The Nirvana Plague Read online

  “We are? How do you mean?”

  “The stress that human civilization is putting on the natural environment is driving the evolution of new opportunistic organisms. We’re not overreacting. It’s a different world. Nature has turned up the heat. If we don’t respond appropriately, sooner or later, and probably sooner, we’re going to have human casualties on a scale not seen since the Black Death.”

  They flew into Andrews like a seagull dropping into a garbage dump. A drab black bus was waiting for them on the tarmac.

  It rumbled across the airfield with them to a distant hangar where the 25th Army battalion was staging for departure. A gigantic dull grey C-17 transport sat nearby idling its engines, ground crew swarming round it like drones round their queen.

  Benford had called orders ahead and got the logistics officers on the hump setting up an expedited “departure process.” At a worktable in a corner of one the cavernous hangars, they each went through the routine: photos snapped, IDs made, questionnaires taken, next-of-kin contact information provided, measurements taken. Boots, helmets, dress, sundries, and packs were distributed. Six-point electronic dog tags were encoded and patched to each team member’s skin.

  Peters asked what they were for.

  Sikora told him: “So they can match up your parts again after they get separated.”

  Peters looked a little pale.

  Weapons were not issued. The whole chaotically efficient process made them uneasy. Both the banter and the bickering stopped. They spoke little and smiled less.

  Benford stayed close, making sure the little assembly line didn’t hitch up anywhere. The battalion commander came over to ask her how soon her team would be ready to go.

  “We’ll be ready, colonel,” she said.

  “Your people understand we’re under communications embargo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Half an hour later she led her little team out a side door of the hangar and across the tarmac toward the towering tail of the absurdly oversized plane. The aft ramp started closing even as they were hiking up it. They took seats in one corner of the rear, a few rows from the backs of the nervous young battalion troops that filled the rest of the hold.

  Almost immediately, it seemed, the heavy jet was thundering down the runway. They lurched into the air, banked sharply, caught a last glimpse of the ground as they turned, then rolled out and started climbing. The Atlantic opened toward them.

  Benford had again made a point of sitting with Marley.

  “So where are we going?” he asked her.

  Every team member within earshot turned to hear the answer.

  “Kenya.”

  Chapter 12

  NEWSREADER: In a press conference in Geneva today, United Nations General Secretary Domingo Alvarez said that he remains hopeful that the United States will return to the bargaining table in, quote, the very near future, and that a cease-fire agreement can be successfully negotiated in the Southeast Asian conflict. In response to the Secretary’s statement, White House spokesman Daniel Musser said that the US remains, quote, willing and eager, to reopen negotiations with the Alliance of Southeast Asian Nations, but that the US could not negotiate under threat…

  On the table beside her, Karen’s phone chimed. It was the downstairs door. She snatched it up and punched the talk button. The TV screen muted itself automatically.

  It was Ally.

  “I come bearing groceries!” she said. “You’re not going to believe what he’s doing now.”

  Karen buzzed her in and went down to help her carry.

  Ally had two bags full of food. At the top of the stair, Karen asked her to wait in the corridor while she carried them in. She came back out with cups of coffee. The two women sat down on the cold landing outside the apartment, cradling the steaming cups in their hands.

  “So what am I not going to believe?” Karen said.

  Ally told Karen about her call from Marley.

  Karen stared at her in disbelief.

  “But where is he going?”

  “He didn’t know, or he wouldn’t tell me, but he was scared. I could tell he was scared.”

  Karen could tell that Ally was scared too.

  “But you’re sure he was going to a war zone?”

  “Yes. I got that much. He only talked to me for maybe thirty seconds. He said he was in the bathroom! I messaged him after, asking what the hell was going on. But he hasn’t responded yet.” She fetched her mini-tablet from her coat pocket as she said this and checked again. Still nothing.

  “But why?”

  “To see cases firsthand. On the spot. Be there when it happens.”

  “But he didn’t say what country he was going to?”

  “No.” She shoved the mini-tablet back in her pocket. “What difference does it make?” she said. “Killing is killing.”

  “How long before he gets back?”

  “No idea.”

  “Surely he won’t go very far forward. He’ll just go to the field hospital, or whatever.”

  Ally clicked her rings together nervously. It made a little pinging sound in the stairwell.

  “He’ll go where the cases are happening,” she said. “Where do you think that is?”

  “He’s not a soldier,” Karen said. “They won’t let him actually go into battle.”

  “Let him? You don’t know how he is.”

  “I know he’s not the heroic type.”

  Ally smiled humorlessly. “No, he’s the damn fool type.”

  “What’s all this got to do with Roger?” Karen said. “I mean, with what’s happening to him?”

  Ally shook her head.

  “It must be happening in the military too,” Karen said. “That’s got to be what this is all about.”

  “Schizophrenics and warriors. What’s the connection?”

  “Weird.”

  They fell silent for a while, watching the steam off their cups kick about in the stairwell drafts.

  “So, how’s it going with you?” Ally said. “Cabin fever set in yet?” Warming from the coffee, she loosened her coat.

  “I called my department head yesterday and told him about it. He was less than sympathetic. I expect if it goes on more than a few days I’ll finally lose my job.”

  “You’re kidding. Aren’t you tenured?”

  “Hardly. I stepped out of the research and publish parade years ago. ‘Look at me, I’m Dr. Dee! An expert in banality!’ — Life’s too short.”

  “Can you take a sabbatical or a leave of absence or something?”

  “Maybe. I can try.” She took a sip of coffee. “To be honest,” she said. “I don’t know if I care.”

  “What will you live on? Do you have any money?”

  “Well, there is that problem, I guess.”

  “Does Roger get any disability?”

  “Long gone.”

  “I mean from the government.”

  “So do I.”

  “So they restrict you from doing your job, and won’t give you any compensation either?”

  “Roger’s the one who’s restricted, and he doesn’t have a job anyway. But if I don’t stay here, neither will he. And if he doesn’t stay here, they’ll lock him up.”

  “He’s locked up either way.”

  “But they’ll put him in an isolation room in the hospital.”

  “What about getting someone to come in? A nurse, maybe a friend or neighbor?”

  “No one allowed inside the apartment.”

  Ally sipped her coffee.

  “I’m just so worn out,” Karen said. “I’ve had enough, more than enough. Ten years of this. Ten years watching my husband lose his mind. Sometimes I wish he’d die. Or I’d die. I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Ally shook her head sympathetically. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t listen to me. Sometimes I just don’t know how I’m going to cope. But we always seem to go on anyway.”

  “This thing that’s happened
to him. Is it better or worse than before?”

  “I don’t know. It’s both. He’s not raving anymore. He’s not paranoid. That’s better. And he’s not on medication, because he won’t take any. But he’s not himself either. He’s not anybody. It’s like he’s been erased, he’s a blank. He’s — I don’t know what he is. It’s hard to explain.”

  “A lot of the crazy stuff that schizophrenics say is confabulation,” Ally said. “I know you know that already. I’m just thinking out loud. — But it’s like they’re trying to explain what’s going on so that reality isn’t just chaos. They don’t even know they’re doing it. But the mind would rather be in a strange world than a random world.”

  “Maybe,” Karen said, “but they really have hallucinations.”

  “Sure, but maybe hallucinations are just the way the brain is making sense of the chaos within. Like dreams. Dreams are what happens to thinking when it’s disconnected from the senses. It goes adrift. And Roger isn’t hallucinating anymore, is he?”

  “I don’t think so. If he is, he isn’t letting on.”

  “I told Carl I’m not convinced this thing that he calls IDD even qualifies as a disease.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what he’s told me about it, and what you have, it doesn’t sound to me like these people are any worse off. In fact, they sound better off.”

  “You think so?”

  “In some ways. In fact, I told him that if you ignore the special terminology, his clinical description of IDD sounds kind of like how mystics talk about their experiences.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Ally just shrugged, letting it drop.

  “Is this the kind of thing you and Carl talk about in private?” Karen said.

  Ally shook her head. The beads in her hair rattled together. “We don’t really talk much in private. We’re not so close anymore.”

  “Neither are Roger and I!” Karen said, like it was a coincidence.

  Ally looked away.

  “Sorry,” Karen said. “That’s not funny.”

  “No.” Ally finished her coffee. “Carl’s got his work, his patients, his teaching, his students. I’ve got the shop. We’re not home much. Between the two of us, I doubt we could keep a cat alive.”

  Karen nodded. “I have my classes, or I hole up in my office, or down at your place, or down at the pub. Roger, of course, has his insanity to keep him busy.”

  “Also not funny,” Ally said.

  “No,” Karen said.

  They said nothing for a moment.

  “Bitterness becomes a habit,” Karen said.

  “There’s no need to take it out on everyone.”

  It was the least sympathetic remark Karen had ever heard from her.

  The big transport plane was escorted through the evening by a wing of Raptors. Marley spotted them now and then against the horizon.

  Benford advised everyone to sleep if they could, but between the roar of airframe noise, the underpadded seats, and the strangeness and uncertainty of their mission, they couldn’t. So they passed the time debating the reality of the disease they were going to diagnose — poring through the data, the reports, the videos — arguing, clarifying positions, solidifying alliances.

  After nightfall, approaching the coast of Gabon, the planes refueled in flight, then shot out over the belly of Africa. They gave the brilliant coastal cities a wide berth, and passed on east into the darkness, threading a zigzag course between unfriendly countries. The darkness below was interrupted only by the occasional electric-yellow glow of a town or the jagged red march of a clearing fire.

  Near dawn, as they angled toward the east coast, the trailing moon revealed a mountain of cloud piling up to the north — round massifs of silver and shadow. And now and then the whole range of it was lit up from within by vivid white flashes.

  Marley overheard one of the soldiers saying, “Holy shit, is that artillery?”

  “No, fool, it’s just lightning.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Artillery is worse.”

  It was early afternoon local time when they finally put down on the island of Socotra, off the horn of Somalia, at a rough inland airfield the Americans were renting in official secrecy from Yemen, for which loss of face among their Arab confederates the Yemeni ruling house exacted a fantastic number of compensatory American dollars — one of the many ways in which the Arab Federation financed its continuing existence with its official enemies’ unofficial monies.

  A row of green inflatable barracks lay like fallen beehives either side one end of the runway. Under orders to get some rest, Benford’s weary taskforce deplaned and followed the troops inside.

  But forty-five minutes later their aides were waking them up as Benford strode into their midst.

  “Change of plans, people,” she announced. “Seven new cases were reported to MHS overnight. All of them in the Kashmiri theatre. We can be there before nightfall if we head out right away. Command is profiling a transport mission for us right now. Get your boots on, please.”

  Everyone was groggy. Delacourt sat up, trying to comb her long hair with her fingers.

  “Seven new cases?” she said.

  “That’s what I said. Biggest occurrence yet. And all in one place.”

  “We’re not actually in the military, are we?” Sikora mumbled.

  They had spent less than ninety minutes on the ground. Now they were taking to the air again, sitting in tiny folded seats in the hold of a back-loaded transport helicopter. Surrounded by a flight of wasp-like helicopter gunships, they shot out low over the Arabian Sea, leaving the green strip of island behind them.

  Benford briefed them on the mission plan en route. “They’re flying in replacements tonight and bringing the cases back out tomorrow. I thought we could fly in with them.”

  “Why don’t we just wait for them on the carrier?” Wenslau complained. “We can see them there. They’re bringing them out anyway.”

  “I want Dr. Marley and the rest of you to have a chance to see these cases as close to when and where they happen as possible.”

  “When and where they happen is not a very pleasant place to be though, is it?” Wenslau snapped. “I mean, that’s your whole theory, isn’t it? That being in harm’s way is the very thing that’s triggering it, right?”

  “If you don’t want to go, Mr. Wenslau, don’t go.”

  Wenslau hadn’t had much to say about anything until now. But until now he hadn’t been scared.

  Two hours out they were met by a squad of fighters, and the gunships peeled off and headed back to Socotra. The fighters flew patterns around them all the way out to the carrier.

  Delacourt pointed them out to Marley.

  “Look at those fighters,” she said, quietly. “What do you think is really going on?”

  He looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “How do you suppose one little colonel is able to get this kind of support?” she said. “Flights round the world with a snap of her fingers. Helicopters. Fighter escorts. Think what they’re spending to get us all the way out here.”

  “They’re afraid of this thing. ‘Force depletion,’ you know.”

  Delacourt’s green eyes beheld him seriously, stifling his impulse to make light of her implications.

  “There’s more to this than we’ve been told, Dr. Marley.”

  Half the team flatly refused to continue on past the carrier landing. Benford, Marley, Peters, and Delacourt agreed to go on. They spent less than twenty minutes on the carrier’s pitching deck, transferring from one helicopter to another — one of four battle transports getting ready to fly out. Benford asked the officer in charge of transport logistics to issue sidearms to her staff. The field commander authorized him by radio and the supply officer issued Benford and the aides M9 Berettas. That almost put Peters off continuing, but Sikora needled him into staying the course:

  “It’s just a precaution,” he said, winking like a stre
etwalker.

  “Against what?” Peters snapped. “That’s my question.”

  “Against anybody taking you for a gutless lab rat. Don’t you respect your Hippocratic oath?”

  “I’m a researcher, asshole, not a clinician.”

  “You’re a scientist, right? A seeker of truth? Time to do some seeking.”

  “Yeah? So why aren’t you going?”

  Benford cut in, irritably: “We’ve only got room for eight. Four of us and four aides. If you don’t want to go, don’t go.”

  “You’re the skeptic,” Sikora said. “You should go.”

  “All right, I didn’t say I wouldn’t!”

  “And remember: try to keep all your parts connected to each other.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “That’s the spirit, Fred!” Marley said.

  Chapter 13

  NEWSREADER: In Laos today, American Allied commanders continue to report little or no progress against entrenched enemy forces. Newsline’s Jeffrey Nelson is at the Pentagon. Jeffrey, what’s the story?

  NELSON: It’s just as you said, US and Allied forces just aren’t making any headway. Defense Department officials tell us that they just haven’t been able to close with these very well dug-in forces on either front.

  NEWSREADER: Considering the overwhelming superiority US forces have in terms of firepower and technological weaponry, what reasons have your sources given you for the inability of our troops to make any progress?

  NELSON: Yes. It’s several things really. First of all, the US doesn’t enjoy the same level of superiority these days as it has in past decades. American forces are spread very, very thin these days…

  It was Thursday morning in Chicago.

  Karen called the Board of Health to inquire whether Roger’s quarantine could be lifted now. When that failed, she demanded. When demands failed, she hung up and called her department secretary to tell her she would not be able to work today.