The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  She let him drone on. She’d heard all before, but she enjoyed watching his lips. She’d love to get better acquainted with him, but there might not be time before he had to return to Borealopolis. And then there was the problem of Hilda and Kermilda. Entrusting them to the tender mercies of Benoît was out of the question, but maybe when Jean-Marie woke up, he could take them on a tour of the greenhouse vineyards.

  When Godfrey turned off the presentation, she put her hand lightly on his wrist. “Dr. Worcester—Godfrey—you do make a point, but we really like our lifestyle here. We could put this to a referendum—but would we force the cure on people who didn’t want it?” She had revolting images of herself dressed as badly as these two victims of the cult of sensible shoes.

  “You’re willing to forgo the joys of parenthood, then? True, you’ve enforced strict birth control via the air supply, but surely your women must yearn at times for motherhood.”

  She sighed. Now he was playing to her weak side. A charming little baby girl, to dress in pretty little frocks, to feed greenhouse strawberries and tidbits of pastry, to teach charming songs, to love, love, love—but Toxoplasma gondii could cause great harm to fetuses: blindness and encephalitis.

  However, on the bright side, she was already seropositive with the parasite, so she reasoned that her future offspring was safe. She was sure. Almost. She need only protect the child from infection until its immune system was fully developed. She could surely arrange that.

  However, she hadn’t yet met anyone she trusted to father her adorable child. She smiled lingeringly at Godfrey, and he flushed slightly.

  Benoît’s eyes flicked warily from her to Godfrey. “You part of that Mars-needs-more-babies movement?”

  Godfrey’s lips turned white and pinched. “No, no! We just feel—well, your station’s culture has—problems conforming to the overall community values of Martian life.”

  “And our culture deviates how?”

  Hilda threw up her hands. “People sleeping until midday! Bed-hopping! Nobody cares whether the filing and maintenance are done properly, or at all! Not meeting planet-wide quotas! You put it kindly by saying the parasite makes women more gregarious, albeit at the expense of domestic tranquility, but the men, the men here—”

  “Are more original,” Lucile said.

  “They have intellectual deficits!” Kermilda barked.

  “They think outside the box. They aren’t intimidated by common so-called wisdom,” Lucile continued smoothly.

  “Like cats,” said Benoît.

  And in fact the two squabbling cats were now a picture of cuddly affection, purple ribbons and all, under a table grooming each other. Lucile suppressed a smile, imagining Hilda and Kermilda doing the same. Except of course they would be repulsed by saliva.

  She returned her gaze to them. “Gari Babakin station excels in contributing innovative ideas to the greater Martian civilization.”

  Godfrey made a show of turning off his data ring. “Well, none of this means anything at all, because NutriTopia Ares, which I must remind you owns every molecule in this station, has authorized me to release the virus as soon as feasible.”

  He and the two women drained the last drops of their coffee, got up, and left.

  After a stunned moment, Benoît leaned over. “Did they already release the virus, without talking to Jean-Marie?”

  Lucile glanced at his worried face. “That’s not the question you should be asking, Benoît. The issue is, what will the virus do?”

  “Turn us into impotent zombies.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know if the personality effects can be reversed once the Toxoplasma gondii takes root. The question is whether their virus will kill the cats. Or,” she added, “Us.”

  * * * *

  Lucile was not as worried as she sounded. In fact, she wasn’t even sure the scientists of NutriTopia Ares had a technology to destroy Toxoplasma gondii oocysts. Previous attempts, with sulfadiazine and pyrimethamine-type drugs, had been unsuccessful, although they had certainly made enough people nauseated and anemic. Still—

  Everybody at Gari Babakin Station knew their universal toxoplasmosis infection came from an infected pregnant cat named Miguet. They even accepted the evidence that it might raise women’s intelligence and lower men’s.

  There had been a problem with the water filtration system early on in the history of the station, and unfortunately it kept getting recontaminated by oocysts shed either by cats or by humans. The citizens had stopped trying to fight it.

  Lucile had arrived at the station at the age of eight, and stayed when her parents left to go back to Earth when she was twenty three. She had no idea what she’d be like if she’d never ingested the oocysts, but she did, if she were honest, think herself more attractive and better dressed than the average Martialle.

  As to Benoît, when he had arrived at the station three years ago he had been meticulous in his habits. He kept tidy notebooks of his experiments in food engineering, and wore his hair and mustache short and neat. He had planned to stay only a Martian summer, but somehow he’d abandoned his original plans. His neatness quotient had gone all to hell after four months; Lucile remembered him suffering a brief episode of the flu, and afterward his attention span went south.

  He had known about the toxoplasmosis infection before he came; he thought he’d be immune. He had no logical reason for believing this, so no surprise that he wasn’t.

  NutriTopia officials were saying infected people were almost three times as apt to get into a work-related accident, and schizophrenia, hitherto unknown on Mars, was making a comeback as a result of the infection.

  The other issue had to do with the need for Martian population growth. Not only were toxoplasmosis-infected women endangering their future offspring’s health, they statistically doubled or tripled their chances of bearing a boy rather than a girl.

  Lucile suggested this might be NutriTopia’s hidden agenda. Because of early immigration practices (only post-menopausal or infertile women were allowed in the initial immigration, due to fears of genetic damage to developing infants), men outnumbered women. A disease that perpetuated that ratio would be unwelcome to the corporations that ruled Mars. That included NutriTopia Ares, which, as Godfrey had pointed out, owned every molecule of Gari Babakin. Mars needs babies. NutriTopia wants more workers.

  Life, Lucile believed, was too short to dance with stupid guys, but intelligence was in the eye of the beholder, and she found the infected men of Gari Babakin—Benoît in particular—amusing, if not father-of-her-future-child material.

  Of course she was careful not to override the station’s contraceptive measures. She didn’t want to hurt her theoretical future child.

  * * * *

  Godfrey congratulated himself he had been careful not to take a chance with any of the pastries or cheeses, although they smelled and looked divine. The coffee was hot, so that wasn’t a danger, and wine was okay because the oocysts couldn’t survive in alcohol.

  At least they hadn’t offered him any of that raw meat dish, that steak tartare made of hamster meat! How could they—

  Headquarters had given Drs. Wrothe and Wriothesley and him very particular instructions about releasing the virus. He was to shake hands with the head elected official, this Jean-Marie Lafayette. Lafayette, his team had discovered, was linked by less than five degrees of separation to every single person on Gari Babakin Station. The virus had been engineered to outlive at least three hand-washings.

  Hilda and Kermilda were also to shake hands with as many people as possible, but it seemed the uptight women scientists had been afraid of being infected by the parasite.

  He would have to speak to them.

  It would work anyway. He had anointed several railings and door handles around that pastry shop and the airlock.

  A
h, my, my, this Lucile Raoul was a charmer. He had no doubt she was even closer than five degrees of separation from most of the station. He regretted having to return home so precipitously. Oh, to match wits with her!

  He also regretted not being able to sample the cheese and pastry. Gari Babakin cuisine was considered exquisite. Their exports to the rest of Mars were irradiated to kill off the oocysts, but two problems remained: one, Martian health officials feared that particularly robust oocysts might live through the irradiation, and the descendants would be harder to kill, thus infecting the entire planet with an unstoppable plague.

  Second, the irradiation killed some of the flavor. Godfrey knew this not because he had personally tried a comparison taste test, but because a food scientist from Utopia had done so several Mars years ago, and swore there was no comparison.

  That food scientist, one Fred Remaura, had lived in quarantine until recently, when he had been the human test subject for the virus that killed the parasite.

  Now, profit motive drove Godfrey’s supervisors to sanitize Gari Babakin so that their products would be safe without the flavor-dulling irradiation.

  Those little jam tarts—the unaltered fragrance of butter and raspberry jam. And that Rocamadour cheese—yes, yes, very stinky, but what a seductive stink!

  Maybe the cheese had some overtones of human sex pheromones.

  He smiled at Hilda Wriothesley, but she only shuddered and said, “That woman is a human sewer.”

  * * * *

  Jean-Marie LaFayette lumbered around the mayor’s office, blundering into cabinets and knocking stacks of files off display modules. Every third lap he would haul up in front of Lucile and say, “Do you feel any different? Do I look different?”

  “Jean-Marie, just check your biometrics. I don’t know if they’ve even released the virus yet. I don’t think we’ll know until it’s much too late.”

  “Filthy tight-asses,” Benoît was curled in fetal position in the mayor’s desk chair. “They’ve singled us out for destruction.”

  Lucile went to him. “Benoît, be wise, poor baby. They are misguided, but they tested the virus on humans, so the damage will probably be minimal. And look at the bright side. Maybe you’ll be able to remember the multiplication tables again.”

  Benoît sprang out of his chair at her, but she smirked her gotcha smirk.

  Jean-Marie was accessing some database he had suddenly remembered.

  “Jean-Marie, darling, turn on your monitor so we can see too.”

  Jean-Marie tongued on his projector. A scientific paper from some long-forgotten minor Terran journal projected against the wall above the office door.

  “Anti-virals!” She clasped Jean-Marie’s arm joyfully. “But where can we get them?”

  Jean-Marie grinned. “Pascal LeBoeuf, our vintinière extraordinaire, my little cabbage.”

  * * * *

  Hilda tucked her pesticide spray into a pocket in her environment suit and polished the faceplate of her helmet. Godfrey could tell that she was nervous about the passenger cabin in the rocketplane. She preferred to keep her environment suit inflated and her helmet on when she was not inside a clean hab. Her work with infectious disease had made her paranoid. She hunched in one corner of the cabin, a rodent-like figure of terror, and not touching anything, not even sitting down.

  Kermilda, in contrast, believed the best defense was a strong offense, so she had loaded up on so many micronutrients that her breath and scalp emitted a yeasty, alcoholic scent. “They’ll figure out right away what we did.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Godfrey. “They’ll know we started the virus, but they won’t know how it’s propagated. It won’t wash off those yokels’ hands, and anyway, I inoculated ever surface I encountered in that hab, starting with the mayor’s office and even the airlock. And I added a thin layer of the protein substrate.”

  “Yes,” said Kermilda, “but they may try to develop an antiviral.”

  “That would take time, and by the time they succeed, let’s hope they’ll come to their senses and realize we have only their greater good in mind.” Godfrey contemplated a return to Gari Babakin once this whole thing had blown over. He’d love to meet more of the natives. Especially if any were like that Lucile Raoul. He could write a paper on the personality differences wrought by curing the population of toxoplasmosis infestation. What would Lucile be like when relieved of her parasitic burden? Would she be just as convivial, but not as manipulative?

  Hilda spoke for the first time. “I wonder how they’ll react when the cats start dying.”

  * * * *

  Lucile found the half-grown kitten under her work station when she came in for work. It was cold and limp. She flinched, then cuddled it to her chest. Poor little thing! Poor, poor kitten!

  This crystalized her fear that the cats were going to die, all of them. Dozens of pet cats on Gari Babakin station had already sickened with a mysterious wasting illness, and the feral colony was reduced to a quarter of its former size.

  She had been afraid this would happen ever since Godfrey’s visit. Jean-Marie had called a town meeting of the entire station. It was the first time that the entire male population had turned up, many of them sober. Everybody knew Godfrey’s team would release a virus to kill the oocysts, but there was no way of knowing what method they’d use to propagate it. The water supply had been examined for new viri, as it was well known that phage virus particles thrive in Earthly sea water, but since Gari Babakin had so few microbiologists who were trained in other than food synthesis, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  She threw open the door of Jean-Marie’s office. “We’ve got to take action. They’re killing our cats, our souls!”

  Jean-Marie rose heavily to his feet and lumbered over to her. He wrapped ham-like arms around her and breathed wine breath into her face. “I know, I know, my dear, but what, what more can we do? We’re working on the anti-virals—”

  “Let me call the head of their sanitation team, that half-scalped idiot that came out here in the spring.”

  “Is he still on Mars?”

  “Of course he is! Earth transport hasn’t left Equatorial city since he and his she-goons were here. Anyway, he seems the type that wants to stay on Mars. Become a Martian.”

  Jean-Marie sighed. “But not a Martian in the truest sense, with the advanced culture provided by our oocyst friends.”

  “No. Not in the purest sense.”

  Benoît appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a clean shirt and hadn’t crashed the station computer system in weeks. Was the phage destroying his toxoplasmosis infection, converting him back into a straight-arrow Martian?

  Benoît said, “You might try seducing him.”

  “Surely he’s not that stupid!”

  Benoît stroked his mustache.

  * * * *

  Lucile spent more time gazing into Bon Bon’s inscrutable eyes, as if the sleek affectionate cat might have answers. A weekly lab test of her own toxoplasmosis status showed that she remained seropositive. The immune factors might just remain in her blood after the cysts were gone. But she thought not. Her bills for package delivery service and droplet manufacturing betrayed her continued interest in exotic lingerie. No, she hadn’t started any new love affairs since the fateful day Godfrey and his hagfish entourage had arrived, but she had been busy. Anyway, her next project was Benoît.

  Or was it?

  Benoît would make an interesting playmate. He would need lots of fixing up, but toxoplasmosis-positive women liked that sort of thing. Of course, toxoplasmotic women also got bored easily.

  She needed more of a challenge. Terrans were certainly not immune to the charms of women with toxoplasmic infections; this was well known. Many of the station women had a good laugh when one of them seduced another male into c
oming to the station on the sheer expectation of meeting the famed Gari Babakin sex kittens.

  This particular challenge might save the station.

  She put through the call.

  Dr. Godfrey Worcester, NutriTopia Ares Project Manager for Toxoplasmosis Gondii Remediation, was in fact still on Mars, at Utopia Station. And, his expression told her, even over on her tiny screen, that he was both lonely and shy, but too damned dutiful to admit it to himself.

  “Do I have the honor of speaking to the too-young-to-be-so distinguished Dr. Godfrey Worcester? The scientist who developed the anti-toxoplasma virus?”

  “Martialle Raoul, good sol,” he said. He sounded courteous, but nervous. As he should be.

  She made her voice soft and breathy, as if afraid she might wet her pants in admiration. “I have been thinking of you ever since you left us that day. We had so much to talk about.”

  He brightened. “I was actually hoping to see you again, Martialle Raoul—”

  She method-acted her face into an expression of fetching grief, combined with vixenish fury. “My naughty doctor,” she said in low, thrilling voice, “Are you aware that you’re killing our little kitties?”

  He wilted like a failed erection. “We—uh, we considered there might be side effects with the cats. But surely not all—”

  “Seventy per cent! That includes Aristide Brewpub, the tom cherished by our mayor. Aristide died in agony a week after your visit. Autopsy shows kidney and heart failure, caused by the sudden death of the oocysts that the cat coexisted with.” Actually, Aristide was perfectly well, but several other pet cats had died, and she figured Godfrey would be more appalled if he thought he’d killed the mayor’s cat.