Grey refused to be nursed in their private quarters, which would pull medics and nursing people away from the general population. A stretcher carried him out to the Aventine markets, with Emma and most of the Bridge staff following.
Even there, he was placed in a quiet corner, where there was lots of room, the sound of running water from the rivulet nearby and almost complete silence. There were only five other pallets in the section, which was bordered by bushes and rose trees. There had been stalls there before. Rivets and screw holes in the flooring showed where the stalls had been hastily deconstructed.
The pallets weren’t on the floor, either. They had been lifted up onto simple bedframes, putting the patients at waist height.
“The captain didn’t want special treatment,” she told Dr. Fan. “The ship can’t afford to segregate and treat people differently, not at this time.”
Fan pulled her to one side. “He’s not getting special treatment, he’s getting different treatment, just as the other five are. I don’t want to advertise the extreme protocols we may have to use. It might start the very panic you want to avoid.”
Emma looked around the quiet little square, taking it in. One of the faces of the other five people there she recognized. “These are mentors,” she breathed. “They’re all….” But she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. “I’m staying to help,” she told him. “Whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it.”
Fan shook his head. “You go back to the Bridge and stay out of my way.”
She swallowed. “I can’t leave him.”
Fan rubbed his eyes. “Someone has to run the ship. That’s your job now, isn’t it?”
Emma straightened up with a snap of surprise. Yes, that was her job now. Even temporarily. Everyone would expect her to step in while Grey was ill. It wasn’t even a matter of what everyone expected, either. The ship needed constant tending or the fine balance of peace and industry would be threatened…and it was already in dire jeopardy with this current crisis.
She gave Dr. Fan a short nod. “I’ll get out of your way after I’ve spoken to Grey.” She stepped around him.
Grey was hot to her touch and damp. He looked at her calmly as she kissed him. “I’m going back to the Bridge,” she told him. “To keep the panic contained, at the very least.”
“As you should,” he whispered.
“It’s temporary,” she amended. “Just until you get back.”
His reply was slow to come. “Very well.”
She kissed him again and made herself leave.
Joeri was the only one left in the bullpen. “Paulie has been sick all morning. He wouldn’t tell anyone. I sent him to the Aventine, too.”
Emma nodded. “Then it’s just you and me. Anyone who steps in here gets commandeered, too, even if they’re guards. There’s nothing to guard against right now, anyway.” She went into her office and called her mother, who was taking care of Victoria that morning.
“Is Victoria well?” Emma asked anxiously.
“Not so much as a snivel,” Anat replied. “Why?”
“Grey is sick. I just came back from settling him in the Aventine markets, under Dr. Fan’s care.”
“Oh, dear…oh, Emmaline, I’m so sorry!” Anat wrung her hands. “I keep thinking I’m ill, too. It’s almost as if I can imagine myself into a headache. But then I look at Victoria and start worrying, then the headache goes away.”
Emma wiped at her eyes. “I keep waiting to get sick,” she confessed. “But now I have to run the ship. Don’t bring Victoria here, Mother. I know the virus is airborne. Still, you’ll be exposing her unnecessarily if you do. I might…I might stay away, too. If Grey is sick, then I probably am going to get sick, too. I have to make arrangements before that happens.”
Anat pressed her hands to her face. “Do what you must, Emma. I will keep Victoria safe until you return.”
* * * * *
But Emma didn’t get sick that day or the next. With only two of them to control the complex systems of the ship, she and Joeri spent every minute they could stay awake taking care of just the critical matters and coordinating information across the ship about the epidemic.
It wasn’t challenging work. The problem solvers on the ship right now were the medical staff. Emma’s tasks were routine and mundane yet essential. They helped support the doctors. Even though the work was not a challenge, there was plenty of it, from determining where next to draw essential energy to print the medical supplies needed, to deciding where the dead could be stored, as all the mortuary technicians were ill.
There were other essential services on the ship that were in jeopardy because the engineers or professionals were too ill to maintain them. Emma coordinated a ship-wide dispersal of personnel to make sure everything kept running as it should. The names of the fit and healthy changed from hour to hour, making the juggle an on-going, endless exercise in picking priorities.
When she had a spare moment, which was not often, she looked in on Grey. Each time she saw him, he looked worse. His skin had turned to an unhealthy grayish-white and his lips were white, too. The fever was making him shiver and sweat, draining him of energy and strength.
On the third day when she went to see him, he was delirious. Dr. Fan caught up with her as she wove through the pallets to the little area where Grey was. “Don’t be alarmed,” he told her. “He may not recognize you. It’s just fever, though.”
“He’s so hot his brain can’t work properly and you think I shouldn’t be alarmed?” she asked him.
“I meant you should ignore what he’s saying. He doesn’t know he’s saying it.”
“That’s reassuring, too,” she replied.
When she saw Grey, she thought she understood Dr. Fan’s caution. Grey was tossing on the narrow pallet, which was soaked through with his sweat. His head whipped from side to side as he muttered. An aide was next to him, making sure he didn’t roll off the bed.
Emma tried to get Grey’s attention, to let him know she was there. Finally, she took his face in her hands and turned him to look at her. His gaze skittered.
“Things to do. Sealed ship. Strings and sealing wax.”
Emma swallowed. “Grey. Can you hear me?”
“Not done. Undone. Unsteady. Not ready….”
Emma glanced at the aide. It was Dr. Fin’s personal aide. The man shook his head a little. “Sometimes, they just can’t hear when they’re like this.”
“He’s not making sense.”
“Nothing is making sense to him, either.”
She turned Grey to look at her once more. “Grey! Look at me!” she shouted.
His gaze settled on her face. “Emmaline…”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, it’s me.”
“Get Emmaline,” he said. His gaze shifted over her shoulder. “Tell her to run away….run…”
Emma swallowed. She looked at the aide, who was watching her steadily, without judgment.
So Emma kissed Grey once more. His skin was blazing hot and she wondered how anyone could survive being heated like that for too long. Before Dr. Fan could find her and say the equivalent of “I told you so,” she slipped back to the Bridge.
Joeri was asleep with his head on his arm, bent over his desk. She turned the screen off in front of him, put a cushion from the sofa in Grey’s office under his head and turned the lights down. Then she closed the door to her own office and sat in the visitor’s chair, staring at nothing, listening to her heart thunder.
The door alerted her to an entry request.
“Who is it?”
“Akayo Pasqua, chief security guard, Bridge security team,” the computer announced.
She sighed. If she didn’t let him in, he would wake Joeri and she didn’t want him to do that. “Come in,” she said, getting to her feet. Her back ached. Her eyes ached. She would need to sleep soon…just not yet.
Akayo was a big man with thick black hair and black eyes. He reminded her vaguely of Mithy Santis and she briefly wondered how the Hawks player was doing. She hadn’t even thought of checking his Forum site in…years.
“Akayo,” she acknowledged.
Akayo jerked his head out toward the bullpen. “I could take him to the ready room, ma’am. He’ll sleep better on the sofa there. I’ve spent more than a few hours on it myself, so I can vouch for the comfort.”
“If you do, he’ll wake and feel guilty about deserting me. Leave him where he is for now, thank you, Akayo.”
Akayo rubbed the back of his neck, where the uniform collar met his hair. “Now I understand why the message came to security. There was no one here to take it.”
“A message from whom?”
“Master Baki Hart.”
Emma nodded. Master Hart had diverted his assistance to overall medical coordination across the ship. He was a better administrator than he was a medical doctor and the doctors were too busy dealing with the patient in front of them to worry about abstract concerns like tracking the course of the disease, numbers of ill, recovered and symptom free and geographical concentrations. Later, the information would be critical when they needed to analyze the epidemic to try to understand how it had begun in the first place.
So Emma spent a great deal of time talking to Baki Hart and sharing information, although he had refused to stir from his office in the Aventine.
“I blocked communications for a while,” she confessed. “I needed to think.”
“I’m sure, yes, Ma’am.”
“Are you at the end of your shift, Akayo?”
“Just begun, ma’am. They sent me up here with the message.”
“There are others still at their post, then?” She was impressed.
“A couple of them are sick, ma’am. Not seriously enough to desert their posts. I’ve been lucky so far.”
“Good. Tell your captain you’ll be working in the bullpen for the next few days. I can’t keep dumping work on Joeri. He needs a break. Find a desk out there and log in.”
Akayo straightened up. “Of course, ma’am. I’ll have to speak to the captain in person, then I’ll come straight back.”
“Good.” She sighed. “Now, the message?”
Akayo’s energy seemed to run out, like a glass of spilt water. He slumped.
“It’s bad news,” she guessed.
He nodded.
“These days, that’s the only kind there is,” she said. “Just tell me, Akayo. I’ve got used to getting the bad news.”
Akayo nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck again. “Master Hart says that earlier tonight, five on the list were found dead, in a house in the Palatine. It wasn’t the epidemic that killed them. He said you’d know what that meant.”
“I’m afraid I do,” Emma replied. Five of the mentors on her list had killed themselves. A suicide pact, apparently. She would get the names officially tomorrow, when the bodies were processed. But Master Hart was right—this was something that couldn’t wait.
“I’m going to send you a list of names, Akayo,” she told him, moving around to her side of the desk. “I want whatever guards are still capable of standing on two feet to go out and collect the people on the list. They’re not to be arrested or alarmed. Tell the people you’re collecting it’s a precautionary measure and give them my name if they want to know who authorized it. I don’t care if they don’t want to come. Bring them in a bag if you have to. I want them here by morning.”
She brought up the list, found Akayo’s paddock and dropped the document into it. “Put everyone you collect in the Bridge itself. Seal everything first, of course. And I want you to search everyone for weapons…no, take anything they could use in a lethal manner. I’ll leave what fits that criteria up to you.”
Akayo was nodding, taking it all.
“Any questions?” she asked.
“The list you’re sending me…that’s the list Master Hart spoke of? The other people on this list are at risk in some way?”
Emma drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I think…yes. I’m too tired to think it through. My instinct is telling me we need to protect them for their own good.”
“It sounds as though Joeri isn’t the only one who needs the sofa,” Akayo said. “Ma’am,” he added.
“While you’re in the bullpen, I’m Emmaline,” she told him.
“It’ll be a few hours before that happens, ma’am. I’m going to go take care of it right now.”
After he was gone, Emma put the desk back into hibernation and looked over the top of it at nothing.
The fear was loose in her, careening around inside, moving faster and faster with each passing minute. She could barely think in coherent patterns. Every time she tried to sort things out in her mind, the panic would crowd back, trying to overwhelm her. All the reactions she had dammed back, hidden and diverted in order to be able to work, or talk to others…they were coming back now at twice their strength. She shuddered with it and wrapped her arms around her middle.
If all the mentors were dying, if this disease really was singling them out for unique and painful deaths, then what would happen to the accumulated knowledge and experience each of them had? Yes, they had trained their protégés. The loss of their collective wisdom, though, would impact every single profession on the ship for decades.
And what of the other non-mentor deaths? There had been some—among the older and younger people. The elderly were also masters of their professions or senior members with decades of skill that would be lost to the ship, too.
That sort of knowledge should be preserved…somehow. It should be kept in such a way that no matter who was lost, the profession could endure. The longevity of the Endurance depended upon it.
The door to her office bleeped again. “Akayo,” it said simply, for Akayo had been registered as a previous visitor who had been granted entry.
She opened the door.
Akayo gripped the door frame, not moving inside. “There’s a personal message. They can’t get through. It sounds…urgent,” he added.
She nodded and took her desk out of hibernation mode.
Akayo withdrew, letting the door close.
Her desk lit up with multiple message attempts, all from the same person. Ranko. She knew the name but couldn’t recall the context.
The sheer number of attempts to reach her convinced her she should take the message, even though she didn’t know who Ranko was. The next attempt registered and she answered.
She recognized Ranko. He was Dr. Fan’s personal aide, the one who had stood next to her while Grey writhed in incoherent panic.
Her throat drew instantly dry. “Yes?” She could barely form the word.
Ranko’s expression told her nothing. He glanced behind him for eavesdroppers, then back at her. “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“You should come and see him,” Ranko said.
Her heart hurt. “Is he…?”
“No.” Ranko hesitated and she knew what he would not say. Grey wasn’t dead…yet.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” she said and cut the connection.