Moreta - Dragonlady of Pern

CHAPTER IX

Capiam could not remain asleep, though he tried to burrow back into the crazy fever-dreams as a more acceptable alternative to the miseries total awareness brought. Something impinged on his semiconsciousness and forced him awake. Something he had to do? Yes, something he had to do. He blinked bleary, crusted eyes until he could focus on the timepiece. Nine of the clock. «Oh, it's me. Time for my medicine.»

A healer couldn't even be sick without responding to his professional habits. He hauled himself up on one elbow to reach for the skin on which he was recording his progress through the disease but a coughing spasm interrupted him. The cough seemed to throw tiny knives at his throat. Such spasms were exceedingly painful, and Capiam disliked them even more than the headache, the fever, and the boneache.

Cautiously, lest he provoke another coughing fit, he dragged the note case onto his bed and fumbled for the writing tool.

«Only the third day?» His illness seemed to have made each twenty-four hours an eternity of minor miseries. That day was mercifully three quarters done.

He could take little comfort in noticing that his fever had abated, that the headache was a dullness that could be endured. He placed the fingers of his right hand lightly on the arterial pulse in the left wrist. Still faster than normal, but slowing. He made an appropriate notation and added a description of the hardy, dry, unproductive cough. As if the note was the cue, he was wracked with another fit that tore at his throat and upper chest like a tunnel snake. He was forced to lie in a fetal position, knees up to his chin to relieve the muscle spasms that accompanied the cough. When it had passed, he lay back, sweating and exhausted. He roused enough to take his dose of willow salic.

He must prescribe a cough remedy for himself. What would be the most effective suppressant? He touched his painful throat. What must the lining of his throat resemble? «This is most humiliating,» he told himself, his voice hoarse. He vowed to be far more sympathetic to the afflicted in the future.

The drum tower began to throb and the message stunned him for condolences were being transmitted from Lord Tolocamp, what was he doing in Fort Hold when he should have remained at Ruatha? to the Weyrieaders of Telgar and Igen for the deaths of … Capiam writhed on the bed, convulsed by coughing that left him weak and panting. He missed the names of the dead riders. Dead riders! Pern could ill afford to lose any of its dragonriders.

Why, oh why hadn't he been called in earlier? Surely nine people in the same Sea Hold falling sick was an unusual enough occurrence to have warranted even a courtesy report to the main Healer Hall? Would he have appreciated the significance?

«Capiam?» Desdra's query was low enough not to have aroused him had he been asleep.

«I'm awake, Desdra.» His voice was a hoarse caw.

«You heard the drums?»

«Part of the message.»

«The wrong part from the sound of you.»

«Don't come any closer! How many riders died?»

«The toll is now fifteen at Igen, two at Ista, and eight at Telgar.»

Capiam could think of nothing to say.

«How many are ill, then?» His voice faltered.

«They report recoveries,» Desdra said in a crisper voice. «Nineteen at Telgar, fourteen at Igen, five at Ista, two at Fort are all convalescing.»

«And at Hall and Hold?» He dreaded her answer, clenching his fists to bear the staggering totals.

«Fortine has taken charge, Boranda and Tirone are assisting.» The finality in her tone told Capiam he would not elicit any further information.

«Why are you in my room?» he demanded testily. «You know.»

«I know that you have reached the coughing stage and I have prepared a soothing syrup.»

«How do you know what I would prescribe for my condition?»

«The fool who treats himself has only a fool for a patient.»

Capiam wanted to laugh at her impudence, but the attempt turned into one of the hideously painful, long coughs and, by the time it had passed, tears rolled down his cheeks.

«A nice blend of comfrey, sweetener, and a touch of numbweed to deaden the throat tissues. It ought to inhibit the cough.» She deposited the steaming mug on his table and was swiftly across the room by the door.

«You're a brave and compassionate woman, Desdra,» he said, ignoring her sarcastic snort.

«I am also cautious. If at all possible, I would prefer to avoid the agonies which I have observed you enduring.»

«Am I such a difficult patient?» Capiam asked plaintively, seeking more consolation than he could find in a mug of an odd-tasting syrup.

«What cannot be cured must be endured,» Desdra replied.

«By which unkind words I assume that the Records have not given up either an account or a remedy.»

«Master Tirone joined the search with all his apprentices, journeymen, and masters. They proceed backward by the decade for two hundred Turns and forward from the previous Pass.»

Capiam's groan quickly degenerated into a spasm that again left him gasping for breath. Each of the two hundred bones in his body conspired to ache at once. He heard Desdra rummaging among his bottles and vials.

«I saw an aromatic salve in here. Rubbed on your chest it might relieve you, since you spilled most of that potion.»

«I'll rub it on myself, woman!»

«Indeed you will. Here it is! Phew! That'll clear your sinuses.»

«They don't need it.» Capiam could smell the aromatic from his bed. Odd how the olfactory senses became acute in this disease. Exhausted by the last cough spasm, he lay still. «Are you experiencing the severe lassitude as well as the dry cough?»

«Lassitude?» Capiam dared not laugh but the word was totally inadequate to describe the total inertia that gripped his usually vigorous body. «Extreme lassitude! Total inertia! Complete incapacity! I can't even drink from a mug without spilling half of it. I have never been so tired in my life.»

«Oh, then, you're proceeding well on the course of the disease.»

«How consoling!» He had just enough energy for sarcasm. «If,» and her emphasis teased him, «your notes are correct, you should be improving by tomorrow. That is, if we can keep you in your bed and prevent secondary infections.»

«How comforting.»

«It should be.»

His head was beginning to buzz again from the willow salic. He was about to commend Desdra on the efficacy of her cough mixture when a totally unprovoked tickle bent him double to cough.

«I'll leave you to get on with it then,» Desdra said cheerily.

He waved urgently for her to leave the room, then put both hands on his throat as if he could find some grip to ease the pain. He hoped that Desdra was being careful. He didn't want her to catch the illness. Why hadn't those wretched seamen left that animal to drown? Look to what depths curiosity brought a man!

Deep in the plains of Keroon and far from any hold, a granite butte had been forced to the surface during some primeval earthquake. The landmark had often been used as an objective in weyrling training flights. Just then it was the site of an unprecedented meeting of the Weyrleaders.

The great bronze dragons arrived almost simultaneously at the site, coming out of between full lengths clear of each other's wing tip, utilizing their uncanny perceptions of proximity. They settled to the ground in an immense circle at the southern face of the butte. The bronze riders dismounted, closing to a slightly smaller circle, each rider keeping a wary distance from those on either side until K'dren of Benden, who had an active sense of humor under any conditions, chuckled.

«None of us would be here if we were sickening,» he said, nodding to S'peren who had come in Sh'gall's place.

«Too many of us have,» L'bol of Igen replied. His eyes were red with weeping.

M'tani of Telgar scowled and clenched his fists.

«We have shared each loss,» S'ligar of the High Reaches said with grave courtesy, inclining his head first to L'bol, M'tani, and F'gal of Ista. The other two bronze riders murmured their condolences. «We have gathered here to take emergency measures which discretion keeps from the drum and which our queens are unable to relay,» S'ligar went on. As the oldest of the Weyrieaders, he took command of the meeting. He was also the biggest, topping the other bronze riders by a full head, and the breadth of him through chest and shoulders would have made two of most ordinary men. He was oddly gentle, never taking advantage of his size. «As our Weyrwomen have pointed out, we cannot admit the losses and numbers of the ill that the Weyrs have sustained. There is too much anxiety in the Holds as it is. They are suffering far more than we are.»

«That's no consolation!» F'gal snapped. «I don't know how many times I warned Lord Fitatric that overcrowding hold and cot would have dire consequences.»

«None of us had this in mind,» K'dren said. «However, none of us had to run see the curious new beastie from the sea. Or attend two Gathers in one day.»

«Enough, K'dren,» S'ligar said. «Cause and effect are now irrelevant. Our purpose here is to discuss how best to insure that the dragonriders of Pern fulfill their purpose.»

«That purpose is dying out, S'ligar,» L'bol cried. «What's the purpose of flying Thread to protect empty holds? Why preserve nothing at the risk of our skins and our dragons? We can't even defend ourselves from this plague!» L'bol's dragon crooned and extended his head toward his distressed rider. The other bronzes rumbled comfortingly and moved restlessly on the warm sand. L'bol scrubbed at his face, leaving white runnels where tears had wet his cheeks.

«We will fly Thread because that is the one service we can provide the sick in the Holds. They must not fear the incursions of Thread from without!» S'ligar said in his deep gentle unhurried voice. «We have labored too long as a Craft to surrender Pern now to the ravages of Thread because of a menace we can't see. Nor do I believe that this disease, however fiercely it spreads, however ruthless it appears, can overcome us who have for hundreds of Turns defended ourselves from Thread. A disease can be cured by medicines, defeated. And one day we will fly Thread to its source and defeat it.»

«K'lon, Rogeth's rider, has recovered from the plague,» S'peren announced in the silence following S'ligar's statement. «K'lon says that Master Capiam is on the mend.»

«Two?» L'bol flung the number derisively back at S'peren. «I've fifteen dead, one hundred and forty sick at Igen. Some holds in the mideast no longer respond to their drum codes. And what of the holds which have no drums to make known their needs and the toll of their dead?»

«Capiam on the mend?» S'ligar said, seizing at that hope. «I have every faith in that man's ability to lick this. And more than those two must have recovered. Keroon Beasthold still drums, and they were the hardest hit by the plague. High Reaches and Fort Weyrs have sickness, it is true, but the holds of Tillek, High Reaches, Nabol, and Crom have none.» S'ligar tried to catch L'bol's despairing gaze. «We have only seven Turns to go before this Pass is over. I have lived under the scourge of Thread all my life.» Suddenly he straightened his shoulders, his face severe. «I haven't fought Thread as a dragonrider for nearly fifty Turns to quit now over some fever and aches!»

«Nor I,» K'dren added quickly, taking a step toward the High Readier. «I made a vow, you know,» he gave a short laugh, «to Kuzuth, that we would see this Pass through.» K'dren's tone turned brisk. «There's Fall tomorrow at Keroon, and it has become the responsibility of all the Weyrs of Pern. Benden has twelve full wings to fly.»

«Igen has eight!» Anger brought L'bol out of his despondency to glare fiercely at K'dren. Timenth, his dragon, bugled defiance, rearing back onto his haunches and spreading his wings. The other bronzes reacted in surprise, sounding off. Two extended their wings and gazed skyward in alarm. «Igen will rise to Fall!»

«Of course your Weyr will rise,» S'ligar said reassuringly, raising his arm in an incomplete gesture of comfort. «But our queens know how many Igen riders are ill. Fall has become the problem of all the Weyrs, as K'dren said. And we all supply the muster from our healthy riders. Until this epidemic is over, the Weyrs must consolidate. Full wings are essential since in many places, we shall be deprived of ground crews for close encounters with Thread.»

S'ligar took a thick roll of hide from his pouch. With a deft flick of his wrist, the roll fell into five separate sections on the sand. Mindful to make no physical contact with the other Leaders, S'ligar slid a section to each of the other bronze riders.

«Here are the names of my wingleaders and seconds, since naming people seems to be a deficiency in our queens. I've listed my riders in order of their competence for assuming command of either wing or Weyr. B'lerion is my choice of a personal successor.» Then a rare and brilliant smile crossed the High Reacher's face. «With Falga's complete accord.»

K'dren roared with laughter. «Didn't she suggest him?»

S'ligar regarded K'dren with mild reproof. «It is the wise Leader who anticipates his Weyrwoman's mind.»

«Enough!» M'tani called irritably. His dark eyes were angry under heavy black brows. He threw his lists down to join S'ligar's. «T'grel has always fancied himself a Leader. He reminded me that he hadn't been to either of the Gathers so I'll reward his virtue.»

«You're fortunate,» K'dren said with no humor in his voice. He added his lists to the others. «L'vin, W'ter, and H'grave attended both Gathers. I've recommended M'gent. He may be young but he's got a natural flair for leadership that one doesn't often see. He wasn't at the Gathers.»

F'gal seemed unwilling to lose the sheets he unwound. «It's all on these,» he said wearily, letting them flutter to the sand.

«Leri suggested me,» S'peren said with a self-deprecating shrug, «though it's likely Sh'gall will make a change when he recovers. He was too fevered to be told of this meeting so Leri drew up the lists.»

«Leri would know.» K'dren nodded. He went down on his haunches to pick up the five slips of hide, aligning them at the top before rolling. «I shall be pleased if these can gather dust in my weyr.» He stuffed the roll in his pouch. «It is, however, a comfort to have made plans, to have considered contingencies.»

«Saves a lot of unnecessary worry,» S'ligar agreed, bending to scoop up the scraps into his long-fingered hand. «I also recommend that we use entire wings as replacements, rather than send individuals as substitutes. Riders get used to their wingleaders and seconds.» The recommendation found favor with the others. «Full wings or substitutes is not the real worry.» L'bol glowered at the lists as he assembled them in his hand. «It's the lack of ground crews.»

K'dren snorted. «No worry. Not when the queens have already decided among themselves to do that job. We've all been informed, no doubt, that every queen who can fly will attend every Fall.»

M'tani's scowl was sour and neither L'bol or F'gal appeared happy, but S'ligar shrugged diffidently. «They will arrange matters to suit themselves no matter what, but queens keep promises.»

«Who suggested using weyrlings for ground crews?» M'tani asked.

«We may have to resort to them,» S'ligar said.

«Weyrlings don't have enough sense …» M'tani began.

«Depends on their Weyrlingmaster, doesn't it?» K'dren asked.

«The queens intend,» S'ligar put in before M'tani could take offense at K'dren's remark, «to keep the weyrlings under control. What other choice have we in the absence of ground crews?»

«Well, I've never known a weyriing yet who would disobey a queen,» F'gal admitted.

«S'peren, with Moreta ill, does Kamiana lead?»

«No. Leri.» S'peren looked apprehensive. «After all, she's done it before.»

The Weyrleaders murmured in surprised protest. «Well, if any of your Weyrwomen can talk her out of it, we'd be very relieved.» S'peren did not hide his distress. «She's more than done her duty by the Weyrs and Pern. On the other hand, she knows how to lead. With both Sh'gall and Moreta sick, the Weyr at least trusts her.»

«How is Moreta?» S'ligar asked.

«Leri says Orlith doesn't seem worried. She carries her eggs well and she is very near clutching. It's as well Moreta is sick or they'd be out and about Pern. You know how keen Moreta is on runners.»

M'tani snorted with disgust. «This is not the time to lose an eggheavy queen,» he said. «This sickness hits so fast and kills so quickly, the dragons don't realize what's happening. And then they're gone between.» He caught his breath, clenching his teeth and swallowing against tears. The other riders pretended not to see his evident distress.

«Once Orlith has clutched she won't go until they've hatched,» S'ligar said gently to no one in particular. «S'peren, have you candidates safely at Fort Weyr?»

S'peren shook his head. «We'd that yet to do and thought there was worlds of time for Search.»

«Pick carefully before you bring anyone new into your Weyr!» L'bol advised sourly.

«If the need arises. High Reaches has a few promising youngsters who are healthy. I'm sure an adequate number can be made up from the other Weyrs?» S'ligar waited for the murmur of assent to go round the circle. «You'll inform Leri?»

«Fort Weyr is grateful.»

«Is that all?» L'bol demanded as he stirred toward his dragon.

«Not quite. One more point while we are convened.» S'ligar hitched up his belt. «I know that some of us have thought of exploring the Southern Continent once this Pass is over.»

«After this?» L'bol stared at S'ligar in total disbelief.

«My point. In spite of the instructions left to us, we cannot risk further contagions. Southern must be left alone!» S'ligar made a cutting gesture with the flat of his huge hand. He looked to the Benden Weyrleader for comment.

«An eminently sensible prohibition,» K'dren said.

M'tani flourished his hand curtly to show agreement and turned to S'peren.

«Of course, I cannot speak for Sh'gall but I cannot conceive why Fort would disagree.»

«The continent will be interdicted by my Weyr, I assure you,» F'gal said in a loud, strained voice.

«Then we shall leave it to the queens to communicate how many wings each Weyr supplies for Fall until this emergency is over. We've all the details we need to go on.» S'ligar brandished his roll before he shoved it in his tunic. «Very well then, my friends. Good flying! May your Weyrs.» He caught himself, a flicker of uncertainty for his glib use of a courteous salutation not entirely appropriate.

«The Weyrs will prosper, S'ligar,» K'dren said as he smiled confidently at the big man. «They always have!»

The bronze riders turned to their dragons, mounting with the ease and grace of long practice. Almost as one, the six dragons wheeled to the left and right of the red butte, to spring agilely into the air. Again, as if the unique maneuver had been many times rehearsed, on the third downstroke of six pairs of great wings, the dragons went between.

At about the time the bronze dragonriders were meeting at the Butte, Capiam had discovered that if he timed a fit of coughing, he could miss some of the incoming, more painful messages. Even after the thrumming of the great drums in the tower had ceased, the cadences played ring-a-round in his head and inhibited the sleep he yearned for. Not that sleep brought any rest. He would feel more tired when he roused from such brief naps as the drums permitted. And the nightmares! He was forever being harried by that tawny, speckle-coated, tuft-eared monster that had carried its peculiar germs to a vulnerable continent. The irony was that the Ancients had probably created the agency that threatened to exterminate their descendants.

If only those seamen had let the animal die on its tree trunk in the Eastern Current. If only it had died on the ship, succumbing to thirst and exhaustion, as Capiam felt he was likely to do at any moment, before it had contaminated more than the seamen. If only the nearby holders hadn't been so bloody curious to relieve the winter's tedium. If! If! If? If wishes were dragons, all Pern would fly!

And if I, Capiam had any energy, he would apply it to finding a concoction that would relieve and, preferably, inhibit the disease. Surely the Ancients had had to cope with epidemics. There were, indeed, grand paragraphs in the oldest Records, boasting that the ailments that had plagued mankind before the Crossing had been totally eliminated on Pern, which statement, Capiam maintained, meant that there had been two Crossings, not one, as many people, including Tirone, believed. The Ancients had brought many animals with them in that first Crossing, the equine from which runners originated; the bovine for the herdbeasts; the ovine, smaller, herdbeasts; the canine; and a smaller variety of the dratted feline plague carrier. The creatures had been brought, in ova (or so the Record put it, from the Ancients' planet of origin which was not the planet Pern, or why had that one point been made so specifically and repeated so often? Pern, not simply the Southern Continent. And the second Crossing had been from south to north. Probably, Capiam contemplated bitterly, to escape feline plague carriers that secreted themselves in dark lairs to nourish their fell disease until unwary humans took them off tree trunks, days from land. Couldn't the Ancients have stopped bragging about their achievements long enough to state how they had eradicated plague and pandemic? Their success was meaningless without the process.

Capiam plucked feebly at the sleeping furs. They smelled. They needed to be aired. He smelled. He didn't dare leave his room. «What can't be cured must be endured.» Desdra's taunt returned to him often.

He was a healer. He would heal himself first and thus prove to others that one could recover from this miserable disease. He need only apply his trained mind and considerable willpower to the problem. On cue, a coughing spell wracked him. When he had recovered sufficiently, he reached for the syrup Desdra left on the bedside table. He wished she would look in on him.

Fortine had, conferring three times from the doorway, seeking authority on matters Capiam could not now recall. He hoped that his responses had been sensible. Tirone had appeared, very briefly, more to assure himself and to report to the world that Capiam was still part of it than to comfort or cheer the sick man.

Fort Hold proper had not been sullied by the plague, even though healers, master, journeyman, and apprentice, had journeyed to the stricken areas. Four of Fort's seaside holds and two coastal cropholds had succumbed.

The syrup eased Capiam's raw throat. He could even taste it. Thymus was the principal ingredient, and he approved of its use on his person. If the disease ran the same course in him as it had in the cases he had studied, the cough ought soon to pass. If, by virtue of the strict quarantine in which he lay, he did not contract a secondary infection, pulmonary, pneumonic, or bronchial seemed the readiest to pounce on the weakened patient, then he ought to improve rapidly.

K'lon, the blue rider from Fort Weyr, had recovered totally. Capiam hoped that the man had actually had the plague, not some deep cold, and his hope was substantiated by the facts that K'lon had a close friend in plague-stricken Igen, and that the Weyr healer, Berchar, and his green rider weyrmate were grievously ill at Fort Weyr. Capiam tried to censor his own painful thoughts of dragonriders dying as easily as holders. Dragonriders could not die. The Pass had eight Turns to go. There were hundreds of powders, roots, and barks and herbs to combat disease on Pern, but the numbers of dragons and their riders were limited.

Desdra really ought to be appearing soon with some of the restorative soup she took such pleasure in making him consume! It was her presence he wished for, not the soup, for he found the long hours of solitude without occupation tedious and fraught with unpleasant speculations. He knew he ought to be grateful to have a room to himself for the chances of further infection were thus reduced to the minimum, but he would have liked some company. Then he thought of the crowded holds and he had no doubt that some poor sod there would dearly love to exchange with him for solitude.

Capiam took no pleasure in the knowledge that his frequent harangues to the Lords Holder about indiscriminate breeding should prove so devastatingly accurate. But dragonriders ought not to be dying of this plague. They had private quarters, were hardy, inured to many of the ailments that afflicted those in poorer conditions, were supplied with the top of the tithe. Igen, Keroon, Ista. Those Weyrs had had direct contact with the feline. And Fort, High Reaches, and Benden riders had attended the Gathers. Almost every rider had had time and opportunity to catch the infection.

Capiam had had severe qualms about demanding a conveyance of Sh'gall from Southern Boll to Fort Hold. But, on the other hand, Sh'gall had conveyed Lord Ratoshigan to Ista Gather for the purpose of seeing the rare creature on display quite a few hours before Capiam and the young animal healer, Talpan, had their startling conference. It was only after Capiam had reached Southern Boll and seen Lord Ratoshigan's sick handlers that he had realized how quickly the disease incubated and how insidiously it spread. Expediency had required Capiam to use the quickest means to return to his Hall, and that had been a-dragonback with the Fort Weyrleader. Sh'gall had taken ill but he was young and healthy, Capiam told himself. So had Ratoshigan, but Capiam found a rather curious justice in that. Given the infinite variety of human personalities, it was impossible to like everyone. Capiam didn't like Ratoshigan but he shouldn't be glad the man was suffering along with his lowliest beasthandler.

Capiam vowed, yet again, that he would have far more tolerance for the ill when he recovered. When! When! Not if. If was defeatist. How had the many thousands of patients he tended over his Turns as a healer endured those hours of unrelieved thought and self-examination? Capiam sighed, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, a further manifestation of his terrible inertia. When, yes, when, would he have the strength to resume constructive thought and research?

There had to be an answer, a solution, a cure, a therapy, a restorative, a remedy! Something existed somewhere. If the Ancients had been able to cross unimaginable distances to breed animals from a frozen stew, to create dragons from the template of the legendary fire-lizards, they surely would have been able to overcome bacterium or virus that threatened themselves and those beasts. It could only be a matter of time, Capiam assured his weary self, before those references were discovered. Fortine had been searching the Records piled in the Library Caves. When he had had to dispatch journeymen and apprentice healers to reinforce their overworked craftsmen in the worst plague areas, Tirone had magnanimously placed his craftspeople at Fortine's disposal. But if one of those untutored readers passed over the relevant paragraphs in ignorance of the significance … Surely, though, something as critical as an epidemic would merit more than a single reference.

When would Desdra come with her soup to break the monotony of his anxious self-castigation? «Stop fretting,» he told himself, his voice a hoarse croak that startled him. «You're peevish. You're also alive. What must be endured cannot be cured. No. What cannot be cured must be inured, endured.»

Tears for his debilitation dripped down his cheekbones, falling in time to the latest urgent drum code. Capiam wanted to stop his ears against the news. It was sure to be bad. How could it possibly be anything else until they had some sort of specific treatment and some means of arresting the swift spread of this plague?

Keroon Runnerhold sent the message. They needed medicines. Healer Gorby reported dwindling stocks of borrago and aconite, and needed tussilago in quantity for pulmonary and bronchial cases, ilex for pneumonia.

A new fear enveloped Capiam. With such unprecedented demands on stillroom supplies, would there be enough of even the simple medicaments? Keroon Runnerhold, dealing as it did with many animal health problems, ought to be able to supply all its needs. Capiam despaired afresh as he thought of smaller holds. They would have on hand only a limited amount of general remedies. Most holds traded the plants and barks indigenous in their area for those they lacked. What lady holder, no matter how diligent and capable, would have laid in sufficient to deal with an epidemic?

To compound demand, the disease had struck during the cold season. Most medicinal plants were picked in flower, when their curative properties were strongest; roots and bulbs gathered in the fall. Spring and flowering, autumn and earthy harvest were too distant, the need was now!

Capiam writhed in his furs. Where was Desdra? How much longer did he have to endure before the wretched lethargy abated?

«Capiam?» Desdra's quiet voice broke into his self-pitying ruminations. «More soup?»

«Desdra? That message from Keroon Runnerhold.»

«As if we had only one febrifuge in our pharmacopia! Fortine has compiled a list of alternatives.» Desdra was impatient with Gorby. «There's ash bark, box, ezob, and thymus as well as borrago and featherfern. Who's to say one of them might not prove to be specific for this? In fact, Semment of Great Reach Hold believes that thymus is more effective for the pulmonary infections he's been treating. Master Fortine holds out for featherfern, being one of the few indigenous plants. How are you feeling?»

«Like nothing! I cannot even raise my hands.» He tried to demonstrate this inability. «The lassitude is part of the illness. You wrote that symptom often enough. What can't be cured,»

Summoning strength from a sudden spurt of irrational anger, Capiam flung a pillow at her. It had neither the mass nor the impetus to reach its target, and she laughed as she collected the missile and lofted it easily back to his bed.

«I believe that you are somewhat improved in spirit. Now drink the soup.» She set it down on the table.

«Are all healthy here?»

«All here, yes. Even the officious Tolocamp, immured in his quarters. He's more likely to catch pneumonia while standing at unshuttered windows to check up on the guards.» Desdra chuckled maliciously. «He's got messengers stationed on the forecourt. He sails notes down to them to take to offenders. Not even a tunnel snake could slip past his notice!» A tiny smirk curved Desdra's lips. «Master Tirone had to talk long and hard to get him to set up that internment camp in the hollow. Tolocamp was certain that offering shelter would be an invitation to undesirables to lodge and feed at his expense. Tirone is furious with Tolocamp because he wants to send his harpers out with the assurance that they can return, but Tolocamp refuses to believe that harpers can avoid infection. Tolocamp sees the disease as a visible mist or fog that oozes out of meadows and streams and mountain crevices.»

Desdra was trying to amuse him, Capiam thought, for she wasn't normally garrulous.

«I did order a quarantine.»

Desdra snorted. «True! Tolocamp ought not to have left Ruatha. He overruled the brother when Alessan fell ill. And with every other breath, Tolocamp is said to moan for abandoning his dear wife. Lady Pendra, and those precious daughters of his to the mercies of the plague rampaging at Ruatha.» Desdra's chuckle was dry. «He left them there on purpose. Or Lady Pendra insisted they all stay. They'll have insisted on nursing Alessan!»

«How are matters at Fort Weyr and Ruatha?»

«K'lon tells us that Moreta is doing as well as can be expected. Berchar probably has pneumonia, and nineteen riders, including Sh'gall, are weyred. Ruatha is badly hit. Fortine has dispatched volunteers. Now drink that soup before it cools. There's much to be done below. I can't stay to chat with you any longer.»

Capiam found that his hand shook violently as he picked up the mug.

«Shouldn't've wasted all that energy tossing that pillow,» she said.

He used both hands to bring the mug to his lips without spilling. «What have you put in it?» he demanded after a careful swallow.

«A little of this, a little of that. Trying a few restoratives out on you. If they work, I'll make kettlesful.»

«It's vile!»

«It's also nutritional. Drink it!»

«I'll choke.»

«Drink it or I'll let Nerilka, that laundry pole daughter of Tolocamp's, come nurse you in my stead. She offers hourly.»

Capiam cursed Desdra but he drained the cup.

«Well, you do sound improved!» She chuckled as she closed the door quietly behind her.

«I didn't say I liked it either,» Leri told S'peren. «But old dragons can glide. That's why Holth and I can still fly Thread in the queens' wing.» Leri gave Holth an affectionate clout on the shoulder, beaming up at her life-long friend. «It's the tip, the finger, and elbow joints that harden so the finer points of maneuverability go. Gliding's from the shoulder. Doesn't take much effort, either, with the sort of wind we're likely to get now. Why did it have to get so bloody cold on top of everything else? Rain'd be more bearable as well as more seasonable.» Leri adjusted the furs across her shoulders. «I wouldn't trust the weyrlings to such dull work. They'd do something fancy, like the stunt young T'ragel tried on the ridge with Moreta. «Now, you said L'bol is grieving badly?»

«Indeed he is. He's lost both sons.» S'peren shook his head sadly before he took another sip of the wine Leri had served him «to wet your throat after the dust at Red Butte.» S'peren took comfort in the familiar act of reporting to Leri. It was like the old times, only a few Turns past at that, when L'mal had been Weyrieader and S'peren had been much in this weyr. He almost expected to see L'mal's chunky figure swing into the chamber and hear the hearty voice greeting him. Now there was a Leader to encourage and comfort in this disastrous Turn. Still, S'peren thought with a blink, Leri was as brisk and quick as ever. «Could Igen put eight full wings up to Fall?»

«What?» Leri snapped out in surprise at the question, then snorted. «Not likely. Torenth told Holth that half the Weyr is sick and the other half looks sick. Their damned curiosity and all that sun on their heads all the time. Slows 'em down. Nothing to do with their spare time but bake their brains. Of course, they all went to gawk at a raree! And we'll never hear the last of their moans for the unexpected tariff!» She made a business of scanning the lists S'peren had handed her. «Can't say as I can put a face or pair a dragon name with some of these. Must all be new. When L'mal was Leader, I kept up with all the new riders in every Weyr.»

«S'ligar asked about Moreta.»

«Worried about Orlith and her eggs?» Leri peered wisely over the lists at the bronze rider.

S'peren nodded. «S'ligar volunteered candidates in case.»

«Only what I'd expect.» Leri's answer was tart but, seeing the expression on S'peren's face, she relented. «It was good of him to offer. Especially since Orlith is the only queen currently bearing eggs.» Leri's round face produced a slightly malicious smile.

S'peren continued to nod for he hadn't realized that. It put another light on S'ligar's concern for Moreta and Orlith.

«Don't worry, S'peren. Moreta's doing well. Orlith's with her constantly and that queen's a marvel of comfort, as everyone in this Weyr should know by now.»

«I thought it was just with injured dragons.»

«And no comfort for her own weyrmate and rider? Of course Orlith helps Moreta. The other Weyrs could learn a thing or two from our senior queen dragon. Wouldn't surprise me if there were some pretty crucial changes made when Moreta's well. And when Orlith rises to mate again!» Leri winked broadly at S'peren. «That girl has got to show her true preference to her queen.»

S'peren managed to hide his surprise at Leri's outspokenness. Of course, they were old friends and she probably felt able to be candid in his company. Then he took a quick sip of the wine. What could Leri possibly be suggesting? He liked Moreta very much. She and Orlith had done a fine job of healing a long Threadscore on his Clioth's flank last Turn. And Clioth had risen to fly in Orlith's last mating flight. He had been perversely relieved when Clioth had failed, despite his admiration and respect for Moreta, and despite a natural desire to prove his bronze dragon superior to the other bronzes of Fort. On the other hand, he had never questioned Sh'gall's ability as a flight leader. The man had an uncanny instinct for which dragon might be failing in strength or losing his flame, or which rider might not be as courageous as he ought in following Thread out of path, but S'peren did not covet the Leadership half as much as his Clioth yearned to mate with Orlith.

«K'lon?» Leri said, breaking into his thoughts. She and her dragon looked toward the weyr entrance.

Clioth confirmed the arrival of Rogeth to S'peren, telling his rider that he was moving over to permit the blue to land on Holth's ledge.

«About bloody time that young man came back to his own Weyr,»

Leri said, frowning. «There has to be another dragonrider able to do what K'lon's doing or he'll kill himself. Misplaced guilt. Or more likely the chance to get in and out of Igen to see that lover of his.»

There was no question that the blue rider was exhausted as he entered the weyr. His shoulders sagged and his step had no spring. His face was travel-stained except for the lighter patches of skin around his eyes, protected from flight dirt by his goggles. His clothes were stiff with moisture frozen into the hide by constant journeys between.

«Five drops from the blue vial,» Leri said quickly in an undertone, leaning toward S'peren. Then she straightened, speaking in a normal tone. «S'peren, fix a mug of klah laced with that fortified wine of mine for K'lon. And sit down there, young man, before you fall.» Leri pointed imperiously to a chair. She had replaced her one stool with several comfortable seats positioned, as she phrased it, in noncontagious spacing in front of Holth's couch.

K'lon barely avoided falling into the appointed chair; his legs slid out in front of him as he slouched into the seat. Dangling helmet and goggles from one limp hand, he accepted the mug from S'peren.

«Take a long swallow now, K'lon,» Leri said kindly. «It'll restore your blood to normal temperature after all that betweening. You're nearly as blue as Rogeth. There! That tastes good, doesn't it? A brew of my own to hearten the weary.» Though her voice was kind, she watched K'lon intently. «Now, what news from the halls?»

K'lon's weary face brightened. «There is good news. Master Capiam really is recovering. I spoke to Desdra. He's weak but he's swearing out loud. She said they'd probably have to tether him to his bed to keep him there long enough to regain his strength. He's yelling for Records. Best of all,» K'lon seemed to shrug off his fatigue in his cheerful recital, «he insists that the disease itself doesn't cause the deaths. People are actually dying from other things, like pneumonia and bronchitis and other respiratory ailments. Avoid those and,» K'lon made a wide sweep of his hand, his helmet and goggles clacking together, «all's well.» Then his expression altered dolefully. «Only that's just not possible in the Holds, you know. So many people crammed into inadequate space … and not enough facilities … especially now, when it's got so cold. The Lords Holder would put people into hide tents that are well enough for a Gather but not for the sick. I've been everywhere. Even holds that don't know what's been happening elsewhere and think it's only them that're in deep trouble. I've been so many places …» His face turned bleak and his body slumped deeper into the chair.

«A'murry?» Leri spoke the green rider's name gently.

K'lon's misery broke through the tight hold he must be keeping on his private anxiety. «He's got a chest infection, one of the weyrfolk nursing him had a bad cold.» His condemnation was plain. «Fortine gave me a special mixture and a comfrey salve for his chest. I made A'murry take the first dose and it really did stop him midcough. And I rubbed the salve thick on his chest and back.» Some instinct made K'lon look at the other two riders and he saw their unvoiced apprehension. «I've got to go to A'murry. Whenever I can. I can't give him what I've got over! And don't tell me it's enough that Rogeth and Granth stay in touch. I'm very much aware that they do, but I have a need to be with A'murry, too, you know.» K'lon's face contorted. He looked about to break into tears, a display he averted by drinking deeply of the wine-laced klah. «That's quite tasty, really,» he said courteously to Leri. Then he finished the drink. «Now, what else can I tell you from my …»

He paused, blinked, swallowed, and then his head began to loll to one side. Leri, who had been waiting for that, signaled urgently to S'peren.

«Perfectly timed, I think,» she said as S'peren caught K'lon before he slid from the chair. «Here.» She tossed a pillow and pulled the fur from her shoulders. «Roll him into this, pillow his head, and he'll sleep a good twelve hours. Holth, be a pet and tell Rogeth to go curl up in his own weyr and get some rest. You,» she prodded the resisting flesh of her queen with her forefinger, «will keep your ears open for Granth.»

«What if he's needed?» S'peren asked, arranging K'lon comfortably. «By the Halls or the Hold or A'murry?»

«A'murry is, of course, a priority,» Leri replied thoughtfully. «I can't really condone his breaking of quarantine. I'll think of some discipline later, for K'lon has disobeyed a direct order. I have just decided that we can use other messengers in K'lon's place. Especially if most of what he does is convey supplies or healers. Weyrlings can do that! They'll feel brave and daring, and be scared enough to be careful. Packages can certainly be deposited without making contact and messages collected at a discreet distance from cots. Let them practice setting down by a pennant instead of a ridge. Good practice.» Leri peered down critically at the sleeping K'lon. «However, you'd better circulate the news he brought us from the Hall, that the plague doesn't kill. We must be more wary than ever for our convalescents. No one with the slightest sign of a head cold or even a pimple is to attend the riders.»

«It's hard enough to get weyrfolk to tend them,» S'peren remarked.

«Hmm! Ask the laggards who will tend them in their hour of need?» Leri rolled up the rider lists and stowed them carefully on the shelf beside her. «So, old friend, you'll bring the good news from the Healer Hall to the Lower Caverns and then tell off the wings which are rising to Fall tomorrow!»

The light of the many glows that Capiam had ordered to illuminate the tight and fading script of the old ledgers shone harshly on the handsome countenance of Tirone, Masterharper of Pern, who had drawn a chair up to Capiam's wide writing desk. Tirone was scowling at the healer, a totally uncharacteristic expression on a man renowned for his geniality and expansive good humor. The epidemic, no, one had to state its true proportions, pandemic, had marked everyone, including those lucky enough not to have contracted it.

Many believed that Tirone bore a charmed life in the pursuit of his duties across the continent. The Harper had been detained on the border between Tillek and the High Reaches on a disputation over mines, which had prevented him from attending the Ruathan Gather. Once the drums had sounded the quarantine, Tirone made his way back to the Hall by runner relays, past holds where the plague had not penetrated and some where the news had not spread. He had a fine old row with Tolocamp to be permitted within the Hold proper, but Tirone's logic and the fact that he had not entered any infected areas had prevailed. Or had one of the guards told the Masterharper how it was that Lord Tolocamp had returned from Ruatha?

Tirone had also prevailed on Desdra to permit him to visit the Master Healer.

«If I don't get details from you, Capiam, I shall be forced to rely on hearsay and that is not a proper source for a Masterharper.»

«Tirone, I am not about to die. While I laud your zealous desire for a true and accurate account, I have a more pressing duty!» Capiam raised the ledger. «I may have recovered but I have to find out how to cure or stop this wretched disease before it kills further thousands.»

«I'm under strict orders not to tire you or Desdra will have my gizzard to grill,» Tirone replied with a jocular smile. «But the facts are that I was woefully out of touch with the Hall at this most critical time. I can't even get a decent account from the drummaster though I quite appreciate that neither he nor his journeymen had the time to log the messages which came in and out of the tower at such a rate. Tolocamp won't talk to me though it's five days since Ruatha Gather … and he shows no signs of the illness. So I must have something to go on besides incoherent and confused versions. The perceptions of a trained observer such as yourself are invaluable to the chronicler. I am given to understand that you talked with Talpan at Ista?» Tirone poised his pen above the clean squared sheet of hide.

«Talpan … now there's the man you should talk to when this is over.»

«That won't be possible. Shards! Weren't you told?» The Harper half-rose from his chair, hand outstretched in sympathy.

«I'm all right. No, I didn't know.» Capiam closed his eyes for a moment to absorb that shock. «I suspect they thought it would depress me. It does. He was a fine man, with a quick, clever mind. Herdmaster potential.» Capiam heard another swift intake of breath from Tirone and opened his eyes. «Master Herdsman Trume as well?» And when Tirone nodded confirmation, Capiam steeled himself. So that was why Tirone had been allowed to see him, to break the news. «I think you'd better tell me the rest of the bad news that neither Desdra nor Fortine voiced. It won't hurt half as much now. I'm numb.»

«There have been terrible losses, you realize.»

«Any figures?»

«At Keroon, nine out of every ten who fell ill have died! At Igen Sea Hold, fifteen were weak but alive when the relief ship from Nerat reached them. We have no totals from surrounding holds in Igen, nor do we know the extent of the epidemic's spread in Igen, Keroon, or Ruatha. You can be very proud of your Craftsmen and women, Capiam. They did all that was humanly possible to succor the ill.»

«And they died, too?» Capiam asked when Tirone's voice trailed off.

«They brought honor to your hall.»

Capiam's heart thumped slowly in his anguish. All dead? Mibbut, gentle Kylos, the earthy Loreana, earnest Rapal, the bone-setter Sneel, Galnish? All of them? Could it really be only seven days ago that he had first had word of the dreadful sickness? And those he had attended at Keroon and Igen already sick to their deaths with it? Though he was now positive that the plague itself didn't kill, the living had to face another sort of death, the death of hopes and friendships and what might have been in the futures of those whose lives were abruptly ended. And so near to the promise and freedom of an Interval! Capiam felt tears sliding down his cheeks but they eased the tight constriction in his chest. He let them flow, breathing slowly in and out until his emotions were in hand again. He couldn't think emotionally; he must think professionally. «Igen Sea Hold held nearly a thousand people; only fifty were ill when I attended them at Burdion's summons.»

«Burdion is one of the survivors.»

«I trust he kept notes for you.» Capiam could not prevent his tone from being savage.

«I believe he did,» Tirone went on, impervious to the invalid's bad temper. «The log of the Windtoss is also available.»

«The captain was dead when I reached the Sea Hold.»

«Did you see the animal?» Tirone leaned forward slightly, his eyes glinting with the avid curiosity he did not voice.

«Yes, I saw it!» That image was now seared in Capiam's memory. The feline had paced restlessly and vividly through his fever dreams and his restless nightmares. Capiam would never forget its snarling face, the white and black whiskers that sprang from its thick muzzle, the brown stains on its tusks, the nicks in its laid-back tufted ears, the dark-brown medallions of its markings that were so fancifully ringed with black and set off in the tawny, shining coat. He could remember its fierce defiance and had even then, when he'd first seen it, conceived the notion that the creature knew perfectly well that it would take revenge on the beings who had restricted it to a cage, who had stared at it in every hold and hall. «Yes, Tirone, I actually saw it. Like hundreds of other people attending Ista Gather. Only I've lived to tell the tale. Talpan and I spent twenty minutes observing it while he told me why he thought it had to die. In twenty minutes it probably infected many people even though Talpan was making the gawkers stand well back from the cage. In fact, I probably contracted my dose of the plague there. From the source. Instead of secondhand.» That conclusion afforded Capiam some relief. Made more vulnerable by fatigue, he'd come down with the plague a bare twenty-four hours later. That was better than believing that he had been negligent of hygiene at Igen and Keroon. «Talpan deduced that the animal had to be the cause of the disease already affecting runners from Igen to Keroon. I'd been called to Keroon, too, you see, because so many of their folk were falling ill. I was tracing human contagion, Talpan was tracing runner. We both reached the same conclusion at Ista Gather. The creature was terrified of dragons, you know.»

«Really?»

«So I was informed. But K'dall is among the dead at Telgar Weyr and so is his blue dragon.»

Tirone murmured, all the while writing furiously. «How, then, did the disease get to Southern Boll if the creature was killed at Ista Gather?»

«You've forgotten the weather.»

«Weather?»

«Yes, the weather was so mild Keroon Runnerhold started shipping early this winter, the tides and winds being favorable. So Lord Ratoshigan got his breeding stock early and an unexpected bounty. As did several other notable breeders, some of whom attended Ruatha Gather.»

«Well, that is interesting. Such a devastating concatenation of so many small events.»

«We should be grateful that Tillek breeds its own and supplies the High Reaches, Crom, and Nabol. That the Keroon-bred runners destined for Bcnden, Lemos, Bitra, and Nerat cither died of the plague or were not herded overland.»

«The Weyrieaders have issued an interdiction against any travel to the Southern Continent!» Tirone said. «The Ancients had excellent reason for abandoning that place. Too many threats to life.»

«Get your facts straight, Tirone,» Capiam said, irritated. «Most life here was created and nurtured there!»

«Now, I have never seen that proved to.»

«Life and its maintenance are my province, Masterharper.» Capiam held up the ancient ledger and waggled it at Tirone. «As the creation and development of life was once the province of our ancestors. The Ancients brought with them from the Southern Continent all the animals we have here with us today, including the dragons which they genetically engineered for their unique purpose.» Tirone's lower jaw jutted slightly, about to dispute. «We have lost the skills that the Ancients possessed even though we can refine runners and the herdbeasts for specific qualities. And …» Capiam paused, struck by an awful consideration. «And I'm suddenly aware that we are in a double peril right now.» He thought of Talpan and all his bright promise lost, of Master Herdsman Trume, of the captain of the Windtoss, his own dead craftsmen, each with his or her special qualities lost to a swift, mortal illness. «We may have lost a lot more than a coherent account of the progress of a plague, Tirone. And that should worry you far more. It is knowledge as well as life that is being lost all over Pern. What you should be jotting down as fast as you can push your fist is the knowledge, the techniques that are dying in men's minds and cannot be recovered,» Capiam waved the Record about, Tirone eyeing it with alarm. «As we can't recover from all the ledgers and Records of the Ancients exactly how they performed the miracles they did. And it's not the miracles so much as the working, the day-to-day routine which the Ancients didn't bother to record because it was common knowledge. A common knowledge that is no longer common. That's what we're missing. And we may have lost a lot more of that common knowledge over the past seven days! More than we can ever replace!»

Capiam lay back, exhausted by his outburst, the Records a heavy weight on his guts. That sense of loss, the pressure of that anxiety, had been growing inside him. That morning, when the lethargy had passed, he had been disquietingly aware of the many facts, practices, and intuitions he had never written down, had never thought to elaborate in his private notes. Ordinarily he would have passed them on to his journeymen as they grasped the complexities of their craft. Some matters he had been told by his masters, which they had gleaned from their tutors or from their working experiences, but the transfer of information and its interpretation had been verbal in all too many instances, passed on to those who would need to know.

Capiam became aware that Tirone was staring at him. He had not meant to harangue; that was generally Tirone's function.

«I could not agree with you more, Capiam,» Tirone began tentatively, pausing to clear his throat. «But people of all ranks and Crafts tend to keep some secrets which,»

«Shells! Not the drum again!» Capiam buried his head in his hands, pressing his thumbs tightly into his earholes, trying to block the sound.

Tirone's expression brightened and he half-rose from the chair, gesturing for Capiam to unplug his ears. «It's good news. From Igen. Threadfall has been met and all is clear. Twelve wings flew!»

«Twelve?» Capiam pulled himself up, calculating Igen's crushing losses and the numbers of its sick riders. «Igen couldn't have put twelve wings in the air today.»

«'Dragonmen must fly, when Thread is in the sky!'» Tirone's resonant voice rang with pride and exultation.

Capiam stared at him, aware only of profound dismay. How had he failed to catch the significance of Tirone's mention of the Weyrleaders' joint interdiction of the Southern Continent? They'd had to consolidate Weyrs to meet Fall.

«To fight Thread is in their blood! Despite their cruel losses, they rise, as always, to defend the continent …'»

Tirone was off in what Capiam had derisively termed his lyric trance. It was not the time to be composing sagas and ballads! Yet the ringing phrases plucked at a long forgotten memory.

«Do be quiet, Tirone. I must think! Or there won't be any dragonriders left to fight Thread. Get out!»

Blood! That's what Tirone had said. It's in their blood! Blood! Capiam hit his temples with the heels of his hands as if he could jolt the vagrant memory into recall. He could almost hear the creaky old voice of old Master Gallardy. Yes, he'd been preparing for his journeyman's examinations and old Gallardy had been droning on and on about unusual and obsolescent techniques. Something to do with blood. Gallardy had been talking about the curative properties of blood, blood what? Blood serum! That was it! Blood serum as an extreme remedy for contagious or virulent disease.

«Capiam?» It was Desdra, her voice hesitant. «Are you all right?» Tirone said.

«I'm fine! I'm fine! What was that you kept telling me? What can't be cured must be endured. Well, there's another way; Inuring to cure. Immunizing. And it's in the blood! It's not a bark, a powder, a leaf, it's blood. And the deterrant is in my blood right now! Because I've survived the plague.»

«Master Capiam!» Desdra stepped forward, hesitant, mindful of the precautions of the last five days.

«I do not think I am contagious any longer, my brave Desdra. I'm the cure! At least I believe I am.» In his excitement, Capiam had crawled out of bed, flinging sleeping rugs away from him in an effort to reach the case that held his apprentice and journeyman's texts.

«Capiam! You'll fall!»

Capiam was tottering and he grasped at the chair Tirone had vacated to prevent the collapse. He couldn't summon the strength to reach to the shelves.

«Get me my notes. The oldest ones, there on the left-hand side of the top shelf.» He sat down abruptly in the chair, shaking with weakness. «I must be right. I have to be right. 'The blood of a recovered patient prevents others from contracting the disease.'»

«Your blood, my fine feeble friend,» Desdra said tartly, dusting off the records before she handed them to him, «is very thin and very weak, and you're going back to your bed.»

«Yes, yes, in a minute,» Capiam was riffling through the thin hide pages, trying in his haste not to crack the brittle fabric, forcing himself to recall exactly when Master Gallardy had delivered those lectures on 'unusual techniques'. Spring. It was spring. He turned to the last third of his notes. Spring, because he had allowed his mind to dwell more on normal springtime urges than ancient procedures. He felt Desdra tugging at his shoulder.

«You have me spend two hours fixing glowbaskets just to illuminate you in bed and now you read in the darkest corner of your room. Get back into bed! I haven't nursed you this far out of that plague to have you die on me from a chill caught prancing about in the dark like a broody dragon.»

«And hand me my kit … please.» He kept reading as he allowed himself to be escorted back to bed. Desdra tugged the furs so tightly in at the foot that he couldn't bend his knees to prop up the notes. With a tug and a kick, he undid her handiwork.

«Capiam!» Returning with his kit, she was furious at his renewed disarray. She grabbed his shoulder and laid her hand across his forehead. He pushed it away, trying not to show the irritation he felt at her interruptions.

«I'm all right. I'm all right.»

«Tirone thought you'd had a relapse the way you're acting. It's not like you, you know, to cry 'blood, blood, it's in their blood.' Or in yours, for that matter.»

He only half heard her for he had found the series of lectures that he had copied that spring, thirty Turns gone, when he was far more interested in urgent problems like Threadscore, infection, preventive doses, and nutrition.

«It is in my blood. That's what it says here,» Capiam cried in triumph. «The clear serum which rises to the top of the vessel after the blood has clotted produces the essential globulins which will inhibit the disease. Injected intravenously, the blood serum gives protection for at least fourteen days, which is ordinarily sufficient time for an epidemic disease to run its course.» Capiam read on avidly. He could separate the blood components by centrifugal force. Master Gallardy had said that the Ancients had special apparatus to achieve separation, but he could suggest a homely expedient. «The serum introduces the disease into the body in such a weakened state as to awaken the body's own defenses and thus prevent such a disease in its more virulent form.»

Capiam lay back on his pillows, closing his eyes against a momentary weakness that was compounded of relief as well as triumph. He even recalled how he had rebelled against the tedious jotting down of a technique that might now save thousands of people. And the dragonriders!

Desdra regarded him with a curious expression on her face. «But that's homeopathic! Except for injecting directly into the vein.»

«Quickly absorbed by the body, thus more effective. And we need an effective treatment. Desdra, how many dragonriders are sick?»

«We don't know, Capiam. They stopped reporting numbers. The drums did say that twelve wings flew Thread at Igen, but the last report I had, from K'lon actually, was that one hundred and seventy-five riders were ill, including one of the queen riders. L'bol lost two sons in the first deaths.»

«A hundred and seventy-five ill? Any secondary infections?»

«They haven't said. But then we haven't asked …»

«At Telgar? Fort Weyr?»

«We have been thinking more of the thousands dying than the dragonriders,» Desdra admitted in a bleak voice, her hands locked so tightly the knuckles were white.

«Yes, well, we depend on those two-thousand-odd dragonriders. So nag me no more and get what I need to make the serum. And when K'lon comes, I'll want to see him immediately. Is there anyone else here in the Halls or the Hold who has recovered from this disease?»

«Not recovered.»

«Never mind. K'lon will be here soon?»

«We expect him. He's been conveying medicines and healers.»

«Good. Now, I'll need a lot of sterile, two liter glass containers with screw tops, stout cord, fresh reeds span-length, I've got needlethorns, redwort and oh, boil me that syringe the cooks use to baste meats. I do have some glass ones Master Clargesh had blown for me, but I can't think where I stored them. Now, away with you. Oh, and Desdra, I'll want some double-distilled spirits and more of that restorative soup of yours.»

«I can understand the need for spirits,» she said at the door, her expression sardonic, «but more of the soup you dislike so?»

He flourished a pillow and she laughed as she closed the door behind her. Capiam turned the pages to the beginning of Master Gallardy's lecture.

In the event of an outbreak of a communicable disease, the use of a serum prepared from the blood of a recovered victim of the same disease has proved efficacious. Where the populace is healthy, an injection of the blood serum prevents the disease. Administered to a sufferer, the blood serum mitigates the virulence. Long before the Crossings, such plagues as varicella, diphtheria, influenza, rubella, epidemic roseola, morbilli, scarlatina, variola, typhoid, typhus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cytomegalovirus herpes, and gonococcal were eliminated by vaccination …

Typhus and typhoid were familiar to Capiam, for there had been outbreaks of each as the result of ineffective hygiene. He and the other healers had feared they would result from the current overcrowding. Diphtheria and scarlatina had flared up occasionally over the past several hundred Turns, at least often enough so that the symptoms and the treatment were part of his training. The other diseases he didn't know except from the root words, which were very very old. He would have to look them up in the Harper Hall's etymological dictionary.

He read on farther in Master Gallardy's advice. A liter and a half of blood could be taken from each recovered victim of the disease and that, separated, would give fifty mils of serum for immunization. The injectable amount varied from one mil to ten, according to Gallardy, but he wasn't very specific as to which amount for which disease. Capiam thought ruefully of the impassioned words he had poured at Tirone concerning the loss of techniques. Was he himself at fault for not attending more closely to Master Gallardy's full lecture?

No great calculation was needed for Capiam to see the enormity of the task of producing the desirable immunity even for the vital few thousand dragonriders, the Lords Holder, and Mastercraftsmen, let alone the healers who must care for the ill and prepare and administer the vaccine.

The door swung before Desdra, who looked flustered for the first time that Capiam could remember. She carried a rush basket and closed the door with a deft hook of her foot.

«I have your requirements and I have found the glass syringes that Master Genjon blew for you. Three were broken, but I have boiled the remainder.»

Desdra carefully deposited the wicker basket by his bed. She pulled his bedside table to its customary place and, on it, she put the jar of redwort in its strongest solution, a parcel of reeds, the leafbound needlethorns, a steaming steel tray that had covered the kettle in which he could see a small glass jar, a stopper, and the Genjon syringes. From her pocket, Desdra drew a length of stout, well-twisted cord. «There!»

«That is not a two-liter jar.»

«No, but you are not strong enough to be reduced by two liters of blood. Half a liter is all you can lose. K'lon will be here soon enough.» Desdra briskly scrubbed his arm with the redwort then tied the cord about his upper arm while he clenched his fist to raise the artery. It was ropy and blue beneath flesh that seemed too white to him. With tongs, she took the glass container from the boiled water. She opened the packet of reeds, then the needlethorns, took one of each and fitted the needlethorn to one end of the reed. «I know the technique but I haven't done this often.»

«You'll have to! My hand shakes!»

Desdra pressed her lips in a firm line, dipped her fingers in redwort, put the glass container on the floor by his bed, tilted the reed end into it, and picked up the needlethorn. The tip of a needlethorn is so fine that the tiny opening in the point is almost invisible. Desdra punctured his skin and, with only a little force, entered the engorged vein then flipped loose the tourniquet. Capiam closed his eyes against the slight dizziness he felt when his blood pressure lowered as the blood began to flow through the needlethorn and down the reed into the container. When the spell had passed, he opened his eyes and was objectively fascinated by his blood dripping into the glass. He pumped his fist and the drip increased to a thin flow. In a curious, detached way, he seemed to feel the fluid leaving his body, being gathered from his other limbs, even from his torso, that the draining was a totally corporeal affair, not just from the fluid in one artery. He really could feel his heart beating more strongly, accommodating the flow. But that was absurd. He was beginning to feel a trifle nauseated when Desdra's fingers pressed a redwortstained swab over the needlethorn, then removed it with a deft tweak. «That is quite enough, Master Capiam. Almost three quarters of a liter. You've gone white. Here. Press hard and hold. Drink the spirits.» She placed the drink in his left hand and he automatically held the compress with his right. The powerful spirit seemed to take up the space left by the release of his blood. But that was a highly fanciful notion for a healer who knew very well the route taken by anything ingested.

«Now what do we do?» she asked, holding up the closed glass jar of his blood.

«That top firmly screwed on?» And when she demonstrated that it was: «Then wrap the cord tightly around the neck and knot it firmly. Good. Hand it here.»

«What do you think you're going to do now?» Her face was stern and her gaze stubborn. For a woman who had often preached detachment, she was suddenly very intense.

«Gallardy says that centrifugal force, that is, whirling the jar around, will separate the components of the blood and produce the useful serum.»

«Very well.» Desdra stood back from the bed, made sure she had sufficient clear space to accomplish the operation, and began to swing the jar around her head.

Capiam, observing her exertions, was glad she had volunteered. He doubted that he could have managed it. «We could rig something similar with the spit canines, couldn't we? Have to prod the beasts to maintain speed. One needs a constant speed. Or perhaps a smaller arrangement, with a handle so one could control the rotational velocity?»

«Why? Do we … need … to do this. . often?»

«If my theory is correct, we'll need rather a lot of serum. You did leave word that K'lon is to be shown here as soon as he arrives?»

«I did. How … much … longer?»

Capiam could not have her desist too soon, yet Master Gallardy had said «in a very short time» or, and Capiam looked more closely at his own handwriting, had he erred in transcribing? A concerned healer with thirty Turns of Craft life behind him, he silently cursed the diffidence of the spring-struck young apprentice he had been. «That ought to suffice, Desdra. Thank you!»

Breathless, Desdra slowed the swing of the jar and caught it, placing it on the table. Capiam hunched forward on the bed while Desdra examined the various layers with astonishment.

«That,» Desdra pointed dubiously to the straw-colored fluid in the top level, «is your cure?»

«Not a cure, exactly. An immunization.» Capiam enunciated the word carefully.

«One has to drink it?» Desdra's voice was neutral with distaste.

«No, though I daresay it wouldn't taste any worse than some of the concoctions you've insisted I swallow. No, this must be injected into the vein.» She gave him a long thoughtful look. «So that's why you needed the syringes.» She gave her head a little shake. «We don't have enough of them. And I think you better see Master Fortine."'

«Don't you trust me?» Capiam was hurt by her response.

«Completely. That's why I suggest you go to Master Fortine. With your serum. He has been too frequent a visitor at our cautious Lord Holder's internment camp. He's coming down with the plague.»