Ammonite

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

What had happened to Wi

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 Da

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 Kurstappeared a while after Estradewas 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. Estradeis 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.