World A Week: Gather III

I told myself as I stood up in Robley's living room, dumbstruck by horror, that we had resources. A whole gathering of very competent versers was here and now in this universe, and there were few indeed who I would rather place the fate of the world in, than in their hands.

Matt with his heightened intuition, and flashes of super-intelligence, and his research laboratory. Kelly had connections at the highest levels of government, and training as a spy in a number of worlds. Lara was a detective and could break bricks with her pinkie finger, and had a nurse dop, and Shawn ran the world's best anti-kidnapping firm. David had a dojo, and an alternate in the Rangers, and the three M.J.'s were a task force of magic and logic all on their own, plus they had links to city government. And so did Graeme who had a magic ship, and his alternate ran a construction firm. And then there was me, and my specialty seemed to be killing things. And Robley here, I did not know anything much about him except he was gay, and seemed tough and experienced.

The nurse Lara drew Lara the verser and me into the kitchen, and then spoke low and urgently.

"We have to quarantine him. Absolute quarantine. And then I need a list of everyone he has met or walked past in the last week."

Something was bugging me, and I rubbed my head trying to think.

"Immuno-compromised?" I asked.

The two of them nodded, and the verser said.

"That means his body is producing potentially a hundred times more virus than a normal patient would. He's terrifyingly infectious."

Something clicked in my head, and I looked up to see Robley listening in at the door to the kitchen.

"We have to quarantine the whole of Jefferson Street." I told him.

Red flushes on his fair, tear-stained face appeared, and he rushed me, and grabbed my shirt, and flung me back up against a refridgerator where I hung in the air.

"You little fascist, that's just what you've been waiting for. Herd us up, dump us into some camps..."

I tried to interject something, but he was not done ranting, so I let him go on for a while. But instead of winding down, he merely got more excited. Lara raised an eyebrow at me over his shoulder asking if I wanted her to take him down.

It would have been laughable since she maybe weighed half his weight as she was a small woman, and he was a big man, but I expected she could do it.

I snapped my head forward, and into his. He reeled away collapsing to his knees while I straightened up my shirt, and Lara kicked his feet out from under him, and twisted his arm into a submission hold.

I crouched next to him.

"You are not thinking. You're letting slogans do your thinking for you. Who was it that deliberately sent a smallpox martyr into your community to make sure you and yours got infected? He's your enemy, not me. He wanted to use your friend's immuno-compromised state as a weapon. Probably made your enemy feel happy inside, too."

I stood up as Lara let him go, and he gave me a somewhat sullen stare from the floor. Then he got up.

And then he nodded jerkily.

I looked at Lara, and let her say the rest. He'd probably take it better from her than me.

"Mr. Robley, a lot of your community is going to react similiarly, unless someone tells them not to."

"No."

"Someone like you."

"I'd be called a collaborator, a quisling."

"You would be saving their lives." And Lara gave him a hard stare that challenged him to either step up to his responsibilities, or betray them.

Robley nodded. And the nurse got him moving to the phone, and arranging things. Jefferson Street was going to wall itself off from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, while it was the most virulent center of infection, there were many more.

"You're the hardhead." I told Lara, and she laughed, and then suddenly stopped as we both considered the magnitude of the problem.

I left her with the nurse to serve as a strongarm. That hour, Robley became the Mayor of Jefferson Street, and Lara became the Sherrif.

I walked out back of the house into a very nice walled garden, and sat down. A quick prayer, and then I reached out for Kelly's mind. It was difficult, the noise of other minds was intense, and just achieving the proper focus baffled me for several minutes, but then I got it.

In a quick burst of images I relayed the essential facts, and she responded by picking up a phone, and calling the White House Chief of Staff, the gatekeeper to the President.

An undersecretary rarely meets the President, and certainly never interrupts a consultation with the Secretary of State about the China stand-off, unless she says things like the following.

"I have reason to believe that a weapon of mass destruction has been unleashed in the continental United States."

In that case, she gets through to the President in five minutes. Of course, if she was absurdly wrong, then it would mean her job, but we were well past worrying about trivialities like careers now.

I then reached out to the Alchemist. There are two protocols for versers, and one is for the senior verser in the world to be "chairman" if he was experienced enough, and the other is to make the most experienced verser the "chairman".

Well since, Shawn was off kidnapping someone we now knew was a probably smallpox martyr, that left the Alchemist as the most experienced verser of us all in this world.

Straining, I relayed the information. I did not use phone lines because this information was too sensitive, and so I relied on telepathy.

"You want me to call a council of war, correct?" He asked me, and I mentally nodded.

An hour-and-a-half later the small group of versers and dopplegangers that could tear themselves away met at the Galt House, and then proceeded down the stairs to the river, and Graeme's boat. Once we were all on it, the skipper cast off, and then moored us in midstream.

I told the gathering the bad news, and what actions I had taken to deal with the most immediate problem.

Shawn's dop filled us in as to the continuing progress. It seemed the target was living in a small house inside a terrorist training camp in Kazakhistan. He was isolated, and obviously sick, and food was left outside his house for him.

It would be a difficult extraction, but doable come nightfall.

The Kazakhs had once been part of Soviet Russia, and now according to Kelly they were a country struggling to progress out of Communism's and the Islamofascist detritus.

She seemed saddened and pensive because it had been thought they were the good guys, as such things went in the MidEast. But only a nation-state would have the capability of using a bio-weapon like Smallpox, Matt assured us. It was a difficult challenge, and a smaller group could not handle it even if they could manage something like Anthrax.

The big problem was that this probably martyr had infected at a guess five hundred people who had all been strongly infectious for a week before anyone did anything about it.

"And it is not localized to Louisville either." David spoke up. "Remember those conventions about two weeks ago. Those visitors he infected took the disease home with them."

We were looking at one big outbreak in Louisville, and dozens of smaller ones outside the city, and some would even be worldwide.

"First step we need to do, is seal off the city." David's alternate, the Army Ranger said decisively, and none of us could disagree with him.

David and his merry band of martial arts students, at least the more senior ones went out to cause mischief. A fake gas leak at the bus terminal, a power outage at the train switching yard, and David strolled into the air traffic controller's tower, and slipped into an unused computer a floppy disc.

It gave the controller's warning, and then enough time to land everyone, and then the system shut down. And he walked out in the martial artist kind of way where you can sort of fade into the background while people are not paying close attention. And lastly, Cynthia found some good spots where the roads were empty of oncoming traffic, and her and the students jackknifed a pair of semi's, and spilled oil from a tanker across both lanes of another main highway out of town, and for another they dumped a dozen cars from a car transporter all across an interstate.

When a reporter asked her masked self a question...

"Why are you doing this, is it to protest the destruction of the environment by the automobile?" The reporter asked feeding his interviewee a line.

"Um, yes. Its also to protest the lack of red meat in the American diet."

"Uh. Lack of, don't you mean too much?" For his interviewee was straying from the accepted storyline.

"No." Howled the carnivore. "Lack of meat, dripping red, you miserable, spineless worm. Tonight is Carnivores' Night, and unless you want to be hunted, you people in TVland better stay in your homes." And then she howled a long piercing wail that cracked a windshield, and revived the instinctive terrors of the night all across the city, and hundreds of dogs who heard this wail from the air or the television remembered olden days, and growled or yowled as they would.

And then her group ran off to get some of the lesser roads blocked.

Meanwhile, the Army Ranger called in some friends, and got things in position. Helicopters were warmed up, and cargo planes were loaded with paratroopers.

But it was all called a war game since the order had not yet come down. There was fighting in Washington about whether to believe this, and questioning the diagnoses, and about who was to take the lead in the problem.

The FBI wanted to consider it a crime scene, and the CDC wanted to get the plague stopped by using the ring vaccination method, and so it went with over a half-dozen alphabet agencies squabbling about authority, and the proper solution to the problem.

And thus the first day passed without any action from Washington. But MJ, the local legal adviser to the Mayor, explained things to him. And well, there was an outburst of incompetence in fixing the transport links in and out of the city.

And the next day federal responders from various agencies started arriving at hospitals to personally investigate. One poor man had four different groups of agents arguing in his room over his body while he lay dying. The lines of authority were tangled up severely.

The Alchemist and the Visitor both went with Kelly to Washington to try to sort some order out of the situation.

The next day, the news media had questions for Graeme's dop who was doing heroic work. Why had the roads not been cleared yet? And what was with some of the people arriving at hospitals in hazmat suits?

There was nothing for it but to spill the news.

"Louisville has had an outbreak of smallpox. Please everyone stay calm. Stay in your homes."

And then he assumed authority that he did not have.

"No one will be permitted to leave the city."

The press conference ended, and another one soon began when Lara (faking that she was her nurse alternate) explained the symptoms of smallpox from the steps of the hospital.

The key words were...

"It starts out like a flu..."
"Possibly thirty percent, or greater, we're not sure, fatalities."

Panic gripped the city, and people instead of being sensible and staying inside went outside. Signs of riot were in the air, but then an alliance of martial arts students from across the city, wearing hastily manufactured hats like the red berets of the Guardian Angels, drove up and down streets in trucks telling people to stay inside, calm down, and wait.

Few indeed were the people to respond with anything but obedience when five or so very healthy and confident students jumped out of the back of a truck and gave them this 'polite suggestion for your own safety, sir'.

And fewer still were the people who connected the leaders of the effort with the criminal protestors who had cut of traffic to the city.

The next morning, the emergency rooms were flooded with people. It seemed anyone who had a flu, a scratchy throat, cold, sinus drainage, or was simply over worried had decided to get checked out.

The lines stretched out into the parking lot of each hospital. The Jewish Hospital had them stacked up for a quarter of a mile.

Staff desperately handed out facemasks, and took aside people who seemed more serious.

And then we heard on the news that the President was forming a new agency to handle things. Kelly was Director, and the "twins" were her deputies. Finally, as her first official order, the city got officially closed, and all public gatherings were banned in the city limits.

A sense of relief that we finally had some direction, and maybe could now turn the corner on this disaster hit the city. And now the Rangers who had been outside the city, conducting "war games" were now clearly declared as a quarantine force.

The next day, I talked with David's crew who had been deputized, and with Robley, and Lara. Exhaustion was the word for the day.


The new sherrif's deputies were delivering food, and Robley had to fight continuous arguements against his authority, and health system was beng overwhelmed by all the flu patients, and the rising number of smallpox patients.

It looked like the prediction was on target. Five hundred in the first wave, and ten times larger in the second wave.

Despite recruiting nursing students from local colleges, the workload was immense. And on top of that, the CDC was still trying to ring vaccinate everyone.

The idea of such a ring is that you find everyone who might have met the patient, and vaccinate them quickly before they catch it, and then spread it beyond.

That seemed to work well, Matt explained to me, as I stumbled in my own fog of exhaustion, but in the modern world with no vaccinations, and rapid travel, it was ineffectual. He showed me the graphs, and the logic, and it seemed inescapable. The CDC was doing its best, but it simply was not good enough.

He had called Kelly, but it seemed she was having difficulty getting her point across to the local CDC director on the ground.

I nodded, after Kelly explained on the satlink the obfuscatory tactics of the director. I was dead-beat tired, and not sure if I was simply striking out because it was satisfying to do so, but it seemed the thing to do.

So I took Shawn's second limo, and picked up David, in what was now my personal car, and visited the director. The secretary told me he was in a meeting, and could not be disturbed. Two security guards tried to enforce this point of view. I left them groaning on the floor, taking care not to hospitalize them since beds were a scarce commodity right now.

Then I walked into the conference room, with its eighteen participants, and marched up to the headman while aghast murmurs ran around the room.

A quick flourish, and my gladius was in my hand, and against his throat.

"I'm all for democracy, rule of law, civilized society, but sometimes you just need to get straight to the point." I shoved the sword in to nick his throat. "You will obey your boss, and no more games."

He screeched, and protested, and swore that he was not intimidated. So I picked him up, and walked toward the picture window. I nodded at David who kicked and shattered the heavy pane of glass into a nice airy hole through which I pushed the director until I caught him by the ankle. He got a good view of the ground five stories down.

I heard some shuffling behind me, and turned to see David sneering with his arms crossed at about five guys who were holding up chairs, and threatening to rush him.

"Think we ought to throw the rest of these time-servers out as well?" He asked me with convincingly faked enthusiasm.

That did it. The director started to plead in a broken voice, so I drew him back in as gently as I could.

Before we left, I looked at each one of them in the eye, even if I had to grab their chin.

"Don't make me come back here."

As we left, I reflected that I felt bad about it, but not that much.

Inside Shawn's car, it occurred to me that I had not heard from him in several days. So I called the other one who was busy running a 'find people' service for the city. If you needed someone with specific knowledge of something, you went to him, and his growing army of researchers and headhunters.

The report did not sound good. Yes, the verser had made it in, but the man had been dying, and only spoke one word over and over again.

"Mama." So Shawn had taped it because the man had an accent not like that of the Kazakhs, and tracked down a linguist after extracting himself from the camp. Interestingly, the camp had shortly thereafter come under attack by fighter-bombers armed with fuel-air explosives, and those had been flown out of the southeast.

The planes had no markers on them.

The translator sent him to Saudi Arabia, and a small region near the Gulf. And there he found his trail since the man had been known to have certain associates.

Posing as an arms dealer, Shawn had taken a plane ride with them, and that was the last they heard of him.

I nodded and sensed about. There was still someone out that way, I thought, and confirmed it with Matt. So Shawn was still alive, but he might well be a prisoner. He had to have known that the terrorists would be especially paranoid right now, but he rolled the dice anyways.

Then I asked Matt how fast the diagnoses scanners were coming along. Three more days, he told me, and the first large batch will be done.
Graeme had been shipping computer chips into the city aboard his boat since smuggling it was easier and quicker than telling everyone what we were doing.

Going back to Robley, I handed him something David got for me. A pump shotgun.

"Look, I know you're a liberal flake, and I'm a fascist boot whatever, but sometimes you just tell people you're in charge." It was a sign of how much he had changed that he took the gun, and seemed to be cheered by it.

Then he took me to see his love. He was worse.
And Robley sat down, crying, and began to tell stories of all the various universes he had been in.

After twenty minutes, his boyfriend slipped unconscious again.

"You know what he told me? He said he always knew I had secrets, and he was glad knowing that I would live on." Robley's impassioned face hurt my soul, and the only good thing I could say about his situation was that no one was bothering to confiscate all the medical marijuana that got smoked.

We already had deaths, and there would be many more. Because the only treatment when you got the disease was an antiviral that was only modestly effective, and intravenous fluids, and pain medicine to make the sufferer comfortable. In other words, if you caught the Red Death, there was next to nothing we could do for you except pray.

And so I did, fervently for nearly a half-hour, and at the end, the poor man seemed to rest easier.

Then struck by a thought, I jotted it down, and went on for several more days until I got a chance to talk to Graeme.

In that time, confirmed proof of a dozen outbreaks in the United States with a couple dozen more unconfirmed erupted. Schools of all sorts, not just public, but even beautician's academies were long closed by now, but now all public gatherings and interstate commerce were banned. Martial law was declared in the outside world.

Mexico, Australia, France, and Japan had outbreaks as well.

We tried to get vaccines delivered to Lousville, but other than a token effort none was sent. A heartbroken Kelly explained in a teleconference to the two Matts, and her other self, and the rest of us that it had been decided to "effectively write Louisville off." She looked furious, and ready to kill someone.

There went my effort to get the CDC director on board. Now there was nothing much for the bureacrat to fumble.

The logic was that they would do mass innoculations in the smaller outbreaks, and try to contain things, but with only eight million doses, they did not have enough to do everyone. So bye-bye to us.

I understand that the two Davids, the one on the inside, the verser, and the one on the outside in the ring of steel surrround our town like a noose had some serious words for each other over this. But in the end they both saw the dire necessity of their situations.

So, I went to talk to Graeme.

"Y'know, I hear you've raised the dead, on more than one occasion. I think you're the only one that has managed that. I certainly haven't."

He eyed me.

"I can't do it here. This world's bias is too low."

He was right, and I do not know why I had not seen it. It was so obvious. The answer was that I was beyond exhausted to the point of uselessness.

"But there's something you ought to be able to do. In a way you're the magician with the most outright power in this whole world."

He nodded, and spoke.

"What this city needs is some luck."

I agreed and left him to go collapse in slumber in my hotel room.

Then the next day, checking for Shawn, I found one less verser. Bewildered, I stumbled to get dressed, and found a cool-eyed Matt, and Graeme waiting downstairs for me.

"Graeme visited me last night. Asked me what would happen if things turned out ten percent better for the world. And then we designed a very complicated spell. It took most of the night to arrange, but I think its already having effects."

I blinked at him, and Graeme took me to a windown in the empty hotel lobby where I could see a sliver of the fog-shrouded river. In the fog, like a ghost, a bizzarre looking ship drifted, and then vanished as the fog lifted slightly.

"I burned the boat taking all of the city's bad luck down with it, and David and especially Cynthia called upon blessings and the natural forces of the Earth to fill us with good luck which amplified what my boat was giving off as it burned. They are not going to be up for anything for the next couple days. I loved that boat."

He stalked off to kick a chair, and I smiled for I felt something. Optimism, hope had returned.

The diagnoses machines came in that day, and Shawn called to say that he had escaped from his captors.

"The Chinese were behind it. They made the virus, a modified version that combined elements of the major and minor strains, and then they farmed it out to a Kazakh terror group that wanted to overthrow the Kazakhistant government. That gave them plausible deniability when America came looking for vengeance."

"And vengeance there will be. The remedy for a germ is a nuke." I said which was official policy of the American government.

"Not this time. The strangest thing happened as I was escaping. A planeload of the Chinese Politburo came to visit the germmakers where I was being held. So I took their plane..." He paused, triumphantly, "And their hides. I've got a planeload of war criminals that I'm 'extraditing'."

I laughed. That should satisfy vengeance indeed.

The diagnoses pinned down our infected people, and they got isolated. Forty percent of ten thousand died, but that was the end of the plague in Louisville.

Robley's lover did not die, but he's scarred badly, but Robley does not care.

The plague across the States killed over a half-million people, and we had to stay isolated for another three months, but that was okay.

The rest of the world did not fare so well. Nearly ten million people died worldwide. And there would be pockets of outbreaks to clean up for the next decade.

We had gotten lucky. We had come so very close to falling into the Abyss, and watching the civilization of the world fall completely apart that it still shook me late at night.

And then rewards were handed out. Each of us versers, and our dopplegangers received a special medal at the hand of Madame President in the Oval Office for the plague had a terrible effect on the leadership. Darkly, I wondered if this was the further working out of Graeme's luck spell, but I decided not to investigate that.

And other rewards were given as well. The war criminals were tried in Louisville, and all but two were found guilty, and they swung from a gallows built in sight of the river. Some say to this day, that the Fog Boat came for their souls as they died, and took them away.

The Chinese government that replaced them was most apologetic, and offered reparations just so long as Shawn was not made ambassador to China.

Tadeusz