Ammonite Read Free

pause, four, pause … The door lights flicked from red to green.
    “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
    D Section was dark. She had not expected that. She switched over to suit broadcast. “Lights.” Brilliant white light sliced on, making her blink.
    D was square, only four beds. Two mobile hoods like slick cauls by the far bulkhead. Several workstations. Not dissimilar to crew quarters. Her visor frosted over. She scrubbed at it clumsily, scanned her readouts: external temperature 24
    degrees Celsius, air composition and pressure at normal levels, no apparent toxins.
    Just to make sure, she sat down at the nearest workstation.
    “On.” The gray screen went black, ready. “Readouts of internal atmospheric composition of this sector. ” Figures blinked obligingly, agreeing with her own readings. She still felt nervous. “Confirm lock and hull integrity.” The screen flashed CONFIRMED. “Off.” The screen went back to dead gray.
    Awkwardly, she took off her left gauntlet. The right was easier. The slick plastic of her helmet was still cold. She twisted it anticlockwise and cool, clean, untouched-smelling air spilled in under the opened seal. Marghe lifted off the helmet and breathed deep. She was safe, for now.

    Marghe pulled hair still damp from the shower free of the collar of her crisp new cliptogether. She commed Hiam.
    “I’m ready for the FN-17 now.”
    “In the food slot.” Marghe padded over to the slot. Inside it were two softgels and a glass of water. “Double dose for the first day,” Hiam said, “then one tomorrow, one the next day. After that, one every ten days. There’s a possibility of fever the first forty-eight hours, nothing dangerous.”
    Marghe squeezed the gels gently between finger and thumb and held them up to the light: they were watery pink. The glass of water was the same temperature as her hand. She swallowed both gels at once, then put the empty glass back in the slot.
    Marghe heard Hiam sigh. “You think I’d back out at the last minute?”
    “You never know. ”
    Marghe lay down on the bed farthest from the hoods, face still turned to the screen. “I want some privacy for a little while.”
    “I’ll have to keep the bio telemetry.”
    Marghe nodded. “But no visual, no audio. Just for a while.”
    “Fine.” The speaker clicked off.
    The click, like that of the comm channel in her helmet, was deliberate, meant to reassure the subject that she was not being monitored. Either could be simulated if the observer deemed it desirable; Marghe chose to believe that this was not one of those times.
    It could take up to two minutes for an object to travel down the esophagus to the stomach. She imagined the softgels dropping gently through the pyloric sphincter, the acids in her stomach breaching the gelatin of their shells, the watery pink liquid spilling FN-17. Enzymes breaking it down, carrying it into her bloodstream, into her cells. An experimental biofactured vaccine against Jeep. Jeep the virus, named after the planet.
    For more than two years she had tried to imagine how it would feel to swallow the vaccine. She put her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling.

    “You’re running away,” her father had said, pacing his study in Portugal, wandering out of the screen visual pickup’s line of sight.
    “I’m not,” Marghe had objected. It was spring, and the scent of grass and the sound of ewes lambing on the Welsh hillside carried through the open windows of her cottage. “This is the most fabulous opportunity for an anthropologist since…
    since the nineteenth century.”
    “And why do you suppose the joint Settlement and Education Councils are offering it to you? Because you’re the best qualified person?”
    “I’m not as naive as that.”
    “Then think, Marghe, think! You resigned from SEC once. They haven’t changed—just as corrupt as ever. Last time you got beaten up and hospitalized.
    What will happen this time? There’s more at stake.