Chapter 5

"You want some help with the dishes mom?"

"No, I'm fine," said Ellen absently. She paused from gathering up the breakfast dishes and gave her daughter a kind smile. "Why don't you go help Kalea in the computer room? She looked like she could use some cheering up."

"Don't we all..." Lois said quietly. "How's dad doing?"

"Okay, I guess. He's working with Leon right now servicing the wind turbine. What a Godsend that's been, with all the power blackouts... Tom's doing as well as can be expected. I think the knowledge that all that work for Jumpstart is now... well, in some ways the thought is worse than what's happening on Earth. We did this to ourselves. Aina though is so innocent... Poor Kara! At least she didn't suffer, never knew what hit her..."

Ellen paused and opened the kitchen window, letting in the warm spring air. "Ah, look at this! It's so beautiful out! Sunny and pleasantly warm. I think April is my favorite month! Have courage my daughter. We must honor Kara's memory. Her spirit was always so full of hope. Our hope is not lost. And it won't be for fifty years!"

Lois nodded and smiled. "Thanks mom. You're right. And I should keep busy. It's after 9 AM, the Monday morning report from CDC Atlanta should be posted by now. I'll go see if I can grab some Internet bandwidth from Kalea..." Lois left the kitchen and was heading for the computer room when she heard a firm knock on the front door. She walked over and opened it, and felt her jaw drop in shock.

"Hi Lois!" Kara said cheerfully. "Is my family ready to receive a visiting head-of-state? Lois, what? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

"My God... Kara, you're alive! How did you know to abort? Did you miscarry?"

Mark, Kara, and Mayoni stared at Lois in stunned silence. "Lois," said Kara softly, "what the hell are you talking about?"

Lois's trained eyes traveled down to Kara's stomach, and Kara saw all the blood drain from her face. "Oh my God, oh my God..." Lois whispered softly, and then she shouted, "Mom, come quickly! Kara's here, and she's still pregnant!"

Ellen ran from the kitchen looking extremely distressed. Mark, Kara, and Mayoni were all looking completely bewildered. "Mayoni!" said Ellen, "your granddad and Uncle Leon are by the wind tower. Bring them here at once!"

"Sure!" Mayoni cried as she ran out the door.

Lois said softly. "Kara, Mark, come sit with us. I'm afraid we've got some really bad news for you."

The entire family was soon sitting together in the living room. Kalea was the last to join them, and her eyes winced when she saw Kara's stomach. "Lois, will you take the burden to speak?"

"Yes. Kara, there's no time to be gentle about this, the time is that critical. We have to abort your fetus, as quickly as possible."

Kara looked at Lois in stunned silence. She had to blink to bring herself back to attention. "What... " she struggled to say, but further words wouldn't come.

"I'll give you a brief history of what's been happening. A plague has hit. A monstrous plague! Everyone is sure it was deliberate! It started to break out worldwide at the start of January, just as we were leaving for my vacation on Aina. It's incredible you weren't already infected. We all thought you were already dead."

Kara stared at Lois. Mayoni was sitting by Kara's side, and she shifted to put her arms around her mother, one around her mother's waist around her back, and the other across her mother's stomach, in a symbolic gesture to shield her future sibling. "Go on," Kara said quietly.

"The plague is incredibly tailored. No natural disease could have evolved like this. The plague attacks the placenta, turns it into the placenta from hell... Let me back up. In normal development, the human placenta is fully formed by the twelfth week of pregnancy, and fully functional by the fourteenth week."

"Okay."

"Sometime during the thirteenth week, the plague activates. It turns the placenta into an incredible killing machine. The mother and fetus are killed a week later. There are at least four separate ways it does this. The primary way is through toxic shock. The placenta suddenly begins to pump massive amounts of neurotoxins into the mother's bloodstream. The toxins target both the motor neurons and the neural transmitters in the brain. The pregnant woman suddenly loses consciousness, and then the autonomic nervous system shuts down. The woman stops breathing and dies from asphyxiation."

Lois paused for a long moment before being able to continue. "What a nightmare the world went through! I'm so glad I missed it! At the beginning of January 2010, the world population was just under 6.8 billion, growing at about 1.1% per year. The birth rate was just over twenty births per year per thousand people. With a nine-month gestation, that means that 1% of the population is pregnant in their second or third trimester at any time. In one week in January, one week!, they all died. Almost sixty- eight million pregnant women died in one week! Along with all their unborn children. There are no documented cases, not one!, of any woman surviving beyond her fourteenth week of pregnancy this year."

Lois stood up and began to pace before continuing. "We've learned about the plague's other killing mechanisms from pregnant woman in their first trimester, those who didn't abort in time. About three days before the toxin release, the placenta primes the body for septic shock, a massive inflammation of the entire circulatory system. The septic shock is designed to blossom right after the toxic shock hits. Women who abort within three days of when the toxins would have hit avoid the neurotoxins, but then suffer circulatory collapse. Blood pressure drop is fatal, all the organs including the heart finally shut down from a lack of blood supply."

Lois continued to pace the room. "But that's not all! There is so much overkill to this plague! One week before toxic release, the placenta also triggers the body into a massive auto-immune self-destruct program. The person's immune system begins to prepare to attack all the major organs of the body. Symptoms take over a week to develop, you only see this in people who abort between three to seven days before their scheduled toxin release. They avoid the toxic and septic shocks, but then their immune system kills them."

Lois sat back down. "There's also a fourth known killing mechanism. This is the one we've actually had a bit of success in understanding. Along with somehow re- programming the immune system, the placenta also floods the body with S.C.I., super carcinogen initiators. Swift, nasty cancers in the brain, heart, kidneys, liver, bone marrow, everywhere!"

"Women who abort between three to seven days before toxic shock die from both. There are a small number of cases of women aborting just at the seven-day boundary who die only from their immune attack or only from the cancers. All the data show that if you abort at least eight days before toxic shock, you're safe. There are no reported cases of delayed symptoms, not one. It's a clean live or die threshold."

Lois whispered. "Kara, you have to abort. Delaying would just insure your own death. You're sixteen weeks along now. No pregnancy has survived this plague. None. We don't have the technology to save a sixteen-week fetus, you'll have to let it go. We have to get your placenta out of you... Now..."

"I... I..." Kara gave a soft wail of despair and collapsed in tears.

Mark got up and stood before her. "Kara, can we be alone together?"

A few minutes later Kara and Mark were lying down in Mark's boyhood bedroom, Mark holding Kara in his arms and softly caressing her body. Kara was sobbing quietly but heavily. She was very grateful that Mark wasn't trying to speak, not yet forcing her to face the sad fate of the promise still living in her womb. Eventually she calmed down enough to stop crying, absorbing Mark's love and caresses. She spent a long time in his calming embrace; and she began to carefully consider everything that Lois had told her.

"Oh Mark," she said softly, "I just want to go home."

"I know... Sweet and precious wife... I know..."

"No, damn it! I'm serious! Let's just pack up and get the hell out of here!"

"Huh? You mean... without..."

"Yep! With our * child * to * be * still inside me."

"Kara, you'll be killed!" Mark whispered. "And we'll spread the plague to Aina."

"Oh, I don't think so! But I want to call a council meeting. Break out our backpacks. It's time to put some of the Jumpstart gear to work!"

A half-hour later the family was gathered in the dining room. In the center of the table stood a speakerphone. There was a wire to a directional transmitter outside the front door. The first-contact observation team had a receiver and a digital wire-line running through the Path to the top of Blue Spirit on Aina, and then a wireless transmission down to the transfer station which boosted the signal to the village.

"How's it coming, Kikapua? How do I sound?" Kara asked.

"The word is out that this is a red-one emergency. I expect all councilors will be here at the science lab within a few minutes. You sound like you're in this room with me."

"Ah, Earth's 2010 telecom technology, you have to love it!"

"Kirahani, red-one... Is Earth fighting a nuclear war? Has Earth discovered the Path?"

" * No * to * both * questions * It's * even * worse! * Oh, I want to keep this meeting in English..."

"Kirahani, the remaining councilors are here."

"Kikapua, will you act as moderator on your end?"

"If you order me to do so, I will be honored. I will start recording now."

"Ha! I am so unused to being a supreme executive! I so order Kikapua as moderator."

Kara heard Kikapua speaking in a loud voice. "This meeting is now being recorded. This is Kikapua as moderator. This meeting is now called to order."