The Long Trial, Part One
Chapter Three: The Station
by R. Bernstein, November 8, 2002

Life at Babylon 5 was never boring. There were 20 million teeming forms of life, not counting the ones big enough to see. Epidemiology there was a challenge during the most calm of times. Not only did Havah have to contend with the usual Human-borne suspects of all varieties: various food-borne illnesses, salmonella, staph poisoning, Norwalk-type virus, ecoli, hepatitis’ A, B, and C, favorite oldies like influenza, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and various stubborn sexually transmitted diseases, syphilis, antibiotic resistant gonorrhea, HIV, as old as Human history. But in addition, she now had to track various alien-borne viruses, food-borne outbreaks and occasionally a vector-borne disease called catarka, in the Centauri tongue, since it was transmitted by Centauri vole. They knew there was an outbreak coming when annoyed technicians began finding dead voles in the air ducts. The bug kept them on their toes, waiting to buzz pest control with the first sign of a vole invasion. It was capable of crossing a number of species, Centauri, Narn, Human, even Minbari and a number of species from the non-aligned worlds, and it wasn’t the only bug capable of crossing species.

Some of the battle was anticipating the likelihood that alien viruses would cross other alien or Human viruses, replicate, and produce newer, more virulent strains of virus, resistant to both species’ immune systems, or to drugs. Like good old influenza. Boy, there was a joy. Instead of a defined influenza season, there was year-round surveillance due to the fact that it was a port of call, there were at least ten species of alien susceptible to the flu, with a similar pathology in all of them, except that since winter occurred at different times on most of the home-worlds that these people came from, it could pass through their neck of the woods at any time! The potential for a station-wide outbreak was always present, and the real threat was not that it was more severe in symptomatology for some of the species, although this was certainly true. It was that Med Lab could easily be overwhelmed by hundreds of coughing sneezing, feverish, aching, runny alien noses, wherever their noses might be.

As the "baby epi," it was one of her duties to assist in communicable disease surveillance. It was an entry-level position, but since they were an understaffed and small health department, contracted by EarthForce, her surveillance spanned the gamut of diseases and approaches, from the old behavioral intervention specialist activities used in the heyday of the HIV pandemic, to the classical John Snow infectious disease tracking methods, foodborne-outbreak questionnaires, etc. And in addition, the department also had to collaborate with station military personnel in the matter of emergency management, and bioterrorism preparedness, and OSHA regulation, environmental and occupational epidemiology, accident rates, Workman’s Comp and other more bureaucratic matters. Which is what brought her to this blasted and horribly frustrating meeting with Commander Sinclair, his public information officer, James Hauth, a federal stuffed shirt named Oren Zento, and Havah’s fiery-tempered supervisor, Carmen Santana.

Carmen (she insisted that her employees call her by her first name) was a matronly Puerto Rican woman from New York, which was probably why she didn’t rub Havah the wrong way as she seemed to do with some others aboard B5. About 5 foot nothing, with unkempt dark hair streaked with white, often in a house-dress, she was matronly in the sense that she would send anyone home with containers of chicken mole if she heard a sniffle or cough in the office and call fifteen times an hour to make sure they were all right, and was equally likely to chase someone down with a wooden spoon yelling at the top of her lungs if she was unhappy with them. There was no need to guess about what Carmen was thinking, ever. She was the most straight-shooting person Havah had ever met, to the great exasperation of both Oren Zento and Commander Sinclair. But her homespun style and lack of tact had always been tolerated, barely, by both the CDC and EarthForce because she was a crackerjack epidemiologist, a thorough scientist, and very often right when they were wrong. And they knew it, a fact which was also probably being rued by all of the men in the room, Sinclair, because she bore bad news and he had no idea what to do about it, Hauth, because it meant more public commotion that he would have to assuage, and Zento, because that meant that she had a strong voice with OSHA and there was a better chance of intimidating an angry army of Narns than intimidating Carmen.

Havah glanced over at Sinclair, the care-worn lines of his eyes deep with exhaustion and frustration. He was presently looking as though he was going to throttle both Carmen and Zento, who were animatedly trying to talk or yell over one another. This was another reason for Mr. Hauth’s presence, to keep leashes on the various angry contenders before the meeting could turn into a brawl. The dock workers were on strike, and it was no surprise. Their equipment was sub-standard, their pay was a pittance to most other people who had to earn a living on an expensive station like Babylon 5, they had laughable benefits for union workers, and to top it all off, when a man was killed as a result of long hours and faulty machinery, there was no redress. Commander Sinclair’s hands were tied, since budget allocations were set by the Senate budget committees, so that it was not allowed for him to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. And the Senate, in its infinite armchair-warrior wisdom, had sent this ‘mediator’ to settle the strike. Commander Sinclair had called this meeting with the hope that the report which the Epidemiology Department provided on the work-related injury rates among dock-workers, would compel Zento’s office to give them more money. It wasn’t working.

"The budget that we’ve prepared should account fully for all repair and wages! If it does not, then the money is being spent incorrectly! These rates are not significant!"

"Not significant! What do you know from significant? I wasn’t aware of your degree in statistics, Mr. Zento! The OSHA guidelines specifically state that the equipment meet these standards listed," Carmen stabbed her finger at the lines of the document, "and our inspector found at least four violations in a preliminary visit!"

"Violations which are the responsibility of the commander of the station to see fixed!"

"Which I could and would do with a reasonable budget, Mr. Zento!" That galvanized the commander. His peregrine eyes flashing beneath a glowering brow, "These men work long hours, unsafely-long, for barely enough pay to make ends meet, and their benefits package is worse than any of my lowest-paid men, and on top of that, the equipment they work with needs to be replaced rather than fixed. How do you expect us to fix these machines on this budget, with duct tape?"

"The budget we ..."

"The budget you’ve prepared is wrong!" Carmen interjected. "It’s one thing to sit on Earth and propose a budget based on inaccurate or theoretical information, it’s another to try to impose that budget in reality after having been given real data that does not support your numbers!"

This was getting nowhere. Havah raised her hand. She knew that this was a school-kid tactic, but she couldn’t think of any other way of getting their attention. She hated trying to yell over people. They completely ignored her.

"Guys…gentleman, and ladies," James Hauth spoke in his best "Let’s pipe down" voice. "We keep getting hung up on this particular argument, ‘this budget is wrong, no it’s not.’ Instead of continuing to argue fruitlessly, Mr. Zento, have you looked at their report yet? It was sent to you prior to the meeting, have you looked at it?"

"I flipped through it, yes." Mr. Zento’s squinty eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, his lip turned up with an arrogance unparalleled by any but those in the budget committees of EarthGov.

Valiantly masking his exasperation, Hauth continued, "Well, Mr. Zento, maybe you should take some more time and read it, think about it, really consider the data we’re giving you and we could meet again. These ladies are excellent epidemiologists and if they’re trying to tell you that there is something wrong, I’d listen. And I helped the Commander prepare his estimate, so I know it’s not off." Sinclair had done well to choose a public information officer with a knack for diplomacy, rivaling his own. James Hauth was also an imposing man when he chose: a six-foot five ex-Marine with distinguished salt-and-pepper hair in his mid-fifties with decades of public information experience, who could command a room full of belligerent and fearless reporters with the tone of his voice. Before Mr. Zento could protest, Hauth added, "And I believe that this young lady has been waiting very patiently to speak."

Carmen had warned her before the meeting, "Remember, you’re an Indian, let the Chiefs do all the arguing. I don’t want any of this coming down on you if things don’t go well. You’re here to learn." And yet, here she was sticking her two cents in. "Uh, well, maybe I could go over the points in the report. See here, this cell means that the number of work-related injuries went up in this quarter and in this cell are the number of machines requiring a service report and the .05 means that it is statistically significant, and in this 2 by 2 table are the number of work-related injuries and the numbers of hours worked per day, and that’s significant too. And here are frequency tables indicating that both the incidence of injuries and the machines requiring service and the hours have all increased. See, we did a retrospective analysis of workers who have been injured or had incident reports with this machinery, and the odds ratio was that workers who had had an injury or incident report were 4 times more likely to have been working this many hours at this pay than workers not reporting any injuries. And the percent increase in injuries is this much higher than last quarter, before their pay was cut ... see the incidence rate of injuries is this figure, and the incidence rate of injuries for these docks on these other stations and ports is this much lower, and their budget is this figure." She leaned across the table and indicated the tables, not registering the look on Zento’s face, intent on the idea that if she just explained everything right ... "So, that’s why we’re saying that there is strong evidence ..."

"Miss, I am not an idiot! I can read, and I am telling you and your Department, that I don’t care what your little tables say, the budget is what it is, and it is reasonable, and I don’t need some careless student with a personal vendetta against long work hours to come in and blame faulty machinery instead of paying attention and learning to use machinery safely!"

She was aware that her appearance, since and even during her tour of duty in the Marines had been somewhat disorganized. Her hair was often ruffled, and her clothes wrinkled, no matter how crisp she tried to make them. Like Pig Pen from the Peanuts Gang had been with dirt, she was with wrinkles. It had been a constant source of push-ups and laps and other punishments. And she knew that the style of dress she chose, often made people think she was a "hippie". But here in this setting, she couldn’t believe what she had just heard, and apparently neither could the rest of the folk in the room. Carmen was instantly on her feet, and Commander Sinclair and James Hauth had both gone bolt-upright in their chairs.

"How dare you!" Carmen yelled, "Havah is one of my epidemiologists, and a damn intelligent one, she isn’t a pot-smoking student here for a class. She did a bulk of this research and it is sound research! Don’t you dare try to intimidate her simply because she is young!"

"And another thing, Mr. Zento ..." Sinclair’s voice had gone deadly quiet, but it was a voice that could have cut through solid duranium alloy. "Not only is Miss Lassee not a student, but she is a veteran of the Earth-Minbari War. She fought on the Line, and at Proxima Three. Where were you? They came here to give you information that you should be considering, and I would recommend that you do not resort to insults again in my meeting room!" Both older soldiers were glaring at Zento intensely.

Oren Zento opened his mouth again to reply, but Havah cut in, knowing that this would be her only opportunity, all meekness gone. "Mr. Zento, Commander Sinclair is right. All you have succeeded in accomplishing in making such wildly inaccurate assumptions is to display your profound lack of professionalism. We came here to present you with the cold hard numbers, and the cold hard facts. Here they are, these are the incidence rates, this is the minimum estimate to fix these violations to the satisfaction of OSHA requirements. If these requirements are not met by this date, the station, and in lieu of the station, your office, will be fined this amount, which will cost you this much more money than providing a budget that would allow for fixing or replacing these machines or otherwise allowing for a safe working environment for these men. That is the bottom line." Her cheeks were burning, but she stood her ground and stared at him, her timbre even.

He leaned forward across the table, his pointy face twitching. "Are you threatening me, young woman?"

Before Carmen could lose her temper and leap across the table at him, Havah leaned back and said icily, "No, Mr. Zento. I’m not threatening you, I’m just a ‘student’ I don’t have any control. OSHA is the one who decides on penalties. I merely do my job and provide them with the information necessary to do theirs. I am in public health, it is our job to be concerned about the health of the public and try to see that their needs are met, that being the definition of PUBLIC HEALTH. If you don’t like the information that we are giving you, then do something productive about it instead of trying to intimidate people who are simply being honest, and threatening anyone in your way." She went to sit down, but Carmen stopped her, "Commander, there really is nothing more for us to do here. I recommend that we table this until tomorrow, and Mr. Zento," her voice was dripping with acid, "can either look at the data or not."

Commander Sinclair took a deep breath, "I agree, it’s almost time for our meeting with Miss Connelly, the Labor Advocate. I’ll show her this information."

Zento shot venom at Sinclair. "It will not change the decision."

Carmen made a noise of disgust, "Thank you Commander, you have been very patient!" and walked out. Sinclair merely gave Zento a lidless stare, like a cobra, and Hauth stood up to get some air before the next ‘meeting.’

Havah followed Carmen out into the hallway, at which time Carmen shook her head and beamed at her, "I’m really proud of you, you did really well in there. I know you have a hard time speaking up, and I don’t know if that was the wisest time to do it, but it was good, you can’t let people get away with that. He didn’t have the right to say that to you. I know you like to be soft-spoken, but sometimes you have to be assertive, and you did, you did great, I am so proud! And you were very polite about it too, I’m not so polite." Carmen said in a sardonic voice and swatted her on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "You just have to know how to navigate the system. You have to think about politics too, but you’ll learn that when you’re an old fart like me!" She grinned and laughed. "Well, I’m starving, let’s get some lunch. I know you’re poor, it’s on me, come on, and you can fill me in on the syphilis outbreak."

* * * * * * *

She went to visit James Hauth to give him the weekly influenza report, as usual, and as usual, sat for about another half hour or so, just chatting. She liked talking with him. They were both avid fans of Rebo and Zooty, and the conversations usually started with them, and wandered to other topics, martial arts among them. He had taken Ai Kido, and she had taken Kung Fu and Tai Chi, and very much missed it. She had found it necessary to be away from her Kung Fu school and most of the friends she had there, in order to take the job on Babylon 5, and there was no satellite school under the same people here. There was one person aboard the station who belonged to the same network of schools, a fighter pilot named Greg Seymour, so they occasionally got together to practice, schedules permitting. But there was no one else she knew who shared this interest in the same way. Except James. He was comfortable to talk with and a wealth of information about EarthGov, EarthForce and a number of other things she found fascinating. This time they discussed the meeting.

"How’d you like that meeting, that was great, wasn’t it?" He crossed his eyes sarcastically. "What’d I tell you about some of these people they send, ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up!’"

She laughed mirthlessly. "I don’t understand why they’re like that. What makes them pick a number of dollars and stick to it and refuse to budge from it. I know they must plan it out in some fashion so it can’t be arbitrary, but why does it always seem like it has to be written in stone. Maybe I just don’t get budget stuff, it’s not like I’m a whiz at my own budget." She grimaced. "It just seems like if it we don’t give people enough money to do their jobs, then things are going to get done either half-way, or not at all. You can’t expect people to work for that."

"Bingo, you got it on the nose, but you’re trying to think logically, they’re not. They have their constructed bottom line, which is based off of information that they have compiled back home, for what they think are similar operations at home on Earth. Except it doesn’t work the same out here. But a lot of the people in charge don’t want to lose face at a certain point, they have to be right. They can’t have a Commander that they didn’t want here, and a few epidemiologists pointing out their errors."

"They don’t want Commander Sinclair here? Why?"

"Ohh-ho, he is not well-liked back home. First of all, he speaks his mind, He’s brutally honest, although he is diplomatic about it. But he’s not malleable to their agendas, and they really want someone who is. Second, they don’t trust him. He was on a Minbari ship, and he was requested by the Minbari to this post, above higher-ranking officers. I can tell you this because it isn’t classified information, and most of it you know already, because you were there too."

Her eyes widened, and he reassured her. "Don’t think that doesn’t make them nervous. It’s different for you though, you aren’t in the service anymore, and you’re young, so you aren’t much of a threat. Also, they don’t have as much control over you, and Carmen is very good at protecting her people. If they tried to get you fired or laid off, Carmen would be down their throats, and she’s more trouble than they want to deal with. You don’t have any power, so they’re not concerned with you, but Sinclair. He has the potential of being very influential right now, more than he knows, and things are changing back home. People are getting more and more xenophobic. I don’t like the feel of things back home right now. It didn’t used to be like this, and I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. There are some very ugly politics going on. Just be glad we’re out here, although I think it will come here sooner or later. Just keep your ear to the ground."

She looked thoughtful and didn’t say anything for a moment, and he added. "Zento, that little you-know-what, is going to pull the Rush Act."

"What’s the Rush Act?"

He tinkered on the computer for a moment and pulled up a file. "Here, the Rush Act states that it is the duty of the commanding officer to use any means necessary to end a strike." They read in silence for a moment, but her eyes kept returning to that phrase, "any means necessary" So did his.

"That seems awfully vague," she said.

"It is. It’s legalese. That language deliberately uses generalizations so that they can go back and change things or reinterpret them, and then make revisions. That’s why the administrative code gets revised every 5 years or so."

"So can anyone interpret it the way they want?"

"Well, it has to be defensible in a court of law, but if you can get a lawyer to defend it and win ..." They looked at each other.

She began carefully, "He can’t re-allocate the budget, right? That’s against the rules. But it’s his responsibility to end this strike, so his back is against the wall. But maybe it’s not, maybe this is a loop-hole. If he is required by his military duties to do whatever he has to do, maybe that releases him from constraints that normally bind him, and powers that he doesn’t normally have can be at his disposal. It doesn’t specify what means he can or can’t use. So maybe this can clear him to re-allocate the budget? Do you think he would want to do that? Is there enough money elsewhere?"

"I know for a fact that he wants to do that, he’s been griping about the allocations since he got them." He grinned slyly. "I don’t know if this will fly, but I’ll run it by him and see what he says. We’ll have to check with the station attorney before doing anything to make sure he can back us up if we decide to run with it. We’ll try anything at this point. I’m glad we pulled this thing up and looked at what it actually said. As always, it’s fun working with you!"

"I guess I better get back and do some actual work before Carmen starts thinking that Zento caught and shoved me out of an airlock."

He laughed, "I think it is more likely that he’ll be the one to wind up out an airlock if he keeps up the way he’s going with the Commander. I was getting ready to knock the three of them out and lock them in a padded room together with three sets of boxing gloves. I’ll let you know what the Boss says after I talk to him later."

"Cool, thanks." She returned to her office.

* * * * * * *

The Commander wasn’t sure about the idea, and unfortunately, neither was the attorney, since there were members of the Senate involved in the decision. But the next day, there was a soft chime at her door. She pressed the lock and saw the Commander was leaning on the lintel outside.

"Hi, are you busy?"

"No, no! Please come in. She gathered a mound of communicable disease reports from the chair and dumped them precariously on top of another ungainly pile in the center of her desk. She sat down to pay attention, and realized she couldn’t see him over the top of the swaying pile, and pushed it gingerly to one side. This unbalanced the pile and there followed a cascade of paper, which they both tried unsuccessfully to catch.

He helped her pick them up, trying not to laugh rudely. "A little busy maybe?"

She sighed, "More horribly disorganized than anything else really."

He laughed, a deep resonant laugh, an almost familiar voice, a very familiar voice really. His dark eyes and the shape of his jaw were familiar too. He had been present at a couple of emergency management task force meetings, but she hadn’t gotten a chance to consider his features much. There had just been this niggling sense of recognition, like the Actor Game she always played when she was watching a vid, to the annoyance of everyone else watching. She would see an actor or actress’ face and try to name all the other things she had seen them in before, and would occasionally get stuck on a familiar face with the name and where she had seen them before, hovering just out of reach in her brain. Ultimately, she never forgot a face, ever, she thought with pride, and it would come to her…probably at three in the morning in the middle of a deep sleep. The place where she had seen him before would just be there without effort. In the meantime, she peered at him as the memory slipped around like a handful of eels through her mental grasp.

"Are you all right?" he asked, at her look of concentration.

"Oh yes, Commander, I was just wondering if I’d seen you before. I’ve been thinking that your voice was familiar since I met you at the emergency management meeting a while back."

He looked thoughtful. "I’ve been wondering the same thing. I know you were on the Line, it’s possible that we encountered one another back in one of the docks ... Anyway, I know you and James Hauth are buddies so you probably already heard, but I just thought I’d drop by and tell you that we went through with the idea you guys came up with. I decided to let Zento have his Rush Act. Be careful what you wish for, you know. So he ordered it. I had Garibaldi and half of security down there expecting a riot; and just when Zento was licking his chops waiting for the blood, I told the workers that they’d get their new machines and better pay from the defense budget, because the Rush Act allowed me to do whatever was ‘necessary’ to end the strike. And then I told Zento where he could stick his objections. The attorney wasn’t sure we could get away with it, and ultimately I’m fairly certain it will come back to bite me in the butt. There is no way they will let that solution slide for long. It’s too soft for them. So this Act is only a stop-gap measure, but there were no better ideas."

She didn’t bother smothering a snicker. "Wow, so what did Zento say?"

"He blustered, as Garibaldi put it, like Yosemite Sam, for a few minutes about our not getting away with this, but there wasn’t anything he could really do. I’m pretty sure there are going to be some angry calls from certain Senators waiting for me by tomorrow, but ..." He shrugged. "It’s over for now, as far as I’m concerned. If they have a problem with the budget, they can come down here and try to fix it themselves instead of sending a ‘mediator’. Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys. That was a clever idea and thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’m always running around and so it’s harder than it should be to get my attention, but I didn’t want you to think that your suggestions or work was unappreciated. I’m just not as good as I should be about making time to tell people that. I’ll send an email to your supervisor telling her that too."

"Thanks, Commander! I grew up in a family of Jewish lawyers, and being a student for so long, I got used to being poor and digging in the sofa for spare change, so I guess I just figured that this is a much bigger sofa." She realized too late how ridiculous that sounded, but he burst into a belly laugh and his face lightened.

After catching his breath, he said, "That’s it, next time some diplomat complains about the size of their quarters, I’ll just tell them to dig under the couch! Ehehehe." He tapped the lintel with his palm. "I’ll let you get back to work, Miss Lassee. Thanks again."

She watched him go before shutting the door. He really is a devastatingly good-looking man, isn’t he? A bit older, but at least he’s mature, and dark, just the way I like ‘em. NO, nononono, never get involved with people at work. She shook herself out of reverie and returned to the database.