Interspecies Trader

“There’s another option?”

There was indeed but I felt bad giving them hope considering what it was.

“…Maybe. There are two reasons why I still bought those 40 vaccines anyway. The first is to conduct some tests and see how effective they are. The second one is just a hope of mine. I hope there might be people skilled enough here to understand the composition and production method based on those samples. If that’s the case, that might allow us to prepare as many as we need.”

As expected, their eyes squinted in disappointment, with Crali soon rebutting me.

“We didn’t even know what a vaccine is. How do you expect anyone to be able to reproduce it?”

“That’s true but isn’t that exactly what happened in the domes in the past? If we could do it, why not you too? Plus, you’ll have the great advantage of already having the finished product.”

This quieted them for a moment and Angin continued.

“Still, how many people will die before we manage to do it, if we ever do? Can’t you find out about the production method?”

“I asked for it, of course. But they refused to even consider my request because giving the method away is the same as telling people to steal their business.”

“But you’re a spatial mage. Getting your hands on it should be easy for you.”

It seemed they truly lacked a good understanding of spatial mages. Sure, it was an amazing and versatile affinity, but it wasn’t omnipotent. I hated stealing things from others but even if I didn’t mind doing it, it would still be too risky. The “recipe” probably was inside some building which I wouldn’t be allowed to access. This implied that I would need a lot of blind teleportation to search all over it, each of which could kill me. And then, I’d probably get caught searching all over the building since I had no idea where it could be located. That was assuming I knew in which building it was stored in the first place.

It wasn’t even worth considering. I thus shook my head.

“Unfortunately, that’s not possible.”

“You should reconsider. We’re talking about the lives of a million people.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s literarily physically and magically impossible to do. To put it simply, it’s suicide.”

They grimaced while I monitored their expressions. About another moment of silence, Angin continued.

“What about the first option?”

She didn’t need to tell me more than this because I understood her point.

“My suggestion is to work on both at the same time. Any other ideas you can come up with would be great too. With the first option, I can buy more vaccines as a stop-gap measure. Maybe if you can ascertain how effective it is, we can vaccinate key personnel, the ones that are critical to handling the pandemic, like herbalists and life mages.”

I let them digest my words and concluded.

“Anyway, that’s all from me. It’s up to you to decide from now on.”

Like before, Crali didn’t seem extremely satisfied but Angin smiled gently at me.

“You’re right. You did great, Tila. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anything so having some options is a good step forward.”

“The ministers were starting to get agitated too, Mom.”

“They’re all so immature. This will help settle them a bit.”

This was a sentence I heard too often back in my world. Being surrounded by old high-ranked people and transcendents all the time, they tended to see everyone younger than them as immature, which included most of the world's population. One of the oldest ones even confessed the world looked no different from a sandbox filled with babies in his eyes.

I handed the 40 vaccines over and the two women looked at the glass capsules with interest.

“How does a vaccine work? What’s the idea behind it?”

“Mom, it isn’t the time for that.”

I understood where she was coming from, though. Being her age, she probably had seen it all, and something completely new awakened her curiosity.

I smiled with comprehension.

“I’m not an expert but I can try to explain simply. A vaccine essentially is the same as the disease…”

“What? Do you want us to inject the disease into people? Are you crazy?”

I was interrupted by Crali and Angin rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“Can’t you let him finish talking, silly girl? Don’t I keep telling you to stay calm in any circumstances?”

“But…!”

“Be quiet already.”

The girl pouted unhappily while I resumed my sentence.

“It’s the same as the disease except that it’s generally inactivated or greatly weakened. It forces the body to fight back against it without producing any dangerous effect like the real disease would. You might know that it’s harder to get sick from some diseases when you already caught them once, right? That’s the same principle here.”

I didn’t want to get into details about immune systems, biological reactions, and whatnot, especially since I only knew common sense knowledge about all of this.

“Oh… Impressive. So simple but so hard to think about.”

“Breakthroughs in technology and medicine are usually like that.”

“It seems education is better inside the domes too. You’re younger than Crali but you have your head much straighter.”

“Why do you keep saying stuff like that, Mom?”

I had to agree with Crali on that one. It wasn’t clear whether general education was the problem or the way she raised her daughter instead. From my point of view, she might have cherished her offspring a bit too much, spoiling her in the process. Not that I knew much about what happened since it was only the second time we met.

I watched them argue for a bit more until I used a moment of quiet to move the talk forward.

“Do you need anything more from me?”

Angin shook her head.

“You did well, we’ll remember your contributions. You just continue earning money from the domes. Tell us if you need any goods from here and we’ll procure them for you. We’ll move things forward on our side and we’ll tell you when we need your help again. I know it’s hard to keep track of your movements so I’d like it if you could pay us a short visit every day.”

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