The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

KAREN LORD The Plague Doctors

Wednesday 9 August 2079 was an extraordinary day. It was Memorial Day, and it seemed like half of Pelican Island’s population was swarming the beaches to take advantage of the midweek break. Beautiful weather was to blame no doubt, that and the lure of gentle swells of blue-green water and white foam. Colin Lee brought his daughter to his favorite spot on the western coast, where a broad, bright highway of sand stretched uninterrupted along the shore of a curved, sheltered bay, its four flat kilometers granted by the low water of a spring tide and the protection of a rocky cay not yet diminished by storms, shifting currents, and rising sea levels. Such a combination was a gift to parents, a party to young children, and a mixed blessing to lifeguards trying to keep an eye out for dangerous play.

Colin’s daughter, Maisie, had already decided that such shenanigans were not for her. The crowd and tumult bored her, and soon she wandered to the quiet southernmost end. There, the beach grew narrower and terminated in a cliff wall, a slight overhang that shaded rock pools filled with shy crabs, spindly and translucent gray amid the moss and seaweed. Maisie spent her time stooping over a pool for long, fascinated minutes, then she would spring up with a hop and a skip to dash to a new pool.

Colin scanned the area, set a blanket down between his daughter and the water’s edge, and took out a book to read. With five-year-old Maisie, sharp hearing and good peripheral vision were all he needed to keep aware of her doings: now she was singing a counting song from school, now she was testing the depth of each pool with a jump, a splash and a giggle. She was used to amusing herself; she got that from him. Always looking out for the new, every day seeking some small adventure—​well, that had been him. The world changed; he changed. All the adventure he needed was right here . . . a quiet day at the beach with a crime novel and enough free time to enjoy both.

Everything was comforting and familiar, the background murmur and movement of home. He noticed the curve of the waves as they refracted around the rocky point, the occasional glimpse of a diligently patrolling coast guard vessel, and the sails of a few colorful paragliders swooping across the blue sky. His ears registered the constant susurration of water surging in and drawing out, and the nearby human and animal sounds of play—​shrieks, barks, and sometimes a snarl or wail. He absorbed it all without concern, with even a little gratitude, as he concentrated on his book and let time pass without guilt.

He blinked, distracted from his reading as a certain quality of the quietness set the parental super senses on high alert. Maisie had been crouched over in one place for too long. He put down his book and looked up. There she was right against the cliff face, sitting on her heels, watching the crabs scuttle over a thick log of driftwood. He slowly walked over to see what she was finding so interesting.

She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Daddy, why is it all polka-dotty?”

Parental super senses also came with super powers. In one long, slow second, Colin’s eyes realized the log was not a log, but a body. His blood ran hot, cold, electric—​spurring him at top speed to grab the back of his daughter’s shirt and shorts, snatching her away from the air that surrounded the corpse. Holding her tightly, he raced into the water and triple-baptized her with mindless instinct, as if contagion could be washed from her skin and flushed from her lungs with a dose of drowning. The nearest lifeguard came running at the sound of her choked screams.

“Plague doctors!” he yelled as the lifeguard ran toward them. “Get the plague doctors!”

There was a protocol. Everyone knew the protocol, everyone practiced the drills, but not everyone had experienced real-life action. Colin was one of the few who had, and terror, not duty, raised the volume of his voice. The lifeguard planted a foot down hard and braked in the soft, heavy sand. He was close enough for Colin to see his passing expressions: disbelief, fear, realization. After a moment of brief indecision, he unfroze and started running north.

Was there enough salt in the water to save them; was there enough water in the ocean to wash them clean? Colin waited in the shallows, holding Maisie and soothing her as she sobbed. “Daddy’s sorry, baby. Don’t cry, hon.”

He glanced over at his blanket and his unfinished book. Gone. They’d be burned along with the body. He turned to watch the lifeguards clear the beach with disciplined swiftness. He heard the sound of distant sirens coming closer.

“Don’t cry, sweetie. Daddy’s here with you. Don’t cry.”

Memorial Day Wednesday 9 August 2079 was an extraordinary day. It was the day of the first recorded incidence of plague on the soil of Pelican Island.

Monday 26 February 2080 was an ordinary day. On Mondays, the plague doctors cleared the beaches. All the island’s beaches, not only Tempest Bay, were now largely deserted, with no holidaying families and no need for lifeguard stations—​only watchtowers for the corpse-spotters.

Audra Lee had been assigned to beach-clearing duty for almost three months. She was more than competent, she knew the process by heart, but she refused to get so accustomed as to call her Mondays ordinary. A steady ocean current had taken to dumping the remains of refugees from the mainland into the southern crook of Tempest Bay. The current had been there for some time; it was the bodies that were new, and the number was slowly increasing.

Monday was the busiest day of Audra’s week. Besides herself, she counted one other plague doctor to carry out field autopsies, four orderlies to seal and move the bodies, and one registrar to witness the process from discovery at the beach to disposal at the crematorium. Every person on beach-clearing duty wore full personal protective equipment in the form of bespoke suits designed by a specialist on the mainland and constructed on the island using imported and local materials and a 3D printer. Standard suits were fine for occasional use, but the nature of their work demanded tech that was up to frequent dedicated use.

Their team leader and senior doctor for the district, Dr. Jane Pereira, was maddeningly philosophical about their situation. “Only a matter of time,” she said. “We had a good run. No such thing as an island in this day and age. Let’s do what we can.”

Beneath the calm words was the unspoken, unsettling truth—​they could not do very much. If the mainland, with all its resources and expertise, had not solved the problem of the plague; if the navy of one of the world’s largest countries could not keep the desperate from seeking help elsewhere; and if the ocean itself had started to conspire against those formerly favored with isolation and health . . . what could the medical team of a small community clinic do?

“Our job,” was Dr. Pereira’s brisk reply when Audra spoke her fears aloud. “And part of our job is to ensure there will be no panic in the community. Please remember that.”

Audra returned to her lab in a fury. Grimly taciturn, she had borne the usual off-site decontaminating scrub down with her colleagues and said a curt farewell to Dr. Pereira, who was leaving to do the afternoon’s rounds for the community clinic. Perhaps it was her bleak expression, or the white square of her mask, or the severely monochrome scrubs that hinted at nonpatient duties. Perhaps it was just that everyone in the district knew by now that Audra Lee, doctor in charge of the diagnostic lab, was also one of the plague doctors. Either way, she spent the twenty-minute bus journey back home along a busy route with no one showing the least interest in taking the empty seat beside her.

She looked forward to slamming her front door, but that tiny indulgence was denied her. Colin was already there, standing at the threshold, his face stern with suppressed and weary anger.

“You’re late,” he stated.

“It’s Monday,” she told her brother impatiently.

“You’re usually back before three.” He looked exhausted. She should have been kind and understanding, but she was tired, too, and her fears were larger than his, and heavy with the secrecy of professional confidentiality. Ensure there will be no panic. She chose something simple to shout about, not a lie, but not the full truth. She would cry over the full truth with her colleagues later.

“We had fourteen bodies today, Colin. Fourteen!” She pushed past him into the house and went to check her messages. “Hi, Maisie,” she greeted her niece absently before she sat at her desk.

“Hi, Aunty Audra,” the little girl replied after a slight pause to make sure the adults had finished arguing. She sounded subdued.

Audra looked up immediately. “Oh. Okay.” She didn’t say anything more.

Promises were impossible to keep, so she didn’t make them. She merely put her work down and walked over to the translucent boundary that had separated Maisie from the world for more than half a year. From a distance, the room glowed white and warm, like the sick bay of some futuristic space station, but with a closer look the painted plywood and plastic sheeting became obvious and the coolness factor evaporated. The main lab was also white-walled, but with tile and aged grout instead of plywood. No illusions there, no glow or pretense at coolness.

Audra knelt, set her hand against the plastic, and leaned her face beside it. She waited patiently until Maisie approached and mirrored her motion, answering the warmth of hand and cheek with her own.

Colin ended the moment by entering the quarantine area in gown, gloves, mask, and goggles. He carried a tray with a cup, a mini teapot, and a small plate of sweet biscuits. Maisie ran to him, laughing. Audra went back to her desk, blinking tears away.

Three days after her exposure to the infected body, Maisie had showed the usual progression: mild fever and a slight rash on her chest, eruption of a few oozing blisters, and then those blisters dried, scabbed, and healed within a fortnight. Colin hadn’t even had a sniffle, far less a blister, and his immunological tests remained clear—​which was a great relief to everyone but Colin, who would have gladly gifted his luck to Maisie instead.

Instead of strictly following the official procedures, which would have meant sending both Colin and Maisie away to Salt Rock Quarantine Center, Dr. Pereira had suggested setting up in an unused storage shed next to Audra’s house, behind the diagnostic lab. Audra wouldn’t have dared ask for that privilege, and she was terribly grateful for it. She was also guiltily relieved that her colleagues were both willing and able to spare her the burden of counseling Colin and Maisie. After Maisie’s skin had healed completely, Dr. Pereira and Antonio Williams, the clinic’s pediatric nurse practitioner, sat down with father and daughter to discuss the disease, its consequences, and future steps—​Antonio and Audra in their protective equipment within the quarantine section with Dr. Pereira and Colin sitting close on the other side of the barrier.

“Maisie, I know you feel much better now, but you’re going to have to stay in your aunt’s sickroom for a little longer, okay?” Antonio told her.

“Why, Mr. Williams?” Maisie’s voice was very soft and a little scared.

“Because you got the gray pox, that’s why. It hasn’t really gone away. It went to sleep, but it can wake up any time.”

Maisie nodded.

“We all want to keep you safe, especially your father. He was very lucky: he didn’t get sick. Problem is, if you leave quarantine, he could catch it from you, and it would make him a lot sicker than it made you. It’s kinder to children, you see. And when it gets into you, it doesn’t want to leave. If something else makes you sick, or very tired, the gray pox will wake up again, and this time it could make your father sick, or anyone else you might sneeze on.”

“I don’t sneeze on people. That’s rude.” Maisie crossed her arms, frowning.

Audra watched her niece’s face intently. Maisie was paying close attention to Antonio’s story of the gray pox, but did she really understand?

“Of course you don’t. But you wouldn’t have to be too close for the germs from a sneeze, or a cough, to reach them. That’s how germs are; it’s not your fault.”

Maisie began to look doubtful about the direction this was heading.

“But you have to stay here so your aunt and your father can take care of you and make sure the pox stays asleep. You’ll see your friends and take your classes on the island school intranet. Our nutritionist, Mrs. Bishop, will check in on you regularly and make sure you’re getting all the good food you’ll need to stay strong and healthy.”

Antonio leaned closer, his eyes warm but stern over his mask. “But Maisie, you must do what your aunt and your father tell you to do. Otherwise, people could die. Your father could die. And Maisie, if you get sick a second time, the pox won’t be kind to you anymore. It will be a plague, then.”

She gulped and nodded, tears welling up. He gathered her up in his long-gloved, long-sleeved arms and hugged her with as much comfort as a gown and apron could provide. Audra gripped her own apron with shaking hands and breathed deeply. She would not let Maisie see her cry.

At the time, Dr. Pereira had estimated only another month or two of isolation for Maisie while she contacted friends and colleagues connected to institutions and clinics on the mainland. No one wanted to send Maisie away, but even Colin agreed that permanent quarantine was no place for a child to grow up. In a country where the gray pox was fairly widespread Maisie could at least live openly among others who had survived that first phase of the disease. And, if the worst should happen, if she progressed to the second phase, she would be near resources for her care—​far better resources than Pelican Island could offer.

A sensible plan that should have worked . . . but Dr. Pereira’s contacts did not bear fruit. Instead, communication grew exponentially worse. Messages arrived truncated, or stripped of attachments, or did not arrive at all. “It’s like we’re in the middle of a war, and the mainland is one of the front lines,” Dr. Pereira had said. “No one can give me a straight answer. We can’t send Maisie there.”

“Is there anywhere else she can go?” Audra asked. Her voice faltered; she already knew the truth.

Dr. Pereira had only given her a sympathetic look, and they did not discuss the possibility further.

Now it was almost six months later, with one birthday and several holidays celebrated—​or endured—​in quarantine. The island’s sole hospital struggled with the reduction of key imports; the quarantine center was about to reach maximum capacity; and more and more bodies were appearing in spite of the best efforts of the navy and coast guard to keep the beaches clear.

Audra forced herself to focus on her work. Her screen showed messages from Gilles Caron in Seychelles, Jennifer Tuatara in Rakiura, and Tom Isaac in Woleai, and a general mailing with the monthly newsletter of the Community Clinics Association of Raja Ampat. She still wasn’t sure how she’d ended up on the mailing list for that one. Why was it so difficult to receive emails and news from established hospitals and universities on the mainland, but personal messages from the staff of far-flung community clinics on distant islands and mountain retreats constantly filled her inbox?

dbauerbadgas is available to chat, her screen prompted her.

She typed a greeting to her colleague, Dagmar Bauer.

No audio? Dagmar’s response came back instantly.

Brother and niece having tea party. May get noisy, Audra explained.

Niece still in lockup?

Audra bit her lip. They’d had that argument by audio months ago, when Maisie was first confined to one of their examination rooms.

“Why do you keep her in a sealed room?” Dagmar had demanded. “It’s contact transmission in the first phase. Droplet transmission occurs only later in the second phase. That’s been confirmed over and over. You’re making the trauma and stigma worse.”

Audra had pushed back immediately. “She’s six. She can’t defend herself if some paranoid ex-mainlander decides she’s the island’s patient zero. It’s not necessary for the plague bacterium; it’s necessary for us. It’s a visibly reassuring abundance of caution.”

Today, she had another answer for Dagmar.

Help me get her out, then, she typed back. Impulsive, unplanned, the words on the screen looked as strange to her as if someone else had written them.

Dagmar must have thought the same. After a slight delay, a line of question marks popped up.

Audra continued, feeling bolder, pulling the words out from some deep place of rebellion and discontent. Fourteen bodies washed up today. Dr. Pereira says we’re due to miss one. The ocean currents could change and the beach might stay clear. But the bodies might just wash up somewhere else, and we’d have another case like Maisie’s. Or several cases.

Again, Dagmar’s reply was delayed. She was busy—​multitasking in her clinic or thinking seriously about what Audra was saying. You have quarantine stations, of course?

Yes, on Salt Rock Island, just 2 km west of the main port. Navy directs mainland boats there. But some refugee boats don’t survive the trip.

Another pause. Things are changing here too. We see more restrictions on movement in and out of town. Media control. I haven’t seen a journalist in months. Can’t rely on email, and even letters go missing.

Audra started to type a reply. Sounds like what’s happening on our mainland . . . but then her fingers froze at the next line she saw.

Death toll is increasing in Bad Gastein and the rest of the country. Secondary disease phase is now established in population, I think. Authorities must be afraid to tell us the truth. So—​censorship.

“Oh no,” Audra said softly. Dagmar, with characteristic bluntness, was setting out all their unspoken fears in permanent text for the world to witness. She glanced furtively at Colin and Maisie to make sure they hadn’t heard her, and then returned to her conversation.

We have to get a cure to human trials. Need your help, she insisted.

Dagmar sent a laughing face. We’re going to find a cure, after all the big labs and hospitals failed?

They failed because they focused on the first phase of the disease. We know better now. And maybe we’re all that’s left. Audra’s fingers shook as she typed the last sentence.

She had discussed the lack of response from the mainland with Dr. Pereira, and what that suggested about the progress of the plague there. And yet she felt such talk should remain a bleak mutter behind the shelter of a face shield, witnessed only by decaying corpses.

You are saying that help may never come.

Dagmar meant it as a statement, not a question, and Audra doubted it was a mistake. The question mark was nowhere near the full stop on a German keyboard. Audra was less brave, so she chose the question mark and batted the problem back to Dagmar.

What do you think?

I think you are right. I think that I am gaining far too much experience with autopsies in far too short a time. I often have to stop myself from thinking because it never looks good when the doctor has a panic attack in front of the patients.

Audra’s spine straightened as Dagmar spoke, and she almost laughed at the last words. Almost. Let’s make a start, then. Let’s reach out to the others. We need a team.

They needed more than a team—​they needed data, resources, and a plan. Gilles had access to a vast library of medical statistics, clinical summaries, and experimental results from hospitals, labs, and institutions worldwide. Jennifer was involved in a project that collated similar information from community clinics, herbalists, and healers in the Rural and Emergency Medicine Network. Audra knew that the lab reports and autopsy summaries she submitted to Dr. Pereira ended up with the REM Network along with all the work of the community clinic team, but visualizing their drop of data as part of an ocean of knowledge was both humbling and heartening.

Best of all, Dagmar had secured funding, the result of a personal connection to a ridiculously rich philanthropist with the ridiculously aristocratic name of Alexander Esterházy-Schwarzenberg. “He will take care of our communications and logistics, including security,” she told them on their group call.

“Why security?” Jennifer wanted to know.

“Just in case,” Dagmar said. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, but right now, if someone wanted to shut down our communications, or take over our data banks, it wouldn’t take much.”

Jennifer scoffed. “That’s a waste of money. Why would anyone want to shut us down?”

“You have to ask?” Gilles said. “Don’t your patients—​hell, your colleagues—​tell you the conspiracy theory of the day? The plague is a weapon of biological warfare. Sent by aliens. No, created by the rich to cull the poor. No, it’s Gaia; she’s trying to wipe out our species. It’s the Rapture, you think they’re dead, but they’re in another dimension. There’s no information from the authorities, nothing from the media, so people imagine the worst.”

“You sound a little tired, Gilles,” Audra noted gently.

“Exhausted!” Gilles confirmed with a massive grin. “Our electrical grid finally collapsed last week, did you know that? They say it’s due to a lack of personnel to carry out maintenance. We have too many dead, too many sick, and those who still live are stretched to the limits of mind and body. I would love to have security here. People break in—​they think we’re hoarding medicine. They try to tap our solar generators. They hack into our Wi-Fi to get news from outside. Information is precious now. We have to protect ourselves.”

“Yes. Exactly. Just in case,” Dagmar said again, but softly, sympathetically, as Gilles trailed off into an incoherent and weary grumbling. “But we can’t protect everyone everywhere, so we’ll have to rely on redundancy. Duplicate our effort with three, four clinics working on the same thing. If one is lost, the others continue. No one is indispensable. And we must hold nothing back. We share all our work straight to our network, and Alexander will protect the network. The work is all that matters.”

With Dagmar’s friend throwing money at the project, everything became startlingly real. Audra told Colin, in the spirit of cautious encouragement, that she was researching every possible treatment that could help Maisie leave quarantine, but she said nothing about the Network and their project to find a cure. Her colleagues were a different matter. Dr. Pereira, at the very least, would demand details, and Audra was afraid of being quietly mocked or silently pitied.

The day after their group call and Dagmar’s revelation, Audra finally met with Dr. Pereira. The team leader’s reaction was completely unexpected.

“Good,” she said. “Try. Try something. Anything.”

Audra stopped, blinked, and passed over the mug of coffee she had offered Dr. Pereira on arrival. “Not a waste of my time . . . our time?”

Dr. Pereira took a long, grateful sip before answering. “Dr. Lee, let’s consider what we can control. We can’t control the number of refugees from the mainland. We can’t control the ocean currents, or the chance that a survivor of phase one might slip past testing at the entry port and make us all vulnerable to a sudden explosion of phase two. We can control our own clinics, labs, and procedures. And—​worst-case scenario—​we might be the only ones left to work on a cure.

“This island has been in a state of tension for almost a year, waiting for the infection to reach us, waiting for the inevitable descent into pox and plague. We can work on a protocol of trials with the Salt Rock Center staff, and get them to start the preconsent counseling process for volunteers. Being proactive makes our medical staff look good, and takes all our stress levels down a notch. A slight notch, perhaps, but I’ll take it.”

Dr. Pereira pulled out a stylus and began to handwrite notes for sending to Audra’s screen. “I’ve been following the work of Zhang, Trevor, and Ali. Nothing more recent than eight months, unfortunately. Most of the forums I used to read aren’t allowing new posts, and I don’t need to tell you how chaotic and unpredictable email has been. None of the immunology has been promising—​neither vaccination work nor curative immunotherapy. Our best hope lies with research on genetically engineered phages that directly target the plague bacteria. Let every community clinic on Earth break out their gene splicers and tackle the problem. Dear God, someone has to get a result in time.”

Audra kept her head down, busily collating Dr. Pereira’s notes and references, and did not voice her thoughts. What if we do run out of time? What then?

Various diseases had wiped out almost 90 percent of the pre-Columbian North American peoples. The Black Death had halved the population of Europe. The Spanish flu killed more than the World War that preceded it, and the new avian flu of 2049 had taken only (only!) 5 percent of the global population, but had been the final push that changed the tourism industry from fast, fossil-fueled flight to slow, solar fleets. Now, in 2080, the world was already irrevocably changed by this plague. Did this plague have a point of no return, leading inexorably to the end of human civilization, or even of humanity?

That possibility was too vast for Audra to contemplate, but the face of her niece appeared clearly in her mind.

Three days later, a battered off-road vehicle, booming with unfettered bass and with wheels stinking of well-manured farmland, rattled up the driveway of the diagnostic lab and screeched to a halt across three clearly marked parking spots. A pair of youngsters—​one tall and cord-thin, the other small, round, and shy—​bounced out and began unloading boxes from the rear.

Scowling in irritation and bemusement, Audra went out to see what they wanted. The tall one paused very briefly to shake her hand in greeting and kept a running explanation going as he continued to gather his equipment. “Good morning—​no wait, it’s afternoon already. Good afternoon, ma’am. We’ve been tasked to set you up on a private network. How’s your solar? Good system, good. But we’ll have to boost it a bit so it won’t suck resources from your other work. You have a nice, flat bit of roof there over your lab. Can we use it? Oh, and do you still make that ginger lemongrass cordial with the special ingredient? No?”

Audra breathlessly summarized the capacity of her solar grid, showed them the roof access ladder, and explained to them that they needed to speak to Ms. Roberts, the pharmacist and herbalist, who used to work out of her lab until they decided to completely separate diagnostics from pharmaceuticals after the plague. And was that special ingredient coca or cannabis? Because there were two popular lemongrass cordials brewed by Ms. Roberts.

“Coca,” said the shy one, speaking at last in a soft, husky voice. “We work very long hours.”

“Oh. And you are?”

The leader seized the reins of the conversation once more. “Call us the Guerrilla Network Unit—​that’s who we are, that’s what we do. Fighting the good fight against ignorance and misinformation in this plague-ridden apocalyptic landscape. Whoops, I’ve said too much. By the way, greetings from Bad Gastein.”

His laugh was infectious, and before Audra could ask any more questions he was on the roof shouting directions to his assistant, moving with professional haste to construct and connect a medium-sized satellite dish.

It took Audra a full hour after they’d left to realize they had never given their names, and the vehicle had no license plate or other visible identifying numbers. And it wasn’t until later that night that she fully understood what they had done. The free but limited voice-and-text chat app their group previously used had spontaneously upgraded into something less familiar and far more expansive. Dagmar appeared on her screen, ruddy and blond with flyaway hair and buckteeth, and proclaimed to Audra and others pinging into the group chat, “Oh, isn’t Alexander wonderful?”

“He certainly is,” Audra said, looking in admiration at the crisp detail of the transmission. Dagmar’s lab, though not much bigger than hers, was bright with the reflected light of stainless steel and glass. In contrast, the white ceramic tiles of the interior walls of Audra’s lab made the rooms look like the showers for a sports team, and the concrete floors and tables were muddy gray and untidily covered with that same plastic sheeting used for Maisie’s quarantine. The effect was that of a slightly unmade bed, or a lived-in set of clothing . . . i.e., nowhere as tidy and spare as Dagmar’s surroundings.

Weekly conferences with Dr. Pereira and the rest of the team in her clinic continued, while online meetings both formal and casual with overseas colleagues expanded from daily to almost hourly. Video meetings improved communication and companionship. It reminded Audra of her earlier days of working with the community clinic team, before the plague and regular Monday autopsies. They’d shared the same building, taken tea breaks together, bonded. The plague had fractured that, and now the plague drew her into a new community of colleagues. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

It had become a running joke in the slightly macabre vein common to stressed doctors everywhere that if any of them were to suddenly default to no video with no explanations, it was time to write a nice eulogy for a colleague, because clearly they were hiding a freshly pox-covered face.

Audra leaned in closer to her screen, frowning deeply. She began to type are you all right then hastily backspaced the words into oblivion. Same as yesterday.

They hadn’t done anything in particular yesterday.

Dagmar’s cursor blinked in silent reproach. Audra watched it in stubborn fascination until it began to trundle forward again.

Your call, Audra replied shortly.

Now the cursor seemed to blink in silent confusion. I am making a call? Or it is my call to plan the week?

Audra hit her keyboard hard with angry fingers. Where is Dagmar?

The cursor vanished. Dagmar’s icon hovered for a while, and then it, too, vanished.

Audra kept typing, knowing the cowards would get the message when next they dared log in. You’re going to die. You’re all going to die of the plague because you wouldn’t let us do our jobs. May the pox take you and the plague finish you.

No other curse felt more potent; there was nothing as transgressive and shocking than to wish this awful death on another human being. Audra slammed her fist against her desk.

“What happened?” Colin’s voice seemed from another world, but for once it was a welcome distraction. Audra relaxed her clenched jaw and tried to answer him calmly.

“I don’t know. I thought . . . I thought I was talking to Dagmar.” She sounded helpless to her own ears.

Colin rested a hand on her shoulder in a rare gesture of comfort, but then his fingers spasmed hard against her collarbone. “What’s that?” he asked harshly, leaning over her to peer at her screen.

A rush of new, unread messages clustered thickly down the page, chiming faintly on arrival until they all merged into one long, high-pitched pulsation. Audra muted the sound. “Someone’s flooding the Network with data files. But who . . . how? We always save our work to our network daily . . . hourly.”

She tapped a message open, not caring for once that Colin was reading over her shoulder. “Who’s AES?” he asked.

Dagmar’s Alexander, the guardian and investor angel of the Network. She went cold again. She had fallen out of the habit of hope. If it was something this big, it had to be bad.

Then the lab phone rang. Audra answered it absently without checking the caller identity, her eyes still reading the titles of the incoming messages on her overwhelmed screen. “Dr. Lee here. How can I help you?”

“Hello, Dr. Lee. Sorry to be a nuisance. We found a lot of information, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to organize it for us. We’ll be very busy for a little while.” Slightly accented English, oddly antique phrasing, and a little quaver of age or weakness over it all.

“What?” Audra dropped her professional tone. “Who is this?”

“She trusts you to pull it all together. Remember, no one is indispensable. Continue the work!”

With a click, the caller vanished into the ether, whether of his own will or no, Audra could not tell. “Oh God, no,” she whispered. Was Dagmar dead, or dying? Imprisoned? Injured? How had they silenced her? Was the Network at risk? She began to pull drawers open, scrambling for old physical backup disks and storage cards to plug into her main and save the new messages.

“What can I do?” Colin demanded. “How can I help?”

“You can’t,” Audra wailed. “I don’t have time to explain this to you. Just give me some space. I have to get all this before it disappears, too!”

An answering wail came from the inner room of the sealed section—​Maisie waking in distress, either because of Audra’s shouting or some other, personal nightmare. She walked into the half-light of the lab, crying inconsolably, and curled up with her blanket near the air lock entryway.

“Help her,” Audra begged Colin, and turned her back to them both.

She worked long hours into the early morning, saving files and sending frantic notes to others on the Network. Replies and fresh news came in for her to read, and slowly the cascade of chaos began to resolve itself into a quantifiable situation with a potential solution.

“Oh, Gilles,” Audra said softly. “I wish it had been aliens.”

Dagmar, or someone under her direction, had discovered and unlocked a secret cache of research. Not only recent, ongoing research by many of the leading scientists in the field (including some recent unpublished papers by Zhang, Trevor, and Ali that Dr. Pereira would love to see), but also transcripts of commentary from an internal forum featuring names from several of the most famous research institutes. Audra laughed to herself a little bitterly. They had been investigating similar areas: phage therapy, of course, as well as immunotherapy and stem cell therapies and potential antimicrobial drugs. And they had shared none of it with the wider world.

Why? Audra wanted to believe in incompetence, not malice, but she knew how hard the Network had tried to get information from these same institutes. She couldn’t help but imagine the worst. Beyond all conspiracy theory, what if the silence from the mainland, and the missing journalists, and the darkening corners of the web were only partly due to the plague? What if there was a cull—​not a purposeful, engineered attack, but a carefully curated neglect? Keeping the best chances of prevention and cure for those who could afford to pay for it . . . a kind of plutocratic manifest destiny.

Their central medical systems and institutions hadn’t collapsed, not really. They’d been hit hard, but they hadn’t given up. They’d consolidated. And they’d quietly narrowed focus, deciding who was worthy of being saved, and waiting for time to take care of the rest.

Hot fury surged through Audra’s veins. She knew triage, and she would not dignify this with that name. This was pure, arbitrary selfishness that would see millions of innocents die so that rich old men could live a few months longer in an emptier world. She would take up the challenge they had abandoned and stay true to her declaration of ethics, if not for Dagmar, then for Maisie.

Maisie.

Audra hadn’t heard so much as a sniffle from her direction for ages. She looked through the barrier and saw Colin lying in the recliner with Maisie in his arms, all wrapped up snug and comfortable in her blanket. They were both sleeping soundly. She smiled.

And then, quietly, she came up to the barrier and slowly pressed her hands against it, pushing against the contaminated air of the interior. “Colin. Colin . . . why?”

Unmasked, pajama-clad, cheek to Maisie’s flushed and tear-damp cheek, her brother held his child with a peacefulness that was its own kind of saintly defiance.

Dr. Pereira assigned Antonio to monitor and care for Colin and Maisie, another favor that Audra did not dare request but for which she was deeply grateful. She literally did not know how to feel anymore; there was never a moment of unalloyed joy or pain. She missed Dagmar and worried about her to the point of full grieving, and yet she was ablaze with the excitement of Dagmar’s discovery and focused on the work of redirecting their research efforts to take advantage of the new data. The week that Antonio reported the emergence of Colin’s pox symptoms was the same week that Jennifer relayed a massive breakthrough from a group of community clinics in Kerala.

By the time Colin’s sores had scabbed over and healed up, the first phage trials in Kerala were underway. Audra thought about having a small party to celebrate both . . . and then received the news that though the cure had been successful, the attempt to make the cure infectious by droplet transmission had triggered a cytokine storm in test subjects. The fatality rate had reached as high as 80 percent in some groups.

Jennifer’s lip twisted bitterly. “We wanted a cure that would be more infectious than the disease. We didn’t anticipate that the immune system would overreact to it. But don’t worry. We’re going to make some changes and try again. We’re close, Audra. I promise.”

Months later, Kerala confirmed that the problem had been solved. But the day Audra began to synthesize doses of the cure in her lab according to version two of the Kerala formula was the day she first heard Maisie cough and knew that this was it, this was what they had feared all along. A ticking timer went off in the back of her brain, and she pushed it further back into the shadows to be in company with her feelings about Dagmar and her brother and her niece. No use dwelling on what she could not change.

“What are these exactly?”

Gloved, masked, and gowned, Audra continued her work with slow deliberation and answered shortly. “Nebulizer vials. A mist of fine droplets is the best way to get the engineered virus into the lungs.”

“How soon can we give one of those to Maisie?”

Audra finally looked directly at her brother. Seeing his heavily scarred, masked face made her wonder how different life would be if the strength he had to do anything for his daughter had included the strength to bear his daughter’s sorrow. “It doesn’t work like that, Colin. We have to see what results we get from the trials. It’s going to take time.”

“She doesn’t have time. She’s getting sicker. You know that.”

Audra knew that Maisie was deteriorating, and she could see the effect it was having on her brother. Colin was tending to Maisie full-time with a belated but necessary caution about his own protection from further exposure.

She made herself say it, and she made sure to look him in the eyes as she did so. “This may not happen in time for Maisie, Colin.”

“All the more reason—”

“Colin, let me explain what happened with the first trials in Kerala. It wasn’t just that people died. The problem was the cure was more deadly than the disease. Those aren’t sensible odds. Let’s take time to see if we’ve got it right. Maisie . . . she’s not doing that well, it’s true, but watchful waiting is a safer option for the time being. I’ve already discussed this with Dr. Pereira and Antonio. Ask them—​they’ll both tell you the same thing.”

“But if there’s a chance—”

“Colin, these vials aren’t my personal property! The cure belongs to the Network and the community clinics, and no matter what, I have to respect that!” Audra paused, swallowed, and added quietly, “She’s my blood too.”

Her brother stared but, having said what she needed to say, Audra turned away to continue her work. She slid a fresh tray of vials into cold storage and closed the heavy fridge door. Dr. Pereira would be coming to pick up the first batch tomorrow. Salt Rock Quarantine Center would join several other clinics worldwide in the first wave of global trials. Being part of that history was thrilling, but her niece might die before the end of it. Saving millions of lives was worth it, but her niece’s life, after all their hard work, would be lost. Joy and pain together, canceling each other out . . . impossible to feel anymore. She moved mechanically, losing herself in the routine tasks.

One more vial. Maybe two. It wouldn’t hurt to have extras. She did the preparations, and tucked the doses neatly into a smaller tray beside a nebulizer and two detachable intake masks. She rested it on the table near the fridge. Her hands were shaking. She’d been working such long hours. Just a few minutes’ rest.

Audra sat at her desk and yawned, drained to weakness. She put her head down and closed her eyes.

Then she watched wearily through half-opened eyes as Colin (all suited, booted, gloved, and masked) quietly exited the quarantine section, silently took up the doses and nebulizer that she had so carefully arranged, and vanished once more behind the plastic barrier. Anger, hope, relief, and fear swirled sluggishly, but a heavy blanket of exhaustion smothered all as Audra closed her eyes and witnessed nothing more.

Over the past year, Dr. Pereira had granted Audra many concessions and gone above and beyond in showing her compassion, but the kind of carelessness that led to two vials of engineered virus going missing could lead only to grave consequences.

“I am going to ask you one thing,” Dr. Pereira had said, her eyes filled with hurt and disappointment. “Leaving out those two vials—​was that oversight or intention?”

Audra was able to meet Dr. Pereira’s steady gaze, but completely unable to form the words to reply.

“Oversight . . . that’s one level of disciplinary action. But intention? And making your brother an accessory instead of taking the full responsibility on yourself?”

At those last words, Audra dropped her gaze, stricken.

“Thank you for all your hard work on this project, Dr. Lee,” Dr. Pereira said distantly. “I would like to suggest that you take a leave of absence.”

The day that the trials were declared a success was the day that Audra’s license was revoked. The day that Maisie and Colin were confirmed free of the gray pox bacteria, and allowed to leave quarantine, was the day that a replacement doctor was hired and the diagnostic lab was moved back to the main building adjacent to Ms. Roberts and pharmaceuticals. There was much to grieve, and much to celebrate, and Audra’s mind and body oscillated uncertainly between the two states.

The quarantine center was transformed to fit a new purpose. Instead of screening those about to enter the sanctuary of Pelican Island, it now processed the outward journeys of volunteers infected with the engineered virus, sending them out into a sick world to breathe the contagion of cure into the atmosphere. It was a noble venture, and an exciting opportunity for those who had for too long felt powerless to change their world.

“How long will it take . . . ?”

“As long as it has to. Every community clinic has the capacity to create the viral cure, and one person per household is all that’s needed, but it will still take time to spread through all the affected populations.”

“How long?” The repeated query was more forceful, less hopeful. Colin’s tone was charged with the anger and weariness of a survivor who had no power to make the world anew . . . at least not yet.

“My best estimate? About five years for the primary infection to complete its spread. Several generations before the population returns to preplague levels. But beyond two years, we’re guessing. We’re all guessing. And yet . . . we found a cure. We won. We’re gambling on a sure thing. It’s only a matter of time.”

“The more carriers you have out there, the faster the cure will spread, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then that’s the adventure I choose. We were lucky to have Pelican Island as a refuge for so long. Time to spread that luck.”

“Some people won’t be kind, if they suspect you. Some people won’t understand. Remember Dagmar.”

“I’ll be careful, then. For Maisie’s sake, if nothing else.”

“Stay in touch. Please, Colin, for my sake.”

Their words were effortful, uneasy; a shadow tainted their farewell. Dr. Pereira had been right. Colin understood both the gift and the burden of the choice Audra had forced on him, and that knowledge was a strain on their bond. And yet, hadn’t she paid the price for her actions and his? Didn’t he owe her something for that sacrifice?

Audra bit her lip and turned away. Better this parting now than years of increasing bitterness on both sides. She tried to cheer herself with the memory of Maisie’s warm kiss on her cheek, Maisie’s excitement about the wide world after months of confinement, Maisie’s utter delight in bragging about her father who saved her and her aunt who helped save the world.

When Audra returned to her too-quiet house, she was thrown for a moment to see a vaguely familiar off-road vehicle sitting athwart two parking spaces with doors open. The faint whiff of manure told her what the absence of mud could not—​the Guerrilla Network Unit had returned. The lanky lead tech gave her a cheery wave from the driver’s seat. Audra felt a pang. Were they going to strip her roof of its lovely new equipment, returning her to the days of typed text and crackling audio? But then, as she walked closer, someone stiffly emerged from the back seat of the rickety car, a far older man than the pair of techs she had met. He was fastidiously dressed, but flushed red and sweating helplessly in the tropical heat, combining an authoritative air with an odd vulnerability.

He extended his hand and Audra took it on pure instinct. “You’re Dagmar’s Alexander.”

The old man’s eyes widened a little in shock, and then he smiled slowly. “Yes. She sent me to tell you that she is alive and well.”

Slightly accented English, oddly antique phrasing with a little quaver of age or weakness over it all.

“Where is she?”

“That, I cannot say. The situation is complicated. Her results were applauded, her methods less so. Perhaps history will give her the laurels she deserves, but for now my work is to shield her from the courts of law.”

Audra lowered her head and smiled sadly. She suspected that whatever illegal or semilegal methods Dagmar had employed to get the data, she had embraced the risks bravely, with no half-heroic measures to trouble her conscience. She tilted her head up again and blinked, trying not to cry in front of Alexander and failing . . . but that was all right, because it meant she was finally free to feel again.

“Will you get her cleared? Dagmar said you were rich. Old money, noble family. Isn’t that right?”

Alexander looked even more apologetic. “More or less. More noble than rich, that is. But I do have a marvelous reputation, and there are many people, both old and new money, who trust me to recommend worthwhile investments and endeavors.” He gave a wry chuckle. “We label it charity most of the time, at least for our accountants and auditors.”

He sobered quickly and gave her a stern look. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m not an angel. I’m a facilitator. What I and my associates do is neither legal nor illegal, but it might be considered . . . a bit irregular. Dagmar understood that. The whistleblower who gave her the data understood that as well.

“Dagmar saved my husband and my son from the first phase of the plague when no other doctor would come near them. Now she has saved them from living with the dread of a second-phase death. Only two among many, but they are all the world to me. I owe her everything, and I’ll do everything I can for her, but I can offer no guarantees.

“But what do you want? Do you need anything?”

Audra startled at the segue, then seriously considered the request. “Our Network will always need resources. Continue to be our facilitator, and find people to fund us. But don’t dare call it charity. Tell them to invest in the world they’d like to live in, the world they’d like to leave to future generations.”

Alexander inclined his head. “I know a few who have learned the hard way that a luxury bunker is too narrow a world at any price. No more moats and walls. We will tend the garden for every­one.”

Later, after the GNU mobile had driven away with its three occupants, Audra looked at the empty building that was her gutted laboratory, the house that was too big for one person, and considered for a mad, brief moment the empty months and years that lay ahead. Alexander’s words echoed in her mind.

What do you want?

She walked to her old lab, opened the door, and hovered at the threshold, marveling at the huge, half-lit, hollowed-out space, emptied of furniture and equipment, as anonymous as any random storeroom. Memories of faces on screens—​Gilles, Jennifer, Dagmar—​floated amid the gilded dust motes. The new doctor at the diagnostic lab would work with the Network now. Audra had said her farewells to her remaining colleagues—​hasty, unthinking, distracted farewells. Only now, in the silence and shadow, did she realize how much she missed them, how much she missed the work.

A sharp ding! interrupted her musings. She sighed and fished her tablet out of her bag, and frowned in confusion. She’d never deleted the Network’s communications app from her device, even though she no longer had access to the lab account. Now, instead of a generic login page, it was showing her a message with YES and NO buttons and a few lines of text.

Eyes on her tablet, Audra absently closed the door of the lab with one hand. The air was fragrant with plumeria blossoms, the sun shone with bright promise, and Audra’s heart was soaring with sudden excitement. She poised a finger above the screen, hesitated to savor the moment, and pressed.