Antibodies 10

© Copyright BG Taff

Characters.
Verna Spiro Type one Virus

Nana Bev, Interplanetary prospector.
Jamie, Bev’s younger prospecting Partner.
Dennis Potter Freight manager and old friend of Beverly’s.
Jack Godfrey Yard foreman and walking boss.
Charlotte and Lucy - Jamie’s younger dancing & clubbing friends.
Rose and Violet. Cis-girl friends of Jamie.
Dr Williams Virologist
Jennifer Jamie’s girlfriend. (Sleeping partner.)

Chapter 10.

I took a long slow breath as I debated telling Jennifer everything, then I concluded the best way forward was to give her a brief explanation then let her ask questions. However, it was imperative that I swore her to secrecy. Unfortunately, Jamie had previously intimated that Jennifer could be a bit of a chatterbox or worse a gossip. I could see Jamie tensing up slightly as she prepared to listen to me reveal our secret.

Eventually I was forced to take the plunge.

“Right Jenny, as you’ve seen, your faeces have turned green but you’re not feeling stomach cramps. What does that tell you?”

Jenny stared at me with fear and uncertainty writ large in her eyes.

“I dunno.” She croaked nervously.

I took the forceful, domineering route.

“Right! I’ll tell you right now, you are NOT going to die!”

She frowned as she tried to digest my words.

“Wha-, what d’you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said Jenny, you are NOT going to die.”

I watched the fear being replaced by doubt and uncertainty as it spread across her face. Finally she found words to press further.

“How d’ you know?” She frowned again. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that you are immune to Verna Spiro Type one Virus just take it from Jamie and me that you are NOT going to die.”

“But how?”

Jamie could see that I was struggling with revealing the whole truth so she stepped in with a little white lie.

“Listen Babes, you’ve heard those rumours about the vaccine being very rare and difficult to get hold of!”

“Yes.” Jenny croaked hoarsely.

“Well the reason it’s scarce is because at the moment they don’t actually have a vaccine. They are using some blood that is donated by a secret donor. Obviously that donor;- or those donors; can only donate so much blood and each time it’s only enough for about fifty doses. There are only two donors, and the government can’t find them because they have to avoid being found and detained or kidnapped for exploitation.

You have heard about the government’s expedition with hundreds of military volunteers who they hope will become donors if their ideas work.

“Yes. They’re waiting for the results, to see if or when those volunteers develop the antibodies.”

“Yes,” Jamie continued, “well it’s going to be a couple of months before the antibodies show up in their bloods. The government realises that this delay is going to be a critical time and until then, lockdowns are going to be essential but brutally tight and unpopular.”

I added.

“As people die between now and when those antibodies are available, the mob are going to accuse the government of withholding vaccines. And if they discover that there are only two donors currently able to supply; then you can bet your bottom dollar that the gutter press and just about all the internet websites will be screaming for blood; - our blood!”

Jenny’s eyes widened into organ-stops as the realisation slowly dawned.

“Your blood! You mean-!”

“Yes. That’s exactly what we mean!” Jamie interjected. “Our blood. Nana and I are those two donors!”

“So your blood is running inside my veins!”

“Got it in one girl. Now for fuck’s sake DO NOT BLAB!”

“But –“

“No buts girl!” I threatened. “If we have the slightest suspicion that the secret’s out, we fuck off back into space and the world will have to wait until the scientists fix a vaccine!”

“So keep your mouth shut!” Jamie added. “Even if one of your friends gets infected, you DO NOT mention us.”

“So how do you supply your blood to the government?” Jenny asked.

“You don’t need to know that. Just keep your mouth shut for a few more months until the volunteer blood becomes available.”

“But if your only supplying blood every six weeks, that’s just two or three donations between now and then. That’s just a drop in the ocean.”

“Duuhh! We know that better than anybody Jenny!” I replied. “That’s why we keep our heads down.”

Jamie sighed. “Just make sure you don’t become a carrier; you know, infected with the bug and then infecting others but not affected yourself. Avoid crowds.”

Jenny suddenly became thoughtful.

“That means I’ll have to self-isolate.”

“And then some,” Jamie emphasised. “No more clubbing for another two or three months.”

“How do you know it takes three months to become resistant?”

“It doesn’t when you’re vaccinated, that protection is almost immediate. But it took us three months before our bone-marrow reacted to the asteroid radiation. On that premise the scientists presume it will be three months before anybody else produces those antibodies and to do that, your body gets altered. Here look at this.”

Jamie proffered her hand and pricked a finger. Jennifer gasped as she noted that Jamie’s blood was not pure bright red but had a slightly discernible, greenish / brownish hue.

“Oh my god! Is it permanently like that?” Jenny squeaked.

“No, the oxygenated arterial blood coming from the lungs is bright red like yours, it’s the venous blood after it’s done it’s work, When the blood carries the carbon dioxide from the muscles back to the lungs, this is where the antibodies are created by the white blood cells. Call me and Nana aliens if you bloody want but that’s how it is.”

“Will my blood go like that?”

“We don’t think so. We have never met any recipients of our blood after a transfusion because we have to avoid them because of the need for anonymity.”

“This will work, won’t it?” Jenny pressed.

“Yes, we just don’t know about the blood colour. Donors will have greenish/brown blood, ordinary recipients will be red, we think. We hope it stays that way until a proper vaccine is produced.”

ooo000ooo

Jenny stayed with us at our apartment until we left for our next voyage into space. Our schedule was firstly our moon, then some hydroponic equipment for Venus; then Mars and finally Saturn’s moons. It was a resupply trip entailing several ‘drop-offs’ at different mines to supply equipment.

This was followed by a return voyage loaded with valuable ores and we anticipated a round trip of approximately six weeks. This suited us because it equated to the periods between blood donations.

When we returned we found that the ‘gay village’ had been isolated and put into lock-down because of the spike in infections. We could not get to our apartment but we could call Jenny on our mobiles.

“Are you getting enough to eat?” Jamie asked her.

“Yes. Food is rationed but that’s not a bad thing. There’s a few as could do with dieting.”

Having confirmed that Jenny was managing alright, we booked into a spacemen’s hostel where spacemen could lay over between trips. Many spacemen virtually lived at these hostels during their working lives before making enough money to retire or buy a home or marrying. The spacemen society was by and large an insular community as individuals worked and saved the high salaries they earned.

In the hostels however, that insularity broke down for the residents had one close connection namely the dangers associated with space travel. We were checked for infection but we were not blood sampled and that evening Jamie and I settled down to a meal in the restaurant.

Later, as we watched the news there was the latest update concerning the donor hostages being held in Africa.

“D’ you think they’ll get them out alive?” Jamie asked as she painted her toenails.

“I dunno.’ Best thing we can do is keep lying low. The other donors are living under constant protection but they’re all military medical people so they’ll be used to living in secure camps.” I replied as I sipped my tea and read some reports that Dennis my cargo agent had handed me on landing.

“Can I come with you when you deliver our blood tomorrow?” Jamie asked.

“We’d best remain separated until the donors come on stream. It shouldn’t be long now, just another six-week trip. The last thing we want is to be caught together by anybody who knows about our blood donations.”

Jamie shrugged and gave a wry smile.

“I’ll be glad when they get a vaccine. What’s that your typing?”
“A letter to Doctor Williams. I’ll attach it to our blood donations tomorrow.”

“What’s it about?”

“I just want a progress report on the blood donors; that is our donors, and the United Nations ones on the ship that wasn’t pirated. I’d also like a progress report on vaccine development.”

“And how will she report to you?”

I waved a new burner phone at Jamie who rolled her eyes.

“Jeeze! What’s that, the fifth or sixth?”

“Can’t be too careful babes.

The following morning, I dropped Jamie off in London and drove to a remote location to drop off the blood. Then I texted Doctor Williams and drove home. The following morning I drove with Jamie to Wales and received the texted report. The most valuable information was that they had picked up feint traces of immature antibodies in the blood of some of the donors and they anticipated another six to eight weeks before a full service could be instigated.

They had done the maths I wanted and, provided strict lockdown procedures were followed throughout the country, they calculated the country could be ‘out – of – the – woods’ within a year.

“What about the rest of the world?” Jamie wondered, “And what about the hostages?”

“I’ll do some calculations when we get back aboard Digger. That’s the best place we can stay until the gay village is unlocked.”

“What living in space or camping out in Dennis’s freight terminal?” Jamie grinned.

“You pays your money and you takes your choice.” I grinned back.

“We’d best sort Jenny out. See her right for supplies, then do another trip

With this plan agreed, we returned to ‘Digger’ which was parked in her regular cargo bay in the freight yard. There I completed my calculations by extrapolating the figures Doctor Williams had given me.

The figures were not reassuring. Our country had three hundred potential military blood donors while the UN had just three hundred more to service the rest of the earth’s population. I could foresee trouble ahead.

I had sufficient confidence in our government to immunise the most important people first and those were the researchers developing an effective vaccine, followed by medical people treating the sick.

I had also made it abundantly clear that while our blood was the only source available, there was to be no favouritism treating politicians etcetera. If I got the slightest hint that my or Jamie’s blood was being diverted for political ends, we would stop supplying.

Finally we completed loading Digger and departed Earth anticipating an eight-to-ten-week voyage via all the usual regular moons and planets plus some more special deliveries for the hydroponic moons of Venus.

Jamie was quite excited for as a younger person, she had genuine expectations of seeing real progress in the glacially slow process of terraforming Venus. I of course, would be long dead before anybody could even venture close to Venus’s surface. Still it was delight for Jamie to put Digger alongside one of the vast rock carriers that was transferring veritable mountains of iron from various sources around the solar system and then injecting the heated liquidised metal into the core of Venus to enhance its magnetosphere.

In this at least I had measurable tangible proof that the terraforming was on course for my instruments aboard Digger had long ago recorded the increasing strength of Venus’s feeble but expanding magnetosphere. My voyage logs had kept a usable record because of my regular and seasonal visits to the manmade satellites circling Earth’s beautiful sister.

Already, close visits to Venus showed that the dense atmosphere was slowly getting clearer. The captain of the approaching ‘rock-box’ (an affectionate term of endearment amongst spacemen for the moon-sized leviathans,) had told me that he was convinced he had once had a brief wispy view of the surface.

I had known this captain for over ten years because he was one of the few who had discovered that I was Charlie Sage’s grandchild. Consequently we fell to chatting a bit.

He explained that he had just glimpsed some rock formations on a high peak during a severe Venusian, atmospheric storm. He had been depositing liquid iron into the polar shaft, that had been robotically bored from Venus’s surface to the planet centre some three and a half thousand miles deep.

Yes, terraforming Venus was an unimaginably vast project!

“So when will the core become a self-sustaining liquid iron?” I asked him as we fell alongside each other like old bedfellows of the night.

“Geologists reckon we need to inject about another twenty-nine million cubic miles.”

“Geeze, I wouldn’t have thought there was that much iron around.”

“Believe me there is.” He reassured me. “Your grandfather Charlie Sage located a lot of it, but it wasn’t important to him as he was more interested in valuable, rare-earth ores.”

We chatted briefly about various items including the plague on earth then we finally separated as he prepared to sit in stasis over Venus’s pole while I aimed for the primary hydroponic moon where the terraformers mostly resided. This was a unique opportunity for Jamie to visit the ‘hydroponickers’ as we spacemen nicknamed them.

‘Why do space men always look for monikers and nicknames?’ I wondered.

ooo000ooo