Chapter 17 : The Brain Scan
Jack watched from the Beluga’s cockpit as an elderly Chinese man made his way slowly up the gantry. The man came through the hatch onto the crew deck and introduced himself politely. It was Doctor Hoi. He spoke in a melodious voice that was full of wonder and excitement.
"Everything so cunning in design, to fit into the compact space. I am reminded of my first journey, to Erican, a colony that is abandoned now, but once had thousands of keen young people, they were dying from a parasitic infection of the brain ... I was there to administer a therapy, based as it happened on another alien parasite that we believed would consume the pathogen. We were not successful, sadly ..."
The Doctor seemed to lose the thread of his story for a moment.
"The Beluga reminds me of that ship. Twelve of us, mostly new recruits to the medical corps, were packed in quarters like these with our equipment and formulations. At one point, we were told by the captain that the ship’s singularity housing had failed and that we should prepare ourselves to die, from suffocation, within forty-eight hours. I will never forget how calmly and nonchalantly he made that announcement. I think men were braver then.”
The physician looked curiously around the cabins, stooping a little, swiveling his large round head on his narrow shoulders in a strange, robotic manner.
“Is the woman here yet ?”
Jack had arranged for Crystal to have a medical examination, using the Beluga’s superior scanning equipment. Her collapse on North Dome had worried him. There was another motive though, which he wasn’t telling anyone about. He wondered if a brain scan might reveal something about her claimed telepathic power. If that power was real, there had to be a physical explanation, and if any scanner was capable of detecting the phenomenon, it was on the Beluga. It was, after all, a ship built to explore the frontiers of science, only lately in service as a humble shuttlecraft.
“She‘s walking in from her cabin”, Jack replied.
“The conditions here are challenging for those who ignore medical advice”, Doctor Hoi said, taking a seat at the eating table.
“Could you explain your meaning ?”
“Life expectancy is higher in the habitat. It’s too early to determine an accurate figure, but I would guess fifty years for someone living inside. Outside, perhaps forty. I‘ve been lucky, considering the places I have been. How old do you think I am, Jack?”
Jack looked at Dr Hoi’s sagging cheeks, and the countless lines and folds under his eyes. His hair though, was still dark and low on his forehead.
“In your mid-sixties, I guess ?”
“I am eighty years old, Jack. I didn’t come here as a physician, you know. I retired a long time before. But they wanted someone of my age, well I was seventy-four then, to complete the sample; they wanted to test the effects of the journey, and the environment, on people of all ages. I don‘t think they expected me to last very long.” Dr Hoi laughed, with his engaging smile, and his eyes lifted and twinkled. “I volunteered my services as a physician, expecting they would use me to make a few courtesy calls. But in fact they needed all the help they could get. Most people here are young Jack - they haven’t seen what I have seen, they’re not ready for it emotionally. So I mentor the staff when they are starting to despair. And now our case-load is so high, I am practicing again. I work full time now - ten years after I should have retired !”
Jack was still trying to digest the life expectancy figures and he wound the conversation back.
“Do people know their life span is that short here ? Only fifty years ?”
Jack was filling with anxiety for Crystal, and for Scooter and Tina and their children. He felt his perspective on the colony undergoing a seismic shift.
“What I have told you, Jack, is off the record. It’s much too early to publish figures. We will wait for two, perhaps three generations, before reaching a final conclusion.”
“But you said fifty years. That‘s terrible isn‘t it ?” Jack couldn’t reconcile the gloomy medical prognosis with the Doctor’s broad, reassuring smile.
“It would be misleading to publish only the figures for first generation colonists”, the Doctor answered. “The brutal fact is that some people have the genetic makeup to survive here and some do not. The process of selection will be rapid in the early years. But the more we refine the gene pool, the healthier people will be, in the long term.”
“So why don’t you use your gene database to work out who’s built for life on Greenshoot, and send the others home?”
“That is a policy that we, the medical staff, must determine. It’s not a simple issue, Jack, and the ultimate success of the colony may depend on getting the policy right. This is an area where my experience is particularly important. I was based for a few years on …”
“Sure. So what is the policy ? Are you sending the others home ?”
Doctor Hoi seemed surprised by the interruption, but showed no sign of irritation. It was becoming an unbalanced conversation in which Jack’s glowering was met with Doctor Hoi’s implacable good humour.
“You are correct - there is a gene database, complete sequencing for all the colonists. When we have data for three generations we can determine which genetic markers are favorable or unfavorable for this environment. There is always the possibility, Jack, that a woman here today who may be suffering a distressing medical problem, holds a gene that will benefit future generations. We will never know if we send people home now. The experiment is only just beginning. You and I Jack, will not see the end of it.”
“Well, I’m glad I’m not part of this experiment”, Jack said wearily.
“You could be, Jack. Have you inseminated any of the colonists yet ? If so we would like your sequence for our records.”
Jack rarely had the chance to talk at length to the decision-makers, the sort people who could determine the fate of enterprises, cities, even whole worlds. He didn’t like the Doctor’s cold logic, but he suspected this was the mode of thought of all leaders. They were all bastards.
Steps were heard on the gantry, and a cheerful-looking Crystal walked onto the deck.
“You have this whole ship for just two passengers ? This is fabulous.”
“The bulkhead is right there”, Jack replied pointing to the hatch a few paces behind the eating table. “This ship is almost all engine.”
“But I’d love to do a report on the Beluga”, Crystal said. “Are we all set for tomorrow, Jack?”
“Let’s get this scan done and then we’ll talk about tomorrow.”
He pointed Dr Hoi towards the ladder. The old man seemed reluctant, suddenly losing his poise and confidence, and he looked at Jack anxiously.
“You made it up the gantry so this should be easy”, Jack assured him, with a mischievous smile. The doctor made his way slowly and painfully to the upper deck, followed by Crystal, and then Jack, who took them into the minilab. Jack ushered Hugo, who was working quietly on the VIBE samples, back to his cabin. The full body scanner sat horizonally in the sloping port-side wall, in a claustrophobic recess which looked barely high and deep enough for a slim astronaut. But in practice people could be squashed in there.
“You know, they don’t have proper medical equipment in the habitat”, Crystal said as she struggled into the scanner, “they have no idea what’s causing my headaches.”
“I have reviewed your notes, Crystal. We advised you to move back to the habitat some time ago. I don‘t think you have followed our advice.”
Crystal mumbled something as Jack stood at the central minilab console watching the diagnosis data scroll up the screen. There were a lot of messages and some, to him, sounded alarming.
* pre-cancerous cells in the left fallopian tube *
* carotid artery dissection *
Doctor Hoi joined Jack at the console and eased him to one side, operating the touch screen deftly. “Yes … yes …” the Doctor said flatly. He was tagging all the messages as non-critical but highlighted one.
* uranium contamination in cerebral cortex *
The Doctor ran another scan and peered at a neural pathway model. The image filled with detail as he zoomed in and roamed around. “The mapping is of higher quality than I had expected”. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “These red lines are the contaminants. They are incorporated into a class of proteins that are unique to Greenshoot, something we would like to understand better. They are were being deposited along the existing pathways.”
“What’s your prognosis ?”, Jack asked.
“The condition should remain stable for a while. But I am not going to give you any assurances. She should look after herself better.”
Jack looked across at Crystal, who lay still in the confines of the scanner. He wondered what to say to her. Any one of the warnings would be enough to disqualify an astronaut - they were not life-threatening conditions but they were serious; and there really was something strange going on in that brain of hers. But he didn’t want to worry her.
“There’s nothing wrong that good hot meal won’t fix”, Jack said. A muffled whoop came from inside the scanner.
Crystal made her way out, and Jack gestured quietly to the Doctor to stay. Jack was becoming unusually anxious about his own health and now he wanted a scan too.
“What do you see ?”, Jack asked. He was wedged awkardly into the machine and anxious to get the business over with.
“I see you have the Gremec virus”, the Doctor replied.
“What?”
“You picked it up quickly. It’s not highly contagious. But you are close to Crystal aren’t you ? I suspect you got it from her”, he said with a little chuckle. “It’s early stage. Don’t worry. It won’t be this that kills you.”
Jack watched Doctor Hoi via monitors until he was safely off the ship. Hugo came into the lab.
“I suppose we’ll all get this virus now”, Hugo said glumly. He had been monitoring the ship’s scanner and already knew the results via alerts to his communicator. Hugo seemed to have interfaces to everything, and his phone was buzzing constantly. Some might have thought he had a busy social life, but his interest seemed to be mostly in machines.
“Perhaps we should start taking VIBE”, Jack suggested hopefully.
“I wouldn’t bother”, Hugo replied. “It’s just beetle shit.”
“Come on, Hugo !”
“It’s just an extract from pulverized beetles. Filtered mechanically. That’s all it is.”
“But the beetles contain the antiviral … because they have evolved here and they developed a way to beat the virus ...”
“No Jack”, Hugo replied, shaking his head and smiling sympathetically.
“This virus isn’t found in the beetles. It’s found in human brain cells. That tells you something. The chances of an alien virus behaving that way are tiny … it’s clearly man made and engineered to enter our brains.”
“But why?”, Jack asked.
“I can’t be sure why. All I know is that the virus enters brain cells along the neural pathway, it takes up the metals in the body fluid, and when it dies it deposits them and you get these metallic filaments.”
“An electrical wire can be both a transmitter and a receiver”, Jack pointed out, surprising himself that he was able to keep up and contribute to this type of conversation. “And that provides the route for telepathic communication.”
Hugo leaned forward conspiratorially, although they were the only people on the ship.
“There’s more. The frequency of signals coming out is 3-4GHz, and guess what the SSS got from our cargo?”
“What?”
“It was a 1 to 5 gigahertz radio receiving dish with a massive processor wired into it.”
“So … your saying … they set up the whole thing ! They engineered this fucking virus just to probe our minds !”
Jack got up and paced around in a vengeful mood. It was Crystal that he felt angry for, more even than for himself.
“This whole mission is a con. We’re all being used here.”
“Well no, not exactly”, Hugo replied. “The VIBE serum probably does work. But it’s not an antiviral. That is, it doesn’t kill Gremec. I think its a purgative, it gets the heavy metals out of the body like iodine, but using a different mechanism. There are thousands of compounds in VIBE and I don’t know which are the active ones. It will take weeks to isolate them. Only then can I say what their value might be in trade terms. But it’s quite possible we have a new class of drug here, one that would treat heavy-metal poisoning.”
“Oh, I see ...”, said Jack, with an unsettling feeling of mental overload.
“And we don’t know who manufactured Gremec originally. It must have been a while ago, because the people that built that thing at North Dome, you said it was pre-war, they might have had the virus back then. Otherwise why build it ?”
Don’t jump to conclusions: wait till all the evidence is in, Jack thought. Now that was a lesson from the Academy. The virus and all its ramifications were yet to be fully understood.