The White Death (33 page)

Chapter 64

“Freda,” said Loretta loudly, snapping her folder shut. “A warrant has been issued for your arrest.”

Freda continued to approach the bench, looking up at her enemy. The doors slammed shut behind her.

“Do you really think I fear a public trial?” she said. “Right now, I would welcome it with open arms, Loretta.”

“Careful what you hope for, Freda,” said Loretta. She sat in her imposing chair, glaring down at her, but Freda wouldn’t break eye contact. This may have been Loretta’s domain, but Freda was determined to shake her to the core.

“This is my Council and my chambers,” said Loretta. “You would do well to remember that.”

“I remember everything,” said Freda. “Nothing escapes me.”

“I wish I had more time to debate with you,” said Loretta. “However, I’m on a tight schedule.” Loretta stood up. “You are being charged with gross misconduct, vacating your post in a time of crisis, and deliberately disobeying the orders of this Council. For that, you are being placed under immediate arrest to await trial.” Loretta pressed the security button on her desk a half dozen times, but nothing happened.

“I’ve cut all communication,” said Freda. “You and I are going to settle this, once and for all.”

“You are approaching a red line you don’t want to cross.” Loretta’s imposing height overshadowed the small Freda. She cleared her desk, the folders and pads vanishing. Freda didn’t take the seat behind the table she was so familiar with. All these years she had sat there, explaining how humanity needed more time. Her familiar brooch sparkled in the darkened room, and she knew this only added to Loretta’s growing fury. She detested any kind of jewelry.

“Speak, and do it quickly, I have no time for theatrics. This is no game.”

Freda heard the doors locking. Loretta had sealed them in.

“I wish this was a game,” admitted Freda. “But it isn’t. Not when ten billion people are involved.”

Loretta looked like she had lost the last ounce of her patience. Her eyes were wide and blazing. Her breathing, short but steady.

Freda readied herself. It was now or never.

“From the time this all started, I’ve been playing catch-up. Each event took me by surprise. First, the Council planned to genetically ‘fix’ every human, before discovering that wouldn’t work. So then we were going to sterilize most humans. That hasn’t happened. Now we have a killer virus on the loose. The only thing that
has
happened is the systematic destruction and eradication of an entire race. A race under my care and protection. Estimates now put the infection rate at over eighty percent of the global population. What’s the status of the vaccine?”

“We are making progress on that,” said Loretta.

“I was very surprised, upon my return to Earth, that the vaunted Bernay virologists had yet to develop one,” said Freda. “I mean, you designed the Eugenics Virus. Surely creating a vaccine would be within your grasp?” She tried to sound as cynical as possible now. Every word dripped with sarcastic disbelief.

“They haven’t fully realized a vaccine yet, Freda. There is a difference. Nothing is impossible.”

Freda knew the Bernay were capable of great things. Bernay scientific and medical capabilities were becoming vital linchpins in the Alliance as populations expanded and interbred and many new illnesses began appearing.

“How long?”

“Pardon?” asked Loretta.

“How long until a vaccine is created? Two days? Three days? A month? A year? How long, Loretta?” asked Freda, raising her voice.

“I don’t explain the workings of this Council to you.” Loretta was threatening, and Freda knew it.

She took her gloves off, while Loretta remained unreadable.

“You have a vaccine sitting in your lab. You’re just waiting for the
Reason
to arrive.”

“If we had a vaccine, it would have been administered to the population immediately. Sterilization is not reliant on that.”

“It was never about sterilization. I know that now. That was just a charade.”

“If you have a point to make, Freda, make it quickly.”

“Cecil came to me,” she began. “I’ve known the man a very long time. From threatening me to pleading with me, he reminded me of someone very close to a breakdown. He’s not a brave warrior or a cold, calculating politician, but he tries to walk on the right side of life. He told me to leave Earth and run, run away to the farthest outposts of our Alliance.”

Freda kept going, but Loretta refused to be baited, instead listening carefully.

“He even gave me fake travel documents,” said Freda. “I was told to leave Earth and never come back. My home world was threatened, my life endangered. I knew he wasn’t acting alone.”

“Proof?” asked Loretta.

“What?”

“Freda, without proof, you’ve nothing to prove this meeting happened or what was said.”

“Cecil will prove…”

“Cecil will do nothing,” said Loretta, amused. “Nothing at all. You abandoned your post and left the Council to deal with this mess. I issued a warrant for your arrest, Alliance-wide. We’ve watched entire nations on Earth vanish because of this virus and the idiotic methods humans have used to try and contain it.”

Freda didn’t reply. She had her argument planned out and had to corner this dangerous snake once and for all.

“I left, but I wasn’t running from you or the Council. I went to find answers, and I found them at Deep Space 66.”

“Deep Space 66? You went to a pirate station on the outskirts of Alliance territory?”

Freda watched Loretta continue, in vain, to press the security button under her desk.

“En route, I focused on reports submitted to Alliance leadership by this Council on Earth, since my tenure began.”

“Continue,” said Loretta.

“Well, I got the data,” said Freda. “I had to call in quite a few favors, though—a lot more than I thought for general reports on a species under the eye of the Council.”

“If you accessed classified data, obtained illegally, then you are just adding to your growing list of crimes,” said Loretta, but Freda was sure she detected a little flurry of intrigue across her face.

“When you’ve worked in the intelligence services as long as I did, you tend to develop a network of contacts,” said Freda. She was surprised how many of her old colleagues were still in the service. “The reports you sent to Alliance leadership on humanity’s progress made for some very interesting reading.”

“This has gone on long enough,” said Loretta. She stood up, getting ready to leave.

“SIT DOWN,” shouted Freda. That flashing crack in her own demeanor startled her.

“I don’t take orders from you,” said Loretta, her voice echoing across the chambers.

“I’ll go straight to every media outlet in this Alliance myself with what I know.”

“Which is what exactly?” Loretta laughed, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! The Supreme Court was aware of my plans to place a research facility on Earth, and they authorized funding for it. They wanted the human gene pool tidied up.”

“But you lied to the Supreme Court,” shouted Freda in retaliation.

“I beg your pardon?”

Freda called up the relevant report and began reciting section five, paragraph one. “‘The laboratory will be situated in a deserted area of Earth, far from concentrated human populations. It is rather akin to the Presada province on the Bernay home world.’”

“Well?”

Loretta rolled her eyes.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Presada province resembles the North Pole on Earth. It does not resemble the most dangerous political flashpoint on Earth.”

“We had to fudge the details in order to get permission and funding. That’s all. We really did take every precaution, including doubling the depth of base construction. We chose that area because it was relatively uninhabited and allowed us access to geothermal energy to power the base. The proposal was signed off on not only by the Supreme Court, but also by the Council. Every member.” Loretta called up the signatory page, and it appeared large and clear for Freda to see.

“The rest of the Council have as much knowledge about the geography of Earth as I do about nuclear science,” said Freda. She wasn’t finished yet. She now read section seven, paragraph two. “‘All necessary safeguards have been taken, and even in the event of an uncontrolled power core explosion, the resulting effects would be minimal.’ Loretta, when that facility exploded, it actually shook the planet. Continents moved. It set nations on a path to war, releasing a killer virus.”

“Mistakes have been made,” admitted Loretta. She sat down again, looking about, distracted. “There is nothing in this. If you’re trying to pass your own failings onto me and this Council, you won’t succeed.”

“You expect me to believe that this was all just bureaucratic maneuvering?”

“I don’t really care what you believe,” said Loretta.

“When I arrived at Deep Space 66, I met up with Joliat Trebor.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“Until I brought him out of his drunken stupor, I think Joliat thought he was dead,” said Freda. He had been a handful at the beginning, but she was able to shake it out of him.

“So you went and saw a drunken old academic, shunned by civilized society?” said Loretta.

“He too went into hiding, blaming the Bernay for tarnishing his reputation to the point where he feared for his life,” said Freda. She had investigated him once. “His research papers were refused publication, and he couldn’t lecture anywhere in the entire Alliance.”

“He always was a rather dramatic individual,” said Loretta. “He once accused the Telson species of harboring an ancient Grison Sphere.”

“I’m not interested in any of that nonsense,” said Freda. “Joliat Trebor was the foremost expert in the Alliance on humans. Now, he is the only surviving one.”

Loretta said nothing.

“Everyone else is dead,” said Freda coldly. It was this discovery that first made her realize just how high up the chain of command all this could go. The Alliance may have had a huge population, but murder was almost impossible. “He claims no one wants to hear about the human paradox anymore. The experiment is considered a disaster. This Grand Alliance doesn’t tolerate disasters. We don’t make those kind of mistakes. He claimed the Alliance was being informed that Earth was a barbaric society, on the verge of collapse. If they ever became spacefaring, they could become a threat to regional stability.”

“Some on Earth would agree with that statement, Freda, let alone Council members. Humans are a violent species.”

“So are most in the early stages of development,” reminded Freda. “But I couldn’t understand why the Alliance would think of humans as a disaster. Some of my reports to the Council have highlighted particular difficulties, but nothing that couldn’t be applied to any up-and-coming junior civilization.”

Loretta remained quiet.

“But Joliat was adamant. You know the way he can be sometimes. So we trawled through the rest of the correspondence between this Council and the Alliance.”

“You let an outlaw view official Alliance correspondence?” said Loretta.

“I did.”

“Freda…”

“From the Earth years 1900 to 1971, your reports to the leadership on the progress of humanity seem quite constructive and relative to actual happenings on Earth. They were comparable to my own reports to you.” Freda had expected this, with Joliat believing things only changed in the 1970s.

“Your reports are then interpreted by me, along with your interviews, to comprise an unbiased picture for the leadership,” said Loretta.

“From 1971 onwards, your reports to leadership turned sour. It was around this time that Joliat and the rest of his colleagues began to become isolated in the academic circles of the Alliance. The decision to intervene with humans sixty thousand years ago has always divided us. Any prospect of failure would ignite old wounds. So, when your reports began to color the situation as worsening, we cast him and every other historian with opposing views into academic wilderness.” Freda had sat with Trebor for many hours while on the space station, as he walked her through the Council discovering Earth and how the decision was reached to genetically enhance what eventually gave rise to modern humans.

“Are we talking about academics now?”

“Joliat and I corroborated some dates. He was cast out of his job and positions in 1980, nine years after your reports about Earth began to turn. The Bernay have spent the last sixty years tarnishing humans.”

“Freda, look at humans! Genetically diseased. My reports only foresaw what was to come.”

“Rubbish!” said Freda. “You began laying the groundwork in 1971 for everything. So I ask you, what did you discover in 1971 that turned you against this one species so much? Don’t try and think of a lie. Tell me the truth. Tell me now!”

“The Bernay placed their scientific reputation on the human experiment. It has failed, and our reputation almost died with it. We would have done anything to save them.”

“Up until 1971 I think that would have been true. The Bernay hate making mistakes. You’d have done everything in your power to ensure humans were all the Alliance expected them to be. That’s when I began to realize just how big this must be.”

“I think this conversation should end now, Freda. There are powers here that dwarf you. I value my freedom, and you should, too.”

Freda paused. She had finally got her to admit something. That was the first step. “Just as I suspected.” Since her meeting with Trebor, Freda knew Loretta had to have had a powerful backer. Academics were the lifeblood of the Alliance, and to have a portion of them disappear without any investigation was out of Loretta’s power by far.

“Then just leave it as it is,” said Loretta. “If you agree to that, I’ll let you go. You can leave the Alliance and live out the rest of your life in peace beyond its borders.”

Freda shook her head.

“This conversation really does need to end,” warned Loretta. Her tone had changed. She had become darker now.

“From 1971 onwards, your reports to the Alliance leadership steadily took a more disappointed and worrying tone against humanity. By the end, you were describing Earth as full of savages. What happened that year?”

Loretta refused to bite.

“I checked with official records. The only thing happening that year was the mapping of the human gene pool.”

“It’s standard procedure to map the DNA and genome of an alien culture under our care once we make them aware of us.”

“And you found something, didn’t you?” said Freda.

Loretta’s eyes widened ever so slightly, but enough for Freda to know she was on the right track.

“Something in the human gene pool,” continued Freda, “which you were cataloguing, and it frightened you. It frightened you so much you began planning humanity’s doom.”

“Humans are a self-destructive, unintelligent, and emotionally retarded species,” shouted Loretta in anger.

“Joliat told me your species vehemently opposed any such genetic intervention 60,000 years ago,” shouted Freda.

“How could we not oppose it?” asked Loretta. “It went against everything we believed as scientists. Natural evolution must take its own course. We didn’t let that happen in this case, and it was a risk we shouldn’t have taken. Human history vindicated us there. A lifetime of inbreeding would have been healthier than what they subjected themselves to. We granted them the right to flourish. Therefore, it was our duty to administer some harsh medicine.”

“Granted them the right,” laughed Freda. “This Council has a very high opinion of itself. But we aren’t arguing about pollution or social eugenics.”

“If the Bernay hadn’t altered human genetic structure, they would have gone extinct.”

“You don’t believe that anymore,” said Freda. “Not after 1971.”

“What?” said Loretta. She was fidgeting with her pen now.

“I know what you found that year,” said Freda.

“Freda, that is enough,” said Loretta sharply, her famed iciness beginning to shatter. “I’ll have you imprisoned for an eternity if you carry on.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t believe it yourself. I couldn’t. It almost frightened me. I can just imagine what it did to you.”

Freda was still standing in front of her little table, occasionally walking up and down the breadth of the room as she spoke. Loretta’s eyes followed her like target practice.

“They are a standard bipedal species. We created them.”

“You’ve been lying since I walked through that door,” said Freda, pointing.