Wildcatter

Day 423

I’ve told you about Blackadder’s Law: “Every world is different, except that they’re all out to get you.” Once in a while, though, a wildcatter will smile and whisper what is known, for obvious reasons, as “Whiteadder’s Amendment.” Its wording varies widely, but is usually along the lines of, “But sometimes one will give you a very special treat.”

Fonatelles, op. cit.

The walls and ceiling of the control room were displaying the starscape outside, dominated by the devilish red glow of great Betelgeuse, although the blue giant Bellatrix now glowed significantly brighter than before. Seth had brought a chair from the mess for Meredith and placed it beside his own at the foot of the table. She was in it already, stroking Whittington, while that faithless turncoat purred in her lap. One by one the others drifted in: Reese, annoyed to be dragged away from the lab, where she had been studying Cacafuego fever; Hanna fidgeting because one of her ferrets was late returning; Jordan still pale from her sickness; and Maria, who honored Seth with a sultry smile designed to boost his heart beat significantly, deliberately followed by a stare at Meredith intended to stop hers altogether. There were now two sex bombs aboard Golden Hind, an explosive mixture even without including Seth’s earlier commitment to the captain.

Lastly came JC, grayer and significantly thinner after his ordeal. He was not so reduced that he could not play the royal role, though. He smiled graciously to his loyal subjects and took the chair at the head of the table, normally occupied by the captain. That was another part of the tradition, for a wake had no fixed agenda, and even the captain’s performance could be shredded. The record was invariably submitted as a report to the financial backers and almost always made public too, so that reputations could be made or shattered. In a wake the ambitious could try to boost their careers and the spiteful could satisfy grudges. Wakes had been known to end in brawls and attempted murder.

Seth savored nostalgic memories of other meetings around this table: jubilation at the announcement that they were heading to a niner world, joy when they saw it for the first time, dismay when they found the beacon, and the dawning hope later that there might yet be something to salvage. Now the mood was sour, almost putrid. It was not the planet at fault now, it was the people. The team had lost faith in itself. He thought he knew why, and was astonished that no one else seemed to have worked it out.

JC had barely laid his hand on the table when he was interrupted by a rainbow flash outside the ship—the missing ferret had returned from a jump. Hanna half rose, then settled back. Control could dock the probe and download its information. An hour or two didn’t matter.

“A good omen!” JC said. “Control, the wake is in session. Lights, please.”

The universe disappeared, beige walls and ceiling returned. Something of the old JC was revealed also. He knew all there was to know about chairing meetings. When it came to public relations, he could spin like a pulsar. Leaning back, relaxed in his chair, he beamed around and addressed Posterity.

“It is a great honor to preside at this historic wake aboard Mighty Mite’s Deep Space Ship Golden Hind, presently wending its way homeward after its epic visit to the world we have named Cacafuego, ISLA catalogue number GK79986B. Before summarizing the team’s astonishing discoveries, I must pay credit…” To Jordan for a harmonious voyage out, to Hanna for a speedy and safe one, to Maria for a skilled analysis of the problem world…

“And certainly to the renowned Dr. Reese Platte, our biologist, who has not merely nursed every one of us back to health in her capacity as chief medical officer, but has managed to solve the mystery of the unknown infection that—”

Jordan’s fist hit the table. “Just when does Dr. Platte plan to share her findings with the rest of us?” Her expression made quite clear that she had not been told the news beforehand. For Reese to tip off JC before telling the captain was a serious discourtesy at the very least.

“I was planning to start personal statements after—”

“Now!” Jordan barked. “Or I will suspend this wake until First Officer Finn and I have been properly briefed.” She wasn’t having any trouble standing up to Commodore Lecanard now, but perhaps that was because it was Reese she was really mad at. Or else JC looked less formidable than before.

“I truly meant no disrespect, ma’am,” Reese said, and for once she seemed defensive, not smirking or sneering. “So far my findings are provisional, but when I went to check on the commodore this morning, he did ask me if I had identified the infective agent yet and I let slip that I had.”

Of course!

“You have a name for it?”

“Not yet, ma’am. I am not ready to submit a detailed report, but I am convinced now that the culprit is a prion.”

“A what?”

“A prion. A prion is a protein of the same chemical composition as one of the victim’s own constituent proteins, but wrongly folded. Infective prions were discovered back in the twentieth century, but they are so rare that I have discovered few later references in Control’s library. They are associated with disease of the brain, specifically spongiform encephalopathy, where the brain is reduced to a sponge. They are normally spread by eating infected brain tissue, although in this case by some other means, most likely simple inhalation. As a first hypothesis, the prion protein we contracted may have come from the centaurs. Perhaps it is peculiarly associated with intelligence? Notably the first to succumb was Prospector Dylan Guinizelli. He was swarmed by them, as you will recall.”

“His EVA suit was not compromised!” Meredith said. “I insist on that.”

Reese shot her a glance of dislike. “You cannot know that. A prion is so tiny, far smaller even than a virus particle, that it could have penetrated any mechanical junction, such as the seal of his helmet. Even if it just adhered to the outside of his suit, your later attempts at decontamination would have been useless. Known prions are so stable that they will survive being boiled in caustic soda.

“The danger is that when a prion meets up with its normal twin, it catalyzes the normal protein’s inversion into the evil twin’s own form. Thus it creates a stereo copy of itself, and both can then proceed to catalyze others.”

“Like vampires?” Maria muttered.

“Or nuclear chain reactions,” JC said.

No one else commented. All eyes were fixed on Reese, hanging on her words.

“And what is the cure?” Jordan asked.

“No cure is known,” Reese said. She smiled smugly. “No one ever survives a prion infection. I detected no trace of antibodies being formed against the infection, because the intruder is identical or almost identical to one of our own constituents. Our immune system ignores it. But since we here are all either cured or recovering, I knew at once that there must be a treatment in this case. We have been incredibly lucky. Had I not been summoned to this wake, I would be in my lab continuing my research. I guessed that the answer must lie in one of the medications we have been using. Since viruses have protein coats, I began by trying out the standard intravenous antiviral medications that ISLA recommends, and about ten minutes ago I found that the evil-twin prions in one of my Petri dishes were reverting to their regular form. Serendipitously, the antidote lay in that medication, and now all I have to do is isolate which ingredient is the active agent.”

“Brilliant!” Jordan jumped to her feet and applauded, and everyone else followed, although JC need time to heave himself out of his chair. As soon as everyone sat down, he took charge again, asking the question that had been worrying Seth and probably everyone aboard.

“So when we return home we can assure ISLA that there is no need to quarantine us?”

“I expect so, Commodore, as long as we remain healthy for the duration of the voyage. ISLA may want to run some tests, of course, and confirm my findings. I shall initiate a course of antiviral treatment for all of us until we can be certain we have eliminated all traces of the prion.”

Smiles broke out all over. They would not be pariahs, lepers, outcasts from their home world. That had been part of the problem—although far from all of it.

JC segued smoothly back into his speech, confident that it would be viewed by billions as soon as he returned to Earth. “Although mankind has been exploring the stars for more than a century…”

He lambasted Galactic by giving Prospector Meredith Tsukuba credit for making first contact with the centaurs and attributing sentience to them; he belabored the way she had then been abandoned to die and the way Commodore Duddridge had flouted ISLA rules by posting a yellow beacon, instead of a purple. He even lauded “young” Seth Broderick for his heroic rescue and the way he had clearly established that the centaurs were capable of speech, reasoning, and cooperation. He did not mention that he wanted to strangle the aforementioned young man for ruining the whole expedition and everyone aboard except Seth himself.

“I call on him now to make his report. Prospector Seth Broderick!”

Applause.

“Even before I went down to the planet’s surface,” Seth said, “Commodore Lecanard suggested that the Galactic expedition that preceded us had made a discovery that it did not wish to reveal—something extremely valuable. This was characteristically observant of him.” Soap him up before you push him off the plank. “Commodore, sir, this gets us into legal matters. Is it possible to turn off Control’s recording function for a few minutes?”

JC choked, coughed, turned scarlet, and finally managed to say, “Possible, yes. But it would be illegal.”

Again Jordan interrupted, looking even angrier than before. “I was expressly assured that it was not possible. The ship’s specs and ISLA’s GenRegs say the same. This is your own doing? You were an IT engineer, once. You have been meddling with Control’s software?”

JC put on an even harder internal struggle, but lost again, seemingly just before suffering an apoplectic fit. “I think there could be a way to suspend recording, but it has never been tested and I refuse to try it now. Let us have your report, Prospector!”

He had been given his chance.

Seth was not ready to report anything yet. “When you hired me, Commodore, you assured me that the crew, meaning the people present here, other than Meredith Tsukuba, would be sharing between them fifteen percent of the ownership of Mighty Mite Ltd. Is that true?”

“Certainly it is! Are you accusing me of being a liar?”

Certainly he was a liar, but men of his stature must not be accused without very good evidence.

“And will those shares make us rich?”

JC choked, gasped, spluttered… And whispered, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is nothing to share. Thanks to you and your hellish stupidity in proving that those freaks are sentient, ISLA will interdict the planet and there won’t be any profits. You wanted to be famous. You wanted to go down as the first man in history to discover an intelligent species. Idiot! You really believe you’re the first to find evidence of intelligent species in the galaxy? The trick is to back off quick and keep your mouth shut, but oh no, not you! Why do you think Indra keeps finding such wonderful stuff on Floren and yet never investigates the lesser continent? Why won’t it even let its ships overfly it? Because they’d see fields down there, and roads, that’s why!

“Why do you think Star Ventures never went back to Pixie, in spite of the terrific chemical feedstock they brought back on the first visit? Because they traded for some of them, and if the truth ever gets out, ISLA will fine them trillions, that’s why.

“But thanks to you and your insanity, Mighty Mite will declare bankruptcy an hour after we establish radio contact. That goes for you too, boy! You may think you own the copyright on your plog, but the creditors will seize that as well, or tie it up in the courts for a hundred years. We’re all flat broke together.”

Seth ignored all the angry glares directed at him. “You too, sir?”

“Including me, yes.”

What? For a moment Seth was stumped, and then he saw the way out. “But your wife is wealthy? Are your children?”

Still JC could not refuse to answer. “They have property, yes. What the hell have you done to me? I don’t feel well…”

“I have done nothing to you, sir. We’re discussing what you have done to us. Remember when we started, when we all dreamed of bringing back things of great value from Cacafuego, things big enough to make the expedition a roaring success. Were you planning to cheat us out of our cut?”

JC shrank back like a cowed dog. He swallowed a few times and nodded, growing older by the minute. He could not resist the truth compulsion. “Yes.”

The audience sat up straighter on their chairs. Jordan opened her mouth but Seth raised a warning hand and plunged ahead.

“How? Cheat us how?”

“Greenhorn Corporation. It’s a privately owned company that loaned Mighty Mite some of its start-up money. It has first call on any and all discoveries that we make. Mighty Mite is a worthless shell. Greenhorn would have taken all the profits and none of the debt. But that isn’t going to happen, you idiot! If you’d left that woman to die and ignored the centaurs, Mighty Mite could have staked Cacafuego and then Greenhorn could have stripped it of everything it had. You had to go and play knight in shining armor. Now ISLA claims all samples, living or dead. We’re still broke.”

“True,” Seth admitted. “Who owns Greenhorn?”

“Several people.”

“How much do you control?”

JC looked around despairingly. “Twelve percent. It doesn’t matter now.”

Jordan said, “But it could have mattered very much. This was fraud you were planning! You were hoping to cheat us, and Mighty Mite’s shareholders, and the banks and funds that had loaned it money?”

“A lawyer could call it that. My lawyers wouldn’t. And I would have seen you each got a reasonable reward.”

“You would have defined the ‘reasonable’ part of course.”

Silence: Seth had made a statement, not asked a question.

Meredith chuckled, although she wasn’t smiling. “I’m waiting to hear a motion that you be put outside to walk home, Mr. Lecanard.”

“Control is still recording,” JC said quickly. He, too, must smell the bloodlust in the air.

“So it is,” Jordan said softly. “And since you have confessed to attempted fraud, you could now sell each of us two percent of this Greenhorn Corporation for the sum of one dollar and our promise not to sue. That is to say the six of us will pay you six dollars for your entire holdings. We could make that legally binding, couldn’t we?”

Choke… Gasp… “Yes.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” Hanna said. Her face was flushed as red as Betelgeuse and her fingers were hooked like claws. “Just on principle.”

It took a little while to get the wording right, but Control pulled some precedents from its archives and approved the final brief text. Crushed, JC appended his sig, and so did the others.

“Commodore,” Jordan said, “You are confined to quarters for reasons of health.” Several people nodded, as if to confirm that strangulation was a definite health hazard. “You may go now.”

Crushed, JC rose and crept out of the room. The captain moved to the head of the table.

“Control, I terminate this meeting and reverse its classification as the official wake. We will schedule a proper wake for tomorrow.” She stared hard at Seth. “What have you seen that the rest of us haven’t, Prospector?”

Seth grinned. No one else did, but he was feeling very good now.

“I’ve seen what Commodore Duddridge saw. As JC guessed, Duddridge had seen that Cacafuego did offer a hugely profitable discovery. You have just seen it start to pay off!

“Remember the first day we met, ma’am? We agreed that Ship’s Rules should specify monkeys not monks, because people always play sex games. We also agreed that power games are popular too. Well, both sorts of games depend on telling lies. In the last few days, I have found myself in several very embarrassing conversations.” He glanced around the table and saw that he had not been the only one.

“Eventually I realized that the mysterious infection was making it impossible for us to tell lies, even little everyday white lies. Duddridge talked with both Meredith and Mariko while they were infected. Meredith told me that he asked all sorts of personal questions.” Seth glanced at her. “So you answered them, and you insulted him to his face, even though he held your life in his hands?”

“When I get my hands on him,” she said, “Duddridge will be even dudder than he is now.”

“He was supposed to be planning how to rescue her from certain death,” Seth explained. “So what was he doing prying into her sex life? He had discovered that she could not refuse to reveal the most intimate details, as any normal person would, especially at a time like that. Of course, she had gone on record as saying that the centaurs were sentient, so he had an interest in making her sound irrational. But I think he had noticed what I noticed, that one of the signs of the prion infection was in an inability to lie. That would be disastrous for normal human relations.”

“Yes, you would miss that,” Jordan said drily.

“I have missed it,” he admitted, “these last few days. I was frightened we had all suffered permanent brain damage. But yesterday I discovered I had recovered my lying skill as my health returned.”

“That was when you told me Meredith wasn’t much of a lay?”

“I hate you, Jordan Spears.”

Jordan joined in the laughter. The mood of the meeting had made a dramatic about-turn. “Lying or not, keep talking.”

“The real brainwave came when Reese told us about the prion. A prion really isn’t living or dead, is it, Doctor?”

“No,” Reese said. “It’s an organic chemical. But it came from Cacafuego. ISLA will still claim it.”

“No,” Seth said. “You told us it is also terrestrial, a deviant form of one of our own brain proteins. Our brains did not originate on Cacafuego. You are one of the world’s foremost biologists. By the time we return to Earth, you will have worked out how to mis-fold it to recreate the protein, and you will have pinned down the antidote you mentioned. You will patent both for Greenhorn. You say that you found no antibodies in our blood, so there can be no buildup of resistance. If you need to try it out to see if it works again, I’ll volunteer for a second dose. Any discoveries you make regarding a human protein cannot be claimed by ISLA; they belong to Mighty Mite under the contract, and so to Greenhorn, and now we own a big chunk of Greenhorn.”

Faces all around the table were bright with hope, yet shadowed by doubt.

Jordan put the conflict into words: “You’re suggesting we profit by selling a biological weapon?”

“Oh no, ma’am. But think of all the police forces and security forces in the world. How much do you think they’ll be willing to pay for a safe, reliable, and reversible truth drug?”

Reese answered. “Plenty.” She eyed the captain. “But lovers might offer more.”

“Let’s stick to governments,” Hanna said. “Letting lovers have it would be much too dangerous.”