Archform Beauty by L. E. Modesitt Jr

Author:L. E. Modesitt Jr. [Modesitt Jr., L. E.]
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Social change, General, Science Fiction, Nanotechnology & MEMS, Nanotechnology, Fiction, Good and Evil
ISBN: 9780765343642
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2003-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Parsfal

By Tuesday morning, I was tired of finding angles on another tragic ebol4 death, or spinning out the stats to show that the epidemic was nowhere near as bad as the CDC had predicted, because only two hundred thousand had died in NorAm, and merely twice that in EurCom, while deaths were trailing off as containment and nanomeds took effect. Donne may have told death not to be proud, but so far as I was concerned death had done himself proud enough, and that didn't include the continuing and rising death toll in Afrique and SudAm.

Nor did it include the continuing deaths in Denv from the mysterious ODs.

Then, while I had finished another weather piece and more on the Southern Diversion, I was still dithering around with stuff on McCall, and getting nowhere. I should let go of old stories, but old stories didn't always let go of me. I'd put in another link to Marc Oler and gotten the same simmie message. I'd also left a message with Kerras, asking for contact suggestions, but he was link-blocked.

So I called John Ashbaugh. He wasn't in either.

With that, I prepared another stat update on ebol4 and fed it to Metesta, and then started on some temperature and weather stats as a favor to Istancya to repay her for helping dig me out when I'd been buried in the flurry around the ebol4 outbreak and the Russean orbiter destruction, now largely forgotten little more than a week later. The silence was truly amazing. Nothing had emerged. Nothing at all, unless you bought the Talibanate's story that despite the components being traced to the Agkhanate, no one there had anything to do with it.

Parsfal? Bimstein again.

I'm here. What do you need?

Some quick numbers to go with the Dewey death piece…

Dewey? The District Coordinator? When did that happen?

Where have you been? Less than a half hour ago…

Doing weather and temp stats…

Drop those… Dewey's electral went off the Elletch Bridge… get something quick on electral fatalities, and also anything you can on the costs of guideway maintenance in the Denv District… and anything else linked to that. Rehm's doing the personal background. Need that in a half hour.

I'll do what I can.

Once you feed that to Metesta, need some more backup on those education and nanomed stats. On the African immigrants.

How much do you need?

Go over it with Brianne. She's got the story. Something Cannon's done in the Senate.

He's always doing something. The last thing I wanted to dig up was statistics on the medical costs of treating immigrants. If they were for Kerras, he'd want something to imply the taxpayers would never get their credits' worth, and Brianne would want something to show that both the nanomeds and the education were great. I had problems with both, when I'd seen too many kids from westside and northside who couldn't afford any real health care.

Get on the Dewey stuff!

Bimstein was gone, and I had to start scrambling. The electral stats were easy enough. NorAm Transport Department had those.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.