Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 10 / Chapter 12 –>

Brett met Ashburn outside the door to Ritter’s room early the next morning. He had scheduled it this way, during the prime breakfast hours for the oncoming shift and the dinner hour for those who had worked through the night. The hall was empty except for the two of them and would likely remain so for the next half hour. Brett didn’t want any more prying eyes about than absolutely necessary.

Ashburn flashed the Admin key card and swiped it past the sensor on the door panel. The bolt clicked open.

“How’s the wing, boss?” he asked.

Brett lifted his arm to demonstrate. “A little painful this morning, but I’ll live.”

“You want to tell me why you needed me here for this little foray?”

“Two reasons. I want this done properly. It might look a little unseemly in a disciplinary hearing if the victim searched the perpetrator’s room by himself. And I needed to talk to you, anyway. I need you to tell me where Ritter got his hands on that gun.”

Ashburn shrugged. “Weapons’ locker. In my office. I didn’t notice until after the event because it isn’t something I look at often. We don’t have much of a use for firearms. Looks like he used a laser scalpel to fry the lock, which didn’t leave much of a trace from the outside.”

“And where were you while he was running around in your office?”

“I was there all evening, from the time I talked to you. It had to have been done earlier, probably when I was doing the diagnostics on Cassandra.” Ashburn paused, considering the implications. “I guess that would mean the attack was premeditated. He’d have held that gun for more than a couple of hours before he went hunting with it.”

Brett pushed the door open, and for several moments, they stood in the hallway looking inside. There wasn’t much to see. The bunk was made, though the blankets had twists and depressions on the surface which suggested someone had tossed and turned atop them. The floor was bare and clean. The lights were on. The only article out of place was the bedside table. It had been scooted from its position against the wall to a place beside the bed.

Brett and Ashburn entered and shut the door behind them.

“Look at that,” Ashburn said, pointing to the table.

There were cards laid out along the surface in a pattern Brett recognized. He muttered a curse under his breath.

“What do you make of it?” Ashburn said.

“He was playing that game.”

Brett took a few steps forward and peered down at the reading Ritter had set out. His jaw tightened.

“What is it, Chili?”

Brett didn’t answer. Beside the cards was a scrap of paper and he picked it out from beneath the right hand line of cards. The top two cards spilled off the edge of the table and fluttered to the ground. Brett glanced at the scrawl of writing then handed it to Ashburn.

“It’s the name of all the station personnel,” Ashburn said, then corrected himself. “Except for you. Interesting. What do the marks beside the names mean?”

But Brett was studying the cards. Four of Staves, Five of Cups, The Moon. The Tower card covered by a second one–Death. It was his reading, the one he had cast after winning the game. Ashburn hadn’t reached the bottom of the list yet. He hadn’t seen what Brett had seen, the list of crew names, each with a chit beside them as though they’d been ticked off one at a time, and at the edge of the page a number. 1.31 x 10⁵⁴⁷. It was circled for emphasis, and Brett knew what it meant without stooping to do the math.

“What do you make of it?” Ashburn asked.

“Ritter was trying to change the future, only to find it immutable.”

Ashburn frowned at him, obviously not understanding. Brett chewed his lips, reading the lay of the cards. Thirty-two times he would have dealt them. Thirty-two times he would have come up with the same reading. Even with a number as phenomenally large as his result, it didn’t seem like enough. It should have never happened. Never. But Ritter was convinced that it had occurred, and had taken a different path to the resolution of the problem as he saw it. Brett was responsible for the future because of his reading.

But had he really done it? Had he really dealt those cards thirty-two successive times with the same results? Or in his confusion, had he just believed he had? How sick had Ritter been that night? Brett recalled him, flushed and angry and intense, plainly disappointed with losing.

He may dare, should he choose, to make a world.

Ritter had gone fucking nuts. A whole can of fucking mixed nuts.

“We’re done here,” Brett said.

Ashburn gaped at him. “That’s it? We haven’t found anything but a game of porno solitaire from what I can see.”

“I know what he did, why he did it and where he got the weapon. I can take it from here.”

Ashburn dropped the paper and put his hand on Brett’s arm. “You can take it where? What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to see Liston. Good job, Ashburn. You’ve done well.”

Brett broke the grip and strode out the door. Behind him, Ashburn called out. “I didn’t do anything, damn it! I’m the goddamned Security Officer!”

#

He had to wade through a steady stream of people to get to Liston in the second level dispensary. The doctor had set himself up in a tall rolling chair toward the back of the room. On a table beside him were a series of spent ampoules which rolled on their sides and occasionally spilled off the edge and broke on the tiled floor. Micah from the bio lab was beside him in an identical chair with another table and his own stockpile of ampoules. They each held an auto-injector gun and were working their way through the line giving shots of what Brett assumed to be antibiotics.

Micah waved happily at Brett. “I haven’t given this many shots to human subjects since I was pre-med.”

The pretty redhead from mech engineering flinched as he depressed the trigger. There was a puffing sound and Micah pulled back, grinning at her.

“All done, gorgeous. Here’s a bandage and a symptoms sheet. If you have any problems, you know where my room is.”

She rolled her eyes and walked away. Brett noted that she didn’t refuse the symptoms sheet. He strode to Liston’s side and leaned toward him.

“What about the others?”

Liston finished the inoculation he was giving, then waved the others in the line over toward Micah. He set his injector down on the table and pocketed both the half empty ampoule in the instrument’s chamber and the remaining full ones clattering on the tabletop. Liston took Brett by the elbow and steered him into the small office off to their right. He closed the door behind them and pointed Brett toward the chairs on the near side of the desk. The doctor sat on the other side, dropping into the chair so that it groaned beneath him, and began to squeeze the flesh between his eyes as though his head ached.

“They began arriving at seven,” Liston explained. “You posted the station message at what? Quarter ’til?”

“That’s about right.”

“Micah was the first one in, so I drafted him knowing his background. He’s a rather abrasive young man, but he can do the job well enough. We’ve taken care of most of the station. I’ll have a list of lollygaggers for you this evening, should you care to encourage them.”

Brett leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “What’s their mood?”

“Scared, but only a little. I didn’t give them the credit they deserve last night. These aren’t your normal civilians. They’re space explorers. They’re frontiersmen, and heartier than the norm, I think. The antibiotics will allay what fears remain for a time.”

Liston fixed him with a steady and serious gaze.

“For a time?” Brett asked.

“I admitted Sievers and Jervis to medical this morning. They came as ordered. Aching joints, light sensitivity, low grade fevers. They’re both infected.”

Brett could only imagine how short a time it would be before that information escaped.

“Shit.”

Liston leaned back and steepled his fingers below his chin. “Curiously, Ilam also reported, but he has no symptoms. I’ve quarantined him to his room for the time being. I saw no reason to further expose him to the sick, but I’m not going to let him perform a reprise of Typhoid Mary, either.”

“What’s next?”

“Next I’ll take CSF samples from Ritter, Sievers and Jervis and probably spend the afternoon in analysis. I may puncture Ilam as well, just for comparison. I should have your causal agent identified before dinner. It won’t do Tappen much good, I’m afraid. He’ll be dead by morning or maybe tomorrow afternoon if he’s tougher than he looks.”

Part of Brett groaned. “And the others?”

“I suspect we’ll salvage them. It seems early enough.” Liston smiled weakly. “But don’t quote me on that, Commander.”

“I have another question,” Brett said. “Ashburn told me that part of Cassandra’s atmospheric protocol is a regular scan for known disease causing bacteria. Is that true?”

“Certainly. And he told you that the various bacteria known to cause meningitis are part of the identified set of biological agents. That’s true as well.”

Brett raised an eyebrow. “But you didn’t receive a report.”

“Nor would I expect one in most cases. Cassandra is a wonderful piece of hardware, but she only fulfills the guidelines given to her. You must realize that most of the common bacteria which become illness causing are present in the air and on surfaces and in many cases inside the human body on a regular basis. Our own natural defenses keep them at bay. It would have to be a significant level of bacteriological infestation for Cassandra to recognize it.”

“But you still had Ashburn check.”

“He was doing a diagnostic. It seemed a way to assist us both.”

“Were you disappointed that he didn’t come up with anything you expected?”

Liston eyed him uneasily. “I was. I told you that I performed the lumbar puncture on Tappen. I’ve had a sample of his spinal fluid for a couple of days now, but I can’t detect any of the known causal agents in the fluid. It looks clear. I developed a culture and studied the results early this morning. There’s nothing there that’s been recognized as a causal factor in spinal meningitis. But the swelling in the meninges is unmistakable.”

“Then it has to be some other cause.”

“Some other bacteria that I haven’t found yet. That’s why the addition of the new patients could be beneficial in the long run.”

Brett suddenly understood. “And that’s why you’re not so torn up about Tappen’s condition.”

Liston shrugged, but it seemed a pained gesture. “After he’s dead, I’ll have a more–ah–invasive opportunity to study the meninges. It won’t do him much good, but it will likely benefit the others.”

“Have Sievers or Jervis demonstrated any symptoms similar to Ritter’s?”

“Do you mean, have they been violent?”

Brett nodded an affirmative.

“No. They’ve been in relatively high spirits due to strong faith in modern medicine, a sick call exemption for the near future. . .and the fact that I haven’t allowed them to see Tappen at this point. Their most trying circumstance appears to be the fact that I don’t have access to a deck of playing cards.”

“I wouldn’t find one for them either, if I were you.”

Liston inclined his head curiously. “Something you learned from Ritter?”

“Ritter’s attack seems to have been initiated by his obsession with the card game they play.”

“You beat him and he didn’t like it. You wouldn’t be the first man against whom murder has been attempted over a soured card game.”

Brett chuckled without humor. “On that note, doctor, I’ll let you get back to your pig sticking. You’ll notify me as soon as you get the results this evening, or sooner if you make other determinations. I’ll most likely be in the engineering labs.”

Brett rose from his chair and walked to the door. Liston remained seated, leaning back against the wall. It occurred to Brett that Liston wasn’t telling him something. The doctor was keeping secrets for whatever reason, and those secrets troubled him. Perhaps they were only secrets of frustration and ignorance, which made them unwilling secrets. Secrets he did not fully know himself, and the lack of knowledge kept him both silent and alarmed.

If that was true, Brett was sure they would all share his fear soon enough.

<– Chapter 10 / Chapter 12 –>