by Sayuri Ueda
“No one laughed out of malice, really. In a way, they had borne witness to what was essentially human nature. They had seen an incident that could very easily have happened to them, and their reaction was to laugh, that’s all.
“But a Round like Veritas couldn’t understand that or what was so wrong about eir behavior. Couldn’t understand why I hit em or why the team was laughing at us. I found out later that even the Rounds had turned a cold shoulder to Veritas. But ey had insisted that ey had done nothing wrong. Ey believed that I would come around eventually if we talked about it. But my team and I had crushed eir resolve by laughing at em.
“That night, after realizing there was no place for em inside the station, Veritas tried to kill emself. Ey slit eir throat with a knife, but I guess the cut wasn’t deep enough. One of the Rounds found em soaked in eir own blood.
“It was shocking the way the entire station swept the incident under the rug. Kline shrugged it off as a cultural collision that was bound to happen eventually. Preda used Wagi’s medical diagnosis and advice to craft a report that would nip the incident in the bud. He treated Veritas’s attempted suicide as an accident to avoid an investigation by the Planetary Bioethics Association.
“The Rounds also kept quiet, feeling they were responsible for Veritas too.
“To prevent another incident, the supervisors restricted access and contact with the special district. Everyone did their damnedest to keep from pointing fingers, recognizing that if a heated debate broke out, it would tear this tiny station apart. Yeah, everyone was real adult about it. Not a single punk screaming justice among them. Neither was there a clear villain to condemn. It all went down pretty quietly, really.
“Veritas and I were made to swear before Kline to never see each other again. Wagi ordered me to counseling, but I ignored it. I wasn’t sick, for crying out loud, just stupid at love. I didn’t much like the idea of seeing Dr. Tei either. Seeing the doctor only reminded me of Veritas.
“The moment I was denied access to the special district and Veritas, for some reason, I began to feel bitter.
“Don’t ask me why,” said Harding. “I didn’t even know what I was angry about. Before I knew it, I was the only one obsessing over an incident that was supposed to have been settled.
“Did I really hate the Rounds or love them? Was I angry at Veritas or at myself? Or maybe I was just spooked that my relationship with Veritas made me realize that I might have been bisexual all along and was desperately trying to deny it.”
Shirosaki remained silent.
“Well, are you going to say something?” Harding asked.
“I’m not a Catholic, so this confession of sins is lost on me. You start taking count, there’s no end to it. That goes for this assignment. Just look at the body count we racked up on Jupiter-I over this mission. That’s a heck of a lot more sinful if you ask me.”
Harding let out a deep sigh.
With Harding in his arms, Shirosaki burned the gas jets to reposition themselves.
When they turned around, they saw the rescue shuttle, piloted by Arino, approaching.
VI
AFTER SHIROSAKI AND Harding were picked up and flown back to the station, they were immediately examined by the medical team. Their wounds were treated and the two received a booster injection of molecs to repair the tissue damage.
Harding lay unconscious in the bed next to Shirosaki. “How is he doing?” Shirosaki asked Wagi.
“Not good,” answered the doctor. “On top of being badly injured, he’s suffering from severe radiation exposure.”
“I see.”
“That goes for you too,” said Wagi disapprovingly. “You shaved ten to twenty years off your life.”
After a while, Tei entered the sickroom. Ey looked gaunt, but ey seemed less feverish and steadier on eir feet.
Tei whispered something in Dr. Wagi’s ear. After Wagi nodded and excused himself from the room, Tei came around to Shirosaki’s bedside.
“How are you feeling?” Shirosaki asked.
“Strange—to have a patient asking after me,” answered Tei with a wan smile. “I thought you should know there was some critical information found on Karina’s personal computer at Europa’s research station.”
“Really?” said Shirosaki, raising a brow. “The data on the parasitic machine?”
“No, the names of the Vessel of Life’s main players behind this plot and a detailed record of their plans—more like Karina’s last will and testament. Just as Karina had said, she was reluctant to go along with the plan. She’d lost interest in terrorism after leaving Libra. Apparently she’d studied biology because she genuinely wanted to research the marine life on Europa. When she met Kline ten years ago, she had been completely clean, which was probably why Kline had trusted her. Karina took on the plan two years ago. By then she was a trusted presence here, so she was able to get past all the security checks. That was probably the reason why the Vessel of Life recruited her. They had anticipated the difficulty of infiltrating Jupiter-I otherwise.”
“Why did she do it?”
“It appears she was being threatened,” Tei said. “Someone with knowledge of her past had made contact with Karina to enlist her services. At first, Karina refused. Even when they threatened to out her as a terrorist, she didn’t bend at first. Perhaps because she’d braced for that possibility all along, that tactic proved ineffective. It was upon learning that Europa’s marine organisms had been taken hostage that Karina had buckled.”
“Wait, what hostages on Europa?”
“The Vessel of Life threatened to poison and wipe out the biotic community in Europa’s ocean if she didn’t cooperate. Even if she were to resist by committing suicide, Europa’s marine life would die. In short, however she tried to resist, unless Karina agreed to infiltrate and sabotage Jupiter-I, Europa’s biotic community would be destroyed.”
“And that was more than Karina could bear.”
“Karina thought nothing about the lives of other humans, much less her own. But she seemed to have regarded Europa’s organisms with the utmost respect, perhaps because in their presence she could forget her own past. To Karina, those tiny lives were as sacred as the gods themselves, and we far paled by comparison.”
“That sounds exactly the way Karina might see things,” said Shirosaki, flashing a bitter smile.
“There’s more. Apparently the Vessel of Life had handed her a package—a virus with a 99 percent morbidity rate, capable of infecting and killing indiscriminately, Round or Monaural. When Karina learned the nature of this virus, she had mocked her employers. What was the point of using such a weapon? It would shut down Jupiter-I only temporarily, and the researchers and Rounds would eventually return. That wasn’t the way to achieve absolute success. Then she offered to create a bioweapon herself. And in two years, Karina had created the parasitic machine, designed after a species of crustacean parasite discovered in Europa’s ocean. A parasite about two millimeters in length that reproduces inside its crab host. Karina’s creation undergoes multiple metamorphoses from larva to adult and acts upon its Round host differently at each stage.”
“A genetically modified organism?”
“Without a thorough examination, it’s hard to say whether it’s organic or artificial. All we know is that it does unthinkable damage to the human host.”
“How does it work?”
“Karina didn’t leave us any details, but Dr. Wagi discussed it with Director Weil at Europa’s research station and came up with several theories. After Dr. Wagi did some research on the data on the crustacean parasite on which the parasitic machine is based, and the various parasites on Earth, we came up with a theory. First, the deaths of the Round infants had us fooled; the parasitic machine isn’t lethal. In fact, it had been made to infect the Rounds without killing them. The Round infants died because of their underdeveloped immune systems. The parasitic machine isn’t meant to kill the Rounds. It is meant to fix their sex.”
Shiro
saki swallowed hard.
“The parasitic machine invades the Round host and attacks the sex hormone system. In a short period, it renders one set of reproductive organs—male or female—useless. Surgically transplanting synthetic organs wouldn’t do any good. Once the parasitic machine inhabits the Round host, it changes forms repeatedly and reproduces within the host until it dies, the way parasites do. And continually attacks the reproductive organs of one sex.”
“So when a Round is infected…”
“Eir biological sex is forcibly fixed as either male or female.”
“Which does it shut down?”
“That varies with the individual,” Tei said.
“Then how does it differentiate which sexual organs to attack?”
“Only one parasitic machine inhabits the host at any given time. The infected Round’s sex is fixed according to the sexual organs the parasitic machine chooses to attack. The substance dispersed inside the special district was comprised not of eggs but first-stage larvae. About one micron in length, the larvae have four dorsal wings.”
“Wings?”
“They fly. With the molecular motors attached to their wings. Actually, the wings move like the fins of the crustacean parasites after which the parasitic machine was designed. They’ve been engineered to glide on the airstream of the air conditioning system and the 0.38 G atmosphere of the special district. It’s thought the capsules contained hundreds of thousands of these first-stage larvae. The capsules were shot at the Rounds and burst, dispersing a fine mist containing the larvae.”
Shirosaki shivered at the thought of hordes of microscopic insects taking flight and latching onto the bodies of the Rounds.
“The first-stage larvae invade the respiratory organs and penetrate the host through the skin too,” Tei continued. “When they enter the blood vessels and detect the double-I chromosomes unique to Rounds, the parasites shed their wings and enter the second stage of metamorphosis by feeding on the host’s blood. At the same time, they produce toxins to prevent other parasites from growing, probably so the host’s body doesn’t weaken from over-infestation. It’s likely the toxins caused the fever the Rounds have been experiencing since onset. It takes about a day for the second-stage larvae to die, leaving just one parasite to enter the third stage of metamorphosis. Once the liver neutralizes the toxins in the body, the fever goes down and the infected Round enters remission.”
“So the reason why Karina was running around with Fortia as her hostage and refused to talk—”
“She was stalling until this third stage. As the surviving third-stage larva continues to travel inside the body, it eventually finds either the male or female reproductive organ. Which one is completely left up to chance. It burrows inside the tissue and matures, never to leave the organ again. The parasite takes root inside the tissue, essentially becoming a part of the body and shutting down the organ’s functions. And that’s how the Round host’s sex becomes fixed—male if the mature parasite inhabits the female reproductive organ and female if the parasite inhabits the male reproductive organ. Parasites lay one egg after the next through self-fertilization. But since the parasite secretes an incubation-inhibiting substance, the eggs do not hatch immediately. They circulate throughout the Round host’s blood system, and the vast majority of the eggs that the liver doesn’t neutralize float in the bodily fluids. They probably can’t be filtered out of the blood because the eggs take refuge in the white blood cells. Removing the infected organ doesn’t help. If the source secreting the incubation-inhibiting substance disappears for some reason, some of the eggs will hatch and will go through the same life cycle, eventually shutting down the reproductive function of one sexual organ.”
“And a new parasite will lay eggs all over again.”
“The parasitic machine wasn’t made to kill any of the Rounds but to eliminate one of their sexual functions. It’s likely its eggs will enter any unborn child by way of the placenta.”
“But wouldn’t artificial insemination prevent the fetus from being infected?”
“Karina must have thought of that,” said Tei. “No, we think that an unborn child will be infected, no matter what the method of insemination.”
“How does it affect Monaurals?”
“It doesn’t affect Monaurals, though Monaurals can be carriers.”
“What sort of contact does it take?”
“Any direct or airborne contact. Inside a Monaural host, the larvae keep their wings and do not transform past the first stage. Instead, they multiply inside the lungs and are transmitted via coughing or exhalation. By running around the station, Karina was herself another vector for infection. We should assume most of the station staff are already carriers. And the security staff.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Unless we come up with a treatment to fight this parasitic molecular machine, the Monaurals won’t be able to resume the Round experiments. The Vessel of Life must have the data on the parasitic machine and could be plotting to inflict the same type of damage on Jupiter-I all over again. Even if we resumed our research with an entirely new staff, an unsuspecting Monaural carrier from the planets might come to the station and transmit the parasites to the vulnerable Round population. Karina may well have succeeded in wiping out the bigender community on this station. At the very least, our gender-free society is no more.”
Shirosaki thought he could hear Karina laughing in his ear. “What are the chances the Rounds will regain their bigender functions?”
“That depends on how far the research on the parasitic machine continues to develop and how quickly we can keep up to find a cure. Our battle with Karina has only just begun. But someday we will become bigender again. If we make the most of humanity’s knowledge and technology, I know we’ll see a day when we can defeat the parasitic machine.”
“Have you been infected, Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And your sex?”
“I am male. But that doesn’t mean I self-identify as male. The Monaurals don’t suddenly become something else when they lose their sexual function, do they? That goes for us too. We were raised in a society where being bigender is a natural fact of life. My generation has matured inherently identifying as both male and female. Even though we have lost one of our sexual functions, we remain bigender. Karina may have destroyed the Round physiology, but she hasn’t destroyed our souls. No doubt Karina knew that, but she had to do it to save Europa’s biotic community.” Tei produced the St. Gerard medal from eir coat pocket and placed it in Shirosaki’s palm. “I hope you bring the people responsible to justice. For the sake of all the people who’ve died here.”
After eir condition stabilized, Fortia sent Album for Calendula and Tigris.
Calendula did not put up a fight when Album arrived. In fact, ey seemed to expect what was coming. Tigris quietly followed.
After bringing Calendula and Tigris back to the residence, Album helped Fortia sit up in eir bed. Fortia rested eir back against the pillow. “Do you know why I’ve asked you here?” ey asked Calendula.
Calendula nodded once.
“Emotionally, I can understand what you did, having given birth and raised children myself. But right now, I am the leader in charge of this community. Anyone who disobeys an order must be punished, or there will be others. Otherwise, this tiny community will fall apart. Do you have any idea what a liability that would be when we embark in space? If we are going to confront the unimaginable hardship that awaits us, our solidarity must be strong and unshakable.”
“I understand,” said Calendula, contrite. “I acted rashly. I’m sorry.”
“I order you to have your sex surgically fixed,” said Fortia.
The words made Calendula’s body go stiff.
“I suspect the parasitic machine has already fixed your sex. But even if a treatment is found, you are forbidden to become bigender again. You will remove the reproductive organs of one sex and work among the Monaurals of this station as
a Monaural yourself. That’s your punishment.”
“So I am to leave the special district? You’re banishing me?”
“You can think long and hard about what you’ve done. Your crime isn’t that you attempted to kill Karina, but that you led the others in a revolt.”
“I did it for the Rounds,” said Calendula, eir voice trembling.
“I know that, which is why I can’t allow you to remain here.”
Album had been poised to jump in if Calendula tried to put up a fight, but that proved to be an unnecessary concern.
“Tell me one thing,” said Calendula. “What will become of my children?”
“They’ll remain in the special district. Don’t worry. I promise they’ll be cared for. Do you acknowledge and accept your punishment?”
Calendula retreated from Fortia’s bedside.
“Answer me, Calendula. I gave you a direct order.”
Calendula did not answer. Cocking eir head upward, ey glared straight ahead as ey walked out of the room.
“You’re to remain here,” Fortia said to a dumbfounded Tigris. “You will raise your and Calendula’s two children. If you ever need a hand, Album and I will be here to help.”
When Tigris came back to emself, ey shook eir head. “If Calendula has to go, I’m going with em.”
“And the children?”
“They’ll come with us, of course.”
“Isn’t that being selfish?” muttered Album. “You’re depriving your children of the right to live as Rounds.”
“They’ve already been infected by the parasite. What point is there now to living here?”
“When a cure is found, the Rounds will reclaim their bigender bodies,” Fortia said gently. “And your children too. You’re free to go with Calendula, but leave the children here. Album and I will raise them. While you may be their parents, you have no right to rob them of their futures.”
