Inoculated

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Book excerpt

Chapter 1

Lydia brought the amoeba-class ship out of sub-ether above a cloud-shrouded planet in the Mnemosyne Constellation and threw a glance at her companion. "I swear, Xsirh, I don't know what those Homo sapiens are thinking. Look at her! Ugly as pondscum! Why does she get to become Empress?"

On the holo, a dainty tiara glittered in the human female's dishwater hair. Her skin was white and rough as plaster. Her lips were the color of rutabagas and poised in a perpetual pout. The nose was squished into the face, a wart the size of a snail perched on a cheekbone, the close-set eyes peering from beneath a unibrow. The holonet was alive with the upcoming coronation of the Homo sapiens Empress, and it didn't matter where Lydia surfed or what program she watched, the hype inundated all the media.

The blob of protoplasm in the copilot's chair, Xsirhglksvi Xlmhgzmgrmrwvh, nodded in agreement. "With your radiant beauty, you're far more deserving to be Empress," Xsirh said. A series of slurps, burps, and chirps comprised the language of her companion, inviting inevitable comparisons to human flatulence. Xsirh's green exoderm mottled with laughter, cilia writhing around his face.

Detecting sarcasm, Lydia glanced at the upper portion of his physiognomy, where his optical organelles were located. "And you became an expert on human beauty when?" Reared by the Kziznvxrfn, she knew their language better than any other human, and sometimes better than they themselves did.

"When I met you, Lydia." His coloration took on a blue shade, a sign he was blushing. "I knew you were special from the moment I saw you."

Mollified, she smiled. "Thank you, Xsirh." He was the father she'd never had, the mother she'd always wanted, and the brother she was always competing with, all in one. He gets maudlin at the oddest of times, she thought. Of all the Kziznvxrfn, he knew her the best. He'd reared her since she was four. The Paramecium way of life had been difficult for her to adapt to. Without his protection, she would have perished. He'd risked censure and ostracism to help her, relations between human and Kziznvxrfn tenuous at best.

She replaced the holo with a view of the planet below. Their destination outlined, the capital Helios occupied an archipelago on the water-bound planet. Lydia and Xsirh had come to negotiate a contract for its didinium exports, which the Kziznvxrfn considered a delicacy.

One of the few humans who understood the Kziznvxrfn's near-addictive craving for the unicellular protists, Lydia had started buying didinium harvested on human worlds for the Kziznvxrfn market and now was the number-one supplier, with a seventy-five percent market share and a fleet of cargo transports. Always on the lookout for new sources, she'd come to Mnemosyne with her adoptive father to scout out the quality of its product.

"Atmospheric entry in one minute," the ship computer blurted. "Zgnlhksvirx vmgib rm gdl nrmfgvh," it repeated in Kziznvxrz.

She checked her five-point and glanced at Xsirh.

A transparent shell dropped from the ceiling to cover him, his periplast far more permeable than her epidermis and his body lacking bones. In a multi-g descent, he'd ooze right through five-point restraints, even with anti-grav absorbing the brunt of the torsion forces.

The ship began to shudder and shake. Lydia concentrated on breathing deeply, atmospheric entry the worst part. Twenty-four years ago, during just such a descent, she'd been orphaned on Kziznvxrfn, her parents dying in the crash. She gripped the armrests with both hands, sweat breaking out on her brow, her stomach doing pirouettes up to her craw, her heart hammering in her ears.

Then the shudder ceased.

"Imperial Infection Control to inbound Paramecia vessel, please assume a holding pattern at fifty-thousand feet while your ship is being imaged."

"Acknowledged," Lydia said, barely finding her voice in time.

"Imaged?" Xsirh said, the shell retracting into the ceiling. "Why do they need to image our ship?"

"Contraband, probably." She shrugged, frowning. She'd commed with a complete flight plan and had been cleared by the authorities. She couldn't imagine what the holdup was.

"Oh, I'll bet it's the coronation."

Intuitively, she knew he was right, the hoopla reaching even Theogony on the galactic rim, a hoopla they couldn't avoid no matter how hard they tried.

"Infection Control requesting visual contact," the ship computer said. "Rmuvxgrlm Xlmgilo ivjfvhgrmt erhfzo xlmgzxg."

"On screen," Lydia ordered.

"Commander Sarantos here, Imperial Infection Control. Lydia Procopio, I presume?" A smile lit up his face. "My, aren't you pretty!"

Prettier than that pondscum Empress of yours, she thought. "What's the hold-up, Commander? All the clearances are in the flight plan filed a week ago with Space Traffic Control."

"We've had some changes in protocol due to the recent outbreaks, Ms. Procopio, clearances or not. We're detecting alien life aboard the ship. We'll need to sterilize the vessel."

"Of course there's alien life aboard—my Kziznvxrfn companion, Xsirh."

"Kzizn? You have a Kzizn aboard? We'll need to do a visual and the alien will have to be dealt with."

"He's been inoculated per protocol, Commander. We've both been inoculated. It's all on file." Humans everywhere were paranoid about infectious agents and invasive species. Recent infectious outbreaks had ratcheted up their paranoia to a persecutory fervor.

"Prepare to be boarded," Commander Sarantos said. The screen winked out.

"I don't like the sound of this, Lydia," Xsirh said.

Her stomach ground and heaved, and not from the rough atmospheric entry. "It's never been a problem before. We've been to how many worlds belonging to these supposed Sapiens?" She frowned at him, dreading the inspection. And what had the Commander meant by "the alien will have to be dealt with"? Lydia and Xsirh had learned how difficult relations could be, their first few attempts to establish trade contacts having failed spectacularly.

"Not very sapient, are they?" Xsirh said. "I'd better get into my envirosuit before they board." His exoderm extended as his periplast retracted, protecting the attached cilia. He looked as if he were folding himself inside out. Xsirh slithered to the floor and squirmed toward his cabin on his exoderm, the mucousy periplast better suited to semi-aquatic environments.

The ship lurched violently to one side. "Tractor beam," the amoeba said, its voice eerily calm. "Gizxgli yvzn."

Thrown against her restraints, she wondered if Xsirh was all right. "Xsirh?" She tried to look over her shoulder. "Xsirh?" Unable to see him, she unbuckled herself. Bracing herself to keep from sliding down the slanted floor, she made her way into the corridor.

"Just a bruise," he said, holding twenty tentacles to a mottled patch of his periplast.

"Nothing broken?" she asked.

He shook his head and laughed, his optical organelles meeting her gaze. He had no bones to break. "Right in the micronuclei, though," he added, his organelles squinting in pain. His micronuclei were the equivalent of human gonads, one of four ways that Kziznvxrz reproduced.

I wish we'd been using the sub-ether drives, Lydia thought. They'd have put us beyond reach of any tractor beam.

"Unauthorized entry being attempted," the ship said. "Fmzfgsliravw vmgib yvrmt zggvnkgvw."

Infection Control, she thought. "Entry authorized. Let them in." She turned to Xsirh. "Better that than they blow our hatches."

"This won't be pretty."

She knew that as well as he did. The amoeba-class vessel righted, and she stepped toward the hatch, which opened.

The face of Field Commander Sarantos was a mix of a leer and a wretch. "What's that stench?! Smells like a sewer!" His face settled on a wretch, his skin turning green.

"Kzizn atmosphere, Commander," Lydia said. "In such a hurry to board, you can't wait for us to change the air? Hitting us with that tractor beam without warning injured my shipmate. If he requires medical care, you'll be getting the bill."

His face turned from green to red. "Inspect the ship!" he barked over his shoulder. "And you stay right here."

"Watch for Xsirh on the corridor floor," she told the marines as they surged past. She turned to Sarantos. "The next time you visit Kzizn, I'd like to offer you a complimentary kick to the testicles. Like the one you gave him."

A vein pulsed at his temple, his hand on his sidearm.

"Got the Kzizn, Commander!"

A blood-curdling squelch came from the back, Xsirh blatting in pain.

She whirled. "What are you doing to him?!"

Commander Sarantos slammed her to the bulkhead, his arm to her neck. "I said, 'Stay'! Take the Kzizn aboard," he said over his shoulder.

"You can't do that! He's done nothing wrong!" she choked out, trying to push his arm off her.

"R'ev wlmv mlgsrmt dilmt!" Xsirh said.

The Commander made another face. "What the hell was that noise? It sounded like really bad gas. Is that speech? What'd he say?"

"He said he's done nothing wrong!"

They'd wrapped Xsirh in a net and were hauling him onto the other ship.

Commander Sarantos let her go. "I'd advise you lay low for the next few days, Ms. Procopio. Whatever business you have can wait."

"My first order of business will be to file a complaint with the embassy, and my second, to do whatever I can to get you bounced out on your incompetent backside!"

"It's just a Kzizn, Ms. Procopio."

"That's my father, Commander!"

#

Lydia frowned at the line ahead of her. A queue of a couple hundred people snaked away from the Imperial Infection Control kiosk at the Helios spaceport, all of them awaiting clearance.

"What's the holdup?" she asked the person in front of her.

A rough-faced old man, his back bent from years of labor, gave her a look up and down. "Where you been livin', some backwater bayou? Outbreaks on Pyrgos Five and Cygnus Twenty, both planets under quarantine." He shook his head at her. "Ought to surf the holonet more often."

She blinked blankly at him and snorted. "Brain rot," she said. Anxious already to get Xsirh out of custody, she was tempted to raise a stink just to get past the line. She was certainly going to file multiple complaints about the rough, unwarranted treatment they'd received. "Where are you coming from?"

"Neither of those places, thank the stars."

She estimated how long she'd be standing in line, saw immediately she'd have to postpone her appointment with the CEO of Titanide Aquafoods. And who knew how long it'd take to get Xsirh released. Or if. She didn't have a lot of faith in human bureaucracy.

"Lydia." She extended her hand to the half-bent old fart in front of her.

"Nick," he said, shaking. "Short for Nikephoros. Pleased."

"Mutual," she replied. "What do you do here?"

"What else on a soupy planet like this? I fish—run a trawler for Titanide. Not much else to do either."

Lydia saw a bureaucrat making his way through the line, asking quick questions of each person he passed. "Titanide? I'm here to see Orrin."

"Runs a tight ship, he does. What's he gonna do with a pretty one like you?"

Lydia blushed and snorted. "Strictly business."

The bureaucrat pulled a man aside and led him over to an arch, where a glowing biodetector sat, its bulk twice the man's height. The man walked under the arch, alarms sounded, the arch flashed red, and a squad of armed soldiers appeared from nowhere.

"But I've been inoculated!" the man said, his voice quailing with fear as they hauled him away.

"What'll they do with him?" Lydia asked.

"Sterilize him," Nick told her with a shrug.

"Will he be able to reproduce after that?"

"Depends on whether or not it kills him."

Lydia stared after the squad, the man in their midst struggling. "How long has it been like this?"

"Happens whenever there's an outbreak. And those quarantines may not be enough." Nick shook his head.

Lydia had read up a little on immunology and disease prevention. Her father Dorian had been a Professor of Xenobiology before he died in the shipwreck, and among his effects had been some preliminary research. The fact that Imperial Infection Control was screening people after they made planetfall seemed to her to border on incompetence.

The bureaucrat was back at it, asking people questions, passing most of them by.

"What do you suppose he's asking?"

"Whether they've been to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year."

Lydia frowned, having been to both planets multiple times on business. Pyrgos Five manufactured shipping containers, and Cygnus Twenty supplied packaging. "What's it like to fish on Theogony?"

"Terrible! Didinium are all over the place. They get in your boots, they get in the nets, they clog up the exhaust pipes, they swim up inside the sewers, and worst of all, they get mixed in with the catch. You ever see a didinium? Those slugs can grow to the size of your head."

Lydia grinned and nodded. "On Kziznvxrz, they're ferocious little beasts." In their early evolution on Xsirh's home planet, the Kziznvxrfn and Didinium had fought for preeminence across a million years, each devouring the other relentlessly, and only in the last five hundred thousand had the Kziznvxrfn waded onto dry land from the planet's primordial soup as the dominant species. And the Kziznvxrfn had never lost their liking for didinium, despite its being nearly extinct. "They're considered a delicacy. If you can catch them."

"A delicacy? They taste awful! Who in their right minds would think they're a delicacy?"

Lydia shrugged at him. "I have relatives with some pretty strange tastes."

The bureaucrat approached the old man. "Any travel to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year?"

Nick shook his head. "No, Sir, never been either place."

The head moved slightly in Lydia's direction, the bureaucrat's eyes remaining fixed to his palmcom. "Any travel to Pyrgos Five or Cygnus Twenty in the past year?"

"Several times to both," she said.

Nick instantly stepped back, as did several people around them.

"I've been inoculated," she told them all, "if that's any help." Lydia already knew nothing she could say would sway a bureaucrat, always gumming things up like didinium in the fishing nets.

"Inoculation didn't help five hundred million people on Cygnus Twenty," the bureaucrat said. "Is that a rash?" he asked her.

"Huh?"

"Those spots on your arm, is that a rash?"

"Oh, that? I don't know," Lydia said. "It's been itching off and on since I left Kziznvxrz."

"I'll have to ask you to come with me, miss. What's your name?" The bureaucrat gestured toward the glowing biodetector.

"Lydia Procopio." She followed him to the arch. Blue lights twinkled around its insides, the hum of its motors faintly audible. It soared over her, dwarfing her slight form.

"On my signal, just walk slowly through, Ms. Procopio. Don't make any sudden moves." The lights began to blink. The hum went up two octaves. "Go ahead, please."

She stepped slowly through the machine. When she reached the far side without setting off the alarms, Lydia turned to the bureaucrat. "I told you I've been inoculated."