they used to hang out.'
'Public Assembly Laws they call them.' Ice all but spat the words. 'No gatherings of more than a certain number of people within a kilometer of Los Angeles. The Colonel must be going nuts,' she said. 'He's getting positively medieval.'
'Does anybody have any ideas on how the virus is spreading?' Jonny asked.
'On a molecular level, the thing's just a lousy cold bug. A rhinovirus. Vanilla as you can get,' Ice replied.
'What I saw on that micrograph at the clinic sure didn't look like a cold virus,' said Jonny.
'Right,' said Ice. 'It's like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes. You know, open up one box and there's a little box inside, you open up the next box, there's a smaller one inside that, and on and on. On one level, this thing looks like a phage, on another level, it's just a cold bug. But the levels keep going. The molecular structure of this thing's dense. We know something else, too. At least, we're reasonably sure.'
'Sure of what?' asked Jonny.
'It's man-made.'
'How do you know?' Jonny wished he could see Ice's face as she talked. He could usually learn as much from her expressions as from what she said.
'Partly it's just a hunch' (She would be frowning now.)', but natural bonds just don't feel like this mess. It's like somebody tried to squeeze ten pounds of ugly into an eight pound box.'
'Tell him about the war,' said Sumi.
'What war?' asked Jonny.
'I'm coming to it,' Ice said. 'It looks like what we got here is an ultra-complex retrovirus, something back in the 'nineties they called a layered virus. A primary bug attacks a system, in our case, the bug is a viral analog of leprosy. It causes whatever damage it can, but eventually the system's defenses kill it. Here's the tricky part, though-'
'There's another virus,' said Jonny.
'You got it, doll, ' said Ice. 'At some point, we don't know what triggers it, but a secondary virus is activated. It uses the damage caused by the first virus to attack the already weakened system. In our case, the secondary virus uses the peripheral nerve damage caused by the leprosy to travel backwards, on a substrate of nerve cell axons, up into the brain. Almost the exact reverse of neuroblast migration. We think it might be modeled on that.'
'What's the pathology of the second virus?' Jonny asked.
'Silence. Syphilis,' Sumi said.
'Jesus.'
'Parenchymatous neurosyphilis, to be exact,' said Ice. 'A really hyped-up version. Years worth of nerve damage get compressed into a few days. Death occurs a week to two weeks after the symptoms manifest.' She took a breath. 'It's a motherfucker, too. Physical, mental and personality breakdown, epileptic attacks, lightning pains, tremors; the full whack. Patient's pupils get small and irregular.'
'Argyll Robertson pupils,' Jonny said.
'Right. Looks like they got bugs in their eyes.' Ice'svoice trailed off, then it came back loud, full of frustration. 'And the syphilis is an analog, too, of course. So none of our standard therapies are worth shit. Personally, I wouldn't go through it-'
'Who would?' asked Jonny.
'I mean I wouldn't want to die that way,' said Ice. 'I think if I found out I had the bug, I'd do myself before I'd go through all that.'
'Yeah,' whispered Sumi. He could feel the woman move, leaning toward Ice to comfort her.
Jonny thought that it was probably night outside. Even in the relative quiet of evening, the sounds and smells of the ocean lent a subtle sense of life to the old fish farm that Jonny appreciated. Raw sensory data, enough to keep from feeling completely disconnected with the world, poured through the seaward vents, sounds and scents changing radically with the passing of the day. There were no chittering dolphins sounds now, just the quiet lapping of water and the scratching of crabs in the empty pools. Farther away were human sounds. Occasional hammering, voices, the momentary roar of a car engine. It would not be unpleasant, thought Jonny, to spend the rest of his life here.
'Tell me about the war,' he said.
'Down by the port, we liberated this warehouse of some guns and fuel, and ended up this case. Had some floppy discs full of declassified military documents. The war was that Arab and Jap thing back in the 'nineties,' said Ice. 'Seems NATO's bio-warfare arm was working on something a lot like the layered virus we're looking at now. Operation Sisyphus. Trouble was, back then, they couldn't always trigger either virus and when they did, they couldn't always protect their troops. A lot of people died. There's apparently still a zone in northern France that's off limits to civvies. After all that, the project got a bad name; the research was considered too expensive and too dangerous, so when the war-talk cooled down, the project died. And the techs went back to making the world safe for conventional warfare.'
'You think our virus could be the same one they were working on back then?' asked Jonny.
'A much more refined version, yeah. I'd be real surprised if in the last seventy years, some of that original data didn't get walked out of there from time to time,' Ice replied. 'I mean, we weren't even looking for it.'
Jonny nodded and his chin momentarily brushed Sumi's hand, which rested his shoulder. 'It fits,' he said. 'There's a New Palestine cell operating in the city. They've been beaming leper videos to the folks back home. Zamora told me they were just a propaganda unit, but he was lying.'
'Hell, could be Aoki Vega or the goddamn Alpha Rats, for all the difference it makes,' said Ice.
'She's right,' said Sumi. 'If this is some germ warfare thing, we're probably not going to find any easy treatments for it.'
'Fuck it, if the Arabs want this city, they can have it,' said Jonny. 'Groucho already talked to me about Mexico. He says we can be down there in a couple of days.'
'I'm not going,' said Ice. 'Sumi'll take you, and I'll come later.'
'You still playing the artistic anarquista?' Jonny asked.
'Fuck you,' snapped Ice. 'I've got commitments here. I'm a Croaker and that means I'm part of this revolution, no matter what you think of it.'
Jonny turned to her voice. 'Excuse me, but wasn't that you a little while ago saying me how much you wanted us to be together again? Well, here we are.' He waited for her to say something and when she did not he said, 'What's the matter? You bored already?'
He felt her get up and leave the bed; an emptiness developed in her wake, a sense of loss that was more profound than the simple lack of her physical presence. He put out his arm, but she was not there and he could not find her. Ice's practiced steps were light and almost silent from months of guerrilla raids and street warfare. Her sudden absence reminded of his helplessness. 'Ice?' he said.
'I'm doing this.' Her voice was firm and low, the tone she always used when she wanted to project assurance, but was afraid her voice might crack. 'You can help me or not, make this easy or hard, but I'm in the for the duration.'
'Why are you being such a shithead, Jonny?' asked Sumi. She shook his sleeve gently. 'What's the matter?'
'Shit. I'm afraid,' he said. 'I'm afraid for her and you. And I'm afraid for me. I don't want to end up alone.'
'You won't be alone,' said Sumi. 'I'm going with you. Ice will come.'
'He's afraid I'm going to take a walk again,' came Ice's voice.
'Shouldn't I be?' he asked.
'No.'
He breathed deeply. His fingers picked idly at a paint blister on the bed's molded metal handle. 'I hate politics. It's the lowest act a human being can sink to.'
'Yeah,' said Ice, drawing the word out to the length of a breath.
'Why don't you come here?' Jonny said.
She came back to the bed and he kissed her for a long time.
Then he leaned back and kissed Sumi, and when he moved away, found himself pressed in the warmth of two
