The Demon Plagues (26 page)

After a moment a pseudopod extended itself
from the central mass and formed into a five-limbed appendage, like
a hand.

It waved at the camera.

***

Markis ordered the general feed left on. He
wanted complete transparency, no accusations of conspiracy or
agendas; also he knew that the vast majority of the viewing public
could only sustain their interest for a limited period of time.
The most effective insulation against further disruption and
chaos is banality and boredom.

Raphael for his part consented to the
continuous video feed, and the Chairman’s governmental complex on
Medellin’s
Calle 45
grew rapidly, soon taking over the
entire block and requiring the Colombians to assume external
security. Free Community scientists talked with the alien as much
as he allowed.

Markis’ time was taken up helping to manage
the alien pandemic problem, what everyone now called the Demon
Plague. While most coverage of Raphael’s interaction with Markis
and the other humans was positive, the perpetrators of the attack
were naturally termed ‘demons’.

It wasn't long before groups of people –
validated UFO believers, crazies, religious fanatics, martyr types,
and serious young academics – hovered in crowds nearby in Medellin
parks and plazas, delighting the local merchants and bedeviling the
police. Some supported the alien’s arrival, some protested it, some
promulgated messages that were far less clear. Colombia began to
strictly control visas and travel into the capital. Soon
applications flooded in volunteering to Blend with the alien, so
the Chairman wasn’t really surprised when Rick Johnstone asked for
a private appointment.

“Sit down, Rick. What’s on your mind?”

“Sir, I want to be the one to Blend with the
alien.” His face was serious, but nervous. “I’ve thought about it
for a couple of days and I think I’m your best choice.”

Markis leaned back in his chair, clasping his
hands behind his head. “Why?”

“Because I’m already close to you. It can’t
be you; people won’t accept some kind of alien taking over your
mind. I mean, that’s what they would say, and you’d be marginalized
overnight. It has to be someone else, someone close to you, so you
have confidence in…in the best interests of humanity. So you know
what to look for. In case it’s some kind of trick. You know what I
mean.”

“I do know what you mean.” Markis idly made
his biceps jump, left-right, left-right, a nervous habit. “But does
Jill?”

“Uh…” Rick abruptly looked like a rabbit
under the eyes of a wolf.

“You haven’t talked with her?”

“Sir, you know what she would say.”

“Sounds precisely why I should refuse. What
is she to you?”

“Uh…I don’t know.” He shrugged uncomfortably.
“I mean, I’m in love with her…”

Markis put his arms down to lean forward,
staring intensely at his dead friend’s only son. “Look, being with
someone for the rest of your life – we old people call it
‘marriage’ – used to mean fifty or sixty years. Now it might mean a
thousand. So I’m sure you think you can take your time. But doing
this might foreclose all your options. We have no idea what this
Blending really is. So before I even put you in the candidate pool,
you go settle your relationship with Jill. You can’t just leave her
out of it. I suggest you do the same with your mother and your
sister. When you can come back and look me in the eye and tell me
you’ve at least listened to them and understood what it all might
mean, then I’ll think about it.”

Rick stood up, seething. “Why did I know you
would react like this? You know, before we young people could look
forward to our parents’ generation moving on and making way for us.
Now we’re just going to be eternal kids. We’re never going to have
any respect in your eyes.”

Markis just stared at him, not dignifying the
outburst with a response. Slowly Rick crumbled under that stare.
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean that.”

“Sure you did, but now you’re thinking it
through. It’s all right. Everyone was young once. It’s your role to
be stupid now and then. God knows I did it enough. But it’s our job
to help you get past it. So speaking of respect, talk to Jill. She
deserves that much.”

Rick nodded, looking miserable as he turned
to go.

Markis shook his head to himself as Rick
walked out. Before the door shut there came a knock.

Captain Ilona poked her head in. “Sir, do you
have a minute? Miss Johnstone said…”

“Sure, come in, sit down, Captain. Remind me,
what’s your first name? Something with an S…”

“Sophia, sir.” Ilona was pretty, as all young
healthy women are, but not someone who would snap heads around. In
uniform she looked rather short and plain and a bit chubby, but he
took notice of the bright inquisitive eyes and the even brighter
mind behind them.

“So what is it that I can do for you?” He
checked his watch surreptitiously below her line of sight; he had a
meeting in twelve minutes.

“I want to Blend with the alien.” She looked
breathlessly at him.

God save me from the young
. “You too?
You know I have about fifty zillion messages from around the world
pleading for the same thing. You’re not even the first one on this
staff that has asked.”

“I know, sir, but I wanted to tell you why
–”

“Look, Sophia, I also get the feeling you
won’t be the last. I’ll put your name in the hat. Millie! Assign
one of your assistants to start screening applications for Blending
with the alien. I never would’a thunk it but apparently it’s a
popular idea. In fact, dig me up a few shrinks and form a working
group. I have to talk with the South Africans in a few minutes. And
find me a sandwich and some iced tea.”

Markis stood up, switching his attention back
to Ilona. “Sorry, Captain, that’s the best I can do. Thanks for
your great work on this project so far and I’m sure you have as
good a shot at it as anyone. I have to go.”

“Of course, sir.” She watched him leave,
wringing her hands behind her back.

-32-

Elise Markis looked up from her desk at her
second, Ravi Tinker. Small, brilliant, and nervous. Very nervous.
“What’s got you all spun up, Ravi?”

He handed her a tablet. “It can’t be
done.”

“You mean we haven’t yet figured out how to
do it.” Her tone made it a statement.
Or is it a refusal to face
facts?

“No. I know you don’t want to hear it but
it’s simply not possible. We cannot immunize an Eden against this
Demon Plague – we’re already over-immunized. It’s the autoimmune
response that is so dangerous. The best we can do – IF we catch it
early – is to suppress the Eden immune system and let the Demon
Plague run its course. After that there seems to be some
accommodation, though a re-exposure can still send the Eden into
relapse. We have only four weeks or so before the next one hits,
according to Raphael, and who knows what that will do?”

Elise sighed. “At least the counterphage for
the normals looks doable. If we can get it cultured and distributed
fast enough we can cure them of Demon Plague number one, though God
knows what use that will be.”

Tinker replied, “I’m convinced these Demon
Plagues will build on each other. There are traps in the genetic
code that only certain RNA will trigger.”

“I’m not sure if I hope you’re right so all
your work is not wasted, or I hope you’re wrong so it’s simpler –
the Devil we know.”

“Or the Demon we know. But what about my
proposal?”

“Did you talk to Larry? He’s the nano project
leader.”

“It’s not my area of expertise. I thought you
should bring it up to him.”

“Next time I see him, I will.”

***

Larry Nightingale studied the nanomachines
they had culled from the Geneva samples on his microscope display
screen. Although he presumed they could be programmed to do
different things, these in particular had only one goal: attack the
Eden Plague.

At this scale, it looked like multi-armed
construction machinery killing rats at high speed. Though far too
small to see with the naked eye, the nanobots were dozens of times
as large as the viruses they hunted. They snatched the floating
phages and chopped them up, leaving bits of proteins floating
away.

The Eden phages were individually helpless;
their only weapon was sheer numbers. For every nanite there were a
million viruses, and whenever the bloodstream density of a Plague
carrier dropped too low, the Eden virus would borrow a few thousand
body cells and turn them into factories, spewing millions of copies
of itself into the host.

If that was all there was to it, Larry
wouldn’t have cared. The nanites would eventually break down, since
they did not self-replicate. Perhaps some future version would, but
these eventually broke, like any machine. Before then, the
patient’s own Eden Plague-powered immune system overreacted with
antibodies to overwhelm the invaders, overproduced histamines, and
cause massive inflammations. Confused, the Plague carrier’s body
attacked itself. About half the time the result was complete
collapse and death.

His results paralleled the Demon Plague
studies. The bottom line was that the Eden Plague and its human
carrier could easily handle any Earthly disease that had evolved or
adapted in a terrestrial environment. Against these alien invaders,
whether biological or mechanical, the Eden Plague was like a
powerful security force that went berserk, murdering its own
citizens.

Just like politics.

Larry was playing catch-up with
nanoengineering; it was not his chosen field. But the specialists
on his team were just as frustrated as he was. They were barely
knowledgeable enough to study the few nanites the Chairman’s
security team had recovered, much less figure out a way to do
anything to them. Never mind creating some themselves.

Oh, they could turn them on and off with a
coded magnetic field; that was a short-term cure for nanite
exposure. But reprogramming them or changing their physical
structure was simply too far beyond his team’s ability. He had a
handful of skilled people; the Americans reportedly had hundreds,
maybe thousands, and a laboratory complex the size of a town. Their
effort was advanced beyond the Free Communities’ ability to
replicate. Larry simply couldn’t catch up in time.

He sat back, rubbing his temples. He had to
finish their report, the one that codified and recorded their
failure. At least Elise’s biogenetic team was big, and competent,
world-class. The new buildings going up outside and the warehouses
full of supplies were a testimony to the resources being thrown at
the problem.

He stood up, turning off the nanites with the
tap of a button. Walking down the corridors, he marshaled his
arguments, hoping to convince Elise and Shawna – and Daniel Markis,
if necessary. He could see only one hope for Edens against the
Demon Plague.

He waved at the outer office and rapped on
Elise’s door. Inside he saw Ravi Tinker, standing as if getting
ready to leave. Struck by a minor inspiration, Larry waved to the
small Indian. “Ravi, glad I caught you here. Elise, can we talk for
minute?”

“Sure, come in and shut the door.”

Larry carefully dropped his two hundred sixty
pounds into a creaky chair. “I’ll have the report to you by
tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you myself. We can’t do anything
with the nanites in time. I think we can turn them off if someone
uses them against us, as long as we have some time to find the
specific shutdown code. But the technology is too far ahead of
anyone here.”

“As we expected.” Elise sighed. “What
else?”

“Yeah…Ravi, I hear you want to get in touch
with the Americans. See if the nanites can be customized to fight
the Demon Plague inside Eden carriers.”

Ravi’s jaw dropped. “How did you know
that?”

Larry laughed, rueful. “Nothing is secret at
a busy lab. People talk. It doesn’t matter; I just came by to tell
Elise that I agree. I have no evidence to back it up but after
weeks of watching these little boogers, my educated guess is that
if we had some properly-programmed nanites, they could whack the
Demon Plague before it caused the usual overreaction. Kind of a
mercenary force to keep the Eden Plague army from mobilizing.”

“See? You see, Elise, he agrees with me.”

“Yes, Ravi, I see that. All right, I’ll brief
Shawna and get it passed up to Daniel. Obviously it will be a
political decision. Working with the Americans will be difficult.
There’s a lot of bad blood. They still regard us as traitors.”

A shadow of pain passed over Larry’s face.
“We’re Americans too, Elise. We can’t forget that.”

“Yes, but the America we knew is gone. We’ll
have to see if it can remake itself into something worthy of our
allegiance. After the Nazis it took Germany decades, and a lot of
help, to become a great country again.”

“Yes, Elise, but now we have a lot more time.
We’re all going to live to be a thousand.”

“If we live till next year, that is. All
right, you two, get back to work. I’ll argue your case.”

-33-

Christine Forman stared at the back of her
new, young hand.

The hands are the first thing to go. Other
than the boobs. And the butt, and the neck…just face it, Christine,
this Eden Plague is the best thing to happen to women since the
tummy tuck. I’m so glad I finally was able to get infected.

She shook off the wonder, walking down the
hall of the family bungalow in the Catskills. The irony was not
lost on her; this cottage, as they sometimes called it, had eight
bedrooms for family or guests, not counting servant’s quarters.