Ammonite

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. Companycase.

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 co

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 Wi

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 perso

“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?”

“Wi

“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 perso

“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 Terraginshe 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.”