IV

 

 

The first thing Axwep asked Lesh when the latter returned to Voosla—annoyed at the interruption even though Awb had done his utmost to explain its reason—was whether water was still being drawn from beyond the ridge; if so, the city should be moved.

“All our cutinates got crushed by the rockfall,” was her curt reply. “They’re not pumping anything right now, and in fact I’m not sure they’ll survive. Now what’s all this about, Eupril?”

The concentration expert sighed. “Oh, I know you suspect our people of wanting to drive you away because we have designs on this site for our own purposes, but that’s untrue and unfair! I came with proof of the danger you’re in. Carry on like you’re doing, and those toughtrees you’re planting on the peak will turn as rotten as everything else. Then what will become of your telescopes?”

“Proof? Let’s see it!” Lesh snapped.

“I’d rather present the evidence in proper order. You’re supposed to have a ripe bunch of experts here now, or so Axwep tells me. Maybe some of them will be a bit less—ah—emotionally committed. Let them be the judges.”

For a second it seemed that Lesh was going to yield to rage; then, resignedly, she slumped to four-fifths height.

“Very well, I’ll send for Drotninch and the rest. But where are we going to get the water we need if we can’t take it from across the ridge?” With sudden optimism: “Maybe from the sea! You can let us have some of your salt-precipitators!”

“They’re dead or dying,” Eupril answered. “We’ve had to order fresh stock, and it’ll be months before we have any to spare.”

Thilling, never one to miss important news, had accompanied Lesh back to the city, and stood beside Awb listening keenly. Now, however, she muttered, “This could go on for ages. Come with me. You said you’d like to be my apprentice, so let’s see if you can learn to trim a lens while I develop the images I’ve caught so far.”

Excited, he followed her down into the very core of the city, where the junqs fretted and throbbed, dreamlost perhaps in visions of their ancestral freedom. Here a small dark bower had been assigned to the picturist, which she could make entirely light-tight. Judging by the stink of juices and concentrates which blew from it when she finished work, it must be very unpleasant in there. Awb began to have second thoughts. But he willingly accepted the blade she gave him, and paid total attention when she demonstrated how to cut loose the full-grown lenses that bulged from the plants she had hung to nearby branches.

“Here are the measurements for a mid-range lens,” she said. “Try this kind first. If you spoil one I shan’t mind. If you spoil two, I’ll be disappointed. If three—well, I’ll probably part you torso from mantle! Understood?”

Awb signed yes.

“Get on with it, then. Go back where there’s better light. And take your time. I may not be through with this lot before sundown.”

 

And indeed the sun was touching the horizon when she rejoined him. He had completed two of the lenses, and the second was flawless as near as he could tell, but he waited on her verdict nervously.

“Hmm! Very good!” she pronounced, surprised and pleased. “More than I can say about the one I have on the fixer at the moment. I mean, look at these, will you?”

She flourished a selection of the sheets she had exposed in the morning. Awb examined them. To his untutored eye they appeared satisfactory, and he said so.

“No, look again! Here, here, here!”—each time with a jab of her claw. “There’s a blur, there’s a smear, there’s a streak … At first I thought the fixer must be leaking light, but I’ve checked and doublechecked. I suppose there must be a blister in the lens, but I can’t locate it.”

Awb ventured, “But then wouldn’t the blurs always reappear in the same place? And these don’t.”

Taken aback, she said, “Give those back to me … Hmm! I wonder if it could have to do with the angle of incidence of the light—No, that wouldn’t fit either. And most of the early ones, come to think of it, are all right. It’s only from about the point where we climbed up the rockfall that I started having trouble. Maybe a wind-blown drop on the lens, but I was careful to shield it … Oh, I can’t figure it out, unless …” She fixed him with a stern glare. “You didn’t drop the leaf-pack by any chance?”

“No, I promise I didn’t!” Awb cried, recoiling in alarm. “And if I had, surely the damage would show on one edge or one corner?”

“Ah … Yes, of course it would. I’m sorry.” Thilling clattered her mandibles in confusion. “This makes no sense at all, you know. It’s as though some trace of light—very bright light—got through the pack-wrap, and …”

“A fault in the making,” Awb offered.

“I suppose so.” All of a sudden she sounded weary. “But I never had trouble with my supplier before. I’ve been trying not to arrive at that conclusion, because if all the leaf-packs I have with me are faulty, I might as well not have come.”

Startled to find himself in the unprecedented situation of having to reassure an adult, Awb said, “Please, you’re making too much of this. As far as I could tell, those images were fine until you pointed out the flaws. Nobody is likely to notice what worries you so much, except maybe another picturist.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Thilling sighed. “Let’s go and eat something. I’ve had enough for one bright, or even two.”

 

Because the scientists were still arguing, Axwep had suggested that Lesh and her senior colleagues, along with Eupril and some of her companions, should eat this evening on Voosla, where the food was better than on shore. However, although she made it clear that she could not repeat the invitation regularly, because any floating city was in a delicate balance with its inhabitants and the best efforts of the giqs could never gather as much nourishment as she collected for herself in open water, there were some who instantly accused the mayor of wasting public resources. Wasn’t it bad enough to have brought these scores of passengers all this way?—that was their cry, and they took no account of the fact that Voosla had been specially replanted with new high-yielding secondary growths developed at the University of Chisp, which would continue paying her back long after the return voyage.

Prominent among those who complained, of course, was Phrallet. Axwep had finally lost patience with her, and ordered that she be forbidden access to the prime food zone. Tagging along behind Thilling, Awb managed to steal in and join the company, hoping desperately as he nibbled a bit here and a bit there that his budder would not get to hear.

Finding herself next to one of Eupril’s fellow quarry-workers, whom she had seen earlier but not spoken with, Thilling said, “What’s all this about a poison, then? Why can’t it be a disease? Name of Thilling, by the way.”

“Name of Hy,” said the other. “Well, it’s because of the way it acts in living tissue, of course. Ever hear of a disease organism that simply killed the cells around it, without spreading, or reseeding itself at a distant site? Oh, we’ve carried out all the tests we’re equipped for, and we even managed to get our claws on the corpses of some of the natives. They don’t seem to care about their dead, just leave ’em to rot. And in every single case we’ve found necrotic tissue, either in the digestive tract or quite often in the nerve-pith, and if you take the dead center—excuse me!—and triturate it and apply microscopic drops to a suitable test medium, like the partly flayed rind of a cutinate … Well, what would you expect to see?”

Thilling frowned with her entire mantle. “A whole series of infection-sites, obviously.”

“That’s exactly what we thought. Wrong. One and only ever one new patch of necrosis. The rest is unaffected.”

Chomping solemnly, Thilling pondered that awhile. At last she heaved a sigh.

“It doesn’t sound any more like a poison than a disease, in that case, does it? Still, it’s not my specialty, so I have to take your word. But I always thought poisons worked by spreading throughout the system.”

Awb was glad to hear her say that; it meant his own main question was likely to be answered.

“So they do, for the most part. I’ve been dealing with poisons much of my life, because you never know, when you feed new ore to a concentration-culture, whether it’s going to survive on it. But I never saw the like before: a poison so lethal that a particle too small to see with a microscope can kill cells over and over. It doesn’t dissolve, it doesn’t disperse, it just sits there and kills cells!”

“Thilling!”

They all turned, to find Drotninch approaching.

“You are coming with us to check out this hot stream tomorrow, aren’t you? Yes? Good! We’re going to leave at first bright. Lesh is working out how many mounts can be spared. Will you need a whole one for your equipment?”

With a wry twist of her mantle Thilling answered, “Not a whole one. I have a volunteer helper now.”