The girl opened the case.
Inside were three crushed antivenom cartridges, a shipping label from an authorized laboratory, and a small data wafer wrapped in a piece of pale cloth.
Sepha reached for the cartridges, then stopped when she saw the batch number.
It belonged to a shipment that had left Meridian six weeks earlier.
The official distribution network had recorded that shipment as delivered without incident.
Vela said it had reached her settlement in a locked container, carried by people who demanded payment before opening it.
The people who could pay received treatment first.
The people who could not pay were instructed to wait.
Her mother had objected and asked for the shipment’s manifest.
Three days later, the laboratory where she worked caught fire.
Vela had escaped through a maintenance shaft with her mother’s case, but her mother had not followed.
Sepha did not tell the girl that the story sounded impossible.
She did not promise that her mother was alive.
She called for a nurse and carried the case herself to a room without advertisements.
That evening, the station administrator brought his security director to Sepha’s office and placed a confidential report on her desk.
Administrator Hravik looked older than he had during the dinner, although his species did not age visibly over such a short period.
The report contained a photograph of a frontier clinic with its windows covered from the inside.
Underneath it was a list of eighteen patients who had received antivenom and then developed the neurological shutdown it was supposed to prevent.
Seven were dead.
Sepha read the list twice.
The security director said there had been an equipment malfunction at an outer settlement.
She pointed to the three separate planets recorded on the report and asked how the same malfunction had crossed two trade routes and a restricted border.
Hravik said that the incidents were under investigation.
Sepha asked who was leading the investigation.
There was a pause long enough for the ventilation system to switch cycles.
A consortium called Helix Transit and Medical, Hravik said.
Sepha knew the name.
Helix had paid for the first factories able to manufacture antivenom in large quantities.
Its advertisements claimed that its investments had turned a single human survivor into a miracle for the galaxy.
Its executives had attended the ceremonial opening of the Meridian program, shaken hands with researchers, and posed beside the same human survivor.
Hamish had refused to sign their exclusive licensing proposal.
