Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

  But the wasps told a different story. Cabrese had placed sensor wasps from Mine 22 all the way to the garrison. The garrison's sensors had reacted four days ago.

  Rios read Cabrese's notes. "Fungus spreads as fast as a man can travel. Wait ten years, come back for another try. Get the ore and go."

  Deece searched the tent. "Looks like they only salvaged corporate gear. Bilt was military, not corporate. Not worth the fuel."

  Rios cursed under her breath. They'd been left to die.

  What would Lefevre's briggers do when they discovered their tour didn't end in two weeks? Rios shuddered. How long until they killed each other? Starting with the outsiders.

  Deece gripped the sensor report so it puckered and twisted. "Fungus can't be the only reason. Cabrese told me the vent sealed itself after a day. What scared them?"

  She shuffled through papers on the workstation. Found a micro drive that had escaped destruction of the comms system. She slotted the drive. Opened up image after annotated image of mottled welts. Bad sensor results had been the first straw.

  She shook her head. Cabrese didn't care if the briggers learned why they'd been abandoned, as long as they couldn't signal for help. And as long as corporate got away clean.

  Deece looked over her shoulder. "The two briggers who died at the mine didn't fall into the vent."

  Rios seethed. No one from Mine 22 had come to her med tent for help. She searched until she found tubes of ointment and painkiller patch wrappers on the floor. They'd been treated in the corporate tent. Maybe at first Cabrese didn't want to scare off the colonists, or she feared the corporate liability. Later she just wanted to save her own ass.

  Deece pried a magnifying vial from the back of a drawer and held it up.

  Rios peered through the optical glass at a sticky looking crust in the vial, then at the hazard sticker that bound the vial closed. The fungus from beneath E-17's surface looked a lot like the dust that blew through the garrison ever since they'd taken the dome down.

  "E-17 alien fungus," she read from Cabrese's notes. "Decontamination would take too long, and the mission now violates a hundred eco-development treaties, including McKay." Rios continued, "The fungus seems able to cross the blood-brain barrier."

  She stopped reading. "They didn't leave us to die. They figured we were already dead. They didn't purge the data because it didn't matter what we knew."

  "Why aren't we sick, then?" Deece asked, then stopped himself.

  "Let me see your arm," she said. He pulled back the bandages. His welts had nearly disappeared. Completely different from Cabrese's images, and the two briggers Rios had quarantined.

  Deece's face showed betrayal, loss. Someone at home. Rios didn't have any such connections. Not any more. Once stung, twice shy.

  "How long do we have?" he asked.

  "Doesn't say. We need to know who's infected." Rios held up the vial with the fungus. "The wasps can detect the fungus on our skin. What about on our breath?"

  "Better to know who'll die first, you mean?" Deece frowned, doubtful.

  "Better to start figuring out ways to slow it down, or cure it." She pointed at his arm. Time to get to work.

  Deece didn't budge. "What got you brigged?"

  Rios cleared her throat, thick with dust. "I got caught feeding my corporate boyfriend's habit from my hospital's supply." She coughed. "He turned me in."

  Deece tilted his head to the right. Looked at her. "I'll get started."

  He unsealed the tent flap.

  A crowd of briggers stood outside, Lefevre and Jersey in the lead.

  "Where'd the brass go?" Jersey asked. She considered lying to them. Buying time.

  She thought about telling them the truth, and hoped she wasn't being stupid. "They ditched us. Murdered Bilt. We're on our own."

  She slipped past Lefevre as voices rose in protest. Heard the snap of knuckles against teeth. Shouting.

  Rios grabbed Deece's sleeve and ran with him to the vespidary. That door had a lock too.

  Rios's peripheral vision swam black and gold from too much time locked behind the vespidary's living walls. Her stomach rumbled. The vespidary smelled of pulp and dust.

  Deece separated two dozen wasps into sensor tubes. He waved a swab over the tubes. The wasps, anticipating a hit of sugar water, thrashed their abdomens and bashed at the tops of the tubes with their armored heads. Two clamped onto the filter mesh with tiny mandibles, then fell away when Deece shook the tubes. "These are ready."

  A small window on the vespidary's door offered glimpses of passing briggers as E-17's thirty-hour day cooled to twilight. Even when the area between the vespidary and the mess was clear, Rios heard shouts and arguments from nearby.

  Lefevre appeared and drew a fighting ring on the ground between the vespidary and the mess, then called to the briggers, daring them, "Go down fighting, or fucking. Whatever works."

  Rios watched as Jersey took the circle, followed by another brigger. Jersey bit the man's ear until it bled, then wrestled him to the ground, landing punch after punch. Three briggers disappeared behind the vespidary with one of the mining briggers. Rios could tune out the fighting, but the four-way echoed loud through the tent's canvas.

  "What's worse?" Lefevre shouted at the vespidary from her perch: a bench they'd dragged from the mess. "Doing anything you want? Or spending your last days trapped with a bunch of bugs?"

  Rios and Deece didn't answer.

  A brigger leapt at Lefevre, and she kicked him down hard. He didn't move. Twenty-seven briggers remained in the garrison, not counting Rios and Deece. Rios's stomach growled.

  "We can kill the wasps and eat them," Deece said, looking around the vespidary and its wriggling walls. Even behind the partitions that kept the wasps from the room, the hum was unending.

  "Protein is protein," Rios allowed. The thought made her gag. "Let's hold off. They'll make more of a meal when we're desperate."

  She distracted Deece by making him list everything he'd done after the rash had started: what he ate, where he went. There was nothing unusual. No reason he should have survived.

  As night settled, the garrison quieted. Then Lefevre banged a fist hard against the vespidary window.

  "One miner's dead, Rios. Scratched his face off while he was busy dying. Couple more briggers have welts now."

  Rios came to the door. "What do you want me to do about it?"

  "Tell me what medicine stops it."

  Rios eyed Deece's welt-free arm. "I'm not sure medicine will help."

  Lefevre rattled the door. Deece had changed the lock code. "Then what will? No one wants to die like that."

  Lefevre held up a box of rations as a peace offering. "No one will mess with you."

  Deece gathered up the sensor tubes and a larger box of wasps, well sealed except for tiny air filters. Rios opened the door.

  Deece walked from the vespidary to the ring of briggers, Rios following. Two briggers, welts creeping up their arms, sat on the ground, scratching.

  Rios walked through the ring, straight to the med tent. She filled her pockets with antihistamine and epi pens, then rolled the miner's body into a freezer blanket, like she'd done with Kuo. When she finished, she stepped out into the light again and found Lefevre talking to a brigger. Fungus welts criss-crossed the brigger's arms and legs.

  "Fungus made it to his brain," Rios said loud enough that the others could hear. "Welts across his scalp, fungus in his eyes. He went blind first." She held out her hand for a sensor tube. Deece handed her two. "We're going to use wasps to detect infection. I've tested it on myself, Deece, and on the dead brigger. We get a reaction only on the dead man."

  "So if the wasps react, we're dead?" a brigger asked from the ground.

  "No. If the wasps react, you're infected. Deece was infected two days ago. Now he's not. We're still working out why."

  "How do we know you're right?" a brigger asked.

  Rios thought of Cabrese canceling the transport while trying to save herself. H
er head filled with an angry buzz. She looked over the briggers, their bruised faces, their dropped shoulders. They'd given up. "We don't know." She touched the brigger's shoulder. "But we can try."

  He looked away, muttering, "Get on with it." Let her hold the tube with the wasp in it to his skin, then to his lips. The wasp pounded its head against the filter, seeking sugar. Infected.

  Same with the next eight. The ninth, eleventh, and twentieth weren't infected. The rest were.

  "What's the commonality?" she asked aloud.

  Jersey guffawed. "Fucking hell." He pointed at two briggers. "You all went at it with the Mine 22 guys." He wheeled around and pointed some more. "You lot did Cabrese, and those over there." He paused. "And me, and Lefevre too."

  Faces reddened. Rios groaned. Somehow, the fungus got into the skin faster through friction and sweat. Contact. That's why she was clear. She looked at Deece. Narrowed her eyes.

  He raised his hand, palm facing her. "Just with Cabrese, swear."

  Rios saw several other briggers nod. So Cabrese didn't escape clean after all.

  "The fungus moves fast. But Deece had the welts, and he's okay now." She had everyone's attention.

  "He was stung in my med tent, but not by one of the regular wasps." She turned to Deece. "You'd trained that wasp for Cabrese, right?"

  Deece nodded. "Probably."

  Rios thought fast. "That wasp processed the fungus through its system. It didn't die from it. But the wasp's venom, combined with the processed fungus, stopped Deece's welts."

  Lefevre narrowed her eyes. "You want us to get stung, on your guesswork?" Given Lefevre's reaction to her last sting, wasps were just as dangerous as fungus. "Kuo died from the wasps. Worse off than the miners. We saw it."

  The briggers on the ground, the ones with the welts, seemed game for anything, except crossing Lefevre. They waited, watched.

  Rios let out a calming breath. "We're not going anywhere. Transport's not coming. We can die, or we can live. Could start our own colony. But that takes everyone."

  Lefevre made a face. "I'm not starting any colony with these blockheads. Mess of screw-ups. And you—since when are you one of us?"

  Since always, Rios thought. Just didn't know it. "They left us here because they know they can always get more briggers. You going to help them get rid of the evidence?"

  Eyes narrowing, Lefevre said, "Keep a wasp in your mouth longer than me. Prove you're a brigger, then you can try stinging people."

  Rios swallowed hard. Was her guess worth the risk? Worth doing something stupid? She nodded. She didn't yet understand how wasp-venom worked with fungus. She'd figure it out later, if there was a later.

  "The bites won't kill," Rios told Deece, back in the vespidary. "It's just swelling. Control the swelling, mediate the pain. If I'm stung, you have epi. Worst that happens is I get off E-17 sooner than you." The walls of wasps buzzed in reply.

  Deece inspected wasp after wasp. "Too bad they couldn't make stingless females."

  She'd asked him to pull as many male wasps as he could. That way she'd have the crawling and the wings, maybe get bitten. But she might not get stung. Male wasps didn't have stingers.

  "They tried. Cabrese told me. The hives died." Deece muttered while he squinted. Stingers were hard to see on the squirming bodies. Males had more segments on their antennae, sometimes. Even harder to see.

  Rios stuffed her pockets with epi pens.

  Lefevre gathered the briggers outside. She shouted, "Rations'll run out, and all you'll have to eat is grass. Best bet on me and feast."

  Rios stepped from the vespidary. Two briggers sized her up, then put chits on Lefevre's growing pile. Deece dropped a chit on Rios and handed the box of wasps to Jersey.

  Jersey lit a smudge near the box, dulling the wasps.

  The sun broke over the horizon's raw edge as Rios joined Lefevre in the circle. Stood with her hand out and felt the hard body Jersey placed in her palm. She couldn't look at it. Lifted her hand to her mouth as Lefevre did, and popped the wasp in her mouth.

  Then they waited, staring at one another.

  At first, Rios couldn't taste anything but the smoke Jersey used to dull the wasps. Then she felt a weak touch, an antennae twitch. Her bile rose sharp and sour. She nearly spat the wasp out. Not in front of the briggers.

  Rios clamped her mouth shut. Tried to breathe through her nose. Something flicked thin and wiry against her tongue. A wing. Rios hoped she had the right kind of wasp.

  Jersey swatted at a wasp that had gotten loose. He stepped hard on the ground and a soft crunch broke the circle's silence.

  Her wasp woke enough to drag a wingtip across the roof of Rios's mouth. Her throat convulsed. The thought made her heart pound. A live wasp, maybe female, in her throat. Like Kuo.

  She stoppered her panic. Tried to breathe through her nose.

  Then she realized her mistake. If no one was stung, Lefevre would guess she'd rigged the bet with male wasps. The briggers would know she lied. They wouldn't listen to her.

  That was death for sure, and sooner, not later.

  Looking up, she found Lefevre staring at her. Lefevre pressed her lips shut in a fierce grimace. She stepped closer to Rios. Her eyes dared Rios to quit, dared her to keep going. The wasp thumped its abdomen against Rios's cheek. Rios twitched.

  She felt the weight of the briggers' gaze prickle her skin. This gamble wasn't stupid to them. Badassery eased everything. Boredom, illness, abandonment. Badassery was a moment of clarity. A win.

  Rios had never wanted to be a badass. Wasn't sure she wanted to be one now.

  The wasp crawled slowly on her tongue, legs pressed, searching. Its head butted her teeth: click.

  Lefevre's eyes widened. Her cheek shuddered.

  Perhaps, Rios thought, she might win another way. By not being stupid. The briggers might follow someone who changed the rules. They might see it as a promise. Survival instead of going down fighting. Rios hoped they would. She drew a deep breath in through her nose.

  With her tongue, she flicked the still-drowsy wasp toward her molars and bit hard. She ground down, crunching its abdomen. The taste was sour and sharp. Thick fluid oozed through the broken sheath of wasp. Rios fought the urge to gag as she mashed the wasp into a paste. Unstung, she swallowed.

  Rios opened her mouth: empty.

  Lefevre spat her wasp out into her hand. "Damn." She frowned. She sounded relieved.

  Around the circle, briggers clapped Deece's shoulder as he swept up their chits.

  Someone pumped Rios's hand and someone else pounded her back and whooped. Surrounded by briggers, she laughed.

  A dust-laden breeze swept through the garrison as five briggers took the black corporate tent apart. They dragged one of the bigger apartment sections over to Rios's med station and began sealing the tough fabric to the faded brown canvas of her tent, more than doubling the space inside. Jersey carried a box of corporate equipment into the tent—tablets, a micro-spectroscope, optical lenses, and medical supplies—and placed it on top of the expensive desk Cabrese had called her own.

  "You'll get a good lab going with this gear," he said.

  Rios nodded agreement. She brushed a finger over the fine corporate micro-spectroscope and waited for Deece to bring the first batch of fungus-exposed female wasps from the vespidary. Two rash-covered briggers sat on the medlab's bench, scratching while they waited to help her test the cure.

  To pass the time, she walked through the new section of the medlab and discovered that the corporate tent had embedded micromesh windows sandwiched between layers of black cloth. She opened the panels and let E-17's daylight pour in.

  Beyond the tent, more briggers redistributed corporate's gear under Lefevre's watchful eye. A pile of broken communication equipment and spare parts grew beside the mess tent.

  Another crew of briggers built awnings and wind barriers beyond the garrison perimeter, using more of the corporate tent. Rios and Lefevre had agreed on one thing: briggers needed som
ething to do.

  Rios came up with the plan to dig foundations for more permanent individual quarters. Lefevre had grudgingly admitted it was a good idea.

  "We'll spread out a bit, make some tunnels," Lefevre told the crews. "But keep the mess for everyone." She'd used the back of a ration chit to sketch an example hut, set low to the ground. Briggers were miners, after all. Then she'd drawn an interior complete with something Rios didn't recognize at first.

  "Game room," muttered Lefevre. Rios swore Lefevre looked almost embarrassed.

  Deece passed by one of the medlab's windows, carrying a box of clear vials. Rios met him outside the tent.

  "First generation," Deece said, lifting the vials into the light. Tiny chitinous bodies made soft tapping noises inside the vials. The wasps twitched their abdomens and flexed their wings at Rios.

  No sense being afraid of you anymore, she thought. We're stuck with each other.

  Rios lifted a vial from the box and carried it, a jab of antihistamine, and a freezpack to the waiting briggers. Her pockets were still filled with epi.

  She had the first brigger hold out his hand, palm down. She turned the vial over on the back of his hand and pulled the slide-lid free. Then she tapped the vial and waited for the wasp to crawl down the side. The brigger shifted his feet.

  "What's your name?" she said.

  "Bannon," he mumbled, his eyes on the wasp.

  "Your first name? Mine's Diana." Briggers didn't share first names. But, Rios realized, we're not really briggers anymore. We're colonists.

  "Jenson," he said, then hissed at the wasp's sting.

  She slid the vial's lid back in place and handed Jenson Bannon the freezpack.

  "Stay here for a bit, until I know you're not going to react badly to the venom."

  Jenson nodded, shaking his hand.

  The second patient, Bane, first name, Mirlo, bellyached and groused, but she held out her hand for the sting too. Rios tried to ease her pain as best she could. Then Rios packed up the wasp vials and handed them back to Deece. She ran her hand across the stubble on her scalp.

  Deece waited with her as she observed the two patients. Over the next hour, the stung colonists began to show one sign of relief, much as Deece had: they stopped scratching at their rashes. If all went well, their welts would disappear in a day.