A car swung in and she saw the face of the alien: no hair, golden eyes and a smile with superbly even white teeth. As he got out, she noticed his ruff protruding just above the collar of his polo shirt. She was no reader of ruffs but she’d read somewhere that it was possible to determine the health and sexual availability of an alien by its colours and patterns. He walked up to her and extended his hand.
‘Ms Bellini, so good of you to agree to meet me.’
His hand was smooth and she could almost feel an electrical charge pass up her arm as she shook it. Inside the pub, it was all polished mahogany tables and gleaming brass. A blonde woman in a short black skirt and with ample cleavage on display took their order. The professor seemed to be much taken by the sight. He must be in season, thought Marcella.
Over a meal of vegetarian lasagne and a huge plate of salad, they got down to business. Probtzl had acres of data for his project but what he needed was a set of case studies with interviews. Then he could analyse the reasons for the suicidal actions of the grads. Marcella told him about Gerry and his brush with death but could not come up with any kind of reason for the change in behaviour.
‘Do you know anyone else who has attempted suicide?’ asked Probtzl.
‘Not in my close circle but I have contact details for quite a few others I want to talk to,’ replied Marcella. ‘I think there is an underlying factor apart from being unemployed. Living sustainably as we do is almost a full time job in itself and requires lots of ingenuity. We all take great pleasure in working the system and avoiding being part of the corrupt culture of over consumption.’
‘Very commendable. Is it correct that you now have your own currency?’
‘Sort of. It’s based on barter. You accumulate credits for doing things for other people and you can use them to buy stuff or services.’
‘I am not surprised that the government does not like the grads. You are beyond its control.’
They concluded their discussion with Marcella agreeing to collaborate with the professor on his research. She would do the legwork of interviewing the survivors of the attempted suicides amongst the grads and he would collate the information and write the paper with her help. Marcella realised that it would be like having a job for the first time in her life.
****
Marcella couldn’t interview all of the contacts in the flesh but there were a few within cycling distance and for some she could get there by train. The rest she planned to do on her e-pad via a video call. The alien professor had sent her an outline of the way he wanted her to conduct the interviews, as well as a questionnaire that people should fill in beforehand. Marcella had looked at this in some detail and added her own questions concerning diet and the use therapeutic of parasites.
She toiled up Parbold Hill on her bike in bottom gear cursing the guy, Wayne, she was about to meet. He’d insisted on meeting at the top of the hill, hinting that he thought somebody was watching him. Paranoia, thought Marcella. She could see his point though: it would be difficult for a watcher to creep up on them if they were perched at top of the hill from where they could survey the area for miles around. Even a small drone could be spotted from up there.
Just before arriving at the summit, she slowed down a little and looked around. To her left, a young black man on a mountain bike, was making his way briskly along a rutted farm track. He waved as she looked his way. She continued towards the top. He caught up and then overtook in a flurry of heavy breathing and whirling feet. Despite all this, she stayed on his tail until they halted at the top of the hill. He grinned at her as he took off his helmet.
She looked at him; pretty typical of the breed: scruffy hair, straggly beard, bright eyes and wiry frame. Nodding at the crossbow hanging on his back, she asked him a question.
‘Worried I might attack you?’
‘This?’ he replied, unhooking the bow. ‘Just in case I see anything worth putting in the pot. You never know,’ he said with a grin. ‘Got a pheasant last week.’
Marcella looked around for somewhere to sit and spotted a bench next to a lay-by. They stood looking out over the countryside below before sitting on the bench facing the traffic.
‘Did you fill in the questionnaire?’ asked Marcella.
‘Sorry, I was too busy. I can do it now if you like.’
Marcella already had her e-pad out with the document loaded by the time he’d finished the sentence. Previous interviews had taught her that questionnaires were the last thing people wanted to deal with. It took a few minutes to tap in his answers on the touch sensitive screen and then Marcella continued with the interview as scripted by her alien colleague.
Traffic continued to roar by, for the road was a main route to and from the M6 and Marcella started to get pissed off with the noise and exhaust fumes from the trucks, let alone the gawpers peering at them from passing cars. The restaurant bar across the road would have been nicer but neither of them had any cash, so it was out of the question. Finally, the interview was complete and Marcella put her e-pad back inside her jacket. A bright red car slowed as it passed them and Wayne followed it with his eyes.
‘Seen them guys before,’ he said. ‘They came past about fifteen minutes ago. Told you I was being watched. Gotta go.’
He sprang on to his bike and pedalled away at max revs down the hill in the opposite direction from the car. Marcella watched him until he disappeared around the bend and then got on her own machine. Then she had a thought. It could be that she was the one being watched rather than the mistrustful Wayne. Before starting off, she looked at her e-pad and plotted an alternative route home, mainly cross-country. If somebody was trying to follow her, it would be more difficult on rough farm tracks than on the road and she would spot them easily.
When she got back to the hut, Gerry was waiting for her.
‘Another of your funny interviews was it?’ he asked. ‘You’re never here. The veg is going to pot. Have you looked at our crops recently?’
‘Yes, I was doing an interview and yes, I have looked at the crops and I will be harvesting stuff this week. How about you doing it for a change, anyway?’
‘I’ve got my own work to do. Let’s face it, I’m the one getting actual cash. You only ever do exchanges.’
Marcella finally got off her bike and wheeled it to the side of the shed.
She turned back to Gerry. ‘What’s got you so worked up? I was away for what, a couple of hours?’
‘There were some heavy guys lurking around, asking questions about you.’
‘Did you tell them anything?’
‘No, I didn’t speak to them. I kept out of sight. They were going round the other allotments asking questions.’
Marcella looked into the hut and surveyed the inside quickly.
‘Have they been in here? It hasn’t been trashed at least.’
‘Yeah, they were inside when I came back from the market. I don’t think they took anything.’
‘You could have shot them with your crossbow. Why didn’t you?’
‘There were three of them. I couldn’t have reloaded fast enough.’
‘What kind of car did they come in?’
‘A BMW Eco-brid. It was red.’
Wayne wasn’t being paranoid, Marcella reflected as she went into the hut. In the small back room, she could see that her things had been moved and put back mostly into their original positions. There’d been nothing to find in terms of her research project. All of that was kept on her e-pad or an obscure back-up site on the web. She’d also uploaded the results of her interviews to a secure server used by Probtzl. She opened her knicker drawer. Within, its beak open and dull eyes looking up at her, lay a dead crow.
Marcella didn’t know what to make of the dead crow left in her drawer, but realised it was some kind of warning. A dead animal left to be found could indicate that she’d be next, but why a crow? Why not some other poor creature? The image of the bird’s corpse plagued her for days and she was no further forward in working out
the answer to her question. Eventually, she dismissed it as some sort of sick joke despite a suspicion that it was connected to her work with Probtzl. When she finally e-mailed him to tell him about the incident, she received a call from him within minutes of sending it.
‘My funding for an important project has been put on hold,’ he told her. ‘I have tried to find out why and was directed to call someone at the Population Balance and Aspirations Agency.’
‘The who?’
‘It’s a Quango with a wide remit. I have it on good authority that it’s a cover for a dirty tricks team that works for the government. Anyway, I called and got a veiled warning that one of my other projects was likely to make me unpopular with powerful people and that I should terminate it. Then I might get my funding back.’
‘Does that mean our project?’
‘Probably. Be careful Marcella, we are on the verge of revealing a conspiracy of some kind. The people in the government are not exactly ethical as you must know.’
****
Gerry was feeling down. There was no reason for it as far as he could see. He’d patched things up with Marcella after the sticky period following his suicide attempt and his jewellery business was doing well. He stirred his crow stew and smelt its savoury aroma. The herbs grown on their allotment, along with onion, garlic and plenty of salt and pepper, made it very appetising.
‘That smells good,’ said Marcella. ‘Pity I’m a vegetarian, I could almost like that.’ She looked at him more closely. ‘Hey, what’s the matter? Have I said the wrong thing?’
‘Nothing you’ve done Marcella. You’re lovely. I’m just really down for no good reason.’
‘I was wondering about you the other morning when you went off to market. You looked a bit worried then. Do you think it’s your old trouble, depression?’
‘Yeah. It’s come back.’
‘In that case we must do something about it,’ she said, bending down and taking a bottle from a cupboard. She poured a small amount of the green liquid into a glass and added water, waiting for the concoction to disperse.
‘Take this. I got it from Elsie, the herbalist over the way.’
‘What is it?’ asked Gerry, screwing up his face as he smelt the liquid.
‘St John’s Wort: it’s good for depression. It’ll make you feel better. If nothing else, the alcohol in it will, anyway. It’s what they call a tincture. Come on, drink up.’
Gerry did as he was told and drank down the medicine in a single gulp. It was bitter but not as bad as he’d expected. She then told him that he needed to take it three times a day for several weeks or even months.
That evening, Marcella was working on the answers in her questionnaires trying to detect any common factors or a pattern that could point to the cause of the grads’ depressive illness. She logged on to the professor’s pet server remotely and used the data processing software he’d installed. While the machine was running through its routines, she got up and went outside the hut for a change of scene. On her way out, she passed Gerry dozing in his chair, an empty glass and a half empty bottle of parsnip wine on the adjacent table.
The late August sky was hazy and dusk was approaching. She took the path around the back of the hut that led to the entrance to the allotments and stopped to breathe in the cool air. An arm suddenly encircled her neck from behind and she was dragged backwards towards the shadow of the shrubs next to the path. She choked as the arm tightened and could feel herself becoming light headed. A gritty voice spoke into her ear and the grip loosened slightly. She smelt beer on his breath.
‘Bitch, I could kill you now but I won’t. This is a warning. Keep your nose out of our affairs; you know what I mean. Otherwise, next time, you’re dead.’
Then her martial arts training kicked in. She stamped down on the assailant’s shin with her heel. He yelped and let go. Marcella jabbed her elbow backwards into his chest and she heard a grunt as the air was forced out of his lungs. Rotating on her left heel, she angled herself for a kick and landed her blow perfectly on target in the man’s crutch. He screeched in pain and staggered backwards holding his groin with both hands. Marcella stepped forward ready to land a knockout blow but the thug somehow gathered enough strength to run, still bent over, through a gap in the bushes, his escape accompanied by a string of expletives. She hadn’t really looked at the man, but registered uneven teeth, brown eyes and stubbly haircut.
Feeling her sore neck, she retraced her steps to the hut where Gerry was still asleep. About to berate him for not hearing the commotion and going to her aid, she glanced at the screen of her e-pad in the next room. A result was flashing. Postponing Gerry’s tongue-lashing for later, she went over and picked up the device. The link was there. All of the victims had eaten crow meat. She put a call through to Probtzl.
****
The alien professor’s response to Marcella’s news had been enthusiastic and they’d spent half an hour discussing her results and going through them. He had paid her train fare to Lancaster and picked her up from the station. It was a typical late August day with a mixture of grey cloud and the odd glimpse of sunshine. Marcella was surprised by their destination. She’d expected to be ferried to the university but found herself at an isolated cottage in the countryside, on the south side of the city. Probtzl had borrowed the cottage from a friend and made sure that they weren’t being followed by taking a circuitous route that doubled back on itself a couple of times. Marcella asked him why he was playing at secret agents.
‘Since your call two days ago, I have spotted people tailing me to and from the university and I am sure that my calls are being monitored there.’
‘Why not just use your e-pad.’
‘The encryption level on those things is rudimentary. A teenage geek could crack it in a few minutes, let alone a government IT goon. Did you switch yours off as I told you?’
‘Of course. It felt very strange being out of contact though.’
‘You may have to get used to that until we have resolved things. An e-pad is very easy to track. If you do need to use it, do so for only very short periods, preferably when you are on the move.’
‘I’m beginning to feel paranoid.’
‘Good. That way, you’ll stay alive.’
‘I thought that you were one of the establishment. You’re a prof at a university. That puts you firmly in the government camp.’
‘Not so. Look at me. What do you see?’
‘An alien man, good looking in a muscular sort of way.’
‘You see an outsider, like yourself. We are not popular with the British government and the other aristocrats that run this country.’
‘They love your technology though. There always seems to be some fat politico on the news puffing himself up about how they’ve gained access to Gliesen biotech and the bright future it will bring.’
‘Mostly they want to use it for dubious purposes. My race regards these people as amoral hubristic fools. We have fed them a few scraps and no more.’
Their conversation continued in this vein for a while until Probtzl brought the discussion back to the reason for their meeting. Marcella fished inside her backpack for the samples she’d brought with her. The professor took them and donned protective gloves before opening an aluminium clad case.
‘This is a portable laboratory I borrowed from one of my colleagues. We can test these samples with it. Did your partner ask you why you wanted them?’
‘He did ask a lot of questions, which I couldn’t really answer of course, but when I told him it was connected with his depression, he was really helpful.’
Probtzl injected samples of urine and saliva into small translucent blocks of what looked like plastic or glass. They were connected to a laptop by short cables.
‘This material is passing along a series of minute channels flowing over molecular level detectors that generate an electric current in response,’ explained Probtzl. ‘In a few minutes we will have a good idea of what is causing the problem. Di
d you bring the crow meat?’
Marcella handed him a small bloody package, screwing her face up in disgust. While her companion dealt with the sample, she found the bathroom and washed her hands thoroughly. When she got back, Probtzl was smiling triumphantly.
‘You’ve got something then?’
‘This is purely a preliminary result, but it looks like Gerry is infested with a helminth and the crow also contains larvae from the same organism. This is not a coincidence. I will take these samples back to the university and get a more detailed analysis done. I’ll send you the report in a couple of days.’
****
With growing anxiety, Gerry listened to Marcella’s summary of the report sent her by the alien prof.
‘You mean I’ve got a parasitic infestation from the crow meat? But I always cook it.’
‘Probtzl reckons the larvae or whatever is in the crows are heat resistant. He says the crows are acting as a paratenic host: they carry the parasite but it doesn’t actually reach maturity there. Humans are the real hosts.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to stop eating crows then.’
‘Yes, you could be like me and be vegetarian. Then you’d have no problem.’
‘But I’m still infested.’
‘Definitely. The tests showed you have active parasites in your gut and they produce a sort of brain hormone that makes you depressed. It’s something to do with serotonin. I didn’t really understand that bit. Anyway, all you have to do is take an anti-helminthic and flush them out.’
‘And then I’ll get better? I won’t have to take that horrible muck you keep giving me. Great,’ said Gerry, hugging Marcella and squeezing the air from her lungs.
Pulling away gently, she continued. ‘I was coming to that. You have to taper off the dose: twice a day for a week then once a day and every other day and so on, until you stop all together. You’ll get withdrawal symptoms otherwise.’
Later that day, Marcella sent voice messages to her interviewees with the same instructions she’d given Gerry. She didn’t care if anyone was eavesdropping: it was harmless stuff and in a good cause.
Parasite World Page 7