Emi grabbed a loaf of each and nearly ran into Ford as she tried to get around him. He grabbed her arms. “Slow down, sweetie. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” she sobbed. “If we can’t solve this, they’re dead!” She forced her way past Ford and ran back to the brig. Rummaging through her medical supplies, she found doses to counteract the sedative and ordered Taber to open the cell.
Taber tried to talk her out of it, but Emi reached around him and slammed her palm against the control panel, releasing the energy gate.
She awoke Aaron first, then Sascha. As usual, the rage was gone. Ilse returned with some of the wives of the other men and a list of foods on a hand-held. Emi scanned the list. Every man who’d had a rage had something with a grain product in it.
“It’s in the wheat,” Emi said.
By this time, Dr. Gould, the head of the agricultural division, was awake. They now had him, Aaron, and Sascha seated at the table in the conference room. Emi hated to dump this on Dr. Gould while he was still groggy. Unfortunately, she had no choice. “Tell me about your wheat.”
He looked understandably confused, his brown eyes rheumy, pupils slightly dilated from the lingering effects of the sedative. “What? Who are you?”
“I don’t have time to explain, Dr. Gould. Please, this is very important!”
The man thought about her question. “What do you want to know?”
Emi knew her frustration and agitation were getting in the way of her reasoning. “Donna, help me here,” she called out.
“Dr. Gould, we think the source of the infection is in the food chain,” Donna said. “Captain Lucio became infected after eating cinnamon bread made by Governor Martinez. We’re trying to pin down all sources.”
“Well, our wheat is all grown here on the planet, from cultivated seed stock. We did extensive testing on it beforehand. You won’t find anything wrong.”
“What changed,” Donna insisted. “Something changed in the past six months, it had to. What’s different now from six months ago?”
Emi wanted to grab him, shake him, scream at him that his life was in danger. Instead, she clenched her hands, her fingernails painfully digging into her palms.
Dr. Gould rubbed a hand across his forehead. “We had our first harvest of totally self-contained seed stocks three months ago, of hard spring wheat stocks. Our human-consumption corn, Durum, bran, barley, and rye have been self-contained for over a year. Livestock grade even longer. Our first self-contained harvest of soft white will happen…” He looked confused. “How long have I been out? It’s supposed to happen six months after the hard spring wheat harvest.”
“How long before the rages started did you process the wheat into flour and it made it into the colony’s food chain?” Donna asked.
Emi again resisted the urge to grab him and shake him.
“A couple of weeks, I think. We still had reserves to use up.”
That would be on top of whatever someone had in their home that they hadn’t used yet. Emi thought about Ilse and her baking. She would go through a lot more flour than others in a normal week. Her husband was one of the first to come down with it.
Emi turned to the governor. “Ilse, you do a lot of baking, right?”
“Yes. All the time. More than anyone here. I told you, it’s my hobby.”
“Dr. Shourpa and her husband are close friends of yours?”
“Yes.”
“So you give them a lot of baked goods?” Dr. Shourpa’s husband was also one of the first affected. “The chaplain, too?”
Ilse looked confused. “Yes. All the time. I mean, we’re a communal colony right now in terms of foodstuffs. We’re not using a commercial plan yet. I bake and share stuff. So does everyone else.”
“But you bake more than everyone else?”
“As a general rule, yeah. They joke that after my first contract term expires, they’re going to keep me on as the colony’s head pastry chef.”
Emi looked at the list of ingredients in the cinnamon bread. “Ilse, I need you to get me all these ingredients. Exactly these ingredients, in these quantities.”
Ilse looked confused, but nodded. “I’ll go get them.”
Donna was still searching for a commonality. “Educate us, Dr. Gould,” she started. “What is the difference between hard spring and soft white wheat?”
He turned to the com link screen, where Donna’s face hovered in the display. “Hard spring wheat has more protein in it, for starters. You want a detailed scientific description or the layman’s basics?”
Emi jumped from her seat and raced over to her computer terminal. “Could it be a protein reaction?” she called out to Donna.
“I don’t know. Run samples through the scanners.”
Sascha stared at the bread. “First, we need to test the theory,” he interrupted. “We need to confirm it.” He looked at Aaron.
Aaron met his gaze and nodded. “Ford,” Aaron said, “go get the energy shackles.”
Everyone stared at Aaron.
Aaron’s brown eyes darkened when Ford hesitated and looked to Emi for confirmation. “Did you hear me? I said, go get the energy shackles. That’s an order.”
Ford nodded and went to do it.
Emi couldn’t pull her eyes from him. “I don’t want you doing this.”
“I have to.” He reached for the bread, pulled it close, and ripped off a piece. “We can be reasonably sure this is the culprit. It doesn’t tell us exactly why, but it sure as shit narrows the field.”
Ford returned with the energy shackles. Working carefully, with waves of reluctance washing off him that nearly overpowered Emi, he put them on Aaron’s arms and ankles. Taber stood ready with a syringe of mild sedative.
Ford wrapped his arms around Emi from behind, and they stood, watching Aaron as he ate the first piece and then another. Twenty minutes later, after Aaron had eaten nearly half the loaf, Emi felt the change.
“Get ready,” she whispered to Taber.
She saw the darkness behind Aaron’s eyes, felt it in his mind when the rage took him. As he rose from his seat to charge her and Ford, Taber applied the hypo to his shoulder. He slumped back into his chair, not quite unconscious.
“Question answered,” Donna said. “Now to figure out exactly how it’s affecting him and the others.”
Sascha pulled his wife to him. “Goddammit. I can’t even eat my favorite foods.”
Chapter Eleven
Late in the day and with Aaron back to normal, Emi felt the deadly clock ticking in her brain. Ford, Sam, and Gregor returned to the Tamora Bight to help Caph so Parisi could return to the Braynow Gaston and assist with research. Emi sent samples with Ford, several baked goods that had triggered rages in other men, as well as the individual ingredients and recipes for testing. Parisi and the others were already working on it.
Eckhart contacted her for a status update.
“We’ve isolated the cause,” she told Captain Eckhart. “It’s just a matter of finding out why. There’s no reason to sterilize the planet or kill anyone. It’s not contagious, it’s just an allergic reaction.” She couldn’t read him through the video com link, but she didn’t like the dark look in his brown eyes. He was young, not much older than her, yet he had an old air about him, with deep lines around his eyes and grey hair already feathering his temples. She suspected he’d had a hard life for his young age.
“I have my orders, Dr. Hypatia. They have not changed. You still do not have a clear-cut cause or antidote.”