He mentioned with disdain the efforts of certain governments to contain the phenomenon strictly for observation, the Great Basin facility in the United States housing at least four hundred novas since Leon Levitt’s arrival there. Within a month’s time, he vowed, the jewel of his business empire, a sprawling Cartagena shipyard, would be converted into a commune for the affected. He had amassed an international team of doctors and flown them there to begin their research. As volunteers, afflicted persons could elect for radiation, experimental gene editing, and stem cell procedures—solutions bound by red tape as pharmaceutical firms buckled under the floundering market. The news, and the impending dissolution of Terzian’s businesses, sent shockwaves. Many sought to prove the plan a bluff. Terzian’s third wife, mother to his eighth and ninth children, had rarely been seen in the public eye. The stage of her condition was, as of yet, unknown. But within a month, the businessman had kept his word. The Spanish commune, an investment of billions of euros, had become the headiest option for novas seeking treatment. Hundreds arrived in Cartagena, flown together in packs by refurbished cargo freighters if their light had grown too harsh for commercial air. Papers asked every week: was this the fate that awaited all humanity? Not for a century, if trends were sustained, news that nevertheless fell on deaf ears as more woke to thin blue light in their bedrooms, and more, still, burned out around the world.
Nora Levitt received a call in the morning. Dr. Merrick relayed the news with as much tact as she could muster over the phone. She packed a bag, alerted her sister across town that the girls would be home from school that afternoon, and got into the car that arrived an hour later. She’d begged Leon to consider Spain. He was too far along to pique the government’s interest or resources anymore. Neither he nor Nora believed in a cure, too afraid of what would happen if they indulged in fantasy. Nora had argued he would be happier there, free to roam, to take the long walks to which he had accustomed himself back in Peridot. They had spoken often of a trip to Europe, for the girls. Leon had refused, or so she thought; he did not speak much anymore. Thus he had chosen confinement, a view of the red deserts of his childhood through his plate glass window. Nora was told that he complained more often of fatigue. The ultraviolet cameras captured his form reclined on his aluminum bed for nearly twenty hours a day. Armed guards escorted her through the facility, emptier than usual. Hundreds had abounded for the commune.
She was padlocked into a lead suit, fitted for a helmet, and shown behind an iron door. The light flooded her visor, strong enough despite the polarized glass to make her squint. Still, in the dark haze she could make out a shape, a man she knew. She stepped carefully toward him. She felt the heat that she had been warned about. Her husband shone in front of her, baking her outsides; she recalled the feeling of laying out with the girls at their favorite pool back home. Leon asked about them, she told him they knew, they had known for weeks ever since the Bek girl; she could not stop them hearing it at school. His grip on her hands through the rubber gloves was only a faint pressure. He’d reached out, nervously, swatting the air. It struck Nora that he could no longer see her. He told her he felt faint and had been so for the past day. She raised a hand.