Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “Like I said. No one,” the Mate said.

  “And guess what, sir? The reason neither the Mate nor the computer noticed that the sequencing was off was that it wasn’t off. All of the last stops we made had the same sequence: arrive in orbit and, fifteen minutes later, vent from those areas.”

  Captain Diad had an awful thought. “You’re telling me we’ve been venting that stuff at every orbit we’ve made here in Scutum-South?”

  Before Di’mir could answer, the Captain said, “Even if the stuff turns out to be completely harmless, we have to contact the City office about it.”

  He lifted Su’lla and her youngest male spouse off him, and noticed the plankton-brandy glow in the Port Mistress’s eyes. She’d be in gaga land for a while.

  “Better get Kell himself on the line. I’ll get dressed and take it here.”

  Both the Captain and the Mate were fully outfitted when the Inter. Gal. Comm. went through. If they had expected their boss to be upset, they were right – but not about them wasting money on a call.

  On the holo, Mart Kell was levitating over a liquid ion-bath, evidently calming his nerves. He was naked except for a nose ring, so the Captain was able to answer two Hesperia-wide questions publicized by PVN gossip and rumors: one, did Ophiucan Kells have metallic bronze hair around their genitals as well as on their heads? – yes, even more brightly metallic – and, two, did multigillionaires paint their genitals with the astronomically expensive Plastro-Beryllium? Again, yes. Harder than any rock when it was up.

  “I’m glad you reported in.” Kell spoke casually, not like the owner of one of the richest mines anywhere. “I just heard from a contact inside Syzygy UnLimited that one of their Env. Engineers just reported the same thing: an off-sequence venting in orbit and a virus discovered at vent ports.” Kell’s jeweled green eyes were, at best, ciphers. Now they glittered. “Have you Inter. Gal. Comm.ed a breakdown on the virus?” Kell asked.

  “It’s on a subloop underriding this call,” Di’mir said.

  Smart thinking, that, Captain Diad thought. Save some money.

  “Good. We’ve got to be certain it’s the same one as Sygyzy spotted. Hold on!”

  Kell looked to one side – evidently to another holo projection. He said something, then was back with them.

  “Sagittarius-Plastro UnLimited’s reporting the virus from their largest hauler. Same story exactly. Captain, you and your Env. Engineer take a Fast here. The Quinx is calling a meeting tomorrow morning. I want you two in person. Bring a sample of the virus and the cells you infected with it.”

  Stunned by the order, Captain Diad asked, “What’s the time there?”

  “Month: Bernstein-Oxford 21; 6500 hours AM. A Fast has been pretimed and reserved and will be waiting. Mate, the ship is yours. Break that malfunction sequence and follow through the hauling schedule. If you can’t break the sequence, seal those vents any way you can.”

  “Yes, Lord Kell,” the Mate used the subservient address.

  “And Mate, report anything even vaguely relevant from Vulpulcella VI during the remainder of your stay. Use Inter. Gal. Don’t spare the cost. I’d like some privacy with your Captain now.”

  “Yes, Lord Kell.”

  Once Mate was out of holo-contact, Mart Kell said to Captain Diad, “You understand the implications of this, don’t you?”

  “I understand that it may be some sort of Matriarchal conspiracy to discredit Hesperia.”

  “And thus call into question our very independence itself. Naturally, to grab hold of the Plastro-Beryllium trade we alone control. So you must realize that the utmost discretion is needed. I’ve arranged to use our facilities on Vulpulcella VI for a partial wipe of your First Mate’s memory.”

  “A wipe? Isn’t that pretty drastic?”

  “A very delicate and minor wipe, since it deals with such very recent memories to which he is not emotionally attached. We’ll remove the sense of emergency and the reason for it. And we’ll insert your being called back for discipline. Bring him to our office. I’ve already set up a licensed Mesmer to do it.”

  Captain Diad thought: This is getting out of hand.

  “What about Di’mir?” he asked. “I’d have to consider Mate far more trustworthy than –”

  “Can’t wipe him, even if I wanted to.”

  “Can’t?” Captain Diad wondered.

  “I’ll explain when you get here.”

  Suddenly it was all very complex. “I’ve never been involved in Quinx-Matriarchy politics before,” Captain Diad said frankly.

  “Well, it looks like you’ve fallen right into the middle of some,” Mart Kell said, and he smiled wryly as his holo snapped off.

  Captain Diad was present at the Quinx meeting – he had already given his evidence and was in a slightly raised side chamber, one petal of the lotus-shaped meeting room – when the First Mate, now Captain of the O’Kell UnLimited Plastro-Beryllium Hauler, Inter. Gal. Comm.ed and asked to speak to him. Diad motioned to Mart Kell, who took an audio on it.

  “Meeting begin yet?” the Mate asked.

  “It’s in progress?” Diad said, wondering how effective the wipe had been. His Mate’s next words confirmed that it had been very good indeed.

  “Sorry about that, Cap’n. Anything I can say – you know, character reference or anything?”

  “Thanks. But you’re not using Inter. Gal. Comm. just to cheer me up, are you?”

  “No. Listen I’ve got to report to the boss.”

  “What about?” Diad asked.

  “There’s some kind of epidemic spreading down on Vulpul. VI.”

  Mart Kell gestured to interrupt the current speaker on the dais. Immediately and without his knowledge, the Mate’s holo and voice were reproduced in front of the five who formed the Quinx center, as well as twenty-five High Members surrounding them.

  “Go on,” Mart Kell talked to the Mate’s holo.

  “Well, you were right, Lord Kell. There’s some sort of illness happening down below. I first got wind of it from the Port Mistress. Her female spouse developed some sort of rash on her left inner thigh. Then she developed a high fever. Same thing happened to the Port Mistress herself a few hours later. At first they blamed us: you know, physical contact with uh, you know, possible alien microbia we might have been carrying, even though the Cap’n and I went through two sets of fluoros, on the ship and entering their residence. None of us are sick.”

  “None of the hauler’s crew?”

  “None. But then cases began popping up all over Vulpul. VI. In the lower hemisphere continents and all, so we knew it couldn’t have been myself and Cap’n Diad. You shouldn’t blame him for it.”

  “We’ll take your testimony in fullest faith,” Mart Kell assured him. “How far has the epidemic spread, and how serious is it?”

  “Knowing your interest, we’re taking in all data as it develops down there. Evidently it’s some kind of influenza,” Mate said. “One of those twenty-four-hour Sol Rad. types. First there’s the rash, usually on the inner thigh. Then the high fever. Some nausea and headaches. Then it’s gone. Everyone’s got it.”

  “Everyone?” Kell asked. “Are the symptoms all the same among the age groups, genders, species, et cetera?”

  “What I meant was among the Humes. We don’t have reports in yet from the small Delph. population here. They’re a bit segregated down on Vulpul. VI. But the same symptoms are reported by all the Hume females.”

  “And the males?”

  The First Mate looked surprised, then did something at a read-board, evidently checking his incoming data. “I don’t see any male cases reported at all. Only females.”

  “Confirming my cellular experiments in forced growth,” the Env. Engineer spoke up. “No male mammals were affected at all.”

  “Gratitude, Acting Captain,” Mart Kell said. “Please keep this line open and send all of the material you are receiving.”

  The Mate was incredulous. “Keep it open? You know how much that would cos
t?”

  “Gratitude, Acting Captain.” Kell signed good-bye, and the holo snapped off. “Tell this council what you’ve discovered Engineer Di’mir.”

  “I infected the curl-vole and water-pig cells and forced cloned growth. All growth was normal until adolescence. The male continued to develop normally. The female appeared to also, until ovulation. At which point the female immediately developed the rash, the high fever, the same symptoms of the Hume females on Vulpulcella VI. We impregnated her and forced fetus growth. She appeared to miscarry. At least she bled from her uterus area. We tried again. This time, nothing happened at all. We took a look inside and found no ovulation. Nothing there at all to ovulate. The female wasn’t merely sterile, the ovaries and the entire fallopian tube system were gone! Naturally, we backed that up with a half dozen other experimental samplings as a control and got the same thing.”

  “The males were fine?” Llega Francis Todd asked. She was the one female on the Inner Quinx, titular and acting Premier and a major player in the Beryllium futures market. “And the females were all sterile? How?”

  “The virus seems to be quite sophisticated,” the Env. Engineer said. “It’s harmless except when in the presence of a mammalian XX chromosome. It seems to attack the mitochondria itself and transform it into some type of cell – call it ZZ or GG or anything but what it was before. It has the same effect on Delphinid ovarian chromosomes.”

  “And our Arthropodic neighbors with their completely different chromosomal structure?” she asked.

  “We really don’t know how they may be affected by this microvirus. Hymenoptera queens lay the eggs. Unfertilized eggs become sons. Fertilized eggs become nymphs or, much more rarely, new queens. The microvirus might prevent ova from being fertilized. We haven’t a large enough sample of Vespid volunteers to know how they’ll be affected. It may be that nymphs can be born, but that they turn out sterile, too.”

  “But not queens?”

  “We’re still not sure.”

  Ole Branklin, Vice Premier and most revered member of the Quinx, now asked, “Surely we can stop it?”

  “We might, but we haven’t so far,” the Env. Engineer admitted. “The microvirus mutates constantly no matter how we attack, how much stress we place it under. We’ve tried several thousand antiviral procedures. Even when its own molecular structure is turned inside out, completely transformed, it seems to retain some sort of tracer-memory, and it still carries out its job.”

  “You’ll continue to work on it,” Llega Todd said. “We’ll provide all the facilities and all the staff you require from any of the species and from our most specialized Cybers.”

  “Lady Todd,” the Env. Engineer seemed to stammer for the first time in his presentation. “It’s our opinion that this be limited to the smallest possible group. And that Cyber specialists be excluded.”

  She and several members of the Quinx looked shocked.

  “Surely that’s all Matriarchal prejudice, Engineer.” She voiced the outrage that others felt. “Just because of their own troubles with a group of rebellious Cybers –”

  “Lady Todd,” Mart Kell interrupted her. “Engineer Di’mir has reason to believe that the microvirus was not only developed by rebellious Cybers but is itself a Cyber.”

  “Bio-Cybernetics hasn’t developed that far!” someone spoke up.

  “It has,” Truny Syzygy spoke out now. “And if Engineer Di’mir says this is a Cyber-bug, you should listen to him.”

  “Why should we?”

  “Because Engineer Di’mir is a bio-Cyber himself.”

  Captain Diad couldn’t keep his peace. “He can’t be! I saw his dossier.”

  “How old is he?” Mart Kell asked the Captain.

  “Well, it wasn’t there. But he looks about a hundred thirty, give or take a decade.”

  “Di’mir is twenty-two years old, Hesperian time,” Syzygy smiled.

  Inner Quinx member Helmut Aare Dja’aa protested, “He’d still be a neo. A kindergartner!”

  “I watched Mart start him up. Sure,” Syzygy added, “he’s flesh and blood like ourselves. Completely mammalian tissue. But his brain, autonomous system, involuntary nervous system, and everything related to it was preprogrammed and constructed in vitro.”

  “The chromosomes for all his axonary and synaptical tissues were cloned from me,” Mart Kell said. “He’s my son. And like any child I’d have, he’s had all the advantages – including advanced mammalogy and Cybernetics.”

  “I don’t understand what he was doing on our hauler,” Captain Diad wondered.

  Mart Kell shrugged. “Learning the business, essentially.”

  “But ... how did he find the error every hauler computer and every systems check we have let pass?”

  “My son is more alert than any Hume. He uses about three-quarters of his brain, where even the most efficient of ourselves use only about one-quarter, after centuries of evolution and training. And why shouldn’t he? All the basic material has been reinforced.”

  Llega Todd was beginning to color. “May I ask how much your son cost?”

  Mart Kell laughed. “A year Sol Rad. of the purest blend of Plastro-Beryl-lium.”

  Helmut Dja’aa was impressed. “I’ve bought solar systems for less than that.”

  Llega continued, “The reason I asked is that if Engineer Di’mir’s analysis of the effectiveness of this microvirus and his extrapolation are correct, then more like himself will not be the answer to the problem.”

  Mart Kell explained, “For a dozen or so of us, who are the wealthiest in the galaxy, and to keep our species barely existent. Only those of us at this council could possibly afford to rear a gang of Di’mir and his siblings just for the sake of hearing neo. voices around us.”

  “And by then it would be moot,” Syzygy reminded them. “Cybers will have taken over Hesperia and every other major city we know of. All they need do is outwait us,” he explained. “Eventually our females will age and die, and no infants will be born. What’s a half dozen or so centuries to a machine?”

  “Can we get back for a moment to the assumption of cause of the microvirus?” Ole Branklin reminded them. “Your ... the Engineer here says it’s a bio-Cyber. Isn’t it possible that the microvirus was originally a Matriarchal invention, and somehow or other became transformed?”

  They all looked at the young engineer. “You mean something they designed against Cybers?” another member asked.

  “Or against Hesperians?” asked Inner Quinx member Kars Tedesco, who was a brooding, silent man.

  “It doesn’t affect males, so that last isn’t likely,” Di’mir pointed out quickly.

  “But against the Cybers,” Branklin went on. “Think of it. We all know how bitterly fought this rebellion has been for the Matriarchy. A third of the Carina Fornax sector closed off close to a year Sol Rad., while they try to roust out the mechanos. Billions dead on several systems. The Cult of the Flowers heading the action. They take no prisoners and don’t recognize the concept of hostages. If a major population of Humes happens to be in the way of a Cyber war station, they’re soon electron soup along with the Cybers.”

  “Some of this has leaked out through more radical networks of communication,” Di’mir admitted. “Evidently yourselves on the Inner Quinx – and the Council – know more of this rebellion than I do myself. More indeed than anyone has made public, even here on Hesperia, where opposition to the Matriarchy is strongest.”

  He looked at his father, who shook his head sadly. “The reports we get stagger the most sadistic imagination. We censor the worst out of the –”

  “Horror!” Llega Francis Todd finished the sentence. “Out of desire to not de-Humeize, de-Delphinize, debiologize our citizens.”

  “Even accepting all this as background,” Di’mir said now, “I simply can’t accept that this microvirus is not a Cyber-construction. It’s too neat, too elegant, too utterly functional to be a mistake, or even a misevolution.

  “Are we to assume
that we too are infected?” Llega asked. “I know the female population of Hesperia isn’t large, scarcely a million, but we would certainly have heard of such an epidemic here if –”

  “Lady Todd, I actually don’t know if we’ve been infected, although I can’t believe that some microviruses didn’t somehow escape to Hesperia.”

  “If the method used,” Captain Diad spoke up, “I mean by venting at hauling stops was used, he might be right.” He felt embarrassed speaking until Ole Branklin waved him on. “On the other hand, any Cybers in those areas that happened to leave any of the haulers might have carried it down here.”

  “Chances are?” Ole Branklin asked Truny Syzygy.

  “A million to one. Which means we’d be fools to assume it isn’t here.”

  “What is it, Llega?” Branklin asked.

  “Now that I think about it, none of the women I know in the City here can wear bacterial makeup anymore.”

  “Your pH factors have all been changed,” Di’mir said. “Your chromosomes are under attack. I’m afraid the microvirus is here, although obviously in a much diluted form.”

  “It would be a terrible irony if the Matriarchy had sent out the virus and it turned into one that now sterilizes,” Llega said. “Especially since Motherhood is the keystone of the Matriarchal philosophy.”

  “Let’s face it,” Syzygy said it for all of them. “Opposition or not. Male or female. Hume, Delph., or Arthropod, we’re all in this together. Let’s plan out a strategy to keep the damage to the minimum.”

  “Captain,” Ole Branklin himself called Diad, “Please come in and take a seat. We’re going to have to seal this meeting. No recordings or any sort will be allowed. Nor notes. Oh, I know the word of what we discuss will get out and among the City soon enough. But the Matriarchy must already know about it and they’ve kept it mum so far. We’re going to need every bit of help we can get. Why don’t you give us a logistical rundown on how the haulers themselves can be further contained.”

  A guest seat was raised out of the carpeting and Captain Diad sat down among the gigabillionaires and the great houses of Hesperia. All of them as frightened as he was.