Reggie Waite could tell that something was bothering his wife the moment they met just on the way to the Shepardsport dining commons for supper. “Is something bothering you, Steffi?”
Her gaze dipped away for a moment, a sure sign of stress. “I just got an e-mail from Dad. Aunt Margaret’s not doing well.”
Reggie had to think a moment to place her — he and Steffi had come up here right after their marriage, and he’d not had much opportunity to become acquainted with his in-laws. “What’s happened?”
“Apparently she went to some kind of program a few days ago, and last night she got sick. Like really, really sick, real fast.” Steffi moistened her lips. “And she’s always been so active, and so healthy for a woman of eighty-three. Sure, she lives in a senior community, but she’s in an apartment of her own, not assisted living. And she only moved there because the maintenance on the house just got to be too much after Uncle Michael passed away.”
Reggie considered the information. “Any idea what the program was?”
“Some kind of inspirational speaker who’d just come in from a stay at an ashram somewhere in northern India. Dad wasn’t too clear on that. He never was too fond of Aunt Margaret being into all the hippie woo-woo stuff. When we were little kids, he told her she could see us only if she promised not to breathe a word of any of that nonsense in our hearing.”
Reggie could understand. He had a few relatives his immediate family didn’t talk about, including a cousin of some degree on his mother’s side who’d gone to Canada to avoid the draft in the later years of the Vietnam War. “Do you think–“
“That it has something to do with that cruise ship the Navy had to rescue? Hardly likely. As far as I know, that motivational speaker had flown straight from one of the big Indian airports to O’Hare. Maybe a layover somewhere while they refueled, but certainly no visits to cruise ships.”
“Not directly, but if the symptoms are similar, there’s likely to be a connection. I think we’d better pass the word to Medlab after supper, at least give them another data point.” As they approached the big double doors of moonglass etched with the Shepardsport emblem, the squid with its tentacles wrapped around a map of Farside, Reggie noted the crowd gathered here.
Hardly surprising when one considered the dining commons was the largest single pressurized area in the habitat, other than some of the big work bays for landers. As such, the dining commons was a central place to socialize, both during meals and for meetings and other activities.
And if there were something going around and it got up here, it would become grand central for infection. Definitely he was going to need to talk about this latest news not only to Barbie Thuc, but also to Betty Margrave over at Safety and Security.