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Chapter 5: Welcome Wagon

  The new driver was "Kaiju." I think that means giant rubber monster or something similar. I told him he could call me "Katsu", which is a shout used to move a person beyond the rational, if I remembered my Zen correctly. His crooked smile was remarkably similar to Tsuiso-Dan’s. Did they breed drivers from a cloned strain here? I praised his driving skills, which he brushed off as unspectacular. He praised our speed of action, which I brushed off as nearly killing my friend and me. He offered us green tea from a thermos and we settled back to rest. The Driver net chattered continuously with their slang growls and my new name, "Katsu."

  We arrived in a little Christian hamlet named "Akron" about thirty minutes later. The church was the largest building seen. The name "Akron Pilgrim Congregational" was over the door. Two harvesters were parked near the road and several men in overalls were cradling rifles.

  I saw Father Luke talking to a few clergy near his lorry. Etienne was parked next to him, looking at the cargo container that had taken so much abuse. I asked Kaiju to pull in for a moment.

  The container looked bad. One back corner was crumpled from the tree. The bullet holes were so numerous on the flat canvas of the container that they suggested familiar shapes, like looking at Rorschach blots or clouds. Etienne was wrestling with the container door. It would take a hydraulic jack to pry it open, so he gave it up as Rafe and I approached. "The famous Katsu, I presume?" he stated as he hopped down. I pointed at Rafe, "And this would be Sancho Panza."

  Rafe added, "We tilt at trees instead of windmills."

  Etienne slapped us on the backs and said, "Thanks whoever you are, there was a real danger that my driver would cause me to throw up."

  While clinched together closely, I asked my compadres, "Do you think we’re blown?" Etienne thought the drivers were clannish but gossipy within their Otaku. The explosion was an anomaly. Rafe ducked his head a little and related that the driver saw him putting the grenade together. He had given a story about doing construction work for the Peace Corps. It was thin cover. I told Rafe to get visibly drunk. He winced and headed off for a store down the street. I told Etienne, "We will show them nerves. They need amateur reactions from us to offset the story." Etienne motioned me around a building to a quiet delivery dock behind. We were unobserved. He opened a small vial of oil and lit a protruding wick with a permanent match. Greasy smoke rose, smelling of cannabis. We scooped the smoke over our hair and clothes, Navajo style. He capped the vial and we went back to the Lorries. We would play goofy roadies with substance problems.

  I put Rafe and Etienne together in the lead lorry and went back to Kaiju. He became noticeably cooler to me. I decided to nap and let him put his own opinions on the driver net. Saint Peter whispered through my implants, telling me Rafe had bought wine. Father Luke finished his talk with the Church clergy. They would receive any medical supplies from the Fabricator and pull the tree off of the road tomorrow. In quick order, our convoy of three Lorries finally got back on the road.

  I dozed, apparently, and Kaiju chatted on the Driver net about how the roadies were on a binge. Conversation shifted from how quickly we responded to what hillbillies we were. Our story changed from daring competence to a reckless opportunity to use explosives. Some of their pidgin slang seemed to involve jokes about our sisters. They eagerly accepted the typecast presented. It gave them a superiority to enjoy and seemed to account for our sudden burst of action. We were not marvels, just lucky and crazed. Our cover was firming back up.

  We rolled under a gothic looking iron arch that said "Cloverland Theological Seminary." My nap was over. It was dusk outside. I could see a church with a four story steeple and a quad of low buildings behind that looked like classrooms and dorms. There were three of our containers offloaded in the parking lot. The Lorries were lined up nearby. It looked like they would be spending the night.

  I linked to Father Luke and asked for an extraction before the clergy got a whiff of us. We didn’t need any credibility damage. He pointed to a door on one of the low buildings. "You have the three rooms near the door. Grab a shower and take the night off, I will send some food by." Rafe and Etienne immediately headed that way. I hopped off the lorry and joined them.

  But I didn’t take the night off. After a shower and change of clothes, I went out to the containers and brought in some boxes that held our toys. I thought Rafe was going to kiss me. He was an easy drunk since going Christian.

  Etienne didn’t get a nap on the ride in. Too busy playing the role with Rafe. I had him set building security before turning in. I would take a night stroll with a bag of tattletales and set up a perimeter before turning in myself.

  Early morning. The doctors sounded like a herd of elephants through the thin walls of the dorms. Endless showers and hygiene appliances and low conversation. It was easy to get ready and get gone before they had assembled their looks for public consumption.

  I met Etienne out by the containers. He said Rafe was down at the rectory, looking for bottled water. We broke out loader dollies and started going through the containers.

  The lorry drivers began waking up. I sought out Tsuiso-Dan for help with the battered container. He seemed subdued and passed me off to a driver with a large tool box. We battled our way into the container, ruining it further. When we were done, the drivers started up their Lorries and headed out the gate. A couple waved but most seemed preoccupied with their trip back through the robbing farmers. Hopefully, they would have no problem now that the containers were gone.

  The damaged container held a lot of mangled equipment. We had packed the tail containers with solid objects rather than chemical supplies, just in case. The Doctors sifted through the debris and inventoried new parts they would need from the Fabricator. We shifted priorities to unpacking the computers and communications gear. This went into a classroom building we were going to use as an office. When that gear was offloaded, we started loading the other classroom building with lab equipment. Six of the seminary staff came out to help. Another dozen went into the buildings to organize unpacking. By lunch time, we were mostly done with the grunt labor. Two sisters from the rectory brought out something called a "Plowman’s lunch." Bread, cheese and an apple chased down with cider. Given the disease we were here to fight, I was glad there was no meat.

  We left the doctors to their organizing and shifted to our own duties, hardening a soft target. I retraced my night stroll with Rafe, pointing out the tattletales I had set. We needed them placed better and checked for function on the Battlenet. He would also cache some of our gear out here. Concentrating your weapons is for bureaucracies, not Templars. Etienne, I put on communications. He would build redundancy into the system and distribute nodes around the compound. He would also add some spectrums not commonly used or jammed. Knowing Etienne, he would probably harden and trap his nodes. Fine with me.

  I went over to the bustling computer lab. There was an extra computer crated there that the doctors did not know what to do with. I took it out for them and went to my room. It was the easiest place for me to harden without drawing attention.

  I set up a generator in one of the containers and snaked a cable to the dorms and the other four intact containers. One had power tools and stock. The other had a simulator with our Combat Skins. Those would be for us. One had the doctors EEG/MEG portable scanner and a backup generator. I still wanted to see how that scanner worked. The last container I would set up as a shelter for civilians.

  Using the power tools, I disassembled the damaged container. Cut it up into sheets and tore a pair of gloves and my work pants hauling the stuff into the shelter container. I hung the sheets lengthwise and attached the top edges so that the panels could flex if struck by projectiles. Over those, I ran packing material and then inflated a bio-isolation shelter with an airlock. Punched a few holes on the top of the container for the filter intakes, hooked a hose to the shower and locked it all up. Later, I would look into making it portable.

  I used a metal s
heet to make a box. This held some saws and drills for the walk to my dorm. Under my bed, the concrete floor received a square hole the size of the box. The box received my quantum computer, linked to Saint Peter. Wired to the generator and house current, it was as secure as I could make it. When Etienne linked it to communications and Rafe had the sensors all up, we would have our Battlenet.

  The doctors set up a clinic in that time. Only one Translator worked and there was a junk room of equipment waiting for parts, but they had enough to start working. They would set up appointments tomorrow. We nurses would check out three trucks donated for our transport and get them in reliable condition. Once that was done, we would be shuttling parts and doctors all over the area. Busy days ahead for everyone.

  I found the trucks in the church lot. One was a nice four-door. The other two looked to have been hauling manure until the beds rusted out. Mechanically, they seemed sound. Hybrid electrics with ethanol generators. I would have to find where they made the fuel.

  Some of the steel from the container would patch the beds and allow a little customization. These trucks would be our strongpoints away from the Cloverland Seminary. Rafe would turn his defensive eye on them while Etienne wired them into the Battlenet. I had the mechanic skills.

  My misspent youth involved keeping old trucks delivering my mother’s peppers and agaves, until I passed the Garda exams. My dad was stored in the Oficina de la Magistrado, waiting for a zombie from the Victims Advocate. A drunk driver ran him down in El Paso and he got backed up to testify. He finally got one when I graduated the Garda, soldier’s families get bumped up the list a little.

  He’s still selling Pulque and Mezcal at my cousin’s cantinas. Quit going to church. I’ve seen him a couple times since, but he looks my age now. It was kind of awkward for my mom. You know it’s him, but it’s hard to realize how much a personality changes with the body it’s in. He was having a midlife crisis in that young body and it made my mom unhappy a lot. I had to cut my visits short or beat the hell out of him. We all hoped it was just a bad phase.

  I settled into my dorm room, watching Rafe and Etienne running wire behind the ceiling tiles. When it was all hooked up I linked to Saint Peter and selected protocols. Data flowed. We all linked for a conference. Father Luke offered the doctors itinerary and preliminary impressions of the staff. We went over the Security system and offered our own rotation schedule to allow us time with the trucks and the doctors. Saint Peter sent us feeds from the outer world, filtered for applicability. The shuttle had infiltrated communications hubs through the airport lines. He could enter Cornucopia systems from a dozen different directions. Another long day closed. I slept better with a perimeter in place. I always do.

  We received the infected the next day, dribbling in singly with an escort of relatives. Rafe was first shift, directing them to the correct doctors and keeping the relatives out of the way. We had a scanner taped inside the main door jamb that gave us a cross-section of everyone coming in. When the Battlenet filtered the image, Rafe would receive an inventory of suspicious shapes and their carriers. We weren’t actively keeping out the armed, but wanted to know who they were. Everyone signed a log book and was covertly recorded. They all sat in a waiting room with secured interior doors. It was all we could do without revealing the presence of a security net. One of the Hindu doctors suggested a disease screening process for the relatives that would involve getting the other two Quantum Translators online. When we finally got the parts from the Fabricator, I would adjust our security to allow rotating them into two screening rooms. Being able to isolate the relatives, one at a time, had possibilities for vetting and interrogation. Father Luke would apply his skills to a patient questionnaire and liaise with the doctors.

  Etienne and I worked on the trucks until lunch, and then I relieved Rafe at the clinic. He was eager to get at the trucks. I cautioned him about remaining covert and set him loose. I was interested in what he would do with them too. Without a Fabricator, it would be a great exercise in field expedient logistics and improvisation. Templars enjoyed puzzles like that. It was built into the candidate pre-screening requirements.

  I got my own puzzle back at the clinic. A van entered the parking lot and disgorged two officials in Cornucopia Co uniforms. They were armed with computer pads and authorizations to inspect. The bureaucracy had arrived. I ran to get Doctor Chopra and Father Luke. They would give them the cheap tour while I kept the clinic secure. I alerted Etienne to keep our profile low, Battlenet on stealth and questionable toys under lock.

  What these officials wanted was to catalogue our clinic operation and to hang a temporary license on the wall. We were now an official clinic, as long as we followed the book of regulations they courteously gave to Doctor Chopra. If we should be found to not follow the regulations on some subsequent inspection, our license would come under review. Apparently, several levels of legal prosecution would descend on unlicensed clinics for unsafe practices. "Even volunteers should follow safe practices. It’s for the whole planet."

  A quick threat analysis of the regulations included a hierarchy of people who made certain decisions. Public announcements by licensed clinics were subject to review before release. New medications required patient releases that had to include the medication proposal. An accredited institution had to endorse any new medications for use outside of the quarantine zone.

  It was an effective political attack. We were simultaneously muzzled and harnessed as a research lab for the Company. Saint Peter’s critique was that it is only as effective as enforced. Disassociate resources outside the zone could spread information. It would take time, but Saint Peter would find outside groups who could be made simpatico. Access to news on the disease would be all the payment needed. Political counterforce could be assembled along existing fault lines. We would get our own committees to oppose any legal prosecutions. For the moment, we should comply as possible and be alert to the possibility of spies being emplaced. Probability was high that new volunteers would be offered containing coverts.

  I had expected that to happen in any case. Relief missions were notoriously hard to secure from infiltration. When we received a call from Akron Pilgrim Congregational saying that supplies had arrived, it was not very surprising that they also had three volunteers dropped off for pickup.

  I sent Rafe with the nice four door truck. It had already been modified and logged into the Battlenet. I found rooms for them in the other dorm. Etienne did a little modifying in the rooms before they arrived. Father Luke would give them a brief orientation while I scanned their luggage. To fight spies, you needed to be a better spy.

  We greeted a man and woman from medical school earning field credits. They seemed to be a couple, like a summer romance among twenty-something’s. Both were excited to work with the Jesuit doctors and help people. They were young for coverts and had a readily traced history. Their luggage held normal possessions with the addition of contraceptives.

  The third was a middle-aged woman named Fumiko. She had been working in the city as a paramedic. She also attended a congregation there that had asked for volunteers. Her luggage had a passworded personal assistant and a dog-eared bible. Saint Peter found anomalies in her history. Likely, she had been assigned to the church and was now retasked. I would watch all three, but for now, Fumiko looked like the covert. They were welcome to our duties at the clinic, freeing us for field work. Saint Peter could monitor them effectively within the seminary grounds.

  I got myself assigned to Doctor Chopra for field tests with the EEG/MEG scanner. They had worked up some parameters from the patients, but the veterinarians wanted something set up for the livestock. Whole herds were being slaughtered with any member that showed symptoms. The Cornucopia inspectors were insisting on it, since they had no equipment to sort the sick from the healthy. If we could scan the remaining herds and separate out the sick before symptoms showed, it would cut economic losses.

  I packed the scanner in the back of a truck an
d drove Doctor Chopra out to our appointment at the Wilson ranch.

  Rancher Wilson was a ruddy man in overalls and a straw hat. He looked like he had been crying. Two of his cattle had fallen sick with the disease. They were rolling around on the ground, trying to get up and foaming at the mouth. A Doctor Truman was the attending vet. He and Doctor Chopra put on disposable coveralls and went out to the sick cows while I unpacked the scanner.

  The scanner was a balloon lofted antenna wired into a powerful generator. Once I tethered the balloon about a hundred meters up and charged the system, four long antennas repelled away from the central line to form a large X above the herd. A quantum computer performed differential calculations on an imaginary grid of coverage, sorting electrical and magnetic variations. Planetal magnetism, ambient charge and solar radiation were filtered out. Vegetation, metals and water concentrations were identified and filtered. What was left was bioelectrical energy. Doctor Chopra spent several hours fine tuning the scanner, looking for signatures on the two sick cows to compare to the baseline herd signature. Doctor Truman was doing some lab work on the sick cow fluids looking for certain proteins. I just kept the scanner running and let them work until darkness started creeping in.

  They told Rancher Wilson that they would need more testing. He didn’t say a word, just went to his truck and pulled out a rifle. I could feel anger radiating off him, it had been building up for hours. He strode over to his two sick cattle and shot them. Then he directed four ranch hands to bag up the cattle and put one in our truck. The other they would burn. Without a word to us, he went back into his house with his rifle. I slid my pistol back into the seat scabbard.

  It was a long drive back. The truck tended to bottom out on the rear springs over bumps. Doctor Chopra spent a lot of time reviewing his findings and chewing his lower lip. I don’t think he had met someone like Rancher Wilson before. I hoped he found it motivating.

  There was a little problem with the cow carcass. Regulations required secure cold storage for an infected body. We couldn’t put it in the food locker, which was obviously a bad idea. Our spy would have something to report if we just threw it in a room. I ended up dropping off the doctor and taking the carcass out to the woods. A shovel and a tow chain let me get it into the ground without tearing the bag. We would need to make arrangements for the veterinary side of this. Concentrating on the human patients without researching the vector animals was going to leave a blind spot. We needed the big picture. I suggested this to Father Luke. He thought that doctor Truman would be a good candidate for recruiting. But first, we needed cold storage for carcasses and a place to perform autopsies. A quick search of resources in the zone showed an auto junkyard with an ice delivery truck. They also had an old office trailer. I went over in the morning with a box of tools to inspect their condition.

  The ice truck was not going to be making any more deliveries without new drive motors and some work on the ethanol generator. The refrigeration unit just needed charged. I spoke with the junkyard owner, a Mr. Burkowski. He had the appearance of an overweight used car salesman. His favorite term was "crunching the numbers", which always led to a high price position from which to haggle. I used some Middle Eastern techniques picked up at Jerusalem bazaars to bring the prices back down. It didn’t hurt that I was representing a cure for the quarantine; Burkowski was losing business with everyone else.

  After an hour of negotiations that included his truncated life story and a pot of coffee, we settled on a deal. Burkowski would strip one office in the trailer and tow it to the Seminary. His son would charge up the ice truck refrigeration and get the generator running before towing that to the Seminary. Burkowski threw in one hundred liters of ethanol. I would build a trailer from the back of a junk truck that would fit a carcass well. The total price was lowered with the offer of sending doctors to his father in law’s ranch before the end of the week. I transferred funds and went to build a trailer.

  Saint Peter gave me the latest intel on the drive back. Fumiko had been using her personal assistant to scramble phone calls to a real estate office in the city. She had very little to report, being kept busy and isolated from the computers. Father Luke brought up her paramedic experience a few times as suitable for field assignments. She wanted to "familiarize" herself with treatment and research first. I’d give that a few days and then put her butt in a pasture checking herds.

  In other political news, a Soto Zen temple had been approached to create political influence. They were speaking to a Protestant minister from our city church. Christians in the city were already being organized. The next outreach would be to other agricultural communities. Some counter opposition was expected.

  In medical news, Doctor Chopra’s scanner data had been examined and a filter produced to find cattle and humans in the early stages. A few areas of the brain showed increased activity when onset was imminent. It was maybe seventy five percent reliable. A chemical screen of the lymph system could refine that further. When all the parameters for diagnosis were refined, the Quantum Translators could find them as fast as we could upload superposition files. The Nanoquinacrine therapy was about sixty percent effective in slowing the disease’s progress. We couldn’t repair the damage, but we could buy some time for the infected. The disease vector was still a mystery. Christians had followed safe practices in preventing prion infections for hundreds of years. An occasional hereditary prion infection should not have been able to spread. The doctors were working on the incubation period to give us a timeline of when it first happened and when it could be expected to end. Problem was, prion diseases can take years to manifest. It might be a very long wait.

  My own report was more of a request. I wanted Saint Peter to upload specs for three Field Translators. The military portable units were a combination of secure communicator and medical kit. You could speak directly to another linked quantum device without much fear of jamming or listeners. It had a large storage chip for files. If you were to trigger Translation, it would back up the nearest mind three times, fast, with concatenated error correction. Signal loss was low under ideal conditions. It would hold only one translation at a time, but you could clear or upload it with a Supervisor’s code and use it again. In the Garda, these things are the Soldiers Friend.

  I told him to sell the idea to Cornucopia Co., the guys holding our Fabricator. I needed the Translators to check cattle out in pastures. It would be nice if we had some quiet electric quads to carry them on, so we don’t spook the herd when we’re out there. Write up a nice proposal for Vector Control to approve. The agency might want to use the idea themselves. Suggest that to them. The more of these rigs running around the better.

  Saint Peter thought about this for a couple seconds and suggested a civilian hybrid. Field Translators were too obviously military. By ordering the quads with a computer built in and getting more replacement parts for the Quantum Translators, an acceptable level of scientific knowledge was conveyed instead of a military skill set. The sensor pickups could be mounted on a cable and boom to allow safer interaction with the cattle. The design was both cheaper to produce and fully capable of everything a military unit could do. Vector Control would like it much better.

  Outthinking Saint Peter, once he has a set of parameters, is tough to do. I wanted the military gear because I thought I might have to Translate casualties. I trusted the Garda models. But he was right, again. They would see what I ordered as coming from a security agent. I signed off on the specs and Saint Peter spread the parts around to different requesting doctors. I didn’t need any recognition. Just a humbled servant, me.

  And so it went for a week. We were clearing herds like an assembly line and getting the good favor of every vet or rancher in the zone. It looked like we would lose ten percent of the herds immediately. At least twenty percent more were under quarantine watch. The clean herds were distributed to low occurrence ranches for safety. If we could keep them alive, they would be spread out to all the ranchers as starter herds.
Our constant sorting and movement of the herds had the added effect of confusing health inspectors. Animals showing symptoms were already under quarantine from the rest. Total destruction of a ranch’s livestock became a rare action. But they still weren’t approving the cattle for market. It was hard to confirm a negative. Infection may still be present.

  We lost ten people to the disease. They didn’t respond to Nanoquinacrine and refused Translation. Of course, Translation would have left them brain damaged in any case. We did have three people opt for Translation anyway. They did it at early onset and were now backed up while the originals were deteriorating in our hospice. We had acquired a motel, which had no tourism business to speak of in the quarantine zone. The Cloverland Ladies Auxiliary was providing services to eighteen patients in failing health there. Another thirty patients were responding to Nanoquinacrine and being cared for at home. We had cleared six hundred relatives as uninfected.

  The next step was volume population scanning. We would take the EEG/MEG on the road with a medical team. The churches would advertise free screenings at markets and draw people in groups for vetting. Possible infected could be cut from the crowd for further testing. Appointments would be made with any overflow numbers. We would use our herd techniques on the several thousand people held under quarantine. I don’t think anyone but the ranchers and vets would notice the similarity.

  We started in Akron. They had been very helpful liaising with the shipments from the outside world, it was time to give back. When the balloon went up and the big X antenna appeared above the market, crowds gathered. It had a novelty value and was visible for klicks. The doctors were set up in the church offices with their machines. The clergy turned the nave into a waiting room for patients. Any experiencing anxieties were ministered to by the priests. The rest of us were circulating in the crowd under the direction of Doctors Chopra and Shetty. They would show us people registering on the scanner, in our imaging glasses. We would approach and ask them to see the doctors. After an hour, people flinched when the "sunglasses" approached.

  After another hour, a convoy of security transports rolled into Akron, three big armored cars and four trucks in olive green. A signature showed up on the overhead scanner when they were six klicks out. The Battlenet came alive as Saint Peter loaded a Threat Contingency plan. He games those and files them for any kind of threat you can think of. This one initiates simultaneous conversation with the doctors, the four of us on the Battlenet and the IFF transponders in the approaching armored cars. I’m moving to my truck before really thinking about it. That’s one of the real killers about sudden military movements. If you’re on the receiving end and surprised, the tendency is to freeze in indecision while your brain games through it. In this case, we would be overrun in ten minutes.

  Things happened fast for a while. We each did our appointed tasks and gradually our situational awareness increased. These were security forces from the quarantine border guard. They had entered the zone about two hours ago and stopped at some kind of large block substation within the zone. They stayed there fifty minutes and then came straight at us. Orbital Surveillance Time Lapse is a great tool if you can afford to keep a starship overhead. I think Saint Peter got the station fees waived for being a mercy flight.

  The doctors came out of their offices and started booking appointments with the people in the waiting nave. The scanner stayed up in the air, but no new people were selected. We were shut down, but it wouldn’t be obvious for a little while.

  Rafe drove away, to a cache locked in a storage unit inside town. Inventory was our Combat Skins and chemical area weapons. We had felt a riot the most likely threat. I’m sure Rafe brought explosives along with anything else that might be needed. He is such a cautious fellow.

  Etienne parked his truck blocking one alley accessing the back of the church. He took a duffle bag of gear to the roof of the neighboring tire store and set up a mimetic blind. The smart tarp would paint itself to match the roof. Hunters loved those things, the ones that could afford them.

  I had a job too. My truck went behind the church, faced out for a getaway. I walked my duffle across the street to a public restroom between two food stands. Superman needed privacy to put on his costume.

  Rafe pulled up in front of the restroom, wearing a blue plumber’s jumper. He looked a little heavier with the Combat Skins and big boots on. The bushy wig helped his proportions. He unloaded a large crate attached to a dolly and wheeled it right into the restroom. My super suit was here. He stoppered the door with the empty dolly while I stripped down. The abdomen of the Combat Skin was open, allowing me to slide into it like a heavy jumpsuit. The back muscles stretched inhumanly long to allow my head into the clavicle collar. I arranged the abdominals as the skin compressed, keeping muscles aligned for fit. The feel is like being hugged over your whole body. Once it felt snug, I did a modified Tai Chi to seat the unit tight and distribute the oils evenly over my skin. Nano filaments burrowed along my spine to tap into direct brain connections. In a few minutes, it was part of me. I put on a mimetic leotard with boots, gloves and hood. Slit pockets were filled with my smaller toys. Rafe packed up my old clothes in the crate and wheeled it back out. He left a bulky coat, pants, hat and my tasseled loafers for preliminary camouflage. Dialing the leotard to denim made me look like a city cowboy. I stuffed a few more toys under the coat and walked out into the market.

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