“Stubbins was actually right. The entire global ecology was on the way to destruction, or at least to being drastically altered. Then a group of environmental fanatics—”
“Please, slower,” Jane said. “And what is ‘fanatic’?”
Claire Patel said, “Hubon^tel,” and Marianne glanced at her in surprise.
“This environmental group,” Zack continued, “called themselves Gaiists. They—”
“Please,” Jane said, “I am sorry—but how can people be too much dedicated to environment? It is Mother Earth and without care, it will not support life.”
My first insight into World culture, Zack thought. Too bad they hadn’t been in charge of Terra when carbon-emission caps and all the other pathetic stopgaps had failed.
He said, “The Gaiists were ‘too much dedicated to the environment’ when they decided that humans were a deadly parasite on the planet, and only if we were gone could Earth recover. So they tried to kill off humanity, or at least most of it. And they succeeded.”
No one spoke, and Zack had a hard time looking at their faces. “The Gaiists had started as a group of scientists dedicated to stopping global warming, and to reversing it if they could, no matter what the cost. But a group of fanatics seized control. Their numbers grew, people were desperate. Gaiists cells formed in a lot of countries, not just scientists anymore although a few gifted, deranged scientists remained. They were convinced that the only way to save humanity was to destroy it. They weaponized R. sporii.”
“How?” Marianne said.
“Are you familiar with the experiments—they go back over fifty years—to dramatically increase the virility of pox viruses by inserting human immune-boosting genes into the virus, so that the body gets overwhelmed by its own antibodies?”
“Yes, of course. But R. sporii wasn’t—isn’t—a pox virus. It’s related to the paramyxoviruses.”
Marianne, this indomitable old woman, seemed to Zack the only one capable of speech. Jane had stopped translating, overwhelmed either by the technical language or by horror. He said, “Yes. But the Gaiist scientists—they were brilliant, you have to give them that—did something similar to R. sporii. They then combined it with another paramyxovirus, avulavirus, whose natural host is sparrows. Avulavirus shares spore disease’s structure and entry protein, glycoprotein. Avulavirus is usually transmissible by direct contact, but now it’s airborne from bird droppings, with a dual reservoir—humans and several species of sparrows. The birds are asymptomatic carriers.”
“And the humans?”
This was the hard part. “The weaponized microbe was released ten years ago. It was deadly. The incubation period is incredibly short. Ninety-six percent of humans died within a few weeks.”
Kayla Rhinehart screamed and fell to the floor. Jane translated that, her voice quavering. Claire Patel made a small sound and turned away.
Marianne, her face pale and waxy, said, “So there were left alive—”
“Something like two hundred and eighty million worldwide, fourteen million in the United States. Not so many now.” Starvation, disease, suicide, gangs, war.
Marianne, very pale, said, “Go on. Why the war?”
“After the Collapse, that’s what we call it”—because no one could bear the more accurate names—“the survivors were, and are, two groups. The four percent who survived R. sporii avivirus—we call it RSA—and the people who were inside energy domes and have not gone outside since without esuits. The weaponized virus is still out there. It didn’t die out because sparrows serve as the alternate host. That’s why you were told to put on esuits. Things in America would be much worse if it weren’t for domes and esuits, both technology we gained from the Worlders and finally figured out.” Zack nodded at Ka^graa.
Claire said, “It wasn’t theirs.”
“What?”
Marianne said, “Never mind that now. Go on.”
Zack said, “The survivors, some of them anyway, formed various paramilitary groups. There were intragroup warfare and South American–style coups, including among some ex-Army. You have to understand that entire military bases were empty and vulnerable. One group emerged from the fighting, New America. They seized control of critical Army bases, all equipped with various weapons. They want the rest of the bases and weapons, including ours at Monterey Base. They think we might have control of some really big stuff.”
She didn’t, thank heavens, ask what big stuff. Zack had heard the rumors, and feared they were true.
Marianne said, “The federal government?”
“DC was nuked even before New America killed off its rivals. No one knows if it was a homegrown group, Russia, China, North Korea—anyone who had the bomb. Although when Congress still existed, it was New America they declared war on.”
“US retaliation?”
“Yes. And counterretaliation. Much of the East Coast, plus Seattle, LA, and Chicago are radiation holes. And most key military bases as well.”
“How many of these energy-shielded domes are left?”
“Not sure. There may be small ones with no ability to communicate. There is no Internet anymore—it was designed to survive attack, but nothing was designed for RSA.”
“So who does my grandson report to?”
Grandson. Well, at least that meant she had one family member left. No, two—the colonel’s brother would also be her grandson. Zack hadn’t been that lucky. He’d lost everyone, until he met Susan and they had Caitlin. He would die before he lost this second, precious family.
He said, “The American military government, which is what we have now, holds a few domed bases across the country. Headquarters is at Fort Hood, Texas. Colonel Jenner can tell you more about that.”
“These protective domes—can’t you make more?”
“Energy dome manufacture was just starting when the Collapse came and the factory went up with LA. We can’t even alter their size or shape—essentially, they’re prefabs. But now that World scientists are here, with their more advanced—”
Jane spoke, in English, with the look of a person focusing on what was most important. “The Earth, now… is the globe warming stopped? Is the environment saved?”
For a moment, red rage flooded Zack. Then he got control of himself. She couldn’t know, this human girl cousin from the stars, that she had just named the Gaiist and New America justification for mass murder of nearly an entire species, and that species their own. Even now there were people who said, But what would have become of all of us on an unsustainable Earth if 96 percent hadn’t died? Wasn’t 96 percent better than everyone? Even now.
“Yes,” he said to Jane. “Global warming has stopped increasing. Earth is slowly returning to healthy forests and savannahs and wetlands and jungles. To lovely pristine wilderness.”
“Zack,” Lindy said warningly. Jane looked as if he’d slapped her—had his tone been that savage? Maybe. He was an RSA survivor. When he’d emerged from the fever high enough to cause delirium, his first wife and two sons lay dead on the bedroom floor, their lungs drowned in their own bodily fluids.
Lindy took Jane’s hand. “You’ll be okay, Jane. All of you. As soon as Jas—Colonel Jenner says it’s safe, we’ll take you all to quarantine and adjust your gut microbes to Terran air. The process is much easier than it once was. We’ve learned a lot about the human body since you left. And inside the e-shields your people gave ours, you’ll be safe.”
Marianne said, “I had two other children and another grandson…”
Zack watched realization dawn on Lindy. He saved her from having to make explanations. “Marianne, Colin Jenner is an RSA survivor. He lives at the coast.”
Tears clouded her eyes. Zack knew, already, she was a person who would hate that public display of weakness. He took a stab at redirection. “You said you’re infected with a virophage against the original R. sporii?”
“Yes.” He watched her face steady. “But I doubt it will have any effect on this variation. If the virus has been merged with a bird virus, the two versions will be too different.”
“Yes, but we can try. Have you cultured the virophage?”
“Yes. But those cultures are aboard ship. There are anomalies in infected native animals—I want to talk to you about that. Later.”
Yes, later. Zack turned to the physician, Claire Patel. “We’re doing work here that will interest you I think. And now that these scientists are here from World”—he nodded at the two men—“with their much more advanced knowledge, the work will probably go much better!”
Silence. Then Claire said in a flat voice, “There is no ‘much more advanced knowledge.’ World science and technology are about fifty years behind ours. Ours when we left Terra, I mean.”
“But… but… the energy shields! The spaceships!”
“Not theirs. And they don’t know whose, any more than we do.”
Zack considered this, while the world turned itself inside out, like a sock. World was not ahead of Terra, but behind. There would be no help from the stars.
But there would be no advanced weapons, either, which was undoubtedly what Jason Jenner had been talking to the star-faring soldier about. Jenner would gain only the ship itself, if he had managed to save it.
That, and five transplanted refugees who probably wished right now that they had never left home.