Ammonite

Chapter One

MARGHE’S SUIT WAS still open at neck and wrist, and the helmet rested in the crook of her left arm. An ID flash was sealed to her shoulder: “Marguerite Angelica Taishan, SEC.” The suit was wrinkled and smelled of just-unrolled plastic, and she felt heavy and awkward, even in the two-thirds gravity of orbital station Estrade.

She stood by the airlock at the inside end of A Section, The door was already open. Waiting. She rested the fingertips of her right hand on the smooth ceramic of the raised hatch frame; it was cool, shocking after two days of the close human heat of A Section.

The sill of the airlock reached her knees; easy enough to step over. No great barrier. The lock chamber itself was two strides across. The far door was still closed, sealed to another sill, like this one. Four steps from here to B Section. Four steps. She had recontracted with SEC, endured six months of retraining on Earth, traveled eighteen months aboard the Terragin, and spent the last two days on the Estrade bumping elbows with the three-member crew, all to take those four steps.

“Well, Nyo and Sigrid say good luck, but they’ll be out there for hours yet, fixing the satellite.” Sara Hiam unclipped her headset. The slight, small woman with the atrophied muscles and club-cut dark blond hair was matter-of-fact, using her doctor persona. In the two days since she had come aboard Estrade, Marghe had learned that Hiam had several distinct facets to her personality, facets she rotated to face any given situation. It was a survival tactic, one way Hiam—and Sigrid and Nyo—had managed to spend five years up here without going mad. Marghe knew there was a great deal of the doctor she had not seen; she wondered what the real Sara Hiam was like.

“Life support is up and running in Section D,” Hiam said. “Are you ready?”

Adrenaline, faster than conscious thought, flooded through Marghe and she had to discipline her breathing, decreasing her pulse and respiration rate, slowing blood flow and reducing the sudden over-oxygenation of her long muscles. Her face pinked as the capillaries under her skin reopened; her muscles stopped fluttering. It was a routine learned long ago.

“I’m ready.”

“Very well.” Hiam’s voice was suddenly more measured, formal. “I’m obliged to remind you that the vaccine FN-17 now offered is still considered experimental. I also remind you that once you have taken it and once you step beyond this airlock, you will under no circumstances be allowed back into Section A: nor, whether or not you proceed as planned to Grenchstom’s Planet, will you be allowed to enter any other uncontaminated Company installation until you have undergone extensive decontamination procedures.” She sounded as though she was reading from a screen prompt. “These procedures consist of—”

“I know what they consist of,” Marghe said. She pulled on gauntlets, closed her wrist seals. Was it her imagination or did the air coming from the lock smell different?

“This is a taped record, Marghe. Let me finish. These procedures consist of: isolation; the removal of all subject’s blood, marrow, lymph and intestinal flora and fauna and its replacement with normal healthy tissues; reimmunization of subject with all bacterial and viral agents commonly found in Earth-normal human population; prior to return to home planet, further isolation at a location to be decided upon to determine the efficacy of said reimmunization. Do you understand these procedures?”

“Yes.” The lock was small but, unlike the rest of what she had seen so far of Estrade, blessedly uncluttered.

“Further, I remind you that although FN-17 is a development of the Durallium Company, the Company in no way holds itself responsible for any adverse effects that may result from its use.

“Nor, though you are to be offered the utmost cooperation aboard Estrade and on Grenchstom’s Planet, are you to be considered an employee of said Company liable to the financial restitution available to indentured personnel. Is this clear?”

“Yes.” She closed her neck seal, hefted her helmet. “That’s everything?”

“Yes.”

“Will you help me with this?” She should have put the helmet on first; the gauntlets made her clumsy.

When the helmet and shoulder ring clicked together, the suit air hissed on. It tasted hard and flat, not like the warm, re-breathed air of the orbital station. She tongued on the broadcast communications. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Hiam checked a workstation screen. “You’re reading well enough.”

She looked up. “You?”

“Loud and clear.” Through the audio pickups Hiam sounded even more remote and doctorlike. And then the only sound was Marghe’s own breathing and the faint hiss of the forced air. Blue and purple readouts flickered in the lower left of her vision. Everything worked perfectly. There was nothing else to wait for.

Marghe stepped over the sill. Her boots clumped and echoed in the bare chamber, and her breath sounded loud. She touched the amber light on the control panel; the door slid shut. Hiam, arms folded, was visible through the small observation window.

Marghe studied the variety of lights, then tapped out a command sequence. A display flared red: VACUUM. Her helmet pickups were full of a hard hissing, and readouts flickered, then steadied, showing zero pressure, zero oxygen. When she moved, she felt vibration through her boots but heard nothing.

The wall display changed: AIRLOCK SYSTEMS ROUTED TO ESTRADE MAIN CONTROL PRIOR TO DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES. TO PROCEED, INPUT SEQUENCE.

Another last-minute reminder: once she started on this, there was no turning back, Marghe tapped out the memorized sequence.

RAISE ARMS, RAISE CHIN, STAND WITH FEET APART.

Marghe did, BLANK VISOR FOR FIFTEEN SECONDS, COMMENCING. Even through her darkened visor and closed eyes, she sensed the flare as the chamber was flooded with radiation.

EXTERIOR DECONTAMINATION COMPLETE. LOCK GOVERNANCE RETURNED TO INTERIOR CONTROL.

Marghe cleared her visor, opened her eyes, blinked away the dancing green spots.

Hiam was still in the window, watching. Then, suddenly, she was gone.

Marghe watched the blank window for a moment, then took a deep breath and turned to the second door, the second panel with its red light. She reached out to input the sequence that would open it, that would enable her to take that last step over the sill that marked the boundary between what was understood and controlled and what was dangerous.

“Marghe, wait.”

Marghe whirled, forgetting the two-thirds gravity. Hiam was back at the observation window, headset at one ear. Marghe had to breathe slowly, in and out, before she could speak. “What?”

“Turn on your suit comm.”

Marghe tongued the channel on. “What’s wrong? What have—”

“Nothing.” Over the closed channel, Hiam’s voice was quiet, intimate. No longer the doctor. “This is off the record.”

“I don’t—”

“Just listen. All those things I said before, about isolation, about spending time somewhere unspecified before going home… that’s not what really happens.”

Marghe listened to her heart kicking under her ribs. She breathed, seeking calm.

Never refuse information, her mother had taught her when she was just six years old, you never know what you might need. But her mother was dead. She managed a Go on gesture.

“If you leave the airlock, if you take the vaccine, you’ll never go home. Not ever.

I had a… a good friend. On the planet. Was one of the initial batch taken off Jeep for study. She promised to be in touch. I think someone else wrote her mail.”

“How could you tell?”

“It felt all wrong.”

“If she’d been ill—”

“No. Just listen. It seemed fine at first. I assumed she just wasn’t feeling good.

Decon’s not pleasant. Anyway, I didn’t pay close attention. But once when I wrote back I put in a private joke we’d shared for a long time. A very long time. When I got her response, I knew. It wasn’t her.”

Marghe said nothing. She wished she had just taken that last step, not listened to Hiam—this new Hiam. The real one?

Hiam watched Marghe intently, then laughed, a short, hard bark. “You don’t believe me.”

“I’m wondering why you didn’t tell me this before. Why you let me get this far.”

Hiam stepped right up to the glass, close enough for Marghe to see the pleats of her irises. “Because I couldn’t decide whether to trust you. But, Marghe… this is real, and somebody has to know. I can’t prove any of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. You seemed… I just thought…” She laughed again. “I should have saved my breath.”

Marghe did not know what to say. “You and Sigrid and Nyo have all been up here a long time. I know that must—”

“Don’t patronize me,” Hiam said wearily. “If you don’t want to believe me, then that’s your privilege, but don’t patronize me.”

Marghe shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Silence.

To go down to Grenchstom’s Planet—GP, Jeep—would be the culmination of years of study that had started when she was just a child, first with her mother, then her father, had continued at Universities, and as assistant SEC rep on Gallipoli, then Beaver. This was the reason she had swallowed her pride and set aside her misgivings about Company, why she had recontracted with SEC alter they had betrayed her, why she had traveled vast distances, literally and metaphorically: to come to Jeep and study over a million people who had been out of contact with humanity for two or three hundred years. There would never be another chance like this, never.

“Sara, I have to do this.”

Hiam turned away abruptly. “Then you’d better go ahead and do it.”

Marghe looked at Hiam’s thin back, hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said again, then tongued off the comm channel and turned slowly to face the flaring red panel. Red for danger.

The known dangers she had prepared for, as far as humanly possible. The vaccine would be waiting for her in D Section.

As for the unknown dangers… Well, they were unknown. Nothing she could do about them.

She stretched out her hand, clumsy in the gauntlet, and tapped out the sequence slowly and carefully. The red panel blinked off and the lights around the door flared green.

The door slid open.

B Section was silent and dark. Ice glimmered in the dim sodium glow of the emergency floor lights. Marghe stepped over the sill and the door closed behind her.

It was done.

The lights ran like runway flares down a narrow corridor between stripped, bare beds, each with its entertainment hookup coiled neatly at the head. Marghe’s boots glowed orange as she walked. Her breathing was loud. She felt utterly alone.

She was the first person who had walked here for five years; five years since the glittering dumbbell shape that was Estrade had been hurriedly converted from an orbital monitoring and communications station to a research and decontamination facility. Five years since the station crew had taken refuge in Section A, leaving Sections D and C for the decontamination of occasional Jeep personnel. B Section, and the long corridor beyond—the shaft of the dumbbell—was the crew’s insurance, their buffer zone, with movement allowed one way only: to the dirty sections.

Marghe watched her boots rise and fall through the orange glow; there was no dust.

The lights at the airlock blinked a reassuring green. The door opened and the wall display told her to blank her visor and hold out her arms; she keyed in the sequence on the next door, stepped through.

The corridor seemed a mile long. The familiar orange running lights gleamed on unsheathed metal and exposed wiring. Gravity decreased rapidly as she approached the center of the shaft; her suit automatically activated the electromagnets in her boots and she had to slide her feet instead of striding.

There was another airlock at the center of the corridor. She went through the dictated procedure, familiar now. The micro-gravity and her sensitivity to the strong magnetic field under her feet made her dizzy. She closed her eyes and took three fast breaths to trigger a meditative state, monitoring for a moment her heartbeat and electrical activity.

She went on: more corridor, another lock. C Section.

In C Section there were beds, like B Section, but each had a hood waiting to be lowered over an occupant to suck out her blood and lymph, ready to push physical and electrical fingers deep into her intestines to kill and remove the swarm of bacteria and yeasts, eager to sear away the first layers of skin and leave red, raw tissues with colorless fluids until new skin grew back. Tombs for the living. She hated them.

They had not been able to save her mother.

She walked faster; she wanted to be out of C Section.

In the lock. Hurry. Eyes shut and arms out. Faster. Key sequence. Now.

Nothing. The panel still flashed red.

Marghe stared at it. If she could not get through into D Section, she was trapped.

The lock systems would not permit her to retrace her steps without a record of her having undergone either isolation in D or fluid replacement in C.

Think.

Perhaps she had input the wrong number sequence. She had been in a rush. Yes.

Precisely, accurately, she tapped in the code a second time.

No change.

She tongued on the comm channel. “Hiam, can you hear me?”

Her helmet speaker clicked. “I can hear. Go ahead.”

“I’m still in lock four.”

“So my readouts say.”

“It won’t accept the sequence.”

“You’re sure you got it right?”

“Seven-eight-three-six-nine.” Silence. “It’s the right one, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Another silence. Marghe imagined the tck-tck of Hiam’s nails on the keyboard. “How much air do you have?”

“About eighty minutes.”

“There should be an emergency suit. In the locker to your left.”

Marghe opened the left locker, then the right. They were both empty. “Nothing.

And all the emergency blow patches have gone.”

“I forgot. We had to clear everything, just in case someone infected tried to blow her way out. Let me think.”

Marghe stood in the dim light and breathed precious air. Eighty minutes. She did not want to die here, alone, surrounded by nothing but dead machinery and empty space.

The audio relay clicked back on. “Nyo’s back from her repair stint,” Hiam said.

“She knows more about the systems than I do, she’s working on it right now.

She—hold on.” Marghe thought she heard a muttered conference. “Sigrid says Nyo’s on the track of some software glitch.”

“How long will it take?”

“Hold on.” More muted discussion. “No guesses. But Nyo’s working fast.”

Minutes dragged by. Marghe concentrated on increasing her blood flow to tensed muscles, washing away fatigue acids and stress toxins. She checked to make sure her boot electros were off. She had seventy-one minutes of air left.

“Marghe, listen, I’ve been talking to Sigrid, and we agree. We’ve decided that if Nyo can’t rewrite in time, then we’ll EVA out from here, open up the exterior hatch of that lock, and bring you back here.”

“You’d risk contamination—”

“Yes.”

Hiam was serious, Marghe realized, in spite of what she believed about Company and the fate of contaminated employees. “Sara, I…” She floundered. “Thank you.”

Hiam laughed, only this time it was not that awful bark, but longer, lighter, more friendly. “Don’t thank me yet.” She clicked off, and once again Marghe was surrounded by the sound of her own breath. Her breathing was strong and even: there were people on her side.

Click. “This is Nyo. Try seven-eight-four-six-nine. We’ll monitor.”

A four instead of a three. A difference of one digit. Marghe input the sequence: seven, pause, eight, pause, four, pause … The door lights flicked from red to green.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

D Section was dark. She had not expected that. She switched over to suit broadcast. “Lights.” Brilliant white light sliced on, making her blink.

D was square, only four beds. Two mobile hoods like slick cauls by the far bulkhead. Several workstations. Not dissimilar to crew quarters. Her visor frosted over. She scrubbed at it clumsily, scanned her readouts: external temperature 24

degrees Celsius, air composition and pressure at normal levels, no apparent toxins.

Just to make sure, she sat down at the nearest workstation.

“On.” The gray screen went black, ready. “Readouts of internal atmospheric composition of this sector. ” Figures blinked obligingly, agreeing with her own readings. She still felt nervous. “Confirm lock and hull integrity.” The screen flashed CONFIRMED. “Off.” The screen went back to dead gray.

Awkwardly, she took off her left gauntlet. The right was easier. The slick plastic of her helmet was still cold. She twisted it anticlockwise and cool, clean, untouched-smelling air spilled in under the opened seal. Marghe lifted off the helmet and breathed deep. She was safe, for now.

Marghe pulled hair still damp from the shower free of the collar of her crisp new cliptogether. She commed Hiam.

“I’m ready for the FN-17 now.”

“In the food slot.” Marghe padded over to the slot. Inside it were two softgels and a glass of water. “Double dose for the first day,” Hiam said, “then one tomorrow, one the next day. After that, one every ten days. There’s a possibility of fever the first forty-eight hours, nothing dangerous.”

Marghe squeezed the gels gently between finger and thumb and held them up to the light: they were watery pink. The glass of water was the same temperature as her hand. She swallowed both gels at once, then put the empty glass back in the slot.

Marghe heard Hiam sigh. “You think I’d back out at the last minute?”

“You never know. ”

Marghe lay down on the bed farthest from the hoods, face still turned to the screen. “I want some privacy for a little while.”

“I’ll have to keep the bio telemetry.”

Marghe nodded. “But no visual, no audio. Just for a while.”

“Fine.” The speaker clicked off.

The click, like that of the comm channel in her helmet, was deliberate, meant to reassure the subject that she was not being monitored. Either could be simulated if the observer deemed it desirable; Marghe chose to believe that this was not one of those times.

It could take up to two minutes for an object to travel down the esophagus to the stomach. She imagined the softgels dropping gently through the pyloric sphincter, the acids in her stomach breaching the gelatin of their shells, the watery pink liquid spilling FN-17. Enzymes breaking it down, carrying it into her bloodstream, into her cells. An experimental biofactured vaccine against Jeep. Jeep the virus, named after the planet.

For more than two years she had tried to imagine how it would feel to swallow the vaccine. She put her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling.

“You’re running away,” her father had said, pacing his study in Portugal, wandering out of the screen visual pickup’s line of sight.

“I’m not,” Marghe had objected. It was spring, and the scent of grass and the sound of ewes lambing on the Welsh hillside carried through the open windows of her cottage. “This is the most fabulous opportunity for an anthropologist since…

since the nineteenth century.”

“And why do you suppose the joint Settlement and Education Councils are offering it to you? Because you’re the best qualified person?”

“I’m not as naive as that.”

“Then think, Marghe, think! You resigned from SEC once. They haven’t changed—just as corrupt as ever. Last time you got beaten up and hospitalized.

What will happen this time? There’s more at stake. And this, this running away because of Acquila’s death won’t help anyone.”

“I can do this job. I understand the risks. And Mother’s death has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?” Suddenly he leaned forward, close to the screen pickups. He looked concerned. Marghe was reminded of the time when she was four and had fallen down the crumbling steps of the remains of the Portuguese cathedral in Macau, and her father had appeared as if from nowhere and scooped her into his arms. Daddy will take care of everything. But he hadn’t. Two years later he had gone to the Hammami region of Mauritania, to study the changing social structures, he said. And her mother had gone up to the moon, to teach social anthropology at the new university. All the young Marghe had had of her parents for the next two years were three battered books that lit up with their names on the fronts and their holos on the back when she thumbed them on, and a telescope through which she had watched the moon on every clear night.

She shook her head impatiently. “Mother’s dead, and I’m sick of teaching at Aberysrwyth. I’m good, too good to be stuck here.”

“You should never have accepted that post in the first place.”

It was an old argument. The fact was, she had not had much choice. SEC was the main career path for linguists and anthropologists these days; after her promising start on Gallipoli, she had gone to Beaver, the Durallium Company’s mining planet, where her worldview and her face had been forcibly rearranged, and that path had no longer been open to her. Or so she had thought.

She changed tack. “Look, if you could go anywhere in the universe to study people, where would you choose? Jeep. This is a chance of a lifetime, anybody’s lifetime.”

“The last SEC rep died.”

“Courtivron and the others didn’t have the vaccine. I do.”

“And maybe the vaccine will kill you.”

“Maybe it will. But, John, don’t you see? I don’t care. The chance they’re offering me far outweighs the risk. Acquila went to the moon, you went to Hammami during those awful wars… I’m going to Jeep.”

“But they’re using you!”

“Of course they are. And I’ll be using them. A fair exchange. ”

“You’ll be risking your life; they risk nothing. You’ll be alone, powerless. Your SEC position as independent observer will be as much protection as an ice suit in hell. SEC’s been in bed with Company for years.”

“Don’t lecture me on corruption and power politics. I know better than most what it means.” She took a deep breath and started again, more calmly. “Anyway, I won’t be alone. Two of Courtivron’s team are still alive. And I’ll only be there six months. Besides, what if I am Company’s guinea pig? So what if SEC doesn’t give a damn about my report? The important thing to me is that I get six months on a closed world to research a unique culture.”

Her father had sighed. “I’d probably have made the same choice at your age.”

And Marghe had noticed for the first time how old and frail he seemed.

Marghe contemplated the smooth white ceiling of D Section… And maybe the vaccine will kill you, her father had said.

She got off the bed, suddenly restless. Exercise, that was what she needed. She pushed two of the beds back against the wall and the edge of a workstation and stood quietly, hands by her sides in the space she had created, centering herself. She raised her hands slowly to waist level, then across, in the first move of a tai chi form.

She knew several different styles, fighting and meditative, but Yang style, with its even and measured movements, its grace, was her favorite for moods like this.

When she finished, her restlessness was gone.

“Lights, low.” They dimmed and the place looked more friendly. She crossed to her screen.

D Section’s information storage was held separately from Estrade’s main files, and was a disorganized patchwork of technical, anecdotal, and speculative notes added to by each decontaminee. Files ended mid-sentence and had large chunks missing. Marghe began to scroll through material with which she was already familiar, looking for the files that had been uploaded from Port Central during the eighteen months she had been aboard the Terragin.

Grenchstom’s Planet had been rediscovered five years ago by a routine Company probe. Preliminary satellite surveys had showed a small indigenous human population living in various communities scattered over the planet, origin uncertain, though likely to stem from the same colonizing spurt that had seeded Gallipoli.

Remote atmosphere testing had indicated that this could be a lucrative planet for Company’s various leasing operations—

Marghe scrolled on.

Company landed its usual survey and engineering teams to lay out communications and construct the working base, Port Central. Accompanying them were a contingent of Company Security—Mirrors—and, to comply with the law, SEC representative Maurice Courtivron and his small team, entrusted with the welfare of Jeep’s natives.

Marghe had not known Courtivron, but he must have been good. Jeep was a Company planet; they owned and ran every line of communication, every item shipped or manufactured there: the food, the clothes, the shelter. When Company had started setting off the burns that ruined the natives’ land, he had done his best to do his job, managing—admittedly, according to the rumors, with the unlikely help of a Mirror—to bring the plight of the indigenous population to the people of Earth, sidestepping SEC corruption and forcing the Councils to bow to public opinion and set in motion the famous Jink and Oriyest v. Company case.

It was at that time that two discoveries were made: Jeep’s natives were one hundred percent female, and there was a virus loose.

The two were connected, of course. The incidence of infection of Company personnel was one hundred percent. Eighty percent of Company’s female personnel recovered; all of the men, including Courtivron, died. The planet was closed: no one on, very few off. The virus had killed the two physicians before they could unravel the world’s reproductive secret—something else Marghe hoped to get information on.

She scrolled through the main directory. One of the names she had been looking for, Eagan, caught her eye. She punched up Eagan’s directory. It had nine subdirectories. She called up the first: more than forty separate files. She sighed.

Three days were not going to be enough to review over a year’s worth of reports from Janet Eagan and Winnie Kimura, the surviving members of Courtivron’s SEC team. Her assistants.

Marghe blinked and realized she had been sleeping. D Section was thick with silence. She wanted to cough, or clear her throat, just to hear something, to make herself feel less alone. She swung off the bed and padded over to the terminal. She was too tired to work, so she commed Sara Hiam.

“Quiet getting to you?”

Marghe looked around at the creamy white walls, the carefully cheerful pastels of overhead lockers, the metal bed legs, the plain flooring. “Everything’s getting to me.

Tell me how things are going on your end.”

“Sigrid and Nyo are still debating whether the solar microwave satellite is out of synch because of a decaying orbit or faulty switching. They do agree that they can fix it. Again.”

Port Central drew all its power from the microwave relay. There were several generators planetside in case the relay failed, but machinery was one thing and having the personnel to operate it another. Port Central was down to one-third of its original staff complement.

“Any other news?”

“The gig might be a day late. We relayed to Port Central the news that there are some big weather systems heading their way. We suggested that they might want to delay. Also, they’re bringing someone up.”

“Who?”

“You won’t like it. Janet Eagan.”

“But I need her down there! Can’t—” Marghe shut up. Technically, she had the authority to order Eagan to remain on Jeep, but an unwilling assistant could be worse than none at all. “Do you know why?”

“Winnie is missing.”

“Missing?”

“Dead, Janet thinks—”

Dead. Sweet god.

“—and Janet, quote, has more than done her duty and refuses to stay a day more when she’s pretty damn sure she won’t find out anything useful and where the locals are as liable to kill her as answer her questions, unquote. I’m sorry.”

Marghe felt sick. She would be alone down there, unsupported, faced on all sides by hostile Company personnel. It was going to be Beaver all over again, but worse, much worse. And it was too late to back out. She had swallowed that softgel, she was here in the dirty section, Section D. She was committed. She gripped the worktable, whether to hold herself upright or stop herself from smashing something she did not know.

“I’m sorry,” Hiam said again.

“I needed them,” Marghe whispered. Alone with all those Company technicians.

And Mirrors. Dear god.

Hiam tilted her head to one side and was suddenly all brisk physician again.

“Now, I need to know how you’re feeling. Have you noticed any adverse effects yet from the FN-17? My readings indicate elevated blood pressure and a slight rise in temperature.”

“I’m angry.” And scared.

“I’ve taken that into account.”

Marghe closed her eyes, monitoring her respiration rate, heartbeat, blood flow, oxygen levels. “There is some impairment, yes.” She felt a little dizzy. “What can I expect?”

“The usual features of fever: dizziness, nausea, headache. I’ve seen worse. Drink plenty of water, and rest. I’ll cut visual monitoring if you like, but I’d prefer to keep audio.”

“You said there was no danger.”

“FN-17 by itself isn’t going to do you any lasting damage, but fevers are always unpredictable. It’s just a precaution.”

“How long will it last?”

“Hard to say. Twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours.”

She would be well enough, then, when Eagan arrived. “Thanks.”

Sara nodded and switched off. Marghe called up the language program she had worked on aboard Terragin. The root language spoken on Jeep derived from twenty-first-century Earth English, with some evidence of a secondary tongue based on Spanish. SEC and Company had given her access to their data bases, and she had selected a dozen of what she considered might be the most important dialects.

She had studied them intently, finding peculiarities that she could trace but not explain. Several words had their root in the Zapotec spoken only by the inhabitants of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, generations ago. And there were some phrase constructions only to be found in Basque, or Welsh. One dialect had a seven percent incidence of ancient Greek. During the tedious voyage aboard Terragin she had amused herself thinking up improbable hypotheses to fit the available data.

Now she put aside the question of origins for another time. The population of Jeep was small, estimated at under one million, and its people lived in small groups, each with its own richly varied dialect. She had three days to familiarize herself with as many as possible.

After four hours her head was aching too badly to continue.

She turned everything off and silence swallowed her. The light hurt her eyes. She drank some water and lay down.

“Lights, off.” The dark and quiet made her dizzy. “Lights, low.” She staggered back to her screen, commed Hiam. “My head hurts.”

Hiam glanced off-screen, nodded to herself. “Your fever’s high, but nothing to worry about.” She gave Marghe a crooked grin. “You look drunk.”

“I feel it.”

“Take a painkiller for the headache.”

Marghe went to the food slot, swallowed the painkiller, and lay down again.

What had happened to Winnie Kimura? Perhaps Eagan knew more than she was saying. Eagan would know a lot that was not in any report. She needed Eagan with her on Jeep, not up here. Six months, alone.

Silence lay like a weight on her chest, pushing her down.

Her dreams were confused. She was back on the Terragin, studying a language map. A word kept appearing, superimposed over her careful roots: CURSED. She tried everything she could think of to wipe the screen clean, but nothing worked.

Then the walls and ceilings were whispering in Hiam’s voice: Remember the cursed.

When she woke up, she felt hollow and light, her head full of hot wires trying to push their way out through her eyes. She lay still. The cursed. The cursed… What did the dream remind her of? The Terragin… working… overhearing one of the crew: Supplies for the cursed.

She sat up carefully, pushed herself off the bed, and almost fell onto the chair before her terminal.

“Sara.” Silence. “Sara?”

The screen flickered into color. Sara was flushed. “Yes?”

Marghe blinked. Bad time. “Sorry.” But she could not bring herself to switch off.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about… A dream. The cursed. Supplies for the cursed.”

“Ah, yes. Our keeper. Our Armageddon.”

Marghe shook her head, confused.

“The Kurst. ” Hiam spelled it for her. “Company’s military cruiser hanging out there, watching us, watching Jeep.”

None of this made sense to Marghe. “What?”

“Officially it doesn’t exist, but SEC knows about it. We know about it.

Commander Danner down on the ground knows about it. I don’t think she’s thought it all through, but at least she knows it’s there.”

Marghe wished Hiam would go more slowly. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“No? Wait a minute.” Hiam leaned off-screen, reappeared holding a glass and a small bottle. She poured herself a shot. Drank it down. “Illegal, this. But I’m sure Company won’t mind.” She poured herself another. “The Kurst appeared a while after Estrade was converted. Four years ago, maybe. It’s Company’s insurance.”

Marghe knew she must look confused. Her head hurt.

“Look at it this way, here’s a planet riddled with a virus that kills all men and lots of women, almost as if it was designed as a weapon.”

“Was it?”

Hiam brushed the question aside. “What’s important is that it could be used as one. Don’t you see? Nobody understands it, no one can control it. Except maybe those women down there. If you were a military person, would you take a chance on letting civilian technicians, even Mirrors, wander onto a world if they could come out carrying a weapon our hypothetical soldier doesn’t understand and can’t combat?”

Marghe had not thought of it that way. “But everyone goes through decontamination.”

Hiam poured another drink. “Let me tell you something. We know nothing about that virus. Nothing. We don’t know its vectors, its strength, or longevity… nothing.

If you were to go through all those unpleasant procedures I detailed for you before you left the clean area, no one could guarantee you would be free of it. Now, given that that’s the case, would you let someone off here and take them home? Imagine if the virus got loose out there!”

That one was easy. “Death, everywhere. For everyone. Eventually.”

“Not necessarily. The women down there seem to have found a way.” She frowned and drained her glass. “But nobody knows how.”

“So what happens to those people who get taken off here, for the long-term quarantine?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

Marghe was tired. “Well, everything will be all right if the vaccine works.” She wished her head would stop hurting.

“All right for whom?”

“I don’t—”

“A vaccine is a counter-weapon. It’s control. Imagine: mass vaccination of the women down there. If they need the virus to reproduce, then they’ll die.”

“You don’t know that they do.” Not even Company would deal in genocide, would they? Hiam was paranoid, crazy. “You’re drunk.”

“Yes, I’m drunk. But not stupid. Look me in the face and tell me SEC would stand up to Company on this.”

Marghe imagined her father, and what his opinion would be. Probably he would say nothing—just get up, search his bookshelves, pull down an old volume on the Trail of Tears and other, more systematic attempts at genocide, and hand it to her without comment.

Hiam was nodding. “You see now.. None of us are safe. Estrade is probably wired for destruct. And the gigs. All because no one out there really knows who or what’s safe and what’s contaminated. One whiff of this thing getting out of control and phht, we’re all reduced to our component atoms. That’s why we have no contact with the Kurst: stops the crew from getting to know us, sympathizing. It’s harder to murder people you know.” Hiam stared at nothing. “Every time I wake up, I wonder: Is this going to be my last day?”

Marghe did not know what to do with this information. She did not want to think about it. Her head hurt. She felt as though someone had been beating her with a thick stick.

“Why do I ache so much?” she whispered to herself.

Hiam heard. “First-stage immune response,” she said cheerfully. She seemed glad to change the subject. “The activation of your T cells is starting a process which ends up with your hypothalamus turning up the thermostat.” She nodded at Marghe’s shaking hands. “The shivering is just one way to generate heat. Don’t worry, the painkiller you took includes an antipyretic. Your fever will ease along with the ache.”

Marghe frowned. This did not fit something Hiam had said before. Something about low-level response. She tried to ignore the thumping of her head and sort out her information. SEC rules meant that Hiam was not allowed to culture the virus, or bioengineer it, so the vaccine was not made of killed virus. What she had done instead was identify the short string of amino acids, peptides, that folded up to form the actual antigen of the viral protein, map out the amino acid sequence, and then bio-facture a combination of different peptides, matching different regions of the viral protein, in the hope that one or more of the synthetic peptides would fold up to mimic an antigenic site present on the viral protein. She had linked those to inert carrier proteins to help stimulate the immune system. But Hiam had not been able to fine-tune the peptides, and the immune response was supposed to be low-level.

“You said that it would be a low-level response. That’s why I have to take it so often.”

“The response to the peptides is low-level—”

Marghe would hate to see an acute response.

“What’s happening now is partly due to the adjuvants I added to the FN-17.”

Marghe looked blank. “The combination of chemicals which enhance the immune response and help maintain a slow and steady release of antigen.”

Marghe struggled against dizziness. Adjuvant. Chemicals. “They’re toxic?”

Hiam nodded. “Cumulatively so. Which is why six months is the absolute limit for the vaccine.”

Toxic, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t think there was any need.”

Doctors know best. Marghe felt angry and uncertain; she did not know whether or not to believe Hiam. About the vaccine, about the Kurst. She did not want to talk anymore. “Feel sick. Bye.” She felt for the comm switch, could not find it, pushed the off switch instead. The screen died and the whole room went black.

She squeezed her way through the sticky blackness to her bed. Behind her eyelids gaudy colors swam and burst. She dozed.

In her dreams her head still hurt, but it was Hiam who was going down to Jeep to test the vaccine. That seemed logical; a doctor would be the best person. Then Hiam was in D Section, saying, “But how does it all work? And why aren’t the daughters identical copies of their mothers?” She got angry when Marghe could not tell her. A tree grew from the floor of D Section, a tree heavy with apples, mangoes, cantaloupes. Marghe reached for a grape the size of her fist, realized it was poisoned just as she woke to a voice calling her from the ceiling.

“…up, Marghe. Wake up.”

She tried to say something but her throat was too dry.

“Good,” Hiam said. “I want you to get off the bed. Come on, that’s it. Good.

Now get a drink of water. A whole glass. Drink it all. Slowly, Marghe, slowly.” The room swooped. “Fill the glass up again. Take it to the bed. Sit down. Good. Sip it slowly.”

Marghe did. The warm water tasted metallic.

“Your reaction was more severe than I’d anticipated. I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to put a hood on you.”

Marghe looked over at the medical hood. “I’m glad you didn’t.” Speaking made her breathless and hurt her throat.

“I still might have to if you get any more dehydrated.”

Marghe sipped until her glass was empty.

“If you feel up to it, go to the slot and eat what you find there.”

An apple. Marghe stared at it, confused. Had Hiam been inside her dream? She picked it up. It was cool. She felt deathly tired, too tired for subterfuge. “Are you trying to poison me?”

“Oh, Marghe. No, I’m not poisoning you. Try and eat the apple.”

She woke up thirsty but clear-headed. “How long this time?” she asked the ceiling.

“Almost seventeen hours.”

She sat up cautiously. She still felt a little dizzy, but that could be lack of food.

The food slot hissed. It contained a glass of water and one watery pink softgel.

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. It was her choice; nobody had forced her to come here. The slot closed automatically when she lifted out the glass and the pill. After a moment, it slid open again. A small portion of fish, still steaming, with a bean sprout salad and another glass of water.

When she finished, she was tired again. She lay down, trying to remember if those conversations with Hiam about genocide had been real or delirium. Marghe fell asleep trying to remember what exactly Hiam had said.

The lights around the door to the outer access lock flared warning red, then dulled. The door hissed open. Janet Eagan was small, naked, and coughing so hard she did not have the breath to greet Marghe.

Marghe brought her a glass of water and pulled a sheet from her bed. While Eagan drank the water, Marghe draped the sheet around her shoulders. They were bony, and pale except for freckles, but her hands and face and legs were weathered.

The coughing eased.

“Better?”

Eagan nodded. “For now. Thanks.”

“I’m Marguerite Taishan. Marghe.”

Eagan did not offer to shake hands.

Marghe gave her a cliptogether. While they ate, she found herself watching Eagan’s hands, which were brown and hard, callused across the palms. She had not seen hands like that since watching a carpenter at a demonstration of old-style skills.

Eagan noticed and laid them on the table palm up.

“Rope calluses,” she said. “For a while I crewed a ship working the coast around the southern tip of the continent. I learned a lot.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“Most of it’s on disk at Port Central. I couldn’t bring it with me.”

“Is there anything I should know before I leave?”

Eagan laughed harshly, “Yes. It’s not like anything you can possibly imagine. If I had it to do again, I’d never set foot outside Port Central, just invite the occasional native in to tell me her story. If you have any sense, that’s what you’ll do. I’m glad to be out of it.”

Marghe said nothing. Eagan shrugged and picked up her fork. They ate in silence.

Marghe got up to get their dessert. She hesitated. “I’ve heard some rumors, I can’t vouch for their validity, but once you’ve heard them, you might want to give up on the decontamination and return to Jeep with me.”

“No.”

“Listen, anyway.” Marghe realized she sounded like Hiam. Was she beginning to believe it? “The rumor is that the people who are taken to Estrade are never heard from again.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Take some time to think about it.”

“I don’t need to think about it.”

“Eagan, I need you down there. I need what you know.”

“It’s all on disk.”

“I don’t want just what’s on disk. I want your private thoughts, your theories, the ones that are too crazy to be put on record.”

Eagan looked at her for a long time. Marghe saw the lines around her eyes.

Formed by months of squinting at light reflecting on the water? “You’re assuming I have some theories. I don’t. Winnie had theories. She’s missing.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“She decided to go to the plateau of Tehuantepec.”

“Tehuantepec?” Marghe frowned.

“The same. Though the name is about as appropriate as ‘Greenland’ was. It’s cold up there, nothing like the climate of the Gulf of Mexico.”

Marghe went over to her terminal and punched up a large-scale satellite map of the planet. Jeep was encased in huge spiral banks of water vapor. The whole world glowed like milk and mother-of-pearl, like a lustrous shell set in a midnight ocean.

A few keystrokes removed the clouds. Marghe rotated the naked world. “Come and show me.”

Eagan pointed to Port Central, on the second largest continent, then tapped a raised area several hundred miles to the north. “Here. Winnie believed she had found clues in their folklore as to the origins of these people. She was heading for a place on the plateau called Ollfoss.”

“Enlarge.” The screen displayed a more detailed map. Much of the plateau was forested and contour lines showed it at an elevation of almost three thousand feet.

“Can you show me’the location?”

“I’m not a geographer. But I ’ll give you some friendly advice. Don’t go. Winnie headed that way, and she never came back.”

Marghe stared at the screen. “How long has she been missing?”

“Fourteen months.”

“She was wearing a wristcom?”

“Of course. But most places out there they’re useless: few relays, and weather interferes with everything.”

“What about the Search, Locate, and Identify Code?”

“A SLIC’s only any good if there are enough satellites out there to scan for it.

And if the Mirrors are willing to come and get you.”

Marghe absorbed all that. “Do you have any ideas what might have happened?”

“Anything could have happened.”

“You said that one of the reasons you wanted off was because the natives would just as soon kill you as say hello. Or words to that effect.”

For the first time, Eagan looked uncomfortable. “That’s not strictly true. I exaggerated, to rationalize my need to get off the damn world. They’re just…

ordinary people.”

“But—”

“No.” Eagan cut her off abruptly. “Winnie did not have to be murdered to die.

The planet itself will do that if you give it a chance. Listen to me. Do you have any idea how many different ways a person could get herself killed? For all I know, Winnie could have fallen off her horse and broken her neck the second day out. Or she could have choked on a piece of meat. Or gotten pneumonia. Or been attacked by something.” Tears, moving slowly in the low gravity, spread a wet line down each cheek. “Or maybe she just forgot to tie her horse up tightly one night and it ran off, leaving her stranded miles from anywhere. Maybe she ran out of food and starved to death. I don’t know, I don’t know.” She brushed jerkily at her cheeks. “All! know is that she went away and didn’t come back.”

“She went on her own?”

“Yes,” Eagan said. “I let her go out on her own. I told her she was crazy to try.

So I let her go on her own, and now she’s dead. And if you go, you’ll die too.”