Quarantine

 

 

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Bubble

 

 

 

For a week now, Yves Scanlon's world had measured five meters by eight. In all that time he had not seen another living soul.

 

There were plenty of ghosts, though. Faces passed across his workstation, full of cheerful concern about his comfort, his diet, whether the latest gastrointestinal tap had made him uncomfortable. There were poltergeists, too. Sometimes they possessed the medical teleoperator that hung from the ceiling, made it dance and stab and steal slivers of flesh from Scanlon's body. They spoke with many voices, but rarely said anything of substance.

 

"It's probably nothing, Dr. Scanlon," the teleop said once, a talking exoskeleton. "Just a preliminary report from Rand/Washington, some new pathogen on the rift... probably benign..."

 

Or, in a pleasant female voice: "You're obviously in exc— good health, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. Still, you know how careful we have to be these days, even acne would mutate into a plague if we let it, heh heh heh— now we just another two c.c.'s..."

 

After a few days Scanlon had stopped asking.

 

Whatever it was, he knew it had to be serious. The world was full of nasty microbes, new ones spawned by accident, old ones set free from dark corners of the world, common ones mutated into novel shapes. Scanlon had been quarantined before a couple of times. Most people had. It usually involved technicians in body condoms, nurses trained to maintain spirits with a well-timed joke. He'd never heard of everything being done by remote control before.

 

Maybe it was a security issue. Maybe the GA didn't want the news leaking out, so they'd minimized the personnel involved. Or maybe— maybe the potential danger was so great that they didn't want to risk live techs.

 

Every day Scanlon discovered some new symptom. Shortness of breath. Headaches. Nausea. He was astute enough to wonder if any of them were real.

 

It occurred to him, with increasing frequency, that he might not get out of there alive.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Something resembling Patricia Rowan haunted his screen every now and then, asking questions about vampires. Not even a ghost, really. A simulation, masquerading as flesh and blood. Its machinery showed through in subtle repetitions, derivative conversational loops, a fixation on keyword over concept. Who was in charge down there, it wanted to know. Did Clarke carry more weight than Lubin? Did Brander carry more weight than Clarke? As if anyone could glean the essence of those twisted, fantastic creatures with a few inept questions. How many years had it taken Scanlon to achieve his level of expertise?

 

It was rumored that Rowan didn't like real-time phone conversations. Corpses were always paranoid about security or some such thing. Still, it made Scanlon angry. It was her fault that he was here now, after all. Whatever he'd caught on the rift he'd caught because she'd ordered him down there, and now all she sent to him were puppets? Did she really consider him that inconsequential?

 

He never complained, of course. His aggression was too passionately passive. Instead, he toyed with the model she sent. It was easy to fool, programmed to look for certain words and phrases in answers to any given question. Just a trained dog, really, grabbing and fetching at the right set of commands. It was only when it ran back home, eager jaws clamped around some utterly useless bit of trivia, that its master would realize how truly ambiguous certain key phrases could be...

 

He lost count of the times he sent it back, sated on junk food. It kept returning, but it never learned.

 

He patted the teleop. "You're probably smarter than that döppleganger of hers, you know. Not that that's saying much. But at least you get your pound of flesh on the first try."

 

Surely by now Rowan knew what he was doing. Maybe this was some sort of game. Maybe, eventually, she'd admit defeat, come seek an audience in person. That hope kept him playing. Without it he would have given up and cooperated out of sheer boredom.

 

 

 

* * *

 

On the first day of his quarantine he'd asked one of the ghosts for a dreamer, and been refused. Normal circadian metabolism was a prerequisite for one of the tests, it said; they didn't want his tissues cheating. For several days after that Scanlon hadn't been able to sleep at all. Then he'd fallen into a dreamless abyss for twenty-eight hours. When he'd finally awakened his body had ached from an unremembered wave of microsurgical strikes.

 

"Impatient little bastard, aren't you?" he'd murmured to the teleop. "Can't even wait until I'm awake? I hope it was good for you." He'd kept his voice low, in case there were any active pickups in the room. None of the workstation ghosts seemed to know anything about psychology; they were all physiologists and tinkertoy jocks. If they'd caught him talking to a machine they might think he was going crazy.

 

Now he was sleeping a full nine hours daily. Unpredictable attacks by the poltergeists cost him maybe an hour on top of that. Crew reports and IPD profiles, none of which ever seemed to come from Beebe Station, appeared regularly in his terminal: another four or five hours a day.

 

The rest of the time he watched television.

 

Strange things happening out there. A mysterious underwater explosion on the MidAtlantic Ridge, big enough for a nuke but no confirmation one way or the other. Israel and Tanaka-Krueger had both recently reactivated their nuclear testing programs, but neither admitted to any knowledge of this particular blast. The usual protests from corps and countries alike. Things were getting even testier than usual. Just the other day, it came out that N'AmPac, several weeks earlier, had responded to a relatively harmless bit of piracy on the part of a Korean muckraker by blowing it out of the water.

 

Regional news was just as troubling. An estimated three hundred dead after a firebomb took out most of the Urchin Shipyards outside Portland. It was a fairly hefty death toll for two a.m., but Urchin property abutted the Strip and a number of refs had been caught in the firestorm. No known motive. Certain similarities to a much smaller explosion a few weeks earlier and a few hundred kilometers further north, in the Coquitlam Burb. That one had been attributed to gang warfare.

 

And speaking of the Strip: more unrest among refugees forever hemmed in along the coastline. The usual rationale from the usual municipal entities. Waterfront's the only available real estate these days, and besides, can you imagine what it would cost to install sewer systems for seven million if we let them come inland?

 

Another quarantine, this time over some nematode recently escaped from the headwaters of the Ivindo. No news of anything from the North Pacific. Nothing from Juan de Fuca.

 

Two weeks into his sentence Scanlon realized that the symptoms he'd imagined earlier had all disappeared. In fact, in a strange way he actually felt better than he had in years. Still they kept him locked up. There were more tests to be done.

 

Over time his initial sharp fears subsided to a chronic dull ache in the stomach, so diffuse he barely felt it any more. One day he awoke with a sense of almost frantic relief. Had he really ever thought that the GA might wall him away forever? Had he really been so paranoid? They were taking good care of him. Naturally: he was important to them. He'd lost sight of that at first. But the vampires were still problematic, or Rowan wouldn't be trolling her puppet through his workstation. And the GA had chosen Yves Scanlon to study that problem because they knew he was the best man for the job. Now they were just protecting their investment, making sure he was healthy. He laughed out loud at that earlier panicky self. There was really nothing to worry about.

 

Besides, he kept up with the news. It was safer in here.

 

 

 

 

Enema

 

 

 

He only spoke to it at night, of course.

 

After the day's samples and scans, when it was folded up against the ceiling with its lights doused. He didn't want the ghosts listening in. Not that it embarrassed him to confide in a machine. Scanlon knew far too much about human behavior to worry over such a harmless quirk. Lonely end-users were always falling in love with VR simulations. Programmers bonded with their own creations, instilling imaginary life into every utterly predictable response. Hell, people even talked to their pillows if they were really short of alternatives. The brain wasn't fooled, but the heart took comfort in the pretense. It was perfectly natural, especially during periods of prolonged isolation. Nothing to worry about at all.

 

"They need me," Scanlon told it now, the ambient lighting damped down until he could barely see. "I know vampires, I know them better than anyone. I've lived with them. I've survived them. These, these drybacks up here only use them." He looked up. The teleop hung above him like a bat in the dim light, and didn't interact, and somehow that was the most comforting thing of all.

 

"I think Rowan's giving in. Her puppet said she was going to try and find some time."

 

No answer.

 

Scanlon shook his head at the sleeping machine. "I'm losing it, you know? I'm turning into a complete brainstem, is what I'm doing."

 

He didn't admit it often these days. Certainly not with the same sense of horror and uncertainty that he'd felt even a week before. But after all he'd been through lately, it was only natural that he'd have some adjustments to make. Here he was, quarantined, possibly infected by some unknown germ. Before that he'd been through a gauntlet that would have driven most people right over the brink. And before that...

 

Yes, he'd been through a lot. But he was a professional. He could still turn around, take a good hard look at himself. More than most people could do. Everyone had doubts and insecurities, after all. The fact that he was strong enough to admit to his didn't make him a freak. Quite the contrary.

 

Scanlon stared across to the far end of the room. A window of isolation membrane stretched across the upper half of that wall, looked through to a small dark chamber that had been empty since his arrival. Patricia Rowan would be there soon. She would get first-hand benefit of Scanlon's new insights, and if she didn't already know how valuable he was, she'd be convinced after he spoke to her. The long wait for recognition was almost over. Things were about to make a huge change for the better.

 

Yves Scanlon reached up and touched a dormant metal claw. "I like you better like this," he remarked. "You're less... hostile.

 

"I wonder who you'll sound like tomorrow..."

 

 

 

* * *

 

It sounded like some kid fresh out of grad school. It acted like one, too. It wanted him to drop his pants and bend over.

 

"Stuff it," Scanlon said at first, his public persona firmly in place.

 

"Exactly my intention," said the machine, wiggling a pencil-shaped probe on the end of one arm. "Come on, Dr. Scanlon. You know it's for your own good."

 

In fact he didn't know any such thing. He'd been wondering lately if the indignities he suffered in here might be due entirely to some repressed asshole's misdirected sadism. Just a few months ago it would have driven him crazy. But Yves Scanlon was finally starting to see his place in the universe, and was discovering that he could afford to be tolerant. Other people's pettiness didn't bother him nearly as much as it used to. He was above it.

 

He did, however, stop to pull the curtain across the window before undoing his belt. Rowan could show up at any time.

 

"Don't move," said the poltergeist. "This won't hurt. Some people even enjoy it."

 

Scanlon did not. The realization came as a bit of a relief.

 

"I don't see the hurry," he complained. "Nothing goes in or out of me without you people turning a valve somewhere to let it past. Why not just take what I send down the toilet?"

 

"We do that, too," the machine said, coring. "Since you got here, in fact. But you never know. Some stuff degrades pretty quickly when it leaves a body."

 

"If it degrades that fast then why am I still in quarantine?"

 

"Hey, I didn't say it was harmless. Just said it might have turned into something else. Or maybe it is harmless. Maybe you just pissed off someone upstairs."

 

Scanlon winced. "The people upstairs like me just fine. What are you looking for, anyway?"

 

"Pyranosal RNA."

 

"I'm, I'm not sure I remember what that is."

 

"No reason you should. It's been out of fashion for three and a half billion years."

 

"No shit."

 

"Don't you wish." The probe withdrew. "It was all the rage in primordial times, until—"

 

"Excuse me," said Patricia Rowan's voice.

 

Scanlon glanced automatically over to the workstation. She wasn't there. The voice was coming from behind the curtain.

 

"Ah. Company. I've got what I came for, anyway." The arm swung around and neatly inserted the soiled probe into a dumbwaiter. By the time Scanlon had his pants back up the teleop had folded into neutral.

 

"See you tomorrow," said the poltergeist, and fled. The teleop's lights went out.

 

She was here.

 

Right in the next room.

 

Vindication was at hand.

 

Scanlon took a breath and pulled back the curtain.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Patricia Rowan stood in shadow on the other side. Her eyes glittered with faint mercury: almost vampire eyes, but diluted. Translucent, not opaque.

 

Her contacts, of course. Scanlon had tried a similar pair once. They linked into a weak RF signal from your watch, scrolled images across your field of view at a virtual range of forty centimeters. Patricia Rowan saw Scanlon and smiled. Whatever else she saw through those magical lenses, he could only guess.

 

"Dr. Scanlon," she said. "It's good to see you again."

 

He smiled back. "I'm glad you came by. We have a lot to talk about—"

 

Rowan nodded, opened her mouth.

 

"—and although your döpplegangers are perfectly adequate for normal conversation, they tend to lose a lot of the nuances—"

 

Closed it again.

 

"—especially given the kind of information you seem to be interested in."

 

Rowan hesitated a moment. "Yes. Of course. We, um, we need your insights, Dr. Scanlon." Yes. Good. Of course. "Your report on Beebe was quite, well, interesting, but things have changed somewhat since you filed it."

 

He nodded thoughtfully. "In what way?"

 

"Lubin's gone, for one thing."

 

"Gone?"

 

"Disappeared. Dead, perhaps, although apparently there's no signal from his deadman. Or possibly just— regressed, like Fischer."

 

"I see. And have you learned whether anyone at the other stations has gone over?" It was one of the predictions he'd made in his report.

 

Her eyes, rippling silver, seemed to stare at a point just beside his left shoulder. "We can't really say. Certainly we've had some losses, but rifters tend not to be very forthcoming with details. As we expected, of course."

 

"Yes, of course." Scanlon tried on a contemplative look. "So Lubin's gone. Not surprising. He was definitely closest to the edge. In fact, if I remember I predicted—"

 

"Probably just as well," Rowan murmured.

 

"Excuse me?"

 

She shook her head, as if clearing it of some distraction. "Nothing. Sorry."

 

"Ah." Scanlon nodded again. No need to harp on Lubin if Rowan didn't want to. He'd made lots of other predictions. "There's also the matter of the Ganzfeld effect I noted. The remaining crew—"

 

"Yes, we've spoken with a couple of— other experts about that."

 

"And?"

 

"They don't think the rift environment is, sufficiently impoverished is the way they put it. Not sufficiently impoverished to function as a Ganzfeld."

 

"I see," Scanlon felt part of his old self bristling. He smiled, ignoring it. "How do they explain my observations?"

 

"Actually—" Rowan coughed. "They're not completely convinced you did observe anything significant. Apparently there was some evidence that your report was dictated under conditions of— well, personal stress."

 

Scanlon carefully froze his smile into place. "Well. Everyone's entitled to their opinion."

 

Rowan said nothing.

 

"Although the fact that the rift is a stressful environment shouldn't come as news to any real expert," Scanlon continued. "That was the whole point of the program, after all."

 

Rowan nodded. "I don't disbelieve you, Doctor. I'm not really qualified to judge one way or the other."

 

True, he didn't say.

 

"And in any event," Rowan added, "You were there. They weren't."

 

Scanlon relaxed. Of course she'd put his opinion ahead of those other experts, whoever they were. He was the one she'd chosen to go down there, after all.

 

"It's not really important," she said now, dismissing the subject. "Our immediate concern is the quarantine."

 

Mine as well as theirs. But of course he didn't let that on. It wouldn't be— professional— to seem too concerned about his own welfare right now. Besides, they were treating him fine in here. At least he knew what was going on.

 

"—yet," Rowan finished.

 

Scanlon blinked. "What? Excuse me?"

 

"I said, for obvious reasons we've decided not to recall the crew from Beebe just yet."

 

"I see. Well, you're in luck. They don't want to leave."

 

Rowan stepped closer to the membrane. Her eyes faded in the light. "You're sure of this."

 

"Yes. The rift is their home, Ms. Rowan, in a way a layperson probably couldn't understand. They're more alive down there than they ever were on shore." He shrugged. "Besides, even if they wanted to leave, what could they do? They're hardly going to swim all the way back to the mainland."

 

"They might, actually."

 

"What?"

 

"It's possible," Rowan admitted. "Theoretically. And we— we caught one of them, leaving."

 

"What?"

 

"Up in the euphotic zone. We had a sub stationed up there, just to— keep an eye on things. One of the rifters— Cracker, or—" a glowing thread wriggled across each eye— "Caraco, that's it. Judy Caraco. She was heading straight for the surface. They figured she was making a break for it."

 

Scanlon shook his head. "Caraco does laps, Ms. Rowan. It was in my report."

 

"I know. Perhaps your report should have been more widely distributed. Although, her laps never took her that close to the surface before. I can see why they—" Rowan shook her head. "At any rate, they took her. A mistake, perhaps." A faint smile. "Those happen, sometimes."

 

"I see," Scanlon said.

 

"So now we're in something of a situation," Rowan went on. "Maybe the Beebe crew thinks that Caraco was just another accidental casualty. Or maybe they're getting suspicious. So do we let it lie, hope things blow over? Will they make a break if they think we're covering something up? Will some go and some stay? Are they a group, or a collection of individuals?"

 

She fell silent.

 

"A lot of questions," Scanlon said after a while.

 

"Okay, then. Here's just one. Would they obey a direct order to stay on the rift?"

 

"They might stay on the rift," Scanlon said. "But not because you ordered them to."

 

"We were thinking, maybe Lenie Clarke," Rowan said. "According to your report she's more or less the leader. And Lubin's— Lubin was— the wild card. Now he's out of the picture, perhaps Clarke could keep the others in line. If we can reach Clarke."

 

Scanlon shook his head. "Clarke's not any sort of leader, not in the conventional sense. She adopts her own behaviors independently, and the others just— follow her lead. It's not the usual authority-based system as you'd understand it."

 

"But if they follow her lead, as you say..."

 

"I suppose," Scanlon said slowly, "she's the most likely to obey an order to stay on site, no matter how hellish the situation. She's hooked on abusive relationships, after all." He stopped.

 

"You could always try telling them the truth," he suggested.

 

She nodded. "It's a possibility, certainly. And how do you think they'd react?"

 

Scanlon said nothing.

 

"Would they trust us?" Rowan asked.

 

Scanlon smiled. "Do they have any reason to?"

 

"Perhaps not." Rowan sighed. "But no matter what we tell, them, the issue's the same. What will they do when they learn they're stuck down there?"

 

"Probably nothing. That's where they want to be."

 

Rowan glanced at him curiously. "I'm surprised you'd say that, Doctor."

 

"Why?"

 

"There's no place I'd rather be than my own apartment. But the moment anyone put me under house arrest I'd want very much to leave it, and I'm not even slightly dysfunctional."

 

Scanlon let the last part slide. "That's a point," he admitted.

 

"A very basic one," she said. "I'm surprised someone with your background would miss it."

 

"I didn't miss it. I just think other factors outweigh it." On the outside, Scanlon smiled. "As you say, you're not at all dysfunctional."

 

"No. Not yet, anyway." Rowan's eyes clouded with a sudden flurry of data. She stared into space for a moment or two, assessing. "Excuse me. Bit of trouble on another front." She focused again on Scanlon. "Do you ever feel guilty, Yves?"

 

He laughed, cut himself off. "Guilty? Why?"

 

"About the project. About— what we did to them."

 

"They're happier down there. Believe me. I know."

 

"Do you."

 

"Better than anyone, Ms. Rowan. You know that. That's why you came to me today."

 

She didn't speak.

 

"Besides," Scanlon said, "Nobody drafted them. It was their own free choice."

 

"Yes," Rowan agreed softly. "Was."

 

And extended her arm through the window.

 

The isolation membrane coated her hand like liquid glass. It fit the contours of her fingers without a wrinkle, painted palm and wrist and forearm in a transparent sheath, pulled away just short of her elbow and stretched back to the windowpane.

 

"Thanks for your time, Yves," Rowan said.

 

After a moment Scanlon shook the proffered hand. It felt like a condom, slightly lubricated. "You're welcome," he said. Rowan retracted her arm, turned away. The membrane smoothed behind her like a soap bubble.

 

"But—" Scanlon said.

 

She turned back. "Yes?"

 

"Was that all you wanted?" he said.

 

"For now."

 

"Ms. Rowan, if I may. There's a lot about the people down there you don't know. A lot. I'm the only one who can give it to you."

 

"I appreciate that, Y—"

 

"The whole geothermal program hinges on them. I'm sure you see that."

 

She stepped back towards the membrane. "I do, Dr. Scanlon. Believe me. But I have a number of priorities right now. And in the meantime, I know where to find you." Once more she turned away.

 

Scanlon tried very hard to keep his voice level: "Ms. Rowan—"

 

Something changed in her then, a subtle hardening of posture that would have gone unnoticed by most people. Scanlon saw it as she turned back to face him. A tiny pit opened in his stomach.

 

He tried to think of what to say.

 

"Yes, Dr. Scanlon," she said, her voice a bit too level.

 

"I know you're busy, Ms. Rowan, but— how much longer do I have to stay in here?"

 

She softened fractionally. "Yves, we still don't know. In a way it's just another quarantine, but it's taking longer to get a handle on this one. It's from the bottom of the ocean, after all."

 

"What is it, exactly?"

 

"I'm not a biologist." She glanced at the floor for a moment, then met his eyes again. "But I can tell you this much: you don't have to worry about keeling over dead. Even if you have this thing. It doesn't really attack people."

 

"Then why—"

 

"Apparently there are some— agricultural concerns. They're more afraid of the effect it might have on certain plants."

 

He considered that. It made him feel a little better.

 

"I really have to go now." Rowan seemed to consider something for a moment, then added, "And no more döpplegangers. I promise. That was rude of me."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turncoat

 

 

 

She'd told the truth about the döppelgangers. She'd lied about everything else.

 

After four days Scanlon left a message in Rowan's cache. Two days later he left another. In the meantime he waited for the spirit which had thrust its finger up its ass to come back and tell him more about primordial biochemistry. It never did. By now even the other ghosts weren't visiting very often, and they barely said a word when they did.

 

Rowan didn't return Scanlon's calls. Patience melted into uncertainty. Uncertainty simmered into conviction. Conviction began to gently boil.

 

Locked up in here for three fucking weeks and all she gives me is a ten-minute courtesy call. Ten lousy minutes of my-experts-say-you're-wrong and it's-such-a-basic-point-I-can't-believe-you-missed-it and then she just walks away. She just fucking smiles and walks away.

 

"Know what I should have done," he growled at the teleop. It was the middle of the day but he didn't care any more. Nobody was listening, they'd deserted him in here. They'd probably forgotten all about him. "What I should have done is rip a hole in that fucking membrane when she was here. Let a little of whatever's in here out to mix with the air in her lungs. Bet that'd inspire her to look for some answers!"

 

He knew it was fantasy. The membrane was almost infinitely flexible, and just as tough. Even if he succeeded in cutting it, it would repair itself before any mere gas molecules could jump through. Still, it was satisfying to think about.

 

Not satisfying enough. Scanlon picked up a chair and hurled it at the window. The membrane caught it like a form-fitting glove, enfolded it, let it fall almost to the floor on the other side. Then, slowly, the window tightened down to two dimensions. The chair toppled back into Scanlon's cell, completely undamaged.

 

And to think she'd had the fucking temerity to lecture him with that inane little homily about house arrest! As though she'd caught him in some sort of lie, when he'd suggested the vampires might stay put. As though she thought he was covering for them.

 

Sure, he knew more about vampires than anyone. That didn't mean he was one. That didn't mean—

 

We could have treated you better, Lubin had said, there at the last. We. As though he'd been speaking for all of them. As though, finally, they were accepting him. As though—

 

But vampires were damaged goods, always had been. That was the whole point. How could Yves Scanlon qualify for membership in a club like that?

 

He knew one thing, though. He'd rather be a vampire than one of these assholes up here. That was obvious now. Now that the pretenses were dropping away and they didn't even bother talking to him any more. They exploited him and then they shunned him, they used him just like they used the vampires. He'd always known that deep down, of course. But he'd tried to deny it, kept it stifled under years of accommodation and good intentions and misguided efforts to fit in.

 

These people were the enemy. They'd always been the enemy.

 

And they had him by the balls.

 

He spun around and slammed his fist into the examination table. It didn't even hurt. He continued until it did. Panting, knuckles raw and stinging, he looked around for something else to smash.

 

The teleop woke up enough to hiss and spark when the chair bounced off its central trunk. One of the arms wiggled spastically for a moment. A faint smell of burnt insulation. Then nothing. Only slightly dented, the teleop slept on above a litter of broken paradigms.

 

"Tip for the day," Scanlon snarled at it. "Never trust a dryback."