ARIA (18 page)

“Thanks, I just want my bag back, mister,” said the woman wearing the white quilt he saw earlier. She’d caught up during the fracas.

The noxious man grunted, threw away a holdall, and struggled away on all fours. Manuel let him go while the woman grabbed her bag. He turned to talk to the woman, but she had gone after the still-crawling man.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Manuel called, but the woman took no notice and gave the man a vicious kick in the ribs, making him roll over. He grunted, grabbing at his side while she kicked him again in the balls. Manuel pulled her away, but she shook him off. More shouts could be heard from inside the mall.

“You got transport?” she asked. He studied her white, young face for the first time. She looked fourteen.

“Yes.”

She started running towards the exit.

“Shall we go, then?” he called after her. The shouts behind grew louder, giving energy to his acceleration.

He caught up and ran to the pickup, bleeping as he approached. They drove off just as three men emerged, shouting.

“Stop!” she shouted when Manuel passed the transit. She leapt out, making him think she had changed her mind, but she’d left her bag. She jumped back in, throwing the transit’s keys on the floor.

“That’ll slow them down.”

“It won’t take them long to steal another vehicle. Is there somewhere you want me to take you?”

“Vancouver. I have family there.”

“Excuse me? That’s—”

“Just over three hundred miles, that way.” She pointed west.

“Sorry, miss. I could take you to the train station. But a round trip of six hundred miles isn’t on my agenda today.”

“Train? You gotta be kidding. You might as well give me back to those goons.”

Manuel didn’t want to take a stranger back to his cabin and yet couldn’t just let her go. He started up and headed out of the mall car park.

“Why were you with them anyway?” He asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

“Why do you think? I am female. They are male. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“Why didn’t you run away as soon as they got out of the van and went into the mall?”

“I didn’t want to go with them. They grabbed me this morning while I was still asleep in my hotel in Banff.”

“And I suppose the hotel staff let them?”

“No staff. The place was full of travellers like me. Too far from our own homes and no means of getting there.” She hugged her bag. “And they took my bag.”

“What’s so precious about your bag?”

“You have one. Would you fight for it?”

“Actually, yes, I would. Anyway, we have to make a decision about you. If we just keep driving around this small town, we stand a good chance of meeting them again.” He argued with himself for a few moments. “Okay, I’ll take a risk and take you to my hideout.”

“What makes you think I want to go with you?”

Again, Manuel experienced shock. He’d assumed her priority would be to get to a place of safety. She’d already been the plaything of a gang, so she couldn’t be scared of him.

“What is your name anyway? I’m Manuel.”

“Jat Qappik and before you ask, it’s an Inuit name.”

“Jat, I went to school with a Mamit Qappik. Was she your mother?”

“I see through your game. You’re old enough to be my father and you might even be him.”

They both laughed. “All right, I’ll go to your house, Daddy.”

“Shouldn’t you have been home with your real mom and dad?”

“How old do you think I am, Manuel?”

“Fourteen, fifteen?”

“Ha ha. I’m at university.”

“Yeah, sure you are. Which one, Vancouver State High School?”

“UBC Okanagan. Right, old man. To you that’s—”

“University of British Columbia. I know. I’ve given lectures there on media technologies. Yeah, probably to your mum.” They laughed again.

He grinned at her, taking in her Inuit face and long, jet-black hair.

“Where did you stay yesterday?” he asked as a test question.

“I guess I was in Vancouver or with those men around here. When I woke this morning, I was scared. Not because of the men. But because I thought I had my last semester exam to do, and I could hardly remember crucial research information for it.”

Manuel swerved around an upturned waste bin in the road. “So, what year did you graduate?”

Without hesitation she said, “Twenty-fourteen.”

“You’ve lost a year. You caught the amnesia bug, ARIA, around a week ago, probably in Vancouver.”

“ARIA? I didn’t know it was called that and probably won’t know it tomorrow. Hey, Manuel, how come you know so much? Don’t you have the forgetting bug?” Jat put her feet up on the dash as Manuel accelerated to get away from a small group of men on the sidewalk.

“Afraid so, but I keep updating myself with notes. You haven’t told me what’s so crucial in your bag.”

“Okay. A month’s supply of Neo-Humulin patches, some syringes in case I use liquid Humulin, needles, and a sugar-level test kit. Satisfied?”

“Right, no need to be annoyed. That’s important information,” he said, cursing the fact that he was committed to helping out someone who would doubtless be dead of untreated diabetes in a month.

Jat burst into a shout: “Hey, there’s a sign saying we can’t go up here, and there’s a broken barrier.”

He grinned, guessing he would score Brownie points from the youngster for breaking laws. “You going to help me put the barrier back to deter others?”

“It didn’t deter you.”

With some rope from the pickup, they re-erected the barrier, but unless it snowed or rained, any passer-by would see they’d driven up the lane. Any attempt to disguise their tracks would fail and it would be dark by the time they reached the cabin, assuming he could find it again. He’d already lost much of the morning even though he had tried to recall it whenever he had a spare moment.

“Aren’t you afraid of bears up here?” Jat asked.

“Nah, they’re all hibernating.”

“Excuse me. You are talking to an Inuit. Okay, I haven’t actually lived as an Inuit, but even I know not all bears hibernate, and those that don’t are awake and looking for food.”

“I am so glad to be sharing my lodge with someone of more intelligence than the mice I’ve shared it with so far.”

“You can’t scare me, Manuel, I’ve slept with rats.” From both, that statement merited only silence.

Saturday 2 May 2015:

Anafon.

A
SHAFT
OF
SUNLIGHT
ESCAPED
THROUGH
A
BREAK
IN
THE
CLOUDS
. It hit Bronwyn full in the face as she drew the blinds in the kitchen. It made a welcome glow to her developing morose outlook.

Megan banged around, making a scrambled egg breakfast.

Bronwyn could feel the tension running high at Anafon. After years of working there, the evenings were too exciting for her: pillow fights, spilt drinks and food, loud music and raucous behaviour—and that was just the adults. But now, couples would huddle in corners and not for romance. Introspective worrying became the main spare-time activity. Since her niece appeared a week ago, the exuberance of youth added to the small community. Maybe a more wayward dimension than Ryder would have preferred, but teenage angst brought to Bronwyn a sense of normality.

“You know why you can’t go to Anne’s party,” Bronwyn said.

“It’s not fair.”

“Of course it isn’t. Megan, life’s taken on a new twist for all of us.”

“Here, here,” Teresa said. She’d strolled in and sniffed at Megan’s scrambled eggs. Megan snatched them out of reach.

“What if I go over the hill and avoid the road completely? I know a gap in the fence.”

“Bloody hell, Megan, why haven’t you said before? Brian, come here.”

“It’s only a small one, where one of the horses scratched itself near Two Rocks.”

Brian remained cool. “We have to expect some breaches, and we haven’t blocked off the mountain. We’d have to go shopping for more fencing.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Megan said, her mischievous eyes sparkling. “There’s plenty of fencing out there. Brand new electric and green plastic ones the other side of Roman Road.”

Gustav came in, stretching his sleep away. “You mean steal it?”

“Excellent idea,” Teresa said. “Well done, Megan.” Teresa knew how to please teens.

“But that’s stealing from our friends,” Brian said with a long face.

Derek stole a forkful of eggs. “We’d be more secure, and we’re less likely to encounter people out on the hills than at a farmers’ store.”

Bronwyn knew it would help Megan get over not going to her friend’s party, which had been cancelled or forgotten. “Megan, you go and burgle with Brian and Gustav and we’ll have a party of our own tonight.”

“Wicked.” Megan leapt, clapping her hands, making Bronwyn laugh and yet feel old.

I
N
THE
COMPUTER
LAB
, Ryder mined the web, looking for new information about ARIA. Missing people were listed on abandoned websites, but because the Internet servers still chugged away, they could be viewed by anyone with a connection. The most up-to-date medical sites beamed in from Asia and Europe, not North America. He worried about Karen, Manuel, and other friends in the States and hoped they too escaped to rural retreats and that ARIA would soon fizzle out.

An incoming message alert blinked. Three messages and none for him. He had no idea his line-manager Derek knew such high-powered officials. Not that Ryder opened Derek’s e-mails, and anyone could make up avatars on the web, including the names of senior government officials. Ryder fought the temptation to peek at Derek’s post. His neck heated up because of a nagging fear that their whereabouts had been compromised. He pushed the office chair back from the screen and paced the floor, went for a coffee, and returned no better. He glanced at the clock, estimating when Derek should return after working on more security cameras.

He risked Derek’s wrath and opened up his e-mail. Suspicious because it came from the government. Ryder worried about official and contaminated fingers working their way towards Anafon. Ian Riddick he knew as a minister. Strong minded and prepared to stamp his feet over his opponents to get his own way. It worried Ryder that Riddick should be writing to Derek.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Alternative venue 

Derek,

Imperative to get my family to you, even if you are Mull or similar.

Maybe me and a couple of colleagues.

Can bring money and provisions, etc.

Please reply within an hour as alternative decisions would be needed.

Regards

Ian

So, the Government didn’t know about Anafon. At least that gave Ryder a sliver of satisfaction.

“We should be all right now,” Derek called, as he came in. “Anyone else for a glass of juice?”

Ryder panicked. He could fiddle with the system so Derek couldn’t tell his e-mail had already been opened, but not in seconds. He closed the program down and looked at the webcams Derek had set up just as he walked up to the desk.

“There, we have ten cams set up overlooking gates, passes, the building, and Solomon’s mine. I even thought of putting a mobile unit onto one of the horses as a random eye but they wouldn’t let me get close.”

“Just as well. How do you know they don’t have ARIA?”

“It didn’t occur to me. But you are right. SARS and AIDS transfer between mammals.”

“Yeah, well, nothing’s certain. Teresa tells me that although humans can catch up to two hundred infections and viruses from animals, it isn’t known how many we give them. Shouldn’t be surprising, considering how much DNA we have in common.”

The computer sang with another e-mail alert.

Derek sat at the keyboard. He clicked for a while.

“I see you’ve been busy, Ryder.”

“Yes, sorry, Derek.”

“You expected me to jump up and down, didn’t you? That’s because a month ago I would have. Let’s see. Yes, I’ve known Ian from Cambridge. He’s been useful to our network, and I’ve been to his dinner parties. I’d like to help, but we agreed we couldn’t accommodate more, didn’t we?”

“This Ian is a government minister, isn’t he?”

“So?”

“He’s been in meetings with other ministers.”

“He’s almost certainly infected.”

“As are his family,” said Ryder, wondering if anyone in authority was left unscathed.

“Just suppose, Ryder, that he isn’t infected. Now, don’t look at me like that. Teresa and Laurette said there are always people who are immune to particular viruses. It would be a waste and a tragedy to not help them.”

Ryder shook his head. “We can’t bring them here, Derek.”

“But if we don’t do something for them, some genius out there is going to figure out the likely hideaways. You used logic and Teresa’s employment to find this place. Others could do the same.”