Mr. Tolliver’s Offer

by Edward M. Erdelac -

Kes stared at the disease-ridden corpse with its alien parasite. He practically rubbed his hands together. So much to be done. So much to study and record. This would make his career.

He was so intent on the body that he almost didn’t notice the door open.

Damn! He had to be more careful. He should’ve locked it. He drew the sheet over Croix hastily and turned to regard the well dressed, tall, dark skinned man who entered.

“Who’re you?” Kes demanded. “This room’s quarantined. You’ve got to leave.”

“My name’s Tolliver, Dr. Kes. And let me preface any further discussion by telling you I know who is under that sheet, and what is within them.”

Kes’ stomach bottomed out.

“What?”

“You’re a talented physician to be toiling down here for the masses and the ZMB,” Tolliver said, strolling across the room to the bed. “I could list your qualifications, but you yourself know your skills are being underutilized, patching up brawling kelp farmers and Enforcers and checking immigrants for syphilis. Your area of expertise is research. Not much call for it here though, is there? Until yesterday, that is.”

Tolliver stared at Kes. The covered body of Croix was between them now. Tolliver reached out and lifted the sheet, staring impassively at the putrid body beneath, which was spotting the white coverlet with yellow grease as the various pustules on the skin burst of their own accord.

He replaced the sheet.

“Do you think the ZMB is going to let you keep sole credit for your discovery? What if I could provide you with state of the art equipment in a private lab space offworld, with unlimited funding for your research?”

“Who are you?”

“I represent parties interested in preventing an impending health crisis of a highly sensitive nature, doctor. They feel they could use someone with your knowledge, especially as it pertains to hitherto unknown lifeforms.”

“What? What kind of a health crisis?”

“I’m only at liberty to speak about it should you say yes to my offer, Doctor. If you do, I can have you and your discovery offworld within the hour.”

“What about Inspector Considine and the Peace Council?”

“Not your concern, nor mine either.”

“What if I refuse?” Kes asked, looking sideways at Tolliver.

Tolliver frowned and clasped his hands behind his back.

“If you refuse….”

Kes held up his hand. A smile broke across his face. “Never mind. I’m being dramatic, I guess. You’re pushing the right buttons, Mr. Tolliver. I’ll have questions of course, but….yes. Yes, I’m interested. I want this.”

“Very good, Dr. Kes,” said Tolliver, slipping the tiny black stingpistol back into his sleeve behind his back. “Let’s talk arrangements.”

Test Results

by Edward M. Erdelac -

It was morning when Considine received the call from the ZMB. He didn’t bother picking up. Whatever the result of Croix’s scan, he wanted to hear it on the spot. He showered, dressed, picked up a stimgulp from the shop at the north junction of his habitation ring, walked to the ZMB facility, and smoked.

The fish were roiling above his head through the observation bubble in the central axis, but he barely paid any attention. He’d lived in Zirconia six years now. Most of the time he forgot the city was underwater. It really wasn’t that different from living on Avenir. Oh, a little dingier, but really, the air was less stagnant, and there was a better class of people down here. Not in the traditional sense of class, but in the one that mattered.

The Zirconian Medical Bureau was a blazing white bank of pods and corridors that stood out starkly in its contrast to the rest of Zirconia. He went in, and found the receptionist, a cyborg woman jacked into her flat, monitor-less desk terminal by a hardwire running from her left eye port.

“Yes?”

“Inspector Stanlon Considine. I received a call.”

“Yes Inspector, one moment.” She blinked, her one human eyelid closing, the eye beneath flitting sympathetically back and forth beneath as the cyborg eye transmitted pages of data into her mind.

The eye opened again, lovely and brown.

“Doctor Kes is waiting for you in the Imagery Lab. To your left, six doors down. Just follow the placards.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled, her teeth chrome.

Doctor Kes proved to be the very same doctor who had tended to Croix’s cuts and bruises following his rough ride to the surface.

“Inspector, I have some exciting news this morning.”

“Exciting?” Considine repeated innocently, though he had expected some kind of excitement.

Considine proceeded to a terminal and ran his hands over the interface, calling up a colorful holoprojection in the shape of a human form, the features replaced with throbbing blobs of color and hints of a blue skeleton.

“What am I looking at, Doctor?”

“Results of Mr. Croix’s internal scan. Do you see it yet?”

Considine said nothing, but watched as the trembling doctor turned the image of the body with a sweep, tapped and zoomed in on the lower spine.

“See that discoloration there? Sort of intertwined with the spinal column?”

“No,” Considine admitted.

“Well it’s there. A foreign object. An organism. Parasitic, I’d say, that’s why he’s dying. It’s feeding off of him. Has been for some time, breaking down his immune system, sucking the pigment out of his hair even. Look at the size of it! It spans from the lower lumbar right up into the base of the brain. How long must it have been there….”

He traced it with his finger, and Considine did think perhaps he saw something, some snake-like thing spiraling up the vertebrae, pulsing ever so slightly independent of the rest of Croix’s internal workings, whatever they were.

“What is it?” Considine asked, swallowing.

“No idea, unless I remove it,” he looked hopefully at Considine.

“Can you remove it? It looks pretty well lodged in there.”

“Not without killing him. But…he is dying.”

“He’s not dead yet. How did it get inside him?”

“After I detected it, I examined him, noticed a small scar in his lower back. Much too small for this thing to pass through – that’s why I can assume it’s grown for some time.”

“But where could he have picked it up?”

“I have no idea. Not here in the city. Out in the open sea maybe, maybe even up top. I’ve never seen such a creature.”

“Any danger of contagion?”

“No. When I detected it, I held over your Enforcer for scanning, just to be sure.”

Brendermeyer. Considine smiled thinly. So he’d never made it to his comedy show, poor lug.

“He’s completely healthy,” Kes went on. “The normal MB immunizations prevent the viruses he’s carrying. Croix’s dying because this thing has sapped his defenses. He’s picking up everything floating around that we don’t even notice anymore. Every impotent bug and fever.”

“What happens when Croix dies?”

“It’ll die with him. It has no way to exit the body that I can see.”

“Is he still conscious?”

“Yes. He’s completely lucid.”

“Doctor, have you told your colleagues about this discovery yet?”

“No,” Kes said, biting his lip.

Considine nodded. New species, new medical phenom, Kes wanted people calling this thing after him. He hadn’t invited his colleagues in until he could fully study and register the thing.

“Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

“I’m in total agreement,” Kes said with forced nonchalance.

“Where is Croix?”

“Right this way.”