Raised by the Fox

by J Walker Bell

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Dominant Species

  Jason Reeder drew the black plastic shield across the doorway of his apartment with some difficulty. The overlapping safety guard at the bottom edge of the doorway was warped out of line. Pulling the shield through it was a daily trial.

  Bastard thing, Reeder thought, finally getting it closed. He pressed the door seals into place. Reeder thought about complaining to the landlord, but he shrugged the thought away. He knew that the landlord would only try to force him to move into an interior apartment again, and Reeder liked having a door that opened directly on the outside.

  Attached to the outside wall to the left of the door was a waist high container the size of a small mailbox. The box was half hidden by a blackish red vine clinging with fat suckers to both the wall and the box. The Savior Vine had not been there the night before. A puff of thick breeze carried the rich, over-sweet smell of the Savior Vine's flowers to Reeder. He coughed and kicked in sudden anger at the thick trunk of the vine. Reeder immediately regretted the rash act as half a dozen garish flowers dropped with wet splats to the sand and gravel strip around his door. The cloying odor of decayed pickled beets clogged the air. Ants half the size of Reeder's baby finger seemed to burst from the hand-sized flowers. "Shit!" Reeder jerked backward and almost lost his balance. The ants struggled to break free from the sticky mess. Reeder watched the grim battle for a moment, strangely moved to free the ants from their sweet flowery death.

  He went so far as to half heartedly kick bits of gravel over the mess to give the ants additional purchase.

  With his eyes still on the ants' efforts, Reeder tripped the release lever on top of the wall container with one hand and pulled the lid up quickly with his other. He lifted a repellant pack from the box and turned to spray the edges of his apartment door. He pressed the nozzle but nothing happened. It took a confused moment to realize why. The supposedly indestructible PVClastic material of the repellent pack was holed in a number of spots and was moving in quick darts in his hand. There was nothing in the pack but ants.

  Reeder watched the moving bag for a moment in queasy silence. A couple of the ants ventured from the bag and crawled with interest toward the hand that held the pack nozzle. He dropped the pack in some panic. With the ants no longer threatening, Reeder felt disgust at the ineffectiveness of the repellent. He stepped carefully around the ants that were struggling out from under the gravel he had kicked over them. The fallen flowers had already devoured any ants that had failed to escape the sweet tombs. In a matter of hours the flowers would be thriving vines. Reeder made a mental note to pick up more weed killer from Stores at work. He was also going to complain to his division head at the Department of Non-Lethal Tactics. Poor products like that repellent gave the department a bad reputation. They didn't need any more reasons for other departments to siphon off funds.

  Reeder walked the six blocks to work without further incident. Despite the heavy clothes he wore, Reeder enjoyed the bright sun and humid heat of the early morning. Gravel crunched under his heavy boots and the air was filled with the whirring sounds of wings. Buzzing about their daily business were flying insects of every description: ordinary houseflies, giant dragonflies, cockroaches, mosquitoes, beetles, and others. The clouds of bugs would get much worse by mid-morning and overwhelming by the afternoon, but the current activity was relatively placid. He enjoyed watching their antics.

  Reeder lived in a failing neighborhood. Most of the three to five story apartment buildings in the ten block development were at least ten years old and were no longer safe from infestation. Despite being made from the most advanced material of the time - chemically enhanced PVC and specially bonded earthen panels - the buildings were no match for the endless onslaught of flying, crawling, and burrowing bugs. Savior Vine now blanketed the walls of most of the buildings. The fast growing vines undeniably reduced the insect population and offered some protection for the building. It had also become the dominant oxygen producing plant in the world since the extinction of the trees. Reeder hated them.

  There were a few other walkers about getting an early start on their day. Officials from the Sporting Hill Enclave that monitored this area were encouraging inhabitants to relocate. It did not seem to matter that these people had nowhere to go. Reeder was the only employee of the Enclave who lived outside its' walls, and his supervisor continually pressured him to move out of the condemned neighborhood. One of the bundled figures raised a hand in Reeder's direction and he waved back, although he actually knew very few of his neighbors. Leaving the walkers behind, Reeder went into the foyer of the entrance to the Enclave.

  "Good morning, Doctor Reeder," greeted the guard posted in the foyer of the Shipping entrance. The guard nodded at Reeder from within the glass panel enclosed booth he occupied.

  "Good morning," Reeder responded. He pulled his badge from his shirt pocket and touched the ID to the security scanner. A door slid open on the left-hand wall.

  "Doctor Boyer has the duty today, sir," the guard commented. Reeder grimaced at the expressionless man.

  "Bet you've been looking forward to telling me that since you came on shift, haven't you, Bill?" Bill raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. "Get in here, Reeder," a woman's voice demanded from beyond the open door. Reeder sighed and left the grinning Bill.

  "Correct procedure is to enter the IP immediately upon ID validation," Doctor Boyer admonished crossly as soon as the door was closed. Her voice was slightly muffled behind the protective mask she wore. In addition to the mask she wore a sterilized body suit and hospital gloves.

  The Inspect and Purge Station was a small, white-walled room. Half the room was taken up by the Infestation Containment System, which Doctor Boyer was currently leaning on. The only other furniture in the room was a container on rollers the size of a laundry bin.

  "Hello to you, too," he countered.

  "Another minute out there and I would have had to sanitize the whole area, Jason," she said with exasperation. Reeder shrugged.

  "Rachel, you're just mad because its Monday and you drew the morning shift this week." Doctor Boyer ignored his comment and pressed a button on the panel next to her hand. An examining table slid out from the ICS.

  "You know the drill," she said, and she watched as Reeder began removing his clothes and placing them in the bin.

  The examination took an hour and a half. Rachel Boyer treated Reeder for a small colony of chewing lice on his scalp, lasered away two patches of fatted-fleas, and applied a poisoning agent to a spot of fungal beetles on the ball of his foot. None of the infestations were particularly dangerous, but Boyer berated him nonetheless after each find for living outside the Enclave and exposing himself to such potential trouble.

  "Get your working clothes on," she told him after patching the two slight burns from the laser. Reeder did so, smarting from the sting of antiseptic and Boyer's sharp remarks. He never got used to this morning purging and resented the insistence on destroying even the harmless insects.

  "Go easy on the starch this time," he commented sarcastically while waving in the direction of the folded clothes in the bin. Boyer removed her mask and gloves and placed them in the sterilizer on the ICS. Reeder finished dressing.

  "You're lucky we don't burn that street garb." Reeder stared at her in disturbed surprise. She was in her forties and had lived inside one enclave or another her entire life. She did not know what it was like to walk on a gravel road and breathe plain, untreated air, and would be appalled at the suggestion that she try it. She saw his concern and couldn't help pressing her point.

  "You'd be stuck in here, then, wouldn't you? Poor Jason, forced to live in a safe, comfortable, insect-free environment. Wouldn't that be a shame?"

  Reeder fidgeted in the light, comfortable work clothes and traditional white lab smock he had donned. He thought of the endless corridors and windowless rooms of the Enclave. He thought of the barren apartments, the shadowless lighting, the absence of anything
living, whether plant, animal, or insect, and shuddered. He did not want that kind of sterile life.

  All that was forgotten by Reeder the moment he entered his lab. The lab was large and modern, and for the last couple of weeks he'd had the lab, outfitted for three researchers, to himself. One of his lab mates had been out sick for the last month. The other had been stripped of his researcher status two weeks ago due to the continued loss of market share in his flagship product, a poisoning agent for epidermal larvae. Reeder did not miss the fired chemist. His absence gave Reeder more room and freedom to pursue his personal project, and it was this personal project that Reeder checked on first.

  Reeder pulled a stool in front of one of the stations. He perched on the round seat, curled his feet around the stool's narrow supports, and immediately became lost in the intent study of the data presented by the computer from the simulation that had been running throughout the weekend.

  "Ha!" Reeder strangled a delighted shout. He spun the stool in a circle and stopped its spin in front of the computer. "Got you, you son of a bitch!" He announced to the glowing diagram, pointing a finger at the screen.

  He jumped off the stool, suddenly needing to share his success. He found Magnolia in the Lounge in 'X' quarters. The Lounge was an open room where the experimentals could gather amongst themselves and have visitors. Researchers were rarely seen in 'X' quarters except at the observation rooms; few researchers wanted to become acquainted with potential test subjects. Reeder, however, was a well known face to security. When Magnolia saw Reeder approaching, she struggled off the couch. She gave him a timid hug which Reeder warmly returned.

  "Please sit down, Magnolia. Don't tire yourself." Reeder looked at her condition with private concern. The middle-aged black woman weighed nearly three hundred pounds. She wore a wool scarf to cover the laser surgery scars that criss-crossed her skull. Reeder was intimately familiar with her medical records. She suffered from a full litany of health problems resulting from an almost total lack of medical care throughout her childhood. He still shuddered at the infestation list compiled after her pickup. Her acceptance into the Enclave probably saved her life, Reeder figured. Such as it was.

  Reeder sat down in a slightly sagging arm chair next to the couch Magnolia had labored back into. He nodded at the man on the opposite couch who had become a close companion of Magnolia over the past couple of months. The man returned the nod. Reeder started to speak to Magnolia, but the man spoke first.

  "You never ask who I am," he commented. There was no accusation in the tone of his voice, only the desire for an explanation. The statement caught Reeder by surprise. He approached his interest in Magnolia and her condition with the same focused, single minded attention he approached his work. He had been nodding to this man for weeks and did not even know who he was. Reeder shrugged apologetically at the man.

  "Would you like to introduce me to your friend, Magnolia?" Reeder asked awkwardly, indicating the man. Magnolia smiled at the floor and sucked on her lower lip.

  "Damon," she said in a low, melodious voice. She glanced in Damon's direction briefly and then stared back down at the floor.

  The man rose to his feet, gave Reeder a direct stare and extended a large hand. "Damon Madeira," he said, completing the introduction. Reeder also rose and accepted the strong handshake.

  "You're one of the researchers," Madeira said as they both resumed their seats.

  Reeder heard the unspoken question behind the words. "Magnolia is a special patient of mine," Reeder explained, finding himself answering the unspoken question. He patted Magnolia's knee. "I have some good news I wanted to share with her."

  Madeira nodded non-committedly. "Want me to leave?" Actually, Reeder found that he welcomed the conversation.

  "Not at all." Reeder put one hand on Magnolia's cheek and gently turned her face to look at him.

  "The latest series looks very good, Magnolia," he told her. When Reeder had first met Magnolia she was a fat, happy and intelligent woman grateful that the Enclave had cleansed her of all her infestations. All but one, that is, which was why Reeder had come to visit her in the first place. She had been accepted into the Enclave because she was infested with a very rare insect that was slowly destroying her brain and her sanity.

  "The doctor is going to cure me, Damon," Magnolia confided to Madeira.

  "He is finding a way to purge the insect contamination in my brain. Isn't that right, Doctor Reeder?"

  "Yes it is, and soon," Reeder told her. He marvelled that she still had such periods of lucidity given the advanced stage of the infestation. These periods were becoming rarer, however, and Reeder knew he was battling time. Magnolia was getting weaker and was also on drugs to control the pain.

  One of the "nurses" came and got her so she could rest and take her medication. Reeder made to leave.

  "Sit a spell longer, Doctor Reeder," Madeira asked him. Reeder gave him a questioning look and then sat down.

  "If you are going to ask me for something, I can't help you, you know," he warned Madeira. Madeira made an annoyed wave with his hands.

  "What do you think you are doing, telling her you're gonna fix her up?" Madeira demanded. Madeira was nearly as large as Magnolia but looked like he carried the weight easily.

  "What do you mean?" Reeder asked, honestly confused by the anger in Madeira's voice.

  "She's gonna die, man, in pain unless she's drugged out of her mind, and soon. What right do you have to lie to her?"

  Reeder's first reaction was anger. How dare this ... this experimental question his competence and integrity, he thought, and almost said those exact words. He controlled himself with effort.

  "Why do you think I can't deliver exactly what I promised?" he asked Madeira.

  "The woman's got bugs in her brain, and you're studying them, right?"

  The man's statement was blunt but right on the mark.

  "Yes, that's true," Reeder admitted.

  "And you'll keep studying until she's dead and you can't learn any more."

  "No," Reeder protested. "I am studying her ... actually, I am studying the insects she carries ... so that I can cure her and others also afflicted."

  "Yea, Buddy, and all us experimentals are here out of the goodness of you boy's hearts," he said sarcastically. He folded his large arms across his chest and stared pointedly at the security guard at the "nurses" station.

  "Look, Mr. Madeira," Reeder began earnestly, getting an angry stare from Madeira, "Magnolia can recover from this."

  "And insects won't inherit the Earth," Maderia said sarcastically.

  Reeder winced inwardly at the common phrase. He leaned forward in his chair and stretched his hands out toward Madeira almost in entreaty. Reeder felt a strong need to convince this man who seemed to care for Magnolia that he did, too. "There is some physical damage, yes. But most of Magnolia's symptoms - the loss of memory, the retardation, the psychosis- that comes from the constant pain and the horrible knowledge of what is happening inside her head. If I can remove all that then there is the real chance that therapy is all she'll need to recover almost completely."

  Madeira looked skeptically thoughtful. "Maybe you are different from the others," he began slowly. "Not that I believe you, yet," he added. He paused, considering what to say. "Magnolia is my half sister. I ... brought her here." Madeira spoke the words as if admitting a great wrong. "She was so susceptible to everything," he explained, "and I just couldn't stand to see her suffer." Madeira's eyes were far away for a moment, then he brought himself back to the present. "When I learned what was happening here I got myself admitted so that I could look after her. I've been watching you and I don't know what to make of you."

  "I just want to help," Reeder said.

  "Maybe." Madeira shifted his position on the couch. "Convince me, Mr. Doctor. Tell me about yourself and about what's happening in her head."

  "Well," started Reeder, "I'm not sure how much you would understand ..."

  He paused,
but Madeira waited patiently for him to continue with a don't patronize me look on his face. Reeder continued, haltingly at first, and then warmed to the task as Madeira proved to be an excellent listener.

  Sporting Hill Enclave was a progressive corporation. The corporation maintained diversified interests, but those interests were all focused in a specific area: making a profit on the war with the insects. It was a lifetime occupation for most of the Enclave's researchers, since there was an endless and ever expanding variety of insects that could adapt to whatever new product was developed. Corporation Directors spared no effort or expense to keep its' employees productive. In twenty-five years of operation, Sporting Hill Enclave had learned it was bad business to keep intelligent people working on death full time - they tended to self-sestruct. The Board established departments to investigate less deadly areas of insect control and even allowed and funded private research, provided the researcher made established production goals in his regular work.

  For seventeen years Reeder had been a destroyer, molding new chemical and biological agents into lethal compounds targeted against specific insect species. After a mental breakdown caused by burn out Reeder was transferred to the now defunct Department of Biological Control, and later to the Department of Non-Lethal Tactics, which looked at insect control solutions that were not so directly fatal. Reeder explained to Madeira how a chemical he was developing could be used to help Magnolia, and why he was so excited by the results he had gotten out of the weekend's simulations. By the end of the hour long conversation both men had found new friends in each other.

  Back in his lab, Reeder reviewed the results of his tests again and began making notes on areas that needed further testing using the computer simulations. Reeder was a meticulous and thorough researcher. Although not a programmer, Reeder had learned enough about how the computer simulator programs worked to be able to make his own modifications and improve the database of information the programs drew on. His files were correct down to a level of detail few researchers attempted or thought was necessary. As a result, no one ever questioned the validity of Reeder's data or the simulation results. Reeder's approval was as good as fact.

  Once the simulation results were completed and approved, the new agent would be tested on a human subject. Human subjects were less expensive than animals, which had been virtually obliterated by the insects. Those few remaining were carefully protected by the National Zoo. There was still much work to be done before Reeder was ready for human testing, and the first subject would not be Magnolia. She was part of his private research. Reeder knew he had to force himself to consider the original purpose of his work.

  Reeder was a specialist in Sarcophaga Haemorrhoidalis: the flesh fly. The flesh fly was twice the size of the house fly. It was shiny black in color with gray markings; fat bodied, stubby winged, its' legs and body were covered in stiff spines and bristles. It did not feed on human flesh or blood as many other species of insects did, but preferred instead the thick sap in the trunk and branches of the Savior Vine. It was particularly fond of using humans as egg and larvae carriers, however. The powerful, sharp proboscis it used to pierce the tough bark of the Savior Vine was also used to punch through human clothing to get at the skin beneath. The female flesh fly laid her eggs and then sucked them into her proboscis. The fly then deposited the eggs under the skin of an unsuspecting human. The sting was rarely felt, the eggs were virtually undetectable without special medical equipment, and the eggs hatched within forty-eight hours. Flesh fly larvae caused painful swelling. Worse, larvae that migrated into the bloodstream were known to cause everything from blindness to stroke. Death was rare but always a possibility. The flesh fly was very adaptable. Reeder estimated that at least a hundred thousand new mutations appeared every day in Nature's endless search for the perfect insect. Enclave products were no longer effective in killing the flesh fly (hence the firing of Reeder's lab partner), and the corporation was getting clobbered in the market by a major competitor's poison.

  Reeder was attempting to develop a chemical that, when triggered by the numbing agent in the proboscis of the flesh fly as it pierced through flesh, would discolor the skin where the eggs had been laid. This would make the infestation visible to the eye before the eggs hatched. The chemical could also be bonded directly to most synthetic fabrics. It was a far fetched idea that he was very close to making work.

  Carla Danner looked in on Reeder in his lab later that morning. She stood in the open door, which he had not heard her open, and watched him without speaking. Reeder was bent over the computer console, tapping out occasional entries on the keyboard and then studying the results. He was solidly built with little flab despite his sedentary occupation. Danner knew he never exercised and admired his body's natural slimness. She worked out religiously every day to keep the muscular tone of her body. His hair was neatly kept and was still full and naturally black despite his sixty years.

  His hair seemed to be the only personal vanity he allowed himself. Danner ran a hand through her own short, curly, brunette dyed hair, but did not allow herself to sigh. She did not like weaknesses, and would not stoop to even mild envy.

  Danner stepped into the room and firmly closed the door, making enough noise to get Reeder's attention. He looked in her direction, but his mind was still on the data flowing across the computer screen and his eyes did not focus on her.

  "Looks like you are having a productive morning, Jay," she said, walking over to him. Her tone was cheerful, but even in his distracted state Reeder could feel the hidden barb in her words. She was the only person who called him Jay. During the months they had been working together the nickname had gone from being indifferently amusing to acutely irritating.

  "Are you about finished patterning the C4 series cell structure for a test subject?" She had carefully cultivated his hatred of the nickname and was satisfied at his reaction to it now. It served to get his attention when she wanted it. Now she looked pointedly in the direction of the Chem-lab counter, where Reeder should have been working but which had not even been powered on yet.

  Reeder felt a pang of guilt. Danner always seemed to have him off balance.

  "Well, no, not yet, but ...".

  "Jay," Danner interrupted. "You don't have to explain to me, you know that." She put one hand on the back of his neck and with the other hand patted his arm condescendingly while looking over his shoulder at the screen.

  Reeder would normally have been reluctant to let Danner, or any other researcher, see what he was really doing on his own, but this time he held still and let her look.

  "It's just that Dolores Gamesly, our supervisor," she continued, squeezing his neck hard for emphasis, "isn't happy with the progress on our real work ..." She had a lot more to say, but the data on the screen finally began to sink in. She stopped talking and studied the column of figures next to the finely detailed picture of a chemical compound glowing a hot neon orange.

  "Is this what I think it is?" she demanded.

  "The whole C series was faulty," he explained. "I was never going to get it to work, so I started a new series and ran the results over the weekend." He waited expectantly.

  "You have been busy," she breathed. "You made changes where? Wait a minute." She began pointing out the obvious alterations in the compound. "Here. And here." She stared again at the glowing figure, and then twisted her head to look at Reeder.

  "The simulation says it will work," he said quietly. She was partly leaning across his body and Reeder could feel the light touch of her breath.

  She smelled of Certs and a new perfume.

  "That's marvelous, Jason." She remained unmoving a moment more. Reeder

  waited her out.

  Danner straightened and let go of Reeder. "That's better than marvelous, Jay, that's as good as a bonus!" Danner spoke with studied exuberance.

  "So, you can have the compound synthesized when? This afternoon?"

  "Well ..."

  "Of course you can,
what am I thinking. You're like Flash Gordon on the Chem-lab!" She smiled brilliantly and pantomimed ray-gunning the Chem-lab.

  Reeder liked the smile. Regardless of how false the emotion behind it, he could not help reacting to its' infectious gaiety. Besides, this was his day. He grinned like a fool.

  "Sure, then ..." He began, but Danner interrupted him again.

  "Then you can imbue it with Poly-Chlor and I'll still have it in time for the experimental," she stated confidently. Reeder stood.

  "No," he said. The grin was gone. "This is not just a mod to a tested design. This is a new series, damn it!" His voice rose over Danner's objections. "I have to run more simulations, and then - and only then - can we use it on a human subject. And then it will be without your neutralizer."

  Reeder glared at her angrily. She was always taking shortcuts and had little regard for the human test subjects. Danner's contribution to their project was a counter chemical dubbed Poly-Chlor that neutralized their competitor's poison and softened up the fly eggs to make the Enclave's own poison effective. Marketing thought the whole idea was brilliant. Not only did the consumer have to buy Reeder's marking compound, but using it rendered the most effective poison on the market useless and forced them to buy the Enclave's product to rid themselves of the infestation.

  "How long?" Danner asked, keeping her voice neutral. All playfulness was gone.

  "At least a week." Reeder flinched in anticipation of an outburst he didn't get. She looked thoughtful.

  "We still need it synthesized, don't we? You'll want a full run of tests to make sure the structure holds together?" He was confused by the questions. She should be arguing with him about taking so long.

  "Yes, that's true," he said non-committedly.

  "Well," she began, warming to him again, "it's no use arguing with you about the time." She paused, but Reeder was warily silent. "I can reschedule the test, but I can't wait a week." She held up a hand when he started to object. "Let me help, Jason. I can establish and test a synthetic, too.

  Maybe not as quickly as you, but then you can be working the simulations. If you actively monitor the interim results you can make changes on the fly."

  She smiled at her own pun. "We can be done in maybe four days if we work together."

  It sounded very reasonable. Reeder looked for the trap, but couldn't see one. It would give him a chance to do a more thorough job with the simulations and would get him back to Magnolia's problem more quickly. Reeder slid back onto the stool, and one hand touched the keyboard.

  "If you'll send a copy of the specs over to my computer I can get started." Danner waited expectantly. Reeder admired the elegant design - his design - on the screen. He tapped the transfer key and queued the full specifications description so that Danner could download it to her computer.

  "Thanks," she said. "I'll do the synthesis from my lab so you can concentrate here."

  Reeder didn't hear her leave the room. He was already changing parameters for a new simulation.

  Reeder worked through the regular lunch period. He did not like the crowds of people in the cafeteria, all talking about the latest, deadliest chemicals and what new class of insect had been discovered or eradicated. Well past the lunch hour he took a break and went down to the cafeteria. He glanced in Danner's lab on the way, but she wasn't in. The cafeteria was deserted. He grabbed a snack and a soda from the vending machines. He had run two additional simulations already. Danner was right about it taking less time this way. Both checked out perfectly. He knew he had a stable, effective compound. There was a couple more tests he could do, but there was really no point. He'd let Danner run the structure tests on the synthetic, which would take at least through tomorrow, and then he would build the results into another simulation. Just to be sure. They'd have it ready in three days. Danner would be pleased.

  His thoughts moved to his own private research and what he had told Madeira about it. A new species of insect from the order Hemiptera had developed a taste for the human brain. The microscopic insect hid among the cells of the brain itself. There were periods of excruciating and seemingly interminable pain for the sufferer that caused mounting mental problems.

  Physical damage took a long time to become permanent, but without a cure psychosis and insanity appeared inevitable. Cases were still rare, but rising, and the public was ready to panic. The insect was vulnerable to a number of treatments, but exhibited an uncanny ability to disappear whenever treatments were tried.

  Reeder got his first look at Pselliopus Cinctus, the assassin bug, during his tenure at the Department of Biological Control. The insect order Hemiptera was a specialty of his early work. Numerous species within this order preyed on other insects, and there was serious hope at one time that the exploding insect population could be brought under control by these very successful insect predators. However, the department, eager for an early success, rushed the most promising projects to market with disastrous results. From comically ineffective to hideously fatal, the department faced failure after failure. Reeder managed to survive the disbanding of the department and the black balling of many of the researchers involved, but he never forgot or forgave the ridicule heaped on his own projects or the brutal pressure applied against him to rush incomplete projects to market.

  A medical examiner discovered the first assassin bugs during an autopsy of a test subject at the Enclave. Through sheer coincidence the examiner brought the dead specimens to Reeder. They were easy to identify and catalog because of Reeder's earlier work with other species from the same order.

  Reeder finished his meal and walked back to Danner's lab. She still wasn't in. He went into the lab and checked her computer. The screen was blank and she had locked the keyboard. Getting suspicious, he went back to his own computer and checked mail. No message from her. Wait. There was a message from Gamesly about the test subject schedule. The message was confirmation that the test would occur on schedule. There had to be a mistake. Confirmation required his approval, and he hadn't given it. Yet there was his authorization code on the confirmation, which only he could input. In sudden understanding, Reeder rushed out of his lab and headed for 'X' Quarters.

  The security guard at the entrance to the 'X' quarters testing area saw him coming. Rising from her desk, she moved quickly to block him. "Doctor Danner said you might be ..."

  Reeder didn't even slow down. He burst past the protesting guard. She tried to grab at his arm, but Reeder shoved her up against the near wall. As Reeder hurried toward the blinking red light over Observation Room #2, the guard thought of the gun in its' holster at her side.

  "Fucking doctors," she muttered, giving up the idea. "Let'em straighten

  out their own problems."

  Reeder threw open the observation room door. He did not immediately see Danner on one side of the room staring in angry disappointment through the one way glass into the testing room, cigarette smoking unnoticed from between two fingers; nor did he see Gamesly on the other side of the observation room shouting futile instructions over the intercom to the medical personnel in the testing room. Reeder saw Damon Madeira. His heavy body was strapped to an examining table. He was writhing violently and spewing bloody chunks of vomit. Reeder could clearly see the neon orange tint characteristic of his chemical marker through the transparent patch on Madeira's arm. Four medical personnel swarmed around Madeira. Reeder watched him die.

  Doctors Jason Reeder, Clara Danner, and Dolores Gamesly were in Gamesly's office an hour after the death of Damon Madeira. "What the hell happened?" Gamesly demanded, staring from one to the other of the two doctors. Gamesly was well into her seventies. She was a very good administrator and used to be an equally sharp technician, but her skills were slowly rusting from the paperwork and politics of her supervisory job of the last five years.

  Reeder spoke first. "You fucking falsified my authorization code and murdered a helpless test subject, that's what happened!" Reeder angrily accused Gamesly. His face was red with rage
and he spoke through clenched teeth. He sat stiffly in an armless chair and his hands rubbed up and down the outside of his legs.

  "Make some sense, Reeder," Gamesly warned him flatly. "Don't get yourself in deeper trouble by making ridiculous accusations."

  "You and Danner can just go fuck each other." Reeder used the same flat, warning tone that Gamesly had just used on him. Danner almost guffawed out loud, and was only barely able to stifle it. Gamesly glanced in her direction, and then ignored her. Gamesly took a deep breath. She stepped from the side of her desk, where she had been standing, and pulled up a chair next to Reeder. She sat facing him.

  "Doctor Reeder," she began, making a successful effort to speak calmly and without anger, "I understand very well how painful this is for you. Mr. Madeira's death distresses us all."

  "I doubt it," he said, but he was calmer now. Reeder stared at his hands, which were now clasped in his lap.

  "If he was so concerned," Danner interrupted loudly, "ask him why he authorized an unsafe test."

  "Doctor Danner, just shut up for the moment," Gamesly told her in frustration.

  "I am not going to remain silent and listen to this incompetents' whining!" Danner shouted and jumped to her feet. Reeder stood as well.

  "You don't have to," he said to them both, "I'm done talking." Reeder walked out.

  Gamesly watched Reeder leave, and then turned to Danner. "Sit down, Doctor Danner," she commanded, "we still have a lot to talk about."

  "... immediately after the deposit of the eggs by the flesh fly the chemical stain appeared as hoped for. This was followed by a distinct flushing of the skin around the wound indicative of ..." Gamesly stopped the video replay of the test. She rubbed a cold nose with the back of her hand, thinking about Reeder's mental state and Danner's self-serving machinations.

  She was alone in her office after having succeeded in getting very little useful information out of Danner. Reeder had gone back to his lab, where it appeared he planned on staying all night. Her gut instinct was to suspend the project and begin a complete investigation. She knew the Board would not approve that. To the Board the test subject's death was a success. After all, didn't the chemical marker work? So what if there were still a few bugs to work out? She could picture the amusement at the joke. Gamesly cleared her computer screen in disgust and asked for all of the files on the project belonging to both Reeder and Danner. It was going to be a long evening.

  Behind the closed door of Reeder's lab was darkness. Reeder sat at his computer in the unlighted room, the faint illumination from the computer screen casting a bluish light onto his pallid face. The light flickered as the data on the screen changed. He watched the data flow past without moving. He made no attempt to wipe away the occasional tear that wormed down the already wet tracks on his cheeks. Finally the screen began patiently blinking the same message:

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  "Cross check complete.

  No errors in data, compilation, or results.

  Compound stable and safe."