The Long Trial, Part Three
Chapter Sixteen: The Markab Plague
by R. Bernstein

It was quickly clear, by the heavy contingent of security and federal agents, that Earth Gov suspected an intentionally released agent. And by the time the ships carrying the assistance teams from Earth Gov arrived, the Markab were dead. The case fatality was one-hundred percent. One-hundred percent of the population had been infected, and one-hundred percent of the infected population had died of the disease. The Markab home-world was a tomb populated by its non-sentient life and the microbes that had destroyed the population. Doctors and patients, young and elderly, males and females, all lay silent and immobile in the early stages of putrefaction. The sight of their rigor bombarded Havah as soon as she stepped off of the transport. Despite her time in public health, she had never encountered such a situation, a fatal pandemic. Even the doctors and other epidemiologists with them looked stunned. What made the sight doubly eerie was the complete lack of smell inside the suit. Around them was a sea of corpses and she was suspended in weird limbo above it, unable to sense anything other than the canned air. It was like watching a movie, through the face mask, something not quite real.

After a vociferous argument with several agents about what the outbreak investigation teams were or were not allowed to touch, and whose jurisdiction or crime scene this was, Dr. Satmahari stopped yelling and handed a slip of paper to the agent in charge. The agent gazed at it, silently handed the paper back, fixing the doctor with a withering stare, and outlined spots on a map. They would be allowed to collect samples from marked areas, observed by an agent. It was either that or order the whole outbreak investigation team back on the ship and home without samples, which was precisely what they would have done and had the right to do since it was now a restricted site. But someone back home wanted information badly enough and had enough power to override the typical protocol of both the military and the Bureau of Investigations.

* * * * * * * *

Dr. Satmahari's voice sounded unnaturally loud in the lull. "Well, there is no one to interview, we'll have to get tissue, and look through records." The field lab and decon zone, and morgue were set up and Havah went out collecting tissue and body fluid samples. A few bodies were brought in to the morgue for autopsy, and the medical examiner began her incisions. They kept their EVA suits on, while Havah assisted Dr. S with analyzing the samples, and coordinated the data collection between the morgue, micro, the field investigators, and Earth Central. The med examiner reported that the bodies she autopsied had died two and a half days ago. The organs had undergone a tremendous amount of damage at a rapid pace. Irregularities in the brain and spinal cord tissue suggested a demyelinating disease. Further analysis of the neurons confirmed that the myelin sheaths had been completely stripped, beginning with the bursting of the Markab red cells, a specialized set of cells responsible for the integrity of the body's myelin. This would have made the disease very much like an extremely accelerated version of multiple sclerosis. A review of medical charts from the computer system revealed that the case definition of symptoms all included the loss of balance and kinetic sense, dizziness, loss of sensation in various parts of the body, and eventually, paralysis, asphyxia, cardiac arrest, and death. The epidemic curves done on Markab records from Babylon 5 and two other regions with Markab populations indicated that the mean time from the first symptoms to death had been about 46 hours. The pathogen was, according to Stephen Franklin of Babylon 5, a virus, attacking and destroying the Markab red cells. No other species but the Pach'mara had physiology similar to the Markab enough to possess susceptible cells. Dr. Satmahari confirmed their safety and they removed their hoods.

Dr. Satmahari peered at the microscope screen. "It appears to be a coronavirus. Those spikes are hemagluttininŠ" He proceeded to begin analysis of the viral RNA. After another few hours, he emerged, his dark face drawn. Now it was Havah's turn to ask him if he was alright.

"I'm fine." He replied tersely.

"You don't look fine." Havah waited.

"I said I'm fine!" He stalked off to the lab again. Havah followed him. Something had clearly happened and she was stubborn enough to persist.

She entered the lab and he was facing the wall with his hands on his head. She sat and waited. After about twenty minutes, Dr. Satamahari went and sealed all the apertures so no one could hear or come in, and came back and sat down.

"About seven years ago I worked for the military in the Bio-Warfare division, in the Immunizations section. The Bio-warfare division is about prevention and protection of our populations against other bio-weapons. At least that's what I thought, until now. Well, I came across sequencing patterns for a genome that I had never seen before. I thought it was for a new vaccine. I wasn't supposed to see it, but let's just say that I had gotten clearance that I wasn't supposed to have. That sequence never came across our desks. I am certain that that sequence and the viral RNA are the same, or pieces of the same. I do not know why I am telling you this. Especially considering who your supervisor is." He looked at her. Fatalism was written in all of the lines of his face.

"I don't know my supervisor very well. Not well enough to tell him about one doctor's speculation."

He was visibly relieved.

She continued. "We need more information. The feds seem to think this was biological warfare. What do you think?"

He didn't answer.

"The Markab weren't at war or even in conflict with anyone, why would someone release an agent like this? In all-hazards training, we learned that the goal of biological terrorism isn't usually to kill huge bunches of people. It's really to disorient or disassemble the society by overwhelming the infrastructure. If enough sick people and enough worried well flood the health care system and lines of communications, the society's resources and/or military are decimated, leaving them vulnerable. I thought biological weapons weren't typically used for genocide? I know the government was thinking along those lines during the Earth-Minbari War, even though many officials won't admit it now. But the Minbari were a threat to us. Why would the Markab be seen as a threat, by anyone?"

"I don't knowŠ" He breathed. "Is there a possibility that motives could include the use of test populations?"

Havah's stomach churned. "I guess."

She went back to the field to think and scour. If this were a weapon, it would require a dispersal method. This virus had been air-borne, and biological weapons had unfortunately surpassed the old days of useless crop dusters, aerosol misters and bungled wet slurries. If there were any evidence to be had, she would have to find it quickly, and do it around the security. What had led the feds to believe that this was an agent? They had been sent before anyone knew the disease would prove so fatal, so they couldn't have known how devastating this disease would be. And why were they so interested in an agent used against a non-Human population, especially since policy appeared to be swinging towards focusing on humanity only? Dr. S thought he saw the viral sequence before, she thought with a shudder. And what of the other populations of Markab, in other locations? They were all dead too. Could it have spread so quickly, or was this some kind of concerted effort? Considering how virulent the virus appeared to be, it was possible that it could have spread to other ports of call across the galaxy. It would depend on the timing. Havah reviewed the data, medical records from hospitals, reports from the other ports. She began establishing temporal sequence. According to local physician's records, the pandemic on the homeworld had begun a day earlier than on Babylon 5, and two days earlier than on the other two outposts. It was three days from the homeworld to Babylon 5, but the incubation period could have begun with an absence of symptoms. She queried the computer to find the earliest case of all four sets of data. There it was. The index case had been on the Home-world. However, a number of others had followed within a few hours. It looked like they had all been exposed at similar times. She reviewed their medical charts all night and all the next day until her eyes were about to fall out of her head. They had all been outside for extended periods of time within the same couple of days, a week earlier. She reviewed the meteorological reports for those two days and plotted the first ring of cases on a geographic map. A chill sunk in as she overlaid the maps. The cases were scattered over a swath closely matching a jet stream of wind that had blown over the area during those two days. A week later, a syndrome unique in its rapid deterioration of patient reflexes, surfaced in local clinics. She checked the soil and water samples from across the planet. The microbe was everywhere. It had to have been an atmospheric release. And then was very likely spread from person-to-person across the galaxy.

Frantically, Havah hacked into copies of the flight records for the Markab ports for a week prior to the appearance of symptoms, copying the crystals and slipping away just before someone came. There was one record, and it could have been innocuous, of a ship that appeared to be having difficulties with its thrusters and, at the surface of the atmosphere had to abandon its attempts to land. It had returned to open space. The ship had been unregistered. There was no other information, but as Havah read the entry, she was almost certain that it had been the source of the release. Those were a lot of conclusions to jump to, but the coordinates at which the ship had abandoned its landing attempts matched a point in the jet stream, and the first case had been the closest to the coordinates of the ship, directly in the path of wind, ten degrees of latitude north of the ship's lowest coordinates. This information had to get to Entilzah Sinclair. It may be nothing, simply a lot of correlations, but the information could be discarded later after review.

No one had slept much in the windy quiet nights since coming here. And now it was time to return home. Nothing more could be done. That night before boarding, after the sun had set and the first three stars had come out in the clear sky, undimmed by the light pollution of a vibrant civilization, Havah stood in a bare field, faced the east and sang the Mourner's Kaddesh for the departed. "Yit'kadal v'yit'kadash sh'mey rabaŠ" Jewish or not, the Markab were a billion souls that deserved singing to wherever it was they were going.

* * * * * * * *

They arrived in the wee hours of morning, but Jensen wanted a report now. As she was walking to his office, the hairs rose on the back of her neck. Eyes had been there. She whirled around, but the hallway was empty behind her. Only a light bulb flickered spastically, the same one as always. Jensen was in his office pinning her with an officious stare as she sat to report. She cleared her throat and in that moment knew, just as she had known only with the force of hunch that the person at the end of her Anla Shok trial had been an enemy, that something sinister surrounded them, and that Jensen knew.

"The Markab are extinct, sir."

"Yes, I am aware of that. Tell me about the virus."

"It's similar to a coronavirus, we think. It was a positive sense RNA virus with spikes of hemagluttinin and another antigen that we didn't recognize. It replicates in the cytoplasm and uses the Golgi complex to bud out of the cell walls. It destroys the myelin sheaths around the neurons, starting with the red cells. The incubation period appeared to be about seven and a half days and was completely asymptomatic until the first symptoms appeared and then the time from symptoms until death averaged about 46 hours. The symptoms all began with a loss of coordination and equilibrium and then progressed rapidly to fever, atonia, blurry vision, slurred speech, descending flaccid paralysis, and eventually asphyxia and death. The index case reported with symptoms at midday on Monday, two weeks ago. There were a number of other cases following that one, at eleven different clinics within four hours of the index case, but from a wide region, spanning the path of the jet stream in the northeast. We believe that it was spread by this wind initially. It is very likely to have been an atmospheric phenomenon, since it was found all over the globe."

"What was its effect on other species?"

"None, sir. It's not pathogenic to Humans or any other race but the Pach'mara."

"And its potential for mutation? Can it change to affect other species?"

"I suppose it's possible, but not likely."

"What do you think was its origin?"

"I don't know sir. I've never seen it before, neither had the microbiologists, although the Markab have records of such a plague in a milder form occurring one thousand years ago."

"Same pathology?"

"Yes sir."

"So it existed on the planet before."

"That's difficult to determine. It's possible."

"What were the treatments during that epidemic?"

"Various chemical compounds, I'll have to check with an ethnobotanist and biochemist. They are all foreign to me. Dr. Franklin from Babylon 5 was able to construct a vaccine. But it was too late."

"I see. Thank you. I want a full report of all historical documents with references to the previous epidemic, and the data you found, tomorrow by noon."

"Yes sir." She left, knees shaking. She stared at the sculpted ceiling all night.

* * * * * * * *

In the morning, she called Dr. Satmahari before going to work. "Can I see you in your lab?"

"When?"

"Lunchtime."

"I'll be here."

She left for the office. Rounding a corner to the hallway abutting her office, she heard a familiar nasal voice, and saw a face that made her freeze and dive back behind the wall. Mr. Morden. He was here. And if he was here, so were they, somewhere near. She sunk against the wall, slowing her breathing and hoping neither he nor his watchers had seen her. They could be in front of her right now and she would never know. Morden receded down an opposite arm of the hallway, and she swept in after a minute as though nothing had happened. He had been to see Jensen. She checked the files and an appointment with him had been listed as a 'consultation'.

* * * * * * * *

That noon Havah showed up at the lab and most of the staff was gone. Dr. S closed the doors of his office and waited curiously.

"I want you to test my blood for antibodies to Grey Wind Fever."

"Francisella canitensis? Why?ŠOh the vaccine?"

She sat down and sighed as he drew her blood. She was taking as much of a chance as he felt he had been taking that day on Markab when he told her his thoughts. He would know that her blood wasn't Human, and right now that was no small confidence.

"I'll go over the blood and let you know."

"Thanks." She returned to work.

* * * * * * * *

At the end of the day, when again, most of the workers were gone, Havah returned for the results.

Dr. S eyed her strangely. "You know that you don't have a human blood type? In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say it was Minbari."

"I know." She paused and peered back at him, eyes unwavering. "I never knew either of my parents. I fought for Earth in the war. I'd do it again if I had to."

"I wasn't questioning youŠThere were no antibodies for francisella canitensis. There were, however, some other antibodies that I hadn't seen before, to the virus we discovered last week. They were in my blood too."

"I thought that the disease couldn't affect Humans?"

"It can't. But it is a foreign substance in the body, and so the immune system can still form antibodies to it, even if they don't do anything. They're markers of exposure. And there was something elseŠThe immune globulin was IgG. It should have been IgM. You understand?"

"IgM is immediate post-exposure. IgG isn't."

"Right. For us to have an IgG response means that we were exposed weeks ago, before going to the Markab planet."

"The Grey Wind vaccine?"

"That would be my guess."

"But Dr. Franklin had to develop a vaccine to this thing. And they could have given this to him, to us, to bring to the Markab!"

"Maybe. It may not have been a functional vaccine, and it wouldn't have gotten there in time. And vaccinating the Markab may not have been the goal of whoever infected them."

Havah just sat there in shock. Dr. S didn't seem to be any less incredulous. "I'm keeping a record of these results."

She nodded dumbly. "I'll let you know if I find anything else."

"Likewise."

* * * * * * * *

The following day, after everyone left for the day, Havah retrieved the solid-state recorder, and retreated to her flat. She hit Play. Morden's voice was clear, and Jensen's, and a faint sussuration, like static, but Havah knew it was not the poly-vinyl. It was Them.

"The data you requested on the Markab. It's all there. What the hell was that?! Genocide wasn't part of our contract!"

"It was a tragic mistake. You couldn't have known of the virulence, no one could. My associates were only trying to assist them. The plague was terrible in the past, and so we thought that introducing an attenuated strain would inoculate them against it in the future. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. You are familiar with that theory, it's fueled human immunization for centuries."

"Well then why was this kept from the Markab government?"

"It would have caused unnecessary panicŠ.Look," Morden's voice was silky, "What happened was extremely distressing to me and my associates. Now we know, and Humans will be better protected. In addition, my associates have agreed to consider your proposal for an examination of some of their technology, under their supervision of course. They would prefer telepaths, as I mentioned. Their language is extremely difficult to learn and so it would facilitate faster education if they could communicate with telepaths. If you could organize this with Psi Corps, I'm sure that we could come to a satisfactory agreement."

"I'll meet with our liaison from the Corps. It may take time."

"Of course. Contact me whenever you have the arrangements."

* * * * * * * *

Havah just sat in mortified silence, and finally sprawled across the duvet, immersed in nightmare.

She was piloting a flyer, but it wasn't like any flyer she'd ever flown before. It was clumsy and made of scrap metal. It looked like one of those antique fighter planes she had seen in the Smithsonian, the kind people used in the old World Wars. As she flew, her view took in the plane as though she were outside of her body. The plane had a name, just like the Star Furies, and the cruisers. It read Enola Gay. The plane was passing over green montane islands, and she could see a large city. A feeling of foreboding came over her. It had to do with the cargo she was ordered to drop, a bomb, an old fashioned one. But this one was different. She knew as soon as she released the catch and confirmed that the load was airborne that nothing in her world or anyone else's would ever be the same again. She sped away, knowing somehow that she had to get away fast. The plane was so slow, and she had the feeling in the dream, of running through molasses, and running and running and never moving an inch, and there was no time to get away. She didn't see the impact, but the aftermath made the ground and water shudder with displaced atoms. In the dream she looked back and saw the mushroom cloud billowing miles above the city where her cargo had landed, enveloping the world in a blossoming engorged sun, scorching and scarring the very air. And then she was back on Markab, and instead of the silhouettes of vaporized Japanese, there were sick Markab everywhere, struggling for breath. They ceased all motion and a sea of glassy frozen eyes gazed back at her.

Havah tossed about on the covers, spotted with sweat, and lapsed back into dream.

She was piloting another ship, on the Battle of the Line, but this time, it wasn't the same battle. Minbari ships were defending Earth against another enemy far greater than they had been. They thought the war was over. They thought they had stopped the invasion, but she watched in helpless horror as alien gliders too far away from her into the atmosphere released their own cargo, a black powdery poison. A plague.

Havah jerked upright, sheets soaked with perspiration, trembling from head to toe. She stumbled into the shower, tossing the sheets in the recycling hamper, and turned on the water as cold as it would go, until her skin was numb. She sat in the tub, reviewing the recent events, the evidence and the epiphanies that she hadn't allowed herself while reporting or trying to trudge through the past few days, reviewing the air of antipathy toward aliens that had permeated everywhere she went, the paranoia. The water streamed down her skin, pummeling her in little pinpoint hammers, washing away suds. The Jews had a word for what she felt. Tom'ay. Unclean. She understood intimately now. It was when you did something terrible, and had to live with the memory and the feeling of it in your mouth and under your skin. The Shadows were here, the Devourers. Our government is helping them, its fear of aliens delivering us into their hands, validating our reasons for being afraid. Havah slid down into the tub, ignoring the pounding water in her face, wishing she could drown in little quarter-millimeter jets of spray. But she didn't. She toweled off and went back to bed, and lay ruminating until the watery blue dawn touched the windowsill. Jensen was a smart man. How could he have let that story about mass inoculation slide? That was completely implausible and he had to have known. But they had easily distracted him by dangling the promise of technology in front of him. Is he afraid that whatever happened to the Markab will happen to us? Is that what the people making those decisions are being led to believe? There were no answers to any of these questions and her alarm was about to go off. She shut it off and fell asleep again.

* * * * * * * *

The next day, she put in for immediate leave, claiming exhaustion from the events of the previous couple of weeks. Strangely, Jensen agreed. He looked as haggard as she felt, and she knew why, but gratefully let him sign the leave slip without a word.

* * * * * * * *

As she was leaving for her shuttle, a man motioned to her in the shuttleport. Now this is the scene the port security always warn you about with those ridiculous questions about whether you packed your own bags or let a complete stranger pack them! Could this be any more shady? She thought. But he didn't try to slip dust into her bag, so she supposed that was a start.

"Havah Lassee?"

She said nothing.

"You don't know me, but I know you. I saw you on Proxima Three and I saw you dust those Minbari units."

"So?"

"So, I've been watching you and there is something that you should know."

"Who are you?"

"Lieutenant Commander William Byron. I have information about Earth Force One on the day of the assassination."

"Assassination?"

"Assassination. There were records of a new engineer brought in on the shift change just before launch. I knew the guy who was replaced. He'd been working that shift and that assignment for five years, and there was no reason for his re-assignment. The new technician was brought in supposedly to repair a couple of problems before launch, with new technology. But Joe'd gone over the ship and nothing was wrong."

"Could something have happened in space?"

"Yes, except that the explosion was supposed to be caused by the fusion core. And I found a record of the cargo inventory with several extra units of liquid nitrogen. Normally that wouldn't matter, we use it for all kinds of things. But I thought you might recognize the idea."

Havah's stomach sunk. She did know that trick, she had used it on the Minbari. "Do you have the record?"

"No, I tripped a virus and it was destroyed."

"Wouldn't the duty officer have to approve a shift change like that?"

"Yes. It gets worse." He handed her a crystal.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me. We're in a shuttleport and you're handing me a package, do you really think I'm going to take that?!"

"It's just a news report. It's hard to find now because it was taken off the air, and the President tried to explain it away. I know you have no reason to trust me‹"

"You're damn right I don't! Why me?"

"Because you can be trusted."

"How do you know that?"

"I told you, I've been watching you. And I told you my name, didn't I?"

"You could just be making all that up!"

He smiled slightly, and raised his hands in surrender. "I don't have any other way of convincing you. It is up to you." He disappeared.

If he was telling the truth, then he had just forfeited his life, if she turned out to be the wrong person. If this was a trapŠShe just stood there, torn in a morass of indecision. I'm going to wind up blindfolded in San Quentin Colony, with my face plastered across the evening news! The shuttle was boarding. She looked at where he had been, and then looked at the crystal, and sighed. Rangers risk their lives. 'Hello ma'am, have your bags left your sight at any time?' No. 'Has anyone asked you to take any object aboard for them?' YES! Wanna see? She shoved the crystal in her pocket, and flinched when a passenger put his hand on her shoulder to pass her in the aisle. Her heart pounded until the flight took off.

In her sleeping compartment, she plugged in the crystal to her hand-held viewer. It was a vid of Vice-President Clarke, in the hospital where he had been taken for a work-up after claiming illness. Despite his malady, he was in the children's ward, looking quite healthy. He was reading Hope for the Flowers to the children, filmed by news crews, when a secret serviceman entered and whispered the news of the explosion to him. He nodded to the man curtly and continued reading. For twenty minutes. Havah realized as she watched, that these were not the reactions of a surprised man, not the reactions of a man suddenly bereft of his esteemed political mate. He had known. It was not proof exactly, but it was clear enough. He had, of course, explained his reaction belatedly as flu-fatigue, but Havah knew now without a doubt that the assassination, the coup d'etat had been real.