Panspermia Deorum (45 page)

A
s Julien made his way back to the hotel in a taxi, a
wistful smile rippled over his face. He knew that it was going to
be a hell of a problem to explain his decision without really
telling the full story. He called the family from reception and
asked them to meet him in the cocktail lounge. There could have
been quite a rumpus if he dropped this on them in their suite, but
decorum would be his ally in a public place.

They stared at
him, waiting for him to say something which would explain his
insistence that they should all follow him to the down
elevator.

“Please, just
do as I ask, there is something to celebrate and something which
has to be done.”

They gathered
around an oval table in the cocktail bar and Julien ordered soft
drinks for everyone. He announced the good news, that Eugene and
his colleagues were the first to cure a man infected by the virus.
He let this sink in for a few seconds and then delivered the
not-so-good news. Their celebrations turned to utter astonishment.
Sophie broke the deafening silence.

“You seriously
want us to go to that hell-hole? If I remember correctly, Eugene
had to fight tooth and nail to get out of Australia. It’s where the
plague started. I’m not going.”

Elise and
Geraldine simply nodded in agreement, and Reuben said nothing.
Sophie addressed her father again.

“Well, come on,
Dad. You talked us into ditching Guiana to come here – because
Eugene said it was safe. There’s something you aren’t telling
us.”

“You
misunderstood. My apologies, I wouldn’t expect any of you to go
with me, but I can’t turn my back on my son when he has to continue
his work on developing a vaccine for sufferers of this virus.
Sooner or later it will reach everywhere on Earth, there will be no
hiding place. His work is at an advanced but critical stage, and
you’re right, Sophie, it all started in Australia, where it has now
mutated. So, Eugene has to tackle it right where it is, right now.
He needs help in altering the current strategy of merely trying to
contain it.”

Elise spoke
calmly.

“So, you want
us to stay here while you and Eugene risk your lives down
there?”

“Well, yes.
Would any of you truly want me to decline Eugene’s plea for help.
Listen, he doesn’t need me to get involved with his actual lab
work. He wants my experience in putting together an organisation
which can properly administrate the distribution of any promising
vaccine he develops. It isn’t an ongoing situation for me, as soon
as the structure is in place, I become redundant. I’ll return here
as soon as I can. This is the safest place for the rest of you at
present, so please just try to keep a low profile and learn
something about the Japanese culture. I promise to keep in touch
regularly. Look, I have no choice; I have to go.”

There was no
further resistance.

Australia -
Three Months Later

With the help
of Zlatan’s boss, and Julien’s contacts around the world, a
meticulous plan had been implemented. A comprehensive list of
suspected stable Alphas in the hierarchy had been under continual
observation by trained operatives under the nominal command of
Alexei Bondarenko, who’d been given leave by his new employer. They
were mainly Russian Special Surveillance Units. A separate group of
trusted scientists had been ensconced in Sydney, with the agreement
of a failing Australian government, once they had been persuaded
that they’d been continually fed false information from the
exclusion zone hierarchy. Parading Eugene’s miracle man, Zlatan,
was the clincher.

The planned
coup to take over the exclusion zone had to be triggered and
executed with the precision of an atomic clock. Above all, they
wanted the top man alive. They needed to interrogate him in the
presence of Eugene’s group. It had been decided to threaten this
man by making him the first stable Alpha to be subjected to their
cure. But not before he’d witnessed phase one and two deviants
being purged of the virus. Brandon and Eugene insisted that this
should be the order of things. There was resistance to the
proposal, the Australian government simply wanted all deviants
eliminated unless there could be a guarantee of no further
mutation. Brandon reminded them that the dimension of time ruled
out such guarantees, repeating the folly of mass treatment at this
juncture. There had to be absolute proof of the cure’s
effectiveness with
individual
cases of all three
deviant phases before any conventional treatment wards could be set
up. He also made the point that isolating the head of the snake had
psychological leverage. Confrontation with cured subordinates
during interrogation, and the pledge that he was next, might just
elicit some valuable disclosure from him. Brandon then bizarrely
placated the Australian government concern. He implied that
regardless of how the individual cure attempts of all three phases
of viral transition turned out, they were merely ‘contained
experiments’. He agreed that all other deviants currently within
the exclusion zone should be terminated and burned under the
strictest supervision.

“We have to use
every small advantage we can muster. There is no room for sympathy
here. The benefit, if there ever was one, of the exclusion zone is
the security aspect. It has to stay like that so that we can spread
the cure outwards in a highly controlled way, and crucially
extending the security as we go. Eventually, thousands may die, but
thousands will survive if we accept this ring-fencing approach. If
we can produce a successful model, it can be applied elsewhere, but
we also have to try to get as much information as we can from the
top man before he is subjected to our cure. If he is truly cured,
he can become our biggest asset. I hope you’re beginning to
comprehend what we’re dealing with here.”

After fielding
a few more ‘what if’ questions, Eugene and Brandon were given
consensual go-ahead for the plan. And, with help in the form of
detailed exclusion zone drawings from Zlatan’s boss, the special
operations units hatched the actual coup.

One of the
engineering employees in the complex was instructed by Zlatan’s
ex-boss to cause a fault in the inner sanctum air conditioning
system during his nightshift. It would be reported the next
morning, rendering scheduled meetings difficult, due to the utterly
oppressive heat. The ploy was extremely successful, all of the
inner sanctum files were stored in that suite, and it could never
be left empty during dayshift hours. The top stable deviant
personally demanded that the air conditioning unit had to be
repaired without delay, while he struggled to keep the meeting
agenda on course. The special ops unit delegated only two men,
dressed in the uniforms of the repair company. They fitted gas
canisters to the inlet supply and then corrected the cooling
hardware ‘fault’. The system was now reported as fully operational
and the special ops men left. It only took a few minutes for the
asphyxiation gas to render the entire chamber attendees
unconscious. The remaining personnel in the special ops unit were
fitted with high grade gas-proof suits and were dropped by
helicopter on to the glass roof. They’d already been familiarised
with the faces of the inner sanctum members and swiftly pulled the
top man to one side. He was administered a heavy sedative before
the others were injected with nerve gas.

The senior
special ops man called Zlatan’s boss and gave the signal that the
chamber was secure, and the asphyxiation gas had been turned off.
He, in turn scrambled all the employees he knew he could trust;
certain ones were required in the ante-chamber while the remaining
gas dispersed, and then to enter, securing the inner sanctum files.
Others were detailed to get to the cache of automatic rifles which
had been planted overnight. Anyone who resisted being assembled in
the main courtyard were to be shot on refusal, no questions asked.
Eugene and his team arrived to pick up their top man and take him
to the state-of-the-art laboratory section.

Stage one was
over, a bridgehead had been established. Now the security aspect
had to be addressed. Once again ruthless adherence to plan was
paramount. The supervised burning of the bodies from the inner
sanctum conveyed this better than any words. Everyone was forced to
attend.

A state of news
blackout was already in place, courtesy of the simultaneous
elimination of all inner sanctum members but one. The news output
had probably been employed as an indoctrination facility, but now
it had to become a containment operation.

Eugene and
Brandon were immediately tasked with selecting and curing a phase
one and a phase two individual prior to re-awakening the head of
the snake. They needed no reminding that time was still of the
essence. They didn’t have the luxury of asking for volunteers, they
took the first one they could verify in each category.

The equipment
in this lab was vastly superior to that which they’d had to make do
with in Japan, and it was estimated that they would have a
prediction in forty-eight hours. The deviants responsible for
setting this equipment up had clearly been very inventive. This was
quite a relief, when compared to Zlatan’s painfully long all-clear
vigil. With this array of monitoring they would know before the
forty-eight hour predictive data came to hand, if there was a
serious problem which would suggest aborting and finding another
more suitable specimen.

World War
Three

P
re-existing pockets of conflict would not be helpful
in expanding outward with the programme. Protestant and Catholic.
Sunni and Shia. Anarchist and Establishment. Cult and Sectarian.
Capitalist and Communist. Somehow, the world had to be confronted
with the need to shelve these divisive habits and focus on Homo
Sapiens and Homo Diversitus. Making it known there was a cure would
derail the chances of the former prevailing beyond the antipodes. A
classic example of being dishonest to serve the greater good.

The phase one
deviant had been cured. The phase two specimen was predicted to be
cured. A debate ensued as to whether it was prudent to take this as
reliable and get on with the head of the snake. It was a tough
call, simply because like Zlatan, the phase one specimen couldn’t
enlighten them about deviant plans, she could only repeat that she
had been driven to rely upon instinct rather than evaluation, and
yet had no desire to commit suicide.

An old axiom
which suggested all wars are won and lost before they are fought
weighed heavily on the minds of the strategists whom Julien
Delacroix had managed to persuade to join the cause. It was
therefore considered good fortune that Australia was a ‘discrete
continent’ in a way. One predominant language, one recognised
government, one set of laws and immigration control force. This
might just assist in bringing in new edicts such as submission to
medical tests before being cleared to travel outside the shoreline.
People were asked to support such draconian action if they truly
wanted to help in defeating the virus. The underlying strategy was
to flush out resistance to checks, and detain possible deviants for
enforced tests. The practical difficulty was always going to be
vetting the sheer number of officials responsible for actually
conducting those checks. If they were to stand any chance of
progress they would have to consider dismantling social media by
bulldozing internet capability into at least temporary ruin. The
monumental knock-on effects of such decisions began to undermine
the morale of the strategists. Even if they could prosecute the
foundations for such lockdown, it would take years or decades to
extend cleansing tentacles into a world which could already be lost
to Homo Diversitus.

Meeting after
meeting failed to shape a viable alternative. There appeared to be
no alternative.

*

The selected
phase two specimen had begun to react positively, and then the
prediction indicated failure. Another would be selected, and the
original specimen would be terminated then burned. Just as well
that Brandon had bullied Eugene into starting the treatment for the
top deviant already. In fact the prediction took considerably less
time than the previous recipients of the treatment. He would be
clean within days according to the data.

*

Julien had been
constantly in touch with the family and now he announced he was on
his way back. He spoke first to Elise.

“I’m sorry this
has taken longer than anticipated but the stakes are so high for
all of us, and I couldn’t seem to walk away from Eugene when he’s
working so hard on behalf of everyone. I’m leaving here tonight,
and I’m really looking forward to seeing you all.”

“I’ve been so
worried about both of you. When will Eugene be coming back?”

“I don’t think
we should fool ourselves, Elise. Our son is not going to take a
step back into normal life for a long time. All I can say is that
this scourge is a very complex organism which may be around in some
form long after you and I are gone. We have to be proud of Eugene
and try to visit him whenever that is possible. The civilised world
is already crumbling, but if we think things can’t get any worse,
we need to really open our eyes. I can explain more when I get
back. Bye for now.”

*

Despite the
chronic fatigue suffered by the head of the snake, he displayed no
signs of being uncooperative. They had their suspicions that this
was part of his defence mechanism. They would only be able to get a
true feel for the extent of his re-conversion by specific, targeted
questions. Eugene and Brandon had already devised a list of probing
queries, buttered with tactical sympathy. In particular, they had
anticipated resistance from him regarding an enforced cure, but he
had been surprisingly compliant.