I glared. “What, it’s comfortable for you?”
“They’re not that bad,” Endria said. “I mean, they’re not territorial or anything. They just do their thing. When I’m a governor, I want to see if we can work together.”
“Yeah. Us and the body-snatchers.”
Endria tilted her head at me. “You know, I think it would be kinda neat, sharing your body with the Vosth. I mean, if it wasn’t a permanent thing. I bet you’d get all sorts of new perspectives.”
I gaped. I don’t think Endria saw my expression through the helmet, but it was disturbing enough that she didn’t share it. “It is a permanent thing! And you don’t share—you don’t get control. They take you over and you just die. There’s probably nothing left of you. Or if there is, you’re just stuck in your head, screaming.”
“And that’s why you’re asking if the Vosth can change?” Endria asked.
“I’m asking because—” I started, and then couldn’t finish that sentence.
Endria smiled. It was a nasty sort of hah-I-knew-it smile. “See?” she said, hopping off the couch and heading for the door. “You are interested in Vosth research.”
Twenty minutes later someone knocked on my door. I opened it, thinking it was Endria back to irritate me. No. In the corridor outside my room stood a wide-faced, high-collared balding man, with an expression like he’d been eating ascorbic acid and a badge on his lapel reading DIPLOMATIC AUDITOR in big bold letters.
He’d even brought a datapad.
“This is a notice, citizen,” he said. “You’re not authorized to engage in diplomatic action with the Vosth.”
“I’m not engaging in diplomatic action,” I said, shuffling through possible excuses. It’d be easier if I had any idea what I was doing. “I’m… engaging in research.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Civil research,” I said, picking up a pen from my desk and wagging it at him like he should know better. “Helping Endria with her civics certification. Didn’t she fill out the right forms to make me one of her resources?”
There were no forms, as far as I knew. Still, if there were, I could probably shuffle off the responsibility onto Endria, and if there weren’t, the sourface in front of me would probably go and draft some up to mollify himself. Either way, I was off the hook for a moment.
He marked something down on his datapad. “I’m going to check into this,” he warned.
At which point he’d argue his case against Endria. Poor bastards, both of them.
“Expect further communication from a member of the governing commission,” he warned. Satisfied with that threat, he turned and went away.
For about a day, I decided work was safer. If I kept to the restricted-access parts of the waste reclamation facility I could cut down on Endria sightings, and I could work long hours. Surely the governors wouldn’t work late just to harass me.
It wasn’t a long-term solution. Still, I thought it’d be longer-term than one work shift.
I got back to my room and my terminal was blinking, and when I sat down it triggered an automatic callback and put me on standby for two minutes. Now, in theory automatic callbacks were only for high-priority colony business, which, considering I’d seen my supervisor not ten minutes ago and I wasn’t involved in anything important in governance, I expected to mean that Endria wanted something and they took civics certification courses way more seriously than I’d thought. I went to get a drink while it was trying to connect.
And I came back to a line of text on an encrypted channel, coming from the office of the Prime Governor.
Most of my water ended up on my boots.
[Sorry I’m doing this over text,] she wrote. [I just wanted an official record of our conversation.]
When a governor wants an official record of your conversation, you’re fucked.
[What can I do for you?] I typed back.
[Someone stopped by to talk to you,] she went on, the lines spooling out over the screen in real-time. [About your not being authorized to engage in diplomatic action.]
I had expected that to be defused, not to escalate. Escalating up to the Prime Governor had been right out. [I still believe that I wasn’t engaging in diplomatic—] I started, but she typed right over it.
[How would you like authorization?]
That hadn’t been on the list of possibilities, either.
[I’m sorry?] I typed. What I almost typed, and might have typed if I didn’t value my civil liberties, was I recycle shit for a living. My skillset is not what you’re looking for.
[You may be aware that we’re pioneering a new focus of study into the Vosth,] the Governor typed.
Vosth research. I wondered if Endria had recommended me upward. [Yes, ma’am,] I wrote.
[We now believe that we can reverse the effects of Vosth colonization of a human host.]
I looked at my water. I looked at my boots. After a moment, I typed [Ma’am?] and got up for another glass. I needed it.
I came back to a paragraph explaining [You’ve been in contact with one of the infested colonists. We’d like you to bring him back to the compound for experimentation.]
Okay. So long as I was just being asked to harvest test subjects. [You want to cure Menley?]
[We believe it unlikely that human consciousness would survive anywhere on the order of years,] she typed back, and my stomach twisted like it had talking to Menley. [This would be a proof of concept which could be applied to the more recently infected.]
And Menley wasn’t someone who’d be welcomed back into the colony, I read between the lines. I should’ve asked Endria who had sat on the council that decided Menley’s sentence. Was this particular Prime Governor serving, back then? Why did I never remember these things? Why did I never think to ask?
[So, you would extract the Vosth,] I started, and was going to write leaving a corpse?, maybe hoping that we’d at least get a breathing body. She interrupted me again.
[The Vosth parasite organisms would not be extracted. They would die.]
My mouth was dry, but the idea of drinking water made me nauseous. It was like anyone or anything in Menley’s body was fair game for anyone.
[I want to be clear with you,] she said. Dammit. She could have just lied like they did in every dramatic work I’d ever read. Then, if the truth ever came out, I could be horrified but still secure in the knowledge that there was no way I could have known. No. I just got told to kidnap someone so the scientists could kill him. I wasn’t even saving anyone. Well, maybe in the future, if anyone got infested again.
Anyone the governors felt like curing, anyway.
Then she had to go and make it worse.
[We would not be in violation of any treaties or rules of conduct,] she wrote. [If we can develop a cure for or immunity to Vosth infestation, the de facto arrangement in place between our colony and the Vosth will be rendered null, and the restrictions imposed on our activities on the planet will become obsolete.]
I wished Endria was there. She could interpret this. [Isn’t this an act of war?]
[We’re confident that the Vosth will regard an unwarranted act of aggression as an expression of natural law,] the Governor explained.
That didn’t make me feel better, and I think it translated to yes. [I thought it was understood that things like that wouldn’t happen.]
[It was understood that the dominant species could, at any time, exercise their natural rights,] the Governor explained. [Perhaps it’s time they learned that they aren’t the dominant species any more.]
We believe the ambient temperature to be pleasant for human senses today, Vosth-Menley told me when I got to the Ocean of Starve. I was beginning to wonder whether his reassurances were predation or a mountain of culture skew.