‘Five per cent of visitors here end up infected. The ones uninfected are those who take precautions. You took none, though you were advised at the runcible terminal and took the information pack on offer. Did you scan it?’

‘No,’ said Janer.

‘You wanted to end up infected,’ the mind stated.

‘Perhaps. Not consciously anyway. Fait accompli now. What are the disadvantages?’

‘There are few. If you spend sufficient time away from reinfection during your first century, the virus will die in your body, and as it breaks down, will cause most of your major organs to fail. Your sensitivity to pain will be greatly reduced, though some might not consider that a disadvantage. You’ll be more susceptible to certain fungal infections. There are three known diseases that would kill you in a protracted and painful way, whereas before you would have survived them . . . There is a long list and it is in the information pack you took.’

‘Advantages?’

‘Extreme resistance to injury. Gradual increase in physical strength. Higher resistance to other viruses — some of which would kill you, had you not had this virus. And, of course, reduced sensitivity to pain - if you consider that an advantage.’

Janer looked at the hornet squatting on the table by his bunk. Minds did not feel pain. How could something scattered between thousands of nests feel pain? How could a mind that once thought at the slow speed of pheromonal transfer understand physical injury?

‘Would you consider pain an advantage?’

‘I consider anything that increases my sensitivity to the world around me to be an advantage. The unit that is with you now died some time in the night, and all I experienced was the loss of sensory input from that world.’

Janer more closely inspected the hornet. He hadn’t realized. He prodded it with his finger and it went over on to its back with legs in the air like a pincushion.

‘What killed it?’ he asked.

‘The same thing you have been infected with,’ said the mind.

‘I thought you said these hornets had been altered.’

‘Two different alterations, one of which I predicted to have a low chance of success.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Janer. ‘How was it infected? It couldn’t have been bitten.’

‘Insects, unlike humans, cannot avoid infection here. The viral spores which only take hold inside a human after a massive infusion - like through a leech bite - can enter insects through their breathing spiracles,’ was the mind’s sarcastic response.

‘I thought the virus didn’t survive for long outside of a body.’

‘It doesn’t. The spores can enter when the insect feeds on something infected. They can even enter when it lands on something infected, or even flies past it. In the case of insects it only takes a few viable spores for the virus to be established.’

‘Why? Why so different from humans?’

‘Obviously we are the more primitive life form,’ said the mind.