The gentle wind carried the faint burned plastic scent of a local fungus analog releasing what passed for spores. The breeze pushed the long fronds of dogwhistles across his path. The grunchers—approximately the same ecological niche as crickets with even a few morphological similarities—that clung to the plants hissed at him when he got too close. He had no idea why the weeds had been named dogwhistles. They looked more like pussy willows to him. And naming an insect analog that looked like a cricket with four limbs a gruncher made even less sense. There didn’t seem to be any scientific process to the naming of the local flora and fauna. People just threw names at things until a consensus arose. It annoyed him.
The Pen was different from the other lab buildings. He’d had its walls built from single sheets of high-impact armor plating welded airtight into ninety-degree angles to make a dark metallic cube twenty-five meters on a side. At the building’s only entrance, four soldiers wearing light armor and carrying assault rifles stood at alert.
“Doctor Cortazár,” one of the four said, holding out a hand in the universal gesture for Stop walking.
Paolo pulled his ID badge on its lanyard out from under his shirt and presented it to the guard, who plugged it into a reader. He then touched the reader to the skin on Paolo’s wrist.
“Nice day,” the guard said pleasantly, smiling as the machine did its work of comparing Paolo’s ID to his physical measurements and his identifying proteins.
“Lovely,” Paolo agreed.
The machine pinged its acceptance that he was actually Paolo Cortazár, the president of Laconia University and head of its exobiological studies lab. The guards had all known that by sight, but the ritual was important for more reasons than one. The door slid open, and the four guards stepped aside.
“Have a nice day, Doctor.”
“You as well,” Paolo said as he stepped into the security airlock. One wall hissed as hidden nozzles blasted him with air. Sensors on the opposite wall tested for explosives and infectious materials. And possibly even bad intentions.
After a moment, the hissing stopped, and the inner airlock door slid open. Only then did Paolo hear the moaning.
The Pen, as it was called by everyone in spite of not having an official name in any documentation, was the second highest security building on Laconia for a reason. It was where Paolo kept his milking herd.
That name had come from an early fight with his ex-lover. He’d meant it as an insult, but it was an apt analogy. Inside the Pen, people and animals that had been deliberately infected with the protomolecule lived out the remainder of their lives. Once the alien nanotech had appropriated their cells and begun reproducing, Paolo’s staff could drain the bodies of their fluids and filter out the critical particles from the matrix tissue. When the bodies were exhausted, any remaining fluids could be incinerated without losing anything of value. There were bays for twenty-four, but only seventeen were occupied at the moment. Someday, with a wider population base, subjects would be more abundant.
The great works of Laconia depended on communicating with the underlying technology the long-dead alien civilization had left behind. The protomolecule hadn’t been designed as a universal control interface, but there was a modularity to the alien technology that let it function that way often enough for the work to proceed. It was Paolo’s job to supply the active samples needed. One of his jobs.
As he walked toward his office in the rear of the building, he paused on a catwalk over one of the holding pens. Half a dozen people in early stages of infection wandered around the cramped, metal-walled space. They were still in the pseudo-hemorrhagic fever phase the techs called Pukers. They could manage no more than a shambling walk and occasional violent bouts of vomiting. It was the protomolecule’s means of ensuring the infection would spread quickly. Once the bodies had been removed from the space, every centimeter of its metal walls and floor would be torched to destroy any biological debris.
They’d only had one accidental infection in the history of the lab, and Paolo intended to keep it that way.
Dr. Ochida, head of the Pen and Paolo’s second in command, spotted him from across the holding area and rushed over.
“Paolo,” Ochida said, clapping him on one shoulder in a friendly greeting. “Just in time. We finished pulling the stem cultures an hour ago, and the injections are prepped.”
“I recognize that one,” Paolo said, pointing at a hairy, muscular man in the Pen.
“Hm? Oh. Yes, he was one of our guards, I think. His intake paperwork said ‘dereliction of duty.’ Caught sleeping on watch, maybe?”
“You tested them?” Paolo asked. He didn’t actually care about the hairy man in the pen, and Ochida’s answer had satisfied his curiosity.
It took Ochida a moment to realize they’d changed back to the original subject. “Oh, yes. I tested the samples for purity three times. Personally.”
“I’m going directly from here to the State Building,” Paolo said, turning to look Ochida in the eye.
His assistant knew what he was asking and replied, “I understand. These injections exactly meet your specifications.”
If anything went wrong, they both knew they’d be the next two placed in the Pen. They were valuable, but they weren’t beyond consequences. No one was. That was what Laconia meant.
“Excellent,” Paolo said, giving Ochida a friendly smile he didn’t actually feel. “I’ll take them now.”
Ochida waved at someone in a corner of the room, and a tech trotted over carrying a silvery metal briefcase. She handed the case to Paolo, then left.
“Is there anything else?” Ochida asked.
“I’m starting to see some growth,” Paolo said, pointing at a bone spur protruding from the hairy man’s spine.
“Yes,” Ochida agreed. “They’re nearly ready.”
In the time he’d worked with Winston Duarte, Paolo had found much to admire in the man. The high consul was intelligent, given to astounding leaps of comprehension on complex topics but still measured and thoughtful in his decision making. Duarte valued the counsel of others but was decisive and firm once the information was gathered. He could be charismatic and warm without ever seeming false or insincere.