Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (11 page)

She picked a bedroom and unpacked her bag, putting her handful of
clothes in the drawers and her toiletries in the bath. She was tempted to lie
down for a second and let real gravity pull her down tight to the bed, just to
say she’d tested it, but she had too much to do.

First things first. Time to find out what happened to the
inventories. It was the first action item on her list, and she was suddenly
feeling quite frisky.

She found the phone and looked up the Superintendent’s number. She
hated to introduce herself to his office with a question of such volatility.
Her contract depended on it. She’d heard of Ed Smith and seen his smiling
picture was on the top of Verde’s data sheets. He didn’t look as bad as his
reputation made him out to be, but that was just how it was with such people.
She’d seen similar pictures of her ex-bosses; handsome, clean-cut men with
clear eyes and straight smiles. Crooks.

“Superintendent Smith’s office,” the male voice said.

“Hi, I’m Donna Applegate. I’m the clinic administrator.”

“Hello, Applegate,” the face said and smiled happily. “You must
have just gotten here. There’s another
key
person I can check off my list. Good. Good.”

“Right . . .”

“I’m Afshin Heronim, Mr. Smith’s secretary.”

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I hate to ask,” she began. “But I haven’t been able to find the
biological inventories that should have been part of the infirmary’s records.
I need them to get an idea of the vaccine spectrums to order and all the other
medi . . .”

“Yeah.”

“ . . . medications I need.” She didn’t like being cut off like
that.

“Right.”

“So I was wondering if your office could supply me with a set. It
would be a great help.”

“Right. Well, I’ll have to dig them up. I’m not sure where they
are right now.”

“Okay. I don’t need them today, you understand, but I do need
them.”

“Can I get back to you in a couple of days?”

“Uh, sure. That would be okay. No sooner?”

“I’m sorry, no . . . I’m swamped with all the administrative things
and so on right now, you know.”

“Well, okay. You’ll call me then?”

“I’ll just send them down when I get my hands on them.”

“Okay . . .”

“All right. Anything else for now?”

“Nope.”

“Nice to meet you. Hope your stay is a good one. And welcome to
Verde.”

“Thank you. Nice to meet you.”

 
“Bye.”

The screen went blank.

Donna sighed and shook her head. No way.

There were many people who could be hoodwinked and put off and
dodged around and snowed under, but not Donna Applegate. She could smell
bullshit even if it was three hundred kilometers up.

There were no goddamned biological inventories.

* * *

Bio inventories weren’t something you “get your hands on."
They were a fundamental, critical part of the project’s initial documentation
requirements. They would be, figuratively speaking, on top of the pile. How
Smith had gotten around doing them was a mystery, but he’d done it, and she’d
bet on it.

She redialed the number. There was no use putting this off. The
inventories had to be done. She wasn’t a whistleblower, but if it came to that,
she’d do it. There were lives at stake.

“Hi, Afshin.”

“Hi, Applegate.”

“Afshin, can I make an appointment with Mr. Smith at his soonest
convenience, please?”

Afshin pursed his lips.

“He’s very busy . . .”

“I’m sure he is.”

“What is it about then?”

“Well, it’s a very important matter, I’m afraid.”

“I see. Well . . . let me . . . check his schedule for you . . .
okay, I can fit you in for next month I think . . . let me see . . . here . .
.”

“No,” Donna said firmly.

“No?”

“No. A month is too long.”

Donna took a deep breath. She was about to get on Afshin’s bad
side, and that was a curse she’d carry forever. You either lived and worked
under a secretary’s curse, or you stood blessed by them. There was no in
between. Donna felt herself slipping into a special form of Hell from which the
road to redemption is long and hard, sometimes never-ending.

“I see . . .” Afshin said.

“It really is important.”

“I’m sure it is . . .”

“Really . . .
very
important.”

“Yes yes yes . . . let me see what I can do . . . I’ll call you
back . . . Goodbye."

The screen went dead.

She fell into the pit.

Well, it didn’t matter. She’d have those inventories. If they
weren’t done, she’d make sure they were. If she didn’t hear from him by
tomorrow at this time, Afshin and she would discuss those inventories in great
detail. No more pussy-footing around.

She heard a door buzzer. It took her a few false steps to find out
it was coming from the clinic’s rear door. When she stepped outside on the
little receiving dock, the heat cloaked her head again like a cloud of steam.
She felt her face scowl against it.

“Two containers for Donna Applegate,” the delivery boy said.
“Where do you want them?”

The efficient logistics of an off-world project’s material feeds
never ceased to amaze her. She’d been there less than an hour, and the system
was delivering goods to her.

“Put them up here. They’ll be okay.”

“Whatever you want, ma’am.”

Nice kid.

Mike raised the containers up and brought them slowly forward.
When they were squarely on the dock, he lowered the carriage and sat them
gently down on it.

“That okay? There like that?”

“That’s fine,” Donna smiled.

Mike jumped down from the lift and sprang up the stairs with his
pad in his hand.

“Okay, then. Just sign here and stamp.”

She could feel him looking at her eye, but he didn’t say anything.
Most people didn’t. Bemused, Donna signed her name with the stylus then put her
thumb in the space provided. The pad beeped and read her print. When she was
handing the pad back to him, she noticed a swollen knot on the boy’s neck, like
a pebble under his skin, just under his ear.

“How long have you had that thing?”

“What?”

“That,” she said leaning closer and knitting her brow at it. “Oh,
a couple of days. Everybody’s got 'em. They don’t hurt.”

“What do you mean by
everybody’s
got 'em
?”

“Well, not everybody, but a lot.”

“How’d you get it?”

“Bug bite, I think.”

Christ, I knew it.

“Bug bite, huh?”

“Yeah. A little stinger about this big,” Mike said, making a space
with his thumb and forefinger about the size of a golf ball.

“That’s little?"

“Some are a lot bigger than that, believe me.”

“Hummm . . . .” Donna lifted the lid on the top container and
pulled one of the ProPaks out by its straps. The kits were drenched with water.

“These are wet . . .”

She looked at Mike for a reaction. He seemed as confused as she
was.

Yes, ma'am.

Donna puzzled over it for a second, shook the water off the kit,
then dismissed it.

“Come inside. I want a better look at that thing.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

She marched him inside and sat him down on the closest examination
table, pulled out the retractable tray from the side and unfolded the kit on
it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Mike Kominski, ma’am.”

“My name’s Donna Applegate.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too. How old are you?”

“Twelve. Well, twelve and a half actually.”

“Lie back on your side, Mike.”

Mike complied.

She adjusted the table to raise his neck then swung the magnifying
lamp down on its swing arm and brought it close to Mike’s head. She pulled a
pair of latex gloves on, then gingerly touched the ball under his skin. It was
hard and moved around loosely. It wasn’t very deep, just under the epidermis.
When she stretched the skin over it, she could see faint striation patterns in
it. She didn’t know the species—it wouldn’t have a name yet anyway, but she
knew what it was: it was either an egg mass or a developing insect larva. There
were dozens of species on Earth with the same sickening and parasitic life
cycle.

“Are you sure that thing doesn’t hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt, honest. It might if you squeezed it, though.”

“I’m not going to squeeze it just yet.”

She felt around it a little more. There was no inflammation or
edema. She took the thermometer out of the pack and touched it to Mike’s head.
He was just a tad warm, but he’d just come out of the sun, too.

“Has it changed any recently? Grown any?”

“It’s got bigger is all.”

“Mike, I want to remove that thing from your neck.”

“You mean cut it out?”

“Yes. I promise it won’t hurt.”

“Now?”

“Yep.”

“Well, okay, as long as it won’t hurt me.”

“It won’t hurt. You stay put.”

The kit had all the basics she needed, except the local anesthetic.
It took her awhile, but she found a bottle of Novoloid in a box of miscellany
from the infirmary and prepared a syringe with it. She also found a pair of forceps
and some glue. That was good; she hated doing sutures and glue was so much
better. She gathered everything up on a stainless tray and carried it over,
keeping it out of Mike’s sight as much as possible.

“This might sting a little.”

She swabbed the area with a sterile pad then slipped the needle
under his skin just at the base of the knot. She injected about a third of the
anesthetic then picked two more spots around it and put in the rest.

She waited a minute then touched the area with her fingers. “Can
you feel that?”

“Not very.”

“Okay. You won’t feel a thing. You might hear a little scratching
noise but don’t let that scare you.”

“Okay.”

Although he was trying to hide it, Donna saw the fear in his face quite
clearly. There are some emotions a child just can’t camouflage with a stiff
lip, especially fear.

“It’s okay, Mike,” she said gently. “Just relax.”

Using the scalpel, she started at the base of the knot and worked
around it in a neat semicircle. The skin parted cleanly and a little stream of
blood ran down his neck from the incision. She blotted the area once with
gauze, then using the tip of the scalpel, lifted the flap of skin covering the
object. The skin came away easily revealing a spherical, yellowish and bloody
grub. She scowled and grasped it gently with the forceps. She lifted it out and
knitted her brow at it briefly. When she dropped it in the steel tray, it made
a rubbery
plonk
sound that only her guts
could hear.

She flushed the pocket with antiseptic solution, swabbed the area
once more to dry it, then using the thin applicator ran lines of glue over the
incision to seal it. The glue dried and bonded instantly, then she pressed the
area with another swab and held it there to halt a remaining trickle of blood.

“All done.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What was in there?” he asked, trying to reach her with his eyes.

She wanted the word to spread as fast as possible. Anyone with one
of those things in them would run full steam to the clinic when they found out
what it was. That’s what she wanted. She wasn’t going to pull any punches.

“An insect larva—a grub. It would have eaten its way out of your
neck once it developed the mouth parts to chew with.”

“Really?”

“Really. And it would have hurt, believe me.”

“Wow.”

She removed the dry swab and covered the area with an adhesive
bandage.

Before he left, she gave him an injection of Trilicine and a half
dozen tablets of the same to fight infection. When she looked for the Xercodan
in the kit she found the bottle gone. It didn’t take her long after that to
figure out why the kits in the containers were wet; someone had stolen it. She
gave him a tin of aspirin instead.

She told him to get everybody he knew who had those knots on them
over to the clinic as soon as possible. When he left, she issued a Med-alert
from the data center and posted it on the company bulletin board in each
shelter describing the symptoms of the infection and the process for removing
the parasites. She hoped they’d all see it. The company bulletin board wasn’t
the most popular appliance in a shelter.