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  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 u
nlikely 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 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 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.”

  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 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?”