Parasite World

by Trevor Williams

  Later, when Gerry wandered outside for a breath of air and a walk around the allotments, Marcella sent Professor Mzorkl Probtzl a message via her e-pad:

  Hi Prof

  Need to talk to you about green issues. Confidential therefore need private venue. Same as before?

  Marcella

  After she’d sent it, her e-pad chimed and a message arrived. It was an alert from a bank where she still held an account with virtually no money in it. She had been credited with £10,000. Impossible, thought Marcella. Gerry deals in cash and I work on the barter principle. Where could this money have come from? She logged into the account to check the source of the windfall. It was labelled as a government benefit. That wasn’t right: as a grad she was banned from receiving benefits unless she had paid off some of her student loan. Marcella had been unemployed since leaving university and not paid back a single penny, much to her satisfaction. Now she was getting a huge government handout. There could be one explanation only: this was her payment for betraying the Gliesens.

  ****

  Marcella studied Mzorkl Probtzl’s ruff. It was largely pink with a faint tinge of purple and the outer edge was grey. She knew from her previous contacts with aliens that this meant that he was just out of season. The MI6 guy was way off beam if he thought that she could seduce the prof at this time of the year, even if she’d wanted to. It would be four months before his interest in sex would reassert itself. At her request, they met at a cottage that belonged to a friend of the professor. It was on the south side of Lancaster and backed on to fields, so it would be difficult for anyone wanting to mount a surveillance operation.

  ‘Your cryptic message was a puzzle, Marcella,’ opined Probtzl. I had to think what you meant by green issues but I think I’ve worked it out.’

  ‘Oh good. What do you think I meant then?’ said Marcella through a mouthful of cream cake, thoughtfully brought by the professor.

  ‘What humans now call the greening or green plague, depending on their point of view. Am I right?’

  ‘I knew you’d get the message. Opinion about the greening seems to be travelling in one direction at the moment. A lot of humans don’t like it. Personally, I think it could be very useful.’

  ‘You haven’t succumbed to the cyanobacterium yet though. You have retained your original skin colour.’

  ‘Yes and do you know why? It’s the mode of transmission.’

  ‘Yes, through sexual contact, a natural and effective way of making sure that most humans would eventually gain the ability to photosynthesise.’

  ‘That’s the sticking point: you get it through sex. To many humans, sexually transmitted disease is a source of shame. You’ve only to think of HIV or other STDs like syphilis or gonorrhoea. These are associated with immoral sexual pleasures. Can you see the problem?’

  ‘We have seen many religious leaders railing against the greening of humans: it’s normal for bigots to hate anything outside their narrow frames of reference.’

  ‘Exactly. Not only does it offend against their standards of sexual behaviour, but it is also compounded by the origin of the disease. The Gliesens are not human and therefore, by definition, suspect.’

  ‘Is that how you feel?’

  ‘Not at all, but I think you’ve made it very difficult for humans to accept the greening as a benefit. You may have to find a way of reversing it.’

  ‘We couldn’t do that. The planet needs this change in human biology.’

  Marcella paused. She knew Probtzl was close to the top of the Gliesen hierarchy but hadn’t realised that he was amongst the policy makers. He was looking at her waiting for her to continue but she needed time to think. How could she pacify the government goons and at the same time not lose the trust of this very nice alien?

  ‘More cake?’ he offered.

  She accepted with a nod and an outstretched plate.

  ‘You’ve not come here of your own free will have you?’ Probtzl said.

  Marcella knew there was no fooling Probtzl. Aliens could read human body language and skin hues better than any lie detector. She went on to tell him about her recruitment by a government agent and the way she’d been coerced into taking the rôle of a femme fatale.

  ‘This seems to be a common approach by this government. It never works. The last time they tried to acquire biotech from us, they ended up with a litter of kittens. The minister behind the scheme is now dead, I believe, killed by a religious fanatic who conveniently disappeared.’

  ‘That must have been Beam the golf minister,’

  ‘The very same. Now, we need to work out how to satisfy your spymasters while at the same time not helping them at all. I’ll have to make a few calls and then I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, if your government man makes contact, you can tell him you have made a start on my seduction,’ concluded Probtzl with a reptilian smile.

  On her way back to the railway station, Marcella felt relief that she wasn’t going to be forced into bed with Probtzl. Knowing that some human women found alien men attractive did nothing for her own attitude. She found the scaly amber skin and total lack of hair a complete turn off. Added to that there were tales about the Gliesen prehensile penis. She shuddered at the thought.

  ****

  Dwayne Burghe contemplated his future as he walked back to his bedsit in Toxteth, Liverpool. A tall bleached blonde walked towards him, clacking along on spindly high heels and showing lots of leg. When I get my new car, he thought, women like her will be gagging for it. He’d almost decided which sports car he would buy. It was going to be bright red with an open top. He would drive around the city showing everybody he was a made man. Turning, he watched the retreating pelvis swaying in its tight little skirt. Yeah, he would soon be getting it on with something like that. Just one minor problem though. He wouldn’t get paid until the job was done. The month of training had passed as in a dream. He wasn’t quite sure where it had been but it was somewhere in Scotland. At the end, he’d been deposited at a railway station with his bruises, a ticket and a wallet full of cash. They’d be in touch, they’d said.

  Back in his scruffy room with its grubby brown carpet and collapsing green leather sofa, he reviewed the latest message on his e-pad. It contained further instructions for his mission. He had a job as an usher at a biotech conference at the University of Manchester. His ID was attached so that he could print it off and he had to wear a proper suit and a tie. He’d not done that in years. The last suit he’d worn was a prison suit, baggy around the ankles to cover the leg irons. He wondered how his mentor, the Pastor was holding up in Altcourse. Funny place to have a prison, right next to a hospital, he’d thought at the time but it made sense. If you got injured badly, they could take you straight there in minutes. Now he had his doubts about the Pastor who’d convinced him to be born again. After he’d left gaol, Burghe had thought he’d been a member of a Christian direct action group, the Wrath of God, handing out justice to heretics, but immediately after his last hit, the CIA came in and spirited him away. That made it look as if the whole operation had been blown from the start. So what was he doing working for the Americans? The threats had been pretty convincing: being found naked on a beach with his balls in his mouth, having bled to death was their first scenario. Then it got worse. Once he’d said he’d work for them, they’d promised him money, more than he’d ever seen. No choice: live and be rich or die there and then, minus his bollox.

  His e-pad chimed. An encrypted message unscrambled itself on the screen, the CIA app doing its magic on what looked like random gibberish.

  Yo Bro Burghe

  Gliesen target will be at the gig for certain. Pic attached. The President is depending on you to exact his just revenge on the sinful alien who inflicted the green plague on innocent mankind. May the Lord bless you.

  Bro Benedict

  Burghe’s self esteem inflated like a hot air balloon over the fire. Yeah, he would complete his mission. Visions of a fast car and willing vacant women beckoned.r />
  ****

  Marcella wandered along the line of animated posters trying to glean some kind of meaning from them. To a history graduate with a smattering of science attenuated by years of non-study, the arcane jargon of biotechnology had little meaning but she enjoyed the colourful graphics and flow charts in a purely aesthetic manner. Some of the contributors at the conference were Gliesens with the majority being humans. Probtzl walked alongside her, greeting academics he knew and shaking the odd hand as he went. They had already had a meeting with two other aliens who were attending the conference at Manchester University. Marcella had expected it to be a cloak and dagger affair in a back room somewhere but it had been the opposite. They’d met in a cafeteria full of other academics discussing research projects at the tops of their voices. Good cover, Probtzl had called it, and he was right. It would have been impossible for anybody to eavesdrop on their conversation while surrounded by such clamour. Now Marcella had a copy on her e-pad of what purported to be a biotech recipe for curing the green plague. She didn’t know any of the technical details: all she had to do was pass it on to her MI6 controller. They left the exhibition hall and went along a corridor which would eventually lead them to the exit.

  Burghe was amazed by the lack of CCTV cameras in the building. Must be a cost thing, he surmised. It was all to his advantage though. He looked the part in his dark suit and plain tie. With his ID badge pinned to his lapel, he fitted in perfectly and had even directed a few people to various rooms used for the conference. He checked the pic of the alien on his e-pad. Yeah that was him coming down the corridor towards him. The girl was a complication but he’d deal with her at the same time. The knife slid into his hand like an old friend as he walked briskly towards them. This was going to be quick and easy. He’d kill them and be out of the building almost before they hit the ground. He smiled genially at the alien as he closed in, his knife hand coming up for the killer blow to the Gliesen’s gut. Nice and smooth: it was going to go straight through to the backbone.

  Marcella saw the usher coming to towards them. He was a slim muscular black guy and moved like a runner. It was the spring in the step that gave it away. As he approached them, she sensed a flexing of his right hand. He’s getting out his e-pad, she thought. Other elements of the guy’s body language betrayed something subliminal that triggered a rush of adrenaline. She moved closer to Probtzl, about to tell him to get clear of the man but too late, saw the flash of the blade. Marcella shoulder charged the attacker from the side, throwing him off balance. He recovered quickly, the knife still in his right hand. Keeping the weapon in her sight, she feinted towards the knife arm but at the same time rotated sideways and kicked the man’s left knee. She felt the satisfying crunch as his patella cracked and he went down. She stamped on the knife hand to immobilise it and hammered her fist into his temple.

  ‘Man down,’ she said turning to Probtzl. Blood was spreading over the front of his shirt but he was still standing.

  Footsteps thundered towards them as a gaggle of security men converged on the scene from both ends of the corridor. The flurry of activity soon had Probtzl on his way to hospital and Burghe back to gaol. After that, things were rather slower and it took Marcella several hours to extricate herself from the clutches of the local police. They found it hard to understand what an unemployed history graduate was doing at a biotech conference with an alien professor of neurobiology. All she dared tell them was that she was there as his guest and they were friends, all of which was true.

  ****

  Jemima Heinous-Smythe called the ATAG meeting to order.

  ‘George, do you have any news for us? Did you find a way of getting anything out of the Gliesens that would ameliorate the green plague?’

  The MI6 man hesitated. ‘We did recruit an agent and she obtained a set of instructions for doing something connected with the greening. The Porton Down bods are looking at it but they reckon it’ll take months to find out if it’s any use or not. They think it might be an enzyme inhibitor that stops the new organelles reproducing.’

  ‘Is that a cure then?’

  ‘No, it would sort of slow things down a bit if you were already infected.’

  ‘And this agent, is she reliable?’

  ‘Not our usual sort of operative, I’m afraid, but competent. You’ll have seen her in the news recently. She’s the girl who defended an alien academic and prevented his murder by a born again ex con.’

  ‘Ah, Marcella Bellini? We could do with more like her.’

  ‘We’re not exactly flavour of the month with her: she’s a grad, one of the virulently self sufficient brigade. We had to apply pressure to get her to work for us in the first place. Now she says that was the last time. After the publicity, she’s no real use to us anyway.’

  ****

  Zoë looked at Marcella with hope in her eyes. Marcella returned her gaze, scanning her for greenness. She couldn’t see much difference since she’d last met her.

  ‘You’ve not got much worse as far as I can see,’ stated Marcella.

  ‘That’s because I’ve been living like a hermit in a cave, keeping out of the sun. I had to tell Doug I was allergic to sunlight. He didn’t take it too well: we had to cancel our holiday in sunny Somalia. I’ve been skulking around indoors and only going out in the dark. Doug’s started calling me his pet vampire. I think he’s going off me because of it: he always like my tan.’

  ‘Nobody has a cure for the greening yet’, said Marcella. ‘But there’s always a chance that somebody can come up with a palliative at least.’

  Zoë brightened. ‘You’ve found something. I knew you would: you’re so clever, Marcella,’ she said flinging her arms around her friend.

  Disengaging herself, Marcella went on to explain what she could offer. ‘Elsie, you know, my herbalist friend, has given me a mixture of herbs used by rural people in South America to fight infections. She won’t tell me what’s in it but she said that one of the ingredients might stain your mouth red. It’s a natural dye and it’ll wash off after a couple of days. Anyway, here’s the stuff she gave me.’

  Marcella picked up a brown paper bag of dried leaves and twigs and handed it to Zoë.

  ‘Drop this lot into a pint of hot water, not boiling, and let it soak for an hour. Strain off the debris and then drink the liquid. That’s all I can tell you. Elsie said it’s perfectly safe and it might also improve your love life. One of the things in the mixture is an aphrodisiac, by all accounts.’

  ‘In that case I’ll give it to Doug as well. He needs it,’ said Zoë with a thin lipped smile.

  ****

  Zoë looked at her complexion in the mirror, patting her cheek just in case the green under colour should reappear at her touch. Her skin stayed pink. She’d lost the habit of sunbathing: bad for wrinkles and you could end up looking like a Chinese smoker, the magazines told her. The main thing was that the greening had gone. She’d finally confessed to Doug about the muscular toyboy but only after she’d used Marcella’s herbal gunge on herself and him. His response had been dramatic while hers was as she’d wanted. Either way, it had reinvigorated their relationship.

  She watched Doug at his screen, going through the orders for their ungreening elixir. He may not be the greatest lover, she thought, but he’s a wonderful analytical chemist. Their new business was going to make them rich.

  Holy Homunculus

  Lucinda kept the target in sight while at the same time trying not to make it obvious that she was following the Archbishop of York. The man was easy to spot, not only because of his formal robes but also the homunculus growing out of his right shoulder. The little figure was constantly leaning over and whispering into the archbishop’s ear and the man usually answered. Lucinda shuddered at the idea of having a parasite with its own brain and ideas growing out of her body. Yet pretty well everybody in government had one. It was a symbol of rank, especially amongst the Old Etonian hierarchy.

  Stonegate was crowded, even for a Saturday aftern
oon in summer, and she found it quite easy to dodge behind groups of drifting shoppers and browsers. The umbrella felt out of place: it hadn’t rained for weeks and York was officially in drought. Every drop of water had to be recycled: even taking a piss was now fraught with regulations. You’ve got this coming, you old goat, she thought. She held the furled umbrella down by her right side, trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible. It was a drab brown affair and not the kind of thing that would draw anyone’s attention. That’s what her GUF controller had said, anyway. She had objected at the time of the briefing. An umbrella in summer and no rain for weeks? she’d queried. He’d insisted that it would not cause any suspicion. She would be viewed as an eccentric: plenty of those in York, he’d said.

  The archbishop stopped in front of the window of Mulberry Hall, peering at the expensive crockery and cookware. Lucinda slid up behind him and drew the umbrella upwards, cocking the spring mechanism with her thumb. It clicked and she wondered if he’d heard it. A passing motorbike roared its message of raw unbridled power far out shadowing anything as trivial as a click and her equanimity returned. She looked at her reflection hoping that the archbishop wouldn’t get wind of her intentions. A skinny muscular bleached blonde woman in jeans and tee-shirt looked back at her. Pretending to look at the glistening goods in the window, she angled the umbrella downwards and stabbed the cleric in the lower right leg, pulling the small wire loop trigger at the same time. A quick wrench brought the weapon back to her side and she sidled along the street, quickly swivelling into a boutique overflowing with filmy women’s summer dresses designed to rack up huge credit card bills. Synthetic sickly fragrance pervaded the shop.

  She watched the archbishop as he turned and twisted his head to look down at the back of his leg. He pulled his robe up and frowned at the mark where the short needle had entered. With a shake of his head he continued walking along the street with a slight limp. As soon as he was out of sight, Lucinda, or Brian as she still sometimes thought of herself, left the boutique and walked briskly back the way she’d come. Now all she had to do was dispose of the brolly. Nobody must find out how they’d done it. The only problem for Lucinda was that the controller had left it to her how to deal with that. What to do? She could dump it in a waste bin: too easy for the police to find. In the river? It’s so low, she thought, it would be spotted immediately just sticking out of the mud. Then an idea occurred to her: have a cup of tea in a café and leave it in the lavatory somewhere out of sight.