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from Virginitis, and Tarvydas from Tardive Dyskinesia. Half the Coalition bureaucracy was allocated to reproductive issues, three-quarters of its budget.
    They were packed in the vehicle like canned fish. The bureaucrats were accustomed to it, their cube ranches similar. The magnatube took off. A person had to adopt a magnatude to ride a magnatube.
    “Hey, Tarvydas, what're you doin' on this gravy train? Takin' a junket just for the jerk of it?”
    “Five-HT-two receptor density, ya jerkin' twerker. Don't you know anything about reproduction?”
    High-density serotonin 5-HT 2 receptors increased the likelihood of random auditory activity, a phenomenon associated with low libinality. Archaic neuroleptics in low doses reduced receptivity and enhanced the libido. No longer used for psychosis, these drugs now played an important role in reproduction. And they still caused tardive dyskinesia. Hence the presence of Tarvydas. “Doesn't take a neuropsychiatrist to know that,” Maris muttered.
    “And there you have it! Detective Peterson cracks the case!”
    He could have strangled the mongrel. “That's what I like about you, kid, delivering conclusions before any news of substance.” Maris forced his way to the door, badge over his head to clear the way, and was first off the shuttle the moment it stopped.
    Plavinas Incubation was a fortress. Brooding towers stood sentinel over a low, squat, beetle-eyed building with a coiled coif of razor wire. Forty-foot fences spat infrequent sparks, also capped with coiled razor. He counted three layers of fencing, the ground in between riddled with mine-seeded mole hills. Ohumes puffy with armor and bulky with arms patrolled an inner perimeter.
    Emergency vehicles had spread out in front of the entrance, engines rumbling and audible from outside the fences, lights flashing brighter than a blockbuster immersie release. He saw hazmat-suited personnel among the vehicles, the green fabric glaring and garish. Not very fashionable, Maris thought, heading for the gate.
    They swabbed him, scanned him, scoured him, surged him. They'd have stripped-searched and rectal-probed him, if his badge hadn't stopped them. Three gates in succession, and he wondered why they'd done no good.
    Just inside the third gate, a young Ofem separated herself from a knot of office staff in business formal. “I'm Ilsa Janson, your facility escort today. You go nowhere without me.” She scalded him with her gaze, startled him with her beauty.
    He wondered how long that would last. “Nowhere?” His bladder felt full.
    “Nowhere. Hang your badge on your lapel and come with me, Detective.” She led him into the building, hazmat-clad crew passing them on their way out. Maintenance crew fiddled with sensors above every door. “The outbreak started at our fertility reception desk shortly after the delivery of the Muceniek ovum at fourteen twenty-five.”
    Military time, he thought, militant operation. “How do you know it started there?”
    They entered a foyer, furnished in standard office-bland. “Nanotectors there went off first.”
    Her face a perpetual scowl, he couldn't tell if it'd intensified. “But not those, back there.” He gestured over his shoulder.
    Her gaze was blank as she led him through a sterile corridor and into a containment area. “This is the fertility reception desk.”
    Two rows of chairs lined one side. A potted plastic plant perched quaintly in a corner. A glasma cage at the far end looked sullied from the inside with a red-brown syrup. Puce, he thought, the color of puce. They'd have to scrape the inside for remains.
    “Ad out for a new receptionist?”
    “Considering a change of careers?”
    He liked her quick wit. “Why here? Why not those back there?”
    The stone scowl didn't change. “This way.” She led him out a side door into a small anteroom with four doors, one of them colored blue. On one wall, long brown robes with hoods hung from hooks. “You'll need one of these,