56: Virus

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“The Hearth is what?” Hali gaped. “Isn’t virus super dangerous?”

“Actually, that’s a point of real contention, so far as I can make out,” Tima said. The four of us were in the front room of our rooms, going over what the treegrave had told me, foyer door closed so it couldn’t hear us. “A lot of ships are really worried that virus is dangerous, presumably for the obvious reasons, but records show exactly no related deaths. The Hearth and the other research ships involved, of course, insist it is safe, and nobody believes them, but unless they’re going out of their way to hide countless dead victims, the evidence does seem to be on their side, so far.”

“They haven’t tried very hard to insist that it’s safe,” Plia said. “They bowed to quarantine demands straight away, which means that they probably also thought it was dangerous. Also, they could be hiding victims. I mean, if it’s all on their own ships…”

“And get every contaminated ship involved? No; something would leak. They could cover up a small death rate as deaths to other causes, perhaps, but that’d be about it. Nothing on the scale of what’s expected, which means that what’s expected is false and there’s no particular reason to assume deceit.”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s expected’?” I asked. “What are these ‘obvious reasons’? Why are people so afraid of virus?”

“Virus, as I’m sure you’re aware, is Earth technology,” Plia explained. “And while our records of Earth aren’t very good, virus was so influential, so deadly, that it’s all through the records that we have. There were whole types of medicine created not just to fight virus, but to change people so that it was impossible for them to get virus. Because if it got into a population, it slaughtered huge numbers of people, jumping from person to person. Even people who didn’t die would be permanently injured.”

“But given the lack of apparent victims now,” Tima said, “we can assume that the researchers have done something to make it safe. Or possibly only specific genesets are vulnerable, and they’re very careful about the genetics of the people they let immigrate.”

“That might be it,” I said, “if they’re making a bunch of genetically identical people to experiment on.”

“Oh, there are a variety of reasons to do that,” Tima said. “Remember, they’re trying to use virus to genetically engineer people after birth. If you’re running atrial on what exactly your engineering technique does, you want a bunch of test subjects that start out the same. I do hope they’re being safe, though. Ships where people are told what their purpose is from birth are always horrible, and it’s extra horrible to make the purpose ‘test subject’. I know the fleet charter lets ships keep their own laws, but that’s… it’s really easy to do that in a way that isn’t okay.”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Plia said. “The test subjects have the same rights to communication and immigration as everyone else. If they don’t like their jobs, they can – ”

“No, they can’t,” I said, suddenly realising the trap. “They can’t leave.”

“You’ve seen how competent Terrence is,” Plia pointed out. “All the staff here are. They’re all strong, dutiful, clever people; it’s probably in their genes. If they wanted to go to another ship, dozens in the fleet would be happy to take them. They would have no problem leaving, and the test subjects on the Hearth would have to be the same.”

“No,” I said. “Terrence zero-five is very, very different from the Terrences on the Hearth. Because he’s a zero run. He could probably get on to dozens of ships if he wanted… but how many ships would accept people from a virus research facility? The only places that those people can go is other virus contaminated ships. So unless they get a job on Starlight residence one, which the lucky ones probably do but I’m sure they don’t need as many staff as there are Hearth generates, then where to they go? How many other ships are contaminated except for other virus research ships? Plia, you said that the Hearth agreed to quarantine demands right away – I don’t think that’s because virus is dangerous. I think it’s to keep their test subjects.”

We all looked at each other for a bit.

“This was supposed to be the fun one, you know,” Hali said. “This was the relaxing ship. The holiday ship. After the intensity of the Arborea Celestia and the weirdness of the Stalwart and the impending disaster that’s gonna be Hexacorallia if they get the colony bid and don’t have the framework of the rest of the fleet to protect them from themselves, this was just supposed to be the nice break where we could all recover and not deal with any radioactive rust. Reimann’s shift, why is this the really messed up one?”

“Don’t draw your conclusions too early,” Plia said. “The Dish might be even more messed up.”

“Technically, this ship isn’t messed up at all,” I pointed out. “It’s the Hearth that’s messed up. The generates seem to be safe here, and the ones in this residence are completely fine. And we’re not going to the Hearth.”

“Good point,” Hali said. “I’ll take it as a win. This is still the fun ship. I’m going to be thinking of it every time I see Terrence, though.”

The foyer door opened, and Terrence stood there, package in his arms. He looked to be carrying hot food – one of the historians must have told him we wanted to eat in our rooms tonight. He took one look at us, put the food on a small bench by the door, and bowed deeply.

“I have interrupted something,” he said. “My apologies. I will return later.”

“You’re not interrupting,” Tima said. “Come on in, Terrence.”

“We were talking about the Hearth, actually,” Hali said. “We just learned about its relationship with Starlight, and…”

“Oh,” Terrence said, his voice unprofessionally flat. “That.”

“We can talk about something else,” Tima said quickly. “How was your day, Terrence?”

“It was very productive, chi,” Terrence said, taking the food to the little table in the room and beginning to serve it without being asked. “All is arranged for your transfer to a standard pull floor tomorrow. As you requested, I will travel with you and spare you the trouble of acquainting to a new liaison.”

“You don’t have to,” Plia said. “If you don’t want.”

Terrence had his back to us, but his shoulders looked a lot more tense than normal, and there was an unprofessional edge to his voice when he finally answered. “I am happy to assist, chi.”

“Really, you don’t have to,” Tima said. “We’ll just ask for – ”

She stopped talking, because I had put a hand on her arm and shook my head. Tima was supposed to be the diplomatic one in the group, but sometimes she wasn’t very good at reading people. (I guess she was by historian standards; the others were terrible at it, especially Hali.) That wasn’t the problem. He wasn’t upset about coming with us.

Tima scowled at me and mouthed, I’m not going to force – but I just shook my head harder. She couldn’t force him to do anything. If he didn’t want to be our liaison any more, he would’ve made a polite excuse and found someone else behind the scenes, and we never would have even known that he didn’t want to come. We didn’t know how any of that was organised; none of the guests did. I didn’t know much about Terrence, but I did know that he was very good at his job, and there was no way that people like us had any more control over his schedule than he wanted us to.

I knew why Terrence was upset. I got upset like that all the time, every time someone reacted to something smart I said and then put on a smile and a baby voice when they realised that a little girl had said it. Every time I got mad about something and a grown up decided I must be mad for a sillier reason. Every time someone stopped explaining something interesting or wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know because they thought it would upset me, and they refused to listen when I told them that I wanted to know anyway.

And babying him and only talking about the Hearth behind his back wasn’t going to make him feel any better. A lot of people think that if they don’t talk about something in front of me, I won’t know that they’re talking about it when I’m not there. Which just means that a lot of people think I’m stupid. I wondered how many of Terrence’s clients had learned about his history and then started looking at him just like we all did when he came in. He sure looked like someone who was fed up with it.

I got up and went to help him set the table. “What do you think about the Hearth, Terrence?” I asked.

“I don’t have much of an opinion, chi. I don’t know anything about their research, and obviously I’ve never been there. Starlight is my home.”

“But,” Hali said, still sitting over with the other historians, “there are other Terrences there, right?”

“So I’m told. I believe that there are six runs of Terrences scattered between the Hearth and Starlight residence one. I don’t know anything about them; the only Terrences I know are the rest of run zero. I don’t know any Hearth generates, only the other run zeroes here in residence two.”

“And you don’t have an opinion on the whole virus thing?” I asked, meeting his eyes.

He dipped his head professionally. “Chi – ”

“Taya,” I told him, not looking away.

He met my eyes again and set his jaw, unprofessionally. “Taya, my opinion on the Hearth and its experiments is that its mere existence continually makes my life very socially awkward. As I said, I am not a scientist. I am not a health professional or politician or communications specialist or anybody else who would be expected to have anything to do with the Hearth or know enough about its work to have a reliable opinion. I am a porter and a guest liaison. If you want advice on what foods to try based on what I have observed of your preferences thus far, or a schedule for publically open theatre performances ion this floor, or assistance in booking a doctor’s appointment, then I can help you. If you want to know about the lives and achievements of some people I have never met on a ship I have never been to and who just happen to share my DNA, I cannot help you. I can, of course, find a biologist or ethicist and arrange for them to meet with you on the topic if you are interested, but anything outside of that is outside of my purview.” He finished setting out the food, and gave a jerky little bow. Not a very smooth or professional one. “Chi.”

“Right,” Tima said awkwardly behind us. She cleared her throat. “Sorry, Terrence.”

I hadn’t looked away, and when he met my eye again, I gave him a little smile. After a moment, he returned it.

And then he was all professional again.

“I have acquired the foods you requested, as well as met your request to ‘surprise me’, chi,” he said to Plia. “While I cannot promise to be an expert in your individual palates yet, I believe that all four of you would particularly enjoy…”

Yeah, Hali was right. This was the fun ship.

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