Bios (19 page)

His first order of business had been to contain the quarantine pod, and he had done that. Before today the IOS had been a sterile zone, isolated from Isis by the hard vacuum beyond its walls. Now
the IOS was itself a breached environment, an apple into which a dangerous worm had gnawed.

The isolation ward had become a Level Five hot zone, contained on its perimeter by fiat Level Four zones—these were the exterior medical chambers, such as the one in which Corbus Nefford was currently trapped—and by Level One, Two, and Three precautionary zones beyond that, i.e., the engineering pod and a maintenance space where Turing assemblers were prepared for launch.

The problem was, there was very little redundancy aboard the IOS. The size and weight restrictions imposed by the mechanics of the Higgs launches narrowed the margin of error to a fine line. Even at peak efficiency, the IOS had always been one or two critical failures away from wholesale shutdown. Without the machine shop, and with access restricted to the Turing launchers—

But no; that was tomorrow's problem.

Solen of Engineering said, “We're looking at how to relocate critical functions as far as possible from the hot pod. The farms, thank God, are about as far from quarantine as you can get, a hundred eighty degrees of the circle. We're setting up a temporary clinic for injuries outside the agriculture perimeter; disease cases, if any, go directly to the quarantine perimeter.”

Degrandpre pictured the IOS in his mind, a necklace of ten gray pearls spinning in a void. No, nine gray pearls and one black: infected, infectious. He would have to move his own quarters closer to the farms.

Certainly the new Turing gens would have to wait; it meant another delay for the D&P interferometer project, but that was unavoidable. The grand plan to use Isis as a staging base for further Higgs launches depended on a stable Isian outpost—to be defended at all costs. Without the IOS, Degrandpre thought, the Trusts will lose the stars, at least for the foreseeable future.

His most immediate problem, though, was not contagion, but fear. The fact of the outbreak in Quarantine could hardly be hidden from the fifteen-hundred-plus crew of the orbital station, each of whom was painfully aware of being locked in a metal canister without
plausible hope of escape. An emergency Higgs launch, Solen told him blandly, would save ten or twelve people depending on their combined mass.

“Motivate your workers,” Degrandpre said, “but don't terrify them. Emphasize that these are extraordinary precautions we're taking, that there has been no contamination outside the quarantine chamber.”

Leander of Medical said, “They know that, Manager, but they also have the example of the ground stations before them. The suspicion is that once contamination occurs, there's no certain way to contain it.”

“Tell them we're talking about one organism here, not the whole Isian biosphere.”

“One organism? Is that true?”

“Possibly. Keeping order is more important than telling the truth.”

The meeting moved on briskly, working through Degrandpre's prepared agenda. So far, so good: the contagion had been contained, food and water supplies were safe, and other essential functions remained in good shape. The IOS was still a safe environment.

What had been stolen from them by the event in Quarantine was their sense of security. We have always been fragile, Degrandpre thought. But never as fragile as now.

Degrandpre ordered his communications manager to stay behind when the others left.

“I want all outbound messages routed through my office for approval, including routine housekeeping. Let's not alarm the Trusts prematurely.”

The communications manager, a bony Terrestrial woman named Nakamura, shifted her weight uncomfortably. “That's highly unusual,” she said—letting him know, Degrandpre supposed, that she wouldn't cover for him if the Trusts eventually brought a complaint.

Young woman, he thought, that is the least of your problems. He noted her objection and dismissed her.

There was nothing here the Families needed to know, at least not right away. Above all else, the Trusts feared the consequences of importing an Isian pathogen to Earth. Alarm them, and the Trusts might well impose an extended quarantine . . . or even refuse to dock a Higgs module returned from Isis, leaving the survivors to drift until they starved.

Degrandpre didn't relish the prospect of becoming one more frozen planetisimal, entombed in a sort of artificial Kuiper body, a cometary mausoleum arcing through endless orbits of the sun.

He spoke to Corbus Nefford through a video link.

The station's chief physician was clearly frightened. His uniform was ringed with perspiration; his face was pale and doughy, his eyes perpetually too wide. Degrandpre imagined the man's thymostat pressed to its limits, synthesizing regulatory molecules at a feverish pitch.

“It's absurd,” Nefford insisted, “at a time like this, that I should be
confined
here . . .”

“I don't doubt it, Corbus. But that's the way the containment protocols are written.”

“Written by pedantic theorists who obviously don't understand—”

“Written by the Trusts. Watch your language, Doctor.”

Nefford's narrow eyebrows and small mouth contracted petulantly, as if, Degrandpre thought, someone had tightened his stitches. The station's former managing physician seemed on the verge of tears, not a good omen. “You don't understand. These people died so
quickly.”

“They died in Quarantine, yes?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you should be safe enough.”

“All I want is to put some distance between myself and the
contamination. Is that so unreasonable? Everyone else is huddling near the gardens, I understand. Why should I be used this way?”

“It's not your decision, Doctor.”

“I've worked in clean environments all my life. I'm a Family physician! I maintain health! I don't perform autopsies! I'm not accustomed to this degree of, of . . .”

Nefford trailed off, swiping his forehead on his sleeve. The managing physician was sick.

With fear.

Let it be fear, Degrandpre thought. For once, he envied his father's stubborn faith. A prophet to pray to. Here, there was no prophet, no Mecca, no Jerusalem. No paradise or forgiveness, no margin of error. Only a devil. And the devil was fecund, the devil was alive.

T
HE EVACUATION OF
Marburg took a day and a half.

The field station was a twin of Yambuku, set deep in the Lesser Boreal Continent's temperate forest. Like Yambuku, it was situated in a cleared perimeter, its rigorously sterile core contained inside layers of increasing biohazard. Its biologically hot outer walls were scrubbed daily by maintenance tractibles, or should have been—lately the tractibles had begun to malfunction; the bays were full of machinery demanding maintenance, and bacterial films had compromised three of the station's exit locks. When the shuttle dock seals began to show similar wear, the station manager, a Shoe Clan virologist named Weber, called for general evac.

The call was not well-received by the IOS. Apparently Marburg's shuttle would be routed to a secondary bay that was being set up for prolonged quarantine. Weber ascribed this to Terrestrial paranoia, though he feared it might signal something worse.

But there was no postponing the evac. Weber loved Isis and
had worked hard to make Marburg a going concern. But he was also a realist. Postpone the evacuation much longer and people would begin to die.

The Oceanic Station had already collapsed. The Isis Polar Station, anchored in the glacial wasteland of the planet's northern ice cap, reported no significant problems and continued to operate on a day-to-day basis.

Yambuku, however, was on the brink of total breakdown.

Avrion Theophilus burst through the shuttle-bay doors from decon, brushed aside his courtesy detail, and marched directly to Yambuku's remote-ops room.

His full-dress Devices and Personnel uniform drew a few stares from the otherwise distracted downstation crew. He was accustomed to that, at least from the Kuiper-born. In civilization it would have been considered ridiculously gauche, the peasant's impulse to stare. But Yambuku wasn't civilization.

He found the station manager, Tam Hayes, coming off a long remensor session. Hayes looked groggy, unshaven. Theophilus took him aside. “We need a place to talk.”

“I gather she's injured,” Theophilus said.

“It looks that way.”

“Out of contact.”

“Verbal contact, certainly. We're still getting some telemetry, but it's intermittent. The fault may be with our antenna array. Remensors are down, too, and the excursion tractibles are dead. All of them.”

“But Zoe is not.”

“No. To the best of our knowledge, Zoe is not.”

“We have good telemetry up to the point at which she was attacked?”

“Yes.”

“Forwarded to Earth?”

“Forwarded to the IOS, at least. Degrandpre bottlenecks traffic to Earth.”

“I wouldn't worry about that.”

Hayes blinked. “Believe me, that's not what I'm worried about.”

“Have the satellites located her?”

“To within a meter of the digger colony, but the atmosphere's too cloudy for any kind of visual confirmation.”

“Not good enough,” Theophilus said.

They had come to the small shuttle-control chamber above the core. It was occupied only during launches—a good place for a private conversation. Hayes was in a hurry to get back to the remote-ops room; Zoe was alive, and he meant to bring her back to Yambuku. Right now Avrion Theophilus was only an obstacle, and the man's peremptory manner made Hayes clench his fists.

He said, “Are you worried about Zoe or about her excursion technology?”

“The technology has already proven itself, don't you think? The fact that she might yet be alive despite a wild-animal attack is evidence of that.”

“Because if it's Zoe you're worried about, it might be best if you let me get back to the business of bringing her home.”

“Not all the novel technology is in her excursion suit, Dr. Hayes.”

“Excuse me?”

“She's a package. It isn't just the interface. She's augmented
internally
, do you understand? She has an entirely artificial immune system riding on top of her natural immunity. Microscopic nanofactories stapled to her abdominal aorta. If the suit is breached, we need to know that. There's much more we can learn from her even if she dies in the field.”

“You're saying she might survive even if the suit is breached?”

“For a time, at least. It might be difficult to retrieve her body, given the situation here. But if we can—”

“Fuck you,” Hayes said.

He didn't want to retrieve Zoe's body. He had a better plan.

Dieter Franklin came into the staging bay as Hayes was suiting up.

Hayes' standard bioarmor was clumsy and immense compared to the gear Zoe had worn. A sterile core wrapped in steel and flexiglass and nanofilters. Hayes had just sealed the massive leggings when the inner door slid open.

“You can't be serious,” Franklin said. “Lee Reisman said you were raving about an emergency excursion. I told her you were smarter than that. Tell me I wasn't lying.”

“I'm bringing her back.”

“Slow down a fucking minute and think about this! You're planning to cross the Copper River in a suit of armor that can sustain you for, what, two days maximum?—when it's working properly. And at a time when every piece of machinery we've sent into the field is either dead or failing and we can't even keep our own seals intact.”

“She's alive, maybe injured.”

“If she's alive, she needs a functioning ground station to come home to. You're more useful to her here. Not out in the mud with a hot servomotor, or worse, dividing everybody's attention and costing us resources we can't afford.”

“I owe her—”

“Nothing you owe her is worth suicide. And that's what this is, you
know
it. Odds are, you'll end up as a few kilograms of compost inside a broken steel shell. And Zoe will end up right where she is.”

Hayes wound a layer of insulation around his waist, forcing himself to slow down, do it right. “She was a fucking
test platform
, Dieter. D-and-P doesn't give a shit about the diggers. Zoe thought she was here to do social studies, but she was a
test platform.”

Dieter Franklin nodded slowly. “For the excursion suit. Elam suspected as much.”

“Elam suspected. But I
knew.”

Franklin said nothing. Hayes tried to focus his attention on his armor, working the procedures, sealing bands of pneumostatic plastic over his rib cage. He wished Elam were here to read him his checklist.

“You knew?”

“I saw all the D-and-P memos. Little communiques to the Yambuku manager. No details, but enough that I should have realized it was her gear that mattered. She was a fucking test platform, Dieter, and I let her walk out there in all her glorious ignorance.”