Authors: Anne Mccaffrey
“All cultures do not believe as we do, Mikaaye,”
Melireenya said, then Khorii remembered who he was. This was Melireenya’s son. He had been on narhii-Vhiliinyar with his father, helping shape a new and less exclusive Linyaari society.
Khorii joined them at one of the tables near the door. Now that the children were done crying, they were curious about the newcomers. By now they knew Khorii, but they had not seen so many Linyaari all together. And the calming influence the newcomers had sent to soothe them let the children know they were not only approachable, but in control. Several came up to the table with practiced grimaces, showing off scratches or scrapes and asking for healing. One enterprising little girl ran out to the grassy strip between the building and the sidewalk and picked a handful of grass she offered to Neeva, who accepted it graciously but did not actually eat any.
“Odd things have been happening here,”
Khorii told the other Linyaari.
“I don’t think I should leave here. They need me.”
“We all need you,
yaazi
,”
Melireenya said.
Sesseli burst through the dormitory door and ran to Khorii. “You’re not going to leave
now,
are you? I don’t want you to go!”
“Shush, Sess, you’ll make all the babies cry again,” Khorii said, hugging her. “I’ll be back, but my relatives think the plague may be ending, and they need me to make sure. You know I’m the only one who can do that.”
“Yes, but who will take care of all the little children if they get hurt or sick again?” Sesseli asked. She didn’t mention that, with Khorii and Khiindi gone, she would feel lost, too.
“Abuelita will need you to help her, and Captain Bates might need help teaching the children about the beads and sewing.”
“And I will need you to teach me everybody’s name and where everything is,” Mikaaye said. “Because you are right, of course. Someone must stay and look after the injuries and illnesses among your people. I cannot see the plague as Khorii can, but I can do all of the other things, so I will stay to help you. I am Mikaaye.”
Sesseli composed her face and stuck out her small, soft hand. “I am Sesseli, Mikaaye. Do you have a kitty?”
P
aloduro and its sibling planets, Rio Boca and Dinero Grande, had been stricken with the plague before it spread via Federation and private vessels to other worlds. “We’ll start our sweep with the last incidences of infection,” Neeva said. “If it remains virulent there, then we’ll decide what to do next.”
To save the energy of their horns for healing, the Linyaari rescue teams conducted all routine conversation verbally, saving their energy-demanding thought-talk for more urgent matters or for far-distant communication that could not be conducted any other means.
“Good plan,” Khorii agreed. Nobody treated her like a youngling on these missions. She had a say in what happened, and her abilities were respected. She was a full-fledged team member.
“So. Kezdet and its moons.”
“Do you know if Maganos Moonbase ever pulled in the supplies we off-loaded for them?” Khorii asked. “Even though we
told
them I’d decontaminated everything, the man running the school for my grandfathers said they couldn’t risk it. He was willing to let Jaya die up there despite having supplies they needed.”
“He was clearly new to our ways,” Neeva said with a wry smile. “But yes, the supplies were collected unofficially by several of the more enterprising students. I understand the administrator attempted to expel them for their efforts, but your grandfathers and Uncle Hafiz overruled that. I understand the administrator in question is still on Maganos but will be seeking other employment once quarantine is lifted.”
“Good,” Khorii said.
“Yes,” Elviiz said. “It seemed strange to me that the head of the school possessed an intellect well below that of the majority of the students.”
“We need to check the water supplies and sewers, too,” Khorii said. “Elviiz thought of it when we were on Dinero Grande. If they are contaminated with the plague, the people and creatures who depend on them may contract the disease that way or become reinfected.”
“Yes, dear, but even without the benefit of Elviiz’s advice, our decontamination teams have been doing that. However, it is a good idea if you check them for latent evidence as well.”
“Aunt Neeva,” Elviiz said, “have your teams performed this task in rural and outlying areas as well as the population centers? The waterways of Dinero Grande near the mansions were contaminated by the private wells in the area. The cleansing processes used for waste disposal were inadequate to eradicate the plague organisms also.”
“We’ll double-check with the teams about that, Elviiz, but I think they covered it.”
The trip from Paloduro to Kezdet was quite different from the one Khorii had made in the opposite direction aboard the
Mana.
The
Balakiire
saw no derelicts; nor did they receive any distress calls. On the other hand, the official Federation vessels that once patrolled the spaceways were notably absent along their route.
The
Balakiire
received frequent hails from other Linyaari vessels—more than Khorii had realized her people possessed. All teams were reporting that the plague seemed contained at last and that the last new outbreak had occurred over a Standard week ago. Elviiz voiced his concerns about the rural water and sewage systems to the teams, and if they had not already addressed the issue, they promised to do so at once.
“It’s odd how it’s just gone away, isn’t it?” Khorii asked.
Neeva shrugged. “Perhaps the causative organism has a limited life span and without a live host, dies.”
“I guess that must be it,” Khorii agreed, but she remained worried about it. After all of the death and suffering, it seemed strange that the disease had suddenly and inexplicably ceased.
W
hen Khorii’s mother, Acorna, first came to Kezdet, no one had ever seen a being like her before. Now, when the
Balakiire
docked at the planet’s main port, five other brightly decorated egg-shaped vessels nestled in newly retooled berths beside her. The white-skinned, silver-maned Linyaari rescuers were as prominent in the city and on the planet at large as once the Federation forces had been. The healthy young adults among the galaxy’s peacekeepers had been among the first to succumb to the plague, crippling communications and relief efforts and impeding the implementation and enforcement of the quarantine.
“We’ll take a flitter to the Nanobug Market,”
Neeva told her. She had to use thought-talk because she could not pronounce some of the names. Linyaari, who had grown up speaking only their own tongue, had a terrible time pronouncing Standard words. Khorii had been indoctrinated into Standard from babyhood by Elviiz, so other than a slight lilt to her speech, she sounded much like other Standard speakers from Kezdet. That was where Maak and Uncle Joh came from, and they had the accent of that world.
A paved flat area at the front of the space terminal was full of flitters of every description. Melireenya selected a roomy one to accommodate the entire team, number 365. “We organized teams of the older survivors to bring decontaminated abandoned flitters here. The numbers correspond to a computer record stating where each was found and, if the vehicle had contained one, a holoprint of the victim’s face and where each was interred. Later, perhaps, the survivors of the owners may wish to reclaim some of the vehicles, but now most of them are too young to fly.”
“You kept very good records.”
“Liriili was in charge of that. Yours is not the only special talent that has come to the fore with this crisis. She also discovered, especially among the remaining human elders, assistants nearly as—there is a Standard phrase Captain Becker employs?”
“Nitpicking?” Khorii suggested.
“That’s the one.”
Liriili was the former administrator of narhii-Vhiliinyar, much disliked, or at least less beloved than most, for her fault finding and superior attitude. It wasn’t entirely her fault. She was empathy-impaired. But Aunt Maati, who had been Liriili’s page as a youngling, could barely stand her, even though Liriili had been rebuked and chastised by the Council and was somewhat easier to get along with than she had been. Meticulous recordkeeping was just what Liriili would do well, along with supervising others as detail-oriented as she was, especially if they also shared her lack of empathy, which would make cataloging the dead a bit easier, Khorii supposed.
Uncle Joh had spoken of the Nanobug Market of Kezdet with great enthusiasm. Before undertaking his many lucrative private contracts with House Harakamian, the salvage and recycling tycoon, as the
Condor
’s captain liked to think of himself, had ended each voyage by setting up a kiosk at the market to display and advertise his scavenged merchandise. He had described in detail the many types of food available, of which to Khorii only the floral arrangements sounded appetizing. Toys, exotic clothing, gemstones from many worlds, animals and plants of all descriptions, household items appropriate to many colonies from the most primitive to the most technical, and billions of other useful or interesting objects.
And those, Uncle Joh would say, were just the legal ones! In the old days, the market had contained a slave market as well, where child slaves and adults who had grown up as slaves were bought and sold. Also, he said that females and some males, many of them slaves, who would mate indiscriminately for a price could be hired there.
You could also buy stolen goods, black-market pharmaceuticals, forged documents and currency, and pieces of Federation uniforms for the illegal impersonation of law enforcement personnel.
Dancers, jugglers, acrobats, fire eaters, magicians, people who could create a custom hologram on the spot, strolling interpreters to help with any possible language barriers and others to write letters of business or to prospective mates for a price. Some would even compose and read literary creations amid the bustling crowds.
Uncle Joh had promised to take Khorii and Elviiz with him during their visit to Maganos Moonbase, which was close to Kezdet. Khorii had been greatly looking forward to it.
What a disappointment!
The flitter approached vast fields of what could have been Linyaari pavilions, tentlike structures but in many sizes, shapes, and colors. Most were shuttered, many were ripped or partly disassembled. Weeds grew waist high among them, all but obscuring the paths of loose gravel connecting them. The Linyaari presence had long ago dissipated any lingering odors. Hillocks here and there, Neeva told her, were where beasts stricken by the disease had been buried where they fell. Walking through the maze of weeds, rickety tables, splintered poles, and ripped tents, Khorii felt a great sadness but saw none of the blue plague dots dancing before her eyes.
“I believe it would be safe to graze here,” she said tentatively.
“That would be a great help for our people still working here,” Khaari said. “We could hardly decontaminate every specimen of plant life growing here, and there are so few fertile areas on this world.”
The live part of the market now was a place where survivors who had been separated from loved ones at the time the plague struck came seeking word of them. A huge tent contained wall after wall of photographs of the known dead on one side, and those being sought by survivors on the other. Children circulated among the crowd of other children and elders with handheld units linking to a central computer bank. It contained data collected by Liriili’s people cataloging the dead by photograph, location, and identifying information or possessions with them when the bodies were collected. In most cases, it also had information as to where the bodies were buried.
“The children helping the others are very brave,” Khorii remarked.
“Yes they are. Many seem to find some solace for their own pain in helping others, even if the information they provide is not always what the seeker wished.”
“I see no evidence of plague here,” Khorii said at last, and they left the tent, exiting into another part of the market. In this section, trade had resumed as briskly if not as merrily as Uncle Joh had described.
Neeva smiled at her, reading her interest. “Perhaps you would like to search this area alone, Khorii, while we return to the tent and help comfort the grief-stricken.”
Khorii agreed to this readily, if not as enthusiastically as she might have done in a preplague market.
If the vendors were fewer, the goods were still quite numerous, and she wondered how much had been looted from decontaminated houses. Or perhaps not decontaminated, once some individuals had realized that they were immune to the disease. She must examine the merchandise closely.
Many of the vendors were quite old, and she could tell that some were doing exactly the same thing they had done before the plague.
“Hey, girlie! Have I got a deal for you! Bring that cute little horn of yours over here and be the first kid of your species to have one of these very special, rare, and wonderful items just in from Newcastle Colony.”
“What items?” she asked. “How did they get here?”
The old man tapped a large wart on the side of his red-veined nose, “Ah, that’s for me to know and you to find out. Come closer, that’s it, I won’t bite,” he said, though he was showing lots of rotting and blackened teeth. “You’re gonna love these.”
He beckoned her nearer and nearer, to come around the table behind which he stood amid a jumble of furniture, mechanical parts, the fixtures with which humanoids cluttered their homes.
When she did as he requested, he opened the tent flap and pulled out a large heavy case, opening it at her feet. Brilliant fabric in more colors and textures than she had ever seen spilled from the case, along with spools of thread, ribbons, and glittering trims.
The man lowered his voice. “Half my tent is full of this stuff. One of my suppliers docked just as the plague hit and died almost as soon as he stepped foot on Kezdet. The merchandise was abandoned, and I had to go to considerable pains and expense to liberate what is rightfully mine. That old nag your people have in charge of the meat wagons wouldn’t let anyone near the docking bays for a long time. No offense,” he said quickly, holding up a palm in a peace-making gesture. “Only thing is, see, I want to protect my customers, so if you’d be a good girl and touch your horn to this stuff to make sure it’s safe, I’ll give you the bolt of your choice and a ribbon for your pretty curls besides.”