But more likely it was because on Earth, Toxoplasma gondii didn't mutate very fast.
Mars organisms, all of them, are bathed in constant cosmic radiation. The radiation speeds mutations, and most of these are harmful. But if you're a parasite, and you reproduce very fast—
So they had only one solution: to take very good care of the cats in the upper tunnels, where the mutations would occur fastest.
The best meat. Carefully formulated meals with plenty of taurine. Clean water always available, from cat-sized drinking fountains.
“We must be very brave now,” whispered Lucile. She squeezed the hands of Benoit and Jean-Marie.
* * * *
At the end of a Mars year—such a long time!—Lucile roused herself to take Benoit and Jean-Marie up to the tunnels where they had been cosseting the feral cats.
The cats looked different this time. Many of them had been dull-coated and listless the previous times they had visited. Today, there were fewer cats—so many had crawled away to die, and would have to be found and cremated—but those remaining were sleek and lively, fleeing the humans, or turning on them, puffing up with hisses and growls.
Lucile cornered one and picked it up to examine. It struggled fiercely, but she gripped its back paws and soothed it with her hand. Then she peered closely into its eyes. Its mucosa were pink and unblemished, its fear and fury palpable signs of health.
She clipped one of its claws too short and harvested a blood sample to take back to the lab.
It snarled and would have bitten her but for her quick reflexes. She let it go and it streaked away, leaving claw marks on her arms. But she smiled.
Benoit caught her hand up and licked away her blood.
“All we had to do was take care that some of them survived,” she said.
* * * *
The cats were hard to count, but the estimate was that thirty cats were still alive on Gari Babakin station
And the one Lucile had tested bore toxoplasmosis oocysts.
Which meant that they probably all did.
And those oocysts now contained Toxoplasma gondii that were immune to Godfrey's virus.
The surviving feral cats were reproducing. Godfrey Worcester hadn't dared come back to the station, but he had sent Dr. Hilda Wrothe and Dr. Kermilda Wriothesley, who wrung their hands and scolded, but since cats are easy to hide, they didn't have much wind in their sails, and besides, there was an outbreak of athlete's foot in Argyre Planitia City.
Nobody from NutriTopia Ares apologized, and Lucile felt a small cold emerald of hatred in her heart.
* * * *
Benoit gave her a tiny kitten. It clung to his shirt until he detached each of its twenty-four claws and handed it to Lucile.
“Where did you get it?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“It has a name?”
“I offer you that honor.”
“Eclair,” she decided. Eclair sank its twenty-four tiny needles into the fabric of her jumpsuit and purred. Its body was very warm. Its tongue was very pink.
“The feral cat colony is back in force.” Benoit tried not to smirk.
“I thought everybody would take all the remaining cats for pets, after most of them died.”
He shrugged. “Not all cats agree to be pets, just as not all Martians agree to play kiss-ass with the corporate jackboots. Some old toms fought like tigers. They don't trust humans, after what happened.”
“And they all have toxoplasmosis? The virus has run its course?”
“Apparently. And people are eating raw meat again. They're raising hamsters to make steak tartare, imagine that.”
She smiled slowly. “What a scandal.”
* * * *
The medico at the clinic that had failed to revive Bon Bon had theories of her own. On Earth, toxoplasmosis benefited cats because cats were the top predator in their environment. Humans didn't count in that environment, because they didn't prey on either cats or rats. But on Mars—well, certain humans could be top predators. At least, the mutated toxoplasmosis seemed to foster that situation.
But their prey was other humans, those of a different genetic background, in a suave and civilized way. Because NutriTopia Ares failed to understand that the virus hadn't completely wiped out toxoplasmosis, it spread wherever food was shipped from Gari Babakin.
Those with these secondary infections, with the other genomic background, behaved like prey animals. Prey animals that don't die, but rather buy. They were infatuated with all the products of Gari Babakin culture.
* * * *
“We are the Paris of Mars,” Lucile said. She twirled, enjoying the swirl of her new red frock. Benoit and she had designed it, and now she was modeling it for a test audience: him and Jean-Marie. Soon she would offer it, as she had other creations, to the wealthy of Mars. Benoit had a flair for design, it turned out, though she didn't trust him to keep the Chez Raoul company books. She hired a woman for that.
She did, however, trust Benoit to father a child. The two designers did not breathe entirely easily until the little boy had reached his second birthsol and showed no damage from toxoplasmosis.
Etienne Bergere had opened a small restaurant that required reservations a Mars year in advance. A mysterious vintiniere now bottled a wine so exquisite that Terran billionaires paid huge sums to have it shipped to them on Earth.
Dr. Hilda Wriothesley and Dr. Kermilda Wrothe won Mars Global Storm Awards for their work in protozoan dopamine metabolism. Lucile watched the ceremony via netlink.
“Oh, look, Tigercat,” she said to Benoit, “they're wearing knockoffs of our gowns.”
Benoit, busy composing a poison pen letter to the Prime Minister of Key West, wasn't watching. “How do you know they're knockoffs?”
“Darling, we'd know if orders had been placed. And neither of them can afford originals. But more to the point, look at how they drape. Droplet manufacturing can't even approximate the real thing, eh?”
* * * *
Dr. Godfrey Worcester, sadly, found himself unable to do serious science after his collaboration with Drs. Wrothe and Wriothesley. He disappeared. Rumor had it he was deported to Earth after his arrest for stalking Lucile Raoul.
He said he loved her.
Copyright © 2009 Mary Turzillo
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Novelette: FOE
by Mark Rich
* * * *
Illustration by John Allemand
* * * *
Sometimes the hardest part of a problem is knowing when it's finished....
* * * *
“Can't you just ship him out, if he's a bum?”
To judge from her look, my question was way off base. Could I whoosh the words back in through my lips?
Then Dena MacLaren made a dismissive hand motion and smiled. She seemed an awkward sort—tall and slender with short, straight, brown hair, and given to motions of a timid nature. Awkward folk easily forgive others their awkwardness. Plus I figured she might be giving me a break because I, Jay Wirth, was a newcomer to Dometown 26, also named Neuhight, here in Bliss.
What a ridiculous name for a hilly plain on chill, arid Mars—Bliss! When I saw it on my travel arrangements I laughed at the error. Then I dug out a map. There it was—and now here I was: short and frizzle-haired, with more mixo-American melanin in my skin than maybe I needed on the planet of dusty-rose skies, even though a lot of other Martians had plenty, too.
“Because it's more than likely, Jay, that if I did that, they'd boot me off Mars, too,” Dena said. “Like as not, none of us are quite up to our best abilities, all of the time, wouldn't you say? But you know all about that, or at least you will, in your new post.”
Was there a touch of acid in her words? How susceptible was I, myself, to being instantly shooed off Mars? I had mulled over that very question on the slow ferry between Earth orbit and fourth planet. After accepting the job, I learned its previous holder had lasted none too l
ong.
“I was just surprised by the idea, I guess,” I said, hoping to patch over my gaffe. “Where I come from it must be a bigger problem than here. We have those sorts of thoughts, since it isn't something we can actually do—ship out anyone. But the presence of a bum's a little sign of inefficiency in the system, isn't it?”
“You mean a guy who sits around talking to anyone nearby? I don't think he's a sign of anything!”
“Our most useful people—”
I stopped myself.
Here I was saying “our"—about cities on a different planet altogether, far away from this enclosed, radiation-shielded Martian dometown.
“Back where I was working, I mean to say,” I said, “we were finding the most useful citizens never quite retired. They kept themselves useful, at least a little. How smoothly can things run, after all, if all the know-how of your most experienced workers goes to waste?”
Dena's face had shown signs of softening toward me. Not anymore. Apparently I was putting foot deeper in mouth—maybe an operation easier to accomplish here, at less than one gee.
Her department was associated with my own, I assumed, so I had hoped to make a good first impression. And since the job I had won, out of however many applied for this obscure Martian post, was that of Chief of the Department of Efficiency—or chief and staff, I should say, since the department had funding for a complement of exactly one—I had figured making a comment or two about efficiency would put me in good light. It would show I was on the ball from the moment I stepped off the Interdome from Claudetown in Neuhight.
Maybe my trouble was I had gone against my own instincts a moment before. I grew up with tales of my grandparents dealing with penury and all the disadvantages and prejudices the poor had to face back in the old America. I sympathized, really. I had put too much importance in Dena's choice of words: That might have been it.
On our tour we had reached an area where young maple trees dotted a wide, green park. Impressed as I was to find a small grove in the middle of Dometown 26, it surprised me even more to be informed it was one of several, and actually the youngest of the dometown's woods. The trees looked healthy, their thinner trunks accentuated by leaves that struck me as broader than usual.
Seeing the greenery made me more aware of the surrounding light. Martian sky-tint bathed everything with a dusty-rose glow. At one time, I read somewhere, the sky was not so reliably reddened, not in all directions, and not at all daylight hours. As had occurred on Earth, though, human activity had raised the level of atmospheric particulates, and the raised levels gave the Red Planet the sky tourists now expected.
The ambience here in the park raised goose bumps. Walking onto the path leading between the trees, I felt lightheaded. That dusty-rose light filtering between the broad, translucent leaves turned the park into an eerie, magical woodland bathed in a sunset I knew would last as long as daylight did. If the gateway to Faerie could be anywhere on rust-colored Mars, it would be in such a place as this.
On a bench sat a blue-eyed old man with short white hair and a suit that had seen better days—quite a few such better days, in fact. He must have tumbled out of bed and forgotten to freshen up before finding his morning cup of coffee, now steaming in his hand. Had I spotted him in Peoria or Elgin, back in sunny Illinois, I would have thought him harmless. When I heard his nattering at Dena about a church supper on Wednesday and about picking up groceries for old Brittney who was housebound at the moment, I consigned him to the talkative-old-busybody category.
After Dena introduced us, old Eddy said, “Oh, so you're the gentleman who's to be the new Face of Efficiency around here. Well, glad to meet you. You go ahead and make everything efficient around here, now!”
He laughed in a relaxed way as Dena and I went on down the path and away from that peaceful park—at which point she made the comment, idly intended I now realized, about Eddy being the official crazy old bum of Neuhight.
Caught off guard by the thought—bums on Mars?—I poised foot before opening lips: Can't you just ship him out?
As we walked from the park toward Engineering, I said, “So given my post I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask. How in the past have you dealt with it? I mean, resources are pretty limited up here. How long can you feed and house the ones who don't work?”
“Feed and house them? I suppose forever.”
“Does that make sense, economically?”
“Maybe not. Economics isn't my area, though.”
“What is your area, by the way? When we were introduced, there were so many to meet I don't have it clear who works where. Your department's akin to mine?”
“Nothing of the sort. I'm in humanities.”
“Humanities!”
“That's right.”
“This town has a department of humanities?”
“Of course.”
“How strange,” I almost said before catching myself. After all, I had managed, so far, to avoid exclaiming how strange it was Dometown 26 had a department of efficiency. While I was happy to have the job, why it should exist was far from clear to me, even after poring over the job description.
Dena noticed my puzzlement and said, “It might seem odd. But you know about Claude Onyell?”
“Name seems familiar.”
“Onyell developed the human-resource systems of our dometowns. He's especially remembered here in the Bliss region. It's where he did his early work. And the Department of Humanities was his idea. Every dometown needs one, he thought.”
“Ah. And how does the Department of Humanities feel about Mars having crazy old bums?”
“Jay,” she said, shaking her head, “I should never have called him a bum. Eddy worked his years. He never made much and really didn't save much, but he earned his retirement. He's not really a bum.”
Was that her personal or departmental opinion? I thought to steer the conversation away toward another topic, delicate though it might be, too.
“You wouldn't have an official opinion, would you, about the previous holder of my job? But I suppose that's outside your purview, too.”
“Actually, I've observed your department fairly closely,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yes. And frankly, I think it's a silly department, whether or not Onyell thought it necessary.”
“You do?” Was I supposed to feel as shocked as I did? Having just taken the job on, I had little idea what might seem silly here.
“In fact,” she said, “I helped get the previous man fired.”
“Really?” I tried to keep my truly horrified reaction out of my voice. Was this seemingly affable Dena MacLaren to be my foe in Neuhight?
“Really, I did,” she said dryly. “Now here we are at Engineering. Addie back at the reception told me someone would take over here. There he is!”
My new foe said good-bye in a friendly way and smiled as though amused by the silly new holder of a silly old position in Dome 26. Even so I could not help but wonder how sharp her teeth were, behind those lips.
Then it struck me what old Eddy called me: the Face of Efficiency. It yielded initials like those of a fraternal organization: F.o.E. Who was the foe, around here? I was the F.o.E. So Dena was foe of the F.o.E.?
* * * *
I took a tentative liking to my new guide, Ron Pierce, from Field Generating—not a department exclusive to Onyell-designed systems. The idea of radiation shielding was as old as Lunar voyages and colonies; and the electrical generation of magnetic fields, the approach used here, was a standard but important element of dometown construction almost everywhere—even near the Earth poles, in this day and age.
Ron Pierce had looks to make me feel jealous. Of medium height, his strong jaw, straight-profile nose, and level brows might have made him movie material. His chestnut hair had just the trace of wave. It was all too easy to imagine women tromping all over me on their way to get nearer him.
On the other hand, he had a quirky, intelligent personality not normally associ
ated with his type—in my mind, anyway. It even turned out we had interests in common, including, oddly enough, Earth-side botany. You see, I had been a bio major before falling tumultuously in love with a sultry brunette in gov. I started taking classes in her department, changed majors out of a sense of making a practical decision about my life, and won acceptance into the same grad school she did—after which she dumped me.
Ron asked what had made me apply for my job.
“I wonder that myself,” I said. Then I told myself to speak with more care, lest it should seem I took my post lightly. Did I need to appear sillier than I maybe already was?
Ron laughed with understanding, though, and waved his hands in the air, as if to indicate his surroundings. “Look at me, Jay,” he said. “I wanted to get into field biology but then got good scores in math and ended making a career choice. Better paying jobs, in this sort of stuff. Crazy. But I don't mind how it turned out.”
So I told him my course of action, in life and education—or inaction, since I somehow early embraced that mistaken idea that it mattered little what I did for a living. Did I need to enjoy work? It was just for money!
Maybe my girlfriend had been so much the love of my life—or the opposite, whatever that is—that I lost sight of myself early on ... the first time I set eyes on her, maybe.
By the time I started regaining any sense of what I was actually interested in, as a person, it seemed too late. I took jobs in city-street management and urban development. Though I felt miserably bored, a lot of the time, I could hardly afford to drop everything to go study lichens and liverworts—it always having been the tiny and oddball that tripped my botanical trigger.
“And that's what made you look to Mars?” Ron said.
“Ridiculous, isn't it?”
“Lots of us, here—we're Martians for ridiculous reasons. You'd be surprised.”
“You mean like we're escaping Earth jobs? Seems like people do the same kinds of work up here they did down there. Except maybe me. I don't have much of a clue what I'm supposed to do.”
Analog SFF, April 2009 Page 17