Ammonite Read Free Page B

anecdotal, and speculative notes added to by each decontaminee. Files ended mid-sentence and had large chunks missing. Marghe began to scroll through material with which she was already familiar, looking for the files that had been uploaded from Port Central during the eighteen months she had been aboard the Terragin .
    Grenchstom’s Planet had been rediscovered five years ago by a routine Company probe. Preliminary satellite surveys had showed a small indigenous human population living in various communities scattered over the planet, origin uncertain, though likely to stem from the same colonizing spurt that had seeded Gallipoli.
    Remote atmosphere testing had indicated that this could be a lucrative planet for Company’s various leasing operations—
    Marghe scrolled on.
    Company landed its usual survey and engineering teams to lay out communications and construct the working base, Port Central. Accompanying them were a contingent of Company Security—Mirrors—and, to comply with the law, SEC representative Maurice Courtivron and his small team, entrusted with the welfare of Jeep’s natives.
    Marghe had not known Courtivron, but he must have been good. Jeep was a Company planet; they owned and ran every line of communication, every item shipped or manufactured there: the food, the clothes, the shelter. When Company had started setting off the burns that ruined the natives’ land, he had done his best to do his job, managing—admittedly, according to the rumors, with the unlikely help of a Mirror—to bring the plight of the indigenous population to the people of Earth, sidestepping SEC corruption and forcing the Councils to bow to public opinion and set in motion the famous Jink and Oriyest v. Company case.
    It was at that time that two discoveries were made: Jeep’s natives were one hundred percent female, and there was a virus loose.
    The two were connected, of course. The incidence of infection of Company personnel was one hundred percent. Eighty percent of Company’s female personnel recovered; all of the men, including Courtivron, died. The planet was closed: no one on, very few off. The virus had killed the two physicians before they could unravel the world’s reproductive secret—something else Marghe hoped to get information on.
    She scrolled through the main directory. One of the names she had been looking for, Eagan, caught her eye. She punched up Eagan’s directory. It had nine subdirectories. She called up the first: more than forty separate files. She sighed.
    Three days were not going to be enough to review over a year’s worth of reports from Janet Eagan and Winnie Kimura, the surviving members of Courtivron’s SEC
    team. Her assistants.

    Marghe blinked and realized she had been sleeping. D Section was thick with silence. She wanted to cough, or clear her throat, just to hear something, to make herself feel less alone. She swung off the bed and padded over to the terminal. She was too tired to work, so she commed Sara Hiam.
    “Quiet getting to you?”
    Marghe looked around at the creamy white walls, the carefully cheerful pastels of overhead lockers, the metal bed legs, the plain flooring. “Everything’s getting to me.
    Tell me how things are going on your end.”
    “Sigrid and Nyo are still debating whether the solar microwave satellite is out of synch because of a decaying orbit or faulty switching. They do agree that they can fix it. Again.”
    Port Central drew all its power from the microwave relay. There were several generators planetside in case the relay failed, but machinery was one thing and having the personnel to operate it another. Port Central was down to one-third of its original staff complement.
    “Any other news?”
    “The gig might be a day late. We relayed to Port Central the news that there are some big weather systems heading their way. We suggested that they might want to delay. Also, they’re bringing someone up.”
    “Who?”
    “You won’t like it. Janet