Heritage of Flight (28 page)

"We've asked for new supplies of all the food served at that damned feast of Beneatha's delivered here. Fortunately I took a lot of notes by hand,” Rafe said.

Pauli sniffed. After the incredible luxury of uninterrupted sleep, her senses were as keen as the edge Dave ben Yehuda honed on a bush knife. “What's that I smell?” she asked. “It's sour."

"That's a new one,” Rafe said. “Did more foods turn up while I was out?"

"Just that.” The tech pointed at a sack from which spilled flour.

Pauli walked over to examine it, put out a finger to touch it, then drew it away and wiped it on her coverall. She was—it had been a settlement joke when they still had things to laugh about—barely an adequate cook, but even she knew that flour should be fine and powdery. This sample was discolored, and had an oily feel.

"Let's see the grain from which they make this flour,” said Rafe. The assistant hoisted a sack onto the lab table and opened it. “It's a rye-wheat blend,” he said. “The grains are modified for frontier use."

Rafe dug in a gloved hand and withdrew a handful, sniffed at it, then ordered, “Bring me a lab animal."

Pauli winced, knowing how the other beasts had died. Rafe shrugged helpless apology at her, opened the cage, and held out his hand. But when he offered the beast the flour and the grain, it backed away, its hackles up.

"It smells something bad,” Pauli breathed. “But what?"

Rafe bent to examine the grain again. “This is ... look at these seeds,” he said.

Pauli leaned closer. “They're dark ... rotten,” she ventured.

"That's a fungus,” Rafe told her. “Jared, try to find out if botany section has samples of these grains still on the stalk. Yes, you can tell Beneatha I think we're onto something. In the meantime,” Rafe turned, automatically heading for the computer, and swore. He sighed. “How am I going to identify this fungus? I've gotten too damned dependent on the computer."

To be trapped, stymied, because the computer had failed! In that moment, she could understand Pryor's howl of rage at frontier conditions.

Beneatha ran in, stalks of grain in her trembling hands. Even to Pauli's untrained eyes, her skin had the waxiness she had noted in people entering the early stages of the madness, and her eyes were very bright.

"You should be in bed,” she said. “Don't make me order you."

"Don't order me,” Beneatha said, her voice reedy. She raised one hand to her throat as if she found breathing difficult. “I had one seizure, but the medcrew says I had it easy. I have to help,” she added. “Please let me. You have to, or I think I'll go crazy again."

Rafe shook his head at Pauli and took the grain from the woman. Delicately he reached for an ear of rye and examined it.

"It seems blighted,” he observed. “Bent and oblong. And look at this color? What rye have you ever seen that's purple"

Pauli watched as Rafe examined several more stalks of grain. Each, the rye especially, bore the marks he had noted: a distinguishing violet color, and the bent, oblong shape.

The xenobotanist shook her head. “I'd have noticed anything unusual,” she stated.

"Then you'd better look at this,” said Rafe. He tilted the bag onto the lab table, and Beneatha bent over it.

Almost half the stalks in that sack bore the violet taint of fungus.

"It wasn't like this when we harvested it,” she said.

"It was rainy this summer,” Rafe said. “And we've never tried these particular strains in Cynthian soil. But you're the xenobotanist. If this were a classroom—hell, Beneatha, if we were in a lab on Earth—what would you call this violet stuff?"

Beneatha shook her head. Her face ticced, then went calm as she thought. Instinctively she turned toward the nearest keyboard.

"Stop wishing for the computer!” Rafe said. “It's down, and I don't have time to reprogram it. Think, Beneatha! Once we all had memories, not hardware. We need your memory!"

"Claviceps purpurea,"
she muttered. “That's what it looks like. And if this sack is any indication, then our entire grain supply—"

Rafe's eyes were very, very sad. “Our grain supply is contaminated with
claviceps purpurea
. Ergot. Now, I do remember about that ergot; there was a man in class with me who had a ghoulish fascination with it. A concentration of 0.05 percent of ergot is enough to produce symptoms of poisoning. And we have—what? Let's estimate that 40 percent of the grain in this sample is contaminated with it."

"So there's more than enough there,” Pauli spoke carefully, “to turn sane, hard-working people into screaming, dancing vandals.”
I didn't eat any bread, she
remembered.
I'm not going to run crazy and abandon my people, my husband, my child. God, what a bitch I am to be relieved. Let's see, though. Who else at the feast didn't eat the bread? They can be released for duty right now.

"That's right,” said Rafe. “Here's the source of the madness. Ergot is very rich in alkaloids that paralyze the motor nerves of the sympathetic nervous system, and affects how the body uses adrenaline. Normally, when you're frightened, adrenaline makes your blood pressure rise. You have more energy for the short term, your nerves are sharper, and you can run or fight, if you have to.

"But if you have ergot in your system, then adrenaline expands the blood vessels, and blood pressure drops. Since the ergot also causes muscles to go into spasm—including the muscles of blood vessels—you can get thrombosis and every kind of cramps. Bloodflow slows to the extremities, which chill and look bruised. In some severe cases—like those poor bastards you saw—gangrene sets in."

"The summer was wet,” Beneatha said. “No one thought anything of it, except to thank God we didn't have to irrigate. Ergot? That's stuff from the Dark Ages, when people danced before plaster saints. Why not ask me to believe in witch doctors?"

Rafe's voice was very gentle as he handed her back the grain. “There's something else,” he told her. “Sometimes the ergot mutates. Then you have not just ergot, but lysergic acid, tasteless, colorless, and even more powerful. That's what's giving you the madness, the flashback hallucinations, even poor little ‘Cilla's religious visions."

"Why didn't we find traces of it in their bodies?” Pauli asked.

"Because 95 percent of any dose is absorbed within five minutes after ingestion,” Rafe told her. “The consequences, though..."

"Do people ever recover?"

"Instinctively Dr. Pryor used adrenaline—epinphrine, she called it—to treat the hallucinations. But the adrenaline only intensified the symptoms of ergotism, made the patients even wilder, and might even have caused them to burn out. But the tranquilizers calmed that. With luck, there won't be much permanent damage; though"—he shook his head—"I don't see much chance for the women who were pregnant to give birth to healthy children."

Beneatha hid her face in her hands.

"There's got to be some drug that's a specific antagonist for lysergic acid. Thing is"—he shook his head—since it's almost never used, I don't know what the drug is; and we can't ask Pryor. If only I had the database up..."

"I'll check the grain,” Beneatha said, her thin voice moan. “If it's contaminated, I'll burn it!” She dashed out of the lab.

Rafe shook his head. “She's probably right to do that.

"Does this mean we can never grow crops here? asked Pauli. She had grown very still. If Rafe said “yes, it was their death sentence.

"No, only that after a wet summer, or a cold winter, we must examine them very carefully. If Beneatha says that the grain looked fine when she harvested it, I see no reason to doubt her word. But something—something in the soil, something in the grain itself, or our storage methods—caused it to turn bad.

"The problem is, we need the computer to find out.'

Pauli paced back and forth. She felt as if she could smell the poison in the grain, which seemed so harmless The violet of the fungus infection was even a rather attractive color. “Computer...” she mused. “Thorn There's communications gear up in the caves. Didn't we have a terminal there too?"

Rafe leaned over the table to give her a hug. His arms felt so strong, so good, to Pauli. For a moment she clung to him, savoring the closeness. Then she pulled away.

"Then that's it,” she said. “Someone has to climb up there and check the computer. It's funny: right before poor Beneatha's
karamu
. I promised to send someone to check on Halgerd. Now it looks like I'll have to go myself."

Rafe glared at her. “Don't argue,” she said, holding up a hand. “I'm no good around a lab, but I have been up to the caves—"

"As have most of the people here, remember?"

"Yes, but can they fly back? Who else knows how to use Borodin's gliders? Are you going to send Lohr? Even if you trusted him around Halgerd, do you think he'd abandon the littlests? He's terrified for them. It's like the bad old times on Wolf IV have come back to snatch away the happiness they had just started to trust.

"No, Lohr's not going. And you're needed here. You know how to work with this ... this ergot. What do I know, Rafe? I can climb, I can fly—and I can deal with Thorn Halgerd without wanting to shoot him where he stands.” She held out her hands to her husband, who stood with his back half-turned on her.

"Rafe, you can keep order here as well as I. I'm the only one well enough trained but expendable right now to go up the mountain in winter, and you know it. But I can't do it if you're angry. Rafe, I need your support!"

Rafe crossed the table and held her close again. “You and your damned risks. I didn't want to love a pilot,” he murmured. “I was so glad when you were stationed here. And now ... you've found yourself a whole new set of dangers. You go, Pauli. But you'd just better come back safe. You see, you're right about every point except one: I can keep order. That much is true. But the only reason people listen to me is that I have you to back me."

Pauli trudged up toward the foothills, a pack laden with the dismantled wings of her glider awkward on her back. If she hurried, she could climb in daylight. Sealed into her flightsuit were copies of Rafe's research notes, anything that might help her use the computer they had left in the caves.

"Don't ... don't forget Thorn,” Pryor had said, breaking off to cough. “You know how young he is .. but the mind ... potentially he's got the best brain on the planet...” Her blue eyes filled with tears, which Pauli didn't think the spasms of coughing had brought on.

"Tell him..."

"Captain, this is long enough,” a medical tech warned Pauli. “Now, Doctor—” He slapped an antibiotic patch on her fragile throat.

"Reverse vampires,” Pryor husked. “Damn, that stuff is scarce! Keep it till we need it!"

Pauli helped settle the older woman against the pillow that propped her to help her breathe, despite the fluid in her chest. “We need it now, Alicia,” she said. “If you die of pneumonia, what will become of us?"

"You'll ... think of something..."

"If you don't shut up,” Pauli threatened, forcing a smile, “I'll tell Thorn Halgerd you're sick."

Pryor's sudden obedience turned the false smile real, and let her maintain it as she left the clinic. Rafe was waiting outside.

"I cached the pack at the camp perimeter,” he told her.

"For God's sake, Rafe, tell them I'm sick, tell them I'm sleeping, or that I've gone to check on something—but don't tell people that I've left!” she asked. “I won't have time to see Serge before I leave, either. Will you kiss him for me?"

Rafe hugged her again. “Go now,” he said. “We can't take any more of this."

She raised her eyes toward the distant, misty cliffs, tempted to fly instead of climbing up there. Don't risk it, she told herself.
Once you get some answers and transmit them, maybe you can fly back.

What would she see up there? Pryor's fears for the Secess’ renegade had affected her more than she wanted to admit. He might be sick, or dead up there
in which case, I'll give him a decent burial somehow,
she told herself. But if he was there, would he be an ally or an enemy? She hoped she wouldn't have to use the weapon heavy on her hip. Perhaps the weight Halgerd had placed on her—captain, a human born, not cloned as he had been, even the fact that she had given birth—would let her handle him.

He had gone up into the hills to be alone with himself for the first time in a short life every bit as deprived as those of the refugee children. The Secess’ had made him a thing, a killing machine interfaced with other killing machines who looked like him, and whom he loved as much as any creature as starved for humanity could love anything. But they had died. Unaccountably, he had failed to die with them, failed to betray the enemies he found on Cynthia to the creators who had so abused him.

Pryor hoped to turn him, hoped that whatever had drawn his “father” to her side might serve to turn the cloned son from his exile back to humankind for the first time. Cloned from one of the most intractable minds ever to terrorize a research university, Halgerd was potentially a strong ally. If he could be turned. If he could be convinced that he too was human and had a stake in the dying settlement.

What if I tell him that Pryor is sick? At her age, people die of pneumonia.
As Pryor knew, which was the only reason she consented to have the valuable antibiotics used on her. She knew her worth to Pauli and to the settlement. That was one tactic she could use. Another was the danger to the children, to Lohr who had had every reason to kill him, but who had saved his life.