On the frontier
Another narrative snippet.
"Really? What lines do you have available?" asked Kai Wern. Dominic, too, drifted a step closer to the vendor.
"Anything you need. Hundreds of cell types in pure culture, and anything else on feeders. Fluor-tagged proteins, homozygous knockouts, inducible knockouts, primary cultures from wild-type systems, SCID systems, whatever. Pure inbred genotypes, clean, no retrovirus. My supplier can even give you customized, MHC-matched lymphatic and bone marrow sets if you allow a couple of weeks. You two are Surveyors, right? For environmental testing I've got fully functional mini-organs in vitro that'll last for months or freeze down perfectly.
Her eyes narrowed. "Did you say primary cultures?"
To her left, Dominic was eyeing the vendor's wrist. Then he interposed himself between Wern and the vendor, spat violently into the man's face, and punted off down the microgravity corridor with such lack of drama that everyone was left wondering if they had actually seen it.
The shocked and dripping vendor found himself staring at the point of an antique butterfly knife. "If you're not off this station in twenty-four hours," Kai Wern hissed, "you'll be going to Earth in a freezer on my ship. With a stick up your arse." She rotated the knife closed with a loud snap and pushed off. The three youngsters followed after, glancing back at the vendor who seemed to have gone catatonic, one hand on his saliva-smeared chin.
"Jie, what just happened?" panted Kai Teck when they caught up.
Kai Wern slowed down. It was mildly hazardous for the three teenagers to try to keep up that speed, as they weren't used to how fast one could go in micro-g. "That man was wearing a Transpatial badge."
"Di'n't see it."
"Not on his shirt, he had it on a bracelet," Whiska offered.
Kai Wern nodded. "In Transpatial territory, slavery is legal. In fact, it's universal."
"So?" Her brother looked baffled.
Kin Onn was quicker. "Sheeeet."
"I really need those human tissue cultures before the Dawn Treader ships out again, if we do get out of here, but I am not getting them from him or anybody else who buys from Transpatials. Imagine being born and living out your life literally in a box. Imagine having some horrible disease that makes your stomach hurt and your skin fall off, but never being allowed medicine. Imagine never learning a single word, or colour, or the taste of food. Imagine having men tie you to a table and pull out your organs without anaesthesia. That's where he's getting his pure cell lines from."
Argh I have SO MUCH homework but I've been reading a paper about transgenic autoimmune mice (which was part of the homework) and reading a Steven Saylor novel and watching Rome all over the past week...this was BEGGING to get out of my head and into text.
Labels: stories
posted by xenobiologista @ 23:04
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