Chapter 18

Challenger 2026 -????

Africa is hot and humid, and working in the field is a week of twenty hour days. It's easy to get tired and worn down. When you go to bed, you're in a tent with mosquito netting and maybe a generator to keep the lights on, or more than likely just a gas lantern. You don't want sex, there's nothing romantic about it, you just want someone to hold you and tell you tomorrow is going to be better. You want to sleep and not dream at all, but only wake up someplace else and yet ... It's the only place we wanted to be. In the field.

I woke up on the inflatable mattress we used for sleeping, it was our only luxury, and Cory was sitting upright and bent over with his forehead on his knees. It took me a few seconds to blink and clear my eyes and head, to understand that something was wrong. He was pale and shivering and then I heard him groan.

"What's wrong? Cory?" I moved to look at him, getting closer and touching his skin, hot and sticky. There was that cold rational voice in my head telling me not to get near him. I couldn't hear it.

"I don't know," he winced, holding his stomach and beneath his arms I could see the dull bruise-like discoloration.

"Fuck," I breathed. "Lie down."

I scrambled through my clothes, bunched up in a pile, shaking them out and I found the cuff and then the bulb.

"I think I screwed up, Jen." He blinked at me, trying to breathe and I shook my head.

"Give me your arm." I didn't need to check his blood pressure to know it was too low, but I needed time to think and I'd need the numbers anyway.

"When did it start?" I asked. "How did you get it? Did you stick yourself?"

"This morning," he breathed. "An hour ... I dunno. I woke up and it hurt. I was careful."

"Eighty-five over sixty," I closed my eyes. "Your hemorrhaging inside, let me see."

I touched his stomach and then moved him gently. His kidneys, both of them, they were bleeding. I found the left with my fingertips against his skin and Cory spasmed with pain. It was Lassa Fever, which had already murdered some twenty-eight people, Sudanese tribesman in this no-name village in the middle of nowhere. Cory was going to be twenty-nine if I didn't do something.

"Hey guys..." Simon was unzipping the tent. Dr. Simon Welling, a virologist from England.

"Don't come in!" I screamed. "Quarantine this tent! I need plasma, two liters right now. I want the T-Cells, give me some, uh ... Fuck! Just bring that and water, ice ... I need sample kits and..."

"Jen? What is it?" Simon asked, frozen now just outside the flap because he'd been doing this a long time too.

"Cory's infected," I said and that was all there was.

"You gotta ... Ah..." Cory clenched his teeth, frowning at me, "Get out of here, before you get it."

"I spent all night with you," I shook my head, making the least professional decision of my life. "I've either got it or I don't."

I moved him carefully, using my stethoscope and I listened to him while I waited.

"Your lungs are clear, your heart's good," I told Cory, but that didn't matter. Lassa goes for internal organs, mostly the liver this time around, but for whatever reason it had gone for Cory's kidneys and it was eating him alive.

"I'm coming in," Simon said some five or ten minutes later and I almost yelled at him for taking so long, but he'd had to dress out of course, and get everything together. He'd moved pretty fast considering.

"Give me the plasma, his BP is too low. He's gonna go into shock." I hung a bag from a nail on one of the poles and Simon was already opening his case, like a plastic toolbox. "Out of the way, I'll do it. I'm faster."

"Right." Simon wasn't going to argue because it was true. I didn't have to be careful, not anymore.

I started an IV, struggling for a decent vein in Cory's arm, and when I found it I was pouring blood into him, trying to keep the man alive. I started another one for the T-Cells, antibodies from patients who'd recovered, sending reinforcements to help Cory's body fight the virus. It wasn't going to work and he was trying so hard to be strong, laying there quietly and trying to hide the pain.

I took a sample of my own blood, handing the vial to Simon so he could put it under a scope and see if I was infected. I had to be. I'd shared Cory's glass the night before, shared Cory's plate, eating together. We'd slept together, kissed and said our goodnights. I had it, but I wasn't symptomatic yet. No fever, no pain. I felt wetness in my eyes as I bathed Cory gently, and for just a second I felt my heart freeze, before I touched my cheek and saw my finger wasn't bloody, merely wet. Some of the villagers had bled from the eyes, which seemed particularly terrible to me and I was afraid of it.

"It hurts a lot, Jen," Cory whispered and his beautiful green eyes were dull with pain. "Morphine?"

"You don't have enough blood," I swallowed hard. "You just have to hold on, okay? I'm gonna make you better."

"I'm sorry," he sighed.

"Shhh..." I stroked Cory's face, wondering how this could have happened. It was like that though, once in awhile, someone would get a virus and we'd never know why. Like God had just picked him to die.

"Jen, you have the antibodies." Simon was back half an hour later.

"Yeah," I nodded, that wasn't a surprise.

"No sign of the virus though," Simon told me. "Just B lymphocytes, but..."

"It's probably too early," I shrugged, leaving Cory so he wouldn't have to hear all the bad news.

" ... The only antibody I found was IgM, there's nothing else there," Simon said through his suit. "It's just the primary and not even all of that."

"So, it's just started then," I said, understanding I'd probably be dead within forty-eight hours. It didn't change anything. "Six hours and I'll give you more blood. What's going on outside?"

"Seven new cases. We had five deaths over the night, two more aren't going to make it until lunch," Simon spoke softly, putting his head close to mine. "We're looking at seventy ... eighty percent maybe."

"That's too high," I frowned. "Too high and too fast for Lassa."

"Rosenthal wants to call it in as Lassa-B, a new strain."

"I need to look at it first." This was something new, that was obvious, but there were other considerations. Political considerations.

"That's what I told him," Simon agreed. "It's your call, but he says you're compromised, so..."

"Fuck." I looked up at the IV bags. "I need more blood, give me the real stuff, he's uh ... A Positive. And more lymphocytes. Anybody survive last night?"

"Nobody new," Simon said. "We've got the four stable and eight presenting with antibodies and no symptoms. But the symptomatic chaps, they haven't improved that much. Not yet."

"Right." I nodded and it was about what I expected. "Four fucking days and we lose half a village. Okay, tell Rosenthal he's not calling in a new strain, not until I look at it. I don't want anyone else. He tries and I'll have his ass back in Montreal handing out condoms to college kids."

"Vancouver, I think," Simon snorted. "Either way, I'll get your blood. Anything else?"

"No," I looked at Cory and he was looking at me with those big green eyes full of fear.

I woke up sweating, staring at the white ceiling above me. I'd been dreaming of Cory and my heart was pounding, my sheets damp and sticky, constricting me and I had to get up.

The cubicle was barely big enough for the bunk I slept in. It had some some lockers to hold my things. My few personal possessions. My bear and my book. My snow globe. Everything else was business, books and binders, all my notes and equipment. I stood in the middle of that little room looking around, licking my lips and feeling caged. I wanted the sun and a blue sky and rain. God, I wanted rain. It had been so dusty in Africa.

I coughed, getting dressed and leaving for the head, the toilet, and after that some coffee. I hadn't been sleeping well and so I'd been sleeping less. I'd need some pills soon, I thought. I couldn't keep going this way and I needed a clear head. I had to be stronger than this. Smarter.

"Hey, Jen," a woman's voice greeted me.

Welsh was on the command deck of the Challenger, but not for any real reason except that some binder someplace said she should be. The ship was on autopilot all the way now. We couldn't stop or turn around, even if we wanted to. Chin's computers were driving, Welsh and the others in the command crew just made sure the lights kept blinking.

"Hi, Diana. How are we doing?" I replied, coming up a ladder.

I smiled weakly and the physics guys had been wrong about one thing, hyperspace wasn't black at all. It was measly white, like looking at a snowstorm. An infinite number of snowflakes, not falling, but twinkling in and out of existence, making you wonder if you were really seeing it or not. I thought sometimes that we were in a snow globe of our very own.

"Still on schedule," she smiled, holding up a magazine. "Seen this one?"

The command deck was reasonably roomy, with a big curving flight control console beneath an equally curved window that covered a full 180 degree view, looking forward from side to side. The habitational section of the ship was a great sphere, over five hundred meters in diameter, and rotating to produce artificial gravity, but we couldn't tell, not without an external reference. We now weighed about seventy percent of normal, which was kind of nice, but bad for our bones and muscles, so we all had to work out.

"People magazine?" I laughed and shook my head. "No."

"You're in it. Page..." she flipped through, " ... eighty-seven, best dressed for '25 issue. 'Astronaut Jennifer Pinchbeck puts a spin on Washington in a Joni Stur original' it says."

"Oh God," I sat down in one of the chairs.

"Nice picture too." Diana held the magazine open so I could see myself in that red dress I'd worn to the White House.

"They cut Josh off," I frowned.

"Yeah, they're bastards," she chuckled and narrowed her eyes at the photo. "What do you wear under a dress like that?"

"Nothing," I laughed.

"Yeah?" She raised her eyebrows. "I'd be scared shitless to meet the President with no underwear on."

Diana sighed and she was an attractive woman of a certain type, masculine and well, butch is a word that comes to mind, I suppose. Only her father had ever called her beautiful and Diana's dress that evening had been something much more practical than mine. I don't think she regretted it either.

"Well, it was a little weird," I nodded.

"I'm gonna keep this page, I think..." Diana said slowly, tearing my picture out and I blinked at her. "Put it on the wall next to my pillow."

"Oh," I cleared my throat.

"It'll remind me that I'm not as brave as I pretend I am," she grinned at me.

"Ahhh..." I was blushing actually.

"Besides, it'll give me good dreams, thinking about you in that dress." Diana was getting up, touching my shoulder. "Time for me to wake up Allen. Come by later, if you want. I have a feeling I won't be able to fall asleep right away."

"Right," I licked my lips.

"We can talk..." she smiled at me, " ... or something."

I watched the woman leave, short and somewhat stocky, but in a good way. Her blonde hair was cut like a man's and Diana had those cobalt eyes. She'd be firm and hard all over, and soft in all the right places too. A serious fuck, the Colonel, who'd been promoted to full bird a month before lift-off. She'd do me right.

Diana ... I sighed. Six days down and twenty-three more to go before we reached Pelham, and she'd finally hit on me. I closed my eyes and smiled, wondering why it had taken her so long. I'd been going out of my way to give her time alone with me, not a lot, but every now and then. I'd probably find her later, since there wasn't any real sense in playing hard to get. I wanted someone to wear me out, push those dreams out of my head for awhile and Allen was fun, but...

"There she is," Allen said softly, bending over and kissing my cheek from behind. "I've been missing you."

"Uh-huh," I smiled as he took the chair next to me, turning in it so we faced each other, rather than forward.

"I'm serious, Jen," he rubbed the short bristling hair on his head. "I almost think you've been avoiding me."

"The ship isn't big enough for that," I said. "I've just been busy, you know."

"Busy, yeah," he was unhappy with me. "Too busy to talk?"

"I know what you want..."

"I want you," he said. "Is that so wrong? I thought we had something going."

"Allen, it was never going to be serious," I sighed. "I'm engaged."

"He's not going to wait," Fuller said and this was what I hated.

"Don't," I warned him.

"I love you, Jen." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "We're not like other people. We belong together. People like Josh ... He'll never do anything."

"You don't know Josh. He built me a house," I smiled, resisting the urge to slap the man's face hard. "And if this is how you plan on making me fall in love with you, Allen ... You're making a big mistake."

I stood up and he just watched me leave. Ever since he'd met Josh, some four months before, Allen had been jealous. It was an emotion that he was singularly ill-suited for, in my opinion, more than most men. It brought out the bully in him, the arrogance that he needed to do so many other things well. In love, it made Allen unattractive and abrasive. It made us both unhappy and now he'd driven me away with it completely.

"Look at you!" I smiled at Arthur Nielson, the surgeon, as he pushed some weights in the small gymnasium we had.

"Heh!" He smiled at me, a little ruddy in the face, a little sweaty in his shorts and t-shirt. "I can bench two fifty now."

"What's that on Earth?" I asked, crossing my arms over my breasts, leaning against the bulkhead. "About one eighty?"

"Spoil sport." He grinned at me. "Have you been exercising?"

"It's in my log," I nodded. "Sixty minutes a day. About fourteen hundred I was thinking we could run some of the labs?"

"Sure," he nodded, sitting up on his bench. "Spectography?"

"Yeah, that looks like an easy one," I agreed. "We'll get David to help, he has some of his own to do anyway."

"Sounds good to me," Arthur looked at me a little closer. "How are you doing? How's your sleep pattern?"

"There's supposed to be a pattern?" I forced a little laugh. "I don't know, I have ... a tough time sleeping."