Analog SFF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I'm sorry, but—”

  “You are in an isolation room. If that bartender hadn't been so observant, I shudder to think how many more people you might have exposed. It's urgent that we trace your movements since your arrival.”

  “Exposed?” Alarmed, Vik pulled up the sleeves of his loose pajamas in search of rashes. He felt at his face, tried to listen to his own breathing for wheezes.

  “Please, Mr. Boeykens, calm yourself! We've already started you on the appropriate antibiotic. You'll be over the infection in a few days.”

  Some local bug, then—he must have picked it up in the forest. “What sort of infection?”

  “Besnoitia speecki.” She spoke the name with careful enunciation and then leaned away, as if she had just delivered news of great portent and now awaited his reaction.

  Besnoitia. The genus didn't sound completely unfamiliar. He rummaged through his memories of General Microbiology.... Some sort of protozoan parasite? Not one that caused any human diseases, though, he was reasonably sure. And certainly not an organism that the UDF had ever weaponized.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “But I'm not familiar with that—” He caught himself before using any terms that might reveal his medical training. “—that germ.”

  His statement apparently surprised her. “Surely you must have taken some classes in biology and history? Where did you grow up, Mr. Boeykens?”

  He was afraid to reply—having planned for a casual evening in a pub rather than an inquisition, Vik had prepared only the sketchiest of cover stories. Now he wished that basic spycraft had been part of the standard medical curriculum.

  But, he realized, Dr. Steibs had already provided him with a perfect evasion.

  “Why, I grew up in—” Drawing on his training in interrogating patients, Vik did his best to mime Sudden Unexpected Uncertainty. “In—” He moved on to Mounting Confusion, followed by Increasing Concern. “I can't—” And now: Apprehension ... and then, Alarm! “I can't remember!”

  Dr. Steibs frowned. “Please, Mr. Boeykens, this is very important. Try to focus on just the past few days. Can you recall entering our province? Our town?”

  He shook his head in what he hoped looked like Fearful Misery. “No. I don't remember a thing. I was sitting at the bar, but before that ... it's all a blank!”

  “I see.” She crossed her arms before her chest and clucked her tongue a few times, looking thoughtful.

  Vik, whose grades in neurology had not been among his highest, began to wonder whether he'd picked such a clever stratagem, after all. Outside of adventure stories, how common was global amnesia?

  But finally Dr. Steibs said, “All right, please try to remain calm. I expect that your memory will return over the next day or two. Don't push too hard; just let it come on its own.

  “In the meantime,” she continued, “I've got a different sort of question for you. One moment...”

  Relieved that she'd accepted his performance, Vik watched as Dr. Steibs pulled a stylus of some sort from her pocket, and turned to the side. She leaned over as if writing or drawing on a table. He could see her make a large circular movement, and then several smaller strokes. Then she pushed something aside and drew a series of straight lines and curves.

  Dr. Steibs straightened up and briefly examined her work. Then she lifted a white page and pressed it against the window; it remained affixed when she removed her hand. She smoothed a second sheet onto the glass beside the first.

  She looked over the pages at Vik. “Tell me what you see.”

  The first sheet bore a large circle containing three irregular shapes. At a glance he recognized the three distinctive continents of Nieuw Vlaanderen.

  “A map of the world,” he said, wondering what she was after.

  She nodded. “Very good. And what else?”

  He turned his attention toward the second page stuck to the glass. But then he remembered his still-unexplained infection.

  “This Besnoitia—” he forced himself to stumble over the syllables—"you haven't told me its symptoms. Is there anything I should be watching out for?”

  She shook her head. But Vik thought that she looked pleased about something.

  “Just take your medication with each meal, and everything will be fine.”

  “But the symptoms—”

  “I won't be able to explain those to you for a couple of days.” Before he could respond, she added, “I look forward to speaking with you tomorrow, Mr. Boeykens.” She touched the wall beside the window, and the curtain glided shut.

  * * * *

  Meals arrived through a slot below the window. On that evening's dinner tray, and again at breakfast, was a small paper cup holding a pair of pink pills, each embossed with a tiny “KM.” Vik swallowed the dinner pills. But at breakfast he set the cup aside when he returned his tray to the slot.

  As soon as Dr. Steibs opened the curtain, maybe an hour later, he held up one of the pills. “What are you giving me?”

  She pursed her lips. “You really do need to take your medication on time, Mr. Boeykens.”

  “Just tell me what it is.”

  She sighed. “That is koningmycin. A very old, very reliable antibiotic. Though if you don't know about Besnoitia, then I don't suppose koningmycin is familiar, either.”

  He studied the pink pill, no wiser than before.

  “Please,” she said.

  He looked up to see her pointing at the paper cup. He shrugged, and then fetched a glass of water from the lavatory. He swallowed the pills.

  Dr. Steibs gave him the smallest of smiles. “So—how is your memory this morning? Anything coming back yet?”

  She didn't seem particularly perturbed when he shook his head. “Well,” she said, “then we'll just have to accept another day of mystery.” Vik wondered at her newfound lack of urgency. “Otherwise, I trust you're feeling well? No headaches, dizziness? Blurry vision? Good. Could you take another look at my artwork here, and tell me what you see?”

  Baffled, he approached the window to view the two pages still stuck there. “This is Nieuw Vlaanderen,” he reported. The second sheet held some uninteresting cross-hatching. He looked back at the map, then to her. “I told you that yesterday. What is the point of this? Some sort of psychological test? Or are you just curious about my knowledge of geography?”

  “I think,” she said, “that I'll be able to answer your questions tomorrow. In the meantime, try to dredge up any memories you might happen to have regarding lancet flukes. Or Toxoplasma.”

  The curtain closed before he could respond.

  * * * *

  When the curtain reopened the next morning, Vik again had something to show Dr. Steibs. Holding up an empty juice glass from his breakfast tray, he demanded, “Are all of your isolation rooms infested?”

  Dr. Steibs peered at the tumbler as he brought it to the window. He thought he saw her lips quirk into a fleeting smile.

  “Where did you find that?” she asked.

  “On my leg!” He pointed at the tiny insect lying motionless at the glass's bottom. “Look how swollen its abdomen is—it was sucking my blood! Probably infected me with some horrible new germs.”

  “No,” she said. “I don't think it has.” She bent down to squint into the glass. “Dermanyssus speecki.” Her voice had softened, as if she were fascinated at the sight.

  He glanced at the bug. Maybe half a centimeter across, its many legs and antennae crisscrossed each other to form a peculiar, asymmetric pattern. He'd been trying to puzzle out that pattern for the past hour, but couldn't seem to keep himself focused on the task.

  “Say,” he asked, “your koningmycin doesn't have any cognitive side-effects, does it? I've been having trouble with my concentration.”

  Dr. Steibs looked up to meet his gaze, but before she could answer he recalled her apparent familiarity with the blood-sucker in his juice glass. “So, this is a common bug around here?”

  “It used to be.” This time she didn't try to hide her
smile. “Nobody's seen one in two hundred years.”

  He gaped at her in confusion. Then she held up a finger, and swung it downward to point at her two drawings.

  Where yesterday he'd seen only a dull jumble of lines and curves, today he saw a peculiar, asymmetric pattern. Very slowly, he rotated his juice glass until the bug matched Dr. Steibs's sketch.

  Vik stepped back from the window until he bumped against the armchair. He let himself fall into it, still holding the tumbler and its cryptic occupant.

  “This,” he said, “would be a good time for explanations.”

  Apparently she had a chair on her side of the window, too; when she sat, Vik could see only her head and shoulders.

  “Are you familiar,” she began, “with the lancet fluke?” At his blank expression, she continued. “A parasite of cattle, back on Earth—it's described in one of the library data crystals we discovered ten years ago. The fluke larvae take over the nervous system of their carrier, a particular species of ant. Every evening they force the ant to leave its colony and climb to the top of a blade of grass; it hangs on until dawn, then returns home and leads a normal day. This cycle continues until eventually a cow happens along and eats the blade of grass, thus delivering the fluke to its definitive host.”

  Vik had had instructors like this—you asked them a straightforward question and they responded with what seemed like a complete non sequitur. When you fell into their trap by pointing out their failure to answer your question, they pounced with their prepared rant on the inadequacy of students these days. Only then did they finally provide the missing information that connected their initial response to your original question.

  Vik had learned to deal with such teachers by looking attentive and waiting. He did that now.

  After a few seconds, Dr. Steibs continued. “How about Toxoplasma? Normally, of course, mice and rats become extremely anxious and fearful when they smell a cat. But infect them with Toxoplasma and not only do they lose their fear, they actually find themselves attracted to cat odors. Rather inconvenient for the rodents, as you might imagine—but Toxoplasma can only reproduce within the gut of its definitive host, a cat.”

  Vik looked nervously at his juice glass. “So this insect—”

  “It's a mite, actually.”

  “—this mite, it's the carrier for the Besnoitia parasite that infected me? And the Besnoitia makes the mite want to suck human blood?”

  Dr. Steibs looked quite disappointed in him. “No, Mr. Boeykens. The mite is the parasite's definitive host. You are the carrier.”

  The tumbler slipped from his fingers. Vik watched anxiously as it rolled across his lap and fell to the floor. He leapt to his feet. The unbroken glass was rolling toward the dark space beneath the bed; just in time he bent over and grabbed it. Letting out a breath, Vik lifted the glass for another look at its occupant. The tumbler was empty.

  Vik jumped backwards, banging an elbow on the wall. Then, frantic, he scanned the floor all around the chair. After several long seconds he finally saw the mite, near where the glass had initially landed. On its numerous legs it was advancing, very slowly, toward Vik's bare foot.

  He slammed the inverted juice glass to the floor, trapping the bug inside. Then, with great care, he slid the glass and its prisoner toward the middle of the room. Keeping his eye on the glass, he stepped backwards until he could once more lower himself into the armchair.

  As Vik began to catch his breath, Dr. Steibs raised an eyebrow. “Shall I continue?”

  "Alstublieft," mumbled Vik.

  “These mites, we assume, are ubiquitous wherever humans live. Although of course we can't prove it from only Nieuw Vlaanderen observations, the degree of specialization evolved by both Besnoitia and the mite strongly suggest that they have been living with our species for thousands of years. Perhaps since before the earliest civilizations.”

  “But—”

  She held up her hand to head off any interruption. “The mite acquires Besnoitia from an infected human's bloodstream. The parasite reproduces in the mite's salivary glands; its larvae then escape into another human when the mite next feeds. From there the larvae travel to their carrier's brain, where as they mature they exert an exceedingly subtle cognitive effect.”

  Vik had regained enough composure to want to reassert his own cognitive abilities. “The human,” he hazarded, “loses the ability to see that pattern.” He pointed toward Dr. Steibs's drawing.

  “Nearly correct.” She tilted her head, apparently not completely unimpressed with him. “Infected humans can still see the mite; electrophysiological studies have confirmed this. But the sight becomes remarkably uninteresting. One glance dispels all awareness of the mite—including not only its image but also the tickle of its feet, the pinch of its bite. Anyone who discovers one of the mites immediately forgets that discovery.

  “Koningmycin,” she continued, “was chanced upon quite accidentally. But once people could see the mite, it didn't take long to also uncover the parasite and work out the details. We thought we had long ago eradicated both organisms worldwide—until you came along, Mr. Boeykens.”

  Not wanting her to pursue that line of thought, but also genuinely curious, Vik asked, “Getting rid of the Besnoitia, what health effects has that had? Besides allowing people to notice the mite.”

  Again her head tilted. “A very perceptive question. Indeed, there have been three beneficial effects. Five percent of schizophrenia cases had lacked a known cause—now it's known, and eliminated. The same for half of all previously unexplained epilepsy.”

  “Impressive.”

  “But it's the final effect that has had the greatest impact. What would you say is the defining aspect of life?”

  The question took Vik off guard. But this was merely another familiar variant of instruction by non sequitur—how he answered the apparently irrelevant question wouldn't actually matter. So he offered the first response that occurred to him. “Reproduction?”

  She dismissed his reply with a wave of her hand. “No, Mr. Boeykens. Pattern matching.”

  Vik was intrigued; none of his instructors had ever suggested such a connection.

  “Consider: a rabbit detects a certain canine aroma, or hears a distinctive padded footfall; immediately it recognizes a pattern of danger, and flees. Just as the same rabbit will dig up the root of a plant whose leaves it has learned to associate with food. And that plant, too, is a pattern-matcher, responding to lengthening periods of daylight by developing flowers.”

  “So,” Vik asked, “then computers are also ‘alive'?”

  She snorted. “Computers are merely tools of human pattern matching. But it's pattern matching that's behind every intelligent, conscious human behavior, from language to music to science to interpersonal relationships.” She paused and looked at him expectantly.

  “What's this have to do with Besnoitia?”

  As Dr. Steibs shook her head in apparent pity at his intellectual shortcomings, Vik cursed himself for falling into her pedagogic trap. She really was very good.

  “The patterns recognized by humans,” she said, “are often exceedingly abstract. But anyone infected with Besnoitia loses the ability to work with an entire class of abstract patterns—those that share any significant features with the image of that mite. It's as if they lived in a world of geometry problems but could never grasp the concept of angles.”

  At Vik's obvious confusion, she said, “I'll give you an example. About thirty years after the discovery of koningmycin, a clerk in a provincial Vital Records department felt there was something odd in recent birth numbers.”

  Vik tried to hide his surprise. Could Dr. Steibs be describing the A.P. probe's attack? The timing would be about right.

  “The clerk couldn't point to any specific discrepancy, but when she visited the neighboring provinces and reviewed their records, again she felt there'd been a change from past trends. We had no computers then, of course, and statistics was still in its infancy. So it took he
r several weeks of poring over her records to pin down the strange pattern she had sensed.

  “The clerk found a very slight increase in the ratio of female to male babies. But not all mothers were affected equally; those who had been the first-born of their siblings were spared.”

  Vik swallowed. This was exactly the first-generation effect designed into the A.P.'s engineered bacterium, to help mask the initial assault. Of the few other attacked worlds that had identified this pattern, none had ever managed the feat before the bacteria's secondary effects were already well established.

  Dr. Steibs continued. “The clerk published her findings. Nearly simultaneously, so did four other clerks from four other countries. Still, it took a couple of years to isolate the bacteria responsible, an oddly mutated form of Wolbachia. Heard of it?”

  Vik worked to keep his expression blank as he shook his head. He didn't know how much of this incredible tale he should believe; not a single previous planet had even confirmed that a bacterium was the cause of their fertility problem—let alone isolated it.

  “No? Well, Wolbachia normally infects invertebrates, so this was a bit of a surprise. Even more surprising, this particular strain—which proved remarkably challenging to grow in culture—was resistant to all the usual classes of antibiotics. In the end it was a bit of a race, coming up with a new antibiotic before the bacteria could spread widely enough for its other effect to matter.”

  “Other effect?”

  “Ah—should both parents carry the infection, all of their offspring would be female. I see you recognize the inevitable consequences.”

  Vik's expression of horror, though, reflected not sympathy for the aborted genocide Dr. Steibs described, but rather fear of what these people could one day do to his own.

  Freed of humanity's millennia-old parasitization by Besnoitia, apparently Dr. Steibs's forebears had—in just a couple of years—not only detected, but correctly analyzed and then neutralized a weapon whose mere existence had eluded most of its previous targets, a weapon whose effects had never before proven less than catastrophically fatal. Once Nieuw Vlaanderen regained space travel, how long until its people threatened the Affiliated Planets? With such superior pattern-matching abilities, how likely were they to lose any kind of interplanetary battle?