17

 

Shivering from the speed with which she had waked, Pauli strode outside and found half the crew who had been detached from the Amherst for duty here waiting for her. She also found catastrophe. Smeared across one of the central storage domes was a crude representation of a Cynthian, its huge wings daubed black, its jaws flowing a crimson that ran down to stain the snow like sacrificial debris before a bloody altar.

Smoke rose from the remnants of an outlying storehouse, adding an eerie cast to the deep gray sky. Much of the compound lay in darkness; rocks had shattered many of the greenish lights.

In the graveside glow of those remaining lay, writhed, or danced many people who clearly belonged in quarantine. Some should have been sedated or restrained. Some cried out in pain, their faces twisting horribly, while others tried to curl around on bellies as distended as those of women about to give birth. One or two people had bloodstained bandages swathing what should have been hands or feet.

Pauli pointed at them. “Those people should be cared for!” she declared, unable to keep the sick disgust from chilling her voice. “Have there been any deaths? What's happened?"

"Only two deaths so far,” one of Alicia Pryor's assistants spoke up. “But a whole complex of new symptoms."

"Where's Dr. Pryor?” Pauli interrupted.

"Down with fever. No, it's not the madness. She caught it from that dive into the river. The rest of us

...Captain, we've been working till we drop. We drafted as many able-bodied as we could, but then that"—he pointed at the twisting, grimacing figures—"started."

"What about the ones with the bandages?” asked Pauli. “What happened to their limbs?"

"Spontaneous amputation,” said the assistant. “About twenty-four hours ago, each man complained of burning on his skin, and stabbing pains in the extremities, which turned black, gangrenous. Finally—you can see that there was very little bleeding. No infection, either.” He seemed bemused by the cases.

Pauli stifled an insane impulse to spit, to turn her face away, to hide indoors until the last of this unholy settlement died, and she could die too. One night's sleep, she thought, because they forced me to take it; and this is what happens! “So, not only couldn't medcrew care for our sick,” she made herself say, “but the rest of you couldn't protect vital installations."

"Ma'am!” interrupted one of the crewmembers. “These aren't poor sick people; they're mad—criminally insane, maybe. Only some of ‘em scream and hop about. Others—you see that moth on the wall, don't you? They're crazy too: quiet, mean crazy, though. Some of them have taken the law into their own hands, and sentenced us all to die. Request permission to break out sidearms, ma'am."

"Permission denied,” Pauli snapped. “I'm not having you use weapons on—"

"These civs are crazy!” shouted a crewwoman who wore security insignia and should have been more stable.

"They're not civs, damn you!” Pauli interrupted, her voice rising into a scream of rage that warmed her as nothing else could have done. “We don't have civs and crew here anymore. We have sick and well; sane and crazy—and right now I'm having trouble telling which is which. Those people are your fellow settlers, lady: and you will damned well remember that!"

The woman tried to meet Pauli's eyes, succeeded bravely for an instant, then glanced down. “Yes, ma'am."

"All right, then. Now, I'm going to get the reports of the techs and scientists who've been working while the crew I thought I could trust plotted violence against their neighbors. And when I get back here, I want to see that ... that artwork gone, and those people decently restrained and tended. Is that understood?"

The crew's “Yes, ma'ams” were roared so loudly that the people twitching under the sodium lamps whirled around to take notice. One of them laughed, the shrill, nerve-shattering laughter that Pauli had heard too often in the past days. Breathing hard, she strode over to the labs. For once, the tall Rafe had trouble keeping up with her.

"Didn't know you had it in you,” he murmured. He didn't mean the fast pace, either.

"Neither did I.” Now that she'd tongue-lashed her crew, guilt began to creep out from somewhere in her belly to chill the rest of her.

"Fine. Don't make a habit out of it."

Rafe slapped a hand against a palm lock bearing the signs of hasty installation, and the door irised. The first thing Pauli noticed was the computer. Its hum was stilled, and the lights of its drives were dark.

"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.

What are these tactics? Pauli thought. We're human, he's human. Let it go at that. She quickened her pace, struggling up the slope, which grew increasingly rocky and increasingly steep. Soon she would be climbing, not hiking.

She brought up against a boulder so quickly that it forced a grunt out of her, then froze, listening. That scuffling crash, what was it? An animal? Her hand slipped down to her blaster, and she released the catch of the holster. There it came again. Not that she knew much about the habits of predators—other than humans—but she didn't think that a hunting beast would make that much noise. Unless it was sick.

She drew her weapon, and crept forward.

A spatter of pebbles fell, and something heavier with them. That was a human voice Pauli heard, crying out in pain and frustration. Who had seen her leave and been able to outpace her into the foothills? she wondered. And why would someone do that?

She set her weapon on low power and began to stalk whoever had cried out. It was hard to stalk noiselessly, while struggling not to fall on the scree, or to let boots scrape against the rocks. Fortunately, her quarry made even more noise than she. Up ahead now, Pauli girl ... there ... one last boulder...

A wail of pain and sorrow floated back to her and made her quicken her pace. Rounding the last boulder, Pauli saw Beneatha crouched at the base of a rock, her booted foot caught in a narrow crack. As the xenobotanist saw her, she laid her head down and wept.

"Why don't you ask what I'm doing here?” Beneatha demanded. Her dark face was coated with dust, except where tears and sweat had left clean black streaks.

Pauli glanced past the woman at the rocks. Another hundred or so meters ahead some of them were high enough to be classified as cliffs.

She sat down on her heels beside her old adversary. “Looks like I got here in time to stop you from doing it,” she remarked, her voice calm as she'd trained it to be. “The river—I set a watch on the bank where Ramon..."

Beneatha turned her face away and laid it against the cold rock.

"I'm sorry,” Pauli said firmly. “But if you're stupid enough to plan to join him, you had it coming."

"You know better than that.” The woman's voice crackled with anger. She turned her head slowly, and Pauli was sure that she was gauging the distance between her hands and Pauli's blaster.

"Don't try it,” she warned her, and holstered the weapon. “All right, so you don't want to throw yourself into the river where your friend died. But you certainly look like you were planning to throw yourself off one of these rocks until you got your foot caught."

Beneatha spat a series of words at her. “Good. Now you want to kill me, not yourself. That's a step in the right direction. Which, in case you'd forgotten, is back down toward that settlement. Where they need you."

"How can I go back there?” the xenobotanist cried. “I'm the one that's destroyed it."

"On purpose? You actually set out to spray that fungus on the fields? You wanted to strike half the population crazy? You tried to do that?"

"Don't overact Yeager,” snapped Beneatha. “You know what this place means to me. You know how hard I've worked to make it run, to help these children have a new life, to have one myself..."

Pauli raised an eyebrow and looked at the nearby cliffs.

Fresh tears streaked down Beneatha's face. “I can't forgive myself. I meant the Kwanzaa feast to celebrate our new future here—and look what it's done! How can I live with this?"

The sun was rising in the sky, and Pauli had a long climb ahead of her. She was conscious of a furious aggravation, and her back ached from squatting down.

"How do you think I handle it?” she demanded. “Something got by you, as it's done for centuries. But look what I did, what I planned. A whole race of people, wiped out! I planned it, and I'd do it again if I had to. You remember, you had plenty to say about the heartless, ruthless, racist military."

Beneatha's head drooped. “How do you handle it? I can't believe you don't care."

"That's the first sensible thing you've said since your feast turned sour!” Pauli declared. “I have to go up to the caves now to use the computer there. Which means I have to face a man I refused to kill. Then I have to come back. If I'm real lucky, I'll have something worth coming back to. You think I wouldn't rather join you in a nice quick jump off the nearest cliff?"

All the fear, all the uncertainty, and the months of guilty frustration that Beneatha's principles inflicted on Pauli came bubbling up in an angry brew. “Dammit, you've been a thorn in my side long enough!” Pauli shouted. “You've fought at every point, you've been self-righteous, obstructive—and the minute you make a mistake, you want to take yourself out. I had you down for a pain, maybe an enemy, woman. I didn't have you pegged for a coward."

Beneatha glared murder at her. Good. Just a little more.

Pauli unholstered her sidearm, and began methodically to burn away at the rock that imprisoned Beneatha's foot.

"Don't jar my hand, or you won't be able to get as far as the cliffs,” she said. The rock crumbled under the fine red beam. Despite the cold, she felt herself sweating. What if Beneatha brought a rock down on her skull and took the gun?

The last of the rock chipped away, freeing Beneatha's foot. The boot was scratched, but not punctured. “See if you can put weight on it."

Beneatha braced herself against a boulder, then, cautiously, stood free. “I can manage,” she said stiffly.

"For how long?” Pauli asked the question flatly, with none of the anger and sarcasm she had used before. “Long enough to get to the cliffs? Or to get back home?"

Wearily she checked the blaster's charge, and slid it back into its holster. Beneatha was wearing her out, and the longer she stood here, the more formidable the climb to the cliffs looked. “You might want to think of something else,” Pauli suggested. “If you really want to punish yourself, what's the worst thing you can do? Not kill yourself, certainly. But sentence yourself to life, life among the very people you injured. Do you want me to tell you that? Hell, I'll sentence you to live if you want,” she took Beneatha by the shoulders and held her at arm's length.

"What do you think I've told myself?"

Beneatha bent and examined her foot again. “If I take the boot off, my foot will probably swell."

"Probably."

"I think I can hobble back to camp, though. They'll strap it for me there."

Pauli shut her eyes to hide tears of relief.

"I've got a comm, if you want to use it."

Beneatha shook her head. “Better not. Let ‘em think I had a flashback, wandered off, and hurt myself. I'll say I blacked out, and when I came to, I limped on back. They'll put me under observation but"—she sighed—"it's better than admitting the truth."

Pauli held out a hand to the other woman.

"Don't think that this makes me approve of what you've done—or what you may do. Right now, I don't ever want to see your face again."

"I've never had your approval, so I won't miss it,” Pauli said. “You can go right ahead and hate me all you want, Beneatha. You're not alone. But at least you'll be alive to do it."

The xenobotanist glared at her. “Why do I feel like I've been tricked?” she muttered.

Pauli sighed and adjusted her pack. It wasn't getting any lighter. “Do you really think I'm that smart?” she asked over her shoulder.

With any luck, that parting shot would keep Beneatha simmering with the fury and chagrin that would save her life all the way back to camp.