“Down by the river, we took a little walk, ran into the Nova and had a little talk…”

Raeilya’s hearts beat to the drum of the cadence, sharp and sideways in her chest. If she looked down, she could see them moving underneath the fabric of her brother’s sweater, pulsing like some alien parasite. He’d told her to wear this shirt, said it was a common garment on Terra, but everyone around her was dressed in some sort of military outfit—Rune wouldn’t lie to her, but years had passed since he’d been here, and maybe he was misinformed. Would she look hopelessly out-of-touch, or just absurd? Nervously, she fidgeted with her shirt, trying to conceal the pulses of lymph and blood.

“I pushed em, I shoved em, I threw em in the river and laughed as they drowned. We don’t need the Nova hangin around…”

Not for the first time, she wished she could understand what they were singing. Raeilya was semi-fluent in Latin, and proficient in several other Terran languages—she was, after all, an ambassador—but she’d never bothered to branch out to Anglican, the lingua franca of Martians and farmers. It was a difficult tongue, with unpredictable spelling and challenging grammar, and it hadn’t seemed worth the effort when she was young. Now, though, she regretted her decision. Hopefully, the rest of Eleutheria spoke more Latin—she could always give them translators, but getting everyone to use an unfamiliar foreign technology they had no experience with was bound to be hard, if not impossible.

Then again, Eleutheria did have a tendency to take near-impossibilities and make them entirely possible, so she may have been underestimating their ability to adapt.

As Raeilya sat at the table, getting bluer and more anxious by the timepart, the guards behind her whispered—not to her, but about her. They were all big, burly human men who looked like they could snap her in half if she so much as moved the wrong way, but none of them seemed aggressive. She wasn’t sure if their comments should make her feel reassured or offended.

“She’s awful small,” one of them said in a coarse, rough-around-the-edges Vulgar Latin drawl. “Is she a she? I mean, she looks like a she, but it’s kinda hard to tell.”

His partner nodded. “I think so. She’s got her hair down, see? The men all have it slicked back, they wear it up in braids. Looks real stupid under the useless little helmets they wear. I couldn’t tell you for sure, though. I’ve never seen a female Mira, I wasn’t sure if they existed.”

“And she’s purple,” the first one added. “I thought they only came in shades of blue. Maybe it’s just the women, like a weird sort of sexual dimorphism thing?”

No, it’s just that the Northerners are the only ones stupid enough to go to war with Eleutheria, Raeilya thought, but she held her tongue. It wasn’t proper or ladylike to insult one’s fiancé in public like that, even if she hated her fiancé in every sense of the word. She was already bound to get herself in trouble for this stunt when she returned back home, and she definitely didn’t need more problems on top of that. It was not wise to make Cadé angry; ignorant and annoying as he was, his family was powerful, and they could probably end Raeilya’s political career with almost no effort. They already hated her, hated the fact that she was all they could afford for their weakling of a youngest son, and she didn’t want to give them another reason to want her dead. So she didn’t speak. She sat there, quiet, unassuming, waiting for Imperatrix Acidalia-Planitia to appear.

Rune had told her that Acidalia was better than her mother, and Raeilya hoped he was right, not just for her sake, but for everyone’s. He’d said time and time again not to go to Alestra for help, and she’d taken his advice to heart. Cadé always said that Rune’s opinions were useless; he hadn’t been planetside since he was a small child, and even then, he was just a soldier who had no reason to come into contact with the royal family. Whatever opinions he held about them were just fragments of memories, easily dismissed as the childhood dreams of a wayward boy who fantasized about Imperial glory. Still, Raeilya trusted her brother above all else, and he said Alestra was bad, so she believed him. And Cadé was too much of a coward to do this without her, so here she was, waiting for Acidalia instead. Waiting, waiting, endlessly and nervously, staring at the open door and the massive, deadly human militants who stood on either side of it…

Pulling at her turtleneck, Raeilya checked her timepiece. It was still set to Ciryan time, but she’d done the math to convert the hours. Unless her calculations were incorrect—and, to be fair, there was a decent chance that they were; she’d nearly failed pre-algebra multiple times, and Ciryans weren’t used to base-ten numerals—they were set to meet in exactly one Terran minute. She counted down the seconds. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight…

Right as the hand hit the hour, the door opened. Evidently, Acidalia was nothing if not punctual.

The guards stiffened in her presence and the chattering stopped, though the noise from outside did not diminish. The soldiers continued marching, but they’d moved on to a different cadence, and the hum-buzz of the fluorescent lights didn’t quiet. Acidalia didn’t seem to notice. Then again, maybe the noise didn’t bother her as much—human ears worked better on land than those of the Mira.

“Salve,” she said, extending a hand. This was a handshake, Raeilya knew; Rune had told her that, and Seven, bless him, had helped her practice. Sometimes Rae didn’t know why he stayed with her. Still shaking, she closed her hand around Acidalia’s slender fingers and shook them lightly, hoping that was sufficient. Acidalia seemed satisfied, and she sat down at the second chair at the small table.

She was relatively pretty for a human, Raeilya thought, although most of them looked the same. Acidalia had a unique kind of pigmentation, which set her apart; her skin was a bronze-y kind of color, somewhere in between orange and brown. It was a shade Raeilya had never see outside of a doctor’s office—once, one of Rune’s friends developed nephrotic syndrome due to an injury he sustained during his days as a soldier, and he was hospitalized when he turned that color. The Eleutherian doctors had called it carotenemia, and the rest of the humans in the galaxy thought it was an off-colored spray tan.

Yet, somehow, Acidalia seemed perfectly fine otherwise. There was nothing about the way she carried herself that suggested pain, and her features were almost relaxed, at ease. She wore a simple white dress, and her unbound, coal-black hair was topped with a silver circlet, featureless save for one single, iridescent opal in the center of her forehead. A necklace with one charm, a small, damaged model of the planet Terra, hung around her neck, but it was clearly poorly made, perhaps a child’s art project or a gift she’d been afraid of turning down. Other than that, she wore no jewelry and had no royal regalia.

Still, Raeilya felt underdressed. She didn’t know what qualified as professional on Eleutheria, so she’d worn a simple black skirt and dress shoes with the sweater that Rune had given her. It said Historic Innsmouth, est. 1936. She didn’t know what Innsmouth was, but she assumed it had to be a place of some importance.

Apparently, Acidalia recognized it, because she laughed when she saw the words. “Innsmouth,” she said. “You know of that place?”

Raeilya blushed, but she knew there was no way she could get through this conversation without admitting her cluelessness. “No. Actually, my brother, Rune, gave me this. He said a Terran would recognize it.”

“I do. Tell your brother that I like his sense of humor,” Acidalia said.

Raeilya felt her cheeks turn blue. “Oh, if it’s something inappropriate I’m going to kill him,” she muttered under her breath. Gods damn you, Rune.

“No, nothing like that,” Acidalia assured her. “It’s a reference to a rather obscure work of literature by an ancient Terran author. Actually, I’m kind of curious as to how your brother came to know of it himself.”

Raeilya sighed in relief “He’s actually from here,” she explained. “We were adopted, both of us. He was a child soldier, marooned on a Ciryan beach after a spacecraft crash, and spared because he was so young. Mira like humans, they use them for labor—they’re strong, especially the men. We worked on a family estate together. I was a maid, he helped in the fields.” Raeilya wondered if she really should have said that last part. Surely, Acidalia had never worked as a scullery maid—she was the sort of women who probably kept staff and slaves herself. And she had no concept of social ascension, either, because there was nowhere for her to ascend to—she was already at the top.

Acidalia raised an eyebrow, and Raeilya momentarily thought she’d done something wrong. But the Imperatrix Ceasarina just said, “That’s very interesting. I’d quite like to meet him. My brother was a soldier, too.”

Something in the way she said the word was made Raeilya think that her brother—a prince, or perhaps a bastard—hadn’t escaped as easily as Rune, so she didn’t inquire further. She knew all too well the feeling of losing a sibling, and it wasn’t something she wanted to live through again. That look in Acidalia’s eye, the look of someone with a fresh but hidden wound, told her all she needed to know.

A moment of quietude passed between them, then Acidalia jumped seamlessly back into the discussion as if they’d never said anything about brothers or soldiers or a town called Innsmouth. “So,” she said, almost conversationally, “I was told of an issue plaguing your home world…”

Plaguing, Raeilya thought. If only the Imperatrix knew how accurate that was. Unfortunately, she was not here to talk about plagues or pandemics; there were more important things to discus than microbes. But how could she ever explain the entropy problem to a Terran who may not even have heard of entropy, especially when Raeilya herself barely understood the concept?

But Eleutherians were smart, and randomness was not a foreign concept to any intelligent being. Though Terra, and Eleutheria, had no reason to even consider a slow, entropic apocalypse, they had to know that entropy existed. Anyone with sensory organs could tell that the universe had a tendency towards randomness. Surely they could comprehend the concept that things get more random over time, that broken things don’t spontaneously rebuild themselves, that messes don’t clean themselves up.

But, then again, discussing the real problems within the galaxy would require a long-winded explanation that delved back into the time before either humans or Mira existed, before the Precursors walked the stars, before the universe was the universe she knew. Raeilya was a politician, not an astrophysicist. She knew no more about the nature of reality than anyone else in this room; to her, it was all confusing math and even more confusing contradictions. She could talk about Rifts and black holes and strangelets and the multiverse, but what good was that if she didn’t understand what she was saying?

But plagues… plagues, she understood better than any scientist. And, judging from Eleutheria’s humble beginnings, she knew that Acidalia would understand plagues, too. Maybe to explain the big things, Raeilya had to start with the small things. After all, the entropy problem was rooted in the behavior of very small, indescribably minuscule things.

So Raeilya took a deep breath, and prepared to talk about the bringer of blood.

“You’re more accurate than you know,” she began, “when you speak of plagues.”

“I see.” Acidalia knitted her brow in concern, and Raeilya wondered if it was real sympathy. But if there was any society that understood the devastating impact of a novel pandemic, surely it was this one. This civilization was forged in the aftermath of the most devastating outbreaks ever seen in the cosmos, “an apocalypse of almost Biblical proportions.” Raeilya had never read the Bible, nor was she really sure what it was about, but it sounded important enough that that statement carried weight. So Acidalia, the woman at the helm of this empire born of a plague, would understand. She might even empathize.

Raeilya continued, “We called it cennilia, literally translating to the bringer of blood, of cenn. It’s come and gone hundreds of times since the Mira evolved. It’s hit us in the past, and it’ll hit us again. It attacked us thousands upon thousands of years ago, and it could attack us tomorrow. We’d be just as powerless as we were before.”

“And you’re seeking Eleutheria’s aid in preventing, or curing, this disease?” Acidalia asked, not incredulous, but surprised and curious.

“Partly. But—“

“Is it viral or bacterial?” Acidalia interrupted, though she inserted herself so smoothly into the conversation that it didn’t seem like an interruption at all. “I would also consider a prion disease, but I’m assuming by ‘bringer of blood’ you mean something hemorrhagic, and prions have a tendency to cause more neurological symptoms.”

The question took Raeilya by surprise. She vaguely recognized the word virus—Rune had self-diagnosed himself with one when he became ill with a lasting cold that he called influenza, “the influence.” But that hadn’t killed him, and cennilia was certainly a killer. If viruses were a minor inconvenience like influenza, cennilia had to be something else.

“Bacterial,” Raeilya said. “I think.”

“Well, how does it spread?” Acidalia’s expression was strange, like she was trying to figure something out, something loftier and more important than the nature of a Ciryan disease. But Raeilya answered her anyway, because not doing so was bad etiquette, and she didn’t need to give people another reason to think of her as a backwards, uncultured charity case.

“Through the water. It lives there, multiplies there. It can survive in our oceans forever.”

“Then it must be bacterial; viruses can’t reproduce on their own, and they generally don’t survive outside of a host long enough for them to transmit through water like you describe, except when they’re engineered to do so,” Acidalia said. “Has it become antibiotic resistant?”

“Anti—what?”

Acidalia looked at her like she had an extra head, and suddenly Raeilya felt very uncomfortable. The Imperatrix’s eyes had looked brown before, but now they seemed intimidatingly dark, like black holes. But she wasn’t angry, not exactly. Her emotions were impossible to read, and her face looked straight out of the Uncanny Valley.

There was an awkward pause for a moment, and even the guards looked confused, though they didn’t speak to one another or to Acidalia. Raeilya wondered if she’d said something offensive.

“Antibiotics,” Acidalia said again, breaking the stilted silence.

Raeilya racked her mind for something, anything, relating to antibiotics. She’d never heard that word in her life, though she could unravel its meaning from its component parts. “Bio,” as in “bioticus,” meant life, and “anti” meant against. So… against life? And if bacteria could be described as “antibiotic resistant,” an antibiotic was probably something capable of killing living things, but only very small living things. It had to be some sort of medicine.

“No,” Raeilya answered, “because I don’t think we’ve ever tried to treat it with antibiotics before.”

“Your home is afflicted with a bacterial plague which has never been countered with an antibiotic?” Acidalia asked again. This time, she appeared slightly confused.

“To be honest, I’m not sure I know what an antibiotic is,” Raeilya confessed.

Acidalia now looked baffled. “How, then, are outbreaks treated where you come from?”

“They mostly aren’t. Well, there are treatments—rudimentary things, herbs and spices mostly. Roots from a specific seaweed are said to stem the flow of blood, bark from a certain land tree can help with the pain, and they say that there are rare, exotic soil molds that can cure all kinds of things. But all of those things are incredibly expensive—far too pricey for the average Miran. Trees, soil, both come from the inland forests, and many Mirans can’t make that journey, or pay a human to do it for them.”

Raeilya didn’t anticipate Acidalia to recognize such primitive medical treatments, but to her surprise, the Imperatrix’s eyes lit up. “A soil mold? Did your Terran brother have a name for that, by any chance? I doubt it’s exactly the same, but we have a fungus known as penicillium—“

“Yes, that’s the one!” Raeilya exclaimed, shocked that an Eleutherian would understand penicillium. Rune had made it sound like an antiquated treatment, used two thousand years ago, long before the Silicon Age collapse. Though, to be fair, Acidalia had indicated that she knew far more of the Greater Galaxy than she’d let on, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question that she’d seen someone apply mold to themselves and made her own conclusions. And she was royalty, after all; empresses were always learned.

“Penicillin is one of many antibiotics,” Acidalia explained, “and it’s derived from the penicillium mold. If I recall correctly, it was the first antibiotic ever discovered. Terra has penicillium in abundance, though we don’t use it much anymore; nearly all of the pathogens that afflict us are resistant to it now since it’s been in use for such a long time.”

“But you still have the mold?” Raeilya asked, heart soaring. If Acidalia had excess penicillium, she might be persuaded to trade it with Cirya in exchange for—well, in exchange for what, exactly? There wasn’t much Cirya could offer Eleutheria, except perhaps land. But it would still be positive publicity, and if the Terrans and Martians weren’t using it anyway, it would be beneficial for Acidalia to donate the mold. It would allow her to portray herself as generous and kindhearted right off the bat—she wouldn’t even have to try to establish a reputation for herself.

“An excessive amount of it,” Acidalia said. “We can give you some, if you’d like—“

“Please!” Raeilya interjected, not even caring how desperate she sounded. “I may not be very important where I come from, but I’ll orchestrate something in return, anything you ask for, anything at all—trust me, if the Council finds out you gave us penicillium, you’ll be their favorite person in the galaxy. In the universe. They’ll—“

“Don’t worry about repayment, consider it a gift.” Acidalia acted as if it didn’t mean anything to her. She probably didn’t even realize the amount of lives she was saving.

Raeilya sunk back into the chair, breathless, almost dizzied. She didn’t even come here seeking treatment for cennilia at first; there was an infinity of other issues to explain, and bacterial infections were small potatoes compared to the entropy problem. Yet Acidalia had gifted penicillium, one of the rarest substances in the galaxy, to a society of people she’d never met, just because she could.

“I must warn you, however,” Acidalia said, “that penicillin isn’t the answer to every infection, and it will become less effective over time. It will work for now, and it will probably work for several decades at the least, but there will come a time when you need phage therapy instead. We can offer that as well, if you’re inclined to accept it, though it is somewhat more expensive and more difficult to administer. And antibiotics do have side effects—are you crying?”

Raeilya realized with embarrassment that her cheeks were wet. She wasn’t crying, technically; that was a human phenomenon. Miran saltwater glands always dripped like this. Heavy emotions did make it faster, though. “Yes. No. I don’t know,” she stammered.

“I just—you have no idea how much you’ve just helped Cirya.”

“It’s nothing whatsoever,” Acidalia assured, procuring a tissue from thin air and handing it to Raeilya. “I would just like you to confirm one thing before I—“

“Anything,” Raeilya said quickly.

“You have some semblance of faster than light travel, correct?”

Raeilya nodded. “Rifts.”

“And yet nobody’s discovered more than one antibiotic, or created phage therapy, or determined what the difference between a virus and a bacterium is?”

“No.” Were we supposed to? Raeilya wondered. It was common knowledge that biology was a difficult subject to deal with; physics and chemistry had been laid out for them by the Precursors, and it was the same throughout the universe, identical on every planet and in every civilization. Biology, though, was hard. It differed vastly between seemingly similar species. Some things only infected humans, some things only infected Mira, and some things randomly changed and hurt them both. Certain foods only kept certain species fed, and they were poisonous to anyone else who touched them. Sugars could only feed people who matched their orientation; flip glucose around and it becomes useless to half the galaxy, though nobody understood why. Biology should, in theory, just be applied chemistry in the same way chemistry was just applied physics, but the trouble was that it was hard to study and there were too many factors at play to replicate it in laboratory conditions, and things that worked for one species were useless to others.

Acidalia looked like she didn’t quite know what to make of that. “By any chance do you know how faster-than-light travel was discovered?” she asked, visibly concerned, though Raeilya couldn’t see why.

Raeilya shook her head. “It’s complicated. I could tell you, but… well, we’re politicians here, aren’t we?”

“Half politician, half geneticist.”

“But neither of us are astrophysicists.” They were getting close now, close to the entropy problem, and Raeilya was quickly realizing that she didn’t have the knowledge to properly discuss this. Acidalia was smart, and Terrans were educated. They probably knew more than she did.

Something glimmered in Acidalia’s eye, and she stood. “If you need an astrophysicist,” she said, “I may know somebody.”