Yeah, Menley made that worse.
I started staring at the airlock, expecting to see his face squashed up against it. Maybe he was just outside, seconds away from getting some idiot like Endria to let him in. People walked past me, and I could hear them talking in low tones while I watched the airlock, like maybe I’d gone into an absence seizure and they should get someone to haul me away. And then they could have me investigated for colonist’s dementia despite the fact that I’d been born here. And they could take me out to the Ocean of Starve…
After two nights I realized if I didn’t step outside to make sure the Vosth weren’t coming with a swarm, I was heading for a paranoid fugue.
Actually walking out took two more nights because I couldn’t stand to open the airlock myself. I finally saw a couple strolling out as I passed, e-suited hand in e-suited hand, and I fell in behind them.
The airlock and the outside were the only places I could be anonymous in my e-suit. The couple didn’t even cross to the other side of the enclosure as it cycled the air and opened the outer door.
The grass was teal-green. I hear it’s less blue on Earth, and the sky is less green, but I was just glad neither one was silver. The sunlight was strong and golden, the clouds were mercifully white, and there wasn’t a trace of fog to be seen. So that was good. For the moment.
The Ocean of Starve was a good ten-minute hike away, and I didn’t want to get near it. I walked around the habitat instead, eyeing the horizon in the Ocean’s direction. I’d made it about a half-kilometer around the periphery when I caught a flash of silver out of the corner of my eye and jumped, ready for it to be a trick of the light or a metal component on the eggshell exterior of the dome.
No. It was Menley.
I screamed.
The scream instinct isn’t one of evolution’s better moves. Actually, it’s a terrible idea. The instant sound left my mouth Menley turned and dragged himself toward me. I considered running, but I had this image of tripping, and either losing a boot or ripping a hole in my e-suit.
Menley staggered up and stared at me. I took a step back. Menley turned his head like he wasn’t sure which eye got a better view, and I stepped back again.
After about a minute of this, I said “You really want inside the compound, don’t you?”
The Vosth opened Menley’s mouth. His nostrils flared. I guess they were doing something like they did to the speakers in the audience booth—vibrating the equipment. The voice, if you wanted to call it that, was quiet and reedy. We are the Vosth.
“I know that,” I said, and took another step back from them. Him. Vosth-Menley.
You will let us inside? he asked, with an artificial rise to his voice. I guess the Vosth had to telegraph their questions. Maybe they weren’t used to asking.
“No,” I told him.
He shifted his weight forward and ignored my answer. The Vosth are allowed inside your partition shell?
“Look what you do to people,” I said. “No, you’re not allowed inside.”
This is natural, they said, and I had no idea if that was supposed to be an argument or agreement.
“What?”
Take off your suit, Vosth-Menley said.
“Hell no.”
The air creates a pleasurable sensation on human skin.
“And the Vosth create a pleasant infestation?”
We will promise not to take you.
If they had to tell me, I wasn’t trusting them. “Why do you want me to?”
Do you want to? the Vosth asked.
I checked the seal on my suit.
Take off your suit, Vosth-Menley said again.
“I’m going home now,” I answered, and ran for the compound door.
Endria was in the canteen, sitting on a table, watching a slow-wave newsfeed from Earth and nibbling on a finger sandwich, and I was annoyed to run into her there. I was also annoyed that it took me that long to run into her, after trying to run into her in the library, the courthouse auditorium, the promenade and my lab.
Endria just annoyed me.
I dodged a few people on their rest hours and walked up to her table, putting my hands down on it. I hadn’t sterilized them after being outside and was technically breaching a bylaw or two, but that didn’t occur to me. I guess I was lucky Endria didn’t perform a civilian arrest.
“One,” I said, “I don’t want anything to do with the Vosth in a lab, or outside of one, and two, in no more than thirty seconds, explain Vosth legal rights outside the colony compound.”
Endria jumped, kicking over the chair her feet were resting on, and looking agape at me in the middle of a bite of sandwich. Sweet schadenfreude: The first word out of her mouth was the none-too-smart: “Uh.”
Of course, she regrouped quickly.
“First of all, the Vosth don’t believe in civil or social law,” she said. “Just natural law. So the treaty we have isn’t really a treaty, just them explaining what they do so we had the option not to let them. We don’t have legal recourse. It’s like that inside the colony, too—we can adjust the air system to filter them out and kill them, so they know we’re in charge in here and don’t try to come inside. Except for Menley, but that’s weird, and that’s why I’m doing a paper. Did you find anything out?”
I ignored that. “And he doesn’t act like the other—how many other infested colonists are there?”
She shrugged. “A lot. Like, more than forty. A few of them were killed by panicked colonists, though. We don’t know much about them. In the last hundred records, Menley’s the only—”
“Vosth-Menley,” I corrected.
Endria rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that. Whatever. Vosth-Menley is the only one to make contact with us. There’s actually this theory that the rest are off building a civilization now that the Vosth have opposable thumbs. Even if it’s only, like, eighty opposable thumbs.”
The base of my neck itched. Fortunately, years in an envirosuit let me ignore that. “We lost forty colonists to the Vosth?”
“Oh, yeah!” she said. “And more when everyone panicked and there were riots and we thought there was going to be a war. That’s why so many Earth-shipped embryos were matured so fast. In fact, our colony has the highest per-capita percentage of in-vitro citizens. We’ve got sixty-three percent.”
“I’m one of them,” I said.
“I’ve got parents,” Endria responded.
I managed not to strangle her. “So there’s no law?”
“Not really,” Endria said. “But there’s a lot of unwritten stuff and assumed stuff. Like we just assume that if we wear e-suits out they won’t think they own the e-suits even though they touch the air, and we assume that if they did come in the compound they’d be nice.” She shot me a sharp look. “But I don’t think that’s an issue now, since you squealed to the governors.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I did not squeal. Endria just didn’t see what was wrong with having a sentient invasive disease wandering around your colony. “I’m going to go now.”