Dragonsblood (18 page)

Realizing that she was going nowhere until she satisfied the towering

Pierre—of course, anyone towered over her—Wind Blossom tried to cram

down the proffered roll.

“Non, s’il vous plaît!”
Pierre said. “I spent more time making that food than

you are spending eating it!”

In the end, she had two rolls and another drink—not water, some sort of

fruit juice—before Pierre let her go.

The last time she returned, Pierre met her at the door.

“She is dead,” he told her woodenly. “Her heart stopped beating a few

minutes ago. She told me not to try resuscitating her.” He rubbed his eyes,

wiping away tears. “I was just coming to look for you. Where should I put

her body?”

Numbed, Wind Blossom slipped past him into the room. She took one look

at Emily and sat down in the chair beside her, head bowed.

After a moment, she spoke. “When I first saw her, she was the most

beautiful person I had ever seen. She would light up the room, lift the spirits

of everyone who met her. She did not allow even the threat of total

annihilation to upset her.

“When the Nathi were bombing Tau Ceti day and night, it was Governor Boll

who pulled everyone together. She worked tirelessly, always there, always

ready—”

“I had heard,” Pierre interrupted, “but never like this.”

“I was young, still a girl,” Wind Blossom continued. “My mother was often

away, unavailable. When I did see her, it was for my lessons—and her

scoldings.” She sighed. “Governor Boll always found the time to say

something encouraging to me. Even when cities were being obliterated,

she would still find the time to talk to a young girl.”

“I did not know,” Pierre said.

“I did not tell anyone,” Wind Blossom confessed. “My mother would have

been furious, and I was too embarrassed to tell Governor Boll myself.”

Pierre nodded. “But now she is not here. And we are left to do her work.”

“Yes,” Wind Blossom agreed, rising from her seat. “Can you carry the

body?”

“I think so,” he said. “Where should I take it?”

“There’s a makeshift morgue over at the College,” she told him.

Pierre looked thoughtfully down at Emily’s body. “I can manage. And then

what?”

Wind Blossom shook her head. “The lab technicians, both first and second

team, have been overcome. I suppose I should see what I can do there

first. But I still have to make my rounds, there are patients—”

Pierre held up a hand. “No one can be in two places at once; not even

Emily could do that. Which is more important?”

“Both.”

“Who can help?”

“If there are some nurses or interns, they can tend the sick, but I don’t think

anyone else knows how to operate the lab equipment.”

“Then you have your answer,” Pierre said.

“I don’t know if there are enough interns,” she said.

“There will have to be,” Pierre said after a moment’s thought. “If you are the

only one left to handle the lab equipment, then the others will have to make

do.”

And so it was decided. With Wind Blossom in the lab, Pierre found himself

first blocking anyone from disturbing her and then later increasingly taking

charge of the whole medical organization, starting with providing food and

rest for the medical staff and their supporters, and then moving on to

organizing the quarantine of the sickest and the burial of those beyond aid.

At the end of the second day, Wind Blossom had isolated the disease: As

she had feared, it was a crossover of Pernese bacteria into Terran bacteria.

The poor lab teams, following their medical training to look for the most

likely causes, had been looking for either a flavivirus like Ebola, or a

combination of viral and secondary bacterial infections. Instead, they had

themselves become victims of the object of their search.

They had had the right symptoms but the wrong culprit. The colonists of

Pern had no natural protection against the hybrid bacteria. Wind Blossom,

following her training as an ecologist, isolated the mutation, sequenced its

genetic core, and developed a vaccine and a course of treatment.

The pitifully few remaining medical personnel were innoculated first, then

their assistants, and finally the population at large, and the epidemic was

broken.

But not without cost. Among those lost were most of the children under four

years of age, almost all expectant or new mothers, nine out of every ten

medics at Fort Hold—and Emily Boll.

In private conversations first with Pierre and then with the recovered Paul

Benden, it had been decided that it was better to ascribe the epidemic to a

“mysterious” illness rather than a crossover infection—at least until Wind

Blossom could train enough medical personnel to combat any future

crossovers. Because the vaccine had been introduced along with a course

of treatment, it was easy to convince most people that the treatments were

only palliative and that only those with natural immunities had survived,

leaving the survivors unconcerned about future recurrences.

Before she passed away, Emily had written a note to be given to Sorka.

Sorka had never shown the note to Wind Blossom, but shortly after she

received it, Sorka had asked Wind Blossom to visit her.

Their first meeting had been awkward.

Over time, their professional relationship deepened into respect and,

finally, into friendship.

When Wind Blossom’s first and only child was born, she named her

Emorra—combining Emily and Sorka—and had asked Sorka and Pierre to

be godparents. Both had enthusiastically agreed.

“How’s your daughter?” Sorka asked, guessing at Wind Blossom’s

thoughts.

Wind Blossom sighed. “She has not learned wisdom.”

Sorka squeezed Wind Blossom’s hand weakly. “I’m sure she’ll get it.”

“But not from me,” Wind Blossom said.

“M’hall, leave us,” Sorka said. M’hall gave her a rebellious look but she

forestalled his arguments, saying quietly, “I’ll call you back in good time,

luv.”

Clearly still uncomfortable, M’hall withdrew. Sorka’s gaze rested on the

doorway for a moment, to assure herself that he wasn’t coming back. She

turned her attention to Wind Blossom. “So, tell me.”

Years of familiarity enabled Wind Blossom to take the open-ended

question at its value. “We are doing all right,” she said.

Sorka gave her a sour look. “Wind Blossom, I’m dying, not stupid. I heard

about your short-term memory.”

Wind Blossom managed to keep her surprise from her face, but Sorka

detected it in her body language. The first Weyrwoman allowed herself a

satisfied chuckle. “What are the implications?”

Wind Blossom sighed. “I’m concerned because we have not had enough

time to transfer our practical knowledge—things that have to be learned by

doing rather than merely studying—from our eldest to our newer

generation.”

“So we’ll lose some knowledge,” Sorka observed. “It’s happened on colony

worlds before and they survived.”

Wind Blossom inclined her head in a nod. “True. But always at a cost: The

knowledge had to be relearned, usually through trial and error at a later

date. And sometimes the lack of that knowledge hit the affected colony

world with a major setback.”

“This could happen here?”

“Yes. We are particularly vulnerable because of the population loss we

suffered in the Fever Year and subsequent epidemics.”

Sorka grimaced. “I knew that and we’ve discussed this before.”

Wind Blossom allowed herself a rare smile. “But now we are discussing it

for the last time, my lady.”

Sorka snorted in derision at Wind Blossom’s use of the title. “Not you, too!”

“I figured that if I am being so honored, you would deserve no less!”

Sorka allowed her free hand to primp at her hair and smiled. “Well, it’s not

as though us distinguished ladies are not entitled.”

“Quite,” Wind Blossom agreed with a grin of her own. “But it disturbs me

because it shows that people are beginning to adopt a caste system.”

“And how does that affect the Charter?” Sorka mused.

“Sociologically, I can see why this ‘elevation,’ this endowing of the old lord

and lady titles, make sense in our young population,” Wind Blossom said.

Sorka waved her free hand dismissively. “We’ve had this conversation

before.”

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Wind Blossom said. “But it bears repeating. The

youngsters needed to relinquish a lot of control to the older colonists

simply because we older people had learned the skills needed to surive.

And survival on Pern is still touch and go—as those young people who do

not heed their elders discover with the forfeit of their lives.”

Sorka pulled her hand free of Wind Blossom’s and used both hands to

make an emphatic “hurry up” gesture.

“I can’t hurry up, Sorka, I’m thinking out loud,” Wind Blossom said. She

paused, striving to recover her train of thought.

“So Pern’s going to have a bunch of lords and ladies in the form of

Weyrleaders, Weyrwomen, and the men and women who run the holds,”

Sorka supplied when Wind Blossom’s silence stretched.

The sound of boots striding loudly up to the entrance of Sorka’s quarters

distracted them. Sorka’s bronze fire-lizard, Duke, looked up from his resting

place at the foot of her bed, looked back to Sorka for a moment, and

lowered his head again, unperturbed.

“M’hall!” Torene shouted. “Why didn’t you tell me? What’s going on? Don’t

you think I wanted to pay my respects?”

M’hall’s voice was a murmur as he strove to placate his outraged mate.

“Have you looked at the casualty reports recently?” Wind Blossom asked

Sorka once they both determined that they were not going to be

immediately interrupted.

“I have,” Sorka’s voice was pained.

“I am sorry. My mother had predicted those numbers when she first

calculated the mating cycle,” Wind Blossom said. “But with such a short life

span fighting Thread, and with the difficulties of the holders in providing

sufficient food for the colonists, maintaining a sufficient margin to support

such luxuries as education and research is quite problematic.”

Sorka nodded and gestured for the older woman to continue.

“So our society will ossify and stratify at least until the end of this Pass.”

“And then?”

Wind Blossom shook her head. “Then population pressures will force an

expansion of the Holder population and the creation of new Holds across

this continent. The lack of Thread should allow the dragonriders several

generations in which to increase their numbers and recover from this first

Pass; the dragonriders in the next Pass should be much more able to

handle the onslaught. There will be pressure in both the Weyrs and the

holds to consolidate what they have and to build conservatively. Any skills

not directly needed in expansion or retention will atrophy.”

“That’s already happening.”

“By the next Pass the skills needed to maintain our older, noncritical

equipment will have been lost.”

“Maybe before then,” Sorka agreed.

Wind Blossom nodded. “Our descendants should survive anyway.”

“Unless the wrong skills are lost,” Sorka noted.

“That is my worry, yes,” Wind Blossom agreed.

“You are an Eridani Adept, so you would worry about the ecology,” Sorka

noted. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re worried about

the dragons, aren’t you?”

“At some point there will be crossover infections from the fire-lizards to the

dragons,” Wind Blossom said.

“There are the grubs and the watch-whers—what about them?”

“Tubberman’s grubs were well-designed,” Wind Blossom said. “They are a

distinct species derived from other native species. This gives them both

the native protection and the native susceptibilities. Given that there are

other similar species, there will be a high degree of crossover, as Purman

demonstrated with his vine grubs. That actually provides a certain degree of

protection because there are multiple species for a particular disease to

assault. Any successful defense by one of the species will rapidly be

spread to the other species. Also, because we plan to plant the grubs

throughout the Northern Continent—and they have already been distributed

throughout the Southern Continent—there is a strong likelihood that any

severe parasitic assault on the grubs will devolve into a symbiosis before

all of the species has been eradicated.”

“Just like the Europeans and the Black Death,” Sorka observed.

“Yes, rather like that,” Wind Blossom agreed.

“If we’re spread across the Northern Continent that won’t be a major

problem, will it?”

“I hope not,” Wind Blossom agreed. “The effect of another epidemic

should dissipate with the added distance between settlements.”

“So the weak point in all this is the dragons, right?” Sorka said.

Wind Blossom shook her head. “It is difficult to point to just one. The

dragons or the watch-whers appear to be the most susceptible. We have

thousands or millions of grubs but only hundreds of dragons and fewer

watch-whers.”

“Are the two genetically so similar that one disease might destroy them

both?”

Wind Blossom pursed her lips. “I strived to avoid that. In fact, I engineered