest days after the outbreak, when the dying began.

‘We've come this far,' she told him. ‘Too far for it to end here. Like this. Life's not that cruel. I don't believe that life's that cruel.'

Her litany. Her private covenant with the future. Her faith. Unshakeable.

He remembers the smile she smiled then. He remembers, and slams his ungloved fist again and again into the unforgiving earth.

For he recalls her last smile too. Her smile, and then the sudden horror spreading like a tide across her face.

She had left the safety of the hut while he slept that day, desperate for something to still the cramping hunger in her stomach, convincing herself that she could make it safely out and back.

And he had woken alone.

He was watching from the window when she returned, maybe half an hour later, carrying a bunch of large green leaves. It was wild Capyjou, which grew in clumps in different parts of the camp, and which, according to rumours, was edible in an emergency. She was smiling, proud of her resourcefulness. She even waved at his stern face as she saw him there behind the glass.

But then she stopped, the leaves fell from her arms, and the look of horror grew behind her eyes.

She was staring at her upraised hand, at the small tear in the latex of her glove, at the pink skin, exposed. And she looked around her as if, suddenly, she could sense the leering presence of Death.

‘Rona!' he cried as he ran out of the door to face her across the narrow laneway.

But she screamed at him.

‘Stay away!' And moved to widen the space between them.

‘Don't come near me. Look . . .' A whisper. As if to speak the words aloud confirmed the naked truth.

The moment replays in slow-mo. The leaves lying forgotten at her feet. The sun reflecting from the glass of the window opposite. The way she held up her hand and stared at the pattern of her doom. The terrible look of loss that touched her face as her faith collapsed at last.

For a moment fear had made him step back. Just a step. And she had faltered. But she was strong. ‘It's too dangerous. I have to . . .'

What?

She looked around again. Where would she go? She looked towards him, trying to find the words that would make it possible to leave him.

And all the time he could not move. He felt the absence of breath in his lungs, and the exaggerated beating of his heart, as he watched her trying to leave him, trying to save him.

Then, strangely, the fear lifted and he stepped forward. One step, two. When he spoke his voice was calm.

‘There's nowhere to go, Rona. There never was.'

And taking a breath he reached out, took her hand, and peeled off the glove. Then, placing her open palm against his cheek, he kissed her hard and held her for an endless moment.

Then he led her back inside the hut.

Now, kneeling in the dirt, he feels the wind on his skin, the itch of a tear as it tracks across his cheek. And he senses the throbbing of his torn and bleeding knuckles. He coughs silently and feels the pain of it in his chest and in the muscles of his neck.

Not long now . . .

Slowly Aaron Rodman stands. He looks up at the sky. The fear is gone. Even the anger is gone.

Then he turns and makes his way back inside the hut, where Rona waits for him. He closes the door gently behind him.

Presidential Complex

New Geneva (City Central)

20/1/203 Standard

CHARLIE'S STORY

I couldn't believe it. They just sat there. Their world and all they held sacred was about to change forever, and they just sat there and listened to what he was saying, like what was going on had absolutely nothing to do with them.

There were twenty of the most respected minds from all the major fields of Research on Deucalion – more than four hundred years of major scientific achievement between them – and no one was willing to take a stand.

No one except Galen.

Tolbert, the President's advisor on the committee, was on his feet at the end of the long table, leaning forward on his fists and staring down at Galen, who held his gaze and waited, calm and controlled, listening to the big man's reply, showing no emotion at all. Which meant, of course, that Galen was as seething mad as I was.

‘We've run all the permutations and data frame models,' Tolbert continued. ‘And even in the best-case scenario, according to the projections, almost everyone in the camp dies.' The words were for the whole group, but he spoke directly to Galen. ‘You know that. Even at best, it's a high-nineties mortality factor. That's not our doing. It's a fact. The difference is, in all scenarios but one, CRIOS escapes, and we all know what that means. The only option is total, immediate neutralisation of the entire camp. We're out of choices.'

He looked up, including everyone at the table in a general plea. I thought Galen was about to speak, but he was biding his time. Tolbert went on.

‘Quarantine is no longer an alternative. The threat has to be removed.'

‘The
threat
?' Now Galen slammed both hands down on the table in front of him. ‘
Neutralisation
? The last time I looked, the
threat
was eighteen thousand innocent people. Men, women and children. Living, breathing human beings. Eighteen thousand still surviving, out of the more than thirty we locked away in there. If you're going to ask this committee to approve the murder of that many human beings, man, at least have the balls to use the word.
People
.'

He sat forward in his chair, his gaze locked onto Tolbert's.

And I saw something I've never seen, before or since. Tolbert's eyes went cold. Not angry. Not scared. Cold, like a reptile.

‘People . . .' The word was slow and deliberate, and as cold as his look. Then he walked across to the huge, curved window and looked out. ‘You know what I see out there?
People
. Nine million in New G alone. And five in Edison, six in Elton, seven in Roma. That's just the major centres. You've seen the epidemic projections – you developed some of them. Are
you
willing to risk that many lives on the off-chance that you can save a few lucky individuals? It's time to cut the bleeding-heart crap and play the percentages.

‘Besides, no one's asking for the committee's approval.' A telling pause. He turned back from the window and looked at me. ‘Last night, in a secret session, the combined houses approved a state of emergency. The whole thing is in the hands of a war-cabinet. Any decision relating to the outbreak will come directly from the President. And it will be executed by Security. From now on, the role of this committee is purely advisory.'

I was watching Galen. His hands gripped the arms of the wheelchair, and he stared at Tolbert with a depth of hatred that I'd never seen in his eyes before. But he said nothing. And I realised why.

For the first time since I'd known him, Galen Sibraa had no answers. And I suddenly understood that look. The hatred was directed at himself as much as Tolbert, at his total impotence in the face of the crisis.

What Tolbert was suggesting was totally unconscionable, but Galen had no alternative to offer. And the fact of it was tearing him apart.

When everyone was gone, I went to him. He was sitting staring out of the same window that Tolbert had looked out of a few minutes earlier. The sun was a few degrees above the skyline, but he wasn't watching it fall. He was facing directly south.

Somewhere beyond the barrier of skyscrapers, beyond the flatlands and the mountains, lay the camp, and I knew he was picturing it in his mind. We'd been in contact with Jerome Hamita at the camp infirmary so often that we felt we knew the place, even though we'd never actually been there.

‘He's wrong, Galen . . .' I began, but he turned to me and the expression on his face stopped my words.

‘
Is
he?' He looked out of the window again, and I watched his eyes reflected in the glass. When he continued, he was speaking as much to himself as to me. ‘Is he wrong, or has the situation moved beyond our old ideas of right and wrong? Shit, Charlie, maybe the only way
is
to play the percentages.'

He touched my face with the back of his fingers, then let his hand drop. When he went on, his voice was quiet, little more than a whisper.

‘I couldn't think of anything to say. He stood there suggesting mass murder, and I couldn't think of a single logical response.'

This wasn't Galen talking – the kid who had turned a childhood accident and a broken back into a badge of honour, forcing his way to the top of his field and dragging me along with him, the idealist who had almost single-handedly talked the Deucalion government into accepting the quarantine compromise in the first place. I'd never seen Galen give up. Or back down.

Until now.

I crouched down beside him until my eyes were level with his, and forced him to look at me. I needed to break him out of it. If he lost it now, I wasn't sure I could cope.

‘Remember, what Parmantier used to say? Not everything that looks like shit and smells like shit has to
be
shit. There has to be another way. And it's up to us to find it. If we let them nuke the camp, we might be safer, but we'll have lost something in the process, that we'll never be able to get back.'

‘Something that's worth tens of millions of lives?'

I didn't have an answer. At the Academy, I'd never paid much attention in the Research Ethics units. I always figured I could trust myself to know how to jump when the crisis arrived. Well, the crisis had arrived, and I was standing frozen on the clifftop. So was Galen.

In fact, the only ones who seemed to be sure of themselves were the politicians – who probably hadn't attended an Ethics class in their collective lives.

Later we sat in my unit. He sipped a cup of Ocra tea and looked across at me.

‘If I put you in a room,' he said, ‘with a totally innocent person – say a newborn child – and told you that in order to live you had to kill that child – put a pulse-laser to its head and fire – could you do it? Would it be right, or even justifiable, to save one life – yours – at the expense of someone else's, just because you had the power to do it?'

I shrugged. ‘Of course not.'

‘
Of course
? There's no “of course” here, it's a hypothetical. But OK, one on one, there's no justification to choose yourself over someone else, all things being equal. But say they weren't equal. Say there was only a slim chance that that child was going to survive the week. Would that change things?'

I didn't answer. I didn't even shake my head. There was no need. Besides, he wasn't finished.

‘Let's go a step further. Would it change things if we put three or four more people into that room. One innocent death to save five lives.

‘Of course . . . No, it wouldn't.'

He was leading me by the nose, and I couldn't escape it.

‘Five for one? Sounds like pretty reasonable odds to me. What about a hundred to one?'

‘It makes no difference,' I snapped. ‘If it's wrong, it's wrong.'

He was waiting for more. I tried again.

‘It isn't really a hundred lives for one. It's one life for one, a hundred times. Each of those people is making the decision to save him or herself at the expense of the victim. “I live, the child dies”, so there's no difference.'

‘There's no difference if each one makes the decision. But what if the decision is made for them? What if they don't even know it's being made?'

‘It still doesn't make it acceptable. No one has the right—'

‘Says you.'

‘Says me.'

He looked at me and placed the empty cup on the low coffee table beside him.

‘Sometimes it's not that easy. I think there might be a few million people who'd disagree with you.'

‘And you?' I asked.

He didn't answer. He was staring at me and swallowing hard.